#how is all of the internet built on this monstrosity

[decaffinatedplease]

programmers will complain about how C++ is too complicated or arcane or whatever and then will literally go and write in JavaScript

[identifying-guns-in-posts]

welcome!

i'm a bit of a nerd when it comes to guns, and thought randomly at some point that it'd be fun to start this gimmick blog and try to identify guns in various posts. however I do still kind of consider myself to be in the dunning-kruger valley, and gun identification is a bit more complex than car identification due to just how many variants of individual gun patterns there are, and how much easier it is to do modifications of them...

(ask / submission rules and other guidelines are further down in this post)

I'll try to at least identify the general pattern of the gun or any recognizable parts and cross reference with images and articles to make a decision. If your post or submission is from a particular piece of media, it's extremely likely for it to already be documented on the Internet Movie Firearms Database wiki website, so some answers will probably be pulled straight from there.

For example, the wiki clearly outlines that, in the above blog header, which is from the anime/manga Lycoris Recoil (IMFDB link here), Chisato (left) canonically uses a Detonics CombatMaster (variant of Colt 1911 pattern, chambered in .45 ACP), specifically one that incorporates elements of the Tokyo Marui Strike Warrior Airsoft replica (notable in the strike face compensator and modified rear sight). Takina (right) meanwhile uses a somewhat generic Smith and Wesson M&P9 PRO, chambered in 9x19mm, with the extended 5" barrel.

To make up for how garbage I am at getting specifics right, I may also offer some bits of trivia about the gun(s) in question and/or their implementation. For example, although Chisato's gun seems based off of the Tokyo Marui design, it notably has three port holes at the top of the compensator as compared to the single port in the original; it might be a bit more effective as a real compensator than the very-Airsoft cosmetic fixing of the TM replica. It also lacks the accessory rail in the anime. Additionally, Takina's signature sidearm, the M&P9, is extremely common in modern law enforcement (you might even recognize the handle of it in the "(A) Steal Officer's Service Weapon" meme), so it's a bit of a "cop gun" in a sense; which possibly matches how Takina essentially serves as the by-the-numbers half of the pseudo-buddycop pairing formed by her and Chisato. Interestingly enough, all other Lycoris agents are seen wielding Glock 17s instead...

asks

I'm always open to asks if you want to ask me anything, but if you want me to identify something, you should probably make it a submission!

submissions/tags

Only submit requests for identification of guns OR fictional gun reviews (more on that in another section)! Preferably memes and posts. You can also submit things from media like video games and anime, but you could probably get a faster answer through IMFDB than me >~>

If your submission or tag is for a "cursed gun" then some special rules apply. If it's a real life picture of some effed up monstrosity, I will do my best to identify it with a real, pre-built gun; otherwise, I'll try to identify parts that may have been used for it. If it's clearly an edited picture or some other form of drawing, concept, or very clearly fictional gun, this will be treated as a "Fictional Gun Review" instead.

Generally speaking I'm looking at "small arms" guns; I'm not super well-versed on artillery pieces and aircraft weapons and the like. I know a handful of rocket launchers and might be able to pick out a couple but those are also pretty hard for me.

Fictional Gun Reviews

I'm also a bit of a hobbyist game designer and like creating weapon designs myself! I can take a look at strictly fictional weapon designs and give some cursory criticism on whether or not the gun would actually function in the configuration it's in (checking things like barrel/bolt/magazine alignment, etc.), what parts of it I recognize from real guns, and an overall subjective rating.

about me

i'm a 21+ trans woman (she/her) and pansexual/biromantic disaster married to a hot butch wife. i'm also an independent game developer and secretly a streamer on another alias of mine. i like guns! i like the history of guns and the engineering of guns. personal favorites are sniper rifles, particularly the L96A1, the first military-specification sniper rifle made by Accuracy International, which served as the prototype of the Arctic Warfare line of rifles, popularized by Counter Strike's AWP (though the classification of "AWP" is incorrect for the particular weapon featured in the series, it's actually an AWM .338). favorite pistol is probably the Beretta 93R, a 3 round burst fire pistol with a similar pattern to the iconic M9 pistol. i also like the MP7 PDW (obvious half life 2 fan is obvious), the MAC10 (by far the coolest machine pistol to fire in akimbo lol), and the G36C (one of the first guns I ever decided to look up more information about many years ago after picking it up in Garry's Mod of all places).

[prismatic-bell]

Mission Brief: Headcanon 01, Q Is A Technophobe

It's a natural assumption, really.

Q's office has two computers with a total of five screens between them, and a laptop, and a tablet, and nobody's actually sure how many work phones he has (only three are confirmed, but sometimes when all three and his personal are in his locker someone will hear a ringing sound). He's the head of Q Branch, for fuck's sake, the man must adore technology.

Q hates it.

There's a video camera by his door, but it's live feed, not recorded, and he mostly has it because M expressed concern over his 'rather low tech, isn't it' security system. He has a computer at home, but it's a monstrosity he built himself when he was in Year 9 and deliberately never connected to the internet--it doesn't even have an ethernet card. Nobody understands how his fridge still runs when it might actually be older than he is. His television still needs a digital converter box. There's parking available on his street, he could easily afford the expense of a car--has his driver's license, even--but he bikes where he can't walk and takes the Tube where he can't bike, and when the distance is too far for any of those things he pretends he's not grateful for James Bond winning a car from the 1960s as he signs out its decidedly-uncomputerized bulk. When he's at home he has a single-use burner phone by his bed for work--it is to be called only by M or Q Branch employees, only to summon him in, and he replaces it every three months--and all his other work devices go in a Faraday cage he built into the bottom of his record player.

He's a hacker, he explains to Bond one night, when they've unbent enough over a glass of scotch to actually have a halfway normal conversation, and any hacker--indeed, any IT tech--worth their salt knows device opsec is only as good as whoever designed the program, and the Big Three leave more holes in their programming than a good piece of Swiss, and Q isn't an idiot who wants his whole life laid bare to any bored teenager with fifteen minutes and access to instructions on 4chan.

At the MI6 winter holiday party, someone gives Q a gift he opens, and raises his eyebrows at, and stashes in his office.

Two months later, he gives Bond kit for a mission to Seychelles. Bond raises his own eyebrows at the item Q's labeled as a smoke grenade. Bond isn't particularly technologically inclined himself, but the Echo Dot is ubiquitous enough he knows one when he sees one.

Q wraps his fingers firmly around it.

"Bond," he says. "Don't bring it back."

[geminicricket28]

On the internet certain memes take hold. They take on a life of their own and people hold them dearly. I've always wondered why the seem to capture the current zeitgeist. What about them touches the mind of so many disparate people so intimately.

This damned mall was one of them. I never wondered about why it was so rooted in our collective psyche. I knew and that truth was horrific.

My firm has been hired to design a mall in Waterford and as a junior architect I had been assigned the task. None of the other, more seasoned architects would touch a mall and it was a rite of passage for the newer associates to take these unwanted projects on. Truth be told I didn't want it either. I wasn't terribly bright but I could see that the rates of consumption weren't sustainable and designing what amounted to a temple to it seemed gross and crass. I had a family to support however and I worked diligently to put lead on paper. Nothing I drew seemed to work and as the deadlines loomed I seemed to have less of an idea than when I was assigned the task.

My sleep became fitful; tossing and turning. Going to bed a fruitless exercise in frustration. I'd fall asleep at inopportune moments, mind insistent on snatching scraps of rest where it could and I always woke with a start, the feeling of a lurking monstrosity on the cusp of my dreams. I became irritable, defensive, angry; all for the sake of this damnable mall. When I could sleep, my dreams were as though I was clawing my way through some viscous substance struggling to breathe, to move, to wrench my way back to the waking world. Those moments of anxious sleep became fewer and further between as the deadline crept up on me. Finally, after weeks of sleepless nights and foggy days my body could take no more.

I had moved to a cheap motel on what was then the outskirts of town to give my family some respite. Even then I couldn't sleep, each slam of a car door, the footsteps on the walkway seemingly an indictment of my inability to design the simplest of things, a paean to consumerism, to consumption. I felt stupid, inept and my body had had enough. I remember getting up from that ridiculous chair that was ever present in these rooms by the bed and crashing. Hard. Blackness. A welcome void.

Even in my dreams I couldn't escape the impeding deadline. I found myself in an empty mall, wandering down the main corridor, exploring the adjoining halls. In the main promenade hung a large crystal chandelier and I realized that this *was* the mall I was to design. This was the yet unbuilt Crystal Mall. Somehow in my dreams I had imagined it, built it in my fevered and sleep deprived mind. Or at least I hoped I had. Like some dreams it seemed all too real. I could even smell the vaguely antiseptic air of large enclosed spaces devoid of any life.

The escalators ran silently and I stepped on one to explore the lower reaches of the mall. Like the upstairs it too was empty, my foot steps echoing hollowly in the vast space. As I stared from below at the chandelier I heard footsteps from either end of the promenade and the adjoining hallways. Not the sure footsteps of people with somewhere to be but they weren't tentative either. Staring up the promenade to see who was coming toward me the sounds stopped but continued behind me. As I turned toward those sounds, the steps took back up from where I had been staring. No matter how quickly I turned the sounds always came from behind me. I woke panting, in a cold sweat. No matter, I had a starting point for the design now.

When the mall opened in 1984 it was, by all accounts, a success. Shortly afterward, vague undercurrents, rustlings in newspapers and conversations made it apparent that I wasn't the only one who had been dreaming of the mall even before it was built. I fear this monstrosity had been searching, plotting, looking for the person to bring it to fruition. To make it exist in reality when it had only existed limnally before. What horrors could it wreak on us that it had a physical presence now?

Maybe I'm imagining things but it seems with the advent of the internet that people far and wide have been dreaming of the mall. Feeling some compulsion to visit the actual place just as they visit it in their dreams.

Maybe I'm imagining it. I hope I am.

The Crystal Mall in Waterford, CT was developed in 1984 by New England Development.

[brooklynislandgirl]

Tagged By: The lovely Carrie @grimmusings and thank you, dear! Tagging: Be Fae, Steal this. ~*~

I. how long have you been roleplaying?

I do not even know how or where to begin answering this because I do believe I was a freshman in high school when I was first introduced to D&D {Dragonlance was the world/setting} and I took to it like a fish to water. A long time after that, I was introduced to the early days of the internet and the concept of real-time chats {mIRC}. I met my future husband in one, and the two of us then found an rp chat. Within a few weeks, we'd been asked to co-run a portion of that rp. About six months later, we were living together, and running that game, a couple in real life, and others. Fast forward a million years and a million iterations of online rp and here we are. {{AOL, MSN communities/chat, Eyechat, InvisionFree and other message boards, private email/etc, and now- Tumblr and Discord. I've pretty much been there, done that with almost every place. Except Twitter, and Facebook.}} II. what got you interested in roleplaying?

