#i know its a popular analog horror but i just didnt get into it

[wonderful-time-in-the-multiverse]

Hey

What's your favorite analog horror?

Mine are these!

⬇️

[idiotthatdrawsakaartist]

Pocket mirror/ Little goody two shoes thoughts

i discovered Pocket mirror back in 2017, a year after it's release and ive been hooked ever since. I used the game to vent allot as a child. I was 12 when i discovered it, im 18 now. older and far wiser ide say, which is kinda funny because back in the old pocket mirror days we didnt know much. I was on the cusp of teenage hood, and now on the cusp of adult hood we get the full picture. any who the games themselves !

Pocket mirror

Pocket mirror is the unloved middle child and im so pissed. The writing is fantastic, the visual story telling and puzzles enforce the story and are fun to see/ go through. The mc is strange in the fact that she's quite bland but by the end of the game we get a good picture of who Goldia actually is, which is great. I have no complaints what so ever. Which is why it pisses me off when people ignored the og game AND goldentraum.

And sadly enough, at the end of the day the reason it's not as popular is because of its asthetic. Analog horror is not that popular but cottage core? that shit rivals Regina George in popularity so Little goody two shoes got more popular. Plus it has more of an open world feel than PM. I just want Pocket mirror to get her flowers, stop sleeping on this game and play it. Or watch it please i love this game so much.

Goody little two shoes !

this game is basically : Pocket mirror left you with questions huh? time to answer them!

that's it, i love the information we get, the character arc, the fact that we get a full picture of Elise. I used to hate her because we didnt know anything about her as person beyond sacrifing her daughter for cash. Now i relate to her quite a bit and she's such an interesting mc. It is annoying that she ignored the golden girl's warnings doe , like girl is getting bad vibes, red flags, warnings ect.. the whole game but acts like she has amnesia and doesn't acknowledge them, probably because if she did we would end up with more than 10 endings and Astral shift propular doesn't have the money to afford the assets for more then 1O endings

i have allot to say about these games, i love these games so much and i hope Astral shift keeps making great games. And while i may be salty that pocket mirror is under Little goody two shoes shadows, i am happy astral shift is finally starting to gain the attention they deserve

[kidical]

In your one post, since you mentioned being in the fandom during its early days, do you have any fav stories or fanworks from over the years or even any of the more recent ones? Lately, ive been seeing these little video game projects on youtube based on the pastas, some i remember being called funkin drowned and mic of time. Theres also this other thing on youtube ive seen going around called the macabre experiment, like an analog horror series about some pastas, with its own lore about em. Kinda cool to see the fandom still making projects.

definitely !!!!!! i was a huge fan of candle cove and still am, which isnt an unheard of creepypasta but its kind of its own like. sub-community that used to be a lot more popular back in the day.

there are also some i remember being more prevalent at the time that i didnt necessarily like myself but have been kind of forgotten, such as characters like the thing that wears mommys skin, suicide sadie, mr welldone, nathan the nobody, hobo heart, username666, seedeater, b.o.b (i think hes become more of an scp type thing nowadays similar to the rake), mr widemouth, zero, lazari, tails doll, kagekao, scarecrow etc etc etc. theres more lost episode creepypastas than i can even begin to talk about, and some from entirely fake series trying to mimic candlecoves success with an edgy bite (happy appy..... holy shit i hate happy appy.....)

there are newer creepypastas too that werent there when i first moved on to different interests that i was surprised to see when i came back, characters like kate the chaser, nina the killer, puppeteer + jason the toymaker + whatever that jester guys name is (they were all KIND OF getting popular by the time i left but they didnt have the same reputation they do now), the expressionless and whoever else i dont really know. i definitely love nina the killer a lot i think the concept of a fangirl gone nutzoid is really interesting to explore and i think i mostly started liking her out of spite just because of the amount of hate i saw for her for literally no reason.

this isnt to say all of the ones i mentioned in the first bit are Forgotten and Never heard of a lot of people still draw them but theyre much much harder to come by than fanart of say. jeff or masky or sally.

