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sg2tiger · 1 year

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Finally, this is my 2022 gaming wrap up! Usual ramblings under the cut.

Pokemon Throwback

With my 6-year old nephew living with us, it's my job to get him on and off the school bus. Last year, when he was in preschool, he had the afternoon class, so we had all morning to do whatever before we had to get ready. It ended up becoming a regular part of the routine to play Pokemon for an hour or so before get dressed time...and the game he chose specifically was LeafGreen. What we actually ended up playing was a FRLG romhack I found with a grab bag of pick-your-own QoL changes called Pokemon Throwback. In essence, we were playing LeafGreen, but things like cut trees staying cut, ability to obtain all pokemon in one cart, phys/special split, consecutive-use repels and other things just made life a bit easier, especially when coupled with the emulator's fast forward feature (GREAT for grinding).

Ultimately, over the course of the school year, we made it through the entire main game, Elite Four, and all of the Sevii Islands (I was pretty burned out by then, and he actually wanted to move on and play Gold, but he also didn't want to stop until we got his Dragonair to evolve...and it had about 5-6 more levels to go after we beat the Elite Four...). Then we went back, caught all the legendary birds, and Mewtwo. We didn't catch 'em all, but we DID catch every single Unown of the alphabet, which took about 3 weeks (again, we only played for about an hour every weekday) and probably made me go more insane than catching 'em all would have. In the end what matters is that he had fun and was excited to learn more pokemon than just the handful of popular ones on his pajamas and stuffed toys. And he really did learn them, and retain what he learned - kids are smart! Even if his sense of nicknaming was essentially 'the animal it's based on + y' (he had a real crisis when we caught Horsea).

We played the game on my phone, with my bluetooth controller. I really liked this controller and was pretty bummed when I upgraded to a slightly bigger phone and the mobile clip just simply did not fit anymore (we still use them as Switch controllers for multiplayer, but still). I ended up getting a different type of mobile controller that attaches horizontally for my new phone, which will hopefully accommodate at least one more phone in the future before they start making them TRULY gargantuan.

Minecraft: Arid Adventures

One night...at a time where I actually hadn't played Minecraft for several months...I had a weird dream. It started out with a friend gifting me some kind of VR survival horror game about exploring desert tombs and recovering artifacts while being pursued by the angry undead guardians. At some point, the dream called for sand physics, and my brain reached into the video game sand physics databanks and pulled 'minecraft sand blocks falling all at once'. The dream then shifted from a more realistic style to that familiar blocky aesthetic (though the non-aesthetic elements were still very survival horror and NOT minecraft). When I awoke and recounted the dream, the minecraft image ended up being what stuck with me, and I wanted to see if anyone had made any kind of desert-themed modpacks. I found...one, which I didn't really like, so I took it upon myself to spend a month and a half working on my own.

The result is a sort of desert-flavored kitchen sink pack, filled with tons of places to explore, loot to discover, challenging enemies, and some light survival with thirst/temperature mechanics (offset by lots of food items to hydrate and keep you cool because I didn't want hardcore survival to be the focus of the pack). I spent a lot of time creating a huge arid ecosystem of modded desert, badlands and savanna biomes filled with tons of desert ruins, bandit camps and other structures across the landscape. But despite how much time I spent fine-tuning and playtesting it, when we actually got it on our friend server we ran into more than a few problems...like the massive overspawning of deadly, deadly scorpions. Still, regardless of some oversights, I'd like to think the pack was a success, and we had some fun playing it together between April/May (I spent half of February and all of March putting it together).

Arid Adventures was ultimately my less-polished-than-I'd-hoped first foray into learning how to make Minecraft modpacks, and I've applied a lot of what I learned about things like NBT structures and datapacks to other packs I've made since. Still, I've got a soft spot for this one, and I'd like to recreate it on 1.18 or 1.19 if possible...and I think it should be, I'm just waiting on one mod in particular to update (Team Abnormals' Atmospheric, for its additional desert biomes as well as resources like aloe and yucca which my bespoke desert food mod incorporated as ingredients for lots of recipes). Maybe when the time comes that I'm able to remake and polish it up a bit I'll even post it publicly on CurseForge. I'm pretty shy and have a massive lack of confidence in my work, though, so I tend to just keep my packs private for our friend group server 😔

(we’re actually currently playing a winter-themed modpack called “Arctic Adventures” which is “Arid Adventures but Cold”. Except not really, because I just took a light vanilla+ modpack I’d made and threw a couple winter-themed mods on top of it. But I thought the name was funny, so maybe there will be more [x] Adventures packs in the future)

Vigil: The Longest Night

You can really tell that 2021-2022 was me trying to work up the nerve to play the actual Dark Souls by warming up with various Soulslikes first. I don't even remember how I discovered Vigil, but probably I figured that if I liked Hollow Knight and Salt and Sanctuary I'd have fun with Vigil too. And I did, actually. Unlike the aforementioned, I even finished Vigil with 100% completion, grabbing all achievements over the course of two playthroughs.

Combat and healing felt a lot more forgiving than the others Soulslikes I'd played, at least if you picked the right perks. I ended up running axes, focusing entirely on that tree and the general survival one, and generally it always felt like there were very few enemies and even bosses that gave me a truly difficult time by the latter half of the game (several of the early bosses did kill me many times). At least, as far as the 'main' content goes - once I hit the bonus bosses like Bluemagpie and Redsparrow I really felt like I had to memorize every possible move the boss could take and counter appropriately. Frankly, if not for the fact that I misunderstood one achievement as having to collect EVERY weapon/armor set in the game, I probably would have given up on fighting Redsparrow after my first 10+ deaths...but I persevered and killed every optional boss in the game too.

I think what I spent the most time on in Vigil was just my obsessive determination to discover every nook and cranny on the map, because games like this where your map is fogged until you traverse it always compel me to reveal it all (I'll never forget the hell Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey put me through because of this urge of mine). The game is absolutely chock full of little secret rooms that you can just barely see a hint of on the map...usually there will be a small passage you have to slide through or something, sometimes hidden behind breakable objects or just otherwise in places you wouldn't think to look. I'd call it the 2D equivalent of Dark Souls' love of invisible walls. Between hunting down places that I sensed held secret passages and trying to platform my way through the trees in the forest areas, I got really into unfogging the map. But hey, in doing so, I was also working my way through all the various loot required for achievements, so one gameplay loop always fed into another in a satisfying way.

I feel like Vigil is the kind of game that's easy to overlook in the sea of 2D soulslike metroidvanias out there, but I had a good time with it. By the end I even really wanted to know more about the story and the lore, unfortunately somewhat marred by a translation of questionable quality. And with the way some of the endings played out, I'm really hoping that there might someday be a sequel, because it definitely feels like the devs left an open door for there to be. I'd say if you're into this kind of game, though, Vigil's worth checking out.

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

I was pretty torn between rating this "Pretty Good" vs. "Decent", because I feel like my expectations for this game were unfairly high, but I also feel like every time I play I find something that I feel like the game COULD have done better, but for some bizarre reason chose not to. Kakarot was a game I was looking forward to a lot when it first got announced, because conceptually it seemed like something pretty different that had a lot of potential to be interesting. And while I think Mistake #1 was choosing NOT to start the story off with kid Goku in the original Dragonball (which would have suited the survival and exploration mechanics so so SO much better if we started off with him before meeting Bulma) I understand that we must bow to the whims of the marketing gods at the end of the day, and 90% of the target audience doesn't care about the original DB at all. Still, despite the name being 'Kakarot', it was obvious that a lot of the game would be spent playing as characters who are NOT Goku...and in particular, Gohan, and the idea of playing through his training with Piccolo with these game mechanics sounded like a lot of fun.

That comes to my first issue with the game...speed/pacing. And I get it, because the game spans the entirety of DBZ from Raditz to Buu, but even so it always feels like we're skipping way too fast through the parts of the story that would service the gameplay the most. I thought what would make this DIFFERENT than the usual DBZ fighter is that we would NOT be skipping over the 'less interesting' parts quite as much, because the gameplay involves more than JUST fighting this time around, but more often than not I still found that it skips massively through major story beats when it should slow down and try to be more immersive. I've been playing intermittedly over the course of a few months so I don't have a lot of specifics off the top of my head, but the most recent part I finished was the whole entire Ginyu Force segment...in the space of about 45 minutes.

I remember being irritated that the game barely conveyed what an actual THREAT the Ginyus were to Gohan/Kuririn/Vegeta before Goku shows up, because of the way you still 'win' even the losing battles of this game. And while I know we're kind of in an era of de-bloodening the Dragonball franchise as a whole, the lack of violence also really lessened the impact of the absolute beat down Rikum gives everyone, and thus also diminishes just HOW powerful Goku - who shows up and stomps him in 10 seconds - has become. Then the whole Ginyu body change bit is just kind of raced through with little ceremony at all despite being one of the more iconic aspects of the whole Namek arc IMO...I don't know. I felt like Goku went from space ship to healing tank in even less time than usual, and in a game that's literally named after the guy it's EXTRA noticeable just how little time is spent focusing on him (admittedly if you go over all of Z in your head you'll realize Goku is actually out of the spotlight for a whole lot more than you'd think, but the game's fast pace doesn't help matters either).

Again, I'm sure a lot of this is just my own expectations being unreasonably high for a Dragonball game, but it bums me out when the general presentation - the extremely faithful cutscenes, the soundtrack, etc - is really immersive, but then they'll just go and race through a whole story segment to get to the next fight. Oh, I remember another one that annoyed me. Imagine if the game wasn't afraid to actually let you control BULMA for the brief interlude where Popo takes her to Kami's spaceship! Imagine actually having to explore around as Bulma (you could even give her Popo's magic carpet so she could still use the game's flight mechanics) and scavenge for mechanical parts (which is already a thing you CAN DO in the game mind you!!) to try and do some repairs to the ship. Or just having to search around the area, maybe in the middle of a blizzard (it was a snowy place iirc), to find the ship at all. Instead the game just kind of went from 'Vegeta got away' to 'but they found a spaceship to go to Namek' almost IMMEDIATELY. Being that I'm playing the game alongside my nephew, who started to get curious about Dragonball (I think he saw some kind of Goku vtuber playing Minecraft on youtube or something, and got excited when he found out that I knew all about Goku), there's lots of bits like this where I end up having to summarize some of the stuff the game glosses over, because watching the story unfold via this game IS his first exposure to Dragonball (which I guess in a way makes it a good thing that the violence is generally pretty toned down compared to the original).

Anyway, yeah, idk. I feel like even when the game does let you explore it's all very barebones and watered down. The fact that only the story cutscenes are voiced and all the original sidequests are just grunts and noises also irritates me because it feels so lazy (Xenoverse does the same thing but idk, it didn't bother me there, I guess because all the battle dialogue was still voiced and it was just overworld stuff that wasn't). I also don't feel like I ever really have to use mechanics like fishing or cooking or any of that stuff because the battles are pretty easy? At least on normal difficulty, because the combat system is so simplified compared to a proper DBZ fighter. It's more about like, Touhou-style attack dodging than anything, which is fine, but I find that it's rarely challenging enough that I feel like "damn I should have spent more time scavenging ingredients to cook food before the battle!". It just feels like they tried to make a game with these survival RPG mechanics but didn't know HOW to, so they're very tacked on...and they just made a bog standard 'let's rehash the same DBZ story once again' Dragonball game when it COULD have been something better. Especially if they dared to start with Kid Goku's life. Sadly I know that a AAA game focusing on OG DB is basically a pipe dream.

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights

After I finished Vigil I was feeling hungry for more 2D metroidvania soulslikes, and Ender Lilies just happened to go on sale like, a few days later. It had really good reviews so I picked it up and spent the next few days playing it obsessively. In fact, based on the dates of my achievements from start to end, I finished the game in less than a week (31 hours total), 100% completion with all achievements. And after I did I just kept feeling like...it wasn't enough and I wanted more. I really got sucked into the world and its atmosphere, particularly through the amazing soundtrack. And once you start digging and trying to understand the lore, it's extremely compelling as well.

While I'd really like to see the devs make another game like this, maybe even set in the same overall world, I'm not really sure if I want a sequel per se. In a way, Lily's story has just begun, but I also don't feel like I want to PLAY whatever lies in her future. Probably because if I did it would mean what awaits her is more monsters and more sadness. But I really would like to explore more of the Ender Lilies world, perhaps beyond the boundaries of the kingdom, or maybe even delving into the past of the Ancients before the events that lead to the game's story.

I can't really talk about the game too much without spoiling too many things that I think are just better discovered for yourself. The game is tough, but not unforgivingly so (especially if you're not going for all the achievements), and it's pretty short if you can hit 100% in just 31 hours. I'd absolutely recommend checking this one out, especially if other similar 2D soulslike metroidvanias seem too challenging. Or at least watch someone else play it (ideally without commentary). Ender Lilies is a whole experience, between the art and the music and the story and the lore and the way the gameplay itself just clicks, and it's one of those things that I'm sad I'll never be able to play for the first time again.

PS - I want more games to take a hint from its map system, particularly in highlighting a room when I've collected everything in it to let me know I really didn't miss anything, because that shit is SO fucking clutch when you're achievement hunting, or just if you're the kind of person who hates the idea of overlooking anything.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes

As I mentioned in the addendum of my 2021 post about Three Houses, it took me so long to finish that game that I actually saw the release date of Three Hopes (mid to end of June iirc) as my deadline. And that wasn't because I had any intention of GETTING Three Hopes (especially on release day, because I just don't buy games like that), but because I knew my Three Houses-loving friends WOULD, and I'd be right back in No Spoiler territory with them after just finally breaking into the inner circle of 3H spoilers. Thankfully I did manage to finish my final route (Crimson Flower) just a week or so before Three Hopes came out, and I even played the Three Hopes demo afterwards to see what it'd even be like (I've never played a Warriors game before). When I saw that the story was actually pretty engaging I was like, oh, this is less brainless than I thought, maybe I'll buy it (eventually)...and ended up getting a gift copy from a friend instead. Nice!

Except...while my Three Houses friends all expected to get obsessively sucked into it (after also enjoying the demo), and I was excited to actually be there with them this time, they unexpectedly became engulfed by a DIFFERENT fandom...progress sort of halted on the Three Hopes front...and then I became the one who was afraid to spoil THEM by pulling too far ahead, so I slowed down...and eventually that just sort of killed my momentum entirely and...yeah. I've stopped playing for now.

Being that I had done the two Eagles routes back to back as my last two routes in Three Houses, AND that being the favorite house of said friends (and the one they were also gonna pick first), that's where I'm at. I have no idea how far into it I am because the game seems surprisingly on par with a normal FE game in terms of story pacing...maybe halfway, or not quite halfway through? I wanna say I got to chapter 8 or 9 before I burned out. I do want to go back to it at some point, ideally when (if?) my friends become re-interested, but either way after how long it took me to push through Three Houses I suppose it was a good time for a Fire Emblem break regardless. I've still got a bunch of other Switch games (notably Shin Megami Tensei V) waiting on my shelf, and I had intended to jump on that when I finally finished Three Houses before Three Hopes came along and threw me that curveball. I've just kind of had the cartridge in my Switch ever since, deluding myself into thinking I'm 'still playing it' because I know the minute I take it out that won't be true anymore.

I suppose I should actually give a review, huh? Well, despite how not far at all I actually am in the game (considering the other routes), I feel like I've played enough that I've seen pretty much every type of gameplay mechanic. I gotta say, despite it not being a turn-based strategy, it feels a lot more Fire Emblem than I thought it would. Just about every downtime activity from Three Houses reappears here in some form, and there's a lot more to do at your base and on side missions than I expected. Trying to get all S ranks can also be really addictive and I spent a lot of my playtime retrying the same missions over and over because I felt like just one small change could improve my time and get me that S (and so far, with maybe one or two exceptions, I've managed to S rank every mission by retrying it a few times). The missions are also still very much what I would call strategic, just in a different way, and the main missions especially give you lots of options for how to tackle your objectives so long as you've been thorough about clearing the map and picking up resources and intel along the way.

I find the gameplay pretty overwhelming with the realtime combat when so much is going on, so the way I adapted to that personally is that I spend a loooot of time pausing and opening the map screen to issue orders to the other characters. Then I usually pick one and try to carry out my own goal while they autonomously work through theirs, periodically swapping to someone else to see how they're doing and just for the variety of playing as someone else here and there. But I'm basically ALWAYS checking my map every 30 seconds to get a feel for where my units are and what they're doing, and what needs to be done...which I found helped me keep track of things a bit better amid the stream of endless enemies, special attacks flying around, and being constantly bombarded with dialogue while I'm trying to fight. It took a bit of getting used to but I think it's pretty fun once you get the hang of it.

What surprised me the most when I played the demo (and made me consider getting the full game at all) was that the story does play a big part in the game. I guess I just sort of expected an excuse plot that sent a bunch of familiar faces out to use anime moves against an army of bad guys. I have no idea how the plot kicks off for the other houses, but what really drew me in with the Eagles was how the decision to reveal and act on one thing at a much earlier point in the plot lead to a completely different outcome, spinning the usual Three Houses story off into an AU that still felt internally consistent with the original characters and events. When it came up, I was like, "no way, that's going to basically change EVERYTHING!" and got really sucked into the plot even before the demo wrapped up - so kudos also to the demo for providing enough content to actually suck the player in. That said, this game is very much only for people who finished Three Houses...at least, I sure can't imagine being able to keep track of the story, or even being interested in it, if not for knowing what ORIGINALLY happened and how differently a few factors of Three Hopes influenced them to change course. So while I'm sure there ARE Warriors fans out there whose interest in the game is mostly that aspect, I think for most people you're not gonna want to just pick this up without having played the original first...IMO, anyway, this game is NOT Standalone, despite being an alternate universe version of Three Houses' plot.

But yeah, I do wanna go back to this someday, because I was enjoying myself. I think just the combination of my friends falling off (not having anyone to talk about it with anymore after liveblogging ALL of Three Houses to them felt weird) and just generally needing a break from these characters after 8 straight months of them warranted a break. It's time for me to accept that, pop out that cartridge, and move on...I'll come back eventually. Probably...

DARK SOULS: Prepare to Die Edition

So, after all those soulslikes paving the way, we finally arrive at this point. All of it, training me for the mindset to go into a game known for its frustrating level of difficulty. I'd actually had Dark Souls in my Steam library for YEARS (that's why it's the old Prepare to Die Edition and not the Remaster), but only now did I finally feel like I was ready to take it on. And so, after applying the DSFix patch/mod (and one other mod that makes crates/barrels occasionally drop things like arrows and throwing knives because I was gonna smash them all anyway (currently really missing this in DS3)), I began my journey in June 2022...and only just wrapped it up in November.

I talked about this a bit in my Undertale review back in 2020, but what you know/expect/feel about a game before going into it can very much affect the experience you have when you finally play it. In the case of Dark Souls, I was strongly influenced by fear of how difficult it would be, due to its reputation. That fear lead me to watch lots of videos before playing, as a way to kind of prepare myself for what was to come (because going in blind was too scary). Most of these were challenge runs, so the focus was on the boss fights, but it all gave me enough of a taste of the general progression and various hurdles I'd be facing along the way. As such, I often knew exactly how to prepare, and how cautious to be making my way through areas, which trivialized a LOT of that expected difficulty.

