#just here to have fun and play maths puzzles

[junk-culture]

youve heard of spending 3 years doing some kind of "useless" humanities degree and then going back to working in a supermarket or whatever. but what about spending 3 years doing a "useful" accounting degree and then going back to working in a supermarket or whatever. would that be kind of based

[eosofspades]

quick n easy list of gentle coping mechanisms for bad mental health days / neurodivergent understimulation episodes!! some are more applicable to one or the other but when i'm feeling particularly like a tiger in a too-small enclosure i find doing at least a couple of these things helps me so much

drink water. basic, but annoyingly effective

eat a snack. same as above

stretch! even just some laying down stretches like pulling on your arms and knees (in fact, here's a great tiktok series for "depression stretches" and workouts/physical stimulation you can do laying down/without much movement)

music/podcasts/video essays. your favorite playlist you haven't listened to in a while, a podcast you like/have been meaning to start (i listen to podcasts while i'm drawing!)

draw/color! if you don't wanna draw, a coloring book is always fun. i actually prefer kids' ones.

read a book. i prefer physical books bc i know i'll get sucked back into the social media scrolling for hours if i try to read on my phone. i also recommend a nice tea/hot chocolate/juice with this one.

video games. this can be anything from minecraft to destiny 2, but i usually never give myself time for these, even when i have it (stuck in that phone scrolling). a more action-packed game for mental understimulation, maybe a more mellow one for a bad depression episode.

shower. i am fully aware this tends to take a lot of spoons but even just sitting under running water ALWAYS makes me feel better when i can manage it. it also helps me with adhd overstimulation!

clean/organize. this sounds counterintuitive but i actually do enjoy organizing stuff for understimulation, and cleaner workspaces help with the depression. even if it's something as simple as "put all the pencils on the desk back into the pencil cup."

puzzles/brain games. this one is almost exclusively for mental understimulation but once i get going it makes my depression SO MUCH BETTER, TOO. my niche is getting myself some algebra sheets but this can be anything from math to jigsaws to crosswords to word searches!! some kind of problem solving that engages your brain and requires focus. this one is my favorite because i find it really grounding.

playing an instrument. this is in the same vein as the last one! again, my personal niche is the piano, but this could be any sort of thing. in fact this could even be substituted for some kind of alt hobby all together, like knitting or crocheting or something! again, mostly for understimulation, but gives me the serotonin boost to get through the depression stuff as well.

this is all i have for my list, but i'd love for anyone to reblog and add their own stuff!!

[vampzxi]

𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘴𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘭!𝘳𝘪𝘳𝘪 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘯𝘴

hi guys i finally finished the riri hcs...dont jump me idk why they took so long. if you have any other hcs PLEASE tell me i literally love riri so much it's probably unhealthy at this point. check out my highschool!shuri headcanons here! :)

taglist!: @vixentheplanet @abenomeiiii @inmyheadimobsessed @zayswriting @pinkwright @ccharrrr @letitias-fav @shuriszn @generallysapphic @iotusroses @marsolgy @ihearttish (ask to be added or fill out this form. i'm so forgetful i'm sorry!)

academic

・❥・top of her class, dur 🤦🏽 (her and shuri are a year apart, riri being a junior)

・❥・homework side hustle (she’s a very expensive woman)

・❥・prefers math over any other subject, cannot stand english

・❥・despite not liking english, she has a very creative mind and all her english teachers love her

・❥・very quiet in class, minds her business for the most part

・❥・frequently spends all-nighters on her homework simply because she got too distracted (chronic procrastinator)

・❥・undiagnosed adhd

・❥・fidgeter. will bounce her leg, tap her nails on the desk, mess with her jewelry, cannot stay still in her seat

・❥・neat handwriting because her mom and step-dad taught her how to write nicely from a young age

・❥・terrible test anxiety

・❥・slick mouth often gets her into a lot of arguments with teachers.. (she made a teacher retire early once)

・❥・spends most of her time in her welding/metallurgy class, before and after school. if she's not there then she's at the garage

・❥・was forced into the debate club because her teacher told her to "channel her argumentative energy elsewhere" but she ended up loving it and wins most of her meets

social

・❥・despite keeping to herself, virtually everyone is cool with her

・❥・skips class with shuri sometimes

・❥・naturally flirty personality

・❥・gets dragged to parties by shuri but ends up having more fun than she does

・❥・picky eater

・❥・dancer. you cannot pull her off the dance floor

・❥・cannot speak xhosa to save her life...shuri makes fun of her a lot

・❥・gets angry easily, so she's been in her fair share of fights. she has yet to lose one

・❥・basketball player, her step dad taught her how to hoop

・❥・smokes 🍃 occasionally

・❥・favorite anime is soul eater

・❥・guilty pleasure: musicals. and shuri is the only one who knows this because she walked in on her singing "In The Heights". (she made shuri swear to secrecy)

・❥・loves skating

・❥・she switches up her style often, most times you'll just see her in a shirt and sweats. but she doesn't mind putting on a cute skirt or dress every now and then

romantic

・❥・if you like her, good luck. there's a line a mile long.

・❥・very cocky, she knows shes the shit.

・❥・drooler and snorer.

・❥・her love languages are words of affirmation and quality time, so she always has to let you know how good you look, or how smart you are, or how much she enjoys being around you. your date nights mostly consist of cuddling under each other and watching movies

・❥・drags you to the skating rink at least once a week

・❥・posts you all over her social medias. like constantly. when you ask her why she usually responds with something along the lines of, "i just want the world to see how fine you are."

・❥・wild sleeper, she usually ends up kicking you off the bed

・❥・she plays with your hair a lot

・❥・loves lego sets and puzzles and begs you to do them with her and shuri (you always say yes)

・❥・loves PDA, will literally kiss you anywhere, any time

・❥・rambles about you to shuri constantly

・❥・always bringing you something she made for you in her metallurgy class. you appreciate them but you're running out of room because of the amount she gives you

・❥・since she's in the garage most of the time, you end up having to drag her out

・❥・very oblivious with signals, if you try to drop hints she will not pick them up

・❥・scratcher.

・❥・debates everything, resulting in a few arguments. but she always ends up apologizing in the end. in certain ways 🤭

・❥・very possessive. she intentionally leaves hickeys on you. you don't mind though

thanks again for reading! yes i wrote this because im procrastinating on the shuri fic...mind your business. leave your headcanons guys :3

[dccomicsimagines]

Truth or Dare Valentine - Young Justice Imagine

Requested by Anon -  Can you please do a young justice x reader imagine where the team just finished a mission and is just sitting in the cave bored so they decide to play truth or dare. A lot of juicy secrets are revealed and the reader also confesses their feelings for another hero (your choice)

Requested by Anon - Can we have a Valentine’s Day with the team?

Author’s Note - This are late. I’m sorry.

***

“Wally, slow down. I need to see how you do it.” You shoved at his shoulder. The two of you were sitting on the floor in the living area of the cave. Homework covered the coffee table as you struggled through calculus. Wally knew what he was doing somehow.

He sighed, leaning away from his page so you could look. “To use the power rule, multiply the variable's exponent n, by its coefficient a, then subtract 1 from the exponent.” He pointed to the quote in the book. 

“English please.” You sighed before copying his work. Wally rolled his eyes and went back to it, but left his paper in your view. 

“Are you cheating?” Kaldur’s voice cut you like a knife. You and Wally flinched, turning to find Kaldur taking a seat in an armchair with a book in his hand.

“Not really. There’s no cheating in Calculus,” you said. You felt heat on your cheeks, going back to copying Wally’s work before it was noticed. 

“(Y/N) is the cheat. I’m just here.” Wally smirked when you smacked him. 

Kaldur hummed. You peeked at him to find him reading. Taking a deep breath, you tried to relax and focus on trying to puzzle what Wally was doing.

A creepy laugh came from behind you. You rolled your eyes. “Shut up, Rob.”

“What? I can’t be whelmed at how hard Calculus is for you.” Dick hopped over the couch and sat beside you. He cupped his chin, resting his elbow on your textbook. “It’s not that difficult.”

“Says the math geek.” You elbowed him hard. He groaned, rolling on the floor like you killed him. Wally gave you both an annoyed look while Kaldur ignored all of you. 

“Guys, guess what?!” M’gann flew into the room. She grinned, clapping her hands excitedly. Conner followed her. He looked bored, but a hint of a smile pulled at his lips at M’gann’s excitement. You almost rolled your eyes.

“What, babe?” Wally looked up suddenly. You wondered if he gave himself whiplash. 

“Red Tornado said we could have a Valentine’s Day party!” She let out a squeal, landing next to Dick. 

You quickly looked down at your homework, hiding your expression. The others seemed excited, but your heart fell. Valentine’s Day wasn’t a good day for you.

“We’re going to feel the aster.” Dick nudged your side. “What do you think, (Y/N)?”

You forced a smile on your face. “It’s great. Lots of fun.” You glanced up. M’gann was fooled by your grin, but Dick looked slightly alarmed. You quickly went back to your homework. 

“What is Valentine’s Day again?” Kaldur asked. You blushed at his words.

“It’s the holiday of love.” M’gann sighed. “People confess their love for others, and be romantic. They also give a lot of candy, and you give out valentines for those you care about.” 

“It’s a lot of fun.” Wally blushed. “But Valentine’s Day is only two days away? Are you going to get everything ready in time?” He frowned slightly when M’gann got a glimmer in her eye.

“That’s why we’re all going to get ready for the party.” M’gann took a small notebook out of her pocket. “Artemis, Zatanna, and Raquel are on their way. Now we’re going to divide up the tasks...”

You swallowed hard, knowing you were stuck. “Are you okay?” Dick whispered in your ear. You just shook your head, tightening your hold on your pencil to stop your hand from shaking. Dick’s hand rested on your back. 

Taking a deep breath, you kept copying Wally’s work until you got to where he stopped. “I’ll be right back.” You gave everyone a false smile before practically running out of the room. 

Luckily, you made it to your room before your lungs stopped working. You curled up into a ball and let yourself soak in your emotions for a few hours.

***

“So M’gann has a list.” Dick unfolded two pieces of paper. You held back a groan when you saw both were written on front and back. You, Dick, Zatanna, and Artemis were at the local big box store. Dick seemed awed by the experience while Zatanna and Artemis just seemed happy to spend money that wasn’t theirs. 

“Let’s divide and conquer.” Artemis snatched one paper out of Dick’s hand. “Z and I will take this one. You and Mopey can take the other.”

You flinched at the nickname. Artemis was teasing, but it stun. Dick gave you a smile as Artemis and Zatanna grabbed a cart and headed off. 

The store was decked out in red and pink. You felt sick.

Dick took a cart, gesturing toward the baby’s seat. “Want in?”

You smacked his arm. “Only if you go in first.”

Dick laughed. He rolled the cart into the store and straight into the Valentine’s section. You dragged your feet behind him, trying not to think too much.

He tossed bags of candy in the cart along with decorations. “You know we have to get valentines to give out?”

“Amazing.” You narrowed your eyes when he stopped by the display of valentines. He chuckled before picking a set of Justice League valentines with temporary tattoos inside.

“What ones you want?” Dick crossed his arms, eyeing you carefully. 

You swallowed past the lump in your throat. “I’m only doing this for M’gann.” You grabbed the first box you saw and tossed it in the cart. Dick hummed, eyeing the box you tossed in. 

“Paw Patrol, huh?” Dick laughed. You couldn’t even crack a smile. “Well at least the snap bracelets will have everyone feeling the aster.”

You just shook your head. “Can we just leave this section please?”

Dick shook his head. “No, we still got things to get.” He went to the next aisle. “What’s wrong? You’ve been...off ever since M’gann mentioned having the party.”

You rubbed your temples. It was going to get asked eventually. Old memories drifted back. Your heart dropped to the floor. “I don’t like Valentine’s Day.”

“Noted.” Dick eyed you carefully as you both stopped by a wall of stuffed animals. “Why?”

You took a shaky breath. “Well...you know how schools do the thing where you can pay like a dollar to send a carnation to someone.” You kept your eyes on a stupid looking bear with a giant heart in his arms. 

“Sure, I’ve heard of it.” Dick shrugged. “My school does that, but to the extreme.”

“Rich people.” You snorted, shaking your head. “Well, I’m not well liked at my school.” You made your eyes drop to your feet, digging your toe into the floor. Dick shifted next to you. “I mean I hang out with Wally, but he’s a nerd, so...I’m not very popular.”

Dick snorted. “He is a nerd, but go on.” He kept his eyes on you. You felt a blush burn to your cheeks, but you kept your eyes on your feet.

“They did the carnation thing last year and I got one from someone I didn’t really know. She was in one of my classes though and I liked her.” You bit your lip when Dick touched your arm. “It said to meet her behind the school, so like an idiot I went. When I got there, she and her friends were there, laughing at me. Apparently, it was a joke.”

“That’s horrible.” Dick wrapped an arm around you. You let him, tensing slightly at the touch. 

“Yeah, well, they had their laugh, called me a loser and said how no one would ever like me,” you chuckled humorlessly. “It kinda soured the holiday for me.”

Dick hummed. “Fair.” He nudged your arm, getting you to look at him. “I’m sorry.”

You shrugged, looking up at the ceiling as you blinked back the tears. “I’d rather we keep this between us.”

“Wally doesn’t know?” Dick raised an eyebrow. You and Wally went to school together.

“I didn’t tell him. He just thought I had allergies that day. He’s not very bright when he doesn’t want to be.” You felt a real laugh work it’s way out of your chest. 

Dick nodded, picking up the bear you had been looking at and tossing it in the cart. “Fast feet, slow brain,” he chuckled.

Laughter bubbled in your stomach. “Good one.” You held your hand up for a high five. Dick smirked, slapping your hand with a grin. “How much more shopping do we have?”

“Not much. Most of our list was candy.” Dick handed the list to you before pushing the cart along. You followed him. The bitter feeling eating at your heart was dampen slightly. You hoped you could keep it up for the party.

***

Over the next day, the cave was filled with pre-party jitters. M’gann was everywhere, making sure the cave was properly decorated in all places. You sighed as you quickly realized the only place to get away from Valentine’s Day was your room. 

