#yes its a fan game but this is my first actual attempt of playing this series in a way that isnt like

[raredrop]

coughing up blood

[teeny-tiny-revenge]

It's home cinema manufacturing time! 🏴‍☠️ Gonna put my pirate show on my shelf! (I'm doing an Arts and Crafts Project and I'm making it everyone's problem.)

After seeing how much they cost, I abandoned the idea of getting a Blu-ray writer for now. For the time being, good old DVDs is what it's going to be! My TV is old and not very big, so DVD resolution is gonna be fine.

It's been ages since I last burned a DVD. For the full experience, I'm gonna create nice menus and pretty sleeves for the boxes. Graphic design is my passion! Um.

Well. First needed to find a program to do stuff with. I'm a Linux guy, so I'm using Devede. (Which is free, btw. In case someone else wants to do a low cost spot of putting pirate show on the shelf.)

DVDs fit a maximum of 120 minutes of video. So, four episodes, I thought. But after a quick attempt, the program refused to do more than three (maybe because of the menu also taking up space, and four episodes cutting pretty close to the 120 min mark?). Anyway, three episodes per disc it is. It's a pretty nice runtime for watching the entire disc, IMO. An hour and a half, and then you can return to reality to realise you should probably eat something, or go to bed because it's midnight.

OFMD with its current two seasons has a total of eighteen episodes, which is divisible by three. You get the following setup:

Disc 1: Pilot, A Damned Man, The Gentleman Pirate - That's pretty good, Stede's introduction to piracy all on one disc!

Disc 2: Discomfort in a Married State, The Best Revenge is Dressing Well, The Art of Fuckery - All bangers. Great to watch together, our boys meet and shenanigans happen!

Disc 3: This is Happening, We Gull Way Back, Act of Grace - Many romantic moments, lots of great scenes, shit hits the fan at the end there. Alright!

Disc 4: Wherever you go, there you are, Impossible Birds, Red Flags - ... Pain and angst! What have I done!?! The disc of horrors. Gotta make sure to have tissues at hand when I watch this. But hey, it also has messy bun Ed! Small mercies.

Disc 5: The Innkeeper, Fun and Games, The Curse of the Seafaring Life. - Another disc with all winners. I love all these episodes so much! (You can watch this disc to recover from the trauma of the previous one!) But seriously, this one slaps.

Disc 6: Calypso's Birthday, Man on Fire, Mermen - Great combination again. Season finale! Love and excitement!

... Honestly, except for the psychological damage of putting all the most painful episodes together, this is coming out pretty cool. Says a lot about how good the show is. I actually really love all the episodes (yes even the painful angsty episodes of massive depression). Thinking about this little project really reminded me how much I love this entire show.

So, we got a tracklist, now menus, then we can burn this stuff!

I did the menu backgrounds in GIMP. Realised I have a big folder full of screenshots I took myself, screenshots someone else took and posted on Tumblr, official promo pics for the show, and I have no idea anymore where most of them are from, because I named the files according to what's on them. Which is useful for when you want to find pics (Need a picture of cursed suit Stede? I have files named that, easy peasy!), but not so great if you wanted to give credit to whoever took a given pic you used. (It's probably @sherlockig or @ofmd-ann or @blakbonnet. Please feel credited, your beautiful screens and gifs brighten my day, and some of them are now probably part of my DVD menus. Shrunk down and cropped, but, yeah.)

I originally wanted to structure my menus as having the title of an episode, then some pics from it, then the next episode, then pics from that, and so forth, but I couldn't convince the program to give me the necessary padding between the menu items, so I ended up just putting the episode images below the menu. Still like it.

Anyway, DVD menus can also play sound! Behold a crappy video of my beautiful creation (provided entirely for sound):

It plays Gnossienne N°5!

More crappy pics of my other disc menus:

Gonna make them some nice sleeves next. Some day. Gotta make sure they all work properly first. So. I'll be on my sofa, watching my DVDs. With menus! (Edit: here are!)

[luvrrgirl444]

chapter 20: girlboss and malewife

TWITTER, IRL!

“hi, my stars!” you said after you started the stream. you enjoyed streaming. you liked live interacting with your fans and how it was void of any editing.

“how are you guys?” you asked, looking at the chat.

rorymp4: better now that youre streaming

“aw, im flattered.”

xogopissgirl: UR SO PRETTY

“so are you, beautiful!”

slvtforconnie: GOOD WBY

“i’m great, thanks!”

flowergrrl: girl stop w the ‘special guest’ we know its eren 😒

you bit your lip to hide your smile, before jokingly rolling your eyes. “can y’all at least pretend to not know who it is?”

slvtforconnie: IS IT CONNIE???

peterparkersgf: dumb bitch she would not call connie a special guest

stupidvbtch: ITS EREN ISNT IT????

“as you all know, i have a special guest today. a lot of you already know who it is.” you rolled your eyes. “introducing the one and only, photography guy!”

eren let out an airy chuckle and sighed. “oh god, do not call me that. but, hello everybody. i was forced to be here.”

“yeah, he’s actually my hostage. you can’t see it, but his arms are handcuffed to the chair so he can’t leave.”

eren mouthed “help me.” to the camera, making you laugh.

“anyways. today we’re gonna play roblox, because this man has never played before. can you believe that?”

cartisimp77: who the fuck has never played roblox before

“literally what i said.”

“okay, chat what should we play first?”

sailormoonz: PLAY DA HOOD

user50: YES PLAY DA HOOD

“they’re saying da hood. you wanna play?”

“i have no idea what that is but yes.”

rorymp4: bro erens gonna get his ass killed

you laughed, putting your hand up to cover your smile.

eren looked over at you with suspicion. “what are they saying? why are you laughing?”

you pointed to the screen that was filled with the live comments from your viewers, making him look over.

user101: stop he’s so hot

slvtforconnie: might have to change my username bc omg..

peterparkersgf: YN GIRL U WON

user03: i want him to **** me until i *** all over his ****

“i want him to.. blank.. me until i ..blank.. all over his ..blank..” eren read out, his eyes slowly widening.

“wow, um. i will not be doing that, unfortunately , but um. i’m flattered?” he looked over at you.

“why are they all just like you?”

🫧

you were now both in a da hood server, immediately being greeted with the sounds of gunshots.

“i thought this was a kids game. what’s going on?”

he walked around and found people fighting and shooting.

“what the fuck is happening?” he shouted.

“eren, where the fuck are you?”

“i don’t know! there’s a literal brawl going on, what the fuck?” he tried to run away, before someone hit him with a knife.

“im being assaulted, y/n where are you?”

you looked at his screen before laughing at the sight. “i’m coming, calm down.”

“how do i defend myself? i don’t want to die,”

“press e!”

he stomped the person and attempted to run away.

“don’t worry, daddy’s home.” you said, as you took out one of your guns and shot at the player. after killing the person, you picked up eren and ran.

“why are you carrying me?” he laughed.

munkin4life: #breakinggendernorms

milesmoralesgffr: girlboss and malewife

🫧

- stream chapter!

taglist <3 : @greeniegreengreen @bakuhoes-bxtch @itzgabz22 @princess-jaeger @marsandsaturn @violenthots @roses-arerosies @conniesbbymama @llovergirlll @iheartamajiki @clipperlighter @liliorsstuff-blog @hoohoohope @akvrae @rinslutz @miniaturelunar @sheluvzeren @shigamiryuk @chamomilespetal @booistoleyou @asp7n @heartz444anna @thatartistshar0n @vintagexparker @tsukkisukkii @venusinx @seeingivy @cyberkitty1 @anitatvd

