Any chance you'd expand on the hank hill trans guy post? (Sorry, best indicator I could come up with.) The concept interests me as I decidedly know my maleness, yet don't feel impeded by for the most part, any male gendered norms/boxes. I am fairly masculine, though I rarely use those kinds terms to describe myself.
I have found I often do stray outside of what society pushed for me when I transitioned, yet I again do not feel it has taken from my right to maleness whatsoever. I am just me, who happens to be male. I have had friends try and suggest I am NB adjacent but I do not feel this way whatsoever. I feel more people are outliers to gender expectation than we care to admit and it's disappointing the way cis-people deny that.
Hope this wasn't too long winded, I value your writing and perspective, and wanted to hear more of your thoughts on this.
Yeah, well so many things all get conflated by gender labels, and it's all so personal, you know? Masculinity does not have to mean maleness, and a person's gender identity might be a reflection of some innate quality they experience themselves as having, or a general summary of their tendencies, or their desired presentation, or their sense of affinity with other people, or an interpersonal tool, or something they just go along with because it was given to them by society, or any other number of things.
I think my recent substack piece on detransition goes into this pretty well, and I have an upcoming piece of what @pastimperfection calls "bilateral dysphoria" that comes out next week that delves into it too.
I think I mostly saw taking on a male identity as a means to an end more than any kind of innate reflection of who I was, though I did feel an affinity with effeminate men for a lot of reasons. I think I also discounted how much I have in common with my fellow nonbinary people of all stripes, because that identity became so strongly associated with being an annoying type of queer person that everybody else just wrote off as ultimately being their assigned gender at birth anyway no matter how much they protested. it doesn't help that 'nonbinary' is a catchall term for literally thousands if not millions of very distinct experiences and desires.
transitioning gave me control over how i was perceived, finally, but hormones are a throttle that only go in one very specific direction, and you don't really have all that much control over which changes kick in at which times and what people will make of you once you do start registering to them as some identity other than what you were first saddled with. it's an incredible gift to be able to toggle that throttle. but it's limited, not because medical transition isn't incredible and needed for so many, but because there is no escaping the goddamned binary cissexist logic that influences everything about how people treat you, how you navigate institutions, who finds you desirable and what they want out of you, and so much else.
if you're able to cast a lot of the external societal bullshit aside and feel strong in your maleness, maybe you're stronger than me or maybe our orientation to these things is just different, i don't know. i was never all that sensitive to feedback that i was doing the whole being-a-woman-thing all that wrong. i reveled in violating those rules to an extent. succeeding at being a woman despite my best attempts was what felt super dysphoric. and now i guess im succeeding at being a man, insofar as im always read as one, and it feels just as uncomfortable and objectifying and false. i thought that with manhood i could probably just grit my teeth and deal with it, but i'm finding that i can't.
ive always been very open that for me, gender is a thing I Do, and i guess to those who know me well it wouldnt be surprising to hear that i have gotten tired of Doing Being a Man and dont feel like playing that particular gendered game anymore. I tend to get bored of things! and find the flaws in things. and find my comfort in being fault-finding and contrarian and not being a joiner. and thats okay. i learned a lot along the way. not having to try any more is a huge relief. i can just do whatever. and know actively that people will more often than not be wrong in what they make of me.
maybe it was natural feeling for you to decidely 'know' your maleness without a care for masculine standards because that is the right identity for you! and maybe i only feel secure in the "not knowing" realm and in letting go of what people think of me or finding any kind of tidy categorization for it because that's the right spot for me. for now. until i find a new interesting way to be unhappy and striving for more and different again. :) that's just part of being alive, for me.
before you pick up your pitchforks & form an angry mob in the comments, hear me out.
first & foremost. what is a want ? a want is something you desire. but not every want is desired. for example, ive been thinking of getting a cat once i move out of my parents house. i want the animal & have the funds for it. when i dig deeper in my desire, i see all the vet trips, the having to feed it & take care of it & i realized that i don’t actually want the cat at the moment. im not ready to make that drastic of a change in my life. on the surface, id like one but i don’t want to take on the responsibility for taking care of a pet at the moment.
i like the idea of getting a cat (shifting) — but when the actual time comes to get a cat (actually shift), i don’t actually want a new pet at the moment (to create that big of a change because i am comfortable with my situation & not mentally prepared / mature enough).
i made a post about comfort already. what previously spoke about can tie into this.
