Me and recruiters.

"how are you?" well did you know that in sea of monsters percy keeps a picture of annabeth on him at all times when she's away for the school year and that she emailed him these pictures from her trip to california with her dad and this kid probably looked through the pictures so much and one day he chose to pick his favorite and download it and (ask sally how to) print it and cut it out and stuck this little picture of annabeth chase in his probably busted up school binder so that sometimes he could take it out and look at it and remember that she exists and is his friend and-

it just hit me how much information we are currently waiting to learn from CC, information that could be dropped any day now. like we're going to get what was supposed to be the second February newsletter, her release schedule for the foreseeable future specifically tlkof's release date, the first kickstarter shipment with sobh, the cover for better in black + more information about it in general, new flower cards, more teasers for twp probably all soon!! like in the next few months all this will likely be revealed that's so crazy

Whose instructions will you follow...?

(OC explanation under read more btw)

So I wanted to make a hypothetical "Selathiel Ending" where you follow its instructions. I would not really call it a "good ending" per se, at least compared to the secret(?) ending where Kinito is deleted (which in itself has some negative consequences if you believe Kinito isn't 100% evil).

My interpretation of Kinito being deleted, including the worlds where he has trapped others who downloaded him as shown in the deletion sequence, is either one of two things: 1) the users are somehow returned to their bodies they had before getting trapped in the digital world; 2) the users are dead but this allows their souls to pass on to the afterlife instead of remaining stuck in their own worlds.

With Selathiel's plan, it would basically be an exorcism to remove Kinito and/or whatever Presence he's got associated with him (assuming the hide and seek and bed scenes aren't just like, dreams or something? I don't know, you clearly don't die because you log right back onto the computer. I suppose something could haunt your dreams, but that's besides the point). However, both due to technicalities with the ritual AND because Selathiel sort of believes all who ended up trapped in Kinito's worlds are basically damned, the souls of the previous people are either flat out removed from existence or sent to purgatory/hell/The Bad Place/what have you. Selathiel is of course fine with this. It set out to remove evil, or what it perceived as evil at least, so this is the best outcome to it.

Selathiel will be mad if you choose to grant Kinito administrative access and will basically declare you beyond saving (see earlier point with damned souls), leaving the computer and locking you into the personalized world ending. With the secret floppy drive ending, it will sort of just be...neutral, I suppose? Kinito is gone, it still thinks you should have done what it told you to do, but the result was the same, so it leaves as it has no further business.

recently went thru and reread the entirety of useless monster (& the additional stuffs) and WOW it's been so long since I've drawn The Boy (went thru a url change and everything). was overtaken by the urge to doodle him in math class!! beastie boyo

(for having not been able to double check a reference i did pretty alright lol)

Oh I LOVE the line weight here incredible Angy Boyo im kissing his head so sweetly,,, he is like.. built to be drawn in math and history classes in my experience

Also you and everyone who like... reads???? UM over and over?????? So incredibly powerful thats so much hfhf

once upon a time,

there was a boy and girl.

they lived in different times; they were never meant to meet.

he died too soon in 1995; she mourned the early death of a loved one in 2019.

and yet, somehow, they found each other.

it’s as if the universe knew-

knew that they needed to meet; that they needed each other. that they would help each other heal and grow — and love again.

a love so pure — that it would breathe life back into her.

that it would bring him back to life.

the end

In 2016 we had But Her Emails. In 2024 we have Biden Is Too Old. The sources of these two lines haven't changed: the flailing GOP with an assist by bothsiderist news media.

Yes, it's the same old distraction technique to draw attention away from the leader of the Republican Party who is an adjudicated sex offender who just lost a gigantic lawsuit based on his past use of fraud.

It's time to push back and aggressively. And successful messaging is repetitious messaging – get used to repeating things if you wish to cut through the noise.

But the main thing is not to freak out and to play offense instead of being defensive. For example: Why are so few people on our side bringing up Trump's unhealthy lifestyle? Drinking 12 Diet Cokes® a day and copious chomping of double cheeseburgers wouldn't be recommended for somebody half his age. And what kind of drugs is he being prescribed?

