#the first one especially. like before that point during my 2020? replay i was like just tossing around random headcanon ideas for seb | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

maintitle · 9 months ago

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Weird thing, and I'm not sure if it's age or what, but as I get older I'm finding that my favorite kinds of games stress me out a bit. For example, I've been going kind of slow through BG3, which is odd because when I was young I would've beaten that in a weekend.

The reason for it is partially because I find the combat difficult (it's easier than the first game, a game I never beat despite really loving it), but mostly it's because I think I've replayed these kinds of games so much that I obsess with perfection. The main drive for me is maximizing content and approval with my companions and trying to get as many side quests in as possible, and I think that stresses me out in games where that either takes a lot of time (BG3) or that have long stretches of nothingness between those things (DA:I). That stress doesn't extend to older games, but I think that's largely because I know every corner of them at this point.

Weird thing is, I don't think this is a bad thing, especially in the context of BG3. I stress out about these details because I WANT to engage in the game as much as possible. And yes, I should really ease off because that stress ruins some of the randomness of choices in a first playthrough, but I still don't think wanting to do well by companions in the first playthrough is at all a negative from that experience. Outside of literally one situation (I repeated the Isobel kidnapping until I succeeded on it, largely because I was fucking pissed off that I could easily win the scenario but kept rolling ridiculously low. THAT was stubborness.) I let my rolls determine the plot and don't try to minmax things... but I WILL fight for high rolls with companions. I WANT to get to know them, so going through a new game can sometimes be stressful because the appeal of the game is getting to know these characters.

Still, I do think the stress of that interferes a bit with my experience. My first ever run of the Mass Effect series saw me play the third installment without Garrus, because I played ME2 about six months before ME3 came out and I just never thought to check if he could be saved until I realized during ME3 that there was footage of him ABSOLUTELY being in the game. THAT was a unique experience, so I should want to re-experience it, right? Well... Inquisition taught me different.

I like Inquisition. I liked it at release... but I was also in a really tough place in my life at release. I had just had life changing surgery, and I was sleepwalking through life for a really long time after it. I had to come to terms with my mortality at a very early age, and I didn't quite realize through the trauma yet that I now had a disability. The surgery took so much out of me that I played DA:I for the first time and I just didn't do a good job engaging with it. My girlfriend at the time REALLY wanted me to engage in it, so I did it, and my large reaction to it was pretty much 'oh, cool' and moving on. I was too out of it to truly engage and enjoy the experience.

I replayed it in 2020 and it was a TOTALLY different experience. I dumped a lot of time into it, and while the game has some pretty glaring flaws (fucking hell the world is so empty and so few of the quests in it actually matter), but despite that I think it's really, REALLY fantastic. But that experience taught me that I WANTED to put my best foot forward into a new game in this kind of genre... and I think that's the source of the stress. I was ambivalent to a fantastic game because of general malaise, and I DON'T want that to happen again, so I'm being a perfectionist trying to get everything right with the companions and that slows me down A LOT. Like, I have 69 (nice) hours in the game according to my save file, but I have 86 hours in it according to my PS5. Now, a lot of those hours are me fucking around with character creation in order to make my ten thousand D&D characters, but still, that's a lot of reloading.

But the end point here is, I think it may have enhanced my experience of the game. While it's deprived me of some UNIQUE experiences, it's also made me deeply care about the game, and I think that vastly outstretches what I've lost from it. It's kind of special to immediately care about a game so much you engage in this kind of behaviour, and I can't honestly say that's anything but a positive. And I am ABSOLUTELY sure the same with be true of Dread Wolf, and while that's a bit stressful as well, I greatly look forward to that stress, because that stress is part of what makes this mini-genre appealing to me. It's never been the overall plot or even the world, it's all about the characters, their stories and themes and how you relate to them. That's the heart of the genre, and I'll be damned if I'm not gonna work my ass off to see their best sides.

#tw: surgery #tw: disability #Other than that I don't think I'm tagging this #This is more verbal vomit than anything #Just a feeling I'm having

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fridge-reviews · 2 years ago

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Mini Games 7

The criteria for this is very simple, all of these games can be completed in three hours or under (without using exploits etc). The reason for this? Well I find that sometimes, often in fact, that people just don't have time to play a longer game. So I thought I'd show some of the shorter ones some love!

Developer: Final Boss Entertainment Publisher: Final Boss Entertainment Rrp: £6.99 (Steam) Released: 30th September 2014

I've been noticing a trend of 'old school' inspired games lately, especially within the genre of the first person shooter. Many try to ape their predecessors by having a lower graphical fidelity or simplified mechanics. Wrack isn't one of these games, if anything this game reminds me more of Bulletstorm than something like Quake. While Wrack does have a story its clearly paper thin and only intended to be a flimsy justification for progressing the game. The thing is if you're playing this for the story you're really missing the point, this is about high scores and trying to build up combos and on that front it does a pretty decent job.

If I do have a bone to pick with this game its that the enemies AI is extremely simplistic, every enemy will start to advance toward you once they see you, even if they have ranged weapons. This meant that in quite a few occasions I just stood around a corner to avoid projectiles and then hit anything that rounded it with a sword (usually killing in a single blow). This isn't a bad game by any means but for only eight pounds more you can buy Doom and get a longer more full and challenging experience. -------

Developer: Bithell Games Publisher: Bithell Games Rrp: £4.79 (Steam) Released: 22nd May 2018 After the success of Subsurface Circular (and it was a success even if it wasn't all that well known) Mike Bithell is back with Quarantine Circular. Unbelievably this game was made a good two years before anyone had even heard of Covid-19 because it almost feels like this game was written for it. This game is set in the near future with humanity facing a global pandemic, one that seems set to wipe us out completely. However it seems that help has come from beyond the stars, or rather the vistor may help depending on your decisions.

The whole game is over in just about two hours but I have to say it was a great two hours. I replayed this over and over again trying to get all the various scenarios.

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Developer: Colestia Publisher: Colestia Rrp: £3.99 Released: June 9th 2020 This game is a bit of a strange one, for starters its a thriller which isn't a genre something video games really manage to pull off often. The other thing that makes this game so unusual is that the events that you're investigating are all true. It's your job to piece together the actual international conspiracy that was happening during the Cold War and you'll be doing this by carefully searching through archives and using an evidence board to show how it all connects. The closes game I can think of that this is somewhat similar to is Her Story, because you're left to piece it together for yourself.

It might not have been the intention of the developers (though I suspect it was) but even though I was only searching through files this game had me feeling a strange feeling of tension. Every so often you could hear the sound of people pulling boxes of evidence even though you know you're the only one in the room, security cameras move, suspicious looking cars appear in the street outside and drive off when you see them... it all adds to this odd feeling that you're being watched and that you might not be entirely safe. Nothing happened to me during my play time but it was damned effective at making me paranoid.

I'd say this game well worth a look for those of you looking for something just a bit different.

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Developer: Dreamlike Publisher: Dreamlike Rrp: £1.69 (Steam Released: 12th April 2021 I think this is the shortest game I've played in a quite a while, lasting a whole twenty five minutes and that was with me getting stuck for a moment. Chicken Holmes (no, I'm not writing the rest) is a escape the room style point and click adventure game.

I've played a few games like this before however this one was made somewhat more difficult simply because of the translation or rather because of the poor translation. I'm not entirely sure what the native language of the developers are but I'm quite certain that they are either Spanish or Portugese speakers. Sadly whomever did the translation wasn't quite up for the task. There were a lot of grammatical errors and typo's that made the game a bit more difficult that it should have been and... well there is an entire section where there is no translation at all. It's near the end and its apparently some kind of movie line but its an untranslated one which meant that whatever it was referencing completely passed me by.

To be honest I'd not really bother with this game, I didn't hate the game but I didn't enjoy it either and there are far better games you can play for this price or even less.

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Developer: Onyx Lute Publisher: Onyx Lute Rrp: £3.99 (Humblebundle and Steam) Released: 18th November 2016 Putting it simply this game is just a bunch of small, yet challenging, jigsaw puzzles. Although rather than it being a jigsaw in the traditional sense you put together stained glass clock faces. Why clock faces? Honestly I haven't not a clue. What I can tell you though is that I found this game a joy to play, I just put a podcast on in the background and unwound.

The thing is the music in the game is great too but I just really wanted to listen to my own stuff after a while and usually I'm not the sort of person who can do that with most games. This one though felt almost built for that kind of use. Mentally stimulating but not taxing to the point I'd really have concentrate.

#wrack #final boss entertainment #quarantine circular #bithell games #mike bithell #glass masquerade #onyx lute #a hand with many fingers #colestia #chicken holmes the mystery of bartlomue #dreamlike #mini games

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pop-punklouis · 3 years ago

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by: @aliensyndrome ✨

Monday night, Louis Tomlinson’s career-defining music festival, Away From Home, took place at the Crystal Palace Bowl in London. A one-day event that Tomlinson entirely curated, himself, was something the Walls singer had been working towards for nearly a year when he had the idea 12 months ago— a free concert, for his fans, to take a stand against the gatekeeping done by ticket prices, and a way to give exposure to smaller artists. He hopes to make the show an annual event placed in different locations each year.

The festival had a massive turnout, hosting roughly 10,000 people, with a lineup including Jess Iszatt, BILK, The Snuts, and Tomlinson, himself, as the headlining act. The show marked the smashing return of Louis Tomlinson to a live stage after his first tour was postponed in early 2020 due to the pandemic. During his set which lasted 70 minutes, fan videos showed how engaged the crowd was. A few times, the audience’s voices matched the power of Tomlinson’s own, building electricity for the return of live music. He was in good spirits, performing at the height of his talent with soaring vocals, feverish frontman-ship, and infectious confidence.

In between delivering a career-best performance, he got emotional addressing the festival and the fans. At one point he stated, “I’ve only done two tour shows before now, and I don’t really know what to expect. Honestly, throughout this whole gig, all I feel is excited about what’s the come. I try in these moments to show you my thanks, but honestly, I can’t even articulate it. I just f****** love all of you.” Even through a screen, one could feel the overwhelming gratitude expressed for his fanbase and the success of the event.

He also premiered a new song at the show— a fuzzed-out, indie-rock track titled ‘Change’ that bubbles into a massive moment for Tomlinson as it feels like it was made to be performed in a festival setting. Seemingly documenting the rambling nostalgia of chasing youth and fleeting youth, it resonates deeper for all those who have had the same bombarding thoughts over the past year due to the pandemic. This only intensifies with hard-hitting lyrics such as “Everything’s changed outside, but I’m still the same inside.” This is his second unreleased track performed live over the past year. The first being the lyrical marvel “Copy of a Copy of a Copy” teased late last year. During the show, Tomlinson confirmed that both of these tracks would make an appearance on his upcoming sophomore album.

Yet, the Away From Home Festival isn’t Louis Tomlinson’s first performance in 18 months. Back in December 2020, Tomlinson put on a live-stream event through Veeps that ended up awarding him the title of “Biggest Solo Male Livestream” of the year with over 160,000 virtual tickets sold worldwide while placing him third for biggest live-stream overall just after Dua Lipa and BTS. This live-stream, Live from London, was done entirely for charity, donating the profits from the show between Fare Share, Crew Nation, Bluebell Wood Children’s Hospice, and Stagehand. He also gave proceeds to his own touring crew.

Saturday, September 4th, Louis Tomlinson will be hosting a live-streaming event for all those who couldn’t attend the Away From Home Festival. Not just a replay of the full concert, itself, the global stream also features a mini-documentary alongside post-show backstage footage. Directed by Charlie Lightning, the 30-minute documentary will showcase Tomlinson and his team as he takes on his most ambitious project to date— the journey and curation of the Away from Home Festival 2021. Veeps has more information regarding ticket prices and timezones.

Louis Tomlinson’s Away From Home Festival wasn’t an easy thing to pull off— especially as an independent artist. But, Tomlinson’s dedication, verve, and loyalty over producing a free festival for fans and DIY artists alike is what allowed it to happen and happen seamlessly. The exceptional turnout and the strong belief in the festival’s presence make this Louis Tomlinson’s most career-defining moment to date. It’s only up from here.

#here it is!!! x #✨🤍#louis tomlinson

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robin-josephette-biden · 3 years ago

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A Statement Through Horror: BDG and YouTube

In his video announcing his departure from Polygon Bryan David Gilbert [BDG] stated, “I want to make things that one day people will make a show like unraveled about.” [Paraphrasing here]. Since that announcement he has made some of the most interesting and engaging comedy videos on the platform. On Bryan’s channel, there is a section called “bdg’s scaries” that contains three videos. The first how to make jorts was released April 27, 2019 and will not be part of this analysis, as we are focused on the other two videos. These two videos are Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss which was released on October 25, 2020 (two months before his final Unraveled video and departure from Polygon) and Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97 which was posted March 3, 2021. If you have not seen these videos yet you should stop reading immediately and go watch them both (honestly everything on his channel is amazing, especially the surprisingly compelling and personal Dances Moving! series) before continuing to read this as I will be spoiling both of them. The position of YouTube celebrity has been the source of a good bit of commentary as short form online media has become more and more central in our culture. Bryan has created two videos that I feel do an excellent job of exploring the relationship between youtuber and audience. I should also point out that this is merely my interpretation of these videos and is in no way BDG’s intended message. I’ll start by going over the first video. Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss opens with BDG outside an apartment building, standing in front of a black car. BDG points up at one of the windows and says, “Three years ago I was living in that apartment right there. Third floor, leaky windows, cockroaches, the worst.” I do not know if the real life BDG actually lived in that building, but the 3 years timeframe does line up neatly with his beginning to work at Polygon. BDG continues to bad mouth his old apartment and mentions how he has turned it all around stating, “But just last week I paid off my very first Subaru Impreza. And I own my own house in Nebraska.” This radical change in life-style he credits to, “. . . [working] from home, [making] my own hours, and [being] my own boss. And you can do it too.” I think that it is interesting that BDG’s career up to that point mirrors that of his character, going from newly graduated content creator making small videos in his apartment to one of the most popular creators on Polygon. And all that being accomplished through work that many (rightly or wrongly) would not see as fitting into the mold of the traditional 9 to 5. The idea of making millions working from home, at your own pace, and with no boss is intrinsically tied to the mystique of the YouTube celebrity. Moving into BDG’s office he explains that he makes $20k a month working on spreadsheets. A massive spreadsheet appears behind him that is dated, 01.12.88 (nothing of note happened on January 12, 1988 and the only thing that happened on December 1, 1988 is a large cyclone that struck Bangladesh, January 12, 1888 is the day of the Schoolhouse Blizzard which struck the midwestern US and killed 235 people (remember this for later)) and is filled, seemingly randomly, with garbled nonsense symbols. Many of the cells are the same as other cells and there are empty cells scattered haphazardly throughout the spreadsheet. BDG explains that he got this strategy from Dorian Smiles. In exchange for working on these spreadsheets BDG receives $10k - $20k a month (an amount that lines up pretty damn well with the amount he should be getting through his Patreon page currently, I don’t know if this was true when the video was made though) from Dorian. Wanting to know where the money is coming from BDG asks his bank and they explain that he is wiring the money to himself from another account he has. He grows confused as to the nature of this work and the disproportionately large amount of money it brings in, explicitly mentioning his confusion as to how the money is coming from someone with, “. . . my name and my voice.” and sets about to find and confront Dorian Smiles. BDG sets off for Center Nebraska, which is close to where Dorian lives (a small town in the northeast corner of Nebraska). He states that Dorian’s address hasn’t existed since 1888 (that’s a familiar year isn’t it?) when it was supposedly condemned during an enormous blizzard and is, “. . . just woods now.” The video then transitions to BDG walking through dark woods while his narration talking up the Dorian Smiles program continues becoming increasingly broken. He comes across a figure sitting in the woods that is convulsing strangely, when he calls out to it the figure turns and is him (heretofore named Dorian). Dorian slowly puts his hands over his nose and mouth while staring at BDG at which point the narration cuts out. BDG copies Dorian and when Dorian removes his hands in a flourish, BDG does the same to reveal that he no longer has a mouth. The video quickly cuts back to BDG in his office talking about the program, he asks the viewer, “Why don’t you join me?” and then sits back and smiles while that line repeats without him moving his mouth. The most pressing mystery is who Dorian Smiles is. I think the most likely answer (and one I know I am not the progenitor of) is that Dorian is a reference to The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde, the story of a young man that has a portrait that ages and takes on the ravages of the debauched life its subject lives while Dorian himself does not. BDG would therefore be the unwitting recipient of that blessing, reaping massive rewards while his double, Dorian, lives in poverty and solitude. I like this explanation for Dorian, but I find it to be far more mechanical than thematic. On a metatextual level you could read that Dorian represents the character of BDG. The person that is in all of BDG’s videos, and the one with whom so much of the audience forms a parasocial relationship. In this lens the parallels with BDG’s own life make more sense. By this point in BDG’s career it is not difficult to imagine him feeling stifled creatively at work (I feel comfortable saying this given how soon after this video came out that he departed Polygon). His character had grown too large, potentially becoming alien to him, no longer reflecting the art he wanted to make and so he made a video about a distorted version of himself stealing his voice. In this way the video becomes a statement on his artistic integrity and his desire to test new boundaries and go in different directions. In hindsight, with the knowledge of his departure and then success after leaving Polygon, the video becomes almost heartwarming (if it weren’t terrifying) in the same way that a before and after picture of someone improving themselves can be. We will return to the Dorian Smiles system, but now we must move to the second video, Teaching Jake about the Camcorder, Jan '97. I’ll save you the blow by blow breakdown and aim for a quick summary instead. This video is a simple stationary shot of an old CRT tv. A VHS tape is inserted and a video of a man teaching his, evidently young, son how to use a camcorder plays. It is relatively wholesome and corny in that way that all home movies are and when it ends the tape rewinds and the segment plays again, this time with a few deviations. Over replays the father becomes aware of what is happening and begins trying to reason with Jake through the camcorder begging him to stop watching the tape and move on. The father is menaced by a large shadowy figure that does not speak or move when confronted. Eventually the father resorts to simply taking the camera and recording his own screams of pain. On the final rewind the father simply says, “Attaboy.” before calmly walking out the room and into the dark hallway, a doorway opens at the other end, filled with orange light, and the father walks through and down stairs. The final shot of the video is of the television, showing the hallway, as orange light begins to flicker in the background of the left side of the TV. The sound of the father descending the stairs transitions from the TV to diegetic and a shadow appears briefly in the light. On one level the video is clearly a statement about loss and about trauma. Jake is losing himself by watching these videos on repeat, trying in vain to relive a happier time. In that desperate desire to regain what was lost he is distorting it, making it into something it isn’t, hurting it. At the beginning the father says, “Never ever press the rewind button, otherwise you might record over a precious memory. We always keep the recording going forward . . .“ I think there is an additional, and more personal for BDG, reading however. The father is the modern character of BDG, and we, the audience, are Jake. He is pleading with us to leave the past behind and move on. This was only his 3rd video that he posted after leaving Polygon. It is a plea from him to leave the old character behind and stop trying to make one into the other. To stop obsessively comparing the new videos to the old. To let the future be the future and let the past be the past. He is telling us that his new work will not be like the old, that he has progressed past that and that now his viewers need to as well. The detachment and confusion of Earn $20K EVERY MONTH by being your own boss has transformed into a desire to move forward. But he needed to ensure that his audience was ready to come with him, and so he made a video about loss and the dangers of sinking too far into it. I know that there are some of you that feel I am reading too much of what I assume to be BDG’s thoughts and emotions into these interpretations, and I am the first to admit that I might be. In no way am I trying to say these are the only interpretations of these videos or even that they are correct. I think there is so much more of an artist that they put into their work than they realise. I do not know the mind of BDG, only he does, but these videos made me feel that I had a glimpse into the feelings of a man whose work I admire. These videos are either longer or a drastically different tone to the material he has put on his own channel and as such they stood out to me. They felt different, and they seemed to ask for a different level of scrutiny. On some level maybe BDGs videos can not be divorced from the story of BDG as a content creator, the same as any modern internet semi-celebrity, or indeed any artist. I guess there was also a part of me that wanted to answer the call to action I heard when BDG left Polygon, to unravel his work. I hope in some small way I’ve been able to do that.

