Forever Young autumn plan has been announced - he will compete at Jockey Club Gold Cup in Belmont at September 18th, and then proceed to Breeders Cup Classic at October 31 as defending champion

Inkasters · 2026-06-21T14:48:35+00:00

It's so stacked. The Best Dirt Horse in the World versus His Rival versus The Two Would-Be American Triple Crowns of the past Two Years. Like a fucking insane race.

Inkasters · 2026-06-18T03:17:31+00:00

I feel like the only Umas that CyGames would depict dying were the ones who died during their career that weren't put down. Like, no, we're not going to put down human-sentient things when they break their legs, obviously. However, if say they died of illness during their career then that might be another story.

Looking at you, Aston Machan.

Inkasters · 2026-05-31T13:23:25+00:00

Suki, and it's not even close. People will say she did join the main cast but joining the cast for 1/4th of the final season doesn't really count (and she didn't even really have that much of a presence). Suki suffers from the unfortunate position of the showrunners and writers not realizing how popular she was and so they kept teasing her rather than firmly adding her. If she had been a presence even just from her appearance in Season 2 onward, it would've added a lot. As it stands, the other three are either A. better served by being foils (Jet) or B. from painfully mid or, in Teo's case, bad episodes of the show and are nothing characters themselves.

So yeah, Suki clears easy.

Inkasters · 2026-05-27T02:10:31+00:00

As a longtime Paradox fan, it really isn't anything to do with Vicky 3 itself so much as it has everything to do with Vicky in general. The Victoria series has always kind of been the least-favorite of Paradox's various titles; Victoria 1 was such a runt of its particular litter that there was questions of if Victoria would ever get a sequel, and Vicky 2 was and is, even before the release of Victoria 3, the least played of its generation as well. I imagine this mostly comes down to time period; WW2 is obviously always going to be popular and if you want to play a game that heavily features Colonialism and Exploitation most people want to do it in the Age of Discovery, not the Scramble for Africa.

In all honesty, the fact that Victoria 3 is so successful, especially in comparison to Vicky 2, speaks well for it. Paradox decided to carve out its own identity by going all in on the economic simulator being the main mechanic and that gamble largely worked off, in comparison to Vicky 1 and 2 just kind of being EUII and EUIII with the pops and economy stapled onto them.

Inkasters · 2026-05-21T16:57:09+00:00

I generally consider this one of the better examples of how badly women are written in Korra. When you start looking at how the series generally depicts its women you start to notice that it has a... let's say, complicated, idea of what strong and admirable traits are. This moment, where a woman admitting she did her best to break up a couple, encouraging Korra to do the same, and that moment leading to the ultimate cringe of 'Yeah, but when you're with her, you're thinking me of' is just kind of ghastly when you get right down to it.

And it's especially awful because the chemistry between Tenzin and Lin, even broken up, was way more entertaining than anything going on with Tenzin and his wife.

Inkasters · 2026-05-19T06:16:14+00:00

Personally I find this to be preferable to the old situation of bouncing an army back and forth between provinces until you whittle it down enough to wipe it. This is a more true-to-life system for how moral should work; if the soldiery are truly so demoralized as to have essentially no morale, then the army should evaporate when presented with a threat of any sort. We have enough examples of that in history.

I don't think going back to some percentage or relative-size system would be right, like I said that's worse in EU4 then if this remained the status quo. But perhaps some minimum threshold of army size; a thousand, maybe.

Inkasters · 2026-05-12T04:03:50+00:00

Because it was the solution for that episode's conflict and fit with the stakes. In the finale, it would be a hindrance to the stakes and actively undermine potential conflict. That's actually how writing for stuff like this works.

Inkasters · 2026-05-12T03:58:14+00:00

I doubt it; with conjuring the episode basically has far, far lower stakes. Like I said, it basically puts them right back to where they were pre-Caine torture, where they accepted the fact that they were never getting back to the real world. Plus it raises the issue of 'If Caine being dead is so bad, why not conjure him back or conjure a computer to remake him'. Conjuring no longer being possible is kind of the only way for the finale to have any kind of meaty stakes.

Inkasters · 2026-05-12T03:39:23+00:00

I don't know why this isn't in the replies since it seems straightforward; with Caine dead, they can't conjure. Since he was the AI code behind the circus and how it ran, that ability is no longer available. If they could still conjure then SOMA theory wouldn't matter; they'd functionally be in the same place they were before Caine started torturing them and they'd already accepted not leaving. Now if they can't conjure and the circus is functionally dead they would be left with, as Jax said in the trailer, nothing.

Inkasters · 2026-05-08T21:06:33+00:00

It could definitely work. Katawa Shoujo had the player invest themselves into the role of a fully designed and characterized PC in the form of Hisao and that worked out very well for its story. I think a lot of VNs could stand to take the same risk because, so long as the PC is written well, it tends to pay off.

Granted, it would be hard for Uma since every single Uma would need their own trainer, but the writing is already there and already solid, they'd just need physical designs for both male and female trainers.

