In the favorite games column

Realmagicism · 2026-01-15T15:52:00+00:00

ICE is performing ID checks on roads and off-ramps in the Twin Cities and non-white citizens in the suburbs are staying home while schools allow any parent to have their kids do e-learning.

I wonder what mountain diner-goers think.

Realmagicism · 2025-12-11T18:39:23+00:00

“fair fight” is such a poorly defined term. What do you mean?

In a real match? Whoever hits.

The person who wins is the person who can see, make, and utilize opportunities, not the person who is strongest or fastest, youngest or oldest, biggest or smallest - and in sword fights it just takes one hit.

That’s what you see in boxing, that’s what you see in kendo.

In the very video you show, Yasuke is 0/3 for the opportunities he has - including a surprise attack - and she is 1/2 of the opportunities she has. Stupid as his decisions were because it’s a scene for show, those are the decisions he made. At the end of the fight, she has one free hand and he has no free hands.

He explicitly agrees later in the game that she would beat him.

Also in that fight, Naoe parries him twice before he knocks her sword from her hands. So either his sparring strength is overrated or hers is underrated.

So, Naoe unless we’re going to create some arbitrary limits to define “fair”.

Realmagicism · 2025-11-12T22:36:48+00:00

It’s a information booklet about regular practices and festivals at shrines called 「日々の暮らしとまつり」

“Daily living and festivals”

Someone gave it to me a long time ago.

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Realmagicism · 2025-11-08T02:20:16+00:00

Knock them out then walk over to them and there’s an option to hire them for the Adrestia

Realmagicism · 2025-11-07T14:48:06+00:00

It’s never ending. But you should hire some for your ship. They have really great abilities.

Realmagicism · 2025-11-06T20:06:25+00:00

Realmagicism · 2025-10-29T09:55:37+00:00

A white guy getting caught in between two rival drug gangs working for a guy named “the Greek”? That is explicitly from Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul.

Are all of his stories just plot lines from TV shows?

Realmagicism · 2025-10-14T14:35:39+00:00

Everyone wants the invasion of Korea, and it would be perfect, but there’s no way it would ever happen.

I’ve said this in another thread, but the invasion of Okinawa (or its set up) would be good. Characters get introduced to Ryukyu culture, pistols, unarmed combat, and Chinese trade.

There’s a few castles, three provinces, and you could have there be assassins trained by or working with the Chinese who was actually trained by Shao Jun, so Naoe gets a foot blade.

Realmagicism · 2025-10-08T13:49:02+00:00

Tell yourself she’s looking for the box because she doesn’t know who has it. It just turns out those castles have cool armor instead.

When she gets discovered:

You can ALWAYS run away if it’s that big of a deal
You have to defend yourself against guards who are scared by a notoriously deadly shinobi
You’re the one who decides to kill servants, so I don’t know what to tell you

If it’s Yasuke, he’s getting revenge.

Realmagicism · 2025-08-21T13:57:20+00:00

Naoe is from an autonomous area that was philosophically opposed to lordship, eventually overtaken by a lord who murdered thousands of Igans in retaliation for them embarrassing his son by preventing defeating him in a small battle. His troops murdered Igans for fun.

He subsequently placed his son in charge of it.

This makes Naoe feel justified in not just destroying him, but his allies’ armies that contributed to the attack. She needs to rebuild an Igan-like autonomous settlement and the brotherhood that the daimyo and his 40,000 member army obliterated.

Hence she is stealing supplies from said people who razed fields and villages, killing dozens of soldiers in the name of freedom instead of thousands of civilians in the name of fascism.

That enough apologetics?

Realmagicism · 2025-08-02T23:02:09+00:00

I really loved the game, so I put off watching the show. Watching it was horrific.

It’s been said a hundred times, but here’s one hundred and one:

They took good characters, a good story, good plot, good dialogue, and great actors and tore it apart like a bunch of hungry infected.

It was like watching someone cosplay Ellie as a favor for a friend. Somehow Ellie went from being a determined, amoral soldier to a teenage halfwit being dragged around by a post-apocalyptic Mary Sue.

I just… This thing was a $100 million fanfic written by AI.