#bdg #brian david gilbert #analysis #youtube #scary #When the dad screams towards the end of Teaching Jake I felt that in my soul.

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hlupdate · 3 years ago

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#louis tomlinson #away from home festival #articles #010921

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becomewings · 4 years ago

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The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>

BTS Universe Story Highlights, pt. 1 / 4

» pt. 2

Introduction

BTS Universe Story, a mobile game published by Netmarble, was released on September 24, 2020. While the majority of the app is essentially a sandbox and engine for users to create their own interactive stories, it also includes official and canon BU content. The first eight segments were introduced between the release date and December 2020, gathered under the title The Most Beautiful Moment in Life <I’M FINE>.

“I’m Fine” is half of the I’m Fine/Save Me ambigram introduced in the Love Yourself era. Notably, all of the BU content available in the game so far falls between events of the webtoon Save Me (also called HYYH0 in its logo) and The Notes 1—chronologically, that is, while bearing in mind that time resets to the morning of 11 April Year 22 whenever SeokJin fails to avert a tragedy among his six friends. I want to assure anyone who is unable to play the game that you are not missing any new, major plot beats from the overall BU narrative. Instead, the stories provide more insight into the motivations and consequences of SeokJin’s decisions in the earlier time loops, as well as more depth to individual characters and their circumstances.

The goal of this guide is to summarize each of the eight stories and highlight noteworthy details, especially if they are not yet present in other BU media. Within each story (which I often refer to as an arc, due to their character-focused nature), episodes must be played successively, but the stories themselves can be played in any order. I will present them over a series of posts in the order they are listed under the <I’M FINE> heading. The Prologue and NamJoon’s arc are free to play; the rest are paid content. Please note that due to the app’s Terms & Conditions, I will not include in-game footage here. The images in this guide are sourced from the official trailers/videos and the live action MVs as appropriate.

Content warning: contains references to death, suicide, suicidal ideation, child abuse, domestic violence, blood, homicide, depression, trauma, PTSD

This guide contains major spoilers and includes references to other BU media

Do not repost, copy, or quote without permission

Game Mechanic

Before diving into the summaries, I would like to address the primary mechanic of the game: the user’s control of character choices at designated moments in the stories. It’s a primary marketing point that the player can influence the progression of the narrative, with a frequent in-app tip also declaring, “stories’ endings can vary depending on your choices.” The latter is not strictly true—and it cannot be true due to the structure of the game. Choices are presented within most (not all) episodes, but each episode is an isolated unit: episode 2 provides the same content regardless of what you choose in episode 1. Since the consequences of your decisions are not cumulative, each episode reaches the same ending, and each decision inevitably rejoins the “main” story path (effectively reducing the script size).

So what is the point of this mechanic? While the system is not nearly as complex as what major platform titles are capable of nowadays (I suspect due in large part to the story creation portion of the game), it does foster a sense of interaction with the narrative that isn’t present in static visual media like comics or film. The episodes with choices also have incentive for replay to discover the impact of changing a character’s dialogue or action. Sometimes the differences between the outcomes are inconsequential, but other times you unearth new details, interactions, or memories that are missing in the other path.

I say this partially in reaction to all of the comments and tweets I read for the game trailers and even Smeraldo Book twitter’s choose-your-own-adventure style teasers with The Notes 2 excerpts released last summer. Many users expressed excitement, through words or memes, about finally being able to give the boys the happy ending they deserved. I don’t fault anyone for wanting that happy ending—I wish for it, too. But no matter what the rather overzealous marketing has claimed, I don’t believe that the canon ending of BU is ever meant to be in the audience’s control. But I do feel that this mechanism fits the BU narrative. It echoes the “countless loops” SeokJin has experienced in an effort to save his friends, the choices he must make at every crossroad, and the butterfly effect those actions have on all of their lives. I think it is reasonable to interpret the simple branching paths in the game as alternatives SeokJin has explored across multiple loops in his struggle to find the “right” way forward. I’d love to hear if you have theories of your own!

Prologue

The prologue is a brief episode introducing SeokJin’s repeated struggle and failure to save his friends. He wakes up yet again in his bed on 11 April Year 22, the beginning of the time loop. After reflecting on the tragedies that keep befalling the others, SeokJin realizes that he has only tried to fix the problems he can see. He wonders: “Have I tried to understand the root of my friends’ misfortunes? How much do I really know about my friends? Maybe I was never brave enough to confront their real scars and the worlds they’ve been living in. But I need to do it. Because it may be the key to saving them all.”

How to Offer a Hand

In this story, SeokJin attempts to prevent NamJoon’s arrest after he gets in a fight with a rude customer at Naeri Gas Station, his place of work. The first episode opens on the night of 11 April Year 22 with NamJoon curling his fists, glaring as crumpled bills lie untouched on the pavement. (The money looks similar to the shot from the I Need U MV.) SeokJin reaches for his shoulder, but NamJoon shrugs him off and strides away to punch the customer who deliberately dropped the bills for him to pick up. The gas station owner runs over at the customer’s furious shouts and orders NamJoon to apologize. He refuses, and police officers soon arrive and charge him with assault. No one listens to SeokJin’s protests that the customer started it first. The man sneers as NamJoon enters the police car. “Do you even have money for a settlement? Hey, you’re done for.” NamJoon is sentenced to prison again, and SeokJin hears glass shattering before the loop resets.

Rising from his bed on the morning of 11 April, SeokJin reflects on his failed efforts so far. He has hit the customer’s car, called for NamJoon in the middle of the incident, and stopped the fight himself, the latter of which caused his friends to avoid him later. The fight has even escalated; the details are unspecified, but the audience is provided an ominous shot of SeokJin speaking to a police officer alone at the scene. NamJoon is not the kind of person who would normally respond to that kind of provocation with his fists. SeokJin realizes that he cannot merely stop the fight but must discover and fix the true cause of it.

With this in mind, SeokJin heads to Naeri Gas Station during the day and tries to engage NamJoon. This is their first time meeting since they both returned to Songju, although SeokJin has experienced it in many loops already. “It’s been a while,” he greets (as he does at the end of the Blood Sweat & Tears Japanese version MV). Before SeokJin can dig deeper in their conversation, NamJoon is called away by his boss. SeokJin enters the small employee break room which serves as NamJoon’s living space when he’s not at the container, hoping to find some clues about his friend’s life. SeokJin locates something bundled in newspapers. If the player chooses to open it, he sees a strange shard of glass inside that may belong to a car or motorcycle headlight. He continues on, finding the book Cosmos by Carl Sagan and a notebook. SeokJin hesitates over the invasion of privacy but decides to read it since he needs all the information that he can gather. The journal entries detail NamJoon’s daily life since returning to Songju: his work at the gas station isn’t too bad despite the occasional rude customer; he purchased a book and hopes to get more in the future; he picked up a second job at a wedding hall to help catch up on bills; his brother NamHyeon got in trouble again, leading to more expenses; and his dad’s health has worsened, with hospital bills after an emergency surgery rising to levels that the family cannot afford. SeokJin knew that NamJoon was the de facto head of household due to his father’s illness but was unaware that it was to this degree. He feels sorry for NamJoon yet is also impressed by his maturity, for NamJoon never writes how difficult his situation is.

NamJoon arrives and asks what SeokJin is doing in the room. If the player chooses to answer “reading” instead of “just sitting there,” SeokJin privately observes that the conversation flows more easily when they talk about books. NamJoon says he must leave and declines when SeokJin offers to wait for him there. SeokJin knocks over a pile of books along with money and receipts as he stands. He thinks it is unusual that NamJoon picks up the books before the money. The books seem to be more than a hobby to NamJoon, holding special meaning. Walking to his car, SeokJin wonders if it is pride or determination not to falter that keeps NamJoon from journaling his grievances. He realizes that money is a constant source of frustration and misery to NamJoon, and that’s why he can’t stomach being insulted over the customer’s dropped money. SeokJin’s new plan is to prevent NamJoon from picking up the money. He also calls Palgok County Hospital and offers to pay the patient bill for NamJoon’s father. Anticipating that NamJoon will be angry if he finds out, SeokJin says the payer is Songho Foundation.

That night, SeokJin returns to the gas station with the excuse that he forgot to fill up earlier. The luxury car arrives with a honk, and NamJoon hurries over to assist. He shakes with anger when the customer drops the money on the ground. “Why aren’t you picking it up? You don’t want it? What’s with that look? Pretty arrogant for a part-timer, aren’t you?” goads the customer. SeokJin intervenes. Whether the player chooses to have him advise NamJoon not to pick it up or to order the customer to pick it up himself, the end result is the same. SeokJin asks the customer, “Why are you harassing a pitiful part-timer?” The customer drives away, and something about NamJoon seems off. His face is expressionless, not mad or humiliated. “SeokJin, you…” He stops. “Never mind. Thank you for your help.” The words sound difficult for him to speak.

SeokJin believes that he has saved NamJoon, although this ending feels sloppy. He continues on in the loop to rescue JungKook and later YoonGi, but uneasiness plagues him. Though he meant to help NamJoon with his actions, SeokJin wonders if he hurt him instead. On 5 May Year 22, he returns to the gas station and follows NamJoon when he leaves work early. NamJoon enters a bookstore, and SeokJin sneaks in after him to watch from afar. He overhears employees talking about NamJoon, worrying that he might dirty the pages of the book he’s perusing. NamJoon is too absorbed in the book to notice one of them calling for his attention. SeokJin recalls a memory from their school days when he found NamJoon reading alone in their classroom hideout: he asked why NamJoon read so diligently, and his friend explained that he found it comforting to empty his thoughts of everything else while focused on the book. In the present, SeokJin wonders how he forgot how much books mean to NamJoon. He sacrifices some of his food and transportation budget to afford them, but they enable him “to endure the weight of the world he’s forced to bear on his shoulders.” After realizing this, SeokJin wants to apologize for carelessly sympathizing with the reality that NamJoon has weathered alone.

The next episode is from NamJoon’s perspective, revealing his excitement over being able to purchase a book for the first time in two months. He wants to buy two but can only afford one. The employee at the register sighs and asks why he leafed through a book he wasn’t going to buy. NamJoon apologizes, and she mutters, “So dirty.” He notices his reflection, clothes worn and smelling of gasoline, and realizes she’s talking about him, not the book. He tries to shake off these depressing thoughts, but he is still not accustomed to this treatment despite experiencing it regularly at work. As NamJoon begins to exit the store, the security alarm goes off. The employees demand to check his bag despite his insistence that he didn’t steal anything. Their certainty of his theft angers him. NamJoon allows them to look through his bag, and they are suspicious of the like-new book in it which he brought from home. One begins to call the police until SeokJin appears, vouching for NamJoon by saying he saw everything. The employees accept that the alarm malfunctioned and excuse their suspicions as a mistake.

Outside, SeokJin asks NamJoon if he is all right. NamJoon is thankful but wonders how SeokJin materialized right when he needed him. “How’d you find me here?” he asks aloud. SeokJin explains that he happened to notice him while walking through the neighborhood. NamJoon wonders if it’s because they said goodbye on a weird note last time. He thanks him and turns to leave. SeokJin calls after him. “I’m sorry. I wanted to apologize. I didn’t mean to upset you that day at the gas station. It was a mistake to have called you pitiful. If my rash actions hurt you, I’m really sorry.” NamJoon accepts his apology, believing it to be sincere, and says that things would have turned out a lot worse if SeokJin had not intervened. Thunder rolls overhead, and NamJoon uses the impending rain as his excuse to depart. He declines SeokJin’s offer of a ride and runs home, feeling his friend’s eyes on him.

Before he can settle down to read at home, NamJoon receives a call from his cheerful mother. She thanks him for paying off the entire hospital bill. NamJoon is perplexed and asks what’s on the receipt, since he didn’t pay it. His mother wants to leave it be, but he insists that they investigate so they don’t get in trouble or sued. She reads that the Songho Foundation is credited as the payer. NamJoon calls the hospital, introducing himself as the guardian for Kim YoungMin, but they can’t transfer him to the administrative department at this time. Disappointed, he looks up the foundation’s website, unable to recall why it sounds familiar. He wonders why a scholarship foundation in the city would get involved with him. Spotting photos of a recent launch ceremony on the site, he recognizes a few people: Songju High School’s principal, the familiar-looking face of the foundation’s chairman, and SeokJin. First, NamJoon forces a laugh, and then it’s difficult for him to breathe. He thinks that SeokJin really had pitied him at that moment. The only thing keeping NamJoon going is the idea of getting through life on his own strength. Why does he have to live like this?

