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#this video is in such shit quality i wish these looked better

worldsetfree · 3 months

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Diamond is Unbreakable × Reader: Weekends Spent in a Beautiful Duwang

(+ bonus character sprinkled in just for you!)

At last, the weekend! You have survived another horrible week and once more been set free from the confines of societal expectations. You've been feeling a bit too stressed out lately, what with the serial killer and all... But what better way to relax than with some quality time with your beloved?

(I hope y'all enjoy these small slices of life! Feedback is welcome. These broader headcanons are really helping me ease into where I want to go.)

Higashikata Josuke

Great! He has to do some chores first or his mom will kill him, but he's been craving some TLC time with you.

He's kind of a homebody, so expect a day spent playing video games (cute couch co-op is exactly the kind of aesthetic he lives for), watching TV, and having snacks.

Loves physical contact. Will wrap his arms around you, soft kisses on your skin. Wishes you could stay the night and cuddle.

Super shy at school the next week. His friends will tease him about it.

Nijimura Okuyasu

"Oh, let me see if Josuke is free!" "No, no, no, babe. Let's take time for you and I."

When he finally gets the idea, his first suggestion is of course: going to Tonio's. It's up to you if you want to experience *that* with him, but either way a dinner date sounds like a great idea.

Okuyasu wants to be a gentleman this evening. Does his best, in his own way. Dresses up for you. "Oh, you look really hot tonight!" Holds open the door open for you. He'll get the cheque, he's rich now! (Excuse me, what?)

Is going to call Josuke and tell him all about it when he gets home. "Oi Josuke, I think I'm in love!" Josuke lives for it.

Kishibe Rohan

No. He's busy. Wait, you're serious? Oh shit, he feels kinda bad now.

You convince him to go on a cute picnic date in the park under the guise of people-watching for more inspiration.

Rohan's mind is more captivated by experiences than images. He finds himself noticing how the other couples act and decides to do some research. Holding your hand makes his heart flutter like a dove's wings. Kissing you is mental anethestic and fireworks all at once.

The manuscript he sends to his editor that week is notably more optimistic than usual. Pink Dark Boy won't be singing from the rooftops, but at least Rohan understands what's inspired the stupid cliché now. And he wants more and more exposure to this feeling.

Kujo Jotaro

He's tired and stressed out. Please take him away from this town, he actually really needs it. You both do, really. Responds to your request with an indifferent grunt. He's in.

Usually, he'd take you to the beach, but he's hit a snag with his thesis and if he sees those starfish right now he might just pull his hair out. And we wouldn't want anything to happen to his handsome locks.

Surprisingly spontaneous when he wants to be. "Let's go to Tokyo, I want you to meet someone."

The drive is peaceful and quiet. He's a great listener, but still not the best communicator. For example: he won't tell you until you get there that your lunch date will involve meeting his mom for the first time.

Bonus:

Tonio Trussardi

This sweet man takes a day off from his restaurant and invites you to his home. Greets you with flowers and wine.

Very excited to show you his garden. Look at his tomatoes!! Humble but oh so proud of the fruits of his labour.

Thinks the most romantic thing you two can do together is cook. But it's his day off? He doesn't mind! He loves his craft! Wants to hold your hands and teach you how to properly julienne a pepper.

Lives for that reaction when you take that first bite. Might use Pearl Jam to make it that much better for you. Domesticity makes him want a life with you.

#jjba #jojo's bizarre adventure #diamond is not crash #diamond is unbreakable #jojo no kimyou na bouken #part 4 #jotaro kujo #kujo jotaro x reader #josuke higashikata #josuke x reader #okuyasu nijimura #okuyasu x reader #rohan kishibe #rohan x reader #tonio trussardi #tonio x reader #ramblingsfromzawarudo

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ophernelia · 4 months

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Hi. Do you have any tips on how to grow your sims platforms? I keep tryig and posting and I hardly get any interactions or followers. Idk what to do. I wish bigger creators would help out smaller ones more by reposting the content so it gets more views. Its so hard starting out

Hey! Yeah, I have a few tips I can share! This is gonna be long so beware!

I keep seeing this sentiment reiterated about larger creators. I get it, but I think everyone's missing one thing in regards to it: you already have access to the same audience they have. Just like you they grew their platform. Maybe it was a stroke of luck from a viral post or something, but they still had to start somewhere. What it takes is getting your content to hit the algorithm. That's all! So even if a larger creator never looks your way, you can still grow and curate an audience without their help. Small accounts are what make up big accounts after all.

You NEED good SEO. I'll talk about TikTok specifically. If you want a boost in visibility then get on Tik Tok. Properly tagging your content is the key to working the algorithm in your favor. I think people believe the more tags the better. No. The more accurately tagged, the better. The hashtags "TS4", "The Sims", and "The Sims 4" are always trending. You should always use those tags. The rest depends on the kind of content you're posting. I'll use my most viral video as an example. My Stormveil Chateau post on Tik Tok got 141.6K views, 22.3K likes. Since it was for a maxis match build I used the following tags: #thesims4 #sims4 #ts4 #simstok #ts4cc #fyp #sim #sims4tok #sims4maxismatch #sims4build #sims4builds #ts4build #ts4gameplay. Most of the tags are related to TS4 and TS4 builds. I wouldn't include anything about CAS, mods, etc. It wouldn't fit the post. Don't flood other tags in hopes of getting more views. It'll just bury your post under a bunch of random content. People have to be able to find your content.

Visually appealing content performs better, period. Y'all give the aesthetic girls hell but they know a thing or two about working the algorithm. I'll give them that! People like things that look nice. Now, that's not to say you need to purge all the color or character from your game. You don't have to follow a certain style trend. Curate your own personal style. Do what you do to the best of your ability. Whatever you post, just make sure it's good quality. Focus on sharpness, clarity, etc. If you wanna curate a particular look then go for it! But most importantly, having clear clean images or videos is the main thing you need. And you don't need a beast of a PC to do it. Sharpen your images and videos before you upload them using Capcut or something. Make sure the lighting is nice. Make sure it's a good resolution for the platform you're posting on. A quick tip: Adding dof to lower quality images makes it look better! See how the left photo looks more clear than the right? A little bit of depth of field helps so the pictures don't fall flat.

Pick a primary social to promote your secondary ones. Usually your primary social may be the one where you have your largest audience. For me, it was Tik Tok. On there I'd promote my Patreon, YouTube, and Tumblr. You just released some cc? Post something about it on Tik Tok, let your audience know they can find it on your Tumblr. Use one to promote the others.

Slow organic growth is STILL growth. Growing your audience is one beast, but maintaining it is a whole other thing. As someone who has gotten shout outs from larger creators, that initial boost ALWAYS dies down. And socials like YouTube will not hesitate to tell you "Hey boo, your shit's failing now. You kinda suck." Been there, felt that. Boosts from other creators and giveaways don't have much longevity. Most times that audience will leave. On occasion you may get a few who stick around, but most won't. That's why it's important to build your audience organically. Yes, it may take longer but they won't just dip out after a few weeks. Things take time to grow. Things take time to curate. Understand you are BUILDING something. It takes time!

And lastly- if you just really want the numbers and it doesn't matter what content you post, then here's what you do: Sell. Still use good SEO, still try to have high quality photos, but give people something to consume. People like to see what they can get. Post some builds, cc, whatever. If you're not a cc creator, then do cc finds, mod reviews, tutorials, build recommendations, lookbooks. People love a good cc haul. They wanna see what they can get. And that's not to say people that make this sort of content don't care about their content. I know they do and it's a lot of work! It still takes time and effort to curate. It's just HOT right now! Especially maxis match content. It ruffles less feathers because a wide array of the Sims community has a vicious vendetta against alpha cc. (Yeah ion know. They will "uncanny valley" and "just play IMVU' you to death. If I say what I think it is.. My people know.) But if you really just want thousands of followers, then there's a way to do it.

With all that said, I know how annoying it is to constantly hear to not focus on numbers but don't. CREATE FOR CREATION'S SAKE. Do it only because you enjoy it. Growth for me has come as a byproduct of me doing whatever the hell I wanted. I make Lykaia because I want to make Lykaia. I love that people love it but it is for me. Not to be an influencer, or to inspire, or to receive praise and accolades. I love everything about the process. Hell, I love the stress that comes with it! I have four scenes to film and I'm still not done editing the ones I have filmed. The episode is supposed to air on MONDAY. I fucking love working down to wire. It's stressful as hell but it feels good! If it's out there, the audience will soon follow. Always. Take your time. Be grateful for where you're at every step of the way. Enjoy the process! And remember that all it takes is one post to take off.

#text post #asks #and take this time to hone your skills!#i am a much better writer and director than i was when lykaia first began

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csuitebitches · 1 year

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Hey! I’m in 11th grade (17 yo), and I always hear people wishing they could go back and improve certain aspects of themselves when they were younger. Do you have any advice for high schoolers about life/self-improvement and going out to the real world? Thanks! I really enjoy your blog

1. Understand basic finance and tracking your money/ allowance/ income if you have any. Something as simple as downloading an expense tracking app can be a good first step.

2. Understand what sort of a learner you are. Everyone learns things differently. See what works for you.

3. Learn to say no politely to people. You don’t have to participate in anything you don’t want to. But I would encourage you to definitely put yourself out there - whether it’s volunteering, parties, clubs, activities- it’s a great way to meet new people. Don’t be shy to say hello first!

4. Keep learning. No matter what. I have a rule where I watch one education video on YouTube a day, and it can be as short as 3 minutes. Keep your brain active. Solve brain games, crosswords, sudokus, anything to keep yourself active. Choose a hobby- as simple as knitting, collecting something, scrapbooking, calligraphy. It’ll help your personal growth.

5. Develop a fitness routine for yourself. It’s important that you start simple exercises, stretching, a short run; anything to keep your body moving. Make it a habit. Health doesn’t mean size 0 and abs. It means being at your healthy weight. Your future self will thank you.

6. Read. Read about things you don’t know. Just because something is fiction doesn’t make it any less useful than non fiction. Read to your heart’s content.

7. Enjoy your age, at any age! Spend time with your family and friends! Tell the ones close to you that you love them. Time is fleeting and memories are precious.

8. Learn to forgive yourself. You WILL make mistakes. You will embarrass yourself at some point. It’s OKAY. It happens. Side note: don’t post yourself crying or overly emotional on social media, or share things that are too vulnerable. I hate this current trend of people airing their dirty laundry. Some things are private, and meant to be that way. Choose that privacy for yourself.

9. Find an outlet for your mind. Journaling, meditation, breathing exercises.

10. Start doing things alone. Spend some quality time with yourself. Date yourself.

11. Learn to cook at least 5 proper meals before you leave for college/ uni/ move out of your parent’s house.

12. Take pictures of yourself and those you love! I love looking back at old photos with my friends and laughing at our awful fashion choices and the shit quality. Photos are such great keepers of memories.

13. Lastly, understand your alcohol tolerance BEFORE you leave for college. I know this is probably illegal but it’s better for you to understand your drinking limit in the safety of your own house than some random frat house.

#c suite #powerful woman #strong women #ceo aesthetic #personal growth #that girl #productivity #c suite aesthetic #getting your life together #q/a #teenager #teenage advice #college #freshman #if I were 18 again #young #advice for young teens #advice for girls #advice for boys

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withloveoptimus · 2 years

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It's Prime Time Chap 1.

was posted on ao3 first but i wanted to post it on here too since I'm writing more lmao

this is a two-shot little story that may end up with its own series but who knows that may also change n e way onto the story

---

Chap One of It's Prime Time

Pairings: Optimus Prime & Reader (platonic), Smokescreen & Reader (platonic)

Summary: Optimus wishes to take you somewhere because he wants to spend quality time with you, and fun ensues.

---

You spent the day like any other, sitting at the base with the kids, either sitting around or playing video games, which would often get too loud and Ratchet would shout, “Quiet down! Some people are trying to work here!” which was of course like any other day at the base. You were eating snacks you brought as you watched them, occasionally playing when they asked but mostly watching.

As you stuff another chip into your mouth, your eyes wander before landing on your partner in crime, and guardian, Smokescreen. His back was turned to you as he was engaged in a conversation with Bulkhead, probably talking about past battles or something, and you were honestly happy that their friendship was getting better since they got off to a rocky start. Bulkhead was a good influence on Smokescreen, in his own way and they acted more and more like brothers. A “Bromance” as Miko put it when you two talked about it one time.

That did leave you with a few thoughts, like imagining those bro memes you would see and you had to keep yourself from laughing.

While lost in your train of thought, you hadn’t noticed Smokescreen walk over to the human area until a metal finger was poking you. “Oh shit!” You jumped, turning to the owner of said finger only to meet Smokescreen’s gaze, “Oh, hey Kachow.”

He immediately shoots you a look that only makes you laugh.

“C’mon, you promised!” He whined.

“I may have promised but your reactions are so worth it.”

You will never let him live down the fact that you walked in on him doing the 'Kachow!' in one of the empty rooms of the base, after having a Cars movie marathon with the kids. It took lots of bribing from him but you promised to keep it between the two of you–he would never know that you let it slip to Optimus and had to swear him to secrecy–, although you can't help teasing him with it.

He rolls his optics at your teasing but you know he isn’t upset if the little smile on his face is anything to go by. “Anyways,” You close the bag of chips and place them on the table, “what were you and Bulk talking about?”

There’s some shouting and you sneak a glance to see Miko doing a victory dance as she beats Jack, who watches in defeat, in one of the fighting games you brought. You can only laugh as she shouts, “In your face!” and Jack just sighs. Arcee, Bumblebee, and Raf watch in amusement, making comments here and there.

“Bulkhead was just sharing some battle stories,” Smokescreen says, excitement clear in his voice, and you turn your attention back to him. “just hearing about them makes me so jealous! I would’ve been so awesome on the battlefield back on Cybertron.”

