#<- sorry...

[allgremlinyaps]

when I watched the plotline in Enterprise where the Vulcans have a military and were gearing up for conflict I was like "ok thats stupid but whatever, its only in one show so I can ignore it, and its 2005 and they're doing a thing about American politics, so liberties must be taken, etc etc" but apparently Vulcans have a military in other shows too?? That is SO. STUPID!!!!!!!!!

Literally how does Sarek's "I'm disowning you for joining a military" thing make ANY sense in a world where Vulcan has a military?

It's not that I don't like hypocrisy in my worldbuilding, I love it, but this feels more like... Trek writers having difficulty imagining a society that functions radically different from our own. If Vulcans are supposed to be an allegory for a idyllic peaceful human future, even if you subvert that allegory, it has to still be believableeeee.

For ex. I was so down with the Enterprise storyline when it was just "Vulcans are engaging in morally questionable espionage." That was fun. That was believable. That didn't make them feel like they're increasingly turning into just humans with pointy ears, in-universe AND in story function.

[eldritch-elrics]

i started playing the silent hill 2 remake!

uhh... buckle up i guess, because i have a LOT to say. probably too much to say. (and probably will have even more to say in the future - i will make a liveblogging tag!)

i got as far as the entrance to the woodside apartments and then stopped. overall, i'm really enjoying it!

i think that what surprised me most - as someone whose experience with game remakes admittedly comes most from nintendo games and the 2018 shadow of the colossus - is how much this is not an attempt to redo sh2, but to rework or remix it. i knew this would be the case to some extent, but it both surprised and excited me how little of the original game's finer details of progression are left intact. i thought i would know where to go, which paths to take, which items to look for, and then... i didn't! this is very fun! it means that even though i played the original about a month ago, and it's still fresh in my mind, i'm still getting the "new player" experience to some extent. on a meta level, it feels like the town's ever-shifting nature has caught me off guard. it's leading me to doubt my memories of the original game, and that's just very cool!

side note: there have been a handful of moments so far where the screen pixelates a little and james clutches his head. i wonder what those indicate! i know that one of these moments happened when i tried to get onto the road where you get the radio/plank in the og, so perhaps they're little hints like "hehe, you're remembering the wrong game!" (i also love all the new little mysteries: new memos, new strange photographs that have their own space in the inventory...)

even with the changes, it feels like, so far, the new/remixed levels are in keeping with the spirit of the og. for one, you've got displaced iconic moments from the og that have been inserted into new contexts - such as the "james sticks his hand in the suspicious hole" bit, which also has a fun little difference in the fact that you have to make him stick his hand further in. (does this indicate that remake!james is less unhinged?)

overall it feels like the game is taking full advantage of the fact that it has a ton more processing power to work with. it is legitimately so cool to see silent hill rendered in such realistic detail. it makes it feel like a real town! it's so beautiful, even when it's gross and run-down. i looooove being able to enter into so many of the buildings around town. i love how much it feels like people really did live here. i love the rendering of the fog and how much consideration has been given to even the smallest, most mundane of visuals. i LOVE being able to smash windows and interact with objects inside display cases. it's like a whole new layer of the town has been unlocked. that's exactly what a remake should do - reimagine the original game with new technology.

speaking of new technology... my god are the autosaves a welcome addition. by far the aspect of the og that felt the most dated!

the acting is also very good. don't have much to say on that front yet. james undeniably feels different - a little more open, vulnerable, cautious, certainly more emotive - but i still completely accept him as a version of james. there's lots of good additions here, such as the way he clutches his side when he's hurt (had me going "poor baby..." out loud way too many times, to which my friend who was watching responded "that is a grown ass man.") or the way he looks in the direction the camera's pointing. the one James Thing i sorely miss is the way he comments on random objects he interacts with. even if it's not a lot, it's a great way to learn about him as a character, and i'm sad to lose it.

i'll use this to segue into some of the game choices i don't like:

the ui decisions are for the most part quite bad. i haaaate that the main font looks exactly like the default font in microsoft word. doesn't fit at all. i also hate the way the screen goes red around the edges when james gets hurt. it's way too unsubtle an effect, and it makes it suck ass to run around at low health. (i turned it off pretty quickly - james's slow pace and stumbling at low health are more than enough incentive to keep him healthy.)

i will begrudgingly accept the general "tutorialization" of the whole game; that's probably a necessary addition to a modern game that doesn't come with a manual, even though one of the things i enjoyed about the early silent hills was how little they explain themselves to you. some parts of the remake veer close to encroaching on the "fuck around and find out" spirit of silent hill - i didn't appreciate the reminder (like 2 hours into the game) that you can break windows to find pathways and items; that's something the player can figure out from earlier tutorials. but it's probably for the best.

another "probably for the best" decision is the little dot that turns up on screen to indicate an interactable item. it's a change that i'm definitely grateful for, but it does ruin a little bit of what i might call the "rpgmaker spirit" of running around trying to interact with every item in case james has some funny dialogue about it. (hmm, maybe that's why they have less environment-thing-description dialogue now?) but overall, in a world with this insane level of detail and realism, you kind of have to find a way to signal to players what they can interact with. maybe that could have been done in a more elegant or diegetic way? maybe they could have preserved that feeling of "oh man, the protagonist could potentially have something to say about anything!" or "whoa, anything here could be important" somehow? but who knows. it's an interesting dilemma regardless.

i'm not a huge fan of the combat so far. it seems too fast-paced. wish it were clunkier. i'm sure i'll get used to it, though.

by far i think the worst decision in the game is the "over the shoulder" camera perspective. i know that this is ultimately a holdover from resident evil 4. i know that it probably makes combat easier. i do not care. it makes james feel too separate from his environment. i want to see his whole body in the frame! i want him to feel small! like he is just one more character in silent hill! it's unfortunate but understandable that the remake had to do away with the iconic fixed camera angles of the og, but, if they were willing to make that change, i don't understand why they couldn't be more lenient with player camera control. ugh.

my final thought for now is a bit of a larger scale question. as i wandered through the town, listening to the familiar, spooky akira yamaoka ambiance, i had a very strange thought: why is there silent hill music? which is obviously a silly question, but i phrase it this way for a reason. despite everything, despite all my positive feelings on it, there is some significant way in which the remake, at least so far, does not feel like silent hill. i'm not sure what it is. it might be the slight surfeit of ui. it might be the fact that there's no grainy filter, that i'm playing it on my friend's 4k monitor. the extreme level of detail creates a fundamentally different type of realism than that which was achieved on the ps2 in 480p - a world that was uncannily realistic because you could see light and shape but little detail. honestly, it might just be the fact that the lighting and shading is so, so different. the original trilogy has an incredibly strong identity, and this remake just... doesn't fit in with a lot of the hallmarks of that identity.

there's a bit of the "shadow of the colossus 2018" question in here. i've talked before about how i think the sotc remake creates a beautiful but ultimately uninspiring atmosphere because it goes for a very generic sort of video game realism, as opposed to the bright, stark emptiness of the original game. it's hard to say that sh2r doesn't benefit from the particular aesthetic it's got going on. the level of detail legitimately does so much for it. but it also loses some parts of itself too. loses some of the spookiness for sure - i talked earlier about how much it looks like it could be a real town, but there's also some important affect that's gained from the og's feeling of stylistic wrongness, the ways in which it doesn't feel as real as it should. just something to ponder...

[sheepsheeples]

Shout out to the USA for pissing Canadians off so bad it flipped an entire election that was supposed to be a landslide for the center-right, forever in your debt o7

[sexypeople-contests-2025]

[crimsonservbot]

You ever hear that old chestnut about how most people neglect the part of the story of Icarus where he also had to avoid flying too low, lest the spray of the sea soak his feathers and cause him to fall and drown? You ever think about how different the world would be if Icarus died that way instead? If the idiom was to Fly To Close To The Sea? A warning against playing it far too safe, about not stretching your wings and soaring properly? You ever think about how Icarus died because he was happy?

[thisisalovestry]

file -> phrases that are going to shift something in me forever

[nattousan]

it was not on wheat...

[isabelopaque]

how my brain picks a new favorite character who sucks

[stirdrawsandreblaws]

got stuck on the toilet earlier and my inner monologue started coming in cookie monster's voice for some reason

[two-wizards-in-a-trench-coat]

[ukulelekatie]

“if you’re sensitive to sounds when sleeping, just use earplugs!” i cannot stress enough that the sensory feeling of having my ears fully blocked AND now being able to hear my own heartbeat and breathing and every other sound that’s happening inside my own body is a million times worse than whatever ambient noise may be keeping me awake

[orpheuslament]

now say it with me: authors/artists dont owe you moral purity. an author/artist job is not to hold you by the hand & tell you exactly what is Good™ & what is Bad™. you should be able to think for yourself

[bigskycastle]

the old cistern beneath the flood control system

[wishfulsketching]

Girl dad Silco is a source of endless entertainment for me

Extra doodles:

Someone save Sevika, she is in hell

[astronnova]

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa