I'm really glad about the discovery of this nano-ARG, and the resulting message. https://twitter.com/iiotenki/status/770795691547299840
"You know what they say… this glass roof ain't gonna have a screaming cutie's butt sliding down it by itself!" *cuts catburglar's rope*
Don't @ me
Do e@ me
My Maddox Brother, My Maddox Brother and Rose
"Where do skeletons send their kids? …Eton. Sorry, during the pause I realised skeletons don't have kids, and had to think of a joke answer"
"Happy 30th b-day! You're finally no longer the interest of the woundbots' active hunters - just their older, slower, unmaintained models."
"Watch this." *hurls stone at lake which skips through 180° and hits his shins* "That's why the military said I was too twee to conscript."
Videogame scientist writing "food = heal, kiss = heal, ??? = ???", then staring at it with mounting trepidation.
"Heh… don't you know that once you've run out of poker chips, you must then bet… your SOUL–" "I'll give him 20 if you'll hurry up and deal."
*places a single ant-sized coffin on a desk* "Worldbuilding."
New mayor outraged to discover the emergency "make the town clock tower blast off like a rocket" desk button is just a relabeled a/c switch.
"Hm? Yeah, she's my palette-swap. Twice my HP, and resists ice. We tried cohabiting but, um… decided we needed distance. Of half the game."
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=38835958 – What I like about this specific pose is her left wrist lazily draped over her hip, like a tossed cloth.
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=36076254 – Remember to brush multiple times per day!!
*sees the username "130dogs"* "Oh, I'd better follow them!"
*sees the username "131dogs"* "Them too!"
*sees the username "132dogs"* "…W-wow"
*watches as the saloon window you were just thrown out of regrows itself in time for someone else to crash through* "I love space westerns."
You watch your monstrous captors bicker over how to cook you, which devolves into fighting, which devolves into sex. You live another day!
That moment you forget cups can't go through walls even though your hands can, and you have to awkwardly put it back in front of everyone.
*puts milk in green tea*
*turns to the camera* "Question everything."
I'm glad VR will finally bridge the gap between rich and poor by enabling the sale of products, written by the former, to the latter.
Even then, as with all retweets, @-replies, and combinations thereof, one must be fully mindful of which accounts you're involving.
I feel like the only thing I'd want to use self-retweets for is a "promote @-reply to main, retaining context" function, like so.
RT @webbedspace: @rachelgeorge @mistydemeo SMH that no one pointed out the obvious connection
Victim: "No… my mind can't survive being blown any more…"
Succubus: "All functions are unary! Passing 3 values… is 3 calls!"
Victim: "NOOO–"
"Sorry, everyone… I zapped the desktop and rebuilt the PRAM instead of vice-versa. Help me wave the smoke away from the fire alarms."
*while gazing at school uniform horribly torn by unexpected transformation into lizard person* "I need to replicate this look in the future"
Me: "Hmm… actual execution… the one thing I did not expect a viddygame to ask for… Well, so much for that."
Me: "Finally I'll start the Rhythm Heaven games, beloved by any and all."
*discovers once more that rhythm is my all-time worst game skill*
Has anyone written a crossover fic between Blame! and Bastard!! yet
While walking home someone cried "Shadow Princess of All That Is" and you turned, but someone else did too, so your cover may still be safe.
"How could my child, who was once a sweet, gentle baby, unleash such brutal Draw Two cards? On their own mother?" *sighs, deals a Draw Four*
Speedrun category naming intricacies.
*reaches over*
"No, please, mercy, spare me, no no no NO NO NO NOOOOOO"
*tickles them very gently, thus forcing them to continue overacting*
"The dark room? It's the office crypt, where every fired employee's desk is moved."
"What are they there for?"
*smiling* "Doing God's work."
"I've never seen the clouds from below before… They look so much flatter, grayer… Oh, to think I'll never see them from above ever again."
"I trapped her and took her power-ups… she beat me up while exploring the ruins… I came back in a mech… God, the mech made it SO obvious…"
"I don't ask for much. One drop of blood, half the chores, the rest of your blood, and eternal servitude as you long for your lost blood."
I did it, everyone, I solved the puzzle deep in my mind.
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=47535629 – Me at heels landing in goo with a visible splash: Ah yes, this is it, this is the crucial detail.
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?id=8650419 – Me at these pictures of heels in sticky goo: Hmm, I dunno, I need something else here… something's missing…
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=29468041 – I like this person's scenes even when their linework isn't the best at conveying depth.
"The perfect robot assassins… so brilliant their design, that my theming them after haunted marionettes doesn't impede their combat ability"
I'm Sorry I Kicked Your Uvula During Vore (Maybe We'll Stick To Unbirthing From Now On) – Theme of Aftercare (Puke-Cleansing Shower ver.)
