every time my patience for contrived writing starts to wear thin they pull me back in again with some shit about economic imperialism

oh happy birthday!

JUST A SIMPLE REQUEST

hahahaha fuck i guess everyone needs a hobby

right but who would bother putting me on that unless it's some automated thing

generally against "check out who blocked me" type behaviour but i've been so good. i've been so nice. you gotta give me this one

reports coming in that bluesky user "why.bsky.team" is not mad

lmfao they must have their most advanced skynet level AGI on the case of tracking down everyone who's ever clicked like on a funny post about them as i've barely even made any jokes myself

oh i was supposed to be in bed 3 hours ago..............

i would be happy to chat to you about first blood if you ever watch that

it is always building in the sense of adding more detail, but i think this deep into the series you shouldn't be scared of getting real serious with the themes. and they weren't scared in the second and third one already! but now it feels like it's hit a groove and im grumbling about it

i understand the marketing aspect of, well someone might pick this one as their first one and we want them to be able to understand it thru a framework of genre conventions. but i think that's, long term, corrosive to this big story that's being told. i think it should continue to build on itself

i think there is an interesting contradiction there with the main character's arc; and the games aren't even unaware of this, it's just that there's four of them and everything that happens with the main plot is always backloaded. each of these has to stand on its own as a full game too

one of my favourite moments in cold steel 1 is when the gang goes on a field trip to an actual military base and they're horrified, one of them is like, what good is this crap they're teaching us in officer school about history and etiquette, all that matters is who has more and bigger tanks

very dramatic looking clouds today. like a mountain range in the distance

oh that's actually really interesting. my dad was way into geography in high school so he had a ton of books and atlases laying around so i somehow absorbed that. but how i figured it out i couldn't tell you

hello energy company? i'd like to complain... i have no energy

i get that we're doing some "indistinguishable from magic" stuff now but i don't think the game, and the previous one, has put in the work to sell it to me sufficiently; it's way too eager for the power fantasy, completely going back on azure/zero where all that super tech was a matter of horror

so much of the story up to this point is about how a new technology such as railroads is, in the game's world, actively reorganizing society and the ways in which the state functions and exerts power. it's not just set dressing, it keeps coming up, even if in the background

cold steel 2 has written itself into some problems. one thing i respect about the series is that it thinks about the supporting structures of the world, travel times, supply lines, movement of people. and it still wants to, but now they've started shortcutting that for the purpose of Epic Moments

A white porcelain woman lying on her back on a bronze base one of her hands seems to be turning into a flower erupting out of the middle of her torso is a black figure that is bending down towards her face (an embrace?). Bursting from the back of this figure is a scaly anthropoid creature with flowers bursting from the front of its head and the back of his head entirely red. By the way most do drink tears that's a real thing. I know this friend I know this from the Elvis Costello lyric 🎶 A butterfly drinks a turtle's tears, but how do you know he really needs it?🎶

Moths Drink Tears — Shary Boyle, 2014
Porcelain, China paint, bronze
45 x 34 x 22 cm
www.instagram.com/p/C_5jIout4Z...

A flatscreen display on a "smart" water fountain, demanding to be reconnected to the internet.

In 1999, I was playing a decker in Shadowrun, and tried to distract a guard by hacking a water fountain to overflow, and my GM said "why would a water fountain be on the network? That's fucking stupid. No you can't try."

Well it's 2026 and I just want you to know, Phil, that I FUCKING CALLED IT!

i went for my stupid little walks today for the first time in uhhh a long time and it improved my mood so much... i gotta get back into the habit

i don't know anything about kirito i apologize if i am besmirching the good name of sword art online

still thinking about the protagonist. it's crazy for the series that starts with estelle freakin bright and her goth brother/boyfriend to decide, no, that was too interesting, what we really gotta do is average nice boy who is secretly the strongest and everyone listens to him. we gotta do kirito

it's alright. i still like the good things it's doing, everything i've said about the scope still stands, some of the en voice acting is great (some not so much), i do wanna keep playing the erebonia arc, but i'd be lying if i said i was on the edge of my seat for the next one

also while lloyd was already shōnen boring but likeable and deeply connected to his city, rean is just the same boring protagonist boy again but with less going on, i guess to make it easier for the 18-35 male gamer to project yourself onto. literally everyone else is more interesting!

the leering at teenage girls "jokes" quotient remains far higher than i'd like, but hard to say if the trajectory is stable or upward; no beach episode at least, but i'm certain they'll get to that in one of the next cold steel games

however, while it isn't JUST cut-rate persona, and is working with more interesting themes than the smt gnostic mysticism stuff that i'm sick to bastard death of by this point, i think it still cribs from persona too much and to its own detriment

i think one thing it's really succeeded at, and something i would love to put in a game if i ever make one, is showing multiple sides of a conflict, how what each side knows isn't symmetrical, how allegiances are unclear and contingent, and how everyone involved is a person