I understand that Apple may need to wait until all of the time zones in the world have finished the month before they publish this data.
I sort of understand why it may take a few more hours to release things so as not to crash a server or whatever.
I do not understand why it takes days and days for me to see the five artists, albums and songs I have played the most during a month.
Why do my smart playlists on my iPhone update automatically (Top 25 Most Played, Recently Played…) but it takes days for the same data from the same source to appear on the Apple Replay website?
It has annoyed my every month since this started.

Hi everyone, I'm trying to play pubg in China through biubiu and 奇游手游加速器. For the past 7 months I can play pubg with no problem. Login with wechat or facebook. Somehow, I noticed since 4 weeks ago, I started to not be able to login with facebook. So I change to wechat. And for some times it is working. I think the past 2 weeks has been really troublesome. Everytime I tried to login with wechat or facebook I keep on getting the above error and even at this very moment right now.
I've tried to use other vpn like simplelink or shadowrocket, it pass through but the ping is high(close to 200). Hence thats why I am using the above paid app. Also, I can login using biubiu in my iOS phone but not on my android phone. Oh yeah also, on my iOS phone I'm using wifi(shared from the 5G network of my android phone) instead of phone data.
I've been using my android phone to play for the past 7 months and i have gotten really good with it.
The customer support for both biubiu and 奇游手游加速器 is sucks. They only put like an automatic robot there and I've tried countless times following the solution they suggested, like turning off battery optimize for this app and allowing the app to run in the background. Somehow, sometimes it let me through, sometimes it doesnt.
Huhhh I'm so pissed with this problem. I tried searching if anyone have the same problem here in reddit but seems like there's no solution to then as sell. Perhaps I should yry any other app ? Please help
Arghh I'm so pissed !

I’ve spent so much time and money trying to fix the production on my music and still struggling years later. The latest Logic Pro update hasn’t helped (I can’t figure out what’s me and what’s a bug half the time) and when I go to producers to fix individual songs, I lose control over the music whilst also feelings bad for spending a lot of money on what’s essentially my own vanity project.
Is there any kind of arrangement where you can work with a producer in a joint capacity, kind of like you do in a band, and simply share credit for the work, where one of you writes the songs and the other one produces them?
I’m sorry if this is a stupid question. I’m super deflated and don’t know how to get out of this hole.

Hello everyone!
I am working on a lacrosse management/simulation game and am trying to gauge how much interest there would be in the community.
The game is early in the development, I started working on it yesterday, so there won't be any testing or anything anytime soon so don't get too excited. But I am basing the game on an open source hockey simulation game so there is a working product, everything is just labeled in hockey terms still, haha
What are some features you would want or need included in that style game to be interested in playing it?
Are any of you interested in play testing the game for me and helping find bugs and give me feedback and suggestions?
I played lacrosse for 4 years in high school so I know a lot of the basics, I just don't know much about college or pro lacrosse beyond what I have researched in anticipation of this project.
Thanks for your time! Looking forward to hearing from some of you and generating some interest in the project.

I discovered Rezi on my last job search in 2021/22. Working on my resume is an activity that is always difficult to start but Rezi made that step feel so much less daunting. It’s not just words on a page, you walk through refining each piece and get those helpful realtime tips as you go. It found plenty of opportunities to improve that first resume and the end product was so much better.
I was at a job that I was miserable at, but wanted to get into a different industry which was really difficult to do since my experience was not an exact match to what other industries were looking for.
From that point I committed to using Rezi, got a pro license and started applying to at least one job a day. I got into a great rhythm with Rezi and would always copy/paste the job description to check keywords and spent a few minutes changing some phrasing to hit more keywords and to get to a resume score of 100.
I also used the AI cover letter tool to get a really good cover letter started which I ended up using with minor adjustments throughout my job search. I still did some rewriting and adjusting myself but much like the resume, it took away that blank page feeling by giving me a structure and it made it approachable.
Ultimately I kept up this effort for a few months. One resume a day every day for over 100 days. That’s over 100 tailored resumes sent out and the interviews started rolling in.
Getting more interviews proved I was getting past the ATS automated resume screener and actually making it to a person which was my main goal. The person may not hire me but I needed to make sure my resume was at least being looked at and now it was. I kept my foot on the gas and continued applying every day until I got an offer.
In the end I got 3 solid offers which helped me negotiate and ended up at the perfect fit job at a Fortune 500 company in a completely different industry than I had ever worked. I fully believe that I got this job because of my vastly improved and tailored resume from using Rezi which got my resume to the hiring manager. If I had continued sending my old resume I honestly don’t think I would have most of the interviews I did.
I recommend this to everyone I know and just used it again yesterday to give my resume a refresh. What I love is that this helps you represent yourself the best way possible and gives you a leg up getting through the automated resume screener at companies. It feels like having a resume coach walking through each resume with you and suggesting small tweaks to give you a better chance. You never have a chance if your resume never makes it to a person. With Rezi you can put the best version of yourself on paper and get through that screener to get more interviews. And with more interviews you’ll get better at those too and have more and more chances to get the offer.

So, I ordered my Odin Pro 2 on May 22nd. It started shipping the next day, everything went super smooth till it hit Jax, FL. It's been On Hold there for days now and CS can only tell me what's on my own screen.
Delivery date was yesterday 5/31 "by 9pm" and here we are on June 1st. The tracking has updated now to just show a number at the top "103" I tried calling the Jax service center but could never get to a human, and now it says they are closed for the weekend. I'm assuming it's the front CS where you can drop/pick up packages and not the actual distribution but that doesn't help since there's no other numbers to try.
I'm not sure if this will upload the screenshot too, but could anyone aside from the shipping company somehow shed some light on what might be happening or to expect?

(17f, south asian)
I'll be graduating next year, so I've started looking into colleges and stuff, and I was looking into places at Australia/UK where I could apply, but when I asked my mom, she told me I can't apply abroad, and that I have to find a local college near home.
I was confused as they sent my brother to the US where he's studying right now, so why not me? When I asked them, they said it's because i'm a girl, because they don't have the money right now, "because I said so", and because apparently I'm not 'mature' enough to handle myself. (said the same ppl who sent me to boarding when i was a kid)
I already knew my bro was the golden child and I was the black sheep, but I didn't know it was this bad. They're constantly comparing me to him (and like everyone else) these days.
Additionally, because I'm a girl, they now apparently expect me to "replace" my mom in what she does around the house. Recently she got "very sick" (it was a few rashes from an allergy) and "couldn't do anything" so my dad just automatically expected me to cook and clean everything?? And when I obviously didn't do any of it (cus I didn't even know I was expected to; I helped out in my little ways, but nothing big). My dad was at the stove "cooking" (reheating tea) and was sweating sooooooooo much from the amount of time he was in the kitchen. When I walked in, he started berating me for not helping around, and (in his words)
"we care for you guys all the time when you're sick, and even when you're not sick, we care and provide for you allllll the time, but you won't do the same for us? ur mom is so sick, and you're not in the kitchen cooking and cleaning the dishes and (everything else)"
idk i'm just done w them
PS: about her "sickness", anytime I've had stuff that's literally so much worse, I'm basically told to shut up and suck it up and get on with my work, but if anyone else (dad/mom/bro) so much as stub their toe, the others should drop everything and tend to their every need (obvi that's an exaggeration, maybe not a stubbed toe, but like a paper cut/small bleed)

