So!! My old blog got shadow banned like half a year ago and none of my support tickets have gotten any response so I figured Iād start over with a new account! Iāll be back to my ramblings about philosophy in game design, messages around colonialism and imperialism in media, and other such tedious topics once Iāve got some free time!!
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Itās a cold night out on the tundra. As it is every night, but this is a particularly cold night. The mechanitor hangs up her parka as she prepares for bed. She orders two of her militors to stand guard outside of her room for the night, as she does every night. The two mechanoids take their posts on either side of the autodoor, mini-shotguns at the ready, ever vigilant.
One of them, however, is due for a recharge. Its battery dwindles, and as the hours tick on, it feels its processes begin to slow. Its gyrostabilizers begin to fail, but before it can fall, it is caught. Its comrade extends its arm to catch it. The firstās power is draining still, but it was ordered not to abandon its post. The second, seeing this, pulls its ally close. Placing its head on its shoulder, it holds up its fellow mechanoid, keeping it from falling over and damaging itself. The first begins to enter self-charging, and while its basic subcore isnāt capable of much beyond combat, thereās a sense of gratefulness that courses through its circuitry, as well as something⦠deeper.
The mechanitor opens the autodoor the next morning to find the two militors leaning against the wall together. One of them is still active, and it gently taps the butt of its shotgun against its fellow machine, which rapidly springs back to life, fumbling with its own gun before hastily saluting its master. The mechanitor giggles. She seems to understand.
Later that night, the two militors were given their own control group. It was the only available group the mechanitor had left, but she felt it was worth it. The two militors were to patrol together. Maybe she was projecting, but she knew the two mechanoids would enjoy from it. They never left each otherās side again.
Check out YIIK I.V. (not a sequel, just an improved version of the original release) if you get the chance. I'm not completely done with it but I'm having a blast. Reflecting on some especially bizarre moments from it. This game is really cool and has a lot of meaningful & important things to say. Especially good commentary on how disgusting true crime culture is. Killer surrealist visuals & storytelling all the way thru. Unabashedly experimental and weird. I'll probably talk about it again when I finally finish it but man it's a good time.
When this game first came out, it was subject to a lot of malicious misinformation so I totally suggest you check it out yourself and form your own opinion.
@clockworkcat99 the battle system is totally revamped and focuses on strategy instead of minigames, using cards that simultaneously act as armor, spells, and passive buffs! Some dungeons have been shortened and the level up system was streamlined a lot, and thereās a lot of new music
As for story changes, it adds new characters and leans into 3D animation over the old VN style and Iād say it helps a lot. It gives the models a lot more expression and helps frame things differently when you can see how characters react to stuff beyond preset expressions. We get to see more perspectives and Alex feels closer to a villain protagonist than in the original
They do still use the vn style at times and I love when it gets pulled out for comedic effect:
@floweramon Iād say itās good but like. Very niche? Itās not straightforward, itās abstract and gets confusing, but I ended up enjoying it while realizing āokay yeah this is a game for a specific subset of peopleā, since not everyone wants to sift through the lies of a pretentious hipster who thinks heās better than you while experiencing a surreal nightmare hell world
And for the plagiarism part, Iād say itās kinda unfair to call it that? They quoted a section from a popular Murakami book and added a page full of credit to things they referenced to make sure people got their intent was homage, not theft
Iāve gotten to chat with the lead dev on call a couple times and itās been neat!! I really liked getting to learn about the development process and how with the original version, the studio knew they were inexperienced so they just went along with any suggestions they got, but this time around they decided to stay true to their vision and make it just as weird and surreal as they wanted while putting their skills theyād learned to use.
With severance season 2 around the corner itās time for me to share the time I accidentally watched 4 minutes of an episode on mute and thought it was a brilliant way to show the sensory deprivation experienced by the innies
I love seeing posts like this so much, like I remember one where someone played disco elysium and thought the game crashing when they talked to measurehead was to establish what an imposing presence he has
The thin line between avant-garde genius and a total accident
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YIIK genuinely had me go from āit has good concepts, but weird and poor executionā¦ā with 1.0 to āokay holy crap I get that the avant-garde isnāt for everyone but this is goodā with I.V
I love how much they emphasize Alex as just being this unhinged weirdo whoās actively making bad choices, and I liked how the benevolent psychosis ending was like a forgiveness arc rather than redemption arc, it was really sweet and felt fitting
Also!! I canāt get over the junctioned self dialogue that implies when he was a kid, Alex got jealous that Allison was paying more attention to her boyfriend than to him, so the logical conclusion he reached was āI should kiss her boyfriendā
I.v. genuinely is just such a cool like. Movie! It's a good piece of art instead of being a kind of confusing piece of art. I think the emphasis on how stunted and bad of a guy Alex is helps a lot, and the added sections in ng+ (I don't have to be coy, i don't think. In yiik iv 2) really highlight this theme of ignoring your grief and using unhealthy habits to process it. Michael's diary notes and just kind of everything regarding Alex. I'm gonna pop some yiik 2 spoilers under the cut
This strange, infinite grief loop handling Allison's death between Michael and Alex is infinitely fascinating. They both have played some major role in her life, Michael as her boyfriend, and Alex as her brother. Through the new nameless child sections we learn about Alex and Allison's home life and how it was genuinely just horrible, with Alex being pampered to every whim by his mom and Allison being verbally abused on the regular, it really fits with how Alex's method of dealing with things is to deflect, not acknowledge it, and to try and distract rather than confront. He's mentally tied to Allison for a number of reasons, and I've taken to reading sammy/semi/"the missing girl" to be Alex trying desperately to reach through his grief to try and find some semblance of this girl, his sister, who we see cared for and treated him well (gave him panda when his parents were fighting, wouldn't run away with Michael so she could be with Alex). I feel like when she died (I think she committed suicide since it's a common running theme and very fitting given the info), Alex's mom probably didn't confide in Alex at all regarding her. She HATED Allison and loved Alex, but her character suggests that after Allison's death, she's the type to just drop support on Alex, while also not telling him exactly what happened to save his feelings.
Michael, on the other hand, blames Alex entirely for Allison's death. To me I feel like he sees Alex as the main reason for keeping Allison from running away with him, and because he kept her from doing that, she was forced into harder and harder living situations resulting in her end. Michael also (through his notes) is revealed to HATE onism and it's users, even though he was the one who created it in the first place, he still places the blame of Allison getting on onism (escaping from the reality of her situation), which he absolutely hates as well.
Without Michael, there is no ONISM. And without ONISM, there's no 'escape from reality' that either Alex or Allison could fully dedicate their time to, and without alex, there would likely be no conflict with Allison, but there also wouldn't. Be a story! So that death has to happen and that conflict needs to happen. They're both so connected to this grief that it manifests in some special hell for the both of them, but it largely seems like Michael is stuck (probably in part due to not processing his grief and turning to spite) in this fantasy with Alex. For some reason. Idk! When I start thinking about the layers of the game itself it gets a little messy and I need to make a diagram for myself.
In the second mission of Flipsville Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy 2, there is an area on the wall of the large town-like planetoid where the player character will stand sideways instead of sliding down after reaching it in the way shown in the footage. From there, a precise backflip can be used to skip to a later planetoid of the mission.
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Fucked up and evil that the Wii Harvest Moon games haven't been remade with the new WOKE features yet because I always forget the marriage candidates and I'll see a really cute boy without a single thought in his head but UH OH I CHOSE THE TWINK AT THE START OF THE PLAYTHROUGH SO NO HIMBO FOR ME
I wrote these out a while ago for my own use, and never posted them. But, as some people expressed interest, HERE THEY ARE! I'm gonna put them below a read more, because there's a lot of them. I have more on other psychic weirdness that I might post if people are interested in these.
(A reminder: Psykers are canon. There were psykers in fallout 1.)
Psykers - who often refer to themselves as Gifted - are individuals with strange powers and abilities ā gifts* ā that defy rational scientific explanation. Although they existed in small numbers before the war, psykers have become much more common since the bombs fell.
Psykers are fairly rare. Generally there's only a handful of psykers in any given geographic area, and they tend to stay on the move for their own safety. Many hide their nature for fear of being captured for study by high-tech groups such as the BOS or the Institute.Ā
Gifts broadly fall into two categories: Projective and Receptive. Projective gifts include things that have external effects, like telekinesis, telepathy, pyrokinesis, etcetera. Receptive gifts are more internal, like precognition, psi-empathy, etc. Some gifts, like dream-walking and bio-pk, straddle the line.
Psykers typically have a mix of projective and receptive gifts, but usually with a stronger affinity for one than the other. Really powerful projectives tend to have minor receptive gifts, and visa-versa. Being a psyker does come with free ESP, though.
Most psykers acknowledge that the sources and natures of their gifts are extremely varied: prenatal exposure to FEV and/or radiation, extended parental contact with psi-phenomena, genetics, and simple random mutation are all common explanations of a psykerās origin.
Many psykerās gifts are latent/dormant, and the individual doesnāt consciously experience anything unusual. Latent gifts can awaken any number of ways, with physical or mental trauma and exposure to psychic phenomena being common triggers. For some, it seems truly random.
