#but also like just. objectively. i love both. i have a lot of nostalgia and feelings about bb. it is worse 💔 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

raisinushigher · 11 months

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hi im just gonna put my thoughts on every clone high ship i can think of here

jfgogh - i think its cute. i can definitely see jfk like uplifting gogh and him falling in love over like the most basic display of kindness and jfk just being like “haha woah there guy i didnt mean it like that” but then he realises he Does

gogh x gandhi - LOTS of mixed feelings on this one but it is pretty interesting truth be told. like, the way gogh didnt just sit back and take what gandhi did to him and instead retaliated, i like that, i like the thought of two tiny guys having the most unnecessarily intense rivalry ever, but i know that isn’t really the way the ship is portrayed often rather than wholesome stuff . you interpret ships however you want though

gfk i think is the name for it - im so sorry as a gandhabe connoisseur i know how annoying it is when people say this about a ship that absolutely entraps you but i think jfk and gandhi are more accurate together as just silly friends who see eachother like once a month. jfk casually brings up a girl hes dating (or rather just having sex with frequently) and gandhi is like wait what happened to the other one? like hes very out of the loop but he listens and they both hype eachother up a lot

ceasgogh, gogh x christo, ceaser x christo, whether it’s any of those seperately or polyamory - i love this one so very much for literally no reason. maybe its like a nostalgia thing cuz i remember people talking about them sometimes in 2020 and being like Aw that’s cute but idk something about them feels so like. objectively correct. like yep that’s the little background trio standing together in an episode as they should be

abefk i think - i like it!! even though it’s barely known apart from jokingly i really like the classic 2000s rivalry between a nice boy and an asshole jock thing that was going on between them before ponce’s death, i admit i miss their interactions. i miss how theyd refer to eachother with their last names. also the part in season 2 episode 6 where they both were recalling memories of the grassy knoll and abe went “i used to get food thrown at me” and jfk continued “i used to be the one throwing that food”. i like them

joanabe - i know this one is like barely a ship but i still need to talk about them badly. their friendship is so important to me. the way its always been them whether it’s joan crushing on abe or the other way around, they’re just so special to eachother in any and every way, and both struggle with the choice of helping the other or doing things that hurt the other but ultimately raise their chances of getting together. tbh im so interested in whats gonna happen with them in the finale, and in the next seasons bc i doubt their back and forth crush thing is gonna last the ENTIRE show like itll be getting a new sort of premise or main character focus which im excited for

joanfk - some of the fanart is absolutely adorable COUGH COUGH ORT SMORT COUG but its just not for me man. biggest two factors as to why i dislike it being how it overtook the fandom, and how to me they just never had any substance. they have a fun dynamic and the season 1 finale was sweet but idk it just never affected me that much. also bc i always knew it was gonna crash and burn. like that is not a stable couple as cute as it is sometimes. like at all. and im happy episode 7 finally addressed it

abe x cleo - again, not really a fondly talked about ship, but they are pretty dear to me. it’s the way cleo was clearly playing with abe at the start but actually saw the charm in him and was actually upset when he finally digested his feelings for joan… i really hope they’re gonna be good friends in the future bc episode 7 seemed to be sort of a start for that friendship and them learning to be ok around eachother after the finale…

joan x cleo - ive always been scared to talk about this one bc some people see them as sisters, which i Really dont. they never acted in a sisterly way at all, and the living together thing lasted for like what. one episode. so i doubt it had any affect on how they view their relationship. but again absolutely fair if it makes you uncomfortable for this reason! but yeah i do like them. very very good trope and there can be some really cute stuff done with them dynamic wise

gandhabe my heart and soul my romeo and juliet my sun and moon my red and blue - AUGHGGGGG MY ALL TIME FAVOURITE. EVER. IN THE WHOLE SHOW FOR EVER they just have such sweet interactions and everything they do they do with the other in mind and i want them to have an emotional reunion in the season 3 finale sO SHRGFRHRVRRRRR RR RBR R R R. RR R. sorry this is mostly incoherent screaming rather than actual words I just DUCIGJGN LVOE GANDHABEEEEE EEYEHEEE THEYRE END GAME!! THEY ARE END GAME WHETHER ITS AS FRIENDS OR ROMANTICALLY RHEY ARE THE ONES

ok now onto the ones involving the new gen clones

harriucius - i like them its the second het ship in the show ive ever actually liked!! they just both go so well in so many ways, they both have almost the exact same struggles and cope in similar ways, but harriet has more of a hands on attitude with her problems, while confucius tends to avoid things. im VERY interested in how their relationship will go and i dont really think anything’s gonna happen to them bc i cant picture the show pairing either of them up with anyone else (mostly confucius tbh 😭)

joanharriet - i WISH this one was more acknowledged by the fandom like i think its the least popular one at least involving the newbies.. can you tell im a sucker for ships that are literally just two close friends who love eachother more than anything. lol. when i think of them i think of episode 5 which makes me extremely happy. like look me in the eyes and tell me that was not an absolutely beautiful wonderfully wrapped episode

johnfucius - gonna be honest i dont like this one. i know this is a really rich thing to say while talking about clone high season 2 but it just felt rushed, and especially with how they barely did anything after sleepover. like they were literally crying both of them being like OMG I FINALLY HAVE A FRIEND!! and then they proceed to have the most stale interactions with the most notable one being in the next episode and it’s literally just confucius encouraging jfk to avoid his problems like he does. not really good. but again if you enjoy them all the power to you, im happy you found something you like that hasn’t been ruined and seems pretty docile and chill compared to all the other ones :o) it’s very much a mostly fandom based ship

kahlopatra - BEAUTIFUL. BEAUTIFUL. I HAVE NO WORDS JUST BEAUTIFUL. there definitely was a lack of suspense like based off the intro and the slight buildup throughout the series BUT that literally doesn’t matter. out of every canon couple they are the absolute cutest im obsessed with the effect they have on eachother. especially on cleos side of things like ahhh!!!! she found someone she actually connects to genuinely!!!! i am so happy for her!!!!!!

tophucius - not much about this one its just pretty fun and silly . i feel bad for the people who thought something big was gonna be going on w them but the small details peppered in about them in sleepover were nice. i always liked how when confucius saw that topher typed your instead of you’re, he went “i thought so” like to me that confirms they do this all the time and they know it’s them. also really funny to imagine them being sworn enemies online but when they actually see eachother in school theyre Like oh shit hey man what’s up! hope youre well! like not even through gritted teeth or anything they’re just so chill irl for no reason

abetoph - Sigh i sure did save this one for last. while im a lot less comfortable with it now i still love thinking of them pre episode 8 and i do think their relationship is just ever so slightly more interesting now with the added double crossing n shit added to it. but im also sad they’ll never be the way they were may 24th to june 14th again . that specific time period of them is so comforting to me for no reason, all the memes and running jokes in the fandom involving them, all the wholesome fan work of them sleeping in tophers bed, watching stuff on tophers computer together, abe being tophers voice of the reason and the one person he actually likes, it’s just so … man. We Could Have Had It All. i love them for ever.

thank you so much for listening

#i also want to write an essay on why abe is autistic #clone high #clone high van gogh #clone high jfk #clone high gandhi #clone high julius caesar #clone high christo #abe lincoln #clone high joan #clone high cleo #clone high harriet #clone high confucius #clone high frida #topher bus #gandhabe #abetoph #clone high spoilers #mine

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viridiave · 7 months

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A little love post to HORROR JRPGs

Content Warning:

So I'm gonna be talking a lot about some pre-Undertale era RPG Maker Horror games, and this post is gonna contain both spoilers and the discussion of the following:

Blood and Gore

Psychological horror

Child abuse

Sexual assault

Suicide

Violence

Fictional minors being put into very messed up situations, because that's just the kinds of games these are

Other upsetting themes

Hetalia (because I can imagine that all of us have very complex feelings about this fucking franchise. It existing feels like it needs a warning)

This post is a nostalgia trip and exists purely because uh. I have literally no one else to talk to about these games, and please just click away if any of the above makes you uncomfortable in any way. Some of this stuff can't exactly be handwaved as just being products of their time.

I'll draw smthn real quick later just to make up for it I promise

I'm like days late to Halloween but I just wanted to write this after getting a bout of nostalgia lmao

I absolutely fucking love Horror JRPGs - the freeware ones, even though I haven't touched one in a LONG time. I'm talking about the pre-Undertale era freeware games by the way, and in the first place I don't think I can consider Undertale a horror game but that's a topic for another day. OneShot also doesn't count aksjak OneShot gives me existential dread and a nonzero amount of guilt sure, but never terror

But let's dial that back a bit.

To begin with. 'Vir, you're a fucking coward, you run upstairs when you see that someone on TV has a gun. You can't stand watching horror movies. How the FUCK did this happen'

Weirdly, you can thank Hetalia for that. Specifically, the freeware Hetalia fangames that used to circulate on DeviantArt - that shit led me down this rabbit hole. And I guess it made sense, most Hetalia fangames are a coin toss between a horror game and a fantasy JRPG with countries getting isekai'd. I also played the fuck out of those.

For a bit of background, I love video games, but neither me nor my family ever really had that much spending power to buy game consoles, so my selection was pretty limited. Before I turned 18, I remember that we owned a GameBoy, a GameBoy Advance, a PSP, and one of those Fun-Sized Nintendo consoles with built-in games. We never bought cartridges either. I got my first DS from my dad on my birthday when I turned 18, and that's all the consoles that my family has ever owned. Still kinda jealous of my friends who have Switches, but eh - one day.

I just played a lot of Harvest Moon growing up, that's been my object of interest in my elementary days. The most of a horror game that I've been exposed to was watching my friends play Five Nights At Freddy's back in 5th grade.

Then high school happened, and I got new friends and shit - and was introduced to both more conventional horror games and Hetalia. Which is. A really weird combination when I think about it now, but everyone who was alive and kicking around in the early 2010's would know what HetaOni is, and you can see how that slope led to me playing freeware horror games. I'll always be grateful to these games, seeing as I never had easy access to mainstream experiences growing up.

