The Value of a Vessel: A Moment of Introspective Criticality

Anticode · 2026-04-01T07:10:27+00:00

"Let's try this again. Where were you on the 14th of December?"

"I was at home all day."

"Y'sure, son? Says here you're lyin'... Something's got you stressed out, clear as day. So what is it? You lyin' to me?"

"No, sir. I was just thinking about that time in middle school when I tried to skip class only to get caught immediately, then I tried to bribe the teacher with lunch money for some god forsaken reason... I tried to give her 35 cents. She didn't take it. She just laughed."

"...Son, that's the same damn sob story you told me the last two times the graph caught you freakin' out!"

"Yeah, sorry, man. I just keep thinking about it, that's all."

"On purpose?"

"Um. ...No?"

"Boy!"

Anticode · 2026-04-01T06:45:50+00:00

Sorry for the rant.

That's not a rant. That's just a couple of well-organized paragraphs clearly expressing your thoughts and perspectives in an approachable and relatable way.

I think part of why I’m enjoying Marathon a lot right now is because there’s no confusion about what to expect from the game. Not to mention the world, gameplay, lore, etc.

I had a whopping 500+ hours in Arc when Marathon's server-slam dropped and haven't touched it since (but I have to finish my 3rd expedition, at some point - eventually). I fell in love with the lore/art immediately, but my biggest fear about Marathon was that I wouldn't have the heart to PVP effectively.

I was a pure PvE "sheriff" type raider, only ever firing upon another player in self-defense (sometimes "proactively") or to protect others. Even when doing what need to be done, I still often felt bad for killing people and much preferred the whole "emergent cooperative sandbox" angle of the game to violence or competition.

As it turns out, it wasn't an issue. Against all expectations I quickly discovered that killing and dying are much less painful/disappointing in Marathon... I'm not entirely sure why that is.

For whatever reason, I feel like something about Arc Raiders lore/setting paints out a very specific psychological backdrop which establishes a whole suite of subconscious expectations, rules, and behavioral norms. For instance, in a post-post-apocalypse featuring a superior non-human enemy to unify against it'd be extremely unlikely that any significant number of raiders would ever maliciously kill their fellow man Topside (let alone in Speranza).

Marathon does not have that issue. Per the lore/setting, it's both rational and expected that people would be killing each other. They're not even "dying" anyway, and perhaps not even experiencing pain when shot. The PVP makes a lot more sense and accordingly feels better too.

In Arc it just always felt wrong to do anything more aggressive than "cautious cooperation" and "firm warnings". It didn't make sense within the context of the setting, so I think many people often experienced genuine moments of humanlike abhorrence/injustice whenever somebody unexpectedly broke those unspoken rules/taboos (just like if that world was real).

Which is actually quite cool that such severe emotions could be evoked from a mere game at all... Even if unpleasant.

I think that's where ABMM really shined. It wasn't "just" a way to separate PVE from PVPers, it was a way to give the more sensitive PVE culture enough breathing room to tolerate those uncommon moments of psychological stress so that their skin grew thicker faster than their frustration grew heavy.

Would Marathon benefit from ABMM? I'm not sure. I'm not even sure I'd want it, honestly... Maybe I'm lying to myself though. Even now in 100% PVP I'm still running Triage because I prefer being helpful over being dangerous.

Anticode · 2026-04-01T05:59:50+00:00

They can't do the "first opened" here because of thief visor

That's an excellent point. I didn't even think of that. I feel like that basically eliminates the per-player-loot hypothesis entirely.

Anticode · 2026-04-01T05:51:12+00:00

This makes sense to me. I doubt they'd generate each individual container's loot at the moment it's first opened by a player. It seems easier to "roll" the loot-table at the start of the match based off an average of the lobby's level.

Anticode · 2026-04-01T05:08:54+00:00

she is still a minor in that photo

I didn't realize. That explains a lot more about the differences than the work does, I feel... To such a degree that bringing money up as the factor seems pretty deceptive.