[sexhaver]

ive been playing Cassette Beasts for a minute and it never stops being funny to me how flagrant they are about making this "Pokemon but with features you didn't know Pokemon has always needed". off the top of my head:

super effective/NVE hits have added benefits/debuffs beyond just doubling/halving the damage (hitting Electric types with Ground reduces their evasion and speed, hitting Steel types with Poison gives them poison-coated spikes that do contact damage, etc)

legally-distinct-Pokemon will learn new moves while in your party without having to battle, and you can then straight up steal these moves from them and put them on a not-Pokemon you actually care about using, which gives an actual incentive to hunt down and raise otherwise fringe not-mons beyond completing the not-Pokedex

we all played the Pokemon Infinite Fusion fangame right? we know how fusions work? okay so this game has them as temporary per-battle things instead of permanent ones, which is only marginally less cool while being infinitely easier to balance around

attempting to catch something shows you the percentage chance of success so you know whether you just got unlucky or if you should save your Pokeballs-i-mean-blank-cassette-tapes

leveling up is tied to your not-trainer instead of your not-pokemon, so you don't end up in the classic trap where your starter is way overleveled and everything else is underleveled and then you hit a fight your starter can't solo and have to spend an hour grinding to get the weaker not-mons up to par (funnily enough most Pokemon Nuzlocke romhacks have already figured this out and give you infinite rare candies with the only restriction being that you can't level past the next gym leader's ace pokemon, because Pokemon fans have realized that grinding is the worst part of the game way before Game Freak has)

moves, not-Pokeballs, not-PokeCenter visits, and healing items are all bought using entirely separate currencies which stops you from trivially breaking the economy in half

the soundtrack, fittingly, is pretty good! the vocals were a bit much for my taste but there's an option in the settings menu to straight up turn them off (letting the BGM play on its own), which i've never seen in any other game and really appreciate

downsides:

on a game design level, i understand why can i only carry a max of 5 not-Potions and 1 not-Revive at a time - it's to put a limit on how far away from fast travel points i can get by just running away from everything and healing off damage. on a gameplay level, however, this feels pretty bad

the pixel art style is trying to look as much like Pokemon as possible without actually being Pokemon so the overworld sprites look more like beta stuff from Pokemon that they cut for looking too weird. i have yet to find a haircut that doesn't look bad

this is super petty of me but something about the bloom and lighting of the 3d environments combined with pixelated 2d sprites that still cast shadows makes me painfully aware im playing a video game. it's like they were going for the same aesthetic as Octopath Traveler but fell just barely short. i can't think of a better way to articulate this feeling but if you know you know

it does that really obnoxious half-assed style of voice acting where plot-relevant characters will sometimes (maybe every third or fourth textbox) speak the first two or three words of dialogue before trailing off. mashing through textboxes (as one does) means constantly getting jumpscared by "hmm"s and "haha!"s "okay then!"s

i get that they wanted to make the player feel involved in the story, and it has a pretty decent hook so far, but oh my god. the amount of dialogue "choices" that just transparently do not matter. you know how people memed on Fallout 3 and 4's dialogue choices all leading to the same outcome, to the extent that you were basically choosing between "yes" and "yes (rude)"? and you know how Bethesda would at least attempt to justify how both options led to you accepting the quest anyways, even if it was really dumb? Cassette Beasts has streamlined this process even further by making the options in most of their binary decisions so identical that they don't even require different followup dailogue before rejoining into the main conversation thread. a solid 2/3rds of the dialogue options in this game so far feel like checks that you're still awake. i know this is a minor issue because people aren't playing Pokemon-likes for the engaging "choices matter" approach to storytelling, and i did ignore it at first, but it's so pervasive that you really can't ignore it

[the-river-delta]

The tragedy of the OGL and Starfinder 1e

The controversy regarding the Open Game License that Wizards of the Coast sparked in 2023 had many consequences big and small, from 5e's SRD being put into Creative Commons to the creation of the ORC license (and Pathfinder 2e's shift to it in the Remaster), but one of the more unfortunate and less-discussed casualties has been that of Starfinder 1st Edition, which as a huge fan of said game I wanna talk about in this probably overlong post.

The Starfinder Roleplaying Game - the strange science-fantasy spinoff of Pathfinder (itself a spinoff of 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons), supposedly developed and put out by its publisher Paizo to make up for the inevitable drop in sales that Pathfinder would experience upon the announcement of its new edition.

As something developed around 2016 and launched in 2017, at a time when the much simpler DnD 5e was on a meteoric rise, the largely Pathfinder- and in turn-3.5-shaped rules chassis of SFRPG could've come off as a little clunky or even downright archaic to a lot of people (not helped by problems such as the infamously awkward starship combat rules that needed emergency errata to mathematically function, continuing to be controversial throughout the game's lifespan).

I myself have gotten into TTRPGs at around that time, but remained somewhat unaware of Starfinder for a couple years - the announcement and eventual launch of Pathfinder Second Edition is what indirectly made me pay attention to Paizo and their games beyond a failed attempt at getting into Pathfinder purely as a crunchier 5e alternative, at the time divorced from the context of anything other than the humongous, nigh-incomprehensible mountain of rules and options that was impossible to navigate without the help of a more experienced friend.

Since that fateful 2018-19 however, Starfinder gripped me more and more in concept, presentation, and even the rules - though my actual play experience to this day is embarrassingly low as either a player or GM, I've legitimately come to love the tweaks it made to the already venerable PF1 ruleset to really make itself feel like a high-octane science-fantasy adventure game, and I fell greatly in love with the game's setting; Yes, it was and is the kind of sci-fi kitchen sink that tries to accommodate everything from cyberpunk and to military SF to space opera and soft sci-fi and Pathfinder-in-space-type science fantasy, but good art direction and writing made it all feel surprisingly coherent for such a big-tent premise.

Parallel to all this, I've played and run a great deal of games far beyond the d20 sphere, and slowly discovered what kind of roleplaying games I really enjoy playing and running - but all this time, Starfinder remained in the back of my mind, and I found great joy in perusing each new supplement - for the artwork, for the lore, for the rules and player options.

As Pathfinder 2e grew in popularity, there were a lot of people who wanted its science-fantasy sibling to also adopt the PF2 ruleset, with its sleek three-action economy and all other rules tech that its proponents loved so much, and at the time at least, Paizo denied having any such plans, choosing to keep Starfinder going as-is. I myself began as one of those "Starfinder 2e would be so good" people, but my enthusiasm for PF2 eventually waned somewhat, at the same time as my appreciation for SF1's ruleset grew, so I began to push back on the idea somewhat, or at least suggest caution.

And then, the Open Game License crisis rippled across the d20 portion of the TTRPG industry (that is, most of the visible and profitable part of it) - fearing legal reprisal from Wizards of the Coast, Paizo rapidly worked to distance Pathfinder from the OGL rules and concepts it was built on, Remastering the game and moving their work onto the newly-developed Open RPG Creative license.

At first, it was not clear what the plan was for Starfinder, even more entangled in the OGL than PF2 was, given its stronger PF1 and 3.5 roots.

Then, at GenCon 2023, Paizo announced Starfinder Second Edition, with a playtest launching a year later.

Sounds great, right? This is what the people have been asking for all this time!

Then, more details were revealed - Starfinder 2e would be wholly adopting PF2's ruleset, down to being able to freely mix ancestries, classes, equipments, spells, etc. from one to the other (something that 1st edition gestured at with some early guidance at converting PF1 stuff to SF1 bits, but was largely dropped and forgotten in the long run).

Between this and some other things, that's where my worries really began.

Part of what made Starfinder so appealing to me were the things that made it stand apart at the system level - the unique skill list (featuring things like Culture, Engineering, Physical Science and Life Science, Computers, Piloting, and Mysticism as a catch-all magic skill), the Health/Stamina/Resolve Points system (which vastly alleviated the need for a dedicated healer or long periods of downtime between encounters to heal up), the different weapon and armor proficiencies (like Longarms, Advanced Melee, and Powered Armor instead of simply the same old Martial Weapons or Medium Armor), magic simply being magic instead of an arcane/divine distinction (and only going up to 6 levels instead of 9 - though apparently that was a page space concern for the original core book more than anything), and a myriad other things.

And even though SF2 would benefit from things like the PF2 proficiency tiers, three action economy, and degrees of success, it would also be saddled with the things that first edition consciously did away with - so magic now is split up into one of the four traditions (arcane, divine, occult, primal), overriding some fun 1st edition lore about how modern society no longer differentiated between those. Even the skill list has been turned to be the same as that of PF2, with the merciful additions of Computers and Piloting - but things like Religion, Performance and Crafting are a thing now.

At least we're still paying in credits instead of silver and gold pieces.

