now is time for Blog

there's so little december left, thought i'd better get a "fave games from 2024" post in before it was no longer 2024 :p

don't feel like ranking them, and it'd be really hard anyway, so i'll just go alphabetical. decided to include any games i played in 2024, not just those that released this year. going to try to keep it to my top 10 too but uhhh i played SO MANY games this year, and there were so many good ones!

Chants of Sennaar (released 2023)

really loved this one. it's absolutely gorgeous and the gameplay is really unique. it's a retelling of the story of the Tower of Babel, and most of the gameplay revolves around decoding various languages to facilitate speech between the different denizens of the tower you are traversing ever upwards. there are some stealth elements too but the game is really forgiving if u heck up. incredible art design and soundtrack with solid gameplay: there's nothing not to like about Chants tbh. i remember i got so into decoding the languages that i was starting to actually learn them, grammar and characters. like genuinely it was such a cool concept.


The Crimson Diamond (released 2024)

had the unique experience of having the dev for this game show up in chat when i was streaming the demo lol. she's such a sweetheart tho and seemingly didn't mind us continually trying to get Nancy to kiss Jack lmao. (she also added in a reaction in the full version of the game for smelling the food in the kitchen bc we commented on it!! incredibly cool of her tbh.)

but that aside, this is such a fun game. if you ever played a text parser/Sierra adventure game when u were a kid this one will really hit right in the nostalgia, like it is PITCH PERFECT. the pixel art is gorgeous and the soundtrack is fantastic, plus the characters and mystery are so engaging; not just me and lightmod, but chat got really into this one too. The Crimson Diamond was genuinely such a delight and i would love to see more Nancy Maple mysteries in the future! c:


Cryptmaster (released 2024)

played the demo for this one last year i think?? it's in one of the NextFest posts i made here lol. anyway, it was one of the games i was most looking forward to this year and it didn't disappoint in the least! it's incredibly funny, stylistically stunning (LOVE the black & white and character designs), and has gameplay that is both innovative and fun: it's based around typing. all your attacks/abilities are words, and you also level up your characters by recalling memories (via figuring out words that represent those memories). there's a turn-based mode for anyone worried about their typing speed too. OH and also, lest i forget: absolutely fantastic voice acting. (Cryptmaster, my beloved <3 <3 <3) if u like word games (there are SO MANY riddles in this sucker, let me tell u), solid writing, or innovative gameplay this is the game for you!


Death Stranding (released 2019)

god where do i even start? this might be the most video game of all time, and i'm not even kidding. i need to do an entire post about it at some point, but for now: it is a goddamn experience. the story is what i, as someone who hasn't played another Kojima game, imagines to be Peak Kojima. it really Goes Places. the characters are all incredible, the gameplay is fun (tho driving the truck.......u get used to it, that's all i can say), and the soundtrack, GOOD LORD THE SOUNDTRACK. this really is just a game you have to play and experience for yourself. it is, genuinely, so, so good.

thank u for letting me play in ur beautiful world, kojima <3


Judero (released 2024)

there is no way to possibly express the extent of my love for this game. you can both feel and see the love and care that went into it. i remember reading an article about seeing Jack King-Spooner's fingerprints in the clay of the character models and yeah. yeah, that's what i fucking mean. two guys put their all into this game and you feel it and see it and hear it--because the soundtrack is so goddamn perfect too.

like the gameplay is pretty simple: you have a basic attack and then a few special attacks you can purchase with currency throughout the game. there are some challenging bosses but the boss fights themselves are part of the whole. like everything is so well incorporated into the artistic vision, and like...that's what Judero is: the best example i've ever seen of video games as art. i don't just mean the fact that King-Spooner handcrafted and stop-motion animated all the models, but that him and Talha Kaya had a cohesive story and message to convey and they succeeded beautifully. no one needs to know how many times i was fighting back tears on stream over a line an NPC said, but it kept happening.

beautifully written, designed, and scored. everyone needs to play this game.


Mouthwashing (released 2024)

another that i was really looking forward to after playing the demo. i remember i was like champing at the bit to play this bc it came out like right before Helene and we lost power for a week. i think it was a wednesday we got power back, and like an hour or so later i was OKAY WE'RE STREAMING MOUTHWASHING RIGHT TF NOW.

it's unfortunate that it's now mostly known for how fucking wretched the fandom is bc it's SUCH a good game. just a horrible meditation on the monstrousness of our capitalist hell realm superimposed over a sci-fi setting and some of the most well-written characters i've seen in a game. "i have to believe that our worst moments don't make us monsters" and "i hope this hurts" percolating there in the back of my head since i played it. plus there's just some great horror moments and haunting visuals. put this one down in the "games as art" category too tbh.


Manny's (released 2023)

i watched Sark play a bit of this last year i think. it looked just the right amount of weird that i thought chat would love it, and THEY DID but i loved it a lot too. another solo dev game, and he's working on the sequel now too, which is rad. hard to describe this one beyond: weird fast food horror. the fishing mini-game nearly drove us all insane but I DID IT I 100%'D IT!!! the ending was also so good; just fun on its own but it was extra fun to experience with everyone c: really nice balance between horror and humor, and the dev's continued by making lil yaoi vids of his own characters on youtube, which i find personally very endearing.


SOMA (released 2015)

eternally grateful to Rachel for forcing me to play this game lol. this was the one where i was around 85% done and was just like "it's really an indictment on the state of vibeo graems that i'm so surprised at how good the writing is" lmfao. it really is very good tho. also like SO INCREDIBLY right up my alley. gameplay is excellent, setting and ambiance are excellent, voice acting excellent, character writing excellent...i could keep going. it's one of the best horror games i've ever played, with one of the best narratives i've seen in a game as well. (there's also a mode u can play on that turns off enemies so if u just want to experience the story u can!) currently pondering how i can work this one into my dissertation lol.


Still Wakes the Deep (released 2024)

speaking of well-written narratives: pls see Still Wakes the Deep. another fantastic horror game that centers the story and characters. some genuinely upsetting body horror in this guy too w/some clear influences from Lovecraft and The Thing (also now that i've played it, probably also hugely influenced by SOMA). props to the devs for realizing how genuinely terrifying an oil rig would be for a setting for a horror game. the voice acting in this one is top notch and gameplay is solid (heavy focus on stealth, which i normally hate but didn't mind as much with this one bc the game is pretty forgiving when u fuck up). i read an interview with like...the art director i think?? anyway i remember them saying that they wanted the environment to be the monster/the source of fear, and they did a heckin fantastic job of accomplishing that tbh.

also i personally love that the writer just cooked up a whole brand new poem for the game. that's the kind of shit i am here for.


Stranded: Alien Dawn (released 2023)

played a lot of survival/crafting games this year but this might be my fave of all of them, if only bc there's that lil smidge of The Sims that u get with managing ur people. wish there was more variation with the planets, but i had SO MUCH fun with this game; it was such a nice surprise considering i'd heard absolutely nothing about it, so it was kinda a blind buy. really don't regret it tho, if ur a fan of the survival/crafting genre you really need to try Stranded.

( and now some honorable mentions bc it really was such a great year for games!!! )

and that's it! my fave 10 (plus change) games i played in 2024! incredible year for gaming, folks.

finally remembered to post this here lol. the bulk of this wip was written earlier this year & then i added an additional scene for like...i think it was day three of inktober? prompt was 'boots.' the original inspo for this AU is...not something anyone will ever guess lmao, not unless i were to tell you outright; there's really not much in common beyond uhhhh swords.

the fun thing about writing this one has been the worldbuilding, which i honestly wasn't expecting to have to do much of and then i ended up 1) writing poetry and 2) coming up with a folktale on the fly. was having fun with it tho :p

quick warning for: gross bugs (parasites)

( The caravan stopped for the night some ways past the walled city of Eversdin )

been thinking about fic summaries of all things recently. it's largely due to actually having to sit down and write some for the big bangs i was participating in, when usually i can just default to an excerpt from the fic itself. i do think that writing (interesting) summaries is something that does take real skill, as evidenced by the scores of ppl disclaiming that they're bad at writing them, but my own preferences as a reader and as a writer are for excerpts over summary, so i wanted to sit with that a bit.

as a reader, it comes down to fic reading habits: i don't tend to read as much fic as i used to, and when i do read fic it ends up mostly being 1) the same handful of fic i reread all the time or 2) new fic by a small handful of authors whose writing i know i enjoy. i very rarely browse for fic anymore, but when i do i'm looking at both tags and what's been put in the summary, so a lot of the time an actual summary feels superfluous to me if the fic's got enough tags. which is why i'd rather see an excerpt there: i want to know what the writing is going to be like more than i need to see a summary.

there's also the unfortunate fact that a lot of the time i will skip over a fic completely if the summary's bad (bad is of course subjective: ppl leaning too hard into the bad-at-summaries disclaimer--even if their summaries are fine--will turn me off a fic just as much as a summary that's just poorly written).

this gets carried over to when i'm posting fic too: i don't like writing summaries, but i also just kind of think it's more useful to have an excerpt (i mean it's effectively just a quick little writing sample). every time there are posts i see going around about this it always seems to tend towards the opposite direction, with a majority of people preferring summaries, or outright saying they don't read fic with excerpts in place of summaries. which has ALWAYS struck me as bizarre, especially bc the reasoning is "how do i even know what your fic is about?" like idk look at the tags??? you can get a pretty damn good idea from those i think, like unless people are tagging characters/relationships and that's it, there's usually a lot of information there.

i mean i'm also kind of perpetually being shown that people just don't fucking read tags tho, so maybe i'm expecting too much there lmao.

but even without tags, most excerpts are chosen to pique the interest of the reader, like this one, from my all time favorite fic:

"This is like some kinda bad dream," Ironhide said aloud.

"No," Cyclonus said, low and harsh. "But it will be."

gonna get to the tags in a sec, but even if you don't read them, i'd think that this is still enough to get people interested: it's dramatic af. what are they talking about? who knows! but i'm certainly intrigued!

and if you DO add the tags in (and there aren't even that many of them!!) you get a clearer picture of WHY this is so dramatic: Parallel Universes & Time Travel are two of a bare handful (there's also "Crying on the Moon," which has got to be somewhere in the top three best fic tags i've ever seen). i feel that this is really enough to give a clear picture about what to expect from the fic, especially if you're also taking pairing and character tags into consideration. like you may not have a detailed roadmap of where the fic is going, but personally after i have eyed the Time Travel tag and read that excerpt i am already Locked In. (my time travel/time loop bias! it's showing!!!)

anyway, all of this is really just to say that i prefer excerpts over summaries and personally think they're more effective, at least when it comes to getting me to read a fic. :p it's def going to come down to personal preference regardless, and i am now sort of curious what the ratio of summary to excerpt is in the fics in my bookmarks, but that's an exploration for another day i think lol. gotta get back to work!

(unfortunately now i just want to reread the fic i linked instead of continuing to work on things orz)

ngl i don't think you could find a fic bingo that is more up my alley lmao

( table here )

for my own reference

had a vet appt for Frankie early this morning, which meant only getting 2hrs of sleep due to how late i typically go to bed. anyway did eventually crash a few hrs back & took a lil nap, but displeased with the reminder that i can't get away with functioning on that little sleep anymore. genuinely the one thing that's forcing me to admit my age, which is another reason to be all >:( about it lmao.

anyway, literally one of the most toxic things to see as a 'positive' but i was genuinely proud of how well i could function on such little sleep. did that shit for ten years and it was a nasty fuckign situation that no one should have to put up with & should seriously question if they find themselves in (heads up: no job is worth spending half a year averaging 3hrs of sleep a night) but like at the same time i still do find myself using that as the measurement for how much effort/energy i'm putting into something, as if it's at all sustainable (it isn't; i nearly killed myself doing it when i was in my 20s, let alone trying to now).

it's one thing to intellectually know 'depriving yourself of sleep is bad and is in no way indicative of how much you care/how hard you can work/how much more serious you are than everyone else' and another to internalize it tho, especially having spent 10+ years living like that. even harder when people have told you things like how "strong" you are for having done so/being able to do so.

so i'm trying to rewire that part of my brain, but it's very difficult. not just bc of the mindset but bc it is distressing to have a "i used to be able to do this and now i can't" moment about anything, even if it's "function while distressingly sleep deprived" lol.

anyway, griping aside, some actual good news: Frankie's doing okay. we're still in the palliative care stage, but the prednisone is so far still working & the vet said the pica was a normal side effect of it, which is exactly what i'd assumed but always nice to have the confirmation. important thing is that she's still doing so much better than she was in March. she'll go back in two months for another check-up but a big HECK YEAH for now.

been busy today; out running errands for most of it. decided to finally chop off around 5 inches of hair bc it's too damn hot. also spent a little time tonight trying to work on the fic i'm doing for wipbigbang and am happy with the progress i made. it was all outlining but it was pretty necessary & will likely make my life easier going forward.

picked a fic i originally started writing around 2017, and it's one that, every time i come back to it, i still find really engaging. past me even left notes for once (!!!!) so i'm going into it with a much more solid idea of what i initially intended.

did fight with myself a little about the ending tho. it's one of those things where i feel like it'd be more narratively satisfying to go with a downer ending/bad end, but i simultaneously get too sad thinking about it lmao. i was having this problem with a wintersberg fic i've got plotted out too, but with that one i just decided i'd write two endings: the one i originally intended which is more narratively satisfying, and then a second one that isn't fucking horrible. could upload each as a diff chapter after the point of divergence. don't think i want to do that with this one tho.

i do think i managed to come up with something that will work for the narrative & themes without also being soul-crushing; will just need to get it written and see how it feels. was hoping i'd have a chance to actually write today too but bc i was doing the usual detailed outline thing it took uhhh...A While. at least i have like all of the dialogue for the rest of the fic now lol.

anyway, i am excited about working on it some more! liiiitle bit worried about getting anything substantial done before snippets are due, but i also have 5k+ words written already, so it's not like i'll be without something to submit, just wanted to be able to include more dynamic scenes :/

also!!! have an idea for a short (for me anyway, which isn't saying much) fic i want to do for nivansfield week. just gonna say i was going thru some The Shape of Water screenshots for icons for the recent monthlyinspo theme and felt Inspired. fingers crossed i'm actually able to write this week lol.

way too tired and in too much pain currently to be engaging with this on tumblr so i'm tackling it here.

re: this post and Heisenberg's purported Nazi paraphernalia

the main thing to note here if this person really wanted to push for this argument is that Sturm is lifted directly from the film Frankenstein's Army where he's a Nazi creation. and by lifted i mean that literally, Capcom just straight up plagiarized the film.

they do that a lot, actually. in fact Heisenberg's entire design is stolen from the short film Rakka.

there's also the big obvious Nazi connections the real life Karl Heisenberg had. like genuinely you can draw these connections without pretending to be fucking sherlock holmes (lol).

now, i haven't looked into the tank and weaponry you see around his factory, but i HAVE looked into the plane turbine that's attached to Sturm and it's an American sea plane, so like 100% not going to put any stock into even the barest scrap of anything from the environment being attributable to character building (in a RE game? hah!), but i saw other ppl replying to this person saying that there's a mixture of German and American weaponry in and around the factory, and i'm willing to take them at their word considering that Capcom's design philosophy when it comes to the RE games is "does this spark joy? does it rock? is it capital C Cool?"

like friend, it's really not that deep. if they wanted Heisenberg to be a Nazi he would OVERTLY be a Nazi. i think what's more likely is that they're picking up influences from things that do lean heavily in that direction (once again: Sturm) and just dumping them wholesale into the game bc that's just how the RE devs make these games. typically tho it's just B movie action schlock.

i'm about to get real mean now and definitely lose the Nice Award for this week tho so let's put the rest behind a cut.

( i'd blame the meanness on the pain but lbr i do have Hater Tendencies )

anyway, all this to say that i think the fixation OP has on the flashlight is based in some sort of paranoia & that if they really wanted to prove Heisenberg was a Nazi they honestly could have done a much better job. this shit is like when my students would try to cheat but they'd be REALLY BAD at it so i just ended up more insulted than anything.

combo of busy + misunderstood how long i'd have to watch the films ended with me not being able to catch very many at all, which i am a little sad about, however i did really enjoy the films i managed to watch! gonna ramble a bit about it c:

spoilers throughout.

( more here )

saw someone else using a list like this for reference for writing/prompt purposes and thought it was a great idea and figured i'd put one together myself c:

NOTE: i'm always good to write gen for any of the following fandoms. i can also be convinced to write for rarepairs pretty easily, even if it's one i haven't listed.

( list here! )

i'll try to keep this sucker updated as stuff becomes more/less relevant. i'm also open to trying stuff i haven't written before, so if there's something particular you'd like to prompt pls feel free. if i don't think i can do whatever fandom/ship/character it is justice i'll say so, no biggie c: