#watching an lp because i am not paying for this game

[mutalieju]

local fearmonger having a floor moment after being beaten up by batman, still gotta go to work tomorrow :(

[inflame]

hi! first off i love your blog. as a certified lp expert, i was hoping you could help me understand a few things. i'm reading the secret diary of laura palmer (beautifully written but so so heartbreaking) and i guess i'm having trouble understanding the division between bob and leland. was leland always bob from the start of the abuse? how much was leland vs bob? how did laura know bob's name, as written in her diary? when does the veil between them lift? i haven't watched the show in a while so i don't remember how clear it makes these things. thank you so much! i'm really enjoying (or... something like that) this read and i might be back to hear your thoughts when i'm done!

firstly, thank you for saying nice things about my blog! secondly, i am happy to answer your questions, but with a major disclaimer: that i can only tell you how i read things, and that i basically… do not pay attention to anything that ma/rk fr/ost was in charge of [i.e. most of s2]. i do not think he understood the show’s ethos and i think there’s an excellent reason that the return literally introduced time travel to retcon it entirely. to put that as kindly as i can.

(also, like, this is an rp blog, and i’ve been writing laura for years, so inevitably there are going to be ideas that i’ve gotten in my head that i fully think are ‘canon’ that i’ve just forgotten i made up. obviously, i’ll try to keep that to a minimum, but it could happen. i’ve read the book several times, i’ve seen the movie… well, i seem to see it at least a few times a month, but i’m not much of a “here’s the receipts” kind of guy. alas.)

so, anyway: bob. like all the lodge spirits / entities / whatever you want to call them, he does exist. and — like all the lodge spirits, again, if i were guessing — he’s been a presence in laura’s life since she was a little kid (pre-diary). she writes about that a bit at some point. he’s this guy she knows, probably from around the great northern, who befriends her and plays games with her and grooms her, basically. she refers to him as a friend of her father’s. so that’s how she knows his name and his face. if that description reminds you of another guy, well! i think it should! but we’ll get to that eventually.

now, the other aspect of the spirits is that yes, they can inhabit people — and yes, we know that leland has been bob’s host for most of his life. i DON’T know the specifics of how that works, physically: obviously, we’ve seen bob where we know leland isn’t, but it’s usually in the black lodge / the Other Place in general. but we also know that laura has access to those places well before she is confined to them, so. you can run yourself ragged in circles on that one. but the way i see it, it kind of just doesn’t matter. one of the main threads of the show is that humans create their own problems (like, the reason the gang ended up on earth to begin with was because they were part of the nuclear fallout from the trinity test / the manhattan project: in this specific sense, albert is spot-on when he says “maybe that’s all bob is: the evil that men do”). the spirits clearly do have influence of a sort, but when it comes to actually manipulating human behavior, their track record is shit (consider that the giant, presumably the de facto leader,  spends almost literally ALL his screen time desperately trying to get coop to make better decisions — at some points honest-to-god waving his hands in the air and yelling “no!” — to absolutely no avail). 

another thing about the lodge crew is that they all seem more or less morally neutral: they are not ‘good’ or ‘evil’. they have their own agendas and personalities — they maintain, as a group, a sort of cosmic balance —  but mostly, they’re just trying to vibe. and bob is kind of like a chaos spirit. he wants everybody to give into their worst impulses just so he can see what happens (and, yes, literally feed on those emotional repercussions). he sucks. but if his host had been a completely different person, his influence would have also looked much different (this is something else that tp:tr expands on: still a violent piece of shit, but a far cry from devoting his life to tormenting little girls). so to answer, i suppose, the ultimate™ question here: it’s always leland. it is never not leland. if leland were the kind of man who would actually be repulsed by these actions, he wouldn’t be doing them. bob might be enabling him, but he is not controlling him. the film confirms this quite eloquently, i think. lynch is careful to only ever show bob when it’s decidedly Laura’s Point of View / Laura’s Perception, because what he is, essentially, is her boogeyman. he was this weird and unpleasant presence in her life at a formative time, and he then became — when she could not process what was truly happening to her and dissociated from it — THE weird and unpleasant presence in her life. and if you ask me, there are several points throughout the diary where she does seem to realize the truth about her father, only to re-repress it (this also happens in the film itself: the first time we see her confronted with his identity, she freaks out, but then she pushes it down, not having a safe way to do anything else). the ‘veil’ between bob and leland is really just laura’s ability to comprehend that there IS no true veil between bob and leland. 

i also suspect that laura’s dissociation / psychosis likely does not only ‘absolve’ her dad, but also ben, whose intentions she seems completely in the dark about until very late in the book, which… does not make much sense, if you’re reading her mental state any other way, since even audrey — hindsight being what it is — tells cooper that he’d probably been abusing laura for a long time. so for me (i.e. what i’m doing on this, my rp blog, at least), ben and leland fall together under a sort of Bob Umbrella. they’re always enabling each other and competing with each other and they’re both just fucking horrible people. they’re supposed to be her family. they’re supposed to look out for her. and she just cannot make it make sense that they wouldn’t — her whole world has been constructed around it! so generally, when laura is looking at them and seeing this kind of fairytale villain from her childhood, it isn’t that they aren’t present: it’s that she isn’t.

the same goes for when she’s writing ‘as’ bob in her diary: like, yes, it’s very real to HER, but he is not literally, factually, an omnipotent being who can read and control her mind. i think that people tend to fall into a trap here where they feel like believing laura means taking for granted that she’s a reliable narrator, and she just isn’t. there’s no scenario in which she would be. she’s telling you the truth as she understands it, but the truth is that there’s so much she doesn’t understand. that she can't. she’s just a kid. she thinks she has so much agency that she doesn’t actually have, and — since once, she actually WAS a very ‘normal’, well-adjusted child — she trusts people. she trusts the adults in her life to look out for her, even when they’re literally trafficking her (one of the most haunting bits in the book, imo, is when she’s basically like, “yeah, leo has his issues, but he likes me! i’m pretty sure he’d have my back if anything bad ever happened!”… and then he’s, you know, the one person who could have potentially saved her life that night, but instead he just tied her up and left her there).

so... yeah. i hope this helps! there's perpetually more to dig into with peaks, depending on what your interests and opinions are, but i tried to keep to what you were asking and, obviously, my focus here is laura and what makes the most sense for her narrative, specifically.

[bellshazes]

my first two jobs ever, in order, were "board game teacher" and "university library assistant," so tho I've never formally studied games (I have been dropping out of college on and off since 2015, and was a freshman in 2012 lmao) I've been casually exposed to games and the people who make and play them in a professional context, as well as having the research skills to help close the gaps. i actually kind of hate playing board games but i loved GM-ing the coop arkham horror and watching my players, which i did for seven years straight.

my current fixation is the result of several years' fucking around on YT watching all kinds of game content, from LPs to specific game dissection to video essayists. jacob geller and folding ideas are kind of gold standards, but this week I've been really enjoying errant signals in particular. Sometimes I'm introduced to concepts this way - ludonarrative dissonance, ergodic literature, the magic circle, etc. that, and getting recommendations from friends or accidentally stumbling into game studies via other research (such as the paper i wrote a few years ago on theater-as-games in prison contexts). most of it though is having thoughts and opinions on things and letting it percolate until i am dangerous enough to find someone who's already explained a concept better than I could, and then running with that. find something that cites its sources, and then chase the ones that seem interesting.

my syllabus post is very much not a reclist, though i do in varying ways recommend everything on that list and it might be of use. here's some stuff I think would be great starting points:

Rules of Play - Game Design Fundamentals, Salen and Zimmerman. This book is an excellent resource, as it introduces a wide variety of scholars who you can dive into as it is relevant to your interests as well as providing tons of useful frameworks and vocabulary to go hunting. It's an easy read with concise bullet-point summaries after each chapter, and the PDF is hyperlinked for easy navigation. I might have found this via Wikipedia, honestly.

A Play of Bodies: A Phenomenology of Video Game Experience, Keogh. What I'm currently liveblogging - it is firmly a literary/philosophical work, rather than by/for designers, and correspondingly it's a little more difficult without at least passing familiarity with cyborg theory or any brand or offshoot of post-modernism, but still fairly digestible and a great read so far.

My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, Nardi. Found this during my theater-and-games paper, and MMO anthropology is not really my thing, but it's a nice complement to the other books as an explicitly player-theorist perspective. Also provides a more approachable introduction to a variety of theorists and sources. (Open access on JSTOR!)

Draw Your Weapons, Sarah Sentilles. I'm biased because I discovered this book by accidentally attending an author event at my local museum, and the games portion is incidental, but if you can find it I think this analysis of the relationship between depictions of violence and violence itself is worth your time. Memorable re: games for its discussion of Press F To Pay Respects.

here are some videos which I offer as examples of channels you might enjoy diving into, looking for additional jumping-off points:

Playing as Anyone in Watch Dogs Legion, Errant Signal. I really appreciate Errant Signal's thoughtful, personal approach to analysis and especially his highlighting of buried gems in his Blips series as well as his non-self-deprecating reevaluation of some of his older analyses over his decade plus career making videos.

Controllers Control Everything, Game Makers Toolkit. Discovered via the Boss Keys series highlighting the souls games, and although I think his channel is (increasingly) geared toward devs, these are well-constructed, thoughtful videos about many aspects of game design. Even when I don't personally get what makes him enjoy Zelda dungeons in that specific way (I'm an outlier), I appreciate his analysis.

Mega Microvideos 2, Matthewmatosis. Perhaps better known for his extremely long-form essays, I love Matthewmatosis' series of microessays framed like Wario Ware minigames. They are brief but don't pull punches, and the format is uniquely delightful. (See also this microessay mixtape.)

Making Sense of Catherine Full Body, SuperButterBuns. She doesn't do much essay content, I guess, but I she loves Catherine and the Persona series, and this dissection of Catherine Full Body is an absolute treat.

Jon Bois. Okay, mostly not about games, but like - come on. 17776 and Breaking Madden, alongside everything else he's ever done, fit because I feel like they do. If nothing else, I think Pretty Good and his general use of Google Earth as a medium for storytelling have a lot of utility in talking about digital media. He's good for the soul.

The Future of Writing About Games, Jacob Geller. One of the gold standards for a reason - and especially if you're looking for further solid recommendations for other writing/creating about games. This video in particular discusses & links to some really great pieces, but his Big List of Other People's Video Essays is also a great way to spend the next month of your life. (You might notice some crossover between this list and his, only some of which is coincidental.)

if i have any conclusion, it's that my current fixation on digital literalism is me finally finding an outlet/academic match-up with a fascination i developed in 2015 when studying gonzo lit. i think the utility of academia and the long history of scholarship on a given topic, as a non-academic, is to help you express ideas or reinterpret beliefs or experiences you've had to others without having to reinvent the wheel. i always become most energized when i stop worrying about knowing all the bg and chase whatever is useful and affirming or enlightening to me. and you can get pretty far if you think about why you like what you do, and just - enthusiastically also consume non-academic stuff. maybe this is a note more for myself! but thank you for the opportunity to monologue.

[roboraindrop]

A fun game, by MemeHaven on DeviantArt, retooled a bit to be for my f/os!

This was sooooo much fun omg. Why am I not using these more??

1. Dick Gumshoe

2. Daisuke Jigen

3. Dan Fielding

4 . Oswald Harvey

5. Chucky Ray

6. Virgil DeLuca

7 . Launchpad McQuack

8. Toshinori Yagi

9. Reinhardt Wilhelm

10. Warp Darkmatter

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

1) It’s 2's birthday. Which characters would go to the party, and what would they give 2?

- Dick, Dan, Oswald, and Warp would definitely be there! Dick and Oswald are coming for the cake, Dan is coming because he wants to sleep with the guests, Warp is there because Jigen is his lounging buddy. Chucky isn't coming, specifically because he is genuinely afraid of Jigen jdjssnsjsh Everyone gets him ammo for his magnum.... Except Oswald. He gifts him a ridiculous tie that will literally never be worn.

2) 7 is being mugged at knifepoint. What happens?