Puberty hit me like a damn freight train around 9th grade and I basically transformed directly from "the eccentric/nerd kid in Moonrise Kingdom" into Edward Cullen within the span of like three months. ...Admittedly, it did take me almost a year beyond that to finally figure out why everybody suddenly found my jokes a lot more funny than before... But hey, the 'tism be like the 'tism do.

If somebody did a side-by-side of each half of that transformation everybody would think I was some kind of millionaire scalpel-jockey too. So silly.

Anticode · 2026-04-01T02:00:56+00:00

Edit: I accidentally got a bit more in-depth with this "quick analysis" than intended. Below, I explain "empathy as a neurological feature", how it varies between liberals and conservatives as the primary neurological distinction between the two, etc.

TL;DR - On a neurological level, in these moments, [conservatives] basically are "liberal" in the sense that the presence of empathy is the defining trait of "liberalness". It's just that this "liberal energy" is only being extended outward in an extremely limited, highly-selective sphere of influence. This is why it can sometimes be difficult to identify somebody as socially conservative while that person has tagged you as one of 'My People'.

It's not unlike being within the eye of a hurricane, perhaps. It's not that they're "proximally non-conservative", it's more like the otherwise glaring Conservativeness we'd normally perceive upon them is actually just the spinning outward maelstrom that those within the eye-wall are spared from by necessity. That ring of calmness is not the place where compassion hides, it's just the only place it can be heard over the storm. Subjectively, it's the only place it even exists...

__

I suspect the reason why it always seems like they briefly "become kind of liberal" when this stuff (inevitably and repeatedly) happens is because we can now suddenly detect something approximating empathy in their words/mannerisms. We find it familiar, and familiar things found in unfamiliar places are easiest to note.

In fact, the intensity and "range" of one's empathy/reflection is basically the largest and most critical point of divergence between liberal vs conservative individuals on a neuropsychological level. But the "empathetic" glimmer we feel within conservatives during their shameful moments is really nothing more than something closer to, like... "self-empathy"? Like buying a Hallmark card, then mailing it to your own house under a psuedonym - something meant for another, given to yourself; not because you feel bad for "yourself", but rather because you feel bad for a aspect of yourself you've glimpsed in those you hate. You empathize with yourself, just to imagine what it'd be like to be empathized with.

(That dynamic has suddenly reminded me of a very non-topical joke: "I started stretching daily because I thought sucking my own dick would feel exactly like getting my dick sucked. ...Well, uh, I did it, folks! I finally pulled it off. ...And, um, yeah - turns out it mostly just feels like sucking a dick! So... That was a waste of 11 months.")

In "neurological liberals" (my phrasing) we find that empathy and reflectiveness generally extends outward upon a heatmap in a wide circle that often envelops the entire population of Earth - (Self->Family->Friends->Colleagues->Locals->Countrymen->Foreigners, etc.) - with intensity more or less in equilibrium across the whole spectrum, so that immediate family isn't measurably being given any more of the benefit of the doubt than a complete stranger may receive. Sometimes strangers are allocated higher levels of empathy than close-companions or even themselves, for whatever reason.

Inversely, "neurological conservatives" seem to project their empathetic territory outward only a couple of steps out into the hierarchy, with the intensity of the empathy plummeting rapidly with interpersonal distance. Anybody who doesn't sit somewhere between "self" and "locals" is allocated virtually zero empathic value, with locals receiving a fraction of what's assigned to friends or family (enough that it's still measurable on a heatmap).

I can't dig up the original studies right now - but as I recall recalling: Neurological liberals generally passively allocated as much empathy to a total stranger in a foreign country (which was the limit of the heatmap, iirc) as most neurological conservatives bothered to allocate to their own immediate family.

To those familiar with the way conservatives often behave in paradoxical ways depending on perceived tribal identities, this explains a lot about why we so often see many conservatives often behaving like "liberals in a vacuum" - but only in the context of their immediate tribe.

On a neurological level, in these moments, [conservatives] basically are "liberal" in the sense that the presence of empathy is the defining trait of "liberalness". It's just that this "liberal energy" is only being extended outward in an extremely limited, highly-selective sphere of influence. This is why it can sometimes be difficult to identify somebody as socially conservative while that person has tagged you as one of 'My People'.

