#early YouTube anime videos were the best

[lowpolynpixelated]

Bloodborne PSX One of the best fanworks on the web

Though the PS4 boasted and still boasts an impressive library of releases, for many (myself included) the system served to be bought for initially one purpose, to be the Bloodborne Machine. Most of the people in my life who had a PS4 during its generation either bought one exclusively to play Fromsoftware’s Nightmare Hunting Adventure or had initially got one solely to play the game and ended up getting more games afterward. It’s a phenomenon the game industry sees time and time again, with previous generations having swathes of fans buying entire consoles for one or two games. As far as games go though, Bloodborne is at the very least worth the price of entry. At the time, it was heralded as Fromsoftware’s most cutting-edge and impressive game to date. A gorgeous gothic world filled with creatures ripped straight out of H.P Lovecraft’s nightmares, a haunting soundtrack showcasing beautifully composed choral scores and a combat system that incentivized aggression and speed to achieve brutal and bloody efficiency. It’s no wonder then why Bloodborne still has such a large following behind it. Fans of Fromsoftware have hoped for a sequel or PC port year after year to largely disappointing results. But where the community shines is in its fanworks. 

From fanart, comics, music, animations, and even fan-made video game spinoffs, the game has been shown a monumental amount of love since its debut in 2015. One of these fanworks was released back in 2022 and has since become one of the most famous pieces of fan-made content surrounding the game, this of course, being BloodbornePSX by LWMedia. An incredibly impressive feat of coding and art direction, the game serves as a “Demake” of Bloodborne’s first Yharnam segment, made to look like and play as if it were made on the very first PlayStation console. With some custom-made areas and an entirely unique boss to boot the perfectly paced experience is both a treat to fans who have been orbiting the game since its earliest days and new fans looking for the best and brightest fanworks to interact with. 

The game has since gone on to be covered by a variety of news outlets all over the web, along with its creator receiving much-deserved attention for her efforts. One Lilith Walther (AKA b0tster on social media) holds the title of developer for the project. A long-time video game enthusiast and FromSoftware fan herself, she’s had quite an impact on the community I’m sure she’s very proud to be a part of. Later in the article, we’ve got an interview with Lilith herself about both Bloodborne PSX and her current project, “Bloodborne Kart”, but first, let’s talk a bit more in-depth about BBPSX.

(Official launch trailer for Bloodborne PSX, uploaded January 31, 2022 by LWMedia on Youtube)

Bloodborne PSX:

So, what exactly is Bloodborne PSX? To start, let’s answer what precisely a “Demake” is first. Demakes often have the goal of remaking the likeness of a game either stylistically, mechanically, or both, as if it was developed on retro/outdated hardware. Famous examples of Demakes include “The Mummy Demastered” developed by Wayforward as a sort of tie-in to the 2017 film “The Mummy” in the stylings of a 16-bit run and gun adventure against armies of the undead, and “Pixel Force Halo” by Eric Ruth games which take the prolific XBOX franchise and shrinks it down to a Mega Man-esque platformer reminiscent of the NES’ 8-bit days. Demakes are intensely attractive looking, not only into the past of video games and their developments but just how creative developers can be with games that they love and appreciate. Bloodborne PSX hits as hard as a Demake can in my opinion, blending masterfully recreated graphics with perfectly clunky early PSX gameplay quirks that go above and beyond to make the game not only LOOK like it belongs on the nearly 30-year-old console but feel right at home on it as well.

(A screenshot depicting the player character “The Hunter” facing off against two fearsome Werewolf enemies. Screenshot sourced from the Bloodborne PSX Official itch.io page)

Gameplay:

Starting off with the masterfully recreated clunk in the gameplay, Bloodborne PSX “shows its age” by hearkening back to a time when being seamless just wasn’t an option. Much like adventure action games of the past (and much UNLIKE its modern inspiration), you’ll be cycling through your inventory delightfully more than you’d expect. Equipping keys, checking items, and even the trademark weapon transformations are all done through the wonderfully nostalgic menu and inventory screens. Taking one of the foundational parts of Bloodborne’s combat system and making it such a more encumbering mechanic is nothing short of sheer genius when it comes to ways to really make you feel like it’s 1994 again. On top of this, the Hunter’s movement itself has been made reminiscent of classic action titles. Somehow, both stiff enough to feel dated and fluid enough to make combat that same rush of bestial fun found in the original, it goes a long way towards the total immersion into that retro vibe the game sets out to give the player. Anyone who grew up with Fromsoftware’s earlier titles like Armored Core and the King’s Field series will be very familiar with this unique brand of “well-tuned clunk”.

(A delightfully dated looking diagram showing off the controller layout for Bloodborne PSX’s controls. Image sourced from the Bloodborne PSX Official itch.io page)

Graphics:

Speaking of old Fromsoftware games, though, let’s talk about the absolutely bit-crushingly beautiful graphical work on display. As I’m sure you’ve seen from the videos and screenshots included in the article, BBPSX’s art style and direction are nothing short of perfect for what it aims to be. While playing, I couldn’t help but notice every little detail (or lack thereof) in the environments meant to emulate the experience of a game made on 30-year-old hardware. Low render distances, chunky textures, blocky polygonal models, just the right amount of texture warp, it all blends together to create an atmosphere that I can 100% picture being shown off on the back of a jewel CD case with a T for Teen rating slapped into the lower corner. While playing, something rather specific that called out to me was the new way enemy names and health bars were displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen while fighting. As a big fan of the King’s Field games, this small detail went (probably too much of) a long way toward my love of how everything’s meant to feel older. Other games trying to match the more specific feel of King’s Field, like “Lunacid” created by KIRA LLC, also include this delightful little detail, a personal favorite for sure. 

(A screenshot depicting the second phase of Father Gascoigne’s boss fight, showing off the game’s perfectly retro art style. Image sourced from the Bloodborne PSX Official itch.io page)

Sound design/Soundtrack:

But where would a game be without its sound and score? No need to fear, however, because Bloodborne PSX comes complete with a chunky soundscape that will make you want to check and see if your TV is set to channel 3. A haunting set of tracks played by fittingly digital-sounding MIDIs ran through filters to sound just as crackly as you remember backs up crunchy sounds of spilling blood with low-poly weaponry. Original sounds from Bloodborne have been used for an authentic sounding experience, but have also been given the CRT speaker treatment and sound like something you remember playing on Halloween 20 years ago. If you watched the launch trailer featured above then you know exactly what I’m talking about. The Cleric Beast’s trademark screech and Gascoine’s signature howl after his beastly transformation have never sounded so beautifully dated, and I’m here for every bit of it. Even the horrific boss themes we know and love from the original Bloodborne have been brought through this portal to the past. One of my favourite tracks, the Cleric Beast boss theme, might just sound even better when played on a 16-bit sound chip. It really cannot be understated just how much weight the sound design of the game is pulling. In my opinion, the only thing missing is that sweet sweet PSX startup sound before the game starts crackling through the speakers of a TV in the computer room.

(The Bloodborne PSX rendition of the Cleric Beast’s boss theme. Created by and uploaded to Youtube by The Noble Demon on March 20, 2021)

Interview with the developer:

Before writing this article, I had the absolute pleasure and privilege of talking with Lilith Walther about some developmental notes and personal feelings about inspirations and challenges that can come with the daunting task of being a developer. Below are the nine (initially ten, but unfortunately, a bit of the interview was lost due to my recording software bugging out) questions I posed to Miss Lilith, along with her answers transcribed directly from the interview. 

I’d like to start this section of the article by saying Lilith was an absolute joy to talk to. During the interview, I really felt like she and I shared some common ground on some topics regarding how media can have an impact on you and what sorts of things come with video games as an art form. After some minor technical difficulties (and by that, I mean my video drivers crashed), I started off with something simple. The first question posited was: “What got you into video games initially?” Lilith’s response was as follows: “When I was a kid, the family member of a friend had a SNES lying around. I turned it on and didn’t really understand. I was a guy on top of a pyramid, I walked down the pyramid, and some big ogre killed me. Later I learned that was A Link to the past.” and after a brief laugh continued, “A couple years later my parents got a Nintendo 64 with Mario64 and Ocarina of Time and that was it. Never put the controller down since then.” 

She then went on to describe what precisely about Nintendo’s first foray into 3D Zelda had hooked her. “I’ve heard this story so many times. It’s like you’re not even playing the game. You’re just in the world hanging out in Kokiri forest collecting rupees to get the Deku shield, and the game expects you to! It was just, ‘run around this world and explore,’ and that really hooked me.” I couldn’t agree more with her statement about her experience. Not just with a game as prolific as Ocarina of Time but many experiences from older console generations that could be considered “the first of their kind”, or at the very least some of the earliest. Lilith also described her first experience with a PlayStation console, stating: “Later on I got a PS2 which played PS1 games. I didn’t end up getting a PS1 until around the PS3 era, so I guess I’m a poser. I remember my sister bringing home Final Fantasy 9 when it was a relatively new game. If it wasn’t my first PS1 game it was definitely my first Final Fantasy game. Of course I went back and played 8 and 7 afterwards.” A solid answer to a simple question. 

The second question I asked was one starting to move toward the topic of Bloodborne PSX and its namesake/inspiration. Or at least the family of systems it was released on: “What PlayStation console was your favorite and why?” Lilith’s answer surprised me a bit. Not because I disagreed, quite the opposite, actually. But with such a big inspiration for her work being games from the PSX-PS2 generations, what followed was a pleasant bit of insight into one of her favourite eras of gaming, to quote: “I can give you two answers here.” To which I assured her she was more than welcome to, but she was set on having something definitive. “No no I’m only going to give you one answer. I can give you the correct answer that I don’t want to admit, but it was the PlayStation 3. It’s so embarrassing but I genuinely was hooked into the marketing of the whole ‘The cell processor is the smartest thing in the world’ and all that. It really seemed like the future of gaming and I was all about it. I think I owned an XBOX360 before but I did eventually get it and really enjoyed it. It took a couple years for some of the best games to come out but I really did.” A few examples she cited as being some of her most memorable experiences on the console were Uncharted 2, Journey, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and Warhawk. All games I’ve seen on several top 5 and top 10 lists throughout my life within the gaming space. A delightful show of affection for a generation personally very dear to me as well, in which she ended the segment by declaring “Hell yeag”, a bit of a catchphrase she’s coined online.

Getting into the topic proper, my third question was one about her personal relationship with Bloodborne: “How did Bloodborne impact/appeal to your interests?” A question that received perhaps my favourite answer of the whole interview. From her response: ”Oh that’s a big one. Going to the opposite end of the poser spectrum, I was a Fromsoftware fan before it was cool. One of the games I played religiously on my PS2 was Armored Core.” A statement which made more sense than perhaps anything else said during my time with her. “Then later in the PS3 era everyone was talking about Dark Souls, this was when I was in college. I finally caved and got it and saw the Fromsoftware logo and thought ‘Oh it’s the Armored Core people!’ I played and beat it, really enjoyed my time with it. I skipped Dark Souls 2 because everyone told me to hate it, I still need to go back to that one.” 

It’s something I would recommend anyone who hasn’t played Dark Souls 2 to go and do. “Then Bloodborne came out and I thought ‘Alright this is the new one, gotta play this one’ and I was a huge fan of all the gothic stuff in the aesthetic. And how do I explain this, I do really like Bloodborne. I like the design, and the mechanical suite of gameplay, as a video-gamey video game it’s very good.” The tone shifted here to something a bit more personal. “But as well, I was playing it at a specific time in my life. I came out in 2019, I know Bloodborne came out in 2015 but I was obviously just playing it non-stop. It was just one of my ‘coming out games’, you know?” For those who maybe don’t understand the statement there, “coming out” is a very common term used within the Queer community to describe the experience of revealing your identity to those around you. Whether it be to family, friends, or co-workers, almost every queer person has some sort of coming out story to tell. Lilith is speaking in reference to her coming out as a trans woman. She elaborated: “Obviously I can only speak for myself, but I just feel like when you make a decision like that, that part of my life just ended up seared into my brain, you know? Bloodborne was there, so now it’s just a part of me. And it definitely influenced some things about me. It was there because I was working on Bloodborne PSX at the time, but it had an impact on something I’ve heard a lot of other Trans people describe.” She went on to describe the concept of “Coming out a second time” as sort of “finding yourself more within your identity” and becoming more affirmed in it. She described both Bloodborne and her development on Bloodborne PSX influencing large parts of her life, a good example being how she dresses and presents. As a trans woman myself, this answer delighted me to no end. I, for one, can absolutely 100% relate to the notion of media you experience during such a radical turning point in your life sticking with you. There are plenty of games, shows, music, and books that I still hold very near and dear to me because, as Lilith stated, they were there. All the right things at the right time.

Halfway through our questions, we’ve finally arrived at one pertaining specifically to the development of Bloodborne PSX: “What are some unique challenges you’ve faced developing a game meant to look/play like something made on retro hardware?”

Lilith answers: “So there’s two things, two big things. One is rolling back all of the quality of life improvements we’ve gotten over the years in gaming. Not automatically using keys is always my go-to example.” Something as well I mentioned in my short talk about the game’s gloriously dated feeling gameplay above. “That was definitely very very intentional. Because it’s not just the graphics, right? It was the design sensibilities of the 90s. Bringing that to the surface was very challenging but very fun. Another big part was, since it was one of the first 3D consoles, I wanted to recreate the hype around the fact that ‘ITS IN 3D NOW!’ So if you go into your inventory you’ll see all the objects rendered in beautiful 3D while they slowly spin as you scroll through them.” This is a feature I very much miss seeing in modern video games. 

She continued, “I think the biggest one was the weapon changes. Bloodborne’s whole thing was the weapon transformations. Like, you could seamlessly change your weapons and work them into your combo and do a bunch of crazy stuff, and I kind of said ‘that needs to go immediately.’ So now you have to pause and go to your weapon and press L1 to transform it, that was extremely intentional. So once I had those three big things down it all just sort of fell into place. Like the clunky UI and the janky controls. You need jank and clunk, and I think that’s why Fromsoft games scale down so nicely, because they are jank and clunk.” 

A point I couldn’t agree with more. Despite all the modern streamlining and improvements to gameplay, Fromsoft’s ever-growing catalog of impressive experiences still contains some of that old-school video game stiffness we’ve (hopefully) come to appreciate. She went on to make a point I was very excited to share here in the article, “It was just a lot of trying to nail the feel of the games and not just the look, right? Like I’m not trying to recreate a screenshot; I’m trying to recreate the feeling of playing this weird game that’s barely holding together because the devs didn’t know what they were doing.” In my humble opinion, something she did an excellent job with. 

Fifth on the list was a question relating to her current project, Bloodborne Kart, a concept initially drawn from a popular meme shared around social media sites like Tumblr when the buzz of a Bloodborne sequel was keeping the talking spaces around Fromsoft alight: “Anything to say about the development of Bloodborne Kart or its inspiration?”

Lilith answers: “So first off Bloodborne Kart is less trying to be a simulation of a PS1 game and more just an indie game. It’s not trying to be a PS1 game, I just want it to be a fun kart racer first. Starting off of course is Mario Kart 64, that’s the one I played back in the day. But I looked at other games like Crash Team Racing and Diddy Kong Racing, but also stuff like Twisted Metal of course. I always used those as a template to sort of look at for design stuff like ‘how did they handle what happens to racers after player 1 crosses the finish line.” The next portion of her answer was initially a bit confusing but comes across better when you consider certain elements present in BBK’s battle mode. “And also Halo, like for the battle mode. I had to do a battle mode and it kind of just bubbled to the surface. Split Screen with my sister was such a big part of my childhood. Thinking about Halo multiplayer while I was making the battle mode stuff.” 

Her answer to the previous question began to dip into the topic of our sixth question: “Are there any unique challenges or enjoyable creative points that go into making something like Bloodborne Kart?”

As she continued from her previous answer: “One of the biggest quirks of the battle mode I had to figure out was how to tell what team you were on at a glance, and that came back to Halo again. I started thinking about how you could tell in that game and it hit me that the arms of your suit change to the color of whatever team you’re on. It was just something I never even thought of because it’s so seamless. So that gave me the idea to change the kart colours, and that’s the most recent example of me pulling directly from Halo. It’s wild how a small change like that can turn your game from something unplayable to something fun.” I would agree. Tons of small details and things you don’t think about go into making seamless multiplayer experiences. Some of which we take for granted nowadays. She then made a point about one of the most challenging aspects of BBK’s development, “The most challenging thing was definitely the Kart AI. AI is just my worst skill when it comes to game development among the massive array of skills you need to make a game. It’s really hard to find examples of people coding kart driving AI, You know? You need to make a biped walk around you can find a million tutorials online but if you need to make something drive a kart, not really. I was really on my own there. A lot of the examples out there are very simulation oriented. Like cars using suspension and whatnot, but I’m making a kart racer. So I started simple, I put a navpoint down and if it needs to turn left, turn left, if it needs to turn right, turn right. And I just kept adding features from there.”

Moving onto our last three questions, we started to get a little more personal. Question seven being: “What’s your favorite part of Bloodborne Kart so far?”

Her answer was concise in what she was excited about most, quote: “The boss fights.” Short and sweet but she did elaborate. “Translating a big part of Bloodborne is the boss fights. So I made a short linear campaign which is basically AI battles and races strung together. Some of those stages are just boss fights which are unique to the rest of the game. When you make a video game you sit down and you make all your different modes of interactions, and then you make a multi-hour experience mixing and matching all those different modes in more complicated ways. I think the most interesting part is when that style tends to fall away and it ends up building something entirely unique to that experience.” An example she gave was the infamous “Eventide Island” in Breath of the wild, it being a unique experience where the game’s usual modes of interaction are stripped or limited, forcing you into a more structured experience that ends up being a majorly positive one. “That’s what the boss fights are in Bloodborne Kart. They do multiple game mechanics like a chase that ends in a battle mode. Like Father Gascoine’s fight where he chases you, and after you blow up his kart he turns into a beast and picks up a minigun.” That sounds absolutely incredible. It’s very easy to see why she’d pick the boss fights as her favorite element when they’re clearly intended to be such unique and memorable experiences. 