I have been a lifelong reader. I was diagnosed as a "gifted" child in the days of yore, mostly because I was reading by the age of four, and I think at some point, I wanted to make stories too. My very first fan-fiction began at the age of 8. Tabletop RP is still my first rp love, though online rp has become a close second. If RP didn't exist, I would still be around somewhere, writing stories and living inside of my own imagination. III. are there any lesser played canon characters you’d like to see in your community?

I have a complicated relationship with canon characters. Two of my oldest friends and I are often dismayed. Back in OUR day, canons were rare and treated with a certain suspicion and disdain. And unfortunately, a lot of people seem to be trapped in a mindset that Canon are the be-all, end-all and don't give OCs a fair shake because they had 'one bad experience, once, a hundred years ago'. Or the whole 'I don't know how to interact with you' even if the OC is built for your fandom, and yet your top three partners are other canons from fandoms that have nothing to do with yours. <eye roll>. I think I find something very disingenuous about that when I see a lot of 'canons' that seem to have only a vague idea about their muse, choose only the flavour of the month fc for them, and just generally come across as ooc/lazy/sloppy. But I am a fandom dinosaur, with a background in creative writing, novel-writing, and 20+ years of rp experience. My standards are so incredibly high. That being said... Justified, Dark Shadows {not the Johnny Depp monstrosity} anyone/thing from the World of Darkness, Dragonlance, Foggy Nelson, Firefly, Vertigo/Indie comics, Valiant Comics....Horatio Hornblower, Sharpe's Rifles, and any historical genre, really. IV. would you consider writing them?

For the right reasons, the right partner, yes. But most of the time I prefer telling new stories in a beloved world/au. V. what do you enjoy the most about creating ocs? I bet you'd NEVER guess that I am really neurotic/overly serious when it comes to making a character. I will sit there for literally months, contemplating their every minute of life before and up to the moment I am ready to debut them. I will know 12 generations of their family. I will know a couple dozen fandoms they might fit in and how they would relate to things. The only aspect I don't really control or try to map out is what canon and other oc muses they might get on with. That's part of the fun of actual rp, forging connections.

Maybe the trouble is...I want to give everyone my absolute best. I want to offer a rewarding experience to people, and thus the standards I carry for myself are excruciatingly severe. But I *can* be silly and fun, once the story begins.

[licuadora-nasir]

My thoughts on Eldarya episode 10

So. This episode was full of filling (which was to be expected) and even though I was a bit curious to see how Erika would design the earth clothes, those scenes were incredibly long and dull (which was also expected). About at the half of the episode the pace quickens and starts getting interesting, so thank god for that.

I loved when Erika let them be dumbfounded with her display of what the internet is 😌 Humans are seen as weak and useless creatures (which is kinda understandable, lol), and seeing them realize how screwed up they are against them and how humans are much intelligent, developed and threatening than they first thought was truly a pleasure.

It's also great to know a bit more about the lore and fill some TO plotholes, like for instance, the explanation of the dragon stone and why Lance could promise them a portal seven years ago.

About the scene in Erika's bedroom.

I think Erika's situation could be perfectly described with this passage of Bohemian Rhapsody:

Spare him his life from this monstrosity

Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?

Bismillah! No, we will not let you go!

Lmao. Anyways,

I love Nevra as a character, he's greatly built-up, and this is the very reason why I also dislike him. Nevra has lived all his life among faeries as a vampire. And I pinpoint "as a vampire" because he's always known what his priorities were, who he was, and what he was supposed to do as a member of the guard. He has always belonged somewhere and has had the company of his sister and friends (at least before one of them was killed and the other departed, lol)

He's committed to the duty of protecting the HQ and eldarya, willing to do anything to assure the future of faeries, which makes him a jerk of a partner to Erika. "I can go alone", "I cannot let you go", "Maybe I should have come alone, It's too difficult for you" Erika is facing one of the hardest moments of her life, and Nevra sees this as a weakness. He cannot empathise with Erika's situation cause he has never had to give up his family, his life or everything he once was.

The ones who better handled it were Lance and Mathieu. Mathieu is going through a tough moment on earth too and his humanity helps him empathise with Erika. Lance doesn't belong anywhere, doesn't have any family or friends and has had the image of his parents in front of his nose without being able to interact with them. They don't try to convince her with words such as "our whole world depends on you" (ejem, Nevra, ejem), they gently try to explain why Erika staying there isn't possible.

I know Leiftan understands how she feels and he's probably one of the people who care most about Erika independently of the lom/crush, but he fails to comfort her in this matter because he thinks that Erika belongs in Eldarya. He tries, but he cannot be completely objective.

Regarding Lance, as Cintanna here said, I felt like he wasn't only saying sorry for her situation, but for everything he's done to her. The first hug the man has in years and the person he's hugging is weeping uncontrollably cause her destiny sucks.

Regarding Erika's past life

I'm glad it was finally confirmed that Erika was a rich girl. It explains why she sometimes was so naive and why she also had quite a temper. I've seen some people pleading they dislike her even more now, but to me, it's completely the opposite. I think that Erika is a hard-working woman that has learned her way through Eldarya's society without the help of her privileged family as a human.

In general, rich people's lives are easier because well, "money is the anthem", but Erika landed in a cruel world as someone who had always lived a life of privilege, pushing her way into the HQ and proving her value long before they discovered she was an aengel. Erika's trip in The Origins is admirable.

About her room. My guess is that her parents/one of them remembered her and rebuilt her room. They told the staff about her missing daughter, re-created a picture of her or something, and that's the reason why the butler/person who found her recognized her. We only know that some people forgot her, and others/someone did not.

My main complain: the time we spend with the LIs. You cannot pretend that I ENJOY spending half of the episode with Purriry and the last 5 minutes with my man cause you guys remembered that this was supposed to be an otome. Seriously, what the fuck are you doing?

Also, the illus are AMAZING, BEAUTIFUL, INCREIBLE, I LOVE THEMMMMM. Very, very pretty 🥺 I'm glad that at least they listened to our complains regarding the illustrations.

I can't wait for the next chapter 😩 rumours say that the intimacy in bed comes in the next episode 😌 I wish it's true and we can finally get down to business.

[bio-nerds-corner]

Scraps from the End of the World (And Afterward Too)

epistolary fic my beloved :>

(no real tws to be had here, just some snatches of media that survived the end of one world and the start of the next)

Mass hysteria didn’t even begin to describe it, but there wasn’t enough time to even see the full effects of an entire planet losing their collective shit. Within the next four hours another city, a neighbor to the last, was attacked. Another flurry of photographs and screams for help. 

This time a picture was made with steadier hands, that of a monster with a mouth jagged with stalactite teeth, tongue stretching forward towards the picture-taker.

The rest of the planet wasn’t far behind. From the first city it spread to more, all emptied of everyone that lived there and stomped flat to the ground in the vigor. The monsters somehow grew less horrifyingly Other with every new city that was attacked - not that there was anyone to track this change, beyond those who could anticipate their homes being attacked next. Where the first city saw alien creatures, trampling their homes and eating everyone with massive maws, the tenth city saw shambling dark humanoids, saw eyes of glittering intelligence begin to blink from the still so dead-looking skin.

By the 40th city there was the first photograph of a giant human. Between one moment and the next the change was complete and they were no longer alien monstrosities, but giants. 

Humanity had scattered to the winds long before this point however. All major cities were attacked first, their inhabitants eagerly consumed by entire packs of the giants. Like a school of fish surrounded on all sides by whales, entire crowds would be horrifically consumed by the larger ones.

Entire cities became nests to them, curling up around the stumps of skyscrapers, digging out the subway lines, scouring every inch for more humans hiding away. 

It was those further out from civilization that had more luck. Entire small towns and communities went off the grid to survive, and in favor of the greater cities and the amount of food they would provide, the giants were content to ignore them. 

The world had ended. The internet grew silent, the electricity stopped running, the satellites above beeped on an unresponsive planet. 

Then the giants began to rebuild it. They fell into the parody of humans that they were, and having fed on too many, the giants, too, grew sentience. In vast mockeries of the cities they had made their hunting grounds, they built even larger structures for themselves. They created language and society and structure and, as the rest of humankind was trampled out one smaller town that stuck around at a time, they craved the vast feast they once had.

The first city of monstrous giants 

...

History of the post-global human societal collapse, and the colonization of Titanicambius Anthropophagus 

Riley Kirk, PhD in Anthropology, University of Western Australia

(...)

The end of the world was a swift and horrifyingly quiet affair. Nobody knew where the monsters had come from - outer space? Emerging from dark trenches or deep forests or secret caves? Through some dimensional veil that had been torn to shreds? 

There wasn’t much time to worry about where they came from, because no matter where they originated, the result was still the same. They were here Now, and we were going to suffer for it.. 

With a swiftness that even modern global technology was ill equipped to handle, the monsters went from rumors to horror stories to reality. Enormous things, with sickly black and grey skin, seemingly held up into the sky like tents on poles with how gaunt they all looked. No eyes or mouths or any other real features… just twisting bones hidden under thin decaying skin and jutting 2 meter long spikes like cactus spines and house-flattening feet that straddled an uncanny valley between bird’s talons and hooves. They inspired fear and awe and a sickening sense of smallness, just from looking at them. 

Of course, if you saw one, it was probably too late to worry about their curious and frightening looks. There was hardly any time for the first city attacked by the monsters to react. Just a brief flare of activity on the internet, a flurry of pictures of monsters blotting out the sun and enormous slimy tongues snaking between buildings, of entire skyscrapers torn open and fires burning rampantly. 

And then the city was gone. 

And the world as we knew it had come to an end.

…

Format: Audio and Video Feed from a digital Camcorder recovered from City T1 (Time: 1, first city impacted)

[Video is distorted, not only from the archaic recording format, but from age and wear as well. There is visual artifacts around the edge of the frame.]

[There is a mother holding a bleary-eyed infant no more than 6 months in age, two children of approximately 5 and 3 years in age, and the slight smudging of the bottom left corner of the camera lens indicated it being held by another person behind it. The sky outside is dark, there is a fire crackling, and there is a curiously fake-looking conifer tree set up and elaborately decorated in one corner of the room.]

[Speech has been translated from a pre-Apocalyptic language]

Small child 1 (5 year): Come on! Come on! Are you ready! It’s [holiday]!

Speaker behind camera (Male, adult): Just give us a second, [term of endearment]. The coffee’s still brewing. 

Mother: As if that will stop them. Why don’t we start with the [sock?], and we can move our way to the presents.

Small child 2 (3 year): [unspecific exclamation, garbled by other sounds]

Small child 1: [having moved towards the ‘socks’ that were hung above the fireplace, well out of reach of the flames] Dad, I want my [sock]! Can you get it for me?

Small child 2: [sock]! I want my [sock] too!

Speaker behind camera: [moving camera towards the ‘socks,’ having the view turned sideways that half includes the decorated tree] Make sure to ask politely.

