#they also create trailers and graphics and shit

[inthelittlegenny]

fell across people being rude to noxcrew. that's hilarious but also fuck off

[k20spock]

Gecko’s list of free video games you should play right now

Hi I’m gecko I like video games and I like not paying 60 dollars for them so here’s a list of some free games I’ve unearthed and liked. Enjoy

(most of these are small, more obscure games made by a few people or even just one person, so support the creators if you can!! Some of these do have a pay what you want model)

Hikeback (Itch.io) 

You see a hitchhiker flagging you down during a long, lonely drive through the countryside. No matter how you choose to handle the situation, you end up back on that road. And then again. And again. And again, until you find a way to escape a loop of violence and self-sabotage. Hikeback is a visual novel inspired by the fable of the frog and the scorpion, and it takes about an hour to reach the ending. It’s available on Windows, Mac, Linux, and browser, and there’s a detailed list of content warnings on the game’s itch.io page. One of my strongest recommendations, Hikeback is an incredible experience, and it was made in only ten days!!

Purrgatory (Itch.io) (Steam)

Find ways to pass the time in an inexplicably cat-themed but otherwise pretty dull afterlife, and befriend its other inhabitants. Purrgatory can hit hard when it wants to, but it’s mostly a relaxed point and click game that takes about a few hours if you want the true ending (which you do). And also I really don’t like recommending things going “it’s rep!!” and not elaborating on what the thing is actually about, but Purrgatory does have a mostly explicitly LGBT+ cast and Korean characters by a Korean artist. It’s been a few years since I played Purrgatory, but I remember it was an incredible experience, and since then, even more people can play it because it’s been fully translated into Spanish and Simplified Chinese! It’s available on Windows and browser.

How Fish is Made (Itch.io) (Steam)

How Fish is Made includes incredible retro-style graphics, a sardine flopping around in a machine with a choice to make, a singing, cane-wielding, tophat-wearing, tongue-eating parasitic isopod, and a free expansion/trailer for the studio’s next game that’s like if Katamari Damacy was evil and also had fish in it. That’s the best I can do for a summary. How Fish is Made is available on Windows and takes about 30-45 minutes, but will itch your brain for much longer.

Stop Burying Me Alive, Beautiful (Itch.io)

A visual novel in which you are stuck between trying to convince your girlfriend you are not dead and she should stop burying you alive, and playing rat-themed card games with a woman you find living underground. The game doesn’t always do a great job walking the line between comedy and horror, but there’s some strong writing depicting a failing relationship and very strong artwork that makes this an easy recommendation. Stop Burying Me Alive, Beautiful is on Windows, Mac, Linux, and browser, and takes about half an hour. 

Caper in the Castro (Internet Archive)

Ok this one is pretty different, but fuck it, it was originally released for free in 1989 (with a recommendation to make a donation to charity instead) and is still free so I’m including it. Not enough people are aware that you can play the first known video game by and about gay people on your computer right now for free and it has that classic adventure game bullshit sometimes but it’s extremely playable and also funny as shit. Like it’s not just cool history it’s actually fun (sorry Gayblade). You play as a lesbian private detective named Tracker McDyke looking for your missing drag queen friend and you can get most of the doors in the game open by shooting them. People have made full walkthroughs for this game and how to get it working if you have trouble so there’s no excuse. Play Caper in the Castro.

Under a Star Called Sun (Itch.io)

A browser game made in Bitsy that’s extremely simple and only a few minutes long, but that’s all it needs to create a succinct, gut-wrenching depiction of grief. 

Hotel Infinity (Itch.io)

If you need more short Bitsy games you can play in your browser that are about death, you’re out of luck after this because I’ve only got the two. Hotel Infinity is more lighthearted, tasking you with checking in on your ghostly hotel guests, and helping one check out. It’s simple, but sweet and affecting. 

Water Womb World (Itch.io)

Back to marine life-themed horror. Water Womb World is about a man’s obsessive search for the Garden of Eden leading him to the bottom of the ocean. There’s a few brief moments of annoyance in the gameplay, but the atmosphere and visuals are fantastic. Fantastic enough I bought the shirt, because I like cool shirts. It's available for Mac and Windows, and takes about 15 minutes. 

Hyperhell (Itch.io) (Steam)

A rogue-like bullet hell with a hyperpop soundtrack. It’s a mess, but in a good way. A run can (allegedly, I am not very good at bullet hells and I wasn’t able to get all the way to the end) be under ten minutes, but the game is very replayable with its different characters, weapons, bosses, and DDR and fishing minigames. You might have heard of this one already because maia has a cameo in it, but it really is a fun, if slightly painful for your eyes, time. It’s available on Windows.

Magicafe HD (Itch.io)

Under a technicality, I haven’t played this one yet, but that’s because I played the original text-based version of this game and I didn’t know the dev had converted it to a full visual novel until right now when I went to recommend the original. I’m certain this version is even better! It’s a cute, simple visual novel about a girl trying to get to her job at a magical girl themed cafe, while dealing with the struggles of secretly also being an actual magical girl. Available on Windows, and lasts about half an hour. The original is available on browser here if you’re interested. 

Dedz0ne (Itch.io)

Ok, wrapping up on a weird one since this isn’t really a universal recommendation. Dedz0ne is a Yume Nikki/Splatoon fangame inspired by Dedf1sh’s backstory and the atmosphere of Octo Expansion in general. It came out before Side Order so it’s not accurate to it, but it’s a really neat game with great visuals and atmosphere. It’s available on Windows

And that’s it for now. There will probably be a sequel someday because I am unable to stop digging through free games. Or maybe a collection of not free but extremely cheap games (like under five bucks) I like. Who knows! I hope you found something that catches your eye here!

[thecultofmalcom]

So. Its out. This is obviously pretty awesome sauce (sorry not sorry jas) and like.

wow.

so it started, middle/late 2011, almost 12 years ago. Some silly little university kids making a stupid horror puppet show. Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling, creating Dont Hug Me Im Scared. What a way to start of the 2010s huh.

After a series of short videos, created for the Kickstarter, the sequel was created. Tony The Talking Clock was he spectacle of 2014 tumblr, eventually winning the most coveted title a fictional outcast could probably get, ‘Tumblr Sexyman.’ The fandom at this time was WILD, with the whole IceHell genre and the ‘Paige x Tony’ fanatics. Not to mention that kids react video.

At this same year, my personal skrunkle scrimblo came around. The Love Cult was introduced by the ringleader Shrignold, worshipping a stone who they fed gravel. Nobody knows why or how the living FUCK they managed to start a cult like this, but here we go. This was the first time the gang was seen outside, and this circled around Yellow Guy (whos a pig??)

Along comes 2015, introducing the absolute LEGEND, COLIN. THE. COMPUTER. Legend in the making, stupid self absorbed fucktwat, and the computery guy!! Also, the outro was a bop. By now, the DHMIS community had grown a fanbase, the watch count of the series so far over 3 Million!!1!

AND NOW. THIS IS WHEN SHIT GETS REAL!!

dhmis five. the talking point of every internet kids trauma. This episode was about being helfy!,2 Joined by the silly goofy Healthy Band, duck guy and yellow (red guy, whered he go?) learned all about why you shouldnt eat food from a strangers plate!! What made DHMIS special was its unsettling gore, which was shown perfectly in the scene where duck gets his. organs took out! graphically! Awesome!

then the finale came. dhmis 6, 2016, 6. years ago now. 6 whole years. introducing the harsh reality of the real world, the absoloute CHAD which we call Larry, Lars, Larson, Lamp Guy, THE LAMP1!11 Teaching (drunk, on drugs, sleep deprived, who knows?) yellow guy all about the wonderful dreams you can have, including eating a drink, buying a hat, losing your friends and drowning in oil of course! This episode was what made this whole puppet show a real nightmare. skrunkle yellow guy gets (unfortunately) mind-tortured by all the teachers, including the saxaphone. still really wanna know how to buy a canoe. At the end, we finally found out who was the brains behind all of this, none other than yellow guys DAD himself, ROY. This is why, perhaps, this whole fever dream nightmare was based around June 19th Fathers day. This is what, we all though, the end was. 5 years of youtube wonder, Becky Joe and Baker created a phenomenon that shocked the internet in perhaps a million different ways. But the positive feedback was overwhelming, woohoo!

By now, the improvement was MASSIVE. as shown below :

And now. This is when we all thought it was over. Until 2 years later, in 2018, all hope was lost. Until those 2 words,

WAKEY WAKEY!!

this was a 30 second short trailer for the DHMIS Pilot, showing at the 2019 Sundance film festival!

This is where it gets a bit weird, because not only is the original Wakey Wakey deleted, the full thing was never shown anywhere else. the only surviving footage of this was the bad quality pirated videos , with those 2 girls laughing thunderously in the background. A new sexyman, MEAN STEVE (🤤, sorry not sorry) WAS INTRODUCED! WE ALL WANNA SEE HIM IN HIS FULL METAL STICK GLORY! But nah we didnt get that. We didnt get a show, which we all because suspicious of.

well. thats what we thought.

2020. the year of the corona. no hope, isolation. until a lovely woman named Becky Sloan posted a lil thing on her instagram. ‘Were making a tv shooowwww! 📺👀📺👀📺👀📺👀’ AND THIS IS WHERE IT GOT WILDER AWESOMER EPICER!!! WE WAITED AND WE WAITED AND WE FINALLY GOT SOME CONFIRMATION! THIS WAS AWESOME! it got picked up by a charity project by the name of BFI YAC,, hoping to pick up on small industries work! AND IT DID!

time went by, still no show. we all thought it was over, cancelled, whatever.

2021 ROLLS PAST.

FILMING WAS WRAPPED! IN THE TIME WE WERE ALL GRIEVING AT THE THOUGHTS OF NO TV SHOW, THEY WERE WORKING ON IT THE WHOLE TIMEEE!!

‘WAKEY WAKEY’ as the fandom called it at the time, was coming!

now we wait. until FEB 25 2022. They finished the final sound recording. It was all done, we were all waiting for that special day, June 19th

, Fathers day. , 3 months ago.

and what did we get?

FLY.

THE TRAILER FOR THE NEW SHOW, PREMIERING CHANNEL 4 IN SEPTEMBER!! OH !EM GEE!

Now, we were all anticipating for the new series, we waited EXTREMELY PATIENTLY for this, 4-5 years no less. Honestly we shoulda won an award for the most patient fandom at this point.

SEPTEMBER 2022!

WE GOTTA GET THINGS READY FOR THS BIG DAY! BIG DAY! THE TRAILER WAS OUT! COMING SEPTEMBER 13TH!

but then, disaster struck! ohh no!

HRH Queen Elizabeth fell ill and kicked the bucket. Obviously , this meant not only is the country in ruins now lol! (fuck liz truss basically) But the show (we thought) was in jeopardy! (not really) The 10 days of mourning began, and the All 4 Website announced that the show would be slightly delayed, but coming this month.

THIS MONTH! NOW! FRIDAY 23RD, 2022. THE BIG DAY HAS ARRIVED! 6 SHINING BRAND NEW EPISODES, PREPARED FOR THE BIG TV DEBUT FRIDAY 30TH SEPTEMBER!

THE IMPROVEMENT, BY NOW WAS STUNNING AWESOME EPIC!! LOOKLOOKLOOK!

this new series, which is 1 day old!! fresh new awesome! is AMAZING! 3 WHOLE HOURS FULL OF OUR FAVE TRAFFIC LIGHT TRIO!

(Yes. we know, you still find red guy sexy.)

(AND COLIN. AND THE LAMP. AND A BIT OF TONY TOO!)

JUST THREE OF THEM! CLAYHILL HAD, UNFORTUNATELY, SHRIVELLED UP OR SOMETHING! (I RECKON)

this was obviously a sign that Wakey Wakey is now Lost Media. But we got this! all thanks to that one silly dumb stupid epic 3 minute long short on youtube, made by 2 people, in their free time, DONT HUG ME IM SCARED!

This post is basically, appreciation for Becky Joe and Baker, and the fandom, and everyone who helped in the making of this phenomenon!

Along the way, we’ve encountered our askblogs, most notably @sketchbook-and-tony-adventures !! And the awesome, probably most noted artists of DHMIS tumblr, the epic awesome amazing @amii-stuff @frootrollup? whats the username again? @hecklefreckled & @bernold ! Obviously more as well but i honestly dont remember the usernames :/ And our epic news sharer @creative-time !! Thanks you guys! And some awesome others, like @creechurfoundincheckerboardvoid @dhmispaint and the bezzie mate @xzumichannn !! Woohoo! Thank you guys so much, without this crazy massive fandom, we probably wouldnt have even got this far, crazy right!

So far, the best moments of this 2011-2022 era for me have been

- ‘Where are all you nasty clockfuckers! did you finally fuck that clock?’

- Sketch has a small face

- LisWeegee Adventures In Lurning dubs

- Whoever the heck that spanish dhmis gacha person is!

- That one ‘No bitches’ meme with shrignold :

- My amazing askblog i could never be bothered to do!

- Whoever that tiktok guy is

- “FREELANCERS DESERVE TO DIE!”

- Money Man. Deserves to be a sexyman fr!

- “BYE GUYS! I LOVE YOU!”

- Hearing the first few seconds of the first episode intro. those bells man. something, a feeling im never gonna feel again. ever. something i could experience only once.

The only bad thing. LAMPS SOBERED UP?? WHERED THE DRUGGIE INSOMNIAC VOICE GO?

Anyways. I love yall your all awesome, were finally trending on tumblr again, and we all have worms in our brain!

What have we got to look forward to now?

- DELTARUNE NEW CHAPTERS, 2023? The finale will probably be ready for 2027…

thats literally it. sorry. Hazbin Hotels coming to tv? i guess? lol.

this is obviously a national highlight of 2022 🥱 well no. Its internationally an internet milestone. duh!

LONG LIVE DHMIS!!

[simfestation]

Bus Driver: Legacy of One. Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bugs.

Chapter 2: Part 12: Some shit happened

A conclusion to this god-awful chapter. I'm not gonna tag this.

I'm not sure if it's that deep when it's the sims, but heads up on details of the consequences of playing fast-and-loose with MCCC pregnancy and relationship settings. Also, murder - but that's going to be a central theme. < - >

Some painting smut was made, a dog version of one my real-life dogs was created... then soon deleted. Sims4 dogs are really upsetting and I can't deal with them whimpering. Bus aged into an elder for the first time and - fuck that. So back to Young Adult it was.

Pile Driver grew into a teen, Yoda NotPorky grew into an adult and triplet girls were born: Graphics Driver, Drunk Driver and Uber Driver I believe.

Soon - like within a day or two - of Yoda aging up, Snips was pregnant. Yoda was the father.

I'd messed with MCCC settings in ways I thought would induce the most chaos, but didn't really consider the outcome.

So anyway, despite being a video game that doesn't real - it felt like simulating something REALLY FUCKED UP. SO i originally moved Snips, Yoda and their crime into a trailer in strangerville. But within a couple of hours couldn't handle it, so I found some new mods.

They somehow already had 3 cats and no litter trays. I adopted the cats out, sent the child to live with some random family and then Bus murdered Snips and Porky.

Then it was time to pack up and move. I'm not really sure what happened to the other kids - they're definitely still in existence because Drunk only died recently. I must have sent them somewhere to live. Pile Driver came with, he was innocent in this.

[talenlee]

Story Pile: Nobody

Y’know how Knives Out is one of those movies that I was concerned about discussing because I knew I was going to be repeating boring details rather than focusing on the movie’s message? That I was contributing to a noise complex because I loved it and I wanted to be able to love it in all angles and share that love for it and hopefully encourage you to love it too? Nobody is a movie in that same genre, but in this case the actual plot, sure, whatever, you’ve seen this, you know the kind of movie it is. It’s a physical stunt based action movie about a Dangerous Man Pushed Too Far. You don’t need spoilers for this, that’s how the movie’s trailer presents it.

And for a movie about physicality in stunts, its physicality is amazing. You can see best-of scenes on youtube, of moments of an entire movie’s worth of holy shit combat scenarios, and they’re the kind of scenarios where you’re meant to regard the world as full of physical objects that are by default stronger than a human’s body, more dangerous to a human than a human is to it. For a surprising number of desks and people using them, you are not tougher than your desk in a straight up fight. That means that when Nobody wants to represent a person engaging in violence with another person, the world around them matters in a wholly material way.

And that makes me think about how easy it is to make a movie like this. Or isn’t.

It’s easy to make these kinds of movies, and I mean it because there’s no end of people who have made an industry out of all the things that go into these movies. The fact that every gun that exists has a meaningful but legally distinct ripoff mass produced enough that you can get safety rated lightweight metal boxes for repeated action sequences with realistic moving parts, produced at scale. They have to be easily produced, you don’t get a cultural phenomenon like the Cannon Group mash-up sequel factory if these movies are too hard to complete. The difficulty does not come in the doing but rather in the how of the doing.

To summarise: The floor for getting a movie like this made at all is very low. The ceiling for how good a job you can do making them is stratospheric. One of the ways you can represent ‘looking good’ in this genre is about doing things that look extremely dangerous, within acceptable standards of danger, and that tends to be the specific, repeatable craft of physical human stunt work.

Computer graphics can do a lot, and I think, based on what I can observe, there are things computer graphics can improve or enhance — like vehicles, backgrounds, removing supports and struts, they can make a fight scene look a lot better. There’s this fight scene that guys like me (and it is, mostly, guys) talk about in these movies, from a movie called Old Boy. The fight scene is a long take with no visible cuts or edits, with minimal props, set in a narrow hallway, with the camera showing the world from ‘inside’ one of the walls, slowly panning along a detailed, multi-stage fight. It is an incredibly well done form of what it is, and it’s using a lot of the tools available to action movie scenes. As an example, the goons in the fight are armed mostly with long sticks, to create vertical spaces, so you can track the action.

It’s great! It looks cool! It’s also got computer graphics in it.

You can ask a lot of nerds about this fight and ask, hey, where did the director use computer graphics to enhance this shot, and a lot of us will say something to the effect of ‘they didn’t, did they?’ which isn’t true. When Oh Dae-su is stabbed in the back? That knife is entirely added with VFX, and makes that scene look even more vicious than it otherwise is.

I bring up this extensive discussion of Old Boy because it’s influential to a whole generation of live action depictions of violence. There are people who are making movies who got into making movies, or redoubled their interest in making movies, after seeing something like Old Boy. I can’t draw you a causal link on the production side, but I can point to a history of ‘people discovering Old Boy,’ and then ‘lots of shows trying to do something like the hallway fight in Old Boy.’

And good! It’s good to try and recognise your influences.

But…

I want to say there’s a ‘movement’ in movies right now but I mean I don’t know that. I can just point to these influences, these hopes, and the idea of making something like Old Boy isn’t even necessarily from that root. There was the long shot fight in Daredevil from the Netflix Marvel Universe, and the similarly impressive hallway fight for The Punisher even if it wasn’t a one-shot kind of story. Then you can just point to John Wick movies, which feel related even if you know the sourcing of the entire ethos of John Wick is much more about stunt professionals getting to take charge of the movies themselves. This involves a related set of skills that, in order to properly replicate combative violence in a form that does not just have verisimilitude to a lay audience but doesn’t present (obvious) impossibilities to an audience that does know things about (say) reloading a gun, the movies have to train everyone involved in the production of the film in a lot of related skills that aren’t just the physicality of controlled, safe, violence. To learn how to do violence safely, one of the skills you need is doing violence unsafely, and as a direct result of this training, you create people who need to understand how people are hurt and the limits of being hurt.

Basically, right now, Keanu Reeves might be legitimately one of the most dangerous people in the world in the context of just the sheer physical skills he possesses even if he’s not got the emotional centre of someone who will actually hurt people for fun.

And those people made a movie about Bob Odenkirk playing the role of John Wick Too.

Thing is, I really liked the movie Nobody and most of what it makes me think about is how you can do something so familiar, but if you do it well, it’s still fantastic as an experience.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[oodlyenough]

life is strange true colours review

the non spoilery part: i LOVED this game, my personal fave game this year and the first franchise entry since the original that has really resonated with or moved me.

it's a life is strange game through and through, so if you don't like slice of life episodes or bonding with NPCs, it's not gonna be for you. but if you like the franchise, or even if you liked the first game but haven't been interested in/liked the other two instalments, i recommend giving this one a chance. i think it got closer to figuring out the formula while still doing something new and interesting.

more detailed spoilers and opinions:

alex

holy shit i love alex? bisexual chad... my darling... i'm gonna be real, a lot of the trailers and promo for this game made me worried she'd be kind of a dull wallflower Soft Girl character, but she's not! she's so funny, and even parts of her characterization i initially thought were maybe a bit of a stretch ended up making sense as i learned more about her. she stole the show. i straight up forgot how much loving the protag helps enjoyment of these kinds of games lmao ... finally a reason to click on everything in the room: to hear what alex will say about it.

i thought her backstory exploration in ep 5 especially was wonderful and emotive and great. broke my heart and explained so much about her :( baby girl

plot/choices

i loved the mystery. i don't think it was quite as Mysterious as the mystery in lis1, but that was okay, i was still invested in solving it. i also got invested enough in the NPCs around the town to make all the exploration bits really fun. i loved eavesdropping on the sagas of the random NPCs like bald man and ice cream couple... just fun little touches and narratives to follow that i enjoyed.

i really appreciated this script not being afraid to shy away from some messier emotions, even if in some cases i wish we spent more time on them. for example: alex feeling a bit jealous of the other people in town that got to know gabe better than her/spend more time with him than she did. or charlotte hating ethan!!! my jaw dropped, i thought that was so good, what a messy but realistic response.

I'm not entirely sure what all the ramifications of different choices are at this point, fresh off my first play. i ended up getting only part of the council to stand with me (eleanor & duckie) while losing pike and charlotte.

i do wish we saw a bit more fallout or exploration of what taking away emotion DOES. i took charlotte's anger, and obviously it meant she didn't stand up for me in the council meeting, but where does she go from there? does she like... ever return to feeling emotions lmao... I also think we probably should've had the opportunity to do that another time, instead of just 2 isolated events -- I think Diane would've been a good candidate.

the romance

i romanced steph, ofc, but i was surprised during the game how drawn i was to ryan too -- i really liked that Drama of him being the one who cut Gabe free, as well as later the drama of him being Jed's son. UNTIL HE DIDN'T BELIEVE ME... that made me mad lmfao, i have to learn what to do to make him believe me before i play a Ryan route bc i'll kill him lmfao.

the steph/alex romance was sweet... it didn't really, like, Consume Me as a ship, but by the end of the game I was still "aww"ing at their moments in the flashforward. steph was more rounded and flawed than i thought she might be, which i really appreciated! i was worried they'd just make her perfect idealized gf, but she has a bit of a temper and is kind of tempestuous and stuff... liked it. loved her standing up for alex so fiercely and immediately at the council meeting <3 and my main reservation about her in ep 4 was that i wanted alex to stay in haven, so when she offered to stay i was thrilled LOL

one semi-complaint i had was that something i loved so much about lis1 was how max and chloe's relationship was central to the entire game and story, it wasn't some extra thing on the side, it WAS the game... whereas here, the romance routes, especially steph's, felt like sidequests. I wish they'd found a way to incorporate those relationships a bit more into the main goings-on. I also wanted to spend more time with either romance option to feel like I knew them better -- splitting the time between Steph and Ryan means that I came away feeling like I didn't get quite as much of either of them as I would've liked, vs spending almost the entire game with Chloe lol.

however, this ended up not really bothering me too much because I DID really like the core mystery and themes, the exploration of grief and Emotion, etc.

other characters

considering everyone knew going into the game that gabe was going to die, i was impressed with how they did it, and how they managed to get me attached to gabe in a mere single episode. it's a tall order to introduce a character designed to die, who your audience KNOWS is going to die, and still make them work.

i thought this supporting cast was ... maybe the strongest in the franchise? or at least, they created scenarios where i felt invested in multiple people in the town, and was genuinely trying to build decent relationships with most of them. duckie cracked me tf up, i liked eleanor and riley, even diane and jeb were good for their roles. (fuck pike. i signed ur stupid thing and left your emotions alone and you still won't do shit? ACAB!!!) the choice to stay in haven or leave was a little harder than i expected honestly, considering how quickly i let arcadia bay burn to the ground lmfao.

gameplay/etc

also i know the whole internet has been dunking on "empathy" as a super power since the game was announced, and i get that it sounds corny and looks corny in the trailers, but i thought how they did it was really cool. i wish they'd branded it "Mindreading" more than empathy tbh because a lot of the cooler elements of it are more along those lines... using her power to manipulate people, potentially taking people's emotions away and what that does to them... very interesting imo!

i really liked the memory feature!!! cool way to give us character exposition and inform the story while encouraging exploration. finally a collectible that like, expands the story, instead of chloe drawing butts on the wall and sean taking 10 years to draw something.

it's definitely the most evolved-feeling LIS game, which it should be, given it's the newest. graphics looked really nice, loved getting to see the characters actually emote, even if there are still some scenes that were a lil comically blank-faced -- usually NPCs. i actually noticed this with Jed the most, which in retrospect maybe was somewhat intentional?

i had a number of visual glitches, nothing major but a little silly, like T-posing Alex, npcs t-posing in the windows, etc. i'm sure they'll get patched out soon.

anyway... i rly liked this game, i'm excited for the steph dlc and finally feel like i have reason to be optimistic about future LIS instalments. hooray!

[ramp-it-up]

Everyday

Pairing: Rafael Casal x Reader, Rafael Casal (as Miles Turner) x Reader

Warnings: MINORS DNI, 18 + , RPF. CURATE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE IF YOU READ BELOW THE CUT. Cursing, drinking, allusion to smoking weed, fantasy, truth or dare, role play, SMUT, Graphic Depictions of Sex, oral sex (M/F receiving), a lil bit of bondage, established relationship, fantasy play.

A/N:  I have no idea what is for trade in prison; sex packets are a made up joke. And I’m really into 90’s rap this week. Anywho, this fic is in response to the following request:

Anonymous asked:

Rafa!!!!! Maybe a fluffy smut where he’s role playing Miles for you? 👀

-------

“Ok, Dare.”

You steeled yourself from the query from Daveed.

“Which fictional character, real or animated, would you like to bone?”

Everyone burst out laughing.

“Real or ANIMATED????”  

You were cracking up laughing and buzzed, feeling good surrounded by your crew of friends who were family.

“Ok, I will answer both.” 

Rafa cleared his throat and settled back on the couch beside you. 

You sat up straight and he watched the curve of your breasts underneath the Oaklandish tee you stole from him that morning.

“Rafael is getting swole! Don’t worry Rafa. She will still come home to your everyday ass.”

“Shut up, Ant. You always got something to say.” You rolled your eyes.  “Everyday with Rafa is amazing.”

You leaned over and kissed Rafa’s lips, which were in a slight frown.  He didn’t like that word, ‘everyday.’

“You good?” You whispered so only you two could hear.

He smiled at you, “No doubt. Answer the man’s question!” Rafa said a little louder, bravado on fleek.

“ANYWAYYY.”  You shook your head at him as you straightened up.  “Max could get it.”

“Max who?” Jasmine was confused.  Then she realized, then leaned over Ant and Rafa to give you a high five.

“Max Who???” Daveed was curious.

“Goofy’s son. Max.”  

Everyone erupted in laughter again. Daveed got up and took the bottle out of your hand. 

“Enough of this.” 

You battled him, jumping up and swatting around D’s head. You won your drink back and sat down.

“As far as ‘real’ fictional characters…” You took a drink. And smiled. All eyes were on you.

“Miles Turner could rearrange my guts.” 

Anthony groaned. Rafa sat up straight. You took another drink . 

“For Real. Ruffnecks kinda do it for me.”

“Gotta who? Gotta have a what?”  Jazzy started rapping. You replied.

“Gotta what? Yo, gotta get a ruffneck.” 

You two started dancing, rapping and singing with your drinks in your hands.

Gotta what? Yo, gotta get a ruffneck

Gotta what? Yo, gotta get a ruffneck

Gotta what? Yo, gotta get a ruffneck

I need it and I want it so I gotta get a ruffneck!

Rafael pulled you down to sit on his lap and Jasmine kept dancing, right in front of Anthony.

Anthony sucked his teeth, but was smiling at Jazzy’s ass. 

“That’s cheating. I mean. That’s just Rafa. I mean, he bones you on the regular.” 

Ant smacked Jasmine on the bottom and took a drink before she plopped down next to him and he put his arm around her.

“You know it!” Rafa and Anthony toasted. 

“But I ain’t Miles.”  

Rafa took another sip of his Abasolo on the rocks.

“And it’s just a fantasy. Right baby.”  

Rafael rubbed your back giving you a look that made you tremble. Rafa felt your warmth on his lap. He grinned into his drink.

“Trueeee!”  

You smiled, trying to keep it light and calm the fuck down. Everyone always made fun of you two smashing in people’s bathrooms.

“You aren’t Miles. I didn’t know you when you were younger....” 

You locked eyes with Rafael, and the green fire there did something to you.  

“I think Rafa is Miles’s wasted potential.”

“Wow. That’s deep,” said Ant from a cloud of smoke.

You and Rafa were locked in an eye embrace as well as a physical one.  When he arched his eyebrow, you had to look away, because you couldn’t take it.  

“Y’all need to use my bathroom?”  More laughter.

You and Rafa both flipped Daveed off. 

“Nah, Diggs.” Rafa stood up with you in his arms.  “We’ll use our own. We out.”  

Your man carried you willingly out of the door.

-----

About two weeks later, you came home with some groceries, you were looking forward to a night in with Rafa.

You’d both been busy and tired lately, only available for maintenance sex. 

Rafa was running around creating all of his creative shit, and you worked in the writers room of a popular series.  Life was hectic.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, hands together on top. 

He was wearing blue scrubs over a white Henley and had his face turned to the side, staring out the window. You noticed that his hair was different.

“Hey, babe. Did you get a haircut? What’s wrong?”

He turned his face toward you and that’s when you noticed two more things. Rafael’s eye was black, and there was a tattoo on his neck.

THAT California tattoo. 

You were very concerned and a little confused. Concern came first in your mind.

“What happened to your eye?”  He gave you a strange look, then he spoke.

“A mutha fucka sneaked me in the yard, that’s what happened!”  

You stood still and had to register what was happening.

Rafa was wearing a grill, and his voice was different, in a lower register  and with a long drawn out, almost southern drawl. 

But it wasn’t southern. It was all Bay.

He stood up and walked toward you, and you noticed that his scrubs had “Prisoner” written in yellow letters down the right leg. 

You suddenly realized what was going on. 

Oh, Shit.

“Baby. You’re a sight for sore eyes.  It’s been a minute.”  

You’d left Rafael in bed this morning.  But it seemed that you came home to Miles.

“Hey,” was all you could say. 

Rafael/Miles gestured for you to come over to the table.  It was then you saw that he was handcuffed. 

A strange feeling came over to you.  He stood up, and you saw that his legs were shackled.  You went close to him and looked at his eye closely.

“Rafa?”

His face was fine, up close, you could tell it was makeup.

“You been to see Galaxy today?”  

You were peering at his neck and the Bay/California tattoo there.

He screwed up his face.

“Who tha fuck is Rafa? And what the hell you talking ‘bout space for?” 

He peered into your eyes, then looked around furtively.

“Babe. Are you high?”

The drawl was a whisper now.

“These muthafuckas’ll kick you out if they think you got drugs on you.”

You smiled at him, pecked him on the lips and replied. 

“No worries. I’m not high.” You sat down at the kitchen table and ‘Miles’ sat across from you. 

“As for Rafa? He’s this guy I know.  Had a nice… conversation with him the other night.”  

You looked into his eyes to see if he would crack.  But your man was a pro.  

He huffed.  “Psshhht.  You MUST be high talking to another dude. What kinda name is Rafa anyway. Sounds like some hipster trash.”  

He peered at you again, anger radiating off of him.

Damn, he was good.

“Tell me what the fuck you mentioning some other muthafucka to my face while I’m locked up in here! Every day.” 

He pounded his bound fists on the table in front of you and made you jump.  It also made you wet as fuck.

He gestured with both hands (because they were handcuffed) to the nice kitchen that you loved to cook in, but that you were now seeing through his performance as a prison visitation room. 

But you were still shook.

“R, R, Rafael is a beautiful artist. He’s a poet. He’s gentle, and kind. And a wonderful lover.” 

Miles glared at you. You stuttered again.

“I-I imagine.”

He gave you a menacing smile and leaned back in the chair, pushing his crotch up in your direction.  Your eyes were drawn there.

“So you imagining fucking another muthafucka and decide to come visit me and tell me about it?”

You got into it.

“Well….I miss you Miles. But it gets hard. Not being able to be with you.”

He leaned forward, bearing his teeth.

“Don’t fucking tell me about it.  Here I am jacking off with leftover chicken grease from the kitchen at night.  Got my dick smelling like a Popeye’s chicken sandwich in this bitch.”

“Ew,” you said, disgusted, then you started giggling at the joke.

Miles pouted and sat back.

“ ‘S not fucking funny!”  He looked out the window again. 

“I shouldn’t even tell you about the surprise.”

You straightened up.  “What is it babe?”

You put your hand on his and he caressed yours with his thumb.  He looked at you, excited and mischievous now.

“I got us a conjugal visit.”

Your mouth dropped open, fully into it now.

“But I thought that was just for married couples, Miles…”

“I know, I know.” He leaned forward and looked around again.  “But I got me a side hustle.”

He shifted his eyes as he scanned the empty room.

“I make sex packets outta the leftover chicken grease from my job in the kitchen. Make a KILLING in oatmeal cream pies, ramen noodles, cigarettes and other tradeable currency.  I made enough to buy us a conjugal visit, girl.”

He leaned back, very satisfied with himself, his hands now on his lap, rubbing his crotch.  

Your eyes were drawn there again and you found yourself irrationally wondering how big his dick was. He had you caught up in this fantasy.

“Let’s go to the trailer and I’ll make you forget all about this Raja guy.” Miles winked at you.

“It’s…”  You saw the look on his face.  “Nevermind. Let’s go.” 

He stood up again, and shuffled his way to the bathroom, you at a safe distance behind him. 

He entered the bedroom and shuffled to the bed, sitting down on the edge. He gestured you to him and you went and stood before him.

He put his nose in your crotch.

“MMMmmmmm. I missed your smell Baby. It’s been too long. He lifted his hands and put them on the insides of your thighs. He pulled back and looked at you, green eyes staring into brown.

“The guards left the key over there. That is, if you wanna get me out of these.” He nodded toward the 

He trailed his hands up to your pelvis, managing to hook one set of fingers into your waistband and still have another at your apex.

He ran his fingers over your jeans right where it counts. This kind of petting felt good and made you want more. 

You let him play for a little while, but then pushed him back to sit and watch you. 

You peeled down your jeans to reveal a white satin thong. Rafael loved white against your coffee brown skin, but tonight, Miles would benefit. You stood there in your button-down shirt, that was really Rafael’s. 

Miles’s hands went to his crotch again as he eagerly watched.

“You seem to be doing pretty well all hemmed up, but let me see.”

You went to the dresser to retrieve the key, and you did, then turned around and put it in your mouth while you slowly unbuttoned the shirt.

Miles leaned back on the bed and opened his legs as far as the shackles would let them go, licking his lips as you disrobed.

You were wearing a white lace bra, your dark nipples and areola straining through the delicate material.  You were very excited at the entire scenario. 

The fact that Rafa was doing this for you because he remembered what you said on a drunken night weeks ago was the shit.

You dropped to the ground and crawled over to Miles’s feet jutting your ass up in the air as you unlocked the shackles.

You massaged his ankles and trailed your hands up his legs to his crotch, where you rubbed the hardness there.

“It’s been so long that you’ve been locked up, Miles.”

You raised up on your knees, loving the feeling of his eyes sweeping over you.

“I’m gonna give you the world’s best blowjob.”

Miles smiled at you.

“Aw, baby. That’s so cute.”

“I’ll show you cute.”

You were about to give your own performance.

------

Five minutes later, you were gargling his cock, relaxing your throat and taking him as deep as you could, nose nestled at his base, and gently pulling and kneading his balls.

Someone moaned, and you didn’t know if it was Rafa or Miles.  He bucked his hips up into your mouth while resting his cuffed hands in your hair.

“As much as I would love to … fuck baby… cum down your throat.. I need that… damn where’d you learn to do that?!... I need that pussy.  Unlock the cuffs, baby.”

His cuffed hands were in your hair, alternating between massaging your scalp and pulling your hair the way you loved it. 

The way Rafael invented. 

You smiled around his cock with the knowledge that what you were doing was making him slip out of character.

You pulled your head upward, mouth open, allowing the saliva to trickle out with his dick. 

He looked at you like he couldn’t believe how nasty you were being. He was mesmerized. You looked a mess, eye makeup running, lipstick smudged, spit all over your face. 

Your dream man loved it.

“Am I ‘cute’ now?”

“Fuck no. You’re so goddamn beautiful.”

You smiled and quickly reached behind you and unclasped your bra, taking your breasts in your hands and pushed them up around his dick.

“See, if you unlock these cuffs, I’ll handle things the way they need to be handled.”

You just smiled up at him while you manipulated your breasts around him, knowing that he could not control his hips fucking into your cleavage.

“I got it under control.” You stuck your tongue out to tease his tip as it neared your face, lubricating it with your saliva.

“Fuck, baby.  I wanna fuck you so bad. It’s been so long…”

This entire scene was just about the hottest thing ever. You were breathless, dripping, and quivering with anticipation. But you didn’t want it to end so soon.

“How long ‘xactly?”

“Shit, 5 months of being here and jacking off to memories of you everyday.  I need to see that ass and fuck that pussy, babyyyy. Please.”

Those eyes.

Those words. 

The acting. 

Miles. 

You had to relent.

You reached for the key where you dropped it on the floor and unlocked the cuffs.

“Fucking finally!”  Miles rubbed his wrists as he stood up, stripped his shirts off and his pants the rest of the way.

“On the bed, let me see that ass up.” 

He smacked it about three times each and then rubbed it as you did as you were told. 

Miles trailed his hand from your ass up your spine to your shoulder and then pushed your head down further into the bed.

“That’s a girl.” Your back had that perfect arch.

He got behind you and swiped his hardness up and down your slit, teasing you with the head of his dick.

He grabbed your hand and brought behind your back, and very swiftly the other, and before you knew it, your hands were cuffed behind you, head in the bed and Miles was entering you swiftly.

“Fuuuuck! How does it feel?”

You couldn’t speak. The thrill of Miles’ dick inside you and being cuffed had you ready to cum already.

His stroke game was on point, as if he was fucking you to a brand new rhythm- Allegro. 

Strangely, it was different than Rafa had ever been.

That was blowing your mind.

Miles tugged on the metal restraints and the slight pain in your shoulders and wrists, combined with the thrill of this roleplay, made you release, all over him and the bed.

“Shit girl, you really are glad to see me.” That drawl got you ready to peak again.

“Oh fuck yeah, Miles, oh shit, oh shit.” Your pussy was clamping down on him at the thought of Miles Turner having his way with you.

“Shit, I’m cumming with you, hold up.”  

Rafa tried to slow down, but you did that thing with your pussy and he couldn’t help it.  His hips drove his dick inside you until it pulsed and started to flow, and then he pulled out.

“Turn over baby.”

You leisurely moved to turn over, and he motioned you down to the end of the bed, moving the pillow where he wanted your head.

“I need in between those legs, baby.  I need to see you, I need to surround me with you.”

You positioned yourself at the end of the bed, your braids hanging over the edge.

Miles gave you a forehead kiss as he got between your thighs, and pumped himself a couple of times as he aligned with you.  

He leaned down and pulled at your nipple with his mouth, moaning when you moaned, moving his eyes appreciatively down your body and keeping his eyes where you were about to join.

The look on his face when he entered you was very hot, and you found your pussy squeezing his cock in appreciation. It seemed magically somehow bigger, and all of your senses were alive as he started moving.

“That’s my beautiful baby. You’re so fucking tight. Don’t push me out, let me have the glorious pussy. Damn girl, this pussy, those thighs, your curves, these tits. What did a man like me do to deserve you. You’re such a fucking sweet princess for me…”

You were astounded. Missionary was far from your favorite position because you seldom came that way, but the way Miles was whispering praise in your ear and the total fantasy was getting you there. 

Quickly.

He watched your face and adjusted his pace in response to your cries, and that knowledge made you start to come. When your eyes rolled back in your head, that’s when he knew.

He pulled your hair back and sucked the shit out of your neck as you came, and he released inside you.  You wrapped your legs around him and held him as he shivered with the aftershocks of his orgasm.

Your lover rolled off of you and you snuggled into his arm. He lay there and held you as you tried to process.

“That was… wow.” You weren’t sure who to address, Rafa or Miles. Irrationally you felt you were in love with both.

He just chuckled at you, and gave you another forehead kiss.

“I’m going to enjoy a shower.  Goodbye for a while, baby.”

You grinned. “Bye Miles.”

He pecked you on the lips and you watched him go into the bathroom.

You rolled over on your back and tried to organize your thoughts. How would you write this?

Thoughts of writing this scene chased you into sleep.

---

You woke up to Rafael, grill and tattoos gone, freshly out of the shower and in a towel, gently trying to pull you from sleep.

“C’mon.”  

You let him get you up and into the bathroom to a hot bath.  You let him tenderly clean you up and then get you out of the tub and dry you off. You were more tired than you thought.

“You hungry?” You walked into the kitchen in a towel behind him.

Rafa had put the groceries up and was holding up takeout menus. He was truly magical. You smiled, nodded and told him what you wanted.

45 minutes later, you were in his softest Oaklandish tee and you were curled up on the couch in the living room together, food containers spead out on the coffee table.

You felt totally in sync with this amazing man.

“I loved tonight.”

He smiled softly back at you.

“Had to give you your fantasy since you help me live mine. Every day.” 

He leaned over and kissed you.  He looked you intensely in the eyes. Those green pools had you trapped.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Rafael.”

Your fantasy had been Miles, but your reality was Rafael. 

And that was fantastic. 

Everyday.

-------

Tags:

@braidedchallah @theatrenerd86 @sebastianabucknettastan @imatyoursurrvicesurr @riiyy @ivycomet @lonelydance @jbrizzywrites @delaber @honeysucklechocolatedrippin @janthonystan-blog @anh1020 @sillyteecup @ohsoverykeri  @theselilwonders @biafbunny @summerofsnowflakes  @wreakhavoconmacroissantdiggs @janthonybitch @einfachniemand @einfachniemand

[wack-ashimself]

everything everywhere all at once is TRUE art.

If you follow me (stalker), you will have noticed I rarely have a 'THIS IS THE BEST THING' or 'THE WORST THING' ever of entertainment. Things are generally in the middle, where it's usually predictable, repetitive, and boring. Tho recently I saw morbius and gave it the worst review I ever gave anything (3/10, but now looking back, 2/10), so there are exceptions.

This movie has set new standardS. That is a big exception for me from what I normally say. 10/10. I NEVER IN MY LIFE GAVE A 10/10 in a review on here (saying it out loud in my head, I could think of a few I would give a 10/10, but the list is probably less than 20 movies, and none I mentioned on here...except for enter the void. That is 10/10. And a mind fuck like this too).

Why 10/10?

Visually-I have done psychedelics. Watching this movie is like taking drugs without having to take them. No fucking joke. Few movies can do that because...it's expensive and time consuming to do it right. Also, you kinda had to have done psychedelics to portray them right.

Action-I didn't come for an action movie, but some of these fights are SO tight, you're like 'man, most real action movies suck.' FUCK your quick cuts. everything everywhere all at once is trying to make smooth transitions where possible and you give them credit! A full pan of people doing weird ass random fucking shit to get powers then fight? SO BE IT!

Acting-I am not going to go into this. Why? I have no hate on anyone, and only praise. I LOVED THIS ENSEMBLE! I like to say I preferred one over the other, but everyone worked so fluidly, it felt like timed perfection. The cast was like a well cut puzzle-they all fit together.

Direction/editing-they made it fun while not making it inauthentic. I mean, do you know how hard it is to make a SPECTACULARLY weird movie WITH heart? It's just not done...And that brings me to....

everything everywhere all at once' is true art.

I specifically say true art cuz almost nothing fucking is anymore. Art, IMO, follows 3 rules.

1-never been done before.

2-hits everyone a different way.

3-is as real as it can get (and that doesn't mean realistic-that means based on THIS reality the artist(s) create, these are the 'laws' that make this reality real).

And by god, did this movie hit every nail on the head.

You get spirituality, nihilism, sexuality, race, religion, sexism, generational gaps, gods, what ifs, alternative lifetimes, true love, family, friends, government, morality, immortality, love, and EVERY FUCKING THING IN BETWEEN.

And somehow, tho the movie is literally all over the place, and there is no way you can grasp at every fine detail, none of the insane amount of themes they cover feels that shallow. Sure, some breezed across, but with everything happening, it, again, makes SENSE for that reality...ies.

I just got to say kudos to whoever made the trailer-you sold the movie without giving away the best parts, and that's ballsy. Fairly, tho...a lot of the best parts were...weird and graphic.

Not going to give anything away, just...it set out to accomplish something, I think it did that, then some, then some more, and it is perfect.

This movie is perfect.

Is it for everyone?

FUCK NO.

I couldn't name....but a few people who I think would get it, let alone, enjoy it.

But if you are open to ANYTHING could happen, this is it. This is anything. Or more so ...everything everywhere all at once....

10/10. I Never gave a movie a 10/10 publicly. If I have, call me out. I want to know what the fuck I said is as good as this movie?

ps-best part? Without a doubt, EVERY SINGLE SCENE WITH THE STONES. I'm not giving anything away, but they are not only fucking philosophically deep (stones), fucking hilarious (still stones), but, (which makes it EVEN FUNNIER) probably the cheapest scenes to make in the entire movie. Seriously-the CHEAPEST parts of the movie were some of the best parts. I think if only for how god damn smart they were.

pps-this may be the weirdest fucking movie you will ever watch. And if you think differently, I challenge you to a weird off. Show me your weirdest media. And that does NOT mean the sickest, most brutal, or offensive. It means something so different, no one has seen it before/done it before. I told you: that's one of the rules of art.

[baconpal]

pokemon rant time

this one’s about the 2 new things, and is at least slightly intended for people actually excited/interested in them, click keep reading or perish

Gonna try and keep stuff short cus there's a lot of topics this time and I've already gone off about how pokemon Isn't meant for me or meant to be a good video game anymore, but gamefreak is right back on their bullshit, so I feel I need to at least point it out.

I'd like to preface all this with, if you are a fan of pokemon still, please realize you can ask for more out of this series. Expect perfection, even if you don't think you'll get it anytime soon. Pokemon won't go anywhere, the old games won't go anywhere, and gaming is a hobby, not a necessity; don't accept low quality products from a company just because you feel like you're supposed to.

With this next wave of pokemon games, gamefreak is clearly testing how little they can put in to a $60 game while still keeping the 2 major audiences they've cultivated. By responding to the most obvious and vocal complaints from the community, gamefreak is aiming to make games that seems like what most players want, without having to put in the work on quality products.

GEN 4 REMAKES Pokemon BS (I am not calling this shit BDSP) is intended for the audience that put up with let's go and RS remakes. The most vocal and obvious complaints for these games is their failure as definitive versions of the games they are remakes of, such as missing features/content, or drastically changed story/dialogue/style. In a way, the recent remakes are inferior versions of incredibly old games, which shows a lack of improvement in pokemon as a whole.

To address these issues, BS is very, very, VERY clearly aiming for a more 1-to-1 recreation of the DS games, but with fully 3d graphics. Clearly the map layout has been transferred exactly, and gen 4 already had mostly 3d environments to begin with, and everyone knows about the future-proof pokemon models at this point, so the amount of effort required to create something like this is absolutely minimal. Assuming dialogue, trainer teams, move lists, etc. are also lifted directly from DP, then this game could be developed in basically no time at all, leaving the team time to ensure the product is of decent quality and includes ALL of the content of the originals, if not more, like the earlier pokemon remakes did to ensure they were truly definitive versions of the games. That being said, it is unlikely the team behind BS has been making use of this saved time to improve the game.

One failing already clear is that the quality is not very good, at least graphical quality. The footage we have shows environments lacking in color compared to the original, with messy, unpleasant textures that contrast poorly with the simplistic environments. The characters especially do not work. As cute and fun the fanart of tiny dawn has been, BS dawn and all other characters look awful. They have gorilla arms that reach down to the floor and lifeless faces, as well as incredibly stiff/simplistic animations. As it stands, BS is a visually inferior game to DP, though most consumers will simply see it as 3D>2D without any understanding of what an artstyle is, so this might not be a problem for many, but that doesn't mean you should accept it.

What remains to be seen is what content will be added/missing from pokemon BS. It is very possible that massive parts of the game, such as the underground, variety of online modes, postgame areas, and content from platinum could be missing entirely. We also do not know if pokemon from after gen 4 will be worked into the region, or even supported. Gen 8 still currently does not support a large number of pokemon, and the remakes may continue this limited dex trend.

Even assuming the remake includes everything from the DS games and doesn't add anything that slows down the story or harms the experience, it will still only be an exercise in forced obsolescence. The main reason people can't really play DP still is that the online isn't supported anymore. If BS turns out to be exactly the same as DP, then you're buying the same game for at a higher price, only to play it until the online service goes away again, or the next game comes out, if both don't happen at the same time.

Don't let yourself buy a 13 year old game at twice the original price.

GEN 4 NOT-REMAKE KIND OF NEW THING On to legends now, gamefreak is targeting the people who put up with sun/moon and sword/shield. The obvious problem with those games to most people was simply a lack of change from the standard pokemon formula. Even when changing the gyms to trials or stadiums, most people still understand that the format and story structures are mostly unchanged. Of course, this problem has seemingly been addressed by changing the game structure a fair bit, but almost entirely by removal.

Trainer battles, and by extension, gyms and tournaments/elite 4 have been confirmed to be absent, meaning all battles are only vs single pokemon, in spite of the player likely having a team of 6 pokemon. Even if battle difficulty is increased to compensate (doubtful), this will still drastically increase the simplicity of combat and make it even less likely for the game to include any meaningful challenge. Exploring towns and meeting NPCs is also seemingly missing, as the game is confirmed to have only a single village, which frankly looks incredibly boring and we've yet to see a single NPC inhabiting the village.

Battles now use an ATB format instead of a turn-based format (for those of you who don't know what that means, it basically means nothing, it's still turn based, it just means the speed state determines who gets more turns instead of who goes first, that's it), but beyond that there seems to be no noteworthy changes, pokemon learn 4 moves with limited PP, type advantage will still definitely be the most important aspect to battle, and the player being able to walk around during battle provides no meaningful impact. While the little dash the pokemon do to approach each other is cool, it is already a sign that gamefreak will not be addressing the issue of lacking animations for pokemon battles, as they can't even be assed to animate and program pokemon walking around the environment during combat, and lucario doing 1 kick for a move described as a series of punches isn't a great sign either.

On the topic of lacking animations, the new "pet simulator feature" for legends seems to be an advancement on the ride system from sun/moon, which presumably people missed from sword/shield. Being able to ride on your pokemon to do stuff sounds cool, but in all likelihood, this system will be limited to only a select few pokemon who will each do a select few actions, and is not a reasonable replacement for all the other pet raising features that have been removed in the past. Similar to BS, the total number of pokemon included may also be limited arbitrarily, in spite of the fact that no new pokemon need to be added, as these games are not claiming to be a new generation.

The largest issues I personally have with this new game is the horrible technical quality and gameplay quality shown in the initial trailer. Unfortunately, these types of problems seem to be difficult to explain to the average consumer, even though the issues seem incredibly obvious and inexcusable to people like me.  Most people were able to understand the problem with the berry trees in gen 8, because it was easy to explain, "this tree doesn't look like the other trees, and it sticks out, isn't that weird?", and so gamefreak has eliminated any immediately obvious issues like that, sticking with a very consistent artstyle for legends, making it almost impossible to easily explain its faults to the average pokemon fan.

People have been really quick to compare legends to BoTW; the game that invented grass, trees, and mountains. In spite of these comparisons, nobody seems to point out that legends looks dramatically worse than that almost 5 year old game from the previous generation. Plants are stiff and lacking in energy, draw distances are poor, colors are drab, and textures are messy. Many parts of legends seems to ape BoTW on just the surface, essentially just following market trends. Even the controls seem to follow after modern 3rd person shooters/stealth games, including a seemingly pointless roll and a clunky looking ball lobbing arc that feels unfun before even getting to play it myself.

The largest issue, painfully obvious to some, and impossible to explain to others, is the framerate. The trailer clearly was ran on actual switch hardware, and not prerendered, which would be a good mark for gamefreak if it didn't result in a trailer that never once hit 30fps. Even with empty fields, with only 1 or 2 characters on screen, the game was incapable of meeting the target speed, and had to resort to optimizations like reducing the frame rate of pokemon only inches away from the player to stop-motion levels of choppy. If situations with almost nothing going on result in slow-down, how will the game perform during actual gameplay? Even though slow-down is something everyone can feel, many people aren't capable of identifying it.

The major things to wait and see for legends is if the removed aspects of the series are made up for by some additional systems or content, and definitely wait to see if the performance improves. As with BS, preordering a game like this only shows that gamefreak only has to market the game by saying it's different, not improved, like they've been doing for years now.

TL;DR FUCK GAMEFREAK One major thing of note is that gamefreak is releasing 2 games based on gen 4 at the nearly the same time, meaning they have no obligation to design new pokemon or even include pokemon not from sinnoh, and also that the sales of each game can be used as an indicator for which of their 2 audiences is more loyal to them. Both BS and Legends are in a position to be pushes aside if they fail, but if either succeeds, gamefreak can continue in the direction of the more successful game and reap the benefits, without any need to innovate, improve, or adapt to criticism.

The last thing I feel I have to remind people about is that gamefreak is a company; you don't need to be "grateful" to them. I've seen that word thrown around far too much by people who seem to buy pokemon games like its a tax, and not something they want to do. You don't have to suck up to a company that made games you liked as a kid if the games aren't what you want anymore. Pokemon is so wildly successful that it can't possible die, so don't buy the games out of pity, or out of some feeling of obligation. Buy the video games you want to play and nothing more.

Basically, if you are considering getting any of these new games, please wait until the games are out before purchasing them, and decide for yourself if they are worth your money, and more importantly, your time. Preordering these games only lets gamefreak know their audience will buy and put up with anything. They have no real competition at the moment, so the only thing the audience can do to encourage improvement is show some of restraint.

[mosneakers]

Tag Game

tysm for tagging me @natolesims and @skywardoasis!! 💖

Your thoughts on the Sims 1-4

Sims 1: LOVE LOVE LOVE. The vibe, the MUSIC, the cheekiness. Alls it needed was the graphics and 👌🏻💋

Sim 2: I also love ts2 so much. The storylines. The lore. the drama. THE CHAOS! I remember how excited my friends and I were to try it out. Literally freaking out over the trailer, and I think I have the most memories and nostalgia attached to this one.

Sims 3: Ahh, the sims 3. The ugliest characters for sure, but it really opened up a whole new world. (literally open worlds!) There's sooo much to do and see in ts3, and I feel like it was the most fleshed out game of the franchise. It was incredibly glitchy though, and my families couldn't stay in one world for longer than a generation or 2 before becoming completely unplayable and needing to start a new save. It is where My Darling originated though, so I'll always hold it close!

Sims 4: *sigh* I think at the beginning it was complete shit and unfinished and lousy. It still kinda does feel unfinished and lacks so much compared to the others. With the amount video game technology has, there's no excuse for some of the things it's lacking. WITH THAT BEING SAID, I really do love ts4 and all that it has to offer, and I think the sims team is just starting to listen and fix their issues. I do also think it gets more hate than it deserves, and I think it's my favorite so far. ♥

What is your favorite Expansion pack in the Sims 4

Cottage Living, my oh my ♥

Small pets or Horses?

Small pets I guess? But I love horses too!

What is your favorite active career in the Sims 4?

Paranormal Investigator 😎👻

What is your favorite Aspiration in the Sims 4?

I think the family related ones

Whims or Wants?

Wants!

What is your favorite Occult in the Sims 4?

Spellcasters ♥

Cowplants, Bonehilda, or the Social Bunny?

Bonehilda

How do you pick your sims names?

I try to think of something meaninful to their family or I'll choose something based on their parents' favorite colors. If I'm creating a townie, I'll randomize a name and change the letter 😄

Do you create a spouse for a sim, or do you go after a townie?

Create! Or heavily edit a townie 😁

Do you prefer to follow storytelling Simblrs, or do your prefer gameplay Simblrs?

Both! ♥

What year did you join Tumblr/Simblr?

2013 I think? oof. Just tagging you all lol

[realisaonum]

book meme

thank you, jen @det395​ !! i feel like this meme got away from me a bit, but no shame! i love talking about books and writing so onward ~under the cut~

1- how many books are too many books in a series? 

mhmmmmm i guess it depends on the objective of the series, right? is the plan to have x number of books in the series and if so, when we finally get to the end will it be satisfying considering all the books we’ve read leading up to it? OR is the objective of the premise / characters just to exist doing whatever? both can be done well. i would say a lot rides on how much i trust the author.

2- what do you think about cliffhangers?

so this is meant for cliffhangers in a series like between books? i don’t really care if there’s a cliffhanger as long as i have the next book sitting right next to me. otherwise uh, only if the wait between books is tolerable, because at that point you need to know that the author can clear this mess up, right? there’s this other thing, like you know how if the entire series was already written, then they might release the books a month apart or a quarter apart - that could be alright too. but years in between? not especially a fan. is anyone a fan?

3- hardback or paperback?

jen, you and me are complete opposites here. paperbacks stress me out. i will go out of my way to buy a used hardcover if given the choice. of course, there are some publications i don’t mind in paperback —thinking poetry and super indie books that don’t have a hardcover release OR books where the spines are thin enough they won’t break and i won’t be holding them long enough for them to wear. hardcovers are sturdy and i don’t have to worry i’ll accidentally bend the cover in some damaging way. I am invested in keeping my books nice to the point that i create covers for my books out of kraft paper or brown grocery bags while i am reading them. this is something i started when i was in college and didn’t want these books i was hoping to probably resell get thrashed coming in and out of my bag for all these classes. My home library is probs more half and half paperback/hardcover but if given a choice usually it’s hardcover.

4- least favourite book?

i think it’s good to at least attempt to meet a book on its level. there are lots of books i didn’t like, but i wasn’t meeting them on their level and i know that so we’re ignoring those. i do however have a shelf on my goodreads dedicated to books that i have beef with so i’ll just go off on two of them.....

tana french’s the likeness for being plagiaristic shit. it is essentially poorly concealed alternate universe OC insert fic of the secret history. you’ve got french’s dublin murder squad folks and then this group they are investigating who bear a STRIKING resemblance to the greek students in tsh 🤔. this would be one thing. it is pretty well acknowledged that nothing is original and there are enough changes to The Likeness that MAYBE i could let it slide if not for this other thing: french’s book, the likeness, has lines that are just basically reworded quotes from the secret history and french positions these lines so they are said by the counterpart (essentially same!) character that gave them original life in tsh. i cannot stress this enough: you can HEAR how similar the sentences are and their core intent is always the same. it’s thinly veiled theft! it astounds me that French hasn’t been sued frankly. it is one thing to want to capture some of the genius that tartt’s debut novel holds, but it is completely lazy and disgusting theft to go about it in the way French did with this book. and YES the secret history was published before french’s book. if i could stomach how fucking goddamn boring the likeness was to read it a second time and cite every one of these offenses i would, but that’s yet a third strike against it—it’s too boring to be worth it. 

T. Kingfisher’s second book of the Clocktuar War duology : The Wonder Engine. this is a book that i feel violated the contract between writer and reader. the first book feels almost like a YA book. the stakes while described as very high are treated, as actions unfold, as very low. nothing truly irreparable happens until the climax of the second book and the fallout of that action is so off-tone of everything that came before i felt deeply betrayed. no, like, completely betrayed as in it ruined the rest of my afternoon, i am still viscerally angry eight months later, and i will never trust this author again. sure, maybe none of those actions that led to the climax were out-of-character, but there was nothing NOTHING in the proceeding action that even came close to that level of consequence. it’s a pity because right up till that point i was having a really good time. the entire vibe of the rising action to the climax of book one all the way through the rising action of book two was just a quippy fun version of roadtrip/quest - it felt like a comfort read. the abrupt tone shift had all the subtlety of dropping a graphically, brutal murder into Blue’s Clues. you don’t do that - this is a basic tenet of a writer / reader relationship. i’m not touching this bitch’s shit again.

5- Love Triangle, yes or no?

not so much. i like jen before me will scream ‘just be poly.’ love triangles that lead into poly relationships? yes, awesome will be glad i read. but i am at a stage in my life where your standard will-they-won’t-they-love-triangle is just fucking pointlessly frustrating to me. an example: i read a Nic Stone’s book Odd One Out a couple years ago and something about the synopsis or the hype made me think that it would resolve the love triangle that way, so when that did not happen i was incredibly frustrated and immediately wanted to resell the book. it’s the potential of the thing. stone’s book could have been the perfect vehicle for opening up the concept of polyamory to a ya audience but instead just really squandered that potential with weak floundering — in my opinion!

6- the most recent book you just couldn’t finish

uhhhhh i’ve got two and i’m not sure i’ve entirely given up quite yet buuuuuuuut 

fucking dune. i got really pissed off with this book. So just…setting aside the whole vaguing at a pedophilically inclined queer coded villain - it’s done so poorly, that it's almost funny? like it doesn’t (as of half way through) actually have any consequence on…anything at all and is tacked on like an afterthought to the end of his scenes. honestly it all could just be cut out entirely with no recourse to the larger story. So my actual beef with this book is the pacing is ATROCIOUS. like yo, not only do you expect me to give a shit about these Atreides cunts, when we just met them and we spend the same amount of time with them IF NOT MORE with the antagonist? but you also expect me to believe Paul was able to just convince the leader of the Arrakis people —the leader of an entire planet!!— with a single fucking sentence??? yeah, not so much. it was not set up for me to believe that Paul could do that! maybe if Kynes hadn’t died immediately after—or at least not died at that moment? baring the fact I thought he was by far the most interesting character, IF he had been convinced by Paul in that scene, it would have been great to see some actual work done around that - with a transfer or a liaise of power between Kynes and Paul and the Fremen. By not having any substantive scene that does it - it begs the question of what the fuck was the point of the character in the first place? unplumbed potential!!! over all there seem to be some key scenes missing to get the reader to where the narrative expects us to be? but the choices made of the characters we spend time with and the moments we see with them, the benefit to the larger story…is not always there. hey herbert, these words you have written aren’t doing what you want them to?? i feel like i should finish it but i reaaaaallly don’t want to :) the only thing i can say is it looks like from the trailer, villeneueve is giving space to these moments so that the viewer can foster a genuine connection with the characters? radical concept.

our lady of perpetual hunger - i started this one optimistically bc i like chef memoirs, but i am at the point where she has just given birth to her son and honestly DON’T CARE. i still haven’t officially given up on it yet since i actually fucking bought it like a dope. i certainly would not have if i knew how much NOT about working the line this was gonna be

7- book you are currently reading

Aside from the failures mentioned above, I am working on the second book in B. Catling’s Vorrh trilogy, The Erstwhile. Also very close to finally finishing Iain Sinclair’s The Last London - there’s a review of his work from the LA Times that goes “One of Sinclair’s greatest skills has always been his ability to take diverse if not chaotic source material and refashion it in a way that sometimes seems downright alchemical” which captures some of the wonder I experience when reading his work. His style and how he creates atmosphere and setting is just unique and astounding.

8- last book you recommended to someone

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Before that I told my brother to read Eat a Peach, as we both love Anthony Bourdain and David Chang talks about him a bit here, plus it’s just a fucking great book. any book that gives insight into Chang’s methodology and paradigm is worth a shot.

9- oldest book you read

I think it might have to be Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (which apparently according to wiki premiered on the stage a whole four months before Hamlet so that’s what we’re going with) and if plays don’t count, I don’t care. I think they count and that’s what we’re going with.

10- the most recent book you read ?

Given the previous question, the most recently published book, right? It’s gotta be the one I just finished: The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic - Revised and Expanded edt., which like just came out this summer. I watched Jessica Hopper’s promo zoom, curtesy of my local indie bookstore, and went ahead and bought it. This was a great decision! It was just what I needed to read these last couple of weeks. i love there’s lots of short pieces that made the read quick and the fact that it’s non-fiction so there was no pressure of a plot or the emotional weight of character investment when I had a lot of big stressors dragging me down irl -it was such a relief. Hopper’s criticism is fun to read and there’s some real art in her appreciation of music here.

11- favourite author?

These are the top in a kind of order but not really: Donna Tartt, Jeff VanderMeer, Megan Whalen Turner, Flannery O’Conner, Chuck Palahniuk, Anthony Bourdain

Other faves very much worth mentioning: Emily O’Neill, Richard Siken, Brandon Sanderson, Warren Ellis, Nathan Englander, Stephen King, Eddie Huang, Carl Hiaassen, Anne Carson, and Iain Sinclair.

12- buying books or borrowing books?

Depends on if my library has it, of course! I nearly always see if my library has a copy first if i have never read it or the author before. If i’ve read the book before or trust the author, I’ll buy it. Like I’ll straight out buy new stuff from Jeff VanderMeer even though with him it’s either this-hits-exactly-and-is-my-new-fave or i-really-disliked-this-but-admire-the-boundaries-you’re-pushing-my-dude - so it’s always a gamble but a worthy one.

12- a book you dislike that everyone else seems to love

a little life (just bc it's torture porn elevated to art doesn’t negate the fact that it’s torture porn. Yanagihara’s project here is repugnant and the fact that this book is lauded as moving lgbt fiction makes my skin crawl)

sharp objects (good writing, compelling story, BUT typographical scarification doesn't work like that - i am not going to get into it but i know from first hand experience how Flynn described it is not accurate)

nesbø’s the snowman (what kinda dumbass detective would think THAT when a woman finds her missing father’s corpse? absolute idiocy - so obviously reverse engineered with that end in mind)

the raven cycle (fuck ronan lynch to start and then fuck him to end as well - there’s some other stuff but mostly he’s a total CUNT and if i don’t say that once a day i have probably died)

14 - bookmarks or dogears?

Bookmarks and sticky notes. Then I can place it pointing directly to the paragraph I last stopped on.

15- The book you can always reread?

This is my question because I reread all the time. ALL THE TIME. Books I reread often: The Secret History, Medium Raw (especially chapter 17 The Fury), Crooked Kingdom, The Violent Bear It Away, and The Goldfinch. Every year like clockwork (since it came out apparently) I will reread Stephen King’s The Outsider.

Other books I feel the urge to reread: VanderMeer’s Acceptance, Englander’s Dinner at the Center of the Earth, Frazier’s Nightwoods, Fresh Off the Boat, the Mr. Mercedes trilogy, the Peter Grant Series (which is queued up for another go here soon I think), any of the stories from A Good Man is Hard to Find, Sanderson’s Wax and Wayne Mistborn books, simon vs the homosapiens’ agenda, and there are two of Alan Morinis’ books on Mussar that I am technically always revisiting—when i need a reminder, i’ll jump around and read specific sections to get centered again.

16- can you read while listening to music?

Yes, but only ambient or near ambient (only usually one track on repeat) or a soundtrack I am extremely familiar with. No new music. I do usually need some audio stimulation or my mind will wander terribly.

17- one POV or multi POV?

Multi pov can certainly be done well (looking at the soc duaology and VanderMeer’s Acceptance) but working a multi-pov means there are more plates spinning, it’s more of a challenge, and some authors pull it off better than others.

18- do you read book in one sitting or in multiple days?

I don’t really do this anymore. that might have something to do with me picking up thicker books? but also i have a full time job now and let’s be real the book has to be hella good if i don’t want to put it down. the last book i attempted to shotgun was the final installment of my favorite series and it still took me two days so....i can get through a lot of books but none of them are ever in one sitting anymore.

19- who to tag:

@sybilius​ @mouth-rainboy​ @iwonderifthatisart​ @phereinnike​ @magnificentmoose​ @wambsgangs​ @moriarteaparty​ and anyone else if you feel so inclined!

Bonus Question: What’s on your to-read shelf? 

As for me, I am excited about one i just picked up, Danforth’s Plain Bad Heroines, which i might start tomorrow and I will be taking Paul Madonna’s Come to Light on my trip to see my brother this coming weekend. 

[dauntingdarling]

Reviewing Cursed (Netflix)

So I finally jumped on the bandwagon for this show and I’ve got some thoughts: (spoilers)

Bad Stuff:

For all the hype I’ve read about the show, I was expecting the main lead to be at least more than she was. Nimue was a disappointment and honestly is one of the weaker parts of the show. 

The 2nd weakest part being Nimue x Arthur relationship  

And I’m not going to even start on the effects in this show, JESUS

While I don’t necessarily blame the hollowness of Nimue’s character on the actress Katherine, (I will say the reason it took me a while to get into this show was because Katherine has 13 reasons why stamped all over her still in my head) I do think she handled some of Nimue’s scenes a bit... awkwardly. 

Case in point: Her first interaction with Arthur 

^But honestly, this wasn’t that horrible when you look to the effects the show used to make this show “graphic” 

All the bloody gore they showed was done so badly that I scoffed more than  grimaced.

^Also can we just point out that when Nimue strung up that red paladin in vines, they made it seem like it was horrible and prime gore material when in reality it looked like a cheap set piece... what a let down

Now lets chat this up a moment:

We all know how the King Arthur tale goes. He marries Gwenevere who then G cheats with Lancelot (more of him in a moment) etc. I feel for Nimue from the get go when I noticed how quick they were to use her to glow up Arthur... like seriously? 

What girl would start a relationship with Mr. Goody (to the point where he is boring) when her life is literally turning to shatters in all directions? All male writers red flag

And while we are on the topic, Arthur-sir, you are the most annoying and basic good guy I’ve watched in some time. Not only does he seem to be too good to the point that its unrealistic, they seriously played off him stealing Nimue’s sword as an okay thing to do... Sir no. 

Devon portrays all the characteristics of King Arthur perfectly, but I feel like if Arthur is to progress into becoming a king, we should be seeing him making mistakes and learning so as to become the great ruler he will one day be. (writers take notes please)

We need some dirt in that perfect persona he carries 

Also known as Weeping Monk 

Good Stuff: 

Let me just start by putting this magnificent thirst trap right here: 

I’ve got to hand it to Daniel Sharman, he has a very loyal fanbase that seems able to carry THIS ENTIRE SHOW on their shoulders. 

Like honestly, I looked through plenty of content on various apps and the Weeping Monk is blowing through social media like wild fire. 

And for good reason too:

-he’s an attractive dude playing the gothic misguided character (serious cliche but highly effective)

-he’s one of the few characters with an interesting character arch (so far)

-he’s Lancelot (hello ladies man)

-he’s great with kids *swoon*

-and don’t get me started on that entrance in ep1 (the writers knew what they were doing)

I’m going to write another post at some point to address why I don’t think he is a toxic, manipulative character that just so happens to be romanticized because of looks (as is seen so far). So watch for that if that interests you. Post in Question

But to tie this off, Daniel Sharman is a fantastic actor and I hope we get more of him next season. 

And, no, it’s not just because he is visually pleasing to the eye (but god bless guy liner)

 I feel like the writers have suspended his meeting with Nimue to the point were we are all shipping the pair of them together, when it’s possible that they may have a different bond, closer to that of Lancelot and the Lady of the Lake in classic lore

But if they hook up I will still be very pleased ngl

Other things I really loved in this show:

-Pym (her time in the viking ship as a healer was prime humor) but I’m pissed she doesn’t end up with the hot viking because unlike our main couple of the show, these two had chemistry for the short scenes they shared together. 

-Merlin (The moment I saw Gustaf Skarsgård in the trailer, I started the first ep. I loved him as Floki in Vikings and wanted to see him in other things) I was pissed that the writers made him seem... boring. 

-I was happy with how Merlin opened up to us as a father to Nimue. Nimue just needs to get her shit together and learn from him because we all know she’s powerful, she just needs to work on it. 

Watch the writers get lazy and just magically having her cast all sorts of powerful magic just because once upon a time she manipulated an apple tree

-SQUIRELL (I loved him from his first scene)

-the Widow! She was the perfect middle ground for a character and her voice was strangely motherly (and I LOVED IT!) While I know Morgana becoming the widow was a great power play and all that, I miss the original widow. 

-Morgana’s general storyline was great considering what happens in the lore. I expected her to go evil the moment her sweet love (that poor nun!) came from the dead with burn marks and talked about being powerful. I’m glad they didn’t push that on her so quickly. They should let that storyline fester a bit more. She’s too great a character to turn to the dark yet (unless they pull a complete 180 of the Weeping Monk)

-Awesome baddies- And by that I mean Iris and the head monk that came to a very satisfactory end in ep 10. Also, props to the show for making the Pope a quick to anger tyrant and his second in command being a literal weasel. 10/10  villain act right there. With these villains in play, it’s easy for Weeping Monk fans to see the light in him, thus driving his character arch. 