May got out to a lightning start for me, continuing the torrid April pace for a while before cooling off a bit in the back end of the month. That's partially by design, as I jumped into a pair of longer games (one enormously so) which I won't finish until deeper into June, but I've also noticed I'm slowly bleeding gaming time from my evenings. As my kids get incrementally older and the days grow incrementally longer entering summer, an hour that would previously be my own is now deferred to them, and that adds up over the course of an entire month.
Not that I'd trade my kids, you understand.
(Games are presented in chronological completion order; the numerical indicator represents the YTD count.)
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#27 - Contra: Hard Corps - GEN - 8/10 (Great)
It's been fascinating to watch the Contra series evolve over time, and Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis is no different. With no Mode 7 (the SNES' proprietary isometric viewpoint mode) available on the system, necessarily some of the top down content from Contra III would need to be altered or removed, and that begged the question of what would take its place: after all, a return to basic sidescrolling action might feel like a big step down, and we can't have that. So I think I expected Hard Corps to throw in a new wrinkle to keep the formula a bit more fresh. What I did not expect was for it to make three enormous changes.
For one, Hard Corps has four different characters to choose from, and each is actually unique. It's not just the look - where else can you play a cybernetic wolfman? - but they've got different sizes and hurtboxes as well. And while each starts with the same basic low power machine gun, each has a completely different loadout of possible weapon upgrades, ensuring that all four play very differently from one another outside of the fundamentals of movement. To that end, the two weapon toggle of Contra III is expanded in Hard Corps, allowing you to hold all four of your upgraded weapons simultaneously and switch between them at will, which adds a new layer of depth and strategy to the action. Building upon this notion of enhanced player choice even further, the second big change is that the game has branching paths. After the first stage you make a choice that determines where you head for the second level, and then later on you make another choice that creates further divergence, such that the game has four main endings (and a secret fifth!), all with their own dedicated unique stages. It's for that reason possibly the most replayable game so far in the franchise; I myself did a run through of each ending using a different character per run to get a feel for them all.
This leads to the final big change, which is the only one I don't regard a resounding success: the entire game is basically a boss rush. Let's zero in on the main path that I followed on my primary playthrough and add up all mini-bosses and full boss phases. What number might you expect that to come out as? A dozen or so? Well, sorry about your naiveté, but the answer is 43: it's bosses all the way down. This is a MUCH more mentally taxing load than previous Contra games where you could kind of skate through the non-boss sections with good fundamentals. And that's just one of four possible paths through the game! It's absurd! It's also way more fun than it sounds it would be from the description, but I've heard people say Hard Corps is the toughest Contra game and now I know why. I do miss just running and gunning and dropping dudes in one hit before a thrilling finale; it's hard to be properly wowed by a boss fight when that's all you ever see. But nevertheless Contra: Hard Corps is lives up to the legacy of greatness the franchise had up until that point established...just steel yourself mentally for the extensive memorization it requires of you.
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#28 - Ancient Enemy - PC - 5.5/10 (Semi-Competent)
Solitaire is one of those games that nobody really wants to play. It’s a game of convenience and opportunity, only attractive in the absence of something better, which is to say “nearly anything else at all.” Slightly more entertaining are variations on the form, such as Mahjong Solitaire or Free Cell, where certain cards/tiles are locked until the ones above them have been cleared away. These are still just time wasting games for people with nothing else to do, but when presented as a discrete set of challenges there’s a bit more appeal. Do you know they say that every one of the 32,000 numbered games of FreeCell on classic Windows operating systems was supposedly beatable? Did you know a very bored teenage me once decided to see if I could prove it by playing and beating every single unique game of FreeCell in order? I got into the low 30s or so before I questioned what the hell I was doing with my life and wisely moved on.
Well, Ancient Enemy is a game for people with nothing better to do, masquerading as a game that would qualify as "something better to do." It’s an RPG, I guess, but the gameplay revolves entirely around a solitaire variant. You have a deck of “stock cards” numbered 0-9 and start each encounter (“hand”) by flipping the top one. Then on the board you have to collect a card with a number adjacent to the one you’re displaying - 0 serving as a bridge between 1 and 9. Getting a card reveals any card trapped immediately below it and enables that card to be collected as well. If you can’t make a move, you can flip a new stock card over to get a random new number until your deck runs out. Some levels are simple puzzles in this vein, trying to clear all the cards from the board. Most encounters though are battles, where you do the exact same thing, except the color of the card you collect enables you to attack, defend, or cast a spell. So it’s turn-based combat, except each turn is you basically clearing as many cards as you can from the board to juice up your attack or bolster your defense, and that’s about it.
Now, at first, this is actually way more fun than I’m making it sound. I mean, I like solitaire type games for what they are, and the extra mechanics definitely do enrich the experience. You get consumable wild cards, battle boards have bonus cards with instant benefits, you get powers that manipulate the board, new types of cards appear, all good stuff. The problem is that the game completely runs out of these new ideas about a quarter of the way through, at which point you’re just going through the motions until the end, accompanied by a complete nothing of a story that I was confident I had figured out, only to find that the ending was somehow worse than the cliche I’d been anticipating. Thus, the game sadly settled into that exact same niche of games it was supposed to improve upon and supplant. Which I suppose is ok…if you’ve got nothing better to do.
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#29 - Snakebird Primer - PC - 7/10 (Good)
I follow a general rule of always playing game franchises in order, but Snakebird Primer is a unique case wherein the developers of the original Snakebird decided that it was too off-putting to new players, and so they made a sequel that they explicitly wanted newcomers to play first. A "primer" in truth to ease you into the overall Snakebird challenge, as it were. So when I decided to check out Snakebird, I thought all right: just this once I'll do it your way.
So how does Snakebird Primer shake out? Well...it's fine. It's a jaunty kind of puzzle game, with bright colors, friendly art and music, and general good vibes. In each stage you control one or more segmented "snakebirds" and have to get them all to the rainbow portal to complete the level. Sometimes you need to eat fruit to open the portal as well, but that's the entire game in a nutshell. It's a very simple concept, complicated only by the fact that a snakebird that has no body segments touching the ground will fall, and so each stage is a kind of pathing challenge, tasking you to figure out the right order of operations to reach the end. The levels are very well paced and designed if you just go in order: there aren't any hand-holdy tutorials, but new ideas are introduced organically at various intervals, and the challenge always feels reasonable, especially because you can undo any number of moves at will, like stepping through code to find an error.
There is, however, a significant difficulty spike for the last couple levels, which is pretty jarring. And when you add to that the fact that the designer of Baba Is You said he built a lot of his design philosophy around the original Snakebird, I've got to admit I'm a lot less keen on checking that one out. It's in that same realm of "enter these six dozen commands in precisely the right order" that made Baba Is You eventually feel more tedious and frustrating to me than anything else, so I think for now I'm happy to have just played the "lite" version instead.
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#30 - It Takes Two - PS4 - 8.5/10 (Excellent)
When trying to write down a genre for It Takes Two in my tracking spreadsheet, I wanted to put "Yes". It's as though the developers wanted to make a bunch of different kinds of games and, rather than accepting any limitations (self-imposed or otherwise), they just found a way to do it all at once. It Takes Two is a platformer. It's a third-person shooter. It's a puzzle game. It's a rhythm game. It's a racing game. It's a stealth game. It's a boss battling action adventure. It's a minigame collection. It's a romantic comedy. It's an exploration playground. One minute you're flying around on a jetpack chucking Captain America shields at devils and the next you're literally playing a timed game of chess. None of the things that It Takes Two does would be characterized as masterpiece forms of their respective genres, but that's not the point. There's sufficient depth and development of each mechanic that it never feels like a lazy tack-on to check a box - and that in itself is beyond impressive - but it's the sheer number of different ideas tossed into this package that make it truly special.
It's hard for me to even review this game, frankly. Part of that is because I feel a strong bias towards the game for the audaciousness of what it tries to achieve, and for the way it inspires me to keep stretching myself in new ways however I can. But it's also hard because I don't remember the whole thing. It Takes Two is both fresh in memory, having just finished it, and yet far away and mingled in my mind with similar bits of similar other adventures (Tearaway foremost among them). Why is that? Well, I first booted up It Takes Two in May of 2022 as a co-op experience to share with my wife - quite fitting, as it turns out, given the nature of the game's plot of trying to reconcile an embattled couple. We'd only play in smaller bursts of 1-2 hours at a time, but every session we played it felt like we were playing a new, different game. Music to my ears, but much harder on my gaming-challenged wife, who took longer to adjust to each mechanical shift. Pretty soon we were playing less and less often, even as I was playing a game like Tearaway early on that occupied some similar design space in my head. Soon we stopped playing at all. When I tried to suggest resuming this title over the past year, I was repeatedly rebuffed until finally a month ago I managed to wear her down enough that we picked it up again for about an hour a week. So it is that the first half of the game is fuzzy and nebulous to me, even as I recall that I loved playing, whereas the back half is much fresher, and it's nigh impossible for me to separate my wife's frequent frustrations from my own experience - especially since I've been playing on a controller experiencing heavy stick drift, so managing the camera was a nightmare through no fault of the game's.
All that said, how could I not recommend this game? It's best played with two experienced gamers, but the story only fully lands if you play as a couple, so there's a bit of potential for a disconnect there, as I experienced. It's not a perfect game. But it is an incredibly ambitious one that had me routinely grinning from ear to ear, despite the grumblings on the couch next to me. When I pointed out to my wife that we finished the game in May 2024, almost to the day when we started back in '22, she said "They should've called it It Takes Two Years." We're both glad it's over, but I think for very different reasons.
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#31 - Rogue Legacy 2 - PS5 - 7/10 (Good)
Some game sequels try to really shake things up and try something different from the one before. Final Fantasy is probably the biggest and most obvious example of this, but you can also see it in virtually every Super Mario Bros. game, in the Castlevania series, and the list goes on extensively from there. On the other hand, some game sequels treat their predecessors like rough drafts to be perfected. With these, the idea is to take the vision for the previous game, use the increase in time/budget/developer expertise now available, and try to execute on it more completely than was possible before. When a game like this is successful, there becomes almost zero reason to ever play the original game (other than possibly its story), because the new version has replaced it entirely as the definitive experience.
Rogue Legacy 2 is one of these latter types of games. Everything from the first game is pretty much still there (bosses excepted): enemies, basic combat and room design, character classes, traits, progression, etc. It immediately feels like "Hey, I've played this before," yet a cursory look reveals a huge wealth of additional content over the first game. Classes are better differentiated, you get new weapons, more spells, special abilities, new items, new upgrades, new explorable regions, new mechanics, new new new. It truly is a total replacement for Rogue Legacy 1 in this regard, a "go ahead and uninstall that thing forever because we've got it all right here and then some" type of mission statement. I was amazed at how I kept finding ever more avenues of progression and discovery, even many hours into the game, In fact, I never did manage to play as every class, and each class has a variant form as well, most of which I didn't even unlock. It's overflowing with stuff.
And I think that's why it didn't work quite as well for me as the first game: it's all too much. Now there are four different types of currency, all acquired in different ways, all for different upgrade paths. You're always competing with yourself on what to level up between runs because there are too many choices and all of them seem pretty good, but as you're finding your early groove the game throws a big wrench in there: labor costs. While each upgrade has a set gold cost that increases as you level it up, early on the game adds a universal tax mechanic to the entire upgrade tree, making it increasingly prohibitive to spend your money on stuff, and it feels awful. Rogue Legacy 1 had a similar system where each upgrade cost 10g more than the previous, but in the sequel these escalate far more rapidly, to the point where you'll complete a huge run and still feel like you can only afford one or two upgrades that barely move the needle. It's a pure inflationary grinding system meant to pad playtime, and I'm not about that. I played RL1 through multiple New Game + levels, but I was thrilled to beat RL2's final boss and move on because the economy is so frustrating. Other than that though, it's got quite a lot going for it.
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#32 - Undertale - PS4 - 7/10 (Good)
When is some information too much information? Undertale is notorious for its rabid fan community insisting that there is only one "right" way to play the game, and so if you've ever heard of Undertale there's a good chance you already know what that preferred method is: pacifism. Undertale takes a unique approach to the JRPG in two primary ways: first, that defending against enemy attacks is an active system pretty much akin to dodging in a bullet hell game, and second that you almost never actually need to choose the "Fight" command from the battle menu in order to succeed in an encounter. The argument from the community is that you must play in this fully pacifist manner, largely because of a design decision that thoroughly punishes players who do not, only revealed after the game's conclusion. Thus, these players are "helping" curious newcomers by saving them from falling victim to a fairly vindictive design choice that would create a lot of frustration.
The problem with that approach is that Undertale makes it abundantly clear from the outset that you have the option for these alternative combat approaches, trains you on how to use them, and then gives you a positive feedback loop for choosing that direction with your gameplay. Which means the discourse surrounding this game effectively undermines not only the game's own ability to surprise and educate you, but also the authorial intent of that same design decision, which in context is a conscious player decision to go against the grain and suffer the possible consequences of doing so. In short, I wish I'd never heard of Undertale before I played it, as I'm sure I would've had a much better time.
As it stands, Undertale is still a highly creative take on the genre that, despite an aesthetic I didn't care for and writing that leaned a bit too hard at times into "lol I'm so random" territory for my tastes, still managed to get me invested with some of its characters and even make me laugh aloud at times. I was particularly impressed with that aforementioned approach to combat, as each enemy introduced unique hazards to avoid, so fighting a new monster was far more exciting here than in a standard turn-based RPG where the only meaningful question is "How much damage did this whatever move do to me?" So for those reasons I applaud Undertale. Even still, there's a lot of walking back and forth with no major purpose beyond "it was decided the game should be a little bit inconvenient here," adding some unnecessary tedium to the mix. In short, Undertale's a generally good time, but if you want it to be even better, just pretend you haven't read anything I just said.
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#33 - Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales - PS5 - 7.5/10 (Solid)
2018 was a big year for Miles Morales. In the fall he showed up in the PS4 title Marvel's Spider-Man as a major supporting character, and by the end of the year he was stunning cinema audiences in the fantastic Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as the primary protagonist. It's no surprise then that by 2020, with his brand so hot, Sony and Insomniac Games would cash in with a follow-up title to the hit PS4 game with Miles front and center. And for the most part, the game is what you'd expect it to be from that basic pitch: more of the same from 2018, only focusing on Miles' family, his new home of Harlem and its people, and his path to becoming a fully fledged hero in his own right. That's all fine, but here's the problem: all of it has been done better before, and recently to boot. Miles' story of personal growth and family drama was handled better in the Spider-Verse series, even though MSM:MM wisely walks chooses to walk some different beats along the way. "Superhero of Harlem" was done masterfully by Netflix with the Luke Cage series (the first season, at least) back in 2016, and MSM:MM doesn't even try to address any issues beyond the most surface level. And the "more of the same" gameplay?
Well, admittedly that's still pretty good. Web swinging is as fun as ever to the point that there's an XP challenge to web swing at high speed for a full cumulative hour of real time and I caught myself thinking, "Hmm, maybe..." There are fast travel points that unlock relatively early on, but the joy of traversal feels like the main point of the game, so why would you bother? Miles also gets some new Spidey moves related to his bio-electric powers, and these are really fun and impactful to pull off, such that "more of the same" isn't in this case a damning phrase. And yet, it's also distinctly not "more, but better." In order to emphasize your new powers, the goons you fight (now including women for the first time I can recall ever seeing in a superhero game like this) have upgraded their own abilities as well, which means the simple pleasure of chaining big combos is a bit diminished. Maybe this enemy just blocks all your basic attacks and stops you cold. Maybe this one turns the tables to dodge and counter you. Or maybe you're just constantly surrounded by a flood of dudes with guns and rocket launchers and you feel like you never get a chance to press "punch" without being thoroughly punished.
Now add to that the game's relatively brief length and general lack of meaningful activities compared to its predecessor, as well as its truly awful villains and the ho-hum plot that they service, and you've got a title that's decidedly a step back from what came before. Of course, what came before was excellent, so even a step back still lands you in territory that's quite fun to play around with. My 6-year-old summed it up best when he came downstairs to ask me a question one day and caught me playing: "Whoa...how are you Spider-Man?!" Which is to say that Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a game that really makes you feel like a wannabe Spider-Man who hasn't gotten it all figured out just yet. And I guess that's all right.
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Coming in June:

• I've had less time for PC gaming lately for a couple of different reasons, but I'm expecting that to be a temporary thing, and I don't think I'm in danger of failing to finish Mass Effect 3 by the end of June. I didn't realize the version of the game I had included all the DLC. Nor did I actually know what any of the DLC was. So I was quite a ways into the game and feeling great about my progress when I got suspicious that the section I was playing wasn't actually base game content. I looked it up and found that, in fact, about 90% of what I'd played to date was DLC and I'd barely actually started the base game itself. That explains why the main story was taking a while to get off the ground, at any rate.
• Speaking of getting off the ground, my journey through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom began impatiently a few months after release, but I took an extended break from the game and have now spent pretty much all of May continuing my thorough trek through the game world. I'm well over 200 hours into the game and am only several days away from having explored the entirety of the game's map. At which point I believe I'll finally advance the main quest past its initial stage.
• In my review for Rogue Legacy 2 above I mentioned the Castlevania franchise, which I feel I can speak to as a whole given that I've finished nearly every game in the series to date. Unsurprisingly I felt most drawn to the metroidvania style games, so there was a layer of disappointment in exhausting the last of those to discover. Disappointment that will soon be temporarily eradicated when I boot up Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, produced by that same creative mind.
• And more...

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← Previous	2024	Next →

Welcome back, Elmo is happy to see you again
Same rules as before
The winner qualifies automatically
And all the nominees need have been originally nominated to make it here
Also, just as a reminder, this is not a “top 5 films of 2019” so your favorite might not make it.
And before we start, I want to impress on you that this is a very weird year.

1. Green Book: the reason why the first rule was implemented, so i wouldn’t have an excuse to not put this one on the list
   
2. Roma: got the most nominated of the night, received some surprise nominations and won Best Director handily.
   
3. Blackkklansman: made it into every single ceremony, and while it did miss in actor, it still did get almost all the nominations it was expected to get
   
4. The Favorite: did quite, receiving the nominations in almost all the ceremonies, and also that double supporting actress nomination helps a lot.
   

And now, we come to the last one, i cannot stress enough that this is a very unusual year, so the last one is going to be quite…odd

1. Black Panther: I know, but hear me out, this film was everywhere, and I don't mean just awards wise, it was freaking everywhere, and there was some real enthusiasm for this film to be nominated in Best Picture, in the end, the biggest reason is that SAG ensemble win.

Now, the rest, in order.

1. Vice: this film didn’t get in by process of elimination, the academy definitely liked it, but Reddit would kill me if i didn’t add “The Favorite”, but seriously, it just didn’t make the cut.
   
2. A Star is Born: that Director miss is why this one isn’t here, also seemed to be on a downward trajectory.
   
3. Bohemian Rhapsody: this film did win “Best Drama”… I don’t care.
   

Yeah, this is not my favorite year.

Hello, I'm not so sure how to tag this, or what I'm really expecting from making a post about our situation, but here goes anyway.
A couple updates since my first post: It's been a couple weeks, AP has been blocked sometime ago and NC has been enforced, but not soon enough, I'm aware. I deeply regret everything I've done. BP has said they're done with the relationship, but they're not finished with me yet. We've talked almost every day about the affair, how they feel about it, what they expect from me and what they're angered by.
I understand they feel that I'm not doing enough at all, and they don't like that I keep proposing IC (for either of us) as it makes it seem like I'm simply trying to run away from the consequences of my actions. They maintain that I don't need it, it won't help, it shouldn't be the point of all of this. I'm still unsure if holding off on therapy/IC for any longer is the "right" thing to do, I might appreciate some input on this.
Some more details I'm pretty hesitant to share, but I really am starting to feel hopeless about a lot of things and unsure of how to proceed from here. In the initial week after DDay, they tried to keep me starving. To be fair, this behavior (irrational, pointless) was started by me, the first few times. I was just that truly desperate to prove to them that I feel terrible about everything. When they encouraged it, however, and a few days would pass where I hadn't eaten anything, I realized that self-harm wasn't going to help us get anywhere stable. So I quit starving and told BP I'll eat when I need to. BP wasn't happy and tells me how selfish I really am to still try to preserve myself this way. They've also tried to make me go NC with everyone else in my life, which made me feel incredibly isolated. I honored this until a few days ago where I told them I won't be doing it anymore along with the starving, because it's become incredibly difficult for me to not speak to anyone else but BP.
Another thing that's happened is constant name-calling. At first I was very willing to sit and take the brunt of their anger, as a lot of forums and subs about infidelity suggest in the early stages of R. It hurt, a lot, especially since a lot of my insecurities as a person has come back into the light after I've cheated. I'm still willing to listen to them talk about it, though.
I know what I've done is wrong, and I don't want to deny them healthy outlets for their pain, and I know I deserve to be called out on everything I've done, but I've started to feel that certain lines had to be drawn about the name-calling and the way they've been speaking to me lately. When I brought it up, BP dismissed it and said I'm loving myself too much again, my ego takes the main stage once more. I didn't mean for it to come off that way, but I know that anything I'll say even in defense of myself will be suspect from now on. And it's all my fault. I'm starting to doubt a lot of what I feel and think and want recently.
BP has also been lashing out at me and their family (they live with them) but refuses to call it lashing out. This is one of the things that worry me the most. I've witnessed them destroy their siblings' belongings, throw objects and break things in their home, and have constant screaming arguments with family members. BP blames me and won't hear anything about their behavior.
I'm starting to believe that R isn't a possibility, and while BP is "done" with the relationship, I feel that I can't simply leave, because they've made explicit threats against me, my friends and coworkers, and they could very well put a lot of people at risk should they follow through on these threats. I try to argue against it, and tell them that I would have still wanted to stay and help them recover even without the threats, but BP feels completely justified. They reason that their actions are proportionate to the pain I've caused them, and says that if I really cared, if I really wanted to make them happy, I should withstand it all. And if I don't make them happy, they'll ruin me and everyone around me. I cannot give too many details as to why the threats are real to me, but I am scared. I'm also torn, and at every turn I'm doubting what I do and don't deserve after all the pain I've caused BP.
I don't want to just come online and whine about the consequences of my actions, I hope this isn't coming off as me simply wanting to hear sweet nothings from strangers just to make myself feel better. I'm just. Tired. Maybe I don't deserve to feel safe after what I've done, but I'm tired of feeling like there's nowhere to turn to and that I'm simply irredeemable. I want BP to be well, I want them to trust themselves and live life again. I want them to be happy and healthy and stable. I want to them to feel understood and that they are worthy of being loved. I want them to know I'm really, truly sorry and that I'm trying to make amends for everything I've done. It all just feels so bottomless right now.
Thank you for reading this far.