Small child 2: Please!

Speaker behind camera: Now make sure to look at everything we got you, and give Mom the trash so we can put it into the trash bag.

[Sounds of rustling, of squeals of delight, of a fireplace crackling. The camera is aimed at the two small children pulling small decorative objects and candies out of the ‘sock.’]

[The infant (6 month) begins crying. The mother begins softly ‘shush’ing it, before stopping and tilting a head to the side.]

Mother: Do you hear something? I swear I hear something. Is it storming outside?

Speaker behind camera: [After a short pause] I could check? It’s a bit dark to tell though. Sounds weird though. Like… Thunder or something. 

Mother: At least we’ve got the fire running, in case the power cuts out. [Resumes shushing the infant, who is inconsolable]

[T0 occurrence: Slight change in light through the windows, a window breaks abruptly. The humans flinch back, and both of the children and the mother scream before being cut off.]

[The camera jitters violently, and the wall behind the tree visibly bulges inward before breaking to pieces, and a large dark shape appears from the other side]

Speaker behind camera: [yelling] What the hell is that! 

Mother: [overlapping] Run!

Child 1 and 2: [screaming, fled towards their mother who has backed towards the opposite wall] 

Monster: [No visible details in the poor lighting, appears a mottled dark color spiderwebbed with pure black. It pushes against the wall more, fitting more of a pointed face into the home.]

Monster: [Opens mouth, reveals dark green tongue that quickly moves towards child 2]

[The camcorder was thrown then, and while a frame-by-frame analysis shows blurs of color and the sound screams and crunches of human bone against monster teeth, they cannot be seen or heard in any clarity. The camcorder hits the ground, a soft carpet, and stays there]

[Creaking overhead, thumping footsteps, distant human screams. The roof of the house rumbles and collapses.]

[Recording ends]

…

[Draft: 

Last saved at: 2:35 AM 04/02/20XX

To: [liquidsunshine255@email.com]

From: [farai.thegoodone@email.com]

Subject: I miss you

It has been 2 days 5 days 1 week 4 weeks since I heard from you last and I think about it every day. I still don't know if you are alive or dead, if you are one of those people who I heard was able to escape them and hide in the rubble. I don’t know if maybe you got eaten by one of them but I have to keep hoping.

I miss you so much everyday Barrett. The fact that I didn’t even get to say bye or I love you last time we talked breaks my heart.

So I want to say every ‘I love you’ that I can in this letter. I loved the way that you always laughed and your voice went up in such a cute way whenever I first called you. I loved the way that we would get into those little fights over favorite fruits or animals or colors or other stupid little decisions. I loved the way that we would both try to hang up at the exact same time when we were going to bed, and every time I lost I would always look at your contact information for a little longer, at your smiling face, before turning off the phone. 

I loved the plans that we had to finally meet together. We had everything planned out. We were going to visit a museum and ‘happen’ across one another in front of a romantic picture. It would have been funny and incredibly public and I always thought that we would get kicked out of the museum when I finally was able to pick you up and twirl you around like I always wanted to. 

That I only said I was looking forward to hearing what you were going to make tomorrow for dinner, because you had planned some fish dish later on in the week and I was curious about the recipe… I don’t know. I can’t really be picky out here, but every time I catch a fish to eat I think of you and that last conversation.

I miss you so much Barrett. Every day. I am in the middle of who knows where, with a bunch of other people who fled their cities before they attacked or managed to scramble out of the rubble as they left. We’re hoping to find somewhere far enough away from everything else that we can get a chance to survive all of this. I wish you were here. You would have found all of this outdoorsy stuff so interesting. 

I hope you are still alive Barrett. And if you aren’t, I hope that you went down kicking and screaming.

I’ll still be looking for you. As long as I can.

Farai

…

…

…

...

...

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…

Forum: The Hermiton Herald

Subforum: Ethics and Politics

⇒ Thread: [ETH/POL] Isolationism and the rest of the world’s people

JellyCat [Posted 3 hours ago]

I really don’t know what the big problem about this all is. Greater Oceania has only stuck around so long because there hasn’t been enough attention drawn to us for the giants to give a shit. There’s nothing that can be done to get people out of the rest of the world.

Zombified_Penguin [Posted 3 hours ago]

So you just want people to continue to grow up in slavery and die without ever having known that we were out there at all. 

JellyCat [Posted 3 hours ago]

No of course not, I just think its too dangerous to do it. If the people can get here then we can let them in, but 

Saturatron_344 [Posted 2 hours ago]

As if we can do that. There’s enough people here as is, we can’t afford to take in more people. Just leave them to the giants so they don’t get to us. You’ve heard the stories, most of them don’t even know anything beyond being pets or food. Its no real loss to us.

Zombified_Penguin [Posted 2 hours ago]

Oh god not you again. Saturatron what is wrong with you - don’t you have empathy? We need to let these people in because theyre going to die. Squabble about the petty stuff later on, this is a constant life or death struggle for them out there. >:(

Saturatron_344 [Posted 2 hours ago]

And you can say that for certain? Most of them are just getting pampered by the monsters, don’t tell me that you haven’t checked on their internet through the VPNs, I’ve seen you on the giant-video access threads helping other newbies. Most of them are dead before they could do anything helpful for Oceania. And the others are basically mindless at this point.

Zombified_Penguin [Posted 2 hours ago]

Oh and you ignored all of the videos of people being hunted down and devoured graphically on camera? The fact that it is popular enough to get entire sections of their Youtube? That there are major Twitch streamers that vocally talk about their enjoyment of human fear and eating them live? 

Borealking9 (ADMIN) [Posted 2 hours ago]

Closing this thread now before things get ugly. As they always do when Zombified and Saturatron are in the same thread. Settle this in the DMs guys.

[THIS THREAD HAS BEEN LOCKED]

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TommyInnit is Live! 

[ravnicaforgoblins]

Ravnica for Goblins

Exciting Planeswalker Visitors

(Caution: Before we begin, this post is going to be much more opinion-based than previous ones. These are my own homebrew ideas, use them as/if you wish, discard/dismiss them if you prefer.)

Planeswalkers are an integral part of MTG Lore, as well as several of its most iconic characters. Put simply, a Planeswalker is an individual with an inherent gift for traveling between planes, or worlds. The gift does not appear at birth, but is usually triggered by some manner of incredibly emotional (usually traumatizing) event. In addition, each Planeswalker displays a unique aptitude for a particular style of magic; be it plant growth, transformation, becoming transparent, illusions, invulnerability, summoning beasts, structural analysis, setting things on fire, etc. Whatever their specific brand of magic is, it’s usually on a higher level than an ordinary person can hope to achieve.

Planeswalkers, as a general rule, are wanderers by nature. They may have a home plane, or even an adopted home plane, but being able to traverse the multiverse leads many towards lives of constant adventuring/shenanigans. Add in the fact that Planeswalkers cannot bring anyone else with them on these travels (except in very rare cases), and you end up with a special breed of super-powerful magical loner. They show up, make a name for themselves with their big magic, and depart when they feel like it. Did you say, “Instant Adventure”?

Ravnica has a few native Planeswalkers among its citizens; Ral Zarek, Vraska, and Domri Rade. In addition, it has several Planeswalkers who have at some point or another (depending on your timeline) devoted enough time & energy to be effectively considered citizens; Azor, Tezzeret, Kaya, Dack Fayden, Dovin Baan, Gideon Jura, and Jace Beleren. Some of these are currently dead, missing, or magically barred from ever returning. At one point, Ravnica had more Planeswalkers on it at one time than any plane in the multiverse has ever or will ever see. If you are going the War of the Spark direction, good luck. You'll need it and so will your players. For everyone else, which Planeswalkers you choose to include in your campaign (if any), should be based on who will work the best for the story you’re trying to tell. A recommendation; if you find their lore too distracting and complicated, stick to the main beats. A lot of these figures can be boiled down to simple ideas, and you don’t want to bore your party with the entire novel of these usually dramatic/tragic lives. Trust me, the base concepts are enough.

With that in mind, here are four Planeswalkers that I, a random person on the internet, believe would work great for a Ravnica campaign. My choices are not based on who has canonically already spent time in Ravnica, or who would be the most powerful/dangerous to suddenly appear in the city. Several Planeswalkers have their own prior commitments on other planes that are pretty central to their character, and BAMFing them to Ravnica for a quick Bad Guy to take down wouldn’t do them justice. These four characters would slide into various aspects of Ravnica beautifully. These four would be the most exciting visitors to Ravnica.

Ashiok, Dream Render

I don’t think any MTG character could be as good a fit for a Ravnican Guild as Ashiok is for House Dimir. Ashiok is almost literally a walking shadow of secrets and intrigue. Their origins, their age, their motives, their face; hell, their gender is a secret yet unrevealed. Ashiok’s power is creating living beings born of the greatest fears stolen from people’s nightmares. Literally.

It’s like if the Dimir stopped half-assing the art of stealing thoughts and turned it into a weapon of mass destruction. Because even the mightiest of Ravnicans are afraid of things. Ask Niv-Mizzet about the Nephilim sometime, see how quickly he changes the subject. What’s better, for a Guild that prides itself on always having the up & up on everyone, Ashiok is inscrutable. They have no past that can be divined, no secrets that can be stolen, no previous encounters to prepare any for their arrival. Neither Lazav nor Etrata can claim such anonymity, despite their best efforts. Ashiok is a true enigma and a dangerous new weapon for House Dimir.

Ashiok also comes with the ability to create minions and NPCs from out of any PC’s worst nightmares, making encounters a great combination of roleplaying & combat. Fighting them is specifically facing one’s deepest & darkest fears made real. Can you say, “character development”?

Ashiok’s arrival could spread this new magical art to other Dimir Agents for a longer campaign, but it might be best to confine it to Ashiok in order to allow for a cleaner victory. Ashiok is not a fighter, cornering them into a direct confrontation should be enough to make the Nightmare Sculptor run for the hills. The mind is powerful, but also very squishy.

Tibalt, the Fiend-Blooded

You know how the Cult of Rakdos are technically Chaotic Evil but generally just a bunch of artsy hedonistic nuisances? Tibalt is to them what a gallon of gasoline would be to a lit stove. Good for fire, bad for everything else. Tibalt is an empath specializing in Pain Magic. Quite literally, he loves hurting people for fun. Drawn to pain like a magnet; physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological, etc, he is sadism personified.

His brief time on Ravnica during War of the Spark was enough to make a strong impression on the Rakdos.

“I like this one’s energy.”