The last episode opens on 5 May back in SeokJin’s perspective. He is confident now that he has saved NamJoon, although it occurs to him that a better alternative may have been to simply pick up the money himself instead of stepping forward. (This decision is enacted in a later loop and depicted in the Euphoria MV.) While reflecting on what comes next to save his other friends, he receives a text from NamJoon. “What’s your account number? I’ll pay you back for the hospital bills. I don’t need your help. I’ll handle my concerns on my own.” Heart sinking, SeokJin wonders how he found out. With a sense of foreboding, he tries calling NamJoon, but no one answers. SeokJin texts him back, pretending that he doesn’t understand, and tells NamJoon to call him. SeokJin’s second attempt connects while he’s gathering his car keys to visit the container. “That’s enough. Just send the account number over text,” NamJoon instructs. SeokJin coaxes him to talk for a moment, and NamJoon asks flatly, “Are you going to apologize again?” SeokJin attempts to salvage the situation, but his friend turns cold when he insists that NamJoon is misunderstanding and that he just wanted to help. “So, why? Why are you helping me?! Yeah, you’re always a good person. You’ve done nothing wrong and I’m the one misunderstanding.” SeokJin apologizes again. NamJoon refuses his request to meet in person. “No, I thought maybe there was a reason for everything you did… But I guess I misconstrued it. I’ll pay you back, so I’d prefer if you stopped contacting me.” Long after the call ends, SeokJin stands holding his phone, feeling that the glass is going to break at any moment. He wants to believe that it’s not over, but hope is slipping through his fingertips.

The episode finishes in NamJoon’s perspective. On 8 May and 9 May, he accepts part-time delivery work and reflects on his three jobs. Whenever he thinks he’s at his breaking point, he focuses on his new goal of returning SeokJin’s money. On 10 May, NamJoon wakes up to his buzzing phone and is called in to work. On a scooter, he passes by a bus stop and notices graffiti. (This is the same bus stop, with matching graffiti, that appears in the Highlight Reel.) Mesmerized, he wonders if it’s TaeHyung’s. As soon as NamJoon looks up, the scooter’s brake fails, and he crashes. The shattered glass on the cold pavement reminds him of the headlight shard and the kid who looked like TaeHyung. (So the piece of glass SeokJin saw in April was really a memento NamJoon retrieved from the scene of the crash in the mountain town, where the delivery boy whom he privately called TaeHyung died. This event is described in NamJoon’s 17 December Year 21 entry in The Notes 1.) NamJoon’s vision grows blurry, and the distant sound of an ambulance doesn’t come any closer.

The arc concludes there, but it obviously marks another reset for SeokJin. It is interesting to note that in this failed loop, NamJoon suffers the same fate that he narrowly avoided in the snowy mountain town before returning to Songju.

Please stay tuned for the next Highlights post featuring JungKook and YoonGi!

#armiesnet #networkbangtan #bangtanarmynet #armysource #dailybangtan #bts universe #hyyh #bangtan universe #bts universe story #bts universe story highlights #seokjin #namjoon #namjin #bts theories

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nct-lian · 4 years ago

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wayv’s relation to lian

KUN + LIAN: LUN

they have the cutest little interactions ever :(

was one of the members that kun was most comfortable around at first

she made him feel so welcomed!

when nct 2018 appeared on weekly idol, lian was placed in the front

but she moved her chair over to kun’s side to be closer to him !!!!!!!

lun stans found dead

they go out to eat food together a lot :D

now that lian doesn’t feel the need to look over him anymore, he stepped in and is now a very good parental figure for her

he bought her an expensive ass ring for her birthday

him and johnny both being her dad: 🤝

kun has been arguing back and forth with chenle about lian’s chinese name

he loves the name xiuying for her :(

they hype each other up all the time !!

lian and kun had the best time with each other when filming from home

we got so many adorable clips of them :DDDD

when talking to each other they can’t pick a solid language

like they’re always switching between mandarin and korean

they also slip in a bit of english at times as well

TEN + LIAN: LITEN

if kun is her dad then ten is her cool uncle

he lets her do whatever she wants

like he will just sit and watch as she teases the fUCK out of hyuck

HES TEACHING HER THAI

just like kun they switch between multiple languages in a conversation

they normally speak english with each other!

their fashion game is always on point.

no actually they literally wore matching shirts one time

liten supremacy breaking the internet: <3

ten once said “guys she’s like my daughter stop being weird~~~!” on vlive when people kept asking if him and lian were dating

as he should !

they mention each other ¿ everywhere ?

THEY DANCE TOGETHER ALL THE TIME

ten even helped her choreograph the new ver. of yoncé

don’t touch me i’m soft

no because ten ships her with someone in the group … just not who you’d think ;)

i swear he’s her #1 hypeman

ten was actually the one who made their ship name- goals asf sry i don’t make the rules

WINWIN + LIAN: LIWIN

lian is yet another member of nct who will sacrifice her soul to the devil for winwin

“winwin winwin winwin winwin is on the mind forever and always i love you winwin” was what she posted for his birthday

AND THE FEELING IS MUTUAL

winwin loves her just as much and he shows it

he likes hugging her DDDDD:

also ten ships them

so that’s that uh :p

lian cried so hard when he had to pause promotions with 127 :(

especially because they were super close!

winwin was actually another one of her first friends in nct because she was fluent in mandarin

and they were both super comfortable speaking with each other :)

winwin: i like lian the most :D

yuta + taeil: am i a joke to you?

no cause yuta is constantly losing in this thing

lian picks winwin and winwin picks lian what is happening

winwin’s current lockscreen is a picture of lian rolling her eyes at yangyang

yup yup their lockscreen tradition LISTEN AND WEEP

winwin’s selfies are lian’s favourite thing :)

LUCAS + LIAN: LULIAN

omfg the chaos these two bring

i’m crying because nct 2018 was chaotic in itself but lulian was something else

THEY WERE ALWAYS SCREAMING ????

taeyong was going through an existential crisis the entirety of 2018

AND BYE LUCAS WILL NOT STOP COMPARING THEIR HAND SIZES

leave it in 2018 sweetheart we been knew lian is the size of a jellybean

he had her react to his drama where he dances to replay after killing his girlfriend

lian confirmed it was 10/10 and would recommend watching

she genuinely thinks lucas should have been added to nct dream and she stands by that opinion daily

the MOMENTS we got during nct world 2.0 were chefs kiss

they were both so chaotic while mark was frying eggs

“MARK WHAT ARE YOU DOING (⊹つ•۝•⊹)つ”

the oldest + youngest in the 99’ line remain iconic

lian hates him but loves him at the same time

because he’s nice to her but he SPENDS TOO MUCH OF HIS TIME MAKING FUN OF HER HEIGHT

“lian you’re like literally two feet tall i could fit you in my pocket”

“i will drop kick you in 2.5 seconds if you don’t shut the fuck up wong yukhei”

lucas once said that their favourite thing to do together was play at playgrounds

XIAOJUN + LIAN: XIAN

what you’ve all been waiting for

xiaojun went so long thinking that lian was chinese (∩╹□╹∩)

like she speaks mandarin perfectly, has a chinese stage name

IT WAS A REASONABLE MISTAKE LET HIM LIVE

when they met the first thing he said to her was how pretty she was

“y-you’re so pretty uhh”

*cue distressed xiaojun*

he followed lian on instagram before nct 2020 was even confirmed

dedication

he didn’t know jaehyun or yuta liked her and accidentally patted her head in front of them and called her cute

AND THAT WAS RHE DAY BEFORE THE WHOLE “xiaojun is terrified of yuta” THING HAPPENED

PLEASEHANDHJEJSB

they’d like to do a duet someday :)

he couldn’t get her lyrics from kick it out of his head when he first listened to the song

sometimes still quotes them around her to make her laugh

lian hyped his drama up SO MUCH !1!1!1!€]£<]~\£>€{

“dejunnie is having an acting debut soon !! please go support him and his cast~”

xiaojun brags about that a lot ... and her nickname for him :)

HENDERY + LIAN: LIANDERY

the teasing

THE MF TEASINF THEYRE SO ANNOYING

besties ™

they would occasionally message each other before and they considered themselves to be pretty close but when nct 2020 happened they were chaos

especially when they ended up in the work it unit together

everyone was so sick of them like they would not shut up about random ass things

hendery and lian are like another version of haechan and lian

but minus the lovey stuff they sometimes do

with liandery it’s constant teasing and making fun of each other 24/7

and it’s all fun and games so they can go DOWN if they’d like to

lian roasted him so hard once bye

they were supposed to be a pair on “it’s awkward but it’s ok”

but they developed such a good friendship within like two weeks that they had to switch up the members

hendery is kinda soft for her though ngl

he’ll just randomly poke her dimples

BUT HE WONT LIE AND SAY HE WASNT INTIMIDATED BY HER AT FIRST

it was just the way she presented herself at that time because she was a little frustrated, but it wasn’t anything that wouldn’t change later on

hendery thought she was older than him by like three years rip

YANGYANG + LIAN: YANGLIAN

when lian met yangyang she gained another child

but yangyang’s not a baby anymore (҂⌣̀_⌣́)

yet he’ll 100% act cute so that she does stuff for him

she’s not complaining though anything for her son

they’re like yangyang and ten all over again

once had a whole ass conversation through memes

it started with spongebob ended with shrek

lian now knows how to introduce herself in german thank you yangyang

not lian teaching yangyang toronto slang :’)

yangayng for some reason gave her big haechan energy when they first met

because the first thing he did was mock her height

he literally bent down and said “can you see me better”

lian: hello i saw you perfectly fine before my neck isn’t broken sir

but it was okay because now they have a really playful relationship with each other :D

have teamed up on numerous occasions to make kun’s life harder

“i thought the chaos stopped with yangyang, lian when did you become such a problem child?”

but lian gets special treatment because well .. she’s lian what do you think

yangyang calls her lili :)

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cloudyskywars · 4 years ago

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Back to December is about Anakin and Obi-Wan and here’s 2,000 words why

So there I was, listening to Back to December, you know, as one does. And then I nearly started crying because this is without a doubt an Anakin and Obi-Wan song. I roped my friend @renegadeontherunn into doing a full song analysis with me. The whole analysis is based from Anakin singing this to Obi-Wan immediately after the events of Return of the Jedi. So everyone’s a Force Ghost, and feelings ensue. Enjoy the angst!

The analysis will be below the cut, because as I said, it’s approximately 2,000 words.

I'm so glad you made time to see me/ How's life? Tell me, how's your family?/ I haven't seen them in a while - Obi-Wan’s family was the Jedi. And Anakin has spent the past twenty five years hunting down the Jedi, eliminating them one by one. And now that he’s one with the Force, he’s gotta be wondering, “Are the other Jedi here too?” because he may not have realized it, but they were his family as well. I’m just imagining Anakin asking Obi-Wan where everyone else is, and Obi-Wan having to tell him that not everyone stayed with the Force the way that he and Yoda did.

Your guard is up and I know why- Obi-Wan’s guard probably wasn’t up, but Anakin would expect it to be. He rightfully feels guilty, and probably expects Obi-Wan to hate him and not trust him anymore.

Because the last time you saw me/ Is still burned in the back of your mind - on Mustafar, Anakin literally burning, the image no doubt haunting Obi-Wan ever since. In Obi-Wan’s 20 years on Tatooine, how many times do you think he replayed that memory in his mind? You were my brother Anakin, I loved you/I hate you. (grouped with previous two lines)

So this is me swallowin' my pride- Anakin as a Force Ghost, standing in front of Obi-Wan. He’s asking, begging for forgiveness, even though he knows he doesn’t deserve it. Anakin was always prideful for a Jedi, and this is him humbling himself and asking for Obi-Wan’s forgiveness (for so many things; Order 66, turning to the dark side, killing the Jedi, killing him)

Standin' in front of you sayin' I'm sorry for that night - the night Anakin fell to the Dark Side, their fight on Mustafar, and also probably the last 20+ years of him as a Sith and causing so much death and destruction. He’s sorry for so much, but especially that night when everything went wrong.

And I go back to December all the time - he revisits that battle in his mind constantly, still hating Obi-Wan as Vader, but feeling deep (deep deep) down, an enormous sense of regret and guilt, and especially at the end when he reunites with Obi-Wan

It turns out freedom ain't nothin' but missin' you - We see in Episode 2 that Anakin feels that Obi-Wan is constantly holding him back, preventing him from reaching his full potential (feelings no doubt put there by Palpatine) Once he turns to the Dark Side, he believes he is stronger than ever, (“I’m stronger than the Emperor, I can overthrow him.”)and so most likely feels “free” from Obi-Wan and the duty of being a Jedi. But we know that he learned, eventually, that all the Dark Side brings is loneliness and despair. “It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith — because now yourself is all you will ever have.”

Wishin' I'd realized what I had when you were mine - Anakin spent much of his time as Obi-Wan’s Padawan feeling less than and like he was never good enough for Obi-Wan. Then, when he finally became a Knight, he still felt held back by the Jedi. In reality, he had a substantial support system there waiting for him, ready to help him, that he never realized existed. He had the tools and the people he needed to be a successful Jedi and to have a happy life and to stay in the Light, but he didn’t use them. And now he’s wishing he had. That he’d recognized his and Obi-Wan’s friendship when he’d had it.

I'd go back to December, turn around and make it alright- Can you IMAGINE the regret Anakin is feeling right now? After 25 years of being the terror of the galaxy, Darth Vader, he has finally returned from the dark and knows all the bad things he’s done, and now recognizes that they were bad things. He slaughtered younglings, helped strike down the remaining Jedi, even took away the clones’ free will. Just imagining the pure regret that he must be feeling at this moment.

These days, I haven't been sleepin' - REVENGE OF THE SITH ANYONE??? We know for a fact due to the Matthew Stover novelization of ROTS that Anakin was getting almost no sleep during the events of the movie. I believe when he Fell he had been without sleep for,,,, at least three days? (I think it was five but I’m not sure) Anakin please take a nap. Nightmares!!! But also, as Vader, I’m pretty sure Anakin doesn’t actually need to sleep or at least doesn’t need a ton of it, so again he’s literally not sleeping and only sustaining himself on the Dark Side.

Stayin' up playin' back myself leavin'- Do you think- do you ever think that during his time as Darth Vader, he would constantly replay those days when everything fell apart in his head? I’m specifically thinking about the scene where he marches on the Jedi Temple. Granted, in that scene, he isn’t leaving, per say. He’s returning home, but it is no longer the place he calls home. I imagine that scene playing on repeat in his mind, because that’s the moment that he passed the point of no return. Before that, yes, he had already screwed up, big time. But he hadn’t crossed the line yet, I don't think.

Then I think about summer, all the beautiful times- At this moment I’m sure he’s feeling loads and loads of guilt and regret, as discussed above. But I can’t help but think he’s also thinking about the good times he shared with Obi-Wan and Padme. (Padme specifically because of summer and Naboo for that one good week, where they fell in love and it was beautiful.) And although his relationship with Obi-Wan was strained near the end (and eventually fell apart) there were good times, times that they both cherished. During his time as Darth Vader, he probably looked back on those memories with hate. But now that he’s Anakin again, he is probably remembering those times fondly.

I watched you laughin' from the passenger's side- [insert gif of Obi-Wan smiling in the speeder]

And realized I loved you in the fall - in the Fall. This could be for either Anakin or Obi-Wan. There must’ve been a part of Anakin that knew he was lying when he shouted “I hate you!” and felt happy when Obi-Wan said he loved him. And for Obi-Wan, he knew he loved Anakin, he had just never said it to him before. The only time he did was when Anakin had Fallen and was dying. And he probably regretted that with every piece of himself during his exile on Tatooine.

And then the cold came, the dark days - There are so many instances where Palpatine is connected with the cold, with darkness, with everything that is the opposite of the Jedi and, more importantly, of Obi-Wan. The darkness referred to here is the Dark Side, when it became overwhelming and Anakin fell.