You chuckle and decide to indulge your guardian, “Mind telling me some stories then?” You ask as you get up from the couch and walk over to where he was standing by the railing.

The grin you get in return is worth it and you can only smile as he picks you up and goes somewhere quieter.

—-

It was late night by the time the kids went home and you lounged on the couch, waiting on a certain Autobot leader, who was your other guardian. Smokescreen had offered to take you home but you declined, wanting to spend what little time you could with Optimus, seeing as he was always busy and you were kind of missing his company.

You were officially bored after attempting to keep yourself busy by doodling, reading some books you brought, or playing games. You were blaming it on Optimus taking so long doing whatever it was he was doing.

It's quiet, save for Ratchet typing away at the computer with his occasional grumbling.

An idea comes to mind and it might be a bad idea and maybe it'll piss off Ratchet but you're bored and it's Optimus' fault.

It's too late to back out now as you look over to where he is. "Hey, Grumpy?" You call.

There's no response and you aren't surprised.

"Doc Bot?"

He pauses but continues working.

"Mister Grinch?"

A heavy sigh and shake of his head and you're fighting the urge to just laugh.

"Rat–"

"What do you want?! Can't you see I'm working!" He finally snaps, and you howled with laughter. His reaction was totally worth it as he just watched you, utterly annoyed and ready to just send you through a ground bridge home. He fails to understand how Optimus deals with you.

It takes a bit for you to calm down, still a fit of giggles, but when you look at Ratchet again you're close to another laughing fit.

He's gone back to ignoring you, probably for the better, but he's frowning and grumbling about something. Just as you're about to open your mouth to say something, totally not to mess with him some more, you're being picked up.

“I can’t leave you alone, can I?” Optimus says as he sets you in his palm, using a finger to nudge your little body.

“What do you expect me to do, I was bored! And would you stop doing that–” You growled, attempting to bat his finger away.

Optimus looks to Ratchet, "I apologize for the disturbance, old friend." The medic only grumbles in reply, waving them off so he can get back to work.

You breathe a sigh of relief when Optimus pulls his finger away, you swear he and Smokescreen only do it to mess with you. Before you know it, you find yourself in Optimus' passenger seat.

"What took you so long, Big Red?" You inquire as he starts the drive out of the base.

He's silent for a bit. "I was taking care of some business. I apologize for making you wait so long, Little One."

You snort, “Any longer and I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

Optimus sighs, knowing all too well how much you love messing with Ratchet. The two of you could have your moments, but primus could you grind the poor Medic’s gears. The Autobot leader couldn’t even count on his fingers how many times he’s had to pick you up and take you somewhere else before Ratchet hauled you through a ground bridge. It’s even worse if Wheeljack is around.

“Must you mess with him so much?”

“Uh, duh! I do it out of love though so it's okay!"

That pulls a chuckle from him. “Out of love, you say?”

You nod, crossing your arms over your chest, sporting a huge grin. Any teasing from you was always out of love or just joking in general. Still, you weren’t the best at reading the room or reading people in general, so sometimes it went farther than you’d have liked.

It isn’t long before Optimus is pulling up to your home, the ride feeling a little shorter than usual and you can’t help but feel just a bit upset. You kind of want to ask him to drive around for a bit, just so you can spend just a little more time with him, but decide against it. You’d rather not keep him from his duties.

“Little One?” Optimus calls, worried at your silence and the slight change in mood. He decides not to mention the pout you were now sporting.

You shake your head, “Sorry, Big Red, I was just thinking.”

He hums, waiting patiently as you collect and calm yourself. You’re glad he let you do so, even if he could read you like an open book.

Once your thoughts are clear, you pat the dashboard, ready to say goodnight and let him be on his way but Optimus stops you.

“Before you go,” He starts, “I must ask something of you.”

Now that puzzles you. A little weird, you think.

“What’s up?”

He was silent for a moment, trying to piece together whatever he was going to ask. You’re silently hoping it isn’t anything too bad, your behavior has been good this week.

“I ask that you do not stay up late,” Okay now he is being weird, “I wish to take you somewhere, Little One. I do not know where, but we shall go somewhere.” He finishes.

And now he’s completely thrown you for a loop.

Of course, it wasn’t weird for him to take you places, there were a few times he had taken you on patrol if he wanted some company. Sometimes he’d even take you and the kids out if you had projects to do because he was hesitant to let Ratchet help with them again, though he would never say so aloud. So what was this all about?

“What?” Is all you manage to say.

"We'll be spending the day together." He simply says.

That is enough to bring back the grin you were sporting earlier and you have to stop yourself from squealing and kicking your feet. Your wishes had been granted and it honestly felt too good to be true.

"Really?!" You look at the steering wheel excitedly then pause, "You're not joking are you?"

He's a little offended you'd think he would joke about this.

"Of course not, Little One, I speak only the truth.”

You pump your fist in the air, “Fuck yeah!” Ignoring the silent reprimand for your profanity.

Optimus chuckles when you hurry to unbuckle yourself and open his door. “Goodnight, Big Red! Love ya!” You shout and dash to your front door, almost tripping in your excitement. You wanted nothing more than to hurry to your bed and sleep the night away. Although you didn’t think you would even be able to sleep with this much excitement, you were going to try.

Once you finally manage to open the door, you turn and offer your guardian a final wave goodnight before scurrying inside.

You find yourself rushing through your nightly routine, and just as you slip on a baggy shirt to sleep in, your phone buzzes on the nightstand. Sneaking a glance, you realize someone was messaging you. That someone being Optimus.

Big Red: Please be ready by ten.

Big Red: Sleep well, Little One, I love you.

You go to bed with a smile and a warm feeling in your chest.

#transformers prime #tfp optimus prime #optimus x reader #but it's platonic #reader is a little silly guys #adventures with optimus #ratchet #tfp arcee #bumblebee #fluff #like lots of fluff #no beta we die like cliffjumper #idk how to tag lmfao

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noahtally-famous · 6 months

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happy halloween to all who acknowledge it! 🎃

enjoy this random halloween drabble? oneshot? I thought up two days ago lmao since I didn't have enough time to plan out the other shawnpher halloween idea

_______________________________________

potential title: in my defense, you scared me; a shawnpher halloween au

"Happy week of Halloween, wonderful viewers, tuning into my brand new video, hosted by the one and only amazing me, myself, and I!" Topher gestures at himself, turning the phone down so that his viewers can get a full look at his dazzling autumn outfit. "For a treat--or a trick--your one and only Tophman will be going into--" he turns around so that the looming corn maze is in perfect view of the camera. "This! Totally haunted, scary as fuck, maze filled with spooktacular frights that this guy is not going to fall for at all! Pretty swell idea, right?"

Stopping the recording and covering the camera with one hand, he leans to the side and hisses, "this is the worst idea ever."

"You wanted something spooky and cool for your Halloween video," Scarlett replies without looking up from her phone. "This is as spooky and cool as all the Halloween lovers can get."

"But I'm not a Halloween lover," Topher whines. "That maze is, like, ginormous. I could get lost in it! My perfect face can't get lost!"

Scarlett rolls her eyes. "You're the one who agreed to it. Seriously," she casts Topher's phone a disdainful look, "is there anything you won't do for your damn vlog?"

Then, as though she said something truly earth-shattering, she strides toward the maze's entrance where several other people are converged.

Topher aims his famous puppy-eyes to the third person of their little group.

Beardo makes a sympathetic wamp wamp noise before shrugging and ambling after Scarlett.

"Come on, man!" Topher calls. Is his puppy-eyes getting old? Impossible!

Hurrying over to them, he huffs. "Rodney would have had my back one-hundred percent if he were here."

"Which he's not. What a coincidence," Scarlett retorts dryly from the front.

Topher gasps. "What is that supposed to mean?!" He turns to Beardo. "Scarlett's done something to Rods!"

"Fucks sake, no--god, I meant he wouldn't be caught dead hanging around one of these scare-traps."

"Rods wouldn't leave me hanging like that, Brainiac. Something's gotta have happened to him. Did you hire a hitman or someone? My man just won't ditch me during my time of need. Scarlett!"

He's too busy wallowing the extremely important chance of him dying via publicity backlash after getting scared on camera by some crazy guy in a costume that he misses the exasperated look his friends send each other.

"It's just an hour, Prissy, don't get your hair in a knot," Scarlett grumbles. "And you dragged me for this too, so you better not flake."

Because Scarlett can be fucking terrifying when she's glaring like that behind her glasses, and Topher doesn't feel like getting his innards pulled out, he says resignedly, "Yes ma'am."

Dealing with jumpscares in a fucking corn maze while on camera is enough stress.

She gives him another one of her glares-from-hell before turning back to her phone. "Ella wishes you good luck, by the way," she says, poking at the screen--probably typing a hasty response back to the only person she ever replies quickly to: her girlfriend. "Says something about you doing fine and shit." She scoffs.

Beardo snickers.

"Dude!" Topher says, betrayed. That's the second time tonight! Man, he wants Rodney here so badly. He just knows the big guy would have his back.

"Sorry, Toph," Beardo mumbles sheepishly.

Easy for him to say. He's just in it to get quality footage for his and Ella's duo-videostream; he can walk away with a paycheck because apparently some fancy smancy producers like their videos enough to promote them.

Topher really wishes he was famous.

They assemble in front of the maze as the sky grows dark and a chill picks up in the air. Surprisingly, there are a hell lot of people, jostling for room; kids ribbing each other, couples already snuggled up or making out, even people videoing their experience like they're doing. Topher scoffs, watching them from the corner of one eye; their etiquette is so wrong, how do they even have subscribers?

"Why would anyone want to unironically do this shitshow in the first place?" he mutters, pulling his thin fleece-jacket tighter around him.

"For fun?" Beardo offers helpfully.

"Thanks, man. This is totally the classic definition of the word fun."

"Topher," Scarlett says, "what have we talked about the world not revolving around you?"

"That it's bullshit?"

Scarlett rolls her eyes so hard he's impressed she doesn't get a headache. Before she can respond, there's an announcement counting down the seconds before they're free to enter the maze, alongside the usual warnings of there being scary ghouls and flesh-eating monsters ready for tasty victims. The shiver that runs down Topher's back is fully due to the breeze, nothing more.

"Aaaand...three...two...one...scram!" the gravelly voice laughs sinisterly as everyone dashes into the maze. "May the best survive this Halloween night!" Paired with a cliche organ sound effect that Beardo can totally do better.

This whole thing is such a scam, why is he even doing this?

Oh yeah, for the views.

After three or four turns, he starts to hear the screams. He's clutching Beardo's arm before he can think about it. His solace is that Beardo did the same, squeezing him to his chest, his video camera bumping uncomfortably against Topher's spine.

"Simple scare effects, and people being scared of superficial ambushes by people in costumes," Scarlett scoffs, hardly flinching. She gives the two boys an unimpressed look. "Come on, or do you want to hang around here when it really gets dark?"

That gets them scrambling away from one another and hurrying after her.

Several feet later, they reach a crossroads--diverging into three parts. Which Topher thinks is convenient considering there are three of them.

"Split up?" Beardo asks nervously, his voice hardly a whisper.

Scarlett nods decisively. "Seems like it. No objections?"

Topher has plenty of objections, but he doesn't want to seem like the scardey-cat of the bunch; not when his friends are up to the idea. Plus he does need footage for his video.

When no one says anything, Scarlett nods. "Splendid, meet you at the other side." She takes the path to the far left, muttering as she does, "thank goodness Max isn't here, he would have lost his mind and his bowels."

Beardo pats him heavily on the shoulder--like that is supposed to be reassuring!--and takes the one on the far right, leaving Topher with the path at the center.

The dark, winding foresty center-path that...was it that dark five seconds ago? And were the trees really that tall?

Okay, deep breaths, Toph. It's just a silly maze, surrounded by a bunch of silly people in scary costumes ready to give you a heart attack. None of it is actually real so get your head screwed on and do it for the 'gram!

He fumbles for his phone, switching it on to recording as he creeps to the start of the path. Videoing himself helps; it emphasizes the idea that nothing else matters except for him and the screen. No creep can jumpscare him into public humiliation when he's in full record-mode.

"Here we are, amazingly beautiful yous. The dreaded dangerous path of the maze I must take alone. Will I survive? You bet I will! God won't kill off a face this perfect and an ass this gorgeous so soon--" a crunch of leaves "--what was that? I mean, that is nothing I can't handle! Leaves? Pfft! What can a bunch of leaves do to, holy fucking shit!"

He's turning the corner when a large shape leaps at him from behind a particularly large tree.

(Okay, so the shape wasn't really large--actually it was a tad shorter than Topher himself, and more so on the leaner side.)

But when Topher takes one look at the thing's masked face, covered in distorted scratches and horrifying renditions of flesh ripped off its face, all rational thought flies out the window. Scarlett's words of the jumpscarers being people in costumes? No recollection. Especially when something long and silver glints in the sky as the figure raises its arm.

Topher screams, all high-pitched and utterly terrified, flailing and stumbling back. His phone flips out of his hand and he curses himself for it because there's a fucking maniac in front of him about to slash him to ribbons. All he can think is not the face!

Like a godsend, a coherent thought hits him, and he puts to use the few self-defense classes his parents had forced him to take due to being related to popular photogenic people.

One leg kicks out, connecting with something.

The figure goes down with a yell that's drowned by Topher still screaming his head off. Dropping to his knees, he gropes the leaf-strewn ground until--aha!--his hand closes on the familiar shape of his phone.

Adrenaline is the only explanation for how he manages to turn the flashlight setting and shine the light on whoever the fuck had accosted him.

"What. The. Fuck?!" is all that comes out of his mouth.