Our last two questions veer away from the topics of development proper and focus more on our dear dev’s personal thoughts on the matter. Question eight posits: “What’s your personal favorite part of being a game developer?”

After some thought, she gave a very impassioned talk about something she considers to be the best part of the experience: “When people who aren’t game developers think about game development they think of things like ‘oh well you just get to play video games all day and have fun’ but it’s not! Except for the 2% that is, and it’s near the end of development. When all the pieces fall into place and you start actually ‘making the game.’ Game development, especially solo, you’re so zoomed in on specific parts. Because you’re not making a game you’re programming software that’s what making a game is. You spend months working on different systems and then you actually sit down and make a level, and you hit play and it you go ‘Oh my god, I just made a game’. That part is what sustains me. It’s magical. That’s the best part when it comes to true appreciation of the craft aside from the reception.” An answer that I don’t think I could’ve put better if I tried. 

My last question is one that I consider to be the question when it comes to interviewing anyone who works on video games. Perhaps a bit basic, but heartfelt nonetheless: “Anything to say to anyone aspiring to be a game developer?”

Lilith’s answer: “Yes. Just do it. For real. This is what I did and it always felt wrong until I looked at more established devs echoing the sentiment. You cannot plan a game before you’ve started making one. The example I always bring up is the team behind Deus Ex wrote a 500 page design document for the game and almost immediately threw it out when they started development. Just start! You’re going to have unanswered questions and I think that trips people up. Don’t start with your magnum opus idea, start with something simple and achievable. I feel like a lot of people set out with the goal of making a triple-A game, and that’s good! But it can’t be your first game. Game development is creating art, just like any other form of art, and it’s like saying ‘my first drawing is going to be the Mona Lisa’ and it just doesn’t work like that. You need practice and development, and it’s difficult to see that because games take so long and so much, so it’s definitely seen as a bigger undertaking. But it’s still art. You’re still making mistakes and learning from them for your first project. Your next game will be better. View your career as a game developer as a series of games you want to make, and not just one big game.” A perfect response to an otherwise unassuming question. 

Lilith’s passion and love for video games were reflected very clearly in every response she gave during my time with her. Her dedication and appreciation for the art form can be seen in every pixel of Bloodborne PSX, as well as the development logs and test builds of Bloodborne Kart. I really do think that the way she answered my final question speaks volumes to the type of attitude someone should take up when endeavoring to make art as intensive as a video game. Whether it’s fanwork of a game that’s important to you or an entirely new concept, do it. 

(developer of Bloodborne PSX Lilith Walther, image provided by Lilith Walther via Twitter)

Closing:

If you’d like to check out the positively phenomenal experience that is Bloodborne PSX  I’ve included a link to the official itch.io page below the article, as well as a link to the official LWMedia Youtube page where you can check out Lilith’s dev logs, test videos, and animations about her work and other art. Thank you so much for reading, and another very special thank you to Lilith for setting aside some of her time to talk to me about this article. Now get out there and cleanse those foul streets!

Links:

Bloodborne PSX official itch.io page: https://b0tster.itch.io/bbpsx

LWMedia Official Youtube page: https://www.youtube.com/@b0tster

Lilith Walther Twitter page: https://twitter.com/b0tster

[omgwhatchloe]

MODERN AU GANG MEMBERS IF THEY WENT VIRAL/WERE KNOWN ONLINE

-dutch should be cancelled but people genuinely think he is crazy so they dont bother. he is used for reaction videos, memes and one of his videos was even on the news when they were discussing banning social media. everyone has given up trying to tell him the entire world is laughing at him and thinks hes crazy.

-johns entire social media used to flop until he got his scars. now all he does is try to prove his scars are real (like that one account from 2022). he hasnt realised yet all the comments are taking the piss out of him, a doctor account proved they were real months ago but he never saw that.

-arthur went viral once when he posted a video of charles and his dog. he hated the notifications and found the comments about his and charles relationship incredibly corny and annoying. he never posted again.

-sean has so many followers because hes always just filming hashtagless videos of him breaking into places, in random countries, screaming in the middle of restaurants, ‘adopting’ wild animals etc etc. lenny is also regularly featured on his account as his boyfriend.

-micah went viral BECAUSE he was getting cancelled in his early 20s. everyone knew his face, he literally could not go anywhere or do anything. he has never posted since. no one can post micah on their accounts either, not that theyd want too.

-hosea is a facebook king. his tiktok account is literally user79286160 and comments on all sean and johns posts. his comments are always at the bottom and go completely unnoticed.

-tilly was an iconic tiktoker and YouTuber who posted vlogs, motivations, outfits etc who got cancelled because she made a huge mistake exposing the wrong person, thinking she was exposing a hater. like, she almost ruined their lives and didnt know what to do, almost got a lawsuit. she ate too hard😔🙏

-lenny barely posts but when he does its the most weird shit. like just a silent, hashtagless picture from his camera roll that slowly zooms out. him walking down the street for 10 minutes. him doing filters. the gang constantly ask him why he posts what he does, and they havent got a straight answer yet.

-mary-beth is a tumblr and pinterest girlie, she has the most followers there and her tiktok account is slowly growing. shes known for being in a lot of fandoms, and making a lot of trends for them. her instragram is also aesthetic.

-javier posts music mostly on youtube and tiktok, but also tries to back dutch up in his videos. people think hes joking. he “collabed” with john (ppl dont realise they are best friends) and that went viral.

[ponett]

Bobby's 2023 Media Wrap-Up

So! Like I said before, this past year I kept a running list of everything I watched, every game I finished, every new album I listened to, etc., and wrote one-paragraph blurbs with my thoughts on every single one. Please enjoy this journey through everything I liked, or didn't like, in 2023, with my favorites of the year listed at the bottom.

(Yes! This is long!!)

Some notes:

I mainly only included things I finished. Exceptions are marked with an asterisk.

I included some YouTube stuff as "TV shows" - mostly particularly long, high effort video essays and documentaries.

I was a bit less adventurous than I'd like to have been this year. Part of this was just that I felt like I was constantly playing catch-up with Big Releases I felt obligated to check out, and part of this was just executive dysfunction from burnout. Wait until you see how long it took me to beat Mario Wonder lmao

Yes, I need to read more books. I don't read a lot of books these days. I need to get back to Discworld.

COLOR KEY

Video Games • TV / Web Video  •  Movies  •  Comics  •  Music

January

1/15: Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (MSQ) - Very slow at times, the Primal shit is generally extremely lame to me outside of the boss fights themselves, but god if the quality of life improvements over WoW, the JRPG energy, and the fact that it Actually Has A Story carry it pretty hard.

1/18: Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island miniseries - One of the most creative and compelling uses of the Sonic IP… ever? Fantastic little self-contained arc about the struggles of Eggman’s abandoned creations that gracefully weaves between heartfelt optimism and moody horror with some of the best art ever seen in a Sonic comic.

1/18: Mega Man X4 - Glad I finally actually beat this after never even beating any of the Mavericks as a kid! I can see why it’s a lot of peoples’ favorites. The gameplay has very little of that X series bloat and is just fun, especially after getting X’s armor upgrades. (But the story really is a long series of missed opportunities.)

February

2/2: Donks - Felix Colgrave continues to be an exceptional artist. The sound design on this is fantastic and really sells this short as something unique. Had to go back and watch his older stuff again after this.

2/4: Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward (3.0 - 3.3 MSQ) - I get it now. I get why people say this is just a proper mainline Final Fantasy game built into the framework of an MMO. That shit ruled. Not even walking back the drama in Ul’Dah from the end of ARR can sour me on it because the main storyline was so strong.

2/8: Disneyland's Forgotten Sci-Fi Rock Band - Live From the Space Stage - A nice and honest tribute to a group of artists who could have easily been forgotten. In hindsight this feels like a precursor to Kevin’s Disney Channel jingle video, a tribute to the unsung artists pouring their hearts into “lesser” art for a megacorporation, art that was designed to be transient but sticks with people nonetheless.

2/9: Metroid Prime Remastered* - Not gonna finish because I just played through the Wii version in 2021, but still. Very, very pretty remaster.

2/16: Theatrhythm Final Bar Line - It’s more Theatrhythm. What more could I want

2/17: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean (anime) - Probably the best part of the anime so far (assuming they continue on to SBR). A near perfect mix of the more structured plot of part 5 with the goofiness of parts 3 and 4 that crescendos into a fantastic, bombastic, emotional, bittersweet ending. The use of footage from the original opening and the new ending set to Roundabout in the finale were perfect, and made me intensely nostalgic for the early days of my JoJo fandom between seasons 1 and 2 of the anime.

2/22: Aggretsuko Season 5 - I don’t really know what to make of this one. Once you get past the agonizing initial arc all about Haida where Retsuko has to be his overbearing mommy GF who flips out and starts spying on him when she’s left on read and chides him when he misbehaves, it feels like an improvement over the previous seasons. But I don’t know how much of that is due to the extremely low bar set by season 4. And then the ending is extremely rushed and anticlimactic. They got legally married and the only acknowledgement was a shot of them signing the paperwork in a montage partway through the final episode?????????

2/24: Double Fine PsychOdyssey - God, what a journey the making of this game was. I already loved 2 Player’s past efforts at documenting Double Fine’s process, but this takes it to a whole new level. This feels culturally significant. The depth and honesty with which they depict not just the nitty gritty of making a game, but also the inherent struggles of working on a collaborative creative work for years at a time, is astounding. Not to mention that they were there to capture the shift from office life to remote work as COVID hit. So much of this would have been nightmarishly stressful to watch if I didn’t already know how successful the game was, but that’s just because they really didn’t sugarcoat it. And yet even after all that, it leaves me feeling optimistic about video games as an art form in a way that the constant headlines about cynical live service games don’t. There are still people out there pouring their hearts into making real art, and this is their story. Everyone who plays video games should watch this.

2/25: Cracker Island (Gorillaz) - New Gorillaz albums feel like less of an event these days, but after Humanz it feels like they’re just more chill with the project and their ambitions with it. Every couple years we get some more laid back jams from Damon along with some fun new collabs. Hard to complain. Favorite track: New Gold

2/25: Pool Kids (Pool Kids) - I discovered this band because Derek knows them and was excited when they got a song added to Fortnite through the Bandcamp collab. Always down to find more cool indie rock bands I can vibe with. The mix of dreamy vocals and energetic riffs on some of the tracks here almost fill the Crying-shaped hole in my heart. Almost… Favorite track: Conscious Uncoupling

2/25: Insane in the Rain (insaneintherainmusic) - I thought it was really funny timing when Carlos announced that his first original project would be a jazz fusion album inspired by acts like T-Square and Casiopea right as I was getting into those two specific bands. The final product does not disappoint. Favorite track: Insane in the Rain

2/26: Get Up Sequences Part Two (The Go! Team) - I’ve never been one to believe that a band’s sound has to remain exactly the same forever, but it really does hit you hard that the first two tracks here sound like classic The Go! Team. Their more recent cleaner sound is still here too, though, for a nice mix of old and new. Favorite track: Divebomb

2/28: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury (Season 1) - Oh my god. Oh my god. I got distracted around the time I was finishing SLARPG, but finally catching up now, wow. My assumption that the seemingly lighter tone of the series compared to the prologue was there to lull us into a false sense of security before twisting the knife when war finally breaks out was spot on. This is peak Gundam.

March

3/4: Pizza Tower - One of the best platformers I’ve played in a long time. It transcends its blatant Wario Land inspirations with the sheer speed at which Peppino can move and the way things like the level design, his wall running, and even the hidden ability to do a second lap around the level reward getting into a flow state where you’re just constantly moving. This is the type of game that wants to turn you into a speedrunner. My only real complaint is a few iffy enemy designs that I wish would get patched.

3/6: Bloons TD 6 * - I bought this before bed one night on a nostalgic whim and then the next morning woke up and saw the Steam receipt email on my phone in one of the most “what did I do last night” moments of my life. I like when the monkeys pop the balloons.

3/7: The Book of Boba Fett - I put off finishing this show for a very long time but finally caved upon the release of The Mandalorian season 3. This show spends four episodes failing to make me give a shit about Boba Fett trying to be “the daimyo” and drive the drug trade off of Tatooine, then just gives up and becomes season 2.5 of Mando, which in turn feels like it undercuts the main series. It fails as both its own story and as a spinoff. I know that finishing this after Andor did it no favors, but WHOOF.

3/12: Obi-Wan Kenobi - Some interesting ideas in the first half hinting at a more introspective show, but it’s mostly swept aside in the back half so it can become a generic Star Wars adventure remixing things from A New Hope and Rebels (and apparently Jedi: Fallen Order). Action scenes have zero stakes because you know nothing can happen to any of the returning characters and none of the new ones are particularly interesting. Why there’s a second climax hinging on a Luke Skywalker death fakeout eludes me. Obi-Wan throwing the rocks at Vader is one of the funniest things in Star Wars history. But it was still better than Book of Boba Fett, I guess.

3/19: The King of Braves GaoGaiGar - Wow, cool robot indeed… GaoGaiGar isn’t going to blow anyone away with its writing, but sometimes you just need a really fun monster of the week mecha show with great action and lovably goofy characters. This is a show where like 20% of every episode consists of recycled transformation, combination, and signature attack sequences and I ate it up every time because they look fucking cool as hell. I don’t care. I’d watch Final Fusion another 49 times.

3/21: The Last of Us (HBO) * - Watched the first two episodes out of curiosity, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue because I don’t give a shit about The Last of Us. It’s definitely a well done adaptation, though, even if I know it’s inevitably going to devolve into miserable torture porn with questionable politics if they adapt Part II faithfully. The ending of episode 2 also lines up perfectly with where I stopped in the game in 2013 lmao

3/27: The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse (Folding Ideas) - Another banger from Dan Olson. This time the premise inherently gives him more time to just show off a bunch of stupid ugly bullshit made by crypto guys, which is fun. My main complaint was that I wished he would’ve brought up Second Life more as a point of comparison (a thing I basically always want out of discussion of “the metaverse”), but he at least did touch on it in the last section.

3/31: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog - I can’t believe after years of begging for the supporting cast to get more and better material in a Sonic game I got my wish in the form of a freeware murder mystery VN released for April Fools. This kicked ass.

April

4/7: Berserk - Completed Miura’s run and caught up on the chapters that have been released posthumously. It’s hard to say anything that hasn’t been said about Berserk, universally agreed upon as one of the greats of manga and fantasy fiction as a whole. What begins in its first few volumes as a nihilistic and edgy action comic built to facilitate as much sex and gore as possible quickly evolves into something deeply human and vulnerable and beautiful, both figuratively and in terms of its lavish art. The world sucks and is immeasurably cruel, and you will see that cruelty illustrated in graphic, sickening detail repeatedly throughout the series. (Perhaps a little too often throughout the Golden Age, where it feels like Miura never misses an opportunity to threaten Casca with sexual assault mid-battle.) But the point isn’t to wallow in that misery. It’s the story of a victim of horrific abuse learning to slowly open up to others, having those people he cares about torn away from him in the worst night of his life, hardening himself into a cold killing machine, and then slowly learning to open back up again, even if it means leaving himself vulnerable to more hurt. Anyone who says that the series peaked with the eclipse and went downhill in the “Guts’ JRPG Party” era is missing the point. Guts needed to find new people in his life to care about, to begin to find happiness again. Because no matter what unspeakable things Guts has gone through, it’s still possible for him to heal and to be loved. It takes time, but eventually you stop and realize that life has moved on.

4/8: Dedede’s Drum Dash Deluxe - Skipped it upon release because I didn’t particularly care for the minigame in Triple Deluxe, and I didn’t miss much. It’s fine as a little distraction, but not as a standalone rhythm game with only seven songs. If you don’t bother with the hard modes or chase after high scores this game is 15 minutes long. Oh how I yearn for Kirby to get the Theatrhythm treatment.

4/10: The King of Braves: GaoGaiGar FINAL - Eh… It was okay. Lots of cool robot fights, but said fights are stitched together with a mediocre plot that tries too hard to be more “mature” than its unabashedly schlocky kids’ show predecessor. Not crazy about the ending, either, which tries to be a bittersweet farewell closing off the series once and for all while also teasing that maybe there’ll be ANOTHER sequel after the OVA series they literally called “FINAL.” Ah well.

4/11: The Owl House - Sad to see this one go, but it’s hard to imagine them doing a better finale than this, even if they had gotten the six seasons they deserved. I’m not as obsessed with The Owl House as I probably would’ve been had it come out when I was, like, 20, but it’s a really fantastic show for all the reasons people always say. Great characters, great world, great story. I love that this starry-eyed fantasy story about a teenager finding love and a place where she belongs is also set on the rotting corpse of a titan with Hieronymous Bosch-inspired scenery and freaky monsters everywhere. What a great mix. If anything, I just wish I would’ve watched the first season as it aired so I could’ve had more time with it.

4/29: Mega Man Battle Network 3: Blue Version - FINALLY beat this via the new collection, 20 years after playing it as my first Mega Man game. (Technically my first was White, not Blue, but whatever.) There are more annoyances than I remember - lots of really really bad forced backtracking sections where you have to revisit every previous part of the internet, low chip drop rates, some really aggravating bosses like BubbleMan and KingMan, etc. But it’s still a great time overall. It’s Battle Network. In the back half the story gets surprisingly emotional, too. I was always under the assumption that the Hub stuff never came back up much in the story after 1, so I was pleasantly surprised with how relevant it was to the emotional arc of 3.

4/30: Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun * - Yeah I’m not playing through the whole thing lmao. I just wanted to play the first couple hours for nostalgia’s sake, and as a baseline for how much better the rest are. Even before getting deep in the game and having to deal with all the shit gated between doing two new game+ playthroughs, it’s immediately obvious how much of a downgrade this one is. Tons of glaring errors and typos all over the script, blander music, a way more boring aesthetic for the internet, and a premise that mostly just recycles the tournament idea from 3.

