#beating the market

[muffinlance]

I'm barely to the massacre and I can already tell I'm going to be screaming at every this-makes-no-sense decision made by the writers (your temple is under violent attack, and you evacuate the kids... to a barely enclosed corner in a prominent temple room? Instead of to the hundreds of sky bison that were highlighted as flying in earlier? Why?) (And Aang left to clear his head and think instead of to run from his duties? That's such a less compelling plot arc?) (And the show had him briefly monologue about being a goofy kid who loves pies and his friends instead of using the extended temple scene to show any of that? Didn't want to pay more child actors, did you, Netflix?)

Yeah I'm just. Going to be screaming at the screen instead of enjoying this. Different decisions aren't necessarily bad, but when those decisions seem to be in the direction of "show a man burning alive before we even get to the on-screen massacre" this is just... not the show for me.

[nuthong]

NUT THANAT as JUN

How smart Thame is. He made you join first, because he knew you could really help a lot. You should have complimented me, shouldn't you? Has Thame even done anything yet?

THAMEPO: HEART THAT SKIPS A BEAT

bonus:

[blueskittlesart]

*sigh* thoughts on Nintendo's botw/totk timeline shenanigans and tomfoolery?

tbh. my maybe-unpopular opinion is that the timeline is only important when a game's place on the timeline seriously informs the way their narrative progresses. the problem is that before botw we almost NEVER got games where it didn't matter. it matters for skyward sword because it's the beginning, and it matters for tp/ww/alttp (and their respective sequels) because the choices the hero of time makes explicitly inform the narrative of those games in one way or another. it matters which timeline we're in for those games because these cycles we're seeing are close enough to oot's cycle that they're still feeling the effects of his choices. botw, however, takes place at minimum 10 thousand years after oot, so its place on the timeline actually functionally means nothing. botw is completely divorced from the hero of time & his story, so what he does is a nonissue in the context of botw link and zelda's story. thus, which timeline botw happens in is a nonissue. honestly I kind of liked the idea that it happened in all of them. i think there's a cool idea of inevitability that can be played with there. but the point is that the timeline exists to enhance and fill in the lore of games that need it, and botw/totk don't really need it because the devs finally realized they could make a game without the hero of time in it.

[thanatika]

yeah i agree with your point about survival mechanics and i feel the same way about the lack of combat mechanics. "why would an educated city doctor need a weapon" because shit is hitting the fan in every way impossible and pretty much everyone is walking around armed... also why am i supposed to believe the the fact that he's a man of intellect will somehow provide him with food? i don't think anyone is going to be too eager to share food during an outbreak intellectual or not...

+ follow up for the previous ask but actually my favorite quest from the original pathologic is the day 11 bachelor quest that involves shooting down soldiers. i think it really drives the point home about how this random fuckass guy who is supposed to be battling a plague doesn't even have the time to do that anymore because the people in charge are asking completely irrelevant things of him now and he's at a position where he cannot refuse what is being asked of him. like i think it was good storytelling that even as the guy who lowkey wants to deal with the plague and solve its mystery you still have other, more pressing, less interesting and or pleasant tasks to complete

i agree! honestly, i feel this way about the combat mechanics even more than i do about the physical survival (food, health, illness, sleep) mechanics. because sure, i can see how it makes sense for daniil's position of authority to mean that his basic needs are somewhat provided for -- although i don't think it makes more sense than what we got in the original game. i've never seen anyone bring up "isn't it kind of unrealistic that the bachelor isn't given lots of food during a massive food shortage?" as a plothole that needed to be resolved. the townspeople generally don't like him much, and most of the people with power don't either, except for the kains. sure, maybe it's kind of weird that you can go see the kains while broke and on the verge of keeling over from hunger, and they won't do anything to help you, but... the kains are pretty self-centered, and they're so goddamn weird that maybe they forget that you need to eat food to live anyway. and it's half-implied that the powers that be are ultimately giving daniil this role as a convenient way to kill him, so it makes sense that they would put no pressure on the town authorities to keep him alive.

(and honestly, artemy is taken under the olgimsky's auspices as much as the kains take daniil's under theirs! which is to say, selfishly, with ulterior motives that are more important to them than the well-being of their healer, but... the olgimskys are set up as the wealthiest of the 3 families financially, as well as the ones with the most access to food, given their control over the meat industry. so if anything it's "weirder" that artemy isn't more materially provided for, though to be clear i don't think there's an actual plothole there either way.)

but anyway, you could handwave it and say that daniil's position of privilege and authority gives him more perks than he got in the original game, but the amount of fighting you have to do to get through town is... kind of an unavoidable physical reality? like you're given so many sidequests that you often wind up walking around town after dark, and that's when the bandits come out. is the idea that the bandits would be too scared to attack him because he's so important? because that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, and even pathologic 2 establishes that he's seen as a valuable target by the bandits:

and then there's the quests where combat plays a more direct role in the story itself, like getting involved in saving andrey from the firing squad, or killing guards to break artemy out of prison, or the quest where you have to kill var in attempt to stop the arsonists (which i include on the same tier as the other ones because i really like the quest journal entry he has if you complete it where he blames himself for willow's death. it's a good character moment.)