- Launchpad has absolutely no idea that he's being mugged! He is oblivious entirely and the one mugging him (probably Chucky) is getting increasingly frustrated because he isn't getting it jdnskslb

3) Why was 1 arrested? What are their charges, and how long is their sentence?

- Dick is being held in contempt of court and it probably has something to do with me blowing kisses at him across the courtroom and him dropping literally whatever he is doing to catch them, including interrupting a trial fkshsksh

4) If 4 and 5 suddenly became a couple, how would the others react? Try to justify the relationship somehow.

- Oh my GOD the absolute chaos that would come out of this. Chucky is absolutely using him as an innocent face to hide behind. Oswald starts carrying around a Good Guy doll and when everyone questions him about it-- "Hey, you watch your mouth! He's my friend to the end!" I feel like Oswald talks Chucky into a circle and that's how he ends up thinking that he's dating the doll fksbsksh

5) Does 3 have any phobias? What is their reaction to being exposed to said phobia?

- Dan has a fear of elevators and small spaces- He tends to panic when he's trapped in them. There are several episodes about this, actually!! He becomes anxious and feels like he can't breathe. He bonds with Dick this way, since Dick is well versed in handling panic attacks related to elevators! Dan falls a little bit in love with him that day.

6) 10 is approached by a stranger and offered a job. What is it, and do they accept?

- This is literally how Warp gets work 😂 He works for the evil emperor, of course he accepts whatever job someone throws at him, as long as it pays enough to be worth his time!

7) If 6 had to kill one of the other characters, who would it be and why?

- Okay let me level with you. Under the right circumstances, Virgil would kill any of them. And here's why; He is VERY easily manipulated. His whole story is being manipulated by his brother to commit crime. If, say, a certain very manipulative knife-wielding doll got ahold of him... There wouldn't be anybody safe. Luckily, I keep them separated by like 3 rooms at all times djdbskhsj

8) 8 and 9 have to team up to put a stop to 6 before they can kill anyone. Are they successful?

-Oh, thank God, Reinhardt and Toshi are the two men I would trust THE MOST to calm Virgil without hurting him dksnsk Toshi can talk him down, and once they get him contained and the weapon/Chucky out of his hands and see what's really going on, they would protect the HELL out of him.

9) 4 has been kidnapped. Why? Does anyone care? Describe the place they’re being kept. Do they escape? Does anyone help?

10) 2 and 9 have a huge argument about something rather mundane. How do they resolve it? Does someone have to step in? Give us some dialogue!

- Dick, Launchpad and Toshi are working their hardest to find Oswald! LP specifically, LOVES Oswald. He fights harder than anything. Turns out when they find him, he's just been sitting in his closet for two days under a pile of clothes that blocked and jammed the door. The cryptic texts he'd been sending saying "HELP" were him, but nobody quite understands how "locked in" autocorrected to "kidnapped".

- Oh, the two old men are having a loud argument over whether western or fantasy is the better genre. This escalates to the point where Toshi has to step in, because All Might is just big enough to hold back Rein from swinging a hammer when Jigen calls his dragon stories "horsegirl with extra steps".

11) 7 finds out that they’re adopted. What are their thoughts? Do they ever get to see their biological parents?

- Honestly, I don't think LP would care much about being adopted. He would probably love the chance to get to meet his biological parents and become close as an adult! But he wouldn't discredit the ones who raised him.

12) 3 finds out that a close friend/family member has killed someone. What do they do? Do they help hide the body? Do they rat them out to the cops?

- Dan is conflicted, especially if that person is someone he cares about that deeply- He doesn't have a whole lot of people like that in his life. At the end of the day, though, he is a man of the law and follows that law where he knows he has to. He would absolutely turn the person in!

13) 6 and 10 have to spend the day together, regardless of whether they want to or not. Where do they go? What do they do?

- Virgil would attach to Warp, because villainy reminds him of his brother. Warp, while absolutely despising how clingy Virgil gets, would actually kinda like having him around as an extra set of hands. Virgil is used to breaking the law and keeping his mouth shut, so he might even get to go to work with Warp! I guarantee you I have warned him a million times that if Virgil gets hurt, he'll lose smooch privileges for a week fksbsksn

14) 7 has been in a car wreck! Describe the scene. Are they hurt? Is anyone else? Who hit whom?

- Nobody is hurt, this is just a normal Tuesday for LP! He is the one at fault, but that's fine- His insurance is used to it :b

15) Is 1 out of jail yet?

- Yes, he is! They can't keep my husband down!

16) If 1 isn’t free yet, 8 decides it’s time to do something about it. How do they get 1 out? Jailbreak? Or something less illegal? If 1 already got out, how did they do it?

- He promised the judge- And Mr. Edgeworth that he would never do it again! (he absolutely will)

17) What does 1 do with their new freedom?

- Oh, Dick? He and I are going on a date as we speak. See ya! :b

18) 2 suddenly inherits a large sum of money. From whom? What do they do with the money?

- He probably got the money from someone whose life he saved selflessly. Someone who had nobody else, and remembered the kindness that was done for them so long ago. Jigen absolutely uses the money for more firearms, ammo, and puts some towards hideouts and lodging for the gang!

19) 5 is jealous of 2’s money. What do they do about it?

-He sits there and stews in it; He's terrified of Jigen! In fact, maybe terrified enough to get his vengeance via somebody else... Maybe Jigen is who Chucky manipulated Virgil into trying to kill? It's all connected!

20) 7 and 3 get in a fight, and 3 punches 7 square in the face! What happens next?

- As much as LP is a good guy, he doesn't like the way that Dan talks to people. This would inevitably cause a fight, but LP is also a big guy... And Dan would instantly regret that punch, even if LP had no reaction to it! He'd immediately shrink back and start apologizing like the Weasley man he is 💕

21) 10 is feeling sad. Who do they go to for comfort?

- Oswald! He can't explain it, but there's just something so soothing about his voice... (They're both played by Diedrich Bader :'D) But in all honesty, I'm the only one Warp feels safe enough with to open up to.

22) 9 goes on vacation. Where do they go?

- Reinhardt takes a vacation back home, to Germany! He misses it a lot when he travels.

23) While 9 is on vacation, something goes horribly wrong. Describe.

24) 7 has had a tough time in this meme so far. How about treating them with their favorite snack? What is it, and how do they react to being surprised with it? Who surprises them with it?

- While visiting Baldwrich at Eichenwalde, something invades the castle- The enemy team!

Just kidding lol. It's probably just a scavenger, but it's enough to spook him really good.

- His favorite snack is bread! Oswald is definitely the one to surprise him with it, and I think he probably cries a little lol

25) 8 has found a strange, unmarked brown box outside their house. What do they do? What is in the box, and why?

- Toshi goes full hero, cautious to open the box... When he finally does, though... It's me! I mailed myself to him because I missed him :b

The end!

[endearmint]

wow i haven't talked about my playing video games at all lately. so, i guess i'll just get everyone up to speed?

i beat in stars and time over a week ago. had extra time (ha.) to play it when i caught a cold and chose to self-quarantine so i couldn't spread it at work (my work station is in the patient-facing reception area). very good game! -- but take care to heed the content warnings before you look further. i already feel like replaying it since the turn-based battles were really satisfying, and there's still some achievements i didn't get

also been playing sable. the best way i can sum it up is, breath of the wild but there's no looming threat except what are you gonna be when you grow up. and it's on another planet and you can customize your horse still hoverbike. it's a pretty chill exploration game, but you gotta be patient for the climbing segments.

also trying to play boyhood's end. it's got ample checkpoints a la witch's house but i'm stumped on this stealth section in a garden... is the squirrel a hint or not? how am i supposed to get past the RED guards who look over their shoulder every two steps???

aaaand i'm also playing minute of islands, but on switch. eshop had a sale when steam didn't. stuck on one puzzle because i can't evade a sequential puzzle piece, and it keeps pitching me back to the start

i passed my 2.5-year anniversary of playing sky: children of the light. i got up to 230 winged light last week, with only a couple red shard eruptions helping out! i'll have to submit bug reports soon, i can't record any more videos on my switch...

i'm also watching LPs of yakuza: like a dragon, nobody wants to die, and life is strange: double exposure.

the yakuza LP is actually an archived twitch stream (thank you chris manok adobo) and while i do enjoy the streamer's chatter during mini game segments, i feel like skipping through them so i can be done with the game faster. i'm on the 16th video in their playlist and i can't remember the last time the main quest was on screen.

nobody wants to die is a futuristic noir-style murder mystery game where everyone has a new, literal lease on life. death isn't necessarily the end, but you have to pay up to actually be alive.

life is strange. they seem to have gotten hella better at writing dialog, but someone among the writers is pulling a butterfly soup. (butterfly soup is an indie visual novel that took most all of its jokes from tumblr posts. and the first scene of lis: double exposure has a joke along the lines of "don't ever talk to me or my sons again", which is a meme so old it's even on wikipedia??.) and it's still got glitches like the absence of character models preventing the character's dialog from being present either, and said glitch may need to be circumvented by adjusting a specific graphic setting.

[kageyama-ritsu]

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Screenshot Let’s Play and Transcription

Since June of last year, I’ve been doing a mostly-on-sometimes-off playthrough, transcription, and Let’s Play of the Steam and GOG port of Higurashi When they Cry/Higurashi no Naku Koro ni on Something Awful. Someone else actually already made a forum-based, screenshot Let’s Play of this game years ago (and finished it!), but half of the images in the first arc are broken and it’s a little hard to parse.

So I thought, why not kill three birds with one stone? I can create a proper transcription of Higurashi that will be saved on its own dedicated server (the LPs in Something Awful are archived both on SA and lparchive.org, the latter once it is completed). I can also reread this sound novel that I am incredibly fond of.

Most importantly, I hope that this LP gets more people to read Higurashi. For people who either don’t want to pay 50 dollars on Steam/GOG for all of the arcs or sit down and commit 60 hours to watch video footage of a game released in 2002, this format lets you read it at your own pace in just a couple of days.

This is how the LP is presented. People who are familiar with and/or fans of Higurashi will notice a few things about this— and my choices are explained in the masterpost (which you can see as soon as you click the link to the LP). I also recorded every update in video form and put a link to it at the top of every update. (Higurashi is a sound novel after all, not a visual novel.) The recordings also have some fantastic voice acting, so check that out if possible.

I update three times a week on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday.

Here’s the link.

My sales pitch, for those uninitiated to Higurashi or do not know why they should read it, is under the cut.

Some people may know of Higurashi because of its rather infamous Studio DEEN anime adaptation. The yandere anime or whatever.

(This is the cover of a Higurashi video game released in 2014 but the art is pretty similar to the anime’s ssshhhhh)

In the game, you play as Keiichi Maebara, a city boy who recently moved to the peaceful and close-knit village of Hinamizawa. While he initially spends his days playing various games with his new friends, the discovery of a string of disappearances and murders that happen in the village set him on a path towards conspiracies, paranoia, and a fight for his own life.

One of the game’s more memorable aspects is how it endears you to the characters through the slice-of-life aspects of the story, until those idyllic days slowly morph into something much more sinister. That in and of itself is nothing new in the horror and thriller genre— pretty much every dime a dozen horror movie starts with a peaceful suburb being threatened with a serial killer or monster on the loose, after all.

Where Higurashi differs is that it doesn’t stop there, but starts pulling the reader in, makes them want the horror and thrill to stop, for the idyllic days to come back. They start off engrossed in the wonderfully unsettling atmosphere that the author, Ryukishi, crafts with nothing but images, text, and sound. As they read one arc after another, they gain more questions even as some are answered.

Because, surprise— Higurashi is a slife-of-life, comedy, horror, suspense, thriller, murder mystery.

Every arc takes place in the same timeframe: June of 1983, but things are different. Something that happens in one arc doesn’t happen in another arc, and vice versa. Even though the characters do  not retain their memories of past arcs, they still perform different actions at different times as strings are pulled behind the curtain. As someone with an omniscient viewpoint of the entire story, it is your job to piece together the puzzle and figure out just what is causing the deaths in Hinamizawa.

