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goggles-mcgee · 4 years ago

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Too Late: Alya & Nino (commission for miner249er)

Fourth chapter of @miner249er ‘s commission

Chapter Summary: The truth is harsh. Teens are harsher.

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Truth.

As an aspiring journalist it was something Alya strived for. It was the most important thing she could give the people who followed her so diligently. She thought she had been giving them that. She had been so good about giving them the truth, her truth, and Ladybug’s truth in the past, she foolheartedly believed she was continuing to do so despite taking shortcuts later on in the road. Why didn’t she fact check herself? Why did she throw that very thing in Marinette’s face? What kind of reporter was she? What kind of friend was she? The answers were all around her and yet she still wasn’t ready to face them head on. There was still that voice in her head that was telling her that this was all Lila Rossi’s fault.

But is it? Alya thought as her and Nino ate together at her house, the TV on in the background. At first it had been on the news but Alya was done with the news for a long while, all it had been was coverage of The Protector and Nino had immediately taken the remote and changed it to cartoons. This was hitting him hard, harder than Alya had expected if she was being honest. When they found out Ladybug and Chat Noir had, in fact, not defeated The Protector and instead the akuma, that Marinette had gone missing, it hit the class hard. Hard because they learned the truth about Lila in that time and that had been rough to work through. Then they had to come to the realization that they believed Lila over Marinette, the sweet, kind, selfless girl that had all at one point been friends with.

Then the lies got to them. It poisoned them. That’s what Alya had written on her blog anyways. They were victims of a silver-tongue and they had paid the price, one they had not been prepared to pay for. Their friend was missing, had been missing and they couldn’t do anything. Alya had been searching through as many local papers and news around the world for any clues if Marinette had possibly gone to those places. Everything was coming up empty. She had even made a separate website along with Max all about Marinette and what had happened, she left ways to reach her and her classmates in case anyone had any info. Nino said they should have added Tom and Sabine’s information as well but Alya was too scared to ask them if they would be okay with it, last time they had all been at the bakery the tension had been palpable.

They weren’t banned like Nathaniel had worried they would be but every time they went in with their families, because that was the only time they went in there, it was always awkward. Tom and Sabine were much too nice to ban them even if they felt like they deserved it. How did everything go so wrong? Even school wasn’t as fun as it had been. Walking into their classroom was like taking a walk of shame, people from other classes, even teachers just stared at them. Some even glared. Then there were the whispers, Dieu the whispers, they followed them everywhere not just school, but they were the most prominent there. Her, Nino, and their classmates would find notes in their lockers, none were really threatening but they tore at her heart all the same. Things like, ‘You’re the reason she’s gone,’ or, ‘Are you guys proud of yourselves now?’ ‘Were the lies worth it?’ ‘You traded in a gem for fool’s gold.’ ‘What a reporter you turned out to be.’

All the notes hurt. That was the truth. That last one? She had found it in her locker this morning and it burned. Alya had been bullied before, she never liked to think about it, who would? But she was and she had to acknowledge it because she had told herself she would never allow herself to be bullied again, and most importantly, she would never turn into a bully. Wrong. She was wrong, and it wasn’t the first time she had been made aware of this since everything happened. Since everything changed. It was a blessing that Nino and her were still together, he never partook in the “tough love” the class had been giving Marinette before she...before she had been akumatized. Sure he didn’t stop them, and that was bad, but he didn’t go out of his way to not invite her to things until she stopped being “jealous” and started acting like the bigger person. Nino wasn’t the one who ignored her text messages, which now that Alya read them, were pretty telling that her friend had been hurting and she had only made that worse.

“What are you thinking about babe?”

Alya looked up from her half eaten bowl of soup to see Nino gazing at her in concern. “Marinette.”

“Oh…” He breathed out as he put his spoon down and looked down at the table before placing one of his hands on hers and giving her a small smile. “Everything will be okay Alya. Someone will find her and then she’ll be back home.”

Empty words. Empty words fed to him too much from adults who didn’t have any updates on anything. “You don’t believe that. And even if she did...who's to say she would even want to talk to us!? What’s to say that anything would be better? We would still be seen as the bad guys! We will still all have to eat lunch at our houses or the park just to avoid the stares and the whispers and the tossed trash our way and the “accidentally” spilled drinks!”

Alya had never understood just how much their class had been living in its own little world. Not to say they were completely unattached to the rest of the school, Alix, Nathaniel, Rose, Chloe, and Sabrina were in the art club (the art teacher and the rest of the club had made a mural of Marinette without notifying them or asking for their help. Everyone is encouraged to leave notes about Marinette on the mural. The art room even has a chair decorated in honor of Marinette that no one else can use. That was announced very pointedly Alix later shared.), Rose was in the scrapbooking club (no one asked to use her materials anymore like they used to), and Max was in the gaming club which Marinette had helped him set up (people weren’t showing up lately.) They weren’t kicked out, but they were reminded of Marinette all the time,it was like everyone’s way of punishing them. It had never occurred to any of them how popular Marinette was.

So popular that the whole school seemed to hate them. Even Mlle Mendeleiev seemed to be harsher than normal and that was really saying something, it would seem like she had a soft spot for Marinette. In their class everyone avoided Marinette’s seats in class, Alya had to step up as class representative but the silver lining was that Nino had stepped up to be her deputy. Though another negative was the fact Nino had stopped making his music and taking DJ gigs. At first he hadn’t said anything to her or their friends, Alya found out because of Chris actually, but then her and Adrien confronted him and he broke down. He cried and he didn’t stop for a long time, but when he had calmed enough to talk he pulled out old pictures of him and Marinette, told them stories about how they had grown up together. It had made the pit in Alya’s stomach grow, she had just been thinking about her and how much she blamed herself and how much she missed her best friend, she hadn’t even thought how this was affecting Nino.

“I...I need to believe it Alya. I need to. Because if I don’t I will break apart. Mari...Marinette and I were best friends in l'école primaire. I never thought she would ever not be a part of my life. Then the whole Lila thing happened and I turned into a coward again, like I had with Chloe! No, worse than a coward! I don’t even know what I would call myself but I know I can’t call myself her friend.” His voice rose the more he spoke and near the end it cracked.

“Nino…”

“No. I know that’s the truth! And I know, I know that things at school have been rough. Hell, they’ve been awful, everyone sees us as these villains in some trashy young teen novel when all we’ve done is make a mistake! Yes. It was a big mistake but it was a mistake nonetheless but we’re...we’re kids dammit. We’re just kids.” Alya felt tears race down her cheeks as she saw her boyfriend break yet again, his cheeks wet with his tears, his voice choked with his guilt.

“I know. I just...I just want her back. I want everything back. I don’t know how many times we have to apologize to the school, but they’re not even the ones that need to hear the apologies! The one we need to have hear us isn’t here and…” Alya could feel herself breaking but she tried to hold on. Nino needed her to be strong. Her class needed her to be strong. Her family needed her to be strong.

“I can’t take the stares! Or, or hear Rose’s cries that she tries to hide from us. Mylene hasn’t been eating and I know she thinks we don’t notice and Adrien, god Adrien. I’m trying to hold it together because my bro is falling apart at the seams! First Marinette gets...gets fucking akumatized, then his dad and Nathalie get taken to the hospital from some supposedly random attack but it’s pretty obvious it was Mar-the akuma’s doing, his mom freaking pops out of nowhere but of course that can’t just be a good thing because everyone has to talk about how his dad and Nathalie were probably Hawkmoth and Mayura! And I’m over here trying not to think too much about all that because it makes actually too much sense, but then we find out that Marinette was most likely Ladybug! LADYBUG!” He lamented, not bothering to hide the fact he was crying, more like sobbing. It just made Alya cry more.

“I...I wanted the truth for so long, but not like this. Not like this. I...I know this makes me sound like the worst person on the planet but I kind of wish stupid Gabriel Agreste wasn’t Hawkmoth because then I could be akumatized and maybe I could be some kind of time-travelling akuma and we could go back and fix everything and school wouldn’t be hell and the twins wouldn’t act like they had to walk on eggshells around me all the time and my dad wouldn’t look like he’s always so disappointed in me and my mom wouldn’t look at my with only pity in her eyes and Nora would talk to me and Marinette would be back!” Alya sobbed out. At this point her and Nino had moved from their seats to the kitchen floor and were huddled together hugging each other for comfort.

The two just sat there soaking up whatever comfort they could and dreaded the time that passed. For each minute that passed, was a minute that brought them closer to having to go back to school. Alya didn’t know if she had the strength to go back and deal with everything, she didn’t know if Nino could handle it either, but she knew her mother would be by any minute to give them a lift back to school. If there was a way she could just finish school online, Alya was willing to do it, but her father wouldn’t ever allow it. He had put his foot down, Otis Césaire was mad, then he was disappointed and he thought it only fair that Alya face her peers and continue on at Françoise Dupont. It didn’t feel fair, it didn’t feel fair at all, it felt like punishment. Hadn’t she been punished enough? Even in sleep she wasn’t safe, all she dreamed of was Lila and her making her act like a puppet. She would see puppet her do all these things to Marinette and she would wake up in sweat and tears.

“Okay I’m here, I hope you two are ready to head ba-” Alya looked up to see her mom standing there staring at her and Nino, her mouth agape. “Oh Alya...Nino...How about I call the school and tell them you’re not feeling good? And I’ll call your parents Nino.”

Alya was going to respond, she really was, but when she opened her mouth nothing came out but a choked off cry and nod. Nino nodded as well as he took in a shaky breath. “Th-Thanks, Mme C.”

“Nino, you know I told you to call me Marlena. Now you two go rest in Alya’s room while I make those calls. Then maybe I can get the rest of the day off and-”

“No manman. Things...things are already bad enough, don’t make it worse by not going back to work. I don’t...I don’t want to be the reason why you get fired.” Alya mumbled as she and Nino got up off the floor.

“Oh...Oh my little one, that won’t happen. And if it did, not because of you. Never. Don’t you think that.” Alya’s mother breathed out as she pulled her daughter into a hug before taking her daughter’s face in her hands and doing her best to wipe her tears.

“Papa and Nora would! Nora still won’t talk to me and Papa only looks at me like he’s disappointed he ever had me!” Alya cried out before she could stop the words from coming out. Her mind completely forgot that Nino was standing right beside her until she felt him hold her hand and give it a squeeze.

“Your Papa is just being stubborn, but you listen to me, he could never ever be disappointed in having you. You are our daughter. You made a mistake yes, but I know you know you made a mistake and that you are sorry. Your Papa will realize that. He just needs time. And Nora...she just needs time too. I just think she doesn’t know how to handle everything and that she’s mad that she couldn’t protect you sweetie. She’s always been the protective older sister, and this was something she couldn’t protect you from herself. They’ll come around. I’m sure.”

“If you’re sure manman…”

“I am. Now you kids go relax. I’m going to take the rest of the day off and go to the store for dinner ingredients, I’ll be back soon. I know things are hard my little Melusine but they won’t always be like this.” With a kiss to her forehead and a swift hug to Nino, Alya’s mom left the two teens in the family apartment.

At first they just stood there in silence and sniffles, but Nino made the move to put their plates in the sink and rinse them out while Alya gathered their schoolwork back into their bookbags. Then they made their way to Alya’s room and kicked off their shoes before sitting on the bed. Nino nudged Alya who looked at him in confusion until she saw him give her a crooked smile and open his arms which she fell easily into. She took off her glasses and placed them on her bedside table while she felt more than saw Nino take off his cap. For a while they just sat there in the quiet of the moment and Alya was content to do just that, to just have a moment of peace, but she slowly pushed away and reached for her remote to turn on the TV and quickly pulled up Netflix. Her mom wanted them to relax so why not fry their brains with some television.

“Anything in particular you want to watch?” She asked as she settled back against Nino.

“As long as it has nothing to do with school or superheroes...I’m good.” Nino responded with a hollow chuckle.

“I’m glad we don’t have to go back too…” She murmured, “Should we...tell the others?”

“Probably. But if I’m being honest I don’t really feel like talking to them and them asking how we are and if we’re okay when they know we’re not. I just. I don’t think I could handle that. Not today.”

“I get it. Sometimes I feel like everyone else even blames me for what happened. Like... Like it was my responsibility to not fall for the lies and to warn them. Like my word would have made a difference! Mari...Marinette’s didn’t so why would mine?” Alya huffed as she scrolled through all the movie and show choices and tried her best not to cry again.

“If they blame you then they need to blame me too and blame the people in the mirror. We all fell for the lies. Sure you’re the budding reporter, but the blame could just as easily be pushed onto Max who is so smart he created a living AI. But we have no one to be mad at but ourselves and we can only do that for so long.” Nino sighed as he held her closer and kissed her temple. Alya relished in the warmth of it all.

“When did you get so wise?” Alya teased softly.

“When I decided to rewatch Star Wars. But no seriously. If anyone in class bothers you please tell me because we should be sticking together not at each other’s throats.” Nino stuck out one hand and Alya slid her hand into his.

“Cross my heart and hope to die. I will. And you’re right, we do need each other, especially now, especially at that school.”

“Especially at that school, yeah.” He laughed out. “We’re going to get through this. I don’t know how, but, we are and we’re going to do it together.”

Alya smiled wryly before she looked up at Nino and it slipped into a real small smile. “Together.” She agreed softly.

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l'école primaire - elementaryschool

manman - Haitian Creole for Mother

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous tales of ladybug and chat noir #ml salt #ml salt fic #alya cesaire #marlena cesaire #etta and ella cesaire #nora cesaire #otis cesaire #nino lahiffe #djwifi #ml class salt #lila rossi salt #akuma class #revolt of the akuma #they are kids and they made a mistake #others need to recognize that as well #goggles commission

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kkglinka · 6 years ago

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I gotta say how much I love that this DC Limited Series is validating so many of my personal interpretations of existing canon. But of course, I'm talking about Blake — you know me.

I understand that many have difficulty with various inconsistencies in the art, but as someone who has read comics since age thirteen, I find them negligible Unless the company commissioning the series is wealthy, media tie-in comics are invariably slip-shod, with beginner artists and rushed art. Everyone's gotta start somewhere. I do accept the comics as canon and treat some scenes as the visual shorthand they are.

I really love many of the little details such as the Japanese aspects of her home life, along with the emphasis on Pacific Islander cultures, such as love of ocean sports — especially little Blake in a muumuu, draped with beaded necklaces. We also see she was a child in the city while Sienna is holding a rally with the Belladonna's both present and publicly acknowledged. Kali's dialog in a later issue tells us that Blake had fallen under Adam's influence when they still led the organization — so Blake was only eleven or twelve, at best. Clearly, younger Blake had periods where she was on the island. To me, that makes perfect sense, but to explain, I need to back up a little.

At odds with early fandom, I figured that Blake had to come from an upper class family and, if she were an orphan as her equivocation implied, then it was late enough in life that it left her with noticeably elegant manners. There was even a memorable instance in which Blake reflexively corrected Yang's slip in etiquette by thumping her across the stomach. (Just as Kali did to Ghira years later). From the way she holds a teacup to how mortified she was over Sun's behavior, we know manners matter to Blake. I was surprised as anyone else to discover her home still existed.

I was uncertain about her family home for a time until another viewer directed me to the post-episode storyboards. The house and lands are identified as "The Belladonna Estate" rather than, say, the chieftain's lodge. There is also a sepia toned photograph of what might be grandparents standing in front of what looks like the bungalow's portico. Finally we have V5's dialog about the Belladonna's time ending, which usually implies a family has been in power for generations.

The tragic princess story suggests that the island was already colonized by Faunus before Humans "gave" it to them. It's far more plausible, from a real life historical perspective, that Humans found the land inhospitable, full of dangerous wildlife and, most salient, resource poor. After the Faunus uprising, the people of the island welcomed refugees and those emigrating from Human controlled lands. The "gifting" was an underhanded way for Human's to cede authority and agree not to invade. So either the Belladonna's were native (unlikely since the capital name suggests a different culture), or they were Mistrali who married into a ruling family.

A chieftain system like we see in Kuo Kuana mostly closely resembles a constitutional monarchy. In smaller villages or tribes, the ruling body might be a council of elders. In a sprawling Rio de Janeiro city like Kuo Kuana, which stretches across the entire valley, it's likely a set of government department heads. The chieftain acts as a figurehead where compromise and mutual support are desired, but not necessary.

That person also forms alliances with other groups/governments and spearheads trade negotiations. In this system, the chieftain doesn't need to be present for the government to continue running smoothly. This system is completely compatible with the Chieftain of Kuo Kuana serving as High Leader and spearheading long-distance political rallies.

Blake refers to the early White Fang environment as being like a family, which kind of implies entire family groups were involved. But they were not a band of Roma or Sinti refugees continuously fleeing Nazi's and denied settlement everywhere they went (and still are). The way I see it, the WF were essentially a missionary group. Anywhere they went holding rallies, giving speeches, rocking the boat, they would have attracted converts and followers. They would have collected refugees, the elderly, the disabled, children, homeless, all wanting to flee and find new homes. Everyone needed to be fed, clothed, protected from Grimm etc.

There is no way that WF traveled through the winter — that would have been an unnecessary logistical nightmare, and suicidal for family groups. Instead, I imagine the Belladonna's gathered resources, planned travel destinations, organized funding, volunteers and everything else during the northern hemisphere's winter, while back home in Kuo Kuana. The band would then travel from spring to winter, which would be consistent with Blake's claim that she spent most of her life traveling with the WF. Then they would bring everyone back to Kuo Kuana in the fall, get new immigrants settled and so forth.

