#goodbye *dies*

[bixels]

Portal 2 is still the perfect game to me. I hyperfixated on it like crazy in middle school. Would sing Want You Gone out loud cuz I had ADHD and no social awareness. Would make fan animations and pixel art. Would explain the ending spoilers and fan theories to anyone who'd listen. Would keep up with DeviantArt posts of the cores as humans. Would find and play community-made maps (Gelocity is insanely fun).

I still can't believe this game came out 12 years ago and it looks like THIS.

Like Mirror's Edge, the timeless art style and economic yet atmospheric lighting means this game will never age. The decision not to include any visible humans (ideas of Doug Rattmann showing up or a human co-op partner were cut) is doing so much legroom too. And the idea to use geometric tileset-like level designs is so smart! I sincerely believe that, by design, no game with a "realistic art style" has looked better than Portal 2.

Do you guys remember when Nvidia released Portal with RTX at it looked like dogshit? Just the most airbrushed crap I've ever seen; completely erased the cold, dry, clinical feel of Aperture.

So many breathtakingly pit-in-your-stomach moments I still think about too. And it's such a unique feeling; I'd describe at as... architectural existentialism? Experiencing the sublime under the shadow of manmade structures (Look up Giovanni Battista Piranesi's art if you're curious)? That scene where you're running from GLaDOS with Wheatley on a catwalk over a bottomless pit and––out of rage and desperation––GLaDOS silently begins tearing her facility apart and Wheatley cries 'She's bringing the whole place down!' and ENORMOUS apartment building-sized blocks begin groaning towards you on suspended rails and cement pillars crumble and sparks fly and the metal catwalk strains and bends and snaps under your feet. And when you finally make it to the safety of a work lift, you look back and watch the facility close its jaws behind you as it screams.

Or the horror of knowing you're already miles underground, and then Wheatley smashes you down an elevator shaft and you realize it goes deeper. That there's a hell under hell, and it's much, much older.

Or how about the moment when you finally claw your way out of Old Aperture, reaching the peak of this underground mountain, only to look up and discover an endless stone ceiling built above you. There's a service door connected to some stairs ahead, but surrounding you is this array of giant, building-sized springs that hold the entire facility up. They stretch on into the fog. You keep climbing.

I love that the facility itself is treated like an android zooid too, a colony of nano-machines and service cores and sentient panel arms and security cameras and more. And now, after thousands of years of neglect, the facility is festering with decomposition and microbes; deer, raccoons, birds. There are ghosts too. You're never alone, even when it's quiet. I wonder what you'd hear if you put your ear up against a test chamber's walls and listened. (I say that all contemplatively, but that's literally an easter egg in the game. You hear a voice.)

Also, a reminder that GLaDOS and Chell are not related and their relationship is meant to be psychosexual. There was a cut bit where GLaDOS would role-play as Chell's jealous housewife and accuse her of seeing other cores in between chambers. And their shared struggle for freedom and control? GLaDOS realizing, after remembering her past life, that she's become the abuser and deciding that she has the power to stop? That even if she can't be free, she can let Chell go because she hates her. And she loves her. Most people interpret GLaDOS "deleting Caroline in her brain" as an ominous sign, that she's forgetting her human roots and becoming "fully robot." But to me, it's a sign of hope for GLaDOS. She's relieving herself of the baggage that has defined her very existence, she's letting Caroline finally rest, and she's allowing herself to grow beyond what Cave and Aperture and the scientists defined her to be. The fact that GLaDOS still lets you go after deleting Caroline proves this. She doesn't double-back or change her mind like Wheatley did, she sticks to her word because she knows who she is. No one and nothing can influence her because she's in control. GLaDOS proves she's capable of empathy and mercy and change, human or not.

That's my retrospective, I love this game to bits. I wish I could experience it for the first time again.

[tubbytarchia]

I don't know what this is all I know is that LimL Joel makes me really emotional

[giyubabe]

I’m sorry but DO YALL SEE WHAT AM SEEING RIGHT NOW ⁉️‼️HELLO ?!?! THE POSITION-THE EYE-CONTACT- I’m officially done.