CPU: i7-10700KF, Graphics Card: RTX 2070 Super, Motherboard: Gigabyte B560M, RAM: 16GB DDR3, Windows is installed on an M.2 SSD and I have a separate M.2 SSD for storage. My PC has extremely high CPU usage during simple tasks like opening Discord or being in the League of Legends client. Initially, it was due to thermal throttling, but I changed my cooling system to a new one from Be Quiet!. My temperatures are now fine (50-70°C) and my CPU no longer thermal throttles (tested using CPU-Z).
I uninstalled everything and freshly installed Windows 10. This helped a bit (Discord and my browser no longer use 100% CPU), but I still can't play League of Legends or any other games I used to play. The games take forever to load and as soon as I start them, the CPU usage hits 100%, and loading anything takes a long time. Even in-game, the situation doesn't improve much.
I have tried the basics like updating drivers and updating Windows, but the issue persists. I hope you can help me as I am pretty clueless about what the problem could be. If you need more information, please let me know.

I am not the OOP. The OOP is u/ThrowRA07253 posting in relationship_advice
Concluded as per OOP
1 update - Medium
Original - 28th May 2024
Update - 31st May 2024
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I (38F) shot an adult scene when I was 18. My husband (40M) doesn’t know and I just found the video again on the internet. Should I tell him?
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Twenty years ago when I was 18 years old I shot an adult scene (porn). I didn’t intend to shoot the scene, I was going with my friend for support and when she chickened out at the last minute I stepped in and did it.
I regretted it immediately after and regretted it even more when I saw it on the internet. The video which was about 30 minutes long made its way around, mostly being shared on file sharing servers. This was post Napster so there were a lot of knockoffs at the time. But after a while the video seemed to disappear and nobody I knew ever found out about it.
I met my husband a few years after I shot that scene and I never told him. I was ashamed and prayed that he would never find out. He never did and we’ve been married for 15 years and have two children together. He is the love of my life and he satisfies me in every way.
I check frequently for that video that I made and unfortunately last week I found it again on an adult site. It’s one of the more popular sites and I am now terrified that someone will find it. It could be someone that my husband works with or a friend of my daughters. I’m just terrified.
My question is, should I finally come clean and tell my husband? I know that he won’t leave me if I do. He knows I was rather promiscuous before I met him and he’s been ok with all of the crazy things I did before him. But this is the one thing I never told him. It’s the thing I am most ashamed of and I don’t want him to ever see it.
And that is what is preventing me from telling him, because I don’t want him to see it. There are many reason for this, the biggest for me is that I don’t want my husband to feel insecure. The man I shot that scene with had a very large penis and I made kind of a big deal about it when I shot the scene. My husband is a little above average in that area but he isn’t close to that guy, but none of the other guys I have even been with were either. I’ve had the best sex of my life with my husband and that’s the truth. But I still feel like he may lose his confidence if he sees that video.
So what do I do? Should I just roll the dice and pray he never finds it or just come clean?
TLDR: I shot an adult scene when I was 18 and my husband doesn’t know. Should I tell him?
EDIT: I’m not giving a link or title of the video so everyone can quit asking. My god I want to erase the video from existence not help spread it further.
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Comments
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The3rdPedal23
I would tell. When in a marriage there’s no secrets. You don’t want him to find out on his own and question why you didn’t tell him. As a man I’d rather know than be surprised. If he really loves you he’ll understand and try to make it work.
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sik_dik
2nd this. if he finds out from anyone else, he'll question what else OP has been keeping from him. great way to erode the most important foundation of a relationship: trust
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ziekktx
Shes already done that by omission. She's in a dire position now because of it all these years.
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No-Accident69
Ya but it’s never too late to come clean. And still get the confession in place before hubby finds out another way
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Update - 3 days later
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After I posted I thought a lot about telling my husband and finally decided to do it. My original post had over 1.7K upvotes and over 2.4K comments and someone even started a post on another sub dedicated to finding the damn video that has nearly 1K upvotes. It’s that interest in my video that scared me and I simply couldn’t live with the anxiety that one day he will come to me and ask if I shot a porn scene.
So I sat him down last night and just came out with it. He thought I was joking at first but once he realized I was serious he got quiet. He had questions which I answered. Most of them I covered in my original post.
Then I asked if he wanted to see it and he said he thought he had to. My heart sank but I pulled it up and asked if I could watch with him. He agreed and I held his hand as we watched it. He laughed when he saw the size of the guys penis so I relaxed a little after that. My husband made a few more light comments while we watched and when it was over he said “well, that wasn’t too bad.”
I pestered him for a bit afterward about how he really felt about it. He just kind of shrugged and said that from what he could tell, we’ve had much better sex than that. And we have. So that was a great sigh of relief. My husband had always been confident and comfortable in his own skin. He’s a catch and he knows how crazy I have always been about him.
He didn’t judge me either. He said I was 18 and 18 year olds do things they regret when they get older.
Later on he wanted to watch it one more time and then never again. So we watched again together and didn’t quite make it thought before starting up with each other. It turned into a really good night.
My husband ended up finding the video in a few other places once he knew what to look for. Many people have suggested trying to get it taken down but I did sign forms and provide ID when the scene was shot. So I don’t know what recourse I would have. I will look into it, but since my husband knows now I am less stressed about it.
Thanks to everyone who offered advice, it was all very helpful.
Also, I am simply not going to help anyone find the video. So you can stop pretending to be a tech expert asking for the link under the guise that you will get it taken down for me. I’m not stupid, I may have done stupid things but that doesn’t make me an idiot. The video is out there so you can look all you want but I will never confirm that the video you found is mine.
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Comments
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Moggy-Man
This is the best possible outcome! You got a keeper OP!
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redman334
Was there a need to watch the vid really?
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Moggy-Man
I think if the husband hadn't watched the video it would have eaten away at him constantly. It's human nature to be curious, and when it involves your partners past, a lot of people can't move on from what happened in their partners past.
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I am not the OOP. Please do not harass the OOP.
Please remember the No Brigading Rule and to be civil in the comments

CPU: i7-10700KF, Graphics Card: RTX 2070 Super, Motherboard: Gigabyte B560M, RAM: 16GB DDR3, Windows is installed on an M.2 SSD and I have a separate M.2 SSD for storage. My PC has extremely high CPU usage during simple tasks like opening Discord or being in the League of Legends client. Initially, it was due to thermal throttling, but I changed my cooling system to a new one from Be Quiet!. My temperatures are now fine (50-70°C) and my CPU no longer thermal throttles (tested using CPU-Z).
I uninstalled everything and freshly installed Windows 10. This helped a bit (Discord and my browser no longer use 100% CPU), but I still can't play League of Legends or any other games I used to play. The games take forever to load and as soon as I start them, the CPU usage hits 100%, and loading anything takes a long time. Even in-game, the situation doesn't improve much.
I have tried the basics like updating drivers and updating Windows, but the issue persists. I hope you can help me as I am pretty clueless about what the problem could be. If you need more information, please let me know.

