#especially in this game mode

[technicalgator]

Shoutout to my best friend for playing Medic in the new VS Hale server. Nothing is funnier than watching a Medic run for his fucking life as a Hale chases him down throughout the map with determination and bloodlust.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

I think what chronically upsets me about TotK is that. So much of it could have been so good with so little change.

I am into Zelda as a sacrificial, wondrous and silenced creature who must literally carry the blade of the hero as a wound inside her forehead and silently wait to be humanized again --and the injustice of a kingdom built on such a premice doomed to repeat itself, especially if the kingdom was founded on such dubious grounds to begin with. I am into Ganondorf forcing the present to reckon with the past through the most violent clash, forsaking everything that made him a person while sinking down into petty vindictiveness until no connection and no humanity remains, even though independance was what he was trying to protect in the first place. I am into Link as somebody trying to hold onto his most important connection to the world he once knew being used to force him into a conflict that has ultimately nothing to do with him (sure that's SS again but, it could have been explored even further). I am into Rauru as this self-important, self-made king who used his own association to godhood to live out a power fantasy that refuses to ever be acknowledge as such, maybe compounded by the fact he is one of the last of his species and feel, himself, the crushing weight of their fading heritage?

I don't know, the Tears of the Kingdom or something????

But, it all tragically depends on one crucial thing, which is to allow hylians to be wrong sometimes.

And it's wild to me how all of this incredible potential to comment on the series' history and the characters' role in it is just. Flattened into nothing, because Good must be Good and Evil must be Evil, and Hyrule must be righteous at literally every cost --even if it means nervously rewriting their own history through convoluted logic that rejects conflict and depth and vulnerability at every turn.

[yamanoskk]

The real mastermind, the unpredictable subordinate, and the 'spies'

My fanarts of the new casts in Touhou 19!

Overall, I do enjoy the game! Really adore all of the new casts, the new music are cool and the story is interesting! Really nice to see more of the old casts come back in here too!

[shiningliive]

Live Emotion Game Introduction 5 - Emotional Pieces

Lets have a look at Emotional Pieces:

As described on the official twitter account: When you cultivate the fragments of the idol's feelings - their 'emotional pieces' - you'll gain access to things like special outfits, and piece stories. You can also see a new side of the idols by awakening them.

Further Analysis below:

As expected, 'Emotional Pieces' seem to be the equivalent to cards/photos in Shining Live. In this video, we get our first look at what I assume is the initial set of SR (super rare) Pieces titled 'Be Elegant!'. The art on the Pieces is 2d, and likely ties into the main story at the beginning of the game as seen in the previous Story gameplay preview with the same background. The four diamonds to the right of the 'Be Elegant!' title likely either representing the cards rarity as an SR, or the amount that is has been awakened (diamonds could fill with colour to indicate awakening).

Screen 1 - Piece Levelling

In this clip we see Masato's 'Be Elegant!' SR Piece levelled up from 1-11 with the use of two EXP Score (S), and two EXP Score (M). The number above the area to select how many EXP Scores to use shows how many of each item you own. EXP Score (S) earns 100 EXP EXP Score (M) earns 1,000 EXP EXP Score (L) earns 10,000 EXP

We can also see there there are three categories of Pieces. Sing, Dance, and Charm. It's likely that each idol can be different categories depending on the Piece (Eg, one Masato SR could be Charm type as seen in this video, and another could be Dance type). Levelling up the Piece adds slightly more to the Piece's assigned type than the others (Masato's Sing and Dance points get an additional 100 points, and his Charm gets an additional 104.

Each Piece has also has an assigned 'Life' value, assumedly similar to stamina in Shining Live. In this case likely each cards 'Life' value being added together to give you a value for your stamina bar.

Under the Life value on the left shows the level of the Pieces Skills. Main Skill, Idol Skill, and Guest Skill.

The buttons at the bottom read (from left to right): Reset, Omakase (Auto?), Confirm, and 'Piece Board'.

Screen 2-3 - Piece Board

This looks to be the various unlockables for each Piece.

The Top tree is unlockables for Story , the middle tree for Skills, and the bottom tree for Costume/Voicelines. Each also had additional unlocks for extra Charm, Dance, Sing, and Life points. They are levelled up with the pink gems seen in the popup screen. It seems each unlock will reward you 2 of the rainbow gems which are likely used for the Piece Gacha.