To give perhaps the best example, I was very aware of Blighttown's reputation because it's practically a meme. People hate this Blighttown place. It's full of aggressive enemies and a deadly poison swamp that's become a staple of all future FromSoft games. It's the worst area of the game. Etc. Granted I later found out a good deal of the hate was due to the terrible framerate the game had on consoles (wasn't an issue for me on PC, at least with DSFix), but I imagine a lot of the hate also comes from people recklessly rushing their way through the upper level and getting caught by the constant ambushes, especially from the toxic dart guys. But because I KNEW ABOUT THIS REPUTATION, I went through Blighttown very slowly and cautiously. I had my bow ready at all times and a solid supply of arrows, which I used to tag enemies from a distance so they'd come attack me one at a time instead of ambushing me in large groups. I came prepared with blooming purple moss from Darkroot Garden to counteract the toxic from the blowdart guys, and since I knew they wouldn't respawn when killed I wasn't really afraid of them in the first place - after all, once they shot me, I'd pretty much know their position and be able to kill them, heal the toxic, and be on my way.

Aside from one or two deaths by fall damage (one particularly funny one was when I saw an item on a ledge that I could practically sense was schmuck bait...but I jumped down to get it anyway, and sure enough the floor collapsed under me and I fell to my death) I didn't have any trouble from Blighttown AT ALL, and definitely not one bit of frustration. It was TENSE, because of how dark the place is and because I was in constant fear of being ambushed, but it just didn't really happen because I could always spot the ambush from afar and tag the enemies individually with my bow. In a few areas with particularly dangerous drops of walkways I just decided that I didn't need the items that badly and ignored them. I got to the middle level bonfire without issue, and then made my way to the bottom of the swamp from there rather easily. And despite the poison swamp at the bottom itself being an obstacle, I had already gone back to the asylum to pick up the Rusted Iron Ring (though originally that was so I could get through the pool in Darkroot Garden), and the enemies at the bottom are much weaker than the ones in the top half of Blighttown so you're really only using your estus to heal off the poison anyway. I spent a lot of time farming the slugs down there for titanite shards and it felt like the poison, while it lasts for a million years, REALLY doesn't even do all that much damage, so as long as you don't panic and keep an eye on your health bar it was really easy to just periodically heal through.

The point is...one of the most hated areas of the game was a piece of cake to me because of the way I approached it. And I approached it that way to begin with because I went into the game knowing about its difficulty, preparing myself accordingly, and taking it slow and steady instead of rushing through and getting caught in a dozen ambushes. Of course this experience is built on the back of the millions of players who played this game when it WASN'T a decade old, and I'm not trying to trivialize the experiences of people who DID struggle with Blighttown by saying 'just like go slower lol'. But I do think it's fascinating how much easier this game is when you approach it the right way. I think, if I didn't know about all this stuff in advance, I too might end up trying to play it like Skyrim or something, just recklessly running into ambushes and traps and swinging my weapon wildly with no regard for enemy attack patterns. But by 2022 I think almost everyone knows that you can't play Dark Souls that way, and they probably wouldn't even try. And if you're not trying to play it that way...it's really NOT that hard of a game at all. It's a challenging game, and it will punish you for playing carelessly, but it's a far cry from the reputation the game has for being hard for the sake of hard. In fact, having recently played Megaman 1-3 with a friend via Switch Online, I feel like THAT is much more of a hard-just-for-the-sake-of-laughing-at-your-failure kind of game, where it just feels insurmountably difficult for no reason half the time, in a very un-fun kind of way. And the whole time we were playing it (and making heavy use of Switch Online save states along the way) I kept thinking about Dark Souls, and how much more forgiving it is than fucking NES Megaman (or NES Mario, or lots of NES games tbh).

Anyway. While this preparedness probably is the entire reason I was able to push through the game and finish it with 100% completion (even if it took me 6 months of playing cautiously), I did also end up feeling like it trivialized my experience in a sad way too, because I didn't really get to learn what the game wanted to teach me by punishing me, since I always knew what was around each corner. That's why I'm currently playing Dark Souls 3 blind (though I'll go back over a walkthrough once I finish an area to pick up items I missed, I'm NOT looking into things ahead of time). I think I probably would have been too scared to play Dark Souls blind, which is why I used those videos as a crutch in the first place, but I'm stronger now and I want to have that experience.

So, would I recommend Dark Souls? Yes, unless you absolutely hate third-person action RPGs in general. I think even if you're afraid of Dark Souls for its difficulty, you should give it a chance. Don't feel ashamed for looking up a walkthrough to prepare you ahead of time - you're still the one who has to beat the area by yourself, after all. While it did make me a little sad after the fact that I didn't get to experience the game blind, honestly, if I hadn't played like this I might never have had the courage to experience it AT ALL, so I'm glad that I did. I still felt pride when I conquered a tough area or boss on my own, even if I knew what to expect before going in. I guess it's like, if you were going to climb a mountain or explore the woods, wouldn't you feel a bit more peace of mind if you had a map of the area? But the map isn't going to climb the mountain for you...at the end of the day that's still something you've gotta do with your own power, and you can still be as proud of that as the guy who didn't buy a map. Or something like that, anyway. And also, don't believe everything you hear about on the internet, because I feel like the game's difficulty has been memed and exaggerated far beyond the actual truth anyway. Just take it slow and steady, prepare as much as you feel comfortable beforehand, and whatever you do, don't you dare go hollow.

Skyrim Together

Oh boy. So as we know, every year I find some way to play Skyrim again (except last year where I played Oblivion instead), and this year that took the form of trying to get Skyrim Together Reborn - the multiplayer Skyrim mod - set up and working with some friends. Except the idea of playing vanilla Skyrim (even with friends) sounded too boring to me. No, instead, I waited until someone else released a stable Skyrim Together modlist and then tried THAT out...and then proceeded to cannibalize it, removing mods I didn't like and adding new ones in that we wanted instead. You know. Just normal Skyrim PC player behavior.

Anyway, after about two weeks of working basically nonstop on my list, patching it and everything, making it as stable as absolutely possible on singleplayer...we took it online. And I learned that just because I've got Intermediate+ Skyrim modding knowledge, I don't know SHIT about what's going on under the hood in Skyrim Together's arcane black magic system. Long story short, we had uh. Problems. Lots of them. Most of them actually very funny, like, being attacked by a wolf (on my screen) and being told I'm actually crazy because it's a fucking skeever (on their screens).

Or looting the dead wolf/skeever and finding 148 bones, 296 dog meat, 539 skeever tails and 148 wolf pelts on it.

Or having...whatever this is, happen whenever your friends move around, except on THEIR screen YOU’RE the one doing it

Or getting launched into the sky for having the audacity to shield bash...

OR the respawn system sending you to the back half of a dungeon you just started, potentially behind locked doors that only open from the front side, leaving you essentially trapped.

You know. Normal Skyrim behavior.

Suffice to say, after many days of saying "okay let's try it again but do [x] this time", we just couldn't get past a lot of these issues. And funny as they were, they were kind of impeding our ability to play Skyrim...together. Eventually we all just kind of got so tired of trying that we quietly abandoned the project. Even me, with the fierce determination I had to make the modlist work for that two week period, just couldn't understand why things were so hilariously broken once we got online, and lost all my zeal for trying (the only thing I could possibly think to do was to ask for help on a support Discord, and given the choice between troubleshooting with a stranger and just giving up, I chose giving up).

Honestly, even if things WERE working as intended, the whole process quickly became tiring. Every time I made changes to the list I'd have to reupload it for my friends to then redownload and overwrite their files with. And we had to get VPNs to connect to a private server session with (the need for extra tools like this is why I listed this as "PC" and not just "Steam"), and depending on which one of us was hosting we'd often experience slightly different flavors of bugs. And it didn't even matter how hot we made our orcs, because certain RaceMenu features just don't sync properly to the server, so all the time we spent perfecting our Himbo body morphs was for naught. It just kind of kept chipping away at our patience a little at a time until the cons started outweighing the pros of playing Skyrim together, and we all just lost the desire to keep trying.

But hey, this was all happening in September, just a month or so after Skyrim Together Reborn's official launch. And it was only DAYS after I saw someone else post a modlist that I then used as the basis for mine. It was probably too early to be as ambitious as we were. My hope is that development on Skyrim Together, and its Nemesis fork, make enough progress that by the time ky desire to play Skyrim again rolls around I might be willing to take another crack at it, and maybe things will work better by then. The day may yet come that our hot orcs will finally be unleashed on Skyrim...together.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2

I've mentioned a few times how me and a friend of mine like to co-op play ostensibly singplayer games with Switch Online, but they do have some multiplayer-friendly games on there too, and sometimes we do also play those. One time we got very into playing Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine on Genesis. And then shortly after that my friend discovered an alarmingly similar game on the SNES called Kirby's Avalanche. We started to suspect this might be a case of some Japan-only game that they didn't expect to take off in the west without more familiar marketing, so we looked into it and it turned out to be the case - for a series of puzzle games called Puyo Puyo. After finding out there was a modern Puyo Puyo x Tetris crossover for Switch (that might be easier to play together than doing it via Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine) we both grabbed a copy...and I even grabbed a second copy on Steam when there happened to be a Sega sale about a week later and I spotted it there too.

Anyway, I may have briefly fallen into a week-long period of Puyo Puyo Fever where I couldn't stop playing, and all my dreams were haunted by falling puyos and tetris blocks. I got over it, but I still think it's a really fun and addictive game, and the multiplayer aspect of dumping garbage on your opponent's field to screw them over is a really fun way of turning what I tend to think of as a singleplayer genre into something competitive. And there's tons of different modes and ways to play, too, whether you wanna play Just Tetris or Just Puyo Puyo or a combination of both, time attack, all kinds of weird variations...and there's a weird over-the-top anime singleplayer story mode as well, where you can launch special attacks at your opponent as well. I actually got stuck on one of the bosses in this mode because I suck at utilizing the special attacks and you REALLY have to in order to beat her, but I'll get her...one day...

My nephew also got addicted to it and even got his own copy of the game for his birthday, so we can play together too (or by himself instead of him borrowing my switch all the time). He particularly likes that you can reskin your puyos to look like Sonic characters. But yeah, honestly it's a pretty fun game, especially if you just want something to pick up and play on the bus, or while you're in a hospital waiting room because you've had an ear infection for 3 weeks, or something. It's pretty pricey on Switch at least, though, so I'd either grab it on Steam (where it's $10 cheaper even when it's not on sale) or wait for some kind of Sega sale to get it cheaper. I think it's a lot of fun, just like, not $40 fun. There's also a Puyo Puyo Tetris 1 that's cheaper, which I imagine can't be all THAT different unless you care about the online scene or something.

Super Mario 3D World

My Switch co-op friend got me this because he thought we would have a fun and friendly time doing co-op together. Oh how wrong he was.

First of all. It’s a fun enough little game, though I prefer the gameplay style of Mario Odyssey myself. I feel like this game’s levels are definitely designed more for quick play sessions, with the star and stamp hunts kind of working like bite-sized versions of tracking down moons in Odyssey. I played through the first world or two by myself before we headed online together for jolly cooperation. Or more like (I’m Mario)...

You see, the game feels nice and friendly and colorful and there’s even a lot of cases where co-op is encouraged. But you can’t show me a results screen at the end of the level where one player can do better than the other, even to the point of being awarded a crown to wear into the next level, without awakening the blood fury inside me. Every time he performed better than me (due to my overwhelming tendency to hurl myself off cliffs) it would ever so slightly raise the rage meter inside my heart. I would become obsessed with doing better in the next level. And at first this was sensible...get more coins than him. Collect the stars before he can. Get the checkpoint and exit flags to show my M instead of his dumb L. All things that would give ME more points. But sometimes you’re just not as good at Mario games as the other person and it’s easier said than done to just BE better than the competition.

But what if there was no competition in the first place? The solution was in front of me all along. Eliminate him. Pick him up and throw him off a cliff, or into an enemy, then use the resulting precious seconds to race ahead and get all the goodies before he can catch up. Of course, this became less and less successful as time went by and he caught onto the fact that I’d try to throw him at virtually any opportunity. Sometimes he’d flip the script and throw ME off before I could get a chance, resulting in a lot of back-and-forth warfare. But more often than not it goes like this

Turns out I’m REALLY good at playing myself. In fact, while looking for a video clip for that first gif of me throwing him off the cliff, I found about 6 like this where I try to pick him up but end up being the one who dies instead.

Honestly though, my favorite was this time, where I spent a while playing nice and not doing anything overtly evil, until we got to a toad house...

The toad house gets marked as cleared as soon as you exit, and he didn’t have any powerups on hand while I was running around with my raccoon suit, so he was pretty pissed about this one. Perhaps my finest moment of video game dickery of all time, and it’s not like it was premeditated (I’m not that smart). I just thought it up on the spot and thought it would be funny. And it was (to me). And that’s what it’s like playing Super Mario 3D World with me.

#sg2 plays video games #sg2's game reviews #this post was already long enough but I also had a little writeup about my experience with the bosses of dark souls #since I've already got it typed up in a txt somewhere I'll probably throw it into a second post and just link back to it here

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kiaranovastar · 10 months

Text

Kimiko-ko! planned episodes

~ = Needs more

Introduce delinquent girl sooner? When she's been designed?

Update! Since the writer made this on a whim, she had to update the reference sheets! Now you can do better fanart! But since so many people think the bottom of Kimiko-chan's skirt is pleated while mine is even, these will become our new official designs! ........ Just kidding!

Draws a line. Yes it's finished!!!

Meerkats

M Hey look, a giraffe!

K takes pictures

M Hey look, meerkats!

Kimiko throws Mio into meerkat enclosure

M cries Heeelp!

Hanako1

Mio Special

A man going around being aggressive. Cute!!!

I'm a wolf! Wooooo! Mio: wooo

Achoo! Each time she does one it gets bigger until the whole world blows away

Visits Ireland. Ahh the breeze! Until she gets blown away

A lesson about skirts

Alright! Listen up! I have to tell you something. Lifts skirt up. Gets looks. Shorts underneath. Always wear shorts under your skirts girls. So you don't get oggled by perverts like this! Kicks a man underneath her

Mio ep

Crossovers

Area 9: This is another crossover! Meet Taishi and Bomb. Bomb kicks him out of the frame. No, just Bomb!

Lost Land

Time Wanderer

Fanboys, how much do you love me? Rips t-shirt off and shouts I love you!!

Kimiko tries her hand at being a therapist but fails Graduates from a top university Says something simple Huh? That happens? Manager You're actually a complete idiot!!!!!

I'm gonna be a therapist!

Goes to college

Gets a degree

Patient: And when I spend too much time alone I get sad.

Huh? That happens?

You're actually a complete idiot!!!

Mio ep

Teenagers need a lot of sleep! Zzzz... 3 days later wakes up Ahh what a good night!

I spent my entire life on this piece! It's the only thing I ever painted! All day long every day! A picture of Kimiko with a mustache "Ehhhh????!!!"

Tap tap tap tap Taps phone then different people

Every time she taps her phone she transforms into a different person

Most boring story ever: Kimiko goes around accomplishing everything instantly

Mio ep

Bug on another bug

Kimiko says to Mio pointing Look, he's cheating!

Stretching

Ahhh!

5 hours later still stretching

The sea is mine! Hahahaha! Spinning in rubber ring in pool wearing crown

An ad for Kimiko: She's so cute it's illegal!

It's Halloween! It's my only chance to eat junk food! Hahahhah! Explodes in pink

Someone tries to take Mio's money

If you could be a high-schooler does that mean you could be 18? Yes. Smoking

Introducing new character

The haters say this isn't a real manga. What do you mean this isn't a real manga? It's just a crappy webcomic. Look, it's just fluff with no real substance. And also they hate that you're Japanese schoolgirls. Kimiko or Mio enraged

Kimiko giving herself orders Kimiko, stop bossing yourself around! Tilts head in a cute way Oh wait, that's me!

Kimiko holding a street sign

Kimiko and Mio shooting up to space

Brains

Change- From now on Kimiko-ko! will be drawn in this style. (super realistic with scratchy lines)

Just kidding!

M: K, the haters are oggling me!

K dropkicks one

It's not appropriate to talk to some people about certain topics

kimiko lying on a red sofa wearing sunglasses: Let's talk about drugs

Headphones

I got new heaphones

Starts yelling abuse

Takes them off Huh????

Kimiko doing her beautiful singing while a room of haters is throwing junk at her

Say, why does everyone hate my singing but the birds?

Spinning theme park ride, then goes out of control spinning rapidly and non stop

Mio shy laugh I'm not helping.

Someone says something K: So?

Keeps saying thing k always replies with So?

Close up SO???!!!!!!

Episodes where K and co play roles throughout history

Blood, blood, blood

Yay, I got my new headphones! But they were very expensive. What do they do? Hi Kimiko! Starts talking Cool!

Go over to the kitchen and make me some toast.

Ok!

Alchemy

Talking potato

Potato in suit with orange hair on TV: Uh, potato, potato, potato. Potato potato? Potato! Making gestures

Kimiko: turns around Mio, what the hell is this potato talking about?!

Kimiko vibrating when she's excited

This is for the perverts

なんてやらしい！なんてやらしいー！なんてやらしいーー！Kimiko just standing there normally and fully cloathed looking irked

WHAT?!

K and M alternative universe! Twins

I was born a few minutes earlier than you, and so, I will die a few minutes before you. Noooo Mio! (as grandmas)

Cat staring at the ceiling. It's Kimiko sticking her tongue out!

Plane battle

And sworn enemies get into a fight

You ate my fries!

And you killed my goldfish!

This is war!

Clash

Mio lying in a destroyed city

K comes down from the plane

I will pick you up

Shot from below of Kimiko as if she's a savior

Kiss

I love you Mio

I love you Kimiko

Kimiko saves Mio

Flashback!

Bully: You're always so quiet and stuck up! Do you think you're better than us?!

N-no, I-

Hey, you stop right there!

How do you intend to stop me?

Starts making weird moves

That's it, I'm outta here!

Are you ok?

My savior!

Mio: How come no one knows whether we're middle schoolers or high schoolers?

K: Hmmm something is very strange here!

Kimiko behind a line of ghosts

Shivers

This is weird...

Mio, why do you have no body in that character sheet?

Head floats

I'm a ghost!

Cheerleader

Go, go, Kimiko! Kimi Kimi Kimiko! You're the best!

Turns around vainly

I'm the best.

K Once I met a rapist!

M What did you do?

K Oooh, you wouldn't want to know

K Kicking a censored bloody mess

M Wow Kimiko, you're so cool!

Hanako: I admire you!

Look, it's the pervert!

What pervert?

All I see is a pool of blood on the ground.

Hiccups

K hicks

M pat pat

K hick

M pat pat

K BURRRRP

M gets blown away

Kimiko on a scooter-

2D video game style

Knocks over Mio and Hanako

Plays flute and Mio comes out as a ghost

Kimiko, do you want a boyfriend?

Hmm yeah, but he needs to have

Huge list of qualities that touch the ground

You'll never find all that!

What do you do to gropers?

Karate chop!

Guy flies into distance

Kimiko and Mio turn into cats

Cat day out

Mmm this tea is delicious

Mmm this coffee is delicious

Mmm your tail is delicious

Kimiko and Mio go to a club where Hanako is performing

She's rapping

Budumdum ch! Rrrrrr!

A fight breaks out

Karate girl

Kimiko: I'm a karate girl! Hya hya! Wahhh!

Breaks a rock

Mio is behind it

Kicks her

Wahhh!

Sorry Mio!

