#king’s court cuphead

[ponchusjbonchus]

i redrew my old mangosteen gijinka cuz i didn’t like it

[the-meme-monarch]

HEY DID YOU HEAR CUPHEAD SEASON 1C IS ON NETFLIX NOW?????

yeah i watched it :] [FINGERS DUG INTO THE WALL SHAKING TEARS IN MY EYES] so that chalice 3-parter huh

[ask-saccharine-sorrow]

Sometimes sweet sorrow is all you need, welcome to this cuphead Au! Based around all bosses! (Dlc included) asks are available, the cup brothers too!

About au|

Chalice replaces the cup brothers in this Au! The brothers are both ghosts as Chalice stumbles upon the casino, since unlike the Cup’s she was actually old enough to have an ID, Chalice was always known around the Isles as the ‘gal lookin for trouble’ she takes care of Elder kettle who is way too old to take care of his little root pack now, this mainly takes place with The Baroness, but chalice and the cup family are all up for asks.

|THINGS TO ASK ABT.

Anything is Valid! Just please respect my ships! And others![if they’re legal.] (Also pls don’t like spam full on corn at me, sexual that is implied is just fine.)

I will draw all ships that are asked of me, I am a semi-multi shipper but I do stick to the ships I have a huge connection too.

Thanks for reading! This Drawing shows the main two of the Au!!

[pja-party]

Overall fighting strength in order :

Devil > Chalice , Faith > Athena , Victor > King's Leap , Kettle > Utena > Walter > King Dice's court > Inkwell Isles bosses

Cuphead and Mugman in other case

( Although they beated the Devil, but they have advantage of Retrospection and Resurrection )

[maythearo]

My friend (and a random guy he gave me the number to) names twisted wonderland characters. Includes bonus observations and comments from them too:

Riddle Rosehearts: Harry Bartolomeu

Cocky king of hearts

Also a child

Only recently became king

He's crazy

Trey Clover: Pedro de Paus

Harry's distant cousin

A gentle and leading man

Cater Diamond: (has refused to give him a name)

He's left handed and very short (was looking at Cater's dorm uniform card where he had to use a ladder so that's why)

Artist

White.

Ace Trappola: Cleito Travesso

Harry's older brother

Loves animals

" I'm going to kill him 👍 "

Deuce Spade: Tocleio Geitoso

Cleito's twin

League of legends player

Leona Kingscholar: Loberto Wolf

" OH MY GOD "

" WOLF "

" WEREWOLF "

" AAAAUUUUUU "

Not enough muscles

Ruggie Bucchi: Luquinhas do ( Vrauw ) APELAOUM ! ( ! )

(I literally copy pasted what he said, that's Ruggie's full registered name)

" KITTY AWWW KITTY "

Younger sibling

Plays free fire

A feminist

Jack Howl: Leon Lion

Clearly a Lion

Cowboy

Motoboy

Asshole

Azul Ashengrotto: Charles Negociações

Zhongli + that cuphead villain

Owns a big company called "Charles Negociações, Negociações"

Jade Leech: Alberto Cabarés

Less mean than his brother Loki

" hot "

A famous brazilian writer

Floyd Leech: Loki Agiotagens

Is going to betray Charles one day

Gambling master also owns a church (????)

Kalim Al Asim: Pablowo

He's so clumsy little silly, he's so cute

So dummy, so cute , very shy

Loves forró and dancing when no one's watching

Jamil Viper: Egito (legitimately the name he chose for him and i could do nothing about it)

Distant cousin of Astra from Valorant

Very rich

Smells good

(Bonus) Najma Viper: Egita Portable Network Graphic

Likes astrology

Vil Schoenheit: Julio da Fonseca

Hates his name cause it makes it sound like he's an old man

Social life alternates between partying and studying

Potion he holds (on Vil's dorm uniform card) is surely 90% alcohol

Rook Hunt: Roberto Valjean

he's poor.

Epel Felmier: Rogério De La Court

Straight from a fairy tale kinda guy

Roberto's rich best friend. They have a band

He's rich

Idia Shroud: Xx_UnoVsChester_xX

Yes that is his official government registered name

The cheshire cat

Ortho Shroud: Pedrinho Da Doublepump

12 years old

Literally a robot

Malleus Draconia: Angelino Jolio

" Step on me with those heels "

Looks like Viper from Valorant

Lilia Vanrouge: Lizbeto Corleone

An elf??

Obviously a sadistic cosplayer

Silver: Markus Richarlisson

Boring. No personality. Looks like nothing.

Just a shonen protagonist with no powers.

