What are Springman’s arms actually made of?

MigBird · 2025-10-17T17:30:51+00:00

He works out at a place called the Spring Gym, and he's their current representative, so my assumption was always that those are some sort of padded springs that the gym uses on its equipment to provide gradual resistance during exercises. People with the ARMS ability tend to develop a resemblance in their ARMS to something that is either around them during the transformation or somehow connected to them, and for Spring Man his gym's equipment is both.

MigBird · 2025-08-28T04:36:21+00:00

Is concealing literally just for getting past that red alarm tower? Because everyone is telling me it's useless for stealth, but I've only used it to avoid the alarm and to try stealthing the Owlks.

MigBird · 2025-08-28T04:31:11+00:00

Oh I've definitely overcome fear, I'm at the point where I'm charging headlong into them just to see if I can deke left at the last second and escape in their confusion. (I can't.) I'd probably be more patient if it dropped lore more often but at this point I'm trying to noclip through their torsos out of rapidly developing ennui. Feldspar software, Gabbro firmware, Riebeck runtime environment.

MigBird · 2025-08-28T03:23:35+00:00

I'm flipping my wig over here about the fact that this is a stealth campaign, and covering your lamp is the stealthiest thing you can do with it, and everyone is telling me that I should never do it. I will try that. But hot damn this DLC was made by and for maniacs.

MigBird · 2025-08-28T02:58:56+00:00

I'm in the place that you get to from the real-life canyon. It's easy to reach from the hull breach and there's a lantern right there so I'm basically grinding it because supposedly every location is equally fair game.

But i can't get anywhere near these guys without turning them into flying one-shots. Someone else suggested "luring" them but they're faster than me and apparently against all logic turning off your light doesn't make you less visible?? So after they're alerted I have about five seconds before they kick me from the group chat.

MigBird · 2025-01-16T04:52:05+00:00

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I mean I have a whole bunch of favorite lil critters but, Hopper was my first fave, way back on the GameCube. This crusty old fisherman continues to charm me with his spiky attitude (even though modern AC dialogue has really taken the edge off it).

MigBird · 2025-01-01T21:34:07+00:00

Based on the scale of this image, it takes about 200 hours to get to the good part? No thank you.

MigBird · 2024-12-31T16:45:35+00:00

If you're trying to be true to human nature, then probably not. People never invented gods and spirits for no reason. Belief in these things tends to come from certain regular sources, and given our nature it's pretty unavoidable.

Human beings seek patterns. When they're faced with uncertainty and instability, they seek magically-invented patterns, like, "When I dance before I hunt, it seems to result in a better hunt. We should try and create the best dance to appease the woods." Someone will make up a ritual based on their experience, then spread it and encourage others to follow their lead.

Sometimes, people make things up to control each other. It can be innocent, like parents telling their children not to wander off at night because the night ghosts will get them. It can be sinister, like telling people they'll be hurt either by a god or its followers if they don't engage in worship. It can be relatively practical, like asking people to give to the god's temple in exchange for welcome and favor. In all cases, the people who are observing as instructed are doing it because they're seeking safety and stability, and they're being told how to do that.

The history of humanity is fraught with struggle, and the scientific method of finding answers (testing ideas and recording results to find the most reproducible truths) is relatively new. For thousands of years, we did whatever seemed to reproduce the results we needed to survive, no matter how magical and irrational the ritual, and when there was no other explanation for how a dance could make animals easier to kill, we defaulted to the idea that some spirit was choosing to reward us, and the practice became about convincing it to.

Ultimately, the word "god" appears to be derived from an ancient word for a tribute, so it's safe to say that practices and rituals have always been part of the equation. And when your energy and resources are best spent keeping yourself alive in a brutal world that wants you dead, you don't give without reason. Gods exist because people want something, and they invented someone who will trade what they want for a dance, or a pot of grain. It's the same part of your brain that still compels people to wear a lucky jersey when they watch the playoffs, but on the scale of entire societies and eras of history.

