#is this review? Kinda I guess?

[theseawillbringdarkness]

I've been pretty out of the swing of things, but I finally got around to playing through new "Cryptid Crush" update! Gonna write down a few things bellow. Putting it under the cut to avoid spoilers for people who didn't check it out yet.

"Cryptid Crush" by @cryptidcrushvn @squidinu. Give them support!

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

SO, I decided to actually play the whole thing from the beginning (totally not because I wanted to see August in that patient gown), and I was glad to have done so! Apologies for a bit random list of things I wanted to note down just off the top of my head:

Transparent sprites of Taro and Mike Madhouse are a really neat detail! Also, unless I'm mistaken, I can see some tiny bits of writing edited or added (like some descriptions during fight with Mike Madhouse or that little bit after cemetery fight, with a chat between Robyn and August - it's a small bit, but it allows to introduce a bit more info on the characters).

New additional voiced lines! Plus Robbie and Mr. Walker getting their voices!

Loving new look for August! It's also nice to see both August and Oz in alternative outfits in-game. And if I'm not mistaken, Robyn's got a new icon during fights, plus Edith had sprites with a bit different facial expression in Chapter 1.

TONS of lore. So many little bits that show relationships between characters that we previously didn't see interacting between each other. Like August and Atlas talking to Tessie, for example. It's also nice to get glimpses like this on the everyday life of the characters, as well as some hints on their backstories.

Tessie is absolutely gorgeous, how dare you!

New characters! I love Hound and their attitude. Also introduction of Lex was done great! All the foreshadowing and details (like "twenty bucks" thing) made a good build-up to the great reveal!

Seriously, there are both hillarious bits and the ones that made me want to cry. Like Oz repeatedly falling facefirst onto the ground while Lex is "correcting" the up and down. Or that added small bit with Mike when he meets Mr. Walker. These added lines and that sprite of slimeball Mike made me go "Ouch-".

The atmosphere of the "Nowhere" was EXTRA trippy, and this feeling was done so well!! With both music, skipping through game scenes, certain things getting distorted, various Lex's forms and such, and especially later, when it got to the fishing mini-game and Robyn's sprites progressively getting less and less detailed, until it goes down to the very rough looking sketch.

As always, amazing music! It reflects greatly the mood of the atmosphere, like Atlas's theme, or the one that plays in the "Nowhere". And the track "Wrath of the Recolors" that plays during Mike' and Jamie's fight rocks!

Also, don't mind me, I'm gonna be screaming in the corner from getting to see so much of Oz in the new update. The bit where he gives you a note got my heart. Also, boy needs some rest desperately.

I apologize if I got something wrong, but it was a rather quickly written little thing. In any case, it was a nice treat, and I'm looking forward to when I can draw something again. As always, "Drowsy Drake" team did a great work!

[guttersnarls]

The band Ghost's Rite Here Rite Now movie is...Cool beans NOT green beans

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Those Beyond The Wall

sequel/companion to The Space Between Worlds, set a decade later

character-focused sci-fi set in an area divided in two, the rich protected city on one side and everyone else in the post-apocalyptic desert

follows a woman who works under the Emperor in Ashtown, keeping the peace

when mangled bodies start showing up with seemingly no murderer, she’s tasked with finding the cause, and finds out that it’s the result of corruption spanning both cities and multiple worlds

explores oppression and messy revolution, police violence and apartheid

bi & polyamorous MC

[yells-of-the-not-so-danged]

So, I just read through the whole of Agent of Asgard; I had only read the beginning and end bits of AoA before (for some reason I could never find the second volume), and so I never realized just what an awful time of it Loki was going through like HOLY SHIT. Verity really well and truly kept Loki from killing themself (for good this time) during the final chapter, huh. Like, if not for her sparking the memory of Odin's words, Loki was going to, without a doubt, go for the Kid Loki option.

Also, Verity and Loki need to go to friend couple's counseling, BAD. We need more time with the two of them, so Loki can show that they ARE becoming a better friend to Verity. That girl puts up with so much shit 💖 (but like for real they p codependent)

(I still absolutely adore the series btw, my brain? changed forever. )

[gardenvarietycrafts]

My partner (@it-is-no-use) got me some new tablets to try, which just arrived today, so I warped up my loom with a short band to try them out, and to try out the swivels. They both worked great!

