#expanse thoughts

[loolilyumm]

The night we met

[bberetd]

PIGTAIL DAISY ACQUIRED!!!

[idolomantises]

Man is it just me or are a lot of TV shows nowadays are written to have big emotional episodes in scenes with very little build up.

[bruhstation]

*Breaks into your house to stare wistfully out the window* Do you ever think that CTHenry is, at least by some perceptions, a corpse being kept alive by gold dust and the whimsy of a goddess whose motives are unknown? I do. *Puffs on bubble pipe* Anyway. I'm still holding out hope for a happy ending for our Miserable Train Gays. Iram gentlemen. Have a good day 💗

out of sight, out of mind

[thenewhogboy89]

I really could use some belly rubs. Who wants to help a brotha out? How much fatter you want me?

[tittykali06]

Here's another picture to prove I've got no ass to speak of 😭😭

I've always been so skinny, and my tits are so much bigger than this now!!

I don't wanna share my current self just yet because they're just like... grotesquely huge 🙈

[natypinkns]

mem cakes

[justgleekout]

New! Kurt and Blaine starter packs!

Each including 8 unique accessories!

Now also available: the “klaine expansion pack” to re-enact 6 of your favourite scenes!

[retrowondergirl]

I honestly love how the relationship system is for The Hex. Everytime I see someone mention 1999 it’s always being called a dating sim by so many, atleast everytime I try to search up anything related to 1999 and even the twitch chat during DE’s streams. But it doesn’t really feel like a “dating sim” like how BG3 felt with every companion throwing themselves at you so easily if their approval is a little too high or Dragon Age where being nice to one of your companions sneakily throws you into a romance with them.

I think not really seeing any meter of any kind to see their “approval” feels nice too. I know their profiles is kinda their “approval meter” but the way it’s written really feels like Drifter is actively taking notes of them and trying their best to figure them out better. Imo it really feels like we HAVE to get to know them better and truly understand them on a deeper level, while the romance part is an added bonus to how Drifter feels towards certain Hex members. I’m not sure how to really explain it, but it really feels like the game pushes understanding someone first than trying to have them ungodly thirsty for your character in the first 5 seconds, which was what I really didn’t like too much with BG3. I love how much they really distrust Drifter and kinda have this belief you’re like Albrecht. Drifter HAS to prove themselves first before even getting to know them better too! Drifter is practically an alien to them and the fact we can literally use Warframes like puppets and can even get into their heads just like a Warframe makes this distrust even greater. I love it so much and it feels like a breath of fresh air from other games with romance in them.

[rustchild]

one of the wild things about people’s stubborn insistence on misunderstanding The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is that the narrator anticipates an audience that won’t engage with the text, just in the opposite direction. Throughout the story are little asides asking what the reader is willing to believe in. Can you believe in a utopia? What if I told you this? What about this? Can you believe in the festivals? The towers by the sea? Can we believe that they have no king? Can we believe that they are joyful? Does your utopia have technology, luxury, sex, temples, drugs? The story is consulting you as it’s being told, framed as a dialogue. It literally asks you directly: do you only believe joy is possible with suffering? And, implicitly, why?

the question isn’t just “what would you personally do about the kid.” It isn’t just an intricate trolley problem. It’s an interrogation of the limits of imagination. How do we make suffering compulsory? Why? What futures (or pasts) are we capable of imagining? How do we rationalize suffering as necessary? And so on. In all of the conversations I’ve seen or had about this story, no one has mentioned the fact that it’s actively breaking the fourth wall. The narrator is building a world in front of your eyes and challenging you to participate. “I would free the kid” and then what? What does the Omelas you’ve constructed look like, and why? And what does that say about the worlds you’re building in real life?

[w1f1n1ghtm4r3]

many a miscellaneous critter doodle

[thenewhogboy89]

Can you do another pants buttonpopping

I hope to soon! You guys should tease me and tell me how fucking fat you want me. It might happen sooner then ;)

But for now please enjoy my first button pop ever

[tittykali06]

I'm not completely gone yet!!

I'm definitely not responding as frequently, but I'm still around for people who are serious about buying!!

[bixels]

Splatoon 3: Side Order is good, but not great. I still highly recommend it, but if you care about the story, you're going to be disappointed. Quick review: spoilers ahead.

Side Order was the devs experimenting with Splatoon's gameplay loop. The campaign is a rogue-like, and it works amazingly well. Super fun, super challenging, building my deck and fighting through challenges with the stakes of resetting really scratched an itch in my brain. They did a great job with it.

Unfortunately, I feel like priority went to game design rather than story. Much of the mysterious artwork we saw in the first teaser trailer was completely unused; turns out, all of that was just concept art that never made it into the final product. Side Order failed to make me care about what was happening. I don't know why the protagonist had to be Agent 8; it could've been anyone else and the story would've worked the same.

Octo Expansion was the absolute peak of meshing story and gameplay. The campaign's hook is insanely strong; we immediately empathize with Agent 8 because we know from previous lore that octolings like her have been trapped underground for all their lives. We care about her fight to the surface because it's a fundamentally ideological fight for freedom. The plot stuff about Tartar and the Thangs is just nice set dressing; 8's fight for freedom is the real story.

There's none of that in Side Order. I don't particularly care about Marina's metaverse, even if it's tied to Octo Expansion's story. I don't know why Acht is there other than backstory stuff. It really feels like 8 is just told to do something and she does it because she's the protagonist; she has zero personal stakes or motivations in the conflict. This is a story blunder the devs did in Splatoon 3's default campaign––forgetting to give the protagonist a personal reason to fight––that I hoped would be fixed here, but alas.

What makes it worse is that the gameplay and story progression are completely out of sync. I beat the entire game on my third run in 4 hours. With each run, you get up to two keys to potentially unlock bits of story. That means you'll get about one piece of the story every two runs. There are twelve pieces of the story; I got the first and then beat the whole damn game. Now I have to go back and grind to see the remaining story when I've already beaten the final boss and resolved the conflict. I missed the entire story because I never had to reset because I blazed through the gameplay! It's just a real shame that I experienced everything without knowing... why it's happening. The final boss had me asking myself what the hell is going on because I don't know the backstory at all.

Again, I still really recommend. The devs did a great job, but Side Order remains in the shadow of Octo Expansion's incredible success. Like the default singleplayer campaign, there's just a lot of lost story potential here that, while not necessary, would have really elevated this DLC into something amazing.

[commandertartarsmoocher]

"Gay Is Okay 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇩🇪"

[beannoss]

Bonus in Volume 13 of the Manga

In volume 13, there’s a “bonus confidential file” which is really sort of a mini mission, but which wasn’t released online (to my knowledge!) The whole thing is a delight, mostly centred on some cute shenanigans for Yor, her City Hall colleagues and Franky. But really it's the first three pages that got me bouncing.

The bonus takes place after Mission 91, which the bonus summarizes so I won’t — 91 is one of my absolute favourite Yor chapters, telling us so much about how Yor thinks and her moral centre and how she’s grown, and it's also one of the first times she’s spoken about her experiences as a child in her own words, while still at something of a distance.

As someone who loves the relationship between Yor and Twilight, I always thought it was something of a shame that Twilight didn’t get to witness that moment, that Yor’s sentiment would have been meaningful to him and touching, in some ways akin to his words to her in their first chapter.

And.

Well.

It turns out.

HE DID.