The guy--because for fuck's sake, obviously, it wasn't a creature from the dead, it was an ordinary guy dressed as one--lay sprawled on the ground, clutching his groin.

Huh, guess those self-defense classes Topher barely listened to did pay off--always go for the face or the groin. The only takeaway he got from the experience.

"Dude!" groans the guy who literally jumpscared him, and he's acting like Topher did something wrong! "What kind of a reaction is that?"

"Um, hello?!" All the fear melts into annoyance. "You're the one who thought leaping at me with a--what the fuck is that thing on your hand?"

"A hook!" The guy displays it--in other words waving it around with too little care to be healthy. Topher leans away from it. "It's a prop! Haven't you been jumpscared before, man?"

Not by lunatics who stay too in character, Topher thinks mutinously, because that dumb reaction was filmed and thank god, this isn't a live stream or he would never have heard the end of it...

Fuck.

"Fuck! My video!"

"What?" asks the guy confusedly, still groaning on the ground and clutching his groin. "I almost got incapacitated in a way I never expected to, and you're worried about your video?"

Topher hardly hears him. He swipes at his screen, brushing aside the dirt and leaves, relieved that the screen isn't cracked, and, yes!, the video was intact too. He hates refilming stuff--and he sure as hell wasn't planning on stepping foot here a second time.

"Okay, everything's safe, we can hold the fire! Now..." he focuses back on the guy who should literally be filed for criminal assault after this fiasco. "What were you saying?"

The guy stares. "I was giving you shit for braining my privates, but I guess your video or whatever was more important than my bits?"

Something about 'braining my privates' sounds off, but Topher had gone through a traumatic event, he isn't about to start analyzing grammar. That's Scarlett's job.

Speaking of Scarlett...

"Dude. Dude, dude, dude, chill the heck out," Topher interrupts whatever tirade the other guy is in the middle of. Ignoring his affronted look, Topher sighs. "Okay fine, sorry or whatever, even though it should be me you should be apologizing to--"

"Me? Apologize to you? That's like a zombie asking politely for some brains!"

Oookay...talk about weird.

But unfortunately, Topher needs this guy. He isn't going to spend another second alone in this blasted maze. Not with his nerves so frayed. Plus he deserves an escort after all this shit.

"Cool, great, awesome, uh, zombie-boy." He holds a hand out. "Now are you willing to listen to me?"

The other guy frowns at him. He shrugs and accepts the hand. His fingers are bigger than Tophers, and rough and calloused--probably from doing this goddamn job and scaring shit out of poor innocents.

Topher hoists him up harder than intended. Yeah, he's got a bit of pettiness in him, but can you blame him?

The guy groans, stumbling a bit, his legs joining together at the knees as he winces. "Damn, for a typical streamer, you sure kick hard."

Wow, this guy is seriously gunning for worst conversationalist ever.

Being the bigger person, Topher doesn't deem that with a response for all of five seconds. Then, to satisfy the itch, while picking at his nails, he corrects, "vlogger, actually. And I'm a very popular one, might I add. You should check out my videos, you'd learn a thing or two. Or several."

The guy blinks, adjusts his beanie. "Uh, what the hell are you talking about?"

Standing next to him, Topher sees that he is right in his initial assumption that the guy is shorter than him. He's got maybe an inch. His off-blue beanie is ruffled with leaves and grime and tilted to one side, exposing wayward brown hair; his face still has that absurd makeup on but some of it has rubbed off from the kerfuffle that Topher can spot a faint scruff and startling hazel-green eyes peering at him through the flesh-ripped artistic rendition. His costume looks generic--vest, sweater, jeans, boots--save for the strategically painted rips and tears and blood on them. When he shifts, his hair nudges the back of his neck, stuck to it with sweat and dirt.

Topher has to admit, scares and annoyances aside, he can acknowledge a solid makeup job. And this guy definitely has it.

Also those eyes. Totally photogenic. His heart beats a little faster--probably still from the adrenaline.

"Hey? Are you listening to me? What're you staring at?" the other guy grumbles, shooting him a suspicious side-eye.

Topher wills his face not to burn. Come on, it's not his fault if a photogenic feature catches his eye--he's been scared to half-death, for gods sake, let him salvage a little familiarity!

"Trying to guess a name to that grime-infested face," he retorts instead.

"Infested?" asks the other guy, wide-eyed.

"Your face, idiot. It's covered in dirt."

The other guy touches a hand to his face as though just realizing it. Topher pointedly clears his throat. The air has turned chillier, he wants to go home and park his ass in front of the fireplace.

“Oh.” The guy looks up. “Shawn.”

Shawn. Finally.

“Topher.”

They don’t shake hands, just eye each other warily.

“Say Shawn,” says Topher conversationally. “How about as compensation for nearly killing me, you get me out of this place?”

“You’re kidding,” Shawn shakes his head incredulously. “You’re the one who kicked me in the nuts. If anyone deserves compensation for anything, it’s me!”

“You’re the one who’s such a shit scarer.”

“You’re the weirdo whose first reaction is to kick someone!”

“Right, I’m the weirdo here.” Topher eyes him skeptically.

“Uh, duh, clearly. You were scared, dude, admit it.”

“Not a chance.”

On cue, a series of maniacal laughter and screams ring the air. Topher jolts.

“Yep, not scared,” snickers Shawn.

Topher flips him off.

But Shawn’s on a roll. “I get that you were scared of my getup—hook-handed ghouls are the perfect type of scare—but those screams? They weren’t even on our path. Damn you do scare easily.”

“Oh, is that what you’re supposed to be?” Topher shoots back. “I was thinking a zombie given how dumb you look—like a pile of rags.”

“A zombie?” Shawn’s eyes open wide. “You’re kidding me, man! The only time I’d willingly pretend to be the undead is when they destroy the world and humanity in it.”

Of course that’s what Shawn fixates on in Topher’s response. And he’s not even going to think about how Shawn had said when. Makes sense that a guy like him is also obsessed with something that’s only in the movies—not that Topher watches those kinds of stuff; thinking about the apocalypse leads him down a troublesome path of lack of hair care products, facial scrubs, and cameras. Talk about drab!

“You’re super mega weird, dude,” he tells him.

Shawn gestures around them, encompassing their entire situation. “No offense, dude, but my concerns are justified. I’m not the guy freaked out by people in costumes.”

For fucks sake.

Honestly, being the stubborn shit he is, Topher could’ve gone on for hours, but at that moment, the light from his phone screen catches his eye and he remembers that he’s still recording. What will his viewers think of him arguing with one of the staff members when they expected a spooky Halloween video?

“Okay whatever, you’re this super stoic guy that Halloween can’t come near to, that’s awesome. Now can you fucking get me out of this maze?”

“Dude, I can’t just leave my job and go with you—“

“Man, you could’ve killed me. I’m pretty sure you’ll be doing those people a favor.”

Shawn frowns, opening his mouth to say something that Topher knows is not a yes Topher I would love to and Topher really doesn’t want to deal with that.

Bribery. People like bribes, right? What can he give in return—something Shawn won’t be able to resist.

“I’ll get you apple cider?” He offers. The only autumn-themed drink he can think of that this place will sell.

Shawn’s expression doesn’t change and Topher resigns himself to a solitary trek in the maze filled with more jumpscares. He tries not to look too disappointed—plays it up for the camera—and rubs his arms as he goes to turn back the way he came when Shawn speaks up.

“That’s the wrong way.”

Topher scowls, turns to face him. “Well the expert isn’t being much help here. Guess I’m gonna have to wither away and die here surrounded by cornstalks. My viewers will hunt you down, mark my words.”

Shawn rolls his eyes, mutters “jeez you’re so dramatic” which Topher is about to take great offense to, if not for what Shawn says next.

“Fried dough too.”

Topher pauses, bewildered. “What?”

“Apple cider and fried dough. This place has the best ones. You should try one too, my recommendation.”

And, well, this is really one of the most absurd situations Topher has ever been in.

But as long as it means getting the hell out of here, he’ll pay for anything Shawn wants. He’ll even give him a shoutout and cameo in his video.

“Fine. Once we’re out, apple cider and fried dough are on me.”

Halfway turned again, he sees Shawn squinting at him.

Oh, what now?

“Are you sure this isn’t a date or something?”

Topher chokes, the cold air burning down his esophagus as he wheezes. Shawn, the bastard, doesn’t even move to help despite being the cause of Topher’s current predicament; only watches in puzzled suspicion.

“What? No of course it’s not! Why are you even—that’s ridiculous—I mean—I don’t—you can’t just say that in front of the camera—“

God, his face feels so red, he sounds deranged. Is he suffering from a stroke?

He should definitely edit this part out.

Shawn watches him for a second longer before nodding. “Cool. ‘Cause all the secrecy was giving me the wrong impression. Kind of an odd first date, eh? That’s what Jasmine would say if she were here.”

Wait.

What?

What is even happening right now?

And then, as though everything isn’t confusing enough, Topher thinks, is this a date?

Does he want it to be one?

Hell no! Not with zombie boy and his mismatched clothes, his shitty scare tactics, his absurdly detailed makeup, his apish social skills, and his stupidly photogenic eyes.

Never. Of course not.

Then why was he stuttering and stumbling around like a baby foal? Topher is never out of control, no matter what the circumstance. He’s had to reject countless admirers before. Why is this any different?

Is it the adrenaline? It’s got to be the adrenaline. There’s no way he’s having a…crush. On someone so...opposite.

He’s overthinking this. Shawn was just messing around, and Topher’s reading way too much into it.

"This is not a date," he hisses at the blinking red light on his phone. Just in case his viewers aren't aware.

Amidst his dilemma, Shawn pushes aside a branch that’s in the way of the opposite direction Topher had been going, calling over his shoulder, "I'll protect you from the big bad ghouls hanging around,” he flashes his hook, “but if there are any zombies you’re on your own, man.”

Okay, yeah, no.

That's fucking it.

This guy.

Topher has no idea if he's serious or not; ribbing around or being sincere; either way, if none of the other creepies in the maze kill them first, he'll kill Shawn himself.

Once he gets out of this maze.

And, he supposes, once he gets Shawn that fried dough and cider.

Because there's no way Topher's going to ruin his public image thanks to some zombie-obsessed guy preaching shit about this entire ordeal.

Buy his silence or whatever.

#i might write a part two for this but idk lmaoo i feel like this is a silly thing i came up with and idek if it's that good hdjkhfk #and maaaybe i might post it on ao3 depending on if i write a second part or not #total drama #noahtally-famous #kit stuff #kit writes #td topher #td shawn #td scarlett #td beardo #shawnpher #shawn x topher #background scarella #td fanfic

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eat-the-richard · 3 months

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GOTY OF THE YEAR 2,000,023

IT'S ABOUT THAT TIME AAGAIN FRIENDS! Another overly long written ramble about the very best in my personal gaming life and experience delivered DIRECTLY TO YOUR EYEBALLS!

And what a year it was!! For gaming! All of it! Just a comprehensive onslaught of video game products from all different genres and developers. From Triple As to Indies to whatever the fuck we're supposed to call the middle ground of those two. No matter who you (yes, YOU, not the general ""you"") are, something came out this year that tickled your little small little balls in one way or the other.

The best part of all, though? A year like this will NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!! Certainly not next year, like my god look at that 2024 upcoming games list, man. It is *slight*.

You wanna know why? Because this amount of quality output, of course, does not come from studios or companies or brands or even the almighty dollar sign. It comes, of course, from people. People who are insanely talented and passionate about their craft. Likely those who dreamed for years to be a part of this seemingly amazing industry of creative professionals all striving towards the same creative goals. And for gaming developers, 2023 was not a year worth celebrating. Sure the products that they worked on released to the public to play and enjoy, but as soon as these projects wrapped up, the studio or company or brand or even the almighty dollar sign ditched their ass RIGHT TO THE CURB!

Because to all of those previously mentioned abstractions, talent is expendable. Demand for talent should be at an all time high, given that gaming continues to be the most money-making entertainment medium of the 21st century. So more games should be in development, therefore necessitating more job opportunities and areas where passionate individuals can spearhead their own creativity into a golden goose. But, of course, this is not how abstractions operate. The talent who creates these fine pieces of art are mere cogs to them, oiling and greasing a machine that will continue to move as long as the pieces are in place. And there will always be a new crop of cogs fresh in the industry who will be willing to take meager pay, miserable conditions, and limited flexibility in their line of work, as long as they get a chance to work with the abstractions.

This, of course, will not happen. The continuous horror of the modern gaming industry spreads far and wide. Notably to our youth, as chronically online as they are, who likely will not want to invest their time and life into a career that will never respect them. As for the talent who have been laid off every month this year? They won't stick around. Their services are applicable in many other fields that not only pay better, but have far more job security. So the talent pool dries up, there will be increasingly fewer individuals looking to refill, and the gaming bubble finally pops.

We're at the precipice of it, and it's hard to ignore the warning signs. It's hard to write a piece about the "great year in gaming" we as consumers had as it feels like the industry that created it might not look the same way in 10 years. Gaming won't die, obviously, there's too much demand for it. But the 300 million dollar blockbusters, the 3-4 year crunch periods, the constant race to produce technological best. That will die. And this year was the last hurrah.

So, in that spirit, let's celebrate the year that was for me. The 10 best games from this year and previous that remind me why I love it in the first place. Why I want to support it, and wish it nothing but the best. And most of all, highlighting the talent who ultimately made it possible, rather than the abstraction who will tear it down.

---------------

Anyway! Enough of that SHIT!! Video games are cool, and I like them. Today, we’re going to RANK the TOP 10-ish GAMES I PLAYED in Twenty Twenty Three. But before that, let’s dive into some dis/honorable mentions.