-The Christian themes. This may be surprising to some, especially if you are like me, a christian (I’m catholic). But honestly, I loved how they took snippets of Christian history and flipped it to create a complicated power in this show. By this I mean, the red monks act a lot like the holy orders in Catholicism back during the Crusades and the nuns act as healers and helpers to those that ask for sanctuary (the Abbess kept her mouth shut about Nimue, even when she was at risk) - thats what the core of Christianity is supposed to be, and I’m glad they made religion complicated through the monks and nuns. 

-Red Spear/ vikings- cool concept to add vikings to the story and the red spear is a bad ass. I hope we dive further into her storyline next season (I expect so given the rumors I’m hearing about how she is supposedly Gwenevere)- If that’s true, I’m worried the writers are going to ruin the relationship G is supposed to have with Lancelot, solely because both characters are more Alpha energy than Beta, and we all know how that goes...

Maybe that’s why Red Spear’s interaction with Arthur was so great. He screams beta and I’m all for it. 

[aion-rsa]

Marvel’s Black Widow: MCU Easter Eggs and References Guide

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains Black Widow spoilers. We have a spoiler-free review here.

The MCU is finally back on the big screen! Marvel’s Black Widow was supposed to be the official kickoff of Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but then the pandemic happened, it got bounced around the release calendar, and Disney managed to release three MCU TV shows before Natasha got to take her curtain call on the big screen.

But that’s thankfully behind us, and Black Widow delivers terrific blockbuster action in the mighty Marvel manner. And you know what that means! Let’s try and spot all the cool MCU references and Marvel Comics Easter eggs in Black Widow.

The Prologue

Setting this prologue in 1995 gives us the approximate age of Natasha. If she’s supposed to be about 11 or 12 here, that conveniently makes the character the same age as Scarlett Johannsson, who was born in 1984.

The general premise of Natasha’s childhood, in which she was the daughter of two Russian spies is highly similar to that of the FX series The Americans. 

This seems to be the late summer of 1995, which puts it roughly around when Captain Marvel was taking place (the official word on that is 1995, but little details in it, like Stan Lee reading a Mallrats screenplay could place it in 1994). 

Young Natasha is played by Ever Anderson – the daughter of actress Milla Jovovich and Event Horizon director Paul W. S. Anderson. You will not be able to unsee her resemblance to Milla. 

The first song choice in the movie is young Yelena’s fixation on Don McLean’s fixation on “American Pie,” a song about (among other things) the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” J.P. Richardson. That being said, “American Pie” is about a larger loss of innocence, a theme that weighs heavily throughout this film.

Before Alexei turns the radio off to play “American Pie”, the station is set to 105.1 FM. This is WQXK, a country station based in Salem, Ohio that serves the Youngstown market. Natasha and Yelena’s American home is likely based in Eastern Ohio.

There’s an episode of DuckTales playing on TV in the background while they have dinner. We can’t tell what episode it is, but DuckTales ruled, and the new series was even better. And hey, we get some payoff later in the movie when they play an aircraft crash for laughs while having everyone just casually walk it off.

Alexei was working undercover in the US at the North Institute, which he burned to the ground before making his escape. In Black Widow Vol 3 #1, Natasha decided to retire to Arizona but she and other Red Room victims were hounded by the North Institute. Spurred to investigate the situation, Natasha returned to Russia where she discovered much of the terrible truth behind her past Red Room manipulation. This was a story that also featured Yelena (and Daredevil, believe it or not).

There’s definitely an early SHIELD logo on the trucks chasing the family to the very end there.

The plane number is 258. In Incredible Hulk #258, we get the first appearance of the Soviet Super-Soldiers (later named the Winter Guard), a communist superhero team created for the sake of rivaling the Avengers. The original lineup was Ursa Major (more on him in a minute), Darkstar, Vanguard, and the fifth Crimson Dynamo (more on this, too). Over time, Red Guardian joined their ranks, though it was Josef Petkus and not Alexei Shostakov.

This is a perfect cold open, the kind that James Bond movies excelled at, and it’s far from the only Bond parallel we’ll get in the film. 

The Opening Credits

There’s all kinds of stuff happening in the opening credits, including the film’s villain Dreykov being inserted into photos with various world leaders, including President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, and others. The Red Room’s influence knows no national boundaries, it seems.

The overall effect is to imply that Dreykov and the Widows have been putting their fingers on the scale for quite some time.

It’s also a nice touch that many of the “news broadcasts” we see here are from MCU staple WHIH.

There’s a shot of some vials with blue liquid, which allude to the Red Room’s attempt to create Captain America-esque super soldiers, which they succeeded with to some degree with the Red Guardian, but also makes us wonder if they tried enhancing any earlier Widows.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

The opening credits are set to a version of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Malia J. You may have heard her covers of Seal’s “Crazy” and Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” in trailers for shows like Bloodlines and The Handmaid’s Tale.

We wrote more about the Black Widow version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” here.

When Does Black Widow Take Place?

This movie takes place in 2016, shortly after the events of Captain America: Civil War. General “Thunderbolt” Ross (William Hurt) is here to remind us all that Natasha is still in trouble with the government.

What’s kind of neat about this is that it’s the first Marvel “prequel” that feels like it is designed to be watched in its chronological sequence (minus that post-credits scene, of course). Captain America: The First Avenger makes more sense as a flashback interlude between Thor and The Avengers, while Captain Marvel makes more sense as a breather between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. But Black Widow feels like it should be watched right after Civil War.

Thunderbolt Ross

Natasha brings up Ross having his second triple bypass. In Captain America: Civil War, Ross talks about how he had his first heart attack while playing golf and it gave him perspective and convinced him to retire from the US Army. It seems chasing down Cap’s allies hasn’t been so good for his health.

Red Guardian

We know that Alexei has been active as Red Guardian since at least 1983 or 1984 based on the tales of fighting Captain America he tells while in jail. He was apparently sent to the USA for undercover work in 1992, and then imprisoned a few years after their 1995 escape back to Russia.

Red Guardian’s knuckle tattoos say “Karl Marx” which is kind of adorable but…shouldn’t they be in Cyrillic/Russian characters and not Latin/English? Is this to troll his capitalist opponents so they can read them as he beats their asses?

Red says he fought Captain America in 1983 or 1984. The simplest explanation is that he’s lying but…what if he isn’t?

Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he’s telling the truth and there really was yet another secret Captain America active in the ‘80s. Now that The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is done, we know that there was at least one “replacement Cap” and the comics indicate there were others. Or maybe it’s just Steve in the timestream…maybe we’ll find out one day, but we wrote much more about some possibilities for this here.

Ursa

Red Guardian breaks the arm of a man named Ursa… Ursa Major (Mikhail Ursus) is the name of another Russian superhero in Marvel Comics, whose mutant power caused him to turn into a literal talking bear. He became a staple member of the Soviet Super Soldiers/Winter Guard along with a Red Guardian. While the movie doesn’t depict him like the comics, Red Guardian does joke about him being a bear.

Taskmaster

This is a very different version of Taskmaster than the one we got in the comics. Marvel Comics Taskmaster has “photographic reflexes” and is a man named Anthony Masters. Here, in addition to the new gender (Dreykov’s daughter is named “Antonia” as a nod to the comics character), Taskmaster is cybernetically enhanced to make those “photographic reflexes a little easier.

There is precedent for a female Taskmaster. The series Deadpool MAX reimagined Deadpool in a cynical, dark, and very adult (albeit absurd and humorous) way. This lent itself to Deadpool-adjacent characters. Taskmaster was depicted as a woman roughly in her ‘50s who trained Deadpool and warped his mind.

There’s also Finesse, a member of Avengers Academy, whose powers are so similar to Taskmaster that she believes him to be her biological father. Unfortunately, due to memory problems, Taskmaster doesn’t know for sure and refuses to offer any DNA to find out the answer.

In the course of Taskmaster’s action scenes, we see her mimic a number of Marvel heroes, with a particular focus on those who played a part in the recent (by this movie’s timeline) Captain America: Civil War including Hawkeye, Captain America, Black Panther, and even Natasha.

We have more on Taskmaster here.

Who is Mason?

Rick Mason first appeared in his own 1989 graphic novel called Rick Mason: The Agent. Mason was a SHIELD agent mostly remembered for being the son of Phineas Mason, the Tinkerer. Granted, the Tinkerer we saw in Spider-Man: Homecoming isn’t nearly old enough to be Rick’s father in the movies and he looks nothing like him, so I wouldn’t expect any secret connection.

In the comics, Rick was practically forgotten about and killed off-panel. His son was one of the victims of Nitro’s explosion in Stamford, Connecticut from the beginning of the Marvel Comics version of Civil War.

Melina Vostokoff

The Melina Vostokoff of the MCU is pretty different from the one in Marvel Comics (who created by Ralph Macchio and George Perez in 1983). There, she was known as (we shit you not) Iron Maiden, and she was at least a former Widow-esque agent as she is here in the film.

Yelena Belova

Yelena and Natasha’s first meeting being over a bio-weapon/agent is very faintly similar to Yelena’s proper introduction in the comics, a 1999 Black Widow comics story where they were explicitly fighting over a bioweapon, not a “mind control antidote” as we see in this film.

The “face swap” trick that Natasha and Melina pull in the film’s final act also has the faintest of echoes of another early Yelena story, where Natasha “swapped faces” with Yelena to try and break her mind and get her on the side of the angels.

What Happened in Budapest?

“You and I remember Budapest very differently,” Clint Barton famously told Natasha in The Avengers during the Battle of New York. But now we know what went down…

Basically, Taskmaster’s origin story is tied to Natasha’s superhero origin. To fully defect from the Red Room and go to work for SHIELD, Natasha had to assassinate Dreykov…which meant the collateral damage of Antonia.

Of course, that led to Clint and Nat getting hounded by Red Room agents, which led to them hiding out for days together. 

And before that, they were in that safe house apartment that was currently occupied by Yelena, hence the arrow damage to the walls.

Crimson Dynamo

Yelena (probably on purpose) refers to Alexei’s superheroic days as when he was “the Crimson Dynamo.” Sure, this is cute, but there really was a Crimson Dynamo in Marvel Comics! Crimson Dynamo is primarily an Iron Man villain, lots of different Russian agents have worn the Crimson Dynamo armor. It…didn’t end well for any of them. 

The original Crimson Dynamo was Anton Vanko, otherwise known as the old man dying in the beginning of Iron Man 2. Although his son was known as Whiplash, Ivan Vanko was more of a cross between Whiplash and Crimson Dynamo. In the comics, “Ivan” was an alias Anton used.

We’re gonna choose to believe that Yelena isn’t just making this name up and that the Russians really did have an armored hero called the Crimson Dynamo, and if we’re lucky we’ll get to see him in a flashback of some future MCU project. After all, there’s that Armor Wars series on the way…

Also, there’s one thing that Crimson Dynamo has over the Red Guardian: he was immortalized in the lyrics of a song by a member of The Beatles. Paul McCartney and Wings have a tune called “Magneto and Titanium Man” which involves “a robbery” where “the Crimson Dynamo came along for the ride.” It’s great, and it’s on Wings Venus & Mars album.

Thor

Yelena’s line about how a “god from space” doesn’t “need to take an ibuprofen” after a fight is kinda priceless.

Mutants in the MCU

Dreykov tells Natasha that they were searching for the “genetic potential in infants.” Sure, this could mean anything like how athletic someone might grow up to be, but is there a chance they could also have been searching for a mysterious x-factor in a baby’s DNA?

James Bond

Natasha is watching one of the lesser-regarded Bond flicks, Moonraker. Of course, she still knows every word.

Dreykov gets a classic “Bond villain monologue” wherein a baddie spells out his plans for world domination before a hero who he surely thinks is either neutralized or could be swayed to their cause.

Antonia/Taskmaster is a Bond Girl! Olga Kurylenko played Camille Montes, a Bolivian agent with a vendetta in Quantum of Solace.

Remnants of the Red Room

Black Widow was written by Eric Pearson, who also wrote Thor: Ragnarok.

So… Natasha probably couldn’t taste that peanut butter and jelly sandwich from Endgame, right? That’s too bad.

It doesn’t seem that “Fanny Longbottom” is a thing from Marvel Comics, but as Mason points out it is most certainly a real name. Also, Yelena’s dog in the post-credits scene is named “Fanny.”