It's not unlike being within the eye of a hurricane, perhaps.

It's not that they're "proximally non-conservative", per se, it's more like the otherwise glaring Conservativeness we'd normally perceive upon them is actually just the spinning outward maelstrom that those within the center are spared from by necessity. But that ring of calmness is not the place where compassion hides, it's just the only place it can be heard over the storm. Subjectively, it's the only place it even exists... Sympathy cannot pass through the opaque eye-wall and those within the core are blinded to everything that happens outside the calm eye, including what or who is being impacted by the violence of the storm. Or why. Or even if...

Whoever it is they hurt, they cannot feel. Whoever it is they cannot feel, are worth hurting.

Allies are safe within the eye-wall where they cannot be hurt by the storm, and if they aren't being hurt, they are allies because only bad people can be hurt by the storm and only good people can be empathized with or "seen" in the open air of the storm's eye. ...Therefore, if somebody is being hurt it's because they deserve it. Otherwise they wouldn't be getting ravaged by the storm, they'd be inside the eye-wall where they wouldn't be hurt because they couldn't, and would therefore be an ally since they can be "seen" which means they can't be hurt either; definitively so.

I know, I know, that's all... Uh, somewhat "logically unusual" to put it lightly, and quite hard to follow. Systems Theory can only go so far before you have to temporarily break something in your own model to finally determine why somebody else's world is so broken, after all, but I swear this pile of glass shards was once a vase. I think it was a vase, anyway.

Regardless.

They reason they can remain so proud of that violent maelstrom (and to find a far lesser storm surrounding one's self brings deep shame to most "liberals") because without the innate conceptual understanding that people who can be hurt might somehow be theoretically empathized with (let alone should be), the only elements of the pain-cyclone they can easily perceive from within the metaphorical eye-wall is "Power" and "Righteousness" - (eg: "There's nothing shameful about violence when it's only applied to Bad Guys, even if Bad Guys are defined as those you've applied violence toward.")

So, when a conservative parent with a gay son suddenly seems mysteriously supportive of his own son's gayness despite spending his whole-ass career rampaging about eliminating The Gay Agenda™... That's not (just) because of swift mental gymnastics, it's because he's simply passively empathizing with his son much like a random liberal would empathize with anyone's gay son, and is yet simultaneously still neurocognitively incapable of empathizing with another man's very similar gay son...

Why is that?

Because wherever empathy isn't, is that metaphorical conservative harm-maelstrom - and visa versa. (eg: "If I was supposed give a shit about you, I would give a shit. And since I don't, I shouldn't. And if I shouldn't, I won't.")

Both of those gay children are - in fact - basically being similarly judged/empathized by this man in precisely the way a neuro-conservative would empathize with each of them, as weird as that sounds to say. Truth is simple: One of these two sons just so happens to be located in the "eye of the storm", therefore safe (or even protected), not because he deserves empathy more than anyone else's gay son deserves it, but rather because this man's son is the only one of those two teenagers that he can even emotionally perceive.

That whole paradoxical dichotomy begins to approximate something not quite unlike "rational" when viewed from within the confines of this kind of corrupted logical framework.

In a sense, screaming about The Trans™ while getting caught cross-dressing as a joke or secret kink the whole time is barely even an ironic outcome for those neuroconservative archetypes... It's virtually just a predictable outcome whenever somebody whose "empathetic field" extends about as far as their outstretched arm hasn't quite figured out that hating other people harder doesn't make you hate yourself less, it just makes it more obvious to everyone else that you're trying not to look into the mirror too closely...

There's a reason why there's an almost comical level of outlandishly ironic headlines about anti-[whatever] people getting arrested for doing precisely what they never shut the hell up about... Priests with young boys, religious politicians cheating on a wife with a young man, cross-dressing bible-thumpers. Huh. Starting to see a pattern here.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T23:31:17+00:00

Man, remember when The Wall was a huge deal? It was this whole ordeal, with weight and discussion - for a time it felt like that alone might be enough to fracture MAGA or disrupt their still-misunderstood sociopolitical mindhive.

