#lmao I've just been playing overwatch

[byanyan]

learning to play fps games on mnk when u've been a console player ur whole life is........ infuriating lmao

[jesterofcringe]

Rock on! [General Headcanons] Venture x Reader

ok so i dont know jack about overwatch lore but i was playing the game today and tried venture out and ended up falling in love with them so,,, here we are ───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ────

★They are sooooo strong from lugging around that heavy ass drill all day- like you'll seriously be minding your own business playing video games or making dinner and they just pick you up from behind like you weigh nothing.

★[could you imagine the bear hugs?? the strong arm cuddles?? omg-]

★You deadass start using rock puns because of them

"Movie night tonight?"

"Sure, let's rewatch Indiana Jones!"

"I could dig that-"

"..."

"..."

":D did you just-"

"LOOK AT WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO MY VOCABULARY-"

★They also have a ton of little injuries they somehow don't notice, so they'll yap to you about missions while you patch up their cuts.

[they insist that they're fine and don't need you to bandage them up but they do find it kinda nice when you kiss their bruises]

★You're also not the only person they yap to- they're a major yapper and general and sometimes will babble to their teammates about you.

"-They're so cool! I met them at the library because we were both looking in the history section and I saw they had a book about this artifact I've been seriously interested in so I said-"

"Hey Venture?"

"Yeah? :D"

"This is a stealth mission."

"Oh yeah-"

★There are rocks EVERYWHERE in your house, like literally on every surface you can name. You tried to get rid of some of them but Venture gave you a genuine reason for why they need every single one.

★*gets a triple kill* "HELL YEAH THAT ONE WAS FOR MY SPOUSE"

"You're married?"

"...Well not yet, I have to dig up the diamond first!"

★You also pack them lunch before they leave for work. It could be a straight up lunchable with a caprisun and they'd STILL be super excited.

[They also have an amazing immune system because they're the type to eat with their hands covered in dirt and soot lmao]

★They used to cut their hair themselves, but very quickly and very sloppily because they were always in a rush for whatever reason. You offered to help out once, and you've been doing it since. You're not a professional by any means, but it looks a little cleaner then when they would toss it into a pony tail, chop it off, and go about their day.

★They also ask you to watch over their pet rock while they go out sometimes, and you'll just send pictures of you out and about doing things with the rock.

★You guys play minecraft together too- obviously they're the miner and you do the building but they always dig straight down and it drives you crazy.

[There was fully a time they dug straight down and died in lava with a couple of diamonds in their inventory]

★They also do not keep up with update logs so they had no idea what the warden was and tried to fight it with nothing but a stone axe and an iron chestplate... they also kept going back and trying it again even though they clearly had no shot.

★I feel like they also have a really hard time settling down- like they're a massive caffeine addict and barely get any sleep from staying up all night on expeditions or doing research on new artifacts, but you figured out you could get them to sleep by asking them to lay with you for a little bit and just. Falling asleep on them. They're too polite to move you and actually find it really cute so they end up sitting there until they fall asleep themselves.

[lets-just-daydream]

I just saw that you answered my ask, oof, would you write something about Genji with an s/o from this universe, who talks about how they main Hanzo, and his reaction to that?? Maybe even some how they are able to show off their skills, lol. Thank you so much!! Like I said, I've been following you for forever, but this might be like, the second request I've ever sent you, I mostly lurk on your content.💖💖💖💖💖💖

LMAO OK

*

"You're into video games?" Genji asked, slack jawed.

"Mhm," you nodded proudly. "There's a video game based on Overwatch. Have you played it?"

Genji shook his head. "It would feel weird playing a game with all of my friends in it based on my life. Do you play it?"

"Like, everyday! I'm a Hanzo main and I rec-"

Genji stood up, shock and lock hurt on his face. "A HANZO MAIN? What's wrong with Genji?!"

You laughed at his outburst and grabbed his hand. "Nothing is wrong with Genji. I'm just not very good at him."

"I'd beg to differ," Genji said, kissing your neck.

You let out a breathy sigh before turning back to your computer. "Anyway, lemme show you some of this skill, right here."

Genji sat beside you once again and watched as the game loaded up. You queued up for a match and went into the hero gallery as you waited, clicking onto Genji.

"Oh," Genji started. "Don't do that."

"Aww, come on. Now that you're here in front of me I can see if they got your ass right."

"Excuse me?" Genji asked, bewildered.

"Yeah look," you said, turning your mouse around slowly and turning the Genji character around. "I think the real thing is better though."

Genji blushed and breathed a sigh of relief when you finally loaded into a match. He watched as you immediately selected Hanzo and waited around for the game to start.

Now that you had Genji sitting right in front of you, you were a little nervous. What if you sucked? What if he judged your gameplay?

"5

4

3

2

1"

The match started and Genji watched as you landed headshots left and right. An impressed scoff and a couple of impressed nods came from him as he watched. An choked sound came from him however when you headshot the enemy Genji who had just popped his ult.

"You killed me!"

"Sorry….." you said, not really meaning it.

The game ended and VICTORY flashed up on your screen. You turned back to Genji, beaming.

"How'd I do?" You asked.

Genji laughed before telling you, "I think you're a better Hanzo than Hanzo is."

[the-s1lly-corner]

What horror movies/films have you seen?

Do you write for creepypasta?

Also do you write for games (can't remember if you do) if so what games?

Rubs my hands

1. So far I've watched nearly all of the friday the 13th films save for Jason goes to hell and jason x, as well as the reboot. I've seen all the elm street films except the reboot. I've watched all of child's play except the show. I've seen the boy (first and second film), the first saw movie (though admittedly I'm not all that interested in the franchise), uuuuh... I've seen the 2017 IT movie but I'll need to rewatch it.. I've seen the first 2 halloween movies + the reboot trilogy from like... I think its 2018-2022? My years may be off... been meaning to watch the rob zombie versions but cotl hyperfixation has me in a chokehold rn LMAO... first 2 texas chainsaw massacre movies + the reboots with thomas Hewitt.. thinks.. if we're including all horror and not just slashers I've seen cabin in the woods, the mist, the (shitty) slenderman movie uuuuuuuuuuuuhhhh thinks... I think that's it? I don't watch a lot of movies tbh

2. I do write fir a handful of creepypastas! Its actually this blogs "default" fandom, dont plan on stopping my writing for it anytime soon! Always worth to ask which ones I write for and which ones I dont!

