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dailyanarchistposts · 2 months ago

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Class is an outdated attempt at socio-economically categorizing humans within the industrial society.

Marxists, especially the former Marxists, as well as all the Left tendencies inspired by Marxism, have relied on the same-old tripartite categorization of society dating back to Aristotle, now divided into three big classes. Contemporary sociologists of the Marxist schools of sociology will be using the stats of median income to show how they’re right about it; where indeed the «middle-class» exists and it’s been going down toward poverty levels in the last few decades, where the upper group of ultra-rich just kept getting wealthier and more powerful. All of it is true, yet only within a tiny, limited aspect of the mastodon. It shows us where most people are situated in terms of income, yet not saying much about all these people located elsewhere up or down the curve. That these people aren’t actually part of any unified class, within the tripartite model of “middle/proletarian”, “poor/lumpen”, or “rich”. In reality — or I mean closer to what could be the social reality — a median in statistics only best represents where a bell curve is located within a spectrum of linear-organized data.

Having lived through years of being on the workplace, in the streets, outside of academia, will reveal that the “world” is a much more complex and especially fluid, dynamic place; not made of categories and classes, but people. Especially groupings of people, constantly organizing and plotting for power. Either to gain more or maintain their “acquired rights”.

This narrow marxist interpretation also serves another purpose than showing the social inequalities capitalism creates. It is useful for hiding or overlooking the privilege-building or consolidation of these same groups of Left-oriented middle-class intelligentsia, or petty bourgeoisie commonly found backing Center-Left parties, NGOs, trade unions or more pervasively running a vast portion of the nonprofit sector, especially the sector more politically vocal about issues of social justice. They are struggling for their own elevation through the social ladder, in conflict with who they perceive – with a level of accuracy – as those limiting their access to higher positions of power.

Same goes for the «rich». As if you’d ask me, for instance, who is the richest person/family on the planet, that’s a question no one can definitely answer. Also an equally complex question : who are the « rich »? Not only wealth is a more complex notion than just net worth, but the super-wealthy do not only deal in monetary values... they’re also using other kinds of more «hard» assets and currencies like resources, precious metals, and now big data. The super-wealthy also tend to be super-connected people. Their wealth would not be very meaningful if this wasn’t a factor of power within social networks.

The question of their might makes it even more complicated when you look at their political schemes and networks. And even among this super-rich crowd, there are factions, milieus, gangs playing Monopoly with the world’s con-o-mies. Ever since Trump went into politics, for instance, this became clear there wasn’t only one power gang in the US, that the most repulsive of these, the White supremacist Christian ultra-conservatives, was engaged in an unprecedented battle against the neoliberal establishment, the dominant gang of the last few decades. This is even true in a totalitarian rule like China, who has different factions fighting within the Party, down to occasional vendettas, in order to consolidate power. Everywhere across capitalist societies there are smaller rich of the upper middle-class, all the way up to the mega-billionaires, with differing stakes in the industry, or gradients of political entry – and positions, from the progressive Left the Rothschild family and Soros to the ultra-conservative Far Right like Murdoch and the Koch.

Hence categorizing the “rich” is always more complicated than it seems. But to me, the ultra-rich aren’t as important as they used to be as social antagonists. I know they are doing terrible things, engaged in running awful schemes that keep billions of people into misery. And they are, in all appearance, holding the reins over governments, the media, NGOs you may work for, and most businesses you might work for.

However you might notice that your local progressive resources center for the homeless is managed by rather middle-class people. This is adequate, as here we are dealing with a charity service, notoriously structured by this same-old Christian binary relationship between haves mores and lesses, or between the higher-educated and the low-educated. The moment you’ll see a homeless resource center run by the homeless, well, that’ll no longer be charity, but rather autonomy. Yet social relations keep being structured into hierarchies between castes of different levels of privilege.

Society, being itself a wide-open pyramid scheme, is thus filled with a myriad of people involved in more or less filthy games that deprive others from having the same quality of life they enjoy. When it’s not about White nuclear families raveling in their comfy private bubbles on the countryside it’ll be urban hipsters keeping nice apartments for their artsy gangs of friends. You might even notice a level of disparities — and consolidation of privilege — within the milieus of the homeless, and the prisoners. But as usual, there’s a share of good economic motives behind all this privilege-building. In big cities targeted by intense gentrification, renters are better be organizing with friends, or building networks of friends, in order to share the rents between people they know so the rents remain as low as possible. That also gives the more radical-minded the possibility for conducting rent strikes on more large scales or do other kinds of anti-eviction or anti-hike campaigns that got more effects than just isolated renters filing formal complaints. Worker coops are a way for them to avoid « falling » in the streets by having decent self-managed jobs that may also contributed to accumulating social capital. As usual, collective organizing is a powerful flagship for gaining more power.

But then again, when more power is gained, what is done with it? When peer groups create their housing and workers’ coops, or even collectively-run squats wherever they still exist, what is the place left in their world, at the end of the day, to all the lesser-empowered outsiders? To those often ending up being — yet again — at the receiving ends of privilege-building social machinations. Being “socially-awkward”, being misfits or too “triggering” makes these seemingly more horizontal, democratic, collectivist schemes as yet again exclusive to those disabled, handicapped, aged, gendered, or just not enough socially-skilled for inclusion. Because, like in the rest of society, these projects are produced through in/out-crowd dynamics, generating social exclusion as byproduct. One way or another, it goes down to be facing locked doors, walls, fences, more sleeping on the sidewalks or at best navigating through precarious rents with deranged roommates… so therefore the social hierarchy of prisons is being maintained. Of course this has to do with landlords and « bosses » owning your life by the balls (e.g. a class relationship), but how do people also not reinforce this through caste dynamics? So even when these schemes are considered to be helpful or charitable, the separation they induce — here’s a place where these late Marxists known as the Situationists got it right) is still by essence, and functionally, alienating. However there is little doubt of the good that some of these people do, despite the alienating structures they’re working in.

