#disco elysium <3 i have no words for disco elysium it’s just the best game ever i think. life changing

[simcardiac-arrested]

Im jus looking at u w big eyes. Tell me what you're autistic about. Infodump get out of jail free card. Any size

oh boy there are. many things. there are so so so many things……. all rattling around my little brain……………….

[icehearts]

10 characters/10 fandoms/10 tags

Tagged by @shroudkeeper & @ubejamjar - thank you both! ♥ It's SO hard to narrow down my favorites but I'll try! Tagging (if you wanna! feel free to ignore!) @renjinguji | @sealrock | @tsunael

@paintedscales | @aethergazing

@sasslett | @chadhunkler | @snotsloth | @abalathia | @lavampira

1. Kainé - NieR Replicant. In trying to limit my answers to 10 separate fandoms, I had to narrow it down to one character for NieR including Drakengard, Automata, and Replicant. It's GOTTA be Kainé, though. I still get so emotional thinking about her.

2. Qifrey - Witch Hat Atelier. Witch Hat Atelier is an ongoing fantasy manga series and probably one of the best I've read. Qifrey is fascinating, flawed, and so much fun to watch (read?). Honestly, there are so many amazing and brilliantly written characters in WHA, it's hard to pick just one.

3. Solas - Dragon Age: Inquisition. I'll get some funny looks for this one, but Solas is THE Dragon Age character for me. I will not be explaining myself or taking any questions at this time. (Varric and Morrigan are strong runners-up though.)

4. Commander Shepard but specifically fem!Shep - Mass Effect. THE PROTAGONIST OF ALL TIME.

5. Kim Kitsuragi - Disco Elysium. Disco Elysium is a phenomenal game, and so much of that experience (for me) is due to Kim's presence. He's a professional, he's a dork, he's calm and collected to balance out Harry's, well, everything else.

6. Dale Cooper - Twin Peaks. I don't know if I have the words to accurately describe my love for Special Agent Dale Cooper.

7. Heather Mason - Silent Hill 3. My baby girl. My strong, god-killing daughter. I love Heather.

8. Cid Highwind - Final Fantasy VII. There are WAY too many Final Fantasy characters to choose from, but Cid goes here because he's the one who kickstarted my love for dragoons. (Other meaningful characters are Garnet, Kuja, Ignis, Rinoa, Freya, Ardyn, Ysayle, Fordola — honestly, I could fill out a separate list JUST for Final Fantasy characters.)

9 & 10. 2B & 9S - NieR Automata. Okay I broke down. I'm including them too.

[ot3]

hi i just finished disco elysium after repeatedly being exposed to it by you and i am incredibly grateful i did <3 you have some of the most compelling and thoughtful takes on media & characters/character dynamics i’ve ever seen so i’m super interested to hear any of your thoughts on harry and kim—they & their relationship is probably my fave part of the game. both are characters with a lot of depth and complexity that i think tends to be flattened by fans, but i feel sometimes i project qualities and depth that isn’t there (especially in regards to kim since we get pretty few peeks into his interior life—idk i think there’s a lot of conflict and contradiction within him, such as his need to remain in control vs an impulsive/violent/cruel streak, his clinging to status quo/authority vs rebelliousness, etc., but again i feel sometimes im reading too deep into things). idk curious to hear your perspective!

first of all i appreciate your confidence in me! very flattered to be called compelling and thoughtful... i do my best. i kind of went on a tangent here about how i apprach character analysis in general instead of talking specifically about kim and harry here... sorry...... sticking it under the cut because its long. and incredibly unfocused. once again sorry.

i definitely don't think you're overthinking it. i don't really think it IS possible to overthink something like disco elysium, which is both incredibly vast as a text [i believe the total wordcount for the game's script is well over a million words, although obviously you don't see anywhere near that full amount in a single playthrough] but also incredibly dense as a text. it's oversteeped in its own ideas and worldbuilding, to a wonderful effect. it doesn't spoonfeed you it's ideas or narrative, and you have to put in real effort to engage with it. and despite how desolate the game is i've seen few fictional worlds that manage to feel so alive just by virtue of the implicit depth and texture of their setting. the same can be said of the characters.

everything you're shown in disco elysium, you're shown with a lot of intent. we understand that kim is a rather reserved character who highly values his self control, which in many ways makes the things we do see of him exponentially more meaningful and impactful. The fact that these things you've listed are things prevalent enough with him that they do manage to bubble to the surface despite how he tries to lock himself down means they're things worth looking at.

also, in general i don't think there's such a thing as 'overthinking' a work of fiction at all. the idea of 'overthinking' implies that analyzing fiction is a sort of binary where you have either come to the correct conclusions about the work or you haven't. but of course that spits in the face of what analysis is all about. i think a better question than 'am i overthinking it' is 'what relationship does this interpretation have to canon?' i don't think it's possible to do media analysis 'right' but i do think it's very easy to do it wrong, and to me that comes down to whether or not your ideas about a work are arbitrary, or in conversation with the text.

i almost think about character analysis kind of like cuil theory, where each level of abstraction is one step further away from the explicit text of a canon. basically everything i think about a character could fit into this sliding scale

1 cuil - explicitly canonical things about this character. as concretely 'true' as anything is in fiction

2 cuils - things about a character that are implied or alluded to, to the degree where these facts are 'canon', but not explicitly stated. subtext.

3 cuils - 'negative space' character traits, things that are neither directly referenced nor alluded to, but make concrete, logical sense within the surrounding context. stuff that toes the line between subtext and personal interpretation.

4 cuils - hypotheticals. stuff that doesn't necessarily have any specific basis in the text, but isn't disproven by the text in any way. stuff almost entirely brought in to the text by an outside source.

5 cuils - hostile readings, where an interpretation of a character either contradicts or intentionally rejects something that can be said to be explicit canon, for whatever reason.

i think the 3 cuil stuff is by far where the most interesting character discussion happens, because this really all hinges on one thing: how much do you trust the person writing this character? do you believe have a complex vision for the character? how much do you trust them to write subtext? the idea of 'overthinking' something can come with the implication that there's nothing there to think about. but if that deep subtext is genuinely there, you're not overthinking it. you're just thinking. I think 'bad' character analysis comes into play when people attribute authorial intent to stuff that is really reliant on stuff they are bringing to the narrative that the author had nothing to do with. Stuff you bring to a text yourself isn't necessarily bad analysis or poisoning the well by any means, but being aware about what parts of your reading are impositions you are making on the text is critical.

That said, every character exists far more fully formed in an author's mind than it exists in a text, just due to the nature of writing. little breadcrumbs hinting towards this more robust picture of a character get left in the text. how many of them are intentional, and how many of them aren't? does it make a difference if it was intentional, if you can still convincingly follow those breadcrumbs back?

in the case of disco elysium, i absolutely do believe it is intentional. i fully believe that the people writing this game could, if they felt so inclined, give us as complete a picture of kim kitsuragi as there's been for any other character in fiction that we might use as the metric for character depth. but the important thing about kim is that he's not the protagonist - his character journey isn't the point here. more importantly, he's harry's foil. Harry as a character is a gaping wound. Everything is spilling out of him unwillingly, and it's ugly, and it's horrible, and then here's kim who is all buttoned up and put together and everything that you as harry are not.

so now here's the trick. you as the player and you as harry want to know kim. almost instantly. i dont know anyone who hasnt been obsessed with this guy from the getgo. we're supposed to want to pick at his seams until we find the bits that are more human there. getting to the ending where kim will join you at your precinct requires these two characters to meet in the middle to some degree. Harry finds structure and function from kim's behavior, and kim begins to exhibit more humanity both in terms of showing more emotion and showing genuine personality flaws, both of which are things harry has in spades. wanting to dig that stuff out of kim is the point of kim's entire character. on a mechanical level as a game that looks like trying to up his approval of you through conversations and investigation. on an emotional level of connecting with a narrative, it looks like what you're doing; reading into his mannerisms and behavior and trying to puzzle it out.

[mundanesalad]

for the violence ask game: 3, 16? >:) (for any fandom)

[Choose Violence ask game] I chose to give some different examples. For variety.

3: screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

Ok. This one will take some time to think about and I want to come up with a few different examples because i've been on this hellsite for so long. And the thing about tumblr is that "you curate your own experience" so its really easy to NO WAIT I CHANGE MY MIND THE WORST TAKE I EVER SAW WAS FROM THE USSR FANDOM "Jews weren't persecuted in the USSR and everything you've heard about the pogroms was USamerican propaganda" which is just straight up wrong and historical revisionism.

Disco Elysium: Every single absolutely noteworthy bad discopost has been from the subreddit, which i do not look at. Therefore the only infamous tumblr take I can remember are the terfs who say nobody can be trans in Revachol. I think they should take a long walk off a short plank.

Guilty Gear: I see frequent bad takes from both the fandom and the fighting game community side of GG, but nearly all that shit is on twitter and reddit. (I'm not kidding when i say the GG subreddit has some of the worst moderation I've ever seen on a game subreddit. It's all shitposts and you cannot find any helpful information there. I can and WILL complain about horrible twitter takes all the time.) Anyway theres a gg confessions tumblr (i will not link it but its not hard to find) is an entertaining trainwreck. The worst take I saw there was "Sol, Jack-o, and Asuka would be the best polycule ever!" which is like. You had to have engaged with the story enough to come to that conclusion but you used absolutely zero brain cells in that thought processing. No critical thinking skills. You saw some pretty people on a screen and shipped them without listening to anything they were saying. (TL;DR One of Sol's defining characteristics throughout the entire series is that he wants to kill Asuka and not in a "hot rivalry way" but in a "you deeply and unforgivably betrayed my trust and bodily autonomy and that's not even the tip of the iceberg" kind of way.)

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: [Long, drawn-out pantomime of opening a bottle of whiskey, pouring a generous amount into a glass, and downing it in one go] It's not worth talking about in public.

16: you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

Disco Elysium: To put it lightly, I do not think Kim would have anything more than a mere tolerance for Jean.

Guilty Gear: Everyone is wrong about Faust except for me and my friends. I'm writing this 30k word fanfic, and oftentimes I think "Is my characterization of Faust too serious? Am I making him too solemn? Like yeah, his combat is silly but otherwise he's very straightforward when he speaks." and then I look at his story dialogue and think to myself "No. It's the fanon's perception of him that is wrong." ALSO. Anyone saying that his characterization in Strive is "him returning to being a serial killer" will die by my hand. Regardless of his uncanny appearance now, mentally that's the best he's ever been in the whole franchise. FUcking fight me on it. I'll 214s->PRC->236h* your ass.

Fallout: The Legion do NOT get a pass because they "allow gay men"!!!!!!!

(* teleport on top of you and give you a haircut. I'm not kidding that's what that combo does.)

Thanks Yarrow! This took me too long.