May

5/14: The Venture Bros. - Glad I finally sat down and watched all of this with Anthony after having seen one (1) episode as a teenager and a bunch of random clips in the years since. Great show. Some jokes in the early seasons haven’t aged gracefully, but what the show grows into over time... man. Hank and Dean go from being the butt of the joke to being characters you actually sympathize with - while still also being funny little goofballs. And the journey Henchman 21 goes on throughout the show. Man. Amazing that a comedy like this could run for 20 years and maintain its level of quality. Can’t wait for the movie.

5/18: Future Me Hates Me (The Beths) - Okay yeah I’m now just discovering bands through Fortnite lmao. I can’t complain really, they pick some really great indie artists for the in-game radio stations. Anyway: It’s very easy to win me over with a combination of energetic power pop, catchy guitar riffs, and earnest lyrics like this. One of those albums where three or four tracks in I know I have to buy it. Favorite track: Not Running

5/18: Jump Rope Gazers (The Beths) - Ditto. Favorite track: Dying to Believe

5/18: Expert In A Dying Field (The Beths) - Another good album. (I’m listening to these in release order.) I’ve been a bit slower to warm up to this one, initially thinking it was a little too mellow overall, but it might be my favorite after a few listens. Some real high highs. Interestingly, the lead singer’s New Zealand accent is also coming out more in her singing? Favorite track: Your Side (or maybe Head in the Clouds)

5/19: The Super Mario Bros. Movie - As a Mario fan, I think I enjoyed it? As a movie, less so? It was decent, in spite of feeling like they came up with a list of fun action setpieces first and then wrote the absolute bare minimum possible for the story scenes tying it all together. Full thoughts here. (This is the first movie I’ve seen this year, huh? I really don’t watch a lot of movies.)

5/23: Don't Know What You're In Until You're Out (Gladie) - I feel like I don’t like Gladie as much as I should. Their style of noisy indie rock is very much in my wheelhouse, and I do enjoy listening to them, but I dunno. Maybe it’s that the particular style of vocals makes it more monotonous to me. A good album nonetheless, if not 100% my thing. Favorite track: Nothing

5/24: City Slicker (Ginger Root) - Yes I am still making my way through Bandcamp artists I heard on Fortnite don’t @ me. Any excuse to get me to listen to some cool city pop-inspired funk like this is a good excuse. Favorite track: Loretta

5/24: Rikki (Ginger Root) - Favorite track: Why Try

5/25: Spotlight People (Ginger Root) - Favorite track: The Classic

5/29: Succession - A good dramedy series that increasingly focuses more on the drama than the comedy as it progresses, but it’s hard to complain about that since the drama is so compellingly produced. I enjoyed it. That being said, I kind of rankle at the claims that it’s The Greatest TV Show Of All Time. It’s great, don’t get me wrong. Amazing performances all around. But the show LOVES to spin its wheels, to repeat itself, and to let most of its interesting dramatic developments fizzle out before anything really comes of them, almost as if the show is constantly getting bored with its own ideas. To some extent this is intentional - Logan Roy is the untouchable billionaire, his kids fail at everything (but will nonetheless remain billionaires), and in the long run none of them really give a shit about anything other than their own status. But it’s not like things tend to visibly impact anyone else, either, be they supporting characters or the world at large. Even the Big Scary Election, where the Roy siblings are directly responsible for plunging the nation into chaos, ultimately has zero impact on the finale a mere two episodes later. Certain Other Things do have an impact in the last season, though, allowing things to meaningfully change for the cast and for the show to sit with the ensuing drama, which has stopped me from souring on Succession more. There was finally a payoff for something. But it does still kind of feel like a show that goes in circles until it’s ready to call it quits, even if those circles did contain a lot of great acting and music along the way.

5/29: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts - I’d watched the first 12 episodes when they originally released, but I guess the Netflix binge release and the fact that all three “seasons” came out in one year led to me waiting until it finished… and then I just never got around to finishing it. Glad I fixed that! Really fun and stylish cartoon with an art style reminiscent of Teen Titans, a hip hop-filled soundtrack, dynamic fight scenes, and a colorful post-apocalyptic world filled with mutant (mostly anthropomorphic) animals. I’ll admit that at times I do kinda roll my eyes at Kipo’s unshakeable belief that everyone can be friends in a way that I don’t necessarily with similar shows like Steven Universe, and not every joke lands, but I dunno. It’s a kids’ show. That’s to be expected. It doesn’t detract from the overall package for me.

June

6/1: Craig of the Creek (Season 4) - It’s been years and I’m still processing the fact that kids can turn on Cartoon Network and hear Jeff Rosenstock. Anyway! Craig continues to be one of the best cartoons on TV, consistently funny and creative and way more engaging than a show about a bunch of kids LARPing in the woods has any right to be. This season turned into One Piece with the gang effectively hunting down the Poneglyphs in search of a legendary treasure. The kids think it’ll be magic. It isn't. An increasing number of cartoon logic gags aside, this show is firmly set in the real world. Does that make it any less interesting? Hell no. Season 3 turned a game of capture the flag into an all-out five episode war between the heroes and villains, filled with dramatic turnabouts and a climactic guest appearance from Del the Funky Homosapien. I’m sure however they wrap things up in the (sadly shortened) final season, it’ll be great. (Also? I would watch a whole show based on that “what if” episode that jumped forward to everyone’s 20s.)

6/6: Barry - Holy shit, what a show. I ended up binging it in less than a week in a cycle of “okay, just one more episode.” The way this show is able to swing between tones and genres while still feeling like a cohesive whole is truly masterful. It’s a layered character drama, a tragic crime thriller, a farcical comedy, an understated action series, a surrealist morality play, and a scathing satire of Hollywood, all in one. Even within the criminal underworld subplots the show ranges in tone from Breaking Bad to Paddington 2. And it works! While the show naturally gets bleaker over time as it confronts the repercussions of Barry’s murders, it never completely loses sight of its comedic roots. My favorite episode was easily season 2’s “ronny/lily,” a mostly self-contained episode that somehow manages to keep throwing the perfect curveballs to escalate its dark comedy.

6/12: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Extended Edition) - Y’all heard of this movie? Pretty good, it turns out. (I’d seen the theatrical cut before, but this was my first time watching the extended edition. I’ve also only seen parts of the other two movies, so it’s time I finally watch all the extended cuts. The Gollum game pushed me to this.)

6/13: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Extended Edition) - give it to us RAW and WRIGGLING

6/17: The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Extended Edition) - I’m not crying YOU’RE crying

6/22: Clone High (Season 2) - While the first episode being about “cancel culture” (or, more accurately, a teenager from 2003 being transported to 2023 and putting his foot in his mouth a lot) put a lot of people off, I ended up enjoying the new season of Clone High. The new clones grew on me as the season went on and their roles in the web of teen romance melodrama crystalized, and it made me laugh a lot, and Cleo/Frida is galaxy brained. Also they played one of my favorite Antarctigo Vespucci songs like a minute into the first episode. I don’t think I could really ask for much more.

6/28: The Mandalorian (Season 3) - I'd been watching this weekly but put off the last episode for no real reason. Responses to this season have been all over the place, but my blistering hot take is… it was fine. Is it as good as the first season? Probably not. But Mando no longer needs to carry the whole franchise on its shoulders and set the bar for how good the live action Disney Star Wars shows can be, because Andor exists, and it’s never gonna top Andor. The Mandalorian is free to just be a pulpy space adventure show where Giancarlo Esposito plays a scenery-chewing cartoon villain and a little puppet does wire stunts. These are things Andor cannot and should not do, but that’s Star Wars, baby. It’s delightful. I could watch Grogu get underhand tossed like a sack of flour all day.

July

7/2: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury (Season 2) - LOVE WINS. (More nuanced take from way later: It definitely feels like a lot of the more messy political conflicts in this show got swept aside by the big final battle where some more easily resolved family conflicts take center stage. I’m not sure the ending is the most satisfying. But also this show only got half the episode count that damn near every other Gundam show ever made got, so that might be a factor here. Idk. Still one of my favorite Gundams.)

7/4: Final Fantasy XVI (watched Anthony play) - I had to write my longest Medium article ever about this one because I was so frustrated

7/10: Home Movies - “Things I like that I’ve never seen in full” has certainly been a recurring theme this year. Home Movies remains an all-time classic of animated comedy that went out on a high note before things got stale or the characters became parodies of themselves. While it’s mostly known for its funny improvised banter, throughout the last season you can really see the arc where Brendon no longer enjoys making movies, yet he feels obligated to keep using them to escape from the real world. In that light, the ending where the nature of their dysfunctional makeshift family is cemented, Brendon’s camera suddenly breaks, and life moves on really does feel like the perfect note to end on. Truly one of the best to ever do it.

7/15: The Legend of Zelda - Tears of the Kingdom - Wow. Just… wow. I had serious doubts about TotK in the months leading up to release due to how close Nintendo was playing their cards to their chest. I didn’t want this to be a Saints Row IV, where the game is fun enough but the recycled map makes it feel like a rehash. Instead, I found a game that made me look at BotW’s map in a whole new light, brimming with so many more things to do and people to meet. Add on a better, more versatile set of tools, more varied dungeons and bosses, and a story that I felt was told somewhat better and we’ve got a real contender for my new favorite Zelda game. It was hard to tear myself away, but as this list shows, it’s been basically the only game I’ve played since it came out.

7/16: Sonic Prime (Season 2) - I liked the parts with Shadow and Chaos Sonic, but I’ve come to the sad conclusion that most of this show is just mediocre. More thoughts here.

7/18: We ♥ Katamari Reroll + Royal Reverie - “I’m a dog, but I love Katamari Damacy.” Truer words have never been spoken.

7/19: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts - Pretty good! It didn’t blow me away, but after how bad the Bay movies got I’m just thankful to have a decently cohesive Transformers movie where the human story is okay and I like the bots (although half of them needed more screen time), even if it is just another Hollywood blockbuster about two sides fighting over a macguffin that devolves into a big CGI battle against an army of nameless monsters in the third act. This is basically a mid-tier MCU movie but with Transformers, which won’t do much for most people, but again: the bar was underground.

7/22: The Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart - God DAMN. A phenomenal ending for the series. While I would have loved to see a full final season to get some more one-off episodes in there, this doesn’t feel creatively compromised in any way–either due to the time constraints, or due to a desire to make it more marketable as a movie. It really does feel like they just took their outlines for the canceled final season and gently massaged them into the shape of an 84-minute movie, and I mean that in the best possible way. It’s completely on par with the previous seasons. A hilarious and fitting sendoff for one of the greats of adult animation.

7/23: Beautiful Katamari - This was one of my first Xbox 360 games, but a frustrating temperature-based level made me put it down for 16 years. “Maybe it won’t be as bad now that I’ve beaten the first two games and am better at Katamari,” I thought. Nope! Still an absolutely dogshit level. But also, turns out the whole game is only like two hours long lmao. It’s still Katamari, so it’s still fun - the final level in particular, which seamlessly takes you from ground level all the way to space, feels like a logical endpoint for the series - but beyond that it just doesn't have the same soul without Keita Takahashi's input.

August

8/4: Doom Singer (Chris Farren) - I’ve been waiting so long for Chris and Jeff to do another Antarctigo Vespucci album, but god damn. This is the best of Chris’s solo work, and a contender for his best record, period. Every track’s a banger, with more energy than some of his previous solo work but also a good deal of variety. Favorite tracks: First Place, Cosmic Leash

8/4: Transformers Earthspark (Season 1) - This show had a bit of an uneven start, unsure if it wanted to have the emotional maturity of a more serious action cartoon or a preschool cartoon where the characters have little kid mood swings and outbursts and learn basic lessons. It also felt like it was speedrunning its Wholesome Found Family Dynamic with characters who just met, which didn’t feel earned. While these problems never completely go away (see: the cheap and corny way the otherwise very dark season finale suddenly resolves), the show improves quickly, and the positives outweigh the negatives. It’s so great to have a Transformers cartoon that feels fresh, giving us a post-war setting with a bunch of new characters and new dynamics between the Cybertronians and the humans. The returning characters are also uniformly great as the old veterans overseeing the new generation. (Reformed Megatron! Danny Pudi as Bumblebee! Steve Blum returning as Starscream! Keith David as Grimlock!!!) And those super dynamic action scenes! I can nitpick, but Earthspark’s a ton of fun, and easily the best new Transformers cartoon since Prime and Animated.

8/5: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (remaster) - Everyone who told me this game was a masterpiece was right. I had played the first chapter when it dropped as the demo for the iOS version years ago, but never went further than that until now. What a game. Absolutely incredible through and through. Great story, great twists, great characters, great puzzles, great art direction. Everything comes together so perfectly to form a totally unique, unforgettable package, a top tier video game murder mystery. Everyone should play this, preferably going in as blind as possible.

8/15: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Season 16) - Wow! Recent seasons of Sunny have been kind of up and down, with some interesting experiments (Mac Finds His Pride, the Ireland arc, etc.) paired with some comedic duds. Most of this latest season is standard fare for the series with fewer big creative swings, but it’s just hit after hit in terms of comedy. Not a single dud, whether we’re seeing Mac and Dennis try to start a rental business for inflatable furniture or watching the gang meet Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, believing the entire time that the latter is Malcolm from Malcolm in the Middle. Even the attempts at topical comedy landed better. Easily the funniest season in years.

8/16: One Piece Film Gold - It’s easy to see why this one has kind of been forgotten in the wake of Stampede and Film Red, which revolve around established fan favorite characters, but this was still pretty fun. Perhaps a little too long, but it’s fun to see the Straw Hats fool around in a giant casino and do a heist. They definitely cranked the fanservice up even more than usual in this one, though, as I probably should have expected for a movie made alongside the anime’s adaptation of Dressrosa.

8/17: One Piece: Stampede - This one goes for a different kind of fanservice. While most One Piece movies are isolated from the ongoing plot and its expanded cast of characters, Stampede instead asks “What if we just put damn near every active character on the same island and had them fight?” The answer: a fun time! It would get old if all of the movies were like this, but after a bunch of movies that are just like “the Straw Hats are gonna land on another new island and fight some more weird guys” it’s fun to see characters like Law and Buggy and Smoker get in on the fun. It’s also nice to get a movie with the Wano era art style, and Usopp surprisingly gets some really good character moments in here.

8/18: One Piece Film Red - This really is the best of the One Piece movies, huh? (Baron Omatsuri is a close second.) It really feels like a change of pace after the last four with the most interesting and emotionally engaging story out of any of them. And even if the events of these movies are never canon, it still feels significant in my understanding of Shanks as a character as we move into the final phase of the manga.

8/21: Pikmin 4 - The opening hour of the game made me really question if they’d changed too much, with all the focus on your new dog unit over your Pikmin and the extremely dull, drawn out dialogue scenes with your new companions back at the base. But once I got into the swing of things I had a blast. This is probably my new favorite Pikmin game. There’s a great mix of activities here to keep things fresh. I also really ended up liking Oatchi’s role as basically your second captain who can also serve as your tank or a rideable mount. The Dandori stuff and nighttime missions in particular show off how useful Oatchi is for your multitasking without necessarily overshadowing the Pikmin.

8/22: Never Get Tired: The Bomb the Music Industry! Story - I literally backed this on Kickstarter eight years ago (my name is in the credits!) and then never got around to watching it for no reason. It’s on YouTube now, and Jeff’s got a new album out next week, so now feels like the perfect time to watch it. And man… what a great documentary. Obviously I’m just a fan of the band, but this also really spoke to me as an artist. Jeff wanting to stick to his principles and give out his music for free and play cheap all ages shows, his discomfort over the idea of selling merch, and the struggles that come with not playing the game like that… It's hard. They readily admit that Jeff is an idealist, that people fight him on this stuff, that he’s missed out on some big opportunities because of these stances, and that he’s had to compromise a bit on some of these things over time. But that incredible climax with their final show, including a full opening performance of the slowly building “Campaign for a Better Next Weekend” and the closing performance of “Future 86” where the whole audience is singing along as the members of the band are hugging and crying… it’s beautiful. This may have been a band where the members had to go back to their shitty day jobs after every tour because they weren’t selling out arenas, but their art meant something to people, and that makes it all worth it.

8/25: Nimona - I haven’t read the original comic (yet), so I can’t compare them too much, but it’s nonetheless pretty apparent that some things were softened and easy kids’ movie jokes were added by the studio to squeeze this graphic novel for teens into a PG animated movie. Regardless, the emotional throughline hits REALLY hard, particularly the very blatant trans allegory and the climax. (It’s no wonder Disney was afraid of this movie seeing the light of day lmao.) The animation is also very squishy and fun to watch throughout. Great movie.

8/26: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish - Spider-Verse really has done so much for animation, huh? This one was as good as everyone said. Beautiful use of stylized color and lighting throughout, and every time this movie very conspicuously shifted to different framerates for a flashy fight scene it owned. Very cute and heartwarming story, too, which thankfully gave its second act plenty of time to explore the cast and let them go on their journey, unlike a certain plumber movie that came out a few months later. Also I would let Death [redacted]

8/28: Holocure: Save the Fans! - This isn't really something I can beat, but I've been addicted to Holocure lately. I don't even watch VTubers aside from maybe seeing a funny Korone animation every now and then, this is just a really, really good freeware Vampire Survivors clone with a huge roster of varied characters to pick from.

8/31: HELLMODE (Jeff Rosenstock) - A new album from Jeff is always a major event for me. If there were any worries that he was starting to go soft at 40 (because one of the three singles off this album was a gentle acoustic piece), the frantic opening of this album put those worries to rest. The first two tracks are Jeff screaming out for help as he’s pulled in a million directions by the chaotic state of the world, a theme that becomes the thesis of the album. I’d say it lags slightly in the middle, but overall this is another extremely well-rounded record full of bangers that’s unapologetically Jeff, with possibly my favorite closing track he’s ever done. Favorite tracks: I WANNA BE WRONG, 3 SUMMERS

September

9/3: One Piece (live action, Season 1) - They did it. I can’t believe it, but they did it. While I have my nitpicks (Usopp and Sanji don’t get enough big moments to shine), this is an extremely solid and faithful adaptation of the first few arcs of One Piece with a great cast. For the most part the changes feel smart and logical, and the big emotional beats of the story are all there and executed very well. I doubted it a little in episodes 2-4, where the Orange Town and Syrup Village arcs saw some major changes to shift the action indoors, and the increased focus on the drama in favor of repeating every gag and battle from the manga 1:1 took a bit of getting used to, but by the end I was having a blast. It’s a different take on One Piece, but it still feels like One Piece. Genuinely very excited for season 2.

