#for context though my dad is a gamer

[thetomorrowshow]

Got my dad to watch mcc (scar pov) with me, here are some highlights of the occasion

he's colorblind and struggled telling teams apart, but appreciated color indicators on some blocks in games

did not understand survival games until he saw the border and then went "oh it's like fortnite!!"

asked questions about every ten seconds which was actually quite lovely, but included:

asking me how mcc teams are decided

asking me who scott smajor was no less than five times

asking me to explain the concept of hermitcraft.

did not care about the game chat until he realized that's where i was getting stats from and then started leaning as far forward as possible to read it

i don't think he ever really grasped the concept of rocket spleef. he had fun watching though

thought antfrost's skin was a bird

asked me if ace race was only for ace people (definitely trying to connect with me after i recently came out as ace. much appreciated, very sweet)

complained if people punched scar off during tgttos

asked if scar would be interested in coming to our family server to build

desperately wants minecraft slushies. i wouldn't be surprised if i joined the family server tomorrow to find he'd added a texture pack for them

i think his favorite game was meltdown, he got very excited about scar's killer aim

he says that most of the streamers he watches are british and hearing american accents on twitch was weird. ok

got happy every time scar wasn't last in team rankings for a game

guys he got so into dodgebolt. he was jumping up with every hit. he was very disappointed when i accidentally changed the channel during the second round and wouldn't let me touch the remote again. he actually cheered at the final shot

he didn't know anyone playing but he still really enjoyed it. he wants to watch again next time :)

[mecachrome]

extremely 👀👀 about this kind/nice spectrum u brought up and how alex oscar lando and anyone else on the grid are placed on the grid..... would love to know more.........

hi there!!! :D omg yes i would love to talk more about this, though of course disclaimer that these are my Personal Interpretations and i love to spout nonsense on the internet LOL. i'll just expand on oscar + lando + alex some more since frankly i don't know all the other driver lore Like That and i don't want to overstep in my analysis! also i'm deathly afraid of chirlies. ok let's move on

to start off... i think the way we talk about celebrity personas obviously requires some generalization + projection since we can only extrapolate what is already being consciously disseminated, and so although i frequently talk about the kind/nice dichotomy or someone's capacity for sympathy vs. empathy (which is kind of a parallel assessment imo) we are of course all complex people who contain multitudes, and i think it's mostly just interesting to examine strictly in the context of racing & racing mentality... if that makes sense!

also wrt landoscar's personalities → one thing i feel very, VERY strongly about despite their differing surface-level interests and social profiles (read: different flavors of off-track sports, both of them being gamers but to diverging levels of visibility, lando's higher degrees of hyperfixation, etc.) is that at their baseline they are extremely similar people, and honestly even very similar drivers and racing "characters," which ultimately kind of colors most of my analysis. if we peel back the layers then oscar and lando are both functional introverts who've been very well-nurtured by similarly robust, persisting, and loyal support systems—oscar spending 99% of his time off-track with his longtime gf, lando's best mates all being from his karting days, their dads being equally objective about yet also supportive of their careers, jon having trained lando since he was like 5 feet tall, etc.—so to me the overarching difference is that they have diametric approaches to how they externalize their convictions, and then obviously since that's what we see/hear day in & day out it generates the existing rift between their media images. per lando on btg: 

"Oscar is extremely down to earth. A bit like me, just a very normal guy who's in Formula 1, just a guy that loves to drive cars and compete against people, and that's it."

(incoming egregious amounts of lando psychoanalysis...) despite oscar being the only driver i truly rep, i've always found lando's psyche soooo fascinating because he invites such extreme emotion in people (be it positive or negative), and i think part of it does go back to the idea of being nice vs. kind and ultimately the lens through which his intentions are interpreted by other people. in real-people fandom this is always interesting since it ends up becoming an unconscious exercise in how we perceive "sincerity" in others, even though the underlying paradoxical truth is obviously that any such assessment must always be dispersed and consolidated via a parasocial system (and thus everything is held relative to our own individual value systems... This is totally not the point of the ask. SORRY FOR THE MILLION TANGENTS) anyway as an extremely disillusioned sports fan i actually have a lot of time for lando despite how much visceral judgment he generates in quite a few people, which is totally fair since everyone is fully privy to feeling however they want to feel about any celebrity and i am not here to convince them otherwise lol. but that's just me!

i think to me the thing about lando is that there is almost zero pretense to his character, which some dislike because they find his bluntness off-putting, but imo just means his intentions are generally straightforward and easily digestible. sure, he lacks the spoken filter to not come off as occasionally callous, but at the end of the day i genuinely believe that he's an inherently thoughtful (and "kind") person, especially within the insular system of professional motorsport and the many mental pitfalls that accompany it. a symptom of this is how willing he is to resist more gracious media responses and how very inwardly critical he can be in specifically self-motivating ways, the latter of which sometimes gets misinterpreted due to the rigid yet overwhelmingly popular framework of what constitutes a competitive racing mentality. but like... to Me, lando is just entirely what you see is what you get, bad parts included, and he has zero intention of making excuses for that or pretending to be anything otherwise. which i enjoy!

and which again also goes back to the idea of niceness. (honestly the tl;dr for most of lando's pr scandals is just Oh okay so it's illegal to be neurodivergent now? but i'm trying to be normal so let me not just say that.) a good example is the entire debacle of saying he felt no sympathy for daniel at mclaren in 2022, because i think it elucidates a sort of kindness in objectivity that he very plainly participates in—to lando, being a top-performing athlete means never searching for excuses to soften the brunt of one's failures, himself included, and equally that there is no point playing sorry in front of journalists or trying to reshape their narrative scrutiny since at the highest level of competition any bold-faced externalization of "sympathy" is really just pity. and what point is there in telling someone else that you Feel Bad for their skill issue/struggles when the moment you extend that sentiment you essentially debase their position as a direct competitor and therefore disrespect them even more?

"I want to be the best in the world, I want to prove myself to people. But I've never had the mentality or the confidence to say that or feel like I need to do anything more than normal to show it to people. Do I have to do anything to go over the top and show that to prove it? I don't think so. People say you've got to be brutal and you've got to have this certain mentality. But I just don't think it's true at all. I think you’ve just got to get in the car and do the best you can."

i think the Separation of Church (treating everyone exactly as they are on-track, just another car to size up or keep at bay) and State (being friendly, supportive, and altogether well-regarded by other drivers off-track) is a primary tenet of lando's personality, and it's something he achieves by valuing kindness over niceness. you know the lando/maxf quadrant interview where lando is like: i'm not friends with you because of your achievements in life... i just care about your personality! and he's mainly saying it to take the piss out of him but he also 100% does mean that shit. that's the crasyinsane part about lando to me... god i'm so sorry i need to not go on for a million years but PERSONALLY, i think lando is very much the type of person who can go through an experience, or otherwise see someone close to him go through an experience, and approach it very empathetically to the point he continues carrying on this internal conviction about it even when he's survived or grown past it. like even as someone who mostly believes in Death to Relatable Marketing, i find it really interesting when lando talks about mental health in sports because we get to see both a) the fact that he's grown so much in his own mental resilience from his rookie self in 2019 to who he is now, but also b) that he continues to believe strongly in rejecting the presumed archetype of a successful formula 1 driver, and is steadfast in surfacing that even though... honestly? lando nowadays is a very consistent, well-rounded, and efficient talent who frankly doesn't experience nearly as much of the unproductive mentally-spiraling self-criticism that used to impact his performances to a far more pronounced degree when he was younger and rough around the edges. yet he still feels compelled to affirm that there is No One way to be an athlete (which is significant because "mentality" is such a harped-on concept in all sports, and everyone is always trying unfailingly to extrapolate performance-related projections via vague and completely subjective intangibles to a notably unempirical degree!!) because he does care, deeply, about how people enter and succeed in motorsport. honestly i always feel kind of iffy bringing up commentary re: Women In Motorsport because it often sounds unnecessarily adulatory, but at least in recent times i think he's also shown a decent amount of grace when talking about female fans, girls in karting, that one time he was like Bruh who are you? @ that misogynistic reporter, which...... i'm not going to say majorly influences my opinion of him, but imo being willing to quickly shut someone down like that is an anti-niceness to a productive end that i appreciate, since i think many personalities would kind of just smile bemusedly and try to quickly move on in the conversation.

tl;dr lando thinks feeling bad for people is useless and will never give you that one tidy sympathetic soundbite, but he does care for people vividly, especially off-track, which to him is the only place kindness really matters anyway. when you look at maxf (and i know this is mainly a portrait of codependency unique to their friendship but i do think it reflects his love languages in general) whose career cratered because he mentally couldn't handle the pressure, lando's response was literally to unfailingly engage in failcore househusband chores for him like leaving handwritten notes in his 3rd grade girl handwriting and ironing his clothes on stream........ which... i could go on forever but again. separation of church and state!!!

anyway with oscar on the other hand, i honestly think most things in his life kind of just exist as a function of motorsport LOL. and that he likes surrounding himself with people of similar interests/intellectual level/skillsets, down to his partner studying engineering and wanting to work in the same industry as him....... again, i think 814's baseline characters are Very similar and that they're both great team players with complementary professional approaches, so this is not a knock on either of their personalities, but imo lando is just generally more outwardly sentimental and has also had to do a lot of conscious growing up in the past ~4 years to become more well-rounded wrt off-track interests, whereas oscar basically came onto the grid as this already fully-realized product with far fewer dependencies who is just nonchalantly like, I see my family 3 weeks a year and my sisters just think i'm their lame older brother and don't care about my career at all, but i'm fine with that and i'd make all the same sacrifices i've made over and over again to get where i am!!! also re: oscar's abject lack of interest in engaging with fans one-on-one, an easy example is how lando genuinely values/treasures the friendship bracelets he gets and wears them consistently whereas oscar is just like. Erm. i respect it but that is not for me ✋😭 he's nice about fan things because he understands how much fan support and consumerist interest enable the circus that is formula 1 but he doesn't really value any of it much past the surface-level pleasantries......

