#its not really my job to link it at every chance but i still do

[daughter-of-prospero]

Jonah Rant

Someone on Youtube reminded me that I rage-typed an essay-length tirade about Jonah Magnus and his status as a certified Bastard Man right after the finale. They asked if there was a chance they could see it, which was a good question because did I even still have it? Turns out: Yes! It’s evidently been chilling in Onedrive for ~2 years. So for those who wish, my thoughts regarding that awful little man are below.

Spoilers for The Magnus Archives.

I went into the finale fully ready to not hear from Jonah again. I thought ‘oh, cosmic horror, as important as he thinks he is, he’s inconsequential and John just zaps him with eye lasers or something’. I didn’t want it per se, but I thought it was plausible.

But no. Oh no. Jonah Magnus speaks again, and he hasn’t been around for all of season 5. We heard him on a recording and we heard him chanting in the background and also all distorted in a job interview flashback, but there has been no actual uncompelled words being spoken by Jonah Magnus in real time since 159.

Yes he wrote the incantation but, rather crucially, he did not read it.

I binged TMA right as it got up to the season 4 finale. I got through season 1 in one day, and season 2 the next, and then got through three and four in the days after that. I caught up just in time for 160 to drop.

So I, foolish, naïve baby that I was, had over a year to forget what this character actually sounded like, and just how much of a slimy, insufferable fucker Jonah Magnus is. Was. Bitch.

I’ve gone into this elsewhere so I won’t belabor it but one of the reasons I’m so viscerally miffed by him is because of every human character in this podcast, he is the only one that is never shown sympathetically. I’m not counting Nikola Orsinov, or NotThems, or other manifestations of the Entities. I mean of the human, or avatar-human characters he is the least grey. Morality in this show is complex and tough to think about in my brain and one of the great ways it does this is through having really layered characters with motivations that are, at least a little, understandable. Jude Perry was a violent, sadistic lady...she was also devoted to Agnes and in some ways I think you could argue they were each other’s only links to humanity until what’s-his-name came along. Coffee shop Himbo guy. Peter Lukas is a misanthrope to the max who will send people into a nether realm if they so much as look at him wrong – which is to say, look at him at all. He was also raised to know nothing but loneliness, and pursuing it was kind of the only way he ever got some sort of approval. Which also manifested as more distance.

We get these little nuggets of what brought a villain where they are now, and we certainly don’t have to excuse them, but we have some context. We have some understanding that there is humanity in there, and that understanding makes them all the more unsettling.

Not fuckin’ Jonah.

What do we know about him? He’s a couple centuries old. Great. He found out about the powers, was drawn to the eye, and decided to start body-hopping to cheat death. He’s been doing this for ages. He tried a ritual and it failed. He took his time then, plotting and planning, and being smug, and finally arriving at a hypothesis that had a lot of credence to it. Everything fell into place, he was right, its all or nothing with the entities but the Eye rules because it opened the door (or WHATEVER).

So his big motivator is he doesn’t want to die.

And you know what, this is super understandable. We don’t know what his childhood was like (Jesus, can you imagine him in a little powder wig, climbing a tree to get a high vantage point to spy on people and get blackmail on them?), but fear of death is almost universal.

And of all the billions of people on this planet, I cannot help but notice that we are not thwarting narcissistic necromancers every fifteen minutes. Because the world would have fucking exploded a long, long time ago if we had more Jonahs in it. i.e. the people who would make aggressive selfishness a full-time occupation.

There’s a sort of cocktail of shit that makes him a memorable baddie not the least of which is that he never even attempts to justify his abhorrent actions. He’s not lying to himself, or anyone else, he’s not serving a cult, or a bunch of worms. He’s in it for himself, and if he has to stack the corpses of every living thing on the planet to reach immortality he’ll fucking do it without hesitation. Couple that with his manipulations, his merciless psychological torture, and a low, smooth voice that is always so infuriatingly composed and you have a Hell of a villain.

(I maintain that one of the reasons he’s so effective is that he enunciates so carefully. He doesn’t run words together, or mumble, he never really raises his voice, he is always in control, and everything is a flex right down to the articulation. I feel like we associate crisp, clear speech with formality, presidential addresses, or theater, things like that. Where you know what you are going to say and so the recitation is more confident. We hear this happen in statements, to a certain extent, but there’s still a lot of emotional range. For 199 episodes we never heard Jonah lose this pointed, smarmy tone. People don’t talk so formally in life, or when they’re talking on the podcast. There is something unsettling and intimidating about hearing such clear and confident speech all the time. It sounds like he knows exactly what to say in any situation. It sounds like he is utterly confident in every word that leaves his mouth. It sounds like he’s in a scene and no one else got the script but him. Because that is kinda what’s going on. At the very least, he thinks that’s what’s going on)

When he drops from wherever he’s suspended in the panopticon, he, you know, sort of makes a noise because that’s gotta be jarring. And we for once, for once, for fucking ONCE hear him even vaguely uncertain. And stupido io, I thought he was finally brought low and we might get a tantrum or something.

But no. Jonah Magnus has a lot of lost time to make up for, it’s been 20 eps since he’s been able to serenade everyone with his unique brand of horny arrogance. This motherfucker has exactly a millisecond of confusion and grogginess before “I was having the most...wonderful dream”. You can hear him edging.

And he’s kiiiiind of surprised to see John by himself with a knife, but still, so blasé, so, ‘oh, is that all?’ He’s a liiiiitle regretful to hear it’s over, but immediately heads into waxing rhapsodic about seeing a thousand lifetimes and the rapture of infinite sight and suffering and other Hellraiser shit when John speaks for all of us and tells him to shut up. Yet another reason to respect him.

And John has a lovely little catharsis where he gets to tell this orchestrator of his despair that Jonah has failed because the Things that Jonah is so devoted to will die a slow death. How long has he been waiting to say that, do you think? I mean at this point there’s nothing that could do what he’s probably feeling justice but he says it himself he gets some satisfaction from “knowing that I’ll be leaving these things that you serve trapped and starving in their own private hell.”

And all Jonah has to say is: “That we serve.” To the bitter, bitter end he is determined to just...okay I was gonna say twist the knife but that seems a bit tasteless now...determined to cause even more hurt. He cannot resist, it’s kind of all he knows. He is at the edge of a cliff and taunting the person that’s about to push him off of it.

And if you ever need a posterchild for ‘hubris’ just pull up a sound clip of Jonah Magnus. He tries to play the old ‘alright, playtime’s over,’ card, brushing the dust and what-the-fuck-ever else off his suit and manipulate John again. He has the...not even audacity, he’s looped back around from being semi-omniscient, to being so confident in that omniscience he thinks he knows everything and therefore acts way more stupidly than someone without that surety. He is enough of a dipshit to try and say to John “we both know you don’t have it in you”.

Motherfucker, what have you been doing for this entire season? What have you been doing this entire show? You have purposefully created someone who has withstood the brunt of every entity and come out more or less intact. You purposefully guided him into honing his powers, and put him in a position where he has nothing to lose. Well, Martin, but Jonah can’t do anything about that. Not anymore. Because the one person who can protect Martin is coincidentally the same person who can, will, and reeeeeally wants to Kill Jonah.

“King of a ruined world and I shall never die” my ass. King? Really? You were a placeholder, my dude. The Eye didn’t give a fuck that you were at the top of the panopticon and it didn’t give a fuck when John pulled you out of it. You said it yourself, dipshit. You might have started the archives, but John IS the archives. He is the only person more powerful than Jonah and Jonah, of all people, should know this. Especially considering you could presumably see John cutting through the domains, dishing out biblical vengeance, on a warpath for your tower.

So of course, he decides to antagonize John even more if that is even possible by telling him they both know he can’t do it.

And John fucking punches him and it’s great. Extended sounds of brutal ass whooping, please and thank you.

And then we get one of two lines that sums up Jonah Magnus for me.

“P-please John, I don’t want to die”.

This guy. Who dedicated his several lives to ruling the world and feeding on everyone else’s pain. Who has committed atrocities that numerous to count and too horrible to name. Who is being confronted by the direct target of his machinations and who, I think it’s safe to say, hates him more than anyone or anything else in existence. Has the absolute fucking nerve to go “but I’m scared :(”

When he went ‘I don’t want to die’ I actually said to literally no one because I was alone in my room “HA, Fuck you.”

John puts it a bit more eloquently. “Neither did they”. Beautiful. And then he’s gutted like the repulsive little fish he is.

The second line that sums up this insufferable megalomaniac is a little earlier. It’s casual, neither of them makes a point of it. Maybe because it’s a little redundant. “Empathy only holds you back in the end”.

I don’t want to die, and Empathy only holds you back in the end.

I mean, that’s the thesis statement of the shit-eating essay that is Jonah Magnus.

He’s so far beyond regret, or anything that isn’t 100% self-motivated he cannot perceive that perhaps John will have maybe, I don’t know, changed a bit. Gotten used to horror. Killed. He cannot fathom anything outside the tower as more than a food source. He is so used to seeing people as pawns he dies not actually understanding why John killed him. “Good luck” are his last lines.

First of all, the direction is ‘wetly’ and on the one hand I know what that means, but on the other, I cannot think of a more fitting adjective to end on with this guy.

Second of all, the ambiguity of how sincere he is or isn’t being is enraging, and so classic and I hate him, which is to say fucking excellent job of writing and acting both.

He goes to his grave thinking John’s making a power grab. He cannot conceive of any other reason for John doing what he’s doing. They’re opposite ends of the spectrum. One who can think of no one but himself, and one who will sacrifice himself because he’s thinking of everyone else. You know how matter can’t be created or destroyed? I think guilt might be the same way. And Jonah found a handy receptacle for all the guilt he doesn’t have time for and that receptacle is named Jonathan Sims head Archivist of The Magnus Institute.

What a good villain. What an infuriatingly mellifluous bitch. The thinks he’s King of the World, he thinks he’s going to get such special treatment, he thinks consequences apply to everyone but him, he thinks this is a game he can win when he doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s playing.

As much as he looked at John and went “perfect, an insecure idiot”, the Web looked at him and went “perfect, a pompous ass”. He wanted to live forever, but now he’s dead. And he doesn’t even get to live on in memory. No one knew he was up there. No one remembered Elias, let alone Jonah. You think Georgie, Melanie, Rosie, and Basira are going to tell the world about him? What would be the point?

Congratulations, Jonah. You tried to ensure your immortality and ended up ensuring that you died both literally and figuratively. Before it got yeeted into another dimension The End must have had a fucking Field Day the second his heart stopped beating.

What a bastard. What an unfathomable bastard. Like he really thought this would all work out for him, that he was the most Important Thing in the world when, at best, at best he was a glorified fucking contact lens.

Ass.

[hollysoda]

Okay so I know that totk turned one year old a couple of days ago but I was away for the weekend and didn’t get a chance to post something about it. Now I’m home again, I think I wanna just put some thoughts down

Firstly, I still love totk. It was a really fun game and had just as much fun playing through it complete blind as I did playing botw with only a loose knowledge of the game. In fact, I enjoyed it more than botw. Maybe it was because I knew more about Zelda than what I did back in September 2022 when I first played botw, or maybe it was because I could see the improvements they made when it came to dungeons and overall exploration. For at least six months totk was my favourite zelda game. Now, a year on, it isn’t.

I think on reflection totk is a very flawed game. While it is technically genius, story-wise it’s incredibly weak, possibly the weakest in the entire franchise. Here are a few points worth mentioning:

Why bother bringing back Ganondorf if he isn’t going to have any real motive? Is there a reason why he’s fighting with Rauru and seeking his own secret stone, or is he just doing it for funsies? Part of the reason why Wind Waker Ganondorf is so good is because he has a strong and clear motive. Without any motive, totk Ganondorf just feels like an enemy rather than a main antagonist

The main thing that drives forward a story is a theme to take away from it. Breath of the Wild’s theme was exploration and lost memories, Skyward Sword’s theme was loyalty and/or devotion, but it’s hard to tell what totk’s theme is. Sacrifice could be the outstanding one, seeing as both Zelda and Rauru make crucial sacrifices for the sake of Hyrule, but where else is it seen in the story? Totk just tries too many things, and having a clear theme would just help to solidify things

For a game that was supposed to solve the mystery of who the Zonai were it sure did a poor job at doing so. I absolutely adore the Zonai and in my opinion Rauru and Mineru’s designs as some of the coolest in the entire franchise but my god. Their lore is so underdeveloped it hurts. We know the bare minimum about their civilisation and culture. We still don’t know why they died off, why they built the labyrinths (and by extension who the Lord of dragons/owls/boars are), why they have secret stones in the first place, why is the Temple of Time in the sky when it was originally on the ground and most importantly why is draconification a forbidden act. If you’re gonna imply that the three dragons introduced in botw were once people then tell us!! Totk deserved a dlc that could explain all of this and not leave us in the unknown

Saying that the Sheikah technology just “disappeared” is an absolutely awful way of saying “uh yeah we never thought about that”. That’s some god awful world-building and planning on the developers behalf. Even if they just said that after the Calamity it lost its magic and then parts of it were repurposed for new technology, like the Skyview towers, it would be so much more believable. The Divine Beasts should have at least been in the game somewhere, perhaps in the depths. The lack of Sheikah tech makes the game feel so disjointed from botw, and makes totk feel as though it’s only a sequel because it has the same characters in it

The ending of the game just doesn’t sit right with me. Why bother having Mineru beg Zelda not to swallow her secret stone if in the end she would be able to turn back into a human. I understand the developers want a happy ending but at least let there be consequences. Let Zelda’s memory be a bit hazy or give her dragon features like many artists have done and let Link permanently be an amputee

Also the Ancient Hero angers me. I’ve got no problems with him not being a hylian because honestly it makes it wayy more interesting knowing that not every hero was hylian, but just explain why. If he’s some sort of Zonai, why doesn’t he look like Rauru and Mineru? Is he some sort of hybrid or a different breed of Zonai? And why does the tapestry depict him as a hylian if he’s not? Seems like an oversight more than anything

I think I should stop there because this post is getting long but uh TL;DR totk could have been a phenomenal game if they spent more time planning out the storyline and fleshing out lore. I get it, the game was originally botw dlc, but after so many delays we at least deserved a better story.

I do still love this game though Tears of the Dragon goes HARD

[dujour13]

Fanwork Friday

Thanks to @dragonologist-phd and @arendaes for the inspo to do this – great idea!!

I have a lot of beloved fics to recommend but this week I have to start with two criminally underappreciated PWOTR fanfics by authors I admire. They deserve tons more kudos. It's a thankless job writing less popular ships/characters but it shouldn't be.

Stay: Here, With Me, As I Go / The Links In Their Chain series – @silversiren1101

Ship: Regill Derenge/Minovae Arangeir

I admit I first clicked on this because of what was maybe morbid curiosity at the concept of a Regill romance but I AM CONVINCED. Many times Siren has made me cry literal tears over these two.

I am so in love with this couple. Mino is a Hellknight with a heart of gold who’s been through it all and still comes out swinging, a tireless defender of the downtrodden and just a fave OC of mine. Without compromising one iota (because that would be unacceptable) Siren’s characterization of Regill made even my flaky azata ass melt for him.

Incredibly emotionally impactful writing and deep knowledge of the lore that make the setting and characters come to life. I am insane over this.

Savor Its Sweet Bloody Taste / A Pulsing Wound of Need series - urgathoas / @camelliagwerm

Ship: Camellia Gwerm/Valerius Dragavei

This is another one my flaky azata ass clicked on out of morbid curiosity but I AM CONVINCED once again. The gothic horror couple of all time.

It’s sad that in the game a good-aligned KC never gets a chance to know Camellia. Harper fleshes her out in a way that’s chilling but also really endearing and made me fall in love with her (from a safe distance). And then there’s Valerius, the Urgathoan dhampir lawyer who uses his mythic power to turn Drezen into a necropolis. Terrifying man in every evil, power-hungry, bloodthirsty way and so damn cute about Cam.

Gorgeous prose full of just the perfect touches of descriptive detail. So much fun to read.

[biolizardboils]

Hey again.

I was saving this for when I'd wrapped some other stuff up, but it's taking too long. I'm just gonna say it while the words are fresh in my head.

The two-month break I've been on? I think I'm gonna stay on it. As in, stay logged off except on special occasions.

There's still things I want to finish here. I will answer what's left at @ask-the-all-consuming-void and bring it to a proper ending; The Secret Thing it was gonna segue into will go up, even if only as sketches and drafts; And there's another project I'm still helping with behind the scenes. But aside from those… I want to maintain my internet presence a lot less.

I've learned a lot about myself since I left: most importantly the hyper-empathy, compassion fatigue thing, and that being terminally online probably does more harm than help. There's trying to be a good, vigilant person, and then there's overwhelming oneself about things they can't control, with info that isn't always accurate. I've been doing the latter in different ways for years; late April/early May was a big wake-up call. Lesson learned: I've got to find balance, and I won't find it here.

The second-most important thing I learned is that… the reason I "joined" the internet in the first place? It's pretty much been fulfilled. Has been for a few years now, actually.

I made this tumblr in 2015, but I got my real start on deviantART and WordPress in 2011. Don't expect links; what people post in their preteens can stay between them and God lol. But I'll tell you what got me to make accounts: my confusion as a new Sonic fan. The way people talked about them, the way they talked to each other… it hurt to see.

I got it in my preteen head to set a better example. To not let my love for something become disdain for others of its kind. To explain instead of assume. And to assure anyone who'd listen that it's not shameful to like Sonic, that those who do deserve better, and that they could still have it better someday.

And now, 13 years later… we do. The hurtful stuff I saw back then is nearly gone now. When it does pop up, it's easier to counteract than ever. People realize how silly and petty and wrong it was, and can call it out accordingly. People can live a little truer to themselves, now that that shit isn't everywhere anymore.

I think that, specifically, is all I really wanted. Everything else—the reinvigoration of the characters and their world, the downpour in avenues once closed off by "cringe" and "not enough interest"—have been wonderful byproducts. I've been gassing up Sonic Movie 3 as the final step, but it's really more of a victory lap.

After realizing that, I just… don't feel the need to post so much here anymore. My self-worth and sense of morality shouldn't rely on what I do or don't type. I don't need to document every thought or choice I make and why.

The cause I've performed for since middle school no longer needs my time and energy, if it ever even did. I can just enjoy things in relative silence, and spend myself in other ways. Ways I've taken too long to get around.

Sonic Unleashed is what set me down this path. I watched it go from rejected at launch, to just divisive, to respected and beloved. I still wonder if, had it gotten a fairer chance, the current Sonic renaissance could've happened sooner.

But dwelling on that won't change anything. I'd rather dwell on how, this year, I got to scream Endless Possibility with hundreds of other people, loudly and proudly. No fear of who's watching, no need to self-sabotage. It meant the world to me.

There was a con in my area on June 23rd. I wasn't planning on doing anything that day until I heard about it. There was someone in attendance who helped me put a symbolic bow on this part of my life.

I think he did a wonderful job :)

I have one last thing to say before I go. That'll be its own post, so I can put it in the public Sonic tags.

Again, the stuff I've left hanging here will get finished eventually. But for now, this is goodbye.

Moots, followers: thank you so much. I will quite literally remember you all in therapy.

--BiolizardBoils

[twilightprince101]

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest REWRITTEN

I recently decided to replay Conquest after years of not even thinking about it, and I've been having a lot of fun! It's my first time playing on Classic/Permadeath, so learning the intricacies of the system for the first time is really fun!

Only thing is that, now as someone aiming for a Creative Writing bachelors and having experience editing... wow the story is not written well. Conquest has its moments, but there is a LOT of missed potential.

But that's the key word here: Missed Potential. For Conquest's story, it had the chance to be really good. The bedrock for an amazing story was all there--you side with the Obviously Evil King because you love the family that raised you and want to rescue them from their abusive father. But with just how blatantly evil King Garon is, Lilith being completely absent from the plot (despite showing up in Chapter 7) and Corrin's honestly irresponsible method of conducting himself in a War Zone, it's hard to see the gold under the grime.

So I thought, "Hey, I'm aiming to be a developmental editor for authors and have experience dabbling in editing already. How about we try using those skills on Conquest?"

And thus, Conquest Rewritten was born!

I'm going to do my best to utilize all of the elements currently present within the game to draw out a more impactful story. This means that there will be no new assets (artwork, voice acting, maps) added in. Every chapter and map will still be the same gameplay-wise, every major event will proceed as it originally did. The only difference is how it is done. The job of a developmental editor is to polish the original story, not create a new one after all!

If you're interested, feel free to come along for the ride! At the moment, Chapters 1-7 have been edited to a point I am satisfied with (though 1 and 6 didn't need any major revisions). I'll likely be releasing edited chapters in batches like this in the future. I'm currently busy with University work, so keep in mind that I might not update too often.

Either way, thank you for reading! Click the links below if you want to get to reading, click the "read more" link to see an example of a scene and how I'm conducting this!

Hope everyone has a nice day! And remember: Only you can forge a fate that's to your liking~

GO TO THE INDEX ->

GO TO CHAPTER 1/PREFACE ->

[Original text of the first lines of Chapter 5, where Hinoka and Ryoma explain the Faceless with clearly prejudiced language against Nohrians, and Corrin does not fight back against that language despite growing up in Nohr his entire life]

[Rewritten text, where Livéle (stand in for protagonist), after hearing that same language, pushes back against them calling Nohrians "evil" and setting clear boundaries for herself, standing up for her Nohrian siblings]

[theheartwhumpswhatitwhumps]

I saw you were taking whump requests!! Could you maybe do something where Whumpee is injured but is still trying to go on missions so Caretaker has to sedate them for their own good???

Sorry this took so long. I've been working on a book and all my time goes into 1) my job and 2) the book, which for the time being is an unpaid second job. But here it is at last!

Let's sedate some whumpees!!

--

cw // sedation w/ fade to black, sedation for whumpee's sake, dizziness, referenced past physical trauma (broken bones, beating), medical language, bad(??) caretaker

(as always, please let me know kindly if there are tags I miss and I will add them)

--

"Any questions?"

Leader crosses his arms and watches the team digest the mission plan. Silence doesn't settle over the room so much as turn in restless circles like an anxious dog.

Everyone wonders if they should be the one to speak up. Of course there are questions. Or, at least one. Only one that matters.

Is Whumpee really coming along?

No one looks at Whumpee, sitting straight-backed in their seat, arm free of its sling a week too early. The bruises on their cheeks and neck are long faded, but under a careful eye, a yellow tinge still lingers beneath the surface. Stitches weren't enough to make up for the small chunk missing from their bottom left, leaving it misshapen. Thanks to Healer's handiwork, Whumpee is in much better shape than they could be (or should be), but no where near completely healed.

Leader looks at each team member one by one. One by one, they feel his gaze, and Leader watches every pair of eyes drift toward Whumpee's chair. This plan hinges on everyone playing their part to the letter. No room for screw ups. No room for weak links.

Healer bounces a knee beneath the table. In the cool light, her eyes flash almost threateningly.

Finally, Leader looks to Whumpee, who returns his gaze with unwavering determination.

"No questions," they say, as resolute as a charging chariot.

--

The team is dismissed to prepare for the mission at hand. In the hallway, Healer catches Leader by the crook of his arm, her fury barely reined.

"You cannot be serious."

Leader looks down at Healer's hand, raising an eyebrow. "About?"

"Don't you dare." Healer's voice is more than angry. It's vengeful. "Whumpee should never have been in the field in the first place. They weren't ready and you knew it. But you sent them anyway."

Leader wrenches his arm free. Rather, Healer lets him loose. She can't stand to touch him anymore.

"Whumpee has skills I needed to utilize. What happened was a terrible accident--"

"They were almost killed."

Leader huffs something almost like laughter. "I'm not the bad guy here. We all know the risks. This is a job like any other, and if they can't stand the heat--"

"Listen to me. Whumpee's bones are barely healed. They haven't passed a single stress test since....since it happened. They're too weak to be of any use." Harsh, maybe, but Healer can't afford to be sensitive when Whumpee's life could be on the line. "If they get into trouble, there may not be any getting out. Not like last time."

I may not be able to fix them like last time.

Leader walks away but Healer is right on his heels. "Their role is a stationary one," Leader says, unperturbed. "Very little chance of trouble finding them from a surveillance van. If they want to back out, they need only say the word."

Fury ablaze, Healer steps in front of Leader, blocking his path. She ignores how a dangerous look flashes across his face. "Whumpee would step in front of a moving train if you told them to. To prove that they could. To make you proud. Don't you dare take advantage of that. They are not your soldier."

More than his usual annoyance, the new look on Leader's face puts Healer at unease. But she stands her ground, refusing to step aside. It's not a look of anger, of indignation at her disrespect. It's thoughtfulness. Like he's just been handed a fun new toy. Like he can't wait to see what it can do.