This is because they do not realize how bad Tibalt would be for the Cult. There is a fundamental difference between the Chaotic Evil the Cult practices and the Chaotic Evil Tibalt delights in. The Rakdos have survived 10,000 years by taking in the freaks, the rejects, and the crazies, and giving them a place where they can live out their most depraved hedonistic fantasies. They are the voice of the outsiders bringing all figures of power & authority down a peg. They always punch up, never down. Tibalt is a young man with no home, no friends, no job, and no interests or hobbies beyond inflicting pain in as many people as possible. Tibalt punches everyone. The most important distinction between the two is that the Cult of Rakdos is a culture, a way of life for people to embrace; it might be crazy, but it welcomes & accepts people no matter how insane the world says they are. Tibalt does not care about anyone but himself. Following his example would see the city turned into the largest, bloodiest, and most destructive riot in its history; with Tibalt inciting and sicking every monstrosity he can find onto the city at once. He will burn the Rakdos candle at both ends and leave them to suffer the consequences of his fun. The aftermath being the city in ruins, the Cult wiped from the face of existence, and him moving on to his next project. In short, Tibalt will hurt the Cult of Rakdos as much, if not more, than the rest of Ravnica. Because that’s how he gets his kicks.

The one thing standing in his way will be Rakdos himself. As the single largest diva on the entire plane, Rakdos does not tolerate anyone who tries to steal his spotlight. As a 10,000+ year-old Demon Lord, Rakdos is in a league of his own, and Tibalt is just a hotshit little pain mage with a few tricks. It’s not a fight, it’s either an exit or a curtain call for the Planeswalker. If Rakdos is around, Tibalt’s spree will be very short-lived. If, however, Rakdos is doing his usual thing of hibernating for weeks, months, or years at a time, that’s a different story. Tibalt is good for if your campaign wants to bypass politics & intrigue and go straight to killing Cultists & Demons. He’s bad for anyone he comes in contact with.

Garruk Wildspeaker

In case I haven’t made my contempt for Domri Rade clear, I hold Domri Rade in utter contempt. As a character, as a Planeswalker, and most of all as a Gruul, he’s a failure. Scrawny, weak, gullible, and stupid. My chief grievance with Domri is that he fell short in all the areas the Gruul Clans idolize. He couldn’t survive in the wilderness on his own without his Planeswalker abilities, he couldn’t fight for himself except against weaker opponents or with herds of animals as backup, and he acted on orders from someone else who wasn’t Gruul. For a Guild built on independence and survival of the fittest, he failed both completely.

Garruk is the real deal. Gigantic, strong, savage, and cunning. Here is a man who, on a fundamental level, has embraced animal savagery as a way of life. He lives like a predator on the hunt, an alpha of any pack, and a fierce threat to all who intrude upon his territory. On a plane like Ravnica, where civilization has encroached on the untamed wilds almost completely, Garruk would be a gamechanger. Not only could he feasibly fight Borborygmos for leadership of the Gruul, he could win, and he could unite the Gruul under his howl of reclaiming the wilds from so-called “civilization”. Garruk would bring animal strength to the Gruul in ways they’ve only begun to tap into, and he’d do it in their language. Because Garruk understands the Gruul, and they understand him. They have so much in common with each other that it’s hard to think of any Planeswalker who could be welcomed so readily into a Guild. They would become so much more than rock-smashers and anarchists, they would become Ravnica’s reminder that nature will survive when all traces of society have crumbled away.

As if taking on the city itself wasn’t big enough already, Garruk has also taken to hunting other Planeswalkers, and can actually track them across the Multiverse. Meaning a few high-ranking members of Guilds and even the Living Guildpact have to take his threat seriously. He’s got a particular grudge against necromancers, dislikes talking, and has a special gift with animals of all varieties. All of which provides plenty of ideas to build from. He’s an 8ft tall Human Druid/Barbarian who willingly chooses animal savagery over intellectual reasoning, can there be anyone more perfect for the Gruul?

Did I say Ashiok was the most perfect fit for an MTG character in a Ravnican Guild? Yeah, scratch that. Garruk is.

Sarkhan Vol

Most Planeswalkers have a theme to their abilities. For some, that theme extends to their personalities as well. And then there are Planeswalkers who can be adequately summed up in a single word. For Sarkhan, that word would be “dragons”. Sarkhan sees dragons as nature’s purest & most destructive form, and carries a fascination with them that is perfectly healthy for anything with wings and scales that breathes fire, but generally less healthy for everything & everyone else.

One of the things that makes Ravnica unique is the distinct lack of dragons (emphasis on the plural). Ravnica has a dragon, Niv-Mizzet the Firemind, who made the executive decision thousands of years ago that he alone was sufficient to represent his entire species. Ravnican dragons are considered more intelligent than dragons on other planes, Niv himself being a prime example of this. Around the original signing of the Guildpact, Ravnica’s Godlike dragons were hunted to extinction, with Niv leading the hunt against his own kind. They were not entirely successful in this endeavor, but what few dragons do remain in the present day survive by staying as far off Niv’s radar as possible. Some dragons live by carrying out Niv’s will under constant supervision, or by hunting in the untamed wilds outside the city, or as sideshow attractions for the Rakdos (usually with their wings cut off to prevent escape). They are effectively stripped of anything that would identify them as “dragons” for the sake of their own existence. Since dragons are such a notoriously touchy subject for the Firemind, few have the nerve or fire immunity necessary to speak out against it.

Sarkhan would be horrified. If he thought the extinction of dragons on his home plane of Tarkir was bad, seeing them living like this would infuriate him beyond words. What would Sarkhan do once the initial shock of seeing his spirit animal (in more ways than one) reduced to pitiful scraps of life as lab rats, scared prey, and freak shows wears off? Let’s make it a game! Do you think Sarkhan will:

A. Cry.

B. Throw up.

C. Embrace this as a plane’s reality that he has no right to get involved with.

D. Scream.

E. Set something on fire.

F. Set everything on fire.

G. Bring back the dragons.

H. Burn the city to the ground with dragons.

I. Kill Niv-Mizzet.

J. All the above except “C”.

If you selected Answer “J”, then congratulations! You’ve just won a free trip to a BURNING METROPOLIS! Sarkhan will absolutely make it his life’s goal to bring dragons back to Ravnica and destroy the whole wretched city down to the last brick. How he would do it is up to you, but it’s a solid bet that even if every other Guild treats him like an apocalyptic madman, the Gruul might side with him over some shared beliefs in smashing the city apart with ferocious animal savagery. They tend to lean towards such ideas with uncharacteristic willful compliance. Ravnican dragons are primarily red, with the most prominent breed still remaining being the Utvara Hellkites beyond the city limits.

Oh, and Sarkhan can turn into a dragon, too. Have fun with that.

[justjessame]

Glorious, Before the Burden - The Mourning ~ 10

My thoughts of Loki weren’t all darkness and sadness.  After I’d had my fill of my garden at night, I’d retire to my bed - too big without him next to me. I’d thought I’d grown accustomed while alone in Asgard after his fall, but here, on Midgard where we first shared a bed it appeared that nostalgia came rushing back.  

Lying beneath a blanket that felt too heavy, on sheets that felt too warm, I’d be overcome with memories of better times - other beds - where I wasn’t alone.  

“Do you know,” Loki’s cool finger danced up my bare spine as my teeth dug into my lip and my eyes fluttered shut at the chill drawing gooseflesh to the surface of my sweat glistening skin, after all he’d just helped me see Valhalla in all its glory - again.  “That I see constellations under your skin,” his tongue replaced his finger tip and I arched up to meet him, sighing at the change, the temptation, the NEED that he was building.  “Shall I tell you the tales of each one, my love?”  

I’d wake each morning twisted in the bedding, sweating and feeling as if I’d had no rest - because I hadn’t rested.  I was reliving every moment of my life with Loki - while he was living on without me, with the belief that I was gone. 

Michael Griffiths had adopted me, much as he’d told Director Nick Fury, he assumed the role of grandfather.  And as such, he took it upon himself to get me acclimated to my new home.  Including, against my better judgement, teaching me the ways around that dreaded beast - the computer.  

“It won’t bite,” he assured me, opening up the portable version he insisted on bringing over.  

A laptop, as it was called - although I’d only seen them set upon tables and desks - the screen flickered awake and as he talked me through the navigation, I found that it was a portal to more information.  That coupled with the internet, it could help me gain knowledge of the points and passages of Midgard that I had missed, even with a few trips that Loki had surprised me with over the course of our marriage - they’d been spontaneous and random - I had much to learn. 

“See,” Michael knew that I loved learning - a ferocious appetite, he called it - and this appealed to my need for it.  “This cottage was already wired for wi-fi, a call was all it took -” he’d done it for me, just as he’d taken care of the cell phone, as he’d handled much of what I would have missed.  I offered to repay him, but he shook me off, refusing every offer.  “I have no family, no close family at least.”  

And so - we became one another’s family.  Taking comfort in each other’s company, I’d listen to his tales of a childhood that sounded simple, yet wonderful - and he understood when I didn’t share as much.  I need to keep myself tucked away, at least for a while longer.  

Not every night was filled with memories - some were filled with images that I couldn’t place.  Images that I felt certain my mind gave me to give me solace, to ease my pain, to make me feel peace - though some were so dark that I had to fear that perhaps Odin was urging Frigga to send me a reminder of my punishment. 

I saw Loki, in chains - shackled and held in place by guards, my pain hit me so low and deep I was startled that I couldn’t wake.  I watched as he asked Frigga if he’d made her proud, as he warned him not to make things worse - as Odin ordered her out.  How could my eyes burn so hot in a dream?  

Loki, my brave, darling, ARROGANT love, standing tall and laughing at his adopted father - mockingly asking what the problem was in what he’d done on Midgard - why there was such a fuss.  And then, as Odin and he had their back and forth, as he truly took notice of his surroundings, it seemed to dawn on him FINALLY that something was TRULY amiss.  

“Where is SHE?”  His tone wasn’t one of fear.  It was anger, the anger I expected when he would first note my absence.  “Where’s MY WIFE?”  

Odin, had he always looked so smug?  Had he always looked so all knowing and condescending?  Or was I simply cynical now? My eyes see him through the filter of pain and being cast out for my honesty.  

“Your WIFE,” he made the word sound like a crime, as if I WERE a crime.  “Is DEAD.”  Loki stared at him, opening his mouth and preparing to argue, but Odin wasn’t through.  “By her own hand,” he nodded at a guard who stepped forward and my heart twisted as I saw just how deeply they’d plotted to keep us apart, to truly destroy our connection.  

The guard held one of the hair picks Loki had commissioned for me, my favorite in fact, coated in blood and I knew - I knew that they really had severed the bond.  It was as if Frigga had taken that pick and shoved it right through my heart, coating it in my actual life’s blood.  

Loki didn’t allow Odin to see him react.  He shut off all comments about me.  Returning to the mocking, arrogant prisoner that Thor had returned from Midgard with - accepting, from an outward appearance, my suicide with a stoic heart.  But I knew my husband, and I saw the red tint in his eyes, I saw the flash that crossed his face, and I understood - he wouldn’t allow Odin to see his pain.  He wouldn’t allow his capture, this person who had taken him as a pathway to peace with one of Asgard’s oldest enemies to see how broken he was by the news that I was dead.  Not after - not with his failure, not after he lost his way and his regret was piling ever higher.  