When fear crept into my mind - Anakin’s already-intense fears of never being good enough or Obi-Wan not reciprocating Anakin’s love were intensified and heightened by Palpatine’s influence and him planting even more fear and doubt into Anakin’s head. This fear and this doubt in his friendship with Obi-Wan was ultimately one of the reasons he fell. Yes, it was his fear for Padme’s life that really did him in. Anakin was known as “The Hero With No Fear.” But there at the end, he became a person full of fear, and as we know: “Fear is the path to the dark side … fear leads to anger … anger leads to hate … hate leads to suffering.”

You gave me all your love and all I gave you was goodbye -Again, this is Anakin finally realizing that Obi-Wan did love him, that he was a good Master for him, and it was Anakin who hadn’t seen it, who had betrayed him. There is a quote from the book Lords of the Sith in which Vader acknowledges his betrayal of everyone he loved. Palpatine: “‘You were a traitor, were you not, Lord Vader?... To the Jedi. To Padme. To Obi-Wan. To all those you loved.’ Vader: Vader did not know the answer his Master wanted to hear, so he simply answered with the truth. ‘Yes.”’

I'd go back to December, turn around and change my own mind- Talking about guilt, again. Without a doubt, Anakin would go back to where it all went wrong if he could. He wouldn’t turn, he’d save Padme, he’d do everything differently if he could.

I miss your tan skin, your sweet smile/ So good to me, so right- Obi-Wan was so good to him. Obviously in a platonic sense. But Obi-Wan was the best Master for Anakin, and you can’t change my mind. Even if they had a rough start and maybe Obi-Wan should have had some time to recover from his Master dying before he took on his Padawan of his own, but I digress. He did the best he could with Anakin, and was most likely far more patient and understanding than other Jedi Masters would have been. Of course at the time, Anakin did realize this and only resented Obi-Wan. Hindsight is 2020, and Anakin would have only realized after everything went down how good Obi-Wan was to him.

And how you held me in your arms that September night/ The first time you ever saw me cry - This one doesn’t exactly fit because apparently Anakin and Obi-Wan never hug in canon and that is a crime (Filoni and Lucas I’m coming for you). But I am pointedly ignoring canon and choosing to believe that when things got really hard or bad, (after Satine died, maybe even after Ahsoka left the Order) they hugged. Maybe it was a sad hug, the kind where one of them breaks down in tears and the other just holds them as they cry. But I am confident that they have hugged, so this line applies to them. Fight me on it, I dare you. (I’m kidding but only partially)

But if we loved again, I swear I'd love you right - After realizing how wrong he was in becoming Vader and how his relationship with Obi-Wan wasn’t one-sided, and especially after seeing the pure, selfless love of Luke, which ultimately brings him back to the Light, Anakin is no doubt thinking of the millions of ways he could’ve done better. He wants Obi-Wan to know how sorry he is and that, yes it took him all these years, but he’s learned his lesson. If he could do it all again, which he probably wants to, he would do it right this time. He swears to himself (and to Obi-Wan) that if he just gets this second chance, he’ll do everything right.

I'd go back in time and change it, but I can't- Anakin knows he can’t go back and fix everything, no matter how much he may want to. All he can do is ask, beg, even, for Obi-Wan’s forgiveness

So if the chain is on your door, I understand - the metaphorical chain isn’t on Obi-Wan’s door, of course, he’d always welcome Anakin back. He wanted nothing more than to see Anakin succeed as a Jedi and be happy, and so of course he’s ready to see Anakin again, to forgive him. But still, Anakin doubts Obi-Wan’s love and his own worth and braces himself to be rejected, even though Obi-Wan’s arms are open. (this might be niche but think: doctor who, “You betrayed my trust, you betrayed our friendship, you betrayed everything I ever stood for. Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?”)

And, that’s it! If you read this entire thing, Fiona and I love you from the bottom of our hearts. As you can tell, we feel a lot of things about this song, and hope you enjoyed our analysis!

#back to december #song analysis #thank you for inspiring us caroline with your song analysis #taylor swift #how do i tag this?#fiona tag!#this was a lot of fun #but also i nearly cried #so i hope y'all enjoy our rambings!#also we didn't really proofread so i'm sorry for any errors

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onelastsho-t · 4 years ago

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Signing Off, 05/02/2021

“Letting go is the easy part. It’s the moving on that’s painful. If I were to go back in time, there are a lot of things I will choose to change. But in the end, I will always choose you, over everything else.”

It has been almost half a year since we completely stopped talking to each other. No form of communication, at all. It happened so fast yet so gradually. We went from talking non-stop everyday to zero communication.

During this period of time, there isn’t a day where I stopped thinking about you. There are countless days where I almost wanted to drop you a text but it never happened. I still have our picture in my wallet and whenever I feel defeated by life, I look at it to give me some strength to carry on. You are still so alive in my head and in my heart. You are still, sometimes, the first thought I have when I wake up in the morning.

I think of you when I am commuting and passed by some places where we used to hang out. When I listen to songs such as “Yellow Lights”, “Us” and a lot more, especially “You Complete Me”. I still remember how you sang this song to me and it still warms my heart so much. When I go to a nice restaurant and the food taste great because you are such a glutton. When I watch a nice series on Netflix which I know you will definitely like. When I see cute dogs on the streets knowing you will shriek and wanting to pet them. Sometimes I just stare into space without any thoughts and you will just appear out of nowhere. All these thoughts always make me smile. The thought of you always makes me smile.

I wonder a lot if you think about me too.

I still wish we didn’t have to go separate ways. But I understand that’s what was best for us at that point in time. You had too much on your plate and I had so much frustration with the situation I didn’t know how to handle it myself. I understand you did what was best for us and I think that’s the way you chose to love me. You saw what I couldn’t see. And for that - please know that I will always be grateful to you. For being so brave and for choosing this path to allow us both to heal properly.

I will never be as brave as you. And maybe that’s why you will always be one of the strongest person I will know. Maybe the fact of you being so stubborn is good in this regard. You never give up no matter how tough the road ahead is. You never even flinch. You just continue marching on and choosing to fight the battle, even when you had to do it alone. I am so fucking proud of you and I will never stop saying that.

I wish I wasn’t so afraid to wish you a proper “happy birthday” last year. I think love always makes me do stupid things. I recorded and uploaded a 25-minutes long video just to wish you a happy birthday weeks before 2 November 2020. But in the end, the video was never made known to you or to anyone. I even went to the Apple store wanting to pick up an Apple Watch for you because I know you have always wanted it. I replayed a lot of scenes in my head - how will you react? Will it stress you out? Is this doing more harm than good? It’s such a stupid idea. It was a tough battle and then at some point I realised I had no place in doing all of these. So, in the end, nothing was said and all these will forever remain as scenes played in my head.

I think after all these time, you still care for me in your own way. Maybe watching my Instagram stories is one of the ways to let me know you still care, or maybe not. Maybe it’s all in my head. I don’t know and I think maybe I won’t ever know.

To me, it doesn’t really matter that much anymore if you will ever get to read all these posts. Because I know, you are slowly achieving your goals. All I ever really wanted was for you to be happy and to have your inner peace. And I know you will have all that - slowly but surely. Remember? You appear to be happier and truth to be told, I am so so so happy for you. My heart still gets this tingling feeling whenever I see you smile and that’s when I know I will take a very very long time to get over you completely. Why do you still melt my heart?

Never thought you will have such an impact on someone right? You do. You are such an amazing person and I hope you will never stop telling yourself that. You brought me so much peace and happiness among the chaos. You taught me how to love myself better. And the list goes on. So please do know that you are not a bad person for hurting me because I know I hurt you too. It didn’t matter who hurt who and how much who fell short, a relationship is a choice to commit and I love you, that’s why everything else didn’t matter. There’s always bound to be hurt in a relationship and I quote the song “The Black and White” - call it what you need, but don’t blame yourself for me.

You are so special and don’t you dare for one second think you are not. You are so precious. You always make me want to take care of you no matter how strong you appear to be because I know deep down, you are not. I ended up hurting you even though you are truly the last person I would ever want to hurt. I've always always wanted to protect you from this world, from anyone who wants to or who will hurt you. You will always be that special person in my heart holding that special place. And you will always be worthy, no matter how bad a person you think you are. Just so you know, you were never the bad person in my story and you never will be. Maybe I will forever have this regret of letting you get away but as long as I know you are doing well, everything’s going to be fine.

I will probably always carry this hope of you coming back, no matter how much time has passed.

But for now, maybe this is the last thing I can give to you and also to myself. I forgive the long distance. I forgive the lack of communication. I forgive the pandemic for taking away the last chance I had to spend quality time with you. I forgive myself, I forgive us. Most importantly, I forgive you.

I will always choose to forgive you because this lifetime is too short. Even though we were together for 2.5 years, I still feel like I wasn’t given enough time with you. I could have spent forever looking at you and not get bored because you will always find ways to either make me roll my eyes hard or laugh real hard. I could have spent forever getting lost in your eyes and the warmth of your hugs. I could have spent forever getting to know you - each and every version of you throughout this lifetime.

But I know for now, greater things are waiting for you to achieve. I hope you will continue to be you. Never let anyone and any thoughts of not being good enough bring you down. Continue growing, continue scaling greater heights and continue fighting life. The future will always be daunting, perhaps it will overwhelm you and leave you doubting yourself. But please don’t ever give up, okay? Take a break when you are tired and continue to soldier on. I will continue to work hard and aim to achieve more too. And I can’t wait to hear good news about you in the future. I know I will be so happy for you for finally getting into the place in life where you always wanted and deserved. You deserve happiness more than anyone else.

We might never talk to each other again. Today could have been our 1000th day together. You are not mine anymore but I'm still a little bit yours. And I know after all these months, it’s probably time for me to move on from us. It’s time for me to move on from you. It was a privilege to love you, and it was a privilege to let you go. You are a tough act to follow but I gotta follow through.

I will try my best not to scream in my head “cute” or “beautiful” the next time I see your picture on social media. I will try not to pause for a short while the next time I come across your profile because trust me, I still do. If you happen to read this someday down the road, please just know that I still care so much for you but I think this is the best I can do for you. I will always care for you in my own way. I will always keep you so close to my heart.

I still love you and I am aware that I am still very in love with you. But I know if you felt the same way, you would have spoken to me because the ball has always been in your court ever since we stopped talking.

Maybe someday we will meet again as better versions of ourselves and the time will finally be right for us.

But for now, as of this moment, here’s me signing off from this platform and taking baby steps to move on from you. It will take a lot of self-awareness, a lot of effort and a whole lot of time. Maybe I will spend this lifetime moving on from you. Or maybe I won’t ever move on from you but I know I gotta try.

I don’t know what is waiting ahead of this road but I know, you will always be living somewhere inside of my heart and this I promise - nobody can ever take away.

If along the way you meet someone who treats you well, from the bottom of my heart - I truly wish you well and I hope the person will know how to cherish and love you because you deserve all the good in this world.

Please don’t tolerate bullshit again, okay? Don’t be stupid hor please (so singlish on Tumblr I know but it’s ok no more aesthetic after all these wordy posts). Grow up already so must know how to protect yourself please. Don’t be so stubborn also. I know your love hate relationship with cats but please do not get your allergy triggered by petting them especially at your void deck. Stock up more cooling water at home in case of emergency headache or fever. Also try not to scratch the spot on your head whenever you are in deep thoughts if not later really become baldy (HAHA)!! And lastly, avoid your black hole at all costs. I repeat - avoid at all costs. If you ever fall into it, just know that those thoughts are not real and get out of that place asap, okay?

Go be weird, go be you, go conquer your demons and the world. I'm so thankful I met you in this lifetime you have no idea.

Important things must say thrice:

I will always miss you and I will always love you. All ways. I will always miss you and I will always love you. All ways. I will always miss you and I will always love you. All ways.

Till we meet again, take care.

Signing off, Jes

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zerochanges · 4 years ago

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2020 Favorite Video Games

I don’t know if I am an outlier or if this is the same for everyone else but I really did not play a lot of games this year. 2020 was a very harsh year for all of us, especially for me for some personal reasons. So to get to the chase, I am just gonna say it left me not doing much in what little free time I did have, and I didn’t play much either. Usually I try to keep my lists for ‘favorite of the year’ to only titles released that year but since I played so little this year, screw it. I am gonna include any game I played this year regardless of release date.

Collection of SaGa

By far a flawed rerelease. It’s bare bones: there are no advance features you would usually expect out of these kinds of emulated rereleases like save states, fast forward, or rewind, and there was no real effort made to touch up almost 30 year old localizations that had to meet Nintendo of America’s then harsh standards. This really is just 3 roms slapped into a nice looking interface with an option to increase the game speed (which by the way you better use, the characters walk very slow in these old games).

I am bit harsh here, but only because I thought the Romancing SaGa remasters and the upcoming SaGa Frontier remaster all looked like they got a great budget and a lot of love while this is just another Collection of Mana situation (moreso specifically talking about Seiken Densetsu 1/Final Fantasy Adventure/Adventures of Mana part of that collection). I would have loved to see Square Enix do a bit more for these older games. Or at least include the remakes. Seiken Densetsu 1 had two great remakes, both unused in Collection of Mana, and all three of these original SaGa titles have remakes that have never seen the light of day outside of Japan. How great would it have been to get the Wonderswan remake of SaGa 1, as well as the Nintendo DS remakes of Saga 2 and SaGa 3?

But my gripes aside, these games are still fun as they ever were. Replaying SaGa 1 specifically during the holiday season really helped calm me down and made me feel at ease. It’s easy to forget but even in their Gameboy roots there are a lot of funky and weird experimental choices being made in these games. They aren’t your run-of-the-mil dragon quest (or considering the gameboy, maybe pokemon would be more apt) clones.

Raging Loop

Perhaps my favorite game of the year, Raging Loop is one of the best visual novels I have ever played hands down. The level of creativity and splitting story paths that went into it is simply mind blowing. The basic premise is both a wonderful throwback to the old days of Chunsoft sound novels while still modern and somewhat reminiscent of both Higurashi and Danganronpa. Essentially you play as Haruaki, a poor slub that got lost in the mountains with no clue where to go until you stumble upon an old rural village with a strange history and even stranger superstitions. Before you know it there has been a murder and the Feast is now afoot.

The less said about Raging Loop the better, although I do want to say a lot about it one day if I ever can write a proper review of it. This is a gripping game that will take hold of you once you get into it though and never let go. I actually 100%-ed this and I very rarely do that. I got every ending, every bonus hidden ending, played the entire game twice to hear all the hidden details it purposely hides on your first play through, played all the bonus epilogue chapters, unlocked all the hidden voice actor interviews, collected all the art work, etc, etc. I was just obsessed with this game, it’s that damn good! And the main character is maybe the best troll in all of video games, god bless Haruaki.

Root Double

From Takumi Nakazawa, long time contributor to Kotaro Uchikoshi’s work comes a game any fan of Zero Escape or Uchikoshi in general will probably enjoy. Root Double, like its name suggests is a visual novel with two different routes, hence Root Double. The first route stars Watase Kasasagi, the leader of an elite rescue team in the midst of their greatest crisis yet that could lead to nuclear devastation as they try to evacuate a nuclear research facility that has gone awry.

The other route stars Natsuhiko Tenkawa, an everyday high schooler whose peaceful life is thrown into turmoil when he stumbles upon a terrorist plot to destroy the nuclear facility in the city and his attempts to stop them. Together the two separate plots weave into one and creates a really crazy ride. Part Chernobyl, part science fiction, any fan of the genre will easily enjoy it. And hey it’s kind of relevant to include on this list too since it just got a Switch port this year (I played it on steam though).

Snack World

I was shocked upon starting Snack World as it is instantly incredibly charming, witty, and downright hilarious at times yet I heard almost zero people talk about it. EVER. This game is Dragon Quest levels of quirky though, and the localization is incredible. The game has such an oddball sense of humor that works really well with its presentation right down to the anime opening video that sings about the most bizarre things. Instead of the usual pump up song about the cool adventure ahead we get stuff like wanting to go out to a restaurant and eat pork chops.

The self aware/fourth wall breaking humor is just enough to be really funny, but doesn't overstay its welcome and always makes it work right in the context of the dialogue. And finally, just everything; with the menus, the name of side quests and missions, and the character dialogue -- are all just so witty and full of quirky humor. This is one hell of a charming and funny game and addictive to boot.

