#what has this game done to me

[andyling]

the past couple weeks i've finished a verdant wind run of fe3h that was collecting dust on my switch and played through golden wildfire on three hopes for the first time afterwards and i'm still craving more claude content 

i think there is something severely wrong with me

[thelikesoffinn]

Chap: "Oh hey, by the way! Last week I met Tom. You know, when I was down by the river and we..."

My brain: DOWN DOWN DOWN BY THE RIVER! DOWN DOWN DOWN BY THE RIVEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRR!

Me: *sweats*

[shadowglens]

i now have six (6) bg3 ocs rattling around in my mind

[zootopiathingz]

I’m so normal about Detroit Become Human (*is currently crying after watching a compilation of all the bad endings where the characters die in the most brutal ways possible*)

[fiddlstyx]

michael corleone and his bottomless pockets

[pawphin]

salmon run is a fucking enigma because i can tell its taking a mental toll on me but every time i lose i feel the urge to pick it up again in hopes that maybe, MAYBE ill get a functioning team or get lucky with a mudmiuth round i dont know i cant take this anymof

[poppydedicant]

Not me getting a little too attached to the most traumatized character in Th.e Qu.arry and wanting to write about him even though I can barely keep up with writing in general ;_;

[phoenixiancrystallist]

Me: What if I made a Forspoken Beauty and the Beast AU?

Me: *thinks about it for a second*

Me: ...actually it's kind of already a Beauty and the Beast thing, isn't it? 'Cuz Frey's just a normal person who gets trapped with a monster, then as they spend time together Positive Feelings™ happen until eventually the Perfectly Ordinary Person© is freed from the monster and later chooses to go back and stay with the monster anyway

Me: ...

Me: ...

Me: Not gonna stop me tho :P

[selenityshiroi]

Writing FFXVI fic is weird because I try writing in the slight lyrical old timey style that kind of matches the game but grammar checks are constantly 'ARE YOU SURE???'

And I second guess myself SO MUCH but just go with what feels like it has the right vibes.

[choccy-milky]

MC doing what we all wished we could do (aka napping on the floor with ominis )😴💕

[yrsonpurpose]

He grabbed my hair in a way that made me understand the difference between rugby and football. bonus ±

[rambles-about-minecraft-ocs]

one of my favorite things about zedaph is that on a server full of people that find strange and oft-overlooked minecraft mechanics or rare events and then see just how far they can push them in the name of spectacle or efficiency or world-breaking, zed is over here finding these mechanics in order to do the weirdest things he can think of in as entertaining a manner as possible

like i 100% have faith in zedaph's theoretical ability to be just as efficient or spectacular or world-breaking. if he wanted to do that stuff, i trust that he absolutely could. but thats so far from being his priority. instead, hes going to spend around a week of irl time focused entirely on eventually having the good luck to spawn in something insanely rare so that he can convert it into something even rarer, the result of which being something that 99% of the server reacts with complete and utter shock that it even exists in the first place, just because its zany and funny and he wanted to. and i love that

[randomminty]

Shishuku….

[98chao]

guys im getting the feeling that shadow milk cookie might have been in the game interacting with pure vanilla cookie for way longer than we thought

[dragonpropaganda]

you should talk about your thoughts on rw fanon (looking with huge eyes)

Oh god, there's a lot of major misconceptions have concreted into fanon, mostly around ancient society and ascension.

First things first! Ascension is not death! They are entirely separate things treated entirely separately by the text of the game. I can see where the interpretation is coming from, but it doesn't really align with how the text treats either subject. Five Pebbles may want to remove the self destruction taboo, but from his reaction to the rot it's clear that he doesn't want to die. Conflation of ascension and death only comes up as an offhand possibility that pebbs makes on iterator 4chan, when he's going into the possibilities of scenarios that even the other sliverists are doubtful of! (let me make clear that I am not a sliverist by any means)

Ascension is more of talked about as a form of transcendence, yeah? A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads talks about their sitution as being "To have grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void…", not as them seeking an end to life.

The beta dialogue goes into more detail, mentioning the "infinities of time and space" and the "boundless fractal planes of spirit and reality...", though this dialogue was cut and it's hard to tell how much it reflects the concept as in the released game.

As for the cultural misconceptions... there's A Lot to talk about, but the first that comes to mind is the common conflation of the five natural urges and the christian concept of sin.

It is true that the negation of urges is mentioned by moon as an alternative method of ascension, but much of what we know about the culture of the people who the fandom calls the ancients (which makes discussion of the depths a mess but that's something for another post entirely) points towards the urges not being seen as shameful.

Even the first urge does not seem to be particularly scorned! Being a warrior is presented as a cause for bragging in the Shaded Citadel pearl, being comparable with being an artist and a fashion legend. The second urge, also does not seem to be suppressed. Multiple sources attribute some level of honour to parenthood! The aforementioned pearl also mentions Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel as being a "Mother, Father and Spouse" without any hint of shamefulness. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections expresses pride about having progeny, mentioning it alongside their owned land and esteem among their peers.

After some peer review, an esteemed friend has told me to add a section on purposed organisms as well! This is not so much my area, so I might be a bit off on some things.

As moon says, the majority of purposed organisms were tubes in boxes, and that the primal fauna of the world are almost entirely extinct. A lot of the fandom seems to ignore the first part, and i can't say I blame them, but the evolution of the creatures is so much weirder than people think.

Concept art for the creatures has this interesting quality to it, where the organic parts of the creatures have an almost... melty quality to them.

In the concept art, the flesh appears as if it's almost defying the machinery to form an animal shape. It's as if it's conquering its own artificiality the way the foliage grows over the (stone, brick and concrete, not mostly metal as some think!) ruins.

Of course, it's hard to really tell how much of this reflects the finalised concept, most of the integration is much smoother in the game, in line with a seamless kind of biomechanical design. There was always an intention of biomechanical strangeness, as shown in this screenshot of the devlog before the term "slugcat" even existed!

That said, the melty nature of the concept art shows a level of wild change inherent the biomechanical nature of the creatures, as if they truly are the result of these "tubes in boxes" almost revolting against their own boxes.

and considering centipedes... some tubes may not have had boxes in the first place!

[gummi-ships]

Kingdom Hearts 2 - The World That Never Was