Some Nature, Some Fandom

I really miss the endless ocean games. I usually don’t tag things thoroughly, but if asked to tag something specifically probably will.

[francismcdougal]

Behold, the fruit of my labors! A fish quiz!

Fish are less one group of animals and more several distinct groups lumped together because they kinda look similar. Find out which one you

[hungry-skeleton]

I think the biggest thing mascot horror things need to get a grip on is the reasonable balance of cute/creepy. The mascot in question needs to be cute enough to realistically be for children but scary enough to actually make for effective horror. Most games always lean too far in either direction and idk maybe it's just me but immersion with these kinds of games are important for me to actually find enjoyment in them.

[hungry-skeleton]

Can anyone hear me

[hungry-skeleton]

[hungry-skeleton]

GUYS...

[mavenmemnon]

[elucubrare]

i was on the way to the movies & i saw an old guy with a piece of wood over his shoulders. it was huge -- a pole several feet long with a kind of wide fan at the end of it. and i said "what the hell is that?" and he looked at me and had this kind of ear to ear grin, and he said "what do you mean 'what the hell is that'?" and he sat back on his heels, still with that big smile like the sun spilling from the underside of a cloud and waited for me to answer and i said "i mean i don't know why you're walking around with that thing, whatever it is." and he laughed and put down his pole and kinda clapped me on the shoulder. "can i get you a drink?" he said. and i said "no, the show's in ten minutes," and he said "oh? what are you seeing?" and i said "christopher nolan's odyssey, i'm pretty excited," and he sighed and picked up his oar and kept walking.

[beniial]

[werechicken-deactivated20241121]

The first three are literal genetically enhanced space warriors and the last one is just some twitchy nerd who got lucky

Besides Samus would cream them all

[purplepokili]

your mind

[tlgtw]

Isaac's First Good Day

[sakhanweaver]

LET CLANNERS WEAR THEIR CEREMONIAL MASKS MORE OFTEN PLEASE CATALYST

[is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not]

The Harmony Gold lawsuit and its consequences have been a disaster for the Battletech fandom and franchise ever since

[is-the-battlemech-cool-or-not]

To expand on this, a lot of the wacky whimsy of early BT was tied up in references to other things, and kind of a level of camp. Team Banzai, the Fighting Urukhai, the names of the background Wolf's Dragoons characters (hi there, Lieutenant C. Aznable of Assault Lance 1, Srisubadh's Company, Zeta Battalion...), the 42nd Adder Cavaliers (aka "The Answer"), the Black Knight's entry in TRO:3039...

But after the HG lawsuit hit, FASA began purging BT of references, or at least ceasing/minimizing mentions of them. And that shift began to create and/or was symptomatic of an internal culture shift towards taking things more seriously. So we lost a ton of the more overt references to things that were wacky and fun — they still do happen but with less frequency and certainly with much less spotlighting. This also went hand-in-hand with a drive to get less deeply detailed with things. The level of depth and detail of the original House books from the early 90s has not been equalled since, despite the fact that those sourcebooks cover an era over a century and a quarter into the past of the setting, as of now.

All this culminated, imo, in MW5 Clans, where on multiple occasions we should have seen the Clanners in full ceremonial regalia, but instead got them in dress uniforms at best... for the foreground characters. The generic background characters got barely anything to distinguish them from one another — take for example, the conclave scene in the opening of Wolves of Tukayyid; we ought to have seen the Vipers and the Falcons and the Nova Cats and the Diamond Sharks in their uniforms, but instead anyone that isn't the Wolves, Bears, amd Jaguars get essentially identical models with very little detail, and while we DO see Khan Lincoln Osis, he gets zero lines and is mostly also in the background. They could have done full justice to the scene, but they didn't.

And yes, I do understand there are things like budgets and deadlines and all that, but its just a shame. So, all aaid and done, while I do applaud PGI for going as hard as they did to recreate the uniforms and general look of things, they stopped short of the full send. And its another example of the wilder, wackier aspects of the setting getting cut in favor of broader appeal, and it's just sad to me.

[lakesbian]

ive just seen the american psycho characters drawn as my little ponies and honestly i dont think patrick should have been given that cd as his cutie mark. i think you're doing it wrong if you're not making him a perpetual blank flank

[lakesbian]

look if you're gonna draw characters as my little ponies you have to remember that the cutie mark can't just be any old imagery you associate with them. it has to be Representative. it's their Unique Characteristic. to quote the pony wiki page i just googled, "Twilight and Applejack point out in Call of the Cutie how lacking a mark means that ponies still get to experience 'the thrill of discovering who they are and what they're meant to be'." there's narrative shit going on here there's Themes. and patrick bateman is NOT unique. he has NOT discovered who he is or what he's meant to be. the end monologue of the book is literally about how he has absolutely nothing going for him in this regard & is simply a vacant, hollow person merely vacuously gesturing at the idea of having depth. and when he rants about music, that's what he's doing there, too. his lyrical analysis is shallow/vaguely inaccurate summaries at best and completely warped at worst. everything he has to say about music--and in general--is intensely fixated on commodities and on appearing normal and intelligent while being entirely devoid of any intelligent or individual thought. so no, his cutie mark is not music. mr "missing that hip to be square is about making fun of conformist squares & proudly proclaiming that its actually about how fucking Awesome it is to be conformist and consumerist" does NOT have a fucking cd cutie mark. He's a blank flank. He has no unique identity. There is no future for him. There is no self identity. He's a fucking blank flank. okay? sorry i got a little passionate about this. there is no exit and he has no cutie mark

[lakesbian]

@epeboch see, I agree, but also, being a blank flank is against the social norm, so I imagine he has a fake one that he wears.

ok now this is important intellectual discussion about the subject. i agree i was personally imagining him like. always having it covered with pants or something. but he would have a fake cutie mark. he would totally get a fake cutie mark tattooed or something in my little american psycho world. in fanart however if this cannot be briefly conveyed then i think for the sake of clarity with regards to his character it needs to be blank. just so its clear he doesnt have one

[letourswordsdecide]

After the first time he chops somepony up with an axe he stands there, feeling nothing, no catharsis, but he still can't stop himself from turning to look at his reflection.

It's still blank. He looks at the axe as though it is the thing that has betrayed him.

[xenogears]

Shout out to the (many) times I got called an elitist gatekeeper for saying that the only real way to fully understand a work of fiction is to experience it firsthand and that summaries and reviews are not a replacement for that

[the-lincyclopedia]

Me, reading the first 80% of the post: What do you mean, "experience it firsthand"? How am I supposed to join the Hunger Games or go on the Odyssey?

Me, reading the final clause of the post: Oh, you literally meant that people have to read the book/listen to the audiobook in order to fully understand it. And people got mad. Oh dear.

[marisatomay]

To quote what a friend of mine said after she watched Jerry Maguire (1996) for the first time, having thought she knew what it was about because of its cultural ubiquity: “you miss a lot of a movie when you don’t watch it”

[prokopetz]

There's a certain subset of freeform RP fans who seem to be convinced that freeform RP is some sort of esoteric knowledge and not, like, one of the most popular online hobbies in existence, and that tabletop roleplaying fans only do what they do because they're literally unaware that freeform RP is an option, which produces the very entertaining phenomenon of freeform RP advocates blundering into tabletop RPG discussions fully expecting to be received like the protagonist of a Jack Chick tract blowing the unbelievers' minds because it turns out they've genuinely never heard of Jesus.

[william-s-churros]

i think i saw a movie like this once

[maidslime]

Ok I needed to know the story and

Guy makes a really stupid decision and gets in a car accident -> no real damage from accident but insurance goes up -> starts beating himself up over his stupid decision -> gets depressed -> starts to realize he's single and had crash been worse he'd die alone -> realizes he's never had a relationship or even a crush and starts wondering what he'd want out of a relationship -> starts to realize he doesn't really like girls so he thinks he must be gay -> realizes he likes girls and boys about the same amount, so he must be bi -> later realizes that "same amount" is none at all -> he's ace

[pokemonheritageposts]

on multiple occasions i have seen people on socials excited for palworld 1.0 and it has taken me a moment to realize they aren't doing a bit and are genuinely excited

[pokemonheritageposts]

[a-mysterious-man]

Do you know nothing about capitalism. This is coming from an avid anti-estabishment. More competition is good for us. This is a marathon, not a fucking sprint. Read a book.

[pokemonheritageposts]

hi! thank you for commenting. i know more than you. the point of this post is that Palworld is not competition.

[pokemonheritageposts]

see, here's the thing: it is absolutely possible to create a monster capturing game that could compete with Pokemon. It wouldn't win, it wouldn't even come close, the sheer market dominance of Nintendo and The Pokemon Company is too overpowering for any competitor to have a reasonable chance of doing that.

The problem is that nobody is going to do that because every attempt to do so is an attempt to compete with the superficial elements of what Pokemon is now, rather than following the how and why that led to Pokemon to become what it is. The objective they are chasing is how to compete with Pokemon, which is no objective at all. The only way to create a true competitor is to build the equivalent to Pokemon again from first principles.

There are plenty of other good monster catching games (as people have mentioned in the notes) and if anything we could do with more of them - it's an underexplored genre IMO. But Palworld isn't that. Palworld is Pokemon as imagined by a modern gamer who believes Pokemon should have completely altered its gameplay style to match modern trends. It's the sandbox gameplay loop soup idea of what Pokemon should be. It's slop. It's the gaming equivalent of a protest vote.

[richard-eeee]

Patroclus is such a bitch, I love him so much

{Excerpt from Robert Fitzgerald's translation of Homer's Iliad, Book 16}

{Left to right: Hector, Kebriones/Cebriones, Patroclus}

References used:

This illustration by Angus McBride for the chariot and horses!

Also used this website to illustrate Achilles' armour!

Achilles Thorax (A version) - Hellenic Armors

Εντυπωσιακό Ολομεταλλικό σύνολο Μυκηναϊκής Πανοπλίας του 15ου π.Χ αιώνα βασισμένο στην μοναδική σωζόμενη πανοπλία της εποχής του Μπρούτζου,

[maid-photographer]

The more I get back into doing creative stuff the more I understand that one Fujimoto quote

[malpensante]

[letatlin]

for anyone wondering about the second quote:

[iraffiruse]

[tim-official]

see every time i see this status i get angry because i’ve played through literally every scenario in rct1 and there is no place where this is a thing. there is never more than one park per map. and in rct2 you can’t make that happen i the scenario editor either. it is not remotely within the game’s functionality to simulate two discrete parks and these games were coded in assembly for christ sake so it’s not like someone modded it in by adding the line “int const TOTAL_NUM_POSSIBLE_PARKS = 2;”. there is no conceivable way this post is anything close to true and even though i know how writing all this out reflects upon me as a person and even though i know exactly how meaningless and trifling of a takedown attempt this is on some random facebook screencap with hundreds of thousands of notes im going to post it anyway because i’m too petty to have any say in the matter

[demilypyro]

Actually, screw it. Have the entire video. This is what Monster Hunter is about

[pretty-prince-lulu]

me: hey what are the spoils on the last raid my dwarves: ten horses and also ten horses. me: weird that you say it like that when its split by gender but okay. next squad, what was your take my dwarves: an opossum, an opossum and twelve horses. me: more horses. whee. okay. next? my dwarves: three lynx, three lynx, five horses, eight horses me: BIT HORSE HEAVY TODAY AREN'T WE. next squad my dwarves: me: that's a real short looking list. what's on it my dwarves: me: it better not b my dwarves: horse

[seventyeight-moose]

Just saw "Why did some knights only armour their arms" and I'm just

[seventyeight-moose]

In reference to later surcoats like this

[seventyeight-moose]

Girl I don't know how to convey this to you but. They wore armour under surcoat. It's a pretty loose garm you can just kind of wear armour under it and you're fine.

[seventyeight-moose]

I feel like alot of armour misconceptions are caused by people not fully thinking through the practicality of it. Like

People just kind of. Not bothering to think about what material japanese armour was made of (iron, it was colourful because they laquered it for decoration and moisture resistance/rust protection)

Full plate + shields (plate broadly obselesces shields, hence why by the ~15th century forwards a knight or man at arms would more likely be with a staff weapon than a sword and shield. Though small guige-mounted shields still existed at this time. This harness is a good example of that.)

Kind of just. Forgetting that history is really long and things evolved or changed over time. (People are often not satisfied when the answer to "How did x period deal with y threat?" being "by becoming z period" more often than not)

Or Hell some ppl are surprised by the idea that armour. Like. Works. And is very good at its job. And was made by very very clever people. Who designed it to fit a purpose very well.

[seventyeight-moose]

but yeah if the harness has articulated plates defending the arms it's safe to assume they also have the relatively far easier to make yet far more important for protection breastplate on too.

General rule of thumb, the head is the first thing you armour, then the chest, then the hands, then the arms, then the lower leg, then the upper leg. BROADLY this is the pattern people followed in history. (The choice of which parts to be armoured being a question of budget and how much you're willing to be encumbered. Anyone who could afford it and was on a horse would wear like. A full set of plate armour. This is why all your heavily-armoued historical units were all noblemen cavalry that's the main niche that a full-body covering would arise in.)

[qsycomplainsalot]

"Studded leather" being people misunderstanding what a brigandine is based on looks alone.

[qsycomplainsalot]

You can shove a vacuum formed plastic breastplate under a surcoat made of upholstery fabric and it'll look better than the average "medieval" outfit in these shows. You can do those things for cheap you just have to be smart about it.

[taraxippos]

There is definitely a phenomena where people try SO hard to avoid anthropomorphism they end up looping around into this quasi-religious stance that humans have some essential non-biological quality that sets us apart from other animals. Like being so cautious about how you describe emotion experienced by a nonhuman animal that you go "that animal is not 'happy' it's just demonstrating a response to positive stimuli and receiving chemical reward signals" as if that's not also what human emotion is at the fundamental level.