I think I played HetaOni exactly once, on my first laptop. I played most Hetalia fangames exactly once, but they all just stayed on my old hard drive. None of them really had anything interesting going on gameplay-wise, I mean it's RPGMaker and these were people who just really wanted to make Hetalia fangames, but I remember some of them just sticking with me. I'd play them while I was away on trips to my grandmother's house, then watch let's plays on YouTube when I wasn't otherwise occupied with schoolwork. Really when I say Let's Plays I only mean KyoKoon64's - and that's how I was actually introduced to horror JRPGs.

CLOÉ'S REQUIEM

There's been a couple of times where they played some of the more recognizable horror JRPGs on their channel, but the first one I REALLY saw a playthrough on was one called Cloé's Requiem. I don't know what exactly it was about this specific game that stuck with me, and at the time I didn't know that this had like. More warnings than you would usually find on a horror JRPG. Calling it now, please look up said warnings before you try ANYTHING with this game - I can't promise quality and nuance, but I can promise great moments. Those moments stuck with me to this day, SOMEHOW, even after encountering games with better story and gameplay experiences… it's about a cursed 12 year-old boy trying to free a cursed 13 year-old girl, never getting a shot at the normal life he wanted and playing the violin because he can't do much else.

I think this game changed my life. Not in like, any grand manner mind you - but I feel like it's the game that best represented this time of my life as a weird high school outsider who obsesses over games that nobody's ever heard about. I was introduced to a lot of things through this game, it's just this whole volley of firsts that I wouldn't trade for anything else. Baby's first horror game, first jumpscare I ever consented to, first taste of games containing disturbing themes of sexual assault and gore, first trips to Pixiv and NicoNicoDouga - just all the fucking firsts. I wouldn't call it a great game, but it IS important to me.

When I think about it now, it's a game about curses. Michel D'Alembert is a talented violinist at 12, and his alcoholic father milks the shit out of this talent because they're not exactly what you would call well-off. His twin brother Pierre is a pianist, is nowhere near as talented as his brother, and hides his misery over this situation under a big-little brother façade. Cloé Ardennes is a pianist too, she's wealthy, talented, and still plays with her stuffed animals. She is cursed with an insane father who rapes her, and a mother who hates her. Charlotte is a young maid with nothing and tries her best, only to be killed because she happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Unsurprisingly things fall apart for everybody very quickly.

Pierre's frustrations with his spoiled, lazy brother boiled over, and he curses Michel out in a heated moment. This drives Michel to murder their Charlotte by accident, and she becomes his curse - he runs out of the house, kills cats, and finds himself in the dilapidated mansion that Cloé inhabits. Cloé by this point is already dead, and so is her dad, her parents, and the maids. Cloé's father may be her curse but she is the curse of this mansion, and it transforms into something hostile until Michel comes along and saves her from the shadow of her father. Michel plays her a requiem, and resolves to go home to confront his crimes - and back to Pierre, who regrets everything he's done. Watching the sun rise with a disappearing Cloé in the True Ending will likely be the last peaceful moment he will ever have in his life.

That's like. Not everything that happens in this game, but this post is already so goddamn long and I still have a lot of other stuff I want to talk about. But the gist of it to me nowadays is that these children are cursed with loveless lives and the whims of the adults that have power over them. In the end, their lives are all ruined. Cloé and Charlotte are dead, and we have no idea what becomes of Michel and Pierre when word gets out that Michel killed a maid and assaulted several others in the house in a fit of emotional instability. In every other ending, Michel is killed and Cloé remains an evil spirit, so really this is the best that anyone ever gets out of this experience.

I remember watching a playthrough of Con Amore on YouTube, but I understood none of it because it was in Japanese, and the game itself was untranslated at the time. It follows the cats Noir and Blanc and basically serves as an addendum to the base game - honestly it made me feel sorry for Charlotte, who was nowhere near as psychotic as Michel thought she was. There's also light novels, but international shipping is expensive and I don't know Japanese so. I'll just never figure out what happens to everyone after the game ends I guess

One of these days, I'll buy the remake on Steam - which exists, and I can't say I recommend it if everything I just listed bothers you in any way. But I can't shake the attachment I feel towards this game no matter how many years it's been, nor how uncomfortable its themes are, so you know - maybe one day. I'll go back to it.

So - following that, I got pretty curious about the other games in this genre of freeware horror. Ib is the one that everyone knows the best, both Markiplier and Pewdiepie played it so you KNOW it gets press, but even in Japan this game was a hell of a hit. To me, it's a simple game that I can finish in an hour, but man what an hour it can be.

If you were to play this game right now after seeing how much press it gets (which I think you should, it's on the Switch now! Go get it!), you MIGHT be a little disappointed. It's nowhere near as gory or disturbing as Cloe's Requiem for one and you know - a bunch of blood and guts and ghosts on the walls does not a good horror game make, but make your choices accordingly. Nah - instead this game's staying power lies in its atmosphere. Like how many games can you say take place inside of an art gallery where most of the pieces try to fucking murder you? I mean there's probably a lot, but something about Ib's almost ambient sense of dread and exploration just kind of sticks in people's brains. Everything's a little scarier when the shapes are so close to being discernable but aren't, and I guess that's the appeal and horror behind Guertena's gallery.

Ib herself is a mute protagonist, pretty typical, but she's also NINE, and the game will let you know that no matter how unfazed she gets or how precocious she can be, she is a child all the same - and children break very easily. I personally love how the game barely has to say anything about how shaken she actually is about her situation, because it will show you how - she has nightmares that you can't escape, she sees herself getting hanged, Garry will need to shake her out of her shock when she sees a picture of her parents in the gallery that should not exist. She loses all of her will to live when she loses Garry to insanity. And speaking of Garry…

There's one standout room in this game and it's the Doll Room. 10/10 would NOT recommend it to anyone who suffers from anxiety because WOW I did not think the RPG Maker 2000 engine could ever have been capable of that. Nobody blames Garry if this room fucks him up. I mean come on the dude has to literally rip open the stomachs of dolls to find a paint ball. Those sound effects make it sound like the dolls are made of skin and flesh and all the while the giant fucking doll is creeping out of the goddamn painting while some of the most anxiety-inducing background noise is playing -

Yeah no I don't know why I ever said you'd be disappointed by this game. Or maybe you still would, this is a low-res game made in 2012. But my god does it TRY to scare you in the best ways it can.

One of the best moments in this game I think is the one where Mary and Ib are alone together, and the conversation gets increasingly unhinged with Mary asking Ib questions non-stop with no background noise other than their steps. At this point, they're separated from Garry, and they're trying to find a way back to each other. Garry meanwhile is slowly piecing together the truth about Mary and how dangerous it is for Ib to remain alone with her, all the while still trying to figure out how to get back to both of them.

The section after that is in the Sketchbook which honestly? The vibes of this place are impeccable. Somehow it's fitting that one of the tensest areas in a game about a fine arts gallery is the place made entirely out of childlike scribbles.

Overall, I'd say the experience is well worth an hour or two - I'd recommend it happily over Cloé's Requiem, if only so you can have a taste of what Horror JRPGs were like before Omori came along. Yes I know that Omori isn't Japanese but it's very much in the same vein as these games.

OTHER GAMES

Those were the safe two that planted my feet firmly into the Horror JRPG fandom, but there's a lot of other titles out there, so let's go - lightning round!

Ao Oni is the ubiquitous one, like chances are you've at least HEARD of it in passing at some point in your life. Like this shit made it to the big screen in Japan, that's how much of a deal it was. I've never played the original myself, but it's partly because its formula of stuck in a mansion with a horror that chases you around is present in pretty much every Horror JRPG after its release in 2007. If you want some classic fun with the big blue demon though then you can't go wrong with the freeware version.

Mad Father and The Witch's House are part of what I like to call the Big 3 of JRPGs starring preteen girls experiencing the Horrors™, mostly because back in the mid-2010's I couldn't go three posts without seeing them all together. Mad Father is the only other one of said Big 3 that I've touched, because I was too coward to touch The Witch's House and Ellen's whole deal remains a mystery to me to this day. I think Mad Father got a remake a couple of years ago, so you can check that out if you want, but keep in mind that these two games in particular might not stoke the same kind of magical staying power that Ib somehow retained years after its release, and I know those two rely on jumpscares a lot more than Ib does.

I'll eat my fedora right here by the way, because one of my cardinal sins of being a Horror JRPG fan is that I've never played Yume Nikki. As far as these freeware games go, this is probably one of the more avant-garde ones - it's artsy, atmospheric, and a game best experienced by getting lost in the strange environments it provides. Out of every game on this post, this is the one I'd describe as the most Earthbound-esque, with its horror lying mostly in the surrealist ambience of just… wandering around in Madotsuki's mind. The end is just as quiet as the beginning, but is no less chilling to watch happen. Then you fuck around a little bit on Youtube and you find out what's actually going on, and uh - yeah that checks out, cosmic horror sounds par for the course at this point.

Yume Nikki and OFF are two of the games I think of when I hear about Horror JRPGs being talked about alongside Undertale - and nope, I haven't played OFF either. That's my other Horror JRPG sin. I was a picky teenager, but I've grown now and wow I need to find a time to play these games in peace. OFF actually isn't even Japanese, it was developed by Mortis Ghost and released in French back in 2008, making both pretty old and already pretty weird in the library. The reason I bring up OFF is because it's one of the older examples I know of that also incorporate Earthbound's precision 4th-wall breaks, and that it's a game about judgment and interrogates the player (more you than the Batter you play as, serving more as a vehicle that the game uses to ask questions through) about the choices they make in the game. OneShot is probably the one game in this genre of indie RPG that I know so far that employs this metaphysical idea of the player existing in the game in any kind of charitable fashion (aside from again, Earthbound and to some extent Mother 3), so between it, OFF, and Undertale they're what I'd refer to as the Interface Screw-RPG Trio.