"Loyalty," he says, and the way the word rolls off his tongue makes Healer's stomach drop, "is a valuable gift. To give, and to be given. Whumpee's loyalty makes them an incredibly important asset to the team....and you're right, Healer. You're absolutely right. Whumpee should be safeguarded, given time to heal and regain their strengths. Effective immediately, they're suspended from the mission."

Healer can't find it in herself to be relieved. There's a caveat coming, she can feel it.

Leader lays a heavy hand on her shoulder, and her stomach drops. "We'll be leaving in an hour. Best give Whumpee one more check up, don't you think?"

--

Excitement runs hot and electric through Whumpee as they practically run to the medical wing. Time for another mission, but more than that. A second chance.

They knock on the examination room door, but don't wait for permission to enter. At this point, this room is as familiar to them as their own quarters. They've spent the better part of a month inside these sterile white walls under Healer's masterful hands.

Healer works at the counter, her back to Whumpee.

"You can't seem to get rid of me, doc!" They hop on the examination table, jarring their sore arm, but they don't let on how much it hurts. They've been practicing.

Craning their neck, they try to peer over Healer's shoulder but can't catch a glimpse of her work. Their thoughts swiftly drift to the mission, and their eyes to the anatomical posters hanging around the room. Skeletal system, nervous system, muscular, endocrine. Diagrams of the human brain. Healer had shown Whumpee what was happening in their body when she healed them from Villain's beatdown, how her powers combined with the medicine she prescribed facilitated almost miraculous repairs.

"Whip up some of your magic so I can get out of here!" Whumpee pinches a corner off the paper covering the exam table. "I still need to get my things ready. Lots to do. I didn't pack enough snacks last time. Or gauze." They shake away the memories. This time, they'll be more careful.

"I just want to make sure you're all set for field work," Healer says. Something clatters on the counter. "Can't be too careful."

Whumpee slowly flexes their sore arm, rolling their eyes. If there's one thing they've learned about Healer through all this, it's that she's inhumanly thorough. No stone unturned, no ailment untreated. Her attention to detail combined with unmatched empathy made her a good medic. The best Whumpee has ever seen, actually. And she tells it straight, the good and the bad, no lies to spare your feelings. Whumpee knows her tough love is the real reason why they've healed so quickly from the worst beating they've ever survived.

"Leader seems to think I'm ready to get back out there. I've got an important role in the plan. You heard him, he said--"

"Leader isn't your doctor."

Healer's voice was hard edges and ice. Whumpee had heard that voice before, usually when she found out that they'd been negelcting physical therapy. Whumpee felt themself shrink a bit in their seat, disappointed to have been a disappointment.

Healer exhales a slow breath, her back and shoulders deflating until she, too, seems smaller where she stands. "But…he believes in you. You've made a lot of progress. I'm very proud of you. You’re gonna do great."

Healer turns around and walks to where Whumpee, ever the model patient, sits on the cushioned table. In one hand she holds a bottle of water, and in the other, she pinches a small paper cup between her fingers. At the bottom, two blue tablets lay like pale snapdragon petals.

She holds out the water and cup. "Down the hatch."

"What's this?" Whumpee asks, but takes both from her.

Healer adjusts the pillow at the head of the table, hair obstructing her eyes. “Pain relief.”

Easy enough, Whumpee knocks the pills back. With the water, they go down smoothly. “That’s it then?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Thrill rushes through them. Back in the field. Another chance to prove their skill. Their capability. Their worth.

Leader believes in me, they think. Healer is proud of me. They don’t know which is the sweeter thought.

They jump from the table, mind already back in their room, gathering up what they need for the mission. No sooner do their shoes touch the tile floor than that shock of thrill turns cold, then fuzzy warm, and then the lights are too bright. And the room is tilting.

“Woah—”

Their knees buckle beneath them. They reach for something to catch but it’s too late. They’re already falling and the world is out of reach.

Strong arms scoop them up. “Easy does it.” Healer’s voice.

“Healer, I…I feel…”

“I know.”

Grotesque diagrams of flayed human bodies warp beneath the harsh lights. There is something here, in this room where safety could once be trusted. Something wrong.

The horrible images all slide away, replaced by a cold, rectangular sun. Healer is somewhere, close and distant, laying them back on the table with arms too long. Softness embraces their head but Whumpee finds no comfort in it.

Half of what they mean to say is lost, butchered as it passes through the sieve of their tongue and teeth. “Healer...(help)...I'm...(feeling)...wrong."

“Shh, I know.”

Sharp metal gleams on the border of their sight but when they turn to see what instruments of pain and horror await, there are only blurred silver sheets where tables once were, and Healer’s sad eyes.

Then Whumpee understands. And they know they’d take ten broken bones over betrayal's deep, hollow pain.

Maybe there were real words on their tongue, or a scream, or a curse, but all that comes out is a high whimper—weak, pathetic, helpless—that follows them into sleep.

[arvoze]

[1/3] HHNFLARTAS - the master trials

hell hath no fury like a rescue team association scorned not a fic or anything, i just ramble a lot about my pmd ocs in a digestible format that's more or less that kind of content. random yearly event for rescue teams. covers no more than like, one week of VV content

[ X / 2 / 3 ]

the master trials

an annual event where the rescue team association (RTA) judge teams of a certain rank and higher. this judgement is made after teams are put through a series of challenges to make sure that the rescue teams are up to par and can perform their duties.

whilst many pass, it is also entirely possible for a team to fail the trials, subsequently getting demoted. in this case, teams may earn enough points to reach the entry rank again, though in order to be recognised as that rank, they must pass that year's trial. this is not a requirement unless you are re-entering the rank.

..

many high-ranking teams will be famous within good reason. one way to earn notoriety is to place well in the master trials -- but if a team comes in the top spot, chances are they'll already be known anyways, and be some of the highest possible ranks. there are outliers, though, but they're few and far between.

hundreds, if not thousands of teams will take part regionally. each continent has its own top 100 chart. it's fine to place below the top 100; this doesn't mean you're getting demoted, it's just a way to deter giving everybody a placement. many of those who make it into the bottom bracket of the ranks aren't cared for much, either, even if it's still an achievement.

the rescue team association

the RTA is like a board of directors within the rescue team profession. it is worth noting that this covers all forms of rescue team; if it operates under guild rules, it counts. rescues, exploration, discovery, all-rounders -- it's all under the "rescue team" umbrella. many on the RTA board are former high-rankers, but some less-than-savoury upperclassmons have had their says in their matters too.

regardless, many of the pokemon here are strongly revered in their fields. they oversee many of the trials in action, after a certain point within the master trials begin (they can't track the progress of every team).

in the final few stages of the master trials, they observe teams using rotom devices linked to familiar technology -- nothing entirely new. just rotom drones projected to a large connection orb, probably. developed technology still isn't that great.

..

the RTA are responsible for sending messages out across all guilds, whenever needed.

verdant village

verdant village is situated within the water continent, meaning that it's part of the master trials (water division). guildmaster rime doesn't actually have that many great teams registered under the guild itself; it's mostly just a place for other teams to hang out and get missions from, sometimes. and a lot of the actual teams are pretty low-ranking, because not a lot of heavy missions show up. that's really just because verdant village is a "new" location in comparison to most other guild origins, having only been founded within the past 50 years. it's still finding its roots, but they're growing.

there's a good few number of teams that can apply for the master trials, however. but the only ones that are really important right now are keith's team (keith/cacturne, mike/breloom, luwel/nuzleaf) and team pb&j (roadblock/garganacl, minecart/palossand). they're rival teams, but in a one-sided sense. PB&J is more of an inconvenience to keith's team.

..

keith's team, having been doing this job for at least 20 years under verdant's guild, have taken part in the master trials several times. team PB&J are fresher on the scene, but have participated in at least one previous trial. keith's team has barely cut into the top 100 within the water division a few times, though always in the lower bracket. they're the highest scorers in verdant village, though, which isn't really a surprise to anybody.

keith's team

keith's team - real team name, nonexistent, they've never had one - have been registered under verdant village since [the team's] creation. the team has existed since the trio were children, and continues to exist as each member is in their thirties (varying ages). despite their general additiude and demeanour, keith's team take their job as a rescue team very seriously -- which is precisely why keith is set to become the future guildmaster. in rime's words, despite what he shows, nobody cares about others quite like him.

the master trials go about as average as you'd expect. keith's team never fail the master's, but they're nothing to entirely write home about either. they're somewhere above average, but they're also not the most famous team in the continent. far from it. (they're recognised within the village, though, as each member is social in their own way). their teamwork and planning-ahead tends to be standout, but still nothing to make other guilds remember the name.

luwel usually prepares far in advance for the master trials, because he's fucked up and likes to make sure everything is right. this always works tremendously in the team's favour, because his tendency to overthink and over-worry allows for the team to solve problems they'd otherwise have no way of figuring out.

hell hath no fury like a rescue team association scorned (#1)

the master trials have begun. they're pretty far in, in fact. the top placements are already well under consideration -- they're going to really be put to the test. the whole point is to make sure that these teams are earning the right to be trusted, right?

higher-ranking teams (and lower-ranking ones of interest) will face further challenges. many teams have already passed the trials and can rest easy; they've nothing else to prove. they're just keeping their status, not needing to prove themselves or aim higher.

keith's team press on for the fun of it, and because they do truly believe that they have something to show. and they're not entirely wrong -- their teamwork and synergy is great, and they get along with eachother & understand eachother far greater than even some of the best.

but they're three grass types. and to some of the stuck-up oldies of the past at the RTA, that's a concern. they've got an incredibly glaring weakness that can make them a liability under certain circumstances. monotype teams can exist, yes, and there's no inherent problem with this, but you also can't just… allow a team like this to think that they can take on anything without acknowledging their faults.

..

they're going to a volcanic dungeon. it's a rescue, of course -- get deep enough into the caverns to find and save a pokemon, but prove yourself further by "completing" the dungeon. it's a deliberate set-up, of course; no team this far into the master's is going to be given the easy way out. the point is to prove yourself.

and it's… a journey. keith's team have survived volcanic endeavours before, but not often -- other teams are better suited for that. the master trials have thrown this at them before. it's always been enough for them to maintain their ranks. luwel's prepared enough, he thinks. keith's belief of if we don't save them, who will echoes in their minds. mike's just here, really. he's always been cautious about these dungeons. he's always worried about what could happen.

..

[pt 2.]

[lav3nder-bees]

This may or may not be a hot take but i really dont think that the Dark Urge should ever be free of Bhall, not completely at least

They are his flesh and blood, they’re him entirely, at least before they grew a soul throughout their adventure, so at least to me the ending they got just felt kind of.. cheap? It felt sort of like a “congrats you made the moral decision! Heres your reward <3”

To clarify I like the current story for the Dark Urge, I think Larian did a great job with it, but maybe its just me but i really wish there had been some larger narrative impact for the urge, rather than it just being forgotten almost as soon as it was resolved, personally I can’t see durge being able to just leave theyre god so easily with what was basically a meaningless sacrifice (i mean sure they died but it didn’t really matter because it barely lasted a minute)

Anyway, my suggestion is for this big climax of freeing yourself from the urge to have just a bit more of a sacrifice (similar to how Shadowheart either loses her parents or spends the rest of her life with her wound, or how Astarion can either retain his soul by giving up the powers of the ascendent or he can gain that power but sacrifice who he is in the process), i mean so much of bg3 is sacrificing something for another so i wish that had carried on to durges “final” conflict

Basically i think there are multiple ways this could be done, either by showing us (the player) and the companions what durge could have by submitting to Bhall (especially since in the game it feels like theres a very strong push towards “hey dont pick this option! Its bad!”) and/or there being a larger impact after rejecting Bhall (this doesn’t even have to be in game, just a nod towards affects after the game)

For the first option i was thinking that perhaps durge rejects Bhall at first and then similar to in-game we get a second chance to accept Bhall, but this time he mentions all of the perks from submitting to him (correct me if im wrong but i believe if you submit you effectively become his chosen? There should be some cool ass new powers with that), obviously mentioning the slayer form, but perhaps also stuff such as immortality (specifically being resurrected an hour or so after death, not being unable to die) or other new abilities (if this is too op from a gameplay perspective it could always just be a “do my bidding THEN you get this stuff”) and if durge still rejects bhall then you can get the whole dying and being resurrected scene, just so theres an actually meaningful narrative sacrifice

The second option is the one im most interested in where durge’s link to Bhall is retained even after theyve been freed from his direct control, I find it hard to believe that a literal godspawn could just walk away like that so it wouldve been interesting to see a few moments of perhaps Bhall chasing after durge, maybe influencing their dreams to a minor extent, almost “speaking” to them in that sense or even having lesser instances of the urge where its not as overwhelming but perhaps the barest flicker towards murder, more like intrusive thoughts then anything that actually threatens to take over

Ive also seen an idea of durge having to make a deal with Bhall to be free of him i believe the exact post was durge having to kill every tenday else Bhall takes control back (said by @crossdressingdeath i think?) and i just LOVE this idea, imagine just that constant knowledge that you have to make a sacrifice to avoid becoming a mindless slave, and as mentioned removed that whole moral superiority aspect of durge’s ending

Please feel free to critique or share ideas!!