REMASTER I REALLY LIKED BUT DIDN’T WANT TO RANK BECAUSE ITS A REMASTER OF THE YEAR: Metroid Prime Remastered (NSW)

Take your pick of, like, six or seven different 25-30 year old Metroid fans and slam them elbow-first into a padded cell. Once they come to and they start talking about Metroid, as you do in confinement, about five or six of them will confess that their first love was Metroid Prime. I would count myself one of them inside of the cell, even if it took me until 2015 and the shudders Wii U Virtual Console for me to finally give it a try.

The six-or-seven imprisoned Metroid fans will inevitably start comparing the two most popular entries in the series: Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. To me, Super Metroid is all about its scenario. Finely tuned and expertly paced, “Super” is a game I play for that jolt of the Metroid formula that currently makes up ½ of every game that comes out nowadays. But Metroid Prime is about atmosphere. The reflections of Samus’ face in the visor dotted by raindrops from above. The movement of fauna, shade & various enemies flowing through every screen. Honestly while I’m writing this the Phendrana Drifts theme is playing in my head.

Metroid Prime isn’t as precise as Super Metroid, but its ambiance is striking. This presentation, already beautiful on the GameCube, is only enhanced on Switch. Despite very little of the original Prime team still being at Retro Studios, you can tell this one was crafted with an enormous amount of respect for the source material. It gets the rare yet coveted distinction for a remaster/make/release of looking just as you remembered it your first go around, yet looking obviously much better when compared side by side. It does well to continue the legacy of this momentous game, to hopefully expose its importance to more than just the five-or-six of us currently jailed.

By the way, the one other guy who didn’t grow up with Prime? He was chatting our ear off about the “subversive excellence” of Metroid Fusion or something. How “forcing linearity in an otherwise exploration heavy series can make you feel weak and frightened” and “it has a much tighter difficulty curve than any other title in the series.” Something like that anyway, couldn’t really hear over the all-time noogie numbers I was putting up while he was stuck in a headlock.

GAME I'M MOST MAD AT MYSELF FOR NOT FINISHING: Outer Wilds (PC)

Is it a me thing? Am I not the type of guy who would truly appreciate a game like Outer Wilds? Spoilers ahead, obviously. Don’t read this part if any part of your bones and back wants to try this one out, dead serious.

Because what a HOOK this game gets you in. The first time the sun engulfed my puny little carcass, the previous session reverses itself right in front of me and the world just completely reset itself? Astonishment, blown away? Other thoughts like that. Conceptually, Outer Wilds is a knockout. The obvious point of comparison is Majora’s Mask, but the mystery at the heart of Outer Wilds is a lot less simple than Find The Four Giants. It’s a weaving thread binding all the game’s planets, but one you must piece together largely yourself.

Which made dropping it back in April and trying to come back to it hard. I probably just have to totally restart it and really really focus on what each little node of information is saying. Or just use a guide or something idk

LEAST FAVORITE GAMING EXPERIENCE OF THE YEAR: Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon (PC)

Ok this title might be hyperbole a bit since I didn’t completely hate it, I just wanted an excuse to write about SONIC AGAIN! I LOVE BLUE MEN!!

Speaking of hyperbole, how about the reception of Sonic Frontiers? Seems like everyone was busting their loads over this one last year. I get it, to a certain extent. As BlazeHedgehog said in his one-hour dissection of the game this year, food tastes better when you’re hungry, and us poor Sonic fans are starving. I don’t think Frontiers is perfect by anyone’s standards, but it at the very least leaves a decent yet slightly rocky foundation for future games to knock it out of the park with.

The Final Horizon is “future games”, I guess. And uh, yeah this one didn’t knock it out of the park. Kinda bunted? Maybe tripped over first base or something idk how to make better baseball analogies than this.

My main disappointment comes from the three new playable hedgehog/hedgehog adjacent creatures. Maybe it's my fault actually, since I had this wonderful idea in my head of how sick it would be for Knuckles or even Amy to have fully decked-out combat trees. Instead, these new characters are actually terrible at combat and you shouldn’t even try. They’re pretty specifically geared towards platforming challenges, unfortunate since all of them feel pretty miserable to control. My original review of this update was “Knuckles controls like an asshole” but they kind of fixed the controls so my review has been updated to “Knuckles controlled like an asshole* *when it launched therefore when everyone played it Knuckles controlled like an asshole”.

Despite my gripes with base game Frontiers, at the very least it felt like a game that was rigorously playtested. Not polished by any means (for crying out loud they never fixed the pop-in), but most platforming challenges had a certain sense of flow to them that made the open zone concept work. Final Horizon does not feel properly playtested. Levels are far less scripted, which would be a great thing in an engine that didn’t feel this busted. The difficulty spikes up seemingly at random, with the three titan boss rush on hard being probably the most unfair challenge in a Sonic game that I can remember. Even the final boss (which features one cool scene where blue eyed Super Sonic gets shot out of a gun) requires a target switching mechanic the game never expects you to know or use by that point, unless I’m an idiot. Which is always the fear.

Ah well, at least it was free. And I don’t want this to be a sign for Sonic team to ditch the open zone for the next game. I do think it can work, but the main gameplay engine needs an overhaul. Not even a Sonic Utopia masturbatory “iT sHoUlD jUsT cOnTroL lIkE tHe ClAsSicS” style control necessarily, just one that feels inherently fun to run around an empty field in. Which is easy to say, I guess. “Make the Sonic feel more funner to control,” the critic says. “Allso give me a cheeseburger “

Congratulations on winning your oddly specific category awards, previously stated video game products! Time for the top ten which was going to be a top sixteen but I’m already incredibly late on this so I’d rather not write about six extra games sorry.

10. Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage (PS1/PC)

The intro to Spyro 2 was fun all three times I played it this year. Once on original hardware at a friend’s house, another time on my own through a PS1 emulator, and a final time through the Reignited trilogy remake. Reignited was where I played through Spyro 1 for the first time some years ago, and although the Spyro 3 remake is allegedly trash (according to my one friend who learned how to read by playing Spyro 3 at age 3), the remake of Ripto’s Rage is pretty OK by my less demanding standards. Plus it ran well on Steam Deck for whatever that’s worth.

Thankfully, playing the intro to Spyro 2 three times was actually a worthwhile thing to do! Unlike Spyro 1 which basically just lets you 100% complete every level the first time you go through it, Spyro 2 requires abilities and unlocks from later levels in the game to get every orb & collectable. Every time I replayed the various levels in Summer Forest, I learned which levels (even areas of levels) I should avoid until I learned how to climb up ladders or whatever. It is much more enjoyable on a replay to keep these types of things fresh in your mind rather than coming back to it years later as a grayed & tired old hag.

While I’m not as story-pilled as a lot of my gaming peers, even in simple games I appreciate when it feels like your actions have weight to them. Completing every level in Spyro 2 isn’t just about collecting the shiny objects and touching the top of the flagpole. Each area has its own particular race of organism coming to you with an issue caused by Ripto. And while it isn’t super complex, your actions through the level are helping that particular group of living beings. When going through the entire game, and thereby helping all of these groups with their minor or major little quibbles, it’s pretty satisfying to look back on once the game comes to a close. That element is, I think, what makes a crusty little game like Spyro 2 still hold up in the face of a very different world.

9. FEZ (PC)

For a while, I didn’t want to like FEZ. I had it on Steam, but only as a result of a Humble Bundle, back when you could specify how much of your bundle purchase went to each specific game creator. And I will never forget looking at Phil Fish and his stupid face, gleefully pulling his contribution slider allllll the way to the bottom, probably capping out at $0.01.

That was 2014. 10 years later, I have two thoughts. 1. Phil Fish’s controversy feels very very trite in comparison to what the internet or, fuck, even the ENTIRE WORLD has turned into. And 2. Phil Fish is a genius.

People were saying it at the time but I just didn’t want to believe them. And I probably didn’t have the capacity to wrap my head around what FEZ was doing. It’s an entry into what I want to define right now as an “unraveling” game (remember this, it will come up later!). On the surface, FEZ is simple. It even has simple graphics! You’re a simple man, living in a simple town, with only a jump button to your name. Then, another layer. A Fez, perhaps, on the top of your gay little head. In gameplay terms, the perspective now shifts when you press the triggers, I think all Fezes do that? Anyway, fun little platforming gimmick for a little 2D game, right?

Wrong. FEZ is a 3D game. Your position in the world is a little tricky to manipulate, but it is mapped in a 3D space. You can even view the world in 3D once you beat the game and get sunglasses. I think all sunglasses do that? Anyway, this allows for some inventive puzzle solving through trying to figure out where to jump and where to shift perspective to make your way out of the room. Can be pretty tricky, but ultimately achievable, right?

Wrong. The puzzles at the end of FEZ are not possible. Literally, I think. The last puzzle is not possible without datamines and brute-forcing it. But for the puzzles that are possible, the amount of honest to god code cracking you need to do at the end of the game is not what I was expecting. I had to bring out an honest to god notebook made of paper from wood and write down my interpretation of the game’s little language. Other games certainly take inspiration from the unraveling layers of FEZ,

8. TUNIC (PC)

Hope you were paying attention! Thank god this game comes right here on the list so I don’t have to test your attention span. TUNIC is also an unraveling type game, in sort of the exact same way to FEZ actually. It appears to be a gorgeous yet sort of simple claymation sorta interpretation of the original Legend of Zelda. You’ve got a couple a silly lookin enemies, item pickups like bombs and potions, you get to explore an overworld and some dungeons. It’s Zelda 1, right?

Wrong. TUNIC is Dark Souls. Beyond just being able to fat roll, enemy encounters can get brutally difficult, and they all respawn when you die. Upon death, you drop a bit of your coins on the ground in a ghost that will stick around when you come back to that same spot. You save and respawn at a fire. Now, comparing a game to Dark Souls is kind of like the most overdone thing in games writing at the point, but it definitely helps that you can get a sense of that original Zelda formula in all of FromSoft’s games. So TUNIC aping those trends feels like a good match, I think. From here, progression might start to make sense. You travel from save room to save room, clearing dungeons and beating bosses. Eventually you’ll find a really big one, and the game is over, right?

Wrong. TUNIC is a game about not being able to understand English. The story is pretty well known at this point I think, but the sole developer of TUNIC was inspired by playing through the notoriously obtuse-without-a-manual Zelda 1 without being able to understand the words of said manual. In TUNIC, you will find pieces of a very similar looking manual all throughout the world in no particular order and in a language you cannot read. Eventually in TUNIC you’ll hit a wall where you have no idea what to do or where to go. And suddenly, you look at a single page of the manual in a slightly different way, maybe even with your head tilted a little bit more to the right. And suddenly it all makes sense.

There’s another way in which this game unravels but it’s sort of like the impossible puzzles in FEZ and I haven’t even begun to try and wrap my head around it. I beat this game with the bad ending and I still had a jolly ole time with it. Very much my sort of game this one is. No spoken dialogue, story communicated entirely through gameplay, and hard as balls bosses. Now if only this one featured a funny little dwarf….

7. Deep Rock Galactic (PC)

Me and my friends cycled through a lot of different games this year. Still wrought in grief over the loss of TF2 and Overwatch, I think. I was kind of the outside guy in these multiplayer romps, as I am burdened with two jobs and game at weird times of the night, but I got enough time in each of them to get the idea. But of all the multiplayer games I dabbled in, the one that I am so sad I wasn’t around to play more is Deep Rock Galactic.

DRG is immediately charming. Playing as a stupid drunk dwarf is kind of inherently a little ridiculous and Ghost Ship leans into that hard. There’s of course the dedicated ROCK AND STONE button, but did you know there’s a dedicated coughing button? Not even loud obnoxious coughing either; subtle, painful coughing that feels like a burden to deal with (don’t @ me I know it’s not supposed to be a coughing button). The hub of DRG is honestly the most fun part of the game, I think. Just spending time with the buds fucking around with barrels and getting drunk on exploding IPAs is quality stuff.

I only played Driller, I think? The rest of the characters are probably fun though. I just liked being able to serve that oh-so-important purpose of pressing M1 in a direction and overheating by accident, as well as using my flamethrower to hurt my teammates. And using my C4 to hurt my teammates. I’m sure they all hate playing with me since I suck ass, but it’s hard for me to get mad at myself when I’m bad at the game since the stakes feel pretty low. Co-op games like this always appeal to me more than PVP for that exact reason, and I hope I can put DRG on this same list next year when I’m a little bit more seasoned.

DRG also fucked up my reflexes for every other game as I always want to press F to throw a flare into a dark room. Even in real life!

6. Dying Light (PC)

Another multiplayer game, although this one isn’t really originally intended to be multiplayer. This game flew under the radar for me for a long time until one of my friends randomly suggested we play it co-op one day and we all happened to have it for free on the Critically Acclaimed Epic Games Launcher. First thing to address here, this game is shockingly seamless as a multiplayer game considering it’s obviously a single player game primarily. Ok, maybe not quite seamless since all the player characters are the same generic white guy protagonist. At least you can wear a clown outfit? But the connection never dips, you’re never kicked out for no reason, everyone gets to watch a cutscene at the same time. Great co-op experience overall.

Honestly, the story and scenario of Dying Light is very uninteresting to me. We haven’t even beat the main story yet. In fact, we go out of our way to not do the main story and just focus on side content as much as we can. Because the core gameplay of Dying Light is fantastic. Again, this game completely flew under the radar for me and I feel like the same thing happened to most people I know. So I was shocked at how good the game feels. Jumping from roof to roof rarely doesn’t work once you know what you’re doing thanks to the generous ledge grab system. And once you get a grappling hook? Bitch, every game should have a grappling hook.

