#which people couldn't be bothered to try and actually have in 2024

[ibreathebooks-42]

This reminds me how everyone is always bemused by the fact I take notes during HOA meetings

(when we manage to wrangle the cats they are enough to have one, but that is a different matter)

"But Steve is the secretary, he's taking the minutes, why would you need your own notes?!"

Well Bob, first of all I happen to think it is a good idea to have a reference of what I (or more importantly you Bob) said I'd do so I can look back at it later when writing up my todo list

Second of all, I love Steve, really I do, but his minutes tend to a) be lacking in the details and b) sometimes never actually get sent out to anyone before they get lost. So my copy of the meeting ends up being what people refer to when they are bewildered by the fact that something hasn't been fixed yet and are trying to figure out who was supposed to be responsible. (It was you Bob, you said you'd do it, I have the notes from the meeting plus the emails from me months later checking in on you to see if you'd done anything...)

And of course since apparently no-one else really understands record keeping, if I didn't take notes there would be no notes.

Someone at an old job asked why I wanted to write up the meeting minutes for our team and I said 'i wanna control the narrative' and they were like 'what' and I pointed out that no one was gonna remember what we said in six months and so my interpretation of the meeting would dictate the assumed reality of what happened

"none of you ever send corrections when I offer the draft so y'all have consented to my version"

"we don't read that shit"

"you must trust me implicitly to create our shared reality that's so sweet"

That's how several coworkers decided I was a supervillain and how I learned several coworkers didn't understand record keeping as like a CONCEPT

[caratheewriter]

Controversially Young ~ Matt Smith x fem! actress smau

Synopsis: You were recently cast as Bruce Wayne's love interest, which everyone adores, Selina Kyle. The age gap though, has some in a tizzy.

Warning(s): sexist comments, big age gap

Rating(s): NC-17

Word Count: 694

Actress Y/n L/n Cast alongside Matt Smith in upcoming Batman Movie

Here's what you need to know about Zack Snyder’s new project...

~~~

y/nl/n

now wait just a meowment...

are you going to see Batman (2024)?

see comments

charliebushnell y/n we've talked abt this

↪️ y/nl/n I couldn't help ittttt

user420 still have no idea how they could subject you to this

↪️ user2 subject her to what

↪️ user420 working with someone twice her age

hater2 be honest... whose d*ck did you suck to get this role?

↪️ hater34 probably Matt's

~~~

y/nl/n

Press paws and live in the meow!

trash007 if I were Matt, I'd hit

↪️ trash006 same

user360 y'all are gross up in these comments

↪️ trash56 if she didn't want these comments, she wouldn’t have auditioned for CATWOMAN

