#kid me was like 'well ive already failed the basic requirement so why the fuck should i care what these magazines and ads have to say?'

[branmer]

sometimes i think im pretty lucky with my body image tbh because while like everyone i have stuff i don't like about my body (like i do struggle sometimes with wishing i were prettier and the shape of my nose) but there's lots of stuff that i see other ppl worry about it never even occurs to me to think about like my hip dips and it just makes me sad that people are taught to hate such insignificant things about their body :/ like i think i have bad body image and then ill see someone worrying about that and im like 'oh sis :/'

[dittolicous]

i think im having my midlife crisis. cuz time is passing so fast and im just... so tired. so tired of spending everyday miserable and stressed and hoping tomorrow will be better, when it never is.

i dont want to have to struggle for another 10 years just to get a simple little home that isnt infested with roaches or has rats in the walls. i want to be able to get up in the morning to drink coffee and watch the news. see kids walking to school. learn to sew. go fishing every now and again. own a car. be able to sleep without fretting over which bill to pay before cutoff.

i. i dont feel like ill ever escape. the community around me doesn't care because im not homeless of suffering enough, because i can still work even if im a husk of a human. because everyone has to work or die. work or die.

ive spent thr last few days pouring over applications, loan possibilities, houses, financial aid, bills, etc. no jobs have reached back to me except scams or ones that are basically downgrades from what i already do. i look and i look and i look, i used that suggested google jobs thing, but all the good jobs are off the island, require 10000 years experience, have no benefits, or are all work that i utterly despise. i dont qualify for loans and make too much for financial aid.

and they always say the same thing. get rid of your pets (as if rehoming is even cheap or easy), get rid of internet, make sacrifises sacrifices and more sacrifices. get up at 4am to wait in food bank lines for old meat, leftover produce, and stale cake. constantly plead to strangers and justify your life. because thats just life! your not allowed to have nice things when youre poor, dont you know? if you do, then thats wasting money and we wont help you. you deserve what you get because happiness comes with money.

i just want out. and i guess jokes on them. if i rehome my pets, well, that would mean id finally be free to off myself. because im sorry to say, but theyre the only thing that holds me back. i hate this world. i wasnt built to survive here. i dont have any passions or drive or... anything.

i dont know why im here. just to suffer and be miserable until im too old and weak to work, to die alibe in a ditch.... i dont have anything worth anything.

and what makes me fucking laugh! is that the last time i went to my psych appointment i was like. i cant do this! im tired of being tired! and they pushed me to try their therapy again and that theyd get a case worker to call me and to think of all things i can change instead of what i cant... i agreed but was open with how i didn't have much faith in the system. how they failed me in the past and that makes me wary.

that was two weeks ago.

case worker never called me. therapist never called me. i cant change anything.

all because of stupid fucking bills and checks and jobs and money because no one deserves to live happy!

ill never escape. ill never have a live worth living. i dont have anyone to go to the movies or amusement parks with, no one who would drop by for coffee and a chat, no one to go to cons with. im just a little icon on a blue website. if i died tomorrow, if my queue ended... no one would mourn me not really. no one would cry. because im just broken and incapable of making genuine connections. id just be another quiet blog, a blip in the radar.

[enigmari]

Oh my GOD Please infodump abt hatoful.... ive repeatedly tried to get into it but have no idea how/how to connect any of the lore. Thanos !

I SAW THE TYPO TOO LATE IT WAS SUPPOSED TO END WITH “THANKS”,

SKDFSKJSLKDFJ no worries anon, it happens to the best of us. Anyways, how should I start this…

So, if you’re totally new here, Hatoful Boyfriend is a visual novel dating sim whose basic premise is “what if cliched boyfriend archetypes… but birds?” And it takes this premise completely wholeheartedly, while still maintaining a comedic tone. You pick classes and club activities each in-game day to increase your skill points, and depending on your levels (and a few dialogue options) you’ll either successfully romance your birdie of choice or get a Bad End. Most of the birds make their interests/level requirements obvious from the start, and you have a bunch of save slots to work with if you wanna go the scum route. Pretty simple and straightforward.