[tmblrcolouredpaper]

Lazy Winter Evening

Hwang Hyunjin/ Reader

Established Relationship; Domestic Fluff in Winter; Dancing, Cuddles and Kisses; Hyunjin is Whipped

wc: 1204

Hyunjin and you spent the evening together and while being tired, you didn't want to miss the chance to make him laugh.

His breath was visible in the cold air and with every deep exhale he built tiny clouds that raised up to the night sky, cradling the the soft light of the stars. The sounds of the city around you were muffled in the the distance and the water of the sea next to you covered with a thin layer of ice. You surrounding seemed frozen in its entirely, no people wandering around the small park but Hyunjin and you and the birds were in deep sleep, not announcing any kind of chirping melodies, as well as the wind that was completely absent and left the air in a crisp cold and calm state. 

`We could go to the movies?`, Hyunjin suggested and lazily followed the sandy road between the grass fields, his hands stuffed in his puffer jacket and his beanie hanging on his head, tilted and in danger of falling. You walked in front of him and caused him to stopping his steps, only for you to reach up to his head to fix his headgear, making sure that his ears were again well protected from the cold. 

`At this time?`, you questioned and wondered if you were right guessing that it must have been around 11 pm. 

`Why not?`, Hyunjin asked and pulled you next to him, linking his arm with yours and continued walking on the hardened sand.

`I don’t really want to.`, you answered and thought if you really had to do something right now. You were happy with just being lazy with him right now.

`We could get snacks and watch a movie at home.`, Hyunjin continued and walked to the edge of the park, ready to leave and walk in the echoey streets. 

`How can you be so energized at this time?, you sighed and leaned your head against his arm and closed your eyes for a few seconds. 

`I’m not?`, he questioned in surprise and stopped walking again to look down at you, a smile appearing on his face when he realized that you were tired. 

`Probably more than you, hm? Let’s just go home and lay down.`, he said and you nodded, ruffling your head agains his jacket while doing so. 

* The second the door closed behind you, Hyunjin turned on the music on his phone, took off his shoes and started dancing sillily through the room, taking off his jacket and messily throwing it in the corner. He continued swaying back and forth when he approached you to pull your jacket off your shoulders to do the same to it. 

You kicked your shoes off and quickly found yourself holding Hyunjin’s hands, swinging your arms left and right with his while shaking your head in joy to the upbeat song that sounded. He threw his head back and laughed wholeheartedly and once you jumped around like a little child with the essence of being convinced to be in a serious dance competition, giving one’s all to be the best dancer to ever exist, Hyunjin couldn’t maintain his composure and let his body sink onto the floor, hitting his thighs repeatedly in a loud laughter, almost crying when looking at your silly performance. You ended it with the most idiotic pose you could think of and broke down laughing next to him. 

You calmed down after a while, but the moment you two made eye contact again you couldn’t escape another session of laughters. Hyunjin pulled you on his lap and threw his arms around you, squeezing you close, still laughing, but you eventually managed to be so out of breath that you silently, chests heaving in catching the necessary air, rested against each other. 

`I love you so much.`, Hyunjin whispered and chuckled, thinking of your incredible performance that he just got to enjoy. He caressed your nape gently and had his chin on your shoulder, while your legs cradled his waist, your head nuzzled in crock of his neck with your hands holding onto his shoulders. 

`I can take over your job now with my amazing dance skills.`, you bragged and pecked his jaw before you leaned back to face him. 

`Oh, that’s why you’re with me? To steal my job?`, he gasped in faked surprise of the revelation, his hand slowly moving up and down your sides. 

`Yes. I needed to learn from the best first to be prepared to apply confidently.`, you explained and Hyunjin wheezed, `So, this was what you learned from me?`, while looking down, eyes widened in disbelief. 

`Did you see my immaculate isolations and the overall flow I maintained? PER.FEC.TION.`, you recapitulate and emphasized your words with big gestured. 

`I think you’re already in dreamland and lost all abilities to have a realistic perception of yourself.`, he chuckled and tapped your hips to signal you to stand up. You did as instructed and took his hands to pull him up when he was still waiting on the floor when you already towered over him.  You wanted to let go once he was standing, but he kept your hands in his, caressing your nuckle with the tip of his fingers, his eyes looking at yours as if he was searching for something in them. 

You involuntarily closed your eyes and turned your head to the side, a big yawn overcame you and tears of tiredness drowned your eyes. 

`No need to cry, you’re my favorite dancer after all.`, Hyunjin smiled and nodded towards the bedroom. 

There was no need to change into more comfortable clothes since you went on the little walk already wearing the laziest sunday-evening-outfit possible, so you just crawled under the blanket without thinking twice, pulling the big blanket aside to give Hyunjin’s side free or him to easily lay down. He took off his hoodie, leaving him in joggers and a shirt and settled next to you, grabbing the blanket to pull it over him, causing it to uncover you partly. You groaned in annoyance and robbed close to Hyunjin who immediately adjusted the fluffy fabric. 

`I’m still convinced that we should use two blankets when sleeping together.`, you grumbled and curled into his body. 

`You are convinced of a lot of nonsense.`, he replied and gave you a long kiss on your forehead. 

`I keep stealing the blanket throughout every night. You must be annoyed by now.`, you reminded and felt him humming into the pillow in relieved relaxation. 

`Just gives me an excuse to be close to you for hours to stay warm.`, he mumbled and waited for your response, but only felt your rhythmic breath against him and found you asleep in his arms. He finalized his position that was comfortable for him yet gave him the perfect view on your face pressed against him and let his fingers gently dance over your cheeks and jaw. 

`Loveyou, Hynjn.`, you mumbled quietly and unconsciously tilted your head to the side to press your lips against him, clumsily nuzzling back into your previous position with a deep sigh, leaving Hyunjin with an inevitable smile and the feeling of warmth expanding in his chest that made him believe that it must have actually been a warm summer day that he experienced this evening.

[secretswiftymarvelfan]

I was reading your Star Reader post and to start off, this is SO CUTE! Gives readers something to be proud of too which is amazing.

I used to have a really difficult time with Tumblr as both a writer and reader (heck, I still have a difficult time). I’ve heard from so many other reader friends about the difficultly they’ve found in engaging when their favorite authors don’t engage back with them.

I just want some readers to know it’s okay - you’re trying to be so kind and thoughtful with your words about a fic and it is appreciated. I know how disheartening it is even as a reader to reblog something and the author replies to all the other reblogs except yours, shares all the asks but yours never pops up.

None of this means you aren’t as “good of a reader”. Your engagement is still appreciated and I’m sorry if you’ve ever felt like it hasn’t been. I hope this event gives some readers a chance to feel more appreciated as well.

Hi there!

I'm glad you like my idea of star readers I'm really looking forward to giving them out and having a fun little thing to do that helps build a community!

Firstly I want to say your point is completely valid I know from my own experience as a reader that it can be a bit disheartening when your comment doesn't get acknowledged especially when us as readers can often idolise our favourite creators.

I have never purposely ignored comments and i'm sure it is the same for other creators too. We want to reward engagement and encourage comments, we not gonna ask for it and then ignore it when we do get it.

If a comment has been missed it almost always has been by accident. Firstly we don't always get notifications, or sometimes asks never appear in our ask boxes, I quite regularly have to turn my notifications back on after tumblr turned them off, we call this place dumblr for a reason!

we also often get quite a lot of notifications! so it's easy for reblogs and comments to get buried amongst the many serial likes! I know I often try and go through and find all the comments but there is always a chance I might miss one or two.

Also we as content creators have a lot of other things we are doing around creating content. A reader only really has to read and reblog/comment which can be easily done in one sitting while writers have to: write, edit, create moodboards, create the post, add links and format the post to make it look pretty and accessible etc and this is all on top of our day to day jobs and hobbies so we don't always have the time to respond to every single comment straight away and so some may slip through the cracks but I PROMISE we are not doing it intentionally!

the only time someone might choose not to respond to a comment is because the comment has been taken in a negative way or is just asking 'when are you going to update xyz.' Some writers do just block people who regularly leave comments like this but i really hate having to block people until the very last straw. so if you are someone who feels like they're regularly ignored maybe just take a look at what kind of comments you are leaving because sometimes that might be an issue. but 9 times out of 10 its just because it slipped through the cracks.

we as writers appreciate all of our readers, you guys are the reason we keep on doing this. we want to spread the love and help nurture this community back to what it was before. we're all human, the lack of engagement is disheartening on BOTH SIDES. It can be really demoralising when you post an update to a series and it's just crickets. And it can be demoralising when you comment on a fic and hear nothing back. But the only way we can get past that is to KEEP ENGAGING, get back on that horse and spread the love. someone who just spreads love regardless of what they get back is infinitely happier and healthier than someone who spreads love on a tit-for-tat basis.

I realise i have REALLY rambled on about this now I just wanted help explain why sometimes this may happen and will probably continue to happen due to bugs and glitches and genuine mistakes, especially if this works really well and engagement increases because we're humans we can't always do it all.

From myself and all the other creators out there to our supporters and followers, we deeply love you all and appreciate you so so much x

Niamh x

[manonamora-if-reviews]

Creating Goncharov by Albie

============= Links

Play the game See other reviews of the game See other games by Albie or follow @gamesbyalbie

============= Synopsis

Everyone knows Goncharov. Martin Scorsese's 1973 film is a cult classic, a true masterpiece of cinema. To celebrate its upcoming 50th anniversary, you, an office drone working at a major media corporation, have to create a pitch for a 2023 remake. It's an amazing opportunity that could launch your career. There's just one problem. You haven't seen Goncharov. Unable to turn down your corporate overlords, you and an indecisive colleague throw together a story based solely on information you can quickly find or invent. How will you reimagine the greatest mafia movie ever made and what will you do to turn your ideas into reality?

============= Other Info

Creating Goncharov is a Twine (SugarCube) game, submitted to the Goncharov Game Jam.

Status: Completed Genre: Unreality, Goncharov, Slice-of-Life, Meta

CW: Unreality, Descriptions of smoking, violence, and death.

============= Playthrough

First Played: 9-Dec-2022 Last Played: 25-Jun-2023 Playtime: around 1h Rating: 4 /5 Thoughts: A deep dive into Goncharov lore.

============= Review

Following the Goncharov (1973) meme storm taking over Tumblr during November 2022, Creating Goncharov takes an alternative reality approach where this fake movie existed - though, you do not remember ever seeing it. Set to create a pitch for a remake, the game takes a deep dive into the lore and the many theories regarding this shitpost. More than that, Creating Goncharov is about finding passion in your work and creating relationships.

Spoilers ahead. It is recommended to play the game first. The review is based on my understanding/reading of the story.

At the beginning, all is dull and irritating. The path to your place of work is slippery from the snow, your desk is in a cubicle nowhere close to natural light, and you expect today to be as boring as every other day you've had so far. 'Tis the life of an office drone. Except...

...you find an interesting proposition from your boss in your inbox - one you cannot refuse* - you are tasked to create a pitch for a remake of Goncharov and 1973 totally real and acclaimed movie, coined as the 'best mafia movie ever created'. Which is great, since you've been trying to get that kind of opportunity. But... you cannot for the life of you remember ever watching that movie. * hahaha like in mafia movies

You are also forced to work with Al*, a co-worker you look down on - even though they are your superior - because you don't believe they deserve their job. Through exchanges with Al, it is not really clear whether they have seen that movie either, or whether they are competent at all (would they take your idea as pass it as theirs?). Still, they have readied some bare bone documentation to help you start. *the author self-insert - do they believe the criticism/jabs they wrote about Al B? I hope not...