3. I write for some games, currently I write for: fran bow, little misfortune, and cult of the lamb! I've written for overwatch in the past but the interest has been tucked away for now until its revived.. oh also fnaf security breach!! I write for security breach currently!

[rationalisms]

Hi Alma, what are you up to these days? :)

hi!! absolutely nothing to be quite honest! it's cold and gross outside and i'm very tired lmao.

i'm spending most of my time these days playing various ttrpgs. my weekend group finished the cyberpunk red campaign (highly rec trying it, it's a gr8 system) and started a scum & villainy (sci-fi forged in the dark) game which is incredibly fun, i'm still in a d&d 5e group, and i just started a shadowrun 5e game that's really cool as well. plus, joined a new group with a friend of mine where we're gonna try a bunch of systems :^) we played a sentinels oneshot yesterday (superhero ttrpg with a really fun character creation system) and are gonna start bubblegumshoe soon (gumshoe is a mystery game and bubblegumshoe is specifically about teenage detectives which i love sm) so that's exciting.

i'm hoping to start GMing my own campaign soon which is based on greek myths (finagling together a powered by the apocalypse system for that) but scheduling is gonna be the issue with that one lol.

my friend is planning a halloween one-shot where we're gonna play dread (a game i've been wanting to play for aaaages and i'm so glad he agreed to use that as a system lol, basically instead of rolling dice you use a jenga tower to determine things) and it's gonna be a train mystery so i'm really hype for that!

i also finally remembered the name of the series of books i was obsessed with when i was like 11 (the bartimaeus sequence) so i'm re-reading those and feeling very nostalgic atm lmao

otherwise, uh, i have just been playing a frankly unacceptable amount of fortnite tbh. didn't have me getting into fortnite unironically on my 2023 bingo but It Is What It Is. tbh most of the fun comes from playing it with friends. it's kind of scratching the same itch for me o.g. overwatch used to except that fortnite is actually a good game lmfao

my friend and i also went to a cute bakery to get a rly nice cupcake today so that was nice :')

thank u for asking ur a sweetheart <3 i hope ur own life is going great and if ur in the northern hemisphere i hope the grody weather isn't getting to u too badly. pls do feel free to tell me what u have been up to as well. have a lovely rest of ur week!!

[keepmeinmind-01]

4, 11 and 13!

thank you for the ask :D

4/ a story idea you haven't written yet

I have some disparate ones that have been simmering close to the surface for a while. One is where Newt and Percival get married after Percival rejects Theseus, but Percival turns out to be abusive and Theseus eventually helps Newt escape. One is where Theseus has a nasty run-in on a mission that leaves him struggling with a severe eating disorder, and how that plays out with Newt and Leta, and the kinds of knock-on effects something like that can have. Finally, I am sort of keen to do something sexy for FB, maybe something with a wlw pairing. I have a few very vague ideas, but I just haven't felt in the mood for ages LMAO. So all of those are pretty much unwritten (other than 3 lines for the second one).

11/ a WIP you'd like to finish someday

My Thesival dog story!! I wrote 14k words of this in one day and then instantly got stuck, because whenever I go back to it, I just see this massive disjointed document of stream-of-consciousness scenes. But it's sweet and a little flirty and has proper hurt-comfort, so I need to get on it and finish it for this niche pairing LOL.

13/ a fandom you're thinking about writing for

Right now I'm so deep in Fantastic Beasts haha, but I sometimes think about going back to Overwatch. I also know that if I watched Killing Eve, I would definitely be all over writing fic for it, but I keep procrastinating because of what I've heard about the ending. And I also had a big Carmen Sandiego phase - maybe I'll do something with those one day. Hannibal, too, but all the fic writers for Hannibal are on steroids hahaah (in a good way).

thank you for asking!! :D

[tonberry-yoda]

It's okay to take a break whether you need it because of personal reasons, or school, or whatever really. I'm just glad to see you on the TL again.

Ah, that's good to hear!! I know the game had a really low point in recent years - I should know, I haven't played in 4 years, ehich is just insane how fast time flies by.

Ashe is so cool!! I love her story with Cass, and she's fun to play in game!

(Personally I play supp more, I've been really enjoying Moira since I picked the game back up. I'm going to have to build back up muscle memory if I want to continue playing Widow 😭)

Sigma's story is SO GOOD. I love him sm. I swear he looks like the meanest person on the planet, but he's such a sweetheart 🥲 It saddens me how Talon's just basically using him and his research for their own gain without him being aware of it.

Thank you <333 Yeah, I have been so busy. I have a great job and have been busy with school and writing my novels, so it's really hard to even think about fanfic anymore. It brought me so much joy when I needed it, but ever since I started going to university, the motivation isn't really there :( Needless to say, I still simp hardcore and would love to come back with a fic

And no yeah, overwatch isn't the greatest game ever. It was really fun for a while, but when I would play it to relax and just get all heated after a match, it wasn't fun lmao. Maybe I'll get back to it

AND OMFG COOL! Both Moira and Widow are so fun, I bet you killll it

And no, I am such a sucker for a crusty scientist story. I just really need like an in depth story for him. Like those mini movies they animate. That would be SO SICK

[euseokz]

brie imma need you to stay w/ me on this one. listen listen, nerdy reader. right right, and i mean like, gaming geek type nerdy with more “normie” sungchan. not that interested in games. stay with me on this part, normie sungchan who is stationed under your desk while you’re playing some comp game (i was playing overwatch while thinking of this) and every time you win a match, he’ll eat you out and throw in a little praise while kissing the inside of your thighs. :((( this was longer than i anticipated but I HAD TO GET IT OUT 💔💔

aaaaaah yup yup i actually love this thought yana !! i've been spending a lot of time on the sims (which isn't really a game you win at lmao) but thinking of him giving you some under the desk help is driving me insane 😵‍💫😵‍💫 he'd be so good at it too, so into it, like sungchan would almost make it his mission to let you know he thought you were doing good by making you cum as many times as possible . . he'd probably cum on his pants just from your moaning too 😮‍💨 oh god i'm unwell thank you yana for this 🫶🏻🫶🏻

[sorcerous-caress]

Didnt know you like FPS games also haha. I played Far Cry 3,4, and 5. i think Far Cry 3 is the best out of all of them.