Speedy driver

Kimiko swerving doing crazy moves

Mio and Hanako Whoo whoo! We love you Kimik-

Wahhhhh! Gets hit

Ah, the flowers are wilted!

Throws them in the bin

Hmm, I think I'll put them back on the window sill!

Kimiko and Mio visit Doomin Valley

But they're delinquents!

Hey hey! You wanna fight with me hey?

Doomins having tea

They flip the table

Doomin sinks them at sea

Doomin: We had to kick them out.

Hanako time!

Alright alright. Listen up

You look at me?

I beat you up.

You say hi? I beat you up.

K Hanako hi!

H Kimikoooo!!!

君の名は

My name is

Ki-mi-ko-ko Ki-mi-ko-ko

Crowd

Mio turned into a gangster

Mio, what happened?

Dunno. Just gimme your money

H That's it. I've decided. My best friend is Mio, not Kimiko.

Mio episodes

Kimiko cuts Mio's hair into a bob, she cries, Kimiko apologizes. ~

Mio turns into a Gundam robot

Aghhhhh!

Pat pat

Picks her up, brings to face

'It's ok.'

Exclusive Mio episode

Joke about naming her Meo because she liked the names Mei and Mio (Mayonaise with her (Mio's) head on it)

Is Mio rich? No, she's completely average! Mio- A little bit. What about you? Oh, I'm rich! No, you're a little bit below average. Cute laugh

Delinquent girl episodes (Hanako)

Intro episode where they run into her (for the first time)

Delinquents Were beating you up!

Kimiko Ahhh no thanks.

You don't have a choice in this you idiot!

Hanako beats them up

Let me be your best friend!

Sorry, my best friend's Mio!

K with M And as I was saying, he totally fell for it!

Huh?

It's the hater

Hanako throws poop at hater

Cops

Hater edition

Hater video games

1 Good: I'm gonna fill the world with chaos and destruction Bad: I will stop you! Kimiko What kind of games do these guys play!

2 Eating a carrot makes you a slut. Then why are you eating a carrot you slut

3 X? If you see a child you are a pedophile, a sexual predator and a- Sees Kimiko Kimiko beats him up

4 Couple being lovey dovey 'You, no you! No you!' THAT's A SIN YOU SLUTS NO IT"S NOT kicks him

5 Hater tries to take pic of kid, Kimiko takes pic of him then beats him up

6 There's something pervy about teens too!

7 It should be illegal to draw a girl with with such a short skirt looks at skirt with arrow Kicks him LOLICON!

Safari

Safari trip!

We see all the animals

Woahhhh

Hanako pretending to be a tree

Do not cross! Or I'll beat you up with my branches!

Hanako, what's gotten into you?

Episode with a talking tree

Kimiko in Wonderland

Pots and pans guiding her along

Kimiko is a geisha samurai

To the people of the future

To the bullies

Crowd jeering

Yeah I'm awesome!

Miss Kimiko, the rope walker

Woah! She's very skilled

Hohoho. I'm glad you like my performance, my dears

Mio takes pictures

I'm your biggest fan!

Mio chan, do you want to try walking the tight rope?

Puts one foot on the rope

Wahhh! Falls

Senpai notice me!

Theres a new girl in school

Mio

K wahhhh!

Follows her around

Takes her shoes, opens the door for her, makes her bentos

You're like my bodyguard!

Flicks hair

Hanako comes along

Hey, you, hey you! You shouldn't be following her around, I should be following you around!

The three are walking in a line k holding ms things and h holding is things

Kimiko the Star Warrior

It's Kimiko! I travel the stars throwing stars at people and fighting the evil planets!

Evil planet comes along

Hoo!

Let's fight!

Star battle

Mio topples in

Her moonshine aura breaks up the battle!

No, Mio, why did you do that?

Sakura

Kimiko playing a flute with sakura in the background

Geishas, Mt Fuji, Hanako?!

Hospital

Hanako Nurse! Nurse!

My heart broke out of my love for Kimiko.

Superhero

K and M are superheroes

M K, I will always be behind you

Dunununununununu Kimiko man!

M Miaow! Miaow miaow!

K shoves Mio and Mio falls

Tea

And so I was saying

Puts tea down

Mio

Kimiko is a musician

Goes to recording studio

Hanako and Mio are there

Congratulations on your newest album! We're your biggest fans!

M Um, I was wondering if you could sign...

My hair.

Goes off with signature in her hair

Thank you!

Hanako

Can I have your autograph?

No.

Can I have your autograph?

No.

Can I have your autograph?

Shut up girl!!! Punches

Genderbent episodes

Madame Egg intro

MKimiko, what do you think of men?

K I hate men because all they think about is sex. Im never getting a boyfriend!

Head on a man

M Way to go Kimiko!

Sword fight

And so, the battle begins.

Between two sworn enemies.

K I said I want strawberry

M I said I want chocolate

Clang

Cling

About to clash again

Hanako gets in the way

Kimiko, my plaster fell off...

Slaps it on Kimikos face

You can have it! Its my gift! Grin

Introducing Madame and Mr Egg

K and M go on a trip to the sea

Ah, what a fresh breeze!

Bumps into an egg

Huh? I didn't know eggs were so big!

Madame and Mr Egg turn around

Madame Hello dears.

Mio Bites I love eggs!

Mio Kimiko, how do you deal with hate?

I just laugh it off. I'm tougher than that. And I know I'm the cutest!

Kimikos the lollipop lady!

Yes, come through, come through!

Madame Egg topples and falls on Kimiko

Balloon on Kimiko. She detaches from it

whirrrrr. Whirrrr

mio oooh

They do a weird dance

Hanako comes and pecks at the ground

Madame Egg rolls down and crashes on them

Fry pan. Frying an egg with Mio in the middle

Car add. Skids and runs over Hanako

Techno world

The techno wizard is mixing tracks that spread evil

Kimiko looks cyberpunk

She sets off shocks

Lightning

Technowizard turns into lightachu

Be my mommy!

Men

Hi!

I want sex with you.

Ah, no thanks. Slaps and walks off

Boo!

What's that I hear?

Boo!

Thanks!

I know you all love Kimiko.

Dun dun dun dun

Mio as a shark

Look, Kamaku, it's our baby!

Sup

Sniper

Hanako shoots out and hits Kimiko in the head

ボウズ

Kimiko, Mio and Hanako as a gang

Kimiko in car. Flips, spins

Music starts

You spin me right round baby right round

Mio went to war

ended up in hospital

cute ghost comes out of nose zzz

K pop

Kimiko lives in Japan 2. Like Japan but has magic and all haters look like this. Kimiko is a sword fighter. Hanako is a professional gangster. And Mio is Miss Japan. Enjoy our country!

Leaning tower of Piza

Kimiko goes to Africa to find a gemstone

Call Kiara a whore and?

Hater is being punched into the sky

Isekai

Mahoushoujou

Hanako every day is the same sitting on bench smoking cigarette dog jumps onto face

Pocky

I got pocky!

Sticks into Mio's eyes

Wahhhh!

Zelda parody

Kimiko Princess of the cherry blossoms flute. Wears regal kimono

Samurai Mio Princess Kimiko, there is a dragon ravaging our lands. I come from afar. I offer you the magical incense to defeat the dragon.

K Samurai Mio, I thank you for the incense.

Hanako the wizard appears, uses わたくし and acts very mysterious and mature. Has a starry cone on her head and a blue robe

Turns Mio into a frog

K You tricked me!

H Hahahahaha! That's what you get for being so gullible!

Well how would you like it if I opened up a packet of your favorite snacks!

Noooo don't eat them!

K eats slowly

H That's it! Take her! And give me those snacks!

Turns M back, wolfs down the snacks

K Hands in sleeves Now will you help me defeat the dragon with the magical insense? I'll give you more snacks!

H love hearts in eyes Yes please!

Clouds and rocks

D Fool! You think I should stop ravaging the lands? How stupid can you be?

Fidgets

I'm on my period.

K M H A WOMAN?!

H She has a man's voice...

Now you will pay for bothering me when I'm narky! Take this!

Battle scene ensues

H pant pant pant

Dragon pant pant pant

H Stomach growls

K Hanako, how can you get hungry at a time like this?!

H Like I can control it!

Wahhh!

Dragon hits them with her tail

Now you're finished!

D's stomach Growl

K Here, why don't we have some snacks?

Everyone is having a disco party

Kimiko the late schoolgirl EvanKimiko

I'm late I'm late late!

Toast in mouth

Bumps into Mio

Both Out of my way!

Madame Egg shows up in the car park on a motorbike

Class Woah

ME Takes off sunglasses

Comes in I'm your new teacher.

Woah, she's so cool

Madame Egg Class, today we have a new student

Mio walks in

Both Points It's you!

Mio, sit behind Kimiko please.

Class in session

Mio blows thrpugh a straw and hits K in head

Ow!

K Grrrr....

The tension is rising.

M hits her again

and again

and again and again and again and again-

K Stands up That's it, I'm ruining your life!

Giant Eva's head appears

Eats the school

My Robot Mio

Here, I stole Hanako's crisps, eat some!

Eats

M Malfunction! Malfunction!

Goes on a rampage

Beats Hanako into the ground

Cracks Madame and Mr Egg wide open

K Stop! You'll have to get through me!

M shoots her through the chest

Kimiko is lying down, M just goes over to her

M Oh no, what have I done!

K just sits up, makes a heart sign with her hands Kyun!

M Heart comes out of chest, explodes

Sonic

Wrestling K vs M

TV keeps repeating itself

And now we introduce to you, The Lost Land!

Aota Grins Bye Nima!

Hey!

K doing the Levan Polka

Slaps everyone in the face

Accidentaly slaps herself in the face

K International Woman of Mystery

Dancing dressed as Austin Powers

Mio Hearts in Eyes

K Standing over M with hand on wall

K Yeah baby!

Hanako joins the bousouzoku

Aliens

Detective Kimiko Part 1

Mr Egg was cracked!

K Don't worry, Detective Kimiko can help!

Did they kill him with a sword, a knife or a melon?

Melon!

Smashes lemon

So, in Britain, apparently you can't take a selfie in a polling station.

K Cheese!

Cooking with Mio

Ping pong

K ping ponging with M's head

Further storyline

Hair dye

Mio K, why don't you dye your hair a different color?

K Ok!

GOTH KIMIKO

High quality

Long cowboy episode

Kimiko arrives in South Korea

0 notes

terubakudan · 3 years

Text

This may be an old article from 3 years ago, but these cultural aspects/observations still apply even today. And though this is strictly a Chinese perspective, a lot of these everyday life bits are observed in Overseas Chinese communities in countries such as The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. as well as countries heavily influenced by Chinese culture like Taiwan, Japan, and Korea.

I've always liked learning about other cultures and making comparisons between how things are done East vs West. Which probably stems from growing up with two cultures and Mom raising me on American movies xD

So the irony is if you asked me how many Chinese, Taiwanese, or Hong Kong actors I know, chances are I know as much as you do xD Like Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, and that's about it. But if you asked me about Western (specifically American and British) actors, then I have a useless brain dump of movie trivia and who was with who in what movie xD

Hmmm, both Taiwan and the Philippines are two distinct cultures but both look up to a certain country and are fascinated by that. In Taiwan's case, Japan and the US for the Philippines. In both cases, this is due to being under the rule of those countries in their history. Taiwan being under Japan for 50 years, and the Philippines being under Spain for 300+ years, followed by periods of American and Japanese rule. To put it simply though:

Taiwan is "mini-Japan with a very Chinese culture".

The Philippines is "former colony of Spain with lots of American influences".

But unlike the author, I've never set foot in any Western country, so my understandings are strictly what I've observed in media, which while it can be accurate, doesn't compare to actually experiencing the culture.

Some further elaboration on most points:

#1 We quite literally use chopsticks for everything. We use it to pick rice, viands, vegetables, fruit, smaller desserts, almost all the food you can think of.

But where do you put your chopsticks when you're not using them? Just put them on top of your bowl or flat on your plate. But do not ever stick them vertically. It's taboo, since it looks like incense sticks, which we use to pray for those who have passed, like our ancestors or during funerary services.

#3 The majority of Asia is obsessed with fair/white skin. In my time at the Philippines, I grew up watching all these Dove Whitening commercials and my classmates often commented on how fair my skin was, how they envied it etc. In Taiwan, girls often say they don't want to 變黑 (biàn hēi) 'become dark'. Japan and Korea too are not innocent of this either (if their beauty/skin products weren't a dead giveaway).

People here at Taiwan often mistake me for being from Hong Kong or Japan (as long as I don't speak Mandarin with my heavy accent xD). A Taiwanese classmate of mine joked that she often gets mistaken for being from Southeast Asia due to having a darker complexion. And while I laughed it off with her at that time, looking back, I now realize she was lowkey being racist. xD

And believe me Filipinas have mentioned literally being told 'your skin is so dark' here in Taiwan, or being given backhanded compliments like 'you're pretty despite having dark skin' and...*facepalms*

My point is, beauty is not exclusive to skin color. People who still think that are assholes.

#5 Not to say we don't have salt and pepper, but yes soy sauce and vinegar are the classic condiments you see on the table, be it at home or at a restaurant.

And if I may add, Taiwanese love their pepper. xD If you ever get to eat at a night market or a smaller "Mom n' Pop-style" restaurant here, some dishes/soups tend to add quite an excessive amount of pepper. Not like anthills, but quite liberally and way more than average. Enough that you see traces of pepper at the bottom of the food paper bag or swirling in your soup. xD

#6 I know this all too well from personal experience. In my years of studying at Taiwan, I always had roommates. 3 in my first school (I graduated high school in the Philippines pre K-12 so I had to make up 2 years of Senior High), followed by 2 in college, with the exception of 1 in freshman year.

My college did offer single person dorms but at around 9000 NTD ($324) per month compared to around 6000 NTD ($216) per semester. Because I wanted to save, the choice was obvious for me xD. But ah, this doesn't mean I don't value personal space, in fact I love having the room to myself, and since both my roomies would go home to their families every weekend, weekends were bliss for me xD

And you don't have to be friends with your roommates (that's an added bonus however), you just have to get along with them. I was quite lucky to have really great roommates all throughout my schooling years.

#9 In the Philippines, we do. Owing mostly to American influences and maybe being predominantly Catholic? xD

#10 *sigh* Chinese parents and parents from similar Asian cultures tend to put too much emphasis on grades, so much that kids could get sent to cram school as early as elementary. This is because what school you get into could literally affect your future job opportunities, and while that's not exclusive to any particular country/culture, I feel it's especially pronounced here in Asia. I'm really lucky my own parents weren't that strict about it. However, if your parents don't point the mistakes out to you, chances are you'll do it yourself, if you're an Asian kid like me anyway. xD It just becomes a habit.

#11 My family is an exception to this. xD We do say 'I love you' directly, but complete with the 'ah eat well ok?', 'don't scrimp on food', 'sleep well' and similar indirect words/actions of affection. We were doing 'Conceal, Don't Feel' before it became popular. xD

#13 I'm kind of confused about this but this has sort have changed over the years in which eye-contact is now more encouraged. But don't stare, especially at elders and authority figures. Sometimes it's just shyness though. xD And I've observed this with my own Taiwanese friend, especially when I'm complaining or ranting to her about something. xD I'm a person who likes to express my opinions strongly, which tends to scare/alienate some of the locals here, as doing so is kind of frowned upon. Thankfully, she does listen and offers her take on things.

#14 Ah this. xD In the Philippines, this is a common greeting known as beso-beso, and I freaked out too when an auntie did that to me. xD Needless to say, Mom lectured me later on what that was. ^^"

#16 Along with #3 another crazy beauty standard. In my view, people always look better with a little meat on them and when they're not horribly thin. Asia still has a loonng way to go with accepting different types of bodies if you ask me. This combined with modern beauty standards has made the pressure for women especially to 'look beautiful' higher than ever.

I know many people love them but please, starving yourself or glorifying eating disorders is never OK just to get this kind of 'ideal' body. I'm not part of the Kpop fandom, but even I think when idols get bullied just for gaining the least bit of weight among other insensitive comments, that's really going too far.

#17 'If you want to make friends, go eat.' <- I couldn't agree more. In the Philippines we have a greeting: 'Kumain ka na ba?' (Have you eaten?) . Similarly in Taiwan, we have 吃飯了沒? (chī fàn le méi), both of these can mean that in the literal sense but are often used as greetings instead. By then which invitation to having lunch/dinner together may or may not follow. Food really is a way for us to socialize and to catch up with what's going on in each other's lives. Not to say we don't have regular outings like going out to the mall, going shopping, etc. but eating together is a huge part of our culture, be it with family or friends.

And while I'm at it, some memes that are way too accurate good to pass up xD

Parents, uncles, aunties alike will fight over the bill xD

Alternatively:

You just space out until your name is called xD

My parents are guilty of the last one. Logic how? xD

#18 True. xD I like giving compliments out to people but I have a hard time accepting them myself, though I've learnt how to accept them much more now than before. We're kind of raised to constantly downplay ourselves so we often say things like 'ah no no' or 'I'm really not that good'. The downside of this of course is that it can come off as somewhat fake. xD

Again from personal experience, that same classmate who made the lowkey racist remark, she was good, she was on the debate team, was a honor student, knew how to mingle with people, but she downplayed herself way too much, while praising me but I honestly thought that she never really meant it from how she treated me. She wanted to keep me around her yet make backhanded compliments at me and she didn't want me socializing with my other classmate who is now my friend. *sigh* It was only after discussing this with one of my roomies did I realize how this 'excessive downplaying' might come off to people like me who more or less grew up with a more 'Westernized' mindset. I'm not saying brag about your achievements but don't be overly humble about them either, which can also be a turn off.

#20 We do tend to be a lot more realistic on how we view things, neither entirely optimistic nor pessimistic. We try to think of things practically and often analyze things on pure logic. A downside of this however, is that Chinese people can be overly practical. Taiwanese for instance don't like to 'find inconveniences' and generally keep to themselves, meaning, they won't help you in your hour of need even when they do have the capabilities. Sounds really harsh I know, but in my 6 years of living in Taiwan, while this doesn't apply to all the people, a lot of them really do only find/talk to you when they need something.

So for some people saying Taiwanese are 'friendly', that's BS xD If you ask me, Filipinos are infinitely more friendly, and again while not all, generally make more of an effort to help you when you need it. I really felt more of a real sense of community during my years growing up in the Philippines compared to Taiwan.

#21 Children do tend to stay with their parents well into college and adulthood, since Chinese families are indeed very family-oriented, in a lot of cases, grandparents often live under the same roof as us as well! And it really does save a lot of money. I see there's a real stigma in the US when it comes to "living with your parents", but that's starting to change especially because of Covid and having more and more people move back in with their parents.

Housing unfortunately is pretty much hella expensive no matter where you go, and Taiwan is no exception. Steep housing prices and the very high cost of raising a child (schooling + buxiban fees, etc.) contribute to a very low birth rate and thus an aging population like Japan. It's not uncommon to see both parents working in Taiwan.

#23 I'm an overthinker myself, but I totally agree with the author that the best is to strike a good balance between these two. Which I guess is why I love drawing or any other related creative attempts, it helps me be more spontaneous or well, creative! I like to remain intellectually or artistically inspired.

#24 Is French high school really like that? xD My friend did watch SKAM France and more or less got a culture shock from what was depicted on the show. I can confirm however that most high schools both in the Philippines and Taiwan require students to wear a uniform, only in college is everybody free to wear casual/civilian clothes.