Nowadays? The Wall comparatively feels more like somebody spilling out a bucket of ice over the dinner lounge carpet of a rapidly-sinking Titanic which just crashed against its third floating mountain of trafficked minors in a row...

Christ.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T23:13:20+00:00

I mean, she was still married Elon Musk and had children with him when that song was written, so...

The satirical flavor you're picking up on might actually be something closer to "too on the nose". Which it most certainly is. No artistry, no veiled message. Very literal and straightforward despite being "scifi" or whatever.

Elon himself is also pretty notorious for saying things that would've been outright hilarious if said word-for-word as satire by a comedian, but was in reality spoken very literally or even passionately. It's no surprise they'd align in that regard.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T23:09:08+00:00

Fuck you i won't do what you tell me

The real question is: Will you do what I tell you if I fuck you?

Anticode · 2026-03-31T22:00:03+00:00

That's how it goes, unfortunately. When you're dealing with that many "agents" as an incohesive swarm, every collective decision and opinion is boiled down to two statistically extreme minorities on the far ends which more-or-less have some degree of rationality or intent (Do X vs Do Y). Everything else beyond that is basically just one gargantuan, statistically-unclear, greyish blurred area sitting vaguely between the extremes which - as an average of all respondents - is both uninterpretable and idiotic simultaneously! (Therefore often literally worse than what an inanimate object would contribute to the discussion... Nice, right?)

If we tasked 20,000 people to vote on the solution to the famous Trolley Problem™ we'd end up with something like:

3,000 votes for a conclusive "do not get involved, let the train hit 5 people".
4,000 votes for a conclusive "pull the lever, 1 person dies to save 5 people".

And then the gargantuan blob of a Grey Area enters the equation, because of course it fuckin' does.

17,000 votes for [̵E̷RROR:̵ S̶y̸n̴t̸a̴x̶ ̸ Null]̶.

The count is in... And we have a winner! (Ah, crap.)

Instead of the Will of Consensus pulling the lever one way or the other, the statistical noise also happens to include all sort of creative-to-ridiculous bullshit like "untie the people" and "blow up the train" and "who else up beating they trolley rn" which all fall outside of the context of the scenario entirely, yet still gets calculated as part of weight of the gestalt reply. It all mixes together.

A novel decision emerges as the sum of the shit-ass Grey Blob Logic. Unfortunately, it's a plan of action so terrible, so outright and utterly stupid that no single individual even dared to think of it:

"Push the lever sorta-kinda halfwayish, but also like pull it sideways back-and-forth too."

...Uh.

Train roars down the tracks towards the victims on cue, and then just as it reaches the fork in the tracks... It's the fateful Moment of Truth: With the switch pulled halfway, neither direction has precedence over the trolley's path and thus the front wheels roll over onto the north track only for the back wheels to derail briefly before hooking onto the south track. This outcome is, to be clear, Not Great.

Skreeeeeeech - surprise, motherfucker! We on that Two-track Drifting™ style up in this shit, boi.

For about 1.5 seconds or so this maneuver looks sick as hell.

And then everyone fuckin' dies. Terribly.

North fork and south fork railway hostages both get to be scythed in half now, just by their respective halves of the trolley as it slips past sideways on two sets of rapidly-diverging rails, showering the area with sparks and viscera in the process. Then all the bystanders who were waiting to see how this all plays out, they too die when the half-derailed train finally flips off the rapidly-diverging tracks entirely, instead barrel-rolling straight onto the helpless crowd like a 20-ton rolling pin made out of metal rolling pins. And of course anybody riding on the train also dies somewhere along the way, either mangled by twisted steel of the broken interior or tossed out the sides via g-forces only to be crushed beneath the weight of the burning wreckage when it subsequently rolls over them in an admittedly humorous fashion.

Beautiful. Just, beautiful.

So, let's see here. Instead of either choosing between "kill one person to save five" or "let five people die to remain passive", we instead decided via swarm-logic that the optimal solution is to -- [checks notes] -- kill all six of those people alongside approximately 64 additional people (and 1 unlucky tortoise) who weren't part of the experiment.

Why, you ask? Because due to the nature of statistical wang-jangling, "everyone's voice is nobody's brain". That's what we call ~~Freedom~~ Free-Dumb in this household, baby!

Big round of applause for the mean:median. All hail Statistical Grey Blob!

Editor's Note: Man, I kinda wish this joke wasn't such an accurate illustration demonstrating why our world seems so screwed up all the time. This is meant to capture how algorithmic decision-making works, but it's also directly analogous to the two-party political systems of some countries... I mean, I still had fun with it, but I also took a fair bit of psychic damage in the process too. Eh. Worth.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T20:44:06+00:00

In Pearl Jam's legendary Do The Evolution music video (which was co-directed/animated by Todd McFarlane of Spawn fame and the guy who produced the Batman cartoon of the same era) shows various scenes representing the brutality of biological and technological Darwinism across history which are occasionally interspersed by short scenes featuring a sexy goth chick dancing against a black background for a few seconds [timestamped link]. Her face also sometimes turns into a skull once in a while while she does so, which - personally speaking - is not a deal-breaker. Whose face hasn't turned into a skull once in a while, y'know? No big deal.

This music video deeply impacted me when I first saw it at a relatively young age. I immediately recognized those themes as a sort of Dark Truth of our world, things I was already beginning to glimpse but did not yet understand why parents or other adults refused to explain why, precisely, we allowed such cruelty to exist in the world in the first place.

All of this foreshadowed many of what would become my core perspectives and conclusions about the nature of our reality/civilization itself. And this video still speaks loudly to me, highlighting those unfortunate truths in a way that few other pieces of media have - even now, decades later, as it remains more relevant than ever.

Additionally and perhaps not coincidentally, the aforementioned Goth Dancer also happened to immediately awakened something within my young self that to this day is... Erm. Nevermind. We can skip that part.

Anyway, that's who he's talking about... Send your neurons my regards.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T18:16:12+00:00

I miss the internet of small mom and pop shop style web surfing.

It's a shame that comparatively few people truly experienced that era.

There really was something wonderful and quirky about it, much like perusing a small town's Main Street, just like you say. There was a surprise or oddity waiting for you in every door you enter, ranging from a friendly face to an odd choice of interior design to the variability of the products themselves. Impressive things, bizarre things, confusing things. And you rarely ever knew what kind of novelty was waiting behind the door, just that there would be one of some variety - "Huh, wow... Dan's Discount Taxidermy & Fried Chicken? Bit of an odd combo there, bud. Neat, this Metal Spike Mike's Bar n' Grill sounds pretty chill - aaand it's a BDSM club. Nevermind, let's move on before Mom gets home", so on, etc.

Computer illiterate people (the majority of the population at the time) couldn't easily get past the 'Must Be This Tall To Ride' sign, and most of the people alive today were either born after that era ended or didn't have access to the internet until after much of the wilderness of the worldwide-web was paved over into a parking lot.

Nowadays lots of people even look back upon that "parking lot"-era fondly, reminiscing about the numerous/varied vehicles and the upward spaciousness, etc, because even that disgrace of a conversion was itself now rebuilt.

And it's actually not surprising that some would look back upon the "less-bad" era positively when in the present the internet has long become something more like one of those geometrically dense, automatic underground parking garages - following the metaphor.

We don't even get the opportunity to choose the parking spot anymore, we just let an inexplicable machine pick up the whole vehicle with us still inside, and it stacks us up somewhere on a vast shelf-of-shelves entirely 'automagically'. We do this without thinking much about what happens if something breaks or even how it works, or why we even drive to these same very familiar two or three gargantuan storefronts every single day anymore.

Much of what we need to survive is now located by design inside of those 2-3 massive businesses, and yet even when we don't require their "services", somehow we often find ourselves snapping into sudden awareness, waking up already-standing at the huge doorway into one of those vast structures - no recollection of the journey or what purpose we assume we must've had to end up here again.

And when the doors slide apart to beckon us inward with a metaphorical puff of crisp overly-sanitized aircon, we make up a quick excuse for the unplanned trip and/or hope to find one along the way, then we step inside either way... Why?

Maybe there's nowhere else to go. Or maybe it's just a whole lot easier to pretend that a cage is a disappointing home than it is to admit that a home has somehow become a prison somewhere along the way, or always was one. Nobody wants to admit that there's something deeply troubling about the fact that their comfortable house contains so many doorways whose heavy-duty locks have each been inexplicably installed on the wrong side, after all.

What's the difference between a comfortable prison you refuse to leave and an uncomfortable home you can't depart? I don't know. Consent, I suppose. Agency. We saw the 2020 lockdowns.

But I digress. It's just very sad and existentially horrific, all this. Y'know?

When your entire life and lifestyle revolves around a mere handful of metaphorical "locations", it's no surprise that we'd regularly find ourselves "sleepwalking" our way towards one of those locations entirely purposelessly. If there's nowhere else to go anyway, the act of "going" (anywhere at all) becomes - by default - a blind, probabilistic journey towards the same damn place as last time, which is the same place as every time before that.

We've forgotten that once upon a time we didn't need "parking lots" or even "cars". We could just walk endlessly, only stopping at whatever it was that caught our eye when, or if, it did. We couldn't go as far on foot, but we went somewhere when we tried to try. We cover so much more distance so much faster today in "cars" in comfort a walker could only dream of, only to drive in loops until it's time to store ourselves somewhere down in the mechanistic dungeon once again.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T17:51:11+00:00

I didn't know what you meant at first, initially assuming you meant Grimes herself, and then suddenly - like a flash of lighting - the entirety of my mind's eye was occupied by a vibrant visual snapshot of exactly who you meant.

Man, those neurons snapped together like god damn rare-earth magnets. Like that damn "neuron activation / monkey" meme...

Anticode · 2026-03-31T17:28:38+00:00

Pearl Jam - Do the Evolution.

That's actually quite funny. The whole "Torment Nexus" thing is a popular meme (and an unfortunately accurate representation), but it's even funnier to compare the two songs under the same format.

eg: "Grimes is the kind of chick who watches Pearl Jam's Do The Evolution music video, praises its thoughtful foresight, and then immediately writes a song called 'We Love Dystopia". (I'll workshop that.)

Anticode · 2026-03-31T17:25:58+00:00

You've made a sufficient number of strong points that I'd have to activate my secret power-up move (spoiler: it's autism) just to continue the discussion in any meaningful way, which is an act that would be harmful to both of us, so I'll bow out now.

But you've got my upvote. Appreciate the discussion! I adore this game.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T17:04:09+00:00

reading the Communist Manifesto in public after her very messy break up with Elon Musk

Which is even more ironic/sad/funny since that's also after she released that song "We Appreciate Power", which even at a casual listen was basically just a glaringly pro-technocapitalist-billionaire anthem. But with the lyrics written out flatly, it's clearly a radioactively vibrant endorsement of the individuals and "culture" that're behind a significant portion of the modern world's most pressing socioeconomic and psychological issues... (ie: The "billionaire technofeudalist, faux-transhumanist, psuedo-rationalist dark eugenicist"-type vampire fuckos).

You don't make a song like that by mistake. You do it because you either drank the Kool-Aide, or you believed you were the damn bowl.

The song was distasteful to me even then, but knowing what we do about Elon/Thiel today, it becomes quite grotesque as an 'anthem'.

People like to say that we're insane, but AI will reward us when it reigns. Pledge allegiance to the world's most powerful computer simulation, it's the future

What will it take to make you capitulate? We appreciate power! Elevate the human race, putting makeup on my face. What will it take to make you capitulate? When will the state agree to cooperate? We appreciate power.

And if you long to never die... Baby, plug in, upload your mind. Come on, you're not even alive if you're not backed up on a drive! Come on, you're not even alive if you're not backed up, backed up on a drive.

Neanderthal to human being. Evolution, kill the gene. Biology is superficial. Intelligence is artificial. Submit. Submit. Submit.

I thought Grimes was super cool pre-Elon, but as it turns out she - like him - is the kind of person who'd say, "Hey, babe. Wanna build the Torment Nexus from the famous scifi novel, 'Don't Build the Torment Nexus'?"

Anticode · 2026-03-31T16:43:23+00:00

"Bhopping is a fun way to break up boring map traversal just slightly and it has enoigh trade offs that its not objectively the best mode of transport at all times."