9/4: Pseudoregalia - A great little N64-style 3D Metroidvania focused on platforming and very satisfying movement. I always love entries in the genre that are less prescriptive in what order you have to tackle areas in, a la Symphony of the Night or Hollow Knight, and this one’s great in that regard. While there are a number of new moves to find, most of the map is open to you very early in the game, and smart use of your moveset can allow you to “sequence break” without even realizing it. (You would not believe how long I went without getting the wall run.) I do wish it had a map, but that’s already being patched in.

9/6: Bomb Rush Cyberfunk * - Not a bad game at all, but I quickly remembered how bad I am at skating games, so like… eh? Not sure I have much desire to play past chapter 2. Also the soundtrack is sadly kinda hit or miss for me outside of the obvious Naganuma tunes.

9/9: The History of the Minnesota Vikings (Dorktown) - Jon Bois never misses. Even as someone who doesn’t actively follow sports, Jon Bois is a master storyteller, using graphs and statistics and funny anecdotes to explore these deeply human stories. He can convey why people care so much about these teams, these people, and sports in general, and how our popular sports reflect on American culture. He could tell the story of just about any team or player in any sport and I just know I’ll come out the other side a misty-eyed fan. And what a fascinating cast of characters we have this time, with origin stories for everything from the Hail Mary pass to a Minnesota state supreme court judge to the Griddy. Nine hours well spent.

9/10: Timespinner - A fun and highly polished Metroidvania that maybe doesn’t quite have enough of its own identity in its quest to replicate Symphony of the Night…but also, like, this was pitched as a Symphony throwback on KickStarter in a pre-Bloodstained, pre-Hollow Knight world, so I can’t really blame ‘em! Stopping time to avoid boss attacks is fun, the pixel art is gorgeous, and I liked the dark science fantasy story about warring empires and meddling with time a lot more than I thought I would - lore journal text dumps and all.

9/14: The Decay of Sam & Cat (Quinton Reviews) - All the stuff at the end with Matt Bennett (the actor who played Robbie on Victorious and Sam & Cat) in this was really good and sweet. It’s that kind of thing that makes these videos feel like they’re still worthwhile on some level. But the padding and the things Quinton chooses to spend the colossal runtime on does drive me more and more insane with each passing Nick sitcom video. I don’t know how much longer he can keep this schtick up. I hope he’s able to move on to other things before too terribly long instead of continuing to extend this “miniseries.”

9/19: Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales - AKA Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man 1.5. It’s fun for the same reasons Peter’s first game was fun. I had a good time swinging around New York again in preparation for the sequel, and there’s a lot of cute stuff with Miles becoming Harlem’s neighborhood hero, but WOW did the Underground v. Roxxon conflict fall flat for me.

9/20: I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson - I understand so many posts now.

9/25: Spider-Man (2002) (rewatch) - It’s you who’s out, Gobby! OUT OF YOUR MIND!

9/25: Futurama (Season 8) - I was ready to be a hater, recalling the fact that Futurama has already had three “perfect endings” with the show getting a little weaker with every revival. Then I watched the first new episode on a whim and thought it wasn’t bad, so I was like, eh, sure, I’ll watch the rest. Overall Hulurama is hit or miss. There are chuckles to be had, and it sure as hell beats modern Simpsons, but almost every episode is either a belated take on an overplayed Topical Issue (the pandemic, Amazon, cancel culture, etc.) or a direct sequel to an old episode people liked. Or both! It’s also really noticeable that certain voice actors sound way older - Billy West is struggling with the Fry voice in particular, and it hurts his comedic timing. But just when all hope seemed lost after the nigh-incomprehensible toy-themed anthology episode, possibly the worst episode of the entire series… the last episode, where the Planet Express crew explores whether or not the universe could be a simulation, was really, really solid. Great note to end on to make me not regret my time with this season as a whole.

9/26: Spider-Man 2 (2004) (rewatch) - Once the GOAT, always the GOAT.

9/27: Spider-Man 3 (rewatch) - Revisiting this movie for the first time since I saw it in theaters… it’s not bad. It’s fine! It continues to have the heart and sincerity that make the first two movies work. It’s just not as concise with three villains vying for the spotlight, but I also wouldn’t cut any of them, necessarily. I guess Eddie/Venom would be the easiest, but Peter getting the black suit and giving in to his resentment feels too central to cut. (Yes, even with Emo Peter becoming a meme.)

9/28: Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake - I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this one, especially since I was never really a fan of the genderbend episodes in the original show. (At the time they mostly just felt like an excuse to crank up the teen romance stuff to 11.) But MAN. This was a fantastic coda to the original series. It made me care about Fionna and Cake and their friends as their own characters separate from their original counterparts, it gave the Simon/Betty arc a much more satisfying (if no less bittersweet) resolution than the original finale had time to do, and it even managed to be a multiverse story that didn’t make me roll my eyes in 2023. A+ all around. Makes me wanna rewatch the original show again. [spoiler: I did]

9/29: Meanwhile (aivi & surasshu) - It’s been a whole decade–they were busy with, you know, all the music in Steven Universe, among other things–but we finally have a new aivi & surasshu album! Their chiptune/piano fusion style is familiar, but they’ve definitely grown as composers in subtle ways. Favorite track: Time Travel

October

10/1: This is Financial Advice (Folding Ideas) - A lot of the nitty gritty finance law stuff turned into white noise for me, but still, great video. I had no idea that the GameStop stock craze devolved into this bizarre cult that thinks they’re going to crash the global economy and rise from the ashes as the new kings with the value of their GME stocks. Glad this video exists to try and balance out the narrative.

10/5: Sonic Frontiers: The Final Horizon DLC - Good ideas, absurdly frustrating and tedious execution. Full thoughts here.

10/10: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (rewatch) - I didn’t plan this, but very fitting that I would end up rewatching this on 10/10.

10/12: Half-Life Alyx but the Gnome is Self-Aware (wayneradiotv) - ha he! (Seriously though, that finale was a fucking masterpiece. The RTVS crew has an incredible knack for using the framing device of video game livestreams to blur the lines between comedy and horror, or ironic anti-humor and complete sincerity. I’ve never seen anything else like this.)

10/15: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - Not sure how much I can say that hasn’t already been said. The most visually creative movie I’ve ever seen, grounded by some really excellent storytelling about Miles (and now Gwen) that’s probably better than his actual comics. But it also does feel like it’s about to end and then the movie just keeps going like ten times over lmao. Can’t wait to watch this a second time on a better TV.

10/20: Sonic Superstars - A mostly really solid and fun 2D Sonic game that’s unfortunately dragged down by an extremely hodgepodge soundtrack and some overly drawn out boss fights. I spent HOURS trying to beat the final boss of the bonus scenario (which is required for the true ending in this one) before giving up. Really a shame that that’s the note I’m leaving the game on, because I otherwise enjoyed it, but ah well. More thoughts here.

10/27: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 - Another good Spider-Man game from Insomniac. Liked the story more than the one in Miles Morales, but maybe not as much as the first game. Extensive thoughts here.

10/28: Venom - Was in the mood for more Venom after the game. As expected this was not a very good movie, but the dynamic between Eddie and Venom made it a fun watch. Tom Hardy is constantly about to shit his pants in this movie. It’s great.

10/28: Venom: Let There Be Carnage - I had a way better time with this one. Is this a good movie? No. But it cranks the insanity of the first movie up to 11. Goofy as fuck in an extremely watchable way.

November

11/5: Pluto - An absolutely masterful series that anyone interested in sci-fi needs to watch. The anime adaptation was great, and I immediately understand why people who’ve read the manga speak so highly of it. Really makes me want to get into Astro Boy more, and also read some of Urasawa’s other works.

11/18: Scott Pilgrim Takes Off - Wow, just wow. When news of a Scott Pilgrim anime broke I was cautiously curious to see if we’d get a more direct adaptation of the comics, and instead it veered off in the exact opposite direction in the best way possible. This is almost entirely a different story, one that’s in conversation with the previous versions (sometimes in very meta ways), and I think it’s really valuable to see O’Malley revisiting these characters with new things to say about them. The major story divergence gives us a chance to examine the characters from a new angle - particularly Ramona, who’s the real protagonist of this version, and the evil exes, who completely steal the show. This was a great reminder of why I fell in love with this series as a teenager. I now genuinely hope we get more Scott Pilgrim.

11/22: Void Rivals (Issues #1 - #6) - The first arc of the new Robert Kirkman series that kicked off Skybound’s new “Energon Universe” is now complete, and I’m left thinking Void Rivals is… okay? I thought the first issue was a decent (if not particularly original) sci-fi comic with an appealing art style, which just so happens to also briefly have a Transformer in it so there can be a Big Surprise. And the series still hasn’t quite shaken that feeling to me. It’s an okay sci-fi series that arbitrarily dedicates a couple of pages of every issue to something from Transformers, but I’m not really sure what the shared universe stuff adds to Void Rivals, or what Void Rivals adds to Transformers and GI Joe. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

11/22: Journey to EPCOT Center: A Symphonic History (Defunctland) - Yeah, gotta be honest, I only got halfway through this one. It seems like Kevin just 1) really wanted to push himself creatively and 2) make a love letter to Epcot, and while I respect that, I think it suffers as a historical documentary. It’s Fantasia but for the creation of Epcot. That might be very impressive on a technical level, but it feels more like a piece of Disney propaganda than prior Defunctland videos due to a lack of context and nuance. 

11/24: Aperture Desk Job - A short, sweet, and funny little tech demo for my new Steam Deck set in the Portal universe. More effort was definitely put into this than was strictly necessary.

11/26: ESCHATOS - I am not good at bullet hell games, but I enjoy them from time to time and I really love this one’s FM synth soundtrack, so I picked it up on a whim in the Steam sale. I only beat it on Easy, but still, I had a lot of fun with it! It’s straightforward but very flashy, with the camera dynamically zooming around from set piece to set piece at ridiculous speeds and each level segueing directly into the next. The lack of a powerup system on the main mode in favor of just needing to know when to use your different shot types makes it feel very approachable.

11/27: Lunistice - A great little 3D platformer with a good soundtrack that I had fun hunting down all the secrets in. This is an easy recommendation for fans of games like Kirby or Klonoa - whimsical games set in colorful dream worlds where the underlying story can get a bit more somber. (Although the story in this one is mostly told through mildly cryptic lore dumps, so your mileage there may vary.)

11/28: Spark the Electric Jester 2 - The leap from 2D to 3D here is impressive, but this is very clearly a rough draft for Spark 3. Very, very fun Sonic-style 3D platforming, but the combat is lacking and the storytelling is just kinda bad. More extensive thoughts on this and the above two games here.

December

12/2: Fortnite (Chapter 4) - This was my first full chapter of Fortnite, after having been roped into the game by the siren songs of Zero Build mode and Goku during Chapter 3. This means it’s harder for me to compare this chapter to previous ones, but still, Fortnite remains a genuinely very well made Battle Royale shooter that’s a blast with friends. If I have any complaint about this Chapter, it’s that they would regularly introduce zany ideas and then slowly reel them back in, whether it was the Augment system or the increasingly mundane movement items. It also felt like it was a little too easy to get the perfect loadout in every match, meaning the final showdown would almost always be against players with Slurp Juice and gold shotguns. And I missed the smaller mid-season map updates of Chapter 3. But overall I still had a really good time, and look forward to playing more for the foreseeable future.

12/4: Plagiarism and You(Tube) (HBomberguy) - This will get written off by many as “YouTuber drama,” but this really is an excellent video essay that feels like the kick in the pants that YouTube needs. If video essayists are gonna be a major source of information for so many, then they gotta have standards. I also think it does a good job of highlighting the people that have been plagiarized and trying to drive more attention their way in an attempt to right those wrongs.

12/6: Transformers (Skybound comic) - We only got the first three issues of this in 2023, but I just HAVE to say something about how incredible this series is here. Daniel Warren Johnson is knocking it out of the park. This is the new bar for Transformers. The hand-inked art is extremely dynamic and full of character, and the story is using the familiar beats of G1 Transformers but doing very new things with them. You can tell this from the very first page, but the emotional scene of Optimus accidentally crushing a deer in the forest and realizing how fragile life is on Earth sealed the deal for me. And yet in the very same comics Optimus can do suplexes and clotheslines and lord knows how many other wrestling moves on Decepticons, and it doesn’t feel like tonal whiplash? These comics just fucking rule, and anyone with even the slightest interest in Transformers should be reading them.

12/8: What We Do in the Shadows (Season 5) - [spoilers] WWDITS has very much settled into being a status quo show. Every season has its own little arc where one or two things change to keep things interesting, but then everything returns to normal by the end. Guillermo finally becoming a vampire, only to become a human again in the end, might just be the most egregious example of this yet. But also… the show’s still really funny? And I continue to be happy that Kristen Schaal has stuck around as a series regular as the Guide. So it’s hard to complain. I could see the show running out of steam over the next few seasons, but it’s still hitting for me right now.

12/12: Pony Island - Finally got around to this since the trailer for the sequel dropped. I feel like playing this years later in a post-Inscryption world where Pony Island is a known quantity kind of lessens its impact, but still, it’s a fun and funny puzzle game where you try to hack your way out of a possessed arcade machine. I’m not sure I found it particularly scary, but I’m not sure it’s supposed to be? The way the game messes with you during the Asmodeus “boss fight” was probably the highlight for me. I also like being able to say things like “The part where you have to not kill Jesus was so hard. I kept getting terrible butterfly patterns.”

12/16: Breaking Bad VR but the AI is Self-Aware (wayneradiotv) - As always, Wayne and co.’s commitment to the bit is unrivaled. This kind of got interpreted as just a way to troll HLVRAI fans, but so many moments in this genuinely made me laugh out loud.

12/18: Soul of Sovereignty Prelude - As someone who would list Cucumber Quest as a big creative influence, I was naturally very excited for this first chapter of GGDG’s new visual novel. Their mentality of both scaling things back in terms of labor while also going more shamelessly self-indulgent in terms of storytelling after burning out on making webcomics has really spoken to me, and WOW, the end result of that new process of theirs is shaping up to be something really special. The art and music are sparse but extremely evocative, giving you the rough sketch of the world and letting your mind fill in the rest. The story blends literary high fantasy vibes with the style of fantasy seen in ‘90s JRPGs (you can definitely tell this came from an idea for an RPG), but rather than constantly winking at the audience and making self-aware video game references it plays these storytelling ideas extremely sincerely, giving them real dramatic weight while still indulging in fun tropes to their fullest extent. While it’s a far cry from their most famous work with much more mature content, GGDG always excels at creating characters and worlds that immediately grab me. I can’t wait for the rest.

12/18: Barbie - I’m only… what, five months late for the whole Barbenheimer thing? Perfect timing. Anyway! On the one hand, I get the critiques saying that this movie is just a major corporation funding a self-aware feminist critique of their own product as a marketing ploy. And I kinda agree with that. And the movie is a little too long, and I don’t really know what to think of the way the Barbie/Ken conflict plays out. Anthony asked me to summarize what the story ended up being about, and I had no idea what to even say. But also… I did still like the movie? We don’t get a lot of cartoonish, absurdist, fourth wall breaking comedies like this anymore, and this is a good one of those. Also the whole cast is great, the set design is kind of stunning, and the cinematography is consistently appealing. I wouldn’t say it’s a revolutionary work of feminist filmmaking by any stretch, but it’s a good comedy movie.

12/21: Dr. Stone: New World - Man, Dr. Stone is great. I’ve said this many times, but I just love that this series uses all the trappings of shounen that would normally be used to hype up the protagonist learning a new move to instead hype up things like the protagonist building a loom or a hot air balloon. It’s shounen Bill Nye. I didn’t completely love everything about the Treasure Island arc this season, but it all built towards a really fun climax with a lot of satisfying turnabouts where the heroes use their ingenuity to just barely win.

12/23: The History of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out World Records (Summoning Salt) - Truly one of my favorite Summoning Salt videos ever, even with how repetitive Punch-Out can get to watch. It’s just so hard to beat “and that runner… was me.”

12/24: Super Mario Bros. Wonder - What more can be said that hasn’t already been said? It’s the best and most creative 2D Mario game since the ‘90s. The only real flaws are that it’s a little easy, the Search Party stages are annoying in singleplayer, and I wish that every boss prior to the final boss wasn’t just some form of Bowser Jr. fight. But those aren’t nearly enough to drag the whole experience down. It was a blast.

12/24: Do a Powerbomb! - Got this from Anthony as a birthday present. This is the previous series by the creative team currently doing the new Transformers comics I was gushing about a few entries ago. Even with the high bar set by those comics, Do a Powerbomb! exceeded my expectations. Holy shit. An absolutely entrancing fantasy wrestling miniseries full of dynamic, energetic action and tons of heart. These comics where a guy wrestles a giant talking orangutan almost made me cry. Twice. An instant favorite.

12/25: Adventure Time (rewatch) - We ended up finishing our rewatch of Adventure Time (the main series, anyway) on my 30th birthday, which feels appropriate. I already kinda knew this, but this rewatch has truly confirmed that Adventure Time is my favorite TV series of all time. The entire show is even better on a full series rewatch. In hindsight, even parts that annoyed me when they aired end up being important parts of the beautiful tapestry that is this series. The many low points of Finn’s adolescent love life are important stepping stones in his growth as a person, which leaves him in an extremely satisfying place by the end. Jake having kids didn’t get to be a huge status quo change because they grew up instantly, but then they did a bunch of fun episodes about Jake’s relationships with his adult children that deepened him as a character. And most of the big lore questions they kept teasing over the years (“Where’d the humans go?” “Who are Finn’s parents?” “When’s Finn gonna get a robot arm?” etc.) ended up getting satisfying and creative answers, because the show left itself the room to figure those things out later. This is a truly special, one-of-a-kind series, one that lasted nearly 300 episodes and yet still seems like it was over too soon. And yes, I did in fact cry during the final montage, like I knew I would. I will always cherish this show with all of my heart.