[alphamalereviewsfanfics]

HANDS UP AGAINST THE WALL WHERE I CAN SEE THEM by deleted user ):

SUMMARY: “literally the gayest cops you can imagine have sex against the wall of amenity number nine”

PREGAME: my partner played officer barrel in a production of urinetown and I saw the closing show yesterday and they are the best barrel of all time!!!!! better than everyone else!!!!! fuck all of you my partner just brings some nice gravitas to the character your stupid ass could never understand!!!!!! i want them to take me to urinetown!!! And so a few days before the show they sent me this fic and told me to read it and of course I would! I read it twice before the show and then twice after so I could gauge how the fanfic was to someone who hadn’t known the characters in full detail and then read it so I could compare the vibe of it to the performance I saw. I am a reviewer who only wants the best for his audience baby and I always deliver except when my friend sends me like a 12 part 500k word story about the amphibia characters disemboweling people I don’t think I can get through that series for him but maybe I will one day who knows. But anyways I was awoken in the middle of the night and that caused me to get inspired to reread the fanfic and write this review so enjoy my fellow alphas

REVIEW: When I opened this shit up and read the tags, I was slapped across the face with a SECOND PERSON POINT OF VIEW. Who the fuck write a fanfiction about two characters in SECOND PERSON??? I am here to read officer barrel get fucked by officer lockstock, “You” doesn’t even fucking exist in this world it takes me out of the immersion baby like what the fuck???? BUT!!! That was just my first impression because oh baby what if I told YOU that this was second person POV being used EFFECTIVELY?? Like what the fuck I didn’t expect it to be actually pretty solidly written so I kinda respected the second person POV as a quirk of the writer and let go of it and the immersion was never really lost it was weird. I’ve read only one other fanfic that did that correctly and that was because it was this one that was in the style of the disco Elysium game and so it enhanced the reading experience very well, I need to review it one day. But the point is that this is like kinda good. Before reading it, my partner and I looked through the comments and we noticed three things: 1) basically everyone reading it was in a production of urinetown and one person who commented actually had lockstock and barrel kiss which was cool I guess AND 2) people who weren’t a big fan of second person POV were into it, AND 3) an account called JDFangirl3.14 commented, “I’m doing this play right now, and we all love how beautifully and grammatically correct this is written! 👨❤️👨”. This comment may seem innocuous and normal but I was shitting my pants when I read that it said that it was grammatically correct. I am the type of guy who can’t really get off to reading fanfic shit, and like especially if there’s a grammatical error it just takes me out of the immersion. But once I read the fic I realized that this dude was almost right. Basic grammar laws were abided most of the time but there was one typo with wall being wal and one mistake where the author didn’t put a space in between two words. But that was easily passed over because man I was already engrossed in this body of work which alluded me because I had to reread it three times to realize that those were there but maybe I’m stupid.

This author (I wish they had not deleted their account so I could thank them) somehow blended in together some elements of shit I didn’t like (second person pov, italics for internal and external dialogue, cops) and somehow brought it together into something pretty solid and immersive to me. And like character wise it’s kinda in character like maybe the production I watched played it different than theirs because I couldn’t really imagine officer lockstock being too intimidating and I had to like separate the characters appearances and voices in my head from the actors in the production because it would be weird and kinda cuck-y to imagine your partner and the dude that played lockstock getting at it at amenity number nine so take my interpretation of the characters with a grain of salt. Like the dialogue isn’t the best sometimes and it feels like I’ve read a few fanfics that have said the same shit before but I don’t know maybe I’m riding a high on something that’s not making me as critical as I usually am. Yeah so if you like a nice combination of second person pov and you wish you could watch urinetown cops fuck on stage then hey this fanfic is for you.

BEST LINE: I’m too tired to find a line sorry I’m just gonna post this and then go back to sleep

RATING: 3.7/8 bunnies (gamma status I think??)

[corvidcall]

I posted 18,037 times in 2022

That's 1,739 more posts than 2021!

401 posts created (2%)

17,636 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@sassytail

@omgitsseddie

@blazing-spectre

@starlit-mansion

I tagged 3,204 of my posts in 2022

#anime life - 339 posts

#hermitcraft - 176 posts

#iswm - 127 posts

#homestuck - 106 posts

#fnaf - 96 posts

#ofmd - 88 posts

#deltarune - 80 posts

#markcu - 75 posts

#disco elysium - 60 posts

#splatoon - 54 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#yucky but its fine for other people i guess. good in other things but gross as a primary condiment. yummy!!!! i love mushrooms. yucky and gi

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

i had a dream last night where i was in a high stakes game of magic the gathering, and even though im very bad at magic the gathering, i was extremely winning because WotC just came out with a new set of cards for like. Pride i guess? and they didnt want to seem homophobic so they were very OP.

anyway heres my best recreation of two of the gay mtg cards

(the lyrics on the lesbian card are from Dodie's song "She" - I don't remember exactly if those were the lyrics on the card but i DO remember looking at it and going "oh i guess they got Dodie involved in this? ok")

110 notes - Posted April 16, 2022

#4

i think it's really funny when people criticize something they don't like by calling it "soulless". saw someone say that about squishmallows, and said that instead of buying that soullless crap, you could spend the same amount of money buying a real stuffed animal

now, i don't care if they do or don't like squishmallows, but i am fascinated by the premise. squishmallows dont have souls, but other stuffed animals do? is toy story real? are beanie babies going to christian heaven?

319 notes - Posted September 19, 2022

#3

None Of You Know What Haiku Are

I'm going to preface this by saying that i am not an expert in ANY form of poetry, just an enthusiast. Also, this post is... really long. Too long? Definitely too long. Whoops! I love poetry.

If you ask most English-speaking people (or haiku-bot) what a haiku is, they would probably say that it's a form of poetry that has 3 lines, with 5, and then 7, and then 5 syllables in them. That's certainly what I was taught in school when we did our scant poetry unit, but since... idk elementary school when I learned that, I've learned that that's actually a pretty inaccurate definition of haiku. And I think that inaccurate definition is a big part of why most people (myself included until relatively recently!) think that haiku are kind of... dumb? unimpressive? simple and boring? I mean, if you can just put any words with the right number of syllables into 3 lines, what makes it special?

Well, let me get into why the 5-7-5 understanding of haiku is wrong, and also what makes haiku so special (with examples)!

First of all, Japanese doesn't have syllables! There's a few different names for what phonetic units actually make up the language- In Japanese, they're called "On" (音), which translates to "sound", although English-language linguists often call it a "mora" (μ), which (quoting from Wikipedia here) "is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable." (x) "Oh" is one syllable, and also one mora, whereas "Oi" has one syllable, but two moras. "Ba" has one mora, "Baa" has two moras, etc. In English, we would say that a haiku is made up of three lines, with 5-7-5 syllables in them, 17 syllables total. In Japanese, that would be 17 sounds.

For an example of the difference, the word "haiku", in English, has 2 syllables (hai-ku), but in Japanese, はいく has 3 sounds (ha-i-ku). "Christmas" has 2 syllables, but in Japanese, "クリスマス" (ku-ri-su-ma-su) is 5 sounds! that's a while line on its own! Sometimes the syllables are the same as the sounds ("sushi" is two syllables, and すし is two sounds), but sometimes they're very different.

In addition, words in Japanese are frequently longer than their English equivalents. For example, the word "cuckoo" in Japanese is "ほととぎす" (hototogisu).

Now, I'm sure you're all very impressed at how I can use an English to Japanese dictionary (thank you, my mother is proud), but what does any of this matter? So two languages are different. How does that impact our understanding of haiku?

Well, if you think about the fact that Japanese words are frequently longer than English words, AND that Japanese counts sounds and not syllables, you can see how, "based purely on a 17-syllable counting method, a poet writing in English could easily slip in enough words for two haiku in Japanese” (quote from Grit, Grace, and Gold: Haiku Celebrating the Sports of Summer by Kit Pancoast Nagamura). If you're writing a poem using 17 English syllables, you are writing significantly more content than is in an authentic Japanese haiku.

(Also not all Japanese haiku are 17 sounds at all. It's really more of a guideline.)

Focusing on the 5-7-5 form leads to ignoring other strategies/common conventions of haiku, which personally, I think are more interesting! Two of the big ones are kigo, a season word, and kireji, a cutting word.

Kigo are words/phrases/images associated with a particular season, like snow for winter, or cherry blossoms for spring. In Japan, they actually publish reference books of kigo called saijiki, which is basically like a dictionary or almanac of kigo, describing the meaning, providing a list of related words, and some haiku that use that kigo. Using a a particular kigo both grounds the haiku in a particular time, but also alludes to other haiku that have used the same one.

Kireji is a thing that doesn't easily translate to English, but it's almost like a spoken piece of punctuation, separating the haiku into two parts/images that resonate with and add depth to each other. Some examples of kireji would be "ya", "keri", and "kana." Here's kireji in action in one of the most famous haiku:

古池や　蛙飛び込む　水の音 (Furu ike ya　kawazu tobikomu　mizu no oto) (The old pond — A frog jumps in The sound of the water.)

You can see the kireji at the end of the first line- 古池や literally translates to "old pond ya". The "ya" doesn't have linguistic meaning, but it denotes the separation between the two focuses of the haiku. First, we are picturing a pond. It's old, mature. The water is still. And then there's a frog! It's spring and he's fresh and new to the world! He jumps into the pond and goes "splash"! Wowie! When I say "cutting word", instead of say, a knife cutting, I like to imagine a film cut. The camera shows the pond, and then it cuts to the frog who jumps in.

English doesn't really have a version of this, at least not one that's spoken, but in English language haiku, people will frequently use a dash or an ellipses to fill the same role.

Format aside, there are also some conventions of the actual content, too. They frequently focus on nature, and are generally use direct language without metaphor. They use concrete images without judgement or analysis, inviting the reader to step into their shoes and imagine how they'd feel in the situation. It's not about describing how you feel, so much as it's about describing what made you feel.

Now, let's put it all together, looking at a haiku written Yosa Buson around 1760 (translated by Harold G. Henderson)

The piercing chill I feel: my dead wife's comb, in our bedroom, under my heel

We've got our kigo with "the piercing chill." We read that, and we imagine it's probably winter. It's cold, and the kind of cold wind that cuts through you. There's our kireji- this translation uses a colon to differentiate our two images: the piercing chill, and the poet stepping on his dead wife's comb. There's no descriptions of what the poet is feeling, but you can imagine stepping into his shoes. You can imagine the pain he's experiencing in that moment on your own.

"But tumblr user corvidcall!" I hear you say, "All the examples you've used so far are Japanese haiku that have been translated! Are you implying that it's impossible for a good haiku to be written in English?" NO!!!!! I love English haiku! Here's a good example, which won first place in the 2000 Henderson haiku contest, sponsored by the Haiku Society of America:

meteor shower . . . a gentle wave wets our sandals

When you read this one, can you imagine being in the poet's place? Do you feel the surprise as the tide comes in? Do you feel the summer-ness of the moment? Haiku are about describing things with the senses, and how you take in the world around you. In a way, it's like the poet is only setting a scene, which you inhabit and fill with meaning based on your own experiences. You and I are imagining different beaches, different waves, different people that make up the "our" it mentioned.

"Do I HAVE to include all these things when I write haiku? If I include all these things, does that mean my haiku will be good?" I mean, I don't know. What colors make up a good painting? What scenes make up a good play? It's a creative medium, and nobody can really tell you you can't experiment with form. Certainly not me! But I think it's important to know what the conventions of the form are, so you can appreciate good examples of it, and so you can know what you're actually experimenting with. And I mean... I'm not the poetry cops. But if you're not interested in engaging with the actual conventions and limitations of the form, then why are you even using that form?