There are other changes that frustrate or perplex me (like how technomancer and mechanic, two classes that were in 1st edition since the start but are being left out of the SF2 core and saved for later - though at least aren't being cut altogether, same with starship rules... or the fact that SF2 is doubling down on being silly and having a god of memes in the core pantheon and a skill feat for Trolling People With Your Online Posts), and many of these may seem like small-potato issues (the distinction between Kinetic Armor Class and Energy Armor Class was pretty minor in practice after all), but in aggregate all of these things made SF1 properly standalone and unique in a way I fear is being sacrificed for SF2 at the altar of compatibility with its biggest fantasy sibling Pathfinder.

Paizo's messaging on the subject has also been mixed - they say the game will be properly standalone after launch, yet they're also careful about designing each SF2 class as to not step on the toes of an extant PF2 class (because you can just bring in said PF2 class into your SF2 game instead, right?), resulting in something like the Soldier (which in many ways was a fighter in space in 1st edition, even though I'd argue it was a pretty baller implementation of the idea) being vastly reconceptualized to a rather mixed reception from SF1 fans; And in general, a lot of the current marketing about SF2 feels like it's been aimed at Pathfinder 2e fans first ("you can now play using your favorites ruleset IN SPACE, or bring in cool laser guns and solarians and freaky aliens into your Pathfinder game!") and at SF1 fans second (and even then, with a kind of implicit aim towards the "man I wish Starfinder just used the 2e ruleset" crowd of Starfinder players - look I was one of them at one point, I get it).

Even the big Starfinder 2e playtest actual play at GenCon couldn't have been a fully SF2 game, as it featured the iconic PF2 investigator in the adventuring party. Sure, it was just a marketing thing to do for fun at a convention, but it's not helping SF2 escape the "it's the sci-fi expansion to PF2" perception.

Some Paizo staff have said that Starfinder 2e was already being tinkered with even before the OGL crisis hit, but that the event kicked the development on it into high gear - causing two entire rulebooks and an adventure path for SF1 to be canned (even though one of them, the Faction Guide, already had freelancer assignments submitted in and even had the cover art ready to go; another was the Extraplanar Archive, which would've delved into what the wider multiverse of SF1 was up to, a book I personally wanted for the entire run of first edition, so while it wasn't worked on a lot at the time, knowing it fell through hurts me in particular as a fan of extraplanar science-fantasy stuff!) - I get it, Paizo is a business and that was a business decision, but it didn't feel good to hear either way.

Speaking of which, the week before GenCon, Paizo dropped a really frustrating bombshell onto the community: they had updated and revised their community licenses and policies, two of which have caused some serious uproar.

For one, to continue distancing themselves from the Open Game License, the Pathfinder and Starfinder Infinite programs (which allow community members to publish paid supplements for Paizo games that utilize their intellectual property, settng and proper nouns and all) would no longer be accepting OGL-based products for either PF1 or SF1 starting in September. PFI and SFI have problems of their own with the large cut and exclusivity involved (much in the way that D&D's and WotC's Dungeon Masters' Guild program does), but it still stings.

The other, arguably even worse news, was regarding the Paizo Community Use Policy (link to an archival version in case Paizo deletes the live version altogether) which allowed community members to use Paizo IP and imagery in noncommercial products and projects - it has been suddenly replaced by the Fan Content Policy (which in addition to being a worse, more corporate sounding name, is also exactly what WotC calls their own equivalent document).

The FCP is much more restrictive about what one can use it for compared to the old CUP - crucially, it's not applicable to "game products" such as, and I quote, an adventure module, sourcebook, character builder, rules database, video game, board game, etc.

While projects with bespoke Paizo licensing agreements like Archives of Nethys and the Foundry VTT module are unaffected, projects that relied on the CUP like Hephaistos (a beloved Starfinder 1e community tool, covering everything from creating characters to managing campaigns and encounters) have been forced to either cease development altogether (which would allow them to be grandfathered into the FCP, provided they would no longer receive any changes) or go back and be scrubbed of Paizo IP (which would be both time consuming and incredibly messy for a game where the OGL-published rules and Paizo-owned lore are so intertwined).

While a number of Paizo staff have said that they'd look into revising the policy to not completely screw the community over like that, it's already done a lot to damage people's trust in the company, further compounding the already strong sense of alienation many 1e fans have been feeling over the past year since SF2 has been announced.

I've played a good deal of PF2, and am currently in the process of preparing to run some SF2 playtest games, and I'm near-certain that Starfinder 2e will on the whole end up being a whole lot more popular than 1st edition ever was, both on its own merits and certainly as PF2's sci-fi spice cabinet - but there is a non-trivial subset of the existing SF1 community that is just bummed out about this whole thing. If nothing else, I now understand how many PF1 fans felt when the game went in a different direction from what they originally came to it for (even though I'd still argue it's good some of the more bigoted stuff was left by the wayside) - except now Starfinder 1e doesn't even have the benefit of easily continuing under a community banner, with the new Starfinder Inifnite and Fan Content policies.

I don't have a great way to wrap this up - there is only so much that feedback I submit regarding the SF2 playtest will accomplish (something I still intend to do, to at least help out testing the parts that are on the table for change and improvement), and getting anyone, at Paizo or otherwise, on board with the OGL again is likewise infeasible, so I doubt anyone is willing to create yet another OGL-based spinoff and repeat the 3.5-Pathfinder cycle.

SF1 will probably remain playable, but if the fan policy continues to impede the development of digital tools that the game so strongly benefitted from, its prospects of upkeep (let alone growth) seem far more grim now than they did three weeks ago.

So while new SF2 fans are feverishly arguing if the promised SF2 ranged meta can work with PF2's cover rules or whether it was a good idea for the 2e witchwarper to be merged with the 1e precog... I'm just more than a little bummed out about this uncomfortable limbo state that SF1 has been put in, a far less graceful death than PF1 received.

[deedala]

✨weekly tag wednesday✨

weekly tagly wednesdly?? lolol thanks for todays game and thanks for tagging me @darlingian!! and @energievie!! <<3333

About you name: deanna age: noel-aged (which isnt old actually, stop being weirdos) starsign: scorpio your first language: english second language: right now the only other language i might be able to have a little convo with you in is norwegian favourite lip product: blistex medicated mint lip balm the best food dish you can make without a recipe: pico de gallo yum yum If you drink tea, what kind?: peppermint If you drink coffee, what roast do you usually get?: light roast (i didnt know about that being more caffeine!! But yay!) favourite thing to watch on youtube right now: mike’s mic’s appropriately unhinged tv show summaries favourite thing to watch on youtube in 2012: i dont have a fuckin clue lol. All i did in 2012 was work at and manage a barber shop well over 40 hours a week, experience a fucked up pregnancy, got traumatized, and played mass effect 3. favourite item of clothing right now: my black joggers favourite item of clothing in 2012: uhmm…green cardigan was something i wore a lot to work cuz it looked extra cute with my red hair. (i had red hair in 2012!)

fandom three movies you recommend: The Fall (2006), Love and Monsters, Palm Springs your favourite concert: went to a ton of dmb shows a youth which were always insane levels of fun have you ever unfollowed someone over a fandom opinion?: oh for sure, im here to enjoy myself lol have you ever left a fandom because of the fans?: i dunno what i consider leaving a fandom? I guess maybe i dont JOIN them very often (ie make friends and participate in events and such) so no i’ve never really left one as the only two i consider myself really being a part of is dragon age and shameless? the best tv show you watched last year: hmmmm….the fall of the house of usher (i have such a short fucking memory i dont know what came out earlier in the year sorry lol) do you have a fancasting you just can't let go of?: not that i can think of off the top of my head… a ship you've abandoned: uuhhmm…also cant really think of one? on a scale of 1-10 how willing are you to share your ao3 history?: oh zerooooo. Its all rather tame, i just am not willing to lay my fucking soul bare thanks lolol do you have a fandom tattoo? i dont have any tattoos which i will probably go to my grave being sad about because i have so far failed at every meager attempt to get one. what fandom do you wish was bigger?: on one hand it might be fun to have more folks around in shameless but also i know our tiny friendly tumblr bubble is what keeps things playful, so i dunno… maybe uuhhmm the expanse?  has a finale ever ruined a show for you?: how i met your mother was pretty bad. I think even worse for me was Chuck. have you... swam in an ocean?: yes been vegan/vegetarian?: i’ve been a vegetarian for 28 years gone skinny dipping?: yes gone skiing?: no been to a convention?: so so so many

now my precious nuggets, please accept this tag and either play along or just know that i am gently squishing your face in my hands @too-schoolforcool @michellemisfit @heymrspatel @heymacy @metalheadmickey @crossmydna @tanktopgallavich @sam-loves-seb @jrooc @gardenerian @mickeysgaymom @softmick @howlinchickhowl @the-rat-wins @lingy910y @sickness-health-all-that-shit @gallawitchxx @mybrainismelted @juliakayyy @creepkinginc @whatwouldmickeydo @suzy-queued @squirrel-fund @tsuga-of-mars @transmickey @sleepyfacetoughguy @palepinkgoat @themarchg1rl @purplemagpie @thepupperino @callivich @rereadanon @grumble-fish @ardent-fox @thisdivorce @lee-ow @iansw0rld @ritualpyre @vintagelacerosette @rosemacclare @maizzycakes @7x10mickey @rrapp @gofionaonthem @suchagallabitch