Trials of Mana

Trials of Mana has gone from one of those legendary unlocalized games, to one of the first major breakthroughs in fan translation, to finally getting an official English release complete with a fully 3D remake. In a lot of ways from a western perspective this game has had an incredible journey. As for this remake itself, I really found myself having tons of fun with it. I loved the graphics, and the voice acting while a bit on the cheaper side almost kind of adds to the charm since both the graphics and acting really give it an old PS2 vibe. I know that is probably just more me being weird but yeah, I had to say it.

I really hope Square Enix sticks to this style of remake more often, instead of just doing Final Fantasy VII Remakes that break the bank and involve extensive tweaking to both plot and game play. I’ll take smaller budget projects that play more like the original game any day personally. I wouldn’t mind if they also deliver a brand new Mana game all together in this engine either.

Utawarerumono Trilogy

This year saw the release of the first entry in the series, Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen--and thus finally after three years since the sequels Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception and Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth came out in 2017 the trilogy is now complete in English. I ended up binging through Prelude to the Fallen very fast shortly after it came out and immediately jumped on to the sequels. Perhaps the best part of 2020 was that I finally played all three of these fantastic games, and did so back-to-back-to-back. Playing the first Utawarerumono was an experience I will never forget, it was like visiting old friends again that I haven’t seen in ages, by and large thanks to the fact that I saw the anime adaption of the game when I was much younger, nearly a decade ago. Back then I would have never of dreamed that I would get to play the actual game and get the real experience.

And it only got better from here, as all three games are such wonderful experiences from start to finish. The stories are all so deep, and by the time you get to the third entry, Mask of Truth, it’s crazy to see how they all connected over so many years and weaved together into a plot much bigger than they ever were. What carries it beyond all that though has to be the fun and addicting strategy role playing game aspect, which while a bit on the easy side, is still so much fun and helps make the game feel better paced since you get to play the conquests your characters go on and not just read about all the battles they fight. Beyond that the games are packed full of awesome characters, and I know I’ll never forget the amazing leads in all of them. Hakuowlo, Haku, and Oshtor will all go down as some of the greats to me.

Ys: Memories of Celceta

Ys: Memories of Celceta is a full 3D remake of Ys IV, a rather infamous game in Falcom’s Ys series. Not to get bogged down too much into the history of Falcom but by this point they were facing a lot of hardship and had to outsource this entry to other developers, and thus passed it on to two particular developers they had a business relationship with, creating two unique versions of Ys IV. Tonkin House who had worked on Super Famicom port of Ys III with Falcom ended up creating their own YS IV entry, Mask of the Sun for the very same system, where Hudson soft who had produced the much beloved Ys Books I & II remakes for the Turbografix (PC Engine) CD add-on created their own Ys IV entry Dawn of Ys for that console. Both games followed guidelines and ideas outlined from Falcom themselves but both radically diverged from each other and turned into completely different games.

Falcom finally putting an end to this debate on which version of Ys IV you should play have gone and created their own definitive Ys IV in 2012 for the Playstation Vita. I played the 2020 remastered version of this remake on my PS4. I even bought this on the Vita when it first came out but I am horrible and only horde games, never play them. So it was a lot of fun to finally play this.

Memories of Celceta is probably one of the best starting points for anyone looking to get into Ys, especially if you only want to stay with the 3D titles as out of all the 3D entries this explains the most about the world and series protagonist Adol Christian. Beyond that it’s just another fantastic entry in a wonderful series that has a few good twists hidden behind it, especially for long time fans of the series.

Random Video Game Console Stuff

Xbox Has Blue Dragon: I actually got an Xbox One this year for free from my brother. Because of that I started to play Blue Dragon again and there’s a lot I would love to say about this game. I don’t know if I am fully committed to replaying it all the way through however but I find myself putting in a couple hours every few days and enjoying myself again. Does anyone else remember Blue Dragon? I feel like it really missed its audience and had it come out nowadays and probably for the Switch it would have really resonated with the Dragon Quest fandom a lot more instead of being thrown out to die on Xbox and constantly compared to Final Fantasy VII and the like which it had nothing at all similar with.

The Turbografx 16 Mini: This was probably one of the best mini consoles that have come out and I feel like thanks to the whole 2020 pandemic thing it was largely forgotten about. That’s a shame, it has a wonderful variety of great games, especially if you count the Japanese ones (god I wish I could play the Japanese version of Snatcher included), and a wonderful interface with fantastic music. One of these days I would really like to be able to play around with the console more seriously than I have already.

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon Never Existed: So Nintendo localized the first ever Fire Emblem game on Nintendo Switch which is awesome to see them touching Famicom games again--I haven’t seen Nintendo of America rerelease old Famicom titles since Mysterious Murasame Castle on the 3DS, but their trailer hilariously made it seem like this is the first time ever they released Fire Emblem when in fact they had already localized the remake Shadow Dragon on the Nintendo DS nearly 10 or 11 years ago. I and many other fans I talked to all found this really hilarious, probably solely because of how much they kept repeating the fact that this is the first time you will ever be able to experience Marth’s story.

All that aside though I have to say the collector edition for this newly localized Famicom game is probably the most gorgeous retro reproduction I have seen in a long time, and I really spent many many hours just staring at the all clear glass mock cartridge. I have found myself really obsessing over retro reproductions during 2020, and obtained quite a few this year. I really hope this trend continues to go on in 2021 as recreating classic console packaging and cartridges is a lot of fun.

#video games #collection of saga final fantasy legend #SaGa #SaGa I #SaGa II #SaGa III #Raging Loop #Root Double #Snack World #Trials of Mana #Seiken Densetsu 3 #Utawarerumono #Ys #Ys IV #ys memories of celceta

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sakuwriteshere · 4 years ago

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Downfall

Title: Downfall

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female!Reader

Words count: 1887 words

Warnings: Death scare, slight smut (you’ll blink, you’ll miss it), mention of depression, fluff, comfort, spoiler (if you haven’t watch season 14 finale), subtle mention of drowing

Summary: During a hunt that went wrong, Y/N is remembering one precious moment she shared with Dean

A/N: So! This is my entry for @alleiradayne‘s 2020 Supernatural Summer Shut-in Challenge! I chose the following prompt: “You need to wake up because I can not do this without you.” Go following @alleiradayne if you don’t already!

A/N2: This is unbetated as always, and I apologize for any error or mistake. Enjoy your reading and please share your thoughts with me!

Downfall

The front door of the bunker closes in a loud bang behind them, Dean is leading the way down the stairs, his little brother Sam, right behind him, helping Y/N with the bags. Both Sam and Y/N don’t dare to speak, each of them particularly silent within the last hour. The drive back to the bunker has been gloomy to say the least.

Without even sparing a look at them, Dean heads for his room, leaving Sam and Y/N taking care of the rest. Contrary to Dean who is completely beat, Sam is still functioning, despite the repetitive recent lost battles, Sam keeps on believing. He’s really the only one between the three of them.

With a sigh, Y/N puts the duffel bag on the wooden table in the library, the different weapons rattling in the process. Sam watches her following Dean’s steps, helplessly. He wants to tell something, anything to help her, to help them, but what can he really tell them? That there is always a light at the end of the tunnel? That they will find a way, like they usually do? No. This time they are doomed, for good.

Her body is on autopilot as Y/N enters her own room, she doesn’t even waste her time to switch on the lights and prefers to let her body fall heavily on her bed. What’s the point in fighting anymore? They’re not going to win this fight. This one is too big. How can you defeat God, himself? Were they even supposed to go that far? Y/N doesn’t know anymore.

As she closes her eyes, allowing the tiredness enveloping her, she doesn’t even react when she hears her door opening in a creaky sound. She doesn’t need to wonder who it is, she perfectly knows.

The bed dips slightly as Dean lays down next to her. She can feel him manhandling her body and she willfully lets him do as he wants. Within a few minutes, Y/N is little spooned by Dean, his arms wrapped strongly around her waist while their legs are a tangled mess, caging her properly with his body, giving her exactly what they both need the most at the moment.

Warmth, protection, comfort and love.

Absentmindedly, Y/N’s fingers brush against Dean’s hand on her stomach as her mind keeps replaying the last previous hours. Chuck declared war, or more precisely, God announced the end of the World. How are they supposed to fix that? Everything they’ve been through, every choice they’ve made until now, thinking it was for the greater good, seems so meaningless. There is no free will, they’re not making their own choice. Everything has been decided for them long before they were even born. Even the most precious decisions they’d made aren’t truly their.

“Don’t.” Dean’s raspy voice sermons her, his hot breath tickling her cheek.

She doesn’t need to ask him what he’s talking about, he knows her like the back of his hand and how her brain works from time to time. Especially during those kinds of uncertain moments.

“Just stop thinking, alright? You’re not in the right mind to make the difference between what’s right or wrong.”

“But…” She turns her head slightly, trying to look at him but his lips pressed against the corner of her mouth make her fall silent.

“No buts, Y/N. I’m serious.” He tells her with a patronizing voice.

Y/N shifts a bit so she can turn around and face Dean properly. Once she’s in a comfortable position, Dean’s arms wrap around her once again, pulling her body against his.

“This is big, Dean.” She whispers and when she sees Dean’s cocky smirk, she’s quick to add “I don’t mean that.”

Dean chuckles and pecks her lips, he’s satisfied with himself because for a second she has stopped thinking about Chuck. He would do anything to make her feel better and he knows exactly what she needs to keep her mind out of focus.

Slowly, Dean brings his face closer, their breaths mixing as they share a kiss. At first it’s gentle and tender, a soft brush of the lips, just enough to feel each other’s presence. A silent reminder that they’re still both alive. Then, Dean’s mouth is becoming greedy, claiming her lips just the way she likes it. One of his hands unwrap itself, sliding up her side, leaving goosebumps in its trail, until it reaches her face. His big hand cups her cheek, thumb stroking the skin underneath while his tongue runs over her bottom lip, silently asking for more. A request she’s more than happy to grant.

Lost in their tender battle of teeth and tongue, fighting each other for dominance, their bodies start moving on their own. Dean comes on top of her, parting her legs so he could fit between them more comfortably while she lays down on her back, the kiss never breaking. Despite the heated moment, Y/N’s mind still goes back to the big problem, keeping her from really enjoying the intimate moment.

As if he’s a mind reader, Dean parts slightly, their breathings short and uneven as he gives her a sullen look.

“This,” He starts to say as he grabs her hand and presses it against his beating heart. “Is real, ok? We’re real and meant to be. I don’t care if it’s because of God or Destiny or some wrinkled old witch. We’ve found each other and I'm gonna hold onto that until the end, ok?”

Y/N can only nod at that. It always baffles her how easily he understands her. It’s like he’s reading her like an open book.

“Your biggest enemy is not Chuck, Y/N. It’s this.” Dean says pressing two fingers against her temple. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about.” He adds, forcing a small smile.

She knows how right he is because she has witnessed his darkest moments. Being able to let the other one see how down you are, to share with him her deepest fears and secrets, it asks a lot of trust to let it happen. And she trusts Dean with all her heart, of that she is sure.

“I love you.” The words hit her like a ton of bricks. It’s not the first time she hears them, but Dean isn’t not really the confident type of man, so whenever he utters those three words it always makes her heartbeat go wild, making her feel alive and strong because she knows it’s the truth. He loves her as much as she loves him. It’s not even funny how strong they fell for each other.

“I love you too.” She whispers and here comes the smile she loves. The genuine one, when she can see his pearly white teeth, the wrinkles deepening at the corners of his eyes. Despite the dim light, she can see how green his eyes are, full of love and promises.

Soon, his face becomes serious again, the longing glint replaced by a needy one as Dean leans over her. They share another kiss, this one greedy, demanding, their hands flying around them to get rid of the unnecessary clothes.

“Stay with me. I need you.” Dean gasps, trailing hot kisses down her collarbone.

“I’m not going anywhere.” She pants, sinking her nails in his lower back as she arches under his ministrations, searching for more contact.

“You need to wake up because I can’t do this without you.” Dean says, both of his hands suddenly cupping her face.

“Wh-what?” She stutters, blinking twice when she notices the fear in Dean’s eyes above her.

“I’m begging you. Don’t do this to me. Wake up!” His voice resonates around her before a blinding light attacks her eyes.

She wakes up with a start, taking a big breath in the process, filling her lungs with much needed air. The first thing that hits her is Dean’s body, literally, as he engulfs her in a bear hug. Still trying to understand what happened, she wraps her arms around him, noticing how heavy her clothes felt, then she realizes she’s completely drenched and freezing. She tries to ask him what’s going on but her body is trembling so hard, and her mouth refuses to form something more than shaky sounds.

“Shh. I got you. I got you.” Dean shushes her, the embrace tightening and keeps repeating the words again and again. They are more for himself to be honest, he needs to tell himself that she’s alright.

“Come on let’s go back to the cabin.” Dean whispers before kissing her temple and holding her up in his arms.

There’s nothing better than a warm shower and a cup of hot cocoa. Bundled with big covers, Y/N watches Dean ending his phone call with Sam. The older Winchester told Sam everything about their last case and assured his little brother they are leaving the cabin first thing in the morning.

“How are you feeling?” Dean asks as he sits next to her on the couch, one of his arms wrapping around her shoulders and pulling her body against his. He kisses the crown of her head before he lets himself relax completely. Now that the case was over and Y/N was breathing, his mind could be at ease.

She takes a sip of the hot liquid, wincing as it burns the tip of her tongue. She shrugs as she feels fine, considering she almost died two hours ago. She thought the werewolf would attack her, not hit her hard on the head before pushing her unconscious body into the cold river.

“This is the last time you’re playing bait. Watch my words, Y/N. I mean it.” Dean warns her, his eyes dead set on her. He is really serious. She still can see the worry in those green eyes she loves so much.

Y/N closes her eyes before she puts the cup on the coffee table in front of them. She adjusts her body on the couch, pushing the covers away then pats her tights, motionning silently Dean to rest his head on her lap.

“I should be the one comforting you right now.” Dean argues nonchalantly but lays down nonetheless.

“I’m fine don’t worry. You already took care of me.” She reassures him, her hand threading Dean’s hair in a soothing manner as soon as he was comfortable.

“Did I?” Dean asks, a content sigh leaving his lips as he relaxes completely under her soft touch.

She hums, her gaze lost in the void, enjoying the peaceful moment meant just for the two of them. Silence envelops them, for the rest of the night they can pretend they are just regular human beings. No more hunt, no more death scare, just two people in love and taking care of each other. The comfortable silence being disturbed only by Dean’s soft snores while Y/N watches over during his much needed sleep, a soft smile curling at the corner of her lips.

Dean is right, as long as they have each other, there’s no reason to give up. Chuck might be God but he made his biggest mistake by bringing Y/N Y/L/N and Dean Winchester together he just created his downfall.

FIN

Pour Toujours Tags: @drakelover78, @akshi8278

#alleiradayne's 2020 SSSI #spn fanfiction #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester x female reader #dean winchester x you #female!reader #reader insert #supernatural fanfiction #oneshot

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lacquerware · 4 years ago

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2020 Recap - My Year in Gaming

2020. What a year for video games. I had big plans for last year, but in the end I did very little besides play video games, and I don’t think I’m alone there since we were all stuck at home looking for a way out of reality. I wanted to do a year-end recap as I’ve done sporadically in past years, but this one will be different than the typical “Games of the Year” format because despite all the games I played in 2020, almost none of them came out in 2020, and some of the things that defined my year in gaming weren't even games.

Resident Evil 3 Remake (PS4)

RE3 was one of the only games I played in 2020 that didn’t coincide with the deadly pandemic's spread across the US. RE3 is, of course, a game about the spread of a deadly virus in Anytown, USA. It was an appetizer, I guess.

When the Resident Evil 2 remake dropped in 2019, there were some things I loved about it, and a few things that felt like steps back from the original. I feel much the same about RE3. I had also theorized that a Resident Evil 3 remake would be better off as RE2 DLC than as a separate full-length game, and considering how short RE3 turned out, with some of the best sections of hte original cut entirely (namely, the clock tower), I stand by my theory.

Oh well, at least Jill gets this rad gun, which for the time being is the closest thing to a new Lost Planet we can hope for anytime soon.

Sekiro (PS4)

Sekiro is the first video game I ever Platinumed. This is partly because conquering the base game was such a spartan exercise that going the extra mile to get the Platinum didn’t seem so bad, but it’s also surely a result of the pandemic. I needed a project and a big win. Who didn't?