12/25: Olive the Other Reindeer (rewatch) - Haven’t seen this one since I was a kid! It was a favorite of mine back then, and while it might not be quite as funny as I remember it’s still very cute, with a 2D/3D hybrid art style that remains very unique and appealing. As an adult I can also appreciate the cast they got for this, with like half the cast of Futurama bolstered by guests like Michael Stipe from REM and The Sopranos’ Joe Pantoliano.

12/26: Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio - Anthony and I capped off our Christmas with the most jolly and festive stop motion movie of all! Jokes aside, man, what a beautiful movie. The animation is immaculate, and we really just don’t get children’s animated films like this anymore. Ones that overtly feature real world politics and religion and so many other dark themes in a way that doesn’t talk down to kids or sugarcoat things. This one hits hard. We need more movies like this.

12/31: Oppenheimer - This was an interesting one. Despite being three hours, the way that first hour jumps around in time makes it feel like Oppenheimer is constantly being propelled forward through life at a breakneck pace, swept up by the rising tide of nationalism in spite of his personal left wing politics, never really reflecting on what he’s doing until it’s too late. Then when he’s no longer useful to the empire, he’s chewed up and spat out, only to eventually be honored as a national hero as a symbolic gesture. It’s a compelling story. However, I’m a little torn on how certain aspects of history were framed. Does the abstraction of the bombings detract from the true weight of those events, in favor of sympathizing with the man who built the bomb? Or is it clever a way to show how the realities of the war were compartmentalized away by people who were complicit in its most heinous acts of violence? One minute a bunch of physicists are talking theory, thousands of miles away from the theaters of war, and the next they’ve killed 200,000 people. So which is it? Eh, probably somewhere in the middle, I guess. But I liked it overall.

12/31: Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe - I’ve been really surprised by how good this rerelease is. It kind of flew under the radar for me. I liked the original game, but at the time it also almost felt like the New Super Mario Bros. of Kirby. It was a straightforward throwback game where you went through a grass world, then a desert world, then a water world, etc., and also they added four player co-op. But returning to this one after the kinda mid Star Allies has made me appreciate just how solid RtDL is as a Kirby game. I really like the updated graphics, too - yes, even the new cel shaded outlines around the characters - even though I didn’t think it looked that great in screenshots. Also the two new copy abilities (Sand and Mecha) are fun, the minigame collection is shockingly fleshed out to the point that they could’ve sold it as a standalone eShop game, the collectible character masks are fun, and the new epilogue mode where you play as Magolor is one of the coolest bonus modes they’ve ever done. This is a top tier Kirby remake any fan of the series should check out.

Ongoing things I followed in 2023 that don't have a blurb:

Halo Infinite multiplayer

IDW Sonic the Hedgehog (main series + specials)

One Piece

Chainsaw Man

My Hero Academia (not caught up)

The JOJOlands (not caught up)

Things I started in 2023 that I still need to finish:

Freedom Planet 2

Hi-Fi Rush

Live A Live

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Picross 3D Round 2

Rhythm Heaven MegaMix

Mega Man Battle Network 5: Team ProtoMan

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

Spark the Electric Jester 3

Sonic Dream Team

One Piece (Wano arc, anime)

Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 (I’ve already read the Shibuya arc already in the manga, though)

Astro Boy (2003 anime)

Futurama (original run rewatch)

One Piece (manga reread)

The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee/Ditko era)

Scott Pilgrim series (reread)

And finally... my favorites of 2023!!!

Overall favorite game: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Favorite indie game: Pseudoregalia

Games remastered in 2023 that are now among my all-time faves: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, We Love Katamari

Most pleasant surprise in gaming: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

Favorite film: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Favorite live action show: Barry

Favorite anime: Pluto

Favorite anime written by a Canadian guy and an American guy based on the Canadian guy's old graphic novel series: Scott PIlgrim Takes Off

Favorite live action adaptation of an anime that I still can't believe they didn't fuck up: One Piece

Favorite Western cartoon: Adventure Time: Fionna & Cake

Favorite older cartoon I only got around to watching in its entirety this year: The Venture Bros.

Favorite documentary: Double Fine PsychOdyssey

Favorite semi-improvised semi-scripted absurdist comedy/horror/tragedy Twitch livestream performance art thing: Half-Life Alyx but the Gnome is Self-Aware finale (wayneradiotv)

Favorite manga: Chainsaw Man

Favorite older manga that I only read this year: Berserk

Favorite Western comic book: Daniel Warren Johnson's Transformers

Favorite album: HELLMODE (Jeff Rosenstock)

And that's a wrap!!!!! Happy new year, everyone! Here's to me maybe actually reading a goddamn book this year

[ev3rgreenxtrees]

ev3rgreenxtrees:

𝕸𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

Key:

Smut/NSFW: ☆

Fluff: ✿

Angst: ➴

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

𝕸𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖜 𝕾𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖔𝖑𝖔

—𝕺𝖓𝖊𝖘𝖍𝖔𝖙𝖘:

“Is It Over?” - ➴

➥ In which: Y/N has recently broken up with her boyfriend Matt, and she isn’t sure how she’ll get through the tough times.

“Spin The Bottle” -☆

➥ In which: you’re at a party with your best friend Nick, and you finally meet his brothers, Matt and Chris, and you take a liking to the shy boy- Matt.

“Movie Night” -☆

➥ In which: you and your boyfriend try to have a movie night at home, but when you interrupt to ask him what pictures to post on your instagram, things take an ‘unexpected’ turn.

“Matching PJ’s” -✿

➥ In which: while you’re having a stressful day, your boyfriend, Matt, texts you at ten PM, saying he has a surprise for you at his house.

“Violent Love” -➴ *Authors Favorite*

➥ In which: Matt and you have been friends since kindergarten, but when his youtube career flew off, so did he. He moved to LA with his brothers, and when he came back to Boston for a visit, it doesn’t end in the most pleasant way.

“Right Here” -➴

➥ In which: You break up with your boyfriend, and your best friend Matt is there to comfort you. In hopes you feel the same way, he confesses his feelings towards you, and things don’t go as planned.

“Love Me Harder” -☆ *Authors Favorite 2*

➥ In which: You have been dating Matthew for a few years now, but he has somehow sustained keeping a major secret from you. What will you do when you find out this secret of his? Will it scare you away, or will it pull you closer?

“Little Bit” -☆

➥ In which: Matt agrees to go to a strip club with his friends, to help ‘relieve his stress’. What happens when things take a turn, and Matt actually takes some interest in this horrible fiasco?

“Sir.Cuddlesworth” -✿

➥ In which: Back at the triplets’ Boston house, you tend to cuddle with Trevor, the boys’ dog, more often than you do with your boyfriend Matt. So, you decide to be a sweetheart and led him your favorite shark stuffed animal, Sir.Cuddlesworth.

“Time Flies By” -✿

➥ In which: Matt and you have two beautiful girls together. He was now in his mid/early thirties, as you were, and your two girls were growing up, but Matt only realized when they both came home with new news.

“Strawberry Shortcake” -☆

➥ In which: You won’t deny it, you are a very attractive girl. You were now a senior in highschool, and everyone seemed to have their eyes on you- except one boy, who just so happens to be the one you want the most.

“Pacify Her” -☆

➥ In which: Matt and you always had a thing. That was until he got a girlfriend, whom he claims he loves. Even after he cheats on her with you.

“About Damn Time” -☆

➥ In which: You notice Matt’s been quite horny recently, more than usual, but as his best friend, you don’t think thats your issue. Until you walk in on him.

-𝕳𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖓𝖔𝖓𝖘:

“Sub!Matt headcannons” -☆

—𝕿𝖊𝖝𝖙𝖘/𝕾𝖓𝖆𝖕𝖘:

“Bf!Matt snaps” -☆✿

“Bestfriend Matt Texts” -☆✿

—𝕾𝖍𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖘:

Overstimulating, Humiliating, & Edging -☆

—𝕾𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘:

“Don’t Wait On Me” -paused

[pt 1] [pt 2- coming soon]

“Sweetheart” -paused

[pt 1]

“First Choice” -ongoing

{pt 1}

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

𝕮𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖔𝖕𝖍𝖊𝖗 𝕾𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖔𝖑𝖔

—𝕺𝖓𝖊𝖘𝖍𝖔𝖙𝖘:

“Heartbeat” -☆

➥ In which: Evelyn stops reaching out to Chris for sex after she gets a boyfriend, but that doesn’t stop him from reaching out to her.

“Tattoo” -✿

➥ In which: Chris and his girlfriend, Evelyn, are dared by Chris’ brothers Matt and Chris to get ‘matching’ tattoos, as punishment for loosing a challenge for their video.

“Don’t Play With Me” -☆

➥ In which: Chris sees you ‘flirting’ with a guy at a party, and he gets jealous. He then decides to teach you a lesson- even though you ‘aren’t his’.

“Love Language” -➴✿ *Authors Favorite*

➥ In which: Chris and reader get into an argument, and reader goes up to Nick’s room to calm down. Chris comes up to his room to apologize, and the reader doesn’t accept it.

“Give Me Space”-➴

➥ In which: Chris gets ‘too’ clingy when you’re having a bad week, and you snap at him. Things take a turn for the worst.

“Jealous Boy” -☆

➥ In which: Chris and you aren’t together. Not dating, not fucking, only friends. But what happens when he sees you flirting with another man at a party? Will he make you his, or will he let you move on.

“By Your Side” -✿

➥ In which: Before you met Chris, and even a little into your relationship, you struggled with self harm. Chris and his brothers were always extremely supportive and caring of you, and eventually, you stopped. You hit your one year of being sober anniversary, and Chris throws you a ‘celebration.’

“Goin’ Somewhere?” -☆

➥ In which: You go to the airport, to catch a flight back to your hometown. However, you get stopped by airport security, and they have to take you in one of the private rooms, to ‘search you’.

“Left Alone With Nothing” -➴

{Fic for Texts With Chris Who Likes You.}

➥ In which: Chris likes you, but you turn him down, and you regret your decision- but it’s already too late.

-𝕳𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖓𝖔𝖓𝖘:

“Sub!Chris Headcannons”-☆

—𝕿𝖊𝖝𝖙𝖘/𝕾𝖓𝖆𝖕𝖘:

“Texts With Bf!Chris” -☆✿

“Dealer Chris Snaps” -☆

“Texts With Chris Who Likes You” -➴

—𝕾𝖍𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖘:

—𝕾𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘:

“Hellbound” -ongoing

[pt 1] [pt 2] [pt 3] [pt 4] [pt 5] [pt 6]

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

𝕹𝖎𝖈𝖔𝖑𝖆𝖘 𝕾𝖙𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖔𝖑𝖔

—𝕺𝖓𝖊𝖘𝖍𝖔𝖙𝖘:

“Care For You” -➴✿

➥ In which: After you and Nick post together about your relationship, you feel like hes slowly drifting from you.

“Mine All Mine” -✿

➥ In which: A date with your boyfriend.. (and his brothers.)

“My Boy” -➴✿ *Authors Favorite*

➥ In which: You and Nick have been dating for a long time now, and you finally agree to be in one of the boy’s videos. Nick introduces you as his boyfriend, and the viewers find out you are trans. Some don’t respond the best to this, but Nick is there to comfort you.

“Never Say Sorry” -✿➴

➥ In which: It’s your first time meeting the triplets’ parents; and since you’re trans, you’re worried they won’t accept nor like you, but your boyfriend Nick is there to comfort you.

“I Mean It” -✿

➥ In which: Nick, your boyfriend, and you have been dating for around five months. You accidentally let a ‘i love you’ slip out, for the first time.

“First For Everything” -✿

➥ In which: Nick and you have been dating for six months, but you haven’t had sex yet. One night, you decide you’re ready, but then you begin to have second thoughts.

“Safe With Me”-☆✿

➥ In which: You decide you’re ready to have sex, for the first time with Nick, and for the first time since you’ve had your bottom surgery.

“Not A Fan” -✿

➥ In which: Nick and his boyfriend are on a date, when Nick gets noticed by a fan. The fan asks to take a picture, but says something vile to Nick’s boyfriend.

-𝕳𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖈𝖆𝖓𝖓𝖔𝖓𝖘:

—𝕿𝖊𝖝𝖙𝖘/𝕾𝖓𝖆𝖕𝖘:

“Texts with Bf!Nick” -☆✿

—𝕾𝖍𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖘:

—𝕾𝖊𝖗𝖎𝖊𝖘:

“Late night Drive- completed

[pt 1] [pt 2]

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

𝕮𝖔𝖒𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕾𝖔𝖔𝖓

—𝕹.𝕾

—𝕮.𝕾

“Mistakes”-☆

“When The Night Calls” -➴

“Dishonest” (F.T. Matthew Sturniolo.)

—𝕸.𝕾

“Late At Night”- part 1/?

“Dishonest” (F.T. Christopher Sturniolo.)

˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚ ˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

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[jazminrhode1]

can you please please do a fic where they are on the podcast and they have matt or chris' gf on the podcast and they talk about their relationship and it's really cute and the guy is just so in lvoe? omg please i need this haha

Forever Be Your Always Matt Sturniolo x Reader One Shot

“Good morning, campers. Welcome back to the cut the camera podcast,” Nick feigned enthusiasm, “can you believe we’re still doing this?”

You sat in Matt’s regular spot, kind of nervous and kind of excited.

You never did this. You never got involved with the triplet’s content. Matt had filmed countless vlogs for his personal channel with you that he never posted. Not because he was embarrassed or wanted to hide your relationship but, because he didn’t want to add fuel to the fire.

The fans were fine. They had no choice but to be fine. You and Matt had been dating since before they started YouTube. You were in more of their videos in the early days but, you kept out of it these days.

Nick was the one who suggested you come on the podcast. He was sick of editing you out of content. Chris was the one who said they should take a stand and let fans know that they weren’t going to ignore the hate that you get online anymore.

It didn’t really bother you. Not matter what anyone said, Matt was still your boyfriend, Nick and Chris were still some of your best friends.

“Today we’re here with a very special guest,” Nick gestured to Matt to finish the intro.

“It’s y/n” Matt announced as Chris and Nick cheers.

“Thanks, you guys,” you laughed. This felt more natural than you had expected. After a while you forgot that the microphones were even there.

You answer questions that Matt had answered a million times before. Where did you meet? How long have you been dating? What is your favorite thing about each other?

Chris claimed that he got the two of you together and, to be honest, you couldn’t remember if that was true. All you knew was that you were thankful for Matt everyday.

“Okay, fans want to know what it’s like dating the grumpiest motherfucker on the planet,” Nick asked.

You rolled your eyes.

“Matt is not that grumpy. Really, he’s not. You just get so animated for the vlogs, and sometimes you do too much - I don’t think he likes that,” you answered. Nick pretended to take offence but, you two had never been anything but honest with eachother. And, you knew that Nick’s energy is was a hgue part of why they had been so successful.

“Another fan wanted to know if this is the kind of relationship that your younger self would have pictured,” Chris asked.

“That’s a great question,” you said and the boys agreed.

“I mean, we’ve known each other for so long. Almost all of my memories have one of you in them. Like, our moms are so close, our Dad’s golf together, my Uncle was just at your Grandma’s house doing some electrical stuff. You know, we’ve vacationed together. There’s just so much shared history even before we started dating. I don’t know that a lot of people can say that they met their partner at 5 years old and started dating 10 years later. That doesn’t answer your question.” 

You thought it over for a moment.

“I think when I was younger, I thought that someone would come along and sweep me off my feet. I didn’t think it would be my desk buddy from the second grade, you know?”

Matt just smiled. For him, he always knew.

“But, I could not have dreamt him up. I don’t think you could have convinced a younger me that I would get this lucky. That I would have found my person at 15 years old or that our families would become so entangles or that his brothers would become 2 of my best friends, you know”?

“Yeah,” Chris said. His eyes glistened.

“Another question was, do you feel like you missed out on anything since you started dating Matt at such a young age?” Nick asked.

“It’s a fair questions but, no. Even our parents when we graduated were like… are you sure you don’t want to live life separately for a little while, and that was just never on the cards for me.”

“And, Matt what about you? Do you feel like you missed out on anything?” Nick asked.

“No. I have gained more that I could have imagined from being with y/n,” he began. “I feel like I will go through my whole life as a triplet being understood by two other people in this unspoken, unexplainable way. And, in the best way, we were kind of forced together by nature and you are two of the closest people to me and, even if I don’t say it often, I love you guys and I wouldn’t be here with out.”

Chris and Nick exchanged a look. Matt wasn’t usually as forthcoming with his feelings if it wasn’t with you.

“In saying that, I don’t believe in soul mate or destiny because that implies that I don’t have a choice in this. Everyday, I wake up and I thank God that it’s next to y/n. And every day it’s the easiest choice to be with her. And every choice that I make, I consider her above anyone else.I don’t want a relationship, a marriage, a family if it wasn’t with y/n. There is no one else that understands me or supports me or loves me in the way that y/n does. You can’t put a price on that and you can’t manufacture it and if, for whatever reason, we were to break up I know that I will never find this again,” Matt said as he reached for you hand over the bench.

You saw a glint of sadness wash over Chris’ face. Nick was swooning.

“Do you think you guys will get married?” Nick asked. He was straying from the previously agreed up list of questions.

“One day. If there is one thing that y/n’s Dad told me is to enjoy every season. Enjoy being a kind, enjoy dating as teenagers, dating as young adults, don’t rush things because you’ll get to the end of your life and regret not really living in the moment,” Matt said.

“Your Dad’s so smart,” Chris said.

“Yeah, he and Matt are big on the motivational speeches,” you joked.

You answered a few more questions about future plans and Matt’s unpublished vlogs. Chris went on a non-sensical rant about not wanting a girlfriend while simultaneously wanting a relationship that you and Matt had. You knew that he was only scared that the girl he dated would only want to be with him because of his job. You knew that would break his heart.