if you don’t actually want something & just like fantasizing about it, that’s okay. but fantasy & imagination needs to be backed by intention. you need intention & effort put into your shifting attempts. ive seen so so many people say “i tried to shift” & all they do is say “i said one affirmation & rolled over & went to sleep & hoped i would wake up in my dr.”
you could say a million affirmations & hope you will wake up in your dr & not shift. you know why ? hope. it’s not hoping you will shift — it’s that internal knowing. it’s letting go fully of the comfort & all you know of this life to go to another & a lot of people don’t want to do that even if they say they do. again, they like the idea of shifting, but aren’t stopping to consider that you’re actually living it.
this isn’t a bad thing. if you actually have come to the conclusion that you don’t want to shift & are in the community — that’s okay. if you’re just interested in the science or content for the subject & that’s why you’ve stumbled across this blog, i don’t have an issue with that.
when i say not everyone will shift, i mean that not everyone wants to shift in the first place despite what they may say. what they want is an escape. time & time again i see comments on tiktok say “i want to get out of this reality”. that statement has nothing to do with wanting to shift — it’s wanting to get out of the situation you are in. you do not have to shift to get out of your current situation. if you live with family or are younger, it’s different, i understand.
if you’re someone who thinks “when i shift, ill be happy.” no no no. happiness comes from within you. while the 3d can bring you momentarily happiness, that only lasts so long. if you don’t have internal happiness & self love those feelings won’t last. shifting — in my option — can sometimes be putting a bandaid on a bigger issue & that’s loneliness & a yearning for another life. you can solve both of those right here at anytime.
lastly, shifting takes effort despite what you may think. “but such and such shifted without trying”. cool, that’s them. but have you ? if you’re reading this im going so safely assume at least a handful of you are saying “no” internally. when you want something you have to work for it. weather that be manifestation or putting yourself first. if you wake up & think “i didn’t shift” or “i hate this world it’s sucks” guess what ?? you’re focusing on the negative. what you pay attention to & give your energy to expands because you’re shifting awareness to it. you make up your thoughts & control them, thus affecting the 3d.
im not saying you can’t shift with negative mindsets or anything. im saying confidence helps a ton. how are you going to believe other people can shift when you can’t even extend that belief to yourself ? you’re making it much, much harder for yourself. doing healing work, finding the root cause of why you want to shift (for love, sense or belonging, etc.) & finding that here first, may alleviate the desperation to shift. when you have a sense of knowing, there’s nothing to be desperate about because whatever happens, you know the outcome already.
okay so. jack! jack. what a collection of guys. the overlap between jack and the beanstalk and jack the giant killer, though. that sure is something! sometimes king arthur is there, which always takes me by surprise.
this. specifically. is an idea I've been kicking around. jack and the beanstalk is not a story I've ever enjoyed, as a kid it was probably my least favorite to read. as an adult, I was INTENSELY fascinated by reading j.g. ballard's the drowned giant. I think about it frequently, and somewhere during a re read of it, I ended up revisiting jack.
combining different versions of jack into one character is not a new concept, but it IS a fun one! the version I've been assembling together plays less with the fun elements of a jack story (and adjacent folklore stories), and focuses more on the potential for tragic elements with the addition of the usual grim and jagged narrative edges that I personally enjoy.
jack with the backstory of the devil and the three golden hairs, only jack doesn't find love, he's TIRED, all he wants to do is go home, but there isn't a home to go back to. what is the point of being born lucky if this is what it gets you? jack the giant killer, only he doesn't want to kill giants, jack who saw a body of a giant when he was a small child and cannot bring himself to do as a king commands. jack, who climbs up the beanstalk and stops halfway to look down. etc.
to go back to the drowned giant real quick, both to set the tone about jack seeing the body of a giant as a youth, and also because I've been haunted and obsessed with this excerpt of it ever since I read it:
J. G. Ballard, The Drowned Giant
anyway! this was originally like, a two illustration concept to get out of my system. however. I'm halfway through outlining a narrative. so. maybe it will also be several illustrations and also comic.
