crystalconfections

[crystalconfections]

HATE that were calling every recipe Marry Me [Recipe]…. Fucking hate that. How bout Frig My Clit Brownies. Kill Yourself At My Feet Pasta. Shut The Fuck Up And Pay My Grocery Bill Cookies (vegan).

[crystalconfections]

Guys please beware of those AI generated twst sprites going around !! 🥲 Those punk/rock style sprites, they're made with AI.

That account is using AI to generate a bunch of sprites with different styles, please don't engage with them 😭🙏 don't give them the time of day, just block the account! It's better to not give them any attention, if their posts don't get engagement they'll probably stop.

Honestly, I find it very disrespectful to feed twst arts to an AI just to generate that crap. Use your own hands and brain and make the edits yourself like normal people do !!! 👊

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𝔰𝔞𝔤𝔢 𝔤𝔯𝔢𝔢𝔫

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tbh i think self shipping has drawn me away from my greatest source of dopamine (writing whatever self indulgent little stories live in my brain)

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from the magazine! I'm crying 😭

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you've been touching him a lot since he got back.

itoshi sae doesn't do anything about it — doesn't dissuade you from tugging at his sleeve or sliding his jacket zipper back and forth while you talk. doesn't comment or bring your attention to it.

but he watches.

you've been around him a lot since his plane landed, making up for all the time he's spent abroad, as if your daily chat threads haven't been enough. most of the time it's just the two of you, the way it used to be. sometimes his brother is around, though thankfully it doesn't seem like you've gotten any closer to rin since sae left.

other times there's a group, mostly your friends, a mix of guys and girls who don't seem to know what to do with themselves around him. sae is used to this — fame brings strange things to light — but you treat him as you always have, except for the touching.

you don't touch anyone else.

it makes him think.

sae has his reasons. he's never let your relationship get past that line, drawn in the sand. he's a professional football player on the other side of the world, and you have a life here. you have friends (even though you still call him your best friend), you have a job (that you complain about all the time), you have family (that can't be bothered to ever congratulate you on anything).

it wouldn't be right — to make you leave. to take you away. not when he needs to focus on being the best in the world.

(he is the best in the world. all those years ago he showed the U-20 team in japan the difference between them, the way the most they could hope for was dating a gravure model. sae never cared about that aspect. he already had you.)

he lets you touch him, but he doesn't touch you back. he keeps you at arm's length — where you're safe.

and then you ask him to be your wingman.

someone else — touching you? kissing you? having you? unthinkable. sae steps out of the shower and barely dries off before pulling on his briefs and pants. steps into his room and there you are, sitting on his bed, looking good, if a little sad.

he considers telling you to get your passport updated and catches the way your eyes trail down his form. maybe this conversation would be easier if he's wearing a shirt — your gaze is too heated, too distracting. you probably think you're being sneaky, hiding your feelings as best as you can, but sae knows you.

and your casual touches are ocean waves washing that line in the sand away.

sae walks towards his closet when it happens again. your finger in his belt loop, stopping him in his tracks. "what?"

"you were ignoring me," you say. "i asked if my outfit is okay."

your outfit is more than okay. "i would have told you to change if it wasn't."

"if you're going to be my wingman, shouldn't you hype me up?" you huff.

sae feels his jaw clench at the reminder. "no," he says, and his tone comes out cold. you don't seem to notice, falling back on his bed and testing every bit of self control in his grasp. "this is a waste of time."

he goes to pull on a shirt before he does something drastic. you're saying something, but it hardly matters when his flight leaves if you'll be on the plane with him. you've covered your eyes with your forearm, so you miss the way he pauses at the foot of the bed, teal eyes drinking in your form splayed out so defenselessly.

sae climbs over you silently, knees nudging yours apart, hands planted on either side of your body. "this is a waste of time," he repeats, watching with amusement as you take in his position. a blush sweeps across your face, but you don't push him off. that's a good sign, at least.

"what, you think i'm not worth being a wingman for?" you ask. silly. you have no idea.

and then you reach for his belt loops again, as if that's a totally normal thing to do and not something that drives him a little nuts every time. sae prides himself on his control, though, so he doesn't lean down to kiss you just yet.

"tell me," sae says, "have you become this touchy with all your friends since i've been gone?"

