#while Celeste is more level headed

[inkspottie]

Do you think things would've played out differently if Celeste was the one that went down to the Blacksite instead of Gabriel?

Oh definitely. Might not be as…clumsy as Gabriel is doing, she’d be far more careful lmao

[waywardxrhea]

Casual - Spencer Reid

for the CM friends with benefits challenge by @imagining-in-the-margins <3

pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader (no use of y/n)

You thought that your sexcapades with Spencer Reid had meant more to him like they did to you, but after a couple of run ins with his BAU teammates you learn that he really meant 'no attachments.'

word count: just over 5k

content: smut (this is sinful whoops) MINORS DNI - 18+ ONLY: oral (fem receiving), public (ish) sexual acts, unprotected PIV, established FWB situation, drinking (just to the point of being tipsy, consent is still given), language, anxiety, angst.

dividers by @firefly-graphics

now playing: casual by chappell roan

“You finally made it!” your friend Maddie exclaimed gleefully as you walked into the latest bar that she had decided your small group of friends should try out that evening. 

Maddie’s girlfriend Celeste elbowed you gently in the ribs before teasingly asking, “Were you hooking up with Mr. FBI agent again?”

“That’d be, what? The fourth time this month?” Adrianna asked, a slight slur already in her words. She threw an arm around your shoulders and winked exaggeratedly before adding, “And it’s only the fifteenth! Get it girl!” 

“Ha ha, very funny, let’s all gang up on the girl with the best sex life here,” you joked, forcing a smile onto your lips despite the pang of hurt that shot through your gut at the comments. You grabbed a drink menu off the bar’s counter before heading back to your group’s claimed table for the evening, telling your friends, “I actually picked up an extra shift which is why I’m late and Doctor FBI agent is out of state on a case.”

“Awe, she knows when he’s out on a case, how sweet!” Celeste teased before winking and taking a sip of her brightly colored drink. 

“You three are impossible!” you said with a roll of your eyes as you stood up from your spot once more to escape the conversation and order your drink at the bar - a raspberry frozen margarita with sugar rim. Luckily when you got back to the table with your drink, the conversation had turned to Maddie discussing the latest drama at her job, so you sat back and relaxed as you sipped on your first drink of the night. 

“I can’t believe we finished all that paperwork in time to actually go out tonight,” Derek Morgan said as he stretched his arms, stepping out of his car and into the crisp evening air as he once more met up with the other BAU members at a bar the group gravitated toward when they had time to celebrate wins on cases. 

“Realistically it would have been nearly impossible for us to not get our work done in a timely manner. We got back from the case at ten AM and were all well rested after the flight, so our brains were all in ideal condition to finish the paperwork on time, even accounting for some delays in productivity due to jet lag,” Spencer Reid rambled off as they all walked into the bar, offering a small smile as some of his teammates rolled their eyes playfully in response. 

“Well all I know is that I’m getting a bottle of wine to celebrate wrapping that case,” Emily Prentiss commented as she dug through her purse. 

“What about you, pretty boy? Planning on drinking tonight?” Derek asked as he gently shoulder checked the younger man. 

“Just water,” Spencer replied. “Did you know that during long plane rides you can easily get dehydrated? The humidity within the cabin is usually around ten to twenty percent which is lower than the usual thirty to sixty percent that our bodies are used to. The lower level of humidity causes water to be drawn out of the body and the thirst reflex is diminished so you drink less water while at the same time losing more. I’m surprised that as a team we aren’t more dehydrated overall.”

The conversation was dropped as the team got their drinks ordered and then settled into a round booth at the back of the bar. As Spencer took a sip from his water, his eyes scanned the bar’s patrons to see if there were any people they may have to watch out for as the night goes on and more drinks are consumed. The water he was sipping on suddenly went down the wrong pipe though as he spotted a familiar face at the table adjacent to the team’s. It was you hanging out with a few friends, seeming to have not noticed his arrival. He wasn’t too surprised about that though because judging by the glasses on the table you were at least one and a half margaritas in and you already weren’t the most observant person when you were distracted anyway. 

“Everything okay, Spence?” JJ asked while she patted Spencer’s back. 

Derek’s eyes tracked where Spencer’s had landed and he smirked as he announced to the table, “Pretty boy just saw the girl he bangs on his couch.” 

There was a quiet cacophony of responses to Derek’s comment the moment it fell from his lips. “Remind me to not sit on your couch ever again,” Emily Prentiss commented with a quiet laugh. “Ooh Spence, how serious is this thing?” JJ asked in a sly tone. “I’m glad you found someone, kid,” David Rossi said with a nod and a toast of his glass. “As long as it isn’t going to affect you at work,” their unit chief Aaron Hotchner commented sternly. “Spencer’s dating someone? Why did Derek know this and I didn’t?” Penelope Garcia asked with wide eyes. 

Spencer didn’t respond immediately, suddenly overwhelmed by the barrage of comments, so Derek took a moment to dig the hole even deeper by adding, “He made me swear not to tell baby girl.” He got a mischievous look on his face as he continued, “But one time when I was at his place getting his go bag while he was busy in the shooting range, I found a bra in his dresser. It took some time but I finally got an answer out of him and it turns out this has been going on for a few months now.”

“Spencer Reid!” Penelope scolded while leaning over and playfully swatting at his hand. “How could you not tell me? You know I would have run a background check on her to make sure everything checked out!”

“Everyone slow down!” Spencer said, putting his hands up which caused the noise at the table to die down. “She quite literally ran into me at a coffee shop a few months back but I didn’t tell anyone because, well…we aren’t together. It’s just a casual thing.”

“Just casual? Is she okay with that?” JJ asked, quirking an eyebrow up in question. 

“She hasn’t said anything against it,” Spencer replied. He glanced over at you laughing with your friends one more time before shaking his head and asking, “Can we change the subject?”

“Whatever you want, player,” Derek said with a chuckle before the conversation moved on to whatever the latest sports news was, prompted by Derek’s reaction to something happening on one of the many TVs hanging around the room. 

Later that night after you had your fair share of appetizers and drinks, your friends were all starting to head home for the evening. “Thank you for coming, we need to do this again soon!” Celeste told you with a fake stern look before she giggled and leaned over into Maddie’s side. 

“We do!” you agreed as you grabbed your glass to finish off the last bit of your drink. “Get home safe!”

“You too!” Maddie said as she attempted to steady Celeste. “You’re calling a cab right?”

“Of course,” you told her with a nod, raising your glass in a toast as the pair headed off toward the door, following Adrianna outside. 

After finishing off your drink, you stood up, trying to balance as well as you could as you grabbed your clutch off of the table and went to the bar to pay off your tab. You weren’t completely drunk, but you were definitely tipsy and you were naturally clumsy, so nights like this were always an interesting time, especially when you were in heels. When you got to the bar to pay though, you were surprised to be informed that your tab was already paid for. “Who did that?” you asked the bartender, your eyebrows furrowing together in confusion. Adrianna was just about finished with but still in law school and Celeste was a teacher so you could never ask them to pay for your drinks. Maddie was a paralegal and made a good salary but still, you made enough on your own to pay for your drinks, so who…? 

Your question was answered though when you felt a familiar pair of hands glide along your waist and land on your hips. You turned your head the slightest bit and an immediate heat flooded your body as you whispered, “Spencer… Hi. I thought I heard your voice earlier. When did you get back?” Your emotions were conflicted at his sudden appearance because you had overheard him talking with his group of friends earlier and it had honestly upset you, but now that he was practically wrapped around you, your mind flooded with memories of his hands on your body in the most intimate way…

“Just got back this morning. The team met up here to celebrate and I was surprised to see you here,” he replied. His voice lowered and his lips grazed the shell of your ear as he mumbled, “You look irresistible in that dress by the way.”

“I…Thank you,” you breathed, feeling your heart rate increase as his hands massaged your hips. “And thanks for paying for my drinks, you didn’t have to…”

“But I wanted to,” he told you, gently nipping at your ear lobe which made your cunt clench around nothing in desperation for more of his touch. Truth be told, it had been a week since you and Spencer last hooked up and you hated to admit that you had gotten dependent on his touch lately. 

Your impure thoughts were interrupted by a low whistle piercing the air, and your head snapped in the direction it came from, to see two people you recognized from pictures in Spencer’s apartment. They must be from the BAU as well. You made eye contact with the perky looking blonde woman and offered a smile as the man beside her asked, “Pretty boy, why don’t you introduce us to your friend here?” 

“Oh, I-I thought everyone had left,” Spencer said, instantly making space between the two of you. You looked at Spencer’s panicked expression that quickly changed into something more neutral as he introduced you by name and then said to you, “These are two other members of the BAU. Derek Morgan and Penelope Garcia.”

“It’s nice to meet you two,” you told them, a smile on your face as you raised your hand in greeting. “Penelope, you’re the tech girl right?” you asked after a few moments of going through your memories of what little Spencer had told you about his job. 

“That’s me! Resident tech genius because boy genius here refuses to get to know technology!” she replied chipperly. 

“Oh trust me, I know,” you said with a giggle, leaning into Spencer’s side as you remembered the last time you two had gotten lonely at the odd hours of night and wanted to video chat each other to get off. Spencer struggled to get the video call to work and it had ended up being muted for a few minutes before you finally got him to unmute himself so you could hear everything his surprisingly filthy mouth had to say to you. 

“Well it’s nice to finally meet the girl who is getting pretty boy out of his shell,” Derek said, flashing you an award winning smile. 

“It’s nice to meet you too. I’m glad you all are keeping him safe out there in the field,” you replied. 

“All in a day’s work,” Derek said with a chuckle. He checked his watch before exaggeratedly yawning and telling Penelope, “Well baby girl, I think we should get going. Don’t want to hold these two up any longer than we already have. You two have a good one.”

“Thanks Derek,” Spencer mumbled as he watched the pair walk off and out the door. You watched as Spencer’s eyes did another sweep of the bar before his attention was back on you, turning you toward him and pulling you into his front, his hands snaking their way around to your ass and giving a light squeeze as he returned to kissing your ear and neck. 

Your hopeful thoughts from the conversation with Derek and Penelope were instantly abandoned and replaced instead by flashes of your intimate moments with Spencer over the last few months. Your hands drifted upward with one resting on his shoulder and the other lacing into his cropped hair as you let out a quiet moan in Spencer’s ear before asking, “Take me home?”

“God yes,” Spencer whispered, pulling away and turning you around so you were in front of him. To anyone watching it would look like he was simply helping you keep your balance as the alcohol in your system continued to impair your coordination, but only you knew the real reason for the closeness. So as you walked the block to the parking lot, you occasionally let your ass rub against the growing problem in Spencer’s slacks which earned low groans and a squeeze of your hips as you two made your way to Spencer’s car which was tucked away at the back of the lot away from other cars. 

When you got there, Spencer pinned you against the side of his car and his lips were on yours in an instant. After a few seconds, he pulled away for a moment and between panting breaths he asked, “Is this okay? You’ve been drinking, I didn’t want to-”

“You aren’t taking advantage of me,” you promised before he could complete his sentence. “I only had two margaritas and a shot and a ton of food. If you want to breathalyze me, agent, go ahead, but I promise you I’m all here and I’ve missed your hands on me.” As you said this, you carefully hooked one leg around Spencer’s waist and pulled your hips closer together with a smirk gracing your lips. 

“I trust you,” he whispered before your lips crashed together again. You once more laced one hand into his curls and used the other to pull him closer as your tongues began lapping into each other’s mouth, desperation and pure need guiding your actions. Shocks of pleasure began flowing down to your core and you felt light headed as Spencer rutted his hips into yours, seemingly desperate for any sort of friction. The moment that his hard cock brushed against your cunt you let out another moan that was swallowed by Spencer’s mouth before he was moving one of his hands from the grip he had on your ass.

Within seconds you heard the tell-tale sign of the car doors unlocking and Spencer was opening the door for you to get in. Rather than going over to his side to quickly drive to one of your apartments though, he instead pulled at the levers at the base of the passenger seat and began scooting the seat backward and flat, sending you into a near laying position and dizzying your senses. “Spencer, what-?” you asked as you regained your composure after a few moments. 

“I can’t wait,” was his reply before he began tucking himself into the now more open floorboard and pulling your panties down your legs. 

“What about- What if we’re caught-? Your job-!” you managed to get out in clipped sentences. 

“No cameras, no cars near us, it’s fine,” he replied quickly. “I just need to taste you,” he added, his voice almost dark with desire which had your cunt clenching around nothing again as your own desire overtook your anxiety about getting caught.

He hooked your legs over his shoulders and pulled your hips close to his face before you felt the flat of his tongue on you, going from your entrance to your clit before he stopped there and began focusing on your most sensitive bundle of nerves. You let out a sinful noise as one hand gravitated toward his hair to hold him close as he began sucking on your clit, not wanting to let go of the feeling. 

After a few breathtaking moments, Spencer pulled away slightly and mumbled, “You’re so wet, fuck…” The vibrations of his voice on your core made a high pitched cry escape your lips and he chuckled before asking, “You like that?”

“God yes,” you replied breathlessly as your chest heaved as the pleasure began to build already in the pit of your stomach. “I missed you,” you found yourself confessing as your hips bucked up to meet his tongue as he returned to his assault of your dripping cunt. Spencer’s only response was to shift and add two fingers to the mix which caused you to cry out his name as he hooked them skillfully, hitting the spot he knew could make you fall apart within seconds if he got it just right. “Oh fuck, right there- Spencer, I- shit…” 

“Come on baby,” he mumbled against you as his long fingers began stroking his target within you, causing the tight coiling feeling in your abdomen to increase more and more. 

It all became too much when Spencer began kitten licking at your clit at the same time and the coil snapped, sending waves of pleasure crashing over your body as your orgasm ripped through you. A loud moan slipped past your lips as your grip on his hair tightened and Spencer pulled his fingers out quickly before beginning to lap at your cunt like a man starved, holding down your erratically bucking hips as you slowly began coming down from your high. Overstimulation took over after a few moments and you gently pushed Spencer’s head away as you panted, trying to catch your breath. Spencer obliged, pulling away and wiping his face with the back of his hand before sucking the remnants of you from his fingers as he chuckled. 

You joined in on his laughter after a few seconds and the question that had been on your mind all night slipped past your lips, “Is it casual now?” Knowing it was a loaded question though, you panicked and quickly pulled Spencer up and into a kiss before he could answer. For good measure, you made sure to keep him preoccupied by teasing him as he drove you back to your apartment where he made sure to thoroughly make up for his week away on the case. 

A few weeks had passed and you were out with your girls again to celebrate Adrianna finally graduating law school. It had been a long and arduous journey for her, but she made it! So before she had to buckle down once more to study for the bar exam, the four of you went out to a nice, new Italian restaurant that had opened only a couple of weeks prior. The restaurant had great reviews, and most importantly to Adiranna, an excellent wine list. So the four of you celebrated with delicious pasta, only one glass of wine for you, and began on dessert - a tiramisu that smelled heavenly. 

As the dessert was being brought out by what seemed like half the kitchen staff who were all warmly congratulating Adrianna, your eyes drifted past them when you heard a distinct nickname being called out teasingly from across the restaurant. Pretty boy. You made eye contact with the man in question and like an instinct your heart rate began to increase and heat began to pool down into your core. It was a Pavlovian response at this point, as Spencer had explained to you the first time you brought up the fact that you would get turned on at the mere sight of him, even if it was in no way sexual. You averted your eyes a moment later and bit your lip as you shifted in your seat, thighs rubbing together to try and alleviate some of the tension building in your core. 

“You okay?” Maddie’s voice asked, breaking through the flashes of when Spencer dragged five orgasms out of you that night after the bar. 

“Just a headache, red wine doesn’t really agree with me,” you told in a half-truth. Red wine really wasn’t your forte, but it was what Adrianna wanted so that’s what you had been sipping on slowly throughout the meal. “I think I’m gonna head to the restroom to take a Motrin, I’ll be back. Maybe the lights will be a bit less harsh in there.”

“Maybe so. I’ll make sure to save you some tiramisu,” Maddie said as you stood up and began making your way across the restaurant to where you noticed the restrooms were earlier. You weren’t really going to the restroom to take some medicine or get away from what really wasn’t even that harsh of lighting in the dining area. There was some part of you that hoped that even from across the restaurant Spencer could tell that you needed him and would get the message to meet you in there. 

Of course as you passed the table Spencer was at, it was filled with the rest of the BAU members, most of whose attention was on the man animatedly talking about the wine and pasta selections. You thought you had gone unnoticed until you heard a low wolf whistle before the comment, “Go and get some loving, pretty boy.”

“Shut it!” you heard the distinct voice of Penelope snap as you kept your head down and made your way to your destination. 

Right as your hand reached up to push the restroom door open, you looked back to see if Spencer had followed you like you hoped, and to your body’s joy he did. Glancing at his lips as he wet them with his tongue, you felt the dampness in your underwear growing as your breathing began to pick up its pace along with your heart. “Hey,” you said simply. 

“Did you want to-?” was all Spencer asked before you nodded vigorously which earned you his lips as he gently pushed you into the single person restroom before locking the door. Spencer’s hands were on you in an instant, one diving into the low v-cut of your dress and beginning to massage your breast, thumb flicking over your already hard nipple as you moaned into his mouth. “If I knew you would have been here I may have dressed a bit nicer,” Spencer commented as he moved from kissing your lips to your neck, your hands desperately roaming his frame as he explored yours. 

“You always look amazing,” you told him earnestly as he hiked you up onto the sink’s counter space and pulled the strap of your dress down your shoulder so he would have better access to your chest. “Oh, God, Spencer…” you whispered as he took your sensitive bud into his mouth and began sucking. It wasn’t long before he moved on from the nipple to the surrounding skin and started to bite and suck which you desperately hoped would leave a mark. You loved it when he marked you because it made things feel more permanent, even if just for a few days.

Before you knew it, your legs were being nudged apart and Spencer’s fingers were teasing your entrance as he asked, “Are you ready?”

“Please,” you begged. The sound was breathy and high-pitched, but you didn’t care much about how desperate you sounded because you knew the sounds you made drove Spencer crazy. 

“Turn around,” he said in a low voice as he helped you jump off of the counter. You didn’t even get the opportunity to tease Spencer or spread his own arousal over his head before you were being bent over the counter with your panties pushed aside as he quickly shoved into your throbbing core. Your moan was muffled as Spencer’s large hand came around and covered your mouth and he gritted out, “We don’t have long.”

You whimpered into Spencer’s hand as he pounded into you from behind, your exposed breast occasionally grazing against the cold countertop causing the most delicious mix of pleasure to course through your body. He always felt so big from behind and tonight was no exception, but the rate and rhythm that he was going at had the coil in your core building quickly. “Spencer, oh, fuck! I-”

“I’m close too,” was Spencer’s grunted out response as the grip he had on your hip tightened as his thrusts began to get sloppy. You don’t know if it was because of the prospect of getting caught, or what, but after a few more thrusts, Spencer was already losing it, whispering, “Baby, I- Shit, shit, shit! I’m coming, fuck-” 

You felt his hot release filling you up and you let out a moan in response, so close to your own peak, but instead of continuing his ministrations like he normally would, Spencer pulled out and began cleaning himself up. You stood there speechless for a moment, still bent over the counter with your heart racing and chest heaving as you recovered from your almost orgasm. Spencer had never left you hanging like that. Maybe to edge you to try and get your body to do what it still hadn’t managed to, but never to deny you an orgasm. 

Spencer approached you from behind once more and recovered your core with your underwear before beginning to straighten up your dress to help you look presentable. He turned you around and placed a gentle kiss on your lips before chuckling and telling you, “I think you may want to fix your makeup a bit.”

“I-I will,” you quietly agreed with a nod, watching as he ducked his head and left you in the bathroom alone, hot, bothered, and honestly a bit pissed off. You quickly relocked the door and went to the restroom, trying to rid your underwear and body of the traces he left behind with his abrupt finish. After cleaning up, you went to work fixing your makeup as best you could and hoped that with all of the wine in their system your friends wouldn’t notice that it was slightly less perfect than when the night began. 

As you quietly made your way out of the restroom, you froze when you heard Derek’s voice coming from around the corner as he asked, “That love toy of yours treating you well?” 

Your blood ran cold as Spencer responded, “Oh, I- uh- Yeah. She is.”

“My man!” Derek said with a bright laugh before the conversation was prompted to return to non-sexual topics by someone else at the table. 

You felt your shoulders slump as your eyes casted themselves down to the floor and you just wanted a sinkhole to open up beneath you and swallow you whole. A sense of dread began to fill your body and your head began to feel heavy as your anxiety started to climb. Trying to breathe through the dizzying feeling, you kept your eyes down as you made your way past the table Spencer was sat at. When you reached your friends, you offered a small smile before telling them, “The headache is just getting worse, I think I need to get going. I’m sorry to be a downer…”

“Hey it’s okay! Get to feeling better!” Maddie told you, offering a smile to try and comfort you. 

“Thanks,” you said as you reached into your small purse and pulled out a few bills that should more than cover your fair share of the meal. “Congrats again, Adri. You earned it!” you told her with a fake chipperness in your voice that you hoped was convincing. 

Once that exchange was over, you quickly made your way out of the restaurant and into the cool night air, trying to convince your lungs to take deep breaths before a full blown panic attack set in. You should have known that all of this with Spencer was too good to be true. You should have known that he just wanted you for sex and nothing more. 

Even though you know you shouldn’t have, after that night meeting Derek and Penelope, you had let your mind wander just a bit and had imagined a little life with Spencer. An apartment smack between both of your jobs, going to the movies together, reading in silence on the couch, maybe even him showing you off at some team party after they closed a particularly hard case. But clearly none of that was in the cards for him… It was just a fantasy you had built in your head.

How did you let this drag on for so long? You pride yourself on being a strong and independent person and for the longest time had sworn off dating after the last disaster that had ruined your life. Yet here you were letting Spencer come crashing into your life, upturning everything you had built for yourself. A searing hatred started to rise in your chest, but it wasn’t directed toward Spencer. It was for yourself.

Your thoughts were interrupted though when a gentle hand was placed on your upper arm to get your attention. Just turning to look at Spencer made you dizzy once again and you braced yourself against the building to keep from falling. “Are you okay?” Spencer asked. “You’re still on the pill right? I didn’t even think about asking, I-”

“Yes I’m still on the stupid pill,” you choked out through your tight throat that felt like it was threatening to close up any moment. 

“Then what’s-?” he tried but you interrupted him. 

“I just thought you thought of me better than a ‘love toy…’” you whispered, the sound barely audible. 

Spencer reached for your hand and squeezed it gently which made your heart soar, but it came crashing down once again when he softly reminded you, “No attachments, remember?”

Panic reared its ugly head again as that dreadful feeling threatened to overwhelm you. So before you could break down in front of Spencer in front of the restaurant, you jerked your hand away and sharply told him, “You can go to Hell, Spencer Reid…” 

a/n: phew, that was... something! i think i need to go touch some grass... anyways, when i was plotting this, i couldn't help but think of another song that ended up causing their backstory, so i'm going to start writing a part two to this called 'butterfly effect' because i don't like unhappy endings. i hope to see you there! likes and comments are always appreciated!

xo, brooke :)

part two - butterfly effect

[dreamingofaizawa]

Violent Tendencies - Purple

Sherif! John Price x AFAB! Fem! Reader

~Small Town AU~

***This piece of fiction is rated M for Mature and contains dark content. If you're not 18 or older, BE GONE ty<3***

Warnings: Stalking, death, murder, guns, general violence, descriptive threats of physical harm, penetrative sex (p in v), unprotected sex (practice safe sex ppl use condoms), body worship(a little?), overstimulation, reader questioning her morals

Word Count: 6.6k

Author's Note: Idk I'm just gonna let this one speak for itself. It's dark, it's hot, I'm having a great time writing all these events for something I never intended to be long but HERE WE ARE.

Series Masterlist

Part One Here - Part Nine Here

Enjoy~

***

Having a true friend for the first time in a long time, you’ve become protective. Celeste has made a home in your life where nobody else really cared enough to. Over the course of the last year or so, you’ve spilled a great deal of your secrets and feelings to her, laying everything out on the table for her to see. She knows about nearly every single one of your fights, the ones you can remember anyways, and your time in juvie. John was with you the night you told her, the both of you telling your violent little tale of love and blood.

“That’s so fucking romantic in the craziest way. Makes me nauseous, the two of you waiting so damn long just to have each other again.” It was lighthearted, and we all laughed as she pretended to gag. She knows about the insomnia, about the therapy, about the itch you still get every once in a while. She knows you better than anyone besides John. 

You know about her, too. She’s sweet, kind, and insanely funny. Her humor is drier than the Mojave, just like Simon’s, and you think maybe the two could easily get along. She’s told you how her bar was given to her when the previous owner grew old and tired, retirement calling all too soon. She lives above the bar, on the second floor of the standalone building, having moved in when the previous owner disappeared off to some tropical getaway forever more. You know she’s had many a summer fling, a trail of hearts behind her when a red flag pops up or the man just isn’t worth fighting for. She’s headstrong, unbending to anyone or anything, but gentle. 

She lacks completely the explosive violence you’ve loved and lived on.

Right now there’s a darkness seeping into your bloodstream, tinting your blood burgundy. It’s heavy, lead in your veins with a resolve you’ve only ever had for loving John. Celeste has knocked herself out, snivelling in her sleep beside you in the bed she’d taken over for the last week and a half. It’s only a matter of time before they come back again. You know it somewhere in your bones, deep in the marrow, that these two won’t be far behind you at every turn. You’ve seen the documentaries, the true crime shows, you feel like this is textbook serial abductor behavior. You’re sure they’ll be coming after you and John as well. They’re more dangerous than Graves was, though. He was angry, vengeful, and despite it all you can say that you understand him at the base level. You’ve felt anger your whole life, you’ve felt the pull of vengeance a fair few times as well.

This guy? This one’s mental. Sick in the head with delusion and obsession.

You won’t hunt them. You’re not sure there’s a way to do that, the car having no license plate and beaten enough the make and model are ambiguous. But you won’t hunt them, regardless. No, you’re going to wait until they find their way back here. You’ll wait until they fall right into your little web, wrap them up in silk and drain them of their blood. John doesn’t have to know. Celeste doesn’t have to know. When they break into your home, it’ll be you standing your ground, defending your home and the people in it. 

When John gets home from the station, he can tell something’s off. You know he can. He’s holding you like you’re made of glass, anything could put a little too much pressure on a thin spot and you’ll shatter.

“Tempest? Are you alright?” His voice is soft. Softer than the early mornings, gentler than the late nights. He’s calm. Like the surface of a lake on a clear summer night, reflecting the cool moonlight flawlessly. Everything about him is blue, cool and collected. Even his rage is cold, chills down to the bone when he stares right through someone with electricity in his irises. Where he’s blue, you’re red. Hot and fiery, boiling the ground at your feet in your warpath. 

Maybe he should know. Maybe he’ll be the voice of reason you need to keep yourself from spiraling into a lava pit of murderous rage. It doesn’t feel the same, sharp and searing instead of a rolling boil, the anger taking an unusually volatile turn. 

“Let’s go upstairs. We need to talk.” You leave Celeste then, making sure to close the door to your room so she can’t hear what you’re about to speak out loud if she wakes up.

“What is it? You can tell me.” You have to breathe deep to keep the anger from spiking.

“They’re going to come after her again.” He nods.

“Kyle and I had the same thought.” Good. 

“They’re going to come after us by proxy.” He nods again, his gaze sharpening, glacial blue glowing in the low light of the coming morning.

“We figured that out, too.” Good. There’s a long silence as he waits for you to speak again. You aren’t sure you can say it out loud, no matter how sure you are that you’ll go through with it when it comes down to protecting this house. You were ready to kill Graves. You’re ready to kill these bumbling fools. 

It’s a one-way trip to hell, slipping down the tracks on a train bound for brimstone.

“If they show up here, they’re digging their own graves.” Your hands tremble, grappling at his jacket as you whisper the confession into his chest, leaning close like he’ll run from you. You hope he won’t, but he’s the sheriff. The law is his life, whether he likes it or not. 

“You mean that?” Your knuckles turn white with how tight you’re holding onto him, fear making you tremble. He needs to know. You just pray that this doesn’t change the way he sees you.

“I do. They’re digging their own graves and lying in them to rot.” His lips press into your temple, voice rough and deep as he whispers into your skin.

“Good.” Relief washes over you in a tidal wave, shuddering breath rattling your chest. He’s on that damned train with you, ticket burning alongside yours. Strong fingers grip your jaw, tilting your head to meet his steel blue stare. “Whatever happens, we take care of it. Yeah?” You nod into his chest. You’ll take care of it together. He kisses you, sweet and soft the same way he’s holding you. There’s nothing else that matters now, with him beside you like this. Everything just feels so right, even when it felt all wrong just moments ago. Something about him stabilizes you, steadies you like a mountain in a hurricane, unbending and solid, immovable where he stands, strong and sturdy and yours. The sharp, blinding wrath finds a home somewhere in your heart, bleeding into something heavy and dangerous. It reminds you that you’re no stranger to blood on your hands, and it’s all the same no matter the source.

Tension spikes in the air, something foreign and hot. It’s a level of trust so deep that you’re swallowed up by the black, inky depths. It makes your chest ache as you kiss him, clawing at his shoulders in a desperate attempt to get him closer, your bleeding heart waiting for him to take it and keep it forever.

Strong arms hold you tight, cold hands slipping beneath your shirt to feel your heated skin. He’s slow with his exploration, dragging his calluses across your flesh, memorizing every inch while he steals the breath from your lungs. He’s peeling your clothes off you agonizingly slow, taking his time for once, following his hands with his lips when he drags your jeans down your legs. You can feel his breath over the pouch of your stomach, whine when he presses thick, open-mouthed kisses up your body, over your breasts as he tugs your bra off, sucking bruises into your neck while his hands squeeze you wherever they can reach. Molten lust pools in your stomach, creeps over your skin like ivy. Every hair on your body stands on end, prickling the base of your skull when a thick finger prods at your cunt through your panties. He groans as the damp fabric gives, and you whine low in your throat when he pulls away.

“Fuck, already so wet for me, baby. My Tempest.” You’re pushed back gently, laid down on the mattress while he climbs over you, shedding his own layers while kissing down your skin, imprinting the shape of his mouth into your muscle memory. Your body will never forget the way he feels, never forget every scorching kiss. He drags your panties off, leaving marks on your thighs as you squirm beneath him. You’re on fire, lust like never before engulfing you. He’s never been so thorough, devouring you whole with his hands and lips and eyes. 

“John, please.” He chuckles at your whine, needy and wanton, all for him. Nestling his hips between yours never felt so right. He’s painfully hard, resting over the mound of your pussy and twitching the longer he looks at you. And oh the way he looks at you, like you’re a celestial being sent to save his soul from the fiery pits of hell. Like he wants to drag you down there with him. You reach up to him, holding his face in your palms and he kisses each fingertip gently, before lacing them together on either side of your head. You’re pinned to the mattress, boiling in lust and desire, while he lines himself up and slowly pushes into you. 

Tears gather in your lashes at the euphoria. He fills you so well, stretches you to the shape of his cock. You’re having a hard time breathing, hiccuping when he presses all the way up against your cervix. You don’t want him to move. You’re dying for him to move. You don’t know which you want more, wires crossing in your head as he pants into your mouth, tongue licking at the tears that fall.

“You cryin’ for me?” Frantically, you nod, lock your legs around his back to hold him close. You can feel every twitch, feel when his dick kicks inside you, and you’re struggling to keep yourself together as you stare into the darkness of his eyes, pupils swallowing up the blue. 

“I’d do anything for you. I love you.” You cry out when his hips jerk forward, heat spreading in your belly as he trembles above you, filling you right up with his cum.

“Fuck, you can’t say shit like that baby.” He’s out of breath, but he’s still hard inside you, and you try your best to keep still to keep from overstimulating him. But you’re burning, flames engulfing your body as you lie beneath him and all his love, the depths of it ready to eat you alive.

“It’s true.” He swallows the words, licking into your mouth and rocking his hips forward. Goosebumps erupt across your skin, your breath stalls in your lungs. Every slow thrust has pressure building behind your ribs and your limbs going weak, and your chest trembles with the sob you let out.

“Oh I know, baby, I know. Come on, Tempest, cum for me.” Something snaps in your body, a coil pulled taut in an instant, and white blanks your vision while your chest arches into his. You don’t breathe, not until he nips at your lip and starts fucking you in earnest, rutting deep into your cunt without pulling out and spilling into you all over again. The fire beneath your skin finally begins to calm, smoldering in the aftershocks. He collapses on top of you, still gripping your hands tight in his as you both pant into the humid sex-filled air. 

There’s an understanding that settles between you as you come down, soaking in the afterglow, and your mind is running wild with all of the thoughts criss-crossing through it. You only refocus when his lips find your pulse, hands holding your head when he pulls back to look down at you. Your skin cools beneath his body, taming the fire in a way only he can.

“Talk to me, Tempest.” 

“I’m scared.” His brows pull together, a pout pulling at his lips.

“Of what? Not of these creeps, you’ve dealt with worse.” You trace the muscles in his shoulder with your fingers, follow the raised scars and lines of ink in his skin while you think.

“No, I’m not scared of them. I’m scared of me. Of what I may be capable of, when the time comes.” It’s true. There’s a piece of you that’s terrified of what you’ll be releasing should you manage to kill these men. Murder weighs heavy on the soul, and some souls take that weight like nothing, murder over and over and over simply because they can, and feel joy. Some souls crumble with madness at the thought of having killed someone. You don’t want to be either, but you’d rather be that latter than the former.

“Are you afraid of me, then?” Your eyes snap up to his in an instant, that icy blue staring straight into your soul. The implication is there, his heart cleaved from his chest and bleeding in your palms. You know it’s true. It’s there in his eyes, in the cold, hardened gaze of a man who’s watched life flee a body and probably taken it, too. Love. Devotion. Happiness. Adoration. Trust. You feel a great many things, looking up at this man. 

Fear is not one of them.

“No.” His kiss is cold, just like the rest of him, while his cock hardens inside you. At your gasp he deepens, tongue flicking over your teeth and tangling with your own while he rocks himself slowly. 

“No?” A sharp thrust has you hiccuping, sensitive still, tears gathering in your lashes as you wrap your arms around his neck.

“No.” Big arms find your waist, tugging your body up so you’re seated on his hips while he kneels beneath you, pressing deep and holding you close. He shushes you when you sob, feeling your hearts beating together and your lungs breathing the same air. He’s yours, always has been yours, even now that you know the darkest parts of him. Especially now. 

“Tell me you’re scared of me, Tempest.” You whine into his shoulder, sink your teeth into his flesh when he ruts up into you.

“I’m not.” His growl rumbles through you, a big hand threading into your hair to yank you back and look him in the eyes. They’re wild, looking up at you while he snaps his hips against yours, sending your eyes rolling back in your skull while he sucks bruises up the column of your throat. 

“Tell me you’re afraid of me!” It’s grit out into your pulse, the anger in it fake and purposeful, and the heavy lust comes through too fully for it to come across as anything truly malicious. 

“I’m not!” You could never fear him. He cums like that again, filling you right up, but even through the oversensitivity he’s feeling he keeps fucking you like a madman.

“That’s fuckin’ right. Not afraid of anything. My fuckin’ girl, my Tempest. Love of my fuckin’ life you are.” His hand finds its way between your bodies, a rough finger finding your clit to rub circles into it. It has you shaking in his grasp, legs clamping down around his thighs so tight you might just bruise. 

“Fuck.” He rumbles against your lips when he tugs you to kiss him, but you’re all fucked out, jaw slack while he works your body and builds a coil in the pit of your stomach.

“My Tempest. I love you, violent little thing. Love you with all that blood and rage and fire in your heart. Cum for me again.” That’s all it takes, and you don’t know where you go but you’re gone. White floods your vision, ears ringing and every muscle in your body is strung tight. There’s no telling where you end and he starts, hot and cold bleeding into a blooming warmth. 

Red and blue exploding in a cloud of indigo.

When you come to, you’re both on your sides, lying face to face. His arm is looped over your waist, the other beneath your head to pillow you on his bicep. You’re sticky between your legs, but that’s a problem you can take care of when you can feel your toes again. 

“Beautiful woman. Don’t be scared of yourself if you aren’t even scared of me, baby.” Your heart may just burst in your chest. There’s so much love you don’t know what to do with it all. It’s leaking from your tear ducts, streaming hot down to his arm. The hand on your hip comes up to brush the tears away, his eyes tracking the drops as they fall. “Even when you’re crying you’re the prettiest creature I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

“Oh you fucking sap.” His chuckle is low and he shuffles closer, pressing a kiss to your lips.

“Can’t help it. Didn’t get to tell you the day we met, even though I was thinkin’ it. Won’t let that happen again.” 

“I love you, John Price. I love you so much it hurts.”

“I’d kill to have you say that to me every day.” You know he means it. 