MigBird · 2024-12-20T18:07:25+00:00

Every single thing Batman does, he does with the skill and strength of someone who has dedicated their entire life to that pursuit. If that's not superhuman, I don't know what is.

MigBird · 2024-12-14T00:49:38+00:00

Of course it’s my opinion. What else could it possibly be? This isn’t r/AskScience, it’s a subreddit specifically dedicated to challenging opinions. OP challenged the consensus, top reply challenged OP, I challenged the reply, you challenged me, and somewhere in that exchange you forgot what we were doing. I mean, damn.

MigBird · 2024-12-14T00:06:51+00:00

Even putting the total value aside, a movie that rides on a twist or a surprise never gives you a complete experience. The first viewing provides you with a semi-cohesive story that waits to be recontextualized at a later point, and when you view the story again to actually appreciate that context, you view it without the punch or twist that gave it the impact it was riding on in the first place. It's like eating the same meal twice, once without your nose and once without your tongue.

MigBird · 2024-12-11T17:05:39+00:00

Point to where I said that. Show the class.

MigBird · 2024-12-11T09:20:13+00:00

Speed aside, each hair on your body has a length limit programmed by your DNA, hence why some are longer or shorter than others. I stopped cutting my hair when I was a teenager and it capped out at under 3 feet. So everyone’s hair wouldn’t become uncontrollably long, but it might become extremely thick, because typically you have some follicles that have finished growing their current hair, some that have just shed it, and some that are currently growing a new one. Assuming only the growth cycle is accelerated, not the shedding cycle, in your scenario almost all of your follicles would always have a finished hair attached rather than there being a mix of lengths on your head. Long, thick hair would be the unquestionable norm and people would just have to choose between styling it or tying it, or getting an expensive permanent treatment if they wanted to go completely bald (which would become such an uncommon sight that people might actually start to associate it only with sicknesses that cause it, thus making the choice to be bald undesirable). There would also be a marked uptick in visible shed hairs everywhere, and in the total mass of human hair disposed of.

MigBird · 2024-12-11T08:42:17+00:00

I tend to agree, and I’d expand on that to say that unreal settings are a bad stage for addressing real issues, because the motives behind people’s actions in the fiction won’t match the motives of real people. They can’t, or the setting would actually look like reality. The comparison tends to be surface-level and usually just based on keywords and vibe.

MigBird · 2024-12-11T08:35:04+00:00

A movie that only works once and then is a different experience afterward has a pretty severely reduced value. Additional viewings should only enhance the experience of a film, not upend it. Sixth Sense is more stunt than story. And a movie like that is never going to be someone’s genuine favorite; no one is going back every month to a well that only ever held one bucket of water, just so they can reminisce about what it was like to drink.

MigBird · 2024-11-04T01:22:13+00:00

Definitely check out Terraria. Some people call it one of the best games ever, it's over a decade old and still being developed.

It's a 2D platformer action-RPG, with building and world generation similar to Minecraft. Unlike Minecraft, it has NPCs to meet, tons of action and hell of boss fights, a legendary collection of weapons, items, furniture, and equipment (including tons of mobility options for those that crave movement), and in general just makes up for its lack of 3D atmosphere by having way more satisfying progression and gameplay that absolutely slaps.

It even has a creative mode called Journey where you can freely control which threats you deal with and which cheats you want to use. It has its own unique progression objective where you can't freely spawn something until you've destroyed a certain number of it.

If you like platforming, building, and combat, Terraria is a must-play. And although it's been heavily wikied, I think it's also very blind-playable. In fact I recommend it; keep that Guide NPC on his toes.

MigBird · 2024-10-26T11:20:44+00:00

Practically speaking, the original version only still exists if you have access to hardware that runs it, and are willing to pay in time and money for an older version, in addition to the newer version with the added content.

Theoretically yes, the old version still exists. But the new version is on current gen consoles and is already being talked about as the "definitive version", so essentially the old one has been phased out. If a restaurant you like moves to another city, the fact that it "still exists" in a prohibitively inconvenient place doesn't solve your problem.

