#i think there's also some animated trailers for the zero games but i looked them up on yt and couldn't find them so idk what happened there

[nintendo-switch-2]

adding some shots from the megaman zx games and the anime promo/canned pilot bc i like them lots....

love the Anime Mega Man(s) Aesthetic. Thought i should make a collection post! Anyone is free to add on if they want!!

[kxsagi]

Hii^^

Asking karasu, barou and shidou on how many hair gel do they use and what kind (probably gorilla glue) b/c their hair don't move an inch despite being in the field for more than an hour😭😭 Also how long does it take them in the bathroom getting their hair in that shape

“𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐫 𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐞”

a/n: HIII THE GIF IS TAKING ME OUT 😭😭😭 but i love this request sm, this is the kind of investigative journalism we need

ft. karasu tabito, barou shoei, shidou ryusei

karasu tabito

when you ask him how much gel he uses, he just laughs. 

like this man is genuinely amused by your question. 

"you think i’d tell you my secrets for free?" 

insists it's all genetics and aura. 

“the wind fears me. that’s why my hair doesn’t move.” 

spoiler: he definitely uses gorilla snot gel, the yellow one that could hold a skyscraper in place. 

his hair looks like it's been carefully sculpted by a professional anime stylist and he likes it that way. 

takes at least 30 minutes in the bathroom and plays a curated playlist labeled “villain era” while doing it. 

sprays his hair and turns his head slowly in the mirror like he’s in a movie trailer. "if my spikes don’t cut air, i’ve failed." (okay obtuse)

barou shoei

you ask him how much gel he uses and he just stares at you. hard. 

like how dare you even imply he uses gel. he thinks his hair naturally defies gravity out of sheer dominance. 

after some pressure (and a promise to never tell anyone), he admits he uses exactly 1.3 teaspoons of gorilla glue gel. 

“not the snot one. the real one. construction grade.” 

yes, he's read the warning label. yes, he ignores it. 

the spikes are engineered. like barou probably has a special comb only he’s allowed to use. 

spends about 20 minutes in front of the mirror. longer if it’s game day. shortest if he’s mad. 

if you ever tried to touch his hair, you’ll get hit with the “do you want to lose your fingers?” 

shidou ryusei

this man has zero shame. you ask him what he uses and he immediately says: “whatever makes me look like i headbutted a lightning bolt.” 

has no idea what brand it is, he just squeezes random stuff from the drugstore aisle into his cart and prays. 

sometimes it is gorilla glue. sometimes it’s literal glue. sometimes it’s a mix of toothpaste and hair spray. 

the only consistent thing is that it's unholy and it works. 

surprisingly, his hair is the fastest: 5 minutes flat. 

he just flips his head upside down, rubs some chemical sludge in, growls at his reflection like a feral animal, and boom. 

“the secret is testosterone and trauma.” 

his hair doesn't move because it’s actually become one with his soul. 

© 𝐤𝐱𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐢

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 8/6/2024

people mad at a video game for being woke, i'm mad at it for not being woke enough. so it goes.

also i wrote a yeehawgust fic

listening

another addition to the "SOMEBODY COME FUCK THIS (GAY)" playlist, thank u charli xcx and billie eilish

-

reading

im still really annoyed with Retraction Watch for platforming a terf last year and then not doing any sort of sockpuppet damage control in the comments. since they got acquired by crossref they've done way less guest editorials. not to be all "stick to sports!" but stick to sports, retraction watch.

they did introduce me to this substack series i will be following with great interest about the rise and fall of hindawi. wiley acquired a paper mill a few years back, bc they seemingly did zero diligence, and then blithely ignored the problem for two years before being forced to do the single largest retraction of papers in scientific publishing history, somewhere above ten thousand articles because it is STILL ONGOING.

i do love following various retractions bc i like seeing what finally made someone go "wait a minute", and, as i have just written in a cover letter, "I studied astronomy and have held several data jobs because I’m fascinated with how and why systems work and fail..."

-

watching

my best friend has decided while i'm at her home in the evenings eating her food and bothering her children (for my mental health, it is very important i am fed tiny bits of mushed up banana by hand by her one-year-old), our new project is watching all the xmen movies. i have no particular desire to do this or special affinity for the xmen, and i would like to keep eating very good texmex and bothering her children (for my mental health, it is very important i play hot wheels with the five-year-old). this sounds so super bitchy of me but it's hard to convey that these are essentially on for background noise.

saw the first two. the two things i know about them are that hugh jackman is in them and they're at the statue of liberty in one

-

playing

an ideologically baffling little environmental game free in the epic store this week, LumberJack. this is on PC and Switch for $13, which is far more money than the playtime anyone can get out of this game. tiny tiny tiny little Spain-headquartered studio without an active website, it looks like one guy hired out to make this and two more games and then went back to single-dev projects. i can respect that!

steam reviewers are mad at this game for being woke, and i'm mad at it for being woke in a very strange way. your one mechanic, as a bear, is swinging a big axe to remove cars and trailer offices and portapotties and various garbage from the landscape.

i wish the movement and look controls are inverted, and i wish they weren't, or at least had an option to make them normal. i know Why this isn't a mobile game (can't monetize something with twoish hours of gameplay and twenty levels) but it's a very straightforward and simple game that would translate very well to mobile. much like donut county.

now for being picky about the political mindset of the developers: as much fun as it is to be a bear swinging an axe around, lumberjacks are not the people i associate with wild preservation movements.

saving the land and turning it back into pristine and perfect land for wild animals in this game looks like erasing every hint of human activity from a site and turning it into sheer recreational use. many levels are heavily polluted, but some can definitely be read as recycling centers. im confused by the erasing every hint of humans in early levels, and then this level where you break down a radio station, slap the host with your axe, and she turns into a park ranger who starts gardening and taking care of chickens?

i don't think that removing all the traces of people from the landscape will magically fix everything, nor do i think simply being in unspoiled wilderness will magically fix me.

there's a golfing level where you whack bombs into various small buildings. i think golfing to save the environment is a strange choice to make for designing a game.

i also briefly thought this bird in every level was an extinct ivory-billed woodpecker, which was a little alarming bc there are some real nutjobs out there with very strong beliefs about this bird and government overreach and how much the government is lying to you about the extinctness of various animals.

i stopped playing about halfway through bc i was not having fun and found the underlying environmental message a little confused. they've managed to sell at least 10k units which is...not very good. i am not surprised this is free on epic, and i wonder what their payout for that was. would not be surprised if they negotiated a payment to their nonprofit partner ecologi as part of that.

-

making

yeehawgust fill! i have another bitchy blond babygirl!

what the fuck is the prisoner? cult 60s british spy tv. with all the surreality and anxieties about the cold war and midcentury psychological horror you could possibly want

He’d been drugged enough times to recognize the splitting migraine rapidly galloping down his neurons. “Where am I?” He fought down the taste of bile (ketamine? xylazine, by the aftertaste) and the rising panic. Oddly enough, the migraine was always worse with veterinary sedatives. One would think a mind would adapt to nearly three hundred years of irregular drugging and constant experiments. One’s body had adapted and ghoulified, but in equally unhelpful ways. The tycoon flickered, approximating an appraising blink. “This meeting has been a long time coming, hasn't it? You've come a long ways, literally and, I suspect, figuratively as well. You’re in the Free Economic Zone of New Vegas.” They’d pretended the prisons were so many different places: across the Continent, in various parts of London, up and down and all around the East Coast of these wretched States. Rarely this far west, aside from the awful escapade in the faux pre-War Western town. “What do you want?” He managed to swing his ankles off the saddle (also pre-War? Heavily used. It certainly wasn’t his, the equestrian event had always been his worst event in the pentathalon) and jolted what felt like every half-dead nerve in his half-dead body.

[klorophile]

WIP tag game

I was tagged by @hannibalcatharsis-zero ❤

Sooo... I feel a little uncomfortable sharing a WIP, but here it goes... (and I'm aware it's not the right attitude, but I still have the urge to preface this by saying: I know I'm not really a real writer, but sometimes I try to pretend, sorry) :x

A little context before dropping weirdness: This is an Arcane fic I nicknamed "Jinxed Horsie Fic" (real title might be Bucephalus but I'm not sure yet (if you smiled because 'phalus' shame on us)). It's a horse!AU in which some characters are horses and others are the humans around them. It might sound like a pretty random idea, but I like to think there is at least a little method to the madness, the very least being: Horses are mirrors and them and our relationship to them are very interesting to think about and put in perspective, I think. Though, I feel like I have to mention that the setting is a bit of a slippery slope, considering most of the human characters are from Piltover and most of the horses characters are from the Undercity... I am aware that it could be read as me portraying being poor as being closer to animals and being rich as being more civilised or something like that. Yikes. All I can say is that this was not my intention at all. (the process was more something like 'I love Jinx. I love horses. BAM Jinx is a horse! Now for a plot...')

This would be the very beginning of a fic. Which I think would be something like 3 or 4 chapters (famous last words)

:x

It was late afternoon when Caitlyn opened the rear doors of the horse trailer to allow Vi to step outside. The last sunrays of the day could not reach them as she had parked behind the large frame of the main tack room beautifully looming over the private driveway, opting out of the front parking welcoming guests. After more than five hours at the wheel as the sole driver of a vehicle carrying a spirited live animal, she could have had a feeling of accomplishment and independence. After all, she had her own horse in her own trailer that she handled herself. The destination, however, made her feel the opposite: here was Caitlyn Kiramman, back to her parent’s manor.

Vi would be a complete stranger to the Kiramman Equestrian Estate, yet she did not need to be asked twice to step back to get out of the vehicle she had spent the best part of her day in. Each one of the chestnut mare’s feet was louder than the other as she brusquely stomped on the ramp, impatient to be able to move around. She paused. Caitlyn did not miss how she perked her ears and let a snort of surprise, and maybe of disdain also. She held her head high. The sights were new to her, and the smells were unknown not just because of the unfamiliar horses settled here but also because those stables were made out of fancy materials Caitlyn’s new companion was not used to.

When all her feet were off the ramp, Caitlyn let her pause again to process. Vi looked her way and snorted a tight “prrr” again. Yes, it was disdain. And Caitlyn could easily admit she shared the feeling. After months working at Stillwater boarding stables, she was missing the encompassing scent of horse poop that her mother would not allow here.

Now, she realized the air here lacked something natural. For a moment, Caitlyn was scared that Vi would bolt at the unfamiliarity of it all. But after some scratching of the ground and more sniff of the air, she just looked at her in some kind of “urgh fine” manner, though Caitlyn remained aware of how tense she still looked.

She felt a little guilty to bring this on the mare…

The alternative, though, would have been to leave her behind, and to loose sight of her – maybe forever. Unthinkable.

To be honest, she felt somewhat sorry for herself too: The decision to come here was not exactly her own either. The call had been made, as always, by her mother. It could be said that Caitlyn had chosen to answer, but was it really a choice made out of freewill? Had Caitlyn decided not to come when asked, her mother would have come to conclusions that were unwanted. And it was not like she would have been cast away for it, on the contrary, she would have somehow been lassoed and pulled by force until she was back to where she came from behind closed doors. Which, granted, was not that far from what she was now, but at least she still had her plans and her head high. And she had Vi.

“Caitlyn.”

Here came the retrouvailles…

“Mom!”

Maybe a welcoming hug was what would have happened in some families, but the first thing Caitlyn did upon her arrival was to invite Vi the mare of unknown sire to the Kiramman ground, and now Caitlyn’s mother’s stern walk is slowing down as she appraises the animal.

This woman has never been in the habit of hugging anyway.

“Mom, this is Vi.” Caitlyn stated, aiming for confidence but sounding defensive more than anything.

“I see…” her mother answered, though Caitlyn could not help but feel like she did not actually see Vi. What she saw was what she was not: a mare born by a renowned breeder. She sounded disappointed. She also sounded very haughty and narrow-minded.

“She’s smaller than what you’re used to.” “She is what I’m used to now.” “And her posture doesn’t indicate a proper training. How old did you say she was?”

Vi suddenly neighed, interrupting them. A little rude. A little justified.

No horse neighed back to her.

Tagging: @the-blue-quetzalcoatl @letters-to-rosie @lullabyes22-blog @aceonice if you want to, and whoever wants to share anything!!

[yazzydream]

follow up to my HI/PD post, HERE'S SHIBUYA INCIDENT. AHHHHHHHH!!! i can't wait. this arc has some of my favorite moments in the manga overall. reminder that episodes restart aug 31st!

here are scenes and moments i'm most looking forward to seeing animated. also serves as an incomplete recap ig.

manga SPOILERS, obviously.

just gojo casually stepping over normies' heads. ignoring sorcery secrecy like fuck it.

FUCK. the whole... train station massacre. this entire arc has to be rated R right? that's why this airs at midnight in japan. (i hope it's not overly censored...) and THEN gojo drops this cold ass line. he's so intimidating. jogo SWEATING. why is gojo so hot? 😭 i love scary!gojo.

i will cry. he's so BRUTAL. 😭😭😭

look at him chasing after jogo. scary......... 😭

*screams quietly in hornyhorror* L👀k at this motherfucker tricking hanami to then turn around and brutalize them.

not jogo trying to help hanami by distracting gojo only for gojo not to give a shit and just obliterate hanami anyway! only yes, because this pragmatic side of gojo is everything to me. again, this post is for parts that will make me scream, and i. will. scream.

I. WILL. SCREAM.

it's like... ok, listen. in jjk i'm pretty sure sorcerers are atheists? (i have no idea if i read that somewhere or if i made that up. sorry.) but anyway, gojo is pretty much the closest thing to a god they have in a real tangible way in jjk? but this arc is a very blatant reminder that gojo is human. he'll do the best he can (which is generally very good, thank you) but he's not actually omnipotent. he can't, he hasn't saved everyone. he's failed a lot of people actually. here and in the future too. it's soo good. akutami may hate writing gojo, but he's excellent at it. gojo is perfect in everything he does but he still fails when it's important. shit, that's good. (this is another reason why i think he'll lose against sukuna but that's another arc altogether so moving on)

omg omg omg omg. the train bursting with transfigured humans is going to be so grotesque and awful. and gojo's distressed face! bby ahhhhh

he's so aghast!!! for a fucking good reason. this massacre is sooo out of pocket.

and what the fuck this entire plot is so fucked and out in the open. there's zero secrecy and separation from the normal world. this is a game changer to what you'd expect in this series. sigh~❤️ so good.

i hate mahito. HATE. but i felt this on a visceral level in the best worst way. lemme preface this by saying, when i'm reading an english tl of japanese media, sometimes certain phrases trigger my brain into wondering what the og japanese was saying. notably, a lot of japanese words are just onomatopoeias of what things sound like. so even though i haven't bothered looking up what this actually said in japanese, i imagined mahito saying there's "uja uja" of them. which is like the sound of many crawling/swarming insects. and it made me feel some type of way. disgusted actually. which is his point. lol

RUTHLESS PRAGMATISM, LET ME SCREAM IT

this shibuya post is just turning into me screaming about the satoru gojo fight. and im ok with that.

exhausted darling. i can't wait to see it. SHOWED UP IN THE TRAILER. I'M DYINNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG 💀

>:-I pouty baby

adorable.

jc this is such a typical shonen hype moment and the irony is absolutely killer. i wanna see this animated just so i can see the anime-onlys suffer.

gonna cap it here before i hit the image limit.

cont. in part 2.

[civilight-eterna]

i've seen the really sapphic honkai animation pv for their new character or whatever. i can't play it bc their company has done some ai art theft-positive shit in the past and i refuse to be associated and also bc g3nsh1n was a great big queerbait/harembait w/aether in sooo many ways and i cannot endure another moment of sitting thru mih0y0 storytelling that everyone thinks is some golden cow of writing that 'of course you shouldn't be allowed to skip!! it's sooo good!!' -> justifications for why we can't skip dialogue that spans several hours and i hate hate HATE how all current adverts for g3nsh1n are like "remember that character we sold you? they SUCK, look at this one scaling a mountain .5 seconds faster than them!" or similarly undermining their characters and i CANNOT endure it. i am NOT strong enough. i watched that pv and felt ffffurious because i'm just thinking the whole time. 'this is so sick. there is a non-zero chance that either of these girls will inexplicably fall for protag/be way more open with protag than story sets up for and i can't watch it happen. there's a non-zero chance that you will be shoehorned into a conversation with two girls that have a clearly close situationship (looking at g4nch1ng) and you will only have your dialogue options be like 'they're just like SISTERS'. like oooh FUCK it's not enough to snatch it away you have to make me say it as the character i'm playing in the game?? thanks i hate it. fandom this post is not about you. you're doing great. you're churning that wlw butter like your rent is due and i see what you do to quite literally fucking enrich the community. not your fault. all my ire is in the place that could put together that trailer with the most unapologetically sapphic, erotic dancing between two women and make me respond with distrust because i knooow how they like to sprinkle their crumbs.

that being said if anyone plays the game and wants to tell me what the fuck becomes of them and if they're actually gay and DON'T become reduced to harem jokes/mommy milkies/ara ara protag pls remember this post and come back to me bc i watched it and i'm just

[maxwell-grant]

Sooo, thoughts on Mortal Kombat 1 ?