Hearing that Frigga wouldn’t be allowed to visit was a final blow - life imprisonment without solace or peace.  And for once - since he first started plotting for his throne - he felt he deserved it.  

Gasping awake, I saw that dawn hadn’t yet crested.  A glance at the clock told me I hadn’t slept more than a few moments.  This tortuous dream felt like it had taken YEARS off my life, that it had lasted DAYS to watch, but it was moments.  

Sobbing as I thought of Loki, MY Loki having to hear that I’d taken my life - considering how they’d searched our rooms, taking anything I could have considered doing just that, and wondered - had they WANTED me to?  Had a family I’d been married into, a family I’d thought myself a part of for so very long, wished me to do them this favor?  End my life so once they could find my husband, they would have a built in torture ready made?  

I couldn’t - no, Frigga wouldn’t want me to have done such a monstrous thing.  It was one thing to SAY it, to try to convince him that I had - but to push me to it?  That was beyond anything anyone I knew would ever press for.  These dark thoughts would get me nowhere - no closer to - but would ANY thoughts get me closer to HIM?  

Picking through our past, I fought to find ONE, just ONE that would make it feel like he was near - and I felt as though I might be growing near it - but then just as it came within grasping distance, just as I could ALMOST catch a hint of a whiff of his scent, a glimmer of the blue of his eyes - it was gone - and I was alone once more.  

“Sigyn,” Loki’s eyes were as red rimmed as they’d been in our rooms - the day of destruction that should have warned me of what was to come.  The sob building in his chest.  “My love, is that you?”  It was as if he COULD see me, locked away in what I could easily see was one of Asgard’s prison cells.  “Have you come to haunt me, my darling?”  

I shook my head, reaching for him, my own eyes burning again.  Wanting so badly to touch him, to feel his cool touch.  “No, Loki, no,” my throat burned too, as if I’d swallowed glass.  “Why would I haunt you?”  

He didn’t come closer, regret and fear warring for dominance within him.  “Of all my failures, wife, pushing you to THIS -” he gestured at whatever he was seeing when he looked at me.  “THIS cuts me the deepest.”   

Confusion overtook my longing for him, what - turning slighting, I caught sight of my reflection - rather a reflection of the wraith that my Loki saw when he glanced my way - what else could one call the withered, bloody being that seemed ragged with death and despair, wearing sorrow like a cloak, the wound I’d supposedly given myself with the weapon he’d had created for me blossoming from my chest like a grotesque flower.  

“Oh, Loki,” looking down, unable to meet his gaze, not like this - in this form, this monstrosity that they’ve twisted me into.  “This wasn’t your fault.”  

“Then whose?”  His pain and grief pierced me as deeply as the false wound would have.  “Whose fault if not mine?”  

Waking up with tears streaming, the pain still clenching tight around my heart, I wished that I could have answered him.  That I could have told Loki who was at fault - but would answering him have truly helped? 

[awwrealmonsters]

Top 12 Breath of the Wild Monsters (Part 2 of 2)

(Part 1 -

#8 - The Lord of the Mountain

Out of all of the creatures on this list, this guy’s presence in the game felt the most unique, with the circumstances around his presence making for a genuinely fantastical and ethereal experience. The glowing markings on his body are a neat way to display the godly and ancient elements of the design, I love the soothing and pretty turquoise coloration, and the double faces are just strange enough to make you uncomfortable without being too creepy. I do wish that the rest of the body was more interesting though, as outside the coloration it’s a rather standard horse design. Maybe the owl influences in the face could have been incorporated more. Still overall a solid boy.

#7 - The Blights

The Blight designs are a big upgrade from Calamity Ganons’, as they refine what works about that design into a less busy and more sensible appearance. The ancient machinery aspects are better incorporated here as they are fairly minimal and well placed, as well as serving a narrative purpose as possessed machines. The silhouettes of these guys are very nice and the single eyes masks are quite intimidating. The sludge and machine colors still don’t mix very well here though, blending together too much and making it hard at times to tell what you are looking at. I said they’re LESS busy than Ganon, not that they aren’t busy. The coolness of these guys outweighs most of their flaws though.

#6 - Blupees

You might be surprised to see the very simple design of the Blupee ranked higher than the Lord of the Mountain, particularly since his simplicity was what I found the most issue with. But Simplicity isn’t always a negative and I think it really works here. Blupees are tiny and there can be quite a lot of them so the basic design works, with the slight owlish markings on it’s front adding just a nice little bit of detail. The color is still very nice and the face is quite cute when theirs only one of them. The antlers make the design resemble a jackalope which helps with the cryptid feel. Plus they are just really cute. While not #1 on this list, Blupees would certainly rank #1 on “best BotW creature to make into a plushie”.

#5 -The Rito

The decision to make the Rito a staple species in Botw is one I fully support. Adding an air-adjacent species to the water-adjacent Zora, Earth-adjacent Gorons, and (sorta) Fire-adjacent Gerudo  just makes sense. I love that the anatomy is absolutely a different species and not just humans with wings. With at least 10 distinctive designs I like that their was an extra effort to make each major character based off a different bird that would highlight aspects of their personality. Kass is a parrot and thus a bard with a big rounded beak that gives him a friendly air, the town elder is a bearded owl because of course he is, and a blue jay is a perfect fit for Revali as an insufferable asshole. The way they use big feathers as “fingers” is a nice compromise to keep the wings looking complete. Overall a lot of them just look very cool. My main complaint is that the “hair” in some of the designs isn’t incorporated super well, they should have stuck with using the feathers to make distinct head shapes rather than trying to emulate human hair.

#4 -Lizalfos

I’m surprised at myself for placing these folk higher than the Rito, but the amount of time I spent facing them in game made them really grow on me. The upgrade from standard lizard to a more chameleon design was a great decision on Nintendo’s part, with the curved back, curly tail, single horn, and those distinctive eyes making for a very memorable monster. The goofy eyes and mouth keep them from looking too intimidating but the way they move and how quick they can be still make them a viable threat. The camouflage ability is also pretty neat and I like all the regional variations. There’s really not anything I dislike about the design, they’re just a few I like more.

#3 -Koroks

This is just peak character design right here. With their tiny rounded tree bodies and silly leaf masks complete with dotted eyes and cut out mouths you immediately understand that these guys are 1-forest spirits and 2-childlike. Their fat little bodies and tiny limbs are both adorable and make you want to help them out. I love that their are so many different leaf designs as each gives off it’s own little personality while still retaining that lighthearted quality. Again this is a simple design, but it conveys everything it needs to. This strikes me as one of the more iconic Zelda designs and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was used as a mascot in future installments.

#2 -The Zora

Look. I get it. I know some people may be tired of the Zora since the internet went crazy for them when the game first came out. Everyone was designing Zora OCs or saying how much they wanted to sleep with Sidon. But. Have you considered. They were Right. Zora’s have been a staple in the Zelda series for a long time now and while the old designs have their charm they’ve never looked better than they do here. The noses have been replaced with head ridges that provide a nice color block between the faces and the adorable head tails, which also provide ‘eyebrow’ esque markings to allow for easier expression without sacrificing the aquatic feel. The fins around the hips serve some extra flair and built in modesty, and having most of the Zora adorn themselves in jewelry but not surely-not-built-for-water fabric is just good world building. The Zora come in more colors then ever before and most are pretty unique shades that are very easy on the eyes. While their isn’t quite as many variants as there are for the Rito, the special shark, whale, and manta ray influenced NPCs are all great and memorable designs. Also they are all huge, which is wonderful. The only thing I would change is to let Mipha have as strong shark influences as her brother. Give me my giant sharp toothed shark girlfriend Nintendo, you cowards!

#1 -Lynel

I went back and forth on the placement of most of the monsters on this list, but there was never any doubt about who the top stop belonged to. There is no comparing the feeling of seeing this thing for the first time, immediately thinking “oh shit” and then promptly getting absolutely wrecked. Intimidating doesn’t even begin to cover this absolutely jacked monstrosity. The pupil-less glowing eyes, big old ram horns, and giant arms all help to make Lynels look as scary as they do, with the lion mane helping to balance out the bottom heavy creature and add some wildness to the design. Lynels are big, sturdy, and have some of the coolest looking weapons in the game. All the variants have pretty good color pallets with the striped ones looking especially nice. I really appreciate the extra detail of giving them scars as well, to help with the seasoned warrior feel .I don’t really know what else to say, Lynels are just cool okay?

Thank you for reading, If you have a favorite BotW monster or think the list should be in a different order, feel free to share your thoughts, I’d love to discuss! :)

[bill-the-baker]

I’ve also decided to finish this decade with something more light-hearted, detailing the many trends that one can associate with the past ten years. I styled this picture in a similar fashion to those gaudy collages you have relating to the 1980s and 1990s, with this mainly being reflected in the style of this picture. The title of the picture holds a very minimalist design, and is shown from inside a phone, whilst the rest of the poster has a dull white background. These main design choices were added to reflect the omnipresence of smartphones in this decade, as well as the general trend of Minimalism, which has been followed by many companies in recent years. The decision to make the background seem plain was not completely because I’m feeling lazy, but because I tried to follow the trend of minimalism, a trend I personally hate because of how boring it is (I probably would have added in a pretty pattern if there was some other major design trend).

Beyond this though, there are a few other things I chose to add in to reflect the 2010s:

-Ragecomics- The basis of most early-2010s memes.

-Skrillex (or rather Dubstep in general)- A key figure in a genre of music that you either loved or hated.

-Obama- A fantastic President who laid the groundwork for change that will hopefully be built upon in the future.

-Hipster culture- Fresh-out-of-college rich kids who made avoiding the mainstream a mainstream trend.

-The Occupy Movement (“We are the 99%” sign)- A promising post-Great Recession movement with disappointing results.

Gay Rights- Gay marriage is now legal in places like the United States, and homosexuality is more accepted the western world, so much so that companies are now no-longer afraid to pander to them whenever June comes around. Still, other parts of the planet have yet to change their outdated ways.

Trans rights- With people like Caitlyn Jenner and Leelah Alcorn, Transgenderism has arrived into the forefront of social issues, though it remains a strongly divisive issue throughout the decade.

Drones- Like helicopters but smaller and cheaper.

Overwatch- An interesting game that offered a unique personality to the shooter genre in a decade oversaturated with annual Call of Duty releases.

Cuphead- A challenging run-and-gun platformer with a Golden-Age animation-style, showcasing what can be made through video games these days.

Minecraft- The game that doesn’t die. It defined the childhoods of many gamers who fondly remember the early-2010s, and has since made a major resurgence in the decade’s end.