Got platinum snow white hair from Richarlisson that's the inspo for his name

Sebek Zigvolt: Gepeto Tesla

engineer

[socks-wizard-money-gang]

ykw, bc im bored and bc you like infodumps, here is:- Every single crimes cuphead, mugman and chalice have comitted on the bosses that the bosses forgave them for THE BASE GAME:- -Killing goopy le grand and his whole ass tombstone -Killing the root pack [unless you do the secret phase in which case ollie bulb, but you do kill horace raddish] -Killing cagney [dude the last phase windscreen is literally his lifeless body] -Severely damaging hilda -Severely damaging the slot mnachine and ribby and croaks -Killing the people in von bon bon's court and also damaging her castle -Making djimmi choke on his pipe/cigar thing -Brutally murdering beppi. like kind of graphically jesus -Making wally [a bird] get eaten by other birds and also damaging his son -Damaging grim -Severely damaging rumor honeybottoms -Severely damaging sally [and killing her husband in the secret phase] --Destroying katzenwagen [<- werner's cat robot] -Damaging both kahl and his robot -Decapitating cala -Damaging the blind spector, the conductor, the lolipop ghouls and the head of the train KING DICE:- -Severely damaging rumulus, ol' ethan and ginette -Severely damagine priouletta -Killing chip -Severely damaging mangosteen -Getting mr. wheezy stepped on by king dice -Killing hopus pocus -Killing phear lap -Killing/severely damaging mr. chimes -Severely damaging king dice himself -Does severely damaging the devil count as a bad thing or DLC/INKWELL ISLE 4:- -Killing esther who has already been turned into canned meat atp -Killing glumstone's ulscer....thing...??? and severely damaging glumstone himself -Severely damaging mortimer freeze -Severely damaging the entirety of the moonshine mob except for maybe the firefly -Severely damaging saltbaker and his bakery but he deserved that ngl IM NOT INCLUDING THE KING'S LEAP BECAUSE THEY READILY LET YOU HURT THEM AS A COMPETITION THING yeah uh. idk what im doing

How r they not in jail yet

Also im wheezing at the fact that one of the characters is named hopus pocus

[gemwing1988]

Beauty Within the Beast

A Cuphead AU fanfic based on Disney’s Beauty and the Beast a little twist, mixed with elements from the 2017 remake, Broadway version and potentially some from the original fairytale. It’s still going through planning stages but thought I should write down some notes for the heck of it.

Summary: Being chased out of the village by the Devil who wanted her for some unexplained reason, lonely outcast Katie and her sisters, Lexie and Natty take refuge within a mysterious castle that houses a dark but lonely dragon beast named Validor, offering them shelter. Over the past days, beauty and the beast become good friends. And how soon will it bloom into true love before the wicked Devil and his minions, King Dice and Anubis (who each have their eyes on Lexie and Natty) try to interfere?

The Main Cast

The Belle’s:

Katie Gemwing (my OC/persona) — The “main Belle” of the story. The eldest daughter and one of the village “oddballs”. Imaginative, creative and well-read, Katie is bookworm who spends half of her time with her nose stuck in a book and dreams of going on incredible adventures outside of her poor provincial town of close-minded people. She is considered as one of the most beautiful girls in the entire village next to her sisters. Under unexplained circumstances, she had caught the interest of the new guy in town, Thomas Chrystolite, who is more than he seems.

Lexie Luthor (@akluthor1998’s OC/persona) — The second oldest of the three sisters, who is also considered odd among her peers for her love for sketching, dreaming and having jalapeños in omelettes. She has the misfortune of having King Dice, the local self-claimed ladies’ man trying court with her and make her is wife against her will practically on the daily basis. It was no secret among the sisters that she has a crush on Liam, the town’s young sheriff.

Natty Poke (@nataliepthatsme’s OC/persona) — The youngest of the three sisters and outcast in the village. Much like her sisters, she enjoys reading and is interested in other things the village deemed strange. She is also sadly a victim of unwanted attention from Anubis, who desires to have her all to himself. She is also the most sassiest out of the three sisters. It is indicated that she has a crush on Andrew, the baker’s apprentice.

The Beast:

Validor, AKA Vale (my OC) — A prince who had been cursed to become a dragon by the wicked Devil when the prince refused to commit a sin and fall for his trick to give him his soul. Unlike the Prince from the original Disney movie, Vale grew up to be selfless and kind but lonely. When he happens upon Katie and her sisters and friends inside his castle one stormy night during their escape from the Devil, Vale offered them refuge in hopes that he and Katie would fall in love to break the Devil’s spell on him.

