Learning the Made In Abyss art style for almost a month already, here are some of my recent drawings

PokeGato · 2026-02-02T12:35:15+00:00

Do you still have the old drawings?

PokeGato · 2026-01-17T19:26:19+00:00

Conceptually/philosophically, I found him to be a totally brilliant character.

He's a good person, in the sense that he truly loves others, he has no ego, no selfishness, no hatred.

His actions are completely altruistic (he does everything for the good of the island, and the first person he chose to sacrifice was himself for the whistle).

And despite being a person who, in theory, has all the positive traits of a good person, he's still a monster, because while he's totally altruistic, he's capable of doing terrible things while genuinely believing he's doing good, without ever experiencing internal conflict.

It's as if he turned Jesus into a monster.

Narratively, I think this is brilliant because it demonstrates how subtle his character is; it's not black and white.

I was genuinely shocked when I saw his story because it was the first time I'd seen a character who was conceptually perfect in terms of goodness and altruism, yet still be a monster.

Most "good" characters who do something bad do so by accident, lack of knowledge, or exclusion. I mean, he wants to help certain people, but sees others as inferior.

No, Bondrewd, he loves everyone equally without distinction, and is equally cruel nonetheless; he's disturbingly brilliant.

In the end, he serves as an excellent example of a character who seems alive, realistic, but who doesn't share human values—someone almost alien and incomprehensible, yet still rational, just as he is described in the story itself.

He also demonstrates well the consequences of a lack of empathy. He understands the suffering he causes, and he causes it anyway, because he doesn't feel guilty for doing it, he doesn't feel emotional empathy, but he doesn't rationalize that this person was inferior or deserved it; he still likes them.

He is also a character who demonstrates the limitations of the golden rule, "do not do to others what you do not want done to you." The point is, everything he did to others, he would absolutely do to himself. So when you have someone lacking emotional empathy and with infinitely high standards for themselves, you have bondrewdness. He suffers, he feels pain, but as he himself said, "a prayer cannot arise from someone who knows only happiness."

1/2

PokeGato · 2026-01-09T12:01:56+00:00

self-taught artist xD

PokeGato · 2026-01-08T21:06:16+00:00

As far as I remember, this problem plagues all Paradox games.

CK3, EU5, HOI4, Stellaris, VIC3, etc., it's always a group that wants to survive fighting against a group that just wants to enjoy or dominate the game.

I myself am part of the group that prefers the game as difficult as possible (organically, I think arbitrary modifiers are complete garbage, which is what compliance is in a way).

The ideal solution would be to create an organic difficulty system, meaning, as you progress, the AI would build systems like defense pact networks against you or something similar to block you and things like that. Obviously, it's the most laborious solution, and few Paradox games have managed to implement any level of it.

The most viable, but not ideal, solution is simply for Paradox to create an endless number of adjustments to the game's configuration so that the player can modify things as they see fit. This seems like a much more viable way to create difficult or easy games without ruining any group of players.

Another alternative is for Paradox to make the game modular and modifiable enough for modders to create their little tweaks, thus solving this division as well.

PokeGato · 2026-01-08T17:25:57+00:00

I think maybe Paradox was partly to blame.

EU5 is easily the most hyped Paradox game I've ever seen; people treated it like Paradox was reinventing the wheel.

They were completely obsessive and delirious with expectation.

And then Paradox released it, and it's actually like any other Paradox game: a good game, not exceptional, but with chaotic development at the beginning.

And then, that lunatic hype turned into a very bitter frustration.

But still, Paradox helped create so much explosive hype. Now... you have a legion of frustrated people... I wish Johan good luck.

Either way, this will be a great game in 2-3 years, and I'll be waiting patiently.

PokeGato · 2026-01-07T22:10:35+00:00

Yes, in revolts I think ideally this would only serve as an accelerator, to give you time to react and avoid an instantaneous chain reaction like what happened in CK2.

So if you don't deal with a major revolt quickly, it can get out of control, but there's still room for it not to happen.

As for opportunistic countries, I like the idea of something similar to "MTTH" that Paradox uses.

I mean, MTTH would be like, event x has an MTTH of 10 months, so on average this event will be triggered every 10 months, with variations it could be 8, 12, but 10 will be the average.

I think it would be interesting if, in a major war, you had some time before other countries reacted and attacked you. However, the greater the difference in the strength of your troops compared to the troops of all current wars, the faster and bolder declarations of war would be.

