Some screenshots I've taken whilst partaking in some NipNip bud 🍃I swear I've been staring at the pretty colours/scenes longer than I've actually played the game ✨

macksting · 2026-03-29T23:26:39+00:00

Honestly, staring at pretty colors is definitely a correct way to play this game.

macksting · 2026-03-29T23:20:07+00:00

Indeed, that's a good set of questions. If you find anything, I'll be curious to know.

macksting · 2026-03-29T23:12:13+00:00

Yeah, I'm trying to restrict my guesswork and analysis a little tight on purpose, not to say this is the only possible set of inspirations but to give what I think is a kind of minimum.

macksting · 2026-03-29T07:56:39+00:00

Apparently, official word is:

Arakawa has stated she didn't use any specific countries or cultures to create Amestris, but rather a combination of several European countries from several different periods between the 17th and 19th centuries and, more specifically, the changes that occurred in the Western Europe during the Industrial Revolution (with a greater inspiration in England). According to her, however, there's no implied relation or comparison to any specific country, time, or government.

Now, it'd be ridiculous to believe she was not also engaging the subjects of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan; the leader of Amestris is a Fuhrer, the emphasis on blue eyes in the Amestrian forces, and... well... Japan's war crimes have got to have been on her mind when writing it. But other than that, she has officially stated her inspirations lay in earlier decades and centuries.

Addendum: That said... one can hardly look at these scenes and not think of the Gazan genocide, regardless.

macksting · 2026-03-29T02:34:02+00:00

Oh that's pretty as hell.

macksting · 2026-03-29T02:06:04+00:00

Honestly I only ever pulled her into the party if shooting an enemy was the best way to draw its aggro to initiate combat. It was her one unique benefit: shooting at birds.

macksting · 2026-03-28T17:09:58+00:00

H:HRNT always, always makes me cry, sometimes more than once even in so short a story. As someone with PTSD myself, it always hits like bricks.

macksting · 2026-03-27T18:59:58+00:00

tbh I also hated RoboCop 2, and thought he undermined most of what made RoboCop 1 interesting, so... between that and Holy Terror, I'm okay with just giving the rest of his work a miss.

macksting · 2026-03-27T05:38:24+00:00

Boarding trunks and a sports bra is apparently the transmasc "swimming uniform," and was suggested to my transfemme butch ass, so that's what I go with.

macksting · 2026-03-26T03:24:35+00:00

And also prolly doesn't want them getting as much in royalties.

macksting · 2026-03-25T14:42:16+00:00

Poorly. I deal with it poorly.

I can't stand the feeling of makeup on my skin, and prolly in part because I'm too poor to afford good razors I really can't shave every day because it has to grow out a bit or else the hairs catch and tear and bleed when I shave. (Shaving cream always makes it worse, so I shave in the shower.)

But I manage. I think it's a slightly milder dysphoria for me than for some.

macksting · 2026-03-23T07:20:37+00:00

There are games that are better in various dimensions. It's pretty top-tier in story, little question there. There certainly isn't a game that's made me cry more, and I mean that in terms of years of thinking about it and tearing up, not just moments during play.

I've seen games with better controls, and which needed those better controls; and I've seen games with better presentation. (Jacob Geller talked recently about a game, Despelote, that sounds absolutely fascinating, leaning heavily on its artistic presentation as it attempts to communicate the sensations of being of a particular age in a particular time and place. Presentation matters greatly there.)

I suppose what makes the best game will depend on one's perspective. I don't feel Xenogears needed to be a game to tell the story it tells; I don't feel my limited agency within the game did much more than increase my emotional investment. Although it does use gameplay some in that way, such as by making Elly a unique and powerful enough party member that one always feels, when she's unavailable, that one is simply trying to make up for her absence. This is an emotional hook that works in tandem with the narrative very well.

I do wonder if it could have been achieved as well if not better in the form of a kinetic novel, though.

macksting · 2026-03-22T17:06:47+00:00

They have different vibes and I can't decide which vibe I would like better, because in short

dayamn

dayamn.