Heartrending photo of Saturn falling on the solar system's floor and shattering… Nothing gold can stay… "𝑁𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑔𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑦" – wisdom
"It's called NSW because you can walk North, South or West, but there's nothing but sea to the East."
"This your porn folder?"
"Yep, eleven GBs."
"OK–"
"Of just IRC logs!"
*recoils in recognition of sheer power*
"Why didn't we desensitise the AIs to the pleasure of gyrating their hips before uploading into the robots? Someone, anyone, make them stop"
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=18845670 – Very intense staredown
"I… I think I messed up the source control so much, it became… sentient? And omnipoten–" *rapidly ages back into a child*
The issuing of oak thrones to every worker after the successful Series A was, in retrospect, the first sign of overconfidence.
Ecumenical scholars on both sides working long nights to prove that humanity's god and the tiny helpless rodents' god are one and the same.
*slams the fridge crisper drawer shut with a kick because remembering to close it before standing up is for squares* Hell yeah
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=34272711 – Squashed between 90s graphic design.
Yumenikki Kawase
Listening on headphones, the melody moves from your left ear to your right ear to a third ear you suddenly wish you didn't apparently have.
"The oversupply of fictional detached arses, created every time someone types "lmao", is approaching dangerous fictive limits."
"Old tweets scroll ever downward, to Heaven… old DMs scroll ever upward, to Hell."
You may not like it. You may hate it. You may despise it with every fibre of your being. You may be filled with disgust. You may scream and
"I've picked my son's internet name. It's "Trucks", since he likes trucks."
Bead curtains do not provide privacy for makeouts! You know it. They know it. This has to be on purpose. This is a grand battle of wills.
"You're surprised a slime woman like me can also have stitches AND doll joints? Ohohoho… anything is possible if you see it in your heart."
"I can just see myself remembering this very conversation, once you're gone… struggling to picture your face, even as I study it right now…"
"What I love about players?" purred the boss. "The shock and terror of their first meeting… and their cockiness once they finally learn me."
You slip on the VR headset labeled "greenhouse", only to find your apartment's greenhouse has transformed into a watermarked flesh volcano.
"Um… did you make a wish to change everything about our lives and it's grotesquely backfired? Asking since you literally just tweeted that."
"How… how long have we been stroking each other's cheeks for?!"
"29,000 seconds. I know because I can individually remember every last one."
The bolts on the dark beast's cage are held by locks on the floor, whose keyholes are dishes of water large enough to immerse your face in.
"How many of them are cursed?" "They're third-generation frogs. Their grandparents used to be human."
"Feeling despair about six different things in three minutes… it's the new making a maze in one minute that takes two minutes to solve."
"I bought supplies to last your adventure" *opens closet to reveal 500 mac-and-cheese tubs* "for me, since you're leaving and I can't cook."
"Timing ends when you lose control."
So, look forward to three, maybe even five of these microgame GIFs, in futures near and far.
Lately (as in, just now) I've set up what I need to play and record footage of these microgames:
I'm so glad… that since I created a file with a line break in its extension, this dialog is produced.
*pulls out the medical-play syringe*
*draws the plunger two feet out to use for flogging*
"Here's your coffee! We're out of cups so I put it in these fifty straws with the ends binder-clipped shut."
You worked it out – split your body in half to cut expenses to afford solo rent after breaking up – but by then you just felt sorry for them
"I couldn't tell him I was moving away until the last day – and it came, and I didn't, because what fool waits until the last day? …Not me."
"Long ago, an explosion happened, and humans, scared and sad, came to be. Days ago, another happened, and I, scared and sad, joined them."
"A statue of a hero. A plate explains that since the original subject later turned against the crown, it now portrays no one in particular."
"Looking down off the balcony reveals where the rain is landing; where the rain fell from, however, is hidden by thick clouds."
"A narrow alleyway with a tree and a vending machine. The tree is alive. The vending machine is dead."
"Ho ho… Little do you know that once you have a scorpion tail so massive that you can't walk, the whole world comes groveling to you…"
"Wait, it's not Sunday? It's only Saturday? Wow… that means I'm one day younger than I thought!" *skips away, walking on air*
(That's to say, about 10 months before any of the characters this figure resembles were first depicted.)
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=4347417 – One of the strongest "false Homestucks" yet, this one is timestamped 2009-05-20, five weeks into Act 1.
http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=8434861 – I actually find this one hilarious.