Combat is where the game really shines though. We set the difficulty to hard right away, which initially made it practically impossible to kill even the most basic type of zombie. If you’re just trying to whack the undead with a simple melee weapon, you’re probably going to get your health drained in an instant. Obviously you get better weapons, even guns towards the back half of the game. But you don’t want to use those all the time, especially guns since they make a ton of noise and alert a ton of infected. So it’s when you start unlocking cool-ass moves like the little kick you do to finish off downed enemies skulls, tackling zombies to the floor, vaulting over their heads to get a quick move on, even a whole ass dropkick to send them tumbling into a spike wall that Dying Light starts becoming fun as hell to just run around in.

Dying Light is also tied with Zelda Tears of the Kingdom as having the most “dark” “darkness” in a game I played this year. You straight up cannot see anything at night in this game, and if you turn on your flashlight you might wake up your mom. She’ll grab and kill you!

5. Lethal Company (PC)

What makes writing about Lethal Company hard is that, in a way, it’s undeniable. There’s no wonder why this became one of 2023’s best sellers practically overnight. Its charm is just that apparent. But why? To me, it’s how it straddles the line.

Obviously, Lethal Company is hilarious. It’s baked into the animations, with a jerky running animation that radiates Scooby-Doo-like energy and the single greatest dancing animation in all of gaming. Despite picking up items to later sell being the whole point of the game, they pack in so many silly little trinkets that are hard to separate yourself from; some can even make sounds! The first time I ever picked up the airhorn was on video, and I popped off harder for that than anything else this year. You may find yourself barrelling off the edge of a railing to your death because you thought you could jump over a gap with a big screw in your hand. Lethal Company is not only trying to make you laugh, but gives you the tools to get into a situation that’ll make your friends laugh.

But Lethal Company is also terrifying. Especially when you have no idea what you’re doing. Deep within the halls lurk otherworldly abominations with behavior that isn’t easy to parse your first time through. Some can be easy enough to avoid like the loot bugs and spiders. But others force you to change the way you move through the level, like the Bracken that requires you to constantly look behind you or else have your neck suddenly snapped, or the Coil Head that requires constant eye-contact or else have your neck suddenly snapped. If the terror was just contained to the halls, that would be one thing. But every Lethal Company player remembers their first time seeing the Forest Keeper, silently tip-toeing your way just out of sight else get eaten alive. You can certainly learn the patterns of each of these hostile entities to make progression easier, but keeping them all in mind while juggling the keys, ducks, and generators in your hands can often be too much to handle.

Despite all the horror elements, though, I never really get too scared playing Lethal Company? At least never for too long. And that’s the beauty of it - the line that the game is teetering on between comedy and terror. Even in observing the objectively very dangerous Bracken, it’s hard not to laugh at how sheepish he looks when backing away from you. When killed suddenly by a big dog outside your ship, the tension breaks once you realize that your friends are going to have to deal with that same dog and laugh as they die with you. Ultimately, Lethal Company’s charm lives and dies by how well it executes its two polar-opposite fundamental elements.

If updates can give more of a reason to keep playing the game after you learn the trick to each of the monsters, then this will be a multiplayer game for the books. That and add in suit customization bro, like come on the rack is right there!!

4. Super Mario Bros. Wonder (NSW)

If I was 7, Super Mario Bros. Wonder would be my favorite game ever. I am actively envious of the kids who get to grow up playing this game. Mario always hits different when you’re first getting into this method of experiencing media. Learning the fundamentals of controlling Mario is a gaming memory I will always cherish.The timing required to stomp on blocks and enemies, juggling the power-ups required to get certain secrets in a level, and the flow state you reach in jaunting through the familiar sights and sounds are baked into my gaming DNA.

As such, I found Super Mario Bros. Wonder to be very easy. There are some harder levels sprinkled throughout the game, but in a year that I beat every Super Meat Boy chapter without dying for fun, those didn’t give me much trouble. With that, plus the sheer number of Mario games I’ve played over the past 15 years of my life, I ate this game’s lunch and didn’t break a sweat. It’s probably unfair to knock a Mario game for being easy, but considering I’m not the only person who’s broached this criticism, I think it has enough merit. But again, I am envious of those who do not have this level of skill. To the kids wiping their greasy spaghetti hands on their Switch and Joy Cons, experiencing Mario for the first time because you liked Chris Pratt’s performance in the Mario movie. If this is your first time, this will leave an unforgettable impression.

Course-clear Mario games like Bros 3, World, 3D World, NSMB, and a bunch of other words and letter combinations are built on gimmicks. Gimmick is often used in a derogatory sense in gaming discussion circles to talk about shallow, meaningless fluff added to a game just to add a pinch of variety and extend run time. But as Mario has proven time and time again, gimmicks can be good, actually. It allows each level to stay fresh, with new ideas constantly being thrown at you with no time given to let any of it grow old. Mario Bros. Wonder is built off this same foundation, but goes absolutely nuts with it. The first part of every level is designed as normal, with some set of enemies, power-ups or other obstacles being presented at an easy pace. But as soon as you Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy, that gimmick is either flipped on its head or is magnified to the highest extent possible. When you allow your development team to design a game for years with no deadline, this is the type of experience you can create.

Also, this should go without saying, but this is probably the best looking game I’ve played all year. It doesn’t do anything crazy technically (like this probably could have been done on the Wii?), but each screenshot is blooming with color, flavor, and life. Shouts out in particular to the new Luigi model. I have no idea what specifically they did to his proportions, but DO NOT change it. This is perfect. Look at him. Perfect.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (NSW)

Hilariously, this is the second Nintendo game in a row on the top half of this list that I’m going to spend half the review bitching about. Because TOTK is the exact same as Breath of the Wild. No, not in the way you’re thinking, although that is somewhat part of it. Not because the world is the same, the overall presentation is the same, the areas are largely the same, the combat is the same, the structure of the game is pretty much the same. Not any of that, rather that this game shares BOTW’s biggest problem - it gets worse the more you think about it.

Because while I was playing it, it felt like the coolest thing ever. Ultrahand is a marvel of design and programming, obviously. Should go without saying that the potential of ultrahand is boundless, and that week where everyone was posting their Zelda creations was very fun. The abilities in general are so ingenious that they actively tricked me into playing the same 100 hour game again. Ascend in particular is one of those things that just breaks your brain and makes you want to do it in every single game that you play afterwards. The first time I discovered the depths, after not getting spoiled on it and not noticing it at all in the game’s trailers, made me feel the same magic as those opening hours of Breath of the Wild. It also shares a spot with Dying Light for having the “darkest” “darkness” in video gaming. Congrats! The awards in the mail. And after what I believe to be one of the greatest endings a Zelda game has ever had, with a killer final fight and that moment with Link and Zelda at the end, I was convinced I had played my favorite game ever.

But of course, you cannot make these sorts of decisions on your favorite X thing ever in a day, a week, even a year. It grows with time. And over time, I had a stark realization that Tears of the Kingdom didn’t really fix many of the issues I had with Breath of the Wild, even if I thought they did at the time. Item degradation was annoying the first go around, but the second time, especially considering all the crafting you have to do to get good weapons, feels especially tedious. The story is just as daft and pointless, even if it ends on a better note. The “Sacred Stone?” repetition has already been memed to death at this point but it’s notable how I didn’t even notice it at first since I had already long since tuned out of the story. Dungeons still don’t hit the same as in previous Zeldas, with the precise almost Metroid-like design of items locking progression not even attempted for a second time. Even the depths, which enamored me so deeply when I first found them, gradually became a slog to travel through as its visual repetition and lack of unique content started to dawn on me.

When I was playing Breath of the Wild for the first time, in a life that feels like it was ages and ages ago, I distinctly remember being in awe of the world they had created and the joy I had in exploring it. Even though I had my faults with the game, as I kept thinking about it, that lasting impression is what sticks out so many years later. Will the same thing happen to Tears of the Kingdom? Will its strengths persist in my head in a decade? Or will its blemishes keep it from true greatness in my mind?

One thing’s for sure: I never want to see a god damn Korok again. At least in this game you can create a device that sets them on fire, smushes them with a giant hammer, then catapults them over a mountain into a bottomless pit. Kinda fucked up you can do that…

2. Pizza Tower (PC)

Pizza Tower is fucked up game made by a fucked up man. How else can I explain the absolutely batshit insane ideas this game throws at you? The first level is called John Gutter. There’s another level in this game called “Oh Shit!” where you run around in the sewer. Mort the Chicken from the PS1 game Mort the Chicken returns to grab onto your head and force you to do double jumps. You’re forced to play golf. There’s a level where you get jumpscared by FNAF pizza topping animatronics and at the end you get to Shoot Them With A Shotgun. One of the bosses is a fucked up version of yourself that’s actually made of liquid and is secretly just a brain with eyes. You’re italian.

I could go on. Despite my cursed Nintendo centric brain, I’ve never dabbled into Wario Land, which Pizza Tower obviously takes a lot of inspiration from. But when looking at gameplay of those older games after finishing this one, I don’t think I would really get a whole lot out of it. Pizza Tower is basically those Wario Land games made by a guy with as sick of a brain as I do, drawing all the assets with MSPaint and cramming each level with crazy bullshit and fun gameplay ideas. Those other games would probably feel kind of lacking in comparison. Like Mario Wonder, the levels in Pizza Tower are gimmicky by design, introducing one-off gameplay ideas and passing the ball to the next idea as soon as possible. So why is Pizza Tower higher than Mario Wonder?

Because Pizza Tower is an anime. When completing each level, you’re ranked from a scale of D to S, same as Sonic. At least that’s what it seems at first, though, as there is another rank. The coveted P-Rank is locked behind not just a perfect run collecting all the pizza toppings through the level, but looping back around and racing through that same level again. All within the time limit given to you when smacking the John at the end of each level. As you can probably tell, this is fucked up. Nothing else in Pizza Tower, not even the batshit level ideas, can reach how fucked up getting a P-Rank is in any level of this game. I’ve only gotten two I think? But Christ, what a rush it is. Pushing your familiarity with the controls and the level like this, reaching a glorious flow state is exactly where I love to be in a 2D platformer. And when I see that sick as hell anime OP ass P-Rank animation, I reach COMPLETE GAMING EUPHORIA.

I am so excited to jump back into this one once I have the time and give this the thorough beating it deserves. Just like how Peppino has been thoroughly beaten….. By The Cruel Hand He’s Been Dealt Through The Struggles Of Maintaining Your Own Pizza Business In A Horrible Capitalist Nightmare………

1. Pikmin 4 (NSW)

Hell yeah Baby!!! Pikmimn 4 Sweep! If you don’t play Pikmin 4 I’ll KILL YOu you stupid piece of shit!!

Pikmin is doomed to be a niche. It’s got a bunch of cute little men walking around and a circular dog that you jump on the back of. But it is so brutally punishing that kids are almost certainly going to bounce off it. And the strategy-heads that would undoubtedly enjoy what it has to offer almost certainly won’t even give it a chance because of the cute little men and the circular dog. This dichotomy, of course, is why I love Pikmin.

I began the year in preparation for Pikmin 4 to finally play the original Pikmin on GameCube. Previously, I had one playthrough of Pikmin 3 but it honestly didn’t do all too much for me for whatever reason. So I wanted to go all the way back to the most busted up, brutal game in the series so I could understand the appeal. Within the first hour of play, all of my Pikmin had either been drowned or crushed by a giant Bulborb because I had no idea what I was doing. And that game has a strict time limit, so you can only fuck up so many times before you get a genuine game over.

So what’s the appeal? Well Nintendo finally found a word for it in the marketing for Pikmin 4 that probably doesn’t exist in English so they just said fuck it and used the Japanese word anyway: “Dandori 段”. Basically being able to manage your tasks and resources in a timely fashion to reach maximum efficiency. Pikmin 1 forces you to figure this out to some degree or else you’re not getting home. And with the limited scope of that game’s levels, Pikmin types, and enemies, I think it’s a great way to learn. Each Pikmin has a clearly defined use case that directly corresponds with their color, and the obstacles in your path are easy to understand in relation to those basic abilities. Need a powerhouse that can take quick work of this giant beetle? Red is your go to. A ship part is stuck high up? The lanky and tall yellows are your guys. Water? Blue. You get the gist.

The problem with Pikmin 1? And every other Pikmin game for that matter? It’s not enough. It needs more. I’m cool with short games but Pikmin 1 can be beaten in like 3 hours. Pikmin 3 is like 10. Usually more content isn’t what makes a game “gooder” but I do genuinely think that the short run time of previous games made this idea of Dandori harder to tap into on a single playthrough. How did they fix this in Pikmin 4?

WEll, my friend, they did this through VARIETY OF MODES!

The main story of Pikmin 4 is basically the 10 hour tutorial. A gentle romp through all the major areas, some largely easy enemies, no game-long time limit, heavy tutorializing, an introduction to all the Pikmin types, basically baby’s first Pikmin. Even if you only play the story, you have so much to sink your teeth into. The above ground areas are as fun as ever, with the addition of Oatchi as a Pikmin platform AND a way to introduce platforming into the Pikmin formula being such an obvious and fun addition. Caves return from Pikmin 2 as a break from the time-limit imposed by the rest of the game, allowing for some tighter combat sections and the satisfaction of scouring an entire area and getting 100% item completion. Dandori challenges scattered throughout the levels provide a taste of that hyper-focused time limit gameplay from Pikmin 1, forcing a greater degree of focus and understanding of the mechanics and design than in most of the rest of the game. Nighttime missions morph the usual Pikmin gameplay into more of a tower survival type of thing, protecting key areas while using the uniquely powerful new glow Pikmin. And each of the major areas all being in the garden of just somebody's house that you THEN get to go inside in what is by far the most unique level in a Pikmin game is some serious chef’s kiss type beat.