[blazehedgehog]

What’s wrong with different games in the same genre playing differently? You dont have a run button or the ability to jump on enemy’s heads in castlevania, and you can’t duck in megaman (usually). Metal Gear Solid didnt play like a shooter for a long time, and not every jrpg needs to be turn based or even have a menu. Sonic unleashed doesn’t play like sonic adventure, or any game, so why should srb2? Doesn’t that reduce the benefits from experimentation in game design that got us SotN?

I’ve always bristled at the idea that Castlevania and Mega Man are the same genre, because that usually means the blanket term of simply referring to them as “action games” when, like, 75% of the games on the market today contain “action.”

(Then there are the psychopaths who put Mega Man in the genre of “platformer,” and that’s when blood starts coming out of my eyes)

But I digress.

The thing that you’re forgetting in all of this is the drum I’ve been beating this entire time, and that’s the idea of STANDARDS. You’ve heard the term where something “raises the bar,” right? Innovation is not celebrating somebody throwing darts randomly at a bullseye and clapping even when they don’t hit the target.

Everything has to have a logic behind it, and either that logic is good, or it’s bad. And sometimes the logic is so good that it takes the current standard and elevates it to the next level, usually by improving on a core fundamental of the game design so much that all games to follow in its wake adopt the changes as part of the expected set of features that game has.

So you have Castlevania and Mega Man, as you say, right? They’re both “action games” but in the most granular terms possible, they are almost their own genres. Castlevania is a hyper-difficult gothic horror melee attack game, and Mega Man is a futuristic cartoon shooter with permanent upgrades.

As such, neither really has a baring on the other. What Castlevania does largely does not effect Mega Man, because Mega Man is not a hyper-difficult gothic horror melee attack game, and vice-versa, Castlevania is not a futuristic cartoon shooter with permanent upgrades. Both games have different vibes, both games have different goals, both games have different structures. They aren’t the same thing and therefore do not influence each other.

They are their own standards, essentially. So you have Mega Man 2, and some people say that’s the best Mega Man, so it’s the standard that all other Mega Man games are judged against. There is a wider action game standard, too, but it’s broader and more complex to define, so it’s easier to focus on something as simple as games in the “futuristic cartoon shooter with permanent upgrades“ sub-sub genre.

The thing to keep in mind about Sonic Robo-Blast 2, is that:

It’s a fangame that’s part of a long-established franchise where the core genre is sort of a platformer/racing game hybrid.

SRB2 has been in development for over twenty years, and if you’ve been following it for the project’s entire lifespan (as I have) you’ve seen exactly what it’s going for (which is to say: it’s the sequel to Sonic Robo-Blast 1, a pure platformer)

We also know what features were available in prior versions of the game (proper analog controls that did not require mouse aiming, and even a homing attack like the Sonic Adventure games had).

These three things influence how we judge the logic behind what version 2.2 has done. We can also use this information to compare it directly to games that are its peers – namely, other cartoony 3D platformers, and other Sonic games.

SRB2 version 2.2 implements its mouse-aim-focused controls because it is built on top of the Doom Engine, particularly the Doom Legacy fork. SRB2 has long fought to build a proper 3D platformer out of the Doom Engine. Every major version of the game moves it closer to this goal, with a third person camera, layered vertically-oriented level design, and moving platforms.

But for more than half of its development, a very popular feature for SRB2 has been its “Match” (Deathmatch) mode, which throws all the platformer stuff out the window and brings SRB2 back to the its roots in the Doom engine, with “guns” (weaponized rings) that can be shot at opponents in tight, looping arenas.

And because it’s basically Doom, it helps to play it like a shooter: WASD for strafing, mouse for aiming. The most hardcore SRB2 players even play in first-person, just like Doom. For them, it’s almost not even a Sonic game anymore, it’s just Doom with different weapons and more colorful maps. This, even though deathmatch didn’t get added until three years after SRB2 entered development.

As the game wore on, the old developers slowly left to go live normal lives and new developers were brought in to fill the gaps, some (or even most) of which were the types to play lots and lots of SRB2 deathmatch. They played so much deathmatch that they decided that playing SRB2 like a standard platformer was worse than playing SRB2 like it was a shooter, so they opted to make SRB2 play more like Doom, because that’s what they like.

Except it doesn’t need to. SRB2 is still structured and designed like a platformer. Nothing in the single player campaign explicitly requires you to circle strafe, even though the tutorial makes you practice doing so. The game’s own design is fighting itself, and the people who just want “Doom with different weapons and colorful maps” are winning. It’s making for a worse product to the people who have never touched SRB2′s deathmatch, or plan to touch deathmatch.

It’s their game. They can do whatever they want with it. They can take what SRB2 was and change that, if it strikes their fancy. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it, and it doesn’t mean I’ve given up the right to complain about it. I cared enough about SRB2 that pieces of my artistic DNA are still in that game to this very day. I’m allowed to have an opinion on it.

And that opinion is: it doesn’t want to play like a 3D platformer anymore. It ignores 20 years of analog control standardization and tells you to play a platformer like a third person shooter. It offers a kludgy justification for it by breaking established rules of how 3D platformers work – rules that, might I add, were not broken by previous versions of SRB2.

When Mario does a long jump in Super Mario 64, he jumps in the direction that he’s facing. When Banjo and Kazooie do a Beak Barge, they shoot forward in the direction they’re facing. When Jak & Daxter do an uppercut, they do it in the direction they’re facing. When Spyro does a headbutt, he does it in the direction he’s facing. When Sonic spindashes in Sonic Adventure, he shoots off in the direction he’s facing. When Sonic boosts in Sonic Generations, he boosts in the direction he’s facing. Nobody EVER shoots off EXCLUSIVELY IN THE DIRECTION OF THE CAMERA unless they are holding and shooting a gun, like Ratchet in Ratchet & Clank. But even then, the moment you stop aiming? All of Ratchet’s moves go in the same direction that he’s facing.

I really cannot make this any clearer than that.

[drsilverfish]

The Riddle of the Sphinx: 14x12 Prophet and Loss

First, thanks to @verobatto-angelxhunter  @gneisscastiel @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks  @mrsaquaman187  for inviting me to guest this week, as part of their ongoing SPN #Metafest project @metafest  

along with several other guests:  @bluephoenixrises  @poorreputation @agusvedder @amwritingmeta   @savannadarkbaby @prairiedust  and

@norahastuff 

I’m going to guest meta about the Riddle of the Sphinx.

Here is creepy Tony Alvarez drowning his first victim. 

Despite an opening dose of Bucklemming torture-porn (ugh - although tbf there was a narrative point, as the drowned girl was a mirror for Dean, just like the slain first-born son and the dude who almost got barbecued were - more on that later...)... So, yeah, despite that, I was thrilled to see this in the visual narrative architecture - the Sphinx Machine Shop, where Tony does his mangled prophecy induced killing.

The Sphinx, as you know, is a fearsome part-woman, part winged-lion beastie, in Greek mythology, who was famous for guarding the entrance to Thebes and asking travellers to solve the answer to a riddle in order to gain safe passage to the city. If they failed, she devoured them.

She is tied in mythology not just to puzzles and their solutions, but to fate...

Here is the Sphynx of Naxos, from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (560 BCE)

Image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphinx_of_Naxos 

The Temple of Delphi was the site of the Oracle of Delphi, who was the High Priestess Pythia (a transferrable role) famous for her prophesies, which came to her in trance-states, supposedly from the God Apollo.

You see the link to SPN’s own Prophet role here.... 

The Sphinx also, famously, appears in Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex, which became the basis for Freud’s also famous (and relevant a bit later) “Oedipus complex”. Sophocles didn’t invent the myth, but his telling is its most famous rendition. 

Despite his other misfortunes, Oedipus doesn’t get devoured by the Sphinx, because he solves her riddle, a popular rendition of which is: 

“What goes on four legs, on two legs, on three, and the more legs it goes on, the weaker it be?” 

The answer, is - a human (baby, adult, old person with a stick).

Oedipus’ story is a classic story about fate, just like Appointment in Samara (re-worked in an SPN episode, 6x11, but originally an old Mesopotamian tale) which @mittensmorgul  and I were talking about just recently, in relation to themes of fate vs free will in SPN (specifically in relation to the role played by Death - see here for the discussion:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182454009599/mittensmorgul-drsilverfish-mittensmorgul  )

Oedipus’ story is a (f-d up) family drama - rather relevant to our very own Family Winchester [no, NOT because this is all about either of the boys wanting to sleep with Mary Winchester - thanks Dr. Freud - although, come to think of it, Dean did say she was hot in 4x03 In The Beginning :-)]  

14x13 Lebanon promo shot 

When baby Oedipus is born, his father King Laius receives a prophecy that his son will grow up to kill him, and so, he sends a shepherd to expose the baby on the mountainside to die, before that can happen. The shepherd however, not being an asshole, saves the baby, and raises him secretly as his own.  

Oedipus grows up, and he eventually learns from the Oracle at Delphi herself (see above) that he is fated to kill his father and marry his mother. Believing the shepherd and his wife are his true mother and father, whom he loves, he leaves his home in the mountains for the city of Thebes, determined to defy the prophecy.

On the way, he meets a quarrelsome old man on the road, they fight, and Oedipus kills him:

When he gets to Thebes, he finds the King has been slain, by persons unknown, and the town is at the mercy of the Sphinx. Oedipus, by guessing the Sphinx’s riddle, obtains safety for the town and is, in gratitude, appointed King himself and given the widowed Queen, Jocasta’s, hand in marriage.

All is well for a bit, until a plague descends on Thebes, and Oedipus is told that to save the city, he must avenge King Laius’ death. So, he goes sleuthing, with the extremely relucant help of his seer Tiresius, and to his horror, discovers that he is the one who killed the King (that old dude on the road to Thebes all those years ago), that he is the King’s true son, and has, therefore, killed his father and, in marrying Queen Jocasta, married his mother and committed incest, fulfilling the prophecy he set out to escape from. He promptly blinds himself in horror. Poor ancient Greek dude. 

The Chorus laments the power of fate

O heavy hand of fate!          Who now more desolate, Whose tale more sad than thine, whose lot more dire?          O Oedipus, discrowned head,          Thy cradle was thy marriage bed;

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31/31-h/31-h.htm  - Project Gutenberg translation of Oedipus Rex. 

A reference to the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx is extremely pregnant right now in the SPN narrative, for two reasons:

1) Fate vs Free Will

2) The Ghost of John Winchester

1) Fate vs Free Will

Dean thinks his interpretation of the book Billie handed him in 14x10 Nihilism - apparently the only death of his in which AU!Michael doesn’t take over his meat-suit and burn the world - means he has to sink himself to the bottom of the ocean, in the Ma’lak (angel) box and that’s “fate”. 

Like Oedipus, there is no escape. 

However, 14x12 tells us two things. Firstly, by analogy - the prophecy is wrong. Alvarez thinks he is carrying out the prophetic Word of God TM by recreating a twisted version of the Plagues of Egypt sent by God in Exodus:

1) The slaughter of a first-born son

2) Drowning in the Red Sea

3) Fire out of Heaven

(all of which are mirrors for what Dean thinks is his “fate” right now: death of a first born son; being drowned forever at the bottom of the ocean in the Ma’lak box; being consumed by the AU Archangel Michael’s Heavenly grace/fire).

But it’s a garbled message, received as a result of Prophet Donatello’s comatose scramblings. 

Secondly, screw prophecy - against the odds, Dr. Sexy of the Lord (yeah - you know Dean thought it) is able to revive Donatello, thus preventing further scramblings (aka wrong prophesies). 

CASTIEL: “Dean - if there is a spark, a hope, then I have to try.... you taught me that!” 

I loved that line, with its resonance all the way back, like a skein of blue grace, to the Apocalypse Mark One, when Dean convinced Castiel, in Zacharia’s (also due to return in 14x13 Lebanon) “green room” in 4x22 Lucifer Rising, to disobey Heaven for the sake of humanity (Yes, Dean, an angel did fall for you...). 

In other words, just as the Winchesters beat their “fate” to be “angel condoms” for Michael and Lucifer last time around, by “tearing up the script” and “making it up as they go” (4x22 Lucifer Rising) thanks to the help of rebel angel Castiel, so they can do so again.   

2) The Ghost of John Winchester

In the SPN world’s worst kept spoiler, we know John will return next week in 14x13 Lebanon. We’ve been meta’ing about the ghost of John Winchester haunting the SPN narrative for... forever.  

Here is some meta of mine on the subject from S12:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/158388550099/john-winchesters-ghost-and-the-haunting-of-s12 

John is explicitly recalled, during the brothers’ (beautifully rendered) car conversation in 14x12:

DEAN: “You ever think about when we were kids?”

