#need 2 put this on my neocities later..

[sneakyscarab]

hello! it's been a while since ive written out my thoughts about touhou! part of the reason why is that i've been working on a website of my own, which now hosts all my grimoire of nina entries with enhanced bonus features! plus a lot of other things on other pages but this is the relevant part to this post. i'm not sure whether i want to continue making tumblr versions of the posts now that i've set this up, but for now im gonna do both a tumblr edition and a neocities edition. with that out of the way lets get started on...

Touhou 1-5 PC98 Extravaganza!

after finishing the main series (and taking a probably needed break from bullet hells for a bit) I went back to the beginning and checked out the first wave of Touhou, the 5 PC98 games!

putting this up front, while i absolutely respect what these games did to kick off the series and get things going, i cant say i was very fond of them, so the overall tone of this writing is on the neutral to negative side. just something i feel i should note. with that said, let’s get started.

Touhou 1 - Highly Responsive to Prayers

Highly Responsive to Prayers is a weird game. contrary to what one would expect, the First Touhou Game is not a vertical scrolling shooter like others. HRtP is instead a sort of breakout/arkanoid type game, where you control a miko-shaped paddle named Reimu running back and forth bouncing a giant yin-yang orb that clears up tiles, beating a stage once you’ve cleared the screen. it does actually have whispers of the series’ future though, with turrets in levels that shoot bullets towards you, Reimu having a amulet-shooting ability (influence the orb's movement), screen-clearing bombs, and menacing boss fights.

you heard me right, this breakout clone has boss fights, and theyre kinda wild. every 5th stage is a boss, which have big hitboxes and shoot out tons of bullets and other attacks which you have to simultaneously avoid while also manipulating your orb in order to hit the boss (because only the orb does damage). After beating the first boss youre given a branching path between Makai or Hell, and either choice gives you 15 more stages for a total of 20.

overall HRtP is a very bizarre and not particularly great game, but its uniqueness makes it really stand out, and if you're in the market to play a weird breakout/bullet hell game for whatever reason you should try it out.

Touhou 2 - Story of Eastern Wonderland

now This is a Touhou game! released alongside HRtP at Comiket 52, Story of Eastern Wonderland is what i would say is the true first Touhou game, being a vertical scrolling shooter with 6 stages, fancy boss fights, and ridiculous characters.

right out of the gate SoEW shows off how wacky the PC98 era lore is, with the first stage containing not one but two military tanks as boss fights. the third stage's boss as well is a weird metallic wall with 5 "eyes" and innumerable laser cannons. its wild. as for gameplay, it's pretty much what you would consider Standard Touhou, although with some features missing that havent been invented yet, notably the movement-slowing Focus mechanic.

one interesting thing about this game is the colour choice: likely due to palette restrictions pretty much the entire game is a combo of red+purple, with the occasional blue+green sprites. even marisa is not immune, having bright red hair only in this game alongside a purple robe+hat.

its very surprising how close SoEW already is to the modern gameplay loop, although i guess it shouldnt be Too surprising considering scrolling shooters are like one of the first game genres ever made. its a pretty fun time, but also pretty rough around the edges.

Touhou 3 - Phantasmagoria of Dim. Dream

if you thought we would stablize into the regular style now that we've seen SoEW, you'd be off the mark. Phantasmagoria of Dim Dream is actually a VS game in the same style as the later PoFV and UDoALG titles! it was really surprising to me seeing just how much experimentation was going on with the series this early in its lifespan, but I suppose that happened a lot back then.

in terms of gameplay PoDD plays surprisingly similar to PoFV, with the same enemy combos, sending spells at each other through a charge meter, and summoning yourself as a boss fight on the other guy's screen as an ultimate move. it even has the same insane boss summon rebound mechanic and the same cheating bastard final boss ai!

one funny difference is that, since faeries hadnt yet been established as go-to mooks, the enemies during duels are a variety of random things. besides ghosts you just have star, moon, or heart shapes with ' ' and ^^ faces. theyre so abstract I kinda love it lol.

like SoEW its surprisingly functional for its age, although also like that game it still lacks features like focus, leaving it being unpolished in comparison to newer variations of this formula. unless youre a PC98 enthusiast id recommend playing PoFV or UDoALG instead, especially since the multiplayer on this one is local-only.

Touhou 4 - Lotus Land Story

now things are starting to standardize. Lotus Land Story is another vertical scrolling shooter and adds in a bunch of features not in SoEW that would go on to be series mainstays: focus, boss phases, boss item drops, and most notably having Marisa as a deuteragonist! if SoEW was a standard touhou missing some features, LLS is taking steps to a full on touhou game, missing just a few mechanics from EoSD, notably the spell card system and point-of-collection line.

LLS is also notable for a few other reasons, one being the character Yuuka who is one of the few PC98 characters to get remade in the windows games, and the other being the origin of the iconic song Bad Apple!! which got remixed by nomico and memed half to death.

Its pretty good, albeit still rough around the edges and missing the sort of spark thats found in later entries.

Touhou 5 - Mystic Square

Mystic Square is where we settle in, playing identical to LLS, which means theres not much to talk about. there are 2 more playable characters than LLS, with both Mima and Yuuka. Mystic Square also includes the 4th and final PC98 character to get remade later in the Windows canon, Alice Margatroid. besides the name and the blonde hair though theres pretty much nothing connecting the two Alices together. if you liked Lotus Land Story you'll probably like this too, i dunno.

alrighty with all those games out of the way its time to talk about the characters of note. and of course if theres one name thats synonymous with PC98 its...

Mima! appearing in four of the five games of this era, Mima is the most consistent character besides Reimu and Marisa, and yet she has never been seen since Mystic Square. this may be a hot take, but i think Mima is emblematic of a lot of the qualities of this era that make it hard to get into from a story perspective. for starters, Mima is incredibly inconsistent. She shows up 4 times and is basically a different character each time; being a random Hell boss in HRtP, a vengeful spirit bent on destroying all humanity (except Marisa i guess?) in SoEW, a woman of few words and a short temper in PoDD, and a snarky bully who tells blatant lies just to see how people react in MS. she also has a weird conceptual design and wack power scaling, being a ghost who was never alive, always been a ghost, who also for some reason has like dragon wings but only when she gets angry (Marisa also has these in PoDD which is really bizarre) and shes able to simply escape being magically sealed away as if she was cracking the seal on a pickle jar and casually beats up everyone in Mystic Square without even blinking. While i do like elements of her character (her lying bastard personality from MS is pretty funny and I see why people would want that back) i think its for the best that she stays in the PC98 era, the one seal she cannot break free of. If she were to come back, so much would have to be rewritten either of the world around her or Mima herself that she would basically be a different character entirely, which i think would cause way more drama than her return is worth.

moving on, lets talk about Genjii! this old fart is basically Reimu's grandpa who is also a magical flying turtle. since Reimu doesnt know how to fly in these games, her pops Genjii gives her a ride whenever she needs to go solve an incident. He also acts as a straight-man to Reimu's comedy in her storylines, often questioning the bizarre things that she says or weird noises she makes. he's just a funny turtle grandpa and i'm here for it. while Genjii has never officially appeared in a game in the Windows era, ZUN has stated that the reason is that he's just enjoying his retirement. Reimu can fly on her own now, so he's just resting in the pond out behind the shrine, doing whatever it is grandpa turtles do in their free time. good for him :>

the last character spotlight is for Meira! she's a cool samurai lady from stage 2 of SoEW who was also Reimu's gay awakening :P (for context, Meira and Reimu's pre-battle conversation is a bit where Meira claims to seek the Hakurei Maiden [for her power] but Reimu assumes that Meira's hitting on her. After clarifying that Meira wants to fight Reimu and take her power after winning, Reimu counter-offers by implying that she'll take Meira as her girlfriend if she wins.) this was almost certainly just intended as a joke, but considering that Touhou Project is basically a yuri wonderland its very funny to see gay implications in literally the second spoken conversation in the entire series. besides that, Meira also has cool attacks utilizing her sword where she makes huge slashes in the air that explode into bullets after a second, which were probably inspiration for Youmu's sick swordplay five games later.

and thats the PC98 era! with these games under my belt ive now played each whole-numbered entry in the series, woo~! so having played them all, what are my thoughts on the origins of Touhou?

i'll start by clarifying that i am generally not a 'Retro Gamer'. while i acknowledge the importance of early entries into series, they are very frequently rough, unpolished, or just straight up unfun because the devs are still working out the kinks on how they want the series to go. this is doubly so for games from this pre-2000s era, where game design in general was still a new concept and most games were working off arcade standards of high difficulty to steal quarters. early Touhou is not exempt from this, these games are missing a lot of features added later that make the games more fun, and the difficulty is much higher with a lot more 'bullshit' design like bullets that spawn on your character or a lack of proper resources given on respawn leading to a cycle of death.

all said, i cant say i really enjoyed my time with the PC98 titles. you may have noticed that i didn't mention 1cc runs so far in this article, and the reason for that is i couldnt find the motivation to keep trying for more runs like i did with the future games. mix that in with the bizarre, nonsensical, and often self-contradictory writing and you have a recipe for mediocrity. PoDD in particular is an absolute dearth of writing and worldbuilding. most character interactoins are like one sentence long, and the plot involves two scientists on a "Probability Space Hypervessel" who somehow invited in the characters from Gensokyo to the real world so that they could capture them and steal their magic for clout. In Marisa's route after she beats them up they give her a weapon as a reward which is a ICBM with a smiley face that Marisa names Mimi-chan and rides around instead of her broom. like its all so ridiculous you can just tell that these were like student projects done by a dude in his free time and not a serious attempt at making a world or story.

overall i just really have trouble finding passion for these titles compared to the later entries, to the point that i had to shove all 5 of these games into a single article and its about as much writing as Subterranean Animism alone. im sorry if youre a big PC98 and/or Mima enjoyer but theyre not for me, and i have to say im glad that Touhou moved on and evolved past this point.

thank you for reading, and i'll see you next time, whenever that is!

[petthebunfluff]

May i ask how you're learning coding for wepages? i wanna start learning it too but idk where TwT

heya anon! so, it's been almost two years since i've started my coding journey...

it's a really hard process, i must admit... i'm gonna say the most useless thing ever but it's what worked: practice!

details under the cut (trust me there's a lot)

TL DR; do whatever is fun and make sure to practice often!

i started by using sadgrl's layout builder and in 2-3 days my first iteration was born this monstrocity was rescued from archive.org and dates back to august of 2022 since i have this awful habit of not keeping all website versions archived on github

i spent so many hours tinkering with the layout,, i didn't knew what things did so stack overflow and coding servers were my best friends

a few of my 2023 layouts were just lost to time... ah well... and we land onto the first iteration of catboo i coded from the ground up + it's graphics update a few months later. these are from march and september, respectively

it was not the best, but i really loved them... also nope, no layouts got lost inbetween,, i just barely updated in those months

there was a christmas layout that got lost to time too, but it was mostly me putting xmas hats on all the graphics

aaaand there were a lot of months inbetween the next layout, catboo v2. i spent roughly 4 months coding and making the graphics for catboo v2

it takes time and patience, anon

this is all my personal experience! it might be different for you...

wanna try to make a site? i recommend using vscode with the live server extension, this way you can see your updates in real time

watch youtube videos, use templates, do whatever you want!! have fun!!

as for website host, i recommend either neocities (where i host) or nekoweb (by dimden)

have fun, anon! i wish you luck (and patience. you'll need it)

[twicecursedmonk]

Getting My Bearings

I’ve freed myself from work for long enough to actually write something. My aim right now is to define the scope of what I will be blogging about. I’m in the middle of transforming my online identity fully away from season 4*, which includes diversifying the platforms I’m active on. For reference to anyone interested in my online career, the plan is this

Twitter/Mastodon will be for shitposts, passing thoughts, and other ultra-short form content

Neocities will be more of a gallery experience of writings and other works that I believe are best representative of my overall creative vision.