Let's go back to all those kids. First, the notion that semi nomadic groups don't educate their children in all aspects of life is an example of internalized racism with its roots in colonialist beliefs. All societies educate their children, but prior to the western colonial era, schools took a variety of forms. Some were permanent structures, some were tents, some were a circle of seats in an open clearing.

The materials might be written or oral, the teachers might be scholars, philosophers, priests or rabbi. In older models of education, you might think of it as elementary schooling followed by vocational training that inherently included relevant high school level topics. Regardless of method, the WF's children weren't a bunch of uncouth illiterate wild animals, though I'm sure Remnant's Humans believe exactly that.

Blake's vocational training would have been to a government position — more or less. That would have been history, politics and diplomacy, public speaking, combat abilities (for social appeal and to avoid being assassinated for power), self-restraint and etiquette. Much of that training would have begun when she was very little — some of it occurring subconsciously because little kids are like social sponges. But imagine truly comprehending that as you hit your early teens, that an entire island population will depend on you (even if only as a figurehead).

That is what brings us to the royalty in disguise trope. The most familiar example is Aragorn from LoTR. This trope always begins with the young royal attempting to abdicate from an overwhelming social responsibility, which haunts them whether they choose to go solo, follow another leader instead, or become a hermit. That guilt underpins their actions until they ultimately accept their role in society.

TL;DR; The White Fang did missionary work most of the year, helped new immigrants and planned for next year during the winter, and educated their children the same as any other society does. Blake spent about an aggregate third of her childhood at the family estate before Ghira became Chieftain full time, after which Blake traveled year round with Adam's splinter group. Her original very carefully worded equivocation was true and we're just having the six years of fanon problem.

#fandom #rwby #rwby meta #blake belladonna

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adiabolikpastel · 5 years ago

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Losing You

Rating: PG-13 - minor sex scene & male x male

Word Count: 4461

Original Character(s): Skye Oakly & Alrick Rosenfeld

ღ This is the first written commission I have ever gotten! Thank you to @the-sloth-woman for writing our boys together! The art for both characters was done by @minoux-draws

An AU piece where demons have taken over, however cannot breed normal. They must use the human’s to secure linage for the future. The Rosenfeld clan captures a human girl to marry off to the head of the family, young Alrick.

Reluctantly, the snake demon prepares for his wedding. There is just one last thing he must do. A young siren who had been his lover for quite some time. Will the two be able to maintain a connection after the big news?ღ

♬° ✧❥✧¸.•*¨*✧♡✧ ♬° ✧❥✧¸.•*¨*✧♡✧ ♬° ✧❥✧¸.•*¨*✧♡✧ ♬° ✧❥✧¸.•*¨*✧♡✧

Alrick closed the door to the penthouse with a resolute click. Anger radiated off him in waves, and it took every inch of his self-control not to rip the door off its fucking hinges.

Why was she so goddamn frustrating!? Surely she could see that he didn’t want to be mated to her either. There were hundreds of demons who he would have been better suited with. Men and women who were thousands of times less infuriating as one stupid human girl. He would have done better to trade her off to the brothel owners. At least there she would find something to do with her stupid mouth.

He shook his head and took a deep breath through his nose. He couldn’t think about Lilly right now, not when he had so much on his plate. There was the ceremony to arrange on top of his normal workload. And that was an enormous task altogether. Was he supposed to just appear in traditional ceremonial dress with no forethought? Please. He didn’t have time to waste fighting with humans.

The first and most pressing matter was, unfortunately, going to be the most difficult. Alrick was an extremely popular demon lord, and living alone for so long had left him a string of paramours. There were many that he did not care about, women who were little more than one-night stands and whose memories were clouded through fogs of wine. There were demons with whom he had more established relationships with, but they would understand his predicament. They would understand how his honor demanded that he put aside his own needs for the future of his people. And even then it had been weeks since he had seen anyone who particularly struck his interest.

But there was one person who he was dreading bringing the news to. He had been seeing Skye on and off for months, and while they had an extraordinary physical relationship, they had managed to keep it hidden from most of the ruling class of demons. Their conversation would be messy, and full of feelings that Alrick didn’t know how to handle. The cowardly part of him wanted to prolong the conversation until after the ceremony. But Alrick wouldn’t let himself be a coward, no matter how difficult it would be.

He spent most of the day making arrangements for the ceremony. His family’s uchikake needed to be pressed and cleaned, the sake needed to be chosen, and he sent out invitations to most of the ruling class. He also ordered contraceptive tea for afterward, just in case the mating did not take hold. There was nothing worse than being forced to raise a cub with someone who was incompatible with you.

Truthfully, he was putting off calling Skye for as long as possible. The clock on his desk slowly ticked down toward the end of the day. He had one last night of freedom before being bound to a human, and he knew he had to make the most of it. He picked up the phone on his desk with a heavy heart and rang the Sakamaki family.

Skye’s familiar voice greeted him on the other end of the line. “Sakamaki residence, this is Skye speaking. My masters are out of the house for the evening, may I take a message?”

For once Alrick was thankful for the human invention of the telephone. It was much faster than sending a messenger, and the person on the other end didn’t have to see the look on his face. “It’s me,” he said, not bothering to introduce himself.

The tone of Skye’s voice changed immediately. “Alrick- I mean, Your Highness,” he gushed. “It’s so nice to hear from you. Is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?”

Alrick tried not to wince at Skye’s familiar flirting. “I need to see you tonight. Can you meet me for dinner?”

“Tonight? Well, the Sakamakis are busy, I’m really not supposed to leave the manor unattended.”

“Shit,” Alrick ran his hand through his hair. “Then find an excuse to leave.” Skye’s warm laugh trilled through the end of the phone. “Really Alrick, has it been so long since you last saw me that you’re resorting to ordering me around? I’ll come much faster if you ask nicely,” he teased. “You should know that better than anyone.”

The double entendre of Skye’s words was not lost on Alrick, but his mood was too sour to appreciate them. “Please, Skye,” he rarely ever let himself plead with another person, but he was desperate. “This is urgent. I need you, and it can’t wait.”

“O-oh,” the tone of Alrick’s voice had thrown the flirty attitude form Skye’s voice. “Yeah, sure.”

“Great. Meet me at our usual spot in half an hour. And don’t be late.” Alrick couldn’t see it, but he knew the authority in his voice was enough to make Skye shiver. “Of course. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

The nerves in Alrick’s stomach were only intensified by the fact that he arrived at the restaurant ten minutes early. He ordered a bottle of wine for the table and then waited for what felt like an eternity. He fidgeted in his suit, his eyes darting towards the door every few seconds. He had no idea what he was going to say to Skye. To tell him what was going on between him and Lilly was going to be excruciating. He remembered once when they had first started sleeping together when a waitress made the mistake of flirting with Alrick. Skye kissed him so possessively afterward that Alrick thought his lips were going to fall off.

The door to the restaurant jingled at Skye’s arrival. The scales that curved around his eyes sparkled in the setting sun and Alrick felt a pang of guilt in the pit of his stomach. He was dressed in a crisp skirt that fell just above his knees and a sweater that accentuated the curve of his waist. His hair was tied into a loose bun at the top of his head, the rest of his long tresses trailing down his back. Alrick couldn’t tell if it was one of Skye’s many wigs or his real hair, but he looked pretty nonetheless.

“Alrick,” Skye greeted him with a warm smile. “Or is this official business? Should I call you ‘Prince Rosenfeld’ instead?”

Alrick grimaced at the title and loosened his tie. “You don’t have to do that when it’s just us.”

“That’s not what you said the other night,” Skye purred, throwing his arms around Alrick in a soft hug. “I seem to recall you not letting me finish if I didn’t beg for ‘Prince Rosenfeld’ to give me permission-”

“Shhh, shh!” Alrick pressed his thumb to Skye’s lips to silence him. “Do you really want to spill all our bedroom secrets in the middle of the restaurant?”

“Well, not all of them,” Skye’s eyes flashed invitingly and took his seat across the table. “Just the ones that really embarrass you.”

Alrick chuckled, some of the weight on his chest lifting. “I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you too. You look tired,” Skye eyed the cut of Alrick’s suit. “Did you come directly from work?”

“What gave it away?” Alrick poured himself a large glass of wine. “I didn’t have time to go home and change before meeting you, I hope you don’t mind.” That was a half-lie. The real reason he didn’t want to go home was that the human girl would be waiting for him, and seeing her would just make everything much worse.

“Alrick, when have I ever minded you in a suit? You know they’re one of my favorite things to take off you.”

“I suppose you’re right about that,” he ran his hand in his hair. “And am I right to assume that’s exactly what you’re thinking about doing right now?”

“Alrick! How could you accuse me of such lewd and lascivious behavior?”

“Because I’ve been sleeping with you long enough to know how your mind works.” Skye let out a burst of giggles and covered his mouth. “You caught me, I’ve been thinking about ripping it off of you since I walked in.”

A wide grin spread across Alrick’s face. Before he could stop himself he said, “Maybe I’ll have to let you rip it off with your teeth.”

The gravity of what he just said hit him a few moments later. There would be no more bedtime trysts with Skye. After tomorrow he would have a mate, and whether he liked it or not he would be bound to her for all of eternity. He swallowed thickly, the weight of his honor feeling like a large burden. Alrick was the demon prince, and he had a duty to his people before himself. Skye immediately noticed the change in Alrick’s demeanor. “What’s wrong? Was it something I said?”

“No, no,” Alrick waved his wine glass, taking a long sip. “You haven’t done anything, I promise you. Actually, you’re doing too little. Talk to me, tell me about your day.”

“Alright...” Skye trailed off, unsure. “It wasn’t very eventful. I did all the things the Sakamaki’s asked me to. Make tea, get the mail, answer the phones. Laito had me arrange a visit to the brothel for tomorrow morning, which should be super fun to clean up after.”

“Of course he did.” Skye looked around to see if anyone was listening in and then leaned across the table with a wicked expression on his face. “You didn’t hear it from me, but I heard that the last time he went there one of the girls was so scared off by whatever he did that she ran out into the street and almost got hit by a car.”

“Ugh,” Alrick wrinkled his nose. “What could he even think up that would scare someone that badly?”

“I have no idea but I wish I did. Whatever it was, I don’t think it would have scared me if it was with you.”

Fuck. There it was again, the unspoken weight that dangled over Alrick’s head like a sword. He swallowed the last of his wine and hung his head. There was no use in prolonging it, he had to come clean to Skye. “Listen, there’s something I need to-”

“I know.”

“E-eh?” Alrick blinked, flabbergasted. “You know...?”

“I know you’re upset.” Skye’s voice softened. “You’ve been getting this terrible look on your face all night.”

“Ugh... I didn’t realize I was being that obvious.” He slumped in his seat. “Hey, hey...” Skye walked over to Alrick and slid his hand along his cheek. “Do you want to get out of here?”

The touch of his hand was enough to make Alrick melt. “Leave...?”

“Of course,” Skye’s thumb trailed down the side of Alrick's jaw. “We could get a hotel room, just the two of us. I think I know something that will really make you feel better.” His voice was dark with promise.

Alrick sighed before responding. The temptation to disappear with him was strong. It would be so easy for Alrick to lose himself in Skye, to forget all his worries if only for a little while.

The feelings that Alrick had been fighting all night suddenly swallowed him whole. “Yeah,” he said, sinking into the comfort of Skye’s touch. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

The hotel rose high above the expanse of the city, almost as high up as Alrick’s penthouse. It was lavishly decorated with the finest amenities, including a huge bar on the first floor. The room itself had a wide window that overlooked the other buildings of the district: glittering patches of light that faded away to the curling fog of the mountainside in the distance.

It was a shame that neither of them noticed any of that. Alrick’s lips were locked onto Skye’s the minute they got into the car. They crashed into the hotel room, their hands fumbling against clothing and furniture. Alrick barely had time to catch his breath before Skye descended upon him, pushing him up against the wall and kissing his way down his body. The feel of his lips was enough to make Alrick’s eyes roll back in his head with pleasure, but he wasn’t content to lose himself in his mouth alone. Alrick wanted more, he needed more. If this was going to be their last night together he had to make it count.

He resolutely moved Skye to the bed, lowering him onto his back like he had so many times. Alrick briefly remembered the first time they had snuck away to fuck. Skye had caught his eye from across the room, flashing Alrick a sensual smile. They had barely managed to find an empty room before Skye was lowering himself onto his knees, taking him into his mouth like a holy sacrament. It was hot and unbelievably addictive. They both knew without saying that one time wouldn’t be enough.

The memory caused a twinge of pain to stir in Alrick’s chest and he buried himself in Skye to block out the pain. He fought it off bravely, taking solace in the other demon’s hands and thighs. He found peace in the taste of Skye’s lips, bringing him closer and closer to his mouth. Underneath him, Skye met each and every one of his thrusts with ease. They had been together so many times that it was almost second nature, but that didn’t mean that Alrick wasn’t spellbound by the sound of Skye’s voice in pleasure. Just the sound of his name as he arched underneath him was enough to send Alrick over and over the edge.

Later, when they were both spent and clinging to one another for warmth, the guilt returned to Alrick. He had spent so much time with Skye today and he still hadn’t broken the news about the mating ceremony. Perhaps it would be worse now that they had spent the evening making love.

“You know,” Skye lazily rolled onto Alrick’s chest, his wig slightly askew. “I’m going to be so upset if I can’t sit properly tomorrow because of you. I might have to call you back and return the favor.”

Alrick stared at the ceiling with unseeing eyes. “You always promise that but you’ve yet been able to make me that sore.”

“That sounds like a challenge- wait, you don’t look happy about that.” Akye propped himself up onto his elbow. “Pet name,” he used his ironic term of affection, “what’s wrong?”

It was time. Alrick sat up slowly, extracting his limbs from their tangled mess. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and avoided Skye’s confused gaze.

Skye reached for Alrick’s shoulder and attempted to rub away his troubles. “Alrick, please... tell me what’s going on.”

Alrick stared at the floor and took a moment before speaking. “Do you remember a few days ago when they found that human girl? The one they found at the edge of the mountainside?”

“Of course I do,” Skye sat beside Alrick and carefully removed his wig. “It was all anyone could talk about. I just assumed she was going to be given to the demon lord who had found her.”

Alrick’s hands were clenched into fists on his knees. “You’re not wrong.” Skye threaded his hand through Alrick’s hair. “I don’t see why that would make you this upset. Unless you wanted her for your own,” he chuckled hollowly. “Don’t tell me that you’re planning to leave me for a silly little human.”

The silence that hung in the air was suffocating. Skye tried again, his voice tinged with panic. “You’re not really planning on abandoning me for a human. Right, Alrick?”

“She...” Alrick’s shoulders sagged slightly. “She was found by my men. That means she belongs to me.”

Skye’s hand froze in Alrick’s hair. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am. She’s- we’re... I’m...” Alrick turned away, his heart feeling icy. “She’s going to be my future mate.”

It was Skye’s turn to be silent. “Oh... Right, of course.” The resignation in his tone broke Alrick’s heart. Skye pulled away and wrapped his arms around his legs under the blanket. “Of course she is,” he continued. “You’re a prince, it’s only natural that one day you would... That we would have to end.”

“I’m sorry... I never thought that this would happen-”

“Don’t.” Skye cut him off. “Don’t say you didn’t know this was going to happen. You’ve always known what your role in the world is. You’re Alrick fucking Rosenfeld-” tears sprang at

the corners of his eyes but he ignored them. “Don’t you even try to say that you weren’t going to leave me for a woman one day.”

Alrick reeled from Skye’s anger. “Parakeet, this isn’t my fault. I wasn’t saying that this wasn’t inevitable, I just didn’t expect it to happen so soon.”

Skye barely heard him. “Who cares about that? Now, later, it doesn’t matter. I guess it’s better this way, so I don’t get too attached.”

“Parakeet-”

“Don’t!” Skye turned on Alrick, his golden eyes blazing. “How can you still call me that when you'll be sharing a bed with her?!”

“Skye, this isn’t my choice!”

“It’s not mine either!” Skye stared down at his body, hating every inch of himself. “It’s not fair, it’s not fucking fair...” He wiped his eyes with a shaking hand and pulled the covers up over his chest.

“I know it’s not fair...” Alrick reached and took his hand, tugging the blanket free from his fingers. “Skye, I promise you that I didn’t plan for any of this to happen.”

Skye’s tears fell harder at the sincerity in Alrick’s voice. He shook his head and his tears dripped onto his scales, making them shine. “It doesn’t matter if you planned it or not, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s happening anyway!”

“I know!” The words ripped themselves from Alrick’s mouth. “Do you think I want this? That I want to be trapped with someone I’ve only known for two days? To be mated to a human-” he choked on the word. He felt like he was repeating the argument he had with Lilly in some sick circle that never ended. “Nothing about this is my choice, Skye.”

“Then don’t go through with it.” Skye threw himself out of bed and knelt before Alrick, pleading. “Turn her away, give her to someone else. You’re the prince Alrick, you can be with anyone you want.” His words came in a frantic rush as he beseeches Alrick. “You don’t have to live a life that’s not yours. Say there’s something wrong with her, say she’s defective. And then we can stay together!”

“You know I have to-“

“Why?! Why is this so important to you, more important than me?”

“Because you know we’re dying out.” Alrick felt detached from the situation like he was viewing all from a very long way away. “Because ever since we nearly wiped out the humans we’ve been unable to have any children of our own. I have to do this so our kind can have any sort of future, even if it’s one with mixed blood.”

