#these reviews are all too long

[willyhoos]

alfred livestreaming his breakdown to the entire us public (as his pr team devolves into chaos)

[hoshiina]

pairing: hoshina soushirou x gn!reader (no prns)

summary: in which he realizes you were the one for him

warnings: none i think !

wc: 1100

Hoshina wasn't a player. He wasn't one to say yes to everyone who came his way nor was he one to lightly pursue just about anyone who slightly interested him— not to mention he didn’t fall easily to begin with. He was a busy man in a dangerous line of work so having a relationship simply didn’t make sense most of the time.

However, this is not to say he hasn’t had a few relationships here and there. He loved those he dated, he really did. He did not believe in dating for the fun of it nor did he believe in starting a relationship he knew would end at some point, but subconsciously he tried not to get attached. He kept his distance and locked away his heart to keep from getting hurt. Was it unfair? Well yes, but he was scared. Everyone has something that terrifies them greatly, this just so happened to be Hoshina’s.

Yet, recently he could tell that something was different with you. It had only been a few months since you started dating, but he feared the shift in his feelings. He knew what it was— he knew very well, but as soon as he admitted it, it would be over. There’d be no going back for him. He knew he was being rather irrational, he knew that if he sat down and confronted these emotions he’d realize they weren’t that big of a deal, but he couldn’t. He’s never been able to.

However, while fighting this kaiju, it became plain obvious that he was simply in denial. 

It upset him how important you were to him, but more than that it upset him that he knew he was important to you. You had made it so painfully clear that he meant the absolute world to you and that broke him to pieces every single time.

To him it was easy being alone— he just had to make sure his job was complete before he died. If he could ensure everyone’s safety or at least help Mina out, there was nothing more he wished for. Yet while fighting Kaiju no. 10 today, when he saw his life flash before his eyes, his immediate thought was of you. If he died you’d cry. And that alone was going to get him home alive.

He’d rather die than make you cry. Especially not alone.

As he stood up again, he could see his blood dripping from his wounds and immediately it made him chuckle. You’d cry anyways when you see the state he’s in. 

I’ll have to be around to wipe your tears at least, he said to you in his head.

He was incredibly lucky that you didn’t work on the battlefield, his heart simply would not be able to take it. But he did, and for you he’d have to get home safe. Even if no one else cared that much, not even himself, he knew you would.

All of a sudden, it was easy to admit. He was hopelessly in love with you, in a way he didn't know he was capable of. He wished that he would spend the rest of his life with you and he hoped you would spend the rest of yours with him. Perhaps he was just afraid and a little flustered to admit that he was important to someone, especially someone special to him too. He had seen how painful it was for those left behind, a little too often. 

But there was an easy solution to that, he’d just get back to you safe every time. He just won’t make you worry and he’ll be there for you. This was supposed to be a dilemma, something he thought he'd stress over, but in the moment he felt eerily relaxed, definitely not like he was fighting an identified grade kaiju. The rest of the fight was a blur, he couldn't remember much. His head was clear but the fatigue had taken over at that point, but before he knew it, the kaiju laid in front of him still.

He was faintly conscious as they rushed him into an ambulance and patched him up. Once he was properly treated and awake, they had warned him to stay put and take it easy, but all he wanted to do was see you.

As soon as he left his assigned room, he immediately bumped into you. You had been waiting to be let in to see him. You took one look at the way he was patched up and tears welled into your eyes. He could tell you didn't mean to, you didn't want to worry him.

“Please don't cry,” he said softly, wiping your tears away. He couldn't help but smile at the sight of you. “I'm perfectly fine.”

“I'm not crying,” you said with a scowl on your face, but the way your voice cracked was not very convincing. “I'm so glad you're back.”

“Can't live without me?” he teased. He knew you couldn't live without him, but he couldn't either. Yet, now he even hated the thought of you living without him, let alone with someone else, so here he was. And here he always will be.

“Shut up,” you said. “You know I can't.”

He knew, but hearing you say that still made his heart flutter. He reached out with his right hand to grab your left and held it carefully. He leaned in to kiss you, but it was so much sloppier than the careful ones he usually gave you. Forgive him, he was terribly exhausted.

“I can't either,” he said, snuggling his face into your shoulder.

“You can't?” you asked, a little surprised. It broke his heart that he had possibly made you feel such way.

“Not for a second,” he said, still avoiding eye contact. “I'd rather die than wake up without you next to me, actually.”

You wouldn’t reply, so he brought his head back up to look at you.

“Oh, don't cry,” he said and chuckled a little, wiping your tears away as he kissed you again. “I didn't mean to make you cry.”

He hadn't let go of your hand and although he was gentle, he held it firmly. He didn't say anything, but he vowed to himself that he'd put a ring on it someday. He wasn't letting go of you ever.

You were the one for him.

[mizgnomer]

David Tennant Year in Review - 2024

David’s television, film, convention, charity, and other appearances from 2024, all in one convenient photoset - with extra special thanks to Georgia and her excellent Instagram posts

Please see my [ David Tennant Year In Review tag ] for prior year-end posts dating back to 2014

[johnnyshrine]

★ 091 // "Calendar?"

[turquoisemagpie]

Appreciate the little things.

Not to ignorantly deny all of the big bad things in the world, but to survive them.

[stemmmm]

Close to a year and four rewrites later, I present to you...

Stem's Thoughts on the Game Design of Harvest Moon on SNES

I’m not going to lie, if you don’t like farming sims, you won’t like this one. At their core, every farming sim (at least in the rpg genre) is nearly identical, and that’s because of this game. In a way, I might dare to say that Harvest Moon for the SNES is the perfect farming sim because it has every one of the usual elements in their most simplified form and it just works straight from the get-go. It works so well in fact, that after this game came out in 1996, four more entries to the series were released before the year 2000.

If you are someone who does like farming sims, I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s simple and to the point, with a fast pace and enough random events and points of intrigue that the game kept me relatively engaged for my whole playthrough.