I'll leave you with one more English language haiku, which is probably my favorite haiku ever. It was written by Tom Bierovic, and won first place at the 2021 Haiku Society of America Haiku Awards

a year at most . . . we pretend to watch the hummingbirds

Sources: (x) (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Further reading:

Forms in English Haiku by Keiko Imaoka Haiku: A Whole Lot More Than 5-7-5 by Jack How to Write a Bad Haiku by KrisL Haiku Are Not a Joke: A Plea from a Poet Who Has Had It Up to Here by Sandra Simpson Haiku Checklist by Katherine Raine

964 notes - Posted October 17, 2022

#2

there's a post (possibly a genre of posts?) that i see frequently where OP is mad about self care posts that are like "it's okay if you didn't brush your teeth today uwu" and op is mad because they didn't brush their teeth for a long time and now they have huge dental bills and i take umbrage with their idea that it was tumblrs fault that they didnt brush their teeth and if only people had been less nice to them, they would have known to brush more

listen, i didn't brush my teeth for many years. feeling bad about it didnt make me brush more. knowing that people thought it was gross didn't make me brush more. being shamed and guilted about it didn't make me brush more.

what DID help was figuring out what was actually the barrier between me and doing it, and then removing those barriers, even if they felt silly and like they shouldn't be barriers at all

for example:

PROBLEM: my toothbrush is too big to fit in the cabinet and I can't leave it on the counter, so I have to keep it in my bedroom and remember to bring it with me to brush

SOLUTION: buy a new, smaller toothbrush. i know i already have a perfectly good one that's nicer than the new one i bought, but a cheap toothbrush i actually use is a million times more valuable than an expensive brush i dont

PROBLEM: i dont want to brush immediately after i wake up, it feels gross and makes me gag

SOLUTION: i set an alarm for a few hours after i wake up and do it then. the teeth dont know the difference!

PROBLEM: i hate mint and i hate cinnamon. most toothpastes are mint and the ones that aren't mint are cinnamon

SOLUTION: start buying kids toothpaste. this has the added bonus of i think it's fun and whimsical

Being mad at yourself for not brushing isn't going to help. You KNOW you should be brushing your teeth. People who don't brush their teeth aren't UNAWARE that their dental hygiene is important!!! Posts that say "if you didn't brush your teeth, you don't need to feel ashamed about it" aren't hurting people, because shame and blame don't help people form healthier habits, and frankly, it's weird to pin the consequences of your unhealthy habits on people for not shaming you more!!!

27,908 notes - Posted February 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

for the record. i dont post cringe to keep the twitter users at bay. i do not post cringe at all. if you cringe at my posts, thats on you, not me. i am simply having a good time on this webbed site and if that makes you cringe, i am sorry for whatever you see in me that shames you so.

29,443 notes - Posted November 8, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[udonthreens]

top 5 disco elysium moments i have never played the game but ithink you should explain it like i know everything already anyways

anon uve triggered my autism beam

these r vaguely ranked but also i. i dont promise coherency and if i thought abt it with more brain theyd be different.

5) ok this is the last one im writing and idk. theres so many good scenes and moments and nevermind. the chair. the fucking CHAIR and evrart. it took me 200hrs to see what happens when u PASS the composure check like. tbh failing this check is basically canon. slide down it like a jello shot. again like the megarich container guy this is one of those possible early moments of 'ou this games a fucking weird comedy' and i just. best way to assert dominance with the corrupt commie boss like 'what a great display of... idek what that was' and im pretty sure u lose a rep point with kim if u fail it too like. kim dont be mad this is just my interogattion technique im not giving the rcm a bad rep i promise kim

actually some honourable mentions: lamby, boardgames with kim, joyce pale convo, kim voice dilligent boy, THE CHURCH I DIDNT MENTION THE CHURCH i love doin the dance after gettin shot its so funny. love the rave kids. shivers voice theres a hole in my heart. the fucking 'lookin to score some d girl!' bit with kim & acele thats comedy gold actually. thats brilliant. i might just start listening everything. pinball with kim when u pass it im just like. kim why dyou sound so smitten . the piss and fuck jackets. actually i really like the whole bit with the working class woman that was Devasting. even more so when i realised u could actually tell her ud look for her husband ...... i liked the jamais vu viscal pleasure wheel bit after (i think that was added with the update? yes it was) altho i dont remember specifics just. his brain reconstructin smth as idk.. smth to make him feel better? felt bittersweet. i should go see that scene again.

ok ill fuckin wrap this up. 'are u... a really good detective?' great line and not a moment per say but. the fact that jean just. hangs around the whirling for several days in that fuckin wig like, obvs he doesnt move spots bcs its a video game (despite the edc lines showin that he does do other shit) cuz u need to know where to find him. but he just fuckin commits like. the character building from all this shit for whats technically a minor character. brilliant. doesnt HE have a fuckin job to do. also titus is always in the whirling for the same video game reason so like. yes. yes to that rarepair.

3) communist book club and the tower building that was soooooo cool not to mention the fuckin hilarity of readin bout inframaterialism for the first time nd going "???? is this pseudoscience in the game or can it ACTUALLY fucking happen like wtf"

2) karoke. pass over fail tbh limbic system KILLS it (and its more lyrical spoken word doesnt fit the song nd also i thot id actually hear harrys voice during that scene and we kinda did but like thats a different tangent) and kims support 'detective du bois... it was down right tragic' and the edc or concept check? concept i 5hink that was like 'to him that represented being an rcm member perfectly' like HELLO??? kim bestie its not 2 late for a career change. AND not to mention gartes reaction to it like... u really get the feeling that he Will get rid of the machine if harry fucks it up. however i do like the pass as well bcs a) harrys had enough cringe fail b) jeans deadbeat litany of 'yeah its shit it sucked awful' like. thats how he talks 2 harry when hes being NICE its so funny. het life partners <33

4) mega rich light bending guy. AGAIN the weiss thingymay coefficent where ur like 'is this an actual Thing or is harry just fuckin insane' nd also i crit succeeded on my first playthru real early on when i hadnt seen any of the wacky shit yet nd it just. the -2 if u have the artcop thought the fuckin ultralib shit . u get like 4 ultralib points at LEAST if u pass/fail the right concept check. god not to mention kim earnestly suggesting rcm reforms like kim bestie kim kim my bestfriend kim its not 2 late for a career change. also if u get the 100 real and kims like 'ur full of surprises most of them bad but some of them good' soooo true <33

1) salami man.

[skollwolf]

For the WIP and Published Asks Game!!

🥰 a fluff WIP snippet

😔published lines or a section of a fic that was super sad, angsty, or difficult to write?

Thanks for the tag! Now it's my turn to be late, mostly because I like....do not write fluff by and large and have been wracking my brain for a WIP I have that counts as fluff. Since I came up with nothing in my WIPs, here's a chunk from a recently published fic I wrote for a holiday gift exchange instead!

🥰 a fluff WIP snippet

KIM KITSURAGI - “Detective.”  He pauses a moment, then, “Harry.  You know you don’t need to impress me.” YOU - “Can’t I want to?” Suddenly the words are bubbling up at your lips, urgent.  “Don’t you deserve to be impressed, Kim?” RHETORIC - You know that sounds like– EMPATHY - Shut.  Up. YOU - “I just want you to stay.  For good food, and for berry crumble, and for–to trounce me at board games, after.  I want you to have a good time with me.  Is that too much?” PERCEPTION [Challenging: Success] - Kim lets out a carefully controlled breath.  He’s looking at you very steadily. KIM KITSURAGI - “No, Harry.  That’s not too much.”  His hand tightens for a moment on your elbow, and then he lets go.  He takes the bowl from in front of you, and ladles stew into it, setting it back in front of you full.  “Eat, before it gets cold, hmm?” YOU - The rational thing to do would be to do as Kim says, but instead you say, like a child in need of reassurance, “So you’re staying?” KIM KITSURAGI - There’s something in the way he’s looking at you, now, that you cannot fully parse.  “Yes, I’ll stay.”  He looks away with a smile–an almost private little curve of his lips.  “We have plenty of time.”

And as for an angsty bit of published lines....whoo boy. I've been writing Disco Elysium fic recently, and that is a bittersweet-at-best to dark-at-worst canon to start from (admittedly while also being one of the funniest games I have ever played), so my recent fics have been A Lot. Warning for a mention in this chunk of Harry's canonical past suicidal ideation I guess.

😔published lines or a section of a fic that was super sad, angsty, or difficult to write?

SUGGESTION [Impossible: Failure] - “I don’t–why?  Why would anybody, when they could have–” with a gesture to the teasing ingenue “–this?” KIM KITSURAGI - The lieutenant’s posture, generally upright to begin with, straightens even further.  He shifts, plants his weight.  “Is this related to the case, officer?” EMPATHY [Heroic: Success] - This moment has weight, Harrier.  Step wrong, and for the remainder of this case, you will have a perfectly capable, perfectly professional partner–and then when it is over, you will never see Kim Kitsuragi again.  Forget whatever hopes you might have of friendship; forget installing those headlights, or games of Suzerainty.  He’s already closing himself away.  You can see him doing it. SHIVERS [Heroic: Success] - YOU CAN’T LET HIM. YOU - 1. [Suggestion - Legendary] - Apologize, and mean it.  Let it go. -1 When has Kim ever wanted your apologies? -2 There’s something here, Harry, and you’re losing it.  A door is closing.  Please be on the other side of it before it does. 2. [Drama - Heroic] - Tell Kim it is case related!  (Lie) -1 If you aren’t even wearing your mesh shirt, is your heart really in it? 3. [Inland Empire - Godly] - Tell Kim the truth. -1 What truth? +5 IT’S TIME. INLAND EMPIRE [Godly: Success] - You hear yourself say, as if from a distance, “No, Kim, it’s not–it’s–I–” but these words are meaningless, in the face of the truth.   Are you ready, Harrier Du Bois? YOU - 1. No. 2. I’m not. 3. Ever since I woke up in the Whirling-in-Rags, some part of me has been trying not to know this, hasn’t it?  So many of my memories hurt me.  Apricots, and letters hidden in ledgers.  The way I put my mouth around my gun before I sold it.  Now this, too?  Is there any part of my old life that isn’t pain? 4. But I’ve always known, haven’t I?  Deep, deep down.  I’m a tongue sliding again and again into an empty socket; I’m fingers that press at a wound until the scab tears, hoping for fresh blood.  I always touch the things that hurt me.  Nothing ever scars. YOU - No. DOMINANCE - Coward.

So that's my set, sorry for them being in Disco format (which is a lot to parse if you haven't played). Thank you for the tag!