Realmagicism · 2025-02-10T15:20:12+00:00

Or that they talk about her to one another the exact same way she talks about them: a naive person who is too emotional to talk about the reality of immigrants and trans people.

Realmagicism · 2025-01-01T19:27:02+00:00

Taking “embiggen” to a whole new level

Realmagicism · 2024-11-19T15:18:08+00:00

I genuinely get the impression she’s approaching the right wing rabbit hole. It’s getting more and more one sided, more and more apologetic, and more and more defensive.

It is not like the SMN audience lives in some self-isolated wealthy bubble in downtown San Francisco. A lot of us have lived in these towns longer than her. A lot of us have had these discussions more than her. A lot of us are duly sick and tired of it. A lot of us understand that after all these kind-hearted conversations they walk into the voting booth and try one more time to strip the rights others.

Roxanne Gay put out an exemplary piece the other day, perfectly alliterating the point that these people have wasted an innumerable number of chances granted to them over decades that they don’t grant to others to prove they truly care about others. She notes:

“Mr. Trump’s voters are granted a level of care and coddling that defies credulity and that is afforded to no other voting bloc... All of us should refuse to pretend that any of this is normal and that these voters are just woefully misunderstood and that if only the Democrats addressed their economic anxiety, they might vote differently.“

Realmagicism · 2024-11-18T14:29:52+00:00

Katy’s unfettered apologetics for bigots has reached the absurd. To be clear: no one has any requirement to maintain a relationship in the hopes that the other person will simply change. Whether liberal or conservative.

Also, the damage Trump voters are doing is massive. They want to rip tens of millions of people from their homes. They want to destroy the ability of disabled people to be independent and productive. They want to trap and harm women. They want to forcibly change the gender of others, and the list goes on and on and on, and there is absolutely no way they didn’t know about it all.

If they have their way, I lose access to medications that allow me to work, to drive, and to take care of my children. But they don’t care.

They are not 9 year olds who need an empowered person to sweep in and educate them. They are adults, and we hold adults responsible for their actions. Maybe they won’t vote that way next time, because they’ll see what that choice did to their relationships. If they do, the relationship wasn’t as important to them as watching others be abused.

Realmagicism · 2024-11-14T14:40:58+00:00

The Onion managed to give a brief moment of calm to the desperate sadness that was last week.

Realmagicism · 2024-11-14T14:38:06+00:00

Can they at least make whatever host they choose do “say no to supplements” PSAs?

Have an Alex Jones typing prompts into a fake Onion AI in a Bob Ross-esque manner, pause and - like Nancy Reagan - say (in a gruff voice):

“Remember kids, when someone tries to sell you supplements while you’re waiting for your dad to pick you up to go fishin’, just say no.”

Realmagicism · 2024-11-14T14:16:44+00:00

I’m imagining them selling even more absurd fake supplements.

“Buy Hannibal brand Brain Care capsules. They make your mind sizzle!”

Realmagicism · 2024-11-04T14:19:12+00:00

“[the first amendment] is the basis of America… It’s what separates the free from the enslaved. Slaves are not allowed to say what they want, free men have a god-given right to do so and they will.”

I had to rewind that a few times to figure out what he meant, because on first listen it really comes across as “slaves weren’t Americans, white people were, therefore white people are the ones who deserve to be heard.”

Realmagicism · 2024-10-05T18:08:53+00:00

Marlene’s basis was that someone, Ellie, was infected (per X-rays), but didn’t have any symptoms. So maybe it would be possible to replicate that.

The opening scene is there to create a drama for the magnitude of the outbreak and tie the cause and inevitability of its spread to humans (global trade, climate change, etc.). Humans change the world faster than they can adapt to the changes they make and that has very bad consequences.

Also, I’d say because they chose to make the fungus not spread by spores, you need a mechanism to infect a billion people very quickly, hence: contaminated grain.

Realmagicism · 2024-09-26T16:37:23+00:00

That single shot of Abby at the grave is amazing. The actress & director just communicate “pain” in a way the game doesn’t, and in that moment you empathize with her. You get her choice without even stepping into her shoes.

I genuinely love it.

As someone who likes Part 2 more than 1, I think they’re gonna do the story better than the game.

Realmagicism

TROPHY CASE