If that interests you, I’ll link the Let’s Play once more at the end of this post. The first post is the masterpost, which has even more information on the game as well as the LP itself. If nothing else, please read the trigger warnings. Higurashi is not a kind game to those who are squeamish. This may only be Ryukishi’s first big work— his writing and pacing is fairly rough for the first two arcs— but there’s a reason this game so thoroughly took over the fandom consciousness in the 2000s. His writing is, if nothing else, completely his own and paints vivid depictions of the cruelty humans have to live through every single day.

(A tidbit to note is that the author used to be a social worker. He writes about the topic with great skill but it is all very hard to watch/read.)

The game is also uh…very anime. It was initially sold in Comiket, after all. If you have a low tolerance for anime bullshit this might be a hard read for you. But underneath everything, the story is, at the core, a very touching one about the bonds between friends. Higurashi has a heart, no matter how ugly its exterior may seem at first glance, and I urge you to give it a shot.

Here’s the link again.

By the by, if you’re interested in a more “straightforward” murder mystery (more of an actuual murder mystery, much less straightforward), you should check out Ryukishi’s next work, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, which someone else already LPed. If you want to see how he might be like, trying to, solve…world conflict…?, the person who LPed Umineko also did one for the first arc (or Phase as it’s called) of Ciconia no Naku Koro ni. It’s all a bit vague for Ciconia, we really only have one chapter to go off of. None of these “sequels” require knowledge of the former entries to enjoy them.

[wosofan14]

Jackie Groenen House Tour Interview - 22/10/20 (Rough English Translation)


Little note - The format of the interview was a little weird. The interviewer guy was very random with what he said, so some things in the translation are very random. But other than that, the video was super interesting. Hope you enjoy the translation :)


Interviewer: Welcome to a brand new episode of “Inside”, a show where we get an inside look into the houses of professional footballers, e-sports players, Youtubers etc... I’m very excited about today’s guest, as we get to go international on this episode. We are going all the way to Manchester, England to get an inside look in Jackie Groenen’s house.

*On screen text*
Woonkamer = Living Room

Badkamer = Bathroom

Slaapkamer = Bedroom

Logeerkamer = Guest Bedroom

Balkan = Balcony

Interviewer: There is an Easter egg hidden in this video, so if you pay attention, then you can spot it, then you’ll have a chance to win some cool prizes. If you’re as excited as I am about this video, don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to the channel to not miss any cool videos. Hopefully after this video, there will be more people that will want to give house tours. Or not, I’d also understand if no one wanted to show me their house. Haha just joking. Now let’s ring the (imaginary) doorbell, or we can knock. Please ignore the huge headphones I am wearing.

Jackie: Hi Matthy (interviewer’s name) and viewers of this show. Welcome to the tour of my crib and welcome to Manchester!

Jackie: Come on inside, this is the hall. I can’t show you too much of the guest bedroom, as my dad is currently visiting. He is also currently filming this video and he’s filming for the first time, so don’t be too cruel on him.

Interviewer: I think your father is doing very well to be fair.

Jackie: Because of the current situation we are in, I’ve frequently had people sleep over and it’s been fun, as it’s meant that I haven’t been alone very often. Now here is my fantastic closet with, if I’m being honest, way too many clothes in it. And I see my father is already looking a little bored behind the camera, as this is his least favourite part.

Interviewer: Yes, I could hear him sigh deeply or take a deep breath behind the camera. You could also see him in the reflection of the closet.

Jackie: This is Mimo (it’s a cushion of a bunny) and he’s my best friend’s bunny. I’ve been able to take this cushion of with me so that I can always think about Mimo and Jenny because I miss them a lot when I’m here in Manchester. I also have a sweater here from training with Manchester United. As most of you will probably already know, I’ve always played with number 14 and I’m lucky enough to be able to play with that number here at Manchester United as well. That’s something I’m very proud of if I’m being honest. I’ve always been a huge fan of Johan Cruyff and I’m always very proud whenever I get to wear the number 14.

Interviewer: Very cool.

Jackie: Alright, here we have the first bathroom. I’ve never actually watched MTV Cribs before, so I don’t really know how people present their bathrooms to the camera.

Interviewer: I’ve never watched MTV Cribs either, but I can tell you that this is a very nice bathroom.

Jackie: People brush their teeth here.

Interviewer: (laughs). I hope that people brush their teeth in the bathroom. People at home, if you don’t brush your teeth, then start now!

Jackie: One of my favourite things about my apartment is obviously my bedroom.

Interviewer: If you have the same bed in your own bedroom as you do in your guest bedroom, then you know that the guests are really well cared for. That is really good to see. I’m adding points on for that!

Jackie: Another of my favourite things about my house is the view. At the moment, you can’t see too much because of the rain. That gives you a good idea about what the weather is like in Manchester.

Interviewer: I was just about to say, that’s typical in Manchester. The view is really pretty though.

Jackie: And here is my very very first guitar. I began playing on this guitar in Frankfurt. I take this guitar with me if I ever go with the girls to the park or somewhere like that. I’m still very careful with it though, as it’s my first ever guitar

Interviewer: I used to play guitar as well. The fact that you have the courage to play the guitar in front of a crowd of in public is very impressive and something I never would have done. I am intrigued though to know how long you’ve played the guitar for.

Jackie: Ummmm I think I’ve been playing the guitar for around 3 years, but I’ve only started taking it more seriously in the past 6 months or so with taking lessons. In Germany, I also had some lessons, but there weren’t very many of them. At the moment though, I play a lot and take a lot more lessons than I used to. I try to have 1-2 lessons every week and I try and play as much as I can before I go to bed so that I can keep improving. I’m still not very good, but I can play some songs. For example, if my dad is sitting on the couch in the evening, or if we are sitting by the heater, I always find it fun to then play a song on my guitar. Slowly but surely, I’m getting better and better at playing.

Interviewer: *says something about the Easter egg in the video and not wanting to spoil anything*

Jackie: Moving on, this is my record player. I’m obsessed with LPs and I find it lovely to put some music on in the evening before I go to bed. Because of my dad, most of my LPs are from the 70s and 80s.

Interviewer: *sees Black Stories in the cabinet* Black Stories is a fantastic game. It’s good to see that you play that game too. But LPs are old music aren’t they? I see and LP of the Beatles, which I like listening too as well. No modern music ever comes out on LPs though, so what do you listen to? Do you only listen to older music?

Jackie: There’s a bit of everything here. 80s music, Beatles, Queen, Jeff Buckley. My absolute favourite LP though is this one of Jim Croce. My dad first introduced me to his music and now I listen to it nonstop. I also love Fleetwood Mac, which is in the record player right now.

Interviewer: I think that most of the people watching this show will have never heard of Jim Croce. This type music is really not something I would enjoy listening to. But I do like that you have such a specific taste in music. You could have also listened to the Top 40 or Despacito.

Jackie: This is something that might be nice to show everyone. I feel like I don’t look at it enough, but I always enjoy holding it. This is the medal from when we became European Champions in 2017. I also have the silver medal from the World Cup in 2019 here where we got 2nd place and lost against the USA. Hopefully now everyone has forgotten about that though (laughs).

Interviewer: That’s still super cool though. A silver medal from the World Cup and a gold medal from the Euros is something that not many footballers can say they’ve achieved.

Jackie: Moving onto my nightstand, I have a picture of all my friends. One of my friends made this painting of us. She’s a very good artist. This is actually my friendgroup, and this painting reminds me of them a lot. And umm... (picks up book of crossword puzzles)

Interviewer: Yes! Zweedse Puzzelboekje (crossword puzzles). Those puzzles are so fun people!

Jackie: I know, I’m old (I guess because she likes doing those types of puzzles that makes her old).

Interviewer: If you’re old then I’m old too.

Jackie: Alright, on to the second bathroom. I think they call this an en-suite. Here is also a place where people brush their teeth.

Jackie: Alright, moving on again. Welcome to my living room/kitchen. This is the room where I study a lot. I also have my Player of the Match award from the World Cup semi-final game against Sweden.

Interviewer: A Player of the Match award is so cool to get, and especially in the semi-finals of a World Cup. It doesn’t even seem that much smaller than the trophy you’d get if you won the whole competition. Obviously they can’t give the big trophy to everyone though. That award is still super cool though.

Jackie: This is my most recent player of the match award from last Sunday from the game against Tottenham.

Interviewer: I think they have those awards in the Premier League for every game as well. Super cool that you have one of those.

Jackie: Someday I’ll make a nice decoration with all these Player of the Match awards.

Jackie: Welcome to my kitchen! I’ll give you guys a small look at what’s in my refrigerator. There’s not too many interesting things in here. I have some fruit and some yoghurt in my fridge.

Interviewer: I think I see some vanilla yoghurt or honey, one of those two things. There are lots of Dutch foods in the fridge though, which is good to see even if you’re in Manchester.

Jackie: Something that is more fun to tell you about is my guilty pleasure. I am obsessed with beschuit met muisjes (a sort of cake like thing with sprinkles - it’s a little hard to explain, so here’s a link to a picture: https://www.iamexpat.nl/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/strange-and-funny-dutch-traditions-beschuit-met-muisjes). I always have some beschuit and some muisjes here, as my dad always brings them for me from the Netherlands.

Interviewer: I assume that they don’t have De Ruijter (company that makes muisjes and hagelslag) in England, so it’s good to see that there’s still lots of Dutch foods in your kitchen in England.


Jackie: On to the living room, and this is where I relax a lot. I lay on the couch a lot to recover after trainings. For me, this is the most comfy part of the house. I’m always ver relaxed here.

Interviewer: I see another guitar there.

Jackie: Now, this second guitar is one of my most prized possessions. I bought this right before the lockdown and I am really proud of this guitar. I try and play some songs on it as much as I can in the evening.

Interviewer: Now this is the third or fourth time that music has come up on this tour and the second or third time that the guitar has come up. I don’t know if I dare to ask you this, but Jackie, I think that you should play a little bit of a song for the viewers of the show and for me.

Jackie: Now, I don’t play very much on camera because I’m not very good yet.

*plays song and sings*

Interviewer: I did not expect this at all! Jackie can sing! You acted as if you were shy and didn’t want to play the guitar, but then you started singing as well.

Jackie: The song goes on like that for a while, and for the viewers, anyone who can guess that song has a good taste in music.

Interviewer: Unfortunately, I do not know that song. Clearly I don’t have much knowledge about music.

Jackie: Another fun little thing to know is that since the lockdown, I have a Nintendo switch. I must say that I’ve used this quite a lot. Especially when some of my teammates where living with me in my house and we all played Mario Kart. A little secret about that that I have to tell you as well is that we always used the Player of the Match award from the World Cup to hold conversations and give a little speech (thanking your parents friends, etc - think about thank you speeches after awards ceremeonies) thanking people after someone won a game of Mario Kart.

Jackie: This is my balcony.

Interviewer: That’s really high up.

Jackie: It’s really nice to have. I’ll point to some things now.

*points* Here are some restaurants that I would usually eat at frequently.

*points again* That’s one of my dad’s favourite restaurants.

Interviewer: I’m not very familiar with the city of Manchester and I don’t recognize the area that you live in, but is the stadium close to your apartment?

Jackie: *points towards stadium* The Man United stadium is right over there behind that building. It’s about a 10 minute walk away from my apartment. I go there quite a bit as well.

Interviewer: A 10 minute walk?! That’s so nice to have the stadium so close.

Jackie: So, from rainy Manchester, I’d like to say thank you for watching my crib tour. I hope you enjoyed watching, and I hope to see everyone very soon again in the Netherlands. Bye!

Interviewer’s report of Jackie’s crib tour:

Inside Challenge: 5/5. I think that everyone who saw that was flabbergasted by your singing.

Football Factor: 3,25/5. The location relative to the stadium is perfect for a footballer. The fact that you can walk 10 minutes to the training as well is so nice to have as a footballer.

Food: 5/5 I saw a lot of Dutch food there, and you also get some bonus points for the beschuit met muisjes.

Chill area: 2,75/5. The chill area was okay. I don’t think you need much room for a chill area as long as there is somewhere to brush your teeth (laughs).

