#you can play any kind of shooter/vs game

[morguemaw]

ever since playing overwatch ive gotten a huge hunch they do not care about player comfortability and more about how many people can get into a game at once ive had MASSIVE issues where ive blocked/reached max people to avoid in a game, and when i remeet them i get the instant reason why they are blocked/avoided i get overwatch wants people to just play so yk you dont go into lobbies where backfill occurs and games just dont happen, but if i block someone/avoid them i DONT want to KEEP PLAYING !!!! ive met 2 people ive blocked and one i genuinely hate playing with and each time im reminded why i dont want to play with them and end up not playing for a hot second idk i would rather deal with backfill and take forever to get into a match knowing ppl i dislike/want to avoid arent there rather then get my teeth knocked in with waves of insults/targeted killing and end up just not interacting with the game imo

[rallamajoop]

Resident Evil 4 vs 8, and Ludonarrative Resonance

Having fallen so very hard for RE8 late last year, I’m incapable of talking about the new RE4 remake without comparing the two – especially when RE8 now occupies the bizarre position of being simultaneously the remake’s immediate predecessor, canonical-later-sequel, and also other pseudo-remake of RE4.

And it’s hard to appreciate just how much RE8 draws from RE4 until you’ve played them both – in broad concept (sinister bioweapon cult in isolated European village, lengthy castle section, awkward shift towards military-shooter-itis at the end – heck, did you know RE8 was even supposed to have Ada Wong showing up with a sniper rifle to rescue Ethan from cutscenes in early drafts? Because that was definitely going too far) and its initial chapter especially. I’d osmosed the broad strokes, but not, for example, the degree to which the first lycan attack in 8 is basically just the first village assault from RE4: mobbed by an endless stream of regular enemies and the one big guy (who you can defeat, but should probably just try to avoid) in an open environment until an invisible timer runs out and everyone goes home.

It’s not a one-way street: it’s only fair to say that by the time of RE4make, Capcom was re-integrating a lot of what worked in 8 back into the new RE4. But as many elements represent a conscious step back from the reinventions of RE7 in favour of recreating gameplay elements of the original: 3rd person view, visible health bar, etc. The same basic arsenal of pistol-shotgun-sniper-rile becomes available to you in that order, but trying to play Leon as you would Ethan is not going to come off seamlessly.

Leon he can’t block, for one. He can parry, but that’s not the same thing. His knife works very differently, many of its uses contextual. You have to aim before firing now – hitting fire without aiming first makes Leon slash with his knife instead (very annoying when I have the sniper rifle equipped, the enemy is too close for the scope to be useful, and failing to get a round off in a hurry is about to make my life a lot more uncomfortable) – and if you’re aiming, you can’t parry. The gameplay in the RE4 remake is honestly my favourite thing about it (the story is... more of a mixed bag, but we'll get to that), but coming to it directly off RE8 is just a little frustrating until you get your head around it. GDI, Leon, Ethan can make a decent mine that doesn’t go off on its own if it’s not tripped in 30 seconds, why can’t you?

Questionable nitpicks aside though, having gotten the hang of RE4’s combat, the more I think about it, the more the differences between how Ethan and Leon handle do actually work for me, and even make sense from a character-centric POV. Intentionally or not, there’s a kind of ludonarrative resonance to it all.

If you’ve read any video game critique in the last decade or so, you’ve likely run into the term ludonarrative dissonance: coined to highlight all those times when the story a game tells via dialogue and cutscenes clashes with the ‘ludonarrative’, or story created by the gameplay. The classic example is something like the Tomb Raider reboot, where cutscenes linger on the trauma of Lara's first human kill, but gameplay will still see her easily mowing down enemies mooks by the dozen barely five minutes later. See also: any time a character is a total badass in gameplay, but can be easily overpowered by a single opponent when necessary for a cutscene. This kind of narrative inconsistency is to some degree the nature of the medium – it’s a rare game that can avoid it altogether, but it can still throw you out of the experience.

For a more Resident Evil specific example, consider that minor plot point from RE6 which reveals that Sherry (one of the many playable characters) has an Ethan-like healing ability as a result of her exposure to the G-virus back in RE2. This has no effect on gameplay, before or after the reveal: Sherry’s health bar works the same as any other character’s. Even the RE4 remake hits this problem: letting Ashley be carried too far away by an enemy mook is an instant game-over in gameplay, but you’d better be prepared to see the exact same thing happen in multiple cutscenes at specified plot points, with no way to avoid it (c’mon, game, I know they’re just gonna stick her in a room with no guards somewhere, lemme go find her!)

You could arguably find a similar problem to Sherry’s in RE8, where Ethan very-canonically comes back from the dead after having his heart ripped out in a cutscene, even though he can absolutely be killed in regular gameplay. And yet, here, I’m inclined to cut the game some slack – because there is arguably an explanation provided, and it’s suitably horrific.

Ethan may be able to reattach severed limbs and walk off falls from great heights, but having his heart ripped out puts him down long enough to convince Chris he’s really dead – definitely down for the count. And if you pay attention to the (many) death-scenes that play after Ethan is killed by a lycan or moroi, you may notice that most monsters immediately start eating him as they light fades away. Ethan may come back after having his heart ripped out, but being digested may be a step too far.

And Ethan can get eaten a lot in this game. Moreau can eat you. The mould-foetus-monster can eat you. Dimitrescu makes pretty-fucking-clear her own desire to eat you too. Sturm doesn’t, but is certainly equipped to reduce Ethan to a fine, pink mist.  Whether those final-moments were included specifically to fill that plot hole or whether they were just thrown in for ‘ordinary’ horror value I can only speculate, but it’s always nice when all those little, gory details tie together, isn’t it?

If we’re going to take games to task for all those probably-accidental moments where the gameplay and the story clash, it’s only fair to note a few of the ones where they do the opposite (likewise-accidental though they may be). Ludonarrative resonance, if you will.

On a basic level, pointing out that gameplay differences between RE4 and 8 make sense for Ethan’s vs Leon’s respective strengths and weaknesses may be a little too obvious. Leon can stagger an enemy with a bullet and then rush in to finish him off a roundhouse kick or a supplex because Leon is a certified badass with way more training than Ethan (who makes one vague mention of having had military training, presumably as an excuse for why he aims so much faster in RE8 than 7).

But it goes so far beyond that.

There’s the issue of blocking, for one. Ethan can block – roughly holding his hands up in front of himself to reduce incoming damage – but Leon can’t. This was initially annoying, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it as a logical change. Sure, Leon can’t block, but Leon doesn’t secretly have mould-powered super-healing, and trying to tank axe-blows to reattachable parts of his body probably isn’t a viable strategy. What he can do is parry with his knife: a more skill-dependent strategy for a more-skilled guy. Timing is much trickier, but only his knife takes damage – Leon doesn’t, so when it works, it’s much better than blocking. And given Leon has this whole backstory-thing about being trained by a knife-obsessed nutjob, that all adds up too.

Then there’s the thing with ladders. Ethan can fall any distance without taking damage, but convincing him to take a gravity-shortcut doesn’t always work: if there’s a ladder nearby, he’ll take it. Leon, by contrast, clearly sees ladders as a waste of time. Ashley will use them to get down from high places, if there’s one available, but Leon, to my joy, prefers to jump. And again, there’s an arguable logic there that appeals to me: Ethan may be immune to falling damage, but he’s badly in denial about it, and would much prefer to take the stairs. Leon isn’t superhuman, but he knows parkour, and he’s damn well going to use it.

Health arguably follows similar logic. Ethan doesn’t get a proper health bar (maybe you need training to accurately judge how dead you are? IDK), just various colours to tell you roughly how bad this is going, and Ethan will be reduced to stumbling through a distorted red haze if you let him go too far into the red zone. Stumble around long enough without dying though, and Ethan will eventually walk it off, automatically returning to about half-health. Notably, Leon doesn’t get this same power (unless you’re playing on the very easiest difficulty – Ethan remains auto-healing right up to Village of Shadows level). But for a dude who canonically has healing powers, you can’t argue that makes a lot of sense.

The same rules apply to Mia too, when you’re playing her in RE7 – but given she’s been infected with the mould too, that tracks (and even if you did choose her for the cure, who’s to say how well such a haphazard cure even worked?)

This logic does break down a bit in RE8 when you play as Chris, and blocking and walking-it-off remain core mechanics. And if you wanted to get really nitpicky, you might even point out the same mechanics are available to Ethan in his very first fight with Mia in RE7, where he’s (presumably?) not infected yet. But there comes a point where you have to admit that expecting the devs to change gameplay so much for one brief section of a much longer game isn’t really realistic (and would be that much more annoying to get used to for this one tiny section anyway).

Amusingly though, in the Mercenaries DLC, Chris has been reworked somewhat, and now can’t block anymore: hitting the ‘block’ button throws a left hook instead. Which is only too appropriate for Chris Boulder-Punching Redfield – but it’s interesting to note that Lady Dimitrescu (another new playable character) can’t block either.

The only other character in Mercenaries mode who can block is Heisenberg, and he does so by raising a literal wall of sheet metal. Intentionally or otherwise, Mercenaries does kinda seem to cast Ethan’s ability to substantially reduce damage just by holding up his arms as pretty unique.

Speaking of health, Leon and Ethan can both increase their maximum HP – Leon by using yellow herbs, Ethan by eating food cooked for him by the Duke. Ethan, however, can also decrease the damage he takes while blocking and increase his running speed this way. This is the sort of game mechanic it’s probably not worth thinking too hard about, but even so, the idea that mould-man Ethan can enhance his own powers by eating food from around the village where the mould originates (and specially prepared by the nigh-omniscient Duke himself) is something I raised already over in my post on Mia and Miranda – and it fits here too. Leon, meanwhile, can only increase his own durability by buying body armour, then paying even more to keep it repaired (there is a case charm that increases his speed a little too, but it’s bloody hard to get).

There are other little details that follow the same pattern too – whereas in RE8, I found myself mostly using the pistol to finish off any enemies who didn’t quite go down in one shotgun blast, in RE4, I found myself relying on my basic pistol a lot more, even when not going for kung-fu finishers. Mostly, that’s down to enemy speed and ammo availability, but you can’t argue it makes sense that the better-trained Leon would be better-equipped to get the job done with lower-calibre weaponry.

Now, to be clear, I doubt most of these little differences are down to the devs going “okay, this new game is about a mould-superman, how do we work that into gameplay?” when RE7 came out – and I’m pretty sure a lot of how the new RE4 plays is down to an earnest attempt to include as much of the old RE4 as still makes sense. Leon has a visible health bar and can supplex enemies into the dirt because people loved the original, and we’re not here to completely reinvent the best features of the wheel. Half the stuff that screams ludonarrative resonance to me is probably more happy accident as design.

But when, for example, you’re being irritated by the discovery that the only mines available to Leon will just go off on their own after 30 seconds if not triggered by an enemy, it’s nice to be able to tell yourself “bloody hell, guess you need a real engineer like Ethan to make a half-decent mine!” and treat that like an excuse. It doesn’t fundamentally change the way either game plays, but it feels like there’s some rhyme and reason to it, and that’s just a little bit more fun. And they’re both great combat systems in their own fun way.

YMMV, of course.

[purplekoop]

I think I should be transparent about the state of where I'm at with my personal projects that I've been sharing on this blog so far.

First off my computer situation is still unchanged, mostly because of scheduling issues being a constant blockade. It can still safely function enough to type in my notes docs or on tumblr, but the big thing is that it can't run games. This is kind of an issue when my most used tag is for a game I play on PC.

Which leads to the big point: I haven't exactly been in an Overwatch mood lately, both because I can't actually play it and because the recent news about the state of its dev team is some of the most disheartening in this game's extremely tumultuous history. It's hard to be excited about a game you can't play, and it's extremely hard to be excited about a game where you're not even sure if there's enough people still employed working on it to keep it going forward. Somehow I still don't outright detest the game or anything close to that, but it's not been too frequent in my thoughts lately.