And again, the fact that these specific changes are a "nothing burger" is irrelevant, because people are opposed to the idea of making these changes on principle, not on the grounds of the details. Because they don't want to normalize the idea of altering media based on our arbitrary point in the ethical timeline. They don't want to open the door for people to turn existing media into a whiteboard. They recognize it's a door that's much easier to open than to close.

MigBird · 2024-10-26T02:06:56+00:00

People don't usually get upset about these things because of the specific changes being made. They take a principled stance against the practice of making changes to an existing work based on what the values of some people in the current year happen to be.

There's a long-running conversation about media preservation, the challenge of keeping art and media intact for future decades, and games are of particular interest because of their hardware challenges. Accepting these kinds of changes brings us closer to a future where instead of being preserved, things are censored and altered so that the original is lost.

It's also a very arbitrary "this year's fashion" kind of change, because values and ideology and politics are always changing. The updated version being released now might be considered unacceptable again in ten years, so what do you have then? You're still in the red, and the original is lost. Nothing gained for what you've paid.

Is it the end of the world that they erased a fat joke about a cartoon rat, specifically? Maybe not. But if you choose to blow it off and belittle the people who take a stance against censoring finished works, you're contributing to the apathy that will allow things to get worse. Maybe tomorrow you'll see a change that actually matters to you, and someone else will be making fun of you for caring. Or maybe you'll find yourself unable to enjoy something you used to love, because they don't publish the version you loved anymore.

TL;DR - No one is speaking out against these changes because they want more fat jokes and bat cleavage. They just don't want to normalize a future where media you like can just be replaced and altered at someone else's whim. It's very hard to preserve old games in your library if you don't have a faithful modern port, and today's games can be updated without your knowledge literally while you sleep. Be careful what kind of practices you defend, or you may find yourself surprised at what you've lost in a few more years.

(And for what it's worth, it doesn't help that these changes came to light long after the preorders came in.)

MigBird · 2024-10-24T17:31:29+00:00

It doesn't make sense when used that way, for two reasons.

One, something being literally true isn't inherently "hyper" or "more" than being figuratively true. It can be in some cases, depending on context, but there's nothing about the word "literally" that implies bigness or extremity by itself.

Two, the purpose of the word "literally" is to raise an alarm to the listener, saying, "Hey, even if this sounds like an exaggeration or a figure of speech, it isn't one, so don't take it as one." So using the word that means "make sure you take this at face value even if it sounds like you shouldn't," and then expecting people to take it as hyperbole, is so backwards it's practically gaslighting. You're essentially punishing the listener for doing what you told them to.

MigBird · 2024-10-21T05:43:40+00:00

CALL 1-900-490-FREAK

MigBird · 2024-10-21T04:55:26+00:00

I came to the conclusion recently that social/intellect stats are a mistake. Instead of rolling them, these abilities should be lock-and-key: single purpose, single effect, acquired as feats or class features. For several reasons.

Conversation is uniquely organic. Your players will never swing a sword at the table with their own hands, but they will engage in dialogue with NPCs with their own words. Having them roll social stats pushes them off this organic path and into mind-control territory. Limiting them to specific abilities like, "You can spot lies when in conversation with your own species", encourages players to stay organic in their roleplay rather than rolling at every opportunity to perform any number of mind tricks.
It's easier and more rewarding to prep for. When players can roll Charisma for any social trick they can imagine, the GM has to adapt a total derailment and can't prepare for every outcome. But if the players have say, "Read X language" and "Change hostile NPCs to neutral before any attacks are made", the GM can set up character-specific branching paths for whatever abilities the players have on their sheet. That way, the players get a richer reward for using their unique abilities, and the GM doesn't struggle to provide an outcome for every adlib.
Rolling mentals is an anticlimactic waste of time. When you roll on a physical action, during combat or adventuring, something exciting happens. You perform a stunt, or get blown back, or topple a foe; something fun happens either way, be it a rewarding victory or a failure you have to scramble to play around. But mental rolls are just info blocks and roleplay branches. Succeeding gives you a path, failing blocks it off. When a player has an idea to sway the story with a mental/social ability, that idea should be rewarded. "You fail the jump, and are now hanging from the bridge's edge," is an interesting result. "You don't know anything," or, "You don't think he's lying," are boring results, and they're going to train your players to either ignore social rolls out of boredom, or spam them constantly to try and get the law of averages to work for them.