Final score: 4,5/5

[crossdressingdeath]

Omg, yes, your answer to the JC choices anon finally made me understand just why JC irks me so intensely! It's not only because he makes bad choices likes blaming WWX for the fall of LP or not paying back his debt to the Wens, though that alone doesn't make him sympathetic already, but it's that he isn't even taking responsibility for those decisions. At no moment, he acknowledges that he made a realpolitik choice to abandon people who helped him to establish his own position or comes out to1/6

himself as a cowardly bootlicker for wanting to court JGS favor, nor does he rage at all the other sects for the delay in forming a common front against WRH until after LP fall or sob quietly about what he could have done to prepare for attack and at least help save the children disciples. He doesn't recognize any responsibility for the things he has done and he doesn't carry any guilt for all the missed opportunities to turn the situation around, no, if you hear him talk, he's always a2/6

victim, nearly a martyr, only he but no one else, a casualty with no power of decision even when he does take action. "I can't protect you anymore" he says famously to WWX before kicking him out from the sect... But dude, at what moment did you ever try to do that? You didn't stop protecting him, you dropped the potato as soon it started showing signs of being too hot or even worse as soon people gossiped that the head disciple of Yunmeng was the real powerhouse in the sect and that hurt3/6

your feelings. The first and last action regarding WWX getting ostracized by the other sects JC did was kicking WWX out, and nothing else, except making things super worse by claiming that WWX was now the enemy of the cultivation world. But he always disguises his real motivations so thoroughly from himself and his audience (and the fandom goes even further in this) by absolving himself of any accountability and playing complicated mental gymnastics to place blame on easy targets like WWX4/6

that he can then bully, but not himself, anyone but himself or more powerful people he'll then have to challenge. And I could have loved a snickering villain or a man faced with too many responsibilities to meet them all and racked with guilt or a chessmaster discarding people as pawns, but JC is creating in his path the damage associated with these kinds of characters without anything of what makes them fun to watch, interesting or lovable in a scary way. He's like a foil to WWX and5/6

LWJ, two upright men who always take responsibility for anything happening to them or around them under the logic that there was always a possibility that they could do something, and sliding closer to JGY who claimed in the temple that he wasn't to blame, he just never had had any other choice but to keep committing crimes.6/6 

Honestly, even JGY’s actions are on some level more understandable, because while it’s not an excuse he did very much grow up scrounging for every scrap of power and respect he got, and that didn’t stop just because JGS acknowledged him. While he’s still wrong, you can see why he’d really, truly believe that he didn’t have a choice. Meanwhile I am willing to bet that JFM would’ve done all he could to instill in JC the importance of taking responsibility as a sect leader. The ability to take responsibility for your own actions and correctly judge responsibility for others’ is super important for a peacemaker and diplomat like JFM, if only to inform his own decisions. While YZY would’ve taught JC to dodge blame, you have to remember that all three Jiang siblings were given the same life lessons growing up, and JC is the only one to play the blame game the way he does.

JC, honestly, just doesn’t have the balls to admit he fucked up. If WWX caused the attack on Lotus Pier and the sects forced his hand in pushing a fight with WWX and the Wens deserved what they got, that means JC hasn’t done anything wrong, and admitting he’s in the wrong is antithetical to JC’s entire personality. But if it’s the fault of someone more powerful than JC, then they might stop him from seeking revenge! So it’s always the fault of someone who can’t or won’t fight back. Or someone who’s already dead! That saves him the trouble of actually getting revenge, and maybe putting himself at risk! He’s a bully, and like most bullies he’s a coward. He’s too cowardly to admit to his own wrongs and he’s too cowardly to blame anyone who might argue the point or fight back. That’s why he goes after WWX but not LWJ most of the time; WWX will let JC do whatever he likes to him, even stop LWJ from beating the shit out of JC on WWX’s behalf, but he won’t stop him from shutting JC up for insulting LWJ. For WWX, everything is his own fault even if only because he failed to stop it. For JC, everything is the fault of the most convenient target, even if he knows that’s not true.

[coppermarigolds]

TLOU, nuance in storytelling, and authorial intent

Recently, massive spoilers for The Last of Us II leaked online, including actual cutscene clips. Being a complete spoiler fiend, I immediately went and looked them up, and I am......frustrated. 

I’m not going to discuss any of the actual specific spoiler content, but I am going to talk about my general reactions, particularly in comparison to the first game, both as a fan and as a writer/aspiring novelist. This could still be considered mildly spoilery, so I’ll put it under a cut.

The plot of the first TLOU game isn’t exactly groundbreaking--it could actually be called pretty basic, and yet it’s had a huge emotional impact on plenty of people, myself included. I never really stopped to think about why exactly that was until the spoilers for the second game were leaked. Certainly the slow, realistic build-up of the relationship between Joel and Ellie, and the excellent performances by the actors, were major factors. But looking back on the first game now, in comparison to what I’ve seen of the second game, I think there was another aspect at play: when the chips were down, the first game trusted the audience and didn’t try to tell us what to think or feel. 

Yes, there were some scenes in the first game that could be considered over the top tear-jerking or basically just there to be misery porn, but I’m thinking specifically of the whole endgame sequence and the decisions made by Joel, the protagonist. In that sequence, Naughty Dog did something remarkable: they presented a complex, morally complicated situation and let the audience draw their own conclusions. TLOU has been out for seven years, yet to this day, whenever I see discussion about it, there’s inevitably a debate about the ending and what Joel did. Is he an unredeemable monster? Is he a hero that did nothing wrong? Is he somewhere in between? I’ve seen opinions all along the spectrum, and the amazing thing is that you can convincingly argue any of them. Both sides have valid positions, and the beauty of it is that Naughty Dog didn’t tip their hand either way as to what they consider the “correct” interpretation. They left it completely open to each individual player.

Most mainstream media doesn’t do that. Many writers spoonfeed what they want the audience to take away from the story. These characters are good; these ones are bad. These actions/beliefs are the right ones; these over here are the wrong ones. If you like or endorse this particular opinion, you’re right and good; if you endorse that one, you’re bad and wrong. 

In some ways, we as human beings crave this black-and-white storytelling. We want our own feelings and opinions to be validated by the media we consume; it’s just human nature. We want to be told we’re good and right for this value or belief that we hold, or this choice that we would make if we were in the characters’ shoes. 

But at the end of TLOU, Naughty Dog didn’t do that. When I finished the game for the first time, I felt deeply unsettled. There was no tidy resolution, no absolution, no assurance that the choices made were the right ones and that things would be okay. That’s not to say it was an unsatisfying ending--I would actually venture to say it was a pretty perfect ending for the story that was being told. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was right. 

(Important side note: that’s not to say that stories with comfortable, happy endings are somehow inferior or not worthwhile. I love and cherish stories that make me feel good, and I think they’re just as necessary as stories with uncomfortable, ambiguous endings. This particular story just happens to be one of the latter.)

So why is it such a big deal that Naughty Dog let players form their own interpretations and opinions of the first game’s characters and story? For some people, it may not be. We all want different things from our stories, and that’s fine. But for me, it’s significant because if there’s one thing that immediately, viscerally pulls me out of a narrative, it’s the sensation that the writer is trying to manipulate me. I crave nuance in stories. I want protagonists with flaws and antagonists with complex, understandable, even relatable motivations. Themes and messages in stories are fine--encouraged, even--but not at the expense of character and story. As soon as I get the sense that the author is trying to beat me over the head with an opinion (even if it’s an opinion I agree with), I start to check out. 

Don’t dictate to me what you think I should feel. Show me the characters and their motivations and choices, and let me decide what I feel. And definitely don’t pull cheap stunts like doing awful things to the characters for pure shock value or just to make the audience wallow in anger and misery.

That’s the thing about the TLOU 2 spoilers. Instead of continuing on with the organic, complicated, nuanced story of the first game, it feels like Naughty Dog picked a side. It feels like they’re trying to tell a portion of their audience, “No, what you feel about these characters and situations is wrong. THIS is the right thing to feel.” It feels like they threw a bucket of water on the shades of gray in the first game in favor of making things black and white in the second. Maybe to an extent, that’s inevitable for a sequel. But it feels like Naughty Dog didn’t even try to avoid it. They could have taken the sequel in any direction they wanted, but they picked the one most likely to cause dissent and anger and anguish among people who connected to the story and characters of the first game. 

(Another side note: I’m not talking about the “dissent” of the vile neckbeard fanboys who are all over Twitter and YouTube spewing their homophobia/transphobia/misogyny. Their opinions aren’t worth a second of anyone’s time. I’m talking solely about story and character issues.)

I knew TLOU 2 would be a story with dark, painful, even disturbing elements just like the first game was. But what I hoped for was a story that would allow Joel and Ellie to continue to grow through the darkness and come out stronger, both as individuals and in their surrogate father/daughter relationship. My fear was that Naughty Dog would take the lazy, easy route of provoking a reaction from the audience by using our attachment to the characters as a weapon against us. And unfortunately it appears that’s exactly what they’ve done. 

Of course, they’re well within their rights to tell this story. They own the IP and they can do whatever they want with it. There’s all sorts of stuff that could be debated about relationships between creators and consumers, whether one party “owes” the other anything, or issues about the balancing act between telling the story you want to tell, and telling one that other people will pay you for. All of that is beyond the scope of this already ridiculously long post. But I do think it’s worth asking why they wanted to tell this particular story, and why they wanted to tell it this way. Neil Druckmann has talked about how the themes of TLOU 2 will center around hate and the cyclical nature of vengeance, etc. And I mean.......that’s not exactly super groundbreaking stuff. Is it necessary to go as over-the-top as possible to tell a story with a pretty basic message? It feels like there’s something more at play here. 

Anyway.

Am I jumping the gun? Maybe. In the aftermath of the leaks, Naughty Dog is insisting that we don’t know the whole story, yadda yadda. I’m sure there’s some truth to that. Context is important. Still, the leaks weren’t just vague hints of what might happen, like spoilers so often are. These were actual video clips taken directly from the game. And it would take a looooot of context to make me okay with what I saw in the clips. Enough that I’m definitely not buying the game the day it comes out, like I originally planned to. I’ll probably watch an LP and then decide whether or not to play the game myself. 

If there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s that these issues are helping solidify what I want to accomplish in my own stories that I hope will be published one day:

Subtlety is key. 

Don’t let the theme of your story overpower the characters.

Make your characters and situations as nuanced as possible.

Write what you want, but don’t toy with your audience. They aren’t playthings for your amusement. 

Except for horrible bigoted entitled dudebros, because screw them.