@jcogginsa asked: You've said Peacemaker is the DC character who fits most in Mortal Kombat, but of the three leaked guest fighters for MK1, who do you think fits it best?

Okay, new Mortal Kombat thoughts then

Well with this and Tekken 8 I guess it didn't take long for Street Fighter to spearhead another fighting game comeback. But while Tekken 8's more on the "basically the same as it always was except there's a graphical update", Mortal Kombat is kicking things off with a, Story Mode-centric showcase with a tiny gore montage and no gameplay. Fairly unusual territory for the series, but it seems to be paying off for them in viewcount.

I'm really not a fan of how anyone looks here, though. What you see in the trailer is the fairly logical endpoint of the MK series increasingly striving for more realism and fixing little design issues like, uuh, a majority asian cast of characters who never even slightly looked asian until some 20+ fucking years into the series, y'know. And for sure the faces look great, but I do feel like we're getting those great faces and expressions at the expense of everything else in their designs becoming increasingly colorless. Like Scorpion and Sub-Zero or Kitana and Mileena, who somehow look more like palette swaps than theyve done in decades.

It's not the only issue I have with this trend but, look the clothes and the lighting and the visuals look very pretty, but this is maybe the most swagless most of these characters have ever looked and that's a capital sin. So far, they look like half-a-step removed from A.I prompt recreations of themselves, which is the harshest thing I could say about it. It's too generic.

And man I'm, reeeally not liking the Fatalities here, I feel like that's the biggest issue with the franchise moving so firmly into 3D realism, the Fatalities just plain aren't that fun anymore most of the time. Sorry to MK fans following me but I will have to be the christian parent finger-wagging at the screen and say that they actually should tone it waay the fuck down because they lost the plot that this is Mortal Kombat, not fucking Liveleak, and plenty of modern games can pull off absurd cool pop-off gore without putting us through characters writhing and screaming and gurgling in pain during rancid torture.

And no, we can't chalk this up to personal taste anymore ever since that story about MK11 devs developing PTSD because they had to look up nonstop hanging/murder/animal torture videos and photos to get the gore right, which is frankly as good an argument as any for throwing Mortal Kombat in the trash and not letting it come out until they cut that shit out for good and overhaul their entire approach to game design and tone, which they clearly have not done and will not do. It's fucked and NRS deserves way more shit for it than their playerbase is willing to give them.

Moving on, so this is like, what, the second or third reboot? I guess it's more so them following on the clean slate Aftermath was setting up but, damn these guys really do love DC Comics and the increasingly short periods between rebooting the whole thing to dodge narrative problems and only coming back to those same problems again and again.

On the more individual character basis: Raiden looks Japanese finally, and I guess the scaling down makes sense since he's not a god anymore. Kung Lao, eh. Kitana, looks way worse than she did in MK11 (maybe I'm biased because that was like, the one time I liked how Kitana looks) and if this is a timeline reset, are they gonna undo her as Khan of Outworld? Fucking boo if they do, that was the best thing they did with her, they are cowards for walking that back if they do.

Kitana looking boring unfortunately also means Mileena isn't looking great either, although I do like the viciousness in her eyes, I like that her alignment's pretty unclear from the trailer, and I like that they're keeping the teeth from 11.

Scorpion and Sub-Zero look way too basic, and although I'm not against their increasing focus on Scorpion looking more human, I just don't like that this is making him look less Scorpion than before, he looks like a disposable Shirai Ryu grunt that reports to Scorpion before getting killed in a pre-fight cutscene.

Shang Tsung as the villain again is a fairly allright idea (if slightly redundant given Aftermath) and of course necessary if they're taking this back to the beginning, I don't mind his design (the claw gauntlets are pretty good) but I do mind that he looks less like Cary Hiroyuki Tagawa than before. I hope to be wrong here in this assumption but If they're not bringing Tagawa to voice him, if they're not basing him off Tagawa's characterization like they did for 11, why bother with Shang Tsung at all? Tagawa's performance is like 80% of Shang Tsung's entire appeal.

I do really like Liu Kang's look though, it's a very nice, very pleasing blend of his classic ensemble with enough Raiden elements to show his new role. Is this the first time they've ever featured Liu Kang front-and-center in the ads and posters for a new MK game? Sure feels like it. Apparently one of the head writers remarked "People, Realms, Rivalries: Liu Kang has tinkered with all to achieve his vision", which is nearly always code for Bad Guy Talk. Too early to call it but, I guess it was inevitable, and if we're really doing Evil Liu Kang for the third time this is already a better baseline than the prior two takes. I don't like his face though, I really liked his MK11 face and this feels like a total downgrade (where's the eyebrows? his eyes are totally different, he looks like the doctor from that wretched surgeon meme and it makes me hate him on sight)

So far, I do really like that the trailer sticks entirely to fantasyland kung fu film vibe. The last two games were stuffed to the gills with Earthrealm military horseshit where as this feels like it's making a point of avoiding that, no gun-toting Americans in sight thankfully. Johnny Cage has been confirmed but, he can stay, he's cool. Speaking of that, Van Damne Johnny Cage, cool I guess? I don't care about Van Damne but, if they're getting action movie celebrities to be in these, getting Van Damne specifically feels like bringing things full-circle a little.

Kameo Fighters? Oh so we're doing Smash Bros Character Reveals now? That's gonna be a fun powderkeg to just throw out there, lmao, I hope they reveal these slowly to really make the fandom spaces unusable. I guess they put Mileena upfront to avoid the worst as is. I do like Assist Characters in the VS series, I guess this is gonna be like that so, cool with me even if they wind up shelfing characters I actually want like D'Vorah and Kano.

(SPOILERS FOR THE LEAKED CHARACTERS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THOSE): Quan Chi, eh okay they were bound to bring him back sooner rather than later, so long as he's not making Shang Tsung chump out I'm okay with it. Takeda, fine. Mavado, don't give a shit. Ferra, without Torr, okay let's see how that goes.

And of course the ones everybody's talking about, Homelander and Omni-Man, who seem extremely redundant to feature together given they have basically the exact same powerset, but I can't fault NRS for jumping on the popularity of that match-up and they have Injustice Superman assets to share between the two. Homelander, couldn't care less but sure, put the meme guy in there, he fits. Omni-Man, I've been dancing around watching Invincible for months now but yeah, cool, he's pretty damn great, seems like the only fighting game you could possibly put him in, and most importantly it means J.K Simmons is joining the voice cast, which I'm of course super excited for.

Personal stand-outs for me are Tremor, who's pretty cool. Khameleon, whose design I actually like quite a bit and who I never thought would show up again, totally on board for her. Ermac, who is one of my favorite designs and who I really enjoy playing as, but the designs so far have been really underwhelming so, not sure what they're gonna do with him.

Oh yeah, PEACEMAKER's joining the roster? Never actually thought I'd happen but I'm gonna do a victory lap anyway because I fucking called it a year ago that he was the most perfect choice in the world for Mortal Kombat. Okay scratch what I said prior, in this house we allow for ONE gun-toting American in the game. And sure maybe I'm biased, but I definitely think he fits the most within Mortal Kombat, if nothing else, because Peacemaker is the one you can actually imagine pulling off a Friendship or uppercutting the same guy's head off three times, he's the only one who feels conductive to the MK series sense of humor. Omni-Man's I imagine is a very close second, being famous for pulling off Mortal Kombat fatalities in a series where that is, at least initially when it operates by seemingly standard superhero rules, uncharacteristically frightening and sadistic violence for anyone to do.

Overall: Glad that they're making an effort to push Mortal Kombat to new places, there's plenty of cool choices or ideas set up here, but there's a lot that I dislike or am ambivalent to, a lot that I wish they were doing differently, and of course the concern of "how much are the devs having to put up with this time around given these Fatalities look somehow way worse than the ones from 11" that is frankly kind of a dealbreaker for me in terms of me getting or supporting this game. I guess it's "it is what it is", but that's a shit excuse and it could, y'know, not be what it is.

[nmarfo]

Opening Night Live kinda sucked

I'm back with one of these cause why the fuck not. Gamescom is another big show that Geoff Keighly hosts, where there's usually some cool stuff, but MAN. all of the games besides the ones I'm about to mention here didn't look appealing to me.

Also, I'll just start off with this. Geoff, you have got to get better security, my friend. How has a dude twice now got on stage and said something? Granted they were both harmless, but pattern recognition tells me something bad might happen soon.

Anyways, let's start off with the 1st hype thing, which was Tekken 8!