How does a caste system works?

Essentially, with the reproduction of identitarian cults, clans or families, and more importantly their related cultures, that allows them to relate to each other. Culture — including cultural representations — is the tie that binds them; as cultures are being used as a means to reinforce the caste’s status quo, redefine its morals, and set the boundaries for inclusion/exclusion as well as serving other control imperatives. These aren’t patterns we observe through big social categories such as classes, that only defined by their mutual economic productive activity. The caste reproduces its own systems of representations and relations, beyond its mere socio-economic activity. The former actuates the other, and provides a kind of appeal, by hype, notoriety, prestige, edge, luxury or any other sort of added social value to it. A sense of privilege, without really providing with meaning.

I’ll be elaborating more on this in an upcoming text on countercultures and normalization, but in the Western rich urban hellholes we could have witnessed over the past years a movement from parts of the punk subcultures toward hipster, more streamlined upper castes of artsy citizenry. Mainstream fashion of the trendy urban lifestyles was reinvigorated by what used to be signifiers of marginal milieus... tattoos, piercings, punky black clothing and asymetric hairstyles, even dog-herding (that for some has been replaced with having children), are all now predictable, unsurprising elements of the urban environment, found in just about any of the world’s metropolis, even outside the Western world.

This has been a way to be part of the “in crowd”, to be accepted not not only into squats, but private rented spaces, get decent jobs at trendy hot spots, and more importantly, get relationships aplenty. That’ll be controversial to say about the same of the normalization of the “LGBTQ+” as social identities, that have played the same socio-economic roles and with the same ends, even tho by themselves they represent a fourre-tout of different minority gender identities and sexual preferences rallied together as one big category, for everyone under its banner to relate to regardless of its meaning for every one’s sensibility.

The idea is not to be criticizing any of these subcultures or their values, or even to be blaming urban trends for normalizing them, but to look into how caste dynamics are functioning, thanks in great parts to the use of cultural signifiers and their related politics. Also to realize how the individual, or the person as themself, is being kept silent and invisible by these caste politics, despite all the social media celebs, who’re really not standing for — and by — themselves but literally posing on a stage through a set of prefab representations. How if you aren’t identifying as one of the recognized identities, just choosing to identify as a “yourself”, or a “person”; this becomes a void for the social management of privilege and oppression. There are no non-gender pronouns for persons, only for lifeless objects, or groups to some extent.

This is — in my view — the deepest cause behind the epidemic of mass-killings we especially got in the US. While some of these are mostly based on demented ideologies of hate against more or less specific minority groups, many of the mass-killings are often committed by disenfranchised, misfit, socially-isolated males who for a reason or another, lacking a better analysis of what’s happening to them in this world, decide to stick it up to those they see as their most direct oppressors. Namely, the social castes in their environments. And in a way, it is true that crowd/mob dynamics tend to make human groupings in general to become more oppressive while losing self-awareness as their numbers increase in a given context.

If the Left would be truly understanding the dynamics of social exclusion, oppression and privilege, how do they work, perhaps they could be helping to some level against such sprees of murderous violence that only now benefits more despotic police controls of the public place. But the Left has remained stucked, as some anarchist critiques know, in this endless spiral of outdated analysis of social and political dynamics, centered on our well-known cartoonish representations produced by Marxists. Castes are defined by a lot more than just the productive activity of their members, and equally the socio-cultural reproduction that defines them goes beyond their mere socio-economic productive roles, when they got one in common, even if we consider society as meta-factory.

The issue of how Leftists could make it better, with a better analysis is beyond me. More so, it ain’t really my own interest. Still, I find it harder to not be caring about the mass-shootings, and in fact the « not in my lawn » approach to social problems might not so easily apply here, as anyone could potentially be affected by these sudden bursts of extreme interpersonal violence.

The purpose of such a perspective on social relations around us is to not be fooled by deluded beliefs in the radicality of our « projects » or initiatives, and to look at those with a more critically realistic lens that shows their shortcomings and weaknesses, standing in the way of the total anarchy or the social revolution you might be after. As to be reproducing caste relations can intrinsically undermine any initiative aimed at equity, autonomy or free association.

As I said too often, anarchists and nihilists have a specific opportunity — often wasted — of creating a social tabula rasa, that negates both the dynamics of privilege-building by putting the deeper issues of property and capital-building into question, while also, through patterns of free-based relations, to be making the issue of «social progress», pushed for decades by the Left, to become irrelevant.

Like there’s no need for work within the industry if we choose to liberate goods instead and creating a commons around everything, where everyone can enjoy shit without the trappings and hindrances of both bureaucracy and property, from being on welfare to «buying land», we’re still being submitted and deprived from an immediate relationship with the natural world. There’s no need for affordable housing if you find a way to occupy spaces for living, and especially shared living. There’s no need for better working conditions if you abolished the need for money — in the first place — in order to have good living conditions, as especially to be able... to just make friends, lovers, accomplices or just have a good conversation with some other human, regardless where they’re from. There’s no need for these demoralizing homeless shelters if you got organized squats where everyone has at least their shot at a living-together, and from which other occupation projects may arise.

The power of negation, is one not being asserted by the liberal agency. Neither the one of supposed « radicals ». Or this false negation will be held contained within their own communal bubbles, yet never outwardly-asserted. And in fact, the Marxists have an historical tendency at postponing negation, as revolution is an evolutionary process where, first, we must build the conditions for the proles to be able to negate the State and capital... as if they had found the secret to immortality!