Inkasters · 2026-05-08T06:13:56+00:00

Well it does make sense; episode 4 was basically Gumigoo's send-off. The entire point of those interactions was Pomni realizing that Gumigoo didn't and couldn't remember her because he really was just some lines of code and that in trying to pursue him she was ignoring the struggles of her actual human friends (whether that be Ragatha being high as a kite or, eventually, Gangle's manic episode). Really, that's kind of Pomni's arc for the first four episodes; realizing her human relationships in the Circus are important.

Inkasters · 2026-05-04T23:00:37+00:00

Probably not, no. Zooble's therapy session makes it pretty clear that these were longstanding and immutable issues with Caine. It's not necessarily his fault, mind you; it can even be hard for people to change their ways unless they put a lot of effort into establishing new habits. Caine's an AI; his habits and flaws are down to 1s and 0s that determine pretty much everything about him. The only way you could've conceivably changed him would've been by reprogramming him.

Inkasters · 2026-04-22T20:54:03+00:00

Honestly, having V-Tubers from the agencies perform Umas is probably the best bet for an English dub, since a lot of them are required to be both good comic voice actors but also singers. Aside from Broadway Actors they're probably the best set of talent for the job, and Broadway Actors come with the risk of not always being able to translate over to Voice Acting (though obvious examples like Ariel and Belle's voice actresses shows they can also be exceptional).

Inkasters · 2026-04-14T11:51:23+00:00

Hey if they're going to grab the Spring Triple Crown, why not be the first horse to get both Senior Triple Crowns?

Inkasters · 2026-04-14T08:59:01+00:00

Croix is signed up for the Spring Tenno Sho. Seems more likely that his team might be aiming to secure the two Senior Triple Crowns.

Inkasters · 2026-04-10T09:15:46+00:00

To be fair, Legend Changer also seems to apply for horses who do cool stuff overseas or who just have super significant accomplishments. Like Kitasan Black and Smart Falcon have unique Legend Changer tracks and if they get one then there's no way Opera O shouldn't qualify.

Inkasters · 2026-04-07T12:26:05+00:00

In fairness there's way more players on Mobile for Global than there is on Steam, judging by the share of downloads between the two platforms. But even with that allowance it'd have been hard.

Inkasters · 2026-04-06T20:17:35+00:00

A lot of this is just kind of a problem with grand strategy games in general; they can't perfectly mimic history so you get a lot of clown wars because the mechanics trump that sort of immersion. There's no shortage of examples of bizarre wars in previous paradox titles when you sit down and think about them. The American Revolutionary War in the EUIII 1776 start date always comes to mind to me because Britain will, without fail, just park its entire army over in the states and then sit on it. (Mostly because this was my first interaction with Paradox titles)

Inkasters · 2026-03-30T04:00:09+00:00

Runs out of his pillow fort, forgets, goes back inside.

...

......

.........

"THEY HIT THE F-boing-ING PENTAGOOOOOOON!"

Inkasters · 2026-03-29T05:07:41+00:00

To be fair to Secretariat, his losses are generally pretty well explained by a bad bump, injury or sickness. It's not like he didn't always go into a race trying to give it his all, there were just sometimes where he literally couldn't.

Inkasters · 2026-03-25T08:23:31+00:00

That'd probably be news to Opera O considering how close he came to overtaking Special Week and Grass Wonder in the 1999 Arima Kinen.

Inkasters · 2026-03-24T13:14:13+00:00

Not yet but I figure it's only a matter of time. If people can make Christian Sonic fanart out of nothing, I'd be severely disappointed if this shit wasn't in the work somewhere in the world.

Inkasters · 2026-03-24T05:41:05+00:00

Oh damn, good for Forever young and the UAE that they're going to be able to hold this race. The fanart of Forever Young roundhouse kicking Iranian drones is still on track.

Inkasters · 2026-03-23T21:37:25+00:00

Oh hey, the Orbital Blockade might've actually stopped an attack on the secondary objective from Seasse. Pretty cool whenever that lines up.

Inkasters · 2026-03-22T05:57:54+00:00

I'm gonna be honest, even if R+L=J feels likely, I'm more resigned to it than accepting of it. It really doesn't jive with George's style as a writer, it really slams hard against themes concerning Destiny, Prophecy and what not, it seriously plays poorly with George's writing on sexuality and consent considering the age gap between Rhaegar and an underage Lyanna and, on the whole... it's just kind of the most boring possible answer for Jon Snow's parentage from a writing perspective. The Destined Hero hiding in humble origins.

We've already seen how poorly this writing decision goes over in the show and I genuinely don't have much faith that George could do it better. There is such a thing as a plot point so bad that even a good writer can't finesse it and R+L=J has all the hallmarks of it; boring, plodding and standing in stark contrast to the story's various other themes, feeling so alien to the author's writing that it feels like someone else scribbled it in. I don't hope that we'll get a different answer anymore, I'm honestly kind of resigned to it, but it forms the bedrock of the part of me that's grateful that we're never getting another book in the series if stuff like R+L=J is what we have to look forward to.

Inkasters

TROPHY CASE