#tangentially related: i am not actually dead

[textfromthelookout]

Did you hear of the news?

I have. :(

Everyone else has their tributes so, here, a summary of my experience with Dragon Ball.

I was in fourth grade art class. A kid had the February 2005 issue of Shonen Jump, back when Shonen Jump was still physically printed here. I recognized Atem on the front cover because the Blockbuster around the corner from our house had DVDs (I think they were DVDs and not VHSs then since I distinctly remember it having a menu and special features) of some of the later episodes of Duelist Kingdom and my brother and I watched them on repeat. So I was like oh, hey, what's this? They make books of that stuff? I don't remember the conversation but the kid ended up giving me that issue, and I took it home with me.

There were a LOT of significant, groundwork things happening in that issue, now that I think about it. We were just beginning to see Sanji truly in action against Pearl. The Dark Tournament was in it's early stages still with Roto fucking around and finding out against Kurama. Sakura shears off her hair in a move that rearranged sexualities the world over. The reason Atem was on the cover was because Yu-Gi-Oh Millennium World was just debuting its first and second chapter. Bleach wasn't even serialized yet. And Dragon Ball, of course, was also there, about a hundred and fifty chapters ahead of everybody else.

Keep in mind that this was my first experience with manga, period. So my very first experience with Dragon Ball opened on this:

and ended on this:

Yeah. Truth be told, at the time Yu Yu Hakusho piqued my interest more than Dragon Ball (a guy fighting with plants? how creative!) but I never did forget these chapters. I thought the art style was so different from the others.

At some point after this, probably between several months and a year and a half, the TV happened to be on one evening when Toonami was airing Dragon Ball Z. Oh hey, I said, I recognize that art, I know those characters. So I hung around and watched some of episode 281. Two things about watching that episode stick with absolute crystal clarity in my mind to this day. Firstly: Buu choking Vegeta out with his arm freaked me the FUCK out as a child. I could not tell you why I had a fear reaction to it but hey, there you go. The second is this:

Specifically I remember 'You died once. If anything happens to you now, you won't exist anymore. There'll be nothing I can do to bring you back.' Not precisely word for word over the years, but Schemmel's tone of voice on this particular lineread. If I had to guess I'd say it was because at that point in my life, uh, death was kinda permanent? So wait, what do you mean died ONCE. Doesn't that apply to everyone?

This still wasn't enough to get me super invested in it though, it just didn't seem like something that would appeal to me that much. So a couple years go by, I don't think about it all that much, and then of course, TFS hits the scene and drops DBZ Abridged. So you know. As a shithead middle schooler with a shithead sense of humor I thought it was the best damn thing since sliced bread. (My biggest character flaw is that I still think a lot of Season 1 is genuinely funny)

And that was really the extent of my interaction with the franchise for the next several years. Say what you will about DBZA but they did manage to put it all together such that someone who had a nonexistent concept of what the original context was could grok it with not a lot of effort. Some time in high school, I think I was around 15, I decided to bite the bullet and read all the manga, as much to increase the funny factor of DBZA as sheerly for the sake of being able to say I had. Stick it to the other weebs, y'know. Now they can't say I didn't know anything about good anime. This was unfortunately at a time when all that was available online were dirty poor-quality scans and questionable translations, but read it I did. I went 'yep, that sure is about what I expected', and proceeded to get on with my life. GT came and went, I looked up and saw Battle of Gods coming out and went 'oh hey that's still a thing huh', kinda was peripherally aware of all the divisiveness of Super as it was happening, didn't really pay it much attention, just stuck to DBZA and quite a lot of wiki-ing.

And then, this time of year about three years ago now, in the middle of conversation with @prophecydungeon, Dragon Ball somehow came up. Something to do with 'Even though I'm not hugely into DBZ's story or whatever Toriyama does have some great character designs' (yes I was referring to Vegeta and Future Trunks at the time, no i will not stop being predictable, yes i am a parody of myself). They eventually brought up the DBS Broly movie and said, and i quote: 'that was a solid 1.5h of unbelievably fun and wacky animation'. Having seen the Gogeta vs Broly part of it on twitter and been like 'damn that animation's kinda off the hook actually, good for them good for them', my response was to be like. Oh word? I've got a spare hour and a half to kill, sure, fuck it, why not, time to watch DBS Broly.

I think that movie was precision crafted to hit me in the hyperfixation, if we're being honest. Opening on a solid 20 minutes of Lore and Worldbuilding and then having most of the rest of the runtime being mindless slobberknocker fun by way of some of the hardest animation flexes ever? I was done for.

In summation. I have been aware of Dragon Ball for a lot of my life, in that its presence was pervasive and enduring as I grew up. I may have been late to the game of actually wholeheartedly enjoying it, but enjoy it I do. Dragon Ball is the roots of a vast tree of anime, and in reading it I began to understand why that is. I respect it for that, and I love it for that. My current fixation may have shifted, but as far as time devoted to one individual thing goes... it took me a year and a half to watch my way through all of the anime and read all of the manga. ALL of it. So there's something good in there, I'd say.

#rip to a legend #text from the mod #tangentially related: i am not actually dead #it's just that between school and my job and the pirate brainrot #(the previous four months of which was feverishly consumed with a 16k word project) #i have had neither time nor impetus to make dragon ball funnies #there is also the fact that my stupid autism brain is still fuming over the website changes #that have fucked up the Aesthetique of the text posts and made them much more annoying to get in a usable form #thus adding steps to what was a simple and comfortable process #and aforementioned idiot dumb brain has not stopped pitching a bitch fit over the inconvenience. #i know it's a stupid hangup. believe me i am fully aware. but there is so little i can do about it #so i am sorry about my long absence. i really truly am. #especially to the asks that have been chillin in my inbox for all this time now #it's just that they're interesting questions that deserve me giving 100% of my brainpower to them ya feel #i want to devote appropriate attention to these little funnies and not phone it in or half ass it LOL

[cozymochi]

never wrong 💃

#cozy texts #twstposting #(for context anyway) #love that for me [dances] #but lowest of lowest of low keys #if they’re gonna give longer and longer breaks inbetween crumbs of actual progression #and little to no substantial distraction events in between #they may as well wrap it up now lol #Cuz the longer the wait in between the more folk end up stewing in their thoughts #and the more elevated ppls expectations get as they’re forced to reflect longer #even then the loooong periods of nothing kinda wreck the flow in this climate where folk would rather binge. #and with media literacy being dead the responses can only get more extreme from here. #But who am i to say i dont even play that version i just get tangential awareness. #mildly twst spoiler related but no overt mentions. #Either way it’s def a scenario where the medium is starting to work against the ambition of their lil’ plot. #Or at the very least because of the breaks the flaws of the release format are getting a lil more noticeable each time. #Its giving….steven bomb. #It’ll probably be a better sit when it’s just aaaall out and can be viewed as a single 10 hr package. #arc fatigue set in and the nibbles of tip toeing forward can be a bit #immersion breaking. i think.

[vamptastic]

that post is so so real though i am fucking constantly writing essays in my head and it's maddening. if you guys think my stream of consciousness tags are annoying then buddy will not believe how irritating it is to live inside my own head. they're not even good essays.

#i'm either giving a long diatribe or dead silent is just kind of how i am #the perk is that im real good at writing actual essays. kind of. #i do a freewrite where i essentially write five seperate essays on tangentially related topics #and then shed a single tear as i cut it down into one essay on one topic #but the essays in my head? annoying. #i will start an internal essay and then realize ive been looking at the wall for a full half hour #and its just like. useless garbage. #writing them down does NOT help it just takes longer. i have 75+ drafts all ~5 pages long about different topics #and each of them is like. an hour or two of me writing an unposted tumblr rant. for no reason.

[betweenlands]

Ok ill bite whats dominion smp?

BOY AM I GLAD YOU ASKED

dominion smp, which some members call DSMP for what's probably seo reasons but i find intensely hilarious because it's technically not wrong to abbreviate it like that, is a small lightly modded server based around the origins mod! basically, each member has a different origin, and in much the same way empires members are loosely the ruler of their respective countries, you can sort of consider each dominion member to be kind of a paragon of their respective origin.

thing is, while dominion is defined in part by its relation to the origins mod, there is also a lot of plot stuff that happens that is only tangentially related to the fact that everyone is creatures -- you've got people beefing over stolen goods, everyone sort of vying for power in a vacuum while trying to not seem obvious about it, taxes of "give me all of your diamonds every two weeks i am no longer asking nicely", and also. whatever the hell is going on with shadowmech.

oh yeah also literally like 75% of these ccs have 2000+ day hardcore worlds so the builds are insane.

here's a masterpost on everyone's povs! it doesn't have their Vibes down rn but i can do that really briefly (EDIT LOL NO IT'S NOT BRIEF THIS IS GOING UNDER A CUT):

starting members:

jamiejoan/jammers, dragonborn: elected queen of the server during s1. has a corruption arc, as one does. not many s1 episodes, but (without spoiling anything) her pov for s2 is unique and worth checking out

grady, enderian: doesn't have many episodes and is mainly a streamer. his character is half wet cat and half "guy that makes that's what she said jokes", but somehow in a different direction from scar?

legundo, piglin: champion of the piglins, sent to the overworld by his people for. well for takeover purposes probably. this mostly involves doing capitalism and having trusting-distrustful dynamics with the besties. actually the main server admin but this never comes up incharacter.

fixxitt, inchling: starts off as a thief, escalates WILDLY until by episode 5 welsknight is telling him "you fucked up, buddy" and then he builds a gigantic house. has 2 musical numbers in the middle of episodes that will absolutely knock you out if you're not prepared. also has very good cinematics.

nukeri, elytrian: democracy lover and guy who really, really just wants everyone to get along. canonically descended from icarus; all my friends have emotions about him and i haven't watched him yet but he's a major blorbo-in-law. i'd make a joke about how he's the resident gay scot of the server since they couldn't get smajor, but he literally does have a voice cameo from scott in his s1 finale.