#26 Ah this is part of our Asian gift-giving etiquette xD We always open gifts later after the event/meeting and in private. Never open them in front of the person who gave it to you or in front of others. This is to prevent any 'shame/embarrassment' that may result both to yourself and to the gift giver. I know this may come off as something weird since some people may want a more honest response or immediate feedback when it comes to gift-giving, but that's just how it is in our culture. You're always free to ask us though (in private) if we liked the gift or not ^^"

#28 I want to say the same goes to drinking, partying, and drugs however xD Those are things which are still frowned upon in our culture. And to be honest, whenever I see those in movies, it does kind of turn me off xD It doesn't mean that we're "uncool" or "boring", we just think that there are much better or healthier ways of "having fun".

#31 Is this true in France?! Man I would kind of prefer that instead of people being on their phones all the time xD This kind of goes with #20 in that Chinese are overly practical or logical, and don't read fiction as much as nonfiction. My Taiwanese friend is an exception though, she's a bibliophile who loves the feel of paper books compared to e-books, and it's a trait of her that I like a lot. Both the Philippines and Taiwan however have a huge fanbase when it comes to manga and anime though.

I'm all for reading outside of "designated reading" at schools especially. Reading fiction improves your vocabulary too, and can be quite fun! It helps you imagine and really invest in a world/story, and if you ask me something that I feel Westerners are better at, they're more in touch with their emotions and creativity, and are thus much more able to write compelling or original stories. Believe me, I've seen a fair amount of Chinese movies that rip off Western movie plotlines xD

#33 Nothing much to add on here..except that since I'm a "weird" person, Mom often jokes that she got the wrong baby from the hospital. xD

#35 True. While I agree with the care and concern that your fellow community can give you, the downside of this is we tend to only hang out with our own people, e.g Chinese with Chinese, Taiwanese with Taiwanese, etc. I've seen too that it's especially hard to make friends in Japan and Korea as a foreigner. Not only is there the language barrier, but the differences in culture too. In a way, Asians can be pretty close-minded on getting to know other cultures or actually making friends with people from other countries. I know this all too well being half-Taiwanese/half-Filipino, being neither "Filipino" enough nor "Taiwanese" enough. xD It's more of people here being too used to what they're comfortable with.

#36 Oh this is something I feel that Chinese students and other students from similar cultures should really improve on. xD How will people respect you if you don't speak your mind?

I felt bad especially for my Spanish teacher in college, granted it was an introductory course (Spanish I and II) but the amount of times that our teacher had to prompt a student to recite/speak even with clear hints already made her (and me too) extremely frustrated. The thing is, these are college students, I personally feel they don't have any reason to be so shy of speaking and technically by not doing so they're slowing the pace of the class too much and a lot of time is wasted.

Unfortunately you can't always be very vocal with your thoughts and opinions in most Asian cultures. I would say strive for that, but at the same time, play your cards well, especially if you're in a workplace setting.

If you made it to the end, thank you for reading and here's a cookie! 🍪 I'm not perfect and there's bound to be something I missed so please let me know if you spotted anything wrong. Feedback/questions are very much welcome and please feel free to share about your country/culture's differences or similarities!

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guerilla935 · 4 years

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My Favorite Fishing in Video Games Where Fishing is Not Core Game Play

A really awesome surprise for me is always to boot up a game that is full of action and suspense to be introduced to a fishing side activity. I have toiled away at fishing in games for hundreds of hours at least. It has gotten so bad in some instances that my friends have asked me why I haven’t just taken the plunge into real fishing. It’s definitely because that is a lot of work and in real life I don’t catch a fish every 30 seconds. They have also wondered why I don’t just play a fishing simulator like Planet Fishing (Shout out to Planet Fishing that’s a great game). And that’s where I have to think for a while. Fishing while you have better things to do like save the world is very special. You aren’t fishing because it’s the objective of the game or because that’s why you are there, you are fishing because it’s fun and maybe you need a break to swing a fishing rod instead of a sword. And then you can stop, and get back to fighting or whatever the rest of the game entails. Below are games that have fishing in them for mostly no reason at all. I have shamelessly spent way to long with my bait in these waters and absolutely loved every second of it and I hope that you (the reader) can find a lot of relaxation in these waters as well.

Pokemon Series

Since the very first Pokemon game there has been fishing. You get the old rod from some guy and then you are free to fish up as many goldfishes that you want hoping that one of them will grow up to be a 21 foot tall dragon. Pokemon has combined their fishing with their main game play and makes you at least start a battle with the fish you drag onto shore. Now fishing in Pokemon is pretty subpar mainly because a single Pokemon game hasn’t really been known to have more than a handful of Pokemon that you can fish for. Also if you are looking for a strong water type Pokemon you could do a lot better than fishing for it. Typically a Pokemon player will fish about 5-10 times total. And although fishing for Pokemon isn’t all that great it has been in every game for over 20 years and that is pretty impressive. It’s a small detail that makes the world of Pokemon feel like a real world of wild creatures.

Sonic Adventure DX

In Sonic Adventure DX you are given the choice to play as a lot of different characters, one of which is named Big the Cat. Most of the characters are combat characters that rely on speed and attacks to get through levels, some even wielding rocket launchers and extremely oversized hammers. However when you start the story of Big the Cat you are thrown in a completely opposite direction. Big the Cat is a giant purple cat who lives in the jungle with his best friend Froggy. Froggy accidentally swallows one of the most powerful objects in the Sonic universe and Big the Cat must chase him all over the world trying to fish him out of where he is hiding so that he can eject the Chaos Emerald out of him and they can return to their life in the jungle. The fishing mechanics in this game actually are really good and this is probably because Sega had just put out a series of mildly successful Bass fishing games before releasing this game. Either way its absolutely hilarious that Big the Cat gets to defeat Chaos 6 right before Super Sonic has his showdown with Chaos Perfect.

Final Fantasy XV

In Final Fantasy XV you play as Noctis and his favorite hobby is fishing. When I first played this game I sped through it and never fished once and reached the end of the game never indulging Noctis in his hobby. When I replayed Final Fantasy XV I fished for 50 hours and then ejected the disc from my console. The fishing in Final Fantasy XV is surprisingly deep with a lot of the vendors supporting what you could call a fishing road trip. In the game it is extremely dangerous to be out at night so I would plan day trips to lakes to maximize the amount of fishing I would get to do. I would prepare days in advance to make sure I could afford the trip and that I had enough supplies to both protect myself at the lake and have enough supplies to last the whole day. Final Fantasy XV really is a game about getting really distracted and fishing is probably its best distraction. My days on the lake were the perfect balance of peaceful and rewarding, this game offers an awesome reward of well planned trips and a good haul of fish.

Final Fantasy XIV Online

Final Fantasy XIV is the only game I have ever played where the fishing played exactly like its combat. When you are fighting enemies in a dungeon in FFXIV you are constantly adding buffs, landing hits, using consumables, and managing resource bars. When you are fishing in FFXIV you are constantly adding buffs, landing hits, using consumables, and managing resource bars. Note you are doing so at a much more leisurely and less life threatening pace but you are still doing it. I never maxed out the fisher class but I got it into the expansion content which was a really long and relaxing experience. Yet another Final Fantasy title where the real meat of the game is in getting distracted. When you fish you also sell on a player market that fluctuates based on market price just like real fish. You get the relaxing fishing side of the game and also an aggressive economic number crunching side as well. I spent way too long with a real pen and paper deciding how much I should sell for on any particular day and bossing around my two cat girl employees.The MMO aspect of the game adds so much to what you would expect to be a very solitary experience.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Have you ever gone fishing for hours to receive an empty bottle? That is exactly what kick started my addiction to fishing in Twilight Princess. An empty bottle in Twilight Princess means another way to heal yourself, another way to add oil to a lantern, another way to carry useless water around. The only way to get the 4th bottle in the game is to go to a dedicated fishing spot and fish until you pulled it out of the pond. The actual fishing is pretty weird, it involves motion controls which I still am not entirely sure what they do or how to properly use them but it is really fun to hold the pole in gyroscope and set the lure in the water waiting for fish to come get a nibble. Although the physics with the water make it difficult to see if you have actually gotten a bite or not it still is enjoyable the other 85% of the time it works.

Stardew Valley

So this one is at the top of every other “fishing in games” list and there is a big reason for that. It’s really good. I think in my first Stardew Valley farm I gave up farming entirely and fished all day every day and stopped to buy food to replenish my energy and go back at it. I really didn’t care about getting rich or making enough money to expand the farm or get to know everyone I actually spent about 50 hours just fishing. The fishing takes some skill and a pretty keen eye but the random jerks of the fish and the rhythm of the game play are so fun to try to master. It’s a part of Stardew Valley that I felt like I was continuously improving on as time went on and it was really fun. I mean I don’t recommend it because you’ll end up moderately poor but it was really fun.

Fantasy Life

Fantasy Life offers you 12 potential jobs, you could be a brilliant blacksmith or a devious potions maker, a lumberjack or a knight, a hunter or a seamstress. However your inner dad is calling and you decide you want to play through a fantasy RPG as a fisherman, hell yeah. the story is relatively short so you can quickly unlock a lot of locales to fish at and there is a manageable economy system that lets you deal in fish in advantageous ways. You can even pick up cooking on the side and make fancy dinners and sell the fish for higher you can do that as well. Fantasy Life is like a clever mix between Animal Crossing and Final Fantasy XIV and it kind of succeeds and falls short of it. The fishing also takes a good amount of skill and rhythmic approach to master so it doesn’t get boring almost at all until you have cleared the game.

Maple Story 2

Maple Story 2 is one of the most expressive and cutest games that I have ever played. And the fishing is no different, its all about style. The fishing in Maple Story 2 is monotonous and can get old but you do it for the chibi clout. Because much like the rest of the game you can look however you want and do whatever you want and sometimes you just feel like kicking back and throwing lure in the water at the beach. I never got super into the fishing in this game but it won me over with its adorable design and stylish atmosphere.

Animal Crossing Series

Of course I had to include the most popular game right now. Animal Crossing has become something of a connection between people when we can’t leave the house. A thing we all have in common on social media and with our friends. My first experience with Animal Crossing really starts with New Horizons and I was completely blown away. The fishing isn’t super complex or difficult but the range of what you can pull out of the water and what you can do with it is absolutely breathtaking. For a game about cartoon people living with humanoid cartoon animals the fish looking photo realistic. And the museum where they can be kept is stunning. The museum looks like it was designed to capture the feel of being in a museum and matches the design of all the great real life aquariums and observatories. Although it is a bit frustrating when your rod breaks it is easy enough to make one (or worst case buy one) to get your bait back in the water.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Tell me I’m wrong, you can’t. Isabelle getting added to Smash brought a very powerful fishing move that isn’t practical all the time but is really funny. Wouldn’t recommend this game if you are looking to relax and fish but I do recommend hooking your friend with a fish hook and send them flying off screen if you had to.

Minecraft

I have a very special role in Minecraft when I join a friends server. A role that I assign to myself. While everyone is off getting awesome swords, spelunking for diamonds, and exploring the infinite landscape, I build a small wooden shack and I set up a farm with an irrigation canal and start fishing. A steady supply of food is necessary and while I’m hanging out with my friends in a server I’m happy to be the one to provide it. The fishing in this game is probably the slowest of all the ones on this list but is the most useful. just throwing the fish in the oven creates food that can help keep you and your companions alive for a long time. I think I definitely have my limits with Minecraft fishing and I couldn’t do it for hours on end it is rewarding to set up shop and find a nice place to settle down for a few hours to fish.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses

This is the only Tactical RPG in this post. Fire Emblem: Three Houses has sections between combat where you can go and talk to your students and do other activities. We aren’t here to discuss other activities though we are here for the fishing. The fishing allows you to catch fish for some reason that I’m sure is good but never intrigued me enough to learn. All I know about the fishing in Fire Emblem: Three Houses is that it’s fun. I started to bust through combat just so that I could get back to fishing. The funniest part about this one is that the fish has a health bar. Pressing the A button at the exact moment finds a way to become easier and still find ways to mess you up. Either way, I’m not that interested in tactical RPGs but I heard there was fishing in this game so I had to play it and it was worth it.

Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

In Jak & Daxter, Daxter gets turned into a small animal by dark eco while exploring a dangerous island off the shore of his home with his best friend Jak. To get back to the island to investigate, the pair have to borrow a boat owned by a fisherman who is troubled by an invasive species of poisonous eel that is ruining his haul. He asks Jak to catch fish for him without catching any eels. This fishing mini game can only be done once but it is going to either be something you think is very unique or a huge waste of time. All I’ll say is that the sound that the fish makes when it goes into the net is absolutely a reward in itself it is so satisfying. But anyways, more intense than some other options here but get it done so you can get back to absorbing eco powers and jumping on stuff.

Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight is a 2D action platformer but you can also fish. And you fish for the best kind of fish, money. You can get some other stuff too like health pickups and magic replenishers but we know what you want. You see that little glint and you pop out the fishing rod and pull out those money bags. If you are devoted enough you can even get a surprise from the Troupple King (long live his highness) if you fish out the right stuff. I don’t even know if I fished all that much when I played Shovel Knight but it’s hilarious that you can.

NieR: Automata

I did not play a lot of NieR and that’s because I was fishing. I don’t know why all I did was fish but you throw your little robot in the pond and you lean on a magical stool so honestly it was good enough for me.

Club Penguin

If you know then you know. In hind sight there really wasn’t a whole lot to do in Club Penguin but this mini game really messed me up. You basically get to move up and down, catching fish and avoiding trash and other hazards. Basically trying to do this and catch as much fish as possible to avoid having to ask your parents for real money to pay for snacks to feed a virtual ball of fluff with eyeballs. I don’t really remember how challenging it really was but I remember getting decently high scores to about like 100 fish per round so I guess it was pretty easy if I could do that at age 10.

Rune Factory 4

I’m gonna be very honest about this one and say that the fishing in Rune Factory 4 is basically just Animal Crossing fishing but more anime. The fish react to the pole the same, the fish almost look the same, and the buttons to respond are the same. What makes this one special is where you can take it. You can fish in the little moat in town, in the lake, in a dungeon full of monsters, in a lake that is eternally the season fall, anywhere. You are constricted by the boundaries of Stardew Valley and that is how much energy you have and how much time you have in the day. It’s still fun to fish but I wish that they had used their fun fantasy setting to give the ability to fish up some cool made up fish instead of strictly things that exist in real life.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Ok, diving, fishing, same thing. Diving in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is just fishing with your whole body. It works a lot in the same way as Pokemon where you fish up monsters to fight and get the rewards from them. It is a completely optional activity however if you decide to undertake the grind of scavenging in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 then you will never hurt for money ever again. It makes my wonder why Rex stopped being a salvager to do odd jobs because this was PROFITABLE. The main incentive is that there are spots that spawn a certain enemy that drop cores. Cores are like gacha or loot boxes that contain new anime girl partners that deal huge damage in fights. They even have their own side quests and story lines. I spent maybe 30 hours grinding before giving up on this game and while it does become tiresome I really enjoyed the random rewards of possibly getting a new companion or a really cool weapon.

It’s been tossed around that every great RPG has fishing in it. I won’t argue that point but a lot of great RPGs certainly do have fishing in them. Everyone needs a break sometimes and fishing is the perfect activity to remind us to stop and take that break. Even games can get long and without these distractions it might be so much harder to complete these harrowing tasks. Don’t forget to take breaks and just enjoy the sound of the water every once in a while because there’s no rush playing video games.

Honorable Mentions:

Kingdom Hearts: Sora fishing with his bare hands on Destiny Island

Persona 4: Weird aqueduct fishing

Persona 5: Marina fishing life

Sea of Thieves: A pirates life for me

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andypantsx3 · 4 years

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conspire | 3 | practice

pairing: Todoroki Shouto / Reader

length: 13,307 words / 5 chapters

summary: Shouto Todoroki had definitely only asked you out in order to ward off his horde of interested suitors. So why does he keep actually taking you out on suspiciously realistic dates?

tags: romance, reader-insert, fake dating, misunderstandings

warnings: aged up characters, eventual smut

Fake dating Shouto Todoroki was an absolute whirlwind, but it certainly came with its benefits.

As weeks passed, you found yourself with a compliant test subject and plenty of data for the work you were doing on his support item. You’d confirmed that you could use this work as your submission for your senior project -- developing a support item without any input, direction, or critique from a professor -- and you’d set to the task with enthusiasm after that.

Shouto caved easily enough to the tests you’d put to him on your first “date” and you’d had way too much fun getting him to freeze and heat things for you, strapping him up in all the nodules and wires as you’d promised. Over the course of a few weeks, you’d analyzed the absolute crap out of the cryogenic structure of his ice crystals and tested the limits of his temperature control to your heart’s content, pleased that the amount of time you were spending together also played into your cover story.

It turned out his quirk worked as you’d suspected, which was incredible. Shouto’s power allowed his body to work like a heat pump, directing thermal energy against the current in which it naturally flowed at will. He used the energy from one side of his body to alternately push energy into or draw energy from the other side of his body, in order to create a temperature gradient strong enough to induce ice or flames.

He was basically like a really good looking, high-powered air conditioner.

The discovery was overwhelming and gave you limitless possibilities as to what kind of support item you could build for him.

The problem was, there were maybe too many options.

“You can watch my quirk training, if you need more direction,” Shouto had suggested one night when you were tucked up doing homework together. He’d really taken to the role of doting boyfriend and put in appearances often, taking you out on a series of other mind-bendingly good dates and showing up to your dorm on school nights with homework and small, thoughtful gifts like bottles of tea.

Through his efforts, he’d become something like a close friend.

You’d discovered over the course of your time together that Shouto wasn’t as quiet and serious as you’d initially suspected him to be, and you quite liked the sides of himself that he chose to unveil. He had a tendency to be blunt and was strangely oblivious given how observant he could be, and he had a little bit of a short fuse when the match was properly lit. He was still kind and thoughtful for the most part, but as he grew more comfortable with you it was like a flip sometimes switched and out crawled an inner gremlin, eager to tease and fluster you.

To your eternal mortification, he’d most definitely caught on to the fact that kissing you was the fastest way to fluster you, though in your defense, being kissed by a man who had no romantic interest in you was certainly a mind-boggling concept in and of itself. He’d thankfully only kissed you a few other times--once, weirdly, when you’d been almost sure no one else was around--though he sometimes watched you with a look in his eye like he was scheming up ways to make it happen again.

He was a very convincing fake boyfriend.

You had agreed to follow him to quirk training the following evening, and showed up to take your place on the sidelines of beta field that afternoon in a thick coat with a thermos of warm tea. Deep in your bag, you’d embarrassingly stowed an extra for Shouto, a habit formed by all of your time spent together.

He was there when you got there, clearly having come straight from class, and huge walls of ice already dotted the field, one or two twisted into melting spires. Slick trails of water ran down their sides where he’d blasted them with his fire, pooling into the cracks of the earth at their bases, and singe marks scored the grass around them.

Shouto seemed to brighten when he caught sight of you, and he came padding over to where you were making yourself comfortable on the cold ground.

“Anything in particular you want me to test out?” he asked, but you shook your head, unearthing a notebook and a pen from your bag.

“No, just do your thing,” you said, uncapping your pen. “I’m just looking to observe how you usually move around and channel your quirk. I rewatched all the sports festival footage from the last couple years but your style changes wildly between them, so I want to get a feel for how you currently do things.”

He looked somewhat embarrassed. “You watched those?”