↪️ trash001 the sexist dc character to exist

user49 I could never work with someone twice my age, I'd be scared

↪️ user86 y/n's worked with Matt before I think she knows how he is

batman2024 we love our bat and cat

leahsavajefferies as purr-ty as a picture

↪️ charliebushnell no! no puns

↪️ diorgoodjohn these puns are hissterical

↪️ y/nl/n lol

~~~

Y/n L/n talks Catwoman, DC, and new interests

by Young Hollywood

Interviewer: Hello Readers! Today I am joined by one of these most known young actresses of our generation, Y/n L/n! Thank you for being here.

Y/n: Thank you for inviting me. I love doing interviews.

Interviewer: So, how have you been?

Y/n: I've been good. Doing a lot of filming for Batman, catching up with old friends, trying to up my instagram game. I've gotten into videography, shooting mini vlogs and cooking videos.

Interviewer: Sounds fun! I love that! Is there any insight into the movie that you can give us?

Y/n: Sure! If any of you were wondering, this is going to be very different from any portrayal of Batman and Catwoman that you've seen or read. Obviously because Selina Kyle is a lot younger than Bruce in this adaptation which is a plot within itself. This Selina, and because she is younger, her story has changed, is a street rat or stray cat. She lives on the streets, and her story in this, is similar to that of her portrayal in the show, Gotham. She meets Bruce as she is trying pickpocket off him out in the open. Then, it goes from there.

Interviewer: Wow! That certainly is a must-watch. Now, I hate to get deep all of a sudden, but have you seen the comments regarding your casting?

Y/n: Yes, I have actually. A lot of them are for disgusting middle-aged men, so I don't really bother with them. I knew what I was getting into when I auditioned.

Interviews: You also get to work with Matt Smith again. Did you know that he was casted as Bruce or did you find out after you got the call?

Y/n: You know what's funny? Zack told me that Matt told him not to tell me. So, I didn't know until our table read!

Interviewer: Oh my god! What?!

Y/n: Yeah! And I hadn't seen him in so long that I almost jumped across the table to hug him.

Interviews: Aw!

Y/n: A lot of people also would say that they felt bad for me because I'm the love interest to someone twice my age, but I've known Matt for a long time. He worked with my father in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I played young Rhaena in House of the Dragon. He's a family friend, a beloved friend. I trust him.

Y/n: I understand the public's concerns though. I did just turn 24 earlier this year. The age gap is big, but it is strictly for storytelling purposes.

Interviews: There you have it. I loved talking with you today.

Y/n: I always look forward to interviews with you. Big fan.

Interviewer: Big fan of you too! Any last words?

Y/n: Go see Batman in theaters near you coming this December!

fin.

I tried my best.

[whatevertheweather]

Thank you all for the tags @run-for-chamo-miles @monbons @forabeatofadrum @rimeswithpurple @ileadacharmedlife @artsyunderstudy @noblecorgi @you-remind-me-of-the-babe! You're all making me very emotional about fandom, and my TBR has gotten out of control.

So. It's 2024 for a little bit more. I'm not sure what's going to happen as I write this post, but I know it's not going to be succinct, so we're just going to start below the cut and see what happens.

I'm waffling over where to start, but I've decided on what we're here for, which is the fic recap. I did actually make fic goals in 2024, and I did actually meet some of them, which I'm trying to focus on instead of the parts I didn't meet. Here's a nice lil screenshot to sum that up.

I did give Bait and Switch a checkmark after some hesitation, because it says ongoing, and I did keep it going. I just didn't finish. (The new goal is before CORB 2025 I guess.)

So I completed 2 fics. Continued 1. Posted 60,917 words, AO3 says, even though that's including the chapters of the WIPs I started last year, and by my clumsy calculations with that in mind, it's actually 32,990. Did not meet my goals, struggled to write most of the time, but when I was looking for these stats, I found AO3 doesn't even give me a 2023 tab (rip first chaps of Bait and Switch and Musical Chairs, I guess), so it's an improvement over last year.

It just doesn't feel like it, because so much of what I did is unposted. So those are the stats I'm gonna give.

Words that didn't get posted: 23.5k

Fics this close to done that I just couldn't get any farther on: 4

Fics started: 3

Fics lovingly revisited after being abandoned for a long while: 2

Number of projects I got really excited about writing: 3

Number of times I wrote AHAHAHA in brainstorming documents because I figured out what I need to do to fix the problems I was having: 5

How long it will take me to turn those ahas into action: I cannot possibly say

Number of times I should have reached out for brainstorming help: 50, probably

Number of times I actually reached out: 3, I think

It's these last two points I actually care about. Well, no, I care about all of it, but it's these last two I've been thinking about. I had writing goals for 2024, I'm going to have writing goals for 2025, but I also had a more nebulous goal to participate in fandom more, and that's the one I'm actually bothered about not meeting.

I have a bad habit of thinking the only way I can participate is by getting fic done. Sharing it. Posting snippets if it's not done. Like I can only rejoice in other people's WIPsday posts if I have my own, instead of just being inspired by other people's writing and art. Or I can only share excitement or progress if I'm sure it's going to go somewhere, instead of just posting what I have and letting the community of it all be its own excitement. Or I can only comment if I have the headspace to put together a stunning review that perfectly encapsulates what I liked about a fic/art/anything, instead of just saying what I can or messaging someone to tell them I loved the thing they made, as if I don't know how wonderful it feels when that happens.

I'm getting sappy and maudlin on main, but I appreciate this fandom so much, even when I revert to lurking, and I want so much to get back to participating and talking to people and sharing in all the amazing wonderful things this fandom does. Y'all are some of the most talented and creative and kind people and I adore you all. So that's my main (fandom-related) goal for 2025, and any fic completed will just be bonus points.

But! Since we're here for fic at the end of the year, I will round out this rambling post by saying there are at least 3 ideas I'm hopeful I'll be able to maintain my current level of enthusiasm for, and beyond that there are about 5 that are a few sentences away from done, so there's hope for seeing at least some fic from me in the new year. Related, here's a peek at the first three documents on my drive.

Two of these fall in the "a few sentences away from done good lord why can't you just finish this" category. The other one falls in the category of things I'm actually very excited about, and hope to at least have a WIPsday post for it before too long. Because I'm thinking keeping things secret for fear of never finishing them is actually kind of silly, and I don't need to keep trying to create things in a vacuum.

Finally, a mess of tags that is me waving hello with both hands: @fatalfangirl @moodandmist @martsonmars @facewithoutheart @whogaveyoupermission

@mostlymaudlin @sillyunicorn @aristocratic-otter @bookish-bogwitch @alexalexinii

@ivelovedhimthroughworse @iamamythologicalcreature @ionlydrinkhotwater @thewholelemon @bluedahlia912

@youarenevertooold @cutestkilla @raenestee @confused-bi-queer @basiltonbutliketheherb

[cloversnstrawberries]

Naviety/Foolishnes Prompt

Kidnapping prompt the child of Pentoius and Cherry if you Write them as a couple, maybe a teenage in age if not feel free to choose and maybe the child is brave enough to say stuff like if you hurt me my mother will destroy your rich ass fancy whatever hide out to crumbs and my dads gonna invent some maybe funny thing thats terribly deathly?

"naivety / foolishness" platonic!parents!yandere!cherrisnake & teen!gn!reader ! !

[2024 christmas/holiday event, entry 2]

event post ! | event masterlist !

description; Recently, ever since she started dating a snake-sinner named Sir Pentious-- your mom has been acting very... strange. At first, you blamed Sir Pentious, but when everything comes to a head; you have no choice but to go to him for help.

additional notes; i already had an idea for the story, and reader doesn't interact with many people outside of cherri and pent, so the second part of your request went largely unused D: it's a really good idea, though, and I tried my best to include it wherever i could!! hope you enjoy :]] !!

+ cherri was reader's mom in life as well, but it's not specified whether they're her biological child or otherwise, so it's up to you how you wanna interpret it :] i also focused a whole lot more on Cherri for some reason, but Pentious does make an actual appearance at the end :D

warnings; heavily implied kidnapping, overprotectiveness, hints of possessiveness(slightly), threats of violence (cherri throws a dud bomb at you), drugging, misuse of trust, Reader is at their wits end, general fear, terror, uneasiness, and if i missed any (i'm very tired, so i might have D:) please let me know!!

w/c; 4.3k

For as long as you been in hell, you've had your mom right by your side. She looked very... different, but so did you-- her one eye and unnatural skin didn't bother you, because despite it all, she was still your mom above anything else.

"Oi, c'mere you squirt!" Your mom yelled as she chased you down-- sunscreen in hand, and you squealed, continuing to run away from her. "No! I don' wanna!" You called back, and to the other beach-goers, all you were was another defiant child too impatient to have sunscreen applied.

When your mom caught you, she swiped you up in her arms-- laughing as you flailed a little bit, looking like a fish on land for a moment there. "C'mon, you don't wanna get sunburned, do ya?" She asked, and you frowned. She was right on that-

"But I wanna get a tan like you..." You always thought-- knew, that your mom was a very pretty woman; her hair sun-bleached from how much she was outside under the harsh Australian rays, a deep tan with freckles splattered every-which-way;

She'd laugh, this whole song-and-dance was something you two always seemed to go through when she took you to the beach with her. Your mom never snapped at you, though-- she was very patient, all things considered.

"No, you don't, squirt. Y'wanna know why?" You tilted your head to the side, gone from defiant to intrigued in less than a second-- "Why?"

You mom shifted her hold on you, bringing her hand holding the sunscreen bottle and tapped you on your little nose, making you reel back just a bit and scrunch up your nose. She giggled at it, and even more as your little face scrunched up "Because, I didn't get my tan from the sun. I got it from eating my veggies, which you don't do, hon."

"Nuh-uh!" You called out-- but you were so young, that you couldn't help but consider what she said as true. When she nodded her head, a sweet smile, a soft one-- one only reserved for you, it seems, and said "Yuh-huh! Now, will you let me put on the sunscreen?"

As your the cogs in your little brain turned, your mom set you down, crouched in front of you. She popped the lid open, not giving you a choice. You frowned-- you knew it was futile, trying to avoid getting lathered in sunscreen, and yet; you never stopped hoping you could outrun it.

You'd kicked the bucket just a couple months after her-- finding yourself down in hell due to some stupid reason. Heaven were so nitpicky, sending you to hell for taking your killer down with you.

You were livid with it, as you stomped around the streets of Hell. Hands shoved in the pocket of your mom's battle jacket, something she held ever-so-dear, and so you did too. You'd died wearing it, so it came with you to hell.

No doubt about it, that the big pink-and-yellow "X" your mom had painted across the back helped her notice you on the street. For a second, only a second, you hadn't known who she was.

The moment she opened her mouth, there was no getting around it. This was your mother-- you felt so many emotions in the span of a minute. Relief, confusion, and sadness were all at the forefront, but behind it was anger. Why was your mom in hell? That only proved that, in your eyes, Heaven were a bunch of nitpicky snobs that turn their nose up at everyone who's greatest sin wasn't forgetting to say 'thank you' when someone opens the door.

It'd been decades, that you and your mom have spent together in hell. She never did tell you how she got into hell, and you never had the heart to ask-- you know you shouldn't, but you couldn't help but try and make up theories about it.

Still, you never asked. Never brought it up-- You hated upsetting your mom, more than anything in the world.

Whatever it was, you're sure she was justified in it. Never did it cross your mind that you are, in fact, extremely biased-- you went about your (un?)life thinking her appearance in hell was one big fluke, similar to your own situation.

Only recently, had you began to genuinely wonder if she'd actually done something drastic to get down here. You knew of your moms tendency to blow things up quite well-- she literally went by Cherri Bomb, after all!

It's not like you didn't accept that part of her, hell, you even used it to your advantage a lot of the time. Someone's picking on you? "You do know my mom is Cherri Bomb, right? That she can blow you to smithereens in a moments notice?" always did the trick to get the asshole to back off quickly.

She may not be an Overlord, but it's not like she was exactly unknown-- she'd been gunning for an Overlord position for years, and while she'd never gotten it, she sure as hell made a name for herself in the pursuit of the title, regardless if she formally got it or not.

But now, she seems to have a bit of a trigger finger-- and she was... being a bit of a helicopter parent, something you never thought she'd ever become. She wasn't neglectful, not in life or afterwards; but she preferred to let you do your thing for the most part,

And now, she could hardly let you out of the house without being by your side. Everytime you commented on it, she just gave you vague answer of "You can never be too safe, hon." or completely dodge the question and change topics as quickly as possible.

It infuriated you. You were a teenager, and she was acting like-- like you were a child! And the worst thing is, she hadn't even acted like this when you had been the age this would've been expected of her!

But your biases dragged themselves from whatever hole they'd crawled into beforehand, and tried to find any possible reason as to this sudden shift in your mom's behavior. Anything, anyone, that wasn't her.

And so, your subconscious pointed fingers at her new boyfriend-- partner, significant other, whatever they wanna call what they have. Whatever name they put to it, they were going out; and from the looks of it, it was a serious kinda thing.

Your mom preferred her freedom, you knew that much. She had to have fallen pretty damn hard if she put such a concrete name to it as she had;

At first, when you'd met your mom's new boyfriend-- Sir Pentious, you weren't necessarily skeptical, not like most kids with single parents were when they got into committed relationships.

You were largely confused. You'd wanted to just ask your mom, straight up, this guy? you're seriously gonna settle down for this guy, of all people?.

Because, while she'd mentioned him before, and had been mentioning for nearly 3 decades, it was never in a good light. In your mind, Sir Pentious was a name synonymous with 'Annoying, british son of a bitch with a ring-ding science project ship' becauses that's mostly what your mom referred to him as before.

And now they were... together? After they'd been at each others throats for years, both often pitted against each other as they fought tooth and nail to fill a spot of a fallen overlord-- usually after exterminations, only to get so caught up in one-upping each other that the position was stolen right from underneath their noses.

It was a routine that you knew, and you knew it well. It was so... odd-- but as you thought about it, how every time she'd come home and you'd ask her about her day, she'd actually call the man by his name.

And she'd actually speak of him as a person, talk about his interests, funny little quirks of his (not even annoying ones!), and not all he did that aggravated her to no end.

In hindsight, you really should've seen this coming-- and, surprisingly quickly, you came to terms that you'd been willfully ignorant to their budding relationship. That didn't mean you accepted the relationship itself.

You didn't have any feelings about Sir Pentious at first-- if your mom had cast their differences aside enough to date, then you suppose you could give him a fresh start as well. Not hold him at the pinnacle of an annoying, egotistical man you'd previously thought him as-- all based solely on your mom's rants about him in previous years.

But then, your mom started changing. Started giving you less freedom-- and while it'd start small, as most things do, it grew to be something so suffocating, so restricting that, for once in your life, you want a break. Just a little time away from her--!

You tried to be sneaky about it, because when she came back (no doubt from visiting Sir Pentious at the Hazbin Hotel), you lounged casually on the couch, a bowl of ice cream cradled in one hand, the spoon held in the other.

Not a bit was taken from it, and if your mom were to look any closer, she would've noticed how tense you were to begin with-- you didn't look relaxed at all. And you hadn't watched even a single second of the mindless sitcom you had running the background. You'd spent the whole time staring at the door, waiting for your mom to come back.

