Kingdom Rebuilt: Chapter 1 pg 1-3

Read the Prologue Here

I've had these three pages sitting in my files for a year without realizing I've never posted them on Tumblr, so there you go :)

Just some thoughts about the past year for me :)

This may get a lil deep, I'm writing this at 11pm while procrastinating revision, so it's going under a read more.

If you had told me that over a year ago I would've joined a fandom that absolutely changed my life during one of the worst periods of my life, I would have laughed. I wouldn't have believed you at all.

These past 14 months have been the greatest time of my life when it comes to being part of a fandom; I'd never really properly interacted with many people in the fandoms I was in so it always seemed quite isolating. I think of it like when you're in a car and it's late at night, you're passing lots of bright adverts that you can't fully engage with as you're passing by so quickly and it's so late that you're very sleepy.

It was just me in my little corner of the internet (i know, such a commonly used phrase) enjoying myself.

And then the qsmp started, literally a day after my life went to shit and I found solace and comfort in the early days of the server depsite not engaging much because of travelling and shitty hotel wifi, when the eggs were brand new. I was a Phil main so I'd been a crow for a while and I wanted to branch out, to spread my wings if you'd allow me a singular bird pun. So who did I branch out to?

Another white man in his 30s /aff.

Now I don't remember much of my first few months in Fit's chat, I could probably look back at the vods and see that I was likely a chronic lurker, rarely chatting. But once I'd gotten comfortable and subbed, his chat became like another little comfort nook on the internet for me.

Seeing Fit and Ramón, and how they treated each other was something very healing for me, not to be too parasocial but it definitely mended some of the father issues I had. It's such a joy, to this day, to be in his chat and chill and I'm very glad that I joined at the time that I did and then, as time went on, I genuinely found comfort in just chilling in Fit's chat no matter what the content.

The people I've met, like Shen, Lills and Pen just to name a few, are some of the greatest people that I have the honour of talking to and it's because of the server that I get to do that. I've genuinely made friends in a fandom like I had never before and they're all so cool and talented and I feel like I'm just little old me, you know?

I was introduced to streamers that I'd never heard of, languages that I wouldn't hear in my day to day life outside of the streams and it was so special. I'll never forget the nights I stayed up extra late watching Cellbit play Hollow Knight or live blogging through the Fitpac date. They're all such treasured memories that I hope I'll hold for the rest of my life.

Now because of this server, I have what is probably (outside of my irl friendships) the longest relationship I've ever had. Admittedly that's with the Portuguese Duolingo Owl but eh, 486 days of learning Portuguese after wanting to all my life after not being taught it my own Portuguese dad, is something that I'm proud of. (This is me trying to inject some humour into this slightly sad piece of writing. Is it working?).

This isn't me saying goodbye to the qsmp fandom, I'm still gonna be here being silly and posting angsty posts and fics. It is, afterall, what got me out of a major writing slump. This is more of a see you later to the server (and whatever '2' may mean), I think. There may not be something like what the server was meant to be for a while after everything that happened so I feel like I should give it a little send off, you know?

I didn't really have an idea of where this was meant to go, I was kind of just writing whatever came to mind and how I felt but I'm glad my life is what it is, despite everything that I've gone through. And that couldn't be without the people I've interacted with, talked to and shared thoughts with.

So thank you <3

Done with Utena for now, but I had fun trying to post something near daily and would like to try to keep that up. Given my track record I'll likely not get very far, but I didn't think I'd finish the rgu read, so who knows. I've got a few ideas, but I also have to take like a week to get out from under the minis-painting commission, so in the mean time why not a poll to see which idea I should go with? explanations under the cut:

Cass Cain project: Cassandra Cain was my favorite comic book superhero, and DC bungling her character back in the day was what got me out of comics altogether. She has since been revived as a new character after a reboot or two, but while I tried I was never quite able to get back into the later version of her, and around the time of the Birds of Prey movie I started a project looking back at her comic appearances more or less in order to try and put into words what I liked about the character back in the day and why later reinterpretations of the character didn't quite hit that same note, for me at least. I put it on intermission at some point and promised to come back with a look at the 'Shadow of the Batgirl' graphic novel, but that book was too long for the too little I had to say about it, so I never did finish that post and the project stalled out. I have thought on and off about dusting the project off and starting it up again. Now might be a good time to do so.

Dark Souls: I've played Dark Souls before. I had a lot of fun with it, and for a while watched a lot of lore & cut content videos. One of the bits of cut content that really stood out to me was Oscar, Knight of Astora. In game he's the nameless knight that drops the key to you at the start of the Undead Asylum, and later gives you the estus flask before dying, but until relatively late in development he was supposed to survive the asylum and appear repeatedly in the main game, following a sort of parallel path to yours. Ever since hearing about this cut npc quest line, I've kind of wanted to recreate it by naming a new character after Oscar, collecting all his gear early, and then using co-op and pvp features to play out Oscar's narrative in the games of random players online, helping early on before becoming a rival and invader later.

Morrowind: I never did beat Morrowind - just played it until I had completely broken the game by accident (through bartering if you'd believe it) and sort of lost interest after that. The game's a classic that deserves a better run than that.