There is little time and not much to go on, but you still push through and ready a pitch for your boss by the meeting time. And...

...you fail. But, this was expected, considering your lack of knowledge about the original piece and of concrete information about the plot, themes, or scenes even. As if, you were meant to fail... who gives a remake of a well-loved movie to a newbie...

At this point, you can end... or, if you believe in this remake and your ideas, push through and proclaim you will make the movie by yourself if that's what it requires!

This is where strange things start to happen...

You go to work the next day, and things feel more... vibrant? The air is not as stale, the office is brighter, you even notice other people during your commute. More than that... your computer boots to the same day as before, showing the same unread email as when the game first started.

In some weird Grounghog Day scenario, you are given a second chance at putting your pitch together, retaining (partly) not only your previous found knowledge about the movie but also the (now-edited) documents Al had sent you the day/loop before. Speaking of Al, they are in this loop more forth coming with their view on the project, their knowledge of the movie, and their friendliness toward you.

While the first loop focused on the general overview, discussing the themes, or (re-)naming the characters, this loop gets into the nit and gritty of the plot. You and Al spend hours ironing out some details about the sequence of events and highlighting potential strong points. There is a lot there you can edit, and show off your creative liberties (with cycle links).

But again, this is not enough to sway the investors. You have not gone deep enough. You're still missing something important: you have not pitched the scenes!

And this is where the final loop comes in.

Yet again, the descriptions about your environment changes once more, and you notice how beautiful it is. It is also then that you notice the building's receptionist (and even remember her name and exchange some words!). The people in your mail box also change from jokey puns to actual names - they are not just nameless cogs but actual full human beings.

The exchanges between Al and you are also more developed and much more friendly. You even seem more passionate about the project than you ever were before! Even as you wait for your boss's email at the end of the day, you have the option to do something outside of work, even grow your relationship with Al.

Obviously, this time around, the pitch is a success (on my run at least, it is possible to fail a third time apparently). The movie is made, and wins tons of awards, setting you for a fulfilling career path.

With over 50 thousand words, the game covers most if not all of the "lore" created during this meme craze. In the many edits you can make, it manages to essentially give an overview of what had been discussed on Tumblr about this fake movie*. Depending on your choices, you may see quite a lot of change in variation down the line (inserting Marting Scorceses as your name for example). *with the plot document in the second loop especially, it felt a bit like those Archive documents the community created to keep track of all the lore.

The attention to details is both a major part of the gameplay, enabling you to "win" the game, and of the prose, through the subtle change in the environment/your behaviour outside of work. This is also a major point of the "movie", as recurrent details embodying time, religion, and change, were put in the forefront of the Goncharov discourse.

The change in tone in the interactions between Al and the player throughout the game feel believable, as you become acquainted with them and find a shared passion in the "movie". The exchanges of emails in the third loop is particularly lovely, and the scenes with them while waiting for that final email is quite sweet. Albie has a great command of their writing style in that area.

There were a few icks that made me tick a bit:

While the inclusion of a Martin Scorcese timeline (if you enter your name as MS) garners some fun responses and variation, it felt a bit out of place when other characters behave in the same way they would if the player has chosen any other name. It was funny that Mr. Scorcese failed the pitch, but the joke becomes a bit stale past the first loop. [In the same vein, no one questioned me when I chose the same name as existing characters/employees]

Some formatting of the text made it sometimes hard to follow along. The fake shared GoogleDoc you edit in the second loop reloads multiple times but doesn't indicate clearly where you last left off (maybe a small translucent horizontal bar?). The email exchanges between Al B and the MC in the third loop could have distinguished better the bits between a description of a scene/dialogues and the emailers just discussing it (indentation, italics, change of font...). I didn't particularly liked the browser errors (a screen popup would have been a bit nicer and easier to close) or the lack of contrast when a popup was on screen (a slightly shaded overlay would have helped separate the elements).

The lack of discussion of the day restarting felt a bit like a missed opportunity. It might not have needed much, just the player getting a bit of anxiety or questioning their sanity from reliving the same day. Even if it can be brushed off because the player can have a do-over on their pitch, the fact that the player doesn't even flinch at the emails they receive is strange*. It could be interesting to have the player fail forever and only manage to break the loop if they give up on 'creating Goncharov (2023)' or it turns out their "win" was just a dream... *there is just the words "Déjà vu" at the end of the second loop...

With the edits of the second loop being so extensive (building on the smaller edits of the first one), the gameplay of the final loop felt lacking. You essentially read through threads of emails between yourself and Al, discussing the scenes, but you have no choice in how they are described (they do have some variation depending on previous edits). I think it would have been nice (maybe for a future update?) if Al or the MC disagreed on some points (e.g: plot points contradict each other) and the MC had to make some choices. There is a bit of an unbalance in player input in the current version.

While time is of the essence, having to scramble to create a pitch in a few hours, the game doesn't "punish" you for taking all the time in the world (e.g. discussing every scene, even though Al presses you to wrap up).

Considering this game was made in less than 3 weeks (during finals!), includes this complexity in story, the high word count, a custom UI, and interactive elements further than simple choice lists, Creating Goncharov is very impressive. It is clear the author has put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this project.

From essentially using every fan theory out there about the fake-movie, to creating full scenes based on fan-edit posts on Tumblr, using the motifs (the clock, the apple, etc...) reblogged by hundreds of users, or including music created for the meme, Ablie has done their research and dove deep into the lore of the meme. They seemed to have spared no (effort) expense in creating... Creating Goncharov.

Bravo!

[shyguycity]

It's been a while since I made a formal game of the year list on this page; in 2020, my now wife and I decided to make an entire fanzine about my favorite games of the year, which ballooned in size and scope from there. If you're interested, you can find the link to the (free!) magazine, Critical Diversions, as well as see what else I've been up to in the gaming space, over at https://twitter.com/crit_diversions. It was written by five people, myself included, layoutted into a magazine format by me, and with some lovingly done illustrations made by my wife. We've also started a discord, games club, and podcast, all under the Critical Diversions banner, if any of that sounds appealing to you.

Since that magazine project, I haven't really had the creative energy to write a full game of the year list the way that I used to. Until now! 2023 has been the most incredible year for game releases that I've been alive to see, and there's so much to be excited for and talk about, I just couldn't resist anymore, despite the fact that we're gearing up to do a community game of the year podcast. But before we get to the top 10 list proper....

Honorable Mentions:

We Love Katamari ReRoll + Royal Reverie

The original We Love Katamari, released on the Playstation 2 in 2005, was already one of my favorite games ever made, so it's borderline unfair of Namco to release an absolutely perfect HD remaster of it in 2023. Namco must've thought so, too, because this was one of my most anticipated games of the year, and I didn't even realize it had released until I happened to see it on the eShop. To the uninitiated, Katamari games task you with rolling up real world objects with your sticky katamari ball, growing bigger and bigger as you go, all with the intent of making your katamari big enough to make stars in the sky. It's a simple yet delightful enough concept on its own to be enjoyed by anyone, but add in an unmeasurable amount of charm and one of the greatest soundtracks ever made, and it's easy to see why this goofy little series has persisted for over two decades now.

For my money, this is the best entry in the series, practically spilling over with creative and fun new ways and reasons to roll over innocent bystanders and animals with a space ball given to you by your negligent, abusive father, who is also basically god. Oh did I forget to mention that there's an actual well told narrative with a genuinely emotional-but-not-saccharine message at its core? Buy this fucking game y'all, I've already seen it for as low as 15 dollars.

Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster

Final Fantasy as a series misses way more often than it hits, for me. Yeah I love 7, its remake, 10, and 10-2, but by and large, every other entry I've tried to spend time with has left me incredibly cold (looking at you in particular, 6). Between craving a turn-based RPG and having the flu earlier this year, I decided to take a chance on the pixel remaster version of 5, released on consoles for the first time in 2023. Imagine my surprise when it became hands down my favorite entry in the series, as well as one of my favorite RPGs I've ever played.

Not to say that what's presented here hasn't been improved upon in the past 30 years; Octopath Traveler 2, a game we'll be talking about in my actual top 10, seemed to base its entire design around "Hey remember Final Fantasy 5? Let's make a way more open and less restricted version of that". Still, though, what FF5 was doing as an early Super Famicom game is pretty impressive; boasting a fairly open-ended job and multiclass system that's absolutely begging you to make as many fun combinations as you can imagine with your party members, it's a game that's infinitely more replayable than your average Final Fantasy fare, despite its lacking (but not horrible!) story. I ran through the game with a samurai that could also shoot hoardes of squirrels and bees out of my pockets, so you know it's a great game.

Super Mario RPG

Look, you'll never convince me that Mario RPG and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door aren't both wildly inferior to the original Paper Mario on the Nintendo 64. I've held this belief (and grudge against these other Mario spinoff fandoms) for most of my life, and I will continue to do so. And I say this as someone whose first exposure to RPGs was renting the original version of this game as a seven-year-old!

"It's too simple!" I would always bleat feebly in the general direction of the nearest hardcore Geno fan whenever this game was brought up. "It's a solid blueprint for what was to come later, but largely feels like a rough draft, a 16-bit Final Fantasy with a Mario coat of paint!" And, yeah, I am right about all of those things, and I'll continue to never let any of you forget it. But in 2023, playing this remake of one of Nintendo's most annoyingly favorited fan favorites, I couldn't help but let myself get washed away in its charms. There's no build variety or real "role-playing" to speak of, you can 100% the game in like 12 hours, and you just generally never have to turn your brain on while playing the game at all. Call it softness, call it old age, call it just really being in the mood for a cute and charming little adventure, but I fell in love with this game and its world in a way I never was able to previously. Bring on that Thousand-Year Door remaster next, Nintendo; I'm in a forgiving mood.

Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania

Speaking of being in a forgiving mood, did y'all know that I thought the original 1.0 release of Dead Cells was incredibly boring? Released in 2018, this sidescrolling roguelite was getting a ton of accolades at the time that had me extremely excited. That's not to say that it was bad, of course; I could see the markings of a well made game, and obviously the game was appealing to someone out there, with all the praise it received. But after 10 hours with it I deleted it off my Switch, thinking I'd never.........return.

It only took five years and a paid Castlevania expansion to make me give this game another look, but I'm glad I did, because I would put this pretty high up there on my all-time roguelite list now. To be clear, most of my issues with this game still remain, mostly that it gets repetitive much sooner than you'd expect of a game with as much content as this does. But instead of cooling on it 10 hours in like I did back in 2018, I got over 60 hours and dozens upon dozens of runs in before calling it quits on Dead Cells this time.

And if you're a Castlevania dork, honestly, just pick this up. There's more than enough love and fanservice here to keep even the most ardent of Castlevania freaks crying bloody tears, including the ability to replace the entire soundtrack with Castlevania songs, most of them the original version but with some new compositions included. Roguelite shredding in a video game hasn't been this good since Hades.

Now...the actual list.

10. Marvel's Spider-Man 2

No one is more down on open world checklist collectathons than I am; the idea of spending over 100 hours playing a modern Assassin's Creed game honestly makes my tummy hurt. And by and large, Spider-Man 2 doesn't stray far from this design template. You run, jump, swing, and glide all over New York City, stopping burglaries and car chases on your way to the next story objective or side mission, leveling up and spending points on various skill trees to level your Spider-Men up to gain new/upgrade old abilities, rinse and repeat. Structurally, this game isn't really doing anything different from the previous two Spider-Man games from developer Insomniac, and yet this entry was an absolute joy to play to me in way those weren't.

Largely, I think it's the pacing of the game. And not just on a macro scale, though I do think that's improved here as well. No, for me it was most noticeable in the combat; no longer are you holding down a button to freeze time and pull up a gadget wheel and having Spider-Man select one of his little science tools to shoot out before doing a few melee attacks and web shots. Instead, all of your gadgets and super moves are activated in real time with different button combinations. It might sound breathlessly dorky, but that simple change really sold the illusion of playing a Spider-Man simulator to me, and not just a Ratchet and Clank game with a Spider-Man skin.

The story I also found to be a wholesale improvement over the last two games, albeit with the caveat that the symbiote and Venom storyline almost never come across as anything beyond tryhard 90s edgelord shit in any form of media. Truly, I think Venom is just a straight up awful character, and is even worse here than usual, and I was exceptionally tired of Peter's gruff mean guy voice by the end of his time wearing the symbiote. Miles more than made up for any issues I had with the Peter side of the story, and with the way the game's story leaves off, I hope to see that character again sooner than Spider-Man 3 in another half decade.