why is this answer so long............... idk if you want to hear anything more about alex but i think he's very similar to oscar in terms of this measured external niceness/quiet ruthlessness, especially wrt how they weather team politics, interact with media (noted red bull marketing hater alex albon), and tend to simply Do The Thing To Do The Thing. alex is especially interesting because if you watch his high performance pod it reveals sooooo much of his growth over the years and his current mental framework ("i was having to be selfless, and it didn't really agree with me that much") and frankly even just the way he speaks about himself is fascinating to me but i digress!!! i do think much of lando's tactless impulse yet also apparent kindness comes from his considerably privileged background and the fact that he was shown a lot of Realistic But Also Unconditional Support and thus never had his career actively threatened growing up. so even though he's had to learn to not mentally catastrophize at the f1 level, he didn't undergo the reckoning alex did with his mother/losing rb's team backing/etc., which alex mentions in this podcast as specifically triggering his insatiable desperation to prove himself.......... and so on. alex and oscar to me are both quite similar in how they let more combative thoughts simmer and are very well-trained in responding palatably to the media, but they're also going to resist relating themselves too much to other people's struggles because That Is Not Their Problem, and at the end of the day oscar is uh.... sure he has a lot of appreciation for mclaren and has called prema a family before, but he really only wants to win for himself and is less inclined than lando is to romanticize the spirit of the Team. and so when he says things like "for me, there’s just not any point, especially in self-deprecation, destroying yourself in front of the media," it's a Niceness because his assessments are always entirely self-absorbed in the most productive of senses, as in he truly only cares about what he himself is doing and is never going to waste time worrying about or comparing himself to his competitors' mental approaches!

does any of this make sense. please excuse the monstrous rambling 😭 but also please feel free to follow up with your own takes/lore about any driver if you'd like to, or to tell me that i'm absolutely wrong if you'd like, because i always love to hear about these things!!! :3c

[h0eznth]

little white gift

pairing: shuntaro chishiya x fem!reader

genre: fluff, outside of the games

warnings: divorced parents of reader, established relationship, heaps of fluff

wc: 981

a/n: all copyright claims go to stayrachas-blog. reposting or translating is prohibited. liking and reblogging is encouraged and welcomed. please follow by the standard tumblr guidelines.

you and the 'game' crew had decided to go to your mother's place for christmas. she had bought a house down in australia for the hot chritmases and for the fun of it. there were beaches just down the road from her house, cafes and scenic walks close buy - it was a convinience to everyone. not to forget your father and his partner had bought a place down in australia as well with the agreement of living in the same state, so when you came to visit you could spend time with both of them during your stay.

you had gotten a mixer for christmas. your mum always found you liking music, and so did everyone else - so when christmas time came around, they whole team was on board with the plan to buy you something you could pursue your thoughts with.

of course, setting it up was always gonna be a hassle. even though it was an hour past midnight and people were still exchanging gifts, you were sat in a corner by the stairs, installing and figuring out how the hell to work this thing.

you peaked over the top of your laptop screen to see arisu and usagi playing with your cat and the new toys you had gifted the ginger animal. kuina and ann were talking about their gifts and what they were going to do during the christmas holidays.

chishiya placed a kiss on top of your head, placing a cup of your family's secret peppermint slice recipe next to you.

"i though you would've been asleep by now." chishiya ruffled your hair in a caring matter, watching your concentrated facial expressions.

"i want to get my mixer working." he placed himself down next to you, pulling his legs up and taking the laptop from your hold. you watched him fiddle around with the instructions while you leaned on his shoulder. arisu made his way over, ducking down to also take part in what you two were working on. arisu could know a thing or two about this type of technology - he was a gamer after all.

it was too late for anyone to function honestly. chishiya had to end up carrying you to your room to allow your body to rest. he sat on the edge of your bed, turning your lights off and taking off his shirt as he lay down next to you.

you felt his touch against your skin, leaning closer to his warmth. his arm fell over your limp figure; hand slowly caressing the skin underneath your shirt.

everyone decided to camp at your house for the festive season. chishiya was clearly used to how the place worked yet the others caught on quickly too.

arisu and usagi soon made their way over to their makeshift bed, getting changed into their sleepwear for the night. chishiya kissed the side of your face as your eyes fluttered between consciousness and sleep.

the next day was a joy. waking up to ann and kuina in christmas hats, singing to christmas songs while dancing around your kitchen. your mum was laying on the couch laughing at the pair having fun. you grabbed a drink from the fridge and made your way down to sit next to the tree where your cat was playing with his new toys and the baulbaulbes.

you felt a soft touch over your shoulders, warm hands pulling you back into a gentle chest. chishiya whispered a soft 'good morning' followed by a 'merry christmas' into your ear along with a kiss. your cat seemed to love chishiya as much as your did, greeting him with a warm hello.

as you were walking to your father's house, you felt chishiya kiss your shoulder softly. you were nervous about chishiya meeting your dad. he was hypocritical, to say the least. you didn't want him to say something out of context about your boyfriend that could offend him. you've warned chishiya about him many times before and he constantly has to reassure your that he won't take whatever your dad says to heart and that he'll be fine.

"you don't have to stress, sweetheart." the nickname always made your knees go weak. he always knew the way around your mind.

"i know, i just-" you sigh out of defeat. "you know he'll say something stupid and i dont want to hear my own father say something bad about the boy i love." you look up at his eyes weakly. he just smiles, he knows you have a tendency to stress, even if you seemed so nonchalant in the games.

chishiya and your father shook hands. this was off to a great start. your step mum insisted on you opening your gifts straight away, and you couldn't help but oblige.

after your father and chishiya came back from a little one-on-one father and daughter's boyfriend time, they sat down with smiles on their faces. your step mum smiled too; they had a plan. your step mum passed you the last wrapped gift beside her.there was a tag stuck onto the small wrapped present. it read the words,

"to y/n,

from chishiya (aka chish)"

you giggled at the last part, you always called him that nickname. as you unwrapped more and more of what present their was, you grew more confused to what it was, and more curious as to what it could e. once you ripped off the last piece of white wrapping paper, you were met with a nice looking box. chishiya carefully look the box from your hand and crouched down. you though he was going to give a little speech on how it was a special gift made and chosen just for that; that was until you realised he was kneeling on one knee.

and yet you still wondered what was inside - until it was shown to you.

a ring.

[applefan28]

Oh, and if you feel like it and I can send another.. (sighs..) Suitcase. For the character ask :)!!

SOUPCASE MY BELOVED of course :)

Sexuality Headcanon: Because i've been seeing it on tumblr a lot and have been very much taken by the art and content of it, aroace Suitcase is really neat :) Like, Suitcase’s whole deal in the show revolves around alliances, friendship, trust, etc. Sure, even though there is no canonical romantic subplot or show in ii, Suitcase to me falls under “would not have any correlation to a romantic storyline with anyone or herself in her own feelings”. She’s a pretty lonely girl more occupied with emotional bonds and connections with her teammates. Not to say romance can’t be involved, but Suitcase was more headfirst into wanting unity amongst her teammates, wanting connection, wanting all to not feel at all left out or unheard, she just wanted to be a part is all (and as an aromantic, none of that feels romantic to me lol). Suitcase also just seems like someone who would never really pick up on social cues in romantic contexts about others or towards herself yknow? In the same vein as Apple who never thought of it or caught onto such feelings, Suitcase just didn’t catch the memo and she’s fine with that (just confused as to how the hell do others feel that way?) If anything, unlike Apple, she doesn’t feel all that inclined to partake in romantic endeavours, because it doesn’t come to her nor is it part of her communication in displaying love for others. I do enjoy her being more of a girl liker in an aroace way if anything, because yes <3

Gender Headcanon: I love both trans gal and transmasc “girl” aligned nonbinary suitcase, as well as being intersex. For sure, she isn’t cisgender, so I’d think her gender would be just as about less concrete in labels as her understanding in attraction. Transfem in the sense that as she aged, her voice deepened, but still has that “girlish” charm in it as she’s pretty fine with her voice, but likes to add flare to it out of boosting her confidence. Fem-aligned transmasc also is based off the voice change. Her having identified as “girl” in a very nonbinary “im my own definition of Girl” way, she along the lines realizes she’d like to transition somewhat masculinely, because she enjoys the thought of having a blend of it in how she presents herself (especially by voice). All this whilst wearing plain, boxy, and politely feminine clothing (always fond of the suspenders + skirt + buttoned down + headband + mary janes combo <3)

A ship I have with said character: Suitcase x Suitcase. I want this girl to love herself and be able to stand for herself without feeling pressured or at risk.

A BROTP I have with said character: Pickle, id love to see them two game and have a sorta nice talk about their own personal feelings they’ve been in battle with! I like Pickle being the “gamer” of the hotel, and Suitcase with that “10/10 would watch again”, there’s potential silliness in such a dynamic :^) Suitcase isn’t really as much of a gamer as Pickle, she’s casual in her manner of speech and communication, which brings in this friendly banter that meshes well with Pickle’s chill and goofy attitude. Not to mention, they’re both characters that are about personal growth and regaining a confidence in themselves that they’ve lost from another putting them down. I think they’d have some heartfelt talk about the such… though it would be kinda funny knowing Suitcase has a sorta odd relationship with the same guy that’s probably dating Pickle… lol.

A NOTP I have with said character: Nickel seems very obvious to go with, Knife as well, honestly about any other guy in the show.

A random headcanon: I know it was a one-time visual gag, but the scene where she has tools in her makes me think Suitcase is well versed in construction/engineering/mechanics and probably is OSHA certified. You know how there’s that headcanon of three background characters being Suitcase’s dads? I’d like to think the three built their home and managed around, with the electrical engineering and plumbing and what have you, doing their own fixings with a young Suitcase around curious about what her dads are doing. They were a hands-on type of family who when something was up, any of them had to take care of it by hand and Suitcase was no stranger to learning and taking care of performing a fixer upper. Maybe she wanted to or is in the trades! I just think it’s funny if Suitcase were OSHA certified and Test Tube was not.

General Opinion over said character: Suitcase is a sweetheart that really deserves better treatment in universe and in her writing. i don’t talk of her much but she’s in the range of “sad lonely girls that deserve the world” that i tend to enjoy :) She’s just so quaint to me, tragic with issues and burdened by loneliness, i also wish she weren't just dumped around as being the weak nimble character with le plot relevant hAlLuCiNaTiOnS. Suitcase should have a gun, she should go stupid go crazy, i want her to curse out on Nickel sooo so bad, i hope she wins and uses the money for her own good <3

[solarsavoy]

Hey hey, you got anything else about Deshi you’d like to share 🤔 I honestly really like his vibe (It’s usually like that for a lot light haired characters in my case 😅)

I was trying to figure out what to say about him. I just find him so cute sometimes because of the little side stories my muse gives me, so then I thought about sharing a little side story about him.

For context, I have an editor friend (not professional) that thinks Deshi's intellectually stupid, so I was trying to think of something that proves he's not, because he can be quite ingenious sometimes. So here it is. Storytime!

Deshi's friend is based off a friend of Deo's, in a way.