I wrote at length about why I like Sekiro more than every other modern FromSoft game, and also about the game’s cherry-on-top moment that reminded me of blowing up Hitler’s face in Bionic Commando. Please read them!

Death Stranding (PS4)

Release date notwithstanding, this was obviously the Game of 2020. I wrote about it here, here, and here. This game bears the distinction of being the second one I ever Platinumed. It took 150 hours. Only then did I learn I had a hoverboard.

Streets of Rage 4 (PS4)

This is the only 2020 game I played for more than a few hours. In fact, I cleared the entire game at least five times. I still don’t think it captures the gritty aesthetic of the prior Streets of Rages (nor even tries to), but this is probably the best-feeling bup I've played. Huge bonus points for finally bringing back Adam, but in the end I found it hard not to pick Blaze every time.

Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch)

What impressed me about this sequel from Inti Creates was that it wasn’t just more of the same, even though that would've been fine. BMZ2 builds on its already excellent predecessor with a catchy new format where players can freely cruise the cosmos and stages take the varied form of planets—some big and sprawling, others short and sweet. Hopping at will from planet to planet without ever knowing what experiences and treasure each one held felt like system jumping in No Man’s Sky and island hopping in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, both of which felt like opening presents.

Dragon Force (Saturn)

Charming, satisfying, and addictive as a bag of chips. Unlike a bag of chips, when it’s over, you can do it all again. And again. And it’ll be different each time! This might be the first strategy game I've truly loved. Better late than never.

The PC Engine Mini

The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 Mini seems a particularly justifiable mini-console for people outside Japan because so many missed these consoles entirely, the games are hard to obtain, and the lineup includes titles spanning the entire convoluted Turbo/PC Engine ecosystem—the TurboGrafx-CD/CD-ROM², Super CD-ROM², Arcade CD-ROM² and SuperGrafx, in addition to plain, old standard HuCard games. I myself didn’t know the first thing about these systems before. It’s like reliving the nineties again for the first time.

Most of the titles included are simple action games that don't require a command of Japanese, but make no mistake: being able to understand Snatcher and TokiMemo does make me feel like an elite special person worth more than many of you.

(Side note: From a gender representation perspective, the difference between Snatcher and Death Stranding is stark. Virtually every interaction with every woman or girl in Snatcher is decorated with ways to sexually harass her. Guess someone finally had a conversation with our favorite auteur.)

A Gaming PC

I’d threatened to transition to PC gaming for years after beholding the framerate difference between the console and PC versions of DmC in 2012, and last July I finally took the leap, buying an ASUS “Republic of Gamers” (ugh) laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU. It seems like consoles are getting more PC-like all the time, especially with all these half-step iterations that splinter performance and sometimes even the feature set (à la the New 3DS and Switch Lite), so with the impending new generation seemed like a fine time to change course.

In the half-year since, I’ve barely played a single PC game more recent than 2013, but just replaying PS3-era games at high settings has been like rediscovering them for the first time.

I also finally experienced keyboard-and-mouse shooting and understand now why PC gamers think they're better than everyone else. Max Payne is a completely different game with a mouse. Are all shooters like this??

The USPS

Early in the year, I rediscovered my childhood game shop, Starland, which is now an online hub known as eStarland.com with a brick-and-mortar showroom. To my delight, it has become one of the best and most modestly priced sources for import Saturn games in the country, and I scored Shining Force III’s second and third episodes, long missing from my collection, for a mere ten bucks each!

In June, I treated myself to a trio of Saturn imports from eStarland: the tactics-meets-dating-sim mashup Sakura Taisen 2, the nicely presented RTS space opera Quo Vadis 2, and beloved gothic dungeon crawler Baroque. Miraculously, this haul amounted to just around thirty dollars total. Less miraculously, they never arrived. This was the second time I’d had something lost in the mail in my entire life, and also the second time that month. Something was wrong with the USPS, and it wasn’t just COVID pains. We would soon learn Trump had been actively working to sabotage one of the nation’s oldest and most reliable institutions in a plot to compromise the upcoming presidential election.

Frankly it’s a miracle there’s still such a thing as “delivery” at all, and a few missing video games is the last of my worries considering what caused it, but nevertheless this was an experience in my gaming life that could not have happened any other year. I won’t forget it.

*By the way, USPS reimbursed me for the insured value of the missing order, which was fifty bucks. So I actually profited a little off the experience.

Mega Everdrive Pro

I love collecting for the Genesis and Mega Drive, but I will not pay hundreds of dollars for a video game that retailed for about sixty. The publishers never asked for that, and the developers won’t see a (ragna)cent of the money. I'm also far less inclined to start collecting for Sega CD, since the hardware is notoriously breakable, the cases are huge and also breakable, and the library just isn't that good.

Still, I'd been increasingly curious about the add-on as an interesting piece of Sega history, so when I learned Ukranian mad scientist KRIKzz had released a new Mega Everdrive that doubled as a Sega CD FPGA, I finally took the plunge into the world of flash carts. This has proven a great way to play some of the Mega Drive’s big-ticket rarities I will never buy—namely shmups like Advanced Busterhawk Gley Lancer and Eliminate Down—as well as try out prospective additions to the collection. I never would have discovered the phenomenal marvel of engineering and synth composition that is Star Cruiser without this thing, but now that I have, it’s high on the shopping list.

The Mega Everdrive Pro is functionally nearly identical to TerraOnion’s “Mega SD” cartridge, but slightly less expensive, comes in a “normal” cartridge shell instead of the larger Virtua Racing-style one, and supports a single hardworking dude in Ukraine rather than a company with reportedly iffy customer service.

Twitch

Getting a PC also resolved issues that had long prevented me from achieving a real streaming setup, and much of my gaming life in 2020 was about ramping up my streaming efforts. I even made Affiliate in about a month. Streaming has been a great creative outlet and distraction, as well as a way to connect with other people during the COVID depression and structure my gaming time. Find me every Monday through Thursday 8-11pm Eastern at twitch.tv/lacquerware.

Metroid: Other M (Dolphin)

PC ownership also gave me access to the versatile Dolphin emulator, liberating a handful of great Wii exclusives from their disposable battery-powered prison.

One of the Wii games I fired up on Dolphin was Metroid: Other M, a game I’d always wanted to try but had been dissuaded by years of bad publicity and the fact that I never had any goddamn batteries. I know I should temper what I’m about to say by acknowledging that I was playing at 1080p/60fps on a PS4 controller so my experience was automatically a vast improvement over that of all Wii players, but I’m increasingly confident Metroid: Other M was the most fun I’ve ever had playing a Metroid game. I haven’t decided yet if I’m willing to die on this hill, but I will just say that if you like the Metroidvania genre in general and aren’t particularly attached to the Metroid series’ story or its habit of making you wander aimlessly for hours, there’s a very high chance you will enjoy Other M—especially if you play it on Dolphin.

Don't Starve Together (PC)

Don't Starve is the only game my friend Jason plays, so last year I tried to get into it with him. I respect this game's singular devotion to the concept of survival, but make no mistake: every session of Don't Starve ends with you starving to death. Or freezing. Or getting stomped by a giant deity of the forest. The entire game is staving off death until it inevitably comes. Even when death comes, you can revive infinitely (in whatever mode we were playing), which means even death is not an end goal. There is no end goal. You don't even have the leeway to "play" and create your own meaning as you do in similarly zen games like Dead Rising.

Don't Starve is a game for people for whom hard work is the ultimate reward in and of itself. Don't Starve told me something about Jason.

G-Darius (PS1)

In the early fall, Sony announced they were dropping PS3, PSP, and Vita support from the browser and mobile versions of their PSN Store, and since the PS3 version of the store app runs like a solar-powered parking meter in Seattle, I decided this was my last chance to stock up on Japanese PSN gems.

Among my final haul, the PS1 port of G-Darius proved an instant favorite. Take down the usual cast of mechanized fish in a vibrant, chunky, low-poly style that perfectly inhabits the constraints of the original PlayStation hardware. I believe this is the first Darius game that lets you get into giant beam duels with the bosses, which is quite definitely one of the coolest things a video game has ever let you do. The PS1 port is also surprisingly feature-rich, including some easier difficulty levels that present an actually surmountable challenge for non-savants.

This one’s coming to the upcoming Darius Cozmic Revelation collection on Switch alongside DARIUSBURST, a good-ass romp in its own right.

Red Entertainment

In my effort to shine a tiny spotlight on some of the unsung Interesting Games of gaming, I found myself drawn again and again to the work of Red Entertainment. First there were cavechild headbutt simulator Bonk’s Adventure and twin shmups Gates of Thunder and Lords of Thunder on the PC Engine Mini. Then I streamed full playthroughs of the PS2’s best samurai-era, off-brand 3D Castlevania, Blood Will Tell and the Trigun-adjacent stand-‘n-gun, Gungrave: Overdose. Then I was dazzled by Bonk’s Adventure’s futuristic spin-off cute-‘em-up, Air Zonk, which was also sneakily tucked away on my PC Engine Mini in the “TurboGrafx-16” section. It turned out all these games were made by the same miracle developer responsible for Bujingai, the stylish PS2 wushu game starring Gackt and a household name here at the Lacquerware estate. How prolific can one team be???

Month of Cyberpunk

In November, I started toying with the idea of themed months on my Twitch channel with “Cyberpunk month.” It was supposed to be a build-up to Cyberpunk 2077’s highly anticipated November release, but holy shit that didn’t happen, did it? Still, I always find myself gravitating toward this genre in November, I guess because I associate November with gloom (even though this year it was sunny almost every day). A month is a long time to adhere to a single theme, but cyberpunk is such a well-served niche in gaming that I could easily start an all-cyberpunk Twitch channel. The fact that we’re so spoiled with choice makes Cyberpunk 2077’s terrible launch all the more embarrassing. Here are just some of the games I played (and streamed!) in November:

Ghostrunner Shadowrun (Genesis) RUINER Remember Me Transistor Rise of the Dragon (Sega CD) Shadowrun (Mega CD) Cyber Doll (Saturn) Binary Domain Shadowrun Returns Blade Runner (PC) Deus Ex: Human Revolution Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Observer

Shadowrun on the Genesis gets my top pick, but the two most recent Deus Ex games are great alternatives for those looking for something in the vein of 2077 that isn’t infested with termites.

Lost Planet 2

Every year. I played through it twice in 2020.

Dead Rising 4

I slept on this one too long. While it's a far cry from the original game, it's easily the most fun I've had with a Christmas game since Christmas NiGHTS. This is the game a lot of people thought they were getting when they bought the original Dead Rising with their new Xbox 360--goofy, indulgent, and pressure-free.

Devil May Cry 5: Vergil (PS4)

Vergil dropped for last-gen consoles in December and breathed a whole lot of life into a game that was already at the head of its class.

Nioh 2

I’ve only played a few hours of Nioh 2 because I promised my friend I’d co-op it with him and wouldn’t play ahead. But he’s a grad student with two small children. Nevertheless, Nioh 2 is my Game of 2020.

And that's it! Guess I'll spend 2021 playing games that came out last year, and maybe eventually getting vaccinated? Please?

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shielddrake · 5 years ago

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Psychonauts: Setup and Payoff Done Well (If Not Perfectly)

So about a year ago I posted a long lecture about how Final Fantasy XV and Kingdom Hearts 3 had major problems in the story department when it came to setup and payoff. I basically said that Final Fantasy XV had lots of scenes with payoff that were not set up very well and Kingdom Hearts 3 had some excellent moments that set up story elements but never followed through on them. And while I think some of those issues have been addressed with some of the DLC released for both games (I reserve my right to be a little salty Episodes Aranea, Luna, and Noctis were canceled) I still stand by my statement that these games have big problems with this.

During the past year, I have received a couple of comments regarding my position on this, ranging from “Can you give a good example of setup and payoff?” to “Well, if you’re so smart, why don’t you come up with a better example?” And I thought, well, what kind of game would be a good example of excellent use of setup and payoff? What game or series would I say does the job so much better than any writer has or does, video game or otherwise?

And then, the middle of a repeat playthrough I always do before a game’s sequel comes out, it came to me:

Now Psychonauts has been out since 2005, so a spoiler warning might seem a little silly here, but I think a lot of gamers have been playing it for the first time since the sequel was announced, so just in case: Major spoilers for the original Psychonauts game under the cut.

Whenever someone tries to argue whether or not video games can be considered art, one of the first games that comes to my mind is Psychonauts, and not just because of its amazing aesthetics. It has some of the best storytelling, script writing, level design, music, voice acting, and art direction I have ever seen. This game is possibly one of the best video games I have every played, despite the flaws that it does have (I’m looking at you, Meat Circus), and it is easily on my list of top ten favorite video games. Is it really any surprise that Psychonauts 2 reached its crowd-funding goal of over $3,000,000 in about a month? And yes, I admit that I am one of those backers, just to put out there any bias I know I have.

But this isn’t meant to be a review of Psychonauts.

I replayed Psychonauts a few months ago with the idea of the first game being fresh in my mind when the sequel comes out, which is supposed to be sometime this year of 2020. I was absolutely inundated with examples of effective setup and payoff as I played, so it seemed like the obvious choice to go over how this story-telling technique can be used not only well, but also to the point where it’s almost like there are far too many examples.

Honestly, I could go on and on and on about setup and payoff in Psychonauts’ story, but for our purposes here most of the focus is going to be on just three big things that are really important to the main storyline: Linda the Lungfish, bunnies and meat, and Raz’s dad.

One thing about setup and payoff is that the setup has to actually happen in a way that the audience, in this case the player, can’t miss it. There are several moments in the game that Linda is mentioned, the first time being in the opening cutscene, where Bobby teases Dogen about the monster at the bottom of the lake. You can’t miss the setup when it is thrown in your face that way.

But that’s not the only time we get references to some sort of lake monster. Before going into Basic Braining, the first official level of the game, if Raz talks to Mikhail, the adorable Russian psychic mentions a “giant, hairless bear” in the woods, asking if Raz has seen it and wanting to wrestle with it. Now, it’s not said for certain if Mikhail is talking about Linda or if he’s just referring to the telekinetic bears you meet later on, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it’s supposed to be the former.

The first time the player heads for the lake, Elton will run up to Raz and mention the “brain-eating fish” that supposedly lives there. Well, now we’ve got both a mention of the lake monster and the fact that it goes after brains. Hmm, sound familiar in retrospect?

Optionally, Raz can also talk to Elton about the fish being spooked by something in the lake.

Although only the first lake interaction with Elton is mandatory (whether it’s when you go to see Milla or before then), both of these moments act as reminders of the setup of the lake monster established in the opening cutscene.

And then there’s the scene in the woods between Raz and Lili on the way to Sasha Nein’s Secret Lab. Raz says that something was watching him, a shadowy being that smelled like pond scum.

I absolutely love Lili’s face in this scene, by the way.

We kind of get distracted by their interactions and Lili basically trolling Raz, but that’s part of what makes good writing. The scene is foreshadowing something without making it overly overt…not that the game is subtle every time, but the point still stands. This game does a great mix of the obvious and the subtle.

The game also has optional dialogue with Coach Oleander and Raz reporting on a UPE (Unidentified Paranormal Entity), which he suspects is aquatic in nature. And Oleander seems oddly insistent that the lake monster does not exist, that it’s just a camp fable.

Finally we get to the Brain Tumbler Experiment. Needless to say, it’s in this level that a lot of the elements come together. We come across a demon in the form of a big, shadowy figure that spits out a diving helmet. Again, does that sound familiar at all?

There is a minor mention of the lake monster in the mental vault below the spooky thorn tower (more on that near the end of this post), but other than that there’s a break in the game where the lake monster isn’t mentioned for a while. We don’t get another explicit scene about it until Raz and Lili meet Linda properly at the edge of Lake Oblongata…where Lili gets kidnapped, we go through the boss sequence under the lake, and enter Linda’s brain of Lungfishopolis. And the final payoff occurs with the Hideous Hulking Lungfish transporting us to Thorney Towers and giving Raz her real name, Linda.

Now would any of that be nearly as rewarding if we had never heard of the Hideous Hulking Lungfish of Lake Oblongata prior to her official appearance? Every single player would just have visible question marks hanging over their heads if Linda just showed up out of nowhere. Deus Ex Lungfish, anyone? But that’s not what the developers did. They spent plenty of time building up to Linda, making her reveal not only make sense but also weaving her into the story so that her reveal is more than satisfying.