Fallout: New Vegas: Another project I started but failed to finish, multiple times over. But maybe third time's the charm for Bethany? I had a lot of fun with New Vegas but the liveblog got bogged down because I ended up playing too far ahead. If I just post thoughts or updates to where I am currently instead of trying to create a continuous narrative of the entire run that shouldn't happen.

Hollow Knight: I've done all the Hollow Knight Achievements on both Switch and Playstation, but on PC my record's sitting at a shameful 83%. Gotta fix that, plus I kind of want to replay it again before the release of the sequel, which I'm still thinking will be later this year.

Cyberpunk/Nier/Sekiro/Disco: Nothing much to say about these, just some games I heard were good and bought on steam that I haven't gotten around to playing yet. At least, not more than just the intro/tutorials.

Top 5 pastries and top 5 indie games, maybe? (For that "Top 5 asks" thing you reblogged)

Thank you!

Top 5 Pastries:

Cinnamon rolls -- Ax from Animorphs was correct, this is indeed the best pastry. Really, cinnamon anything is a win for me, but cinnamon rolls are just so delicious. Can't have them all the time (too much of an indulgence), but I do love them.

Muffins -- Honestly I just really love a good muffin? There are so many good flavors, but lately I've been into banana chocolate chip, and also cinnamon chip from my local grocery store. I also love blueberry muffins, flavor-wise, but since I'm allergic to blueberries I can't actually eat them without losing my ability to breathe. :') So no blueberry muffins for me.

Chocolate croissants -- Croissants are another winner in many flavors, but ones with chocolate chunks in them are my favorites. What can I say? I have a sweet tooth.

Fruit turnovers -- I grew up with both cherry and apple ones, and both are really good, with or without icing drizzled on top. It's another one of those categories of "stuff something in dough and it's going to be delicious" I think.

Cinnamon twist doughnuts -- Again, cinnamon is a winner for me, and this is my favorite flavor of doughnut. For those who have never had them, this doughnut isn't round; it's a long pastry in a sort of twisted, braided shape, and then glazed with cinnamon sugar. It's delicious.

Top 5 Indie Games:

Undertale -- I don't care what people think of its fandom, in my opinion Undertale is still one of the greatest games ever made, and the fact that it was made by one person is still just astounding to me. It just hits all the right spots for me; the type of humor, the excellent music, characters, theme, everything. Undertale is phenomenal and anyone who hasn't played it (for whatever reason) should give it a chance. Even if you're bad at bullet hell, trust that you will get better as you play, and it's worth it regardless. I love Undertale with all my heart and always will.

Night in the Woods -- A true gem and I'm sad (though I 100% understand) that the developer's second game was scrapped. Night in the Woods doesn't have gameplay in the sense that there aren't levels to complete or anything like that, but it's more like a visual novel in that a story unfolds and there is SO much to discover and learn on repeated playthroughs, the two different friendship routes you can take, and overall it's a comforting game in the sense that it's like, look. Life is not ideal. Actually, life sucks and probably will forever. But there's comfort in accepting that sometimes. It's a game I always come back to whenever I'm feeling depressed.

Hollow Knight -- Look, were parts of this game (namely the Gods & Glory pantheons 3 and up and I think Nightmare King Grimm) too hard for me, in the sense that I lost the will to continue trying after triple digit losses? Yes. Did the parts I eventually overcame (White Palace and Radiance in particular) put me through abject misery in overcoming them? Absolutely. But this is still a gorgeous game top to bottom, the aesthetic is absolutely GORGEOUS and the music is as well, it's hard as fuck but extremely well designed so it's not as if I'm dying because of bad gameplay, etc. Hollow Knight is peak aesthetics even if it made me scream until my voice was raw at multiple points. I'm ready to suffer again with Silksong whenever Team Cherry deems it ready.

Stardew Valley -- And on a completely different note, after all the hundreds and hundreds of hours put into it, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Stardew Valley. I never liked farming sims growing up because I thought the idea of playing on a farm sounded so boring, but I heard SDV compared positively to Animal Crossing and it was reasonably priced on sale one day so I said "why not" and gave it a chance. And I'm glad I did! There is SO much to this game and I love the atmosphere, the characters, everything. It's another game made by one guy, which is another marvel. I can't wait for the 1.6 update on Switch; I'm staying away from all spoilers until then. And until then, my girlfriend and I have a farm we're building together for our dates (since we're long distance), so it's special in that sense, too.

Celeste -- This is a precision platformer, which means by its very nature it is a very hard game. However, not only does it encourage you to keep going with every failure (you're supposed to fail, it's baked into the story), but it starts you at the beginning of the same screen . . . and there are accessibility tools you can turn on to even make the main character invincible if you want, so it's accessible to anyone of any skill level. Beyond that, the game is beautiful, the characters are wonderful, the story is fantastic. This was a game about anxiety before Games About Anxiety became a huge trend, and I really appreciated when it had to say about anxiety and depression. It's definitely worth a play, even if platformers are not normally your thing. (Since, again, the accessibility mode means that they don't have to be.)