So Deshi loves videogames, which most should know by now, and this is inspired by the types of videogames I like, which some may not know. One major difference is that I'm a fan of horror games and Deshi is not, lol. He just can't handle them, which only makes him that much more endearing to me.

Anyway, when his dad disappeared, his mom got a large sum of money meant to take care of her and Deshi and Sasaki (his little sister) until college, so she doesn't work. This does make funds a little limited though and videogames can get expensive. To still be able to get what he wants, he's patient, saves his money, and then gets things as cheaply as possible. (Yes, he steals games online.) He got the idea from his unnamed friend to build a computer from scratch because the gaming computers/laptops can get a little pricey.

So that's exactly what he did.

He learned how to put together a computer, constantly asking his friend for help of course, and eventually built it from the bottom up, a really good gaming computer, for much cheaper than it would've been on the market. This is why he's a PC gamer. He's very proud of it and protective of it (since Sasaki is constantly pranking him and unlike Karma, her pranks are maliciously destructive) and his mom nor his sister have any idea how hard it was for him to make it. Like, they just think he can tinker around with it for an hour and it'll be fixed. 🙄

So one day, Sasaki actually damages it really badly and Deshi goes to his friend and it takes 3 months and all his miniscule savings to fix it. Mom thinks he was being dramatic, but finally decides to tell Sasaki that the computer is off limits and to just not mess with it ever because "Deshi's sensitive". *glare

After this whole debacle, his friend donates his old monitor (it's a very nice monitor, btw) to Deshi and moves away. They're both kind of pretty bad at keeping in contact, but they try. And that's how he got his computer and became a PC gamer!

Deshi was around 10 when he decided to start building his computer and 12 when he finished. His friend moved away when he was about 13 or 14.

So yeah, definitely not intellectually challenged. 😣 And Deshi's actually really good at finding ways around things. This comes up a lot in the Second Fragment while learning magic. He just has this kind of "how do I make this work?" mentality when it comes to doing things.

Bonus!

He's normally the guy that takes things a little to seriously and is overly cautious in ways (product of his evil little sister's constant pranks) but he's surprisingly playful when it comes to experimenting with stuff to understand it and make it work. Here's a summary of a scene in Second Fragment.

He's trying to understand his limits with magic while working with Master Diette and decides that the best way is to just use magic until he runs out, which causes him to faint. "Ooo, that's bad." Master Diette says, also wanting to test Deshi's limits out of curiosity. "We can't let Master Key know or we'll both be in trouble." And then allows him do this. But you know, forcing yourself to faint just isn't a good idea. 😆 Don't worry, he ends up being fine.

Deshi's nonchalance to danger while experimenting comes from the amount of times he was electrocuted while building his computer. Not super common, but it happened. He made the lights in the house flicker once and has burned through more than one motherboard, trying to figure it all out.

Thanks for the ask! 💙

[chemicalbakeryarts]

Well, this is new! Not sure if you guys know this over on Tumblr but I love to try new things! And uh.. this time, I would try something a bit more physical than usual!

This custom is of an oc of mine, Legendary Flare! Though I have not posted her to Tumblr, so uh…. If you want more information check out her DeviantArt post! (Semi-old art lol)

As a Skylanders fan, and someone who has tons of Skylanders oc's. I'm naturally going to want a toy of my Skylanders oc's! Toy customs have been something I've wanted to do for at least a few months.... I was thinking of doing a custom of Thorn on Knockout Terrafin and really want to make that. But it was just a "yeah that would be cool" with no serious intent of actually doing anything with those actions. Until less than a week ago I actually started taking this seriously, and I think it was around two weeks ago when I was having dinner with my Dad and asked if we could go shopping for art supplies for making a clay sculpture, and fortunately for me, he said yes! (I'll be applying for a job.... again in a few days so I'm hoping I won't need him for this kind of stuff in the future) I ended up drawing a reference photo for the pose I wanted to do, and the next day we headed out to Micheals. 40$ CAD down the drain I quickly got to work on making a clay figure of Legendary Flare, effectively turning what used to be my epic gamer man cave into an a mini-art studio. starting with removing Torch from her base using some pliers. And FUCK dude removing a Skylander from the base is difficult, it might be because of being weak as fuck and my slender hands but it is NOT easy.

But after that was dealt with I got to work on sculpting. Day one, I did her legs, day two I did the tail, day three I did the rest of the body, and day four I did the painting. And although getting her big legs to stay on the damn base wasn't easy, soon enough I got her on. The sculpting was incredibly fun around the end! Sure it was a bit difficult to make sure everything... you know, stuck. but It was a good time! And painting was soooo satisfying. I was literally squealing and going "oh my god" while finishing the paint job, it was amazing and I loved every second of it.

Now, time for the mistakes I made. (for context I used air dry clay, and although the paint doesn't matter here I used acrylics)

First, making everything stick together. I recommend making small holes and indents in places you want to stick parts into. like placing the arm on the torso? Make a small indent hole in the torso. Maybe this is an issue from me not using a wire armature for the figure but getting everything in place proved to be difficult. Her claws kept falling out because they were on the edge of the base. And also using a wet paintbrush to mold the clay together of course.

Second, smoothing everything out. Basically getting a wet paint brush and stroking the clays cracks. I didn't do this enough. Which you can't tell as much since the images were compressed but its a bit of an issue, less so since this character has scales, but again, its an issue.

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

Overall I would say sculpting is a super fun experience! Generally I just love trying new things with my art but this proved to be especially rewarding! And, uh... If anyones wondering why I chose Legendary Flare specifically. Its for three reasons. A: I don't care about Torch and Legendary Flare is my only fire element oc, B: She only has three colours so painting her would be pretty easy, and C: she isn't a main character or anything so if I mess up, it's not as bad as someone more well-known and pushed on my account.

I briefly considered making a video about my process on this (hell I even filmed Torch before I removed her) but later I decided not to film because I wasn't sure if the results would be good and since Legendary Flare, being a Legendary variant requires some context to explain why she's a variant anyways. I might make a video about a future custom tho idk.

Be sure to let me know your thoughts on me doing customs and if you want me to make more of them! I have a lot more clay and paint and I do not like to waste money!

(also what tags do people put toy customs in?)

[localvoidcat]

hello gamers I have summarized the entire plot of fmr. I hope you enjoy (also this is done weirdly because I was making this for someone with no context of the plot. anyways)

FMR but explained poorly (as of 7/17/22)

So you’ve got these two guys: Andre and Josh. They live in this weird little town called Amber Falls that actually isn’t weird considering that witches and werewolves and vampires and stuff exist in their universe and everyone knows about it but Amber Falls is still definitely weird

Anyways andre’s just having the time of his life, even if his dad is kind of forcing him to be a were beast hunter like the rest of the people on his dad’s side of the family, but shit goes down the drain when andre just turns into a werewolf one night and salvador (his dad) tries to kill him. he manages to injure him but not kill him though, and andre wakes up the next morning with a vague recollection of what happened. He goes to josh who is like hell yeah dude I’ll help you totally not because im in love with you or something yeah totally not dude hey you wanna kiss as they’re escaping the town, josh gets shot and killed by salvador. Andre attacks salvador, josh dies in his arms, angsty shit or whatever. Andre escapes the town.

But of course josh couldn’t just die then. Apparently fucked up magic + a pendant with a link to spirit magic sent him right to the void dimension (which is kind of where the gods reside? It’s this dark place where your soul just floats) but oh no he is. Still awake in this dimension and he is not supposed to be here. the god of death (mortem is their name) sees him and is like what the fuck dude get out so she brings him back to life by. Kicking him out of what is essentially heaven.

So josh wakes up in the hospital, he’s now got these weird connections to the afterlife and stuff. His soul isn’t really fully attached to his body anymore/it’s partly trapped in the afterlife which means that one, he can see ghosts now. It is driving him insane and two, he can temporarily become one by. And this is so funny to me because he literally just falls over but he can eject his soul fully from his body and walk around as a little spirit dude. Despite how cool this is he still spent time in the void dimension, where even a few seconds can feel like hundreds of years, so he’s a little fucked up over that. Also the fact that he died. Also the fact that the guy who killed him is telling everyone in the town that Andre died, which josh knows isn’t true but he can’t really say anything without also exposing andre so he. Isn’t able to just yet meanwhile with andre he’s started participating in these werebeast fights to earn money, and holy shit dude get out of there you are getting the shit beat out of you physically and mentally. a couple months/a year after joining though, he finally leaves and joins what I call the werewolf gang. It’s not even a gang it’s just a group of friends that all happen to be fruity werewolves which is great because he’s also a fruity werewolf. Anyways laurel, one of the people in said group (there’s only like four people bro) kind of acts like an older brother to andre and helps him control his lycanthropy which is awesome because gods know he needs that cut back to amber falls where josh is uh. Actually he isn’t doing much aside from being tortured by the restless spirits of the undead. He’s fine totally fine nothing wrong there oh my god im forgetting my own plot. Uh there’s a weird gray space for a while where andre is just. hanging out with his friends/found family and also learning about the rest of the supernatural world which is good for ghim. I mean he’s also having to deal with the embodiment of his curse that likes to torment him over josh’s death but that’s totally fine it’s not messing with him at all

Also andre’s been searching for a way to break his curse because. As cool as it is turning into a giant wolf monster for three nights a month it’s also awful and he’s being actively hunted for it. People are out there trying to sell his pelt so. Yeah he needs to get rid of this curse now. so he’s searching for that with no luck, which is why he’s getting way too involved with magical stuff. okay so a lot of time has passed obviously. It’s been like seven or eight years since the incident, so they’re 21/22 by now. we finally come back to josh, who has been trying to hunt down the source of andre’s curse all these years, not knowing that hey andre’s doing that too. Of course josh is more successful in his attempts because he’s kind of using some of the hunters in Salvador’s association to get information. And by using them I absolutely mean that he’s dating one of them. Gaslight gatekeep boyboss he also kind of. Summons the spirit of andre’s ancestor, trying to find out the truth straight from the source. The ancestor is named victor for future reference, and victor agrees to help him uncover the truth. which is of course located in Salvador’s office at his headquarters, and of course there’s an event going on there to celebrate a century of service to the town or something. Josh gets into the event using his hunter date, manages to break into Salvador’s office, and would you look at that there’s handwritten journals by torres family members (torres is the family name. i am all over the place) describing ways in which they’ve tried to break the curse and the things to lead up to them getting it. Apparently a hundred years ago victor was killing were beasts to the point where they weren’t safe in the town anymore, some witch got mad at him and cursed him to turn into a werewolf, and now every other torres family member turns into a werewolf if the previous curse holder has passed on. Andre got his curse because his grandfather died just before he turned, which explains why it was so sudden or. something

Josh is trying to collect these things and oh what do you know Salvador’s here. He kills josh for the second time, leaving his corpse on the floor of his office, and starts burning the evidence of a curse. Salvador, for context, is desperate to uphold his family name, to the point where he would and has killed to do so.