We get an explanation for Natasha’s blonde look in Infinity War here, as Mason gave her the hair dye. But the way it’s presented here feels slightly like a sisterly tribute to Yelena, which is really sweet.

Natasha makes a crack about “the cavalry” as Ross’ troops close in, but folks hoping that’s an Agents of SHIELD reference are probably going to be sorely disappointed.

Dreykov’s pheromone trick that he has implanted in the Widows (and Natasha in particular) leads to this scene playing out like when RoboCop tries to arrest Dick Jones in the classic 1987 film.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Natasha tells Dreykov with a smirk after getting him to monologue his evil plans. This is as close as we get to a Black Widow catchphrase – she also ended a veiled interrogation with Loki using the exact same words in The Avengers.

The Post-Credits Scene

Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) is back after her appearances in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. If we had to hazard a guess, she’s putting together a team of “Dark Avengers” or “Thunderbolts” for the MCU.

Florence Pugh is indeed confirmed to appear in the upcoming Disney+ Hawkeye series, as well.

We went into much more detail about what the post-credits scene means for the future of the MCU right here.

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Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Marvel’s Black Widow: MCU Easter Eggs and References Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2VrjyDY

[thedaddycomplex]

If you want to create a fiction podcast, but think you don’t have the means, check this out.

Let me tell you how I occupied myself for about 10 weeks during quarantine. I spent almost every waking hour writing and producing a fiction podcast.

The original idea for the story included a bunch of characters, but because of the quarantine and the fact that I don’t have the funds to go around hiring a bunch of voice actors, I reworked the story to include just a few characters. And though I’m no actor, I filled the main role just out of necessity. See? Here I am acting and shit...

The emotion! The pathos!

Of course, that was before I learned that I should really be recording in a more soundproof place, so I moved into here...

A closet. Not even enough room to turn around. Claustrophobia, party of one.

To fill out the cast, I asked two of my old college buddies (who had their own recording equipment) and my wife. I gave them each their episode scripts and, in the case of my friends, they recorded their parts in their own home and sent me a few takes of each scene.

I don’t have a photo of any of them recording, but... uh... here’s a shot of my wife standing proudly next to a puzzle she worked really hard to complete...

Oh, and as for the microphone, we already had a nice one, but any microphone will do in a pinch. Hell, I know some people even use the mic on their earbuds to record. Sure, it’s not ideal, but it works.

Then, having almost no knowledge of how to work the software, I edited it, did sound design and mixed it. I used Pro Tools, but there are a ton of free options for recording and mixing a podcast, like Audacity. And some podcast hosting companies, like Anchor, even offer that stuff for free. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy.

Anyway, my wife knew how to use Pro Tools, so she showed me the basics. And my friend Tyler does audio for a living, so whenever I got stuck on something, he would walk me through the fix. You can’t swing a stick without hitting someone who knows something about recording, especially now when every-fucking-body has a podcast. So, ask around if you don’t know the technical stuff.

I should also note I got nearly all of the sound effects from freesound.org, which is a fantastic resource for this sort of thing. It’s a pretty massive searchable library of totally free effects generated by pro and amateur users. And the site has royalty-free music options, too, but I spent about $20 at melodyloops.com for main theme music I thought perfectly captured the mood of my story.

I also used royalty-free images to generate some promotional graphics both for the series and individual episodes. Graphics like this one...

...and this one...

I used Photoshop to make them, but there are free online photo editors that have the same functionality. Pixlr is a good one.

When the audio files were ready, I looked around at where to put them. Now, there are a shit-ton of sites and services that will host your files and populate your podcast to all of the major platforms. So, see what works best for you. I used the aforementioned Anchor because it's super easy to use and — you guessed it — free.

Then, once the whole thing was rockin’ and rollin’, I started putting the word out any way I could and a few of those efforts were successful...

Now, this post is about how to make a podcast, not how to be successful at it. But, I’ll say this about self-promotion: Just tweeting shit out doesn’t do anything. You have to research where people who might listen to your podcast go online, what lingo they use, etc. I mean, it’s basically Marketing 101, but a lot of people think posting shit on social media is magic. It’s not.

So, yeah, I tweeted stuff, but I also wrote up a press release and emailed it out to a bunch of websites and reporters. And I made a video trailer using royalty-free stock footage and free video editing software.

So, my final tally to make and publish a 6-episode immersive fiction podcast was exactly $20. (And that was for the theme music.) And I was able to do this because I didn’t let a lack of funds or lack of technical know-how stop me. And because — and this is key — I wasn’t afraid to ask for help. If not for my wife and my friends... I won’t say I wouldn’t have been able to do it, but it definitely would have sucked ass.

Okay? Now you know you can quite literally make a podcast for free. So, go do it.

And lastly, if you dig crime and/or horror fiction, maybe check out my podcast Barren. And if you like it, leave a review.

If you don’t like it, fuck off.

[lockhvrts]

Hey Em! How you feeling about tlou2? I'm still sobbing 😭

hi rilee :’) hope you're doing well❤️ i actually wanted to ask you too lmao and same this game wrecked me  

..okay so i have many thoughts n things i want to say id actually just would link you a review that goes more into detail and is more cohesive than my messy essay so i’ll try my best and keep this short as possible tho and i apologize for my english lmfao : 

SPOILERS FOR TLOU2 OBVIOUSLY

also if anyone disagrees with me and is about to send me an essay why i am a h*mophobic,  tr*nsphobic and alt r*ght piece of trash bc i didnt praise the shit out of tlou2

i'm glad that you enjoyed the game so much that its a masterpiece and 10/10 in your eyes , i honestly respect your opinion (and i wanted to love this game too) but maybe rethink what you're about to do and let other people have different opinions without bashing them? it literally doesn't affect you in any way that i didn't enjoy it ( and no it wasn't enjoyable for me bc a character i like died)

postive: 

the gameplay is fluid and responsive (there were some minor issues but its still great), definitely improved compared to the first game, id love to have a little bit of more enemy variety bc it got kind of tiring after the 20th encounter that basically felt the same as the ones before (tho i appreciate the stealth gameplay , sneaking around the map and taking out enemies while being prone like in mgsv was thrilling)

animation, graphics , level design, acting, sound design: ND succeeded in creating another jaw dropping immersive cinematic experience is all i have to say, this is one the best looking games i've ever played (i cant believe a 7 yr old machine can run this game)

music:  i'm glad that gustavo santaolalla is back for the sequel! it wouldn't feel the same without him, his music adds so much to the experience 

negative: the controversial part lmao

story, characters:  I’ll be honest i prefer tlou1 + left behind story wise. i personally don't like the structure of it in the sequel, too many empty side characters, some character / plot decisions generally didn't make sense for me, the dialogue/writing felt out of place and kind of odd sometimes (compared to the scenes from the flashbacks with joel and ellie) and the last hours were dragged out for some reason i just wanted to be done as quickly as possible with it tbh  

jesse was your typical nice guy™ who will definitely be killed off to move the plot forward. the only thing i remember is that he’s dinas ex boyfriend + father of jj dont get me wrong i like and didn't mind him but he has nothing interesting to add to the story. also funny how they literally did not mention him once after his death 

owen and the other WLF members were just kinda there..? i don't have much else to say about them besides that they felt empty i tried to understand them and their stories but i didn't care for them in the end its prob my fault but henry, sam, bill and riley were more compelling to me

lev and yara were great i liked them both , its just that especially lev was just there to make abby seem more humane, i didn't like that ND tried to create a similar dynamic between them like in the first game with ellie and joel it didn't particularly make me like her more speaking of which:

 abby shows barely to no remorse for the things she did. what she did show was that she enjoyed torturing joel, killing seraphites and almost knowingly murdering a pregnant women (dina) and now ND shoves us this forced narrative of her being a good person into our face like how she would've accepted to die for the cure, has friends and a dog that she treats well (which we as ellie were forced to kill to make her seem even more like a villain in contrast to abby) , takes care of yara and lev (granted out of guilt for joel maybe? but i'm not sure) also making her seem more humane bc she has a fear of height? but abby would kill anyone who is not on her good side this time without a problem as we’ve seen plenty while playing as her what i'm surprised about is that i weirdly didn't hate her or anything guess they succeeded in making me feel some pity for her in the end 

yes i also had some issues with the way tommy, ellie and joel were portrayed but i think i'm gonna stop here and give you a 

TLDR:

gameplay ,graphics, animation, acting etc: solid 9/10

story (structure, writing, dialogue,characters etc) : 4-5/10 seems harsh but i am comparing it to the first game, if this was a different ip maybe an 8/10

all in all a its 6-7/10 for me, this game made me feel emotions (not particularly positive ones lmfao) i've never felt in any other medium before, only the first game comes close.

 tlou2 is bleak, hopeless and messy at times with some rare light moments like the flashbacks of joel and ellie that i enjoyed the most and wished we’d gotten more of while also exploring joel and ellie's present relationship on her quest of finding the truth about the hospital incident and maybe also learning more about her immunity  alas this was not the case as seemingly promoted by neil and some misleading trailers.

would i want to play this again? to be honest not really I’ll maybe try clearing the trophies but going back to just casually play it like i did with tlou1 no i don't think so for now.

[sometimesrosy]

I’m so sick of the antis! OFC the trailer isn’t gonna spoil any major storylines or twists? Last season’s trailer barely gave us anything to do with bodysnatching or the anomaly... And it pretty much confirmed the anomaly is a wormhole which is huge!!! Idc if you only watch the show for one character, one ship, one storyline, whatever because we all enjoy things differently. But the amount of people shitting on the trailer because it’s not 4 minutes of what they want to see is annoying.

Yeah. I think it’s stan/anti mentality.

They stan Bellamy so feel slighted that he’s not in it. This is not the same as *loving* bellamy. Because stans require obeisance be paid to their faves, and LOVING Bellamy is enjoying his character/story. Which you can do without having him be the focus. BUT the stans believe their faves are and should be the focus and if their faves are NOT the focus, then it is an offense to their holy writ. And off they go on a holy war, attacking non believers and the perpetrator of the *great evil,* JR.

And then there are the antis, I am sure, who are still shocked SHOCKED I TELL YOU that the main character and hero of The 100 is Clarke Griffin, and every time something is focused around her, a trailer, an episode, a season, a narrative, they believe it is a grave disservice to whoever they think is REALLY the main character. I have seen that be Bellamy, Lxa and, the most odd really as there is no evidence of her being the main character period, Echo. I’ve even seen people get pissed of that Kabby is not more important than Clarke, and turn on her when they realized the show was about Clarke not them. 

The FIRST shot of this show was CLARKE creating a dream of the earth with her charcoal. Remember? That’s an establishing shot. This is CLARKE’S story. 

The trailer is CLARKE’S story, too. ALMOST everything in it focuses around Clarke.

EXCEPT What focuses around Octavia. 

OH so interesting. We know she’s been captured. But we get, from her pov, flashbacks to Diyoza and Hope. AND discussions of Bellamy. AND maybe the only new shot we see of him reacting is to Octavia saying he wasn’t allowed to sacrifice himself for her. 

Wait. There’s also some Echo in there. She sees bellamy being dragged away (i am now convinced that body was Bellamy.) She goes into the anomaly we know. Undercover. She’s breaking from the plan with Gabriel. She’s in the white room. She screams. We don’t know why. 

Oh. so wait. Here’s what I’m seeing. 

There is an absence in the trailer. Bellamy is missing. From it. AND IS MISSING IN THE TRAILER. 

The CENTER of the trailer (other than the sanctum factions) is a missing Bellamy. (yes like the missing CLarke from s6)

Let me explain to you how it is organized in my head, because I see stories in shapes sometimes. I know it’s weird. But my brain is weird, and I think this is part of my ability to analyze stories that I can sometimes see the structure in a graphic form. OK. So.

Season 7 is a black hole. There is an absence in the center. Bellamy. Which sucks all the outlying matter into it. THIS fits with the knowledge that the anomaly is a worm hole. It fits the trailer. It fits the balancing of Clarke and Bellamy’s narrative (the graphic image of bellarke, btw, is two binary stars, drawing closer, I think, which might lead to a supernova, creating a new galaxy even. we’ll have to see if that’s where it goes, but it’s a possibility.)

Fandom shitting on content because it’s not what they want or the story is different than they expect or their fave is not the most important is common. Gotta ignore it.