11/20/2017
Log book of Det. Ryan Snow
Case #2798: The Appalachian Murders
When I woke up, I was in such a haze that I couldn’t make out where I was at first. My vision was a blur and all I could hear was the sounds of rushing water. I tried to move my limbs, but each muscle down to my little finger felt like lead weighing down on me, making it hard to breathe.
It felt like forever before the ringing in my ear was slowly swallowed out by a voice crying out from what sounded like a distance only to grow louder as it seemed to approach me from the void I had woken up in. It wasn’t until I heard my name that I recognized it was Kate’s voice, pleading and filled with tears.
I blinked away the blur, finding myself staring up at a water damaged ceiling, a single yellow light brightening the room. My head was pounding and my body still felt heavy, but I moved my head enough to turn and see where Kate was calling from. It took a moment, but I soon realized that she was lying on her back, strapped by her arms and legs to a metal table, looking to me with wide terrified eyes.
“Detective, please help!” She cried out. “Please don’t be dead! Please help me!”
“Bl-Black…Well…” I groaned out as I tried, painfully, to pick myself up off the stone floor, “Black…Well… Ah… Shit… Shit! Ms. Blackwell-“ I was gaining consciousness minute by minute as I finally took in the situation and got to my feet. However, the moment I had gotten to my feet and began running to Kate only to immediately fall back to the floor once again, my ankle getting caught by something heavy. I turned to see my ankle had been shackled to the floor by a cuff and chains. I searched my person to find my coat, along with my Glock had been taken, blood decorating my pants and sleeves. I placed a palm to my forehead to find blood when I lowered it down to look at the warm liquid slithering down from my scalp.
“Ms. Blackwell,” I returned my attention to her, examining what I could from my place on the floor, “are you alright, are you hurt?”
“I… I… I don’t… Don’t think so…” she managed to whine out.
“Where’s Mr. Raines?”
To this question, Kate looked away from me, sobbing being her only verbal response.
I went back to the shackles on my ankle and began trying to yank the chains off from the floor, but they had been well maintained and were too strong for me to simply yank out of the stone. I then quickly looked around the room to find we were in a different basement from the one in Cabin #3, though it had the same kind of layout, the table the only major difference. I also took note of the blood stains that trailed from the sides of the table and the dried pools below.
“I want my mom!” Kate cried out, her voice echoing in the empty room.
“I’ll get you to her, I will, I promise,” I assured her, trying to find something, anything to get us out of this, “do you remember how we got down here?”
“I… I… I just re-remember… Remember you g-getting knocked out… Knocked out by someone and them… Them putting a rag over me… Then everything went black… Then I woke… Woke up… H-Here…” Kate answered, trying to breathe with each sob she let out. “I… I th-thought… y-you… You were d-d-… Dead!”
“I’m not, I’m very much alive and I’m going to get you out of here and back to your parents,” I vowed as I continued looking for a way out of this situation, “we’re going to get you out of here, get you home, and we’ll make sure no one ever gets hurt here ever-“
The sound of the basement door from the splintered wooden steps cut me off. I listened as feet descended down the steps to the basement below, Kate’s ragged breaths the only other sound. The person who came down was a woman. The same exact woman from the photo I had found in her house. She looked as if she had not aged since that photo was taken, despite how long ago it seemed the photo was taken. She had the same exact long, white hair, same tired looking eyes, and same disgustingly pale skin as in that photo and on her profile picture. It was Mrs. Larson.
“Deeeeeetectiiiiiiive,” she spoke in a hoarse voice mixed with what I assumed was her own and several others, both male and female, adult and child, “youuuuuuu shouuuullld haaaaaaaaave juuuuuuusssssst giiiiiven herrrrrrr toooooo meeeeee… Youuuuuuuu diiiiiiiiid nooooooot haaaaaave toooooooo ssssssseeeee thiiiiiissssss…”
“Fuck you!” I shouted, beginning to charge at the elderly woman only to be yanked back by my shackles. “Let us go, right now!”
“Nnnnooooo,” Mrs. Larson replied harshly as she stepped over to loom over Kate.
“Stay away from her!” I barked, trying desperately to break free of my shackles.
She ignored me as she ran a shaky hand down along Kate’s trembling face. “Ooooooooohhhhh, Kaaaaaate… Sweeeeet, sweeeeeeeet, Kaaaaaaaaaate…” Mrs. Larson cooed as she went on stroking Kate’s wet cheek. “Doooooo noooooooot crrrrrrryyyyyyy, dooooooonnnnnn’t thiiiiiiiiiinnnnk oooooofff iiiiiiiit aaaaaaaassssss dyyyyyyyyiiiiinnnnng, thiiiiiiiiinnnk ooooooooffff iiiiiiit aaaaaassssss ssssssssaaaaaaaaaviiiiiiinnng aaaaaannnnoooootherrrrrrrrr liiiiiiiiife.”
“I-I… I d-don’t… Don’t under-understand… w-what th-that… That m-means…” Kate cried, her hands gripping the sides of the metal table beneath her, “P-Please, d-don’t… Don’t kill me… L-Let… Let us-us go!”
“Nnnnnoooooo,” Mrs. Larson answered in the same harshness she used on me, “IIIIIIIII neeeeeeeed youuuuuuuuuu,” she then shot a death glare my way through tired, silver eyes, “aaaaaaaannnnnnd heeeeeeeeee’ssssssss beeeeeeeeeennnnnn nnnnnnnoooooooothiiiiiiiiinnnnnng buuuuut aaaaaa thooooooorrrrrrnnnn iiiiiiinnnnn myyyyyyyyy ssssssssiiiiiiiide siiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnccccccce youuuuuu eeeeeessssssscaaaaaaped meeeeeeee.” She then looked back to Kate with a softer look. “Aaaaaaaassssss fffffoooooorrrrr whaaaaaaaat youuuuuuu caaaaaannnn’t uuuuuunnnnnnderrrrrrssssssstaaaaaaannnnnnd, IIIIIIIIII nnnnnneeeeeeed yourrrrrrrrrr heaaaaaaaarrrrrt tooooooo ssssssssaaaaaavvvvvvve myyyyyyy ssssssiiiiiiiisssssssterrrrrrrr.”
“The fuck does that mean?” I demanded, still trying to vain to pull my ankle from the chains. “How the hell will Kate’s heart save your sister?”
“Diiiiiiiiidnnnnnn’t nnnnnnneeeeeeed toooooo beeeee Kaaaaaaate’sssssss,” admitted Mrs. Larson, “buuuuuuuut sssshhhhhheeeeee hiiiiiiiiid theeeeee ooooooootherrrrr giiiiirrrrrrllllll ffffffrrrrroooooommmmm mmmmmeeeeee.”
“S-Son… Sonja…” Kate sniffed, the tears still streaming down her face.
“IIIIIIII oooooooonnnnnlllllyyyyy neeeeed fffffffeeeeeemmmmmaaaaallllle,” Mrs. Larson dismissed Ms. Greymoore’s name, “ffffffeeeeeeemmmmmaaaaaallllle heaaaaaaaarrrrrrrtsssss toooooo rrrrrrreeeeeetuuuuurrrrrrnnnnn mmmmmmyyyyy ssssiiiiissssssterrrrrrrrr toooooo theeeeeeee giiiiirrrrrllllll ssssshhhhhheeeee uuuuuuuusssssed tooooo beeeeeee.”
“That’s a fucking joke right?” I asked. “The hell makes you think eating a female heart will turn your sister back into a human woman? Have you seen what’s happened to your sister?”
“IIIIIIIII knnnnnnnooooooow beeeeeeecaaaauuuuusssssse iiiiiiiiiiit wooooooorrrrrked ooooooonnnnn mmmmmeeeeee,” Mrs. Larson explained, “IIIIIIIIIII waaaaaasssss aaaaaaablllllllle toooooo reeeeeeetaaaaiiiiiinnnnnn thiiiiiiiiiisssssss huuuuuummmmmmaaaaaannnnn fffffffooooorrrrrrmmmm ffffffrrrrrooooommmm eeeeeaaaaatiiiiiinnnnnng theeeeeeee heaaaaaaaaarrrrrtsssss, sssssspecifffffficaaaaaaallllllyyyyyy fffffffeeeeeemmmmmaaaaallllleeee sssssssooooooo IIIIIIIIII mmmmmmaaaaaayyyyyy rrrrrreeeeetuuuurrrrrnnnnn toooo beeeeeiiiiinnnng theeeeeeee giiiiiirrrrrrrllllll IIIIIII uuuuuuusssssed toooooooo beeeeeee.”
“You were dead,” I pointed out, “they found your body up here, you were buried.”
“Theeeeeessssssse sssshhhhheeeeeellllllsssss arrrrrrre mmmmmeeeeeerrreeeellllyyy veeeeeessssssellllllssssss ffffffoooooorrrrrr theeeeeeee sssssspiiiiirrrrriiiiiitsssss weeeee hiiiiiiiiiiide beeeeeneeeeaaaaattthhhh,” Mrs. Larson responded, finally turning her gaze to me, “IIIIIIII haaaaaaad tooooooo maaaake peeeopllllle beeeelieevvvve IIIIIII haaaaaad diiiiiiied tooooo keeeeeep frrrrroooommm theeeee poooooollllliiiiicccce ffffrrrrrrooooommmm pooookiiiiiinnnng aaaaarrrrouuuuuunnnnd aaaaannnnnd rrrrruuuiiinnnnniiinnnng eeeevvvveeerrrrryyythiiiiinnnng.”
“So, let me just get this whole thing straight,” I began as I started rubbing my temples, "when you and your sister starting into… Whatever the hell that thing you call your sister is-“
“Ooooouuuurrrrr sssssspiiiiiirrrrrriiiiiit,” Mrs. Larson corrected.
“Whatever!” I shot. “You found out that eating female hearts turns you two back into human women and to keep police from suspecting you, you pretended to be dead and… What? Just hope a shitty real estate agency would buy your property and you could just… Kill people, people with lives and families outside the mountains?”
“Thaaaaaaaat iiiiiiisssss cooooorrrrrreeeeect…” Mrs. Larson admitted, narrowing her eyes at me.
That’s when I began laughing hysterically, holding my sides that hurt with each harsh breath of a laugh I took. Both Mrs. Larson and Kate looked to me as if I had lost my mind and at this point I was starting to believe I had. Everything I had seen and heard about this entire case would put anyone in the looney bin. And I’m the damn fool who dug too deep into something he had nothing to do with.
“Whaaaaaat’s ssssoooo ffffuuunnnny?” Growled Mrs. Larson, stepping around Kate to stand between us.
“I don’t know what’s fucking funnier, honestly,” I chuckled, running a hand through my hair, “the fact that you thing people won’t be poking around even more when they discover not only is Blackwell missing, but so is a detective and escaped convict all of whom now have ties to these fucking mountains and those cabins, or that you thing I’m more afraid of what you plan on doing with me more than I am when her father finds out I got her in this situation in the first place!”
“Heeeeeee wooooonnnnn’t beeeee aaaaabllllle toooooo doooo aaaaaannnnnyyyyythiiiiiinnnng aaaaaaafffffterrrrrrr IIIIIIIII’mmmmm dooooooonnnne wiiiiiiiith booooooth ooooooooffffff youuuuuuuuu,” Mrs. Larson hissed as she inched closer, “fffffffiiiiiiirrrrrrssssst, IIIIIIIII waaaaaannnnnt youuuuuuuu toooo waaaaaatch mmmmmeeeee kiiiiiiillllll herrrrrrr,” she turned her head to look to Kate who was now just shaking, her eyes seemingly gone dry from the crying, Mrs. Larson then looked back to me, “sssssseeeeecooooonnnnd, IIIIIIII wiiiiillllll ssssssaaaaave youuuuu fffffooooorrrr mmmmmmyyyyy sssssiiiiiisssssterrrrr, oooooonnnnne heeeeaaaaart wiiiiilllll nnnnoooot ssssssaaaaaatissssfffffyyyy herrrr huuuuuunnnnnger.” She took another step. “Uuuuuuuunnnnnllllliiiiiike sssssssoooooommmme ssssssiiiiiibllllliiiiiiinnnnnngsssss, IIIIIIIII caaaaaarrrre aaaaaaboooouuuuut mmmmmmyyyyy ffffffaaaammmmiiiiilllllyyyyyy.”
She stared into my eyes, expecting a reaction and while my blood did somewhat boil at the accusatory statement, I didn’t fully understand what she was getting at. Not until she used that voice. Not until she relived that day with those two familiar child-like voices.
“Screw you, Liam!” She cried out in a voice I remember from my childhood. “I hope you drop dead!”
“Stop.” I demanded.
“Piss off, Ryan!” She shot back in a second boy’s voice.
“I said stop!” I began shouting.
“Help me, Ryan! Please, help me! I’m sorry! Please, Lucky Dime, help me!”
I then lunged toward her, reaching my hands out toward her neck only to be stopped by the shackles as she swiftly, almost without even moving, stepped just out of my reach.
“Fucking bitch!” I screamed out.
“If only you really cared about me, Lucky Dime,” sighed Mrs. Larson as she turned and began making her way to the side of the room where a cart stood in the shadows. She pulled it over to Kate’s side, the cart covered in rusted medical tools.