"Mwahaha, it seems you have found me, the whimsical artist boss, at last…" *drops paintbrush, pulls out a Fricking Gun*
Due to tailors re-stitching the hall carpet, the building's exit has been moved to a storage room, and the outside world to its broom closet
You watch parkgoers sliding down the slides, and others sliding up them by sprinting at tremendous speed and diving into the bottom.
"Yes, their president only sent this child to negotiate the merger, but we've got a smartophone to amplify his ideas to adult smartness."
You need clearance from the Department of All Things Cement and the Department of All That Grows and Dies to be able to pave this lawn path.
"Hm–" *minimises 3D scan of your head while reading your neurons to decipher your deepest memories* "Ah, sorry for this unscheduled meeting"
You report to your superior, who, as you'd hoped, is incapacitated with sorrow at your failure, and whose departure brings your promotion.
"As you can tell, this desert was once an ancient sea," *gestures to crumbling pillars of sand-brown seawater*
On the possibility of reducing the current world record (16m 52s) by 26 seconds:
Castlevania speedrun canon.
https://tcrf.net/Gimmick!#Playable_Enemy – First the EarthBound light effect, and now this… My heart can't take these second controller discoveries.
And I should mention that the puzzle in Dragon Drop I admire isn't even the one necessary to "beat" the game.
Right now I've only managed to remember two – Corrypt (https://mightyvision.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/corrypt.html) and Dragon Drop (http://minimalism.spacebar.org/compo/).
As an alternative to the 7 games fad, I tried thinking of games I've played with really satisfying, astonishing single puzzles in them.
I think a Metroidvania with a decent inventory of engaging powerups is Knytt Stories, whose focus almost entirely on mobility and physics.
this understandably causes environmental engagement to be philosophically trivialised by the game, and, in turn, by the player.
When the gating of areas concentrates on the "disengaging" kind of powerups, elevating them to the game's main milestones,
To continue this: the point of powerups in Metroidvania is to either let you disengage from the environment, or make you engage differently.
In loving, corrupted memory,
"Boss".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4nDn24_FvI – "You use a glitch to spawn a boss and then kill it."
The result is uncomfortably insular: your toolset and reach hasn't meaningfully deepened at all, but the game acts like it has.
Unless, of course, mobility is forced onto them by building locks specific to them in the world, promoting them to milestone upgrades.
These powerups, themselves, don't expand your toolset or mobility, but speed up traversing visited areas. This is how they were in Metroid.
"You need to shoot enemies to traverse this place."
Wave Beam: "You no longer need to aim."
Screw Attack: "You no longer need to shoot."
"Quality-of-life" powerups being one that primarily salves the pain of backtracking, by removing existing skill barriers.
An issue I have with various "post-Super" Metroidvanias is how they treat "quality-of-life" powerups vs. genuine new tools.
*carefully places smartphone on top of an acoustic coupler*
"Hug tighter! Pop my head like a champagne cork!"
"I… can't… you're hugging ME too tight!"
"Don't worry! I'll squeeze my strength into you!"
(This is because there's a very hard skip at the 2-minute mark that, if failed, means you have to reset.)
My favourite part of Castlevania SOTN speedrun streams is watching the Dracula/Richter opening, every two minutes, over and over and over.
Like a Mac OS X window sliding into the dock.
And not even for surface reasons, such as it being way harder to draw.
I feel fondly to vore art where the prey's body just kind of funnels, genie-like into the pred's mouth, instead of using a size difference.
"What's wrong?"
"I scared myself stiff wondering whether fat spiders or thin spiders are scarier."
"That doesn't……" *slowly stops moving*
"World's biggest catburglar. So heavy, the sounds of their footsteps are crushed under them as they walk, resulting in perfect silence."
"Can't wait to find myself describing this period of my life as "I was bleeding to death, and thought I could just push the blood back in.""
"…To punish you for that joke, I'm going to my room, where you can't see me laugh my head off."
"Not unless… I tickle it out of you first!"
Learn You A Click
"I'm a cold, quiet stoic. If you hear me holler "JUST WRECK MY FOOL BODY" at a vid, you made the mistake of letting me feel safe and loved."
Your automatic writing is only revealing the thoughts of the tiny rodents piloting your outer shell, who, like you, are badly underpaid.
"Dad, society has moved on. Most of the social cachet of a school prom is now decided in the delirious street race on the way there."
http://haltenny.deviantart.com/art/Crackle-Trap-153755620 – This one reminds me of looking down (or up) a shaft of internal balconies.
Very important spell… potentially the best.
I actually got into the game primarily for for the pixel art, which has that distinct 90s Mac icon aesthetic.
(I feel this leans a bit hard on cliché, though… "What's thematic for a mythical Arabia setting?" "Storytelling, definitely storytelling.")