The outfit unlocked for Van is titled "Formal Wear'.

[ladyluscinia]

Dipping into videogame fandoms is always wild. Like fandoms of all sorts are bad at genre conventions, but gamers LOVE to praise or criticize things for, like, blatantly subjective gameplay styles that literally just are types of game that maybe they should be playing more (or less) of, and then cap it off with a suggestion that is obviously far beyond game engine capabilities based on experience, or would radically change or cripple the intended interactive player experience / replay value

You think the devs fucked up because the protagonist is a blank slate just dropped in the world with no backstory connection or driving motivations???

Bruh... Skyrim never even hinted to you what you had done to get thrown in a cart on your way to the death penalty

I think maybe you would have more fun stepping away from the RPGs. Grab something with a named protagonist on the cover and no character creator. If you don't want this canon character to have "OOC" dialogue options when you control them that make them sound like an outsider to the plot, well, they don't tend to do that when you play something with minimal / option-less cutscenes 🤷‍♀️ nor do you lose critical interactive experiences if you pick a game designed from that mindset

It's never something subtle, is the thing 🤣 always with the "TRAGIC - Amazing Game would be objectively better if only it was a Completely Different Game more suited to my preferred play style"

[serenedash]

leans into microphone.

I don't listen to people that haven't played a new Kingdom Hearts game since 2006. Yes yes kh2 we all love it yes kh2fm is amazing yeah yeah we've all see kh2. Play more kh games, that is literally game number 3 in a series that's like 15 games ongoing. "It's confusing" it's just long as fuck so its a lot of information to take in and that's okay. People literally take so much time and care to explain the series and lore to people who are lost. Like just say you enjoy kh2's gameplay and move on, if you really cared about the series AS A SERIES you'd be paying attention to it as a whole. "Dream drop distance what a stupid title!!!" that is the LEAST stupid thing that has happened in this series. "It's on too many consoles" watch a cutscene movie. Read a wiki page! I own a Playstation TWO!!!!!!!!!! like I have nothing more recent other than my switch. Do you think I've played every game lmao??

Anyway stan kh mobile games I don't care if you don't like them its not a hot take by any stretch of the imagination to not like them. You should read my khux/dr plot summary actually <3

[sketchupnfries]

Some hazy and melancholy photo mode stuff

[himbo-in-limbo]

"Your true colors"

[pretty sure this idea has been done before but I wanna give it a shot sksksksk]

You and your yautja mate were visiting a tech savvy friend who had called you unexpectedly this morning.

(3am to be exact) your mate wasn't to pleased about this since it ruined your perfect sleep together.

But they had called you in for good reason! You see your tech savvy friend has been working alongside other yautja technicians and together they have developed a new vision setting capable of giving yautja partners "ooman vision!!"

Since your friends with the techs you two were given first rights to test it!

Your yautja mate clicks in hesitation to being set up as a guinea pig...but for the chance to see the world through your eyes??? Worth any risk.

Since the bio mask feature is in its testing phase it still has a lot of wires connected to it and after proper application...your mate looked like the inside of a computer monitor (you couldn't help but snicker a little as to how funny they looked)

Tech: Systems running.... synchronizing bio helms infrared settings to the new update...and we should be clear! How's it looking [insert yautja mates name] ???

Tech: can you see us???

Your mate takes a moment to focus their eyes to the new flash of colors...a bit more irritating since they never had to perceive this much detail before.

Soon enough they were taking in the view of the room they were in and started to look down at themselves, realizing this is how their skin color looked to you.

You couldn't contain your excitement and proceeded to rush your way to them! "How do you like it love?!"

They turned their heads to you immediately and they got up so fast the tech almost got yanked to the floor while carrying the wires that were attached to the mask 🤭

Tech: WOAH EASY THERE!! these wires are delicate!!!

Your mate grabbed your arms and all you could hear were cute purrs mixed in with happy clicks! "Your...colors!!"...their so... beautiful!!!

You couldn't help but get a bit teary eyed at their tender expression (even if they were wearing a mask)

The way they tilted their head, the way they began to coo at you and marvel at your unique beauty...

They gently cupped your face and took their time to take in all the details they couldn't see on you before!!

