Rundown (7/27/2025) That Time I Spent $15,000 on Colombian Pussy

This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: That Time I Spent $15,000 on Colombian Pussy
• Pokémon Presents 2024-2 Happened! (Pokémon Champions and Legends Z-A Look Good)
• Not Safe For The Powerful Puritans – Part V (Collective Shout Is Trying to Destroy Itch.io)
• A Natalie.TF Schedule Update (My 2025 Schedule Has Been Horrible!)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
That Time I Spent $15,000 on Colombian Pussy

Omigosh, storytime~!

This wouldn’t be ‘new’ to anybody who has been reading Natalie.TF for a couple of years. However, I’ve got some new blood readers who might not know, and this is one of the more interesting things to happen in my humdrum life that hasn’t gotten its own dedicated Ramble. Frankly, I don’t want to give it a standalone Ramble, but a Rundown Preamble Ramble? That seems appropriate!

So, back in July 2021, I was contacted by a Student Transfer scenario writer who went by the handle Clavietika. Despite the frankly bad English, her work captured an essence, passion, and presentational prowess that I both recognized and respected. She began our conversation by asking me if I thought she was a good writer. I gave her a diplomatic answer, and, as I tend to do when queer people land in my DMs, I managed to somehow make friends with her.

In doing so, I learned she was a Colombian transgender woman, and that she was a very… troubled, needy, and complicated person. I would rather not divulge too many details about her or her life, but, I need to give at least a few examples: She is plural and described herself as a system of three identities, each of which were prescribed their own name, one of whom was non-binary. She was simply not good at managing her physical space or surroundings, maintaining this ungodly table of trinkets and medication rather than use, say, a shelf. And she was someone who had miscellaneous sensory issues that ranged from her ability to wear certain types of clothing— like shoes or a gaff— or look at certain monitors, particularly the one she needed for her day job.

She was a woman of many problems, and she liked complaining about them, as she was, for a variety of reasons, unable to fix them. I looked at these myriad problems and thought what many, many women before and after me have thought when stumbling onto a girlfailure like this. “I can fix her.” So, I decided to help her however I could.

I assisted Clavietika in proofreading and editing her novel project, Crownbound!, a Bowsette fanfic with the serial numbers shaved off, which probably warrants an explanation. For those who don’t remember, Bowsette was a highly prolific meme and art trend for a solid two weeks in 2018 that has persisted in dribs and drabs throughout the past 7 years. I have not followed it closely, at all, but I do see a Bowsette crop up every few months, and was super into it when it was a hot commodity. Because it was a giant monster man becoming a hot goth princess! To 2018 Natalie, that was peak fiction! (2025 Natalie has far more esoteric tastes.)

Now, Clavietika had a very personal perception of who Bowsette, this character created by fandom, and was opinionated on what she should be, on this image she built up in her head. She saw a lot of what she desired in herself when she looked at Bowsette. Someone confident, bold, beautiful, strong in body and mind, and with the regalness of a princess. It was a perception crystlaized by fandom ideas and interpretations, particularly citing The Glory of Bowsette. She wanted to make a story like that, so she conjured up the idea for Crownbound!, and yes the exclamation point is part of the title.

The story has since been removed from the wider internet, but I still remember the key details. It was a story of a Bowser pastiche (Wolfram) being defeated, finding a Super Crown pastiche, becoming a Bowsette pastiche (Abandrella) and undergoing an identity crisis following their transformation. While it had many Mario shaped fantasy elements, it was ultimately a story about a character struggling to accept they are trans, because that was a feeling Clavi had a strange fixation on. Characters having this laborious path of resistance before realizing that they are trans. The story was not particularly good, but I took my role as an editor seriously. I used Google Docs to parse through her work, highlighting sections that needed attention, making suggestions, and trying, as best as I could, to explain what works and what does not work when writing a story. I did this to help her learn. …It did not work.

This consumed a lot of time, as did offering her more general life advice, guidance, and an ear as she voiced her many troubles and many desires. However, time is not what I’m here to talk about. What I’m here to talk about is the money and the pussy! As many of you know, I am a well compensated white-collar professional, and circa 2021, I had very few expenses, as I lived at home with my parents. This meant, I had a surplus of money, more than I had ever had in my life. So I looked at Clavi, this desperate girl who wanted to do so much, making Colombian wages (less than 4 bucks an hour), and thought of how much further money would go where she lived.

In August 2021, after knowing her for a month, I sent her $2,750, knowing that this money would do wonders to help her out in her daily life. However, she did not really use it for that, and spent most of it on her student loans. Which is… good, as student loans are evil and should not exist. College should be free, and I’d be happy to pay more taxes to support such a venture. However, this meant she needed more money to fix her life’s many problems, so I gave her more gifts.

In November 2021, I sent her $1,200 so she could buy computer parts and household items. Slightly later during that month, I sent her my Wii, games, and accessories, along with an MSI Radeon R9 390 that I got back in 2015, valued at well over $1,000. Now, why did I send her a Wii and GPU? Well, as someone born in the late 90s, in a third-world country, she never got to enjoy the Wii during its heyday. She was aware of it, yet it was something for Americans and the wealthy. Something out of reach. To her, having a Wii was a means of fulfilling a childhood dream. A dream or having nice things and being able to play once expensive and impressive games.