There is just one thing I’ve always been curious about, a sort of chicken-and-egg scenario. Did the legend of the lake monster start because genetically-altered Linda showed up and starting attacking campers? Or did the legend already exist and Oleander used it as an excuse to write off any “sightings” of the monster? Any ideas?

Moving on from Linda, we come to the imagery of meat and bunnies.

Without knowing the full ending of the game, most players would think that it’s a bit strange I would stick meat and bunnies together in the same category. Sadly, the connection between these things is a bit on the morose side, and they are actually first introduced at the same time as well.

When I first played Psychonauts, the first time I actively thought about bunnies and meat being related somehow was during the Brain Tumbler Experiment, but that’s actually not the first time the game introduces these. Anyone else notice that Basic Braining has figments of meat cleavers, butcher knives, a pig, a duck, and a fox? I could logic that a meat cleaver and butcher knife fit with the whole army theme, but a pig, duck and fox?

Kind of odd animals would be included in all this, especially animals that are either butchered or hunted. At least that’s what I thought at first.

It is in Oleander’s mind that we first see the “meaty plant” that Lili saves from being squashed by Raz. It’s also here that we see bunnies hopping around the snowfield with the Gatling gun. This early in the game, is this important or just set dressing? I’m ashamed to admit, but I thought it was just weird set dressing when I first played, but it makes more sense as the story goes on.

Turns out it’s important all right, since the next time we see both meat and bunnies is in the Brain Tumbler Experiment. “Mr. Bun” seems like a rather random animal to have in Raz’s brain, but then again bunnies showed up in Basic Braining as well. Is there a connection somehow? Sasha tells Raz that an animal may represent a primal fear or memory.

He’s right on the latter, although a player going through the game for the first time might not know why (and I admit, on my first playthrough, I didn’t). And there’s more meat and meaty plants here. Raz doesn’t directly mention these (at least he didn’t during my most recent playthrough, to my recollection) but they are pretty obvious, to say the least.

So that’s two things connecting the Brain Tumbler Experiment and Basic Braining. Is this a normal occurrence? Maybe these things just show up in brains? Lili does mention she had been dreaming of meat plants, after all, both in Basic Braining and in the cutscene before Raz enters Milla’s mind. Maybe it’s a primal need for meat? Don’t tell the vegans I said that. The Vegan Police would be very unhappy with the final level of this game.

After the Brain Tumbler Experiment is finished, we know that the brain interference was coming from Oleander, but it’s not explained why there are meat and bunny references up until that point. There’s actually no mention of either at all in the subsequent levels until the last. Lungfishopolis, The Milkman Conspiracy, Gloria’s Theater, Waterloo World, and Black Velvetopia are devoid of all meat or bunnies, which possibly leads the player to forget about the whole thing for a while (and when I say “the player,” I really mean me).

In fact, we don’t see any sign of either until the final level of the game, Meat Circus. And, oh boy, Meat Circus.

Yeah, it should come as no surprise that I hate this level. I hated it so much that on my first playthrough of this game in 2005, I rage quit and didn’t look at Psychonauts for several days. I eventually went back to it and beat it, but let’s say I was more than a little relieved that they lowered the difficulty for it in subsequent releases.

But I digress.

We reach Meat Circus, the combined consciousness of Raz and Little Oly, and the payoff of all the meat and bunny stuff we’ve seen thus far. We have Frankenstein-esque meat bunnies, platforms made of steaks, rail grinding on bones, trapeze and trampolines of bones and skin, and of course the dark versions of both Raz’s and Oleander’s fathers, who not only are evil but also become a giant two-headed monster. When Sasha said that problems seem larger in your head than in real life, I should have known it would be taken more literally in this game.

I mean, is it really any shock that Oleander is carrying some trauma after seeing his bunny friend be decapitated by his own father? It’s never said how old Little Oly is, but considering his behavior he is clearly younger than Raz, so this happened when he was in the single digits of age. That’s really not something a little kid should see. That’s just asking for PTSD.

Anyway, back to setup and payoff, which is pretty obvious at this point. We have plenty of mentions of both bunnies and meat throughout the game, leading to the final boss that is both creepy and downright terrifying. Not only does this boss conclude Oleander’s trauma with his father being a butcher and killing his favorite bunny, but it also allows Raz to defeat his inaccurate mental image of his own father. Both of them are able to move forward from that point on. Defeating this monstrosity acts as the ultimate payoff and conclusion for both Raz and Oleander.

Speaking of Raz’s dad…

Raz’s relationship with his father at the start of the game is strained, to say the least. When Raz goes to learn Levitation from Milla, the very mention of his father showing up to take him home from the camp makes him nervous. Not the best sign here, and his other comments regarding his dad don’t make it much better.

Once Raz reaches cadet ranks ten and twenty, we get cutscenes of Raz talking with Cruller in tutorials for Pyrokinesis and Telekinesis. During Pyrokinesis, Raz first mentions that his father, Augustus, hates psychics and trained Raz in acrobatics to the point where Raz worried his dad was trying to kill him. During Telekinesis, Raz reveals his suspicions that his father is psychic as well. The memory vault we see of Raz running away from home only reinforces Raz’s perspective.

We’re led to believe that Raz’s statements are the truth, which is a logical conclusion since he’s the game’s protagonist, but the end of the game shows otherwise. At first I thought this meant Raz was simply an unreliable narrator, but that turns out to not be the whole story. While Raz is an unreliable narrator in that there are a lot of things he just doesn’t know, it’s not malicious in any way. Raz simply doesn’t know that he father really does care about him. That’s the magic of using the third-person limited point of view.

Up to this point, we’re led to believe that Augustus is a neglectful father at best, but it turns out that Augustus does love his son. He’s just apparently really bad at showing it. The very fact that he is the only one able to break into Raz’s “hard to penetrate skull” shows that there is a deeper relationship between them. And Augustus is clearly distraught that his own son sees him as a monster in his mind. Poor Augustus.

I think that a lot of the interactions between father and son in this game was cut out due to both budget and time constraints, because I feel like there is more to be said with these two than what we get in the final product. (I’m thinking we’re going to get more of that in the sequel, but that is up in the air at this time.) This doesn’t bother me too much though, since we do get effective enough setup and payoff that it doesn’t seem like it comes out of nowhere. They do finally talk to each other and express their concerns, mending their relationship…in the middle of a battle with a two-headed father monster.

Clearly these two have communication issues. The morale of this story is that it’s important to talk to one each other.

And this is certainly paid off in the end cutscene of the game. When Sasha says they want Raz to come along to rescue Truman Zanotto, Raz doesn’t just run off with them again. He turns around and gives his father puppy-dog eyes, clearly asking for permission to go this time. And Augustus not only gives it, he gives Raz his blessing and encourages him to “show them all.” Contrast this to the backstory of the game, where Augustus flat out forbids Raz from having anything to do with the Psychonauts and Raz running away in secret.

And if that’s not satisfying use of setup and payoff, I don’t know what is.

That’s not to say that all of the setup and payoff in Psychonauts is perfect. To be fair, there are times when the setup can be missed, and therefore the payoff that comes later can be confusing. The most obvious example of this is the nightmare that attacks you in The Milkman Conspiracy. When I first played the game all those years ago, my first thought was, “What in the world? What is this thing and where did it come from?”

Of course, on subsequent playthroughs, I did find the demon room in Milla’s mind, showing the same nightmares she had caged away. This is the difference between a sane mind and an insane one. Milla has all her demons under control (although notice that they have not gone away) while Boyd’s run amok because he has no way of mentally dealing with them, since his brain is a little bit busy with this, well, milkman conspiracy. The nightmares that attack in Boyd’s brain make more sense after I saw the ones in Milla’s brain. In this case, the payoff wasn’t bad since the nightmare miniboss wasn’t a bad fight, but context in the form of the setup made the payoff better.

Other times the setup can be missed? The other big one is the resolution of all the campers’ storylines. Unless the player spends time going around camp throughout the game and seeing the interactions the other campers have with each other, the little scene you have with each one once they are re-brained won’t make a lot of sense. The love triangle between J.T., Elka and Nils? J.T. and Chops having conflict about J.T. abandoning his best friend for his new girlfriend? Crystal and Clem attempting suicide to become more powerful? Chloe thinking she’s an alien? Maloof basically becoming a mob leader with Mikhail as his right-hand man? Elton and Milka’s blossoming love? …Just to name a few? Yeah, the context of all that is missed if the player doesn’t bother to talk to the other campers throughout the game, but I attribute that more to the player than the game. The developers accounted for this in the story, so it’s more the player didn’t look for the setup rather than Double Fine just not bothering to include it.

That’s just some examples of setup and payoff that I feel are probably the most important to the main storyline of Psychonauts. They are far from the only examples. Really far from it. Oh boy, could I go on about the scenarios of setup and payoff that happen in this game.

Dogen talking to the squirrels, who tell him that the short man is going to kill everyone, only for them to really be talking about Oleander?

Elton saying that Oleander’s recruiting office in Basic Braining resembles a dentist office, only to find out that one of the main antagonists, Dr. Loboto, is in fact a dentist?

Oleander having a mental vault trapped behind some mental cobwebs? Well, he has something to hide, despite him saying he doesn’t when you first play through Basic Braining. Of course, getting angry at Raz for snooping around a room with a curtain doesn’t give off the idea that Oleander has something to hide. Nope. Not suspicious at all.

Agent Crueller having all the different personalities around the camp, hinting as his unstable mental state?

The Hand of Galochio appearing in the lake as a reference to Raz’s family having a curse to die in water, and said curse just so happens to show up not only as a gameplay element but as a story element during Meat Circus?

Raz being able to read Lili’s thoughts when she doesn’t mean for him to, then for him to do it two more times near the end of the game?

How Lili’s cold stops her from sneezing out her own brain?

Sasha’s hatred of tacky lamps having to do with his past working in a tacky lamp factory? Or the shoeboxes indicating his father was a cobbler? Or the bed as the location of where his mother was horribly ill and died?

Raz needing to climb the “creepy thorn tower” in the Brain Tumbler Experiment, only to later need to climb Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed?

The mention of the town of Shaky Claim on the giant tree stump at the camp entrance referring to the sunken town that is (somewhat) explored during the boss sequence under the lake?

Raz talking about being back in high school in Black Velvetopia despite being ten years old? Not to mention the stories the dogs tell about Lana/Lampita and Dean/Dingo?

Lastly, do I really need to mention the incredibly weird and seemingly out of place mental vault below the creepy thorn tower? A brain chicken hatches out of an egg, meets a fish in water, goes to a circus, gets placed in a teacup, and blasts people to death? Kind of a summation of Raz coming out of the egg in the Brain Tumbler Experiment, meeting Linda at Lake Oblongata, entering the Meat Circus, and getting placed in a brain tank and defeating two people? Was the mental vault a foreshadowing of the main plot of Psychonauts? I don’t know. What do you think?

*Takes a deep breath.* See what I mean when I say I could really go on and on about setup and payoff in Psychonauts? There are so many examples that it’s kind of ridiculous. It could be said that there’s too much of this kind of storytelling in the game, but I fail to see how that is a problem. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, but when it comes to setup and payoff, Psychonauts is not it.

Credits

Screenshots courtesy of the following:

Comic Foil, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN-Y6XDe0oWyhgjcGunJqGw

Global Gaming, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pjsxNSwSSA

StoryGamer, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXZ1vDFp_dw&t=139s

ThatNotSoAznKid, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ford0MGvWIc

#psychonauts #psychonauts spoilers #setup and payoff #writing in video games

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littlesliceofmarvel · 5 years ago

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Manipulating a God | chpt. five

Synopsis: Trying to break the information out of Loki during the attack of 2012 wasn’t exactly the easiest task, but it was a challenge you were willing to take head on. So, what happened when a master manipulator tried to get information from the God of Mischief?

Series warnings: Swearing, mentions of violence, blood, and gore

Pairings: Stark!Reader x Loki

A/N: I am so happy to be back writing on here. I apologize for the unannounced hiatus, I was dealing with personal issues and couldn’t find the motivation to write, but I am back and stronger than ever! I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and may all of your 2020 wishes come true! Much love. xoxox

PS. There is a major storyline/timeline change here but don’t worry, it’ll match up with the movie timeline soon enough!

I know this chapter is shorter, but the next one will be a lot of fun!

For the millionth time that morning, Fury repeated the same question, “What did Loki say again? Give me the quote.”

Groaning and throwing your head back (also for the millionth time) you replied the same way you had all morning, “He said ‘the power I could find here on Earth is beyond anything your human brain can comprehend.’ Word for word - ish.”

Fury placed the pencil under his chin as if he were contemplating the meaning of life and all existence, looking down at the notepad in front of him which only had that one exact quote written, no other details or clues or even doodles scribbled anywhere else on the small lined paper. For about half an hour, the two of you had been sitting here discussing what the God of Mischief had said, but nowhere nearer to deciphering anything. Thor, who was currently your best hope in this grand old mystery, was off paying his dear brother a visit in the meantime but hadn’t actually spoken to you all day so he was of no help thus far.

In the half an hour you had been meeting with Fury, you had downed about eight coffees and your mind was having trouble staying focused on just the one quote, the meaning of it practically lost to you with the amount of caffeine flowing through your bloodstream. Your hands slightly shaking, eyes feeling fuzzy, you tried your best to keep focused and find any ideas flowing around your imaginative mind that could help out. But, in all honesty, you were blank.

Of course, you barely had any knowledge of ‘Outer Space’ in the first place, having only recently come in contact with your first-ever ‘aliens’ this week - and they were both nothing like you had expected from reading sci-fi and watching Star Trek. And that right there was the extent of your knowledge.

“What if he’s looking for someone powerful? Instead of something,” Fury thought out loud, mumbling to himself as he started tapping the pencil to his chin. Mumbling a silent agreement, you let out a dramatic sigh as you continued sinking into your chair, bored of the endless circle of conversation that continued feeling pointless to you. No point had been proven and nothing could be confirmed or denied since Fury’s space knowledge didn’t seem to exceed your own.

“God, pick yourself up a little bit, Stark,” Fury spoke in disappointment at your slouched figure, “You’re worse than a seven-year old child after you’ve had your coffee.”

Chuckling at his comment, you sat properly in your chair, straightening your back like a stiff board and intertwining your fingers on the glass table like a posture-perfect model, “Is this better, Corporal Fury?”

“Y/N, I’m not messing around here, the fate of our planet is kind of resting in your hands.”

Joking around was kind of your thing — you were a Stark after all. You knew that sometimes it got in the way when trying to hold a serious conversation (like right now), but there was nothing that could stop you from blurting out sarcastic or witty comments when people were relying on you for important answers.

You leaned towards him, a gentle smile on your lips, “I know, Fury, I’m just trying to bring some light to this dark situation.”

Fury nodded slowly, pointing down to the empty notepad in front of him, “Then try to shed some light on this.”

Dropping your smile, you pulled the notepad in front of you, staring blankly at the meaningless quote in front of you, “Have we ever considered that maybe Loki’s just messing with our minds? After all, that’s what he’s known for. This could just be an empty threat.”

“It’s not.”

Thor decided to make his entrance at the right time, arms crossed and a frown etched upon his bearded face — clearly, he had just come back from meeting Loki. He sauntered slowly over to the table and my eyes didn’t leave his figure. Something about the way he was standing gave me a feeling he was about to give us some information regarding what we’d been sitting in here discussing.

“Care to spill the beans, Thor?”

“Sorry? Spill beans? I do not under—”

“You don’t understand, yeah, I know. Just tell us what you think Loki means,” your patience was starting to wear thin with the Gods and their mysterious way of speaking. Still leaning over the table to direct your full attention to the blond hunk, you tensed your shoulders as you prepared for any kind of answer.

“There’s this belief on Asgard, and most of the universe, really, that there are these things called the Infinity Stones,” Thor spoke, treading carefully as if detonating a bomb. The words meant nothing to you, and he seemed to notice this as he began to elaborate.

“There are six Infinity Stones, and they’re the most powerful things in existence. One is in Loki’s sceptre, and as you see, it’s been able to turn a few of your best men into what you have called ‘flying monkeys.’ They are dangerous and if in the wrong hands, can create catastrophic events throughout our knowable universe.”

