#you want me to play anything online then show me the mode where it doesn't save anything to your history

[amplexadversary]

As a rule of thumb, I really don’t see any point to a game where you can’t win with your favorites. This is why I don’t play competitive fucking anything because I don’t want to get slapped with the fucking bitch tier rank just for not making the same choices everyone else does.

[buzzybee26]

Thor Pirate Software's coverage of the Stop Killing Games Initiative has been deeply frustrating to me because one of the main points he's been getting on their ass about is being vague, but there are several times that he has been incredibly vague about the information he's used to draw the conclusions he's presented and where he got that information from.

The example of this that I'm going to use is in his first video when he talks about The Crew.*1 There's a bit where he claims that the game was always marketed as online only, and the only source he cites for this is legitimately "everything I've found online." I'm not saying this is false, but I have so little information on why he thinks the game was only ever marketed as online only that I can't say it's true with 100% confidence, especially with the knowledge that the crew had a story campaign that could be played entirely in single player*2. Not a perfect comparison, but the majority of Splatoon 1's marketing, at least from trailers, was based around its multiplayer (I'm not about to do the same thing I'm criticizing him for after getting on his ass about that, I do have some self awareness), and yet you can still play its single player campaign after the servers are dead. And I'm not saying the single player mode was ignored in the marketing, like I say it's not a perfect comparison to the claim he's making, but the vast majority of the marketing for this game was showing its multiplayer gameplay and features. This being the case, the vast majority of my playtime with that game as well as the rest of the series has been single player. Just because a game is marketed based on its multiplayer content, that doesn't mean people won't only play it for its single player content or that the single player content can't be a major selling point and he didn't go through any effort to show that this wasn't the case for The Crew. Show some trailers, a screenshot of the game's storefront page from when it was being sold, anything more specific that "Everything I've found."

And if we want to talk about being vague, how about deleting 2 weeks worth of stream content, including all the VODs in which he talked about the initiative. I would say deleting multiple hours of your coverage of a topic is not the best way to keep the specific details of your argument in tact. I simply refuse to believe that he managed to fit all of his opinions and takes about the initiative into 23 minutes and 9 seconds and I'm not going to hunt for clips on tiktok, youtube or twitter just for the sake of understanding the perspective of someone who doesn't know I exist. If he wanted his perspective to be understood, he would consistently show clearly and specifically what information he uses to come to his conclusions and where he got that information from.

I have a lot more thoughts, but I am wayy too tired to get them down now so I'll cut this off here. TLDR: put the bare minimum effort to show where you're getting your information from, jesus christ.

*1 There used to be a bit where I said The Crew's Wikipedia page was the only source he used for information about the game. This is false, he also used cites Steam's active player count tracker to show that the game had a large drop in players when The Crew 2 came out. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about and I wish he was more consistent about showing information like this. He also shows the release dates of the sequels that the Crew received, but I don't count this showing sources for information about The Crew 1 and I forgot about him showing the player tracker when I was writing this initially

*2 I realised I did the thing here, This Steam discussion post and this Reddit post contain people discussing the single player campaign, which is how I know about it. Cite your fucking sources, me. Also, The Crew's Steam Page lists the ability to "fly solo" as a key feature of the game, as well as boasting a 30 hour+ story campaign in the Content section. Most of it is focused on multiplayer, but to say the game was only marketed as online only isn't even true.

[bearpillowmonster]

Trailers now and days spoil a lot when it comes to the finished product, something you wait years to release and even if the trailer doesn't spoil it, then the online community will. I seemed to have missed that childlike whimsy of picking up a game and know close to nothing about it. So, I tried to replicate that experience and it worked. But this one I played a little differently because I came up with the bright idea to deprive myself of a whole genre. I say "genre" but really it's a franchise and clones like it, that franchise ended up being Zelda.

I chose Zelda because I had already unintentionally spent a good amount of time without it, so no new or old games in that time period. I purposely avoided anything that was labelled to be like Zelda (such as Genshin, Sonic Frontiers, etc). I was already a fan of Zelda so a new game was a sure win but I never played Breath of the Wild because by the time I got a Switch, Tears of the Kingdom (unnamed at the time) was already announced. So, this won't just be my experience with the game, it'll be my experience with Breath of the Wild and not just that but where the franchise has gone for over five years and boy has it changed.

Now I can climb (pretty much everything) and cook and run and jump! I have to pay attention to what I'm wearing because the environment might be too cold or hot. A time cycle. The storyline starts like a Ghibli movie, Zelda's voice is like a deadpan Lara Croft and on the first day of playing it, I realized that there's a lot more adventure than I thought. I barely played that first day because it was all so much to take in. So, I won't be describing the game, I'll be describing my experience.

In a world like this, why complain? Well...The frame-rate drops in trees but does pretty good elsewhere. There's no way to deselect while in the hand mode, you have to jump out then back in. You can't roll. The adventure is more about exploring and the puzzles are more about tinkering. It's a complete overhaul of what came before it.

The horse can be annoying because you have to train its bond and get it a stable and get it to stay with you and they can be hard to control because "sometimes they don't want to go that way" or it's too precise with invisible barricades that it decides it can't jump over (i.e. a stone block in a ruin of stone blocks). And in a game ridden with mountains, you find yourself abandoning it half the time. If only it was a ghost like the companions...There was a bike in BOTW (hard not to know) but it's not in this one. Which all that would be fine if you could handle it in a timely manner but there were a lot of points where I regretted going in blind because while I was playing it, I felt like I was playing it wrong, it seemed like forever before I actually started getting anywhere once I touched down from the sky islands. I was so relieved the first time I found a stable because I didn't have to worry about losing it or anything, I could finally register him. Then I started the Rito Village quest and fell back into enjoying it but then the Eldin stuff drug me back down. It was a toss up.

All in all, it's a lot more RPG but in a world of prexisting RPGs, it almost doesn't feel like I was waiting for anything new, it has all these features that I've already seen before just not in Zelda and I'm not sure whether I prefer it that way either.

Open World specifically is the one I'm a little half and half on because it felt like I could spend days doing nothing, trying to find a way into somewhere to make some progress which in some cases just goes to show how good the game is, if you're willing to spend time doing side stuff and explore not only its environment but its gameplay but I don't know, this one felt a little too empty to me, like there were long stretches where I was just climbing or trying to go places. There are indeed wheels and different contraptions like I've pointed out to get moving but the threshold to get them is a decent length, especially if you don't know where you're looking for this stuff. You can't just pick them up and put them in your inventory either, you either have to find them out and about or already have them in your inventory from a rare drop or a capsule machine. Which wouldn't be so bad but those inventions you spend all that time building despawn (which makes sense for the hardware this is running on). But at the same time, there's a function that keeps a recipe in stock, you just need to have built it and...ok, it doesn't make sense, whatever. But even once you pass the threshold of finding a bounty of these "zonite" powered objects, you need that "zonite" to power them. Can be easy to fix but it would be just so much simpler without needing a battery change every five seconds and the more devices you run in tandem, the faster it depletes.

