I remembered a reblog you made that talked about computers that looked like they had been murdered and so I made this sketch of Lunar

hope you like it

PH!!!!!!!! F!!!! GH!!!!!!!!!!!!'!!!!!!!!!!!

LUNAR…… ROBOT GORE……. LOOKING LIKE HE GOT MURDERED…….!!!!!!!!!! IM!!!! SO!!!!! HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES YES YESSSSS YIPPPEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ^_^

regarding that post about the audience being complicit in the protagonist's downfall, do you have any recs?

Okay so I'm sure I'm missing some, but an incomplete collection of media that implies the audience is complicit in the things happening in the story or has related themes (heavily skewed toward horror, probably because that's what I tend to prefer, and even when it's not there tend to be dark themes. If you're worried about triggers you might want to double check ahead of time, as a general rule for this list):

. Archive 81- a horror podcast where emphasis is placed on listening to the tapes in the archive and how that's not a neutral action, and being an observer doesn't prevent you from being affected by what you're observing; plot things hinge on this so i won't go into detail.

.Hannibal (the tv show)- it's not a huge focus but there's the whole thing about "are you right now observing or participating", with the implication that observation is a form of participation.

.the Magnus archives- another horror podcast with the idea of observation being a form of participation in itself, where the main supernatural force (in the context of the story centering around the archive) has a direct connection to Watching. Interesting on a metanarrative level re the nature of observation and whether/to what extent/how it affects the story, and has a lot of points where the characters are talking about the idea of something watching/listening to them that from an external perspective can be viewed as them addressing the audience.

.house of leaves- a horror book with a really experimental writing style. I don't remember it technically quite doing this very directly, but I'm including it because of the way it blurs the lines between the fiction of the story and the reality of the reader, implying that it isn't just a story and maybe it could have some effect on the reader's real life too.

.Mr. robot- tv show, not horror though it can get pretty dark, about a hacker (and it actually puts effort into getting hacking right! Which is cool). The main character will often address the audience directly, as a character he created in his head.

.exquisite corpse- so i should mention that this book gets placed on lists of the most horrifying books written a lot, and it has extremely graphic violence and also extremely explicit sex, among other things. Anyway. It's about serial killers. There are several points in this book where the author pretty clearly directly addresses that the reader is choosing to continue reading the book, in the context of like. Well people say they're horrified but they're choosing to read these really florid descriptions of gore, and there are characters who are killed who are really invested in true crime, and there's all this fascination with the subject matter, etc.

.malevolent- horror podcast, unique in that there's an additional layer to the story if you become a patron, which allows you to make certain decisions in place of the characters. In this case it's very directly making you responsible for what happens in the story. I should mention (because i wasn't sure how it would work when i was first getting into it) it doesn't tell you specifically what the results of those actions will be, but often you have some amount of context with which to make the decision, while occasionally you're basically going in blind and choosing arbitrarily. But it's not like you're choosing the overarching plot and already know what will happen in the story as a whole.

.a lot of "slenderverse" horror args- I'm just putting this in a general category for lack of a better way to phrase it. What i mean is a collection of interrelated horror args/"unfiction" that tend to be primarily centered on YouTube. Because of their nature as unfiction (something presented superficially as nonfiction that is actually fiction but usually puts a lot of effort into "staying in character", basically), and because a lot of the stories tend to center on the videos themselves and how viewing and/or creating them affects things in a psycho-supernatural horror context, it tends to be good for this sort of things. A few series would be marble hornets, everymanhybrid, mlanderson0

.we need to talk about Kevin - both a movie and a book, and i think they both have the scene or an equivalent to the scene I'm thinking of. Not necessarily an overarching theme, put there's a part where the titular character is talking on television and says something to the effect of no one wanting to watch good normal people go about good normal lives, and who are all of them really watching when they turn on the TV, "people like me".

.spree- a horror comedy movie about someone who kills people and puts it on social media, entirely filmed from the perspective of the sort of camera that would be relevant to the story (so like. The cameras the character sets up, people's phones, security footage, etc). And the entire thing is centered around how it is or isn't being viewed by other people, which has a natural extrapolation to the out of universe audience watching the film.