Also, by nature of this being the first game and therefore hard to cover concisely and by nature of taking so long to write this... it's long as hell! Enjoy! :) <3

I can’t say my appreciation of this game doesn’t come with a few caveats. I’ve intermittently played HM games all my life, starting with the GameBoy port (GB1) all the way to Pioneers of Olive Town, so while I don’t know exactly how the series has evolved, I’ve seen it at some of its earliest and at its latest. My vague childhood memories of GB1 (a game I didn’t own and didn’t play much of) were that it was pretty sparse and bland, so knowing that this original game was allegedly the same thing but with a little more content, I was expecting the bare minimum. I was prepared to never even be able to leave my farm, but the first thing the game did was shuttle me off to the nearby town and blocked the exit until I talked to everyone there. 

(Maps of the town, mountain, and farm via The Spriters Resource)

You learn everything you need to know about the game right here at the beginning; Firstly, that this town is small as all hell and has hardly anyone in it aside from the five girls you can marry and their immediate family members. The next thing you’ll learn is that there’s a fence on your farm, and you need to be taking care of that. Of the few repetitive lines of dialogue any given person in town has to share with you on any given day, a fair amount are devoted to reminding you to fix your fence, to make sure it’s in good repair. There was just a big storm so watch out! Remember to check it every day! Are you chopping enough wood? Because you’ll need it for that fence!

I’m being dramatic of course, you aren’t reminded about it that much, though the thin variation of dialogue means it comes up a lot. The emphasis on your fence does exist, and it isn’t for nothing: while it doesn’t matter as much if all you do is grow crops– if you keep animals, the game tells you that the ideal thing to do for yours and the animal’s happiness is to put the animals outside to graze. Animal feed bought from the livestock shop will keep them fed, but it's nothing compared to fresh grass grown on your farm. You can’t even buy animals without a certain amount of grass planted! And sure, you can cut the grass to store for later, but it’s at its best straight out of the ground. However, the way the game is programmed, the animals only eat when the day rolls over, so putting animals outside for the day and taking them in at night isn’t an option, and on top of that, there’s things that come out at night that can hurt your animals. This is where your fence comes in.

The Utility of Fences

At the entrance to your farm is a cluster of buildings: your house, a small lumber shed, a barn, coop, and silo, a tool shed, and an old, dried up well. Just barely surrounding all of these is a little wooden fence that looks more like a row of upright logs than anything else. Despite this farm having presumably been abandoned, the fence is in perfect repair. You’ll quickly discover that the fence as it is won’t work out; there’s hardly space to plant anything within it, and with the well dried up, you’re forced to hop it to get to a water source to fill up your watering can. It’s pretty clear that you’ll need to expand your fence, and it’s easy to do with all of the tree stumps littering the massive field that it’s blocking off. 

On top of needing to expand the range of your fence, the individual planks eventually will rot away and leave useless stumps. They show up more frequently after rain or a large storm. The posts don’t rot away completely so they have to be manually removed, but replacing them is as simple as smashing the old post with a hammer or ax and popping a new post in its place. It becomes a very natural part of your daily routine to run a lap around the farm’s perimeter before you go to bed to make sure everything looks safe and secure. It’s a good way to ensure your animals are put away and debris is cleared out, too! It slotted very nicely into my daily schedule until a certain point.

With how much time you have to spend hopping over the logs to get to the rest of the area too large to fence in, you might be tempted to leave one out of place for easier traversal. When night comes, it’s clear why that would be a mistake. Sometimes when you go to bed, you’ll hear your dog barking. It’s a small detail, one that took me a long time to notice because I didn’t always play with the sound on. There are wild dogs that prowl around the wilderness surrounding your farm, and only at night do they dare to come close. Your dog, if left outside, isn't able to do anything other than warn you of their presence if they show up. There’s nothing to notice during the daytime if it happens, unless you happened to leave one of your animals outside. There was one night that I left my chickens outside, having thought my fence was in perfect order and repair. I went to bed and heard the dog barking, followed by a horrible crunch. When I went out in the morning, I saw where my chicken had been before, it had been replaced by a pile of feathers. On the north side of my farm was a rotted fence post I’d failed to fix. 

The Reality of Fences

After losing my chicken, a cluster of pixels on my screen it may have been, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my animals outside. I didn’t want to take a risk again, the sound and sight of feathers was upsetting enough. On a more logical note, the chickens didn’t even lay eggs if left outside so there was no value in it. Cows were a pain to put back inside the barn too, because of some silliness with the game’s collision. As much of a disappointment as it was to not have my animals roam around, it was just easier. At the time, I was focusing on upgrading my house anyways, so I didn’t have time to take care of my animals outside where time would pass when I could use that time gathering wood, and everything I had was being saved up for the house so I didn’t have any extra materials to repair my fence with. My fence was all rotting away. Because it was inconvenient for getting to my crops, I started smashing all the old posts as they went, too. That’s when I noticed something: the wild dog wasn’t coming anymore.

I didn’t pay much attention to it until I was looking up a completely different mechanic and discovered a forum explaining how the fences were broken. Rotted posts attracted the wild dog, they said. It didn’t matter if you had gaps in your fence, or even a fence at all–in fact no fence was the best kind to have because the mere existence of posts that could rot was a liability. 

I was hesitant at first to test this concept, after all there wasn’t much I could gain from it. My chickens wouldn’t lay outside, and my cows would be too challenging to get back in if the forecast called for rain. The thing that got me to finally try it was when I was trying to hatch more chickens. My coop felt like a nightmare to navigate due to its current population. I wanted less animals inside that I had to feed, so I threw a couple chicks outside–they weren’t laying yet anyways. Lo and behold, the dog didn’t come. More days passed and more animals were left outside, and it never came. My fence had rotted until there was nothing left at all. No dogs could ever come to my farm again. And I realized that the game’s own insistence on its mechanics was all a lie.