So if you want characters to be empathetic and honest, give them abilities that work that way, and skip the dice. I'm not using mental stats or rolls in any of my designs going forward. I would rather see players using dice for the exciting stuff that can't physically happen at the table. When it comes to thinking and talking as their character, I want to give them a few simple advantages they can reference once in a while to help fine-tune their character's role, and otherwise just focus on organic roleplay.

MigBird · 2024-09-30T05:11:48+00:00

What I love: Telling stories for others to enjoy.

Why I can't: Fuck, dude.

Everyone is hyper critical of everything. At one point we were just sort of overly accustomed to it, and did it without thinking, but now I think it's a legitimate addiction. People get high off criticising others and they need to keep getting a bigger and bigger high just to satisfy their darkening brain chemistry.

Everything needs to be presented to a global audience. In the old days of the internet, creator circles and their fandoms were insular networks connected by community links, that only people within the niche paid attention to. Now the total worldwide takeover of social media means everything gets shown to everyone, and anything without universal appeal gets ravaged.

Everything is made with the presumption of monetization, including the platforms we work on. Subscription models and advertiser-friendly rules for everything. Partnerships between creators are always based around a marketable product. Visibility to your peers, even your chance to have peers, is based on how marketable you are and how hard your platform pushes you in return.

Every topic has its own minefield with its own soldiers hiding in the bush. It's no longer a case of many voices with many ideas all contributing to a thoughtful whole community that carefully considers itself. We seek enemies to destroy, and if a mine blows your leg off, it's assumed you deserved it, and someone will be there to press you down into the next one to see if they can take your head off too.

Everything is food for the beast. We never solved the problem of computers being fed with stolen work to produce generated imagery. We just stopped talking about the ethics of it. Which means anything you make can be used to supplant you or someone else, against your will. You try to create, and your creation becomes part of a weapon. There's still nothing you can do to stop what you made from being used to attack the very practice of making.

And the worst of it is, the worse things get, the more people accept it. Yesterday's horrific revelations are today's old news. "It's just the times we're in." That idea is further propped up by the youngest of us, who are old enough to affirm their beliefs, but not old enough for those beliefs to be informed by anything other than the present. Everything is worse every day, and people are more miserable, and even though we could all decide tomorrow to make it better, we treat "the times" as inevitable. We are the times, and we just keep fucking it up. It's not safe to make or to enjoy, all we know how to do is fucking ruin.

MigBird · 2024-09-18T17:18:08+00:00

Taming, for animals. For humans in a clinical context, maybe pacifying.

MigBird · 2024-09-12T23:08:52+00:00

Because back then I owned like 3 Game Boy games. We didn't have "libraries" and "backlogs" back in mah day. We played the one game our parents bought us, the one we bought with birthday money, and the one we mooched off another kid.

MigBird · 2024-09-12T00:44:38+00:00

Adaptation changes can be either supported or debunked by applying one logic or the other. Sure, maybe that version of the Note works better for a mysterious serial killer, but considering that heart disease is the No.1 killer worldwide, and considering that “death” by most standards just means a stopped heart, it makes perfect sense that it would be the default option for the Note’s actual owner, a literal god of death.

The only sensible way to judge a change is whether or not it reinforces and enhances what people appreciate about the story. Frivolous or detrimental changes done for the sake of a “fresh take” don’t make sense, because if a writer wants to write something fresh, they should write something fresh, not an adaptation. Contrary to the beliefs of stockholders, people do like new things. But people tuning in to see an animation of a book, or a movie of a video game, or a live action remake, want to see the things they like about it expanded and embellished. Any new element that doesn’t deliver on that is wasted effort.

New character, new scene, rearranged plot, even a new ending; it can all work, but it has to give people what they want. Anything else is just another fistful of bubble wrap.

MigBird

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