You looked at the TV when you heard her come in, not able to process anything happening on screen, your heart racing a million miles a minute.

At that point, you had no idea why you were so unsettled, so scared to ask your mom a simple question-- before she got with Sir Pentious, you wouldn't have batted an eye if you'd been led to ask what you were going to now.

When she came by the couch, one hand placed on your shoulder as she leaned over and placed a kissed on the side of your head-- your throat felt dry. She asked you "What 'cha watchin'?"

"Can I go stay with a friend?" You said-- or, more like the words tumbled out of your mouth. No input of your own going into your speech, clumsy and nervous. You tried to swallow the lump forming in your throat, but that proved harder than expected.

Your mom went quiet, oh-so quiet, and you when you looked up at her--

It was wrong. It was so wrong. She didn't look like your mom at all, and you swear your heart skipped a beat. You tried to lean away, quietly, meekly, asking her "...Mom? Are... are you oka--?"

Her one gentle hold on your shoulder tightened like a vice, gripping so hard you could feel your bones grinding against each other at the motion. She stared you down, and in a scarily flat voice, asked "Why?"

The way she looked at you was... something you'd never seen before, not in anyone, especially not your mom. You glanced to the side as your answered, unable to meet the intensity of her gaze any longer. "U-Uhm, it's-- I want to give you some alone time with your boyfriend! So, so you wouldn't have to worry about coming home for a few days, or feeding me, or--"

Her grip tightened, but before even a teensy bit of the tension in your muscles could release, she took your chin in her hand-- not roughly, per se, but she wasn't happy and you could tell-- and turned your head to look right in her eyes again.

"C'mon, I'm not some out-of-touch geezer. I know that's not the reason." It wasn't often you cowered, that you shook like a leaf in autumn. Especially when you were with your mom. Especially at your mom.

She'd never been the cause of your fear before, not directly. You'd be afraid for her, scared she wouldn't make it back home when she went out for another battle with a certain other would-be overlord (in years past, of course); that much was expected,

But never, ever before had she been the direct reason for your fear. You weren't one to cower often in the first place, a very brave (or foolish, depends on who you ask) person, you were. You got it from your mom, the audacity to walk the streets of hell without a care in the world. Clutching the blade discreetly hidden in your pocket, or some other means of self-defense, if it came to that (which didn't happen very often).

"Stop it," You don't think you've ever heard your own voice so small, so... weak, for lack of a better term. But right now, that's the least of your concerns.

Before speaking again, you cleared your throat-- contemplating looking away, but decided against that. Your mom didn't look like she was in the mood for correcting you again.

"You're scaring me."

Her eye went wide-- it was always a strange sight, considering the fact she just had one big eyeball to begin with; but you can't bring yourself to laugh at it right now, not even smile a bit at it.

Then, her hands were gone. She leaned back up, and you felt like you could finally breathe again-- like your heart wasn't going to either give out or burst right out of your chest.

You aren't sure how long you'd been staring at the ground, waiting for her to speak again or leave. Neither happened, as she continued standing by your side-- never uttering a single word.

When you looked up, finding her standing there, arms crossed over her chest-- you knew you'd messed up. But why? You... you just asked to sleep over with a friend. Sure, you tried to lie, but you think that was perfectly fair in a situation like this!

As she continued to stand there, both of you locked in an impromptu staring-contest, she still said nothing. It was clear what she wanted,

She wanted an apology.

It'd been so long since she did this song and dance-- she'd stopped when you two were still alive, probably before you even hit high school, if you had to guess.

You tried to clench your hands into fists, a shallow sort of anger and frustration forming in your chest-- not even touching the surface of the problem, pointed at a semi-non issue.

Though, you found you were still holding the bowl of ice cream in one hand, fingers gone numb-- the other wrapped tightly around the spoon so much that the edges were digging into the flesh of your palm and fingers.

In the long run, you'd knew it'd be much, much better to bite your tongue and move on. Keep any snark down and spit out the most sincere-sounding apology your brain could muster in the moment.

Your mom had a reputation about her, both in life and what came after-- more-so now. That she had a temper, and while you'd never faced the full brunt of such a force-of-nature everyone described her anger to be, she had gotten frustrated with you. Multiple times.

This was a perfect example.

And yet, your own stubbornness refused to let you back down. You knew she wouldn't hurt you-- wouldn't dare to, she hardly even yelled at you. And if she did, it was out of worry. Always something along the lines of "Get away from there!" or "Look before you cross, you almost got flattened by a car!".

Setting down the bowl of ice cream, wincing as you pull your hand from the spoon to set it alongside the melted dessert-- you stood, and stared your mother right in the eye. You steeled yourself, backed up by how bull-headed you could be.

It was a learned behavior from your mom, even though she phrased it as 'standing your ground', you knew that wasn't it. It always did you more harm than good, back when you were younger. Before you adjusted yourself while away from your mom, made yourself more palatable to teacher and peers alike.

Well--you tried to, at least. Because, even with how hard you tried, you could never quite quell your stubbornness from crawling up your throat if given the chance. Just a little push was all it needed to rear its hear and make your life 10 times more difficult.

Or afterlife, you guess.

Your mom had this smug little smirk on her face-- she absolutely thought you were about to grovel, ask if she was actually mad at you. Beg for forgiveness, even if she said she wasn't cross with you.

"You're being suffocating, and I want a break. There, is that what you wanted to hear?"

It was a funny sight, how fast that smirk got wiped off her face as you spoke. Emboldened, baring a less-than-happy smile of your own, you continued. "I tried talking to you about it, but you wouldn't listen! I'm not a little kid! Why are you treating me like one?!" Your volume rose, and you whole-heartedly expected the downstairs neighbor to slam the end of their broom against their ceiling.

They hadn't done that for a while, actually-- you weren't worried for them, they were an absolute asshole; but you're curious about what happened to them. Not for any reason than to just be nosy.

You really should've kept quiet. You knew you should've, and yet, you still chose to poke a sleeping bear, and oh-- oh god, did it react.

It's been a few hours since the... since the argument about your mom becoming a helicopter parent. Since you provoked your mom so badly she...

She'd thrown a bomb at you. And you ran-- as you ran, you never heard it go off. You knew that she carried duds with her, just to cause chaos for the fun of it. Not do any real damage, just mess with people.

As you think back to it, you realize that it definitely was a dud. You don't think that makes much of a difference if it could've went off or not. She still did it, still held the threat of blowing you to bits--

It wasn't like her.

You've stopped blaming Sir Pentious-- mostly because you have no-one else to go to for this. You're hoping-- and hope is a dangerous thing in a place like hell, but again, you have no choice-- to anyone, anything, any higher power both known and unknown, that he isn't involved in this.

He seemed... nice, your resentment to him-- because you'd chosen him as a scapegoat, had clouded your judgement. In all honesty, you think he might be a fluke like you. Did something that could tangentially be considered a sin, but the context wasn't taken into questions before you were cast down to Hell.

Sure. There was Angel Dust-- but he was probably out doing something, and if he wasn't...

Well, he'd never been one to put a damper on your mom's spirits. The two were best friends, and you swear that they encouraged each other's less desirable traits and habits (scratch that, you knew they did, and you knew that they knew-- no use in confronting them about it).

Sir Pentious seemed like an alright guy, all things considered. He was a little awkward, but that was a given; he was from a completely different era, and you were kind of surprised with how... eh, approachable, he was.

When you made it to the Hazbin Hotel-- having travelled on foot for the last 4 hours in nothing by your pajamas and some untied sneakers you'd managed to snag before running out the apartment-- you were shocked to find that the doors weren't locked.

You aren't sure that was just a one-time thing, or someone forgot to lock it; but at least you didn't have to wake up all the residents. If Angel was in, then that rocketed the risk up to 100.

The door creaked-- you opened it slowly, trying your best to be quiet with it. Shutting it with a little less care, you started speed walking towards where you think Sir Pentious' room is.

You're pretty certain you're right on it, but you'd only been here a couple times. And you'd never really paid attention to where his room was, because you assumed that every time you visited him...

Your mom would be there, guiding you (more like dragging you) along.

Eventually, you came up on his hall. It was pretty easy finding his room from there-- Charlie had, apparently, done a recent activity that had all of the residents painting their own doors. Personalizing it-- probably so the residents could "look inward on themselves", or something equally as insane as that.

When you knocked, you didn't hear anything for a little. You nervously looked around the hall, finding no other personalized doors-- you knocked a little louder, because you were fairly certain Pentious was situated a little ways away from any other residents (of which there were very few, but it's whatever).

In an instant, there was a loud crash-- glass breaking, furniture being knocked over, the whole nine yards. It went quiet for a second, and you were afraid he'd hit his head or something in the apparent mad-dash he'd made for the door--

The door pulled open, and before you stood a very tall snake man-- wearing his blue and white striped dressing gown, and a little matching hat. If you were any less paranoid and on-edge, you would've laughed at it, or at least made a comment about it.

Right now, you stayed quiet. Something very, very uncharacteristic of you, and Sir Pentious definitely took note. His whole demeanor changed in a second-- he'd opened his mouth, then closed it.

When he opened it again, his voice came out incredibly soft as he leaned down a little lower-- allowing you to see the top of his head, now unobstructed by the doorframe.

"What ssssseemssss to be the matter, dear?" He asked, his lisp was somehow more pronounced, maybe because you'd woke him up. He was rubbing his eyes-- and you saw that as conformation that you had woken the man up.

"i-I'm sorry for, uh-- for waking you," The words tumbled out of your mouth, the stuttered and meek tone felt foreign, they felt awful on your tongue-- but you made no effort to fix it. To put up a front.

Pentious tilted his head to the side, and you forced your explanation out. You talked so fast, you weren't sure he'd even understand any of it.

"It's-- it's my mom, she's acting really-- like, really, really weird, an-and I don't know where else, o-or who else to go to, so-- I, uhm," You couldn't look him in the eyes now, your gaze cast downward. He hummed, and gently extended his arm.

You flinched back, and he did the same at your sudden movement. He made no move to touch you, simply held his extended arm, offering you to take it. Silently inviting you.

You don't know why you did it, why you took his arm so quickly-- linking your own, and letting him lead you into his room-- or suite, you guess; because it wasn't just a bedroom or anything.

He sat you down on a big, comfy Victorian looking sofa-- and suddenly, all the aching and stiffness from your long walk over here was letting itself known.

All you wanted to do was sleep, but you were so anxious that your eyelids refused to close for more than a second. It was a weird kind of oxymoron, so tired you felt like you could curl up and sleep for years, but so awake that you feel like you'll never sleep again.

"What about ssssome chamomile tea, dearesssst? Then you can tell me all about it." You jumped-- head snapping to where his voice came from. He took a step (a slither? you don't quite know the semantics) back, hands raised by his sides and open wide, palms facing you. Letting you know he wasn't a threat.

"..Huh?" You asked, and he started to repeat himself. When he was halfway through the second word of his sentence, your brain finally caught up.

Admittedly, you did feel kind of bad for cutting him off-- he didn't seem to mind much, though.

"Yeah-- yeah, that sounds... nice." You said, and found you just couldn't bear sitting any longer. You pitched over sideways, kicking off your shoes as an afterthought before pulling your legs up on the sofa. Your body still refused to let your eyes close for very long, though.

Pentious didn't respond verbally-- just a quick nod of his head as he headed off the the little kitchenette off the side of his suite's living room.

You so out of it that you didn't question how long he took. How much he rummaged-- how he talked to himself, saying things like "now, where did i put that laudanum..?" or "I told her to not be so ham-fisted with it! And now look what she's done... scared the poor thing half to death.",

None of which you caught.

You didn't realize the strange color to your tea-- it was more... red than it should've been, but it tasted a little off. You rationalized it-- thinking to yourself that maybe he made it differently than you did. He was, like, a British Victorian man. He's sure to know different ways of making tea than you do.

Only a few sips in, and your eyes started fluttering closed-- you'd sat up to drink the tea, but was leaning to your side; you didn't even notice it.

You didn't notice when Pentious took the teacup from your hand either, because by that point-- you were just a second away from collapsing.

Before your head hit the cushion of the sofa, you were already out like a light; none the wiser to that certain tincture Pentious had slipped into your tea.

[ange-de-la-mort]

Fandom: Queer (2024) Pairings: Eugene Allerton/William Lee Chapter: 3 of 3 Word count: 19,751 Rating: Explicit Summary: In which Lee finds out that the trip to South America was actually a bad idea because he ends up with far more than he'd ever have wanted.

“You're not eating,” Allerton said quietly, tearing Lee from his thoughts. ”You barely ever do.” “I'm just not hungry.” It wasn't even a lie, because the uncertainty of his own existence made Lee fear that he might choke on every single bite, and at the same time filled his whole being so much that he wouldn't be able to get anything down anyway. “That's rude towards people, “ Allerton continued, and Lee huffed, unable to stop a smile, knowing it was his way of expressing concern. Allerton didn't give a shit about what the locals might think of Lee and him. But he did care whether Lee ate or not. That was a nice feeling. Knowing his health mattered. Knowing he mattered. It was enough to make Lee force down a few mouthfuls (and at the same time, it was a shame that he couldn't enjoy the meal; because although he didn't like fish, this was damn good). “Now, you tell me what's bothering you. And don't even try to lie to me.” Though he smiled as he said it, his tone was dark, commanding. Alluring. ”I'd see through you anyway.”

[Read on AO3] [Read from the beginning] [Merch giveaway]

[notafraidofredyellowandblue]

Rammblings Nijmegen 2024-06-18

The Show (part 2)

- Sound and music were pretty good, as a guitarists-fan i was looking forward to Richard's solos, but the first one i couldn't really hear well, maybe the sound was a bit off there, but that must have been just a glitch, because elsewhere it was great (Ausländer solo os so beautiful 🥰). I know some people mention there's playback on some songs, but honestly, i don't care, we were all looking forward to a great show after being wet and cold for a while, that i just wanted it to look and sound the best it could 🌺 (Maybe it was me, but at Adieu i think there was someone off key at some point 😊 so that definitely wasn't playback, but they pulled it together)

- Paul and Olli's side i could watch pretty well, although i didn't see Olli that well, on IG photos i see that he wore a darker shirt for part of the show, maybe that had something to do with it. Paul was for the most part of the show playing with his micstand and doing Paul things like he usually does 😊

- Flake is great in his gold outfit, no trouble following where he's going, and i loved his 'stuck doing the Till-hammer' but, with team feuerzone egging him on chanting 'Flake, Flake' 😄

- Richard looked great, even from that distance (he didn't bother trying his hair to stand up and started with the hair combed down), and i lived his backing vocals, especially at Puppe, you could really hear his voice in the sound as well 🥰