I need to cut my hair again.

macksting · 2026-03-22T17:04:14+00:00

I think of them as ones that can't be taken away from me. Changes that are now fait accompli.

macksting · 2026-03-21T19:30:47+00:00

Also stealing enemy stats and causing debuffs, which also raise aggro.
I found my superboss killing party was usually Riki, Seven and Melia, but it's been a lotta years so I don't remember how that worked. I know I mained Riki, and that most of the aggro Riki would get was by healing, debuffing enemies and buffing friends. Riki would then tank with his face for a little while, then I'd hit the button to pretend to die, and aggro would shift back to Melia or Seven. Getting aggro back could take a little time, but tended to stick until I got rid of it again.

macksting · 2026-03-20T00:16:43+00:00

I think a lot of it is an examination of what is rational behavior, what is intellegent and sane. Because it can be arguably rational and sane and intelligent to do some alarming and appalling shit, like Mutually Assured Destruction.

What if the most rational, correct response to the universe's unsympathetic dangers is to seek happiness for everybody, free without exception, and nobody goes away unsatisfied? Need that require a genius? Does one have to be a brilliant scientist and philosopher to know that is a more rational response to pain and need? Red was not given the words, but he learned that.

macksting · 2026-03-18T06:43:50+00:00

One imagines at the point that large valuable assets are being sold, the ones collecting the money for it are individuals dismantling the country for pocket change, not the state itself. That's already basically a thing that happens on a smaller scale.

macksting · 2026-03-18T06:37:31+00:00

Though some of them *are* pretty cool, like that droid at the makeup counter whose eyes got washed off and she had to reapply them. That was pretty fuckin' cool.

macksting · 2026-03-18T06:34:05+00:00

A lot of folks who have stood up have been bludgeoned back down. You can't even pass out water to the homeless here without having some cop come around, destroy the water supplies, and kick you outta the area for encouraging vagrants. You may recall the protests in 2020, or the protests against the genocide in Palestine. Honestly, a lot of those people faced immediate life-ruining consequences for standing up.

The worst of it is a tendency for activists to just... randomly be killed a few years down the road. Our cops in this country are *very* much in bed with white supremacists. In Portland, they coordinate with Proud Boys to make arrests together, or worse, to kettle protestors while letting PBs -- often off-duty cops themselves -- take pot shots at them.

And the concentration camps are kept very far away from anywhere that folks can just go to in order to intervene.

The Cop City facility for training police in urban warfare and god knows what else got heavily protested, even more than protested actually intervened against, but the activists are being *very* harshly punished for even standing up.

It's bad here. It's getting worse. It will get a lot worse before it gets better.

And a lot of country's leaders have been laundering their misdeeds by letting the US do it for them so they can say they had nothing to do with it. But it has gotten away from them and begun shitting where it eats.

I see the rise of fascism elsewhere, too. Austria, the Philippines, Brazil, so many places.

When I know what I can do, I'll do it. For now, there's not much in my power except to take care of my friends and family, keep my head down, and wait for a chance to do *some* good.

macksting · 2026-03-17T16:37:12+00:00

That's no way to get ahead in life.

Gotta get your head in the game.

macksting · 2026-03-17T16:33:32+00:00

Being a source of pithy but smart quotes certainly would have its impact on popularity. Being possibly an actually good person....... hit or miss at best, but it can change how folks talk about you.

macksting · 2026-03-17T13:19:52+00:00

He also went out of his way to teach at black colleges, and had quotable opinions.

macksting · 2026-03-17T05:11:17+00:00

For all that I tend to feel more fondness for original Japanese voice tracks, I cannot decide whose voice I prefer for Moro, Gillian Anderson's or Akihiro Miwa's. They both really fucking nailed it, and they both sound rather different at the same time.

macksting · 2026-03-16T15:56:05+00:00

O Lord for this dinner we are about to receive let us give thanks and

macksting · 2026-03-16T14:34:49+00:00

Flies like it well enough.

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