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #314

“as above, so below  /  what you reap is what you sow  /  what you give comes back threefold  /  as above, so below”

What do you do for work? I'm currently unemployed. I only get paid now and again to do pictures for people. What would you ideally like to do for work? I'd love if I could just be a photographer. What are you doing in order to achieve this? Practice and shoving my extreme discomfort about it aside and trying to promote myself where possible and not in an overbearing manner. What do you think is the worst being on the planet? "Rapists, pedophiles, abusive people in general." <<<< This. Anyone who disrespects the existence of other and equal people. Have you ever been arrested? If so, what for? No. How big an age gap is between you and your siblings? My immediate sisters and I are two years apart. My half-siblings, I don't know. I don't have their ages memorized, but I do know 5+ years, some even 10. Do/did your siblings cause trouble? Not really, we were good kids. What's your dream vehicle? I don't really have one. Are you good at taking care of your finances? What finances? And I don't mean that happily. What's your favorite comic strip? I don't have one. How many people have you texted today? Zero. Someone cheats. Second chance? Nope, byyyyeeeee. Thoughts on kids? Clay that I'm not playing with. Are you a risk taker? No. What are you listening to? I'm currently going through a phase of playing The Evil Within 2's theme nonstop, jc. Is/Was your high schools dress code strict? Not like, mega strict, but it still was overboard. No spaghetti strap shirts, and I even once got in trouble for wearing a floral mesh shirt, despite having a normal tanktop underneath it. It was weird, like no one had ever had a problem with it before, it was just this one teacher that I passed in the hall. Who was the last person to request you on a social media network - and did you accept? Someone I didn't know, so obviously not. Who was the last person’s vehicle that you rode in? Mom's. Who was the last person to make you laugh or smile, and why? Another current obsession of mine: John Wolfe, another let's player who I think is super funny. He said something that made me snicker before I turned on music and started this. Who was the last person that you took a photo with? My half-sister while she was visiting. Who was the last person to pay you a compliment, and what did they say? In group therapy the other day, one of the other women told me that even if I don't believe it, I bring so much positivity to group and she was really happy to be there while I am. I was so so super flustered but flattered, too. Who’s the last person that you visited in the hospital? My mom, following her surgery. Who is the last person that you lent money to? Actually today to Mom. What was the last food that you ate? I warmed up a burger for dinner. What did the last pair of footwear that you wore look like? They're just black flipflops. What was the last kind of bread that you ate? Just plain white bread. What was the last app that you downloaded to your phone? Oh wow, I never do this. I want to say it was a game for my niece. When was your last work shift? I haven't worked in a long time, so idk. When is the last time that you had trouble falling asleep? This is literally every single night. When was the last time you saw a significant other? I ain't got one'a those. When’s the last time that you took a risk? What was the risk? Well, I did say I'm not a risk-taker... Where was the last place that you went on vacation to? You know, how long does it have to be to be considered a "vacation?" I would say not since I went to the beach with an old friend, but it was literally a day. Where was the last place you got lost? uhhhhhhh Why did your last relationship fail? We need to work on ourselves before we could properly support each other and stay in a healthy mindset. Why did you leave your last job? I couldn't handle the stress of serving people and having so many responsibilities at once. How long has it been since you last visited a doctor? How about a dentist? I literally went to the doctor today because I had a follow-up appointment about my weight gain again. I haven't been to the dentist in a few months; I had a normal cleaning my last visit. How big was the last fish you caught? Oh boy, this is stretching years back. It was probably something small, idr at all. Give me the first initial of your last name? D. Something in your home that’s on its last leg(s)? We just moved here, so nothing that's a part of the house itself. As far as items we actually own, idk. Where do you purchase most of your clothes? I haven't gotten new clothes in so long, idk. I would probably say Hot Topic. Describe your skincare routine. I don't have one, if I'm being honest. I just shower. What’s your typical morning routine look like? I don't have one of those, either. The only thing that's consistent is going to the bathroom, eating, and taking my meds. Even brushing my teeth, the time of day when I do that (if I'm not leaving the house) varies. Then it's time to just binge stuff on YouTube and do whatever on the laptop... Are you still playing Animal Crossing? I've never played it, actually. How has the pandemic specifically affected you? It's caused a lot of stress worrying about my mom falling ill, given her being immunocompromised. It's also held me back from searching for another job (even though I don't know what I'd go for, anyway...), because I absolutely refuse to risk bringing Covid into this house by leaving it daily or whatever. What is your main source of anxiety? Being mentally ill, really. It just affects a lot. Any bands or artists you’ve recently discovered? Not very recently, no. What kind of games do you play on your phone? Just Pokemon GO nowadays. Do you have a specific aesthetic? It varies. I love dark, gothic, and gory stuff, but then I also love everything pink and pastel?????? Pastel gore is especially where it's at. Describe the moment you realized you were falling in love with someone. I'd rather not. What’s your favorite sparkling water brand/flavor? I've never even tried it before. What’s your favorite makeup brand/brands? I don't wear nearly enough makeup to be even remotely familiar with any. What’s your all-time favorite movie? It'll probably always be The Lion King. Do you have any subscription boxes? No, but they're cool. What fictional creature would you like as a pet? On deviantART today I actually discovered a fantastic artist who does a lot of HTTYD fanart, and I would say as a dragon lover, Toothless would be soooo great. Have any local businesses closed that you’re sad about? I'm certain tons have closed, but none come to mind. How do you feel about TikTok? I don't feel anything about it. Did you/do you still have a Neopets account? Haha I've had like... two or three at different stages in my life. What were you doing at 9 o'clock this morning? That's actually when (virtual) group therapy starts. Are you wearing any jewelry? Yeah; my piercings (if you count them) and then two rings that I always have on. Are you good at hiding disappointment? No. I'm bad at hiding my emotions because they're so strong. What happened the last time you cried? lmaooo I was finishing watching a The Evil Within 2 LP yesterday, and like, the last hour or so of the game just rips me apart. I was hoping so bad that my mom didn't pass by and ask what the problem was. What would your parents be surprised to learn about you? Both would be stunned to know the situation I had with Joel/my former best friend's boyfriend when I was around 12. What fictional character do you have the biggest crush on? dARKIPLIER Where would you live if you could live anywhere in the world? When all things are considered, like laws, seeing family, etc., somewhere in Canada, or maybe Alaska. Actually, Alaska would be really cool. What after school activities did you do in high school? I didn't have any, if you mean like, school sports and clubs. I did do dance once or twice a week, but it wasn't tied to my school. What’s the last book you really loved? I positively adored The Handmaid's Tale. If you could have been a child prodigy what would you have wanted to be skilled at? My writing was seen as very exceptional for my age as a kid, but it still would've been awesome if it was even better. If earth could only have one condiment for the rest of time, what would you pick to keep around? Uhhh I guess ketchup. I use that the most of all options. What is the scariest experience you have ever had? The night of the breakup. It was such an impossible concept to me that I genuinely thought my life was over, that I'd pull the plug at any moment. Who is a non-politician you wish would run for office? Oh, hunny, Markiplier lmao. Call it a bias all ya want, but he's just a genuinely incredible person that cares so much for everyone and is so serious about equality and just being a good person. Do you think it’s important to stay up to date with the news? It's very hypocritical of me to say, but yes, regardless. Do you own plants? If so, what kind of plants? If not, would you like to grow any? I've never been into growing plants, honestly. Is there a city that you have a particular fondness for? If so, what city is it and why? No, not really. When was the last time that you acted impulsively? Is this a common behavior for you? I dunno, I've gotten better at this. I probably said something I shouldn't have. If you received an allowance as a kid, what kinds of things would you buy with it? Were you more the type to save up for something big, or spend it on little things? I didn't get one. When you cuddle with someone, how do you prefer to position yourself? Would you rather be held, or do the holding? Or both? Are we sitting or lying down? Either way I think I have a tendency to lay my head on their chest while hugging them, and my legs generally curl up. If I'm upset, I definitely feel better and just a greater sense of safety if I'm the one being held, but if the roles are swapped, then I like to be the one doing the holding because I know that's what I want when I'm upset, so treat others how you wanna be treated, y'know. When you woke up today, did you find unread messages from anyone? No. Have you recently told anyone that you miss them? Yes. Can you recall the last time you turned down an offer, of any kind? Mom asked if I wanted to come with her to Ashley's a few days ago, but I said no. I wasn't in a social mood at all. Is there anyone you interact with every day on social media? No. What was the main character's name in the last fictional book you read? Sunny. Have you ever been rejected by a church? No. Is your family nice to you? Yeah. Are you comfortable with your gender? Yeah. What was your favorite Mary-Kate and Ashley film? I don't remember; we had a couple, though. What was your favorite book you had to read for school? The Outsiders. What was your favorite Nickelodeon show? ngl, I don't remember a lot of them and don't feel like looking up a list. Do you still live in the house you grew up in? No. Which Spice Girl was your favorite? I don't remember their names. Do you think you look the best you've ever looked? Oh hell no. Have you been hurt by religion? Yes, honestly. In Truth or Dare, would you rather choose Truth or Dare? I always choose "truth." Have you ever had more than one crush at once? Yeah, I think that's perfectly normal to feel, even for someone monogamous like myself. Just when you establish a relationship, then it's time to make a choice. What social issue do you care about most? This is hard to say with how passionately I hold my opinions, but probably LGBTQ+ rights. It's just... so disgusting to me that I was once homophobic. It's like I want to make up for it. Just the idea of being repulsed by love just because someone has "the wrong thing" in their pants is just... appalling. When was the last time you read a Bible? Many, maaaany years ago I started reading it, but I didn't get very far at all. Do you own a Bible? I personally don't, but I know Mom has one, maybe multiple. Do you discover new music regularly? No; I very much stick to what I know. It's great when I do, though, given that that's how I find new songs to repeat to the grave. What does your first name mean? "Of Britain" or something like that. What country do you live in? U.S.A. Do you believe that gays are born that way? Uh, yes? Who honestly believes a homosexual would *choose* to be in the discriminated minority? People are murdered and abused for simply their sexuality; no sane person would "choose" to risk that torture.

[janetbrown711]

4) “I’m too sober for this.” Dewey (I’m interested where you’d take this lmao)

Webby walked into the room of the poker game and saw what could only be described as the most intense game of poker she had ever seen in her life. a little bit of a crowd had gathered to watch Dewey, Dante, Donald, and a lil bulb were all sharing untrusting glances to one another. On top of that, they were all wearing green visors and some even wore shades. In the middle of the table was a pile of chips, a shirt, another visor, a coupon for free frozen yogurt, and a bag of beef jerky. It seemed like everyone really wanted that stuff though, as everyone keeping their cards very close. They didn’t even bother to break their glances when Webby entered the room.

“Soo... who’s winning?” Webby asked as she pulled up a chair to observe.

“We’re trying to break a four-way tie,” Dewey explained briefly.

“Donald’s one?” She asked. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in him, but it’s a game of lying and luck and Donald wasn’t exactly an expert on either of those activities.

“He won by default. We all had to go to the rehearsal for the rehearsal dinner, which you somehow didn’t show up to, and he claimed victory. We kinda just let it slide,” Dewey said. That made sense.

“I fold,” Donald sighed at that comment and set his cards face down on the table. The lil’ bulb did the same, but Dante and Dewey kept glances of distrust, both trying to read the other's mind.

“All in,” Dewey said, pushing all his chips in and causing the others to gasp at his bravery.

“Fine, all in as well,” Dante smirked back. Webby had no idea what was going on since she had only ever pretended to know how to play poker. She figured his confidence was a bad thing though if she was routing for Dewey.

Slowly, Dewey revealed in his hand a pair of queens. Everyone in the room gasped and looked to

Dante who, stone-cold, turned over his hand to reveal...

A pair of aces.

The crowd went wild and started shouting and celebrating as Dante collected his prize.

“Sorry for this, you all have been nothing if not kind, but rules are rules,” He smirked. Donald muttered under his breath and walked out to get some air. The lil’ bulb shook his fist and probably said something devastating if anyone knew their language.

“You suck,” Dewey said.

“That’s just how I work Amigo,” Dante put his prize money and other possessions into his bag that

Webby recognized from their adventures where they would run into the parrot.

“So... Dante... What’re you doing here?” Webby asked, forcing a smile but gave an annoyed look to Dewey

“Oh, did Dewey not tell you ahead of time?” Dante asked, before shaking his head and chuckling,

“Of course he didn’t. I’m his plus one, and his boyfriend.”

“Hm, a plus one he didn’t rsvp for. Where have I heard this before?” Webby asked rhetorically.

“A sweet sixteen does not need an rsvp for me to bring a couple of friends. It wasn’t even that big of a deal,” Dewey rolled his eyes and took a sip of the gin and tonic that sat next to his cards. “I’m too sober for this,” he muttered under his breath.

“That I can tell,” Dante teased. “Forgive me Webbigail, for my unexpected arrival. I did not know he didn’t tell you.”

Webby sighed, “It’s alright. We made sure we had extra food ordered if such an occasion occurred. The more the merrier, am I right?” Webby and Dante laughed.

“I couldn’t agree more,” Dante said. Dewey muttered something under his breath, but Webby didn’t take it for much since he was being a sore loser.

“So, what’re you guys going to do next?” Webby asked.

“Probably get stupid drunk before the rehearsal dinner and cause a huge scene,” Dewey chuckled.

“Don’t even joke about that,” Webby pointed at him.

“Okay, okay, geez, I get it,” Dewey raised his hands in defense. “Perfect wedding, don’t be drunk, blah blah blah.”

“Forgive him, he’s drunk but not drunk enough to be likable yet,” Dante stated, which made Webby do the same.

“We still love you Dewey, even if you’re a sore loser,” she patted Dewey’s head.

“I am the most handsome duck brother,” Dewey regained his cockiness.