[bananabasedidiot]

just watched Twisters, and I have some thoughts

-i feel like Kate should've walked with a limp or something, but maybe that big ol cut on her leg just missed muscles or something idk

-Tyler's crew live streams. I think they did an okay-ish job representing the sorta YouTube thing they've got going on but for the life of me I can't figure out how they'd set up their live streams.

-idea #1 they switch out the camera angles based on which one has more stuff going on. I think this might be able to feasibly work, but it would be logistically very annoying to do.

-idea #2 they simultaneously have all the cameras streaming in a grid pattern on the screen. This would probably make more sense, but I'm not sure if people would actually want to watch something like that.

-idea #3 they have multiple streams going at once of the different cameras and cut the footage up later for videos. This one, I honestly think might make the most sense but it's also kinda stupid. Idk.

-Kate's mom. I love her, she was so funny. But please why wasn't she scared when Kate went to her house in the middle of the night. She just walked into the kitchen all normal. I was waiting for her to walk in with a goddamn shotgun or something.

-and Kate being all "Mom it's me," like ok girl. Nice of you to warn her after breaking into the house ig??? you couldn't have knocked???

-Javi is a manipulative idiot. No like seriously he is. From almost the first scene in the movie you can tell he sorta likes Kate, and that's fine and all but it's what he does later that makes things so much worse.

-Javi emotionally manipulated Kate into chasing again. He knows she's traumatized, unexpectedly waltzes back into her life, and goads her into going back to Oklahoma.

-he was mad at Kate for running away from the tornado. You can't look at someone who's basically having a freaking panic attack and be like 'you shouldn't have made us miss the storm'. Like no Javi, that's not what you do.

-trying to ask her on a date after getting mad that she's having a panic attack.

he's just doing so many things and I just can't figure out why he'd even do this in the first place, like it's all just a pretty shitty move my man. It annoyed me.

but overall I did enjoy the movie. it's a solid standalone thing and I'm glad they didn't really try to completely tie it in to the first movie.

[gyarucoded]

loki s2 ending was so shattering that now i cope by making horrible memes out of it

[13eyond13]

nothing more cringe than coaxing and half-forcing someone to go to the movies with you because you're talking up how good the last one in the series was and then they finally agree to go and then it ends up being over two hours long and also kinda the worst 😬

[my-t4t-romance]

watching my dad change a flat tire in the movie theater parking lot was genuinely more interesting and memorable than the entire borderlands movie

[tbookblurbs]

The Hero of Ages - Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn Era 1, #3)

5/5 - Satisfying conclusion, excellent discussions about faith, intensely vivid world-building

Spoilers below!!

This book deserves high praise for its commitment to the plotline alone. Many books (and tv series) that I've read(/watched) find themselves unwilling to commit to the ending that they've set themselves up for. As heartbreaking as it is, sometimes the events set in motion have to result in major character death and despair. Anything else would be unsatisfying.

I can still remember how I felt the first time I read HoA and even knowing the ending, you still feel this sense of dread. How can the characters survive this? How can you fight the end of the world? And yet because I was so used to seeing most of the main characters survive, I remained convinced until the end that Vin and Elend would make it, which makes their deaths all the more heartbreaking. The imagery of Sazed piecing their bodies back together and laying them in a bed of flowers makes me tear up every time.

On the topic of Sazed, I think the bait and switch of Vin or maybe even Elend as the Hero, only to have Sazed fulfill that role is a really earned and satisfying conclusion. It feels good to see that only Sazed could save the world and bring everything back to what it should have been because he's a scholar. Conflict and death couldn't resolve everything in the end.

The journal entries should have tipped me off, honestly. The first time, I thought that maybe Elend or Vin was writing them later on, old and able to look back on these times with more of a curious eye, or maybe that Sazed and the pair were creating it together. But now, reading this for the second time, the hints of Sazed were there the whole time. He's got such a distinctive voice and way of looking at the world.