- sometimes i read fans not liking the songs from the Untitled album that much, because 'it isn't Rammstein as it should be', but honestly, some of the songs that got the crowd moving the best, were actually Ausländer and Radio, and even the Deutschland remix with the stickmen dance was great at getting the crowd to dance along, until that point in the show the crowd were mainly watching (not team feuerzone, they always moved ofcourse), but those songs really melted the ice (maybe that was also the moment the rain started to drizzle out, don't remember). Loved the stickmen dance (which i didn't think i would), the 4 guys did a little 'kickline' at some point, and some other funny stuff, and we in our little corner on the stands danced along 😊

- And ofcourse the big songs like Sonne (when the sun really showed for the first time), Du Hast, Deutschland, DRSG, Mein Teil were great as well, but i really loved all the songs, not one exception ❤️

- I was too far away to really notice if 'fun was had' on stage (you know i like it when the guys have fun on stage), but i loved Paul and Richard playing together, love that their Mein Teil intro is always a bit different (up until that point they played pretty much their regular 'roles'), think Till tried to distract Paul before that intro a little bit to prevent him from going to center stage 😊 but the tower was obstructing my view a bit, so really only saw afterwards on social media all the details 😄 but that's okay, they had fun, that is the main thing 🥰

- i really enjoyed my first show, and i really wanted the band to know it, i wouldn't have minded if they stuck around on stage a bit longer at the after-Sonne-bows and the final salut so we could cheer them on more, but that isn't the Rammstein way and i accept that 😊

- and the best part: i get to do it again today (and it looks like it will be dry) 🥰

[veebs-hates-video-games]

It's that time again where I make an entirely too long summary of every game I played this year. There were far too many of them this time around (well over 100, but some of them I only played long enough to know they're not my thing, and a bunch are weird short little things), so I'll try to keep it to a sentence or two for most of them. On the off chance anyone's interested in more of my thoughts they should nearly all have at least one other more detailed post on here somewhere, hopefully all properly tagged at this point and everything.

Also hopefully the formatting makes it easy to skim through, broken into categories and with each individual game bolded, because I would be astonished if anyone actually reads the entire thing. It's over 180 games and 7500 words, so, uh...good luck?

I think I'll just stick with the same categories I've used in the past couple years. On average the categories further down the list have things I liked more, but there are things in one category that I might've liked more or less than some things in the categories next to them, and they're mostly not really ordered within each category.

So with that said, let's start with the worst gaming experiences I had in 2024:

Bomb Dolls: Probably more fun with other people, but it was borderline unplayable for me so I didn't want to subject anyone else to it.

Sayonara Wild Hearts: Anything that feels like it was designed in a lab to give me seizures and migraines simultaneously isn't allowed to place higher than this.

Gwenblade: It tries to do something interesting, but it has a pretty profound lack of polish that makes it just not work.

Survivors of the Dawn: It must get better later on, but it felt so sluggish and unsatisfying at the beginning that I couldn't be bothered to find out.

Neverwinter Nights 2: I guess I still really don't get along with RTwP and most CRPGs.

Persona 5 Strikers: This finally convinced me to give up for good on the SMT/Persona games, because I clearly do not click with their pacing or storytelling conventions in general.

Mouthwashing: The most profound sensation of boredom I experienced all year. Extremely not my thing, but I'm pretty picky when it comes to horror.

On to games that weren't the worst but still completely failed to live up to whatever (possibly incorrect) expectations I had of them:

Strawberry Vinegar: Weird miss for ebi-hime, with characters that felt awkwardly written and like they didn't suit their ages.

Scanner Sombre: Incredible tech demo, frustrating game.

CrossCode: I liked most things about it except for the actual gameplay, which was really not my jam.

Nier: Automata: Somehow feels substantially worse to play than any other Platinum game I've ever played, and the story and characters completely failed to grab me in the first half dozen hours.

Death end re;Quest 2: Huge let down after how surprisingly interesting but flawed the first was. They dropped almost everything I liked about the original, and even though they thankfully toned down the visual fanservice, the character writing was enough worse to counter that.

Dead Cells: Seems like probably a pretty good game, but having pretty obvious influences from Dark Souls in your gameplay mechanics is usually a good way to make me not have a good time.

Owlboy: It's pretty? Not much else going for it.

Night in the Woods: I did genuinely like a lot of stuff about it, but it just felt like it wasn't really going anywhere, and some of the night scenes were impossible for me to see with my weird/bad vision without turning the screen brightness to retina-searing levels.

Her Name Was Fire: What if 20 Minutes Till Dawn except everything was slightly worse?

Final Fantasy XIII-2: The first half was great and felt like a weird hybrid of Radiant Historia and Pokemon with a Final Fantasy skin, but the closer I got to the end the worse everything about it got until I quit in the final area. A contributing part of why the entire FF series is now banished.

Muse Dash: It's alright? The UI is a nightmare about a trainwreck though.

Final Fantasy VII Remake: I love the metanarrative of the story commenting on itself and how much more fleshed out the characters are, but as a game I didn't have a very good time playing it, and I continue to not vibe with the way Nomura/Nojima tell stories. The other main reason FF is now banished.

God of War: I was pretty hopeful about Dad of Boy, but I just don't like how it feels to play. A contributor to why I'm increasingly skeptical of giving most AAA games a shot.

It gets so lonely here: Second person is not a valid POV (for me personally).

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor: The mining mechanic is pretty neat, but otherwise it's one of the less interesting/satisfying things I've played in the genre.

Spider-Man: Most stuff about it is...fine? But aside from the great movement nothing else really makes it above fine other than the typical stuff that comes with throwing lots of money at making a game. Another major reason why I'm increasingly wary of buying or playing most AAA games.

Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania: The least fun I've ever had playing Vampire Survivors, almost entirely due to it not having its own separate adventure mode to introduce stuff on its own terms in more digestible chunks.

Neva: Not bad, but basically everything about it that's different from Gris is different in a way I don't personally like as much.

Once on a windswept night: see: It gets so lonely here

Stray: I only lasted a couple hours before getting bored. I don't even mind that it's mostly a walking simulator since I've enjoyed plenty of those since they were first a thing, but aside from the novelty of being a cat nothing about it really clicked with me.

Next we have games that I liked what they were doing overall but they're just not really my thing:

Gorogoa: Good art and a clever way to structure the puzzles and how you navigate them/between them, but it's not really my kind of puzzle game.

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights: Probably the closest I've come to liking a game with Souls-like influences. Well put together metroidvania that feels good to play, but the combat got exhausting the further I went.

Snakebird: The addition of gravity and puzzles make Snake a lot more interesting, but I wasn't into the flow of it enough to want to finish it.

Please, Touch the Artwork: Good framing device and clever way to turn recognizable art styles into puzzles, but the individual puzzles didn't stay interesting enough to me after a while.

Super Mario Bros. Wonder: It does some really clever stuff, but I think I just don't really jive with how movement feels in modern 2D Mario games anymore compared to the ones from the 80s and 90s (but I still love the 3D ones). Also maybe kind of a victim of how sometimes Nintendo polishes their games almost too much, and the removal of any rough edges ends up detracting a bit from things I personally like.

Toodee and Topdee: The dimension/perspective swapping is neat, but it wasn't quite enough on its own to pull me through the entire game.

Tens!: Reasonably satisfying, and a pretty polished presentation, but this one also didn't hold my interest all the way through.

The Shape of Things: Another one with good presentation and decent (but slightly janky) puzzle mechanics that didn't quite hook me.

OscarWildeCard: Excellent name, and card battles to determine who has the gayest dinner party is a fun idea, but it's not really my style of card game in the end.

From Ashes, Bloom: I really like the creature and how it moves and interacts, but in the end it's a tower defense game, and those have never been my thing.

Cypher: I really like Matthew Brown's puzzle games in general, and I liked this too at first, but once I got to the point where I couldn't mostly hold the puzzles entirely in my head anymore I lost interest. I probably would've had a great time with it when I was younger and had more patience for taking my own notes though.

Manifold Garden: It looks good and has some good ideas, but kind of like Antichamber I feel like it'd be more interesting to me if I didn't instantly already wrap my head around the way it messes with space. The burdens of having an intuitive understanding of unusual geometry, I guess.

Burly Men at Sea: Seemed like it had potential, but the UI is awkward enough on the Switch that I didn't feel like finding out.

Railbound: Another puzzle game where I liked learning how it works but didn't feel like sticking around beyond that.

Rabi-Ribi: It seems cute enough, but I didn't click with how movement feels and the pacing was a bit off for me.

Cureocity: Has a good premise, and I liked the idea of the combat system, but I felt like I wasn't getting enough out of it for what I was putting in.

Parallax: The core puzzle concept is solid, but it gets a little tedious having to run around the map to actually put solutions into action. Also the most broken default controller layout I've seen in a long time.

Kero Blaster: Nothing really wrong with it, but it didn't hook me. Definitely not another Cave Story.

Nora: The Wannabe Alchemist: There's almost something there and the art's pretty decent, but the Switch version is Not Great, and it feels like it could use a bit more work in general.

Psychopomp: Seems like there could potentially be something interesting going on there, but it's borderline unplayable with a controller.

Press Any Button: This one also might eventually go somewhere interesting, or at least it definitely hints at it, but the gameplay segments started getting pretty tedious before I found out.

stitch.: Great presentation of the puzzles, crappy mobile game presentation for the menus, and solidly average actual puzzles.

Thumper: Pretty unusual aesthetic and music style for a rhythm game, but I don't have the reaction time to keep up with it when brain no worky like lately.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom: I can appreciate what they're going for, and it definitely addresses some of the issues I had with BotW/TotK, but I'm still having a really hard time getting as into it as older games in the series.

Spitkiss: I'm into the idea, and the presentation is really fun, but I bounced off somewhere in the middle as the levels got more heavily focused on tighter timing of actions. Seems fun for someone more into that sort of thing though.

After those we have the ones that are the most "fine, I guess" of the year that I had mixed feelings about:

Townscaper: More of a toy than a game, but I got it in a game bundle and messed around with it on a Steam Deck. It's fun briefly to see what you can make with it, but that's about it.

Little Noah: Scion of Paradise: Most of my time with it wasn't actually this year, but this is the year I concluded that even though the characters are cute and the way you build combos is kinda neat, the game itself is only ok. Also the Switch version doesn't run great.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R: The first 2/3 or so of it is great. The art style used in the remake is gorgeous, and the characters and running around doing typical JRPG stuff feels like all the things that made 90s JRPGs great. Then I got to what previously would've been disc 2 and it all fell apart into what makes 90s JRPGs so hard to go back to sometimes.

Fallow: I like most stuff about it except for actually playing it, which was kind of frustrating. Her music's still great though.

Ape Out: It's alright. I'm not very good at it.

Downwell: It's fine. I get what they're going for, and it feels like they succeeded, but I didn't stick with it super long.

Looking Up I See Only a Ceiling: This one gets an award for suffering the most from a bad translation or not being written in the creator's native language. It'd probably be pretty decent if that was cleaned up.

Astronomical Club for Queers: Dialogue's a bit awkward, but overall it shows potential for making something decent in the future.

Hardcore Cottagecore: This one has serious student project/game jam vibes. With some polish and balance they could make something alright though.

A Little to the Left: Deserves an award for "game that most makes me want to go replay Unpacking instead". Fine, but I lost interest after a while.

Twilight Survivors: I've definitely played worse bullet heaven games, but at least when I tried it this one didn't have much unique about it good or bad.

Geometry Survivor: It's close to being pretty decent, but it just doesn't quite feel good enough to play to me to stick with it too long.

Ikenfell: The characters are good and the story is ok, but I could've done without the gameplay. The "instant victory" button was one of my favorite buttons I pushed this year and saved the game enough for me to actually finish.

Star Ocean: First Departure R: It probably would've been more fun if I'd played it in the 90s. Significantly less compelling than SO2R but not actually bad or anything.

Cats Organized Neatly: Presentation's alright, but the process of solving the puzzles isn't the most satisfying for me.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: Fixes a lot of the issues I had with BotW, and the abilities feel a lot more polished and like they complement each other better, but I still ultimately don't love the way these recent Zelda games play and am probably done with them until the next major franchise overhaul.

The Average Everyday Adventures of Samantha Browne: It's fine. There's just only so much it can really do in like ten minutes.

Jewel Match Solitaire Summertime: It's a perfectly competent solitaire game, just like all the other Jewel Match Solitaire games. Good for when brain no worky, but it doesn't stand out in any way.

Xenogears: The first time I tried playing it was before Xenosaga was even out. I tried going back to it to finally finish it, but I forgot how rough the translation was and how janky some stuff like the camera is. At least now I remember why I've never finished it.

One Deck Dungeon: It plays out in an interesting way with the way everything is built around dice rolls, but it just didn't grab me enough to get me to keep playing.

the static speaks my name: It was just strange enough to be a little bit interesting, but not strange enough to stick with me at all for more than a day or two.

Stray Cats in Cozy Town: Might be my least favorite Devcats game I've played because the different angle makes it harder to come up with a good search pattern.

TREE: Another ten minute free one. I liked it more before replaying it to get the last achievement.

Witcheye: Pretty unique movement and fun for a while, but the difficulty increase later in the game didn't feel like it fit as well with what the controls let me do.

RYB: Some pretty good puzzles, but the more mechanics are introduced the less well it reads visually.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia: I've tried more than once to go back and finish it, and while I still like most things about it, the map design and a couple enemy types annoy me enough that I finally had to accept I'm not going to beat this one.

Graceful Explosion Machine: Surprisingly well balanced and an interesting gameplay loop swapping between weapons, but sometimes I lose track of enemies in the visual clutter. Also it's physically painful for me to play some of the later levels.

Frincess&Cnight: Good pixel art and fun interactions between the two characters' abilities, but the increasingly tight timings and need to start levels over for any mistake got a little annoying at some point.

CARS: More interactive art than a game. Fun to poke at for a bit, but probably not leaving a lasting impression.

VOYAGER: Slightly more of a game than the previous one, but mostly it's just tracing out fun patterns with your orbit while pretty good music plays.

Dragon Quest XI S: I played the demo on Steam a while ago and loved it, but having to replay the entire opening dozen hours when I got the full game on the Switch was painful enough to make me lose interest. There's so much stuff it does well, but It sure does start slow.

Project X Zone: I do enjoy a lot of stuff about it, but there are so many levels that each take so long to finish that after a while it got kind of tedious.

A Slug's Dream: Pretty good puzzles and presentation, but at some point I drifted away and never went back.

Puddle Knight: Same as above.