Obviously, this hurts my enthusiasm to work more on the AU based directly on the game itself, but also doesn't help inspire me to work as much on War Bots, my original team shooter project based heavily on Overwatch. I realize that between the two the former is more popular (fanbase of like 6 vs a fanbase of like 2), but still. My personal interest in these is at a low, more so unfortunately for Role Requeue than War Bots. This is somewhat normal for me, I cycle between interests pretty consistently, with my last Overwatch/War Bots kick lasting a bit long all things considered without much going to my other personal projects.

speaking of, I can at least mention the two of those I've been lending some brain juices to

The first is Renegades, a teen superhero team story that I hope to turn into a webcomic series one day. There's really not anything to it that I can say as a super unique pitch, I just wanna make my own superhero story because I think they're neat.

Slightly more zesty is Darkworld Showdown, a platform fighter idea with a "spooky/monster/creature" theme inspired by Darkstalkers and Skullgirls. This one has been on brain hiatus for longer since the friend who sort of became the "second in command" on the project has been radio silent for almost a year, but I've been back in touch with them recently so I'm hoping to get back into it more and give another pass on the roster and mechanics to hopefully refine it into something both more realistic to make and more interesting than just another indie platform fighter. I have some character designs floating around on Art Fight already but most of the cast needs an update badly, it's been a while for almost all of them and even some of the public stuff is rough from how old it is.

I may be posting more about these if there's any interest, but I mostly just wanted to explain where my head's been at lately, especially if you mostly expect Overwatch stuff from me. Not gonna try and beat myself up for it or anything, but wanted to mention it anyways. I think at least in my little circle that the Overwatch burnout is apparent so this might not be as big of a shocker as I'm fearing, but uh... yeah not sure how to end this one.

[blazehedgehog]

i have fallen down the rabbit hole of game collecting and i own a good few systems now. i'm curious about getting a dreamcast but i've been putting it off because i kind of expect myself only to get the two Sonic Adventure games on it. (i have a Wii so i could always get their gamecube ports, even though sadx is quite bad)

do you think a dreamcast is worth the investment? i know i'm probably missing some obvious hits on the platform

I still think SA1 (obviously) and SA2 play best on the Dreamcast.

As for other Dreamcast games, hm. There are a handful of games that never really came to other platforms, including:

Cannon Spike, the home console port of Capcom's top down arcade shooter. You can play as Cammy and Mega Man. It's fun but not incredible (like all arcade games, there's about 20 minutes worth of content).

Chu Chu Rocket, which probably needs no introduction. It had a GBA port, which is also pretty good, but you can't beat the Dreamcast original.

If you ask me, Crazy Taxi also plays best on Dreamcast, unless you have access to an arcade machine with a wheel (though the Gamecube version is probably fine). And Crazy Taxi 2 has yet to see release on any other platform (unless you count Crazy Taxi 3 on Xbox, but that's a different beast).

Blue Stinger and Illbleed are sort of legendary games that never left Dreamcast. I think even fans of these two games would agree they're not very fun, but they are deeply interesting and very weird.

I think D2 was practically a launch title for the Dreamcast and one of the first multi-disc games. People talked about it a lot at release but don't anymore. I have no idea what it's like, outside of it being a horror game.

Floigan Bros. is absolutely miserable. Peter Moore said it was going to be Sega's "Super Mario Bros." I think. It's a point and click adventure game and was going to be episodic. Only one episode ever came out. But it's so bad it's worth owning.

Since I've already recommended games of questionable quality, I suppose it's worth pointing out that Sonic Shuffle has also never left the Dreamcast.

It came out on other platforms, but I think the Dreamcast version of Rayman 2 is considered to be the best one. Other versions have weird changes or missing features, whereas the Dreamcast version is apparently the best of all worlds.

I think the Dreamcast is also home to the only console ports of Sega Rally 2 and Zombie Revenge. The latter is basically a House of the Dead Beat'em'up.

Metropolis Street Racer is also a Dreamcast exclusive, and while older racing sims aren't usually sought-after, I had fun when I revisited this last year.

Super Magnetic Neo is also unique and probably worth looking in to.

As is Super Runabout: San Francisco. Had fun with that one last year, too.

Which is to say nothing about Soulcalibur.

The Dreamcast version of Skies of Arcadia seems to have better visuals on Dreamcast, but a worse difficulty curve and less content. Pick your poison.

Games that may also be worth looking in to that I am not super familiar with: Cosmic Smash, Fighting Vipers 2, Headhunter, Maken X, PenPen Tri-Icelon, POD Speed Zone, Psychic Force, Stunt GP, Toy Commander, Sword of the Berserk, Confidential Mission, Tokyo Xtreme Racer 1 & 2, Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future, Fur Fighters

Don't forget unreleased games: Half-Life, Propeller Arena, and a Dreamcast prototype of Toejam & Earl III.

Other Great Dreamcast Ports: Dynamite Cop, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, Marvel vs. Capcom 1 & 2, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Capcom vs. SNK 1 & 2, Mark of the Wolves, Last Blade 2, Guilty Gear XX, Mr. Driller, Powerstone 1 & 2, Project Justice, any of Capcom's "For Matching Service" games, Dead or Alive 2, Ikaruga, and Bangai-O.

My only concern with collecting Dreamcast stuff is that the console has a tendency to burn itself out after enough time. The GD-ROM laser doesn't last forever (I know mine is on its last legs) and it is basically impossible to service. Most people seem to go the route of installing an SD card loader or something.

[thesuperawesomeaarpong]

Right now I'm busy editing my new video on the WRPG VS JRPG discussion. Thought I'd show a piece of the script to give a teaser so here's the intro.

Way of the Samurai 4 is a japanese game. Not just because it was made in japan by a japanese dev team. But because of its style, its characters, its cultural influence and even, shall we say, its unsavory sense of humor. Yes, this game is incredibly japanese. And it is also an RPG. In this game you can make whatever character you want. You can react to people in different ways, you can choose your fighting style, join different factions, you can be a cop, a nationalist, a colonialist sympathizer, you can even be a huge pervert. And at the end you get a rating on how much you acted like a samurai.

So, is this a japanese RPG?

People say that Japanese people just roleplay differently, they say that the difference between western and japanese RPGs is that one is about expression and the other about narrative. Yet, most western RPGs have a narrative, they have a story while still giving the player agency. The Witcher is based on a book series. Gerald is an established character. Yet, you can still play him your way. You can play him nice, you can play him mean, you can make him abuse his powers. Yet he is still a set character.

Naoki Yoshida has recently stirred up turmoil because he believes that people should stop using the term JRPG. That his game Final fantasy 16 should be treated like it is no different to any other RPG. But if he wants these games to be treated the same, why doesn’t he take the initiative to make his games more similar to western RPGs?

In FF16 your character is being discriminated against for being a bearer in the same way Gerald is for being a witcher. Yet, when you are being abused by the townspeople after just doing a quest for them, can you tell them to fuck off? Can you punch them in the face?

Way of the samurai 4 makes that effort, gives people choices. While still being one of the most japanese games I’ve ever seen. Adding agency did not make it western. Which raises a very uncomfortable question. Do Japanese people not like choice? Do they not like agency? Do they not want to change the fate of the story? Not everyone likes platforming, not everyone likes shooters, not everyone likes puzzles and not everyone likes roleplaying, but that depends on your personality not on your race.

People criticize the term Japanese RPG for being discriminatory, not realizing that that term was created as a compromise. Whether you like both, prefer one or hate the other. I think most can agree that these 2 kinds of games are not the same. Are we crazy for thinking these games are dissimilar? Or are we just being gaslit?

I’m willing to bet that the people who would defend the term the most would be the big JRPG fans. That term was chosen and protected out of love for these games, to explain an obvious contradiction. Two things cannot be the same while still being different. Something has to budge.

Right now, JRPG fans are scrambling to come up with a different term. A term that still calls these games RPGs, does not use the word japanese, while still recognising their differences. And they won’t find it.

But I did, and they are not going to like it.

[thatluckybear]

What kinda gamer is ThatLuckyBear?

This is a long post. So I'm into video games maybe a bit too much. Here's what I like:

Tetris + Dr. Mario (puzzle games): Core to my gaming spirit. I like to do speedruns of 0-21 on Dr. Mario 64 and I've been known to play 0-20 on Dr. Mario for the NES as well. I loved Tetris since NES but fell back in love with Tetris DS and now I mostly just do sprints on tetr.io. I'm also a 8 chain Puyo-Puyo scrub and I like the game but lack the energy to get better at it. Since this is kind of in the vein of puzzle solving the Ace Attorney games as well as oldschool Point and Click adventure games are wonderful for me as well.

Soulslike: These are all fun. I haven't played most of them though. Dark Souls 1 and Bloodborne are my favs and I've put a lot of time into Elden Ring but Miquella shut down my run and I haven't had time to grind it out. I'll finish it eventually though.

Metroidvania: Huge fan of the genre. Hollowknight is my favorite at time of writing but Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow is an ultra banger and I would have a hard time not mentioning it. I've played all the DS Castlevanias and I love them all.

Schlooters: Looting and shooting is fun. I play coop with my wife and we really enjoy Borderlands. We also had a good time with Outriders. Destiny 2 has been kinda tough to get into but we're trying to get a feel for it before investing any money.

MMORPGS: I've been doing these since 2003 if you can believe it. I was playing Ragnarok Online pre-beta by sneaking onto jRO. I really hit the road running with the iRO beta. Since then I've put a lot of love into Tera Online (Elin berserker just tickles my "hehe" bone, I had a popo too but Elin was the best imo) - I enjoyed FFXIV (Lala paladin) but it's too expensive for me to keep up with the monthly. I really wanna finish FFXIV's story someday. Phantasy Star Online, and Dungeon Fighter Online get a honorable mention but I really haven't had a chance to be in love with them since my MMO muscles are weak and my gaming time short in my age.

RPGS: Classic and modern I'm a big fan of RPGS. I've fallen in love with Dragon Quest recently although it was one of the first RPGS I played (Dragon Warrior NES.) I remember looking through Nintendo Power Magazine and looking at the illustrations and descriptions of the weapons and just getting SO JAZZED. Anyway Super Mario RPG is the best RPG of all time followed by Pokemon Blue/Red would be my call. I love modern Pokemon games but I haven't spent much time with others.

Action RPG: Monster Hunter, Yakuza (love but never played much,) Cyberpunk 2077, Resident Evil (2/4/7) and so many more. I'm a hunting horn main and I am head over heels for Monster Hunter and will always love it.

Competitive: I like to compete but I don't do it much because I have /emotional issues/ and I can't keep my lid on proper. That said I really have a great time playing Smash Ultimate (not a Melee guy sorry it's too hard for me) Street Fighter, Tekken, Granblue VS, and Smash are kind of the only ones I like playing these days. While I used to do a lot of FPS competitives I'm boycotting Actiblizzard so no COD or Overwatch til they remove Bobby Kotick. Valorant is too hard and time consuming but I love it (I'm bad at it sadly.) I might play Fortnite someday but idk if I'll get into it.

the COMF: I love some comfy games. Some of the above fit that category for me (Pokemon Red/Blue to be specific) but Stardew, Animal Crossing, anything Wholesome games, Minecraft, Stray etc. Anything that can make me sleepy usually fits me well.

Platformers: I get into some 3d mario games. I especially enjoyed Odyssey. I kind of get most of my platforming jazz out of the metroidvania stuff but I couldn't get through this without mentioning how much the 3d (and 2d for that matter) mario games matter to me.