Some other titles that I like are between the same devs, even some that I haven't really played to completion. Cloé's Requiem for example was made by Buriki Clock, and they've made other titles like Fantasy Maiden's Off Hideout and Trauma Traum - the latter I can't play because it doesn't have an English translation rip. Miwashiba is another dev which I think people who have a taste for light lolita goth-pastel colors would like, because my god the character designs in both Alice Mare and LiEat are peak. Don't even get me started on the fashion of 1BitHeart because everything in that game has such an impeccable aesthetic. I think I saw something at one point about 1BitHeart that like. Might count as a shared joke between Xenoblade fans, but I'd be hard-pressed to give context because again… packed schedule, who dis?

Just to talk about Alice Mare a little more, I've actually played this one - it sports a heavily storybook-inspired cast with some unique tastes on the tales. Most of my actual experiences with Alice Mare were from the English Light Novel, which I do still have! I really recommend it to people who have a couple of hours to spare on some light, relatively bloodless horror. Most of these games have Light Novels, come to think of it - hell Ib even has whole audio dramas, one of which was fanmade in English, and from what I remember of it the voice acting for Mary was PEAK.

One last dev I want to talk about is Segawa. I've saved them for last because their brand of horror is reserved mainly for one game, but their other games Farethere City and Tower of Hanoi are no slouches either. I don't know much about Tower of Hanoi (or if it even has an English translation right now), but Farethere City is a pretty cute experience as far as pseudo-horror games go from what I've heard, which is probably good for us because their other standout game is anything but cute.

END ROLL

Ah, End Roll. The last of the Horror JRPGs I've played before school kicked me even harder in the shins and I had barely any time for it. Out of all the games I mentioned on this list, this is the one with the most staying power in my brain - and also the one that influenced me the most.

So, I don't talk a lot about my original works. Nobody asks, so I don't overshare. But some of the prevalent overarching themes of my personal mythos are those of guilt, self-love, and the burdens of love. All of these themes were lifted directly from End Roll - which is to say, End Roll actually only deals in guilt, my brain just ran buckwild with trying to wrap itself around the logistics behind InfoRuss. One of my main protagonists, Rosso, is a dead-ringer expy of Russell - the same goes for Blanco with the Informant. One of the only ways I can describe Rosso and Blanco's relationship is 'selfcest as a metaphor for the painful coexistence of self-love and self-loathing', and how this relationship reached this point was largely thanks to the Informant and his role in Russell's dream.

I don't really know why I've come to associate the idea of self-love with guilt, because that's like. Not what the game is trying to do. The game's express purpose is to tell you the story of a boy who comes to love his victims and self-destructs under the crushing guilt that he carries from killing them. By some weird hand, I've fixated on the Informant and his determination in seeing that mission of the game through - AND his secret boss fight. Actually, I should. Go ahead and describe the build-up to his secret boss fight

You can only access it if you've purchased the optional villa, and if I recall correctly you can only fight him on the last day of the dream. The locked shed next to the villa is revealed to be a library of some kind called the Graveyard of Books and like - sure enough, there's books of every kind just torn apart and scattered about everywhere. The reason for all of this is because of the Informant's jealousy. He is created specifically so he can provide Russell with the necessary information to complete the Happy Dream Experiment, and in this regard he thinks Russell doesn't need anyone other source of information than him. So he does away with the useless other books, except for the strategy guides because that's the only kind of book Russell likes - and thus, the only kind of book that the Informant likes. Notes are scattered in the hallway leading up into his boss room, with the last one sticking out in my mind to this day:

'He thinks he's the most important thing to you.'

Which. I don't know why that line is so important to me. Whether it be because it awakened something weird in me, or because I myself was dealing with my self-loathing in a VERY complicated manner at the time, that line has gone on to dictate the way that I write about my characters even to this day.

It's such a visceral depiction of self-inflicted brutality. Russell Seager is a 14 year-old serial killer who grew up loveless and abused, and has no shortage of things that make every waking moment of his life fucked up. He killed people - some who just happened to be wherever he was at the time, some willingly by his hand - could not feel guilt about any of it, and when he lost Yumi to his drunken father while his nymphomaniac mother watched he snapped and killed both his tormentors. He then turned himself in to the police, a teen on death row. Happy Dream is him discovering guilt through dream versions of the people he killed. Happy Dream is what allows him to manifest the newfound emotions he felt through interacting with the kinds of people that his victims COULD have been. The world he creates morphs into the self-inflicted hell that is his guilt.

Russell has no happy ending, his guilt won't allow him that. Everything around him becomes a reminder of the lives he's destroyed, and how much of a living hell his own life was. Through feeling happiness and love from these fabricated visages of the people he killed, he learned guilt. It's such a weird exercise in sympathy, knowing that you're playing as this remorseless kid going through rehabilitation through extreme means. It either doesn't work, and he's deemed a failure - or it does, and he commits suicide either by confessing his crimes to one of his victims and stabbing himself to death with a syringe, or he stays in the deteriorating dream, never to wake up again.

At some point it honestly just turns into misery porn, if you look at it from a certain angle - this game is set on having Russell die no matter what. I couldn't tell you what EXACTLY it is about this experience was so impactful that it would go on to influence the way I want to spend my life - that is, I want to make games exploring these kinds of themes. Guilt. Sins. If loveless lives can be redeemed and made better. By the time the last day in the game rolls around, it's just a matter of giving Russell closure over his miserable life and choosing for him what his last freedom is going to be.

I think one of the reasons I like thinking about the Informant with regards to Russell is the scene that happens if you choose to go through with the first True Ending. Russell never really much liked the Informant, and the feeling is mutual. Russell is cold to him, and the Informant takes every opportunity he can to rub all of Russell's sins in his face - and that's his job, he represents the fundamental, uncomfortable truths of Happy Dream. If Russell chooses not to leave the dream, he is resigned to its destruction and waits for the inevitable along with the other denizens of Nameless Town. But if Russell chooses to get out of the dream, the Informant returns to Russell in tears, happy that he can finally be back to being a part of him - to this game, it's the ultimate acceptance. Russell then goes on to confess his crimes and the reality of the dream to one of the citizens, and he wakes up when they kill him in tearful retribution by his request.

He grabs the syringe next to his bed, and stabs himself to death, unable to handle the guilt. That's how the game always ends for me. The Informant succeeded, Happy Dream succeeded - and Russell chose to die as person who could finally feel remorse.

It's a regretful story with themes that really shouldn't be replicated in any fashion in real life, but somehow I found it fascinating in the way it explores the facets of the self. It makes me want to ask more questions and explore that angle of self-reflection to the furthest extremes that I can conceivably reach, and I guess that's one of the many reasons why I respect it so much.

SO… WHAT NOW.

Nah, that's kind of it. Like, OF COURSE this isn't all I have to say about the games that I mentioned, but wow this post is so long and I was just pining for the days of a couple of years ago. These games were present for the most transformative years of my life, and uh - whether or not that was actually a good thing remains to be seen, but I'll always be grateful for their presence in the void that I call my gaming experiences.

Horror JRPGs will always have a special place in my heart for how they tell their stories. Nowadays, I've developed more of a taste for fantastical RPGs that prefer to hide their horror in the margins of the narrative, fridging the terror for when the player wants to step back a bit and think about the implications of certain events in the greater world. Undertale, OneShot, and the Octopath Traveler games all tick that box for me - and all of those games are ones I hold dear. Like I'll probably ramble about OneShot some other day, because that's the other game that really changed my life in a way I felt like I can never come back from - but there's just a lot of special things to be said about these neat little self-contained, 6-hour freeware games. For now I'll close this long-ass post out. Happy late Halloween I guess - the M&Ms in our fridge have never tasted better.

#rpg maker horror #rpg maker #horror rpg #ib rpg #cloe's requiem #end roll rpg #ao oni #mad father #the witch's house #OFF rpg #yume nikki #alice mare #farethere city #cw horror #seriously please read the content warnings

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fluffyhare · 1 month

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Hey friend!

Maybe this has been asked before, but was Avery inspired by anyone? ( ·ิϖ·ิ)

I don't think anyone has ever asked me this on this blog! Honestly, I've tried many times to nail down exactly what inspired Avery, but... I never can, not completely.

This is going to get long, I'm sorry.

I turned 30 last year. It wasn't in a "midlife crisis" or depressive kind of way, but I started thinking a lot about how I wanted the rest of my life to go, and what I wanted out of life that I'd never had a chance to have. I decided that there were two things I really yearned to do -- make art, and make friends. I figured a good place to start dipping my toes in would be Tumblr, since I'd used it in the past and I knew there would be a lot of art here to inspire me. And I was inspired... massively. Especially after I started actually drawing, myself. I started getting more ideas at once than I'd ever had in my life, and it triggered a bout of insomnia I am still dealing with now, almost six months later.

The first time I can remember thinking about Avery was during one such sleepless night, desperately trying to coax myself to sleep. Laying in the dark, I'd close my eyes and imagine leaving my body, floating above my apartment complex. I'd wander around like a ghost, exploring places I'd seen, but which are normally inaccessible... private roads, fenced estates, etc. I'd imagine sitting on the edge of a skyscraper, watching the city move beneath me, imagining what people were doing, why they were up so late, etc.

I imagined this many nights... It became a pet fantasy. When I was a kid, I read a book called Billy the Bird by Dick King-Smith, maybe that's where I got the idea... I don't know. Along with the insomnia were vicious bouts of nostalgia, too, so... It's possible.

But, anyway... I'd get lonely.

I wanted someone to talk to, so I imagined someone sitting with me. Someone who could only come out at night, for fear of being seen. Someone for whom sitting on the edge of a skyscraper was no concern, and who could catch me if I fell. I imagined he was soft, gentle... a good listener, maybe even a bit shy. I imagined he was an intellectual, capable of being quite serious, but never dour. He was quick with a smile, and it was easy to make him laugh.

In some respects, I suppose, he was inspired by a friend of mine, who died many years ago. In most ways, he wasn't like Avery at all -- he was extremely blue-collar, the exact opposite of an intellectual, and very outgoing. He was not refined in any way, and could even be quite reckless, at times. But, he had a unique, gentle, innocent sort of kindness that I've found to be exceedingly rare. To know him was to love him, really; he was a hard worker and a fierce friend, someone who wanted nothing more than to love and be loved. My relationship with him and the way his passing affected me touches everything I make and everything I do, intentional or not.

