#which we came up with together a year ago! these are very funny and cool pieces i promise

[0039pf-third-blog-hooray]

leon is urgently called on a mission

leon: sorry, mr. president, i'm in madrid. with the daughter of the previous mr. president. no, i can't, i'm at a wedding. mr. president, this is my wedding. no, not with the daughter of the previous mr. president, luis serra. yes, a criminal in 10 countries, but like i said, i’m in madrid.

there’s a wedding march in the background

by @pol-parketny

[pixiesfz]

okay so this idea is a bit out there but you know that girl on tik tok who has the woso wall and talks about all the drama in woso.She also has a wall trying to figure out if Lucy and keira are dating or ona and Lucy so I think it could be cute if you made a fic about that girl making a wall about if reader and jessie are together or if they’re dating different players and then them finding out about it and stuff.Idk I just made that up in my head so you don’t have to do it it’s just an idea 😘

YES OMG WAIT THIS IS FUNNY

on the wall j.f

plot: your sister sends you a tik tok that has you and your secret girlfriend having a serious conversation

warning: that crazy tik tok lady

It was a Tuesday afternoon when your sister sent you a link, you had just returned from your trip to Canada where Jessie took you to meet her friends and family and you couldn’t have been happier.

devils spawn: little sis…

y/n: what is it Katie?

devils spawn: you’ve made it to the wall

y/n: huh?

devils spawn: *insert link*

You furrowed your eyebrows as the link took you into tik tok, a video that already had over 65,000 likes.

“Now Tom” a woman’s voice started as she pointed at a wall, your eyes shot up at the amount of pictures of your sister and her current girlfriend and also ex girlfriend as well as other soccer players such as Lucy and Keira.

Then you saw what she was pointing at a picture of you that was next to a picture of Jessie.

You I paused the video and watched along.

“Now the McCabe sisters did not go home for their Christmas holidays this year” she stated as you looked at recent pictures from your trips to Canada and Ireland.

“Now this is y/n Mccabe, Katie’s younger sister, we’ve mentioned her a couple of times when she posted pictures of her, Katie and Caitlin” and you thought back to that post that was a couple months ago.

How long has this been going on? You thought.

“Now I haven’t put it on the board yet because their wasn’t enough evidence but it is rumoured that y/n is dating a Canadian soccer player Jessie playing who plays for Chelsea, a rival of Arsenal.

“Why would she date the enemy” the guy asked and the woman looked at him “because that’s a cool love story Tom” she rebutted.

“Well anyways, it’s confirmed that y/n dated Georgia Stanway when she was on a loan at man city” she said and pointed to an old photo of you and Georgia when you played for the team “broke up when Georgia went to Germany, we don’t know if Jessie has dated anyone other than the fact that some Chelsea fans thinks that her and team mate Niamh Charles could be an item as they are very close” she pointed at photos of both Jessie and Niamh which you paused the video to laugh at the conspiracy of her girlfriend and her bestfriend.

“But y/n was seen spending Christmas at Canada which is where Jessie is from but this isn’t the only time they’ve been caught together, at the World Cup Jessie was seen watching the Ireland vs. Australia game with an Ireland top on, very similiar to Caitlin” she rambled on “I don’t have a good enough photo of that” she muttered “then there’s also a group of pictures online that looks like a double date between the two couples” she pointed at two photos that were stuck next to each other, one with Caitlin and Katie and one with you and Jessie, though you had posted the photo months apart it was clear it was the same place.

Your mouth kept on dropping as the girl talked about instances where it could’ve been possible that you and Jessie were a thing.

When Jessie came back from training you shoved the phone into her face “watch” you demanded and say her down.

You watched her reactions as she furrowed her brows “what the heck?” She asked as you nodded “how did they know about that?” She asked when the woman talked about Jessie at your game “apparently people are more observant then we think” you told her and she glued her eyes back onto the phone.

“Remember this Tom cause I don’t think this will be the last time we talk about this couple” the woman stated before the video ended.

Jessie turned to you.

“That was the second weirdest thing I’ve seen today” she said and you furrowed your brows “then what’s the first?” You asked “well Erin showed me a video-“ “I already don��t want to know” you shut her mouth and she laughed.

“How did you find that?” Jessie asked “Katie sent it to me. They’ve been doing videos on her and Caitlin and Ruesha for a while now” you said as you scrolled through the account.

“It’s a little bit weird but expected” Jessie said and you turned to her “how so expected?” You asked and she shrugged “I mean I don’t extremely like it but women’s football is now getting more hype and I guess more fans”

You nodded at your girlfriend “I don’t like how people are caring more about our love life’s then our talent, I bet this woman doesn’t even know what position we play” you said and Jessie took your phone out of your hand.

“Should we just tell people we’re dating to make them stop making assumptions then?” Jessie asked and you looked to the wall “I don’t know” you said “I guess I’m just trying to get used to it all” you shrugged.

Jessie reached her arms around you and pulled you into a hug which you accepted “well you have me and I’ll help you get used to it all” she said and kissed you on the forehead, you smiled before pushing bf her off “have a shower you smell” you told her and she laughed.

“Well you just hugged me so I guess we both need a shower”.

You ended up getting used to the videos people made about you and Jessie, finding some of them funny and even entertaining some of it.

You commented on the wall girls tik tok once asking Tom to blink twice if he needed help and the media went crazy for it.

You and Jessie did eventually open up to the public about your relationship, posting a photo of you at a Chelsea dinner with Jessie’s hand on your thigh as you kissed her cheek.

‘she may look happy here but we made a bet that she would wear my Arsenal kit if we won the derby so @_jessflem you ready?’ Was your caption.

You were so overwhelmed by the amount of love and craziness that happened under the post you left your phone for the day whilst Jessie read out the comments begging for the photos of Jessie in the kit.

Jessie reposted the post adding a message saying that nobody would ever see the photos of her in your kit.

“That wasn’t as hard as we thought” Jessie said as she pulled you into her chest that night and kissed you goodnight

[smorbee]

iBook Pyramid Behind the scenes!

This is a long one. Also keep in mind we made this a year ago so were going completely off of memory at this point BUT we do have the files. Unfortunately we didn't save specific versions of it really early into its creation so all the blender files close to being finished.

We have an intense appreciation for funky old computers. People correctly identified inspiration from the Thinkpad 701C. Less obvious in the final design but something that almost certainly influenced us as well was the 12-inch powerbook g4.

There is something very satisfying about nearly-square shaped laptops.

Others mentioned the JVC 3100R pyramid TV which, you'll be surprised to learn, we had never actually seen until after working on this project. The resemblance is uncanny and yet, entirely coincidental. Honestly if we had seen this thing, it probably would have had an effect on our design because the way that hinge is set up is beautiful. Our thought process was simply just comically emulating the form factor of a modern laptop but with a giant CRT.

We're pretty sure the idea started out as simply wanting to design a full profile keyboard into a macbook-like laptop because funny, and at some point the butterfly keyboard came to mind and we said Screw it and implemented that into it as well. Heres the keyboard separated into the different sections.

Sorry to say that the keyboard does not actually contain any switches. (You'll see that this computer was modeled to be viewed a limited angle)

Heres the keyboard from the top.

Once we got going with it, the whole thing was turned into a big joke of course, clashing many different eras of technology into one. Such as this massive beige tank of a "laptop" having a single USB C port as its main I/O.

And same with the software. This is the texture for the display, Which was taken from our real (unfortunately not crt based) macbook setup at the time. Except not quite, as the original screenshot was 16:10. We simply edited the image to make it 4:3. This is running mac os 12 with a majority of the icons changed to early osx equivalents.

We'll be real and admit the animation is not very intricate, theres no real "rig" for the model, parts are just parented together because we did all this in about 2 days. That said, we had loads of fun animating it still, trying to imitate the motion of someone struggling to lift the heavy top up before it swings open with an inaudible, but easily imaginable "Thud". Making the whole body shake and the trackball jump slightly was the finishing touch to make it complete.

The wire for the trackball was made using a circle with the screw modifier and then applied to a curve. Here's what it looks like with each modifier applied sequentially.

And then making the trackball itself a handle for the curve, we can have the cable be dynamic. (Yes, we notice that the trackball in fact has no mouse buttons. No good explanation for that, I think we just forgot lmao.)

For the screen, we make use of a location transform on the UV mapping for the satisfying detail of the screen distorting from the impact, which we swear we've seen before but no matter how hard we (safely) bumped our CRT monitor we weren't able to recreate it. Nonetheless even if its not entirely realistic we wouldn't remove it for anything.

speaking of which, an utterly useless detail considering the resolution and distortion of the final renders and yet we added anyways just for our own amusement is that the display has a shadowmask, simply done by just multiplying it over the base screen texture.

Combined with a glass material over the inner part of the screen, it utterly destroys low sample count renders of the screen and makes the project at least 3x as prone to crashing so thats cool! (it crashed on us while we were writing this section)

We've learned since in future projects that trying to optimize polygon count and materials is still very important even for offline rendered content. We can never be truly free from the constraints of memory limitations 😔

the final step was getting a more authentic less "polished" look in the compositing. This step can get very complicated based on the specific look were going for, but for this render its really just basic color correction and some blurring and sharpening steps. We used the default fake jitter node in blender at the time, though in more recent stuff we use the non-denoised image with filters applied to it instead, so its less uniform between images and more uniquely degraded looking.

Though we'd do a number of things differently now were still pleased with the final result. especially in animated form.

Heres an overview of the scene:

This is the bezeled apple logo in polygon form. Its simply an alpha texture with a normal map:

Thats all for now! Thank you for reading!

[piltoversfinest-caitvi]

Katie Leung at 2023 Facts Gents Con

There has been news circling around about season 2 Arcane development as well as the Q&A recorded at the Facts Gents. Take some information posted with a grain of salt but I believe them to be plausible

Some questions for Arcane:

Q: In the voice acting were you able to be together in the studio for like scenes with interactions for example between Caitlyn and Vi

Katie: No... so I have not met Hailee who plays Vi. Normally when you do voice acting for something like Arcane, you are just in a box, so you have a producer on one side of the room with a glass pane between you And then it's just me and then the mic and the monitor with the lights or the animation and sometimes if Hailee's done her Vi lines before me then I'll get to hear the stuff that she's done and then I can respond to it. But most of the time there's a director on the screen who will just say the lines to me and then I have to respond and not that they are not great actors because I'm sure they could kind of give me a performance if they want it but I think they try and keep it neutral so then I'm responding to Vi saying something that might be potentially romantic and (the actor) will just be very dead and then I'll just have to kind of respond in the way that I would want to respond as caitlyn so it's funny that because when they put it together, it sounds like we're all in the same room because so much emotions that's carried forward in the voice acting but I've never met Ella or Hailee or anyone for that matter so it's great what they can do

Q: How did a process feel for you because voice acting is different from real life acting and how excited are you for the second season?

Katie: Oh my god I just did some recording for season 2 of arcane a few days ago and I can say that it's looking really good. It was a project I went into without knowing how big it was going to be how incredible the animation was going to look. I heard of league of legends before because my brother is a huge gamer and I used to be a big gamer as well but I never played it so... I did it because I knew he was a big fan so yeah I'll just do it cause I have time. And these guys, you know the creators, they sound really nice so I remember them sending me just photos of Caitlyn And this is the character you're going to play. And she looks really cool so I really yeah uh I went to the recording studio like you know it was just me and the mic and that was kind of strange because I wasn't really sure what they wanted and I wasn't sure you know with the storyline I didn't know what they were talking about when they were talking about piltover and um just all these kind of different jargons that are in relation to League of legends so I was a bit confused about what I was doing and seeing And then once the animation came in and I was able to see some sketches I was like oh my god this looks really cool and then when it came out last year I was just blown away

Q: Which line from Arcane is your favorite? (@ 2:30 Sunday) Katie: Oh that's a hard one because I feel like I really enjoy all the scenes between Vi and Caitlyn and like the moments they have. The most precious moments are the ones where they don't say anything to each other. But if I had to choose a line probably when Vi calls her cupcake and she says shut up. Yeah, that's a really cute moment

Q: Which character storyline are you most excited about for season 2? Katie: Uh…… I think I'm excited mostly.... I'm just trying not to give anything away but I think with season one for Caitlyn she like I felt her pain in season one, you know she had, there's a lot of kind of weight on her shoulders uhm kind of to do the right thing she's kind of like she's a justice warrior She wants to do things correctly and she wants to do things for the people she believes in equality and justice and all these and uh obviously she's a bit of a goody goody two shoes um in comparison with Vi and I think we get to see a different side of her in the next season so I'm really excited for people to see that arc, that journey um and also it's been really exciting for me to play that as well.

Q: What kind of dynamic do you think Caitlyn will have in the upcoming season with Vi

Katie: Oh…. I can't tell you that, I mean, all I can tell you is that….. no no I can't tell you.

I'm telling you a lot by not telling you

Q: If you come to facts as a cosplayer who would you dress up as Katie: Oh my god that is a really good question. I think I would dress up as Caitlyn because I just did some recording of season 2 and she has some incredible costumes. She looks really good. Yeah I mean I can't say anymore but I would love to dress up as a Caitlyn you know her costumes are really cool

Q: When you did the voice acting, did you have any props or cosplay items that you could use? (@ 6:35 Sunday) Katie: No, um, I think it would have been helpful to have like something I could hold on to because there are certain moments when Caitlyn, you know when she's fighting, .. Okay I'm giving stuff away now ..

But when she's maybe in action whether she's running or she's fighting or just breathing heavily or trying to climb out of something I think it's always helpful to be able to grab onto something but there's nothing that you can because they're afraid you might make extra background noise so everything has to be like in the air.

So that can be difficult so I would have liked to have some props for sure but it, there's only ever like a glass of water and the pages with your lines on it and the microphone.

Even when you're running, you have to just be like you have to pretend you're out of breath in place so I'd say it's definitely not easy to do voice acting but it's so much fun when you get the hang of it.

Q: What do you think Caitlyn's Spotify playlist looks like? Katie: Oh god, I don't think she would want anyone what's on her playlist but if she had to... it would be like 90s, R and B, literally, I'm just listing the stuff that I listen to. A bit of rock, a bit of grunge, I'm thinking of TLC I think she would love a TLC, maybe see Dr Dre, maybe Linkin Park, yeah, put up everything

Q: What nickname do you think Caitlyn would have for Vi? Katie: Oh.... do you know what I think she would probably call her by her full name. Violet. I think that would be quite a tease because I think Vi is such a cool name. I'm not sure Vi likes her full name to be honest, I think there's a reason why she doesn't, cause, Violet is, I guess I would see it as quite feminine and quite lovely and that's a last thing Vi would want to hear. As Caitlyn, I probably would call her Violet.