You let a teasing smile flit across your lips, curious to see what kind of mood he was in today. “Oh yeah. Loved the one where you got totally stomped by Bakugou.”

To your amusement, his eyebrow twitched. “I let him win.”

Men and their fragile egos. You suppressed a smirk and stretched leisurely like a cat in the sun, tipping your face back to look up at him. “Sure you did.”

A look of annoyance passed over his handsome features, and he huffed, taking a threatening step closer to you. Something glinted in his eye, and that was all the warning you had before he leaned down and pressed his mouth over yours.

You instantly dropped your pen, fisting a hand in the jacket of his uniform to pull him closer. It briefly crossed your mind that no one was around to observe the two of you, and that this kiss was perhaps wasted effort on his part, but then he did that thing with his tongue you liked and all rational thought fled from your brain.

Shouto kissed all the sass straight out of your mouth before drawing back, looking thoroughly pleased with himself.

“I’ll thank you to keep quiet,” he said, and you could only stare at him dumbly as he smirked and made his way back onto the field.

Confusion eventually washed over you as he set about practicing with his quirk, and you could only pay half a mind to what he was doing.

What had that been about? You checked your periphery to confirm that no one else was around to have witnessed his assault on your good sense, confusion only mounting when there was no one in sight. You knew he wasn’t actually interested in you, but that kiss had felt like something a real boyfriend would do to shut a mouthy girlfriend up. Was he getting so used to your little charade that he hardly minded? Did it affect him so little that it hardly troubled him at all?

You pushed your thoughts down for examination at a later time, forcing yourself to keep your mind on Shouto’s quirk training.

You took careful note of the graceful way he moved, the raw power with which he released both sides of his quirk. He was faster than almost anything, able to maneuver around the field with deadly precision, unbelievable power called to his fingertips within seconds and wielded with brutal efficiency. He was, much like his quirk, two halves of some contradictory whole, combining incredible strength with unexpected elegance to create a combat style that had quite likely never been seen before.

You sketched out several notes on his movements and jotted down a couple vague ideas for support items that came to mind as you watched him.

After a while, Shouto seemed to come to the conclusion that you’d had enough time to observe him and started messing around instead, creating enormous ice waves to slide down for your amusement, looking like a very strange surfer on some still mass of ocean. You laughed as he shot down a slope faster than he’d clearly expected, throwing up another hill of ice to slow his descent.

He came sliding over to you, huffing a little after hours of exertion. “You’re acting like you’ve seen better.”

You smiled. “You just looked funny.”

That wry twist at the corner of his mouth was back. “You do it, then.”

You stared at him. “What?”

He held out a hand, wiggling his long fingers. “You’ve had your fun judging me from over here. You do it if you’ve got opinions.”

A stab of panic shot through you. “Absolutely not.”

Something like a challenge glinted in his eye and he surged forward, scooping you up into his arms easily. You panicked, instantly trying to twist out of his hold and get him to drop you, but he just walked back onto the training field, one arm barred across yours in a steely hold. You tried to get a foot against his hip but his grip was too tight to allow you movement enough to do it.

“Shouto, you had better drop me or I will straight up murder you,” you grit out, gripping his sleeve in terror as a crackling noise started where his feet met the ground.

“You had better hope I don’t,” he tossed back as a platform of ice formed under his boots, carrying you up to the top of one icy wave. Your rise was horrifyingly quick, and you were torn between being absolutely terrified and impressed that this is how he maneuvered around all the time. You gripped him in horror.

“I will never forgive you if you do this,” you threatened, staring down the steep drop hundreds of feet to the ground. “Nothing you could ever do will make up for a betrayal like this.”

“I have some ideas,” he said. Then he took a step off the top.

You became aware of a piercing scream and realized it was coming from you. You wanted to press your face into Shouto’s chest and close your eyes but you were too terrified to even look away from what was happening as the two of you slid down the ice at hundreds of feet per second, hurtling at the ground like a rocket. You couldn’t believe you had laughed at him if this is what it felt like to do what he did.

You felt Shouto tense underneath you, and the arm under your legs flashed notably colder, before another layer of ice formed, evening out the wave into a less precipitous curve, slowing your slide and carrying you easily to the field. Gravity seemed to catch up to you again and you slid down a little in his arms. Your heartbeat pounded in your chest and your hands clenched in the fabric of his costume, even as you slid to a stop, soft grass rustling underneath his boots as he stepped off the ice.

“You’re a dead man, Shouto Todoroki,” you promised, hands still fisted at his sleeve. And he was, just as soon as you could let go of him.

Another smirk crossed his infuriatingly handsome features and you found yourself a little mesmerized by the sight of him.

He hefted you higher in his arms. “But if I was dead, how would I do this?” he asked, then pressed his mouth to yours again.

Well, he certainly had your number. Your plans for murder were instantly wiped from your brain like notes from a whiteboard, and you moved a hand to his collar to pull him down to you. His mouth was hot and he was excruciatingly gentle, working you over thoroughly, until you could hardly remember your words, never mind a flawless plot for murder.

Shouto shifted carefully and you became aware of grass under your back. Then he was moving over you, pressing you into the field with the solid weight of his body. His mouth left yours to pepper a trail of kisses in a slow line down your neck, and those long fingers tugged down the zipper of your jacket, coming up to pull down the collar of your sweater to allow him better access.

You squirmed mindlessly under him, letting out surprised little gasps whenever he found a spot that you particularly liked. The chill of the evening washed over you and you pressed yourself into him for warmth, sighing when his left side flared hotly. He bit down carefully over your pulse where it beat wildly in your throat.

“Y/N,” he groaned, and a vague thought came to you like this was somehow strange for the two of you to be doing, some reason why you shouldn’t be. You couldn’t remember why. “Tell me if I should stop.”

He pressed his mouth back to yours again, a calloused hand making its way up the side of your sweater and disconnecting your thoughts again. This felt too good to be wrong, why shouldn’t you do this? A thumb brushed under the fabric of your bra, catching a nipple, and you jerked under him, letting out an embarrassing noise. He made a noise low in his throat and did it again, tensing when you shuddered under him again.

He let out a harsh breath, then your sweater was torn upwards and your bra quickly followed, a warm mouth closing over one nipple. You swore, the heat of his mouth so unbelievably good against the cold air, arching into him as he swirled his tongue.

“Oh my god,” you managed, fingers tangling desperately in his hair. You hooked a leg over his hip, anchoring him against you harder. Your own hips raised without any input from your brain, and you swore again when one of his thighs pressed tightly to your core.

He moved to your other breast, laving over the hardened peak, two toned eyes watching your face with undisguised interest.

“Shouto,” you gasped out, drawing him back up to you to kiss him. His chest pressed into yours, the strong line of his body pinning you down everywhere, and the weight of him was unbelievably wonderful over you. Why had you ever thought you shouldn’t do this?

A blinding light suddenly flickered on over you, searing even through your eyelids where they’d fluttered closed. You jerked apart in shock. Blinking blearily, you realized it had grown dark and the field lighting system had just kicked in.

Shouto sighed and crawled off of you, leaning back on his knees to stare down at you. You blushed, the implications of what you’d just done pressing down on you, realizing your entire chest was exposed to him in the harsh light. You yanked your sweater back over you, struggling a little bit to get the band of your bra back down. Shouto placed a hand on your hip.

“Uh,” he said, something like a flush rising to his own cheeks, “That’s what you get for laughing.”

You choked out a shocked laugh, staring up at him. “That’s what I get for laughing?”

He smiled again, climbing to his feet and pulling you up with him. “I imagined my girlfriend would be more supportive.”

You gathered up your bag, hardly daring to look at him. “You picked the wrong one then, I think.”

His smile turned soft, something almost private. “I think I did okay.”

Warmth flashed through you again and you had to push down the well of thoughts that bubbled up inside you like a spring. You tried to ignore the niggling at the back of your brain as bid your goodnights and went separate ways to your dorm buildings. One thought refused to be pushed aside, however, following you as you made your way to your room, lingering as you readied for bed and turned out the light. You couldn't sleep for a long time as you tried to dredge up an answer.

What the hell had that been?

#bnha #bnha x reader #todoroki shouto x reader #fanfic #todoroki x reader #boku no hero academia #todoroki shouto #smut

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so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed · 3 years

Text

With the year coming to an end, here is everything I’ve written in 2020. I had quite a productive year, and wrote some fics I’m very proud of. I’ve also met wonderful new people and I’m going to participate in the big bang next year, as well as hopefully join more fests! Thank you to everyone who has helped me create these 12 fics!

March:

🤴 with no way out and a long way down Larry, 31k, T, written for the @hlroyaltyfest

Prince Harry is ten when he receives his soulmark.

May:

✈️ driving down a one way road (to something better) Zouis, 26k, T, written for the @wallsficfest

“I’m at the airport.” It’s followed by a bitter laugh. “I’m - I’m literally at the airport, hiding away in the toilets to make a phone call. They’re probably going to barge in here in a minute, thinking I’m doing something illegal, but I didn’t know what else to do Lou.” He sounds desperate, wild, nothing that Louis is used to associating with Zayn. “My flight leaves in an hour, and I wasn’t gonna do this, but, I didn’t know what else to do.”

Louis frowns. “What do you mean, love?”

“Can I - Can I please come and stay with you?” It’s barely more than a whisper, and Louis honestly isn’t sure if he’s heard it right, but the lack of an immediate response on his part makes Zayn’s breath come out all shaky and Louis won’t stand for that.

“Yes,” he decides, repeats it, in a softer but no less certain voice, when he knows Zayn is about to protest. “Yes. Of course. I’ll be there, yeah? I’ll come pick you up. When will you get here? What airport?”

---

When Zayn breaks up with his boyfriend, he needs a place to stay. Louis wouldn't be Louis if he didn't immediately open his doors to him. Never mind the fact that he's been in love with him for two years. That's not important, right?

July:

🏥 my love will never leave you Larry, 10k, T, written for the @wordplayfics challenge week 1

In a world where memories are used as currency, Louis will do anything it takes for Harry to get better.

🗝 sadness is a little boy looking out the window Ziam, 6k, T, written for the @wordplayfics challenge week 2

Liam is twelve when he receives the key. It’s given to him on his birthday, in a red velvet box, and something about the weight of the box in his palm gives him pause, makes him hold his breath when he unwraps the bow around it.

The bronze key looks innocuous, but Liam knows better. He’s grown up with the stories, as many people have. Has been told about the keys, and that most people except for an unlucky few got one at birth. Some were immediately gifted to them by their parents, others had been kept away from them until such a time that they were deemed responsible enough to understand what it meant.

Because this kind of key, it doesn’t just open any door.

It reveals what you need most, when you need it most, and it can only be used once.

✨ it’s time to find your wings again Larry, 12k, T, written for the @wordplayfics challenge week 3

The first reports are dismissed, as tall tales or folklore. As mental illness, poor Bathilda, she’d gone loopy. As people simply getting scared in the dark woods and seeing things, making things up. Magic isn’t real. Mythological creatures aren't real.

But then the first one is caught. A faun, that little Meg from around the corner swears has attacked her in the woods, and everyone comes to the marketplace to see the faun be hanged for its crimes. Louis doesn’t want to go, but at the same time, he finds himself unable to stay away. Not when this proves what he’s wanted to believe all along, that magic is real.

Louis is twenty when he starts working at the prison. His fascination for supernatural creatures had turned into something most closely resembling loathing over the years, due to the many stories of their evildoing, and although he still doesn’t believe in hanging them for their crimes, he does believe in keeping the town safe. In making sure that his siblings get to grow up without fear of being kidnapped or hurt. As the oldest son, it feels like his duty to make sure that no creature in the wide area will ever pose a threat to anyone.

🍛 it’s a long shot just to beat these odds Ziam, 14k, T, written for the @wordplayfics challenge week 4

Zayn: how many years in prison would I get for murdering a popstar???

He scrapes the plates clean, resists the urge to kick the trash can, his breathing still feeling shallow and high in his chest. He wants a cigarette. And a cuddle from Louis. But a text is the most he can realistically ask for now, and luckily Louis doesn’t leave him hanging.

Louis: ?????

Okay, so it isn’t that helpful, but Zayn knows his anxiety well enough that just distracting his mind is usually enough to keep from having an actual attack. It doesn’t matter that the subject he’s discussing is the one thing his brain is actually panicking about, just trying to formulate words into a text is helping.

Zayn: I served him raw chicken. RAW. And he was kind enough to want to try and eat it too. I could have killed him!!!

That would’ve made headlines for sure. FORMER BOYBANDER GETS POISONED ON FIRST DATE, more on the ten p.m. news.

Louis: well that’s one way of making sure he’s not going to go on any of the other dates. Bit drastic though mate.

August:

💌 if you’re lost just look for me Larry, 9k, T, written for the @wordplayfics challenge week 5

Let your dreams set sail.

Louis blinks at the sticky note, sitting casually in between a flyer advertising an upcoming gig for one of the many bands on campus (the heavy metal graphics implying that the music is not to Louis’ taste) and an ad for a yoga club (Louis is going to have to give that one a miss too). It’s small, barely noticeable unless you’re paying attention, just tucked away as though it’s been left there for Louis to find.

He snorts. “Let your dreams set sail. What a fucking joke.”

Louis' first year of college is everything he had hoped for it to be.

It’s why it’s so hard to swallow that his second year is everything but.

A fic where motivational quotes, no matter how cheesy, might just make everything better after all.

💐 the birth of love like a force of nature Ziam, 22k, T, written for the @ziamfantasyfest

After moving into a new house, Liam decides to introduce himself to the neighbours. The next thing he knows, he’s tied to a chair and threatened by a small army of fairies.

October:

👻 these days I watch you from afar Larry, 666 words, T, written for the @1dtrickortreatfest

“Are you talking to me?”

The boy blinks, blue eyes thoughtful as he cocks his head. “Yeah?”

“You can see me?”

🎃 love me like we don’t have tomorrow Ziam, 666 words, T, written for the @1dtrickortreatfest

"Are you going to see him again?" Louis asks. He’s sitting on a ruined wall, inspecting his long, dark nails. Talons, Zayn thinks. He nods.

“How many years in a row is this?”

Zayn glances at his best mate, doing up the buttons on his coat. “Dunno,” he says, even though he can recall, with perfect clarity, all the times he’s met up with Liam. Every Halloween that he’s spent with him.

"And he still doesn't know?"

☠️ be the end of me Zouis, 666 words, T, written for the @1dtrickortreatfest

"Who are you?" Louis asks, and Zayn can tell that he already knows. He's tense, poised for a flight from the inevitable.

Zayn still answers. "Death."

December:

🎄 room for your love underneath this tree Larry, 11k, T, written for the @1dchristmasfest

“IwannameetHarryStyles,” Daisy mumbles, and Louis blinks.

“What?”

“She says she wants to meet Harry Styles.” Phoebe pipes up, and Louis blinks again, absently switches the camera to himself because he knows that his followers will want to catch his baffled expression.

“You-” he starts, and then stops himself, because he did tell her she could ask for anything she wanted, and how can he go back on his word and tell her that he doesn’t actually have the power to make that happen?

Because Harry Styles is -- he’s next level kind of famous. Louis has two million subscribers on his YouTube, but Harry has eighteen times as many followers on his Twitter alone. He’s had three number one hits in the last year, and his last album had charted at the top spot for a record breaking 27 weeks. He’s a singer, actor and philanthropist, and there is no way in hell that Louis can get him to come meet Daisy for Christmas.

So of course he laughs, even if it’s a little bit breathless, and nods at her. “One Harry Styles for Christmas, coming right up.”

#hlcreators #1dsource #hljournal #larry #my fic post #my fics #2020 in writing #fic masterpost

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franeridart · 4 years

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Anon said: Do you still keep up with black clover? 🥺

Hell yeah I do!! Only the manga, though!

Anon said: Hello first I'd like to say that I really love your art style and your drawing and I have a question about Akane it's pretty weird and may be already ask but can she control blood ? and so people ? sorry for this question it's very dark I was just wondering... Thanks

She can’t! Blood’s alive and she can only control non-living stuff, so anything of the like is out of the question for however hard she may try! Old/dead blood might be another thing, but that’s as far as it goes!

Anon said: I reeeeally love your art and may I just say that I totally appreciate the relationship dynamic your Kirishima and Bakugou have? I've been bingeing KiriBaku angst fics and your wholesome art makes me feel so much better! I like how your Baku is never an asshole to Kiri and how Kiri in return isn't weak-willed or complacent. You character portrayals are just so wholesome and still realistic

Thank you!!! I’m glad you like my way of going about them, I’m pretty sure at this point I put enough of myself and what I like in them that they aren’t exactly as IC as they could be, but I enjoy them this way! And I’m always happy to hear people enjoy them the same way I do, too!

Anon said: Hello hello I just wanted to say I love the way you draw Bakugou???? It’s just v v expressive v good,,, Ok that’s all thank

Thank you!!!! He’s loads of fun to draw, ngl!!

Anon said: I saw that you don’t take requests, but what about commissions?

Not at the moment, and at this point I don’t know if it’ll ever happen orz maybe??? We keep on hoping haha

Anon said: You ever just...exist???? Like bro what a weird construct.

More than weird I’d call it tiring lately, ngl

Anon said: I found someone on instagram who reposted your art and left them a comment politely asking them to take it down, would you like their tag?

Ah, for it to be of any use to me I’d need the direct link to the post, but this ask is old enough that I’d think you wouldn’t have it anymore orz it’s fine!!! I’ll live with people constantly disrespecting me, my wishes and my art, nbd

Anon said: You ever just get tired of being awake and go downstairs in the dark to get ur sleep meds because you have work to do tomorrow but u can’t wake anyone up so then you get super scared by everything?aha what a life. Anyways how’s ur day?!

Actually none of the meds I take are for sleep and also my house is one floor only so I can’t say I relate to that specific feel! And it was good, thank you! I ate cake, played acnh, wasted a lot of time trying and failing to find something to draw... fun times

Anon said: Hi it’s the anon who had the 8am class again. I didn’t take your advice cuz it’s 5:22am and I’m still awake oops. But I didn’t think u responding to my last message hold make so happy yet here I am smiling extremely hard at my phone. Ily Fran I cry

Ahhhhhhh I try to answer to all asks I get, so if you ever send one and I don’t answer is because I didn’t get it! Still... it might take a while for me to find the energy to reply..................... genuinely sorry about that....................

Anon said:k idk if you noticed or not but i just spent like the last hour of my life liking all of your shit because JESUS i love your art

THANK YOU!!!!! I can’t remember if I noticed, but if I did I assure you it made me incredibly happy!

Anon said: I got really sad because haikyuu and I came on ur blog page and now I’m :)

So happy to know I can put a smile on your face ;;; <3<3

Anon said: Sorry Umm do you still do bnha fusions? Cuz umm Tomura and deku forced fusion? Or Tomura and Overhaul? :3?

I don’t, sorry!

Anon said: i just wanna say that as a poly person i really love how you do poly ships, esp your old haikyuu bokukurooteru tattoo comic. like how you write relationships like that is just... so good and genuine and healthy??

Ohhhhhh man I’m happy to hear that! It’s a topic that means a lot to me, so knowing I can do it justice means the world!!

#fran answers #long post #replies replies replies #every time i swear i'll get faster at this and then a month goes by without an answer being given #i'm seriously #Seriously #sorry about that #orz

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dragonflymage · 3 years

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(This has taken me forever to write. Be prepared for a long answer! *kicks it out of the draft box*)

I don’t think I’ll choose a Type for this answer because I chose Types in similar questions. This time I’ll go with the word “ideal” and play with that for a while.