Steven Universe- A much-loved show that offered many unique and progressive themes, which I can admire despite my mixed feeling for the show itself.

Gravity Falls- A show aimed at children didn’t have to be this immersive and interesting, but Alex Hirsch and his team did it anyway and offered the world two seasons of hilarious and yet gripping television.

Political correctness/Woke-ness (“That’s Offensive” speech bubble)- Something that has been pushed to death among the political mainstream, but especially by the Left, as people are silenced whilst others demand safe spaces to keep their precious feelings from being hurt. Political correctness is a somewhat-trend that is better off staying in this decade.

Shrek- Whilst the 2010s have been starved of a new Shrek film besides the contested “Shrek Forever After”, the “Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life” greentext story, despite its crude subject matter, has made the brutish but kind ogre a mainstay in meme culture, whilst offering people the opportunity to explore the nuances of the franchise, after growing up with the character.

Pewdiepie- Starting out strong in the decade, making a name for himself as “that funny Swedish guy who screams as scary games”, an incident in February 2017, in which he was called a Nazi by the mainstream media, resulted in him becoming a more independent and politically incorrect figure, before going on to unite the internet in a battle for the most subscribed YouTube channel against a corporation. He lost in the end, but it was fun while it lasted.

Tyler, the Creator- Offering a unique sound among waves of forgettable Pop music, Tyler evolved from an edgy but somewhat humorous rapper, to an interesting and poignant singer in this past decade, achieving near-mainstream success.

Marvel Cinematic Universe (Endgame logo)- Many mainstream cinemagoers are bound to have seen at least one of these groundbreaking movies in cinemas, with their intense action and perfectly balanced humour, all culminating in the outstanding films “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”.

Death Grips- Unlike anything that has ever been popular among general audiences, the exciting tunes concocted by MC Ride and Zach Hill have remained in the minds of many younger and more alternative individuals.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic- Arguably the most unlikely of fanbases to come around in this decade, this re-imagining of an 80s cartoon series had a style of humour and storytelling that peaked the interests of a group of adult men known as “Bronies”, who’s reasons for being interested were questioned and much of the internet hated them, but they were certainly something to behold throughout these years.

The 2016 Presidential Election (Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump)- A time many can regard as the branching-off point between the first and second halves of the decade, as the extremes of both sides were exposed to the world with astonishing results.

Vine- A social media platform that has since disappeared off the face of the Earth, but brought about many notable celebrities and memes that are often remembered by younger generations.

Vaporwave- Alongside Hipsters, Vaporwave was perhaps one of the few examples of a concrete “counter-culture” movement, offering an anti-Capitalist message within its use of music and iconography from the 1980s and 1990s. Since then, it is best known for offering a warm and interesting “aesthetic”.

Pepe the Frog- A frog best known for saying “Feels Good Man” earlier on, was later used by certain Right-wingers and has since been touted as a symbol of hat. But, with a smug grin like that, it appears that he doesn’t seem to care about what others say.

Social media- It already played a massive role from the mid-2000s-onwards, but now, the scale of social media has grown exponentially, with people moving away from mainstream news and entertainment and instead choosing to get their kicks on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. This focus on gaining the news from social media has held some negative consequences as fake news continues to fool gullible Boomers.

Hyperbeast fashion- In terms of fashion, the Hypebeast is the late-2010s’ version of the Hipster, though unlike Hipsters, who are financially-independent rich kids who make questionable purchasing decisions, Hypebeasts are often preteen/teenagers who suck money out of the credit cards of their rich parents.

Adventure Time- A rather interesting cartoon that started off as a fun show to get high to, but evolved into a gripping epic with an expansive lore and interesting world.

Minions- While they were rather annoying to older viewers following their introduction in the otherwise top-tier film Despicable Me, children and especially 40-something year-old Facebook Mums couldn’t get enough of these wacky tic-tacs.

Brexit- A subject that I, as a Brit, couldn’t seem to get away from in the past few years, as politicians refused to move forward with the people’s decision. But, with the Tory majority in Parliament, as depressing as that sounds, it seems possible that we can finally move on as a country to more important matters.

Vaping (Juul-smoking mouth)- Recovered chain-smokers and rebellious teens have made this trend a popular pastime, though its popularity has waned recently over health concerns.

Doge- Whilst it began as a singular image of a cartoonish-looking Shiba Inu making a weird face, as brightly-coloured Comic Sans surrounds her, this dog has become the subject of many surreal and unique memes, taking on many different forms, solidifying the transformative nature that all memes should strive for.

Hoverboards, Fortnite, Dabbing, and Fidget Spinners (The monstrosity on the bottom-right)- What do a handle-less Segway, a more cartoony (but somewhat better) version of PUBG, a dance based off of post drug-taking sneezes and small bits of metal for Autistic children have in common? They have all ascended to levels of annoying trends that at least some people have had fun with.

Undertale (Sans)- An interesting game that has gained a heavy degree of fame for its interesting themes and interesting characters, some of which have been admired a bit too much by certain teenage girls.

As for my personal experiences of this decade, I can say that, whilst I was born in the early-2000s, I was definitely raised in the 2010s. Much of my memories of the previous decade are rather minimal, and I didn’t follow that many trends considering I only lived on constant repeats of SpongeBob by the start of this decade. Since then, though I have gained many impactful memories from these past few years. Some good, some bad, some great, all of which were a part of growing up. In about two-weeks’ time, I will finally become a legal adult, and shall begin the rest of my life. So, I wish you all well, and hope your Twenties are truly roaring!

[recentanimenews]

6 of the Wildest Anime Villains from the Go Nagai-Verse

In celebration of the Crunchyroll Villain Takeover, we have a slate of features all about our favorite villains! Stay tuned for a whole week about just how fun it is on the dark side of things, and keep an eye out on #VillainTakeover on social for more mayhem!

    Manga and anime pioneer Go Nagai changed anime forever with the introduction of super robots, combining robots, transforming superheroines, and more. His heroes were always brash, bold, and larger than life—usually equipped with insanely powerful mecha or weapons. So how do you fight an over-the-top hero? With an over-the-top villain, of course!

  Just as Nagai's heroes were on a whole other level, his villains were unlike anything even anime audiences had seen before. From mythical beings to bizarre hybrids, his Rogues' Gallery was an exercise in strange concepts and stranger character designs. Villains like Panther Zora and the Great General of Darkness gave heroes like Cutie Honey and Koji Kabuto a serious run for their money!

  It would take us ages to outline every single off-the-wall baddie Go Nagai has ever created, so we've whittled it down to our personal favorite six. Beware of spoilers (even though most of these titles are going on half a century old), and prepare to meet your doom as we count down six of the wildest, weirdest, and most dangerous villains of the Go Nagai-verse.

  Psycho Jenny (Devilman)

Fans of the recent DEVILMAN crybaby will be familiar with this particular demon. If you liked her, we have good news: she's been a part of the Devilman story since the very beginning!

  Psycho Jenny is a loyal servant of Satan, and in fact much of what happens in the series across its many iterations is thanks to her mind-bending powers. Her stare can drive a person insane—though we feel like seeing a giant woman's head with arms and legs sticking out would do the trick on its own. She holds the cards when it comes to Ryo Asuka's true identity, and returns in the story's stealth sequel, Devilman Lady... though this time she's much, much taller.

  DEVILMAN crybaby gave Psycho Jenny a slightly less horrifying form to walk around in. Did you spot her before the big reveal, Go Nagai fans?

    Baron Ashura (Mazinger Z)

One of the Mazinger franchise's most constant baddies, Baron Ashura is the loyal right hand of the villainous Dr. Hell (yes, that's his real name). Unerringly devoted to Dr. Hell and the Mycenean Empire, they can't seem to catch a break against Koji Kabuto and the mighty Mazinger Z—a constant point of ridicule from Hell's other subordinates.

  As ridiculous as Baron Ashura seems in action, their origin is heartbreaking. In the original manga and anime, they are what remains of a pair of Mycenean lovers. The two were in a forbidden relationship, and as punishment were mummified and buried alive in a cave. By the time Dr. Hell found the pair, a piece of rubble had fallen between them, crushing one half of each corpse. He built Ashura from the remaining pieces. In 2009's Mazinger Edition Z: The Impact!, the story is slightly more convoluted, but still involves a pair of lovers—Ashura even gets to meet their former selves during a flashback.

    Emperor Gore (Getter Robo)

Not all Go Nagai villains are freaks of nature because of medical intervention. Some are just born that way. Take Emperor Gore, ruler of the underground Dinosaur Empire. Gore himself isn't a dinosaur, though. He's a cobra man... or has a cobra for a head. Or is a cobra whose chest just happens to be a full-sized man. We'll get back to you on how that works.

  To take back Earth from those pesky mammals who stole it from the dinosaurs (i.e. us), Gore lets loose robot dinosaurs known as Mechasaurs. Fortunately for us, we have the three bots of Getter Robo on our side! In the end, Gore has admitted defeat and chooses to die honorably at the hands of Getter—which he is prevented from doing when he's killed by the leader of the demonic Hyakki Empire. By the time we reach Shin Getter Robo, both leaders are living in the basement of the heroes' lab as ghosts and giving out really bad advice.

    Archduke Gorgon (Mazinger Z/Great Mazinger)

Once again, we return to the Mycenean Empire. The bloodthirsty Archduke Gorgon is... uh... kind of a tiger centaur? But backwards? And the whole tiger is still there, it's just there's a man stuck to it from the waist up. Also, Gorgon and the tiger might be entirely separate consciousnesses, considering he whips the tiger when he needs to run faster.

  As a character, Gorgon is far more confident than anyone else working with Dr. Hell, which may be why he makes it all the way to Mazinger Z's sequel before getting taken out. He views Dr. Hell's machinations as convenient for his own goals. And, according to Mazinger Edition Z, he conspired with the two Myceneans who went on to become Baron Ashura.

    The Slum King (Violence Jack)

From ancient Greece to post-apocalyptic Kanto, our next baddie is the only guy tall enough to look Violence Jack in the eye. The Slum King, the main antagonist of Violence Jack, is a literal giant of a man, clad in samurai armor and sporting the sword skills to warrant it. He also wears a mask, which takes a variety of different forms over the course of the different manga and anime series. Regardless of the look, the mask is there for the same reason in each version: he literally has no skin.

This potentially Dororo-inspired monstrosity also keeps a limbless Ryo Asuka and Miki Makimura from Devilman on leashes. That's because, like so many Go Nagai series, Violence Jack is also a sequel to Devilman. This just keeps happening.

    Gandal and Lady Gandal (UFO Robo Grendizer)

Our last villainous entry may not be Go Nagai's most fearsome villain, but they get bonus points for being possibly his oddest concept so far: a man with a tiny woman living in his face.