9. Pikmin 4

This feels like Pikmin's big breakout moment as a series. And honestly, maybe my biggest surprise of the year isn't how great this game was, but how many other people were (finally) raving about Pikmin. The fact that it's this relatively low on my own list when most people I know that played it have it near the top of theirs shocks, while also making me feel pretty damn great about Pikmin's future.

From a casual perspective it's pretty easy to see why this has been such a hit for the series. It retains all the charm and cuteness and great gameplay loop of previous games in the series, while making a ton of smart changes along the way. New to 4: a fully adjustable camera that makes you feel way more involved in the action (and see all of the impossibly cute death happening around and to you); a whole host of quality of life changes, like being able to move your spaceship around each stage at will to have a more accessible base of operations; bonafide multifloor dungeons where you're able to soak in some of the best aspects of Pikmin's gameplay without worrying about time passing; "dandori battles", both against the CPU or local rivals where you aim to manage your armies as efficiently as possible; and partner space dog Oatchi, who can help you and your little army of dudes in whatever way you see fit, from battling to carrying to scouting, thanks to an honest to god skill tree. In a Pikmin game! Who woulda thought.

Honestly though, as great as this game was, I can't help but pine for the more complex level and puzzle design of Pikmin 3, as well as the local splitscreen cooperative play of Pikmin 3 Deluxe. That second feature in particular was sorely, sorely missed in our household, as Pikmin 3 Deluxe's sublime coop is some of the most fun I've ever had playing a video game with my wife. Here's hoping the now inevitable Pikmin 5 manages to bring these missing elements home, much like my group of 100 Pikmin carrying an entire watermelon the size of a small mountain back to our spaceship for the day.

8. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

Besides just being a great year in game releases, 2023 was also the year where my expectations were subverted many times over. I'd seen plenty of overhyped indie spiritual successors to fan favorite games from the late 90s and early 2000s come and go, so my interest level for BRCF as someone that's never played a Jet Set Radio game couldn't have been much lower. But that's all on me, because if I'd known that this game and its inspirations were essentially just 3D platformers dressed up as a 2002 cyberpunk anime that'd air at 2am on Toonami, I'd have been all over it much sooner.

This game effortlessly pulls off everything I value in 3D platformers. The level designs are masterful and well thought out while still feeling organic instead of just abstract obstacle courses (the game does dabble into the latter at times, and they're some of the most standout moments as well). Being set in a city, it's naturally got a large emphasis on verticality that I think not enough games in this space bother with; I want to feel my stomach drop when I miss landing on a grind rail half a mile in the sky, even if falling from that far has no consequences beyond needing to pull off the platforming section again. And unlike the earlier Tony Hawk games, I'm free to explore each environment to my heart's content, looking for new songs to add to my playlist or spots just begging to be tagged with graffiti. Wrap all of this up in a style and soundtrack that are both just fucking cool, and what else could I really ask for? Well, besides just more of this, please.

7. Resident Evil 4

In a year full to the brim with remakes, remasters, and revisits, Resident Evil 4 is the one with the most expectations put on it, due to not only the pedigree of the original RE4 (often cited as one of the best games of all time, and surely the catalyst for the modern over the shoulder third-person shooter), but the obscenely high quality of Capcom's other recent remakes from the series; 2019's Resident Evil 2 remake, in particular, being one of the best big budget games of the last half decade, by my estimation. A lot of fans cited RE4 as both "impossible" and "pointless" to remake, though I imagine those same fans were the ones most anxiously waiting for this remake to drop with bated breath.

The end result? RE4 as a remake can't live up to the lofty expectations a lot of people probably hoped it could, not really, but I think it's also one of the most successful video game remakes I've ever had the pleasure of playing, in terms of the fun factor. The gaming landscape has changed a lot since 2005, a lot of that change because of RE4, so what do you even do to make a revisit under a modern lens worthwhile? I think Capcom didn't fully know the answer to that question, as the biggest mechanical additions to this game are the ability to parry the vast majority of attacks with your knife, and erm....craftable ammo? You'll of course find a handful of new enemies and remixed encounters, an even fewer amount of new weapons, and a couple welcome completely redone areas, like a mini open sandbox where you're free to explore the shores of a lake, and a much more clever and interesting version of the brief time spent playing as Ashley.

This might all sound like damning with faint praise, but truly, Capcom's ability to thread the needle here and deliver an honest to god, full on remake of RE4 with modern production values and budget, all without compromising the vision of the original, AND managing to make the remake tonally fit with the current vision of the extended Resident Evil universe? There's some black magic at work here, surely. Or at the very least some ancient parasite bugs at large.

6. Kirby's Return to Dreamland Deluxe

Kirby is the best Nintendo series, and this is an excellent remaster of one of the best Kirby games. What more is there to say? The only reason this isn't top three of the year material is because, well, I played it when it originally released on the Wii. But what's your excuse, coward?

I often hear the refrain of "Kirby games just aren't for me", and I used to humor that line of thinking, largely to avoid prolonged contact with dumb babies. But that dies today, and so will you if you don't stop being a dweeb. High quality sidescrolling brawlers with lite platforming elements and puzzle solving, set to some of the best music ever made for the medium, sporting an adorable aesthetic that's used as set dressing to cover up some of the best backstory and lore this side of Dark Souls? That's not for you? What is for you then, besides being a sad weirdo that still waxes nostalgic about the girl you held hands with once in middle school? Her mom dropped you two off at the theater once to see White Chicks and she never thought about you again. Grow up. Change something about your life. Kirby's got more charm and delight in whatever his puffy mass equivalent to a pinky is than Super Mario Bros. Wonder managed to wearily attempt to slump over its shoulder for an entire game. Y'all should be ashamed.

...

I dunno what this bit is anymore, so let's pivot back to normalcy. Yes, I know, I know, I'm the Kirby guy. It's my favorite gaming series, hell, maybe my favorite franchise in any medium period. But I'm also not blind to its faults and missteps, such as 2018's Star Allies. When I tell you that Return to Dreamland Deluxe, a remaster of a game I played over a decade ago, now with additional content, is one of my favorite games of 2023, I really mean it. The base game was already excellent, and the first entry of the modern era of Kirby, under the helm of Shinya Kumazaki. A new cel shading-adjacent rendering, coupled with completely new abilities Sand and Mech on top of perhaps the overall best set of copy abilities in a Kirby game, really help make the game feel fresh; Sand's combo and damage per second capability in particular is through the roof, while not feeling imbalanced.

The meat of the new content, however, is the new epilogue, in which you play as fan favorite character Magolor. Magolor plays very differently from Kirby, eschewing copy abilities and quicker movement for magic, and the game also introduces an honest to god skill tree into the series. This mini adventure culminates in not only what is probably my favorite boss fight of the year, but an in-universe lore explanation for why Magolor shows up in spinoff Kirby games adorned in green instead of blue and trading in crystal apples.

That may sound goofy and extremely in the weeds, and it is, but for a man in my mid-30s that's been beyond bored of Nintendo's refusal to do any significant kind of world building or storytelling in almost any of their mainline games, Kirby manages to continuously surprise and delight me with both its gameplay and universe in a way no other Nintendo game is even interested in trying. The Super Mario games should take heed.

5. Octopath Traveler 2

I played both demos for the original Octopath Traveler back before that game came out, and to say I didn't like it would be an understatement! The writing was at best flat, and at worst, overtly sexist (and that was just from a demo!), I found the battle system to be clunky, and the thing most people praised it for, its "HD2D" approach to graphics, I found quite ugly; it seemed to be throwing away any attempt at an actual artstyle in favor of cranking a bunch of photoshop filters up to max and letting people ooh and aah over some particle effects and oversaturated lighting. Great soundtrack, at least.

I couldn't tell you what drove me to check out the demo for 2, but I did, and instantly, something clicked for me that didn't in my limited experience with the original. Full disclosure, I haven't finished this game yet, and in fact I don't think I'm even halfway through. And that's a shame, because I think it could honestly rise even higher up this list, based on what I've already played. The battle system is fast and snappy, as long as I'm paying close enough attention to all the information on screen, like enemies weaknesses and my current BP situation. The overworld feels far more inspired by popup books than I remember 1's world feeling like, while still retaining the gorgeous battle sprites that the original excelled in. The soundtrack is an all-timer, to put it lightly. Even the writing for the characters, while still nowhere approaching the rest of the game's strong points, feels less like it works exclusively in lazy caricatures and broad stereotypes. Yeah there's a merchant character named Partitio from an old west-styled silver mining town, and yes I was just as worried about that fact as you probably are reading that sentence. And yet, Partitio has honestly become one of my favorite characters of the year, his desire to use his mercantile skills to ease the burdens of the working class only being outshone by the electric guitars and saxophone in his theme song.

What truly impresses with Octopath Traveler 2, though, is its sheer openness. The world is, while not quite your oyster right from the start, pretty dang free form for the most part, allowing you to go recruit your party members and explore towns and monster-filled wildlands in whatever order you see fit. This extends to the job system, which affords you the most freedom to truly make whatever kind of team you see fit I've ever seen in a game of this kind. I'm currently multiclassing my cleric, Temenos, into a scholar, and I've rarely felt cooler/dorkier at the same time, wielding nearly every magic type offered in the game at once with one world-weary church inquisitor. Just typing up this entry has got me itching to get back to the game, hoping to discover even more jobs to multiclass the rest of my crew into.

Take it from me, someone who as little as a few years ago felt pretty much over turn based RPGs, especially those coming out of Square-Enix: this game is very worth your time, regardless of your feelings towards the series, or even genre as a whole.

4. 30XX

In a year chockful of exceedingly excellent roguelites (Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania, Risk of Rain Returns, Cobalt Core, Vampire Survivors, just to name a few), 30XX stands tall above the rest for me, not just in terms of quality, but also in its ability to completely take over my gaming time for a couple months. This has all the trappings you expect from a game with the structure of a roguelite; permadeath resulting in having to start your entire run over, unlockable items and stat upgrades purchasable with currency carried over from the run you just died in, powerups that you collect during a run to give yourself a fighting chance (and which force you to make on-the-fly decision making about how best to synergize your build), and a white knuckle intensity that makes the runs when you really start to shred feel all the more rewarding, albeit no less anixety inducing.

What ends up separating 30XX from any other game in this admittedly crowded space is that it's essentially a roguelite take on Mega Man X4, the beloved Playstation 1 entry in an even more beloved series. X4 was the first game that really fleshed out lightsaber wielding cool guy Zero as a fully playable character, for the first time letting you play through the entire game as both him and series protagonist X. 30XX makes no bones about its inspiration; Nina, the blue one, is the X equivalent, meaning you'll be primarily shooting enemies with your arm cannon, while Ace, the red one, slices and dices with an energy sword, just like Zero. Likewise, the (absolutely gorgeous) spritework and extremely catchy soundtrack are doing their best to evoke the oft overlooked aesthetic and sounds of 2-D games from the Playstation 1. Rounding out the package are full-featured coop, both local and online, community made levels, daily and weekly seeded runs with leaderboards, and the promise of even more updates, including new characters(!!).

Even Mega Man series staples you might not expect to show up in a roguelite take on the formula end up being major focuses of the game, like gaining new abilities from defeating bosses. The game even takes that mechanic a step further, letting you mix and match two abilities to form completely new ones, like combining your black hole and homing lightning abilities to create a barrage of homing lightning strikes emanating from a swirling void. Or, in true roguelite fashion, you can even forego an ability from a boss altogether, if a different reward suits you. And that's just if you're playing as Nina! Ace gets an entirely different set of abilities and mechanics, all built around melee capabilities and close quarters combat.

If any of this sounds appealing to you, you're probably now asking yourself "why have I never heard of this game?" And I truly can't answer that, as this feels like it should already be a revered indie darling on the level of Shovel Knight or Super Meat Boy. If you're a Mega Man fan, please do yourself a favor and check this out. There's even a separate mode that minimizes the roguelite elements, including a removal of permadeath, if that suits you! This is a better Mega Man X revival than you'll likely ever see out of Capcom, if a day even ever comes for that at all. It also happens to be better than just about any official Mega Man game Capcom has ever put out, as well.