"n-no?"

it's cute, how wide your eyes get. sae leans down a little closer. feels your breaths on his lips. still doesn't kiss you — yet. "then i won't be your wingman. you don't need one."

"why not?"

do you know how breathless you sound? sae considers his apartment in spain, how he'll need to make sure the bedroom doesn't share any walls with the neighbors. the way you sound is all for him and him alone.

"because you have a boyfriend, now."

(companion piece to this)

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you can go back to the past but nobody’s there

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I mean do you think the company's being too greedy? Ppl can spend as much as they pls (I'm f2p) but it seems like all the new stuff is behind a bunch of paywalls. There's also a bunch of other issues the infold has yet to address for concerned fans (the eng va, etc.) which is what the boycott is for

tldr ; yes and lads kind of sucks (because all gacha games suck) but it can be better but you have to be a huge bitch about it.

idk how well ill be able to articulate all of this if im being totally honest so ill do my best

but i think its, at least somewhat crucial to this discourse to discuss at least like. the nature of gacha games. and the history of gacha itself. because people are Missing the point i think

so why does it matter that lads is a gacha game.

gacha games are incredibly, unimaginably predatory by design. they are the get rich quick schemes of the gaming world. they're pyramid schemes. and they all sort of operate the exact same way. a game will get released and gain a lot of traction, the game will be very generous with in-game resources. at the start but gradually become more sparing with those resources once players hit the late game.

resources now need to farmed for and farmed for consistently. to build a strong account, you need to play consistently. newer things will continued to be released on gacha - and to pull on the gacha, you will likely need an in-game currency. you can either buy the in-game currency, or in an ideal world, you will be able to farm in game currency in some capacity.

the game is subsidized by a group of people who play gacha games called whales - who spend an absolutely exorbitant amount of money on the game. these whales will continue to spend it because they have the money to blow or are willing to go into debt over the game. these players allow f2p players to participate in the game.

so the question that people are trying to answer now is: if whales will fund the game anyway, why worry about f2p players? why should we care about players who mooch off the million dollar company?

and the answer is very simply, game quality. without f2p players, companies will care less and less about the quality of the game. they know the whales will continue to spend money, so they will put out inaccessible slop every few months until they move onto their new project to repeat the process.

the game will slowly lose relevance. it may continue to make revenue, but the interest in the game will die as will the momentum - because the only people who are playing it are filthy rich. the medium spenders and low spenders who spend but do it responsibly will run out of meaningful content to pull on, because the devs will absolutely not give a shit about meaningful content. they know someone is going to buy it anyway.

infold is an older company. it has run a number of games. and it has already completed this process a number of times and will continue to do so over and over. gacha games are the get rich quick schemes of the gaming world. they operate on sunk cost fallacy and fomo to run.

when a game stops being relevant while remaining profitable, the company will immediately forefeit updating it meaningfully to the next stream of revenue.

ask literally any love nikki player who have played the previous infold games. they can give you as much information about it as you need. or look at any pretty much any gacha games from the eras previous to genshin impact with the exception of FGO.

this is the scheme of gacha games and why, prior to genshin, they are consider piece of shit games. they WERE piece of shit games. they are games made WITH the intention of squeezing AS MUCH MONEY AS POSSIBLE from the player base with as little actual reward. and by the time players get out, people have already wasted too much money to leave.

what made genshin so revolutionary was that it proved that gacha games could be more then the piece of shit system it was considered. genshin did this primarily through unique combat and a fleshed out story, with an absolutely immaculate cast of characters.

genshin revolutionized gacha by making a fun game first, instead of making a game that is model solely off of extracting revenue - which is how most gachas have operated until then.

the genshin gacha system can still be very brutal - but PRIOR to genshin, there was literally nothing for most games. no pity system. no rate transparency. nothing whatsoever. (im a traumatized enstars fan)

so the newest wave of gacha is very new, and most new gachas really model themselves after genshin because while imperfect, it was actually so much better STILL. because gachas just had a reputation that fucking horrible.

but genshin is still new, still imperfect in many ways. the reward system is still kind of straining, farming can be hard, mechanics are often not well explained. its not perfect but the game is fundamentally fun. it has unique, fun and interesting characters and playability. it has SO MUCH story. it has a lot of merits.

a few years later, and the game is still very popular. natlan was a flop but nod krai has tons of eyes on it. it has a very loyal, borderline rabid fandom.