[szif]

i Just finished disco elysium here's my thoughts on it

[first words as the credits roll]

this was worth the 11+ hours of gametime in a row of a "itll take 3 more hours to wrap it up, i'll quickly go through it!" and here's me, nearing 6 am, about to go to sleep. haha. like holy shit just finished the game. i feel like i have played this before and i have the memories full crystal clear but the ending just feels relatable because it feels like a recollection of everything people throw at you its like... a "confession scene" like how most storygames also have them, where you have to recount all your actions and your environment decides on your fate. im just real glad i took the time to actually finish it

[actual spoilery part]

having to go with cuno is the biggest punishment in the entire game and i remember it being like that (do not ask where these memories are from. i looked it up and i apparently have, in fact, played this game before, a ... year ago? and yet i didnt notice it when i was playing it?) and just the abscence of kim hit me so hard i decided on just loading a save for it.

kim was the best fucking character ever like he was so like, cool and i wanted him to just say literally anything. kept trying to talk to him just to see if he would have a little convo with me like he was just lovely. all his reactions and how the relationship develops between our guy and him? it was amazing he really was a huge boost to my fun!!!! and i feel like all the dialogue and the setting itself was just. a huge part of it. like they knew what they were doing and kim is the biggest example of it.

for like . im sorry i am so tired icant make all these symbols you know what okay i will but it physically pains me. all these [vague gestures] stuff i actually felt like i could somewhat understand the game and what i need to do and i didnt actually feel like, über confused or felt like the game is impossible. i just did my own thing and also set out to my own adventures to have fun. i literally had fun throughout the entire game and loved every second of it until i accidentally got kim fucking shot and got locked with cuno. like that was fucking horrible. but it really surprised me like i felt like it would be stressful or i would break down crying about it at least once or twice but no. it was great.

im really just like. amazed by the game honestly. like yay videogames are actually fun. and thank you to whichever tumblr user uploaded it in a hurry then took it down for their safety again because i feel like thats how i have a copy of it? so thank you, whoever that stranger might be, because i feel like i gained some nice fun from it and i probably wouldnt have gotten the game otherwise out of my volition besides having it conveniently placed in front of me. thank you, but really!!!

oh yeah, im im sorry my brain is a bit scrambled but honestly i was super into the fact that i found that stickbug thing and didnt have to leave each other behind. i dont know if it played out once for me or not but i went with my guy kim and left our guy in there. it has been great i really liked that outcome. but thats not what i want to say actually the thing i want to say would be something like "i feel so deeply uncomfortable and theres something spiralling and warping in me, a part of myself that doesnt sit right with the fact that the ending was about some pretty much homeless guy who through a political assassination got his opposing enemy soldier when all of the stuff was unwrapping inside the town." a bunch of troubled people walling your cop ass out from them because you're trouble and they all carry their baggage and everything is more complex as they seem but the law and justice is blind almost even when we're seemingly corrupt because we are fulfilling our jobs as like, police officers and so thats how it really ends for us? for him? i feel like i need to sit down and yes i have heard this ending and his entire talk before and it made me slightly uncomfortable listening to it but i havent really paid attention to any of it i was just clearly aware that like being so lustful about a clean win is. so disgusting. but i also feel like after coming back(?)(did it exist?) to it i still havent really gotten to know how i should feel OR like if i even got any of the thing that was being said or implied. like i dont know i feel like i just have nothing going on with me that could be making me understand any of it even when the feeling is there. but ill just get a clear head and look what happened in there later like i usually am awake hours before . and im over here trying to conceptualize all my troubles in the world. it really didnt sit right with me i just got nausea from just like how unfolding everything was only to leave the most bitter fucking like. well . "Nothing" for us. after all that we've experienced?

man it was just real fun and ill probably think about it for a while and try to pick out some real fun parts of it ...

[amnyatas]

Oh my gosh similar worms I also just recently played Disco Elysium! Sadly can’t replay right now because my ADHD ass can’t focus on a text based game anymore but it was fun!

I was such a pathetic little man, I definitely missed a lot of things, but on the bright side I didn’t take a single drug or alcohol the whole play through (love letting my man be clean)

What kind of stats did you give yourself at the start? I tried to make mine similar stats to what I think I’d have so I had basically no physical ability lol.

Also ngl i spent a lot of the game thinking Kim was actually my half brother because of whatever that beginning narration was that said that (most definitely metaphorically)

oh god i was a mess too.

was trying to play as i would answer, but then also trying to 'fix' harry, then my brain hit a limit and i was like 'ok but i really also wanna solve the main story'. took 3 days.

i went with the uhhh thinker archetype the first time, which was a mistake because oh encyclopedia gives me so much lore text...it was a little overwhelming! my brain can only process so much information in a day, i think, and dumping ALL that lore at once was. SO MUCH. but i cried when i got to the end and got stick bugged.

second run i tried going with balanced stats and that has NOT made anything easier LMAO. at least now i don't have to worry about story progress so much and can focus on all the stuff i couldn't comprehend the first time. am also trying to be goofier but i think it's a little more unhinged instead. the tie will NOT shut up.

i had enough of a gist of things going in; i had heard abt some of the thoughts, i was warned about The Chair and the scab leader's story about the tattoos. also had seen what harry's portrait looked like shaved and without The Expression and that it was implied that was the best path for him...the rest was kinda up in the air.

oh NO. yeah no i got that the second time, and i think my logic was 'yeah no i woulda heard about how weird that was instead of seeing ship art'. Kim's a real great character though, the lines between harry being his own character and a proxy for the player really make it heartwarming to see a character be so supporting. he's goofy under that cool exterior, too, which i adore.

like i'm not good at...expressing thoughts and feelings through words, but it's really a masterpiece. i hope the lawsuit goes well for the original devs, i hope they get this fascinating world they created back and allow us explore it more someday.

[kecleonplush]

He compartido 16.314 publicaciones este 2022

¡Son 13.298 más que en 2021!

116 publicaciones originales (1 %)

16.198 reblogueos (99 %)

Estos son los blogs que más he reblogueado:

@sew-birb

@readytoplaygod

@alibrariangoestoikea

@dingdongyouarewrong

@kitsune-kaos

He etiquetado 4997 publicaciones en 2022

#kim: 668 publicaciones

#ref: 310 publicaciones

#them: 269 publicaciones

#disco elysium: 202 publicaciones

#yeah: 135 publicaciones

#me: 57 publicaciones

#shabby chic: 49 publicaciones

#eeaao: 39 publicaciones

#yes: 35 publicaciones

#love this: 35 publicaciones

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#you are being willfully ignorant of the process of academia to assume that they're even able to say “yeah they wer gay and fuqqed all the t

Mis publicaciones más populares este 2022:

5

I'm so glad that Heartstopper exists - it's so nice and cute and really is a great portrayal of young queer love and I just hope that we can have more stories about happy queer people. Stories about our struggle are great and important but so much queer media is focused on it that it's easy to just binge gay movies and shows and fall into a depressive hole.

But at the same time, for me personally as a gay millennial who grew up right on the cusp of this new wave of queer acceptance, it really hurts to watch something that could have been me if I were born like, five years later. I had teenage love stolen from me by a society that wanted me dead or at least miserable for being who I was and it really fucking sucks to be reminded that I'll never get that back. I'm nearly 30 and despite having had supportive parents and a great family I'm still playing catchup socially and romantically relative to my peers because I lost so much time as a teen and young adult. Even if I've been lucky enough to not be bashed or actively discriminated against, the fear of it has kept me from experiencing things that so many of my peers have and have helped isolate me in ways my cishet friends have never had to experience.

I hope that my generation is the last one that has to live with this kind of fear and isolation. Things like Heartstopper make me hopeful that that's the case. But I also hope that people like me, who had to live in this limbo, don't get forgotten either.

11 notas. Fecha de publicación: 25 de abril de 2022

4

Disco Elysium is a wonderful and beautiful game with amazing writing and a haunting world and soundtrack and I really want to create a TTRPG system based off its approach to gameplay AND ALSO I have projected ALL of my problems and insecurities onto it and it has GLOMED onto me like a Futurama brainslug and I am so in love with Kim Kitsuragi and I might die from it oh my god

12 notas. Fecha de publicación: 16 de julio de 2022

3

As of last night, I finished my Disco Elysium fic (or the first draft anyway). 180ish pages, 60kish words (accounting for the scripting stuff to the best of my ability). I’m taking a break from my first proper tip to tail readthrough to go through my dash, but I’m gonna finish it up and chunk it into chapters then try to find beta readers to help me clean it up and edit a bit. If any followers and/or mutuals want to help I would be very grateful!!!

For those curious, it’s a slowburn Harry X Kim casefic that looks to establish sort of a post-canon canon - I started it as a sort of self-indulgent attempt to establish a feasible way of them getting together but then it just kind of spiraled into a novella so.

13 notas. Fecha de publicación: 23 de septiembre de 2022

2

I watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture on the plane and while it was a bizarre film that did a weird amount with a strange premise, the biggest value it has to Star Trek canon may very well be the fact that it’s basically just a Sprik fic made into a movie

20 notas. Fecha de publicación: 4 de agosto de 2022

Mi publicación más popular de 2022

There’s something so fucking tragic about the fact that Disco Elysium is supposed to be the one little window we get into the entire Elysium project, intended as an introduction to the world and not the end-all-be-all, that ends up being just entirely consumed by capitalistic greed and a disregard for art for art’s sake. It is only a part of this passion project that spans a decade or more and has a rich background, world and system created by a group of people just looking for a way to relate and be together and imagine a world that is somehow both better and worse than ours. And the only thing the system could do when being presented with this art is kill it for profit.

I really genuinely hope that the ZA/UM folks find another way to continue the world of Elysium because it really doesn’t deserve to die an untimely death at the hands of the demon of capital.

68 notas. Fecha de publicación: 3 de octubre de 2022

Descubre tu resumen del 2022 en Tumblr →

[jeffersonhairpie]

I posted 11,235 times in 2022

490 posts created (4%)

10,745 posts reblogged (96%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@hickeywiththegoodhair

@valoricky

@friendraichu

@tomwambsgirl

@romulussy

I tagged 11,231 of my posts in 2022

#succession - 3,159 posts

#lol - 1,793 posts

#fanart - 1,517 posts

#nct - 955 posts

#tom wambsgans - 943 posts

#disco elysium - 830 posts

#greg hirsch - 707 posts

#animals - 621 posts

#tomgreg - 587 posts

#roman roy - 458 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#tom would not have said a word to greg at the baseball game if he hadn't heard logan talking about putting greg in and asking if tom could h

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Honestly Tom’s little Nero and Sporus speech barely even counts as foreshadowing it’s so barefaced. Tom is explicitly telling Greg he’d choose him over Shiv and would hurt Shiv to do so and then guess what motherfuckers

163 notes - Posted January 24, 2022

#4

Enough with the takes that Tom and Shiv should be gay best friends. Roman and Tabitha would be so powerful if they'd never tried to fuck

174 notes - Posted March 24, 2022

#3

See the full post

337 notes - Posted January 15, 2022

#2

I know it’s been said a million times before but Tom taking the fall for Greg in Boar on the Floor really is wild. Aside from the cut stuff about the extent of Tom’s real punishment for throwing the game it’s just like...the only thing Tom gets out of that is Greg and he doesn’t even cash that chip in. He doesn’t do it to get Greg on side or leverage it to keep Greg on side and it weakens his position with every person in the room including his father in law. Fuck, it even weakens his position with Greg. 