CS was my childhood, i remember playing CS1.6 at LAN shops after school lmao. I played COD too. What FPS games do you play?

I'm a fake fps fan, imma admit it. Sorry for leading you on. I own the qaurtz kraken razer headset and egirl setup.

Currently I'm playing high on life! It's honestly very fun and all the different guns and their tricks are so cool.

I started with far cry 4 as my introduction, actually. I got in very late to the party of fps games. Then I moved on to borderlands and god it's a fucking experience by itself.

I did play cod and cs when I was a kid with my siblings but I never really had fun yk? It never truly clicked for me until far cry 4 years later.

I never thought fps could be fun! All I knew about them was the toxic cod lobbies I was forced to join for my siblings. And it got boring quickly, but god, since far cry, I've been finding out how fun and cool it feels to be a badass with a gun in a game.

Deep Rock Galactic, Doom, Half-life 2, Residents evil, fucking TINA'S WONDERLAND! i did hear good things about far cry 3 and far cry 5, I do want to try them eventually.

Gave overwatch a try back before ow 2 and it was eh, same with tf2. I prefer my toxicity to be served in MOBA, thank you. If I'm not the mid flaming jungler for never ganking my lane, then it's just not satisfying.

[allisonlol]

Teach me your ways of finding a boyfriend, I've been chronically single for my whole life and it's low key embarrassing when people ask me stuff and then they get all shocked when I tell them I never even held hands with a guy 👉👈

oh girl it’s fine i was the same way, he’s my first bf LOL

i didn’t do shit too, he just messaged me on insta one day asking to be friends 😭😭 we messaged and played overwatch together for like 3 months before we met up for the first time…nothing special LMAO

[protagonistheavy]

It's kind of blowing underneath everyone's radar among all of the other problems with regards to Overwatch 2......... but holy shit the Kiriko animated short is fucking terrible. Horrifically bad compared to the usual quality of these shorts, easily the worst directed one of the bunch. I left the video having learned less about Kiriko.

It's soooooo outlandish that I was genuinely cringing. It's not like the OW universe is gritty, but it's never felt so like a cartoon, so immature. Nothing about this short is actually original, it's just constantly wanting to be like other stuff. It hits so many generic checkpoints: protagonist walks in with her favorite trademark food, she bumps into Innocent Civilians which also conveniently lets her show off her Checkbox Diversity skill of knowing sign language, local not-yakuza gang walks in (complete with exaggerated walk cycle) and beats up old man only seconds later, protagonist interferes in the most edgy way... and then, by using her ultimate, she... turns the two civilians into killing machines? Wtf? And then this over the top mother-wailing of her mom crying "My baby is a super hero!!!!!!!!!!!!! ......... ooooooooo!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ............... !!!!!!!!!!!!! wahhhh!!" jesus christ why did it go on for so long. Nothing felt inspired here, everything felt like such a specific production, trying to be what other stuff has done before, and failing to make the character any more interesting.

Why was this animation so fucking cramped? The entire thing takes place in the world's most narrow apartment hallway and never, ever opens up. This makes the battle extremely unimpressive with no depth, it's just Kiriko disappearing and reappearing, kicking people around. And what's with the whole "I'm going to kick all of you in the face" thing? There's such terrible mood whiplash here, we're seeing innocent people get beat-up by organized criminals and be genuinely threatened... and then our hero appears and says "I'm gonna kick you all in the face" in a really dark voice? Wtf is this middle school shit?

Middle school is just totally how to describe Kiriko. She feels like a chuuni character but with zero irony or awareness, a weaboo's OC shamelessly made-up of influences from the anime theyre watching. And it outright ruins her design/makes it worse. My most hated aspect of her design was her dumbass headband, and you wanna know why she's wearing it? Why is such a prominent aspect of her appearance there? Oh it's because in THIS animated short, she randomly received it as a gift from the kid. Doesnt that just seem so awkward? It's so irrelevant and yet it's arguably the most defining characteristic of her visual design -- imagine if Roadhog got an animation and in the first ten seconds he sees a random mask at Goodwill and is like "hmm, cool" and then just starts wearing it forever.

God and the climax, when the old man gets shot. Again, another huge whiplash that just totally broke my neck -- everything is all goofy during the fight, then STOP! SOMEONE HAS BEEN SHOT! GUNS ARE REA-- oh don't worry, Kiriko has magic healing papers, so all tension is lost. EXCEPT IT'S NOT. YOU JUST PISSED OFF KIRIKO AND NOW SHE;s;psijfb SHE'S FUCKING GOING RAGE MODE. LSL:ASKNDS oh my GOD! How did they animate this with a straight face? I've seen role plays on Neopets be better about drama than this. And then with her ultimate ability, she whips up the two civilians into a murderous rage???? I'm supposed to think this is cool???? That Kiriko apparently has the power to make people explode into violence???

.......... AND THEN SHE DIDNT EVEN KICK ANYONE IN THE FACE? right??? I dont think she kicked ANYONE in the face, despite that being a huuuuge "joke" or whatever! Wtf is this disappointing set up? This whole short feels way more confident in itself than it should lmao, it really thinks its being hilarious.... Like when that gangster was like, "we're gangsters, son!" and then when he's lost he whimpers it again? Oh my god, this is just so juvenile.

What's her relation to Genji and Hanzo? What's her relation to ANYTHING happening in the Overwatch universe? What's the science behind her abilities? Where's her spirit fox?!?! Do we get any sort of glimpse into who Kiriko is besides a shounen anime protagonist vigilante that beats up nameless goons? No but 30% of this ten minute short is spent about fucking donuts.

I want to guess that maybe this was an extremely rushed product, because I just can't believe how poor in quality it is. The dialogue sucks, the cinematography sucks, the action sucks, the characters suck. There's nothing worth remembering here, nothing that pushes Overwatch lore or makes the OW world more interesting, just an immature showcase of the worst character added to OW yet. So completely uninspired.

[xmoonlitxdreamx]

How'd you get into overwatch ships? I saw you mention that you haven't played any ovw so it got me curious!

tbh i have no idea LMAO;; I've been drawing pokemon swsh ships for the past 2-ish years, then my sister mentioned something abt overwatch 2 back in December so I decided to look up the ow2 designs, drew junkrat, then abruptly fell head-first into drawing roadrat again fjndngndn;;; and then I guess my brain is just used to multishipping (I ship a ton of the gym leaders w each other in pokemon swsh for no discernable reason), so I ended up imagining a lot of random junkrat n roadhog pairings (??????). Idk I think my brain kinda just wanted a break from drawing pokemon fsr.

