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choicesficwriterscreations · 27 days

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April Creator of the Month: Aallotarenunelma

Each month, CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers or artists, and this month’s creator of the month is the lovely @aallotarenunelma! The writer is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page. Past COTM's can be found here.

Quick Links:

Tumblr Blog My Masterlist

How do you want to be known on Tumblr?

Aallotar is fine. I am agender. My pronouns are they/them.

More below...

1- When did you start playing Choices? What was the first book you played?

I saw the app being highlighted a lot in Google Play in 2017, but it was only at the end of February-beginning of March 2018 that I downloaded it. It was when Perfect Match 1 started releasing and shortly before Bloodbound 1 began releasing. Time is flying!

There were already a lot of books, and it was a bit overwhelming. I chose the series that was being heavily advertised: The Royal Romance.

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

I joined the Choices sub-Reddit in July 2019, then the Tumblr fandom in April 2020.

I first joined the sub because I wanted to discuss the books and the characters, and hopefully befriending other players. It was lonely to read the books, and having no one to share my opinions and theories with. Then, I took a step back from it and after lurking a bit, I joined the Tumblr community.

3- How did you pick your blog name?

When I joined Tumblr, in April 2020, it was initially to be a Writblr. I was writing a story about a heroine named Aallotar. Its title gave my blog’s URL. My blog’s title is its English translation: Aallotar’s dream.

In the end, my blog turned into a bit of everything.

4- Pull up the first post in your archive, and tell us about it!

This is my very first post. This is my original writing, conveniently mentioned right above. :)

5- Do you write fanfiction, create fan art, or are you one of those really gifted people who do both?

I define myself as an artist because I create. This is how I express myself. It doesn’t matter if the pencil I use is to write or to draw as long as I create. Before I started learning how to draw, I was always saying that I was drawing with words. To me, this is what writing is. I draw and paint with my words to depict stories that my characters want me to tell.

I mostly write, but I also create fan art, such as sketches and various kinds of edits: quotes, sprites, moodboards, etc.

6- How long have you been creating for Choices and for any other fandoms?

For the defunct app Lovestruck, from December 2020 to October 2021.

For Choices, since April-May 2020.

7- What is your favorite Choices book, and what is your favorite Choices book to create for?

My all-time favourite Choices book is Veil of Secrets. I adore it!

I heavily create for the It Lives Anthology - the three books - and also for Immortal Desires. I love these books so much that I made a crossover, and most of the characters from the Anthology and from ID have met and even befriended each other.

8- Share your first Choices fanfic or fan art that you posted with us. Do you still like it, or would you change it if you were creating it today?

My first Choices fiction is a Blades one: Of Stardust and Light.

I still love it and I wouldn’t change anything - except the typos and the clumsy grammar/syntax, due to the fact I am not an English-native speaker.

For a long time, I thought it was my masterpiece, that I wouldn’t write something as good or even as better than this. But I proved myself wrong in the end.

The other reason why I wouldn’t rewrite it now is because I have definitively stopped writing for my Blades pairing, Tyril x Soile. I made it official a few months ago, and this decision is final.

9- What is your favorite piece of fiction or art that you created?

It’s really hard to choose only one, but I do have a soft spot for Répondez, S’il Vous Plaît ! #3 because this is where I tell about my OCs’ Ash and Skylar’s meeting. It was a story I wanted to write for a long time and I love it.

Chronicles of a Crimson Summer deserves to be mentioned as well. This is the longest story I have shared here, and it’s a real balance of angst, fluff, and funny moments. Also, because its birth was extremely painful, so for all of these reasons, I am glad I wrote it and shared it.

10- Do you have a fic/art that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to do well but found it could use a little more love?

I never expect anything I share to be well received, whether it’s a fiction or a drawing. I’m only sharing it, hoping that at least someone will find it and enjoy it. Even better if it helps the person in any way.

That said, sharing my art remains a lot more difficult than sharing my writing, so any art reblog is leaving me a bit confused, due to my imposter syndrome.

Most people here who are familiar with my stories have read some of the funny stories I have shared, as well as the fluffiest stories I have ever written - sometimes too fluffy for me.

However, this isn’t only what my writing is about. Darker Than Night has generated so much indifference that it saddens me.

This series really shows what my writing is, minus the layer of humour that you can usually expect. It truly deserves better, just like In Joy and Sorrow, that actually gives a good idea of what my writing really is.

11- (WRITERS) If you could write only angst, fluff, or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

I usually share a lot of fluff here, because the world outside is hard, so I want to uplift people with sweet and funny stories. However, my original writing is usually angsty with some funny and fluffy moments to alleviate all the angst a little. So, I’m choosing angst. Definitely. To me, writing angst is comforting.

11a - (ARTISTS) If you could only draw one style or type of art for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

I could easily do oil pastels for the rest of my life. It’s an easy technique to learn, it’s very forgiving, it’s calming, and I love how it looks.

12 - Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

I am agender and aspec, so in any non-binary and/or aspec MC / OC of mine can be found parts of me, regardless of how they define themselves on those large spectrums. Representation is highly important to me, so this is one of the recurring themes in my writing.

Also, the witty/sarcastic and playful characters are easy to write because I know them too well!

13 - What element of writing/art do you struggle with most?

Finding the right word is difficult, either in English or in my native tongue. I always want to capture the emotion, the feeling, the landscape with the perfect word. I’m still learning in my daily life.

Regarding my art, at the level I am right now, that would be shadows. Sometimes, they look great, but they often don’t. Practice makes perfect, so this is what I do whenever I can.

14 - Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

I tend to have only one WIP that I see to end. One reason for this is that I usually write my stories in a notebook, before I type them down to share them. The state of the notebook is not always great; I even sometimes struggle to re-read what I corrected!

If it’s about my original work, then, yes, I want to finish that one novel’s second draft.

15 - If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to see your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you show them first?

It has actually happened with one of my siblings. At that time, I was only writing for Blades and had maybe like five stories posted. I let my sibling read them because we are close. For other people, I think it would be on a case-by-case basis, but most likely not. I'd rather make them read my original writing, if my shyness isn’t getting in the way.

16 - Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing or art? Are there any artists that influence you?

Émile Zola and Arto Paasilinna are my all-time favourite writers.

I am learning from every fanfiction writer I am reading. First, because I read in a foreign language. Second, because I believe you learn from everyone every day.

In terms of art, I don’t think I have a particular influence. I am still exploring my style.

17- (WRITERS) Which one of your stories would you most like to see as a movie/series?

It would be In Joy and Sorrow. I created this It Lives in the Woods AU series to give a life to my first MC, Riikka. The one she couldn’t have. In this series, I talk about close friendships, coming outs, being bilingual/bicultural, how to navigate a romantic relationship as an aspec*, how to deal with bullying/harassment, etc. I talk about timeline collapse and time-travelling as well.

And because there’s the most delightful OC ever, my all-time favourite: Ash. He truly is one of a kind and his friendship with Dan is really something special.

*aspec: a person on the aromantic and asexual spectrums.

18 - (ARTISTS) Which one of your creations would you like to see a fiction written about?

I don’t have any yet that would justify the honor of having a fiction being written about.

19- Do you write original fiction or create non-fandom art?

I started writing when I was 10 years old. It was thanks to an assignment for my native tongue class when we were studying the structure of a fairytale. I really enjoyed writing one, so I kept writing over the summer. Little stories about everything and nothing.

I wrote my first novel when I was 13, but never dared to send it to a publisher. I kept writing novels - and not sending them, I have a nice collection, now! - and branching out in other forms of writing, in hope to develop as a writer: rpg forums, poetry, (fan)fictions, creative writing course, etc. I took a ten year break from writing (fan)fictions before returning to them.

I am working on the second draft of a novel about grief, and I have three other different novels already outlined.

Regarding art, I mostly create non-fandom art.

20- What other hobbies do you have?

Except writing and drawing; I paint murals and do oil pastel; I do theatre; I design and crochet my own clothes.

I enjoy watching old films, Hollywood era and silent ones included, but modern films as well, if they are excellent.

I love learning foreign languages, listening to music and going to gigs.

I am also a true race car enthusiast, preferably Formula races - F1 to F4, Formula Regional included.

I also enjoy going for walks in nature and travelling.

21: Tell us anything you’d like (if you want to).

I want to thank CFWC for highlighting me, and giving me the chance to talk more about my characters, my stories, my writing and my art. This means a lot, especially as this month is also when I’m celebrating my 4 year Tumblr Anniversary.

Thank you for your support throughout these years!

I want to thank so many people, but I’m also scared to miss any of them!

Thank you to my friends, old and new. 💛

Thank you to everyone who has read and reblogged my stories and left kudos and comments on them. It has been helping me so much in believing in myself and my writing.