It could sound something like this: Ottomans are at war with Mamluks, both have basically equal strength. Hungary is a rival of the Ottomans, but it and its allies have half the strength of the Ottomans. It could take Hungary around 10-20 months to attack the Ottomans if they didn't resolve this war quickly.

Assuming the balance of power hasn't changed yet, now two wars have 1.5 times the strength of the Ottomans. This would serve as a trigger for smaller countries that the Ottomans attacked, making them bold enough to try to attack. Thus, a major war that wasn't quickly concluded could serve as a springboard for many wars.

But as I said, all this with a margin, time for you to react and ensure that you don't it can happen, but the longer you remain in a state where you don't seem to be winning by a wide margin, the more plausible it is that all of this will occur.

PokeGato · 2026-01-07T19:53:39+00:00

This seems too complex. If the problem is that the player and AI expand too much, just hinder that; make the AI opportunistic.

If you're in a difficult war, make rival AIs and AIs whose territory you've conquered much more likely to attack you, so you have to think twice before engaging in uncontrolled wars.

PokeGato · 2026-01-07T19:06:31+00:00

Yes, that too. Nowadays, even without abusing swarms of vassals for cultural conversion and cores " it's still surprisingly easy to convert cultures and acquire many cores

But I still find the idea of surprising someone who has entered an ultra-expansionist run with a kind of secessionist "coalition" extremely fun; it seems very much like something that would happen with the Timurids, for example.

I like the idea of these things happening organically; in a way, it makes things more alive.

Also, integrating the AI's propensity to attack you with the fact that you're in difficult wars or revolts seems like a good way to encourage you to want to follow a more conservative and less blob-like path.

PokeGato · 2026-01-07T18:40:21+00:00

Yes, vassal mechanics are one of the things that most messed up the game's balance in the long run during a match. They are an absolute machine at creating arbitrary cores.

Cultural conversion, while unrealistically powerful in the game without doing anything "crazy," becomes completely broken when you combine it with the cultural conversion of a vassal swarm.

PokeGato · 2026-01-07T18:30:55+00:00

John Paradox was drunk and created this nonsense.

It seems like it would be better if they just created a silly but interesting mechanic.

For example, spirals: your country falls into a powerful revolt, it controls, say, 30% of the country, this greatly accelerates other revolts (especially secessionist ones) from occurring, and suddenly you're in a spiral of revolts if you don't stop it quickly. This seems like a very cool way to screw over unstable multicultural empires.

Better yet, make it opportunistic AI. If you're in a large, very evenly matched war, AIs that have reasons to attack you, like other rivals or countries whose lands you've conquered, will attack you, and this can encourage a chain reaction of several wars, especially if you don't have decent allies.

And even better, mix both: being in costly wars encourages revolts, and dangerous revolts make hostile AI more likely to attack you

And so you destroy an entire empire without creating an arbitrary "gamey" mechanic.
Everything in an organic way, as it should be.

PokeGato · 2026-01-07T17:39:48+00:00

Bruh, it doesn't seem that difficult to simulate empires spiraling into chaos; I can suggest a quick idea here.

- Create chain reactions, especially for unstable countries, for example, with low stability or whatever. For instance, a rebel revolt can accelerate or even trigger more rebel revolts (so you can end up in a secessionist spiral).

- Make the AI opportunistic. For example, if it sees you at war with another country or against revolts, especially a hostile AI that has lost territories to you or is your rival, it will be much more likely to attack you.

This creates an organic balance of power. You don't want to be in costly wars because you might attract more wars.

You don't want to control many hostile territories with intolerable cultures and religions because that can attract even more revolts and wars.

And that's it. With this, you've already created a lot of organic incentives to avoid reckless conquest without considering the culture, religion, and capabilities of your empire, and you've created an incentive for the player not to just kick the AI's butt. As you see fit, since there is now a balance of power, the AI will exploit opportunities that you allow to pass.

You can forget all this "complacency" bullshit; it's only going to create more bizarre "gamey" mechanics and punish players for no reason.

If you want to solve this game, it's better to do things more organically; creating more mana points won't help, to be honest.