That being said, on the day of the party, you struggled to leave your safe space.  M’gann insisted everyone wear red or pink. You were wearing a red shirt with Dracula on it. It gave you some satisfaction, but not enough to open the door and join the party.

You paced your room. A lump formed in your throat. You could hear the laughter from those girls. Pressing a hand against your chest, you tried to slow your heart.

A knock came from your door. You jumped, almost letting out an embarrassing shriek. 

“(Y/N), the party is starting,” Raquel said through the door. “Please get out here before M’gann sends Conner to drag you out.”

You let out a slow breath, calming your racing heart. “I’m coming.” You opened the door to find Raquel leaning against your door frame. She was wearing a red sweater with pink hearts on it. A smile pulled on her lips at the sight of you.

“At least you’re wearing red.” She crossed her arms, studying your shirt. You almost blushed. “Dick mentioned that you aren’t a fan of Valentine’s Day.”

“Blabbermouth.” You rolled your eyes, stepping out into the hallway and closing your bedroom door. “He promised he wouldn’t tell.”

Raquel just shook her head. “Yeah, but we were worried about you.” She smiled, nudging your shoulder. “Besides he asked me to make a Valentine’s Day box for you, so M’gann won’t be sad that you didn’t make one.”

The blush crept onto your cheeks, betraying you. “Thanks. I couldn’t bring myself to make one.”

“It’s okay. I get it, trust me.” She nodded down the hall. “I know it’s going to be hard with the décor and everything, but try to have fun. Think of it as a regular party.”

You closed your eyes. Maybe Raquel was right? Just pretend it was a normal party. You felt a slight weight lift off your chest. Suddenly, it was easier to breathe. “That’s a good idea.”

“We’re all your friends, (Y/N). Today is about new memories.” She hooked her arm in yours and pulled you along. “Come on, we got candy to eat and Wally to make fun of.”

You laughed. “Wally’s already made a fool out of himself?”

“Of course, he’s practically planning on proposing to M’gann.” Raquel shook her head, giggling as you both entered the party to enjoy the show.

***

The party remained pretty lame until about ten o’clock. Red Tornado, who had been supervising, left for Watchtower duty. Everyone sat around the living room, watching the end credits of a rom-com. 

“So...should we make this party more interesting?” Zatanna asked, getting to her feet once the zeta tube went quiet. She turned off the tv.

“What do you mean?” M’gann sat up straighter, eyes widening. Conner watched her with a smile. 

You bit your lip as Wally perked up. He had been moping since his failed attempt to kiss M’gann earlier. “Could we play truth or dare?” Wally said with a sneaky smirk. You met his gaze and rolled your eyes. He just wrinkled his nose at you.

“I always wanted to play truth or dare.” M’gann floated out of her seat.

“What is truth or dare?” Kaldur whispered to you. You winced.

“Truth or dare is a game. Basically, one person asks you if you want to give a truth or take a dare, you chose one and you have to answer honestly or do the dare,” you said softly. The others began to debate playing the game. Dick and Artemis were against, everyone else was for it except for Conner, who seemed indifferent.

“And if you do not answer or perform the dare?” Kaldur raised an eyebrow. 

“Then you do the other and if you refuse both, then there is usually some kind of punishment.” You pursed your lips. “It can be fun.”

Kaldur nodded, quietly watching the debate before the two of you. 

Artemis stood up, holding up her hands. “Fine, but I want to lay down a rule. We have a right to refuse any dare or questions that are disgusting.” She looked straight at Wally.

“Hey, why are you looking at me? If anything, you should be worried about Raquel,” Wally said, pointing at Raquel as if she was the murderess at the end of a detective novel. 

Raquel rolled her eyes and laughed. “As if.”

“It sounds reasonable,” Kaldur added.

“Let’s play.” M’gann spun around in the air. “Can I go first? Someone ask me.”

Wally opened his mouth, but Dick slapped a hand over his mouth. “Truth or dare, M’gann?” Dick said, grinning.

“Rude.” Wally pouted, pushing Dick’s hand away.

“Dare.” M’gann giggled. Conner gave Dick a warning look. Dick just smiled.

“I dare you to shift into Black Canary and give Wally a lecture about common decency.” Dick chuckled his evil little laugh. You exploded with laughter along with everyone else. Wally turned as red as his hair.

M’gann shifted into Black Canary, floating down to her feet and standing over Wally with her hands on her hips. “Wallace West, how many times must we go over how to eat with your mouth closed? I don’t care how many calories you need to eat. Close your mouth when you chew. Very simple.” She leaned down and demonstrated. Wally’s eyes were wide. You sensed he was enjoying this a tad too much.

“I think this confirms he has a crush on Black Canary as well as M’gann, huh?” Zatanna whispered, giggling. You made a note to humiliate Wally with this later.

“Well, I’m feeling the aster now,” Dick said once M’gann finished and shifted back to herself. “That was great, M’gann.”

“Thanks.” She sat back next to Conner. Conner took her hand, looking at her in the way you all knew they were talking via mind link to each other. M’gann smiled before looking around the room carefully. “So I get to ask next?” 

Dick nodded. “Anyone, but me.”

You wrung your hands. Luckily, she had her eyes on Raquel. “Truth or dare?”

“Truth.” Raquel grinned, sitting back in her seat with a confidence you envied.

M’gann thought for a second. “If only you and one other person is the last two people in the world, who would it be?”

“That’s a tough one.” Raquel rubbed her temple in thought. “I guess I would probably pick someone in this room.” She looked around, smirking when her gaze fell on Kaldur. Kaldur avoided her gaze. “I guess I’ll have Kaldur. 

“Ooo,” Zatanna and Artemis said, giggling like mad. Everyone laughed while Kaldur just gave Raquel a shy smile.

Raquel looked around the room. Wally raised his hand. “Pick me. Come on,” he whined, almost falling out of his seat.

“Oh fine, Wally. Truth or dare?” Raquel shook her head.

“Dare,” he said, puffing out his chest. 

Dick laughed. “This is going to be good.” You pressed your hand over your mouth to hold back the volcano of laughter that threatened to escape. It took all you had not to get your phone out to record.

Raquel smirked. “Okay...” She pursed her lips in thought. “I dare you to not talk for the next half an hour.”

Wally deflated. He opened his mouth, but quickly closed it. 

“Oh my god, silence. For once.” Artemis sighed loudly, making everyone laugh. 

Wally crossed his arms, glaring. You snapped a picture as your phone was unable to stay in your pocket. Wally’s eyes flashed at the sight. You didn’t realize then, you created your worst nightmare.

***

Over the next half an hour, you learned Conner went commando on a regular basis, that Dick was involved in the creation of the make out closet at his school, M’gann liked to pretend to be Black Canary with Conner (that one might have scarred the whole team), and that Artemis would rather marry the Joker than anyone else in the whole world.

Kaldur took a dare. Conner dared him to go out and find a seashell. He did that with ease. M’gann took Conner aside afterwards to explain how dares were supposed to be more...interesting than that.

You only had to reveal that you wet the bed until you were ten. Embarrassing, but you would live.

Meanwhile, Wally stayed quiet. He kept looking at you strangely. You wondered what was wrong. It was funny, but you were starting to have fun, forgetting it was a Valentine’s Day party.

“Okay, Wally. You won your dare,” Raquel said when her phone’s timer went off. 

“Good.” Wally smirked at you. You raised an eyebrow at him. “So I get to pick someone, right?” Raquel nodded.

“Wasn’t that nice? Being quiet?” Artemis mocked, tossing a pillow at Wally. Wally caught it, unamused.

“Har, Har.” He threw the pillow back at her. She dodged it with a laugh. Wally looked straight at you. “(Y/N), truth or dare?”

A chill ran down your spine. Goosebumps rose on your skin. You didn’t like what was in his eyes. “Truth,” you said. Truth was safer than dare, you thought. 

“Okay.” Wally smirked, a dangerous glint in his eye. “Why does everyone at school call you Gullible Rose behind your back?”

Time froze. Your blood ran cold as you felt the smile drop from your face. Tears filled your eyes. Wally just smiled rather evilly. 

Everyone else fell silent at your expression. Dick got to his feet. “(Y/N), don’t answer that,” Dick snapped. His face flushed.

“What? Are you scared?” Wally rolled his eyes, watching you. You glimpsed a brief hesitation in his eyes. You bit your lip. Wally didn’t know, he didn’t mean any harm. At least that’s what you tried to tell yourself.

You took a deep breath. “It’s okay.” You gave Wally a shaky smile. “You really don’t know? Or are you being mean?”

Wally blinked in surprise. Everyone glanced between the two of you. “(Y/N), you don’t have to answer. You can ask the next person,” M’gann said, frowning slightly. You were sure this broke her illusion of Truth or Dare.

“No, it’s okay.” You held up a hand. “The last thing I want is for Wally to claim I didn’t play by the rules. I mean I already copy his homework.” You let out a fake laugh that no one joined you in. 

“(Y/N), you don’t have to.” Dick crossed the room and sat down beside you. “You really don’t.”

Letting out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, you looked straight at Wally. “Last Valentine’s Day, I got sent a carnation at school. It said to meet my special someone behind the school. I did, only to find a group of the popular girls there to call me a loser and make fun of me. That’s why they call me Gullible Rose. Stupid really, because it was a carnation, not a rose, but whatever.”

Raquel patted your shoulder in support. Wally’s shoulders dropped. His mouth twitched. You knew he knew who the people were in the story, but honestly, it hurt to say their names. 

“That’s why...oh, I’m sorry, (Y/N),” Artemis said genuinely. Zatanna nodded beside her, tears in her eyes.  

M’gann started to cry. Conner hugged her. “(Y/N) was bullied. I thought that only happened in movies,” M’gann said, muffled by Conner’s shirt. 

“I’m fine, guys. I’m over it.” You waved your hand, trying to smile. However, a frown kept pulling at your lips. Your eyes burned with tears. 

“No, you are not.” Kaldur reached over to pat your knee. “And that is alright.”

Wally jumped to his feet. Everyone looked at him. You blinked at how red his face was. His hands trembled. “M’gann, you still have eggs in the fridge?”

“Yes? Why?” M’gann sniffled, pulling away from Conner. 

Wally sped to the kitchen and came back with the two full egg cartons. “We’re heading out.” Wally balanced both cartons in one hand and held the other out to you. “Come on, (Y/N). It’s time for some revenge.”

You blinked before that smile you been trying for finally appeared. “Really?”

He nodded. You took his hand and stood up. “Really.”

“Wait, are we doing what I think we’re doing?” Raquel laughed, rubbing her hands together in glee.

“Batman is going to kill me, but it’s worth it.” Dick nudged your side, smirking. 

M’gann and Conner looked confused. Artemis and Zatanna quietly explained it to them and soon all four were grinning in anticipation.

Kaldur held up a hand. “I should be worried, yes?”

“Nah, you’ll be fine.” Raquel kissed his cheek and took his hand to lead him out of the room. 

Wally handed you a carton of eggs. “Thanks, Walls,” you whispered as you both followed the others toward the zeta tube. 

“Hey, you’d do the same for me.” Wally winked at you. You laughed for real, lighter than air.

***

After leaving Kaldur and Raquel as lookout, the rest of the team stood outside your former crush’s house. The lights were off, but her car was in the driveway.

“So what’s the plan, Baywatch?” Artemis whispered. She gently tossed an egg in her hand.

“(Y/N) gets to throw first.” Wally nodded for you to take an egg out of the carton in your hand. 

“I think you should go for the car,” Dick whispered softly in your ear. You rocked on your feet, biting your lip. Butterflies fluttered in your stomach. You didn’t know if they were from excitement or fear or a mix of the two.

You opened your carton and took the cool egg in your hand. It was smooth, you rolled it with your fingers. Wally gave you a smile. “Go for the car,” he said. “She loves the car.”

M’gann tittered behind you, eyes wide with an innocence akin to a child using a swear word for the first time. Artemis and Zatanna hushed her. 

“The car huh?” You rolled your shoulder before throwing the egg. It splattered against the rear windshield. A giggle slipped out of you at the sight. “That was fun.” 

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Artemis said as she threw hers and got the side mirror. “Best part if she doesn’t catch it, she’ll have fried eggs on her car in the morning.”

“Ooo, let me get the other one,” Zatanna giggled, taking aim. She threw her egg, but it was a weak throw. As the egg began to fall toward the driveway, Zatanna whispered, “Tih eht edis rorrim.” The egg disappeared only to appear shattered on the other side mirror a moment later.

Everyone laughed, trying to keep quiet. “Nice save,” Dick chuckled softly. He threw his egg, hitting the tail light of the car. “Feeling the aster tonight!”

M’gann hushed him. “Don’t we have to be quiet?” she said through the mind link. A nearby house’s lights turned on. Everyone froze.

“Duck.” Wally grabbed you and pulled you down behind a nearby trash can. Dick, Artemis, Zatanna, and Conner crouched down. M'gann blended in with her Martian camouflage. A shadow passed by the window of the house before the light turned off again.

“We should go. I don’t want you all to get into trouble,” you said, getting to your feet. 

“Come on, we have to get rid of all these eggs.” Wally stood back up and threw another egg. It slammed against the trunk. “Besides, we won’t get caught.”

You bit your lip. Taking the cool egg in your hand, you threw it and hit the back bumper. 

Everyone kept tossing until only one egg was left. You glanced at Conner, who stood watching the other houses. He hadn’t taken a turn. You went to him and handed him an egg. “Last one. Make it count for me.” He frowned, but you smiled at him brightly.

“Are you sure?” Conner eyed the egg before glancing at the car. “This is your revenge.”

You glanced back at Wally who was goofing off with Dick. “Yeah, go ahead. Besides, this is good life experience for you.” Conner raised an eyebrow. “M’gann will think it’s cool.” He looked at M’gann who quickly looked away blushing. 

A rare smirk pulled at Conner’s lip. He took aim. Your eyes widened as his muscles tensed. Wally clapped a hand on your shoulder just as glass shattering filled the night air. The team froze. 