The Antagonist(s):

The Devil (Cuphead) — The main antagonist of the story, who will be based off from the evil fairy from the original fairytale with a mixture as the “main Gaston”. A wicked demon who had placed the curse on Validor and all of the residents of the castle. He also has the desire to make Katie his bride.

King Dice (Cuphead) — The “secondary Gaston” as well as the Lefou to the Devil’s Gaston, King Dice is the sleazy and conceited self-claimed ladies’ man who sets his sights on Lexie as his future wife.

Anubis (shared OC) — The Lefou of the story. A hunter and shady character, Anubis desires for Natty and will see to it that nothing would stand in his way — man or beast.

Friends, Family and Allies:

Misterie (my OC) — As Agathe/the Enchantress. A mysterious painted wolf sorceress posing as a beggar woman who resides in a hut in the outskirts of town and likes being closer to nature. She had served as a secret test of character for Vale in the events of the prologue and had countered the Devil’s spell similar to Maryweather’s to Maleficent’s from Sleeping Beauty and provided him the enchanted rose and magic mirror. She watches of the girls for two years and is confident that Katie and Vale are destined to be together not just because of breaking the curse.

Glimmer the Galarian Rapidash (Pokémon) — In the role of Philippe. The family horse, Glimmer provided the girls and their allies’ method of transportation when trying to escape from the Devil.

Pikachu (Pokémon) — The family pet and companion to the girls. Pikachu was first found as a small Pichu injured in the woods and adopted into the family. Loyal and protective, Pikachu often zaps Dice and Anubis with a Thunderbolt as a means to tell them to back off from Lexie and Natty. Like most Pokémon and animals, Pikachu has a sixth sense and is the quickest to detect that Thomas isn’t all he makes himself to be.

Liam Jones (Lexie’s OC) — The young sheriff of the village. Lexie has a crush on him, not knowing the feeling the feeling’s neutral as he likes her a lot as well. He is very accepting of the girls’ open-mindedness and creativities and is very in love with Lexie’s kindness and courage. He and Andy joined the girls in their escape from the Devil and is overly protective.

Andrew/Andy Keller (Natty’s OC) — The young baker’s apprentice and Audrey’s twin brother. He has a crush on Natty, who secretly likes him in return. He joins Liam in helping the girls escape from the Devil.

Josh and Audrey (Natty’s OC’s) — The owners of the local bookshop. Katie, Lexie and Natty are their most valued (and only) customers. They are very welcoming and open minded of the girls’ imaginations and dreams, and the most concern about their sudden absence.

Elder Kettle (Cuphead) — A gender switch role of Mrs. Potts.

Cuphead, Mugman and Ms. Chalice (Cuphead) — All sharing the role of Chip.

Lord Rogers (The Swan Princess) — The Cogsworth of the story.

[paladin-of-nerd-fandom65]

For the fanfic emoji ask:

💖What made you start writing?

🤡What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

🎶Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been listening to on loop lately?

🤗 What advice would you give to new fanfic writers that are just getting started?

I don't have the brain emoji but pick a character and tell me a favorite headcanons of yours for them

💖 Maybe it was after years of reading Teen Titans Animated Series fanfics on Fanfiction.net and one day deciding ‘You know what, I have experience writing some papers in high school and college so far, so I don’t think a story, even a one shot can’t be that hard’ so then I write my own take on ‘What if Mary Grayson, Dick’s birth mom became a Talon for The Court of Owls?’ And the rest, as they say, is history.

🤡 Maybe from what I can think at the moment, Dick, cosplaying as Nintendo’s Mario while Kory was Princess Peach, putting on a fake mustache and saying Mario’s catchphrase “Let’s-a go!”; From a Robstar Week Fic

🎶 Often times either it’s Beatles, Beach Boys or any classic rock band that plays in my ears while I write. Usually I alternate between songs instead of looping one over and over again but if there’s one I do loop it’s either ‘Honey Pie’ by the Beatles or ‘God Only Knows’ by The Beach Boys

🤗 ‘Work At Your Own Pace and Think About What You Write Before Typing It Right Away. If It Gets Too Stressing, Take a Break From It Until You Feel Ready to Get Back to It.’

🧠 Jake Grayson

- He often sings in the showers, sometimes it’s a Beatles song, graceful and harmonious, sometimes it’s a traditional Tamaranean folk song….thank goodness the walls can absorb that loudness

- He consider the following as his arch nemeses: Victor Zsasz, Cinderblock, the Court of Owls, Deathstroke, General Zod (shared with Chris) and the final bosses of Cuphead, King Dice and the Devil himself

- He has a tendency to sleep eat; a combo of sleepwalking and having a late night snack; often times it’s either Zorkaberry-Boysenberry cookies or his favorite cereal that gets eaten without Jake even remembering having a bite when he wakes up the next morning

Thanks for the asks, @spider-jaysart

[sazorak]

Every Game I Played in 2022, Ranked

I didn't actually play that many unique / new games in 2022, but hey let's rank them all the same. Let's keep this nearly decade long streak rolling!

2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021

11. Tunic – 2022 – Steam – ★★★

I understand that my opinion is an outlier.

At the start I really enjoyed Tunic; I like Zeldas, I love me a good puzzle, and the overall mechanical design— built around learning things from finding pages of the game’s cryptic manual in-game to uncover secrets of the world— was fascinating. Those “Aha!” moments where you completely recontextualize something you had only a surface-level understanding previously? Very good. A game built around that? Sounds great!

Here's the thing: the combat in this game is atrocious. Like, yeah, I get it, that’s not really the focus, but boy y’all really decided to hang major portions of the game on this, huh? By time of the game’s “normal” ending I had completely soured on the whole thing. And while the secret “Golden Path” certainly isn’t combat heavy, and the puzzles within it are neat in principle, the actual experience of doing them was just one-note and tedious.

I had kind of expected given the open-ended nature of the exploration early-on that the experience was going to be more of a Metroidvania, where instead of necessarily discovering new traversal abilities you uncover contextual information that opens-up new rewards, opportunities, etc. While this is sort-of the case with manual pages, the game is mostly linear… and most of the unlocking of new sections is based on basic mobility abilities in any case.

Disappointing!

10. Capcom Fighting Collection – 2022 – Steam – ★★★★

Darkstalkers is a good series and Capcom should bring it back. This is a good collection that has Darkstalkers available for online play. I enjoyed my time playing Darkstalkers again. Darkstalkers.

9. Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course – 2022 – Steam – ★★★★

It’s more Cuphead! It’s not transformative, especially unique, or divergent from the original, base game. But… it’s more Cuphead! That’s pretty great. There's some truly astounding art in this DLC compared to the base game though, which deserves some serious props when Cuphead was already visually amazing.

8. Crusader Kings 3: Royal Court, Friends and Foes, The Fate of Iberia – 2022 – Steam – ★★★★

There have been quite a few pieces of major CK3 DLC this year— and they’ve all been pretty good. Royal Court was probably the most substantial and interesting, Friends and Foes added a lot of flavor, and the Fate of Iberia established a core system that’ll be very interesting as it’s applied more in the future.

In terms of the overall state of CK3 now as opposed to the start of 2022: it’s in a really good place. Which yeah, I’d hope so given the sheer number of major DLC that has hit within a 7-month span, but all these additions have, in one way or another, improved the overall mechanical underpinnings of CK3.

Do I wish there’d been more care taken to addressing under-loved regions on the map? Absolutely. The fact that the map is so big but the lack of definition to gameplay outside of Europe is still very disappointing. But hey, little steps, little steps.

7. Stellaris: Overlord, Toxoids – 2022 – Steam – ★★★★

Stellaris also had a major DLC this year in Overlord, but most of its best improvements have been courtesy of their new “Custodian” team. The Custodians go through the previous release content, and overhaul mechanical systems, and implement systematic, flavor, and ~lore~ refinements. The level of polish this has added has drastically improved Stellaris as a whole, making it both more balanced and more interesting. They even added more galaxy types! That's great!

On top of this, the Stellaris team has started doing more open beta testing of patches, which has resulted in greatly improved quality prior to major release. I’ve played a lot of Stellaris this year.

Hitman 3 – 2021 – Steam – ★★★★

The finale of the big ol’ Hitman Trilogy is, in all honesty, probably the worst of the trio on its own. Like, the levels are good, and the package as-a-whole is fantastic, but there’s just less new “Hitman 3” unique content in this boy compared to the previous titles, and two of the levels that are there are just pretty… whatever? Which is fine as a complete package but it does diminish the shine on one a little.

But man, as a whole? Good ass trilogy, good ass games. Looking forward to the new run-based Freelancer mode that’s coming out in ’23.

Inscryption – 2021 – Steam – ★★★★

Inscryption is one of those games where to explain it to someone who hasn’t played it would just diminish the experience for them if they were to then go and check it out. It’s also a game where to talk about it with those who have played it just results in an exchange of “wow this part sure was neat huh?”

For the former group, I guess all I can say is: it’s a very neat narrative card battling game with some interesting ideas and a very unique presentation.

For the latter group: wow it sure was neat huh! I think I preferred the opening section quite a bit more than what followed, but overall, it was damn good. Maybe I should check out the "endless" mode?

6. Pokémon Legends: Arceus – 2022 – Switch – ★★★★

This is really interesting. They went and did something truly different with the Pokémon formula, and it turned out quite well.

I think the game has a little too much in the way of busy work— I’m not especially interested in resetting maps to get the rare zones where certain specific Pokémon can only show up for capture— and the combat-and-capturing are a little on the basic side, but overall? This is neat.

I’, really interested to see if they evolve this formula moving forward. I like the classic Pokémon formula well enough, but it’s been the same for something like 25 years now. Varying things up more, evolving the formula here and there, would be appreciated at this point.

Though, like many of their recent titles, I think a problem all these games have is that they are just put together by a shoestring budget and a really small team. I realize this probably increases the profit margins for them, but the level of polish really isn’t enough for games of these “prestige” as it were. Imagine if they had combined the teams and levels-of-polish put into this and Scarlet/Violet this year.

Sneaking up on Pokémon and just slamming them in the back of the head with a Pokéball though: still very funny.

Disco Elysium: the Final Cut – 2019 – Steam – ★★★★

I’m not sure I have anything especially unique to say about Disco Elysium that hasn’t been said by a thousand people at this point: the writing is very good. The dialog system and the way it interacts with the RPG-system is great!

I don’t think I liked it quite as much as some— I think because I was sort of hoping for a more open-ended narrative given the flexibility in the dialog? But as far as linear adventure games go, it’s a very good one. Not necessarily my favorite (or even my favorite one this year, as it turns out) but still fantastic.

5. Neon White – 2022 – Steam – ★★★★

I am not the kind of person who particularly cares about speed running or any kind of record-based-gaming, frankly. That being said: I enjoyed my time getting the ace medal in each level of Neon White, a game explicitly about speed running. The gameplay loop and the overall flow of action is just fantastic. I even earned a few developer time medals, which hey that’s fun.

A lot of folks complain about the game’s writing, and I think they’re being melodramatic. It’s mostly fine-to-good; very 90s-Toonami-Anime-Vibes, to be sure, but that is an aesthetic they’re deliberately going for. I enjoyed the cast and the story, even as it did occasionally drift into “cringe” at times.

Also: game introduced me to Machine Girl, which is a fantastic band.

4. Pokémon Scarlet/ Violet – 2022 – Switch – ★★★★

For all my complaints in my Legends: Arceus blurb about how they’re not advancing things in the main-line titles, and for all the considerable— and very real— technical limitations of this game: Violet is one of the best core Pokémon titles in years. I don’t think it has the charm of Sun and Moon, and it has major problems with its progression, but as a game where you explore-an-open-world-and-catch-stuff? It’s damn fun.

The open nature of the game is both to its advantage and disadvantage. The actual catching parts of this game? Pretty good; not as viscerally enjoyable as Arceus, but good. The gym and trainer battling in game? Ehhhhhhhh. See, there’s no level scaling at all, so it is very easy to accidentally out-level everything depending on what you’re doing. The game eventually catches up if you’re not doing too many extra things by time you hit the Elite Four, but there’s whole swaths of the game that are kind of pointless to engage with with since you can just mash A and ignore it.

Graphically? It’s at best “compromised.” Patches have addressed the most embarrassing graphical bugs, but the game is still frame-y as all hell. But they actually managed to make the move to a true open world work quite well. Yeah, we lose a little from the traditional route-system— and I’d argue that maybe they gave us full mobility with the game’s legendary a bit too early relative to the game world we’re tasked with exploring— but as a space to explore it’s pretty fun, even more than Arceus was.

The story of Scarlet/Violet is pretty fun and pretty stupid, just like how I like a Pokémon. It’s not quite Sword and Shield or X and Y levels of stupid, but boy: it’s pretty dumb. Lots of fun characters. Wish there was more interaction with the Gym Leaders though.

The new Pokémon are as a whole fantastic. Great additions to the series. As far as temporary in-game gimmicks go, Terastylizing is interesting; the ability to shift a Pokemon’s type for either extra STAB or removing vulnerabilities is fascinating. Opens up some really unique space without being as obnoxious and back-breaking as Gigantamaxing or Megavolution.

Teraraids are better than Max Raids, but still extremely half-baked. Buggy, with a ton of issues— especially if you’re attempting to do them online. The experience is still enjoyable enough, but man I wish it was better.