I actually used to be interested in Overwatch back in 2016~2017 when it first came out (I was in college at the time), which is when I watched some of the official animatics and read some of the comics (basically only the stuff w Junkrat and Roadhog). I also looked at/read a lot of roadrat art/comics then too so that's kinda when I got interested in Junkrat and Roadhog as characters. Ovw was like HUGE back then, like even if u didn't play most ppl knew the characters... feel like it wasn't particularly uncommon for ppl who didn't play to draw fan art/etc.

I think I gravitated toward Junkrat and Roadhog bc they reminded me of my OCs Lafayette and Dmitri (short character who gets into trouble + tall character who keeps them in line kinda thing). I think the way I draw them has changed since 2016, but yeah.... I think that was the true initial reason for why I started drawing them.

Anyway overall............ who knows. Idk what motivates my brain to draw, all this stuff kinda comes out of nowhere LMAO;;

[astrobstrd]

2022. GAME OF THE YEAR. OK?

Hey folks, season's greetings. Runner-up for most sentimental gamer 2021 here and I got a bug up my ass to write about video games. It's equal parts games that did and didn't release this year. Forgive me for any run-ons or excessive commas, this started as a piece on one game on the list and then became a top 10, then it spiraled out of control a tad as I forced myself to write more. Regardless, I'm happy with it and you can check it out under the read more. Happy holidays!

GUNDAM EVOLUTION

Gundam Evo is so goddamned weird. It’s a great game that I cannot recommend anyone jump into now. I really enjoy the core gameplay loop and what it does versus a game like Overwatch— the dash and boost system serve as a salve to the ever-present hero shooter roll-out problem and offer a little bit of movement unpredictability, the lack of clearly defined roles prevented the game from having a dichotomy of “hard” or “soft” tank and support units, and, generally, I found myself having more fun with it than I could recall having with OG Overwatch at the time. Every time I think about going back, however, I remember that it’s one of the clearest examples in recent memory of a publisher just not really giving a shit about its product.

The game sits at a sub-1k player count on Steam, with no way for people in certain regions of the world to even play the game, the console versions took a full two months after initial release to hit digital storefronts, and there’s no backfill system in any capacity. For a game to have such promise in a world where only one hero shooter really survived the late ‘10s burnout period, then to fizzle out so quickly… it’s just kind of a bummer. I would not be surprised if the game is shuttered by this time next year. Still, the time I spent with it felt immensely satisfying.

FORTNITE

Yeah. I fell in last year, (completely by coincidence, when they put the skanking emote in, if you can believe that, which you shouldn't,) and now that I can play Zero Build, my playtime's only gone up. I've also watched as the remaining capital G-I Games Industry folks I follow, who poked and laughed at the Tower Building Gaming For Children also fall into the exact same hole. So... lmao.

I think as you get older you do look for a few more opportunities to have a common activity that you nor your friends really pay a whole lot of attention to but use as a vehicle to shoot the shit. That's Fortnite. It's like getting drunk at a baseball game in the middle of the day for late millennials. It also has full patch cycles that are genuinely, unabashedly, very fun. We got dirtbikes and gravity hammers and fuckin Doom Slayer now man! It's great!

Oh, and to defend my honor just a little, I've spent a grand total of $14 on it. I caved to buy the Rasputin and Gangnam Style emote. What are you, the IRS? Leave me alone.

SONIC ROBO BLAST KART 2

...henceforth referred to as SRB2K because I'm not typing all of that out again, is not a live service game, and also a mod for Doom. It's (probably) the best Sonic kart racer ever made, and it's all built in a game that has nothing to do with the little blue freak. It feels fantastic to play, and it evokes the same feeling of fuzzy-warm coziness that I got from playing a lot of Skulltag one winter. I spent quite a lot of time in late January and February compiling user created SRB2K mods, hacking together soundpacks for existing characters, and screaming into a microphone as I careened through some of the best and worst maps I've ever played in a racing game.

DEAD BY DAYLIGHT

I pretend to hate this game and sometimes I do.

And now it's time for

Let's find out!

10) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge

Man, was this a fun surprise! I’ve never been the biggest turtles guy, but I am enough of one to have a favorite that I’ve picked almost entirely on the basis of color and weaponry. (It’s Don, for the record.) I am also enough of a fan of cooperative side-scrolling beat-em-ups that playing this whole game in a little under four hours with a group of friends was a complete blast. I have this weird hang up where I just can’t play these games solo. I think most beat-em-up devs also know that the real meat is in flying through them with a buddy or three or five. (After all, the only way I was ever going to finish Double Dragon: Neon, a game that I love but was definitely not the target market for, was playing it in co-op a year after its release.) That all being said, the fact that TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge allowed for six players at a time is as perfect as it is completely batshit and overwhelming. I’d routinely lose my place altogether as the genuinely fantastic backdrops and battle arenas turned into a flurry of blows and flying footclan bodies, and I simply did not mind.

While my time with it didn’t last long, I couldn’t help but admire the fact there was enough depth in the combos and strategic use of heavy moves, super attacks and thug-juggling technique to potentially make the game worth replaying. This is not even mentioning the genuinely fantastic sprite, level and sound design work. Fast, fun, and punching above its weight class as a title that was free day one on Game Pass, a fact of the gaming landscape that I constantly feel like we’re on the verge of having a reckoning with. Anyway!

9) Rumbleverse

I must preface this blurb with the fact that I have completely fallen off of Rumbleverse and I am genuinely sad I don’t have more to say about it. It’s been probably 3 months since I last fired into Grapital City, but the pull to go back amidst my neuroses and general malaise has been strong. It’s one of the few battle royale games where the insane love for its inspirations and the dedication poured into the game itself both shine right through. From the looser fighting game influence in its move priority and combo systems, to the completely unmistakable wrestling mark DNA, Rumbleverse is authentic and just plain fun. Compared to your bog-standard, shooty-bang-bang battle royale, the hype, guttural-noise-inducing moment ratio is off the fucking charts here, and that’s reason enough for me to include it.

By the way, every now and then I’ll hear people bemoan the fact that there are no melee-focused battle royale games. The fact that this game did not once and for all solve this quandry for people despite being the best implementation of that concept? It makes me want to scream.

8) Marvel Snap

Don’t look at me like that.

I really didn’t expect to like Marvel Snap. I’m not a comic book or superhero movie guy, but it’s amazing what being both free and available on Steam can do for you. Despite starting a little rough and having some growing pains in making decks that I actually wanted to use, the game of Snap itself is undeniably fun and incredibly easy to fall into. As of the time of writing this, I’m collection level 593 and I can no longer deny that I’m just playing it for giggles. This is the game that the certain-Blizzard-card-game-playing-me of 2017 wanted and just didn’t realize. Despite the whale bait in this very obviously mobile card game being clear and evident, and the fact that there is no way to assuredly get cards you want before level 500, I still somehow feel like this is the one online CCG I’ve seen that treats you with some modicum of respect... so long as you pace yourself and play in chunks. The quick nature of Snap, of course, isn’t really conducive to this, but you really just have to chalk that one up to terrible, awful, no-good, very bad mammalian reward responses.

I know the one thing that people just cannot shut up about is the game’s brevity, but it really is important to herald. As someone who’s played half-hour Hearthstone matches, it’s an undeniable factor in its continued popularity. After a particularly rough two days in late November where I kept snapping and kept playing despite losing six(!) ranks, I remembered an extremely salient realization I had while falling out of love with MOBAs a few years ago— if it sucks bad enough, you can leave. You can hit da bricks, so to speak, if you’re not making anyone else suffer as a result of it. If you’ve put a handful of your chips on black the last six spins and lost every time, it's okay to walk away from the goddamn table.

Latent gambling impulses aside, Snap is undeniably fantastic, and not even the only card game I’ve been playing this year.

7) Downfall: Slay The Spire

I’ve played a lot of Slay The Spire. It’s probably not even a fraction as much as the truly dedicated card gaming wizards that I’ll occasionally see screenshots from on the Community Hub, but damn, I love that game. Slay The Spire also came to me in a weird time; I was knee deep in my graveyard shift job at a gas station and spent my evenings, (7AM-11AM on any given day,) trying DESPERATELY to find a game that didn’t require too much of me but was still engaging enough to play between smoking pot, drinking, doing laundry, or all three. I bought the game on a whim, knowing only that it was a rogueli(k)(t)e and a card game, then fell ass over end into a Spire shaped hole.

Downfall: Slay The Spire is a lovingly crafted mod that pretty much just serves as an excuse to get me to play even more of this damn game. From the incredibly well-translated boss characters to the Hermit’s ability to pass as a character that Mega Crit would’ve made themselves, Downfall is fantastic. It could easily pass as an officially released expansion, and it's something I’ve already lauded over in the Steam Reviews for it

6) HYPER DEMON

This shit is bananas, man. I loved Devil Daggers so, so much, and despite still being squarely stuck 50 seconds away from the Devil Dagger, I swear I will get it before I shuffle off this mortal coil. And you’re gonna give me another lofty goal to strive for in a completely different game 6 years later? Fuck you m4tt. I love you m4tt.

I’ve played 3 ½ hours of HYPER DEMON so far. It was all in one sitting. I was amazed I didn’t forget to breathe during all of those 210 minutes. It’s the exact same all-consuming, focus demanding immersion that Devil Daggers ensnared me with in 2016. It’s Devil Daggers: Puzzle Fighter. It’s a cocktail of cosmic horror, Windows Media Player visualizer, Quake 3 montage over-editing, what I imagine the visual sensation of DMT looks like, and pure, unfettered skill-based FPS ecstasy. HYPER DEMON holds you to the sanding belt of its incomprehensible blazing-fast iridescent horrorscape and is unfeeling to whether you can handle it or not. I want more.

I need to play more. I will be playing more. I live to serve SORATH.

5) Super Mario 64 — B3313

I have never completed Super Mario 64. In fact, to my recollection, I never actually owned a copy of it despite having an N64 around the time of its release. I did, however, play an awful lot of this Super Mario 64 romhack in January. It has stuck with me ever since.

In second? grade I’d pass the controller at my best friend's house, as each of us desperately tried to clinch the red coin star in Lethal Lava Land or not tumble off Cool, Cool Mountain. In my teens I’d boot up an emulated copy through Project64 and try, to my behest, to play a game that paled in comparison to the breadth of experiences I’d already had with, at the time, recently released games. (Of course, when your high watermark is something like Garry’s Mod with workshop support or Just Cause 2, anything else feels like hoop and stick.) Even still, I appreciated what Mario 64 meant at both of these stages of my life, for one reason or another. Now, as an adult who claims to have a pretty good understanding of video gaming history, that respect has only deepened.

As a kid, I could recall broad strokes of the in-game world when I was away from the Mario Sanctioned Zone of my best friend’s house. The general layout of the first floor of Peach’s Castle, the first Bowser stage, the royal slide, as well as strange fragments of the hub world architecture scattered through my brainspace. In the days after a hang-out or sleepover, I’d devise ways to get around stages in my head, but SM64 never stuck in my craw for long amounts of time. Yet, I still had moments where it was forced back into my consciousness.

During a particularly shitty bout with the flu when I was about seven, my child brain conjured up visions of a castle that… sort of existed. In between retching up anything that wasn't saltines and soup, half-watched segments of Nickelodeon’s Games and Sports channel, and confronting the sickly taste of bile and lemon-lime Gatorade, I’d pass in and out of dreams, seeing feverish facsimiles of Mario 64. Strange floating voids that might’ve resembled a run-up to Bowser, Tick-Tock-Clocks that didn’t seem to match up with what was on the cartridge, and impossibly long hallways that bled into one another.

I had a passing knowledge of the “every copy of SM64 is personalized” “meme” before playing B3313, and saw increasingly convoluted icebergs and the Wario Apparition, (something that thankfully doesn’t show up in this romhack,) as laughably goofy addendums to already lame gaming creepypastas. The general idea of this hack, despite being fueled by this mix of amateur horror, is something still so genuinely fascinating to me. It's not even really the concept of a game with a “personalization AI,” but moreso the idea of imperfect memory. Things might be changing without any input from some spooky and malicious entity pulling the strings, you just can't remember what these places looked like. Those who are as equally fascinated with B3313 as I am use that term— “fever dream.” They use it liberally when talking about the general feel of the romhack, while also mentioning that at some point during their childhood, they would also have dreams about parts of Mario 64 that didn’t exist, or were slightly off. As one of those people, B3313 nails that exact feeling one-hundred percent.