Tumblr will be for medium length content that is temporally relevant. Descriptions and analysis of the things I am doing/making/consuming.

A painting I saw on Twitter, posted there without credit

More on tumblr: I don't plan on using this site often beyond using it to catalogue my thoughts. At this time I don't have any aims on community building here, and my blog will mostly function as a sort of behind the scenes view of the process of creating other projects that interest me more.

What other projects you ask? Here's a list!

How To Win Disco Elysium by becoming the baddest hustler to ever live (YouTube)

Untitled Video on the Pale and Innocentic system (YouTube)

The Unscrupulous Netizen's Guide to Modern Computing (Neocities)

Untitled Home Alone Rip Off Game (Platform TBD)

Untitled Naruto Rip Off Game (Platform TBD)

Music? (Soundcloud?)

For now, my goals are more based on creating a process I can stick to than any particular output, however I feel better with the projects I've selected for season 5 than previous seasons. In the past I have not been very good at getting things done. The problem I have identified is that it's very hard for me to try to do things. The solution I'm testing is doing without trying.

Notably, Twitch is not a platform I have any major plans for at this time. Twitch for me right now fits in the category of too time consuming without any real benefit. I may stream incidentally if I am already doing something that would work well as a stream, or if I have a specific idea, but it's not something I will be putting major amounts of effort in. I do need lots of Disco Elysium footage at this time, and I plan on streaming while I collect that, but beyond that I have no specific plans for the platform at this time.

Monetization/calls to action? None at this time. I may set up a Patreon at some point, however it doesn't seem important at this time. For now, just know that you can get in touch with me best on Discord. I made a new server recently too!

Feel free to join, you will need approval to get into the server, just let me know where you came from and I'll let you in. That's all for now

--End

*For reference

Season 1: Middle School. I was active on an unmoderated forum for a children’s book series that a bunch of 4chan/SA posters had colonized. Everyone hated me (deservedly). Later on, I switched from the book forum to the official SSOHPKC forums, which I believe also no longer exist. I’m very glad for that. Not many people, including myself, have record of season 1. Defined by the disgusting ignorance of youth

Season 2: High school - college. I was mostly active on Facebook and reddit. Sadly this cringe still exists. I have no plans on removing it however. Search for it if you'd like, my only request is that you let me know if you find it, and not ruin the search for others. Towards the end of season 2 I withdrew from most public forums. Defined by a paralyzing fear of rejection.

Season 3: Commie Zoombini. This is where I believe most people who may read this first became aware of me. Season 3 is when I became active on Twitch, Twitter, and Discord. I started streaming after watching Hasan for a while and thinking "yeah I could do this". Defined by a smug sense of supieriority

Season 4: Cursed Monk (Maine). I honestly have very little memory of this. Gave up on everything. Defined by the burden of expectation

Season 5: Cursed Monk (Texas). Last season sucked, but the name was good so I'm keeping it. Season 5 is the present. Defined by the unknown.

[gayvorestories]

Dinner Date

This story is a little different, no vore. I've just had this idea rattling in my head all week and I really need to write it down.

Also I'm still working on that neocities site to back all of this up. Work has been busy.

========

Keith took a quick bite of pizza before sprinkling cheese onto a new one and popping it into the oven. He finished the slice off as he started to roll out more dough for the next pizza. Roll it out, sauce it, toss on the toppings, move to the next one. The oven dinged and he took the pizza out and set it into the warmer. His belly gave a soft groan and he leaned against the counter. No more orders coming in. He opened the box back up and took out another slice. If a customer didn't pick up their pizza within an hour and a half, they were supposed to throw them away, but Keith couldn't bring himself to throw away perfectly good pizzas.

As he was putting the last bite of the final piece into his mouth, Keith saw Trent, their Saturday driver, walk in from the back.

"My next trip ready yet?" he shouted to the front. Keith pulled the two he had just finished and boxed them up. He tried hard to keep his eyes on Trent's face. Keith was almost certain Trent got his company polo two sizes too small on purpose, there was no way he would be able to fasten those buttons over his broad, handsome, muscular... Keith looked up and Trent was grinning a little funny at him, "you uh, got something on your face there."

Keith turned bright red and pushed the pizzas forward, wiping sauce off the corner of his mouth with his other hand. Trent smiled at him and he felt like he was going to die right there. "I was, uh, they never. Never picked it up."

Trent laughed a little, "hey, better than throwing them away." His expression changed and he started, "hey uh, I was wondering, if you're, you know, not working-"

The phone rang and Keith went straight to it. He took some details down on the pad and Trent checked the time. 'I'll be back later,' he mouthed to Keith as he opened the door. Keith held up his thumb in acknowledgement and finished taking the order. Four pepperoni, 2 garlic sticks, and a two liter of sprite in 45 minutes. Barely enough time, but he could make it.

He worked as quickly as possible, rolling out dough and tossing cheese, his belly sticking out slightly from having just eaten an entire pizza. Covered in flour, he closed the oven door with everything inside. 20 minutes, just enough time to get them cooked and boxed. He opened up a medium that had been there almost 2 hours now and put a piece in his mouth. His stomach let out a quiet grumble as he swallowed the first bite. "Hush, I'm sure there will be more before we close." He looked at the clock. Unlikely, this would probably be the last order of the night. He put another piece in his mouth and sighed.