Therefore, like with the rest of the liberal bourgeoisie, breaking the law, seeking pleasures against the dominant morals, will be reserved for the private space, of the caste, the communal in-crowd, or the family, or on a private island. And the more harmful immoralisms (such as rape, abuse and other violences) might also break loose due to the safety bubble promised by privatized spaces, in milieus where they hardly would be allowed to happen in broad daylight.

But are these really negation, or just reconstruction of same-old patterns of appropriation and exploitation, inherited from the dominant morals? A transgression ain’t necessarily negation of an order but rather its preset contradiction, as “rules are meant to be broken”. The “anti-” principle is not an “a-” principle, or abscence of principle; it is an against not a without. Satan exists because of God. So the bank robber or cryptominer is still after making big money, only innovating in their fulfillment of the well-known capitalist imperative (unless of course they throw the money in the streets). I ain’t saying it is wrong... only that it is not negation of an order and its values, where the person takes the liberty to make their own of the latter, asserts power over their own world, making themself emperor and god over it.

Absolute negation of all orders — the questioning of everything — is what is necessary to revert the power of the totality over ourselves. Therefore we cannot truly avoid or abolish these caste relations that separate us both from each other and from ourselves — as well as the world around us — without putting their imperatives, values under the crushing mill of the cold, concrete logic of total negation.

Property is not only theft. Fundamentally “property” is just not something that exists. Your comfort zone known as your household, or friend’s commune, or mansion on top of the hill... are only a privatized space made-up by capitalism’s territorializations and reinforced by walls, doors and locks. It is only «real» as far as it is a relational construct, enforced by the threat of judicial or interpersonal violence. You cannot pretend anarchism, even less «communism» while at the same time enjoying these levels of privilege provided to you by an invisible, unavowed caste system. Well you can... of course! But that is more of the same-old Victorian hypocrisy, reinforced by equally Victorian-era ideologies pretending to oppose the dominant system. You may choose to be a conservative so to be less an hypocrite — indeed — yet the status quo of the caste system will be maintained, only more bare. My postulate, that is not so important to consider, is that 19th century classical liberalism has kept Western civilization from being a full-fledged official caste system, or at least this was delayed by a century of class-defined struggles.

Regardless. The wild, the feral, the natural domain does not know these territorializations. Or neither cares about if they know. The wild one only cares about their own sustenance, protection, pleasure and well-being. Anything else, any attempt at accommodating with any level or sphere within the caste system, means becoming more civilized, or over-civilized, as these are the mostly-intangible yet highly-recognizable walls of civilization, defined by culture above politics and economics. A vagabond can keep freeloading luxury hotels or chic cafés, in order to partly avoid the misery related to homelessness, or even hang out at student parties or exec clubs, but what will chase him off from these spheres will not be their bank account, official status or even their political allegiances; it will be their external appearance, their tenure, their speech and etiquette.. or lack thereof. As the cultural standards are what makes these social categories to be castes. Not classes. Because, to repeat, castes are culturally-defined — more than socio-economically defined — groupings.

So I am not here posturing for an anticiv purity by rejecting caste relations; but this could be useful as an ideal for a direction. Or giving rationale and analysis to a life where the radical critical thought makes you a social misfit, anyways. It can be interesting to be social hacking across the cultural layers of this garbage every caste uses to reinforce themselves, and many of us do achieve this, to different levels of effectiveness. But then again, will be driven by a will that is your own, or only reflect the desires mass-produced for the masses to follow? As for every caste there are different means and modes to attain what everyone in this society is after.

Doesn’t the wild one only contents in seeking power over their own existence? Why, otherwise, would they be seeking any larger power, if not for chasing the aims defined by the dominant power dynamics? For having the privileges they envy so much from any of the castes above them, or for « ruling in Hell, instead of serving in Paradise »?

Perhaps because such dynamics as the terrorism of the judicial system are hindering on this self-power. That the goal would not be to become yet another layer of judicial system, like the call-out culture appears to be doing.

There lies the importance of the initial thesis of this tension. That the Marxist and Marxist-leaning tendencies of the Left have been from the start adopting the class struggle analysis in a way as to brute-force the emancipation of people only through their own hierarchical systems. This is why they’ll always be confined, mentally-restrained, to the notion that any self-empowerment, self-defense, and liberation can only be attained through mass social avenues and means; as these reflect, more deeply, the need for empowerment of a more or less specific caste of «intelligent» educated middle-class people, over what they’ll always perceive as a mass of people who are in the dark, who need saviors or organizers or hot-blooded, loud-talking revolutionary leaders to pull them out of their politically-induced trance.

Not to say this was the case of enlightened, fearless rebels like Fred Hampton, Geronimo, Novatore or Harriet Tubman. These were in my opinion more like the feral ones that undermined the consolidated powers of their times, the society subjected to a predominant caste. Needless to say… you’ll also notice they were also not our well-known arrogant, power-hungry White college kids from the suburban middle-classes.

So the Marxists need this vague, Cartesian model for a social category — the class — that is inherently defined by a position within the production chain of Industrial Society. As in their view, one cannot be else than a Worker, or a Prole (and perhaps including the lumpen prole) in order to take part in this class struggle toward the liberation of all the Workers. But are these leaders, or organizers, ever been really the Workers they claim to be leading to liberation? Aren’t they instead positing for their own empowerment over the Workers, by the use of these Workers workforce to push for a change of power dynamics, where this intelligentsia caste attain a higher privileged status within the processes of production? In the neoliberal society the best they’ll do is to have well-paid white collar positions, perhaps even an entry into state politics within a minority party. Which doesn’t discount for the sleazy corruption of the lawyers and real-estate profiteers taking higher positions of power within the dominant parties. But, restating the obvious that I said earlier, they’re all chasing the same sausage, only through slightly different means and modes. And think about... if they’d, once again, come to terms with the whole capitalist state like the Soviets did, they’d have the highest positions in society!

