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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Sour grapes.

    There is nothing popular fiction hates more than somebody doing something everyone wants to do but can’t. Impossibility, when possible, becomes cast as immorality or immaturity or otherwise something arbitrarily undesirable.

    To be a ghost is depressing and/or monstrous because when we die in real life we don’t stick around. Time travel overwrites reality with a worse version of the present because in real life we can’t change the past. Resurrection brings people back as monsters because in real life we can’t have our lost loved ones back. Immortality is sad and lonely and often requires you to do evil things to sustain it because in real life we can’t live forever. Traveling to alternate lifetimes where you’re more successful is emotionally hollow because you had the most important emotional stuff in your life all along and you wouldn’t trade that for the world.

    These and other speculative crises always have to be fixed by making the fictional world abide be the limitations of the real one. Aren’t we so lucky that our world is randomly already like this?


  • This post was finally the push that made me buy it, having been interested since I first heard about it. Only checked out Barbuta and Bug Hunt so far.

    I’m loving Barbuta. It’s scratching that itch that only Tomb Raider 1 and Dark Souls 1 have scratched before. There’s something so weirdly cozy about this air of open hostility where the individual challenges aren’t actually hard to execute. I haven’t made it very far in yet, only found/bought three items, but I’m already in the headspace where I wanna push myself to keep replaying it until I can beat it without using any eggs and I’m not one to normally care about that sort of thing.

    Bug Hunt is okay but, in terms of the framing device that this is a compilation of old games, I’m not buying it. Its mechanics and writing and tutorial pop-up windows feel distinctly like a modern indie game. Barbuta only slipped once that I’ve seen so far, with that I Wanna Be the Guy trap on the first screen.




  • I’d always suggest being direct instead of waiting for other people to take a hint. Tactfully, mind you. Phrase it in a relaxed, emotionally neutral way that doesn’t single him out. Something like “Really, I am doing fine. When I’m at work, I just prefer to focus on the work itself instead of talking with people. I’m more at ease that way.”

    That being said, is this the kind of work situation where you’re one of many options to make friends with or is it more of a you and him stuck in a room together all day type of thing? He sounds like a lonely person and if the two of you are stuck together then the best idea might be to seek a social compromise between you two’s preferences, like designating some specific portions of the day as times when it’s appropriate to have a conversation. You try to be sociable for him when it’s on, he tries to be quiet for you when it’s off.





  • I’m playing Dragon’s Dogma II, taking the suspended tram into Bahkbattal or however you spell it. One of my pawns failed to make it into the basket before it started moving but they’re not a ranged fighter so they’re no use in driving off harpies anyways and I don’t bother turning back since I know from previous antics that they tend to find a way back to you.

    A few minutes into the trip, dangling precariously in a rickety wooden contraption over a canyon, I hear the cry of a griffin. I spot it over the horizon, its eyes locked with mine. I am forced to watch helplessly as it approaches, drawing an arrow as if it could accomplish anything. The griffin slams into my tram, shattering it instantly and dropping the three of us to our doom.

    That pawn that didn’t make it on the tram catches me in a bridal carry and sets me gently down on my feet, completely unharmed.

    That’s why the game’s fast travel systems are made to discourage you from using them, because adventures don’t happen during loading screens.