Tossing the empty box to the side, he took the pizza and breadsticks out of the oven and boxed them up just in time for the phone to ring.

"Hey, is this the Rockford street location?"

"Yeah, did you want to place an order?"

"No, no, I just wanted to let you know some lady came in wanting pizzas. Mixed up the locations. We're over an hour away and she's not willing to drive out."

"Oh."

"Yeah, just wanted to let you know. Have a good night."

"Yeah, you too."

Keith hung up the phone and looked at the stack of food and soda. "Ah fuck, there's no way I can do all that." He took it all to the back, popped open a box of bread sticks, and bit off over half of it in a single bite. His stomach gave a hungry growl and he swallowed, giving it a pat. The breadsticks were soft and warm and fresh, and he dug in so fast he was surprised when his fingers hit the bottom of the box. He set the empty box to the side and replaced it with a pizza box, taking a fresh-from-the-oven slice out and nearly cramming the whole thing into his mouth at once.

The warm cheese coated his mouth and he let out a content sigh. It was so soft he practically swallowed it whole, quickly replacing it with another, and another. He picked up a fourth piece and walked up to the front to lock the door for the night. He finished the slice as he walked back into the kitchen and found Trent looking over the tower of boxes.

"What's uh... all these for?" he asked.

"Oh, a custom-URPH-customer made a big order to the wrong store and isn't gonna come get them." Keith picked up another slice and started eating.

"You gonna try to eat all of that yourself?" Trent asked, looking at Keith's belly that was starting to noticably push against his shirt.

Keith turned red. "I-uh. There's no way I c- I mean I could eat a lot of it, but you know, I uh, I couldn't even if I wanted to, not that I don't want to I like to think I'm, uh... no."

Trent gave him that smile again and leaned back against the wall. 'Don't look, don't-shit,' Keith said to himself, trying desprately not to look at Trent's pecs through the unbuttoned collar. "Gonna give up that easy?" Trent asked.

"W-what?"

"Nothin'. I just never doubted you could until you said you couldn't."

"Oh! Oh, yeah. Well, maybe. Usually I would spread out this many pizzas all night though."

Trent's eyes widened a little, "wait, you mean you've eaten this much in a night before?"

Keith could swear he saw Trent blush slightly. "Well, close to it, but it was from the start of my shift until the end so it's a little different."

"No fuckin way," Trent said, eyeing Keith's belly again.

"I.. could give it a shot?" Keith said, unsure about whether he could eat all that. Now he was sure Trent was blushing. He picked up another slice of pizza and bit off as much as he could, finishing it off fast. His fingers hit empty cardboard and he realized he must have been eating without realizing it while they were talking. He set the box with the empty box of breadsticks and when he turned around Trent had the box open and a piece in his hand.

"Here," he said in a quiet tone Keith hadn't heard before.

Keith reached forward with his mouth and caught a glimpse of Trent looking at him confused. "Oh, oh you meant you were handing me the.. I thought you meant... fuck I'm awkward."

"N-no, it's fine, here. I don't mind." His face was burning red as he put the slice to Keith's lips, and so was Keith's. He fed Keith the slice, and another, and another, and three more after that. Keith gave a little burp and rubbed his belly, "starting to feel tight in there." He leaned against the table and his bloated belly was very visible.

"You should lean back more, why don't you hop up on the table and lean on the wall?" Trent suggested.

"I'm 5'4" and absolutely stuffed with pizza right now, but otherwise I would."

Trent pushed the slice of pizza in his hand as far into Keith's mouth as he could, leaned down, and lifted Keith up. Keith's face went right into his pecs and he swore he felt his heart stop. He set Keith on the table, his eyes wide and his face redder than the sauce on the pizza. Trent gave the pizza in his still mouth a little push and Keith absentmindedly swallowed the slice whole.

Keith ate the last few slices from that box leaning against the back wall, his belly gradually filling up in front of him. Trent opened the box of breadsticks and started pushing them into Keith's mouth. Keith tried to lean forward, but leaned back when a warm finger pressed against his mouth accompanied by a gentle, "shhhhh, just lean back and eat." Something about the tone of the voice compelled him and he did as he was told and opened up for more. He closed his eyes and focused his full attention to eating.

The warm bread, the savory tastes, the way it felt when he swallowed another bite, he hardly noticed when Trent switched from breadsticks back to pizza, and when he opened his eyes again he was licking sauce from Trent's finger.

"Oh, fuck... did... did I eat all of it?" he groaned

"Not yet, you still have half a pizza left."

"Fuck... I feel like I'm gonna explode..." he said as he rubbed his round belly. His shirt was riding up around his bellybutton as his stomach let out stressed, uncomfortable groans.

Trent moved his hand close to his belly but stopped just before touching. "D-do you want me to-" he started, but was interrupted by Keith arching his back forward so his belly made full contact with Trent's palm. Keith closed his eyes and opened his mouth again.

The last few pieces went down easy while Trent massaged Keith's round, solid belly. "All done," Trent said in a soft voice as Keith's eyes opened.

Keith looked up at Trent and froze when he realized he's pushed his belly into Trent's hand and Trent had started rubbing his belly. He opened his mouth to say something but only let out a low burp. Trent gave him that smile again.

"Maybe you should come home with me, you don't look like you're in a good state to try and drive home yourself," Trent offered.

Keith swallowed hard. "I uh... I'd love to but, I don't know, I don't wanna... you know, mess up?"

"Mess up how?"

"Well, uh, I kinda, um. I'm not good with this stuff but-"

"You like me?"

Keith turned red, "Yeah."

Trent sighed, "Keith you idiot, I'm asking you to come back to my place to fuck."

Keith's eyes widened, "oh."

"So?"

