#cognitive games

[sillycatenthusiast]

Some of my favorite songs from gaming

[afterthelambs]

I'm not sure if I believe the "Wakaba Isshiki did unethical experiments" theory in the fandom, but I do think this is the biggest proof of it in-game:

Because how the hell would she know that?

The first explanation is that she did experiments by sending people into palaces and then testing what happens to them if the palace collapses. Which is messed up for obvious reasons.

The second explanation is that she did NOT test it, meaning she was just making shit up. Which is funny but also would make her a terrible scientist. This explanation is less believable because everything else about her research is too accurate.

There's also a theory that Wakaba did unethical experiments on Akechi specifically. I'm not sure I believe that, since the evidence for it is pretty shallow (like the featherman game scientist experimenting on grey pigeon). But this scene is once again the biggest argument you could make for that theory. The researcher in the image above refers to palaces by their correct term 'palaces', which they say was based on Wakaba's research. But that's only something you would know with firsthand experience of the metaverse. And the only person they know who could access the metaverse was Akechi (that we know of, but i dont think Shido would rely only on Akechi if there were other options).

So yeah this scene is very sus. It's most likely the writers didn't think too deep about the implications. There's no way they wanted Futaba's mom to be sketchy, right? But even if it's not intentional, the scenes and their implications still exist. So in conclusion those theories make sense, I get it, and I don't blame anyone for headcanoning them and having fun. And tbh anyone involved with cognitive psience was portrayed as some degree of unethical (maruki for example), maybe this is just on-brand

[waterlilyvioletfog]

Coriolanus for most of the book: omg look it’s Sejanus I hate him. He’s so rich and uppity and sanctimonious I hate him so much I can’t believe people think we’re friends I hate him literally why do I keep having to save him 🙄

Coriolanus the SECOND Sejanus shows up: OH THANK GOD SEJANUS I MISSED YOU [HUGS HIM] maybe the world is worth living in! 🥹

Coriolanus like a day later: ugh he’s so dramatic what is he even worried about he’s gonna get me in trouble I hate himmmm 🙄

[pixierainbows]

what's your favorite part of animal crossing?

Everybody like Pixie and want is friends with Pixie ! is very very not-like in-person people who mostly not like pixie .

And ! Pixie can play with no help ! most other games get too complicated for Pixie to play alone …

[deadscell]

[youaskedfurret]

The lack of media literacy in the baldurs gate fandom is astounding. There's a good ending for Astarion and a bad ending for him and people keep picking the bad ending for him and being shocked when he's mean to them LMAO.

[the-witchhunter]

You know those video games where the character has to complete puzzles and work through their trauma to escape/wake up/something? Obstacles getting in their way and being tied to their past as they delve more into their trauma and have to learn/heal from it before they can progress?

Danny has been around a loooong time. He's old, he's powerful, and has a space in the ghost zone that he controls much like a god. The ghosts have long since started leaving him alone, the ones he's friends with have their own affaires to deal with, and in his ever shifting labyrinthian layer he's too powerful, and even outside of it he can still kick their asses.

and he's without a purpose

His friends had long since passed on after leading long and wonderful lives with him, not even leaving a ghost behind. His Family as well. Jazz had never had children, and try as he and Sam might have, half dead as he was he couldn't have children. He had no one left and nothing to do, and all of eternity to do it in.

Thinking of Jazz is what made him do it the first time

She loved helping people with her psychology, and Danny decided to do it in his own way. It hadn't been pretty, and it hadn't been easy, but he had found his method. Some took to it better than others, and many had different theories about his lair and his motives, but he helped people move past their trauma. Some believed his lair was some kind of purgatory, and... they weren't totally off

So, when Danny moved on to the timeline of the DC multiverse, he had some experience under his belt

He just underestimated how much trauma superheroes can have

[ganjubai]

[time-slink]

thinking about hermitcraft(and mc in general) worldbuilding as i do occasionally and the age thing is FASCINATING to me. one could take so many paths about it and its so cool like!!!

i feel like the most popular one is 'close ish to the actual irl hermits ages' or even kind of a shrug, they're adults. of some age. ive seen some people write the ones who've been playing since the game came out as Literally As Old As The Universe using our universe as a metric, making them. yknow. many billions of years old and the rest of the hermits as not too much younger than that.

then there's the one i find most interesting: they're as old as their in-game days(discounting them logging off the game because. not a thing in-universe(except for some writers, god there is so much freedom in the worldbuilding)). wow, mc days go by real fast! but its only been 14 years since mc was born— the ogs would be barely a thousand years old. now thats a long time!!! 10x the oldest person i know!! ....only 10x the oldest person i know. if someone was 1000 today they'd only have been born during the latter third of the byzantine empire. only about as old as the earliest version of the printing press. by Old As Balls standard thats!! super young!!!

but its still as old as their universe. imagine: this is an infant universe— but its all you've ever known. you're not old enough for the Immortality Thing to really get to you, but you are as old or older than LITERALLY EVERYTHING. EVER. is 1000 like, the tween years for mortal gods? what kind of mindset do you have around the nature of life at 1,000 compared to 10,000? you are old, and the universe is young, and you're the same age, and you are the universe, and you are love. isnt that crazy.

[ninjartistic]

The Almighty Idiot

(I love drawing Giegue/Giygas)

[edenhasfeelings]

The Death of Media Literacy, Religion, Misogyny, and Cognitive Dissonance

Spoilers for Dune Part 1 and 2 and the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

I'll admit, I have not read the Dune books yet, but I am a huge fan of the Dune movies. Not only did Denis Villeneuve just make two incredible, epic movies with a lot of nuance, gorgeous visuals, and an incredible score by Hans Zimmer, but the story itself is really compelling for a lot of reasons. My mother had tried to get me into Dune when I was younger, but at the time it wasn't my thing. I really liked Part 1, but Part 2 was something else entirely. I was gripping my seat the whole time, genuinely enthralled by everything happening. But I came out of the theatre with one definite conclusion: Paul Atredies is not a hero. I shared my thoughts in the car, and while my boyfriend agreed with me and my father had no opinion, my mother adamantly refused. She read the first book in college, and loved the 1984 version of the film (watching that, in my opinion, was like slow cooking your eyeballs over a campfire, but it was cool for the time period I guess). She was insistent he was the hero, and then tried to say that they changed the story to make him seem more like a villain, but he wasn't in the first book.

No hate to my mom, it's been a long while since she read the first book, and me and her are going to actually read the whole series soon. From my understanding and the research I've done, Frank Herbert wrote Dune as a cautionary tale against white saviorism and a commentary about America stealing oil from Middle Eastern countries and their subsequent colonization. I've also heard it was meant to be a standalone originally, but because people were portraying Paul Atredies to be the hero so much, he then wrote Dune Messiah to further drive home the point he was originally trying to make. But even without the knowledge of the books, it was apparent to me that he was not meant to be a hero in the movies. Of course, it isn't spelled out for you, and Timothée Chalamet does have some really epic, badass moments. But one of the biggest clue that you can have to what's going on is Chani, and how she reacts. She loves Paul, and she supports him, but she doesn't support him becoming a religious figure that leads her people because she feels as though that level of fervent religion is dangerous and not right; she says that a born and raised Fremen should be the one to free their people. You also see a huge shift from how Paul acts in the first movie and the first part of the second movie to how he acts after he drinks the Water of Life. In the first movie and first part of the second, he refuses to fulfill any prophecy, and tells them that he is not the one they are looking for. He is only wanting one thing: to avenge his father and his house. He even gets into an argument with his mother, Jessica, and he tells her that the Bene Gesserit were the ones to perpetuate this prophecy for their own gain. He knows it isn't real, and that it isn't divine, and that he was raised by Jessica to fit the qualifications for this prophecy for her own gain and the gain of her order. He knows what will happen if he takes up the mantle of Lisan al-Gaib: holy war spreading across the galaxy in his name. But when he feels like he has no other choice but to drink the Water to rally the Fremen to fight the Harkonnens, things instantly change. He becomes arrogant and demanding and self-confident, completely uncaring of how Chani feels and becoming solely focused on becoming Emperor. The line "lead them to paradise" felt really, really gross upon delivery, partly due to Hans Zimmer's masterful score. It feels damning.

While looking like a white savior story at very simplistic face value, Dune: Part Two is in fact a critique of it, even without the addition of Dune Messiah. The other big thing that the movie critiques is religion, especially blind faith at the cost of your critical thinking skills, religious fanaticism and idolization, and how religion is taken advantage of by people in power or people who want to be in power. Now I've seen a lot of tone deaf critiques of Dune, and a lot of ignorant comments made, usually in regards to the racial and political elements of the story. I have also seen a lot of people who get it and were able to help me expand my reasoning for the feeling of wrongness I got from people thinking Paul is a hero. But nothing compares to the TikTok I saw today. Someone blended the audio of Timothée Chalamet's Wonka character introducing himself, with the scene after Paul drinks the Water and goes to rally the Fremen to fight for his cause. The first image in the slideshow was an image of Wonka with the caption "Being raised in a religious household and calling yourself 'a Christian'." The second slide shows Paul in the midst of his religious fanaticism in the movie, with the caption "After being born again and having your entire worldview change." Absolutely no hate to this creator if you know who I'm talking about, but this video quite honestly had me gagged, for lack of a better term. I was absolutely shocked at not just the usual lack of media literacy that revolves around this movie and so many others, but the fact that they were so far gone from the point of the movie and Paul's character entirely that they thought it was a good idea to post that online in reference to their own faith. Paul Atredies took advantage of a prophecy that he knew was engineered to control the Fremen to do exactly what the Harkonnens wanted to do, just in a different font. His intentions might have been good to start, but ultimately, because of Jessica and the Bene Gesserit (specifically the Reverend Mother, as she talks to him in his visions and pushes him forward), who he realizes he is being manipulated by, he ends up where he is: a religious idol who (Spoiler for Dune Messiah) leads 61 billion souls "to paradise" and causes irreparable damage to the galaxy.

As someone who was raised Christian, I can tell you without a doubt that religion in general, but especially Christianity, can heavily damage your critical thinking skills and media literacy. When you look at everything from the lens of, "Ok but how does this piece of media validate my feelings and beliefs regardless of intention, subtext, or true meaning?" you end up falling into some really dangerous territory. Paul is not meant to be venerated in any way, shape, or form. He's a badass character and Timothée Chalamet did an excellent job portraying him, but you should not be comparing yourself to him, especially in the context of your religious journey. That is incredibly dangerous as you then shut your eyes to the true message of the story: white saviorism is bad, colonialism is bad, exploiting entire peoples for resources of any kind is bad, and spreading and using religion to control people is bad. Of course if you phrased bluntly any of these things to religious people they would (probably) agree that those are bad things. But when you put it into the context of film/literature/music/etc, and then you have no one spelling things out for you like you're used to people doing for you in your religion, and you've already tossed your critical thinking skills out the window in order to avoid doubting your faith, you end up supporting and turning a blind eye to the bad things that you would otherwise disagree with if it was made simple for you. Even if you have no ill intention, even though it was just a silly TikTok, the ease in which people delude themselves by refusing to look any deeper into media causes such mass amounts of complacency and allows history to repeat itself. It is repeating itself right now. When we learn about the Holocaust in school, everyone would say that if they were Germans living in Germany, they would have opposed the genocide of the Jewish, Romani, and queer people during WWII. But here we are, watching the genocide of the Palestinian people live on our phones, and yet people are still sitting in denial and complacency, and often using the Bible and religion as an excuse for why its' ok.

Steering away from the topic of religion, another clear example of media illiteracy recently was The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I both read the book and saw the movie (full book review posted on my book review blog @385bookreviews). While in the book you get Coriolanus' raw thoughts and it is made more obvious that he is not a good person even without the influence of Dr. Gaul, the movie still does a really good job of showing his decline into the person we see in The Hunger Games trilogy. And yet somehow, even with the context of the first three Hunger Games books (and the four movies), somehow people were still painting Coriolanus as the misunderstood good guy of the story. The latent misogyny that came out of so many people, especially women and girls who claim to be feminists, by saying Lucy Gray was manipulative and everything was her fault, was honestly appalling to watch. There is always room for personal interpretation of media, however that is widely different from purposefully ignoring canon information and editing the text to adhere to your own cognitive dissonance. This can once again come back to religion, as I believe people of every organized religion also practice this habit of picking and choosing whatever they want from their holy texts and then conveniently excusing the rest of it. Media illiteracy is shown in another way with the Hunger Games series fans as well. A lot of people can go to the movies or read the books and root for the rebelling protagonist and recognize perfectly the plot of the story: government bad, so good people rebel and fight for their freedom, and those are our heroes. And yet these same people will then turn around and ignore genocide because "the oppressed people attacked first, they should have stayed peaceful".

While not all media reflects real life, or is meant to be taken as seriously, The Hunger Games and Dune are definitely not two of those series. By ignoring the context and subtext and purely engaging with things as fiction, and then ignoring the real life applications and implications of the work, we are being purposefully and consensually blinded and allowing ourselves to become mindless cogs in a capitalist machine. We all need to learn to think for ourselves, now more than ever, and that starts with our media consumption.

[bignosebaby]

Kanzi the bonobo is now a gamer!

YouTuber ChrisDaCow reached out to the Des Moines’ Ape Cognition and Conservation Initiative where Kanzi and his bonobo family live. For decades Kanzi has demonstrated proficency in learning tasks and understanding human language, and his introduction to Minecraft adds to human study as well as Kanzi's enrichment.

Kanzi started by familiarizing himself with the game, using arrows to point to loot on the ground. Over time, Kanzi learned to tap the center of a touchscreen to move forward and touch the sides to turn and look around.

Kanzi gets rewarded for his achievements with his favorite snacks, such as peanuts, grapes, and apples. Kanzi not only enjoys playing Minecraft but also when people play with him.

Watch the video here! A fundraiser is included to build new outdoor play areas for the bonobos. They have already raised 10 thousand dollars and are planning another video about Kanzi's Minecraft world.

[demigod-of-the-agni]

FF7 REBIRTH SPOILERS ft A THEORY OF MINE

"Emptiness"

I may be reading too deep into this but bear with me. Sephiroth doing his damned best to reinforce that Cloud is nothing, that everything he feels his fake, that he's a puppet pulled along by Sephiroth's strings with no real purpose of his own. "Your tears are empty" is a line that really stands out to me, because Sephiroth insinuates that Cloud isn't a person and has no true substance as an individual. He's a shell.

Then much later, in the dream-esque Sleeping Forest, Aerith wants to spend one of their final moments focusing on Cloud, focusing on "finding the real [him]". Then Cloud hands Holy to Aerith, and she gifts him the clear materia in return, presumably having taken up Holy before she leaves. Aerith theorised earlier in the game that Holy was probably powered by her memories and dreams, and having lost them to the Whispers, to fate, has rendered the materia useless.

Basically, Cloud aptly describes not-Holy with, "It looks empty".

An empty man holding onto an empty materia.

I don't know, man. The thing about being given an empty thing after being told and tortured with the idea that you yourself are an empty thing is getting to me.

Part 3 is most likely going to deal with the fallout of Cloud's broken psyche and piecing him back together to "find the real [him]". I'm theorising not-Holy is only restored once Cloud has finally figured out who he is and what he wants to do.

Because materia isn't just the crystallisation of mako and the Lifestream. It's the physical representation of hopes and dreams and desires. The Black Materia was created to deliver the Gi from their unending existence. The White Materia ensures the prayers of the planet are answered.

And now not-Holy belongs to Cloud, so that whatever he finds in himself will fuel not-Holy and provide it with new purpose, maybe even allow him to finally heal after over two decades of suffering, because as Aerith said, "it's about saving the world — and you"

That is all

[jrueships]

older white men who have to announce how much they prefer college sports over professional sports & obsess over it kinda creep me out idk

[kizunagatari]

Can you believe lobcorp basically reinvented millenium items

[torchstelechos]

In an instance where the party met or had to deal with Mal du pays, I think they could theoretically do damage to it despite the fact that Siffrin could not. Specifically because I think, as Mal du pays is Siffrin's saddness/trauma taken form, that it would allow the party to hurt it. As I think that Siffrin would allow his loved ones to hurt him, as long as they stayed with him for a moment longer.