There’s a ton of quality-of-life improvements to the act of raising Pokémon for battling. You can just buy bottlecaps now! Ability changing items are relatively easy to get! Teraraids get you easy access to hidden ability Pokemon, as well as high IV Pokemon! It’s not even that hard to get EV reduction berries! Shiny hunting is also probably the easiest it’s ever been, thanks to picnic resets and the way the save-and-clock systems work.

But maybe the best thing about this game— and the thing I see folks talking about the least— is that the online co-op actually is kind of great? Like, it’s literally “oops our two worlds are dropped ontop of each other and you can just play through your campaigns individually.” That’s awesome! Like, yeah this is something we should be expecting from games in this day and age, but from Nintendo? From Pokemon? Being able to just tool around with friends and catch shit was really fun, especially earlier in the game.

It's pretty pointless once you're done, to which: I really hope DLC adds more post-game content, since all there really is at this point is doing more Teraraids and battling people which, while fine, I’d love a Battle Tower or Frontier. Nemona would love a Battle Frontier! Let her have fun!!!

I think if this game had some of its issues ironed out, it’d be a 5-Star given my level of enjoyment for it overall. Hell, if you added the catching-Pokemon-from-the-field stuff Arceus has, combine their movement systems? That’d be a hell of a game!

3. Pentiment – 2022 – Steam – ★★★★★

I am a huge history nerd, and a huge sucker for evocative aesthetics, and let me tell you: Pentiment is laser targeted at me. An adventure game styled after illuminated manuscripts, set in an abbey in medieval Germany? Fantastic.

It is funny, in retrospect, how much it’s borderline a The Name of the Rose fangame. But given how narrow a subject-matter that is, and the fact that this is a title published by Microsoft of all studios? Once again: Fantastic.

Pentiment is just a monumental achievement in visual semiotics in video games. Unique fonts that are styled based on not just the speaker’s accent and background, but also the player character’s impressions of that character? The fact that the illuminated script styling of each character varying based similarly depending on their background? The sheer skill at which they managed to singularly render this game in this style, with a narrative about this without any compromises? Again: Fantastic.

Pentiment is truly Art, in a way few games are.

2. Elden Ring – 2022 – Steam – ★★★★★

I have a lot of issues with Elden Ring.

It’s immense in scope, but a lot of that is borderline padding with repeated content. It’d be much better with a more focused, tighter experience.

The music is incredibly weak for a From Software title (bar one major exception).

Most items you find are throwaway, and the sheer repetition of encounter design in the mini-dungeons you can explore make doing them kind of pointless.

Many boss encounters are frustratingly designed, as they either have mechanics that exist just to compensate for horse-riding or varied weapon types but make Normal-Ass Combat kind of worse, or are incapable of handling someone not using the most basic weapon styles, or are sometimes just a duplicate from elsewhere put into a room they sometimes barely function in. When compared to a more focused combat experience like Sekiro, this "squishiness" sticks out.

Miyazaki takes his obscure narrative obsession to a new level by making the entire setting of the game being hidden in a dialog chain you can completely miss if you explore this "open" world game in the wrong order.

…

Ok, that all being said: I desperately wish there was more Elden Ring. Elden Ring is fantastic. Monumental in both size and achievement. I’ve put nearly 200 hours into Elden Ring this year, and that’s absurd.

Elden Ring is definitely still just One-Of-Those, a Souls-like with not that much evolution in terms of gameplay— but what quality-of-life changes are there are great. The exploration is indeed kind of throwaway, but there are so many weird things that you can find and the combat feels so good that you can forgive the paltry rewards. There’s so much variety of ways you can approach the game; while this does weaken the overall design of many encounters, the fact that you can play it so many different ways is still an incredible achievement.

The funny thing about the narrative is that, while it is as ~mysterious and vague~ as ever, it’s still a fantastic one. I really enjoyed the weird goober characters you meet along the way. It is weird, but never too outlandish. I want to see more set in this world.

Announce some DLC Miyazaki. Please. Oh God. I’m begging you.

1. Dwarf Fortress – 2022 – Steam – ★★★★★

Dwarf Fortress is a game I have known about for years but never played. Certainly I’ve heard many sing its praise, and I understood that, yes, I would love this game. But I always put it off due to the challenges of the interface; I did not have it in me to learn the ASCII graphics, the keyboard-only interfaces, to wrestle with the labyrinthine systems and mechanics.

Then it came to Steam. With graphics. And a mouse interface. So I figured, hey, why not, let’s give it a shot. I’m on vacation, I have the time!

And, turns out, yes: Dwarf Fortress is very good. Amazing, even. It’s a monumental exercise in the kind of weird stories you get just by assembling a series of mechanical systems and then hitting play. Dwarves engaging in their dwarf-y lives, occasionally beholden to your whims, more frequently beholden to their own, and with the world actively conspiring against both you and them.

For those of you who may not know what Dwarf Fortress is— very possible, since it is probably the most obscure thing on this list— Dwarf Fortress is a colony simulation game where you take a bunch of dwarves into procedurally generated world and try to stand up a successful colony. The big thing here is that the entire world is procedurally generated, with its own history and actors, and your dwarves act largely on their own based on a complex network of interlinking systems. You can submit requests, and they’ll get to them, but dwarves are very needy and sensitive creatures. When those needs aren’t met, or when the world goes against them, things go very awry.

They are all high-functioning alcoholics, which probably doesn’t help.

Here's an example: In one of my earlier forts, the very unfortunately auto-generated “Twinklechains”, I had a fisherdwarf. Every so often, this dwarf would walk out of her mountain-side home, through a little forest, into a nearby creek to go fishing. She was very good at it; she frankly was the source of 95% of Twinklechains’ food supply. She kept at it so frequently that she actually wore a path through the grass through her constant marches to-and-fro.

Problem is: it occasionally rained. She hated the rain. She was getting very salty about it. To the point where, to improve her mood, I freed her from her fishing duties. We had a functioning farm and we didn’t need fish now. But because she had been rained on so much, she now had so many memories of being slightly soggy, and she became depressed over it. Not only that, she was unhappy that she couldn’t fish anymore, so she spent 95% of her time now sulking and crying on the mayor’s shoulder about how unhappy she was.

Then a giant, fire-breathing, beak-less lark emerged from the caves beneath the fort and burned her to death. A tragic end for some, but a welcome exit for her, I think.

In my most recent fort, the also very unfortunately auto-generated “Twinklebasement” (why is it always Twinkle-???) the capital of my civilization fell in a war, leaving us somehow the new capital. But because this occurred before any nobility could be invested on-site, we now are just a pure democracy with just a mayor. Said mayor is obsessed with mandating we make statues, and also to never export statues. The hallways are lined with statues. He just likes them. And he keeps getting reelected, so more and more statues and filling this fortress, commemorating this new, last bastion of the Dwarven civilization of The Born Figure.

My best wall-engraver lost the ability to walk in an incident, but gets around plenty fine on their new crutches. Unfortunately, they only want to engrave images of traction tables. My walls are covered in beautiful, immaculate images of That Time He Was In Traction After His Legs Were Shattered By Goblins. Dwarves are weird.

This fort is on the precipice of total collapse now. See, they encountered a monster that exuded a goo that causes flesh to rot. This killed a bunch of dwarves (which the survivors weren’t thrilled about), but it also got on a lot of the dogs they had brought to the fight. Those that survived long enough managed to get back into the fort proper before immediately dying. Unfortunately, this goo seems to have gotten itself into somewhere the dogs and cats keep interacting with (there must be a puddle of it somewhere), which is cause them to constantly melt from the paws first, slowly releasing a horrible cloud of rot before falling over dead. There are so many pet dogs in my fort that are all slowly-but-surely melting into the ground that the entire population of dwarves are getting very crabby indeed.

I expect the whole fort will soon fall prey to the dread Tantrum Spiral, where-in everyone eventually gets so mad that they start a massive brawl that will destroy the fort from within. Hooray!

See, Dwarf Fortress isn’t really about “winning” the game. It’s about experiencing the systems to the point at which you inevitably lose in a weird and wild fashion, and then you start over again. Losing is the fun. Yeah, you want your dwarves to be happy and succeed, but current success is just the root of future failure. Armok demands only conflict and slaughter!

Play Dwarf Fortress. Strike the Earth!

[leorawright]

Leora, imagine that you have chance to write spin-off story about one of Cuphead bosses. Which one you'd choose (from each group: Inkwell Isles 1-4; Casino Bosses (including King Dice and Devil); King's Court)?

Oooooo I'm doing one for each Island!

Inkwell Isle 1: Cagney Carnation I love his design so much and his character in general

Inkwell Isle 2: Tie between Grim Matchstick and Baroness Von Bon Bon I love both of them to death

Inkwell Isle 3: The ghost train I adore all their character designs

Inkwell Isle 4(DLC island): I'd have to say the Flying Aces! They have so many different parts and I love it

Casino Bosses: Chips Bettigan I love his western look and I could probably make a killer backstory!