hyv took the model of genshin, and then fine tuned it some more to make hsr. with hsr, they took many of the criticism and feedback that genshin received, and MADE those quality of life changes necessary to keep players coming.

and guess what? hsr has consistently been the highest overall revenue gacha game for months and months at a time, since its release. it consistently tops all other gacha games in quality.

it consistently listens to it's audience about game critiscism, power-creeping etc

the game is not perfect. a gacha company is a gacha company no matter what. but it is crucially a better, more comfortable game to play then virtually any other gacha out there now.

and it achieves that by being THEE most f2p friendly game in the entire line-up without doubt. it is generous with rewards consistently and is incredibly easy to access, and has a number of re-farmable, re-playable things for the user to do - even very early game for the in-game gacha currency.

but more the real reason its so f2p friendly its because improving your account, getting stronger is realistic with investment.

if you want a good, playable game to balance the already extremely predatory gacha system - caring about accessibility is fundamental. its crucial to the games health and ecosystem that the game will be f2p friendly in at least some capacity

the issue with lads is the core game mechanics are Bad. late game farming is a crucial aspect of any gacha game - but the amount of time and resources it takes to appropriate level the teams required is literally batshit crazy and inaccessible. it takes thousands of wish bottles to get a card to 80 with built out protocores and even more time then that to create a functional team

the main appeal of the game is the story cards, but those are one-time experiences. sure you can play them again. but unlike most gacha games where the things you pull for can be used to upgrade your account repeatedly and allow you to level up in or some other aspect in a meaningful way. the only time this is true is for myth characters but the newest wave of discourse started literally because xavs myth is not up to par the one place it should be.

the games core mechanic, affinity, has no real standard way of being farmed either. there are a number of small tasks you can do and those will earn you dias, but lads is marketed as an otome game. so the most important thing, more then even the cards, is character to affinity and having access to your fave.

there is a limited number of things you can do weekly that provide chocolate for your reward to increase affinity - but there's no repeatable, fun gameplay mechanic. you can play kitty cards or do the claw machine, but nothing else. there are orbits, but numerous late game players have complained about being stuck because there's not a meaningful way to make your cards stronger once you hit a wall.

there's the senior hunter competition, but the number of cards required to complete it with full stars is absolutely ridiculous even if you play everyday. the game mechanics are difficult and not explained well whatsoever, especially as you move into late game. the game is not well organized (notorious for infold). the amount of content between character unequal despite the amount of time the games been released and EVEN THOUGH THERE ARE ONLY FIVE CHARACTERS as of now.

the game is extremely, extremely unfriendly to f2ps for more reasons then these. these are just a few of the more glaring and obvious issues.

infold will make money regardless of who plays because whales exist and always will. but without f2p players to keep the game alive, the game will lose steam and the quality will continue to decrease. there will be no reason to update the game in a meaningful way after a certain point and it will fall out of relevance just as quickly as it came into it.

that's why it doesn't make sense to me why people are defending infold. infold makes a metric fuckton of money. and it will keep making that money, but without core mechanics and without f2p players to keep it in line - the quality WILL decrease over time until it just kind of ceases relevance. its the system of gacha itself. once the money is certain, the quality runs dry and the game will be dead.

if you want a game to make money, you need to be good to your f2p audience whom make up a majority of your fanbase because it improves the game quality. whales will pay your bills, but consistency is what keeps your game alive

[crystalconfections]

blame grimmy

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I think we all need to research how soap is made in case one of us is accidentally sent back in time. I can sing soap's praises all I want to Victorian era England, but that meeting's gonna go down hill fast as soon as some wig-wearing guy asks me how to make the stuff. I can't just tell these people to Google the recipe for soap. But If we all pre-Google the recipe for soap together as a precaution, we have a pretty good chance of whoever accidentally time travels knowing the recipe.

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men are so much hotter when they’re yearning and suffering because of it

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my favorite thing about navigating fanfiction is finding a really good one and being all “oh boy this was good, I hope they have more!” and literally every other story they’ve ever written was for like Miami Vice 

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hey sexy. I can tell by the frequency of your blog updates that you are once again avoiding it all

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its so much and its dishonest work

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my first impression about what tonight's popping! happy popcorn! event is going to be like initially--