So you are anticapitalist? Great. But “anticapitalist”, just like “antifa”, is a negative position, which doesn’t say much as the kind of world you want in the place of the existent order. What does it means to you in daily life, beyond a few protests and graffiti?

You are maybe communist? Super. And given it is still subversive thing in many parts of the Western world, this gives you a little of rebellious edge. But then again, whose communism? If you are only after the Commune then which commune are we talking about? The Communal form of property Marx himself told us about, that the Ancient Greeks invented, those brutally partiarchic, slave-owning landlords, who weren’t that different, actually from the Founding Fathers? The Commune of Friends, where all you need is to become a “Friend” in order to be included and treated as equal? So what is it you call a Friend, then?

My intent here is not to drag everyone in the mud of their own grandiose projects or claims (no matter how I’d love to!) but to be looking into what people are really after, and for whose specific interest. As, like a Stirner would say, as far as the Commune is not my own, or as long it is not knocking at my door for any friendly motives, it is strange to myself; it means nothing to me, as it is only to the benefit of a specific group of others.

Not only it is not so much benefiting to me, but a very vague mass of «proles», comrades or Friends that I may or may not be part of, depending on the analysis of the leading core group in charge of defining the social categories and their narratives (also known as the “ID politicians”). And only my being included as a proletarian comrade I may benefit from the leftovers of this nomenklatura. I do eat the leftovers of proles on a regular basis, as part of my means of survival and for secondary ecological aims, but it is never as retribution for serving under the wing of this social category.

The world is driven not by money, but by narratives and their representations.

There were times where men couldn’t live without God. Or without a hunt. Or without fire. Equally, a « world run by money » is a capitalist, materialist narrative of the late industrial age. Such narrative, just like any other, becomes existent due to its supportive system of power relations. Yet it won’t necessarily be meaningful… most often it won’t. If you let yourself be defined and driven by these, written and drawn by a group of others, you let yourself, again and again, be fooled and controlled by the group(s) enforcing it, then it will become an unavoidable fact of existence. Hence this group de facto becomes a caste above you... the hierarchs owning all the secrets of your forever-delayed liberation. Accepting them to define me is accepting the hinges of their control over me.

And let’s make it clear to some of my potential detractors, that the Marxist Left here was used only as example among many other iterations. The Far Right or Alt Right, as we could witness over the past few years, tends to be more successful these days at their games of gaining domination over yet another mass of (much) less educated/intelligent peoples for their own caste benefit. They are, after all, connected to specific groups — the old White supremacist aspect of the wealthy establishment — fighting to regain the power they apparently lost through the Post-War, and especially post-Civil Rights Era neoliberal order. Instead of the class, they’ll be using the more retrograde social categories of race and/or national identity. These were, after all, the first identity politics of the Modern world, in the republican, industrial, post-religious world where scientism and Nation-States purportedly replaced the old religious ideologies. The retrograde Alt Right, more classic liberal than actually conservative (and much less « libertarian »), equally got their own priests and popes of social justice, pandering on inherently shallow, brutish definitions of the «human» as if due to being older, or before, they were any more accurate or righteous than the recent «corruption» of the LGBTQ+, the Women and the non-White social identities, undermining their former, ages-old domi-nation over bodies. Are these new categories produced by the new Left and reproduced by the social media empires – led by White normative men, by the way — any more authentic or accurate? I doubt that.

The only social identity that is accurate, is yours, or mine. The question that you may represent, not the prêt-à-porter answer. That is the only one, removed from even the official citizen and corporate definition enforced by the state from shortly after your birth as physical living being- that can define you.

Who are you? Or what are you?

Am I, the author, in a position to know better than you? I only know, for sure, that you may not be what you pretend, but something more, or less, or else. You may even possibly exist!

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pokemon-ash-aus · 2 months ago

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I love these AUs. I came up with an Ash Au but given how much content is in the anime I never know where to start?

How do you do it? It's overwhelming almost

I choose what i want and go from there.

Most of the time i start from the beginning, i make it known that it's before or during Ash's Kanto journey.

But then you got the Cryptid AU, which i technically created during Unova because Ash and Pikachu are so foreign they were a hot topic at the time of his arrival. One being a foreign trainer and the other being an ultra rare pokemon within the region.

Or magical girl au, where Hero's ARE a thing in Kalos, one that is deliberately masked and having Mega Evooutions to help hide the initial pokemon as well. It was too good not too pass. Plus, Greninja to Ash-Greninja was magical girl coded so it was a must.

TA AU is self explanatory since Alola was the only thing with an active and full school run.

Sometimes you just slot it in where you want and go from there. You dont need to start at the start, and you dont have to handicap yourself for the sake of making sure it's linear. Just have fun with it.

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fallershipping · 9 months ago

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My Pokemon world "main game" story timeline starts with Porygon being created in 1995, though I don't know when the events of FRLG/RSE happen... An official writer said that Kanto/Hoenn stories have happened around the same time. I know for certain that the original RGBY Gameboy games were 1996... And hilariously, SM Red wears a 1996 shirt, which always made me think he's possibly less than or equal to age 31.

But Gameboy Kanto/Johto being 1996 and 1999 (The games mimic real life release dates) ... Makes me curious as to whether the Advanced Games follow that notion? Otherwise, Advanced-Kanto's timeline means that Red began his journey in 2002, perhaps?

This is why I always have the floating 15-20 years between Kanto/Hoenn Stories to Alola. Though with Red's 1996 T-Shirt and Porygon's dex entry, it feels too intentional to be throwaways for 20th Anniversary jokes...