(oh my how they wish they could see more of you in a private setting...)

You melted into their touch and showed them any tattoos or markings you had so they could see it how it was meant to be seen! Afterwards you heard the tech drag something into the room.

Tech: figured you'd like to get a good look at yourself in full view! (They've brought in a large mirror)

You pulled your mate closer towards the mirror, "I'm so happy you can finally see all of your pretty skin patterns the way I've always been able too [insert mates name] ♥️"

Tech: I'm confident that I can get this finalized and installed permanently since testing has gone so much better than I hoped for, so this won't be the last time you'll get to see like this!

You thanked your friend for this amazing opportunity, and you turned back to your mate and the two of you continued to look at yourselves (well you were mostly looking at your mates reaction)

They were staring at you as well, (you were starting to blush a bit) Do you...like how I look?

Your mate turned to face you, "My ooman....you were appealing to me even in the darkest shades of red and black..."

"Your true colors are even more breath taking than before..♥️"

[stergeon]

unfortunately edelgard she's just not that deep

[tamiisnthere]

I hate to write some random rant, but I really wish players would start boycotting The Sims 4.

Each new patch/DLC brings more and more glitches and bugs which developers refuse to fix or accidentally(?) create more bugs to fix some. Like for example right now there is a missing moodlets bug that corrupts some saves and because of this these must be deleted.

DLCs (mainly kits) are bland, almost empty, poor quality and expensive junk while modders create huge CC packs and mods that are high quality and most importantly free and also they fix the bugs that EA made.

Still, I feel sorry for console players who don't have the option to fix/improve the game unlike PC players and it makes the game unplayable due to broken patches.

Then players are reporting to EA who gives empty promises that they will fix it and later next DLC drop and it's same crap. It goes on and on in a never-stopping cycle.

And what's the worst, what annoys me the most? That some players want more content into game and EA wants TS4 to continue on even after Project Rene (The Sims 5) is released. It's a huge red flag since what a horrible state the game is in right now.

If you have TS4 as your comfort game and it helps improve your mood, please try to play either previous The Sims games like The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 or a completely different game. The possibilities are endless.

I'm saying this (even I'm just screaming into void) bcs I just don't understand when everyone says EA is one of the worst AAA video game companies, people still buy their games and DLCs which are unfinished and buggy.

[maryse127]

Put my 18 hour Kingdom Hearts playlist on shuffle while working on my assignment and was fully unprepared for the emotions any and all Daybreak Town songs evoke in me

[themayomambo]

I'm gonna start mcsm posting I stg

[batsplat]

from the stuff i’ve heard marc’s former honda teammates (dani jorge and pol in their media careers but joan also i guess) say about him now that they’re racing is generally quite positive, both on a professional/riding level but also seemingly on a personal level? i’m wondering what you make of that given that, yeah, marc doesn’t seem like a very good teammate (unless you’re alex who i’ve left off this list). like MARC wants to separate on and off track stuff and it seems like all of these guys are willing too at least in retrospect, so he can’t have truly burned bridges with them. do you have any thoughts on that

(x, x) most riders are quite good at not burning bridges with each other! it's not like marc's competitors don't know that this stuff is kinda part of the game. I mean, all of marc's past teammates were also trying to assert themselves within the internal hierarchy... you can say that certain teammates engage in 'worse' behaviour than others, but, like, these people do understand they're supposed to be fighting each other! a baseline degree of nastiness is factored in and will be accepted to a greater or lesser extent by your rivals - especially when it comes to asserting yourself in intra-team power struggles. you might hate the other guy in the moment, but generally speaking once the active part of the rivalry is done with... you will probably get over it. marc's fellow riders are aware of how ultra-competitive marc is - and to a certain point they do respect it, not least because they're aware that this is part of the reason why marc has ended up with all those titles. it's like dani said, right, it's marc's strong suit. and in general, you do have to say that there's relatively few teammate pairings that devolve to the level of toxicity that it completely destroys the interpersonal relationship. you might need some level of preexisting animosity... most of the purely competitive sins can be healed with a little time

on the 'separating on-track and off-track' thing... well. this is kind of a question of how you define these things, you can say that marc generally speaking isn't going to massively hold grudges over isolated on-track incidents or whatever... but he doesn't just leave his fighting to the track, and personally I've also never felt he can entirely separate these things out in his mind. can you really say his professional and private relationships with other riders are completely detached from one another? mostly, he's opted to be pretty disengaged from his fellow riders as a collective, and obviously that's a good way to not take things too personally... it's all part of the game, isn't it? sometimes it's good to go with the straightforward approach: marc tells you he will make your life hell, he does indeed make your life hell, and then you both move on with your lives and can maybe actually have a pretty amiable relationship with him in years to come. he's not really defying your expectations at any point here, is he now? it's still a question for each of them as individuals as to whether they think that kind of behaviour is above board and acceptable or not... but everyone by now knows that marc plays these games, so it's not like they're going in blind

and it's not like other former teammates are constantly badmouthing each other. I mean... look, let's just cut to the chase here and bring in valentino as our reference point (as he is for the sport as a whole, which by the way does also help create a certain baseline of acceptability for marc's antics - maybe goated riders are just supposed to be dicks who knows). vale's premier class teammates were 1) nobody (2000-01), 2) tohru ukawa (2002), 3) nicky hayden (2003; 2011-12), 4) carlos checa (2004), 5) colin edwards (2005-2007), 6) jorge lorenzo (2008-10; 2013-16), 7) maverick vinales (2017-20), 8) franco morbidelli (2021), and 9) andrea dovizioso (2021). of these eight men (let's just exclude 'nobody' for now), do you know how many had serious complaints at any point about valentino as a teammate? that's right, it's one guy. one. some of valentino's other teammates, like hayden, checa and edwards, were even quite actively positive about their whole experience. this is the thing - you do need some specific circumstances for teammate rivalries to escalate from 'being kinda bitchy every other month' to 'actively fantasising about stabbing each other'. not accounting for natural interpersonal animosity, let's list some circumstantial factors that you need to get a bridge-burning-worthy level of feud:

you need a competitive bike. it is possible to beef about development direction when you're in the trenches (cf late 2010's yamaha, 2020's honda)... but generally speaking this is going to be quite low-level petty stuff, not actual war

you also need something that approaches competitiveness between teammates. if one teammate is unquestionably stronger than the other one, then it is very unlikely that you are going to get any open hostilities. the tension comes when the two sides are close enough to each other for the internal hierarchy to actually be a contentious issue (this is also basic self preservation... if you're the far weaker teammate then you do not want to make the situation troublesome, because then you will be the one to be fired)

following on from those first two things... well, it doesn't hurt to have a title fight in the mix. there are also other ways you can generate competitive stakes, like, for instance, if you and your teammate know that one of you will be out of a job soon. basically, it helps to have something to squabble over

it is maybe easy to forget how rare it is this century for teammates to be fighting directly for a title, let alone over the course of multiple seasons. only two 1-2's since the year 2000 and they're both for the factory yamaha's (though 2006, 2011-13 and 2017 did all prominently feature two factory hondas). which means that for valentino, the prerequisites were met just the once in his premier class career... and yes, the results were pretty memorable, but (topic! for! another! post!) it's worth pointing out that even that relationship was pretty much 'fine' whenever there was a sizeable disparity between the two of them performance-wise (2008 and 2013 are the most clear cut examples). I think the way I'd frame it with marc is that he has a bunch of mildly dubious strategies up his sleeve to assert himself within the team, which don't really deviate that far from what you'd expect from a rider of marc's calibre and only need to be escalated under specific circumstances. that doesn't mean he doesn't have the potential to be ruthless, but up until now it's mostly been a fairly 'acceptable' level of ruthlessness on the intra-team level... and not something that is likely to make other riders actually hate him

taking marc's teammates one by one... dani was the closest to meeting the bridge-burning prerequisites, though he was only a title rival in marc's rookie season. and marc did go further with him than he did with anyone else, and dani has made some pointed comments about marc's style as a teammate... but yes, he is fonder of marc these days. partly I'd just emphasise again that this is a fairly natural progression when you've stopped directly competing for long enough, and partly it's also just a question of individual personality - dani's not massively into holding grudges. then there's jorge, who... I mean, they might as well not have been teammates, given that jorge was either too slow or too injured to even be sharing any track space with marc. you have to put that one down primarily to circumstance, seeing as jorge's own track record on the teammate front isn't exactly spotless. marc and jorge beefing in 2019 would have been pretty dumb and also a massive waste of everyone's time in a year in which marc singlehandedly won the team's championship. even those two needed more to get things going