Her lack of resources and computer power also made her unable to play many 3D games for much of her life, with the most she could manage on an integrated GPU being PS1 emulation. She wanted a better computer so she could play modern games, and so she could run more and better art/editing programs. Which is why I gave her the money and GPU for a computer. I even gave her access to my whole Steam library via the old Family Sharing policy. (She has since been removed from my account.)

I thought I was doing her a favor, helping her get past economic trauma by giving her access to these things. However, when she received them, she was… a brat about it. Flaunting them in public Discord servers, talking about how great her new things were, and rejoicing in how she did not need to feel poor any longer. She was not content to enjoy these things on her own, she needed to publicize them, to share them, and in a very particular way. Like she was using every good thing that happened to her to make her seem better than she is, to tell others ‘fuck you, losers! Look at how good things are going for me-me-me.’

I believe this reaction came from a long-standing complex. Things had been so bad for her for so long, and she did not know how to react now that she got something she always wanted. I had given her the opportunity to better her life, and while I don’t doubt she was grateful, her reaction to my gifts always… pissed me off. I did not give her my Wii and game library just so she could flaunt it in the Student Transfer Discord. This was one of Clavi’s many personality flaws, but far from the biggest. The biggest was probably her particular blend of neurodiversity, but I’m not gonna touch that. I’m gonna touch the fact she was quite racist.

Now, much of this stems form her upbringing. She grew up in rural Colombia, in a town without hope, that only brought in money through tourists. So rural that she not realize Black people were real until she saw one walking down the street of [REDACTED] as an adult. That is a racism born from ignorance and geography, but her other racisms were less… understandable. She routinely dismissed ‘Spanish culture’ as inferior next to English culture. She would speak ill of Venezuelans after they started populating her city due to troubles in their home country. And she was not particularly fond of Asians, per my recollection. Which is always the dumbest group to be racist toward, as most humans are Asian.

Clavi also had a strange fixation of insisting that she was White when… no, she wasn’t. She did not look White, she looked Hispanic. Because she was Hispanic, and you can’t just change that. (Trust me, I’ve seen shit, and it always ends in failure.) It is not wrong to say that Clavi wished she were White and that she could erase her Colombian heritage entirely. And the number of disparaging things she said about Colombia… well, they made me realize how hopeless a lot of people living in South America have to be feeling.

Clavi had problems, she had personality flaws, and for months, I tried helping her. But after a point, I was just sick of dealing with her. How entitled she felt to my attention and opinions, how little respect she was showing others, and how disinterested she was in the self-improvement I have been urging her to pursue since day one. She eventually said that the one thing holding her back, preventing her from getting her life together, was her lack of bottom surgery, the fact she still had a penis. To paraphrase, she said she would get her life together if she had a vagina. And I believed her.

So, in January 2022, I decided to help her out again. I sent her $1,200 for miscellaneous expenses and a plane ticket, and sent $9,000 to a Colombian doctor, fully funding her vaginoplasty. I hoped this would fix her… But then I found her starting shit in other public Discord servers, metaphorically rubbing her freshly forged Colombian pussy in the face of trans girls who lacked the funds or support to pursue bottom surgery. Which is… a really shitty thing to do. You don’t go flaunting your jewelry in the poor house, and you don’t do whatever the fuck she was doing.

At this point, I gave up on Clavi. I gave her everything I could think of, and I was just not pleased with her as a person. I got mean, I got nasty with some of my comments, and I wanted to make my disappointment with her, as a human, abundantly clear. So, I cut her out of my life. …Until August 2022, when I started helping her with a Crownbound reboot based on The Count of Monte Christo, working through certain plot details. However, our conversations during this period just pissed me off, as Clavi just was not willing to take my advice, giving me pushback on so many things as she wanted to remake. So, I told her off with the following message:

“For the record, I have no faith in your writing or storytelling abilities at this point. The number of times you have called on me for help and been unable to connect the dots has frustrated me. …I am still disgusted by the sheer gall you had with that giantess story and this belief that you could write an entirely new type of story unlike something anyone has ever done before. Now, a year later, you are still struggling to come up with an outline for a story directly based on another story.”

That marked the end of my friendship with Clavietika, and I have not looked back. She has since deleted her Discord account, a lot of her accounts, and the moniker of Clavietika, her supposed true name, has been discarded at least twice. I was able to find some of her modern socials, but I don’t want to draw any attention to her. I don’t want her to be part of my life anymore, I don’t want to talk to her, know how she is doing, or anything of the sort. But I also do not wish her any ill will. She is someone with a lot of troubles, defects, and needs that are beyond me. …And I wish I realized that sooner.

Do I consider what I did to be a mistake? Well… not entirely. I gave her money she used to pay off her student loans and receive a surgery that she otherwise would never have been able to afford. I hoped that I could fix her, even her out, and make her a happier, more skilled, and more determined individual and creator. Sure, I don’t think it worked. Is that my fault? Oh, fuck no. I was a saint for months before my tolerance cracked.

