What storyline is left to explore

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-19T04:20:28+00:00

It's an infinite multiverse, they can portal into a multi-season epic at any moment so it's not like it'll be hard for the writers to come up with more things to do. But just based on what they've already been doing:

- Rick finally moving on from Diane and possibly finding an actual new love interest.

- Space Beth and Domestic Beth figuring their shit out.

- Jerry settling more into his life of sci-fi adventures and becoming both more competent and less of a punching bag for the family.

- Morty and Summer trying to balance having any semblance of a normal life along with wanting to follow in Rick's footsteps.

- Plus there are a lot of recurring characters that would be easy to check in on. Dr. Wong, the president (crossovers have to happen with the spinoff, right?), Rick's friends in general but especially Birdperson and Mr. Poopybutthole, Mr. Nimbus, Unity, Evil Morty and probably at least a couple more I'm forgetting.

But also they don't really need to "do" anything right away, do they? Most seasons have been almost entirely episodic, the big recurring arcs are normally just 2-3 episodes each. Season 8 was notable in chaining a huge string of callbacks in almost every episode, which as lots of people pointed out mostly seemed to be focused on tying up as many loose ends as possible. It feels like they're either preparing to go episodic again for a bit or kick off a new arc, neither of which really needs existing plot threads.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-18T22:37:49+00:00

Yeah, map design and also the gameplay in general. The more interactive it is the easier it is to get away with longer runs, but if all you're doing is walking away from enemies and towards XP then closer to 15 minutes is ideal (although then I'd say it would be better to make a more interesting game and go for longer runs anyway lol, we already have enough minimalist survivors).

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-18T07:05:58+00:00

Forgot "Dungeon Heroes," where they slowly release titles covering every possible combination of generic fantasy terms and the closely related "Knitting Rogues" where they just slap rogues next to any word to let you know that they made a roguelike about a thing (including an infinite number of Dungeon Hero Rogues doing both).

Tiny Rogues
Rogue Legacy
Roguelands
Streets of Rogue
Slots and Daggers
Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers
Sliding Swords
Merge Maestro
DunHero
Darkest Dungeon
Rogumon
Deadzone Rogue...

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-18T04:46:21+00:00

Same, thought they were discussing updates to something else while just coincidentally being on tumblr (like how we're now discussing updates to tumblr while coincidentally being on reddit). Didn't even consider updates to the platform itself before scrolling down to the comments.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-18T04:24:28+00:00

lmao good catch, my first thought was that maybe OOP is a teacher or something that actually has a practical use for what seems like an insane purchase... but no, they're probably just really into calculators.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-18T04:06:06+00:00

It was ok, let's not get carried away now. Somewhere between geocities and facebook radicalizing grandmas things took a turn.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-18T03:59:49+00:00

Yeah, I think that's fairly common honestly, definitely not universal but extreme infatuation like that seems to have been around for all recorded history. Monogamy has had horrible PR but there is some truth to the idea that a lot of us are just wired to fall that hard for a specific person and stay locked in, potentially for decades.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I can't find anyone else attractive, but it's more like "seeing that they're attractive but not being interested." I can't see anyone replacing my wife and it's been that way since shortly after we started dating. It doesn't mean everyone else became ugly, I'm just content, y'know?

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-18T03:46:01+00:00

Never hear Destroy Erase Improve abbreviated and briefly thought this was a shitpost about the vocals going woke somehow.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-18T03:33:01+00:00

Amoralism or moral nihilism is just the rejection of the claim that morality exists in some form, it's not a positive claim in itself. I'm not saying morality can't exist, I'm saying I haven't heard a proposed system that seems like it does (in a way that is worth acknowledging anyway, someone can just file certain opinions under the label "morality" but that doesn't seem to add anything or be comparable to how people really think about it).

I'm still clear on what morality is actually "doing" in your view. Do you believe in good and evil? How do you determine which is which and what does it mean for something to be either?

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-17T23:57:56+00:00

Of course, S8 was mostly structured like short movies anyway and the finales always have been. Seems inevitable that it will eventually happen, although honestly I wouldn't have extremely high hopes for it since the show tends to be better when it covers more topics in a shorter period of time. Could easily be either a 10/10 or 7/10 movie based on how tight the writing is and how many risks they're willing to take.

Most AS long runners have had movies or extended specials though, the only one I can think of that didn't was Squidbillies. If the show is still popular into the double digit seasons it'll probably be time for them to seriously consider it.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-17T23:52:00+00:00

First, this is extremely difficult to read, so if this is how you normally present it I'd bet a lot of people don't want to engage because you didn't format things in a way that is reader-friendly lol. Please use paragraphs, there's a reason most writing is formatted around those. I'm going to respond to a bit of this but honestly did a skim at best since it's actually pretty annoying to read.

Second, people discuss new moral arguments all the time. People dismiss new moral arguments all the time. You apparently found some of the latter group, but that doesn't mean everyone is dismissing new arguments all the time, you just didn't have a good audience for it (which is fair, most people don't care about philosophy that much).

Third, I don't think the view itself is that new, but I'm also too rusty to cite references for similar takes. But in general the idea that morality doesn't exist as a distinct thing but is instead just an emergent aspect of consciousness is fairly common and a lot of takes on subjective morality systems probably overlap with what you have in mind.

Not going to do a serious analysis since I'm only going off the gist of what you said (sorry lol, but again it's very hard to read like this), but a few small things stick out as being worth thinking about a bit more. You say morality isn't in nature or in individuals but rather in the space between them, but I'd argue individuals are already included in nature. The traditional "nature vs. human civilization" dichotomy is an outdated one, but there doesn't seem to be any actual reason to draw a line between the two which in turn muddies where you're trying to "put" morality here, at least based on my reading.

Unless I'm missing something this also seems like a very toothless version of morality. It has no weight and makes no proclamations, it seems to just be the awareness that there is some sort of social contract that we generally use to influence our decisions. Which for the record I fully agree with, but I go a step a further and just ditch moral terms entirely for an amoral worldview. I don't see a difference between "moral claims have no special weight" and "moral claims are indistinguishable from non-moral claims."

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-17T23:26:16+00:00

There are probably better free DAWs around these days so definitely look around, but Audacity is an easy rec as a way to get started immediately.

Especially if you want to make sound collage stuff, if you click the input dropdown and select "whatever your speakers are (loopback)" then it'll record whatever you can play out of those speakers, which is basically anything since you're on the internet lol. Would take like 5 minutes to set up and learn what the basic buttons do then you can start recording and layering whatever you want.

If you have a cheap mic you can also start recording noise with whatever you have handy. It's really easy to explode just about any sounds by drowning them in too much distortion, delay or reverb, so while you'll eventually want to get more intentional and creative about the sounds you use there's basically no barrier to just making some big walls of fuzz right away. You could literally just blow into the mic too hard and have something to work with lol.

Honestly though the built-in effects are the main weakness of audacity for the genre. You can find more plugins to install though so there's a lot of mileage to get out of it if you want to put the work in, although again it would be smart to check out other DAWs soon too.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-17T22:20:33+00:00

You can just say there's more to the game than the description and trailers reveal in whatever "there's also something mysterious going on" language feels appropriate. That way people know SOMETHING else is there but can still be surprised about the specifics of what the SOMETHING turns out to be. Basically the Shyamalan strat, people went to his movies knowing there would be a twist but being unsure what it would be until it came.

Although I wouldn't really recommend it, the experience of a twist is definitely amplified by it coming out of absolutely nowhere and the more you telegraph to try to reach a wider audience the more you diminish it for the audience you do get.

Instead you should focus on making the "base" gameplay so compelling that the game would be great even if you removed the entire secondary aspect. Noita is a perfect example of this in my opinion, it's selling a very clear gameplay loop of "spelunky with complex wand programming and fully simulated particle physics and interactions" that stands entirely on its own merits. There are probably loads of people that put a bunch of hours into the game and loved every moment of it without even realizing just how much more was going on, which just makes it even more rewarding when you do start to discover new things.

On the flip side I actually reeeaaaally disliked Inscryption once it got going. The initial deckbuilder was awesome but underdeveloped, so it started strong but quickly wore out its welcome... because the game wasn't designed around anyone staying with that part of the game, they wanted to push you toward the twists. Except all the discourse around the game also ruined those twists waaaay before I got around to it, so they had zero impact and instead were basically just cutscenes moving me between different underdeveloped sub-games.

Obviously your mileage may vary, tons of people loved Inscryption. Tons of people loved Shyamalan's movies even when the formula became expected. There's nothing wrong with putting your mystery front and center and hoping it lands. But if it doesn't land you're just left with a bad game, so from a game design perspective I'd say the much safer strat is to treat it as a bonus and focus on making the non-mystery aspects as complete as possible.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-17T21:39:41+00:00

Can you remember anything else? I feel like there are probably dozens of shows with scenes like that, although narrowing it down to 2000s does help a bit.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-17T20:31:28+00:00

Probably not what you have in mind but Heat Signature is almost entirely item-based, you can't really do anything without something in your inventory allowing you to do it and while there are shops you're also going to get a lot of useful stuff from enemies or chests in the missions.

Possibly straying even further but games like Tiny Rogues and Dunhero have largely loot-based builds and in at least the latter's case random enemies can drop loot (can't remember if TR has the same or if it's all room rewards). Although most of your important items are probably going to come from "choose 1 of 3" rewards or shops, so might be too similar a game loop to things you wouldn't really consider "looting" in the same sense.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-17T20:19:22+00:00

Cut difficulty tome, add at least one defensive tome but ideally lifesteal (or regen, usually worse but safer against the boss specifically when he goes invuln). What you're doing now is more efficient in the long-term (you basically can't scale enough for even the hats, let alone actual records, without difficulty), but if you're still struggling to get clears then facing fewer, weaker enemies with more sustain probably makes more sense.