Once again, I don't play fighting games, but honestly, this and Street Fighter 6 are VERY much tempting me too. They showed off a new mode called Arcade Quest, which seems to be making up for the idea that Tekken 8 is not being put in arcades, and honestly it looks great. That being said, we also have 32 character roster and 6 more were revealed. all of whom are returning. Yoshimitsu, Steve Fox, Sergei Dragonov, Leo, Shaheen and Kuma, who seems to take up some of Heihachi's move set. Honestly, I still think young Heihachi will at least be some form of DLC, cause with canon in that case, who gives a shit?

Honestly, given that so many of these characters are from Tekken 5 and 6, and Leroy Smith is coming back, I'm surprised they didn't include Lidia Sobieska, given how popular she seemed to be. Also still no Alisa, which kinda sucks up hey, I can have hope.

Image Credit: @kittymiya (Commishion her if you can, her art is amazing)

Onward to Mortal Kombat 1, where we got 2 new characters announced, the returning Sindel and Shao Kahn, or in this case General Shao, as well as Kameo's for Motaro from MK3, and Shujinko, from Mortal Kombat Deception/Unchained.

They did also announce a board game mode, which looks cool, but Mortal Kombat 1 feels like it might be a bit lacklustre, especially given that Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6 are really packed with a bunch of game modes outside of the story mode. We'll see if they manage to pull it off, and I am looking forward to the story, but IDK I just feel like there might be not a lot there.

Up next, anime in GranBlue Fantasy Relink. I honestly don't have much to say on this other than it looks cool, and I'll probably pick it up when I get the chance, cause I know nothing about GranBlue.

The other thing that I saw that I might be interested in was Wukong, which looks very cool! I might play it when it comes out, cause action games are fun.

Anyways, on to the last thing, Hoyoverse showed up with a bunch of stuff, all of which I'm going to talk about.

First up, Genshin showed up with a trailer to promote the current update. I've finished the story that is currently in the game, and it's honestly really good, and I'll be writing about it for my main site soon! The big thing here though is that they announced a consort tour, which is awesome! I'm hoping to attend the one in London if I have enough money.

Up next, they showed a trailer for Fu Xuan in Honkai Star Rail. I don't really have anything to say here, but I'm Star Rail still looks very cool!

The big thing I want to talk about personally is Zenless Zone Zero, which got another trailer to show off things they have been working on over the past year.

They showed off 3 new areas they are working on adding to the game, a new hangout sorta mechanic where you're protag can hang out with different characters, as well as minigames and new mechanics, such as an offence and defence assist. I've been a big fan of Hoyo's games since Genshin really showed off what they can do, and I personally can't wait to see where this takes them.

But yea. that's everything. Honestly, this is the 1st time in a while it feels like one of these shows by Geoff Keighley has not been worth it, which I guess is a good thing, but hopefully, some more cool stuff shows up at TGS, where it's gonna be pretty hard to disappoint me I think.

I'll probably show some work works in progress and also maybe talk about Bandai Namco later this week(cause where the fuck did all the anime properties go), but for now, have a good rest of your day. Bye!!

[growling]

Yes I think you absolutely should steal Takumi and Karua as your ocs and give them better personalities. lol

Today I had a dream that friendly fire was enabled on The Hundred Line and you could accidentially kill another party member if you don't watch yourself and the punishment for that is that the other characters slit your throat open execution style and then watch you silently as you slowly bleed out to death and try to beg for mercy while gurgling and choking on your own blood but it's for nothing and I think they should put that in the real game. Sorry what was the ask about

Honestly I just might lmao especially Takumi since my jokes about him being Yomi's Hellspawn have went on for too long and now I genuinely do subscribe to that. They get mistaken for a pair of brothers at the mall because they look so similiar and Yomi is forever stuck in his twenties due to being immortal

I. Don't like Takumi's personality he's such a cookie cutter everyman protagonist. He's just constantly "Ooohhh I'm so normal. Nothing ever happens to me I am literally nobody and proud. I love being normal" and this gets so tiring with every Kodaka protagonist having literally the same goddamn thing going on with them just in slightly different flavors (not you Yuma Kokohead you are a shining light in this dark purgatory). Zero ego, zero self-esteem but no in any interesting way either, constantly doubts himself and is just so humble and nothing he does or says is out of line in any way, judgy of other characters that are any modicum of less Normal / more interesting that him but not outwardly so it doesn't even matter, but also he's perfectly capable of just switching up into being courageous and content with sacrificing himself if he has to, he's just so safe. Arrrghhh. I'm currently reading his personality on the wiki and holy shit he's possibly the most generic Kodaka protag we've had so far if we don't count the baseball gacha protagboy. Nothing he does ever surprises me. Deep frying him in yesterday's tłusty czwartek pączki oil

Ok so. One thing that I actually hoped for back when I watched those first few trailers from a few months back, was that he's gonna be more. I dunno, moody? Sulky? Irritable? cause he kept making that Tired face during the trailers like he was at his wits end the whole time. Or maybe it was just a few frames but that stuck out to me so I just ran with that and cannot remove that from my mind since. He should be so angry and stressed the whole time he just starts picking fights with everyone else and losing miserably every time and Aotsuki tries to gently hold out his arm for him to sniff like he's some sort of distressed critter but Takumi just keeps biting it. He should go into the academy with the "First Thing You Do Is Punch The Biggest Guy You See To Assert Dominance" mentality. He should present himself as mean and cold and cruel and such hot shit that Doesn't Give a Fuck as a defense mechanism so nobody comes close enough to him to notice how much he's shaking. Takumi has the cornered prey animal mindset and Aotsuki thinks he's in a horsegirl movie with Takumi as the horse. Do I even make sense

Takumi I like your design but why are you so boring. Oh and also wasn't The Hundred Line originally called "X Limit Despair" or something and the red-haired girl on the poster was supposed to be the protagonist (and just in general resembles Takumi somewhat). Did we get robbed of a female protagonist in favour of the most milquetoast protagboy in a Kodaka game again. Alright that's it I am aiming the Transfeminator right at Takumi no escape the games are over.

I hate Karua's role in the story (her just being a tool for Takumi's character existing just to give him something to fight for or blast him with psychic visions of their childhood memories whenever the plot demands it like she's his sleep paralysis demon or something) but I actually. Do like her design somewhat? I like how this very pale, nearly completely all-white palette of hers makes her look almost like a ghost. Or like she's constantly glowing, or just looks slightly out of place or unreal even. And considering her whole characterization I don't think it's great but whatever I can fix her. She's so autistic to me. Also transmasc beam I am going off the rails. I forgot everything else

[luzarvizublog]

Library Assignment

"A Minecraft Movie" May Craft Something New

Author: Sebastian Strawser

A brief summary

The article mainly discusses how "The Minecraft Movie" can actually surprise us and answers the question, "What if I was in Minecraft?". He points out the good and the bad things here and there but saying that the cast and the "stunning" visuals might actually make it at the box office.

Sebastian also explains some other things about the game itself, but in another talk, he says that the "Minecraft" movie could end up being a lively, refreshing, and bold take on the expressionless "Minecraft" world.

Why did you pick this article?

I was discussing the trailer for this movie with some friends, and we noticed that some of the designs looked AI-generated. It was as if you had entered any AI image generator and typed "Minecraft"; the visuals and designs were quite similar to those in the Minecraft movie, but of course, we all said this as a joke. We also noticed the kid looked a lil bit "soulless"...? He just didn't look right in a way.

In the end, turns out that we were right. In a recent Q and A conference, Jared Hess (director for the "Minecraft Movie") answered some questions from the fans like...

Why was the movie live-action and not animated?

I asked my friend Chris Bowman (the movie's screenwriter) the same thing and he said "It wouldn't fit like that." He liked the open world of the game and based the cast chemistry and the basic plot on "Jumanji" and "Zatura." Making an animated movie wouldn't work, he had to be faithful to his "inspiration."

Why does Steve as a kid in the trailer look fake?

Because he is! (laughs). We are trying new things with this movie. We put all the effort into the realism of the mods while the rest is being done with artificial intelligence. The kid shot and certain parts of the script were done with those tools.

The director also said a quote like "I just can't disappoint the 10-year-olds or they're going to murder us"...WELL.

There are people who are intimidated by all this artificial intelligence, there is a campaign going on in the animation industry about this and how some corporations are firing a lot of artists, there was something that actually really stick in my head "Corporations don't care about they're employees, but they care about YOU, the consumers". Sounds sad but it's true.

What can we learn about this? AI is a tool, and it is important to remember that this tool is designed to augment human capabilities, not replace them. It's all about finding the right balance and ensuring that we use AI to complement, not to replace.

At this point, I couldn't care less about the movie's plot. Instead, I'm giving all the credit to the artists involved. I recently watched a behind-the-scenes video about the film and discovered that many of the props I thought were created using CGI were actually handcrafted and sculpted by artists working on the project, which I found it's truly amazing!