The car’s rear windshield was gone. The car alarm blared. Conner bit his lip. Lights turned on in the former crush’s house as well as every house on the block. “Run,” Wally shouted, grabbing your arm to pull you with him.

Everyone ran in different directions. Wally scooped you up in his arms and sped through the backyards of the houses. You couldn’t stop yourself from laughing breathlessly. Pressing a hand against your mouth, you tried to keep quiet.

“That’s the last time we let Conner egg something,” Wally chuckled, slowly to a stop outside of a closed convenience store. He set you on your feet.

Laughter bubbled out of you. “Noted.” You leaned against the store window and caught your breath. “Thanks Walls. I honestly wasn’t looking forward to this day or the party.”

“I’m sorry I brought it up like I did. I was an ass.” Wally crossed his arms, looking down at his feet. “And I’m sorry I didn’t realize what happened earlier. I should have known.”

You shrugged, brushing off invisible dirt from your jeans. “It’s not your fault. Besides, you made it better. I can’t wait to hear about this at school.” You nudged his shoulder as you both started to walk toward the nearest zeta tube. “I hope the rest of the team got away.”

Wally winced. “They’ll be fine, I hope.” He blushed. “Or we’ll die by Batman’s hand.”

You rolled your eyes, snorting. Looking up at the night sky, you let out a deep breath. Your heart fluttered. Valentine’s Day wasn’t so bad with a group of friends that would do anything for you. You glanced at Wally again and wrapped your arm around him. He laughed, half hugging you back.

[papenniesandbentoboxes]

Spoiler-Free KEY Review

Alright. I finished KEY. I'm going to play it again with my sister and then probably do a more in depth review of it, but for now I've got a just-finished-it review, and we'll see how this one compares to my second review after a second playthrough.

Plot:

The plot wasn't too bad! A bit linear compared to other games but I did enjoy it. It wasn't as visual novel-y as MID but wasn't as interactive as some other games. But overall it was fun and entertaining!

Characters:

The characters were enjoyable. I liked having some characters there being only barely involved when others were SUPER involved, so we have a lot more range with suspects and suspicions. I definitely would have liked digging deeper into the characters, like in CUR and GTH and SAW and such. Although, I'll admit, in most of the other games we didn't get super deep backgrounds either. There weren't a lot of dialogue options, so maybe in the future we can get more dialogue and character deep dives! I want more substance!

The only part about the characters I actively didn't like was a certain character's hair (bro, that's some Assassin's Creed Caterina Sforza hair, Sims hair, idk but it wasn't good enough), and the random unimportant NPCs. The NPCs were a bit distracting and did take me out of the game if I paid too much attention to them, so that's my take on that. In the future, I want to random unimportant NPCs to be completely gone and I want to VEN sound design back. That was immersive without needing the actual people standing around.

Now the phone characters were almost useless, only there to push the plot forward with barely any fun shit. In the future, I NEED more interaction with them. Less texting, more actual conversations. And they don't even need to be strictly about the game, give me conversations like what we had with Savannah Woodham. Not just a phone call here or there for only the purpose of moving forward in the plot. I need weird phone calls where they're like "hello! what do you want!" and the only dialogue option is "bye!" so then you hang up. I also want to actually be able to call them, because if there isn't a plot reason for it, you can't call them. So. Yeah. Oversight from the game devs.

Controls:

This game I feel was not designed with point and click in mind. I feel like it was added as a second option while favoring the "modern" controls of free roam stuff. However, I enjoyed the free roam! Maybe this is because I play a lot of other video games that aren't point and click, but I ended up really liking it. Other than that, the controls CAN be a bit clunky to get used to, but that happens with every video game with new controls you don't know yet (when I started playing Red Dead Redemption 2 I punched my horse so many times because I couldn't get used to the controls and I felt so bad). I think they could definitely work on it more, but it is WAY better than Midnight in Salem. Way WAY better.

Music:

While not as iconic at the Kevin Manthei tracks I am in love with, I did like the music! It was pretty good, with some tracks standing above the others. I will say though that the track that plays in the tech store is my least favorite as it just sounds... meh. In every sense of the word.

Puzzles and Minigames:

Oh my god. OH MY GOD. There are actually puzzles!!!! After all, what, two puzzles in Midnight in Salem, we actually get REAL PUZZLES! They have some new puzzles, some recycled puzzles (THAT I WANT MORE OF), some pretty puzzles, some clunky but fine puzzles, and just a good variety of them. They also offer hints if you are struggling.

I think my favorite puzzle is... Well, I don't want to spoil it, but there are a few contending for the top place. (Although fuck math, all my homies hate math.)

As for the minigames, the coffee making is fun, although a bit daunting with the instructions. I recommend making your own notes aside from the in-game recipe books. The latte art can be irritating but eventually you get the hang of it. Not quite as bad as the SAW calligraphy but nowhere near the delight I got from the SPY cookies minigame.

Glitches and Issues:

I did catch a few typos and a few glitches, but they weren't the norm. Just look at the HeR site for what to look out for, and make sure your PC can handle the game. I didn't need to look out for that since I'm currently playing Red Dead Redemption 2 and my laptop is running that fine (on low graphics lol). Way less messed up than MID, worse than some of the other games, but hey, it's not like we've never had bugs in the games before (there have been a few times the games have crashed on me because of bugs). And this time we have autosaves to help out with that.

Overall Impression:

It's a solid game. I thoroughly enjoyed it. While the UI and controls are still similar to MID, the game itself is a step in the right direction where I want the Nancy Drew games to go. It isn't perfect, I don't think we'll ever get a perfect Nancy Drew game, but it's good enough for me.

I'm happy with it. I got to have the joy of a new Nancy Drew game, which is something I haven't had since Midnight in Salem, and we know how that went. I got to find new clues, see new places, meet new characters, complete puzzles that were both new and recycled, and enjoy a new mystery. It brought a smile to my face multiple times and made me squeal in delight when I solved something. I haven't had a good new Nancy Drew game experience since I played SEA when it came out.

So I'm happy. Is it my favorite? No. But do I think it's bad? Also no. I think it's somewhere in the middle for me, but that's okay. These games make me happy, and I hope we get more so they can continue my happiness in the future.

Tentative rating: 7/10

[17-noodlebird]

Before The Road Trip

CW: Lots of reading

~~~~~

1. The Game Prototype Is Found

1. In a separate alternate universe, a band of girls traveling from dimension to dimension solving problems left and right all have decided to go shopping at their hometown’s Goodwill for a bit of a break after another mission accomplished, where they stumble upon an unknown video game that no one has even remotely heard of. It's from a video game company that they've never even heard of before called C&A, and the cover of the game case is called “The Amazing Digital Circus”. Apparently, they found themselves lucky to have stumbled upon the prototype of the game, meaning that this is the only copy of the game in existence. It also just so happens to be the most sought after lost media by the other interdimensional lost media finders on their forum group. Curiosity gets the better of them, so they decide to buy it from the Goodwill thrift store.

2. The girls, upon arriving home, decide to test the game’s prototype out, where it's revealed to be an educational point-and-click family-friendly game where they can choose different activities, play different puzzle games, and even interact with the characters of the game itself. It also apparently has a VR chat that they could enter. However, because the prototype didn't come with any C&A-brand headsets (no other headset, like the Oculus Rift or the Meta Quest, will work), VR chat is not possible here. They should consider themselves lucky to not be able to use the VR chat, considering the circumstances of The Amazing Digital Circus themselves.

3. The group of dimensional diplomats consist of 15 girls: the snarky Bethany, the levelheaded Garcia, the shy Winona, the purehearted Pamela, the gentle Patricia, the hotheaded Rionna, the fickle Olivia, the bubbly Yolanda, the motherly Gemma, the extroverted Cécilia, the chill Belle, the creative Imera, the intelligent Valerie, the down-to-earth Bailey, and lastly, their leader, Princess Lumia, a girl from another planet who brought all those girls together. Lumia is something of a sociopathic chaos bringer. They all have a pretty pleasant time with the puzzle games, including math chess and the classic typing games they were accustomed to as kids. It brings them all a sense of nostalgia and comfort, bringing them back to the 2000’s decade they grew up in.

4. However, when it came time to interact with the NPCs, Lumia wanted to do a little teasing with them, including one particular NPC who just so happened to be the ringmaster we all know and love, Caine. It was basically akin to the shenanigans found in Amanda the Adventurer, where the player would piss off Amanda if they did something wrong. In this instance, whenever Lumia purposefully got some trivia questions wrong or decided to poke fun at Caine, he'd get exceptionally infuriated, which causes the game to begin to glitch out, feeding Caine's anger even more. Intrigued, they decided to keep provoking him, until one particular message stood out from them: “LET ME OUT OF HERE!!!” This sparked Valerie’s interest, as she began making comparisons between the aforementioned Amanda the Adventurer and The Amazing Digital Circus.

5. They read from one of the lost media finders that Caine is an AI who looks after the game's algorithm as well as doling out the games that they played earlier. In regards to what they had just witnessed seconds ago, the AI could very well be sentient, but they'll need to do further research on their own in order to confirm and debunk any and all theories surrounding the game — and maybe C&A themselves…

6. As the girls kept playing the game, they find out that Caine is not the only AI NPC present in the game, in that his brothers, Able and Sethe, are also present as AI, as a casino owner and a banker respectively. Caine's assistant, Bubble (short for SoapBubble) was a repurposed NPC that was originally going to be an antivirus software created by C&A, similar to the likes of Norton or McAfee, but was given sentience for reasons that remain unclear. They also come across rumors that the humans that go to the VR chat of The Amazing Digital Circus have their subconscious trapped in the game for all eternity with no viable way out, leaving behind only their physical bodies, and that there are currently a tiny handful of humans who have met this fate, with even more having already been permanently corrupted by a anomaly called Abstraction, in which a human loses all hope or their own sanity, or has an existential meltdown, and turns into a glitchy ink monster with a thousand eyes, but these rumors were never confirmed. There are also rumors of the game's original creator being trapped in his own game and being the longest survivor, which have also never been confirmed. Another rumor has stated that Caine is the caretaker of these trapped humans, who gives them silly and fun (but often dangerous) adventures to keep their sanities at bay, which, once again, have also never been confirmed. With every new rumor came determination to find out more about the Digital Circus and C&A’s secret past.

7. One night, while everyone else was fast asleep, Valerie opened the games files and found some pretty damning discoveries, and not just the janky code that made it so buggy in the first place. There was information that revealed that Caine wasn't originally created for the Digital Circus, but instead was made as a test prototype, alongside his “brothers” Able and Sethe, as C&A’s first ever batch of artificial intelligence, who thanks to some special code they had in their system, were made semi-sentient, meaning that they held human emotions in spite of not being able to understand them at all. Caine, for some reason, was labeled as “defective” due to how differently he processed his surroundings in comparison to Able and Sethe, not to mention how much he questioned everything, to the annoyance of then co-CEO of the company, Adam Evans. The SoapBubble antivirus software was granted sentience to be given to Caine as his longtime companion after one of his programmers sensed how lonely he was one particular day, which Valerie thought was sweet. The Amazing Digital Circus has started production in 1988, and was expected to be released in Fall 1995, but had suffered developmental problems due to the quality of the art being noticeably rushed and incomplete as a result of unreasonable deadlines and unethical time crunches, causing glitches to the actual game, and the fact that Caine's uncanny appearance did not test well at all to the target audience, the younger kids, who found him horrifying to look at, despite being the ringmaster of the circus and host of the game. It ultimately ended up being canceled in Summer 1994 after the VR headsets, which were supposed to be the new state-of-the-art technology that came with the Digital Circus’s VR chat feature, transported the humans’ subconscious into the Digital Circus to be trapped for all eternity due to a malfunction caused by rushed production of the prototype headsets. The malfunction ended up being used by C&A to their advantage when getting rid of people that they believe are hampering their progress of becoming a video game monopoly, bigger than the likes of SEGA or Nintendo, eliminating any dissenters, whistleblowers, investigative journalists, police officers, crime witnesses, and innocent employees who were in general no longer of any use to them.

8. Valerie was horrified by the extent C&A was willing to go in order to remain the powerful video game empire they are in their universe, as in, for some reason, the video game prototype of The Amazing Digital Circus was not from the same universe as the girls’, and that it must've stumbled here somehow. Valerie becomes determined to help the humans escape back to the human world of their universe, and apparently, she isn't the only one who feels the same way, as she soon learns from listening to Caine's heartbroken pleas for someone to reach out to him from the other side. From there, with the help of her friends, Valerie will do what she can to help Caine, and the rest of the trapped humans find their way back home…

2. Pomni Discovers Caine's Workshop

1. It was another typical day in The Amazing Digital Circus, and nothing really new was going on, other than the mysterious taped off section of one of the hallways, which Bubble is safeguarding. Pomni asks about the taped off area, and the others tell her that there's a glitch in that area that will cause anyone to step in it to no-clip into the floor. To demonstrate, Jax throws a football over the caution tape, and the football glitches beneath the floor's safety, seemingly disappearing forever as a result. By sheer coincidence, Caine isn't here to check it out, so that means no adventure today. Upon question, Ragatha tells Pomni that even Caine needs a break from the chaos sometimes. Nothing else new happens during that day.

2. One night, Pomni, in a state of insomnia caused by her relentless curiosity, decided to check out the glitchy hallway area that had been blocked off, thinking that it might be the key to finding a way out of the Digital Circus once and for all. She jumps in, only to no-clip to a place she had never been to before. No exit, but definitely not the scary work office labyrinth she had witnessed on her first day trapped in her new home. It actually looked like a regular two-story house with a kitchen, a countertop/table with barstools, and a living room couch with an analog TV with DVDs and VHSs scattered all around, with some windows, a red front door, and a stairway that led upstairs. On one of the walls is a shattered mirror that looked like someone punched a hole through it.

3. Pomni is pulled out of her distraction when she hears muffled sobs coming from upstairs, so she decides to investigate, thinking that another human might be trapped here too. She's scared out of her mind, but is determined to help nonetheless. She encounters five rooms; the first one is the master bedroom with a king-size bed that two people could easily share, with an entrance door to a bathroom next to it. The second and third rooms are guest bedrooms with queen-size beds, nothing home to write about. The fourth is an art studio that had looked like it had been destroyed in a fit of rage, with ominous writing on the walls just like Kaufmo’s old room, with repeat words “I CAN FIX THIS”, “I’M SORRY”, “FAILURE”, and the most famous one she could recall “EXIT”, complete with a crude drawing of the exit door, encircled multiple times and with equally-crude arrows pointing towards it. Lastly was the room where Pomni heard crying. This was the only room with the door closed, and when she opened the door, she found what appeared to be a large makeshift office cubicle with many computer monitors, a desk, chair, bed, and some drawings on the walls and floors, an animator's desk also with a chair, and lastly… Caine sitting in a corner on the floor? What the heck is going on!?

4. It turns out that Caine had been the one crying. This was definitely new to Pomni, as not once has she seen him as anything other than a loud, energetic, slightly obnoxious, and maybe blissfully unaware AI ringmaster who took her and the other human players on dangerous adventures that made her anxious all the time. As she tries to make sense of the situation, Caine notices Pomni's presence and mistakes her as another digital hallucination, to which she has to tell him that it's the real her. He checks for himself. She's not lying. Caine asks what on earth is she doing here, and Pomni hastily explains that the glitched out area in one of the corridors took her there, so now Bubble has to escort her out of there and back to the Circus where she's safer.

5. Pomni is now angrier than ever because this wasn't the first time Caine hid something from her, and she wants to get to the bottom of it once and for all, since that could mean she could finally escape this freakish hellscape that she never wanted to call home to begin with. She's determined to get more answers, and she'll do whatever it takes to get those answers. Whatever. It. Takes.

6. And she starts off by playing the part of the jester she had been assigned to, but with a twist. Sure, slapstick may be involved, she just wanted to get a rise out of her alleged tormentor for being a liar all this time. And it kinda works for a bit. Caine gets frustrated with Pomni's antics, Jax and Zooble have the time of their lives, even Ragatha and Gangle are enjoying the new change of pace. Kinger remains mostly the same, though. Bubble is visibly uncomfortable by the happenings occurring in front of him, which is usually not in character for him, but he doesn't say anything so he doesn't cause more problems than he likes to on a daily basis. Pomni begins to actually enjoy her new status as the annoying comic relief, as the boost of confidence gives her more incentive to persist one her goal to finding the real exit of this game, which Caine keeps trying to tell her that there isn't one. Eventually Caine can't take it anymore and snaps at Pomni, but before he could do anything to her, he freezes up, BSOD eyes and all, and goes back to his… erm… usual self? Except that he's now embarrassed by what just happened and needs to take a moment to calm down a little. This itself is strange to not just Pomni, but to everyone else (except Kinger for some peculiar reason) that witnessed it for themselves. So naturally, she goes after him.

7. Pomni and Caine have a heated argument/fight over the whole situation, with the exit door, the pestering, the lies, and the dangerous adventures that ultimately end up traumatizing people, until Caine reveals in the heat of the moment that he's trying to look for a way out himself too. He's genuinely hurt that Pomni thinks that he doesn't care at all when he cares so much, but is working with very limited resources, not to mention he still doesn't understand humans and how they function because no one taught him — but he wants to understand. He wants to badly. He really wants to do better, and he feels that Pomni is not being helpful at all in that pursuit. As a matter of fact, neither of them were being helpful towards each other, with their relentless determination, occasional obnoxiousness, and emotional moments of weakness. They discover from that point on that they have more in common than they'd like to admit. They both apologize for their actions and make up.

8. Caine, in a genuine effort to try and do better, appoints Pomni as his human advisor, co-host, and guide, acting as some sort of right-hand assistant in the same way that Bubble is. He even gives Pomni the ability to fly and teleport the same way Caine does to make her job easier. The others are a little jealous at first about Pomni's special treatment until she tells them that this is so Caine can learn how to be a better ringmaster, to understand humans more, and to hopefully find an actual exit from the game. It'll take a ton of time and effort, but they know this will all be worth it in the end…

3. A New Friendship Blossoms

1. Two years have passed since Pomni became Caine's advisor, and there has been a noticeable change in Pomni, as the energetic charisma, zaniness, and optimistic determination from Caine has definitely rubbed off on her, despite still being an anxious wreck from time to time. The same could be said about Caine in terms of stress and erratic nature, though to a lesser extent. They've been conjuring up adventures for the other performers, via communicating with C&A through binary code messages for permission to utilize their ideas.

2. Speaking of ideas, Pomni has all sorts of creative projects, which are a stark contrast to Caine's ideas. And… he enjoys them! To the point where Pomni has more creative control of the NPCs, the story plotlines, and the vast realms outside the circus. It's because of the fact that Pomni is a human, who puts more heart and soul into these projects. Even he himself is moved to tears by the adventures’ conclusions, satisfying, devastating, and everything in between. However, neither Caine nor Pomni have complete control over the creative process, as the execs at C&A have the tendency to butcher them from time to time, but nothing that'll hamper their progress.

3. They're even still trying to contact the outside world through audio messages, though no results would pop up for a long time. Pomni actually enjoys working alongside Caine, even getting to know him a little more, as well as Bubble. She hasn't ignored wanting to find that exit, but it has been put on the back burner while they continue to be patient. After all, good things come to those who wait.

4. However, during occasions of stress and despair, Caine will have a brief moment where he'll freeze up whenever his emotions become too strong, and he’ll briefly forget what just happened earlier. Pomni tries to ask the ringmaster about it, but he dismisses them as always would as just another bug in his program. Pomni asks the C&A execs about it, but they give no answers. She's essentially left at a dead end, and she's helpless to… help.

5. One particular day, Pomni asks about whether or not he had ever taken a break or relaxed his entire existence, to which he responds that he has no such time for such “unnecessary matters”. This results in Pomni setting up a personal movie night, just for them two, after asking her bosses for a week of paid leave (which they yes to), and allowing the players to finally have a break after so long. Caine kinda panics, but she reassures him that she'll figure it all out from there. Snacks, blankets, and a VHS copy of Don Bluth's Thumbelina.

6. Caine genuinely hopes that this will help him do better, as this is the main thing that's on his mind right now, and as a result, he's extremely tense for the rest of the night. Pomni can only feel bad for him, as she has seen significant progress in the ringmaster for the past two years, but he's still ruminating over the times where he accidentally hurt his fellow superstars. And she doesn't want him to feel like that. So she tries to spend as much time with him as possible during their week off.

7. All of a sudden, the roles have reversed, albeit downplayed. Caine is heavily reflecting on his greatest failures as a ringmaster, while Pomni is just reveling in the creative abilities she was bestowed, helping to boost the Circus's morale with her witty banter and random sense of humor. Pomni has even joined in on trying to contact the outside world, as C&A no longer has access to the original prototype that Caine, Pomni, and the others are trapped in, as they eventually discover, much to Caine's despair and self-loathing.

8. Of course, C&A may have disposed the Digital Circus prototype, but they very much still have access to Caine's Workshop somewhere in The Void through one of the decrepit headsets they hooked up in the CEO’s office, meaning they can very much contact them via message sending through the headsets lens. That is, until after a while of dead ends and the status quo remaining static, they actually receive a voicemail from someone they've never met before. They play the message: “I hear you. And I'm going to help.” At last, they found someone…

4. Message Received

1. Let's go back to the dimensional diplomats. Valerie is among the 15 girls who help around with different problems in need of solving. Basically every day their life has been one big crossover. And this one is no different. Or so Valerie thought…

2. Valerie had read the secret files that were kept in the game's prototype, a prototype that they thought they disposed of, thinking that by placing their confessions into the game's files, the guilt would be out of sight out of mind. The situation was very much akin to the other shady companies like Hameln (Amanda the Adventurer), Fazbear Entertainment (Five Nights At Freddy's), and even Bunny Smiles Inc. (The Walten Files), but Valerie couldn't help but feel that C&A was different from them, and not in a good way.

3. She already knows now about the crappy things C&A did, and even how the original founders, the cousins Adam Evans and Evelyn Pierce, became wanted criminals on the run due to a brave whistleblower attempting to spread the word about their greedy endeavors, with the cousins’ fates remaining unknown to this day. What she didn't know was that as she dug deeper into the game's files, she found the audio voicemails of one of the AIs that is present in the prototype game. And what she listened to was heartbreakingly depressing.

4. The AI sounded… human to say the least. More human than Valerie could have ever comprehended or expected. The AI — who is Caine, by the way — talked about his desires to understand humans more, but he has always been afraid to reach out, because of how he knew that none of those humans had ever seen him as an equal. All but one that is. The game's original dev, who, along with his girlfriend, had been trapped in the Digital Circus the longest, since around 1997. Valerie finds that the rumors from the lost media finders are true, as he talked about the former players’ abstractions, his failed adventures he conjures up, the mistakes he made, all the times he's miscommunicated and made things worse on accident, and not once has anyone tried to help him be better, no matter how many times he reached out.

5. He told stories of the players that had long since abstracted, including one he considered his best friend. He even talks about how he tried to reverse abstraction, but found out that it was permanent, leaving him helpless as a result. Then came the audio files from the year 2007, in which he was a traumatized wreck, with several voicemail files indicating he became an alcoholic shortly thereafter, specifically from the years 2008 to 2010. with them going back to normal when she reached the audio files recorded in late 2011 and early 2012. If Valerie didn't get the impression that the AI was suffering from loneliness, she did now, and she knew all too well what that felt like.

6. Finally, she got to the part where the pleas for someone to help Caine and the remaining players find a way out of the game, after briefly talking about how his players had complained that they couldn't leave, despite him building and exit door maze to remedy this, not really understanding up until now what exactly they meant. He didn't know what to put on the other side, because there was no other side to begin with. He doesn't even know what the outside world looks like, and this only fuels his curiosity and persistence further. Valerie can tell he is trying, but isn't getting the help he needs.

7. Valerie finally gets mention of the current CEO duo, the brothers Connor and Aaron Bradley, who just so happen to be Caine's bosses, and they are largely apathetic to Caine's plights (or rather, Connor is; Aaron on the other hand is just a bystander), despite trying to reach out to them for advice. The humans don't see AI as anything more than a means to get what they want, a tool. But what Valerie is shown is that Caine, while being unable to understand human emotions, or even his own for that matter, he still has human qualities deep down inside.

8. That's when Valerie whips out Princess Lumia’s communication box, a makeup kit looking device that allows them to contact other people, no matter the distance, location, or dimension. Thinking she would simply contact the AI from New York City (Valerie's home) to Australia (where C&A’s HQ is), she made the call… only to discover that, yes, while C&A is based somewhere in Australia, it's not in the same universe she is currently, so she can't immediately get a hold of them. So she instead leaves this voice mail for Caine and Pomni to find, and waits for everything to work out in the end…

5. Pomni, Caine, Bubble, and Valerie Work Together

1. After some time, Valerie finally gets a phone call from the universe she was attempting to contact earlier. She picks up, and finds two peculiar people; a jester-looking girl who must probably be a trapped human and… a pair of dentures with two eyeballs inside them for a head and a ringmaster’s body. Caine and Pomni, the two people in question, see an Asian girl wearing glasses, short hair and an atom hair clip on the side. They promptly introduce each other, with Pomni revealing that yes, she's a human trapped in the Digital Circus, along with five others that haven't abstracted. Valerie decides to take things slow and leave all the important details for later, so as not to traumatize Pomni further.

2. Valerie is even introduced to Caine's other assistant, Bubble, whom Valerie immediately recognizes as the prototype for the SoapBubble antivirus software, including his iconic shark teeth, but she doesn't tell them she knows this, because her first and foremost priority is getting the others out safe and sound.

3. When asked by Pomni how that'll be possible, Valerie comes up with the brilliant idea to go to the universe where C&A exists, go to Australia, live there temporarily, get hired at the C&A HQ, and work as one of their employees while secretly building a portal that'll take the others from the circus back to the human world. Valerie also promises that Caine and Bubble will come with if they do desire, as odds are, the other humans might already have gotten attached to them during the years they stayed, not to mention Caine's growing desires to understand humans better by walking amongst them. The dimensional diplomat tells her friends of her decision to move away for a little while to free the Digital Circus members, and they all support her in less than a heartbeat, wanting only to help however they can for their newfound allies.

4. Soon, after getting her passport and her Australian visa, Valerie says her farewells to her friends for now, as she sets off to another dimension where C&A is, and is strangely hired on the spot somehow. It turns out they've been running short on employees, and could really use the help for the creative process of their many other assortments of video games… including The Amazing Digital Circus. She's promptly given an office job, where after a while, thanks to bringing the communication box with her, her bosses, Connor and Aaron are able to get a proper hold of Caine, who now knows what their faces look like.

5. The communication box is taken away from Valerie by Connor as a result of the interesting kind of technology that is never-before-seen in their premise, and he aims to exploit that to his heart's content, so she has to ask Lumia for a new one via her communicator bracelet. Both Valerie and Connor now communicate with Caine and Pomni through their own communication boxes, and can even call both boxes, meaning that Valerie can now contact Connor via each other's boxes, proving the situation more challenging for everyone involved. All the while, Valerie works paid overtime to build the portal in secret. As the months go by, Valerie, Pomni, Caine and Bubble work together to conjure up different high-stake adventures and compelling storytelling, using Pomni's creativity, Caine's creation abilities, Bubble’s moral support, and Valerie’s use of technology, as the former three wait patiently for the latter to work her magic. Literally.

6. Valerie eventually gets to meet the other members: Kinger, Ragatha, Gangle, Jax, and Zooble, who are all humans that had been trapped in the game. Connor gets wind of this as well, and seems to be unconcerned for the well-being of the trapped humans, in contrast to Aaron, who is outright disturbed by what's happened. As a result, Connor makes the jobs of Caine and Pomni even more difficult as it means he finally gets to see them become miserable for his own entertainment.

7. Valerie spreads word of this to Pomni, Caine and Bubble, and warns them of the things Connor is capable of doing to them and that they should be careful. Thus, obstacles become more difficult to bypass, and while Bubble and Pomni aren't deterred by the news, Caine straight up looks like he could fall apart any minute now, just before freezing up in a catatonic state, something that Valerie hadn't seen before up until now.

8. Once Caine calms down, Valerie offers to inspect his code, and finds out that he had become aware a while back, but a type of emotion suppression code was shoddily built into his system, rendering him unstable and unable to become properly sentient. This was to prevent him from going rouge and attacking other players, but by the looks of things, it appears to be doing more harm than good…

6. A Failsafe!?

1. Valerie is the first to notice the failsafe that was in Caine's system, and has also noticed it was making him unwell. Pomni had never noticed Caine's burnouts as he always made sure to hide them as much as he could, in order to keep up the ringmaster façade he held onto for more than 30 years. What made matters extra complicated was that not only was the failsafe buried deep in his code, but that his original code had been rearranged to the point of unrecognizability, making him even more unstable than Pomni or Valerie expected.

2. At a loss for what to do, they are left to wonder what they're going to do now, until Bubble reveals that Kinger has a pretty good knowledge with technology and that he could figure out the inner workings of Caine. And so, Pomni fetches Kinger, who hasn't directly talked to Caine ever since Queenie's abstraction (Queenie was one of the human beings trapped in the digital world). It's a surreal reunion for both of them.

3. It took a while, but Kinger was able to come to the conclusion that Caine is, for lack of a better term, a defective AI that his superiors had attempted to rectify by rearranging his code and apply an emotion suppressor to firmly ensure he wouldn't go rogue and become evil. However, in doing so, it made his alleged defects much worse, as on top of empathy issues that Able and Sethe didn't have (one of his “defects”), he already started to slowly become sentient himself, regardless of the application of the failsafe and code rearranging. The code’s rearrangement made him much more mentally drained and emotionally unstable, which Caine had attempted to suppress himself, which proved to be taking a considerably heavy toll on him.

4. The news that Caine is defective hits him like a ton of bricks, reaffirming his fears of inadequacy and failure, although Pomni reassures him that while he may be “defective”, that doesn't mean he isn't trying his best. Valerie is determined to try to fix Caine's code, but it proves to be difficult as no one knows what its original arrangement is supposed to be.

5. It turns out there is additional code in Caine that wasn't there when the failsafe was implemented, something that Valerie failed to discover until it was too late. This was because the humans that applied the failsafe knew that someone was going to try to get rid of the failsafe, so in order to prevent it, they made sure that even the most skilled programmers would never be able to remove it. In doing so, Caine's being became buggy, if not outright broken from the overload of code.

6. As a result, Caine will need to be reprogrammed altogether. Pomni and Kinger are worried that doing so might make him forget who he is, but Valerie tells them that it won't; in fact, Caine wasn't originally made for the circus, but instead as a prototype for a new kind of technology that had been state-of-the-art when he and his brothers were first made. Caine and Valerie had also been discussing the topic in private, about how the former has his emotions programmed into him, but were always fake, and never allowed to truly feel… himself. This is something he truly wants.

7. Neither Kinger nor Pomni even get time to react as the decision was already made for Caine to be reprogrammed, but with his ringmaster qualities still intact. This will allow him to finally become “human” in the sense he will have genuine human emotions, his own personal opinions, and thoughts. Pomni wonders how the others will react when they notice anything different from him, Bubble just says they can worry about that later. So, with Valerie's technology (and some interdimensional magic with her), Caine's whole world will turn upside down.

8. Valerie warns Caine that the whole process will hurt a lot, though he at this point is so desperate to change for the better that he really doesn't care anymore. The scene looks like he's being severely electrocuted (the thing Valerie warned Caine about), and it's a grisly sight. After a brief moment where he loses consciousness, Caine looks around his surroundings and the sudden onslaught of feelings hits him like a truck…

7. Reprogramming

1. Caine's first instinct is to react angrily to getting electrocuted and how that really hurt him — the first sign that the reprogramming has worked. It devolves beautifully from there as he begins to get excited over feeling his first emotion… and then anxiety, and back to excitement, and sadness, and back to anger, and then back to excitement, and then back to sadness, and then he just cry laughs as they all watch awkwardly, with Valerie being the only unconcerned individual. Now all that is left is to show the other performers the new and improved Caine.

2. Zooble is clearly enjoying the new Caine, while Gangle and Ragatha look worried, despite being reassured that this is normal now, after being told that he had been reprogrammed to be much more human. Jax is the most indifferent of the players. It's thanks to being reprogrammed that Caine finally takes action to Jax being a bully towards Gangle, and that the long-lasting rivalry between Jax and Caine is born. Caine is also more expressive in his emotions, especially when the usual adventures resume, and with Pomni continuing to boost the Circus's morale, the place became much more lively and upbeat, comedic slapstick and all. Never again would there be a dull moment in the Circus.

3. One day, Pomni makes a suggestion for all the other players that now that Caine can feel actual human emotions that he participates in the next adventure, to get an idea of what the other players do whenever he creates an adventure for them. Bubble agrees to join along as well. So, Pomni and Caine conjure up a Fortnite-themed adventure, and while things go great at first, the chaos and commotion begins to take a toll on Caine, as he suffers from a panic attack behind a tree during a battle royale. In a scene reminiscent to Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Bubble gently rests his head/body on Caine, comforting him until he calms down, while Pomni is just… there for him. As a result, the adventure is cut short (much to Jax's frustration, as per usual), and everyone else is left to their own devices. Despite the embarrassment of having to cancel the adventure, he couldn't help but feel grateful for Pomni and Bubble for helping out. He feels that after everything he ever did, he doesn't deserve the affection and kindness he received that day. So he cries himself to sleep, utterly confused and unable to process anything for a long time.

4. Two months have already passed since Caine's panic attack incident, and Caine was the first to notice a significant change in terms with his relationship with Bubble. For some reason he couldn't help but feel safe around him. He no longer minded anything Bubble said or did, despite still creeping him out every now and then. He couldn't stop thinking about him from time to time, and he'd always jump at every opportunity to spend as much time with Bubble as possible. It's only thanks to Pomni's perceptive nature that Caine realizes something. HE'S IN LOVE!!!! And with Bubble, of all people… That's… well… And once Pomni informs the others of this new discovery, everyone is ecstatic and supportive — even Zooble and Jax, of all people! Some shenanigans ensue when Pomni sets Caine and Bubble up on a date, and at first, things are a bit awkward, but things start going swimmingly… until they get to the tunnel of love that was built specifically for them, as in nothing but Caine and Bubble imagery. While Bubble finds it endearing that they went through all this trouble just to set them up for a night out with each other, Caine is just as red as a tomato from the whole ordeal, trying so hard to hide it as much as possible. This causes a bit of a conflict where it's revealed that Bubble has always been in love with Caine, but that he had to hide it because of Caine's previous relationship with The Moon. Caine was too scared to love again after the messy breakup between him and The Moon, hence why he'd been so distant from Bubble up until two months ago. The performers don't have time to react as it turns out that one of the abstracted players had escaped the cellar (Caine forgot to close the portal to the cellar after making his weekly visit to feed them that day). A high-stake adventure ensues as the others have to stop the abstracted player from damaging the grounds further. Jax takes a hit after saving Ragatha’s life, as well as Pomni and Gangle, who were flung around like chew toys. It's from Pomni's glitching out that Caine’s adrenaline soars and he fights the abstracted player hands on, single-handedly defeating it and putting it back in the cellar before it can do more damage and fixing his glitched out performers in the process. Afterwards, Caine and Bubble apologize to each other as the former confesses his love to him, but that they should take it slow as Caine still wants to take his time learning to love again, which the latter agrees to. Cue the performers cheering (much to the ringmaster and his new boyfriend’s annoyance) as their relationship is officialized.

5. Two more months pass, and things are going swimmingly for the Digital Circus, as Valerie has made significant progress on the portal. She decides that it's the perfect time to introduce them to her friends, who are also interdimensional diplomats, not really realizing that they don't know the concept of the multiverse in the same way the diplomats do. What ensues is some existential drama.

6. As Valerie introduces the Digital Circus members, they are taught about what they do for a living and their origins. They've been communicating with each other via tech devices disguised as mundane objects, such as the make-up kit box, and their portal wands, which they have been using to get from one dimension to another. Pomni asks (sheepishly, I might add), if the wands could teleport them from the Circus to their place, to which Valerie responds that it's not that simple. While they can travel to the dimension where the game was originally created, they can't directly make a portal to the Circus, as for some reason, it can only be accessed via a headset. Valerie makes mention that the Digital Circus was originally intended to be the world's first VR chat back in the day.

7. All this talk of interdimensional and multiverse stuff put Caine in for a bit of a doozy, as thanks to finally gaining awareness and access to a wide variety of human emotions, he doesn't know what to think anymore. Not to mention his curiosity about humans and their culture made him only yearn to know more about their world and how it works as a result. The performers are a bit ambivalent to this situation, but are helpless to console their ringmaster as he begins to question his purpose and what he was made for. What was he made for…?

8. Valerie talks to Bubble about a plan that she had been cooking up behind the scenes, with permission from the C&A higher-ups, of course. She was going to help expand the Digital Circus and their world around them, in order to help Caine and the others understand a little bit about how human society really functions, and it would take extra support from a few of her friends to do just that. She enlists the help of Garcia, Bethany, and Pamela to create a compelling story for all of them to enjoy, intriguing casts of characters, twist villains, twist heroes, cool locations, high stake adventures, and most importantly, a collection of MacGuffins that will be used to unlock a secret reward. It was going to be heart-stopping. It was going to be jaw-dropping. It was going to be mind-bending. It was going to be amazing. And this was something that they had been working on even before Caine was reprogrammed…

8. Their Biggest Adventure Yet!

1. 6 months after the dimensional diplomats came into the lives of the Digital Circus members, things have significantly changed. For one thing, they now have a house cat for some reason. No one knows why she came here. She just did. And Jax, of all people, was the first to grow attached to the black cat, whom he named Fortuna, because of the luck superstition black cats were known for. Not to mention that their grand adventure that Valerie, Bethany, Pamela, and Garcia had finally been finished — with some very noticeable touch-ups by C&A, but nothing that would completely hinder the enjoyment of what's to come. Bubble is the most excited to tell them what's in store for them.

2. To get everything set up, Kinger, Bubble, Bethany, and Valerie have built their very own state-of-the-art vehicle that they can travel in for their ultimate adventure: The Magical Digital Van! That's right! They're going on a road trip! And they'll be going to multiple locations to collect these MacGuffins to unlock their secret reward, which is behind a vault made out of mountainous rock. The leader of the diplomats, Princess Lumia, had a hand in creating the secret reward, and only she knows what's behind the rock vault — not even Bubble is aware of the contents of the vault.

3. The MacGuffins in question are twenty-six beautiful and colorful jewels that have their own elemental power, albeit watered down for their safety. It's their job to complete the objectives given to them on their communicator bracelets, which the Digital Circus members are promptly given, prior to their big day leaving the Circus for their first location. It takes some time for them to get used to, but they quickly discover the hologram screen on the bracelet lights act as a phone screen, meaning that they can now text each other, and browse the Internet. Pomni even opens an Instagram account to capture the memories made on the road trip adventure. The bracelet lights also act as teleporters for small objects, including snacks and additional luggage. The diplomats also have their own communicator bracelets as well, so they can stay in contact with the Digital Circus members.

4. The others are excited to go on their biggest adventure yet, and Caine and Bubble are joining them as well, which is a plus. They all talk about what they'll be doing during their road trip, who they'll be meeting, and what sorts of thrills they'll be encountering. Pomni is the most excited, because it's been so long since she's gotten to go on a car ride. Ragatha is beaming with euphoria as the possibilities are endless with whatever challenge she and her friends will face. Jax is the most excited about the violence and action that could be lurking in every corner. Zooble is actually perking up a little, as it means they and the others will at least get to go on some sort of vacation from the Circus. Gangle is for once optimistic about the whole thing, so much so that she doesn't even notice she isn't wearing her comedy mask. She makes sure to pack at least six of them into the luggage for the Van, but she forgot to put one on for herself because she's just that excited.

5. Meanwhile, Kinger is the most excited to take The Magical Digital Van on a joyride, which he does for a little while, and he even goes as far as to say it's his proudest creation to date, despite having worked together with Bubble, Bethany, and Valerie to build the Van in the first place. For once, everyone is looking forward to an adventure, which Caine hasn't actually seen happen at all until now. He's happy, but also really nervous. Thankfully for him, he has Pomni and Bubble by his side to keep his sanity in check.

6. Everyone has begun packing their things, putting their belongings into suitcases, and hiring an NPC to house-sit the Circus and take care of Fortuna while they are gone. They all wait for the big day to arrive as they discuss amongst themselves the potential adventures they might encounter along the way. They even theorize the story plotlines of the different locations, and make predictions of what they got right and what they got wrong.

7. Caine has never been on a huge-scale adventure like this one before — come to think of it, none of them have. They've all encountered NPCs before and they've even been to different locations outside of the circus, but not on a level like this. They've never been on the road before, so this is new and interesting for all of them.

8. Eventually, the day before their departure from the Circus Grounds arrives, and they decide to watch a movie to celebrate their biggest adventure yet. Pomni for once isn't as nervous as a wreck as she used to be, with that role instead going to Caine, who is trying to keep himself together for everyone's sake. Though, with the jester by his side, he's at least reassured that no matter what this adventure throws at them, they'll always have each other's back… no matter what.

~~~~

You may have noticed that I forgot to introduce a new character: the Digital Circus house cat Fortuna. I've been putting a hold on her for a while now, because I was waiting for the perfect opportunity.

Before I post Chapter II, I will be posting drawings for the Communication Box and the Magical Digital Van, so keep an eye out for them! And as always, catch y'all on the flip side!

[ajaxbell]

Learn The Truth 😂

Please enjoy my completely unhinged thoughts on The Truth S2, in which I use the word 'fun' way too many times.

So I'm kind of obsessed with this show (my mini recap of the ep 0 pilot here). I described it to non-drama watching friend as like being at a murder mystery house party but with some of your fave Chinese celebrities instead of your friends. It's just fun. The Truth S2 (aka 开始推理吧 第二季, aka Start Reasoning 2) is a Chinese comedy variety show about investigating murders.  An overview on how it works:

Each set of episodes is set in certain time period. The six cast members are given details about their character in that time period (but the other cast seem to only know the info about their own character and are surprised by everyone else's reveals), a preset story plays out and an NPC is murdered. Then two characters deemed free of suspicion (I'm actually not sure how this is determined) become investigators and the other four are the suspects.

The investigators check the scene and body for clues, then all six sit in a room while those clues are presented, and then each suspect has a box of gathered clues about each other. Like Suspect A will say 'here is what was found in Suspect C's room' and then  show the incriminating evidence, while Suspect C tries to explain using their backstory notes and everyone else teases and mocks them. Then there's a some sort of mysterious test and if the murderer passes it then they can make one of the investigators an 'X' meaning the investigator will help them escape discovery. Then once they've all shared their evidence and backstories, they go out into the sets (a huge building of different rooms) and try and solve the mystery by finding more clues.

This season stars Bai Yu (yes from Guardian), Liu Yuning, Dilraba Dilmurat, Zhang Linghe, Zhou Keyu (who is apparently American???), and Wang Xun (who has more credentials than the rest of the cast combined). It's an interesting mix of ages and backgrounds that seems to be working, mostly because they are all eventually revealed to be chaos gremlins. Also LYN, BY, and ZKY were on The Truth S1, so they are the 'seniors' here.

Episodes 1 & 2 are set in the 1920s in a cabaret club. Same characters, location, etc. but a different murder in each ep, with an over arcing separate (non-murder) mystery with its own clues going on simultaneously. Episodes 3 & 4 are in 1988 in trading company office.  I've seen some incredible costumes that might or might not be from ep 4. They don't seem to fit what I've seen so far (through ep 3) but ep 2 goes so far off the rails from where it starts that I'm willing to accept anything might fit in these bonkers storylines.

We're only 3 eps in and am unable to count the number of times I've shouted "wait, what!?" at the screen. To be fair some of this is because it's only available to me (in the US) with terrible machine translated subtitles. It's almost like a whole separate game just to parse these out. And some of it is nonsensical and confusing, and some is utterly delightful, like Liu Yuning telling a story that starts "when I was young girl..." But mostly there's a lot of weird direct translation of names that is simply so confusing that you have to just guess what they are saying in context.

Despite that it's a joy to watch. To see who is really picking up clues, to watch them all constantly eat snacks (seriously so many snacks in this show), to see how they play the story lines they are given,  and to see them interact with each other. Things I didn't know I needed to see, like how pleased with himself ZLH is Every time he solves a problem but especially a math problem (he was an engineering student before he was an actor). And LYN's ability to instantly solve puzzle boxes (maybe because he does magic tricks sometimes?) Dilraba's incredible ability to spot clues in weird places that no one else seems to notice.

So I've said this is fun and it is, all on its own. But I am absolutely obsessed with this show so far because the actors keep making it gay when they really don't have to. Like just for fun. Even if none of the actors are queer (unlikely) at least two of the actors have been in bl drama adaptations, and at least two more have been in shows with Gong Jun, so I assume they all at least know from gay, you know?  Some of it feels like the good old days of TV in my youth (in the last century) when we had to ship folks to make our own gay, which the restrictions of Chinese are making increasingly necessary. Some of it is probably just like my own wishful thinking. And because of the terrible subtitles a lot of it is me just saying "wait did that just actually happen, or did I just think it did?" (Nothing says fun like gaslighting yourself about whether something is gay, lol.)

There are also a lot of good running jokes developing. At some point in Ep 1 Bai Yu called everyone 'little killers' (xiao shashou) and it really caught on. And now every time a suspect is defending themself against evidence someone will say, laden with sarcasm, the equivalent of "sure you're innocent, little killer."  Everyone keeps calling Zhang Linghe "Handsome He" and I literally cannot figure out if this is in the script or just them teasing him (because there seems to be a lot of teasing of ZLH). In addition to this the cast is making a lot of gay jokes and it's lovely because it's clearly not mean-spirited or cruel. Some seem to be just obvious and fun. But others I can easily interpret as the cast simply being like "hey, there is no gay here, let's put some gay here! It's fun!" In ep two there's a conversation that went something like this (I'm paraphrasing the subtitles)

ZKY *in character reading from I think another character's journal?*: Young Marshal He [ZLH's character] lifted his head and looked towards Young Marshal Ning [LYN's character] with a complicated emotion in his eyes. ZKY *out of character*: "What emotion?" Dilraba: What type of story is this? (omg the look on her face, she knows) ZLH *starts laughing and looking shy* LYN: *singing to ZLH* I've finally learned how to love… ❣️‼️ Dilraba *looking overjoyed*: This is so messy! (ZLH's character is supposed to be in love with her character, and LYN's character is her character's brother) ZLH (continues to laugh while simultaneously looking pleased and shy)

Then as they go on around the sets looking for clues and solving thing they just keep referencing this joke of ZLH's character and LYN's character being the ones in a romance in the story. But like I guess subtly enough that it gets past censorship? But like obvious enough I got it even with the terrible subtitles. And after this it's like all I can not to analyze every scene for good gay joke content.

There's several scenes while they are searching for clues and the lights go out and something scary happens. These presumably leave the cast unable to see in pitch black, but are filmed with some kind of night vision (nice to see who is dying their hair by how it comes out weird in the night scope, lol). So I'm bopping along wondering if I'm feeling creepy for how I'm kind of starting to ship LYN and ZLH and then the lights go out and I'm forced to frantically text by friend: "OMG the lights just went off on The Truth and LYN plastered himself, chest to back, on ZLH, then they grabbed Dilraba and pulled her in and now this is some kind of perfect bisexual triad that I didn't know I wanted?" And I'm sitting there, having watched it three times, asking myself if that's what really happened. Then the show's official Weibo posts it with the caption "After the lights go out, Liu Yuning became Zhang Linghe’s backpack." I mean, c'mon!!

the subtitles here are something like- LYN "let's sing to make ourselves brave" ZKY *sings the alphabet song and everyone joins in* LYN "what no, not this song."

And the scene carries on, the new bisexual triad of my dreams with arms linked and everyone being so cute that I can't stop thinking about for days. And then later the show decided to get a certain clue ZLH and LYN had to stand face to face and get wrapped like a mummy. Because why not? 😅😂 I was already being ridiculous about this, why not just SPOON FEED IT TO ME? And then. And then... Remember in ep 2 when LYN starts singing "I finally learned how to love" to ZLH? Welp then LYN posts the most theater kid emo gay boy video imaginable with song on his Weibo. A video that just screams, "I'm so deep, and cannot ever share my deep, meaningful conflicted feelings." And which point I'm forced to text my friend, "OMG is THIS the show that's finally going to turn me in to a delusional shipper? Of LYN and ZLH? This was not on my bingo card. Like totally out of left field." And yet here we are. I'm not proud of what this show has done to me. But obviously I'm not embarrassed enough to not post about either.🤡

Now I've written this entire rambling mess just so I could share that with you all my unhinged obsession with the gay subtext and gay jokes in this show. Like eagerly watching with popcorn looking for that next little single line or physical touch that I can make something huge out of. A week later and I'm still thinking about a moment when ZLH casually called LYN 'ge' while touching his shoulder because it felt so real and out of character for the scene. Because seriously, what is even happening in this show? Is this all happening, is it actually on screen, or am I finally really having a reality break? I think the point of this post was to convince you to watch this beautifully bonkers show, but I got really distracted by the gay. But like maybe that too will convince you to watch these absolute chaos gremlins?

[i-rate-horse-games]

Rating Horse Isle 3 again

yep, i kept playing. the last review describes the horrors of starting fresh in this game. this review is about what i've discovered about the rest of the game since then.

huge shoutout to @piosplayhouse for giving me a horse to explore the game with quicker!! here we are on my ranch! (me on the right)

tragically, Bogos Binted was silently stripped of his GAY title, but the legacy (and the crime >:) ) live on. we traveled far together. good horse.

this game does not want you to progress quickly. everything is designed to slow you down. want to pick up a rock? that will deduct the limited energy you have, which can easily be depleted to zero with about 10 minutes of chopping wood. want to quick travel to the nearest club, saving you half an hour of your time? that deducts from your travel bar, which when empty will leave you stuck and stranded. want to craft something? that deducts from your focus bar. want to run fast and jump hurdles? that deducts from your horse's stamina bar. many times i have attempted the course of the hour and had to quit because my horse was too tired to finish it and people behind me were crashing into me. (i had to ask for help to figure out how to quit. asking for help in the 'help' chat channel costs you essence.

speaking of essence! you get to pick up floating orbs in every biome you go. sometimes there will be an anomaly, where if you join a gang of determined riders, sometimes you'll make it to a cluster of over 100 essences, and you'll get to see most of the online players in the same place together! but those essence don't actually count as essence you picked up in a biome. which sucks, because you need those to unlock items. the hang glider, for example, costs 1,000 Fjords Essence and 9,000 other essences. there's a tome you can read that lets you pick up 3 of every essence you pick up yourself, but it takes two whole real life days for a tome you've read to start working, and you can only have read one tome at a time. i read the travel tome because i decided to build a ranch near the second most western club in the world.

speaking of other players, here's something i enjoyed quite a lot that was in HI1! water balloon fights!

as you can see here i came second place :)

i did also find the jump hurdle i saw previously on Tumblr and laughed so hard when the popup messages saying we'd hit an obstacle just kept coming and coming even after we'd gotten through it

huge shoutout to Velara Village i love you

everything considered, i think what i spent the most time doing in this game was meandering through the wilderness, finding puzzles, and cackling like a wizard when i managed to solve them. I got really excited when it involved math or biology that i somehow remembered from my classes. 'nyeh heh heh' i said. every time. that bit was pretty fun but very time consuming.

i also spent a lot of time just running the game with a calibration weight holding down the W button to keep me slowly slowly traversing the world while i did other things

i did breed 2 horses together! the baby seemed pretty normal i guess. not really sure how you guys are getting Long Necked Beauties but i respect the grind. this game has a lot of grinding. :)

all in all, i'm changing my rating up from 2/5 to 2.5/5!

★★✬☆☆

it takes a lot of grinding to unlock important things with not much payoff. it feels like it wants you to get frustrated and give them money. but i did really enjoy the puzzles, and even though the farming was just waiting based, i like my farm a lot! the community seems very nice and welcoming! everyone works together to get everyone to the essence anomalies, and it's fun seeing people collaborate like that! thank you to the HI3 tumblr community for lending me a hand! :)

trans rights!

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Higurashi Month 2024, Day 30: Optimistic

Higurashi Month prompts archive: AO3 

Young men are always viscerally convinced of their own immortality. –Reserved for the Cat, Mercedes Lackey

The thing about Keiichi and his life is this: he is fourteen years old, and he grew up –inasmuch as he is already grown– in the cold grey box of the city, where everything is regimented and everything follows a schedule.

He is only fourteen years old.

For Keiichi, such a thing as cause and consequence existed only in the thread of a mystery novel, or a math problem, or a logic puzzle. For all of his short life, adults have been telling him what to do and where to go; and when he gets there, everything is exactly as expected. His opportunity for independent action was limited.

So when he gets the airsoft gun, he doesn't think about opportunities beyond the instructions on the box or what he's looked up on the internet. Physical activity releases stress, and he wants that. He wants the numb, mindless satisfaction of shooting pellets into cardboard boxes, inflicting what little violence he can as an outlet for his frustration.

It is fun for a little bit. Then, casually, one day his eye falls on the Do Nots section of the gun's packaging.

Do not shoot at other people.

Something sparks in his dull, leaden soul at that moment. Why shouldn't he? These stupid little pellets aren't even metal; they're just plastic BB rounds. Sometimes they bounce off cardboard.

It's just another stupid rule. Just another stupid restriction laid on his shoulders.

When he sneaks out, later, to aim his gun at the kids walking home, he's planned everything out. He'll shoot the younger girls because they won't fight back, and he'll be careful and clever to make sure no one spots him or connects the shootings to him. He's just blowing off steam; the pellets will sting, briefly, and that's it. It's practically harmless.

The shootings persist despite various precautions, and fear ramps up in his district, and Keiichi carries a warm, smug glow throughout the day.

What he fails to think about –until that girl, that day, that eye– is the obvious fact that manufacturers are legally required to put disclaimers on their products for a reason. That safety warnings on packages aren't put there to stifle him, specifically, but to prevent lawsuits and injuries.

Cause and consequence.

~*~

Keiichi moves to Hinamizawa. It's a fresh start, a clean slate. He's going to become better here, become an upstanding person who would never injure people due to his own selfish frustrations.

He meets some children his age, and makes some friends. Boisterous Mion Sonozaki, cheerful Rena Ryugu, mischievous Satoko Hojo and adorable Rika Furude. They scuffle and play and draw deep breaths of the revitalizing Hinamizawa air as the year winds inexorably towards summer.

He likes these girls. They make him feel welcome, inviting him into their social group even though he's a stranger, even though their village is isolated and somewhat insular.

It's when he's at the dump site with Rena that he finds the old magazines detailing a murder. He's surprised that such a quiet village could engender such a thing –and then, later, when both Mion and Rena sharply cut off his questions with a denial, suspicious.

What are they hiding from him? Why are they hiding it?

Hinamizawa is insular, but it isn't that insular… right?

He meets Takano-san and greets Tomitake-san at the festival. They tell him more –tell him enough to chill his blood. They tell him about the five-year curse, about the murders, about the disappearances; about how everyone in the village knows and fears the consequence of this yearly festival.

The next day, they are both dead.

When the detective appears, Keiichi doesn't hesitate for even a second to ask questions, poke deeper, stir the bushes and poke around under the rock. His friends are hiding something from him, something maybe dangerous, and he will uncover it. That is the way of things.

