#and finally Reed

[depvotee]

Marid really dropped into Night City and it seems like a swarm of DILFs came running to him to turn into THE disfuctional male figure in his life, like if we're a competition or smt

[krowfaced]

Mandatory art of one of my fav podcasts, with the best grump <3

I know she wouldn’t wear fish hooks, but I was inspired by the description of her nana Glass

[boredth]

Arm yourself because no one else here will save you

[octopunkmedia]

Detroit Evolution - AO3 Fic Tags

[seenfull]

[pintsofguinnesmakeyoustrong]

oh god i just realised barry did get redemption. hes been begging god to wash away his sins as if they never happened to be seen as a good man and he fucking got it. the whole world thinks that he was a hero. buried in arlington cemetery with full honours. god is propaganda. god is hollywood.

[billhader-fromtulsa]

didn’t even think about this until now

[616witch]

that's why i can do the impossible.

what if... reed richards transitioned?

[joldiego]

hey girl I’m sorry to tell you this but um. we buried your boyfriend in arlington cemetery. with full honors yeah. And like. the movie we made about him paints him as a heroic veteran who– yeah who got manipulated. redeeming him in the public eye. his son’s gonna remember him as the hero hollywood painted him as. sorry :/

[twobabkas]

BARRY 4x07 | a nice meal

[jillfvs]

the lane and lou hate is so forced like sorry the mcs are well written and don't have the cardboard personality u guys desperately want in order to self insert yourselves in the stories

[sciderman]

thinking of spider-man's first silly little suit (and his silly little webwings)

thinking of you all the time (webwings)

[seizethedeansofproduction]

i am completely normal right now, why do you ask??

also yes the show is about many other things, but this particular thing caught my attention.

[innsstash]

A bunch of colored doodles too so they can be used for reference!! Drawings of: Deacon (Fox) Emeth (Doberman) Reed (Lizard) William (Cat)

[asha-mage]

Cyberpunk Meta: The Power of Sticking to Your (Narrative and Thematic) Guns

I've been struggling to articulate why exactly I find Cyberpunk 2077 so damn compelling, given how far it is out of my usual wheel house in terms of genre, tone, and even ideology. And I think after beatng Phantom Liberty it finally clicked-

What enthralls me about this game is it's complete commitment to it's underlying themes and ideas.

Most video games struggle to challenge the player on a story level. Some of this is the capitalism of it all: the idea that video games that aren't trying to make every moment exciting and engaging and wish fulling aren't going to sell well, and so video games should try and maximize player satisfaction above all else. But it's not just that- video games have an inherent limitation of medium in that, since they ask for so much time from the player, they have to be hooky, to draw you in, and keep you there. You don't loose a video game when you die and have to start over. You loose a video game when you put it down and decide to stop picking it up again. And that means that the ways a video game can or will push it's audience are sharply limited- it curtails their ability to make the player uncomfortable, to deprive them, to push them into things like no-win scenarios, and bad endings, to force the player to reflect. And that limit is a hurdle to making art inherent to video games as a medium.

What I admire about Cyberpunk 2077 is it's willingness to find away around, over, and through those limits, while still sticking to it's narrative and thematic guns. Cyberpunk could so easily fall into the trap of making the torment nexus look cool and rad. But it doesn't. Night City is a suffocating capitalist hellscape plastered with advertisements, where the right of way belongs to the person with the car running you over, the only way to get an ambulance is to have a good enough insurance policy, and dodging bullets on your way to work is just a part of every day. The game is unafraid to hammer it home repeatedly that this world is broken, sick, lost, and their isn't really anything you can do to save it. One of the main themes of the game is that sometimes, their are no good choices: just ones you can live with.

And nothing hits this home harder then Phantom Liberty's King of Wands ending. The game hammers you during it's final stretch, again and again- how much are you willing to help Songbird, someone who is, at the end of the day, no different then you- a young kid way in over their head, dying from betrayal and loss, with only a razor thin margin of hope. Helping her is the right thing, but what are you willing to do for that? The game slowly strips away your other motivations and reasons, until you are sitting on that train left with just one reality: do you call Reed and betray Songbird because that's the only way to get the cure you need? Or do you preform an act of true altruism and charity, in a world tormented by greed and selfishness? Do you put her on that rocket, and send her away knowing you'll get nothing for your trouble but the knowledge you stuck to what you believed was right? Or do you choose to give her up to the FIA, to Reed, to Myers, knowing what that will mean, knowing that all she's done to win her freedom?

And like, the sheer audacity, to add an ending via DLC, and it's not a good ending. Their is no magical reward, no last minute silver bullet, or dues ex machina. Virtue is it's own reward. The extra ending you get, for compromising, for betraying, for choosing the same selfishness and greed as everyone else in Night City- it's a bad ending. You loose all your personal relationships, you loose our chance to be a legend, you even loose Johnny in the end. And for what? To most likely end up like Reed one day- on the leash of the NUSA, used up until their is nothing left but regret. I've never seen a game quite do that, because it runs against that central idea of video games- it's anti power fantasy. Your extra time, extra missions, extra choices- their not rewarded, not repaid. The story doesn't let V find a third door just because they have been moral and true. It's unjust. It's cruel. It's unfair.

Just like the world Cyberpunk 2077 is warning against.

And that, is a brilliant bit of art.

[pintsofguinnesmakeyoustrong]

albert probably watched the mask collector and was like. girl what.