So that’s all well and good for the base game. But the post game? The post game? This is what takes Pikmin 4 to legendary heights. I CAN’T EVEN WRITE HERE everything I want to say because I KNOW YOU HAVEN’T PLAYED THIS GAME, and it was so joyous when I had these experiences blind. What I will say is this - this idea of Dandori and your understanding of it will be tested in some of the late game Dandori challenges. Entirely optional content by the way, nothing needed if you aren’t fucking with the idea of being an ancient Dandori master or anything. But this is the type of thing I live for in games. Mechanics and design being stretched to their limit, pushing your boundaries and forcing you to execute nearly perfectly to get the win. Usually uber-hard platformers are all that get this type of reaction out of me. Maybe I should be a strategy gamer? Am I finally ascending to be the Total War XCom Starcraft freakazoid I was always meant to be?

Maybe it was the surprise in how much I was enjoying Pikmin 4 for my entire 40 hour playthrough that gets it this high on the list. A marriage of gorgeous presentation, compelling mechanics, and content out the ass that no other game this year quite reached for me. DLC for this game is a must buy. Honestly, I might just play this game again some time soon, I need to make sure my feelings about it aren’t a fluke.

And most importantly, YOU (yes, YOU, not the general ""you"") need to play this game. I DO NOT CARE if you have a Switch. DOWNLOAD THIS GAME FROM NSW2U.COM AND DOWNLOAD THE YUZU EMULATOR AND SEARCH ON GOOGLE “Nintendo Switch Keys Download” TO PLAY THIS GAME FOR FREE ON YOUR COMPUTER. Maybe you won’t even love it but DAMN IT I do. I’m glad Pikmin got another chance and for that chance to be the most feature-packed and gloriously executed game in the series by far. Hope this isn’t the end for our Pick-ed Men… Hope they don’t throw my colorful men in IP jail for 10 years again… Hope I can say hi to my good friend Olli mare one more time before I’m old and gray………

Thats it ok bye

#game of the year #pikmin 4 #essay #top 10 #pizza tower #i outdid last year by 2000 words!

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lone-sk · 4 months

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Hey, so! I thought it would be fun to do a tier list of all the games I played for the first time this year, and discuss my thoughts on them. Tiers are unordered, thoughts below the cut.

Super Meat Boy -

Just a fun ass time. Excellent platforming, a great difficultly curve, fun level gimmicks, and a solid amount of content. Basically as flawless as a video game can get.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth -

I've never played a roguelike where each run felt so unique. All the different shit you can do with ability synergies and items is insane, the skill ceiling for this game is practically infinite. This is what the roguelike genre has the potential to be, and every other roguelike is now worse because they aren't this good.

Dark Souls Remastered -

Yeah, the combat is improved in later entries, but the level and world design here is unmatched. Each segment flows together so seamlessly, combined with the top notch atmosphere and aesthetic for an unforgettable experience.

Psycholonials -

A really exceptional visual novel that talks about the pandemic, the internet, and just kinda what its like being a young adult nowadays. Captures a lot of weird and intense feelings. It makes you feel so emotionally drained after every chapter, and I mean that as a compliment.

Persona 5 Royal -

There are so many interconnected systems in this game, but they're all so balanced and intuitive. The developers thought of everything, and every time you get complacent, they pull another trick out of their sleeves to keep you on edge. Masterclass of pacing. Plus, the visual style is leagues above anything else out right now. The RPG mechanics are even somewhat manageable as well. It just feels good to play, and never really fumbles.

Class of 09 -

A visual novel that is both really funny, and really profound. Kinda similar to MTV's Daria, with a lot more edge. I do appreciate that there is a message - several really - at the core of it's various endings, and it's not just being edgy for the sake of it. The voicework really caries the experience, especially in contrast to the inconsistent artstyle. I get that they want to go for the shitty deviantart anime style, but some of the endcards just look bad.

Class of 09: The Re-Up -

Pretty much a direct improvement in every way. More scenes are hand illustrated now, and the artstyle looks a lot more palatable now. The voice actors are given more challenging scenes, and they absolutely rise to the occasion. There are less endings, and less content overall, but it's higher quality.

Cruelty Squad -

Everyone seems to talk about this games art style, but honestly, I just really liked the gameplay. Lots of high skill movement mechanics, paired with challenging level design, and a dash of immersive sim mechanics make for an engaging experience.

Melty Blood: Type Lumina -

A fighting game that combines the mobility of a platform fighter, with the combos and depth of a traditional fighter. Takes the best of both genres with none of the cons. I only wish the netplay was better.

Shenzhen I/O -

A puzzle game that involves programing and arranging circuits. Fun, but very challenging. Or maybe I'm just dumb.

Pentiment -

Disco Elysium but set in a 15th century European monastery. It's well written, and has cool art, but doesn't really have the memorable, interesting characters of Disco. Plus, it asks the player to learn a lot about medieval history. Like a lot.

Dead Cells -

A fun enough roguelike, but it runs out of steam pretty quickly, faster than you'd expect for this genre. After a while, you run out of good long term progression unlocks, and the difficultly curve really spikes. I got stuck at a point where I could beat through all of the stages easily, but then the end boss would wipe me out really quickly.

Hotline Miami -

Lots of visceral, gory gameplay. The aesthetics and art direction are on point as well, more so than normal for one of these games that was clearly made for a gamejam. The controls do kinda suck though, the lock on mechanic is especially unintuitive. It's almost impossible to play on controller.

Exa Punks -

Another fun programming puzzle game. The gimmick of having little robots you give commands to is fun, and kinda reminds me of those websites that teach coding in similar ways. The only problem is that the objective of levels can be unclear.

Watch Dogs 2 -

I'm surprised a Ubisoft sandbox is this high, but this game really grew on me. The gameplay is mostly similar to the stuff you can do on the hacking skill tree in Cyberpunk 2077, but more fleshed out and intuitive, really fun stuff. The story, too, is surprisingly pretty good. They also push the messaging pretty far, nothing that's proper like, anti-corporation or anything, but it's pretty anti-silicon valley, anti-walled garden tech, stuff like that. Shattered my incredibly low expectations, good job guys.

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley -

Overrated as fuck in my opinion. It starts out strong, but the pacing gets flattened by the end of chapter 2, and it feels like the developers don't know where to go from here. There are so many little bits and pieces of the story, with the cult, the demons, the weird shit to do with blood types - and I don't think there's any way to take these ideas, build on top of the story so far, and have something cohesive, or satisfying. And if you're just here for the incest, it's only in one scene at the end of one of the possible endings, so what the hell was even the point.

Shadows of Doubt -

A procedurally generated detective game, which gets points for letting you do pretty much everything. Like it's an admirable level of detail, you can do shit like break into the phone lines in order to trace someone's call. It just doesn't really click with my brain, I guess. Like it could be tutorialized a bit more, so the player has a better idea of what they can do. Plus after a while, you exhaust all the different cases there can be, and they all get predictable and formulaic. I do hope there are more content updates in the future, this is a great base to build off.

Psychonaughts 2 -

The world and characters in this game are all really good, but the story is really a drag for me. The first game had this goofy, silly vibe to it, but the story here is so overly focused on like, acknowledging how fucked up it is that you can go into people's minds and change their personality like that, which I always thought was kinda the joke of the original. Plus the gameplay is like, just okay, although a lot of the levels are too long, which feels like a weird complaint, but I ended up getting bored a lot.

Pseudoregalia -

Excellent platforming with dogshit level design. Once I left the tutorial stage, I was constantly confused about where I needed to go, and what I needed to do, and even where I was. Just some of the worst game design I've ever fucking seen. Abysmal shit. But, the movement is pretty spectacular, so I did end up finishing it. I hope people find out how to mod level packs in, that would be hype.

Pizza Tower -

I had the same issue with this game that I did with Mario Odyssey. The main character has such a distinct and refined moveset, so why am I spending half of most levels as someone who is not the main character? I don't understand this focus on captures. I still had a lot of fun, but it's frustrating as fuck, when you want to play as the fun character with the deep, high skill ceiling moveset, and the game does not want you to do that for some reason.

TIS-100 -

Another puzzle game for smart people, which is brought down a bit from not really having an art style. I dunno, I get wanting to be minimal and cool, but at least give me background music, come on guys.

FAITH: THE UNHOLY TRINITY -

I do respect the commitment to the Atari 2600 art style, but if anything this just proved why most "retro"style games went for the style of later console games. The gameplay is literally almost nothing, and I have a hard time getting into any story that's told in 90% text logs. The style makes for some effective horror, outside of that I had a hard time getting anything out of this.

ALAN WAKE II -

I feel like the devs did not consider the combat system here. Like the entire point of making combat clunky and resource - dependent is to force the player to pick and choose their battles. It falls apart when you're constantly forcing them to kill enemies. That, and the corkboard puzzle sections don't really require any thinking to solve, you can just brute force them. They aren't very intuitive either, it's such a transparent way to just, progress the plot instantly. I did like the story though, for the most part, and the visual style is pretty fantastic. Lots of eerie, abandoned scenes, I love it.

Hotline Miami 2 -

Whatever improvements to the art style and gameplay are negated by the terrible level design. Lots of wide open spaces, where an enemy off screen will shoot you, and you have to duck out of cover, spraying at them with an SMG that has random spread. Lots of glass, lots of levels that only really have one route, lots of getting killed by random enemies you didn't even notice. Just really frustrating stuff.

Teardown -

The tech used here is really cool, I just wish they used it in a better way. The levels are barely passable, there's no real difficulty curve, or ideas that get expanded upon. It still feels like a tech demo.

Hiveswap Act 1 -

It's a perfectly inoffensive point and click adventure game. The art is well made, I like the story, and I thought Joey and Xefros were cute together. It's just missing something to really bump it any higher. It's short, and the puzzles are all either obtuse as fuck or super easy to solve. I also have a hard time figuring out who this is for. I don't know if Homestuck fans or point-and-click adventure fans would get a lot out of this.

Yakuza 0 -

I had a hard time getting into this one. The main story is just too soap opera for me. So many characters with complicated relationships, so many dramatic declarations and cutscenes. The combat is also just okay. The side content is really great, but it's hard for that to carry the entire experience for me. What a weird game.

Critters for Sale -

It's difficult, because I think there's a lot of cool techniques here that would help push visual novels as a medium forward. Lots of cool visual effects and fun mini games. Being very clear and upfront about how many endings and routes there are. Good menu and UIs. But the stories are just, not very good? Like I can remember maybe one or two individual moments, but most of the game I've totally forgotten about. Except for the Death Grips storyline, what the fuck was that?

Far Cry 3 -

Everyone gasses up the main story on this one, but lets be honest, it kinda sucks. Vaas is great, but who gives a shit about any of Ethan's friends? Or Ethan himself? Plus, the gunplay and exploration were both so generic. They were probably impressive like a decade ago, but now? I can get this same experience in 20 other games, do something interesting with it, or get out.

Not for Broadcast -

A game that really had me, and then really lost me. At first, the gameplay is mostly basic video editing stuff - keeping the camera on the person talking, censoring curse words, stuff like that. Ok, makes sense, it's fun. But they slowly add more gameplay that's just busy work, and the story really goes off the rails, and I couldn't take it seriously anymore. It basically turns into watching Monty Python skits while solving a Rubik's cube.

Gunfire Reborn -

A roguelike fps that just kinda sucks. The "roguelike" elements don't change anything massive about your run, just enemy placement and weapon pick ups. And it runs on like, Borderlands progression, where you're just looking for stuff with the bigger number. The combat feels shitty too. Shitty movement, abilities and guns that don't feel satisfying to use, what a terrible experience. I hate how every FPS makes "difficult" enemies by just adding more HP.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch -

Boring as fuck. The story was boring, the combat was boring, the world was generic, I feel like I've played this game twenty fucking times already.

Jedi Fallen Order -

Dark Souls if it sucked. You can always tell if a game was made in Unreal Engine if it has shitty, floaty movement, and for a soulslike, not having precise movement really fucks with the entire experience. There are also too many ranged enemies, which is a problem when your character is melee focused. The levels suck, and the story is shit. Fucking Star Wars fans will buy anything.

Bastion -

It's Hades, but everything is 1% as good. I guess it was interesting to see the roots of certain ideas, but everything is just slower and not fun. Literally no reason to play it now outside of some historical curiosity.

City of Gangsters -

There are so many interesting systems here. You can set up specific routes for your crew to perform at specific times, down to the location, and action, but honestly, it just doesn't scale well. In video games that revolve around storing shit, the complexity ramps up much faster than it does in most games, and if you don't provide the player the tools for handling it, it's just overwhelming. I appreciate the ambition, but this needed like, another half year of dev time, minimum.

Outcore -

I've never played a game that was this self conscious. You can skip pretty much all of the gameplay, although it's not like it offers a lot outside of rip offs of better games. So much could have been done with this concept of a desktop buddy coming to life, but instead, I am presented with a rip off of the Flowey fight from Undertale. Guess it's not plagarism if you frame it as an homage. Get the fuck out of here.

Clone Drone in the Danger Zone -

It needs more. More upgrades, more enemies, more weapons, more arena designs. As it is, it feels like a gamejam game.

Hiveswap Act 2 -

Oh my god the story is so terrible. Imagine thinking that it's a good idea to introduce 30 characters in a 4 hour game. Barely any of them are interesting, either, and even if you do end up liking one, it's not like they can be a significant part of the story, because we've got 29 more of the fuckers to introduce. Plus there's an Ace Attorney segment like halfway through which is really hard to get through if you've never played one of those games. I don't see anyone enjoying this, outside of the really hardcore Homestuck/troll fans, and even then, do you know how much fan fiction for this series exists? And how much of it is really good?

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vergess · 2 years

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So. Lots of pain meds at the moment, so this is a little bit nonsensical, but, I have been playing the newly released video game I was a teenage exocolonist (available on steam, not linked because tag visibility) while I am laid up in bed.

Lots of opinions, basically all positive. There's a specific thing I want to talk about in more detail, but this post got too long so I will just link a future post on the gender politics of nature, nurture, and future as presented by the twins Dys and Tang.