How You’re Told To Play - How The Game Lies

Of course, my animals didn’t stay outside. For a minute it was fun having a crowd of cows milling about while I tended to my crops, but letting them wander free and uninhibited made it impossible to find and milk all of them without any trouble, and there were the rainy days to watch out for. After the novelty wore off, they went back inside and stayed there. The thing is, that didn’t make a single bit of difference in how much they liked me compared to how they were living in the barn. On top of that, they didn’t seem to care whether I was feeding them grass or store-bought food either, though I mostly stuck to the grasses since they were cheaper and easier to get. Nothing about how I was told to care for animals really mattered past feeding them every day, petting it and maybe brushing it, if it was a cow.

It gets worse. The most basic aspect of the game is the fact that time passes. The story takes place over 2 and a half years, running through each day until the end, and these days last from 6AM to 6PM according to the game’s own internal time setting. After 6PM, all of the shops aside from the bar will close and you lose the ability to sell anything as you’re told it would rot in the shipping bin overnight, so there’s nothing to do but sleep until the next day. Issue with this is that when the days stop at 6PM… they just stop. Time doesn’t flow anymore. The game doesn’t give you any kind of clock to know the exact time it is until after you’ve upgraded your house, so all you have to go by before that is the color of the environment and whether or not your character has played an animation to eat something (you’re automatically fed when you wake up, at noon, and at night). I discovered this because I was curious if I could actually see the wild dog by staying out, and left the game running for probably 20 minutes in real life only for nothing to happen. Because of the time freeze, the time after 6PM actually becomes really valuable for farm logistics. You can’t sell anything, no, but you can pull up all the weeds on the farm, water your crops, fix your fences, feed and care for animals if you hadn’t already, and harvest wood for fences and house upgrades which would have taken a lot of valuable time to get during shipping-hours. The only thing that gets in the way of doing all that is you running out of energy.

Your energy is what allows you to use your farming equipment like your ax or watering can. Running out of it doesn’t mean you fall unconscious or anything, but your character will play an animation of them stumbling over and will fail to use any tools. The most obvious fix to this is to simply go to bed, as sleeping gives you a full recharge. You can also, however, recharge it by going to the hot spring on the mountain, or by eating food bought at the restaurant in town or foraged for in the forest. You can’t tell easily how much is refilled, as there’s no visual indicator like a health bar, but you’re able to eat more than once, and jumping into the hot spring seems to count whether you did it or not more than how much time you spend in there, so you can hop in and out a couple of times and call it good. 

Individually, time freezing at 6PM and energy being endlessly replenishable aren’t bad things. Even together, they’re not the worst. Having free time to focus on profitless chores is nice, and I think it’s important to be able to replenish your energy in case you have a limited amount of time to do things like for example, cut all of your grass before winter kills it. What makes an exploit out of these is the fact that the resources in the forest will never run out. Every time you re-enter the forest, all forage items and tree stumps are respawned. The infinite amount of forage makes for infinite energy refills, and could also make for an incredible money exploit if you didn’t have a very limited amount of time to ship things. You don’t have a limited amount of time to cut up tree stumps though. If you wanted to, you could run up to the forest after 6PM, chop every stump, then simply reload the area, and everything’s back. You can get all of the wood you would ever need to fully upgrade your house in one night. It’s a bit of a grind to do all at once, but it’s a grind you’d be doing over time anyways. It’s not the worst exploit in the world, since you still need money to pay for the house upgrade, but arguably because of how you have to focus your energy elsewhere for most of the game, the wood is the harder thing to get. Additionally, when the game has very little to do in both fall and winter due to the lack of crops, this exploit takes away just about any reason to play those two seasons other than to take care of animals. It’s an optional exploit of course–as all exploits are–but once you learn about it, it’s hard to resist the desire to get the grind out of the way all at once and mess up the pacing of the game.

The Charm of the Game

Learning that the fences were completely broken as a mechanic was a huge disappointment for me. From the moment I got a grasp on how the game was supposed to work, I wanted to eventually surround my whole field with fencing and keep my animals outside so I would have some life on my farm while I worked. I didn’t just want this, I was excited for it! This was something I’d never done in a farming sim that didn’t already manage putting animals in and out for you like Stardew Valley or newer Story of Seasons games do. My routine is always the same: I go into the barn and coop to tend to each of my animals, I take care of my crops outside, then run straight to town to talk to everyone, and go to bed. The change in routine that would come from taking care of the animals outside and patrolling the fence every night felt fresh to me. It made me feel that even though this was the first game of its kind, it was different and required new things of me. But in the end, I played it exactly the same.

Harvest Moon is still very different from all of the games that followed it, though. In many ways, it’s because it has less “stuff” in it– both in terms of items and things you have to do. But I wouldn’t say that it feels incomplete. Harvest Moon runs over the course of 2 and a half years before your work is evaluated. Until that happens, you have the ability to farm four different crops, you can raise both cows and chickens, you can upgrade your house to have more features, upgrade your working tools, build relationships with the townspeople to a small extent, go to town festivals that happen each year, and you can get married to one of the five girls living in town with whom you can have up to two children. Everything that you would come to expect as a fan of games like this is already here from the very first iteration. The most notable lack this game has, and one that seems to be completely unique to this game, is that there aren’t any crops in the fall or winter, which means that unless you have animals, there’s a whole half of the year that you don’t have anything to do. The game is clearly aware of this though, because in an average playthrough, this is where you’ll start to run into the story events.

There isn’t much of an overarching story in the game, past the general concept that you’ve run away from home to work on an abandoned farm. The conclusion rests on how good of a job you actually do. In between those two points are smaller events, usually tied to when you get tool upgrades or special ones for each of the romantic interests. The first event you’re likely to run into happens on the very last day of summer, where one of the woodsmen comes to your house in the morning to ask if you’re okay because he heard a huge crash at night and you should check your farm. What I found was that a tree in my field had fallen over, and its remaining stump had a big empty hole in it. When I inspected the stump, I was suddenly underground in a cave filled with loud and industrious music, and I was faced with two, little green people–Harvest Sprites, though I don’t know if they’re called that yet here. One asked me if my scythe worked well, and when I said yes, told me that they had made it and that I should check my shed tomorrow for a better one. Other tool upgrades are obtained in similar fashion; one comes from feeding a starving sprite a mushroom and another comes from another hole in the farm opening up to reveal another part of the cave system that has a couple of hints on how to unlock other things. 