If I could tell my past self to not do this, would I? Uh, yeah! I truly do not feel a strong connection to Clavietika. Like I said, I cut her out of my life, forgot about her, and I did not have many good times with her. But if I’m talking about hypothetical nonsense scenarios, then I would also tell broke-ass November 2018 Natalie and her momma to buy a $4,000 Bitcoin, HODL it like a good bitch until it broke $60k in April 2021. Because I spiritually cannot say no to a 15x gain. Hell, it’s hard for me to not sell when I see a fluke investment double in a couple months.

Will I ever do something like this again? Uh, definitely not in the foreseeable future. Most of my income goes directly to paying my condo association dues and my mortgage. I have real expenses, and I need to be responsible with my money. Which I… sorta am?

Did this gifting experience hurt me financially? Uh… yes, I miss the $15,000 I spent on Colombian Pussy, but I’m not broke or anything. I have money— my net worth is about $290,000, I’m 30-years-old, and I’m putting away over $1,000 a month. Financially, I am in the top 20% of people my age in the United States. I’m not rich, I’m comfy, and financial comfiness is always in demand.

…And I guess that’s the end of what I have to say about Miss Clavietika. She’s someone I knew, tried to help, offered way too many resources to, got really pissed at, and then I cut her out of my life.

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Also, I got bottom surgery later the same year as Clavietika, and it cost me roughly half as much as it did for her. $4,682.13. I’d say thank you Blue Cross Blue Shield, but I would never thank a health insurance company for anything. They should not exist. Every health insurance executive should [REDACTED].

Also-also, when I die… all my money’s probably going to go into a carefully managed restricted fund for some queer charity here in Chicagoland. You know, assuming World Death hasn’t kicked in. Because I physically cannot have kids, and even though my sister would be a great mother, she has a nasty habit of trying to fix men who are spiritually predisposed to being deadbeat losers.

Also-also-also, the header image features this piece by 吐槽先森, which Clavietika used as her profile picture for the majority of the time I had known her. Sorry to the artist for associating them with Colombian Pussy, but I’m sure they’ve been associated with much, much worse. Like Nazis! If you draw art online, a Nazi has probably used something you made for a profile picture.

Also X4, I wrote an entry of TSF Series directly inspired by my time with Clavietika. It’s a fun one, chock-full of SATANISM! And PERSIAN DICK CHEESE!

Akumako: “You got that right!”

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Pokémon Presents 2024-2 Happened!
(Pokémon Champions and Legends Z-A Look Good)

It’s that time again~!

The Pokémon Company chose to grace us with a Pokémon Presents this past week, and it was… by in large, what we have come to expect. Frontloaded with trailers for shows, events, live service updates, and the shadow drop of a trite puzzle game by the name of Pokémon Friends. From the trailer, it looks to be a YEAH! YOU WANT “THOSE GAMES,” RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW, LET’S SEE YOU CLEAR THEM! like affair. A genre that used to be common amongst Flash game devs or student projects, but has since been repurposed by callous advertises as engagement farming ‘brain teasers.’ And now there’s one of those involving the biggest IP in the world. Hoo-ray~!

They also announced some theme park attraction they were planning but… I just do not get how immersive theme parks like this are a draw for all but locals and the top 20th percentile of earners, especially when travel is so expensive. However, people still somehow find a way to visit Super Disney World 3D Land USA: Doki Doki Panic. So maybe some people are willing to just blow their whole savings on an experience worse than going to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Or the Timber Ridge Lodge & Waterpark. To a small child, those three are functionally the same experience, and the beer’s a lot cheaper outside of Anaheim.

Anyway, the real meat was divided between the two big projects. The mobile and Switch Pokémon online battling hub, Pokémon Champions, and the big 2025 title Pokémon legends: Z-A. So let’s just dive into those.

This Pokémon Presents offered people their first real look at Pokémon Champions, which seems to be in-line with what I, and a lot of people, wanted/expected. A multiplayer Pokémon battling game using the existing animation, models, and rigging structures of the Switch games. Specifically BDSP, as ILCA is making Champions, and both are running in Unity.

Battles seem to be mostly geared around 3 vs. 3 single battles and ‘the real Game’ of 4 vs. 4 doubles, and is further divided between ranked, casual, and private matches. Pokémon from Pokémon Home can be brought over to the game, but players can also purchase a (rather small) list of Pokémon specifically for use in Pokémon Champions by using a currency, Victory Points, or VP. Per the official website, VP cannot be directly purchased, and it is primarily earned from ranked matches “depending on the outcome” and “other places.” To me, that means there will be some sort of dailies or progression reward system that gives player VP, and it will be included, as a sweetener, for various monetization methods, namely cosmetics. Because this seems like the sort of game to go ham on cosmetics. Just look at… live services in general.