[ask-emile-sdv]

we should go on a date! i know a great spot: the epic the musical livestream tomorrow night (i wrote this as of 8/28) (im not indoctrinating you into my obsession i swear) (please dont call me a theater gay my partner already does TvT) you can hear calypso go ALL WE COULD WANT HERE ALL WE COULD NEED HERE or telemachus going I KNOW LIFE AND FAITH ARE SCARY BUT I WANNA BE LEGENDARY or even zeus singing. zeus's main song is very zeus btw but god games isnt just zeus's song its a song where he gets his kids and wife to be pit against athena its p cool (APHRODITE YOUR LITTLE HIGH AND MIGHTY ODYSSEUS CLAIMS TO LOVE HIS MOTHER BUT LET HER DIE OF A BROKEN HEART HE WAS BUSY FIGHTING MORE LIKE BUSY SPITING THE CYCLOPS LET HIM FEEL THE PAIN THAT HIS MOTHER FELT AND ROT) augh uh. one sec. lemme actually do smth coherent

EPIC: The Musical is an Odyssey retelling and adaptation made by a young man Jorge "Jay" Rivera-Herrans. It started out during lockdown because he had another musical he was working on but due to COVID restrictions it made him and his then-crew unable to continue working. During COVID, however, he wanted to make another musical. And so, for over four years now, he has been writing, casting, and recording EPIC: The Musical. It is a musical sectioned into sagas, five of which being in the first act and the other four being delegated to the second. There have been six sagas released thus far, with the Wisdom Saga, the seventh saga, being released on Friday, August 30th.

Jay has explicitly stated in his videos about the creative process that he takes heavy inspiration for how he conveys plot points and the like from anime and video games, more heavily the latter as he is attempting with EPIC to create a musical that feels like a video game. The way he does this is by giving each saga a boss battle, each with such powerful music to match. In Poseidon's "Ruthlessness" he preaches to Odysseus the true meaning of this world: ruthlessness is mercy upon ourselves, a message that sums up the entire theme of the musical and that is repeated throughout. In Zeus's song titled "Thunderbringer" it repeats his brother's preaching but he didn't explicitly tell him, more showed him by forcing him to choose between making it home to his son and wife--something he said he'd trade the world for in the second song--or saving his crew that had just mutinied moments before. And by the end of the musical, Odysseus has internalized every boss battle and we get to watch him become the final boss from the perspective of those who tried to wrong him and that are getting punished for their actions. By the end of the musical, Odysseus is a heavily changed man and the final song is titled "Would You Fall In Love With Me Again" which is a song to his wife, Penelope. She shows up often in the musical, not often physically, but often pops up because Odysseus proclaims that all he wishes to do is to see his wife and son. Jay assigned each character an instrument, and while I cannot recall each off of the top of my head, Penelope's instrument is a viola. In act two, when we hear the song "Suffering" we can hear something is off because yes this is her voice, but her viola is missing. That minor detail is enough to set off alarm bells in many a fan's head, and it did!

Back to the end of the musical, we get to see a reunion between two lovers, but only after what is a reunion for one and a first meeting for the other--the song between Odysseus and Telemachus, his son. It is one of the most heart-wrenching songs in the musical, just the snippets are enough to move to tears. Odysseus's assigned instrument is a guitar, and for the first time in a while, it is a quiet tune that plays on the guitar used in that song. Just that guitar alone hurts to listen to, at least for me. Anyway, I've waffled on more than enough! Sorry for the ramble, wanted to do something a bit fancier than what i tend to do.

I’m sorry- a date?!

Well- uh- I don’t think we’re THAT close!!!

But… Greek Mythology sounds cool I guess. Even if I’m not really a musical guy. Besides, someone has to look after you, hm?

I GUESS if I have time I might listen…. Only because I don’t have anything to do!

[doberbutts]

Your post abt how male victim sa is treated as a joke in media really resonates w/ me. like i dont watch drama tv shows, i watch like sitcom/comedy stuff and so its extra apparent to me in a way?

Because while in a drama tv show you can have both male and female sa victims, sitcoms will rarely if ever try to make jokes about female sa (or at least now anyway, i dont watch older sitcoms) they absolutely do make male sa jokes.

For example, in Parks and Rec theres this episode where April and Andy make a lot of doctors appointments in one day and in one part Andy is listing out all the doctors they've seen and Andy says like "One guy looked at my weiner, touched it, that was weird" and April says "And that guy wasn't even a doctor" and Andy says "...What" with an uncomfortable look on his face and then it just moves on.

And its supposed to be a funny haha moment but everytime I see that clip I get really uncomfortable bc like its never clarified if she was kidding or not but also why would you joke abt your husband being sa'd???

And thats just one example, theres plenty of others. (The whole thing with Barney and Rhonda French in HIMYM makes me super uncomfortable even tho its played as consensual, it gives me bad vibes)

But it feels like no one ever really cares to talk abt it, so it was nice to see someone bring it up. Sorry for the long ask 😅

The comedy I watch is normally yes about equal to Parks and Rec or Brooklyn 99 and yes, there's a lot of jokes that fly under the radar because they victimize one group or another that isn't seen as "in danger". The amount of prison rape and prostate exam (hinthint wink wink not performed by a doctor though teehee) jokes really stand out the more you pay attention to it. And maybe it IS time to pay attention to it, because clearly this is a symptom of a bigger issue, one that endangers everyone.

Going back to stuff I watch more of because I haven't seen more than a clip or two of HIMYM, but I remember when I was watching Buffy with my ex [then boyfriend] and he pointed out that Xander had a really good reason not to like Faith and it's because Faith rapes him (forced to penetrate) and how Xander really... never seemed to forgive her for it and always seemed uncomfortable around her after. And while I was not part of the fandom during the show's heyday, being that I am a relatively recent watcher only maybe about 6 or 7 years ago, he told me it was very frustrating to him that the fandom seemed to focus more on the wrongdoing of Spike's *attempt* to rape Buffy, than the *actual rape* Faith did to Xander.

Even with my Witcher example, I'm seeing people shipping Yennefer and Jaskier because they had a moderately improved friendship in season two, while not at ALL touching on the fact that Jaskier's first memory of her is a blatant sexual assault and maybe that's why he's increasingly aggressive to her every time they see each other for the remainder of season one and when seeing her again in season two. It's more than "he's somewhat jealous of her closeness with Geralt" when I know for a fact she pinned and grabbed him by the penis and I wouldn't fault anyone for not liking someone who grabbed their genitals without consent. I'm not yucking anyone's yum but it's really frustrating to me to see people skate right by that.

(again, books/games fans who follow/reblog, your faves are not immune, I present to you one Triss Merigold who rapes *Geralt himself* by means of a love potion in the books and who does it *again* in the games if you let her manipulate Geralt into sleeping with her when he has amnesia, do not even start with 'wehweh this is why the show sucks' when your favorite adaption did it too and Triss/Geralt is a possible romance path in the third game, AND Yennefer is mad at Geralt for... letting Triss rape him while they were together, because she considers it cheating, if you talk to her about it in the third game she dumps you in the lake to punish you for defending yourself)

Big sigh.