“P-Please,” Kate wheezed, “p-p-please… I… I d-d-don’t w-want… Want t-to d-d… D-Die, I… I w-w-want m-m-m… My m-mom!”
“Dooooonnn’t woooorrrrryyyyy,” Mrs. Larson soothed, using that mix of different voices, “mmmmmmaaaayyyyybeeee sheeee wiiiillll cooooommmme loooookinnnng ffffooooorrrr yooouuuuu aaaaannnnnd sheeeeeee caaaaannnnn joooooiiiiiinnnn youuuuuuu.”
Kate began to sob, begging and pleading for Mrs. Larson to let her go, thrashing around in her restraints. Telling the older woman that there was no saving her sister and that she was too far gone for this sick ritual to work anymore. I tried to yank at the chains once more, trying to loosen it at least enough to break free and grab at Mrs. Larson.
“Rrrrrrreeeeellllllaaaaax,” Mrs. Larson ordered as she began filling a syringe with some kind of clear liquid from a small bottle, “yoooouuuuuu woooooonnnn’t eeeeeveeennn fffffeeeellll iiiiiiit, thiiiissssss wiiiiiillllll puuuuuut youuuuu toooo ssssssllllllleeeeeep aaaaaannnnnnd wheeeeeennnnnn youuuuuu waaaaaake uuuuuuuup, youuuuuuu’lllllll beeee iiiiiinnnnnn heeeeeaaaaaaveeeennnnn… Uuuuuunnnnnnnllllllessssss youuuuuuu weeeerrrrrrre aaaaaa haaaaaarrrrrlllllooooooot, iiiiiiinnnnnn whiiiiiiiich caaaaaassssssseeeee, mmmmmaaaayyyy Goooooood haaaaaaaave mmmmmmmmerrrrrrrcccccyyyyy ooooonnnnn youuuuuur ssssssoooouuuuullllll… Aaaaannnnnd baaaaaaasssssed ooooonnnn hoooooow youuuuuu drrrrressss aaaaannnnnd theeeee coooommmmpaaaannnnyyyy youuuuuu keeeeeep,” She added as she eyed me, “IIIIIII ssssssaaaaaayyyy youuuuu haaaaaave aaaaa lllllloooooot ooooooffff fooooooorrrrgiiiiiviiiiinnnnng tooooo dooooo.”
Kate continued to cry as Mrs. Larson pushed the needle of the syringe into her arm, pushing down on the plunger as it pierced the flesh. Kate’s loud screams soon turned quieter and her red eyes began to glaze over, but she continued to stay awake, tightening her grip on the table and still begging to be let go.
“IIIIII waaaaannnnt youuuuu toooo waaaaatch, Detective,” Mrs. Larson spat out my title in Mr. Blackwell’s voice, “IIIII waaaaannnnnt youuuuu toooo waaaaatch herrrrrr fffffaaaaaade aaaaaannnnnnd mmmmmeeeee rrrrreeeemmmmooooove heerr heeeaaaarrrrrt toooooo ffffffeeeeeed tooooo mmmmmmyyyyyy ssssssiiiiiiiissssssterrrrrr,” she then pulled out a recorder, “theeeeennnnnn wheeeeeennnnn IIIIIII ssssssuuuuummmmoooooonnnnn herrrrrrr aaannnnd sheeeee fffffiiiinnnniiiishessssss oooooofffffff heeeerrrrr heeeaaaaarrrrrt, youuuuuuu’llllllll beeeeee neeeeeext.”
“Fuck you,” I snarled, “I hope you and your sister burn.”
“IIIIIIIII’mmmmm gooooonnnnnaaaaa gooooo aaaaallllllerrrrrrt mmmmmyyyyy ssssssiiiiiiissssterrrrrr,” Mrs. Larson turned and began making her way to the basement steps, “ssssseeee youuuuu boooooth ffffffoooooorrrr diiiiiinnnnnnerrrrrrr.”
She then pressed the play button on her recorder and a small, little girl’s voice echoed in the room before Mrs. Larson vanished up the steps.
“I’m here… I’m here… I’m here…”
Then the door slammed shut.
“De… Tec… Tive…” Kate squeaked out, her breathing slowing.
“Stay awake, Blackwell,” I ordered her gently, looking around frantically for anything to get us both out of this alive, “I’ll get us out of this, I promise, just stay awake, we’ll get out of here, I just need-“
“I’m… S… Sorry…” she breathed out. “I’m… So… Sorry… For… Get… Getting… You… In… To.. This…”
“No, no, this is not your fault!” I assured her. “That psychotic bitch got us both into this shit and I won’t stop until I get us out and put her and her fucking sister are six feet under!”
“W…Wha… What… H… Hap… Happened… To… To L… Liam…?”
I stopped struggling with the chains and turned to look to Kate. Her head was turned to me, her face wet, hands clenching as hard as they could to the table beneath her, the light in her eyes slowly fading second by second. She was trying desperately to stay awake. The medication Mrs. Larson taking hold of her as the minutes ticked by.
I dropped the chains that were in my hands, looking away from her, wanting to stare at anything other than another person I had failed.
“He was killed,” I answered, “we were fishing at a lake nearby… Lake Gaagige… We got into a really stupid ass fucking fight about how which fishing pole we were going to use. I wanted to use our dad’s, but Liam was older and said only men could use dad’s fishing pole… I told him… To drop dead and stormed off… When I got home, my parents dragged me back to the lake and scolded me for leaving him…” I trailed off, swallowing all the tears and screams I’d bottled up since that day. “When… We found… Him… The autopsy… Said he was mauled by a bear… I’ve blamed myself for leaving him there alone… For letting him die and getting killed like that… The last thing I ever told him was to drop dead… I was a shitty brother and now I’m a shitty detective…”
“Is… Is he… Why… You became… A… Detective…?”
I took a deep breath and swallowed the tears again. “No, Blackwell,” I answered, “he’s not why I became a detective… I already knew what had killed him… It was my fault… If I hadn’t been such a brat and stormed off… He might still be alive… And now… What that bitch said…” I replayed Liam’s screams that escaped Mrs. Larson’s mouth. “I’m starting to think I’m getting what I deserve. Karma’s back to kick my ass…”
“H… How… Old…?”
“I was six… Liam was eight…”
“N… N… Not your… F… Fault…”
I turned to look to Kate, her eyes on mine, however faded.
“Y… You were… Only… A k… Kid…”
I took another intake of what little air there was down in that basement. I had spent years trying to convince myself of the same thing, but those moments never got easier for me when those thoughts returned.
“I think you’re just being nice,” I laughed painfully, “but I’m afraid I- and my folks- don’t share the same sentiment.”
I was staring down at where the chains were coming from in the ground, Kate not saying a word for over a couple of minutes. I spun to see if she had fallen asleep and immediately tried to find out how to wake her up again. However, once I our eyes met, I saw that she was still fighting sleep, the last of her tears rolling down across the bridge of her nose and into her hair.
“I… I… I had… Had a c… Crush… O… On… J… Jasper…” she confessed, her voice getting quieter and higher. “P… Paul and… And Son… Sonja knew… I never… Never c… Cared f… For Luke… But I’m… Sure… S… Sonja t… Told him…” she looked like she was going to sob again. “I… I never g… Got the… Ch… Chance… T… To tell J… Jasper… I… Was… Scared… He… He and… P… Paul were friends… And I… I kn… Knew… How P… Paul f… Felt… A… About m… Me… I… I did… Didn’t wa… Want to… R… Ruin… Anyth… Anything…” She took a gulp of air. “I… I ha… Hated L… Luke… I… A… Always… Kn… Knew… He… He was a… Player… B… But Sonja… Said… Said she was hap… Happy… So… So I did… Didn’t wa… Want to g… Get in… H… Her way… B… But Luke d… Didn’t l… Like h… How cl… Close… We… Were… I d… Didn’t w… Want him to make… Make her th… Think I… I was l… Leading her o… On… T… To get them… To b… Break up… Th… Then… That n… Night… Sh… She w… Wanted to… To leave…” She let out two pained gasps of breath. “I… I let them down… I let them all down… Luke pro… Probably thought… Thought I w… Was the one who… Who f… Filled Sonja’s mind… With thoughts of… Of him ch… Cheating… Th… Then I… I got them… All killed…
I… I didn’t deserve them, d… Detective…” she went on, looking away from me to stare up at the water damaged ceiling, “I… I… I was a… Terrible… Terrible friend…”
“Did you read their guest book entries?” I asked.
“N… No… D… Didn’t w… Want to… To r… Read any… Anything p… Private…” Kate answered.
“Jasper didn’t blame you,” I assured her, remembering what he had written in his entry during his time watching Mrs. Larson just outside the cabin, “even when he heard the voices- when he heard Mrs. Larson- telling him to, he didn’t. I don’t think the others blamed you either. You didn’t do anything wrong, Ms. Blackwell, there’s no way you could have known any of this would happen.”
“K… Kate…”
“What?”
“C… Call… Call me… Kate…”
“Aright, Kate,” I let out what little laughter I had left inside me, “so long as we’re the last people we’ll be chatting with, call me Ryan.”
“R… Ryan…”
“If we at all live through this, I’m going to need a long vacation after this,” I said as I turned to look at my shackles again, looking around myself to try finding anything to Get free since a vacation sounded like something to die for at that moment, “do you know any good vacation spots I can book for the fall?”
“Y… You’re… You’re a… Dick…” Kate struggled to laugh.
“I also enjoy pineapple on pizza,” I winked as I reached down to my ankle, ready to break it just to taste that sweet combination of tomato sauce and fruit.
“G… God… I… I c… Can’t… Believe… I th… Thought y… You w… Were c… Cute…”
I sat down on the floor, grabbing my ankle with both my hands. Needing to hype myself up enough to do what I was going to do, I began removing my shoe and sock from the foot, rubbing and squeezing my way up and down the ankle to my toes. I had never broken a bone in my life before this and I definitely never thought I’d do it of my own volition, but this was a desperate time and it definitely called for desperate…
“Wait what?” I turned to look to Kate, finally registering what she had said.
However, just before I could be sure of what I heard, the sound of a hunting rifle going off just above our heads right before we heard the door to the basement swing open and immediately be slammed shut. Both Kate and I turned to see someone stumble down the wooden steps, his clothes torn and body scratched and cut to a nearly deadly degree. I was even shocked he was still breathing.
“M… Mr… R… Raines…?” Kate gasped out.
“What’s left of me at least,” Mr. Raines grumbled as he limped over to Kate and quickly began undoing her straps to the table, “damn thing almost ripped my head off, but one swing of the barrel to its eye and I was able to get away… Can’t say it didn’t do its damage though… I’m… Getting really fucking hungry…”
He shook his head violently before limping over to me. He then raised an eyebrow at me when he saw how I was positioned still on the floor with a bare foot in my hands shackled to the floor.
“I… I was… I… I thought you were-“ I stammered.
“I am,” Mr. Raines interrupted, “at least, I’m on my way there anyway.” He then retrieved my Glock from his back pocket. “I don’t know what that thing did to me, but I’m not gonna make it out of this alive, or the way I came in. It’s a massacre out there by the way. Lot of men in blue bodies out there… Very… Hard to ignore… Sure more will be on their way. So.”
With that, Mr. Raines pointed at my chains and pulled the trigger on my clock, barely giving me time to cover my ears as the sound rung out loudly in the basement. I shook my head, trying to undo the blurry and ringing side effects of the sound of a gun going off near your head. I gave the older man a glare before standing and snatching my Glock from his hands. That’s when I saw Kate shifting herself to the side of the metal table she was no longer tied to, trying to get her limbs to comply with her to help her off and on to the floor.
I ran over and grabbed her just as she nearly stumbled face first to the floor and lifted her up to her feet, her body heavy with lack of keeping herself up.
“Do you think you can walk?” I asked, trying to keep her on her feet.
“I… I don’t… I…” Kate stammered as she tried to push herself off of me while also using using me as a crutch until she could stand on her own. However, she didn’t seem to be able to put any kind of pressure on her legs without falling down.