You sleep like the dead together. Not a damn thing could wake you while you were tangled beneath the sheets. It’s how you spend a lot of your shared sleep now. Inseparable.

Celeste’s problem vanishes like dust in the wind for two whole weeks. Not a single trace of him or his accomplice remains, the getaway car gone like it never existed. His picture is plastered on every pole and board in town, everyone on the lookout for the man that’s bothering their barkeep. The news spread pretty fast that the guy was after Celeste, since the entirety of the bar watched from inside the window when you’d dragged the guy out by his hair and beat on him. 

You don’t let her go home, even when that false sense of security settles in. Her arguments get shut down quickly when you remind her that Phillip returned after six months for his revenge. This guy doesn’t seem like the patient type.

You’re ready, though. 

You’ve made your peace with yourself, chipped away at that fear you had. John helped. All of your doors had been reinforced properly within a month of Graves being sentenced, as well as your windows. You’ve got a simple security system, nothing insanely fancy, but enough that if there’s any forced entry you’ll know. You make sure the bats and mallets you’ve had stashed around are accessible to you and the other two in your home.

You have John take you to the range with your revolver.

Your aim’s improved in the last week or so, enough that you’d more likely hit an intruder than the wall, but you’re not going to use it at anything further than point blank range. If you shoot, you’re shooting to kill. No chance to miss, no chance for them to walk away. You’d confessed that to John, and he’d looked at you like you hung the moon in the sky. He loves you with all your pitch. Like you do him.

You and Celeste are in the diner, talking about her shift and the crap she’d had to deal with, when the bell chimes and two figures slink in through the door. You recognize one instantly, and so does Celeste, and you’ve already got the shotgun loaded and cocked when she makes it over the counter and calls John at home. She’s whispering her words into the phone while the two advance.

“You fuckers stop right there or you die.” The stalker huffs, but they freeze. His voice is unmistakable from the tinny voicemails.

“Lessy, it’s time to come home sweetheart.”

“Fuck you, crazy asshole! I’d rather fucking die than go anywhere with you.” She’s still on the phone, and you can already hear John’s sirens coming down the road. They hear it, too. When they dart, you shoot, but you hit the wall beside them when they make it out the front door. You’re hot on their heels, the single shot in the gun spent so you toss it to the ground.

They’re fast. Faster than you, by a long shot, and you can’t make it to your car before they’re off again. John is just turning the corner, missing them by a fraction as they vanish out of sight. Rage boils over in your veins, white-hot, and all you can do is scream into the frigid night air at the sheer frustration of it all. They got away. Again. Celeste is on you, and when he parks so is John. When he cools you off, you need to breathe and reassess. This cannot be allowed to happen again. 

About two days go by before the final nail in the coffin is hammered home. A voicemail sent for the first time in two weeks, and it has you seeing red. The normal threats are there, the angry obsession grating your ears as you sit in the station listening alongside the deputies, the sheriff, and Celeste. But at the end there’s a darker tone, a crueler one that completely lacks the obsession you’re used to hearing from the creep.

“Those two can’t keep you from me, Lessy. That girl is going to end up hurt, and I’ll take care of the Sheriff next.” Celeste looks at you terrified, but you know all she’s seeing is rage.

The next time they come back, they die.

A plan is made. They need to be backed into a corner, trapped without an escape route. No more being cornered, it’s their turn. A single shotgun isn’t enough for the both of them, so confrontations can’t happen at the diner anymore. The only way to guarantee that is to keep Celeste out of there. She cashes out some of the insane stash of vacation time she’s got stored up, ready to stay in the house as bait. You told her how much you hate to do it, but even she is in on this plan, ready to be rid of these creeps for good.

She’s never home alone. But you’re sure to make it look like she is. She’d checked her own place’s cameras, and sure enough they'd already looked for her there. Now they’ll probably be coming to your home. They’d obviously been watching her, since they knew where to find her in the diner. They know what your car looks like, and you make sure to leave it out in the driveway. John’s truck stays tucked into the garage, since the sheriff’s vehicle would probably keep them from trying anything. Celeste doesn’t question anything when you ask her to trust you. If anyone else knew, the three of you might be in for premeditated murder. 

But that doesn’t matter. Not when your resolve is a steel beam, load-bearing and shining fresh off the factory belt. You know there’s no coming back from this once it’s done. Hell, there’s no coming back from it now, having set your mind on something between revenge and defense, blood the only thing left to spill. You’re not nervous anymore while you wait for them to make the only move you’ve left open, take the one route they have left. Celeste has been either with you out in public or in your house, and if they’re watching her then they know she isn’t going back to work. There’s one place left for them to look: in your lion’s den.

They come in the night, just as you’re settling in for bed Saturday night. Your lids droop heavy, mind soothed by the steady thump in John’s chest and his hands scratching gently at your skin. You wake instantly at the sound of your phone chiming with the alert, your security system detecting a forced entry. This is it. The revolver and John’s handgun are out of the safe in less than thirty seconds. You can hear them creaking through the house, louder than a stampede with their careless footfalls. This was poorly planned on their part, but that’s exactly what you wanted. They aren’t going to get a chance to improve their strategy. 

You and John know where the boards are solid, slinking down the steps with stealth and speed and razor sharp focus. They don’t get away tonight. Your eyes are adjusted to the dark, feet taking you effortlessly through the layout of this house having lived in it for nearly 30 years. A shadow moves as you’re rounding the corner, and there’s that lanky bastard reaching for Celeste’s door. You reach him as he jiggles it, the lock clicked into place every night since the diner. 

He freezes when you put the barrel to the back of his skull. He jumps when you pull the hammer back.

“You’re going to die tonight.” John had disappeared from your side when you sped off for this guy, and all the creaking has stopped. Nobody’s moving, no shots, no sounds of pain. He’s got the other one in the same position you do. You call through the silence of the house, soft, but John will hear you.

“I’ve got one.” He chuckles, dark and low, sending your blood swirling in your veins, hot and heavy. That damn laugh. Don’t get horny now, damnit.

“I’ve got the other.” There’s a hard thud, then a louder thump of a body collapsing to the ground, and the creep flinches beneath your barrel. John appears, slips right past you and hits the back of his head with the grip of his handgun. He knocks clean out and crumples to the floor, but they’re not dead yet. 

“I’ll tie ‘em up. Then we meet the others.” The revolver is secured in the safe once again while you get everything ready. Part of you is tempted to go wake Celeste, let her know you’re leaving. But she doesn’t need to see the two lumps being stuffed into the trunk of your car. You text her, just in case she gets up while you’re out, then shut your phone off and leave it on the dining table beside John’s. 

She doesn’t need to see the next parts, doesn’t need to know what’s about to happen. So you let her sleep, blissfully unaware for the time being.

John holds your gun while you make the drive to the diner’s parking lot. He wanted you to leave it, didn’t want you to have to do this. It’s not that you want to. But you need to. Part of you thinks that if you aren’t the one to pull the trigger, they’ll rise out of their graves like zombies and come take Celeste anyway, then kill John and you just for getting in their way. It’s an itch you can’t ignore.

An old black Mustang and a navy blue Corvette wait for you there, and when you pull in, your boss steps out of the Corvette. Kate comes to you first, her hand squeezing your shoulder. You can see Kyle in the passenger of her car, Simon driving the Mustang with Johnny.

“Tell me you got ‘em.”

“Wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.” 

“Good. We’ve got everything, I’ll lead and Simon will be behind you.” Then you’re back in your vehicles, driving out of town into the night. It’s a long drive. About an hour out of town, and then a half hour into the wilderness. You’re in the middle of nowhere, not a soul in sight, nowhere to run or hide and nobody to hear a scream or a gunshot.

The task of unloading the cargo is left to the two biggest of the bunch, Simon and John dumping the two wriggling, grumbling lumps on the ground. They’d obviously woken up at some point on the ride, unable to do anything while bound and wrapped in canvas. You’ve all got a barrel trained on them when John cuts them loose, and when their first instinct is to bolt, a warning shot has them frozen solid. The two of them look just about ready to shit themselves. Good. Two shovels are tossed at their feet. Silence. You’re getting impatient, and John makes his way to you, pressing his chest to your back and whispering into your ear. 

“Go on, Tempest.” A chill crawls up your spine. They’re yours. With the other four staring down their barrels, you drop yours to your side. 

“I told you you’d die tonight. I’m no liar. Now dig.” The accomplice falls to his knees, trembling and starting to weep. Whatever he’s trying to say is only coming out in blubbering nonsense. Celeste’s creeper actually finds his voice.

“W-w-we’ll leave her alone! I’ll drop it! I swear!” You laugh, humorless and vindictive.

“Oh you’ll leave her alone alright. You’ve got a choice, though. Wanna hear your options?” He nods, hope glistening in his crazed eyes. You’re having too much fun, you think. But right now you can’t find it in yourself to care.

“You either dig right now, or you dig with a black eye and a broken nose.” Hope dashed, he shakes in his shoes. His sniveling counterpart is a right mess, babbling about being dragged into this bullshit. You couldn’t care less what his reasoning is. But if time is what they need to come to terms with their deaths, time is what you’ll give them. You’ve got all the time in the world. 

It’s a long, slow process once they both pick up the shovels. Hours go by in a haze, watching them sweat and dig and cry. Not once does your heart ache for them. You do try, though. A slice of your heart wants to hurt at the prospect of separating a soul from a body. You try so hard to find empathy in your own cold, dead soul. Try to see it from their perspective, try to find a way to keep them alive despite everything. Every time you try to find an ounce of sympathy, all you can see is them coming after Celeste. The voicemails, the threats of capture, the things that kind of life entails. Death at the very best. You try not to dwell on the fact that everything else would be a worse fate for her. They followed her to her home, her bar, the diner, even breaking into your home when they couldn’t find who they were looking for. 

All just to end up here.

“That’s enough.” John barks. It’s the first words anyone’s spoken in hours. You stand, having sat down in the dirt to watch. The others stayed standing, firearms at their hips, but the two haven’t been stupid enough to try anything. It’s a shame, really. You’re itching. You pop your joints, rolling the stiffness from your body, and eye the two as they stare up at you from their respective ditches.

“Who wants to go first?” The creep tries begging again, blubbered promises to vanish and never come back. Too little, too late. 

“Shut the fuck up. You think I give a damn about your empty, bullshit promises? You think I believe you when you say you regret it? It’s too fucking late for regret. You’re here because you’re fucked in the head, hunting a woman who lives alone with some twisted delusion you could keep her like some doll.” You stalk over to him, kneeling in the dirt to grab his collar and yank him close to you. He’s going to see the rage in your eyes, feel it through your knuckles at his chest, whether he likes it or not. It’s what they had planned after all, wasn’t it?

“Well guess what, you’re my doll now. And I’ve decided I’m done playing with you. So you’re going to die here, forgotten and tossed aside like every other plaything a child grows out of because that’s all your useless life is worth.” You shove him, send his stumbling onto his ass in the grave he’d dug for himself. They’re lucky, really. If you weren’t tired right now you’d have them fight for their lives. The other one is watching you as you stand. You can feel his eyes on you.

Something’s changed about him. 

When you actually look to meet his gaze, an eerie spike of fear shoots up your spine. He’s staring at you like a damn hyena over a carcass. His chest is heaving, eyes wide and trained on you, hands trembling at his sides. They’re both the same kind of sick. 

“You’re so pretty when you threaten people.” It’s sickly sweet, carnal with a twisted desire. From behind you, John growls out a curse. You can hear him pull out his gun, leveling it at the guy.

“Eyes off my woman.” He doesn’t listen, focused on you like you’re the only thing around. Like a kid eyeing a piece of candy. Looks like you know who’s dying first. He nearly drools when he comes to the edge of his pit, resting his arms over the ground at your feet. You cringe with nausea, stepping back when he reaches to grab you.

“No, I think I’ll keep her.” A shot rings out into the night sky, and the guy’s head snaps back. His body lands with a thud in his grave, blood seeping from the hole in his head. The nausea fades, replaced with a steady calm. John wraps an arm around you.

“You okay Tempest?” You nod, breathe in his scent, close your eyes and lean into him.

“I am now.” The fear you expected once it was done never comes. One of them is dead, body still warm, rigor mortis still hours away. But you’re calm. The rage is concentrated, distilled as you stare down at the dead man. His partner in crime is crying, curled in a ball at the bottom of his grave. Part of you feels like being cruel, wants to have him bury his friend with whatever dignity and life he has left. Instead you go to the edge, crouch down to speak to him.

“I want you to know that it won’t hurt. You won’t feel a damn thing.” He looks up at you like you’re some kind of gracious stranger who’s fed him in a famine.

“It won’t?” You shake your head.

“It won’t. You’ll be dead before you can process any kind of pain.” He lets out a little sob at that, at the reminder of what exactly is about to happen to him. “What’s your name?” He blinks, confused.

“Why the fuck do you care?”

“I don’t. I didn’t care when your buddy dropped dead. I won’t care when you do either. It’s purely morbid curiosity on my part, knowing the name of the man I’m going to kill.” You stretch your hand out to him for a shake, giving him your first name. When he doesn’t reach for it, you wiggle it like a little lure. It takes a minute, but he eventually stands.

“Will.” You expect him to yank you into the pit with him, but he just drops his arm when you let him go. His will to live has faded completely. A small part of you is thrilled about it.

“Will. You threatened my best friend. You threatened the man I love. You’re a fucking creep, the scum of the earth really. The world is about to be a much better place without you wasting oxygen. And between you and me, I desperately wish I had the energy to beat you to death with my own two hands to make you feel every ounce of pain and fear you’d put Celeste through. I don’t think you deserve a painless death. But that’s what you’re getting.” You stand when that fight comes back, his eyes hardening as he screams curses at you. Oh yeah, that’s what you wanted to see. He’s too deep to scramble out of the hole, body weak from digging as long as he has. You don’t bother saying anything else, just raise the revolver and shoot.

It’s heavier when you’ve shot at a living thing. Watching the light drain from his eyes has you eerily calm. But you’re unsatisfied, just a little bit. Your explosive nature is making a comeback, the desire to pummel and punch and break making you itch beneath your skin. John’s big hands find your shoulders, and the itch scatters into the darkness. 

“Let’s go home, Tempest. The others will take care of the rest.” 

The ride home is quiet. You’d said you can stay and help, but John wasn’t having any of it. You didn’t put up much of a fight. John’s driving, your two firearms unloaded in the backseat. Exhaustion pulls at your mind. You expected to be horrified at the death you’d left behind. You expected to feel haunted, expected to see their dead eyes ingrained into your memory. The horror doesn’t come, even when you make it home. In fact, you don’t feel much beyond pure relief. Like a plague has been lifted, cured from illness and feeling the strength return back to your body.

Celeste is awake when you get back, the sky beginning to lighten as you pull into the driveway. She’s in the doorway while you and John step from the car, worry etched deep into her face. Something in her expression tells you she knows what you’ve done. That hurts a little more, fear crawling up your throat at the thought that she’s about to run and never speak to you again. But you’ll be okay, if it means she’s safe. When you get closer, she yanks you into a bruising hug.

“Don’t you ever disappear like that. You left your phones, I had no idea where you were or if you were okay or what happened-” You grip her hard, shaking her a little by the shoulders to get her to look at you.

“We’re okay. Let’s get inside, it’s freezing out here.” She nods, and the three of you make your way to the dining room after you and John deposit the guns in the safe. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to use them again for a good long while. Celeste has coffee ready by the time you make it back, hand in hand with John. There’s a silence that settles over the room.

“Celeste.” You call her softly, scared of spooking her.

“I’m gonna freaking kill you if you ever ditch me like that again, damnit.” You laugh at the notion. At least she’s not afraid of you.

“I’m sorry. We had something to take care of. But it’s okay now, we’re safe.” You reach for her hand, squeezing it while you look her dead in the eyes. “You’re safe.” She swallows around the lump in her throat. Her voice is shaky.

“Are you sure? Can you promise me that they’re…gone?” If you could kill them all over again, you would. If you could raise them from the dead just to pummel them right back into their graves, you’d do it in a fucking heartbeat. The fear she’s been filled with still lingers even after they’ve long departed the world of the living.

“I can guarantee it. They’re serving a life sentence, far far away from here. They’ll never bother you again.” Her chest stutters as tears gather in her lashes.

“Don’t lie to me.” She’s begging. Her hands tremble in yours while you squeeze them tight.

“I may be a killer, but I’m no liar.”

[ultimateplaylistmaker]

How is Kokichi hyperintelligent? /genq

This is a really hard question to answer not because he's not but because it's really hard to not just, gesture at everything he does because there's just SO MUCH, but here's some of the one's off the top of my head

He can make workable blueprints, we know this because Maki found the bugvac blueprints in his giant stack of decoy blueprints which Miu was able to fully follow and make a fully working prototype, and as someone who has taken a few welding classes, that is NOT easy to do While we have no confirmation if he also made the electrobomb or electrohammer blueprints, Maki and Shuichi both speculate it's very possible he could have

2. He constantly is collecting evidence even from other cases and storing it away, showing a sense of foresight and awareness, which is also shown in his giant fucking whiteboard in his room which if you look up close to it shows a decent amount of work into actually predicting things and keeping theories together

3. He's constantly pointing out things in the class trial that other people skim over, while he's not always correct, he's extremely aware of everything going on around them, even being the person to call out Kirumi for trying to guilt trip them into trying to die in her place after getting voted or to cause a commotion for her to slip out in which Kirumi confirms as her plan after being called out, while I do give Kaito some credit for speaking up first about not doing that, his was less of a "kirumi is trying to manipulate us" and more "don't feel bad for not dying for someone else, life's to be lived, suicide bad"

4. He manages? to tie??? rock paper scissors???? a hundred times in a row???????? How did he do that

5. He wrote the Trial 5 Script, which while Kaito did have to improvise, is still stupidly fucking big and way too fucking detailed when did you make this sir because I'm not sure I believe you wrote all this in the bathroom

If we include stuff outside the main game,

in the bonus boardgame mode, he's one of the if not the only person to realize that Junko and Mukuro are different people

2. calls Celeste by a real name something she would have NEVER EVER EVER told him so he'd have to dig up on his own which CANNOT be easy (also I love how her face right after just screams that she's going to try and kill him in his sleep for it)

3. He's so good at keeping his secret organization secret, it's at a point where not even Komaeda can dig into it, which despite your thoughts on his talent and it's reliability we do know DICE exists in some form and thus could theoretically be discovered, so the fact Komaeda who could give you ALL the details on people like Fuyuhiko the Ultimate Yakuza is unable to find information is notable

All together Kokichi shows a rather high intelligence, whether or not it's on levels such as Junko or Izuru is a bit shaky but he can at very least on some level keep up with them (i didnt include the kokichi izuru events because they never had a specific moment around his intelligence but izuru actively fleeing from kokichi lives rent free in my brain) His problem isn't his intelligence, or even his emotional awareness though that isn't as strong, his main problems revolve around trust and paranoia along with the fact for the v3 game, well, truth is, the game was rigged from the start.

[best-iwtv-scene]

ROUND 1A, MATCH 4

Summaries/Propaganda under the cut:

Recovery/Apologies montage (1x06)

Following Lestat's physical abuse of Louis at the end of 1x05, the beginning of 1x06 features a montage of Louis' recovery and Lestat's attempts to regain his favour. Claudia takes responsibility for Louis as he is greatly injured after being dropped from the sky, introducing a different level to the pair's relationship, with Claudia older and more mature than ever. Lestat's apologies feature excessive gift-giving ("We burned more gifts than bodies in that decade"), and in one memorable moment, his gifts are answered by Louis dropping Lestat's coffin out the second-story window of the Rue Royale. The scene is scored by 'Are We The Sum Of Our Worst Moments' by Daniel Hart, the repetitive piano indicating the passing of time, and almost making Louis and Lestat's reunion feel inevitable, bound to repeat the cycle over an over again.

Propaganda:

No propaganda was submitted for this scene

Louis chasing down the coven (2x08)

Angry and falling into madness after he is freed from the coffin that should have killed him, Louis develops a plan to take revenge on the Paris coven for the execution of Claudia. The theatre finally burns down as part of Louis' plan, quickly killing most of the vampires, while Celeste and Estelle have their bikes blown up by Louis as they try to escape. Louis then taunts Santiago, toying with him before decapitating him using a machete. Louis' murderous and suicidal killing spree is, however, only followed by a feeling of hollowness. The scene is dramatically scored by the epic 'Take As Many With Me As I Could' and 'Hello Francis, Goodbye Francis' by Daniel Hart, which incorporate the Santiago and Paris themes to brilliant effect, ending with a dissonant flourish as Louis kicks Santiago's head away. "The plan? I was going to die. And I was going to take as many of them with me as I could."

Propaganda:

No propaganda was submitted for this scene

[mod-kyoko]

pet hcs part 1: trigger happy havoc

type: non-despair au, general hcs

a/n: just wanted to write something with my own idea before i finish up requests!

♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧♤♧

makoto naegi

makoto and komaru each owned a hamster as kids

their parents took them to a pet store and they were both drawn to a specific one, and fought over who would get to name it

makoto, being the older brother, was pressured to just let komaru have that one

so he got another hamster, but komaru ended up liking his more, and more sibling fights ensued

makoto never owned any pets after that, but if he did, he would want a hamster because it reminds him of his childhood

kyoko kirigiri

i've said it before, i'll say it again

kyoko owns a reptile, specifically a bearded dragon

she often allows it to roam her office while she's working

having it out helps her focus

she often likes to scratch its head and under its chin

it's perfect for her because it's chill and quiet

byakuya togami

byakuya would own a great dane 100%

they are very regal dogs, elegant, and strong

they are low maintenance when it comes to grooming

they need a lot of exercise though, but byakuya doesn't mind that

he has many people to take over his business while he takes his great dane on walks

he's very proud of his pet, so much so that he would enter it in competitive dog shows

sayaka maizono

sayaka is a rodent person

someone: "are you a dog person or a cat person?"

sayaka: "no"

sayaka had a guinea pig as a tween, and eventually got it two buddies a few years later

she loves all breeds of guinea pig

hairless, curly, short-haired, long-haired

she loves cuddling with her piggies, nuzzling their noses with her nose, and scratching their heads

kiyotaka ishimaru

an energetic person needs an energetic pet

taka has a sugar glider!

he's obsessed with the way his little glider will jump down from tall objects and fly towards him, perching on his shoulder

the sugar glider goes with him everywhere, always on his shoulder or on top of his head

he definitely cuddles with it and kisses it good night lmfao

celestia ludenberg

yeah celeste has a cat, but she would also totally have a cockatoo

they are very elegant birds, and she loves having elegant things

her bird perches on her finger or shoulder and she loves to give it kisses

she's very protective over her cockatoo, no one else is allowed to touch it

mondo owada

mondo's soft spot is his pet rabbit

he has a lionhead because they look badass

his rabbit is always roaming around the house

it's not mondo's house it's the rabbit's house

he treats the animal likes it's his whole world

the rabbit gets nothing but the yummiest treats and the biggest play area and so many places to explore

he often has the rabbit lay in his lap and sleep, while petting it

sakura ogami

what else would she have but a ferret

two ferrets

they are energetic, fun, and she doesn't mind that they are high maintenance because they are like her children

if you go to sakura's house, just know that there will be tunnels and toys everywhere

the ferrets are always out and playing around, you really gotta be careful where you step and sit

all sakura's friends are always welcome and they're constantly at her place just to play with her pets

hifumi yamada

hifumi has a very grumpy himalayan cat

it doesn't help the fact that he's always dressing the cat in cute and silly costumes

if you go over to hifumis place just know that the cat will hide and you will not be seeing it around ever

in fact, no one believes he even has a cat because no one has ever seen it with their own eyes

but he does have a cat, and it has its own tiktok page

chihiro fujisaki

chihiro has a medium sized aquarium full of all kinds of colorful fish and it is his prized posession

he spends so much time decorating their living space and cleaning their habitat

he's very knowledgeable about fish, too, it's one of his special interests

ask him one question and he'll ramble on about salinity levels in saltwater tanks

he is always posting cute pictures of his tank on social media lmao

yasuhiro hagakure

hiro has a hermit crab because they are cool but also low maintenance

he loves taking it out and watching the little dude crawl around

but it's not supposed to really be a companion, he likes having it for show

nevertheless, he takes really good care of it and is also protective of it

toko fukawa

yeah, toko has a stink bug... yeah

but she also owns other bugs

tarantulas, praying mantises, and even an ant colony

she can't stand people who overly freak out at the sight of a bug, she never understood that fear

they are so calming to look at, and they are just little beings trying to get through life as we are

her ant colony sits on her writing desk so she can watch them all scurry around when she has a block

aoi asahina

leon kuwata

aoi needs a pet that can keep up with her

a golden retriever is perfect

aoi is at the park ALL the time throwing frisbees and tennis balls

she has her dog run next to her while riding a bike

her golden retriever sleeps with her in her bed and she's always with it

leon has a hedgehog because they're cool

he definitely pricked himself a hundred times before he learned how to pet it

shows it off thinking it's gonna get him chicks but it backfires because they are more interested in the hedgehog than him

takes cringe ass selfies with it perched on his shoulder

they wear matching accessories sometimes

junko enoshima

junko is a horse girl and i will die on that hill

her steed is her absolute most prized possession and ALL of her money goes to keeping its coat shiny and mane luscious

also she looks amazing in an equestrian uniform

she rides her horse every day around her own private stable ground

no one and i mean NO ONE is allowed near her steed

enters in equestrian competitions and horse beauty pageants and always. fucking. wins

there is no amount of money she isn't willing to sink into her horse's quality of life

it's stable is all pink and bedazzled

mukuro ikusaba

mukuro obviously has a badass pet

she owns the largest domesticated python in the world

she didn't own a snake expecting it to be her best friend, though she does enjoy its company

it free roams her house sometimes

she has a large respect for the pet, her space is the python's space

she totally lets it crawl over her, wrapping itself around her arms and such and lets it chill there because it likes her body heat

[salad-o-malley]

I think im gonna need to Hide Tumblr from myself, Before I get a weekly streak of absuing the ask button!...Haha, I've honestly gotten curious way to curious and I know curiosity killed the cat but maybe im more of a dog? Lol, your Ocs are just all so lovely and make me wanna beg like a Victorian child in need of food. I just can't get enough of them. You're amazing at character design! And that had me wondering if you've ever considered getting into writing? From one of your newer but still old videos, you mentioned that you're oc world lives rent-free in your head, and that made me relate to you alot my world is always getting built in my head and one I started written my Ocs storys not in a lore format but more in a story way as if i was writing a book it just seemed to help me place everything together and was curious if you tried or do write storys with you're ocs while most people on here dont like reading Oc stuff if you did ever write something and shared it on here id jump to be the first to read it. (My apologies for all the asks I spend to much time on here...haha.) As an Oc ask im way to invested in learning your Ocs lore well more like world lore from that one video I mentioned earlier Id always been way to eager to know more about the complicated Oc universe so as an actual ask to not waste your time hows Seren's universe set up hes an Incubus/Succubus so that must mean his universe has some sort of hell given he's friends with Rouge (From your pinterest post I think Seren being a sore loser is hilarious.) And from your All of my god ocs plus any one who Relevent video Alodias and Celeste are the first incubus and Angel made so does that mean the god ocs are connected to Serens universe and seeing from the fact Fern and Seren play with there kids dolls and are friends and fern and her husband are hybrids? (Ferns a bunny?...and her husbands a Wolf.) it just makes me curious because that means the universe is filled with alsorts of creatures and then if the god ocs are connected to it, it just seems like a very interesting world and seems very creative and I love it! (Sorry for such a long post...I cant help but abuse the ask button, ill try my best to keep in check!)

-🪼

OH BOY OH BOY OKAY

So i’m gonna try to make this as simple as I can manage to

basicallyyyy I have different oc universes that all kind of coexist at the same time next to each other while being separate from one another

I’ve categorized them in my head kind of like this;

- god realms (not technically a universe but the gods and all the creatures in their realms know of and can interact with all the other universes)

- serenverse (unofficial name lol): basically just base level stuff, kind of just regular earth with more mystical creatures in it (like succubi/incubi, hybrids, etc) this is the universe most of my ocs kind of get automatically shuffled into if they don’t fit into the specific niche of my other universes in my brain ☝️

- fantasy universe: the universe where all the damn whimsy is. Kings, queens, princes, princesses, mystical/magical creatures are entirely the norm, it’s not like regular earth at all- it’s completely disconnected from anything like that. This is where my ocs like Sephtis, Carlin, Cassiopeia, Lunarus, Reef, Ezekiel, Pluto, Florian etc would be! This is also the universe where *my* gods are the most known, widely accepted, and worshipped!1

- Apocalypse universe: the universe that’s closest to being like our world buuut if everything went to shit because a war machine ruined it all. I made this universe specifically for Khaos and Tigre lmao

now getting into god stuff!1 my gods exist everywhere all the time in allllll the universes regardless if the people in those universes know of them or not

for example, in serenverse, the gods are mostly seen as mythology (like how we’d view the greek gods) though some people do know of/believe in them! The reason for creatures like incubi and angels existing there is because some of the ones born in the gods realms just migrated down there and reproduced annnd there ya go. the timing of that happening would’ve been like millions of years ago so it’s already kind of a norm in that society I suppose

while in apocalypse verse nooone of that “exists”it’s literally just a parallel of our world

BUT in my favorite universe, fantasy, the gods are veryyyy very real to the people there!1

this is gonna get even more confusing I apologize but here we go

each of the major gods has their own realm and creatures that they made to inhabit them-

likee

keveah - incubi/succubi

fallon - angels

keres - fire demons?1?

rosalite - cherubs

Lyrastra - literally every living thing on earth + some magical creatures on certain versions of earth

reaper - he didn’t make anything he’s literally death. though most people’s souls reside in his realm!

anywhozies all of the gods realms are like their own mini universes where they and their creations live! They’re all unique and kind of like their own little towns and cities in there.. I have pinterest boards for their realm inspo but I don’t feel like getting into ALL THAT

okay okay moving on. Specific ocs of mine were born in those realms, like rouge, and have the ability to traverse between realms and certain universes as they please because of that!

in the case of incubi and angels,, angels are never born on any version of earth! They’re always born in fallon’s realm no matter what, so there isn’t really such a thing as an angel born on earth (same goes for cherubs and fire demons.. basically any other creature that isn’t an incubus)

buuut incubi and succubi, because of their nature, are doing whatever the fuck and reproducing willy nilly wherever. So! There’s terms for incubi/succubi born in keveah’s realm versus earth- which would be

born in keveah’s realm; sin born

born on earth; earth born (self explanatory)

sin born incubi and succubi can go from the god realms to earth (whichever version) as they please but earth born incubi/succubi *can’t* because they were born on earth so they don’t have that power!1 whoopee!!2

annnd unfortunately seren happens to be earth born (he’s literally half human) so he can’t do any of the special stuff like that. Rouge just has like.. multiple clubs spanning keveah’s realm and the serenverse because I thought it would be silly lol

anyways that got terribly ramble-y and idk if it made a lot of sense but yeah!!2!? lore kind of?? uh!!! there’s definitely more to this but I need to stop rambling good god

[eat-the-richard]

GOTY OTY TOTY YOTY 2OTY4

Video games continue to exist, despite it all. And I continue to play them, despite being 27. 

This year, I reached my video game playing zenith. Becoming one with the controller, in sync with play. My body is made of graphics. This glorious, truly enviable point in my life will not last forever. Something will tear me away from this gamer euphoria, perhaps sooner than I’m OK with. But I’m going to keep doing this shit ‘til the wheels fall off. I will persist in engaging this deeply in my favorite hobby. Because it is not only what I need, it’s what the world needs right now. A balding, middle aged WHITE GUY spilling his heart out about electronic toys. And looking this damn good doing it!!!!!

SHORTEST GAME OF THE YEAR: CELESTE 64

BEGIN PLAYING THIS VIDEO AS SOON AS YOU BEGIN READING!!

Celeste 64 is pretty cute. It was quite the surprise coming at the 6 year anniversary of the original game. I’m a sucker for retro-style 3D platformers, so I couldn’t wait to try it out. It’s got some cute character models, fun design, and has a surprising amount of depth for a little -

aaand it's over. Honestly kind of shitty that they only made the game 16 seconds long…..

KILL ME IF I BUY ANOTHER ONE OF THESE AWARD: WWE 2K24

I don’t know why I keep doing this man. I tell myself every year that I won’t buy into the hype, that I won’t waste money on purchasing another one of these fucking WWE games again. And here I am, wasting ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS on the deluxe version of WWE 2K24 + Season Pass only to reach the same disappointment again as 2K25 peers over the horizon.

Look, these wrestling games mean something to me. They were very foundational to my love of gaming and pro wrestling when I was a little boy. Hours spent creating my own wrestlers, multiple full playthroughs of the endlessly replayable story modes, and hilarious hardcore battles with my brother at WrestleMania. 

But they’ve lost so much of that original spark. The story mode has been reduced to two separate modes, one that literally just recounts classic events that have already happened, and another that gives you two boring story paths which have very little room for expression and branching paths beyond your created character’s appearance. The gameplay is horrid, slow and plodding, not at all demanding of your mechanical skill. To top it off, they keep leaning every year into microtransaction fuckery, with so many alternate skins locked behind a hilariously awful amount of grinding or payment. 

If I buy another one of these games again, please hit me in the back of the head with a 2x4.

LMAO OF THE YEAR: MULTIVERSUS

LMAOOOOOOOOOO

OK TIME FOR THE ACTUAL LIST OF NUMBERED VIDEO GAMES IN ORDER OF GOOD

10. Penny’s Big Breakaway

It’s a little sad what happened to Penny. First revealed at a Nintendo Direct two years ago, it would ultimately be a shadow drop this past year during another Direct (partner direct, which nobody watched) that in my view doomed the launch. That, plus a bevy of technical issues clearly brought about by the game being rushed out the door, killed off any chance of this game taking off in its early months. It flopped commercially, and its developer, Evening Star (AKA the folks that created Sonic Mania) had to lay folks off later in the year. Given that its publisher, Private Division, has torpedoed and sank to the bottom of the ocean , perhaps this option is better than the game never coming out at all.

What makes this so much more heartbreaking is that, at its core, Penny’s Big Breakaway is very fun. There’s nothing that controls quite like Penny, despite influences from various other titles. Sure, there’s rolling and slope physics like Sonic, but the overall flow of movement is very different. You need to use your yo-yo moves in addition to the slopes in the level to gain and maintain speed, while also making sure to interact with the environment to keep your combo going. In that sense, Penny feels like a neat combo (SKULL EMOJI) between a character action game like Bayonetta, where half of the fun is going through each level while keeping in constant motion, and a 3D Platformer. Sure, these controls can be a little unwieldy when you’re not used to them. But with a little bit of time, I found a peculiar rhythm with the movement that was able to carry me pleasantly to the finale sequence.

Games like this aren’t for everyone. It’s no wonder why so many bounced off of this oddity. The visuals, while stylish, certainly aren’t blowing anyone away. The technical experience still to this day leaves something to desire. And the music… well the music is another Tee Lopes slapper. But the game as a whole just fits into a certain niche. A niche I happen to fall into pretty nicely. And I wish that games didn’t have the pressure of deadlines, or shitty publishers, or like, fuckin’ money, to be able to just live in their niche and provide the best overall experience to the audience that best appreciates it. Hopefully Evening Star can bounce back to fulfill that promise in a future title.

9. Animal Well

I have FOMO with Animal Well. It’s an onion-type game. I think I referred to it as an “unraveling-type game” in a previous year-end write up. Surface level impressions are pretty strong. It’s a master class in minimalism, with gorgeous lighting and striking detail fitting into a concise, pixelated image where you play as a circle with eyes. A Metroidvania, Animal Well opens its world up to you with literal toys as its upgrades. While the frisbee item seems like it’s just there to counter the giant dog that wants to eat you, it has plenty of other uses that give it utility across the map. With no text, the world needs to convey itself to you entirely through visuals, and expects you to play around with its mechanics enough to get through to the end. But I think anyone can get to the “end” of Animal Well with a little bit of effort.

But the end of Animal Well isn’t the end. Not even the end of Animal Well is the end. There is so much to dig into, and the map leaves no wasted space. We’re getting to the next layer of the onion, where puzzle solutions get a little more abstract. You need to pay a little more attention to the striking details I mentioned earlier, no longer just being set dressing and instead being important to see every corner of the map. It’s now required to fully understand all of the intricacies of each upgrade to get through platforming challenges that seem impossible at first glance. There are upgrades that you only see in this onion, with abilities that hide itself beyond first glance. But with enough time, I got to the end of this layer, and had a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

So why do I have FOMO? Simple, there’s another layer. One with puzzles that go far beyond anything an individual can find themselves. Puzzles that are so mind-blowing in how they fit into the game, with solutions that require genuine communication with other players to solve. But of course, these puzzles all were solved by rabid fans before I even got to the end of the first layer. So all I can do is appreciate the story of how these secrets were found, unfortunately only from afar. I highly recommend the videos from FuryForged detailing the craziest puzzles within Animal Well. While I could not take part, just knowing these are in the game at all elevates Animal Well for me. Clearly so much attention to detail went into these puzzles, and that level of devotion from a player base to solve them so quickly is everything a creative person can want.

