• 1 Post
  • 317 Comments
Joined 7 months ago
cake
Cake day: January 8th, 2025

help-circle











  • I prefer high-minded horror. Cosmic, cult, psychological, etc. Actually, the less of a personal physical threat there is, the better. The idea of being added to a human centipede and surviving for days, weeks, or even months, is so much more terrifying than being stabbed by some guy in a mask and dying quickly, and the idea of becoming a Cassandra, forced to watch things happen but unable to stop them, is worse still. The idea of otherworldly beings that don’t hate you but can and would wipe you out as casually as we kill a beetle crossing the road beneath our wheels is so much more compelling than ‘Get some holy water on the way home, please, honey. There’s a demon in the kids again.’ I also hate stupid characters. I’m not interested in watching people who are not, at least, vaguely intelligent. If their first, last, and best attempt to defend themselves is guns, knives, and explosives, why are we even watching?

    The rest of my preferences are more about quality. Effortful writing, minimal jumpscares or orchestra stings, balance between unflinching realism and gratuitous visuals, minimizing things that ‘just happen’ for narrative convenience, etc.



  • One of the biggest problems with human societies is that parents, by necessity, have their brains broken and, due to modern values/life, are under constant strain. Being a parent means (generally) the kid is priority 1, then there’s everything else. This is a necessary irrationality, but if this means you have to do the occasional genocide or violate someone else’s civil rights to ‘keep our kids safe’ then, by god, those people are just going to have to suck it up and die. Sometimes, if you have the time, you can talk some people around and remind them, one day their kids are going to have to live in society as one of those 'someone else’s and won’t always be their precious little baby, but almost no one has the time and energy for a more nuanced thought than ‘save the babies!’ much less if they also have to work 48 hours, commute 10 hours, and parent their kid(s) for 167 hours each week.



  • I did something similar, but also had mods to change player model and starting scenario, and unscale combat from your level. I started as a young girl who just lucked out of magical enthrallment by a necromancer and aged her a year every time she went up a level. I started in the middle of nowhere with a stolen kitchen knife, some slaves’ rags, the now-dull ring that had once held her in thrall, and no one to help.

    It really turned the game grim: little girl stumbles into town, nigh dead from no food and crab attacks in the wilderness, looking for help, and the locals offer to put her to work. But, by the time I’m at level 20, she’s in her 30s, has plenty of food, rich furs, fire magic, and a heartful of revenge plans to keep her warm, and has acquired a circlet that made her fire even hotter. The eventual plan was to complete her schooling and then go on a necromancer roasting hunt, but the game broke. Fun little run. Could almost make a book of it.


  • Perhaps among those who saw him playing basketball at a top level, there were some who cared anough about the game to take note of his approach, but if you went out and asked 10,000 random humans, ‘do you know who Kobe Bryant is?’ and ‘What is he known for?’ approximately zero who say yes to the first part are going to answer the second part with anything about his personality. Even people who are almost precisely famous because of their outlook, like motivational speakers, are still better known as speakers than for their particular outlook.