Super Mario 64: B3313 is a fever dream come true. It’s a slurry of beta, demo-build and original content that bleeds into areas from the retail copy of Super Mario 64. Despite its brief, eyeroll-worthy, yet awkwardly fitting brushes with metatextual horror writing, (enter this cave if you want to see your deepest fears unfold!!!!!!!!!,) the main conceit of this strange, alternate-history beta-dump Mario romhack still hits like a guided missile to my brain. The seldom-played yet still familiar memories of Peach's Castle turn from a welcoming environment into an LSD: the Dream Emulator-esque maze of doors to entirely different castles, alternate versions of existing Mario worlds, densely foggy ominous hallways, and harshly inhuman architecture. It’s bizarre, surprisingly unsettling and manages to evoke a sense of familiar unfamiliarity.

B3313, Wet Dry World’s Negative Emotional Aura and the Personalized Copy concepts are at a bizarrely interesting confluence of childhood imagination, video game folklore, niche meme culture, and, most importantly to me, the impermanence of memory. It already feels like decades ago that we were telling people that, no, Nelson Mandela did not die in prison, the Berenstain bears’ surname was just being misremembered, and, uh, that Taco Bell never had “medium” sauce, but there’s something weirdly different about the foggy, self-aware recollection of sections from Peach’s Castle that never actually existed. There’s an unspoken understanding in YouTube comment sections and other circles versed with B3313 that none of this is, y’know, for real. It’s all gotten a bit tongue and cheek and suffocatingly ironic now, and while some would consider this a horrible breaching of kayfabe, I see it as a necessity to prevent B3313 and other experiences like it from becoming deeply lame, reminiscent of the early days of extremely self-serious YouTube ARGs.

There’s a seal that you break at some point if you came up playing video games. It’s the realization that everything in the game you’re currently playing is there on the disc. Emotion engines and curated experiences cannot magically conjure a completely unique experience specifically for you. With digital games, automatic updates, and the increasing capabilities of neural networks and AI, this becomes a harder point to make, but we’re not quite to the point where games can just generate new assets out of thin air. New content speeds through pipelines for still-alive service games, patch notes get nailed to the theoretical doors of your chosen Gaming Chapel, yet ghosts do not haunt hardware. There is no “personalization AI” present in a two-decade old N64 rom, and with how fast information travels and the fact that leaking video game news and secrets is basically a goddamned industry now, most games don’t get to keep their secrets for long, no matter how much I may want them to.

As you do with the childhood loss of innocence, you learn to eventually understand and cope with the feeling that games are not infinite dream machines made for you and you alone. However, you inevitably replace that malaise and disappointment with the fact that these collections of data and if-then statements still have so, so much to share with you. Experiences like B3313 come along from time to time to serve as a haunting reminder, though. This romhack is a transmission from a moderately different yet hauntingly similar reality that threatens to plunge you back into the depths of childlike mystique, wonder, and, funnily enough, horror, but with your current adult understanding and awareness. It’s equally as enticing as it is terrifying.

I know part of it is just getting older, not having enough space in your head for everything, and generally just "recording over" less important events in your life, but I've realized in the last few years that I don't remember parts of my childhood. I'm not talking year long spans or anything like that, but traumatic experiences that my brain has blotted out, or lengths of time that I just used to remember very succinctly. I don't think my childhood was any more or less extraordinary than anyone else's, probably on the "less" side of that spectrum, actually, but… it just feels weird. In finding old TV show uploads and reliving games from that time period, I feel like I've been trying to piece it back together or convince myself that I shouldn't. I think this romhack, in its own way, helped me cope with a little bit of that.

Playing B3313 is tasting honey lemon cough drops as I sweat into my childhood bedsheets, drifting in and out of tenuous sleep in my dark bedroom in the middle of the day. In its own weird way, it’s beautiful.

4) Hitman: World of Assassination

Thanks for sticking with me through that.

Up until recently, I always felt like an outsider when I said I was a fan of the Hitman games. I loved Blood Money when I was at the ripe old age of 10, and loved watching Tom Bowen’s “How Not To Play Hitman” series slightly more than actually playing it. I did end up finishing Blood Money, eventually moving onto Silent Assassin and, for some reason, Codename 47. I could not finish the first, nor stomach the latter, and it always made me feel like… a poser, I guess? They were pretty “hardcore” games at the time, known for stringent stealth and detection mechanics, and looking at forum posts and videos at the time it felt like I wasn’t getting The Full Experience by not being a bad enough dude to play them, let alone get Silent Assassin ranks. The World of Assassination trilogy has blown that locked door off the fucking hinges for me.

The three newest Hitman games are wonderful romps. As someone who’s been following Giant Bomb for a decade and loved their Hitman coverage and content, it feels like I’m just copying their homework here, but oh well. From throwing homing briefcases and walking around as a clown with a WA2000, to actually seeing the bald beauty's story wrap in the third chapter, Hitman asks you to take these games as seriously as you can. While you’re still definitely Agent 47, (nom de guerre, Tobias Rieper,) and still definitely going through an actually pretty good plot thrust in between garroting sociopathic billionaires, you are given carte blanche to steal so many clothes, chuck so many wrenches and empty as much lead into bystanders as possible with very little restriction. It's this distinction that I feel makes stuff like World of Assasination and, in my opinion, the Dead Rising series work. Comedy is often a hard thing to do in games, and I feel it's best left up to player expression and interpretation in most cases.

Whenever possible, I WILL go for alert-less stealth runs in any game where it's possible, and I killed hours meticulously reloading checkpoints, or missions wholesale, in the World Of Assassination trilogy back in February just to get Silent Assassin. But I also had plenty of moments where I had to break my own self-imposed restrictions to, for example, shoot Vanya Shah right in the back of her smug head and beat a quick, immediately exposed retreat as I let the exhausted sweatshop workers she rules over see her body careen two stories to the ground below her. This was a moment so satisfying that I am struggling to not reinstall the game right now and record a clip myself. (By the way, while Hitman has never been about killing people who don’t deserve it, WoA’s targets ride a hell of a line between being laughably sociopathic and ripped from the headlines of [what is hopefully not] the near future. I really do admire it.)

Hitman had some of my absolute favorite moments this year and, despite it pushing you strongly to a lot of those moments, they never felt unearned. I often yearn for the desire to feel like I truly was the brain genius who earned my moments, but Hitman helped lessen some of that stringency on myself while still allowing me to push my understanding of the game. From throwing Erich Soders’ replacement heart into the trash to whacking the Janus in a send-up to Blood Money’s A New Life, it’s some of the most satisfied I’ve ever been getting lead to water.

And, god, that fucking mission in Berlin? Insane. Insane. I know people talk up Dartmoor a lot and it does deserve it but… man.

3) Dicey Dungeons

In the midst of my summer-time seasonal depression, nothing was really working for me. I found myself pouring over what was on PC Game Pass, writing off games that seemed like too much of an undertaking after I’d completed a certain, lengthy RPG earlier in the season. Dicey Dungeons was a blip on my radar once upon a time, but had slipped through the cracks of my memory until I scrolled past it in my Xbox app, then inched my way back up to it.

I am both surprised and not that I spent SO much time playing Dicey Dungeons this year. As a man that will play any rogueli(k)(t)e you put in front of me at least to the completion of one successful run, it’s basic fuckin’ math. It’s the logical conclusion of just how rudimentary you can make a roguelike and have me still play it.

It’s also, by technicality, the third god damned card game on this list.

Dead simple— Dicey Dungeons is a game of rogueli(k)(t)e Yahtzee with RPG classes, inventory management, and an absolutely fantastic soundtrack that has me picking up my chiptune defending sword-and-board once again. The fate of your runs are, with some influence from the player, entirely up to literal dice rolls. I truly love just how much the game leans into being a stone-cold RNG fest, down to the fact that the entire thing takes place in a game(show) of fate hosted by an anthropomorphized Lady Luck. Its writing and enemy design is sickeningly, saccharine sweet and just a tiny skosh insufferable, but it never gets in the way of how rock solid and addictive the game itself is. So much so that I squeezed this damn game dry of content.

I’ve seen quite literally every piece of new content the game has to offer shy of the Halloween expansion, (it turns the game into a lethal puzzle thing, just not my cup of tea,) and I still had to stop writing this section of the list to go play a quick round. Played Robot in Parallel Universe with a decisive victory against Madison, in case you’re curious. And I cranked the volume in the boss fight for the first time since I turned it down to catch up on podcasts and video essays while whittling through the end-game hard modes. Lifeline goes completely insane as does the rest of the soundtrack. I was throwing ass in my kitchen making sandwiches listening to this months ago. This game just rules.

2) Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon

Of all the ‘guys’ I have claimed to not be in this GOTY list, I am, maybe least of them all, a turn-based RPG guy. I’ve tried, multiple times to breach them, and the best I can get is about halfway through most mainline Pokemon games before the tedium of Okay Now You Go battling gets to me. And yeah, I know, I just got done rattling on about two different card and dice-based roguelikes that are also turn based but… that’s different, y’know? I’m not just highlighting Firaga and watching an animation play out, I’m throwin’ dice and channeling lightning orbs and…

Look, it’s not important. What is important is I finished my first fucking Yakuza game this year. And it was the goddamn turn based RPG! Yakuza 7 is one of the most charming and enjoyable games I’ve played in my life! And it’s a turn based RPG!

That’s horrifying!

I don’t need to sing the praises of any of Ryu Ga Gotoku’s games. If you’re following me, you’re probably fully bought into the series or have heard people around you audibly get boners for Goro Majima and Kazuma Kiryu. In fact, I find it incredibly difficult to write anything new or provocative about this game that hasn’t already been said, but I just feel so strongly about it. It’s the insanely fun video-game-meets-real-life premise and immeasurably loveable cast of misfits that excel. It’s the heat moves. It’s Zhao. It’s the raw passion, genuine heartbreak, and joy of just being here that really got me. It’s Zhao again. Combine all that with an active battle system that satisfies the goopy goblin gamer brain’s need for near constant input and man? I’m set.

I know through cultural osmosis that Yakuza is a series about a few key things: compassion, loyalty, the bonds we share with others, and what loyalty really means. Yakuza 7 obviously has all of this in spades, but especially what it has to say about the lower/working class, anyone unfortunate enough to be homeless, sex workers, and those from impoverished backgrounds is so effortlessly excellent that it makes me excited to go back and play this series from the word go. I’ll miss the hell out of Ichiban and the shonen protagonist brand of fire-blooded vigor and bullheadedness he brought, but I’m excited to (…eventually) start anew.

1) Jabroni Brawl: Episode 3

Here we are. Finally. I’m not only writing something about a released version of Jaykin Bacon Jabroni Brawl, but I also genuinely feel it’s my game of the year. And now that we’ve arrived at this juncture I just keep thinking… what the hell do I even say about this game? I found something, but fuck, it took a while:

It must be said that I was raised in a triple parent household: I was brought up by my mother, father, and the Source engine. When I was 9 years old, I tuned into a mid day re-run of the now anicent television program The Screensavers that showed off version five of Garry’s Mod. At that point, I’d already played scattered chunks of the short, but enthralling Half-Life 2 demo we had on our family computer, (of course, the Icthyosaur jumpscare and being teleported to Ravenholm scared me right off,) but hadn't picked up the game. I begged my poor cash strapped father for a copy probably too many times, and after we both realized the pirated copy he nabbed wouldn’t be compatible, got a Half-Life 2 & Counter Strike: Source double pack for me as a birthday/Christmas gift.

I loved Garry’s Mod. I’ve got no clue how many hours I poured into version 9 before its subsequent release on Steam as an officially sanctioned mod, but let’s just say it was a lot. In December 2005 I joined the Facepunch forums, learned the difference between models and textures, corrected a lot of spelling mistakes, had my first bouts with navigating Windows folder directories, definitely made some crude sex poses, and found my first group of online friends shortly thereafter. I would eventually slowly slip away from regular patronage to Facepunch sometime in the early 2010s, but the impact it had on me as a youth is unquestionable. We can talk about whether it was a net good some other time though.