Thank you to everyone who has reblogged my art and my edits and left comments on them.

Thank you to every talented person who has gifted me a piece of their beautiful art, written or not, anonymously or not.

Thank you to everyone who has asked about my characters and my stories.

Thank you to everyone who has sent me positive and uplifting messages.

Lastly, thank you to every single person who has supported me these past months, in many different ways. Your kindness and your presence have made a difference, and I am grateful for those and for you all.

And a special shoutout to my fellow rainbow creators! 🌈

#choices fic writers creations #cfwc creator of the month #choices stories you play #playchoices #aallotarenunelma #choices #choices fanart #choices fanfic #april creator of the month #playchoices fanfic #playchoices fanart

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bettsfic · 3 months

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A few years ago—god, i must have still been in college. 2018? 19? You made a master post of all your fic up until then. Would you be able to make another post, with all your fic from 2019ish-now?

sure! i've been wanting to do this for a while but the question becomes - how to organize? i write in too many different fandoms to do it by canon. so we're just gonna go by the myriad ways my id is on full display.

i skipped a few fics that i didn't like so it's not *everything*. also many of these are locked down so you have to log into ao3 to see them.

masterpost of my fics, 2019 - 2023

key:

personal favorite

you don't really need to know the canon going in

VERY NSFW

diet cottagecore

there's a house. somebody is sad. chores.

rest in grace - violet evergarden, violet/gilbert, canon divergence - 20k, complete

float - breaking bad, jesse/OMC, post-canon - 19k, complete

good bones - star wars sequels, reylo, modern au - 12k, wip

stray - genshin impact, razor/lumine, canon divergence - 6k, complete

"i don't remember you" to "let's pretend to be in a relationship" to "oh you've been in love with me your entire life?"

fake dating via trauma-induced amnesia and chronic illness

a standing engagement - the hunger games, odesta, canon divergence - 57k, complete

wind of the new world - the hunger games, odesta, sequel to ASE - 10k, complete

digging for orchids - tgcf, hualian, modern au - 43k, complete

a brat and the guardian she desperately wants to fuck

and the guardian who is trying desperately not to give in

huaycan - the gray man, six/claire, post-canon - 16k, complete

in water falling - the clone wars, rexsoka, dystopia au - 14k, complete

a long way - game of thrones, jaime/myrcella, canon divergence - 18k, complete

so obsessively in love that their life is upended and their identity irrevocably changed

romance with repercussions & codependency ever after

free ride - tbosas, snowbaird, modern au - 24k, wip

patronage - painter of the night, nakyum/seungho, modern au - 11k, complete

lemon - star wars prequels, anidala, modern au - 73k, complete

organic chemistry - the clone wars, rexsoka, modern au - 57k, wip

"i will kill for you" (literal)

murder as a love language

acquittal - tgcf, hualian, modern au - 10k, complete

the bluff - barry (hbo), sally/barry, canon divergence - 9k, complete

if i had a nickel for every fic i've written where an unstable marriage is saved by an adrift third burdened by the guilt of their society-ruining decisions

i'd have two nickels, but it's weird it happened twice

before the suns rise - star wars prequels, obianidala, canon divergence - 30k, wip

renovations - frozen, anna/elsa/kristoff, modern au (no incest) - 47k, complete

"whoops, i was trying to kill you but i fell in love with you instead"

villainfucker city rise up

the truth of time - rurouni kenshin, e/k, canon (live action) - 6k, complete

penitence - star wars sequels, reylo, canon divergence - 17k, complete

porn, but also healing from atrocity

honestly every fic i write could fall under this category

reclaimed - star wars sequels, reylo, omegaverse - 14k, complete

light - saezuru, yashiro/doumeki, canon divergence - 30k, complete

sick part of a sick thing - stranger things, hellcheer, no upside down au - 45k, complete

let ruin end here - tgcf, hualian, modern au - 8k, complete

the art of scraping through - the 100, bellarke, modern au - 18k, complete

porn, but also righting the wrongs of decades past

boys with big regrets and even bigger—

dirtbag - stranger things, hellcheer, no upside down au - 60k, complete

moderation - the 100, bellarke, modern au - 40k, complete

always be closing - mdzs, wangxian, modern au - 32k, complete

femdom tsundere (ft. pegging)

grouchy women and the submissive men who adore them

black-eyed - mdzs, chengqing, modern au - 16k, complete

not if, when - original fiction - 12k, complete (the pegging is there in spirit)

ghost in the pearl - westworld, dolores/caleb, canon divergence - 7k, complete

the innate comedy of abject pining

"i'm so in love with you it's killing me lmao"

no certainty of doors between us - mdzs, wangxian, modern au - 6k, complete

the beach episode - tgcf, hualian, modern au - 20k, complete

shut up and kill me - original fiction - 5k, complete (not really a romance)

if you dig my stuff and want to support me, you can

subscribe to my newsletter

buy me a coffee on ko-fi

thanks for the ask, anon! this was fun.

#my fic #masterpost #lkwrnl

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pastelfates · 3 months

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Talk about some of your favorite experiences on this website if you feel comfortable doing so! I'm meaning favorite threads, partners, muse experiences, etc. You've gone through a lot of hardship across multiple blogs yet you never give up and you keep doing what you love so I figured it'd be nice to talk about the positive stuff that helps you to keep going despite all the trouble.

◌・❀➵ Okie so this is gonna be long post so everyone grab a drink n some snacks! I just wanna start with that if it wasn't for my mutuals I have no idea where I'd be, ya'll have been with me through so much and some of the hardest times of my life and I can't thank everyone who has stayed enough.

◌・❀➵ FAVORITE THREADS/INTERACTIONS

➵ @morifactory ➵ Eddie and Serina meeting! Also the Riba and Serina and Riba ikea thread/ All our Carbon and Serina threads hav a place in my heart. And Talia w the blond bois! Also so far Kiki and Esmee has my heart. And ya know our first scarvi ocs and our stardew ocs. Me and Lena hav a lot of connected ocs

➵ I'm gonna count this as a thread bc it was a thread of asks but Mana once had multiple sections of the bee movie sent to her and it was absolutely hilarious. Committed to the bit with the url /frankiebeestan at that time.

➵ @constellationcrowned / @malusrecord ➵ LISTEN I care so much for Nellie, Mell, and Sunny's lil friendship (i hav a half typed starter for them in drafts shh), and Mana and Kariom's friendship is very special to me bc sobs Mana feels v comfy around him which means a lot bc she rarely fills comfy around ppl.

➵ @ervaurem ➵ Listen the family stuff with Law and the sisters is my weakness. It's been since 2021 that the fam has existed and I heccin cri. The treasure hunt thread has my heart,,

➵ This one is fairly recent but with @riftdancer, @ofstarsandskies, and @mathcs the whole Jude is evil arc has been so much fun so far!

➵ This was more so on discord but the relations have made their way to tungle but @pyonpyonpyon, @forgottenluck, @talesofourworlds, @mathcs, and @broadswordandpistol the sad boi drinking hours,, it was so cursed and sad at the same time, and it was such a highlight to me.

➵ @strebcr ➵ Can I say all of them? Just Streber and Mana have had so many good threads! Mana loves her new frog and just aaa

➵ @maligncntchain ➵ again with just recent threads but the two were cute and just silly gremlin uses the power of treats to not be immediately under the control of pecharunt was v funny to me

➵ @archivisim ➵ Sobs special place for the lil series of thread/asks we had just recently. Their similarities really just came through and they are hopefully gonna be more comfortable around each other!!

➵ @hxroic-wxlls ➵ cris it was like forever ago but the thread with Sunny and Luigi was so wholesome and I want you to know Sunny thinks Luigi is v cool. Also Mana and Simon has a v somft relationship i adore. the lil drill necklace he gave her for her birthday is one of her prized possessions.

➵ I know I posted a lot of newer stuff so I'm gonna bring up a thread from like ages ago?? 2018-2019 to be exact, the days I wrote non-seriously. I had a thread with two people over a skit in a game and it was just peak. Also that blog is still around (not deleted) so anytime I wish I can see the silly threads that bring me so much joy.