When I was building Avery's character, I was very fascinated by object heads at the time (particularly Prince Robot from Saga), and I was also seeing a lot art for "doctor/scientist" type characters. Despite never playing the game, I liked TF2 fanart, especially of Medic. I thought about other characters I'd fixated on, too, and what exactly I liked about them... Milo Thatch from Atlantis, Data from Star Trek, John from Homestuck, Sans from Undertale, Stanley and the Narrator from The Stanley Parable, Pokemon professors both Oak and Elm, Nightcrawler from X-Men, Wilson from House, Dr. Bashir from DS9... The list goes on, really.

I know this is kind of a non-answer, and I'm sorry about that. It isn't really a clear answer for me, either. All I can really say for sure is this: Avery is the embodiment of everyone and everything I've ever loved, as well as the reflection of my own self-love. Relatively speaking, we just met, but I feel like he's been here the whole time. I've made so many wonderful friends because of him, too! Can't say what the exact moment was, only that now that he's here, I can't imagine life without him. 💙

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uraberika · 3 months

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AreOri and nostalgia

I read a hot take the other day on Twitter that said something along the lines of "AreOri isn't worse than all the other series, y'all all just blinded by nostalgia", and after a lot of pondering, I have to agree. I have not seen the later part of Ares, nor Orion but I think the way they utilised nostalgia was what made it kinda flop. Objectively speaking Ares does a decent job at being a soccer anime, but by so heavily bringing in elements that aim to make fans nostalgic and then fails to handle this nostalgia well is what makes the series lag behind all the others in the franchise.

Ares wanted to do too much all at once by making it into an alternate universe with the og cast included. While at first I was very excited about the reappearance of some of my faves, they did a poor job at handling characterisations. The og characters became bland and uninteresting because obviously the plot had to favour the development of the new main characters. This also ruined many Ares characters since it immediately invited the viewers to compare and contrast Asuto's gang with the og guys; and not only Asuto's team had more personality (which made fans who were hoping to see the og characters disappointed) but they seemed to have eerily similar traits to guys in the og series. Asuto, the sunshine boy, Haizaki with his anger issues and sick-loved-one-in-the-hospital problems, Nosaka the genius, emotionless tactician etc. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with using a formula that seemed to work in previous installments, but the development of Ares characters 1) came at the detriment of the og character's development who just seemed to be background actors standing around without any real advancement of their own character or of the general plot and 2) was impossible not to compare and contrast the two groups of characters and find way too many similarities which makes the viewer (i am myself included xd) unable to appreciate the Ares characters as their own.

While this was going on, Ares also tried to use some tropes and themes that were already familiar to the audience. Yet again, a great move if executed correctly. My biggest issue with the execution here is that these tropes never fully made use of the full potential of Ares being in an alternate universe. We learn of Akane pretty early on in the series, Akane and Haizaki basically being the equivalent of Gouenji and Yuuka (or Gouenji and Yuuka with a different sort of relationship). Making a slight change in the trope of having a loved one in the hospital (like Haizaki and Akane being childhood friends) should have been enough, had Ares been a series on its own. The audience would have acknowledged that "haha this is a nod to the og series, how clever". But when Gouenji is right there, having gone through the same thing (especially if we considered how similar Akane is to Yuuka and Haizaki to Gouenji) the opportunity for these to bond (or hate, or whatnot, just to interact in any way) over this fact offers itself on a silver a platter, yet the series does not do anything with it, depriving both Haizaki and Gouenji from a potential character development.

The anime decided to create an alternative universe yet it was hesitant to harness the full potential of its alternative universe-ness. They could have used og characters to help them build the main character's personalities through interaction which they seemed to be doing, but at the same time, the og characters only seemed to be hollowed out shells of themselves, only there for a three minute appearance to draw in fans who started watching only to see this one character.

I think that's why I like Victory Road's premise so much. It seems to handle nostalgia much better than Ares did: the characters seemed to be very distinctly unique so far, no og characters to compare them to and a change in the protagonist's general attitude will also serve the game well, in my opinion. It alludes to previous series just enough for it to make fans want to pick it up while also introducing new, unique characters and a plot that replicates but also goes against the established story arc of Inazuma series. (I am aware that the fact that all the charas of previous series will be playable is also a big drawing force and that is the main reason that ppl are excited about this game haha).

So, in my opinion, the main reason people find AreOri the worst series in the franchise is because it establishes that it is going to rely on nostalgia and then does an abysmal job at making use of this nostalgia of the audience. It relies solely on the fans' dedication to their og characters - putting in og characters in the series as dummies with no real purpose, just so fans can say that their fave is in it - and completely forgets about the potential that fans can grow fond of new characters, can appreciate a storyline that is different from what they are used to.

I have to make it clear that I don't hate Ares, I just think that it was not well executed, due to in part in the way it relies on nostalgia, but I myself had enjoyed some parts of it when I was watching. And at the end of the day, it is a soccer anime which is mainly concerned with fancy hissatsus and high-stake matches and not the intricate details of their characters' personalities. I am also grateful for Ares because it was successful in making me nostalgic and indeed pulled me back to the franchise. Despite all the issues I think it has, a lot of characters turned out decent and I was very invested in the story when it first came out. What I also love about Ares is how it revived the fandom here on tumblr: the sakka fridays of watching the new ep without understanding anything, the long analysis posts, the fanarts and fanfics, I will always be thankful for its community-building.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk. xd

#“labs write your thesis”#me: is this my thesis?#labs talks #inazuma eleven #inazuma eleven ares

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stingraywipe · 1 month

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What’s your top three beloved Pokemon? And if you have them— your top three most hated Pokemon?

omg hi Sofie!! :0 Get ready because I have a whole lot to say about this.

Most Beloved:

Number 1: Squirtle

My absolute favorite is squirtle. What's funny about this is I can't really pinpoint a specific reason why I like him so much. My first pokemon game was alpha sapphire, and I didn't play gen 1 until Let's Go Eevee, so it's not a nostalgia factor. I think my brain just subconsciously selected him back when I was watching the Indigo League anime in middle school. The squirtle squad showed up and my brain was like "Yeah. This guy. He's awesome. This is the one." And he has been my number 1 favorite fella ever since then, and as a consequence he is the pokemon I have the most merch of and it isn't really close.

Please keep in mind this is just what I have in my apartment where I live for college, and that I have even more stuff in my bedroom back at home. Now that I think about it, Koopa Troopa is my favorite mario character, so maybe I have an affinity for characters that are just little turtles. Either way, water is also my favorite type, which means even more bonus points for squirtle.

Number 2: Riolu

Riolu's high ranking has been somewhat of a recent development for me. I've always liked lucario, but I didn't see the light that was riolu until after I watched Pokemon Journeys. Ash's riolu was so silly and adorable, and I always felt so bubbly inside when he was on screen. This shift in my preference is probably due to me developing a major soft spot for cute characters/creatures over the past few years. Most of my favorite pokemon at this point are just little guys because of it. Anyways, the reason I like him so much is because of the aura control him and lucario are capable of. I've always loved aura as a power system; the idea of being able to harness one's own life energy and see it in others is just so cool to me. I especially like how it's established as its own concept outside of moves in pokemon, making it something super unique that only riolu's evolutionary line can take advantage of. I have a lot of lore/worldbuilding ideas for PMD that would utilize aura. For example, Milo, the protagonist of the PMD verse I've been brainstorming, on is a riolu with much stronger aura than normal due to him being a pokemon with a human soul. I have a lot of ideas for how I could use this concept to drive plot points or character arcs, and I might share more in the future if I ever get time to start solidifying a story.

By the way, Milo's partner, Lilly, is a squirtle. No way I don't give both of my two favorites the spotlight.

Number 3: Sprigatito

My love of sprigatito is really quite simple. I love cats. So much. They are easily my number one favorite animal of all time. My Instagram feed is covered in them. So imagine my excitement when I saw that one of the new generation 9 starters was a kitty. My violet team is my favorite team I've ever used in a pokemon game, and the sprigatito line is a massive part of why I love it so much. Sprigatito is adorable, and my meowscarada was so much fun to use after he evolved. On top of that, sprigatito's depiction in Pokemon Horizons makes me love it even more. It's literally just a cat. It loafs. It makes biscuits.. It gets annoyed at the mildest inconvenience. Liko squishes its beans. Plus it releases a super sweet scent when you cuddle it as a bonus. It's so perfect. It's like Game Freak was like "Yeah this is the perfect pokemon for Ray, put it in the game." I have a sprigatito character in my PMD verse named Mayple, but I can't share much about her because it would mean dropping pretty big spoilers for a plot point I have planned.

Honorable Mentions: Greninja and Ceruledge

I love ninjas. I love frogs. Greninja is both. And ceruledge is just objectively one of the coolest pokemon designs ever.

In terms of behated pokemon, I don't have many that I personally despise. It's more so that I feel indifferent about them, and I would simply prefer not to use them on my teams. Usually I don't have any real reason to dislike the ones I do hate; I think it just stems from a gut feeling. The biggest one off the top of my head is the tepig line. I don't know what it is, something just feels off about them. I also dislike incineroar. I like litten and torracat a lot, but they really dropped the ball with the final evolution for me.

That's about all I have. This was really fun to do! Thank you so much for submitting this ask. I look up to you and your work a lot, and it made my night when I got the notification. I'm still pretty new to Tumblr, so I don't know exactly how I'm supposed to do things around here. I want to try to meet more people here, but my social anxiety and tendency to overthink online interactions usually shuts down anything before it can happen. Because of that, being able to answer something simple like this means a lot!! Thank you!! :D

#pokemon #pokemon mystery dungeon #squirtle #riolu #sprigatito

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incrediblemeh · 2 months

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When I was a little kid, I used to be pretty arrogant and elitist towards a lot of anime. I thought shonan was stupid and Dragon Ball Z was for idiots. I thought I was hot shit for drawing the characters from the playstation games I was interested in and that the kids who drew dragon ball characters in their notebooks were shit artists by virtue of "being unoriginal" or something.