From a pulled-back perspective, Sanderson is really good at writing the end of the world. I felt similarly reading the Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (which everyone should read!) and that same sort of sadness and hopelessness bleeds through the page here. However, just like in Butler's work, there's this pervading sense of hope. It's desperate and crazy at times, but it's still there. And that's one of the things I really like about Sanderson's novels. He seems to really believe in the potential for people to be good and hopeful and trusting in one another, which I vastly prefer over the "all humans are evil" schtick that a lot of other authors have going (GRRM).

[lizardinkart]

With the heavy caveat that I know people put their heart and soul into this show, having watched 6 seasons of this shit now, The Dragon Prince is just this to me

I root for this show as if it was my child’s little league team playing against the Dodgers. Like, they have the spirit, certainly. Can they actually hit a fastball going over 100mph? I think not.

[garrettwrites]

I am so tired of how Quotev/Wattpad level fanfiction, written by what reads as a 15 year old getting into their first fandom, gets pushed up the book ratings in the gay romance genre (m/m). Why is Red White and Royal Blue always at the top. Why is Boyfriend Material. Why must I suffer. Where are the standards. Why is a 30/40 year old recommending me, a grown adult man, stories that feel like they were written for highschoolers who don't like to read so they pick up the trashiest, most easily digestible shit in order to have the bare minimum of fun while doing their reading interpretation project for class.

This is coming from someone who had fun reading goddamn Twilight by the way. I'm not a book snob. I can enjoy objectively bad media if it's fun. My favourite book series with LGBT main characters is All For The Game, and that's a shitshow! But at least there's passion in it! There's fun!

I am going insane!!!!!

[parab0mb]

So, now that I finished the game (again) and the DLC chapters, I'm going to ramble about Crosscode C:

This game is really bizarre in the sense that, to be completely 100% honest, there isn't any particular part of the game that I think is all that mind-blowing. But all the individual elements (heh) of the game come together so well that the resulting product ends up being so much stronger and memorable than the sum of its parts.

Like, most indie games have one or several notable flaws or shortcomings (and understandably so) but this game is such an airtight experience that I can't help thinking about it and just being like "the how HECK is this game so GOOD?!"

...I am of course just getting started, I've got a wall of text of things I liked and thought her just "meh" under the 'keep reading' if you're interested (you've been warned (also spoilers obviously)):

The combat is definitely one of the strongest elements of the game and probably one of my personal favorites; its brutally difficult and sometimes feels like bullshit (and maybe there is one or two instances where it actually is just bullshit) but once you get the hang of it is really is flashy and satisfying and makes you feel badass to pull off. Plus its got the whole easy to learn, hard to master thing going on (like most of it is just charging SP and pressing the space bar, but knowing what moves to use and when def play into things).

I dunno how much of a hot take this is, but I really liked the puzzles in this game! I won't deny that they can sometimes drag on and interrupt the pacing of a temple, but personally I didn't mind. And just like the combat they're so well constructed that, while you'll spend minutes staring blankly reminded that you're a simple-minded creature and that the human mind wasn't made for this and you should be foraging for mushrooms in the woods and risking death over your next meal, they rarely feel impossible to solve without having to resort to a playthrough and are really satisfying to finally figure out (not to brag but there was exactly one puzzle in the game where I had to look up the solution and another where I did solve it on my own but then looked it up cause I thought I cheesed it by mistake). At first I wasn't a huge fan of how fast/precise you have to be for some puzzles on top of just finding out the solution in the first place, but after a while you kinda get used to it (and there is an option to slow things down which is really nice of the devs to include).