Skye sagged, defeated. “It’s not fair... I hate the humans for what they’ve done to us.” Alrick slid his hand along Skye’s jaw, tilting his face to meet his. “As do I, Parakeet. They’ve ruled over us for thousands of years, it’s not right that they kill us off like this. That’s why we have to keep fighting back. And why I as the prince have to fight back hardest of all.”

Skye’s tears finally seemed to come to a close. “You’re right,” he murmured. “For the good of the people, right...?”

“For the good of the people,” Alrick repeated bitterly.

“Well...” Skye folded himself beside Alrick’s legs and leaned his head on his knee. “We still have until the ceremony. I can try to be by your side as much as possible before then. I’ll convince one of the Sakamakis to send me on errands for you. And maybe it won’t be so hard by the time the ceremony comes...” He reached for Alrick’s hand, placing it atop his own head. “How long do we have before she becomes your mate?”

Shit. Alrick was a fool. How could he have thought that prolonging telling would have made this easier? He felt sick. Sick of himself, sick of his circumstances, and sick of the human girl who he just so happened to catch. “It’s tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?!” Skye’s head snapped back like he had been slapped. “Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

All their promised time together came crashing down around them. After the mating ceremony, there would be no more sneaking around. Not because Alrick respected his human mate, but because he would be bound to her. Demon mating ceremonies were so much more than simple human weddings. If everything went as planned, he would want no other after her. They would be bonded for life.

There was nothing more to say now. He could tell from the heartbroken look on Skye’s face that he made his mistake even bigger. Alrick stared past him and spoke to the opposite wall. “She was found only a few days ago, there wasn’t much time for me to-”

“No, no! You could have told me when they found her! You could have told me when the damn council made their decision. You had days, Alrick. Days!”

“I know!” He gave Skye a glare that stopped him from speaking. “I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to fucking hurt you.”

“C-can’t you see that this hurts me more?” Skye’s voice broke. “How can I go on knowing that this will always be our last night together? That you and I got into a fight because you were being stupid, uncaring, selfish-”

“I’m not being selfish!”

“Yes, you are! Can’t you think about how this is affecting anyone but yourself?” “Parakeet!” Alrick cupped Skye’s cheeks and held him when he tried to jerk away. “You are the only other person who I care about right now. Not the council and definitely not her.” Alrick’s voice softened. “There is nothing in this world I would ever want to do to hurt you. Can’t you see how much I don’t want to do this? That it hurts me to hurt you like this...?”

An explosive sob wrenched itself from within Skye’s chest. He collapsed forward into Alrick, crying freely into his arms. “I’m sorry,” Alrick whispered, tucking his head under his chin. “I’m so sorry, Skye...”

They sat like that until Skye’s sobs became muffled sniffles. Alrick threw a glance out the window and saw the sky had lightened considerably. “Shit...”

Skye followed his gaze. “You have to go, don’t you...?”

“I do.” Alrick sighed and felt a thousand years older. “The ceremony is in a few hours. I need to get some sleep.”

Skye did not need Alrick to tell him what the ceremony entailed. He had seen a few himself, and he could not bear to watch Alrick fuck another woman- let alone see it on public display. “I won’t be there.”

Alrick chuckled quietly and extracted himself from Skye’s grasp. “I wouldn’t want you to be. I don’t even want to be there myself-” he began finding his discarded clothes strewn about the room- “and I don’t have the luxury to blow it off.”

Skye nodded and watched Alrick redress. Within minutes he was the same man who met him in the restaurant. Poised, calm, and unbearably handsome. Alrick ran a hand through his hair to smooth it back in place., completing the look. “I’m going to miss you...”

“I”m going to miss you too, Parakeet... Swear that you’ll never forget me?”

“How could I? I think you’ve ruined me for other men,” Skye laughed without humor.

“Don’t say that,” Alrick stroked Skye’s cheek with the back of his hand. “Don’t let my departure ruin any of your future happiness. Promise me that.”

“I’ll try...”

“Thank you...” Alrick reluctantly let his hand drop. He moved to the door, his shoulders already stiff with apprehension. “I’ll see you when it’s over, Parakeet.”

Skye did his best to smile. “You too, Pet Name...” Alrick gave Skye one last look, memorizing the way he looked under their messy bed sheets. Inside his chest he could feel his heart breaking. Alrick had been in pain many times before, but nothing so far had been as bad as this.

He took a deep breath and buried his feelings as far down as they would go. He stepped through the door and into his new life.

Skye did not sleep. He sat in the puddle of blankets Alrick left behind and felt utterly miserable. He wanted to cry but he had no more tears left. He wanted to scream, but his throat was raw from all the sobbing. He wanted to break every single thing in the damn room but he had no energy. All he could do was sit and feel horrible.

There was nothing left for him to do anyway. Even without the human interfering, he and Alrick were never meant to be. He had just entertained the thought for far too long...

He pressed a pillow to his face and fought off another round of sobs. Every fantasy he ever had with Alrick had been ripped to pieces within a few hours. He had so many dreams for the two of them, so many things that would have made him happy. And now there was nothing.

Unless... If the human woman couldn’t produce children with Alrick she would be taken away, thrown in the brothel where she belonged. If they were a bad match she would be given to another demon, that was a possibility. Or perhaps an accident would befall her, something terrible like falling off a building. Maybe she would even do herself in. Skye heard she put up quite a fight when she was caught, and there was a rumor that her mother was one of the resistance leaders. And if all else failed, he would just have to wait. Human lives were so short compared to a demon’s. There was no law that said Alrick couldn’t take a new mate if his first one died. Skye settled into the bed, finally feeling some sort of peace. He could be patient, he could wait. And if he couldn’t there were then enough ways for him to rectify the situation. The human may have been Alrick’s mate after tomorrow, but she wouldn’t stay his mate for long.

#commission #writing #skye oakly #sky oakly #alrick rosenfeld #the sloth woman

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sylveradrake · 5 years ago

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Pixel art commissions are open!

Active Slots:

[ ayealiskomori: four 200px dolls (sketched) ]

[ charlieltweets: one 150px doll (sketched) ]

[ cupiddissolvi: two 250 pixel dolls ]

[ Open ]

Reserved Slots:

[ Open ]

Frequently Asked Questions (Please Read!):

[ ? ] Are these all the options you have for commissions? [ A ] These are primarily just examples of things I've done consistently in the past! If you have a more 'custom' idea, we can certainly discuss it! I've been doing pixel art for over four years, so I have some decent experience, but like every artist I have limits to my current abilities. You can see both my Tumblr and DeviantArt galleries for more examples, including the options for the line styles, animations, and shading! [ ? ] What ARE all those options under the examples? [ A ] Hard lines means the piece will have "hard", solid black lines between each "section" of the piece: the outline, and between all the different colors, etc. Lineless means that rather than having that solid black line, I use a slightly darker shade of each color to outline them, like the full body dragon! This gives it a softer, 'lineless' look. Cell shading means that there's just one color used to shade, rather than a blend. The Kakashi doll on the far left has cell shading: just one color in a hard shape. Smooth shading means what it sounds like: a few colors are blended from dark to light to make the shadows smoother! I do a few very basic animations for certain dolls or icons when requested. Typically this refers to a one-pixel "bob", and a blink cycle. I can also have a doll open its mouth and bring up a small speech bubble if you'd like them to say something! Please bear in mind that animation takes additional time and effort, and though not required, additional support is appreciated for animated pieces! [ ? ] Why are there things you refuse to draw? [ A ] For the most part, it's simply a matter of preference. For others, it's a matter of ability. Some things are just a bit too complex for me to feel I can pull it off in a fashion consistent with the rest of my work, and therefore being worth your money! Hence a limit on complex poses and the number of characters per shot, or complex designs, like mecha. Other things like the ship limitations are just personal preferences that make me uncomfortable. The NSFW ban is mostly due to most hosting sites not liking to host mature artwork...and also a matter of both my ability, and personal preference. [ ? ] What constitutes NSFW? [ A ] For me, this includes any nudity that shows genitals - nipples and / or breasts are fine. This also includes anything sexual, including any and all fetishes, even if genitals are not shown. I also do not do heavy gore. I may expand this umbrella term if anything not already covered comes up! [ ? ] I can't afford a commission, but I'd like to help! What can I do? [ A ] You can share this comm sheet and / or my art with your friends! Getting the word out might mean finding someone able and willing to order a comm, which of course is a big help! [ ? ] Do you do requests? [ A ] Unfortunately, not at the moment. If you'd like me to draw something for you and the comms are open, you're more than welcome to order something! While I do do personal art for myself and for friends, I can't make free art for everyone. In the future I may do something akin to raffles, but for now, we're starting with the commissions! [ ? ] Can I donate without ordering a commission? [ A ] You most certainly can, and it's very much appreciated, and would be a huge help! Of course it is NOT an expectation: no one has to donate if they can't or don't want to. But if you just want to throw some general support in to help me keep creating, you're more than welcome, and I'd appreciate it tremendously [ ? ] Do you accept DeviantArt points? [ A ] I do not. To put it bluntly, DA points can't pay my bills. I have nothing I need that DA points can buy, so I only work with money. Sorry! [ ? ] Do you do anything like art trades? [ A ] For the moment, no - but I might in the future! I'm open to the possibility, but for now (and for this post's purpose), I'm working on commissions! If I ever open up art trades, I'll be sure to make another about it! [ ? ] How is best to contact you? [ A ] Any of the above listed social media! Here on DA, please send a note with a subject line about commissions. On Tumblr, you can send an ask (off anon) which I will reply to privately. You can also send an IM! Email also works: just include commissions in the subject line. I do my best to check all of these sites a few times a day, but there may be times where I'm limited. I'll try to post ahead of time so you know why I'm not responding promptly! Otherwise, it could take me about a day to get back to you. Please be patient! I have other responsibilities. I may also take hiatuses if I feel the need. If I go more than a few days without responding and haven't given any warning, there's probably something keeping me from my messages, and I'll do my best to get back to you as soon as I'm able! [ ? ] What's your policy on refunds? [ A ] So long as I haven't finished flat coloring your piece, you can get a full refund, of course! But once the piece is lined AND colored, I've put in a good bit of work, so I'm afraid I won't be able to refund you. As stated on the sheet, you can ask for an update on the piece any time! And I will send you the cleaned sketch once it's finished to see if there's anything you'd like changed. Though please bear in mind some things can differ between sketching and lining, especially when shrinking down to pixel. A sketch is a general outline, not the full product! [ ? ] Are there any other circumstances where you might refuse a commission? [ A ] Honestly it depends. I hope not to encounter any other reasons beyond my general rules, but I DO retain the right to say no to any commission for any reason, which I don't have to disclose. If I do say no, please respect that decision. It's never anything personal. [ ? ] Where does the art go once it's finished? [ A ] Any commissioned art, by default, will be posted to my DeviantArt, my Tumblr, and on Ko-fi! I'll also send you a copy / link through whatever means you contacted me with. If you'd like your art to be private, you need only ask. I will then only send YOU the art, and it will NOT be posted anywhere else. I can also post the art anonymously if you’d like it posted, but your name not attached to it. [ ? ] How can I use my commission(s)? [ A ] Any way you like UNLESS it's commercial - in other words, if you make any money using the artwork. Please also do not trade or sell the artwork. Otherwise, feel free to use it for any personal use you'd like! You can also repost the art so long as you provide a link to my original post. If your comm wasn't publicly posted, a link back to any of my social media will suffice! Just always be sure to use proper credit so people know where the art came from! That way they can find my pages, and maybe get a commission of their own! [ ? ] Do you do fanart? [ A ] I do! My commissions are all one-off, unique jobs, and I'm hardly about to impact any IP markets. So long as it's a large fandom (no Disney, though - that's one I won't touch), and my art wouldn't greatly impact the profits and livelihood of other creators, I can do fanart. But I DO prefer to do original art! It's great to work with new designs, and help give original characters more art for them! Gimme OCs to draw! [ ? ] Can you design a character for me, like a custom adoptable? [ A ] I can! Just bear in mind that I'll need as many details as possible to make something that fits your vision! I'll also need to work with you more than typical to be sure we get it as accurate as possible, so be prepared for a lot of communication until we get it looking as you want! [ ? ] Can you do gifts - in other words, can I order art for another person? [ A ] I do, and you certainly can! Just be sure to let me know who the gift is for, so I can tag them! If they don't have any of the social media I use, you can just give me a name or screen name to post with it. A gift will just cost you the same as any art you'd order for yourself! Also please do be sure you have permission to commission art of characters owned by another person! [ ? ] What do you mean by 'item'? [ A ] Each individual pixel piece! One lone pixel doll of 150 pixels would be four dollars! But if you want two dolls interacting, it's four dollars EACH. So eight dollars. That's because I still have to sketch, ink, color, shade, and possibly animate EACH doll! Twice the effort means twice the price.

#commissions #pixel art #pixel doll #pixel icon #pixel cursor

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askdoctoroliver · 6 years ago

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Rules

I am not an actual doctor. If you really need medical attention, please find someone qualified.

Do not send hate / spam me with the same question. Doing so will only make me uninterested in answering them.

Keep asks proper and not too NSFW heavy. While mun is indeed of age, I would prefer not to draw happy wands everywhere. Suggestive asks are allowed.

Interactions are welcome! Feel free to drop an ask or DM me if you want to delve deeper with our muses.

Do not ask me if Oliver is in love with his patients. He works as a pediatrician and they are underage.

Do not ask me about health issues [both physical and mental]. These questions make me uncomfortable and I am not qualified to give advice or diagnoses.

Magic Anons (M/A!s) are welcome! As long as one is not currently in effect, you can send them to me.

Please don’t ask if you want a lollipop or if he has a certain type of lollipop. I get them constantly and it gets tiring responding to the same ask. To make things clear, he has most of the normal lollipop flavours that are sold at most stores (I.E. Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, apple, etc.)

Absolutely no asks about political/controversial/current events. This blog's main purpose is to entertain the followers.

Do not use my blog as a platform for arguments/education. If you would like to express your opinion about matters unrelated, find another platform to do so.

Do not ask for art requests or art trades. If you are interested in my art, my commissions are open. My commission info can be found on my art blog @wolfyfloofs. You may also DM me on this blog.

Do not repost or edit my art without my permission. Rules may be modified in the future!

#rules #cos these last asks have been so tiring lately

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yourinternetmarketingguide · 5 years ago

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The perfect Real Estate Website to Use