This answer will be about the steps to finding an ideal match. INFP style.

Everyone knows that INFPs are the dreamers. They dream their way through being a child, through the teen years, and yes right through adulthood. It’s unavoidable. If a potential situation creeps up on an INFP, it won’t be long before they have come up with all the imaginative ways to live it and make it their own. Within their minds.

I am going to reveal some things about myself as an INFP that aren’t easy to reveal. Tapping into this realm of idealism that INFPs seem to be known for.

What exactly does it mean when someone says that INFPs are idealistic? It’s more than just seeing the good in others and hoping for a bright future. There’s a side of darkness within it as well because this doesn’t always mean ‘realistic’. It can mean searching for qualities that only exist in our thoughts.

My topic within these imaginative daydreams will focus on “The Ideal Match”.

I have to say that the first sensation that comes to me while thinking of this topic is… wistfulness.

In my expansive INFP imagination, my ideal match is someone who wants to know me.

That’s it.

Okay, that’s not all, but that’s where it begins. With someone who has SEEN me. And not just seen me, but moved closer instead of shaking their head and walking away. Of course, that doesn’t make an automatic match, but it has to begin somewhere.

Can you imagine the elation of being truly seen? That tiny ray of INFP light shown outward has caught someone’s attention. What should be done now? It isn’t love yet. Right? This elation isn’t love. But what if it is? No, it’s much too soon. Maybe if the door is opened a little bit more. … What are they doing now? Running? Moving even closer? OMG. What should I do next?!

Breathe. This doesn’t mean they are devoting all of their eternity. It just means they are curious. Stay calm.

Does that sound like panic? It might be. There’s always the fear of doing too much too soon, yet wanting to reach out and touch. The unseen internal tug of war.

So, this is where the INFP stands now — Revealed some of their deep self and was noticed for it. Then the person stuck around wanting to know more.

This is a great beginning. But what’s next? It would probably be easier to know what to do if this took place in-person. Body language and tone of voice is clearer to decipher. Most likely this all happened online, where emotions and reactions can be filtered through the process I refer to as: “I’m doing my freakin’ best to explain myself with only text!” *flails*

I would say that being seen and someone wanting to get to know you are where new friendships and possible future-relationships reside.

Being seen is nice, but being understood is even better!

It looks like a connection is forming. This is where our INFP will decide what sort of sharing is appropriate.

There are all sorts of sharing:

💙 Surface sharing - which involves interests and everyday activities. Also known as “small talk”. Topics such as pets, job or school, hobbies, books, etc. This isn’t always an INFP favorite, but conversations have to begin somewhere. During the small-talk phase, an INFP will determine whether there is potential for a connection. And, yes, an INFP is more than capable of this discovery just from small talk. This could last for a brief time period or for many days, depending on the person’s comfort level. 💙 Test sharing - which involves emotions attached to topics. Such as the meanings behind this or that event in life. It could be another subtle test to see if the other person is still interested in talking. Or it could be a bit of desperation to have someone to finally discuss the deeper aspects of the world. Some of these emotion-laden topics might not be used by most people until later in a potential friendship-relationship, but INFPs may reach this level of conversation fairly quickly. This type of conversation could continue throughout the friendship-relationship, obviously while no longer in a ‘testing’ fashion. 💙 Personal sharing - which involves longer and more frequent conversations. It’s a bit like sharing your life in ‘real-time’. At this point, the INFP has decided this is someone who is interested because they haven’t run away, and maybe it’s okay to invest more of ourselves with them. These sorts of talks are like inviting them to our home and giving them a glimpse of what life is like for us. These discussions are saved for close friends and potential love interests. 💙 Deep sharing - which involves all those things an INFP shares with no one. And by ‘no one’ I mean ‘a rare and special someone’. I think many INFPs have an inner vault where they keep all the topics that have been too much for other people to handle - such as traumatic memories. Some INFPs, after being rejected in the past, may choose to never touch this level with anyone again. Other INFPs may decide that if this special person can understand what’s in the vault, then they are absolutely ‘the one’. Whether as a love interest or a very close friend.

🍵 There could also be a level 5 which may involve fantasies or the darkest of secrets they may never tell anyone, but some INFPs might lump those in with #4. It depends on the individual. 🍵

The difficulty with those Sharing Levels is finding an order that works and sticking to it. It wouldn’t work well to start with #1 Small Talk and then skip right to #4 Deep Sharing. (I mean, unless you’re talking with a therapist, then go ahead.)

Now that I got the informative portion out of the way, it’s time for some INFP idealism!!

INFPs are amazing humans. We care with our every breath and we want the best for those around us. We can also become stuck within our idealistic thoughts. No, that isn’t a secret.

We are called The Dreamers for a reason.

INFPs have a difficult time with this strange thing called Reality. We are flooded with violence from the media, and sometimes it exists in our personal lives. Reminding us of all the hurting souls we can’t help. We have potent plans of how we will change the world. Then Reality sneaks up from behind and whispers “you do realize no matter how hard you try, you can’t save them all…” Thanks, Reality.

It’s these realizations that can infiltrate all aspects of life - how we envision our future, how we envision our environment, and how we envision our Ideal Match or our Ideal Partner (in a potentially romantic sense).

I first started imagining a ‘love interest’ at around age 12. It wasn’t marriage or white gowns that I imagined. It was someone who cared by listening to me.

One of the first crushes in a love-interest way I had on a person (other than classmates I mentioned in a different answer) was Hawkeye from the MASH re-runs. ( I don’t know what it is about me and ENFPs, but anyway… I spent long hours daydreaming about somehow being illogically inserted into that environment just so I could sit and have long conversations with Hawkeye. 😅 I thought he was the perfect match for me. Of course, he had other issues going on, but I was willing to overlook them all! This daydream went on for a few years until I moved along to other potential unreachable love interests.

The important factor about the idealism and daydreaming is that I was internally forming a list of what I hoped to find in a future partner.

Attention and caring were important. Kindness to others. Devotion to helping people. Silly humor. Depth of character. Capable of understanding pain. Willing to imagine what could be.

Sadly, if an INFP isn’t paying attention, they can idealize themselves through life…even through the most painful events and can become addicted to this coping mechanism.

Like I did.

The downside was that since I never truly encountered a great deal of decent treatment personally, I didn’t know how to recognize it in others. It was unfamiliar territory (for many depressing reasons). So in my early 20s, what I did was latch onto a person who I thought had the potential and idealized everything else about him. He gave me attention, sure, but I think I consciously idealized everything else about him. Even when there were many clues that he wasn’t a good match for me.

I rejected every natural instinct I had and encompassed myself in flowery daydreams in order to survive the life I’d suddenly found myself in.

That is probably an extreme example of what idealism can do to a person. But I think that INFPs have the very real probability of slipping into this unhealthy internal mindset.

If we aren’t careful, idealism can turn into an INFP mind-trap.

I don’t want to turn this into a negative answer. Idealism has wonderful benefits if used in healthy creative ways. To imagine what could be. But there also needs to be a balance with Realistic thoughts.

Always stop and ask yourself “Is this truly a possibility? Is this actually what is taking place? Am I somehow coloring the truth from myself?”

Only then will an INFP truly find, not just an Ideal Match, but a True Match.

Without any of the rose-colored glasses interfering with what is Real.

#mbti #infp #infp thoughts #relationships #mbti thoughts #introvert #myers-briggs #hsp #emotions #emotional #sensitivity

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itmighthavebeenintentional · 4 years

Text

Walk Me Home - Ch 7

Summary: Twenty-four years ago, Kimberly Harper met a boy who changed the course of her entire life before up and leaving one night. She spent years moving past the memories, building a stable, satisfying career as professor of folklore and mythology at the local university. Then the accidents start, and she’s forced to seek help among her hunter contacts. All it takes is a knock on her office door to send Kimber’s carefully built emotional walls crumbling to the ground.

Featuring: Teen Winchesters, high school romance, reunions, misunderstandings, high intensity emotional turmoil, Dean’s love of pie, Dean being adorable, Sam being adorable and maybe a bit nosy eventually, much group adorkable-ness, show-style investigation, mention of our favorite werewolf, gratuitous and obvious love of fall, DID I MENTION ROMANCE, fluff, smut, tension.

Warnings: Show level violence, show level parental neglect (let’s not John bash, I’m just saying), show-style witchcraft, show-level mental manipulation, stalking, bit of angst, sexual content (higher than show level),swearing, general yearning

Word Count: 3667

Author’s Note: All my love to @mskathywriteswords , @fangirlxwritesx67, and @cracksinthewalls for so much of all the things. Thanks to everyone who read/reblogged/liked the first chapter. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I do.

Keep in Mind: There are a lot of flashbacks. I tried to write current events in present tense and flashbacks in past tense. Here’s hoping I got everything right!

Please read/heed the warnings. 18+ ONLY.

In Case You Missed It: Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 ItMightHaveBeenIntentional’s Masterlist

Chapter 7

“A goddamned hex bag, Sam. I didn’t even see whoever it was. I was going to the bathroom, they tapped my shoulder and shoved it in my hand as I turned around. I was...it was…”

Kimber trails off, not ready to share what she saw while under the influence. She rubs circles on her temples, calming the dull throb that’s persisted ever since she woke up. Sam waits patiently for her to finish, giving her time to gather her thoughts.The motel room smells faintly of fries and coffee, and the shower hisses in the background as Kimber does her best to fill Sam in on her near-catastrophe.

She and Dean had come straight back to the room after finding their way off the roof. Kimber headed right for the bathroom, cranking the shower up as hot as it would go to try and scrub some of the experience off, and Dean took the opportunity to check in with his brother.

When Kimber emerged, feeling only slightly less violated but a little steadier on her feet, Dean ended his call with Sam with a stipulation that Sam let him know the second he found out anything at all helpful. Dean and Kimber had exchanged quick glances then before looking longingly at the bed.

“Nap?” Kimber asked hopefully. Dean didn’t bother answering verbally. He shucked his boots, flopped on the bed, and opened his arms in invitation. She joined him, and the two of them slept for nearly four hours until Sam knocked on the door with food and a disappointingly short report on his own morning’s work.

Now Kimber is doing her best to bring him up to speed on their side, but for some reason, she keeps stopping short of telling him what her hallucination consisted of. She trusts Sam as she trusts his brother, but this is something she needs to talk to Dean about first. Preferably alone.

“I had very little control and was completely unaware of my actual surroundings. These are the most realistic hallucinations I’ve heard of from a hex bag. I’d say nearly on level with a djinn. This guy is good, Sam. And we’re not any closer.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Sam counters, drumming his fingers on the table top. He leans forward, resting his forearm on the smooth surface. “We know Helen definitely didn’t fall. We know there weren’t any hex bags left at the scenes, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t any involved.”

He pauses to take a swig of water from his bottle, deliberating.

“We know he’s sneaky, know he can blend into a crowd without standing out. He may very well have been at some of your defense classes before but made an effort to not be noticed. We need to talk to your instructor, maybe some of the people in your class, see if anyone knows anything about him at all.”

“The class is in the campus rec center. I know the instructor’s name, but not her contact info. Class is tomorrow night, but we may be able to find her at the rec center before then.”

“Not ‘we.’ You’re staying here,” Dean says as he exits the bathroom. “After this morning, you’re staying right here until we end this son of a bitch.”

Kimber’s temper flares at his commanding tone, and she bites back an acidic retort. She trusted Dean’s instincts all those years ago, and they most likely saved her life. Even in her hallucinogenic haze, she heard him and tried to listen. And she trusts him now, too.

But she’s tired and beyond stressed, and while she knows the day hasn’t treated Dean any better, he doesn’t have to be a dick.

“We’re not seventeen anymore, Dean. I’m not a naive little girl who needs to be bundled out of the way, and I sure as hell don’t take orders from you. Don’t think for one second that I’m staying out of this investigation. This is my life, and I’m in charge of it. Not you.”

Dean’s face darkens, the tendons in his neck flexing alarmingly as he opens his mouth to retort, but Sam cuts in before Dean gets a chance.

“Kimber,” Sam offers, ignoring when Dean’s glare shifts in his direction, “You know Dean is just worried about you. What if I go to the rec center, ask around. You could call ahead, explain why I’m coming, and then your instructor might be more willing to talk to me. Whoever the witch is, they’re probably expecting you to go to class at some point. It really would be safer if you stayed here.”

She grudgingly concedes that Sam’s plan is solid, a lot safer than her gallivanting around campus as if a psychopathic witch isn’t trying to kill her. She forces her brain to accept reason, expelling as much of her ire as she can with her next couple of breaths.

Sam stands, pushing back his chair and beginning to bag up the trash from their late lunch. Dean reaches for his jacket, but Sam puts out a hand, holding Dean’s eyes and shaking his head. Kimber doesn’t miss the muscle jumping just above Dean’s jaw or the way his expression softens fractionally when Sam’s eyes flick her way.

“Dean, maybe you should stay here, just in case. The witch probably doesn’t know where Kimber is, but we really can’t take that chance. She’ll be safer with you.”

Subtle, Sam, she thinks, sighing internally. Real subtle.

To her surprise, however, Dean doesn’t argue. He grips the back of the cheap chair so hard that it squeaks in protest. His head dips down for a long pause, jaw and fingers flexing. When he resurfaces, his anger isn’t gone, but he is visibly more in control.

“You go, Sam. Kimber and I will regroup, see if she can remember anything else. I think we’re both pretty wiped from this morning, even after passing out. Is that okay?”

Though the question is directed at Sam, his eyes move to Kimber, including her. She nods as Sam finishes gathering their take-out containers, offering Dean a conciliatory smile. The relief on Dean’s face dissolves what’s left of her irritation.

The sky outside is nearly dark when Sam leaves. Dean and Kimber sit on the two beds, facing each other in silence. They study each other for a long time, staring unashamedly as they search out reminders of the kids they once were, relics of the past that are now mixed with the scars their separate lives have carved with time and experience.

She can feel his gaze on her, heavy at first, and then as searching and tender as a lover’s caress. She wonders if he likes what he sees as much as he did twenty-four years ago. She hasn’t changed much, in her opinion, but, then, she’s not exactly an objective observer. Some lines, a little sag, some silver (which she actually likes). But all the main features are still there.

Kimber is the first to move. She slides to the side, tilting her head to indicate the empty spot next to her. Dean frowns, seemingly determined to keep his distance, and she shoots him a look of such utter exasperation that he actually cracks a smile for a second before he’s able to stop himself.

“Fine,” he growls. He shoves up from his own bed, dropping down next to her with enough force to tip her off balance and send her tumbling into his side, where he is ready to catch her, as always.

A shudder runs through her at that realization.

“You...you got me,” she whispers. In her mind, she’s at the edge of the rooftop again, her heels on solid ground, nothing at all beneath her toes. “You…”

“Me,” he says, his tone heavy, weighed down with everything he isn’t saying aloud. “I got you.”

Flashes of terror, disorientation, fury boil through her so fast they steal her breath and her balance, and she grasps at the lifeline his shirt presents. Her fingers clench into the soft material. Her gut burns with bitter shame, and she’s blinded by a sudden onrush of hot, angry tears.

Violated. That’s it. She feels violated, absolutely powerless against this unknown assailant. All these years of preparing herself, staying vigilant and alert, and yet it all came to absolutely nothing, in the end.

She shoves the heels of her hands against her eyes. How dare someone intrude upon her well-ordered life, bringing nothing but terror and violence? The tears flow faster, harder, the rage burning down to a fine point, honed and hard.

“I may be his target, for whatever messed up reason,” she hisses, “but I will not be his fucking victim.”

“Damn straight,” Dean agrees, his arm tightening around her back. He doesn’t offer any useless platitudes or promises he might not be able to keep. He simply agrees with every curse she spews out, holds her tighter when the scalding tears soak into his shirt, and unapologetically augments her wild declarations of revenge with his own suggestions of violence.

Kimber knows they (probably) won’t act on any of it beyond what’s necessary, but it’s nice to share in a violent verbal tirade with someone who gets what she’s going through.

“Thanks,” she finally says as she straightens up, having finally blown through her considerable cache of vitriol. He chuckles, looking down at his hands and rubbing them slowly together.

“I’ll plot revenge with you anytime, sweetheart. Gotta keep on your good side; I’d be an idiot to piss you off after finding out you’re capable of all that. That was, uh...creative.”

She bumps her shoulder against his, still feeling very raw and open but a lot more settled.

“Kimber,” he starts, deliberately avoiding her gaze. “What...what did you see? I get it if you can’t talk about it, but you were so zoned out when I chased you down. You were saying my name, but I got the feeling it wasn’t me me you were talkin’ to.”

When she falters, Dean puts his hand on his knee, palm up in a silent offer of support. When she takes his hand, the strength and warmth of his grip soaks into her, and she bolsters herself.

Her brain shivers with revulsion, balking at the prospect of digging back through the earlier episode. She’s scared, so scared to go back to that place, even verbally, but she perseveres, pushing herself to get the words out.

Because even if she can’t pull herself out this time, she’s going in knowing Dean is there, anchoring her to reality.

“I got you.”

I know, she thinks. Instead of affirming aloud, she simply starts talking.

“It started off like that one walk we went on, the trail with all the falling leaves.”

“I remember that day,” Dean says, studying their entwined fingers. “Your mom made that pumpkin pie for dessert. That was a good...that was one of the best days.”

“I think that’s why my mind went there. There’s no way to know for sure what spell he used on the hex bag, but it took me to that afternoon, sort of. You were ahead of me, and I kept trying to catch up, but I couldn’t. And the leaves kept falling in my face; there were so many more than the actual day, and I kept having to knock them away just to be able to see. It was hard to walk, to think.”

Dean squeezes gently, waiting for her to continue. She licks her dry lips, her face pinching in, but she pushes on, knowing she has to draw out the poison.

“I could hear you calling from behind us. I know that now, but I didn’t then. You, the real you, would break through every now and then. But I couldn’t stop following him. He led me to a house, a just-married couple. It was you and me, not us from then or from now, even. We were maybe in our early twenties? The house was a lot like my parents’. The pair of them, us, were so happy, so...together. And he said...the teenage you said…”

“What did I say?” Dean prompts, his voice soft and measured.

“You told me it was your dream, that we could still have it, if I wanted. And I knew it wasn’t real, there were too many little parts that were wrong, that reminded me it wasn’t true. I knew we’d lost our chance all those years ago, but Dean...I wanted it. I wanted you, I wanted that life, and it seemed so easy to just give in. Take his hand, take that step, get our happily ever after. I wanted-”

She breaks off, the thought too big and too deep for her to vocalize. The past twenty-four hours catches up with her all at once: the anxiety and stress of her supernatural stalker, Dean’s unexpected arrival and the return of all her residual feelings for him, the shock of realizing she’d been wrong all this time about him forgetting her, the terror of finding herself literally on the edge…

She still cares for Dean, the feelings deep and aching, no matter how hard she shoved them into a metaphorical box and locked them away. She still has no idea why he never got in contact again, but at this particular moment in time, she no longer cares.

I wanted to give you your dream after all, she thinks, and in the end I couldn’t even do that.

“Kimber, look at me.” His words grind out, ragged and thick. He turns towards her, his free hand moving to hold her face so she has no choice but to meet his gaze.

“Don’t you dare feel sorry. You saved your life. Yeah, I caught you,” he says, his eyebrows lowering warningly as she starts to interrupt. “Yeah, I got the hex bag out of your hand, but you knew what you were seeing was wrong. You felt it, you knew that wasn’t me, and you pulled yourself out. You fell away from the edge of the roof, not towards it. You did that. I just caught you, that’s all.”

He holds her gaze, and they sit frozen, mere inches between them. His eyes are ablaze, relentless in their determination to burn Kimber down to her base elements. She is speechless, without air or thought to offer another single word.

But he waits, adamant, letting her make whatever final decision she feels is right, or at the very least, right for now. It seems he’s always waited for her to decide, and she owes it to both of them to end their shared misery.

She drops her gaze, loosening her hand from his. Her eyes rise with her fingers, and she places the barest tips against his jaw, wordlessly asking permission. In response, Dean lowers his arms, his hands moving to brush her hips as he presses into her touch. His eyes close, his face awash with elation almost to the point of pain.

She traces the fine lines surrounding the corners of his eyes, just as she wanted to do this morning. Her fingertips smooth the creases between his eyes, gliding over his furrowed eyebrows until he finally relents and lifts them. She presses the heel of one hand over the worry lines ingrained in his forehead before running her thumbs under the silky, delicate skin beneath his eyes, stained dark and bruised from years of sleepless nights.

She finally allows herself the indulgence of mapping first his lower lip, then the upper, the pads of her fingers tingling. But the feel of him, the soft warmth, the scratchy stubble, the silk plush of his mouth, is too much and not enough for her overwhelmed senses. She needs more, needs him closer.

His breath catches, fingers contracting, when she pulls his head down to place a kiss on first one temple, then the other. Another press of her lips just above the bridge of his nose, then one for each of his eyelids. A kiss for the tip of his nose, for each cheekbone, then each corner of his mouth.

“Please.” She feels the movement of his lips, his plea so soft as to be inaudible. His hands are tense on her waist, just shy of painful.

The knowledge that he wants her as much now as he did so long ago, even just the knowledge that he wants her, is heady and powerful. Lightheaded, giddy, she brushes feathering, teasing kisses across his lower lip, his upper lip, before claiming his entire mouth.

His reaction is so quick she doesn’t even realize she’s in his lap until he’s shoving back to get more purchase on the bed. His hands slide down from her waist, pulling her back with him. She shifts until her legs are on either side of his hips, settling more firmly as she deepens the kiss.

Dean tugs, pulling her shirt loose from her waistband, and skates calloused palms over her flushed skin. She arches reflexively, and his lips trail down her chin, ghosting over her throat. She returns to him as fast as her position allows, desperate to touch, to taste, to drink him in. Four seconds away from Dean’s mouth is too long, nevermind twenty-four years.

She is raw and aching from the weeks of worry and frustration, off-balance from her close brush with the void, and every movement sends her senses reeling. His strong, denim-clad thighs scrubbing through the thin fabric of her slacks. His day-old stubble abrading the taut column of her throat. The silk of his lips caressing her own, the sinful slide of his tongue.

She loses track of who removes whose clothing, but they are bare and joined in what feels like a heartbeat. Dean pulls her back into his lap, her hips firmly in his grip, and she stills against the intensity of his gaze. He throbs, hard and hot against her belly, and a tremor of need shivers down her spine.

He holds her eyes, one hand dragging down from her waist with torturous languor. Her flesh burns in the wake of his touch, muscles trembling in reaction. A breath jerks simultaneously from both of them when his fingers find their goal, and she nearly comes apart on him right there.

“Does this work for you?” he asks. His breathing is shallow, almost panting with the effort of restraint, and his eyes have taken on a glassy quality, but still he asks. And waits.

“Always.”

His eyes close at the first touch of her tight, wet heat, his lips parted as his eyebrows draw down, and she can’t decide if she prefers the feel of his fingers on her or the sight of him more. Then he moves his hand, curling his fingers inward, and she makes up her mind real damn quick.

“Please.” The whisper comes from one of them, but neither knows nor cares who. Dean’s fingers plunge, retreat, repeat until she’s riding his hand, oblivious to the obscene sounds coming from her mouth as well as where they’re joined.

Her hands drag up from where she’s been digging into his shoulders, anchoring firmly into his hair. She pulls his face back to hers, seeking his kiss even as his fingers press again and again. His tongue sweeps into her mouth, matching the curling rhythm of his fingers, and she’s so close she can almost taste her completion.

She’s so close, she just needs…

“Dean, please, I need-”

His free hand slides up her back to grip her shoulder from behind, and his cheek brushes against hers. His lips ghost over her earlobe, his breath hot against her neck.

“Come for me, sweetheart,” he growls, and that’s all she needs to hear. She buries her face in his neck, her breath coming in fits and stops as he murmurs broken bits of praise. Her hands slip from his face, arms draping around his neck as her limbs go loose and weak. She loses track of time, riding the last diminishing shocks his fingers stroke from her.

“Kimber, I...god, that was...I need you, are you ready?”

“I’ve never been ready for you,” she breathes as she rises up on trembling knees, “but I am so damned tired of waiting.”

Dean’s eyes seem to cross for a moment, and he grips her like he’s afraid she’ll float away. A low, guttural sound works its way from his chest, the tendons in his neck stranding out tight and thick against his flushed skin.

“Waited...so long…”

She leans in, her forehead sliding against his, and they move blindly, bound together and barreling towards completion with reckless abandon. His nails scrape against her shoulder blades, his teeth rasping down the crook of her neck. The sound he makes when she tangles her fingers into his hair, grips and pulls, makes something vital clench deep inside of her, and she moans his name shamelessly with every erratic roll of her hips.

Dean stiffens in her arms suddenly, cursing, his teeth bared. She rides him still, and he guides her hips with rough encouragement, their staccato breaths echoing through the still room. He claims her mouth just as she comes, and her cry is muffled against his desperate kiss.

She knows effort is involved in getting them into an actual horizontal position and under the blanket, but to Kimber it feels like she simply melts into bed with Dean. Just as the night before, she molds perfectly against his side, her head rising and falling with each of Dean’s breaths. He strokes her cheek with one hand, his other arm solid and strong around her back.

They drowse, fingers wandering aimlessly under the covers, occasionally stretching up or leaning down to meet for a kiss. Kimber drifts with Dean, sated and content to her soul.

Just before she slips under completely, she hears him mutter, “Can’t believe we waited a quarter of a damned century to do that. Fuck was I thinkin’.”

Sleep claims Kimber with a smile on her lips.

…

Chapter 8

#apparently I forgot to do tags the first time around #woops #um #spn #supernatural #dean winchester #teen dean #teen winchesters #original character #original female character #let's face it #if you got here through tags it's a miracle anyway #fuck it #i'm ready for bed #g'night

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steve-rogers-new-york · 4 years

Photo

Pre-WWII Television Mid-1930s to 1945

In the last month, I’ve read no-less-then THREE separate fics referencing Steve and/or Bucky having more than a passing knowledge or experience of television pre-21st century — and I really wanted to clear that misinformation up.

Television, like most new technologies, existed for some time before being adopted by the wider public, and early models were prohibitively expensive for the everyday person. While yes, I think the boys would have seen a television demonstration at least once, they would not have owned one, nor would anyone they knew have owned one (except Howards, but when would they have seen it?).

First Commercial Televisions

The first ‘electro-mechanical’ televisions of the mid-to-late-1930s were grand, expensive affairs. The two of the main producers in the US were RCA with their TRK-12, TRK-9, TRK-5 and TT-5 models, and DuMont with their Model 180, and Model 181. These set would be handcrafted, with polished wooden cabinets modelled in the popular Art Deco “streamline” style of the times. Rather than an accessory, televisions of the 1930s and 1940s were large pieces of furniture and had little resemblance to today’s sets. Despite the large bodies, the screens themselves were only some 10-15″ wide diagonally.

These sets were sold in large, high-end New York department stores like Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Wanamaker’s. They went for anything from $199.50 to $600 per unit, which when calculated for inflation, is about $3,500 to $11,000 in today’s money.

Around 7,000 sets were made in the US before WWII, and with such a massive price-tag, only around 2,000 sets were actually sold and in use across America. Most of the unsold units went into storage until after the end fo the war.

The first practical demonstration of television sets outside of those high-end department stores was the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. There, visitors could visit the RCA Pavillion to see the “Hall of Television” with its thirteen TRK-12′s in action; as well as the “Radio Living Room of Tomorrow” and “Radio Living Room of Today,” which showed the technology at home in domestic settings. There were also live NBC broadcasts and opportunities for guests to be televised and see themselves on television — a unique novelty that came with an “I was televised” souvenir care to go with the experience. Other manufacturers at the World’s Fair also had their own television demonstrations, including General Electric, Westinghouse, General Motors, and Crosley.

So, what could those lucky 2,000 Americans watch? Well, televisions of this period could receive channels 1 through 5, and New York City had the only broadcast station. NBC began broadcasting regularly scheduled programming in 1939, along with CBS and Don Lee. Broadcasts ran for around 2-hours of content in the afternoon and 1-hour in the evenings. Programming during this time included all manner of content: sports, plays, operas, cartoons, cooking demonstrations, travelogues, fashions shows, skaters at Rockefeller Centre, and numerous live telecasts. The rest of the time viewers would only see the station’s test pattern.

WWII

All this slow progress came to a grinding halt when the US joined WWII. While some broadcasts continued, they were on a limited basis and included civil defence programming. All production of televisions was ceased, with engineers instead using their expertise for the production of radar and communications equipment for the military instead.

Post-WWII Growth

It wasn’t until after the end of WWII that television really got its explosion in popularity and became a household item for any aspiring middle-class family. At the end of the war, most people still didn’t know what a television even was, but only four years later, the majority had not only heard of them but wanted one. By 1949, the price of television sets had dropped and people were buying then at a rate of 100,000 a week! In addition to the drop in cost due to mass-production, families also benefited from suddenly having disposable income thanks to the post-war economic boom. By 1954 55.7% of households owned a television.

Steve, Bucky, and Pre-21st Century Television

So, realistically, how familiar would our boys have been with television before post-thaw/deprogramming? Well, going on my own favourite headcanon than the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair can be used as an almost direct analogue to the 1942 Stark Expo, I think there were two scenarios in which the boy would have even come across a television in the US:

Manhattan Department Store — Now I say Manhattan specifically, as despite Brooklyn having its own high-end department stores in Abraham & Straus and Frederick Loeser & Co., however, it doesn’t mean that they stocked televisions. My research seems to indicate that they were pretty exclusive products and only specific department stores stocked them — kind of the same way only certain car dealerships will sell you a Ferrari. Thus, I think if you were to go with the idea they say one in a department store display, you would have to assume they were inside one of the those gig-name Manhattan stores to even catch a glimpse. Seriously, they would not be catching a glace walking past a storefront, these would be deep inside for the distinguished partons.

Stark Expo — Again, assuming a degree of similarity between the real World’s Fair and the fictional Stark Expo, I think it’s fair to assume there would have been some sort of television demonstration. Now, whether the boys would have seen it is another thing. Bear in mind that these World Fair style attractions were MASSIVE, covering hundreds of acres of land, requiring internal transportation and remaining open for at least a year. Now, even if the Stark Expo was on a smaller scale, I doubt they saw even close to everything in just the evening they were there. So really I’d say its a 50/50 chance they saw a television there or not.

The only other place I think they would have possibly come in contact with television might be during the war, either:

While in Britain — Both Steve and Bucky would have (at least briefly) been in Britain during the war. Bucky, prior to deployment on the continent, and Steve with the Howlies during meetings with higher-ups. Television was actually more widely adopted in the UK, than in the US. Around 19,000 sets (compared to the US’s 7,000) were made in the UK, which assuming the rates of sale were similar would mean more than twice the number of sales. Broadcasting also started some years before those in the US. So, which all broadcasts were suspended the moment the war started, there is a chance that they would have come across a set sitting dormant somewhere or another.

Steve while on the USO tour in the home of a rich/famous donor — So one thing to consider is that Steve would have spent a while before Azzano hob-nobbing with the rich and famous as part of attempts to raid money for the war effort. And it’s not too outrageous to think that at least one of them would have owned a television and shown it off.

Other Points of Note

The first colour televisions did not come onto the scene until 1954.

There were, of course, no remote controls — not until 1950.

Image Sources

TRK-12 Promotional Photo, two women and one man | Source RCA TRK-12/120 (1939-40) | Source RCA TRK-9 (1939) | Source DuMont 180 (1939) | Source Working 1939 Art Deco Television Set | Source World’s Fair “Hall of Television” from the back w/o guests, 1939-40 | Source World’s Fair “Hall of Television” from the front w/ guests, 1939-40 | Source “I was Televised” Souvenir card (Front and Back), 1939-40 | Source

The full research document for this topic is available on the Discord’s “Patreon Clubhouse” channel ($3+ donors)

This post has been sponsored by my much loved and long-time Patreon supporter Joanna Daniels. She and I would like to dedicate the post to the loving memory of her mother Joan Daniels. She will be sorely missed.

[ Support SRNY through Patreon and Ko-Fi ] And join us on Discord for fun conversation! I also have an Etsy with upcycled nerdy crafts

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gimmethehobbit · 3 years

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2020 Fanart Highlights

Thanks for tagging me @une-amie!! Love your art btw!

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

Yay, nothing like a little artistic self-reflection! I’ll stick to linking to my comics and art (I have some rotten fic festering on the distant regions of the internet that we won’t mention here lol)

I think I drew more comics in 2020 than I did the previous two years? While my style has gotten less cute and I’m using almost no color, I actually don’t feel too bad about it. The art always served the punchline/gag anyway. If I got you to chuckle/smile with my comic then it’s mission accomplished for me. Also, around when quarantine started is when I got a drawing tablet and basically everything I’ve posted since then has been drawn digitally. I’ll go chronologically over my faves:

Pining Keith in 2020 [VLD | Klance] It seems like I optimistically start every year ranting that this will be the year of klance (now years after the actual show ended.) My favorite thing to do is cut corners so repeating panels and just changing expressions/dialogue is the absolute BEST and I encourage everyone to do it! No one will notice or care! :D This one was still pencil on paper, which I kind of miss because it carries a certain energy that digital misses.

RA Comix: ONE FEAR [Richard Armitage] Okay, this one has like NO notes but I died laughing making it. We could have had a really epic closing chapter to the whole RA/LP thing but I guess now we’ll never know? (is the con even being rescheduled??) Also any RA fan is free to reuse this for whatever RA’s current fear is lmao.

Michigan J. Frog! [Looney Tunes] I worked full-time during quarantine. But on a random day off I thought, you know what, I should really draw Michigan J. Frog on this tablet I’m still getting used to. I think he turned out alright. It’s still my aim to animate him once I have like a year off :P

RA turns 49 [Richard Armitage] This one is very special to me because I spent 5 minutes drawing it and then like an hour just playing around with cut and paste and warping his face. The real satisfaction here was making myself cackle. Also I love that his doll friend is the only thing worthy of being put in color. Did I mention how much I HATE coloring comics???? Which leads me to coloring art...

Leatherface’s Quarantine Advice [Horror | Texas Chainsaw Massacre] This was the first one of my horror/artober challenge. Drawing/coloring is hard! He came out okay, if a bit smudgy but I’m still perplexed over how I did that real cool-looking sky and background.

You’ll Float Too! [Horror | It Movie | Pennywise] Stylistically I went for something that looked like a kid drew it and I think I really nailed it! 😆

ANNABEL/LE’S [Horror | Annabelle | RA’s friend lol] Probably the art piece I spent the most time on this year? Aka more than an hour. Had a lot of fun painting her, I was in the Zone. Really like how her creepy face plays with light and shadow. That blood tear is pretty spot-on 👌 Also nothing like the juxtaposition between Annabelle’s realistic creepiness and the cartoony Annabel 🤡

(audio scream warning!->) Thrandy Scream [LOTR/Hobbit | Thranduil | Legolas] Including this one because it’s one of three animations I did last year along with Thorin’s McRib and Artie Fufkin. I was all set to do a bunch more and then I realized CSPaint has me stuck on a time limit of just a few seconds??? So that kind of sucks. But I like merging audio with crudely moving art. Definitely want to try more of it. Also amused myself by drawing Thrandy after a long hiatus.

That’s all folks! Lmk if there’s something you want to see more of this year :3 (I fell off the RA train because I don’t do audiobooks but I can always make shit up 🤪)

Tagging @heyholmesletsgo @oldfarmerbillswife @sillymarillion-comics @aninomori @atanes-universe @monkeyscomics @thejerseydevile @evankart and any other artist/writer/creator who wants to do this!

#2020 fanart highlights #tag game #damn i spent longer writing this post than drawing some of these comics i mentioned #🥴

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robotnikfucker · 4 years

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10 Questions Tag Game

I’ve been tagged by @jimbotniks

Rules: Answer the 10 questions, ask a different 10 questions, and tag 10 people

(Small warning, I have ADHD and just took my meds so this is a little ramble-y and disjointed. I apologize, there is no way to fix this, my brain is just like that oops. For courtesy, I’ve put all the long stuff under the cut so you only have to read my monologue if you want to.)

1. What is your favorite genre of music? Why?

Probably indie-rock and indie punk. I like indie-rock largely because my favorite shows in my formative years were Chuck, Bones and a couple other “golden era” crime dramas that all featured a lot of indie-rock music in the background. Indie punk appeals to me because it’s just a good catharsis while also being pretty damn dance-able. Kiwi Jr and AJJ are both really good bands if you need to just let it all out while jamming to some bops.

2. What’s an art project you’ve made that you’re proud of?

I draw angels frequently, often depicting them as humanoid but still terrifying. This was an art theme that I’ve had going since before I was religious and I find that “angelic” imagery can sometimes leak into my other art so a lot of my favorite art is drawings of wings, gore, monsters and all kinds of Gothic themes. Right now, I have a watercolor of Virginia Madsen that I’m just in love with. I was always enchanted by her hypnotized stare in Candyman and I did my best to capture that. I even went out with my girlfriend to buy a gold gel pen so her tears would glitter. From theme to technical prowess, it’s my favorite painting right now and possibly my magnum opus. My previous best was a gore heavy, similarly angel themed, digital painting of Roger Wilco from the Space Quest games (weird special interests, I know.) I could go on about drawings I love for hours, so I’ll cut myself off here with the small post script that this is just my visual art and I also have poetry and prose that I feel similarly about.

3. Do you have a favorite album/podcast to put on in the background while you work or study?

It all really depends on my mood. My girlfriend shared a really relaxing Sovietwave playlist with me recently that I’ve been enjoying. I also listen to a lot of AJJ and Saint Motel, I don’t really think I could really pin down a specific album for either of them. The Candyman soundtrack works really well for study especially for my Gothic and Mystery class. I have a playlist titled Fuck Funk that’s specifically for writing fanfiction since I could never find a good playlist for writing smut when I needed it but I also use that playlist to work out since it’s mostly just a healthy mix of songs that I can jam to. I’ve never liked podcasts for study/work since I can’t really write and listen at the same time but I did make a podcast once for a professor that was a radio-play style parody of Scooby-Doo. I did all of the editing and I still listen back over it and pat myself on the back for turning 2 hours of raw improv into something that got us like a 98. A lot of my own music taste peaks through.