As they wrapped up and you crawled out from behind the desk, Matt wrapped you in a hug and placed a gentle kiss on your lips.

Without saying a word, you knew how deeply he loved. Everything is better with him and he will forever be your always.

[aannonn]

⭑.ᐟ˚⭐彡 // bold text , strong colors , spoilers

A TLDR about the podcast for those who don't really want to watch the whole 1 hour and a half video !! :> ( I had posted it here before but I deleted it cause I wanted to wait a bit until I finally 'completed' it (technically speaking 'cause I'm only really making a TLDR at what my brain stuck onto or else I may get burnout. (っ °Д °;)っ) so I wouldn't have to edit this post every time . . lol ... feel free to add anything else in the reblogs/notes though !! ^ _ ^ )

The Most Successful Stick Animator in the WORLD Ft. Alan Becker - Dojocast Ep.6

。─ ⭐ Animation vs. Animator/Minecraft Stuff !!

° . They have been working on AvA 11 for over a year ;; 20 minutes long ;; Probably the biggest one they have ever worked on ;; They are doing their best to push it as early as they can , possibly around early december or even late november // { 54:07 }

° . They have a Minecraft Short being worked on about BedWars ;; This one's been really complicated since they are using real Minecraft acting with stickfigures // { 54:56 }

° . Next thing coming up is a Three-Part series about Green ;; It's a surprise. lol // { 55:40 }

° . AvA is going to be atleast Three seasons ;; As long as AvA and Minecraft are popular they are gonna keep going // { 57:08 }

° . King Orange used to be King Gray for a long time ;; Alan was considering to make him a light purple for a while // { 58:10 }

° . Alan's favorite is The Second Coming // { 1:06:36 }

° . Alan had different ideas for the 'fight scene in the box // { 1:19:29 }

° . Animator vs. Animation was originally supposed to be a trilogy ;; At the end of AvA3, everyone was supposed to die ;; His senior year college Teacher, who knew about his animations, gave him the idea to continue the series // { 16:45 }

。─ ⭐ Alan Becker's Production Team & Other Stuff !!

° . Alan's biggest inspiration was his lead animator; Terkoiz = The same one who worked on AvPhysics // { 1:00:07 }

° . Alan is the lead creative ; Hatena is the line producer ; There are three project leads = One takes care of AvA , One takes care of AvM , One takes care of Everything Else ; The animators are not segmented into only a certain series , they work on everything based on their skill set ; Also a Production Assistant that helps Hatena takes notes // { 1:02:34 }

° . An advice for any animators struggling to break into the industry/studios be it Indie or major ones : TLDR: The best thing you can do as an Independent artist is post your work as much as you can, and eventually opportunities will land and you have to take them as they come. You have to put yourself out there; Get yourself into as many doors as possible, and just get to know everyone. // { 1:07:29 }

° . They got inspiration from BoxOfCrayons' Voices Plus Faces !! // { 1:15:27 }

° . Alan made Animation vs. Animator 1-4 completely on his own. ;; Animation vs. Minecraft was when he decided to experiment in having a team of animators, and he did it with the diamond armour as it was an extremely tedious process (he taught 5 animators to do that). ;; in Animation vs. Youtube, Stone and Oxob were the first two animators he trusted to animate stickfigures. // { 27:45 }

° . ABTV is basically a loop compilation of all the AvA/M videos they ever made ;; They are trying to make it fun by adding little transitions between the episodes like "you're watching ABTV !! ^0^" ;; Eventually it'll get to every single transition between episodes; Is unique // { 48:44 }

[kaypeace21]

[The future of this BLOG]: SHOWS I'm planning on analyzing here & on YouTube

Interview with the vampire

Invincible

House of the dragon

The boys

Umbrella acadamy

Bridgerton probably (still haven't had time to watch part 2 yet)

stranger things: I have mixed feelings about reviewing it given what certain staff has said and done. I oscilate between wanting to review the final season or wanting to boycott it (especially as someone who has been part of the BDS movement for 1/2 her life). But, on one hand, It's not the fault of the underpaid (and talented) writers and staff who don't have these views. And I do believe some of the writing staff may have good intentions and want to give us a positive and powerful message to the audience about healing from childhood tr*uma. However, other members of the writing staff may just want to go down the stereotypical and popular-easy route. We'll just have to wait and see what happens in the last season. If I hear the ending isn't simply another re-hashing of prior seasons and it's more like s1-2 (without the cliches of s3-4). I'd be more inclined to review it by *cough* and watching it elsewhere. Once I was logged back on to tumblr: I did have a whole draft saved about my politics since I was a kid and why I still feel so strongly about such conflicts, today . But, I shouldn't make the topic about me- and I'm not sure anyone wants to hear my life story XD. So, the big point (to my followers) is regardless of whether I chose to watch it or boycot it-

I'm not deleting the old ST content: so do what you want with it (like, reblog, add details to reblogs I didn't notice). Have fun :D !

Analyzing ST certainly helped me improve in terms of media literacy (and it'll be beneficial for the future content I make). So even if it sometimes got messy here, I do appreciate all the positives the ST blog and followers brought to me.The kind words meant a lot. For those who want to unfollow me for my political beliefs , that's totally fine. That's your prerogative. For those who want to unfollow cause again ST was pretty much my whole blog: again I TOTALLY understand and I wish you the best :). I'm not going to judge, take away, or guilt anyone, for their choice of media they like. Enjoy it (I truly mean that).

For those who continue to follow my blog . I appreciate you SO MUCH! I've been gone from this blog for such a long time cause of school (and I appreciate those who stayed and were excited to see me again). The positive words meant a lot over the years. Everyone have a lovely day. Take care of yourselves.

Sincerely, Kay

ps: I'm open to other media suggestions too so you can drop them in my message box (recent films/ shows, mini/limited series, animation, heck i'm open to comedies and foreign media too).But, analyzing them will most likely be after the shows listed above .Right now I'm focusing on my national exam and my mental health. My first video will probably be in late August or early September. My test is August 20th. Hope everyone is doing well .I'm feeling much better mentally. Hope everyone is feeling the same way :)

for my 1st video I’ll just post it to youtube . But for other videos I may make a early access patreon (like a week before the next video comes out free on youtube). Have to google how all that works (or if there's better alternatives) . Totally fine if you can't afford it (you'll get to see it for free on youtube regardless :D) . I'll be honest . I'm primarily thinking of doing it cause I need to pay off those student loans and I'm trying to hopefully move out of state in a few years. Plus, I love analyzing media anyways (so making it a part time job would be a dream come true .

[dancinglikebutterflywings]

Valentine's Surprise | Jung Wooyoung

Pairing: Jung Wooyoung x Fem!Reader

Request: No.

Synopsis: Wooyoung surprises his girlfriend for Valentine's Day, which also just so happens to be their anniversary.

Warnings: None. This is probably terrible. This is a repost from my now deactivated blog. More of an explanation in my pinned post.

Word Count: 783

ATEEZ Masterlist | Tag List Sign-Up | Requesting Guidelines

“Why don’t you join us?” Y/N’s best friend offers, not wanting to see her alone for her first valentine’s day with her boyfriend, who is out of the country, until tomorrow.  

“I don’t want to intrude on your plans,” Y/N politely declines her friends offer. She'd been third-wheeling her and her boyfriend quite a bit since Wooyoung went on tour. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got ice cream and plenty of ATEEZ content to binge, so It’ll be like Woo is here. He did message me earlier saying he’s going to call me again soon.” 

“If you change your mind, call me.” 

“Enjoy your night,” she tells her friend and ends the call before she can say anything more.  

Pulling up YouTube on her tv, she finds the WANTEEZ playlist that’s saved to her favourite and presses play.  

Y/N and Wooyoung had met three years. A mutual friend of theirs was hosting a gathering. Wooyoung being the social butterfly that he is, introduced himself first. By the end of the night, after he’d walked her home, they swapped numbers and made plans to go out for dinner the following night. Their relationship has been going strong and steady (with a few minor hiccups) since then. 

Three episodes in, her phone starts ringing. She checks it, sees that it’s Wooyoung and pauses the video before answering her phone. 

“Hi baby, how’s your night going?” she asks him. 

“Can you open the door?” he asks, greeting her, sounding out of breath and as if he’s wrestling with something. 

“What door?” she asks, confused and wondering if he’s hidden something in one of the bedrooms or somewhere else. It doesn’t explain the breathlessness though. “Did you run somewhere? Are you okay?” she asks sounding concerned. 

“The apartment door,” he tells her, confusing her even more. “Your anniversary and Valentine’s Day gift has arrived.” 

Standing up from where she’s sitting, she makes her way to the apartment door, looks through the peep hole and finds someone standing there, holding a bouquet of her favourite flowers and a giant stuffed black cat that’s almost as big as the person and hiding who the person is. Unlocking and opening the door, with the phone still to her ear, “What are-” 

She’s cut off when the person moves the stuffed animal away from him, revealing it’s none other than Wooyoung. “Happy anniversary, Jagiya! Oh and Happy Valentine’s Day too!”  

He moves them into her apartment, closing the door behind him and hands her the flowers and leans in to give her a kiss, bringing you out of your stunned state. 

“How did you... I thought you were coming home tomorrow night?” She says, still a little surprised to see him.  

“I talked the managers into letting me fly home early,” he says smiling widely. “Did I surprise you?”  

Y/N nods her head, causing his smile to widen as he leans in for another kiss. He lets go of the giant black cat to wraps his arms around her waist and bring her closer. She quickly wraps her arms around him, returning the kiss with equal passion. The surprise and thoughtfulness of his gesture leaves her feeling like the luckiest woman in the world.  

As they part, she looks into his beautiful deep brown eyes, "I can't believe you did this for me," she whispers, her voice filled with love. 

Last year he paid for her to be flown to Japan where they had a few shows and schedules, knowing he wouldn’t be home. She was grateful that she had a few days off at the time. This time she didn’t get any time off and Wooyoung was due home the day after, so they planned something for then. 

Wooyoung smiles, his eyes sparkling with love and adoration for his woman. "We’ve been together three years. This is our fourth Valentine’s together. We haven’t spent an anniversary or Valentine’s Day alone since we met. I wasn’t going to let you be alone this time."  

Last year he paid for her to be flown to Japan where they had a few shows and schedules, knowing he wouldn’t be home. She was grateful that she had a few days off at the time. This time she didn’t get any time off and Wooyoung was due home the day after, so they planned something for then. 

"I don't know what I did to deserve you," she says, her voice filled with sincerity.  

Wooyoung brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, his touch gentle and comforting. "I ask myself that every day."  

After placing the flowers on the counter, Y/N pulls him in for another kiss.

Likes, Comments & Reblogs are welcomed and appreciated. 

TAGGED: @staytiny2000 - @dancelikebutterflywings - @kpopmenace143

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[shadyvoxtruth]

How ShadyVox Threatened Myself & Others For Years

My name is Martin Billany but I am also known as LittleKuriboh in the YouTube sphere/Yu-Gi-Oh fandom.

I am posting this here for posterity in case all of my other posts elsewhere about it are removed. Also because there has never been a single unified place to find all of this information presented in sequence.

Patrick, also known by his pseudonyms of ShadyVox or Scratch21's Matt Robinson or Blake Swift, spent the better part of 2019-2023 both threatening me and manipulating a group of real victims.

A brief history - for those who don't know, Patrick/ShadyVox and myself were heavily involved in the "abridged series" world in the late 2000s/mid 2010s. I myself started the whole abridged parody nonsense with Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, and Patrick would follow suit by doing a Yu-Gi-Oh GX Abridged. We met through content creation and formed a friendship through it. Not best friends or anything, but friendly enough.

Patrick would later leave the abridged series stuff behind and start over making music, working in original animation for popular internet channels, etc. Stuff he was genuinely very good at. It was a strong choice to move away from parody content, as it likely would have held him back at some point.

At a certain point in 2018, I received a communication from him that requested I remove certain YouTube comments on my videos that featured him. These comments were demanding to know why Patrick was following various right wing channels and were calling him alt-right, etc.

I agreed to remove the comments because I considered him a friend and automatically assumed there was some big misunderstanding. As it turned out, he was subscribed to a few channels that caused me to confront him.

I was emotional and upset, admittedly. Things politically were at a fever pitch and I had been swept up by it. I have included screencaps of our conversation.

Later I would apologize to him for my outburst and try to make amends. You're probably wondering why I would include this since it doesn't seem to involve Patrick threatening me, and it seems if anything to suggest I got upset at him.

That is because I truly believe this is the moment Patrick decided he was going to find some way to come after me. I believe that Patrick had spent a lot of time creating a mask for himself, and had worn it very well, and the moment someone saw through it for even a moment he decided I had to be dealt with somehow.

At this point - mid 2018 - Patrick and I were not close. We hadn't worked on anything together in half a decade. We really only kept in touch in a cursory fashion. So I imagine this interaction stuck in Patrick's craw something awful.

I was, however, closer with the person Patrick had worked in conjunction with on his abridged series, X. These days X is my best friend. Back then, I don't know how close we were. But definitely closer than either of us were with Patrick.

One day in 2019, entirely out of the blue, Patrick messages me privately to inform me that X once slept with a girl who was 17 when he was in his early 20s.

My own spouse was sexually assaulted before I met them, and as a result I have a no tolerance policy on anything that even could resemble assault. So I immediately ended my friendship with X.

And as I was doing so, Patrick told me repeatedly that I was overreacting.

As you can see, by Patrick/Shady's own words, this was a long time ago. Just under a decade or so, by my count.

And most importantly, Patrick had been aware of this for the whole decade or so and chose this very moment to tell me that this happened.

I want you to keep that in mind, especially the fact that when I said I was ending my friendship with X, Patrick's actual response was "it was a long time ago, he's gotten better."

It was painful to end my friendship with X, but I did. I told him that if he could provide satisfactory proof that what Patrick had said didn't represent the facts of the situation, I could be his friend again. Until then, I cut off all communication from X.

A week or so later I received specific evidence that pointed to a situation wherein Patrick was intentionally misrepresenting what happened, or the alleged victim's story. The alleged victim VERY specifically disagreed with Patrick.

You'll note that I'm not including screen caps of these conversations - that is because the alleged victim, and other involved parties, DO NOT WANT to be part of any of this and have needed actual therapy because of Patrick's behavior in the past. Not just here.

Anyway.

I returned to Patrick/Shady and told him there had been a misunderstanding. I wanted to clear the air and give him a chance to say something along the lines of "oh okay, obviously I had my facts wrong." I mean, as you yourself have just read - he said himself that this was a long time ago. Maybe he got some wires crossed.

This is how Patrick actually responded:

The screenshots were taken on different dates, hence why his twitter icon looks different suddenly.

But yes. His response to me explaining that the alleged victim disagreed with his stance, was to insist that the alleged victim must be lying and that I should be absolutely infuriated.

After he'd tried to tell me that there was no point in being upset about this information that he had sat on for the better part of a decade.

Patrick continued to scream at me via dm, repeatedly requesting that I give him my phone number so we could talk about this. I assume this is because he didn't want any kind of text evidence of what he was going to say to me, or what he was doing.

He would later, mid-conversation, tell me that he was deleting all of his dms to me. Not sure why. It doesn't remove them from my side of the conversation, so I still have access to all of them. I have not shared the entire private message thread yet, because it's sensitive and involves people beyond just myself. But if the dms ever do need to be made public entirely, I have them.

I ended up blocking Patrick during this very conversation because he had begun screaming at me, behaving extremely unhinged and in a frightening manner. I honestly think he had hoped that I would initially try to defend my friend from his accusation, in which case he was going to fly off the handle then. But because I had genuinely believed him and removed my friend from my life, only to then learn Patrick's story didn't hold water, he had no choice but to lash out now. When it didn't make any sense to suddenly be irate about a thing he had told me about, and had literally just said "it was a long time ago."

Within 24 hours, Patrick had sent me a threatening email saying he was going to expose me for everything I was doing. I have attached the highlights of the email, parts that don't involve other people's names.

Some of the references in this email - specifically about how I've associated with others and ignored people calling me out for it - are related to a podcast I was on, alongside Patrick. Until recently I had indeed tried to move on with my life after a number of the people involved had revealed themselves to be toxic. I had made efforts to separate myself from those people. It had been years since I'd really had any direct connection to any of them.

I do indeed regret not speaking out about it sooner.

Having said this, Patrick himself was equally as guilty for not speaking out - and had in fact spent a significantly larger amount of time talking to/working with the people in question.

As such, I believe a lot of this is some form of bizarre projection on his part.

I ignored the email because I was a) worried that he had suddenly snapped, and b) I didn't think any of the content warranted a response.

A day later, I received this email from Patrick where his tone has changed entirely:

As you can see, this is more in line with the reality of the situation. He is apologizing profusely and insisting I didn't actually do anything wrong, and that he was the one in the wrong.

You'll also note that he signs this particular email "Patrick." That is because it is his real name, and I believe he was possibly appealing to my humanity and the part of me that might still have seen a friendship worth salvaging. Otherwise I could not tell you why he signed his real name - he typically hates using it.

I still did not reply because at this point I was confused and scared and wanted him to leave me alone. And to that point, he had specifically stated at the end of his email that he was the problem and he would not "involve himself in my life any longer."

The police were contacted and they told him to stop. I had hoped that my part in all of this was over.

Later that very month, Patrick announced on his ShadyVox twitter account that a new GX Abridged was coming out for April Fools.

When it is posted on April 1st - less than a month after he had sent his email saying he would remove himself from my life, and not long after the police have visited him - the video contains many references to our conversations, and specifically the fact that the police got involved.

Yes, after being told by the police to stop - and after writing an email that insisted he knew he was the real problem and would be getting help - he decides to make a mockery of the situation publicly, in a manner that nobody else will understand. Except the people it is targeting.

The tweets about this video are the only thing remaining on Patrick's twitter account, as he had purged it some time ago.