[A]ll of the #BidenTooOld coverage is about as new and revelatory as #ButHerEmails. If nothing else, it proves that a scandal holding that the president forgets things is always going to go down smoother than a scandal in which a special counsel flagrantly violated a long-standing Justice Department practice and protocol not to “criticize uncharged conduct.” As Sullivan was quick to point out, CNN and the New York Times and every U.S. corporate media entity and its cousin jumped onto the bandwagon. [ ... ] Perhaps one way to navigate yourself through this seemingly insoluble morass would be to ask yourself why Biden, who is stipulated #Old, has managed to helm the most successful presidency in modern history. Booming economy, eye-popping jobs reports, first gun violence reduction bill in decades, $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan plus COVID relief, Inflation Reduction Act, infrastructure prioritized, judges seated. Pick your metric—there have been a lot of wins. And the reason this old man who sometimes forgets things like dates has gotten all this done? He has, for the most part, surrounded himself with experts, genuine scientists, respected economists, and effective governmental actors and advisers. Governance is not an action film. There is no minute-to-minute psychodrama involving someone in a tight black T-shirt mincing along the outdoor ledge of a skyscraper, ninja-kicking his lonely way down to the stairwell, where he karate-chops the well-armed baddies and then commando crawls his way into an empty vault with the glass chest where the nuclear reactor sits. No. Despite our fascination with the Great Man theory of American lawmaking, the presidency is an office that largely turns on superb staffing, visionary planning, deft political negotiation, and artful execution. Joe Biden doesn’t actually have to remember every single detail himself—he has to use his judgment to employ and empower a large contingent of skilled experts to execute upon their agreed-upon vision. If you are unconvinced, the best evidence that we keep falling for Great Man fantasy propaganda is the unmitigated failure of the first Donald Trump presidency. Here we had a self-described loner literally trumpeting his I-alone-can-fix-it worldview, all embodied in Great Man megalomania. He managed to accomplish virtually nothing: Almost none of his promises for single-handed economic revitalization, world domination, or intrepid urban crime-solving panned out. His great dreams were either strangled in infancy by staffers or halted by courts. And whether you believe that this happened because Donald Trump surrounded himself with incompetent yes men or steely adults in the room, both versions serve to offer proof of concept: Donald Trump accomplished close to nothing because the people around him were either too inept to put his vision into practice or too skillful at blocking him to allow him to put his vision into practice. Put another way, if you or anyone you know finds themselves reacting to the Biden Is Old revelations with the thought that, sure, Donald Trump is a 91-indictments-richer, adjudicated sexual abuser, defamer, liar, violator of national security, self-enriching, fascist-boosting insurrectionist, but it’s OK because he will surround himself with people who might check those impulses—well, doesn’t it rather intuitively make more sense to instead vote for the highly effective, internationally respected, but yes, sometimes forgetty guy who is surrounded by people with day planners?

A president is a lot closer to being a CEO than a superhero. And when it does come to being businesslike, Trump has declared bankruptcy six times – approximately six more times than Biden. Trump's business "skills" lean heavily towards fraud, deceit, and bullying.

The real reason we all keep falling for Great Man horse race stories is because they are good for fueling fantasies of all-powerful big daddy presidents who control every tiny aspect of governance in their tiny wee hands. If that is your jam, well, it would make sense to vote for the only candidate who believes in the same dream. If it’s not, the question is reducible to rather simple stakes: Do you want the Big Daddy who surrounds himself with sycophants and nutters and people with shared last names, or the one who surrounds himself with competence and expertise? This doesn’t seem, on balance, like a really tricky call. Do we prefer presidents who can backflip and ninja-kick their way to total world dominion? Perhaps. To my knowledge, nobody ever made a Tom Cruise movie about listening and learning and compromising. But if you still believe governance to be a sober and serious enterprise, vote like the alternative is chilling, because it is.

Trump flatters himself as a "stable genius". But it is Biden who brought stable governance back to the US. Being a constantly ranting gasbag is not an indicator of competence.

Very little attention is being paid to psychological age. Trump is just 42 months chronologically younger than Biden, but Trump acts like a toddler who is not yet 42 months old.

Parents with kids who were constantly having temper tantrums and being frequently disruptive would consider taking those kids to a child psychologist. Being a disruptive narcissist in his late 70s does not make Trump seem youthful but instead more like a case study for arrested development as a toddler.

i’m something of a carpenter myself

Little Finnwrath is merging mail at a first-year business major's level!

At least somebody doesn't think I suck as a human being.

You don’t need to answer this, I just wanted to say I would 100% support this game on Kickstarter! I hope you all do it or a patreon, I’d love to support ya’ll in those ways <3 I love cirrus and I appreciate ya’ll making a game like this. It’s amazing!

Thank you so much, nonny! 🥰

We're not planning on crowdfunding Obscura's production right now, though we do take donations via itch.io if you wanna kick a few dollars our way. Don't feel like you have to, though.

Honestly, the best way to support us right now is to wishlist OBSCURA on Steam! Wishlists are really important for visibility on Steam, especially before a game's been released, and every single one helps a lot 😊 Better yet, it's free to do and if you get the game on Steam your saves and unlocks are even carried over between it and the itch.io version!

omg some job listings:

"Not locked into just working 9-5 and embraces an "until it gets done" attitude."

as someone who used to pull 65-80+ hr work weeks in corporate America, never ever ever ever ever apply for a job that says this.

it means they don't value your life. and that pretty salary? it gets really small when you add up the hours.

btw where the fuck did september go. did i spend it all lying in bed and developing ptsd again or

Actor: Has something ever gone missing and you can’t find it?

Lead Actor: Yeah, it’s called losing something.

i spend more time trying to understand what phones could actually do in 2003 than writing like. i can't even ask my parents cuz where i lived in 2003 was more like the 80s in the US in terms of technology so [SCREAMS]