(Actually, that’s a lie, it gets much more complicated later. Don’t worry about that right now.)

Most of HBF is framed through the perspective of the protagonist (I’m gonna use her canon name for convenience) Hiyoko, and she is… not the brightest bulb in the box. Especially in the first game, when events in one character’s route will be foreshadowed in other routes, she will rarely call them out or make note of them. Naturally, this also means some reveals will be spoiled depending on which order you do the routes in. You also unlock documents in the Archive section after completing each route, which adds another level of puzzle piecing to the mix. 

(No, this is not the complicated part I was talking about earlier. Sorry.)

In this next bit, I’m going to briefly run through the routes of the first game from least to most complex in terms of lore, as well as what things are foreshadowed when. I’ll also toss in the archive documents when I feel they’re most relevant to the information you have. We ready?

Okosan’s routes: Mostly joke endings, unless there is some greater plot significance to pudding that I’ve missed for all these years.

Ryouta’s route: Mostly about character building, the only real hint you get is that his mother is sickly and it’s implied he inherited this from her.

Azami’s routes: You could get here with the same stats as Ryouta’s route, but then you fuck it up by taking this job opportunity away from him. How rude, Hiyoko.

Sakuya’s first route: He opens up to you about his abusive and bigoted dad, and with some encouragement you encourage him to run away and become a musician like he always wanted. Mr. Le Bel is very important to multiple other characters in this game.

Sakuya’s second route (needs perfect stats/dialogue choices): Same conversation about his dad, but he chooses to live with you instead. Your big hint is at the end, when Yuuya sends you a letter saying there’s “something he’s wanted to tell [Sakuya] for a long time. Something important.” 

Yuuya’s route: You don’t actually get to find out what the "important thing" is, whoops. You do find out that Yuuya’s a spy for the Dove Party, Shuu is one for the Hawk Party, and the school has been increasingly influenced by the Hawk Party as of late. 

BAD END: You may have gotten it earlier, but now you have context as to who’s killing you when you fail a route- it’s the Hawk Party. The reason why is still unclear.

[CW for gore, child death, medical abuse, suicide, and attempted genocide from here on! This game is a trip!]

Shuu’s first route: Absolutely not a romance route and if you ship Shuu/Hiyoko please block me and tab out immediately thank you very much. You learn that Shuu has been killing students for medical experimentation, confirming Yuuya’s suspicions about the quills in the student store and the food in the cafeteria.

Shuu’s second route (needs perfect stats/dialogue choices): Same ending where Hiyoko dies, but he’s attached enough to her that he takes her head in a jar when he goes on the run. You do learn that Shuu doesn’t care about the Hawk Party’s politics, just that they can enable his personal experiments.

Archive Note 11: Someone (Shuu) knew that Yuuya was a Dove Party agent from the start. He also notes that some of the students are “fascinating”, which you know from his route means they’re good experiment fodder. You learn that he has reason to believe his victims won’t oppose the experimentation, but not the details.

Archive Note 10: Shuu makes notes about human “adaptability measures.” Given that Hiyoko is the only human at the school, you can guess that this will involve her in some way.

Archive Note 06: Notes about the Spanish Flu, how deadly it was to humans, and the connection to an “Avian Influenza.”

Archive Note 04: Notes about a “Goodwill Ambassador” for humanity, who needs a strong natural immunity to Avian Influenza. Hiyoko’s stats show that she has a base level of 800 Vitality, so you can guess that she’s the ambassador. This is why she dies when you fail a route- the Hawk Party saw she didn’t build a good enough connection to the birds, so they take her as a lost cause.

Archive Note 07: Shuu makes notes about “carrier capacity” in the student body, inducing it in some way in a “normal” individual. You can guess this is the details of his medical experimentation, but not who the victim is. You can also guess that the disease to be carried is Avian Influenza.

Anghel’s route: It’s not actually that complicated, but I think you need to complete Shuu’s route before the “mad love of a fallen angel” option is available. (EDIT: you actually just need to complete one playthrough to unlock this option. Even the Azami solo ending will unlock it.)  This ending seemingly undermines all the things we learned about Shuu right before, but this is just Hiyoko’s perspective.

Archive Note 01: A certain student (Anghel) has hallucinogenic properties that can affect bystanders, putting them in a trance-like state. This explains why everything went totally off the rails in his route.

Kazuaki’s route: Again not a romance route (no matter what he says about “waiting”, ew) because the whole point is that Kazuaki is afraid to open himself up to love of any kind. You learn he had someone he cared deeply about in the past but lost, and now he’s been soured from the experience. You also learn that he smells like bleach.

Nageki’s route: You learn that he’s a ghost, that he killed himself in the school some years ago, and that he doesn’t have all his memories. He disappears before you learn anything more, but he’s happy so it’s okay and why am I crying agai-

Archive Note 02: Someone (Nageki) writes about how they are trapped, and can’t remember what happened to them.

Archive Note 05: Nageki remembers he made a promise to someone very important, but he can’t remember who or what it was.

Archive Note 03: Nageki once woke up in a place that wasn’t the library- somewhere with bright lights and a white ceiling. He’s not as trapped as he first thought.

Archive Note 14: Nageki notes that he can move between floors, going from the library to the chemistry lab below. You can guess that the place with the bright lights is somewhere below these two rooms. This also reveals that Nageki knew the layout of the school when he was alive.

Archive Note 12: Nageki notes that after meeting Hiyoko, he feels fulfilled “just as he did back then.” He still can’t remember everything, though.

Archive Note 08: Notes about an underground facility, a fire, and a Subject 00 whose remains are in storage. You can guess that the facility is the place with the bright lights, and Nageki is Subject 00. You can also guess that Nageki set the fire, since he said that he killed himself.

Archive Note 09: Notes about Subject 00′s relative, whose remains are also in storage. You can guess that this is the “important person” that Nageki made a promise to a long time ago.

At this point, the only documents left are Note 13, which is about a terrorist incident at the Heartful House orphanage in which only two birds survived, and Note 15, which is about another terrorist incident some years ago in which the Ave’s High City building was bombed. Nothing in the main routes hints at these notes, so it’s a good time to move to…

Bad Boys Love route: This route is literally the length of the rest of the routes combined, so we’re doin’ more sections, baby!

Kazuaki’s lost loved one and Nageki’s important person turn out to be each other. They were the survivors of the Heartful House incident, and Kazuaki (real name Hitori) took care of his little brother by himself. Nageki was sickly, so he volunteered himself for a medical experiment at the school that could potentially cure him to take the burden off of Hitori. 

Unbeknownst to them, the Hawk Party was already in control of the school and their real motive was to investigate the disease Nageki was carrying- Avian Influenza. Shuu was specifically the lead for this project, and he also witnessed the Heartful House incident when it happened. At the time, he went by the name Isa Souma and was a medical researcher. He worked with Ryuuji Kawara, Ryouta’s dad, until Ryuuji’s death from disease.

Ryouta and Hiyoko were also there, because her parents were former human ambassadors too. Unfortunately, they became some of the casualties, which left the two kids heartbroken. Shuu, seeing them and recognizing Ryouta, offered to grant them a wish. They both wished for a world where humans and birds would never fight anymore, which Shuu took to mean “kill all the remaining humans so they can’t fight the birds” because… he’s like that. 

Shuu decided that the easiest way to kill all the humans would be to spread the Avian Influenza, and this is why he sought out Nageki. Nageki was forced to kill humans as part of the experiments, and this traumatized him so much that he set the lab on fire to stop it, trapping himself inside. Hitori witnessed this too, and swore to get revenge despite Nageki asking him to destroy his remains and live a happy life. He bleached his feathers and swapped identities with another bird to fake his death, and applied to the school as a teacher under his new name. 

Nageki’s plan didn’t entirely work, and the Hawk Party was able to store some of his remains for future experiments with Avian Influenza. This brings us to the timeline of the main routes, where Shuu took advantage of Ryouta’s sickly constitution to make him a new carrier for Avian Influenza. Yuuya tried to interfere on behalf of the Dove Party, but Shuu blackmailed him with the knowledge that he killed his real half-brother because he hated Mr. Le Bel and wanted Sakuya to live instead. 

The new strain of Avian Influenza that Ryouta carried was enough to make Hiyoko sick and kill her. The death of the Human Ambassador kickstarts the beginning of this route, and Shuu planned for the humans who would retaliate to also be infected. It doesn’t go as he planned, of course, but that’s laid out pretty well in the rest of the route so I won’t re-summarize it here. 

Aaaand that’s about everything for the first Hatoful Boyfriend game! I’ll gladly do infodumps/lore summaries for Holiday Star or the other side materials if anyone wants, but this took almost three hours to write as is so I’m going to give myself a break.

[larissaloki]

Larissaloki homelife rants

Ok this is a major rant to get things off my chest and f have trigger warnings for suicide and depression and such things, dont read. Ps this post i an absolute mess of a rant.

Ok so I’m only 2fucking4, and i am already wanting life to just bloody end. Literally life is killing me. Not to be a whiny millennial but life is fucking difficult for any singular person to get by. Everything in governments are pretty much based (at least it seems in the uk) on relying on a good network of people around you.

I have a loose network of people and none i can depend on financially. I mean this as nicely as possible and ill explain why. My best friend that help me is dealing with trying to find her own way in life and save money and i working nearly all the time to get by. All grandparents are either working full time still at their age or medically unable to help out.

When i was childless i had an ok life but i was still with mum unable to save up to move out. At least not by myself. But i had plans for uni out of my home county. Courses that require me to not be pregnant.

I fell pregnant as contraception failed me. The guy i was with didn’t want kids but I’m against abortions unless needed. I was medically healthy and at the time i had lots of support from my mum so I made the decision to keep. I managed to get a fairly good job that worked around my lifestyle and my mums hours and was coping great.

Then things slowly fell apart. My mum kept changing hours to the point i was unable to have a stable baby sitter for when i needed to work. The other grandparent works full time and so would be unable to help. So i regretfully had to resign from work to stay home.

Now a lot of people see to think people on benefits live great lives and have lots of money. No we don’t.

Bills still need paying. They rack up while your waiting for said benefits to go through. I already suffer anxiety and depression and this just really set me off. Ive only been on benefits for 1 year and a half but i can already see the difference in spending. When i first started i could spend 30 out of my 60 I get a week for minimum amount of food and the rest for bus fair for appointments or to get around as i had a child in a buggy. The rest went on bills and replacing things that seemed to keep breaking and my rapidly growing child (i got a further 70 from another benefit a week which wa used on the stuff i just mentioned) i never had extra one so Christmas was a far off dream and pretty much sucked. I never felt so bad as unable to get anything great for my kid other than a few small items or cheap stuff or had my mum help me with.

Over the course of my time on benefits I’ve ended up spending more on food weekly as food prices (often nearer to 60-70 a week now) or bus fair rises (3;50 to being 4 pounds). My benefits don’t. From before where i had no extra money to begin with I’m nowhving to try and rebudget.

Over the course of the year my laptop broke that i use to battle depression by writing and job searching. My phone has broken and at the moment I’m burrowing old models from my best friend. I own literally nothing. Yet these things are required to be able to function in everyday society. I cant use library much as it requires bus fair to get to each day if i wanted to go and. Can’t go in each day anyway with a child that refuses to stay still. My son is energetic and even at 3 doesn’t sleep through the night. Wakes up 5;30 each morning at the moment.

As it is I’m sat at home each day every day wondering how the fuck am. Going to adjust next week money to pay so so bill?! Im already spending nearly 15 on jut electric alone at the moment. 12 for tv license, 40 for water and 10 for gas and finally 20 for council tax. Take in what i earn above plus adding once a month I get 80 which. Use for my water bill and bus fair each month.

All this is before i even get to my actual tv packages which are basic and my phone contract to be able to keep on the net and contact with family members that all live outside of my county.

If I didn’t have my son right now i honestly would have given up on life. I’m just tired of just fuckng going hungry to make sure my kid if healthy and happy. My body has pretty much gone into survival mode where every bit of food i do eat is stored in me making me actually gain weight even though i eat like a mouse!

I’m fucking tired of government trying to make it worse by cutting back certain benefit and yet giving themselves wages that rival footballers.

My son i what keeps me going his cheeky smiles and love and innocence gives me life to keep on. My bet friend also deserves thanks as without her support despite her own struggles and buying me food every now and again i would not be driven to do certain projects or would of had complete meltdowns. Bless zach’s other grandma that helps us as well when she can an buy’s us food occasionally.

Don’t take those that help you for granted. Cherish those that offer a hand despite everything else.

[ministryofgamers]

The FIX - Bren

I’ve been doing YouTube for a LONG time now, well 8 years certainly sounds like a long time to me.. but eerily doesn’t feel like a long time. We’ve been through so many changes and trails, trying different things, making movies, TV shows, Interviews, Press events... you name it, as a content creator for the video game community I’ve made it. I’ve always wanted to be a successful youtuber when it came to video-games, these days that usually means you have to figure out a silly name and play lots of games and make a fool of yourself (and yeah i’ve done that too). A youtube star is someone that has millions of followers, uploads daily, sometimes twice daily, but I have none of those things... does that mean i’m not successful? I dont’ think so. I’ve conducted interviews with lead game designers, been to top tier invite only press functions, had 2 shows on UK TV for video games, a movie, and run an active community driven youtube channel that has a great gathering of awesome people. So why is it that I feel like I’ve failed somehow? is it because I didn’t find the right audience? is it because I didn’t get launched to super stardom for my time as a games journalist... would I even want that if it came knocking... i’m not even sure I would like it to be honest. It's strange, I've always felt like I’ve wanted to be successful in making video content, films, art, always wanted to entertain and make something that would make someone say “wow” and I have done that, but on a small scale.

Now on Youtube I see things are very different, attention spans are miniscule, kids are starting channels left right and centre, no knowledge of how to frame a good shot, how to use a decent microphone, no knowledge on how to make a proper video... vertical videos of cats being dicks, fail videos, pranks, challenges, all of that stuff to me is benine crap,  redundant. I feel the same about reality TV and how most formats prey on schadenfreude( german phrase meaning "to take pleasure in anothers missfortune") I find it nausiating that television, for the most part, has become so mundane, fuelled by adverts and les than average production values. I recently watched a shocking piece of output form the BBC where they seem to have forgotten that sound levels are important... as well as whitebalance and did the OP forget his tripod? Hand held is ok, but this chap looked like he'd had a bit too much rum in his coffee that morning.  

Anyway, back to Youtube. I'm a part of a few "small youtuber" groups on facebook, basically if you don't have 500,000 subs these days you are considered to be pretty small time. And in these groups I see thousands of the same posts everyday "yay i got 20 subs" or "how many views do i need before i can monetize." and the best one "sub for sub anyone?" honestly pretty much everyone on those groups that i've looked at (except one or two) literally have no fucking idea what they are doing and couldn't make a video if it meant saving their own life. Time and time again I see the same shit, constantly. It honestly makes me Wince at the thought that these kids are about to embark on the most dissapointing crusade of thier lives.  I started youtube in 2009 and it was a bloody good time to do so as there were pretty much no such thing as lets plays or video game shows etc... we had an amazing show, 4 presenters, heavily edited reviews, sketches, comedy! And best of all we were in with the big boys, interviewing people I never thought i'd ever get to meet!  "But Bren, why didn't you just keep going with that?" Well, thats a whole different story and i'll just sum it up by saying there were differences of opinion and it fell apart.

