blackberry neximide @blackberryneximide - Tumblr Blog

i don't use this blog much!! i still like whf, and if you want to contact me, please do so @loftwinglullaby

& i appreciate any visitors to my art blog @sunstonespark 🥰

So I decided that I wanted a nicer, more organized way of looking at the stuff I dig out of Poedit, something that isn't so finicky about editing and arrangement as tumblr and reddit are so that I can more easily delineate who's who and what's been removed and and and.

I'll be adding to this as I feel like it, but if you have a request for a particular quest or something, feel free to ask and I will prioritize making its entry.

#wonderful work - thank you veyr much!

sunstonespark

I did what had to be done.

#victoria byng #making it do the rounds! again!!!

inposterumcumgaudio

On a Pedestal

"A statue of me. That's not creepy at all."

People make a lot of this statue in Byng's safehouse and while it is indeed creepy under the circumstances, I think people got the wrong shape of it.

Mostly because I think people are not terribly interested in actually examining Byng's motives to begin with. It's generally assumed that Byng is obsessed with Sally, that he thinks he is in love with her.

Nope! That's Verloc. Or was, anyway.

Byng's relationship with Sally has always been explicitly understood as transactional. There was never any pretense to it. This was not a courtship, it was a mutually beneficial agreement. Manic pixie dream girl shit in exchange for protection from both her ex and the Executive Committee (and if we're being real, Byng probably bankrolled her lab too). The agreement is that Sally is ready to answer when he calls, and out of the way otherwise. She even claims he hasn't visited in weeks when she goes to his office to ask for a Letter of Transit.

So if this statue isn't a shrine to his obsession with Sally, then what the fuck is it?

Let me show you something.

When Byng is left to his own devices to decorate, he tends towards a traditional, stately style with a slight imperialist, Rudyard Kipling bent to it, per his work during British military movements in India. He's utilitarian about it, also per his military background, but he has an aesthetic.

We know this is the way he prefers his living spaces because Victoria, who idolizes her father, also decorates this way. She's more ornate about it, more feminine, and you won't find an elephant foot umbrella stand in her house (she's trying her best not to look foreign or exotic), but all the same basic tastes are there. She swaps her father's military elements for equestrian ones, befitting a proper (and pointedly) English lady, but she's got the same gilt picture frames and leather seating.

But the safehouse isn't decorated this way. Save for his own office space which has a depressing, cobbled-together (utiliatrian?) mid-century modern thing going on...

...Byng has emulated Sally's decor style.

"I wanted it to feel like home," he says.

And maybe you're thinking, okay, but this still looks like a shrine to Sally.

And it does! But you know what?

So does Sally's own house. It's exactly like home! A+, Byng, no notes.

Now I'll grant you Sally may not have been thinking she was designing a shrine to herself in her apartment. Joan Collins has a portrait of herself over her mantle but it was painted by Patrick Nagel and if Patrick Nagel painted me, I'd hang that fucker up over the mantle too. But there is other art in the game. Four giant Sally face masks in the living room instead of any of the many abstract art pieces available in the assets? This was a choice. And if you're looking at Sally's psyche from the outside... well, the self-obsession is what you're going to take away from it.

But still, a statue is a bit much.

So we continue to wonder: what the fuck, Byng?

Byng, specifically because he was not in love with Sally nor blindly projecting his idealizations on her (in fact, there's a few times where it's clear he thinks she's acting like a foolish child and tries to tell her sense), was the one character in the game who understood her best. They're very similar, in fact. They're out for their own and they're both quite mercenary about it. His understanding was not complete, it was shaded with his own biases, but it was closer to the reality of Sally than Arthur's or Verloc's or anyone else's.

And a thing Byng probably pegged about Sally early on - probably exactly during that meeting where Verloc thought she was flirting with Byng and trying to impress him - was that Sally wanted to be appreciated and to get credit for her chemistry skills and not just her looks.

And so he puts a monument to her in the safehouse, a monument that for once acknowledges not just her beauty but also her talent as a chemist. She's the only one who will ever see it, but she's the only one who needs to once the fall of fucking Rome goes down out there. It's not like Byng planned to stay in that safehouse with her fulltime. He had a boat to escape! His office in the safehouse looks like a poorly-coordinated thrift shop because he wasn't planning to be there that much.

This was just the continuation of their previously agreed upon arrangement, that she's ready to entertain when he comes calling, out of sight out of mind when he doesn't.

The statue was for Sally, not him.

ratodemadame

bloody vicky vicky bloody

#victoria byng #i lvoe her so much... :3

ratodemadame

idk just some masks concepts

#oh gorgeous!! love these!! :D

sunstonespark

I am absolute rubbish on the bongos, aren’t I.

#self rb yipee yipeee

sunstonespark

Dearest V,

By the time you read this, I’ll be gone.

#this didn't get enough love so here it come again!!!!!

blackberryneximide

her!!

#everyone's been reblogging a piece of sally art i like Much Less so. this one. again. ur welcome

the-commonplace-book

sally/verloc if DJ doesn't send you that, i would also love haworth/verloc if you're up for it!!

Send me a ship for the ship bingo chart: Harry Haworth / Anton Verloc ( We Happy Few )

This is a god-tier ship. This ship nearly blacks out the board. This fucked up (affectionate) ship needs more attention in this fandom. There’s so much juicy drama! Delicious themes! Delightful disfunction and oh the devotion!

You, dear reader, might not have considered the Haworth/Verloc ship but take that histoplasma mushroom and slam open the doors to your perception. You’re going to be perceiving all kinds of things now.

Verloc was sort of Haworth’s protégé. Not quite a teacher-student relationship, but certain a degree of mentor-mentee within Haworth Labs during the early years of Verloc’s employment. @inposterumcumgaudio’s anthology fic Twenty-Two Short Films About Wellington Wells (can’t recommend it enough!) mentions in Chapter 18: Everything on Evidence the idea of Haworth intentionally training Verloc to potentially step up as head of the Labs some day, but this was certainly not overtly communicated. Or, if it was understood, the timeline wasn’t to Verloc liking considering he went on to conspire with Gen. Byng to take over prematurely, accusing Haworth of madness and locking him up in a “glass cell.” It’s unclear if it was that he really wanted to be in charge, or if it was more genuine concern about Haworth getting into phrenology, or if it was genuine concern about Haworth’s mental well-being personally. Most likely, some blend of all three.

Regardless, it’s the aftermath of this incident especially that intrigues me regarding their relationship. While Verloc could have handed Haworth over to Wellington Health, he chooses to keep him in the Labs. He gives him special treatment compared to the other patients (gets an extra biscuit a day, isn’t put through as rigorous of drug tests, etc.) and ensures that he is well cared for in his little enclosure - at least as well cared for as he can be. He can’t let him go. It's to the point of obsession.

From teacher’s pet to keeping your teacher as a pet, really. There’s an intriguing power-swap there, not to mention something very queer about the whole situation.

I imagine, in the aftermath of We All Fall Down, if Verloc survived, it wouldn’t be his lab notes, or his memorabilia, and certainly not Sally he thinks of and worries about finding. It would be Haworth, down in the basement of the collapsed Labs. Wondering whether or not he too survived, or if at last this song and dance they’ve been wrestling at for years has finally come to the end of it’s time.

Extra note: Haworth is a bit older than Verloc. Verloc is just one of those guys who started greying at age like 25.

#ahhh intresting to see folk talking about this! it's always been a dynamic that's itnerested me

sunstonespark

science gorl.....i care her

#sally boyle #yeehaw drew the girlie again uwu

groovywellie

The Lightbearer DLC turned 4 years old today!!! (???) Has time really gone by that fast?

I remember how damn hyped I was for it, and it certainly did not disappoint. As much as I adore Roger and James and their DLC, I have to say that Lightbearer overall was my favorite❤️‍🔥🎸💊

#oh wow happy birthday to it!! such a good content blob :3

sunstonespark

making a blorb sheet is like.. literally the most self indulgent thing and uhm here it is uwu

#'s got sally. im allowed to rb my own blorb sheet here if it has sally

spacevixenmusic

Unfairly Maligned Games, Vol. 2

Games I loved that got low scores, review bombed, or have some other weird negative stigma attached to them that I think is unfairly earned.

NOTE: I don't believe in giving games a number score or a letter grade. Maybe I'm just bad at criticism or very easy to please, whatever.

We Happy Few [2018]

Originally advertised as some kind of procedurally-generated stealth horror survival game that people kept insisting was "like BioShock" even though there is literally zero correlation or even vague resemblance to BioShock, this game's crowdfunded development process was a long hard rollercoaster ride through concept and scope changes, getting picked up by major studios and publishers, a constantly evolving marketing campaign, and a loud, rude blasting of negative press right before and right after launch due to bad take misinformation and some game-breaking bugs on Day One.

We Happy Few started as a Kickstarter project from Compulsion Games, a small studio known only for their previous game Contrast. In Contrast, you play as a child's silent imaginary friend in a cabaret dancer costume who can phase in and out of backgrounds to become a shadow on the wall and solve platforming puzzles. Working together, you help the child navigate through her emotions as her parents struggle through their own relation-shit in an early 1900s European port town. Seeing as their first game was stylish as hell and widely praised among indie crowds, it's no surprise that a Kickstarter for a new game from that studio became an instant success, so much so that it caught the eye of several big studios (Microsoft and Gearbox Publishing), and it quickly turned into a vastly bigger project with many more hands working on it. The proc-gen element was downtuned and streamlined, and the main emphasis of the game became about survival, stealth, and story.

And let me tell you. In terms of story, this game is phenomenal. The simple premise is that you play through the lives of three people living in 1950s-60s England, under a government that is forcing everyone to take these candy pills called Joy that make you instantly and excessively cheerful, so you can easily forget about all the horrible things that the government wants you to forget ever happened about The War, the Missing Children, and all the people still actively dying of malnutrition from the ongoing Famine and all that. The people are mandated to forget their worries, grin and bear it, pretend everything's just peachy keen, and if you refuse to take that pill, people will notice your un-cheerful behavior and call the police to track you down and beat you senseless. Can't have any Downers in our perfectly lovely happy town, now can we?

The game's art direction features two stark parallels between a dreary English village and early 60s-70s psychedelia (with a hint of A Clockwork Orange for good measure), and a soundtrack influenced by bands of the era, such as The Doors, The Beatles, The Byrds, etc. The dichotomy of looting dilapidated rural homes while avoiding plague-ridden peasants versus the rainbow streets and lava lamp light show sex dens in the cities is truly astonishing. It's a game about, funnily enough, Contrasts between the bright and cheerful life everyone is forced to think they're living, and the grim depressing reality that lies underneath. Many people initially assumed this meant the game had some kind of anti-drug message about not relying on your depression medication cause pills can't fix everything, but it's clear right from the get-go that's nowhere near the case. We Happy Few is a story about revisionist history, the pressure to conform, submission to a corrupt system that might not even know what it's doing, and the very British notion of Keeping Calm and Carrying On as if major atrocities hadn't just been committed in a massive world war.

Gameplay-wise, this is a strange hybrid of survival and stealth, with combat definitely being present, but taking a backseat for the most part. It's much easier to distract enemies than fight them, and many of the characters excel at hiding in plain sight, provided you don't do anything to make people suspicious, like running and jumping around or breaking into houses to raid them for food. You do have options and skill trees though, so the game does allow you to tailor it to your own playstyle to a degree. I had significantly more fun playing it slow and methodical, sneaking up and choking out enemies, and watching NPCs bump into each other awkwardly while quoting ancient English literature for no apparent reason. Taking it slow, reading every scrap of paper and Journal I found, my final playtime was about 50~ hours.

Again though, let me gush about the story for a second. The base game has three full chapters, each of which has you play as a different character with different strengths and game mechanics (including such wildly inventive ideas as the burden of motherhood taking up inventory space if you don't periodically check on the baby you have to leave at home, and carefully maintaining a balanced blood sugar level so you don't collapse?!). Their stories are all deeply connected in ways that aren't immediately apparent but are cool as hell once the pieces of the puzzle come together. Each chapter more or less takes place at the same time, but the events always play out slightly differently, because memory-altering drugs fuck with your sense of reality and make us all question the reliability of each narrator. If that wasn't already cool enough, the game also features three DLC packages where you play as three ADDITIONAL characters, each of whom is also a recognizable face in the main story if you're paying attention. These DLCs add even more neat mechanics and open up the story events even more in and around the main game. They were honestly all an absolute blast to play, especially if you were already as invested in the story as I was. And the subject material goes all over the place, touching on such highly specific topics as 60s science fiction, gay lovers, Beatlemania, trippy drug-induced murder mysteries, the British occupation of India, and plenty more. I can't stress enough what a unique storytelling experience this game has to offer. It really is unlike anything else I've ever played! But alas, we should probably talk about why nobody else seems to be as enthused about the game as I am...

Aside from the huge misunderstanding about the game's message, We Happy Few was bombed with criticism on Day One due to some major bugs that hadn't been ironed out - remember, for a $60 game backed by some big names in the industry, it was still very much an indie passion project from the start, and it's clear it wasn't given the full AAA treatment at all. Several big-name Game Reviewers (a field I detest almost as much as Cartoon Reviewers) ripped into the game for its bugs, and while I can't fault people for being mad at broken quests and at least one full-on softlock, not everyone experienced those bugs, and many of them were ironed out in later patches. It's almost like chasing those Day One reviews and videos are a bad idea for people who want to Enjoy Games. Sadly, first impressions are all that seem to matter anymore in gaming, so those early negative reviews still sting to this day. But people out there will give games like Skyrim a perfect 10/10 despite a significant number of similar bugs (hell, they're almost a charm of the series at this point), so why should an indie game not be given the same graces?

In closing? We Happy Few is a phenomenal story in a completely fresh setting that really doesn't feel like anything else before it. The game has been criticized to hell and back for its early bugs or for "boring" gameplay or whatever the Review outlets chose to report, but to me it stands out as an extremely unique experience in a sea of Lowest Common Denominator games. I'd rather play an imperfect or buggy game with a unique or highly niche premise than yet another polished piece of pristine pop pleasure, and I genuinely think people would enjoy games like We Happy Few if they just lowered their goddamn expectations for once in their lives.