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Anonymous asked:
are you a lesbian?
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Caves Of Qud is a game where I'm too pushy about a goatman's name so he enters a blood rage where he can permanently dismember me. A ritual we did together ages ago means I'll become a pariah if I kill him. That is not an option.
I zip off on 8 quick legs, but he's hooked one with his axe. He's dragging me in and I can't get away. Why did I have to ask him twice?
On his first good pull I whack a syringe into his neck, a rare item with a chance of failure. His status blessedly changes to LOVESICK and I scramble out, but we're not done. He's going to follow me everywhere. The LOVESICK makes him passive, but on turn 3000 he'll stop measuring me for a coffin and start taking pieces off. I won't be ready, since that's not a count the game keeps for me.
I have to get rid of this guy before then.
First I took him on a tour of duty through the most dangerous places I knew, and he tore everything apart. Then I tried to outrun him, and he caught up. Then I remembered I know how to amputate limbs and took off both his arms. He stood in the puddle of blood and regrew them.
I winced, and he punched a tough enemy to death. That's when I realized he'd lost his axe in the river where I confiscated his arms. After splashing around getting chewed on by everything, I found it first, and it was a distinct upgrade over mine.
I whistled all the way to an area more dangerous than I'd ever been. We walked through suspiciously empty fields, dodging fungal spores, while I wondered if this was where he'd turn.
Before that happened, a sea of crabs came pouring in from all sides.
My video game stories are usually posted a while after I died or overcame. I'm a firm believer in the blind playthrough: unless a game is frustrating or poorly explained, ignorance makes it memorable. It's infinite possibility, it's giddy heights of fear, arrogance and cleverness. When the surprises and revelations are tapped out, you call that knowing the score.
nah Fiona Apple made it into my pantheon, she's somethin rare
Caves Of Qud is a game where I'm too pushy about a goatman's name so he enters a blood rage where he can permanently dismember me. A ritual we did together ages ago means I'll become a pariah if I kill him. That is not an option.
I zip off on 8 quick legs, but he's hooked one with his axe. He's dragging me in and I can't get away. Why did I have to ask him twice?
On his first good pull I whack a syringe into his neck, a rare item with a chance of failure. His status blessedly changes to LOVESICK and I scramble out, but we're not done. He's going to follow me everywhere. The LOVESICK makes him passive, but on turn 3000 he'll stop measuring me for a coffin and start taking pieces off. I won't be ready, since that's not a count the game keeps for me.
I have to get rid of this guy before then.
I think I'm driven to phrase things this way just because simple language numbs. I could say "refusing to face reality does no good"; hasn't familiarity bred contempt for that kind of phrase? Don't we wick it right off? When a concept is fresh to us it presents a new world, we burrow into it with new language & conception, we make it our own thing. The popular ways of addressing it often begin to fall short of the deep meaning we've invested in it. So, new language is necessary.
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Sometimes depressed people develop a kind of frantic contrarianism: they must, absolutely must, be positive about everything. Not a radiant positivity but a doubtful hedging, carving out a hollow space for goodness within every single thing, as if to keep the weight of the world suspended safely above.
The work of doing this tends to mire you in an endless confusion about whatever you see. That's a lot of why it's tiring. You don't allow yourself an honest opinion in case it destroys you. It might destroy you with its bitterness. The hardest hurdle is that you think you're doing the good work of keeping hope alive, the whole time.
Someday, ruefully, you do realize. You are not hope's seeing-eye dog, and it doesn't even need to lean on your shoulder. There was never a responsibility.
I mean when the only other viewpoints society offers you are a cynical sense of capitalist realism or total nihilism... yeah, its still better than those
I mean it's not a front in the struggle against despair, it's more like an emotional concussion. If you want a viewpoint, philosophy offers a lot of them. If you're looking for a salve for despair, this one never salved mine and I don't think it can: it's something less than optimism.
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in my experience nobody stops having a favorite animal when they grow up but people DO stop asking. well now i'm asking. what's everyone's favorite animal mine is the noble manatee
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- Juri Han, Ultra Street Fighter IV (Capcom)
I do ruminate on here more than I realized. The last year or so, my life has had something of an actual trajectory, so as I clean up each of the messes that form it, I find myself saying "how did that get there?".
path-forbidden reblogged
Sometimes depressed people develop a kind of frantic contrarianism: they must, absolutely must, be positive about everything. Not a radiant positivity but a doubtful hedging, carving out a hollow space for goodness within every single thing, as if to keep the weight of the world suspended safely above.
The work of doing this tends to mire you in an endless confusion about whatever you see. That's a lot of why it's tiring. You don't allow yourself an honest opinion in case it destroys you. It might destroy you with its bitterness. The hardest hurdle is that you think you're doing the good work of keeping hope alive, the whole time.
Someday, ruefully, you do realize. You are not hope's seeing-eye dog, and it doesn't even need to lean on your shoulder. There was never a responsibility.
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One of the really amazing things about Fran Liebowitz's speaking is she's as good with her hands as she is with words. They blow out concepts to ten times size, skewer one point with an outstretched finger, work at the problem on each side of her head as if trying to crack a nut, and fold elegantly in a final moment of contemplation.
Lord. I haven't really sat down and revisited my childhood in a few years. It really hits you. I think I could have begun to make a recovery around 16 or so, if institutions hadn't betrayed and violated me. Even just counting what happened until I was 12 or 14, I cry for that child.
This very lonely child in badly fitting clothes, infantilized to the point of uselessness, hugging a shaking dog while screams ring through the house. This child who stopped ever bathing and bit their nails with the front tooth that was worn down to the nerve. You could see it whenever I spoke.
I think it must have been clear something was terribly wrong: that's why no one asked me what it was. My father had moved out and knew he left us to it, my brother participated, my mother walked under a teetering slab of guilt already. Who was in a position to open that door?
If I could get one thing, just one thing out of it, I would have the house razed and a small monument put up.
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Setsuko Hara
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people have this stereotypical idea in their head of what abusive relationships are like that consists of a crazed drunkard husband who's completely insane and yells all the time and a pitiful little wilted flower of a wife who cries all day, when a lot of the time it looks the opposite. the man is calm and collected because he gets to take out all his anger on his wife in private and he has has his wife cooking and cleaning for him so he's totally relaxed. meanwhile the wife is run ragged from doing everything for her husband and children, and is distressed from being terrorized by him, so yeah she's short with people, she snaps at her children a little too often, she's stressed. and when he's slightly inconvenienced, the man throws a tantrum and pretends he's the victim, because he's such a better parent than her, and she's actually the crazy one who needs to just calm down (accept his abuse with no reaction and keep the peace). and people see this and think, "look at this totally calm and rational man, he never yells at his kids, meanwhile his wife is crazy and yelling at her kids and husband all the time." yeah of course she's the one who's crazy! she's being driven crazy 24/7! and the husband says, "yes, see, SHE'S the problem," and everyone believes him. so sickening
I'm surprised anyone read such a long Tekken post, but I felt the need to make it. The 5K or over hours in the game is probably less than I've spent studying the game, coaching people in the game, etc. In the course of putting my will to that game I became a new person, met many people and learned very much.
It probably sounds strange, but hey, that's being a very competitive girl for you.
The heart of modern Tekken is the game has fun, deep and universal defensive mechanics that must go because they are not legible to the spectators who form the largest dollar pool. The zeitgeist in fighting game design, see SF6 and Strive, is to splash in that dollar pool. The spectators can only see the most obvious action. Many have never seen the game before at all.
To that end, everything must take an intuitive shape and focus on crowdpleasers; comebacks, setplay and big damage. In Tekken, grounded and balanced character designs must become brainless gods. Their raw individual power has to overcome universal defense. Fireworks have to happen. To this end, 6 seasons of jacking up the power level against player desire.
To this end, a game defined by free and fluid movement puts on successive pairs of shackles; movement is extremely popular and respected among players of all skill levels, but not engaging for spectators, it looks janky, it's not an attack. I've been not playing this shit anymore for like 2 weeks now. It wasn't really an intensification of my anger, I just finally constructed a complete mental model of what the balance strategy is driving towards.
To actually convey everything I'd need like 200 paragraphs, but man, I think I'm done! Tekken has a big enough name to trade out its audience for a more profitable and less discriminating audience.
I always thought Tekkenheads were often dumbasses, but I will say when the pay-to-win DLC and battle pass dropped, they review bombed the game to 50% positive (and falling) on Steam. Bravo, and thanks for the good times. After about 5K hours, I'm out.
high death roguelikes require a different naming sensibility. dismembering axe grillmaster is called MY STRANGE ADDICTION. battlefield controller with a protective carapace is TACTURT. wall-bypassing houdini build is MILD ONE.
with mutants like these i have been playing Caves OF Qud. I was sold on this game by hearing that you can encounter your own evil doppelganger again and again, slicing off its face(s) and wearing them on several heads for a large Ego bonus.
I have never played a build where you can do this. my newest is mindlasering people from a cloud of corrosive skunk funk. my oldest drills through walls with a nanojackhammer while sowing flowers with her big stupid boots.
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The jaded post-ironic mean girl thing is just south park nihilism for acid jazz gays
"I think furries are fine but otherkin are degenerates" type beat
"If I'm not mean and aloof I might have to admit I'm not better than the tenderqueers" type beat
Y'all aren't ready for this one yet. The wise know. Give it a few months.
i've found there's a persuasive internal voice that latches onto the unselfconsciousness of other gay people, the basic comfort that makes them more willing to be dorky or unfashionable where it pleases them, & advises 'oh no, you don't wanna be near *those* guys...'
Call it two parts internalized homophobia to one part social exclusion scar tissue. Probably a part and a half of plain asshole, maybe more if you really keep listening.