[pahrak-the-sinnoh-slizer]

Game Night: Cassette Beasts

Pokémon fans threatening to find a new monster taming series is like Americans threatening to move to Canada: we’ve all said it at some point, and for completely valid reasons, but the reality is that it just isn’t that easy to pick up and go.  For me at least, it’s hard to pin down exactly what it is about Pokémon that’s central to my interest in it, so I’m not quite sure what to look for in other monster tamers.  At the very least, when something like Palworld rolls around I can easily tell that it’s not that.  The last several Pokémon games have been some of my favorites, but I’ve remained curious about the genre at large; unfortunately these games are innately a rather large commitment, which doesn’t pair well with my indecisive uncertainty.  All this to say, while I was definitely intrigued by Cassette Beasts when I first heard about it years ago, that intrigue never actually went anywhere…until now.

I believe I recently heard someone toss it out as a recommendation on a stream I was watching, which is why it stuck out when I was browsing the Games Done Quick channel on YouTube.  Out of curiosity, I wound up watching the speedrun.  I then poked around the official wiki a bit and came to realize this game could be very appealing to me specifically.  And BOY was I right about that!

Before we get into it, spoiler-free tl;dr: Cassette Beasts both wears its inspiration proudly on its sleeve and iterates upon it in many truly fascinating ways, with an atmosphere that switches effortlessly between delightfully cozy and creepy cool.  I have some gripes, but I have been thoroughly entertained and downright mesmerized playing this game.  If you have any interest in monster tamers, pixel art indie RPGs, and/or cosmic horror, I highly recommend checking Cassette Beasts out.

>PLAY

The game first asks you to customize your character, sans outfit—that comes later so you’re not entirely overwhelmed right away.  There’s also an option for pronouns, including he/him, she/her, and they/them, which is lovely to see.  You are then dropped onto the shore of a mysterious island, and are found by a girl who tells you that you’ve landed in a different dimension.  So, yes, technically an isekai.  But this is a limbo-esque world that only has humans because they keep falling into it from time to time—every single character is either from another world, or was born to parents who are stuck here.  That, combined with making your character’s explicit goal “find a way home”, excellently avoids the most common pitfalls of the genre and lets you assess it without preconceived notions.  What’s really interesting about this is that people are pulled from many different worlds, and from various points in the timeline: you have characters talking about the Mars landing of 1969 and the 20th century peace treaty with the elves, and also famous Greek philosophers and Karl Marx.  I love how eclectic it is, and it’s frequently used in really funny ways. (You all remember Diogenes, right?  Guess what traits are shared by all the monsters he uses.) The people brought here have all banded together in a mutually supportive community, with everyone contributing what they can and materials like wood and metal being traded for goods as opposed to using money.  Why do we want to go home again?  This sounds like a nice place to live!

But anyway, we’re here for the monsters.  And in-game they are just called “monsters”, never “Cassette Beasts”.  Which strikes me as odd.  But the monsters have been in this world way longer than the cassette tapes, which are actually a relatively recent arrival courtesy of an isekai’d shopping mall.  Rather than catching a monster, you record them on a blank tape, meaning that even if you are successful you’ll still need to defeat the monster or flee to end the battle.  You then use your tape and cassette player to take on the form and powers of the recorded monster, and fight your battles first-hand!  Pokémon briefly flirted with this idea in a spin-off manga (Pokémon ReBURST), but here it’s fully embraced; this sort of approach can be seen in other aspects too, as we’ll see later.  After learning the basics, you’re given a few major questlines and then set free into the open world of New Wirral, tackling whatever catches your attention as you romp around.  There is some level-scaling, though I’m not sure of the specifics.  Regardless, both it and enemy AI can be adjusted via Settings, and you can also turn off the glitch effects that show up if those are impacting your experience.  In battle you control both your avatar and one of several recruitable partners, and can carry up to six tapes at a time—essentially Doubles format, with all the complexity and chaos that entails.  One very interesting wrinkle in the formula is that in addition to the tapes/monsters having health bars, the humans also have their own health bar, hidden under that of their tape as if the tape’s HP was a shield meter.  If attacks overkill your tape, the excess damage is dealt to your own HP, and if you lose all of your HP then you’re done regardless of how many tapes you have left.  It’s an important extra resource to keep in mind, and the same is true for (most) NPC cassette-users: if you deal enough damage to their own health bar you can defeat them without having to get through all of their tapes.  Until the late/post-game, that is, where your human foes are invulnerable beneath their tapes while you very much are not, and that feels very unfair.  I also find it strange that there’s no item for restoring your human HP—campfires to rest at are fairly plentiful, but it’s still somewhat odd.

Each monster has one type, and rather than limited uses for each of its moves, both characters generate AP every turn they can then spend on certain attacks.  Moves also each have a type, but while there is a same type attack bonus (STAB), it’s not as significant as it is in Pokémon.  Naturally, each type has advantages and disadvantages over other types, but!  Weakness and resistance is also toned way down, and is not your primary goal when using type advantage. Type interaction is far, far more nuanced in this game, involving the entire spectrum of ailments and buffs and debuffs, and even changing the target’s type.  For example: Water extinguishes Fire, temporarily reducing its attack power.  Using Fire on Water creates steam, which heals Water over the next few turns.  Fire also melts Ice, changing it to a Water type for a few turns.  And this is all just barely scratching the surface!  A chart showing these interactions is given to you in-game, which is nice; more than that, whenever you discover a new interaction for the first time, a tutorial box pops up and elaborates on the effects, as well as providing an explanation of why (extinguish, steam, melt, etc) that goes a long way in keeping track of them all.  While a fantastic feature, it can get repetitive at times: the mystical Astral type has identical interactions with all four classical elements, and despite all 4 being mentioned the first time, you’ll still get that same text box explaining that interaction 4 times.  Types range from the usual suspects (Fire, Water, Air) to some very…surprising choices (Glass, Plastic, Glitter), plus Typeless moves that take on the type of the monster using them.  Moves are treated as stickers applied to your tapes, and can be peeled and moved at your discretion; you obtain them either from leveling up a tape, or from shops and chests and drops.  Leveling up monsters (from 0 to 5 stars) also increases their max AP and how many move slots they have, and I think slightly increases their stats?  Your human characters, though, have their own stats which increase as you level them up from 1 to…well I’m not sure exactly but it exceeds 100 at least.  I couldn’t tell you the exact mathematical way the two sets of stats interact, but it’s a neat idea, strengthening yourself as well as the tapes you collect.  Your partners gain experience even if they’re not with you, and thank God they do, otherwise it’d be a pain to spend proper time with each and every one of them.

There’s one other major battle mechanic unlocked at the end of the tutorial segment: Fusion.  After filling up a meter, your avatar and partner can fuse their monster forms together to unleash hell upon your enemies.  Monster sprites were made modular so that the game could automatically generate fusions on its own, meaning that there are in fact over 16000 different fusions you can make, and your bestiary will keep a list of them all. (Thank God there are absolutely no incentives for filling that list!) Fusing will also cause whatever music track is playing to gain vocals, which is a fun way to up the presentation factor.  Your relationship with your partner is key to Fusion: its measured from 0 to 5 hearts, and you need at least 1 to be able to perform Fusion at all.  At 2 hearts, you gain a super move.  Every level gained increases the stats of your fusion as well.  It’s a fun mechanic to mess around with, even if a lot of the fusions can look a bit derpy—small price for the sheer flexibility of the system.  I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Pokémon fans have been enamored with fusion since at least B2W2; I doubt it’s coincidence that Cassette Beasts chose to implement it as a Mega Evolution-esque gimmick.  Once you get to the late/post-game, the NPC fights also gain access to Fusion, giving you a chance to figure out ways to play around the feature from the other side.

Like I said before, this game greatly expands upon a number of fan-favorite concepts from Pokémon, and I’m pleased to say that extends all the way to Shinies.  Every monster has a small chance to be a “bootleg”, with not only a different color scheme, but a different type.  There are a total of 14 types in the game.  Do you see where this is going?  Every single monster has 14 variants with different types and color palettes (even their original type, weirdly enough?).  And every single one has a page in their bestiary dedicated solely to tracking how many of these variants you’ve found.  Probably nightmarish for a completionist, but holy shit is that insanely cool!  Multiple palettes to choose from instead of being stuck with just one that might suck!  And they have mechanical differences to incentivize recording them beyond simply collector’s value!  Fantastic!  There are also various ways to increase your odds, all the way up to 20% in specific cases, which I imagine will entice quite a few players into the hobby of bootleg hunting.

Let’s see, what other mechanical topics can I cover before moving onto more story-related stuff?  Field moves are a thing—you obtain them by recording a specific monster, and in the case of some like the glide you’ll partially transform when it’s activated.  I think it strikes a nice balance: it’s dependent on what you yourself have actually recorded, but doesn’t ask you to dedicate move or party slots to it.  Their approach to evolution feels simplified: when you rest after getting a tape to 5 stars, you’ll be prompted to “remaster” it if applicable, rather than having to guess which level you should be aiming for.  There are a few wrinkles when it comes to branching evolutions, but only a few, and mostly come down to either having a certain move on the monster to change its remaster, or, after choosing to remaster, being given two options right there.  Those options can be a bit vague, though; I looked into it ahead of time, and if I had gone with the option my gut opted for when remastering my starter, I would have gotten the less cool-looking monster.  I also want to mention the loading screens; you know how The Sims lists random stuff on its loading screens?  They do something similar here, except they’re all related to one of the monsters: “Directing Traffikrab”, “Tuning Kittelly”, “Sharpening Ripterra’s knifeclaws”.  It’s a little thing but I find it charming, and perhaps a bit devious in making players curious to track down these various monsters being teased.  Oh, and selecting the Flee option will tell you your percent chance to flee, and even if you fail you can still choose to blackout if you really just want to get out of there.  There’s also a Mystery Gift analogue that’s been used to distribute various bootlegs, and things I haven’t even tried like the “Gym Pass” to customize your player character's stats.  Beating the game also unlocks customization options for future playthroughs like randomizers and permadeath.  There’s a LOT.  It’s a very packed game.

Right then, story.  There are two BIG big questlines, one of which being a setup similar to collecting Gym Badges: there are 12 special NPCs all over the map who give you a stamp when you defeat them, but rather than specializing in a certain type, they tend to have a favorite tactic they employ in battle.  One of the easiest to find specializes in moves that create defensive walls; one particularly annoying one prioritizes controlling accuracy and evasion; there’s even one who specializes in just one particular monster with an elaborate signature move.  It’s perhaps not an enormous difference, but again, it’s nuanced.  There is also a “Champion” fight at the end, but I won’t get into that.  More importantly, the questline that the game is largely centered around and leads to the end credits, is the hunt for hidden subway stations that house powerful, eldritch boss monsters known as Archangels.  Apparently, when humans first wound up in New Wirral, they didn’t know what to make of the monsters and tended to refer to them as angels or demons.  That fell out of fashion as the community came to understand monsters better.  The Archangels, however, cannot be understood by human minds.  Each one is drawn/animated in its own style that clashes with the world around them—your partners all say that it hurts just to look at them, and just being in the stations makes them feel uneasy.  A personal favorite is the claymation skeleton with a vertical mouth, to give you some idea of what to expect.  These fights have their own unique mechanics, and the Archangels tend to hit very, very hard; if you do survive, some floating guy in a red coat with a 3D rendered reflective triangle for a head shows up and absorbs the boss (concerning), and you’re given part of a riddle that will eventually lead you to the final dungeon.  The vibes are incredibly at odds with the typical overworld gameplay, and I mean that in THE best possible way.  The Archangels were a real highlight for me.

In addition to those, every partner you can recruit has their own questline, which can range from a single fight all the way to finding 6 hidden locations around the map with their own substantial battles to win.  The girl who finds you at the start of the game, Kayleigh, is your first partner, first having a quest that’s essentially “finish the tutorial” before switching to a more personal quest that involves dealing with an actual cult.  You’re also very early on pushed in the direction of Eugene, who has that long, long quest finding hidden locations all over the map.  Slow-going as it is, though, it’s about fighting off a horde of capitalist vampires who are trying to establish a housing market, so.  That’s fucking hilarious.  But it has stiff competition in Felix’s quest, where you follow his middle school OC brought to life as she journeys to four sacred altars to slay their guardians.  That’s right, Felix’s edgy anime OC, an angel demon catgirl ninja named Kuneko, is also up and about in New Wirral and he is mortified by this discovery.  Excellent questline, no notes.  Another partner you’ll run into fairly early is Meredith; her quest involves navigating a dungeon you probably won’t get to for a good while, though it’s a solid dungeon when you do get to it.  There’s also Viola, the character from Twelfth Night by William fucking Shakespeare, whose search for her brother takes her into a haunted shipwreck to face a villain from a different Shakespeare story.  New Wirral is very eclectic.  But perhaps least expected of all is Barkley the dog.  One of your playable partners is a dog.  His quest is the shortest and an utterly fucking brutal punch to the emotional gut.  Anyway I like all these folks, they’ve got personality and endearing character development that touches on some personally relevant topics.  Aside from Barkley, you can romance any partner after maxing out your relationship level, and that was a tough choice to make.  The Gym Leader analogues are sufficiently quirky for their role, and you meet a handful of other perfectly fine recurring characters—including a few who are only encountered in post-game quests.  If I’m really being strict here, I don’t think I’d say any of this game’s characters have jumped the ranks to new blorbo status, but take that as you will.

The post-game has an interesting structure to it.  You don’t unlock any new areas, not really, but after engaging with the newly-unlocked sidequest board for a bit, you gain access to a few longer questlines.  There are two that eventually come together which each feature their own new characters, one following the direct consequences of actions you took earlier in the story, and one that’s about someone new being dropped onto New Wirral, showing that the world keeps turning even if your particular story is over.  There’s also another questline which delves even deeper into the background lore of the game, and that’s something I’ll never get enough of.  The repeating sidequests are brief and rewarding enough to from a satisfying gameplay loop to disguise the grind, and I’m only just now considering an extended break after nearly 70 hours total gameplay (which I would guess is around half post-game).