By default, the player only has access to a box of 30 Pokémon they can use for team building, which can be expanded through some unspecified means. Certain Pokémon can only be used a certain number of times, per an infinity symbol in the UI. Move sets and abilities can be customized and changed through what looks to be an expansive list. Move descriptions are a lot less ambiguous than they are in the main games— thank goodness. And the game seems to be eschewing the PP raising strats of competitive players, in a move that I’m sure will be as controversial, but with competitive Pokémon, I’m pretty sure it’s all controversy, and people are there for the meta drama first. Same as speedrunning and sports.

Stat customization also exist, but in a way that perplexed me. I mucked around with a stat calculator— probably not the preferred one— and I think that I figured it out. Pokémon are level 50 as a rule. When you buy Pokémon from the in-game shop, you get Pokémon with perfect IVs across the board. And based on the UX, I have suspicions that all Pokémon brought into the game are given perfect IVs as a rule. So no hunting for a 0 Speed IV Bloodmoon Ursaluna for Trick Room strats. However, you have the ability to allocate their EVs, known here as Stat Points. Except you are not distributing 510 Stat Points in a way that would parallel the EV system from the main games. Instead, you are distributing 66 points, and the math here is a bit… odd. I know the 252/252/4 rule, but the numbers don’t work out cleanly.

A Pokémon at level 100 with 252 (max) EVs in a stat should have 63 points added to that stat. At level 50, the effect of max EVs would be halved, so they would only see a 32 point boost. Though, this effect is multiplied by 1.1 or 0.9 if the Pokémon has a beneficial or detrimental nature. Which is how the modest (special attack boosting) Gardevoir in the trailer has 194 special attack.

What they are doing is taking the math and simplifying it for ease of use, but in a way that I find initially confusing. In part because they just made up a new number? Going back to the 252/252/4 rule, that rule exists because it is the optimal way to give a level 50 Pokémon boosted stats. 32 points in two stats and 1 point in another, totaling 65 stat points from EVs. Except Champions is using 66 Stat Points, meaning they just decided to add a new one. That is… just a strange way to alter a format that people have been getting sweaty over for 20 years at this point.

…Also, for the record, I am almost definitely not going to try out Champions when it launches, as despite my clinical Pokémania, I do not like competitive Pokémon. I only like the series as a single-player RPG. Hell, I don’t actually like competitive anything, as I view competition as a tool to propagate nationalism, tribalism, and the hatred of the other. And considering how racism, sexism, and hatred all tend to froth around competitive environments, like competitive games and sports, I don’t think I’m too off-base in my adolescence-borne haterism. What is a war if not a competition between de facto kings?

Pokémon Champions will be release for mobile and Switch in 2026. Strangely not Switch 2, because I guess they don’t want to give people 120 fps or 4K Pokémon battles.

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Pokémon Legends: Z-A was given a significant per-release spotlight, and as has been the case since gameplay first dropped, I think the game looks, generally, pretty good. While some Switch 1 footage in the past looked a bit choppy, the game looks pleasantly clean on Switch 2, even if I still smell some 3DS tech in just how things move. Anyway, onto the new stuff shown in this trailer.

We learn that the protagonist is a newly recruited member of a loose collation of plucky youngsters dubbed MZ, joined by including the previously seen rival, Urbain/Taunie. The fashion designer Naveen, because fake Paris is the land of fashion. And Lida, an aspiring dancer who wears comfortable street wear, ties her hair up into a little three point, and is, on some level, likely a re-do of Tierno from Pokémon X and Y. Because… what the heck did Tierno even do in those games? (Don’t think about what could’ve been in Pokémon Z, Zoomies. It was never in full development. Game Freak decided to make Tembo The Badass Elephant instead.)

There’s of course an evil team of some manner with the Rust Syndicate, led by disgruntled salaryman Corbeau and his uniformed mooks.

Trainer customization is leagues beyond what was offered in the past few games, truly letting you create your own little digital fashionista. It’s a feature that I always appreciate, but the inclusion of this, and seeing Skillet flip out about it made me realize something about expansive character creators. No matter how much they let the player do, most players will only explore a fraction of the options available, as they only have one character. Specifically a character they want to actively play as.

There are certain exceptions to this rule, namely the Pawn system in Dragon’s Dogma (2012) and the Replicant-Slave system in God Eater Gaiden: The Freedom Wars (2014). However, two examples is not even a trend. Why only let the player customize one character? Why not let them design their rival too? Pokémon games had a history of letting you name their rival, and plenty of classic RPGs let you just rename characters whatever you liked. But why limit it to that? If you have these tools, why not let them customize more than one character?

…Or at the very least, let players choose which of the two rivals they get. Why should the people playing as a boy get to be around a cutie while anybody playing as a girl is stuck forging a rivalry with their inferior blasé boy equivalent? One is in hot pants and a high-cut top, leaving their midriff exposed— the cheat code to make any skinny anime person hot, the other’s in some T-shirt and jeans. These two things are not equal! Stop pretending they are! YARGH!

Side quests, a feature pioneered in Legends: Arceus, will make their return with what seems to be a combination of continuous quest lines and on-off encounters. Fighting alpha Pokémon standing on elevators. Take out the garbage. Show someone something. Collect X number of Ys for Mx Zed. Help the forgettable but novel Emma from X and Y as she pursues the path of a detective, complete with a smartly dressed redesign. Assist this new character Mable in helping her research Pokémon them and doing whatever in exchange for infinite use TMs (THANK YOU). …Wait, what do you mean Mable is not a new character? …She was a Team Flare admin?