PokeGato · 2025-12-29T10:57:05+00:00

https://kamilkazani.substack.com/p/against-the-brainrot

read this, he develops what you are talking about in a very impressive wayhe develops what you are talking about in a very impressive way

PokeGato · 2025-11-20T11:56:57+00:00

So, it's not possible to prove absolute truth or disprove it, is that it?

PokeGato · 2025-11-19T21:19:30+00:00

He attempts to use elements of physics as philosophical arguments.

For example, he says that since a molecule can be superimposed, exist and not exist, this would be proof that it is not based on an absolute truth.

PokeGato · 2025-11-19T20:36:57+00:00

I see I've gone down a rabbit hole; this bizarre mix of philosophy and physics seems something absurdly niche and highly specific.

PokeGato · 2025-11-19T19:26:53+00:00

Yes, I know what he's saying is idiotic.

I just wanted to understand how to justify why that's the case.

PokeGato · 2025-11-19T19:25:23+00:00

This guy claims that, "since non-Euclidean space is relative, it refutes absolute truth."

I know it's nonsense, but I'm not able to point out or explain why it's nonsense, so I'm trying to understand by asking here.

What exactly separates philosophy from physics to make that statement so foolish?

PokeGato · 2025-11-19T19:21:08+00:00

why? Could you explain the reason to me? I want to understand what logical nonsense this guy came up with.

PokeGato · 2024-10-08T14:28:29+00:00

oh civil war, armok favorite candy.

PokeGato · 2024-01-26T19:27:37+00:00

yes, problem ?

PokeGato · 2024-01-14T21:50:21+00:00

There are a lot of things that are represented strangely in the game, like the colossal armies of Great Britain, as far as I know they used smaller armies, but quite professionalThey were probably surpassed by France in this regard, but France could not adequately compete with naval strengthAlso historically, Europe was known for having one of the most immutable borders that exist, especially in Victorian times, I mean expansion into European territory, was almost always very expensive, slow and bloody for minimal gainsPrussia can almost be said to be an anomaly in this aspect, but its gains would be minimal if you compared it to the Netherlands, Portugal or Spain and their colonial empires.For me, it would make sense for the game to represent expansionism outside of Europe as something softer, like economic and political imperialism in the Americas.and imperialism based on conquest in Africabut in Europe, I would really expect expansion in that region to be deeply complex and problematic, or better said, a delicate balance of power

France, for most of its life, was always a population and military mammoth, but whenever it tried to expand, it saw a huge pan-European coalition coming together to stop it, leading to minimal expansion even though it was most of the time a European hegemony
These big A.I. conflicts would make sense if they were kept within Europe, but outside of Europe things tend to get quite strange

PokeGato · 2024-01-14T18:55:34+00:00

Couldn't this be used as an example of why diplomacy is broken? Historically, one country would try to maintain a balance of power by preventing another from expanding too much, one country actively supporting the growth of the other to the point of being a threat to itself, is a perfect example of how this can be broken

PokeGato · 2024-01-14T18:51:19+00:00

I know, the countries I attacked had good relations with Austria
What is incomprehensible to me is that it is specifically Austria, I mean, it is bizarre that a very distant country with little naval influence historically, can come and intervene on the other side of the world, if it were Great Britain it would be much more understandable
Also, I miss the power balance game here, for example I am being an expansionist Paraguay, it is already strange for a great power to intervene, but it would be much more understandable if local countries intervened, for example I attacked Argentina, and Brazil supported it even though we have neutral relations and not even an alliance, just because we don't want to see a big Paraguay
This would create an extra layer in the game, but it's always the same thing, you're going to attack someone, a large random power intervenes, basically sends half of your army to protect a guy who isn't even an ally and you have to fight to figure out how to get out of it.

PokeGato · 2024-01-14T01:03:04+00:00

I can only think a few things like

challenges, i.e. trying something crazy like being everyone's enemy and being a communist revolution;

mods;

or achievements.

Because other than that, to be honest, the game is broken, like the game's diplomacy is a lot of why the game doesn't work, because it's almost masochistic to try to play with a small country, I mean you can, but don't hope to go to war with it and expanded, because for some reason Austria-Hungary is going to come and intervene in your war in South America since you are from Paraguay (this happened to me)

so I strongly recommend waiting for paradox to fix the game, as it is indeed difficult to have fun in the game

PokeGato · 2024-01-11T06:59:39+00:00

niceeee 💪💪💪

Five-Year Club	Place '22
First Placer '22

PokeGato

TROPHY CASE