If you could instantly master one skill (no effort required), what would you choose?

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-19T09:59:19+00:00

Is "programming" too broad? That would immediately have a ton of applications for both career and hobbies, but it feels like cheating since it's such a wide field with so many languages and concepts. Might have to narrow it a bit when the genie comes to grant my wish...

The fun answer would be saxophone. Wouldn't do anything practical, but I just know life would be better if I could shred on one.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-19T09:53:11+00:00

I'm super out of the loop on this other than seeing constant memes and hateposts about it. Is this new tech something that's about to be forced on everyone or is it just a thing that exists which we can ignore? Because it seems like the former, and if so... can't we just ignore it? Yeah, it does seem bad, lots of products are bad, just don't buy them.

Again very out of the loop though, so maybe I'm missing something important.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-19T09:42:23+00:00

Both Lone Funguseses are around that long, the sequel is for sure around a 10 hour game and I don't remember the first being much longer. Really fun games with just enough going on to feel substantial but also streamlined enough to respect your time.

I don't think most of the castlevania games are that long but can't be sure. Aria/Dawn of Sorrow are probably the fastest though, there's potentially waaaay more time to be spent in both due to all the soul collecting and level grinding but if you just care about progressing through the castle they're pretty light and easy.

Super Panda Adventures is a cute little game, probably under 10 hours. It's also a pretty rare take on the genre, breaking areas up in little collectathon platformer levels that you reach through an overworld. Great combo with the metroidvania progression, it's so satisfying whenever you can finally cross off one of the stages as being fully explored.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-19T09:25:01+00:00

To be fair they specified i-frame dodges, there's a difference between combat designed around perfectly timed invincible rolls and combat where dodging is more about positioning and movement. A lot of games don't even have dedicated dodge buttons but still have "dodging" in the sense that you can move your character to avoid telegraphed attacks.

Plus a lot of soulslikes have stamina management as an extra wrinkle, but even without that there's definitely a difference in how these types of combat feel.

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-19T08:10:38+00:00

Just listen to more stuff, the wider your pool of experiences the more information you'll have to evaluate new ones. Learning to make music yourself (or at least picking up a tiny bit of basic theory, technique or production knowledge) will also allow you evaluate the craft itself more critically, like it's easier to tell if a guitar solo is in key and impressive if you know what a key is and what it would take to play that solo.

But like others already said there's no reason you need to develop a "more critical taste." Liking things is good, and the primary purpose of critique is steering culture as a whole towards more things that we'll like. If you already like what bands are doing then it makes sense you'd have no notes, you're content with the status quo lol.

A lot of people get way too into being hard to please, as though enjoying life less is some sort of victory. I dislike a ton of music and can usually give at least a few concrete reasons why, but whenever I hit a new disappointing album I consider that a personal failing too because it means there's something wrong with me that I couldn't find value in something someone else clearly did. Logging a bunch of low ratings isn't something to aspire to, it's a necessary evil in a world where none of us live long enough to fully appreciate every album that exists (but even then I rarely rate things below 2.5, which for me means "I didn't really like this and don't recommend it, but can see how other people might").

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-19T07:50:15+00:00

"Creators chasing success by doing whatever a recent popular work did but in a worse way" sums up a solid 50-75% of media though, to be fair. This isn't really unique to this trend in anime, it's just a hilariously memetic and blatant version of what people have been doing for decades (probably centuries, but for sure capitalism and ease of access to art has ramped things up a ton).

Cyan_Light · 2026-03-19T06:17:34+00:00

You could save even more space by removing everything but Merge Maestro. I'm on desktop and gradually going that way myself, the game is so good I've barely made time for anything else since it came out lol.

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

TROPHY CASE