The events for romantic interests happen at less scripted times, as they’re tied to how strong your relationship is with each girl. Each girl only has one event, and it only triggers when your relationship is high enough that you would ask her to marry you. The events usually take up a whole day, and don’t necessarily add much to each character. Ellen’s revolves around how she’s no good at keeping pets– something established on your second day at the farm when you get your dog from her, Eve’s hammers in her fraught relationship with her grandpa, and Ann’s is about losing the chicken weathervane, or “weathercock” which sits on the roof of her workshop and goes missing every time there’s a storm. Conversely, Nina and Maria’s scenes bring up entirely new events that bring up a number of questions while providing no answers. Nina disappears while looking for a medicinal plant because her mother is apparently sick, and Maria vanishes for days until you find her hiding away with the woodsmen for some reason. All of these events, whether they share new information or not, manage to add some greatly appreciated depth to each character by giving them more room to speak and be sincere than their short and repetitive day-to-day dialogues do.

The dialogue in this game is simple, to the point, and sparse– probably because there was only so much memory that could be reserved for approximately 15 people who all have multiple lines of dialogue, and only so much money to pay someone to write more. There is simple dialogue that doesn’t tell you much more than “hello, how are you” would, more dialogue that I’d label as tutorial text, and a few lines that I truthfully couldn’t understand well because of the sub-par translation this game received for english. The dialogue that exists to inform the world really manages to create a unique vibe though. Nina’s dialogue, almost always about plants, goes into forays about how they’re creatures with wills to live, too. Ellen’s uncle who runs the ranch shop tells you that it’s much better to feed your animals fresh grass if you try to buy any from his store, and if you decline to purchase he laughs as if he’s won something. There’s even dialogue referencing the silent player! Multiple lines exist to comment on him not paying attention, and inspection prompts have people telling you not to touch something rather than being an item description. It was the last thing I expected, to get the same level of personality out of the main character as I did from each of the girls, albeit very subtly. He went from a kind of nothing, self-insert into being what I perceive to be a hyperactive boy, akin to a border collie who was let out into a field of sheep for the first time–the exact kind of person crazy enough to take on an abandoned farm and succeed.

It’s these short little character details that bring life into the game. Each day, you’ll really only see one line of dialogue from each character, be it new or old, with that dialogue usually only changing if there’s a change in season or festival coming up. The repetitive, pretty mindless routine of the game can turn into a sort of meditation if you let it, where you spend your time working thinking about the folks in town and what they had to say to you the previous day. The developers took this concept in stride and gave the side characters loads of dialogue about life, about God and religion, and about… very basic morals, but morals nonetheless. It’s a children’s game after all. When you take the thoughts, questions and prompts the characters give you back to the farm to do your long and tedious routine, you have to ask yourself– what are you working so hard for? For the feeling of accomplishment? Recognition from your peers? For the sake of some higher power, if you worship one? For me personally, it was to write this essay, but it was also for a good grade on the high score screen at the end, so to be honest a lot of this stuff was lost on me until just now when I was reviewing the game to get screenshots.

Setting The Standard - Why You Should Play HM SNES

You may read all of this and still think, well, it doesn’t sound like the game has much in it. And you would be right, it’s a very small game, but it’s also extremely quick. On average, my days only lasted about three minutes of real life time. Everything flew by, and I think I finished the game in 20 hours or less. I barely got a chance to notice that there wasn’t much going on because every second of my day was spent busy doing something, and when I wasn’t busy, the break was appreciated. I didn’t start to run out of things to do until I was finished with the second year, and when I looked up what I needed to do to get a decent ending, I was already most of the way there. It was easy to push through those last two seasons to get to the end, and it was so, so worth it. 

As I mentioned earlier, the game ends with a high score screen, meaning it has to track all of your accomplishments. These include, but are not limited to: the number of things you ship, number of each crop you grow, number of animals you have and how much they like you, how upgraded your house is, who you married, how much all of the girls in town like you if you didn't get married, how many kids you have (which basically equates to how long you were married), your happiness score (increased by going to festivals and decreased by having animals die), and how many times you’ve pet your dog. In addition to these being tallied up and presented to you, you get special cutscenes not just for each one of these accomplishments, but additional ones for if you managed to do even better! I got a cutscene for having a cow, followed by one for having lots of cows, followed by yet another for having cows that loved me! Watching them play one after the other felt like taking a victory lap even without getting the best possible result. Seeing all of my numbers come up at the end made me want to try again to actually get those other cutscenes, not to get to see them, they’re so easy to find on Youtube, but because the game made it feel like an accomplishment! If I weren’t following this game up by immediately playing its GameBoy port, I absolutely would have started a new file right away. I’ve been playing the Harvest Moon series since I was a little kid and this was the first time I’d actually managed to beat one of these games. I struggle to think the finale of any game following this will feel as good as this one did.

I started writing this whole thing about the fences because it was an easy and silly entry point to get into my core issue with the game, and so I could have an opportunity to dig into game mechanics and the way the knowledge you have of them will completely alter your playstyle, because that’s all fun and interesting for me to talk about. Another reason why I focused on that was because it was near impossible for me to pick any kind of focus point when talking about this game. After all, I’m trying to study a whole series of games that spans multiple decades, and this is not only the first game in that series, but a game that created the whole genre of farming sims and defined that genre so thoroughly that you can see its DNA in every single game that followed.

 I didn’t expect much to come out of my experience with this game. My expectations for it before I even picked it up were that it was going to be basically featureless, as informed by my experience with one of the first games I ever played as a child, Harvest Moon GB, which I will get into next. This game was not that at all. I think that everything it did manage to get working right came together just about perfectly. Harvest Moon is exactly what it wanted to be, and where it wasn’t, it lied about how it worked to try and make you play the correct way anyways. When I believed that lie, my time playing was even more enjoyable. Maybe if farming worked just a little bit more like how you’re told it’s supposed to, and if there was just a little bit more story, those would cover the things I felt wanting for the most. But maybe a little flexibility and ambiguity is a good thing. Maybe actually maintaining a fence is just too hard, and maybe if the girls were more fleshed out, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy filling in their gaps in my head.