“Whatever you say, bud. I’m gonna head out to the bar. See you too tonight, and I swear to god if you all cause a scene at tonight's dinner or god forbid the wedding I will strangle you. And if not I, then my scary college roommate Amber,” Webby threatened the both of them.

“Who’s Amber?” Dante asked.

“That’s classified. All you need to know is that she’s a bridesmaid and can and will kill you if I say so. I’m watching you two,” Webby eyed both of them before leaving the room and to the bar, where Lena, Huey and Violet waved her over from their table.

“So how’d the game end? Who won?” Lena asked.

“Dante, though I think it was a close call,” Webby recalled.

“Alright losers pay up,” Lena smirked as Violet and Huey both paid her ten bucks each.

“You guys running bets over here?” Webby raised an eyebrow.

“Oh yes. It’s a very fun way to keep things exciting and engaging,” Violet said.

“How many bets do you guys have going on?” Webby asked with curiosity.

“Mm.. I’d say twelve,” Huey had to think about it.

“Twelve? What’re they on?” Webby was now extremely curious.

“Whether or not Dante is gonna cause Dewey to do something stupid before or after the wedding ceremony, if you were going to show up today, how many 20 dollar bills Gladstone’ll find, how many times Donald will trip today, if Della will “della” Dante in the face when she finds out he’s dating Dewey and he didn’t tell her, whether Dante is secretly evil because to quote Violet, ‘no one is that muscular without a reason-unless you’re LP-,’ if scrooge’ll cry, if someone will crash the wedding, if anyone will object, if the shrimp sucks, if Boyd is gonna crash, and if you and Louie forget to bring forks when you slice the cake so you two will just end up smashing and smearing it all over each other’s faces,” Huey read off a list on his phone.

“Wow, you really weren’t kidding when you said this was the gossip corner Lena,” Webby had to laugh.

“We like to think we’re having fun,” Violet smirked.

“Okay, but seriously, who is Dante? I’ve never seen or heard of him before ever,” Huey looked to Webby.

“He’s just some guy we take on adventures for help every once in a while when we’re in South America. I don’t know how he and Dewey got so close, I guess they just did. He’s really helpful though,” Webby shrugged.

“I think that’s suspicious,” Huey squinted.

“I think you’re a paranoid older brother,” Webby pointed out.

“Maybe, but I got a hunch,” Huey drank his scotch.

“You do you,” Lena sided with Webby.

“Well either way, I’m excited to see how this all turns out. A lot could happen in the space of two days. For all we know, all of that and more could happen,” Webby pointed out.

“True. You never can tell what the Duck family will do next,” Violet agreed. “At most weddings, you never know who the wild card will be, but the Duck family is just a whole deck of wild cards. Needless to say, I’m curious to see how this’ll turn out too.”

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

[wiz-witch]

DuckTales 2k17 3x03: Double O Duck In You Only Crash Twice

"The Lost Harp of Mervana!" So fun fact: all I know about James Bond is from the Mythbusters episode, that Jimmy Neutron special, and Goldmember. And I haven’t seen either of those in over a decade. So let’s see how many references fly over my head.

Also this is my second viewing but I’m going to try to keep my commentary as if this is my first

“Dew-ble O Duck” Dewey, sweetie, I will pay you to stop

Wait her name is Red Feather? Boo

Obviously evil guy is obviously evil

“What are you doing?” Being a theater kid with middle child syndrome

...Wait, Ben can sing??

Okay, that was impressive

Yay foreshadowing

Dewey: “Oh fuck, he’s messing up, this was a bad plan”

Daw, Dewey calls him LP

Also I cannot get over the fact the glasses they were wearing in the released screenshots were VR glasses

Hey, it’s the Phantom Blot! I can’t wait until you do something cool this season

My favorite House of Mouse shorts were the ones with him (and one where Von Drake tried to take Mickey’s heart. Yup, the show had more influence on Epic Mickey than causing the company to get Oswald back)

Aw, he sad :(

“Am I a joke to you, lad?”

“Uncle McDee”?? :D :D :D

Webby is a bro, and Scrooge is everyone’s uncle

Ball pits are terrifying, and this just proves it

I love how Heron’s welding mask is built to compensate for her mask. It makes her look like a plague doctor

Yes, intruders in the very public Chuck E Cheese knock off. Geeze, got Magica working there, got Phantom Blot as the mascot, got a FOWL lair underneath... Frank? Why is there so much evil in the Chuck E Chee--oh, wait, never mind

Are we ever going to get the full intro with Della?

Yeah, his kids come here all the time, why are you surprised at this?

He’s asking the important questions

She didn’t want to answer because she made it

I love Whack a Mole. I had a home version even

That is such a mood. I hate being in public.

...Ouch. Those things are heavy

...That’s all.

That legitimately looked like something out of the Carmen Sandiego choose your own adventure

Wait, how did they even know the passcode in the first place? It’s not like they were given a briefing or anything

...what.

Dewey has the brain cell at the table

jlkajlkdajlkdsj SOMEONE PLEASE GET ME A REACTION GIF OF DEWEY SILENTLY GOING ‘WHAT?’ WHILE WATCHING THIS DISASTER

I love the cutting between the game and reality. I also love how Steelbeak felt the need to put on the glasses to beat them up

Webby, that is not how you hold a skee ball

Himbo versus... Is there a term for a himbo who’s an ass? Is it just “attractive idiot”?

...Did I just imply that Steelbeak is attractive? Ew

Webby was right, it is a trap!

Okay, as someone who’s been hit in the face a lot and wears glasses, those glasses should’ve broken from that

Oh my gods...

Aw, sad baby

Ooh, are these the guys I have beat up Huey in my FOWL fics?

Did Steelbeak spend too much time with Quackerjack or something?

...Okay, part of me is actually highly disturbed at the fact Steelbeak changed their clothes while they were unconscious

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chip and Dale! Rescue Rangers...

they play the f*cking theme song...

Daw, he helped them, and they helped in return

Oh snap

Webby is DoneTM

“This department has worked 322 days without an accident” I feel like that’s a facility record. Would be at my work

.......what.

I love how he didn’t know what the device did and knew it was a game and still sacrificed himself for Dewey. That’s adorable

Did you guys really get multiple lives in that game? Because it seemed kinda insta-lose

Also, are the glasses currently off or are they still seeing things differently than we are?

Oh, I think this is a direct Bond reference--it looks like something from Jet Fusion

Why is he British?

...Please give us our himbo back. Please. I will pay money for that.

Aw, he calls him Dewford now. I do not like this, please make it stop.

...was that English?

Me either

“Oh heavens, you don’t want them to think you don’t know what you’re doing” My constant monologue at work

that was epic

Why is he still wearing the glasses?

“They’re back?” Okay, those two words bring a lot of questions I want answers to

Huh. Guess I wrote the wrong triplet getting kidnapped by FOWL

#priorities

Scrooge... Sweetie...

I love how Webby keeps wanting to kill Funzos employees... Oh, what if all of them secretly are part of FOWL?

...Except Magica. Maybe she was hired so they could see if she was FOWL material

Oh, I wanna break that innocence so much...

....... [slams head on desk]

Okay, how could Launchpad hear Dewey clear as day, but Dewey can’t hear anything Launchpad is saying?

Aw, that fear on Dewey’s face when Launchpad crashed... Oh, what if unconsciously Dewey knows this is real now but hasn’t quite consciously processed that?

He’s Launchpad McQuack, that’s how.

Dewey is Done with this guy and is showing signs of being like his brother

Well that’s unnecessarily badass

How can you be so DoneTM when being tied up like that. Also why is he tied up up there

Boo, bad pun

No, “Me” was correct there

I’m sorry, is that just going to become their thing? Just casually coming into a scene to help rescue the Ducks and then leaving?

...Oh you are not doing this.

We were robbed of a hug

Okay, the subtitles say this is Dewey singing, but it doesn’t quite sound like his voice while his song earlier did. WTF

"Stop the evil conspiracy out to get us.” Hey, Launchpad, before you do this, PLEASE TELL HIM ABOUT FOWL SO SOMEONE KNOWS

Launchpad has ADHD and RSD

That was adorable. Dewey is a good kid. Reminds me of half my cousins, but a good kid

...Wait, wasn’t that shot in the original season 3 promo?

Dewey, why did you jump, that was really unnecessary

Well, there’s that hug I wanted

...what.

Because of a joke from a friend, I’m mentally retconning that line into “Huey’s going to freak when I tell him that I--we beat the game.”

Seriously, I love how it took him not being in an episode to not have a mild breakdown

I hate how realistic that is

Let’s see, one ball got him 2 tickets, and one quarter gave him 5 balls...so one quarter equals 10 tickets, which means a dollar equals 40 tickets... That comes out to 75 grand. Scrooge, wtf

I love how Dewey clearly is trying not to crack up

I’m sorry. I cannot get over the subtitles calling him “Suave-Pad”. Who on the crew came up with that.

Ooh, are they going to learn?

...I hate everything.

Scrooge’s reaction is mine

Well, that explains a lot

Okay, if she specializes in rays but Bradford doesn’t want more rays... Imagine them looking for fresh brain...

Shut up, I like hurting Huey, let me do so in peace until canon gives me the conspiracy theorist Huey hunting down FOWL I was promised

...Okay, that is the most terrifying thing this episode.

Me picking up pretty much anything in the house for the first four years of my sister’s life

So what’s next week? ["The Lost Harp of Mervana!"] ...ARNY MAERMADIDS NEAZXT WEK!

[terror-that-flaps-in-the-evening]

Words and Scribbles

The first time Launchpad had to go out on an adventure with Mr. McDuck and the kids after he and Drake started dating, he left Drake a coloring book and asked him to do his daily colorings for him. Drake had really done his best before that to shrug his shoulders and say, “Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine here alone.” He’d been so nonchalant about it - telling everyone who asked that yea, he’d miss his boyfriend, but he’d be fine. He wouldn’t worry.

The coloring book was the straw the broke the camel’s back, however. Drake, despite telling everyone who asked him that, no, of course he wasn’t going to cry when Launchpad went out of town indefinitely on one of Mr. McDuck’s crazy, life-threatening, potentially world-ending adventures. He was a grown adult, and he could handle being alone for a few days, weeks, months, whatever it took. 

He was a grown adult who was trusted by his boyfriend with his coloring book for the duration of an indefinite trip. Drake knew that Launchpad loved relaxing at the end of the day by scribbling away at the pictures inside - he knew the weight that was being handed to him in between the covers of such a simple and childish gesture.

So, yeah, Drake Mallard was a little bit of a sobbing mess the first time his boyfriend left home to go out on an adventure with his other family. For an hour after Launchpad left, Drake lay curled up on the floor in his living room, clutching at the coloring book that was left to him and wishing that he could call Launchpad. 

He was pretty sure there was some sort of rule on airplanes that all cell-phones had to be turned off, though. At least on the commercial flights he’d taken. He wasn’t entirely sure if Della and Launchpad followed those same customs, but he certainly wasn’t going to endanger quite literally everyone he really knew just for a phone call to a duck that had only been gone for an hour.

Drake wasn’t completely useless, however. So, after only a few hours of moping about, Drake managed to drag himself off the floor and into the kitchen, where he promptly started tearing up again as he realized that he was making himself a dinner for one. Sure, he’d gotten a lot of his cooking out of his system when he was meal-prepping for Launchpad, the kids, Mr. McDuck, and Mr. McDuck’s niece and nephew, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t still have it in his heart that he should be cooking for at the very least himself and his boyfriend.

Drake ended up making himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and practically throwing himself in one of the dining room chairs - which gave a dangerous creak from the force of which he plopped down. New dining room furniture, he noted, was something he needed to work on once S.H.U.S.H. started paying him…

Once he had devoured his childish dinner, he realized that he had a much more childish task to attend to. Drake flipped open the coloring book, tracing the crayon lines that had already been colored in by his boyfriend with his fingers, letting his mind drift to all the times that they’d been laying on the couch together, watching Darkwing Duck while Launchpad scribbled away.