Keith tried to push himself off the table, but his belly was stuck out like a beachball and he could barely move. "I would but.. I can har-URP-hardly move."

Trent put his arms behind Keith's back and under his legs and lifted him. "I've got you."

========

The drive to Trent's house was short, and he spent the entire time with one hand tracing little circles on Keith's belly. He carried Keith up the stairs to the apartment and got him up on his feet once they got inside, Keith's work shirt riding way up his belly to nearly where his stomach ballooned out from under his ribs.

Trent put an arm around Keith's shoulders and rubbed his belly with the free hand. He brushed his lips close to Keith's and whispered, "can I kiss you?"

"You can do anything you want," Keith said with a slight waver in his voice.

Trent's hand rubbed the underside of Keith's belly. "Anything?"

"Anything."

His fingers slipped tightly beneath Keith's skin and he grabbed Keith's cock gently. "Maybe I don't know what I want to do with you yet." He leaned in close to Keith's ear, "maybe I want to jerk you off while I feed you even more, maybe I want to fuck your brains out. Maybe I want to fuck your brains out while I see just how much that sexy little stomach can hold."

Keith's hand slid up Trent's tight shirt as he leaned his head back. "Maybe I want you to use me however you see fit."

Trent kissed him roughly, pushing his tounge past Keith's lips. He scooped him up into his arms again and carried him to the bedroom. He set Keith on the bed and pulled off his own shirt while Keith stared. He bounced his pecs and winked at him, "I catch you staring all the time. You wanna touch?" Keith lifted himself up and grabbed Trents pec as he bounced it, while Trent reached down with both hands and rubbed his belly.

Keith slowly licked between Trent's pecs, feeling the fuzzy hair run over his tongue. His left hand drifted to Trent's bicep and his right gently rubbed his dick through his jeans. Trent flexed for him and thrust into Keith's hand. Sucking on his nipple, Keith undid Trent's pants with one hand and pulled his jeans until they dropped to his knees. He slid his hand into Trent's boxers and gave his cock a gentle tug as Trent pulled Keith's lips to one of his flexed biceps, which Keith gave a slow lick.

Trent gave Keith a gentle push backwards onto the bed and practically pounced onto his belly. He licked the sides of Keith's belly slowly as he pulled Keith's pants and boxer briefs off. He explored the tight, stretched spot of the underside of his belly with his mouth and slowly worked his way up to Keith's bellybutton which had nearly been pushed flat. Trent kissed his belly when it gave loud groans and used both hands to massage the sides.

"Oh god, please..." Keith whispered.

"What do you want?" Trent asked.

"Fuck me."

Trent pulled out the lube and a condom from the nightstand. After wrapping up he leaned in and kissed Keith deeply while he rubbed himself down with lube.

"Ready?"

"P..push in," Keith said. A moment later he gripped Trent's back as he felt Trent push inside of him. "F-fuck, fuck me."

Trent pushed the rest of the way in slowly and then pulled back. He pushed in again slowly as Keith let out a soft moan. "Tell me if you need me to stop."

Keith grinned up at him, "Trent you idiot, I came back to your place to fuck."

Trent gave a hard thrust in response and Keith gripped his back while moaning and laughing at the same time. He started slow and built up as Keith held onto him tightly, his belly pressing into Trent. It didn't take long for Keith to cum, and Trent followed just after. Trent collapsed next to Keith and kissed him gently on the lips. Keith slid his back to Trent, who put his hand on Keith's belly and rubbed slowly.

[danishmiilk]

𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙣𝙚𝙤𝙨 - huang renjun. for @radiorenjun​ || love letters pt. 2

type: superhero!au, friends to lovers!au, enemies to lovers!au

warnings: swearing i think, not very well explained plot holes

synopsis: from personal experience, you can tell that fighting crime with two best friends who can fly and turn invisible respectively is way easier than having a crush on one of the aforementioned best friends. also one extra little complication: the vigilante imposter who calls himself a member of your organisation screwing shit up.

taglist: @lebrookestore @starlightsooyoungs @sweetlyjaem @allegxdly​ ; send an ask or a dm to be added to the taglist (for all of the fics, and that can be quite a lot so do keep that in mind.)

wc: 1.2k

“he’s on the move again,” donghyuck swipes his phone screen viciously with two fingers, zooming in, “what’s his deal?”

you hum, “i mean, he claims to be one of the neos, but he’s always giving us trouble with missions and such, you know? an impostor, i’d thought. calls himself r, doesn’t he?”

“yeah, so pretentious, isn’t it?”

sniffing, you roll your eyes, remembering the time this r had almost ruined your mission and let lee sooman go free to continue terrorising the citizens of neocity. he’d simply gotten in the way of you and donghyuck, even shooting you and injuring you in the leg, and it was only thanks to donghyuck that you’d even managed to get close enough to your shock gun to fire at the villain who was flying away.

so a long story short, you hated r with a burning passion for being annoying, hurting you, and then still daring to claim that he was a neo. one of you. heck, you still couldn’t run at 100% speed.

“where’s renjun, by the way?” only just realising that the third and final member of your mission team was missing, you shrugged at donghyuck, not having the answer to that either. “shouldn’t he have been back already? our mission ended, like, 5 hours ago.”

“nothing happened to him, did it?” you didn’t need to look in a mirror to know that your eyes were clouded with worry for your best friend. best friend that… ah, you’ve fancied for quite a long time now, pining in silence. not that anyone else knew, of course.

there’s the unmistakable sound of muddy shoes squelching along the sterile clean floors of HQ (you’d know, you’ve tracked mud in too many times to count, to the dismay of the cleaning lady. or man, as far as unofficial cleaning man lee taeyong was concerned.) you whip your head around so far it nearly cracks, then quickly dart out of the way to avoid the boy sliding across the floor clumsily.

donghyuck isn’t so lucky though, because renjun barrels straight into him, showering him with water droplets.