Of course he doesn’t really realize that josh can come back to life, so once the bitch does, josh immediately attacks salvador. Also remember Salvador burning the evidence? Yeah the place is on fire now because of their fight. They’re beating the shit out of each other as the place crumbles, everyone leaving the building except for the both of them. there was a way for josh and salvador to escape, but josh had that “if im dying you’re coming down with me” mentality and ended up letting the both of them die to smoke inhalation. 

Josh wakes up after another totally not traumatizing trip to the void dimension, realizes that the flames are being handled, and also realizes oh shit he killed a man he needs to get out of this town now. he escapes the town (oh hey didn’t this happen eight years ago), and has to start a new life as a completely different person.

Also I forgot to talk about josh’s family, but this portion of the story focuses a little on how they’re affected by his “death”. They don’t know that he’s alive and the person affected most by this is his twin sister Julie, who is obviously going through stuff because. She watched her brother go through horrible depression for years, constantly have trouble from other people in the town after his coming out (for context. Josh is also a trans guy and amber falls is. Not a very good town to be trans in), and now everyone thinks that he committed a murder-suicide. So she’s pretty distraught over that. Julie I am so sorry I care about you very much now on the other side of things, we get a good moment about two years after josh’s death, when andre and josh finally reunite thanks to the fact that josh decided to search for him, just to see if he could set things right. they’re talking again, they’re discussing everything that’s happened and oh they’re in love now. I mean it only took them ten years to get over the mutual pining. I care very much about these two.

A while later like. A year or two, they decide to go back to amber falls one last time just to come clean to their families (also because they’d like to have people they know at their wedding. They’ve both been under the radar and would like to speak to people again). So they do and. well isa (andre’s mom) is so happy to see her son again. she doesn’t even care that he turns into a murderous creature every now and then she’s just so happy to have him back. also she finally realizes that Salvador was a shitty husband which is great because it took her too long to figure that out. Also she’s fine with the two of them being together (she’s a little concerned that his partner is the main suspect behind what was possibly the biggest crime to occur in amber falls but. Whatever makes her son happy ig)

On josh’s side though…yikes. Obviously his family is more than overjoyed that he’s okay, but julie is not too happy about the fact that he just left without telling them anything. It’s understandable because she spent two years of her life grieving, and just as she gets over it he shows up again. So things are tense between the two of them but overall it’s still good because he’s alive and they’re all safe.

From here there’s less major events and things calm down. Everything I write from this point on is usually just the two of them being together, or whatever I feel like in the moment

Also. There are two endings to this story. One of which being that they get to have a happy life together and the other being that. They both die tragically, but together. The second one I have cried over multiple times.

Anyways I hope you enjoyed my dumbass little story I love these freaks so much

[everysongineverykey]

I'M DONE. HERE. TAKE THESE CHAPTER 2 THOUGHTS AND RUN, BABY.

so i'll try to go in order here. uhhhh... there's a LOT i have to say. first: toriel giggling sprite my beloved

on that note, ALL THE NEW SUSIE SPRITES MY BELOVEDS

NOELLE YOU'RE SO GAY. I THINK THIS IS PROBABLY JUST BECAUSE I TOLD HER TO IN CHAPTER ONE BUT SHE GAVE SUSIE THE LUNCHBOX FULL OF CHALK!! I LOVE ITTTT

ralsei's, uh... kinda sus. the whole "recruiting" thing REALLY sketches me out. and he looks kinda... smug, all the time, like he knows what's going on.

LANCER JOINED! ROUXLS JOINED EVEN THOUGH NO ONE WANTED THAT! STARWALKER JOINED, TO EVERYONE'S JOY!

LIBRARY PORTALLLL

so before i entered the city there was that pre-city area? that looked very much like the city? except it had different music? and i thought they'd cut welcome to the city and i was SEVERELY disappointed. but then they didn't! just something i wanted to mention

NOELLE!!

throughout this game i went from despising berdly to feeling bad for him to not really liking him again, but not hating him as much as before. he'd better stay the fuck away from susie though

the queen is the best villain. she's the kind you love to hate! she's literally so funny AND her boss battle is actually tough (rip to the king but he just. wasn't a formidable enemy at all lol)

THE GANG CHARLIE BROWN DANCING TO WIN A FIGHT! SUSIE GAINING THE POWER TO ACT THROUGH SHEER FORCE OF WILL! SUSIE FORCING RALSEI TO LEARN TO ACT EVEN THOUGH HE DIDN'T WANT TO! THAT ENTIRE BATTLE WAS AMAZING! THE "BATTLE WON" END DANCING SEQUENCE! GOING INSANE GOING INSANE

the puzzles in this chapter were genuinely really impressive! i especially loved the word search puzzles and the ice-ee undertale word search reference💙

that being said. the mouse puzzles were SO fucking infuriating. i caused poor noelle a LOT of grief with those and i feel bad.

SPEAKING OF NOELLE!! the scene where she and kris are walking through the puzzle, the one that spells "december", and she's talking about when they were kids, how she loved sneaking out? beautiful. the cinnamon tography <3 also i guessed dess's full name was december a while ago and while i guess it was obvious, it's nice to have that confirmed!

also, i love that susie and ralsei are real friends in this chapter! he taught her a healing spell!!

ugh. fucking berdly. so smug and pretentious. i love queen's desire to be as far away from him as possible though

i also like his backstory. it gives his behavior, even if it's still annoying, at least some context. i get the feeling of feeling like if you're not smart, people will forget about you, and that's scary.

ALSO ALSO. GAMER BERDLY. LITERALLY EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT IS PERFECT. "I THOUGHT YOU WERE A GAMER!" "i only play mobile games, berdly." "NOOOOOO!" like i ADORE that

anyways. time for me to talk about the only thing that matters in this world: suselle. i mean, did the gays win in this chapter or DID THE GAYS WIN IN THIS CHAPTER?? THEY RODE A HEART-COVERED FERRIS WHEEL AND HAD A HEARTFELT, TENSION-FILLED CONVERSATION!

"did you ever wonder why the real susie never picked on you? well, maybe it's because... when you were both new to class, you lent her one of your pencils, like... maybe a dumb one with candy canes on it or something, and... even though it didn't actually taste like candy, she... remembered your smile." okay god thanks toby it's not like i needed my heart or anything

SERIOUSLY. TOBY "i'm gonna give the gays everything they want" FOX IS BACK WITH ANOTHER BANGER LADS

QUEEN'S BOSS BATTLE! ACTUALLY TOUGH, UNLIKE KING'S! AND GIGA QUEEN! I'M GOING INSANE THAT WAS SO SICK AND SO HARD

the way my heart BROKE when lancer turned to stone good god thank GOD our boy's okay

AND ROUXLS KAARD IN HIS PIRATE DUCK!! WITH HIS LITTLE HAT! DEMANDING THE QUEEN MAKE HIM BUTLER SUPREMETH! I LOVE HIM MORE THAN LIFE ITSELF

also!! kris and ralsei's little moment on the swan boat💙 i wasn't a kralsei shipper before but uh... that may be starting to change

it's hard because ralsei's still suspicious but at the same time i love him and want him to be happy. i don't know how to feel

also, if darkners outside of their dark worlds turn to stone after a while, why didn't ralsei? that's, uhhh... VERY sus. very weird. mr fox i need ANSWERS

WE FINALLY HAVE A WAY TO SAVE AFTER WE'VE FINISHED MOST OF THE EPILOGUE LADS. REJOICE!!

seriously the thing that peeved me about ch1 was that the last save point was on the battle stage and if i wanted to play the epilogue again, i had to. do that entire battle all over. BUT NOW THAT'S BEEN FIXED!!

UNDYNE AND ALPHYS HAVE MET UNDYNE AND ALPHYS HAVE MET THIS IS NOT A DRILL UNDYNE GAVE HER A BOX OF CANDIES EVERYBODY SHUT UP THEY'RE IN LOVE ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD

ALSO! NEAR THE BEGINNING! I FORGOT TO MENTION THE LITTLE WHITE DOG DOING DONUTS IN A TOY RACE CAR AND BACKING UP TRAFFIC! THANK YOU LITTLE WHITE DOG!

on that note: "looks like a car. this one has a man in it. he waves at you happily." AND THEN THE MAN'S GONE??? HEY TOBY???

ALSO. THE SEGMENT WHERE THE ANNOYING DOG HELPS US FIND THE KEY THROUGH THE POWER OF WANTON DESTRUCTION. THE BEST PLOT DEVICE!

TORIEL TEACHING SUSIE TO MAKE PIE STOP ITTTTT

and yes yes i KNOW kris slashed toriel's tires. that was extremely troubling. but THEY MADE PIE TOGETHER!!

"leave the chalk alone, kris" TORIEL!!

sans and toriel making egg puns and asgore running in and going "don't forget me, your eggs-husband!" is the FUNNIEST sitcom moment type thing ever. GOD.

on the other hand sans let me meet your brother god dammit i'll kill you

METTATONNNNNNN

RUDY... "who got you these flowers?" "is it weird for a married man to get flowers?" "so your wife did?" "oh, no! kris's dad did!" "...not even gonna try to understand this..." TOBY STOP ITTTT YOU'RE GIVING THE ASGORUDY SHIPPERS FALSE HOPE. YOU KNOW YOU'RE JUST GONNA KILL RUDY. YOU'RE JUST RUBBING SALT IN THE WOUND!

NUBERT! MY MAN!

seeing kris repeatedly they-themmed by multiple characters makes me so happy <3 poor kid... "college summer vacation when" "you opened the door with your eyes closed. you saw nothing" kris....

KRIS...

fucking. BLACK FOG STORM IN THE LIVING ROOM KRIS STOP IT. HOW'RE THEY GONNA REVEAL THIS WAS INNOCENT? THE KNIFE IN CHAPTER ONE WAS EASY BUT HOW WILL THEY EXPLAIN THIS

the staticy tv appearing in the dark and a toothy smile slowly fading into view in the center and lingering there ominously for far too long >>>>>>> every hollywood horror movie ever god. GOD

snowy and monster kid checking out the red door. implying there's something in there. something that kris knows about. knowing we won't get any more deltarune content for 5+ years does NOT fill me with determination

also. gaster's symbolic theme being mus_smile. and the final image in the game being a smile. god. gaster's COMING lads.

onionsan hears a song at night... a familiar song... memory, perhaps? or maybe a certain... four-note arpeggio that's hidden in a sound test room in undertale? who knows? guess we'll just have to wait for chapters 3/4/5.

this concludes my ramblings for now, but don't get it twisted- this is FAR from the last post i'll make about ch2. this whole chapter was absolutely amazing! brilliant! showstopping!! i'm genuinely soooo super impressed and excited for the chapter 3/4/5 bundle!!!