Like I’ve seen people say that Succession is a show that works best when you believe the characters love each other, and I’ve seen it said that Succession works best when you ask yourself what love means when it’s so battered by ulterior motive, but I can’t find the ulterior motive in Tom going down in Boar on the Floor. And it just boggles my mind that this happens in one of the most high stakes scenes in the entire show. It’s not a small sacrifice, it’s a full on pig roast and Tom says yes just because Greg says please. 

I keep asking myself what Tom has in his hands at the end of all this and I’m coming up with exactly one answer. 

435 notes - Posted January 8, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Nope is such a fantastic story about the way things regress to their most primal forms in a catastrophe.

There is a UFO in the valley (except they don’t call them UFOs anymore). You want to know what it’s doing and why it’s taking your horses. You want to understand it. You want to see it. You want to run from it. You want to survive at any costs.

What even is that thing? It’s a ship from a civilization unrecognisable from your own. Wrong, it’s an animal. You think maybe it’s targetting you, seeing you. But it’s just hungry, and territorial. You understand this because you’ve worked with animals your whole life, but you can’t stop a horse from bucking when a flash goes off so how are you supposed to stop this thing from eating you?

If you’re going to see the UFO that isn’t a UFO you need to find proof that you saw it. You fail to capture it on your phone so you install some high end CCTV and point it at the sky. The CCTV fails because there was a bug in frame. The CCTV fails because all electricity fails when this animal arrives. You find someone with a camera that they can hand crank but he gets eaten. You have a well with a polaroid camera pointing at the sky and if you take enough pictures at the right intervals you can string them together into a film in which the hungry, hungry animal appears right at the end. It’s in your blood. The first piece of film ever made was made this way, and it captured your ancestor, on a horse.

You like to think that you’re worldly and modern and that you escaped being whatever you might have been if you had grown up in the wild. But if your father’s skull is ruptured by a dime, or if your birthday balloons get close enough to the studio lights to burst, or if you swallow a balloon and it explodes in your stomach, all the preconcived notions about what you think you are go out the window and you become nothing more and nothing less than flesh and blood.

And sometimes, if you’re smart and lucky, you might just get to survive

1,232 notes - Posted August 27, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[thesteadydietofeverything]

Top 10 Games of 2019

This was an extremely good year for games. I don’t know if I played as many that will stick with me as I did last year, but the ones on the bottom half of this list in particular constitute some of my favorite games of the decade, and probably all-time. If I’ve got a gaming-related resolution for next year, it’s to put my playtime into supporting even smaller indie devs. My absolute favorite experiences in games this year came from seemingly out of nowhere games from teams I’ve previously never heard of before. That said, there are some big games coming up in spring I doubt I’ll be able to keep myself away from. Some quick notes/shoutouts before I get started:

-The game I put maybe the most time into this year was Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. I finally made the plunge into neverending FF MMO content, and I’m as happy as I am overwhelmed. This was a big year for the game, between the release of the Shadowbringers expansion and the Nier: Automata raid, and it very well may have made it onto my list if I had managed to actually get to any of it. At the time of this writing, though, I’ve only just finished 2015’s Heavensward, so I’ve got...a long way to go. 

-One quick shoutout to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy that came out on Switch this year, a remaster of some DS classics I never played. An absolutely delightful visual novel series that I fell in love with throughout this year.

-I originally included a couple games currently in early access that I’ve enjoyed immensely. I removed them not because of arbitrary rules about what technically “came out” this year, but just to make room for some other games I liked, out of the assumption that I’ll still love these games in their 1.0 formats when they’re released next year to include them on my 2020 list. So shoutout to Hades, probably the best rogue-like/lite/whatever I’ve ever played, and Spin Rhythm XD, which reignited my love for rhythm games.

-Disco Elysium isn’t on this list, because I’ve played about an hour of it and haven’t yet been hooked by it. But I’ve heard enough about it to be convinced that it is 1000% a game for me and something I need to get to immediately. They shouted out Marx and Engels at the Game Awards! They look so cool! I want to be their friend! And hopefully, a few weeks from now, I’ll desperately want to redact this list to squeeze this game somewhere in here.

Alright, he’s the actual list:

10. Amid Evil

The 90’s FPS renaissance continues! As opposed to last year’s Dusk, a game I adored, this one takes its cues less from Quake and more from Heretic/Hexen, placing a greater emphasis on melee combat and magic-fuelled projectiles than more traditional weapons. Also, rather than that game’s intentionally ugly aesthetic, this one opts for graphics that at times feel lush, detailed, and pretty, while still probably mostly fitting the description of lo-fi. In fact, they just added RTX to the game, something I’m extremely curious to check out. This game continued to fuel my excitement about the possibilities of embracing out-of-style gameplay mechanics to discover new and fresh possibilities from a genre I’ve never been able to stop yearning for more of.

9. Ape Out

If this were a “coolest games” list, Ape Out would win it, easily. It’s a simple game whose mechanics don’t particularly evolve throughout the course of its handful of hours, but it leaves a hell of an impression with its minimalist cut-out graphics, stylish title cards, and percussive soundtrack. Smashing guards into each other and walls and causing them to shoot each other in a mad-dash for the exit is a fun as hell take on Hotline Miami-esque top down hyper violence, even if it’s a thin enough concept that it starts to feel a bit old before the end of the game.

8. Fire Emblem: Three Houses

I had a lot of problems with this game, probably most stemming from just how damn long it is - I still haven’t finished my first, and likely only, playthrough. This length seems to have motivated the developers to make battles more simple and easy, and to be fair, I would get frustrated if I were getting stuck on individual battles if I couldn’t stop thinking about how much longer I have to go, but as it is, I’ve just found them to be mostly boring. This is particularly problematic for a game that seems to require you to play through it at least...three times to really get the full picture? I couldn’t help but admire everything this game got right, though, and that mostly comes down to building a massive cast of extremely well realized and likable characters whose complex relationships with each other and with the structures they pledge loyalty to fuels harrowing drama once the plot really sets into motion. There’s a reason no other game inspired such a deluge of memes and fan fiction and art into my Twitter feed this year. It’s an impressive feat to convince every player they’ve unquestionably picked the right house and defend their problem children till the bitter end. After the success of this game, I’d love to see what this team can do next with a narrower focus and a bigger budget.

7. Resident Evil 2

It’s been a long time since I played the original Resident Evil 2, but I still consider it to be one of my favorite games of all time. I was highly skeptical of this remake at first, holding my stubborn ground that changing the fixed camera to a RE4-style behind the back perspective would turn this game more into an action game and less of a survival horror game where feeling a lack of control is part of the experience. I was pleasantly surprised to find how much they were able to modernize this game while maintaining its original feel and atmosphere. The fumbly, drifting aim-down sights effectively sell the feeling of being a rookie scared out of your wits. Being chased by Mr. X is wildly anxiety-inducing. But even more surprisingly, perhaps the greatest upgrade this game received was its map, which does you the generous service of actually marking down automatically where puzzles and items are, which rooms you’ve yet to enter, which ones you’ve searched entirely, and which ones still have more to discover. Arguably, this disrupts the feeling of being lost in a labyrinthine space that the original inspired, but in practice, it’s a remarkably satisfying and addicting video game system to engage with.

6. Judgment

No big surprise here - Ryu ga Gotoku put out another Yakuza-style game set in Kamurocho, and once again, it’s sitting somewhere on my top 10. This time, they finally put Kazuma Kiryu’s story to bed and focused on a new protagonist, down on his luck lawyer-turned-detective Takayuki Yagami. The new direction doesn’t always pay off - the added mechanics of following and chasing suspects gets a bit tedious. The game makes up for it, though, by absolutely nailing a fun, engrossing J-Drama of a plot entirely divorced from the Yakuza lore. The narrative takes several head-spinning turns through its several dozen hours, and they all feel earned, with a fresh sense of focus. The side stories in this one do even more to make you feel connected to the community of Kamurocho by befriending people from across the neighborhood. I’d love to see this team take even bigger swings in the future - and from what I’ve seen from Yakuza 7, that seems exactly like what they’re doing - but even if this game shares maybe a bit too much DNA with its predecessors, it’s hard to complain when the writing and acting are this enjoyable.

5. Control

Control feels like the kind of game that almost never gets made anymore. It’s a AAA game that isn’t connected to any larger franchises and doesn’t demand your attention for longer than a dozen hours. It doesn’t shoehorn needless RPG or MMO mechanics into its third-person action game formula to hold your attention. It introduces a wildly clever idea, tells a concise story with it, and then its over. And there’s something so refreshing about all of that. The setting of The Oldest House has a lot to do with it. I think it stands toe-to-toe with Rapture or Black Mesa as an instantly iconic game world. Its aesthetic blend of paranormal horror and banal government bureaucracy gripped my inner X-Files fan instantly, and kept him satisfied not only with its central characters and mystery but with a generous bounty of redacted documents full of worldbuilding both spine-tingling and hilarious. More will undoubtedly come from this game, in the form of DLC and possibly even more, with the way it ties itself into other Remedy universes, and as much as I expect I will love it, the refreshing experience this base game offered me likely can’t be beat.

4. Anodyne 2

I awaited Sean Han Tani and Marina Kittaka’s new game more anxiously than almost any game that came out this year, despite never having played the first one, exclusively on my love for last year’s singular All Our Asias and the promise that this game would greatly expand on that one’s Saturn/PS1-esque early 3D graphics and personal, heartfelt storytelling. Not only was I not disappointed, I was regularly pleasantly surprised by the depth of narrative and themes the game navigates. This game takes the ‘legendary hero’ tropes of a Zelda game and flips them to tell a story about the importance of community and taking care of loved ones over duty to governments or organizations. The dungeons that similarly reflect a Link to the Past-era Zelda game reduce the maps to bite-sized, funny, clever designs that ask you to internalize unique mechanics that result in affecting conclusions. Plus, it’s gorgeously idiosyncratic in its blend of 3D and 2D environments and its pretty but off-kilter score. It’s hard to believe something this full and well realized came from two people. 

3. Eliza

Eliza is a work of dystopian fiction so closely resembling the state of the world in 2019 it’s hard to even want to call it sci-fi. As a proxy for the Eliza app, you speak the words of an AI therapist that offers meager, generic suggestions as a catch-all for desperate people facing any number of the nightmares of our time. The first session you get is a man reckoning with the state the world is in - we’ve only got a few more years left to save ourselves from impending climate crisis, destructive development is rendering cities unlivable for anyone but the super-rich, and the people who hold all the power are just making it all worse. The only thing you offer to him is to use a meditation app and take some medication. It doesn’t take long for you to realize that this whole structure is much less about helping struggling people and more about mining personal data.

There’s much more to this story than the grim state of mental health under late capitalism, though. It’s revealed that Evelyn, the character you play as, has a much closer history with Eliza than initially evident. Throughout the game, she’ll reacquaint herself with old coworkers, including her two former bosses who have recently split and run different companies over their differing frightening visions for the future. The game offers a biting critique of the kind of tech company optimism that brings rich, eccentric men to believe they can solve the world’s problems within the hyper-capitalist structure they’ve thrived under, and how quickly this mindset gives way to techno-fascism. There’s also Evelyn’s former team member, Nora, who has quit the tech world in favor of being a DJ “activist,” and her current lead Rae, a compassionate person who genuinely believes in the power of Eliza to better people’s lives. The writing does an excellent job of justifying everyone’s points of view and highlighting the limits of their ideology without simplifying their sense of morality.