Yeah, I only played through X once (after 300 hours, I was good), the games are generally not the go-to choice for discussion, and Team Flare bits tend to be glossed over. So I completely forgot Mable was a thing. I remember Xerosic for being an Eggman-looking-ass dude and his role in the post-game Emma storyline. But Aliana, Bryony, Celosia, and Mable? I have zero memories of those losers. Looking them up, they barely had a presence in the storyline, and were bona fide jobbers. They only had a maximum of two Pokémon per each team, and were functionally indistinguishable next to the grunts next to them.

Admittedly, their key art actually looks pretty good, but they don’t have faces. Their eyes are covered by large bulky visors that, visually, indicates they are mindslaves. They don’t know who they are, where they are, and were merely brainwashed by Lysandre for his ethnic cleansing campaign. Same with every other Team Flare member. That is what the glasses are for!

…I’m not saying what’s canon, I’m saying what makes sense!

Oh, and while I could similarly poo-poo the ORAS admins as being forgettable— because mechanically, they are kaka— they had immediately recognizable and loveable designs. Just looking at them makes me want to swap their bodies, poof into a plant, and watch as the chaos unfolds.

Dang, I have enough body swap brainrot that this official art even looks like a body swap scenario playing out.

As a Mega Evolution centric game, and given Pokémon’s strange obsession with raid encounters and outbreaks, PLZA also features Rogue Mega Evolution battles across Lumiose. Battles against Mega Evolved Pokémon where the player, and a computer controlled ally, need to knock their giant health bar down to zero before, most likely, catching them. Also, they drop Mega Ring juice that you can use to Mega Evolve, as that’s likely going to be a necessary mechanic to engage with, unlike Terastallization.

I really do not like the modern pivot towards these raid encounters— I’m still traumatized from 30 second catching animations— and just from the footage shown, I worry that these will be boring fight. But, hopefully, the rule of level scaling remains true and the real-time combat glosses over the tepid gameplay of pressing A twice every 45 seconds.

Also, Mega Dragonite was revealed with a goofy design that plopped a pair of giant wings on their head, made their tail even longer, and affixed it with a little Dragonair-like ball. I actually think it’s cute, appropriately silly, but… why did they have to make the wings on the back smaller? Mega Evolutions should be additive, not take things away!

…Between all those tangents, I guess I’m actually pretty excited about Pokémon Legends: Z-A. In fact… I may as well just pull the trigger at risk of breaking my word.

I decided that I’m going to buy a Switch 2 along with this game.

Yeah, I know I went on about how I wasn’t gonna get one, but I know I will be getting it within the next year for my Pokémania. And, if I can find one for MSRP before October (big if), I will just buy it. I’ll pay the extra $11 in Switch 2 tax to get the better version, and start up a Switch 2 physical game collection. I could just buy the $500 PLZA Switch 2 bundle announced during this Pokémon Presents, but I want a physical copy. Because I’m gonna wind up selling them in 20-ish years, and I do not trust Nintendo to honor future digital purchases, period.

Am I looking forward to throwing down $580 on all of this? (Cook County has the highest sales tax in the country, bay-bee!) Nope! But what choice do I really have? Give up my Pokémania? Ha!

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Not Safe For The Powerful Puritans – Part V
(Collective Shout Is Trying to Destroy Itch.io)

I was planning on giving an update regarding last week’s puritanical payment processors story. A bit before last week’s Rundown went live, Vice reported that payment processors were being lobbied by an Australian organization known as Collective Shout. A few hours later, that story was eventually taken down by Vice’s owners (big mistake) and will likely lead to the (second) death of their gaming subsidiary site, Waypoint. This was later picked up my PC Gamer, and I figured that the story would end there. That this would be straightened out, and this negative coverage exposing them as a bad organization would lead to the slow process of correction.

…Then, in the dark hours of Thursday morning, I saw that Itch put out an update on NSFW content. Due to an abrupt and aggressive push from Collective Shout and payment processors like PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard, they have begun a wave of deindexing of the majority, roughly 75%, of adult works. Per the reporting of various other sites, and various other people on Bluesky, I have reached the conclusion that Itch’s approach has been more than a little sloppy. Pretty much anything with an NSFW tag is at risk, things that are just LGBT were also targeted, and even things people have already purchased are no longer available to be downloaded. Hell, freaking Max’s Big Bust, which has no nudity and is just a few f-bombs away from being PG-13, was shadowbanned, so clearly, something was wrong with however they are implementing things.

Itch has done a poor job of communicating what is going on, and I think their actions may have traumatized certain individuals. However, I’m pretty sure you could fit all of Itch’s staff on a sufficiently sized bus. They are the little guys, I do not believe they are operating with even a modicum of malice, nor do I believe they want to do this based on what Itch is and what it has become over the years.