Overusing a gift causes āBurnoutā. Symptoms vary widely; sudden change in blood pressure,Ā heart rate, and body temperature are common, with purely neurological symptoms being rare but not unknown. Burnout can be deadly if a gift is pushed too far, especially for very strong psykers.
Receptive psykers are notably more common than projective psykers. Pykers with powerful projective gifts are rarer, and tend to be significantly more vulnerable to fatal burnout, but are not so rare as to be surprising. (I.E. How many serious athletes do you know?)
Receptive psykers are also more prone to advertise their gift (usually in return for caps) due to their intangible and thus easily dismissable nature. Projective types tend to be quiet about their Gifts for their own peace and safety, though some revel in the fear and awe they invoke.
Psykers tend to have really intense eyes, regardless of color. A psyker making eye contact tends to feel noticeably more⦠direct than normal. Especially if said psyker has psi-empathy or telepathy, in which case it can feel downright intrusive, like theyāre inside your head.
Non-psykers can usually sense the use of a psykerās gift indirectly. Someone standing near a telekinetic might feel their hair stand on end, while someone near a precognitive might feel watched. Regardless, strong gifts create a strong sensation of power and tension when in use.Ā
Psykers stand out to other psykers. When they get close enough they can just feel them on the edge of their perception: more there than everyone else, almost like theyāre backlit. Distance varies with sensitivity, but two psykers would usually sense one other across a crowded street.
Psykers have an aura, influenced by their powers and personalities, visible to other psykers when they use their abilities, as well as in dreams. Psykers can also literally sense what other psykers are doing with their powers, especially projective gifts.
Extended contact (physical or mental) with a Psyker (especially one with poor control) or any class of psychic presence can result in⦠weirdness. This effect is typically non-physical, involving things like accidental dreamwalking and development of low-level esp. Often called āUncannyā by true psykers, these individuals occupy a strange place between the mundane and the preternatural.
There are only two instances of Psyker powers being successfully suppressed, neither of which has proven replicable: Jack Cabotās Abramelin-Field and the Masterās Psychic Nullifier. These methods were either developed by a psyker (the Master) or by an individual directly influenced by one (Cabot).
Only one Nullifier still exists, currently in possession of a psyker known as āthe Forecasterā in the Mojave wasteland. Its development was possible only due to the Masterās inhuman intellect and innate Gifts; all attempts by the Vault dweller to even comprehend the mechanisms underlying the deviceās operation ultimately failed, and the Brotherhood couldnāt find empirical evidence that it did anything at all.
Jack Cabotās Abramelin-Field is only applicable to one entity: his father Lorenzo Cabot⦠or the entity inhabiting his body, at least. Although the field causes distress in other psykers (feelings of being smothered/blinded) it doesnāt stop them from using their powers. Jackās studies have suggested it only suppresses his fatherās connection to the crown rather than impacting its powers directly.
This mural seen in the Flopside Pit of 100 Trials in Super Paper Mario presents a very interesting piece of lore continuity between two separate timelines in the game that is never explicitly stated. While the mural at first glance simply depicts King Croacus IV, the boss of Chapter 5, with his Pure Heart, it is apparent upon closer inspection that while he is red, the flower in the mural is black. This is because it actually King Croacus I, the great-grandfather of the boss fought in-game.
It is established in two separate places that:
-The Ancients created the Pure Hearts 1,500 years prior to the events of the game.
-The Floro Sapiens have their own calendar according to which the game takes place in the year 1626. King Croacus I ruled from Year 1 to Year 496.
Cross-referencing these two gives the result that 1,500 years before the game was the year 126, within the reign of King Croacus I, so he would have been the one in possession of the Pure Heart at the time assuming the murals were made at the point where the Pure Hearts were given out to their guardians.
All of this can only be gleaned by the players cross-referencing the dates on their own instead of ever being explained in-game.
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Yeah, I feel like people interpret lawful good as āugh that annoying goody two shoesā and donāt realize itās literally just āI have values I hold strongly and/or I want to benefit the collective over my own interestsā
Lawful good is about working to further the goals of an ideal and considering the larger-scale consequences of your actions, itās only boring if you misinterpret it as āIād never break societal conventionsā or something like that
Everyone wants to say theyāre a wacky chaotic good/neutral who no one can pin down, but eventually we have to accept the fact that sometimes we have ideals we hold strongly and want to protect. Itās not a bad trait, itās just a facet of a person and itās fun to explore when you put the effort into it and communicate with the GM and other players about it
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