With thousands of Real Estate websites you can get, finding the right one can be challenging. Do a search on Google and also get hit with the most popular Real Estate websites, like Zillow, Trulia, and Refine. Once you get past the first page sometimes the less popular sites now have the same home browse features. So how does a home owner or home patron to know what site is best. Before you choose you first need to know a little more about how they all started and what they really are. For several years if you were in the market to buy a home you had to go to any nearby Real Estate office in the area you wanted to buy a home through and ask to see a list of homes for sale. This list was the print out of the homes for sale from the local Multiple Listing service (MLS). Typically the list gave you basic information about the homes as well as marketing remarks. You scanned through it and then sought after an agent to show you the homes you thought you would possibly like. This was great for Real Estate agents because as harbors for this information, the buyers had to come to them. It also gifted the agent a chance to show the homes that the ingredient themselves were listing first. For the buyer this wasn't so good. It was hard for the buyer to tell if the realtor was there to represent them or the seller given that they wanted to look at homes in more than one town some might have to go to other Real Estate offices to see list as a result of other MLS's. These lists could also be out of date and when you will did find the home of your dreams it may already possibly be sold. This process could take a long time and be stressful just for even the most seasoned buyer. Fast forward a decade or maybe two and some important changes have happened. The MLS went digital and consolidated into larger MLS vendors that covered even larger areas. Here in Western Washington we now use The North West Multiple Listing service (NWMLS) and it handles all but two counties; Clark and Clallam. In the 90's the internet brought the first Real Estate websites. Most of these showed typically the homes listed by the agent/agencies that owned the website not to mention were not updated very often. Some of the bigger Real Estate agencies, those who had the money and resources, started building home looks tools using data directly from the MLS. Now, for those first time, buyers do not have to talk to an agent to find homes for sale and will get even more information (pictures, schools, map locations or higher to date status). Nowadays the price of producing these high quality website pages has come down to the point where the average agent with the ideal skills can build their own. We now see an exploding market of Real Estate websites and it seems most of them have residential search features. This leaves buyers confused on which web-site to use. Now that buyers can get information from just about any Realty website, what should they know before picking one? First of all, here in Washington State any licensed agent can reveal and represent you on any home listed about the MLS no matter what website you find it on. Most of these webpages have a mobile application or are mobile friendly. Alot of buyers begin their home search on the internet what they don't understand is without a doubt that that website you use to look at homes is a list size tool for the agent. The buyer is trading their call information for the use of the website. This is not a bad thing. Any time you really want to buy a home then you will need your questions clarified, help finding financing, an agent to open doors for everyone, someone who understand the paperwork and can help you using the negotiations, and a trusted agent to look out for you from the closing process. That can only happen when you talk to a real estate agent. Which agent you get is the important part. And that's whereby finding the right website comes in to play. The buyer should utilize these websites to find out more about the agent they might want to characterize them. Finding out more about the agent before getting knowledgeable about an agent is the key to achieving your goals regarding or selling a home. What you should be looking for is the things the agent's experience is in Real Estate? Do they perform full time as a licensed Real Estate agent? What is their closing achieving success rate? Do they guarantee their services? What achieve past clients have to say about the agent's service? All of these questions can sometimes be found on the agent's website but if not you might want to ask on the first contact with an agent. Now that you know where did they started and what they are, how do you choose the right website available for you? First, let's talk about the differences in these ınternet sites. We can break it down to four types. The first style is the big non brokerage sites like Zillow, Properties. com, Realtor. com and Trulia. These sites do not own agents working in the field. What they do will be sell the leads that register on their site for you to agents who hope to convert the lead into a client. These website have worked hard to make sure home buyers come across their site first. They have added a lot of nice devices that estimate home values or mortgage calculators and also all the information they can get on just about every home in the US and some other sorts of countries. They get most of this information from public track record and what some home owners may give them. The down side to this to these sites is that the information they employed can be out of date or inaccurate. Take the home values for example , because they get the sold data (what homes in the exact neighborhood sold for) from public records not the local THE LOCAL MLS their numbers can be behind the market trends. In the world regarding Real Estate we only look back to the last six months for helping us determine the value of a home. While the sale rate of a home may go in the public record right within closing, it can take months to filter through the system prior to these websites can encompass it into their data and also will throw their numbers off. There is also a question with regards to like kind homes. When a Real Estate agent or appraiser really does a comparable market analysis (CMA) of a home's importance, they look for homes just like the subject home (the place that is being valued) same size, same bedrooms, equivalent baths, same size property, same neighborhood and very same condition. This can be a bit of an art and the question is will be able to a computer do as good a job as an agent? This can set out buyers and home sellers confused about the true worth of a home. I would like to take this opportunity to weigh on on home values. In a free market, like ours here in the US, the true value of a home is exactly "the highest price a buyer is willing to pay as well as least amount a seller is willing to take" for just about any property. It is only when a property is sold that the true selling price can be set and everyone else, Real Estate Agent, Appraisers, County Assessors and any website, is only making an estimate as well as guess. The second type of Real Estate websites are the big plus medium size brokerages like Re/Max, Windermere, Coldwell Bank, Century 21, RedFin and ZipRealty. These companies have a number of brokerages in many locations throughout the US. These Real Estate suppliers have agents who work for the brokerages directly, normally as independent contractors. Leads or potential customers who signup on their sites are assigned out to the individual professional or sometimes sold depending on the companies polices. These companies make a large part on the agent's commission or pay, through some of them taking 60% or more. This means the agent should work harder to convert as many leads to customers as they can be just to make enough money to stay in business. Sometimes all these agents take on more than they can reasonably handle leading to very poor customer service or a higher transaction failure rate. Some of these providers give the buyer a rebate. This rebate comes out from the agent's commission and can make it even harder for providers to provide good service to their customers. I have heard loads of complaints about agents that disappeared once a commitment is signed or agents that refuse to show real estate to buyers that are looking at homes in the lower end of your market yet they still want to write up the written agreement and get paid a commission. The third type of Real Estate websites is the small or independent brokerages. These companies are usually had and operated by seasoned agents who have the proficiency and knowledge to build a good quality website and provide decent service to buyers and sellers alike. You will find an identical home search tools and email notifications as within the big sites and because these sites serve localized communities, many times these sites have more information about the locations they serve and consumers can read more around the agents that they may want to use in buying or selling their homes. They then can have one or more agents working together as a team or possibly as independent agents and usually have a higher successful ending rate. What makes these sites the best choice for home individuals or sellers is the agents that come with them. The 4 . type of Real Estate website is the independent agent website. All these websites are built by the individual agent or a third party on the part of the agent. They can be as good as any of the bigger commercial websites depending on the skill, time and money an agent is ready to put into it. These agents can be very good agents but still most of them are little more than one page public resumes put out by agents hoping to attract buyers and / or sellers to the agent it is promoting. So in taking into consideration a Real Estate website, buyers and sellers should take into account a website is not going to help you buy or sell your home, oahu is the Real Estate agent. The website is a way of seeking out the right agent to try the job. Think of it this way, since you can get the properties information from just about every website now what value presently getting from a website? The value is in the service you can get from an agent who may save you time, money as well as keep you from the heartache of a bad deal or perhaps bad service.

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schalaasha · 5 years ago

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Top 20 Games of the Decade

Hi, I felt like writing about my top 20 games of the decade because I kept thinking about it. This is a semi-ranked list, but I decided not to throw numbers into the mix since, really, outside of the top 2, I can’t think of how to rank the games prior to them. I also commissioned hyiroaerak (@/HRAK__S2 on twitter, https://hyiroaerak.weebly.com/work.html) for art to commemorate this occasion. Our characters are cosplaying as characters from our games of the decade!

Mega Man 10

I actually like Mega Man 10 more than Mega Man 9 out of the two platformer revival games in this series. Though a bit of background on this: Mega Man 4 is my favourite, and I prefer the games that are not 2, 6, 7, or 11, so I suppose that contextualises this for others. Either way, despite it not having weapons that were as useful as Mega Man 9’s, I felt like 10’s level design and pacing worked more for me in my favour. Though I’m saying that as someone who liked the double fortress design in earlier games so that might invalidate how I feel.

Time Attack mode from Mega Man 9 returns as well as Proto Man (but he’s unlockable right off the bat). It also has a proper Challenge Mode compared to Mega Man 9’s challenges, whereby challenges for certain levels or bosses are unlocked when you actually do it in the main game. Being able to play as Proto Man off the bat allows for the fluidity Mega Man had in 3 and beyond by letting you slide and use charged shots. I personally liked being able to play as Proto Man off the bat as while he has the 3 and beyond advantages for his moveset, he is a glass cannon and you still have to watch where you’re going.

I feel like the levels were a little better designed and if I needed more of a challenge, Hard Mode was still there to cut my teeth on. I liked the colour schemes throughout the level maps a lot more than 9’s as well. The bosses felt particularly gripping and trading blows with them fit into a nice rhythm.

It has more content than Mega Man 9 and I had a lot more fun with 10 than I did with either 9 or 11. The formula itself is pretty static compared to other Mega Man games, but I like simple things. Why fix what isn’t broken? It’s just a nice piece of cake at the end of the day and that’s all I really want.

Trauma Team / HOSPITAL: 6人の医師

When I started university for the first time in 2006, I was pre-med. I eventually got sick and tired of the politics and people in the program (ie: folks saying they only wanted to go to med school so they can get rich or make friends with pharma reps who might give them perks), and I left the program to pursue program majors and a minor to prepare me for speech-language pathology instead.

We had a Wii in our student lounge. My main university campus wasn’t exactly big and a lot of the people who hung out in the student center were kind of cliquey. I think I had the benefit of being really good friends with one of the guys who was the biggest social butterflies at the school so I got to meet a lot of people or get involved with stuff if I felt like it. So that meant I got to play with other students in games or wi-fi sessions during classes or after classes if I didn’t have to commute home right away.

Because almost everyone I knew at my school wanted to go into medicine, everyone played the Trauma series. Some kids played Under the Knife during class. Some kids played Second Opinion on the Wii in the student lounge. Some kids played New Blood. This was before like… Farmville took over everyone’s computers at the time.

Trauma Team came out way after that, and some of us were either graduating or staying in school an extra year because we didn’t know what to do after the recession or knew what to do but needed extra courses for graduate school. So the Wii was free to use. I don’t think people hooked it up as often anymore anyway. By 2010, a lot of us who had met each other in first year decided to go our separate ways, not even in the same majors or programs anymore. A lot of us either branched out into research, psychology, neurology (like me), kinesiology, epidemiology, forensics, genetics, etc. So Trauma Team for the rest of us who were still there was a good fit.

Trauma Team took some influences from the 2009 Swine Flu pandemic considering that was when the development phase occurred. Now, I live in Canada, and Canada was one of the focal points for the 2003 SARS outbreak. This was when health bodies in the country decided to make some changes to how they respond to potential pandemics. A lot of things they tell medical students or any students studying health policy (like I was at the time) emphasized how different parts of the hospital or medical or health care staff need to work together in order to care for a patient. I actually find the different professions involved in Trauma Team useful and a reflection of what my class of 2010/2011 became later on (a lot of us graduated in 2011 and took an extra year).

Diagnostics and Forensics were what I was really interested in since they don’t play the same as surgery/emergency medicine since they played out like a point-and-click. Later on in life, I had to look at so many medical reports and radiology reports and file them but by then I realised what my patients had but I can’t tell them myself since I’m not a doctor. But Trauma Team gave me a chance to do so and practice my terminology as a student. A friend of mine, who ended up becoming a doctor at a hospital in Toronto, really enjoyed endoscopy since it merely involved using the Wiimote as an endoscope and the nunchuk to steer. A lot of us played co-op too.

The difficulty in Trauma Team, I felt, was decreased from previous games. But that doesn’t really spoil it. It was a varied game and it looks fantastic. It’s a shame that the game style hasn’t been replicated or given a sequel in later years, because while I’m older and my classmates are doing completely different things and I haven’t seen some of them in years, I’d love to take a stab at these types of games with a well-practiced laboratory technologist’s hand.

Sonic Colours

I think it goes without saying. My first community when I joined the old forum was the Sonic community. Just a bunch of people who were interested in talking about Sonic so much in almost every thread that we ended up making a community thread together. I don’t post in the new forum everyone is at but I still talk to mostly everyone via different social mediums.

I wasn’t around when Sonic Colours came out but I think I remember reading the joy everyone felt when nearly universally everyone in that thread seemed to really like Sonic Colours. I remember the thread title still. I preordered Sonic Colours because apparently previews were saying it was… good? I didn’t bother playing Sonic Unleashed until after I’d joined the forum, but hearing Sonic Colours would be a return to form since I was one of those people who didn’t adjust well to the 3D games made me interested.

Sonic Colours is everything I wanted from a 3D Sonic game. Or rather, a 3D version of a platformer. I didn’t really like where 3D platformers were going because they were hard to look at, hard for me to pay attention to, and to be honest I got dizzy while playing a lot of them since you’re expected to work in a 3D space as opposed to a 2D space so it was really hard for me to process. I really like the hybrid nature of the level designs that’s where Sonic Colours got me.

Sonic Colours isn’t without its hangups: some of the levels are really short; existing mostly for ranking/getting red rings. Sonic’s jump is pretty floaty. The script is fairly short even if the jokes can be funny. Bosses are reused. Sonic Colours is not a perfect game, but the attempts it made were fantastic enough in its own right.

The music continues to be great, but the areas are visual spectacles. Whatever you think of the series, it’s fairly undeniable that the games try to have style. From the lighting, to posing, to setpieces, to colours used in assets in the level design – Sonic has always had really great ideas. Sonic Colours is no exception – areas like Aquarium Park, Planet Wisp, and Sweet Mountain have a variety of neat level ideas and they look good trying to execute it. From popcorn on the floor to one of the best darned water levels in all of video games due to the drill wisp, to a fresh take on a grassy knoll with beautiful music, Sonic Colours can bring tears to your eyes because of what it attempts. Terminal Velocity Act 2 is also one of my favourite parts of the Uncolourations games partially because it’s a well-executed setpiece, but it also showed me that maybe those 3D racing bits aren’t that bad.

The bosses may be really easy, and the final boss ends far sooner than it should before it could perfectly execute its Kamen Rider reference, but I think the point was to fully enjoy the theme park that Sonic Team threw at you this time.

In 2020 I like to say that out of all of the Uncolourations games, Sonic Unleashed is my favourite due to the balance it struck and its presentation/artstyle, and basically having one of the best soundtracks of the previous decade. But I recognise everything that Sonic Colours brought to the table. If it wasn’t for Sonic Colours, I wouldn’t be friends or acquaintances with so many people that I am with now.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Have you ever played a game that made you feel warm and toasty? Canadian winters can be really cold, you know.

When I lived at my old run-down house, my old room didn’t have good insulation. Whenever it got cold, my room got really cold. I had my own personal heater because we didn’t really have a good heating system in my room either. So I only wore flannel pyjamas, wrapped myself in faux-wool blankets all the time, and went to sleep covered in at least four quilts or comforters (which is something I still do out of habit sorry). I used to make hot choco every day because it was just so cold in my room.

I love Kirby’s Epic Yarn. Kirby’s Epic Yarn makes me feel warm and toasty inside because I think of being wrapped up in yarn and sheets and scarves and I just feel so happy. There are so many pastels used in KEY’s earlier stages that I can’t help but to feel toasty and happy when I’m playing it. It’s not the most challenging game. The game is really easy and all you mostly do is collect furniture, music, beads, and parts of the results wheel in every level, but I don’t think that’s the point of it. The point is just to have fun. Watching Kirby turn into a car to sprint, watching him turn into a little parachute or transform during those vehicle bits, you just can’t help but to feel so enveloped by the cute.

Being able to interact with cloth by pulling a loose button and releasing something, taking off tags, pulling on stray thread, spin balls of yarn… it feels so fulfilling because it’s a clever use of the medium. It’s exactly what you’d do if you’re stitching or knitting. Placing furniture around Kirby’s little apartment makes the Animal Crossing fan in me so happy.

I appreciate the lengths Good-Feel went to producing the level designs. They took photos of the fabric they bought and created the graphics that way. The music is calm and relaxing, with lots of woodwind and piano and lighter sounding instruments. The entire game feels so soft and sweet. It’s a visually-impressive game since everything animates incredibly fluidly.

Cuphead

Like anyone my age or older, I grew up watching a lot of older cartoons by Max Fleischer with watercolour backgrounds, hand-drawn characters with a lot of focus on expressions, rotoscoping, etc Lots of slapstick and musical scores out of that decade. I would have never believed I’d play a video game that looks like that but here we are playing Cuphead this decade.

Cuphead is a blend of that artstyle with older run and gun style games. It combines a gunning experience with puzzles, reflexive actions, and dying… and dying a lot. And learning. Underneath it’s cartoony and child-friendly veneer lies a game that is unrelentingly difficult. There aren’t really any checkpoints in the game save for one. You can’t regain lost health. It’s just you versus the game. You may spend hours on one single level learning everything about it. And you can’t beat the game until you finish off every other level on regular difficulty.

Different levels have different forms: they can be run and guns á la Contra, which are actually, oddly enough, breathing room levels. They’re probably the “easiest” levels in the game. Other types of levels can be straight up shmup-like boss fights where you’re flying in a plane. They can be hard as a regular shmup.

The best crafted types of levels are the ones that include platforming as part of their boss battles because they use the artstyle and ideas involved in the art piece as interesting platforming mechanics. You have a more limited control scheme but the scenario you’re involved in is really interesting and unique. You fight a woman in a play and the setpieces in the play change according to how far you are in the boss fight, for example. The game also has a parry mechanic whereby you can double-jump off of anything that’s coloured pink and fill your super meter in order to kill bosses faster. The parry cues change per boss so it’s really cool to see what they look like every time you encounter something new.

I think while Cuphead can be utterly unforgiving, I think it should be experienced at least once for how much work was put into making things look so fluid and how creative every boss and level can be. It’s what I wanted the UBIart framework to eventually evolve into. I think the game’s aesthetics and sound are its own reward in addition to that feeling when you finally conquer That One Boss.

Asura’s Wrath

Asura’s Wrath was a game I was incredibly iffy on even buying at all. I heard about how the ending was part of paid DLC, that the game didn’t have a lot of gameplay, and that it was incredibly unremarkable. I don’t think I had a remarkably low bar or anything for this, but I decided to purchase it on the cheap.

Asura’s Wrath definitely isn’t a game for everyone, and I feel as though it’s an acquired taste. The main character’s art might not jive well with everyone, the lack of ‘play’ will probably deter some folks, and its episodic nature/final chapter unlock sequence would probably get on people’s nerves. With that said, at first, it seems to be an action-cinematic game without necessarily expanding on the “action” part. A lot of it at first seems to be a bunch of QTEs to move the narrative along, with the narrative not necessarily being that strong in the first place. I think that’s due in part to the game’s structure initially. The first few chapters and the first act truly don’t seem very remarkable. The Buddhist and Hindu aspects of the game are very obvious and very central to the game’s plot, but at the same time, they don’t seem to be specifically mentioned whenever someone talks about the game to me. The Asuras were not one singular character or a god, but a race of warlike beings exhibiting wrath and pride. They were incorporated into Hinduism and Buddhism through their mention in The Rigveda. With that said, I was continually impressed by how many references—whether it was mere mention of regular terms/concepts/people, the artstyle and inclusions of things like lacquer skin, mandorlas, Vajras and Pretas, and also Siddham script—was included in this game. Asura’s Wrath ended up feeling incredibly natural and a nice way of shedding some light on non-Judeo-Christian religions.

Anyway, I genuinely liked that the game felt like a playable anime. I don’t feel like the game would be as effective if it were put into another genre, or were less cinematic. It ends up getting its message across with its carefully-researched artstyle, great scene direction, well-composed music, and penchant for feeling like it was a fantastic shounen anime. I also feel like the game has more combo-based gameplay than people give it credit for. A lot of the complexities come to the forefront on Hard mode, and going for S-ranks and finding ways to do that quickly and effectively on higher difficulty modes is always an interesting affair.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

I finished marathoning all of the Ace Attorney games in 2010. I don’t recall if I was doing it before Ghost Trick but I think what enticed me to get the game was its amazing animation. I hadn’t seen 2D sprites move that fluidly in a very long time. Characters have exaggerated movements, exaggerated dances (ie: the panic dance), and they have big flashy gestures to show off the game’s animation engine.

You’re introduced to all sorts of eccentric characters, many of whom don’t overstay their welcome (Circus case from AA2, I’m looking at you). You have a desk lamp, a doggo, a dancing detective, a little girl who’s the focal point for one episode, etc. Everyone’s dialogue is relatively snappy, their expressions and animations make them stand out from others, and due to how everything is presented right down to the character art portraits, everything just jumps off the screen.