I was a pretty shit kid. It took watching Gurren Lagaan years later to course correct me on my frankly objectively terrible opinions, and I didn't stop viewing Dragon Ball with some measure of contempt until much later after that. My first exposure to Dragon Ball was through the abridged series, and I was one of those people who believed that DBZA actually wrote it better. Which is an exceptionally arrogant and unfair idea. There's a sort of pseudo-intelectual attitude towards Dragon Ball Z that I inherrited, as I was growing up being sarcastic and critical towards media was attractive. The internet was full of an entire cultural landscape of Nostalgia Critics, and video game reviewers who couldn't help themselves when describing everything japan makes as outlandish and wild. Ever western cartoon I was exposed to would inevitably do a bit where they would have some godawful parody based on someone's surface level idea of anime. I think that attitude is alive and well today, quieter but buried in the hearts of a lot of people who are on their way from being young adults to becoming crotchety old farts. Ready to speak up and pressure others to find ways to apologize for liking something. After I finally grew to love Dragon Ball Z for what it was I also grew to deeply dislike the framework of judging media through quantitative statements. Better, worse, dumber, smarter, peak, cringe.

I've never thought of myself as a Dragon Ball fan, but I've grown to love it more and more. Dragon Ball is a series that will find a way to burrow into your heart one way or the other. After you give it that first bit of forgiveness you'll find yourself letting go of more and more of the unfair reasons you hated it.

I won't belittle Akira Toriyama by pretending he ever had to be a perfect author. And I won't diminish his work by describing it in all the boring stupid ways people are keen to use. Dragon Ball Z can't be described honestly by calling it a show where people just glow funny colors, yell for a whole episode, and then start punching each other and throwing energy blasts. The curtains aren't just blue and neither is SSGSS, unless you suddenly need things to be complicated in order for them to be meaningful. Dragon Ball Z is a show about how he inherit the love people have raised us with, the arrogance and pettiness of the powerful elite, disregarding the idea that what you are capable of has anything to do with how you were born, and how hateful people can be irrevocably changed by being forced to acknowledge the worth of a single kind idiot. It is also exceptionally emotional, uses presentation and escalating force to poke at all the right spots of the brain to make you excited and interested in a show of power you otherwise might never be so you can feel the same adrenaline rush and payoff Goku does, and watch the atmosphere of the fights warp and twist around the changing feelings in the hearts of both the combatants and onlookers. It rocks and if you think it's all an accident I can point you to a man who says "I like birds." and make you look like a moron.

Gonna start fucking crying now.

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bluepeachstudios · 1 year

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Hello again! Hope you’re having a good day! 😁

My question this time is, if you had to rank the TMNT series from your ultimate fave to your least fave, what would you pick and why? 😄

Thank you! 😊

Hello! I got four hours of sleep but otherwise yeah I'm doing okayish.

OUGH okay-- here me out-- I'm doing this by my personal tastes, this is not what I think is the "best" show objectively. By "series" I'm going to assume you mean the TV show series, because if I get into the comics this is gonna get messy fhgkdfjg

2003 (personal favorite, I love the story and the characters so much, the animation still holds up, I have nostalgia bias for it)

Rise (absolutely gorgeous animation, the story is great, the characters are great, honestly if they'd gotten a full second and third season like they wanted it would probably be my favorite)

2012 (fun character dynamics, a long show which I know throws a lot of people off because the pacing can be ough sometimes but I enjoy the content, I... Highly disagree with a lot of the writing choices they made but the amount of POSSIBILITIES also the turtles tell each other "I love you" and that's a lot of points)

1987 (this show!!! is really cute!!! and fun!!! but I can only handle a little of it at a time. There's no cohesive storyline except for like, three seasons I think? The humor is fun, the animation is.... both bad and really good at times. Very unreliable. Very cute turtles tho 10/10)

The Next Mutation (THAT'S RIGHT I BROUGHT IT UP. I'm still only halfway through this one because we only watch 2 episodes every other week but OUGH this show can be so fun to laugh at. The amount of sound effects, ridiculous. Venus, I love her. They do take the Bold Stance of pulling a "we're not blood related" even though they most likely would be??? just to have a romantic plot with Leo and Venus?? which hasn't come up yet, but ough I am so afraid for when it does. The costumes aren't great, the story's not great, if this was a fan-made project I would be really impressed but this was a full production thing and just-- jesus fhgkdjfg)

#asks

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 4 months

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Well here's a fucking Chortle headline for the roundup:

Holy fuck. I cannot believe that. Never for a moment did it cross my mind that this might happen. It's been nearly ten years since he left, and this never once seemed like a possibility.

I remember exactly when he left. I know it was announced in February 2015, because I was sitting in my bedroom in the city where I lived in 2015, where I'd moved to join their bigger and more impressive sports team and ended up just being miserable and lonely for two years because I did not have any of the skills required to fit in there. Anyway, it's fine, not the point of this post. The point is I know it was 2015 and I know it was February because I vividly remember sitting in that bedroom and scrolling on Facebook, and seeing a mock Valentine's Day card that said "May Jon Stewart be the only man to break your heart this week." And that's how I found out he'd announced he was leaving The Daily Show.

I know when he actually left, too. It was August 2015. Because Donald Trump walked down that fucking escalator in June 2015, and announced he'd be running for president. I remember watching The Daily Show that night, and Jon Stewart, incredibly pleased at the comedy gold mine that was about to befall all political comedians, looked into the camera and said to Donald Trump: "Thank you for making my last six weeks the best six weeks." Then he stayed on for six more weeks and made Trump jokes every night, then he left, and the world immediately ended. Looking back with a bit of perspective, Jon Stewart really did happen leave the show right as the Western world was on a precipice of having the norms as we thought we knew them all crumble at once. I'm thinking of that timeline that says 2000-2015=nostalgia, 2016-2019=2016, 2020-present=plague. Those are pretty much my life's eras. And Jon Stewart was there for a hell of a lot of that first one. (Not actually the first era of my life, there is also 90s=childhood, but I'm pretty sure everything was fine then, right?)

It's a bit weird to me now to see Jon Stewart as having an individual career, if that makes any sense at all. If you'd asked me in 2009 who my favourite comedians were, it wouldn't have occurred to me to say Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, even though I watched them both every night and loved those shows. I hardly even though of those as things that people had to make by being comedians and writers. They were just fixtures. Part of the landscape. I was so confused when he left the show, I didn't think it could exist without him. It didn't really feel like television could exist without Jon Stewart coming on at the end of the night. I remember learning some time ago about Marc Maron's feud with Jon Stewart over their days on the comedy circuit, and that was so weird. Jon Stewart didn't have days on the comedy circuit. He didn't have a career you could object to or admire, or opinions you could agree with or disagree with. He was just a fixture in the landscape.

I remember the first time I saw Jon Stewart. I think it was probably 2006, maybe 2005. I was really into Rick Mercer, this Canadian comedian who did TV shows where he made fun of the news. My mother put on a TV show, pointed to the guy behind the desk, and said, "That's Jon Stewart, he's like an American Rick Mercer." It only occurred to me relatively recently how funny it is to call Jon Stewart "an American Rick Mercer". But anyway, I watched that episode with my mom and then I kept doing that every night for many years.

I remember watching his final Daily Show episode with my mother, in August 2015. Bruce Springsteen came on live and played him out. My mother and I both got fairly emotional.

I kept watching The Daily Show for a long time after Jon Stewart left. I even followed a lot of the similar spinoff shows by its correspondents. I watched Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, and Larry Wilmore's The Nightly Show, and Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act, and Michelle Wolf's The Break. Obviously, I followed John Oliver to Last Week Tonight (and would also if necessary follow him to the ends of the Earth, but that's beside the point).

I quite like Trevor Noah too; when he took over the show I read his autobiography and watched his stand-up specials and the documentary about him. I even saw him live in 2019. So I wasn't one of those people saying the show could never recover from Jon Stewart leaving. I watched a lot of the Trevor Noah years, and only dropped off from following it so closely fairly recently. It was around 2022, I think, when I just stopped keeping up with it. I had so much Britcom going on, and the world was so fucking depressing, getting all my news from actual news sites (as everyone should always always do, do not get your news from comedians, use political comedy as a way to lighten the mood of the regular news that you should first get from actual journalists, for the love of God please do not let the industry of actual journalism be steamrolled by entertainment) was stressful enough and I didn't want to keep having this other way of going over it.

So, those are a few disjointed memories that came into my mind when I saw that story this week. Here's another memory: I remember reading an interview with Jon Stewart from just after he left The Daily Show, in which he was asked if he would ever watch Fox News again. He replied that if he were ever in some post-apocalyptic scenario where Fox News was the only way to find out where to find vital life-saving information, he still wouldn't watch it. Because doing that job that required him to watch so much Fox News had destroyed him mentally and he could not wait to never ever ever ever ever do it again.

I was one of those people, after he left, saying, "I get it, it's high-pressure and difficult, I see why he wants to move on and have a break. But I would pay to have Jon Stewart just broadcast once a month in his sweatpants from his living room couch. He can't just be gone. He needs to keep telling us about the news, what will we do without him?"

We did do without him for nine years, and the world we thought we knew has crumbled around us in about twenty-five different ways since then, and I have absolutely no idea how the fuck Jon Stewart could fit into the landscape as it exists today. Like. I don't know what to do with this information. It wasn't on my radar. It's like finding out they're rebooting Buffy with the entire original cast and writing crew. Or if the girl I had a crush on from the ages of 9 to 14 showed up and told me she was in love with me. Of course it's what I wanted, but... what? Really? Why? Why now? Do I even still want this? You mean everything pre-2016 wasn't just a dream and we still technically exist in the same world as that one and the things in it are still out there and could just come back?

...There are people like @lastweeksshirttonight who actually know things about the US late-night comedy show scene, who have always understood that Jon Stewart is a person with a backstory who entered and then left an industry that also had a backstory and those things affected each other and this will have a significant effect on the ecosystem. Those people will have intelligent takes on what's happening right now. But I do not. Jon Stewart was on TV when I was in high school. He can't be on TV now because I am no longer in high school (even though I was 24 when he left in 2015). What the fuck?

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d4isywhims · 11 months

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sims tag game!!

i was tagged by these lovely people @seokolat @pxeltownie @mdmszee @moonriesims @magpiesims @oasivy @tbeanie-sims !! <3 lots of love to you!!