rnjoy, witch: loves doing mad science, committing tax fraud, and has a mushroom son in s2 now. not a lot of s1 episodes but she loves her ravager gertrude i know that much. currently being hunted by --

shadowmech, witherborn: hitman of the server who is only withered rn because he ate a really bad porkchop. no episodes currently, he's in the process of doing a supercut of all his s1 stuff. is also in the process of uh. being very possessed and possibly being the s2 arc baddie rn. it's. fiiiiine. he's just not speaking to anyone and also attacking them during blood moons! totally chill

sneve, blazeborn: like if keralis was oli orionsound but with less musical numbers. sneve is an experience that cannot be described. just. watch his episodes there's only like 3 of them it'll tell you everything and nothing you need to know

taneesha, goat: lover of domes and also psychological warfare. started an advancement race probably as an excuse to steal people's shit. not a lot of s1 episodes but has some plot stuff anyway since she kind of got invited to join jamie's. void cult. yeaaaahhhh.

started midway thru s1:

vikingpilot, phantom: SOMETHING IS SO VERY WRONG WITH HIM. sweet ghostboy who is also incredibly unhinged. canonically dead and was also intangible and invisible for the beginning half of s1 up until the dragon fight. does dark magic, or is at least planning to do dark magic. pluralcoded and you can fight me on this. honestly my top pick for "if you only get one pov"

started at the beginning of s2:

progamebot/josh, sporeling: one video so far! joy's mushroom son. helping her make potions out of a van in the desert atm, which is. actually a breaking bad reference, not a reference to that other dsmp. canonically like a week old at the most. doing pretty well considering this.

kiply, fairy: no episodes yet, but uh. i've been watching her other stuff on and off and something is seriously wrong with her in the best way possible. plays on i think at least 2 different lifesteal-type smps? she is unhinged. she is not a reliable narrator. i love her.

dalilred (wolf) and itsryan (iron golem) also REALLY recently joined so i haven't gotten a pin on their vibes yet. red seems like she has a little bit of a cottagecore aesthetic and ryan seems to be kind of closer to sneve on the shitposter end of the mcyter spectrum, but that's all i've got

#WHEW didnt mean to infodump that hard #dominion smp #anonymous #ask #orig #yt #dominioners

[ot3]

thoughts about the beginning of umineko chapter 6

this short interaction here has been making me feel insane

like theres just so much swirling around my head here

whatever relationship beatrice and kinzo had seems, to put it lightly, fucked up. as much as beatrice seems to hold pride in her title of family alchemist every time we actually explore her relationship to kinzo it seems like a fucking hostage situation

whatever beatrice's relationship to battler is it involves the events of 6 years ago, when battler attempted to leave the ushiromiya family

kinzo being fully confirmed dead before the games start, battler's piece solving the epitaph, and battler becoming the game master and thus the sorcerer at the end of game 5 has him both inherit kinzo's position literally and metatextually.

beatrice was theorized to be kinzo's mistress, and in the game where beatrice showed up as a piece the siblings all hypothesized that she was the long lost child of kinzo's mistress come to stake her claim on the family fortune

and on the subject of long lost children battler has said that there is a chance that he was the baby natsuhi pushed off a cliff 19 years ago, which. well for starters if that's true then what does that mean for his biological relationship to ange? they have the same hair color. what does it all mean. anyway

game 5 also showed us more of natsuhi's feelings of respect towards kinzo and desire to belong to the family proper which, obviously, were not in any way returned by the real kinzo himself and were only there in her delusions

erika uses the 5th game to essentially frame natsuhi for having an affair with kinzo, essentially forcibly casting her as his mistress despite her only seeing him as a father

i dont know man i dont know like this isnt even Theorycrafting i am just trying to untangle the rancid vibes happening in umineko and its impossible. it really took me awhile to get hooked here but i am fully invested in beato's wild ride. on a tangentially related note this stuff with featherine and ange is VERY orv.

#umineko

[firstkanaphans]

Am I the only one who thinks the baby is actually Ayan who's been struck by lightning?? He must have seen the shooting star too and wished for a new beginning with Akk? He's gonna pop up later like Gawin in that scene from Enchante, buck naked in Akk's bedroom

Haha oh my god, that would be epic. You’re the only person who has said they thought the baby was Aye, but someone else asked if the baby was a reincarnation of Aye, which made me sad because that would mean Aye was dead. But no, I swear the baby is not any version of Aye. It is its own entity.

Also, this is only tangentially related to this ask, but I’ve been playing around with those stupid face morph things to show what your baby will look like and I need y’all to meet Dao. Look at those cheeks!!! 😭

#asks #stardust fic

[bleachbleachbleach]

I was rereading chapter 176 and on page 16 Aizen says “We left the underground assembly hall open only for a few hours before and after the two captains meetings.” Am I misreading this or is Aizen really claiming that they handled shifts in central 46 so that someone left a few hours before a meeting started and then one of them came back when the meeting started only for them leave it empty for another few hours after the meeting ended?

NB: The new thing I am obsessed with is only tangentially related to the original question, but if anyone was wondering 'what's B3 chewing on now, is it toxic, do we need to go to the vet' it's down there!

--

That does seem to be what Aizen is saying... But, like I don't really understand what his narrative and/or Ichigo gains by knowing this? Like, why is this an important logistical detail to be highlighting?

I would HOPE it means they took shifts and they didn't just sit in the chamber all together for days on end, but I also don't know why they would need to be there at all? I can understand why they'd need to be there to issue orders, but that doesn't make it sound like they'd need to stay. If, as Aizen says, 1) anyone who entered would see the illusion of the Central 46 alive and well, and 2) no one was going to enter, anyway. Three layers of protection? That's a lot of failsafe for someone with a lot of confidence in the power of his illusions.

One thing that I was interested in is what span of hours those two captains' meetings were comprised of, and what the three of them were up to during those periods beyond the Central 46 chambers. The meetings in question take place in Chapters 81-83 and Chapter 98. The first one is to rebuke Ichimaru, and the second one is to discuss the escalation of the ryoka issue. These are both very early on in the arc! They don't even hold a captain's meeting to discuss AIZEN'S DEAD BODY IMPALED ON A WALL LOL. Who needs unified strategy when you can just do... whatever it is they did. Ukitake and Hitsugaya weren't even *at* the second meeting.

I dunno, I'm having difficulty getting past the "this part of the plan was superfluous, Aizen what even" part of my brain here.

What follows is not something I think is necessarily true, or even something that seems likely. But one thing that I think would definitely be interesting is to consider that those few hours before and after these captain's meetings were the only times ANY of these three were actually out and about in the world. Like, let's pretend the three of them just spent the entire arc at a Central 46 slumber party together, and it was only illusions waking around for the rest. This level of illusion would kind of track with what Aizen claimed in TBTP, where he had Joe Shinigami follow Shinji around, under the illusion that it was Aizen. You're expected to be there, so you are.

Again, I don't think this is likely, but I'm... kinda into it? Because it would mean that there was potential for Hinamori's nighttime rendezvous with Aizen to have actually taken place with Hinamori alone, with no Aizen at all. It could also mean that Hinamori never throws hands with Kira to get at Ichimaru, and Kira is in actuality defending no one. It could mean that Hitsugaya confronts no one at the 3rd Division dance plaza--except for Hinamori.

Where this gets very appealing to me its its "WOW HOW TO MAKE THESE MOMENTS EVEN WORSE!" factor. Because, in this potential interpretation, a world could exist where not only was the Aizen who comforted Hinamori here doing so disingenuously, he wasn't even there.

[Bleach 100]

(But maybe there is power in that, too. To realize that inasmuch as Aizen was an illusion, it was something you had power in shaping, too. It's a hard thing, to understand your own will as being part of the sword that harmed you. But maybe there is a little iron there, too. To know that at in your moment of fear, your moment of need, you could write it for yourself. You gave it to yourself. And no matter the ugliness around it all, the rotten layers that must be peeled back, you gave yourself what you needed. Just you.)

#if there is a 'team aizen kaper chart' -> hinamori storyline pipeline know that B3 will find it every time #aizen sousuke #hinamori momo #bleach #asks #bleach カラー #bleach manga #no brain just bleach

[boypussydilf]

FINALLY. someone else who thinks 302 is boring as hell. i only ever see people talk about liking it like the majority of it isnt 2 different segments of 3 Rooms With One Music Track Looped For 45 Minutes (Or More)! that being said i love the concept and the astral projection framing device and i love that the remaster is giving maximus his stupid little newsboy hat. and of course there is the ending leading into 303 😁

ITS NOT JUST ME!!!!! oh my god ive never seen people talk about it at All i didnt even know if people liked it or not. People Like It? it’s like………. it’s All Setup. it has very little going for it on its own its just setup for the rest of the game. i’ve always wondered if it’s more fun to Play than to Watch, when you’re actually trying to Solve The Puzzles, but i do doubt it. it’s just. eh. eh. “the devil’s playhouse is such a great game one of my favorites” i say and then i consider one of its episodes an exhausting nightmare. the rest of the game is good but they did not do a very good job with that one i think. they flopped a little

BUT GOD. IVE ONLY HAD MAXIMUS WITH HIS HAT FOR 1 STILL IMAGE AND ALREADY SEEING HIM HATLESS IN THE ORIGINAL GAME JUST LOOKS SO WRONG. I CANNOT FUCKING WAIT FOR THE REMASTER AND HIS SILLY LITTLE NEWSBOY CAP!!!!!!!! THERE IS A GOOD AND JUST GOD (MAXIMUS HAT RESTORED)

this is only tangentially related but that just reminds me how excited i am to see any other changes/additions like that in the s3 remaster…. the Graphics/Lighting/Modeling/Animations updates are nice but s3 doesn’t need them as much as the first 2 did. it does extremely look like it was made in 2010, and it’s not as nice looking as the remasters, but visually it does totally still hold up, it’s Got good lighting and camerawork, no one’s opening this game and thinking “man this looks like shitty wet cardboard”. (and i’m Always going to be frustrated by the remaster having less Grit and Realistic Textures and being more smooth and vivid and cartoony. but it was a little jarring going straight from s2 to s3 and suddenly the buildings look like this game was made in gmod.) uhh i lost track of what i was saying. Oh right well anyway. aside from the Graphics Updates the other thing really fun about the remasters is all the stuff like… like giving maximus his hat from the concept art. like widening the hole into flint paper’s office and angling the camera through it. updating the Christmas Future scenery in 201 to be consistent with how they actually model that scene in the last episode. Doing all these things that they wanted to do the first time around but couldn’t because of technical limitations and now they can! So I wanna see what other things like that they might do in the tdp remaster……. this could’ve been its own post but i already got this far.

anyway hell yes for 302 having a really cool framing device and really cool ending 👍👍👍👍👍👍 hell no for how its so boring i would rather be looking at pretty much anything else 👎👎👎👎👎👎 and another hell yes for maxs dead grandpas gay little hat 👍👍👍👍👍👍

#Man…… People Like It? #its…. the most boring episode of the ttgs….. #basilask #snmposting

[luneevenfall]

Okay actually I WILL talk about that smut reblog a bit in my own words bcuz I am still a newer nsfw writer and know that I am not perfect, not nearly. I don't want to flood the OG post so I'm doing my own separate thing.