Itch is a place for anything and everything, but mostly works from bona fide indie creators. Not actual studios, but devs who make everything in their bedroom. Not even a basement or garage. That’s a 20th Century fantasy! And a lot of queer creators who want to make queer art on a platform that, historically, has been very open to queer subject matter. Also, they have an open revenue sharing model, which makes them the GOAT storefront in my mind. You gotta have stones to let people give you nothing for using your servers. They are one of the few platforms in their category that I don’t view as a callous way to amass users over time. I genuinely believe their goal is to function as a place where artists can make art.

With Steam, I could largely shrug off this story as an organization going after a big storefront because someone was causing a hissy fit over a mainstream platform. But Itch? Itch is NOT mainstream. It is not a major storefront by any means. Steam is one of, if not the biggest, gaming platform. But if you are not queer, and not into niche PC gaming, there’s a good chance you don’t know anything about Itch. And by being smaller, they are more vulnerable, more susceptible to the whims of payment processors like this, and have fewer means to resist them.

Ergo, Itch is not the enemy here. They are the victim, and the real target of one’s ire should be the payment processors. PayPal, Visa, and Mastercard. And if we want to see them reverse their callous and discriminatory restrictions, you can actually do something about it.

If you care about NSFW content or LGBT people— and if you don’t why are you here— then please give these payment processors a call. And to make it easy, I ‘prepared’ some resources for you. Here are some phone numbers to contact these payment processors:

• Mastercard (US): 1 800-627-8372
• Mastercard (Int.): 1 636-722-7111
• Visa (US + Can): 1 800-847-2911
• Visa (AUS): 1 800-125-440
• PayPal: 1 888-221-1161
• Stripe: 1 877-887-7815

If you need some prompts on what do say during your phone call, here is a short yet succinct script:

“Hello, my name is [YOUR NAME], and I would like to file a complaint. I find it troubling that [COMPANY NAME] is blocking content on [PLATFORM, EX. STEAM/ITCH] and making it difficult for me to make legal purchases. I am going to stop using [COMPANY NAME] if this isn’t rescinded and fixed.”

And here are some other pointers you can use:

• Stop censoring legal fictional content that complies with the law and platform standards.
• Reject influence from activist groups that promote moral panic or misrepresent fiction as harm.
• Be fully transparent about content restrictions and the rationale behind them.
• Protect creators’ rights to make legal adult content and ensure a fair appeals process for any penalized media.

Or, to just point you at a better resource that I found after getting this post ret-2-go, just follow these instructions.

(As a side note, I was unable to contact anyone at Stripe or Mastercard, as I do not have a Stripe or Mastercard account, so they do not care about me and lock their support down to account holders. I was only able to contact PayPal and Visa.)

Also, yes, I know some of you are introverts who don’t want to talk to someone on the telephone, or wait on hold. To which I say… tough shit. If you want to do something, the least you can do is take a phone call. Do whatever while waiting on hold, clog up the phone lines, and make your voices heard. Because phone campaigns work. The reason Collective Shout was able to make this much progress is because they had 1,000 people make phone calls.

Rock the bote, become a nuisance, and don’t just bitch on a damn forum.

Akumako: “How is that better than what you’re doing?”

I’m doing journalism and giving people information so they could try to make a difference in the world.

Akumako: “You do realize that millions have seen what is going on, nearly every queer creator has been circulating the links, and even drama ‘moderates’ like MoistCr1TiKaL have been covering the story, right?”

Yeah, but I’m still gonna do my part. This is my weekly topic segment, and I’m not gonna stay silent, ya silly demon wench! Because if this keeps up, then Natalie.TF is going to go down!

Akumako: “How? You don’t monetize the site!”

Uh, because if it is de facto illegal to sell something, then it will become de facto illegal to host something, even if that person is paying you and just writing words. First they come for the trans, then the gays, then the Blacks, then the women, then the non-Anglo-Saxtons, then the non-Aryans. It’s their fucking playbook. It’s how things escalate. Everything is at risk now, and unless we are proactive, and stomp out these puritanical troglodytes ASAP, they will keep on coming.

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A Natalie.TF Schedule Update
(My 2025 Schedule Has Been Horrible!)

…Yeah, I don’t have much else I want to talk about this week.

Sony is going to acquire 2.5% of Bandai Namco’s stock as part of a strategic partnership. Which might sound like an opportunity for game partnerships— it might be— but the press release specifies this is more focused on the anime and manga industries. Or in other words, more Bandai works on Sony platforms (Crunchyroll). Besides, Bandai and Sony have a pretty good relationship, so I don’t know what a strategic partnership would bring to the gaming scene. Maybe some co-publishing or exclusives, but I think we are beyond the era where console exclusives make sense. Well, outside of Nintendo.

If I wanted to be topical, I could talk about The Epstein Files, but everybody else is doing that, and you people already know what I think about it. I don’t think they are going to let these files release unless someone leaks them, and I hope they do. I hope that someone leaks them and thousands of powerful men are exposed as pedophiles, including the president. Now, I cannot imagine the justice system actually doing anything about it— I would sooner expect SCOTUS to make raping enslaved children legal for sufficiently affluent members of the Homo Caucasoid species (exact wording)— but it would help the vibes at the very least.

