Penny is also a master of understatement.

Source

fyi the point of fucking up your data patterns isnt to avoid suspicion. it’s to make EVERYONE suspicious. same logic as the bloc, pals.  protect your comrades, be suspicious. ESPECIALLY if you aren’t doing anything likely to get you arrested.

With the TLOU1 Remake

I feel like I can bring up my lament on the games industry and their obsession with graphics (spurred on by gamers overall and their obsession with graphics).

Each console cycle, we see more graphical improvements. But the Last of Us remake, it just shows that this has serious diminishing returns (and has for the last couple console gens).

FIFA’s a good benchmark because it releases every year. The red outlines indicate a new console release that year. This is the same person each year. (I missed 2017).

You can see the dramatic diminishing returns with each new iteration. From 2013 onwards you can see a dramatic shortening in the jumps in graphical upgrades. By 2018, this shortens again.

This is because what as the polygons increase, the addition of new polygons becomes relatively smaller. A model with 10 polygons sees a major jump to 20 polygons, 100%. But a jump of 10,000 polygons in a 100,000 polygon model is only a 10% bump.

This fixation on hyper-realistic graphics is pushing consoles to be bigger and better, while the idea of expanding other technical aspects of games go unexplored. To me, the fact that games AI has largely stayed the same for a decade is disappointing. 

To this day, NPCs will charge you with a knife from yards away, in a straight line, because their AI is just figuring out the shortest path to you and thinks of nothing else.

Enemies will funnel themselves into doors or halls without thinking because all their AI considers is if they have line of sight. So waves upon waves of NPCs will walk through doors, one at a time, and get shot like targets on a wall.

This AI has largely remained unchanged since Half-Life 2.

Sure, AI is hard to market while graphics are easier. So what about, instead of using improved hardware to update graphics again, instead focus on things like destructible environments. And not just the “oh, your cover degrades,” but making buildings and terrain show signs of damage in real time, rather than just slapping bullet decals on a wall when you shoot it.

What about sound? What about improving the way sound travels in areas and through objects? This would dramatically change how stealth operates.

What about clothing physics, so clipping is heavily diminished. Instead of a ribbon clipping through your character’s shoulder, have it interact with the model instead.

For the longest time, video games often ‘cheated’ by creating illusions to simulate real effects. Wall damage isn’t your bullet leaving a hole, it’s a decal on a still flat surface. Your footsteps aren’t actually creating sound, it’s just a sphere around you that gets bigger or smaller depending on variables. Mirrors don’t reflect, they’re just transparent walls looking into a cloned room with cloned NPCs. Rain is just a series filters, which is why standing under an awning or tree doesn’t stop your character from getting wet.

For a long time we could’ve been moving out of the realm of ‘cheats’ and, instead, improving these things to make them behave more realistically. But, instead, the budgets go to graphical improvements (and other things I don’t feel warrant the price tag).

I really wish gamers and the industry stopped venerating graphics to the degree they do. The TLOU Remastered looks fine. If you’re going to remake a game, do it for a game that actually needs a graphical update (if you must).

It would be the other way around. Hades is the one that hired Cerberus. (Yes, hired - you know how Cerberus actually means ‘spotted’ in Greek? Cerberus’s original owner was a little girl who found him abandoned as a puppy, so she took care of him and he grew into the three-headed monster. Unfortunately, orphans living on the streets don’t have the best conditions and she grew sick and died. Cerberus was so grief-stricken that he wouldn’t let anyone claim her spirit, terrifying and driving off even Hades’ own lieutenants. The god himself finally decided to see what all the fuss and bother was about and he was so impressed with Cerberus that he offered him a deal: serve loyally and faithfully for a thousand years and a day guarding the gates of the underworld, and then Hades would return the girl to life so they could be together again. Thus, Cerberus took his job as one of Hades most devoted servants, waiting the day that he could be reunited with the little orphan girl)

Sometimes I think of Hades and Persephone sleeping like this XD

The thing about this that bothers me the most is that some damn fool let Livy have plants in her cell.

Again.

Also, what is this guy’s budget that he can get ahold of tarantulas and polar-water shark meat?

Arkham Rogues from Batman/The Shadow #1 -  Scott Snyder, Steve Orlando & Riley Rossmo

I’ve had sleep paralysis happen to me twice. Fun times. Each ‘encounter’ was different, though.

HAHA GUESS WHO JUST HAD SLEEP PARALYSIS FOR THE FIRST TIME

LOLOOLOLOL THAT WAS FUCKING AWFUL

Multiverse of Madness

The more I think of the movie, the worse it gets.

When you’re building your magic system around being a spectacular joy-ride and not around rules and limitations, you’re going to end up sacrificing everything in your film for it. Characters have spells/abilities we’ve seen before, but never use them when it would be appropriate to their goals.

You could best sum it up with how blatantly Strange has plot armor, where Wanda has abilities that would instantly kill him, yet Wanda will never use these abilities on him. She’s shown to have the intent to kill him. Not killing him is a quick way to her goal, yet she’ll only vaporize people with zero plot relevance.

Characters act in ways that make no sense for who they are. This is the problem with writing supposedly brilliant and/or competent characters when you don’t live up to their standards; you say someone is intelligent, but your own limitations mean you write them as dumb. It is frustrating to see the so-called ruthless Wanda not take the ruthless options, the competent Wong fumbling with the basic calculus of 5 people vs the entire multiverse or the intelligent Strange not making the obvious calls.

The film falls apart when you pause several times in a scene and consider basic cause and effect. Why are characters acting in the way they are? Why are they making the choices they do? What does this scene say about a character? What is accomplished in this scene? How does this action interact with the rules of magic.

Everything collapses if you think about it long enough. Characters are damaged, rules are damaged, stakes are damaged. 

The writers seem to be making statements they are unaware of, creating horrifying moral consequences if you think about what they mean. They undercut several scenes of something serious with humor. The writers seem to be fumbling around, making the rules of the very universe fuzzy and indistinct. It feels like there was no forethought put into the film at all.

The people who made the film also seem to have a hard time grasping the concept of “infinite” and use the word several times without knowing what it means. With an ‘infinite’ multiverse, it means there’s infinite combinations of events, which make certain payoffs rely on absurd levels of coincidence (both good and bad).

And what do we get in exchange for the subpar script? Some trippy visuals. Cameos and fan service. A few watered-down, Raimi-esque horror shots. Non-graphic ‘gore’. The writers didn’t even leverage the multiverse to do something interesting, just visiting 2 additional universes.

Benedict Cumberbatch is trying his best and you can tell, but I have to wonder if he even knew what he was doing on stage. I can appreciate all the actors putting in a good performance. It’s just a shame they are not given an adequate script to work with. 

I came out of the movie thinking it was a 4/10. But the moment I thought about things more, my criticisms began to pile up. I’ve since lowered my score to a 2/10.

I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re interested in the writing at all. It’s a film where you need to turn your brain off and not think about a single thing. If that doesn’t appeal to you, don’t watch it.

unfortunately I’m watching supernatural and someone on screen said ‘there are No Wolves in pennsylvania’ and I was like. what a bold incorrect statement. where did they possibly get that idea from. so I googled it…google is insisting there are no wild wolves in pa?? except I’ve Seen wolves here?? there used to be a wolf that would hang out in my backyard and roam around the neighborhood?? like Everyone knew about this wolf we assumed he lived on the golf course and would come to our yards if he got spooked by golfers (very quiet block). like we all thought he just lost his pack or whatever so people just gave him a wide space and let him chill, he didn’t try to break into any houses or attack any pets but this was definitely. a wild wolf. where. where did he come from what do you MEAN there aren’t wolves in pennsylvania I’m literally spiraling right now

I mean - you can still fight it. It’s just kind of a losing proposition. Especially since one way the other, one of you is dealing with the wrong kind of pressure.

But just imagine if they lived in shallower waters and came out at night. You’re a night-time diver, doing your thing, checking out the nocturnal life on a reef and then - you see a light in the distance.

Hey, it’s another diver!

So you swim towards it, thinking you’ll say hi. (Or gesture hi, you’re underwater). So you get closer... and closer... and closer... the light is still there, still shining towards you and you’re just about in front of it...

...and then you see a mouth open, rows of teeth as long as a human arm gleam ever-so-briefly in the light and then you don’t see anything else.

TIL that the sculpture used in this photo is actually a realistic size for a deep sea angler fish, and I'm not happy about it.

For added information, this is the one that most often comes up, and the one she was most proud of having the artist do. Simone has gleefully admitted that there was no reason to ensure that we saw Nightwing’s butt in that panel other than she wanted Nightwing’s butt to be seen, and that she wanted to make sure the artist did it justice (the artist was on-board too, if I recall).

And you know what? That’s fine. She wants to see sexy men and have them in her comics. Her female (and gay/bisexual male) readers want to see sexy men in her comics. Not a thing wrong there.

But you don’t get insist that gratuitous ass shots of one character are “essential to the plot” and then turn around and complain about gratuitous cleavage/abs of others. Well, I mean you can, but it’s an interesting look, isn’t it?

Done and done.

(Not pictured: “Butt window”, but trust me, it’s there.)

Point of fact: Gail Simone is also the writer who proudly insisted on having as many images of Nightwing’s ass in her stories as possible and said, quote. “Every Nightwing butt shot is essential to the plot. ESSENTIAL.”

That’s an interesting opinion to have for someone who just likes windows, innit?

Done and done.

(Not pictured: “Butt window”, but trust me, it’s there.)

clark reupload

edit: forgot the sweater comic

What a great example of colour theory.

Amber Court Hotel. The most haunted hotel in Malaysia. Moss on the building makes it look like its bleeding.

transformers au where every time starscream betrays megatron he bakes him an apology cake afterwards:

“i don’t think censorship is good, i just think authors and artists should be forbidden from creating some types of art and punished for doing so”

Art by Stefan Koidl