There's obviously millions more games that I forgot and couldn't touch on. Day of Defeat was a formative competitive shooter experience as well as all the other HL1 mods I played. I could go on forever but I hope this helps you understand what kind of gamer I am. While I'm pretty eclectic in taste I'm also pretty formulated. These days I spend most of my time trying to find coop experiences to have with my wife so lmk if you've got some cool ones I should look into. 🧡

[rockstarlong]

Desktop destroyer android

Desktop destroyer android how to#

Desktop destroyer android install#

Desktop destroyer android skin#

Desktop destroyer android upgrade#

Desktop destroyer android full#

You will start off using a catapult that shoots a bunch of projectiles al at once. The game mechanic is very easy to understand: you simply need to aim with your finger on the building to be destroyed, calculating the dip of the shot and the spot it will impact. We are offered something along these lines in Destroyer!, a game that allows us to bring down all kinds of buildings by firing our weapons. If you have problems running South Park: Phone Destroyer on your PC or any other issues, leave a comment below.There is something about the demolition of buildings that leaves all of us captivated by the beauty of controlled destruction. I hope you enjoyed this guide, please rate and share.

Desktop destroyer android install#

Use the steps illustrated below to download & install South Park: Phone Destroyer for PC and increase your chances of winning the epic, real-time player vs. But that can be tough when playing on Android or iOS devices. We recommend that you keep an eye on the moves of your opponents and restrict them from attacking you. Also, ensure that you prevent your characters from getting killed. To emerge victorious in South Park: Phone Destroyer, you need to use the collected cards very carefully.

Assemble your ultimate team of cyborgs, wizards, cowboys and more, and get ready to crush your opponents.

Witness Randy cross-dressing in new & exciting outfits.

You can customize your heroes and make them as unique as you want with lots of options.

Join a team and boost your decks by sharing cards with your teammates.

Desktop destroyer android upgrade#

Collect & upgrade over 80-unique cards, featuring all-new, beautifully rendered designs.

Build your own deck of cards and then use them to challenge other real players from across the board.

Face your opponents in real-time, player vs.

The game gives you a whole new South Park experience with new & twisted versions of the infamous characters like Stan of Many Moons, Ninjew Kyle, Cyborg Kenny, Grand Wizard Cartman, etc.

You’ll love the South Park: Phone Destroyer’s smooth and easy-on-the-eyes graphics.

Overall, South Park: Phone Destroyer features a series of levels where you’ll be walking down the streets and clear level after level as you hunt your opponents.

You win the battle only after you’ve eliminated all the enemy kids, and beaten the Indian Chief.

Cowboys and Indians health is displayed on top of their head.

During battles, a bubble may appear above a unit, and you just need to tap to activate its special powers. You can view each kid’s attribute by tapping and holding on a card. All kids fight automatically based on their traits and characteristics. Tap to select a kid, and then drag him on the battle-field. And the battery, which refills gradually, is located on the far left side of the screen.ĪLSO CHECK: Monument Valley for PC (freeload)Įach card has a battery cost displayed on it, and you are free to deploy kids on the field based on the available battery. Your 5-cards, representing kids that have taken different roles such as outlaw, gunslinger, assassin, ranger, sheriff, etc, are displayed at the bottom of your screen. Your score will be displayed on the top-left side of your screen, above your hero, while the enemy’s score appears on the top-right, above him. Then meet Stan of Many Moons (The Indians Team) in the middle of the neighborhood where houses are decorated for Christmas holidays.

Desktop destroyer android skin#

If you prefer customization, you’ll need to select gender, hair, skin color, facial features, clothes, accessories and more. You are free to either randomize or customize him/her. Gameplayīegin by creating your character, a kid. He has learned about a sharp-shooter kid, who’s a master of his phone, since he’s often on the phone all the time, and that’s you. But what they may not know is that this time, Cartman has a plan. Other kids claim that the Indians kicks their asses every time. The argument goes on for a while until a kid dressed as the sheriff- Cartman, enters the room.Ĭartman declares that they’re going to play Cowboys vs. Robots, and another insists that Christians vs. One of them suggests that they should probably play Aliens vs.

Desktop destroyer android full#

South Park: Phone Destroyer takes you to a living room full of kids dressed in different costumes, and fighting over what to play today.

Desktop destroyer android how to#

In this page, we share everything you want to know about this addictive mobile game, and we also illustrate how to install it on Windows 7/8/8.1/10/XP and MAC computer. player battles as well as a hilarious single-player story, created in collaboration with South-Park Digital Studios. The game offers epic, real-time player vs. You’ll find Stan, Cartman, Kyle, Kenny, and many more. The action-packed game lets you take on the iconic characters from the animated series- South Park. South Park: Phone Destroyer is a free, role-playing, card-based, combat game for Android & iOS devices, developed by Ubisoft. South Park: Phone Destroyer Review, Main Features, Gameplay and Video

[gffa]

Do you think one could follow the Jedi Code/Lifestyle in real life as a positive manner of living or do you think it only works in Star Wars? I asked this on r/Mawinstallation and the answers I got were either:

''The Jedi code is oppressive so no'' ( this was the most upvoted answer )

''The Jedi code works but only for the Jedi''

''The Jedi code requires the force to work and since the force doesn't exist in the real world, the code cannot work''

And finally, I got only a single reply that said

''Yes, the Jedi code does work in real life, that's the entire point of Star Wars''.

What is your take on this?

This is going to be sort of a long, roundabout answer, but the short version is: In the finer details, we're not space psychics, but as a general idea? Yes. First of all, what even IS the Jedi Code?  Are we talking about the whole “there is no emotion, there is peace”/”emotion, yet peace” meditation mantra, which we should point out is nowhere in the movies or TV shows, but is entirely in the novels and comics supplementary material?  Are we talking about a more generalized idea of Jedi philosophy?  And what, precisely, does that mean?  I mean, what’s oppressive about it and what scene evidences that that’s what the Jedi taught? Second, there are two talks that George Lucas gave that I think really illustrate this view of emotional navigation and how that impacts Star Wars and the Force: There’s the writers meeting of The Clone Wars where he talks about the light side and the dark side and there’s an Academy of Achievement Speech from 2013 where he talks about joy vs pleasure:     “Happiness is pleasure and happiness is joy. It can be either one, you add them up and it can be the uber category of happiness.     “Pleasure is short lived. It lasts an hour, it lasts a minute, it lasts a month. It peaks and then it goes down–it peaks very high, but the next time you want to get that same peak you have to do it twice as much. It’s like drugs, you have to keep doing it because it insulates itself. No matter what it is, whether you’re shopping or you’re engaged in any other kind of pleasure. It all has the same quality about it.     “On the other hand is joy and joy is the thing that doesn’t go as high as pleasure, in terms of your emotional reaction. But it stays with you. Joy is something you can recall, pleasure you can’t.  So the secret is that, even though it’s not as intense as pleasure, the joy will last you a lot longer.     “People who get the pleasure they keep saying, ‘Well, if I can just get richer and get more cars–!’ You’ll never relive the moment you got your first car, that’s it, that’s the highest peak. Yes, you could get three Ferraris and a new gulf stream jet and maybe you’ll get close. But you have to keep going and eventually you’ll run out.  You just can’t do it, it doesn’t work.     “If you’re trying to sustain that level of peak pleasure, you’re doomed. It’s a very American idea, but it just can’t happen. You just let it go. Peak.  Break. Pleasure is fun it’s great, but you can’t keep it going forever.     “Just accept the fact that it’s here and it’s gone, and maybe again it’ll come back and you’ll get to do it again. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure is purely self-centered. It’s all about your pleasure, it’s about you. It’s a selfish self-centered emotion, that’s created by self-centered motive of greed.     “Joy is compassion, joy is giving yourself to somebody else or something else. And it’s the kind of thing that is in it’s subtlty and lowness more powerful than pleasure.  If you get hung up on pleasure you’re doomed. If you pursue joy you will find everlasting happiness.”  –George Lucas And how I like to compare that to The Hijacking of the American Mind by Robert Lustig, MD, MSL, which is a book about how corporations have hijacked our pleasure centers to make us focused on reward over pleasure.  It talks about the exact same concepts, with only slight word adjustments, but otherwise might as well be verbatim: “At this point it’s essential to define and clarify what I mean by these two words—pleasure and happiness—which can mean different things to different people.     “Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines “pleasure” as “enjoyment or satisfaction derived from what is to one’s liking”; or “gratification”; or “reward.” While “pleasure” has a multitude of synonyms, it is this phenomenon of reward that we will explore, as scientists have elaborated a specific “reward pathway” in the brain, and we now understand the neuroscience of its regulation. Conversely, “happiness” is defined as “the quality or state of being happy”; or “joy”; or “contentment.” While there are many synonyms for “happiness,” it is the phenomenon that Aristotle originally referred to as eudemonia, or the internal experience of contentment, that we will parse in this book. Contentment is the lowest baseline level of happiness, the state in which it’s not necessary to seek more. In the movie Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), middle-aged married couple Beatrice Arthur and Richard Castellano were asked the question “Are you happy?”—to which they responded, “Happy? Who’s happy? We’re content.” Scientists now understand that there is a specific “contentment pathway” that is completely separate from the pleasure or reward pathway in the brain and under completely different regulation. Pleasure (reward) is the emotional state where your brain says, This feels good—I want more, while happiness (contentment) is the emotional state where your brain says, This feels good—I don’t want or need any more.     “Reward and contentment are both positive emotions, highly valued by humans, and both reasons for initiative and personal betterment. It’s hard to be happy if you derive no pleasure for your efforts—but this is exactly what is seen in the various forms of addiction. Conversely, if you are perennially discontent, as is so often seen in patients with clinical depression, you may lose the impetus to better your social position in life, and it’s virtually impossible to derive reward for your efforts. Reward and contentment rely on the presence of the other. Nonetheless, they are decidedly different phenomena. Yet both have been slowly and mysteriously vanishing from our global ethos as the prevalence of addiction and depression continues to climb.     “Drumroll … without further ado, behold the seven differences between reward and contentment: Reward is short-lived (about an hour, like a good meal). Get it, experience it, and get over it. Why do you think you can’t remember what you ate for dinner yesterday? Conversely, contentment lasts much longer (weeks to months to years). It’s what happens when you have a working marriage or watch your teenager graduate from high school. And if you experience contentment from a sense of achievement or purpose, the chances are that you will feel it for a long time to come, perhaps even the rest of your life.Reward is visceral in terms of excitement (e.g., a casino, a football game, or a strip club). It activates the body’s fight-or-flight system, which causes blood pressure and heart rate to go up. Conversely, contentment is ethereal and calming (e.g., listening to soothing music or watching the waves of the ocean). It makes your heart rate slow and your blood pressure decline.       - “ Reward can be achieved with different substances (e.g., heroin, nicotine, cocaine, caffeine, alcohol, and of course sugar). Each stimulates the reward center of the brain. Some are legal, some are not. Conversely, contentment is not achievable with substance use. Rather, contentment is usually achieved with deeds (like graduating from college or having a child who can navigate his or her own path in life).       - “Reward occurs with the process of taking (like from a casino). Gambling is definitely a high: when you win, it is fundamentally rewarding, both viscerally and economically. But go back to the same table the next day. Maybe you’ll feel a jolt of excitement to try again. But there’s no glow, no lasting feeling from the night before. Or go buy a nice dress at Macy’s. Then try it on again a month later. Does it generate the same enthusiasm? Conversely, contentment is often generated through giving (like giving money to a charity, or giving your time to your child, or devoting time and energy to a worthwhile project).       - Reward is yours and yours alone. Your sense of reward does not immediately impact anyone else. Conversely, your contentment, or lack of it, often impacts other people directly and can impact society at large. Those who are extremely unhappy (the Columbine shooters) can take their unhappiness out on others. It should be said at this point that pleasure and happiness are by no means mutually exclusive. A dinner at the Bay Area Michelin three-star restaurant the French Laundry can likely generate simultaneous pleasure for you from the stellar food and wine but can also generate contentment from the shared experience with spouse, family, or friends, and then possibly a bit of unhappiness when the bill arrives.       - Reward when unchecked can lead us into misery, like addiction. Too much substance use (food, drugs, nicotine, alcohol) or compulsive behaviors (gambling, shopping, surfing the internet, sex) will overload the reward pathway and lead not just to dejection, destitution, and disease but not uncommonly death as well. Conversely, walking in the woods or playing with your grandchildren or pets (as long as you don’t have to clean up after them) could bring contentment and keep you from being miserable in the first place.       - Last and most important, reward is driven by dopamine, and contentment by serotonin. Each is a neurotransmitter—a biochemical manufactured in the brain that drives feelings and emotions—but the two couldn’t be more different. Although dopamine and serotonin drive separate brain processes, it is where they overlap and how they influence each other that generates the action in this story. Two separate chemicals, two separate brain pathways, two separate regulatory schemes, and two separate physiological and psychological outcomes. How and where these two chemicals work, and how they work either in concert or in opposition to each other, is the holy grail in the ultimate quest for both pleasure and happiness.”                                – Robert Lustig, MD, MSL And then lets add in what Dave Filoni has said about the Force and the core themes of Star Wars:     "In the end, it’s about fundamentally becoming selfless moreso than selfish.  It seems so simple, but it’s so hard to do.  And when you’re tempted by the dark side, you don’t overcome it once in life and then you’re good.  It’s a constant.  And that’s what, really, Star Wars is about and what I think George wanted people to know.  That to be a good person and to really feel better about your life and experience life fully you have to let go of everything you fear to lose. Because then you can’t be controlled.        “But when you fear, fear is the path to the dark side, it’s also the shadow of greed, because greed makes you covet things, greed makes you surround yourself with all these things that make you feel comfortable in the moment, but they don’t really make you happy.  And then, when you’re afraid of something, it makes you angry, when you get angry, you start to hate something, sometimes you don’t even know why.  When you hate, do you often know why you hate?  No, you direct it at things and then you hate it.  And it’s hard because anger can be a strength at times, but you can’t use it in such a selfish way, it can be a destroyer then.        “These are the core things of Star Wars.“  –Dave Filoni So, the core things of Star Wars and the Jedi teachings (because Jedi teachings are basically almost word for word how GL described how the Force works) can very much be a reflection of real world teachings and ways to live by, because all of the above are about how GL viewed the world and what he wanted to put into his movies. Further, Jedi teachings are basically just reworded Buddhism + Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.  And both of those are very livable by our real world standards, if you so choose.  GL was very much about how SW had themes that were meant to be picked up on by the audience and even DF has said this:  “ Jedi have the ability to turn the tide, to make a significant moment, to give hope where there’s none.  That’s their ultimate role to play, to be this example of selflessness.  And that’s what makes them a hero, when no one else can match that heroic thing.  And then our job is to emulate that, to use that example, and further our own lives.” --Dave Filoni Ultimately, the Jedi are specifically focused on disciplining themselves (which GL has said is the only way to overcome the dark side, in that TCW writers’ meeting), probably to a degree most of us wouldn’t have the room to devote to, but that doesn’t mean that the broader strokes aren’t meant to be applicable to our lives or don’t echo real world teachings.