(An aside - I do recall someone attempting to call Patrick out for being toxic previously on twitter, and his response was to spam them with the words "PROVE IT. PROVE IT. PROVE IT." until they gave up. I would include screenshots of this, but like I said - he purged his entire twitter except for this specific GX Abridged video he'd thrown together in a week to respond to the fact that the authorities had intervened to get him to stop)

One other important element of this video - which is where, I believe, this whole thing veers into genuinely disturbing territory - is that it is interspersed with garbled footage intended to look like some sort of creepypasta/vhs effect. At the end of the GX Abridged video, it is clear that Patrick is using this video to allude to some upcoming song tracks he is producing.

Songs that are tailored to threaten me in cryptic, indirect ways that very few people pick up on.

But I'll get to those later.

During 2019, Patrick reaches out to actual victims of the toxic individuals from the podcast I used to be on more than half a decade before any of the stuff chronologized in this post. He tells them lies, and demonizes me to the point that it convinces them that I am still both defending/supporting the toxic individuals, and actively mocking their victims in private.

I am aware of this because Patrick tweets about it - before deleting the tweets entirely. He even attempts to throw popular abridging group TeamFourStar under the bus, which I assume was merely out of spite because they had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

I wish I had screengrabbed the tweets when they were still up, but there is still remaining evidence that they did exist.

Here is someone posting on Reddit about it - he only references one tweet, but this was around the time Patrick was posting and then immediately deleting what he'd said. I honestly can only assume - but I think he was fishing for people to latch on to what he was saying and contact him privately.

Not to mention the fact that the police had specifically told him to stop, so that was likely in the back of his mind also.

Here is someone replying to a since suspended twitter account that was discussing what Patrick was saying about TeamFourStar. Obviously I have no clear way to prove it, but please know that I have no reason to make that much up and point to a random ass tweet.

I imagine Patrick (not the suspended person in the above screencap) realized the best way to not seem directly to blame or involved at all was to remove any and all posts he'd made. Admittedly it would have worked if I didn't have the dms and these emails.

Speaking of emails, I received a third one in late 2019 - as you can see, Patrick's promise of leaving me alone forever didn't even last a year.

You'll note that he's speaking as though the second email never even happened. He's also just plain lying through his teeth for a significant part of it, but I think it's most important to note that this email requires you to assume the second email never got written.

He has gone from pages and pages of "of course it wasn't your fault, I'm the problem, you're good, I'm bad" to "I told you..."

Also, I think the words "You tried to damage me" should be highlighted here as it reinforces my theory that all of this was about me insulting him for all the right wing channels he'd subscribed to. Which, to me, was barely even a thought in my mind at this point.

So I choose to ignore this email also. Because y'know, why would I even humor responding to the guy at this point? I decide that I will only speak on any of this if it becomes public conversation. Until then, anything that happens would be because of Patrick's actions.

I do let my friends know about all of this - including TeamFourStar, who through this entire thing have been blameless and didn't even do anything to Patrick to begin with. And every time Patrick does something, I make sure people in my circle are aware and to be cautious.

Meanwhile Patrick alludes to all of this indirectly in the songs he posts to his YouTube channel. Yes, a situation that involves actual victims and one alleged victim that Patrick hadn't spoken to in years. He chose to make reference to all of this in videos where he raps, amongst other things.

There are a number of songs that feature references to this, it's mainly these two that I want to focus on

Birdy Boy is a song that is explicitly referencing Patrick's issues with me, without actually going into any details about what the issue is.

It is so clearly about me that people pick up on it - and rather than confront the issue or have a dialogue, Patrick decides to pin the comment about it to the top of the comments page.

Of course, if Patrick made any attempt to directly describe the issue or explain himself, it would likely result in the police becoming involved once again.

So he sticks to singing about the whole thing.

This next song is the most upsetting one.

Patrick/Shady writes a song called "Joker" about a psychotic individual murdering someone who "used to be funny." This is, specifically, the song that he teases at the end of the GX Abridged Episode 21 video he posted earlier in 2019 for april fools.

He has teased it multiple times on his twitter, and elsewhere, with the words "Coming Soon." The very same words he used to title his third threatening email.

Here is the email, placed next to some lyrics from the song Joker.

He is seemingly very specifically trying to threaten me without anyone noticing, in plain sight. I was unable to watch the video in full until after all of this stuff came out into the public. It was only through reading people's responses and the lyrics that I realized what he was doing.

Again, at this point I am doing and saying nothing publicly. Just watching this behavior and waiting.

Meanwhile in 2021, a videogame based on the web series TOME gets fully funded and Christopher Niosi - the creator of TOME - reaches out to the voice cast to see if they'll return. I myself was the voice of Nylocke, one of the main characters, and Patrick was the voice of THE main character.

As such, I told Christopher no and explained my reasons.

And here is Christopher's response.

Please pay careful attention to the fact that Christopher Niosi flat out says he already knew Patrick was doing this stuff - it isn't just me imagining it.

As a result of this interaction, I do not reprise my role as Nylocke and Christopher Niosi chooses to just recast every single character. Please note that he could have just recast Patrick, but did not. As a result, I feel responsible for all of the original cast losing out on work. It hurts to think about. But at least I feel like I did the right thing.

One member of the TOME production staff takes it upon themselves to reach out to Patrick personally. They discover that he is planning to write more songs/raps that target me. They ask him nicely to stop. He insists that he has to do this. Y'know, make vague allusions to extremely sensitive topics that he lied about in the form of song. Has to do it.

The member of production staff tells Patrick he should seek professional help.

Patrick ignores them.

Patrick continues to engage in behavior that, while not openly hostile or even specifically targeting anyone, is very clearly intended as mockery at best and a threat at worst until 2023 when all of this comes to a head.

In August of 2023, the real victims that Patrick has manipulated make a callout post aimed at myself and TeamFourStar. It specifically cites Patrick's testimony and the songs he has posted. They have been misled, but their anger is understandable.

Within a week, it becomes apparent to all sides that this is Patrick's fault. The person who posted the callout takes it down and apologizes to everyone. Not just me. They apologize to TeamFourStar, and to X.

And only then do I speak publicly about what Patrick has been doing.

I share all of the screencaps I've posted here, and give context. It's all a little muddled as at the time, my cat was dying of terminal cancer and so all of my posts are somewhat scatterbrained and aren't in chronological order. But it's still remarkably clear to everyone that Patrick has manipulated this whole thing, starting in 2019.

And that's only the stuff I feel comfortable sharing.

Since the callout post first dropped in 2023 and I began pointing people's attention toward Patrick, Patrick himself has been entirely silent. He has dropped off the internet with nary a word in defense. Not a single person directly associated with what happened has attempted to dispute my description of events.

This isn't my word versus his. It is my word versus silence.

I have it on good authority that Patrick is alive and well. I am grateful for that much. My attempts have not been to hurt him, but to defend myself. My efforts have not been to hunt him down and crucify him, but to make people aware of what transpired - and what could have easily been undone by Patrick/Shady just choosing to stop.

Instead a number of victims, and people who never did a thing, experienced a considerable amount of trauma as a result of his thoughtless and spiteful actions.

Patrick is a remarkably talented individual, and it makes me sad I have to be the one to show people who he is. I genuinely think all of this could have been avoided. It's so meaningless. It's just pain on top of pain.

And Patrick stood in the center of it all, not just pulling people's strings but practically uprooting them and then acting like he didn't do a thing.

I'm not expecting an apology, and I'm not asking for his cancelation, whatever shape that would take. But I do think it's important that people know this happened, that he chose this.

He did this for almost no reason to a person he considered a friend, who worked on videos with him.

It just seems like the responsible thing, to make sure people are somewhat aware that he could do this to them if they aren't cautious and careful and super aware.

I'm sorry to anyone disappointed and hurt by all of this information.

Believe me, I understand.

[k-kamostarr]

𝚅𝙰𝙽𝙴𝚂𝚂𝙰.

choso x blk!reader

wc: 800

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚃𝚠𝚘:

After I entered my apartment, I set down all my belongings and called in some takeout. While I wait, I decide to start my nighttime routine. I pull out my phone to record a "get unready with me" video. After finishing the video and posting it, I take a quick shower. When I check my phone after the shower, I see that my food was left at my door. I also noticed that Choso messaged me back. I quickly respond to his message, put on my robe, and run to get my food. I grab the food and set it on my counter while I change into some more comfy clothes.

While I change I continue messaging Choso, I get settled with my food and laptop. Choso wanted to call since he's not good with texting. I open my laptop to start editing and studying for my test on Monday. My phone starts to ring and I see that it's him.

“Hi there!’ I say while stuffing a dumpling in my mouth. 

He laughs looking at me stuffing my face. “Hey! If I knew you were eating I wouldn't have disturbed you.”

“Oh no, you're fine I’m always eating something plus I wanted to continue talking to you.” We laugh in unison. 

“Would you like to watch this show with me I cannot eat without watching something?” I ask. He nods.

We decided to watch the first episode of Blue Exorcist. “You know I would've never guessed this to be the type of anime you liked.” He says. I gasp. “What? What kind do I look like I like?” I laugh. “I took you as a romance or slice-of-life type of girl.” He smiles. “I mean I do like those too but I love me a good action anime.” I smile. 

Halfway through the second episode, I start getting full so I put my leftovers in the fridge. “I’m back!” I say. “Welcome back!” He exclaims. “Let's finish this episode then do something else,” I say. “Deal.” Once the episode finishes he cuts the screenshare. “I got questions for you.” He says. “Okay go ahead.” I smile.

“So how do you juggle college and doing content?” He asked. “Well it's not easy but it's not too bad, I do all my big content stuff on the weekends like YouTube videos and events but like TikTok videos, I do whenever because you know its a 15-second video,” I say truthfully. He nods. “Plus I only have two classes that are in person all the rest are online!” I exclaim. “I see I just think it's so cool to see you doing both because I know so many influencers that were in college and once they got big they left school to pursue content creation you know.” He says. “Yeah, I know that social media isn't forever so even if I lose my fame I know I will have my degree to fall back on.” I nod. He nods. “Well, now I have a question for you.” “What's up?” He asks.

“How do you handle being the sole provider for your brother while also doing content?” I inquire. He sighs. “Well he’s 16 and has his little job now so it's not much to handle now really but before he got a job it was a lot because I had to leave school to take care of him and any person would be pissed about that but I wasn’t I knew what I had to do as the oldest.” He says honestly. “You're a good person Choso I hope you know that.” She says softly. He smiles. “I try to be a person Yuji can be proud of.” He smiles. “You’re doing a great job so far if I was him I would brag about my big brother being the best.” I smile. He laughs. “I love how down to earth you are with the field we’re in a lot of people we meet are fucking posers.” He laughs. “Oh most definitely.” She laughs along with him.

They talk into the early morning without even noticing. “Oh damn, it's almost 4 am I didn't even realize.” He yawns. “Oh my gosh really?” I say surprised. “Hey when are you free this week so I can see you, we can go get some food or something?” He asked which causes you to smile. “If you want to go get something later today we can,” I say. “That's perfect!” He smiles. “Okay then it's settled we can go around 3 so we can both get enough sleep,” I say. “Perfect, well I'm going to get off the phone now have a good sleep.” He yawns. “You as well!” I yawn. We end the call and I instantly fall asleep on the couch.

[bluestarjay]

Kenhina for the soul todayyyyy

Shoyo comes upon Kenma as he pets a cat, and of course, he doesn't really think much, but he's lost, so it couldn't hurt to make conversation. He's never seen him before, but he might still be able to help! But the guy is also lost, and *wow* is he pretty. And then he can't help but notice his volleyball shoes,,, so he makes small talk (as best as he can), and discovers the boy's name is Kenma Kozume. Not only is Kenma one of the prettiest boys he's ever seen, but he plays volleyball! And he's a setter??? But then Kenma and his friends show up, and they have to say goodbye. Hinata doesn't think they'll see each other again for a while since Kenma isn't from Miyagi, but that doesn't stop him from thinking about kenma.

Kuroo hasn't seen kenma talk so much to a stranger in a while, if not ever. So what's so different about the little short kid with the ginger hair? And then Nekoma and Karasuno play against each other. 'Ah. So that's why."

Kenma wasn't sure what he had expected when shoyo told him he played volleyball, but it wasn't this. But wow. They see each other in a particular light, despite having met mere hours ago, and there's a certain fire rising between them. Definitely not love, at least not yet, but it's the beginning spark of one of those eternal flames they'd seen videos of online.

Kenma *doesn't* make a face when he plays against shoyo. But they've exchanged numbers and started talking, and early on, Kenma thinks the way shoyo texts is cute. Not in the way the girls at school are cute, more like in the way that small animals are cute. He uses emojis excessively and uses so many acronyms he doesn't know (attributed to the fact that shoyo still uses a flip phone). It gives him a headache, really. But every time he gets the special notification sound he paid for, especially for Shoyo, he actually bothers to check it.

Shoyo likes a shocking amount of the games he does, and he finds out it's because shoyo watches other people play them on YouTube because his family owns one small TV and no gaming consoles. And, shoyo told him that his mother tends to be kind of strict about his social life and is reluctant to even let him play volleyball, let alone video games. He supposed it makes sense with how bad shoyos grades are. But he couldn't imagine not being able to play video games. And when did he start thinking about shoyo so much?? He didn't even think about kuroo that much, and they'd known each other for years. It doesn't occur to kenma that he has a crush on shoyo until their next training camp with fukurodani and karasuno.

Hinata knows right away that he's enamored. His first thought when he sees kenma is that he's beautiful and then to find out he's an incredible volley all player, too? And he's a setter??? How perfect could someone be?

Kenma knows when he sees Hinata and Lev hanging out, and it makes his blood boil. He wants to shove Lev's tall ass into the mud and let him stay there. As they eat their watermelon and barbecue, he sees how Shoyo's eyes turn gold in the sunlight. It reminds him of his favorite book series, Percy Jackson, how in the second series' latest book, they find the Athena Parthenos, which holds a small statue of Nike, the goddess of victory. It reminds him of them.

Shoyo will do anything to win; he is the strongest person he knows (or at least mentally). He wants to beat karasuno. He wants to keep fighting, even though he's never wanted to so badly before. He knows it's Shoyo's fault, the way he wakes him up early at the camp to ask him to set for him, and if it were anybody else, he'd say no, but shoyo isn't anybody.

He wants to continue to analyze every player on the court, to find their weaknesses and use them to his advantage. He wants to hold Shoyo in the palm of his hand, like how Athena holds Nike, to hold victory so close to his heart. He wants the golden-ness of Shoyo to reflect onto him. He wants to be wrapped up in everything shoyo can give him. So when he sees hinata fawning over how cool and tall Lev is, he knows it's time to tell him the truth.

Kuroo has never seen him so,,, weird. Of course, kenma has always been a freak, but when he stares at lev like he's gonna strangle him (and much harder than normal), he realizes it's because he's jealous of Lev, who's hanging out with the shrimp. Kenma invites shoyo to the gym a few hours later, during which they'd kiss for the first time. Kenma realizes that this is probably how Annabeth and Percy felt when they'd first gotten together. It would never beat an underwater kiss, but a gym kiss was still pretty good.

[asmolguy]

Gonna make a list of characters that are so painfully little coded everything in my brain just goes “baby” whenever I watch them. Plus one caregiver. (And one real dude which feels kinda rude since he’s just like. A guy. Living his life. So you can ignore that one. But I wanted to point it out.)

Lloyd from Lego ninjago. Dude. Canon family trauma + canon forced to end his childhood early. Prime agere material. There are so many good fics of little Lloyd just littling. He’s tiny boi. So baby. So perfect.

Cole from Lego ninjago. He is. So caregiver built. I think it hurts to watch sometimes. So gentle so sweet. Get this man a child or a little or something to care for I swear. He just needs to parent. It’s in his blood and carved into his bones.

Branch from trolls. Ya’ll did you watch movie 3? The family trauma times two. The way he uses a pacifier to lock in. Someone was straight up weaving that into the fabric of his being as a character. He’s not little coded he’s little written. Plus in the show he has a little stuffie named Croco and I love that for him. There’s also some good agere Branch fics, but not enough. I need more. Pwease. He is so smol and so grumpy just everyone write him as the baby boi he deserves to be I beg.

Spider-Man but specifically for ultimate Spider-Man (btw if anyone’s looking for good regression shows and you fall around like 5-10 it’s a very good show because it’s long and has a good mix of humor and that show is my jam dude when I’m big and little). But anyone. Ultimate Spider-Mans Spider-Man is so stressed all of the time. He is just a teen. And he’s handling so many unruly teens. And in the later seasons when he’s handling the entirety of shield while being worried about nova. Give the boy a break and let someone take care of him. He’s both little and caregiver coded btw. I adore the fics where everyone calls him daddy longlegs because that is straight up what the last season is. Just him being a father to all these troubled ass powered teenagers while being so troubled himself. But then he’s also so little. He pouts and needs so much love and he’s scared all of the time and he is traumatized and then that one ep where that got turned into those weird chibi things the show tried to convince us were children I want to believe awakened something in him and he is now little sometimes.

Ian Hecox. Listen. I am aware that he is just a dude. Like a real guy. Who cannot be coded because he just exists. But I see. So much of myself in him. It kind of makes a part of my heart hurt that no one like every really seriously criticizes his more childish behavior (even for the bit on a YouTube video) because it makes me feel better about the small ways I slip in public or with my friends sometimes. There’s literally “everyone babying Ian hecox” comps online. His habit of saying scawed or newvous is unironically a blessing and curse since now all my friends who also watch Smosh do it so it’s not weird if I do it but then sometimes I have to pause and be like “is this for the bit or am I slipping right now. Both? Neither?” That one tntl (#91) where they did the blind pairs (btw one of the funniest ones ever in my opinion absolute hall of famer, the fish one, burning the pool, m’lei, all incredible bits. It’s like. The video I show people to try to get them into Smosh.) and Ian puts on overalls and walks out with an Elmo and is like “I’m five” and then after the bit is over he stays in character and when he’s like “elmo…” and damien is like “yeah bud I made sure to miss him with the spit” and then Ian drags the toy through he spit and everyone in the room is just like “aww man” like everyone is truly just like Ian dude you got your stuffed animal wet. Also Anthony being able to fully pick Ian up and carry him multiple ways. If you watch the behind the scenes for the my best friend is dead video Anthony 1. Is pumped to pick Ian up. 2. Does a baby cradle with Ian more than successfully. 3. Says “I got you bud” when Ian gets nervous and Ian goes “ok” in this tiny little voice and instantly relaxes. 4. When Anthony puts Ian down Ian follows him making grabby hands and says “I want uppies”. More little Ian caregiver Anthony fics when. Except not really because again don’t really want to put any of this on real people just doing comedic bits that I happen to feel in my soul a bit too much.