(CW suicide) Does anyone else think TF like definitely tried to kill himself during the 10-year time period where Graves was in jail? No, like this has been an interpretation of mine for so long. It's just sooo. I feel like TF's absolute grief and guilt during that time period doesn't get talked about enough and like understandable because in the main lore it's only vaguely alluded to and implied and never really explored but like. If you think about it, you can not tell me this man did not cry himself to sleep for months if not years
Like it's fact that Graves got locked up (something TF probably blames himself for), which is already bad enough but then you take into account how TF has pre existing trauma surrounding abandonment because of his folk leaving him and I don't know about other people but I feel like a very common feeling when you're traumatised or hurt is being afraid you're going to put someone you care about through that so TF probably took it twice as hard because he felt like he "abandoned" Graves in prison. All of that guilt gets like 50% worse if you count the implication that TF has been in love with him for a long time and was self aware about it so now it's also guilt from "fuck I doomed the man I love because I couldn't save him"
AND THEN IT GETS EVEN WORSE WHEN YOU CONSIDER THAT, HE DID TRY. He did try to break him out. And that trying lead to at least 3 of their crewmates/friends getting killed. No like I can not state how absolutely devastating that period probably was for TF. The survivors guilt from Graves being imprisoned, the guilt from the fact he got their entire crew killed trying to save Graves, the fact that it's canon he never spoke to anyone about it and held it in for years
All of this concluding in this line that I've always found interesting
Like I could already go on about how his identity and name change seem to have happened right after the last of his crew died and how it's really likely he changed everything about himself to distance himself from everything that happened and how it was probably too painful being himself because of the guilt and grief
But what I find interesting is the mention of the river and how it's implied this name change happened after he visited and left the river. Now there's a high chance I'm looking too much into this and this is mainly my own headcanon and interpretation but how likely do you think it is he changed his whole identity because he failed a suicide attempt (in which he probably tried to drown himself) and using a different name and identity was the second closest thing he could do to stop being himself and existing as himself
No, like I'm sorry, but it's the fact he went to a river despite not knowing how to swim after thinking the man he was pining after was abandoned by him and TF put him through the exact pain he had to go through, not to mention the isolation and beatings TF just sentenced him to by "letting him get captured" AND THATS ON TOP OF THE ACTUAL AT LEAST THREE FRIENDS/CREWMATES HE ACTUALLY GOT KILLED IN AN EFFORT TO SAVE HIM. and then the fact he literally had zero outlet during all of this. I don't know, I just feel like it's a solid possibility. TF's repression of his emotions through his nonchalant and playful attitude tends to, in my opinion, make people overlook how badly the whole thing probably affected him and I feel like that's a bit of a shame because there's so much angst potential there
Anyways I'm normsl about the league of legends gambler guy
i would like to find a yarn color that is roughly close to this shade of orange:
as the doll is going to be using dark blue eyes and the contrast would look pretty good (ty to my friend for helping me narrow down colors here lol) but well. you would not believe how hard it is to find a more muted light orange. i have been to specialty yarn sites. if i did either of the two multi-colored yarns, it would be for highlights/still mostly orange just with other tones in there :) if u have specific opinions on this please comment bc good god i hate yarn shopping for this.
RAAGHHHHHHH LET'S SEE THIS THING REACH 13 NOTES!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOOOOO THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOU WHO ARE HERE I HOPE Y'ALL ARE HAVING A GOOD EVENING!!!!!!
TROLLS NOIRE AU BY THE AMAZING @artroc-ity !!!!! READ COLD CASE OF MY HEART TODAY!!!!!!!!!
no but seriously. even when i’m thinking about other things that captivate my interest, i find myself coming back to them and feeling like i fell down three whole flights of staircases every time i do. they are one of my favorite pairs in media and are very special to me.
it’s the way that ryoji and minato’s lives are inevitably intertwined with each other due to the circumstances 10 years ago on the moonlight bridge. without no minato, there is no ryoji. minato as he is today is because of ryoji. they have irreparably affected each other’s lives that you cannot discuss one without bringing up the other one.
ryoji mochizuki, who is death, pharos, thanatos, nyx avatar, the man of many names and identities, is the perfect summation of p3′s messages and themes.
minato arisato, the wildcard and protagonist, who has boundless kindness in his actions despite the unfortunate cards handed to him.
the two of them complement each other and tell a beautiful story from start to finish.
minato’s personas capture this perfectly. he awakens to orpheus, who’s flames burns bright, is snuffed out by thanatos during the encounter against the arcana magician. a visual precursor of the idea that ryoji stole from the life that minato could have had.
it’s the way that over the course of the game as minato interacts with pharos, talking throughout the dark hour, forging a bond that cannot be broken, that allows ryoji to exist. minato humanizes death.
november. the bells toll, calling the appriser. and yet, it’s peaceful... quiet, and full of life. ryoji, who breaks free from death’s chains, refusing his role, is given the chance to live for a month. to make the most of the humanity that minato has given him over those ten years. and what a life he lived. ryoji’s life is a reflection of what minato’s life could have been like in another universe.