Because you’re a spirit with amnesia, you’re given the ability to go through time, and also the ability to through environments by hopping from object to object and possessing them in order to influence what happens in the past to save people in the present. This is just a path to trying to figure out who you really are or to find who or what killed you. A lot of the gameplay revolves around trying to figure out which objects to manipulate and when in order to influence an outcome. It makes the game partially point and click, but also partially a physics puzzler. I don’t think I remember a single object in the puzzle segments that was wasted. In other circumstances, you must manipulate time in order to save someone in their last four minutes.

If anything, I feel like Ghost Trick is a necessary inclusion simply because of its style and attention to detail, as well as its sort but sweet story where nothing overstays its welcome. Its soundtrack also feels similar. The game is fairly consistent and nothing really changes in terms of progression over most of the game. But I see that as a plus as opposed to a minus for the most part. It helps to bring the game to a compelling and surprising conclusion.

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood

I marathoned all of the Assassin’s Creed games in one year prior to Assassin’s Creed III since I wanted to see what the deal was with the series because the first game wasn’t that great from a play perspective for me. The thing that resonates the most with respect to Assassin’s Creed for me is marshmallow-flavoured birthday cake and a bag of regular Bugles. I started this marathon on one of my birthdays that decade.

Assassin’s Creed II is one of my favourite games out there, but Brotherhood adds so much to the formula despite its middling storyline compared to its predecessor. But that’s because most of Ezio’s growth happened in the previous game. He is a middle-aged man searching for the Apple of Eden, and while the story does not carry as much emotional impact, that isn’t exactly what I’m looking for with respect to the earlier AC games.

One of the things I absolutely love about the earlier AC games is its attention to detail even if it isn’t necessarily completely accurate. At first I missed the fact that I could explore many different towns like I could in AC2. But then I realised how big Rome and its surrounding area is. Rome is gigantic, and it has so much attention to detail with historical buildings everywhere (which you need to pay to rebuild), old tapestries from the era, citizens dancing in the streets, lovers flirting with each other behind pillars, etc. There are more roofs and buildings to parkour over and between. The game adds towards that require you to take over them before you can use them to gain access to vendors and things to renovate. You can also find the glyphs (much like the ones from the previous game) to solve puzzles in order to gain access to more lore.

I genuinely love the renovation aspect of this game. It’s more involved and a lot better than what the previous game tried to do with its economy. You renovate in order to gain access to shops, which in-turn generates income for you, and then you can renovate other stuff based on the income that you generate. It’s something that I’ve come to miss in later AC games. It felt a lot like a Suikoden game in some aspects.

Platforming missions return in the form of finding parts of a cult and cutting the beginnings of a conspiracy off by its limbs. They’re faster paced than AC2’s tombs and there is more variety in terms of what you platform through. I like both types equally since one allows you to marvel at the beauty of a cathedral, while the other allows you to clock a few folks while making your way through a lair.

In addition to the lairs, there are different types of missions for each faction that you forge alliances with, there are Da Vinci missions that involve new war toys and blowing things up in a scripted way. Assassin missions can vary in terms of how you carry out the assassins (albeit still scripted; improvisation was not a thing until ACUnity).

The crux of AC: Brotherhood is being able to recruit assassins to your cause. Random citizens throughout Rome may be under attack by Borgia soldiers, and once you save them, they are recruited to join your cause. You level them up, send them out on missions, improve their gear, and ask for their help when you can and when they’re available. This feature gets expanded upon in later AC games but it gets a very good start here.

Brotherhood is so full of content and a lot of little things that playing it for me makes it feel like comfort food for me. It may not have the best story and it certainly isn’t as memorable in that sense as its predecessor. But it’s so fun that I can’t help but to feel satisfied every time I turn it on.

Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

I played the original Pac-Man CE on 360 years ago at my cousin’s house, where they added a timer and a morphing maze to the base original game. I thought it was a neat novel thing at the time but didn’t think further.

Pac-Man CE DX adds more mazes and more mechanics and more modes to the championship edition base. It added sleeping ghosts where, if Pac-Man moves near them, they wake up and they chase him around the maze in a line until you can finally eat them all and rack up a huge score. You can also elect to use a bomb at a small expense in order to save yourself and send ghosts to the middle of the maze again. These changes assist in maintaining the game’s flow and it never makes a score attack daunting or boring.

Devouring big long conga lines of ghosts following you is so satisfying while you’re listening to a bumpin’ soundtrack and chilling out looking at the cool lights on the maze. Really and truly, while at its core, PMCEDX is a score attack game, it makes for a beautiful loving chill sensory experience and I couldn’t ask anything more from it.

Deadly Premonition / レッドシーズプロファイル

I think I, like a lot of people, was introduced to this game via the GB series. I didn’t have an Xbox 360 so I eventually imported the Japanese version for the PS3. The game’s dub was already in English; the text was in Japanese and it was pretty easy and reasonable to get through. Deadly Premonition actually the Guinness World Record winner for most critically polarizing horror video game since the reviews at the time were so all over the place. And yes, I will contend that Deadly Premonition is definitely not for everyone.

I am not the type of person to play shooters. I actually hate them a lot. I don’t like gushing blood in video games, and I don’t really like the act of murdering someone in a game. I used to play a lot of survival horror games when I was younger on the PS1 and PS2, but a lot of the time you’re dealing with the undead or oddball things going on around you so it’s not nearly as bad I think. It’s funny; I deal with people’s bodily fluids and body parts all the time in real life as part of my job (ie: I’ve had to help dissect someone’s stomach before fresh out of the operating room), and it doesn’t bother me. But the mere act of seeing it done or doing it, makes me feel squeamish. I don’t like it. I don’t even like watching blood being drawn from me or needles being stuck into me, even though I’ve done it to other people as part of my work.

For the most part, inexplicably, in Deadly Premonition, you’re dealing with the undead anyhow. I’m not the best person at shooters, but I certainly know what’s a good one and what isn’t. Deadly Premonition is not a very good shooter. It’s really janky. Some of the weapons don’t make sense in terms of how balanced they are. The controls are also really janky. This is not really a surprise considering the game’s strength wasn’t supposed to be its shooter aspects. In fact, those parts weren’t even supposed to be there.

Deadly Premonition is often cited as an artistic piece or a good game simply because of its story and character writing. It has an excellent main character who was cast almost perfectly. It has a lot of eccentric characters filling the town of Greenvale to help you solve the murder mystery or help obstruct it. The end result of having an unreliable narrator works out in the game’s favour. It helped sprout pop culture references, weird humour, quirky dialogue and more. I have certainly never watched Twin Peaks but I got the allusions either way since the show was so big. Slowly uncovering how every cast member lives their lives throughout the town and every day makes you more emotionally connected with them.

Greenvale is more of a sandbox than just a place where a crime is committed. You can play darts. You can race cars. You can do a ton of sidequests somewhere that will reward you elsewhere. You can collect trading cards??? You can carry some lady holding a pot everywhere? You can taste-test for one of your coworkers? You can do a lot of stuff that makes zero sense but I still end up enjoying it all anyway.

It looks like a PS2 or Dreamcast game or something and I almost found that utterly endearing in the era in which it was released. The soundtrack itself is so dissonant and doesn’t always fit the situation. Sometimes the sound mixing is so all over the place that it often results in making a scene more hilarious than it should be. There’s a song that’s just… American Idiot… on the soundtrack for some reason. Along the way, you start wondering “is this game real? Am I real? Is this really happening right now?” and yes, yes it is.

In the end, because of its cult success and getting people talking, it allowed Swery 65 to make more games. Deadly Premonition was lightning in a bottle for him. He followed up with D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die (unfortunately in limbo). He cowrote Lord of Arcana and Lord of Apocalypse. He recently released The Missing. If anything, I’m more interested in what he makes. I’m eagerly looking forward to The Good Life.

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors

Text/Puzzle-adventures, rather than pure visual novels, became a staple of some players’ libraries due in part of the popular Ace Attorney series, Professor Layton series, and whatever Mystery Case File games that were published by Nintendo. 999 is not a pure visual novel. It’s a puzzle adventure game with visual novel elements. With art by Kinu Nishimura and a story written by Kotaro Uchikoshi (who had a few visual novels under his belt), it was difficult for me to ignore this game. I was also at a point where I really wanted to get into a lot of the games that Aksys published so it was a natural choice to buy.

A lot of the localization and language in this game was edited so that while it stays true to the spirit of the original language, a lot of care was put into making the dialogue and writing sound natural in the English language versus going line by line exactly. It worked out in the game’s favour because the script was fairly large. Based on Uchikoshi’s past games, he likes to ask a question and generally incorporate some pseudoscience in his narratives. 999’s version of pseudoscience ended up being morphogenetic fields (see: Rupert Sheldrake). This theory ended up the basis for a few characters and it is the way the story unravels. He also took inspiration from another older game of Chunsoft’s: Banshee’s Last Cry where the player is put into an unsettling position right off the bat. Indeed, 999 starts the player in media res, but the player is already in trouble when you begin to control the main character.

The puzzles were added to the game so that it would be received well by a wider audience than just visual novel readers. They were naturally and seamlessly integrated into the experience that the game became almost wholly about the puzzle rooms and whatever flavour dialogue occurred during the puzzle rooms. A lot of inspiration seems to have been taken from browser-based escape games like the Crimson Room from 2004. Escape the Room games were a subgenre of point and click adventure games and it was nice seeing the concept integrated in a narrative experience that wasn’t Myst (see: http://www.fasco-cs.net/ for more information). Due to the puzzles being a fundamental part of the game’s story, with them getting more and more difficult, the final puzzle for the entire game at the end of the true route is both a relief and also incredibly impactful due to using both of the DS screens and also revealing a lot to the player about the narrative.

If I had criticism for the game, I feel like it would be having to play the game repeatedly, doing the same puzzles repeatedly in order to unlock another prerequisite ending for the true ending. I did not play the later port which rectifies this but I’m not entirely sure that being able to see the branches would be great for the game either. I also feel like, just like a lot of Uchikoshi’s writing and previous games, that when the characters start cracking jokes when they have to urgently do things to not die, the tone feels a little off.

With that said, 999 is one of the more compelling text/puzzle-adventures from last decade, and it uses its native platform to its advantage. There weren’t a lot of games that used the DS screens to convey a narrative properly but when you are faced with the revelation that the game was using the two screens for a remarkable reason, you feel like the game is a natural and powerful addition to any DS library and gives significance for the dual screens.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

The funniest thing about Metal Gear Rising was that I actually disliked it at the beginning when I first started playing it. I didn’t know what I was doing half the time, and I didn’t ‘get’ the parry mechanic. At first, I guess I was playing it for the sake of playing it? It definitely took me a while to even warm up to it. The camera was obnoxious (and still gets to be obnoxious in some places), and I felt incredibly nauseous while playing it sometimes.

It wasn’t until I got to the Mistral boss that I finally … found what I was looking for… I’m sorry. I’m serious, though. Metal Gear Rising truly shines during the boss battles. When I finished that particular boss battle, I’d reflected that I was smiling like an idiot the entire way through. I don’t think I’d fought satisfying boss battles in years prior to that. Returning to previous chapters told me that Platinum really likes to frame and teach players via trial by fire. Learn to parry yourself, here’s a test to see if you can parry well and you can get a trophy for it, here’s the final test to see if you can even parry (Monsoon). I loved that Metal Gear Rising threw a lot of what we knew about Metal Gear Solid out of the window, with a significantly interesting score, boss battles that centre around the climax of a battle (expertly done via excellent sound design as I noted in my SotY writeup this year), and a more interesting and personable version of Raiden. It relies far more on offense than defense and stealth, and that’s okay to me. It ends up separating Raiden even more from Snake.

The final boss is a love-it-or-hate-it sort of affair, and I ended up loving every single part of it. I felt like it was one of the best final bosses in years. Don’t know how to parry? You’re fucked. Don’t know how to use the game’s other offensive rush tactics like Defensive Offense and running? Good luck. The game makes sure you try to know how to do these things before even bothering to attempt the boss, with the major roadblock being Monsoon. And if you can’t parry by then, the game brutally tells you that you aren’t doing it right by making the boss battles ramp up to significantly require you to use one of the game’s core mechanics for elegant combat. This isn’t the most elegantly-designed game whatsoever. In fact, it can be really sloppy. With that said, it’s one of the better action games I played all decade.

Papers, Please!

Papers, Please is work. It feels like work because it is work. You can grant freedom and admittance to people, or you can just take their freedom away or not permit them to cross the border. Everything you do is controlled by the government, or by rules and regulations. If you do something wrong, you’re written up. Do enough wrong, and your pay is cut. Do enough wrong and your pay is cut multiple times, and you can’t provide enough for your family. Everything about the game just feels like work. Even right down to the end of the day when the whole thing feels like a budget calculation and spreadsheets. Everything about the game’s UI feels a lot like work. Where do you allocate space to do your job? How much money do you allocate to heat/food/medicine? It ends up feeling very tedious, but somehow fulfilling.

You are an immigration officer in a fictional Soviet state. The interesting part of the game is that it doesn’t only feel like a job, but it also feels like government and self-evaluation. You end up studying why the government keeps regulating the border the way they do, and thinking about how mundane the job can be. You know that people’s livelihood and family lives hinge on whether or not they cross the border, and sometimes your penchant for following the rules and disallowing people across the border may be called into question when people plead with you to go through. Do you accept docked pay so you can reunite people or save people from slavery, or do you do as you’re told and live with the consequences of your actions. In a small way, your ethics are called into question. It’s a nice reminder that a lot of things, despite people being people and having their own stories, generally seem to come down to bureaucracy and pieces of paper as opposed to a full understanding of humanity or extenuating circumstances.

I’d also like to add that Jorji is one of the best characters of 2013 to me. I think his glass half-full philosophy / if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again philosophy is something to look forward to whenever I encounter him in-game.

In many ways, Papers, Please feels a lot like the Milgram experiment. Are you going to make cruel judgement calls to separate a family, or keep people in slavery because the authorities and higher-ups essentially tell you to do your job so you can keep your family healthy? Papers, Please in many ways is written incredibly well. It doesn’t use reams of text to make you understand the overall premise of the game but through your actions, you’re also helping to tell the story. That’s the sort of weird and wonky player “agency” that I find interesting.

World of Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy series had a better decade than the last decade, I feel, considering the quantity of releases increase from the previous decade. However, it had a lot of growing pains to deal with at the beginning of the decade. Final Fantasy games sell well all the time, and more people playing games than ever, it makes sense that sales numbers continuously increase. Attach rates aren’t as large. Final Fantasy XIV came out in 2010 and it was not a good game at all to the point of having to be structured for its 2013 re-release. Final Fantasy XIII had mixed reviews, as well as its subsequent direct sequels. Final Fantasy All the Bravest wasn’t exactly the best mobile debut for the series. The brand also suffered from dilution – the Final Fantasy name was attached to almost anything and everything for the sake of sales, and numerous spinoffs were released and the quality varied.

Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII, originally planned to be part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis setting with Final Fantasy XIII were renamed and rebranded/redesigned to be their own titles: Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy Type-0. Both games also had mixed reviews and multiple delays. If anything, I can probably say that this decade was the most divisive for Final Fantasy fans.

World of Final Fantasy came out during the same year Final Fantasy XV. I think I’ve made my feelings about Final Fantasy XV fairly well-known. Perhaps my feelings about that game influenced how I felt about World of Final Fantasy but as someone who has played this series for decades (for reference: the first game is one year older than I am, and my first Final Fantasy was the first game), I felt like World of Final Fantasy was a love letter written to fans like me. I am a long-standing fan of the series over the course of decades and have been through its up and downs, and while I don’t like every game in the series (we all know how I feel about half of the games in the series, after all), I can still look at them for their influence on the rest of the series. I also like the newer games equally as the older games and dislike and like games from all of the eras, so I don’t really have issues with how the series is represented in general unless the games are really bad.

World of Final Fantasy feels like a Kingdom Hearts-esque exploration of the Final Fantasy games while throwing Pokemon into the mix. It involves a lot of older references as well as bringing new references in and throwing it into a presentation mode that fans of all ages can enjoy. The main characters are chibi which fits right into how the older games represented characters, but they can also grow taller to represent how the newer games are represented. You can create stacks of party members according to their height and balance well accordingly out of classic Final Fantasy enemies and characters in order to battle against other classic Final Fantasy characters, villains, and monsters.

The game is exactly what I wanted a mainline Final Fantasy to look. It retains a cartoony look, embracing stylization while adding so much detail to the areas’ setpieces so that they also stand out while the characters move around on the map. I also felt like the score was also a brilliant blend of old and new: with Masashi Hamauzu composing the score but also remixing older Uematsu themes to fit within the context of the score. The score was loftier compared to Hamauzu’s older works and the strings, synth, and piano works incredibly well to bring the game’s world to life.

The idea for WoFF was to try to bring younger fans into the fold, hence the Pokemon-like influence for using and rearing many classic FF enemies so that children could start to recognise them. The loftier script was also written in-mind taking into account both lighter storytelling from older FF titles and some darker bits taking into account newer Final Fantasy games. I’m not too sure that SE was very successful with bringing younger fans into the fold, but the way the game was written fit well with what I remember liking about FF for the first few games I had played. I also enjoyed that characters were chosen for their involvement to the plot versus them simply picking the most popular ones. This is why we got characters like Eiko and Shelke as well as regular FF mainstays. All of the characters were woven into the story well, as citizens of Grymoire as opposed to characters who just have their regular identities transported into Grymoire instead.