Oh, I should also talk more about the bestiary and completing it!  Each monster has the standard flavor text and habitat listing, plus that page that tracks bootlegs, and a list of how many you’ve encountered/defeated.  However, when you raise a tape to 5 star level, you also unlock an additional page of flavor text, usually something related to the inspiration for the monster’s design.  While heavily scaled back, having this sort of progression in the bestiary reminds me of doing research in Pokémon Legends Arceus, and I very much appreciate that.  Going that far is optional, of course—really, doing anything involving the bestiary is optional.  But the game does nudge you in that direction and reward you several times along the way.  When you first encounter the “professor” character, he gives you a series of quests that just ask you to record one of the monsters found in the central region of the map.  Easy!  From there, he gives you a handful of resources and tapes every time you hit a new milestone of 10 monsters recorded.  In the post-game you can also randomly get quests asking you to get a certain monster to 5 star, or perform a specific fusion, or use a specific monster to fight the professor’s assistant, all slowly, slowly nudging you in the direction of completion.  But what’s really interesting is that you don’t necessarily have to fully complete the bestiary to get the grand prize (this game’s equivalent to the Master Ball).  Cassette Beasts originally had 120 monsters.  A later update raised that to 128, and some time after that, they released a DLC that added a handful of unnumbered monsters.  You get the Master Tape by recording 128 monster species.  So, if you record a bunch of the DLC monsters, you can “complete” the bestiary without tracking down every last monster in the base game.  If you do go beyond that, the completion percentage will actually go over 100%, which is so weird to see, but in a cool way.  It seems the intention was specifically to not make completion increasingly difficult as new updates are added, which is honestly pretty rad!  And, again, though I appreciate the bestiary remembering all of your fusions, I’m so glad there’s nothing incentivizing you to from every last one of them.  Same goes for bootlegs.  So, does this mean future updates/DLC with even more monsters are on the way?  No clue.  But they are working on a multiplayer update expected to release soon! (I don’t have Switch Online so I won’t be able to do much with that lol.)

I did purchase the DLC right away; I was confident I would enjoy the game enough I would want it eventually, and buying them both together was slightly cheaper than buying them separately. (The bundle also comes with a cosmetics pack but it’s nothing that interests me personally.) After progressing through the main quest enough that you become able to access the final dungeon, a small boat washes ashore, and you’re able to ride it to a dock in the middle of the ocean housing some sort of carnival.  The ringmistress asks you to explore the three major attractions and beat their power sources, the “Infernal Engines”, into submission.  Despite being a small area it’s still just as open-ended as New Wirral, an effort I appreciate.  You can tackle the attractions in any order you want, even leave in the middle of one to go do another if you prefer.  The place is also populated by several new monsters to record, including one of my personal favorites, a ghostly book monster named Hauntome.  It’s a few mini-dungeons, some solid bosses capping them off, and then one last boss, with a loose story in the background that has some connections to the main story but isn’t anything essential.  I don’t know if I’d go as far as to call it a must-buy, but it is fun, and inexpensive, and more Cassette Beasts.  Up to you.

There are two major themes I picked up on during my playthrough: community and art.  The people who’ve ended up in New Wirral, in spite of coming from countless different dimensions, have all banded together to support each other and however many newcomers show up; they don’t even ask for anything in return, they just value life and want to be sure people are cared for.  The theme that plays in Harbourtown is transparent about this: “we’re all in the same ship […] but at least we’re together […] I don’t know you but we’ll make the most of / wherever we are now”.  Fusion is about literally joining with someone to create something stronger than either of you could do on your own.  There are even some genuinely scary twisted manifestations of this idea, like the Mournington cult and the truth behind the Landkeepers—people crave community, and there are some who will use that to their own advantage.  It’s baked into the motivations of all your partners, and, switching gears, most of them are heavily connected to art too!  Felix is an artist learning he doesn’t need to be ashamed of his past, less “polished” work.  Kayleigh, after addressing her regrets with Mournington, reconnects with her old hobby of playing guitar.  Meredith actually takes things in a different direction: she used to spend all of her time consuming vast quantities of art to the point that it cut her off from her community, showing that you still need to exercise moderation when it comes to art.  Viola is a character from another, pre-existing work of art!  The Archangels play into this as well: one of the biggest things setting them apart is the way they clash with the rest of the game’s art style, and their nature as incarnations of humankind’s ideas is a delightfully malevolent spin on the whole thing.

Taking these two themes together, Cassette Beasts presents a thesis on our responsibility to our fellow people and how we can all find our own way to fulfill it, with a particular focus on art and how it broadly conveys our ideas and inspires change.  The final boss fight punctuates this beautifully when, after Aleph destroys your cassette player, Morgante awakens and tells you that you don’t truly need the cassettes.  “THE ABILITY TO MANIFEST YOUR WILL TO ALTER REALITY…TO CHANGE YOUR WORLD, AND YOURSELVES...THAT LIES WITHIN YOU.”  Then she and ALL of your partners fuse with your avatar, and through your combined might, you strike down the malevolent forces in your way, secure a path home, and bring a huge, fundamental change to New Wirral as its inhabitants now have the option to decide if they should stay or go.  It’s an extremely satisfying ending, even if it does see you and your partners going their separate ways.  But, who knows?  Given a few tidbits from the post-game, it sounds like we just might get to meet them again someday.

Again, I had a really, really great time with Cassette Beasts and highly recommend it.  It’s charming, its fun, and it’s only $20!  Maybe don’t get it on Switch, though, not if you can’t stand frequent load times.

And, just to brag about my bootlegs a little:

-The random free bootleg from Harbourtown was a Glass-type Dandylion for me

-The freebie Ritual Candle netted me a Water-type Glaistain!

-The post-game bootleg starter, I got a Poison-type Candevil

-Was able to use the mailbox to get a Fire-type Undyin

-And obviously there’s Barkley’s Ice-type Pombomb

-The first one I encountered purely by chance was an Astral-type Jellyton

-Air-type Jellyton

-Ice-type Carniviper

-Astral-type Carniviper

-Fire-type Traffikrab

-Plant-type Squirey

-Ice-type Boltam

-Lightning-type Snoopin

-Poison-type Kirikuri

-Glass-type Scubalrus

-Glass-type Spooki-onna

-Lightning-type Dominoth

-A Fire-type Piksie

-A Glitter-type Picksie

[troomtroom101]

Toon Quest Theory PT.1: Who is Pib and the meaning behind the Book of Life

okay so I know @toontails announced their return (idk your pronouns im sorry!!) but I recently reread thru the Toon Quest story and I’m finally clicking some stuff together that I’ve been wanting to maybe throw out there!! Please guys listen to me i have been thinking of this for weeks, TQ has so many open ends and mystery that it’s not even funny. I’m a person of wanting to understand things so I made this post to share my thoughts with you guys, and yes I did research don’t make fun of me!!!

so, to start off first and simple. I wanted to get down to the point where the Book of Life is first mentioned, AA mentioned that the Book of Life dosen’t randomly select its holders which makes sense because the book is a lingage and it somewhat of a heirloom (ok probs not the best wording but still) it was also mentioned that the Book of Life chooses its holders like I said, generational wise but also because of the attributes that the subject brings to the team. I couldn’t find the screenshot but AA answered an anon ask at one point stating that. Now if we look more into the team we can understand why exactly they make up the team they are now, instead of a group of goofballs we actually do have a pretty well looking team.

Oswald’s attribute would be his luck. Which is seen in the first chapter when he managed to save everhine in the van from the semi truck crashing into them, which follows with him cheering that he still had his luck.

Bendy’s attribute from what I can assume, would be the fact that he’s a demon, and from what AA has stated/revealed the strongest one on the team (though Bendy himself might not know that) I’m taking it that in this AU, Bendy isn’t created from the ink machine but as it was said from AA he was accidentally taken from his home and placed on the surface (I can’t find the screenshot of the authors confirmation but trust me!!) I say that because Abel is after Bendy, which was also stated. And I’ll also go into why he might be after Bendy in my next post. But bendy’s attribute would be his strength and the fact that he’s basically inhuamne. Not to mention toons are hard to kill as is and since he’s a toon demon, it’ll take a lot to really kill Bendy and I’m sure we’ll see more of that in detail with future chapters.

Donald’s attribute would be his bad luck, which may be bad but is actually a good thing as in one of the chapters his bad luck basically murked the spirit spider that was chasing after them in the cave sequence.

His attribute clearly comes in handy when it’s needed. Not to mention it weighs out Oswald’s good luck with his bad luck. Creating a balance.

For Cuphead and Mugman, it would have to be because they harness power to shot their peashooters, and because as stated they defeated the Devil some years ago. Though with their character turnaround with tagging along with the TQ gang, this makes them a great advocate with knowing some plans about the opposing team.

And Panchito would have to be for his intellucal integrity as he himself was the one to even put the band together to begin with. Traveling overseas just to find one of them. His morals seems to be very strong and I believe there’s more to his character as he was the first one to recive the book and get any sort of information about it, as he claimed that the thought of the book came to him in a dream that he has had for years. Which would make sense why the book would go to Panchito first out of everyone because his person is uplifting, loyal and fairly responsible (in a way)

the book clearly harness some spiritual power as AA has stated. It’s not just a book, so I believe the book is what sent Panchito these visions. Also he’s good to and that it’s clear he’s a sharpshooter. Maybe even as good as Bettigan.

And moving onto Y/n. Her attribute, as we all know. Is undetermined because she’s a human. Not a toon. She dosen’t have any cool tricks, she dosen’t entirely have magic as it was said that she was supposed to, but lo and behold. She dosen’t. And she never will, as AA has confirmed. But inside the story it was say MULTIPLE times that the reader was supposed to be given a power to help her.

it’s refered to as a mark and how it was supposed to be given to Hector, but because of time and how he and his group couldn’t successfully go on with the plan of figuring out what Ruby Falls was (the death of his friends) he came to a witch in the woods to send a message to Y/n about how her having a mark would help her defend herself from darkness and save mankind.

But as we noticed, Y/n has no power and so far has been fighting and defending herself based on her agility and luck. As it’s seems multiple times, she’s not very good in combat unless the other toons are with her to back her up. But by herself on a 1 on 1 combat, she fails exceedingly bad at defending herself, which I won’t bash her too much as she’s just a teenage girl who’s revealed to be a homebody with no friends, fighting against various combative individuals who clearly has more training and knowledge in the ring than she does. You’re not gonna wake up one day and be able to take down Batman. But there is one thing about her that I will point out. That she’s very observant and can very much tell when things are off in certain situations. As stated by AA.

Reader is indeed a fast learner as when Ruck was teaching her archery, she was able to develop a knowledge on how to properly use a bow and arrow. And I must say. Archery is very much a tactile and difficult field to get in as it takes a lot of body strength and muscle strength, but with little time she had. She was able to adapt very quickly as seen with her being able to successfully get bullseye during the Warrior Falls contestant picking for the finale’s.

Though that dosen’t mean we’ll run right over the fact that Y/n dosen’t have magic as states as she was suposoed to have. It even concerns her to a point of questioning why she dosen’t have it. Does the book decide not to give her magic? Does it often happen for these quirks to just not show up. It was clear that someone or something is suposoed to give them these quirks as Hector denied wanting to have it as he stated he would save it for Y/n. Which also comes into play that this is probably a one time use.

So where is it? And who has it? Well. Who else is the only one in the series that has magic? Well, we have Bendy. Who’s able to bend liquids (which from what I see it’s preferably ink) and he can also make portals.

But this can also be because of the fact that Bendy is an actual demon and harness power that not any ordinary toon can. But that also makes me say. Do you know who else has the ability to create rifts and portals?

And y’all look at this FUCKING KEY WORD!!! PUDDLE

I swear this is not a COINCIDENCE!! I make this side by side comparison because at some point it was mentioned that Bendy would be the one prone to betray Y/n. Now I don’t wanna point fingers, but I believe Bendy may be a reason why Y/n is powerful. Or 1 of the many reasons. Because my second reason is going to be Pib. As it was said that Pib plays a big role and sort of a fairly meaningful role to not only Y/n, but to everytbing. Now, I don’t wanna be that guy but I really do want to say that Pib is actually a good guy and Y/n is a bad guy. AA did at one point said that Y/n is morally grey and that she dosen’t really care to be a hero, meaning that Y/n dosen’t wanna put her life in the line for just the sake of it.

which may seem like a bad thing but, honestly? We’ll probably get more into why the reader may feel this way and why she may essentially reach a point where she feels this isn’t really fit for her. Pib isn’t exactly a bad guy because their only objective to them is to kill Y/n. That’s it. They don’t care for the book. They don’t care for the situation or who has the book, but it’s just to kill Y/n.

and the opposing team also wants Y/n dead as well. And only her. They don’t care for the others but just wanting her dead

I’ll get into later why I might think why they want Oswald out of everyone. But that’s besides the point, I find it concerning that Y/n has such a large bounty over her head when she hasn’t done anything to anyone or from what we know and have been seeing she’s pretty much innocent. Before I get into Pib, I also want to put on the table why I may think everyone wants Y/n eliminated first.

I’m chapter 5, Argus states that when she kills Y/n, the book will be in her possession.

She claims that when Y/n’s dead her bloodline will be no more, now I want to say she’s refering to Y/n being the last of her generation to hold the book in her possession, but now that I thought more on it, maybe when Y/n dies, the book just automatically releases its hold on the others making it accessible to anyone. So in some sort of way, Y/n has to be a key, a valuable key and asset to keeping that book locked. Whuch can explain why Ruck is trying him damn hardest to teach Y/n under the time he has to defend herself properly seeing she has no power to properly do it. Because if she dies. Everyone is shit out of luck, anyone in the world can just access the book. Which can explain why the villians want Y/n dead so bad. if break the lock. You have access to the riches. Now that’s if the others will still be there to defend the book from being taken still.

which moves back to Pib. Now we all know. The books signature glow is a yellow/golden light or aurora. It helped them navigate where to find eachother. Certain locations and even a piece to Ruby’s Heart. This book is basically its only navigation. But who else has that certain golden glow to them.

In the recent sneak peek, Pib was able to tug some hair from their head and use the essence of it to creating a golden line to lead them to where the TQuesters are. The same navigating line that they used many times to help them travel around. And Pib’s glow is yellow and golden. A color that's assossiated with the book. Maybe Pib is also a keeper of the book, and maybe the magic that was supposed to be given to Y/n was handed to Pib somehwere along the line. But who would have given this power to Pib. The only other person I can think of, would be the main villian. The man in the trenchcoat. As he was the sole purpose of all of this happening to begin with. Though he has little screentime. It’s clear that he’s going to be a big problem. Pib’s power was also stated that it’s just about as strong as Bendy and Abel. Abel being a literal arch Angel—which is mentioned that Abel’s sole purpose on earth is to kill dark magic that’s located in the Shadow Realm. A split between physical world and the spiritual world. Which I can assume is where Bendy came from as well as Zip and Zot as they were confirmed to be from the shadow realm. I belive the things from this world are dangerous and cannot be contained. Which is why Abel is even present to begin with. He’s role is to destory anything that’s from that world. Including Bendy. Now why he has such a hatred towards Bendy, I don’t know.

Not to mention Abel is at the top of the list of things that is very hard to be defeated so it’s safe to say that the book refering to angels being able to banish darkness, Abel is what it’s refering to.