Please Fix the Road: Also same as above.

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness and the Secret Hideout: The most atrociously paced intro ever before suddenly becoming very good a few hours in, but the tediousness of needing to replace all my stuff at once toward the end of the game instead of stuff opening up more gradually killed my enthusiasm before finishing it.

Otoko Cross: Pretty Boys Mahjong Solitaire: A friend gifted me Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire years ago as a joke, so I impulsively got this on sale in memory of that. Totally fine but nothing special as a game, and if they toned down the horniness a bit some of the character designs/outfits would actually be pretty cute.

Death Becomes You: Some decent ideas and an interesting world, but some of the writting is kind of off-putting and some of the endings feel kind of abrupt and unearned.

this morning I decided to die: I get what they were going for and can appreciate it, but it didn't entirely land for me.

Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age: One of my favorite mainline FF games since the 90s, and I did genuinely have a pretty good time with it a lot of the time, but every time I got back into it it would pull some annoying crap to pull me back out again.

Tales of Berseria: I liked a couple of the characters enough to keep me playing for a while and the story is fine, but I got bored of the actual gameplay eventually and gave up.

Tales of Arise: Feels better to play than Berseria, but even though it hints at something interesting going on nothing in the first couple hours hooked me enough to get me to keep going.

KarmaZoo: I love the idea, but it doesn't get to go higher than this because it requires other people to play and I couldn't find any when I tried.

Margo: Definitely a fan of the art style, but the overall experience was only ok. It was probably somewhat negatively influenced by it being a pain to get it to run on the Steam Deck and still running terribly when it did, a very rare experience for me.

Berserk and the Band of the Hawk: It continues the pattern of most Musou/Warriors games that aren't affiliated with Nintendo in some way just not really being as good these days. It's ok, but it's noticeably more clunky and less polished than even the original Hyrule Warriors was and just doesn't feel as good to play.

Moving on, next we have games that were pretty good and generally met my expectations:

Luna's Fishing Garden: I didn't love either difficulty option for the fishing minigame, and it dragged a bit toward the end, but overall it's pretty cute and chill. Special mention to the "you got a fish" animation for being great.

Kuukiyomi 2: Consider It More! - New Era: I apparently never mentioned this in a post anywhere, or at least I can't find it. Anyway, it's more of the same from the first one, which is a good thing for the most part. It's basically WarioWare, except the minigames are about being considerate (or being a jerk if you'd prefer) in various situations. Cheap, short, and a decent way to be amused for a little while.

TET: Cute, funny, includes recipes. A good use of ten minutes and $0 if preparing food for Vietnamese Lunar New Year sounds like a good time. Also feels much better with a touchscreen.

Clickolding: Like I said earlier this year, it's the most about sex work anything's ever been without explicitly stating it's about sex work, and it will do its best to make you vaguely uncomfortable about that. Didn't leave quite as much of an impression on me as their other game I played last year, Can Androids Pray, but still pretty good.

An Arcade Full of Cats: Not my favorite Devcats game ever, but still enjoyable. As someone old enough to remember arcades it was fun seeing all the terrible cat puns on old games, and they did a pretty good job of capturing the general feel.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore: Most of my time with this was before this year, but I finally made it through the last third of it. I have some issues with the dungeons dragging on too long and the almost non-existent quest tracking, but the characters and story and combat are mostly fun, and it's the only SMT/Persona-adjacent game I've actually enjoyed other than BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle.

Glitchhikers: The Spaces Between: It didn't hit me as hard as the original over a decade ago, and a couple sections just didn't really land for me, but when it does work it does some interesting stuff. The train section was probably my favorite because it actually gets to expand on its ideas a bit more there.

The Fairy's Song: What if La Belle Dame sans Merci but make it yuri? Nothing revolutionary, but it does everything well enough to be enjoyable, enough that I'll probably get through the sequel one of these days too.

Bury me, my Love: Manages to capture both the surreal horror and mind-numbing mundanity of being a refugee seeking asylum and does a fairly effective job of it. The lack of typical VN QoL features kept me from going through again to see stuff I missed though.

Takorita Meets Fries: Fluffy nonsense about merpeople in search of french fries, and I mean that in a good way.

GOODBYE WORLD: The story and art were just enough to keep me going through the annoying platforming sections (which make narrative sense to be there, and even for them to be bad, but still), and the way it all came together in the end is what bumped it up as high as this.

Blackberry Honey: Yuri that's mostly cute and fluffy and fun while it lasts. I have Questions about the way the main character's boobs are drawn though. What's wrong with your boobs?

Voxelgram DLC #1: One one hand it's good because more Voxelgram is good, but on the other the larger puzzles are mostly just more tedious. Still good enough puzzles to get my poor ADHD brain to focus on something while listening to podcasts or whatever.

rat chaos: A replay of something I played many, many years ago. Not my favorite of the Twine boom back in the day, but having an "unleash rat chaos" button makes it memorable.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line DLC: Still not my favorite style of music/rhythm game so it doesn't go higher, but there's some good music in there, and it was still enjoyable enough that I had fun going through everything.

A Hero and a Garden: Cute, fun characters, good music (including the unlockable remixes after you finish the game), and somehow made in Ren'Py, which is not intended for this genre at all.

Hide & Dance!: I like it for similar reasons to the other games I played by hap (which will be further down this list), but it doesn't have quite as many opportunities for the silly humor that makes their games work.

Subsurface Circular: "You are a robot detective solving robot crimes by talking to other robots on the subway" is a great premise, and I was not expecting Thomas Was Alone (still my favorite Mike Bithell game I've played) to be canon.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land: It was genuinely great for a while, and they did an excellent job translating what makes Kirby fun into 3D, but I kept finding more minor annoyances the closer I got to the end, and I gave up entirely on the postgame stuff pretty quickly because it wasn't doing it for me.

Clear Skye Thinking: More cute yuri fluff that won't leave a lasting impression, but it was a good palate cleanser.

Regency Solitaire 2: Basically just Regency Solitaire again, which is fine with me. These always feel a bit more substantial and more polished than the other solitaire games Grey Alien publishes, so it's nice to have another of these after years of mostly just Jewel Match Solitaire.

Zenzizenzic: Good bullet hell game with good music, and everything is so many squares. Sadly not available anywhere anymore, and neither is the soundtrack. Also sadly I'm not very good at it.

Wedding Witch: I got it mostly as a joke after it popped up in a Steam friend's activity, but it's actually pretty competently made. I wouldn't mind seeing some of the stuff from this in a little more substantial game that's somewhat less horny.

A Park Full of Cats: More Devcats hidden cats. If you're into it you're into it, and this is more of it.

Gordy and the Monster Moon; One of the more recent entries in the Frog Fractions Cinematic Universe. A successful attempt to see what would happen if you made a traditional Zelda game without most of the things most people think of as making something a Zelda game.

Art Sqool: I've seen people complain that it's janky and gives you bad tools for drawing, but the whole point feels like that even if you only can make "bad" art you still did something creative and made an art. Fun to mess around with if you can engage with it on its own terms.

Fire Emblem Engage DLC: I played the main game last year, but I didn't get around to doing DLC stuff like the Fell Xenologue until this year. Not quite as good as the main story (which was one of my favorite games last year), but I still overall had a good time with it.

Super PSTW Action RPG: Replay of something I played years ago, so it can't go any higher, but if it didn't break my own self-imposed rules it would be GOTY every year.

A Tower Full of Cats: More Devcats? More Devcats. See every other entry for them.

Shovel Knight: Really well put together platformer inspired by old 8-bit ones on stuff like the NES and clearly made by people with a deep love for and understanding of them.

Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk: This and the next one go together. They didn't completely win me over, but I'll give them points for managing to nether glamorize nor stigmatize trauma or psychosis and avoid having an ending that's either tragic or fixes everything. Not perfect, but they at least tried to do something interesting with it.

Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk: See above

Meet Her There: Does what it's trying to do pretty well even if the writing's a bit stiff. Content warnings on this one aren't messing around. Also it's funny how many people totally missed how full of gender it is.

Florence: Effective storytelling with almost zero text or dialogue, and they actually manage to do some clever things to tie the very minimalist gameplay into that to enhance it.

Boyfriend Dungeon post-launch content: I played the game itself right when it came out and had a good time with it, but it took me until pretty recently to go back and do the additional stuff added after it came out. I probably would've liked it more if I'd been able to do it all at once, but it was still enjoyable enough to be worthwhile.

Star Ocean: The Divine Force: Definitely an improvement over SO2R (which was great in the first half but kinda fell apart in what would've originally been disc 2). This one still stumbles a bit toward the end but holds it together a bit better. Enough characters I liked and satisfying enough combat/exploration to keep me going until the end, and the nyoom button might've been my favorite button to push all year.

Be My Horde: Or at least what of it is finished up until now. I like the idea of having your only resource being dead enemies you've killed and most abilities revolving around upgrades/enhancements of your resurrection ability. The voice acting is also surprisingly good/fun. Definitely has potential if future additions to it can build on its strengths, but we'll see how that goes.

Pesticide Not Required: Possibly the most unusual premise for a bullet heaven game I've played, crossing it with a farming sim. Somehow it actually works? Builds feel kinda samey after a while unfortunately, but it's cute enough and interesting enough seeing how farming/fishing/mining manages to work simultaneously with killing hundreds of bugs at once to be enjoyable for a bit.

Golf Club Nostalgia: I'm absolutely terrible at the actual gameplay (thank you story mode), but the story and worldbuilding told through the radio broadcasts were interesting enough and kept me going. Not subtle about its politics or who it's commenting on even though it doesn't name any names.

I commissioned some bees 0: Not really anything special on its own, but I'm a big fan of the idea of commissioning multiple artists to draw whatever they want as long as they can fit a hundred bees in it somewhere.

Point of Mew: Short enough that its cuteness and charm can carry it through to the end.

Locke(d): I appreciate that someone took a hypothetical scenario from an essay, interpreted it completely literally, and then used that setup to talk about the ideas of the essay.

The Great Voyage: Not nearly as good as their second game, Vengeful Heart (which will be further down the list), but you can see how they got from here to there and how some of that stuff was already here to begin with.

CATO: Buttered Cat: Some reasonably clever puzzles, and building your game mechanics off the idea of a cat with buttered toast strapped to its back is silly enough that I can't not like it.

The Knight Witch: It didn't quite win me over enough to finish it, but what I did play of it was pretty well put together and enjoyable enough.

Peglin: It has a pretty fun loop, and turning Peggle into a roguelike is a pretty neat idea that works surprisingly well. I could see myself going back to it for a few more runs now and then.

Words Can Kill: It has a pretty fun loop, and turning Scrabble into a roguelike is a pretty neat idea that works surprisingly well. I could see myself going back to it for a few more runs now and then.

Across-Stitch: The tweaks to the typical picross/nonograms rules are just enough to keep things interesting, and I probably would've spent even more time with it if it didn't have some unfortunate color palatte choices.

memories: Another little yuri VN, this time sad. I liked the way it tied different memories to different outfits, and it's reasonably well told for what it is. It desperately needs a way to adjust the text speed though.

Next but not quite last are the ones that exceeded my expectations in some way without necessarily being better than the ones in the previous category (although some are here because they were good). I could also just have gotten more out of them than I was led to think I would:

Seraphim Slum: A VN that isn't afraid to get weird with it, and by weird I don't mean rawrxdlolrandom, I mean surrealness and strange metaphors and corruption/destruction as a form of love. I can dig it.

9th Sentinel Sisters: Seems unfortunately abandoned at this point, but what they finished of it is a fairly enjoyable bullet heaven game with a bit of a different feel and aesthetic from what I'm used to seeing. Translation's pretty awful though.

20 Minutes Till Dawn: One of the better bullet heaven games I've played, with a great monochrome-plus-one-accent-color aesthetic (the character portraits are particularly good) and different builds that genuinely feel different to play. Play on anything but the Switch if you have the option though, because it has atrocious slowdown with certain builds (although it still remains remarkably stable even then).

DoraKone: More yuri fluff about four queer girls spending the summer playing the my OC do not steal version of Pokemon GO. It's cute, and I liked the way they managed to tie the developing friendships/relationships into playing the game together in a way that actually felt like it worked.

A Time Traveller's Guide to Past Delicacies: More surreal weirdness, but this time with sock puppets too. I'm still undecided on what it's trying to say, but I really enjoyed the way it said it, and it captures both the fun and the janky parts of 90s FMV games well.

Bayonetta 2: The main reason this counts as exceeding my expectations is that the first game was full of great ideas but felt really unpolished in a lot of ways, and I wasn't expecting something that's still an entire decade old to have really fixed all that. But they did for the most part, and all the potential from the original finally came together properly.

Vectronom: Aside from pure rhythm games, this might be the first thing I've played since 140 that integrates the music and gameplay as well as it does. Bonus points to whoever decided to include some stuff with odd time signatures and rhythms later in the game.

Vampire Survivors: Emergency Meeting and Operation Guns: I liked both of these as much as I disliked Ode to Castlevania. They're much more interesting than the previous DLC was and experiment a bit more mechanically, and the adventure mode does a great job of introducing all the new stuff and teaching you the new mechanics and maps.

Lies as a Starting Point: A good example of how this category isn't necessarily better than "worse" categories in my list. It's pretty decent and the three storylines come together in a satisfying way in the end, but the translation is awful. I still got more out of it than I thought I would though.

Before I Forget: Ironically for a story about memory problems I forgot a lot of it because of my own memory problems. This nearly ended up in the best category though, and I appreciated how they made the story about who the character is as a person instead of just what's wrong with her.

Mom Hid My Game!: This and the next two are basically three parts of the same game, which is the offspring of a point and click adventure and WarioWare. Pretty short with lots of little bite-sized puzzles and a silly sense of humor.

Mom Hid My Game! 2: see above

My Brother Ate My Pudding!: see above

Soulstone Survivors: Another of my favorite bullet heaven games I've played. The addition of an active dodge and a lot of layered interactions between abilities makes it a bit more involved to play, but in a good way if you're looking for that sort of thing.

Bio Prototype: Not my favorite to actually play and the UI isn't great, but you can do some absolutely wild things with what basically amounts to a programmable build system to DIY your own weapons with very few restrictions.

20 Small Mazes: A great example of something that takes a simple concept, explores it thoroughly, and then ends without wasting time or energy on anything unnecessary.