You play a princess who, when hearing a story being told, is instantly sucked into the world of the story, seemingly involuntarily.
It's an open-world RPG, so the story is rather thin… though there is one wrinkle I found interesting:
As of the era, it's quite simulationist, and boasts that it will make you miserable if you don't micromanage food, water and inventory load.
I've actually started a serious playthrough of this 90s Mac-only Ultima-like RPG (http://www.qnote.com/Jewel/jewel.html)
I read a webcomic where a little girl, for lack of anything else, has to call her parent "parent", and somehow it just broke my heart.
I'm reminded there aren't yet English agender or genderqueer equivalents for "mom" or "dad", and I can't help but feel sad.
The other Castlevania IV track I admire is the Dracula boss music. It's, I might say, anachronistically understated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHeurtNrxjA
(Maybe this is a bit unfair, as Bloodlines had the benefit of hindsight in its rendition, as IV did with its great treatment of II's theme.)
I especially like to compare Castlevania Bloodlines' superior rendition of Castlevania IV's own theme music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijEPu2dH4mM
Thinking of Stickerbush Symphony, Brinstar Red and the like… the Genesis's hardware tended to outpace it for fast, bassy action music.
Kinda feel like this was ultimately the SNES sound hardware's strong point… many of its beloved songs have these slow, moody feels to them.
Castlevania IV also has such a mellow credits theme… at some points it sounds like it's from SNES SimCity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=regyBjE4fLE
What I love in Castlevania IV is that Dracula's treasure hoard is so tainted that ghosts constantly pour out of it.
"The tallest tower in the world, reaching up to the dome of the sky, twenty feet away– *ducks as a very cramped flock of birds flies past*
"I gaze at the moon because it reminds me of myself… cold… pale… secretly a hollow robotic death machine–" *sarcastically palms own mouth*
"Spatial anomalies are only anomalies until science documents them!" *writes "spinny whatsit" on sticky note, places it in orbit around it*
"How long do I have to wear this top hat before I grow a twee waltz theme tune?"
"WikiHow says until next season."
"What!? It's only ep 3!"
Soon after you climb out of your impact crater, a small stoat runs in and lies down to appear as if it caused it.
"I'm almost done with this commit, but I still have to comment all of the c–" *entire body enters torpor as an autonomic defense mechanism*
"Please avoid shaking or moving the console while SAVING is on screen." *cut to a speedrunner placing the live console in a paint agitator*
The town's sole sports team, the Immortals, plays every known sport but only ever faces one other team, simply called "the visitors".
"Take a deep breath… and let the world know you aren't giving that breath back without a tiny bit of calmness paid in return."
"Why were these cities built, these monuments raised?"
"Same as us all: to ease their pain. And we yearn to understand them to ease ours."
"This rusty sword has gone millennia longing to be understood, to be wielded," *tears it from skeleton's hand* "And now its wait is over."
The game tries to disguise which of the characters joins the party by making you name them alongside five other NPCs and a random enemy.
"Us humans are born with these marks." *rips off shirt, points to nipples* "Each one means love. Together, hope–" *is tackled by companions*
"Listen, I'm definitely the original… the cloning tank just has a bug where whoever uses it gets… teleported inside… somehow."
"I possessed a mosquito in my sleep and dreamt I had to bite my body to get back. Then I woke and killed it. Now I'm sad and itchy all day."
"Apartment inspection… guess I'll have to vent my home world atmosphere." *breaks seal on door* "Humans can't smell sulfur dioxide, right?"
"Hah! I've made the bed… sixteen times over! That's fifteen buffered makes, ready to auto-activate!"
*the bed is glowing and shuddering*
""Weirdo" is… a very reverent Earth word meaning "one-of-a-kind trendsetter"!" *pats their back triumphantly*
You remember being a kid, incredulous that adults could go without sugar. Now, you're still giddy from a sultana in this morning's cereal.
"This guy's the muscle. Aaaaand I made the mistake of recruiting while horny, so these four other guys are the muscle as well."
"Touch this." *you feel their metal chest throb with a synth heartbeat* "And this." *you feel their metal head throb with a synth brainbeat*
"Ah… bony bat wings with spiderwebs in place of the membranes… if these don't scream "ridiculously powerful"… I don't know what else will…"
"Yeah, "debts to the death gods are always repaid", but c'mon, I'm a sweet li'l human! Can't I just say I did an oopsie?" *flutters lashes*
"What I'm about to tell you is strictly between you and me." *the dog wanders in* "…Fine, you too." *both huddle around it*
Now in near pitch darkness, you turn to your mirror. You can barely tell that your reflection has relaxed, and is leaning against the glass.