I felt like the Pokemon mechanic was handled well. I even loved it enough to have the idea commissioned in combination with our FFXIV characters. I liked that it changed up whatever skills you had access to, it influenced your stats, and it looked adorable to boot.

I would absolutely love to see a mainline game made by this team because I felt like the loose style of storytelling and worldbuilding made for a very good Final Fantasy game, and in essence, WoFF was the real Final Fantasy XV to me. It felt more “Final Fantasy” than a lot of the games released in the same decade, or even compared to ones released in the previous decade. It was a nice step and touch to demonstrating that there were staff members who remembered what Final Fantasy is to older fans.

Va-11 Hall-A

I’m too young to have a big attachment to older PC games like the ones on the MSX or the PC-88/98. But I’ve always had a fondness for their graphics and their music, like sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong time or something. It’s one of the reasons why I gravitated hard to the PC Engine—I felt like it was a way for me to finally experience stuff like that.

Valhalla is supposed to be a bartending simulator but in reality, mixing drinks is a bit of a break and distraction between the visual novel bits. Usually if you’re stuck in a futuristic landscape akin to Bubblegum Crisis or Blade Runner, you’re asked to investigate a mystery or explore it. But nope, you’re a bartender making drinks and making enough to scrape by and pay your rent. You hear a lot about the world from various clientele while you serve them drinks but you don’t necessarily have to do anything with the information they give you.

I worked as a medical administrator for a few years and over that time, I got to hear a lot of stories, meet some famous people (like been on TV people or youtubers or people who got paid to do things for celebrities), and just meet a lot of neat and interesting regular people. I got to hear stories about people’s health or their personal lives or witness people falling in or out of love. You don’t necessarily have to do anything with that information (in fact you can’t due to patient confidentiality), but the stories become sealed in your head. I can’t help but to think of some of these people I met for those few years or where they are now. I actually run into some of them at my current lab so I keep getting to see some of their stories. You eventually learn how quickly icebreak in situations like these to make people feel at ease or find a topic of conversation while they’re waiting. I even used my phone to gauge news because a lot of the time when I got home, I was too tired to do anything or getting news in the palm of my hand was incredibly easy to do.

In this sense, I understood Valhalla. It may look dull and it doesn’t look special but you’re the one who makes it so that it doesn’t have a dull moment in the bar. You’re the one who has to make it enjoyable even if your pay sucks. Because you don’t want to be miserable either. It’s through the conversations with others that you learn about Jill because she has to add commentary too. Everyone has a different way of requesting something and it’s up to you to figure out how to decipher it. It’s a lot of like practice in being in the service industry. You need to consistently gauge a conversation in order to actually give the client what they want to unlock more conversation.

The pacing in this game may be a little slow, but it doesn’t feel like a hindrance because the writing is really good. Something always happens to keep you interested or you have to mix drinks to keep yourself on your toes. The humour comes across well, and nothing really falls flat. Part of the reason why I feel like the writing is genuine is because the game’s developers wanted to write something that reflected how they live in Venezuela, akin to laughter in the middle of despair according to the developers. The writing is balanced well with the music and the visuals which makes the whole package a wonderful experience.

This game also has Rad Shiba so it belongs on the list by default.

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

I had gone to Catholic Schools all my life. I was even in a nursery school operated by nuns when I was a toddler, and they always tried to get me to write with my right hand instead of my left (which left me ambidextrous for some things lol). Because of my experiences with religion growing up, I absolutely had questions and doubts and concerns with metaphysics, theology, and epistemology. Every Catholic, I think, as they grow up and have to take religion classes, and having to take what the province mandates as metaphysics are somehow inserted into math and biology syllabi without even being mentioned in the coursework at all, questions it. And that’s okay. You should. The best religion and philosophy teacher I ever had growing up always said we should question everything we learn including what he taught us.

Going through school, though, and reading the Bible and having Bible study, my friends and I always sorta wondered what it’d be like if a game was made about this stuff? I know it may be a little sacrilegious but there are so many stories in there that would fit a game. Throughout my life, as I became acquainted with others from different branches of Christianity or other western religions, I talked with others who played games who… surprisingly had the same ideas and desires? It probably won’t ever be done. El Shaddai is inspired by the Book of Enoch and while it is considered as non-canon in most Christian and Jewish sects, I guess it might come close to what some of us wanted.

El Shaddai was a game that I picked up mostly because I bought almost every niche game back then. I just looked at some of the trailers, thought it looked just okay, and picked it up because I felt like Ignition was going out of business and it would be a novelty item. Ignition did not have the best reputation among the people I talked to back then. I played Lux-Pain whose localization left a lot to be desired. Nostalgia was a middling RPG. Arc Rise Fantasia’s localization left a lot to be desired despite being a good game. Deadly Premonition had an English dub already but the text localization wasn’t that great. I felt like El Shaddai was the most polished game that Ignition released. They got incredibly great voice actors, including Jason Isaacs. They developed a score attack combo ranking system for replayability. They had a fantastic art director and background art. They made two bishounen that screamed for female audiences to pay attention.

All of it didn’t exactly work out for the time the game came out, and I always contended that the game was released before its time. Unfortunately, all the effort put into El Shaddai didn’t exactly save Ignition. I feel like if El Shaddai were released in the later half of the decade, it would have been accepted. However, I also feel like its marketing was mishandled. It doesn’t feel like a Devil May Cry successor. It shifts between genres continuously. It is very much like Nier in this regard: it is not for everyone and it has its own unique feel that sets it apart from other games. It is also a score attack action game, not a hard character action game.

One thing I really enjoyed about El Shaddai was that all of the setpieces aren’t exactly the same. It ranges from a watercolour painting to abstraction to 2D children art to more abstraction to Final Fantasy VII and keep going like that. It references rhythm games, 2D Platformers, racing games, action games, Devil May Cry (with its own brand of Devil Trigger to boot), and other genres to create something that syncs up very well with the rest of the game due to lore reasons: different enemies prefer different things so that’s why each environment looks different or the gameplay styles may be a little different. I’m okay with this because it shakes things up per chapter and the game doesn’t feel stale at all. You’re expected to adjust to new mechanics per area.

The combat is a lot like Rock-Paper-Scissors, where certain weapons beat other weapons, or some bosses change which weapons they’re weak against (and the game gives you other weapons so you can adjust accordingly during fights). The weapon you wield also modify your platforming abilities (ex: one allows Enoch to dash, one weighs him down, etc), and they also vary in terms of character strength. In order to obtain G-rankings for each stage, the player needs to analyse which weapon would be the most useful for certain enemies and combo while guarding, guard-breaking, and stealing enemies’ weapons.

I am putting El Shaddai on this list because I really enjoyed it for what it was. It’s a brilliant score attack action game with a fantastic soundtrack and fantastic art design. It made for a pleasant sensory experience and made some religious figures fairly compelling with good character designs. It’s definitely one of the most rewarding and prettiest score attack games I’ve played this decade.

To the Moon

Everyone goes through life with regrets. I’m in my thirties now and I think I’ve done things I’ve regretted, or I didn’t other to do something and I’ve regretted that. Kan Gao was inspired by his grandfather’s illness when he was writing and making To the Moon, he’s noted that when he gets old and when his time would come, he might end up regretting some decision he’d made throughout his entire life. Everyone goes through that when faced with introspection. You can have the courage to love, you can feel pain, you can live your life fully, or not live it enough. To the Moon explores this, and while the writing isn’t the best and can be a little messy (this gets improved on in Gao’s later sequels to this game: A Bird Story and Finding Paradise), I understand what To the Moon was trying to accomplish. To the Moon is an exploration of everything that life throws at us, and the results of the decisions made throughout our lives that touches everyone and everything around us until our time passes.

Eventually you build up so many wishes and have a big bucket list but eventually there will come a time where you won’t remember why half of those things are on those lists. To the Moon relates the story of Johnny Wyles, an elderly man on his deathbed with one wish: to go to the moon. The problem is that he could not remember why. The general flow of Gao’s games have involved two scientists from Sigmund Corp, specialising in wish fulfillment at the end of someone’s life, creating memories for people in their final moments to generate comfort for the patient. How ever you may feel about the moral implications of generating false memories for someone prior to their end of life, this is merely a set up for traveling through time to understand what the patient had wanted and what they’d accomplished.

Johnny’s character revolves around another character with an ASD. I will also note that my brother has autism (compounded with a multisystem syndrome). While the central focus was on Asperger’s Syndrome (Tony Attwood books being mentioned in the game), I’m a little happy that ASDs are being brought up in games and the game truly hit home for me. The writing may not be stellar, but I felt that the theme of the impact of medical disorders was communicated well. Particularly the theme of why communication and connections with others is so difficult for those with ASDs and those who take care of those who have ASDs. It’s easy to sympathize with the characters trying to express what they mean to each other.

The game itself is relatively short. Regardless of its length, players must confront some uncomfortable situations and emotions that people struggle with daily or even at different points in our lives. I’m older now and I appreciate this game a little more since I’ve come to experience more of what the game had been trying to tell me a decade ago. The writing may not be the best, and it can be a little messy at times with respect to how it’s presented and written, but a lot of its messages come across as utterly genuine. Slowly unraveling the reasoning behind Johnny’s desire to go to the moon is beautiful. This game is quite human and I appreciate all three games that are a part of this subseries that came out this decade. I am looking forward to more.

Nier Gestalt

If you’ve played a Drakengard game or the first Nier game at all, you kind of know what you’re getting into. Not the best graphics of the decade, plays pretty janky, having bosses that can be difficult to manage, etc. So going into Nier Gestalt in 2010, I knew what I was getting into. Not a lot of people bothered playing this game since I don’t think it got as much promotion considering it came out during the same year a mainline Final Fantasy game got localized. Nier also got a little scrutiny since the west got a different protagonist from the Japanese version. I will say that this worked out in its favour, since the protagonist being one of the central character’s father versus her brother makes for a better, more interesting story than having yet another shounen protagonist.

I will support the case that, like the Drakengard games before it, Nier Gestalt was difficult to get into. The gameplay is jank. Easy is too easy. Normal doesn’t drop enough stuff to warrant playing on the mode. Hard can be a little hard but eventually it evens out. I generally used spears for the charge portion of the combo but in the end it doesn’t necessarily matter what weapon type you use. It doesn’t even matter if you use magic or not unless the game prompts you to do so. It’s either broken or not and the game doesn’t have a set balance for anything. Combos are boring and you’re essentially mashing a button. Even playing through the Nightmare DLC for extra drops, it continues being like this. I was used to playing shmups so it wasn’t necessarily revolutionary that AoE attacks looked as though they were spat out from a shmup either.

I wasn’t quite understanding why game started acquiring a cult following, because what I’d played of it was pretty boring and standard. “It’s just a regular ARPG starring an older character versus a young protagonist,” I said to myself. I guess that was the reason. I didn’t quite understand why, even past acquiring Kaine, because I guess I accepted that there weren’t a lot of NPCs and certain towns were the way they were due to, what I surmised were, RPG conventions. It wasn’t until I finished the questline for the brothers, where their mother tried to run away with a man and abandon her children, that I finally started to understand.

Within every substory, there was something that resonated with someone. I couldn’t fathom why someone would want to abandon their responsibilities, and at the same time I understood. Sometimes you just want to take care of yourself. With the way the older brother sort of understood why even through his anger and disappointment, it resonated with me. I finally ‘got’ the story, so I wanted to play more. This became one of those rare games where I played only for the story and lore and abandoned any hopes of the gameplay getting better. I fished, I upgraded weapons, I did enough sidequests for the trophies. I almost platinumed this game, but since the drop rates are so terrible for this game, I didn’t.

I started enjoying the game for what it was. It was genuinely a fun romp where it feels like everyone taking part in the game’s design contributed something unique and something they were fond of. If you read any interview from Emi Evans from this time period, you’d realise language is something she’s particularly fond of, so much of the composition and lyrical content of every song was a phoneme from any language that would make it sound like an evolved or a sort of Esperanto version of a current language. This came into play with the game’s lore, and many of the interviews were interesting to read from back then.

Many of the game’s stages borrowed from different genres of video games. There were the obvious shmup references, the rail shooter reference, the visual novel reference, the Resident Evil/fixed angle horror game reference, the Shadow of the Colossus references, the 2D platformer references, the Zelda references, the top-down puzzle game references, etc. For what the game lacked with respect to its combat, the game excelled at reliving genres and putting maps together in such a way that it felt like an ode to other games and genres that inspired it. The City of Façade’s language being a loose phoneme reconstruction of Japanese felt right at home with the dungeon’s Zelda references complete with Zelda fanfare for me. The Forest of Myth being one long visual novel was so hilarious and unique at the same time.

Playing more of the game and opening up the lore with every playthrough was neat. I don’t particularly like when games waste my time, but Nier made each new playthrough worth it. Killing bosses quickly for a trophy, redoing dungeons to see the enemies’ perspectives, and unlocking more of the story and learning more about the world that came from a Drakengard ending felt satisfying. As someone who was studying linguistics at the time, constructing nonsense words from drops out of different morphemes to act as accessories or armour was really amazing for me.

Much of Nier felt organically put together, from characters’ writing and what they wanted from each other, to the dungeon design, to maybe even the combat design… it felt like a truly special game made from the heart with as much lore as it could possibly include. I had purchased the Nightmare DLC primarily to get weapon drops and while it isn’t nearly as interesting as the rest of the game, it has some implications for the lore. The music and resulting soundscape lends so much to the worldbuilding and includes many peoples’ languages from the area with French, Japanese, English, German, etc phonemes thrown around to sound utterly organic and special.

At the end of this, I have come to realise that despite saying to myself that I never played this game for the game… I’ve been lying to myself this entire time. I actually did play the game for its game parts. Those are the bits I remember the most about it, and they’re the reasons why I genuinely loved the game. It’s unforgettable for me and it’s why it’s one of my favourites in general.

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward

I did not care about MMOs in my late 20s because I was far more focused on finishing school and actually working hard in my field. I think by the end of university, I barely played games because I literally didn’t have time for them. I probably stressed myself out a lot. I threw myself into a semester where I had what felt like 500 evaluations, had to study a lot, had to write papers, and I ended up breaking up with my ex-boyfriend amicably. I was on my own a lot and to be honest, I think I felt okay that way. I think maybe others thought I was unapproachable.

My best friend now turned fiancé had been begging me to start playing Final Fantasy XIV for a really long time, since he was in the beta prior to its 2.0 release. I made excuses and said I won’t play until a speedster class was implemented since nothing really stuck out at me. In reality, I was mostly busy. Well, Ninja got implemented late 2014, so I ran out of excuses. I got a copy of ARR but to be honest, I didn’t have time for it and I didn’t play it much so I didn’t bother to try harder since my focus was elsewhere.

Luckily, I got into a semester where I didn’t have that much coursework to think about so I ended up playing XIV more. I caught up during ARR and really my intention was to only play through ARR and finish the story and quit. But my fiancé’s friends were so nice and welcoming to me. When the servers shut down for Heavensward maintainance and I’d finished the ARR storyline literally that night, I made the conscious decision to buy Heavensward. By that time, I was falling a little too hard for my best friend and I really liked my newfound friends. I wasn’t ready to leave Eorzea yet.

Of course, I had some quests to finish up during Early Access so I didn’t get the opportunity to play with anyone I knew during the main storyline for Heavensward. Heavensward was leaps and bounds above anything I experienced in ARR. The story was well-written, the English voices were recast and given better direction, character deaths were meaningful, a smaller cast made for good character building, the environments were large and you could only assume things happened in each area eventually (they didn’t in the long run), each area was different, it reminded me of Canada… Heavensward made me feel at home.

Almost every job felt built on, since nothing was really truly culled. A lot of what you got felt like an extension of what you already did. The three new jobs didn’t start out too well or too balanced. Machinist was a mess. Astrologian felt weird. Dark Knight had some growing pains but probably performed the best out of the three once the Alexander raid was implemented given that its specialty at the time centered on magic defense. I was one of the five people who really liked bowmage since it required you to think before you cast but you still did a lot of damage if you thought before firing. I swapped to an omnihealer main officially halfway through the patches because my fiancé requested it.

Heavensward had a lot of growing pains. For all the team did for the base game, they took a six-month vacation to recharge. 3.1 wasn’t really worth the wait and a lot of people quit the game or stopped playing because nothing really meaningful was added to the game other than a faceroll raid, poorly-tuned exploration missions, and two dungeons. Gordias earlier in the expansion nearly killed the raiding community as a whole. 3.2 didn’t fare too much better, though it did add the best raid tier that has yet to be topped. 3.3 was when FFXIV solidified itself as an MMO with a grand story to tell, with one of the best conclusions a Final Fantasy game had seen in almost a decade. The sound design was near-perfect for this patch, and it was when a lot of us genuinely felt comfortable with the game and its future. Heavensward wasn’t perfect; it still had its missteps and balancing issues, but it was the most comfortable and profoundly skilled I’d ever felt with the game.

Final Fantasy XIV may not be what it used to be. I feel old and I feel like I’ve played the game for a really long time. Now while it’s riding the wave of success, currently having the best story Final Fantasy has seen in a very long time, I can’t help but to remember Heavensward when we finally felt assured about the game and it felt like a cohesive gift to players who were active at that time. I got to know so many people during Heavensward, and now I’m engaged to my best friend partially due to our experiences together playing at that time.