When Anabel was mentioned to have wound up in Alola 10 years prior to the events of SunMoon, people incorrectly assumed that this was the start of the timeline and that there's exactly ten years between Kanto-Alola when it's certainly not the case. Even then, she's completely off the table for timeline writing because she was canonically in Ultra Space for an implied long amount of time (enough to gather an INSANE amount of wormhole energy, apparently)

Even then, Junichi Masuda said that they don't focus TOO MUCH on a timeline because it overcomplicates things... But I feel like they do have some kind of linear timeline going on with what they've written and hinted.

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demdozeguys · 5 months ago

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Strap in for a long one, because it's time for:

REVIEWING AND RANKING EVERY GAME I GOT FROM THE STEAM SUMMER SALE

ramblings under the cut:

UNRANKED: ULTRA STREET FIGHTER IV

okay look I know I said I'd be ranking all of these but putting a fighting game up against six linear-progression single-player adventure type games feels a bit unfair.

as for whether I liked it: yeah it's alright. it's street fighter, it's fun. only time will tell how much my brother and I will get out of it, but I'm already feeling like I don't like it quite as much as 5. how much of that is due to 4 not having Urien is anyone's guess.

#6: CROW COUNTRY

I'm gonna be honest I didn't fuck with this game nearly as much as I thought I would.

maybe it's because I'm new to the genre. maybe it's because I've been spoiled by autosave. or maybe it's just because I can't aim to save my life. but losing upwards of 20 minutes of progress every time some creature I failed to hit or juke tagged me one too many times got frustrating pretty fast.

I didn't hate my time with Crow Country. the environments are gorgeous, the story kept me intrigued, and filling out my mental list of "oh shit I can go here now"s was still satisfying. if this is your thing don't let me dissuade you, I just wasn't built for it.

#5: KAMIKO

Kamiko is decent fun, but there's not really a whole lot to say about it. It's a short and sweet zelda-esque game where the meat of the playtime comes from trying to go through it as fast as possible, and as you'll see later I happen to enjoy going fast. enjoyable, but not super meaty. if you like routing and time management give it a shot.

#4: PONY ISLAND

Alright, this is where we get into the Good Shit.

Pony Island is a game in which you play a game called Pony Island made by The Devil From The Bible. every few minutes there's some new weird meta setpiece to keep you on your toes, plus the code puzzles and pony sections between are solid fun on their own. it's a great time. and if you're interested, there's a pretty solid reward for getting 100%.

if I had to dock points, it didn't seem to have much in the way of replayability, but that's not a huge dealbreaker. I really need to get my hands on Inscryption now.....

#3: SPOOKY'S JUMPSCARE MANSION REMASTERED

I'm not normally big on horror but Spooky's kept me coming back. despite going into it already knowing what all the specimens did, they managed to keep me on the edge of my seat because you never know when they're going to show up. combine the legitimate building terror with an offbeat and self-aware sense of humor and you have a damn fun package.

it's worth noting that as of writing this, I've only completed the main story. the DLC campaigns probably won't affect the final ranking? but I have a feeling they'll make me appreciate the game more.

#2: PEPPER GRINDER

Pepper Grinder is fucking awesome.

The level design is great, the soundtrack rips, and just moving around with the core gimmick of "what if you could drill and then jump out" is so good. I just really wish there was more of it.

I was able to get all the major in-level collectibles and reach the end in under 3 hours. the bulk of my playtime came from the time trials, which do manage to hit a sweet spot of encouraging you to push yourself without requiring CBT perfection. demolishing the gold medal on the final boss took me well over an hour's worth of attempts and may have been one of the most viscerally satisfying challenges I've ever completed in a game.

Pepper Grinder is really, really cool. But if it had another world's worth of levels it would be even cooler.

#1: CHICORY: A COLORFUL TALE

Man. I fucking love Chicory.

The vibes are immacculate. The story made me really feel for these gay little animals. The soundtrack is delightful (Lena Raine, everybody!). The exploration is rewarding. The painting mechanics made me actively want to go back to areas I'd already been to and recolor them better than I did originally, which is like. not something most games do. You can even draw penises everywhere if you want. There's something for everybody.

I'm having a hard time putting down exactly what made me fall head over heels for this game as much as I did - especially when I wasn't expecting to going into it. Maybe it was just in the right place at the right time. No matter how it cheated the system, Chicory is easily the best game I picked up.

And that's that. this was my first time doing something like this (especially on tumblr) so it felt kinda weird but idk lmk if I planted any seeds in your brain

#dem.txt #actual blogging #steam summer sale #blugh maintagging is weird #can you believe I almost put down hashtag gaming. like what kind of tool

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heliopauseentertainments · 6 months ago

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At The End Of A Long Day

A birthday present for @tarklesbehindthescenes. Happy birthday!

Continuity: G1

Rating: General Relationships: Galvatron/Rodimus

Characters: Rodimus, Galvatron

Warnings: Alternate Universe, Vignette, Established Relationship, Fluff, Cuddling, Not Beta Red

Summary: In which Rodimus is exhausted by the burden of leadership.

Crossposting: AO3 | Dreamwidth

Fic under cut. See AO3 for complete notes.

The sun shone in through the windows of Rodimus’s private quarters. Well, not solely his, the ones he shared these days with Galvatron, who was out at the moment. He had no clue when his partner would come back.

The light formed an accusing spotlight on the back of his head.

Worse, the chronometer on the wall flashed the time, indicating that it was only early afternoon.

Yet Rodimus already felt so exhausted, his limbs heavy and his mind sluggish.

After finishing with his morning meetings, he had rolled home… and promptly flopped prone onto the ground.

He turned his head away from the wall as though not looking could negate the reality of linear time.

Rodimus had, over time, gotten used to the idea that, to some extent, he would always be involved in keeping a fractured, nearly barren Cybertron together, despite having tried to separate himself from the burden of the Matrix whenever possible. It had been difficult to accept the immense, inescapable responsibility that he had never wanted in the first place.

