Oh No :'D

So this thing started getting notes because it was reblogged by someone popular and I have already made the "anthropology is descriptive, dipshit" addition to it before, but now I'm very tempted to make the other addition, which is just me, in-character as robot evopsych scientist, rambling about Megatron's poor post-function politics and how it was always gonna turn out to be some fascist-at-worst-utopian-at-best nonsense akin to the Monoformer movement, but I don't know how to make that post without throwing some extreme shade on the parts of the fandom I was throwing shade at with the original caricature of the "Functionist scumbag".

Like I'm just saying in a fandom obsessed with Functionism Bad at lot of people don't seem to realise that the politics they put into the fiction would diegetically make them functionist, y'know?

Fannish activity roundup

I haven't really talked about what I've been Up To on here that much lately, huh.

So, I watched Higurashi Gou & Sotsu, spurred on by getting redthedragon into Higurashi with me (:) hiiii hellooo) and I really enjoyed them! I was wondering if post-Umineko Higurashi would reincorporate some of that worldbuilding back into Higu, and I ended up really enjoying the way they did it. Going back to my Umineko reread after watching Sotsu changes some stuff up significantly, it really plays into and with the tone of that series. The way the tail of the tale wraps around Rika, the way it builds on the anime, specifically, really works for me.

I'm currently playing through Horizon: Forbidden West. I only have the Hunting Grounds, the Enduring and Arena to go because uhhhh I am not going to be able to play through the Machine Strike questline, it simply requires the kind of brains that I do not possess. NGL I was pretty sure I wasn't gonna do the Enduring sidequest either, but then I did get reasonably good at the human-combat, so now it's a matter of grinding it out until I luck into a victory. I'm quite glad all the side activities aren't that hard, that it really is for when you want More Shit to do at the end of the game.

As for the plot of HFB... I'm not hating it? I feel pretty neutral on it, it suffers from the lack of the driving mystery HZD had. It's kinda just average, buoyed up by the character work being really good and the elements it does introduce being really thoroughly chewed. The art and animation budget for the game must have been huge, the script must be massive, there are so many incidental non-subtitled NPC conversations I've just gotten stuck listening to because they're so fun. I think something about the way they make these games had them neglect that part until the Frozen Wilds, and then they had so much fun making Frozen Wilds so cinematic and character-driven that they realised they possibly couldn't go back.

I'm also really happy with the new mechanics! The complicated resource trees, which were left out of the first game, still feel a bit... overly elaborate... but the way they're integrated into the fighting-of-the-machines validates their existence on a design level, and I think all of the new machine fights are really well designed and really interesting to engage with. Hitting weak points is a lot less ambiguous, and the weapon damage scales up much faster, so you're not stuck fighting irritating HP mountains for that long. The incentive to use elemental damage is also much stronger, the weaknesses have been shuffled around to make more sense. The one thing I still don't like is how the enemy attack damage scales, I don't enjoy playing games where I'm constantly two hits away from death, but eh. I've learned to live with it. Figuring out when to chug a potion is much more of a tactical concern now.

I also got a Switch over the winter, and I absolutely blazed my way through DRv3 and the Ori games. I really wanna replay Ori 1, it genuinely became one of my favourite video games as soon as I got started with it, although I wouldn't know how to explain why and how.

Oh, and this is not fandom related, but Essie is finally fixed and I am just slobbering for the driving season to start properly. I miss the nyoom more than I expected Q_Q)

A general rant about games asking me to do things and then making it impossible.

( Under a cut now because argle bargle this is so petty )