But I wanted to explain a few scenarios for my stories in which the sexual scenarios serve outside purposes as well as just y'know, being hot.

Morag and Melia: Morag is willing to fuck just about any woman in the vicinity, but the dynamic between the two of them develops as a sort of game of life and death; Melia's trying to kill her, Morag's trying to get her to enjoy herself and let go of those things that bother her. As their relationship gets physically closer, Melia starts to question why she even wanted Morag to die in the first place.

Scarlet and Ollie; this one's the obvious one for me, really. Their entire story (when it'll end up being written, prolly a short story) is basically tangentially related sex scenes all centering around one premise: Scarlet is chasing Ollie for his "crimes"; and when she catches them, instead of you know. Arresting her. They have sex. Because Scarlet has some emotional shit she's dealing with, and this is stress relief. It's also a desire to rebel on Scarlet's part, against her role as the knight captain, and eventually, it's what brings her to want to get away, to be her true self, to embrace who and what she really is. The sex is a huge part of getting there for her, emotionally. Like a ticket.

This isn't true for their overall sex life, but Ren and Petunia's sex scene that was one of the few things I've written; several months of being too busy to even sleep in the same bed, they're finally fed the hell up and have sex all night. But really, what that prompts is for Ren to suggest that the two of them just leave all this shit behind - go somewhere just the two of them. The desire for a life away from all of the bullshit of the noble society in which they reside. The womanly urge to run away and become forest nymphs.

Nudity and general intimacy is the theme of Stella and Cecil's story; insofar as Stella has struggled with intimacy in her dead-end marriage (she's sapphic and doesn't know) and how meeting Cecil, someone completely removed from that life and able to engage with her on a deeper level, makes her feel that closeness again, that desire for intimacy; the sex in this scenario has to do with Stella finally realizing what kind of situation she's been putting herself into by pretending everything's ok in her life and that she should at least be happy just to BE married at all.

ANYWAYS. I could go on; there are more than just these guys, just who I thought of off the top of my head. I use sexual themes a lot in my stories. These are the ones in which I think sex scenes might actually be necessary for the story; the rest is just "Haha what if x and y fucked in the forest" scenarios. But I wanted to bring to light some of my OCs and how I use sex in their narratives for good character stuff!

THANKS FOR READING!

#my ocs #original character #oc #sapphic #lgbtq+ #my writing #lesbian #nonbinary

[un-pearable]

s4 thoughts: okay honestly im really surprised the tournament arc came this early in the show because for some reason i thought it came a lot later. either i had. so much fun this was such a fun arc. i was also familiar with wayyy way more of this season than the other ones which was surprising so i mustve watched the bulk of it at least twice or something.

okay lets get the worst thing out of the way so that we can talk about things i really liked. the . euuuuuugh the garmadon / misako / wu love triangle that they still keep bringing up for some reason. actually im just going to take a snippet of one of my angry discord rants and leave it at that

number 2: THE RESOLUTION OF THE JAY/NAYA/COLE LOVE TRIANGLE!!!! thank GOODNESS im so glad that is done. i'm glad we're all friends again and dont have to bring that up in any sort of significant way going forward. hopefully. id like to see more friendship shenanigans please writers please

number 3: im obsessed with how absolutely and entirely confused i am about the timeline of ninjago. i understand nothing. i really dont and i think the writers are just as confused as i am

number 4: i think they did a better job w skylor/kai than any of the other ships so far but also half of that is because im pretty sure it being kind of shallow but having the potential to be an actually functional and mildly interesting relationship is the point instead of on accident this time. at least thats what i got out of it

number 5: speaking of skylor, who the heck is her mom. real question. this is always my question whenever any dude has a child with no mention of a mom especially because half the men in question i could not see anybody getting married to them in a million years.

number 6: i feel like the writing got significantly better this season. the plot was tighter and the jokes were a lot funnier and . yeah i dont know i had so much fun the fights were engaging without dragging on too much on characters we dont have any real investment in and i really like how they didnt just put everybody into the same stone pit and had them beat the snot out of each other. many points for creativity.

number 7: your tags on my last ask

literally SOOO true nothing else to add you hit the nail on the head. tangentially related question but is it ever explained how chen got his hands on pixal & zane (???)

number 8: lloyd & garmadon continues to be the most interesting and compelling relationship in the show, which is great for me because im terribly invested in this. my curse in life is that the more invested i am in a character or relationship the more my brain locks up when i try to talk about it so trying to put something into words is like pulling teeth but !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THEY WERE SO GOOD THIS SEASONNNN im also really glad they let lloyd be mad for five minutes when garmadon decides to send himself to the spirit realm or whatever to save ninjago. thank you writers. also having lloyd be the one to send him off like 😭😭😭 wow yall really out here making him kill his dad Again but also YESSSSS yesss couldnt have chosen anybody better this was so good

number 9: some more miscellaneous things, but like. dude this season was so fun. the premise is "the ceo of this megacorp noodle company is actually is holding an underground fight ring between all the elemental masters so he can steal all their powers and use it to turn all his men into anacondri" is absolutely wack and i am 10000000% here for it. still not over how the prisoners built a jet to escape the underground noodle factory, btw. some other misc observations

also cannot believe they worked literally DARETH into this. incredible showstopping spectacular amazing this was so much fun. 9/10 (<- one point docked for subjecting me to more garmadon/misako/wu) arc

1) ah yes,, the misako frustration reigns eternal. i will never get over how interesting she had the potential to be (implied to be badass archaeologist adventurer who’s also setting the trend for deadbeat moms? at the very least she could be frustrating but fun) and the dedication to making her the good guy in all conceivable situations is ACTIVELY harming the narrative. i wish she could be shitty in a fun way so bad

2) hell yeah!!!! the love triangle is annoying but cole and jay’s dynamic through out this season is very dear to me. its stupid as hell but dear.

3) mhm mhm mhm. it gets so painfully clear that they grew out of the original plan for the series VERY quickly after s2 and over time it only gets funnier as they try harder and harder to justify each new season’s premise. personal fave is “fuck it video game”

4) skylor and kai is fun!!! i’m not usually a fan of those kinds of dynamics but they’re more convincingly attracted to each other and maybe have the momentum + desire to make it work than. pretty much every single other romantic relationship at this point

5) ahh… the villains inexplicable child dilemma. theoretically she had to be the previous master of amber but imo it’s much funnier if chen just yoinked skylor from somewhere. or she was just 100% down for evil machinations and skylor’s the weirdo in the family for being half decent. either way good fuckin question why is this so ridiculously common

6) yeah!! the fights and competitions are actually pretty creative and the structure did tie the whole season together well,, this seasons technically less exciting than the others but you can def tell they had a much clearly vision and plan for it. and the roller derby is funny as hell so

7) i could talk about zane for ages and ages.. the day i finally write the android-becomes-human trope fic about him and pixal (is probably never going to come bc i can’t decide When it should take place bc his opinions would be vastly different) is the day i win. i believe it’s canon that robin’s the one who turned them over? zane rebuilt himself, pixal found him and then they got captured (the ending of s3 was supposed to tease about zane’s new body but i think it didn’t get animated correctly). i very much could be wrong but i’m like 80% sure that’s canon

8) GOD YEAH ITS SO GOOD. lloyd and garmadon carry the character dynamics for the entire show. utterly tragic. stunning. i also have nothing coherent to say about them but will never shut up about them. i want to stick s1 lloyd and current lloyd into a box and shake it until the emotions and complex feelings about their father come out

9) IT IS IT REALLY IS. ninjago at its core MUST be goofy as hell and s4 embraces it in SUCH a good way. later they get too good at angst i need stupid shit and stupid shit we get. (okay not really. what i mean is early goofiness fits with the established show, where later stuff is more. spontaneous and lol random wouldnt-it-be-funny-if stuff rather than part of the narrative’s status quo) agshdjfjfkf tysm for your reactions im never going to be able to watch it w/o those being in my head again.. ooohh there’s something there about ourboros but i don’t have words for it rn. the narrative is constantly eating itself to rewrite what was once canon so they can tell new stories. it’s crumbling under the weight of needing to tell more and more new and creative things in a world that was built for four ten minute glorified advertisements,, consuming itself and rewriting its own history by necessity…

#idk where i’m going with that last bit. anyway hell yeah my main man dareth #also!!!!! i know it’s in your next ask and im gonna do that next but don’t stop!!!! im really enjoying this #i LOVE live-blogs i’ve just been busy today #i totally thought i’d posted this one but it got stuck in my drafts apparently #i’ve been spending 99% of my time drawing lately and forgot to check 😔 #i’ve been enjoying the hell out of this though so if you want to keep doing it im absolutely here for it im having so much fun #sorry these are basically essays now agdhdjf #fun though. you’ve got killer insight and it’s super interesting seeing what you latch onto #text✨ #ninjago #liveninjablogging

[harocat]

I recall that the dream arc of tteotm didn’t work that well for you. Was it not being into Mingye and Sangjiu as characters or did you feel it was a deeper structural problem

Ming Ye and Sang Jiu on their own were... mostly fine. Their romance was even pretty cute at first. The arc also had incredible aesthetics, so it had that going for it.