There are many more things I could say and wanted to say about this game, but this has grown far too long already so I'm cutting myself off here. I'm sure my later entries aren't going to get near this length. If you managed to get to this point, thank you so much for reading!

[jakeperalta]

I feel that some of the recent (post-tbosas) hunger games takes are going a little too heavy on the whole "snow hates katniss because she reminds him of lucy gray" "he's beefing with a teenager over his ex from 60 years ago" thing. like obviously yes the fact she's singing lucy gray's songs, using the mockingjay symbol etc makes it all that much worse for him (and more satisfying for us knowing how his downfall is tied to those he wronged in his ascent to power). but also.. he very much primarily hates her and wants her dead because he is an evil tyrant and she represents a threat to the power and control that he cherishes above all else. it's personal on some levels but it feels pretty crucial to the story to acknowledge that he would treat her the exact same regardless of background context because he is the oppressor and she is the oppressed.

[kanonavi]

2024 XVX Fic Recs!

Hi everyone, I hope you're having a lovely and restful holiday season! Last year around this time, I posted 10* xvx recommendations, and since I haven't gotten tired of this lovely ship, or meticulously tracking all of the fics I read in a year, I'm back for year 2!

As with any rec list, please keep an eye on the ratings and tags of any given fic. My tastes might not be to your tastes, and that's okay, just make sure to take care of yourselves first and foremost. This especially applies now because there will be a couple of explicit fics that I shout out this year. Now, here's 10** fics that I read this year that I think other fans of xvx would enjoy!

*Plus a few extras ;)

**With the return of a few extras, since I like y'all so much ;))

~

Lighthouse, by HuaFeiHua (@hua-fei-hua) [Ongoing, Teen, 20.3k, 5/15 chapters]

When one of Xiao’s endless battles against the remnants of old gods leads to the slaughter of an innocent child, the guilty adeptus knows he must pay penance for his crimes. However, upon meeting with his Lord, ready and willing to be executed, Rex Lapis refuses to terminate their contract before its due time. Instead, he sends the yaksha to the Land of Dreams, where he is to spend a human lifetime hunting nightmares to atone. Xiao expects it to be lonesome work, but then: enter Venti, a bard from Mondstadt whose dreams of a castle with a lighthouse by the sea somehow draw Xiao back to him time and time again. And while Xiao means only to spend the century executing his duty, Venti somehow manages to make their time spent together into something almost like a sweet dream. Now if only Xiao would let him.

HuaFeiHua is our first returning author from last year’s list, but now that they’ve not only emerged from the Anonymous collection but also started posting their love letter to xiaoven, I couldn’t not include it here. If there’s any fic that knows how to do atmosphere, it’s this one. The liminal unreality of dreams is captured immaculately in this fic, and it makes the perfect setting for Venti and Xiao to dance around their emotions and each other like the avoidant disasters that they are. It manages to read exactly like the fairy tales that it was inspired by while also feeling right at home in the centuries that exist before Genshin canon, and for someone like me who loves canon setting fics, that’s more than I could have ever asked for.

Now, I was going to make a joke about nepotism but then Hua told me that the correct term is– *checks smudged writing on my palm* “cronyism”, so actually I give up.

~

Extra Rec: While Hua has many fantastic fics that you can now find easily in one place after their liberation from the Anonymous collection, I want to specifically shout out the absolute full course meal of a smut fic that they posted for their de-anoning debut. Do mind the Explicit Rating, though.

~

Catching Air, by Sub_Reality (Twitter: @/sub_reality__) [Ongoing, Teen, 164k, 13/21 chapters]

“Your assignment,” Ningguang said, “Is to assist the Ordo Favonius of Mondstadt in dismantling a newly-surfaced criminal organisation that goes by the name of the ‘Abyssi Familia’.” Exactly one week into their new positions, the 115th generation of the Liyue Qixing’s secret elite forces are given their first assignment; to take down a major criminal syndicate that is surfacing in their neighbouring nation of Mondstadt. Consisting of 5 of the most dangerous personnel across databases continent-wide, their assignment will conclude when all five of their targets are arrested, subdued, or dead. However, of the five is an enigmatic mercenary by the name of Arsenic - holding claim to the highest current kill count, and without a single failed hit. They are notorious for their weaponization of toxins, their mysterious escapes from assassinations, and for their distinguishing feature of not having a single shred of information or data regarding them. Something which, the Ordo Favonius emphasises, is highly concerning. With the arcane nature of Arsenic and the Abyssi Familia, one could say the Yakshas have quite the unpredictable mission ahead of them.

If you’ve ever wanted to be blown away by worldbuilding in a fic, this is one to read. With an incredible eye for detail, the author has reconstructed Teyvat in a far-off cyberpunk future that offers just as much fast-paced secret agent action as it does cultural details of the futuristic Mondstadt that the story inhabits. In terms of xiaoven, the burn is slow with this one, but Xiao and his fellow Yakshas (reimagined with their own mortal identities and personalities) have more than managed to carry the story so far. The mystery just hit a big reveal in recent chapters, so if there’s any time to start reading this one, it would be now!

~

the memory department, by twomooncorner (@earlgreyhui) [General Audiences, 3k, One-Shot, Archive-Locked]

The site of the memory debris takes a bus ride and a half to get to, past a billboard with flapping holes torn through, an abandoned gas station, and a sign for an old water park standing on only two rusted legs. The mountains reach halfway around, and the lakebed which might have started as a meteorite crater and then filled with water and then went back to being a crater again is shiny and hard. Venti hops off the bus and opens a can of soda with his teeth. Let’s get to work, he says.

I told myself I was only going to include one of the fics from Moonlight Melody, but I just couldn’t resist this one. I love the concept of the afterlife as a deeply dull bureaucracy, so seeing Venti and Xiao working as reapers at the very bottom of the ladder was incredibly interesting. But then that premise was executed with some absolutely stunning prose that stole my breath away. This fic has an alluring quality that draws you in until you’re lost in the moment it encompasses just as deeply as the characters are. I’d linger for thousands of words more if I could.