  General Gandal of UFO Robo Grendizer fights for the Vegan (as in "from Vega") Empire, a brutal tactician and entirely loyal to his leader. Once in a while, his face pops open like a horrifying cuckoo clock and a red-haired woman comes out to have her say. This is Lady Gandal, and she has her own opinions on how things should be going. Later in the series when Lady Gandal's body is destroyed, the two work out a time share that involves a face-swap rather than the previous arrangement.

    These are just a few of the strange and amazing villains you can find throughout the works of Go Nagai. Each new series—and each new adaptation!—introduces more unique characters to the roster. They may ultimately meet their defeat at the hands of the heroes, but they make the fight along the way so much more interesting.

  Which of these bizarre baddies is your favorite? Any others we haven't mentioned that deserve some love (or fear)? Let's take it to the comments!

    -----

Kara Dennison is the co-founder of Altrix Books and co-creator of OEL light novel series Owl's Flower, with writing credits across the Internet. She blogs at karadennison.com and tweets @RubyCosmos. Her latest book, Vanishing Tales of the City, is now available for pre-order.

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[anniekoh]

elsewhere on the internet: decolonizing games

[Screencap from When Rivers Were Trails]

The Deep Forest is a map game of post-colonial weird fantasy. It’s a re-imagining of The Quiet Year, one that centres upon monstrosity and decolonization.

Real Native history in a video game: An Indigenous take on The Oregon Trail

20 Indigenous writers and music by Supaman and Michael Charette combine efforts to create a decision-based roleplaying game, 'When Rivers Were Trails'

While the popular Oregon Trail series computer game of the 1980s and ’90s had narratives from the point of view of settlers traveling from Independence, Missouri to Oregon, it neglected the stories of the very people who lived on those lands.

...

In the game, an Anishinaabeg player in the 1890s is displaced from Fond du Lac in Minnesota due to the impact of land allotments. They make their way to the Northwest and eventually venture into California.

Unsettling Settlers: An Interview with Golboo Amani by Farah Yusuf

At that time I was also playing Settlers of Catan a lot. Immediately I was hooked; I was totally entertained and sucked into this game. The more I played the more I became aware of all of the oppressive narratives that play out on this board. Actually, the “Aha!” moment for me was when a player in a game that I was playing built a road that split the board in half – the Longest Road is a power play mechanism in the SoC game. By doing so, the player was able to own half of the board. It confined the rest of the players, it forced a particular kind of resource management and competitive engagement among the rest of the players that put the person who built the road in a position of power. Looking at the board after we had lost the game, I realized that the economy of this road was parallel to the economy of an apartheid wall. That’s when I realized that this game was actually a virtual space capable of simulating real-life scenarios. It begged the question, “Can we simulate an alternative narrative? Can we simulate a narrative of dissent or a narrative response to this extremely oversimplified, highly problematic narrative?”

FY: You describe Unsettling the Settlers: Intervention as a slow artwork. To date, you have spent three years engaging diverse groups of participants in “play tests.” Can you explain what goes on during these sessions and how they relate to your social practice?

...

It seemed unrealistic that the only obstacles Settlers faced in the base game were resource management and development issues with each other. Where were the environmental factors? The conditions of the landscape that are less predictable? And more crucial to survival? None of this gets addressed in the base game. The intervention pack forces players to address and negotiate solutions when entering uncharted land and being faced with, for example, a long winter, a spoiled crop or a plague. Indigenous communities have always contributed to the survival of settlers. They offered the first settlers knowledge and resources for the production of food and medicine and they provided the tools and materials required to survive on the land. To address this in the game, I produced a new set of resources to be collected throughout the game. The resources in the base game are very much non-renewable and extraction-based (ore, lumber, et cetera) so creating a set of renewable resources felt crucial to the survival of both Allies and Settlers. The new resources include agriculture, medicine, game (fur or meat) and navigation.

And as a bonus

This City Builder Asks You to Rebuild the World After Climate Devastation

'Lichenia' is an alternative to SimCity that challenges you to experiment in the post-apocalyptic unknown.

Lichenia is a new web-based game from game designer Molleindustria (Paolo Pedercini) that’s about “reshaping the natural and built environment, reclaiming dead cities, and growing sustainable ones.” It takes a few minutes to get going, but what else would you expect? Resurrecting a poisoned world is hard.

[maximumsnow]

Meetings 3

Now they’re all together!

Alex swore when the power flickered and finally went out. When it didn’t come back on within a few minutes, he swore again, and stomped towards the old as hell computer that monitored the power in the bunker.

He had intentionally built this bunker to rely on lower tech because it meant he could actually hide here without some kind of ad tracker getting his location and spilling it to anyone who knew where to look.

And considering one of the people he had been hiding from was an AI that practically controlled the internet, he really couldn’t afford that. Especially since it once held the off switch for said AI.

Despite all this, it was still a royal pain in the ass to make the machine work when he was so used to much quicker response times. Even months later, he still complained about it. He had to ignore the fact that there was no one to complain to, but at least he felt better after a good rant.

He wasn’t sure how long the back up battery was going to hold up, so the longer he spent waiting for the spinny loading circle to finish, the more frustrated he got.  Thankfully, the warning pop-up appeared of its own volition within a few minutes, and it gave him the information he needed.

[WARNING: GENERATOR OFFLINE]

… Well damn.

That meant there wasn’t a way to fix this problem remotely. He would have to go outside.

The mere thought made him break out in a sweat. The walls were thick enough to survive bomb blasts, but he had thought he had heard things. He didn’t know what the sounds meant, but who knew what was out there now.

He started prepping for his excursion to the surface, and he wasn’t looking forward to it. If his day counting was correct, it was the dead of winter, so he needed to dress appropriately. The warmest coat he had was way too big for a man of his stature, and for once, he thought that might not be a problem.

He grabbed ski goggles, a respirator, and as an afterthought, a portable Geiger counter he had fashioned in his rather extensive free time. For all he knew, those explosions had involved literal nukes.

First, he had to remember how to open the damn door though.

This was bad. This was really bad. Charlie risked a look over his shoulder at the giant thing chasing him, and was not happy with how quickly it had caught up with him. It screeched at him, and the sound itself made it feel as if the ground was shaking.

Too many legs carried it with a speed that his much smaller human body couldn’t hope to outrun in a straight race. If he had the time, he would have tried to figure out if this thing was closer to a spider or a crab, but all that mattered was that it was very angry and running at him.

He vaulted over the remains of a car, jumped through the broken window of the closest somewhat stable building, and dove behind a counter. Trying to control his breathing, he listened for the beast’s thundering footsteps. He didn’t think he had outsmarted it enough for it to run by, but he was still pissed when the crashing stopped close by.

Holding his breath as if that would help, he sat frozen to the ground. His heartbeat was racing, and in his ears, it sounded like a heavy drumbeat that would give him away to anything that had a sense of hearing. Which he wasn’t sure if this monstrosity had, to be honest, but he didn’t want to find out.

He nearly screamed when a pointed spidery leg crashed onto the counter.

The point of the leg dug into the fake wood, and he could feel it drag across the top. It came very close to where he was, and he dived forward before it got there.

He heard a thud and the splintering of the counter before a sharp pain shot up his calf. “SHIT!” He shouted in pain.

The sound of a heavy door opening was lost in the chaos.

Alex never expected to hear a human voice on his doorstep. It made him drop the Geiger counter, and he tried to slam the heavy door open. It wasn’t successful, given his lack of upper body strength, but it opened enough to let him see what was going on.

And that’s when he saw the thing he had been actually worried about.

All he could see from his position was a couple of legs that looked far too much like a spider’s for his liking, and that nearly scared him right back into the darkness to hide. It was only the fear reaction of “freeze” that kept him from doing that and sealing the fate of the unknown voice to doom.

His eyes traveled downwards to the end point of the most stretched out leg, and he could see it pulling something back towards the shattered windows. When that something moved, he finally realized it was a person.

Whoever it was twisted themselves around, pulled a gun he hadn’t noticed out, and pointed it towards the creature. They pulled the trigger, and that made the beast scream. The legs reflexively pulled up, and the black and white clad stranger took that as an opportunity to crawl back to his hiding place.

“Over here!” Alex shouted, hoping that the stranger could hear him over the commotion. The realization that maybe he shouldn’t be inviting the first person he had seen in months into his relatively safe spot didn’t hit him until the words were out, but his conscience couldn’t let someone die in front of him.

The person looked up towards him hiding in the doorway, but before any questions or conversation could happen, another spider’s leg slammed down between them. This caused the other person to roll away to protect himself, and Alex ducked down as if that would protect him more. His hand still firmly on the doorknob, he resolutely kept the passageway open.

He wasn’t sure how the man was going to get over towards him between the monster still trying to pull him out and the injured leg. The door was shielding Alex from sight, but he didn’t doubt that it was going to notice that potentially easier prey was hiding there.

He didn’t even have a gun to protect himself with, and even if he did, he wouldn’t have known how to use it.

The man seemed to know what he was doing, however, as he continued to take pointed shots through the window. Alex was honestly impressed at how he kept his cool in the face of danger and against the odds.

He definitely didn’t expect to hear more voices, and the beast’s legs to suddenly collapse. He peeked around the door, and he saw two more people wearing predominantly black climbing through the window.

The spider-like monstrosity was nearly torn in half.

Charlie’s relief was palpable when he saw Pi leap on top of the mutated monster and started stabbing it in the eyes with his pipe. If Pi was around, that probably meant Lucky was, and that was confirmed when the creature suddenly started to shake and split in two.

Lucky looked exhausted, but that didn’t stop them from nearly hurling themselves at Charlie to look at his injury.

Pi, as usual, stayed a bit further back, and even though he wore those weird shades, Charlie knew he was glaring at him.

Whatever. He focused back on Lucky, who was suddenly asking him where his first aid supplies were. The sight of his blood was worrying them, and he had pulled off his backpack when he suddenly remembered the extra party.

His head shot up and looked towards the still open doorway, and his companions followed his gaze in alarm. The stranger in the overly large parka, respirator, and ski goggles was still standing there, but it seemed like he was far too focused on the dead monster to pay attention to them.

“Hey, you!” Charlie shouted in an attempt to get the man’s attention.

That got the man to stumble, and the goggled face swung back towards them. The way he grabbed the door to steady himself hinted at nervousness, and Charlie couldn’t entirely blame him. “We won’t hurt you, promise,” Charlie said in an attempt to keep him calm. His leg then reminded him that it was still hurting, so he hissed loudly, and Lucky reached over to grab the bag so that they could dig through it better.

“Who’re you?” Pi asked cautiously, his head tilting to the side. He didn’t approach the new person just in case that scared him.

“Alex-” The man started before cutting himself off.

“He tried to help me during all… that,” Charlie said as he waved his hand towards the dead creature. “You showed up before he could do much.” Turning back towards Alex, he said, “Thanks for the thought, though, it is appreciated.”

“A friend of Charlie’s is a friend of mine!” Lucky exclaimed as they looked up from their search. “I’m Lucky! I would give you a better greeting, but Charlie here is hurt. We can talk later, yes?