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe: As someone who's been playing the different variations on this since the original mod, this was a more effective story commenting on its own (re)telling and its own audience's expectations than FF7R was, at least for me.

Halls of Torment: What's this? Another of my favorite bullet heaven games? The standout for this one might be how so many of the achievements/unlocks are really well thought out to get you to approach playing the game in ways you might not have tried otherwise and are often little mini-puzzles themselves.

SeaBed: Very slow burn VN that ultimately pays off in the end even if I liked the journey a bit more than the destination.

Everything is going to be OK: On the surface it's very coping with adversity through absurdity, but if you keep digging it has more to say about trauma and depression and misogyny and the value of artists and so on.

Will The Man Get Frog: Cute little PICO-8 game/toy for creating haikus using an extremely limited set of randomly chosen words. Fun to mess around with to try to come up with anything remotely coherent.

The Indifferent Wonder of an Edible Place: Interactive poetry about being a willing participant in the destruction of history and trying to explain or justify it while also being aware of the sense of loss.

Luckily, My Arm Is a Shotgun: Nothing revolutionary, but it's surprisingly polished for something so small and cheap, and the titular shotgun is very satisfying.

a completely normal dating simulation that is definitely completely sweet, innnocent and normal: SOMETHINGETH ANIVERSARY EDITION: It feels like someone in high school in 2011 dumped their Tumblr into Ren'Py while also feeling like a flash animation from the 00s. I'm not sure the humor would hold up for me if I did all the different routes, but what I did play of it was the kind of thing I haven't seen in years.

And finally we have the ones I enjoyed the most or felt I got the most out of, not really in any particular order other than vaguely the order I finished them and added them to my list:

The Witcher 3: Absolutely my least favorite gameplay of anything anywhere near this high on the list, but the world and characters are so interesting and well developed that it more than makes up for it. I know they had an entire series of novels and short stories to draw on, but they've added so much more on their own, and it's only gotten bigger and better with each new game. They do a great job of making it feel like the world is much, much larger with a lot of stuff going on outside the small corner you're seeing at any given time.

Ghost Trick: It has a ridiculous premise and clever puzzles and a good sense of humor, but something else that particularly stands out about it is that despite the relatively simple art style it has some of the most fluid and expressive animations that give a ton of personality to everyone.

Vengeful Heart: Possibly my favorite retro aesthetic in anything I've played recently and definitely the best anyone's nailed the PC-98 look in a while, but even more than that the characters and story are great. They do a great job showing people from totally different backgrounds with totally different approaches working together against an oppressive power structure, and rather than everything working out perfectly there are definitely problems, but it still shows hope for overcoming them and a path toward the future.

Unicorn Overlord: Unlike Vanillaware's previous game the writing is only ok, but the art continues to be excellent, and it's easily their best iteration on their RTS ideas to date. I don't think the story will leave much of a lasting impression on me, but I had such a great time with the gameplay for the entire time I was playing that I don't mind.

OPUS: Echo of Starsong: Definitely kind of a slow burn that took me a bit to warm up to, but I really liked how things came together in the end as I got to know more about the characters and what was going on. It's also good at showing restraint though, not neatly wrapping everything up, and it left me with more to think about than when I started.

We Know the Devil: Another one that's good at hinting at and suggesting things without explicitly coming right out and directly telling you everything, and some scenes hit differently when replaying to see the other endings when you know enough to be able to read it as commenting on itself.

Jack Jeanne: A strong contender for my favorite thing I played this year. Definitely my favorite music/rhythm game, the best music in general, and the most gender. So many things in it can be read on multiple levels at once as being about the nature of art and performance, what gender even is, and how (or even if) to engage with an audience.

Visions of Mana: It's a shame the studio got shut down right when it released, because they definitely understood what made the old games in the series so much fun, and they finally made a new non-remake Mana game that's actually pretty great for the first time in over two decades.

1000xRESIST: I'm undecided on whether it's my favorite thing I played this past year, but it's definitely my favorite piece of media in general that came out in 2024. It's another one where everything works on like 17 levels simultaneously, like generational trauma, the nature of language and communication, the protests in Hong Kong, the experience of being an immigrant or a child of immigrants, both biological and found family, memory and what we choose to forget or to pass on, and like a dozen more things.

A Highland Song: If you're noticing that most stuff in this category is here because it has great writing/storytelling you're not wrong, and this one is no exception. The way what's going on is gradually revealed is satisfying, and the way it's structured across different paths keeps things interesting. It also does a great job of seamlessly blending realism and history with myth and legend, treating them all as equally meaningful and important to the people and world.

Ys X: Nordics: Sometimes you just need to go on a wacky adventure though, and Adol's shenanigans continue to be fun. The gameplay continues to feel tight and polished, and they also keep managing to have a large cast of interesting and likeable characters. It's just a good time.

I guess this time I'll only be tagging that last category because I played entirely too many games in 2024 and don't actually have enough tags for the top two categories like usual. There were some huge disappointments, but there were even more things that I didn't expect to like as much as I did, and there was a bunch of really great stuff in general.

[cupcakefoggy]

Ok, this drives me nuts.

I love Bridgerton. And I don't love all things Regency, so before you write me off as a romance-loving Austenite (which is ALSO a perfectly valid thing to be, thankyouverymuch) just hear me out on why this take is so damn annoying.

Ok. Cool. Now, you're entitled to your opinion that Bridgerton is too fluffy, too girly, and needs more "texture" (which, according to the article, should come in the form of labor, hardship, threatened financial ruin, the usual good stuff) but I want to impress upon you, firmly but politely, that if you're in the market for something gritty, you probably should turn off Bridgerton.

She compares Bridgerton to every prominent period show in this article, and consistently complains that it doesn't measure up. "Well it's not Downton Abbey!" No, no it isn't, and that's what we like about it. We aren't watching it to Learn Something. We're watching it because, for an hour or three at a time, it's really nice to forget that there's so much awful crap going on in the world, and just focus in on Penelope's up-and-down courtship with Colin or how damn cute Kate and Anthony are together.

But that isn't even the thing that bothers me the most about this article.

Why, in the year of our lord 2024, are we still perpetuating this "fluffy girly things are BRAIN CANDY" nonsense? Has Jane Austen truly taught us nothing? At the age of 12, back in the early aughts, my dad gave me a hard time for reading the Sweet Valley Twins books. He wanted me to read Pride and Prejudice, and aggressively shoved it under my nose until I finally agreed to take a look at it. I found it incomprehensible, looked it up online, and found to my immense pleasure that Jane Austen's literature was considered "popular" and "feminine" in its day -- not at all serious literature. I took my findings to my dad, who just about exploded and told me "that's not the point, it's a classic NOW, so shut up and read it."

Guys, I don't care if it was written in the 1600s or last week, pop culture is pop culture. It reflects its time. And more importantly, it shapes its time.

In the 1990s, Seinfeld aired the now-famous episode wherein the boys and Julia Louis-Dreyfus' character, Elaine, have a contest to see how long they can all go without masturbating. One of the men is out before the contest begins; of the remaining contestants, Elaine cracks first. This is now considered a bold statement, because in the 90s, women actually ENJOYING orgasms was taboo -- a concept they make sure to acknowledge within the episode itself, as the men insist women don't masturbate.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus later said of her time on Seinfeld, "We weren't trying to change the world, we were just trying to make something really funny. And that's really hard to do. And if you can do it, you CAN change the world a little bit."

Now, I don't watch Seinfeld. I hate it. I tried to watch a bit of it for Julia, bc I loved her so much in New Adventures of Old Christine, but I just couldn't get into it. but I saw the episode she's talking about, and it IS funny. Because they aren't up on a soapbox, they're just having fun, and she's a damn good comedic actress. So why am I bringing up Seinfeld in a conversation about Bridgerton? Because they're both fluff. No one is watching Seinfeld in an effort to solve the mysteries of the human condition or reflect on the nature of good and evil. It's just for fun. And so is Bridgerton.

And even if there was absolutely no value to Bridgerton besides being fun, it would still be "okay" to watch it. Because sometimes we just need fluff. But I don't think we really spend enough time thinking about just how much impact that "fluff" has on our culture.

I've seen people argue that Bridgerton DOES tackle occasional "serious" topics, and that's why it has value. I disagree. Bridgerton's value comes from the fact that it is FUN. It's easy to get into, it's easy to watch, no one is FORCING it on you, like my dad tried to do with P&P. And because it's fun, people -- YOUNG people -- are willingly watching it…

And they're seeing elderly women, women of color, and plus-size women being depicted as beautiful and desirable.

They're seeing a young, newly-married woman force herself on her husband and realizing that women also need to be taught about consent, and that a lack of sex education leads to damaged relationships.

They're seeing depictions of mental illness in the Queen Charlotte spinoff. They're seeing a man with a mental illness bare his soul to a woman he loves, and hearing her say, in no uncertain terms, that as damaged as he thinks he is, she loves him too. Unconditionally.

They're seeing queer representation in the Queen Charlotte spinoff, too. They're seeing racism and politics and medical abuse. They're seeing storylines that they'd never seek out on their own, and intentionally or not, they're learning from those stories.

Maybe it's optimistic to a fault, but I just can't stop wondering, how many young girls talked to each other about Daphne and Simon? How many plus-size women saw Penelope and Colin's sex scene and felt beautiful, felt seen, for the first time? How many people with mental illness saw Charlotte love King George and realized that they too are worthy of love? How many people heard Violet shyly tell Agatha that she misses having sex with her husband, and felt validated that, no, you don't turn 40 and stop being horny?

I sobbed my eyes out watching S3 the other night, because they captured the feeling of being unpopular and overweight so damn well. I saw my high school years reflected in Penelope's story and it broke my heart and gave me hope all at the same time. I love that they dress Violet and Agatha and Charlotte as richly as they do the younger, "hotter" leads. I love that Anthony Bridgerton goes down on Kate every fucking chance he gets. I love Bridgerton's message, however unintentional, that you don't have to be the classic Pretty Skinny Caucasian Starlet - you can be fat, old, BIPOC, disabled, outcast, anything, and still deserve and GET your happily-ever-after.

Shondaland is not trying to change the world. They're just trying to be fluffy and horny. And if they can do it, they can change the world just a little bit.

[fantomette22]

Little theory about Zelda Echoes of Wisdom timeline

Alright i figure I should do a quick lil post about it before the game release. Because i have some thoughts about where it could fit in the timeline? Actually i have a couple of possibilities i wanna share. With people questioning themselves with what we learn on the promotional materials, trailers, & japanese website + 1 image of the beginning of the game there's lot of speculations going in all direction.

Minor possible spoilers ahead (but besides map & screenshot from the website & trailer nothing much)

First nintendo somehow change the downfall timeline a bit and I just notice now WHAT IN HYLIA?!

Hyrule historia timeline (2011)

Tears of the kingdom masterworks (2024)

Did they just casually swap Link’s awakening with the Oracle series?? Why? How? I- I don't understand. Is it because of LA remake? A link with theh possible development of Echoes of Wisdom?🤔 (ahah get it?) (We’ll probably have to wait years to know were exactly it fit too now… i mean finger cross that Nintendo will reveal it in a few months…)

So now where does EOW would fit hm? I saw many speculations on it:

Same world/Link as ALTTP, LA, and the oracle series (soft reboot remake)

2. In between ALTTP and ALBW : but different Hyrule, different Link & Zelda

3. After ALBW, different Zelda & Link

4. Before ALTTP? Different Hyrule and Zelda but a Link we already know? (more of a crack theory of mine but hear me out later ok?!)

So one of the most logical take would be it's in the same world as ALLTP, LA etc. With the same Link Zelda etc

Could be after LA or Oracle or in between but in all cases after ALTTP. And that would be another adventure for this dear Link and Zelda! But there's a few things that people point out that didn't work : Like it's not exactly the same hyrule/map even if it's similar, there's Gerudo, Mojo, Gorons, Zoras etc, references to the goddess Hylia, to sheikah etc

Well yes it's a good point! But it could just be because it's kind of a soft reboot remake? In 1991 lot of things in more recent Zelda games just didn't exist. And I wouldn't mind a remake of ALTTP rebooted with lot of extra things. So ALTTP happened before that but not the way we know it probably.

Plus

It seems the map could still kinda fit apparently.

As for 2 & 3 options well that could be possible but there's a few things bothering me 🤔

Link seems like he's at full lvl, like he already save Hyrule and came back from an adventure. So which one? Would be weird if we never saw it before. I can’t refund the image but it’s in one of the last trailer : there’s a man on a building calling for help because he’s attack by a moblin. He ask if we’re Link to help him out. Another clue Link helped people around before.

(Plus ALTTP & ALBW Hyrule are to similars from something like this to be a different incarnation and in the middle. Same with after ALBW and between Zelda 1&2. Gerudo, Gorons etc fit more before than after ALBW when they all disappear afterwards.

Some people point out it couldn't be ALTTP Link because his hat have a green strip instead of yellow?

Well Link in Link's awakening remake have a green strip.

And actually he has 2 hats anyway now 😅 problem solve

Yes that's Link house in EOW it seems and there's a lil hat! With a yellow strip.

« But it’s not Link’s house from ALTTP » you’re right it’s in Southorn village. But in Alttp i think it was his uncle house right? Maybe he returned in his og village afterwards. Or it’s because of the reboot. Or you’re right it’s not the same…

Some other people point this out ^ too. That if Zelda don’t know Link they can’t be the same as in ALTTP right? (Well they did that in Oracle too apparently?) in TOTK many characters who are supposed to know Link have no idea but it’s the devs choice for new player so- could be for new players too. So no accurate in lore? and i mean Zelda here is trying to stay anonymous. (See the wanted posters all around hyrule for her). If she says she know Link and it’s her bestie she might get into trouble 😂 so who knows..

4. Ok here’s my crazy theory but i hope it’s not that. But if it happened hello?!

What if! What if- Link went to the past for real?! MINDBLOWN

Ok more seriously if it's indeed a different Hyrule, different Princess Zelda than in ALTTP/LA universe (even if well everything point at at LA sequel), maybe it could still be the same Link! The same than in LA remake. Who was send back in time (or the future)? (that would be why there's Gerudo, Mojo, Gorons etc). That would explain why Link is so OP, why he's helping everyone around and why he went directly to fight Ganon to save Zelda. But man the implications... that would be insane? And- how?! If it's really that I will blame the Wind fish. So wait in that case would that meant he could be the ancestor of alttp zelda if how is a few century before?! *faints* still think alba zelda being his descendant his more logical too... anyway-

Bonus

My 2 grain of salt theory on Tri is that if Link does have the triforce at the beginning of the game. Well his wish to protect hyrule/zelda could have summon Tri. But who knows.