[soupthatistohot]

Sk8 headcannons because brainrot pt. 2

- everything Reki has ever taught himself has been because of the wonderful world of YouTube tutorials

- Kojiro wanted to get his ears pierced in highschool like Kaoru, but he didn't do it because he was afraid of tarnishing his image (which is ironic when he gets a massive tattoo later in life)

- Langa doesn't like cats because he thinks they're mean

- there’s a stray cat that lives near Langa’s house and even though he doesn’t like cats, he leaves out milk and some fish for it sometimes because he feels bad

- Langa has never had a pet except a goldfish he won at a carnival once that he managed to keep alive for four years somehow.

- Kaoru technically needed glasses in high school, but he didn't wear them because he just didn't care at the time (until his vision grew poor enough that it affected his skating)

- Miya gets called a furry by Reki on the daily

- Reki has some knowledge in video editing and has considered starting a YouTube channel

- Langa has a diary, something he started after his father died. At first he didn't really know what to write, so he would just talk about his day, but eventually he got to the emotions part. The diary was especially useful during his fight with Reki in which he was trying to figure out his emotions (it was also useful when he realized he might have an itty bitty crush on his best friend)

- Joe is the biggest dad friend of the group in terms of doting on the kids and giving advice and stuff. Both Reki and Langa come to him often for advice, and Miya hangs around his restaurant a lot.

- Langa has one (1) succulent that he has managed to keep alive for three years. Its name is Gary, and it may not be the prettiest, but it is not dead yet!

- Reki never tells his mother when Langa is coming over and she's trained herself to just expect a lanky Canadian to be wandering around her house at any time.

- It took Kojiro a really long time to figure out his sexuality (and that's valid!!)

- Hiromi has been hopelessly in love with his manager for three years and has tried on multiple occasions to confess to her, but either something interrupts them or there's some sort of misunderstanding about it. Those are his more violent nights at "S".

- After befriending Reki, Langa and Miya, Hiromi is a little more careful about his tools of sabotage during beefs (and he lowkey feels guilty for injuring Reki in the beginning)

- Kaoru and Reki are actually closer than one might think. Reki ends up asking him for advice just as much as he asks Kojiro.

- Reki can't do something mundane without his ears being occupied. He ends up listening to music or podcasts a lot when he does chores or is working on a board alone (but if Langa is there with him, he'll talk his ear off instead).

- Miya's family isn't particularly bad, they're just a little distant. They assume everything is okay because Miya's so successful with school and skating, and they trust his integrity (which makes it very easy for him to sneak out to "S"). He doesn't really talk to them (or anyone, really) about his struggles.

- When Miya and Koyomi meet, he shows her all his video games and suddenly Reki's little sister is a gamer girl

- Langa almost wore a long-sleeved top to the beach and Reki had to go make him change before they left ("you'll melt in that, are you crazy?!")

- Kojiro knew damn well that Kaoru had a business trip and that the gang was going to the beach, but all other parties were unaware. He just decided to tag along as to not be left out.

- Kaoru trims his own hair, as he finds salons to be ridiculously overpriced for those with long hair

- Reki dogsits for his next door neighbor sometimes, they have a shiba named Onigiri (rice ball).

- Kojiro’s pennant was a gift from Kaoru and he wears it literally all the time except in water (so it doesn’t get ruined)

- Reki’s father is pretty absent, so Oka takes it upon himself to look after him

- Langa occasionally picks up odd jobs in order to help his mom out with finances

- Langa’s favorite animal is dolphins. He had a phase as a child where he read like fifty dolphin books and it was his entire personality for a few months. Despite this, he has never actually seen a dolphin irl

- Reki takes really good care of his nails and Langa… does not. He bites them and it annoys the shit out of Reki to the point where he’s just like “please… just let me file them for you” and Langa relents despite the fact that he hates the sensation of getting his nails filed

- Reki sometimes talks to Langa about getting depressed and one time Langa is like “yeah I getchu” and Reki is just like “heh?” And Langa says “I mean my dad died and I was in counseling for like months after that before I came here” and Reki is just like “oh”

- Langa is Reki’s bi awakening and it takes him a hot second to figure that out

- sometimes Langa pretends to be more oblivious than he is, either for shits and giggles, or to obtain information

- Kaoru knows exactly how to seduce women, and occasionally uses this to his advantage. It just sucks because he’s not into women.

- Reki is super observant, but whenever Langa does something that’s an indication that he likes Reki, he’s just like “WELL MAYBE IM OVERANALYZING THIS CANT BE REAL-”

- Langa (in general) doesn’t feel the need to be super secretive about anything. He’s honest (sometimes brutally so) and doesn’t always think twice before he says something. This can be both good and bad depending on the context.

- Reki doesn’t sleep a lot. He literally has to go to bed past midnight, he absolutely cannot fall asleep earlier. He gets up at 6:30am every day of the week, even weekends. It’s just how he’s programmed.

- Kojiro used to go to the public gym before Kaoru commented about how unsanitary that was. Ever since then he got freaked out about going to public gyms (especially as someone who works in food services) and cancelled his membership. He bought his own equipment and works out on his own now

- Reki knows how to do rainbow loom. His sisters had a phase with it.

- Kojiro drew on himself with pen when he was bored in school.

- Miya has a habit of eavesdropping on conversations he’s not meant to hear

[kamandzak]

Into the Great Night

Context: Andrew is coming to terms with his current relationship, reflecting on the past, and fearing for the future while in the presence of his mother, a woman he hasn’t seen for nearly a decade.

Mom could tell that something was the matter before I set foot in the house.

    “Talk to me,” she stated, skipping the pleasantries

I didn’t want to. It was the same kind of denial that had consumed me when Jake first tried to pull information out of my unwilling mouth: Maybe if I didn’t acknowledge, it simply wouldn’t exist. If I wasn’t afraid of Jake dying first, perhaps he simply wouldn’t.

    “I’m fine,” I lied and she shook her head.

    “No. You’re absolutely not fine.”

    “I am,” I insisted weakly. “I’m taking my meds, I promise. I’m just tired.”

    “I’m not talking about your health,” she stated. “And I’m not talking about your sisters. I too woke up thinking we’d talk about what happened when you were growing up. I thought we would talk about the full conversations I had via text with the girls last night. It’s clear that those will have to wait. Something is eating you alive, Andrew. What is it?”

    “I’m scared,” I cracked out and Mom’s face seemed to fall.

    “For Jake.”

    “Mom, I can’t lose another person.”

    “Have you talked about it with him?”

    “He doesn’t like to. He goes through, like, phases? Sometimes he gets incredibly low on himself and on his situation but most of the time we don’t talk or think about it. No use in thinking about something when thinking won’t do anything to change the outcome.”

    “You really think he doesn’t worry about the future most of the time? He probably does, but he wants to keep you out of it. You’re like, the one thing he’s got. A distraction”

    “But that isn’t the case anymore,” I protested. “Because-.”

    “Because you care about him more than before. He isn’t just another gamer you can talk to. You have feelings for him.”        

    “Right.”

    “He feels things for you too. I can tell. He watches you in a way that tells me he doesn’t just see a broken boy who needs piecing together. It’s like all the bits of you have been glued back into one unit but he’s the glue, and you’re his.”

    “I don’t think he wants me to be, though. It’s confusing!” I shouted as the cat ran away from her perch. “He kisses me like I’m a drug that he can’t get enough of.” Talking about Jake and our confusing relationship with my mother was the farthest thing from what I ever imaged my reality to be. “But then we talk about minimizing the impact of ourselves so when we die there’s less sadness. How can we have both?”

    “I don’t think you can. You can’t have the death of someone you care for not impact you in a way that drives a stake through your heart, and I think you and Jake are so far in that there’s no going back. Maybe he doesn’t want to accept that, but I think it’s true. Nothing you can do can take away the feeling you get when you watch him or the feeling he gets when you show him what it’s like to be loved.”

    “Do I love him?”

    “You know the answer.”

    “I feel guilty but not all the time. I don’t understand,” I said pathetically. “I don’t get what’s happening. How am I supposed to feel about all of this?”

    “About what, exactly?” Mom asked and I knew she already knew what I was going to say but was making me say it for the sake of myself. “What are you thinking about?”

    “I don’t know where to start,” I said helplessly. “Where do I start?”

    “I know,” she began, “that you spent years in this house wanting to talk about things but feeling like you couldn’t because you would get in trouble. You won’t get in trouble here anymore, Andrew. No one here is going to tell you you’re weak for not holding in your feelings with irrational strength. You can be you here, with your mother.”

    “How can I move on so fast?” I cried out. “I spent so long with Greg and we did so many things. We saw great things and terrible things and I loved him!” I shouted. “So if I loved him why have I found someone else?”

    “Do you feel for Jake the same way you do for Greg?” I didn’t have an answer. “You never will. That’s okay. Do you really think you’re moving on? Or just moving forward?” She was spouting off the same nonsense I read in a self-help book. Don’t move on, move forward. What was the difference?

    “What’s the difference?”

    “Think of your brain as a big filing cabinet,” she began, starting off in left field, far form my question. “Your life is in that cabinet. Your schooling, your gaming, your family, your friends, your secrets, your loves. Greg has a big folder in that cabinet that refers to files in other folders. It’s been what, six months? But finally, his folder isn’t in the forefront of your cabinet. You don’t have to wade through everything he meant to you and the feelings you had for him in order to pull on information from other folders. You can sit and audit through your folder where your dad and I live. You can read through Greg’s folder without letting it consume you. You can…. You can create new folders and gather new experiences. Just because he’s no longer in the front of your cabinet doesn’t mean he isn’t still there. It doesn’t mean you can’t miss him when you do think about him.”

    “Jake asked me if Greg would be mad if he knew that I have… feelings.” It was my first open acknowledgement that what Jake and I were doing wasn’t just me taking him on as a charity case. I wasn’t forcing myself to do something for the sake of good karma. There was something about him of which I could not let go.

    “And?”

    “And my anxieties say yes, of course he would be, because it’s like cheating on someone. But am I cheating? Or am I letting myself live? I would never have done something like this when Greg was alive but-.”

    “But what?”

    “But he’s not,” I sighed. “He’s not alive and I know exactly what he’d tell me if he and I were able to talk right now.”

    “So knowing that, why is this still so hard? Are you afraid that you’ll let yourself relax and then something will happen? That you’ll get sicker and leave Jake to deal with the aftermath?” Jake’s sickly face rippled through my mind. “Or,” Mom continued so softly I could barely hear her, “are you afraid of the other way around?”

    “Mom, six months ago I watched someone die in front of me. I watched death steal someone who had barely begin to understand what life was even about. I stared the scariest thing in the face and I don’t want to do it again. I don’t know what I’ll be like on the other side if I have to watch someone die again.”

    “Why are you so afraid?” she asked and for a moment, hot rage bubbled up inside of me. “I don’t mean that in a tongue-in-cheek way. I’m not accusing you of thinking something is scary when I don’t think you have a reason to be. I just want to know what was so frightening about when Greg died. Maybe if you can narrow it down, we can talk about it.”

    “It wasn’t him dying that scared me. It wasn’t that he would finally be free from all the terrible stuff going on in the real world. In that sense I was excited for his freedom. I wanted him happy and healthy and I knew he couldn’t have that if he stayed with me. But…,” the image of the final exhale burned in my line of sight. “But not getting to grow old with him hurt even though we knew the chance was rare that we would get to do that. Why does that happen? Why do things still hurt even when we know they’re going to happen?”

    “Because we can’t do anything to fix them.” Unlike Dad, I wasn’t sure if Mom had experienced the death of someone she held close. She certainly seemed to speak from experience. “Because we’re sitting back, watching and waiting and unable to figure out and fix the bullshit. It’s unfair that Greg died and it’s unfair that you and Jake are sick and as a mother I can’t believe that I can’t reach in and take your pain away from you. Knowing that I will probably outlive you doesn’t mean that when you die, I’ll be able to continue living my life as if nothing has happened. You’re allowed to love, Andrew,” she said with a hand on my leg, her fingers trembling. “Just because the last person you loved died doesn’t mean you are damning Jake to a fate of early death. Life without love is boring and lovely and if you don’t think Greg would understand why you found comfort in the arms of another person, I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit.”

Jake was a fifteen-minute drive away, lounging in bed with the television remote and enough pillows to create a fort. I wished he was with me.

[lilacnothlit]

Jewish Animorphs headcanon... if anyone more frum or gelernt wants to correct this interpretation (that said, what's more Jewish than textual exegesis?), feel free. Interpreting this religiously, not ethnically, though that would have made more sense in context.

Rachel in Megamorphs 3 tells Ax, while explaining Hitler, "My father's Jewish."

This struck a friend as stereotype breaking, because what about her mom - we're to assume a dark-haired lawyer named Naomi, who either suggested or signed off on naming daughters Rachel, Jordan and Sara... is the goyish parent? (Disclaimer - though the presence of stereotype signifiers does not imply the presence of their referent, when creating media, especially with Jewish characters, these decisions can usually be assumed to be conscious on the author's part; and besides, the parents get so little screentime that ancillary stereotypes will look large. Sorry, not being flashy, just that I don't know how to dumb it down, I minored in Semiotics.) Put simply, a blond Olympic athlete named Dan is the slightly more plausible of the two to be the goy, if all you went by were stereotypes. In his first appearance on the page (7), he brings home shrimp. (Rachel eats bacon and cheeseburgers over the course of the books (3, 28). Kashrut isn't usually the first thing on their minds.)

Anyway, they were like "I can believe Dan is Jewish, but why would Naomi not be? If she is, what did Rachel mean by that?"

I want to say, no - matrilineality. Rachel doesn't mean Naomi isn't Jewish, she's saying she herself isn't necessarily.

After all, why not say "I'm Jewish?"

She's 15 or so by then, she's presumably had her Bat Mitzvah and is an adult by those terms, and she has at least one Jewish parent - she qualifies in that regard. But in an off the cuff answer, she makes it her dad.

The thing is, though, if she said "my mom's Jewish," that would be, in almost all denominations, a tacit admission that she's Jewish. But saying her dad, that gives her deniability. She says it so snappily she probably has said it a few times. And she's seen God and is a year away from learning he's a gamer with a foot fetish, and also broken at least five commandments, and dare I say it? She probably doesn't want to be Jewish anymore. She barely wants to be anything.

If she is Jewish, if she considers herself as such, and is proud, it's because of her dad. She thinks he's the bravest guy ever and wants to make him proud. It would be exactly the reason she says it to Ax - "This Hitler guy wanted to kill people like my dad" would be one of the most weighty ways she could have put it. So that's one interpretation.

But the tragedy of Rachel is like Melisande - she continually loses the things that define her. Over the course of the series, her house is destroyed, as is Bobo Bear; gymnastics fades from her life, as does shopping, Melissa, her calligraphy, her family, her performance, her dad, her sanity and decisiveness (48), her self-conviction, and finally, her principles (54, "It was a war... we had to win."). Losing her life is almost like sand tossed on the smoldering embers of a bonfire. She was already going, going, gone. All these kids deal with the war in their own way; one of the many things she had in common with Tobias is that she coped by disappearing and shedding ties. By the end, she exists in the blinding sunlight and judgment of the teammates who use her to death, and almost nowhere else, even in her own mind, all she can say after she dies is "what the hell" and "did I actually matter?"

The subtext of the whole thing being, would Dad be proud of me?

Papa, can you find me in the night?

If Judaism was a single facet of what defined her, then all the crap she's been through, not least of which was in this very book being told that she was just then in a re-education camp, learning her place - has just led to one more aspect of her identity sandblasted into oblivion between one more battle, breakdown or bifurcation.

So she says "My dad's Jewish," not because her mom isn't, but because she herself doesn't think she's anything anymore.

(Or you could say that she wants the right to define herself, or any number of other reasons. But that's a little more optimistic than these books tend towards.)

[manlyquail]

Nerdy Lucid Dreaming

So I figured for no reason whatsoever that I’d share the small story about how I started to learn how to lucid dream as a kid without even realizing what I was doing.

For some brief context, I’m (and always have been) a big gamer. My dad had me playing video games ever since I was young (looking at you Blizzard games), and needless to say I became a bit of an addict. So anyway, with video games ingrained in my brain, there was a day where I suddenly just learned a new skill in my dreams, and it was sort’ve the first step of learning to lucid dream.

See, what would happen is I was a kid that got nightmares quite a bit. Waking up from the cold sweat all scared of whatever happened to be going on (I also grew up on movies like Alien, Friday the 13th, etc. I even saw the opening scene to Fullmetal Alchemist when I was a kid, the scene where they try to ressurect their mom? Yeah, lots of nightmare fuel for my tiny little brain to process). Anyways, it really gave my brain a lot to process, and I don’t really remember any of the dreams because I was so young, except one.

I remember this particular dream because it was the first time I’d ever been aware of my dreaming state, and I was so scared I basically took control almost in a state of panic. In the dream, I was in a really thick hedge maze, above me was all black so no stars or anything, kind’ve like there was just a thick black ceiling above me that was so dark it didn’t even seem like there was anything there. In this maze I was being chased by monsters, in particular I remember Predator being there, a xenomorph from Alien too, and a few other baddies all teamed up chasing me through this maze. As hedge mazes do of course, I eventually found a dead end in the chase and got cornered. So, for dream me it was basically the end, but then the weirdest thing happened. I was so desperate to get out of the dream, to get away from this moment, that a “PAUSE” menu appeared.

Think any game with a pause menu. The screen sorta darkens around the edges, a bright menu in the middle with a list of options and “PAUSE” at the top. It showed up just before things were at their worst, and I was so desperate to wake up from the nightmare that a cursor started to move its way across the image of my dream. It made its way to the pause menu, scrolled down to an EXIT button, and when it clicked it BAM, I woke up. It was so weird to me, and internally I realized how absolutely dorky it was that a video-game style pause menu is what I somehow used to get out of my dream.

After that happened I guess I internalized that ability because I was so thankful to be able to wake up from dreams that it ended up becoming a sort’ve default setting to nightmares at that point. I gained some foresight into when a dream was going to be a nightmare and could simply just ‘exit’ the dream, wake myself up, and then just try another dream. 

Since then I’ve learned more to be able to lucid dream, but in my own way I suppose. I haven’t looked too much into what its like for others with the ability, but for me I’m almost just actively ‘watching’ a show at this point. I’m well aware I could change things around, intervene at any time to wake myself up or change the course of the dream, but I’ve become essentially my own checkpoint system. My curiosity to see how a dream plays out before me makes me eager to simply let dreams play out, but if something bad happens to me in the dream, or something happens that would prevent the dream from continuing or finishing in a way I’m satisfied with, I briefly rewind in a sense and let it play out once more but with the knowledge of what went wrong to avoid it.

I have a few other unique quirks about the way I dream, but some of them are honestly a little horrifying to describe, so I’ll put like a TW and a cut right now for descriptions of extreme gore, and like, loss of limb stuff below really quick just in case before I continue on, mostly because I’m enjoying sharing this and figure why not put all my dream stuff in one place?

So something else kind’ve messed up about the way I dream is how vivid everything is. Because of the self awareness I have that everything is a dream, I no longer panic or freak out when something horrible goes wrong. I’ve been eaten by cannibals, had my limbs ripped off, been cut in half, and so on in my dreams before, but because I realize that they’re dreams I don’t get super freaked out by the events. Usually I just roll with the punches, and in most cases, quite literally try to put myself back together.

I remember one dream in particular, I was in a Halo Warthog in the dream and I don’t quite recall where we were going (group of just sorta faceless people I suppose, and it was a four seater without the turret), but there was a crash and an accident and I ended up getting cut in half right at the waist. Horrifying yes, I remember the feeling of that dismemberment followed by desperately crawling across the ground to a set of legs I thought were mind. Through dream logic I just sort’ve planted my torso on the set of legs and after a couple second was able to use them. Joke was on me because I found out they weren’t actually my legs but someone else’s from the accident, but they were already attached so what was I to do?

The freakiest part of it all though wasn’t the dream, but when I woke up I still felt ‘separated’. I’ve described it to some people in the past as almost like a reverse-phantom limb situation, where I have the body parts but it doesn’t feel like they’re actually attached to me. I was so scared that if I lifted myself up in bed my torso would just pop off from my legs.

It’s not the first time a situation like this has happened, though most of the time it involves my hand. Somehow I frequently get my hand lopped off in various ways, usually not at the wrist but somewhere along the palm or even a few fingers. I always ‘reattach’ it in my dream (usually with something silly, like glue, tape, etc.), and the logic in the dream is as long as I don’t move it around too much it’ll naturally just ‘heal’ itself back connected. I think I get that logic from the idea of sewing limbs back on in emergency situations to save the limb, my brain just equates that to “Well if I just find a way to keep the two pieces lined up long enough it’ll all work out!” Then, when I wake up, than translates to me being utterly terrified to so much as flex my hand or move my fingers around too much lest it just fall apart.

It’s the same sensation as the cut in half one as well. Despite the fact I can see my hand, I can move it and wiggle it around, there’s a lengthy period of time where it feels like a cold fog is there instead. Like, I can feel the warmth of my body up to the part where the limb was lost, but then its like this cold sensation where its as if it isn’t really there even though I know it is. It’s a spooky sensation, almost like a part of my soul was just cut off or something. Eventually the sensation goes away with time, but my imagination and memory are vivid enough that if I think really hard about the scenarios I can recall that feeling pretty distinctly. Spooky stuff.

Anyways, that’s about the end of my weird dream rant. I love sharing nonsense like this but it mostly feels like me rambling some of the time, so thank you for indulging me if you’ve read this far at all and I hope it was the least bit interesting!

[kingjasnah]

Is there the full list of brandersons favourite games reposted somewhere?

i dont think so? or not that ive seen. u can literally just sign up for the newsletter on his website but screw it ill just post them for u. it sure was a TRIP scrolling past these to get to the interlude though. undertale is on this list.....im shakign at the thought that adolin was based off ff10 tidus but i cant get it out of my head now

#10: Katamari Damaci

I love things that make me look at the world in a new way. Katamari did this in spades. It is an imaginative, bizarre vision with unique gameplay. It is like nothing else in the world and I love it for all its strangeness and occasional lack of gameplay polish.

I was transfixed the first time I played it, and have looked forward to it being remade and rereleased on multiple different consoles. I love the cute—and somehow creepy at the same time—storyline. It feels like a fever dream more than a game sometimes, and is probably the closest I’ll ever get to understanding what it’s like to do drugs.

#9: Undertale

This is an oddball on this list because I think it’s the only game that is not a franchise from a major studio—but is instead an indie game, which I believe was originally funded on Kickstarter.I loved how this felt like a novel as much as a game. It was one person’s vision; a single story told really well, with a huge amount of personality. The humor was just my kind of wonderful/terrible, and I was instantly enamored with the characters.That probably would have been enough, but it is a nice deconstruction of video games as a medium—and has not one, but multiple innovative gameplay mechanics. Together, the package left me enamored. This is a work of genius that I feel everyone should at least try, even if it ends up not being for them.

#8: Fallout: New Vegas

I have played all of the core Fallout games, and I was one of the (it seems few) who was really excited when it moved from turn-based tactics to first-person shooter. While Fallout 3 was good, it didn’t have the charm of the first two.New Vegas delivered on everything I was hoping to see. The charm was back, the writing sharp, the quests imaginative. The gameplay was engaging and branched in a variety of directions, the gunplay was solid, and the atmosphere immersive. I of course love the first two games in the series—but New Vegas combines everything I like in gaming into one package. (As a note, I own the Outer Worlds, and am looking forward to digging into it. Consider this item on the list a recommendation of other Obsidian games—like Knights of the Old Republic Two—regardless of genre, as I’ve found them universally to be superior to their contemporaries.)

#7 Super Mario World

When I was eleven, I flew (alone, which was very exciting to me) from Nebraska to visit my uncle Devon in Salt Lake City. Before I left, my father gave me $200 and told me to pay for my own meals while on the trip—but of course, my uncle didn’t allow this. At the end of the trip, I tried to give him the money, which he wouldn’t take.I mentioned my dad would take the money back when I got home, but that was okay. Well, my uncle would have none of that, and drove me to the local mall and made me spend it on a Nintendo Entertainment System. (This uncle, you might guess, is an awesome human being.)Since that day of first plugging it in and experiencing Mario for the first time, I was hooked. This is the only platformer on the list, as I don’t love those. But one makes an exception for Mario. There’s just so much polish, so much elegance to the control schemes, that even a guy who prefers an FPS or an RPG like me has to admit these are great games. I picked World as my favorite as it’s the one I’ve gone back to and played the most.

#7: The Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3)

I kind of miss the golden age of adventure gaming, and I don’t know that anyone ever got it as right as they did with this game. It is the pinnacle of the genre, in my opinion—no offense to Grim Fandango fans.This game came out right before gaming’s awkward teenage phase where everything moved to 3-d polygons. For a while after, games looked pretty bad, though they could do more because of the swap. But if you want to go see what life was like before that change, play Monkey Island 3. Composed of beautiful art pieces that look like cells from Disney movies, with streamlined controls (the genre had come a long way from “Get yon torch”) and fantastic voice acting, this game still plays really well.This is one of the few games I’ve been able to get my non-gamer wife to play through with me, and it worked really well as a co-op game with the two of us trying to talk through problems. It’s a lovingly crafted time capsule of a previous era of gaming, and if you missed it, it’s really worth trying all these years later. (The first and second games hold up surprisingly well too, as a note, particularly with the redone art that came out a decade or so ago.)Also, again, this one has my kind of humor.

#6: Breath of the Wild

I never thought a Zelda game would unseat A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda, but Breath of the Wild managed it. It combined the magic of classic gameplay with modern design aesthetic, and I loved this game.There’s not a lot to say about it that others haven’t said before, but I particularly liked how it took the elements of the previous games in the series (giving you specific tools to beat specific challenges) and let you have them all at once. I like how the dungeons became little mini puzzles to beat, instead of (sometimes seemingly endless) slogs to get through. I liked the exploration, the fluidity of the controls, and the use of a non-linear narrative in flashbacks. It’s worth buying a Switch just to play this one and Mario—but in case you want, you can also play Dark Souls on Switch... (That’s foreshadowing.)

#5: Halo 2

Telling stories about Halo Two on stream is what made me think of writing this list.I’m sometimes surprised that this game isn’t talked about as much as I think it should be. Granted, the franchise is very popular—but people tend to love either Reach or games 1 or 3 more than two. Two, however, is the only one I ever wanted to replay—and I’ve done so three or four times at this point. (It’s also the only one I ever beat on Legendary.)It’s made me think on why I love this one, while so many others seem to just consider it one of many in a strong—but in many ways unexceptional—series of games. I think part of this is because I focus primarily on the single-player aspects of a game (which is why there aren’t any MMOs on this list.) Others prefer Halo games with more balanced/polished multiplayer. But I like to game by myself, and don’t really look for a multiplayer experience. (Though this is changing as I game with my sons more and more.)I really like good writing—which I suppose you’d expect. But in games, I specifically prefer writing that enhances the style of game I’m playing. Just dumping a bunch of story on me isn’t enough; it has to be suited to the gameplay and the feel of the game. In that context, I’ve rarely encountered writing as good as Halo 2. From the opening—with the intercutting and juxtaposition of the two narratives—to the quotes barked out by the marines, the writing in this game is great. It stands out starkly against other Halo games, to the point that I wonder what the difference is.Yes, Halo Two is a bombastic hero fantasy about a super soldier stomping aliens. But it has subtle, yet powerful worldbuilding sprinkled all through it—and the music...it does things with the story that I envy. It’s kind of cheating that games and films get to have powerful scores to help with mood.The guns in Two feel so much better than Halo One, and the vehicles drive far better. The only complaint I have is that it’s only half a story—as in, Halo 2 and 3 seem like they were one game broken in two pieces. And while 3 is good (and Reach does something different, which I approve of in general) neither did it for me the way Two did, and continues to do.

#3: Final Fantasy X

You probably knew Final Fantasy was coming. People often ask if the way these games handle magic was an influence upon me. All I can say is that I’ve played them since the first one, and so they’re bound to have had an influence.On one hand, these games are really strange. I mean, I don’t think we gamers stop quite often enough to note how downright bizarre this series gets. Final Fantasy doesn’t always make the most sense—but the games are always ambitious.Ten is my favorite for a couple of reasons. I felt like the worldbuilding was among the strongest, and I really connected with the characters. That’s strange, because this is one of the FF games without an angst-filled teen as the protagonist. Instead, it has a kind of stable happy-go-lucky jock as the protagonist.But that’s what I needed, right then. A game that didn’t give me the same old protagonist, but instead gave me someone new and showed me I could bond to them just as well. Ten was the first with full voice acting, and that jump added a lot for me. It has my favorite music of the series, and all together is what I consider the perfect final fantasy game. (Though admittedly, I find it more and more difficult to get into turn-based battle mechanics as I grow older.)

#2: Bloodborne

Those who follow my streams, or who read other interviews I’ve done, probably expected this series to be at or near the top. The question wasn’t whether Souls would be here, but which one to pick as my favorite.I went with Bloodborne, though it could have been any of them. (Even Dark Souls 2—which I really like, despite its reputation in the fandom.) I’ve been following FromSoftware’s games since the King’s Field games, and Demon’s Souls was a huge triumph—with the director Hidetaka Miyazaki deserving much of the praise for its design, and Dark Souls (which is really just a more polished version of Demon’s Souls).As I am a fan of cosmic horror, Bloodborne is probably my favorite overall. It really hit the mix of cosmic and gothic horror perfectly. It forced me to change up my gameplay from the other Souls games, and I loved the beautiful visuals.I am a fan of hard games—but I like hard games that are what I consider “fair.” (For example, I don’t love those impossible fan-made Mario levels, or many of the super-crazy “bullet hell”-style games.) Dark Souls is a different kind of hard. Difficult like a stern instructor, expecting you to learn—but giving you the tools to do so. It presents a challenge, rather than being hard just to be hard.If I have a problem with Final Fantasy, it’s that the games sometimes feel like the gameplay is an afterthought to telling the story. But in the Souls games, story and gameplay are intermixed in a way I’d never seen done before. You have to construct the story like an archeologist, using dialogue and lore from descriptions of in-game objects. I find this fascinating; the series tells stories in a way a book never could. I’m always glad when a game series can show off the specific strengths of the medium.In fact, this series would be #1 except for the little fact that I have way too much time on Steam logged playing...