If only that were all of it.

After the wisdom in the relic had been drained to push back against the Hate-Plague, the added task of refilling it with new wisdom also weighed him down. Only a small seed of light had been restored to the chamber.

Most days were an uphill battle, but that was hardly new for Rodimus. Life just tended to be a Sisyphean task.

At least these days, that task tended to involve fewer battles and more administrative pressure. He could do without the tedium and public appearances and approvals and interviews and blah blah blah—If only he could liquefy and saturate the floor.

Then again, given that the floor was solid, Ultra Magnus would likely just come by and mop him up, wring the resulting Rodimus juice out into a bucket, and then prop that bucket up in the chair in Rodimus’s office. He would probably even tape a light-pen to the rim of the bucket for Rodimus’s “convenience.”

An absolutely terrible way to go, he thought, pressing the side of his face into the cold, metal floor.

And they’d write it on his epitaph: “Forever Dedicated To The Betterment of Cybertron”

The bust, of course, just to rub salt into the wound of his exhaustion, would be a lovingly sculpted damned bucket, in beautiful black granite, with a faithfully rendered taped-on pen.

He heard a door slide open behind him. It was probably the front door, but he couldn’t be sure without looking. Looking would require moving and he had little to no interest in doing that at the moment.

However, just in case whoever had walked in thought him dead, Rodimus groaned horribly to dispel any worries about having stumbled upon the corpse of the vaunted leader of the Autobots. He wasn’t dead, not yet anyway.

“I have returned from the day’s battles!”

It was just Galvatron then; that was fine. He had never been one to fear a half-dead body. Or a full-dead body. Any body, actually.

Rodimus managed to slide one arm over his head to give his partner a tired thumbs up.

“Welcome back,” he mumbled into the ground. “Good job.”

With the reintegration of the Decepticons into mainstream society, Galvatron’s role these days was more ceremonial than practical. Rodimus was often envious of how little paperwork he had to do. Public appearances were the mainstay of his duties. At least Galvatron, being a blowhard, liked the sound of his own voice. That would make it a less tedious duty for him personally.

“Rodimus, why are you on the ground?” Rodimus, still not able to see Galvatron, could hear the heavy stomp of his footfalls as he approached… and then the creak of his old joints as he squatted down. “Where is your dignity?”

“Uh… Misplaced it this morning.” Assuming Rodimus had had any dignity to start with was very generous of he, so he decided to humor Galvatron a little.

“I shall graciously help you locate it—“

He probably ought to intervene before Galvatron’s sometimes tenuous grasp on reality slipped. He did better these days, but best not to chance it.

“Galvatron, I was joking. It was a joke—”

“Perhaps it has been stolen then.” A strong hand pressed into his shoulder, as though to comfort him, to assure him that all was not lost in the course of some grand quest. “I shall sally forth and reclaim it for you from the smoldering corpse of the would-be thief.”

How, uh, valorous.

“No,” Rodimus said, “you really don’t need to do that.”

“But why?”

“You’re being incredibly literal again—Look, I’m just tired. It’s fine. Really, it’s fine.”

Said a mech lying prone on the floor and having spent untold minutes wishing to ooze into it. Totally fine and normal behavior and goals.

He could hear Galvatron humming with doubt.

“Are you dying?”

Before Rodimus could say anything in protest, a heavy weight pressed along his side before arms rolled him over. The next thing he knew, he was both cradled into a tight embrace and also pressed into the floor. Good thing he had never been claustrophobic.

“This is hardly a warrior’s death!”

Despite being a somewhat squished, he was comforted by the embrace, as though the hug would keep the worst of the exhaustion at bay. If anyone could intimidate a sensation, it would be Galvatron.

“No, Galvatron, it’s… it’s an accountant’s death and I’ve always hated math.”

Galvatron’s grip around his torso tightened, but not uncomfortably so. Not yet anyway. It happened sometimes when he got a little too… enthusiastic in his affections. The guy never did anything by half-measures, both a blessing and a curse depending on the day.

“I forbid you to fall to such a pathetic enemy.”

There was no winning any complaint otherwise; he knew that by now. Best to just give up and let Galvatron have his… whatever this was. Victory, maybe? That didn’t seem quite right, but it didn’t really matter.

Rodimus relaxed into the sense of safety and concern.

“Alright, alright; I won’t. You’ve convinced me,” he conceded.

Galvatron scoffed, as though the very idea of an alternative was laughable.

“Of course, I did.”

And, frankly, Rodimus felt a little better already.

#fic #one shot #maccadam #g1 #rodimus #galvatron #galvarod

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voidhollow · 3 months ago

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Chapter four of black myth wukong started with darkness and spiders and other bugs with heaps of poison and a rather confusing map area. Lots of ways to go and things to miss out on. The upper area was still infested in its own weird ways, but was much brighter, the secret area was pretty. I like how the first boss you come across in the secret area will attack the last boss if you don’t kill him, I tried to kill it, but got wreaked. The last boss of chapter four was pretty intense and mildly annoying, using the vassal from the secret area helped a lot.

Going into chapter five I didn’t know what to expect and it’s been wild. Chapter five has zero chill, lots of fire and aggression. I think it’s the most linear and the shortest chapter so far. The secret area boss is insane, ultra aggressive and has three different areas you can fight it in over the course of the battle.

I’m currently level 91 and have done no farming for levels, about 51 hours into the game. I’ve been very throughly exploring each area. Still having a lot of fun and looking forward to hopefully getting all the trophies.

I think a good break down for the game phases is as follows: chapters one & two are early game, three is mid game, four is mid to late game, five is late game and six is end game.