1. What’s your favourite sims death? death by vending machine just because that's the only "unique" sim death i've gotten so far lol (it happened to mawar btw but i immediately quit the game bc of obvious reasons)

2. Alpha CC or Maxis Match? i'm personally a maxis mix girl but i loveeeee looking at sims with alpha cc

3. Do you cheat when your sims gain weight? nope :)

4. Do you use move objects? yes. i would not be able to survive without it

5. Favorite mod? bed cuddle mod my beloved <3 no but in all seriousness, mccc and iu cheats are a gamechanger! i also love a bunch of adeepindigo's mods

6. First expansion/game/stuff pack you got? get to work ;)

7. Do you pronounce “live mode” like aLIVE or LIVing? live as in aLIVE :)

8. Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made? aww just one? :( i have so many! priya, kohana, harlow, jae!!!, hunter and sooooooo much more. but if i have to choose one i'd say my favourite is probably harlow because i based her off of savannah smith and she is gorggggg (both savannah and harlow!)

9. Have you made a simself? yeap

10. What sim traits do you give yourself? foodie for sure, umm maybe creative and dog lover :D

11. Which is your favorite EA hair color? the ash brown swatch? the one hunter's hair colour is in

12. Favorite EA hair? i don't knowwww 😭 i mostly use cc hair yikes

13. Favorite life stage? young adult! i get to do so much :D

14. Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay? both i think? but if i had to pick a side, i'd say that i'm more of a gameplay person in ts4 :) i'm an avid builder in ts3 tho hehe i’ve always loved the building aspect of the sims and i loveee watching speed build vids on youtube

15. Are you a CC creator? i wish! but unfortunately i’m not :(

16. Do you have any simblr friends/a sim squad? i like to think we're all friends here so i'm going to say yes! i've met sooo many amazing simmers on here and i intend on making more :D

17. What’s your favorite game? (1, 2, 3, or 4) i’ll say ts3 just for the nostalgia :’) but ts4 is pretty good too minus the bugs lmao

18. Do you have any sims merch? do knockoff plumbob headbands count? :p

19. Do you have a YouTube for sims? i do actually lol my yt username is still d4isy-nukes but i currenty have no vids up.......YET

20. How has your “sim style” changed throughout your years of playing? when i first started playing the sims, i was obsessed with making the "perfect" sims with "perfect" lives and would aaalways cheat away negative moodlets or never give them "negative" traits ykwim? but now i just go with the flow at whatever the game throws at me lol it's much fun that way :D also it helps to not stress about the things in game too much, it takes the fun out of it :p

21. What’s your Origin ID? same as my tumblr name!

22. Who’s your favorite CC creator? oof i can't name just one 😭 @littlbowbub @oni28 are my go-tos for food cc! @simstrouble @johnnysimmer are also very cool! idk man i feel like if i list all my fav cc creators it would be never ending lol

23. How long have you had a simblr? ohh omg i think i made this account somewhere mid-2021? not sure tho but i've only started being active earlier this year :) and hopefully for the years to come!

24. How do you edit your pictures? i use photoshop! i don't do much besides adjusting the brightness, cropping the pics and run a few actions. if i'm feeling fancy i'll add a moodlet/thought bubble or text :) gshade basically carries my editing process atp lol

25. What expansion/game/stuff pack do you want next? give me hotels/resorts!!!! but ngl it's probably going to be buggy af tho lmao

25. What expansion/game/stuff pack is your favorite so far? cottage living AND seasons. i canot live without seasons

i know for a fact that a bunch of my moots have done this tag already so i'll be tagging whoever sees this lol

#gem got tagged!

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aurorangen · 11 months

Text

sims get to know me tag!

@akitasimblr @oasivy @duusheen @druidberries thank you so much for tagging me ❤️

1. What’s your favourite sims death? getting eaten by a cowplant!!

2. Alpha CC or Maxis Match? maxis mix! and i have a lot of alpha hair too. i can't help it, they all look so pretty...

3. Do you cheat when your sims gain weight? not for weight but for the muscle. idk but it seems funny that they go buff so fast even if you've not made your sims exercise for long

4. Do you use move objects? it's on as soon as i enter build mode

5. Favorite mod? mccc and ui cheats. but for gameplay wonderfulwhims.

6. First expansion/game/stuff pack you got? get to work! and then i got that bundle with parenthood and vintage glamour/bowling night.

7. Do you pronounce “live mode” like aLIVE or LIVing? now that i think about it i've called them both ways.

8. Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made? so i made this gorgeous sim in cas and he just became my favourite right there. he will eventually make an appearance in tjol posts, but my favourite sim you've seen it's bryce of course!!

9. Have you made a simself? yep! once i saw that simstrouble hair i had to make myself! but i've only shared it to my good friend @oasivy!! maybe i'll show you all in the future.

10. What sim traits do you give yourself? lazy, foodie and hot-headed. nooo those are awful traits but it's true....ok if i had 5 traits then it's also clumsy and perfectionist!!

11. Which is your favorite EA hair color? i love all the blond hair swatches!!

12. Favorite EA hair? when i saw that outdoor retreat hair, the one wavy hair parted in the middle i used it on all my females! it was my favourite at the time, but now i only use cc hairs.

13. Favorite life stage? has to be YA. i always have lots of plans with them and get the most gameplay at that stage (as you can tell).

14. Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay? definitely gameplay, but my building is slowly improving! i rarely go into cas unless it's to create a new sim for my legacy

15. Are you a CC creator? nope! no skills or patience lol

16. Do you have any simblr friends/a sim squad? yes! i have talked to a lot of wonderful people here, simblr would not be the same without you guys!!

17. What’s your favorite game? sims 4!! but sims 3 for the nostalgia.

18. Do you have any sims merch? no.

19. Do you have a YouTube for sims? no.

20. How has your “sim style” changed throughout your years of playing? i was an on/off sims 4 player since 2015 and back then i was completely vanilla, then i found out about cc in 2018! only in 2022 i started using more skin details and gshade. but one thing's for sure, i have always been a legacy player!!

21. What’s your Origin ID? same as my simblr, but there's nothing on my gallery. i changed it bc it used my real first name and i upload sims for ppl to download on simblr, but ive not done that for a very long time.

22. Who’s your favorite CC creator? there are too many creators that i have downloaded everything of. i love everything from pralinesims!!

23. How long have you had a simblr? this simblr is almost a year old! i started posting on the 13th July 2022!

24. How do you edit your pictures? i completely rely on my personal gshade/lighting mods and don't really edit, i just sharpen on photopea or add the moodlet stuff when needed.

25. What expansion/game/stuff pack is your favorite so far? when cottage living came out it was my absolute favourite!! i made all my families live there including nsb pink gen, gen 4 of another legacy and my 100 baby challenge! by the time i started my postcard legacy i played with too much cottage living so i decided to start on freegan.

26. What expansion/game/stuff pack do you want next? honestly it would be great if the sims team improves the older packs, i feel mostly everything from previous games have been included. but it was family gameplay i wanted before growing together was released.

i'll tag: @weindenburg @raiiny-bay @bloomingkyras @glowbloom @igotsnothing but feel free to ignore ❤️

#rambles #tag game

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17-noodlebird · 7 days

Text

World Two = The Ace Of Clubs

♥️♦️♣️♠️🃏🎰🎲🎱💲

~~~~

Jewel: Lapis Lazuli

Power: Metal

Color: Cobalt

Theme: Las Vegas Casinos & Game Shows

~~~~

Objective:

Win all 10 games in the Comrade Casino and win the grand prize in the Trivia Torrent game show.

~~~~

Chapter II: Get Your Head In The Game!

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The second episode/chapter pays homage to Las Vegas and their many casinos, as well as the games shows we used to binge on TV, such as Family Feud, Wheel Of Fortune, The Price Is Right, and Jeopardy. It also pays homage to the Trivia Crack app.

The episode picks up where Chapter I left off, as they finally reach their first destination of the road trip: The Ace Of Clubs, a Las Vegas-esque city with colorful lights, extravagant scenery, a grand hotel, and casinos as far as the eye can see. Yeah; a lot of gambling here is encouraged. Team Circus had just booked a room for a pretty fancy hotel named Doki Doki Resorts (a reference to Doki Doki Precure), where they are promptly greeted by the hotelier, who gives them a tour of Doki Doki Resorts: there, they have their in-house casino (because of course they do lol), a fine dining area where they perform their dinner theater, a full liquor bar, a swimming pool, a ballroom for weddings and formal galas, and of course, the luxury 5-star rooms they are well-known for. It's all magical for Team Circus; Jax especially loves the slot machines and their endless cornucopia of gold coins they bring. Zooble is revealed to be an excellent poker player when they decide to try it out, Kinger enjoys the dinner and a show with Gangle, and Pomni and Ragatha are overall just having a blast, having befriended a rich but wholesome couple named Crystal and Geode de Monte, playing casino games and singing karaoke at the bar. Caine gets hit with a mix of deja vu and nostalgia, as while nothing compared to the Circus, it feels comforting knowing that this kind of familiarity puts him at ease. Though, that won't be the case for long, as he'll soon find out the next day…

So, after Team Circus settles in for the night in their own hotel rooms (15 hours of driving will exhaust just about anyone, mind you), they wake up the next morning for breakfast, set off to explore more of The Ace Of Clubs as separate pairs (winning gambling games while they're at it), and then all meet up at a Soviet Russian-themed casino called the Comrade Casino, where they meet another character from The Ace Of Clubs, the pretentious and cocky owner of the Comrade Casino named Jonathan Flusher (my apologies for saying “casino” a lot, dear readers).

At first glance, Jonathan would appear to be a good-natured fellow looking to entertain his folks with his prowess and charisma, even flattering Team Circus for their attributes, including Pomni, with whom he for some reason is attached to, something of which Caine does not take too kindly to (both out of jealousy and Knight Templar Parent tendencies). Naturally, Caine and Jonathan start having beef with each other, with the former talking about how they're only here to retrieve a jewel to open a secret door and that they shouldn't be messed with, thus resulting in the latter challenging him to a game of War to prove Caine's worth to Jonathan, as well as the next jewel they have been seeking during their stay. With this, all eight members of Team Circus receive a notification for their second objective on their communicator bracelets. Upon questioning from Pomni, Bethany has to explain to the others that Jonathan will want to play 10 different casino games with him, because not only does Jonathan like a good challenge, but he hates it when anyone other than him doesn't win. During the 10 games, Bethany and Pamela give out hints and tips to Caine while cheering him on in the process.

The first game is, as I mentioned, War. Jonathan is, of course, Caine's dealer, due to being the Comrade Casino’s owner. At first, the game starts off easy, with Team Circus and the diplomats cheering him on every time he has an advantage. But no one could shake off the feeling that it might just be rigged. Or perhaps it's just luck being by Jonathan's side.

The second game is Match the Cards, where the consequences are more noticeable with every disadvantage. This one is especially difficult because every mismatch results in Caine losing $5, but he nevertheless beats Jonathan yet again, though he is $175 short now.

The third game is Craps. A dice game. Should be easy, right? Unfortunately, that's not the case. While Caine isn't looking, Jonathan will alter the dice rolls into snake eyes, something Pomni takes notice of, but doesn't say anything until much later. Somehow, Caine still wins.

Big Six is also rigged, with him losing every turn whenever the wheel is spun. Eventually, Caine figures out the jist of it and prevails in victory.

Roulette is also another game Caine wins through strategic thinking.

Thanks to Zooble's advice, Poker is a bit easier on the ringleader.

Blackjack, not so much. This is where the frustration begins kicking in.

Pool is another game Jonathan deliberately cheats at in order to tick off Caine. Thanks to Bethany and Pamela though, he successfully thwarts Jonathan's efforts to try and defeat him.

After emerging victorious from the ninth game, Spanish 21, though long and frustrating it was thanks to the no-good casino owner, a sentient strand of RNA can be seen eavesdropping on Team Circus, alongside his girlfriend, a Jessica Rabbit-esque lady with a clover card symbol for a head. They're planning on surprising them with something, though no one knows quite yet.

And finally, we reach the tenth and final game, Baccarat. Through motivation from Bubble and helpful tips from the money-sauve Pamela, Caine defeats Jonathan for good, and simply collapses from exhaustion. Jonathan, though pissed, handles the loss with professionalism, stating that this battle of theirs isn't over yet, before walking away towards two shadowy figures, briefly caught by Ragatha.

At the full liquor bar in the Comrade Casino, Team Circus discusses the next event that'll be happening, which is the game show, something about trivia. Ragatha senses they're being watched somehow, but she doesn't voice this concern with anyone. Valerie just says to “let the adventure find you” and not come looking for trouble. After all, patience is a virtue.

Pomni and Ragatha then encounter their new friends, Crystal and Geode, and as the two groups make small talk, Pomni proudly introduces the rest of Team Circus to the rich couple, and each of the rest of the members try to feel at ease around them. After a while, however, Crystal asks if she and her husband can show them something. They gladly agree, but you could tell from Bethany’s face that her heart had just sunk.

As Team Circus follows the de Monte couple, they are led to a secret basement of some sorts, where they are then asked by Geode to stand on the rug in front of them. The rug turns out to be a trap door as all eight members fall into a glossy black void of some sorts, with Crystal and Geode professing that they unfortunately have connections with Jonathan Flusher and his frat buddies from down the lane, and that them befriending Pomni and Ragatha was only a ploy for Jonathan to steal all the money from his patrons.

The first of a string of betrayals to come from this road trip, sadly, each one more traumatic than the previous.

Though initially upset by the revelation, they cannot process it right away as the void then brightens up to reveal a set for a game show called Trivia Torrent, and yes, it's a trivia-based game show, in case the name didn't give that away. Each member of Team Circus is revealed to have their own podium, with their own names on it and a shiny red button they can press. A sentient strand of RNA emerges from the door onstage, where he introduces himself as Aaron A., welcoming the viewers to an episode of Trivia Torrent. Already, Zooble is getting some unpleasant flashbacks looking at this place, triumphantly confirming Kinger's suspicions as to whether or not Zooble saw a game show inside the Gloink Queen’s stomach back in the canon show's pilot.

He introduces his contestants to the audience, who we all know as Team Circus. Aaron A. goes on to explain that here in Trivia Torrent, you have to compete in a series of trivia questions and various challenges and obstacles, and that whoever has the most points wins the fabulous grand prize behind the titanium vault behind him.

In the middle of the stage is a giant spinning wheel with thirteen different categories, each with their own designated color: History (red), Math (orange), Literature (yellow), Science (green), Challenge (cyan), Geography (blue), Art (indigo), Fashion (violet), Film (pink), Food (brown), Sports (white), Gaming (gray), and finally, Miscellaneous (black). A beautiful woman with a clover symbol on her head named Gala Decker would be the one spinning the wheel. Team Circus is most off-put by the inclusion of the Challenge category and the Miscellaneous categories, but before anyone could ask, Aaron A. explains that the Challenge category is is nothing too rigorous, as it's basic puzzle solving and board games that are based on luck and chance, while the Miscellaneous category is basic questions that don't fit into either category; nothing randomized.

Slightly reassured, Team Circus allows Aaron A. to continue on, as he announces, “Now with all of that out of the way, let's get ourselves ready for…” with the audience shouting back “TRIVIA TORRENT!!!!” followed by an applause. Afterwards Aaron A. then says that whoever presses the shiny red button on their respective podiums first (or the fastest if there are multiple people who press the button) gets to choose which category on the wheel to spin. They then get to participate in a trivia question that is either multiple choice, true or false, or just a regular question (unless the wheel lands on a Challenge category, in which they, as aforementioned, must complete a challenge) before rinsing and repeating. Whoever answers correctly (or wins the challenge in the Challenge category) will gain some points, with the amount of points depending on how fast they answer or complete the challenge. The first person to reach 1 million points wins the grand prize.

And as always, the diplomats from the other side cheer Team Circus on as they shuffle their way through every knowledge previously unknown. And when they do land on the Challenge category for the first time, it's revealed to be a word puzzle, like that of Wheel of Fortune. While Gangle is apt in Science and Math, and the Art, Film, and Writing going to Pomni, the others are having a bit of trouble with the other categories that aren't challenges, which are all resemblant of Family Feud, Jeopardy, Wheel Of Fortune, and hints of Nickelodeon’s Legends of the Temple and Figure It Out. Bubble and Caine have the least amount of points at 15 points and 0 points respectively. Later on, a commercial break occurs so the others can cool down from the adrenaline.

Though Team Circus is competing with each other, it really doesn't matter who wins; one of them will still get the grand prize in the end (and if large enough, can be shared equally amongst themselves), but here, we get to see more of Caine's insecurities. It's the innate ability of many sentient (or the closest thing to sentient) AI to be the best they can be; it was easy at the casino because he could figure out even the most complicated mechanics, but not here. One of his greatest desires is to know more about humanity, even to walk amongst them; apparently, there was so much he didn't know, and the things he thought he knew weren't actually correct (at least not by 2024 standards). The latter part is what hits him hard the most. Although Pomni reassures him, it barely does anything other than a small smile from the ringleader, as he looks on at the others, who are clearly basking in the potential victory.

Once the commercial break ends, Aaron A. recaps the amount of points each of the contestants have: Zooble at 135,067 points, Kinger with 45,910 points, Gangle at 8,522 points, Ragatha at 1,025 points, Jax at 870 points, Pomni at 212 points, Bubble at merely 15 points, and finally, Caine, with… zilch. Caine is irritated, but has already resigned to his fate, leaving it up to his fellow performers to save the day now. From here on out, the questions become even more difficult, teetering on over existential territory, with some delving into some… uncanny meta material that hits way too close to home for Team Circus.

Then finally, they reach the final question, where the category is in fact gaming. It has to do with C&A, and already, Team Circus is off-put by how in the world he would know such stuff. Though none of the members could properly answer the question (mostly due to being petrified by the existentialism it brought), Pomni opts to challenge Aaron A. instead, which is something that hasn't happened in Trivia Torrent in 5 years, though no one has actually won up until this point.. Regardless, Aaron A. accepts the challenge, where it's revealed to be a maze, in which Pomni must find an exit within 1 hour or lose the grand prize.

Pomni is briefly awash with fear, though she sucks it up for the sake of her friends (having already made the same mistake once; see canon pilot), and tries to run through it as much as she can. After about 25 minutes of running into dead end after dead end, giving her flashbacks of when she tried to find the exit the first time she came to the circus, she's briefly struck with a bout of hysteria and madness, before regaining composure to try and get help from the dimensional diplomats from the other side using her communicator bracelets, she can only get vague tips from them, as she must complete the maze by herself. At first, she considers giving up, softly crying on the floor in a fetal position for a moment, before remembering how she abandoned Ragatha in a moment of weakness when Kaufmo abstracted. She knew she had to keep going. So that's what she did.

However, what she didn't foresee was that the exit of the maze was maliciously blocked off, thus making the maze actually unsolvable… or was it? When Pomni panicked for a second time, she noticed one of the maze hedges was slightly bugging out. She was able to conclude that Aaron A. had trapped her in here on purpose, to keep them away from the grand prize. After jumping through the buggy hedge, she was able to actually find the actual end of the maze, albeit furious rather than relieved. Aaron A., shocked to see that Pomni actually managed to make it out alive, attempts to congratulate the unamused jester before the latter speaks out about how Aaron A. and his convoluted scheme to rig the game and horde the grand prize from everyone (though this was just Pomni assuming in a fit of anger). This would turn out to actually be true when Gala Decker not only confesses that Trivia Torrent has always been rigged, that Aaron A. had purposefully shattered Caine's confidence to make winning the grand prize even more difficult, that Aaron and Gala have been co-owners of the Conrade Casino alongside Jonathan Flusher, and that the game show only exists for the purpose of making the Comrade Casino richer through means of money laundering, but that Gala Decker was also cheating on Aaron A. because of his terrible performance onstage and in bed (that latter bit made Pomni snicker) and that she was sick and tired of playing alongside his dirty tricks just get wealthier.

Due to it being on live television, The Ace Of Clubs Police Department actively arrests the de Monte couple and Jonathan Flusher himself (who have been idly and comfortably watching the game show from the Comrade Casino bar), Gala (who gleefully accepted her fate, proving that redemption may be a certainty for her), and Aaron for money laundering and conspiracy, with Team Circus being compensated with the grand prize that was promised to them, according to some weird Ace Of Clubs law they had there.

The grand prize? A cobalt-colored Lapis Lazuli. This was one of the jewels that Team Circus had been looking for.

This notification then pops up on all of their communicator bracelets:

~ JEWEL OBTAINED! ~

1 out of 26

Only 25 remain

Everyone heads back to Doki Doki Resorts, where they briefly wonder how they're going to transport the Lapis Lazuli alongside the remaining 25 currently uncollected jewels, to which Beth transports an empty tote bag from her communicator bracelet to Pomni’s, where the former states that they can use the tote bag to carry the jewels with them during the rest of the road trip. Afterwards, Team Circus, tuckered out from today's events, goes to sleep for the night.

The next morning, after breakfast, Team Circus head back to the Magical Digital Van and depart the Ace Of Clubs to their next destination, all of them clamoring about how excited they are for the next part of their amazing digital road trip; in fact, this was the first time in… at all, if I'm being honest, that the six human players of Team Circus are actually happy, excited, and even content with their adventure, much to Caine's delight, and the dimensional diplomats’ relief, as this was one of their main goals of this road trip. The episode ends with The Magical Digital Van driving off into the morning glow.