Alex nodded slowly before slowly looking at the three of them again. “… It’s dangerous out here, why don’t you come in?” His voice was clearly nervous, but the offer seemed sincere.

Before Charlie could speak, Pi interrupted, “Let me see what you’ve got first.”

Alex flinched, but didn’t argue. “Y-yeah. Makes sense.” He opened the door wider to invite the shorter but much more dangerous man in.

Pi was intrigued by the little bunker set in the outskirts of the city, to put it mildly. He wondered how this Alex had the funds for making this, or if he had had the fortune to stumble across it early.

He was even more impressed when he saw all the electrical equipment set up to work remotely and unconnected to the old grid. However, there was the problem that all the lights were off.

“Yeah, something went wrong with a generator, and I was going to fix it when I stumbled across your friend,” Alex said in response to that unspoken question. “I’ve had power up until then, though.”

“Wait, you can fix generators? Were you some kind of engineer?” Pi suddenly asked, intrigued. That would give him a better idea of what they were dealing with.

“Kinda. I liked messing with the machine hardware, but that wasn’t really my main job,” Alex said proudly.

“What did you do then?”

Alex paused before saying, “Uh, a little bit of everything? Kind of a higher up in IT, if that makes any sense.”

It made enough sense for Pi. This person didn’t seem like a threat to Lucky or Pi. Or even Charlie. “Yeah. Let’s get the others,” he said before brushing past Alex and up the stairs.

Shit. He had almost given out who he was. Alex released a breath he didn’t know he had been holding. He didn’t know these three well enough to figure out if that was a bad thing or not yet, but they were definitely too dangerous for him to risk giving that information out too early.

He had a huge suspicion about Lucky, though. The company he had been working for had been interested in abnormal powers in humans that had been springing up.

Even if he wasn’t responsible for those experiments, he wouldn’t doubt that they would be unhappy with him.

He wouldn’t truly realize how screwed over he was until later.

Once Charlie was placed comfortably on the couch, he and Lucky started fiddling with a flashlight so that the two of them could work on patching up his leg, and Pi offered to go with Alex to watch his back while Alex fixed the generator.

When they got to where the generator should have been, they found out why it wasn’t working anymore. The area it had been in had collapsed, and without anything to dig it out with, there was no way to even see if it could be repaired.

Defeated, Alex came back and found that the duo had finished treating Charlie’s leg. This also meant that they had gotten more comfortable, and the various things they wore to protect their eyes and faces had come off. Pi joined them in taking off his shades and removing the bandanna he normally wore around his mouth.

Alex was glad he hadn’t take off the respirator yet, since it covered his look of pure shock as he recognized the three people he was now stuck in close quarters with.

Pi was, god fucking damn it, a young private investigator that he had hired via emails to find someone who had threatened him and several of his coworkers. During the course of that mission, he had gotten shot in the head, and even though Pi had survived, his memories of the incident were completely gone, and Alex had sent money in the guise of a charity to ensure he actually got treatment.

Lucky definitely was one of his company’s many experiments, and the one that was had so much notoriety, even Alex was informed about them. Something about their ability to actively screw with people’s neural links had marked them as dangerous, and Alex had pointedly tried avoiding being around them. He had gotten extremely aggravated with one of the scientists talking about Lucky as if they were some lab rat they had bred for the purposes of poking and prodding, and had snapped at her over it.

And then there was Charlie, oh boy, Charlie. AKA, the one poor sap who was forever stuck at the bottom of the totem pole in the company due to his brain being wired strangely. Alex had never figured out what made some people unable to connect, but Charlie seemed to have something that outright rejected the attempts. It wasn’t through lack of trying either, because Charlie did have records of attempting to connect and failing every time. It was also noted that Charlie had sleeping issues because the constant buzz of machinery didn’t agree with him. Due to his guilt of being unable to fix any of these problems, Alex had ensured that Charlie never got fired, and secretly approved the promotion to work as a tour guide.

He may have done a few nice things for these people, but they sure didn’t know that. And it wasn’t like him telling them would really smooth things over since it would be seen as a lie to cover his ass.  As far as they knew, he was the source of most of their problems in life, or at least a convenient substitute, and he had no delusions about what they would do if they did know who he was.

So he would have to keep quiet, and hope they never found out. Which, given what almost happened earlier, he thought he could already see the writing on the wall.

[bright-eyed]

“Who are you? Who are we? In times of crisis, these are life-and-death questions. Thousands of people survived Hurricane Katrina because grandsons or aunts or neighbors or complete strangers reached out to those in need all through the Gulf Coast and because an armada of boat owners from the surrounding communities and as far away as Texas went into New Orleans to pull stranded people to safety. Hundreds of people died in the aftermath of Katrina because others, including police, vigilantes, high government officials, and the media, decided that the people of New Orleans were too dangerous to allow them to evacuate the septic, drowned city or to rescue them, even from hospitals. Some who attempted to flee were turned back at gunpoint or shot down. Rumors proliferated about mass rapes, mass murders, and mayhem that turned out later to be untrue, though the national media and New Orleans’s police chief believed and perpetuated those rumors during the crucial days when people were dying on rooftops and elevated highways and in crowded shelters and hospitals in the unbearable heat, without adequate water, without food, without medicine and medical attention. Those rumors led soldiers and others dispatched as rescuers to regard victims as enemies. Beliefs matter — though as many people act generously despite their beliefs as the reverse.

Katrina was an extreme version of what goes on in many disasters, wherein how you behave depends on whether you think your neighbors or fellow citizens are a greater threat that the havoc wrought by a disaster or a greater good than the property in houses and stores around you. (Citizen, in this book, means members of a city or community, not people in possession of legal citizenship in a nation.) What you believe shapes how you act. How you act results in life or death, for yourself or others, as in everyday life, only more so. Katrina was, like most disasters, also marked by altruism: of young men who took it upon themselves to supply water, food, diapers, and protection to the strangers stranded with them; of people who rescued or sheltered neighbors; of the uncounted hundreds or thousands who set out in boats — armed, often, but also armed with compassion — to find those who were stranded in the stagnant waters and bring them to safety; of the two hundred thousand or more people who (via the Internet site HurricaneHousing.org in the weeks after) volunteered to house complete strangers, mostly in their own homes, persuaded more by the pictures of suffering than the rumors of monstrosity; of the uncounted tens of thousands of volunteers who came to the Gulf Coast to rebuild and restore.

In the wake of an earthquake, a bombing, or a major storm, most people are altruistic, urgently engaged in caring for themselves and those around them, strangers and neighbors as well as friends and loved ones. The image of the selfish, panicky, or regressively savage human beings in times of disaster has little truth to it. Decades of meticulous sociological research on behavior in disasters, from the bombings of World War II to floods, tornadoes, earthquakes, and storms actoss the continent and across the world, have demonstrated this. But belief lags behind, and often the worst behavior in the wake of calamity is on the part of those who believe that others will behave savagely and that they themselves are taking defense measures against barbarism. From earthquake-shattered San Francisco in 1906 to flooded New Orleans in 2005, innocents have been killed by people who have believed or asserted that their victims were the criminals and they themselves were the protectors of the shaken order. Beliefs matter.”

— Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

[linuxgamenews]

HERO.EXE deck building RPG already passes funding goal

HERO.EXE tactical action RPG game hits Kickstarter for Linux, Mac, and Windows PC. Thanks to the creative efforts of developer Mystery Egg Games. Which has already passed its crowdfunding campaign goal. Developed by Mystery Egg Games and published by Top Hat Studios, Inc.. HERO.EXE is part tactical action RPG, part collectible card game, and part visual novel. Which is also inspired by the classic Mega Man Battle Network series. Not to mention the popular modern day favorites. Due to games like Hearthstone and Fire Emblem: Awakening. Coming to all major PC storefronts: Linux, Mac, and Windows PC. HERO.EXE is expected to release in Q1 of 2024. The Kickstarter campaign is live until October 21st. Having also passed the $20,000 USD campaign goal, currently 116% funded. While enthusiasts of the genre can pick up exclusive rewards, merchandise, and reserve copies of the game. A Windows PC demo is also accessible from the Steam page. Which works very well with Proton 6.3-6 and it's very responsive. The dialogue is already voiced, which certainly makes the game feel alive. Check it out.

HERO.EXE Kickstarter Trailer (Linux, Mac, Windows PC)

In another world, The Grid was design uses much the same way our own Internet. Dong so with elbow grease and a dream. However, the HERO.EXE world turned out very different from ours. Instead of websites, they built oceans. Instead of vlogs, they built cities, and soon A.V.A.s came into being. A.V.A.s are all partnered with pilots in the real world. Shopping, socializing, and browsing the grid are the many everyday essentials done through A.V.A.s. However, one day upon logging in, you realise something’s not quite right on The Grid. Soon enough, an A.V.A. you’ve never seen before materialises before you. Who also changes your destiny with just a handful of words, “I need you to pilot me”. Connect to the internet of another world, choose your A.V.A.. Go on an adventure to change both of our worlds! Each A.V.A. is a living being that will act and respond to your actions. Each of them has their own personality and goals. Including their own histories, stories, and relationships in HERO.EXE. All of these have an effect on your play-through. So get ready to take on whatever the Grid has to throw at you, together!

Features:

Deep, fully customizable card based combat systems and decks! Use the A.V.A. Build System to build and compile together your own personal combat deck. Including over 300 unique cards and abilities! Collect ‘em all and have fun trying out different combo's.

A journey around a diverse, interconnected digital world! The HERO.EXE Grid is made up of users from all walks of life. Coming with all sorts of hobbies and all sorts of weird personalities. When these people come together, they form “server worlds”. You’ll journey across them with your A.V.A. Move from tile to tile as you explore each server. So you can uncover mysteries and meet new friends (or foes). Then flick back and forth with your P.O.K.I.T. to customise your deck. Keep up to date with what’s going on with other pilots.

Complex characters and complex stores  - every A.V.A. is unique, with their own personalities, histories, and goals. Bond (or clash) with them as you navigate across The Grid. And who you might know (and how much they like you) might change how things turn out. Just be aware that as the Pilot. Since your decisions are final and may have unforeseen outcomes!

Gorgeous artworks and story segments! HERO.EXE’s deep story is told through the usage of lovingly crafted drawing. And on occasion visual novel esque sequences.

Intense, multi-phase action and combat! Get onto a grid to fight glitches, weird mischievous monstrosities that have begun terrorising the locals of the server worlds. Pick your hand of cards, set up on the grid, and out skill your opponent.

The Campaign:

A Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for HERO.EXE is live until the October 21st. Where enthusiasts of tactical action RPG games can pick up exclusive rewards, merchandise, and reserve copies of the game. A demo is also accessible from the page. While the full release is due to be available on Linux, Mac, and Windows PC in Q1 of 2024.