SAM: “Maybe, yeah, sure, sometimes, why?”

DEAN: “I know I wasn’t always the greatest brother to you.”

SAM: “Dean, you were the one who was always there for me. The only one. I mean, you practically raised me.”

DEAN: “I know things got dicey, you know with Dad, the way he was... and I just.... I didn’t always look out for you the way that I should of. I mean, I had my own stuff, y’know, and in order to keep the peace, it probably looked like I took his side quite a bit. Sometimes, when I was away, you know it wasn’t cos I just ran out, right? Dad would, he would send me away, when I really pissed him off. I think you knew that.”

SAM: “Man I left that behind a long time ago, I had to.”  

AU!Michael, I’ve been arguing since the start of the season, is a mirror for Dean’s self-repression and for John Winchester. See:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/179463975289/shirtlesssammy-14x03the-scar-meta-writers

John was one of the major causes of Dean’s self-repression, as illustrated in the convo above, where it’s clear Dean had to grow up too fast to become a substitute-parent to Sam, where he was often obedient to their father to “keep the peace”, and where he was also often, unreasonably, punished by his father in the process (such as, as we already know, when he was sent to Sonny’s after stealing food for Sam in 9x07 Bad Boys). 

According to psychoanalysis, we always internalise psychological constructs of our parents - Freud calls them imagos. So the Riddle of the Sphinx, for Dean, is how to kill (or rather, lay to rest) the ghost of his father (whom AU! Michael is a mirror for) and with it, the self-repression which has wounded him so much, psychically, since childhood, without letting it kill him too.  

Nick, of course (general shudder) also serves as a John Winchester mirror in the episode - his obsessive revenge quest for the slaughter of his wife (aka mirror Mary Winchester) by Abraxas, led to something she never wanted - damage to innocents along the way (aka mirror innocents, Sam and Dean). 

To Conclude

The answer to the Sphinx’s riddle, the one that helped Oedipus avoid being devoured by her was.... humanity.

Light Sphinx, 2015-2016, Mixed media (inc. foam, hand stitched fabrics, LEDs, beads, synthetic hair), 74 x 32 x 54 cm by Tarryn Gill

https://tarryngill.com/Light-Sphinx-Shadow-Sphinx-2015-16 

Dean IS the symbolic representation of humanity (which is why Amara was so fascinated by him, and let’s not forget Metatron’s words about Castiel in 9x22 Stairway to Heaven  - “He’s in love with.... humanity”).  

Our first-born Winchester son just has to believe what this episode showed him -  prophecy can be wrong.

His “fate” - to die, to drown forever, to be consumed by holy grace/fire, to remain trapped by the ghost of his father, by his own self-repression, by AU!Michael, by the Ma’lak box (aka, in subtext, the closet) is NOT the “Word of God”.

And killing one’s father doesn’t (as it did for Oedipus) have to mean damnation, if, the way one does it, is symbolically, by laying his ghost to rest in one’s heart and mind (hello upcoming SPN 300 14x13 Lebanon).

Freud believed the resolution of the Oedipus complex (for boys) was identification with the father (and no, we don’t have to concur with Dr. Freud). Dean has actually been on an oppositve journey, to get out from under his father’s shadow.   

The Jungian solution, which the S14 narrative is offering to the metaphorical Riddle of the Sphinx, is, to turn around and embrace the Shadow-self (the parts of oneself one has repressed) and in so doing, to evolve - to become more fully human.

So, a final salute to Jerry Wanek and team, and the ever wonderful SPN set dressing narrative, for The Sphinx Machine shop!

NB:

You can read my Jungian Meta series here, if you’re interested:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/180906003584/the-shadow-14x08

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/181122764984/14x09-the-spear-jungian-decoder-ring-edition

 http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/182299438269/jung-and-deans-journey-towards-self-integration

And if, you want to read more of my SPN meta in general, go visit my blog and look under the “Meta” sidebar tag: http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/tagged/Meta 

Plus, if you want to read lots of other people’s fabulous SPN meta, go check out the “SPN Meta” sidebar tag: http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/tagged/SPN%20Meta 

Thanks for having me @metafest !

DrSphinx out.