In all cases the game is releasing soon! Cannot wait! And we might get seattle on all of this soon! Or not 💀 if the zelda team stays vague at usual… (Sahasrahla save us please! No seriously he would be a great indicator). I still think it might be a ALTTP/LA sequel (while being soft reboot but... well people did touch very interesting points... we'll see)

[whumpsmith-participates]

AI-less Whumptober 2024

Day 22 - Forced to watch, "Do not look away."

Tags/CW: child abuse, werewolves, team whump, lady whump (light), open ending

Being in charge is never easy.

You have to make tough decisions for the good of everyone you're responsible for. You want to protect the most vulnerable of the group, even if that is at the expense of your own life.

Which was exactly the position Evan (Frostbringer) and Cassie (Kinetica) found themselves in when their most vulnerable team member's abusive extended family showed up to haunt him.

Evan had gotten used to the howling. Having a lycanthrope as one of your sidekicks will do that to you. The distant howling from the wilderness beyond the city borders didn't bother him too much. Those could either be actual wolves or a pack of lycanthropes out hunting.

Harvey could usually tell who was howling, either ignoring them if he didn't recognise them, or heading out to howl back in response, before coming back in and telling everyone who would listen about which pack was near and how he knew them.

Working closely alongside a lycanthrope, also taught Evan a lot about different kinds of howls. He learned to tell Harvey's howling apart from any others, and was even beginning to learn whether he was calling out for him, or just responding to something Evan couldn't even hear.

Cassie was even better at it. Having been classmates with Harvey for longer than they had been sidekicks together. Not to mention the fact that she had been the team leader for longer than that Evan had been their mentor. She knew exactly what each sound, pose and facial expression meant, the baggage the boy carried, despite appearing so carefree and innocent on the surface.

Cassie had seen, firsthand, the damage that unethical experiments and the treatment of supers by secret organisations had done to Harvey. She knew why Harvey preferred to live life as a wolf when his emotions got too complicated, and she knew when to let him be, and when to encourage him to change back into his human form and try to participate with the rest of the group.

Evan...wasn't entirely there yet, but he was trying his best. He kept in contact with the boy's mother, and took mental notes whenever Cassie explained some of Harvey's behaviour. He indulged the boy when he needed it, but he also knew when to tell him to knock it off and face life.

All in all, Evan and Cassie felt like they were doing a pretty good job. Harvey was thriving, and eager to help out — especially when his expertise was needed. He loved working closely alongside the police, using his heightened sense of smell to sniff out missing people, or even dangerous perpetrators. Or, he used his innate knowledge of nature to identify mysterious incidents as something supernatural, or simply wildlife shenanigans.

They had been on their way back from one of such cases, where the police was unsure whether a hiker had died from unfortunate circumstances or genuine foul play by his hiking partner. Harvey had sniffed around the scene a bit, before changing back to human shape and confirming that the hiking partner was indeed innocent, and the deceased hiker had indeed just taken a very bad accidental tumble.

The police had offered them a ride back to the city, but Evan declined, deciding to hike back as a reward for Harvey, who loved to frolic alongside the path, running ahead, jumping in puddles, and running back to show them a bug he had picked up.

"I know I shouldn't say it, but it's like having a very vocal dog sometimes with Harvey around," Evan commented after Cassie sent Harvey off to put one of his bugs somewhere safe.

"I know what you mean," Cassie said, "I can't help but to be a little worried about how immature he can be sometimes, though."

"Honestly? It breaks my heart a little," Evan said, "Erica—his mom—explained he's stuck in a childish state because it allows him to ignore the hardships of the real world. It's how he responds to past trauma."

"I-I know," Cassie said, "it breaks my heart too...when he starts talking about aliens I just wanna scoop him up and hug him to bits."

"You should hear his theories on unicorns," Evan said.

"Oh I have," Cassie said, "he covered unicorns for a biology assignment. It was...painful to watch. It got him in trouble with his family, and child protective services got involved...I still feel like I should've known something was up."

Before Evan could think of the right words to encourage her, they could hear a haunting, deep howl, coming from somewhere really close, but both Evan and Cassie could tell that it wasn't Harvey. They exchanged a glance with each other, before sprinting in the direction that Harvey had gone off to.

Fortunately, Harvey seemed unharmed, but he also seemed terrified. His face was as white as a sheet, his eyes wide and teary, and his hands covered his ears as he cowered by a sturdy tree.

"H-Harvey?" Cassie gasped, stepping forward to comfort him, while Evan noticed a rustle in the leaves behind another tree.

Without hesitation, he conjured up an ice wall, just in time to protect Cassie from the large wolf that jumped out from behind the tree, crashing against the ice with a pained yelp.

"Heh, bad doggy," Evan said smugly, before promptly being pounced from the other side.

"Evan!" Cassie shrieked, picking up a large branch from the ground and taking a swing at the second wolf.

The hit didn't do a whole lot of damage, but it did cause the wolf to let go of Evan's arm and turn towards Cassie instead. Growling threateningly while licking Evan's blood off of his snout.

"U-uncle Edrian, no!" Harvey pleaded, causing all kinds of alarm bells going off within Cassie.

She never had the displeasure of meeting any of Harvey's uncles, since they were supposed to be in jail for what they did to Harvey. So why was one—or maybe even two of them here?

"H-Harvey...run," Cassie said.

"B-but—"

"I'll hold them off, you get out of here and call for help. Now! Go!"

With a sob, Harvey scrambled to his feet and sprinted off. The wolf that attacked Evan stopped growling, only so he could howl, probably alerting the rest of their pack that their prey was getting away. Cassie cursed under her breath, not sure how to stop the wolf since the branch didn't seem to do a whole lot. To make matters worse, the first wolf then rounded the corner around the ice wall, blocking her only escape route.

Not that she would've run while Evan was quite clearly badly injured, the blood from the bite wound in his arm beginning to mix with the mud. Yet, despite the pain and blood loss, he still grew an icicle in his good hand, ready to impale either of the two wolves if either of them would dare to attack Cassie as well.

However, it seemed that the wound on his arm was worse than he thought, as his vision was already beginning to blur, and the icicle slipped from his hand and broke. Next thing he knew, Cassie shrieked as she was jumped next. Going for her leg, rather than her arms, biting down in it harshly and beginning to drag her away.

"Evan!!"

Evan could hear the fear in her voice, and it physically hurt that he wasn't able to help her. Instead, he used his last strength to freeze his wounded arm, before passing out from sheer exhaustion...

When Evan regained consciousness, he was...definitely somewhere else. The wall of ice he created was gone, and the forest seemed denser. A large paw, belonging to something heavy, was resting on his back, pinning him to the ground.

Right next to him was Cassie, arms twisted behind her back and held tightly by a man who vaguely looked like an older version of Harvey. The bruises and scratches dotting his skin showed that Cassie hadn't gone down without a fight, and the glare on Cassie's face also showed that she wasn't done fighting yet either.

But she was at a disadvantage now. With Evan injured and only half-conscious, being pinned down by an oversized wolf with really bad breath. Evan nearly gagged, but his discomfort soon disappeared into unimportance when he heard a familiar pained cry.

With great effort, Evan tiredly lifted his head, looking in the same direction as what Cassie was glaring at. Before them, in a clearing, stood another man looking similar to the man holding Cassie. Except this man, was holding Harvey, pinching the back of his neck painfully, and barking at him to shut up when he expressed any sort of pained sound, or hopeless sob.

"I told you to shut up, Harvey!" he barked, cruelly shaking the boy.

"He's only gonna cry harder if you keep doing that, Ephraim," the man holding Cassie pointed out.

"Nobody asked, Emile!"

The wolf pinning Evan down sounded like it was laughing, and Evan vaguely recalled Harvey referring to him as Edrian. Just when Evan was getting the urge to tell him to shut up, Edrian promptly quieted down as a fourth man stepped into the clearing.

He was notably older than the other three, his hair a dark grey rather than blonde, and matted. Cassie noticed how the younger three men averted their gazes, not looking him directly in the eye. Meanwhile Harvey seemed even more terrified than he already was, ceasing his struggles against his uncle's grip as he froze.

"P-please..." he whispered hoarsely, "P-Pawpaw...p-please..."

"So you haven't forgotten about me?" the older man asked, "I was beginning to think you had; letting me rot in jail after I tool you in when nobody else wanted you—"

"LIAR!" Cassie quickly shouted, "Harvey, your grandfather is lying—"

Emile cut her off as he covered her mouth with his hand. Evan wanted nothing more than to knock him off of her, but honestly he needed all his strength to stop himself from passing out again. At least he knew who the older man was now: Harvey's abusive grandfather, Joe Silvetti.

"Don't listen to that human," Joe said condescendingly, "your Pawpaw would never lie to you, Harvey."

"...b-but you did," Harvey whimpered, "m-mom and dad came to rescue me. W-we live in New York now."

"If she wants you so badly, why does she let you roam around with this sad excuse for a human?" Joe asked, gesturing at Evan. "So far away that she can't even protect you herself?"

"B-because...b-because..."

Evan could tell that Harvey was beginning to shut down, overwhelmed by his current fear and bad memories bubbling to the surface. He wanted to give Joe a piece of his mind, but whatever strength he could muster was quite literally squashed as Edrian started putting more weight onto his back, nearly suffocating him and preventing him from speaking up at all.

Cassie tried to pull her head out of Emile's grip, but he just growled at her in warning and refused to let her succeed. Harvey glanced at her and Evan briefly, to which he was immediately rewarded with a harsh smack across his face.

"Don't look at them!" Joe growled, before grabbing Harvey's jaw and forcing him to maintain eye-contact. "Because you're family, I'll give you one last chance to re-join the pack. But we have to punish you for the harm you did. We lost our home, you know? And my other darling grandchildren...Ephraim and his wife lost custody. We don't even know where they are."

"I-I'm sorry..." Harvey whined, "b-but I don't wanna—"

"Heh, the runt thinks he has a choice~" Ephraim said, though he quickly quieted down again as Joe glared at him.

"You know better than to speak out of turn, son," he growled, before looking back at Harvey, "he isn't even correct. You do have a choice, Harvey. You can choose to take your punishment and join us, and we'll let your favourite human live. Or you can decline, and we'll just kill all three of you. Do you understand, Harvey?"

Harvey could only whine quietly in response. Cassie picked up her struggle again, probably trying really hard to cuss out the old man. The trickery wasn't lost on Evan either. He just knew Joe used the singular 'human' as a way to torment Harvey even further after this punishment he had in mind.

Harvey didn't seem to have noticed, though. He was visibly shaking, tears rolling freely down his cheeks as he felt like he absolutely had no choice if he wanted to spare his friends. He resisted the urge to look at them again, choking out a few sobs, before giving the tiniest nod.

"I....I-I'll come back..."

"Good boy, Harvey," Joe praised, letting go of his jaw to pat the boy on his head, "how about we get the unpleasantries over with right away, huh?"

Again, Harvey only managed a whimper in reply, his grandfather grinning sinisterly as he stepped back, while behind him his uncle began to change, biting down in the boy's shoulder as soon as his canines had grown large enough to do plenty of damage.

Harvey let out a sound that was halfway between a yowl and a scream as his uncle maimed him. Cassie shrieked and sobbed into Emile's hand as she was forced to watch Harvey get hurt, while Edrian finally changed back into his human form, his knee pressing even more painfully on Evan's back than his paw, and his hand gripping painfully on his hair as he forced him to lift his head up.

"Don't look away~" he whispered gleefully, "Do you really think father will let either of the humans live, Emile?"

"...hush," Emile just said, seeming to be the least sadistic out of the three, even allowing Cassie to squeeze her eyes shut as the scene before them grew more and more horrific.

Evan couldn't look away. Not just because Edrian was forcing him, but because he felt it wouldn't be fair on Harvey to look away. Even when it made his stomach turn around as he watched how the two grown werewolves mercilessly attacked the younger, smaller werewolf.

Harvey didn't seem to be making any attempt at defending himself, other than to turn into his wolf form so he would be less fragile as his uncle and grandfather ruthlessly bit and clawed into his skin.

Evan wanted to yell at them to stop, but his vision was beginning to swim. The three wolves slowly blurring into one shapeless mass of teeth and claws, growling and yelping and yowling.

"H....Har....vey....."

He wanted to tell him how sorry he was. He wanted to apologise for failing to protect him. But he wasn't sure he even managed to say anything as he slowly passed out again...

@ailesswhumptober

Evan (Frosty) belongs to @illustriousshadow Cassie (Kinetica) belongs to @dr-abitat-blog

Masterlist Main account

Is this the end for the three of them? Do they manage to fight their way out? Or are they rescued last-minute? Anything is possible!

[marshmallowprotection]

Mystictober Day 14

Mystictober 2024 | Day 14: OST/Headcanon

"Have you ever thought about learning how to play an instrument before, Saeran?"

"I haven't, actually," Saeran glanced over his shoulder as he continued to wipe down the dishes. "I didn't have much time to get into music in Mint Eye. I will admit I looked at some of the things Zen did to help me... but I didn't always understand what I was interacting with. I think his type of music is different than what your type of music is. I've noticed there's many different kinds but figuring them out is hard without the right label."

Oh.

That made sense when you sat down and thought about it. Ray had told you that he only looked into things that would A) bring you to his place and B) help him make a list of things to better understand all of the RFA members. If it didn't go on that list, he didn't bother trying to learn about it. He didn't have time to do anything else when he was in the process of bringing you there.

And, Saeran... well, he'd been so caught in trying to play the strong guy to survive. He didn't have time to look into anything, either. The two of them had no reason to look into popular music. That left your Saeran with no insight into music outside of whatever Zen did! That was musical theater, too, which was its own genre. He hadn't heard music from a band or an idol before! A symphony, sure, but outside of that?

He had nothing to go by.

You did not doubt that people would stare at him if he were to confess something like that in public. Many people thought it was weird when someone didn't have the same experiences as them, but that wasn’t fair. No life experience can be one size fits all, but you never wanted anyone to make him feel like he missed out on something he could never get back.

His life was ahead of him and he could do anything he wanted to do. 

"Why do you ask, my love?"

"Oh, well, I learned how to play an instrument back when I was in high school," you explained, pulling up an old photo on your phone to show him. "I've been wanting to get back into it now that I've got free time again, but I think I want to try something new. I thought... I don't know... maybe if you were interested in learning, we could learn how to play together."

His eyes seemed to be trained on the image of you were you were younger. You looked a little silly in your band uniform, but it was one of the happiest times of your life. It took a lot of hard work to practice and come together with everyone else in the band. In the end, it was worth it, and even though you couldn't go back to that time, you wanted to recreate that feeling of learning something new all over again. 

"I'll do it," he said.

"Just like that?"

"I want to see your eyes light up like they did in that picture in person, my love. I'm always ready to learn something new about myself and the world, but sharing this experience with you makes it all the sweeter."

[mysticsparklewings]

Obscutober 2024 Day 4: Apricate ☀️

----------

Apricate (v.)

to bask in the sun; to expose to sunlight

----------

Hope you’re all feeling as good as a cat sleeping in the window on this 4th day of Inktober 😉

I’m not really because it’s a traveling day & those wear me out, but hey could be worse! 🤷‍♀️

Click the "Keep Reading" and we'll talk more about my thoughts/process for this piece ✨