[blood-and-pizza]

So, I just checked and... I have 251 followers on this blog. Holy moly!

I am definitely surprised... didn't think this blog would get this big. I know 251 isn't a lot in terms of internet followers, but... it's definitely more than I was expecting to get when I first started Blood and Pizza.

Originally, I posted about FNAF on my personal blog, but I eventually decided to put it all on its own side blog after years of putting it off. I didn't really think I had much to add to the FNAF community apart from my occasional reactions to new announcements and whatnot.

It's funny, I actually went through a phase where I was ashamed of my FNAF obsession and thought I'd gotten over it and was even thankful for that. But then Security Breach was announced and... I got pulled right back in. I mostly blame Glamrock Freddy, but honestly, the whole concept of Security Breach got me.

Now I'm an even bigger fan of FNAF than I ever was back in the past. And to think, what pulled me into the fandom in the first place was seeing crossover art with My Little Pony on an image board... yes, I'm serious. I was into Friendship Is Magic before I first became interested in FNAF (I was an MLP fan when I was little during the late 80's and early 90's). Someone drew Cupcakes fan art with the FNAF animatronics and it led me down a rabbit hole which led me to both FNAF and Markiplier.

I'll be honest with you guys-- I love FNAF and its lore, but I'm such a chicken with playing the actual games because of my tremendous anxiety! I usually prefer to watch other people play the games, though I have made a few attempts to play them myself too. Despite the games being anxiety simulators, I love their stories and lore (as messy as it is) and especially the characters.

I'm just happy to be able to share my love of it all with all of you. No matter what happens with this blog in the future, I hope you guys continue to stick with me. <3

[itsohh]

thoughts after completing mw3

I can firmly say its not worth playing unless your a fan of DMZ. as someone who isn't, its horrible.

the game turns 180 on the style of the campaign and you lose a lot of the liner gameplay which made the first two games so enjoyable. in order for what I presume was to cut corners they opt for a more open world more feel. while the other games did have this on some levels it wasn't done in a fun way.

for example 'alone' in mw2 you have the entire stealth aspect with johnny and then in mw1 (I can't remember the mission but its the one where you getting farahs brother) you do open objective as gaz with price and even though its a big area it still feels quite nice and focused.

this weird open world thing was seen in the second to last mission but it was still straight forward. honestly the game felt rushed, empty, spotty and full of fuller content. the story line wasn't very solid and felt ehhhh.

don't even get me started on some of the actual normal missions like 'kill invisible dudes who instantly snipe you before you can see me' fuck me that was horrible. they give the illusion of that you could stealth around them but every time I attempted gaz would get seen. so idk if that was scripted or not but it sucked.

the final mission felt lackluster and dull.

I'll give them that the final cutscene was good and did tug at the heart strings. but also it felt like his death was more for shock value? to reference the previous games. ah idk. it's not bad I suppose but I also feel like it was tacked on, I wish they made it a bigger deal

I can't help but wonder what the level design would have been if they had more time. I miss the way they did things in the previous games and it also so short. they established such a good begining in mw1 and then had maybe not the best game AI but a really good sequeal in mw2. mw3 falls so flat. I miss missions where you spend the entire time stealth, I miss the interactions between soap and ghost, or gaz and price.

for what they delivered it really wasn't worth the price. would I still have bought it? yes because I wanted to experience it.

the lack of optimisation is insane, sure its early access but we all know that they won't fix these bugs. on one mission I was forced to put my graphics on the lowest setting to load it. I have a current gen graphics card. for some random moments my screen would be covered in low pixel smoke that would only clear if I did a 360.

the graphics were of course, amazing and photorealistic but somehow didn't deliver on the immersion that the previous games did. the voice acting and acting alone carried this game unfortuantly let down by the shotty writing, cheap level design and general cash grab vibe to the game.

I thought that this was supposed to be the last game but with the lack of question still to be answered it does feel like they could have another one. without soap though... the team doesn't feel complete. any attempt to bring in roach at this point would feel like hes there to replace him which isn't idk great.

vlad's still out there, so is graves and then the entire plotline with valeria / alejandro has yet to be touched on. I imagined they will bring one of those in for the raid series

the game feels like it has so many holes, mainly why was so little amount of troops sent in. like at times it feels like there only 141 in the world and like ??? speshly with the final mission like your telling me they got only one hotel squad to go with price and soap? against a bomb threat caused by one of the biggest terrorists out there? wtf is everyone doing???

it feels weak and overall I rate the game 4/10

[arcplaysgames]

You know who I like? Yosuke. If only he wasn't also Yosuke, you know?

Like, when Yosuke is good, he's supremely fucking good!

Like its not even as simple as SLink Yosuke vs Main Scenario Yosuke, because as we get more distance away from the horrible fucking travesty of the spring camping trip, he's turning back into the pretty likeable dude. He's empathetic, he's mourning a girl who did not actually like him and trying to figure out how to handle it, he's driven by good emotions and not shitty emotions.

you get to hug him and he fucking cries for a while! that's some moving stuff!

Also, it's baffling he's not a romance option bc he sure as hell is written like one, lmao. I don't know if I have another full playthru of this game in me because my god its pacing is kind of a mess, but I am intrigued by the idea of modding in that romance and seeing it, because even if he's not Officially An Option, you cannot convince me Yosuke isn't in love with the MC and is just struggling to figure that out.

ANYWAY MY POINT IS WHERE HAS THIS GUY BEEN FOR THE PAST MONTH.

Circling back, a note about pacing: MAN this game's pacing is WEIRD and I am pretty sure I don't like it and am just tolerating it. Maybe it's because the way I personally play this game, knocking out the dungeon early and usually in one or two days, but the long periods of twiddling my thumbs after a dungeon completion is grating. It makes me want to rush through things to get to the next plot beat.

blah. At this point, I am trying to close out some SLinks so I can focus on others because this game literally has too fucking many.

Meanwhile, over in Yukiko's SLink, my god is she consistent. A new crew wanted to film the Amagi Inn to make a spooky show because of the murders, but they said no. Yukiko lowkey wishes they said yes so the inn would lose reputation and shut down and she'd be free to amscray without guilt.

Yukiko, I don't say this lightly, but what the hell. I full support you bailing on this destiny you didn't want or ask for, but wishing a historical institution of a small town would close forever just because you don't like the guilt is not great.

But also: remember her Shadow Self? The bird in a cage with an open door and no lock? Deep down, she's still struggling with this idea of wanting something else but not wanting to give up anything for it. It is still incredibly selfish! Which I love! This is some crunchy stuff! Huge fan.

I had to fucking google how to unlock this one but finally EMPEROR SOCIAL LINK: GET! Now, as you may suspect, I did initially make a fucking angry face at this. Emperor? For Kanji? Tell me you're using the Default Guy Card without telling me etc etc. My initial thought, I swear to god this is true and will be amusing in a moment, was "how the fuck is he an emperor without and empire to look after." Because the Emperor is very much about dominion over a place, about being in charge of taking care of it, so why tf would that be Kanji.

THEN LITERALLY

IN HIS FIRST FUCKING SLINK

One, love that the locals use 'chan' with him, that's precious. He is a hometown boy.

Two, the thing he's focused on is taking better care of the neighborhood. His presence causes trouble for everyone, especially his mother, and it's starting to eat at him. He wants to take better care of his community, particularly in the wake of these murders.

Which, to be clear: is tied into gangs pretty clearly. There's that whole argument that before corruption sets in and violence breaks out, gangs often start as a community's attempt to create protection for itself, to take care of people when the local government fails them.

Stewardship of the community from within the community is perhaps one of the most noble goals a person can have, and it's very Emperor. So, Kanji has work to do if he wants to take on that responsibility.

Doubly so because the next SLink for him, he tries to take Reverie home to meet his mom (aw) but we hear she's at the hospital. Kanji is panicked and thinks something bad had happened, but his mom is fine, she accompanied someone else to the hospital.

but Kanji is young and scared and lashes out because of it before running off.

Shocking no one, I like Kanji tremendously. I'll prob fill out Magician, Priestess, and Emperor p quick.