King's Court: I love the Rook the most I could pull off an angsty story for him

This was so fun thank you for the hypothetical situation friend!

[dontaskchaosandco]

Music Album Bracket Qualifiers Form

Please put checkmarks next to whichever albums you personally like. You can give checks to none of them, all of them, or anything in between.

The current plan is to put 32 of these albums on a bracket (4 from each group). If an album seems like an exceptionally-unfair fight, it may be disqualified.

THE FOLLOWING IS A FULL LIST OF EVERY ALBUM ON THE FORM

A Night at the Opera After Hours (The Weeknd) Charlie Brown Christmas OST Dark Side of the Moon Discovery (Daft Punk) Elvis Presley (self-titled) Folklore (Taylor Swift) Giant Steps Hotel California Led Zeppelin IV Map of the Soul: 7 (BTS) Pet Sounds Sgt. Pepper's Thriller To Pimp a Butterfly WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP… 1000 gecs American Idiot Black Parade Bridge over Troubled Water Darkness on the Edge of Town Highway 61 Revisited IGOR In the Court of the Crimson King Let it Bleed Night Visions OK Computer Out of the Blue Remain in Light Renaissance (Beyoncé) So (Peter Gabriel) Toto IV Brat (Charli XCX) Catch a Fire Channel Orange Déjà vu (CSNY) Fragile (Yes) Getz/Gilberto loveless Madvillainy Rumours (Fleetwood Mac) Selected Ambient Works 85–92 Sign o' the Times Songs in the Key of Life The Velvet Underground & Nico Undertale OST Vespertine Ziggy Stardust Back in the High Life Bitches Brew Black Album (Metallica) Boston (self-titled) Breakfast in America Cross (Justice) Currents (Tame Impala) Demon Days Goodbye & Good Riddance Samurai (Lupe Fiasco) Sung Tongs Travelling Without Moving True Blue (Madonna) Turnstiles Weird Al Yankovic in 3-D Whenever You Need Somebody 3 Feet High and Rising Aqualung Business as Usual Cuphead OST Lateralus Mollusk (Ween) Omnipotent Youth Society (self-titled) Over-Nite Sensation PetroDragonic Apocalypse Solid State Survivor SOS (SZA) Spirit Phone The Chirping Crickets This Year's Model (Attractions) Tommy (The Who) Trout Mask Replica Etazhi Flood (Boris) Flood (They Might Be Giants) Floral Shoppe Good Faith (Madeon) Indestructible Beat of Soweto LUX (Asleep Country) Mother 1 OST Philosophy of the World Pink Tape (Lil Uzi Vert) Pinkerton Recovery (Eminem) Soundtracks for the Blind Unhappy Refrain Worlds (Porter Robinson) Zombie (Fela Kuti) Adventures (T-Square) An empty bliss beyond this World Cyriak's Animation Remix Excursions (C418) Fourth World (Kara's Flowers) Global Drum Project Grim Fandango OST Hawaii: Part II Hell's Pit (Insane Clown Posse) I Didn't Mean to Haunt You Let Her Burn Octavarium Odyssey (HOME) Spirituality and Distortion Squaredance (Kitsune^2) Under the Western Freeway 005: A Lovely Pear Another Light (Red Vox) bird world Cave World death cycle (begotten) Geogaddi He Has Left Us Alone… Hit Vibes (SAINT PEPSI) Motorway (Fearofdark) SAVED! (Kristin Hayter) SGFR Presents: RIP^2 TRUST CEREMONY Untitled Paint Project Volcanic Bird Enemy… WLFGRL zero_one

[just-delta-ing-the-runes]

Weird dream stuff

Okay so this was a background piece in a dream I had last night, but I need to talk about it:

I was in some mall food court or something and there were a few arcade machines lined up against the wall. One of them was called "Roll the Dice" and had King Dice's theme (from Cuphead) playing. The machine was red with some foam dice inside (which were also red). It was a claw machine, but the back board on it was tilted like a skiiball table and it had egg-shaped holes (how's a die gonna fit through that?). Well, the one weird part, which is why I'm posting it to this blog, is that the top part on the front of the machine had one of Spamton's shop sprites, tinted red. No explanation as to why, it was just there.

It was the one where he's looking forward with his mouth open btw.

[the-aro-artist]

The Roaring 20s!

[harvest-honeymoon]

whipped this up stupid fast to encapsulate the current mood

[nothingbutlimbo]

darling!~

[mind-if-i-scream]

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Time to dance and throw stuff on the ground