He flipped through the pages slowly, admiring each and every page, despite the ultimate simplicity that the nature of the activity dictated. It wasn’t until he got to the first uncolored page that his heart dropped out of his chest once again as a piece of paper floated down out of the coloring book. He picked it up and read,

“Heya, Drake! This is Launchpad, obviously. I am writing here as instructions. You have to follow them. That’s the rules. They’re easy, because I don’t like hard games. Just color for me, like I said before I left (Thanks past Launchpad!). Then after you color, you get another paper. From me. Launchpad. Get coloring!”

The note was written in crayon, with alternating colors featuring some of their favorites and some random splashes of color. There were little scribbles and doodles all around the note, some of which looked vaguely like hearts that had been half scribbled out, then redone. A few of the longer words had a few crossed out versions in front of them, but no matter because in Drake’s heart, it was the world’s best piece of literature. Drake took the note over to the fridge, placing a Darkwing Duck magnet over it to hold it in place. 

As childish as he felt doing it, Drake grabbed Launchpad’s box of crayons, curiously labeled “Launchpad’s! Do not eat!” Drake made a mental note to ask Launchpad if someone else had tried to eat his crayons before. Drake picked out a plum purple and began to darkly color the outline of the train that was sprawled out on the page in front of him. Once he’d finished his dark outline, he lightly colored in the body with varying shades of purple, creating what he’d call a work of art compared to Launchpad’s wild scribbles - not that he disliked the fact that Launchpad just went wild on the page with the pack of crayons. It was cathartic to watch his boyfriend do, and it was comforting to have that piece of him here now that he was out in the air somewhere, on the way to adventure.

The first day after Launchpad left, Drake went to the coloring book as soon as he woke up, very tempted to unfold the note that lay on the next page (Labeled, “No peeking!”) before he finished the coloring of the lion that lay on that page, but Drake knew that Launchpad’s first question would be whether or not he followed the rules, so he managed to hold back his eagerness to hear from his boyfriend.

Once he finally finished coloring the lion with an unfortunate thorn in its paw (Drake had added the splinter and a tear to the drawing - for dramatic effect!), Drake eagerly slipped his finger under the fold in the paper and flipped it open.

“Day one of no Launchpad. You must be sad. I know I am. In between being scared for my life, that is! Adventures are crazy. I am probably being very brave right now. You are probably being very brave too - being Darkwing alone. I am going to buy you a sooveneer.” 

Drake made a mental note to tell Launchpad how to spell souvenir. He also made a mental note to tell Launchpad just how much this entire thing meant to him. It felt like he might not be entirely alone, what with Launchpad’s good natured-ness still there to envelop his heart in warmth. Reading the note, he could hear his boyfriend’s voice echoing through his head, and he could practically picture him laying on the floor in the McDuck manor garage, tongue stuck half out as he scribbled away notes and carefully folded them into little origami triangles to hide in the coloring book. 

Each day only made Drake appreciate the gesture more and more. On day three (After coloring a picture of a pond full of fish, to which Drake drew in a shark), the letter read, “Things are probably getting rough on my end. I say they’ve gotten in three arguments by now! I’ll keep count and we can see when I get home! Have you caught any good bad guys? By good, I mean bad. By bad I mean extra bad. Extra bad-baddies. The mean kind. Answer here _______________. Tell me about it when I’m home.”

Drake scribbled away his answer in the small space provided, telling a story about a particularly rude villain that he arrested - he had gotten called a creepy cosplayer while he was in the process of tying up the guy. Drake drew a little picture of him, taking the liberty of adding devil horns. He made sure to leave the picture colorless, so Launchpad had something to do when he got back. Drake added the note and his own addition to his fridge collection. Another day closer to having his boyfriend back.

Day four was a coloring sheet of a small duck strumming away at a guitar. Drake wrote the notes for the Darkwing Duck intro above the guitar and drew a little smiley face. “Let’s Get Dangerous,” he wrote above the picture after he finished coloring it, proud of his handiwork for the day. He’d earned the next note.

“Heya! It’s LP again. I’d hope you know that by now. Today is a scavenger hunt. Or, sort of. Just go to the bedroom, and go under the bed. Or, look under the bed. There is a box that says, ‘Launchpad’s Do not Eat,’ on it. It has something for you. Miss you.”

Drake resisted the urge to run to the room immediately - instead he took the time to pin up the note alongside the first three. By the time he made it to the bedroom and dug the little shoebox out, he was shaking with anticipation. He opened the lid, and his jaw dropped. Within the shoe box was one of the few pieces of Darkwing Duck memorabilia that he had not managed to obtain yet - the classic Darkwing Duck slippers that went for hundreds online. Drake felt himself tearing up again as he put his feet into the cute little cartoony versions of his childhood hero.

On day five, Drake woke up with his entire body aching from the fight with a few of the Beagle Boys he’d had the night before. Usually when they woke up after a rough fight, Launchpad would massage his back for a while, he’d massage Launchpad’s back, and then they’d make breakfast together. Instead, he hobbled out of bed and made himself some toast. He immediately got to coloring, eager to see what awaited inside. He took his time filling the drawing of two ducks riding a tandem bicycle, trying to add features to the two to make them look more like him and Launchpad. He wasn’t sure how successful he was, so he ended up just labeling them in the end. He eagerly unfolded that day’s note, ready to hear it sounding out to him in his boyfriend’s voice in his brain.

“LP here! Mr. McDee said it’d only take a little bit, so maybe I’ll be home soon. Here’s a Hamburger Hippo coupon I saved for you. Get yourself dinner! I miss you. Or, I will miss you. I am Launchpad from the past. OooooOOOooooOoooo, spooky!”

The entire letter was surrounded in drawings of clocks and little ghosts. There were also a few of what Drake could only assume were supposed to be ghost clocks. Drake’s fridge was starting to look more like an art museum than a fridge, but he wasn’t complaining. Each time he saw the letters that peppered his fridge, his heart started fluttering all over again. He couldn’t wait to see Launchpad again - the second his boyfriend came knocking on his door, he’d get attacked with the full force of a flying, climbing, scaling hug that would no doubt end up with Drake clinging to Launchpad for hours.

Day six was laundry day. Usually they’d end up having a sock fight when they were trying to fold the clothes. Instead, Drake folded the clothes in record time with a sagging heart. His heart fell even further when he saw the coloring scene he had for the day - it was a sock. Who puts a sock in a coloring book? Drake made a mental note to look up who in the world designated the drawings that went into this coloring book so he could have a word with them. Once he finished, he eagerly grabbed the note that was stuck in that page, unfolding it to see,

“Laundry day. I probably need laundry day. Jungles don’t have washing machines. Fun fact. From Launchpad. Your boyfriend. I will throw a sock to say I miss you. In the future, not now. I am past Launchpad. Throw a sock for me too. Miss you,” Drake grabbed one of the pairs of socks he’d just folded, ripped the two socks from each other, and hurled one of them as far as he could. Somehow, it landed on top of the fridge. At least when he would have to ask Launchpad to get it down, he’d have proof that he was following the rules… Drake pinned the note up on the fridge, and continued on with his day.

Day seven. A week had passed. Drake found it hard to believe that he hadn’t heard Launchpad for a week. He hadn’t seen him for a week. He saved the coloring and note for that day until right before bed - wanting to cherish each second that he could of looking forward to it. As he was coloring away at the picture of the day - a monkey hanging from a tree (Drake was adding bananas to make it more fun), he heard a knock at the door. 

Drake thought he must be hearing things - no way was Launchpad back so soon! He carefully closed the coloring book and lay it on his bed, somehow managing to fight the urge to just toss it and sprint to the door. He felt his legs turning to jelly as he walked to the door, wearing the slippers that his amazing boyfriend had somehow acquired for him.

Drake just knew that the moment he opened the door, it would turn out to be the mailman, someone who had the wrong door, an assassin sent to kill him, anyone but --

He swung the door open and felt his heart stop. There he was. Launchpad McQuack, in the flesh. Drake ran full force into the mountain of a man, who immediately picked him up to swing him around. “Don’t ever leave again,” Drake mumbled through his tears into Launchpad’s chest. He took in the scent of the man - how he’d missed that strange combination of baby shampoo, oil, leather, mustard, and a slight cologne-y smell. 

“I missed you,” Launchpad squeezed the air out of Drake’s lungs, but it wasn’t something Drake was going to complain about - on the contrary. He didn’t want this hug to ever end, because it felt like the second the hug was over he might lose his boyfriend to adventure again. He couldn’t let that happen again, he loved every second he had with Launchpad. He--

“Launchpad?” Drake pulled his head back just enough to give his boyfriend a quick peck before burying his face in Launchpad’s chest and saying, “I’m in love with you.” 

Maybe it wasn’t quite the opportune time for his first confession of love, but damn if it didn’t feel right. He felt Launchpad’s hug increase in power to a dangerous, spine-cracking level, and he felt like he was hugging just as hard back.

“I love you too, Drake,” Launchpad said, with tears in his eyes, “I love you so much.”

“I hope you know that you’re bringing me along on your next adventure,” Drake said, nuzzling into Launchpad’s chest. “I mean, what adventure wouldn’t benefit from famed superhero Darkwing Duck. And what day wouldn’t be better with the man I love?” Drake felt his heart skip a beat as he said those magical words again. Who knew that seven days without the man he loved would really awaken the awareness of that love in him?

[theabandonedones]

GET TO KNOW THE BLOGGER.

Can be used for RP and non-RP blogs to get to know a bit about the person behind the screen!

tagged by: no one, i snagged it from @marudeinu​ tagging: do crime  

1. FIRST NAME: Kerri

2. STRANGE FACT ABOUT YOURSELF: 

I have more stuffed animals than my nephew and I will never change. 

My first tattoo was a friday the 13th sale line tattoo of a cat in a pumpkin and I regret nothings

I’m obsessed (literally) with planners / stationery / etc 

3. TOP THREE PHYSICAL THINGS YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ON A PERSON:

Eyes are always the first thing I’m drawn to. It’s not a color thing, but interesting eyes that are fun to stare into? A+ 

Jawlines. I’m a slut for a nice jawline. 

I really like slender fingers? Dainty hands man, they’re so nice. 

4. A FOOD YOU COULD EAT FOREVER AND NOT GET BORED OF: Salad! I love salad so much, and you can do so much with it!!! 

5. A FOOD YOU HATE: I honestly can’t stand cranberry sauce, my guy

6. GUILTY PLEASURE: I’m not really guilty of any of my pleasures, but I’ll say, I’m a fan of M/LP: friendship is m/agic, and no I don’t regret it. It’s the show that got me into voice acting.  

7. WHAT DO YOU SLEEP IN: leggings or pj pants, and a tank top (or no shirt)

8. SERIOUS RELATIONSHIPS OR FLINGS: Serious! Like my relationships right now! I’m too emotional for flings - always have been. I support fling-havers with all my heart, but I am a soft romantic who can’t handle that

9. IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN THE PAST AND CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOUR LIFE, WOULD YOU AND WHAT WOULD IT BE: I’m a firm believer that a lot of things shape who we are, so, as much as I would love not to be a traumatized wreck, part of me would always worry that I’d be drastically different if not for the experiences I’ve had. But honestly... I’d have said ‘I love you’ to my mom more, I think. Just... There’s a few regrets I have, surrounding our relationship. 

10. ARE YOU AN AFFECTIONATE PERSON: I am a very verbally affectionate person. I love hyping people up, I love pet names and the like. That said, I’m really... bad. With physical affection. With most people, at most times. 

11. A MOVIE YOU COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER AGAIN: The! Princess! Bride! 

12. FAVORITE BOOK: Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

13. YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO KEEP ANY ANIMAL AS A PET, WHAT DO YOU CHOOSE: Okay ignoring the fact that it wouldn’t be humane and I’d never do it, I’d love an otter (babies!!!) or any sort of wild cat. But that’s... not a thing, because animals need to have their natural environment. Pets-wise, I really really want reptiles (snek!) and I want a dog, I’ve missed having a dog. 

14. TOP FIVE FICTIONAL SHIPS: Oh no, uhm... Okay I can’t rank my ships so these are just 5 that I like, not my ‘top 5′, I’m bad at picking favorites. 