[veebs-hates-video-games]

Ok this is mostly going to be rambling about Tears of the Kingdom, but I'll at least briefly mention a couple other things I keep meaning to say something about and not getting around to.

Pixel Puzzle Makeout League was surprisingly good and deserves its own post because it does some unexpected things.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line is still mixed but overall more good than bad and generally has similar positives and negatives to the previous Theatrhythm games and Melody of Memory (which is better as a game than any of the Theatrhythm games even if it still has some issues too).

The Outer Worlds is...a game. I totally forgot I started it at some point, and it hasn’t made a huge impression on me in the first five hours or however long.

Cadence of Hyrule is great for a while and does a lot of things right, but there’s a kind of frustrating spike in difficulty near the end, and I’m not sure if I’ll bother finishing it.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed is already GOTY 2023 for me, even if 99% of other people will say it’s TotK. Some day I’ll get around to that XC3 post...

Anyway, as someone who liked a bunch of things about Breath of the Wild but found enough frustrating about it that it took four attempts at playing the game to make it past a single Divine Beast and then give up forever, Tears of the Kingdom brings almost all the same problems along with it but mitigates them enough that I’ve finished a temple without giving up on the game and stopping playing for several months a single time so far.

The really short version is that I think everything in Steph Sterling’s soon-to-be infamous review is true and accurate, and the main thing I disagree with is that at least based on my enjoyment of actually playing the two games I’d have to give BotW an even lower score. Come at me, haters please don’t actually and go do something more fun like playing the game you like so much because I’m glad you’re enjoying it

Yes I’m 100% one of those people who thinks weapon durability has never been a positive thing in any game I’ve played (with the possible exception of certain Fire Emblem games) and Skyward Sword introducing a stamina meter to Zelda was a mistake. I’m happy for people who think they add something to the game for them, but for me they're actively anti-fun and constantly interrupt me when I’m trying to engage with all the neat systems the game has. Please just incentivize me to try new things by rewarding me positively for doing it (see: XC3 and in particular Future Redeemed) instead of punishing me for not playing the game the way you want me to.

Thankfully new additions like weapon fusion and ascend go a decent way to mitigate the frustration I have from stuff like that. I can skip a lot of the tedious climbing, and between avoiding most combat and gooping items together I’ve never had a shortage of actually decent weapons since like halfway through the tutorial.

Another positive is the ability set this time around. It’s a bit weirder on the surface, but they complement each other well and feel a lot less janky to me. Half the time with stuff like stasis I felt like I was fighting against the game trying to get the correct angle and momentum, but the new set of abilities pretty much always does what I want it to and lets me do all sorts of silly things in ways that don’t even seem like they should work at first. The game is at its best when I’m just messing around with that stuff to invent and solve problems in unusual ways.

And then the game is at its worst when I have to do combat of any kind. I can tolerate it better than in the previous game, but I’m still not a fan. I’m still reluctant to use my best weapons or any items I don’t have a reliable supply of, and the controls are still wack. You cannot convince me that run on B and jump on X isn’t crazy or that not being able to remap them is a good idea. I’m also still not a fan of the half dozen popup menus for changing weapons or selecting items or whatever because while they do technically work they’re so awkward to use and would really benefit from a third hand. Finally the N64 controller’s true purpose is revealed.

And speaking of menus, the menus still kinda suck too. Why is every food ingredient and every rock and every bug and every plant and 7000 other things dumped into a single tab instead of having sub-categories? Why is every single one of them available in the popup menu for attaching them to arrows or throwing them or whatever with apparently no way to at least favorite things? Why are there no options in the options menu like changing the volume (ideally with music/voice/sound effects separately adjustable)?

And why is the map? Why can’t I reveal stuff on the map just by going there? Why after the map is revealed is there no way to tell which parts of it I’ve been to already and which ones I haven’t (especially annoying so far for tiny random sky islands)? Why do I have to mark every stupid little thing on it by hand? I am playing the game on a computer, and my map exists on an in-game computer. Computers are supposed to deal with this crap for me so I can do something fun instead. And this is coming from someone who drew their own maps for the NES/SNES games on graph paper and actually enjoyed it.

A lot of these things aren’t huge deals on their own, but I’ve been spoiled by the vast number of quality of life features in XC3 and its DLC recently, and the little things add up. And I know there are people at Nintendo who know how to address these things because literally people from Monolith worked on both BotW and TotK, just not on those specific parts of them as far as I understand (mainly with building the open worlds because they already had previous experience doing that).

On the plus side, even if I’m a little underwhelmed by the story and storytelling (thanks again for ruining everything for me, Monolith), it was immediately much more engaging to me than BotW’s was. Wow, there are actual characters with motivations and stuff right off the bat. Neat! No offense to anyone who liked Calamity Ganon and the Calamity in general, but that was the least compelling antagonist in a Zelda game since probably the NES for me, and I’m glad they’ve taken a bit of a different approach this time. We’ll see what I think if/when I get further through it, but so far it’s at least better even if I don’t entirely love it.

I dunno, it’s something I guess. There’s just enough there for me that I’m still going, but it sure is good at discouraging me from doing stuff that would be lots of fun for me with minor tweaks. But hey, at least locking on to enemies actually follows them with the camera again now, so that’s nice. You know, that feature they literally invented for Ocarina of Time and nearly every 3D game anyone’s made has used since then but then they decided not to in BotW because...reasons?

In conclusion, it seems to be a great game for many other people and a decent but frequently frustrating one for me, but shifted a bit more toward decent and a bit less toward frustrating than the previous game. I’m still not convinced either one of them is a Zelda game though. They feel like something totally different to me with a vague Zelda theme overlaid on them. Oh also the puzzles are much better this time around so far. So that’s nice and more Zelda-y. And maybe we’ll get a Musou game out of it again in a couple years like we did last time, which would be nice because Age of Calamity was the best Zelda game since A Link Between Worlds (not counting remakes and stuff).

[purplesurveys]

1755

Millennial survey In which a Gen Z-er takes over a survey meant for millennials 😜

What year were you born in? 1998.

Do you remember a time before smartphones and social media? Yeah, of course. I'd talk to friends mostly through landline or text; memorizing the program schedules per channel was the norm because streaming and on-demand stuff were pretty much nonexistent then; and playing outside was the best way to have fun with friends. There was also still the element of surprise when watching...well, pretty much anything, because there was no concept of spoilers unless you had access to the (early days of the) internet, which had been damn near impossible to use anyway because of how expensive it used to be.

I remember when Friendster, Multiply, YouTube, and Facebook all started getting popular and it being very exciting because the concept of social media didn't exist til then and it was like discovering a new world that I thought I'd never get tired of, lol.

Were you part of the generation that experienced the transition from dial-up internet to broadband? Yes. We had dial-up up til the early 2000s and didn't get a taste of broadband until around 2008 - 15 years ago. That noisy dial-up sound is permanently etched in my brain.

Did you grow up watching Saturday morning cartoons? I absolutely did. For some reason they kept the actual entertaining shows in the early morning, so that's how I learned to want to wake up early even on the weekends to catch them. I hated the Nick Jr block they had on in the morning and always skipped over it unless Hi-5, my only favorite, was airing.

Do you have any memories of using floppy disks or cassette tapes? Not floppy disks, but I am very familiar with cassettes since our first family car had a cassette player. My first Beyoncé album is a cassette and I wasn't able to get the CD version til, like, well into the 2010s because it was the first time I saw the CD in the wild haha.

How did you communicate with your friends before the advent of text messaging? Landline.

Were you a fan of any particular boy band or girl group during your teenage years? Ok this is 100% where my Gen Z card would show because my answer to this would be One Direction hahaha.

Did you ever own a portable CD player or a Walkman? I had a CD player and my own radio.

What was your favorite video game console when you were growing up? PlayStation 1 and 2. I had always wanted to try playing on the GameCube but we never had one.

Did you ever use AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) or MSN Messenger to chat with friends? Not those, but I did have Yahoo! Messenger for a time.

Were you aware of the Y2K bug and the associated concerns leading up to the year 2000? No, I had been too young for that whole thing.

Did you ever rent movies from a physical video rental store like Blockbuster or Hollywood Video? I didn't.