Did anything surprise you?

Minecraft was a big part of my childhood, so I was both surprised and excited when I first came across a post about this film. My initial thought was, "Okay, cool. I'm guessing it's going to be animated" and then the trailer came out and I just stood at the screen like...oh. Zero thoughts were said at that moment other than..."Why?"

I came across this other article were they talk about what does the target audience think about this movie? You know, the "10-year-old murderers", and there was this kid who said "I think it looks pants. Minecraft isn’t at its peak in popularity anymore. Why are they making a film about it now? I don’t think it will do well." Now wait, the kid got a point there! I mean, this movie was already being discussed a decade ago, right, but I think things could have gone "better"...I don't know, at this point, anything could have happened.

In my personal opinion, I think the interactive Netflix series is better. I would have preferred if they had created something like that or even if they had made an animated movie I wouldn't mind having Jack Black as the voice of Steve. I reached this conclusion after watching someone create a fully animated remake of the trailer. Alternatively, it might be best if they just didn't make a Minecraft movie at all.

At the end of the day, if I decide to go and spend my money on this movie, I honestly think there will obviously be laughs here and there without a doubt. I think this might be just like one of those movies that feels like a fever dream or something. In Mexico, we often refer to movies that aren't particularly artistic but are entertaining as "palomera." These films are funny, easy to follow, and make for a great choice when you want to relax on the couch with some popcorn, whether you don't have anything else to watch or simply want something to play in the background.

Sourced used:

[unnamed-proxy]

Ok let’s go I’m ready to ramble about literally all of these 3,2,1 go

1; Funny story actually. I had left the fnaf fandom a little bit before Help Wanted came out and had been long since burnt out on fnaf after hyperfixating on it since fnaf 4s trailer dropped. So I had little to no idea wtf was happening at the time and one of the YouTubers I watched posted an animation of the Freddy beatboxing meme with GR Fred and Sun screaming at the end (Seeks Animation And Stuff if you were wondering). Had zero clue who they were at the time and kind of just brushed it off with only mild curiosity on who this weird sun faced dude was, forgot about it soon after. THEN more SB gameplay gets recommended to me on YouTube and I’m faced with the reality of “wait that guy was in the game???” Leading me to start getting into it all, find out more about security breach, Moonman enters my life, hyperfixation quickly ensues and now I’m here!

2: Kellen Goffs voice performance, was also a hardcore Funtime Freddy fan back in 2016 so needless to say he hooked me pretty easily.

3: Since about December 27th around!

4: lol no

5: This piece probably

6: Gosh, when it comes to this fandom it’s genuinely hard to pick. It’s a HARD tie between horror and romance. DCA writers have a knack for writing the most out-there crackships into a masterpiece and, as a multi shipper, I end up consuming a lot of those fics very frequently. But also my initial love for Moon in particular was how well he contrasted Sun and their attempts at friendliness, so to get some horror content based on his actions, ESPECIALLY from Sunny’s perspective, never fails to disappoint.

7: Oh without a doubt ‘Like Clockwork’ by Gallexy Cat. It is such a good read and one of the only Y/n fics I’ve ever been able to get invested in (No offense to all the writers in this fandom who do x Reader and the like ofc y’all are great) I definitely recommend it to anyone reading this!

8: Nope

9: They are so fucking ugly in the best way possible. It’s such a nice contrast between the decals and the actual models, the posters set up such expectations and I feel like all the inconsistencies between the two versions perfectly encapsulates how Fazbear treats its robots. Sun & Moon are so unkept and nasty they SCREAM neglect more then anything else and it makes me want to vomit and then give them a little pat on the head and make them my scroingly doinglys. And I think it’s that uglyness that allows such creativity and freedom in redesigns and interpretations from the fandom! If they looked more appealing in game, we wouldn’t be as inclined to completely rework them from the ground up like we do now. Aka, absolutely hideous, disgusting, god awful and uncanny /pos

10: Mainly autism, but also because they’re insanely fun to draw and are personally intertwined with my artstyle in a way that leads me to always come back to them when I drop out of a hyperfixation/fandom. They’re like those old worn out toys that you always say you’re going to sell or give away or put in storage but every time you open up the moving box and see them at the top of all your stuff you just feel the need to snuggle with them and play with them for what you always say will be the final time, if that makes any sense.

11: Hooooboy, character design wise? Moon, 1000% Moon. But as a *character* I’d have to go with Sun, since I don’t think that Moon is much of a character without Sun in tow when boiled down. As much as I love my unhinged nightlight spider I’ll be picking Sunny on this one, way more writing potential and stuff to experiment with even without their counterpart and…. In game predicament.

12: They are…. Not what I expected to say the least. Not in a bad way though! As I imagine most of the fandom does, I have a lot of thoughts about them. They make no sense and they logically shouldn’t exist in the ways they do but at the same time they’re my father now and there’s nothing you can do to pry them away from me. So many ways to interpret them, so many questions, so much angst potential- are they a Steven universe fusion between the two? A factory reboot for a daycare ai while Sun and Moon are still the theater personalities? Something entirely different and an entire new person that just isn’t mentioned in the base game???? Are they the original attendant and Sun and Moon are the branch offs or is it the other way around? Are they in denial? Are they stupid? Are Sun and Moon still alive or was the ‘Thank you’ their last words? What is going on??? Idk but I love it because all I’m seeing is a soft spoken little creature who deserves better and they can do no wrong and you’re crazy if you think otherwise, your honor.

13: Getting into big headcannon territory with this one, but I am under the strong belief that the virus simply turns up the flaws of the bots AIs to a hundred and seeing what happens. I feel like Pre-glitch Sunny was much more akin to their fannon interpretation, happy go lucky, childish, playful, albeit with quite awful self esteem and anxiety and maaaybeee just a teeeny weeeny bit of a pushover turned people pleaser by circumstance.

14: Soft Moon truther stepping up to the stand rn. In my opinion PG Moon was more or less the same as Security Breach Moon, though significantly toned down. He was pleasant, soft spoken like Eclipse, much more emotionally stable than Sunny, but definitely a prankster at heart and unwilling to put up with the staffs BS. He probably had a bit of a temper, leading to his bad reputation amongst the employees and ultimately being the patient zero of the virus, but while in a good mood he’d just do a little mischief after hours with nothing too harmful, just annoying at worse while he kicks his feet up into the air and laughs until he’s out of breath while you glare at him and wait for him to calm down. I believe that in Ruin he’s simply just angry because of how long he was kept out of control and wants to get back at Sun for it, unaware of their reasons and unwilling to listen because of the genuine, pent up rage from being trapped for so long.

15: I’m privy to both interpretations honestly! Though I very much lean towards them being entirely separate beings that just so happen to share a body and try to make the most of it, but with Eclipse factored into the conversation the idea of them being two wayward halves of one lost identity has been getting more and more appealing the more I’m exposed to it. And no, at the end of the day I don’t really think it matters.

16: More exploration of how Sun and Moons relationship and personality’s got to where it is now. What were they like at the beginning? Did they always hate each other? Did they use to be separate people? Why were they combined? How did everything go down after they were infected? What events took place in between Cassy’s memories of having such nice, good times in the daycare and the unstable nightmare of Ruin and Security breach? There’s a lot of potential for that and I don’t think people consider it enough!

17: Reader insert content honestly, it’s fine in doses but it does get kind of tiring after awhile. Especially for someone like me who’s never been much of a fan of that kind of content. Once again no offense to anyone who makes that content /gen

18: Moons mini game in Help Wanted 2!! :D:D

19: According to the cannon content we have? Stars above absolutely not. Sun would make me so anxious and I don’t think I need to even explain for Moon.

20: I feel like the puppet, ballora, and the DCA should all get in a room together and have a little hang out. I wanna see Moon and Ballora have an overly-flexible-acrobatic spider off while Sun gives Charlie the childhood that was stolen from her (while Moon keeps her calm with his music box maybe?) I love all the little parallels and threads that tie the humanoid characters together a lot, seeing them together -even in my own daydreams- just makes me happy lol

alright dca fandom, here's some questions bc i'm curious. the funky jesters make our brains go brr, but why? treat it as an ask game or answer in the tags if you feel like it! :)

how did you get here?

why these characters in particular? what was the hook for you?

how long have you been here?

have you actually played fnaf sb?

if you make content, what's your favorite piece you've contributed?

what's your favorite sort of art or fic? what genre/flavor/style?

what's your favorite au?

do you have any ocs, or have any ocs you're fond of?

what do you think of the dca's canon appearance? Scary? Cute? Something else?

what keeps you in this fandom despite the very small amount of canon content the dca had?

be honest: if you had to pick only one, sun or moon?

thoughts on eclipse?

thoughts on pre-glitch sun?

thoughts on pre-glitch moon?

do you interpret sun and moon as two sides of the same person, or truly two separate beings in one body? does it matter?

what's something in the fandom you'd like to see more of?

what's something in the fandom you'd like to see less of?

anything you're looking forward to?

do you think you'd actually get along with the dca if you met them irl?

free space! talk about whatever's on your mind!