“why are you so wet?” donghyuck shoves him away in disgust, “nothing happened to you, did it? i just saw the news today and r capsized one of the neos’ ships at the harbour. no altercations, right?”

renjun shook some water out of his hair like a dog, then pushed his fringe out of his face, “no. i tried going after r earlier, which is why i’m back so late, but i fell into the river. so there.”

you cringe slightly, moving as far away from renjun as possible, “go and clean yourself up, what are you still waiting there for?”

“to kiss you,” renjun leans over, puckering his lips, before turning around and rushing off in raucous laughter.

“i hate him,” you muttered quietly, trying to hide your flustered expression from donghyuck.

“no, you like him,” donghyuck shrugs, like that’s a universally acknowledged fact, “what? it’s true. everyone knows you think he’s so handsome and fine and-”

“shut up!”

—a few days later

cradling your injured arm, you hissed, cursing out lee sooman with the worst curse words you knew in ten different languages and crawling behind a trashcan, hoping against hope that donghyuck and renjun would be able to take care of him. sure, you hated always being the one to get hurt, but it wasn’t like you could 1. fly or 2. turn invisible. the only power you had was healing, and it didn’t even work on yourself, so what was the point?

“i mean, as long as r doesn’t show up and ruin shit, they’ll be fine, won’t they?” you mumbled to yourself, taking cover behind a discarded barrel. there’s a sudden sound and you swear in your head, whipping around to point your gun at its source. it couldn’t be an enemy- your dominant hand was essentially useless until you got back to HQ and your other hand was nowhere near fantastic at shooting. 

“who’s there,” you call out unwisely, before cursing yourself even more, “are you a friend or a foe?”

there’s no reply, so you inch even closer, using the barrel as protection while you rounded the corner, only to be met with someone zipping up their full latex superhero (or supervillain, you couldn’t tell) uniform. 

and it was r.

the little fucker.

raising your gun, you aimed it right at him, but hesitated. didn’t it go against everything you stood for as superheroes to outrightly shoot someone without concrete evidence that they were a villain? all r had done was to spoil some of your equipment and ruin some missions, but he hadn’t actually killed anyone, had he? but in the split second it had taken for you to decide, he’d turned around to face you, suit fully zipped up now. revealing a very familiar face.

“huang renjun?”

“shit,” renjun’s eyes darted around frantically, fiddling with his hands like he didn’t know where to put them, “that’s not how i intended my crush to find out about my hidden identity as a vigilante.”

“your what now?” your brow furrowed. too many revelations in too short a time.

“that was also not how i intended my crush to find out about my crush on her,” he groans and pulls a hand across his face roughly, “right. i bet you want an explanation. so basically i know i’m classified as an impostor and repeat offender right now, and i think you hate me, but i just wanted to… garner some glory for myself as an individual superhero who’s super famous worldwide or- that sounds dumb, nevermind. but i was kind of clumsy so one dumb thing led to another and… yes! alsoiwaskindofwonderingifyou’dgivemeattention.”

blinking, you lowered your gun and stared at him hard, taking in a deep breath. renjun cringed away slightly, awaiting beration, but you just set the gun down with a thump and narrowed your eyes at him.

“huang renjun, did you just say you have a crush on me?”

“is that bad?”

“no- it’s- like, i like you too. so you didn’t have to sink ships to get my attention,” you smiled gently at him, conveniently ignoring donghyuck’s hopefully overdramatic cries of pain in the background.

“that’s- great. wow,” renjun grinned giddily, stating intelligently, “i never thought you’d say that.”

you laughed breathily, hoping your voice wasn’t going up by an octave, “well. so i have.”

donghyuck rips his newly healed hand out of your magical grasp and glowers at the new couple. “you’re telling me,” he growls, “that when i was getting my ass beat by lee sooman, the two of you were sucking face behind a wall? some friends you are.”

“we thought you were being overdramatic. the boy who cried wolf, you know?” renjun grinned at him, “but you’re fine now, right? sorry.”

the former walks out of the medical tent backwards, features still arranged in a frown that was meant to be intimidating, but all the effect was soon lost on you as he mumbled a small “congratulations” on his way out.

donghyuck would come around.

or you’d have to make him.

©danishmiilk, 2021.

[ewkytpmv]

ewk’s Guide to Windows 98 Retrocomputing

hello all, i’ve created this post to help people that are interested in using windows 9x in the current year (i’ll be focusing mainly on windows 98 here since i have the most experience with it). my goal is to build a community of people that share the same hobby of using 90s/early 00s computers and want to help bring back the old web in a small way by making personal homepages and communicating with each other via old chat services such as aim or msn messenger. so, without further ado, here is my guide.

step 1: finding a pc

the first thing you’re gonna need to do is find an old pc (obviously). start by checking craigslist. if you can’t find anything on there try checking your local thrift stores once or twice a week for a few months before looking on ebay because their prices suck. i’ve gotten old systems that would’ve gone for hundreds on ebay for as little as $8 at thrift stores.

look for a pc from around 1998 to 2000 (identifiable by a windows 98 sticker on laptops and prebuilt desktops), these will typically run pretty fast but any pc from 1996-2000 should work. if you find one at a thrift store be sure to check to make sure it works. try to check the bios for specs.

the minimum specs of a system i would buy for windows 98 would be a cpu with a speed of around 300mhz and 32mb ram (i would recommend a 350mhz cpu and 64mb ram or better). note that you can use a system with specs lower than the minimum i gave but it won’t be fast.

if you can’t find an old system locally and you don’t want to spend tons of money on ebay you can build your own windows 98 computer using old and new parts. i honestly have no experience with building old systems though so don’t ask me about it. lol

if the pc you’re buying is a laptop be sure it has pcmcia slots. they look like this:

this slot is required in order to install a wifi card. if your laptop doesn’t have this check to see if it has an ethernet port (not to be confused with a phone jack):

you will need either a pcmcia card slot or an ethernet port in order to connect to the internet.

desktop pcs are easy because they have pci slots that you can easily install an ethernet card into

be sure to find an network card that windows 9x supports. for desktops an easy find is a 3com etherlink tx card (drivers are here). and for laptops the linksys wpc54g is cheap and easy to find as well (drivers here).

step 2: installing windows

if your pc already came with windows you can skip this step but let’s say you built your own system or upgraded the hard drive and you need to do a fresh install. in this case the first thing to do would be to grab an install disk image which you can from winworld. serial numbers are also there. i picked windows 98 second edition for you because it’s better supported and more stable.

then burn the image to a blank cd and yada yada yada, i’m sure you know how to do this. (if you don’t, here’s a tutorial)

you can chose a “typical” installation or go with a “custom” installation to select what components to install. i personally check most of the boxes except accessibility options and webtv (which sounds cool but doesn’t work anymore iirc). put in the serial number, enter the date and time and you’re done installing windows.

step 3: installing drivers

assuming you need drivers for your system, driversguide has a large archive of drivers and i personally use it. to get the drivers onto the new pc without internet you can burn them to a cd as well. make sure to set the disc “for use in a cd/dvd player” when prompted by newer versions of windows. if your driver is a .inf file instead of a .exe just right-click it, select “install” and restart.

step 4: software and services

congratulations, you have a working 90s pc! but what do you do with it? here’s a list of software to improve your experience:

updates and tweaks

Windows 98SE Service Pack 3.61 - unofficial pack of microsoft hotfixes and system software, has been updated in 2018

KernelEx 4.5.2 - system tweak that allows you to run software designed for newer versions of windows

classic internet browsers

Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2 - the last good version of internet explorer. full installation package comes with additional software (other versions available on this page as well)

Netscape Communicator 4.5 - good version of netscape i use

modern internet browsers

K-Meleon 1.5.4 - the fastest modern browser for win9x around, sadly the last version supported by windows 98 was made in 2010

SeaMonkey 2.0.14 - slower than k-meleon but slightly newer and runs under kernelex

communication

AOL Instant Messenger 5.1 (via Phoenix server) - aim lives on unofficially thanks to iwarg’s replacement server

MSN Messenger 3.0 (via Escargot server) - you can also connect to msn messenger in a similar way to the aim server. i believe version 5 also works but it requires hex editing and i haven’t tested it yet.

mo-footer 0.9.6r - mo-footer is a twitter client written for win9x/win2k by japanese programmer blackwingcat. it hasn’t been updated since 2011 but still works for basic use. setup can be a bit of a hassle if you don’t know what you’re doing so use google translate on the page

NetMeeting 3.01 - similar to skype or later versions of msn but older and uses ip adresses (please note that your ip address is visible to your contacts when using this software)

mIRC 5.41 - popular irc client

multimedia

Media Player Classic 6.4.9.1 - last version of mpc for win98, requires directx 9 (included in the service pack i linked earlier) and ffdshow (ffdshow requires windows 98 and an x686 cpu or better)

RealProducer G2 6.1 - great for making very compressed audio and video files for your webpages

Winamp 2.5e - very cool and sexy audio player

plugins here (be sure to get the flac one)

imaging

IrfanView 4.30 - image viewer since windows 9x doesn’t come with one by default

Adobe Photoshop 5.5 - it’s photoshop, need i say more?

file sharing

RFtp 0.9.7.5 - very lightweight, portable ftp client 

WinMX 3.54b4 - p2p service similar to napster (be sure to run the patch in the install directory)

TinyUpload - not software but rather a file sharing site that supports files up to 50mb and loads in almost any browser

webpage stuff + good hosting sites

Arachnophilia 2.1 - good html editor, please read the very touching about section

Microsoft FrontPage Express 2.0.2 - microsoft’s own visual webpage editor.

GEOCITIES.WS - mirror of geocities that accepts new accounts. doesn’t use ssl so pages will load in old browsers.

Yahoo! Japan Geocities - the official japanese geocities is still up but you need to make an account which involves verifying a japanese captcha. microsoft character map is your friend. (registration page is here)

Tripod - an old webspace provider similar to geocities but still exists

AngelFire - another old webpage host owned by lycos just like tripod

Neocities - a very well done reincarnation of geocities. uses ssl so old browsers will not be able to load pages. pages will load in k-meleon but the “browse” and “activity” pages will load infinitely so be sure to stop loading the page (esc key) shortly after clicking the link

helpful links

ECSIS List of Software For Windows 95

DON'S WINDOWS 98SE SOFTWARE PICKS

Completely Free Software - hosts many pieces of software for windows 9x

WinWorldPC - archive of a bunch of old software and operating systems

that’s about it for now, i’ll be updating this post from time to time. please message me if you have any questions!