[kuiperblog]

Guilty Gear Strive is the Team Fortress 2 of fighting games

Team Fortress 2 is a game with an incredible legacy, but its debut in 2007 felt like an especially big deal for the FPS community as a whole, in that it felt like the game that brought everyone together.

In the early 00′s, there were several “categories” of FPS gamer on PC, with the two big categories basically being “Counter-Strike player” and “arena shooter player” (who played games like Quake 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Tribes). And there wasn’t really a lot of overlap between those communities: either you were the kind of gamer who wanted to shoot terrorists in the head with an assault rifle, or you were the kind of person who wanted to rocket-jump to the rail gun and insta-gib the guy who hadn’t picked up armor.

Other categories existed (like WWII shooters including the Call of Duty series prior to 2007, and “big team battle” games like Battlefield), but “Counter-Strike” and “Quake-like games” were the most established and most enfranchised categories of player: they were the people who you’d find hanging out on forums, gathering on IRC to organize scrimmages, and the kind of people who would haul their computer out to a LAN event.

Team Fortress 2 was a huge event, in large part because it somehow managed to bring both of those communities of people together. Quake players felt right at home playing as a soldier and rocket jumping their way across the map. And all of the people who had Steam installed to play Counter-Strike: Source were now using it to purchase the Orange Box and play Team Fortress 2.

But even bigger was the fact that Team Fortress 2 brought a ton of new people into the FPS community: the distinctive artstyle was a big draw to a new audience of people who didn’t find any appeal in military FPS or existing arena FPS games, and TF2 also made a lot of intelligent design choices that made it a simple yet elegant game with a high skill floor and a high skill ceiling: it was easy to hop right in and be useful as an engineer or medic even if you weren’t good at aiming (an incredible feat for a first-person shooter), but there were plenty of people who spent thousands of hours playing that game and mastering their rocket jumps and airshots.

The fighting game community of the mid-late 2010′s feels a lot like the FPS community of the early-mid 00′s, in that you have several distinctive categories of gamer: 2D fighters like Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom, 3D fighting games like Tekken and Soul Calibur, and anime/airdash fighting games like Guilty Gear and Melty Blood.  (And then you have Smash players, which are their own category altogether.)  There was some overlap between those communities, but it never felt like there was a lot of overlap.  More to the point, there was no single game that everyone converged on: Street Fighter IV was pretty close in the early 2010′s, due to it almost singlehandedly revitalizing the fighting game community, but by the time Street Fighter V came out, the community had split into several factions, and if you showed up to an event to play Tekken or Under Night In-Birth, you probably weren’t going to take anyone up on an invitation to play Street Fighter V.  (Not even Street Fighter players wanted to play Street Fighter V when it first came out! Many still don’t!)

At the weekly meetups I’ve been attending, it’s become clear that Guilty Gear Strive is far and away the most popular game there. That’s not to say everyone is a Guilty Gear player in their blood: for a lot of people, Strive is their first Guilty Gear game, and in some cases their first anime/airdash fighter. But somehow, it’s captured the attention of Street Fighter players, Tekken players, and of course the Melty Blood/UNIEL players who you’d expect to feel most at home. Even some Smash players show up to play Strive (and those that don’t, don’t show up at all). You can go up to basically anyone and say, “wanna play Strive?” I don’t think it’s exaggeration to say that when I go to those meetups, 90%+ of the people who show up on a given night will be down to play Guilty Gear Strive, and at least half the people who show up are only there to play Strive. It’s the game that’s brought everyone together in the same way that Team Fortress 2 was a game for both Quake and Counter-Strike players.

And, like Team Fortress 2, there are also a lot of new people being drawn to Guilty Gear Strive as their first fighting game. (You might surmise as much, based on the number of people who are showing up only to play Strive.) It’s easy to get sucked in by the incredible visual style, and like TF2, it has a game with a simple-yet-elegant design, serving as one of the easiest on-ramps for someone who isn’t into fighting games, but might like to try one. Even if you’re in the bottom quartile of players, and lose the overwhelming majority of the time, it never feels like you’re getting completely bodied. (I say this as someone who’s in the bottom quartile of players, and loses the overwhelming majority of the time: I might go 1-6 against most people, but for the entire duration of the set, I will still feel like I’m in it to win it, and I find myself learning a lot over the course of each set.)  For those people, Guilty Gear Strive is going to be the game that everything else gets compared to.

And, once you’re enfranchised enough to start attending meets, you’re exposed to a bunch of other games, and are probably way more inclined to try them: I, like a lot of the people who show up to play Guilty Gear, have spent quite a bit of time over the past few weeks spectating Melty Blood matches and thinking (and occasionally remarking) that it seems pretty cool.

[baconpal]

pokemon rant time

this one’s about the 2 new things, and is at least slightly intended for people actually excited/interested in them, click keep reading or perish

Gonna try and keep stuff short cus there's a lot of topics this time and I've already gone off about how pokemon Isn't meant for me or meant to be a good video game anymore, but gamefreak is right back on their bullshit, so I feel I need to at least point it out.

I'd like to preface all this with, if you are a fan of pokemon still, please realize you can ask for more out of this series. Expect perfection, even if you don't think you'll get it anytime soon. Pokemon won't go anywhere, the old games won't go anywhere, and gaming is a hobby, not a necessity; don't accept low quality products from a company just because you feel like you're supposed to.

With this next wave of pokemon games, gamefreak is clearly testing how little they can put in to a $60 game while still keeping the 2 major audiences they've cultivated. By responding to the most obvious and vocal complaints from the community, gamefreak is aiming to make games that seems like what most players want, without having to put in the work on quality products.

GEN 4 REMAKES Pokemon BS (I am not calling this shit BDSP) is intended for the audience that put up with let's go and RS remakes. The most vocal and obvious complaints for these games is their failure as definitive versions of the games they are remakes of, such as missing features/content, or drastically changed story/dialogue/style. In a way, the recent remakes are inferior versions of incredibly old games, which shows a lack of improvement in pokemon as a whole.

To address these issues, BS is very, very, VERY clearly aiming for a more 1-to-1 recreation of the DS games, but with fully 3d graphics. Clearly the map layout has been transferred exactly, and gen 4 already had mostly 3d environments to begin with, and everyone knows about the future-proof pokemon models at this point, so the amount of effort required to create something like this is absolutely minimal. Assuming dialogue, trainer teams, move lists, etc. are also lifted directly from DP, then this game could be developed in basically no time at all, leaving the team time to ensure the product is of decent quality and includes ALL of the content of the originals, if not more, like the earlier pokemon remakes did to ensure they were truly definitive versions of the games. That being said, it is unlikely the team behind BS has been making use of this saved time to improve the game.

One failing already clear is that the quality is not very good, at least graphical quality. The footage we have shows environments lacking in color compared to the original, with messy, unpleasant textures that contrast poorly with the simplistic environments. The characters especially do not work. As cute and fun the fanart of tiny dawn has been, BS dawn and all other characters look awful. They have gorilla arms that reach down to the floor and lifeless faces, as well as incredibly stiff/simplistic animations. As it stands, BS is a visually inferior game to DP, though most consumers will simply see it as 3D>2D without any understanding of what an artstyle is, so this might not be a problem for many, but that doesn't mean you should accept it.

What remains to be seen is what content will be added/missing from pokemon BS. It is very possible that massive parts of the game, such as the underground, variety of online modes, postgame areas, and content from platinum could be missing entirely. We also do not know if pokemon from after gen 4 will be worked into the region, or even supported. Gen 8 still currently does not support a large number of pokemon, and the remakes may continue this limited dex trend.

Even assuming the remake includes everything from the DS games and doesn't add anything that slows down the story or harms the experience, it will still only be an exercise in forced obsolescence. The main reason people can't really play DP still is that the online isn't supported anymore. If BS turns out to be exactly the same as DP, then you're buying the same game for at a higher price, only to play it until the online service goes away again, or the next game comes out, if both don't happen at the same time.

Don't let yourself buy a 13 year old game at twice the original price.

GEN 4 NOT-REMAKE KIND OF NEW THING On to legends now, gamefreak is targeting the people who put up with sun/moon and sword/shield. The obvious problem with those games to most people was simply a lack of change from the standard pokemon formula. Even when changing the gyms to trials or stadiums, most people still understand that the format and story structures are mostly unchanged. Of course, this problem has seemingly been addressed by changing the game structure a fair bit, but almost entirely by removal.

Trainer battles, and by extension, gyms and tournaments/elite 4 have been confirmed to be absent, meaning all battles are only vs single pokemon, in spite of the player likely having a team of 6 pokemon. Even if battle difficulty is increased to compensate (doubtful), this will still drastically increase the simplicity of combat and make it even less likely for the game to include any meaningful challenge. Exploring towns and meeting NPCs is also seemingly missing, as the game is confirmed to have only a single village, which frankly looks incredibly boring and we've yet to see a single NPC inhabiting the village.

Battles now use an ATB format instead of a turn-based format (for those of you who don't know what that means, it basically means nothing, it's still turn based, it just means the speed state determines who gets more turns instead of who goes first, that's it), but beyond that there seems to be no noteworthy changes, pokemon learn 4 moves with limited PP, type advantage will still definitely be the most important aspect to battle, and the player being able to walk around during battle provides no meaningful impact. While the little dash the pokemon do to approach each other is cool, it is already a sign that gamefreak will not be addressing the issue of lacking animations for pokemon battles, as they can't even be assed to animate and program pokemon walking around the environment during combat, and lucario doing 1 kick for a move described as a series of punches isn't a great sign either.

On the topic of lacking animations, the new "pet simulator feature" for legends seems to be an advancement on the ride system from sun/moon, which presumably people missed from sword/shield. Being able to ride on your pokemon to do stuff sounds cool, but in all likelihood, this system will be limited to only a select few pokemon who will each do a select few actions, and is not a reasonable replacement for all the other pet raising features that have been removed in the past. Similar to BS, the total number of pokemon included may also be limited arbitrarily, in spite of the fact that no new pokemon need to be added, as these games are not claiming to be a new generation.

The largest issues I personally have with this new game is the horrible technical quality and gameplay quality shown in the initial trailer. Unfortunately, these types of problems seem to be difficult to explain to the average consumer, even though the issues seem incredibly obvious and inexcusable to people like me.  Most people were able to understand the problem with the berry trees in gen 8, because it was easy to explain, "this tree doesn't look like the other trees, and it sticks out, isn't that weird?", and so gamefreak has eliminated any immediately obvious issues like that, sticking with a very consistent artstyle for legends, making it almost impossible to easily explain its faults to the average pokemon fan.

People have been really quick to compare legends to BoTW; the game that invented grass, trees, and mountains. In spite of these comparisons, nobody seems to point out that legends looks dramatically worse than that almost 5 year old game from the previous generation. Plants are stiff and lacking in energy, draw distances are poor, colors are drab, and textures are messy. Many parts of legends seems to ape BoTW on just the surface, essentially just following market trends. Even the controls seem to follow after modern 3rd person shooters/stealth games, including a seemingly pointless roll and a clunky looking ball lobbing arc that feels unfun before even getting to play it myself.

The largest issue, painfully obvious to some, and impossible to explain to others, is the framerate. The trailer clearly was ran on actual switch hardware, and not prerendered, which would be a good mark for gamefreak if it didn't result in a trailer that never once hit 30fps. Even with empty fields, with only 1 or 2 characters on screen, the game was incapable of meeting the target speed, and had to resort to optimizations like reducing the frame rate of pokemon only inches away from the player to stop-motion levels of choppy. If situations with almost nothing going on result in slow-down, how will the game perform during actual gameplay? Even though slow-down is something everyone can feel, many people aren't capable of identifying it.

The major things to wait and see for legends is if the removed aspects of the series are made up for by some additional systems or content, and definitely wait to see if the performance improves. As with BS, preordering a game like this only shows that gamefreak only has to market the game by saying it's different, not improved, like they've been doing for years now.

TL;DR FUCK GAMEFREAK One major thing of note is that gamefreak is releasing 2 games based on gen 4 at the nearly the same time, meaning they have no obligation to design new pokemon or even include pokemon not from sinnoh, and also that the sales of each game can be used as an indicator for which of their 2 audiences is more loyal to them. Both BS and Legends are in a position to be pushes aside if they fail, but if either succeeds, gamefreak can continue in the direction of the more successful game and reap the benefits, without any need to innovate, improve, or adapt to criticism.

The last thing I feel I have to remind people about is that gamefreak is a company; you don't need to be "grateful" to them. I've seen that word thrown around far too much by people who seem to buy pokemon games like its a tax, and not something they want to do. You don't have to suck up to a company that made games you liked as a kid if the games aren't what you want anymore. Pokemon is so wildly successful that it can't possible die, so don't buy the games out of pity, or out of some feeling of obligation. Buy the video games you want to play and nothing more.

Basically, if you are considering getting any of these new games, please wait until the games are out before purchasing them, and decide for yourself if they are worth your money, and more importantly, your time. Preordering these games only lets gamefreak know their audience will buy and put up with anything. They have no real competition at the moment, so the only thing the audience can do to encourage improvement is show some of restraint.

[thelordofdarkreunion]

Sci-Fi Video Games: What You Thought They Were Going to Be vs. What They Actually Were

Halo: 

What You Thought it Would Be- Shoot some aliens.  That’s pretty much it.

What it Actually Was- Holy shit this is probably the best game I have ever played.  

Halo 2:

What You Thought it Would Be- Halo but better.

What it Actually Was- Halo but better.  

Halo 3: 

What You Thought it Would Be- Halo 2 but better.

What it Actually Was- Halo 2 but better.  Possibly the best video game of all time.  

Halo 4:

What You Thought it Would Be- Halo 3 but better.

What it Actually Was- Wait, what?  This...is not how it should be.  And it is certainly not as good as the others.  

Halo 5:

What You Thought it Would Be- At this point we’re just hoping for the best.  

What it Actually Was- No.  None of this is cannon!  I refuse to believe it.  

Titanfall:

What You Thought it Would Be- Kind of a b-list shooter game.  Something to pass the time.  

What it Actually Was- This is great and I absolutely adore this game and its movement system.  

Titanfall 2:

What You Thought it Would Be- Titanfall but better.

What it Actually Was- The most underrated video game of all time.  Period.  

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare:

What You Thought it Would Be- Call of Duty but newer and better and with all sorts of cool and interesting things!

What it Actually Was- Call of Duty: Now Everyone Has a Jetpack

Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare:

What You Thought it Would Be- Call of Duty in space.  

What it Actually Was- Actually a new, interesting and exiting game with pretty good characters.  But the COD fans hated it because it wasn’t like Modern Warfare.

Mass Effect:

What You Thought it Would Be- Like Star Trek but a new universe and with more shooting.  

What it Actually Was- Hey, this is pretty interesting.  A solid all around game in a new fictional universe with more shooting and less diplomacy?  Let’s see where this goes.  

Mass Effect 2:

What You Thought it Would Be- Mass Effect but better.  

What it Actually Was- This is great and these are possibly the best video game characters of all time.  

Mass Effect 3:

What You Thought it Would Be- The wonderful and triumphal end to the Mass Effect Saga.  

What it Actually Was- Everything is great and all the fans love it but what is with the endings?!

Star Wars Battlefront (2004):

What You Thought it Would Be- Hey, a Star Wars game!  Never seen one of those before.  

What it Actually Was- This is only the beginning...

Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2006):

What You Thought it Would Be- Star Wars Battlefront but better.

What it Actually Was- If you played this game when it came out, you know.  The memes, the fun...nothing can surpass it in its own way.  

Star Wars Battlefront (2015):

What You Thought it Would Be- Star Wars Battlefront remastered.  

What it Actually Was- If you can get past the classic EA ‘this shouldn’t cost anything but it does’ -ness, then it is a new and pretty decent take on a Star Wars video game.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 (2017):

What You Thought it Would Be- Either 1. A Star Wars fps game that has both multiplayer and a campaign or 2. EA will ruin this.  

What it Actually Was- Originally started out as a classic ‘EA ruined this’, but became pretty good because, oddly enough, they moved past that stage and now everything is free.

No Man’s Sky:

What You Thought it Would Be- Explore the galaxy in its majesty and see all there is to see!

What it Actually Was- Originally really bad, so everyone moved on, but the developers kept with it and now its pretty good.  

Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Wars: Knights of the Eternal Throne:

What You Thought it Would Be- Star Wars, but set before the movies in a time where the Sith were numerous and had their own empire.  

What it Actually Was- The Old Republic lore is better than most of the stuff out there, including a solid half of the movies.  And you think Rey is a strong Jedi or any of the movie Sith Lords are really powerful?  Well, you have yet to meet Vitiate, Revan, Marr, Satele Shan, or any of the other Masters or Dark Lords of this age...

Stelaris:

What You Thought it Would Be- Control your own interstellar empire in a massive strategy game!

What it Actually Was- Virtual mass genocide has never been this fun.

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 1 and 2:

What You Thought it Would Be- A Warhammer 40k game set in space.

What it Was- Have you ever blown up your opponents from inside a 20 km-long floating cathedral of death?  No?  Would you like to?  

Apex Legends:

What You Thought it Would Be- Oh dear god no not another battle royale game.  

What it Actually Was- A good somewhat sci-fi game with none of the cringe commonly associate to the battle royale genre.  

Note from the Author: Feel free to add to this list if you have any ideas.  

[theuniversitychallengereview]

UC 51.03 - London Business School vs Hertford, Oxford

Since it was introduced at the 1988 Olympics, every single Gold Medal in the Women’s Team event in the Archery has gone to South Korea. Including yesterday’s win that’s nine straight victories, and their period of unparalleled dominance continues. The men’s team have also won six of the nine they have contested, and a mixed team won the first staging of that event in Tokyo too. Adding their success in the individual events, South Korea have won 26 gold medals, and 42 in total, in the 43 archery events which have been thus far staged at the Olympic Games. 

As Twitter’s own @tarequelaskar pointed out in the brilliant article which alerted me to this story, this is a perfect example of specialisation, an economic concept whereby countries or companies focus intensely on one particular aspect of a given industry and come to serve that niche in such a specialised fashion that they become the ultimate experts and nigh-on irreplaceable. This is done in government and business by providing companies with incentives to specialise, and supporting those who succeed at it. 

With respect to Korean archery, similar forces are at play. There are a bunch of professional teams and leagues in the country, giving archers financial stability while they focus on their training, something not as common across the world. Said training involves such things as practicing in live baseball stadiums and replicas of the Olympic venues, to mimic first the atmosphere and then the conditions that will be present on the day of the actual tournament. 

This philosophy of marginal gains - the same system used by Team Sky and Chris Froome to win multiple Tour De Frances on the trot - puts their preparation miles ahead of the competition, which goes some way to explaining their dominance. It is not the only reason. Before the fine-tuning of the elite shooters comes the discovery of the promising young ones, and the inspiring nature of past success (along with a historic national love of the sport) helps to create a virtuous cycle which give Korea a far larger number of archers to choose from than any other country. This greater choice means that there is a greater chance of finding the next Gold medallists.

Making the argument that professional footballers are at a higher level than other elite sportspeople, Michael Cox used this same argument in a recent article for The Athletic. To summarise, he stated that because there are a far higher number of people who wish to become professional footballers, that must mean that the ones who do make it are at a higher standard than those who make it in other sports. Initially, I was drawn in by the pure maths of this point, but having thought about it some more I’m no longer sure to what extent I agree. 

Now, the fact that hundreds of millions more people play football than rugby, or basketball, will certainly confer some level of “eliteness”, but only up to a certain point. Because football has been so popular for so long, the general standard of the play, relative to what it used to be, has had longer to improve. In the same way that if you transplanted a 100m runner from the Olympic final in the early 20th century to now they probably wouldn’t even qualify for the games, a footballer from the 80s would stand less of a chance of making it were they playing today. Many other sports don’t have that level of natural progression, afforded by decades of technical and tactical advancement - at least not globally. 

But the numbers argument only goes so far, as can be demonstrated by the Korean archers. Yes, there are more archers in Korea than anywhere else, relatively, giving them a higher chance of uncovering those with a natural aptitude, but the reason behind their bow and arrow dynasty is the specialisation. The hyper-detailed level of training and focus which allows them to be the best they can possible be. 

Now, archery is unique in that there is a theoretical maximum score (I understand that this is to some extent arbitrary, and related to the rules of the game as defined by some human being, semi-randomly, but it works in terms of this argument, because it gives a percentage score of how good the archers are based on the agreed-upon parameters of the sport), which, at the Olympics, is 720. The Olympic record is 700 (held by Korean Kim Woo-jin, giving an implied “eliteness level” of 97.2%. 

The best player in the history of football (don’t @ me) is Lionel Messi, and few would doubt that he operates at or above that level of perfection in his sport. But I also don’t think you could doubt that Novak Djokovic, or Serena Williams in her pomp, were similarly magnificent at tennis. Cyclists on the Tour De France put their bodies through more in three weeks than most people endure in a decade, and have every aspect of their training and diet strictly controlled so as to bring them as close to perfection as possible. There will certainly be a higher number of these elite performers in football, because there are a higher number of paying jobs for said elite performers, and because more people attempt to become elite performers, but I don’t think that it follows on from that that they are better at their sport than other elite athletes, all of whom have undergone years and years of specialised training to get them where they are.

Does any of this matter, in terms of how each sport should be enjoyed? Probably not, but its interesting to think about, and kind of awe-inspiring to try and appreciate just how good those at the top of their respective games are. And if there is some discrepancy in the level of eliteness between the different sports it doesn’t detract from the fact that they would handily dispatch any civilian challengers without breaking a sweat. The joy comes from watching people who are good at stuff doing that stuff - and, as evidenced by the crowds which gather for non-league football, it doesn’t matter whether or not they are at the absolute pinnacle of said stuff. They’re still going to be much better than the rest of us. 

Competitive quizzing is different from the activities previously mentioned in that any normal person can have a guess at pretty much any question, with a chance that they’ll get it right. What sets the contestants apart on shows like University Challenge is the speed of their recall under pressure - the quickness of their knowledge as well as the knowledge itself. But there are plenty of armchair quizzers who think they could wipe the floor on the show, so just how good are the actual contestants? (Compared to an elite footballer or archer on an imaginary scale that accounts for relative skill in all disciplines?). I don’t know (and in case you hadn’t noticed by now I’m just fascinated by people who are really good at anything, and wanted to share some of that fascination with you all), but I’ll try and have a go at answering it anyway. 

So, the World Quizzing Championships have been dominated by British and Irish quizzers since its inception in 2003, with 16 of the 18 winners coming from either Britain or the Republic of Ireland (who have four wins courtesy of The Egghead Pat Gibson). This, in my mind, makes this neck of the woods comparable to South Korean archery. It is a hotbed of talent, and the infrastructure is in place to encourage and aid talent maximalisation. Indeed, if you scroll down the list of highest ranking players at the WQC in any given year you can see a significant cohort of UC alums, so clearly there are a number of elite quizzers who have passed through the show. 

This specialisation can be seen in microcosm with the preponderance of top-level quizzers produced by Oxford and Cambridge, who both have a long-standing culture of competitive quizzing far beyond other Universities. The debate is there to be had on the fairness of each institution having so many teams, but clearly they produce enough elite players to compete with far bigger Unis when entering as (sometimes tiny) colleges. 

In conclusion, I think it is pretty obvious that UC is a breeding ground for world-class quizzers, and though no one has won a World title straight off the bat after appearing on the show, there are top-50 and top 100 finishes abound, which is still greatly impressive, and helps to give an idea of just how good these students really are. 

Hoping to justify the 1000 words I’ve just written about their exceptional talents are two teams from the London Business School and Hertford College, Oxford. The Oxford side have never made it beyond the second round, but LBS reached the semi-finals in 2006, their only previous appearance on the show. Anyway, there is quite literally no time for me to recite the rules; here’s your first starter for ten... 

Paxman mentions that LBS were in the show in 2006, but doesn’t mention that they reached the semi final, which is lazy imo. A bunch of them are studying for MBAs, which makes sense. He doesn’t mention Hertford’s previous appearances either, but that’s more understandable.

Hertford’s Hitchens takes the first starter with Kennedy, and the Oxonians added a full set of bonuses on words made up by authors - including a couple of educated guesses. LBS hit back with the next question, but can only manage one bonus on famous scientists. One of the two they miss is Rosalind Franklin, and Paxman teases them for not spotting an apparently obvious clue within the question.

The first picture round is on national emblems, and LBS are first to recognise that of Vietnam for the starter. They don’t know Laos or Belarus, but do know that Mozambique has a machine gun on its one. Butterworth then jumps the gun with argon on the next starter, giving his answer just as Paxman says it in the question. Butterworth makes up for it with the music starter, recognising Fat Boy Slim before anyone else, and LBS know Primal Scream and Wu Tang Clan too. They’re still fifty points behind though, and will need a big second half to turn things around.

This task gets more difficult for them, as Hitchens takes another starter. Lloyd adds a second in a row for Oxford and they are nearly one hundred points clear. LBS really need to get some points on the board, and Ruess duly obliges, knowing that there is a massive sculpture of a spider called Maman, which sounds needlessly scary, to the extent that I’m not even going to google it.

The comeback is ended before its even begun as Oswald takes a starter for Hertford, which gives them the picture bonuses - the starter having been dropped by both teams. Lloyd produces another excellent guess of Reuben, demonstrating how useful it is to have vague knowledge as well as specific knowledge. This is one of probably five questions he has answered in a throwaway manner, but which turned out to be correct. 

By this point LBS seem to have accepted defeat. Ruess takes another starter, but there is little to no urgency on the bonus questions. They’re right, granted, to have none, they have no chance of winning, but if they gave it a go they might scrape a high scoring loser spot. Ruess is the only one who seems bothered, and bags himself ten more points. They have an amusing discussion about methods of poisoning in Agatha Christie novels (’it was used as a curry ingredient?’, Ruess wondered aloud, trying to figure out which spices could be poisonous, before Butterworth pointed out that it wasn’t something commonly used as a curry ingredient, prompting respectful mirth from the audience) on the bonuses, but still languish miles behind. 

Lloyd grabs the last starter of the night for Hertford, who win by eighty at the gong.

Final Score: London Business School 100 - 180 Hertford, Oxford

At the end, Paxman mentions Hertford’s stellar guesswork, which means I wasn’t chatting nonsense (at least on that front, the jury is out on the rest of it), and says that they’ve done a really good job. Incredibly effusive praise for a score of 180. He really is going soft in his old age.

Phew, that was a long one. If you made it through the intro you deserve a prize. And that prize is that you get to come back next week for the next episode of this blog!! Woop woop! 

And if this wasn’t quite enough UC content for you then you can subscribe for extra blogs on my Patreon, which features Retro Reviews from the 2015/16 series of the show. Ta x

[amphtaminedreams]

Farewell to Spooky Season, AHS Style: Lookbook no.12

Hi to anyone reading,

Happy belated Halloween!

I capitalise it because if I'm gonna recognise any day as sacred, it’s the spookiest one of the year! Halloween 2020 obviously hasn’t been as exciting as usual, parties and club nights being banned has meant there’s been far less opportunities to dress up, but I still managed to get out for the night before they announced the upcoming second lockdown and do a couple of spooky movie nights (and carve a pumpkin!)!

I originally intended for this lookbook to be last minute halloween costume inspo but I was lazy and didn’t manage to get it out on time-a lot of these looks minus the makeup and maybe an accessory or two could work on any day or night out so I thought I’d go ahead and post it now anyway. Celebrating the fashion moments of American Horror Story is something I’ve wanted to do for a while; it’s probably not the first show you’d think of for sartorial inspiration but Mr. Ryan Murphy has fucking fantastic taste in stylists and the first five seasons of AHS in particular, which I’ll be focussing on in this post, have given us SO many amazing looks. The man may be guilty of many things-subjecting us to the character of Will Schuester, trying to turn Richard Ramirez into a thirst trap, embarrassing everyone who raved about how good Scream Queens was when he wrote season 2-but costume related laziness is not one of them. We see more consistency in a Ryan Murphy character’s wardrobe than we do in their story arcs and I respect that because honestly, as much as I love joining in when it comes to ripping into his ability to cohesively bring an AHS season to a close when it airs, I’d probably be the same; if you put Lady Gaga in front of me and told me to write her lines I’d probably end up getting overly invested in what her character was going to be wearing in the scene too. 

So! Enough Ryan Murphy bashing from me! I’ll get on with it! Starting with 3 season 1 inspired looks:

Murder House: Elizabeth Short, Tate Langdon and Violet Harmon

-striped jumper from caitlinlark on Depop, kick flare jeans from ellagray-

When it comes to reflecting on season 1 of American Horror Story, all I can say do is thank the internet overlords that Tumblr has moved on from the romanticising school shooters and wearing normal people scare me tops phase to instead collectively taking the piss out of the “GO AWAY, TATE!”, “YOU’RE ALL THAT I WANTTT! YOU’RE ALL THAT I HAVEEE!” exchange. 

In terms of fashion *moments*, whilst season 1 doesn’t stand out as much as the seasons that come after, Violet and Tate’s wardrobes did give birth to a bit of a 90s grunge renaissance with their oversized knits and faded jeans and layering of textures. It did also give us good costumes in the form of Alexandra Breckenridge’s Moira O’Hara and Mena Suvari’s portrayal of the Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short; unfortunately, I didn’t have a slutty maid costume lying around so I did the best I could at giving the outfit Elizabeth wears when she makes that fateful visit to the Murder House a modern, more party appropriate update.

In terms of season rankings, Murder House isn’t my favourite. It starts off really great but lulls a bit towards the end and I could never get behind Violet and Tate as a couple because you know, one of them is a school shooter who sexually assaults the other’s mum, and that’s a hurdle that I think most couples might struggle to get over irl. That being said, it was the season that started it all and showcased some of the most innovative writing and directing on TV, and it opened up a spot for horror on primetime television which as far as I know was kind of unheard of before then. Back when I first watched it, I had no idea what to expect not only because I’d never seen horror in a serial format but also because it seemed to be able to get away with the kind of storylines you’d expect network executives to fire people over. It introduced us to Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters and Denis O’Hare who would go on to make the show what it is today and more importantly, through Jessica’s glorious portrayal of Constance Langdon, provide us with an endlessly versatile meme format for this trying time.

Asylum: ‘60s Lana Winters, ‘70s Lana Winters, and Sister Mary Eunice McKee

-afghan coat from louisemarcella on Depop, red AA skater dress from julietramage, pink gingham co-ord from zshamim-

I think we can all agree: Asylum would’ve been a perfect series of television if it wasn’t for the completely unnecessary alien storyline. Like, I get that they fit in with the whole good vs. evil theme as a kind of non-biblical alternative to the idea of a higher, all-powerful being but there was already so much going on that it just wasn’t needed. Aside from that, I think the general consensus amongst watchers of the show is that Asylum has the best writing of any season and I think I’d tend to agree. It’s not my favourite because it’s too depressing to rewatch but if we’re talking the first time round, this is the series that had me hooked. Lana Winters?

Iconic. 

Sister Mary Eunice? Iconic. The Name Game? Iconic. Remember when you couldn’t go a day on Facebook without seeing that one photo of Naomi Grossman as Pepper used as the go to “what I really look like” photo in one of those “expectation vs. reality” style posts on your newsfeed? Those were simpler times.

Because this season was mostly situated within the hospital, we didn’t get that many proper outfits but when we did, they were stunning; if I had to state my absolute favourite AHS character of the entire show I’d probably go with Lana Winters and the part her wardrobe played in her characterisation would 100% play a part in that. The late 60s/early 70s was such a wonderful period for fashion and through her character we get to see both of those explored a little. Of course there’s also *that* Sister Mary Eunice scene with the red slip dress and suspenders too which yes, could be a perfect halloween costume, but I also strongly believe should be a perfectly acceptable outfit for any day of the year. 

Coven: Misty Day, Madison Montgomery, and Zoe Benson

-chiffon dress from rags_to_riches on Depop, pinstripe corset from hanpiercey, and tennis skirt from mollie_morton-

I hate to be a basic bitch but I have to say it: Coven is my favourite season of American Horror Story. Once you get over the complete waste of Evan Peters’ acting capabilities that resulted from the *choice* to have him play Kyle, the unnecessary rehash of the Evan/Taissa pairing from season 1 in what I can only assume was an attempt to capitalise on the popularity of the questionable Tate/Violet relationship, and the subsequent sacrifice of any interesting character arc we could’ve foreseen for Zoe Benson beyond her obsessing over a resurrected, non-verbal frat boy, it’s a perfect season. A supreme (heh) balance of horror, humour, and character drama, as well as the stunning aesthetics and forever quotable dialogue, make it my go-to season if I’m ever considering a rewatch. And if you disagree, let me jog your memory with the most mainstream (not to get all “normal people scare me” and suggest AHS is not a mainstream show, I literally just mean in the sense that even those who have never watched the show will have seen this)  reaction GIF set any FX show has even spawned:

Buzzfeed employees had a field day, Emma Roberts enthusiasts (I mean me) finally saw her cemented as the pop culture icon Scream Queens has since showed us she deserves to be (because not enough people have seen Unfabulous, Nancy Drew or Scream 4) and the gays everywhere rejoiced at the year’s worth of meme fodder they’d been provided with. It was Madison Montgomery’s world and we were truly just living in it.

And the fashion! I mean, Stevie Nicks meets 21st century teenage witches! Come on! 

Freakshow: Dandy Mott, Maggie Esmerelda and Elsa Mars

-olive green satin skirt from morganogle on Depop, headscarf from tonijordan, platform sandals from elliefewt, PVC skirt from bethpin_, corset top from sadieflinter, beret from house_of_erotique, flame detail platform boots from mad_rags_vintage-

When people talk about the declining quality of AHS, they usually point to Freakshow as the beginning of the end, but I have to completely disagree. I wasn’t a fan the first time round but on rewatch it’s probably the most emotional season of them all; no, there aren’t as many “horrifying” moments as in other seasons and Elsa is probably Jessica’s worst performance (which is still an incredible one by anybody else’s standards), however it makes up for it with the most sympathetic bunch of characters yet, and on the flip side, also one of the most amusingly depraved with Finn Wittrock’s Dandy Mott. Fans usually argue that the season went downhill once *SPOILER* Twisty the Clown was killed off but for me, he really primarily served as the catalyst for the far more interesting devolution of Dandy, who, imo, is the show’s strongest villain to date, rivalled only by Bloody Face. Then there was the episode Orphans too which made me cry buckets, the sole AHS episode to do so. 

We got a lot of great fashion content in this season too: the theatrical opulence of Elsa Mars’ wardrobe, “Maggie”’s nomadic fortune teller costumes, and all those twee suits we saw Finn Wittrock in. Highly underrated if you ask me. It seems an odd choice for me to use Elsa’s Dominatrix look as an inspiration for one of my looks here when we have that Life on Mars performance outfit and all the extravagant robes Jessica got to waltz around in for reference buuuut I didn’t really have anything to do the vibrancy of either of those justice so I went with the black leather option which is much more me. Am I saying I moonlight as a dominatrix? Maybe. Lol, no. I wish. It’s not for lack of trying. WHERE ARE ALL THE GENUINE TWITTER PAYPIGS AT!? Your girl wants to insult creepy men and get some new clothes out of it xoxo

Hotel: Hypodermic Sally, Liz Taylor, and The Countess

-silk white bralet from xlibby_maix on Depop-

Hotel is another season that I liked a lottttt more upon rewatch, once I knew I was okay to tune out the (completely predictable and utterly nonsensical) Ten Commandments Killer storyline that so much of the season initially seems to hinge on. I love Chloë Sevigny but the fact that her and Wes Bentley’s wooden John and Alex Lowe are positioned as the protagonists at the expense of the far more interesting Liz Taylor, James March and Hypodermic Sally really does a disservice to what is an otherwise great season upon initial viewing.

The visuals this season are magnificent and I think if I had to pick one character’s wardrobe to steal from the entire cast of AHS characters, it would be The Countess (a toss up between her and Misty Day tbh, so I kinda just settle for low-key channelling both). No fucking idea where I'd wear any of her clothes to but I’d make it work. Liz Taylor and Hypodermic Sally have some amazing looks too-there’s just honestly so much to choose from; that being said, this post wouldn’t be complete without a specific ode to the vampire goddess Elizabeth Bathory, who is everything I want to be in life minus the murderous qualities:

Everything. EVER-Y-THING. LOOK AT HER!

Lady Gaga is really a fucking goddess isn’t she. And people were claiming before they’d even seen it that she couldn’t act? A patriarchal society doesn’t like women that can do it all. Just saying. 

Anyways!

That’s it for now! I hope you enjoyed the post if you did read til the end! Sorry I couldn’t get this out before Halloween, I was typing and Picmonkey-ing madly from 2 in the afternoon on the 31st but I taking fucking forever to get ready and had to abandon all hope of getting it out on the day by 4PM. I’ve got so much content planned and it sucks because a couple of them are lookbooks which now feel completely redundant given we’re heading into a second lockdown, but maybe I should just do it anyway? The grunge inspired moodboard I just did seemed to get a good reception too so I’ve got some more of them planned. 

As always, hope everyone is keeping well, and feel free to inbox me with any suggestions, queries or even just to say hi if you need someone to talk to! I check here quite a lot so I should see it. Lots of love to everyone in this time!

Lauren x

[considerthehorses]

Heterosexuality Is A Misleading Term For "No Homo"-Moids. Men Do Not Feel Attracted To Women, They Do Not Like Women, And They Do Not Love Women.

1.) Men are not attracted to women.

Men constantly talk about how disgusting vaginas look, smell, taste, and how much they hate the idea of going down on women. If they have the choice, they prefer female genitals that are mutilated: either via "old-fashioned" techniques like in some African and Islamic communities or via "modern" cosmetic surgeries that some women in porn have performed on them. The goal of this is always a kind of sexless, "genitalless", pedophilic look of a pink little slit.

Men also hate any amount of natural body hair on women although (or because!) it is a sign of sexual maturity. Men hate normal amounts of body fat on women although (or because) it is a sign of sexual maturity and fertility as well.

Men want babies with big tits.

And what do they want to sexually do to these babies with big tits? Fuck them in the ass, fuck them in the throat, beat, rape, torture, and humiliate them until they cry.

Male sexuality is nothing but fetishized violence against women. They love anal sex because it is hurtful to women and doesn't give women a chance to orgasm themselves. And the moment they realized that some women actually enjoy giving blowjobs have they come up with "throat fucking" and "deep throat": they HATE women, they HATE female bodies, and they HATE the idea that a woman could enjoy sex.

It is often said that "Porn tells lies about women, but it tells the truth about men". And the truth is that if you take the brutal anal/throat penetration out of male sexuality, what's left is men casually beating, hurting, whipping women. The distinction between "vanilla" and "kink" doesn't make sense in the case of men. It's just a matter of degree. "Vanilla" men want to rape women and beat them - "kinky" men want to rape women and beat them and electroshock and water torture and mutilate them.

Men are not attracted to actual female bodies. Men only enjoy the idea of DESTROYING female bodies: both through absurd beauty norms that effectively destroy these bodies and turn them into absurd dolls and through sexual practices that are always about hurting, beating, whipping, raping, anal fucking, throat fucking female bodies.

Men are MONSTERS. There is some creepy shit in nature: viruses and predators and parasite larvae that eat their host alive. And, of course, other animals also rape women. But nothing is as cruel and disgusting as the human moid: at least a lion doesn't masturbate over the idea of a female lion being torn to pieces by an elephant or whatever. A predator just wants to eat you, a coronavirus just enter a cell nucleus and replicate ... but the human moid gets erections and masturbates to the thought of women being humiliated and tortured and hurt until they cry and bleed or even die.

2.) Men do not like women.

Men do not feel attracted to real women. And men do obviously not LIKE women. They hate women so much that the moment women like something, men hate it: if women like flavored-coffee drinks from Starbucks, men hate it BECAUSE women like it. (As if bacon and bacon memes are funnier or better than women making memes about pizza or enjoying pumpkin-spice lattes!)

If women join a fandom, men leave because the moment women like it, they start hating it. Some sociologist has coined the term "gender pollution": it is a sexist term itself but it describes a real phenomenon: the more women enter a particular space (e.g. a profession or a hobby), the more it is "polluted", the less it is valued and the less people in this job get paid. I think in some Eastern European countries this is actually the case with doctors even: but as there are many women in this field - both among nurses as well as among doctors - doctors are also not valued anymore.

The moment women became good in school was the moment boys increasingly dropped out. Men now associate doing your homework and reading books with women - and they rather ruin their lives than to be engaged with something women like! So instead of doing their homework are they now playing video games 24/7. But now women have obviously started playing video games as well. So now they become mass shooters because they hate the idea of female video game characters.

3.) Men do not love women

Winston Churchill famously said that you have the Germans either at your feet or at your throat.

Now, I’m not sure about the Germans, but I think that this is definitely true for males: they are always either at your throat or at your feet. Males fall in "love" with e-girls … but the moment they find out that those women already have boyfriends they want to kill them. (I’m not even sure if I have to put "love" in quotation marks here because the idea of a REAL love in contrast to quotation-marks-love feels a bit like the idea that only "men" in quotation marks are toxic and shitty while REAL men are all these heroes and these supermen…)

I think pornsickness and “lovesickness” are, in a way, two sides of the same coin. “Love” feels like the surrogate religion of a secular age. I’m not a Buddhist but I agree with this part from a text, explaining why this religion is critical of the concept of “romantic love”:

The love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man is often the floor to which people fall after the collapse of other dreams. It is held to be solid when nothing else is, and though it frequently gives way and dumps them into a basement of despair, it still enjoys a reputation of dependability. No matter that this reputation is illogical — it still flourishes and will continue to flourish regardless of what is said in any book. Love, or possibly the myth of love, is the first, last, and sometimes the only refuge of uncomprehending humanity. What else makes our hearts beat so fast? What else makes us swoon with feeling? What else renders us so intensely alive and aching? The search for love — the sublime, the nebulous, the consuming — remains sacred in a world that increasingly despises the sacred. When the heroic and the transcendental are but memories, when religious institutions fill up with bureaucrats and social scientists, when nobody believes there is a sky beyond the ceiling, then there seems no other escape from the prison of self than the abandon of love. With a gray age of spiritual deadness upon us, we love, or beg for love, or grieve for love. We have nothing higher to live for.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/price/bl124.html

I couldn’t agree more. Just consider how many males murder others and/or end their own lives because of love. Just like being pornsick makes it hard for males - and for women - to develop a realistic understanding of human sexuality with its possibilities and limitations, being “lovesick” makes it hard for males - and for women - to develop a realistic understanding of human relationships. People these days expect love to do what previous generations expected miracles and gods to do. “All you need is love” vs “All you need is Jesus”.

There are also studies that show that males fall in love easier and earlier than women. And they surely fall out of love easier as well. Males are like the flickering flame of a candle that burns brightly for a second and then goes out again. This is why it’s so super common for women to think that they do not know their husbands anymore because they feel that these males are completely different persons suddenly.

Males can be lovesick and pornsick at the same time. They masturbate to torture porn in one moment, and the next moment they write a 20-page love letter to some e-girl and emotionally vomit all over them, confessing their undying love. (Many women receive as many rape threats as they receive cringe love letters in which males emotionally vomit all over them.) And one moment later do they already want to kill those terrible “e-thots” again: males are always either at your throat or at your feet: the romantic concept of "love" is a literary construct at best and a religious tool at worst but it's simply not true that men are able to "love" women in the sense women dream about being loved.

Men are not attracted to actual women.

Men do not like actual women.

Men do not love actual women.

PS - Quote from the Reddit Comments:

Regarding love, this is hormonal thing. The feeling of romantic love, of falling in love, "the honey moon period" etc is caused by hormone called Oxytocin. Oxytocin induced social bonding including bonding with sexual partner, and maternal love. It is found in women in far higher amounts than in men and it is major reason why women exhibit more pro-social behavior, are less selfish, more empathic, better parents, more generous, more trusting, more romantic etc. Men do not normally have much Oxytocin, but they get a temporal boost when they fall in love, which makes them bond to their partner and mellows them down, making them less dangerous and more attentive partner and father. But the effect is always temporal and only lasts few months.

PROOF : The results showed that OT plasma levels (pg ̸ ml, mean ± SD) were significantly higher in women than in men (4.53 ± 1.18 vs 1.53 ± 1.19, p ˂ 0.001).

[nahoyaglock]

Frobi selfship headcannons

!!sfw!!

shigabi, tenfro, fronaka, frobishima, inuobi, frokuto, aobi, frotani, fromi, ushibi, frobinoya, katsubi hcs

a/n: sorry for these long ass headcanons, i hope yall enjoy them tho?? also sorry for the reoccurring mention of my terrible paranoia </3 im going through a hard time w it rn, pls excuse me

reblogs on selfship posts are super appreciated!

shigabi

video games

i am his baby! he has a soft spot for me :3

lets me sit in his lap while he plays video games

hc that shigaraki is a twitch streamer instead of a villain and he streams with me on his lap

messy hair, black headset, pajama pants and a black hoodie vs pink tank top, white skirt, pink bows and a fuzzy blanket

we own cats named wario and waluigi >:3

we play ow and animal crossing together

he plays shooters and horror games while i play otome games and rhythm games

watching happy feet and cuddling, lets me lay between his legs as he plays with my hair

calls me brat and baby

cooks me seafood

some days i want him to baby me, other days we go run around at 4am

teases me bc of my height, leanes down to give me kisses

randomly tugs on my hair and pretends he didnt do it throught the day

i kick his ugly ass ankles /j

tenfro

baking, cuddling, horror movies and videos games 24/7

both bullied so we confine in each other and comfrt the other well

hes very caring so he always checks in, even when i seem fine

notices my mood changes

"do you need a hug?" and just hugs me bc he knows i do

he likes to rest his head on my chest when he rants to me

booping noses and interlocked hands ♡

ushijima gives us rides everywhere

their manager, so i have to make sure tendou does well

the other team members are happy im dating tendou, especially ushijima

sitting with tendou on the bus to their matches

kisses and hugs after every match and practice match

lets me wear his jersey bc he hates when other guys look at me

one time terushima tried to flirt w me and he made ushi scare him away

fronaka

hand on ass always.

tries to fight any guy that even comes near me

me, ryu and noya, the trio !

walks me to class with his arm around my waist

basically bestfriends to lovers so we spemd all our time together like we did before we were dating

still a slight kiyoko simp but lmao so am i, we admire her beauty together

brags to the team about me, telling them random things about me

"frobis favorite food are clams!" crosses gis arms proudly

"ryuu, you dumbass" insert me slapping the back of his bald head

saeko teasing him and telling him to treat me well

says "hey bae" and probably uses the devil emoji ajxjzjx

plays with my hair, he loves my curls :D

we prolly have a dog, small dog bc ooi dogs scary,, D:

frobishima

always has an arm around me

denki bestie af !

also one that i can relate to so we can share our experiences and comfort each other

top kin so we get along very well and have alot of the same interests

movie nights w/ the bakusquad

cuddling kiri the whole time and making the rest of them feel single

he likes to pinch my shoulder to get my attention

big smiles and playful biting :D

he probably has alot of my clothes left at his house bc i like wearing his shirts

insert kiri cooking while i back hug him <3

likes to princess carry me, and carries me when im sleepy

thigh kisses bc he loves them alot <3

best an comforting, sings me to sleepy and helps me when i have really bad paranoia </3

true loml

inuobi

walk to school together everyday

sometimes we race

brings me a breakfast bar, sometimes his mom makes me a morning snack too

little pecks and hand holding

we're like two energetic puppies in a relationship

i always attend his games and cheer for him and the boys

insert kuroo, tora, kenma, and kai acting like my dads

me and inu doing puppy eyes for little spoon, he usually gives in and takes big spoon

lots compliments and blushing

"inu, y-you look cute today"

"frobi, you look s-stunning"

comfort buddies!

convinces the coach to let me ride on the bus with them to tournaments

sleppys babies on the back of the bus

members have pictures of us sleeping

sharing a blanket that kai gave to us bc the bus was cold and sharing a scarf that inuoka bought me for winter

frokuto

if hes sad, im sad :( if im sad, hes sad :(((

my energy beam, my number one, my ace 🥺

he loves to hold my small hands in his big ones, rubbing the back of my hand with his thumb

he'd walk around at tournaments, big star bo with his tiny cute girlfriend

saru, komi, and konoha give me headpats

bo pouts because they didnt guve him head pats

many pats for the ace!! :D

during lunch i hang w him and akaashi, akaashi having to deal w me and bos shenanigans

lowkey, we probably bring him stress

me and bo go on night time adventures, he drives us <3

brings home ramen after a long day of practice

when hes sad he cries into my chest and i play with his hair

"its okay bo, your still my ace" kisses and more kisses and more kisses

he loves to hold my thumbs and kiss my wrists

always looks for me when he has a match, sees me cheering the loudest for him <3

hes my baby, he'll smiles at me and ill cry

aobi

listener

he lets me talk about my interests and day, i let him talk about his

loves to be supportive, my shoulder to lean on

we take public transportation after school to get to our house

he lets me lean against him and sleep, tired from a long day, he'll wrap his large arm around me

he opened up after a while and smiles more, sometimes he'll lightly giggle, one time i made him laugh for 5 whole mins

hes so golden in my eyes, lake dates, he likes to just walk with me

treats me to food whenever we go out

i help him be more open and push him to be himself, but i respect his boundaries !!!

if he feels uncomfortable he'll poke my back gently

i take him away from the uncomfortable situation and ask what was wrong so that it doesnt happen again

people ask why im dating him bc hes "scary"

my response is a punch to the face

jkjk, its none of their business why, but its bc hes very sweet and kind hearted, who couldn't love an angel like my nobu? :]

frotani

complicated hc?? i have like two ways it could go, my top is def still me being a shiratorizawa girl bc lmao canon !!

met him through levy, (@bigger-simp-than-kazuichi) aoba johsais manager

she introduced me to her besyies, kyo and yahaba

"hey, you're the one they call mad dog?" he hates that now but responds with "yes, im mad dog."

levy invites me to alot of their events if im not busy, lowkey oikawa is salty bc im shiratorizawas manager

kyotani stays at my side, we talk about our days and his live for volleyball

we exchange numbers and he messages me at night, we have hour long conversations till one of us falls asleep

late night calls, he just grumbles and scoffs at anything i say and he just waits for me to sleep before hanging up

confesses to me at a match infront of my team, i just kissed him in response

he visits me whenever he can, and brings me food and gifts

imagine aoba johsai vs shiratorizawa, rip kyo lmao ushi get his ass /j

kyotani likes to hold mt hands and wrap my in his jacket and scarf

barks at anyone who bothers me, loves when i sit on his lap btw

fromi

komi will pick me up over his shoulder and drag me to the room when he wants cuddles

loves horror movies, horror movie marathons any time of the year

he likes and kiss my jaw and hold my thumbs

calls me short when he's not that much taller than me

we curse at each other every 5 minutes

insert sarukui climbing through our windows atleast once a month to have a movie marathon with us

komi likes to slap my head

we probably play fight all the time, definently turns into something more intense

akaashi and konoha break us up and me and komi will be confused

"whats wrong? We were just playing"

"yall were strangling each other"

"we're fineee~"

chaotic, we always look like were fighting or arguing

"fuck you, i hate you" "fuck you too bitch"

holds hands and deep kisses the next second

akaashi lowkey hates dealing with us, bokuto loves us skxj

ushibi

shira and hayato convinced me to join at their manager

the original shiratorizawa manager, ceo of the company 😎

they introduced me to the team, and they took a liking to me

ushijima was by my side alot, helped me with my job and carrying thing especially

he was so kind and even spoke to me, asked if i ate, if i slept well, if i needed anything

didn't realize it was different from what he normally was like until tendou asked about it

one time ushi was walking me home and i asked him about it, but he was definently confused

"i, guess so. your attractive and have a good personality. i would date you."

hes so blunt, awkwardly blunt

so we,, started dating, and now he really never leaves my side

i got haterz bc im THE ushiwakas bby girl 🙈

gives me headpats and kisses before everymatch

lets me wear his team jacket, huge on my small figure

he enjoys our height difference, he thinks i look cute when i look up at him :3

teaches me how to play volleyball, even smiles when i land a good serve

patches me up whenever i get hurt, slight frown if i ever fall

hes,, kinda fatherly? a person w no dad calling someone fatherly sjcjxj lmao 🙈🙈

nurturing and caring, ushi i will kiss you, probably calls me by my full name, fro, manager, baby, and sometimes even brat

frobinoya

hes woke, i just know it

all the characters prolly woke but hes woke asf!!

we run around, literally our whole relationship is mainly just running around and being wild

arcade hangouts after school/practice

he loves arcade games so much, and so do i

we take off guard pictures of each other, also chaotic and blurry pictures

he'll kick me in the butt, que me chasing him till i run out of breath

he likes to support my interests, loves to watch me practice dancing

we wear cat ears and maid outfits and take pictures in his room at like 5am when the sun rises

videos of us kissing and cuddling in his gallery

posts on insta to make ryuu jealous

buys me cute skirts bc he knows i love to look pretty for him !!

im his pretty kitty ♡♡

likes to call me his girly~ and his serotonin

holds my hand whenever im feeling sad and strokes my cheek with his thumb

lowkey has a good voice, sings heather to me while he nuzzles his nose into my jaw

katsubi

random kisses throughout the day

pinky holding bc he likes my small hands

leans over me when he wants a kiss

gets teased by the squad and just endures it bc he likes the way i giggle when they do

head pats ! lots :3

likes to show off infront of class 1-b by holding me close and kissing me

brings me lunches he cooked and likes to feed me

always finds an excuse to be on my team for training or being my training buddy

barks at anyone who tries to train with me /j

walking me to school and home, even brings me over

mitsuki loves it whenever i come over and makes cookies when i do

katsuki helps her make the cookies D: so precious

never kisses infront of his parents bc he doesnt want to deal with their teasing and nagging

sings ballads, will sing me to sleep, probably listens to rap and rnb, some rock, but will sing me some khalid since he knows i love him

probably sung me "can i be him" one night when my paranoia got bad <//3

i laid on his chest and he ran his fingertips up and down my back, singing softly to me until i fell asleep

forehead kiss before he drifted to sleep as well, katsuuuu :( <3

@kekozume @nekosvno

[salmonid-ink]

How would you feel if the Little Buddy gameplay segments were 2-d platforming, kind of like in Mario Odyssey where the game let you switch to 2-d segments to de certain things, or the game play will be similar to those Mario vs. Donkey Kongs games with more of an emphasis on puzzle solving and overcoming obstacles. But because Little Buddy is just a smalfry, you can’t can’t get hit when doing it or you start from the beginning.

idk I feel like 2D platforming would be kinda out of place in Splatoon unless it was a minigame that you can play whenever like squid beatz or something. like, splatoon isn't a dedicated platformer, not really, not at its core. it's a shooter, y'know? I feel like it'd be a little confusing or dissonant with the rest of the game. it'd fit better as optional content than obligatory.

it also doesn't have the roots that Mario does, that being in 2D, which is why the 2D segments exist in odyssey in the first place. it's nostalgia pandering, lol. but I'm no developer, I can barely use RPG maker, so I'm pretty clueless!!!

could be fun to make though, if you have any programming prowess anon I encourage you to make a little game like that!

as for mario vs donkey kong style gameplay, that may be more in line with what we'd get, though I'm not as familiar with those games--never had the chance to play them myself. (spoiler: I haven't played many games we're kinda poor lol)