First and foremost, the arc was too long. Battle scenes too lengthy, endless convoluted misunderstandings etc. This is time that could have been dedicated to many other things, including the immortal arc later on.

Secondly, the dubious consent scene with Ming Ye and Sang Jiu. Not only did the show not seem to play it as dubcon, but it was just completely out of character for Sang Jiu. I tried to put this behind me, but it was extremely hard, and tangentially related but I'll always be bugged by the fact that Tantai Jin and Li Susu's' 'first time' together in a sense was when they were in those bodies, being forced to act it out. OFC none of this is Ming Ye or Sang Jiu's fault, but it just made the whole thing more screwed up to me. I wanted it to be brought up, but I knew it never would be. One of the reasons I WANTED them to get a scene where they explicitly consummated their relationship is because I wanted them to have something better than... that. So I am glad the show at least gave me Li Susu and Tantai Jin getting to do that in episode thirty-nine.

(To be clear even if this scene wasn't dubious consent on the part of Sang Jiu, I still would have been kind of upset for TTJ and LSS, but it makes it a lot worse.)

I guess the biggest issue is really that the characters were so stupid. Tian Huan was a pointless character. She had NOTHING to her except her crush on Ming Ye, which led her to do all this fucked up and evil shit. Say what you will about Bingchang (who also drove me nuts lol), but she had more meat to her; motivations and issues deeper than just 'stereotypical jealous bitch.' Every moment with TH on screen was insufferable. In no way was she ever fun to watch or even fun to be angry at. While it's true that villains are sometimes created to be hated, there should be some aspect of strong feeling associated with that that enhances your experience, as opposed to just 'I'm so annoyed I want to stop watching.'

Ming Ye and Sang Jiu constantly made the dumbest decisions, especially Ming Ye. I know xianxia loves the miscommunication plotlines, and obviously there was plenty of that between Li Susu and Tantai Jin, but as frustrating as theirs was, it was at least understandable why it would happen. These two just had a multiple choice selection and chose the worst one every time. Ming Ye was the worst about this, and I understand that this was new to him (and 'this was my first time being a husband' was a lovely line btw), but it was still so maddening to watch. Instead of being sad for them, often I was just mad.

There were some great moments. Evil Sang Jiu was hot. The scenes in the forest when Ming Ye was recovering were beautiful and legitimately touching. Sang You is my boyfriend, and he is also gender. I LOVE that she actually got to take out TH, and I love when she stepped forward and said 'this is not a transaction.' That was SO good. That being said, even close to the end, after TH was dead, I felt like their ill fate was entirely preventable. That this all took place with the background being a potentially apocalyptic war going on did not help, because it did make it all feel very banal.

But as maybe a three or even four episode arc, I think it could have worked much better.

I also didn't think it played well into the final arc in a satisfying way. TTJ repeating Ming Ye's fate was awful to see. He's even stuck in the scale! Sang Jiu had no play in the last arc at all, even though she easily could have with the world overturning jade. It felt really unfair to her, but it does track with how LSS was treated. My honest opinion is that if the dream arc was utilized well in the final episodes, it would have given multiple routes to a very logical, well foreshadowed ending storyline (with yes, an HEA). I would have forgiven a lot from it if it ended up being a set up for some really excellent story beats in the final five episodes. But it just wasn't.

#haro talks #anonymous

[ixcaliber]

April

This month I’m going to try not to lose my mind a little bit as I write this post. Fingers crossed.

1. The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog

The best kind of april fools joke is one where there is an actual thing of substance to it and it stands on its own as something that could just exist outside of the idea that it’s a funny april fools joke.

The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog is a free visual novel with platformer elements, and it’s a lot of fun. Even as someone who doesn’t know every sonic character, doesn’t get some little background references and cameos this is a fun game with a fun narrative and satisfying payoff.

The platformer elements are like abstractions, little tasks to be completed which if successful indicate the player character having successfully thought their way through to the conclusion of the argument they want to make. It’s a little abstracted but it works well enough in the game. Some of the later bits are actually quite tough but there are accessibility options for anyone who needs them.

Lot of fun. Absolute recommendation.

2. You Are Dough

A new tiny experience from npckc (a year of springs). Playable in browser. Good illustration of a concept. Exactly as long as it needs to be.

3. Gexfeld

A game about nothing.

It’s a game where you traverse awkward geography and listen to the same unfunny jokes again and again as you struggle with the awkward controls. It feels user hostile in a very intentional way and combines these two completely disparate elements in a way that works surprisingly well to showcase what feels like thinly veiled contempt of its source materials. Maybe I’m reading too much into a game about nothing but still.

4. I Want To Pursue The Mean Side Character

Very short and straightforward visual novel about girls being gay for each other. Character deisgn is cute. It’s a little too predictable and simplistic for it to really leave any lasting impression. But it I am always happy to see girls being gay and happy together.

5. Magic Mirror Hall

Short visual novel about seeing an established relationship from an outsider’s perspective. It was interesting to play through as the choices really did make me feel conflicted in how best to handle a situation I was only tangentially part of.

The game does a really good job at evoking the idea of a world with the little snippets that you learn about magic and how it relates to the psyche of an individual delivered in a naturalistic manner.

6. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands

Playing this game for the first time was like the arrested development dead dove meme. I was excited to play it as I had fond memories of Assault on Dragon Keep (a Borderlands 2 DLC from which this is spun off) and it just never crossed my mind what a full game based on this concept would mean.

It feels weird to say it out loud but I think the thing that I like the most about Borderlands is the setting itself. And some of the characters also I guess. It’s not the gameplay, aesthetic, sense of humour or tone.

In this you’re playing a character playing a game of Bunkers and Badasses DMed by Tina and so instead of the borderlands worlds and their strange worlds and varied creatures you are exploring the wonderlands, a generic fantasy world with generic fantasy monsters.

It really was a case where if I’d thought about it I would have concluded that this would be what the game was but I hadn’t and so it felt a little disappointing, especially since your party for this game are two new characters who I never quite warmed to as much as you would hope given their prominence.

Frette and Valentine are supposed to be there to represent the extremes of ‘follow the rules of the game’ and ‘roleplay and do what you want’, but I never read them this way until they have an entire conversation where they explicitly state that that is their whole thing. I mean rule of comedy has them both ignoring the rules whenever they want. The vibe I initially had was that Valentine was supposed to be like the charisma character who attempts to befriend and seduce every character he meets and Frette was supposed to be playing a murderhobo.

And this reading isn’t supported by the game either but it makes more sense to me in theory at least. Then the conflict between them is more about connecting to the world and the people in it than whether or not a rule that we as the players don’t know anything about because it’s just a game mechanic - or not even a game mechanic it’s a narrative abstraction of a game mechanic - isn’t being followed.

Also the character customization kinda sucks and despite giving myself cat ears I still couldn’t really manage to make a character who looked appealing. Also I think having custom characters of set character classes is just a fundamentally worse way of doing it. It makes the character you play as feel completely hollow as they say the most generic quips.

I picked Sporemancer or whatever. I had a little mushroom buddy, which seemed cute when I was picking the class but when it got to playing the game I quickly realized that they not only weren’t cute their main thing would be farting to get enemy aggro and while useful it means that 90% of things my character said were reactions to my mushroom farting.

That said as I continued through the game there were a couple of areas (the beanstalked village, the empty ocean) that were actually pretty memorable and interesting to explore.

The thing that got me interested was how the villain of the setting The Dragon Lord always talked about Tina and seemed to bear a personal grudge against her and it got me thinking about Spec Ops The Line. Spec Ops The Line is the game I hold emblematic of the brief trend to make a game that makes you do a bunch of bad things and then calls you out for it and while I do like that specific game I did always used to think, ‘if we’re bad for playing it what does it say about the people making it’. 

There are some pretty good moments with The Dragon Lord, where he points out for example that you’re just a pawn in Tina’s game as well. Despite the conceit of the game (you’re the fatemaker the one person in the wonderlands with free will) you don’t actually have free will, you can’t reject the main story to kill the Dragon Lord you can only either do it or ignore it.

He mentions that you’re essentially interchangable, an unremarkable cipher just to play the role of hero so the other characters can exist and do things and brings up that nobody has ever said your name, and it’s true. I mean it’s partially true because you’re given a free prompt to enter whatever name you want (I chose Piss because I was annoyed at the time or something. Look sometimes I just do things and there are no reasons) but it does touch something true about the experience.

Of course we could never have Valentine advocating trying to talk things out, befriending or seducing people because as ever the only verb that Borderlands has is kill. It would be incongrous if he said anything that made you try to connect to the Wonderlands as a world because by the very mechanics of the game you never can and never will be able to do so.

The end was a let down. All this stuff about the nature of the game that I’ve been enjoying for the last few paragraphs, I think it got in the game on accident because they definitely don’t seem to want you to agree with the Dragon Knight. If I’d have been writing this game I would have done some absolutely wonderful bullshit at the end. It could have been so good. I’m seriously considering writing fanfic of it.

7. Sonic Frontiers

It would be difficult to make a sonic game worse than Sonic 06 but they certainly tried.

I wanted to like it and conceptually I don’t think it’s unsalvageable. But the problems are significant and numerous including the aesthetic, the jank, whether or not this is a 3d sonic game or a 2d sonic game in a trenchcoat, the basic act of navigation, sonic’s deathwish, the combat, the characterization and the fucking pinball.

Chapter One: The Aesthetic

Its awful. That’s it. That’s the end of this chapter. You all have eyes you can see for yourself how it clashes with Sonic, how it looks like the kind of premade assets you’d see in an asset store with a bunch of sonic objects just thrown in at random.

I still think it could have worked, with just some attempt at bridging the gap between Sonic and the world he is inhabiting. A more colourful world, even with the same exact scattershot design would look more coherant. I watched The French Dispatch this month and that’s a great movie, I didn’t think I’d be mentioning it in this post. But there’s a line from that, a quote from the editor of the magazine along the lines of ‘whatever you write make sure it looks like you did it on purpose’ and the aesthetic of Sonic Frontiers looks like an accident. Looks as though the designers spilled a huge box of sonic objects over a pubg map and called it a day.