➵ Again on older threads, and while this one isn't on tumblr it is canon to Mana history. She has unapologetically set a bakery on fire with no remorse. That event also had like the first actual set appearance of REGRET and her lil maze which honestly makes me v happy bc REGRET is one of my all time favorite ocs. And Symonne's maze was there too, really care for that Ivar and Sync interaction in the rpg horror house w the fake Jude and stuff

➵ FAVORITE PARTNERS / People I adore seeing on dash

@ad-simul , @archivisim, @broadswordandpistol, @opscurus / @cpirits , @canidgrit, @castelias-comeups, @constellationcrowned / @malusrecord, @electricea, @ervaurem, @forgottenluck, @historias-multorum , @hxroic-wxlls, @kaizokugaris, @lightfallls , @maligncntchain , @morifactory , @nobuverse, @ofstarsandskies, @pinklocksoflove, @riftdancer, @talesofourworlds / @outofthisgxlaxy, @soulsbetrayed,

➵ I love seeing you all on dash, your threads are all peak and I just wanna say tysm for being moots with me and allowing me the opportunity to be a part of the stories you unfold for your characters. I am forever thankful to you all for everything and to the all of you have stayed with me despite how awful things have gotten, thank you for never giving up on me and seeing something in me when even I wasn't able to. You all are the reason I'm still here, continuing this hobby I love to my core. I hope I can be around for many more years to come and that I will continue to have you all by my side.

#➵ ooc #constellationcrowned #Im too lazy to tag everyone but thank you all so so much #I adore you all and I will say it as often as need be

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7grandmel · 3 months

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Todays rip: 18/01/2024

MAGFest 2019: SiIvaGunner Presents - High Quality Ripping

Season 3 Featured on: MAGFest 2019

Presented by Nape Mango, Omknee, ShonicTH, Chaze the Chat, Harmony Friends, Trofflesby, Craz Xexe, Agent

youtube

Yeah, okay, this is cheating in a lot of ways - this is not on the SiIvaGunner channel, and its obviously not even a rip. But I felt it necessary to commemorate, as I mentioned briefly in Because I Love You, its finally time for MAGFest once again, and the SiIvaGunner team is to host their own panel there tomorrow! And in the spirit of that, I want to just...talk about SiIvaGunner and MAGFest, at least for a little bit. Because the first two panels in particular, the ones that marked the beginning and end of Season 3, are some of my all-time favorite videos associated with the SiIvaGunner channel.

A big part of the identity and gimmick of the channel itself, as you're likely well aware, is the bait-and-switch - to present it as a faceless entity simply uploading video game music, only to instead feature jokes, shitposts, edits, and so forth. Part of maintaining that kayfabe, then, is to intentionally obscure who makes what behind the scenes, to keep the real people under wraps for those who aren't going to dig deeper, in order to further sell the illusion of being an official VGM upload. The team does of course still give credit when its relevant, as any rip can be featured on an album be given full credits there, but just that degree of separation alone between casual fans and ones willing to download an album has probably led to a few too many people being unaware of who made their favorite rips. Back then, I typically fell somewhere in the middle - I wasn't actively using music listening software and thus missed out on listening to albums for a long time, but was still aware of some of the big names you'd see in comments sections, saw some shoutouts from Twitter, the works.

Yet with the two MAGFest panels of 2018 and 2019 respectively, it felt like the first time that the magnitude of what SiIvaGunner is and how much it means to people was revealed to me for the first time ever. The uploaded recording of the 2018 panel, posted by Chaze's own account, features a shot about seven minutes in that turns the camera to the crowd - and it's an absolutely packed-full room of nerds just like me. And even though I've never been able to go to any of these MAGFest panels due to travel costs and complications...just seeing how many people truly do care about SiivaGunner, in such a tangible way, something more than a number...it resonated with me, yknow?

Beyond that, these panels are just such fascinating pieces of history for the channel, such good time capsules in so many ways - and that's in a lot of ways why I chose to highlight the 2019 panel in particular. Rather than discussing the upbringings of the channel, it features members of the team reminiscing and going through Season 3's timeline of events in particular, going into surprising detail into the thought process and direction the various pieces of the year took - while also giving insights into the production of the Christmas Comeback Crisis, King for a Day Tournament, and more. I feel like with the turn from Season 3 to Season 4 Episode 1, you can really notice that the idea of "hype" for SiIvaGunner content becoming so much more prominent, so much more deliberately handled by the team, which is made all the more evident by the King for Another Day Tournament reveal live on stage.

Man, look, it's an hour-long panel, and there's so many small things that I still remember from it, despite last having seen it five years ago. The members talking about their favorite rips, giving a round of applause to all the rippers who couldn't come join them at the panel or on-stage, the very funny last-minute rips made to "celebrate" the channel being terminated a day earlier (one of which I've embedded as the Bandcamp link), and even some slight discussions on what SiIvaGunner as a channel means to the team, what it represents, and what their goals have been overtime. And, of course, the fucking incredible PowerPoint hijinx with Inspector Gadget, which I am 100% going to take as confirmed canon that Gadget's level of sentience and awareness of the real world is just the same as Woodman's and The Voice.

I have, of course, been told a number of times that I overanalyze SiIvaGunner, that I'm uncovering depth that's clearly not intentional, looking too much into a silly meme channel. And sure, I'd admit that I do overthink things to a degree, anyone who read Vote Responsibly!! should be able to tell you as much. Yet its stuff like these in-depth behind-the-scenes looks, these moments of getting a face and a voice to attach to the works, that really just felt super validating to me even back then - that the intentions and goals of the channel that I myself had picked up on were in fact some sort of direction that the team itself were steering toward. And though Nape Mango does indeed declare in this very panel that "Everything is a coincidence with SiIvaGunner", I'm forever in awe at just how good the team has been at lining those coincidences up into something genuinely incredible.

We SilvaGunner, We Rip.

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chemicalbrew · 5 months

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2023 game list, part 1: I love complaining!

Once again continuing what has become an honorable tradition thanks to @smash-64 💜

I tried to promise myself I'd be more organized this year, trying to take notes after I beat things, making lists and gifs and everything, as it has become a consistent yearly undertaking. In truth, what happened is that I felt more overwhelmed by this than I did the last three years. The best explanation I can give is a combination of two facts: this year, while not particularly worse than what came before, still saw my confidence in myself tank a bit (i.e. What does this matter when few people read it and I don't bring much things of value to the table?)...

And the fact that I played very few games that really stuck with me, that I enjoyed enough to see through to the end and feel like that had merit, for a lot of the year. When that wasn't the case, it was more than likely I'd been on my nth playthrough of Katana ZERO of the year (more on that in a later post, hopefully).

I probably need help, don't I?..

games I played, but don't have much to say about at the moment without being prompted, aside from 'I kinda liked them, I guess', ordered best to worst:

Purrfect Apawcalypse trilogy (2019-2021) - series of VNs that's genuinely just good fun as you find yourself attached to the characters before you know it. You'll know if this one is for you at a glance. Also, this is how I found out about Panel Royale! LOL

The Witch's House MV (2018) - good old RPG Maker horror with a few decent twists. The remake has good QOL changes.

Gunbrella (2023) - the plot might be forgettable, but you get a gun that's an umbrella! What's not to enjoy?

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (1995) - I played this game, but only in the most technical sense. Literally cheated the fun out of it - either that, or this platformer style is not for me.

Coffee Talk: Episode 2 - Hibiscus & Butterfly (2023) - the most upsetting entry on the list. The writer behind the original game has passed away, and his absence is felt keenly even if you're not aware of the fact - because this sequel lacks charm.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (2021) - yet another of those cheap and short indie 2D Zelda clones. The definition of the word meh.

Irisu Syndrome (2008) - a unique free puzzle timewaster. Tries to have a story and fails.

dishonorable mentions (the part with the most complaining)

2064: Read Only Memories (PC, 2014) [♪ Home (Not) Sweet Home]

Starts off decent enough, doing the bare minimum to string you along the mystery (which, for most people with standards, wouldn't even be good enough, but I was willing to stick with it for the sake of the neat audiovisual presentation).

As soon as the murder scene is revealed, however, the main plot starts to fall apart, and the longer you spend with the game's writing (which seems to go on and on forever) and characters (about as flat as a pancake fresh off the pan), the more bleak and yawn-inducing they seem (including Turing, who just took longer than everyone else to annoy me).

Do yourself a favor, play VA-11 Hall-A (which this game gratuitously references) instead. You'll get all the benefits of cute pixel art and upbeat soundtrack, but with an actually good story\character cast to match. I swear it says something about 2064 that one of its most exciting moments was seeing throwaway lines from a VA-11 character!

Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (PC, 2015) [♪ Climbing the Ginso Tree]

This is a game that won awards back when it came out almost a decade ago. Unfortunately, it feels like it was made to win awards and little more. While the credits scrolling up the screen tried to convince otherwise - with the usual special thanks given to families and pets of the developers - I sat there, unsure of what I was supposed to take from this experience (once again, the less words you try to use to tell your story, the more it usually suffers!).

The heart of any platformer is its movement systems - and, while eventually Ori's tools open up just enough to make you feel at least a little free and alive in its world, they also never go beyond what is almost painfully typical. Double jump, wall climb, ground pound, glide, charged projectile? None of that is going to wow anyone. The way it comes together is not too pleasant, either - Ori's too floaty and the obstacles before him, while painted with a talented stroke, are too unclear in their presentation to make for truly fun traversal. The exception to this is the escape sequences - sure, a lot of the time they're not much less frustrating than the rest of the game, but they're definitely more memorable, to the point where the accompaniment to one was the only part of the soundtrack I could think to showcase.