When I saw all these mechanics that people were pulling off with BOTW, I was thinking that the system was just that ingenious, that it just threw you into a playground and to some extent it does but I think it would've been better suited some other way. The surface is wet? Makes sense that you'd slip but sure as heck annoying. It chose accuracy over fun. If you're one of those people that hordes potions and items (like me) then this probably isn't the game for you. Especially since it takes forever to find what you're looking for, like when you're scrolling to attach something to an arrow. It doesn't tell you what stuff does in that menu (Flashback to FF6), an easy fix would be a favorites list, Nintendo. Your weapons break very easily, I could be fighting an enemy and use my whole inventory. At least with Animal Crossing, it still lasted a while, I didn't have to worry about my axe breaking after my first tree.

And that blind feeling wasn't helpful because there were things that were really truly great and helpful like being able to use waypoints and having a tracker that you can use on pretty much anything that you've come into contact with already so long as you logged it in your 'compendium'. But you wouldn't know that stuff if you didn't do the side-quests or rather the progression of them, because they started as something entirely different to get to that point. I was already past half way before I got all this helpful material that I could've used when I started and I didn't even see in any beginners guides when I checked. You can upgrade armor?? So I think that "not enough" of the game is set up on the main path, completely messing up the theory on how to make a good burger. It throws everything in your face at once and expects you to do it all.

Why I think I liked Rito so much and not Eldin is because Rito (almost) resembled a dungeon of sorts and it was the first one I did but Eldin had a lot of empty space yet its scope seemed massive. I think open world is great if only taken in bites, not all at once. The Goron in Eldin (which he pronounces gore-own? But everyone else says gore-on?) is just uninteresting and so is his story then the cutscenes come into play where I started wishing we were without them again because I would move a little bit only to initiate another cutscene of him spouting obvious mousedung like "I think it's this way, oh I wonder where Zelda is, what do you think Link?" and it's the same silent answer every time, it's just stupid. There's no room for subtlety or guessing if he just tells you everything. (unlocks a door with five locks, sees one of the locks drop, Goron: "Just four more locks left!") Math!

His AI is pretty dumb too, his hitbox was inconsistent, not being able to be used as a shield but would get in my way whenever I needed to hit something. He wouldn't always be there when I did need him though, he'd kind of just stick around another platform (I assume since he can't fly and he's so big that he needs room?). Then this was just downright lazy, with the Wind Temple, you needed to find a way to undo four locks. Okay, worked well enough but then the Fire Temple has you do the EXACT same thing. It's bad from a story and a gameplay pov, it's just copy and paste in a different environment, different place, but same context. And GUESS WHAT? They're ALL like that.

Let me show you this part that I was having a hard time with.

You can shoot arrows and or the Goron using various methods to try and activate switches but this one was blocked. I tried making a ramp but the rocks had to be level with the ground in order for it to work with the Goron. It ended up not even mattering though because it's blocking a way that I need to go, forcing me to find the correct way, it knew that I'd try that. Ok, so I try climbing-

And if a lip is too protruding, you can't go around it, so that's exactly what they did, they knew you'd try these methods but barred you from doing so. So what was the right way? Well, I skipped it, went to a different one then climbed and glided my way around until I could tip toe in a different way. It worked but it was largely unconventional and was definitely not the right way of doing it. So how did others do it? Well, they made a bridge using the rocks around them...except, I did that. FOUR TIMES. The space is cramped to where you have a hard time fitting all of them in a row but I did manage to just barely make them long enough and each time, it'd flip and fall because there's nothing to attach it to and the higher ground is so uneven that it'd lose balance. This is an example of the preciseness of its system. (Flashback: Accuracy over fun.) While I'd like to believe there were more refined solutions, I have yet to see any, in fact, to further my point, I went back after completing it to try it again and lo and behold it finally worked, I had the idea but couldn't execute it because of the too true mechanics. There's another great example of this if you look up the Rabella Wetlands "Remove Spike" puzzle.

Now let me talk about the underground. The overworld has these shrines that serve as little mechanic introducers and teleporting waypoints, you also get these lights from them that can net you a heart or addition to stam. The underworld has similar shrines too (which I'll call 'beacons') but it's horrible getting there, you spend it with the screen looking like this 90% of the time.

It's dark and these shrines light the place up except the underworld is every bit as big as the overworld. Even looking up beacon locations gives you coordinates but for one, there's no way to look at specific coordinates on the map, just your own and two, just because you have coordinates, doesn't mean you can take that path. Just like the overworld, there are mountains in your way, mountains that you can't see! Enemies riddle the area and blah blah, it seemed optional at the time so I noped out of there and stayed with overworld stuff but then I found out that a lot of what actually unlocks the stuff that I want is underground so it's best to get a good chunk of that out early. (such as those waypoints and compendium and power to recreate stuff you've built) No reward for lighting the beacons either so getting them all seems more like a hindering job so you can see the game than actual fun.

Now cosmetics are actually quite exemplary, there are a ton of costumes you can mix and match and collect, both new and old. With most games, this stuff can be picked up as drops, treated as achievements or set up in a shop for moolah. This is a mixture because some are indeed like that but the ones that you want, you're going to have to work for. By work, I don't mean difficulty though, I mean time. That underground holds a lot of these costumes, a lot of ones that you'll want and they're contained in chests, these chests will either be in the form of a coliseum where you fight an onslaught of enemies, including bosses...that you've already fought...I'll explain my problem with that in a minute but the other ones, those are scattered in chests and like I said, easy to find coordinates, tough as nails to actually trek to. I could spend an hour just cycling this environment, trying to get to where I need to be because there isn't a waypoint near it then after I get it, guess what, there's two more to the set. That's right, you've collected one third of the costume, now you need to get the other two pieces somewhere. I could spend 3 hours on just one costume. And you can upgrade these costumes to give you better stats but you need certain materials to do so.

Now the problem I have with the coliseums is that they're challenging but those types of things should be challenging, it's when it makes everything a chore that I begin to feel useless. I played for over 50 hours and only had 1/2 of the possible heart containers (which is still a good amount) but I never felt ready for any of the boss level enemies (Gleeok, Lynel, etc) because they'd always one-shot me and I'd do chip damage which I'd understand if I was way ahead of where I was supposed to be, but I unlocked all but one section of the map at thas point and with it being an open world game, these types of bosses are everywhere. There are foods and elixirs you can use to higher defense and attack but those only go so far and should only be additives, not mandatory, it nerfs your base health. If I can play 50 hours in a game and still feel weak then that's a problem with padding because I wasn't progressing fast enough or with the right stuff, I never really felt stronger. With Metroid, I always feel like I'm doing something, every single ability I unlock, every weapon, every door but this game makes it all feel null. Fuse as much as possible. Use as much as possible. Sleep as much as possible. Get as much as possible. Cook as much as possible. It's all very demanding of your time to actually try and have the time that you wish to have with this game, it sucks when you make time for it but it sucks it right back like it was nothing.

As far as story, there's a very weird origin and lore of the series that I'm still up in the air about. With franchises like this, I've started wondering whether they "should" cover the origin of everything this far in, that's what has me worried for Star Wars. But other lore is good because we have little things like Gerudos trying to run out of the rain because they don't like it and just that there are Gerudos running around in the first place is a step up because I always thought it weird that each kingdom had its own race but you only saw them there, nowhere else. You could argue that it makes the level design that much more unique but with an open world game like this, I kind of like seeing a mixed world with Avians, Gerudos, and Elves alike everywhere.

I guess the domains all act the same is because you "can" do them in any order but in doing that, even the cutscenes are reiterative, explaining the same event over and over after you defeat their boss. This nulls and dulls most of the story when it very easily could've been fixed with replacement scenes for whichever region you're in, it actually had potential when it started.

But let me let you in on a tidbit, not too much of a spoiler, just something so you know not to get your hopes up. When it was first revealed, they showed Zelda and Link together and the fans started thinking "What if you could play as Zelda?" this would've been an instant selling point but admittedly a better one to keep secret, well the sad news is that it didn't follow along with the fans. Normally I wouldn't dock it because of this because the only games that have done this were done so on a technicality but with this one in particular, they set up Zelda as "a mystery" and you're given pieces of what's happened to her throughout but I think it would've served everything better had they made these cutscenes, playable sections.

All in all, high highs but really low lows. The wait wasn't worth it. The hype wasn't worth it. Being blind was a mistake. The expectations were indeed impossible but I still think I grounded myself pretty well compared to many other titles I've waited just as long for. Now was the 70$ price tag worth it? I can already tell you that it was a meaty game but that doesn't mean fulfilling. It really depends what you "want" out of a higher price game. I wouldn't charge that again for anything but I do understand that it must've taken some programming genius to get it to run on Switch (though Nier and Dark Souls are on there and Genshin runs on a phone!)

But I feel really bad and sad to say that every game that I played around this...I liked more. Now everything labelled as a "Of the Wild" style, I'm not going to be as interested in. I actually think I disliked it at times and it's been a while since I've truly disliked a game. In fact, Zelda is such a successful series that I've liked every game I've played ...except this one, making it by default, the worst.

[queersturbate]

ryōhei arisu is autistic

usually, since im autistic myself, all I would have to say is dude trust me but ive gathered some evidence anyway

major alice in borderland spoilers

1. we can see him have meltdowns in episode 1 and 4. In episode one, the meltdown is brief and stopped pretty quickly, as everything is happening very fast. karube decides to put all the pressure on Arisu to save them. Karube is leaning over Arisu who has back himself up against a wall when he starts to feel overwhelmed, he gets up and thrashes to get out all the baddness~ (similar to stimming)

in episode four when he had just lost karube and chota in a very traumatic way he gets picked up by Usagi and when he wakes up and he works himself up into a very bad meltdown, he keeps repeating that he has to apologize to them and he's repeatedly banging his head on the ground. keep in mind that everyones meltdowns look different- autistic people with abusive family, like arisu, often have small, quick meltdowns so they won't get abused for having an intense meltdown (my meltdowns are 100% unnoticeable)

2. Arisu happy/focus stims in a lot of unnoticeable ways, i think he probably has learned to subdue his stims because of his family, he probably even has tried to stop stimming completely but it's almost impossible to do so. Here's one point where he happy stims (pushes his knees up and rocks, i stim like that so it was cool to see)

3. Arisu exclusively wears comfortable clothing, he wears plain (maybe with a little writing or a simple pattern) t-shirts most of the time he has a thin jacket over, he wears capris pants or shorts. at the end of the season he wears a button up shirt but it looks soft and with a nice texture. He never wears anything with a rough or uncomfortable texture- like jeans- and never wears anything constricting they're always loose fitting

4. his special interest is video games. this doesn't need much of an explanation I mean it's just what it is, he spends every chance he gets playing video games, like when he's walking and no one is answering him so he starts playing a game- he also gets excited when Usagi asks what an online game is- he wants to info dump and is about to but quickly stops as she looks uninterested

5. he also has a tough time in social situations and cannot always read social cues and doesn't know social norms- when he is with karube and chota- people he has known since he was a lot younger- he is much more relaxed and himself. When in a new group of people or around a new person he often goes temporarily nonverbal- shaking his no and nodding yes primarily. Like when he is with Hatter- he rarely responds to him only saying 2 very quick sentences while the rest of it is him staring and shaking his head (there are actually a lot of instances where he does this im not gonna name everyone of them)

and when he goes to talk to the two girls he is very blunt and doesn't read social cues- yelling out "i wasn't trying to hit on you!!" very loudly as they ran away from him- he can also be very blunt about a lot of things and it often gets him berated or the shit beat out of him. He means no harm with this bluntness, seeing nothing wrong with saying these things. Of course- if it's chota or karube, they dont mind his bluntness- like when Chota has a burned leg and they were theorizing the possibility of the universe they were in was VR. arisu says that VR cant make such a bad injury, chuckling to himself, seeing it as a joke he made. No one else laughed. Also a social norm that he doesn't seem to think about- when Usagi gave him her water bottle to drink he immediately offers it to the two strangers theyre with without asking her first (also an example of his hyper empathy which he shows a lot of throughout the season). he also has "odd" reactions to things in general. Compare his reactions to everyones reactions to everything in the season- you'll see what I mean

6. he can also go into hyperfocused mode (a side note: I believe he has a eidetic memory- as you can see in episode one where he is in hyperfocus mode and he remembers the evacuation map perfectly- which I know eidetic memories haven't been proven to be a thing per se but as they study it- it is commonly found in autistic people) which you can see during the games or when someone is telling him important information- for example episode one:

7. this one is short but it stuck out to me a lot- he is extremely touchy with karube and chota. he is always hugging them and reaching out to grab them, stuff like that but he looks extremely uncomfortable when someone else touches him and he doesn't touch anyone unless he absolutely needs to like life or death situations

in conclusion <3 arisu is autistic (and nonbinary) and you cant say he isn't because i literally gave you evidence and im autistic and nonbinary

[slade-neko]

Started playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe again as a fun de-stresser...

(Mario Kart as a form of stress reliever?! I'm bonkers, I know.)

I've always played my brother's save on his Switch in the past. Finally got around to playing it on my own Switch now. Already got all 3-stars on all CCs and Cups. Gotta say its a HECK of a lot easier to get 3-stars in this game compared to the Mario Kart Wii days.

The star-ranking system in MK Wii was brutal. Hit walls too many times, get pelted by items too much, fall under 1st place for too long, go off the course ONCE, and you can kiss 3-star rating goodbye. In MK8 you can screw up all you want, as long as you win 1st place for all 4 races in a cup you're guaranteed a 3-star rating. I was able to get them all under 3 days. I was expecting I'd have to race all 12 cups/ 48 tracks for all 4 CC speeds and Mirror mode, but as it turns out beating 150 CC gives you the same star ratings for that cup for 100 CC and 50 CC automatically. That made the whole thing a lot faster, just skipping straight to 150 CC, Mirror mode, and 200 CC. taking the total of 240 races for all modes down to only 144.

Been farming coins last couple of days, I think you need 5,000 total to get the Gold Glider (Non Deluxe, Wii U was 10k coins, I think?) I'm currently sitting at 3.3k as I spam 48 all cups/ track races. Nice how Switch saves you're spot, so I can leave and come back and pick up where ever I left off. Then I just gotta do some Time Trials to unlock the Gold Wheels and I think that's 100% completion? Cool. I'll have the game fully beat in less than a week! (Yay for my personal satisfaction of beating video games.)

I have yet to get the Booster Pack DLC courses as I hear mixed things about the quality of the tracks, but will probably pick them up eventually. I only wish they'd add in more characters with the Booster Packs. I dunno, maybe give me my main Funky Kong back from MK Wii would be cool or at the very least DIDDY KONG! (WTF Nintendo?! You monkey haters!)

Hmm, I guess what I'm trying to say is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is a dang good game. There really isn't anything I can find to gripe about. I guess I could complain saying getting 3-star rating is too easy now, but I'm fine with that (less stress compared to MK Wii.) Though at the same time 3-stars doesn't really do anything in MK8. At least in MK Wii it would display 3 shiny stars beside your name plate in online play to show off, but this game doesn't reward you diddly squat for achieving 3-star ratings. Still doesn't matter much to me considering I don't race online anymore as I don't pay for Switch Online (Ha, MK Wii's online was FREE!) Sooo yeah, all-in-all Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is such a fantastic Mario Kart and a ton of fun.

[vivdunye]

present day, present time

and you don't seem to understand

fabled adages of science

so i was watching the snyder cut of justice league the other morning, i couldn't really begin to tell you why other than i needed 4 hours of background noise . but i tuned in at one point when the fictional super Israeli, wonder woman, narrated a scene explaining an alien technology "that was so advanced that it almost seemed like sorcery", and wouldn't yknow, that's a real concept actually, i recognized it immediately as clark's third law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

it's perhaps the most well known and oft quoted of the three, but i always felt like arthur c. clark's first 2 laws don't ever get quite enough love . i've been thinking heavily about the first law lately:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

i've been thinking about it in relation to this one quote from wernher von braun that i always liked:

Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.

many people are afraid of death; of ceasing the awareness of life, because they don't know what will happen to themselves after, where do they go if anywhere? it's much more nebulous in the secular sense if you haven't a construct for the afterlife already . i've been thinking about death more and more often lately to a worrying degree . however, scientific thought for all its clinical detachment from all things spiritual has strangely enough always felt like the perfect module for contemplating the metaphysical . so i decided to do some research .

i want to recall right now thomas edison's first intended use for the phonograph . edison had originally envisioned the phonograph primarily as a means of preserving the voices of loved ones after death . he later went on to try and develop a "ghost box" or "spiritphone" . this device would allow humans to communicate directly with the dead . he was unsuccessful .

if hauntology has taught us anything, we technically do have ghost boxes now, but maybe not in the way edison intended or even predicted . we carry them everywhere and can check them anytime, channeling messages through them constantly . we actively become digital ghosts, online we are both present and absent . the present implodes with the past, we've over-documented everything so now we can experience an instant nostalgia . today's future becomes archaic, we live in the archive to try and remember what the future once was .

'haunted' and 'futuristic' become one and the same .

by this token i'm reminded also by transhumanism . as the technological singularity fast approaches, as progress charges forward at a constantly increasing speed, current estimates posit the 2040s as the point in which technological improvements will occur at a constantly self-replicating rate . in the time between now and then, transhumanism and the eventual merging of human consciousness with machinery are theorized outcomes of technological progress . one day we might be able to leave the shackles of our human bodies and transcend our physical forms as a joined digital consciousness .

and in relation to this i also think now of clark's second law

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

through the wired

this is the stage on which the anime Serial Experiments Lain is set . a story, that while constructed on the patchwork of fiction, is nevertheless symbolic of certain phenomena based in reality .

also i apologize if it wasn't apparent that this post was going to be about Lain . im lainposting boys

the first few episodes exist to misdirect the viewer right from the beginning . and only by returning to these episodes having thought through the rest of the show, does their purpose become clear . the first episode, aptly titled "Layer 01: Weird" , is meant to show us exactly one thing, that lain is fucking weird . we can't tell what she's thinking, we can't tell what she's doing, and that's exactly how everyone around her feels . lain is totally and completely disconnected, she doesn't keep up with current events at school, she doesn't communicate with her family, near as we can tell she has no actual interests besides her stuffed animals and totally phasing out of reality. the inciting incident of the series happens when someone tries to make a connection with lain, and that person happens to be dead...

or at least there body is dead, their consciousness seems to have escaped into the wired . lain's decision to pursue this connection is what lead's her to ask her father for a new navi (the series' name for a personal computer) and that's all that really happens in this episode . coming back to it from later episodes we know that lain is probably thinking a lot throughout this episode . the decision to not entreat us to any of her thoughts is intentional, it is to make us feel distant from her as viewers, the same way that the world around her is distant . as lain forms connections throughout the series, so too, will we form a connection with her .

we do not know how much time has passed since then and the second episode, but whatever has happened lain has already developed a significant presence in the wired . this episode is tricky in its presentation as it doesn't make us privy to which things lain is lying about and which things she's honest about . in it we have lain talking to someone on her navi, she types sporadically in an encrypted language, and someone who looks just like her appears late one night in a night club downtown . while lain won't admit it to her classmates it's apparent at the end of the episode that it was her at the club all along . the key to understanding her actions throughout the episode is to realize she is trying to keep her existence in the wired and her existence in reality as separate entities . the realization she has by the end of the episode, which she uses to terrify a gunmen into suicide is that there is no escape from the wired, no matter where you are you are always connected .

