Sometimes you love a game mechanic that is understandably rare. For me, that's enemies that are stronger than they appear at first glance.
In Resident Evil 4 and other RE games, you don't necessarily know which Ganados is going to have its head burst into a Plaga upon death. This keeps the action from getting stale, keeps you on your toes. RE9 continues this tradition with the Blisterheads.
My absolute favorite example of this mechanic is in Sifu, which I consider one of the best pure action games. It truly nails that action movie feeling when a mook you think you're about to steamroll blocks your deathblow and knocks you back, now shimmering with an elite enemy's healthbar and moveset. That is kickass. That really gets the juices flowing.
An Ultraviolent Tropical Gothic Tabletop Role-Playing Game.
You play as Wanderers in a Dead World reanimated by the necromancer named Neoliberalism and the Godnamed Capital.
As Wanderers, you will travel far and wide, mastering technicks, magicks, and experiencing Reality so that you perform Spirit Cultivation to become stronger and stronger. For what purpose? Is up to you. But you will need to fight, lie, steal, cheat, kill, cooperate, save, love, and be human if you want to survive a world that is trying to convert The People into nothing but Labor.
Wanderers are an age-old literary character. The traveling xia enacting justice to those without it. The cowboy coming into town having to face injustice or gang war. The ronin dealing with a town’s local politics and shifting allegiance. The bandit liberating a sugar plantation from a haciendero’s grip. The shaman offering solace and revolution for workers in a cotton farm. The firebrand cadre organizing farmers in the countryside to march against the forces of Empire and Nationalism.
It is Ultraviolent because it deals with the wielding of violence to break free from cycles of violence. 10kSword’s World is a world reeling from Post-Calamity and burgeoning, unstoppable capitalism. Those exploited are even more exploited, those that benefit benefit even more. It understands that Violence is the only recourse against those committing Violence, but it is a pure, unalloyed Violence that wishes only to break free from oppression that breaks cycles, instead of Violence wishing to gain the power to oppress. It is Tropical Gothic because 10kSwords’ World centers cultures, aesthetics, ideas, and ideologies that resonate or look like the ones in our third world, in the neocolonies and current colonies and semicolonies and semifeudal states of our world. In the socialist states of our world.
Tropical Gothic is an old literary concept that blends gothic horror with tropical realities, dealing with colonial violence, marginalized indigenous histories, imperial faiths clashing with local cults, monstrous legacy of colonies and liberalism.
It is Xianxia because this world is a Dark Fantasy rooted in Buddhism, Daoism, and Folk Religion. Wanderers must cultivate themselves and, more importantly, their communities to create a force powerful enough to topple heaven—in this case, the neoliberal world order. Collect violence, esoterica, and lore to benefit not just themselves but the People. To cultivate for one’s own power is not Ultraviolence.
Put Them Together and what do you see? I hope you know when to look away. I hope you know when to look closer.
Another year, another art vs artist meme! I feel like my art output was less this year than last, but I got quite a few detailed paintings under my belt! I'm especially proud of my opera!Sifu AU series :D My first posts for 2026 will likely be Star Wars-related, and I'm super excited to share them!
Wishing y'all a Happy New Year and an excellent 2026!! <333
I just got back from a month-long vacation in Europe, only to realize that I never posted the full Sifu opera series! So here it is! :D The poster at the top was inspired by Sifu's marketing poster; I just adjusted MC's stance to look more like an opera pose loll
