The Tragic Lost Emo Children of 2017

People kept telling me to play Nier Automata, so when the new edition – sorry, NieR:Automata™ Game of the YoRHa Edition – came out I finally quit trying to figure out the Great Shitty Crystal of Giruvegan without a walkthrough and turned off Final Fantasy XII. Games that trap you in long repetitive dungeons with no save points are THE WORST and NO FUN AT ALL; and, as much as I hated that shit back when I was playing Final Fantasy IV on the Super Nintendo, I hate it even more now. (See also: why I quit playing I Am Setsuna.) I might come back to Final Fantasy XII when it comes out on the Switch, but for now I’m done.

I was told to go into Nier Automata without knowing anything or trying to look up spoilers, so here I am. I played for about an hour last night, and so far I’m unimpressed and very, very bored.

The player-character is a sixteen-year-old robot who dresses like it’s Lolita night at the Goth club, and she’s all “emotions are prohibited” because she’s an edgelord. Or edgelady, as she has a boob window and shiny exposed upper thighs (because the game really wants me to want to fuck this sixteen-year-old robot I guess). Despite being named after a pencil, she thinks sixteen-year-old edgelady thoughts like “when do I get to kill the god who created a world where we have to die,” and the lore contained in the menu screen weapon data is excerpted from the same emo LiveJournal.

Goth robot pencil girl has two companions: A sweet boy robot mapmaker who probably has some dark secret or something, and a floating robot murder friend. Sweet robot boy mapmaker (also named after a pencil) is growing on me, but I’m really here for the floating robot murder friend, who is a very cute and helpful little one.

Anyway, the game starts you off in 2D bullet hell, which is probably my second least favorite game genre. You then progress to 3D bullet hell, which is my absolute least favorite game genre. While firing bullets back at enemies by means of your floating robot murder friend, you also have to control Goth robot pencil girl and the game’s camera all at the same time. I am notoriously bad at games, but this literally hurt my hands, and the constant flashing lights and explosions and camera jerks gave me a headache.

This would be fine if it were just an opening sequence, but this series of bullet hell battles leads directly to a long repetitive dungeon with no save points.

I am getting real tired of Square Enix’s shit tbh.

I will keep playing, but only because of peer pressure. Also, I hear that eventually you can talk to the robot enemy characters, which I am very much looking forward to because they are adorable.

Re: The Tragic Lost Emo Children of 2017

But listen, let's be real.

You know I'm 99% likely to be crying over these characters before too much time passes.

One of the nice things about having good friends is that they push you to try games you would never normally play and thereby help you expand your horizons even though they know you hate new things. It took me a long time to find friends who enjoy video games, but these people are collectively one of the greatest sources of joy in my life.

The friend who recommended Doki Doki Literature Club can go to hell, though. They know who they are, and they know what they did.

American Gothic Posthuman Romance

I mentioned earlier that I've had a tab constantly open on my tablet browser, and I think the time has finally come to talk about it.

*deep breath*

I've been reading an epic ongoing Five Nights at Freddy's fanfic series titled Everything Is All Right. I know fuckall about the Five Nights at Freddy's games, but the fic's author, R. Lee Smith, is a prolific and extremely interesting writer who happens to share one of my more arcane interests, interspecies romance. Smith's writing style and subject matter resemble those of Stephen King - and I say this as a fan of Stephen King, if that needs clarification - except if all of King's protagonists were female and also down to fuck monsters. The only book of hers I've read is Cottonwood, but I liked it so much that I'm saving her other books for summer, when I know I'll have time to enjoy and appreciate them.

Smith's work came highly recommended by @corseque on Tumblr, whose taste in fiction I've grown to trust over the past two or three years. Corseque mentioned that this author has been writing fanfic, so I clicked on the link and started reading her story, which is mainly about an OC romancing Bonnie, a rotting animatronic rabbit without a face. People say of writers they admire that they would read anything they wrote, up to and including a shopping list, but I think the real test of how much you like a writer is whether you'd be willing to read their erotic Five Nights at Freddy's fanfiction. For me, regarding R. Lee Smith, I guess that answer is "yes." I'm not sure that this is the sort of thing I could recommend to most people, but it's quite good. Like, really good. I'm taking my sweet time reading the series, but I'm hooked.

By the way, I want to take this opportunity to comment on how amazing fanfiction is. It's so cool that so many fantastic writers put their work up online for free, and that anyone can access it at any time from anywhere. Sometimes I hate fandom, but there is not a day that goes by that I'm not grateful to every single fanfic author on this planet.