“Kate?” A girl’s voice called out from above us.
Feeling Kate shudder, I realized that it must have been the sound of Sonja’s voice and Mrs. Larson was using her to keep Kate from running. I quickly swung my arm down behind her knees, pressing the other down on her back as I lifted her up off the floor, my Glock at the ready as I kept it pointed in front of me while my arm held up Kate’s knees.
“She must have heard the gunshots,” I pointed out, “how’d you get past her in the first place?”
“I set the other cabins on fire,” Mr. Raines answered as if it were the simplest of answers, “I had to distract her somehow and give those bodies she’d been eating a better fate than becoming her shit.”
“Are you planning on setting this place on fire too?” I asked.
“‘Course I am!” Mr. Raines exclaimed, seemingly offended I’d even ask. “I already doused it in gasoline, I ain’t wasting all that time!”
“Kate!” Sonja’s voice cried out, getting closer to the basement door. “Are you seriously leaving me here to die alone again!”
“Please… Make it… Stop…” Kate sniffed as she gripped my shirt and burying her face into the fabric.
“Let’s get you two out of here.” Mr. Raines began leading the way to the basement stairs, cocking his rifle as he did so.
“What about you?” I asked, immediately following after him.
Mr. Raines didn’t answer as he stomped up the stairs and kicked the door open to the first floor of the cabin. The stench of the gasoline he had spilled hitting me harshly in my face.
“Kate!” Sonja’s voice, along with a different crescendo of male voices shrieked out as Mrs. Larson appeared from the corner of the hallway where the basement was located.
“Leighton?” A different woman’s voice asked the moment the old woman’s eyes spotted Mr. Raines. I then watched in both shock and confusion as it almost looked like the very skin on the woman melted off to reveal a much younger woman. The woman I recognized as Bonnie Collins. “Leighton… Love is that you?”
Mr. Raines kept his rifle on the vision of the woman he once loved before her murder, but didn’t move or speak.
“Darling, I’ve missed you so much!” The fake Bonnie cried out as she began making her way to Mr. Raines with arms open wide to hug him.
Mr. Raines then lifted his gun up higher, placing his finger on the trigger which caused the vision to stop in her place.
“Leighton?” The fake Bonnie asked. “Baby, it’s me… Bun-Bun… Don’t you recognize me…?” She began to tear up.
“You’re not my Bunny,” Mr. Raines growled before he shot once at the woman.
The fake Bonnie swiftly dodged the bullet, an inhuman hiss coming from an unhinged mouth, revealing a row of long, sharp teeth. The skin of Bonnie then melted off to reveal another woman, a lot younger than the first one it intimidated. The face of one of the victims upon being brought on this case.
“Kate,” the fake Sonja called out, “Kate, what are you doing? Who are these men? Why are they trying to hurt me?”
Kate let out a sobbing gasp, her nails digging into my shoulder with her arm wrapped around my neck.
“Didn’t I suffer enough?” The fake Sonja asked. “First my boyfriend and now you? Why don’t you want to be with me anymore?”
“Shut up!” Kate demanded. “You’re not Sonja! You killed her, you killed all of them! I don’t care what happens to me, but I’m not letting their memories end with you!”
Kate then snatched my Glock from my hand under her legs and shot directly at the fake Sonja’s head. Again the shot missed as the fake vision of the girl slithered out of the way, a frustrated growl of a dog and human escaping it’s mouth. It then zipped to the side, cowering with its back to us on the floor.
“Lucky dime…” A child’s voice then took over. The vision’s skin melting now to a much smaller figure. “Is this what you want? To kill me all over again?” He turned to look up at me, Liam’s face forever eight-years-old staring up at me. “It’s no wonder mommy and daddy hate you now… You were always a shitty brother… Now, I’m gonna starve to death because you’d rather help a couple of strangers.”
“I’m sorry, Liam,” I replied, everyone, including the fake Liam looking to me in surprise, “I left you alone out here and that’s what got you killed by that thing out there and I’m sorry. But, if I’d stayed it may have been both of us and then mom and dad would have no one left to blame but each other. If you had left and I was the one killed, you’d probably be in my shoes instead. I’m sorry for letting you get killed, but I’m gonna make up for it now.”
I then took my Glock back from Kate and pointed it to the vision of Liam.
“Good bye, Liam.”
I shot the gun once again, missing the creature again, however, this time I just kept shooting, Mr. Raines following after. Our different bullets just kept firing, the thing dodging and trying to get closer to us. The creature screeched out at us in a myriad of different voices both familiar and unknown. It wasn’t until one shot from my Glock struck the creatures shoulder and Mr. Raines’ rifle struck its head when the skins of everyone it was trying to turn into all melted off, revealing Mrs. Larson once again.
However, this time, she looked shriveled, older than she looked before. Her face looked deformed, beginning to grow furry, her eyes growing nothing but red, no irises, no pupils, just red. Her hair grew longer, branches like antlers growing painfully out from her skull, breaking the skin as they grew larger. The lower half of her face grew elongated, turning into that of a muzzle of fangs and a drooling mouth.
“You… All… Have no rrrrrrriiiiiight!” A different, unknown voice snarled out from what used to be Mrs. Larson. “People liiiiiike you all… Abandoned me and myyyyyyyyy sister!” The fur growing around this thing grew out short and shaggy, the cloths it was using melting off with the skin and flesh it was wearing. It now didn’t look anything like a human woman. It now took the form of a large wolf mixed with that of a deer, it’s body dog-like with hooves, antlers, and a long, scraggly tail. “You lot abandoned us here! You left us all here to diiiiiiiie!”
Guilt was weighing down on me with each syllable it was growling. Kate looked away from it, burying her face in my neck as Mr. Raines lowered his rifle.
“Nooooow, you’re bringing more here to just leave and let die out here!” It went on, it’s horrifying, broken body shuddering. “Why let them just vanish and die up here when they can bring people like my sister and I back? Give me Kate’s heart and fix what you threeeeeeeeee failed!”
Mr. Raines then handed over his rifle to Kate, placing it down on her stomach as her hands were still wrapped around my neck. The older man made his way over to stand over the thing, its neck creaking like a rusted door as it turned its wolf-like head to look up at him.
“Leighton…” Bonnie’s voice came from the creature. “Give mmmmeeeee her heart aaaannnnd we can be togetherrrrr again… If you eat the deeeeeetective’s we can saaaaaave you tooooooo…”
“My Bunny’s dead,” Mr. Raines told it as he dug in his pocket and took out a carton of matches, “and so am I.”
“You’d burn your wife?” A mix of Bonnie and Mrs. Larson’s voices shrieked as it glared at the match he took from the match box.
“You’re not my wife,” Mr. Raines told it, “and I’ll never see her again.”
“Fooooooool,” Mr. Larson’s voice chuckled, “you’llllllll killllllll us both!”
“With the shit I’ve done in my life, I know you’re taking me to Hell with you,” Mr. Raines growled back as he struck the match on the box, “so I’m sure as fuck not afraid to burn here on Earth with you!”
Mr. Raines then dropped the match to the floor right before the creature and everything around the two of them immediately went up in flames, the fur of the creature catching quickly and engulfing it. An agonized shriek echoed out all around us, the creature thrashing in the fire it had gotten swallowed up in. Mr. Raines then grabbed it by it’s long, furry throat and swung it down back flat the floor, jumping to pin it down.
“Get out!” Mr. Raines cried out to me. “Leave here!”
Not needing to be told twice, I held onto Kate tightly and bolted past the two burning bodies, jumping over the fire as it began growing fast throughout the cabin. I quickly got to the front door and stopped to look back to see Mr. Raines fighting the creature and preventing it from coming after us, it begging for me to bring Kate back and that it would die without her.
“I’ll clear your name,” I called back, trying not to reel back in horror as I saw Mr. Raines skin begin to melt off, “I’ll let people know you didn’t kill Bonnie!”
“I’ll let people know you didn’t… Kill… Liam!” Mr. Raines’ voice called back, him thrashing around with Mrs. Larson as he said my brother’s name in my voice.
I turned back and kicked the front door open, rushing Kate out of the burning cabin. I ran until I got far enough from the smoke, turning back to see all three cabins now on fire, the area around them all ablaze. The only place untouched was Mrs. Larson’s house, all the evidence remaining. I could hear sirens in the distance coming closer. The sounds of shouts from the surviving officers sounding much closer.
“I’m here… I’m here… I’m here…”
I looked to the front porch of Mrs. Larson’s house where her recorder continued to call out for her sister. I set Kate down at the base of a nearby tree and ran to snatch the recorder, shutting it off. I searched around, looking for any signs of Prudence, but it appeared that the fire and the sounds of sirens and voices had scared her off. I ran back to Kate, her eyes closed and her not responding to me calling to her, but after checking her pulse and breathing, I found that the medication Mrs. Larson had given her had finally taken over and she was now fast asleep, the rifle Mr. Raines gave her still sitting on her rhythmically rising and falling stomach.
Letting out a sigh of relief, I leaned against the same tree I set Kate down on and slid down to the ground next to her. The first two cabins were already practically nothing but ash, the last still blazing as I heard the slowly fading screams of Mrs. Larson and Mr. Raines coming from inside.
When the screaming ended all together, the smoke turning blacker as it rose from the flames, I got to my feet and took out my pack of cigarettes as I approached the fires, staying far enough away not to get burned. I opened the pack up before stopping myself as I reached for one of the ten remaining cigarettes inside. I then flung the entire carton into the fires without taking one.
“Save one for me down there, you old bastard,” I told Mr. Raines before making my way back to Kate’s side.
It wasn’t long before the remaining officers found us, looking in confusion at the fires and to me with a sleeping victim in a homicide case on the ground. I told them we’d need to call an ambulance for Kate and that we needed to keep the flames from getting to Mrs. Larson’s house as it held evidence on the case. One officer retrieved his radio and called for an ambulance while a group ran to the house and another went to try controlling the fire as best they could by yanking out any bushes near by and throwing them away from the area around the house.
Luckily, the fire trucks were called long before the fire spread too far, residence noticing it practically the moment Mr. Raines set the first cabin on fire.
As I sat there, keeping Kate held up against the tree we sat under, I listened to the crackling of the fire, the sirens of fast approaching fire trucks and the ambulance, and the sounds of distance, coyote, almost human, howling.

Getting Deadly Premonition to work on the Steam Deck through its native PC port has been an absolute nightmare. Thought I'd type up the steps here to try and save some of you poor souls the hassle if you ever want to give it a blast, but also, as safekeeping for myself in case I forget the steps I took in the future!
Following these steps to the letter SHOULD get you up and running. File locations assume you are installing the game to the Steam Deck's hard drive. If you are using an SD card you will need to adapt steps 6 and 11 to reflect the install directory of the game.

1. Install the game from Steam. Obviously. Don't run it yet.
2. Use the Steam settings menu, navigate to 'Properties' and then the 'Compatibility' tab. Choose Proton 3.16-9 from the dropdown.
3. Run the game and let Steam finish its installation. When the Deadly Premonition config tool pops out, just close down the whole game.
4. Head to Desktop mode.
5. Download this version of the PhysX installer. (version 9.13.0725 in case the link eventually goes down). Rename the downloaded file PhysX_SystemSoftware.msi
6. In the Dolphin file browser, navigate to: Home/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Deadly Premonition The Director's Cut/redist. Drag your downloaded and renamed PhysX_SystemSoftware.msi here, overwriting the existing file.
7. Download this file. It's basically a text file with instructions for Proton which we'll be using shortly. The file should be named vc1decoder.verb. If you can't find the download link at the github page, look in the top right for a download symbol which when you hover over it reads 'Download raw file'.
8. In the Dolphin file browser, move the vc1decoder.verb file to Home/deck
9. Open the Konsole app from the 'start' bar (I don't know what it's called in Linux!) and type the following line EXACTLY: /usbin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=protontricks com.github.Matoking.protontricks 247660 -q quartz qedit devenum /Home/deck/vc1decoder.verb
10. Konsole will start displaying some installation data - if any windows pop up just press ok to clear them.
11. Next, grab DPFix from here. Unzip the file and place the entire contents in Home/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Deadly Premonition The Director's Cut/
12. DPFix enables much improved graphics / resolution / texture injection / all sorts. You can edit individual settings by opening DPFix.ini in a text editor. Under the 'Graphics Options' section, make any desire tweaks - the file is really nicely annotated so you shouldn't need much help from me here. Under the 'Window Options' section make your settings read: forceWindowed 1 and borderlessFullscreen 0.
13. SAVE your changes!
14. Back to Game Mode. Use the Steam settings menu, navigate to 'Properties' and then in the 'General' tab enter the following command EXACTLY under the 'Launch Options' section: WINEDLLOVERRIDES="d3d9=n,b" %command%
15. We're almost there, gang! Run the game. When the DP Config file boots, click 'Settings' and ensure Controller settings are set to default - any eventual tweaks will be done using Steam Input.
16. Boot the game - after the company and developer logos play you should be presented with a video cutscene / intro. If this is playing with sound / video, we're just about there. If all is well, quit the game one final time.
17. Back in the Steam settings menu, navigate to 'Properties' and then the 'Compatibility' tab. Choose either Proton Experimental (not tested) or the most recent Proton GE (I'm using GE-Proton9-5) from the dropdown. This step is super important as otherwise controls will not work properly!
18. Boot the game! Enjoy!
19. (If using the Steam Deck OLED, cap the framerate using the '...' button to 60fps otherwise physics in game will be busted.)