Starting GameGazmTV was very freeing... I had decided that I needed a platform where I didn't care too much about what content I put on it... I had boxed up my camera equipment and used a phone to film most of the stuff for it... we slapped half naked manga girls all over it with flames and rock music in the hope that we would offend someone enough to just come and look at the channel... even the name "GameGazm" was fucking ridiculous. It wasn't long before we started to slowly change everything. Removing the semi naked girls, and some "dead weight" and started to clean up the brand... but it didn't do anything really.. I started to slip back into the "everything must be good" routine, so started heavily editing videos again, making bigger productions, adding more visual effects to everything... graphical updates, weekly updates, started doing let's plays for more content, live streams... then by year 4 we changed the name fully to Ministry of Gamers in the hope of finally shedding the GameGazm crappy beginnings. And now I've suddenly realised... that I hate most of it... I look back at a lot of our content and pretty much 90% of it I could throw in the bin and no one would bat an eyelid. The content I love the most on our channel is 2 videos... Solstice and Top Gun. 2 videos that I think are actually really worth watching... the rest of them i'm not that bothered about... but solstice and top gun both took 6 weeks each to make... thats a lot of time... and then the most successful video on our channel is a video about a fucking controller that we shot in an hour because we thought "why not" I couldn't give a crap about that controller... but its the only video that i've spent the least amount of time on and its the most successfull thing ive ever made.... talk about a kick in the teeth... thats some way to really get yourself down.

Up until this point if you asked me is YouTube worth doing, should I start a channel? I would have said " yeah its really fun to do, and totally worth it." but ask me right now? i'd say "no... don't do it.. its really not worth the stress you'll put yourself through, its not worth seeing comments like "shut up and stop reviewing games you fat cunt." on a video that you spent DAYS writing, recording, editing.  Its not worth making any video that takes you longer than an hour to do, because honestly... your effort is the last thing youtube gives a crap about." Youtube does not care if you stayed up for a week straight slaving over an edit, making sure your colours are good, sound is balanced, Youtube doesn't care if you spent days crafting a CGI intro for your channel, making custom graphics, building a brand! It DOESN'T CARE... but make a controller video, slap it up, and youtube will give you £300 and a pat on the head..... great... just film your cat doing something retarded and you'll be a millionaire in no time. don't worry about talent... its not required here.

Basically youtube isn't the kind of platform I would like to be on. But not being on Youtube is like saying "I don't want to be on the biggest viewing platform available." throughout my video carrer I've only ever really been interested in making content about videogames. It's my passion so what else would I do? I have a couple of thoughts about other avenues I could explore. But if I really cared about them then I would have been doing it already. No I still care about making content for videogames but now its time to change the focus... change the direction because something has to change... i'm no longer going to use youtube as a platform to give content thats about something else.. i'm going to make it about ME and my team as people, its not a show anymore. I want it to document OUR struggle, OUR journey through a project, how we as people are focused on making entertainment. Youtube doesn't need another gaming channel, it needs to hear about how crushingly difficult it is to get anywhere with content creation, and thats where I want to be now. I'll be working on something I really care about, and i'll provide updates to that on youtube.

I can't keep going the way I have been, a constant viscious circle of dissapointment and failiure, over and over. I'm done trying to fill a gap that just doesn't need to be filled. There are other ways I can use my time and thats the most precious thing to all of us.. becasue there really isnt' that much of it.

Why have I written this? I guess to just put it all down somehwere other than my head.. the more I write at the moment the more I feel it leaving me.. literally like ive turned a tap on and the water was filthy and its slowly starting to clear up. My main point to all of this though was to fully understand why i'm so successful at failing, I make incredible work that never gets anywhere and no one really cares that much about, but its still MY work, and even if only one person sees it and is entertained by it, then to me, i've won. So in closing, I am a youtuber, and a fucking successful one.  And no one really knows it...... yet, and of course i'll never give up, I firmly believe I have something to offer a wide audience, i'm not quite sure what that is yet, but I feel like its my mission to figure it out, I owe it to myself to keep trying! and always give my best. Take pride in what you do, and if you believe in something enough, you will get it... after a long bitter road of absolute mental turmoil.... you'll get it.

Bren.