Just my perspective: I don't like "eternal WoLships" where two characters love and have loved each other pre- & post-sundering. It's romantic, yes: It's a generational, multiversal, soul-bound curse. You're tethered to your ancestor's old flame's soul, even if it's in an evil person.

"Why's that lass got exposed bits in her armor?" "She does some wicked magicks with her blood, and needs easy access to her flesh, so she says." "Shouldn't there be scarring then? That sounds rough." "That's the scary part; her body heals through bloodshed, like she's cursed. Best to leave her be."

I won't ever go back to ov/erwat/ch but if i was still a player i'd be so pissed that all the crossovers use the same 4~5 characters.

It's really funny how ubiquitous poison is in video games. Doesn't matter which decade you pick, poison is there.

"Lonely, Lonely" meme is a top 10 Rosarie meme for sure.

I love when people try to take the gambling defense for games by being like "why should they ban loot boxes from Valve! Like next you'll tell me you want to destroy the TCG market!" And it's like. Yes. Yes I do

I'm gonna start glazing ds2 so every newcomer gets excited to play it and realizes it's fine. People told him to skip ds2, so ofc human nature biased him in favor of it. Even checks one of the bingo card sections off where it ends with a shot of Majulaas he mentions the "beauty" of ds2.

Playing a metroidvania where they don't randomly take away your currency when you die because hollow Knight did it because dark souls did it has me feeling relief I didn't know I needed

I know this is for gameplay reasons but ponds, rivers, and lakes having infinite unlimited clean water is how some adults think of water resources despite, y'know, learning how the water cycle works in middle school. ("You are 12" etc. etc.)

Refusing to say "content" when talking about a game has done wonders for making my speech more clear on what I'm talking about.

The "younger generation lingo is a mixture of appropriated AAVE and incel forum lingo" idea has a lot of merit given their proclivity to wantonly drop the r-slur, a term that was extremely uncommon in "general internet public spaces" until recently.

Man, this new draft feature is great!

I prefer coming up with OCs rather than picking existing characters to be reflections of my WoL. There are only so many characters from the First and Ninth who would be A. interesting & B. novel enough that nobody else would use them for their WoL. The Thirteenth has even fewer options.

Video of them having a rough go of things in Expert Roulette and telling people to stop moving to Aether when all of the characters in the party are Aether natives... You can see in the chat them talking in a cwl "i feel like im on crystal" No Ma'am That's Your Neighborhood.

She got stuck like that on the left...

Spencer (@skull-hazard.bsky.social) writes about what makes Dawntrail a solid foundation for the future of Final Fantasy XIV (@en.finalfantasyxiv.com)!

The funniest part about this CC season to me is that the gravity mechanic unique to this space tileset almost doesn't matter because the real dangers are the 4-block mechs that explode and have infinite defense and resistance, as well as all the everything else. www.youtube.com/watch?v=raOM...

Another one complete.

They were really evil for releasing this during Friendfield times.

I think the "ffxiv is not a dating app" people ignore the fact that the game is necessarily social; people are going to seek & do social activities through it. We don't get to declare the correct & incorrect activities people do in the game, only who we interact with & which behaviors we tolerate.

I'm gonna skim over some fanfic for a bit and report back on my findings.

Avywenna = Gravel + Savage, you cannot unprove this.

How come whenever someone wants to own a sword they always pick a replica of a LotR film sword.

Typical Arknights: Endfield loading screen

"Can you pet the dog" is like the dog owner+gamer version of reporting on whether a company is or is not doing enough rainbow capitalism, regardless of said company's material efforts in relevant areas like sensitivity training, financial support, etc. It's not as important but it has the same vibe.

The breath of the wild hill has done unlimited damage to gaming

I thought the Recent Meme about the Two Numbers was w/e but it was harmless fun so I had more patience with it than I usually do. But there's imminent ordained metaphysical Skeleton Divine Death Blast for those responsible for making me have to know about "xvexrahvaryl" (rot13)

Two hours for a reclear after a DSR legend sage up and stopped dps right at the end leaving us with 0.1% enrage and then immediately dipping puts the kind of fury in my soul that makes stuff like this happen.

One thing that gets me about concord or high guard discussions is everyone always says the characters aren't sexy enough like that means anything. Apex legends is one of the most popular games in the world and every skin looks like this. It doesn't matter

Spencer (@skull-hazard.bsky.social) spent 2025 playing his usual staples and revisiting old favorites, but three new releases also stood out to him! What old favorites do you keep revisiting?

Friendfield

If i worked on ffxiv the only things i'd want to do are: -update adventurer squadrons -design npcs for populating areas -make a whole bunch of secret mini-quests and bonuses you can find in older areas like "using the /guard emote where there isn't a guard NPC for 20 minutes gives you 20,000 gil."

CRASHOUT FOR THE AGES

The worst approach a player can take for making a video game outfit deliberately bad is the Crayon Box Special, where each piece is a different primary or secondary colour. It lacks originality, requires little to no effort or thought, and it's too mundane. Wearing no outfit has more character.

None of it ultimately matters but people keep saying that high guard game "disappointed people because the last announcement of the game awards is supposed to be prestigious" and that's like the most depressing sentence dude. Wow you're that sucked into marketing you have fetishized ideas about ads.

Fromsoft game where there are enemies that can only be parried, enemies that can only be dodged, and enemies that can only be blocked so people have to learn all the things.

I have never liked "pve" or the other one (pvm? I think). "Pvp" has a reason to exist but I think saying something like "Tunic is a pve game" is wild to me.

"This boss is badly designed because it makes my self-imposed challenge run either really really really challenging or flatout impossible." Listen to yourself.

Remember when palworld was the most common denominator no effort survival game clone and a bunch of guys who have never played anything except AAAslop spent weeks talking about how it was finally giving pokemon it's much needed effortful competition in the genre.

Something funny happened in M9S, and then it was even funnier that it turned out be a ring and I managed to win the roll for the ring.

lol, any pokemon fans relate to this?

Dark Souls 1 players when you tell them they can't use Power Within.

This strikes me as a "just add another lane" approach to the problem; the issue isn't that Aether is too small to fit every NA raider—it's that too many NA raiders believe they have to go to Aether. It's a behavioral problem; too many vehicles on a road because people won't use public transit.

"Cozy" is a subjective descriptor so it doesn't work well as a term to establish a game's identity. Elden Ring, Bloodborne, and Pathologic 1 were all cozy to me without any of them being Cozy Games™️. "Cozy Games™️ vibes" have often been co-opted by grifting types and it makes for an unsavory label.

they need to ban the word cozy as a descriptor for video games

The dichotomy of people gassing up octopath 0 and every octopath fan in my life being depressed by it is actually crazy

The silver lining with all of the DDOS attacks is that now NA raiders will finally see the light and realize the concept and practice of "raid racing" to "world first" is (and has always been) devoid of fairness, detrimental to the disposition of the playerbase, and ultimately childish, right?

It's so sad if you engage with gaming communities at any stage you see constant posts from people who say they're fed up with gaming and got over it and then they list Only Open World AAA games. It's like absolute misery.

I need to sleep but I want to keep writing my Dawntrail piece.