Undertale

The late half of 2015 was a really bad year for me. The first half was really great. I started playing FFXIV often, I finished the hardest year I’ve ever had of my 9 years of university so far with high grades and was going full-on hard into my residency year, I fell in love with my best friend. I was pretty happy since I finally felt very successful.

If anyone can recall (or this may be new to the person who is reading this), towards the end of 2015 my dad was falsely accused by our neighbour of possession of a weapon (it was a gardening tool), and he had a restraining order put against him so he couldn’t live with us anymore. My little brother is severely disabled so that’s why I still lived at home so I could help out. Without my dad around, it was so much harder. I came home from my days at the hospital every day after a 12-hour day, had to babysit my brother since my mom still cooked food to carry for my dad who had to live at my aunt’s, somehow had to find time to study for my licensing exam and do some work for school and my thesis, had to find time to socialise a tiny bit otherwise I’d go crazy, maybe had to take my brother to his appointments by coming home a little early, and then had to find whatever time I had left to sleep. I stopped posting on message boards because I literally had no time to do so and I wouldn’t have anything of value to contribute to discussions either.

I detached myself from a lot of people. It was actually kind of lonely. It was really hard. I lashed out at people when I shouldn’t have. I don’t look back on those days other than the bright spots with fondness at all.

Before that, everyone was telling me to play Undertale but I sort of didn’t want to? I felt like the fanbase was sort of making the game unapproachable around the time it came out. By the end of the year, I was so out of the loop about games that I didn’t give a hoot. A friend of mine, Shadow Hog, bought the game for me on Steam. I still have the e-mail message for it.

My now-fiancé got his own copy so we could play it together because at that point I didn’t want to do much of anything alone. I was actually sinking deeper into depression and verging on a mental breakdown. I was not mentally sound and every single week it felt like someone had to save me from doing something stupid.

I started Undertale and I didn’t really think much of it at the start. I can’t remember when it started clicking with me but maybe it was around the time I got into a battle with Tsunderplane and Vulkin and got to Hotland that I gave up and started having fun with it because it was just… silly. It was time to let down your hair and have some fun for once and not feel completely guilty about it.

The idea of having to win and achieving a certain ending by sparing your enemy isn’t necessarily new – SMT’s demon negotiation, Silent Hill 2’s morality system, and MGS3’s fight with the Sorrow have some sort of sparing mechanic. The hybrid of a turn-based battle system with enemy negotiation, as well as dodge system inspired by a shmup makes every encounter both strategic (ie: having to avoid bullets while also sparing enemies in a set order per battle) and consistently active. Unless you are going for a certain other ending, you cannot just sit there and hold down the attack button and expect to win. That said, this makes a lot of encounters a little longer than a standard RPG battle, but the flavour text for each uniquely-designed enemy makes many of the battle worth it. Undertale isn’t a hard game unless you’re playing on a certain route. But I don’t necessarily think the gameplay part of Undertale speaks properly for it. The dungeon maps are relatively simple. They all have their little gimmicks. The battle system is relatively easy to understand.

The reason why Undertale has such a prolific fanbase is primarily because of its character writing and ability to make and use memes properly enough that they catch on. Many of the characters are easily encountered early, are easy to draw (propels a lot of fanart), and understand due to the character writing. What also helps is that the game is 4-6 hours long, and it came out at the right time with the right kind of word of mouth. Undertale could have easily fallen into the sea like so many other RPGs before it but it didn’t. My fiancé and I were shopping for work clothes one day at a store that sells business clothing, construction clothing, and scrubs. He was wearing a shirt with the Delta Rune on it since he loves game shirts that are relatively subtle. Even then, one of the sales clerks pointed it out and was pretty excited to see it. It was pretty crazy to both of us how popular Undertale had gotten. I don’t think the popularity was unwarranted. I think it’s a fantastic game, helped by a considerably lengthy varied and catchy soundtrack. Granted, I was not as exposed to how explosive its popularity was when it came out. But I understood why so many people liked it. It wasn’t for its gameplay.

As I progressed through Undertale, instead of thinking of the lore (which was well-written), I was thinking of how the monsters treated your character with respect and love because you treated them that way. They didn’t go out of their way to fear you, and welcomed you as one of their own. In the end, they were hesitant to even kill you, and you were hesitant to kill them. Even then you still had the spare/save commands.

At the very end, you only had the Save command.

And that’s how I felt. When Hopes and Dreams started playing, I couldn’t help but to cry. When I was repeatedly nudged to press the Save command, I didn’t actually feel like the game nudged me to do so. That was something I wanted to do. Just remembering how depressed I was when I started playing this game and then progressing to its true end with Hopes and Dreams and SAVE the World playing, I couldn’t help but to feel like my hopes and dreams were still alive.

Even if I was going through a really hard time in my life, hope was still there as long as I had people around me that supported me all the way through. That was the time in my life that I realised who my real friends were. And in the end, I felt like Undertale told me my friends saved me and that my dreams weren’t crushed, now matter what threw at me.

And that’s why it’s my game of the decade. It may not be the most perfect game that came out this decade or the objectively best-crafted, but it did so much for me. When I was prompted for my game of the decade, Undertale was the first thing that popped into my head. I didn’t question it. I just knew. I don’t think we’ll get another Undertale again in my lifetime, but I’m glad to say that I gave it a shot and I love it for what it is.

#games of the decade #gotd

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wolfiesworks · 6 years ago

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T.O.S. Info

(Go here to read it if you have furry amino) http://aminoapps.com/p/d1gn5w

BEFORE COMMISSIONING ME, YOU MUST READ AND AGREE TO MY TERMS OF SERVICE BEFORE RECEIVING/PURCHASING PRODUCTS. THIS IS A CONTRACT AND FAILURE TO ACCEPT OR FOLLOW THESE GUIDELINES WILL RESULT IN THE REFUSAL/CANCELATION OF MY SERVICES! THESE GUIDELINES ARE PUT IN PLACE TO PROTECT ME AS A VENDOR AND TO REGULATE MY CLIENTS REQUESTS.

✍My signature and/or watermark✍

The watermark/signature I place on my works will be off to the side and out of the way of the main focus of the product. You MAY NOT move or remove my signature or watermark, period! If I find that it has been removed or placed elsewhere on the work, I will revoke the work from you immediately. *If you receive an adopt from me, my signature will be on it as proof of who created it, but I will remove the watermark myself before giving it to you.*

🚫Age Requirements🚫

You can receive any services from me as a legal +18 adult. However for anyone under age, if you plan to purchase something from me, you must have parental consent first. *I will ask for physical proof of age or parental consent. (Rather that is student ID, drivers license or parental signature and or/voice confirmation).*

✂Usage of my products📲

✏Artwork🎨

My main products come in the form of artwork. You can purchase several forms of artwork from me with varying prices. You can only re-sell works of mine if they are:

-part of a OC's art collection

-an adopt

-still possesses my signature/watermark

*You cannot resell my work if the signature has been removed or for a higher price! If you wish to return something you have purchased from me after a set amount of time, you will not receive a refund for it. (This applies to ALL my works).

🐱Adopts🐶

Adopts are pre-made characters that I sell as is. There will be no changes made to the adopts to suit your needs. After purchase , you obtain full rights to the character and design. You can make whatever changes you please after you have purchased and obtained the character. *If you plan to get rid of the adopt or have no use for the adopt, you can re-sell the adopt at either a lowered price or up to five dollars more (no more, no less). You can also give it back to me. (Your transaction will not be refunded.) (These rules also apply to customized characters).*

🔎Custom Characters✉

You can get customized characters from me! In order to receive one, PLEASE be as specific as possible! I will send WIP's as I go and make changes to find your needs. *If you are unhappy with the outcome, know I tried to have you give me as many details as possible. I am not at fault for you not being specific enough. These are non-refundable.

💡Notifications and WIP's🔔

As someone providing you a service, I will send you alerts! I will also tell you if something you are asking is too complicated for me to do! Feel free to message me about updates, just don't over do it. 👍 *This includes when I will be starting, what kind of time frame you could expect the art to be worked on and finished, as well as work in progress shots!

⏳Time Frame / Deadlines⌛

I normally work at my own pace, as to not over work or stress myself out. I will alert you as to when I will start your commission and give you an estimate on how long it may take.

💲Payment💳

I take PayPal and gift cards! I will only take trades if I have the time and the art will be of equal amount. EX:(A headshot for a headshot.)*I will ask you to pay when I start your commission sketches! Do NOT pay before I start!

*Do NOT offer amino coins for my regular commissions! I have a separate wiki for my AC commissions; in my "AC YCH's" wiki. I will redirect you. If you beg, you will be blocked.

📥Refunds📤

I do not do refunds. This is why I also ask you to pay once I start the commission (this way you don't purchase something I'm not about to do. This also helps me keep track of who's commissions I'm doing). If you purchase an adopt me that you don't like, resell or give it back to me (look at the TOS section on adopts). *All purchases are finalized. You will be guaranteed your commissioned product (unless you violate the TOS).*I will only send back your money if it is an emergency and you return the product to me.*

📮Receiving Products📫

This all really depends on what type of product you get from me. If it's digital I can send you your finished product via email or other social media platforms (that I have. I will not go out of my way to make an account on a site just to send you something.) If you are getting one of my specific traditional options I can send them to you via the post system (within the U.S. You may have to pay a shipping fee depending on the type of product.)

📎Advertisement📈

I may keep some works for my art examples! This by no means is me stealing your character(s) or keeping the art I had made for you to myself. You will receive the product, as you have purchased it rightfully. I just might keep the ones I'm proud of in order to advertise and display my work.

⚠Discrimination&Illegal Activity⚠

If you want to get something from me that is racist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, representing or showing anything illegal (depending on the context and age of the subjects) or anything within a morally wrong standpoint I will automatically block you; no confrontation. There will be NO toleration for these things! *This also applies to your speech. If it's something minor (by my standpoint) I will give you a warning. If you fail to comply I will not work for you (you will also not receive a refund or a finished product from me during your commission for any rude behavior.)*

What I WILL do ✔

*Ask about details, I can only do so much! I'm will work with you to the best of my ability! (Getting some reassurance is fine by me👌)

- Any species/race.

- Any gender.

- Any sexuality.

- Ship art; as long as the characters are in a consensual relationship and the characters are of appropriate age (Two children together in SFW context is fine. I will block you if you ask for child/adult ship art).

- Backgrounds (may vary depending on the type of background).

- Most clothing (may vary if you're wanting anything intricate like designs or armor. This also counts for robotics).

- Short - panel comics (only 2 to 4 panels per page)

- Gore/Horror themes (this includes candy/fruit, pastel, glitch, realistic and other types).

-Nudity (You must be +18 years of age RREGUARDLESS and provide proof you are at this age. Non-sexual nudity is preferred.👌 If genitalia is present, I will ask that you contact me on a different platform.)

- Tattoo, logo, or banner designs (all you have to do is give me credit for creating the design. Other than that you can do whatever with it. Though if you plan to use it for personal merchandise, you don't have to pay me a royalty or anything, just give me credit for the artwork and link me if you would! ✨).

- Maps for world building or tabletop games (likes D&D).

- Mood boards.

What I WONT do ❌

- ANYTHING discriminatory (such as homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia or racism), pedophilia, zoophilia or anything morally wrong.

-Sexual activity of ANY kind. (Non-sexual nudity is fine, BUT both you and the art's subject must be 18 or older age. Suggestive is also alright.)

-Mech suits (robotics are fine as long as the parts are larger and less intricate)

- Over complicated character designs.

- Over complicated clothing/armor designs.

- Over complicated backgrounds.

- Realism (in art style; because I'm bad at it).

❔ Any Questions? ❔

Feel free to ask!

#tos #TOS #T.O.S.#terms of service #commission info #commission information #wolfie yaps

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bloomsnake · 7 years ago

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Witchy Wishlist 2018

Please let me know if you need my mailing address (either via tumblr messaging, discord, or ask). For #s 2 and 3, I’m happy to talk on Tumblr or on Discord (Asclepias#8994). For 5, 9, and 10, please PM me on Discord. I’m happy to provide my email if needed. 😊

Buy something from my Amazon wishlist (I don’t need anything, but there’s a handful of stuff I wouldn’t mind getting.) - http://a.co/hg2bLR2

Trades – I’d like some people to trade with on an ongoing basis, be it witchy-related items, knowledge, or arts and crafts. Mainly art though, because I need something to get me motivated to draw again. I draw and paint, make wire-wrapped jewelry, and have lots of cool nature items I’ve found while hiking (and probably some other stuff!)

Ideas for art and stickers – Again, I want some stuff to motivate me to make art again! Some of the sticker designs I’ll be using to help fund items below and/or help pay for my master’s degree. I expect people who help to critique my work. 😉

Money (my paypal is: paypal.me/KaraDriscoll) for either:

new orchids - The Tamiami International Orchid Festival is coming up from January 11th – 13th and I REALLY wanna go. I’ve got an extensive orchid collection already, but my goal is to collect a large majority of orchid species found in my state. This’ll be a good opportunity to knock some hard-to-find species off my list (especially if I can preorder them from vendors coming in from other countries!!) I also love looking for TEENY TINY and really weird looking species!

my first tattoo – this is a majorly personal goal of mine. I’ve always wanted a tattoo, but I’ve never had the money or (more importantly) the confidence to commit to getting one. This’ll be the first of a series of deeply personal pieces meant to reclaim by body and myself for Myself.

or a new piercing – This is related to B. I’ve always wanted other piercings, but my family and others have always commented on how “weird” I’ll look with them.

Someone to commission me and/or purchase already-made pieces from me- I’ve got a decent amount of wire-wrapped jewelry I’ve made that’s been just… sitting around for a while. I also have a stash of crystals that I can wrap. I also draw animals, monsters, plants, and anything witchy or occult. I’m not so good with robots or people, and I’m not comfortable at all drawing smut. I could use the extra money for any of the above items. My art blog is here: http://kara-driscoll.tumblr.com/ I haven’t updated it in a while, but I’m happy to discuss pricing. I will reblog this post later with a link to my wire wrapped work and prices.

If you’re able, volunteer 10 hours with a local conservation group, especially one that is plant related. Try to help out with not only trash pickup or invasive plant removal, but also citizen science work! If you can’t do this, see #s 8 - 10! (Caveat- Try to pick a group that is close by that isn’t Audubon or Sierra Club if you can, as they often need lots of help in terms of time and money!) Tell me about your experience and tag me in the post!

Or, attend the next meeting (and field trip for bonus points!) a local conservation group of your choice holds and tell me about it and tag me in the post!

Help the rare flora, fauna, and ecosystems in your backyard! Make a master list of what your county/state/country’s rare plants, animals, or habitats are and learn about them! Try to pick a few species (or habitats) that aren’t getting attention or real protection, and start learning about them: What is known about their biology? Their ecology? What issues are affecting them or causing their decline? Are there solutions to the problem or people working on it? If so, how can you help or advocate on their behalf? Tell me about what you find and tag me in the post! If you’re motivated to help and don’t know what to do, I’m happy to try to give some advice. 😊

I encourage you to look at small fish or small birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, spiders, other invertebrates (like the 40 federally endangered freshwater mussels, or the 11 federally endangered snails.) These are very often overlooked, and the presence or discovery of a federally endangered animal can halt development or destruction of a habitat (in the United States, that is).

I especially encourage you to learn about your state-listed rare plants (and animals/habitats). Just because something is not federally listed does NOT mean that it is less rare or imperiled than a federally listed species. In fact, state listed flora and fauna can be rarer than those listed federally.

Are you good with organizing? Budgeting? Time management? Project management? Long-term Planning? Life Coaching? I need help with ALL OF THE ABOVE. I have major issues with executive dysfunction (one of the joys of ADHD) and I really need help organizing my goals, priorities, and managing my time/projects. I’m determined to be a better me (starting ASAP), so I’d love any help I can get (ESPECIALLY if it’s ongoing!! I’m happy to trade [see #1] for longer-term help as well!)

Help me with plant conservation and advocacy! I’m currently pursuing a master’s degree in environmental science, and I’m a board member for my state’s Native Plant Society. I’m working to expand one of our existing citizen science projects. This project is working on mapping populations of Florida’s 21 milkweed species. However, in order to better publicize and get the word out, we need to organize what we know about milkweed, produce some educational material for new volunteers, and do some data entry. My goal is to have most of this material done before May of next year so that we can officially publicize and launch the project for next summer!

I may add more if I think of any, but that’s about it. It feels selfish to ask, but I’d love it if I could get wishes 9 and 10 fulfilled by some folks. I really need a lot of help getting myself organized, and I really, really want to get this project organized. I’d also love if wishes 4 and 5 are fulfilled as I don’t have a job and any extra income would be super. <3

#witchy wishlist #personal

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artisticflutter · 7 years ago

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AU Yeah AUgust Day Twenty-Six - BFF Swap

More Julerose is needed! Also, catching up again on prompts, but this month is almost done!

By the way, if you want to get a commission before the month is over, click here to see more details.

Rating: G Genre: Drabble Pairing(s): Julerose Summary: Juleka and Marinette are BFFs, and Marinette is up for wingwoman-ing Juleka when it comes to Rose Warning: Un-betaed!

Support me on Ko-Fi || Commission Me

“Hey, Juleka, she’s back…”

The single rosy eye visible from her dark hair blinked, and Juleka glanced over at her best friend sitting nearby. Marinette’s blue eyes twinkled as she beamed and tilted her head slightly towards the Art Classroom’s door. Sure enough, it was her – Rose Lavillant from their homeroom class. The small girl had the biggest sky blue eyes to match her big heart. She was so open and friendly with practically everyone… and pink, and her blonde hair was always cut in the cutest pixie style.