Instead, I’m just going to talk about my schedule for the rest of this year.

In short, my output has been bad beneath my expectations, and I feel bad about it. For the first 3.5 months of this year, I was swarmed with work, barely given much free time. While I did manage to prepare a 50,000 word outline for Act 3 of Verde’s Doohickey 2.0, that is not something I can really show people. I’ve already gone on about why everything before April 16th has been a mess for me. However, I need to pause and ask myself what the fuck have I been doing the past 3.5 months?

Well, the first roadblock I want to highlight is, of course, video games, as I’ve actually been playing them quite a lot. Which you can tell by all the reviews I’ve put out the past few months.

• All in Abyss: Judge The Fake – A poker VN that would have been great if they had an extra $75k for the budget, and didn’t use gross AI backgrounds.
• Body Swap Story – Aunty Yui & Yuto – A banger-ass body swap visual novel that knows exactly what is going to be and delivers upon the good smut. Seriously, buy it, play it, and get wet. (It’s not banned yet, but it might be.)
• Press-Switch v0.6c Beta – A surprise update to one of my favorite games of all time. It was amazing, but now I can’t talk about it because of pseudo-legal reasons.
• Tribe Nine – A live service that saw EOS announced after a mere three months, and I played it right before it lost core features that made progression not a nightmare.
• Persona 5: The Phantom X – A mobile live service spin-off of Persona 5 that’s just a worse version of Persona 5 in every way.
• Hello Girl – A nice little wartime VN about bunny girls, friendship, lost family members and government conspiracy.

Which is before getting into the time I spent on Umamusume (I guess is supposed to be Uma Musume according to fandom). My less than peachy time with Tokimeki Memorial. And, of course, the 200+ hours I have spent chipping away at Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy.

Adding up all my playtime for these games, we get some gooey number like 350 hours, probably a bit more, and that is just counting the time I spent PLAYING these games. I am not counting the time I spent writing these reviews, editing them, and grabbing screenshots. At 34,000 (published) words, 45 hours would be a decent estimate. Also, Hundred Line review’s at 19,000 words, but I’ll need to rewrite bits and edit everything once I’m done.

However, the arguably bigger barrier to progress in the past 3.5 months has been my Rundowns. In the past 3.5 months, I have released 123,000 words of Rundown content, not counting this piece. Writing, editing, posting, and making header images for all of that takes time. How much is vague and murky, as I do not track my time on principle, but even a dog would guess it’s in the ballpark of 150 hours. Some of this stuff requires research, and image editing can take a fair bit of time. This alone took over an hour while this took three minutes. (This week’s Rundown header took over half an hour. I had to mess around with what I wanted, find the right Bowsette image, source it, manually remove the background, make the cat emoji edit, decide on the right filter to use, and realized the tail extension I made was not necessary.)

I am trying to spend less time on Rundowns, aspiring for shorter word counts and leaner coverage of topics, but when I get fixated on something, I fixate the heck out of it. Rambling about something I care about is fun, and even though I consider these Rundowns to be ash in the pan time capsules, I do try to make my weekly ‘written podcast’ enjoyable for the… 70 to 250 people who click on them.

Then there are the TSF Showcase, which have a nasty habit of eating up nearly a week of my time. One day to read, four days to write, one day to edit/rewrite, one day to grab images, with some slack thrown into this routine. I would say that is pretty good turnover for a 14,000 article that someone does as a part-time side-job. Same with getting through 58,000 words in 4 months. But why would you believe me? I’M BIASED!

So, where am I at regarding the remaining 3.5 5 months of the year? What do I have planned and what about this arrangement do I plan on changing? Well… not much. I have several commitments for this year already in place, such as my monthly TSF Showcases and a couple game reviews I promised. Dokyusei: Bangin’ Summer, FlipWitch – The Forbidden Sex Hex, Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, and others that I want to better understand my friends. Namely Needy Streamer Overdose and Fate/Stay Night.

I hope to get to all of these this year— Except for Fate, which is like 800k words long.

I promise that, somehow, I will write/release TSF Series #019: Suicide to Salvation before the end of Q3 2025.

And while I want to say I will do more… I also need to account for three things. International travel that I have earmarked on calendar. The release of Student Transfer Version 9, which should come out this year (I RSS the Git activity) and will easily consume a week or two of my life. And, last but most, my second busy season.

As a tax accountant, I have two busy seasons. Mid-February to mid-April and September to mid-October. Spring busy season this year was a fucking mess, and per my analysis of my current client workload, I expect the fall workload to be a messing fuck. Not because I am doing anything wrong, but because I am beholden to the whims of my boss. Despite technically being a co-owner (not by choice, really), I do not get to sign returns, finalize them, and am not the go-to contact person for client correspondence. My boss is.

Furthermore, my boss is unpredictable, can barely get in on time, likes to laze about playing chess and drinking coffee, and leaves me with very few direct action items. What am I supposed to do today? I dunno. My boss needs to tell me. Could I round up and cold call some clients? Sure, but I do not like doing that, and my boss prefers to be the one to forge these relationships, as he’s the extrovert. It’s not an ideal situation… but at least I get paid well and don’t need to work 40 hour weeks (most of the time).