Kara.suma x Gakuho (Assassin.ation Classroom) 

William x Sebastian (Kurosh.itsuji) 

Ta/maki x Ky/oya (OHS.HC) 

Aluca.rd x Walter (Hellsi.ng) 

Spiderm/an x Dea/dpool 

15. PIE OR CAKE: Cake.

16. FAVORITE SCENT: Vanilla, especially vanilla spice where the sweet is split by something else!!! 

17. CELEBRITY CRUSH: Boyd Holbrook

18. IF YOU COULD TRAVEL ANYWHERE, WHERE WOULD YOU GO: EVERYWHERE LET ME TRAVEL DAMMIT, but like also, Alaska, Japan, Germany, and Italy. 

19. INTROVERT OR EXTROVERT: Introvert / Ambivert 

20. DO YOU SCARE EASILY: I AM A BABY PLEASE DO NOT STARTLE - I had nightmares after watching Zombie Land in high school, I used to have a zombie survival poster but I had to take it down because the zombies on it kept spooking me at night, I am a baby. 

21. IPHONE OR ANDROID: Android. Apple is a shitty, company change my mind

22. DO YOU PLAY ANY VIDEO GAMES: Ye! Currently obsessed with:

Pokemon (Always) 

Animal Crossing (Always) 

Slime Rancher (Always) 

Skyrim (Again) 

God of War (Again) 

24. WHAT WOULD YOU DO WITH A MILLION DOLLARS: 

Get my dental / healthcare in order

Get Ray’s healthcare in order 

College

If there’s anything left after all of that, house, get one and pay it off, and then use anything left to make additions, and invest/ save the rest 

25. FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU HATE: Uhhh see I’m head over heels for a lot of hated characters, because I’m trash. I’ll list Min*ta from BNH/A, given he’s the literal worst. 

26. FANDOM THAT YOU WERE ONCE A PART OF BUT AREN’T ANY LONGER: Attack on Titan / SNK - I used to write in the RPC, but the RPC is toxic and the creator is disgusting so! Out we go! 

[avi-daragon]

20 Random Questions

I was tagged in this post by @marianrios33 because she made me open a Tumblr account and insists on me posting something. I told her I would, eventually, but she is the kind of person that sits in your ear and screams loudly into it until she gets her way, so I better not ignore this any longer.

1. any favorite tv shows? There are so, SO many, but here are few that come to mind: Game of Thrones (regardless of the ending), Breaking Bad, American Gods, The Man in the High Castle, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Haunting of Hill House, The OA, Brooklyn 99, My Hero Academia, Fullmetal Alchemist... and the Chernobyl miniseries rocked as well.

2. fave songs at the moment? Movement by Hozier, Talk is Cheap by Chet Faker and almost every song by LP, but I particularly love Tokyo Sunrise.

3. favorite movies you’ve watched recently? Rocketman (awesome mix of biopic and musical), I am Mother (gotta have me my good sci-fi) and it’s not that recent, but I really enjoyed the conclusion of M. Night Shyamalan’s hero trilogy, Glass.

4. are you usually late or early to events/work? Recently I have been quite punctual to work, but despite my best intentions and hardest efforts, I am usually late to everything else.

5. favorite drink/foods? Tacos and soup (I LOVE soup!) as a meal, coffee, chai latte, and whiskey, as drinks, and last, but certainly not least, tiramisu for dessert. YUMM-EH!

6. movie title that best describes your life? Insomnia (new first-time mom here).

7. city would you most like to live in? Galway, or any Irish town.

8. what age do you wish you could permanently be? Perhaps mid-twenties, but I really wouldn’t like to be stuck at any age.

9. fictional place you would most like to go? A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

10. how do you relax after a hard day of work? I don’t. But if I could, I would probably take a record-breaking nap.

11. tv show or movie you refuse to watch? Anyone in which a dog dies, especially  Hachi: A Dog's Tale.

12. what are some small things that make your day better? New and awesome movie trailers, unexpected messages, good books and anything new my baby learns to do (he’s only 4 months old, so everything’s basically new).

13. what is the most impressive thing you know how to do? Bullying students until they love me (right, @marianrios33?)

14. game or movie universe would you most like to live in? I feel I’ve answered this before, but I’ll go with the game part of the question and answer unequivocally Hyrule. 

15. if all jobs had the same pay and hours, what job would you like to have? I love teaching, but I would also love an animal related job, like dog walking (no joke) and cat cuddling (dead serious).

16. what is something that is considered a luxury, but you don’t think you could live without? I could do without most luxuries, but I don’t think I’d fare well without my insulin pump.

17. what do you have doubts about? Being a good enough parent (as in I doubt there is such a thing).

18. what irrational fear do you have? I fear watching horror films and being traumatized, regardless of the fact that when I watch them the only remaining feeling is MEH.

19. what would be your spirit animal? Red panda (we look AND move the same).

20. three interesting facts about you? 

1) I get pissed off when people say I should be happy that I had a son (and not a daughter) so I can inherit my love for Star Wars (I cannot fathom how they miss the fact that I am indeed a Star Wars loving woman).

2) I can read a novel in a day, but it can also take me months to complete another. It mainly depends on how much I am invested in it, or how bad my depression is.

3) I watched The Last Jedi 10 times at the cinema, and countless times at home (I don’t care about the popular opinion, I LOVE that movie and find the script near perfect).

Extra fun fact: It really bothers me that this quiz has no capital letters.

I have no one to tag, so this is the end of this Quiz. Thanks @marianrios33 for pushing my hand and helping me to get into Tumblr. Oh, and also, for being a great friend!

[amisbro]

Point of View:  Shining Live 1 yr later

(I considered making the “Point of View” part just “PoV” but ehh...here we are) Been a while since I have done something like this but it is that time of year when Shining Live is going to have an Anniversary and its my first full year officially with the game...this is why its being called “1 year” and not 2 so that we can get that out of the way. Yes this IS the first full year officially that I have had Shining Live installed coming up and that actually happens around the middle of the month which is always an interesting time.  Its interesting because its timing is LITERALLY going to be around the following Aniversaries “Stand my Heroes” “Idolish7″ and then of course “Shining Live” To say the VERY LEAST this is going to be a brutal month for me just when it comes to mobages because the funny irony here is that I haven’t been playing really ANY of them that much right now.  I think I play “Heroes” more on and off and I played i7 like 3 times But the big one (and the focus of this piece) is Shining Live...where are we nearly a year on from the time we came back to the game? There in lies the problem See when I first started playing Shining Live originally back when the game came out in English in January of 2018 (ironic when you think about when I started watching the Anime like 4 years earlier) I actually had a lot of fun with it and was enjoying it for the most part.  I think I only really had one time I uninstalled it and that was brief because of the fact that DST had come up last year and I didn’t feel like playing the events at 1 AM in the morning ET. Okay that’s only a half truth...one of the other reasons I stopped playing the game at that time (and completely wiped my old account) was because at the time I had actually spent $$$ on the game which I was not proud of.  Yeah at the time I had gotten one of my favorite Photos in the game (”Aqua Crystal” Camus) but after what happened I refused to keep up the account because of the fact that I didn’t like what I had done.  At that time (after fighting the damn game and Google) I completely wiped out the account and eventually started over Here is the kicker about what I just said I had started the game in January but come early March I had deleted it completely.  I could tell we were going to have a weird relationship When I eventually came back to the EN Server this was sometime in August and when this happened we were getting ready for what would come to find out to be the final two chapters of the main story with the last one eerily enough being on September the 11th! I had thought that in October we were going to get a new chapter but it was around then that they were making a few changes with one being the “3 pull Birthday Boxes” and the other being they were adding “Collection Events” which now meant the month was going to be hell for anyone that wanted to play every event The thing was that now you had 1 Set List event 1 Collection event And they were still going to do “Score Battles” too...matter of fact this month is #19 which makes things interesting especially with what they brought into the game earlier this year I think I was wiling to flat out give a pass to the idea of NOT having a story part for October because they were introducing the “Collection Event” and doing the update to the Birthdays...surely November would go back to normal right and they would double up? NOT QUITE! For reasons that I can’t fathom STILL the game’s final story update still remains 9/11 and the thing is that ,while I know its only a minor group of people, (including myself) that have started looking at their story passes as they go up and up and up with nothing to use them on it gets to the point of “Why Bother?” Why bother playing a game (even for the “reruns” that came up) when the company is just trying to distract you with the fact that they haven’t done a story update in almost 1 year and not explained (when they should have and no apologist can tell me otherwise) why in the God’s Name the game has not been updated as far as the story content. Oh but they DID manage one thing recently Because of an issue (which from my understanding only a small # of players got) the video ads have been disabled and they don’t know when they are going to come back...CUTE! Alright to be fair... If the ads aren’t working for one group of people and they do for another then that gives an advantage when it comes to LP hoarding later on so it DOES level the playing field in THAT respect...not in the respect of “Pay to Win vs. F2P” despite the fact that in Belgium they have discontinued ways to buy certain things because in that country they made Lootboxes illegal (NOTE:  I am fully aware that there is almost nothing in SL that is considered a “Lootbox”.  You MIGHT consider Gachas “gambling” but even then that is a stretch especially with the changes that were made to the Gachas recently...putting that out there) Now think about this November December January February March April May June July And now August It’s been damn near 1 year since we have had story content in the game and yet the fandom has been so trained to accept the fact that the story mode has all but been abandoned.  In this time we have had Renewals for B-Project Idolish7 got a Part 4 AND had like 2 Lives (and I own one of them already) TsukiPara has had its 2nd Anniversary Oh and Stand my Heroes ,A3! and i-Chu have had Anime Projects announced along with Season 2 of Idolish7 for next year Do ya get it or nah? Like forget the fact that Shining Live has given some of the most paltry of rewards for the # of days you played the game but its just so funny to me that when you try to explain to people “This ain’t right!” They have become so conditioned to the fact that the game has issues with keeping people’s interest to the point ,and this is hysterical, where I got people on my twitter timeline that legit start showing how many story passes they have saved up because its been that damn long OR they now start making a hashtag about whenever they see a HEAVENS member pop up in the game at some point (I’m talking about when they show up on the Duet covers) You know this is funny that I am writing this because of the fact that there was a fan project or whatever you want to call it where I had been shown a link to “apply” for a position on the staff and I outright refused because honestly the fact of the matter was that I had gotten so frustrated with Shining Live that they couldn’t handle my honesty...PERIOD! No joke on tweets that the “Shining Live” twitter put out I QT’d them and let my feelings be known about the fact that they haven;t done anything for the people that don’t care about the flood of events we have and we just want to play the story (and have HEAVENS added too but I’ll take “story” at this point) and honestly it cost me a friend...oh well...pack up and move on Here is the reality and it smacks you in the face as we nearly are up to September I am going to hang around this game for as long as needed because all I want is to see when they are going to add to the story...might be announced for something in the Anniversary or it might be legitimately the 1 year anniversary (that would be creepy) but I think people deserve to hear how frustrated a person can be when you have a progression wall and you just can’t move on and its not because of your level or being out of story tickets but its because of the fact that a company is so infatuated with MONEY that they have basically said to the people that might not care about that to go dunk! Now I will say this Does this year of frustration hamper my enjoyment of UtaPri?  No not really...there is a scene I saw from one of the PVs from MLKingdom that kind of Skeeved me that ,no matter how it gets explained away to me, its still creepy af and I have seen things on the a series about the “Deep Web” that made me cringe but you know how it is. I think its time that people understand that people are allowed to be frustrated ,pissed off or however they want to feel about the game.  I wish more people would “get it” and understand but sometimes it feels like you are talking to a wall and that’s not fun!  It just makes you miserable because trying to explain WHY you haven’t touched a game in a good long time and not being able to have a genuine conversation so you don’t walk away more pissed off than you already are is just not cool...at least playing “Mirror’s Edge” is FUN frustration and this just makes you want to pull your hair out! I’m morbidly curious about what is in store for Shining Live for 2019-2020 and here is hoping that come the time that we get to this point NEXT YEAR its a bit more of a pleasant experience My name is Amisbro...and this is my “Point of View”