~~~~

Current Status:

1 Jewel has been collected

25 remain

♥️♦️♣️♠️🃏🎰🎲🎱💲

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• OG Cast

Lizzie Freeman as Pomni

Amanda Hufford as Ragatha

Michael Kovach as Jax

Sean Chiplock as Kinger

Marissa Lenti as Gangle

Ashley Nichols as Zooble

Gooseworx as Bubble

Alex Rochon as Caine

~~~~

• Audience Surrogate Cast/Diplomats

Hynden Walch as Valerie

Susan Egan as Pamela

Amy Winfrey as Garcia

Mandy Moore as Lulu

Nevaeh Hamilton (me) as Bethany

~~~~

• Background Diplomats

Andrea Libman as Winona

Cristina Vee as Patricia

E.G. Daily as Rionna

Stephanie Sheh as Olivia

Debi Derryberry as Yolanda

Cree Summer as Gemma

Ashleigh Ball as Cécelia

Erica Luttrell as Belle

Ashly Burch as Imera

Kimberly Brooks as Bailey

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• Episode’s Antagonists

Jonathan Freeman as Jonathan Flusher

Sam O’Nella as Aaron A. the RNA Game Show Host

Ashley Johnson as Gala Decker

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• Secondary Characters Introduced

Debi Derryberry as Mana Jerr the Hotelier

Hynden Walch as Crystal de Monte

Khary Payton as Geode de Monte

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#the amazing digital circus #tadc #tadc caine #tadrt au #tadc road trip #tadc jax #tadc pomni #the amazing digital road trip #tadc bubble #tadc au #tadc ragatha #tadc kinger #tadc gangle #tadc zooble

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absolutebl · 2 years

Note

Hi again absolutebl! I was reading this BL manga and I realized that I enjoy a certain seme-uke pairing: soft reliable seme + feisty uke. Do you have any recs for BLs with this dynamic? The best example I can think of is Shi De and Shu Yi in WBL.

I know I just sent an ask about two days ago but I couldn't resist asking this. Thank you as always! I hope you are always happy and healthy.

Hi again!!! Always welcome.

Soft Reliable (devoted) Seme + Feisty Uke

(Like Shi De and Shu Yi in We Best Love.)

Ooo, fun request! So explicitly NOT a tsundere or a himbo seme. But the uke could probubly be tsundere.

Seven Days (what you doubt me?) - Japan, grey

Of course it rates. Seryou & Yuzuru don’t have a very strong S/u dynamic but Seryou is (basically) the pursuer and he is soft AF. Yuzuru isn’t so much tsundere as he is obstreperous. I consider this one of the best live action yaois ever made, with perfectly structured angst, fantastic characters and acting, and no problematic tropes (rare in Japanese BL). The leads have excellent chemistry although it’s low heat there’s still some really cute mutual kisses.

Light on Me - Korea, Viki

Very much a high school setting and low heat, but this is still one of my favorite KBLs. It’s an elegant pastiche of traditional live action yaoi but all tropes are cleverly deployed to bolster one of the most riveting love triangles ever put on screen… and I don’t like love triangles! Both semes are super soft. Full review.

Make it Right - Thailand, YouTube

The original Thai version of this dynamic. Tee is unequivocally devoted to Fuse from the moment they first get together. Fuse is more chaos bi: cheating, messy and confused (as is common with the high school stuff) but I think it’s the dynamic you’re after. What more can I say about this show, the origin of the Thai BL pulps? It’s objectively terrible, and not just the leads but the side couples too, and yet I love it. I tend to call myself the “world’s foremost Make It Right apologist.” I recognize the issues but I find it utterly charming, especially Tee’s utter devotion to Fuse the disaster.

SOTUS - Thailand, YouTube

The follow up version to Make it Right, but less soft. This is the BL that launched a hundred BLs. No literally, It was SOTUS’s international success that pretty much built the Thai BL industry into the juggernaut it is today. It’s classic sunshine/tsundere, but Kong is very steadfast and soft. People have baggage around SOTUS, I have nostalgia. trigger: hazing and bullying.

Manner of Death - Thailand, WeTV

Honestly I think this one qualifies. This is TanBun’s dynamic. I like MoD a lot but I’m conflicted over it being actually BL. It’s a great gay romantic suspense, although the mystery element is its weakness. MaxTul, the Kings of chemistry, are, of course, perfect and perfectly cast, but their romance thread is more a distraction than an addition. Still, I could watch them make-out the phonebook. Trash watch here.

Nitiman - Thailand, YouTube

This show was so close to being brilliant. They fudged the ending but this is probubly one of Thailand’s most classic takes on uni set yaoi with this exact dynamic. This Thai BL pulp had sympathetic characters, a solid tsundere uke redemption arc, and a fantastic pining seme who yearned without bullying, grooming, or gaslighting. Plus when they're together, they're ridiculously soft. But it also had a realistic portrayal of university life, bisexual awakening, and friendship groups. Bummer about the ending. Full review.

Dear Doctor, I’m Coming For Your Soul - Thailand, iQIYI

This is a romance between a doctor trying to save his patients and a reaper who is both his enemy and (eventual) lover. Basically it’s the genius premise of a gay Doom at Your Service. High concept looks good on you, Thailand. It’s lovely to see KarnNat back on screen together and they are still great, and Karn is just painfully beautiful. I enjoyed it more than it’s ending deserved, and the best I can say is that it’s not strictly HEA but if you’re okay with Life: Love on the Line, you’ll be okay with this BL. It’s set up well, there’s no surprise unpleasantness like HIStory 3: The BL that shall not be named. Full review.

En of Love: Tossera - Thailand, YouTube

Basically the softest BL ever Bar is feisty, but it’s kinda token tsundere. Younger boy wants to court older boy and does and… that’s it. No really that’s the WHOLE STORY. There is actually no angst, drama, or, indeed plot. But are they the softest bois ever to BL as a main couple? Yes, they are.

Cherry Magic - Japan, indie subbed

AKA 30 Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard AKA 30-sai made Dotei Da to Mahotsukai ni Nareru rashii

Kurosawa is certainly soft but Adachi is maybe more chaos confused than feisty. (Another one like this is My Love Mix Up.) This is the sweetest fluffiest magical realism BL, packaged as a pinning office romance, very low heat (practically chaste) but the cutest.

Mr. Unlucky Can Only Kiss - Japan, Viki (fan subbed)

AKA Fukou-kun wa Kiss Suru Shikanai! AKA Mr. Unlucky Has No Choice but to Kiss!

Mr Chronically Unlucky (another adorable chaos muffin) and Mr Always Lucky (solid, steadfast, crushing from the start) end up dating after they meet at uni orientation. It’s JAPAN yet they kissed in the first episode. What freaky alt-reality did I enter into? That’s all they kiss tho, over which I was a touch disappointed (I know). Still I spent far too much of my time with this show biting my knuckles and squealing “THEY’RE SO CUTE!” It is very slapstick Japanese style comedic (light) BL, so if you like that style, you’ll adore this show.

Amusing story: I paused mid the most tooth-achingly adorable first date in the entire universe and Viki was like “something missing?” and I was like “MY HEART YOU BASTARDS!”

Word of Honor - China censored, YouTube & Viki

I don’t rec Chinese stuff often, because I believe in censoring the censors, but this show is one of my favorites of the post 2016 censored bromances. It’s two murder-gay assassins (pining sunshine/tsundere), and they are so insanely gay for two boys who will never be allowed to kiss. Tropes include: wuxia, soulmates, paranormal, historical, and fantasy elements.

Maybe?

KOREA

Some More (Strongberry short)

Blueming

Peach of Time (Korea/Thailand - sad)

Spring of Crush (bromance)

THAILAND

1000 Stars

Bite Me (but it’s NOT good)

Brothers (sp KhunKaow)

Cupid’s Last Wish

Enchante

Secret Crush on You (side couple SkyJao)

Siew Sum Noi

TharnType

What Zabb Man?

Y-Destiny (the YoonLayPerth ep)

ELSEWHERE

Silhouette of Your Voice - Japan

Rainbow Prince - Pinoy (musical)

See You After Quarantine - Taiwan

Sort of this dynamic but there isn’t much seme/uke

remember Taiwan likes to futz with seme/uke

HIStory 2: Crossing the Line

some of the other HIStory maybe, although they often lean himbo

Be Loved In House: I Do - (My original blog post on seme/uke was spawned because of these two)

My Day

Wish You: Your Melody in My Heart

Second Chance

My Esport Genius Brother

Mr Cinderella

Others maybe related to this?

Strong Seme/Uke But Still Gentle

(source)

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