Pib and Abel works hand in hand because they both have the power to do a lot of damage. I’ll make pt2 going over more bc I need you guys to hear me OUUTTTTTTTTTTTT

@toontails I WILL NOT BACK DOWN UNTIL I FULLY UNDERSTAND

[okiankeno]

2 Truths 1 Lie Reveal:

TDLR: option 3 was my lie! The first love letter I did lose and never opened until 3 years later (funnily enough, this was from the academic rival's best friend btw) but my second letter, from a girl I knew, I opened right away after finding it. Hence, I lied.

If you would like to learn more about me and the stories behind the options I picked for myself, they're under keep reading!

Most of Smoshblr voted for option two, which everyone dubbed Wattpad fanfic adjacent. It happened lol. I have a long explanation in response to @unknownteapot that I will reiterate here with some edits:

The academic rival was a guy I had a 'crush' on in grade 6 (my last year of elementary school in Canada). I say 'crush' in quotations bc I didn't understand the concept of sexual attraction or romance until the year after. Before understanding sexuality and attraction, I thought that picking the smartest person in the class would make me fall in love or something (spoiler alert: not really). We were compared a lot to each other as overachievers because of the extracurriculars like music and sports that we did, but I never thought we were rivals outside of school.

He and I were pretty good friends too, we ended up going to different junior highs (grades 7-9) but we texted and emailed each other every so often to keep in contact. The summer before high school started, he sent me a flurry of texts pretty much saying "Please go to x school with me, if you do we can date each other" (as if that was like a cool reward for going to the same school as him like??)

He is a nice guy but it was weird to me. He knew that I had a 'crush' on him years ago because I either told him or my best friend told him I can't remember tbh. I have no idea if he liked me tbh it just came out of the blue but what do I know, I miss flirtatious cues a lot so 😔😭😣 oh, and if you are wondering, I did not take up his offer because I thought it was really weird, plus I didn't have feelings for him.

Option one, stopping foreplay because of a joke that I never told my girlfriend? This too, is true.

My girlfriend and I took edibles before nightfall and when I'm high is that I get very bubbly and it's super easy for me to laugh. Additionally, it's very easy for me to get locked in on intimacy — so that's how I found myself in my girlfriend's bed, you know, bodies pressed together (there's a slew of other effects, but these are most integral to this story). But as I was touching her I could not stop thinking about how funny yet unsexy it would be if I cracked a joke. And this thought just kept repeating over and over in my head making me giggle and then into full-blown laughter. So naturally, sexytime had to come to a halt. She asked me what was going on and I told her, "I kept thinking about how funny but unsexy it would be if I made a joke right now," to which she asked, "What was the joke?"

There was no joke, just me laughing in anticipation of potentially making one during sex. Really lame, I know. I ended up getting frustrated at myself for a few minutes (my girlfriend comforted me with, "We don't have to do this right now if you're not in the mood") while we paused but then I locked in and got to home base.

Option 3, unopened love letters! This is my lie! These stories have a lot of sadness carried with them, so if you don't like hearing about heartbreak, prepare yourself!

The first letter, Valentine's Day, I'm the only gal that gets one from this guy. I misplaced it in my bedroom in one of my books and didn't find it again until I deep-cleaned my room three years later. I open it, it's a card that tells me about how cool I am and is filled with Naruto drawings (I doodled a lot of anime characters in class) and a $20 bill. $20 is a lot for an elementary school kid! So, yeah, I missed that signal. My best friend at the time even said to me on the bus home, "Oh I think [guy's name] likes you," and I went hm yeah interesting, not interested (I didn't care for or understand romance at the time - this was grade 6).

Second letter: An anonymously signed love letter was found in my locker in May, a month before I graduated high school. I opened it immediately because I wasn't gonna have a repeat of missing a confession from someone. It's typed in Times New Roman, and signed with an uppercase 'L'. It's from someone I knew because of the details included in the letter. They wanted to confess to me before we graduated but didn't have the courage to do so in person.

I spent a week trying to figure out who this could be, and unfortunately for me, I pegged down the wrong person, someone I had an ongoing crush on for 5 years since junior high, and wrote a letter to him. He reads it. He says it's not from him and he doesn't like me. I'm heartbroken and baffled.

Almost immediately after conversing with my crush, I knew who it was from: the girl who sat beside me in my physics class for the past year. Her last name started with an L, but I never thought it was her, because her words, to me, in the context of my delusional crush on a guy, sounded like him. So in my heartbreak, I write her an emotional reply letter overnight, bringing the one I wrote for my crush as well, and approach her at lunch break.

It's a sunny day, two weeks have passed since getting the letter in my locker, and I bring her to the end of a busy open hallway. She's sitting on the concrete floor, I'm standing above her, letters in hand; everything is bright, but I know the next thirty minutes will be anything but naught. I opened the conversation by telling her I received her letter and by mistake, thought it was from someone else. I let her read the letters. She starts crying, and I do too — she's a very sweet girl and my friend. A teacher walks by and asks if we are OK, and we both are sobbing, saying, "Yeah." We do not look ok.

I felt soo shitty, having heartbroken her heart from my heartbreak, and she tells me she has to write a math exam after this. I still cringe thinking about this story to this day because it fucked me up emotionally and I couldn't sleep right for the rest of the summer. Anyway, I think about the experience and think I could make a Webtoon about it and it probably would pop off because a high school love triangle that's unrequited on all ends? Pain.

Anyways thanks for coming to my story time 🫠✌️

[itsmarsss]

Annual Birthday Plant [Jared Kleinman x Evan Hansen] (Dear Evan Hansen)

(from the vault)

Jared Kleinman gives Evan Hansen a plant for his birthday every year since 7th grade.

Words: 2,934

Warnings: like one brief/vague mention of sex

[. . .]

In 7th grade, Jared Kleinman gave Evan Hansen a plant for his birthday. 

He was supposed to come over so the two of them could play video games and eat pizza until their stomachs hurt, their favorite thing to do together since forever.

But, for the first time ever, Jared had to pick Evan's gift himself, unlike every other birthday, when his mom would do it and he wouldn't even have to think about it.

And so for weeks Jared tried to think of something, but nothing seemed to come to mind. He tried making a list with everything he thought Evan would like, but ended up crossing out most items as they were either too expensive or just outright impossible to get, and the more he thought about the things he still had left on the list, the more he convinced himself that Evan wouldn’t actually like any of the options.

So he postponed deciding, because what else would he do? Then suddenly it was Evan's birthday and he was supposed to be at his place in an hour and he didn't have a gift. He started panicking as he got ready to leave, knowing not only it would be a big dick move if he showed up with nothing, but that his mom would probably murder him- but then it hit him, out of the blue: he knew exactly what the perfect gift would be.

His mom did indeed get mad at him for procrastinating until the last minute, but, still on time, Jared managed to show up at Evan's with the perfect gift in hand. 

He never forgot the look of pure joy in Evan's face when he saw the cactus. 

"Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!" Evan kept repeating, grabbing the plant and staring at it in awe. "Mom look!"

"It’s beautiful honey!"

"Thank you so much, oh my God!"

Jared was shocked by the amount of happiness the tiny little plant he picked up in a rush at the store was bringing his friend. He couldn’t help but feel extremely proud of himself for choosing the perfect thing. 

"Oh that's fine. I uh. Remembered you said you wanted a plant a few months ago so. Yeah," he said, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck.

"You remembered that?" Evan looked genuinely confused.

"Yeah. No big deal," Jared said, wanting anything but for Evan to get emotional.

Evan didn’t say anything back, and Jared has ever been able to handle silence well, so obviously he started talking. "I uh. I named it uh- shit. Nevermind."

"No, what did you name it?"

"Well I was like. You know just joking about naming it with my mom and we thought Jeff would be a funny name so. But you don't have to name it that. Obviously. Or like. At all."

Evan shrugged. "I like Jeff."

“Cool.”

"Well do you wanna go play Mario Kart?" Evan blurted out after a few seconds of a really awkward silence.

"Hell yeah dude!" 

In eight grade, Jared Kleinman gave Evan Hansen another plant. 

He didn't exactly mean to make it a tradition. In fact, he only got Evan another plant for his birthday the next year because, once again, he couldn't decide on a gift. And so he thought that, well, considering the way Evan seemed to absolutely love Jeff (who was still very much alive, which Jared, who had let dozens of his mom's plants die before, found impossible), he would most likely appreciate another plant.

This time he got him a succulent that came in a little white vase. The moment Evan saw the plant was when Jared did decide to make it a tradition- he had no idea what the deal was with Evan and plants, but he liked that it made him happy. 

"Oh my God. Another one?" Evan sounded stupidly excited.

"Yup. Thought Jeff would like some company."

"Thank you! Holy shit!"

“Evan!” Heidi yelled from her room at his cursing.

“Sorry mom!”

"You know I don't really know anything about this stuff so I got this one. I don't know if you like succulents but-"

Evan cut him off. "I love it."

"Uh, good. That's good."

Evan made way for Jared to enter. "So. Did you name this one too?" He closed the fornt door behind them.

"Not really. But we could think of something."

"Jessica?"

"Ew dude. No."

"What's wrong with Jessica?"

"What's not wrong with a succulent named Jessica?"

"Because a cactus named Jeff is pretty normal?"

Jared rolled his eyes in response. After a couple seconds in silence, his eyes went wide. "Oh shit I got it!"

"What?"

"Are you ready?"

Evan shrugged. "Shoot."

"Hear me out: Tom."

Evan laughed. "All that build-up for "Tom"?"

"Do you have any better ideas?"

Evan seemed to try to come up with something, but quit pretty quickly. "Not really."

"Tom it is!"

On Evan’s 15th birthday, Jared Kleinman gave Evan Hansen yet another plant. 

He had another list, days before the actual birthday. But this time it only consisted of different types of plants. Not that he’d ever- ever- admit to absolutely anyone that he, a totally heterosexual highschool freshman, had spent hours googling different plants to try to find the perfect one to give his (also totally heterosexual) completely platonic best friend for his birthday.

He made his decision as soon as he saw the first picture of the last option on the list, even making sure to go to the store a few days in advance to see if they had it (which they thankfully did). 

He picked it up, like the previous two years, right before his mom dropped him off at Evan’s (because he knew he could not be trusted to take care of it for even a day), but made sure it was in a box this time for completely selfish purposes. He would not just waste a joke.

“Hey! Are you-” Evan’s eyes landed on the small box his friend held. “Oh. Is it not a plant?” he asked him, obviously trying his hardest not to, but sounding a little bit disappointed. Jared’s heart did… something in his chest, like fucking… cartwheels or some shit.

Jared proceeded to ignore those cartwheels. 

“Of course it's a plant.”

Excitement was back on Evan’s face instantly. “Oh cool! Thank you! You know I lo- uh- I really like them.”

“I was gonna say it’s no big deal but you should be so fucking grateful for this one, dude.”

“Why?”

“You’ll… see.” Jared couldn’t contain his laugh. 

Evan started laughing too, but simply because of Jared’s own laughter- he still had no idea what was going on. “Dude what is it?”

“It’s um,” he cleared his throat, trying to stop laughing. “It’s called Lithops? Ever heard of it?”

Evan shook his head no, and Jared wordlessly handed him the box, now unable again to contain some pretty embarrassing-sounding chuckles. Evan opened the box and took the plant out. Now Jared was flat out cackling.

“Get it? Cause it looks like- cause it looks like a-” He couldn’t stop laughing, not able to even talk properly. Apparently only then did Evan register what was so funny about the plant, slapping Jared’s arm. 

“Oh my God! No! That’s disgusting oh my God,” Evan complained, but it was obvious he was fighting a smile.

“I’m sorry!” Jared said, still laughing and very obviously not sorry at all.

When Evan Hansen turned 16, Jared Kleinman crossed out his first plant idea.

He decided to buy Evan an incredibly specific plant instead- one so specific the flower shop where he’d bought all the plants from the previous years didn't actually have it, and he had to drive across town to get it. 

“Heeyyy Ev!”

“Hey. You’re… late” Evan sounded a bit disappointed, and Jared couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about it. Still, he also couldn’t help being sarcastic about it.

“Maybe I’m not. Maybe you’re just early!”

“To… my own place?”

“I’m sorry.” There was no sarcasm in his voice anymore. 

Evan seemed surprised by that. “Oh it's fine! It’s- it’s okay.”

“I’m late for a good reason though!”

“Which is?”

“Your gift dumbass! Now normally I buy your little plant friends from this shop a couple blocks from my place BUT I really wanted to give you this one and turns out they didn’t have it so I had to drive across the city to get it from this other shop, which was kinda sketchy by the way, not gonna lie, but anyway yeah here it is!” He outstretched his hands, holding the small box with the plant inside.

Evan laughed at his lienghty explanation as he grabbed it, and started opening the box before pausing. “Wait. What’s so special about this one that you did all that to get it? If it’s another-”

“Stop being so dramatic! It’s cute I promise.”

Judging by the look on his face, Evan didn’t seem so sure, but opened it anyway. 

“Oh. It IS cute! It looks like that thing that nemo lives in!”

“The… anemone?”

“I guess? I don’t know dude.”

“Well you wanna know what it’s called?”

“Here we go.”

“Don’t be a perv, Hansen! It’s nothing dirty it’s just funny!”

“Okay what is it?”

“Baby toes,” Jared announced in the same tone Evan would picture someone using to pitch a brand name idea for a CEO.

“There’s no way this is called baby toes.”

“It is!”

“You are so stupid, oh my God,” Evan said, smiling.

“I mean I’m not the one who owns baby toes, so...” 

“Well what are we gonna name this one?”

“I dunno. I thought about a few names but it was for another type of plant so I don’t think it fits.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh well uh. I was actually gonna give you this one called anthurium? Is it anthurium?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, well it was gonna be one of those ‘cause I thought it had like cool colored leaves but apparently the colorful parts are actually just leaf-looking flowers so. Baby toes.”

“What’s wrong with flowers?”

“Oh you know. Just like… giving a dude flowers you know. Sounds kinda uh. You know what I mean.”

Evan seemed like he was gonna push him further about it, but decided not to. Jared was more than thankful for that. “Well I liked this one. It’s pretty cute. What about Joey?”

Jared was too busy tensing up and holding his breath to properly register what Evan said. “What?”

“I said what about Joey?”

“Like from Friends?”

“I thought you hated Friends.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t know anything about it! It’s pop culture!”

On Evan's 17th, Jared Kleinman chose Evan Hansen’s plant pretty early, and he was really proud of himself.

“Jared?” Evan asked when he opened the door. “You’re early,” he pointed out with a frown.

“Can’t a guy be early to his friend’s birthday celebration?”

“Is this about the plant you’re gonna give me?”

“Who said I got you a plant?” Jared asked exaggeratedly, hiding the box behind his back.

Evan laughed. “Okay whatever. I’m almost done. Just gotta put on deodorant and do something about my hair and we can go.” He ran upstairs, and Jared waited for him by the doorstep. After about five minutes he was back.

“Okay I’m done! We should probably get going so there’s no chance it’s sold out.”

“Dude we’re watching a Captain America movie at like 5pm I don’t think it’s gonna sell out.”

“Let’s just go.”

“Okay, fine. But first, your gift!”

“My ‘not a plant’ gift?”

“Your… ‘maybe a plant’ gift.”

Evan grabbed the box and opened it. Then he freaked out. “HOLY SHIT ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I’VE BEEN WANTING ONE OF THESE FOR FOREVER! IT’S LIKE A MINI TREE!” 

Jared laughed at his excitement. “Don’t get too turned on, tree boy! we still got a movie to catch.”

Evan flipped him off before carefully placing the plant on the kitchen counter. He took one more look at it before turning back around. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Not even a thank you?”

Evan said nothing, just motioning for him to move, locking the front door before they both walked to Jared’s car. He did awkwardly thank him when they got in the car.

“It’s whatever. So what are you gonna name it?”

Evan stopped to think about it for a second. “Oh! Maybe Steve?”

“You totally just thought about it because of Captain America.”

“So what?”

“So the obvious choice should be Tony!”

“I am not naming my plant Tony, Jared.”

“You’re no fun!”

He did name the plant Tony.

On their senior year, Jared Kleinman gave Evan Hansen nothing for his 18th birthday, as he saw fit.

A year later, things were going better between the two of them. Still, Jared Kleinman gave Evan Hansen nothing for his 19th birthday.

On Jared Kleinman’s sophomore year of college, he decided they were finally fine again. He got an air plant, which he didn’t even know were a thing, and planned to keep it in his room until Evan’s 20th birthday.

Evan ended up getting his plant a couple days early though, when they were just hanging out in Jared's room.

“What’s its name?” Evan asked, pulling Jared out of his own thoughts.

Jared looked up from the videogame screen. “What?” 

“What’s its name?” He asked again, pointing to the tiny glass vase with a plant in it.

“No! Shit!”

“What?” Evan asked, probably scared of having done something wrong.

“You weren’t supposed to see that!”

“Why?”

“Because it’s your gift dumbass.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Well. Now that you ruined it. You like it?”

“Yeah! Air plants are pretty cool.”

“Cool.”

“So,” Evan spoke up after a few seconds of awkward silence. “What do you think I should name it?”

“Aren’t you a little bit too old to name plants?” Jared asked, mindful to emphasise his jokeful tone.

“If not me then who?” Evan asked dramatically. 

“Whatever you say Mr.-I-speak-for-the-trees.”

“Oh wait I know!”

“Okay shoot.”

“Audrey II!”

“I should not have introduced you to musicals.”

“But you did.” Evan smiled. Jared didn’t like how much he liked that.

The following year, Jared Kleinman made the decision to tell Evan Hansen about the no-so-platonic feelings he realized he felt for him.

And chickened out of it.

"Are you gonna say anything?"

Evan looked up from the daisies in his hands. "What?"

"You just gonna stand there and stare at it or what?"

"These are daisies."

"Yes they are."

"These are flowers."

"I guess."

"You just gave me flowers."

"I guess I did."

"Does it… mean anything?"

Jared seemed to be taken by surprise. He didn’t expect Evan to get it so quickly, let alone be so upfront about it. So, he chickened out. 

"Except just me giving you your annual birthday plant? It's your 21st it's special!"

Evan sighed. "I don't get you."

"I mean neither of us are in the closet anymore at this point so I figured like. What's the matter, ya know? That's all."

Silence.

"Okay. Sure."

"Alright."

"Her name’s gonna be Patricia by the way."

"I cannot stress enough how much I hate this decision."

"Well the flowers are mine so..." 

On Jared Kleinman’s junior year of college, he smiled as he walked to Evan Hansen's dorm room with his birthday plant in hand.

He knocked on the door and waited. Evan opened it in only a few seconds. Jared noticed his hair was wet, probably just having taken a shower, and he was wearing his favorite dress shirt. 

"Oh we're fancy today huh?" He raised an eyebrow and pointed at the shirt. 

"Shut up. What's that?"

"You seriously need to stop asking that as if it's not gonna be a plant."

"I'm being polite!"

"Well stop! You can't be polite to me. It makes me look like an asshole."

"Maybe you're just an asshole regardless."

"Actually go back to being polite."

"Are you gonna give it to me or what?"

He faked an indignated gasp. "What kind of guy do you take me for, Hansen?" 

He handed Evan the box, and both of them entered the room. Evan set the box on his desk and sat down to open it.

"Oh It's- it's an anthurium."

"Yeah. You like it?"

"I do. But…”

“But what?” Jared pursed his eyebrows together. Shit had he done something wrong? Dis Evan not like anthurims anymore or-

“Don't you think it's a little weird giving flowers to another guy?"

Jared let out the breath he'd been holding. "I will murder you."

"I'm just saying, you know."

“I literally gave you daisies last year.”

“I didn’t wanna say anything back then but like… that was kinda... you know... it was a little gay.”

"I will break up with you."

"No you won't.”

Jared couldn’t think of a funny comeback, so they just stayed in silence for a moment. 

Then Evan stood up. "Thank you. Really,” he said seriously, and leaned in to kiss him. He smiled at Jared’s lack of response to it.

Jared, in turn, could barely speak, his cheeks burning an embarrassing, obvious amount. "That- that's okay-"

Evan laughed at his flustered state, which he still got into pretty often considering they’d already been together for a few months now. He decided not to tease him about it this time, grabbing his jacket instead. “C’mon we’re gonna be late.”

“I mean. Your mom won’t mind…” Jared went on, obviously not entirely serious about it since they really were almost late, but also not entirely joking. Evan found it extremely cute.

They really had to go, though. “What kind of guy do you take me for, Kleinman?” He asked, mocking what Jared had said earlier. 

Jared rolled his eyes. “Okay let’s go you ruined the sexy mood.”

They both took one last glance at the anthurium on the desk before leaving.

7th grade Jared Kleinman really had no idea what he was getting into when he gave Evan Hansen that first cactus, did he?

[. . .]

A/N: You go 16 year old mars with the dead ship from the dead fandom of a dead musical! If anyone remembers this it's cause it's been on ao3 since it was written a few years ago and it's actually been posted here when i had a different blog (i was bigbilliamdenbro/marsiguess). I'll be going back to writing and posting and old writing will be tagged as from the vault! Interact and maybe even request away! I'm really glad to be back :)

[awesamforehead]

Tag at least six people (can be more than six if you want), and say at least one nice thing about or to each of them. Can be mutuals, can be people you follow, can be people you don’t know but just happen to exist in the same circle(s) with. All you gotta do is tag them and say something nice about/to them :)

Thank you @mahikamihan (the nicest and sweetest person here) for the tag! Ignore that its been a few days shhhh I was actually thinking of doing this on my priv but then this showed up so perfect opportunity :D Its a big one so everyone will be under a read more so Im not clogging the dash

@gogtopia Jules, you were the first person I followed when I was revamping my blog last year, the first person that came to mind on who I knew was safe post October. Although this was long ago, I really enjoyed the discussions we had about lore and such on discord that was a fun time. And now you're on the path of getting my into The Yard more too lol

@i-anonymous-crow Crow crow crow crow. You were the first (literally the first) people to follow me and it was all because I was crying over the Las Nevadas gift for ckarlnapity. And since then we've cried some more together. And now we're here, thank you for giving me a chance

@foolishfreckles Moss my beloved. Actually one of the chillest people I know and a really great clipper. Another person who has been here since pretty much the beginning (like when I had 20 followers) and one of my biggest supporters. If you arent already following Moss what are you doing. I also love the Foolish screenies you try to get every stream

@traidyy LUCKY!!!!!!! :D SWEETEST PERSON AND GREAT ARTIST THEIR ART IS SO CUTE. also a karl fan so thats 1000 more attractive points. But actually one of my favorite people here, wuv u Lucky <3 the dog to my cat

@sapybara INY!! Somehow you are the most rational but also the most chaos inducing person here and I love you for that. Whenever dash is all fucky and im beginning to spiral, your post are usually the ones who help pull me back up. Also your sapybara pfp is the cutest thing ever.

@vadergf REY REY! The would be drolo of my heart and the realest person when it comes to the green man. Your anons are hilarious and your art is so cute, no matter what you might say. Also thank you for supporting me like with the dteam hourly account i really appreciate it

@simplepotatofarmer Loyal! :D this is a thank you for always wanting and trying to make the fandom a better place. So many people give you the worst shit and yet you try to give second chances and show kindness. Thats something very rare to find nowadays. I love your aus like the rabbit and black dog au, and your chicken posts are some of my favorite things (all hail dream (chicken) )

@toxicsapolo Hi Salty! The og sapolo, the one who paved the way. Even though I have no idea what you and Adora are talking about with the F1 fandom, Ive admired how passionate you are when it comes to your interests. Sapnap, fashion, cooking, your boyfriend.

@tinynap JO!!! Your liveblogs never fail to make me laugh, even if half of them give you a tummy ache. I also want to say im proud of you trying your best at college, even at your roughest nights. You're gonna do great, kid

@dralbum NIICCCKKK!!! Ok not only is your art gorgeous and gives the softest feeling, you are also one of the funniest motherfuckers here. I enjoy our time on privtwt where we ask to eat each others food lmao

@faehrys ARIA MY ARIA!!! Not only an awesome editor, but also an awesome person. I appreciated how you tried to keep a positive space during the rough time, but also knowing when to stand your ground. And as always, karl enjoyer so extra cool points :>

@negativepeanuthoarder PEANUT!!! A true squirrel in which they stick around and make a home in your heart. You are always the loudest supporter in my writing and I really appreciate that, especially on the harder days

@knffuckraw ACE!!! Another funny person here and also representing the inner haikyuu fans (along with Iny). You have the greatest comebacks for anons and the funniest tags. love you ace <3

@dreamnotnapss First, a thank you for your services they’re greatly appreciated and you be missed by many. Second, a thank you for supporting everyone you could within our circle and even beyond. We’ll remember you fondly

@selvish HI TENDER!! we interact much more on twitter lol but youre one of my favorite people, big karl enjoyer and created some of my favorite fics like Y&OY, Rules, Favorite Place, and when we’re older 💜

@secretkoalasandwich EMMI MY BELOVED. ok tbh when we first started following each other I was so nervous cause you had a Wil pfp but now youre one of my favorite people lol. My brethren of punzblr, always ready to simp with me. Also an amazing artist with the most amazing blending skills youve ever seen youre telling me this is a painting??? anyways 10/10 spectacular amazing wow

@canonicallykayfabe EACHTRA!! Some of the most beautiful art here, both in a more cartoony style and one that holds slight realism. The color choices are fantastic as well. Along with that, you have some really thought provoking posts that I really appreciate like the banter discussion post awhile ago.

@sapnapstummy BLAZE THE KINDEST PERSON HERE 100%. legit i dont think ive ever seen you post a neg post about anything thats impressive. also i want to say i love how youll go back to either dreamtummy or sapnaptummy, so iconic and so true.

@dnapsnfsapnap PIGEON!! We’re semi newish mutuals but I’ll always welcome new sapnap fans into my life. On par with Salty, Jo, and Blaze, you fit right in with the sapolo ideology and i think thats amazing. You can always get the cutest screenies of Sapnap and I love your frog posts as well ^-^

@snfbabydrop Ive said this multiple times but thank you for your work on dreamnotnapss. The safe haven for multishippers in our corner. Aside from that, you are one of the nicest people Ive met here, never let your sunshine get blocked out

Also shoutout to my awesome mutuals who I dont talk to often but still love 💜

[daggerzine]

45 With An Epic: Ben Holton interviewed by Eric Eggleson

(photo: Rob Glover) epic45 has been a band on my radar for many years. Ever since I saw the “Ghosts On Tape” video,

I started looking for more music by them and eventually other artists on their label. After purchasing their latest amazing new album, You’ll Only See Us When The Light Has Gone, I contacted Ben Holton about a possible Dagger interview. He agreed, so here we go. When did you begin your musical career? The word ‘career’ is a funny word to attribute to what I’ve been doing over the past 25 years as it suggests I set out to make a living from messing around with sounds. The first epic45 release came out in 1999, though, so I guess that’s a good place to say it started. What musical training do you have? None whatsoever, apart from a few production tips I picked up on a woeful ‘music production’ course I took part in in the early 2000s. Both my parents played guitar and I kind of learnt by osmosis. There was also a piano in the house I used to play around with. It was my little world, and I didn’t like anyone entering it and telling me the ‘right’ way of doing it. When did you feel that you made it in the field? Why? Again, a hard one to answer as, in many ways, I have never truly ‘made it.’ Our first release was played on Radio One by John Peel, so I think that gave us a lot of confidence. We had a quite combative attitude back then, a bit ‘us against the world’ which has held us in good stead ever since. Who influenced you the most in your musical career? I think discovering Mogwai around 97/98 was a big factor in us getting our shit together, and making us realise we could give it a proper go. Then, even more so, the band Hood, who we felt an instant kinship with. It felt a bit like ‘punk’ to us at the time. How did you come up with the name of your band? The origins are pretty foggy now, as it was quite some time ago, but I believe it was from looking through my mum’s old record collection and seeing the ‘Epic’ label and the ‘45rpm.’ I liked the idea of these small pieces of vinyl holding something so powerful and potentially meaningful. In hindsight, I don’t think the name has done us any favours, it’s not particularly ‘cool’ or anything. I don’t find that particularly important, but I recognize the possible impact it has had. I mean, ‘Prefab Sprout’ is an objectively awful name, but they are one of the best bands ever! Tell me about your record label. How did it start? The label started in 2006. As epic45, we were still part of the collective label Make Mine Music with our friends, but started to want to have our own little thing for side projects and things. MMM was great, but maybe felt a little disparate in its overall ethos and aesthetic. Eventually, MMM ended in 2012, and we had our own readymade label to continue releasing on, using the knowledge and skills we’d learned from being part of the collective. As for what determines what’s on the label, to put it very simply I have to like it. Obviously if it’s a Doom Metal album (a genre a really like) it might not end up on W&W (but I’d never say never). So, the music/artist has to share a sense of belonging with the existing ethos of the label, which is based around landscape, memory and place. That could sound quite a broad remit, but I will ultimately recognize whether something fits or not.