made in the late-90s, Lain was quite ahead of its time . it predicted not only how in the early 2000s the internet would be regarded as a separate world where anonymity and personas reigned—it also predicted how the internet would eventually and inevitably overlap with the real world, once people in the real world realized that the internet is the real world . people have a tendency to see one part of themselves as their "true selves", whereas the parts they show to others are personas, they think of these things as separate when in reality a person is an amalgamation of all of their personas . lain tries to change her personas by dressing and acting differently from when she's in the wired-mode and in normal-mode, but she doesn't realize how people have been doing this way before the wired existed . her classmates are all 15 but they all pass for adults when they've dolled up and hit the club . if the characters in the show seem a bit young for their attitudes then you may not have met enough tech-savvy teenagers before . the purpose of this episode is to ultimately to prove to lain that the so-called real world and the wired are merely two layers of one reality, which couldn't be more true of the world today .

let there be light300pMTK. .

in mythology, psyche was the mortal princess who fell in love with and, eventually, married the god cupid; in religion and classical philosophy, psyche came to mean the human soul, and in the modern, literate world, it retains that meaning as the human spirit; in freudian analysis, psyche refers to the totality of the human mind: the id, ego and superego .

every meaning of psyche is distinctly human: a human princess who achieves godhood, the soul or mind of an individual . if previous episodes introduced the blurring of the real world with the wired, then episode three; "Layer 03: Psyche" is the episode that starts to blur human identity online and offline . one doesn’t even have to venture into the wired to ask what is human .

by this point we know that lain is definitely up to something . at this stage it's hard to tell what, but all we get are little glimpses into her actions . she still seems to be hiding a lot from the world around her and from the viewer in turn . ironically, lain's blank-faced silence and response to the questions of those around her it's own incrimination . when a police officer tells her to speak up (regarding the gunman's suicide) even if she had nothing to do with it, he doesn't realize she's being silent precisely because she does have something to do with it . but her deer-in-the-headlights persona gets her out of it .

the lain of the wired and the lain of reality are slowly starting to mesh into one whole . it remains difficult to interpret the physical existence of "other lain" so to speak, and the show refuses to outright show her playing that character . at the least, we do get to see lain access the wired in all its chaotic glory and she does begin to take an active interest in expanding her knowledge as she learns about and installs the "Psyche drive", a computer circuit that lain procures in hopes of it enhancing her computer's processing power . on the smaller scale, when lain applies the psyche processor to her navi, she is installing a spirit or soul, an animating element, to her machine . notably, the psyche does not replace the main processor; psyche augments the main processor, interpreting the data that flows through it . the soul is not simply the brain, it is an elevated consciousness or meta-self. by this point in the series lines become blurred and the lains begin to merge (hehe) . all of this is set against the backdrop of lain trying to decide if she should remain in the physical world or fully integrate in the wired . she hears one voice telling her that death feels amazing, and god exists in the wired, that there is nothing left for lain in this world . however, lain begins to establish a connection with her classmate alice, saying her name out loud and commiting it to memory for the first time, alice asks why her friends are not more shaken up after watching someone shoot himself in the head the previous day . it's almost as though lain is clinging to alice as an excuse to stay in the physical world out of fear for changing over . this all sets the seeds for what eventually grows throughout the series .

i want to recall the final meaning of the word “psyche". that the word also meant “butterfly,” which is how the greeks imagined the soul to appear . no doubt the symbolism of a creature that begins as one thing and transforms into another is not lost on us here .

every event serves to emphasize the existence of one's own personal reality, and as individuals from all others, we desire a place to belong . however that too is an egotistical concept . in order for there to be a mutual understanding, it is necessary to recognize here and now, like the brain synapses, we are all—in a logical yet chaotic manner—connected .

each is seperate—yet they are one . by connecting, humanity gains first awareness of its function as a seed . and by connecting a human no longer remains a mere endpoint, a "terminus", but becomes a junction to another point, having won the right to continue itself . in a sense, the ability to connect is the ability to continue . this not only applies to the connection of axial coordinates but temporal coordinates as well . therefore, at the time when a conscious, intentional connection is made, surely the dead will rise from there intended place, appearing at the time coordinate of the connection's origin .

in that moment, the realization will dawn that the time in which we inhabit our physical bodies is but the starting point of the connection, and the very meaning of possessing a physical body might be questioned .

we recognize we are connected .

serialize thyself .

[metalgearkong]

Resident Evil 8 - Review (Xbox One S)

7/6/21

Developed by Capcom, released May 2021

It's felt like a long time since Resident Evil 7 came out, performing a total reset of the series. Although the wait has been padded with the excellent Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 remakes, Resident Evil 8 was still one of my most anticipated game of this year. The story and format continues; we play as Ethan Winters from the first person perspective, following a few years after the events of the Baker Estate. Chris Redfield, who made a strange cameo appearance at the end of Resident Evil 7, has promised to keep Ethan, Mia, and their newborn daughter Rose safe if they relocated to Eastern Europe.

One of the big hooks of this game was Chris Redfield apparently playing the role of the antagonist. Showing up in the prologue and murdering Mia in cold blood surrounded by his soldiers, it certainly raises some questions. For longtime fans, no one truly thinks Chris turned evil, and there is obviously more to learn about the story. Unfortunately that's all it was for me, a hook, and I had no suspense or anticipation why Chris appeared to evil because I didn't question for a moment if his intentions were malevolent. It's memorable, but I think it only works for super dummies.

Ethan Winters finds himself captured by Chris' goons, but escapes, and comes across a massive village hidden in the snowy mountains of Eastern Europe. This is when I noticed one of my favorite things about the game, it's atmospherics. Resident Evil 7 spent nearly all of its time in pitch black corridors, but nailed the dark creepy feel of modern and classic survival horror games. Resident Evil 8 opens things up wide, and often in broad daylight. An elaborate castle looms in the fog, creaky windmills are spinning in the distance, and a dilapidated village connects them all, acting as a hub for the game.

Gameplay is largely the same as Resident Evil 7, but Resident Evil 8 is unquestionably less scary and suspenseful. It's understandable that scares in the daylight are vastly less terrifying by default, and that remains the case here. Yes the village is abandoned and eerie, and has tons of blind corners to be ambushed from, but when everything is surrounded in a gentle blizzard or during a serene sunset, the game is going to be inherently less scary. I do give them points for trying something new, as I can't think of another Resident Evil game which took place in the daytime besides Resident Evil 5 (which wasn't a very scary game either).

The foot soldiers of the village are werewolf people called Lycans, and in the other sections of the game such as the factory or the castle, you also encounter generic ghouls, often carrying melee weapons in the theme of the area they populate. A vendor appears all over the game, paying homage to Resident Evil 4, who you can sell treasures to, upgrade weapons, and buy supplies from. I played on Normal difficulty and after the initial action scenes, I settled into a grove that felt pretty easy. Even the final boss only took me one attempt. Seasoned gamers may want to try hard mode to start off with.

The story is intriguing at first, but doesn't resolve in anything satisfying, and evolves into something that makes some of the least sense in the series so far. Yes it does continue the story of the mold infection, but the explanations I found to be vague and the story brings up more questions than it answers. You shouldn't have to read third party sources online to get basic information about the plot. My favorite section of the game was exploring a mansion where one of the sub-bosses lives, borrowing heavily from PT. Taking away your weapons and exploring a pitch dark building with something extremely creepy following you was the most satisfaction of the horror genre I felt in the entire game.

My least favorite part was exploring the main village hub, as I felt it was an unnecessary maze of obstacles and excuses why you couldn't just navigate this little town more openly. Most of the puzzles and backtracking is some of the most simple in the series as well. No one will be left scratching their head trying to remember where a key went, or how to organize your inventory to maximize what you can carry with you. A crafting system also allows you to create ammo out of thin air, further adding to the simplicity of the combat and drop in tension. You don't even have to mix herbs in this game, making item usage completely streamlined and brainless.

[Spoilers] Resident Evil 8 also throws a big twist at the end, apparently to explain away an unrealistic aspect of Resident Evil 7, but the explanation raises far more questions than it answers, and is much more of an obvious ret-con rather than a genuine planned twist in the story. Apparently Ethan died at the beginning of Resident Evil 7 when the Bakers captured him and imprisoned him in their home. All along Ethan has been infected with the mold, explaining his ability to reassemble lost limbs. Resident Evil 8 is still a solid triple-A first person experience. It may not be nearly as scary as Resident Evil 7 and may be more action-oriented, but it still has a few great moments. The story will leave long time fans frustrated however, and in spite of a huge cliff hanger, it doesn't keep me on the edge of my seat for the next game. A fun and sometimes satisfying game, but doesn't live up to its potential or its predecessor.

7.25/10

[n5md]

Cloudwalker

In our newly relaunched "Learn more about..." interviews, we switch up the continuity slightly and focus on just one release: Gimmik's Cloudwalker. Martin kindly agreed to answer a few questions to kick off what we'll refer to as v2 of the "Learn More About..." blog.

While Entre Les Chambres was the actual return of Gimmik to the public eye, Cloudwalker is more of a return to form. It is undeniably Gimmik; however, Cloudwalker treads some new ground for you. Can you shed some light on how the creative process changed from Entre Les Chambres / Deux Nouvelles and how those two albums might have influenced Cloudwalker?

Very well observed - they did influence Cloudwalker! Entre Les Chambres and Deux Nouvelles were both produced under technically limited circumstances. On top of that, I thought that no one will ever hear this material. Luckily it was not the case, and I got the chance to become a member of the n5MD family. When you produce with the idea that the material will never get released, it gives you a lot of room and space. You are not concerned about expectations. The music can flow and evolve freely. The calm nature of those albums helped that process. It was research where I experienced myself more as a witness than a composer. For me, that is a new approach. This approach was still the same when I produced Cloudwalker. That is the reason why the tracks are so diverse. Short Wave Memories and In My Family do not have anything in common, but that is the way they evolved, without me constructing anything. The most significant difference is that Cloudwalker was produced in a proper studio environment. Plus, I took a step into eurorack, which brings a very unpredictable element. And yes, that is Mutable Elements "Rings'' what you hear on In My Family. I was working on a self-generative patch with "Marbles'' when all of a sudden, the melody appeared...

I think you sent me In My Family shortly after you finished it, and it was one of the darkest days of the early pandemic; where our local government-issued curfews and such. It was the track that I needed at that moment; it brightened my day. It's very cool that the melody was a generative experiment gone right. I seem to remember you have quite a bit of the Mutable Instruments modules. Modular, to me, seems like a bit of a wormhole of experimentation. So, how do you stay focused when experimenting with new sounds and textures to bring, say, one of your Modular Nature tracks, which you have on your Youtube channel, to life.

Working with a modular system is entirely different. My approach is always a question. What will happen if I connect this with that and modulate with this? Then you start patching, and the results are entirely different from what I expected - a lot more exciting and better! In the beginning, I thought modular was about rebuilding synth voices. So I started emulating the signal-flow path of a 101 for a start. I missed the whole point of modular... A system has a life of its own and takes you to completely different places, and sometimes I do not even understand the results. (-: But that is not important. The decision to work with modular is to avoid walking down paths I have taken too many times when composing. What keeps you focused is your ear. The trick is to learn when to stop. In the beginning, I lost a lot of great patches when the result was already at 90%. When trying to reach 100%, my tweaks destroyed that patch's beauty, and I never found a way back to 90%. That happened a lot of times in the beginning. A modular system really helps to learn when to let go… (laughing). I chose Mutable Instruments because those modules are very focused on musical and harmonic results.

So, going back to Cloudwalker, how did it feel getting back to basics as far as Gimmik goes. People may not know that Entre Les Chambres and Deux Nouvelles were made for very personal listening. Care to shed a little light on those two, and more importantly, what made you want to go past those themes and bring Gimmik full circle for Cloudwalker?

Entre Les Chambres and Deux Nouvelles were NOT a conscious decision. Those were a necessity! The title Entre Les Chambres means "between two rooms", the space that is between two rooms. That is nowhere! It mirrors how I felt at that moment. There were many significant changes in my life, luckily nothing concerning my family, but still major changes. In order to cope with it all, I started making ambient tracks. It was the only thing that helped me to cope and focus again. The tracks happened by themselves. Listening to them and working on those albums was a calming experience. When they were finished, I played them to Chris, and he convinced me that he liked them. That led to the decision to make those first tapes. Later I sent them to you. Your reaction was very motivating because the music got released. With that motivation and getting back into a studio environment, the Cloudwalker tracks just poured out of me very quickly - it felt terrific to go back to the studio. My family gave me the time to work in my studio, and you and Chris gave very motivating feedback! From my perspective, this makes Cloudwalker my most important album so far, and I am very thankful for this chance! Another key element is that you gave me total freedom regarding artwork, choosing tracks, and their order. Just great!

Well, I knew going in that you know what you are doing. So I shouldn't have needed to step in and manage such details. For release prep, I'm available to take care of the details that an artist doesn't have access to or the working knowledge. You and Chris ran Toytronics, and you are a graphic artist as well, so I knew that you know the drill. If something was glaring or didn't work under the n5 stylistic umbrella, it is my job to say something, but I was pretty confident that wouldn't happen. I also know that after you completed the tracks, you took a great deal of time to get them to flow perfectly and also fit on four LP sides—your care in craft shows, and it's been great to work with you.

You brought up Chris, and there is an Abfahrt Hinwl remix on Cloudwalker, so; I'm going to ask. Are we going to hear some new Abfahrt Hinwl soon?

Thank you, as I said, that means a lot to me. And I still think that it is a fortunate situation. The AH RMX of Sailing Everest on Cloudwalker was just me, to be honest. That is why I used an abbreviation - AH. It is more a hint. It has a lot of the Abfahrt Hinwil ingredients. We tried to revive the project and realized that working over a distance via the internet does not work for either of us. The key of Abfahrt Hinwil was that we worked in the same room, at the same time, with the same equipment - listening to what the other one does - giving an immediate reaction. The most important point is communication, which has to happen immediately - you need to respond straight away, not with a delay. Today we find ourselves in two different life situations. We both would like to continue. After an online experiment, we realized it would be only possible when we visit each other and then work in the same studio. That is not possible at the moment, and Covid plays a significant role in that.

Ah, I see; Abfahrt Hinwil was you and Chris basically feeding off one another; also, there are cheques and balances, which is great to have. I completely understand why it would not be feasible to do it from a distance effectively. So, I'd like to pivot to these little builds I see on your Instagram. You recently sent me a pic of a peculiar little box that looks to be a synth. Assuming this is something you built (loving the stickering, by the way). What is this, and does it appear on Cloudwalker?

(laughing) That is a drone box handmade by a guy in Russia. Six oscillators, each one with a kill switch. Three standard range oscillators and 3 Sub. A very rough-sounding machine, great for drones. The filter sounds very nasty, just great. There is a little bit in the track Cloudwalker itself but washed out by Big Sky. The downside is that there is no midi, trigger gate, or voltage control. It is more of an experiment tool. The important parts of the track Cloudwalker have Mutable Instruments: Plaits and Tides 1, using the Sheep mode. Both outputs went into Warps, modulated by Stages. The little melody was played live on the Yamaha DX Reface, going into the Big Sky. It was all recorded live onto tape to 4 tracks to a Tascam 234. Then it was mixed the classic way, patchbay, fx, analog mixer main out to digital. 75% of the album was recorded to a Sound Devices MixPre-3 II.

It sounds like your Big Sky gets some action! Strymon makes some exceptional pedals. It seems like you can almost entirely make music out of the box if you needed to, which is excellent. So one last question: When we collaborated on the Cloudwalker one sheet text, you added something about the production tools "representing technology from 1958 to 2019," and I asked if 1958 was a type-o that needed to be corrected to 1985 when it was not. When people read that, I think they will be very curious as to what technology you utilized from that far back…

Yes, it is a great pedal, I love the sound and the fact that you get nice results very quickly.

1958- (laughing) There is an on oscilloscope from Russia, which can be seen in some of the videos on HIDDEN REALITY, and 2 vintage function generators. I got those old function generators from a close friend, he is an electronic engineer and professor for physics at a university. They got rid of all their old equipment, and he asked if I wanted to have something. He could not throw those old machines away, so he rescued them to his cellar. He changed the connections for me, so I can use them with the modular environment, using my standard patch cables. I used them a lot as modulation sources, as they can modulate extremely slow (like MI tides). But I have to admit that I got them for their looks in the first place…(laughing) - Those machines look like the machinery you see in Qs research center in old James Bond movies...

Order Cloudwalker now: US / UK / EU

Learn even more about Gimmik

[09yards]

7 - Houston, I have so many problems (days gone by - nct)

Days Gone By masterlist | main masterlist - ao3 link

warning: excessive use of italics in this chapter because apparently I felt like it and I've only worked on this during night hours and honestly it probably doesn't make sense because it isn't edited properly okay love you bye now, enjoy the chapter (:

Mark drowns his sorrows in T Swift, Grey's Anatomy and Ben and Jerrys and we talk about Johnny a whole lot and the pressures of school and life decisions.

I’ve got a hundred speeches thrown-out speeches I almost said to you

&

Yeah, after all this time, I’m still into you

      Johnny was a good brother, just not exactly role model material. He was protective, but still let you do all the dumb stuff you thought of - like jumping fully clothed in the lake during winter or staying out past curfew because ‘mum will never know, not unless you tell her anyway’ - he was the one there to laugh with you, cry with you, encourage you to do stupid things because you have to live your life. Mark never really understood when Johnny would go on some philosophical rant about how you only get one life, if you aren’t enjoying it then you’re not doing it right.

     He wasn’t constantly thinking about what to do next, how if he did this or that then this would happen. Mark was confused by it in all honestly, he couldn’t comprehend that Johnny studied for fun, wanted to do well not because he felt he had to but because he wanted to. Mark never felt like he made choices purely for himself, he did it for other people or because that’s what he was supposed to do. It wasn’t just academics, Mark was nice to everyone, he it his tongue when he really wanted to correct someone on their opinions (everyone is entitled to their own opinions but the guy was just plain wrong, zero factual basis for his arguments). Mark liked being in control of his own thoughts and feelings, he liked dictating his own life, for once. He just didn’t know how to regain control. He wanted to stop doing things for others, he wanted to be a little selfish – wanted to make himself happy first. He didn’t realise there was absolutely nothing selfish about that at all.

      And then, as stupid as it may sound, Mark started binging Grey’s Anatomy. The medical drama was a major turning point for the sixteen-year-old (at the time), taught him about how he wanted to help people, how he wanted to make a difference to people’s lives. He remembers sitting down and talking to Johnny about it, about how he felt like he’d found his calling. Sure, if anyone asked him now, he’d tell people that he fell in love with medicine as a young child, always playing doctors with his teddy bears and seeing his mum go to work every day, not that Sandra Oh being the magnificent actress she is, made him want to learn more and more about the field, thus he pulled an all-nighter googling different medical pathways and finding what was right for him – and how.

      Johnny was there for all the big decisions in his life. Johnny was there when Mark didn’t realise you were supposed to ‘come out’ if you were anything but straight (frankly, he strongly believed in the idea that no ones sexuality should be pre-determined and that no one should feel the need to define who they are - like that clip in ‘Love, Simon’ which prompted Jisung, Hyuck, Renjun and Jaemin all telling him to shut up when he went on a rant about how assuming someone’s sexuality is wrong and how coming out shouldn’t just be for the non-heterosexual) and in the midst of his first full-on breakdown over his burgeoning crush on Daniel from year 10 maths, Mark had said ‘he’ around thirty-two times, give or take a few (yes, Johnny had counted just to be sure), and only then had it truly dawned on Johny that this was it, this is the closest Johnny was getting to an ‘I-am-gay-and-this-is-me-coming-out-to-you’ moment. Honestly, it’d made Johnny quite proud - his mother was an avid supporter of the community and they’d grown up completely aware that any and all love was love, nothing wrong with any of it and those who believed otherwise didn’t deserve a lollipop (sue him, he was only eight and that was their mum’s way of describing people who were arseholes without calling them bad names). Johnny was there when Mark, sweating nervously and disgustingly clammy-handed, told them how he wanted to follow in their mothers (actually Meredith Grey’s, not that he was going to tell his mum that) footsteps and become a doctor too. Why he was so nervous, he’ll never really know nor understand.

      Especially not when Johnny picked him up and twirled him around in a hug shouting about how his little brother is going to be a doctor, Johnny always was one for theatrics, their mum on the other hand gave her usual warm-hearted smile, said she’d support him no matter what and wrapped him up in one of her bear-hugs. She always gave the best hugs, they simply felt like home, like no matter what you’d be safe.

      Jisung smiled, too young to really care and didn’t understand why Mark had made some big deal about it – “it’s just a degree, you could buy one online for like a hundred pounds instead”. Yes, Jisung spent too much time on the internet, Mark really didn’t want to know what the majority of his time on there was spent doing. Honestly, Mark had him pegged as some sort of edgy Tumblr teen running an insanely successful blog for a book-turned-tv-or-movie series so the majority of his time was probably devoted to reading (that Mark knew) and watching and then reviewing the episodes. It was somewhat worrying the amount Mark had thought about this, was he a multi-fandom blogger or did he just stick to one? What was he watching? Shadowhunter’s? Harry Potter? Sherlock? So, many, questions. But hey, it wasn’t Marks business to know. If he’d just asked Jisung he’d be aware of the youngers multiple blogs, one dedicated to his love of kpop and idols with dimples, the other dedicated to reviewing and just general chatting and fan theories about his favourite book series turned movie/TV shows, Mark wasn’t as far off as he’d like to believe.

      With everything that was happening with Hyuck, or rather lack thereof, Mark was desperate to feel at least somewhat in control of his life. Desperate to feel like he was doing something that mattered, like he was working toward something. One thing Mark could always rely on is that all of his friends and family, among other things, would describe him as a workaholic. As much as Mark loved to attempt to dispute this, he couldn’t. It was the truth and being the emotionally constipated teenager that he is – what better way to deal with your emotions that not doing so and instead throwing yourself into schoolwork? Mark was a broken human in many ways, in many ways he was just normal. Just like any other teenager feeling like they didn’t have their lives under control, feeling like they had to make life altering and affirming decisions at the age of sixteen or seventeen. It wasn’t fair. It didn’t feel fair at least. It didn’t feel fair that he couldn’t have some cute teenage love story like in the movies, didn’t feel fair that he had to submit his university applications by mid-October when everyone else got to wait until December, didn’t feel fair that everyone else had their soulmates or were finding them left and right but he was stuck.

      It was stupid and selfish but he wanted to feel upset. He wanted to feel like he’d lost something rather than just admitting the plain truth that Donghyuck just didn’t like him back. Not every love story was straight (oh the irony) out of Wattpad and not everyone got their happy ending, at least not yet. So, a very stressed Mark was free to wander mindlessly around his home, mind too occupied with some parallel universe where there’s no such thing as soulmates and everyone possess the ability to fall in love with whomever they wish. Not that that would change much in Mark’s case, but let the guy dream okay? Okay.

      Johnny was a good brother. But Johnny was still his brother at the end of the day.

      A brother who comes home for the weekend unexpectedly and so his seventeen year old brother believes he’s able to be singing his heart out to wildest dreams by Taylor swift, I break from crying over Mcdreamy’s death, with a pot of Ben and Jerrys fish food (yeah he was in full blown sad mode) in hand and the most over-sized hoodie he could get his hands on, actually wearing his glasses for once and well… Mark was a mess, in peace, but Johnny took the initiative of filming Marks current endeavours before making his presence known by snorting obnoxiously and crumpling into a ball (well as close as Johnny could get to folding his over six foot body into something remotely small) on the floor of their kitchen unable to breathe normally for at least ten minutes and unable to look Mark in the eye for the next two hours while keeping a straight face, as every time it resulted in him wheezing again and managing to get out a “Y-you, you listen,” another wheeze, “to Taylor, the Taylor Swift,” another, stupid, wheeze, “like queen of break up songs when you’re sad? Oh, Mark, where did I go wrong with raising you.” Yeah, not the most pleasant of experiences for Mark, his bright red ears clearly displaying his emotions.

       He should be allowed to drown his sorrow in peace, listening to Taylor Swift (and Adele but Johnny didn’t hear his rendition of ‘hello’ so #MarkFirstWin) eating his ice cream and dancing around the kitchen. We’ve all been there and anyone who says they haven’t done some sort of version of this is a down right liar, or just really, really, lucky and hasn’t experienced any form of heartbreak ever.

      Nevertheless, this is the same Johnny who then slaps you so hard on the back that it winds you, and then tells you with the biggest shit-eating grin on his face, “Hey! You know what would be perfect to distract you?” No Johnny, he was taking the Taylor Swift route. Mark just shook his head, his ears tinting red at the memory of Johnny catching him again (yes it was three hours again) and how he would definitely be relaying the message to others. “Well, your uni applications are in, nothing you can do right now to change that. So, I wasn’t going to invite you because I knew you’d say no but now I’m leaving you no choice. As it’s Winwin and Yuta’s birthdays, they’re having a party tonight and you are coming with me.”

       “But-“

      “Yeah, no buts. You’re coming. Yes, everyone will be there – it’s a family affair. Even Jisung is coming for a bit but I’ve already bought him chocolate milk and put it in the fridge at Yuta’s place.”

      “And you’re really going to let me drown my sorrows in alcohol after my birthday party?”

      “Sure, after all, what’s the worst that could happen?”

      Like Mark said, Johnny let you do the dumb shit. He’d help you pick up the pieces later.

   Hyuck. Alcohol. Jungwoo. Alcohol. Yuta. Alcohol. Winwin. Alcohol. Jaehyun. Alcohol. Soulmates. Black-out drunk.