The story is... pretty alright. Yeah. I honestly don't have much to say about it. Bit of a slow pace, does the job, and has it's share of twists and emotional moments, but the narrative itself doesn't really do anything mind-blowing either so... you know. I definitely think it's the characters themselves that are memorable and prop up an otherwise average story. I mean every single one of them is just the hugest goober and even characters who initially seem forgettable or one-dimensional end up subverting your expectations and being super endearing/compelling/layered. Oh yeah, and Lea is a character that can only say like 10 words and SHE DESERVES THE WORLD I WOULD KILL FOR H-

Also, since the DLC is brand new to me I do wanna say that the ending was the tiniest bit underwhelming. Like you break into Vermillion Wasteland, fight a (surprisingly easy) boss, and that's... just it. Like 20 minutes top. I dunno, it feels like... something was missing. Still thoroughly enjoyed the entire thing and it is nice for the cast to get their happy ending (not quite as emotionally impactful as the base game's end imo, but still great and I'm glad they gave us more time with these dorks).

The platforming and navigating the overworld is tedious, which sucks a bit since that makes up a good chunk of the game. Idk man, having to scale different elevations of platforms is made frustrating by the fixed camera and the fact that the different "levels" of platforms aren't distinct from each other at all, so its easy to get duped by the perspective and jump to something you can't actually reach (yes you can use projectiles to check but it still isn't fun). Even without everything blending into each other visually, trying to find which obscure paths from four rooms ago will bring you to a chest just isn't all that enjoyable (some of the later maps like Sapphire Ridge were okay though, if only cause they started to have actually interesting puzzles to do). Basically they're just... there, between the actually fun stuff.

The trading system and farming for resources is confusing and kind of a chore. That's all I got.

Guess I'll touch on the art/music since I don't have too much to say about them. To be perfectly honest I'm not actually super crazy about the artstyle (blasphemy!), but I won't deny that the sprite-work and overall aesthetic are still super-well done, even if they aren't my personal taste (tl;dr I'm neutral on it). The soundtrack isn't something I'd put on my phone and listen to in the car, but like the art it's still well-made and perfectly suits the mood of/drives the emotional impact of the game, and there are still a handful of standout bangers (Lea's theme will live rent-free in my brain of course).

One last thing I'll say (that I mentioned before) is that as fun as this game is, it feels like a commitment to get through at times. Even when I first played it and had more free time, sometimes this game just felt "imposing" to pick back up after a break. Idk its hard to describe, but at least for me it was hard to play any other games alongside this (especially with my limited free time) which kinda sucked a bit.

To wrap things up, if I had to give the game an arbitrary number rating, I have to give Crosscode a 0/10 because its an indie game that doesn't have a fishing game (smh honestly how could they make such an obvious mistake 😔).

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Bang Bang Bodhisattva

mystery set in a near-future cyberpunk future

follows a trans hacker who does random gigs to get by, but is on the verge of losing her apartment

and an ex-cop PI who takes her along on jobs sometimes - and when they’re investigating his missing ex-best friend they find him murdered instead

along with her new crush mysteriously disappearing - she’s dragged in the middle of a mystery with few leads

trans polyamorous MC, ace MC

[sassysnowperson]

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sarafi by by Shannon Chakraborty should have a fanatical tumblr fandom. Sure, because it's excellent - wonderfully plotted, vivid characters, joyously queer, set in a historical world that feels like it's breathing with life and just enough of the fantastic to keep me riveted. Yes yes, all of that. Here's the thing though.

There is a man, and he is pathetic. He's pretty, he's damned, he's annoying, he's terrible. And it feels fundamentally wrong that I have experienced this media, and my dash isn't filled with people who want to save him, want to make him hurt worse, who are turning him into sopping wet kitten or a hyper-sexual dom.

To be clear, I am not, primarily, a pathetic man enjoyer! The main character is a badass middle aged woman who is exhausted, that is my catnip. Amazing. But it still feels wrong, to see this prototypical tumblr dreamboat and for him not to have a feral fandom for me to be fondly annoyed by. Pathetic men enjoyers I need you to come get your poor little meow meow, stat.