3. Sephonie

My personal gaming identity feels inexorably linked to Analgesic Productions, the two person development team that's putting out the best indie games most people have never even heard of. The only thread on Resetera I've ever made was solely for the purpose of evangelizing Anodyne 2: Return to Dust, a game that resonated so hard with me the effects are still reverberating outwards, as my habit of recommending that game anywhere I go has helped me forge genuine friendships (and probably gotten me on to a few government watch lists). Even the Ocean was the third game my friends and I covered in our games club, and was by far and away the best talk I've ever had about video games, sparking a creative spirit in me for months afterward. Marina Kittaka and Melos han-tani make some real affecting fucking games, is what I'm saying, and the idea of trying to sum up what makes Sephonie so special (and maybe even my favorite of their impressive work) is a bit daunting.

At its most base level, Sephonie is a 3-D platformer not dissimilar from the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, or even the above Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, albeit without any wheels; instead of tilting the analog stick to move at whatever angle you want, you hold a button to run forward, the stick's sole purpose being to make adjustments to direction. Your mobility on its own isn't very versatile, and getting around requires careful and clever use of the environment to do wall runs and jumps, grabbing giant dandelions to float, landing on mushrooms to bounce, etc.

Even for a self-proclaimed platformer guru (maybe even especially for one!), the movement feels unwieldy or even downright intimidating at first. But in Analgesic we trust, and by the end of my initial 8 hour or so playthrough of the game, I felt like a parkour god, able to pull off complex maneuvers that I would have never been able to dream of in the opening sections of the game. Coming to grips with the controls and eventually mastering them was one of the biggest joys I experienced in video games this year; don't go into this expecting s Super Mario Odyssey-level of 1:1 control that lets you immediately start flowing through the environment like a hot knife through butter, because that's decidedly not the point here. Despite what the past few console generations have taught us, we don't need standardized controls across every game, as all that would serve to do here is sand down the distinct personality and learning opportunities presented in Sephonie.

Rounding out the gameplay are linking puzzles. The three playable characters are researchers who have come to the remote island of Sephonie to study its unique animal and plant life. Linking with each new lifeform you discover presents you with tile-based block puzzles, which end up being a nice change of pace from the platforming. As a testament to just how much love and care was put into Sephonie, the vast majority of these linking puzzles each have unique mechanics, be it teleporting tiles, tiles that are blocked and need busted open by matching blocks on adjacent tiles, tiles that multiply your point total, creatures that travel the puzzle and alter when and where you're even able to place your tiles, etc. With some tweaks, the link puzzles could be a whole game unto itself, and it's really impressive!

That's all well and good, but the main reasons I come to Analgesic games are the unbelievably good writing and even unbelievably-er soundtracks, and both are where Sephonie truly shines for me. Unfortunately, to talk too much about the story here would be bordering on a cardinal sin, and you're better off listening to some of the music on your own. Why not try the entire playlist here?

The previously mentioned Anodyne 2 opens by telling you it's a game about life. That's a bit of an understatement for me with Analgesic's games in general, but Sephonie might be the best example of "a game about life" that I can think of. As someone that grew up in a midwestern town full of basically nothing but nothingness and corn, the Bloomington, Illinois section of the game is without a doubt the most beautiful segment of any game I've ever played, and the main thing I keep coming back to with this game even six months later. I've never been so simultaneously full of nostalgia, regret, disdain, self-loathing, and fond memories as I was while platforming around an abstract dreamscape version of a midwestern town right off the highway. And I don't think I've ever related to a character in any fictional work as much as I did when Amy was talking about feeling lucky she was born in a small town, because it made learning how to drive much less intimidating.

If there's one game on this list I would beg someone to give a shot, it would be Sephonie. Hell, if there was one game I could force anyone to play, Sephonie might be taking that spot as well. As a thorough contemplation of what it means to be alive, and what connecting with one another can truly mean and feel like, there's no better work of art out there today, and certainly not one anywhere near as fun, either.

2. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

What can I say about TotK that hasn't already been expressed in a million think pieces, essays, and podcasts across the entire internet by now? As a direct followup to 2017's stellar Breath of the Wild, I had concerns going in - would the magic still be there? Is exploring the same incarnation of Hyrule going to be fun when I know all of the broad strokes already? Are the bosses not going to suck this time? The answer to all of these is a resounding "absolutely", but there's so much more on offer here.

Everything in this game makes BotW feel like a rough draft, a sentence I never in a million years thought I'd be typing prior to getting my hands on the game. Any mechanic you can think of that you loved in the prior Zelda entry is either improved upon here or excised for something infinitely more interesting. The Sheikah slate abilities from BotW feel not only basic, but downright boring compared to the powers on offer in this sequel. Who cares about being able to spawn bombs at will when I can fuse batwings to arrows to make them fly further? Or just swim through through the damn ceiling!? To say nothing of the fact that you can build basically anything your imagination can spring into existence, from cars to rocket ships to pilotable mechs to lawn mowers. And it all....just....works, somehow, not only tonally with the game's world, but also from a game perspective. The game even lets you have five CPU controlled companion characters out at the same time, every one acting independently to take down enemies near you! It feels like your Switch is going to collapse under the weight of this game's ambition at any moment, and yet I put over 300 hours into the game with not a single crash in sight.

If there's one thing I can complain about, it's that the story feels like an actual afterthought, to the degree that it actually bummed me out, even as someone with rock bottom expectations when it comes to story in a Zelda game. The marketing REALLY hyped up the return of longtime series antagonist Ganondorf, and he just....kind of has no motivation for anything he's doing here. I'm not asking for much, and there are genuinely great character moments lightly sprinkled throughout the game's runtime, mostly with princess Zelda herself. But I couldn't help but imagine how much harder some story beats could have hit if Nintendo, again, actually even attempted to give people the tiniest but of anything to chew on when it comes to the stories they're telling.

But whatever, I've got a catapult to build to launch me and a korok buddy up a damn mountain.

Baldur's Gate 3

Like most people who cut their gaming teeth on more straightforward action fare on consoles, the term "CRPG" (computer RPG) seemed beyond out of reach for me. Dice rolls? Skill checks? Playing as a charisma based character to persuade bosses to kill themselves instead of having to fight them? READING!? Uh, I'm an American, thank you very much; I like my video games game-y and my gravy portion extra, ma'am, and I don't have the patience to think about probability and stats.

So imagine my surprise when, after my wife started playing the game on her own, I found myself itching to get into the character creator myself. Not the moment to moment gameplay, mind you, but the character creator, a step I'm notorious for getting through as fast as possible so I can start "actually playing", even if I'm stuck with a boring default character named Goober. Something about watching my wife agonize over which horn style and subrace to go with on her tiefling bard, which hairstyle and color looked cutest and would match her vision of how she was going to roleplay in the world, stirred something in me I didn't know existed. While she was perusing all the customization options, I spied the class "monk" and a race called "dragonborn", some anthropomorphic dragon people with a lot of pretty color options for their scales that also affect your elemental resistances. "Yes," I thought to myself. "I'd like to make a humanoid lizard dude that punches shit to death. I'd like that very much". And before my wife was barely out of the tutorial section on her first character, we were already backing out to make a second save file where we would play the entire thing cooperatively, fretting over the decisions and romance options each step of the way together. I got to make my silverscale (that means he's got ice powers, baby) dragonborn monk, Shikai, and the following 300+ hours (and counting!) with Baldur's Gate 3 have been the most fun I've ever had playing a video game.

Would I be as gobsmacked with the game if I was intimately familiar with the genre? Maybe not, but I guess that's my point. Living with my wife and playing games together has completely changed how I engage with a lot of them; Animal Crossing was basically a cute chores and debt repayment simulator with a dash of fishing on the side until watching my wife play the game for thousands of hours taught me the joy of decorating.

Elden Ring was her first foray into the Souls-like genre; she had a similar reaction watching me play the opening hour of Elden Ring as I had watching her in the BG3 character creator, growing increasingly frustrated as she watched me putz around making a boring dexterity based samurai character when what she wanted to see was some faith-based holy magic in action. Despite my love of Souls-likes, I had always just made standard melee based characters in them, usually katana wielding doofuses; I'm an American, I don't know a lick about incantations, I HATE thinking, and please keep your Wes Anderson movies to yourself, ma'am.

But as I saw how much fun my wife was having shooting fireballs and throwing lightning bolts at enemies, I eventually started speccing my dexterity character into intelligence as well, making a samurai sorcerer, undeniably the only thing cooler than a normal samurai. That's not to say that playing Elden Ring with a melee exclusive character is wrong, but just that with a touch of curiosity and willingness to take the tiniest step outside of my comfort zone, a comfort zone I didn't even realize was as tiny as it was, I opened up a whole new way of enjoying a game I already loved playing. Learning to enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 feels like I've opened the door to an entire new avenue in my mind, waiting for me to fill it with opinions about games I've been avoiding my whole life. I'm gonna actually make a concerted effort to finally play stuff like Mass Effect and Disco Elysium sometime soon, two games I had preemptively decided years ago were just "not for me", and I'm genuinely excited about it.

This entry is so long already, and I didn't even mention anything about how the game actually plays (it's the best turn-based battle system I've ever experienced, to say nothing of the freedom you're afforded to solve every single scenario presented to you in the game.

Or anything about the characters (this is the best cast of characters I've seen in any medium, and they feel like genuine friends of mine in a way that no other game has ever come close to feeling).

Hell, to save time and my poor fingers: Baldur's Gate 3 is without a doubt the best video game I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. And as little as a few months ago, my only thought towards it was "that game probably isn't for me".

Don't make my all too human mistake; check out shit that looks interesting, take the chance to expand your mind and your taste. They're not all gonna be Baldur's Gate 3-level bangers (what is though, really), but you truly never know what you're going to discover. And you might even find yourself open to a whole new avenue of life to enjoy that you had previously assumed was just for mega dorks.

[kitkatt0430-recommends]

My perusal of old FFnet favorites continues on. I've been pretty pleased to find so many cross posted to Ao3, though occasionally I'll find one that started to get cross posted and, sadly, was never completed. But I can still bookmark the completed external version and keep an eye on the incomplete versions in hope that, one day, they'll get the rest of the chapters added after all.

Double Crossing by JessaLRynn - Ten and Rose run into Seven and Ace at a Star Trek convention. Throw in some actual aliens, a missing prince, and disguised weapons dealers and it's just another Tuesday for these four, really.

A Ten/Rose (with some Seven/Rose too) fic now with a follow up Eight/Rose story. Double Crossing shows as much love to Star Trek as it does Doctor Who and it's a wild ride from start to finish. I was glad to find it over on Ao3 where it's rated T.

KOTOR: Revan's Second Chance by VMorticia - Revan remembers who he is after the escape from the Endar Spire; not everything, but enough. And while he no longer has the ambition to be a Dark Lord of the Sith, Revan knows two things. Admitting he remembers who he is would be a terrible idea and… what happened to Malak is his mess to clean up.

It's an unusual premise (especially for a fic following the game's light side path) and one I really enjoyed. Revan can be at times charming or an ass, but he does care a great deal about others. So it's easy to see the Jedi he used to be and the Sith he became in the person he is now. I was unable to find it on Ao3, so this one is linked to FFnet. It's rated T and the ship is eventually Bastila/Revan.

The Adventures of Ten, Rose, and Jack by SanguineInk - The series starts with Two Months, in which the Doctor and Rose show up before the ghosts start showing up and run straight into Torchwood One. Which is when Jack shows up, just in time to help fight some Torchwood One flunkies and some Cybermen too.

A four part series with Ten/Rose and Ten, Rose, and Jack friendship that starts as a Doomsday fix-it and grows from there. It's a lot of running, drama, and fun, so it really captures the feel of the show. I read the first three over on FFnet years ago, so I'm thrilled to find there's actually a fourth fic in the series now that I've rediscovered it on Ao3.

Shadows of the Future by stormqueen873 - After losing the duel on Mustafar, Obi-Wan wakes in the past right as Anakin walks into his life for the first time. And Obi-Wan is determined to ensure things won't happen the same way around this time.

While this did start to get cross-posted on Ao3 back in 2016, looks like it was never completed there. The version I've linked to is on FFnet, which is complete. While I do wonder why it didn't get finished when crossposted to Ao3, I'm glad the FFnet version is still around because this is probably my favorite time traveling Obi-Wan fic out there. It's rated K+ and is gen, with a focus on Obi-Wan's relationships with Qui-Gon and Anakin.

Fools Rush In by LoveSupreme - X-Men AU where Erik runs a coffee shop and has a bit of a crush on a handsome man who passes by every day. It wouldn't have come to anything, until one day Annoying Cappucino Lady drags her cute friend Charles into Erik's shop.