hell, even in pathologic 2 itself, one of the biggest Bachelor Moments is on day 11, when you have that big dramatic convo with him after he killed a soldier for the papers he was delivering. plus one of bad grief's idle dialogues in patho 2 is commentary on the bachelor being "quick on the draw" and that he "already shot someone". like he just straight up is not living a combat-free existence. and overall, combat isn't just a good tool from a mechanical perspective, heightening the stakes and placing pressure on the player (though it is), it's also pretty important for him on a thematic level imo, almost as important as artemy and his "rivers of blood". in patho classic, daniil has this early interaction with the inquisitor:

which, thinking about it from a doylist perspective, was probably the writers' attempt to make it sound more plausible that this random medical researcher from the big city was competent with multiple types of guns. and i appreciate them coming up with that hint of backstory to cover their bases a bit, but with those bases covered, i think the fact that daniil ultimately spends more time shooting people than he does prescribing medicines for them actually does a lot for him thematically? i mean, if his whole thing is that he's this "tempted destroyer", someone who frames his career as a combative battle with death rather than a quest to save people's lives, whose "default" solution is to raze the town with artillery because he's too limited by his rationalist worldview and military upbringing (and bitterness over being manipulated and sabotaged) to come up with a solution that saves the any remaining infected survivors on his own. plus the way that clara frames artemy and daniil as two sides of the same coin in being violent destroyers and killers, who without player intervention will immediately devolve to running around chasing each other down in what's either an insanely dedicated tom and jerry LARP or some really elaborate foreplay. imo, that whole dichotomy (which is pretty core to the game, as the idea of dichotomies are core to it in general) works so much better with the way they're both presented in classic, stalking around with gun/scalpel in hand. hell, not to mention the effect that spending 12 in-game days trying not to starve and getting killed by bandits or guards or worms or soldiers every day would have on the player, and the way it would make them feel about the town and their natural projection of those feelings onto dankovsky, who is a perfectly fitting vessel for them as the avatar actually undergoing those virtual experiences.

ultimately i think they are mainly going this direction out of a desire to do something more creative and original, which is fine... it just seems a bit silly to me that they keep saying "well obviously that doesn't really work for the bachelor's scenario", when, well... even as recently as patho 2 in 2019, they seemed to think it fit his narrative pretty well! i'm also guessing that a lack of combat won't be that bandits are just no longer roaming the streets at night. it sounds more like pathologic 3 is set to be more of a nonlinear experience, where you'll probably fast travel from place to place instead of having to walk across town so much? so you'll be avoiding bandits just in the sense that the gameplay will be avoiding them. i guess i'm hoping that at the very least, there's still the implication of the crunch of not getting enough sleep or food and the threat of being stabbed to death while trying to get through town occurring to dankovsky in the background, even if those mechanics are deemphasized in favor of more macro-level town resource management, time control, and sherlock holmes fruit ninja or whatever the hell they were on about back in 2022 lmao.

[librarycards]

me at 10 🤝 me at 14 🤝 me at 19 🤝 me at 22 🤝 me the day after my 26th bday: wandering around the house alone with my cringe music blasting to avoid a mental breakdown

[p-receh]

Whoa, look at that cleaaaaan render cut!!!😘👌

I once said that Gentar really looked like Chai from the game "Hi-Fi Rush" and I. Mean. It.

As in, down to their personalities...

Their color palettes...

Their magnetic power...

And even their art styles wtf?!🤯

In conclusion:

[raviollies]

How's everyone day been

[ganondoodle]

not to dive back into my apparently controversial video game opinions but the "they probably left out nigh all references to botw to not confuse new players" argument for totk really confuses me in turn bc …

if an overgrown non functioning botw shrine confuses you so much you cant keep playing how are you ever getting through any video game?? if you are not familiar with botw its just part of the environment for you, a fallen apart titan or a half collapsed shrine of life with a cave now leading somewhere else shouldnt completely confuse you-

but mainly ... this is (supposedly................) a direct sequel to botw, a literal second part, if you dont play the first one and just get into the second one you cant blame it on anyone but yourself for not understanding some things? like if totk actually built on what botw set up and you get into totk without having played the first one you really have no right to be angry about being confused by some things its like if you start watching a series with the second season instead of the first one, your own darn fault if you dont get it (also theres plenty of people who summarize video games for you so you could also jsut watch one of those if you really really dont want to play the first one)

if this is really the reason nintendy forcibly bent everything in totk to not dare have a proper connection to botw then ... im sorry but why the heck did you call it a sequel then, if you want to have a standalone game then make a standalone game, and if you want to reuse the map and models so badly then just say its some paralel universe or something, you have literally done that before!!

[skunkes]

Thsi is so awesome

[akabaka-dev]

Practicing making fancams for ✨️social media marketing purposes ✨️

Please enjoy this fancam of our cat, Yokai

[akkivee]

there was a time, esp after the 2nd drb ended, when everyone was holding their breath scared/excited that hypmic would introduce new divisions to their lineup and thank fck they didn’t lol, but i like to think in a roundabout way, they did give us a new one by allowing chuuoku to have a division like dynamic lol

[whimsywillowwrites]

🌈WOW ✨ It looks like Alastor is going on an adventure! But where?? Why?! Read Chapter 10 to find out! (◕‿◕✿)

[schreibvibe]

Hello again and happy RNLI SOS Day (Royal National Lifeboat Institute).Helping everyone feel safe when they're surrounded by a body of water!

The lifeboat is this: https://we.tl/t-WiZzWYvXBO

(just a little movie set in venice wink wink nod nod, best known for the amazing marketing @_@)

And the body of water is all of my tears (and drool).

Im also happy I can return the SpringF favor!

Thank you so much, the link works perfectly!

Finally... our lifeboat... our great white whale... has been found...

[krowbby]

me on my lunch break taking off my work jacket and name tag to go to the bathroom so people don’t ask me questions. can’t stop saying in my head i am now fully and legally a damn civilian! the way stephen briggs does it in the audiobook

[syn0vial]

in which boba fett hates loud noises

bonus: bitty!boba hates loud noises, too!

[writingatdusk]

I came back on here just say one thing:

The Edge of Sleep is on Prime Video right now!

I repeat: The Edge of Sleep is available on Prime Video right now!

Go watch it like your life depends on it- or just causally have it on in the background will work, too.