So instead here's my Most Recommendable Qualities (mostly free of spoilers):

Native linux compatibility:

you know how I am about that. I cannot believe I've become the very linux guy I so hated when I was working retail...

Upsettingly beautiful art

2D gaming is my first love but man the medium has come a long way since needing a flashlight to play pokemon. Sometimes I forget how far, and then games like this pop up with the gorgeous art and expressive characters, and I inevitably find myself wondering why the """"mainstream"""" video game market (in as much as such exists these days) focused so obsessively on photo realistic 3D when inevitably a well directed art style is what matters most.

The backgrounds and environments in the game are all extremely lush, with a gorgeous, colorful style that if I had become an art critic instead of a writing critic I would probably have better terminology to describe. Like, uh. Water colors or some shit. Stained glass. It's all very luminous fuck dude I don't know, the closest I'm going to get here is to write a poem and I'm not going to write a poem where the fuckign developers might see it. I need to be sober for that.

Characters:

I'm a character driven asshole, we all know this. It's why I read so much fanfiction and play so much melodramatic fantasy and spend several hours of my life openly sobbing about a single fucking issue of Sandman. So, you'll understand when I say, "people keep recommending me dating sims and I keep bouncing off of them because the characters never Do A Thing," what my major criticism of a lot of Large Cast Of Dateable Character games is.

None of those issues arise here. I've played a few runs now, making a conscious decision on each to focus on a specific character. One. SIngular. Except, the thing is, you can't do that. Not in the sense that the game won't "let" you. You could certainly just dump all of your time into skills and one character. And the timeline of the game would change to reflect your isolationism.

Characters you don't interact with during runs have their own "autonomous" storylines written, and each divergence your player character makes has its impacts meticulous tracked to create different character experiences every time, even as each character holds very tight to a narrow set of repeating traits. This only further emphasizes the fundamental strangeness of the player character, as the only one capable of being fundamentally different across timelines.

Also all the dateables are just, oh god, SO cute. And, by the time they are capable of fucking, very fuckable. Extremely attractive designs. Honestly everyone is super cute. The whole cast is magnificently designed. And that includes...

Monsters:

First of all, let's get the important personal opinions out of the way. I think I would fuck the antagonist....uh....commander, whatever his title is. He looks like a fucked up centaur and I'm into that. There are also Adequate Amounts Of Tentacles. If you've known me long, you know that is a high bar, but the game clears it admirably and with diversity!

The alien fauna are all very FUCKING COOL. There's a bit of throwaway dialogue from An Adult (your dad?) that talks about expecting the planet's ecosystem to be 'more alien' than it is, and I respect the space program's attempt a tpreparedness but for me, the whole uhhhhhh. Situation. With regards to the alien animals is PLENTY alien, and SO satisfying.

If you've ever been like, "god, I wish someone who wasn't orson scott card would do all the cool shit they did in fucking speaker for the dead" then by GOD is this the game for you.

Accessibility:

The content warnings are extremely detailed. I reviewed them all, and having seen several of the ones I was most worried about, I feel they accurately described the situations without spoiling them. I did end up upsetting myself rather badly with one thing which happened, but it is hardly the developer's fault that I misunderstood the context in which the "teenage pregnancy" CW would apply. I personally want to specify that (IN THE ROUTES I HAVE SO FAR PLAYED) the pregnancy is a very wanted, safe, and cherished.

The game players very well on controller, which is a must for me. There are a handful of UI elements that I have not yet been able to access by controller, but I think this is more a factor of my being bad at remembering buttons than the game's design. If you have a mouse, that will solve the issue entirely. My GF speaks highly of the keyboard and mouse gameplay.

Turning off screen distortions and weather effects generally made the game very visually understandable for me, with large, clear iconography. If you have significant visual impairments, I don't know if this is a good game to play. Picking up items on the ground can be tricky in some cases and there's nothing for eg a high contrast or greyscale mode if you need that kind of thing.

Good stability.

It's easy to forget that near-launch properties are supposed to be complete games that function well. This game is very complete (VERY, INTRICATELY, COMPLETE) and very stable. With as complicated as the sets of cause-effect-timelines are, I expected it to be much easier to create minor paradoxes in dialogue.

So far, the only time events have seemed to happen slightly out of sequence due to relationship progression or what ever else, was when I made a conscious effort to be as obnoxious as possible at one point just to see if I could make it misbehave.

I haven't been able to make it crash from within the game so far. I'm hardly a Q.A. tester anymore, but I do tend to be pretty aggressive to my games, so I feel confident in saying it'll run steady for you if you get it.

Politics etc:

The queerness is all very excellent, super queer in very believable ways, especially given the cultural aspects of the worldbuilding. Characters behave queerly outside of just all being bi-for-the-player. The trans characters were all extremely appealing to me with strong characterization that included but did not obsess over their genders. There are at least 2 trans teens in the player character's peer group and 2 trans adults of very different ages and character types, and there's even a cute little intergenerational trans solidarity bit you can get sometimes. In addition, of course, to the ridiculously complete gender personalization.

You would not believe how many games forget that "bro" and "cowgirl" are gendered terms, but this one remembers.

The racial politics are, from my perspective, adequate to not interfere with my gameplay experience. The human characters do consistently refer to the environment and native animals in very colonialist terms but they're literally colonizing the planet so.... The point is, there is not a native people being eradicated, though there are... territory wars(? I guess.) with both wild animals and antagonist peoples.

If you're particularly sensitive to colonial narratives, handle with care, but I felt the writing in the routes I've seen so far handled most of the issues well. Plus I mean. THe title. Is "teenage exocolonist" like. I think the whole "colonialism is a major narrative theme" ituation should be made clear bythat.

In terms of the human diversity it's pleasingly broad. There are characters of all ages, builds, complexions, races, personality types. There's a massive range of disabilities both physical and mental, as well as plenty of fun sci fi accomodations.

I mean just among the dateables I can remember top of the head, theres:

ambiguously asian twins who really said Autism Has Two Genders,

ambiguously brown fat girl with developmental disability,

ambiguously brown Gym Bro (derogatory) who is, and this is true, literally named 'ambiguously brown

ambiguously white farmboy who has clearly been eating his space wheaties and also helps invent space cannabis with your dad

unambiguously black girl who looks the autism twins dead in the eye and said 'no autism has one gender and is me'

unambiguously white tomboy who goes full samus

Venom but he's a twink now

There's something here for everyone, all of these characters are super fascinating concepts honestly. I know I keep harping on that but it's true so there.

Scenario writing:

It's a bit difficult to separate the player character writing from the scenario writing for reasons that rapidly become clear in the game. Both are very good, though, so that's fine. The writing is just really very good.

The variations on the timeline that you are able to uncover through repeated play are fascinatingly diverse even as certain events remain immutable, and the whole thing really plays with the concept of time travel and the other-self so beautifully. Really one of my very favourite explorations of the topic already, and I've only seen... IDK 4 endings along 2 routes? And there's 29 endings???

It's very good. The point is that it's very good you should go play it.

It's on steam. It's app 1148760 on steam and it's very good, it's definitely worth more than what they're charging. I mean have you seen what a $60 console game looks like these days, and then this is like. $25 and SO very much.

#exocolonist #i was a teenage exocolonist #Exocolonist #I was a teenage Exocolonist #Spoilers #Exocolonist spoilers

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therabbitsmuse · 1 year

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one of my many ongoing projects is moving my favorite photos onto the Day One app. i haven't gone through my google photos in forever & came across SO many photos that I have loved & forgotten about. it's been a super tedious process but it's crazy how seeing a photo will allow you to dive right back into the past like it happened just yesterday. some findings during that process:

my life literally was 'eat, sleep, rave, repeat' for YEARS. but make 'eat' interchangeable with 'drink' lol. going through those memories felt like a rollercoaster. i felt like i wasn't in control of anything during that phase and could barely anticipate the next sudden drop in life. side note, seeing these photos reminded me of my godlike party stamina back then lol. sometimes i wish i still had it but i think it's gone for a good reason now lol

this is going to sound conceited as hell but DAYUM i looked GOOD! but I can remember clear as day my mindset back then when I took those photos -- how insecure i was, picking at every little thing. if i could go back in time, it would be to shake myself and be like, "girl, be more CONFIDENT. it shows when you're not! also, you look great." like how was i partying that much and sleeping so little and still looking decent? nowadays, if i have one late night a week, it fucking shows EVERYTHING hahaha. maybe this is what they mean to just enjoy your youth because everything that you were worried about back then really isn't going to matter in the future/never existed anywhere but in your own head.

oh, my friends from that era. i remember how great of a time we had together. and i also am very aware that at this point in present-day time, we're more like acquaintances now. it's been years since I've seen some of them or even longer since we've had deep conversations. i'm trying to not romanticize that time period since I'm all up in my feels but i do have the urge to jump back into it like old times. except those days don't exist anymore.

despite the thousands of photos I'm going through, i wish i took more photos!!! I have a lot of shitty photos because I didn't want to bother with taking an extra minute or two to try to take something with a better composition. plus the cameras on phones back then were so bad (looking at my edc 2013 videos LMFAO). it was more about 'just be there in the moment'. but now, 10 years later, my dusty ass brain cannot recall a lot of it LOL. i really thought some crusty 10-second snapchat was enough because at that time, i never thought i would look back on those videos years into the future. and wish i had more of them, shitty quality and all.

& going off of that, during 2016 edc, my bf at the time invited four girls from taiwan to come with us. we lowkey made fun of them the whole time because they were so insistent on taking photos every hour or so. at some point, my bf was like, "STOP TAKING PHOTOS, PUT THAT AWAY, I DON'T WANT TO SEE YOU GUYS TAKE ANOTHER SELFIE!" but in retrospect, they did take some cute ass photos! like I've gone to 6 EDC's at this point i don't even have a single photo of myself overlooking kinetic field. i had some cute photos with people i no longer speak to and would hopefully never see again lmao. I've tried cropping them out but it's still just tainted shit and blurry low-quality jpegs haha. nothing with just me.

[side note, i just talked to my ex whom i mentioned in the previous bullet in the middle of writing this. i basically told him everything i just said about wishing I had taken more photos back then and he's like, "hah yeah, i do wish we had taken more photos then, the fobs were right" LOLLL]

I'm still pretty shy about taking my camera out and taking photos because i don't want to be that friend who makes people wait before they can eat their food lol but i think i can find other moments where i can take pics~ i really wish i had taken the coolpix i had in college around to events.

basically I'm gonna make sure there's no shortage of good photos of my 30's and I'm also going to try to note down memories with each collage because there's so much shit i forget about after a week goes on and they're just lost forever

#drafts #thoughts #photos #memories #musings #day one #k i should go back to work lol #personal

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thebossestunicycle · 11 months

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Final Flash Update: an actual review

The DCEU has always been very hit or miss for me, but it has a special place in my heart. When Man of Steel came out, my dad was OBSESSED with it (still is), and it became the first superhero movie I ever watched. Despite the mediocre scores internet-wide (and how the terraforming scared the shit out of me as a kid), I cannot help but love that film to death. It really sparked my interest with superheroes and just ‘nerdier’ stuff in general.

While the DCEU opened me up to the whole world of superheroes, it also became part of what made me so weary of comic book movies. While there were good movies like Wonder Woman (2017) and (hot take) Black Adam, and great ones like the Snydercut, there were also huge disappointments that left me feeling pissed off when the theater lights turned back on. It’s not like all of these movies are downright horrible in every way (exception being 2016’s Suicide Squad), but each seemed to have its own form of kryptonite. The Justice League (2017)’s being its lack of character development; Wonder Woman 1984’s forgettable plot; and of course, Batman v. Superman’s Martha scene.

With the DCEU’s track record, the over saturation of superhero media, and with Ezra Miller being… Ezra Miller, my hopes for this movie were extremely low. But I actually left the theater feeling pretty.. decent?

Here are my main takeaways. Spoilers ahead:

Plot + Characters

As of now, I haven’t noticed any critical plot holes, which is pretty great, especially considering it’s a multiverse movie and all. Everything that blew up in Barry’s face was tied up nicely. But I am sorta curious to see how moving the tomato can caused Ben Affleck to become George Clooney.

The time mechanics were also pretty neat, like how a new future creates a new past.

I kinda like Barry a lot. He’s wicked awkward but it’s funny to watch.

Younger Barry too! He was such an airhead in the beginning that I was shocked to find out he was the guy that our Barry kept seeing when he time travelled.

I found Keaton’s Batman entertaining too. But the whole time Keaton didn’t really seem like he was trying to act. He just looked happy to be Batman again, which I can’t blame him for. On that note, I wish Bale’s Batman made a cameo somehow.

I was underwhelmed with the Zod plot. I was ready to watch him totally kick Flash’s ass. I didn’t mind Kara, but again she was a bit underwhelming too.

I got excited when Zod mentioned discovering Clark in his pod somewhere in space. I was like “Oh shit, did they take him in and train him to fight for them?” Seeing an evil Superman would’ve been crazy, but nah, they just killed him instead. Lame-os.

Effects / CGI

Oh man, I did not enjoy some of the choices made here.

First of all, the deep fake cameos. And also, deepfaking people like Adam West and all, who are dead, is a little odd. However Nicholas Cage showing up was very funny.

Then there was the CGI in the Speedverse (?? correct me if that’s the wrong name). It was video-game level. I felt like I was watching a skyrim-inspired acid trip.

Even outside of speedverse, the quality was really spotty.

Action

Oh my god, it’s so refreshing when there’s even the tiniest ounce of creativity in fight scenes (Looking at you, MCU).

Diving deeper into Barry’s powers was cool and seeing him fight with (and then against) himself was neat!