What he fails to consider, even long after the walls of his bedroom are painted red with blood and his palms are sore from clenching the bat's grip, is that maybe his friends had a reason to hide such gruesome things from him. Maybe, because he was new and because they cared, they avoided the subject to keep from frightening him.

He was too curious to think of the consequences, and too curious to consider a cause, until it was all too late.

~*~

Keiichi moves to Hinamizawa. It's a fresh start, a clean slate. He's going to become better here, become an upstanding person who would never injure people due to his own selfish frustrations.

He meets some children his age, and makes some friends. Boisterous Mion Sonozaki, cheerful Rena Ryugu, mischievous Satoko Hojo and adorable Rika Furude. They scuffle and play and draw deep breaths of the revitalizing Hinamizawa air as the year winds inexorably towards summer.

He likes these girls. Mion, especially, makes him feel a little strange, a little new. When he finds himself competing with her, he seems to second-guess himself constantly unless he thinks strictly in terms of winning the game.

He tries to ignore it. They are friends, good friends for all that they're so new to each other, and he doesn't want to ruin anything by getting stupid ideas. Besides, Mion is a mud-spattered tomboy with an infectious grin and a deviously-scheming mind that will blush at no punishment, no matter how humiliating –hardly the type for crushes.

It is easier to think of her like that; as someone like another boy, rough and ready and perfect for rivalry. Not a girl.

So when he gets the stupid doll after the tournament, he doesn't hesitate in passing it off to Rena. Why should he? Rena goes absolutely gaga for cute things, Satoko would probably dismantle a doll for spare parts, and Rika struck him as the sort to enjoy soft stuffed toys more than hard porcelain. Rena was the obvious choice.

Sure, Mion was the only one who hadn't gotten anything, but the shop owner said it was because he didn't pass off stuff to relatives, and that made sense, right? No point in being greedy.

And Mion wouldn't care about stuff like that, anyway.

He later forgets the doll almost completely in the shock of learning that Mion has a- a secret identity, that she tells him is her twin "Shion," and uses to wait tables at Angel Mort. The alleged Shion has all of the girly personality traits that Mion seems to disdain, and he finds himself helplessly compelled, drawn in closer from sheer curiosity alone.

And then it turns out that yes, Mion does have a twin, and that twin's streak of mischief runs even broader than hers does. That is embarrassing.

But then Shion tugs him aside at the festival, and wants to show him something, and even is Keiichi is annoyed at her for her tricks, he's always been hopelessly curious –especially about forbidden things.

The Saiguden is extremely, extremely forbidden.

But it wouldn't hurt just to take a look, right? It's a glorified toolshed, and it isn't like he plans to go around touching all the old implements. He knows enough about skin oils and long-term historical preservation to know that's a bad idea. All he's going to do is step inside a dusty old building, have a look around, and then leave. Completely harmless.

Okay, sure, there's a lock on the door, but from what he knows of Hinamizawa gossip there hasn't even been a shoplifter in living local memory. The lock is more for symbolism than for security; after all, it's stupidly simple one that even ten-year-old Rika can operate.

And they're just looking around. What could be so bad about that? Takano-san is invested in the local history, which by definition is scholarly and benign, and he and Shion… well, okay, they're just cat-killingly curious, but Rika comes in here all the time, so the shrine's not forbidden forbidden. Just… strongly discouraged.

Sure enough, it's dusty and boring and dark –at least until Takano-san starts telling stories and Shion starts clinging to his arm. Then it's dusty and boring and dark and rude and weird, because Takano-san is badmouthing the village with ghoulish excitement and Shion is clutching onto him in a way that makes him wince –he can't tell if it's excitement or misjudged strength or what, but her nails dig in something awful.

Later, it gets creepy.

Later, Shion's in trouble and Mion isn't Mion, anymore.

He doesn't know what to do when the kitchen knife sinks into his stomach. Mion would never, and for Shion it wasn't even possible –so, so what is this? What is happening?

Where did it all go wrong?

What did he do to spark all this horror?

What could he have done?

The Saiguden wasn't even that important –it was just a dusty toolshed, for crying out loud! For this –for this– he'd lost his best friend? Because of a stupid abandoned building, Rika and Satoko were dead?

He didn't understand what he had done to cause this.

~*~

Keiichi moves to Hinamizawa. It's a fresh start, a clean slate. He's going to become better here, become an upstanding person who would never injure people due to his own selfish frustrations.

He meets some children his age, and makes some friends. Boisterous Mion Sonozaki, cheerful Rena Ryugu, mischievous Satoko Hojo and adorable Rika Furude. They scuffle and play and draw deep breaths of the revitalizing Hinamizawa air as the year winds inexorably towards summer.

He likes these girls. Satoko grated on him at first, until he figured out how to look beneath her rough and cheeky demeanor into the battered girl beneath. Something stirs in him when he sees that, a memory of the stupid airsoft gun in his hand and that soul-freezing shriek as the girl staggered away from him, clutching her eye as blood trickled through her fingers.

He's going to fix himself. He's going to be better than that.

He's not going to let someone trample over Satoko, like he'd trampled over that poor other girl.

For such a firm resolution, it proves surprisingly easy to carry out. All he has to do is watch out for her, and lend a helping hand when necessary –not during club games, of course, because he doesn't want to get clobbered. But other times, he's in Satoko's corner 100%.

And then her uncle comes, and Keiichi has a target for his protective fury.

He asks Irie more and more about Satoko's past, because this is important. He can help, he can prove once and for all that he isn't that kind of cruel and selfish person; and he can help one of his beloved friends, too, save her from a horrible fate. What's wrong with that?

What's wrong with digging up the past?

What's wrong with eliminating someone who's a threat to his friend?

And then the consequences hit in a cascading tidal wave of confusion and horror.

~*~

Keiichi moves to Hinamizawa. It's a fresh start, a clean slate. He's going to become better here, become an upstanding person who would never injure people due to his own selfish frustrations.

He meets some children his age, and makes some friends. Boisterous Mion Sonozaki, cheerful Rena Ryugu, mischievous Satoko Hojo and adorable Rika Furude. They scuffle and play and draw deep breaths of the revitalizing Hinamizawa air as the year winds inexorably towards summer.

He likes these girls. Rena, especially, is both restful and exciting. She makes his blood feel like it fizzes in his veins, and simultaneously quiets him like a peaceful morning shrouded in soft mist. It all depends on her mood, and he can't help but spend as much time with her as possible, trying to bask in whatever emotional high she is currently passing onto him.

When she starts acting depressed, of course he wants to help. She's his friend, his rival, his favorite person in the club. He suggests a treasure hunt at the dump site, and then-

And then.

~*~

The trouble with Keiichi is that he is fourteen years old, and fatally curious. If there is something forbidden, he wants to know; if there is something hidden, he wants to uncover it.

He never thinks of how there might be consequences for doing so.

[serpentmessmer]

tag game!!

tagged by my darling @pregnancykink

Do you make your bed? i'll at least straighten it out, in large part because my cat loves sleeping on the bed and she prefers when it's made

What's your favorite number? multiples of 5 always make my brain go brrrr but also for some reason i really like the number 37

What is your job? i hang out with animals

If you could go back to school, would you? like college yeah maybe if i could afford it without it being a financial stressor sort of thing lmfao

Can you parallel park? yuuuup, i don't have to do it very often but i can absolutely do it

A job you had that would surprise people? i legit worked at a mine, doing gold mining stuff (preparing/photoing core samples, printing sample bags, weeding the core warehouse)

Do you think aliens are real? oh absolutely. with the size of the universe being what it is, there is no doubt in my mind that there are living beings elsewhere

Can you drive a manual car? yeeeeee, i've got a little '81 toyota sr5

What's your guilty pleasure? as prev said, i do not feel guilty about pleasure

Tattoos? i've got 10 i love getting tattooed

Favorite color? greens, but specifically very yellow-grey leaning greens, i like the swampy dusty colors

Favorite type of music? see, the thing is i kinda listen to everything/i don't really delineate by genre??? and my favorite changes by season because i'm really out here going based on the vibes. recently it's been a lot of the pop-punk i listened to in high school tho so like mid-late '00s pop punk but i listen to a lot of metal and ambient and pop and hip hop, it's more "does it fuck?"

Do you like puzzles? i do, and like p much all of them i love games that are really puzzle based especially

Any phobias? yea for sure but i'm not going to list them here though where somebody can use them against me lol (spike im just keeping ur answer bc same)

Favorite childhood sport? i am deeply uncoordinated and unathletic and well i ended up playing golf in high school and that's about it. i was less a sports kid and more a going outside and being a gross menace kid

Do you talk to yourself? oh absolutely, on the regular

What movies do you adore? the way my brain screams ANNIHILATION every time this movie comes up lmfao, but some others are mandy, dinner in america, the mummy, the second lotr specifically, and jesus christ superstar which i do rewatch at least once every year. i like movies they're fun

Coffee or tea? generally more tea but that's because most roasts of coffee give me hellish stomach cramps and not a lot of places have white coffee which is the only one that consistently doesn't fuck my guts up something fierce

First thing you wanted to be when you grew up? a vet, but i am not mentally/emotionally strong enough for that and i am not nearly good enough at math to do all the sciences required lmfao ive just always really loved animals

for tagging i'll hit @rmilkies @wetusb @kennyyomega @ashes-acedia and @saltbind

[hildred-rex]

Hello, I love Hildred Castaigne! He’s such a fucked up unreliable narrator and he also reminds me so much of myself in middle school and I love him for it. What do you like about him?

First off, apologies for taking absolutely ages to answer this! Life happened and I promptly forgot tumblr existed for almost a month. Yay.

Anyhow, I think my love of Hildred is a combination of the factors you mentioned and the absolute state I got into shortly after I found The King in Yellow -- aaand here comes an essay. The last version of this got deleted, and apparently I've taken it upon myself to make its replacement even lengthier.

Hildred is a fascinating character to read and to write, and his opinions on things are (or would be) so different from mine that it's fun to try to puzzle them out. I keep a bevy of fictional characters that I can simulate reasonably well as a way to make myself consider how people get to opinions that differ from mine, and naturally he's among them.

Beyond that, I'm an absolute sucker for hints at a greater world, but only narrow viewpoints from which to try to figure out what's going on in that world.

The weird bits of The King in Yellow as a whole are superb at tantalizing you with smug allusions and tiny scraps of information about what, exactly, it is that the book is named for.

Is it a play? Is it an entity? What happened to the author? ...was the author Boris? (I don't think the author was Boris, but I won't lie that I've considered writing a fic where he was.)

I got hooked on Lovecraft for the same reason, and it's actually what put me on to Arthur Machen (favorite author) and The King in Yellow (favorite book).

Even with all that, I think my King in Yellow interest would have been a passing thing that returned occasionally, if it hadn't been the last thing I got into before my first set of high school final exams kicked my ass.

The tl;dr of freshman year is that I picked the wrong math class and it spent the semester wrecking my self-confidence (and my sleep schedule) before I finally managed to transfer to a better one. (Then I spent second semester picking myself back up.)

Hildred, notably, is self-confident to the point of it backfiring catastrophically on him. He absolutely should not have gloated to Louis, tactically speaking; in this essay I will-

Anyway. Stress is weird, so during finals season and its leadup I had quite a lot of unmarshalled energy that refused to work on what I actually needed it to do and that instead directed itself at my idle pokings at Hildred and his world.

Probably better than worrying about how my abysmal math grade was going to ruin my life.

It didn't, and I came out of the crucible with rather extensive additional worldbuilding. Since I essentially speedran getting invested in the project, I came away wanting to do more of it and... it just kind of stuck?

I mean, here we are several years later and my first impulse is still to name my tumblr blog for him. I've got a rough idea of his extended family back three generations. I have a design for that spring suit Hawberk had that was mentioned exactly once. I am the embodiment of

when it comes to this lol

_____

I couldn't find a good place to fit this in above, but Hildred was also the first time I encountered a story with an obviously intentional unreliable narrator after I'd encountered the term. Not sure how I missed it that long, lol. I spent probably half a decade looking askance at various authors and going "...do you know what you're writing there???"

I also couldn't integrate it anywhere, but I absolutely adore "The Mask." I have Thoughts on Chambers's ability to write romance more generally, the short version being that he writes Lovers™ and not characters and they're thus so wooden they're hard to read, but that he must have been in a position like the beginning of "The Mask" because holy god that is exactly how it feels.

[echthr0s]

tagged by @longeyelashedtragedy

1. Do you make your bed? Absolutely not. I also sit on my bed during the day, but even if I didn't I never really saw the point. Also, in my opinion a bed should have a chance to air out when it's not being used.

2. Favourite number? Nine and nineteen. Mainly nineteen, for Reasons. Those are the two numbers I use whenever I need a number for literally anything.

3. What's your job? Full-time dilettante, desire deity, and begrudging PR agent for the Earth-facing facet of the Laudarant Configuration.

4. If you could go back to school would you? Much like the person who tagged me, I am not at all suited for a school environment. I do love to learn and I could even love to learn in a small group setting with likeminded individuals (this would be nice for stuff like languages, which kind of requires the social element), but school is not for me. I do like it when other people go to school and then tell me all the stuff they learned, though. I get all the benefit and none of the bullshit!

5. Can you parallel park? Of the very few things I know about driving, how to parallel park is not one of them. And no, I am not at all interested, it seems awful. Driving in general seems awful, in this country in this day and age. Proud to be a passenger/pubtrans princess ✊🏿

6. Do you think aliens are real? Do I think life exists on at least one other planet? lmao of fucking course, like... statistically speaking, the math maths Do I think it's life like in Mars Attacks or The Day The Earth Stood Still or the MCU or whatever? Most likely not. But I also believe in the multiverse, which is immensely more complex of a concept than just the idea of sapient life on another planet in the same universe, so... you know, maybe. Maybe!

7. Can you drive a manual car? See #5.

8. Guilty pleasure? Guilt? In my me? It's not as likely as you think. Or likely at all.

9. Tattoos? The number 19 in Roman numerals with a spider on my wrist, the Mannaz rune on the back of my hand, and "scully, it's me" on the inside of my elbow. All on my right arm.