4. If you could become the protagonist/antagonist of any media franchise, which one would you pick and why?

Realistically, Animal Crossing because that’s the safest bet least likely to lead to my death. If we’re gonna get wild... probably BJ Blazkowicz from Wolfenstein so I could kick some N*zi ass or Conan Edogawa/Jimmy Kudo from Case Closed/Detective Conan so I could enjoy that sweet mid 90′s aesthetic.

5. Can you play any instruments? which ones?

I can, actually, I’ve played cello since I was 8 (I’m 18 now) although I’m a little rusty. I played piano and drums for a while and while I’m pretty useless when it comes to piano these days, I still maintain a pretty firm grip on my sense of time and rhythm thanks to the years I spent playing percussion. I played bari sax in middle and high school. I marched it for 3 years until I had a back injury but I was in jazz band all 4 years of high school so I was still playing. I was also in choir for a very long time and even spent my junior and senior years in an acapella Madrigal choir (I still have my costumes from both years) and even though it hasn’t been a whole year since I graduated, I still miss singing. I certainly don’t miss high school but I do miss that choir.

6. Do you collect anything? If so, what?

Not sure if this counts but I’ve been an achievement hunter/completionist since I played Ocarina of Time so I guess I “collect” video game achievements. I also collect lost things when I find them. I have an abandoned library card, two different gym membership cards, and a whole bunch of business cards. I have a small collection of lighters but that’s less about the joy of collecting and more about how often I burn incense. Aside from the usual stuffed animal collection that most people have from childhood, I don’t collect anything else.

7. How many songs are there in your music library?

This is kinda difficult for me to answer. I use Spotify and I don’t always download my music since I have unlimited data, but it currently says that I have 1070 “liked” songs which is likely a little conservative since I had to switch accounts last year and lost some of my music in the process. (This just got me thinkin, back in the iTunes era when songs were 99cents a pop I would have had to pay more than a thousand dollars for that kind of collection.)

8. If you could live anywhere in the world, and at any time in history, where and when would you choose?

So, by any time in history do you mean only the past or the future too? If future is an acceptable answer, I’m gonna say Star Trek. Like if Star Trek ever becomes vaguely reality, I’m going there. Even if the details are wrong, a career as a science officer on a space ship in a universe that isn’t constantly at war and is instead working towards peace and the pursuit of higher knowledge is perfect. If we’re only talking about the past, with no allowances for possible futures, then I think I’d want to live in the 80s in a metropolitan city like New York, Chicago, or Tokyo. Perhaps its misplaced nostalgia, but working as a secretary sounds nice. In the 80s you could still outright buy an apartment instead of renting it and it was actually semi-affordable (at least for the privileged) which as someone facing adulthood in the current economy, sounds like a dream come true. I guess I just want the simplicity and security of economy back then. Lookin for that yuppie life!

9. Have you ever performed live in front of an audience?

I have, several times. Although I’ve never been a headliner or anything I’ve played and sang at school concerts (even had a few solos) and my jazz band once performed for a dance hall full of people. I’ve never been paid unless you count getting a free CD but I’ve performed in front of quite a few live audiences.

Anyway, Jimbotnik didn’t write a tenth question so I guess I get an out. I’m sorry for my rambling answers, that’s just life. I’m gonna tag @jasminerobotnik @zoekrystall @rohotnik since y’all are my Sonic blog mutuals (like my header implies, I keep my main and this side blog separate for privacy’s sake) I’m also tagging @actsoflove @manicrobotnik @dusicielkusiciel @hamil-trash24 @lee-bunny @legally-immortal and @wutevrz

If you’re confused as to why I tagged you, I don’t have many mutuals so I picked followers who I’d seen some interaction from. You don’t have to play if you don’t want to and I’ll delete your tag if you’d prefer. As usual with these games, it’s also open to anyone who wants to get one of these started among their group so if you’re reading this post and wish you’d been tagged, that’s you.

My questions:

Do you wear glasses/contacts? If you wear glasses do you like how they look on you?

Do you have a playlist of music that’s just for when you’re sad? What are your favorite songs from it?

Is there a skill you consider yourself particularly good at?

If you’re the kind of person who uses a reusable water bottle, do you decorate it? If not, what is your favorite drink day to day?

Do you drink diet soda or can you not tolerate the taste?

Do you write fanfiction? What fandoms and genres? Do you share your fic with people you know in real life?

What’s your favorite scent? Do you often buy scented products like incense or candles?

Do you like scary movies? If so, what’s your favorite? If you don’t, what is your favorite genre of films?

What’s your go to movie snack when you’re watching in a theater? What about when you’re watching a movie at home?

What’s your favorite “medium” for art (sculpture, dance, music, painting, drawing, poetry etc.) and which one do you feel most adept at?

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hyunnie-bunches · 4 years

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Costume

Genre: fluff, Supernatural AU

Pairing: vampire!Mingyu x reaper!reader

Word Count: 1243

“He lied about having a wife!” You yell at the character on your TV screen, as you reach for another slice of the pepperoni pizza. “How can you possibly-“ You are interrupted by the loud ring of your bell. Reluctantly, you drop the pizza slice back into the box and pause the TV.

Not expecting anyone, you don’t bother fixing your appearance as you head to the door. When you open it, you come face to face with the grinning visage of your boyfriend. The smile quickly fades and is returned by a frown as he looks you up and down, taking in your messy bun, sweatpants, and an oversized shirt. His faded Rolling Stones shirt, incidentally, which he had gotten during their first American tour in 1964.

“Mingyu?” You ask, the confusion in your voice evident as you stare at the all-black outfit he has on, including a cape that is trailing behind him. To complete his look, he is caked in makeup that would even creep you out had he not been giving you puppy dog eyes at the moment.

“Y/N~~” He whines. “You aren’t dressed up!”

“Uhhh-“ You rack your brain to figure out why today would be relevant, but your brain is still sluggish from shock. Mingyu saves you from your misery though as he explains, “Halloween? The Day of the Dead? The one night of the year when being weird is celebrated?”

You quirk your eyebrow. “I see. Don’t you think we’re, I don’t know, a little old for that?”

Mingyu gasps in what you can only assume, or hope, is fake horror, and says, “You did not just say that! Halloween, like most things of value in life, does not have an age limit.”

“Right. And you’re dressed as…a reaper?” You say, catching sight of the unnecessarily realistic-looking scythe leaning against the doorframe.

A brilliant smile graces his lips again. “Yes!” He grabs the scythe and walks into your apartment. “And, since I anticipated this unfortunate turn of events, I took the liberty to prepare a costume for you as well!” Out of seemingly nowhere, he pulls out a store-bought costume packet and presents it to you as though presenting a precious jewel.

“Sexy Vamp Girl?” You question, reading off the text on the packet.

Mingyu’s smile dims just the slightest and he shrugs. “Well, I admit the thought that you may not have a costume only crossed my mind about an hour ago and so I had to make do with what was available.” He pauses. “And you have to admit, it’s kinda funny if you’re a vampire and I’m a reaper. You know, because I’m actually a vampire and you’re actually a reaper.” You shake your head at his ridiculous sense of humor, but can’t help the smile that threatens to spread across your lips at his genuine excitement.

“Come on, Y/N! It’ll be fun, I promise.” He passes the packet to you and shuffles you in the direction of your bedroom. “Just go change.”

When you emerge 5 minutes later, the only words to leave your mouth are “Absolutely not.”

Mingyu looks up from where was nibbling on a slice of pizza, and gives you a once over. Before he has a chance to say anything, you continue, “I look utterly and completely ridiculous.” The dress in the bag was not only so short that it barely covered your ass, but it was also so cheaply made that it looked borderline cartoonish. The fake fangs and uncomfortably sticky blood that was trailing down your jaw didn’t help either.

“You look fine.” Mingyu placates. “What’s the problem?”

You give him an incredulous look. “What’s the problem? The problem is that you look like you spent hours of time and effort and money on your costume and I look like I came up with mine in 15 minutes.”

“Which…is exactly what happened.”

You scowl. “But I don’t what everyone to know that that’s what happened. We look like we wouldn’t even talk to each other, let alone go anywhere together.”

Mingyu smirks, “Are you jealous I look better than you?”

You cross your arms and narrow your eyes at him. “Need I remind you that it is not me, but you, who wants to go our tonight and you are not helping your case by teasing me.”

Mingyu’s smirk doesn’t fade but he says, “Fine, fine. We can work with this, okay?” He walks towards you and looks at the costume again, thinking. “Do you happen to have a black or red dress? As long as we keep the fake blood and fangs, you should still be recognizable as a vampire.”

With a frown on your face, you walk back to your closet. After some serious rummaging, you dig up an old red dress with black mesh over it. Lifting it up for Mingyu to examine, you ask, “How about this?”

The dress had been one of those online purchases that looked amazing on your laptop, and significantly less amazing in person. But it was better than what you were currently wearing, and the somewhat old and tattered looking mesh was almost making the dress more appropriate for Halloween night.

“Hmmm” Mingyu hums, considering, “This could work. Wanna try it on?”

You do, and after some additional styling, you have to admit you don’t look too bad. The fangs, Mingyu insists, have to stay, but you manage to convince him to replace the sticky fake blood with your own (Pro #837 of being a supernatural creature: super fast healing). Once you look appropriately bloodied and have covered your face in makeup similarly spooky to Mingyu, you finally declare yourself ready to leave.

“So where are we headed?” You ask Mingyu, as you grab your phone and keys.

The instant change in Mingyu’s expression has your guard rising. “Mingyu?”

“Well…so the thing is, maybe I didn’t really make a plan for the night?” He rubs the back of his neck sheepishly.

You let out a sigh that could be exasperation or resignation. “Outrageous.” You mutter. “An hour and a half to acheive this-“ You gesture at yourself, “-and it’s all a waste.”

“It’s not a waste!” Mingyu starts, “Y/N. Tonight’s the spookiest, most active and least suspicion arousing night of the entire year. The world is our oyster! We can spook twenty somethings going to parties, pretend to work at a haunted house, steal candy from right under parents’ noses… basically, just use our abilities to cause some much needed choas without raising any suspicion.”

You eye him skeptically.

“Or we could meet everyone else at Seungkwan’s place and marathon scary movies.” He adds.

In an instant, everything clicks and you ask dryly, “Let me guess, there is a costume competition involved.”

“Maybe.” Mingyu says noncommittally, “or maybe I just like dressing up for Halloween.”

“You’re an idiot.” You say with a shake of your head, though the amusement is clear in your voice, and move to head out, Mingyu trailing behind you. “And you better hope I don’t get worst dressed or you’re in for it.”

“Don’t worry about it. You know Jihoon is going to put in half the effort you did. AND-” He runs to catch up with you. “-his makeup skills are nowhere near as good as yours.”

“You know I can tell when you’re buttering me up, right?”

He gives your a devilish smile. “Is it working?”

“Of course it is.”

#kim mingyu #seventeen mingyu #seventeen #mingyu fluff #vampire mingyu #seventeen fluff #mingyu #mingyu x reader #mingyu drabble #mingyu fic #seventeen fic #seventeen drabble #can we pretend i posted this last week?#also someone needs to teach me how to write endings #hyunnie writes

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ruoyeming · 4 years

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My Fav Books, another chaotic list

Another quarantine review fest! I know I ranked my top anime but this is seriously too hard so I’m just going to list them to avoid hours of debate. Enjoy!

1) The Skulduggery Pleasant series

This whopper of a series (now at 15 books jesus christ I didn’t know there were that many I’ve only read about twelve) has a special place in my heart. I was FULLY obsessed with it throughout my tween - and teen - years, and for a reason. This shit just butters my bread like nothing else. The story follows a young girl Valkyrie Cain (who eventually becomes a young woman through the series) and her partner in crime, a fashionable living skeleton called Skulduggery Pleasant. They’re MAGICAL DETECTIVES!!!! Bitch!!! They use elemental magic - water, earth, fire, air - to fight off magic-wielding bad guys and look good doing it. The duo is hilarious and seriously shaped my sense of humour, the dry wit and comedic writing style stuck with me and influenced my own writing style to this day! As the series progresses we get a massive cast of characters but to me they’re all memorable, likable (mostly) and well-developed so that’s not an issue. I have no fukcing clue how Derek Landy comes up with his stories because every book in the series has an absolutely wild (yet unique) plot with its own twists and turns. It gets REALLY dark and depressing at times, gory, brutal etc etc especially in the later books I have no idea why this is labeled as a kids series.

10/10 for badassery, humour, and MAD codependency issues

2) The Feverwake series

This bitch is one hell of a YA series. It’s actually only a 2 book-series which is rare, but that’s not the only thing that sets it apart from other creations of its genre. It’s hard to explain the setup without waffling so I’ll just quote the blurb of the first book: “In the former United States, sixteen-year-old Noam Álvaro wakes up in a hospital bed, the sole survivor of the viral magic that killed his family and made him a technopath. His ability to control technology attracts the attention of the minister of defense and thrusts him into the magical elite of the nation of Carolinia.

The son of undocumented immigrants, Noam has spent his life fighting for the rights of refugees fleeing magical outbreaks—refugees Carolinia routinely deports with vicious efficiency. Sensing a way to make change, Noam accepts the minister’s offer to teach him the science behind his magic, secretly planning to use it against the government. But then he meets the minister’s son—cruel, dangerous, and achingly beautiful—and the way forward becomes less clear.”

As you can tell from this, the series is heavy on its politics but in a grounded, realistic and relevant way which is different to many other YA series. Marxist theory is brought up, and you can make some pretty strong links between the books and real events. The magic also has a semi-scientific explanation which is cool and adds to the realness. Anyways this series is action packed and full of twists, plus there’s a bisexual main character and queer romance at the core!! Wig!!! Very good for moral debate - how far is it acceptable to go to protect the oppressed before you become one of the oppressors? Dark and exciting series.

10/10 queer representation and political themes.

3) Spin the Dawn

It’s probably obvious that I’m biased towards YA books but they’re just so exciting and cool! Anyways this is about a girl living in a kind of alternate universe ancient China where magic exists. Maia Tamarin is a skilled seamstress who dreams of being the Imperial Tailor, a position that can only be held by a man. She poses as her brother to go to the royal palace and enter a competition full of skilled tailors, all vying for the role of imperial tailor. She also meets Edan; a mysterious, annoying, but SEXY mage who seems to know her secret identity? Oho? IMO this would be an elevated book if Edan had been a girl but that’s just me being gay. As the final challenge Maia is tasked with making 3 dresses from the sun, moon, and stars - a mission that takes her to the ends of the world in search of these magical materials (obvs Edan goes with her and they kiss kiss fall in love). It’s a fairly classic YA plot and characters but the combination of Project Runway, Mulan, and kind of Lord of the Rings(??) vibes makes for a very entertaining read. It’s also really fun to imagine what the clothes look like, plus the romance between Maia and Edan is very cute. Second book is yet to be published but sounds lit.

10/10 magic fashion and romance (despite its heterosexuality)

4) Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Usually I steer clear of angsty gay stories because I’ve consumed too much of the depressing narrative which is all about suffering because of being gay, but fuuuuuuck this book is like the definition of bittersweet. Mostly bitter to be fair but it has a happy ending which was lovely after the emotional torment of the book. It’s about two teen boys - Aristotle is angry and repressed, Dante is eccentric but kind, and the two eventually form a strong friendship after meeting at the local pool. It’s kind of obvious that Ari is in denial about a few things, which leads to some real sad boi hours. There’s also a devastating moment around halfway (not sure) through with a car accident which makes the whole thing 10x heavier. Despite all this, the book has its sweet moments - parents play a big role, but not in the way they usually do in queer stories - and like I said the ending is the bandage for your broken heart. I’m not sure what it is about the writing style, maybe the way it just cuts between scenes randomly or perhaps the way the dialogue and actions are so realistic, but it’s so different to any other book I’ve read that it’s stayed in my mind for a while after reading it.

10/10 really good philosophy plus supportive parents

5) The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

Okay if this was a ranked list, this bad boy would be on its way to the top spot. It’s got everything: historical setting, gays, pirates, alchemy, humour, adventure, angst, character development, and some healthy second-hand embarrassment. It’s not complicated or philosophical but reading this book all in one go is like taking five shots and diving into a pool. It’s exciting and witty, but deals with darker themes like child abuse too. One of the MCs also has a disability and doesn’t treat it as something to be cured, which is a lesson our protagonist has to learn. Speaking of protagonists, Henry ‘Monty’ Montague is a great main character. He’s obnoxious, oblivious, and hedonistic yet quick-witted and passionate, and he has a good heart. Sometimes you just want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him for being such an ignorant idiot, but throughout the book he grows and learns to open his mind more (as well as becoming more humble). He’s a great example of a flawed yet likable main character. He is also a bisexual icon.

Oof forgot to even talk about the story. Monty embarks on a tour of Europe, usually taken by lads his age to get all cultured before they settle down and inherit the family company or whatever. With him are his younger sister Felicity, a girl with a brilliant mind for science who isn’t taken seriously by anyone because of her gender, and the lovely Percy, Monty’s lifelong best friend (and crush). Monty ends up stealing a very valuable object that turns the Tour into a manhunt across Europe, and drags the trio into a big ol’ conspiracy involving something that may or may not be the philosopher’s stone????

Issues of race, gender, and disability in historical context are really well done, and it’s an absolute banger of a book.

10/10 very exciting adventure, plus GREAT GAY ROMANCE

6) Heaven Official’s Blessing

HOOOOOO BOY. This is probably my absolute fave on this list. It’s a webnovel (originally Chinese but the full translation is online). Set in ancient china in the cultivation world (difficult as shit to explain if ur not into all of that but I’ll try), basically there’s three realms - the heavenly realm, the human/mortal realm, and the ghostly realm. If a mortal reaches a certain point (good deeds, power etc), they ascend to become a god - or if they fall far enough, they become a ghost.

I’ll just quote the author’s description again cause I don’t have the brain cells required:

“Eight hundred years ago, Xie Lian was the Crown Prince of the Xian Le kingdom. He was loved by his citizens and was considered the darling of the world. He ascended to the Heavens at a young age; however, due to unfortunate circumstances, was quickly banished back to the mortal realm. Years later, he ascends again–only to be banished again a few minutes after his ascension. Now, eight hundred years later, Xie Lian ascends to the Heavens for the third time as the laughing stock among all three realms. On his first task as a god thrice ascended, he meets a mysterious demon who rules the ghosts and terrifies the Heavens, yet, unbeknownst to Xie Lian, this demon king has been paying attention to him for a very, very long time.”

It’s hard to describe the enormity of this story and all the emotions it encapsulates, you really have to read it for yourself. But bitch the undying, pure, Hozier-devotion-level LOVE is by far my favourite part of this story. If you’re looking for an epic, god-tier gay romance, then this is it baby!! This story has comedy, action, and downright harrowingly depressing moments, but throughout is this achingly beautiful love between fallen god and last believer.

I don’t wanna give too much away cause there are some big ol’ plot reveals, but oooh this shit made me cry. The protagonist is MY FAVOURITE EVER I didn’t think it was possible to like a protag so much!! He’s legit my fave character! At first he seems oblivious and carefree but he’s just doing his goddamn best after all he’s been through and he’s so fukcing kind and just wants to help everyone for fuckcs sake excuse me I need to go have a breakdown.

Okay I’m back, anyway there’s a great cast of characters, even the background characters are all incredibly memorable and all given their time to shine and develop. My faves include Quan Yizhen, a rowdy himbo who just wants to fight, and Shi Qing Xuan, a friendly genderfluid god who controls the wind. Read this shit I’m not joking it’ll change your life.

10/10 for everything

#book review #book recommendations

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