[mackerelphones]

Video games I've played lately

Hey, hardcore gamers. This is WD of the Mackerel Phones News Network reporting from the front lines of "video games I played recently and still remember"

Metroid Fusion: Definitely an interesting spin on the Super Metroid design. The controls are less floaty, though Fusion doesn't feel as flawless to play as Zero Mission. The structure is much more linear, with the player locked into certain levels before being able to access others. Internally, each level has a bit of the nonlinear, exploratory design, with typical Metroid-style hidden paths, but the levels are almost always self-contained, with clearly telegraphed A to B to C progression until later on (probably around the point you're hunting for Nightmare). Despite what people will say online, though, it is possible to 100% it your first time through. This just involves knowing about the unintuitive hidden secret paths between every area and going through them in the right order with the Screw Attack. I admire that the story changes the status quo of the series, instead of trapping Samus in eternal stasis, even if the greater narrative focus would eventually spawn Metroid: Other M. For how much I saw people online talking it up as super scary, Fusion is more like a Saturday morning cartoon children's comic book version of horror. Hilariously, Samus says her surgery "damatically [alters her] physical appearance," but instead of being covered in scars, she's still a sexy supermodel at the end (not to say being covered in scars would necessarily mean she isn't sexy)

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes: I had a blast returning to Metroid Prime, so I decided to beat Metroid Prime 2 after all these years. Some people online seem to disagree, but I consider this a downgrade in almost every way. I've never before played a video game that caused me to gasp "What were they thinking?" this often. The vapid dark/light theming is obnoxious, especially when the opening setup seems to promise a more complex narrative. The Light World seems designed organically to make sense and look good, but the Dark World is just an ugly, more barren palette swap instead of feeling like its own place. Okay, we're in the Ing Hive! Sounds interesting. But this sinister headquarters is just the Sanctuary Fortress painted black and much emptier. The Space Pirates have become more boring, brainless enemies, just marching forward shooting instead of dodging and jumping around like in the previous game. Dark Samus fails to have anything to do with anything--like, shouldn't she instead be clearly working for the Ing? It continues to have that really disturbing Metroid staple of murdering random wildlife, even when it's barely dangerous (I don't want to hurt some cool bug that isn't even attacking me!), but even more fucked up here because Samus does not give a shit if the animal is only attacking her because an Ing stole its body. The bosses also drag on to an almost hilarious extent. With some, I was pummelling an unflinching bullet sponge for like twenty minutes. In Prime, I could always understand what I had to do against a boss, not least because scans explained the weakness, whereas in Prime 2 I had to check an online guide for almost every new bizarrely unintuitive fight (and there are a lot more than in the first one). And that HORRIBLE Spider Guardian almost made me want to drop the game. I hear those of you who played the Wii port could jump in Morph Ball form, so you have no idea how much easier you had this waste of time. Also the ending is literally genocide. I appreciate how dark and bleak Prime 2 feels, however, and some of the music is still good

Dead Estate: This is a really fun horror-themed roguelike action game. Monsters chase Jeff and Jules into an isolated mansion one stormy night, but once locked inside, they discover it's a shifting, unnatural space full of even more monsters. They suddenly have guns now (the trailer shows Cordelia tossing them the guns), so time to kick ass. Since I can play Dead Estate, I know it must be on the easier end of the spectrum, but the variable difficulty options can probably assure a tough challenge. On opening, Dead Estate advises you to play it with a mouse and keyboard. Don't let that fool you! When I tried that setup, I thought the game was simply much too difficult to control. Before refunding it, though, I decided to try using a controller just once. Then I put over 40 hours into it before finally getting every true ending (except an A or S ending for Anya). Despite the horror theme, Dead Estate is 99% silly comedy. Many large, bouncy breasts. In addition to the wacky roguelike, there is also a straight-up horror adventure game in which you play as the aforementioned Anya. (I would strongly recommend playing the normal game mode first, at least until you unlock Axel, whose cutscene shows how Anya ended up in the mansion to begin with.) Anya also has large breasts. My biggest disappointment is simply the genre: with so many colorful, wacky characters, it's a shame I can't see them really interact. I want to enjoy the chemistry Jeff and Jules have, and also let's see Fuji be gay

Enjoy the Diner: This is a charming Japanese adventure game/visual novel where you go to a diner. There are two endings. The characters all have extremely strange names, such as "Railroad Spike." I much preferred the first half, when it's a sad, psychological low-key absurdist story, when the nightmare seems to represent people suffering aimlessness and ennui, than the second half, when it instead veers into sci-fi romance stuff with lore. Pretty much all my criticisms are for that back half. The script does not quite grapple with how horrifying what happens to the main characters is, though that might be the intention. Still has great "vibes" throughout, and the art is fantastic, pixelated and in only three colors yet feeling as if drawn in pen. This isn't one of those reading text looking at PNGs and occasionally make a choice-type video games. Rather, you navigate the diner at will, interacting with the other characters through a dialogue menu that expands with new topics to discuss as you learn more. The only issue is that you can't skip through text, at least not as far as I could tell, which I found annoying when I would accidentally re-select a topic I had already discussed with the character. Also I hoped the main character would get some gay romance, but no such luck

Slay the Princess: It's a fun adventure game/visual novel thing. Not really all that deep, though, imo. I think it's a great example of something complex in structure (an impressive number of branching paths) but thematically not as rich as many of its fans seem to think. There's something going on about codependency. But the drama does not quite work, starting promising but becoming too abstract, focused on symbolic embodiments of cosmological concepts instead of characters (and also, at the end, veering into rambling about that "wanting to live forever instead of dying means you are scared of change" or even "dying is basically good" trope I hate so much). However, moment to moment, it's surprisingly fun to play! I had a blast. Got a few real laughs out of me. I'm satisfied I got the best ending just by being stubborn and disinterested in the finale, though I also went back to various points to poke around and see some of the other weird situations that could arise. Gore. Also, I had so much fun annoying a narrator here that I decided to bite the bullet and buy…

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe: I finally got the remake of The Stanley Parable with 5+ hours of new adventures glued on. While the quantity of new content is admirable, and I was amazed to see, even if in silhouette, actual people in the speech ending, I'm overall not all that thrilled with what that new content is. See, the odd thing about The Stanley Parable is that it is often very funny but also frequently scary and sad, enough so that I wouldn't call it primarily funny. But people remember it, I think, as primarily funny. (Choice. It's the best part of being a real person.) With at least one major exception, the new material leans so heavily into the zany lol haha comedy that the more existential and unsettling writing seems lost. Then again, this might be deliberate, since to some extent the central joke is that the idea of a sequel to The Stanley Parable is ludicrous and misses the point, so (a lot of) the new paths parody a cashgrab sequel/lazy new content. Ultra Deluxe dares to ask: What if The Stanley Parable was the same, except there's a bucket?

[docexe-mx]

Some belated general thoughts regarding the Super Mario Bros. movie after the trailers and other footage they have showed so far (not to mention, the TV ads that… ehem… leaked):

The animation and art style looks impressive. From a visual standpoint, it’s probably the prettiest movie Illumination has produced to date.

The characters’ designs weirded me out at first, not because they looked bad but rather because they actually looked very faithful to the game renders while still being very different in key respects (particularly in the facial shapes). That combination of “familiar yet also different” caused me a reaction akin to an “uncanny valley” effect of sorts, but by this point I have become pretty accustomed to the movie designs so I don’t really mind them anymore.

Talking about faithfulness, I’m honestly (and pleasantly) surprised by the amount of cues the movie is taking from the games. So far we have seen references that go from the mainline Mario platformers (both 2D and 3D), to Mario Kart, to Super Mario Maker, to even Donkey Kong Country and Super Smash Bros. Considering how the original live action film (not to mention several other videogame movies, for that matter) took lots of questionable liberties with the source material, seeing this one being this faithful it’s actually refreshing.

The story seems like it’s going to be relatively simple: Bowser wants to conquer the world and is invading other kingdoms to obtain the Power Stars, Mario will go through a “Chosen One”/”Fish out of Water”/”Zero to Hero” journey in order to stop him. Nothing particularly original or out of this world, but I think it ultimately works well for a Super Mario movie.