Why this game works so well isn’t just its willingness to stare in the face of uncomfortably relevant subject matter, but its ultimately empathetic message. It offers no simple solutions to the world’s problems, but also avoids falling into utter despair. Instead, it places measured but inspiring faith in the power of making small, meaningful impacts on the people around you, and simply trying to put some good into your world. It’s a game both terrifying and comforting in its frank conclusions.

2. Death Stranding

For a game as willfully dumb as this one often is - that, for example, insists on giving all of its characters with self-explanatory names long monologues about how they got that name - Death Stranding was one of the most thought provoking games I’ve played in a while. Outside of its indulgent, awkwardly paced narrative, the game offers plenty of reflection on the impact the internet has had on our lives. As Sam Porter Bridges, you’re hiking across a post-apocalyptic America, reconnecting isolated cities by delivering supplies, building infrastructure, and, probably most importantly, connecting them to the Chiral Network, an internet of sorts constructed of supernatural material of nebulous origin. Through this structure, the game offers surprisingly insightful commentary about the necessity for communication, cooperation, and genuine love and care within a community.

The lonely world you’re tasked to explore, and the way you’re given blips of encouragement within the solitude through the structures and “likes” you give and receive through the game’s asynchronous multiplayer system, offers some striking parallels for those of us particularly “online” people who feel simultaneous desperation for human contact and aversion to social pressures. I’ve heard the themes of this game described as “incoherent” due to the way it seems to view the internet both as a powerful tool to connect people and a means by which people become isolated and alienated, but are both of these statements not completely true to reality? The game simplifies some of its conclusions - Kojima seems particularly ignorant of America’s deep structural inequities and abuses that lead to a culture of isolation and alienation. And yet, the questions it asks are provocative enough that they compelled me to keep thinking about them far longer than the answers it offers.

Beyond the surprisingly rich thematic content, this game is mostly just a joy to play. Death Stranding builds kinetic drama out of the typically rote parts of games. Moving from point A to point B has become an increasingly tedious chore in the majority of AAA open world games, but this is a game built almost entirely out of moving from point A to point B, and it makes it thrilling. The simple act of walking down a hill while trying to balance a heavy load on your back and avoiding rocks and other obstacles fulfills the promise of the term ‘walking simulator’ in a far more interesting way than most games given that descriptor. The game consistently doles out new ways to navigate terrain, which peaked for me about two thirds of the way through the game when, after spending hours setting up a network of zip lines, a delivery offered me the opportunity to utilize the entire thing in a wildly satisfying journey from one end of the map to another. It was the gaming moment of the year.

1. Outer Wilds

The first time the sun exploded in my Outer Wilds playthrough, I was probably about to die anyway. I had fallen through a black hole, and had yet to figure out how to recover from that, so I was drifting listlessly through space with diminishing oxygen as the synths started to pick up and I watched the sun fall in on itself and then expand throughout the solar system as my vision went went. The moment gave me chills, not because I wasn’t already doomed anyway, but because I couldn’t help but think about my neighbors that I had left behind to explore space. I hadn’t known that mere minutes after I left the atmosphere the solar system would be obliterated, but I was at least able to watch as it happened. They probably had no idea what happened. Suddenly their lives and their planet and everything they had known were just...gone. And then I woke up, with the campfire burning in front of me, and everyone looking just as I had left it. And I became obsessed with figuring out how to stop that from happening again. 

What surprised me is that every time the sun exploded, it never failed to produce those chills I felt the first time. This game is masterful in its art, sound, and music design that manages to produce feelings so intense from an aesthetic so quaint. Tracking down fellow explorers by following the sound of their harmonica or acoustic guitar. Exploring space in a rickety vessel held together by wood and tape. Translating logs of conversations of an ancient alien race and finding the subject matter of discussion to be about small interpersonal drama as often as it is revelatory secrets of the universe. All of the potentially twee aspects of the game are balanced out by an innate sense of danger and terror that comes from exploring space and strange worlds alone. At times, the game dips into pure horror, making other aspects of the presentation all the more charming by comparison. And then there’s the clockwork machinations of the 22-minute loop you explore within, rewarding exploration and experimentation with reveals that make you feel like a genius for figuring out the puzzle at the same time that you’re stunned by the divulgence of a new piece of information.

The last few hours of the game contained a couple puzzles so obfuscated that I had to consult a guide, which admittedly lessened the impact of those reveals, but it all led to one of the most equally devastating and satisfying endings I’ve experienced in a video game recently. I really can’t say enough good things about this game. It’s not only my favorite game this year, but easily one of my favorite games of the decade, and really, of all-time, when it comes down to it.

[joecial-distancing]

2019 in review in review:

A few years ago I started tracking yearly goals, books read, movies watched etc in a year, along with overview blurbs, in private posts. End of 2019/beginning of 2020 I was really frazzled/burned out about a lot of stuff and just never finished up making the thing. 8 months later, got the urge to read back what I’d got done, then figured I’d maybe go ahead and see about finishing. 

Media tracking below the break. thoughts/blurbs written in 2020 italicized, 2019 not.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_____________________________~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Didn’t do so hot on explicit personal goals, but had a lot of stuff go ok around them this year.

School’s been fine/better than fine.

Job’s probably the biggest failing. Still with same job, haven’t made the firm moves to jump off, dragging my feet too much on exploring stuff w/ Columbia/NASA GISS.

Did not get better with covid, lol

Dating life still non-existent, but I’ve registered on apps, gotten more comfortable with selfies, improved general social life dramatically, been flirted with, updated my wardrobe, and generally started to get comfortable accepting that I’m a hot person.

Somehow got extremely better during covid.

Books

Grant (finished)

We stan a taurus legend

Guy was good at exactly one job, and was fortunate enough to have been in the right place/right time to get to do it.

Mort (discworld)

Definitely best discworld I’ve gotten to so far.

Don Quixote p. II

Really entertaining in a way that part 1 wasn’t; I was shocked how much the meta element landed for me.

Consider the Lobster (DFW collection)

had zero context on who DFW is/was when I read, and still don’t exactly tbh. Wanted to wait for a pause in The Discourse before diving into more of him, but dunno if I’m ever going to get that.

Crime and Punishment (revisited)

Weirdly didn’t get much more out of this than I did the first time I’d read it

Better Than Sex (HST Gonzo papers)

Xerox/widespread fax accessibility opening citizen access to mass media in a manner really reminiscent of what social media would go on to do at a much larger scale. Has a much more deliberate narrative arc than the other gonzo papers collections, also has that excellent HST richard nixon eulogy

The Brothers Karamazov

SPQR

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Didion collection)

Pet Sematary

Not my favorite King, but not bad

Sourcery (discworld)

still funny/charming, but Mort really made clear/reminded me how much the hapless sadsack Rincewind mold of protagonist wears on me after a while.

The Devil's Teeth

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

Liked it a lot more once I realized it was doing a Fear and Loathing thing.

Homage to Catalonia

This should be the Orwell that gets taught in schools. Make it a followup to All Quiet on the Western Front or something, jeez.

Lyndon Johnson I

Having now finished all of them, this one’s probably the least-interesting but sets up a bunch of important context that the others still then feel the need to retread.

The Razor's Edge

Recommended to me as a “white guy discovers eastern mysticism” book, but also is more interesting in its treatment of that than I’d expected (helps it was written in the 40s). 

Cat's Cradle

There’s a part in this where Vonnegut’s making fun of people who try to bond with strangers over being Hoosiers, and my dumbass immediate thought was “ooh, Vonnegut’s a hoosier? Me too!”

Lyndon Johnson II

Robert Caro felt compelled to apologize for spending so much words lionizing Coke Stevens, segregationist opponent to Johnson’s senate run. His goal was pretty clearly to show lbj’s lack of campaign charisma by contrast, definitely definitely overcommitted in his own narrativising.

Libra

I want to go back to this after reading some more De Lillo.

Gravity's Rainbow

This book absolutely kicked my ass

Overstuffed and referential in a specific way that really keeps me hooked in instead of put off. When I learn about some piece of cultural context that I retroactively recognize as being referenced in this, I want to go back and reread the entire thing.

From Caligari to Hitler

Kind of fails both as film criticism and cultural analysis, but absolutely made me want to run for the hills when considering current relationship between mainstream movies and demands of pop culture.

I took a class on Weimar cinema in undergrad that I now realize was probably biting pretty heavily from this and never once referenced it.

Movies

Venom

Movie itself is not as fun as the Tom Hardy hype coverage. PG13 was the absolute worst space to aim for, PG- or R- versions of this could have been a blast.

Harryhauser Argonauts

Was tripping when I put this on, and it was all kinds of fun.

2001: a Space Oddyssey

First time seeing this, all-time classic for a reason!

A Good American (the NSA doc)

Dr. Strangelove

Mel Brooks History of the World p. I

Not my favorite Brooks, best joke was at the beginning.

In Bruges

Had been a while since I saw a proper dark comedy.

Spiderverse

Fukkin awesome!

Visually great, and extremely better than usual superhero stuff for being aimed at PG instead of PG-13.

You Only Live Twice

Highlander (Revisited)

I watched The Old Guard on netflix recently and it mostly just made me wish I was watching Highlander instead, because at least Highlander knows exactly how goofy it is

Moonraker

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Much like The Shining, I though this would have been 100% spoiled for me by cultural osmosis, but turns out it wasn’t, and even the scenes I had seen *totally landed* in-context still.

Kung Fu Hustle

Ichi the Killer

Really gross, really fun

Matrix Reloaded (watched thru highway scene) (Revisited)

The highway scene was not nearly as cool as I remembered it being.

John Wick 3*

Probably dumbest plot of all of them, best choreography. I like how every single fight had its own distinct flavor. “Knife museum fight” “horse fight” “halle berry dogs fight” 

Akira

A classic

Pet Sematary * (ugh, bad)

Why can’t john lithgow be in good movies anymore

The Revenant

MCU Spiderman

Fuck this was awful.

MCU Spiderman 2*

Really weird, complete Rorschach Test of a movie: it’d be totally valid to read into this that global warming is Fake News, for instance.

Lmao this was completely awful

Rites

Dredd (non-stallone)

oh hey Lena Headey’s in this

For All Mankind!

Watched in honor of moon landing anniversary

Lion King *

Watched it way too stoned, was like dark side of the moon + wizard of oz except instead it’s a lion king script reading + nature footage edited for lip syncing.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood *

Many scenes of very long setups for really stupid shaggy dog jokes, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. I do kinda want to rewatch now knowing more about manson, which I knew pretty much nothing about beforehand

Blowout

A good john lithgow movie

also I think I like travolta in things.

Lord of War

A Good cage movie

I like when Eamon Walker shows up in stuff.