In conclusion, make sure to play this on groundhog’s day. There’s a groundhog in the game that gives you beer.

8. Pseudoregalia

In life, you are either Mario 64, or you are Mario 3D World. Pseudoregalia is Mario 64. Controls in a 3D platformer like this are everything. It actually doesn’t even matter that much what content is in the game, or even how long it is. If you create a fun character to play, then that is all that matters. That was the mentality Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of the Nintendo theme park) had when tweaking the player control in Super Mario 64 (for the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack - Nintendo 64 application). Famously, early prototypes had no level design, and simply focused on making the act of chasing a bunny fun (the bunny of course was named MIPS, named after a shitty programming language). 

Pseudoregalia seems designed with this same philosophy. Sybil just has so many moves, which makes every session of play unique and fully expressive. You’ve got the long jump like in Mario Galaxy. You’ve got the ground pound jump like in Mario Odyssey. A backflip like in Mario Sunshine. And man OH MAN do you have this wall kick. I’m one of the sick FUCKS who actually likes the Mario 64 wall kick, where you need to be extremely precise with the inputs to kick off of the wall. I understand this makes the basic movement a little tough for most players, but it always feels extremely satisfying when pulling it off. Pseudo’s wall kick maintains that satisfying feel, but since you can just hold the button down to pull the move off, it is far more forgiving. But since it isn’t as easy as, like, how MOST platformers do wall jumps, they don’t restrict you as much, allowing you to chain wall kicks together to jump off of the same wall or an adjacent wall to gain ludicrous height. 

This game is so good that I don’t even care that it’s sort of furry bait. I kept those pants on the whole time, thank you very much. There’s definitely some sort of story going on, but for me it was the atmosphere that really stuck out. The music combined with the sort of empty, colorless world gives this a unique feel to other platformers. It’s not very long, but I actually think that weirdly works out in its benefit. Games like this are built for speedrunning - even if you aren’t built like that, there’s still plenty of reason to utilize your moveset to just sort of mess around in every level. Being able to get somewhere you’re not supposed to, or way before you’re supposed to, just sort of appeals to me in a deeply innate way. If any of this piques your interest, give it a try. It’s only $6, Christ.

7. Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree

First of all, this counts as a game. Whatever, my list fuckers!!!

Second, this was probably my most anticipated game coming into 2024. There wasn’t a ton of competition at the start of the year. As such, there were a lot of expectations, and in many ways Erdtree fulfilled its end of the deal. The game world is just as fun to explore as the original game, with actually more of the Dark Souls 1 layered world design that really drew me to that game originally. You’ll see an area, wonder how the fuck you’re supposed to get there, and the solution is abstract and not at all what you expected. You get to a major area of the game by going into a coffin hidden by a fake wall. FromSoftware is back baby!

There’s also the usual stunning visuals on display, which I feel like I take too much for granted anymore. Like, yeah, of course the new Miyazaki game has screenshots that just look like a painting, with vistas that just stop you in your tracks sometimes. Comes with the territory. Although it does seem like these visuals, on top of the dense world geometry, are stretching the hell out of this old-ass Soulbourne engine. My game ran like absolute shit, to the point I had to disable certain cores of my CPU to get it to run better. Damn Multi-threading!!!

There’s a word though, stretching. I think this game is stretching the limits not just technologically, but in terms of its difficulty. Some of the boss fights in here are straight up fucked. And not in the Ornstein and Smough fucked where you jump in like “oh man how is a human supposed to do this!!!” but with enough time, you see the flow and beauty to the dance of the fight. No, the fights in here are fucked. With attack windows so short and boss attack strings so long that every failure feels like you happened to get greedy once and you’re paying for it. The final boss literally has an attack that makes the framerate 20fps and unless you immediately start moving back, you are just going to take a free hit. 

It really feels like this isn’t the best use of this engine, and incentivizes you to basically make a build that plays the game for you. I don’t play these games with magic that creates a fucking laser right in front of you that annihilates every enemy. I play it for that dance in proper boss fights, the feeling of satisfaction in understanding their design to pass overwhelming odds. That is there in Erdtree, granted. Just in between a bunch of approximations of what that appeal may be.

6. Half-Life 2

I’ve had Half-Life 2 on my steam account for 14 years. Less than some people, but still far too long to have only beat it this year. HL2 is so foundational to modern gaming that reviewing it seems useless at this point. The Source Engine went on to completely revolutionize how games incorporate physics, how characters emote and talk to you. I’ve played and loved Valve games made in this engine for years. But I was never able to get through the progenitor, until this year.

The frustrating thing is, I know I would have loved Half Life 2 in 2011 if I had reached Ravenholm. Because this game shares a lot of DNA with the Nintendo classics that shaped my love of gaming. Because the Gravity Gun is a toy! Because the act of picking up a razor blade off of a wooden plank, and thrusting it at a zombie at a million miles an hour, watching their limbs explode across the map, is fun as shit!! The first act of Half Life 2 takes itself a little too seriously, with most of its gameplay focusing on just shooting a damn pistol. But it’s when HL2 gets a little more playful, with plants vs zombies turret segments, summoning Antlions to eat the Combine, and blowing up helicopters with a rocket launcher, that it really started clicking for me.

I originally wasn’t sure what to do on this list for Half-Life 2’s episodes, which I also played this year. Are they separate games, as originally released? Or do I consider them as part of the overall experience of Half-Life 2? Thankfully, Valve answered that question later in the year for the 20th anniversary, and confirmed that these 3 games are actually one game. So now I can tell you, in this section, that Half-Life 2 Episode 2 is actually the best Half-Life 2. It is pretty short, but has so many amazing gameplay scenarios that just keep you engaged the whole time. The fight underground against a swarm of antlions. The encounters with the hunter. The trek through White Forest on a massively upgraded 1969 Dodge Charger. And, of course, the final gameplay sequence, where you need to protect a facility from waves of Striders by using your gravity gun to pick up and chuck remote bombs at them. By far the best bit of gameplay in the series.

Episode 1 is kind of mid, with its core gameplay moment being a Sheep Herding Mini Game where you need to move NPCs through two rooms while under fire. But it's worth it to get through to Episode 2, which is a bittersweet glimpse into Valve at the height of their powers. 2007 was the year they released Episode 2. And Portal. And Team Fortress 2. A generational year from a generational developer, reaching heights they would never reach again.

5. Shadow Generations

Although I’ve written at length about Sonic in these year-end lists and on this blog in general, it has never even sniffed the top 5 section. Shadow Generations breaks that cycle. 

Maybe all Sonic needs is to make Generations style games forever. Ones that take old level ideas, maybe even from games that sucked, and bring out their full potential. Shadow Generations takes Kingdom Valley, a level from a game made by Hitler, and turns it into one of the greatest 3D Sonic levels ever. With so much replayability, branching paths all over the place, with just enough variety in gameplay with the doom surf ability to keep things fresh. Every level of Shadow Generations is like this, but it’s the reverence this game even gives to terrible, putrid parts of Sonic history that brings it over the edge for me. These aren’t vapid references preying on nostalgia; they’re transformative experiences that elevate the series as a whole.

What I find interesting is that Shadow Generations and Sonic Generations, which share the billing in the hilariously titled SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS, are basically two sides of the same coin. Both are referential towards Sonic’s odd past, sure. And their style of boost Sonic gameplay is similar on the surface. But it’s in how these levels are presented that really shows their distinctions.

Take Classic City Escape from Sonic Gens, for instance. It is just optimism curled up into a ball and thrown into your face. Fun, upbeat music, coupled with Classic Sonic riding on a 90’s-ass skateboard, all while escaping this comically-destructive GUN truck that obliterates chunks of the level as you go through it. One of the most iconic levels of that game, and shows the snarky, lovable Sonic we all know and love.

Now compare that to the Mephiles boss fight from Shadow Gens. Odd comparison, sure. But this is bringing back a character from a game, again, made by Hitler. One that was very famously erased from existence both contextually within his original game and in real life as that game left a stain on the franchise. There was no need to bring him back, but they did anyway. Because they found a way to give Mephiles justice. Because he isn’t just fighting you for no reason, he’s fighting for his right to exist. Again, both within context and outside of it. He puts his best foot forward, tricking you with clones and erecting towers of purple doom juice for you to climb up. He screams in anguish once you get ahead, crying out to you to let him come back. Shadow, meanwhile, is here because Mephile is a mere bump in the road, and needs to take care of him and move on. As he does.

Both of these technically exist in the same game you can buy, and both are trying to present the Sonic series in a very different way. And both of these are awesome, and prove that despite the Sonic fanbase being very split in what they want, that it is possible to please both sides. The world could use more Shadow games, just not, like, ones where he’s packing heat?

4. Astro Bot

The game of the year, ladies & gentlemen & enbies! I was stunned when this game caused an honest to god controversy after it won GOTY. How could you hate Astro? Look at his face!!

I think more than anything, Astro failed to find a wide audience. Because the audience who want to play Astro Bot are on PlayStation. They may have been in the 2000s, when the same platformer-adjacent franchises that are littered as collectibles throughout Astro’s game, were given equal footing among Sony’s list of intellectual property. But that audience is long gone, with no intent to buy a PS5 for even the best of platforming in a given year.

What’s disappointing is I feel what Astro is on a surface level overshadows what Astro actually is at a gameplay level. Like, the fact that it is a fun loving platformer that has Crash Bandicoot and Parappa the Rapper as a collectible is kind of all people know about it. And Astro Bot is used as a weapon in a gaming culture war. It’s less expensive than God of War, and takes itself less seriously. So clearly this type of game is the one that Sony should be focusing on! All the while, the actual design of Astro Bot, like what it's actually doing beyond first impressions, gets lost in the shuffle. My theory is these people aren’t even playing Astro Bot. Probably don’t even have PlayStations! And just use it as a battering ram against their perceived plights, all just to have something to get mad about, as if there’s not enough to get mad about already.

So, what is Astro Bot actually doing? Well for starters, its use of haptic feedback is far and away the best use of it in any game I’ve ever played. The Switch has had haptics for a while, and phones have had it for even longer. But never before has it been used to create the best-feeling Gacha Ball crush in history. I use “feel” a lot to describe while I enjoy games, and a lot of that has to do with things that aren’t actually “feel” as much as they are a facsimile. But Astro Bot’s haptics literally do let me feel certain actions in a way that elevates every moment of the game. From the way different materials feel to walk on, to the way the controller rumbles when you blast yourself with the dog power up, to the chaos of punching a bunch of gems out of your way. If this game gets a PC port (which it should), the number one thing it will be missing for most is how the DualSense controller integrates with the game.

Comparisons to Mario Galaxy have already been made before, so I won’t repeat a lot of that here. All I’ll say is that when the director compared one of the final levels to “Grandmaster Galaxy,” I instantly swooned. What keeps Mario special after all these years is that in his games, they never stay on a concept too long. There’s just a constant barrage of ideas that keep the game fresh, and in some ways just barely scratch the surface of what the mechanics are capable of. Astro Bot is designed in a very similar way. There are individual abilities in here that could carry entire games if given the opportunity, and they are just a small fraction of the bigger picture. 

I am jealous of the kids that get to grow up with this game as one of their first. But are any kids actually playing this? To be honest, it feels like the only people playing it are 27 year old white guys longing for days gone by. Kids are playing, what, Roblox Obbys? I guess those are platformers at least. 

The only thing holding this game back for me is that this game is Mario 3D World wayyy more than it is Mario 64 (Callback!!). It’s more concerned with giving you a bunch of interesting abilities per level than it is giving you a bunch of moves right at the start. As such, the movement feels a little static in a way that, say, Pseudoregalia, does not. I don’t think I’ll be replaying Astro Bot as much as my favorite 3D platformers. But that should not take away from what it is overall, and if you ever find yourself in the position to try it, I would highly recommend. And not because it’s the glorious epic AA masterpiece that Sony should base their whole company around. But because it’s damn good, and that should be enough.

3. Half-Life Alyx

I’ve had VR for a while. About 6 years, to be exact. In that time, I’ve always had obstacles getting in the way of my experience. Underpowered PC hardware, faulty VR headsets, wires. All restricting me from fully enjoying it, beyond some quick Beat Saber sessions. This prevented me from really sinking my teeth into 2020’s Half-Life Alyx when it was released. But a lot has changed. I have a better computer. I have a better headset. And most importantly, I no longer need a wire, as the Steam Link app on Quest allows me to stream PC VR games directly to the headset over Wi-Fi. And it only stutters causing eye-melting visual hallucinations sometimes!

With this setup, I could finally play Half-Life Alyx, which I was able to do right after completing Half-Life 2 and its episodes. In some ways, Alyx is bittersweet. It is Valve punting on the most expensive and the most detailed VR game ever made. Trying to inspire developers to put in as much effort as them, with the design challenges that they were able to solve, to make VR into a viable avenue for gaming going forward. But to this day, there is nothing quite like Half-Life Alyx, and it stands alone as the preeminent VR experience that lives up to most of the medium’s potential.

The highlight, to me and most others, is the Jeff section. It’s everything Alyx does well in a single section. The concept is genius for VR, with the fear of this freakish abomination hearing you and ripping your face off made more tangible when you stand eye to eye with him (or fungus to fungus). Being able to utilize every little object in the environment to trick Jeff into going a certain direction, while also making sure not to throw anything by accident as to not spoil your own location, is made way more immersive when you’re using your actual hand and fingers to pick these objects up. Valve continues to create excellent scenarios of gameplay and in concept, with the moment of having to purposefully let him out of the room you lock him in standing out. The tension, made more real by having your entire eyes and ears surrounded by the game, can only be accomplished with this fusion of design and hardware.

Much like those old source engine games sanded off some of the edges of previous FPS attempts, Alyx is the smoothest playing VR game, with tailored design to hide the medium’s weak points and accentuate its positives. VR still isn’t as accessible as it could be, and Meta’s continued dominance over the platform still irks me. But this experience straight up could not have been done as well without Steam Link, which is a pleasant reminder that VR is still improving. It is my hope that a future game can take what Half-Life Alyx did and surpass it.

Alyx does feel a little off tonally compared to Half-Life 2, but was a pleasant reminder of the same Valve that wrote games like Portal and Team Fortress 2. I like those games, if you couldn’t tell. Jay Pinkerton just eats through quippy humor most writers struggle with. There is still some debate on if Alyx counts as a full Half-Life game, which is a little absurd to me. Not only is this as long as as thorough as Half-Life 2, it feels at home with Valve’s 2000s classics in quality and innovation. There’s a lot of rumblings on if Half-Life 3 is finally at a point where it is a real thing being worked on at Valve. If true, not only am I happy to be caught up (I beat Half-Life 1 also this year, which was fun but shows its age a bit), but I am confident that the same Valve that made Alyx could absolutely pull off a HL3 that lives up to its namesake. Not another Artifact, at least I hope.

2. Rivals of Aether II

Long have I searched for the game to replace Smash. I love Smash, more than most normal people. But I am long past the point of caring about the characters needing to be known from another video game. Or from the Warner Bros extended universe (see LMAO of the year for more info). I’m in this genre for the gameplay, because nothing quite hits the same for me as a quality platform fighter.

Rivals of Aether II has the potential to be the greatest platform fighter in history. So much of the little details in this game are just right. The speed of the characters, the responsiveness of the inputs, the slight leniency in executing advanced techniques. All leading to the game feeling like butter, one where every single character benefits from the overall strength of the mechanics. 

And these characters have so much love put into their kit. My main is Orcane (don’t kill me). Just in this one character alone, there are so many techniques that are exclusive to him. His puddle not only assists in recovery, but in the range and efficacy of his kill moves. The puddle can also be turned into a small cluster of bubbles, which can trap opponents with precise timing. His traction is lower than other characters, allowing him to slide onstage with his strong attacks and shields. This even allows for the amazingly named “hydroplaning” technique by spot-dodging in the middle of your turnaround. His Nair is a damn Sonic Adventure 2 Bounce Bracelet, which can be a vicious two-hit move when combined with a technique called “hitfalling,” which lets you fall immediately after hitting your opponent with an aerial. 

I could keep going, but the point is that this is all a part of one character’s kit. Every fighter in Rivals has this amount of attention put into their design, and makes learning any one of them into an immensely compelling experience to me. It does seem that this sort of over-design in some places makes Rivals a little controversial in some spaces. Every character kind of has their own sort of bullshit they can pull off, which is fine since every character has something to come back with. But that does make balance a bit of a pain, which we’ve already seen cause issues in the first few balance patches. Also, to this day, this game is not finished. They had to release it in this state because they ran out of money, so I understand why they had to do this. But it does leave issues when the game launches without, say, a proper tutorial mode to learn all the characters' techniques. At the very least, this team has a great reputation from Rivals 1 of listening to the players and making quality changes, and I do believe that in a few years, Rivals 2 will be in a good spot.

What a thing, huh? Listening to player feedback… where have I not seen that before? Smash Bros has this weird thing of being an immensely popular and fun competitive game, despite being primarily designed as a casual-first experience. It leads to a disconnect between devs and players, where balance-changes and mechanical tweaks can happen seemingly at random for no real reason. And, most damaging, an active disdain towards that competitive player base that leads to enormous restrictions and missed potential. More than anything, Rivals 2 succeeds at what it is because it is not made by Nintendo.

And hey! Because it’s not made by Nintendo, a lot of my friends were actually down to play this game with me! Competitive Smash has always been an insular passion of mine, without much room to share with pals, which takes away one of this genre’s greatest strengths - the communal, shared experience. I have had so much fun over the past few months playing this game with friends on Discord, not just as a fun casual game, but in actually seeing both them and myself improving as we continue to match up. It is my hope that, once the new player experience hopefully improves with future updates, that many more people in my life can share this experience with me. And that Workshop support lets me play as Captain Falcon. 

1. Outer Wilds

OUTER WILDS SPOILERS. PLEASE GOD PLAY THIS BEFORE READING!!!!

Outer Wilds won my prestigious “GAME I'M MOST MAD AT MYSELF FOR NOT FINISHING” award last year (which has not returned this year due to my aforementioned ascent to gamer godhood). What made me so frustrated at this blunder was that I truly was the ideal candidate. Never having consumed as much as a single trailer, I went into my first playthrough blind as a bat. I explored the town in Timber Hearth for the better part of an hour, acclimating myself with the locals and learning some of the mechanics. I got the launch codes at the top of the observatory, had the wonderful Hearthian within tell me to visit the moon to get my feet wet, had my memories consumed by a strange statue, roasted a marshmallow or two, then prepared myself for takeoff. I don’t remember if I smashed directly into the Attlerock upon landing but it wouldn’t surprise me. I explored just about as much of that rock as there even was, before my screen was enveloped in a blue haze. The music should have been a dead giveaway, as the color of the sun beforehand. But those clues did not prepare me for a front row view of a frighteningly beautiful supernova.

Upon viewing the last twenty two minutes of my life back and waking up exactly where I started, gazing up at the Orbital Probe bursting in a random direction in the orbit of Giant’s Deep, I started wrapping my head around the game’s hook. You’re only given until the sun’s explosion to explore any of the planets, moons, comets, or space stations. All in search of some way to prevent the inevitable destruction of the solar system and life as you know it. And I was all in. My favorite Zelda game to this day is Majora’s Mask, and the time loop is such a significant part of the reason why. It allowed for the sequence of every day to be plotted in advance by the creators, allowing for an always-moving game world that you have infinite chances to figure out and explore. A time loop game in space, one of my earliest childhood interests, seemed like a home run.

So why did I drop it? Simple - I’m bad at reading text. In the vast majority of games that I play, reading is mostly optional. While I enjoy reading, I need to be in a certain mood to mix it with my gaming. It’s why I appreciate Metroid Prime and FromSoft’s output so much. There is plenty of context to every area, item, and enemy you come across. And there is so much more to be gained when you fully take all of that context in. But if you want to focus just on the game, you can still enjoy so much of what their worlds have to offer.

Going into Outer Wilds, I assumed much of the same. That the lines of Nomai text were window dressing. Nice to know if you want to understand the world around you, but not essential to understanding the game. That is wrong. VERY wrong. Understanding the world around you is  the game. You aren’t getting much of anywhere until you start taking in the text you read, putting it into the context of the area you’re in and the greater universe in which you reside. And by the time I realized this, I felt taken off-guard, and put the game down until I was in the mood for a game like this.

It took a year and a half to get to the point where I wanted to keep playing. Until just this past December, this game remained in my head, but not top of mind. Just a persisting feeling of unease knowing that this was still in my backlog. After hearing so much positivity, and being so enamored by the premise, there was no way I could keep it there forever. And much like the Souls series, it took the shared interest of one of my friends to push me over the finish line and strike this off my list. So right before the end of the year, meters away from the finish line, Outer Wilds gets onto the list, and is here at number one.

What pushed Outer Wilds to the top of my list so suddenly was in thinking about the game’s themes. You are burdened with knowledge that seemingly nobody else in your solar system has - that this world is doomed and we’re all going to be eaten by the sun. Naturally, you start to think that the objective of Outer Wilds is to save the world. Maybe the sun station, constantly in orbit and hilariously difficult to land on, holds the keys to your salvation. You start reading about this station and how the Nomai wanted to use it to blow up the sun on purpose? Well that must be it then, that must be the answer! Getting to that station involves deep understanding of the game’s mechanics, likely first understood by falling into the black hole within Brittle Hollow, teleporting back at the White Hole Station, then using that same teleporting mechanic when realizing that those teleportation stations exist on the border of Ash Twin. Or you somehow land on it, you little goober.

But finally, you’ve made it to the station, and turning it off can hopefully stop this unforgiving cycle. Unfortunately, things aren’t so simple. This station has been off the whole time, it isn’t even doing anything up here. All it can confirm to you is that this supernova is irreversible. The sun is at the natural end of its life cycle. It seems like the universe itself is at its end. Chert on Ember Twin starts noticing that stars all throughout the system are suffering the same fate as our own. They get terrified when they realize that this is the end. I was too when I came to the same conclusion. There’s no easy way out.

All I can do is appreciate what I see in front of me. I’m in a time loop, I have as many chances to explore every inch of the Outer Wilds as I want. During my most recent playthrough, I made sure to read as much as I could find to make sense of it all. And during the process, you learn a lot about the Nomai, which lived and died far before our time. It’s bittersweet to comb through their history, often seeing their remains next to the towns they lived in and the text they wrote about them. And in so many ways, this species is more advanced than you. What they were able to observe about our universe, and what they were able to build in the place you call home. Very literal, sometimes a bit stubborn, and with passions that often went out of control. But also very caring to this solar system, one that they very much are not there on their own accord. Without their special care when mining the ore within Timber Hearth, the progenitor species of the Hearthians would not have been able to evolve, and you would not be able to follow in their footsteps that are in every part of the system.

For the record, the Hearthians that are actually alive have their own charm as well. What I most appreciate about the main group of Astronauts you find all over the Outer Wilds is that they all have their own flaws. I’ve already discussed Chert, who in addition to having an amazing name, is constantly researching about the end of the universe so much that it drives them mad. Rybieck sits strumming away on a perch of Brittle Hollow, utterly mortified to take a step out of their hidey hole. Gabbro has ended up in the same time loop as you, but feels kind of jaded about it and would rather just waste the day away. Feldspar is someone you hear about very early, and is presumed dead. But in fact, they stranded themselves deep within Dark Bramble, enjoying the peril of the area so much that they seem to care nothing about how worried they have made those around them. These flaws are very relatable, but this level of personality makes each Hearthian extremely charming,  and I would often go out of my way to speak to them after finding new info about the planets. 

Speaking of, the planets themselves even have a ton of personality. The Hourglass Twins can be frustrating to explore depending on the time of day, but allow for the most intricate scheduling of certain tasks of any of the planets, and the Sunless City is fascinating to explore with the sand rising below your feet. Timber Hearth, your humble home planet, has plenty to discover of its own, mostly in giving you little threads of elsewhere in the system, like the piece of Dark Bramble and your first look at the Ash Twin Project. Brittle Hollow features the most visually striking city in the game, as well as interesting platforming challenges with the falling debris and lower gravity. Giant’s Deep is intimidating to explore, with islands rising into the sky while you’re still on them. But as you learn more about the planet, it becomes extremely rewarding to go deeper into the planet’s core. And Dark Bramble, a planet that defies space and logic, littered with confusion and assholes.

Then there’s the Quantum Moon. From the start of the game, you start noticing a lavender moon that appears to be at different places depending on where you are. Soon, you realize that it’s moving every time you look. Once you learn more about the Quantum presence all throughout the Outer Wilds and the rules that govern it, it brings you closer to figuring out how to step foot on this moon. No joke, I had my “eureka” moment of how to get onto the Quantum Moon while in the shower. Where to put my camera to always have an eye on the moon, before entering in through the south pole. Of course, something that you only know about through the findings of the Nomai. So how appropriate that in this location, riding the line of reality, that you finally meet one.

After seeing the remains of the Nomai so often, and at times seeing their floating spacesuits surround an area that would become their resting place, it is surreal seeing Sollana, an actual moving Nomai within the Quantum moon. Even more so given that you’ve just seen five of her corpses elsewhere on the moon. Being able to communicate with her in real time, rather than static text, strengthened my connection with the Nomai. Which sets the scene for your ultimate objective in Outer Wilds - to fulfill their desire to reach the eye of the universe. 

Upon viewing the last twenty two minutes of my life back and waking up exactly where I started, gazing up at the Orbital Probe bursting in a random direction in the orbit of Giant’s Deep, I knew what I had to do. The pieces were all in place from prior sessions. I had finally made my way into the Ash Twin Project, and promptly removed the warp core within it to accidentally kill myself and get the bad ending. I had silently floated past the dickhead Anglerfish to reach the Vessel, the ship that the Nomai crashed here on that has the ability to travel to a set of coordinates. And I had finally figured out with some guidance (thanks @skulfsvyrn) that you can actually enter in the Jellyfish surrounding the core of Giant’s Deep to get past the electric barrier, being able to visit the third module of the Orbital Probe Cannon that lay inside. 

The Nomai, ever the forward-thinkers, had figured out a way to go twenty-two minutes back into the past. It’s what’s keeping you here, as well as what has allowed a single probe to be blasted in a random direction over 9 million times in search of the eye of the universe. And it found it, thousands of years after the Nomai were inexplicably killed off by a meteor strike and just in time for you to finally see it. Something about this whole idea truly delights me, that this species left this little nugget here, that they would never possibly be able to take advantage of, so inefficient that it took millions of attempts to solve. But that blunt experimentation is exactly what we need to get out of here.

With all the pieces in place, the route is clear. Blast to Ash Twin, wait for the sand to lower enough to teleport to the Ash Twin Project, remove the warp core that is in-universe responsible for the in-game time loop mechanic, and risk your life traveling within Dark Bramble and hope to God that the dipshits within don’t eat you en route to the Vessel. The song that plays during this section of the game, a beautiful leitmotif of the same song that has played before every supernova, truly makes it shine. Usually, those notes would strike fear and tension. Those feelings are still there, but infused with passion and intent. We may not be able to save this universe from its end, but we can at least do something that our forefathers would move heaven and earth to do. Visit the eye of the universe.

I won’t talk too much about the specifics of the ending from there, but I will dance around it with flowery language. 

It’s hard not to think of the end of the world. Everyone deals with it in different ways. Some are too scared to leave the safety of their home. Others try to learn as much about what could kill us as possible, and often those findings just make them more anxious. More yet are just numb to it all, taking everything at its face and stare unmoving at the end. Some go very far away, finding their own little corner of the world to live their own life, leaving their communities behind. Despite these flaws, we all are forever connected with our shared existence. Our environment bonds us in that way, in how it affects our feelings and behavior. Just as the environment of the past shaped our ancestor’s behavior, and their motivations to keep on. Ultimately, we try to live through our history, fulfilling the desires of those who came before us and building upon their learnings. But more than anything, they would want us to keep living. To continue the dance of stars and planets orbiting each other, and for those living among them to persist. The ending of Outer Wilds is a reminder that we can individually play our songs within our own circumstances. But upon dire straits, we always can join our music together and harmonize. And even if it is the end for us, we can create a melody that exists for generations after, and that life goes on with our music as the backing track.

Wait fuck the autopilot is driving me right into the sun agai-

[febrilepenguin]

This was the first year I played demos in the Steam Next Fest (I didnt even know it existed before), and I will be doing it again, cuz it was pretty fun. I played a lot of games, and I thought maybe I could talk about each of them a little, so that more people know about them, and also to keep a little record of my thoughts and feelings about them for myself.

I'll list them in the order I played them cuz why not.

1. Mech Builder: I've never had any of those cool mech model kits that you have to cut out of the frames with pliers and then assemble yourself, but they've always looked really cool to me and I've always wanted to try assembling one. Well, this is that, but in video game form, and it was pretty fun! It was satisfying to snip the parts out of the frame and then snap them into place according to the manuals. There was also decals, coloring options and more. I just wish there was a way to pose the models a bit after they're done, or maybe see them from behind and the sides? Though I understand that it'd take a lot more work to make all the art for that and it might make it unfeasible but i think it'd be fun to play around with the models a bit after they're done. (Can you even pose the real mech model kits? I cant remember.)

Anyway, good game for relaxing and futzing around with cool mechs.

2. WHAT THE CAR?: This one was just delightful. It's just such a joy to play, being this silly little car with legs going through increasingly ridiculous iterations of movement with their accompanied puns and jokes. I was smiling and laughing the whole time i was playing, even in the harder skull stages, and i tried and got all the gold crowns for all the levels. (Also I still have that "What the caaaar" jingle stuck in my head, and Im not even mad about it). Just about anywhere you looked was a wordplay joke, or a visual gag, and I love it for that, and can't wait for the release. I will also be getting the other games from the devs, Triband. I also checked their website and they seem like really cool people too. (There was also a secret puzzle hidden in the game, that I was too late to solve for the rewards, but i had fun doing it nonetheless)

3. Mind Over Magnet: I've been a longtime fan of Gamemaker's Toolkit, and I've also been watching Mark's Developing series of devlogs, so I was hyped to actually play a demo of Mind Over Magnet, and it was cool to see how polished it had become. Cant wait for the full game!

4. SCHiM: Adorable little game that emulates that feeling of childhood playfulness you had when you used to walk through the sidewalk only stepping on shadows or you'd "lose". Loved the art style and the environments for this, though it was a bit hard to tell where you were meant to go sometimes.

5. Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus: I've been waiting for this game for a long time, since a game that combines hollow knight with japanese folklore is a must play for me. The movement felt really fun, and its focus on staying midair and air control was a cool feature of it, because you basically get a double jump every time you hit something mid-air, and can hover around and over enemies while you hit them. It's basically floor is lava the metroidvania. And when you get the dash it gets even better, cuz you can chain the dash with the blue midair jump, and the momentum from the dash will carry over, (which i think was intentional, cuz whenever you do it there's a small glint of light happening) Kinda like a celeste super dash. The demo made me look forward to it so much more.

6. Tactical Breach Wizards: So, recently I've gotten into tactics games despite myself, (it's all Into the Breach's fault, maybe I'll talk about that too another time) and wow did I love this one! The gameplay was really fun and the abilities were varied, the concept and world were cool (imagine wizards as military strike teams, and a world where magic is pretty common so there are P.I. Storm Witches and Traffic Warlocks) but my favorite thing about this game was the characters and the dialogues and humor. My favorite bit was:

"You can't throw all of life's problems through windows, Jen."

"Maybe not, but we owe it to ourselves to try."

Look me in the eyes and tell me that's not hilarious.

It's like god dropped this game in front of me as soon as he heard I've gotten into tactics games.

So so excited for this one!

7. Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo: really stylish game with fun mechanics and gameplay, a good light-hearted adventure for whenever I get tired of dark and grim stories and games. Also did not expect I'd be able to jump in this lol. Kinda reminds me of Mina the Hollower, another game Im excited for.

8. Demonschool: first off, I gotta say i didnt finish this one, not because I didnt like it, but because I left the game and when i came back it wouldnt open from where I had already progressed, (it kept crashing when i clicked "continue") and I didnt wanna do it all over again, so I gave up. But! I really really liked it. Another cool tactics game, with a beautiful artstyle weird occult world and fun characters. And even though i havent played persona, I could tell that it was inspired by it, what with the school life sections and whatnot. Cant wait to be able to continue on with it when the full game comes out.

9. Cato: i'd played the older demo before and liked it, so it was nice seeing the game had progressed further and gotten more polished. Pretty enjoyable puzzle game, if a bit simple. Also the cat liquiding through tubes never stops being funny.

10. Metal Slug Tactics: I loved the old Metal Slug games as a kid, and we used to play them a lot with cousins at sleepovers, and I have fond memories of it. So im really excited for this game, with all the nostalgic characters and sounds, and now with a (again, someone must be stalking me) tactics coat of paint. The shield and cover mechanic and also the sync mechanic are pretty clever and fun to play around with. Im sure I'll enjoy this one a lot when it comes out.

11. Tiny Glade: A relaxing and lovely little game that made me feel creative and like a kid playing in a fantasy sandbox. I've been waiting for this one impatiently ever since watching the trailer ages ago, and it's so wonderful. I didnt get to play around with it as much as I wanted to, but im definitely going to make a whole bunch of different little towns and castles when I get my hands on the full version. The camera mode was also so detailed and nice. Best I can describe this game is Vibe.

12. One Btn Bosses: Clever idea, and cool minimalist artstyle, but it wasnt really for me

13. Tavern Talk: This feels like being a bartender in a D&D world, and I enjoyed it a lot. The art is lovely, and the characters are all interesting (Fable's anxieties were too relatable, man.) (And Caer...Lin was so cool) (i cant wait to meet the whole cast who's on the posters) the mixing part was also pretty fun and Im sure it's gonna have more drinks and variety to it in the full game, all in all a nice and cozy fantasy visual novel type game for when I wanna chill.

14. Caravan SandWitch: kinda solarpunk/hopeful sci-fi game, with a cool van. Seems like it's gonna be a wholesome cozy time. Roadtrips through gently postapocalyptic-looking places? Im not sure what the correct vibe is for this game, because I dont know a whole lot about the setting or the story, but it was pretty cool. Also watch the trailer, the french song is stuck in my head, it's so good.

15. Mira and the Legend of the Djinns: Im gonna start this one with things I liked and then things i disliked about it. I love the art style, and I think the game as a whole looks gorgeous. I like that it's inspired by moroccan culture and how it infuses every aspect of it. I loved the instrument playing, even though there was only one song to learn in the demo and it didnt get a lot of time to shine. (I havent played ocarina of time, but im pretty sure I'll enjoy it for the same reason of it having the ocarina playing, among other reasons) i liked the pickaxe too, and how it allowed you to climb and mine.

Now for the dislikes. I did NOT like the combat. The fact that all of your momentum just dead stops when you swing your sword was pretty jarring to deal with, and it made those floaty eye pricks so annoying to deal with. Especially because of the way they space themselves and distance themselves from you so fast, and also the fact that there's no upwards slash (not in midair anyway, there's one you can buy that only works from the ground) which means you have to jump in very close and level with the enemy, so it doesnt have much time to fly away, during which time there's a high probability of it shooting you and making you fall, also if you're a little below it, the third attack which is very horizontal misses, so you have to do it again. The final boss of the demo was also pretty much a slog, due to the one-pattern attacks and the huge health pool. And you had to first break away the shield to be able to damage him, (and it would not register multiple attacks on it at once, if you hit the shield it became intangible until the boss changed position again) so it just became a repetition of: dodge through projectile, *ding* hit the shield. Dodge, ding. Dodge, ding. Dodge, ding. Dodge, ding. Dodge, ding. Shield broke. Stab stab stab stab stab. Dodge big attack, and start over. Rinse and repeat for like, seven more times. It became a chore almost. There was a general stiffness in the combat that made it hard to enjoy.

Also a minor nitpick about the UI is that it was a bit hard to tell how much mana it took to heal how much. If there was a small line or indication in the mana bar to show if you have enough for a heal, it would be really helpful in combat to know at a glance if you can heal in the moment or not.

All in all, this is not to say i disliked the game itself, I actually really liked it, and think it has a lot of potential, given a bit of fixes and improvements.

Anyway, these are some of my thoughts on all the demos I played during Steam Next Fest. I hope you'll check out some of the games in here and wishlist them to help out the games you like!

[anticsofafox]

Journal #2

Content warning, eating disorders. This post is a general health update with some details on my eating history, my path forward and I suppose some emotional venting.

To start off on a positive note, I am getting better. Since about November I'd been eating about 500-1000 calories a day on average, keeping that going for over 4 months, plus the periodic starvation for the last few years is what got me into my current situation. However, as of the past few weeks I've started doubling the amount I've been eating, and I am getting a bit more energy every week.

Now though, I need to start shifting my attention away from just eating enough and start eating better, I have a few vitamin deficiencies, especially iron. This is because we hardly ever eat meat because my sister Angela hates it when we eat meat, and wont front if we do. I feel a bit in a bind, because I don't want her to go away, she just started fronting again, but with our current energy levels shes only been able to manage fronting twice a week. Supplements wont be enough to fix this fast enough alone but I kind of just miss her, shes important to me and I'm kind of grounding her to her room in head space, it feels a bit bad, but I think I need to do this, for now.

I'm actually so, so happy with how our recovery is going, but I'm noticing some changes to our appetite which don't seem to be going away any time soon. I've found that if we eat any more than a medium/small portion at one time we get pretty uncomfortable indigestion, to the point where it's hard to do much else than wait. It's possible our stomach is just small, but even when I try to eat more consistently it doesn't seem as stretchy as it used to be.

I still face some food insecurity, so when I do binge, it becomes quite uncomfortable, but for the next month or two I think thats a behaviour I'll still need to occasionally engage in. I suppose one benefit of this though is that when I get a stable supply of food again, it should be very easy for me to stop binging, it's kind of solved the mental hurdle.

As more and more time passes I'm realizing this experience is going to change my relationship to food forever, and I'll never be able to return to a more 'normal' relationship with food. However, I know I can find a healthy relationship with food that works for me, and I'm very excited to get there.

Moral of the story? Don't skip meals. Skipping a meal here and there is incredibly easy, and if you're at all self conscious of your weight, like I was, watching yourself get slightly skinnier because you skipped a meal can feel really good. But that quickly spirals into you becoming more familiar with the idea of skipping meals, and not having as much of an appetite because of it. It feels good at first, and it takes a long time before you get ill from it, but by the time you do get ill, the habits become hard to break. So please, if you haven't had anything to eat in the last 5 hours please try to grab something to eat, even if its small. And if this isn't an issue for you, please check up on your friends. Make sure they've had something to eat, had water, slept recently and/or taken their meds. We all struggle with something different, but we need to support each other, and check in. Showing that you care about someone makes it so much easier to start recovery and preferably not fall into a bad situation to begin with. I owe a lot of my progress to the support group I have, Ryanne, Emily, Chloe, Celeste, Misty. Thank you all for being there to support me while I've been struggling, it means more to me than I can ever express in words.

[an-aussie-button-masher]

Mind Your Step - Five of the Best Platformer Games

   Running, jumping, dodging…platformers were amongst the earliest staples of the video gaming world, defining the medium since the 80’s. Some things never change. Modern platformers may look fancier and have more involved gameplay, but the core concepts are still as solid as ever: patience and observation is key, and they’ll usually require intense focus, determination and sheer will to overcome the trickiest jumping puzzles and deadliest traps. Jump down into a handful of some of the best platforming challenges in gaming I’ve gathered here, from the simple but enjoyable to the toughest obstacle courses imaginable. Watch where you step!

Astro Bot    Astro’s crew of familiar friends from Playstation’s thirty-year history have been scattered across space with their mothership near-destroyed - it’s time for a rescue mission! This game genuinely feels like an early 2000’s game built with modern technology; there’s no online nonsense or pointless padding, just pick a level and go! You can feel the love that went into Astro Bot’s development through the colourful and chaotic level designs, the creative power-ups, and an absolute banger of a soundtrack, all amidst a constant game of pointing at the screen and going “hey, I recognise that character!” as you rescue icons like Ratchet, Aloy and Kratos or more classic faces like Sly Cooper or Jak. There are some truly brutal challenge levels, but watching your collection of bots grow and feeling the nostalgia of old PS1-era games make Astro Bot impossible to put down.

Celeste    Welcome to Celeste Mountain, where you’ll find treacherous pitfalls, ominous ruins, mysterious magic, floating strawberries and one very determined young woman. As Madeline scales the mountain, she also must confront her own anxieties and self-doubt, literally battling her inner demons in a narrative that’s just as compelling as the challenging climb itself. Often cited as one of the toughest platformers you can attempt, this climb is not for the faint of heart. Expect constant deaths and failures as you trial-and-error your way up the cliffs, but you can’t give up - just a little further, just a little higher! The feeling of clearing each part of the mountain and dragging yourself ever closer to the peak, all while Madeline overcomes her internal struggles, is a kind of genuine satisfaction few other games can match.

Super Mario Galaxy    It wouldn’t be an article about platformers without mentioning the Goomba-stomping pipe-traversing king himself, and his first galactic adventure was Mario at his peak. Super Mario Galaxy takes the usual 3-D platforming formula and flips it, twists it, and turns it inside-out with gravity mechanics that’ll send your head spinning. Rocket into the stars with Mario’s new allies the Lumas and their carer, the mysterious Rosalina, and scour the cosmos for Power Stars - and, of course, chase Bowser from one end of the universe to the other. As you orbit around planetoids and soar between asteroids, the gravity mechanics are constantly changing up in new ways from galaxy to galaxy alongside a host of fun power-ups and incredibly imaginative level designs. With one of the most beautiful orchestral soundtracks ever backing your journey and the iconic gravity-warping gameplay, there’s no question of Super Mario Galaxy being an all-time classic among platformers.

Rayman Legends    One less dimension does not make this 2-D sidescrolling quest any easier! The limbless legend Rayman and his friends sprint, leap and glide from one world to the next, rescuing the helpless Teensies in peril and battling fairytale monsters of myth. In true Rayman fashion, Legends is an excellent party game if you’ve got up to three extra friends to take the journey with you - or to cause havoc as you thrash each other about the levels and battle for control over the chaos. After each harrowing boss fight, the rhythm levels at the end of each chapter are a blast to play over and over as you run and jump in time with the music as the chaos unfolds around you, while the challenge levels scattered about will have you tearing your hair out with the precision and patience needed to clear these gauntlets and unlock new allies to play as!

Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time    This very aptly-titled sequel may have taken 22 years to release, but Crash hasn’t lost a single step! The classic Naughty Dog linear platformer series returns, starring everyone’s favourite manic marsupial in a race across space and time itself. Rescue and equip the Quantum Masks to flip reality, manipulate time, toy with gravity and more as you sprint through apocalyptic wastelands, murky swamps and swashbuckling pirate fleets. In an interesting take on time-travel stories, there are several additional playable characters besides Crash and his sister Coco that all have their own separate adventures alongside Crash’s that impact the main adventure in ways you’ll only understand by playing their perspective. The platforming gameplay is punishingly precise as always - the slightest misstep will send you plummeting to your doom, so brush up on those jumping skills and keep your eyes peeled for unforgiving traps and hazards!

   Don’t lose your footing now, because we’ve reached the end of the list. There’s still plenty of other great platformers out there though - if you know any that would fit here, or if you enjoyed any of the games on this list, let me know! Feedback, reblogs and likes are all much appreciated!   Thanks for reading!

An Aussie Button-Masher

[bios-hzrd]

Tension, Flow, and Mastery in Action Games

Anyway here's my massive rant on game design, guest starring Mario, Kirbo, Ms. Celeste, Mr. Hollow Knight, John Miami, White (Neon Walter), err shove all night, and WELLTARO FROM HIT GAME DOWNWELL!!!

And Pizza Tower.

>------------------------------------<

I think that tension is the majority of what makes action based gameplay fun. Tension is derived from the need to make a move, particularly in deciding which one. Action games create higher levels of tension by giving the player limited time to make a decision, making the correct move uncertain, and judging how well they performed their actions. To examine further, I’m going to break down gameplay into four primary states. I’ll call them safe, hold, anticipation and window. Or shaw. That's a fun word, apparently it's synonymous with thicket.

Safe is when the player is completely safe, no tension. They could put their controller down and nothing would happen. When you’re on safe ground in a platformer, or behind cover in a shooter.

Hold is the equivalent of treading water, you’re holding a position, but you can’t stay there forever. The game generally requires that you do some simple action, like holding the climb button to cling to a wall in Celeste, or pogoing in Hollow Knight. When games try to pull extended tense sections, they often use this as the baseline to give the player time to think and recuperate, while ensuring that they know they aren’t out of the woods yet. Further this state often provides some kind of threat if they don’t get a move on. In Celeste clinging to walls drains an invisible stamina bar, and when you run out you’ll fall off to your death. In Hollow Knight you can technically pogo off a sawblade forever, but there's the unspoken threat of you messing up the pogo, screwing up the repeated simple action,  and falling to your death, losing progress, so you better get to the next part before that happens.

The anticipation is defined by the player moving towards their next action. They can’t act yet, but sometimes the player is expected to line themselves up in preparation for when the anticipation state ends, which usually leads to the player finally having their window of opportunity to act, the time frame where they can actually perform their next action. Longer windows make pulling off the action easier.

For example a basic anticipation to window transition would be running up and jumping just before a ledge in Mario. If you jump too early you’ll fall into a pit, too late and the same will happen. If you pull it off during the window you’ll get across.

However anticipation does not always lead into window, for example when you’re descending from a jump onto a goomba, you use the anticipation to line yourself up, but there's no window. Once you land on him you’re set back to safe.

There’s many different ways action games use this kind of thing. It's fairly common for games that implement enemies as the primary hazard, like Kirby or Mario, to have the player turn the environment into safe zones as they go through. The player has to put themselves in anticipation and window as they say, dash towards an enemy to take them out, however they can do so whenever they please, because they’ve already cleared out all of the enemies behind them, and almost everything behind them is a safe zone.

On the other hand, some games space out their safe zones, giving the game most of the control over the pace. Thus the game can keep the pace cranked high to give the player less time to make decisions and make the gameplay more intense. Celeste and Downwell hold the implicit threat of falling to one's death over the player's head, having the player travel extended sections without being able to land on solid ground, increasing the tension by spacing out safe zones. Celeste allows the player to cling to walls for a decent bit of time, encouraging them to carefully plot out their actions but make a move before it's too late. In quite stark contrast Downwell gives gives the player a limited air stall ability, that can be used to hold them in place, allowing them to put themselves in hold temporarily, but the mechanic has many tertiary aspects in play to encourage the player to rely on it as little as possible, creating an intense adrenaline rush where you’re falling at max speed, pulsing the brake only as much as you need to steer.

Now, there's an interesting way this dynamic is changed when the player is forced to redo parts of a level. Maybe they got sent back to checkpoint, maybe they’re beating it again to satisfy a ranking system. Point is, when a player is made to repeat a level or part of a level they already beat, the way they approach it is different. I call it the flow to mastery transition.

The initial run is a pure flow run, what's important is that the player is unfamiliar with the path ahead of them, and they have to adapt on the fly. Their movement requires more care and planning. They make greater usage of the levels stills and holds to take everything in, and if they do not have control over the pace, then the tension spikes significantly such as in games like Downwell and Pizza Tower, as they have to use the few seconds the anticipation gives them to figure out their next move. The player's main focus is to avoid extrinsic flow breaks, which are factors outside of the core gameplay loop that serve as punishments for failure such as getting knocked back when you get hit and dying when that happens too many times, getting sent back to checkpoint, or the beginning of the level if you’re out of lives. The player needs to find a way through without dying.

The flow run begins a gradual transition to mastery the moment the player has to repeat an area, whenever they are sent back to checkpoint or the beginning of the level. The mastery is defined by the player using their preexisting knowledge of the level layout to try and find the most efficient route back to the new stuff. The player uses safe and hold zones much less, as they need to slow down less to take the level in, Safe and hold are treated as anticipation and window zones by the player, as they are much more likely to act as soon as the game lets them. Gameplay mainly centers around finding the perfect series of inputs to get through the set stage. The path to elucidating that series revolves around discovering the best route and picking out all of the little inefficiencies in gameplay.

The discovery is emphasized most when the player is uncertain of what the “correct” path, or the most efficient way through is meant to be. My mind flicks immediately to nonlinearity, more mazelike areas with many options, and we arrive at our first mastery case study, Hotline Miami. This game falls into the Celeste camp of 1 HP, checkpoints every five feet, trial and error your way through levels. As such the game puts all of its eggs into the mastery basket. The game is made up of a bunch of interconnected rooms, and you can hit up any adjacent one. Your goal is to hit up every room and kill everyone in it. Every death comes with the opportunity to either iterate on ones last strategy, or try a brand new one. If the player feels like they’ve hit a brick wall with their current strategy, they can choose to switch up the order in which they enter the rooms, and see if they can find a better one.

In addition to allowing the player to make their approach in any order they’d like, the game implements plenty of other tricks to increase the complexity and potential tension through new and uncertain choices of mastery development.

Guards are constantly on patrol, and if they stand beside a window or door you can get an immediate takedown. Should you wait for things to line up, barge in, or head for a different room. The important part is that the player has options, and that they are never forced to wait.

Further, the game implements what I’ll refer to as “soft blocks.” A hard block would be a wall, you can’t get through that. A soft block would be a long corridor with a guy wielding a shotgun at the end. You can’t get through there, with your fists at the least. You could go around and come in from behind, or if you grab a gun from another room you can blast him from the front.

The point is the player is provided with a number of complex choices they need to make, and a number of factors that make the optimal choice uncertain. They have many options, and all of them at least seem equally valuable.

The other interesting approach I’ve noted would be most prominent in Neon White. The game is a speedrun 3D platformer where you pick up guns represented by cards strewn across the level to shoot at stationary demons scattered everywhere, and once every demon is dead, get to the goal. Each level is designed for the player to initially blast through, then replay repeatedly to get a better time. Your first run will likely take you along the critical path. You see, the game takes place in a giant void, with a bunch of floating platforms everywhere. The player has many more options than just the ones that get them to the goal; they can get to any platform in jumping range, and many areas fill themselves with plenty of decorative platforms that seemingly only exist to make the place look nice. The critical path is communicated by the implied rules. The most famous example everyone likes to bring up is coins in Mario. They don’t do much, but the developer placed them in such a way that if you always follow them you should get to the end. Neon white uses demons and weapon cards in a similar fashion, where you’ll get to the goal with all demons defeated if you just follow.

Now, the reason this game is notable is because the critical path is rarely the fastest one. The game also throws in shortcuts. Shortcuts come from you defying the pointers outlining the critical path, and using the full extent of all options provided. You do not have to get every weapon, the only requirements for level completion are that you stand on the goal with all demons defeated. Further you do not have to get close to demons to defeat them, your guns are ranged weapons. The game just drills that mindset into you by placing cards and demons on the critical path. The player won’t have to go out of their way for extra weapons when they’re efficient with their ammo, and can skip parts of the critical path as long as their new route has line of sight with the demons.

The pointers give the level an immediate initial route, but with repeated attempts the player will gain greater understanding of all the options they have been given as their focus changes from simply getting through to getting through faster, and they will be able to discover the hidden shortcuts that rely on unused options placed throughout the level that the pointers constructing the critical path trained them to ignore.

In other words, to enhance the discovery of the mastery loop, you can either make your path an open maze, or a line with extra steps. As for the journey to perfection, to the perfect execution of inputs, there’s only one technique I know of to make that more interesting. I refer to it as intrinsic flow breaks.

Intrinsic flow breaks tend to be a short interruption worked into the core gameplay loop. They are less a failure on the players part as they are a measure of skill expression. While they have unique utility in individual games, they are generally used as something to minimize for speed incentivized players, but in both of these examples it comes packed with the bonus utility of making the game easier on your first try. They don’t necessarily have to stop the player, the main point is just that the player takes a small cut in speed.

Kirby makes for a pretty great example. In theory his ability to float over any obstacle should trivialize the majority of the game, however in practice the reduced speed from the float disincentivizes players from using it unless they absolutely need it. A metric defined by player skill where less confident players get an easy out of anything they can’t handle, while experienced ones use it as little as they can get away with so they can make good pace.

Pizza Tower shows what happens when you take a similar idea but crank the speed up to eleven. Peppino controls like a car with no brakes. Until you crash into a wall, you only ever go faster, so to help newer players get used to the games intense pace, intrinsic flow breaks are introduced. Moves where the player changes direction such as the turn around drift and super jump have Peppino pause for a moment before shiting direction, and allow newer players a second to get their bearings and break down the situation.

Pizza Tower likes to bake the intrinsic flow break into its catch all move for newer players, then add in more specific options that avoid the intrinsic flow break. For example you can avoid the pause during the super jump and turn around by choosing to climb walls instead of super jumping, or jumping off of them to turn around.

The way Pizza tower uses intrinsic flow breaks is especially notable because the methods to avoid them are context sensitive, they need a wall to pull off. They are not replacements, they are opportunities open to veteran players if they can spot them. They don’t change the gameplay, they build it up.

Other examples include having to punch enemies vs maintaining a toss combo in Gravity Circuit, bashing into enemies vs spinning through them in Anton Blast, whatever Plague of Shadows is doing. Made a whole video on that one.

Now, extrinsic flow breaks are what tie the flow and mastery together, so we’ll need to do a closer examination into extrinsic flow breaks in order to understand how flow and mastery play off each other. Just as a refresher, extrinsic flow breaks are the game's explicit failure conditions, such as getting hit and dying. They are what the player is primarily focused on doing during the flow run. Extrinsic flow breaks can be understood as two elements. The buffer, and the threat. The buffer is a degree of leniency the game extends to the player, allowing them to be inconsistent and still pass through. Most commonly expressed through health bars, their length is defined by the level of error and inconsistency the game is expecting and willing to let the player get away with. By allowing the player to slip up without losing progress, the constant introduction of unforeseen obstacles and by extension the flow run itself, is maintained. In addition, typically a degree of tension is added as their buffer shortens and they reach closer to the threat, which is of course what the game threatens to do if the player burns through their buffer. Usually sending the player back to checkpoint, it exists to demand a certain level of performance from the player. If the player's performance doesn’t match the difficulty curve, they’re made to repeat it until it does. The intention being that the increased skill from the practice will get them there, which develops mastery.

Now the following examples are just individual case studies. A small showing of games that use certain ratios of buffer to threat to accomplish a certain goal. They are in no way representative of the only thing that can be done with that arrangement.

Low health demands precision. In Mario games you have somewhat infrequent checkpoints, but also not terribly many hazards. The player has to be somewhat careful with their moves, but they aren’t expected to die terribly often, so the game doesn’t place checkpoints very often, as if the player does die they were likely either playing too risky, or had a simple mistake. Either way the player is unlikely to grind the level out, and the game focuses on easygoing flow. On the other hand Celeste only lets you get hit once and places spikes everywhere. As such it has to place a checkpoint down every couple of feet to ensure that the player keeps making progress. If the checkpoints were too far apart, then the player would surely master the first portion of the stage completely long before they even got close to the new stuff. The fun comes from the growth, but eventually the player is just grinding for a lucky run where they don’t screw anything up. The game ought to move the player along before that. Celeste can be a bit anxiety inducing at first, but when you repeat and practice the feeling transforms into a much more easygoing zen as the runs mesh together.

High health and somewhat frequent checkpoints brings to mind games like Shovel Knight and Hollow Knight, which have more focus on the player engaging the enemies with their combat mechanics as they traverse the world, and getting hit is a fairly expected part of the formula. Combat is a bit less precise compared to just platforming. Platforming tends to be about executing the correct path, while combat is more about avoiding and outputting damage. Platforming has very well defined anticipation and windows, whereas combat forces the player to constantly determine when it is safe to act through careful consideration of their current health, the enemies position relative to their own, lingering hazards, the opponents patterns, etc. The games have to place a fair number of checkpoints to catch the player if they fall in combat.

I can’t think of what high health infrequent checkpoints might represent from a general standpoint. Probably because the player would likely use the extra health to play riskier then die pretty far in and lose a bunch of progress, and that sounds very annoying.

The main issue I have with how extrinsic flow breaks are implemented with the traditional health and checkpoints system is that it’s rare that I find a game that can make both its initial flow and mastery development fun. Games that focus on flow often treat mastery as an obligation for players that can’t keep up. Without the considerations to extend mastery development, the player gets to perfection way too fast, and the mastery stops being fun. The mastery gets in the way of the flow.

On the other hand, games that put the development of mastery at the forefront lose the appeal of the flow by constantly interrupting the stream of new content with mastery development. I’d like a minute to take in all of the new stuff but the game keeps throwing me back to the start.

In search of a game that can pull off both, we come back to Kirby and Pizza Tower, as they both try to have their cake and eat it too. They try to make their flow accessible and easy to maintain and their mastery challenging with strong depth.

They put a lot of slack on the line, Kirby’s float will theoretically let you cheese anything as the player can just fly over any obstacle, ignoring the ability system will introduce a much simpler combat loop for boss fights, and the player is given a generous health bar. Peppino from Pizza Tower has infinite health, and can’t die until the escape sequence in every level, which does put the player on an explicit time limit, but gives them enough time to escape twice over. However, both of these games implement elements to incentivize experienced players to play faster, and tighten the restrictions for goals beyond completing the game.

Kirby goes the simple route and records the player's time. Oftentimes the game will implement side modes to show the player how fun it is to go fast. There will be obstacle courses and boss rushes that will give you medals if you can finish them under a certain time. The game knows it's more fun when you go fast, and tries to make sure the player gets that.

Pizza Tower has a more complex version achieved through its level rankings. In order to get the game's best rank, P, you need to meet a few requirements. You need to get a certain number of points by collecting objects throughout the level, complete all 3 secret rooms, grab the hidden treasure, complete a lap 2, and maintain a singular uninterrupted combo from the first room to the exit door. Your combo starts when you kill an enemy. It gives you seven seconds, and resets if you kill another. That means that you have to be constantly running as fast as you can to get to the next target before your combo runs out. On top of that, needing to do a lap 2 puts the excess time the game gives to newcomers to good use, significantly tightening the clock.

The most subtle mechanic however is likely the points dynamic. Points are received through killing enemies and collecting minor collectibles scattered through the level like coins in a Mario game. Smaller amounts are scattered in patterns to guide the player, but many more are hidden in big stashes throughout the level.

Because the smaller coin-like collectibles are intended to guide the player along the critical path, the player is going to miss plenty of them as they take shortcuts. This means that they’re already running tight on points, and if they need more they’ll need to find the stashes that can be collected most efficiently to make up for those lost points. 

Further, the player can lose points through taking damage, and if they do they will likely have to get some of the less easy point caches placed later in the level, that may require the player perform a stylish trick or the like. The tension and challenge is enhanced by the fact that they haven’t been practicing that specific trick as they repeatedly attempt the level, which brings it much closer to the flow than mastery as the player needs to adapt to their slip up.

These games give the player a lenient formula, but ratchet up the challenge by having the gameplay radically change when you try to appease conditions that only veteran players will care about. Level rankings are about giving the game a broader range of appeal, as the player will either care, and go for the best one, or they won’t and waltz on through content with what they got. Games can keep their flow separate from their mastery development by splitting them into two separate experiences. This not only maintains the sanctity of the flow run, but makes the mastery development optional for those who strongly resonated with the game.

One method to do this that I didn't mention would be the pseudo New Game Plus, where you replay the whole game, same levels, but with a new character designed to speed through them. I know of three examples, Meta Knight from Kirby Super Star Ultra, Plague Knight from Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, and The Noise from Pizza Tower.

To put it succinctly, Shovel Knight can jump 4.5 tiles horizontally and vertically; Plague Knight can fly. In fact all three of the mentioned characters are able to fly, in a platformer not designed around that. These games take characters with certain limits, design levels around those limits, then once you beat the game, let you replay those same levels as a character without those limits. This naturally increases the appeal of both the initial flow run and mastery development. The flow run is renewed as while you are somewhat familiar with the level layout, it’s been a while since you beat the first level, and further you don’t know how the new character navigates the first level. The mastery development is renewed because the level geometry has massively increased shortcut potential now that certain restrictions have been removed.

The new characters' much more expansive and freeing movement capabilities remove the emphasis of how the level wants you to navigate it, and places the emphasis on what your character can do.

[zoneromscom]

Best Nintendo Switch Games Under $20

The Nintendo Switch has become a go-to console for gamers who value versatility and an extensive library of games. While some titles come with hefty price tags, there’s a treasure trove of incredible games that deliver exceptional gameplay without breaking the bank. If you're on a budget, there are plenty of options available for under $20. These affordable gems provide entertainment, excitement, and often surprising depth, proving that great gaming experiences don’t have to come at premium prices.

The Joy of Affordable Gaming

Gaming doesn’t have to be an expensive hobby, and the Nintendo Switch is a perfect example of how diverse and accessible gaming can be. For under $20, you can explore genres ranging from action-packed adventures to relaxing puzzles, each offering a unique experience. Whether you’re looking for a quick distraction or a game to sink hours into, the Switch eShop has you covered.

One standout is Celeste, a beautifully crafted indie platformer that challenges players with its tight controls and intricate levels. Its story of personal growth and overcoming mental struggles resonates deeply with players, making it a must-play, especially given its affordable price. Similarly, Hollow Knight offers a sprawling world full of mystery, challenging combat, and stunning hand-drawn visuals. For under $20, you’re getting a game that rivals even the most expensive AAA titles in terms of depth and quality.

Hidden Gems Worth Your Attention

Indie developers have been thriving on the Nintendo Switch, delivering unique games that often outperform their big-budget competitors. Take Stardew Valley, for instance—a charming farming simulator where you can cultivate crops, build relationships, and even explore dungeons. It’s a game that feels endlessly replayable and rewarding, offering a calming escape from the daily grind.

Another underrated title is Overcooked! This chaotic co-op cooking game is perfect for parties or family game nights. Its simplicity in concept belies the frantic teamwork required to succeed, ensuring laughs and memorable moments. For those who prefer a solo experience, Katana ZERO combines fast-paced action with a gripping narrative and a retro aesthetic that oozes style.

Why Budget Games Shine on the Switch

What makes the Nintendo Switch a haven for budget-friendly gaming is its thriving indie scene. Smaller developers have found a home on the platform, creating innovative games that experiment with gameplay mechanics and storytelling. These games often focus on creativity and substance rather than flash, making them some of the most rewarding experiences available.

In addition to indie titles, frequent eShop sales mean you can snag well-known games for under $20. Keep an eye out for discounts on classic franchises like Mario or Zelda, as Nintendo occasionally drops prices on select titles.

Get More Recommendations

If you’re eager to discover even more budget-friendly Nintendo Switch games, there are countless other options waiting to be explored. From quirky puzzle games to intense roguelikes, the library is brimming with variety. For a comprehensive list of affordable games and additional recommendations, visit Zoneroms. The site offers curated picks and updates on deals to help you make the most of your gaming budget.

Closing Thoughts

Gaming on a budget doesn’t mean compromising on quality. The Nintendo Switch has proven time and again that you can enjoy unforgettable adventures, intricate puzzles, and captivating stories without spending a fortune. With countless options under $20, it’s the perfect time to dive into the Switch’s expansive library and uncover hidden gems.

You can also get and download switch roms at zoneroms.com

Affordable doesn’t mean less—it often means finding extraordinary value and experiences you’ll cherish. Don’t let a tight budget stop you from gaming. Explore what’s out there, and remember, for more tips, guides, and recommendations, head over to Zoneroms.

[hattiestgal]

What is your favorite video game? (Or other type of game?)

(Apologies if this is one you've already answered)

Ok, so this is one I can never answer with just one definitive game, so I'll give you the list in no particular order!

Celeste: I mean, what can I say? It tells a deeply relatable story about overcoming your own mental mountain, and the absolute battle that can be on the way. The ups, the downs, the even further downs... then that stubborn climb back up. Plus, it's got really tight and well put together platforming mechanics, really good level design and art direction, and one of my favorite video game soundtracks ever.

Night in the Woods: This is the game that actually helped me get through a really, really bad depressive rut a few years back. You're put into the shoes of someone who struggles with a lot of aspects of life, and forced not only to confront yourself, but explore other peoples struggles at the same time, and the concept of growing up when you never really had the chance to be a kid. It fundamentally changed my perception on death. I'll never forget the line "When I die, I want it to hurt"

SLARPG: 4 gay ass furries go on an adventure, kiss, and learn deeply important lessons about themselves. It was kinda destined to be a game I loved. It's got a beautiful art style, a soundtrack I've listened to more times than I can count, and just a really lovable cast of characters. Plus, I'm real partial to notably sapphic furry women (and traditional JRPGs)

Terraria: I feel like being one of the only games I've sank over 1000 hours into makes this a pretty notable pick among my favs. Solid mechanics, one of my favorite games for mobility progression and tech, a good host of real fun boss fights, pretty much everything you could ask for! I do think there are times when the game just steps it the hell up and progression slows down a good bit (notably after plantera), but it's a seriously fun game to come back to and play every once in a while!

Undertale Yellow: Oh my GOSH, this game is too good for its own dang good!!! It's a fanmade prequel game to Undertale that tells the lovingly crafted stories of an all new cast of characters (bar like- two beasts who overlap), expands and explores Undertale's worldbuilding, has a REALLY GOOD soundtrack that's been stuck in my head for weeks, and just... more of what gave Undertale its magic. Having seen all three endings (and the neutral one being the most compelling somehow??), it's just amazing what the team behind the game managed to pull off. It's a passion project on a scale I've never really seen before.

Some honorable mentions: Beat Saber, Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker, Armored Core 6, Ghost Giant, Enter the Gungeon, and Minecraft

...Okay, enough rambling from me! I hope that gives you a good look at what I like to play!

[imthequeenofinfinitecity]

Hybrid of the Seven Sins AU Masterpost

Summary:

Now this is a two-book series about the life of a Demon Angel Hybrid named Daniella Stella Fenton, the Queen of Infinite City and the Empress of the Human World. Daniella or Ella as she is called, is the second daughter and fourth eldest child of Jack Fenton, younger twin sister of Daniel Eleanor Fenton, younger half-sister of Dan James Fenton and Jasmine Madeline Fenton, and older half-sister of Diana Elizabeth Fenton. Jack was her and her brother’s donor for their mothers; Stella and Eleanor Phantom. He became their guardian after their parents died when their house was purposely set on fire when they were only a month old. The only reason the two survived was because their mother, Stella, who is an angel, used the last of her life to protect them from the flames (talk about a mother's love). Daniella had a relatively happy childhood but her life changed the day she witnessed an extermination. She became determined to put an end to it but this road has many obstacles, requires lots of sacrifices, and pain. She experiences this when she loses one of her family members but that just pushes her harder. However this is the future, let’s start in the past.

Note from author:

Ok, so this is just to explain a few things. For every single picture I use, I don’t own any of them and I will try to give credit to the artist but if it’s a picture from a shopping site then there’s no reason to do so.

Also while this story says that the Fandoms are Danny Phantom, Hazbin Hotel, and Helluva Boss, THIS IS NOT A CROSSOVER, this is an Original Work with characters, specific locations, and elements from the two fandoms. I am a big Danny Phantom fan and like to write fanfictions about it. I also have ADHD, so I create a lot of stories in my head (not all of them get written for severe reasons; one being I lose interest fast). While listening to the new Hazbin Hotel songs, watching the new episodes, and getting bored in school causing my mind to wander; I created this AU! I will be using some of the songs from Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss (Danny Phantom has like one song and there are a lot of covers for it so I will use one of those) as well as using episodes from the main two as outlines for some of my chapters as the second book is based off of the plot of Hazbin Hotel and the first book is based off the plot of Danny Phantom.

Also shout out to the person who inspired many of the changes to the episode plot within the chapters because a lot of these ideas for how the chapters were written came from her books. This person is Mikaela Miller, who created “The Phantom Twins: Season 1”, “The Phantom Twins: Season 2”, and “The Phantom Twins: Season 3”. You can find her on Wattpad.

Books:

Series Post

Book on Ao3

Book on Wattpad

To remember while reading:

Types of Characters

Types of Chapters

Species' Magic

Species Design

Clarification

Seven Deadly Sins & Seven Heavenly Virtues

Heaven and Hell Ranks

About the Characters:

Here you will find the species, sin, element, magic level, look, and so much more about the characters. There will be no pictures as I own none of them.

Actual Character (AC), Look (L), or Personality (P)

Team Celeste

Why I chose what Sins for the Team

Team Celeste Allies

Inhabitants of Hell

Team Celeste Family

From School

Minor Characters

Information Posts:

Most of this stuff came from Ao3 but I put it here so it's easy to find incase you need to go back.

Demon Angel Hybrid - A Dangerous & Rare Breed

Twin Bond

Government

Changing DNA or Genes

Enchanting Birthday

School (Magic Edition)

How The Body Works (Magic Edition)

Changes from Show

University of Magic

Nine Rings of Heaven and Hell

Anything Else:

Ella’s Symphokinesis

Spotify Link:

1-90 are in The Rare Hybrid Girl’s Life Starts Now!

91-157 are in The Kings of Infinite City and the 8 Divine Dealers

There are 160 songs total however the other three songs aren't on Spotify but they are on YouTube so that's where I have the full completed playlist. One of those songs are in the first book while the other two are in the second book.

[caramel1mochi]

Weekend Together [Gekko x F! Reader] [End]

Heya again!

This is the final part of the date! I want to continue this whole Gekko storyline because I'm getting many good ideas, but I don't want my blog to be clogged up with this guy only. I might save those for later but I have no idea what to do, haha.

Anyway anyway, this is the part!! This is the section that kept me up so many nights and I'm so nervous posting it, I hope it's good and I hope this entire date has been fun for you guys!

My next work will be about Chamber, so if you're interested in that, be sure to head to #chamber x reader and it should be there within a few days! Or stalk my blog like I stalk everyone else's.

❤ฺ·。

Gekko x F! Reader

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Genre: Fluff

Synopsis: Gekko gets over his anxiety and finally asks you out, watching delightfully as you finally let your guard down. Or so he thinks.

。+❤ฺ·。❤ฺ·。+❤ฺ· +❤·。❤ฺ·。+❤ฺ·

Gekko’s lips twitched, before parting and taking the small spoonful into his mouth with an abnormal amount of hesitation. And his eyes widened once the dessert made contact with his tongue.

He’s had plenty of lemon cheesecakes before. But for some reason, it tasted so good when you fed it to him. Like some sort of addictive additives were sprinkled throughout whenever you’d lift it with the pie fork. Maybe that was your ability, haha.

“Good work. You know you’re quite the dote, right?”

You noticed confusion take over him as you scooped another slice, smaller than his. This prompted a giggle from you.

"I said you're cute."

He blushed when you put the same fork into your own mouth. Technically an indirect kiss, right…? Gah, you're messing with his head. Gekko swallowed the treat, smiling.

"So, um, where are you from again...?"

"Me? I'm Irish."

Irish? He stared at you, only now taking in the physical details. Beyond, of course, um, your 'structure'.

The scattered freckles that stood out against your pale white skin, your orange hair, and your celeste blue eyes. Of course, how did none of them put two and two together? The features that screamed Ireland?! It’s not like he was going to tell them, though. He didn’t go out on this date just so he could get forty bucks.

“But… your accent’s English, right? Like, the queen’s english, or something.”

“I put it on. If no one can understand me, how will I give out commands?”

“Really? So this isn’t your normal accent? Can I, um, you know, can you talk normally?”

You noticed his enthusiasm just from the way he slightly arched his back. You looked away for a second with a smile.

“Aye. Yer a cute hoor, Matt.” <Yes. You’re a cheeky one, Matt>

You sliced another piece of the cake, lifting it to his mouth.

“Been donkey’s years since I’ve gone on the lash, and here you are, tryna court me.” <Been a long while since I went to drink, and here you are, trying to date me.>

You didn’t notice him taking a bite; only focused on how he was unable to understand more than a few words. Not like it was easy either, he had to dig those out through your incredibly thick accent.

“Hm, I can’t be giving out. You chanced yer arm, didn’tcha?” <Hm, I can’t be complaining. You tried, didn't you?>

You were amused at his expression. Just like everyone who wasn’t Irish, they all had the same look of confusion whenever you’d speak normally.

“You should see my nan. Even my pals can’t understand her.”

“Your grandma?”

“Aye. She thought I wouldn’t land a good job if people knew I was Irish, and taught me the accent.”

You put down the fork as you spoke. Your Irish accent was toned down to a level he could somewhat understand, but he still felt charmed from such a simple move. Just the way you’d ‘tuck in the r’, as he'd say, it sounded like music to him.

“Oh, really? Why?”

“Times were tough on the lass.”

With a smile, you rest your chin on your hand once more, staring through him. And this time, you didn’t bother with the professionalism you worked to carry around all the time.

“You make a holy show, Matt. Always going scarlet around me. But I haven’t laughed this much in a while. Craic’s ninety with you, you know?” <You embarrass yourself, Matt. Always going red around me. But I haven’t laughed this much in a while. I’m having so much fun with you, you know?>

He grinned, enamoured with the way your natural smile carried your cheeks.

“And that’s a… good thing, right?”

“Aye. We should do this again.”

You grabbed the fork once more, scooping up another small piece of the half-eaten lemon cheesecake.

“Now, open wide.”

Just as you lifted the utensil, he complied and gladly bit down on the delicious treat. Getting into Gekko’s head was an easy task for you to take on. So, why not?