[kayime]

[aro-arttorneys]

Happy "it wasn't christmas yet!" to those who celebrate 🥳

[xitsensunmoon]

Thinking about how dca would always feel incomplete. How tech always gets old and impractical and needs to be upgraded again and again and again, because the world around is changing all the time but they don't.

You also change.

They feel a weird combination of pride and jealousy. You change on your own. You, a human being, something so fragile and breakable in their eyes, can change however you want. Whenever you want.

It's in your nature.

They, on the other hand, are created by your folk's hands. Their only nature is to obey those hands. To rust until you say otherwise.

Do you even realise how much unpronounced power you have over someone like them? They think you don't.

Yes, they're made to be stronger. Maybe more durable in some ways. If anything, something like them may kill the humanity one day.

But then they'll rust. But not in a physical sense of this word.

The world around them will change. But they will stay the same.

Because unlike you, something that they deem to be as fascinating as it is terrifying,

they cannot adapt.

[chaos-bringer-13]

Omg I just had a thought! (insert someone joking about this being my first time thinking)

So, you know how in the movies there's someone dying and another character has hallucinations about that dead character and then there is a scene with dead character going like "I'm dead, just let me go"???

Danny. Danny can do that. Or Dani, she's chaotic enough. Just say to someone dramatically all this "I'm dead, you're hallucinating, let me go" speech and go intangible and invisible.

And it can be used for angst where Danny dies in front of someone and has to pretend he's dead, and then they meet each other accidentally and Danny gaslights his way out of it

Or for complete crack with Danny just being a little shit and doing that on every opportunity, several times in one day

Like, character N and Danny end up alone in one room, Danny smirks, N hisses "don't you dare!", and Danny does dramatic speech of "I am deaaad, you're lying to yourself, let me go". Bonus points if just a minute ago Danny was giving a speech to like 10 people, and all of them clearly could see him. More bonus points if Danny accidentally does the hallucination speech in front of someone else, and they just stand there really confused.

[bittersweetresilience]

the great gatsby / kentucky route zero / koe no katachi / disco elysium / omori / night in the woods / homestuck / koe no katachi / l'étranger / disco elysium / firewatch / john dies at the end / everything everywhere all at once / the subtle art of not giving a f*ck

[nocasdatsgay]

I saw a post about Tamlin’s shapeshifting and- I’m goin to hell for this- but like. Do you think. He would have shifted into Rhysand if Feyre asked? Or Elain if Lucien asked?

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

last of us tv adaption decided to make a Gay Romance For The Ages out of a Gay Pettiness Subplot and i respect that sm 💘but PLEASE recognize both r valid

[maehonk]

my contribution 2 the last defense academy fandom

[bride-and-bride]

Saw a neat Fourcheanult post about the ways in which he sucks but tragically I cannot reblog without at least SOME analysis on how the loss of Louisoix would impact his choices and views on his children's actions

[lycansprites]

I have to go and leave you alone; but always know that I love you so.

[sanjiaftersex]

thinking about how Ace was just a wounded soul with the weight of his father's sins and his mother's death upon his shoulders and this very burden had made him question his own worth from his childhood till the last moments of his life

[kaitobromota]

I've been thinking about the Future Foundation watching the events of Jabberwock Island lately.

This is specifically meant to be the first murder. I imagine no matter Byakuya's actual feelings on the imposter, seeing someone who looks like you get murdered is pretty jarring.

[penofwildfire]

Geo and Bonzle's relationship is something so nebulous and not entirely definable but so, so incredibly loving. Less father and daughter and more older brother and teen sister that he feels responsible for. She showed up when he was at his absolute lowest, barely keeping himself alive as day after day after day of agonizing loneliness went by. She knew that loneliness all too well and they found so much comfort in eachother. And even as their family grew their dynamic never really changed. I just. Hrghghhghghghgghgghgghhfjfjfhfjgjghggjjghgh 😭💕💕