Taxi Driver

A classic

Snowpiercer

Watched in a bar with only one speaker working, which is the correct way to watch. Weirder and funnier than I thought it was going to be, which still doesn’t make it good, but,

dbz big green dub

Exorcist III

Brad Dourif just tearing it apart

Deep Red (argento)

Suspiria (1977)

Watched the remake in 2020, which was ok, but nothing tops the Goblin score.

Elf Bowling

Thanks, Gnome

Parasite *

Interesting to me that this one seems poised to hang around people’s good esteem for a while

TV

FMA: B

Rick & Morty

Saw some episodes, generally pretty funny, some misanthropy that’s probably appealing to a certain type of teen al a something like House, but ultimately I don’t totally Get the intensity of discourse about it.

Leterkenny

Mob Psycho 100

One Punch Man

Deadwood

Watchmen

Only watched like half of it. Was playing around with a lot of hefty imagery/thematics, but didn’t really seem ready to rise above playing (tho also I feel like it’s weird on some level to *expect* them to rise above that in the first place)

Music

New Avantasia

HEALTH/ show

lol remember concerts

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard/ show

Just learned about King Gizz in 2019 and got completely obsessed with them. I don’t tend to expand my music selection very readily, and a lot of what I currently *do* know is old/inactive stuff, so it was/is incredibly exciting to have an active group with good momentum just immediately win me over like that.

Mistimed the edibles and ended up with a really good finale and a really long subway ride home.

New Yeasayer

Sad they split up

Steve Wilson Tull remixes

Aqualung’s a good album and the sound mixing’s kinda bad, so I liked this project.

Stonefield

Opened for Gizzard. Really good as studying music

Video Games

Civ VI: Gathering Storm

Hades

Turns out Supergiant’s design proclivities all work *extremely well* on a roguelike

Baba is You

Untitled Goose Game

Cute, if maybe a bit overhyped

finally fucking finished Pillars of Eternity

Had fun with it, but too long, and really dour for how long it is.

Pillars II

Kinda drifted off it eventually, but I do genuinely like that the flavor of the fantasy is colonial era rather than medieval.

There’s a Balancing Bastard Factions element where it’s like the writers are just being smartasses after a while. Having to go extremely out of their way to make siding with colonizers seem like a competitive option.

Pokemon shield

Cuphead

pisses me off, which was a nice outlet when I was stranded by flight cancellations during thanksgiving

Celeste

Also very difficult, but really easy to stay patient with, which is nice.

Disco Elysium

None of the discourse made me want to play this, but people talking about the mechanical stuff it did got me extremely interested. Mostly Delivered IMO.

Breath of the Wild

You can approach the nodes of the main quest in the order you choose, and the second one I chose made ninjas start fucking spawning everywhere when I’m just trying to explore, and there’s no way to make it stop. May go back to it one day.

Podcasts

Relentless Picnic Patreon feed

The treats really helped me start distinguishing individual personalities, compared to the regular eps.

Picnic Discord!

<3

FatT Counterweight

Fun, but also I think Mechs are not my shit.

FatT Spring in Hieron/ end of that particular world

8 months since I’ve last tuned into FatT. ah well.

Law School

He’s in everythiiiing!

You Must Remember This: Manson family

*There’s* the context

Misc.

Kindle train guy

Times Square sleeping guy + kids taking selfies w/ him

toddler singing along after Psycho killer (a, ya, ya ya, ya)

drunk and dragged to a drag show

Central park football family

Soft Steel Drum Subway Busker

Weird old lady going to grand central for oysters

2018 in review (cards):

MySelf (CC)

Self: Tower

Blocked: 10 Cups

Ethereal/subconscious: 8 Swords

Material: 3 Swords

Past: Justice

Future: Page Wands

Attitude: Sun

External: King Swords

Hopes/Fears: 5 Coins

Trajectory: High Priestess

Also Self:

Hierophant

7 Cups

7 Coins

Blind Spot:

(self & others): 5 cups    ||    (others not self): High Priestess

(self not others): Moon   ||    (nobody): 3 Cups

[stalwartignoramus]

Disco Elysium (Review)

Gameplay (8/10) Monsters out, dialogues in

(+2) Innovative take on the RPG genre. The gameplay, skill tree, and level progression of DE is a very fresh take on the classic RPG formula. Instead of traditional combat where you reduce an enemy’s hit points to 0, you need to pass skill checks that are based on your invested skill levels. Instead of gaining exp and leveling up by fighting monsters in an action RPG, you converse with the citizens of Martinaise and interact with the objects scattered around the district. You gain skillpoints when you level up and you invest them in different areas in order to represent what kind of detective you want Harry to portray: The thinker, the psychic, the muscle, or the specialist. It doesn’t play like your standard RPG, but it is built on the same foundations of character customization (you can even dress up Harry in whatever way you want.)

(+1) Failure is part of the game. To my knowledge, you’re not gonna be able to max out all skills so you have to focus on one area of expertise and leave out the rest. If you play as a logic-based detective you’ll probably be on the bottom end when it comes to physical prowess and hence fail a lot of the physical-based tasks. This however doesn’t necessarily mean a game over, as the game gives you many avenues to tackle a problem, some even require you to fail to get the more desirable outcome.

(=) There’s a lot of reading. A LOT. Disco Elysium is basically a more interactive version of a visual novel so 90% of the gameplay would be reading the many dialogues thrown your way. It’s the core gameplay loop of DE and the extensive amount of reading might turn people off or bore the people already playing it, while enticing the hardcore readers to get into it more.

Story (8/10) A journey of redemption or downward spiral

(+2) Decide Harry’s fate. You hold in your hands how Harry will deal with his situation. Will he become sober or stay an alcoholic? Will he solve the case or fail horribly? Will he do drugs or remain clean? Will you sleep in the inn or out on the street? Will you even remember your own name or how you look like or will it disappear into oblivion? All these different options mean that every playthrough of DE will be a unique experience depending on how you built Harry and the choices you make during interactions. If you’re not careful (or if you’re just purposefully diabolical), Harry may meet one of the game’s many game over screens depicted as newspaper headlines, or you may not see one at all throughout your playthrough if you’re really careful.

(+1) Lieutenant Kitsuragi. Enough said. The straight man to your crazy antics, Lieutenant Kim Kitsuragi is the down-to-earth partner you need to keep you grounded when your mind floats to strange dimensions. He almost feels like a character being played by another player online. He is patient and understanding when it comes to dealing with Harry’s personal problems, but also knows when to be strict when Harry is going too far with his unorthodox methods.

(+1) Intricate world-building. The world is wonderfully laid out to the player through dialogues and environment design. You can see the extensive damage Martinaise has sustained and you can realize that it was a previous warzone even without asking any of the townsfolk. Conversations with different people reveal all the political struggles Martinaise underwent and the world beyond and how the pale is consuming everything. You can choose to know more about the world at large or just let it slip by you and go on with your investigation. Regardless of which you choose, you’ll still come across very obvious signs of political unrest, corruption, drug trade, and general poverty all over the district which tells you that this is not just the generic town littered with NPCs and interactions, this is a town inhabited and shaped by the people living in it. 

(=) Heavy political undertones. As mentioned in the previous statement, there’s a lot of political unrest going on in Martinaise aside from the Union’s strike. If you’re like me and don’t care that much about heavy political jargon, you might find this piece of the game quite undesirable. Nevertheless, you can choose to opt out of most political conversations and avoid all the confusing words they throw around here and there.

(-1) Underwhelming resolution. The ending was very lackluster to say the least. It all culminates in a final showdown with your police investigation unit where you present everything you’ve done throughout the game and depending on how you acted Lieutenant Kitsuragi will vouch for your actions. There’s no resolution as the game just ends after the conversation without knowing how it all went down for the characters after they’ve reported the case to their respective superiors. Not even a cliffhanger hint of a sequel. Arguably, this might tie into one of the game’s themes of not having closure but as a player it didn’t leave the best impression on me.

Visuals (9/10) Flamboyantly grotesque

(+3) Magnificent artwork. The crowning glory of Disco Elysium is the artwork. The drab watercolor-like aesthetic of the game reflects the game’s colorful and creative world plastered with grim filters of reality. It’s something that I think cannot be achieved by going for a hyperrealistic look where things appear as close as possible to real life counterparts, but rather through the lens of a rough and distorted perspective of an alcoholic detective with an abundance of internal struggles. It reminds you that there’s beauty in destruction, and destruction in beauty; as alluded to by one of the quotes found in-game. On top of that, the portraits for the thoughts are overwhelming in a mesmerizing way. Similar to how you just can’t understand what’s going on in an intricate stained glass art, or the thick black strokes of the inkwork on a tarot card, there’s just so much going on and it’s a lot to take in but you still get captivated by the imagery. You can take any still from any moment in the game and present it as a renaissance painting and I’d believe you just because the game’s artwork is that wonderfully made. Truly a testament to the talent of this generation’s artists.

(+1) War-torn Martinaise. This district has lots of stories to tell without even having a mouth to speak. The way Martinaise is presented is very organic. You can still see bullet holes and mortar damage from the war fought over the district many years ago, old arcade machines from a forgotten time litter the establishments, entire buildings with abandoned equipment of their former establishments, and repurposed infrastructures. This wasn’t just built as a place the player has to explore during their playthrough, this was a place with history and has lived way before the player step foot within its bounds.

Audio (7/10) It’s all in the voice

(+2) Superb voice acting. The voice acting gives life to the characters in Martinaise and it comes in all shapes and sizes. Every character has at least one voiced line so you can have an idea of how they sound like. Some of the more important characters have more than one voiced line, which reiterates their importance in the overall narrative. The character’s personalities and idiosyncrasies come alive in the voice acting, from the way they say certain words and their inflections, letting you know that Martinaise is home to more than one group of people as a result of the district’s history.

Final Score (8) Excellent  This is Disco, baby

Disco Elysium is more than just a game, it is art first, a visual novel second, and an RPG third. The game accomplishes something more than to entertain you for the few hours you’ll pick it up. It also attempts to educate you on political discourse and warn you on the adverse effects of drug and alcohol abuse, all while being enveloped by the game’s captivating art style. You’ll find yourself appreciating the scenery more than a few times while you scour Martinaise looking for any sort of lead that’ll help you with your case. 

(1-2) Terrible (3-4) Bad (5) Average (6-7) Good (8-9) Excellent (10) Masterpiece

[entergamingxp]

DualShockers’ Favorite Games of 2019 — Iyane’s Top 10

December 31, 2019 12:00 PM EST

2019 had a lot of cool mecha related games, but a lot of other great games from other genres too. Here are my top 10 from this year.

As 2019 comes to a close, DualShockers and our staff are reflecting on this year’s batch of games and what were their personal highlights within the last year. Unlike the official Game of the Year 2019 awards for DualShockers, there are little-to-no-rules on our individual Top 10 posts. For instance, any game — not just 2019 releases — can be considered.

I assume anyone who clicked on this wishes to read me talking about myself and my Unneeded Opinions (one of my favorite sentences of 2019), so I’ll do just that. 2019 was another year that went by in a flash. I’ve reached my first anniversary writing on DualShockers in September, and I’ve been pretty busy overall. As such, there are multiple games on this list I actually didn’t finish yet.