Were you into MySpace or LiveJournal during the early days of social networking? I made a Myspace because I had heard of its popularity, but quickly realized that it was only popular in the west because what was big here instead were Friendster and Multiply. LiveJournal yes, I did do a few attempts to start blogs and stuff but I always ended up abandoning them after 1 or 2 posts.

What was your first experience with online shopping? I only started online shopping in like 2017 - the Philippines caught on pretty late. Before that I would either have to go to an actual store to get something, or ask my dad to buy something for me whenever he was in the US.

Did you ever participate in a flash mob or witness one in person? I've done neither.

How did you discover new music before the rise of streaming platforms like Spotify? It was mostly through either recommendations of my favorite celebrities or word of mouth in school.

Were you a fan of the "Harry Potter" book series or the "Twilight" saga? I was never into Harry Potter but I was obsessed with Twilight (still am, lol). I caught on to the hype in 2008 when the first movie came out – quickly breezed through all the books and got to watch New Moon up to Breaking Dawn Part 2 in the cinema.

Did you ever have a MySpace profile and customize it with HTML and CSS? I didn't do HTML on Myspace but I definitely did on Tumblr. This is where I learned all my website customization knowledge tbh.

What was your favorite TV show or cartoon during your childhood? In early childhood, my favorite was without a doubt Hi-5. I was hooked and I remember feeling so distraught when I graduated preschool and realized I was never gonna get to watch Hi-5 again once I'd start grade school and have full-day classes.

Growing up more I started to gravitate towards shows like Drake and Josh, The Suite Life, and That's So Raven. Apart from those, Spongebob also remains a favorite no matter what age I get.

How did you feel about the transition from traditional television to streaming services? It was hard to grasp at first. I remember in 2020 when my dad was asking us if we can get rid of cable and I felt genuinely scandalized lol like why would we ever get rid of cable when it's been part of our everyday lives since even before I was born??? Anyway, my siblings and I eventually gave in when we too realized that we never even went through the cable channels anymore.

Streaming services are definitely the 'new' way of consumption now and my family has fully eased into it - we're subscribed to Netflix, Disney+, and Prime Video. I don't have too many strong feelings about this topic, but if anything it does feel extremely bittersweet whenever we'd hear a channel permanently sign off for good – recently it had been NatGeo.

[weaselandfriends]

Three completely unrelated questions: ever heard of interactive fiction (parser games like Zork etc), and if you have, what's your opinion on it? Also, you mentioned a Pokemon fanfic ages ago and do you have plans to write that because Pokemon is my obsession and I would read the hell out of a Pokemon story if you wrote one. Also, is Sister from CxC and that Chateau de whatever vampire anime she keeps talking about inspired in any way by the Marquis de Sade?

Question 1: This blog, believe it or not, used to post exclusively about Homestuck, so yes, I have some familiarity with interactive fiction and parser games. I actually knew about Zork long before Homestuck, mainly because when I was 12 I was a huge Nintendo fan who would read books about the history of video games and Zork would always show up sooner or later. Now have I actually played a parser game? No.

In college I took a senior seminar on interactive fiction. This was a very funny course that included the David Cage classic Heavy Rain. I remember the professor bringing in a PlayStation and having us actually play the game; all the students made fun of the terrible voice acting and inhuman characters, and by the end the professor, looking genuinely hurt, said "I thought it was a good story..."

In this class, I wrote a paper that was actually about the original Super Mario Bros, arguing mainly that even in the complete absence of traditional narrative (text, video, etc.) any video game is actually interactive fiction, in which the player's phenomenological experience of the game shapes their understanding of the game's narrative. Consider the way a first time player would play Super Mario Bros, moving tepidly and carefully, stopping to hit every block, and dying frequently, and then compare that to an experience player or a speedrunner who will blaze through stages at full speed, ignoring most obstacles and reaching the end in a few moments. The understanding of who Mario is as a character is significantly different for these two players, and in fact the absence of traditional narrative elements makes this interactivity even more pronounced compared to a game like, say, The Last of Us, where character is much more strongly enforced by the authorial entity via traditional narrative elements.

Some time after I wrote this essay, Dark Souls would get popular and give everyone else the same idea I had, with its "environmental storytelling" that stripped out traditional narrative elements without sacrificing narrative itself. But I think you can see the precursor to Dark Souls' style in a lot of older games.

Question 2: Very odd coincidence, I actually started thinking about that Pokemon fanfic idea again recently, prompted by the ask I got in which I talked about my idea for a professional League of Legends sports story. Since Players stole my thunder in that regard, I started thinking of ways I could put my rather extensive esports knowledge to use for a story, and remembered my old Pokemon fanfic idea.

I always liked the near-future near-utopian world of Pokemon, where there seems to be little or no scarcity and 75% of the populace does nothing except pursue hobbies of interest. I'd like to do a serious exploration of what a world is like that encourages 10 year olds to drop out of school and attempt to become professional sports stars, without verging into edge. This is a world where it's *fine* for 10 year olds to do that, mainly because widespread, versatile, and even skilled Pokemon labor means there's less need for a large and robust human workforce. So what are these pros like, having left home at 10, spending their youths tromping through wilderness, their only significant social interaction being with what are essentially animals? All while training to excel in a competitive sport that requires an encyclopedic breadth of knowledge about all the diverse Pokemon species, movepools, statistical spreads, strategies, etc.? Obviously they're going to be total social weirdos. I think it'd be a great premise for a sports story to focus on a big, international tournament where these utter nerds come down from their mountaintops and are suddenly hoisted up as the exemplars of human society, imbued with instant celebrity despite their inability to function in any social setting.

So, to answer your question, it's back on the table. I'm pretty sure after CQ my next story will be a relatively short horror story set at a prestigious all-girls prep school in New England, but after that anything's possible.

Question 3: Sister's favorite anime, Le Chateau de Diodati, is primarily modeled on Le Portrait de Petit Cossette, a 2004 gothloli OVA directed by Madoka director Akiyuki Shinbo. Petit Cossette isn't hentai itself, but Shinbo was also directing several visually bizarre hentai OVAs around the same time, which I rolled into the Diodati fictional narrative. The name "Diodati" comes from the Villa Diodati, a Swiss manor once used by Lord Byron and the Shelleys, famous for being the location where Mary Shelley first created the story of Frankenstein. Diodati is also an Italian name; the Comtesse's full name, Marie von Diodati, is a nod to the tripartite cultural heritage of Switzerland (French, German, and Italian), and meant to contrast Marc Elmarghichi, who is of Moroccan descent. Sister/the Comtesse's appearance is modeled off Lambdadelta from Umineko and Shinobu Oshino from Monogatari (another Shinbo anime!).

The only work by de Sade I've read is Justine, and while the unabashed degeneracy of that work was in the back of my mind while writing CxC, it never manifested into any explicit or implicit reference. I have something of an aversion to de Sade, not because of anything he wrote, but because one of my least favorite novels, Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, has a horrible pun where a gardening business is called Marquis de Sod.

[maideninorange]

hm... Top 5 Touhou games? Can be for the gameplay, characters, story, etc

That's a good one! Let's see here...

(Obligatory "This List is Highly Subjective" Disclaimer: These are not in any particular order. Just my top 5, because I still can't rank lol.)

1. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. A fairly typical pick, admittedly, but I still really like it. EoSD is the Touhou game that I first checked out (and by checked out I mean watched YouTube videos of lol) when I got into Touhou initially, so I can't help but like it. The art is so cheesy, especially compared to the later games (but honestly even by early Windows era), but it has this weird charm to it that I can't help but like. And of course, the characters! It's fairly easy to see why this is a common pick for beginners to Touhou, and I stand by that (although playing wise, I'd recommend IN, MoF, or TD more, because EoSD doesn't let you see your hitbox amongst other early-installment weirdness lol.)

2. Imperishable Night. IN is on here mainly because I absolutely adore how the PCs bicker with each other and the bosses lol. They're all so silly I can't help but love it lol. Shoutout to the Magic Team there lol. ("It's all Alice's fault." lives rent free in my head.) One of my favorite gimmicks in Touhou and Len'en games is when you have team-ups like this, because it lets us see these sorts of fun dynamics. If there's any Touhou gimmick I'd love to see return, it's this kind of partner system honestly (and I doubt I'm the only one, considering they're decently prevalent in fangames, at least to my knowledge).

3. Highly Responsive to Prayers. Yes really. Of all the PC-98 games to pick, why this one? I love it because it is so different from all other Touhou games, even the other four PC-98 games. Not to mention that it has this really unique tone to it (in-game at least) that I haven't really found in any of the others (even the darker ones like SA or WBaWC). There's also the element of challenge to it that really appeals to the writer in me (that's probably also insane): "How can I interpret this into a full-fledged story, presumably more like the other Touhou games?" If I were to ever attempt one of those fan novelizations of a Touhou game (whether Windows or PC-98), I think this would be my pick. Naturally, it would be the most difficult. Which is probably part of the fun knowing me lol. (Though if I were to ever attempt a novelization, I think realistically it would probably be EMS, but this is a Touhou game list, not "Maiden's Project Wishlist" lol.) But for now I can only dream.

4. Subterranean Animism. I think this is the Touhou game I'd pick for the cast of characters. Not only is it a partner gimmick game as well storywise (though I prefer IN for that), but the cast is very vibrant and colorful, as well as has a lot of fun danmaku gimmicks to go with each. I also love how brutally straight forward and completely avoidable the overall incident is: "Kanako-sama gave power to a dumbass bird in the hopes that it won't go mad with power, bird goes mad with power ". Still gets pretty dark, mind you, but it is still pretty funny in my opinion lol. I don't think I'd ever play this game though, even if I were to get good, because I've heard this game is up there as one of the hardest. But I really like it for everything else lol.

5. Ten Desires. If EoSD is what first got me really into Touhou game wise, TD is the first Touhou game that I actually played. For that reason, this game and its cast of characters hold special places in my heart for that reason. It's charming, in its own brutal way gameplay wise. Whenever I play it, I find myself wondering if this will be the run I finally best Miko. And hopefully one day, I just might! (Seiga and Yoshika are both utter nightmares though lol, but I'm making it work!)

And those are my top 5 picks at the moment! It was actually kinda difficult to narrow it down, but these are the five I'd say I'd pick for that at the moment. And who knows? Maybe it might change in the future!

[abstractdiagram]

Hellooooo down there! Ye be warned TMI and bizzarity (is that a word?) is ahead.

I have been stuck in a loop of WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY DRAFTS

FOR THIRTY MINUTES!

Finally found them by signing in on not-mobile and dicking about there for far too long. Guess what. No fuckin drafts. So I had a lovely preface basically for this same post but now I’ve lost two trains of thought and I can vaguely remember… uh. Yeah I remember. How the new game I had been playing for an hour before starting that post was making me think I was running out of holes for the letters so the letters could fall down. And how I fucken went to the Transformers One movie even though I had zero interest and he won’t do fuck all anything for me. I told him he had a month to stop ignoring me except when he needs emotional/moral support and make an effort because if I wanted to be ignored I’d have … well. I’ve never stayed with someone who ignored me so I have no examples to give. An ouroboros of … shit. I took too long trying to spell that word.

I don’t know what I hate more. The fact that we can’t get his depression under control even with actually qualified professionals’ help or that now he has no libido and no fucks to give AND depression.

I’ve surprisingly been doing ok. A bit better than ok because I’ve been able to write. Like visualize in brain AND get it into print/screen/cloud. This current fic didn’t flow right by hand. One I started it in the default iPhone notes (can hackers get me easier now?!?!! Do they want Harry Potter m/m Tomarry fan fic? My lists of books by author? Triple crossed hockey sticks drafts?aaaaaasssssssssssssss) anyway. Fuck. I guess now I won’t link it…. Fuck it. I have an iPhone. They have everything about me from shoe size to triple crossed hockey sticks I prefer.

Except I can’t figure out how to do it. It’s been 9tened minutes and the damn snake is back again eating its own tail like a ouroboros of dumbass.

Archive of our own: Harry Potter and the Lion, the Witch, and the Audacity of This Bitch by AbstractDiagram

(me!) heed warnings and tags my darlins because I’m too loony toons raised up to list or even remember em here.

Speaking of warnings. Reactivate!

I want to talk about important stuff. Nope. Brain supplies “breasts need attention” to which I replied? “Mine or hers?” Brain: “malfunction. Error. ‘Just whomst the fuck is “hers”’ referring too-est?”

(Did I just get a quote in a quote in a quote? Yes I did Other Barry Other Abstract, yes I did.)

Me: JE Suis de FUCKING CHRIST ON STILETTO HELLS THAT WAS HARD THINK. First I thought the self-convo. Then I thought about thinking it so I could write it down where I had to think of the words were in the correct order. ANOTHER SHART-TROUSERED-TOGLODITE of an ouroboros!!!

Fuck. I wanted to link what I think is the second song on Vanilla Ice’s cassette. “Stop this Train I Wanna Get Off”. But the music search doesn’t know it. Or I’m misremembering some part of it and/or experiencing a personal Mandala Effect.

There’s just been a sound outside. Metallic clang. Like someone hitting a trash can lid. And my brain hole has convinced me there’s someone dressed as a clown outside the window that is less that a standard size man can reach away from me. I scared myself so bad I stopped breathing and only started again when I realized that standard size man is bad languages. Speaking of bad language can I say “sexist” and not get ban-hammered?

Bahahhahahahahah! Brain just sent a flood of what can only be referred to as grasshoppers in helium making my boobs jumpy and floaty. “Yo Bee-atch. Boobies. Need. Attention. But I’m talking with everyone in my blogosphere. But. If not boobies? Munchies? (🎵“Mon-chi-chi, Mon-chi-chi”🎵) I have got to get away from doing these thoughts in thoughts in thoughts like (🤯😡🤬😡🤬😠🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 say it with me now:) “an ouroboros.” Which. I can almost spell now. I’m close enough and/or attempted enough that the spell check gods have pity on me and throw it up there something about I can spell “ouroboros.” Almost.

Little lovelies if you made it this far, thank you.

There’s a man I need to see about a canoe. Or something like that. IT MEANS IMMA WATCH triple crossed hockey sticks videos (“Did I just do a recall <double - recall IN A MUTHAFUCKEN RECALL> inside an Ouroboros INSIDE ANOTHER RECALL Other Barry Other Abstract? Yes I did.”)

I may have to revisit it later because that had BETTER MAKE FUCKEN SENSE tomorrow or I’m gonna be very upset.

Brain promised me tits but I kept getting more snakes. I’m ever so pissed.

Fuck your two videos a post. For thou hast provided me with a Make A Gif button and I now have a gif of that video so there. That’s not the clip I wanted. Wait. Please hold.

Ok. So I wanted the “Tappa…” lady saying “I’m ever-so pissed.” But I decided I’d settle on the lady as posted above to use as this example by using it as in an example. (Ouroboros!) but then I could only find this Windy-oh’s 95 Paint flip book version and I realized. Oh fuck. House of rodent representative would shut that shit down. If you can’t see aforementioned lady’s image flickering above then I decided in (fuckING SNakEseses!) I decided to it not risk jt.

I just hallucinated two things in rapid succession and now I’m half petrified and half fidgeting nervous - and not too/bottom half or left/right halves. Fucking right arm (for typing) and left knee jostling. Other limbs left arm/right knee I can’t get to move. But as I looked at my phone the left half of my left eye’s visual field showed me a view out a window that I haven’t even seen the house the window is for thirty years. Oddly nostalgic dusty barely orange tone that made me smell summer weekend at Betty’s house. I could smell the cigarettes and beer and dogs and hot outside humidity. For a good ten seconds I was able to type (many errors! But I’m vain even highfalutin so I edit as I go) and see that wall, window, leaves, sky. But then (now too… if I cut off suddenly it was clowns in the window <re-call!>) there was another {ouroboros} metallic sound and

Shit there was one when I searched that that now I’m 3/4 petrified (but not the (Re-call) quarters you’d think. I have my right hand, my right toes up to my cramping-at-the-moment!!!-calf and the bottom of my left foot and left toes.

Ok well. Fucked that up by breaking paralysis to take picture of my cramped up 1/4th.

I have to stop here. I have to. I could do this “not Captain America quote.”