The above being said, there are two things that I do find fascinating regarding what’s been shown so far of the movie’s story. The first is that they are going back to the OG backstory of the Mario brothers being Italian plumbers living in Brooklyn who accidentally end up in the Mushroom Kingdom while doing their jobs. I saw some people online confused/annoyed by this “Isekai-like” take, but that’s actually the original background the characters had in the arcade Mario Bros. game, and which was later used in both The Super Mario Bros. Super Show cartoon and the original live action movie.

The second thing that caught my attention is the apparent role inversion between Luigi and Peach. It seems that, this time, Peach is taking a more proactive role in actively defending her kingdom and will be Mario’s primary companion at the beginning of the movie, while Luigi is going to be the “distressed dude” whose kidnapping by Bowser will incite Mario’s quest to stop the villain. It’s an interesting variation on what we usually see in the mainline games. Of course, given this is still a Super Mario movie, I’m expecting Mario will reunite with Luigi at the end of the second act/beginning of the third act only for Peach to be captured instead, which will then lead into the final confrontation with Bowser. That would be slightly disappointing if it happens, but it wouldn’t surprise me given that, again, it’s a Super Mario movie.

So far it seems that the humor will be comprised primarily of self-referential jokes and slapstick. It probably won’t land with everyone, but I think this style of comedy is appropriate for a Mario movie and some of the gags do have made me chuckle. Mercifully, there hasn’t been a single fart joke so far, I just hope that remains true during the entire film.

Regarding the slapstick, I also have seen some people annoyed that Mario looks so bumbling in the footage shown so far. It certainly clashes with his general depiction these days where he is presented as a hyper-competent and confident hero, but given this is supposed to be an origin story of sorts, I don’t mind his clumsiness that much. It kind of mimics the pitfalls (heh!) people tend to find when they play platforming games for the first time, and besides, some of the ads that have leaked imply that he becomes more skilled later on.

The overall online discourse regarding the film still revolves a lot around the casting situation (which is annoying for reasons I have already pointed out before). The only thing I will say on this matter is that Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key and Charlie Day are all killing it in their respective roles, while Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy sound unimpressive, not because their performances are particularly bad so much as that they sound extremely flat. Mind you, Pratt does sound better in the footage that was shown at the Game Awards, but it remains to be seen if his performance will be better in the final reel.

All things considered, I’m very excited for this movie. I’m not exactly expecting something out of this world, as Illumination is not exactly one of the best animation studios in the business (although I also don’t think they are actually as bad as the Internet tends to paint them, Minions notwithstanding of course). That being said, what has been shown so far looks really promising and it seems like it will make for a good time at the cinema. So, fingers crossed.

[tedturneriscrazy]

Here's Eclipse Lake, an episode that has been highly anticipated! Will it top Knock, Knock, Knockin' On Hooty's Door?

I'll skip the pretense: No. It won't.

You'll see under the cut.

Hmm, that list of ingredients for the Grimwalker...I'll let other people theorize about this (like @sepublic ), but it sure looks like a thing

Guess the mysterious green goo won't cut it, huh?

Belos face reveal already?! Huh, didn't expect it so soon.

Oh, no, he's hot! (And I'm mad about it)

Still an ass, though

Now we know why Hunter was wearing a different outfit (because people fixated on that for some reason)

Amity with the clipboard gives me strong Dipper vibes

GHOST! My beloved!

I need a moment because CAT!

(Also, someone pointed out earlier that Ghost was based on Dana's cat, and that's super obvious in hindsight)

Raine?! Oh, wait, you mean rain. Sigh.

Eda gets training tips from DBZ confirmed

(Also Amity's face when reacting to Eda's explanation is priceless)

Oh God Eda's a weeb I need another moment

Damn, Amity just straight up calling Eda old

Oh, loopy Luz

(The abomination holding the tissue box is adorable for many reasons)

Yeah, don't want Luz to eat the McGuffin

I have several questions about those Tamagotchis that I'll refrain from listing here

Amity your Odalia is showing

Girlfriend counter: 1

(Yes I am introducing a counting gag, deal with it)

Was wondering if they were ever gonna reference the dissection incident. We've come a long way, baby!

Oh, so that's what everyone was looking at

Luz honey your enthusiasm is admirable but no

Luz burrito is quite cute, though

Girlfriend counter: 2

(Damn, still wild to think that that's the case)

Just occurred to me that "Boots" is probably shortened from "Bossyboots" from earlier

Guess the Luz hiss compilation needs to be updated again

Those tunnels ain't the only thing around here that's unstable, amirite?

Oops, guess Kiki was justified, after all

Maybe don't talk so loudly about your plans, dude

That is her son, get it right!

Serves you right for having that stupid strand of hair sticking out like that

Is this just the episode where everyone dunks on White Boy? Because I can totally get behind that.

Already mentioned this, but I am loving the parallels between Katara and Amity with that bottle of abomination goo. Insert obligatory "Two Nickels" meme here about Mae Whitman.

We really are just dunking on the white boy and I am living for it

Hooty had to get it from somewhere, I suppose

Nothing says mother-son bonding like shooting things at each other (see also: Separate Tides)

I'm sure the magic bouncing off the veins won't come into play later at all

Oh well, at least the echolocation looked cool

At this point Amity would kill Hunter for a Klondike bar

Wait why does Hooty need a chair

Willow with the galaxy brain ideas

"A bad but sad boy" Luz is a genius at succinctly summing people up

Kikimora continues to be unhinged. Ironically she's not wrong about Hunter.

Motherfucker stop acting like you know what that says

(Also, projecting much?)

Girlfriend counter: 3

Friendly reminder that Hunter is still an antagonist

Uh oh

UH OH

I know someone mentioned Willow having the brain cell, but honestly it seemed like Luz had it this whole time. And that's not good.

WHY IS FOOL'S BLOOD EVEN A THING

Aaaaand cue the getting screwed over

Further reminder that he's still an antagonist (Apparently there's a vocal segment who's Really Mad at him that seem to forget this fact)

You unhand Ghost right now!! And Amity too, I guess.

(I kid, she's literally my second favorite character)

For what she did to Raine it warms my heart to know Kiki has had zero peace of mind

Wait, the Abomatons are Transformers?! Okay, that's kind of awesome, actually. Alador might be a shit dad but he is a brilliant inventor.

Chucking kids off cliffs is a surpisingly common pastime in the Boiling Isles

Owlbert no!

Eda did spend literal decades fighting the Owl Beast within, so I guess she can't be blamed for not thinking to talk to it

Also hurry up guys I'm very concerned about Owlbert

Fuck yeah Harpy Milf!

Yay Ghost returns!

She's glad they're okay (I didn't need to take this, I just thought it was cute. Also this is surprisingly high quality considering I just took a photo of my TV screen)

Oh, so they do have video games in the Demon Realm. That or Luz introduced them.

Trailer shot!

Oh dear, we about to have a fight over the key

Wow, being so high ranking under Belos is really bad for mental health

Jesus Christ Belos what have you been putting in this poor kid's head?

Leave it to King to give radical recontextualizations

Amity, I'm glad you remembered/realized this about Luz, please don't let the sad white boy play you like that again

Also, I appreciate the gesture you're making, and it's a wonderful summary of your character development, but goddamnit he's gonna go for that key because he's STILL AN ANTAGONIST

"Being nice usually works for Luz!" A) Not always, and B) Amity I love you but Luz you are not. A valiant attempt nonetheless.

Ooh, cool fight scene!

Always lovely to see such superb animation

I was privately griping about not seeing Amity use magic for so long, and now I am fed

Don't think I didn't hear the glass breaking

Appreciate your ass from a hole in the ground, Golden Boy!

(jk I don't actually feel that strongly about him still. That kind of threat still isn't cool, though)

Oh so that's why it's the Common Mold!

It's kinda cute, actually. Or maybe it's just because it's Luz.

TIL Hooty is heat resistant

Apparently Owl Beast just wanted a snack

Girlfriend counter: 4

Also love how calling Amity her awesome girlfriend is literally the first thing Luz says to her upon returning.

Yesssss return the hug! You deserve it!

(I know there are higher quality versions of this screenshot, I just didn't feel like looking around)

King demands huggies, too! (And gets 'em)

Reminder that Amity is smart as hell. I knew that glass breaking indicated something!

So once again I've been had. I let the fandom trick me into thinking this episode would be way more intense. Guess that one screenshot was from the next episode.

Overall this was...fine. Some nice Lumity moments, Harpy Eda strutting her stuff, that gorgeously animated fight sequence; those were all lovely.

I do wish Willow and Gus had a bit more to do. And I'm still rather unenthusiastic about Hunter, to be honest. I've seen his type several times before, and the path they have for him is rather obvious. I may never share the fandom's love for him, and I guess I'll have to deal with that.

Anybody who says this was better than KKKOHD is a damn fool.

Mid season finale next week! I think Yesterday's Lie will finally bring the pain!

[revengerevisited]

A little vent about KH4, because I have a lot of feelings all bottled up inside, and if I don’t let them out I’m just going to continue feeling depressed as I have these last few days. This is not a positive post, so if you’re excited about KH4 or enjoyed KHUX, then you’ll probably want to skip this one.

So, I must preface by saying that I have not watched the KH4 trailer, nor will I be. I was serious when I said I’m no longer interested in canon KH. I have however accidentally seen a few screenshots, though I haven’t studied them particularly closely. That’s the level of knowledge I have going into this.

First of all, I honestly find the hyper-realistic art style and washed-out colors that KH4 is going for to be directly in the uncanny valley for me. It honestly creeps me out to see Sora in this super realistic art style. In fact, he doesn’t even look like Sora to me, more like some random guy in an anime cosplay wig. I’m not saying this to be ‘salty’ or whatever. I genuinely think his hair being a lighter shade of brown and lacking in volume and his facial structure being different with those small eyes is making him not look like Sora at all to me. Like it didn’t even register in my brain that that was supposed to be Sora when I first saw him. It just freaks me out and I don’t like it. I would say that perhaps I will warm up to the style, but I won’t be playing this game so I’m not going to get the chance to.

Second, Strelitzia being here. Now I’ve said before that I expected her to come back to life, especially since we saw her ‘ghost’ in a white coat in KHUX. I also suspect Quadratum is some sort of realm of the dead, or the afterlife for KH characters, with Quadratum also being more similar to our world, and it’s also based on the original concept for FF15 in which death was a major theme. So I’m not surprised in the slightest to see Strelitzia here, only surprised that we’re seeing her so soon. Death has zero consequence in KH, anymore. I guess that at least confirms she’s not in the Black Box.

My issue with Strelitzia is her only purpose in the story (so far) has been to turn Vanitas into a murderer. Her death plus Vanitas being one of the Thirteen Darknesses is the entire reason why I quit the series. I can’t bring myself to engage with any content in which Vanitas is Darkness and/or Strelitzia’s murderer, and that includes canon KH. So her being here is just further rubbing it in my face. It’s more salt in the wound. Every time I see her, it’s just a reminder of the monster Vanitas has been retconned into. Any sympathy that Sora might have had for Vanitas is going to disappear as soon as Strelitzia tells him that Vanitas murdered her. So much for redemption.

Strelitzia and Blaine (I’m calling him that now) both being present just shows that KHUX, bizarre and nonsensical and frustrating as it is, is going to continue to be the main path KH is going down. It’s going to continue with the Thirteen Darknesses, meaning Vanitas is still going to be a villain. I can’t allow myself to care if he gets a so-called ‘redemption arc’ now, because number one I don’t expect that to happen, number two even if it did it would be as poorly written as Vexen’s ‘redemption’, and number three just because Strelitzia is ‘alive’ now doesn’t erase the fact that Vanitas intended to murder a child. I once said I might forgive canon Vanitas if he helped bring Strelitzia back to life as a way of apology, but it looks like not even that will happen because she’s already here and doesn’t need his help. How would an apology between them even go, anyway? If the ‘apology’ between Ansem and Ienzo is any indication, not well-written.

I could go into how Scala is also still being made super important, Xehanort’s real birthplace and training grounds, which just like what was done to Vanitas is a complete retcon, contradiction, violation, and desecration of my favorite KH game, Birth by Sleep, but compared to Vanitas being Darkness it doesn’t really matter, anymore. If Vanitas hadn’t been turned into a murderous monster, and his connection to Ventus made into a lie, I’d still be enjoying the series. I’d be celebrating and excited for KH4 just like everyone else, even if I still think the art style is weird. But I can’t, because my favorite part of KH, the character I held so near and dear to my heart, has been so completely and utterly ruined forever. 

I’ve seen theories about the latest artwork by Nomura, how because Vanitas is standing on the side of Org13 who ended up helping the good guys (Saïx, Demyx, Vexen, and Ienzo), that’s evidence that Vanitas will be redeemed. I’d point out that I already believed he’d be redeemed in KH3, back when his greatest crime was putting Ven in a coma, and I was wrong. Now his crimes are even worse, and I’m afraid that at this point, thanks to what has been done to him, it’s now too little, too late. All the misery and pain I’ve felt these past two years, the ranting and crying and begging for my greatest fear to not come true, all of that is very real, a wound in my heart that will never heal, and nothing can ever take it back. I have to tell myself all this because if I dare to regain hope, then I’ll likely just have my heart crushed again.

So... yeah. I will not be continuing with the canon KH series. I will still finish A Heart and a Half as promised, and finish my fanart WIPs. But I am genuinely uninterested in the series going forward and this shall likely be the first, last, and only time I speak about KH4.

[callmearcturus]

inducing some tetris effect to help u sleep

this is a real-ass thing: if you play the right video game before you go to bed, you might dream of the game’s mechanics instead of whatever bullshit your subconscious wants to pull on you. lately, i have super needed this, and I bet many others have too, so here are games i personally rec for inducing this shit in yourself. play for like an hour or two before bed, see if it helps.

Forager

I played this at launch and have recently gotten into it again. The trailer is a lot more intense than the game itself, honestly. Forager is a cute, funny little combination of clicker game and gathering game. The controls are very simple, and there is a very nice curve to the difficulty. As you unlock more mechanics, the game simultaneously unlocks ways to make things easier for you, so instead of it truly growing in complexity, it just maintains its level and moves from thing to thing. Very fun.

Good as a podcast game: Yes! The sound design in Forager is very cute but you lose nothing muting it.

Wandersong

Do you want just the most gentle and humorous and kindhearted fucking game ever? Wandersong. This game is by design super easy, and is mostly focused on just enjoying the ride it puts you on. The plot is such: the world is about to end, and a spirit comes to inform One Adventurer. Unfortunately, she picked a Bard, who only sings. There’s zero combat in this game and most of what you do is walk around talking to very charming people, bolster characters’ spirits to help them follow their dreams, and sing. A lot of singing.

Good as a podcast game: Alas, no, you want to sink into the music of this one.

Thumper

So I cannot watch horror movies, but you know how people who love them say that it’s like a safe way to experience fear and then sort of purge that emotion, and its amazing catharsis? Thumper is not horror, but it’s like that. It’s a self-described “rhythm violence” game that has a little metal beetle rocketing through ethereal, surreal landscapes, hitting beats along the way. For me, this game is actually very tense. I feel tense playing it, I need to focus on it entirely to do well, and then when I’m done... those emotions are sort of relieved from me. It’s incredibly effective, and I highly rec giving it a shot.

Good as a podcast game: HAHAHAHAHA NOPE. You better play this fucking thing with headphones.

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

(I fucking hate the trailer for this game, so have a screenshot instead)

Have you ever wanted Skyrim but with less..... stuff? Like, a big sprawling landscape to explore, but less combat verbs in your game and more exploration and creative verbs? Then maybe look into Yonder. This game is just incredibly pretty and soft, and it lacks the stress of other games of its scope. Grab this is running around and befriending animals and exploring new places sounds cool to you. It also has randomly just totally shocked me with fun little events in the villages, it was adorable.

Good as a podcast game: I don’t think I have ever listened to a second of this game’s audio, I mainlined most of FATT’s Bluff City to it.

Tetris Effect

Let’s end on the most obvious game.

If nothing else works, this will do the trick, I fucking promise you. People can’t stfu about this game because it’s actually that good. It is hypnotic, it sinks you into a trance, it’s gorgeous. Some of the visual effects of this game have literally taken my breath away, it’s so incredible. Playing this was the first time in years that I wish I had a VR helmet, because sitting in this game would be just about the most enveloping experience I can conceive of.

(Also its made by the same ppl who made Rez, which YANNO if you can get your hands on Rez HD, consider that another option for this list, it will also trance you out.)

Good as a podcast game: I know you will be tempted but don’t do it, don’t fucking do it, nope.

/ahem. I have one more sort of rec for folks.

But Arc, I can’t settle on a single game and keep hopping around, what do I do?

I would really genuinely recommend looking into the Xbox PC Game Pass (PC specifically, I don’t have an Xbone and can’t comment on the regular game pass). It’s only 5$ per month, and it has an absolutely wild collection of games. It has Cities: Skylines, it has Yakuza: Kiwami, it has that Final Fantasy road trip game, it has Battle Chef Brigade, it has Machinarium, like if you have the “I wanna play a game” urge but you don’t know what game you wanna play, I would try out the PC Game Pass because it has a lot or everything, and if you don’t jive with one thing, you can immediately try something else.

Have fun.