With that all in mind, what is my schedule for the rest of the year? Eh, basically this:

• 2025-07-29: TSF Showcase 2025-09: Girl In My Dream (COMPLETED)
• 2025-08-26: TSF Showcase 2025-10: TBD
• 2025-08-??: Dokyusei: Bangin’ Summer (2021) Review
• 2025-09-30: TSF Showcase 2025-11: TBD
• 2025 Q3: Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy Review (WIP)
• 2025 Q3: TSF Series #019: Suicide to Salvation
• 2025-10-28: TSF Showcase 2025-12: Turned into a Breast Milk Fountain by a Beautiful Vampire
• 2025-11-18: FlipWitch – The Forbidden Sex Hex Review
• 2025-11-25: TSF Showcase 2025-13: TBD
• 2025-12-30: TSF Showcase 2025-14: TBD
• 2025-Q4 Pokémon Legends: Z-A Review
• 2025-Q4 Needy Streamer Overdose (Rain Request)
• 2026-??-??: Fate/Stay Night (Shiba Request)
• 2026-??-??: A Mirror’s Curse Review (Because I Really Should)

Between all of this, maybe I’ll find time to actually start on the two novels that were supposed to come out this year!

…Actually, screw it, I’m just going to say it here. TSF Showcase is going on hiatus starting in 2026, because I am tired of analyzing excellent TSF stories. I want to get back to writing half-decent ones! I know Showcase gives me more views, more opportunities to share works with others, but it has been too damn long since I got creative with my life!

Now, TSF Showcase WILL come back, unless I get Auschwitz’d, but it will be in an ad hoc surprise manner with no schedule!

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Progress Report 2025-07-27

…You know what really burns my bacon? When people don’t even attempt to properly capitalize things that really ought to be capitalized. I’m not enough of a curmudgeon to get peeved at people for eschewing capitalization while on their phones, as phones are bad for typing, just in general. I am talking about when people put up thread titles and don’t attempt to capitalize any words. When they write this paragraphs long reply to something and don’t capitalize anything, like their shift keys are broken. Tweets (generic term) from people with large audiences that they know will be seen by 25k+ people. Or when my boss, who has a PhD in English, a side business where he resells books on eBay, chooses to write email subject lines, name files, and name Excel tabs with zero capitalization.

I see this crap and think where they got permission to just not follow the rules of language. Yes, I understand that most people are not trying to write something great. That they just want to get the idea across in text. And that this is marginally easier for people who do not have a trained writer’s stance, like me. (I say as I type at maybe 50 words per minute.) But every damn justification I can think about falls apart when looking at another example. I am not saying English is a flawless language. It’s the only one I know, I’ve written millions of words of it, and I still throw a grammar editor at everything I do before publishing it, because of how nonsense it can be at times.

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2025-07-20: Oops! I spent five hours watching anime with Cassie. Higurashi and All Routes Lead to Doom X! Good times! Afterwards, I decided to begin doing some housekeeping by backing up Natalie.TF, except the backup via FileZilla was incomplete, so I had to research and learn that… fucking Jetpack lets me download my own backups! Thanks, Chuck! Established a new private domain for my private/professional email which… shit, I should not have included it in the last Rundown. It’s removed now! No archives exist! However, StartMail gave me grief in doing this, and I was pissed off after getting it set up. Also, set up RSS feeds in Thunderbird, because that’s a thing you can do! Get fucked Feedly! Wrote the 2,000 word intro for this Rundown. Played more Hundred Line.

2025-07-21: Wrote 1,200 words for the Hundred Line review and played more of the game. But then I talked to Rain for like two hours about console generations and school schedules.

2025-07-22: Wrote 2,200 words for the PLZA bit. Played more Hundred Line.

2025-07-23: Wrote 1,700 word schedule update bit, as I needed a third thing for this Rundown, and that was GOOD E NUFF. Played more Hundred Line, finishing the Box of Calamity route, which was a breath of fresh air after going through Serial Battles, Conspiracy, Casual, and Boxes of Blessings back-to-back. Now for the pheromone route! Also, made the header and stats image.

2025-07-24: Wrote the 1,400 word Itch bit, after getting SO MAD about this fucking affair. Edited this almost 9k word brisket. Made the Itch flame header.

2025-07-25: Technically the start of my vacation from my boss, but not a productive day. I had some work come into my email and wanted to do a client overview since my boss is bad at doing that routinely. That ate up my morning through my afternoon. Made my phone calls to payment processors and wrote my scripts for them. Then I watched anime with Cassie for a while, since she was in VC. After dinner and dishes, I realized my progress was minimal, so I decided to vacuum, exercise, and shower early, since I clean my shower extra well the last (or first) Friday of the month. Then, with five free hours, uninterrupted, I started doing stuff.

2025-07-26: Mostly just Hundred Line with miscellaneous life stuff. Cutting veggies, going out to dinner with my grandmother, setting up a safe while my mother was coughing on protein powder, boring stuff. Did some writing for next Rundown, but I might scrap it, mostly just feeling out a topic.

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