moving on to the dark years, pol and marc had an extremely stop-and-start partnership on a honda that was generally pretty uncompetitive... so the only stuff they could get ever so mildly irritable about were riveting incidents like 'marc saying pol wasn't the biggest championship threat' (neither of them were) or 'pol saying he'd copy marc's set up' (which proved entirely useless). not exactly title decider territory, is it now, and marc very much had pol covered as a challenger throughout their partnership. also, those two do have a longer history! they've known each other since they were kids and hold a pretty significant place in each other's careers. now that pol's more or less retired, it's natural there'll be quite a lot of sentimentality there - which will paper over any small cracks that appeared during those two years. and joan was a one year teammate at a time in which the bike was consistently close to offing them both. they only managed to start a sunday race together as teammates on thirteen occasions. it would take some serious effort to engineer a feud with that little opportunity, and, really, why on earth would you bother. maybe if honda had gone for rinsy rather than joan for the factory seat, it could've been a bit more prickly, but it's unlikely that it would have escalated beyond that

this is the thing, right, the only one of these partnerships that would have been worth burning bridges over was dani, and even there marc pretty much had him handled after the first season. in general, marc has been pretty clear on how he's not interested in making friends with the other side of the garage while the teammate relationship is ongoing... which is fine! there's some prominent-ish teammate pairings that are actually good friends, some teammate pairings where one of them is actively helping out and advising the other one, but some riders prefer to just keep their distance. it would have been a little silly of marc to start a feud with a teammate who is galaxies away from being a competitive threat, let alone a title rival, but generally it is possible to toe the line between 'attempting to suppress your internal rivals enough to stop them from becoming a problem for you' and 'taking radical enough action to make your internal rivals despise you'

especially in the post-dani era, marc never really had any need to push things too far... and, let's face it, how many of your teammate relationships end up with burnt bridges is also quite frankly a question of luck and circumstance. do you want to guess which top rider on paper has the worst track record this century with premier class teammate feuds, in terms of a) how many they've had, and b) how little public reconciliation there has been since the end of the rivalry?

yes, that's right, it's the first name that comes to mind when you're thinking of toxic and conflict-prone riders: andrea dovizioso. that old devil, constantly causing trouble. just couldn't stop undermining his poor, innocent teammates. can somebody please stop this ruthless bully before it's too late

I think you get the point. I would personally suggest that dovi is not in fact the worst teammate it is possible to have in a motogp top team. he just happened to find himself in a situation where he was teammates with two separate guys he did not click with at all, in situations that involved a pairing of riders who were (or had the potential to be) competitive with each other, as well as some proper stakes attached to the rivalry. in general, situational factors are going to determine this stuff more than anything else... and marc more often than not does have a reasonably good feel for picking his battles. he's flirted with the line, but he's mostly avoided crossing it. he hasn't had to

[the-punforgiven]

Thinking about the concept of making a fantasy game but making the Barbarian almost like, a joke class

Like, this guy runs headlong screaming into a dungeon wearing nothing but a fuzzy loincloth and two leather straps, packing turbo gym bro muscles so shrink-wrapped he looks like he's never had a full glass of water in his life and lives on a diet of nothing but raw protein powder eaten straight from the bucket, dude runs in howling like a wild beast into the dungeon with no supplies, no rations, no water, not even a backpack literally just One Single Iron Axe and just... goes in?

You gotta admit like, on some level that is a little silly, right?

[fooloftheunknownworld]

Taking a break from my Helluva Boss critical vacation to get this off my chest

Hmm, mothers who were turned cartoonishly evil because the writers decided they wanted the fathers that were clearly villainous to be sympathetic only to fail horribly... What happened to both Stella and Monika was basically Wattpad fanfiction.

[solradguy]

How do you feel about Overture Sol’s design? I mostly like it, but his cargo pants always distract me. I feel rather Victorian in saying that, but I don���t mean his ankles!!

It's not bad. Here's a tierlist I slapped together of all of Sol's designs that showed up for more than one illustration. Unordered within tiers