Was a time I believed the best interpretations of The Devil Went Down To Georgia were the ones that made it about hubris. That the gold fiddle was cursed somehow and the devil meant to lose. Now I know it's just the American 'nah I'd win' attitude, without a hint of irony.

Learning to let others be kind and generous to you is a skill I believe is as important to learn as, say, reading. We're a highly social species, and survive and thrive by helping and uplifting each other. The idea that you have to be self-sufficient and can't lean on others is a capitalist myth.

Anno 2070 essentially takes the framework of Anno 1404, moves it to a sci-fi setting, and expands on its systems, creating a game that is much more in depth. ... ...d'you get it? In depth? ... The joke is you can use submarines to build underwater settlements.

The depictions of longbows as just being statistical upgrades over 'shortbows' (whatever the fuck that is) in many RPG and game systems is rooted in a colonialist mindset of white suppremacy in this essay I will-

And that was Chapter 6, and Season 4 as a whole. I'm... emotional. I have emotions about this story. Thoughts not so much. It's solid stuff. But fuck is it making me *feel* things. It didn't leave me quite as emotionally devastated as chapter 5, but I'm not sure many stories can.

Me five years ago: "Fuck, I love Hades. This game is so good. Like holy fuck is it good. I wish there was a Hades with a female protagonist, that would be absolutely amazing." Finger on the monkey's paw: *curls*

GW2 Season 4.5 opens with a date to the library with my plant wife. And they say this game isn't made for autistic sapphics.

AND ANOTHER THING ABOUT ODYSSEY! I fucking hate how they handled Aspasia. She shows up early on during the first Athens section, is instantly the coolest character, then you sneak her out of Athens in the second section, she meets your mom, and then disappears from the plot entirely.

My notifications are blowing up so fast I can blink and suddenly have 30+ again. I guess people have feelings about number treadmill games? @ela-bambust.bsky.social is this what it's like for you all the time?

As a side-tangent to my AC:O post, I wanna rant about how sick and tired I am of 'number goes up' game design. It is so often a lazy and sloppily designed system, whose sole purpose is to trick you into thinking you're having fun. It sucks.

Assassin's Creed Odyssey truly is the Dune of video games, in that it is honestly kinda mid, morally kinda reprehensible, wierdly pro-eugenics, and I can't help but love it. I've put hundreds of hours into it. It's truly a comfort game. It also sucks. I love it so much. Don't play it.

Hilarious: meeting another Belgian in an online space where the lingua franca is English, do the Spider-Man pointing meme, have them talk to you in French, and having to go 'sorry, my French is awful.'

You wanna feel better? Watch this video of an entire lecture hall chasing down a nazi student when he fucked around and, consequently, found out.

As my chronic pain gets steadily worse, I find that I can't play many games as intensely as I used to. Any kind of high APM game I can only do in like short bursts of less than an hour before I need a break, or else my entire arms will be in agony for a year.

Guild Wars 2 Living World Season 4 Episode 4 sure is a rollercoaster innit?

Ah, balls

There's something about GW2's weapon system that just really tickles my brain. Like yeah different classes would use weapons differently. A warrior obviously uses a greatsword for close range AoE attacks, but a mesmer uses it as a conduit to fire mind lasers and i think that's just beautiful.

Every bit of casting news coming out of the HP show is so wild like most of it is me instantly losing all respect for an actor, but sometimes it's stuff like they might be casting Voldemort as a black woman? (???) so it's not like the show isn't gonna bomb with the regressive right either.

I have maintained for a while now that farm owners are part of the petty bourgeoise and any sensible politician knows you've got to keep the petty bourgeoise happy because they're the ones with the time, resources and general will to rebel and be successful.

I have never been patient in my life but I can't wait to give it a try!

That Junji Ito 'this is my hole it is made for me' panel but the guy is me and the hole is in the shape of Zorephet, the Moonstone Axe.

But also like, this probably accidentally absolutely nails the completely unhanged state of mind his character is in at that moment. Yes, the line is camp as fuck, and the delivery is micrometers away from just breaking, but it also really fits within the context of that moment in that mission!

bi lesbian in that i'm a lesbian who plays hades

As an aside, this misplaced loyalty isn't even rewarderd, but rather immediately and mercilessly punished. Don't try to be friends with fascists. Not only will you be seen as a fascist by association, you also won't get anything out of it.

Marvel's setting is so vast they can have a character named Spider-Man and a character named Black Widow and not have them be thematicaly or interpersonally linked in any direct way.

Palawa? What a joke-o! (ya girl finished GW2 season 4.3)

A mass walkout of the UN General Assembly as Netanyahu prepares to speak.

Hades 2: Axe good

I don't get people who don't get invested in the stories of the games they play. Like, not telling folks they play games wrong, I just do not grok the mentality at all. The very notion that a game might have a narrative, with characters, and arcs, and people want to skip it, is so very alien to me.

-say thing -get misinterpreted -explain in detail what was actually meant -"Why do you always use so many words to say simple things?" - >.>

Wish I could say I was surprised. Disappointed for sure! Heavily so, in fact! Surprised? Not so much.

*sharp inhale of anticipation*

Hydration cycle is bullshit. What do you mean I gotta 'drink water regularly' only to then piss it back out? But guess what! Then I gotta put more water back inside of me, or else my body will start feeling shitty. But if I don't pee, that is also bad! Make it make sense.

Italy is striking for Gaza. dpa-international.com/politics/urn...

Original fascism had cruel aspirations of remaking the human condition into an idealistic myth, simultaneously ancient & new. This post-modern fascism is empty, replicating the ostensibly transitional means by which fascism was to achieve its future, but as its end goal. Camps for the sake of camps.

Deutsche Bahn delenda est.

Ah yes, the two genders. Cis and de-cissed.

I'm gonna glaze Guild Wars 2 some more. I *love* the Commander. It's so rare to see a player-created MC, especially in an MMO, be a full character and not just a prop the player has to move around and have interact with stuff so the real characters can make the plot happen.

Dragon Age Veilguard is the only game of its size and budget I know* of that lets you play a trans person. Sure, Baldur's Gate III lets you set your body shape, voice, genitals, and pronouns as separate options, but DAVG lets you *be trans* and have it come up in conversations.

In the past year or so I've been asked if I wanted to go to some US-based event or other a good three times. Frankly, the very idea utterly terrifies me.

So... When I woke up today my follower count just about hextupled from what it was 24 hours ago. Erm... Hi? I'm Hel. Transgender lesbian nerd from Belgium (she/her). I'm the kind of person who uses 'hextupled' in common parlance, almost entirely for autism reasons. And I'm sometimes funny?

putting this on your timeline again

Broke: You can't have female space marines. The geneseed needs a Y chromosome to work. Woke: That's a bullshit reason and the result of sexist writing. Geneseed could work in any way they wanted and this is what they chose? Bespoke: Whole chapter of trans women space marines.