And finally, Max thunderman. I mean. Just watch the show. The pouts. The frequent fake sobbing and sniffling. The fact that he needs a childhood back after Phoebe was put on a pedestal. Someone give me soft thundertwins fic where max is a little and Phoebe is a cargegiver please I need it. And I am. So bad at writing. I would love you forever and ever if you did.

[multidimensionalslvt]

۪۫🐾'۪ 𖧵 introducing my archeologist-YouTuber dr ˊ˗

A/n: FINALLY GOT MY MOTIVATION 😭😭. If you have any questions ask!!

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

ME - E - EE .ᐟ

✶⋆. birth name : Moira Swan

✶⋆. online name : Angel

✶⋆. nicknames : ang, mor, moi

✶⋆. nationality : Swedish-American

✶⋆. birthday : September 27

✶⋆. zodiac : libra

✶⋆. languages : Swedish, English, German

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

PERSONALITY .ᐟ

✶⋆. traits : quick thinker, genius, creative, hilarious, adventurous, compelling, attractive, initiative, problem solver, sarcastic, flirty, competitive

✶⋆. likes : going on runs, digging, archeology, coffee, drunk karaoke, dancing, working out, chocolate chip pancakes, reading, playing guitar, Dr Pepper, F1, going to the beach, Taylor Swift, flirting with people, being unhinged on the internet, my friends, making youtube videos, Streaming on twitch, hockey, animals, learning about history

✶⋆. dislikes : Littering, Poaching, nosy people, Dr Pepper haters, people that slut shame, being told to calm down, the smell of nail polish, rude people, lavender scented things, liars

✶⋆. known for : the songs ‘maneater’ ‘slumber party’ ‘circus’ ‘promiscuous’ ‘obsessed’ ‘where u @‘ , iconic one liners,, being an archeologist, angelsplaining, being bffs with jshlatt, being friends with Charles and Arthur Leclerc, being a formula one stan, streaming, being a YouTuber, party girl, flirting with EVERYONE, being a swiftie, being beautiful, where I’m from, reading spicy books, taking so many photos, having cool hair, being up at crazy hours, having an insane converse collection, having best fan interactions, drunk karaoke, vlogging, being a hunger games, marvel, and criminal minds stan, simping for celebrities and fictional characters on the main, being unhinged, knowing basically everyone

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

APPEARANCE .ᐟ

✶⋆. face claim : Madison Bailey

✶⋆. height : 5’6

✶⋆. hair : My hair is a mixture of red, ash blond, brown (like a calico cat I suppose).

✶⋆. extra : I have light freckles, septum piercing, 5 ear piercings on both sides, belly piercing, central labreth piercing, mountain looking birthmark on my thigh, scar on my hand from my first time in the field, 16 plus tattoos

✶⋆. style : idrk how to describe it but it’s a mix of everything. Casual and abstract.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

FAMILY/BACKSTORY .ᐟ

✶⋆. backstory ; Grew up in Sweden until my brother and I were 10 years old. (Our parents were not rich but well off) Then we moved to the USA. Mal and I started carting in Sweden at age 6. At 12 our parents died in an accident. And we were forced into foster care. My brother and I stopped carting for a while until we were 14 and my sister convinced him to continue. When our sister became 18, she started raising us. We lived in Texas. Until we graduated highschool (mal and I graduated a year early) then I went to college and my sister and brother moved to cali. I graduated at 20 then I jumped head first into my archeological career.

sibling one

✶⋆. name : Nevaeh Swan

✶⋆. age : 28

✶⋆. career : professional dance choreographer.

✶⋆. extra : we’re so close omg. She has a YouTube channel.

sibling two

✶⋆. name : MalakI Swan

✶⋆. age : 24

✶⋆. career : formula 2 racer (soon to be f1)

✶⋆. extra : my twin. we’re known as the trouble twins😭. Oh and I forced him to make a yt channel.

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

LIFE .ᐟ

✶⋆. job : archeologist, streamer, youtuber

✶⋆. main friends : handsum fella, Jshlatt, Ludwig, Jack Manifold, Hasanabi, Austin show, Carina Singh (my manager), Lando Norris, Logan Saergant, Valkyrae

social media

✶⋆. youtube channels : I have like 3

⊹ user : archAngel101

⊹ subscribers : 999k

⊹ content : random facts about archeology, have a segment called “angelsplaining” where I basically explain shit.

✧ user : angel.digz

✧ subscribers : 714k

✧ content : gaming content/like more of my streaming content

ᯓ extra : I also am thinking about having a vlog channel. And my siblings and I have a channel for our podcast.

✶⋆. twitch :

⊹ user : archAngel101

⊹ followers : 645k

⊹ content : this is more so streams about my day job ig.

✧ user : Angel.digz

✧ followers : 701k

✧ content : where I do video games or tier lists or wtv. I also have a segment called “angelic nights” where I pull all nighters with my guests. We stream 3-4 hours then vlog the rest.

✶⋆. instagram : I have 3 accounts. My 3rd one is private.

⊹ user : archAngel101

⊹ followers : 991k

✧ user : angel.jpg

✧ followers : 289k

✶⋆. tiktok :

⊹ user : archAngel101

⊹ followers : 1.01 m

⊹ content : a bunch of shit tbh idk how to describe.

✧ user : angeldigzdeeznuts

✧ followers : 21k

✧ content : this is my alt so I just post unhinged videos?? Idk😭

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

PETS .ᐟ

number one

✶⋆. name : Cassius

✶⋆. age : 2 years

✶⋆. species : frog!!

number two

✶⋆. name : Calliope

✶⋆. age : 3 years

✶⋆. species : birb!!

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

[cleolinda]

Weekend links

My posts

I have been amorphously unwell (migraines, dizziness, aches) this week, which is super great. I am, in fact, daunted by the complexities and unknowns.

See "Personal tag of the week" at the bottom for updates on the Tumblr happenings.

Reblogs of interest

Thousands of Israelis protest in Tel Aviv, demanding a hostage release/ceasefire deal and new elections.

I never know how to segue from a serious news item.

Theseus liveblogs the labyrinth, and it’s heartbreaking.

Before hbomberguy was going after plagiarism, he was playing Donkey Kong for trans rights.

“to touch is to interact, and when you put your hand on your dog the universe does not know that you are separate”

The universe knows you are separate from this cat’s Absolute Terror Field

Cats named Pigeon

The most dramatic cat

Figure out what starts your engine and ride the waves of your brain

This is not van fundamentalism

Lawful good werebears

The Godmother is not committed to the kindness

Escape room employees reveal the worst, or best, things they’ve seen on the job.

“So I explained to him the story of ‘Alice’s Restaurant,’ and he began to get MAD”

It seems that y’all do not understand that the Better Call Saul ads are just how we live in the US, and that I pass five Alexander Shunnarah billboards just to get a quesadilla. 

1) Don’t take your native animals for granted. 2) This jay is the bluebird of happiness, apparently.

Wisdom from a Tumblr longtimer

Benign chain posts: the Money Garf

Video

Every now and then I fall apaaaaaart

Click through for a massive gothic rock playlist on YouTube

It’s a great dance contest entry--but then they tell you it’s also randomly-paired improv

Capybara capybara (capybara)

The sacred texts

You have not seen a sacred internet text until you have seen the Lolrus (2006)

Personal tag of the week

“the happenings” is my tag for all internet platform bullshit. This week, it’s Tumblr, as CEO Matt Mullenweg lost his shit and started harassing a trans user (including on another platform). This is a factual explanation early in the week of what happened and how it started: 

predstrogen (the first blog) was allegedly deleted for “sexually explicit material” despite any posts that may have been labelled as such being marked with a community label and her blog recently being manually approved as NOT containing adult content. she also talks in this post, as well as here, about how she has had a support ticket open for several months for harassment she was receiving that has not been dealt with

the CEO of tumblr made a post wherin he publicly aired information regarding her deletion and threatened legal action against her , showing examples of the alleged death threats where no actual threats were made and telling people in the replies to just leave if they were unhappy with the moderation of the site

Specifically, he was upset by the expressed wish that he perish in a car covered in hammers that would explode multiple times, a serious threat that could surely come to fruition in reality. If you can't tell that I'm being sarcastic, congratulations, you're CEO material.

It spiraled from there, but suffice it to say, it ended with trans employees posting on the Staff account (reblog here with commentaries):

The reality of predstrogen’s suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension. Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

While the post is sincerely emotional and brave, the real chess move is this part:

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it. We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

Matt Mullenweg now either has to nod and go, “Yeah, yeah... I’m a great guy committed to freedom...” Or he can, I don’t know, shut the site down in a fit of defiant pique? All I’m going to say about this is that the day all this first went down, I started archiving any posts I’d put significant effort into last year, and I’ll be crossposting them on Dreamwidth and Patreon. I don’t want to lose Tumblr’s culture and unique platform--I mean, I think the Weekend Links themselves make a case for the fact that there is nothing else like Tumblr on the internet. And shutting down is not even necessarily the most likely outcome--but I’m not gonna be caught unprepared, either. 

[sleepanonymous]

Hi, I was wondering if you knew when Vessel started 'dancing' on stage? I'm pretty sure he started doing in in the late Sundowning-ish era/ TPWBYT era but I thought you'd probably be the best person to ask about finding videos from when he started dancing.

Oooh this is an interesting rabbit hole, thanks for asking Anon 🖤

So... I guess it depends on what you mean by dancing, because Vessel has always sort of moved on stage, you know? But what he did back then and what he's doing now is completely different. Like... maybe a better word for what he used to do is "writhing." The earliest video of a ritual I've seen of Sleep Token's was their third ritual in (what I'm assuming is) late 2017, and "writhing" is probably the best word for what Vessel was doing on stage (and I say that affectionately/respectfully).

TLDR; Conclusively I would say Vessel started dancing, as we see him dance on stage today, in the summer of 2022. He's always moved on stage, and even acted unhinged during Sleep Token's earlier rituals. Below the cut, I go through rituals on YouTube from 2018-2023 to try and pinpoint exactly when Vessel started dancing like we see currently in 2023. (I went through quite a few videos, most not even mentioned in this monster of a post, so I made a YouTube playlist here).

A great example of Vessel's early "writhing" dancing is this YouTube video of Nazareth from the 2018 Leeds Festival (he's also an absolute menace here!! He steps on III, he didn't paint his waist or his back, and he strangles and spits on the original OG IV. Like... the man had demons and I am here for them). The dancing that's most similar to current times starts around 2:37 and 3:40.

2019 is impossible to find good videos for lol, since they did most of their rituals for the Beautiful Oblivion tour as an opener and, apparently, nobody films openers. But there are some with decent audio quality from ArcTanGent (my favorite being The Offering). Interestingly, he's less animated, still writhing, but not a menace to the rest of the band while doing so. If anyone is even slightly photosensitive please don't watch these ArcTanGent videos, the lighting effects really didn't agree with the camera's shutter speed.

This is a video of Higher from December 2019. The sound is not as crisp, and the videographer is quite a bit further from the stage, but Vessel is still moving, especially towards the end. The breakdown starts around 2:15, and while III and OG IV are definitely more animated than Vessel, he's still dancing with them. He even jumps down to scream the end of the song at the barrier (and has a mini-wardrobe malfunction) at 2:39. That crowd was really feeling it and so was Vessel.

Because of the plague in 2020, all of Sleep Token's shows were in January. Vessel's behaviour was very similar to the video posted above (just with less crowd interaction). The first show they played in 2021 was the Download Pilot. This is the best audio quality of that show, and Vessel also moves/dances the most in this video, though it's toward the end around 2:31, where the videographer forgot they were filming and just started vibing, so it's really hard to see, lol. I don't blame them, but it's also shakycam to the max. (Also, a quick fun fact, this is the first show the band played with our current IV as far as I can tell.)

This is another video from 2021, but from Sleep Token's TPWBYT rituals tour. It's Hypnosis, and in the very beginning, we see some Floor Vessel, which is neat and reminiscent of the most recent NA rituals, before he does some of his usual writing, though quite a bit more animated. Around 4:06 you can see the writing again, but after 4:19 it morphs into what we've seen from more recent rituals. (Also, if anyone wants a full 70-minute video of this show, filmed from the center of the balcony looking down on the stage, you can watch it here. Some parts have major flashing, so just be careful).

Here's another video of Hypnosis, this time from September 2022. Here, finally, we see Vessel's current version of dancing, hops and arm flails included. It starts right when the song kicks in at 0:13, and he does it again at the end, around 4:29. Technically they did a UK tour with the Architects in May (see this video of The Offering at 3:50) and an Australian tour in June 2022 with Northlane (again, see this video of The Offering at 0:20, 1:37), with similar behaviour from Vessel, but that BRRF Hypnosis video is the first video I ever watched of Sleep Token live so it's very dear to me and it's also better sound quality than anything I could find from earlier in the year.

I went way overboard with answering this question, Anon, but it was super fun, so thank you again for asking 🖤🙏 Again, I made a playlist of all the videos + several others. If anyone has any recommendations for me to add to the playlist, send the links my way (especially if they aren't The Offering or Hypnosis lol) and I'll add them in chronological order.

[desire-mona]

dead poets society chars but i assign them random things ive seen happen on the internet / random videos or posts i remember (not based on anything it is genuinely at random):

neil - tony crynight's fnaf animation series which i dont entirely remember the plot of but i'll try to describe. so basically its fake mangle lore to say that mangle is the way they are (all broken and shit) because Mangle kissed Foxy and Chica got jealous so she took a Machete to Mangle to Mangled them. and then the gang tries to save mangle or whatever

todd - fluffle puff, someones pink fluffy mlp oc who was in lesbians with chrysalis (i think thats her name, i never watched mlp). mosy notably known for the animation to pink fluffy unicorns dancing on rainbows. also the creator is a pedophile i think

charlie - sorrow tv and his entire existence. sorrow tv was a youtuber who made videos reading out reddit videos in silly voices. there was a whole posse of youtubers who did this, and he was the most popular just bc his voice acting was rly good. i still watch him every couple months even tho he hasnt posted since 2021.

cameron - does bruno mars is gay? i think about cameron man door hand hook car door every day, so i obviously need to point to my third favourite silly trying to be serious sentence. most ppl know this from game grumps but im not linking a game grumps video on here. rumour come out!

knox - venturiantale, the youtube channel usually consisting of 4? siblings playing gmod together usually. the channel itself was ran by this guy named jordan i think? and his siblings has their own channels. i knew them best for their fnaf gmod videos and their fanmail videos. turns out they were all very christian? and the whole family was abusive and way deep into said christianity if i remember correctly, one of the siblings who left first made a video on it. the venturiantale channel hasnt posted in like 2 yrs and the slow death was kinda sad to see bc he (jordan) blamed it all on The Algorithm.

meeks - that one nagito komaeda kinnie back in Whenever it was cutting off their finger to. i guess prove that they were a nagito kinnie frfr? if u dont know danganronpa lore then nagito gets his hand cut off and replaced with junko enoshima's hand because sheeeee got... executed? i wont lie i dont remember this part of the games story sorry. but essentially that one person was like I Gotta Do That........ anyway im jk the audio was faked and nothing actually happened + the person is fine LAWL

pitts - the key of awesome's parody of tiktok by kesha called glitter puke. theres no lore to this the key of awesome is / was ? a silly little song parody channel. this video was made in 2010 and it kinda shows in some moments but other than that it holds up. just checked and the key of awesome is Not still going, it ended 6 years ago and the last video was actually rly good and genuine

keating - onma island is buried a treasure chest. ok so basically mr beast made a video talking abt a private island and he buried. a treasure chest for a viewer to find. during the video he said "on my island is buried a treasure chest" but it sounded like "onma" which this one youtuber (pinely) found rly funny. it became an inside joke with his friends (one of whom got a tattoo) which then became a lowkey meme. mr beast even tweeted it so. good lord thats a lot of links sorry there isnt a know your meme page or anything

chris - i dont have any links for this one sorry, im just gonna tell the story and u have to believe me when i say i swear it happened (its very a believable fandom story im sure you will). so back when the genshin impact was still in its fairly early days (late 2020-early 2021) the phrase "hear me out" to refer to characters n stuff started becoming popular I THINK at the same time. so people in the genshin fandom were like hear me out with increasingly more heinous shit. started with characters, then npcs, then enemies, then bosses, then weapons, the stamina bar at one point, etc. a lot of these were jokes or straight up bait but back then (maybe now too - i havent been part of the genshin fandom for a LONG time) people took bait far more often than they didnt. so it became a "genshin fandom bad" gotcha to point out That One stamina bar post.

ginny - $300 junko enoshima wig! sorry for double dipping with danganronpa it was just the first fandom i actually started like. on purpose noting fandom happenings with + a lot of shit happens in that fandom. this one cosplayer who at the time was called snowthesaltqueen / badguyincorporated started selling pre-made (and styled) junko enoshima cosplay wigs for $300. which WOULD be fair (i think? idk how cosplay commissions work) if said wig was styled well or quality at all, but what was ACTUALLY provided was a rly basic wig base and few clips with no note or no nothing, and rly flat. like on purpose. like that was "the styling". also you may recognise this cosplayer for 1) getting in trouble when they did a cosplay photoshoot (danganronpa cosplay funnily enough) in a graveyard, posing ON a gravestone. 2) KILLING SOMEONE. they were screwing around with a firearm and fake pointing it at someone and then they accidentally shot them.

i could do this forever like actually. i have SO many internet stories in my brain its actually bad.