it is the way the two of them are reflections of each other. ryoji with his hair down is just like minato. they are both stubbornly committed to choosing to be kind, to love life, yet are chained down by the cards the narrative dealt them with. they finish each other’s sentences, knowing each other intimately in a way no one else does.
how is that, a boy who lived for only one month, profoundly changes the course of the narrative? he is simultaneously relevant and irrelevant. blink, and you miss it, the beautiful life that he led.
ryoji is horrified at the revelations of being the appriser. he who so desperately wished to forget that his existence was meant to bring the end to all life, was unable to escape the inevitability of death. in a non-human way, of course. he becomes remorseful. a shadow of his brief time as a human who was enamored by the small beautiful things that life had to offer.
he is swallowed by grief. grief knowing that his very existence will take away not only minato’s life, but everyone else’s. the very thing that ryoji loved- life, fundamentally went against the role he was born for- to be the harbinger of death. and unable to grapple with this sadness he believes that the best thing for minato to do is to kill him, so that SEES can live in bliss not knowing about their inevitable end.
SEES is left rattled, calling into question what the meaning of life is and what they do when faced against the inevitability of death.
and!!! minato chooses!! for ryoji to live!! even in spite of what ryoji is MEANT to embody, minato still stubbornly chooses to defy death itself! and if that’s not cool i don’t know what is!! minato wants everyone to have the chance to live!!
so he climbs. he ascends tartarus, to meet ryoji, again, who is now the nyx avatar. and i just think there’s something so so beautiful about being able to use messiah, minato’s ultimate persona, against nyx avatar.
messiah, being the fusion of orpheus and thanatos is peak ryomina to me. because ryoji and minato have established an unbreakable bond from having been entwined for 10 years, minato still has a piece of death with him, and by proxy!! ryoji is able to defy and rebel against nyx trying to bring the fall! and i think that’s fucking cool shit if you ask me!
even when all of the arcanas have been gone through, it’s still not enough to stop the fall. and yet. minato knows. in the way that ryoji was sealed in minato 10 years ago by aigis... minato becomes the great seal so that everyone can live. it comes full circle.
march rolls around. he fulfills his promise to SEES on graduation day. minato dies from exhaustion. but goddamn does his sacrifice make me weep- he’s had such, such a tiring journey. he’s been through so many things because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. but at the end of it all, he’s reunited with ryoji in death.
and i think this is why ryomina continues to evoke so much emotions for me, to this day. the relationship that they have embodies so much of persona 3′s messages and themes that it makes me feel like a microwave with nothing running in it.
p3′s message is very hopeful, for me. my favorite takeaway from it is that even if death is inevitable, appreciating the life that we were given and choosing to live as best as we can with kindness (even if we can’t feasibly do everything), is just? really nice? and you see this manifest in both ryoji and minato’s personalities and what they do for the other characters.
ryomina just feels so distinct to me, the flavor that their relationship ties back to my favorite takeaways from this game and im just!! god!! i love you minato arisato! i love you ryoji mochizuki! im so glad that i could meet them! i’m happy that they changed my life! they made me want to appreciate the connections in life even if they were fleeting! they made me!! want to pay attention to the good moments in life and cherish them!
i love ryomina so much!!! i’m so glad that these two could bring so much joy into my life! and i hope that others can have this joy too! 💛💙
i didnt know what to put on the mug, i didnt know what might symbolize madoka, so i just drew a little mini kyubey💀
but lets just say its merch, in a timeline where madoka is actually a huge fan of madoka magica. and the mc is...homura!!!!
i think i just made a super cool au
(thanks for more of the super kind words! im glad you like the way i draw! i'm trying my best to stick with the style of madoka magica while still incorporating my own style in there, hope its working)
god I know this is like The Wrong Stance on AI. I know its not about whether the art is Real and Human or If It Has A Soul and how a lot of the arguments against it are the same bullshit arguments people made against digital art like I Know. I Knowwww. but god, I'm really sorry, not to post like one of those annoying poetry bloggers I cant stand (yall are valid, live your truth, theres nothing wrong with what you post I'm just a petty bitch who hates poetry. unless I dont hate it.)
But theres just something about the way AI art will almost certainly never be able to mimic the exact way my pencil leaves an indentation in the paper, the way some of the lines I can never fully erase cause I pressed too hard, theyll have to at least train them to draw with a physical pencil first, and sure, they could train it to draw with a pencil and even erase the exact same piece I drew, line for line, on a piece of paper with a robot arm powered by AI, but they can't replicate. idk. the lineage of lefty bitches in my family, and the way I grew up going through school with my entire left arm silver with graphite, from doodling on my schoolwork. not yet anyway. but I guess I do live for the day we make the ai sentient enough that we can traumatize it by giving it homework after kneecapping its executive functions so it copes by drawing a big tiddy lobster monster. sure
I think I cried harder today over my dad's jackets than I did at his deathbed. That was a miserable time of course, a memory that will likely be seared into my brain until I die, but I cried... I think a normal amount, all things considered. More than I ever usually do of course, but I typically don't cry At All. All this free crying is certainly surreal.
The jackets, though. I was put in charge of doing his laundry, because we don't want to pack up dirty clothes. I was expecting it to be unpleasant bc my dad's dirty clothes - gross. But really, it was much more unpleasant in that... those were his. It felt wrong to touch them. Felt wrong to treat his jackets as gross. Because they were just his jackets. They weren't even in the hamper. And then I was remembering him wearing them, and then I was crying. Again. And again. Weeping over these damn jackets.
Then I found a shirt on his bed that still smelled like him. It smelled like a Hug From Dad. And that set me off crying even harder.
In total, I think I cried like 6 times within 40 minutes. It took me that long to finish sorting the damn clothes bc I just. Was a wreck. Like, what are you supposed to do when you're living life like normal, vaguely hopeful bc you're taking steps to secure your own happiness, and then 4 days later you're sorting your dad's laundry because he fucking died. Suddenly. Without a goodbye.
And you have to worry about his lack of a will (even under an ideal situation, only 2 heirs and no conflicts between us, probate's a fucking Bitch), and arranging the funeral, and prepping his obituary, and picking out pictures, and writing a speech bc you want to talk at his funeral, of Course you want to talk at his funeral, but even just thinking about anecdotes you could share has you crying yet again.
I've cried more times in the past 3 days than likely the entirety of last YEAR. And that's WITH my cat, and uncle, and family friend dying. Those all hurt, my uncle most of all, & I was real fucked up over it. But this? This was my Dad. Likely the person I'd have named 2nd closest to me in my life, second only to my sister. He wasn't perfect, but he did so much for me throughout my entire life. All he wanted was to raise us to be happy and independent. And he accomplished it, we're getting by without him, but we still wanted several more decades with him. He was only 57. We should've gotten several more decades with him.
But here we are now. Playing investigators to his life, digging into all his shit, trying to find documents and take inventory of all his things, and learning Many things about him in the process. In his lockbox of sensitive documents, like his SSN and birth certificate and all that stuff, we found an old letter. About a decade old now, written in my hand. Right at the very top, we found that he'd kept the letter I wrote to him telling him frankly about my struggles and the things I wanted him to do better. He kept it. He tried to take it to heart. He looked at it again, sometime more recently than all the rest of the documents. That was on top.
His love for us is evident everywhere. The pictures he has hanging up all over the place, majority of them with us in them. The old fathers day cards placed on display in his bedroom bookshelf. The gifts we gave him, even stupid little knick knacks, placed around his apartment with pride. I wish we'd taken more videos of him. I don't want to forget the sound of his voice. I don't want to forget his smell either, the smell of a Hug From Dad, but I still tossed that shirt into the wash even though it felt like saying yet another goodbye.
It's the suddenness that hurts the most, I think. We were planning on having him help me finally get my license this year. My final words to him, the last thing he would've seen from me, were messages asking up on whether he'd called his car insurance company to make sure there wouldn't be problems. I should've called him more. I don't know if I'm going to learn from this.
I cut my 2 weeks off early to have time to grieve and to work on things for the funeral and settling the estate. The last thing I'd wanna do right now is selling fucking bubble tea in a job I already decided to leave. So here I am without a job, though with potentially two life insurance policy payouts to come. Inheriting half his 401k. Inheriting couches, knickknacks, keepsakes, paintings, art pieces, maybe even his guitar and other furniture if we can figure out what to do about space (I don't have room for this furniture, I don't know if I even have room for the couches, but God do I want to keep so much of this furniture). It has me even considering keeping one of his guns, just one. A tiny little revolver, it sits so comfortably in my hand. I don't even want to use it for anything. I just want to have it, keep it stored in a drawer with its ammo kept separate. I don't like guns, but this is a part of him. He loved collecting guns. He was about as responsible with them as someone can be, keeping them locked in a lockbox and impressing upon his children the importance of gun safety (I've known the basic gun safety rules ever since I was a little kid. Of course, of course, of course.) It reminds me of him. It's horrifically easy to have a gun in Indiana. I apparently don't even need a permit to carry anymore. (I have no intention to ever carry this in public.)
