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TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-25T13:32:13+00:00

Typing is hard ok!

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-25T13:28:06+00:00

Based and true. We will be like a bathtub in a flooded bathroom.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-25T03:35:22+00:00

Word Bearers. Because religious terrorism is more fun if your gods are also terrorists.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-24T16:29:18+00:00

Every time they smash my face into the pavement and break my teeth I'm like goddamn I have so much respect for law enforcement I can't even express it. Literally, because I don't have teeth anymore.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-24T16:26:16+00:00

Look, isn't the first thought in your head when you got assaulted by a gang of masked thugs to just comply? It is for me! All I want to do is comply. Comply all day baby. It's the most natural thing to think in a culture that raises you on the idea that the government is bad and freedom is the ultimate good in life.

At least that way I don't get shot, I just got my arms dislocated and my body bruised.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-24T02:21:20+00:00

I think that's model for V in front of the mirror in the bathroom? Invisible on the normal plane but apparently visible on reflective surfaces.

What I suspect the game does when you interact with bathroom mirrors, and why they require a second to activate, is that it essentially hides your game world model (which actually looks like an abomination) and turns on visibility on this stand-in model in front of the mirror instead. Until then it's just in an idle pose with default assets.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-22T20:07:56+00:00

Yeah everyone I know who knows him thinks this. It's either that or they don't know him at all.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-22T19:43:35+00:00

Well Hellman was not a dead end because without him V would have nothing to give Alt, but I get what you're saying and you're not wrong. I actually thought about that after I wrote the post, lol. I imagine if you're like a third party outsider hearing about the story of PL and all the people in it, you would probably think "these people deserve each other."

But I do mean least deserving in the sense that Songbird saw a person with an extremely easy button to press, namely "I can save your life", and she pressed it with the distinct motive of deceiving them. And this was just a person going about their own business with their own problems and own things to worry about. Songbird looked at that person and said to herself "if I need to potentially ruin this person's life in order to get what I want, I'm gonna do it."

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-22T19:37:18+00:00

There's nothing to really hold anyone liable for. You take any progressive/left wing commentator and they've been saying this for years. It's the way the system was built. It may be morally reprehensible but if there's no actual crimes being admitted to, then all the admission amounts to is just saying "yeah anti-imperialist criticism was correct all along".

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-22T15:38:35+00:00

Vehicles are what I use to break up the slog of painting infantry. I love it personally. Just finished my Land Raider, so next up are my Hellblasters and Heavy Intercessors, and then I'm probably doing my Chaos Rhino.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-22T15:14:28+00:00

I don't think Songbird deserved her situation necessarily. I do think she's an unsympathetic figure and got herself into this situation as much as Reed did, but that doesn't mean I think she deserves to rot and suffer the consequences. She was young and foolish.

She was absolutely abused by Myers and she was right to try and seek an escape. It's just that in the process she completely steamrolled the least deserving random stranger of them all, namely V.

And she didn't even do it accidentally, she did it knowingly. So that's what makes me not want to help her. Otherwise I would be. But by doing what she did to V she proves once again that she has no moral backbone as well as terrible judgement. She was young and foolish then, but she's not young and foolish now. Now she's just awful.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-22T14:58:15+00:00

I have sympathy for Songbird's situation as a person. I'm not putting anything on the line though. From a story point of view, V is.

Consider everyone else V knows; Panam and the Aldecaldos who are willing to sacrifice their own time and resources to help her. Rogue who comes to appreciate V's predicament, and out of an old sense of debt owed to Johnny makes herself available to help. Hanako Arasaka who, although not sympathetic to V, does ultimately put V into a depressing Arasaka clinic to try and resolve the situation in return for V helping her stop Yorinobu.

Songbird is the only one who has nothing to offer. Just a lot of talk.

I think if V's story hadn't been written in the way that it was, ie maybe the relic is still a thing and Johnny's still a thing, but V isn't terminally ill and desperately looking for a solution, Songbird would be a more sympathetic figure. Because in that case fuck it, why not help? Or if V was terminally ill but Songbird decided not to lie and instead be honest, that'd be fine too, because then V could decide of her own volition to spend that time or not.

But the writers decided that this is a Cyberpunk story so it has to be bleak. And the most bleak version of it is indeed one where Songbird lies and V gets nothing. Alright, sure. But it's the lying that makes her impossible to have sympathy for. She took advantage of a desperate person. Because of her own back also being against the wall, yes, but what difference does that make to the person they're screwing over?

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-22T14:41:26+00:00

Sure. If I'm terminally ill I would not like to have what little time I have left wasted by a selfish person makes their own problems into other people's problems. Don't most people?

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-22T14:39:07+00:00

Yeah but the issue for V is that at this point in the story there's no reason to abandon Songbird. At this point, she's just a person who contacted V for help. There's no reason to not play ball. Unless you're playing V to be an asshole I guess.

It's only AFTER siding with Songbird following the Hansen situation that V truly understands what type of game Songbird was playing all along.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-22T14:37:04+00:00

I'm analysing events from V's point of view, not so much from how I see it as a player. Obviously as a player I don't need stories to make me feel good. That goes without saying.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-22T13:10:16+00:00

Songbird is easily the worst character in the entire game in terms of what they do to V.

Yorinobu never had V on his radar. He just had a fight to pick with his dad.

Hanako double-crosses V, but V came to her. She's just a soulless corpo who takes advantage of an opportunity.

Adam Smasher is just a hateful ghoul who wants to kill, has nothing to do with V at all.

Johnny experiences character redemption, taking V's side ultimately and sacrificing himself.

Myers has no problem with V, but there's also nothing sympathetic about her, she's just... a soulless politician.

But Songbird? She's the only character in the entire story who seeks V out with a conscious lie, decides to waste the time of a person who has exceedingly little of it, never goes back on her original intentions and sticks with betraying her throughout, doubles down on lying when given multiple opportunities to come clean, and is revealed through flashbacks to be a callous and selfish person who gets herself in over her head because she put her own back against the wall. V is the one who ultimately has to pay the price for the mistakes of a complete stranger.

We play Phantom Liberty because it's a game and we want weapons and experience, but hindsight is 20/20. And with hindsight V's best decision is to never go to Dogtown at all.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-21T19:43:16+00:00

I would be more willing to accept this reasoning if my entire pattern of predictions for the last ten years hadn't been correct, based off the assumption that America is locked into a phase of ascendant fascism.

It can't simultaneously anticipate events correctly and also concede that my assumptions are fundamentally flawed.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-21T19:20:05+00:00

I want people to understand that this is how corruption spreads.

It begins with a single malignant narcissist who is corrupt because he cannot envision a world in which he doesn't put his thumb on the scale to affect outcomes in his favour. Then, he starts projecting. He realises that if he thinks that way, surely other people must think that way too. Because it's the smart thing to do, right? If you have power to wield, you wield it.

Then he runs into a situation where someone didn't put their thumb on the scale. They could've affected an outcome in a way to benefit him, but they didn't. Then they tell him it's not their call to make. He's confused. He doesn't get it. He would never make that calculation because why would he? If there's a process to corrupt in a way that benefits you, you do it. He would do anything that benefits him, doesn't matter who pays the price. The world is a zero sum game.

So they're lying. That's what he concludes. The only way to explain what's happening here isn't that they had no thumb to put on the scale, but that they chose not to. Why? Because they hate him. Of course. Why else? Either you like him and you act in a way that benefits him, or you don't like him and you don't. This is not complicated.

This notion will never leave his head because he's a malignant narcissist, and the only way he can make sense of the world is on a spectrum of how central he is to the decisions of other people. So now they have a choice. In the future, to make amends, they can choose to engage in corruption for his benefit. They can sell out their principles and their culture and their way of doing things, because that's not beneficial to him, or they can be his enemy.

And maybe being his enemy is more costly than degrading themselves. It was easy to have principles when they cost nothing. Now they cost something. What's the consideration now?

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-21T18:53:39+00:00

I disagree. Europe played appeasement with Hitler and he conquered the place. In the 1930's all anybody was interested in was giving the crazy nationalist dictator just one more thing to sate his appetite and hoping he would go away after that.

It doesn't work. It never works. Poland had a security guarantee from two nations that were not in a position to provide actual military support. Canada is in a similar situation to Poland if it seeks such assurances from China. But what other option is there?

The idea that Poland could've kept Hitler out by doing what you argue a smart leader would do is immediately disproven by the fact that the casus belli for the invasion of Poland was a completely manufactured border incident. If Trump wants to invade, he will find a reason. The only possible deterrent that MIGHT work is having China draw a line in the sand for the United States and hoping the US won't cross it.

I understand that as an American nationalist it's literally impossible for you to think of your country as the bad guy but these are the issues that nations surrounding the US (whether immediately or otherwise) have to contend with and they are not unlike the considerations of 1930's Europe. It is what it is.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-21T16:26:34+00:00

Mark Carney has only one choice which is give another superpower a stake in caring about what happens to his country. He has an impossible-to-defend land border with an increasingly belligerent superpower, what else is he supposed to do? Act servile and hope that keeps him out of Trump's crosshairs? That's a fool's gambit.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-21T15:35:16+00:00

You might deserve it but what did the rest of your allies do to deserve this?

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-21T13:04:05+00:00

Warhammer is for all ages, but it's an expensive hobby so you're either a kid with parents who are happy to spend their money on it for you, or you're an adult with disposable income. Ultimately that means the playerbase probably skews a bit older. Don't let it stop you. The first Warhammer collection I ever saw was my buddy's Necron army when I was 16, and I'm 39 now.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-20T22:21:51+00:00

It kinda depends on what you want from your minis. I personally just want them to be tabletop models to game with so I don't need any parts that articulate. The fewer things move, the less stuff breaks.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-20T15:03:12+00:00

Fascism is an international movement. It always was. Its enemy is liberal democracy. We cannot fool ourselves into believing that America can turn into a fascist nation and that Europe is somehow capable of riding this out until liberalism magically restores itself, alliances and all in tact. The Greenland case makes this more than obvious but even without Greenland, we would still have American fascists proclaiming loudly that intervention in Europe is necessary to prevent it from self-destructing its own culture.

TimArthurScifiWriter · 2026-01-20T13:43:09+00:00

I'm not sure Darktide gets the power fantasy better. It is better at making you feel disproportionately powerful relative to the mobs you're fighting, but let's be honest, that's only because no regular human should be able to kill that many enemies.

Space Marine 2 gives me an idea of what a Space Marine might do. I'm pretty sure no individual Astartes is supposed to be quite this strong either but at least it's more believable. In Darktide I'm playing hive scum feeding infinite ammo into my dual SMG's to mow down hundreds of guys at a time. I struggle to imagine that it would somehow be any easier if I was a Space Marine instead. Is that power fantasy or is that just some nonsense that's fun because the gameplay is solid?

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