There are many games released in 2019 that I was really hyped about but didn’t have the time to try out yet either, and I’d like to start by listing some of them:

We first have games I’d consider mainstream, such as Devil May Cry 5, Judgment (I actually bought it in Japanese) Astral Chain. Then you’ve got more niche things, like Daemon X Machina (I’m waiting just in case a PC port gets announced), the Grandia remasters, SaGa Scarlet Grace, and Friends of Mineral Town Remake.

Lastly, we’ve got some visual novel games: Berubara Gakuen, Gnosia (Japanese outlets hyped up this game in a similar fashion that what happened with Disco Elysium in the US and Europe), Ciconia Phase 1 (the thing I was actually hyped for the most in 2019), Eve Rebirth Terror (idem), and the Yu-No remake.

I’m on a quest to play everything that Hiroyuki Kanno wrote after getting my mind blown by Eve Burst Error. Yu-No is one of these things, but the character design in the remake is bland as hell. Ryou Nagi is a great artist, and you can see that with Heavy Object or Ar Tonelico, but for some reason, everything remake-related he touches turn into the blandest thing ever. The same thing happened for the newest Langrisser I&II remake; it’s like some huge conspiracy. As such, I’ll probably grab the Yu-No remake in Japanese, as that version includes a port of the original.

Anyway, that was just a small intro to show my tastes and what to expect in this ranking. Here are the games I’ve enjoyed the most in 2019, and note that it’s not only games released in 2019. Also, note that the top 5 are all pretty much my top 1.

10. Cyber Troopers Virtual-On Masterpiece 1995-2001

I suck at Virtual-On. But I love it, especially Oratorio Tangram, and being able to play it remastered on PS4 is nice. The only thing these ports of the three Virtual-On games sadly lack is local multiplayer split-screen. Virtual-On is the originator of Gundam Vs like games and all the anime 3D arena battlers of varying quality releasing each year, and it’s the best one there is.

Other games I considered for this position were Destiny Connect, Shenmue 3 (which I didn’t play myself and watched an online friend’s playthrough), and Zanki Zero (I was supposed to review that but ended up never finding the time to finish said review). I picked Virtual-On because it didn’t require me to write 2000 words to explain my mixed feelings about it.

9. Space Engineers

According to Steam, I’ve played 47 hours of Space Engineers with my online friends. I’m pretty sure at least 20 hours of that was us trying to figure out how the game works and being annoyed and how counter-intuitive many elements are. This includes reading wikis and only to realize it’s outdated info, looking for Uranium only to realize you can’t find any on planets, or trying to design vehicles, copying blueprints and recreating them block by block. And a lot of other dumb stuff.

Besides all these frustrations, Space Engineers is my favorite multiplayer game I’ve tried out this year and I’ve made some great memories with it, as an online friend streamed some of our adventures too. I’ve tried making the Senegalese flag with wind turbines (too long to explain): we managed a trip to a moon and putting the Algerian flag on it (a French joke too long to explain) and we did a MASK opening sequence parody with a vehicle parade.

8. Ocarina of Time Randomizer Version 5.0

I actually put this on my list last year as well, but seeing that the game’s meta has changed since then, this is fine. Again, I don’t have the time to play this myself and enjoy watching races instead, This year, ZeldaSpeedRuns held the OoT Randomizer Season 2 tournament, which ended in June with the victory of Marco against WTHH.

Now, the Season 3 tournament bracket matches just started in early December, with the version 5.0 0f the mod, changing the meta. We’ve already got a surprising upset, with first tournament winner and 2nd qualifier ATZ losing against 31 qualifier Killerapp23. Getting into detail would take too long and be incomprehensible if you’re not already into OoT rando, so I’m just gonna say this is the most interesting esports thing to watch ever. And like I said last year, it’s incredibly fun.

7. Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom

Wing Commander IV is one of the many games I’ve played in my childhood which left me with a huge impression. Along with things like Shenmue 1 & 2, this is one of the games I used to regularly quote until my high school years or so. I’ve finally got the time to rediscover the game this year. I didn’t end up replaying it myself though and watched a full playthrough of it. It was really interesting; I remembered many iconic scenes from the game and some characters, but I had no idea what the overall story was about anymore.

It’s surprising how anime space opera the story is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if something Japanese inspired the story. It all comes to Japan. This also made me realize, in a sense, that Wing Commander IV is pretty much one of the first visual novels I played and what made me enjoy well-written stories and choices. This is also what made me both love and hate draconian choices, multiple routes and characters’ deaths. I hate not being able to save characters.

6. Romancing SaGa 3 Remaster

Back in my childhood I tried playing Romancing SaGa 3, as it was among the various SNES roms I had at disposal. I quickly realized that it’s completely different than most RPGs and unlike many games in Japanese such as Super Robot Wars 4: I couldn’t trial and error my way through.

Around 18 years later, Romancing SaGa 2 Remaster comes out in 2017; it’s awesome, and a masterpiece. And then in 2019, Romancing SaGa 3 Remaster is finally out and it’s even more awesome. I’m currently in the final area of the game after playing as Sarah, because she has a fluffy afro ponytail. I just wish the game had a turbo button.

Tie-in 6. Persona 5 Royal

This is a tie-in as that’s an enhanced version of a really recent game, which was my 2016 favorite. I purposely played through Persona 5 only once, only maxing the coops and not doing much of the other side content, in case such an enhanced version ever released.

Even then, and even considering how much of a masterpiece that Persona 5 is, clearing such a long game again is annoying. Most of the new scenes I’ve seen so far, most notably Kasumi’s and Takuto’s scenes, are all incredibly nice though. The renewed dungeons and bosses’ designs are fun, and Joker is even more Lupin The Third-like with the wire hook, but there’s nothing groundbreaking either. I’m far from reaching the new part at the original’s ending, as I’m just about to reach the Hawaii part. Hopefully, it’ll be a nice ride.

The five games below are all my actual number one.

5. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim

I’ve been waiting for 13 Sentinels since when it got announced in 2015. I could even say since 2013, as I hoped a game related to the Vanillaware Happy New Year 2013 Geroge Kamitani artwork above would come out someday. I had incredibly high expectations for it and none of it were betrayed as of now.

It’s awesome. It’s fully-voiced. It’s got giant robots. It’s the most beautiful (2D) game since forever. It’s like if an old Japanese adventure game got made with current technology. It’s a shame the game bombed in Japan. If you’re interested, I’ve written more about the game, and I’m recording myself translating the game as I’m playing through it.

4. Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

Ys IX: Monstrum Nox is amazing on all points. I’ve rarely had so much fun walking around and exploring a city in a game. I think what makes the game the most amazing is how it’s pretty much the culmination of the Ys series since it switched to the party system, and as if one of the first versions of the first Ys games were transposed to 3D. The verticality of the environments is used so well you can still feel lost despite having a map. Falcom might pretty much be one of the smallest, penniless studios in Japan despite its longevity; they still make the best action RPGs ever. What I’ve seen of the story so far is particularly amazing too, and Toshihiro Kondo is a good writer along with being a good company president.

I’m currently taking a break from the game after reaching what I guess is around 1/3 of it. I was so hyped I had to play it at launch, but I want to do all the other Ys games I didn’t do yet first, even if it’s absolutely not necessary to understand the story. I like being able to understand every single reference in a series like this. I’m the kind of person who wishes to know exactly how many times Kazuya and Heihachi threw each other out of a volcano/mountain.

3. Super Robot Wars T

I didn’t play Super Robot Wars V nor SRW X as they initially didn’t release on Switch. If we don’t count SRW OG Moon Dwellers, which was on my top ten 2018 list, SRW T is my first SRW game since the SRW Z3 finale on PS3 in April 2015. It’s pretty great, be it the story, its cast list, or the animations. Everything about it is nice. Having things like Cowboy Bebop, Gunbuster, Rayearth, Gun x Sword, and Captain Harlock together feels incredible. It’s extremely sad that Captain Harlock’s seiyuu Makio Inoue passed away right after he finally got in SRW.

A new OG anime directed by Obari and a new OG game would be nice. I’m happy the series seemingly won’t get a new game in 2020, so the development teams can take their time.

2. Fire Emblem Fuukasetsugetsu / Three Houses

This game has my favorite cast of characters in a Fire Emblem game, along with Fire Emblem Seisen no Keifu/Genealogy of the Holy War, and I could write a 1000 word article on every single character on this picture (if I was paid adequately for it). This is only one of the many reasons why I like this game. In a nutshell, I’d say I love the fact that I find it very innovative and yet similar to the other Fire Emblem games I’ve played and liked so far, and how it’s true for every aspect of the game.

Check out DualShockers‘ review for Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

1. Project Sakura Wars/ Shin Sakura Taisen

This opening sequence has over 1.7 million views, and half of these are all me. While I’m not done with Shin Sakura Taisen yet, I fail to imagine how the game could even disappoint me so far, seeing how amazing it is. Before the game launched, I wasn’t concerned about the battle system change, but whether the new cast would be interesting or not. If there was a world Guinness record for most baseless worry of 2019, this would get it. This game got everything that makes Sakura Taisen so awesome. The strong female characters, the cool mecha, the great worldbuilding, the comedy. It’s a great new start in the series and I hope we’ll get more. I shared a few impressions on the game and just like 13 Sentinels, I’m recording myself playing the game, translating at the same time.

That’s it for my top ten.

If you’re wondering about my expectations for 2020, the game I’m looking forward to the most so far is the Seiken Densetsu 3 remake: Trials of Mana. Then we also have things like FF7R, Rune Factory 5, Space Channel 5 VR, Brigandine…I’m also eager to see KOF XV even if I won’t play it. Lastly, 2020 will also mark the tenth anniversary of the Pretty Series franchise. The Pretty Rhythm anime seasons and its King of Prism sequels were my favorite anime of the decade, so I’m looking forward to what Avex and Takara Tomy have in store for the anniversary, and if we might get some games other than arcade games out of it.

I’m planning to stay on DualShockers and keep writing about Japanese games in the new year. I don’t have the time nor the paycheck to cover every single news as fast as possible, but I always try to bring to the table as much info as I can, along with relevant translations and observations. Hoping you’ll keep reading us in 2020.

Check out the rest of the DualShockers staff Top 10 lists and our official Game of the Year Awards:

December 23: DualShockers Game of the Year Awards 2019 December 25: Lou Contaldi, Editor-in-Chief // Logan Moore, Managing Editor December 26: Tomas Franzese, News Editor // Ryan Meitzler, Features Editor  December 27: Mike Long, Community Manager // Scott White, Staff Writer December 28: Chris Compendio, Contributor // Mario Rivera, Video Manager // Kris Cornelisse, Staff Writer December 29: Scott Meaney, Community Director // Allisa James, Senior Staff Writer // Ben Bayliss, Senior Staff Writer December 30: Cameron Hawkins, Staff Writer // David Gill, Senior Staff Writer // Portia Lightfoot, Contributor December 31: Iyane Agossah, Senior Staff Writer // Michael Ruiz, Senior Staff Writer // Rachael Fiddis, Contributor January 1: Ricky Frech, Senior Staff Writer // Tanner Pierce, Staff Writer

December 31, 2019 12:00 PM EST

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