I don't regret the time I spent on this, per se, but what I can tell you is that it probably didn't deserve the awards. Also, the way the wall jump worked was annoying! Pushing towards the wall to do it feels very counter-intuitive, and with this I found that I much prefer when games have you face away from the wall to register wall jumps, or do not require you to press a direction at all.

Celeste (PC, 2018) [♪ Checking In] + Celeste Classic (2015, played as part of full game) :)

I was in high school when this made waves. I pointedly feigned disinterest as it splashed all over the internet, while making sure to download the soundtrack quickly and listen to it - more than occasionally - over the next three or so years. Lena Raine's work carried me through my school years and empowered me, and all the while I hadn't a clue what playing the game is actually like.

Those were the better days.

Now, the things about this game that seem to appeal the most to a lot of people are how refreshingly simple Madeline's moveset is and how much the game respects your time with death transitions and reloading, and the story it tells through heartfelt cutscenes and gameplay working in sync. To which I boldly say... none of those things are good enough.

Having to climb and manage your stamina adds another layer to navigating the rooms, sure, but to my simple ass, that's one layer too many. To the game's credit, there's a setting to make climbing toggleable instead of requiring you to hold down the trigger, and using that was the only reason I managed to push past the hotel and Oshiro (call me a scrub, it was genuinely overwhelming otherwise), but it still did nothing to change how I feel about this mechanic fundamentally.

I get it, it adds precision and verticality to your movement, and, seeing as you're literally supposed to be scaling a mountain, it's more than a natural inclusion... but its existence did nothing but add pressure for me, somehow. I would frequently forget it's an option at all before realizing the room in question expects me to utilize it. Instead of feeling like climbing expands my options, I felt constricted and awkward.

My second issue is much simpler. I'm a spoiled brat, and Celeste's respawning process involving that annoying whoosh sound effect and a transition that, yes, takes only about a second, but is still not quite instant, was not good enough. I recognize that having it be truly instant would not be ideal, either, but I can't help but wish that was the case.

As for the story... It underwhelmed me even back when I was doing surface level research at the time of release, and it's not impressing me now. It's okay, and I recognize why it would resonate with people - the themes of self-acceptance and resolve are plain to see (and just as plain to mull over). But in my time with the game, Madeline never began feeling less like an avatar for my failures and more like an actual character, never changed into someone I would truly like.

By the time I reached the Mirror Temple, I was certain that this game, in most respects, is just not what I would ever want. I pushed towards the summit anyway, and left it feeling profoundly... nothing.

However... Celeste Classic did not have any of those things! That little prototype gem of a game wastes zero time trying to set the stage and make you feel things with ~a story~, doesn't give you any opportunity to climb whatsoever, and neither does it waste your time having the screen fade to black when you die! And these three things, I reckon, are key to why this smaller version, that's supposed to just be treated as an Easter egg now, a relic of the past, and to be forgotten in favor of the project it grew into... resonated with me so much more! I beat it twice! It's lovely! It's what I actually needed Celeste to be!

IT'S COMPLICATED

AI: The Somnium Files (PC, 2019) [♪ MonzAI] + AI:TSF - Nirvana Initiative (PC, 2022) [♪ Nefarious Institute 1]

You know how they say not to judge the book by its cover? This is a story of me learning (once again) to judge a game neither by its reception nor by the credentials behind it. When I plowed through this duology, I came to understand that sometimes, lightning might strike just the once.

Of course, most of my bitter feelings about it stem from just how miraculous of a fuck-up Nirvana Initiative ended up being as a sequel (it's impressive how much it had to twist everything its predecessor stood for to even have a chance at making a mediocre point!), but a lot of the disappointment came from the way the first game carries itself in general, and maybe even from the presence this game has among fans. 'Oh, if you want more of the magic and mystery that you so enjoyed in Zero Escape, you have to try this! It'll be just as good!'

I should have had my doubts from the start, given how little I had enjoyed the ZE series after 999. AI1 flounders in many things, like its obtuse, deeply unfun gameplay loop - most of which is pressing random buttons until you see the most ridiculous shit present itself. There's also the overt reliance on stale and perverse jokes, and a story that can barely do much except trudge to the finish line and attempt to convince you the journey was worth it with a trite dance number, of all things.

But the thing is… even with all that, the first entry was somewhat compelling during its runtime, though most of that comes from its bold novelty. The idea of taking advantage of the surreality of dreams to find deeply concealed truths is fun to occasionally ponder, and there's just enough fluff to the places you visit and things you do to string you along for the ride (though having to check the same spots for flavor text on each revisit to very little results is a deep annoyance I have with both entries). The characters actually got a chance to grow (if not by much… this series' urge to be immature at every turn is nothing short of ruinous, sometimes), and their designs strike a wonderful line between outstanding and cringeworthy that makes them just… stick out in your brain, you know?

So while I thought the song and dance (both the literal and the metaphorical) were ultimately not worth much, I was still convinced, fooled by the magic just enough to see things come to an end; and the resolution itself was satisfying and believable, if nothing else. And with how exhausted I felt reaching this point, I figured that'd be enough.

To me, AI1 is all about finding shards of diamonds in the rough, and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that its fandom runs away with what little they have to try and improve on it (and often succeed). As such, you'd expect its sequel to take advantage of how much room there is to grow, capitalize on this chance to refine things, and use the few strong themes the original presented (value of bonds and family made both by blood and by choice, finding those you can rely on to carry what you have done forward, etc)... right?

Um, yeah, turns out it twists over itself even more than I'd already thought possible in order to make sense (not to mention seemingly forsaking most of that mess right at the true end in order to approach the established universe from a contrived meta angle). If AI1 can be described as having extremely unrefined gameplay coupled with a decently intriguing story, NI is just about the opposite of that.

While I'm glad they bothered to make exploring the dream worlds enjoyable this go around, there's no way in hell that makes it worthwhile to bear witness to the innumerable ways in which this mess of a sequel sullied the already weak foundations laid down by its predecessor. When I had finished that game, I wrote, on impulse, that 'I haven't been this confounded by a sequel's existence since Chrono Cross'. It just… did not need to happen, like, at all.

Nirvana Initiative posed to me one of the worst questions you can have while playing a game, which is…

'Why am I doing this, again?'

Let's be real, it was mostly for the soundtrack. Unlike AI1, this game had passable music! Though having to watch ANOTHER dance number (like half a dozen times, actually! and no, there's no skip button!) just about had me gagging.

That's not even the worst part about that sequence, no - that would have to be the way it almost actively ruins and undermines what's probably the only passable character arc in NI (and even then, you have to squint hard for it to pass your judgement, given how it starts... gotta hand it to this game for managing to have multiple relationships with genuinely questionable setups involving uncomfortable age gaps).

I wanted to feel touched by the new, somewhat expanded narratives, I wanted to see the world grow a little, despite all the grievances I was certain I would have... But not even halfway through the plot, I realized that my true wish was to just move on. I think that's what I'll do here, as well, as even reminiscing on this chaos is quite dreadful.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch, 2022) [♪ Agnus Colony]

Don't become prey and victim to your own expectations - or to bad advertising.

Xenoblade is a special series, full of wonder and power. Words fail me this year, as they did the year before, when it comes to describing how much of an impact these games - the second entry most of all, a game I think about now and then with a bittersweetness on my heart that I oddly never can get enough of - had had on my mental well-being last year. They might as well have saved me back then, and while getting to experience them was something I'd been planning to do for a while, the specific circumstances it all had happened under were just so special, so exceptional, so wild, that it's hard to think of those days as anything but a gift.

And yet, there are plenty of things in this particular journey I still have to reconcile with. I never settled on what my impression of 1 is, in the end (or, some might say, I never properly played it); I could use a fresher look at 2, and… I never, ever, will finish Xenoblade Chronicles 3. It's a game I once had hopes for, but nowadays don't ever want to think about.

I thought it a privilege, of sorts - the fact that I was there to witness (and acquire) a brand-new release in a series that became dearly important to me. I ended up hearing many things - the trailers, the rumors, the leaks. They all spoke of a definitive resolution to the series, of levels of refinement never seen before, of intrigue so big you can barely take it, of key character appearances we were all dying to see.

Turns out most of what we were so eagerly expecting came with an extra price tag.