Then there was also pretty standard Batman stuff that I’m a sucker for

NEEDED a better Kara v. Zod fight. I wanted lasers. I wanted them to go to space. ANYTHING

Overall Emotional Reaction

Both Barrys hit hard a few times. The desperation to fix everything. Having to let go of their mom and accept their fate(s?). The scene when he said goodbye to her for the last time was pretty sad.

The themes were simple: accept your past; pain makes us who we are; etc etc. But there’s nothing really wrong with that.

The jokes landed! I laughed with, not at, most things

…Okay, I did laugh out loud at some things, like the deepfakes and when the Barrys phased for the first time.

But yeah, it was really enjoyable to watch. The runtime wasn’t an issue at all. Dull moments were rare (though I didn’t give a single shit about Barry’s dating life at all)

Final Score:

Characters: 7/10

Plot: 7/10

CGI: 4/10

Action: 7/10

6.3 / 10

If I had to rank: above Black Adam, below Wonder Woman

but seriously can they just recast flash already. I wish ezra miller all the best on rehabbing themselves, and they really do a great job with the character, but it’s like they’re trying to get a jail sentence with everything they’ve done

#the flash #dceu #g rambles-#I MEAN #g reviews

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londonspirit · 1 year

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2022.

Well, it has been a year indeed.

Talk about rollercoaster.

Looking back, two things immediately come to mind: the loss of my father, and OFMD.

Yeah, I know, that’s some insane comparison.

But once again, fandom helped me through real life horrors.

Losing dad was hard, but (yes, there’s a but) overall it was a relief. He’s been sick and weak for a while, and everyone who only remotely knew him, knew how terrible that was for him. He wasn’t able to do the things he wanted to do, couldn’t really do anything much at all towards the end. He was suffering a lot (as was my mom) so him finally finding peace was the best for him. I know it sounds harsh, but it’s what it was for us.

The time after that was…weird.

But we got through it, made sure mom was doing okay; and after the funeral life continued - as it tends to do.

Everything was a tad dulled and tinged with grief but when I (finally) listened to Tumblr which kept raving about that ‘gay pirate show’, well things… changed.

I will forever be grateful for those i follow that they kept screaming about it otherwise i’d never checked it out. But I was fandomless, there wasn’t anything I was currently obsessing over, and I needed something to distract me from that massive loss.

And by the Gods, that they did. That perfect little show, full of queer love and wonderful friendships, of beautiful sentiments and funny quips was JUST what I needed. It filled the empty space in my heart and helped me through the toughest times.

I have lost count of how many times I’ve watched it by now (and will again once the UK will finally get it officially just to experience the SQUEE that will happen when it airs!).

I love every damn thing about that show: its amazing creator, that insanely talented cast and the wonderful crew making sure every single one can shine and sparkle as they deserve!!!

Nothing was ever the same after April 3rd, the day I left hanging with the most gruesome cliffhanger in a while and no renewal in sight!!!

Once again I am soo soo glad for the friends that fall in love with the same things - but then again, this damn show is just soo fucking perfect and everyone else really need to get their shit together to even get close to the level of perfection that show has!!!

The show and its cast has occupied my mind ever since (and will continue to do so once season 2 comes out so expect more screaming about it in next year’s review).

But there have been more lovely and wonderful things - it’s almost as if this year wanted to make up for the pain.

I’ve been to London again!! TWICE!! Six glorious days in the summer, and four in autumn. Summer was on my own, and boy did I enjoy that. Having time for myself, doing the things I wanted to do, being on my own with my thoughts - there’s nothing better to recharge the batteries.

But I wasn’t lonely: finally met some old friends again and got to spend some quality time with them; I saw one of my fav musician again, after almost a decade of not being able to do so. London in summer is gorgeous, London during Pride month is even better! I saw an amazing queer Shakespeare which I wished I could’ve seen twice; Come From Away will ALWAYS make my heart soar and I’ve spent hours in a beautifully immersive Van Gogh exhibition.

When I came back, I even got to spent more amazing time with my dear C, went to see Queen - even though the one souvenir i didn’t ask for put me in quarantine for 10 days! (Still so thankful for 3 vaccinations and a very mild case!)

There was a brief visit at B’s to see her boys and spent some time with her as well - it’s been too damn long since I’ve seen her (even though I LOVE her video chats when she can squeeze them in in between her kids!)

Another London trip, seeing David Tennant (hating the play - a very first!), LOVING Letter Live at the RAH (beautiful beautiful place; def going to go back!); getting tipsy in the skies and walking all the steps!!!

And just when I thought the year couldn’t get any better, there’s the chance to see the one and only Taika Waititi live and in colour! (Massive shoutout to the like minded and equally obsessed people that helped me secure a ticket for the show!)

GAH!! That’s still a thing I never thought to happen! And yet it did. And once again, a new fandom always comes with the most lovely people - thank you, Twitter (even though you’re currently a terrible hell hole!) for connecting fandoms across borders!!!

WHAT A NIGHT that was!!! Even though he was tiny and far away on that stage, that night will forever be seared into my memories! (hell, even just typing it out makes me grin like a loon!)

There was one small hiccup as mom had to go to hospital for an astonishing four weeks, but she’s back home again and feeling more or less okay, so I’ll take that!!! (Plus, she’s gotten through her 1st Covid infection rather nicely, thanks to 4 vaccinations and despite everything else a rather healthy constitution it seems!)

And now it’s New Year’s Eve - another one for the books.

Closing out 2022 on a more optimistic note though.

Pandemic slowly but surely turning into an endemic which means less restrictions and more travel for me. Maybe even working without face masks in the spring.

It’s getting there. And I'm hopeful, and looking forward to all the things 2023 has to offer.

For seeing old and new friends again.

For seeing my beloved London again.

For making plans and doing things and enjoying life to the fucking fullest because it is too damn short to not do all the things you want to do!!!

BUT once again, I will not make too many plans, these days being spontaneous is the better way to do things without being too disappointed.

So, for the new year: hug your loved ones; tell them you love them; look after them; make friends; let go of the things that are not good for you!

ENJOY life as much as you can. Be it in big things or the small ones - as long as it brings you joy and makes you smile, it’s a GOOD thing!!!

Here’s to a glorious 2023 - have the most wonderful year, my darlings!!!

#personal #annual review #happy new year #tw: loss of a family member #(just in case)#these are basically just for me but if anyone else reads them #consider yourself warned #2022 #new year's note

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finsterhund · 1 year

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okay so I bought cheap pull string music boxes from china, right?

There was no way to buy just the pull cord assembly which was the only part I actually needed to replace in the backup Sunshine Elephant so you have no choice but to buy an entire music box insert complete with the 18 note musical movement inside. I also bought multiples in case one was defective or broken.

Got one from aliexpress first for less than a dollar, free shipping, but was afraid it wasn't going to arrive so a little later I bought from an ebay seller what was supposedly the exact same product (same exact photos) for five dollars, also free shipping.

Free shipping from China takes a long time so I didn’t get them until much much later.

I get the ebay one first. It is competent, just like the photos, and the 18 note movement it came with is functional and proper sounding. Brahms's Lullaby. The most typical music box that could come inside. There was no option from either seller to choose the song. But no issue because I literally bought it for the pullstring assembly. One tiny little piece. Seems pretty wasteful but there was no way to get just the part. As it turns out though the case is also really good and since due to brittle glue and age the one from Sunshine Elephant was broken and somewhat larger (so harder to put in and out of the head of the stuffed toy) so happy coincidences I’ll be using the new case as well.

To chose the song it cost extra. Like to buy on ebay also shipped from china the listings that said what song it was costed like 15 dollars lmfao. Maybe somewhere down the line I’ll decide to build my own handmade pullstring music box toy and get one with the star wars theme or something but not now.

Anyways, weeks after the ebay order arrived the aliexpress order arrives and... oh boy....

Can you say “you get what you pay for” because wow.

First thing to note is that the plastic case that contains the movement and assembly is a much cheaper thin almost translucent plastic that feels waxy and crap. It’s the same size and obviously modeled to look like the other one but the quality isn’t there. The pullstring handle it came with though is just as good as the handle from the other one, but they are slightly different. I’m not using the handles or strings they came with but wish I was because they’re both better than the one that’s sewn into the Sunshine Elephants. I already opened way too many needless seams on the backup sunshine elephant though so I don’t wanna go through the effort of switching em out.

I gotta test the music box though and this is where the fun begins.

It looks the same as the other one. Unbranded but modeled after the Yungshen and Sankyo models. The threaded metal piece that holds the drum in place is a little loose but it’s all put together properly. Visually it is indistinguishable from the ebay one. Start playing it, Brahms's Lullaby also. Typical. Then everything goes to shit.

One of the fucking notes (caused by thickness of the bars on the comb) is off. It completely takes me off guard and I have an asthma attack from laughing so hard at this fucked up cursed lullaby music box. It is just one key (bar of the comb) and it is played three times each rotation. Each progressively more jarring and funnier than the last.

This is the most I’ve laughed since... well..

all over this stupid fucked up music box.

I will try to remember to record a video of it.

#text post #long post #music boxes

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briefcasejuice · 2 years

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gabs, i'd like to present to you a very short thesis on the song 'my tears ricochet' by taylor swift. i am by no means a mattelektra stan, but holy shit, do i mourn what could've been. this song is very clearly from elektra's pov:

these lines here i feel represent the first time they reunite in season 2, when she basically says that not a day went by where she didn't think of him, and she thought that they could move on, finally live a life together

Even on my worst day, did I deserve, babe All the hell you gave me?

because she loved him. until she died.

'Cause I loved you, I swear I loved you 'Til my dying day

absolute goosebumps

I didn't have it in myself to go with grace And you're the hero flying around, saving face

and because he still loved her, even with all that happened

And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake? Cursing my name, wishing I stayed Look at how my tears ricochet

and an homage to his struggle in s3:

You had to kill me, but it killed you just the same

And you're tossing out blame, drunk on this pain Crossing out the good years

absolute chills from listening to this. it's like this song was made for them.

OH MY GOD RHI YOUR MIND AND MUSIC TASTE??

this is absolutely perfect when i first read this my impatient brain read all the pink first and i genuinely thought, "mattelektra," then i read everything else and i swear i was audibly chanting yes. but you phrased the analytical bits in such a beautiful way i could cry!!

as an editor, like videos n such, im such a sucker for finding meanings in songs that could match with character or ship qualities and AHH this is basically my entire thought process but you're an amazing writer so it's phrased 100x better than i ever could i love this so much

#literally i was listening to the drums recently #lile their albums in full because i hadnt in a while and i needed something that matches the overcast-ish mood while i was showering #and i came across 'boood under my belt' on their album 'abysmal thoughts' and i IMMEDIATELY thought of either #s2 mattelektra or zdarsky's mattelektra #blood*#i need a rhi tag #rhi's really rad #kinda love that lmao

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mytrasheden · 2 years

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SPOILER ALERT: MOONAGE DAYDREAM

Things on top of my head after seeing Moonage Daydream:

- Very specific stereo sound system mix, can be too loud at times, but most of the times it let the bass go straight to your chair & your heart and my God that was amazing

- Really good visualization, but at times I feel like I'm watching a very dedicated cinematic fanvid., which in a nutshell is technically what the movie is. It's not a documentary chronically his career, though it loosely, very loosely follows chronically his career, but more on how his artistry and opinions evolve and simultaneously stay consistent through time

- Hence, weird pacing at time. The mid part lags on for a bit

- Very focus on his 70s to Modern Love period musically and quote wise. His talks during the 90s were streamlined through out tho so it's actually more than what people think. Still, very 70s focused, but I wouldn't say they didn't try to put a shine on his 90s opinion, they are just divided and shown through out the movie

- I wish there was more Diamond Dogs & Isolar tour (the 1st one) contents.

- The Earl's Court is similar, but holy fuck I love the quality of these videos

- LOVEEEEEEE THE REMIXES. Aside from Heroes. Ironically they butchered that with the loudness & some production issues. HALLO SPACEBOY WAS SO GOOOOOOD I LOVE THIS VERSION SO MUCH. Same as Word On A Wing, Let's Dance, Ashes to Ashes, Space Oddity, Rock n Roll Suicide, Warsawa, Subterranean, V2 Schneider, Moss Garden, All The Young Dudes, those are really good that I can remember. Probably best version of Let's Dance I have ever heard.

- Special things: there are ALOT of mash-up of different songs that turned out REALLY WELL. Like songs I wouldn't think to mix together. Black Star & Hallo Spaceboy was sooooo good. Same as Sound & Vision + A New Career in A New Town, the Modern Love mix was with Station to Station (?) I think. The Word on A Wing + Heroes mash-up was so hopeful and then Heroes was butchered pretty bad.

- Basically, I would go to hear a lot of those music's again. Lots of good quotes, mainly good new narrating from Bowie at the beginning. Man this man is obsessed with his horoscope and natal chart.

- LOTS of stuff you can definitely find online and have seen if you are my deep into the rabbit hole tho lmao just not as good quality. I'm kinda disappointed that the vault was opened and I have kinda seen most of these. Bowie's own footages of stuff are good tho!

- HE WAS SO BEAUTIFUL IM CRYING. That Earl's Court look and the Let's Dance non-perm looks Osjbdhamkxhgghsk his blond hair was soo sooo good

- That vid of him being messy painting his stuff,

Overall, I like it, I wish the pacing was better in the middle, but really good later half and good first half. Overall more of an experience and artistry manifestation of Bowie rather than a documentary. You would learn some and some if you're a casual fan but like, casual fans don't know much about this at least in my area soooooo we have all known most of these things. Musically I would pay to hear those again when they come out. Earl's Court Bowie and Serious Moonlight non-perm Bowie are ethereally beautiful fight me. I'm not paying the IMAX price to see it again but holy shit that sound system.

#david bowie #moonage daydream

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