(Apologizes in advance for any formatting issues; I wasn’t able to draft the Tumblr post before we got on the road and I am so not used to doing this on mobile. 😅)

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

----------

I apologize for the lack of my normal description today, Sparklers. As I mentioned yesterday, I've got on my plate today and I just don't have the time to get into the details right now! I'll see if I can come back in the evening and flesh things out more, but for now I'll leave you with just some bullet point thoughts:

My primary inspiration was kitty cats basking in "puddles" of sunshine they find on the floor, or sitting in sunny windows, etc. Hence the cat-window-silhouette thing happen as sort of the main focus of the mandala.

I also thought of sunflowers, and coincidentally sunflowers are non-toxic to cats, so it would be acceptable for a kitty to sit in a patch of sunflowers while both flowers and feline face the sun.

More obscurely, to help fill space and add contrast, I thought of these things.

I tried to go for a little bit of an effect with the background like the sun is actually shining through the windows, but I'm not sure I pulled it off correctly.

I was 95% done with this piece when I realize it looked much more washed out on screens that were not my iPad, so I had to back track a bit and try to fix it. Now I think it looks too dark with how low I keep the brightness on a lot of my device screens, but I think a lot of people keep their screens brighter than I do by default (at least during the day) so I'm sticking with it.

I'm still not really happy with the "red" for the curtains. I was going for a kind of desaturated dark coral, but it kept coming out either too pink or too dark. Ultimately I settled for too dark because it went better with the sun-through-windows idea, where the curtains would be more shadowed anyway.

White might have been the more natural choice for the lines, but then you probably couldn't see the cat silhouette and I could not be bothered going back and changing it to outlines. [And it looked kinda weird as outlines when I first started drawing it, which is largely why I ended up filling it in the first place.

----------

See the Prompt List

Artwork © me, MysticSparklewings

Obscutober Concept Inspired by nikolas_tower

----------

⭐️ Like My Art and Want to see more of it? Here's All My Links! ⭐️

[cipheramnesia]

Stung (2024) is kind of a throwback to Spielberg horror which was going off in the 80s, every director wanted to be the next Spielberg and you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a movie about a weird little kid with a charmingly dysfunctional family whose encounter with a surprisingly well realized horror element first causes them to fall apart under pressure before growing more closely knit and surviving. Plus also usually some of the most deeply uncomfortable racist stereotyping you've ever seen, like even in the 80s you'd at a minimum be like "this feels weird right now" and then they age like a forgotten tupperware in the back of the fridge. You look at em and think well this is better than I expected it, then those two minutes of wildly unnecessary racism come swinging through and you recoil, tupperware open, close it up immediately and throw the whole thing away.

Which sucks because most of the time the racism part wasn't even in a part of the movie that needed to be there - like it goes unnecessarily out of the way to add a character just to make it racist. Anyway. So Stung has got a weird little girl who loves bugs, a stepfather figure trying to be a dad, mom trying to support the family and they're all in the same apartment building every 80s sequel ever took place in. Pretty much chock full of great fun with an alien spider growing at an exponential rate, killing every human and animal it can find. Plus this absolutely hair raisingly cringeworthy black character who, through the magic of in media res gets to Black Guy Dies First twice, and it feels like everything about him was written by a predictive algorithm whose only data set was the phrase "Aw hell naw!" And he could have been fully edited out which would have been better than what we got.

The thing is, there are actually plenty of movies like this which just don't have the "Why would you even write that" racism scene. And the other thing is, as I've mentioned often, at this point everyone should know better. Everyone does know better, which means enough people were lazy or hacky enough to let that slip, you can safely not bother.

[kevin--of-desert-bluffs]

Writetober/Jotober 2024

Hiya! I’ll be drabbling a short bit of WTNV fanfic based on the Inktober prompts but turning them into writetober/jotober things instead! Block #writetober and #jotober if you don’t wanna see them!

Personal rules:

No less than 500 words featuring the prompt word or eluding to it. No more than 1000 words. Just write what comes to me and don’t go back and edit. Day 7: Passport Character focus: Martin McCaffry

It was funny how life took you round in circles so often, Martin thought. He thought this as he literally watched luggage going around and around, unclaimed. Night Vale airport was not busy, yet nobody claimed the suitcase. It couldn't possibly belong to anyone here anyway. There were always more departure's than arrivals. When he had worked at the Randy Newman Memorial Airport he had only ever investigated the goings and bewildered comings back of Night Vale residents.

The planes always departed, few arrived, and yet the citizens who tried to leave almost always ended up back at the airport. Almost always. Martin scratches his arm. He always got itchy when he thought too hard about how the airport and planes in general actually worked. That's why he'd quit.

No, that's not right, is it? He'd quit because of the dark elongated figures which haunted his every waking hour. They were here with him now too. Why had he come back then?

Martin had entertained the thought of trying to leave Night Vale himself. Maybe it would let him go since he'd worked so close to the giant flying metallic beasts for so long. It was almost time for his flight now. He'd happily, or more accurately neutrally but with understanding, gone through all of the state-of-the-art security measures. The metal detectors, full-body scanners and the lengthy pitch black tunnel that travelers must crawl through while a recording of a monotone male voice lists possible ways of dying. He hadn't even been bothered by the voice of a small child plays through strategically placed ceiling grates asking travelers to name every person they have ever kissed. He'd listed all five and also his wishes that five could become six one day.

What was stopping him then? This could be his way out. Not just out of Night Vale but away from the figures themselves. He was trying to concentrate just on that long suitcase but they were so close and so tall he could still see them out of the corners of his eyes.

He was about to turn and board the plane when he had a terrible thought; "What if they aren't confined to Night Vale? What if they follow me onto the plane and wherever else I go?"

Martin felt his nerves give in and he headed back out the way he had come. His own luggage had been checked. He would come back for it later. Now he just needed air and a new way out of his situation.

There at the entrance were two smiling people. They were ex-citizens of the former Desert Bluffs. It was obvious that they were by their blood stained clothing and smiles that extended past the eyes showing way too many teeth. As all Night Valeians did, Martin ignored them, until they put a pamphlet into his peripherals.

Suddenly all the dark elongated figures pulled away. Martin, seeing this as a sign, took the pamplet and looked at the two smiling people. They did a motion in the air, a kind of circling with the fist thing. The figures retreated further away from them.

Martin gave a curt nod and that kind of smile you do when you're not really trying to be happy more you're just acknowledging someone or something. You know the one. White people do it a lot? Yeah that one.

He hurried around the corner before he took a closer look at the pamphlet. The Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God. Could this be it? Could this be his ticket and passport to something better, something without the figures? Well…there was only one way to find out. Martin got into his car and started to drive.

[aciddaffodil]

Summer 2024- What I Dropped

Wistoria : Wand and Sword

I was so here for this anime; the animation is stellar and magic society interesting. A very simple concept of MC wanting to be with his childhood friend but doesn't have a lick of magic. Cool- until there's no likeable characters and it just feels like its showing off flashy sakuga fight scenes. Not to mention the fucking fantasy racism with the dwarves which is just...gross? Who knows, I may binge the rest of it once its fully out? I definitely want to try watching it again.

No Longer Allowed to Live in This World

A Dazai-like Sensei character does not successfully die by double suicide with his beloved and is reincarnated into a fantasy world. He constantly uses his power of negativity and absorbing sleeping pills/poisons as his ability against monsters. Everyone fawns over him, and he can offer some good advice...on occasion. I just didn't see the point to keep watching it and dropped it after 5 episodes.

Failure Frame

The Isekai(?) Overpowered MC who is dark and edgy and wants to cause ruin upon the Goddess who brought him to this fantasy world, and most of his classmates who abandoned him to die as a "low" ranker with skills that cause harm. What bothered me most was 1) the 3D CG shots just don't blend and make all the monsters look awful and its BLAUGH and 2) having to hear about men npc's wanting to rape a female npc character just is annoying and gross.

Plus-Sized Elf

I think the only thing noteworthy is all the workout advice in it- of which I won't retain anything of it and the plus-sized fanservice exists. I personally just didn't want to waste my time with it anymore even though the episodes are short.

2.5-Dimensional Seduction

It was a cute nerdy experience of them first meeting but honestly, I did not vibe with this show. I'm sure this show is enjoyable, as people have compared it to Dress Up Darling and like it.

The Ossan Newbie Adventurer, Trained to Death by the Most Powerful Party, Became Invincible

I gave this like 5 episodes? But finding out the dude is actually super over-powered and not just trained to death...was disappointing. For a trashy fantasy series, it was pretty good and fun to watch. I just have a habit of rage quitting if something frustrates me or if you listen to how cheesy and horrendous this opening is, that will do it as well lmao. Rick and Raenette's friendship is really sweet. I think him having the same dream as these S-tier adventurers is cool and I do hope they achieve their goals by the end of the series.

Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World?

I attempted to watch this 3 times, but it kept putting me to sleep so I dropped it.

Narenare Cheer for You

The only P.A. Works anime I've ever dropped. It was because of how irritating the line art is in color and how ALL the outlines of literally everything is in color. And when it comes to specific scenes, it gets muddled and that's why I couldn't stomach it past 2 episodes. I'm sure it's a cute cheerleading anime but the style of it was awful to me personally. WHY CAN"T THERE BE CRISP OUTLINES WHYYYYYYY.

Tasuketsu- Fate of the Majority

Ah yes, death games premise and where deaths aren't permanent cause you can ask a question and have loopholes which take away from the emotional impacts some character deaths have. I.e., the protagonist's best friend who came to life again with no reasoning behind it. The rules are so dumb but the power system interesting, I just didn't care to keep watching.

____________________________________________________________

It is frankly terrifying how much anime I'm keeping up with this season...my count is at 26 and even the most mediocre I have brainwashed myself to not give up on cause they all have some sort of redeeming factor. CURSES.

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

The great regular sleep experiment of 2024 part "REM"

Again I get into bed by 10 or 10:10 ish and an undoubtedly asleep by 10:30... again I sleep, wake briefly, sleep again and wake to find it is 1:44 or 1:45...

Again I lay in bed 2 extra hours trying to sleep before giving up to go pee and feed my cat, alert as can be. Tired, but so so alert.

Again I have had dreams of being back in circumstances involving ex's ex friends and old roommates... This time I am trying to tell someone, "No really, the skinny corset style top isn't mine, it is too small, my rib-cage alone would break it and I don't wear girly things with pink print all over them, it has to be Fine's. IDC if it's black or if you think it would 'suit me'..."

And why? Because men in my life, friends or otherwise were always doing that. They'd find a "girl clothes" in their/the house that's about 2-5X girlier than my gay ass would ever wear, and insist on repeat that it "MUST" be mine, that I am just not remembering and getting defensive, sometimes accompanied with comments of thinking it would look good on me or wanting to see me in it... Always until some other "woman" [because they would not acknowledge my masculinity, other women are women, i'm just a gay] would come forward and be like "Yeah, no I left that here."

And always always always it was someone who should have known me better than that. Someone who could have only missed what I generally wore if they hadn't bothered really looking at me for years at a time in close proximity. And often either my partner, or someone who seriously had no business picturing me in ANY clothes/outfits [like being 20 years older than me]. Very often they would have me confused with another 'girl' with dark hair, even when they are dating me. There is an insult inherent to this.

And now I have to fuckign DREAM that? Bullshit.

Who did I piss off?

But I guess my point is, it's becoming clear that I have been sleeping like this all along, but usually strung together on one end of the day instead of spaced out, so I couldn't really tell that when I am sleeping 8 hours I might only actually be getting half that many REM cycles.

Because either:

-I am having REM cycles faster than most people which means I am getting two in 3 ish hours of sleep, which explains waking in the middle and having dreams on both sides of that [8 hour equivalent in terms of raw REM cycles]

-I am only having one rem cycle per sleep, interrupted, which means currently having 2 per day [4 hour sleep equivalent to most people]

And if you have recommendations for affordable home equipment to measure that I am all ears, because I wouldn't survive going to a sleep clinic.

Every trick I have ever used to combat insomnia is failing me. Self hypnosis, meditations, other things you do before bed that knock people out cold sometimes... Any medication that's made me sleepy before, all of it, none of it.

And I just get to wake up vaguely annoyed I am wasting my precious vivid dreaming time talking to people I removed from my personal space for a reason, and other generic dream actors.

And the night sleep, well that's the one that butts up against the nope-time, 5-10 am... but the day sleep, I have tried to encourage the day sleep to extend itself with no luck either.

If I stopped sleeping at night, I might get the two sleeps crammed back together, but then it's exactly what I don't want, sleeping all day, and also -by virtue of it being regularly scheduled sleep- I won't be sleeping any longer than I am now.

I always liked a half day schedule. I liked it in theory and in the moments I could hold onto it in practice. It solves a LOT of my problems including waking up halfway through the night and not being able to sleep again, and it being too hard to force myself awake all the way till my next sleep time, that's only half a day away at most now.

I just... I need more than 8 hours of sleep, and I am getting 6 on a good day.

And that brings me to the next point... I am pretty sure the conflict is this:

-I have a delayed sleep phase disorder that sometimes looks like a non-24 hour sleep disorder because of how it keeps pushing my bedtime back when I sleep at night [I am a 'night person']

-I am a "super sleeper" in that I have the genes to have shorter sleep cycles or for my body to think it needs one fewer to be alert

-I also have chronic fatigue and require extra rest/sleep regardless, maybe specifically sleep to help with healing and converting adenosine, and this is incompatible with also having the genes of a "super sleeper"

-I am one of those people hardwired to "two sleeps" as was once more fashionable, and this doesn't stack well with everything else or with the societal expectation that I should sleep 8 hours in one block and only at night.

-My most natural time to fall asleep is right after sunrise and that is the ONE time it is most safe for me to run errands now, due to 'infectious dose' [or the dose of virus I -personally- react to, short of infection] vs 'viral load' [virus levels that build up in the air in buildings through the day] and the fucking perpetual plague, so it is the one time I need to be habituated to being alert enough to go out. First thing at opening, after walking there.

In a world without the plague I could probably sleep from midnight to whenever and only have to deal with SOME of the... Byproducts~ of a regular sleep schedule, a lot of people don't expect you to be an early morning person when you are disabled.

Anyway I am just going to start biting people now. [In dreams? who can say! It worked on the sleep paralysis demons didn't it?]

Love that I decided to do this to myself just to make SUPER SURE that regular sleep wouldn't solve my problems...

At least I am not hallucinating or having night terrors, sleep paralysis etc.