#gaming #black myth wukong #black myth wukong spoilers #my thoughts

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dotthings · 6 months ago

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Soooooo tired of people who think the classic CW era had no problems so no one is allowed to speak against it. The idealization of the classic CW era needs to end. But I agree Nexstar CW is a special level of "wow, how did you manage to make this tire fire even worse, bravo."

Being real, it is about business. Nextar bought a broadcast network that never made a profit. I get that people loved the shows. I loved them too. I'm irritated and refuse to pretend it was all sunshine and roses, I saw the damage CW classic did again and again. But at least there was an abundance of scripted genre TV and it was fun--uneven quality and the various PR tire fires-- but a lot more fun at a party than Nexstar CW.

So Nexstar bought this broadcast network that never made a profit and had to make it profitable. They did that via deep, deep cost cutting and sacrificing scripted originals and relying more and more on ultra cheap programming. And I just would not want to be the tv network that managed to burn all of J2M.

But people need to look at the realities of linear broadcast network TV right now and understand that Nexstar CW is not the only one who is going to have to lean this direction and scripted TV is going to get sacrificed first.

#dot trolls the media

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the-helixverse · 1 year ago

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Medusa-Class Battleship

Creator: Thai'Qul Length: 798 Meters Width: 378 Meters (Widest Point); 70 meters (Narrowest Point) Propulsion: Nuclear Pulse Drive; Five Fusion Drive Thrusters Crew Complement: 5,000-7,000 (Normal complement); 10,000 (Max. Capacity) Radiator Type: Solid-State/Droplet Armaments:

x8 40mm Point Defense Cannons (PDCs) (Aft)

x4 Cargo/Torpedo Bays (Aft)

x2000 5-kiloton driver warheads (Aft)

x4 Ultra-Relativistic Electron Beam (UREB) Cannons (Bow)

Interior

Because the Thai'Qul are an aquatic species, their ships are unique in being almost entirely filled with water. This pulls triple duty in protecting the occupants from intense G-forces, radiation and heat; providing resources for the fusion reactor and torpedoes, and in the event of a hull breach, lost water can be more easily retrieved than air. The consequence of this is that it increases the ship's overall mass, requiring more energy for any kind of acceleration or deceleration. This is also another reason for their ruthless pragmatism: the lack of air pockets outside the cargo sections prevents them from easily taking prisoners or taking larger ships aboard.

Creators

An average Thai'Qul male. Roughly 85% of the species is male, carrying out tasks for the rarely-seen matriarchs, who outsize them significantly. On ships such as the Medusa-class, prepubescent matriarchs- referred to colloquially as "Countesses"- serve the role of captains and admirals.

Strategic Overview

If there's any way to describe the Thai'Qul military doctrine, it would be ruthless pragmatism. Rather than engaging in widespread power projection, heavier ships are mostly concentrated within their own systems, while smaller vessels are the most commonly encountered. These represent the first line of defense, focused on patrolling defense perimeters.

Should a perimeter be broken and an enemy force infiltrate a Thai'Qul system, either by evading or destroying lighter vessels, this is when battleships such as the Medusa-class are deployed. This typically follows barrages of Thai'Qul frigates and corvettes, which will try to guide invaders into designated kill zones, where the Medusa-class will engage them at close range, such as near large asteroids, space stations or ring systems.

While these battleships lack high speed or fine maneuvering, they make up for it with powerful defenses and overwhelming firepower, particularly their UREBs. Once the invader's shields and other defenses have been exhausted, should they refuse to surrender, attacks from these beams will irradiate and effectively sterilize the target.

This is done because, rather than simply blowing up bellicose ships, the Thai'Qul will always try to salvage as much technology and information from them as possible, either to assess motivations or reverse-engineer whatever they discover. Of course, should a ship surrender instead, the Thai'Qul will gladly accept, taking the time to analyze captured ships just as thoroughly.

This doctrine has proven to be quite effective in multiple engagements and ensured invasions of their systems are rare.

Ship Diagram

The Bow Shield is a large dome entirely covered in ablative heat-resistant armor.

The nose of the craft houses the four UREB cannons, which cover a large hemispherical field. While the beams lose effectiveness over time or when fired at an angle, time dilation effects prevent them from completely dissipating over longer ranges. Maximum energy from the bremsstrahlung resulting from impact has been measured at over 5,000 Sieverts.

The UREBs are only possible via the battleship's length, where the linear accelerator (Linac) runs along the central axis of the ship.

The Medusa-Class doesn't have a designated bridge or command module, but instead 36 large windowless spheres, where most of the crew resides. Commands, controls and sensor readings are instead performed using holographic display interfaces that crew members can pull up at any moment. This ensures damage to one area of the ship will not compromise control, and that key staff can be moved into the interior.

The ship uses a combination of solid-state and droplet cooling with liquid lithium, firing the molten coolant into space, where it condenses into larger drops before being recaptured in a dish section for recirculation. Additional radiators vent excess heat to prevent the lithium from completely vaporizing. In times of duress, this coolant can be used as everything from makeshift flares to additional thrusters.

The aft section consists of a large octagonal cylinder, which houses bay sections designed to be drained of water so cargo, torpedoes and other craft can be sent into space. This is also where the ship's fusion reactor is housed.

The PDCs, nicknamed "Barnacles," allow the ship to fire at targets behind or beside the ship.

Contrary to popular belief, the piston supports are only painted blue and not transparent, though they are full of water to help cushion the impact following a pulse.

The pistons and their shock absorbers are attached to a set of electric motors, which extract a small, but not insubstantial amount of power from every pulse.

The Drive Cone is fitted with flexible rings and is even colored bright white to take advantage of as much radiation pressure as possible. Usage of this drive is why the battleship can't be used in a planetary orbit, as the risk of creating radiation belts poses a threat to orbital infrastructure.