[softness-and-shattering]

About the Mean Girls musical movie

I know Ive had conversations before about the cultural context stuff, that it seems like the message was not as effective as the first movie when the stuff its talking about, how girls are wrong whatever they do and everything is up for criticism and filming, and you have to pretend to be sweet and kind fairy princesses instead of being allowed to be human. And Id have to go back and find those posts to see what I do and dont agree with now. Because I just saw the movie. And honestly, I liked it. A lot of the visuals were really fun and interesting, which I think is impressive in a movie that mostly takes place inside of a high school. Regina more than once looks like she's in a music video, and that works because shes so hyped, its like she lives in a reality where not only do people break into song, but she's always in a music video. She really sells the character, self-assured and in charge and perfectly manipulative, and even when she's being vulnerable you're like, but is this another deception? She's more villainous in this version, and by the end maybe more human as well. (also the costuming is phenomenal, that Halloween angel dress?? The entire Halloween Someone Get Hurts sequence might be my favourite. )

Also Renee Rapp, who plays Regina, is just incredibly hot. She also played Regina on Broadway so it makes sense she has the character down. Thats not film critique thats my personal admiration. Its almost a little silly with the "oh no Regina is gaining weight she cant fit her clothes" because she looks amazing. [Edit: She's also obviously - I was gonna say she seems older than the other "teens" but actually she's 24, so Im having a moment of feeling old. And she's actually the same age as Auli'i Cravalho who is a lot younger in my mind because holy shit Moana came out EIGHT years ago?? Angourie Rice/Cady is 23, Jaquel Spivy/Damian is 26, Avantika/Karen is 19, thats more the age I thought they were but not the cast seems to be mostly 23-26. Its so weird when times moves the same for people while your image of them in your head stays the same. So Rapp isn't older she's just a bit bigger (neutral/positive). And she's been playing the role for a long time. And Im allowed to find her hot because she's a goddamn adult and so am I. This paragraph is not critique it is me blogging on my blog. Now Im annoyed at myself for Caveats of Fear but Im gonna stop dwelling on that now.]

On that note, though I originally liked the musical quite a lot, the significant fatphobia in it soured it for me. And Im happy to say in the musical movie, they changed or omitted those lines. I was waiting to cringe and they just sang something else. So that was great. I think the only fat character was Damian (why does that suddenly look like a vampire name?) - Jaquel Spivy - and he seemed comfy and cool, no self deprecating fat jokes or anything. Generally the lines/jokes that were uncomfortable or a bit bigoted have been changed. Though there isnt any disability rep, and theres a random character the burn book claims puts alcohol in her inhaler, like a 3 second joke.

And the big thing is that a lot of the meanness is shown in montages of vertical video and comments - no-brand tiktok obviously - and I think thats pretty realistic, and also in the original theme of not being mean to peoples faces but talking all kinds of shit behind their backs. And I think the montage format is effective in mimicking that endless scroll eyes glazing over stuck in the doom scroll/stuck in the spectacle. The music was good. I really liked how they overlaid the Spring Fling/thematic music with the math competition. If anything, Cady is not as good of a character, her Plastic switch is basically overnight, the scene with Aaron at the party is still kinda of awkward, she doesnt get as much room to breathe, while almost everyone else comes off really well. Heck even the candy cane/glen coco guy did well, I was actually suprised at how differently and yet excellently the actors acted their lines, compared both to the previous movie and the musical. Auli'i is fantastic, scary Janis is *scary*. And I simultaneously want to be her best friend. (It certainly helps that her art is augmented with embroidery and she's carrying embroidery hoops in multiple scenes. Fiber arts my loves.)

When I first saw a trailer my thoughts were "ugh we dont need another movie of this," but I think Ive changed my mind. Its similar enough and different enough that for me its a good adaptation. Also - I almost forgot to say - Janis gets a girlfriend for Spring Fling. Its not a plot point, we're just montaging getting ready and Janis goes to pick her up (in the lavender suit), and Damian is taking photos with two other sapphic couples. And he gets a crush/admirer who again, is just there to be there and doesnt interfere with the main story. I might change my mind again once its had time to settle in my thoughts, but initial impression is that its a fun movie I would watch again. Maybe we want the social commentary to be more incisive than it is, and in the end it is entertainment that needs to not be too boring to hold peoples shortening attention spans. (also neutral). Maybe thats wishing for it to be a movie that its not trying to be, and thats always a recipe for disappointment and also not great or fair analysis. What a fantastic line to end on*.