The base game of Xenoblade 3 is a mirage, a mere shade of what came before it. The environments are open and vast, but they look more drab than ever - and with the new autowalk feature, it takes even less time to get sick of it. The music takes you on a journey, but you forget what it sounds like far sooner than you'd prefer. The battle system promises lots of options and a nice learning curve, but it only overextends, overwhelms and forces you to grind. The cutscenes look every bit the part of a Xenoblade story, but meander and stretch things out to the point of boredom, which means none of the characters get enough time to grow on the player, either… Though a lot of them would probably go nowhere even given all the time in the world.

And the setting as a whole? Well, it's a simulation, so who cares about it feeling unique or fun? That's the point, the game says, you're supposed to empathize with these characters breaking out of their bonds, out of this miserable existence! Well, I say that things can be made appealing even in decay. You don't have to actively worsen things to make a point.

Future Redeemed is an impressive demonstration of how things could have been. It fixes practically every point where the base game falters - and it is in this part of the game where all those promises that once seemed hollow finally come true. Sort of. The exploration process is smooth as butter in the way none of the games before were, characters are at last back to having defined roles in battle, and all that teasing becomes a thing of the past as 3 acknowledges its own roots and past in full, and you think to yourself… 'If only we'd got this in the base game all along!'

But we didn't. And the credits on Future Redeemed roll far too soon to truly be satisfied. Is this how you wanted the saga to end?

honorable mentions

Butterfly Soup 2 (PC, 2022) [♪ Night Tourist] *I hope you'll forgive me for not finding a GIF for a mostly static VN...

It's so funny. For me it has been two years; for the creator, it'd been five. But I guess time doesn't matter when it comes to maturity, as I feel like both myself and this game have done plenty of growth. And for that, I love it all the more, just as I am now thankful to be able to call Butterfly Soup a short series.

Compared to the first game, the art is more refined, the tone is more consistent, and treatment of serious topics is more grounded - in more ways than one, this sequel is like a fond, yet melancholic look at what you once had, what changed since then, and what you hope to make of things. But between all that, it stays sincere and silly in the best of ways - the ones that make you feel cozy on the darkest of nights, the ones that endear you for a good while yet. Truly, this game was a ray of light in a sea of mediocrity this year.

Road 96 (PC, 2021) [♪ Hit the Road]

Yeah, I know. The fact that I have played a goddamn walking simulator at the behest of a good pal (who might or might not be reading this, hi on the off chance that you are!) is nothing short of a miracle. Not to mention the fact that I ended up having a good time with it!

I'll put it plain: the vibes of this game are almost impeccable. It wastes little time setting things up - it's the turn of the century, and a massively corrupt government is practically folding in on itself as it closes its borders. It's up to you, as you're literally put into a blank-slate teenager's shoes, to go on a desperate journey and see whether or not you make your way out.

Over the course of Road 96, you do this six times, and the people you meet on the way and choices you make with them may or may not shape not just your own future, but that of the whole country. There's nothing for it, then, but hit the road and see what awaits you, as you sit in a car that's probably stolen, blaring music from your carefully curated tapes… or are dropped off on the wayside with nothing but a paltry backpack to speak of… or find yourself biding your time near a gas station… or… whatever it is the game throws at you, as you hope that the strangers you run into actually deign to help.

Yes, the biggest way this game attempts to stand out is with our good old friend, RNG. Even reading blurbs about it, you cannot escape the all-too-typical claims of 'your own personal journey', 'a thousand unique paths waiting for you' and all that… months later, I find myself unable to decide whether this helped the game or harmed it more, as it's definitely smaller than it makes itself out to be.

As a story hook, this setup is clever and delightful, as I tried to illustrate a moment earlier, but the moment you begin to overthink it, you realize that the randomness aspect clashes hard against the continuity the game tries to establish. You, as the player, indeed learn more about the world and colorful characters in it each time you venture forth, but the avatar you control is supposed to be clueless as ever, setting out on a path that is, in fact, not quite their own any more. It's a weird gripe to have, and I found it an easy one to ignore, but I wish something could be done about it anyway.

As for the rest of the plot, let's just say it's... surprisingly binary, and the supporting cast small and not always compelling in turn. The game sacrifices some of the personal intimacy and uniqueness it has built up to make a sweeping, painfully boring statement of 'freedom good, suppression bad' before credits roll, but as damaging as that is to the overall experience, I feel like one can't deny the fundamental appeal of just being asked to go on a journey with sweeping stakes and truly, truly banging music. Seriously, it was meant to be put on speakers and blasted as the world passes you by!

In a word, Road 96 is ambitious, and in a sentence, it is ambitious, yet falling short of itself. Nonetheless, I was impressed by how it managed to worm its way into my heart for a while.

A Space for the Unbound (PC, 2023) [♪ Don't Have Much Choice]

Wouldn't you know it? I had actually played two games involving entering people's subconsciousness to solve their problems this year!

Truth be told, I'd been looking forward to this game for about a year, given that it was published by the people behind Coffee Talk (which, if you recall, I had quite enjoyed). The warm and inviting screenshots on the back-then almost empty store page, showing off awesome art and promising a sweet little journey with slice-of-life tropes and a mystery waiting to be solved… well, to say all of that was alluring is to say nothing, really. I just about jumped when I received a notification for this game releasing at last at the beginning of the year, and wasted little time trying to dive in.

The sad thing is, what you see is not always what you get. The cozy, comfortable, sensible vibes of the early game - running around the city, doing chores at your school, naming every stray cat you come across, watching the protagonist's diary fill up as he crosses all the little goals he had set in life off his precious list… Yeah, those things won't last - definitely not long enough to get you attached to characters living in this world.

As the plot begins to unfold, it fumbles over itself trying to introduce various cliches and supernatural elements, to the point where you recognize the whole experience as a tedious drag as you see exactly where it's heading, and think to yourself that you have heard all this before. It's yet another heartfelt story about self-actualization, and as the game hammers it in harder than ever before, you sigh and wish you could go back to the times of bottle cap collecting and cat petting. Sometimes, simpler is better.

Unfortunately, that's not exactly true when it comes to actually playing A Space for the Unbound. The gameplay is as simple as can be - basically all you do is walk around (quite slowly) and interact with things. I can appreciate how linear the game is, for the most part, but I wish it let us accomplish our goals without wasting too much time! Not to mention, if you try to see everything there is, you have to be prepared to deal with quite a few mind-numbingly repetitive mini-games for far longer than you have to. Don't do that. It'll just sully your impression of the game.

If you're somehow still interested in this after reading this messy opinion of mine, don't be too discouraged - you'll see plenty of beautiful sights, hear some cute music, and, maybe, be affected by the story far more than I was. (Besides, for a cat lover, it's always nice to see others appreciate them!) Just... try not to waste too much time with the game's superficial sidequests.

Tales of the Abyss (3DS, 2011 port of a 2006 release) [♪ The Distribution Base]

There's something ironic in how playing (most of) this game has been one of the best things I have done with my lovely 2DS since I homebrewed it earlier this year... and yet I quite regret not checking how (ahem) easily available the PS2 version is, instead. They may be functionally identical, but the hardware is not - you have no idea how hard some of the goddamn Mieu Fire puzzles become when your character is taking up a mere four or so pixels of an already tiny screen. Man, that was trying my patience at its finest.

These horrors aside, though, what kind of game are we even dealing with here? Well, it’s a Tales game first and foremost. I can’t deny claims that Abyss has a few strengths of its own (most notably, of course, actually bothering to have coherent character development arcs), but it’s not quite enough to obscure the ever-prevalent issues this series has:

exploration and side-questing is still annoyingly obtuse, not to mention traversal is painfully slow in the first half of the game,

some characters (in this case, Anise more so than others, but I'd argue Mieu's whole existence is part of this too) are obligated to suffer because Tales has to meet its unhealthy anime tropes\wackiness quota per game,

the skit system has not, unfortunately, evolved one bit (the amount of times I would skip a skit on accident, because any input halts its playback entirely…),

while I’m inclined to say the battle system is, for the most part, an improvement (the Field of Fonons mechanic is quite a nice change given the foundations of Tales gameplay, I have to admit), any goodwill you might want to give it gets shattered when you realize Free Run breaks bosses in half. And aside from that, it’s just your usual button-mashy fare.

So why did I push on with this game as far as I did, pulling the classic move of quitting right at the final boss instead of, well, any earlier? A lot of that is because I was just in the mood to mash some buttons in bed until I realized I was slightly underleveled for the finale and caught myself groaning at the mere thought of trying to even cheese it. A shame, that, because the ending of this game is pretty wonderful for what it set out to do, and it was the only bit I did not see on my own. It's like my experience with Final Fantasy VI all over again…

That's not all there is to it, though. Abyss has some of what's probably the most involved and curious worldbuilding (once you get past all the awkward made up jargon it loves to throw at you) of any Tales game I know! Not that this says much, because that's a low bar, and I'm not too familiar with the series at large, but it was enough to keep me engaged for a long while. And, as mentioned earlier, it puts in greater efforts than I expected to endear you to the cast as they slowly band together and uncover their own talents, purposes and aims in life - Luke in particular.

I liked him almost immediately - because I'm not too hard to please when it comes to this series, and his design is, I feel, particularly sweet and striking (especially given how nicely the game used the Important Haircut trope with him, and of course, the contrast between him and Asch). But that alone doesn't a good protagonist make - it's the fact that the story allows Luke to make mistakes (from small ones to straight-up catastrophes), get his comeuppance and grow from them organically, at his own pace, that makes him stand out in my mind.

As Luke sheds his sheltered ways of thought and accepts his responsibilities, those that were traveling with him, either out of obligation or by chance, begin to support him more and stand by him in earnest. It all comes together gradually and at a satisfying pace, and is definitely a highlight of the experience to me.

Growth and connection are probably among the biggest themes of the game, so it's nice to see that it applies pretty much equally to both protagonists and antagonists. Sure, it's the job of a Tales' Big Bad faction to be goofy and up to nefarious activities, but beyond that, the group has solid enough chemistry both among themselves and with the party that I actually ended up looking forward to most encounters with them, even if ultimately it felt a little predictable. As an aside, for a game this old, the voice acting was really good and plentiful (though there is none for skits, which sucks), and further piqued my interest in the story along the way.

To conclude, I'd like to say that the biggest thing I learned while playing this game is that I'm a sucker for grounded tales of (ha) self-actualization even this many years later. And also that once you play one Tales game, you truly, to some extent, know them all.

SANABI (PC, 2023) [♪ Warm Hospitality]

Do you want to know why I ended up playing this one? Of course you do, that wasn't really a question. I only bring this up because the answer can be revealed with a single screenshot:

...yep, the inspiration is that blatantly on display. I was expecting it, of course - the Katana ZERO community is the only reason I know of SANABI in the first place, and even as you read people's thoughts on it, the extreme similarity is practically all they ever bring up, be it in a positive or negative light. It pleased me and warmed my heart, while also making me feel wary - it's one thing to be inspired by something, and another to actually carve an identity of your own.

That said, KZ is far from the worst thing to try to replicate, particularly when it comes to visuals - SANABI has some awesome scenery that makes me feel right at home. And while the story at times feels so much like an amateurish copy that it leaves me confused more than anything (I'm sure the awkward English translation sadly does not help matters, not to mention the fact that I'd played this game in an unfinished state - you might expect me to write about it again next year!), the gameplay is anything but.

I'm sure there are quite a few platformers out there that have you use what's essentially a grappling hook to swing through the stages, but SANABI is my first experience with something like this, and in this regard the game absolutely manages to shine on its own. Movement is lightning-fast and responsive, enemy targeting is extremely generous - almost to the point of being handholdy (and, of course, they all die in one satisfying hit - as do you, if you set the game to the highest difficulty. It's nice to be given an opportunity to learn the ropes before engaging with the game earnestly!), and there's something to be said about how the level design has that extreme kind of clarity to it that I always appreciate and favors speed over precision, with how spacious everything is.

My only big issues with how the game plays are how it doesn't seem to be designed with a controller in mind (it is an option, but I found myself moving much more precisely with KBM! Me! Someone who never plays games with that!), and, once again, the just-a-bit-too-long death animation\transition. Being able to skip it helps, but I just yearn for no time to be wasted...

#celeste #aitsf #xbc3 #tales #abyss #zero.txt #yearly game list #flashing gif #.gif

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gaiaxygang · 4 months

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scary relationship chart

I made a messy visual for this a few months ago but here I will attempt to put it into words!!!

If you've spent enough time around Thai actors you've probably realised a lot of them happen to know each other. I like making connections drawing lines and once I fell into a hole because of these 6 20something year olds.

Ohm Pawat, Nanon Korapat, Chimon Wachirawit, Perth Tanapon, Saint Suppapong and Mark Siwat all know each other in one big circle. Here's a short video showcasing it (this is not as detailed as my post will be but it has the rough idea).

(It's hard finding a place to start when it comes to a group of 6.)

1. Saint, Ohm and Chimon went to the same high school, Assumption College (Thailand). Ohm and Chimon are in the same year, while Saint is 2 years above them.

Ohm and Chimon became close friends here (I don't have any clips where they mention this but it's evident from how they act). I'm unsure when exactly they met but they've been friends for a very, very long while.

Saint wasn't close with them because he's older but in School Tales The Series interviews he mentions sometimes seeing Chimon around campus. In one of these interviews he also said they could get closer by talking about football and he was relieved to be working with an old schoolmate.

Saint and Ohm would later attend the same university (SWU) and I don't know if they were friends. Everyone here except Chimon actually went to SWU so this doesn't mean much 😭

2. Nanon and Chimon met while filming Senior Secret Love: My Lil Boy season 2 in 2016. Nanon was in S1 but Chimon wasn't. They got along quickly because they were close in age (they're both born 2000, even though by Thai conventions Nanon is younger). They would go on to film several series together in the next few years.

Similarly, Perth and Mark met while filming Please... Siang Riak Winyan in 2017. Mark was the first to approach Perth and became Perth's first friend in the entertainment industry. They also spent more time with each other because their characters were close.

Chimon was also in Please, and this is where he met Perth and Mark. The two weren't super close with Chimon since they didn't share scenes.

3. Mark and Ohm became friends in SWU. There are old videos of Ohm being annoying (affectionate) around Mark.

In Ohm and Mark's first year at SWU, Ohm met Perth (still in high school). According to a Double Savage interview, they'd met through a mutual friend. I am unable to find anything that confirms or denies this but I am almost certain Mark introduced them. They became good friends afterwards and have described each other as like blood brothers.

(Ohm thought Perth would be arrogant because he was already an established actor by then but he was very polite HAHAHAHA he is soooo cute 🫳🐯)

Also this isn't really in chronological order but Nanon and Perth met in SWU in 2019 as well!

4. In 2018, Ohm, Nanon and Chimon were cast in Blacklist. When they were filming the pilot, Ohm and Nanon met for the first time. Chimon helped to introduce them (having been friends with both for years at this point) and when Nanon saw Chimon speaking casually to Ohm, he started doing so as well.

(Nanon is a year below Ohm and Chimon, but he's close enough to Chimon that he speaks to him like they're the same age. Ohm has mentioned seeing Nanon skipping class in uni wwww)

Perth and Mark met Saint while working on Love By Chance. Perth and Saint were paired together. I'm not certain about LBC because I don't want to touch anything related to it but there seems to have been a LOT of promotion featuring the full cast.

5. Perth and Chimon met again at some point, likely around when Perth joined GMMTV. They were both close with Ohm and Nanon. Perth was asked early on who he'd want to work with in GMMTV and he answered P'Ohm, P'Chimon and Nanon 😊🫳🐯.

TL;DR

Ohm, Chimon and Saint went to the same high school. Everyone except Chimon went to the same university. Nanon-Chimon, Ohm-Nanon, Perth-Mark, Saint-Perth met through series. Ohm-Perth were introduced by a mutual friend.

(I don't know anything about Nanon, Mark and Saint. Half the industry probably knows Nanon but I don't know if they're friends with him.)

What about the shows?

Aside from the aforementioned shows, many of them were also cast in the same series.

- Perth and Mark were cast as a couple in The Stranded. They were very comfortable with each other by then so there weren't many problems. They even improvised a kiss! Perth-Mark did some promotion together (Pepsi ad and Mint Magazine video for example) but went their separate ways career-wise after.

- Around the same time as Blacklist, Ohm and Chimon were both cast in He's Coming To Me as friends.

- I don't know WHEN because My Precious production was SLOW but Ohm Nanon and Chimon were all cast in the movie. The series version was also filmed at the same time.

- In 2021, Ohm and Nanon were paired for Bad Buddy. They did around a year of promotion before, well, divorce.

- Saint and Chimon were cast in the same episode of School Tales The Series. This was done before PerthChimon became an official GMMTV pair but I find it very funny that by the time it aired PerthChimon had already done an event together. This twitter thread has links to videos and interviews with Saint and Chimon.

Mark was also in School Tales, but in a different episode.

- Ohm and Perth played brothers in Double Savage. Given what their characters are like I would hope Ohm and Perth didn't put TOO much of themselves into it but I presume their friendship helped with bringing their characters to life.

- I've done a separate PerthChimon timeline so I won't talk too much about them but they became an official pair around mid 2022, likely also when Perth joined the cast of NLMG.

- Music projects! Perth and Nanon have been in Musicon, both Japan and Jakarta. Perth was also a special guest at an Ohm-Nanon fanmeet, where he performed with Ohm.

😬😬😬 typed this out on a whim so I might be missing things. The 6 of them make me so (TEARING HAIR OUT) genuinely. Hoping for a Perth and Nanon project next year 🫠🙏

#gaiaxyposting #nanon #ohm pawat #chimonac #perthppe #mark siwat #saintsup #RRRAAAAHHHHHHHHHH #THIS IS SO HARD TO VISUALISE LMAOAOAIAOAOAO #gaiaxymeta

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vinceaddams · 1 year

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top five clothing items you wish you'd wear more often, please! and the five you do wear the most, please!

Oh heck! I still have asks from that ask meme thingy I reblogged 2 weeks ago, sorry for taking so long!

Hmm, tough to choose specific things I wish I wore more often. I do have a bunch of fancy 18th century things that sit in my closet most of the time, but usually when I leave the house I'm either going to work or to the grocery store, and I don't feel like being super fancy for that. Cuff ruffles would get in the way of all the hand washing and such, and breeches would be annoying at work because I use machines with knee levers.

I guess I wish I wore my nice shoes a bit more often than just for photos, but they were expensive and I don't want to wear out the leather soles. Maybe I ought to get little rubber soles added.

Oh, and my embroidered monster waistcoat! I wish I wore that more, but it's from an older pattern that doesn't fit me very well. The embroidery is also a bit worn out in places, alas.

It's a bit difficult to know which things I wear most frequently, but here are my best guesses for right now. (My summer answers would of course be different.)

1. This brown wool waistcoat from early 2019. I wear it all the time in the cold half of the year.

Just like the monster waistcoat, it's made from a pattern I drafted before top surgery, so it really doesn't fit me anymore. It's also getting pretty shabby. I've been meaning to make some new everyday plain wool waistcoats for a while now.

(I wear that green shirt pretty often too.)

2. This cap. It's just two pieces of linen, and I made it in 2018. I like wearing caps indoors when it's cold, and also under my wool hat outdoors. It adds an extra layer of warmth, is softer than the wool hat, and protects it from my very oily scalp.

I have 3 of these caps, but this one is my favourite. It's also something I ought to make more of.

3. These pants. They're just plain black cotton fall front pants.

I could pretend I'm wearing them the most because they're fully lined and therefore warmer than my other pairs, but the fact is I've got 3 other pairs of pants with holes worn in them that I need to patch and have been avoiding for a shamefully long time. It's a pretty easy thing to fix, and I will likely put it off for several more weeks, if not more.

I feel the need to point out that not all of my wardrobe is in such a miserable state, I at least have a good amount of shirts!

4. I don't think I have any pictures of it, but my winter coat is just a plain medium grey modern (by which I mean at least a couple decades old) wool one. Here's an image I found on google of approximately the same coat.

It was my grandfather's, and is a bit too big for me, and the lining is getting pretty worn out. Someday I want to completely pick it apart, recut it, and re-sew it with a new lining, but I can't do that until I have a backup winter coat.

5. This poor flannel nightgown which has finally worn out! Just a few days ago it developed a huge hole in the back panel, and a small one by the button placket, so it's destined to be cleaning rags and/or firestarters.

The buttons might end up on another nightgown though. So I guess this is no longer a thing I can wear frequently :( In the linked post I actually made 3 nightgowns from the same pattern, and that was the medium weight one, so now I'm down to the very heavy fish print flannel one and the light rayon one, and need to make more. (A very common theme with my wardrobe things, alas. I am slow.)

But I did just finish a new nightgown this week, made from a completely different pattern that I'm quite excited about! I'll get some pictures soon!

#ask #ask meme #me #clothing

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finallydelight · 2 years

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DATING / CRUSH HISTORY | Ming

A small history of Ming's former partners and crushes.

— SON DAEHYUN (2014)

Daehyun is a former pledis trainee and a fellow 99-liner. Yerim had a crush on him first, but Daehyun was the one to actually ask her out. Her grandmother told her once to never chase after boys and she truly lives by that.

They became girlfriend and boyfriend not too long after that. They consider each other their first loves

They were genuinely such a cute couple, like they were the sweethearts of pledis. They, unfortunately, broke up because Daehyun's parents wanted him to focus on his studies and didn't want him to be an idol anymore.

Daehyun and his family live far from Seoul, as they are from Changwon, and both him and Yerim didn't see the point in a long distance relationship. Both of them were so heartbroken, Yerim deadass thought she would never fall in love again.

They're still on good terms. She ran into him when she was visiting Wonwoo and his family a couple of years ago and they were so happy to see each other. From time to time they talk to each other.

After Daehyun graduated high school in 2018, he started working as a professional dancer and choreographer. He was originally casted by pledis for his dancing skills, he was one of the best dancers of the company.

— ASTRO's ROCKY (2015)

This was a very temporary crush. When Minhyuk transferred to her class, he was the only one that was actually nice to her.

He also reminded her a lot of Daehyun, so for a while she had a crush on him. That quickly went away, tbh. When she actually thought about it, she just couldn't see herself being in a relationship with him. She saw him more like a best friend.

She's very happy she actually never acted on her crush, because they truly are besties now and she wouldn't want to have missed that.

— LEE JIHYUN (2018)

Yerim's first girl crush. Jihyun is a hairdresser at the hairsalon Yerim used to go to. Yerim always knew she had a thing for both girls and boys, but Jihyun really confirmed it.

They became friends very quickly since they would see each other a lot. Then they started seeing each other outside of the salon, still as friends. Yerim really liked Jihyun, she wasn't in love, but something close to that. The fact that Jihyun is three years older than Yerim, also did it for her. Yerim loves her unnies.

After a couple of months, Yerim picked up the courage (with some help from Minghao and Seungkwan) to actually confess to Jihyun. That ended up in another heartbreak. Jihyun liked her as well, but knew her family wouldn't approve of her having a girlfriend, so she rejected Yerim.

They stopped hanging out after this and Yerim even switched hairsalons, because of how sad the situation made her. She didn't blame Jihyun, she understood it, but it was upsetting for her to know that she liked her back, but that they couldn't be together.

Jihyun started working for bighit entertainment in 2019, therefore she works for hybe now. Originally, Jihyun was one of the hairstylists of TXT, but was later switched to the styling team of ENHYPEN.

— NCT's Mark (2022)

She's had interactions with Mark throughout the years, but it's only recently that she started looking at him a bit differently.

After their awkward encounter at MCountdown, they started talking to each other more. Certain NCT and SVT members are really trying to get them together. Renjun spilled to Jun and Minghao that Mark really and I mean REALLY liked Yerim.

It's very obvious to all of the members that Yerim is starting to feel some things for the guy, but not all of them are big fans of it. It's not that they don't like Mark, they think he's a nice guy. But they know that if they ever get together and the relationship is exposed, that Yerim will be subjected to a lot of hate and potentially more heartbreak. The girl has had enough heartbreak, they don't want her to experience more.

Taglist: @lunarxsun @cosmicwintr @mythicalamphitrite

#ming.svt #deluxeocnet #aes!ocnet #14th member of seventeen #seventeen 14th member #seventeen oc #seventeen x reader #kpop oc #oc idol #seventeen female addition #seventeen female oc #seventeen female member

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declanlikesmusic · 9 months

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Today's Listens: Episode 006

August 11th & 12th, 2023

I'm sure you might be aware that my last episode was a delayed bummer by the end of it, so I'm really just gonna start writing these episodes on the days once again to hope for a better outcome with them. My days without work are already over as soon as they began and because of work yesterday and a knockout bout of hayfever today, I'm gonna have to turn this into another double episode because I've hardly listened to enough on both days. Still though, let's have fun with these

We got some more content warnings on this one, albeit they're minor in comparison: Do watch out for a short but immediate mention of suicide as well as a reference to sk*nning that even I can barely tolerate most of the time.

ℍUM♥ℕIGHTM♥RE – 宇宙の認識 (2016)

Do pardon the unicode that comes packaged with this artist's name, but this is HUMANIGHTMARE, a once young & up-and-coming vaporwave producer who tragically lost to suicide in 2020. I caught ear of this particular album during a commemoration livestream on Vapor Memory and it allured me enough to want to seek out and check it out back then. I thought it was a very good album at the time and to this day, I still think the same way, though it leans very much into greatness at a good handful of points. This was a super meditative take on the growing slushwave sound of the time along with some hypnagogic drift tunes and I think the results should not go overlooked by fans of those genres. Tracks like the opener 宇宙の誕生 as well as 脳の網 are absolutely gorgeous, while the track that hooked me in the first place, 宇宙との関係、is so captivatingly strange to me in a way that I can only adore and fascinate about. If you're already deep into vaporwave, I highly recommend this one.

7.5 / 10

Highlights: 宇宙の誕生、宇宙の盛り、宇宙との関係、宇宙の夢、脳の網、復活

SURFING – Emotion (2019)

Up next on the trans agenda is the third and most recent album by vapor & chillwave duo SURFING. Their 2012 debut is one of the most iconic works of the genre and rightfully so, because it perfectly blends original instrumentation & singing with dense, hazy and deeply nostalgic vaporwave samples. So I have no idea what brought in them the need to forgo that entirely, as 2018's Incubo was still sample-based but nowhere near as dreamy and this one fully submerges into the stylings of chillwave & indie rock with none of what made them so excellent before. That said, with that expectation in mind, while this is still their least good album, it was at least better than what I was anticipating after the first couple of tracks. Visions is the song everybody turns to and for good reason, because it does bring a newfound energy to the band, but my favourite moments were still where they leaned back into their dreamy & hazy sonic roots. It's still a good album and if you're a fan of dream pop, I'd give it a shot. Just don't expect anything particularly dense.

6.9 / 10

Highlights: Visions, Crazy, Hearts, Enough, Give You Up.

Chat Pile – Remove Your **** Please (2019)

I'm going to say it now, this is among the worst EP titles I have ever read. I know that this band was deadset on making intensely dark & grim stories through noise rock & sludge metal, but if it wasn't for me keeping an open mind, I would've steered clear of this record entirely even despite the loving reception this got back then and even now. Which is a complete shame because I ended up enjoying this one more than any other Chat Pile record so far, even God's Country (which warrants a relisten at this point). I even found my current favourite Chat Pile song through this record in the form of Davis, weirdly enough. The drums just sounded much better on this record than I had previously heard, sounding way less blurrier and more burrowing, though that might just be attributed to my headphones being replaced months ago. Couple that with the noise, the energy, the vocals and especially Davis's melodies and despite the horrible name, I'd recommend this one to fans of dreadful rock music. I still don't love them as a band, but this gives me hope that whatever they cook next, I might be able to start clicking with them.

7.2 / 10

Highlights: Mask, Davis

netbooks.WRLD – loosies '19-22 (2022)

Speaking of EPs, I don't know how many y'all heard this up-and-coming talent named netbooks.WRLD? Dude's pretty local in the online vaporwave & electronic music communities and his discography is about as fresh as the next lemon you will ever buy, but real talk? I think he's by far one of the most promising artists to pay attention to! I was initially a dumb stupid dumb skeptic back when his debut album ENDLESS STAIRCASE popped up in 2021, but upon the last couple of months, revisiting that album, tuning in to his brand new single, checking out his Skylive performance and now coming over to this EP of loose cuts, I have fully turned into a believer! The dude makes some downright excellent post-industrial plunderphonics and vaporwave tunes all over his catalogue and I think I found some of my favourite tracks he's ever made through this EP. Sure, they were mostly featured in other places and that's counting the bonus tracks, but god, I've been hooked to them completely in the 24 hours since hearing this. My only sticking points against it are the volume of the high frequencies being a little too harsh for my personal headphones, but I know that's by design considering his aesthetic. Other than that, holy shit, go check out ENDLESS STAIRCASE and this EP at your earliest convenience.

8.3 / 10

Highlights: pipes song, shook shook, RAGDOLLS

Vįr+üål Åįrßñß – ▚ ▛ ▜ ▟ ▞ (2021)

It's the second day and one of the best discoveries I've made last year was this random but completely ethereal-looking and unpronouncable album by a young Virtual AirBnB and I thought to relisten to it for the morning. Spoiler alert: This might just be one of my favourite vaporwave albums. This record is compact, but it is so gorgeous and stunning! It flawlessly blends together elements of mallsoft, new age music, I believe sophisti-pop R&B vocal samples and just overall aesthetics of beauty, nature and the future. Almost every single cut here is downright heavenly. Listening to them all from front to back is one of the most soothing, relaxing, beautiful and often transcendent experience I've personally had with the genre and it's so criminal how overlooked this album is so far. High recommendation to the absolute heavens. Just put your headphones on and let the rivers drift you away.

9.3 / 10

Highlights: ⿴ ༄ ℣ ₪ ℣ ༄ ⿴, ••• ❒︎ ❒︎ ᵒ ᴼ ᵒ ▫ 𐊔 ▫, | ⟗ ☱ ☲ ☳ ☵ ⟗ |

サイバー '98 – RENDERED FANTASY

Saiba '98 is an enigma to me. I don't think, even in the vaporwave scene, this short-lived alias got any of the credit it honestly deserves. The music's not excellent, but for a vaportrap artist, this guy managed to craft some of the unique, jarring and abstract material in this form. Upon relistening to DIGITAL FOREST for instance, I found it absolutely fascinating in how the tempos are sporadic and unformed, the beat instrumentaion is basic and minimal and the backing ambient atmospheres are ghostly and dark. This culminates into his last album under the project, RENDERED FANTASY, and while I can't tell you in good conscious that I love it or that it's completely great, this is honestly the best release of the few still publicly available. More than any other album I've heard from them, this album is glitchier, darker, more ominous, eerie and experimental than ever before. I almost completely admire the way he was seeing through his vision on this one. If you're curious, I can't guarentee you'll love it, but if you're a fan of vaportrap or experimental music, I'd give it a fair shake.

7.3 / 10

Highlights: b e n z a i t e n , Love Translator (self care), Hospital Flower, Kingdom_$lave, Life is a Constant Double Helix

crt paralysis – "Slideshow" (2022)

I'm about neck deep with vaporwave again these past couple of days, so next I threw on this project that got me very curious. Known for making some great vaporwave & DnB as dotnds, CRT Paralysis is a broken transmission side-project of theirs that I'm not fully enamoured with but still greatly appreciative of, especially with their Winter Paralysis series of albums. This "Slideshow" caught my eye though as it looked to center completely around the nostalgia of 2000s office computers and Windows 95 styled corporatism. However, not exactly in the way that I viewed it as a child, which is a little disappointing, but I still found this to be a very good time. The presentation was what drove this home to me the most, it's pretty off-kilter, even for Bandcamp standards. If you're curious for some late 2000s vaporwave nostalgia in a format that I could see INTERNET CLUB doing back in the day, I'd recommend this one.

7.0 / 10

Highlights: "Newlife" 2008/04/02, "Screenshot" 2006/08/17, "Evening" 2008/07/03, "Email" 2008/07/04, "Lounge2" 2008/07/09

RAWINTHEVOID – Alphalord (2018)

How do I go about this one? This was the third album from a then very young RAWINTHEVOID. RAW is a talent in post-vaporwave & plunderphonics that I've been looking forward to seeing his growth for a few good years now. His two latest albums MD (Manifest Destiny) and NOTINTHEMOOD are especially great and, even with some very rough patches, they still shine in comparison to his very, very humble beginnings. I've been going through his catalogue backwards and it's fascinating to see how rudimentary & borderline regressive their sample-based works were back in the day. Even on Alphalord, currently my least favourite of theirs (but only barely behind Double Couple), I still found a wealth of fascinating ideas for its alphabet-long tracklist. For example, I would've never thought that speeding up a whole ass noise rock album down to less than six minutes in a song would've sounded any good. To spoil you, it doesn't sound good, but I'm glad someone tried it anyways. I don't recommend this one. If you're curious, go through his latest albums and his live sets, but don't go digging through the back catalogue. Trust me.

4.4 / 10

Highlights: c3, m13, o15, q17

VHS Head – Persistence of Vision (2014)

To close off this post, I went with the sophomore album from one of the most "Dude, how come you've never heard of this guy" artists in the realm of electronic music. VHS Head is a producer of IDM & Glitch Hop beats that are constantly punchy, sporadic and memorable, all thanks to his incredibly persistent sampling of found VHS tapes. He's growing a cult following overtime but it's not exactly helped by his sparse release schedule. This album came out less than five years after his first and he only thought to put out a followup just a few months ago. I can't wait to try that out, but I would shoot myself in the foot if I didn't go for this album first and I'm very glad that I did. I guess when I heard it, I was a little unenthusiastic in a way? But only the way that still made me love this album in the end, like my thought process was "Of course this album is great." The beats are still punchy, the constantly shifting sample flips are more memorable this time around, I think it's even better and more consistent than his debut! Highly recommend this one, with no doubt.

7.9 / 10

Highlights: Enter the Devil, Don't Look in the Closet, Camera Eyes, Red Ocean Apocalypse, Dead to Morrow, Frozen, Body Magic, Angels Never Sleep

Finally, another episode in the books! You'll notice I'm committing to these a little less and less, but I'm honestly not sure if I can keep doing these daily. I'll keep 'em up for as long as I like, but I think it's time to finally admit that I might skip days proper. I'll find a way to still make them work though, because no doubt, every day, I find something new that I want to talk about. Maybe I could make it more of a highlights thing than an outright journel, but we'll see how that shapes up. Until then, I'll see you next time!

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