#the-helixverse #ekpyrosis #thai'qul #spaceship #worldbuilding #my art #hard science fiction #hard sci fi #ship design #project orion #worldbuilding art #scifi art

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hypnagogics · 6 months ago

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PLEASE MAKE A PART 2 TO UR NERD ELLIE THING PLEASE IM BEGGING WE NEED IT I NEED IT PLEASE

edit: hi.

OKAY OKAY OKAY OKAY GOSH 😭 im trying LMAO. i feel like that was kind of a one time hit, like every single time don't plan on something doing well...especially in tloutopia’s current economy LMFAO. not sure ima do a linear thing, but im gonna make "pathetic/ultra loser!ellie" like it's own au. or try to. wait no not an au but a collection there we go heh. ugh another hallway crush!ellie situation where i gotta make it complicated why am i like this. but the notes are making me all teehee, so ill give yall loads more of her 🤭 she's too much fun i can't not LMAO. SO THAT MEANS KEEP ALL THE LOSER!ELLIE SCENARIOS/IDEAS/REQS COMIN AS MUCH AS YALL WANT <3

#pluto's mail ☆

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leathr-blr · 1 year ago

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i really wish i understood the appeal of milo murphys law but i just can't get into it :-( I've tried watching it but it's just so painfully mid

(i’m very critical about mml here but i end it positively don’t worry. essay under the cut)

i watched milo murphy’s law with my best friend and roommate ( @herbi-cide ) which gave me a more positive experience with the show as a whole but there were so many times were it just felt like a slog. i hesitate to call it “filler” because it’s a pretty episodic show (though theres much more of a plot than pnf) but i don’t particularly find the laid back contained story episodes very engaging or funny most of the time. i’ve seen people (KEYAN *shakes fist*) say this roots from a lack luster premise, but i think that a premise is always as good as it’s execution. and a lot of mml executes like ass. it is straight up disastrous. like milo murphy himself walked through the writers room one day leaving the writers to salvage whatever scraps were left among the wreckage

im really not confident in dwampy’s ability to write a plot-driven show, i think it’s obvious that they’re comfort zone lies in episodic comedies. which is awesome, we all have our skills and comfort zones, phineas and ferb is so great at what it does for a reason. but i think this is very much to mml’s detriment. there is so much set up for great storylines and likable characters, and so many good ideas, but like, either they didn’t have time to do anything with them or just straight up didn’t know how. it is genuinely impressive how boring mml can get given its cast and world

i think people blame pnf too much for the decline of mml in season 2, doofenshmirtz is insufferable throughout most of it and all, but i think the pnf shoehoring hints to a larger problem that mml always had. it feels as if it’s uncomfortable with its own characters and world, like it’s afraid to commit, and i think that is very much dwampy’s sitcom-oriented writing style shining through in an ugly way

i see people praise mml for its story, but because of dwampy’s aversion to writing linear storytelling, it definitely ranges on the plot-light side of television. it’s not quite a sitcom, but there’s really not much story progression happening aside from a few world building episodes and big arcs like the aliens or the pistachions (which phineas and ferb also does better in the meap saga let’s be real, at least for the alien arc)

i don’t like comparing mml to phineas and ferb, but one fails so hard at the things the other achieves in spades that it’s kind of impossible not to compare them. i wouldn’t mind mml’s shitty storytelling as much if the plot-light episodes (which is most of them) were compelling. phineas and ferb has just as good as a premise as murphy’s law, if not less interesting, and does the character-driven sitcom filler infinitely better in every single way. it is rare i’ll ever be bored watching phineas and ferb, and ik comedy is subjective, but i think a lot of us can agree that phineas and ferb is overall just wittier and funnier in general than mml. mml is kind of forgettable! i’ll be real! i love it but it’s forgettable

i want mml to be its own unique thing sooo bad but especially in the second half it feels like there’s no reason i shouldn’t just turn it off and go watch phineas and ferb. it’s also frustrating because i know mml has the capability to be good, because the pistachion arc is gripping and well structured and generally super entertaining (one of the best experiences i’ve had watching a show with a friend), and there’s a lot of fantastic episodes and moments in there. which is why i’m so harsh on it, it’s disappointing!!

there’s dozens and dozens of ultra talented people who worked on milo murphy’s law (i’ve gone through so many storyboards and portfolios to look for more details about the artists who worked on it so can confirm these people are awesome) so i can only wonder if studio conditions / time crunches / other factors (disney bullshitery) had anything to do with how spectacularly mml fails in a lot of regards, but there’s an upside, and this is the biggest appeal of murphy’s law for me:

the milo murphy’s law fandom and by extent the dakavendish fandom is one of the best fandoms i’ve ever seen hands down, some of the most dedicated and passionate writers, artists and general fans continue to be active in the community and create awesome shit that is leagues better than anything in the source material. because mml presents so many good concepts but doesn’t deliver, it leaves a lot of room for fans to expand on them and make their own amazing stuff. and because they’re such a small community, and milo murphy’s law is widely remembered as “that show that came after phineas and ferb” or “that show keyan carlile didn’t like” they are very close knit and very very friendly. nicest ppl you’ll ever meet

if it weren’t for the fandom i would not give a single shit about milo murphy’s law, but the fans make the show and it’s characters so much more than they are in the source material. so no wonder i had such a good time watching it when i had my roommate to talk about it with! community adds context to art in a way that can change it entirely, especially in the age of the internet

so i will always recommend murphy’s law with that in mind. also, think of it this way: at least it’s not hamster and gretel. i’ll stand by my opinion that show sucks LMAO

#milo murphys law #dwampyverse #asks #ask #thank you:#anonymous #keyan carlile fight me in the ring #it’s okay i love his videos #but i’ll still fight him in the ring

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