It's on Ao3 now and has a whole series!!! I don't remember this one strongly but I do remember it being cute. So having even more story now makes me pretty excited. It's not rated on Ao3, but it's probably about a T? I don't remember anything warranting an M in there, though I could be wrong. And the ship is, of course, Charles/Erik.

Charlotte Francine Xavier by Blind_Author - A rewrite of X-Men First Class, where Charles Xavier is now Charlotte. And though much stays the same… so much is changed too.

I was excited to find this one on Ao3 too. A lot of the beats here are the same as in the movie, but the fic also does a good job of distinguishing itself from the movie's plot too. Obviously its a genderswap fic and the ship is Charlotte/Erik. Rated Explicit and I do remember it earns that rating pretty hard and it has some darker elements to it than the movie did.

If I Knew You Then: Part 1 by Ruchira - When Tom and B'Elanna meet at the Academy, years before Voyager is lost in the Delta Quadrant, it completely changes their lives.

The first of four fics following Tom and B'Elanna from the Academy to their eventual arrival on Voyager; while they end up stranded in the Delta Quadrant on Voyager in the end, just like in canon, how they get there changes radically. It's Tom/B'Elanna for the ship and all the fics are rated T. I wasn't able to find them on Ao3, but they're all still up on FFnet.

[chyna-hd03]

Field Work #5

1. | White Supremacy |

We are all well aware of the definition of white supremacy whether it is because we were taught, have experienced/seen it first hand, or maybe just using basic context clues in the wording: White Supremacy is the belief that nonwhites are inferior in more way than one and overall are biologically different, or some even believe not fully human. As seen in the linked video older cartoons constantly pumped white supremacy into their watchers whether it be blatantly or subliminally. The blatant white supremacy in these cartoons was shown by how the nonwhite characters communicated it wasn't proper they slurred, stuttered, struggled, and can hardly be understood; its equivalent to a jumble of words while the white characters consistently speak properly (and even eloquently in some cartoons) painting the picture that intellectually whites are far more superior. The hairstyles and accessories between girls are subtle but so obvious a cherry on top of the racist cartoon is what ill call it, two little girls one black and another white “naturally” the white child is given a clean sleek look topped with a cutesy barrette while the black little girl's hair is seen as unkept and careless looked that's topped with a bone. When these cartoons were released they made it seem normal and okay to make fun of, bully, judge, and look down upon nonwhites, especially black people who were portrayed terribly and incorrectly in older cartoons.

2. | Intersectionality |

Intersectionality is a way of assessing how one's race, gender, and class affect and shape one's life and choices. Based upon how, where, and/or how you looked growing up affect the choices, opportunities, and even patterns that you are exposed to, this varies for every person typically white people are shown better paths and opportunities due to the abundance of social capital with a helping hand in the cultural capital; but this isn't only in whites just more common. The girl in the TikTok is a teenage black girl in high school with no job, living in a less fortunate area, parental issues, and is pregnant but this is not to bash anyone in these circumstances or something relatively close but to point out that a good amount of people like this young lady end up pregnant young among other things. This is partly a generational thing there is a good chance that you or someone you know parents had a baby young this normalizes the single mom struggle when they're really barely surviving or getting by, this pattern has a chokehold on many communities including my own. In the comments on TikTok people talk down to her about how her baby probably won't have a father and she won't be anything extraordinary because this is the pattern that people see, though it may be extremely hard and feel impossible it is definitely possible to do all those things with a baby given the right resources and dedication.

3. | Genotype |

Genotype is what affects your exterior appearance, this is the one thing that makes all of us different on a biological scale. Genes make up 0.001 of our DNA which contains health and appearance so besides that 0.001 we are mainly equal. People are quick to assume that the fact that some people look different whether it be lighter, darker, smaller, bigger, or even have big noses they assume it's inferior and which in no way is correct. In the picture, these spidermen all have different costumes but they are all still Spiderman and if you change the wording to be more accurate to the human race like “we may all look different but we are all human” it's literally the same and both statements are true.

4. | Jim Crow |

The laws that were put in place to enforce segregation legally after slavery. All Jim Crow laws did was add gasoline to the fire that is divided into the United States. These laws divide us into groups based on our looks convincing everyone that we were different inside and out. The 14th amendment was placed to basically make sure no U.S citizen was stripped of their privileges or immunities. Jim Crow worked around this by giving POC the same things as white people, just extremely lower quality teaching the community that they were lesser because they had worse quality bathrooms, water fountains, etc. This is not to say the 14th amendment does nothing with jim crow but the lack of details in it is what makes jim crow thrive though it still puts pressure on the laws so that we still got the bare minimum. Which wasn't near acceptable.

5. | Miscegenation |

An older demeaning historical word for interracial marriages. Interracial marriage is still looked at sideways now depending on the coupling and where you are in the world. The black community that I have experienced and seen much prefers that the upcoming generations marry within their own race and when they don't they say the non-black partner is “stealing our black queen and kings”. Painting a picture that the thought of two people of different races is so bad that someone has to be getting forced into it. The flyer pictured is the biggest overreaction when it comes to a couple marrying, like how will a kid be negatively affected by SOMEONE else's marriage just because they are different colors. Property values may be would've plummeted during that time because maybe some white people wouldn't want to live in the same neighborhood with a black person, unnecessary reactions like this are what make minute and things that shouldn't matter social problems.

6. | Racial Ideology |

Family Guy - White Track Stars Are Obsolete like DVDs

The normalization of discriminatory behavior because the behavior is well-known or popular that's usually done by institutions and individuals is racial ideology. Racial Ideology cripples people's mindsets giving them ideas like all black people are loud or all Asians are smart but when there is someone who doesn't fit this popular norm they're “weird” or rare. In the video they let the white runners get a headstart before they let “everyone” else go because it's a common misconception around the globe that black people are more athletic, stronger, faster, and bigger but this isn't true there are tons of black people who aren't athletic myself included. Saying that our biological makeup is the reason why we're like this when in reality biologically there is barely any difference between a white or a black man. Ideas like this make it harder or unnecessarily easy for whites and POC to progress in a career, or a sport, and even in life.

Sources

[dojae-huh]

https://youtu.be/LJY5M2eXDRM?si=6hCA5phcvFXIyHJy

Hii huh nim....when u watch this content please check something very for me...its about yuwoo.....I dont knw why but I think there is something developing between them..I had a hunch that yuta already has a thing for woo..but I think like woo is giving a chance...but dont knw....I started to ship them becoz of yuta...nd it's ok to go with them coz woo will makes every ship sail smoothly...but yuta also gives good reaction ...except with mark... he wont give that kind of feeling...nd with mark I am 100%sure that's their way of bonding....

Since I ship them I see evrthing in a shippers eye...even if they just look..i make it as a love moment.. .so i cant clearly decide weather there is something cooking or it is my delusion...i dont really care if they r not real ...i will continue it as a ship..but if it is getting real then i want to make sure , nd wants to differentiate it from just shipping...like jaedo...so can u please help me nd give me am answr after watching this?? Thank u in advance...

Lastly about jae....when u watch it will understand...it is a waste to put mike on him when this kind of content happens....srsly he seldom speaks here...one or 2 at frst...nd tthe ending Ment...that's it....it is kinda museum visiting vibe from him...he just observed the birds , walked, observed nd observed...haha...he is really smthng...the only one talked non stop is woo...he is kinda like a toy , if we on the switch he wont stop talking...kinda like the old dy...but old dy is a savage, there is no one can be like him...sassy king of nct...haha....anyways if u watch dont forget to reply...thanku again...

Link

I've noticed Woo interacting more with Yuta in recent content. However, I still think he is straight, so there is no "gives a chance" with such a view of mine. Didn't notice anything unusual or sus in the vlog as well (exept for 21:29 hand on neck).

Do is a natural chattermouth. Jungwoo seems to me to be less talkative. Woo feels the need to create content though, to talk about something. Like during an MV recording or a photoshoot he will comment the most (about nothing, really). SM finds non-idol jobs for their artists, Woo is trained as MC and a variety persona. Jaehyun doesn't bother with content. He serves looks, lol. He is aiming to be singer-songwriter and a moody actor.

Either Jae was sleepy or didn't feel himself too well. He barely ate, and looked off a few times. Maybe a stomack or head acke. Do even pushed him to eat more (8:22 he says the meat is very warm looking at Jae). Thus he was even less withdrawn than usual.

9:37 - Do explains something to Jae. You can notice easily how Jae kept to Do despite Do changing people to talk with. Also easy to notice how Johnny singled out Do for the company.

Ah, I want to see the magpie goose, too... and the glossy ibis.

Do, you were wrong for shading the Bali myna. Stilts you can see in many zoos, while the white birds are critically endangered and an Indonesian endemic.

Well, when I will be in Jakarta I'll definitely visit this bird park. Looks clean with enough interesting birds. It was a good ad for target audience (me).

[spongebobafettywap]

Also quick question, wasn't it Abyss and Kiwi Black he also had a strong link to?

correct, it was probably tied to how they each had a power set slightly similar to his like abyss' which is tied to space alteration.

(while i was looking this up to be sure i read that abyss just got killed which is... sad because apparently it was the only way to solve an issue as he still couldn't control his powers. even after being on an island with other mutants and scientists for 3 years. dude is just unlucky)

Also a male writer being unfamiliar with female biology is par for the course in Marvel comics LOL.

oh believe me i know. but this just took every single one of the standard bad i was used to and blew it out of the water. like the panel where destiny is having nightcrawler... this now exists.

i- i don't even know where to start. the proportions are off (how long are destiny's femurs), the perspective is off (the must-wear-a-tie-on-the-job medical 'professional' they had is too far away from her to be of any help or see anything).

for the 22 hours this went on, they let her keep her glasses even tho she's blind and thus wouldn't need them in the first place as they serve no purpose and might become a nuisance real quick... (like the whole process makes you sweat and builds pressure on your head/face so glasses can get pretty uncomfortable). also they'd fall off/ slip from her face especially due to the labor position she's in...

because destiny is nearly sitting down on her hands and knees, slightly hunched over (instead of arched up), in actual pants while doing all of that. it becomes more jarring to see because fake-pregnant mystique next to her is in a more-practical-for-the occasion nightgown even tho she's not gonna deliver any baby any time soon

quick side note on the time taken here for the delivery : each pregnancy is different and complications do arise but destiny already had kids before so it should have gone smoother than what this story implies in both process and positioning besides the doc or mystique could have better advised her on the latter. (the writer might have accidentally leaned on the ' azazel's children are harder to deliver ' route too due to his poor knowledge on anything and in that case that's yet another common factor between nightcrawler and azazel's biological children...)

overall when you combine this panel with any medical knowledge you might have,

it just looks like nightcrawler came out of the wrong orifice okay ?

and if he supposedly came out of the right one, the only possible outcome to this poor attempt at that specific labor position is a dead baby nightcrawler as he would suffocate between destiny's legs before drawing his first breath... on the account of those damn pants

does destiny actually want this kid or is she deliberately dwindling his chances of survival before he's even out fr

Well you know they will have all important Street Brawls as part of the next Marvel Crossover event I'm sure. Marvel: Secret Street Brawls.

mystique just casually organizes encounters between specific heroes and villains after making a poll of "who do you wanna see fight" and "which street needs more wrecking" online then she films everything and updates it to cash in on some good old advert money. that's it, that's how the whole event should be about

It's like everything you're telling me gives me more reasons to never go back to reading Marvel. I felt like my tastes in story telling really matured after I started watching shows like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul and reading and Watching Jojo's bizarre adventure. Maybe there's a reason why the best stories function with a beginning and an end and don't go on endlessly with too many cooks stirring the pot.

Like seriously wasting Abyss for what? Some storyline no one cares about? You know its interesting how you'll be one of the few people to point that out about how stupid the drawing of female anatomy is. Of course a lot of people just really like the "appearing progressive" angle that Marvel loves to do so they can sell a headline instead of putting thought into it, much like how they did when they decided Bobby should just be gay in such a contrived way like having Jean mindread him and tell him he's gay. Like they couldn't just have him explore his own sexuality? With his own feelings on how his relationships went and what genders he likes? Side note I really hate whenever someone criticises a story thats made to appear progressive gets lumped in with reactionary bigots as if whenever you write something with the intention of progressive you are absolutely free from criticism its just so childish really.

Honestly yeah they do need to just have Marvel Street Brawl be a thing and then they could also try to be deep about it like they did with AvX and pretend like there's this massive moral dilemma situation "Should we destroy this Street or not? That's a big problem and we need to answer it in 50 issues"