It's all a cycle. Business, grief, thoughts about my future. Round and round, like the most nauseating carousel in existence. I don't know how I'm still so functional. My skills with compartmentalization have been my lifesaver.
And im just thinking about the story my dad's best friend shared today. About a friend of theirs who lost her father. She reached out after hearing about my dad to share his words with her: "it's okay to grieve, but don't make his death your life".
He explicitly referenced himself in this, saying if he were to die suddenly that he wouldn't want us to define ourselves by it. Grief is expected, but he wants us to be able to move on. He's always wanted us to establish ourselves and make ourselves happy. He wouldn't want to be a weight holding us back from that.
So every time I start to feel guilty for thinking about having nicer furniture or using his life insurance payout to fund the rest of my college, I remind myself of that. Thinking about the material isn't a bad thing. I'm only human. And in the end, he'd Want me to be thinking about it. He never intended to die, certainly not without warning like this, so he would've only encouraged me being pragmatic about it all.
He only ever wanted us to be happy. So I need to do what I can to live up to that.
finished my second playthrough of signalis, was going for the artifact ending. then loaded my save and got the memory ending. such a good game aaaa
the memory ending made me cry, it was really heartwrenching when ariane said sorry i dont remember, i just crumpled. watching elster be so exhausted was a lot.
not really sure if i understand the artifact ending. i feel like either its really vague (on top of all the other vagueness) or if im missing something. it kind of feels like a burial of arianes memory? like elster dies and we see ariane thikning about her and elster dancing in the wrecked ship? i’m not sure. maybe someone could give me their interpretation of it?
i also found out that theres a difficulty setting and really wished i had set it to survival before my second playthrough. woulda been nice!!! I do have one more ending so i might play the game again but might also just watch it on youtube and play the game again some other time(gotta let it ruminate so i can go back in with different eyes), I wanna get all the achievements anyways.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
all in all i fucking love this game a lot. very rarely do i replay a game so soon after playing it for the first time. its really tragic i’ll never get to experience this game for the first time again, but, so it goes. its such a beautiful game i will be thinking about it for a longgggggggggggg time. ive been wanting to talk about it so badly for so long but none of my friends have played it yet kyaaa!!! >_<
its crazy to me that the game exists the way it does. the style, the mechanics, the story, the music, everything about it oozes so much passion and care and thought. very few games have made me want to stare at every part of it to figure out how they made it look the way it did (THE GAME IS SO STYLISTICALLY RICH LIKE HOIW DID THEY DO ALL THAT) and the game mechanics are so nice to my brain, everything is so tactile and clicky and inventory management and ammo management and horror stratgey and the flesh and rust and death and love and lesbians and robots and anime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
amazing game thank you rose engine, i hope they make more stuff because i really want to see it
edit:(thinking about the first time i played compared to the second. i was considerably less scared since i had a clue of waht was going on but the fear that i felt playing the first time was special to me. i really like games with stories about ‘time loops’ because the replay-ability is baked in in a cool way. especially with how the game throws information at you, viewing things again having experienced perspective shifts from information is really cool. seeing scenes again re-contextualized makes my brain go ^-^(hots quest ding sound) but going in completely blind and being afraid of everything (i especially remember being scared of the dream beach, i had literally no clue what to expect and it was nice) it all had a different flavor than the second time which is cool because i feel like i experience that kind of emotion change *with* elster. (girlie needs a FUCKING cuddle nap)
the way the game balances reality and the surreal i think is super neat. i love surrealist dream stuff a lot and i think that a video game is a super good medium for that kind of experiential stuff that really inspires me to wanna make video games. especially because then theres also this super nerdy sci fi stuff going on about robots and space regimes and magical tech(my favorite) and planetary systems and military systems and all that good shit. i similarly wanna get nerdy about stuff like military logistics while also telling a story about gay robots and girls that keep missing each other just barely in the space time continuum. i love that the game tells you a lot but also is vague and also says fuck you (affectionate) stop looking for answers and just feel it. it explains just the right amount to not feel esoteric while keeping enough vague to leave a lot up to interpretation/figure it out by playing it again/thinking about it. it plays with themes and reality and reoccuring symbolism and all that good shit that makes stories addicting to think about.)
((also one of the endings requiring beating the game once among other things that keep between playthroughs, yummyyy. games that know they are games/stories/worlds that are aware of themselves., thats good shit right there))