This is a big one, and even though Richter is out of commission we consider it a special interest.

Symphony of the Night was extremely influential in my life, keeping me close company during a manic episode I had in 2019.

We became Richter Belmont in the flesh, obsessively playing through the game again and again on our Xbox, which btw is the best port of the game and you should buy it for $10.

I couldn't reccomnd the game more highly.

As for Rondo of Blood, we love the game but differently. It's too difficult for me, and I get extremely pissed off trying to make any progress past the first boss.

Harmony of Dissonance I've been able to enjoy on my switch, however it's too confusing.

These are both common criticisms of those games, but unfortunately it's the thing of thing that makes it out of my reach.

I hate pulling the disabled card, but my brain has serious problems.

I played Skyrim in 2015, it was my first impression of the series as was many other peoples as well. I loved it!

I made up plenty of characters, and my most developed are a Dunmer named Vilmis, and an Altmer named Arecano. They're inseparable and Vilmis is the tortured Dragonborn.

It was a looong time before I branched out, eventually I downloaded Morrowind onto my computer and jumped in.

As you might expect if you're familiar with the game, it took a while until I really got into it but when I did hoooly shit i was consumed. Hours and hours.

I made a character I liked, she's a spin-off of Alucard from Symphony of The Night who is an Altmer named Aurcarya.

I really fleshed out her story when I created two other characters, a Dunmer named Maravera, and a Khajiit named Ra-khtar.

If you cant tell, theyre based off Maria and Richter of Castlevania fame.

As for Oblivion, I could never really get into it. I would love to dive into Daggerfall, but I dont have the time yet.

My very first exposure to the Fallout Series was watching my friend's older brother play Fallout 3.

I didn't think too much of it honestly, but when Fallout 4 came out I ended up getting a copy somehow and I fell in love with the game.

I played the hell out of it, and when I eventually found out about Fallout 3 I wanted to play it for myself! Luckily, I realized that there was a code for a free digital copy on the back on the disc case for Fo4.

That I also played the shit out of!

At the time, we didn't have money and so I wasn't able to get Fallout: New Vegas, but becoming part of a Fallout focused online space, naturally I desperately wanted it.

Eventually though, my mom got it for me and whewwwww I mean, I didn't get through the game as thoroughly as I had with Fallout 3, but thats kinda good because to this day I can hop in and have some new experiences.

I actually still haven't gotten through most of the DLC. Back then, like I said we didn't have money so I only managed to buy Point Lookout the The Pitt for Fallout 3, Point Lookout easily being my favorite.

For Fallout: New Vegas, the first DLC I bought was Honest Hearts because I thought Joshua Graham was cool. I didn't exactly understand Mormonism at the time.

As an adult, and this wasn't too long ago as of age 24, Dead Money is hands. down. the best. The characters are amazing, the gameplay and atmosphere are captivating, and I couldn't stop playing until it was over.

For most of my playthroughs of Fallout, I end up translating an existing fictional character and their situation to the Fallout universe, although I do have some old truly original characters.

I'm very fond of my Castlevania-inspired playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas, and my Castlevania-inspired Fallout 4 playthrough (using the Alternate Start mod to make it an actual rpg).

These fucking games. I started with Red Dead Redemption 2, obviously the game was amazing and the story was a roller coaster of emotions.

By the time the game had finished (keep in mind I had saved myself from spoilers) I felt an extreme connection to John Marston, being obviously very flawed and someone who made some serious mistakes accidentally mistreating people close to him.

He also has Tourette's Syndrome so jot that down. Once I got to the Epilogue, damn my life was changed! Such a beautiful ending.

By this point I am pretty aware of the first game being a sequel. I watched a 100% playthrough in one sitting because at the time I was heavily sedated.

Later on I got a copy myself! It's definitely more difficult of a game being that it's kinda broken, but I think I prefer it to RDR2 simply because of personal preference.

The experience of being someone with a tainted past which makes existence in a modern society really speaks to me, as I am also uneducated and failed by the systems of this modern capitalistic society and driven to violence because of this.

At least I was able to clear the charges from my record.

So this game and universe changed my brain chemistry. The atmosphere and setting of this game are excellent, and the content of its side quests and the main storyline are a fantastic ride full of detail and a good deal of suspense (the first time around, anyway).

It's a morbid game, full of things that will make you uncomfortable and horny and things that will feel very familiar if you're a truly fucked up and perverted individual.

After I finished this game, I delved into the wider universe of the TTRPG and it was similarly life-altering.

The entire point of the game feels like a morbid gothic parody of real life where the vampire clans represent the different flavors of fucked up it can make you

It's definitely way more complicated than just that, but it's what I like about it. I desperately want to engage in a chronicle either as a player or possibly a storyteller.

This is Beckett's source, and since he is a very prominent character within the lore of VtM, there's a hell of a lot of content to get through and we have hardly touched the majority.

I would say that he's definitely a product of Bloodlines, but we picked up quite a few things from Beckett's Jyhad Diary and various other tidbits from other lore materials.

I have a lot of history with this game. When I was very young, one of the first games I ever played was the first Fable on Xbox. I was a child, so I never got father than the first mission you take after leaving the Guild.

It was scary, and really fuckin' hard for me, but I enjoyed playing it nonetheless. Once I was a little older, I played Fable 3 on the Xbox 360 and I did get pretty far, I think I even completed the game. I was about 11 years old maybe, and I loved it!

When I was even older (about 17/18) I saw Fable 2 on sale, and I assumed it was the one I first played as a child. It was not, but I was still captivated by it.

The story is easily my favorite out of any Fable game, once you really start the game the pacing is up to you depending on how much you want to take your time and explore, and you have a lot of choices you can make that end up impacting the world around you (which is a huge selling point for this series)

The later story beats of the same are very deep and meaningful because they make use of suspense and you really feel the placement of your character within the story.

I'm kind of rambling but this is one of my favorite games of all time, with a lot of replayability. Each time i play I pick up on more of the subtle manipulations that lead up to the big twist at the end. Highly reccomend

Fable 3 pisses me off, because it forces the Fable 2 protagonist into a set story as opposed to the first two games which are spaced out by hundreds of years to great effect.

It also (assuming you're playing the good guy) mechanically forces you to become an abusive landlord later on because otherwise your kingdom will fucking die.

I just think its a stupid decision that that Fable 2 protagonist (famously an impoverished orphan) would grow up to become the King/Queen of Albion yet managing to increase the rate of poverty in Bowerstone. But that's just my opinion.

This game had me by the nuts from about 2019 to 2022.. It was one of those things that permeated everything I did and really grounded me when I needed it to.

I played it on the switch, obsessively.. I never got into modding, I kinda just replayed the original levels over and over and made up narratives about it that related to Symphony of The Night, and I was once totally convinced that they based Richter Belmont off of doomguy.

They do have similar official art, so I wasn't entirely crazy!

I did once try to make a WAD, that was a recreation of Symphony of the Night. It didn't get far, because I'm awful at understanding complicated and unfamiliar things.

I have even more history with THIS game series. I think Ocarina of Time must have been the first game I've ever played period, and I never even got past the Kokiri Forest, but luckily it still kept me engaged enough to kind of obsess over it.

Later on in life when I was like 11 or 12 my dad bought me Super Smash Bros Brawl, and it became a huge special interest for me getting me back into Ocarina of Time and other things.

Around this time, I recieved my stepdad's friends collection to N64 games along with a console and a copy of Ocarina of Time AND Majora's Mask.

I had convinced my grandparents to buy me a cheap plastic ocarina, and I played the hell out of it, figuring out what notes corresponded to the in-game music notes so I could actually play the songs from the game.

I remember fondly sitting outside and just playing the songs again and again.

I was Link for Halloween that year, but I wanted to be Sheik. My aunt had made me a Hylian shield birthday cake that year, but I didn't get to have it.

A year or two after, my aunt bought me the Ocarina of Time 3D game, since I had a 3DS at the time.

Sadly I didn't get to play it because it went missing (pretty sure my mom sold it). Now, I have it on the current 3DS I play! Thank god for homebrew.

When it comes to Majora's Mask, my experience with it had been messing around with completed save files from the old cartridge i recieved.

I also did this with Ocarina of Time, but that game was far less intimidating so I actually made progress on my own save file. Majora's Mask freaked me out with it's timing thing, I never even bothered.

But that one is also on my 3DS, so I'm able to actually get somewhere! And I'm really loving it.

In 2018, I got a Switch for Christmas. The only game I had was Super Smash Bros Ultimate, which was in fact the reason I wanted a Switch in the first place. It was actually the reason I got into Castlevania, and later Street Fighter.

A year or so after, I finally bought the Street Fighter bundle thingy for the Switch, and I got to enjoy it! While I did give each game a chance, I kept coming back to SF3.

I think I must have experienced SF3 as a child, because the character select screen of the first one had been etched into my brain and it still gives me a wave of nostalgia.

Anyway though, the style is easily my favorite of the whole series, and I think I just love the era it was born out of. I main Alex, and Urien.

I also got a lot of fun out of SF Alpha, but not as much. For this one I main Sagat

'98 isn't the only KoF game I enjoy (I also like 2000), but it's by far my favorite. I love the team mechcanic, the OST, the backgrounds, the roster. In this one my go-to team is Yamazaki, Ralf, and Robert Garcia.

I like to stare at the half-naked women while I play, thus I'm kinda shit at it. Generally I don't excell at fighting games.

This game was introduced to me as a child when i had a Gamecube + game collection from my stepdad's friend. I didn't have a memory card so I never progressed very far at all, but I enjoyed it for the time I did play.

I also had Sonic Heroes in this collection. Same deal. Later on someone close to me had introduced me fully to the games but I'd rather not associate it to them anymore. Knuckles is my favorite Sonic character, for being unsocialized and rude in an awkward sort of way.

I watched this show in high school, and it's definitely something that changed me. Not only did I grow up in that area but the meaning spoke to me.

It was awfully familiar. Some of it triggers me deeply, so I have to skip some things on a rewatch. It's understandable of course, given its extremely dark subject matter and its highly visceral depictions of murder and sexual assault.

It's all very visceral, its as realistic as it is outlandish and it captures the psychosis of being in the woods at night, an owl in the distance and cold wet air all around you.

There is a lot of tourettes in this show, LOL. Highly reccomend.

IMPORTANT DISTINCTION: I was mainly obsessed with the comics at the height of my special interest. Though, I was there at ground zero when the first episode came out on cable TV, and the show still means a lot to me despite it's tragic fall from grace.

I could go on and on if you asked me. I think the first few seasons of the show are actually way better than the beginning of the comics overall, and I don't think thats controversial.

By the time i was reading the comics, I caught up around when they found The Commonwealth, and I read it all the way up until Dwight's untimely death, which pissed me off so much that I stopped reading it.

I had some serious psychosis as I got through the All Out War arc, and it rubbed off hard on me. The first time I realized my plurality was when I had a nasty fictive of Negan, who stereotypically made me do reckless and dangerous things.

Me and my partner decided to watch this show on a whim, but it had repurcussions! Victor was born out of this show, obviously the deeply traumatized dangerous wild animal would call to us.

For a bit, we were into the current Wolverine comic arc because of how homoerotic it was, but that was q*eer-bait and we fell for it.

Otherwise, I've checked out some of the comics and taken things here and there, but honestly comics aren't typically my medium. Idgaf.

What a fantastic series. My partner was really into the manga as it was coming out, but it had associations with bad people that they knew.

However, when I watched it with them it was kinda mind-altering. What a thoughtful piece of media. It's very anthropological, and extremely gay and NOT in the tumblr way it's like actually legit erotic as hell.

Very fascinating characters and it does a lot with the historical setting its placed within. Highly reccommend.

Watched the anime off-handedly and it's just awesome. The art style of the manga and thus the anime is so tasty, and the characters are very particular and strange.

Noi blew my mind because I'm obsessed with buff women, needless to say she's basically kin-bait for me. Victor picked up that one because we think he needs to work on his masculinity problems.

Highly reccommend this series but it was trending a few years ago so I think most people in my circles are familiar with it.

This anime is beautiful, the style is soft and almost "aged", it has an antiquated vibe that I'm really into!

its very suspensful and mysterious, we still haven't finished it but it's always a pleasant watch when we remember it.

It's very cool seeing this upstanding surgeon who wants to protect all life slowly harden and shed the morals he once stood for.

My partner showed me this band after reverse image searching a high school photo of my dad to figure out what t-shirt he was wearing.

It's become maybe my favorite band ever, with it's first album (Metal Church) being maybe my favorite album ever.

Their audio mixing is so good I reference it frequently as some kind of gold standard. Each instrument goes so hard and it doesnt sound muddy like a lot of metal sounds translate to in recorded audio.

The band is also from Washington State, which is so important to me.

So fucking classic and so fucking important. Classic rock more or less used to be my special interest so we go way back...

I used to be obsessed with my Vol.4 record I picked up at a thrift store.. i was like 15 or 16. I still find new music from them from my wife (whos the type to scour discographies... not me though).

People who think it sucked without Ozzy are being ridiculous lol. It's pretty cool that the Deep Purple guy sings for them.

This is another band that I love because of my dad- my first, and favorite, patch is from him, he ripped it right off his car seat cover and gave it to me because I liked touching it. I was like 11 or 12.

"People" tend to call Slipknot fans posers or fake metalheads but I think nu metal hatred is purist in the worst kind of way, especially when its black metal fans.

One of Risotto's favorites

See above. I remember asking about the lyrics a lot. They sound fucking crazy and that really stuck with me as a kid.

Yet another band I heard when i was young, Spit helped me through some of my worst times and I mean that seriously.

It's so important to me that women get violently angry.

One of my favorites honestly, I dont like their earlier stuff but October Rust is fantastic and important to me.

I think their overt pervertedness is really refreshing even if it makes me cringe sometimes. That's just life. I would play Love You To Death at my wedding.

Demitri's favorite band.

My lover showed me TOOL and theyre fucking cool... We've fucked to Prison Sex a lot.

Undertow is a great album, but I like what I've heard from their other albums too.

LOVE these guys, I'm really into Face of Despair but I like bits and pieces of their other stuff too.

I'm fucking obsessed with their old trash sound and their audio mixing is awesome. They're definitely up there with Metal Church for me, I just need to listen to more.

I never really heard them as a kid but the moment I touched Painkiller I was changed.

I don't know much else, but my wife has showed me other great stuff from them. Another album that goes hand in hand with this one in my heart is The Ultimate Sin by Ozzy Osbourne.

Richter obsessed over these albums.

Okay fuck these guys but they're unfortunately important to me.

Load is still one of my favorite albums of all time and For Whom The Bell Tolls still makes me stim hugely.

Obviously Risotto likes them a lot, particularly Load, Kill 'em All, and kinda Death Magnetic. There's no way that they made that album not knowing about JoJo part 5.

They're pretty cool, they basically have the same thing going on as Metallica but a different flavor. Especially given the context. I loved Peace Sells as a kid.

A band my wife introduced me to. Love their sound, its classic thrash.

Found them on a whim, I love Purgatory Afterglow. It's thrash with death elements. I always love when any genre of metal fuses with thrash.

I like their freakishness. It's so fucking silly but it's that campy edge that loops back to being awesome, or something. Sometimes I'm just feeling like a freak on a leash.

Wife showed me. Their first album is really great, it's the campy kind of metal like you'd see in a disney channel cartoon.

Cruachan... I want to love you so much more than I do. Gaelige Metal is SIIICK but it's been hard to find a song I would listen to every day.

I dont like their cover of The Rocky Road To Dublin, which is tragic. Maybe I can do better. That being said I do need to listen to more.

I'm not a superfan for them but they've got some really good songs and I love the over-the-top viking feel lmao.

Like I'll complain about romanticized viking bullshit and then turn around and rock out to Amon Amarth. I feel like they know it so it kinda works.

I have serious issues with these guys but I'll be damned if they don't have some bangers.

Their sound is really unique and smells like gasoline and oil- their band name just now kicked in for me.

I was already really into Dio, and so I got into them pretty quickly once my wife showed me.

Beckett really likes Rainbow Rising.

At first I wasnt going to add this because in my head his music falls under "Black Sabbath" but obviously that's not right.

I mentioned The Ultimate Sin earlier, and that's definitely my favorite.

Yeah you know its Holy Diver. I'm level 1 for Dio but I must give credit to him here.

Huge, and I'm sure everyone loves Nirvana! They should. Another band that helped me through things, especially In Utero.

I had such an intense grunge phase in high school and it makes me nostalgic to hear even their most overplayed songs. Only a state like Washington could produce their kind of thing.

That and serial killers, apparently.

They make such fucking catchy songs, I really need to check out more because they've given me a lot to fixate on recently.

Another excellent musical product of Washington.

Don't hurt me, I know it's ska, but it feels like it should go here as opposed to metal or rock.

One of those bands that gets you through a really hard time. Forever in my mind linked to The Walking Dead. I don't have those fictives anymore but it belongs to them in honor.

Everything Goes Numb is one of my favorite albums ever.

Former special interest category. One of the few bands of which I'm familiar with almost the entire discography.

They're definitely not overrated (though some of their songs are), and they get better as they go on which tends to be the case for those older bands.

I think stealing people's music makes it sound faker so I'm not crazy about their earlier stuff but its still decent. Stairway to Heaven is THAT GOOD.

They're so fucking cool and I'm obsessed with Sabotage. I need to listen to more, but it seems they rarely recorded in a studio.

That said, they have great audio mixing when they have it! Practically, they're Scottish Led Zeppelin. To me.

Technically they helped create metal, but they veer more into hard rock if you ask me.

So good though, Machinehead is very cool and our friend was caught speeding to Highway Star when we showed it to him, which is an awesome thing to bring up in relation to Deep Purple.

Another former special interest category. So I used to be freaking obsessed with Tommy but it's kinda bad to listen to and to watch.

They definitely got better over time but since I know the lore i also appreciate their older stuff too because of the fun factor.

Quadrophrenia is amazing though, and I really like how the evolution of their rock operas is so apparent, it's a very refined album.

Maybe I should consider this a special interest category too.

I get pretty mentally ill about my music fixations but good fucking god, The Wall did terrible things to me.

I made a mock encyclopedia of these species of "worms" I thought up and it was directly inspired.

It's got so many classics on it too, and they're rightly very popular, but I think Young Lust is severely underrated.

So, their early shit is really good and I don't know why I get mad about this often (probably because his songs are so overwhelmingly popular) but i hate Brian Johnson's voice.....

Jailbreak is like, the peak for me because it's sooo silly and knows it's silly. Bon Scott has a natural campiness about him. I feel like black on black and other newer shit is trying too hard to be cool.

I got into Cream during my classic rock phase. pretty solid, classic classic rock, I sang karaoke Sunshine of Your Love to my wife once.

Another classic rock era discovery, my first taste of prog metal. Mostly I'm just into Fire of Unknown Origin, it's a GREAT album

..... I have a very deep psychological relationship with the OST of this game, which I could rant a whole book about, but I won't. Maybe in the shrine.

My favorite is Wandering Ghosts, and I think its underrated. This therapist in a psych ward said it sounded like jazz, which is funny, but not untrue.

Prologue is still my ringtone, even though my wife begs me to change it. My former boss once asked me if it was Metallica.

I actually can't listen to this OST anymore, because it triggers something in my brain that I'd rather avoid.

The first Castlevania OST i got into, so catchy and it makes me wish smash ultimate hadnt remixed them

this ost was with me during some weird times. i used to be convinced that it was connected to castlevania, and i consider some of these songs to be themes of certain characters of that series. theyre also just awesome and kickass

This game has amazing OST. If you ever just want creepy sounds and good music in your ear at once I would reccomend.

I'm listening to it as I type this paragraph. Obviously this is Beckett's territory, but I think Demitri is more attached to this OST than he is.

By far my favorite KoF game, got me through a lot, and if you ever want to know what a manic episode feels like, look no further than this OST.

the OST is part of why i got into sf, its very catchy in sf2 and sf3 has such cool themes and compliments the art style

something i got into for nostalgia reasons. played this as a kid and so naturally i was fond of the OST, its very strikin

So important to me. Sparked my love of old country, and wild western soundtracks.

Radio New Vegas is good to, and back when I was obsessed with mobsters I greatly enjoyed it, but the calming nature of some of these tunes just speaks to me.

My wife also likes it, I'll catch them listening to it from time to time.

This one scratches my wild west itch.

I also love the soundtrack for RDR2, but I think RDR1 is more personal to me, for reasons I'll be describing in the video games section.

really nice atmospheric and folky soundtrack, with some high energy symphony type sounds

got pretty hyperfixated on this series for a month or two in like 2021

i love love love the silly/badass vines of this soundtrack, i think it gets sillier as you get from Sonic adventure to sonic heroes but its

i have adhd AND autism theres no way i dotn like this soundtrack. im definitely not a superfan of the series but its quite good and toby fox is a great composer

see above

Whew... Now, this one has weight for me. I feel like it's almost the intention to become hypnotized by this soundtrack, because it was very effective for me.

I'd always smoke to this soundtrack, and it definitely gets better the more intoxicated you become. Which again, I think lends to the purpose of the OST, considering.

i cant stress how much i love this soundtrack

an anime my friend got me into, the intro is LOVELY i really enjoy this song

something im not too deeply into but its full of a lot of good shit from the actual show itself to its OST, but truly im obsessed with this song and its version

This one is pretty iconic, even if people dont know it.

It's basically Beer OST but my wife opened up my eyes into just how beautiful it is.

We actually havent even finished the movie, i think because it got really misogynist and just turned us off.

this song is very important to me, like a blanket that comforts me when i need to hide

ive always been an american, but ive gotten deeply into reconnecting with what my family lost way back when. the unwavering pride of ireland has made me very passionate for it

there is definitely IRA sentiment in what ive already shared but these are more light hearted as if solely to tease the british

a band i discovered a few years ago when i researched about romania and they really scratched my folk itch with their highly impressive fiddling and hammered strings