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You may not like to hear this, but Cruelty Squad is the best cyberpunk game out there. All your Cyberpunk 2077, and Stray, and Deus Ex games, plated in shiny chrome, don't grasp the core essence of cyberpunk nearly as well as Cruelty Squad, a game made of filth and disease. It's barely even cyber as well, it honestly leans into biological augments more than cybernetic ones.

But that doesn't matter. Because the absolute core of Cruelty Squad, is that the world is a sick, corrupt festering thing, twisted by greed, corruption, and unrestrained capitalism. Human life has no value, and this is explicitly seen in the narrative and in the game mechanics. And the thing that really stands out is that it deliberately tries to shock and disgust the player.

Sure, many cyberpunk games purport to engage in those themes, of greed, corruption, etc. But there is a dissonance. We are told narratively that this world is horrible, but visually, we see a cool, technologically advanced world, where people are badasses. And the problems in these settings are close enough to our own, real life problems, that a slightly enhanced dystopia might not seem so bad, when it comes with such technological advancement.

Cruelty Squad does not do that. There are no badass characters in the game, rather a series of pathetic, pitiable wretches who act in despicable ways, lacking empathy or humanity. The augments are horrific in such a way that the player does not fantasize about having them in real life. All of the textures are disgusting, and deliberately so. The sounds are abrasive and offputting. Even the UI is hideously ugly. It isn't poorly designed of course. But rather, designed in such a way that the player should never develop a hint of sympathy, longing, or good feelings for any aspects of that world. The underlying assumptions underpinning the cyberpunk genre are not to be romanticized, but rather exposed as a viscerally loathsome thing, which makes one reluctant to touch any part of a world tainted by it.

There aren't a lot of games which linger, and occupy headspace. But Cruelty Squad is one of them.

did I do the dishes? buy groceries? put laundry away? no. But I live alone and I found a wood burning stylus so this was my last hour and a half

[screenshots: #I've been telling my fish that I'll do the dishes and I've been lying to him. Following is a picture of an old man in dark, dramatic lighting captioned, "I would like to see the fish".]

The Boy

"kill them with kindness" wrong. WATERFOWL DANCE.

edible turned me into a word document

Research

if you gave a gnome popcorn he’d kick his little heels together with every bite but if you told him they made a candied version called moose munch he’d start breakdancing on his pointed cap like a top

Follow my Twitter/X Account for more

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wasted away again in margaritaville

Eridan and Feferi 💜 most of this was done on stream

National Get Dicked Down By An Elf Day

Ghost commission resurrected my boy.

“That sounds like a good idea…….”-“Is there something bothering you with the idea?”-“No, the idea is GOOD…..🙂”

Can someone explain this to me?

Old people use quotation marks to indicate emphasis, as a substitute for italics (which many of them could not produce on the old typewriters they learned to write on), whereas young people use them to indicate sarcasm or falseness. They’re used as “scare quotes”.

And old people use ellipses simply to indicate a pause, or for some other incomprehensible reason I’m not aware of. But young people use ellipses to indicate passive-aggression.

So an old person could type something like:

and what they mean is

But a young person would interpret that sentence as

The linguistic difference across generations is beautifully explained here thank you