~

If Any Lesser, I, by twodimensionaltrash (Bluesky: @/novelelitist.bsky.social) [General Audiences, 3k, One-Shot]

'A mighty paw swipes at him. He twists his upper body to evade and stumbles back. The demon’s leg passes through the spear like it’s nothing. Like he’s nothing. He hates it. Claws and fists. Teeth and nails. They push and pull, hunter and prey, switching roles on instinct. Andrius puts Xiao on his back foot. Xiao chases Andrius to the edge of cliffs. The laughter of children echoes in Xiao’s head, accompanied by the songs of a bard. Beneath the lowest notes there’s the roar of flames, the flicker of a candle before life burns out, and in the center of it, him. In the midst of a nightmare, Xiao is pulled into Venti's dreams.

The first thing that drew me to this fic was the characterization, which was both intimate and irreverent in a way that felt super refreshing to my thoroughly xiaoven-enchanted brain. Then it follows up with a super interesting discussion of karmic debt and erosion that puts a spin on the game’s portrayals of the phenomena and yet feels right at home in the setting all the same. This was my favorite fic from the Moonlight Melody anthology, and I’m just glad it got crossposted so I can sing its praises in this list!

~

collateral damage, by connections [Teen, 1.8k, One-Shot]

Another bite. Almonds carry only the smallest hint of bitterness with them that reminds him all the same of who he is, and of what he has done, and of how much it hurts. Another bite. He’s pretty sure he deserves this. Violence is the only language he has ever known.

This fic is more a Xiao character study with a dash of xiaoven for flavor, but I still wanted to include it as an example of finely-aged xiaoven vintage. Xiao’s desperation to be loved by Venti but also by Morax is palpable, an ever-tragic contrast against the weight of his karmic debts and the blood on his hands. It was a pleasant surprise to see the gentleness that this author gave to Xiao, especially with all the edge that the game characterized him with at the time. That gentleness has been important to me ever since I fell down the xiaoven rabbit hole, so there’s something nice about seeing it in a fic posted before I would have even known his name.

~

now i see (holding you close), by esperra [Explicit, 5.8k, One-Shot]

“Did that feel good?” Venti asks gently. He cups Xiao’s cheek; Xiao leans into the touch almost on instinct. “I don’t… I’ve never done this before,” Xiao says. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” “Whatever feels good, my love. That’s all that matters.”

As I’ve noted a couple times in the past in tag games and the like, xiaoven is actually pretty different from my previous shipping pedigree, and nothing reminds me of that more than the fact that a lot of xiaoven smut just isn’t to my personal tastes. This fic, however, managed to break that streak! If you’re looking for something steamy, this fic probably won’t do it for you, but if you enjoy the way that the relationships between characters can be explored through sexual intimacy, this is definitely one to read. I just think it’s sweet when two characters who love each other have sex that’s very deeply Okay and only love each other more for it.

~

carry my fears as the heavens set fire, by yanrans (Twitter: @/yanrans) [Teen, 25.6k, One-Shot]

“Dear Yaksha, do you remember me?” The boy wraps his hands around Xiao’s; even through his gloves, he can feel heat, thick and heady, sink deep into his skin. The fire licks his bones, clawing secrets in the cracks in its surface. Xiao knows better than to let himself burn, knows that Liyue is worth more than his scorched ashes, but this is a dream. This is a dream, so there are no battles to fight, no duties to follow. The boy can strike a match on Xiao’s skin, and Xiao can watch as all his armor dissolves in smoke. The boy tugs, and Xiao comes unmoored. In which Xiao and Venti meet in a series of dreams. Sort of.

There’s something quintessentially xiaoven about this fic that I could taste only a few thousand words in. This fic has it all, from Xiao’s desire to do good battling with his fear of hurting everything he touches, to Venti’s gentle insistence on working his way into Xiao’s good graces with his indomitable charm, all with a splash of corruption angst for a bit of extra spice. If you’re looking for canonverse fics, this definitely deserves to go on your list.

~

to be unbroken and brave again, by magicites (Bluesky: @/ellsyx.bsky.social) [Complete, Teen, 36.4k, 3/3 chapters]

“What could I possibly have to forgive you for?” Venti asks. What could Xiao say? There are so many answers. For trying to grant him freedom and only giving him the same power that’s doomed to tear him apart. For hearing that Morax died so long after he did. For starving for his touch so selfishly. For letting him be lonely. There’s so much; they tangle in his throat. “For making you wait,” he settles on. “Ehe, I'll forgive you, but only if you play a duet with me tomorrow." He has work to do, but— “Yes.” - How the duty-chained Anemo Archon and the Trickster Yaksha found freedom.

When it comes to a prompt as classic as a roleswap, it’s the details that really make a story, and this fic absolutely has it made. As the second returning author from last year, I’ve made it clear that I adore magicites’ work, but the way that she broke down Xiao and Venti’s characters and reconstructed them as a plausible Anemo Archon and Yaksha blew my mind as I was reading this fic. It’s the friction that arises from their roles that makes xiaoven a compelling ship: Venti as the Anemo Archon went out of his way to free not only his people but also himself from the chains of rulership that constrained them before, while Xiao as a Yaksha is bound to Liyue by his contract despite the freedom that he craves. For those roles to then be switched while having the conflicts that bind the characters remain is a truly impressive feat that makes this story totally worth the read.

~

A Surefire Guide to Wingmanning, by corviidae (@corviidaees) [Complete, Teen, 19.1k, 2/2 chapters]

Illuminated by the glow of gold-scorched parchment, the harsh lines of Xiao’s face smoothen into confusion, then resignation. He takes a steadying breath. “You aren’t leaving.” “I’m bound to you until I find you love,” Venti corrects. “Yeah, so you aren’t leaving.” “Wrong! I have a hot streak of success.” Venti claps his hands, the contract scrolling back up into non-existence. “Now that you understand, shall we start over? My name’s Venti, and I’m your assigned Cupid. Your wingman, if you will.” “... Xiao.” Or: Xiao is, maybe, a little in love with his Cupid. Venti does not catch on.

I first read this fic back in 2021 and had one particular line from it permanently branded into my memory (that you’re gonna have to read it to hear!), so I was delighted to find that it still holds up beautifully. This fic lives up to its “Sitcom” tag, because it managed to pull smiles and laughs out of me left and right as Venti tries (emphasis on tries) to find Xiao the perfect partner. It’s an incredibly sweet, comfy read, and I think that’s what we all need in our lives sometimes.

~

if these wings could fly, by MaximillianDelirium (@delirious-dove) [Complete, Teen, 145.7k, 35/35 chapters]

To Xiao, Barbatos was the embodiment of everything he was not: happy, free, fully confident in who he was. His music made the shadows in Xiao’s head retreat. They were all about living life to the fullest, having hope when the world was turned against you, and having fun (something that was almost entirely foreign to Xiao). And now he was going to have to give away all his albums, delete Barbatos’ songs off his phone, and never listen to his music again. Just looking at the albums lined up on the shelf made Xiao cringe. He’d thought that if he ever did get a chance to meet his idol, it would be in a controlled space. He would have said something normal, like, Your music means a lot to me. Then he would’ve shaken Barbatos’ hand, gotten an autograph, and lived out the rest of his life in peace. Xiao’s idol had watched him punch a guy in the stomach. Since Zhongli's early retirement, Xiao's life has been aimless. But a chance encounter sets him on a new and uncharted path.

It only took another year, but in the end I managed to complete the trifecta of xiaoven idol aus. This is one of those fics where you can blink and suddenly five chapters have gone by, because it’s just that engrossing. It has all of the drama and intrigue that one would expect from a celebrity au while still maintaining the typical, down-to-earth chemistry that draws Xiao and Venti together. You know a story is good when it has me pulling out the popcorn for miscommunication plotlines instead of closing the tab, and it’s not only xiaoven, but the entirety of the well-loved ensemble cast that come together to make this the enthralling story that it is.

~

Extra Recs: Not only does this fic have a beautiful epilogue where xiaoven get the happily ever after that they deserve, but there’s also an entire series that features several of the side pairings from this fic’s universe, which are also worth checking out!

~

That's a wrap on another year! If you got this far, thank you so much, and I hope I've given you some new fics for your to-read list! This year, I feel like I did a lot more reading back compared to the year before. Some of these fics I only read because they were recommended to me by fellow fans, which I appreciate so much, but it could also mean that there are fewer hidden gems this year than the last, so I hope you can forgive me.

I'm looking forward to what next year will bring, and hopefully I'll be back with even more fics to share! Happy holidays to all, and much love <3

[black-and-yellow]

Working on something

[ganondoodle]

also i watched arlos review of paper mario the origami king earlier and i .. didnt even know they put people under such strict restirictions in what they can do with it, with the whole that some higher ups (idk who exactly anymore) not only restricitng what they were allowed to do creatively but also the story and how they found it to be rather unimportant or, and that stood out to me, how they didnt want to go back to how the games used to be (i think .... its been a bit sincei watched it but he said sth very similar at least), which just sounded alot like that commentary about totk that (i think aonuma) said he didnt understand why people want the old zelda style still and dismissing it as purely nostalgia, and i couldnt help but wonder ... did that happen to totk? like the video is about paper mario but like, alot of stuff arlo mentioned there just kinda .. sounded like alot in totk to me? the way its messy but also there IS good ideas there, it just reeks of a troubled production with someone either constantly messing with it or wanting to push one idea through no matter how much it hurt the game ....

(heres the video if you want to give it a watch too)

[exploding-boxes]

I fucking love Muse.

And as you may know, when I love something, I don’t shut up about it (Alice I know you know)

So here is my list of favourite songs by Muse, from all the albums, my rankings of them and how they weakened my mental health even more (btw I love Muse so much I almost have all their albums on CD because I’m a whore for cd and many other things)

Showbiz (1999) - Muscle Museum. I bought this album for 3€ at a random shop that did sales on CD by just telling myself “It’s a Muse album, I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.” then went back home, put it in the CD player, laid on my floor and cried. That album is so fucking good especially for a debut album. I think it shows how good Muse is because I never hate a song. There are some I dislike but not in this album. Muscle Museum is called like that because in the English dictionary, the words before & after Muse are Muscle and Museum. That’s the smartest yet dumbest way to title your song. The bass gives me a hard on, the lyrics are nice, the “and I don’t want you to adore me, don’t want you to ignore me when it pleases you” is so fucking good and tho it’s a song about love and I can’t relate I love it. At the end, when Matthew’s voice becomes a fucking guitar, that’s so cool and HOLY SHIT THAT MAN CAN SING HIGHER NOTES THAN ALL OF US

10/10 album, no skips

Origin Of Symmetry (2001) - New Born, again, I buy this CD thinking I won’t be disappointed and end up thinking about the meaning of life. I love everything and as always, the notes he hits are just yummy. The bass, the guitar, everything is amazing, like in this whole album, except Darkshines, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE all the songs.

9/10 album, only a few skips

Absolution (2003) - Butterflies & Hurricanes. All the gifted kids burn out will relate heavily to this song. At least I do. The piano and violin is amazing, it shows how good of a classical pianist Matt is. The part where he says “Change everything you are and everything you were” and “Best, you’ve got to be the best, you’ve got to change the world” is too relatable and I know that technically it isn’t about gifted kids burning out but a whole album about the world ending but sorry if this fits. This is also my childhood album since my parents had it and always played it in the car

11/10, no skip, tells a story about the end of the world, every song is beautiful and brings back childhood

Black Holes And Revelations (2006) - Starlight, I’m sorry, maybe I don’t get like any of the hidden messages but that song definitely at least talks a bit about suicide. The line “Let’s conspire to ignite all the souls that would die just to feel alive” is so fucking good. It’s not the most popular of the album (the most popular is Supermassive Black Holes and that song is fucking freaky) but definitely has a special place in my heart.

9/10, the most popular one for a reason, no skip but just a tiny bit less memorable for me though it’s an amazing album

The Resistance (2009) - Resistance. Do I need to say more ? That song is SO. FUCKING. GOOD. It’s like forbidden love, there’s a reference to 1984 (“Will they find out hiding place ?”) and just love being interpreted as resistance can be interpreted in so many homosexual ways. It’s genuinely a really emotional and fucking amazing song. The “It could be wrong but it could’ve been right” just resumes a lot of things in life and I genuinely think this is how you can make shut up all those guys that kissed their homies to see if they were gay and when they didn’t like it they became homophobic (if you get the vision you’ll understand). This is once again a childhood album.

9/10, really really good, just too short for me tho I love the 1984 reference. Why the fuck is there 3 classic songs and one where Matt sings in French, it’s another question.

The 2nd Law (2012) - Animals. That song single-handedly restarted my Muse addiction. This band literally left my brain and came back in 2022 when I heard that song in a TikTok. The voice was familiar from my childhood, I understood it was Muse and desperately looked for that song. The lyrics are nice and reminds me of “Je suis un Homme” by Zazie (my frenchies will get it). Basically just mankind being an asshole and trying to overtake the nature. The line “Kill yourself and do us all a favour” is so relatable (that’s a joke) it’s the one I heard on the TikTok and made me look for Muse again. That song is so chaotic, especially at the end but it’s so fucking cool

8/10, I need to re-listen to it because I was tired the first time. Really cool tho

Drones (2015) - Psycho. I need to listen to that album again. I didn’t like it that much but it’s still really good. The intro is so good and the lyrics “Love, it will get you nowhere, you’re on your own” is nice because I’m tired of love songs. It’s like a genuinely slightly depressing song if you look at the lyrics to but yeah it’s nice

7/10. Didn’t particularly liked that one

Will Of The People (2022) - Kill Or Be Killed. That song is REALLY FUCKING COOL. When looking for Animals, I did have the name and accidentally found this song, realised they made a new album and listen to it. Though the lyrics might be a bit stereotypical, they’re still nice, the “Fate has brought us here to face our hopes and dreams erased” are nice, the whole thing with fate is cool. I like it, it’s a change of direction since the first album but it’s not unwelcome for me. The guitar solo is really nice too

8/10. nice.

[zymstarz]

anyone got any good video essays to listen to while i try and deep clean my whole house lol

[tabellae-rex-in-sui]

20th century historians be employing 21st century blorbo-eyed tumblr tactics to defend the actions of a man from the 18th century

[kyoshialone]

tyyy beloved @ash-and-starlight for the tag here r some books im excited to read next year !!!

tagging (v optionally) @wakingstone @jumping-jackalope @legofbicuriosity @lesbianboyfriend 👉🏻👈🏻👀

[rotisseries]

rori rotisseries reviews from respected critics

[dumbassalex]

Ok, as someone who sorta defended The Crow 2024 reboot, and now that i've seen it, i have thoughts about it and i wanna share them... (More under the cut, spoilers ahead)

So firstly i liked the action, it was clear and you could see what's going on and the gore in those scenes was good, so no real issues with the action scenes. I really dug the soundtrack, the songs they chose to play were good and something i'd listen to.

I also like that Shelly had more screentime and got to be more of a character, that was fun and FKA twigs played her well in my opinion. Bill Skarsgard gave a good performance, as basicly always, with his Eric too.

Now my biggest issues is with the story itself, and especialy the pacing, it was SO slow, we spent like half the movie on Eric and Shelly while watching the villians look for Shelly, while also barely any real time has passed for Eric and Shelly, or at least it didn't feel like much of a time has at all passed between Eric and Shelly running away and being murdered.

And even once the couple gets killed by the villians, it takes us like another third of the movie for Eric to really become the Crow, for most of the movie he's just Eric with healing powers, and only becomes The Crow right before the opera scene, whitch is way too long for something based on a comic that's mostly just Eric being The Crow and hunting Shellys killers.

Another thing i dislike is the villians and their story, the original idea for the villians was just a group of street criminals coming across Eric and Shelly on a random day in the rain as their car broke down and deciding on a whim to do what they did, that was the tragedy, that it was random, senseless and didn't have to happen if a single thing happened differently. And changing it to a group of rich people hunting Shelly specificaly due to an incriminating video is such an odd change, along with the change to give the main villian superpowers.

Another thing that i feel like is a big difference between the comic and the movie is that the movie is very literal and very open about Eric coming from the death, healing super fast and there being supernatural entities and superpowers, while in the comics it was all more lowkey with Eric not feeling pain and healing slower than what the movies show, with his walking around wounded and scarred, the crow talking being in his head, same for the skeleton cowboy and the vision of the white horse that was a metaphor for the conflict of the story, it was a random senseless act that Eric had no control over yet he couldn't leave it be and blames himself for what happened.

In the movie it's a literal thing that happened to child Eric and doesn't set up his character arc and personal conflict of not blaming himself and moving on. Whitch was WHY he came back for revenge, because he was angry, blamed himself and couldn't move on, something he was only able to do at the end when he died at Shellys grave.

Whitch brings another change i disliked, the ending, the original ending of the comics is about Eric finaly being at peace and being able to move on and die, joining Shelly in the afterlife. But in the movie the reason he keeps going on is from pure love (somehow he felt such love after such short time) that can waver and make him loose his powers until making a deal for Shelly soul and becoming The Crow, bringing Shelly back to life while Eric stays dead. That just kinda misses the point, there wasn't no coming back and living again, it was about Eric having to come to peace and move on, it was a bittersweet ending but it was fitting the story and the themes, but just like the white horse methaphor, the movie ignores that.

So all in all, as a movie it's alright, but as a Crow adaptation it's overall kinda awfull in most ways. If you enjoyed the movie, good for you, but i personaly didn't really like it as a Crow adaptation and think it could've been much better. One thing i will give the movie for sure tho, is that it skipped Shellys assault, something i think wasn't entirely neccecary to motivate Eric to do what he did.