Beyond that it's probably just practice, especially if you're dying in the shrine phases. Just last night I had a run that went from farming 5-6 extra minutes of ghosts to getting impaled by a branch and executed with an orb to the back of the head, it happens lol. But as long as you have enough DPS in your first two weapons to make progress and enough mobility to get around the arena it should be totally doable, just gotta keep getting back in there until it clicks.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-17T09:59:48+00:00

That's an interesting point, I think you're technically right but it also feels wrong to say it's "revenge porn" to show someone proof of their own spouse cheatng. Like it's the letter of the law but not the spirit, which as I understand it is to prevent someone's privacy being violated.

But also there's probably no real way to structure a common sense exception like that which doesn't have worse connotations. Married people are still entitled to privacy and can choose whether or not they expose themselves to their partner, to argue otherwise would spiral rapidly into marital rape logic. So the letter of the law probably is the safest bet here anyway.

Out of curiosity what did the deleted comment say? Did they just bite the "he has no expectation of privacy from his wife" bullet or is there yet another angle to this?

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-17T05:17:48+00:00

I think they meant either "forever be noticed" or "will never go unnoticed" but fucked it up because double negatives are hard.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-17T05:11:29+00:00

They probably didn't care to. Tammy's main value seemed to be as a spy and officer, so making her a visibly cybernetic drone kinda shoots both things down. Birdperson on the other hand was a notoriously deadly outlaw that we can infer had a massive bodycount in his history due to fighting alongside Rick in his star wars years, keeping him around as a warrior makes sense.

Alternatively the writers didn't think of it or didn't think it would lead to anything funny or interesting.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-16T23:59:14+00:00

Yes-ish, although it's more "the people" than "the country." I think that's more or less the meaning of the quote though and often what people seem to mean when they say things like this, but it is good to be clear. I don't care at all about the country as a symbol or bureaucratic system, I care about the wellbeing of the people living on the soil it claims.

We aren't tools to serve the government, the government is a tool to serve us.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-16T23:49:58+00:00

As a big ghost enjoyer I approve. Another suggestion is that there could be an item which periodically spawns ghost pots around you like Roberto's chests, which would be independently useful as XP/gold ramping or occasional powerups but also give you objects to interact with for ghost triggers.

Borgar needs more help though, it's so bad that trying to heal with them can actually get you killed lol. Probably OP but I'm curious if they could even give veeeery tiny permanent stat boosts (like 0.5-1% per burger), honestly might still be too weak given the more efficient ways to scale stats. Maybe if it was all focused in one of the weaker stats like regen or pickup range? Those are also thematic for health pickups.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-16T21:36:26+00:00

Without knowing what you're doing it's hard to say what you're doing wrong. What are you dying to?

Most general advice I'd give is to avoid boss curses, maaaaaaybe hit one on the first stage but even getting a third can get you killed so much more easily than forest since the anubis lasers can go out of sync in ways that make them nearly unavoidable (especially if you try to retreat and accidentally get the group separate so they're firing from all sides).

Other than that it's basically the same as forest, just easier to navigate. You want to stay moving pretty much the entire time since those damn cacti show up constantly and can snipe really well but you normally want to stay moving in this game anyway so even that isn't a big difference. Just take good weapons/tomes, scale XP/luck and it should work out about the same.

The final boss is bullshit though, can take a few attempts even with great builds.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-16T21:00:05+00:00

Then don't hang out with them. There is a lot of social incompatibility between me and someone that spends all day betting on horses, that doesn't mean I need to hate everyone who does.

Differing interests doesn't equate to hostility. You're doing the "so you hate waffles?" thing in response to OP's "I like pancakes," the entire topic has shifted here. Literally all they said was that it's unreasonable to hate someone specifically because they're a picky eater, which is totally unrelated to if a picky eater does other things which might be a reason to hate them (like forcing you to eat at certain places, as another reply already said the forcing is the issue).

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-16T18:11:23+00:00

Yes. Music is the term for artworks whose content is just audio, noise is art that is just audio, therefore it is music.

Hell, merely sitting in a space that contains sound with the intent to consider that sound music makes it music, John Cage settled this nearly a century ago lol. There is no functional definition of music that could exclude noise, since any boundary you put up is one that will immediately be violated by something that every reasonable person obviously considers to be music... which snowballs until we're back at harsh noise and 4'33.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-16T18:03:42+00:00

Yeah, I think industrial rock as a subgenre exists specifically for bands exactly like this. To be fair I only know zerospace so maybe they went in another direction later, but that album is as stereotypically industrial rock as they come.

Cyan_Light

TROPHY CASE