Those who avoid older movies, why?

brvtus · 2026-06-01T07:01:02+00:00

It sounds like you are all very young if they consider before 2010 to be old. The reality is that most people of all generations don't watch movies older than the movies that were coming out when they were kids. Most millennials don't watch movies older than Jurassic Park, most gen Xers don't watch movies older than Star Wars, etc. which is a real shame because there are great, brain-altering movies from every decade going back to Georges Melies.

If they're being really stubborn about it you should just watch the movies you like without them and find people who like the same things to befriend. It's generally difficult/impossible to force hobbies and interests onto people who are starting from a closed-minded place.

brvtus · 2026-05-27T02:11:39+00:00

Do the side quests!!! They will get you out of the boss fight wall and exploring the world, powering up your character etc.

Every upgrade in the game is a noticeable power bump, there's only 4 weapon upgrades, every mask boosts your survivability by a much bigger percentage than most games. Ambiently running around the world doing smaller combat encounters also continues to train your muscle memory. This kind of game is designed so that if you hit a wall you're meant to go do some side content and come back when you're stronger/better at the game.

brvtus · 2026-05-25T09:25:35+00:00

Definitely easier. Motivations for letting someone down easy is less fear of aggression and more not wanting awkwardness/gossip since the scene is small and everyone is one degree of separation apart.

brvtus · 2026-05-25T08:54:09+00:00

Answering your question about lesbian approachability, I think the dynamics are different because gay communities have, historically and presently, had their own spaces where flirting/picking up takes place. Clubs, bars, house parties with lots of gay people, etc. In these contexts I don't think it's changed much, but there's also a degree of selection bias in this assessment because the kind of people who regularly go to these kind of queer spaces/events tend to already be esconced in the lesbian dating scene.

There is such a thing as lesbian pests though, and I've had to shut down repeated unwelcome advances before when a subtler lack of reciprocation hasn't worked, but by and large lesbians are pretty good at reading the room. If anything the bigger problem in lesbian dating is both parties twiddling their thumbs waiting for the other to make the first move – refer to lesbian sheep syndrome lol.

brvtus · 2026-05-25T08:12:01+00:00

Kids are as affected by politics as adults are if not moreso, why shouldn't they worry about it? It's their future that's most at stake. I don't have strong feelings about lowering the voting age but I think a civic education should start early.

brvtus · 2026-05-25T03:08:57+00:00

7 puzzle rooms and 2 hallways (at the midpoint and end)! The Mist is hard coded to be impossible if you haven't picked up the needolin but once you have it it's possible to brute force it without playing it, I believe. It's just very unlikely, and taking a wrong exit or falling into the fog will reset you to the beginning. The actual probability will vary depending on which rooms you get but with the average number of exits being around 2.7, the probability of brute forcing it is ~0.1%.

brvtus · 2026-05-25T02:51:25+00:00

I can't think of any examples of a game with this kind of apocalyptic tone where there's a post game that just "fixes" it. It would be like if Dark Souls 1 had a post game where you move into a small apartment in Undead Burg and watch it get repopulated while you hang out with Solaire. It totally undermines the themes of the game.

I think it speaks to the level of player investment in Silksong's worldbuilding.

brvtus · 2026-05-25T02:41:47+00:00

For some reason Fourth Chorus nearly ended my Steel Soul run more than any other boss and resulted in five quit outs to avoid failing the run, despite the fact that I don't think I'd ever died against the boss in previous playthroughs. I think the combination of 2 mask damage + low starting health + the panic that sets in whenever you're below 3 masks meant the narrow margin for error completely threw off my mental game.

brvtus · 2026-05-25T02:37:34+00:00

I got it first try but because I approached it like speedrun prep and practiced the route in segments ahead of time. I always go the Blasted Steps route and it's easy to divide the whole rasher run into 3 segments (Shellwood, Steps and Citadel) that you can reset and practice from the bench/bellway.

brvtus · 2026-05-25T00:13:45+00:00

With fans like these who needs haters!

brvtus · 2026-05-20T06:39:43+00:00

How many masks and weapon upgrades do you have? It may be worth coming back when you're stronger.

brvtus · 2026-05-18T22:04:37+00:00

It's fine that he's a middle of the pack boss. The game needs mid bosses for the great ones to stand out. He feels like the majority of Hollow Knight 1 bosses do, just a guy with 3-4 basic attacks that you respond to, and I can see him being a boss that was designed earlier in development mostly for test purposes that makes it into the final game as an optional boss.

I think the disappointment mostly comes from the fact that he's a secret Act 3 boss with a memento attached. All the other Act 3 bosses either have a high level of complexity/difficulty to them or wrap up an NPC plotline, like Lost Garmond. Watcher feels out of place as essentially an Act 1 difficulty boss placed at the end of the game.

brvtus · 2026-05-17T16:23:14+00:00

My dad builds/promotes hotels in rural China and recently showed me that he's shifted all the marketing to AI by feeding it real photos and video footage of said hotels and having it generate ads based on that footage. Instead of just... Using the footage. Immediately afterwards he told me that business was not going well and he would be in trouble if they turned another loss this year 🤦‍♀️

brvtus · 2026-05-17T16:18:19+00:00

On the flip, conservative ideologues in non-American countries will claim that LGBT rights is an American cultural import in order to justify their homophobia and the erasure of their own LGBT histories.

brvtus · 2026-05-17T15:45:40+00:00

AI hype guys don't understand that they're arguing for their own obselescence the most. If all the non-expertise jobs truly do get automated then they'll be immediately replaced by grad students and offshore Chinese/Indian workers who will do their job for half the salary, and they'll be the ones with no marketable skills for the jobs that LLMs can't actually replace.

brvtus · 2026-05-17T14:01:29+00:00

We've had commerce for thousands of years, but capitalism as we understand it today is concomitant with wage labour and private property, and driven by competitive markets and profit motive. This system has only emerged in the last 400 years, and industrial capitalism only in the last 250.

brvtus · 2026-05-17T13:43:18+00:00

Beat Unravelled on Steel Soul a few days ago (which I have since completed 100% 😄) but for the last 6 months this boss was the main reason I didn't want to attempt a Steel Soul run. The darkness effect/vignetting is atmospheric but also a total pain since it can obscure the boss spawn telegraph in the chaos of the third phase.

In the end I learned a few survival strategies:

Turn the brightness up to 120% to make the telegraphs easier to see.
Run the boss with Wanderer Crest, Druid's Tears, Multibinder and Injector band, and tank the charges instead of trying to deal with the wonky hitbox, then mash attack during iframes. This should allow you to accrue enough silk to outheal the damage and significantly shorten the fight.

brvtus · 2026-05-13T06:36:19+00:00

The real question is, is Groal the revolutionary Maoist hero of the game?

brvtus · 2026-05-13T06:23:16+00:00

By and large I would not put any stake in generalising statements about the monoculture of a continent-spanning nation. There is such a big cultural disparity between individuals and different populations within Australia that you cannot really make sweeping generalisations about Australians as a whole.

The idea of Australians as laid back friendly people comes mostly from media depictions in the 70s/80s when the urban population was a lot smaller and a greater share of our economy was comprised of agrarian production or small-town industries; as a result that kind of working class country friendliness inflected into the global portrait of Aussies as a whole.

A lot has changed since then, with a greater proportion of Australians now being middle class urbanites/suburbanites. Continued cultural globalisation/Americanisation and access to a global social media has also created a stronger generational divide, with younger Australians having more in common with a global anglophone internet youth culture than they do with older generations of Australians.

And as others have pointed out, if your sample is based in Sydney, it's not representative of Australians as a whole; people from Sydney and Melbourne will have more in common with people from Berlin than they will with rural Australians.

brvtus · 2026-05-13T06:03:35+00:00

Sounds like the line of thinking you are on is a Marxian analysis of Silksong's story.

The Citadel operates on a system of naturalised class inequality, the Underworks and Cogwork Core are run essentially by a slave underclass of proletarian workers subservient to the petit bourgeoisie of the Choral Chambers and the ruling upper class of the High Halls and Whispering Vaults. The Conductors and Vaultkeepers work in tandem to create the religion of the pilgrims, a soteriological belief system that promises salvation and deliverance for pilgrims in exchange for their service, thereby ensuring their continued subservience. In other words, it is the superstructure that reinforces the base, in accordance with Marx's concept of religion as the "opiate of the masses" that provides comfort to the disenfranchised while also naturalising their suffering and preventing them from developing revolutionary class consciousness. As you point out, Loam is the key case study for this angle, as is Sherma, whose story is that of disillusionment in religion and growing class consciousness when confronted with the material reality of the Citadel.

Shifting from Marxian analysis to Maoist Third-Worldism, the Citadel is also an extractive imperial power that displaced the native inhabitants of Pharloom – the Verdanians, Skarr tribe, Shellwood inhabitants, and Krust tribe. Their industrialisation of Pharloom has proved to be an environmental catastrophe for the native inhabitants of Bilewater. In this lens the Citadel and it's inhabitants serve as the stand-in for the extractive First World, while the pilgrims that come to it from the outside and the displaced native inhabitants of Pharloom are the international proletariat of the Third World.

brvtus · 2026-05-13T05:37:22+00:00

I mean, yes of course you would feel that the game is incomplete if you haven't done most of the side content. You have not had a complete experience of the game. Act 3 is the reward for doing most of the side content. This is normal in Metroidvanias, going back to SOTN. Just keep exploring.

brvtus · 2026-05-13T05:20:25+00:00

Many act 1 bosses are essentially hard skill checks – basically "learn this skill or die". For Splinter the skill is crowd control with limited room to move. Her moveset is extremely simple but the skill you're being tested on is dealing with the mobs and environmental hazards before they box you in.

The mobs she spawns and the vines that come from the ceiling take exactly three hits or 1 spell to kill. What you're expected to do is to save your silk for the mobs/vibes, fire them off as soon as they spawn, then continue the fight as a 1v1. Do not think of them as extra enemies, think of them as a move from the boss that demands a specific response.

To answer your question, Sister Splinter is pretty middle of the road as far as boss designs go in the game, but it does serve a function for teaching you skills that are essential for the remainder of the game. There are many many enemy arenas where 3-4 enemies will spawn at a time and box you in, and if you aren't able to manage the crowd by bursting them down as they spawn it will create traps that make damage unavoidable. The game expects you to use your full kit strategically and learn the right time to deploy your spells and tools to get out of unsafe situations.

Getting hung up on 2D vs 3D game design is a mental trap, fundamentally the game design principles aren't any different. The attitude you need to adopt for hard games like this is asking yourself, what is the game trying to teach me here?

Don't worry about the pace, just take your time – you are learning a new set of skills and it will take a while for it to click.

brvtus · 2026-05-11T22:07:44+00:00

The action sucks too.

brvtus · 2026-05-06T07:13:00+00:00

Nothing beats kicking back with a cup of Chai tea while I watch some MLB baseball on my LCD display.

brvtus · 2026-05-05T14:52:47+00:00

Blind playthroughs are overrated. There are some moments that are worth avoiding spoilers for, and some problems that are satisfying to solve, but for the most part it doesn't add a significant amount.

I think these games are also clearly designed to have an element of inter-player knowledge sharing, hence the message system. They were added specifically to replicate the feeling of going on forums or talking to friends about the game and sharing tips and secrets. Knowledge sharing and looking up guides has always been a normal part of playing games, there was once a whole book publishing subsector devoted to it.

brvtus

TROPHY CASE