#1: Civilization VI

This series had to take #1 by sheer weight of gameplay time. I discovered the first on a friend’s computer in the dorms my freshman year—and I can still remember the feeling of the birds chirping outside, realizing I’d been playing all night and really should get back to my own dorm room.That still happens, and has happened, with every game in the series. I have a lot of thoughts on this series, many of them granular and too specific for this list. (Like, it’s obvious AI technology isn’t up to the task of playing a game this complex—so could we instead get a roguelike set of modifiers, game modes, etc. to liven up the games, rather than just having a difficulty slider that changes a few simple aspects of the game?)I’ll try not to rant, because I really do love this game series. A lot of people consider IV to be the pinnacle of the series, but after V unstacked units—and VI unstacked cities—there was no way I could ever go back. If for some reason, you’ve never played this grand patriarch of the 4X game genre, it’s about starting with a single stone-age settler who can found a city—then playing through eras of a civilization, growing your empire, to try to eventually get offworld with a space program. (Or, if you prefer, conquering the world.)It’s a load of fun in the way I like to have fun, and I feel like the series has only gotten better over the years. My hat is off to the developers, who keep reinventing the series, rather than making the exact same game over and over.Now, about that request for difficulty modes...

there are runner ups but for the sake of anyone whos on mobile and cant get past a read more (first of all omg im SO sorry) ill refrain. anyway he thought WHAT loz game was the best before botw?

[janus-zea1]

A small history of my Chrono fandom

I So, I guess the place to start on this is back at the beginning, right?  It was some time in 1995, no clue when exactly, when our dad took us to Toys R Us and let us pick out SNES games. I doubt it was Christmas - he took us here every time he was in town (our parents were divorced, and he spoiled us a lot :P) At about this time, Power Rangers Zeo had debuted on Television, and let me tell you: I was (and am) a big fan of the show back in the day, though I didn’t follow the old seasons as closely as I do now. All I knew was, it had a kickass remix of the Power Rangers theme, and based solely on wanting to hear that on the title screen, I picked out Power Rangers Zeo: Battle Racers. But who cares about that, right? You can probably guess what my brother picked out.  Now, let me tell you - my brother is not a gamer, not like I am. It was a cool thing to him, like comic books and baseball cards, but he wasn’t as big into the kinds of games I liked (although he did often play Super Metroid too.) So, when he picked out “that Dragonball Z looking game Nintendo Power was talking about”, I didn’t give it much thought...  at first. Let me tell you though: the minute I realized how much Power Rangers Zeo Battle Racers absolutely sucked ass, I immediately started playing *his* game, much to his sometimes annoyance - it didn’t last long though, as he soon lost interest in the RPG, and I pretty much assumed ownership of it. I loved it - Where most RPGs greatly annoyed me with their random encounters and stiff command systems, Chrono Trigger (and also Super Mario RPG) felt different to me.. smoother, better. I was engaged.  I won’t bore with a lot of my memories for most of the game - I think I had Nintendo Power to help me figure out quite a bit - But I do recall somehow learning what would happen to Crono at the end of the third quarter. How do you think I reacted? “Oh no, Crono dies????!!!” ?   Nope, it was “Crono DIES!? This I have to see.” I was a weird kid. I remember soon running into Janus, who pretty much confirmed that what I hear wasn’t just a rumor - “DUDE!!! I have got to see this...” The reason I tell you this is because at first, I really didn’t care much at all for Janus or Schala. They were just more boring characters standing between me and this scene where Crono would die. “Ok, we get it, your pendant is Marle’s pendant but it opens doors, get onto Crono dying” I remember my strongest memory of Schala at that time was actually her crouched/crying sprite, where her bangs covered her face entirely.

“Wow, really getting tired of seeing that damn sprite. Less crying, more dying” 

As you can imagine, I really didn’t pay much attention to Zeal my first time through. :P  After seeing Crono disintegrated and going through the blackbird, I remember being told “oh hey someone wants to see you at the North Cape”  me: really? Ok. *immediately goes to North Cape without saving after the blackbird* After listening to Magus talk and reveal “oh yeah I’m Janus or something”, things got heated, and Magus wanted to fight. I remember being all like “shit shit shit shit SHIT SHIT SHIT NOO NOO  UUhhh noooooo I’m good thank you no no no no no shit I didn’t save I’m not ready.”  I was a little surprised that Magus was like “ok” and let me leave... and even more surprised when suddenly I had him in my team.I remember one time I named him after an old school bully of mine that I later became friends with, but that’s another story.  First time this game legit made me cry I think was when we finally did get Crono back, and Marle dove on top of him in tears. Seeing a cute girl cry in a videogame like that...        I don’t know. 

Not you though  I’m not sure what exactly it was that made me change my mind, but it might have been years later, when I was a teenager browsing fanart/fanfics on Icybrian that it finally actually hit me what a bigass deal it would be if Schala were to reappear in a followup, particularly in the context of Magus. “Oh, hey he was Janus right?? They were... they were close...” 

sorry... I seem to have something in my eye...    Imagine my disappointment when Cross left out an important factor in all of this, and my continued disappointment at CTDS’s reasoning.  Still, as I’ve said before, at least *she* got something of a happy ending, and if Janus has truly become Guile, then in his own way, is he not happy?  aaaanyway, that pretty much brings things up to speed, I guess. I will note that over the years I have gained a fond appreciation for Robo, however. I also believe he is criminally underappreciated as both a character and as a comrade in arms. If fanfic writers actually gave two damns about him as more than just the subject of some other character’s thoughts (Lucca I like you too but come on), I’d be interested in reading it, I think (Ok I did this with how fics handled Schala too back in the day but seriously)  now we’re up to speed I think. :P 

[leliafatnowna4-blog]

The Best Music For Finding out

Ambient is a style that describes a big spectrum of music. Hip-hop is a music with a history relationship all the best way back to the 70s, having advanced in every decade since. What we have now right now though is completely unrecognizable from the genre's origins in the streets of the Bronx, New York. The fashionable business features megastars like Jay Z and Kanye West, raking in tens of millions of dollars on album sales, huge-scale enviornment tours, and award-show appearances. Within the midst of all that, it is easy to overlook that the purpose wasn't always to make money.

However like all musical kinds, emo is due for a 20-year resurrection this decade. Right on cue, a new wave of bands has emerged to let their meek flags fly in the age of the selfie. The motion is not precisely nascent; key gamers like Algernon Cadwallader and My Coronary heart To Joy have already come and gone, and a dense community of teams prospers on Bandcamp, replete with its own emasculating lexicon ( Twinkle Daddies ???). It is still a distinctly underground phenomenon too. None of those bands appeared primed to cross over in this pop local weather and not using a Fall Out Boy-model digital makeover, and the bands that influenced them within the first place had been by no means more than cult favorites anyhow. Special consideration was given to inter-categorical relationships, with a unique fashion for primary hyperlinks (dad or mum genres), secondary links (other influences) and anti-links (backlashes) to make the chart extra correct. Horizontal timelines provide clear information about which 12 months each genre emerged, though for most genres this is disputable, which is why the timelines are faded in the background and surplus data is added in separate style descriptions. These descriptions provide the subtleties that can not be made visually clear in an effort to utterly perceive the sociological, semantic and technical context of their respective genres. Out of respect for the ability of music and to increase readability, all genre names are capitalized. Starting within the late Sixties, digital music enjoyed an explosion of creativity, technological development, and popularity. This era of development would in many ways mirror the technological developments in other branches of expertise like private computer systems and video games. After relocating to Germany, the Italian born musician Giorgio Moroder became a deeply influential proponent of what would develop into electronic dance music, particularly the subgenre often called Italo disco. Germany was a sizzling bed of musical experimentalism through the late 1960s and early Seventies, particularly within the subject of electronic music. Groups like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, and Can used synthesizers and different digital devices to remodel rock music into new varieties, inspiring many people across the world to experiment with digital music.

Musical structures and forms started to alter from Baroque to Classical. The Suite, usually consisting of up to six movements based mostly on earlier Renaissance dances, developed into the Sonata. This form was developed in the Classical era with the clear intention of permitting the composer to develop their musical themes extra extensively than was expected throughout the Baroque. ninja : Ninja music both comes from, or sounds prefer it could have come from, the Ninja Tune label, identified for pioneering and championing its personal brands of underground digital dance music since 1990, with sturdy breakbeat and occasional hip-hop influences. Unfortunately lots of none present genres were slapped across the internet and new none present genres are born out of those already none current different genres, making genre speak all useless and giving rise to individuals who wish to denounce genres as ineffective classifications as a result of a lot of people are overdoing it on goal or based mostly on sheer lack of experience and data on the present. Argues that rock music is distinctive in putting recordings, quite than performances or compositions, as its major musical object. Thus the fashionable music trade was born. Genres have been created based upon the demographics required by the companies purchasing the advertising. When record labels released newly-recorded music, they created promotional staffs that may suggest individual recordings to specific radio stations that catered to a selected style to be able to enable all the businesses involved to maximise the sale of both certain kinds of musical records and pimples treatment to white teenage ladies. Importantly, as a result of this was a quantitative research of lifeless musicians and our intention was to collect inhabitants knowledge to establish occupational hazards in the pop music world, I can only speculate here in regards to the underlying causes of those patterns in mortality.

The Music Genres List web site covers lots of the hottest styles of kids's music, we hope this becomes the definitive record of youngsters's music genres on the Web, ship an email to add @ musicgenreslist dot com when you feel any childrens music genres are missing and we'll add to complete the music list. There isn't any copyright on the songs. Tons of of folks songs from the nineteenth century have recognized authors but have continued in oral custom to the purpose the place they're considered traditional for functions of music publishing. This has change into a lot less frequent because the Forties. Right this moment, virtually every people music that is recorded is credited with an arranger.

Austrian composer impressed his contemporaries already as a toddler. On the age of 5, he mastered keyboard and http://diegoneuman71600.mywibes.com/index/__xtblog_entry/12307310-most-fashionable-music-genres-all-through-the-world?__xtblog_block_id=1 violin, and entertained the social elites together with royalty all through Europe. Mozart composed more than 600 works in all music genres known in his time. A few of most famous and most widely performed Mozart's works embrace Requiem, Symphony No. 40, operas The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro, Piano Sonata No 16 in C Major, Symphony No. 25, Piano Concerto No. 21 and Piano Sonata No. 11 (Mov. three - Turkish March). Belgium About Weblog Music site from Belgium with relevance in all the Dutch language area, and http://www.audio-transcoder.com/ much past. We attempt to put up an important new musical discoveries or simply nice songs on Dancing Bears. In addition, we attempt to supply added worth to different music blogs by giving our personal opinion, comparing it with properly-recognized groups or simply including a nice description. a class of inventive composition, as in music or literature, characterised by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.