Letting the knowledge sink in as if you were listening to science fiction theories, you pressed Thor to go on, “What’s that got to do with us?”

Thor grimaced, as if the answer tasted bitter rolling off his tongue, “He believes that they are here on Earth. If these stones got into Loki’s hands, it would be the end of your life here on this planet.”

You processed this sudden turn of events, sitting silently as you plotted a way to prevent Loki from getting these so-called Infinity Stones, even though you strongly doubted something so powerful would be casually sitting on your planet without your knowledge, “On Earth? Seriously? Out of all the planets and solar systems and shit, why would they be here? Don’t you think we’d know about them?”

“You only just found out about them, and you’re not a regular person. So, no, you wouldn’t know about them. Especially if they’re safe.” Although you had just met the rock-solid God, you could sniff the honesty coming off of him as if you’d known him for years.

Sitting back in your chair as if hit by a literal brick wall of information, you turned to Fury, “What the fuckin’ hell do we do now?”

Fury raised his eyebrow, thinking over the scenarios in his head, “We plan a meeting and discuss. I’m going to gather the team. We meet in fifteen minutes.”

And without another word, Fury left you in deafening silence with Thor.

- - -

Within fifteen minutes, Fury stuck true to his word, and the rest of the Avengers had groggily piled into the room. Thor explained the Infinity Stone situation and how they worked, even talking once more about Loki’s sceptre — which apparently homed the ‘Mind Stone.’ That explains the mind control.

“Has he mentioned the Infinity Stones to you, Y/N?” Tony asked, sarcasm laced in his voice almost in disbelief of the turn of events.

“Nope,” I replied casually, popping the P, “I haven’t really spoken to him much, so maybe next time I’ll try to bring it up, I dunno.”

“No — no, we can’t let Loki know that we know,” Thor’s eyes widened as if a lightbulb went off in his head, “If he finds out we’re onto him, he can very easily cause irreversible damage. I mean, I’ve never seen Loki willingly sit in a cage like this, it’s probably a part of his plan. So, we keep our mouths closed and let events unfold, I’d say.”

“Let events unfold?” Fury spoke up, “We are not letting that psychopath sit back and live his little life in that cage as if it were freakin’ Disneyland. Y/N, you’re going back in there for conversation. Find out the location of the Infinity Stones and his plan with them.”

I ran a hand through my hair, sitting upright with a tight smile, “Fury, I hate to disagree with you, but... I disagree with you. Look, Thor’s right, we can’t let him know we’re onto him about this because he can easily just... get out of here, or call his little backup boys or something. I’ll go talk to him and try my best to get everything that I can from him, but I doubt he’ll give in that easily,” I let out a sigh, trying my best to ignore the looks that everyone was giving me, “Just, give me a few days.”

And that’s exactly what Fury did.

Sitting face to face with Loki got less intimidating every time I did it. Probably because he looked sicker every time I saw him. Not that he was any less captivating — his blue eyes held numerous mysterious emotions and the smirk on his lips proved that he had secrets I wanted to know, but the fact that he looked as if his entire life was crumbling before his eyes made me feel like my job might just get a little easier.

“You’re back,” Loki smirked at me as I walked into the room. For the first time in about three days, I wasn’t wearing a tactical suit — meaning I didn’t feel as on edge, my body finally getting to experience comfort. My y/h/c hair flowed loosely down my shoulders and rested on my plain white t-shirt which was tucked into a tight pair of jeans.

“Yeah, hi,” I smiled, my mind replaying what Nat and I discussed this morning.

Be kind to him. Understand him. Relate to him.

Relating to Loki might be the toughest challenge out of the three, but my mind was witty enough to come up with something that made sense.

“I’ve persuaded them to let you eat if you want,” I smiled, looking down at the brown paper bag in my hand and held it out, “I’ve got a bagel and a hashbrown. I don’t know if you even eat, but this is good shit in my opinion.”

“I do not want it, but I appreciate the effort, Y/N.”

The way my name rolled off his tongue sent shivers down my spine, and I mentally smacked myself for focusing on it. He sat in the corner of the cell, leaning against the glass wall with his green cloak wrapped around him. His eyes looked more sunken in than last time I saw him and a part of me felt bad knowing he was probably losing his mind in here.

“If ever you do need anything, though, you can ask me — I know how to get my way with these people,” I smiled at him as kindly as I could, sitting down in the small chair in front of the glass.

He chuckled, eyes raking over my body quickly before locking back with mine, “Change of heart from our last conversation, wouldn’t you say?”

Now it was my turn to laugh slightly, remembering the last time I spoke to him and how different the encounter was, “Doesn’t change the fact that you will do as I say, but, I am human and I do have feelings. I’m not too good at the ‘being mean’ part. Even though I act like it.” That was totally a lie — I could slam and call out people in an instant — but I needed to play the role of a sweetheart if I wanted to get him to believe I had good intentions.

“You don’t seem like someone who has trouble being mean,” Loki scoffed, shrugging his shoulders backwards.

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” I raised an eyebrow at him, glaring him down as best as I could.

“Decipher it however you want,” he leaned his head backwards and gave me a weak smile. Something about him looked incredibly off and as much as it seemed like he was faking it for help, a tiny sliver of my mind told me he was being genuine and he needed help.

“Uh, so, how have you been?” I tried to strike up a casual conversation, still trying to figure out a way to pop the Infinity Stones in.

He gave me a quizzical look, “Just peachy. What do you think? I’m bored.”

I smiled down at the ground, an idea popping into my head, “Well, what if we played a game? To get to know each other? Like, Never Have I Ever or 20 questions?”

Loki rolled his eyes, “No, thank you. You seem incredibly boring.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” I scoffed, flicking a strand of my hair over my shoulder, “I’m bored too, this will give me something to do.”

Loki’s eyes flickered with an idea, and as he opened his mouth I knew I’d regret giving him the option to play.

“What do I get out of this?” He smirked coyly, crossing his arms over his chest.

Rolling my eyes, I pointed to the brown bag on the floor, “Food, duh.” There was nothing else I could possibly offer Loki — nothing that was good, anyways. I knew he’d ask to set him free, but that was not an option in anyone’s books.

“Not good enough, princess,” he shook his eyes, eyes playfully tracing my figure.

“Well,” I began, “You also get me as a friend!”

The playful smile disappeared from his face, “Oh, yeah, that’s totally what I want.”

“Stop being a bitch, Loki, and just ask me a question.”

He placed his fingers on his chin as if pondering the situation for a moment before his eyes lit up and he shot me a toothy grin, the dark ideas swirling around his mind ready to break free from their cages. Was I going to regret this? Yeah, probably. Was I going to back down? No.

“Fine, let’s play.”

Taglist

(message me if you want to be added/removed. If you are in bold it is because I am unable to tag you.)

@dapperappleton @what-a-fantasy @the-girl-of-many-fandoms1414 @brighteyedmichelle @leasly @cassiopeia-barrow @jay-the-mothafuckin-gay @themusingsofmany @bambamwolf87 @thefandomzoneisdangerous @cyberskeletonhandsbat @ultracarpediemfan @vgirl-10123 @bangvateez @leximills666 @littleredstarfish @blue-spider-official @benji-booxx @gorgeousgodzilla @what-a-fantasy @hello-lemons @yandereforyou @godhateskyleigh

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lovehaswonangelnumbers · 4 years ago

Photo

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/2020-2021-the-deeper-astrological-outlook/

2020-2021 THE DEEPER ASTROLOGICAL OUTLOOK

By Elizabeth Peru

Dear Cosmic Community, 2020 has been a year of ‘profound change’ – within all of our lives. Indeed, it was always going to be. The new energy decade of 2020-2030 will see more change in 10 years than we’ve known in the past 10,000 years. My previous blog post details why this is. And as we look towards the final months of 2020 and into the new year of 2021, that ever-changing landscape is set to continue, with some profound astrological markers, opening the way for an awakened humanity to evolve – together.

Before I begin looking at the deeper meaning behind some of these major astrological happenings, there are 3 focal points to consider.

When you follow these practices, the path ahead ‘becomes easier’ and any upcoming changes will enhance your life experience.

Seek Beauty Within All – When you look for what is good and true within everything you see, hear, feel, touch and intuit, you increase your vibration. You’ll fill yourself up with high-frequency, ‘self-empowered’ energy. This means that when any challenge comes your way (as it will) you can respond from a strong, wise and assured view point. When you’re filled up with lower level negativity, seeking what’s wrong instead of what’s good in life, you’ll weaken your ability to respond and will ‘react’ instead, making decisions that dis-empower and pull you down. Under the 5D energy template now operating on Earth, what you focus upon, manifests quickly. I have a Guided Meditation to instantly Raise Your Vibration and inspire and motivate you.

Observe your Past and Future – As your past comes up for review, and it replays over and over in your mind, just observe yourself within it, rather than reliving it by being part of the replay. Pull yourself back, and just watch your part within it. Then you won’t be swamped by revisiting your past, but instead will learn and grow in wisdom from it. My Guided Meditation to Open Your Third Eye will assist in envisioning a soul-focused future for you.

Bring your Integrated Spiritual and Physical Presence To Bear – When you awaken to the fact that you’re a soul (a being of light) experiencing a physical life – then live like it. Walk through your life exuding your integrated spiritual and physical presence. The grater spiritual energy you emit, the stronger, more grounded and more able to effect change you become in your everyday life. My Guided Meditation for Empowering Empaths invokes your highest presence into your life.

And so, let’s look at some of the major astrological happenings for the remainder of 2020 into early 2021 and the deeper messages behind them…

The Cosmic Rectangle – September 2020. This is a planetary alignment that sees Earth placed in the centre of a giant rectangular formation, created by the overlapping energetic lines of the planetary bodies. This formation will help us to see the myriad of life ‘options’ that are actually available to use in 2020 and beyond. It extends your ability to see what’s around you, from all angles, all at once. This assists with creating an integrated spiritual and physical human. I see many souls deepening their understanding of who they are in September, with an ability to live their truth.

7 Planetary Retrogrades will also occur in September 2020. A retrograde occurs when a planetary body appears to be moving backwards around the Sun, when observed from Earth. It doesn’t actually move backwards, but it appears to from Earth, due to our relative positions moving in an ever-changing cosmic dance around the Sun. With Jupiter, Pluto, Chiron, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Mars all in retrograde for a period in mid-September, the globe will be taken back over old ground. This is where focal point 2 (that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post) comes into play. You may feel like you’re not moving ahead and are just reliving your past, but this is not so. You’re simply being asked to observe your old patterns, so that you can improve upon them going forward. And this is the key in working the retrogrades to your advantage. This will be tricky energy for some to navigate, especially if they have no understanding of cosmic energy and its impact on our lives.

The Three Super New Moons – Beginning in September 2020 and then continuing in October and November, we will have three Super New Moons in a row – signalling our movement out of the 2020 energy fabric, as we begin to weave the picture of what our 2021 will look like. A Super New Moon occurs when the Moon is new and is also at its closest approach to Earth all month. The first Super New Moon in September is the door opener on three months of accelerated newness. Much can and will change in your life (for the better) from September until the end of November. This is where focal point 1, from the beginning of this blog post, comes into play. Seek the beauty in your life. Emit it from within you and find it outside of you. Look for it in every situation in your life – you can do this. This will make all the difference in how well you navigate and experience the final months of 2020 in your power.

Mercury Direct on ‘the day’ of the US Elections – I mention the US elections, as many in our community of light are interested in this ‘once in 4 year event’ that does have such a profound impact, not only on the US, but also on the globe. The lead-up to November 3, 2020 sees two Super New Moons occurring and between 7 and 5 planetary retrogrades. So, we will have one cosmic influence asking us to seriously address our past and another to optimistically address our future. And with postal voting set to be huge in the US for this election, this will effect voting preferences. Again this is where focal point 2 (that I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post) comes into play. Rather than becoming angry or confused about the past, or wishing that you were back there and not where you are today, observe it instead. From careful observation comes a progressive life view that you can then take forward to effect great positive change. In the lead-up to the election Mercury will be in retrograde and this can cause create some uncertainty, as to which way the election results will go, Mercury influences all communication and messages, electronics, the Internet and the electrical charge within us all. There will be varying poll results, and views from day to day, right up until the actual day of the election – counting could also be delayed. Which is interesting because, by the afternoon on November 3 (in the US) Mercury will have just moved direct, before a final result is announced. That is good news for the eventual clarity of results. There will also be a Blue Full Moon only days before the election, just as Uranus makes it closest approach to Earth all year. Uranus causes us to break out of old patterns in an unexpected and often-surprising way and the Blue Full Moon (the second Full Moon in a month) will demand that the old completes in a grand way. Over these final days before the election, over-blown and ever-changeable energy will be present. Do your best to focus on the bigger positives for our globe over the next 4 years and that we’ll experience a smooth transition, that is respectful and all-inclusive of the wise beings of the light that we are.

The Final Eclipses of 2020 – Beginning in late November and continuing through until almost the end of December, we’ll close the year with the energy of radical change, similar energy with which we began 2020. The final eclipse season for 2020 will be intently felt. In late November, there’s a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse, and then in mid-December, a Total Solar Eclipse on the New Moon, just before Chiron moves direct. This Total Solar Eclipse is one of the final cosmic events for 2020 that will stamp a completion (and honouring) of all events in your life from January to December. Eclipses force us to clear out what isn’t working in our life in favour of what is. My advice is always the same during Eclipse Season – ‘do your work and make your changes’ each day. Don’t wait for the actual eclipses to make the radical changes for you – as they turn out not be what you desire’. You can zip up in evolutionary knowing in the final two months of 2020 with the ever-useful, uplifting energy of The Eclipses.

The Great Jupiter/Saturn Conjunction in Aquarius 2020 (an influence into 2021) – On the Solstice in December 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will meet in the zodiacal sign of Aquarius, known for its progressive energy and bringing forth of societal change that focuses upon ‘we instead of me’. Saturn is a slow mover and takes almost 2.5 years to cycle through each sign of the zodiac and will transit Aquarius until 2023. This is why it takes almost 30 years to return to the same position as the day you were born, known as your Saturn Return (a time of great awakening and deepening in our lives every 28 – 30 years). Jupiter will transit Aquarius for just over 12 months until December 29, 2021. Jupiter takes just over 12 years to cycle through the entire zodiac and it last transited Aquarius from 2009 – 2010. I’ve mentioned previously that the period of 2010 – 2020 is what has prepared us for 2020-2030 and the biggest shift in 10,000 years Indeed, the years of 2009 – 2010 have been what has prepared us for entry into The Aquarian Era of Light, which cosmically kicks-off on The December Solstice 2020, with Jupiter and Saturn both meeting in Aquarius – a great conjunction that last occurred 20 years ago in 2000.

I will be holding a special global event on this great cosmic occasion in December 2020 just for our Tip-Off Community

Very Early 2021 – With such a magnificent event as the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius on the Solstice at the end of 2020, the opening weeks of 2021 will be infused with Aquarian energy, inflecting us with higher ideals and a humanitarian outlook. I’ll be speaking more ‘very soon’ on the bigger cosmic picture of the entire year of 2021, as so much is still shifting in 2020 that the landscape is still morphing.

ARE YOU READY TO GO FURTHER? NOW IS THE TIME TO START BEFORE 2021 BEGINS For all of the details, of every cosmic event and how this energy will be advancing your spiritual path and growth each day, you can take this opportunity and join with the thousands of awake and aware souls globally, who are already successfully ascending on their spiritual path every week with my daily energy forecasts and soulful life guidance The Tip-Off It’s a choice that I know, will empower you…

I trust that this blog post has inspired you, brought new information to light and most importantly has peaked your interest about the deeper astrological outlook coming up. I welcome your ‘loving interactions’ in the comments below ♡

In the highest vibration as you…experience your soul Elizabeth ♡

*******

All of Creation Is watching Earth and witnessing its Ascension Process. They are ready, ready for this Planet to be Declared a Light Only Zone. All of Humanity are called upon now to Step Up in fulfillment of their Divine Soul Contract.

The dark has been cleared, fully defeated and New Earth, Nova Terra, is ready to begin. This requires each Being to fully clear the remaining density within their bodies, to awaken to full remembrance of their Galactic Truth, their Soul Essence, their Divine Blueprint.

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