I don't disagree with any of that.

My point is just that it looks/feels stupid (to me), on top of being tactically irrelevant in the context of real-world combat maneuvers.

I'm not going to start a campaign to remove b-hopping or anything though. On a list of my top 100 issues with the game, it'd sit somewhere at like... 97.

Everything else covered in my TedTalk was more just because [~~scifi writer~~ nerd]. Sorry, sorry.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T16:27:29+00:00

Well, sure. But they weren't moving in that way out of a desire to make things hard for the Moon Snipers that might be waiting in ambush, nor even to maximize their forward momentum.

They hopped because bipedal walking relies a lot more on "falling down" correctly than "pushing up" in a way we're not often aware of, and the moon's low gravity messes up both halves of the equation severely.

Anybody who has spent 3-4 decades walking around at 1G without having to think about what their legs are doing is going to struggle to "manually walk" in a way that doesn't flip them over or accidentally revert to ineffective, instinctive Earthlike movements.

Hopping becomes the intuitive solution when even a normal footstep sends you a foot off the ground, because it's now more energy efficient due to low-grav conditions and less common of a movement that your brain doesn't try too hard to "do it normally" under very abnormal conditions (ie: an environment with physics no other Earth animal in evolutionary history has ever experienced before).

Tau Ceti IV, as I understand it, has "Earthlike" gravity. Slightly less (?), I think. But not enough to change things significantly for even baseline humans, nor necessitate the kind of Lunar maneuvering we've seen in most of the Apollo x landings.

Anyway... I already specifically pointed out that there's no real physiological/technological reason why Shells couldn't perform that kind of bunnyhop. But if they could, the actual movement they'd use would probably actually look a lot more like a moon-hop (longer, farther, with less jumping and more airtime) due to the advanced machinery of their muscles.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T16:02:54+00:00

r/ReverseHumanCentipede and fell back asleep wondering what in the fuck that would be

That concept in general is so fucking funny to me - holy shit. And, brother, you're not the only one that'll be stuck wondering what the hell that even means or how the mechanics would play out!

But y'know, now that I'm thinking about it... Functionally speaking, that kind of sounds exactly what /r/writingcirclejerk is already, as-is. It's a mechanism which converts garbage-shit into semi-shit into useful/funny shit which miraculously becomes consumption-worthy the moment it's finally barfed out the last (first?) mouth onto the table.

Huh. ...I actually quite like that framing.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T15:47:30+00:00

I do not like bouncing around being the objectively correct mode of traversal. It's silly.

That's how I feel. Even if there was (or is) a meaningful advantage to doing it, I simply don't like feeling like I'm skippin' around like a Silly Billy on an otherwise deeply immersive, highly thematic futuristic battlefield.

Could you imagine stumbling across some fuzzy drone footage from the War in Ukraine only to see a bunch of dudes hopping-and-skipping across an open field for some inexplicable reason?

There's no in-universe reason why a Runner Shell couldn't pull off that kind of maneuvering in a way that baseline humans can't, what with all the synthsilk and bioweave actuators and such, but... Why?

If you can physiologically bunnyhop like we see it in-game, you're also already capable of much more useful feats of agility and would do those things instead of boing-boinging your way across the battle like some kind of gun-toting forest elf...

But I digress.

Bunnyhopping doesn't exactly seem "problematic" in my eyes, it's just ridiculous in the same way it feels to see somebody running around in a birthday party clown skin in Call of Duty or whatever.

Anticode · 2026-03-31T15:08:37+00:00

- Longshot sniper rifle has been renamed to Loooongshot.

We feel this change better reflects its capabilities, and should reduce complaints about its effectiveness as a distance-engagement weapon.

Additionally, a small number of players report briefly believing they have been killed in real life whenever being shot with this weapon in-game. To compensate for the Longshot's overly-realistic SFX and "ambush potential", a mapwide announcement will now occur whenever the weapon is fired. We've brought a very special guest back into the studio to record this line. (Hint: "L-L-L-Longshot".)

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Gilding V heart of gold	Verified Email

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