[insectsinsects]

Winnie, I owe you a post, but what you mean to me often transcends words. They fail me, which frustrates me because they are all we have. Your novel is brilliant. I remember when it was merely a thought. Pieces of the synopsis conjure memories of a younger, more naïve version of me. It's come so far...! I'm very proud of you. You have returned love at ten times its original value and I've always admired how you get back up despite everything. We're alike in that way. It's funny that we were merely two ships in the night all those years ago. When our paths diverged, your face was among hazy freshmen crowds in my 2020 dreams. It's hard to believe our friendship ever had an intermission like that. The string that connects us is older than some sidewalks in New York. Maybe I couldn't sense it under the concrete and tar. When you came back into my life two years later, I was surprised you could remember me because I was unremarkable back then. I was plain, I hadn't left my house in three months, and I was doomed. Honestly doomed. I wrote about things that used to feel like stellar masses on my mind. Now I think they're frivolous. But maybe we were all 18 and writing about things that became very small over time. I was honored to have made any impression on you. My hair was short. Yours was even shorter. I had only recently emerged from my chrysalis an interesting specimen. You were born cool.

I am esteemed to be a confidant to you. I do feel like a trusted sous-chef or lieutenant to you, and I'm always happy to share your joys or strategize or mourn or eat something yummy or watch a movie. I think we have a funny visual dynamic, from the way you tower over to me to our stylistic juxtaposition, I am proud when I walk next to you. One Christmas you cut your bangs and I waited until I was way out of frame and in my hometown to haphazardly chop bangs in your shadow. We have miraculous clogs from a thrift store in Virginia, because we prayed for them together in the hour-long train journey. We experience small instances of happiness because we pray for each other. You're one of 3 reasons I'd ever come back to New York, even though it smells like somebody else's house nowadays.

I'm sorry I didn't open up more before. You've given me so much of your life. When we called last week you saw my open, pulsating wounds. You probably, unknowingly heard my heart beat its loudest in warm alleyways last spring. You've seen me experience pure bliss and happiness, because a lot of those bright moments happen with you. I want to share every beautiful thing in my life with you, and I wish I could take half of your pain and bear it together. I can't wait to be wiser in 2030 or even a day from now.

Everything is so big because we're young, but I have a feeling we'll always exist as we are in the amber of my mind.

[remimibanana]

3DS Retrospective Part 1: Memories of the Past

Since the 3DS eShop has now closed and the online is shutdown, I thought I would take the time to look back at some of the games I've played on the 3DS!

This handheld was a huge part of my childhood, and I still play on it to this day. It deserves a very long retrospective from me for being in my life. I would love to come back to this in the future and smile at all of the memories I once experienced.

I have to thank my dad for introducing me to Nintendo or I wouldn't be here right now blabbing about this. He truly was my number one supporter in my gaming journey back then. I’ve played a lot of games so this will be long aha (sorry....thank you for reading this all if you do!).

Part 1 is under the cut!

Animal Crossing New Leaf

One of my absolute favourites on the 3DS! Love the music and gameplay and practically everything about it.

I remember going with my dad to my local Target to buy ACNL around the time it came out. I had my red 3DS with me, ready to play it as soon as I got back into the car.

I was so excited, I remember rushing to the 3DS section and instantly taking the game off the shelf while my dad was chasing after me. We went back to the car after he paid for it. I couldn’t wait to open the game, and I think I remember my dad going “open it already”.

Which I did!

Unfortunately for me, there was no game cartridge inside there. The staff forgot to put it in after we paid for it, and we didn’t even notice.

I told my dad and he was saying we could come back tomorrow because we were already far from the Target.

I was so sad about it that my dad turned around and drove back anyway lol

Once we finally got the game cartridge, it was time to play!

In New Leaf, you get to name the town you’re moving into. I didn't know what I wanted to name my town so I asked my dad. He said Knin, a city in Croatia where he comes from. I put it as my town name while asking him how to spell it.

Unfortunately I lost pretty much all of my games a few years ago, including this one (they were all in this giant yellow case and I can't find it, weep). But I do have screenshots! They're super nostalgic.

I loved the Southern Islands the most, the minigames were a lot of fun and listening to the cap sing was so cool. I never skipped his songs, I never knew you could (unlike some people).

You could even play with people from around the world with Club Toritimer that cost like 50 medals to obtain. I remember working hard to gain so many of them—all so I could go to the International Islands!

And hoo boy, I have a story to tell regarding this.

I went to the island and there were these people who were talking about giving bells. I stared at them, not wanting to interfere with what was happening.

One of them dropped like 50,000 bells, and I remember staring at it in awe.

Guess what I did?

I ran to the bells and picked them up into my pockets like any sane person would. I ran away while the others chased after me, yelling at me to stop. I clicked on the button to get me out of the island and that was that—I was a thief!

I can't believe I would ever do such a thing, stealing bells like that! I don’t even remember why I did it! I was really something as a kid.

I even ran into one of them again after a few weeks on the International Islands and I was so scared they would yell at me. They didn’t seem to realise or they just didn’t care, but I ran off anyway.

Tomodachi Life

I love this game.

I remember making myself, my whole family and other random characters and friends on my island! I used to spend hours on there, utterly immersed.

My brother and I used to play together since we only had one copy and things always went awry because of it. Case in point, let me tell you some things that I remember occurring.

My cousin married my old childhood best friend, which was flipping funny to my brother and I from memory. I told my cousin and she looked at me as if I was crazy and you know what, deserved

I didn't want a boyfriend in game at all, and somehow I never managed to but my brother decided to go behind my back one time.

I came back to me having a boyfriend and the game already saved. Once you save, that's it. Unless you had an action replay or something, you were screwed and stuck with whatever happened.

For those who have never played Tomodachi Life, the Miis can have dreams while sleeping. Some were interactive, allowing you to do things in the dream—those were the best.

You would also get an item relating to the dream, so it was always worth checking them out. I think it was one of the main reasons why I played.

My favourite dreams were:

The Transform (Superhero) where the Mii character says "by the power of (insert item)" and they just transform and say some random advice. Every time I looked at one of my Miis dreams, I always hoped it would be this one.

The Hide and Seek one where there are two Miis and the seeker says "are you ready?!" and the hider goes "not yet." and it just repeats and repeats until you exit. My brother and I used love copying this dream a lot lol

The Giant, where a Mii is sitting at a cafe in front of a closed window and the window blinds open to show your face using the inner camera and the Mii freaks out intensely lol

Of course, we can't forget that you can make songs! I used to love this feature. I was a kid, so I just made my characters swear lmao or sing about weird things.

I unfortunately lost this game, so all I have left are screenshots and my own memories….

I currently play the Japanese version on my 2DS since the European version I had installed stopped working for some reason. It’s good practice!

Bring it to the Switch Nintendo! please I beg I'll do anything even sell my brother why not

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire

My favourite Pokémon game! I love everything about this game, hands down one of the best remakes ever made.

I remember getting this for Christmas back in 2014. I woke up at like 4:30am alongside my brother (for some reason) and we went downstairs and started opening presents.

At this point, I already knew what I was getting. It wasn’t much of a surprise but I was so excited none of the less!

My dad who was awake at the time said "what the hell go back to sleep", and that we did. We went back to our rooms with our presents.

Fun fact, my brother got this small car while I got a whole 3DS game LMAO

When I woke up again, I instantly turned on my 3DS and started playing. A few weeks before Christmas, I got the guidebook for ORAS (I still have it actually!) instead of clothes like my mum wanted me to lol

I used that guidebook throughout my playthrough, and I managed to beat the entire game in one day which is seriously impressive, I could never do that now

I loved soaring the most, it was such an fun feature! Soaring through the skies with Mega Latias and exploring Hoenn...I can hear the soaring music even now. Take me back...

Secret Bases were the bomb, I remember always looking for those little holes around Hoenn and seeing how much space there inside them was with Hidden Power. My Secret Base was at Route 119 right before you enter Fortree City, at this grass bush.

I remember that you could buy decorations at Mauville City, and you could even get special ones on a Saturday.

I transferred my level 100 Sylveon from X to this game for some reason, I think I wanted my beloved partner with me but it wouldn't listen to me for the entire game lmao

The only reason I beat Steven back then is because Sylveon finally managed to listen to me and land an attack on Mega Metagross, which obviously died immediately upon impact lol

Good times.

Pokémon X

I remember getting Pokémon X because my friends had Pokémon Y and I wanted to play with them and be cool but I didn't remember they had Y at the time so I chose X lol

My old childhood best friend gave me a shiny Haxorus at my cousin’s birthday party when I showed him how I had the game and was stuck in Reflection Cave.

I loved all the customization, the music and just the entirety of the game! Probably my second favourite overall!

My favourite town is Lumiose City, it was so fun to skate around and explore every nook and cranny. It’s literally amazing how well they were able to make it.

Especially the sketchy alleyways, I used to always go through them all and then get lost because I don't know where I landed lol

I know how people didn't like the postgame (or how little there was) but I really liked it! Working with Looker and meeting Emma and her little Espurr Mimi....good memories!

I remember when I found out about Sylveon, the new Eeveelution in Gen 6, I knew I had to have one. I remember searching up how to evolve Eevee into Sylveon on Google, and it said it needed high affection.

So the new Poke Amie came in handy. I love Poke Amie so much! My favourite minigame is Head It, I can't believe they removed them after Gen 6, they were so fun ;;

But I wasn't sure how much hearts I needed for my Eevee so every time it tried to evolve, I would spam B to cancel it, I was that afraid of not getting Sylveon lol

I did this until I had full affection and then I let my Eevee evolve and I was so happy to see a very cute Sylveon! I checked again after and you only needed three hearts at the end.

This Sylveon was the first Pokémon I ever got to level 100 and it had Dazzling Gleam, one of my absolute favourite Fairy moves. The same one I moved to Alpha Sapphire I just talked about lol

Sylveon has been in my team ever since (had one in Gen 7, 8 and 9) and I plan on keeping it that way! Pokemon Legends ZA was announced and you bet your butt I'm going to have a Sylveon in my team.

The ost is so nostalgic to me. Lumiose City always makes me stop and reminiscence...

Yo-kai Watch

I love this game so much!

Technically this was my brother's game back when, he was the one who wanted it initially but I used to play it all the time since it was there.

The music and story is really good, I'm sad it kind of flopped overseas because it's really popular in Japan. Another reason to go to Japan....one day

I really like Komasan, just a cute Yokai that says "oh my swirls!".

My brother was the real pro at this game, I remember he used to mock me because I couldn't beat a boss that looked like some crazy doctor. He nearly finished the entire Medallium and got all the legendary Yokai which is rather impressive I might add!

(Unfortunately that copy got lost so he uh…lost all that….aha)

My most favourite part of this game is Terror Time. It happens randomly at night where the clock stops and you get transported into Terror Time. It's like a nightmare where you have to escape at the exit without getting caught by any oni minions otherwise they call Gargaros, the main scary oni. He was real powerful and strong and kicked your butt when you get caught.

I would also put away the clock and just run around at night on my bicycle hoping Terror Time would come. If I stopped randomly and I can't move, that meant it was Terror Time. I live for that thrill.

My brother used to be so afraid of it while I begged for it to happen. Every time it did, he'd give me to play so I can get him out of it.

Please localize the Yokai Watch 1 Switch Port I beg Level 5. It wouldn't be that hard. Pleaseeeee

Paper Mario: Sticker Star

I know most people don't like this game but I really like it! It was my first introduction to the world of Paper Mario.

I played the entirety of it with my brother and it was a lot of fun. I was the main person who actually played, my brother was moral support as we tried our best to beat the game!

I loved collecting all the stickers and going through all the worlds to get the royal stickers. I remember the beginning where everything is destroyed, and you have to save all the toads from being stuck in various places.

There was this one toad where for the life of me, I could not find. I looked everywhere and it just did not exist. They hid them too well, I'm afraid.

Fun fact, at the end of the game when you have to use Kersti to beat Bowser, I cried. For like three days lol. I didn't want to use Kersti, she was with us for the whole journey and I grew attached to the floating sticker.

Like I was full on crying in bed when I remembered using her. My brother didn't even give a damn.

It was sort of sad, wasn’t it? I finally got over it and used the flying sticker to beat Bowser up with my brother by my side. When we beat him, we were so happy.

I miss those times when my brother and I played games together, we don't do that anymore...

Pokémon Dream Radar

I remember buying this game when my dad put $50 on my account and I didn’t know what to buy. My friend recommended it and so I got it!

It was a very simplistic game where you would use the 3DS camera to shoot at these little energy balls to collect points and catch Pokémon.

You could even transfer them to Black 2 and White 2 after, which I always did with my Black 2 copy.

You could get the Forces of Nature (Thundurus, Landorus and Torandus) from this game, I believe it was one of it's main reasons for existing (but don't quote me on that one). As you play through the game, you upgrade your equipment and get closer to meeting them and of course, catching them!

I think I managed to get only two of the three back then.

Professor Burnet is in this game actually! She's the professor we're working under. I remember being so shocked when I saw her in the Sun and Moon anime. I knew her back when she was researching dreams, hah!

And then you have to capture the Pokémon, which is a whole another story. You had to move around a lot and shoot a continuous beam of light until you fill the meter before the time limit. it was honestly tougher than expected, the dang Pokémon keep moving!

Colors 3D

This was a game I got because my friend told me to get it, like above.

It's a drawing application where as the name suggests, you draw. There is a whole palette with every colour, a few brushes and tools you can use at your disposal.

There is only 5 layers, which isn't that great in all honesty. I wish it had more, it would make drawing much easier.

But I still use it from time to time! I like drawing on there when I’m bored and don’t want to drag everything out. Doodling has never been easier.

My favourite part was the Colors 3D Gallery, where you could view art uploaded by other people. It was very simple, but I used to go on there all the time! Loading into the gallery is pretty nostalgic to me.

Everyone is so talented on there! I don’t get how people can draw such intricate things on a 3DS. I suppose it really proves that it’s not the brush that makes the artist.

You could also add someone else’s art to your own gallery to view and draw on. I remember saving Tokyo Mew Mew art and whatever I liked at the time to my gallery.

I’ll miss going on it (´ｰ｀)

Mario and Sonic at the 2012 Olympic Games

I love this game. It’s my second favourite game in the whole series.

I think my brother got this game for himself, but I used to play it all the time because it was a lot of fun! Anyone could argue that the Wii version is better overall, but I think the 3DS version holds up well!

There were many events to choose from, such as water sports and equestrian! My favourite events were the Rhythmic Ribbon and Beach Volleyball! I was an absolute beast at Beach Volleyball, the one event I could beat at any difficulty without breaking a sweat.

Although you couldn’t choose any character for any event, as you can in the Wii version. Each event has a specific set of characters you can choose from, such as the girls or the heroes. Only four in each group and that's all you got.

I remember being disappointed a bit, since I was used to how the Wii version was.

Back then, I managed to get a gold medal for every event in the easy, normal and hard difficulties! I was as they would say, a pro at the game.

I think the story mode for this game is pretty decent, I remember beating the entirety of it. The end with Bowser and Eggman all powered up with the fog was actually pretty tough, the game let me pass because I kept failing the events over and over out of pity.

The records menu is the most nostalgic to me, the bgm makes me stop and feel things. I feel that a lot with those settings menus, their bgms are always so nostalgic.

I often come back to it from time to time but my skills have dwindled unfortunately…(blames my current 2DS for sucking and not me sucking lol)

Mario Kart 7

I know most people prefer any of the other Mario Karts, but I think this one has to be my favourite one!

I had a white 3DS XL that came with Mario Kart 7 pre-installed, but I also had the physical copy that my brother played with that I got from my birthday.

Emphasis on had. I have a story to tell here, one I’m not that proud of.

Unfortunately as a kid, I was way too naive. My old friend at the time wanted my physical copy in exchange for an eShop gift card.

Of course, that sounds stupid and I wouldn’t even dare consider it now. It was my copy!

I don’t know why, but I did. I think my reasoning was that I already had it on my 3DS at the time, and he was my good friend.

I think it’s one of the things I regret to this day, because I got legit scammed! The eShop card was used and it was only like $25?! My friend got a whole game and I got legit nothing!

To make matters worse, I didn’t even have internet at the time!

My mum got mad at me, and for good reason. I didn’t think I did anything bad, which probably made things worse. My brother was upset because he couldn’t play Mario Kart anymore.

Needless to say, I shouldn’t have done that. I remember regretting it after a while.

We got another physical copy at the end since my brother wouldn’t stop crying about it, but I learnt the hard way not to be so naive.

But anyway, back to the point.

I am an absolute beast at this game. I always beat my family when playing it. I love all the tracks, and pretty much everything about the game!

Rainbow Road is probably my favourite track, the 3DS version is so good! It is so big and immersive!

Sonic Generations

I remember getting this because I loved Sonic. I vividly remember playing it and showing my dad how fun it was.

It was one of the ways I could play Sonic, and it was also one of the reasons why I got a Sonic the Hedgehog emulator on my old laptop thanks to my dad.

I know this the console versions are better but I've never played the console version before. I think this version is not that bad as people claim it to be.

It holds up. The online on the other hand doesn’t, I’ll admit lol

I think I prefer the final boss here, I remember it gave me so much trouble as a kid (and even now when I replayed it some time ago aha).

The levels here are so good. Sonic legit has to outrun a killer whale, what more do you want? I used to replay them all the time!

Fast forward to now, and I just learned that one of the stages is from Sonic Rush that has the banger music. I didn’t know as a kid that Generations featured other game’s levels.

Pokémon Moon

I love Alola so much.

This game I got relatively late actually, during 2019! Why didn't I get Ultra Moon when it was right there?

I wanted to play the original before jumping into the sequel. I think I'm glad I did that, because I like Moon over Ultra Moon lol

This game is special, because it was the first game I ever completed the Pokédex on! My high school friend was the one who encouraged me to do it, and that I did!

I remember recording a video of when I did, seeing that 100% and getting that shiny charm felt so cool. This is one of the games that I still have to this day, luckily.

I always like to come back from time to time and see all my Pokemon, look at my beautiful party.

This game is also where I got my first shiny! I did the Masuda Method with the shiny charm and I managed to get Shiny Buneary in 64 eggs! I remember freaking the heck out!

I then tried to do the same for a Shiny Ralts, as I love how Shiny Mega Gardenvior looks like. That was an absolute failure and I was left with like 6 boxes of Ralts lmao

So I traded them all away using Wonder Trade! I wonder if anyone reading this got one, ehe.

New Super Mario Bros. 2

This was the version I played the most out of them all. I really like this one for how fun it is and the whole coin idea!

My brother and I used to play this one together, alternating levels and having our own saves. Honestly, one of the reasons I was able to beat Bowser at the end is because of this:

The Gold Super Leaf, making you practically invincible. Mario would turn into a white raccoon and no enemies could kill you. You still can die to lava or if you fall, but otherwise...

Cheating but not really cheating. Perfect if you suck at the game.

This would appear if you kept failing a level over and over, and I used to use it without a second thought. I would like to try to beat the game again without the use of this one day!

Super Pokemon Rumble

I loved this game so much as a kid. It was probably one of the first spinoffs for Pokemon I played!

I remember getting to the very end of the game, but never beating the final level???? I think I didn't have strong enough Pokémon for it, or I just didn't get around to it. If I ever do find my old copy, I'd like to finish the game.

The music is really good, I really like Toy Town and Axle Town! They're really nostalgic to me, I remember running around in them and healing up my Pokémon at the Dewdrop Fountain that was in the middle of each town.

The Toy Shop was objectively the best part of it all. It was where people from Streetpass would come to your shop and buy some toys. If enough people bought toys, then something special would happen in game. I believe it was that special Pokémon would appear and could be collected.

We need a remake of this Game Freak, i beg you

Pokémon Rumble World

This is more of a recent game I played, but I absolutely enjoyed it.

You go on these air balloons to various places to collect all the Pokémon! I remember downloading it because i enjoyed the original and this one had even more Pokémon to befriend!

This one unfortunately uses gems as a currency for in game purchases. It’s not needed to play the game, but certain things are locked behind them that help you catch Pokémon.

For example, there’s a stop mechanic that costs two gems to use. It's real useful.

This allows you to stop at the place you want—otherwise it’s random chance. At first, it was hard getting to the right place. You had to pray that it would miraculously land there.

And there was no way in hell I was going to pay for gems just for this one game I played from time to time. The eshop was going to close anyway, so there was no point.

I have a modded 2DS and I found a cheat that gave me max diamonds…you can guess what I did. For legal reasons, this is a joke and I would never do such a thing no wayyyyyyy....

With that, I was able to catch every single Pokemon available in game! It’s my greatest achievement probably, and one that I will flex on you all right now:

You can't get any more than 719 Pokémon. Try to beat that LOL

Probably my greatest achievement ever.

Nintendogs + Cats

I loved the original Nintendogs, so I had to get the sequel as a kid as soon as I found out it existed. I still prefer the original, but this one is still pretty fun.

I had a very cute dog that I took perfect care of. The walks were the highlight of the game, in my opinion. It was sort of an upgrade from the original, although the original always clears.

I have a story with this game as well, also concerning my old childhood best friend. I know, you're wondering how did so many things happen to me lol

Back then, I used to bring my 3DS to my cousin's birthday parties so I could play with said friend. We would sit on the couch right next to each other and get lost in our own world.

One time, it seemed that I dropped my copy of this game during one of these parties and my friend picked it up. He told me that he had it and that he’ll give it back to me at primary school.

That never happened and its been years since then. WHERE IS MY GAME DUDE?! I WANT IT BACK

So I got scammed and my game stolen by the same friend...maybe if we ever meet again, I'll demand for it back. Get some retribution for all the sins they've committed against me.

I hold grudges man and I HOLD THEM HARD

Animal Crossing Happy Home Academy

I actually got the set that came with the Amiibo reader since I didn’t have one. I still have it somewhere, but I don’t think I ever used it.

This was dubbed my brother’s game, and so he got to play it first.

I remember being upset because my brother chose the boy avatar, because I didn't want to be a boy when I would play.

I was smart and simply dressed up his character as a girl.

I put on a wig and a skirt, and boom! Girl character! It was the easiest way instead of nuking the whole save file. When my brother would play, he would make his character look like a boy again.

This game is pretty simple, but it’s a lot of fun! It’s no wonder they did it again for ACNH with the Happy Home Paradise DLC. I still think I prefer this one over the DLC.

Decorating houses for the villagers, especially the ones you like the most is the best part. I remember spending so long trying to get everything looking perfect and beautiful.

I managed to finish all the buildings you could make in the game, I was so happy to see Digby and Isabelle here!

Super Smash Bros For Nintendo 3DS

My brother got this game as well, but of course I played it way more than he ever did.

It was my first introduction to the series! I absolutely loved it, fighting as characters I love! I am a huge fan of fighting games in general, so this was right up my alley.

My mains were Rosalina and Luma, Zero Suit Samus, Zelda and Peach from memory, I became really proficient at using them all. My favourite stage was the Tomodachi Life one, since the Mii's you had in your Mii Maker would appear inside the apartments.

The 3DS version had Smash Run, one of the best modes ever if I do say so myself. You had to collect items to improve your stats so you can beat the final boss at the end! It was timed and honestly harder than you would expect.

It was a multiplayer mode but I used to always play by myself since I had no friends to play with aha

I remember always getting the same kind of stats and wondering how all the COMs were able to get such amazing ones—cheating I say!

Skylanders Giants

I remember vividly buying the game at Target. It came in a large box since it had the portal and three figures, as you can see above!!

I wish I could play this again, you need to have the portal and figures, and the portal I had is gone ;;

I remember being really invested in this game, playing through it and admiring how cool it looked! The story was pretty captivating.

My favourite Skylander is Chill, always loved her design! I actually broke the figure by accident, the ice spear she held fell out of her hand aha

I have a story to tell that is somewhat related to this game.

One time, I lied to a friend of mine that there was going to be a new Skylanders game after Swap Force that allowed you to use the figures on any game, particularly on Spyro’s Adventure.

My friend was stuck on the final boss in Spyro’s Adventure and I was a terrible person to make up such a story. I don’t even know why I did that, I think I got too excited making it up….

The worse thing was that they believed me completely and even told someone else about it because I told them to….

I’m sorry…..

Cars 2

You’re probably wondering, why did I play this? Well, my brother got it since he was a huge fan of the Cars franchise, but he barely played it.

And guess who did? ME BECAUSE HEY A GAME AND I LOVED CARS 2 AS A KID

It was pretty fun! There are many modes in this game, but I mostly played the Mission Mode as you could choose from any level you wanted (of course, warranting you played it in the main story).

Holly was the person who greeted you in this mode, and she was my favourite car back then. I always tried to play as her if I could since she was the only girl car playable in the game.

My favourite levels was the ones at the party in Japan, where you first play as Finn McMissle and sneak through the party without being caught by cameras or by Lemons. It was such a thrill, I became a pro at it!

Then you would play as Mater, rushing to the fountain before he overheated after trying Wasabi for the first time. That one was way harder than it seemed, the meter went down way too quickly so if you weren't fast enough, you fail.

They were the best levels, alongside the ones at the Oil Rig. Anything with Finn McMissle was a banger. He is a super cool spy car after all!

New Style Boutique Fashion Concert Demo

I never had internet when I was a kid or much money to buy many games, so I used to download demos. You never say no to free things.

One in particular is this one here!

There were two demos you could download for the game, the Fashion Contest and the Shopping Experience but I always preferred the thrill of being in a contest over simply dressing up your character.

I would like to introduce you to this one guy named MC Mode who is the contest official you see every time you play!

I loved this guy as a kid, not because of how he looked or anything. I liked this one specific dialogue he would say.

GO BE FREE MY BEAUTIES

It's not even that funny but it always amused me for some reason. I would even voice the line with a low voice. Every time I loaded up the demo, I always hoped I would get this.

You could tell by the opening lines of his speech, if he doesn't ask for the audience to turn it up a notch, then it would be the other dialogue that was in my opinion, boring as hell.

I have specific outfits I use for every single theme that always gets me to 1st place in most cases. That’s how much I used to play it.

I remember playing this demo with my cousin quite a bit because she liked dressing up games and this was the closest I had that looked appealing to her.

We used to get mad at the demo when it gave us the same theme over and over. The themes are randomised every time the demo starts, and can’t be influenced too much.

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance Demo

Probably my favourite demo of all time. I remember downloading this when I scrolled through all the available demos to download.

It was my first introduction to the Kingdom Hearts series, although I didn’t get into it until way later in 2019.

I loved flying around as Sora! The controls are a lot of fun, and you get to explore most of Transverse Town and beat the boss there! It was a giant monkey that was kind of a pain to beat.

I remember I used to always procrastinate actually beating the demo in favour for exploring. The controls were so interesting and I really liked how Sora could summon his little Dream Eater friends to help him out while battling.

With that, Part 1 is complete! I've played more games than this, but these are the main ones that I've made fond and not so fond memories with that I wanted to share!

I hope it was an interesting read! This took me forever to write. I feel like you can learn a lot about me.

Part 2 and Part 3 will go through more of the inbuilt software! I hope to see you over there too!

[cartograffiti]

May '24 reading diary

This month, I finished 16 books, mostly quick cookbooks and graphic novels!

I started May by listening to a very unseasonal full-cast audiobook of E.T.A. Hoffmann's original The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. When I was a child, I read a lot of different text adaptations of the Tchaikovsky ballet adapted from this story, but only realized I'd never read the original when a friend got me to read Hoffmann's squarely horror story "The Sandman" a few years ago. This was creepier than the ballet story, though clearly written for children, and I'm very glad to have gotten around to it.

K.J. Charles, author of a large number of romances I'm a fan of, put out her first mystery A-plot novel, Death in the Spires. I think it's a good introduction to her style if you're not a big romance person, and I think it was the right call for this plot to prioritize the genre elements in this way, but I also have found her B-plot mysteries more exciting. No problem, I liked it a lot, and it has a lot of juicy thoughts about justice as distinct from the law and how trust is earned or lost. Gay disabled detective.

Two sports romances: You Should Be So Lucky, a sensational 1960s baseball player/magazine journalist relationship, meditating beautifully on the fear of failure and on grief. One of the mains was in a long-term relationship with someone who has died, and I think this is the best widowed romance character I've ever read. Sebastian is also just fabulous at taking a tour of a made-up person, full of small details and slice-of-life stakes. I've read all her books and will continue to; I like her particular approach to historicals and her ability to make queer happy endings distinct and individual. M/M.

The other sports romance I read this month is The Boxing Baroness by Minerva Spencer, which I only mildly enjoyed. Unfortunately I don't even have any real criticisms, I just very simply didn't click with Spencer's style on a sentences level, particularly in sex scenes. Your mileage will vary! There is a lot of really enjoyable bits about the hot honorable love interest thirsting over how strong and cool he thinks the heroine is, and he's right. This is definitely worth trying if the basic premise of woman boxer Regency is your thing. Wait, I do have one plot criticism--this would have been stronger without the epilogue. We didn't actually need to meet [historical figure redacted]. M/F.