But there was something different today.

“Oh my gosh, Juleka, she’s wearing a purple and black bow…”

Rose was indeed – it made Juleka’s face warm. She dropped her gaze and turned her head when Marinette dropped down next to her.

“You should go talk to her…!”

“What would be the point in that?”

“Uh, you like her? That’s why? And she’s totally trying to get your attention right now!”

Juleka shook her head. “No she’s not. She probably wanted to try a new color.”

“Like two weeks ago? And four weeks? And last month?”

Grunting, the goth girl tried to focus on her bass again, looking down at her fingers to try ignoring her best friend. She really loved Marinette – honestly, she was a great friend – but she did have a bothersome habit of nosing into people’s relationships like Ivan and Mylène, and Alya and Nino. Sure, they were now dating, but how could a successful matchmaker like her go around like that while waffling between her brother and Adrien?

Besides that, why would someone as perky and sweet as Rose even find someone so brooding and quiet like her interesting?

Sighing heavily, she couldn’t even remember what chord she had been thinking of for her song. Checking over her music sheet to check her last penning, Juleka nearly missed the finger tapping her shoulder.

“Marinette, I told y-…” But when her head turned, she did not meet Marinette’s ultramarine gaze, but baby blues. Her fingers tensed on her strings and her one visible eye widened. A swift glance to the size and she spotted Marinette waving from next to the door, having traded places with Rose… Rose was standing in front of her.

“Hi, Juleka! Are you practicing your bass or writing a new song?”

For a second, Juleka just continued to stare… and when she finally did make a sound, it was only a croak. However, Rose just smiled and nodded.

“I was wondering… I wrote some lyrics and I was hoping we could do a collab? I was thinking something in the style of Karrot or Machine Brain…”

Juleka felt her brain boot up a little faster at the names, surprise hinted in her voice when she spoke finally, “You... like heavy metal?”

“I love heavy metal! It’s one of my favorite genres, but I really can’t sing it so well. My voice makes it more suited for glam metal…”

“Glam metal… that’s still not bad,” Juleka replied, feeling her lips quirk slightly at the corners. “… Do you really want to do a collab with me?”

“Yes! At least, if you’re okay with it…”

Though she knew that Marinette probably suggested that Rose come over to her – that she might be manipulating a few other things behind the scenes – her best friend did give her an opportunity. And it did seem like Rose was excited at the possibility herself…

Letting out a breath, she tried to ignore her hammering heart. “Sure… let’s make some music.”

#miraculous ladybug #miraculous!au #au yeah august #scribbling do #day twenty-six: bff swap #juleka couffaine #rose lavillant #marinette dupain-cheng #julerose #juleka has a crush #but she doesn't think it'll work #rose has a crush #she makes it really obvious

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dustedmagazine · 7 years ago

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The Dusted Mid-Year Exchange: 2018 Edition, Part 1

In our fifth annual switcheroo, Dusted writers review each other’s favorite records, venturing out of the genres where they feel most comfortable to wrestle with excellence outside their frame of reference. As always, assignments were made at random with the only rules being: a) you can’t review your own pick and b) you can’t review something you’ve already written about for Dusted.

Unlike in past years, there was no clear favorite in 2018, although artists including Marisa Anderson, Olden Yolk, DJ Koze and Kacey Musgraves made multiple lists. And perhaps most heartening, a number of writers amended their mid-year favorites after listening to other writers’ picks. We hope you’ll also be able to find some new favorites among the artists we highlight.

Today, we’ll run the first half of the mid-year blurbs (alphabetically) from Marisa Anderson to Joelle Leandre & Elisabeth Harnik. We’ll cover the second half of the alphabet tomorrow, then close our feature with individual writers’ best of lists through the first half.

Marisa Anderson — Cloud Corner (Thrill Jockey)

Cloud Corner by Marisa Anderson

Who recommended it? Eric McDowell

Did we review it? Not yet, but it’s assigned.

Ben Donnelly’s take:

"Slow Ascent" is one of the titles in Anderson's latest batch of profound electric guitar explorations. It's a good phrase to summarize her career and style, hiking higher with each release, wandering further from the trails. For the second time, she's tracking a few extra instruments into her miniatures without disrupting the solitude, keyboards and acoustic strings mostly matching the cracks and chime of her main axe. Her fingerpicking has a fractal aspect, where intricate and rapid patterns can create a cycle that's relaxed and gradual, as on the title track and other lilting numbers. "Lament," a slide blues with a dissipating tempo and skeletal keyboard notes is forceful in its minimalism. She's becoming a master of small contrasts. Nowhere better than the closer "Lift,” where folks sounds step aside for a plucky scale that spirals up, offset by sweeps that sound like brushing the harp of an open-lidded grand piano, but take focus as a harmonized electric. Her brilliance is ever more in focus.

The Armed — Only Love (Throatruiner)

ONLY LOVE by The Armed

Who recommended it? Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it? Yes. Jonathan Shaw said, “The Armed will likely be delighted by the divisive responses Only Love generates.”

Ian Mathers’ take:

You almost wish for anyone who’s potentially up for the Armed’s pummelling, exuberant, often frantic, tremendously maximalist take on hardcore and assorted associated genres to come to the record totally blind, and not just because “Witness” comes leaping out of the gates so forcefully. It can be fun to start digging around and register all the distancing tactics, purposeful obfuscation, sense of play, and weird links (to everything from Converge to, err, Rubicam and Young), but the visceral impact of Only Love is powerful enough that all that context should be saved for later. It’s one thing to start filling in context, it’s another thing to hear something as ferocious and compelling as “Role Models” (“NO INS! NO OUTS!” yell-chanted in a way I’m pretty sure even little kids would find appealing, if you could sneak this synth-spiked bomb past their parents) in the context of trying to figure out the game, if there is indeed a game here. After the roiling chaos of the first few listens subsides the sheer number of hooks packed inside these songs really settle in your mind, anchored by Ben Koller’s incredible drumming (possibly commissioned on false pretences) and just as adept at etching out a multi-part climax like the seething “On Jupiter” as just full-on sprinting on the likes of “Heavily Lined.” And then there’s “Fortune’s Daughter,” maybe the strongest earworm I’ve encountered yet in 2018. Who are the Armed and what are they up to? It’s not that I’m not interested in the answer to that kind of question, it’s more that as long as they keep making records as good as Only Love I’m happy to believe whatever they tell us (or don’t).

Bardo Pond — Volume 8 (Fire)

Volume 8 by Bardo Pond

Who recommended it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes, Jennifer said, “The sound, vast and muscularly monolithic as ever, seems more like a demon summoned periodically from a ring of fire than the product of any sort of linear development.”

Isaac Cooper’s take:

Like fellow travelers Yo La Tengo’s There’s A Riot Going On, Bardo Pond’s Volume 8 is stitched together from jam excerpts and spare parts, but unlike Riot, Volume 8 is remarkably cohesive and propulsive. Even at its droniest and spaciest, there is no shortage of momentum or sense that Volume 8 is a collection of barrel scrapings to tide over the diehards; it stands with any of Bardo Pond’s releases. The guitars on “Kailash” and “Flayed Wish” howl and wail like Lear on the heath, while the rhythm section pushes on, determined as Sisyphus. Two shorter pieces, “Power Children” and the gorgeous solo guitar piece “Cud,” act as a brief respite before the entropic and monstrously heavy closer, “And I Will”. Musical improvisation is one of the best means we have of tapping into the murky world of the unconscious, and Volume 8 demonstrates that while there’s plenty of chaos and darkness down there, it’s also the source of inspiration and transcendence.

Cut Worms — Hollow Ground (Jagjaguwar)

Hollow Ground by Cut Worms

Who recommended it? Ben Donnelly

Did we review it? Not yet...

Patrick Masterson’s take:

“Amid all the noise nowadays, there’s precious little that still makes me feel the way those peoples’ songs do, and aspiring to reach that level is a big part of what makes me do this to begin with.” This is Cut Worms’ Max Clarke in a charmingly earnest Medium interview last fall on some of his biggest influences – John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed. Maybe you’ve heard of them; maybe you’ve heard of the level of cultural influence they have exerted on us all. And if you’ve heard the Alien Sunset EP that was released just after the interview ran, you’ll easily be able to see where Clarke was coming from in the time that he spent putting the homespun eight-track wonder together, splitting halves between Chicago and his current Brooklyn home. It’s a beautiful record that doesn’t overplay its hand, choosing instead to let the simplicity of his natural ear for a melody do the talking despite the humble recording quality. He was never going to reach the mythical heights of his influences plying away at that trade forever, of course, but his art was all the better for sounding so self-assured in its limitations.

Hollow Ground, however, is a Trojan Horse of the most exhausting variety. Those same reference points – the Beatles, Dylan, solo Reed – still apply, only here they spring forth in an aggressively augmented form with a backing band and a more fleshed-out sound that’s like saying, “Alexa, give me every pop music trend of the 60s at once” or, more accurately, like listening to someone too young to have experienced the decade but old enough to be familiar with its most basic cultural signifiers play an album’s worth of icons. How do we know? Check the new versions of Alien Sunset’s “Don’t Want to Say Good-Bye” and “Like Going Down Sideways”; they’re wholly different, coldly unlovable remakes of the intimate originals. Even his lyrics feel unconvincing; Clarke uses the pet name “baby” on 60% of the songs here, which, look: I don’t need to stare into a wordless void with Bill Basinski to feel something and there’s an evident surplus of genuinely touching heartache present, but that’s an affectation of the most irritatingly trite variety.

For a certain kind of person, Max Clarke is the perfect person; for that person, Hollow Ground will resonate simply, perfectly. I am not that person. I will never listen to this again – likely not individual songs, certainly not in full. Does that seem unduly harsh? Does it feel too personal? Does the cut worm forgive the plow? Guess we’ll see. Ask again when there’s a follow-up.

Sarah Davachi— Let Night Come on Bells End the Day (Recital)

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Who recommended it? Bryan Daly

Did we review it? No

Bill Meyer’s take:

Sarah Davachi puts out albums often enough that it’s hard to catch up, so please cut Dusted some slack for not getting to Let Night Come on Bells End the Day until now. The Canadian composer and multi-instrumentalist has followed All My Circles Run, an all-acoustic minimalist chamber piece, with an overdubbed solo recording for electric organ, acoustic piano, Mellotron and synthesizers. Like some ecclesiastic initiate, she has followed a solitary path to arrive at a place that is one with the cosmos. Her slow-morphing tones, incremental melodies, and exquisitely voiced harmonies don’t just sound like they should be played in a chapel; they erect a virtual space around the listener that only lets the ineffable through. If Andrei Tarkovsky was still around, he might be writing a movie to wrap around these sounds.

DJ Koze — Knock Knock (Pampa Records)

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Who recommended it? Patrick Masterson

Did we review it? Yes. Jennifer Kelly said it “has a humid, organic air, even its most rigorously electronic tracks seething with jungle-y vitality and caressing warmth.”

Ian Mathers’ take:

Like a lot of his peers, DJ Koze has been active and prolific for years without ever putting out that much in the way of “proper” albums, which probably goes some way towards explaining why Knock Knock, only his third, sounds so relaxed, confident and casually accomplished. With stellar vocal turns by everyone from Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner to folkie José González to Róisín Murphy (who’s rarely put her imperious purr to better effect than on the two perfectly-matched tracks she’s on here), 16 tracks in total and a lengthy running time, Knock Knock feels like a bit of a Statement from the producer. Which makes it maybe even more impressive that some of the best stuff here (like the sad jam “Pick Up” with its perfectly deployed vocal sample, or the almost-Avalanches style “Baby (How Much I LFO You)”) is just Koze without a high-profile guest vocalist. The whole thing has a friendly warmth and subtle propulsiveness that makes for compulsive listening; if this isn’t Koze at the peak of his powers, it sure feels like it could be.

Tashi Dorji and Tyler Damon — Leave No Trace: Live in St. Louis (Family Vineyard)

Leave No Trace: Live In St. Louis by Tashi Dorji & Tyler Damon

Who recommended it? Isaac Olson

Did we review it? Yes, Isaac said, "While these performances are undoubtedly chaotic, they never feel purposeless.”

Justin Cober-Lake's take:

That guitarist Tashi Dorji and percussionist Tyler Damon have a limitless supply of ideas isn't surprising, but it's remarkable how well they've organized them into sensible packages on Leave No Trace: Live in St. Louis. Neither of the quarter-hour tracks here are exactly linear, but they do progress both coherently and unhaltingly. “Leave No Trace” offers the most noise, with the first half of the piece continuously crescendoing. The disappearance of one artist or the other simply means the soloist has more volume to cover. The pair spend the last two minutes together, Damon crashing away while Dorji sounds like two guitarists fitting blips together.

“Calm the Shadows” works differently. While not a suite, the song comes in sections, with Dorji and Damon filling in an outline as they go. The pair respond to each other, and work mutually on an unpredictable but discernable path. The slow build to the noisy section lets the chaos function as a thesis statement with the back half of the track the understanding of what to do with it. Dorji's pointed playing through that section answers the early rumble without making anything easier. Damon's sounds complete the thought. When “Leave No Trace” works so hard to slowly heap sounds before smashing through it all, the effect is amplified but the control of its predecessor. Dorji and Damon are a few albums in now and, while there wasn't much doubt from the start, they seem to be working in a rare place right now.

Holland/Parker/Taborn/Smith—Uncharted Territories (Dare2 Records)

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Who recommended it? Derek Taylor

Did we review it? Not yet.

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

It feels like a math puzzle. How many distinct ensembles including duos, trios and quartets can be formed out of four musicians? But hearing it in practice as master bassist Dave Holland, free jazz titan Evan Parker, pianist Craig Taborn and drummer-vibe-ist Ches Smith assemble and disassemble into improvisatory groups is quite another thing. “Trio No Tenor” on disc one takes a luminous shimmer from jangling metallic percussion, abstract interpolations of piano and the shape-shifting tone of plucked, hanging bass tones. “Duo Bass Tenor” on disc two is far more fluid and contemplative, as long bowed bass notes underline the fluttering explorations of sax; its two old friends finding space in each other’s musings, darting in to challenge and interject and locating points of agreement even in occasional dissonance. The quartets, though, are the most astonishing, (I like #5 from Disc 2), as extraordinary, unruly energies careen off one another, extemporizing, reacting, reaching over and in between each other in a dense mesh of sound that seems, nonetheless, uncrowded and precisely choreographed. Only three cuts were composed ahead, the rest worked out in two days of live improvisation. Uncharted indeed.

Quin Kirchner — The Other Side of Time (Astral Spirits)

The Other Side of Time by Quin Kirchner

Who recommended it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? Yes, Eric McDowell said: “ Kirchner sidesteps novelty and navel-gazing by putting pyrotechnics second to, well, music.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Kirchner leads from behind on this sprawling two LP solo debut, his drumming feverishly hot but held in check so that others — saxophonist Nate Lepine, bass clarinet player Jason Stein, trombonist Nick Broste and Matt Ulery — can take the spotlight. Interplay between the two reed players is intricately, acrobatically fine. In opener “Ritual,” Lepine jets off with Stein in hot, asynchronous pursuit, Kirchner executing a furiously syncopated undertow, part samba shuffle, part continually exploding roll. “Brainville,” the Sun Ra cover, swings and swaggers, bass and drums in arch, stylized conversation. Kirchner is, maybe a drummer’s drummer, but this is not a drummer’s record, except on two lovely, timbrally varied “Drums & Tines” tracks, where layers of kit rhythms and kalimba intersect in fascinating geometric patterns. Kirchner clearly reveres another band leader whose instrument didn’t always occupy the top of the mix; Mingus’ “Self-Portrait Three Colors” cuts the drums to brush-on-snares, while giving Broste a chance to wail, the two reedists to evoke lush dance-hall sensualism, the bassist to pluck out dark blots of body-moving tone. Kirchner is not the façade, but the architect and also the guy who holds up the building.

Joelle Leandre & Elisabeth Harnik — Tender Music (Trost Records)

Tender Music by Joelle Leandre / Elisabeth Harnik

Who recommended it? Eric McDowell

Did we review it? No

Isaac Olson’s take:

The best part of listening to improvised music is hearing the moment when the musicians lock in and the music takes on a life of its own, when the thrill of discovery dissolves the boundaries between performer and audience. There are many such moments on Tender Music, an improvised set from bassist Joelle Leandre and pianist Elisabeth Harnik. A few examples: the swelling tension that emerges at the one and a half minute mark of “Ear Area I,” the rising anxiety and tentative conclusion of “Ear Area IV”’s final minute, and the march that closes out “Ear Area VI”. Between these peaks, Leandre and Harnik evoke Cecil Taylor, Morton Feldman, blues, bop, classical and more, sometimes all within the space of two or three minutes. Fortunately, Leandre and Harnik are attentive enough players that their restlessness never comes at the cost of coherence. Leandre and Harnik are formidable soloists whose use of extended techniques coax ear-tickling, unexpected timbres from their instruments, but it is when they’re playing together, and more or less “normally,” that Tender Music is at its best, that the melodic and rhythmic invention of both players shines brightest, and that they’re able to speak to each other, and to us, most clearly.

#marisa anderson #the armed #bardo pond #cutworms #sarah davachi #dusted magazine #mid-year 2018 #dj koze #tashi dorji #tyler damon #dave holland #evan parker #craig taborn #ches smith #quin kirchner #joelle leandre #elisabeth harnik #midyear

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