Or alternately a more muted colour pallete for sonic when he’s in the open world areas. I really think that if he could just match the world he’s in it would feel substantially different.

Chapter Two: The Jank

It’s not as bad as Sonic 06. Which is like the lowest bar I could possibly imagine. I just wanted to say that quickly because like... this isn’t the worst of the problems with Sonic Frontiers. When I talk about the jank I’m talking about glitchy behaviour like when you run up the arm of one of the big enemies and half the time you get to land where you need to and half the time you just get launched off in some other direction. Or phasing through the flippers in the Fucking Pinball section.

It’s definitely there and definitely irritating, but it is one of the lesser problems of the game simply because if the game was running perfectly then none of this stuff would be happening. All of the rest of the problems are fully intended aspects of the game.

Chapter Three: Whether Or Not This Is A 3D Game Or A 2D Game In A Trenchcoat

In the game you have cyberspace levels which are essentially 2d levels that you access them from portals in the 3d world. You might think I’m about to make an argument that these are the real content of Sonic Frontiers but fuck that I hated playing those as well. No my argument is that the 3d is actually an enormous number of tiny 2d levels all jammed together.

I would have thought that the purpose of the numerous boost pads, bumpers and grind rails was to help you navigate around the world. To aid in faster movement between locations. In fact the purpose of these items is to briefly shove you into a 2d platforming sequence that can last maybe just a couple of seconds, maybe a couple of minutes. It doesn’t sound like a huge problem but like okay this is kind of trending into the navigation problem now so lets just start Chapter Four already

Chapter Four: The Basic Act of Navigation

Okay so the reason it’s a big problem is that whenever you want to get anywhere your options are to just run there in a straight line or try one of the speed boosty items around you and sometimes you’ll get lucky and you’ll do a fun little platforming section that also brings you closer to your destination. Most of the time you will do that platforming section and find yourself turned around and further away from where you wanted to go.

Or maybe you’ll notice partway through and want to quickly exit from this diversion and get back to what you were doing. That’s not always an option. If your up high in the air there might be safe gaps you can drop through, but this can also happen on just narrow strips of land which still exist in the open 3d world. It feels so silly when you’re standing in a wide open field but still diligently working along a single line of obstacles instead of just stepping to the side of them even though you should be able to.

The other major problem with navigation is that okay for example the plot needs you to now go and interact with a chaos emerald and it’s over here on the edge of like a peninsula so you work your way along the cliffs to reach it but when you get anywhere near it’s all cliffs too high to possibly go up or maybe the area you need to go to is just way up in the fucking sky. At that point you need to step back look at the exact spot you’re trying to go to and then follow back all the loops and rails and bumpers back to the one spot where you can go to to start the actual trek to the place you want to be. It’s just completely antithetical to open world design. It’s like why is this game open world in the first place anyway.

Chapter Five: Sonic’s Death Wish

This is how I’ve chosen to label the chapter where I talk about how Sonic controls. It’s so strange because like, his turning is somehow both too responsive and too sluggish. It’s most noticeable in the cyberspace levels. I think it’s that he has a surprisingly wide turning circle. He’s responsive at turning but even at walking speed he has to veer around in a wide arc it makes it a real pain if you’re trying to do anything precise.

Attempting to use the boost button in cyberspace levels is more or less a guarantee that Sonic will just shoot off into the void, but there are also places where it feels necessary, where you just need that extra distance that comes from mid-air boosting and the unpredictability of it is so frustrating.

Chapter Six: The Combat

The new combat sort of works sometimes but also doesn’t really work at all. In theory having enemies that take more than just a homing bounce or whatever it is called is a good idea, and the cyloop is an interesting way to add movement to combat. In practice fuck fighting any of these enemies.

Early on the second island I fought a group of about four of the most basic trivial enemies that kept shielding themselves and it’s not as though I was struggling but it felt fiddly and annoying. They made the combat more time consuming, more awkward, but not necessarily more engaging.

The game tries to give you all these skills to unlock to try to engage you with the combat mechanics. But like it’s just buttons to press to initiate a different animation while you’re doing homing bounce combos on an enemy. It even gives you a skill to automate that so you don’t even have to engage with these new skills. That’s how little faith it has in these things. Not to mention a couple of times where I would trigger one of them by accident while trying to evade a fight and then sonic would do this whole wind up and go flying at a enemy who always seemed to be in the middle of an attack animation when sonic got there and you lose so many rings when you get hit. Just an ungodly amount. You can hold up to 400 and that’s about 2 hits most of the time. The combat fucking sucks.

Which is to say nothing of the big titan fights. They have cool soundtracks but god the super sonic mode is almost worse than regular mode. Sonic can’t get hurt in this mode. All the enemies can do is knock you back, force you to watch a little animation of Sonic getting knocked away and then regaining his composure for a couple of seconds. The only thing they can do against you is waste your time. And thats exactly what the fights feel like, a complete waste of time. Sit there with the parry buttons held down until the enemies do an attack then button mash until it gets ready to attack again and do that over and over again and then add in some quicktime events and you’re done.

The second titan fight is when I think I went from thinking this was a bad game to thinking this was absolutely abysmal. Second titan fight has you climbing up a tower in the open world, jumping onto a magic ribbon that runs parralel to the titan, running along this to keep up for an inordinately long amount of time, until you can get to its head. Then you get the chaos emerald and enter the fight proper. You fly around after the thing, dodging missiles, parrying attacks and attacking when you can. Around and around this island and then when it was down to 25% health it did some kind of qte attack on me and I start button mashing the appropriate button just like in the last titan fight only to die instantly. This was a new type of qte the game hadn’t shown me before, introduced five minutes (i timed how long the fight took on my next attempt and five minutes is a conservative estimate) into this boss fight. And the kicker is that it puts you right back there at the beginning in the open world to do everything I just listed above again. 

Chapter Seven: The Characterization

Maybe I got spoiled by The Murder of Sonic The Hedgehog. I didn’t like any of the characterization in this one. Every little conversation between Sonic and his friends felt weirdly stilted and unnatural. I wasn’t given any impression that these people willingly hang out with Sonic even once. And it’s kind of funny that like each of the first three islands is about giving one of Sonic’s friends a moment of reflection, to consider what they want to do with their lives and let them express their interiority, and each one of them expresses the desire to go and do something else away from Sonic. About the only plot beats I could actually agree with.

Which is to say nothing of Sage and Robotnik. Every time they had a cutscene it was essentially the same cutscene. Robotnik says ‘let me out of this accursed cyber dimension’ and Sage says ‘no it’s too dangerous but i won’t tell you what the dangerous thing actually is and you won’t even consider asking me about it’ and Robotnik says ‘nevermind that let me out of this accursed cyber dimension’. Repeat for most of the game. Except for that one cutscene where a bunch of helicopters attack Robotnik for some reason and Sage blows them all up really easily and nothing of any consequence actually happens why does this cutscene even exist.

The funniest part of this whole relationship is that Robotnik spends the entirety of the game not showing the slightest acknowledgement of Sage as a person, he talks to her like he’s talking to Amazon Alexa or whatever and then when she gets blown up in space he’s suddenly like ‘my dearest daughter i’m so incredibly sad about your death’.

And don’t get me wrong when I say these things are funny they’re not really actually funny in the moment. Everything is too slow and clumsy to land as a joke. The game never really becomes so bad that it’s good.

Like this isn’t a characterization point but I’m not going back and creating a new chapter now, but all that stuff I was saying earlier about getting stuck in a faux-2d level every time you hit a bumper or whatever. It’s a problem if you’re trying to navigate the world as quickly as possible, but hypothetically if you’re just running around for the fun of it or trying to collect the collectibles then surely having lots of platforming challenges to stumble into is good.

And I’m not going to argue that that isn’t good. Its just that as the game went on I started to notice more and more how long the game would go without needing any input from me, as it bounced sonic around and through loop de loops and all kinds of cool spectacle, i’d notice that I could take my hands off the controller for like ten/twenty seconds, sometimes more and it started to feel empty like I’d have more or less the same experience just watching the game autoplay through these segments.

I got to the point where everything about the game had worn out its welcome; the story, the combat, the platforming, the open world, the cyberspace worlds, basic navigation, just getting collectibles. Nothing felt good. Nothing was what I wanted. That’s when it was time to play the fucking pinball.

Chapter Eight: The Fucking Pinball

At the end of the third island right before the titan your last task is to play pinball and score five million points. Honestly I could make a number list of all the ways in which this pinball minigame is fucking abysmal but I’m going to try to restrain myself, which means making all the same complaints but without the extra bit of unnecessary structuring I suppose.

The score you need to hit is so fucking high. You very quickly notice you’re not wracking up points in the thousands. You need to hit the red coins that appear to get a x2 multiplier and then a x4 and so on up until you get a x255 multipler whereupon you’re actually getting some decent points. The multiplier will reset to zero if your ball... falls down the pinball hole. I don’t know the pinball terminology you know what I mean. The length of time you have to play this pinball minigame, which by the way is completely mandatory you cannot proceed with the game until you reach this absurdly high score in this stupid minigame, is just unconscionable.

It does not help matters that the board is so basic. There are just some bumpers up at the top, a pair of paddles and little bouncy things in most of the walls. No switches to flick on for combos. No little holes to go into. I don’t know pinball terminology but anyone who has played a decent pinball table knows you need more than this, especially if you’re going to be forcing people to spend like five to ten or longer minutes playing this horrible pinball.

It doesn’t help that when you do finally hit this high score the pinball continues and the game declines to give you any more instruction. At this point you need to hit the pinball to a small hole that has opened at the top of the board which is the real win condition. If you gutter at this point, or just quit out because you think you’re done, then it’s time to start the entire thing over again.

This was the breaking point where I decided this was one of the worst games I’d ever played. I made a post comparing it to We Happy Few, and yeah it has less abhorrent sexual abuse victim blaming than that game does but moment to moment I had less fun playing this. It was more difficult to get me to want to sit and play this video game than WHF. I hated this game. Good fucking god.

8. The Birdcage

A little puzzle game I played on my tablet. It consists of about 25 different little birdcages each one has a bunch of little mechanical puzzles to solve which will eventually grant you a key you use to open the cage and free the bird.