Graphic novels--I used to read Chelsey Furedi's Rock and Riot when it was coming out as a webcomic, and I was excited when her follow-up, Project Nought, was suspended soon after launch because of a book deal. Unfortunately I somehow missed it when the book actually came out in 2017, and only when Heartstopper sent me on a nostalgia trip last month did I realize I could read it. I wish I had read Project Nought when it was new! A lot of the sci-fi plot no longer feels futuristic even 7 years on, although the core twist is just fabulous. There isn't enough of the interpersonal depth that shines in Rock and Riot, the villain plot resolution is a bit too easy for the YA market, and overall I just wouldn't pitch this as more than pleasant.

The rest of the graphic novels, far more than pleasant, I read volumes 8, 9, 10, and 11 of Witch Hat Atelier by Shirahama Kamome. This was a good batch to read close together, as they all deal with the events of the same festival. Unfortunately I have to wait for my library to buy the next to see the resolution, but that's how manga goes! I loved a lot of what's happening at this point, with some fabulous milestones in the Coco-Agott friendship, lots of good moments from my favorite of the adults (Olruggio), and continuing to push down on the question of forbidden magic. Shirahama brings in both strong cases of things that deserve to be banned (glasses that let you see through people's clothes, not treated as remotely funny) and things that...maybe don't. I really cannot tell what ethics resolution might be end-game, which is very exciting.

Cookbooks! My lovely mother surprised me with a copy of an 80s book I'd been looking for, Vineyard Seasons by Susan Branch. I wouldn't exactly call her style pastoral, but I've seen her rediscovered a bit by cottagecore, Ghibli-esque, and related aesthetic bloggers. If that kind of romantic daily life artwork appeals to you, you might like her books as much as I do; every page is full of Branch's watercolor paintings, sometimes ornamental borders and sometimes illustrations of the sights of her home in Martha's Vineyard. I read and re-read her books just to linger over the pictures, but almost every recipe I've tried has been a winner.

I also borrowed a whole bunch of cookbooks of literary-inspired recipes. I went through two by Alison Walsh (A Literary Tea Party and A Literary Holiday Cookbook), which were disappointing; they draw from a pretty small range of books, and rely a lot on food coloring to fit the themes. Meanwhile, The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook (ed. Kate White) has a really wide range of difficulty level and approach, only some of them inspired by fiction. Each recipe was contributed by a different author, making it fun in the same way that church and community cookbooks can be, but I don't have any wish to own this, either. I have two others still to look at. (And I already own some I do recommend, Kate Young's Little Library cookbooks and Tim Federle's literary cocktail books.)

More nonfiction: DK Publishing's really insubstantial small coffee table book Banned Books, which didn't have quite enough text (I shouldn't have finished any entries unsure on what grounds they were banned/challenged, and did), but some pretty vintage covers (and not enough of those either).

Really great, with loads of pictures and thorough text: The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag by Sasha Velour. I was first aware of gender-fluid queen Sasha Velour as an illustrator and zinester, and in many ways they're the reason I was first interested in drag performers. This book doubles as a history of drag and a personal memoir of Velour's experience with it, and I enjoyed both equally. The history is well-researched and thoughtful, and the memoir is generous and self-aware. And it has some of their comics!

And I'm still reading Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles at about one per month. I finished Pawn in Frankincense in May--lush and devastating and funny and infuriating and completely absorbing. Still not a series I would recommend to everyone, and still one I'm so glad I'm reading at this exact moment, when my emotions can go through the juicer and not feel scarred afterwards.

[mountainashfae]

Word Search Game

Tagged by @outeremissary! This was a very funny way to spend my work day because we know I am Not a writer so I was digging deep to see what I could find. Dug up some very cool rambles and unfinished pieces from ages past.

The words I was given were TIME, HAND, and DARK.

TIME - This isn't really a WIP so much as an unpublished character backstory, written from the character's PoV. My Dragon Heist players will start to recognize him, but this is a specifically DnD5e version of Alec rather than the PF1e version they're acquainted with.

Take that gear. Grab that gold. Get a weapo–why are you picking up the bow? The voice continued to echo in his head to lead him to safety. Something about it filled him with dread. It was sophisticated, it was princely, it was like a whispering wind, and it was intense in its guidance to lead him out. It wasn’t until he was riding away on the back of a horse—did he always know how to do this?—that he began to wonder what was happening. He’d glanced at a mirror in his escape; at his dirt-caked hair, at his four horns whose count felt wrong, at his mismatched pair of eyes. What was he doing in that building? Why did it burn so suddenly? Who was he? Don’t think too hard. We aren’t safe yet. It’ll come back to you. The voice in his head wasn’t very comforting. But it was right, bits and pieces began to come back to him. His name, Alec, glimpses of his home, vague memories of loved ones. But whose voices were speaking to him? Whose gentle hands was he longing to hold him? He couldn’t remember, and it pained him. The pieces of memory came to him in the middle of the night as he tossed and turned for even a moment of sleep. It went on for hours, he would lay down in his stolen bedroll to sleep, but sleep never found him. After a week he finally accepted that he would never sleep. In fact, it appeared he didn’t need it anymore. That’s useful, more time to get work done if you never sleep. Alec found himself disagreeing with the voice more often than not.

HAND - This is from my current WotR WIP titled Accepting a Fey's Gift, which has been in limbo for months now as I try to figure out how to tie together all the disconnected sections.

"Forget the gift, let's talk. Just the two of us." Rotgut began to object from Aurien's shoulder before they gave him a stern look. Without missing a beat, the parrot nipped at their ear and flew off. "I don't know why you still keep that oglin around,” Ulbrig shook his head, checking on their now-bleeding ear. “I got lonely, especially after the shipwreck. He managed to survive it with me, so, it seemed a good idea at the time.” They reached to touch Ulbrig’s hand, but pulled back at the last second. The ice was too cold, he was making an effort to come this close as it was. “Still seem like a good idea?” “Well even if I’d known about a certain griffon sleeping in a statue in Kenabres, I doubt he would have woken up some 10 years ago…” Aurien stopped themself, catching the distraction in the conversation. “Let’s not change the subject. We need to talk about this.” Ulbrig sighed, gently pulling his hand away. “Then let’s talk.”

DARK - Okay. Okay so. It turns out in all these years I can only find one fic, wip or not, that uses this word??? Somehow?? Anyways my biggest regret in 2020 while I was in the Fate fandom was never finishing this fic. It's from the PoV of Perseus during the unwritten scene and fight against Caster. I came up with so much stuff for this. I had the entire fic planned out and it would've been the longest thing I've ever written. I made a whole fanservant for this. Mopsis my weird little guy.

He blinked. That’s how fast the change happened. One second, they were in fourth period. It was English. Sajyou-san sat two rows down from him, next to the window. She’d seemed distracted with something that day and wasn’t paying attention to the lecture. The next second, the familiar classroom was replaced with an alien landscape. All his classmates had disappeared. That left two options; either he was the only one in this space, or his classmates were all elsewhere. The landscape was alien in all sense of the word, but held a strange familiarity to it that he couldn’t place. There was no sun, only the dark expanse of space. Hundreds of glowing lights illuminated the ground as if they were stars. Everywhere he looked was gray. It was a desolate, barren land. As he walked down the path beneath his feet, he could get a better grasp on where he was. No typical laws of physics seemed to apply. Paths and rocks floated in the air as if in a three-dimensional maze, the “landscape” expanded for as far as he could see in all directions. No matter how far he looked, there was no sign of life. No plants, no people either. He seemed to be completely alone in the foreign remnants of a once prosperous society. That was fine, he could find his way out of this. He had faced plenty in his time, this was nothing more than one more adventure to his list. With a deep breath, the situation became clearer. The air was tinged with magic, like the Age of Gods. If this was the case, all he had to do was… “Isemi-kun!” A voice called out, disrupting his thoughts.

A shame some of my other older writing couldn't make it. The Cei fic or the Cay monologue could've been fun.

[redheadedbrunette]

Cool so I reread the series and I noticed a lot more than I did the first two times I read it which is fun. The relationship between Ben and Erica is more explored than I remembered which is good and I can definitely see her character arc a lot clearer.

X is still my least favorite book and there’s absolutely a corner that Gibbs wrote himself into on that one unless he’s entirely giving up on the idea of having Ben and co. be secret agents.

Ben’s a lot more of a competent spy than I remember too, which is refreshing.

I also completely forgot that all 10 of these books happen in the span of like a year and a half which is hilarious.

Oh and the age gap seems like something that would be a lot more of an issue if there weren’t only like 300 people in the world they could have contact with. Even Erica and Josh had a bit of a gap since she had to have been 14/15 or so while he was 17/18. A gap of 2.5 years would be problematic for normal kids but I think different rules would apply.

I'm so glad it was clearer on a second go around! Honestly, I didn't even really see it all that clearly until I reread the series a couple years ago (SSAS came out my first week of college) and had a lot more experience with how stories work on a fundamental idea. Erica's development is very much in the background, but when you're looking for it (excluding SSPX, but that's a different rant) it's so clear and interesting and I love it.

SSPX bothers me for SO MANY REASONS the biggest of which is that Mr. Gibbs puts the message before the overarching plot of everything, and then! It's not even a relevant message! Like, what twelve year old is hardcore believing QAnon (it's pretty obviously meant to be that or something similar). I feel like something could have been achieved and a message about privacy, like Murray makes getting a video of Ben part of some TikTok knockoff challenge, because that seems like a much more likely thing kids would do, but gotta make fun of people who remember what the news said two years ago and comparing it to what they say now! Can't have people with good memories! But yeah, it does shoot the series in the foot kind of, and I understand the reasoning behind why things were done the way they were! I just don't agree with it most of the time.

It's even funnier when you realize that it's not a year and a half evenly spread out, it's one mission his first year with five months before summer, one that summer, and seven his second year. Eight if you want to count SSGS and SSBI as different missions (I go back and forth as to whether or not I do). It's so funny. Please give poor Ben a break.

And yes! Ben is actually so much more competent than people seem to give him credit for sometimes. It's just that his skill set tends to be less flashy and useful in battle scenes, but he's very much the chess master of the group. He's the one planning and strategizing, and all the karate moves in the world aren't going to do you any good if you can't actually foil the plans.

My reasoning for why I'm okay with the age gap is because the narrative treats them as equals who are more or less in the same place in life. Like, yes she's two classes ahead of him, but for all intents and purposes, they're teamed up together constantly with others in Ben's class and I think Erica is the only one we really know about in her class (can't remember Chip's age, but he might be? idk, doesn't really matter). It's never dwelt on, and it bothers me when people try to make a deal about it! Like, they're not going to be in the same place in their lives forever. It's high school. Almost no one marries the person they dated in high school. I've long held that they'd break up sometimes after Erica graduates and starts her adult life while Ben is still in school (or something similar depending on how Mr. Gibbs decides to do things moving forward).

[marshiestars]

Tag 9 People You Want To Get To Know Better

thank you @scrawnytreedemon for tagging!! let’s begin, shall we? :3c

Three Ships: ughhhhh this is real hard because I JUST invented the most horrible, wonderful ���why does it work” crackship a few weeks ago, but if I want to include it, I have to ignore one of my three big zelda ships :C

1. Ghiralink. because of course. I feel like it’s illegal to leave this one out or put it any lower. it’s the good food. it’s well-established. I can afford to be picky with my content. it’s great :D

2. Astlink! sorry Kohlink, but Astlink is less likely to scare half my audience away 😔.

tbh I’m still VERY surprised that Astor and Link aren’t paired together nearly as often as Zelast (Astor / Zelda). don’t get me wrong, both are rare pairs, but somehow Astlink is even *rarer* shksjhdjhsshs, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. either way, it's 'moody goth bitch rejected by society (or maybe he rejected society first, it's a chicken or egg situation tbh) with the perfect golden person that everyone admires who secretly has their own issues'!! and it's about how they're on the complete opposite sides of this huge conflict and yet they find unexpected parallels in each other! and having everything fall apart but deciding to be a better person, even when the rest of the world says it's too late, because that one person believes in you and is willing to give you a chance! darkness and light! it's GOOD FOOD

(...man, I really gotta finish chapter 3 of swordsman and the seer.)

3. ...fuck it. scrawny, I hereby challenge you for the title of Weirdest Fucking Crossover Ship. Ghirahim x Godrick? Sephiroth x the Hollow Knight? I'm intrigued, but not crumbling to ash at the thought.

and so I give you this in place of gushing about Kohlink, which is unbelievably rare, but damn it, at least they're from the same source material! besides, I wasn't the first person to pair them by a long shot, no, no, no.

but there’s a special, lonely sort of pride in knowing you’re probably the first of 8 billion people in the world to ever even think of a pairing. ready? here it is:

R*x D*ng*rv*st x S*np*i from FNF.

(censored their names like that because if this shows up in the tags I’m gonna jump out a window)

yeah, man. I don't even know either.

I mean, I do know, somewhere, and my original train of thought is buried in the memory slush of a few months ago, gone forever. so now we're here. fuck. kill me. why am I writing shit for these two. girl what the hell is this

everyone who reads this post, I want a brick emoji in my inbox to simulate getting one through my window

First Ever Ship: ANYWAY, fuck, I don’t even remember at this point, I've been in greater fandom for so long. wait... oh, son of a bitch, nevermind, I do.

*sigh*

it was Billdip.

DO NOT COME AFTER ME, I DON’T SHIP IT ANYMORE. haven’t for years. I was 12. but I loved Bill Cipher (still do, he's my funny meow meow blorbo <3) and was very upset when the finale happened even though I knew that was how it had to be. but every time Billdip art came across my screen, I saw cool art where he: # 1. was still around and # 2. was more often than not a pretty human / humanoid (this was at the height of his sexymanification). hell, I didn't even give a shit about Dipper honestly, I just wanted more Bill content. and again, being literally 12, I didn’t really stop to think abt any moral implications. but yeah.

(also nowadays I hc Bill as ace sooo)

Last Song: 'She Had The World' by Panic! very nice to sing to, it's right in my range <3

Last Movie: does ‘My Little Pony: A Very Minty Christmas’ count? it’s a childhood film and practically tradition for me to watch it every year for christmas lol. although this year I’ve been replaying it for... research purposes. yeah. totally not for a lethally cursed fanfic, no sir.

if that doesn’t count, then ‘The Lego Movie’!

Currently Reading: nothing atm!! even as my 'to read' pile gets taller by the day, hhhh

Currently Watching: Minty Christmas, again, but definitely not so I can copy the dialogue verbatim to use as the base for a coked-up christmas crack fic

Currently Consuming: soup <3

Currently Craving: instant ramen, good god, especially if it’s spicy. they have cups for sale in vending machines around campus but they’re all beef and chicken flavour :C

I won't tag anyone else in this because nine people is a lot; far too many to bother with this wall of personal nonsense shdhdj but thanks anyway for tagging me scrawny, my beloved mutual!!! <3