Before this gets too far into navel gazing and nostalgia, I’ll say that along the line I played a wonderful mod for Half-Life 1 called Half-Life 2: Jaykin Bacon Source that serves as the genesis for Jabroni Brawl. It’s a mess, but up until its Facepunch-branded revival and subsequent alpha/beta tests, it was the only thing I’d ever played like it. It’s full of ripped assets from other mods, purposefully goofy voice acting from its shithead (lovingly) teenage creator, and plenty of stuff taken from the then-recent Metal Gear Solid 3, a game I had also fallen in love with prior. It was dumb fun that I have forced multiple groups of friends at varying stages of my life to play and have a ludicrous amount of attachment to.

And Jabroni Brawl: Episode 3 is that, all over again, from the faithfully recreated weapons and impenetrable Facepunch callbacks, to the fact that this more or less ended up being a surprisingly official-feeling love letter to anyone who has ever made anything in either Source or Goldsrc. Jabroni Brawl knows what it is, and that’s all it is. It’s a deathmatch mod for and by the people still cherishing the rapidly atrophying muscular structure of a game engine that just won’t seem to die. It's for the people who want to get a group of people together on a Friday and throw friction grenades at/fart on each other. And that's all it needs to be to knock it out of the park.

Source and its modding scene still means a lot to people, myself included. For a lot of us weirdoes, it was a playground that evolved into a way to make friends, hone skills and even turn interests into hobbies and jobs.

But hey, this is getting KINDA GAY!!!!!!!!

Jabroni Brawl is frenetic FPS bullshit. It’s terminally stupid, rough around the edges, and unbelievably fun with the right people. Jabroni Brawl is gaming. It’s e-sports. It's, dare I say, hobby-grade. And it’s a complete goddamn miracle. I mean, fuck, this is probably the one project to start on Facepunch and actually see the light of day, right? Even seeing the Tales From The Galactopticon models in the customization menu made me feel positively ancient.

Here’s an in-game clip of a good friend killing himself in maybe the funniest way I’ve ever seen. Take care, and Feliz Navidad.

[asimmingpunsquared]

still feeling horrible - the zoloft withdrawal dizziness is actually getting worse instead of better (???) and now i'm having trouble taking a deep breath, which according to google actually has a scientific name but i can't remember. it's only been a week, so i still have to wait it out. i think i feel so bad because yesterday i was actually feeling better so i pushed myself to do more chores around the house and uh. i am feeling the repercussions. the repercussies, if you will.

literally the only thing i can do rn is play the sims. i bought the battlepass for overwatch this season before i knew i'd be changing my meds, so i might make my partner play for me so i can get my rewards lasgdksglksgs. anyway, sims. i've been particularly getting into decorating. i also found out what was causing my crashing when doing makeovers - i think, years ago, when my onedrive fucked up and reset some stuff in my game, the 4gb patch unapplied itself. shoutout to @sometownie for mentioning this in one of their gameplay posts. they mentioned that they weren't getting the pink soup that normally happens when you don't have the 4gb patch applied - i hadn't either, which is what inspired me to check. so like, psa if you're having unexplained crashes with no pink soup, check to make sure the 4gb patch hasn't mysteriously vanished. shoutout again to sometownie for inspiring me to actually decorate (and push outside of my comfort zone with decoration - which is like, the first two pages of whatever category, lmao). and shoutout to coolors.co, which i think i saw @gir-sims using, for generating inspiring color palettes so i don't just make all my sims houses decorated with various shades of brown, white and blue with yellow and pink throw in for some spice.

anyway i'm still able to work because i work from home mostly listening to audio and editing text, which also means i'm able to play the sims and edit pictures during work! i haven't been much in the mood to edit, mostly just play, but i'll try and get some editing done to get back to posting. gameplay-wise i'm in university of week 3 year 5 but i took a break to do some decorating around stilla.

[alo-piss-trancy]

What fandoms are you still enjoying? Anything you'd still be interested in writing in? I don't have any requests, nor do i want you to feel forced to write anything anytime soon, just thought it might be nice to ask 👀

Hi! Thank you, I appreciate the ask 💛 And about the not feeling forced to write thing, thank you. That's something I'm still trying to figure out myself too because I REALLY want to but I'm trying not to overdo it too early and burn out RIP 🤔 It's gonna be a balancing act while I hopefully get back in the groove. But I'm always happy to talk hcs or smth!

Tbh I don't have a lot of new stuff bc I honestly haven't been watching much tv lately (literally like 1 episode of Bob's Burgers at dinner most nights lol) so I'm behind on anime or my other shows are on break 🥲. And game-wise I still... am putting off most of my pile for daily ACNH or smth lol oops

I have been really enjoying Overwatch 2 lately though! Its lore seems to be barely held together by popsicle sticks and chewed gum lmao but it might be nice to write for something I don't have to worry much about details for. If they can't keep their own timelines consistent I can do whatever I want >;3€

Also I've been really vibing with IASIP suddenly. So maybe now that I shook off the rust with that random Dee fic I'll maybe finish my diaperplay draft from... oh man maybe 2 or 3 years ago? It was for one of the old omovembers lmao

Genshin Impact, has been a nice casual game and I literally haven't read any of the lore. I don't care about it, I just run around and do the little plots. It's Free Real Estate with my favourites ✨️

And FYI I'm still Obsessed with Danganronpa, that hasn't changed ahdkfk but unfortunately still without a device to finish playing them or reading the extra novels I unlocked... so if I write anything it will be trying to polish some of my old drafts rotting in my files 🙃

[celcstialls]

3-5 for the multimuse asks!

ASKS FOR PEOPLE WITH A MULTIMUSE OR MULTIPLE RP BLOGS

— ehe! TY Xue

3. Which muse(s) do you currently have most muse for? Sandrone. I hardly ever play "evil" characters- so she's just been super fun to explore. Also Kaveh, no thanks to Goose. 4. Name a muse you have written in the past. What was your favourite thing about this muse? One of my first-ever blogs was for Mei in overwatch! (As a matter of fact, I've noticed with a fair few of my mutuals that we used to follow each other with our OW blogs LMAO) I love Mei so much, she solidified my love of writing intelligent, soft women. I could easily pick her up again tbh 5. Name a muse you wish to write in the future. What’s your favourite thing about this muse? God too many. I wanna write Enjou for no reason in particular, Ayato to feed my friends. But-- even though she is in my request muses atm, I think the person I wanna write the most right now is Mona! I've been rping her on discord with some friends and she's just... I love her so much ehehe