It feels reminscent of something like The Room, but in a much more simplified form. There was only one or two puzzles that were complicated enough that I had to stop and think and not just operate on first instinct. But its neat enough if you just enjoy the tactile feel of operating a machine, opening compartments and pulling levers etc. I feel like I’m damning this game with faint praise but I did enjoy my time with it.

9. Pizza Tower

Pizza Tower is an incredible indie platformer with an emphasis on speed and precision imputs. I’m sort of bad at both of those aspects but even so there’s still so much here to appreciate. For one thing the character designs and the animations are incredible in their expressiveness and exaggeration. There’s nothing I can say about that that can’t be better conveyed by just watching this man start running and build up to top speed.

The design of the levels is also really neat. Each level has a main phase and then at a certain point you will encounter a John Pillar (i still wonder if John Pillar is a pun or a joke i just don’t get somehow) you will have to break which starts the escape phase. Everything ramps up in intensity and a countdown timer starts ticking down. It’s such a good design, with enough leniency in timing to allow those who aren’t as good at the mechanics time enough to get to the exit, but those who have mastered Peppino’s robust controls to complete an entire second lap.

The variety present in the levels is really good. Each level has some kind of gimmick. Either some element not present in others, some transformation for Peppino or maybe the presence an ally such as Gustavo and his enormous rattie friend Brick, or Mort the Chicken from the video game of the same name. Every level feels fun and unique in some way.

The boss fights are mostly very fun. I kind of struggled the most with Pepperman (the first boss) because of the one phase where you have to hit him while he’s in the air and I never quite worked out the timing to do so with any regularity. Every boss in this game has at least one hidden health bar and this is probably the first game I’ve played where I don’t think of that as a negative.

The first phase of every boss fight is fairly simple and mostly there to acclimatize you to the mechanics of the fight before the second phase really goes wild with it. The fourth boss (who I will not name for spoilers) was the most enjoyable in the whole game for me. I realized with every new attack I was surviving to that I was laughing out loud as I dodged and weaved through this incredibly chaotic battle.

I had heard about how good a game Pizza Tower was and I had sort of held off on it because a lot of the discussion seemed to fixate around like the speed tech of the game and the mastery of the controls. And that’s not something I really find compelling. I’m super glad I gave it a chance though, as there’s a lot to love here that isn’t just in mastery of the systems. Fully expect this to be on my end of the year best games of the year list.

10. I Commissioned Some Bees 3

I played another one of these. As usual my only complaint is that the levels don’t feel arranged in order of increasing difficulty. In fact I got stuck and needed a hint for the last bees on the first three scenes and then had no problem at all locating them on all the rest of the scenes. Remains fun and chill with nice artwork.

11. Pixross

A little picross game I got from a bundle I think. It’s picross but by solving it you also create a little pixel art object or creature or something. My first issue is simple: there’s an animals category and it doesn’t have a foxie in it.

My second issue is less simple. I don’t have to explain picross do I? Well just in case it’s a grid you have numbers at the top and left of each of the rows and columns which tell you how many filled cells there are in each row/column, but more specifically they tell you how many filled cells in a row there are. Like 3,1,3 would be three cells in a line, then one cell on its own, then three cells all with at least one space between them. Yeah I know you’ve played picross before, sorry for overexplaining.

So as an example if I have a row labelled 1, 1, 3. And I have filled a single cell in the row. Lets say its dead in the middle. There’s enough space to the right that that cell could be the first one indicated by the label. If I were doing this manually I’d have to get more information before I could ascertain which of these blocks that cell belonged to. In pixross if a block is complete then it gets crossed off. So if this was one of the two solitary blocks that one would be crossed off automatically and I would be given more information that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to glean through just looking at the board.

It felt like cheating to use this aspect of the way the mechanics worked as a clue. I tried to avoid doing so for the most part, but you kind of can’t help but notice that and it colours how you would proceed even if you try to only proceed using logic that is apparent. 

12. Plastic Tape

A very short narrative game by npckc. I’ve mentioned them before. In fact I played a little game of theirs back up at the top of this post. This is one of my favourite of their little games. It’s about a series of phone calls across a number of years and it uses a really neat little framing device and it is playable in browser.

13. Aka

Aka is a cute game that deals with a surprisingly serious topic. It is about a red panda who returns home after war. Its main narrative isn’t immediately apparent, but is primarily about helping ghosts move on.

There are things to like about this one. The design of Aka is great, the design of the big capy is great. The world is pleasant to explore, the characters fun to meet and assist. In theory I like the main thrust of its narrative, though I think it has missteps in how it communicates and unlocks that narrative.

The main gameplay is all about gardening, collecting resources and crafting items, and that isn’t a gameplay style that personally resonates strongly with me. It also in my opinion doesn’t feel like it fits cohesively with what the game is and it quickly feels like you run out of crops to plant and objects to make. The game feels too short to really engage with these mechanics in any meaningful way, and there isn’t really enough things to make and plant to keep someone who was here for these mechanics engaged.

It also felt a little janky to me. Just something about the way it controlled that made it feel a little unpolished. And there were a couple of parts where the game offered me a minigame (the marble run minigame and one of the rhythm minigames) where it just didn’t load no matter what I did.

14. Riven: The Sequel To Myst

I have had a weird relationship with the Myst games. I have played all of them when I was too young to really even be able to solve the puzzles. I have a distinct memory of playing one of the later Myst games and all I was doing was looking up the answers in a walkthrough or hint book or something and then carrying them out. And I wasn’t even really following the story. I distinctly remember thinking something along the lines of ‘why am i playing this I’m not engaging with it on any level’ and giving up.

In 2021 I decided to replay Myst and had a great time (except for the fucking underground maze sequence). I remembered the shape of the island but not any puzzle solutions. I think I maybe also remember trying to fill a real life notebook with all the fireplace panel combinations. I hope that I didn’t actually do that and somebody stopped me.

Anyway so this month I saw the hbomberguy patreon video about Myst and my brain went, oh yeah Riven. I had about the same experience that I had with Myst where as I played it I began to remember the shape of the island but no concrete puzzle solutions. I remember being absolutely convinced that there was a secret area under the lake, under the big rock with the spyglass, that you just needed to find the right combination of levers in the control tower and then the submarine would go into there somehow. I mostly have memories of being stuck, wandering around the island trying to work out what I was supposed to be doing next.

The thing about Riven is its openness is its best feature and also its biggest problem. Like the first couple of hours is fun as you explore the various locations. It’s also a little annoying as each place that you come to you find yourself blocked somehow (a bridge that needs to be extended from the other side, a panel with buttons but no clues as to what to do with it, levers that control things on walkways you can’t reach, a number of eyes that clearly allude to something but what). Its like having a roll of sellotape and you just can’t find the edge to let you start peeling it away. And the most annoying thing about it is that the big puzzle here is you need to close a specific pair of doors behind you and finally you can actually make progress with the rest of the game. It was that simple.

The worst part is being stuck in that part of the game and you’re still learning about how the game works, how the machines you encounter work and what they do and sometimes you just don’t have enough information. If you see a puzzle its really hard to know if you have the knowledge you need and you just need to work out how to apply it or if you just need to close some more doors till you find the rest of the game.

Once you’re going though, the way the game gradually unfolds out and all of the things that you’ve been seeing throughout your playthrough finally become apparent. That’s great. Very few games made me feel as excited to solve a puzzle as when I first arrived at the plateau island and realized what I was looking at. I believe everyone hates the fire marble puzzle but I loved it. It turned the whole geography of the video game into an enormous multilayered puzzle.

Riven kind of is a masterpiece but I wish it was a smoother transition into the complicated puzzles. I will admit that the second time an important location was hidden behind an open door and I struggled and struggled to figure it out was on me though.

#ix plays games #i played two sonic games this month #of course i lost my mind a little bit

[templeofshame]

no one wants to read my ranting halfway through the stranger things s4 finale, but like... this is my blog so

so like, i’m only halfway through the finale, but it seems like the most effective scenes are moments of connection that have little to do with the whole convoluted supernatural plot. #1 will & jonathan (including the will/mike scene of course because where it really hits is between will and jonathan; honestly mike is kinda just stupid this season, and jonathan has been as well but at least the writers gave him a great will plotline to work with), eddie & dustin, and yeah  lucas & max and joyce & hopper as well.

but eddie & dustin’s moment stuff hit earlier and more superficially, maybe to make room for the grief monologue, which, i guuess. but i feel like a lot of the heart of the whole eddie of the season (which is a major plot thread, steddie aside) is about the connection between dustin and eddie and i feel like personally i’d rather have a monologue about that than max’s (well-performed) monologue about billy, like i just feel like we get it by this point and it’s just not as satisfying as it should be? billy’s already dead and Fucking Terrible, the emotional stuff i wanted from max is between her and lucas (which we get and it’s adorable) and other than that i’m not sure what would hold weight since el is far away and her connections with the others aren’t strong enough to carry much weight. but i’d love to hear more about why his friendship with dustin means so much to eddie, and what more depth beyond that eddie was nice to them when no one else was.

i also feel like that’s more important than a ~metal~ guitar bit that didn’t seem to really do anything and randomly had recorded vocals? i do feel like a guitar moment is a chekhov’s gun i wanted fired, but i wanted it to... matter? like i don’t know exactly what self-sacrificing thing eddie’s about to do in between where i am and his death, but i feel like that’s where in the story the guitar bit should fall, eddie should sing even if it’s bad, and the choice should have a notable positive influence on the tides of Climactic Finale Plot (even though i know i’m gonna be more and more unsatisfied because they don’t even defeat vecna, right?)

genuinely i would be glad if jason carver didn’t exist, but if he has to i’d keep going with the early steve parallel. you could easily have him get in the way and be an asshole buy i’m just not really here for the whole thing of the jocks going wildly violent on children. it’s not totally clear if it’s deliberately racially charged or it just happens that the Black kids are the most accessible to the jocks? but we’re so far away from humanity with those characters that unless we find out vecna’s controlling them, i don’t think anything they do will be satisfying to me.

honestly, at the end of the day i think the will & jonathan scenes are my favorite, but the lucas & max scene is kinda the only one of the effective Big Scenes yet that actually affects the main plot (i know there’s a mike & el one and i’m just kinda over mike at this point, like it feels very contrived that he hasn’t said “i love you” a bunch of times by now and saying he loves her for who she is immediately before reminding us that she’s a superhero is like... what about her as a person though dude? like remember when she didn’t have her powers? you still loved her, right???). One thing i think this ep is doing that’s Cool and Right is that the characters who have spent all season far away and tangentially related to anything are finding long distance ways to be useful. I love that. don’t love the separation as a season-long thing, but given that, love the solution. but jonathan and will are still tangentially related to the plot at best because they’re just helping facilitate el, and joyce and hopper are like, satisfying ship finally getting together yay and hopefully figuring out how to be useful finally, but mostly they’ve just been tied up all season trying to get back to where we were pre-explosion.

idk i just feel like there are so many scenes the show is giving weight and they’re not necessarily bad scenes, but the structure and plotting of the season has been so messy that most of them are unearned and some of them are given to the wrong people (cough obviously the steve and nancy scene. i’d rather see a jancy scene, or will and jonathan talking about wtf contrived situation is going on there, but they are putting so much effort into throwing steve at nancy and just... why? did murray break into a russian prison to be disrespected like that?).

there are also just so many things about the internal logic of this season that don’t make sense to me and i’m not sure what it’s trying to say about survivor’s guilt or abuse or anything but like idk dude, maybe vecna’s just a clockmaker

#stranger things spoilers

[strangefellows]

Seigfried, Chevalier d'Eon, Medusa, Zhuge Liang (Lord El-Melloi II)

fghshs thank you SO MUCH for indulging me wings

First impression

Seigfried: Oh I know him!!! He's hot, coo-- SUWABE???? OH SHIT OH NO

D'Eon: Ohhhhh, I've heard of them! Like that manga!

Medusa: That's the, uh...least snakey Medusa I've ever seen. Why is she a Rider? Huh.

Waver (because it's basically Waver): AWWWW BABY I LOVE YOU ALREADY, you poor bastard getting roasted in the middle of your class by your professor...

Impression now

Siegfried: You're so stupid. You're so noble. Dear good lord christ you absolute heroic idiot, I love you. Good lord. Go apologize to your wife you dumb wonderful himbo.

D'Eon: They haven't had much time to shine, but I do like them! And reading up on their historicity is fascinating!

Medusa: DAUGHTER QUEEN YAS SLAY I LOVE YOU DUSA WHAT A GIRL, WHAT A LOVELY SWEET GIRL WHO WILL MURDER FOR HER POOR ABUSED MASTER WHAT A GREAT SERVANT

Waver: King shit, nothing like sneaking into an entire ass mage war you were NOT supposed to be part of, somehow being the only mage survivor (Kiritsugu doesn't count he died in all ways but physical), and going back home to STEAL YOUR DEAD PROFESSOR'S NAME AND JOB???? On TOP of somehow scoring an ancient bara king as a boyfriend????? Absolute legend, the El Melloi classroom is the best place to be.

Favorite moment

Siegfried: I haven't finished Apocrypha yet but dude his immediate 'aight time to kill myself for this random homunculi kid who needs help' was kinda legit if stupidly heroic. Also him showing up in Traum pretty much literally to go "i am so sorry I'm such an idiot I love you" and defusing Kriemhild in seconds was fucking amazing. Also his summer alt puts me in hysterics.

D'Eon: Them being basically the only sane NB in Agartha was pretty hilarious, poor d'Eon.

Medusa: I have not watched HF because Reasons but I hear she goes fully fucking apeshit to protect Sakura and I say slay queen you go girl. Also her being just sweet and chill and vibing with Sakura in Emiya Gohan gives me life.

Waver: The finale when he stares down Literally Gilgamesh and manages to survive was glorious. Also everything about Case Files, but specifically the final bit where he gets to talk to Iskandar for a bit. Also also in Accel Order when he's committing so much violence against his baby self and when he absolutely fucking plays Kayneth like a fool, that was hilarious.

Idea for a story

Siegfried: I don't have TOO many ideas here, actually, but I'd like to see Kriemhild put up with his event shenanigans, bless her. Go on double dates with Sigurd and Bryn.

d'Eon: More screentime! Go hang with Marie!

Medusa: I think I'd like to read things dealing with her past and her sisters and the other Greek Servants, but also I would read everything involving Medusa beating the fuck out of Zouken and Shinji :)

Waver: Go make out with your bara boyfriend, also solve more mysteries, also also take a nap. Though Waver teaching Fujimaru mage basics would be adorable! He's in charge of Modern Magecraft Theory, they'd get it a little better.

Unpopular opinion

Siegfried: Uhhhh, call me back after Apocrypha?

d'Eon: It's only tangentially related, but I don't hate Agartha. Like, it's DEFINITELY not Good, but it's not terrible either.

Medusa: /shrug emoji

Waver: IDK man, what are Waver opinions? I love this guy.

Favorite relationship

Siegfried: Him and his wife, him and Sieg so far, he and Kotaro were kind of adorable buddies in the Vegas event.

d'Eon: Them and Marie for sure, it's sweet. Also them and Astolfo is a kind of funny duo, NB RIGHTS.

Medusa: SAKURA FOR SURE.

Waver: ISKANDAR ISKANDAR ISKANDAR, but also Grey and the rest of his class, like damn, I'd kill for Waver as my professor.

Favorite headcanon

Siegfried: I don't actually have many hcs yet.

d'Eon: Neither for d'Eon, admittedly.

Medusa: She and Parvati hang out all the time for sure.

Waver: Like I mentioned above, I definitely hc Waver helps teach Fujimaru how to use basic magecraft so they don't Die. He also helped in EoR to deal with the Mage's Association. I also hc he tagged along with my Fujimaru into the London Singularity.

#fateseriesblogging

[linkedsoul]

Saw a great post about the importance of "cringe culture is dead" and I wanted to add a tangentially related fact: sometimes the "cringey" things you liked or did as a kid are... great, actually.

When I was like 12/13 I really wanted to dress "punk rock" or something - the kind of "edgy" alternative style inspired by the shoujos I was reading at the time, which was probably not actually “punk rock”, but whatever. I wanted to have a full black and pink "punk rock" outfit because it looked COOL. I would look at black and pink electric guitar earrings and consider getting my ears pierced. I even bought fingerless gloves and a necktie at Claire's with that color pattern, the first pieces of my dearly desired outfit. 

Kid-me had forgotten one crucial detail: I did not have the motherly approval to dress like that. I was never able to convince her to let me even remotely experiment with that style. My punk rock dreams remained dreams: I never got around to wearing the gloves or the necktie. They spent the years following their purchase in a drawer in my room. Probably even the same drawer. I never took them out. 

I got over that phase in high school and absolutely CRINGED thinking back on 13 y/o me's dream fashion. High school me was hoodies n' jeans and sneakers or boots (still my go-to outfits to be fair) and your only chance to see me in anything else is at the yearly high school carnival. Punk rock? Anime fashion? Black and pink? HA! Cringe. It would have never fitted me. Why had I even bought those silly gloves and that even sillier necktie? I never touched them. If I opened the drawer they were in and saw them, it was “pretend you never bought that shit” time. It had been a really useless purchase back then, high school-me thought, and when I didn’t downright forget about it, I regretted it. 

Cue to current me. 21 y/o me. About a week ago I receive a wig I ordered for the sake of playing around with gender presentation. A long, wavy pink-grey wig with bangs. I’m ecstatic. I ask my sister to help me put on make-up. I try on different outfits before putting on a navy blue skirt and a white shirt. 

And then I have a revelation. I run to my room, open a drawer, and take out my pink and black gloves and my pink and black necktie. I put them on. 

And I fucking rock it.

I look like an anime character. I look cute and cool and fun. 13 y/o me is THRIVING, her teenage fashion dreams revived and unburied and finally fulfilled. 21 y/o me is THRIVING because cringe culture is dead, I’m a shoujo protagonist, gender is a performance and I am the main lead.

So what I mean is: don’t shame kids for having weird interests or making overpowered self-insert OCs with purple eyes or wanting to dress “anime punk rock”. They’re kids, they’re growing up, they’re creating and experimenting. 

But also, don’t shame yourself for having had those interests. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to revisit said-interests, if you want to. Write those self-insert fics where you land in your favorite book’s universe. Create those overpowered OCs with rainbow hair and iridescent eyes. Plot that story with parallel worlds and dragons and fairies. 

Remember those gloves and necktie you bought at Claire’s as a kid and wear them, one of these days. It’s fun, I promise. 

#linked rambling #cringe culture is dead #about me #positivity #here i am creating overpowered characters with glowing eyes and cocky smiles #*looks at Aed* #AND PEOPLE LOVE HIM #so yeah you can find some things cringey #but don't shame people for it if they're just having fun #your 'cringey' teen interests and taste are fun to revisit #just enjoy yourself #it's actually amazing to recreate the kind of ocs you used to make as a teen #now that you have a better grasp on characterization #same for stories #it's fun to see how far you've gone #and how much you've improved

[spiked-tea-writing]

and they were roommates?!

SapnapxFem!Reader

Summary: Imagine being in love with your roommate, couldn't be you.

Pronouns: She/her

Warning: Swearing

Word Count: 2.3k

A/n: I don’t watch or know anything, I just like these people and I had a concept. Also, he and Dream aren’t roommates in this for the sake of I can’t figure that out. Also also, my timeline is probably fucked but who cares

The dynamic in the apartment was...interesting to say the least

In the two years of living together, it had shifted a lot

In the beginning, you and Sapnap had been... less than cordial to each other

Both eighteen, fresh out of high school, off to college thinking that you knew everything.

There was lots of fighting, to say the least.

All of the “No it’s your turn to vacuum”, and “I swear to god Sapnap I will punt you halfway across the world if you eat my pineapple again”

The only reason you didn’t slit each other’s throats was that if the other person was dead, who would pay rent?