[booklust]

futurelit vol 3: starlit void

I knew for a fact that for volume 3, I had to cover a twitter bot. Come hang with me and starlit void for a while and see why---

The boom of Creative Writing Twitter is a natural extension of how we communicate today: quickly, constantly, concisely, urgently. But short doesn’t mean simple: following the ethos of writing (or subverting) formal verse poetry, the restraints of Twitter often produce the most creative content. Among them are many creative writing-oriented twitterbots. These clusters of code generate tweets following a certain linguistic--and sometimes also visual--structure a set amount of times per day. Some results are "better” (more beautiful, or more hilarious, or more surprising, or more mundane, or more....) than others, but it’s always enchanting to watch unfold. The dependable, structured presence of twitterbots--however unexpected the results---on our feeds makes them eventually feel like a friend---oddly human. One creative writing bot that stands out to me is starlit void’s quietscape--the bot pairs a colorful, randomly generated, geometric digital landscape picture with a short, fantastical suggestion/description. Each tweet creates an environment for thoughts to exist in, like a creative writing prompt. At least for me, it serves an essential meditative function within hectic internet space. I knew that my conversation with starlit void would be a rad discussion about writing and tech, but it bloomed into so much more: an oral history of bot world, seriously cool meditations on mental health, Soundcloud playlist suggestions, + more! Keeping with the futurelit tradition (and my own personal tradition), we avoided a phone call and did our chat over Twitter DMs this time:

what is your favorite environment to create in? (whether it's a certain physical space, listening to a certain kind of music/silence, etc.) 

i typically like to be well-caffeinated, alone or in a cafe, & excited about getting something working.... there's a thin line between excited & stressed about how something is going to turn out. i used to go to "game jams" until i discovered it was actually really stressful for me. i'm trying to be more relaxed about my creative output (this is easier said than done) & trying to avoid equating prolificness w/ human value. i think i do my best work when the intended audience is very selective, even 1 or 2 people, or just for myself. i also listen to what i call "robot music" a lot, for example this sort of mix.

----continue below----

tell me a little bit about how you came up with your bot 'quietscape' -- what were your inspirations for it? as i believe you had already guessed, @quietscape was first intended as a prompt bot, for getting some creative thoughts limbered up. at first the output was text only, which was easy to do using tracery (TRACERY PLUG: tracery by @galaxykate along w/ http://cheapbotsdonequick.com by @v21 are hands down the greatest twitterbot making tools around, lowering bar to entry for many many people into the complex world of botmakery). i think at first i did use a few of them as prompts, but quietscape was ultimately too bland & not interesting enough. i added the raytraced images as a proof-of-concept & it's remained almost unchanged ever since. quietscape is still a work in progress!!!!! of course after adding images i came up w/ a huge complex system of how this takes place on a mysterious earth-sized artifact orbiting a binary star system blah blah blah but i felt it was more important to synchronize tweets to my own daytime schedule. i found some code to roughly calculate sunlight intensity & sunrise/sunset times at roughly my latitude for a planet that's roughly earthlike & that was "good enough"! the schedule is also in line w/ some of my thoughts on bot tweeting volumes. i like that quietscape only tweets 5 times a day (dawn, afternoon, dusk, midnight, & a daily "shrine" tweet), which i think helps keep xem from getting too familiar or overstaying xyr welcome. i love procedural generation but our minds can feel out the recurring pattern of a bot very quickly, even if there are 50 bazillion possible combinations, which sounds good on paper but doesn't actually provide human quality variety in the output. my partial answer was to make a terse bot. as far as actual inspirations go: quietscape owes quite a lot to tsutomu nihei's architectural renderings, @katierosepipkin & @lorenschmidt's collaborative work, and @edclef & @davidkanaga's game _proteus_. the daily "shrine" tweets are thanks to @trapitolina's @obelisk_bot, which got me thinking about adding more of a physical location feel to quietscape.

what do you love most about coding as an art/writing form, and how did you get into it? i see generative & algorithm-assisted creativity as a vast & mostly untapped field, where the product isn't really the product, but a wild & nearly organic factory that can make lots of weird & surprising things. i think @katierosepipkin said it best in their interview: "Here, the cartographer draws the cliffs that contain a sea of one hundred thousand artworks. And then one searches for the most beautiful piece of coral inside of their waters." this resonates w/ me, especially this feedback loop of curated generation (generate a huge number of results & then pick out the best ones). of course that's hard to do when making a bot that supposedly exists independent of human interference. there are a lot of successful procedurally generated experiences out there & yet i think there is much to be learned about how we can work hand-in-hand w/ computers to make more human accessible works. @emshort explores this a whole bunch in her notes following the text of "the annals of the parrigues" (see page 81), "the state of the roads", & it's really eye-opening & exciting. on the other end of the spectrum, it's exciting to me that there are several wonderful tools available for picking up rule-based creativity & just making it. i would love to make tools that help people get started down the road of algorithmic creativity. i would love to see more voices using these techniques.

I can't help but notice that your 'quietscape' website is hosted on neocities---were you into geocities when you were younger? and if so, do you have any cool memories about it? (or about any other piece of the internet that's not around anymore that you're nostalgic for?)   sure!!! i had a geocities site & i'm still known to gawk in awe at mid-90s web aesthetics. but even more important than that, i think it's crucial we move away from centralized conglomerate based media platforms for our creative output. html remains a viable technology for sharing ideas & presenting them online, & to get started you just need to copy paste some nearly-human-readible code. returning to lists of url links & webrings & simple web crawlers as the means to discover other sites.... it's not democratic or equal in any sense, but in hindsight it seems better than entrusting your content to an algorithm w/ an intrinsic corporate bias. geocities was the era during which we were sure that the internet had come to free us all from ignorance & relying on centralized systems. 20 years later, 3 or 4 companies control almost everything you do online. the bleak cyberpunk corporate surveillance police state of the 80s is happening instead. i'd love to go back to those innocent days & work for a better distribution of technology. or breaking systems down, i don't know. relying on systems is killing us.

which projects are you currently working on, or would like to in the near future? the big theme of what it would be like to live in a weird endless megastructure has haunted me for about 15 years so i'll probably still find ways to explore that in future work. the two other forces that draw me kind of go hand in hand but they're also kind of opposite. i'd like to put more of myself in my work, & focus on some of the changes & revelations i've had over the past few years (gender, sexuality, identity in general). but also i'd like to address bigger issues, like stepping down & propping up marginalized voices.

post an image/images that feels like 'the future' to you (x) love mushbush's work & it feels out of time & futuristic in a playful way!