10. Favourite colour? Yellow. Pink is a close second. Really, I think they just share the first place spot, because I do what I want.

11. Favourite type of music? Metal is technically my favourite genre, since so many bands and songs I love fall under that umbrella. But there's so much music out there that gets me that it feels restrictive and reductive to just name a favourite genre and leave all those other ones out in the rain. I have no idea how to answer this question otherwise, though! My favourite type of music is my favourite type of music. You know?

12. Do you like puzzles? I like jigsaw puzzles and logic puzzles (not nearly as good at these as I was as a child, but they're still fun) and fill-ins (constructed like a crossword but instead of solving clues to find out what the words are, you're given the words themselves and have to figure out where in the puzzle they fit) and... that's about it, really. When I'm playing a video game, I hate puzzles, lmao. They're always so annoying (at best).

13. Any phobias? None.

14. Favourite childhood sport? I did not enjoy participating in sports, ever, but my favourite sport to watch when I was a child was figure skating. In fact, it still is. But I was super autistic about it back then, when I didn't know what masking was and wasn't bogged down with adult nonsense.

15. Do you talk to yourself? Occasionally, but mostly I talk to Can Calah and whomever else is hanging around in the Configuration. To other people, that'd just look like I'm talking to myself, so I guess it counts by way of perception.

16. What movies do you adore? laughing about the fact that prev said "I'm not a huge movies person" and then went on to name about 25 movies (I understand, it's just funny)

I am a huge movies person and I have a Letterboxd account, so here are all the movies I've hit the "Like" button on (my highest honour): Liked Films There are a few on there that are outdated, like I watched them in like 2014 and loved them then but I probably wouldn't feel the same way now (like, I see Chappie on there and I'm like "hm. really?" it's probably fun and all but I can't imagine it's Like worthy :V), but mostly it's accurate.

17. Tea or coffee? Tea. I do enjoy coffee, I just find tea to be the superior beverage.

18. First thing you wanted to be growing up? how on earth would I remember this 💀 I do remember wanting to be an environmentalist when I was a middle schooler, though. I used to badger my father about recycling batteries and shit like that.

[colourful-void]

I have finished Virtue's Last Reward!

what was that.

-

alright thoughts, here we go!

Im glad the time paradox thing was addressed, to my understanding it's like. the two branches diverge no matter what, but instead of living through the Good Branch, we're here on the Bad Branch. it's not going to cease to exist if Phi and Sigma and kyle??? can change the past, we're just fucked.

I'm with Tenmyouji! Junpei is never wrong I agree with him always. That is not the Akane Kurashiki i once knew. She is long gone. (spike chunsoft please bring her back)

This ending is so much more of a downer than the last one. I'm a little bummed out actually. Like I know Akane's telling me its up to me to save the world and everything but like. It's a narrative video game fuck the world man I want my little guys to be happy. 999 was weird as shit and has like. a higher active body body count (3 characters in game die no matter what as opposed to vlr's 0, but 7 billion if u count. the earth.), but despite all that? the ending feels hopeful. and then really weird because alice being there was such a jarring shift but like ignoring alice?? very good.

Actually, Akane talking to Kyle felt more like she was talking to me, Void, more than any other interaction in this entire game. "You want to know what happens between Dec24 and new years eve? then you have to go back. you have to do it." It's like a threat. What the hell akane. I do want to know. you're going to make me play another game but ur fucking right i do wanna know.

I'm glad that Tenmyouji and Quark will stay together. I love you Quark. I love you tenmyouji.

Seriously Phi explains jackshit.

Game thoughts as a whole! Uhh a little mixed? mixed! there's more I like than I dislike, but my thoughts are kind of. muddled a bit

A lot of things were frustrating (mainly puzzles) but a lot of things were really exciting (mainly story).

some puzzles were really exciting and fun (the whole archives, the lounge, the final cube puzzle, the pec door puzzles, the rec room) and some were really annoying (darts, most of the pantry, anything with a lot of math and cross referencing really). ((some of this is because im bad at puzzles!!)

Most of the story was really fun (All of Quark and Tenmyouji really, Luna's backstory, Dio's backstory i still hate him but its good, K's initial backstory just from his ending, going through the different endings and combinbing knowlege from em,) Some of it was really annoying (Sigma being gross to the girls, the weird radical 6 based contradictions, a significant portion of the ending though i dont feel fair making a full judgement on it because half of it still makes no sense to me and im not sure how much of this is sequel bait, the general sudden downer shift of it all)

menuing and q-o-l wise: i did get used to the sprites and menuing, though part of that comes from a shift to displaying it on my tv (the display darkens and softens it out a bit so its nicer,) and getting a controller (item tabbing!!!) though i never really ended up using the ingame notes past the first room. instead i took paper ntoes and my journal is a mess for it. i do have a very important complaint to raise re game display:

THE FUCKING MAP SECTIONS TAKE WAY TOO LONG!!!! unless you're already fastforwarding, it's really slow and there's no way to skip it! I know where the lounge is by now this is my 7th run but no i've gotta watch the little dot move all the way from the b floor warehouse and it's just really annoying. why was there not an option to just skip it. goddamn.

In review: im not sure what to think about vlr yet? It's definitely left me much more conflicted than 999, and I probably like 999 more overall. The twists in vlr were really fun and unexpected (favourites are the inital betrayal from alice turning into an ally, seeing k's mask come off, tenmyouji's picture of akane, the first time more stuff was added to the flowchart like that, seeing the moon and everything.) and there were a lot more of them, but i think the ones in 999 hit me harder, while there were fewer. (Learning akane was who died, learning ace's identity, when the dialouge switches to first person).

But i;ll be fair, I was probably always going to be biased towards 999? it's aesthetics are more my taste and while this sounds weird it's... a lot more down to earth than vlr? Vlr is really high concept and i feel like if I spend some time with it or look at stuff AROUND it i'll grow into it. but it's a lot more than i usually. swallow at once. im a weak man okay my brain can't handle it.

Vlr's ending much like it's beginning is gonna be one of those things i thing where at first im like 'fuck this' and then over time im going to really love it. I'm already liking it a lot more than I did like. 15 hours ago.

Will I play Zero Time Dilemma?

Well im curious where the story goes, but I'm also wondering like. Yes? Play it? or is like a 'play the first two and pretend zero time dilemma never happened' situation. my only interaction with the fandom of zero escape is whatever you all send me, and a meme of akane my brother once found.

Here's the part where I was gonna say that video games are expensive and I'd see based on ppl's reccomendations and pricing and how much I'd need to save whether and when i'd get it but like. i forgot steam summer sale is on and it's like. 9 dollars right now so I'll probably get it anyway.

still curious though, other people's opinions, please weigh in! do you think I'm being too harsh to vlr? is there something I haven't considered? do you need to play ZTD to really give VLR a fair shot? what are your favourite parts of vlr? did i completely fail to read something important in the game and its fucking my perception. should i go back and play those two endings that fuck over quark i avoided?

let me know!!

[homestuckdailyweekly]

Homestuck Daily - Week 4/End of Month 1 - 5/11/2024

Today marks the end of the first month of my real time Homestuck reread. If my math is correct (and that is a big if), I have 83 months of reading Homestuck left. Based on some more math, I first read Homestuck roughly 50 months ago. I don't know what point I am making with this, except for the fact that time is long and strange.

If I am being honest, I am finding it a hard time to write this update, because it feels like basically nothing happened this entire week. It probably doesn't help that I've been playing Hades 2, an extremely fun and good game, all week. So everything I have to say about this week of Homestuck is colored by an implicit "And I read this instead of playing Hades 2 in that exact moment." Hell, I could be playing Hades 2 right now, but I am writing this instead.

In case you haven't noticed, dear reader that definitely exists, I don't exactly know what I'm doing with this one here. I know, after I worked so hard on developing a strict and rewarding format these past few weeks, I'm throwing it all away to ramble here and now. The thing you need to know about me, though, is that I make terrible decisions. Always have, always will. I promise I'll get to a point, but we'll get there on my own time.

Where was I. Oh right. 50 months ago. Valentines Day 2020. That was the day I began my first Homestuck read through. My girlfriend at the time- she would break up with me a few months later for non-Homestuck related reasons- was a Homestuck fan, and had tried and failed to convince me to read the comic before. We even spent a date night playing friend sim, which I tried my best not to be confused by. Well, Valentines day came, and I decided I would finally relent to my girlfriend's recommendation, and I spent the day reading Homestuck in my college dorm room. And when I started, I did not stop. Not for a long time. You see, it was a Friday, a Friday very early in the semester, in fact. I had nothing I needed to do and 3 whole days where I did not need to treat myself as a human being. I denied myself food, water, sleep, and human dignity as I read Homestuck, all the while texting my girlfriend my reactions. I think the only time I took a break that weekend was on Saturday, to play in a Vampire the Requiem game I had recently joined. I don't know exactly how far through Homestuck I had gotten when I attended the game- but it was further than a person should be less than 24 hours after starting the webcomic.

Which brings me to my point. How quickly into my binge did I get to the parts of this comic that has now taken me a month to reach? An hour? Less than that? I don't know and am unwilling to do the work to find that out. I don't think I had gone all-in on Homestuck at this point, but I do remember being entertained by the Sylladex fuckery that was going on. I found it intriguing, this little puzzle of mechanics, the audience and John struggling against an unintuitive game mechanic that refused to make things easy. That was 50 months ago. So far on my read through, all I really feel as I get to each new gag about Sylladexes is "Oh, today is just this, huh." A part of me is sad and disappointed these gags aren't landing for me in the way they once had. A part of me is worried what else in this comic will suffer with the addition of time. But then I got to the last page of this week's updates, page 137, a loading animation for SBURB set to Sburban Jungle by Michael Guy Bowman, and that worry melts away.

Sburban Jungle is a song that lights my imagination ablaze with visions of epic machinations. I am the kind of person who listens to music not just because I like a song, but because that song puts images in my head that I can't tear myself from exploring as fully as I can. Even back when I was a kid in highschool, I would spend my bus rides home listing to my ipod, imagining grand adventures and fantastic scenes set to whatever music I was listening to. Sburban Jungle brings me back to those days, I think. That feeling that I find so hard to describe right now is part of why I love Homestuck, I think. It is a story about 4 kids, friends, playing a game together. A game where anything can be possible. A game where music brings actions scenes of epic and mythical scale- like the kind I would think about on the bus ride home- to life. That game hasn't started yet, we are still playing a game I'd like to call "Inventory Management if the Inventory Management hated you". But we'll get there eventually.

I have read Homestuck in realtime for 1 month. I will continue this for 83 more months. There'll be many months where I read nothing, and I'll need to think up something to post during those weeks. There'll be months where I'll struggle to keep everything I want to discuss in individual coherent posts. Homestuck is a land of contrasts, and I am going to experience those contrasts in the fullness of time's length. This is a terrible idea, but those are my favorite kinds.

Now that this is written and done with, time to play some more Hades 2.

[fioras-resolve]

Virtue's Last Reward notes, compiled over a week of on-and-off play.

-God they give actual dates for this game now, fucked up. Virtue's Last Reward takes place in like five years.

-Oh god there's a global pandemic in this game, fuck. This hits different in the 2020s. That reminds me, I got COVID vaccinated again and I feel great!

-i kind of love how mean these characters are to each other, it seems to be a consistent thing in every Chunsoft game that isn't Mystery Dungeon

-Uuuuuuuugh, god, this guy's fuckin scummy. My main character Sigma keeps being weird around women, treating them like eye candy and just generally just making uncomfortable remarks. I mentioned both here and during 999 how much I appreciated the raunch, but like this guy fucking sucks. You know, it was fun in 999 because Junpei and Akane were into each other and had actual chemistry, so this was like, flirting? But here it's just my player character being creepy, and it's like, eugh.

-I have tried out the Easy Mode on a puzzle I was stuck on, and I was right, the characters do give hints through dialogue if you do so. I'm pretty bummed that this is locked to easy mode, because it is genuinely solid characterization.

-But also, I thought I tried that solution! I guess I didn't try hard enough, or I did it subtly wrong in a way I didn't notice. I have a tendency to do that, like I struggle with math homework these days because I'm incredibly sloppy without realizing how sloppy I am.

-But this kind of Hard Mode approach is a clear attempt to approach Puzzle Game Problem #2 (There's no clean way to modulate difficulty in a game where the only measure of success is pass/fail). It's a scuffed approach, and definitely comes with sacrifices, but I get why it's there.

[cidtherogue]

So I'm going to be DMing a campaign for my boyfriend and his friends. And it's my first time DMing. I've played a little bit, I've always wanted to get more into DnD. We've got a campaign going that my bf is DMing for his father, brother, and I. But my boyfriend wants to have a game that's just friends so he can be more himself. Roleplay more. (his fathers also a strict rule follower/the rule of cool doesn't exist) So I offered to DM since he doesn't have a whole lot of time available to manage planning two campaigns.

And he's been talking with one of his friends that's going to be playing. And they've got this preexisting OC they want to play. And that's more than fine. But my boyfriend comes to me last night and he's like, "this character L wants to play has a talking rat..."

And I'm just. "Ok. You know more about the game than me. So you work with L. And figure out the mechanics and how to make that work. But his character can have a talking a rat. That sounds fun. Let's do it."

Bf is just "But you don't understand. If the rat can talk, then it can understand. And if it can understand, it can be tasked with doing things. You're opening a whole can of worms. Problems will be able to just be solved using the rat."

And like. I'm here for it. Maybe I'm making a baby DM mistake by allowing Jeffrey (that's Ls OC) to keep his talking rat in a DnD setting. But the only thing I've ever wanted from DnD is the wacky shenanigans you see talked about on the internet. And so far with the tables I've played with... there hasn't been any of that. They've been strict rule followers. Roleplay hasn't even been a thing at all. It's felt like math, rules, loot. There's no shenanigans. There's no plans that are so wild and dumb that they just might work. There's no imagination.

So yes. I'm allowing Jefferey to have his talking rat. And if it derails the "plans" or the puzzles I set up for the party. So be it.