It was the summer before college started at the time, and you were working long hours minimum wage so coming]’/ home to an annoying prick caused a crap ton of conflict

After a few months of being little bitches to each other, y’all got piss drunk in the apartment and it all just sorta fell apart

Got that good drunk therapy, spilling your deepest secrets

(y’all were underage but shhh)

So by the time college started, the two of you had become actual friends and started enjoying each others company

A few months into the friendship, you encouraged him to post the video of “Minecraft, but it’s Raining Cats and Dogs” on a whim

Lmao little did you know what you had created (we’ll get to that later)

You mocked his train of thought constantly, laughing at the timing of it all.

“Ahhh yes, I am Sapnap, the genius who thought it’d be great to become a YouTuber while in my first year of college.”

He’d always just laugh and roll his eyes, playfully shoving you while stealing your chips.

The next few months were a haze of studying, work, and him.

It was truly a friendship of convenience since you guys were so busy, him starting his youtube career, and you working restaurants, then school on top of that, it was just easy to find friendship in your roommate.

Of course, he had his close friends which he spoke to over the internet, and you had your friends from back home, but as for college, it really was only him.

You guys had a fun time just hanging around the apartment, and it became so easy to be friends with him

And it WAS truly platonic (we’ll get back to that as well)

The best thing he brought to the friendship was his animals

You got on fabulously with Cash and the cats

They were all so cuddly and honestly loved you more than him lmao

You guys were just trying to get degrees and not be too stupid, was that too much to ask???

Well to a certain 2020, it was

The beginning of that year was great.

He was sorta realizing that he liked putting himself on social media, but on top of that, it seemed like a great start to a year.

February brought him to twitch, which you loved

You found it hilarious how he would just sorta play games and have people watch him live.

But you were incredibly supportive, as a friend, of course

He really liked it so, you tried to ignore the shouting at three am, and the loud anthems at night

Sure you’d give him hell in the morning, but why kill his fun?

March started great, as it was his birthday.

You got him a glittery lighter as a gag, but it was the perfect gift for a broke-ass college student

Then a certain pandemic came a-knockin’ on y’all’s door

It was a hard hit on both of you.

An executive decision was made that you two would stay put, but being away from your families was incredibly tough.

That spring was the birth of The SMP.

It brought him so much joy, which in turn made you happier.

The rest of the school year was a blur of zooms and test

Nick nearly killed you on multiple occasions when you made fun of the fact that he was learning computer science over the computer or made him help you figure out what the fuck zoom was since it was tangentially related to his major

“SAP HELP ME YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS ITS YOUR FUCKING MAJOR!!!”

“NO, IT’S- AHHHHHHHHH”

Yall got more than a handful of noise complaints shhhh

That summer was fill was spent trying to fill the time in weird ways

Note to self, he can’t cook (which you learned the hard way)

Yall spent so much time trying to cook and bake, then sweating off the calories working out with The Fitness Marshall lmao

As sucky as the situation was, that summer was so incredibly fun for the both of you, and truthfully the only arguments were about what music to blast

“Y/n I swear if I listen to Cosmicandy one more time I will drown you.”

“Well if I hear American Idiot one more time someone’s knee caps are getting harvested.”

(that argument was settled with Elton John.)

When school started up again that fall, something shifted

After a year of actual friendship, you guys were no longer just friends, and the tension was so thick it could be cut with a knife

You had watched every single one of his streams since day one, but within 2 seconds of his Love or Host, you felt the need to hurl for some peculiar reason

It was bizarre because there was no way you could ever like him, of course not.

Within the apartment, you guys suddenly got a lot more touchy, but only because it was getting cold with winter and all that jazz.

It wasn’t because yall were secretly in love, what is this, a romcom?

The number of times you guys woke up on the couch, definitely not cuddling was too many to count

You started sitting in his room while he streamed, definitely not watching him with heart eyes because of how excited he got

He always had a pot of coffee full and a 6-pack of monster in the fridge since he knew you ran on spite and caffeine, and definitely not so that he could spend more time with you in the early hours of the morning.

The laundry started getting all mixed around, resulting in just sharing any sweats, hoodies, or socks.

The same thing went for food.

No longer was anything labeled with a name, if it was in the fridge, it was fair game (unless there was a post-it because come on, yall weren’t monsters)

But no, y’all were just roommates, not dating, lets make that clear.

Feelings? We don’t know her.

This entire time, his friends have had to hear about you rip.

But they got front row seats to your relationship development

“OMG my roommate is the worst she ate all of the frozen strawberries”

“Y/n kidnapped Storm all day while she studied and I thought I lost the fucking cat asjvdk”

“I had to run down and talk to the landlord because we dropped a pot of pasta sauce all over the carpet and couldn’t get the damn stain out.”

“She is so nice in preparation for a family dinner zoom, she ran out to the local Filipino food place and pick stuff up.”

“Sorry I’m late I overslept and didn’t want to wake up Y/n.”

They weren’t stupid, and could clearly see how whipped he was.

Dream and Geroge teased him about it constantly.

“Woah, calm down Sap, you should probably tell her you love her before you propose.”

“Yeah Dream’s right, it’s kinda weird that you’re living together before ever dating.”

He always flushed and denied it with a shake of his head.

He wasn’t into you, are they crazy?

Quackity and Karl messed with him in more unorthodox ways

There are a solid number of clips where they are fake crying over how he’s cheating on them, and even more tweets to match

It only got worse when you met them accidentally.

He was chatting post-stream on a video channel with George, Dream, Karl, and Quackity, and just his luck, you came into his room.

Like of all the times you could walk in, it was the time he was with his five closest friends but I digress

“Yo I got some extra tips yesterday so I picked up some extra Red Bull if you want to do one of your weird all-nighter streams.”

“Y/n I’m on channel.”

“Oh shit sorry my b. Catch.”

All the guys heard was a thud and a groan from Sapnap as the six-pack hit him in the chest.

Dream was the one to recognize your name.

“WAIT IS THAT Y/N I WANT TO MEET THEM!”

You could hear Dream’s voice through his headphones

“Sap… who is that?”

“No one. I’ll be out in a sec to help with dinner.”

You could hear a British voice come through.

“Oh so we are no one now, huh.”

Another voice piped through.

“Common... ¿Qué intentas ocultar?”

You cut in.

“Your headset it shit my guy. I can hear everything. I’m down to talk to them.”

He let out a groan.

“Fine. But you’re gonna have to do the dishes tonight.”

“Deal. Now move.”

“What? No.”

“Fine bitch.”

You collapsed onto his lap, plucking the headphones off of him.

“Hello, Sapnap’s friends. I am Y/n. A pleasure to meet y’all. Can you hear me?”

You heard a series of laughs through the headset, and a voice came through.

“Yes, we can see you too. I’m Karl, it’s so nice to finally meet his girlfriend.”

A blush rose on both of your faces, and another voice came through.

“Yeah, we’ve heard lots about you. Plus we can’t see your face in that picture Sap sent us. I’m Quackity”

That remark stopped your embarrassment in its tracks.

“What the fuck? How do you guys know me? I’m not even his girlfriend? And what picture?”

Sapnap grabbed your arm to calm you down as another voice cut in, but his one you recognized as his friend Dream.

“Hey, it’s okay. He just talks about you a bit, and the picture I believe was of you holding like three cats with like a red bull can on your head.”

“Jesus fucking christ why do they have that photo??”

He looked guilty but chuckled.

“Because that photo is a damn masterpiece.”

Karl’s voice came back in with a giggled.

“Soooo, Y/n we’d love to hear about you. Specifically anything funny or embarrassing that you have learned by living with him.”

Sapnap let out a groan from behind you as you went off.

“WELL lemme tell y’all, he has no cooking knowledge, well I mean, now he does, but one time, about a year ago, I had I been keeping a pot of water boiling for about an hour, soft boiling eggs, cooing noodles, blanching bok choy, etc. but this fucking genius is like ‘oH tHe HaNdLe Is StIcKiNg OuT. LeMmE mOvE iT wItH mY bArE hAnD.’ Needless to say, he burnt the crap outta his hand and kept the bag of frozen blueberries on it for the entire night. It took me like a solid five seconds to actually help him because I was laughing.”

By the time you had finished that story, you had seen Nick roll his eyes like 5 five times while the rest of the guys were wheezing.

“Yeah, well remember the time you were trying to imitate Rapunzel after we had watched it over Zoom with my sister, and you swung the edge of the frying pan into our head and got a nasty bump on it? At least I moved quick enough to put some ice on it.”

“Ice? It was the damn leftover Slushy that I had been freezing.”

“True, but you got to drink it after, so it was a win-win situation.”

“Sap, I had a bump the size of a golfball coming off of my temple. There was no winning.”

“Fine, you’re just making me sound like such a shit roommate.”

“No that’s not true, you do all of the talking to the landlord, and you at least tried to muffle the noise when you stream.”

“I guess that’s true, but you do like 80% of the cleaning.”

“Yeah but only because you’re working. Plus in the past 6 months, you’ve made coffee every morning, AND made sure I was taking my meds.”

“Those things aren’t that hard and I do it to make sure you don’t die because I lo- care about you.”

“What?”

“What?”

You heard Dream’s wheeze laugh and remembered that you guys were still on call.

“Smooth.”

You both went red, and Sap moved his arm around you to leave the channel.

The next few moments were complete torture, the two of you just sitting in silence.

You were wondering if he meant what he was about to say and he was scared that you had heard it.

He was the one to break the silence. (mind you you’re still sitting on his lap lmao)

“I’m sorry about that.”

You weren’t sure how to respond. Should you ask him if he meant it? Because that wouldn’t be that bad. Or just pretend it never happened. Nah that’d be hella awkward. Or-

“I love you too.”

“You what?”

Wow, okay your brain is being a little bitch rn, but fuck it. Balls to the walls baby.

“I love you, and I have for a while now. I just want you to know.”

You finally looked him in the eye, and he was grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

“Thank god. I love you, and nearly fucking told you for the first time in front of my friends accidentally. Damn, I’m smooth.”

You laughed and he smiled wider.

“Can I kiss you?”

After a quick nod he swooped in and holy hell his lips felt great. His arm wound around your waist and your hands made their way to his jaw as he pulled you closer to him.

The only thing playing in your mind was “and they were roommates”

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