.the object stares back- this is actually a nonfiction book that's an interdisciplinary look at the nature of sight. The reason I'm including it here is the overarching idea of the act of observation affecting both the observer and the observed. I don't really no what else to say about it except that I'm quite confident it's this universe's equivalent to a lietner and it kind of fucked me up

I'll add any more i think of as i think of them. Also i realize that most of these have only cursory descriptions of what they're actually about on the whole if at all, but that's because i wanted to focus on the subject i was actually being asked about in relation to them without it getting too incredibly extended. If anyone would like any clarification feel free to ask, i just figured the premise/basic summary could probably be found pretty easily if you're interested. Also feel free to ask if you'd like any further elaboration on why i think they're themes in the work/specific examples- again, i didn't want to get too detailed or, in some cases, include something that might be considered a spoiler.

So a friend asked about some anime I mentioned and I might have gone a bit overboard.

-*gore* Hunter X Hunter (shonen complicated violent)

-Keep Your Hands Off of Eizoken (Spectacularly Animated anime about highschoolers making anime)

-Flip Flappers(gay arthouse)

-Toradora(Romantic dramady which many hold in high regard but which didn't really hit

the mark for me)

-Otaku no Video (Gainax production which is one part pseudodocumentary on the otaku and one part fantastical retelling of the founding of Gainax itself)

-Aim for the top! Gunbuster!(True debut for Gainax and acclaimed director Hideaki Anno part underdog story part Mecha war drama part masterful execution of a drama exploring a space time phenomenon whose closest familiarity I had held with until that point was a tidbit on the Twin Paradox, whose illustration was my greatest interaction with. A tale of love and loss and moving on and HARD WORK AND GUTS! Among my favorites)

-Keijo(sports anime where girls compete to knock each other into the water using only their butts and busts)

-Girls' Last Tour (A meditation on the many facets of life we take for granted through the eyes of girls living day by day in a near lifeless world, not as depressing or preachy as that description would lead you to believe. Took me about year to finish because each episode was so exquisite. Highly recommended. Not sure if on Crunchyroll)

-Wandering Son(closeted trans elementary schooler learning. HEAVY Sadly I can't find what is considered to be the best episode anywhere, because it was cut from tv brodcast, that's what crunchyroll has, and it seems that's what all the illegal streaming sites and torrenting sites have. It dealt with the recounting or a trans woman of her experiences when younger. I think that tells you enough.)

and finally

-*gore* Sturgil Simpson's Sound And Fury. Not very anime or even animeesque [at least if you constrain your definition of anime too much. If you compare this both arthouse compilation works Robot Carnival and Satoshi Kon's Opus (not all three films are directed by him but that's how they always title it) then it fits in pretty well] It's a movie, it's a compilation, it's an album, it's an experience, and one I enjoyed quite a bit. If you don't want to dip your toes into anime just yet, this is great. But oh dear. I forgot.

I added the trigger warnings afterwards.

-Bloom into You. I struggle to think of a romantic anime that I adore more than Bloom into you. There may be romances I adore as much, more, or in a different way. Dead Leaves (Directorial debut of Hiroyuki

Imaishi, Sexual, Violent, Vulgar, I think gory but the stylization blurs the lines, although I may be desensitized) comes to mind, as does Paprika, and Laputa:Castle in the Sky gives off the vibes that early steven and connie do (in fact, in the reunion of Ruby and Saphire before Stronger Than You, a scene, like many, forever etched into my heart, a physical interaction between the two child leads is recreated) But I loved watching each episode. Highly recommended.

Murder by Numbers review – a witty, winning combo of puzzler and visual novel • Eurogamer.net

Honor’s having a bad day and now there’s a giant stiletto embedded in the side of a drag bar.

I’ll concede that the guy squished beneath the back wheels of the Pride float is probably having a worse day. But given Honor’s lost her job, her showrunner pal, an award ceremony and been at the scene for not one but two recent murders – all under the shadow of a not-so-amicable divorce and a very, very irritating mother, may I add – I think she might be running a close second.

Murder by Numbers review

Developer: Mediatonic

Publisher: The Irregular Corporation

Platform: Reviewed on Switch

Availability: Out now on PC and Switch

We’ve been called to the location by a friend of ours, K.C. Before we were fired, K.C. tended our hair and makeup on the set of our hit show Murder Miss Terri where we played second-fiddle to bolshy Becky in the titular role. But rather than calling the police on spotting what’s left of the dude squished beneath the wheels of the festival float, K.C. decided to drag us into it; you know, because poor Honor hasn’t been through enough.

The reason he’s called us? Well, it seems Honor has absorbed some of the detecting talents she aped on her TV show. Following bungled investigations bookended with the sneers of the grousing detective assigned to investigate these mysterious deaths, it turns out we’re better equipped than most to survey the scene and gather evidence, chiefly thanks to our new robot pal SCOUT, a damaged but super-friendly robot who sought us out to solve the mystery of his missing memory. He too mistook our TV persona for a real-life investigator, the silly thing.

I didn’t even notice the corpse the first time Honor arrived at the scene at the drag bar. I didn’t properly notice them at the preceding ones, either. Murder by Numbers’ backdrops are unapologetically bright and busy, stuffed with colour and detail so your gaze is forever dancing across them, eyes bouncing from corner to corner as you take in the bold, colourful environments and the expressive motions of the cast. There’s no gore per se, but this means the few macabre touches – the handprints squeezed into a neck; the scarlet drops peppering a temple – stand out all the more, much to my delight.

The cast itself is equally diverse and colourful. I’m still not sure what to make of K.C. and Fran, the latter being drag queen bar owner, for while there are plenty of welcomed, positive messages about acceptance and LGBT issues here, a lot of it is tied up in teeth-clenching cliches and “thank STREISAND you weren’t there”s, which tempers the positivity a little. There’s also a not-so-subtle thread about power and emotional abuse woven throughout Honor’s tale, too, so be warned; it’s not just murder and mayhem you have to brace yourself for.

You’ll progress through Honor’s story in a number of ways; point-and-clicking for clues, flicking through the scenes of a visual novel, and by solving nonograms. The former’s simple enough, as is the central theme – characters chatter, you choose what to say in response; nothing you haven’t seen before – but I’ll level with you here: the latter is… well, it’s weird, right?

You see, SCOUT does exactly what he says on the tin; he scouts around for clues, using a scanner that might once have been cutting edge but is decidedly dated now. On discovering clues, you need to help him decipher the 8-bit-esque images of them by solving a series of puzzles – nonograms – that require you to fill in, or leave blank, cells on a grid.

Their days are numbered.

I’ll be honest; this prospect did not excite me. Sure, I’ve dabbled with a bit of Brain Training like the rest of us, but mathematical puzzles are not something I typically look for in gameplay at the end of the day, particularly as the conceit itself feels hammered into an otherwise unornamented visual novel.

I will be from here on in, though.

Though the name Murder by Numbers intimates a dusty experience that’ll kill you via relentless maths revision, these puzzles are exquisitely balanced and arrive right on time to break up the visual novel monotony. While a little overwhelming at first, there’s a great tutorial that’ll get you up and running sooner than you might expect, plus an easy mode for those who want the story with a less intellectually-taxing experience. The further you progress the more complex the puzzles will be, but you’ll likely learn – like I did – that even with eleventy-gazillion 1-1-1-1-1-1 combinations and not much else to go on, the silhouette of the image will help guide you when all else fails.

This isn’t necessarily best enjoyed on the handheld console, mind. The bigger the puzzles get the more there is to squeeze into the minimal real estate of the Switch’s screen on which I was playing, which means I often ended up giving up my (otherwise thoroughly enjoyable) portable sessions as my poor, bleary-eyes couldn’t clearly make out the numbers peppering the sides any more.

Navigating the nonograms isn’t without incident, either; the reticle is a wild, unwieldy thing, often flicking over the wrong cell. Even though it happens with both the controller and joy-cons, I’ll admit in normal play this isn’t too much of a problem, but it’s an absolute stinker in the timed sequences. Losing the round because you’re not fast/clever enough is one thing; losing it because the reticle slips around the screen like a greased fish is quite another.

But I’m being picky. I came into Murder by Numbers not really knowing what the hell to expect, and I leave it as an ardent admirer. Hato Moa’s – the creator of Hatoful Boyfriend – cast is masterfully brought to life with their (mostly!) relatable personas and credible dialogue, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney composer Masakazu Sugimori always seems to know precisely when to slow things down with a well-placed jazzy tune or pep us up with a liberal dusting of 90s J-Pop.

Despite its dark themes, Murder by Numbers is a wholly original treat and a complete bargain at that – I hope it surprises you for all the same wonderful reasons, too.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/murder-by-numbers-review-a-witty-winning-combo-of-puzzler-and-visual-novel-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=murder-by-numbers-review-a-witty-winning-combo-of-puzzler-and-visual-novel-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

[SF] Memories from The Bugger

This is my first time posting here so it's probably not going to be any good but I hope you guys enjoy this.

I first spotted the starcraft at the height of noon, where the larger sun glowed radiantly against the smaller, forming dual shadows across the entire basin. Spires of dull crystal reflected the light minimally, and the more opaque stones left blackish speckles in the maroon sands, almost like a messy piece of art. The sky was entropic as it always was, with crimson, almost violet clouds blanketing most of the planet, excluding an opening that the suns beamed through. Contrasting it all, though, was a heap of twisted metal and scrap strewn archaically in the depression, leaving a round scar over the deepest point of the basin. At first, I skimmed past the wreckage, assuming it to be just unusual crystal formations, but then I realized that such ashy colour and smelted figure can't form normally on this planet, at least not on the surface. Curious, I put away my map and began toward the rubble. Soon enough, I reached the rubble, and was quickly able to deduct that it could not be a natural formation; it was incredibly jagged, almost damaged, and was made of an alien metal. It, in fact, had patterns of bumps in it made of presumably the same metal. Besides that, though, nothing about it could have been less organized. Holes sparatically filled the scrap, twists and turns of sharp, seared metal sprouting from them, and what could not have been anything but wiring hung loosely out of the wounds and were scattered outward from the site. I took my scanner and ran it over the wreckage. It whirred and popped for a moment or two, and then spouted out an image of a spacecraft. Looking back between the real and simulated models, the similarities were undeniable. Although the ship was destroyed, its basic shape seemed to match up with the hologram: a blunt-tipped spear nose preceeding a narrow cockpit, which led to an odd sort of beak belly that stabilized four wings, a pair on each side, and ending with three slit-shaped thrusters. In the virtual model, the starcraft had the title '94-Barrage' etched into its side, which shared the name of a Corvette-class starfighter developed and owned by the Wesser Stellar Federation, but I happened to notice that, of how gored the ship was, the plating where it bore its title was still intact, though a dust had settled on it. I came to read the name, but after wiping away the dust, I instead was greeted by the jarring words: THE BUGGER

"The Bugger is comin' home, baby!" Horos bellowed, grasping a metal orb in one hand and steering the ship with his other. The orb was pulsating rapidly, sending green light in all directions through the cracks between his fingers. Horos laughed and swayed back and forth, victorious in his newest heist. "I've got the Key Interface, and now I can do whatever the hell I want! I could overthrow an entire nation, or get any damn thing I could want; riches, power, maybe even a couple sexy Tlazilian chicks. Hey, I could use some new members for the crew back home, ha!" Horos laughed almost maniacally, bashing the Key into his thigh repeatedly until he dropped it onto the floor and fell onto the steering wheel. "Whoop," he said to himself in his joy, "probably shouldn't break it yet, at least not until I get back to Terra." Horos bent down to grab the orb, but fell out of his seat whenever a sudden crash levered his ship sideways. "Shit," he spat, "It's the Daero!"

As I slowly excavated The Bugger's interior, I saw on its left flank a massive hole, and surrounding the hole the metal contorted inward, as if something had forced the plating open from the outside. Though it could have been space debris or a smaller rock, it would have had to have been moving especially fast to create such an indent, so I deducted that some projectile had likely been launched or even shot into the ship's armour. For what reasons, I did not know. I swiped my hand across the hole's frayed edges, and then continued my search.

Horos quickly pocketed the Key Interface and then returned to the pilot seat, pressing some buttons to make a hologram appear. Multiple intimidating starcraft the shapes of crossbows floated ominously in the void, equipped with many guns and artillery cannons. They appeared distant, like silent giants, but almost seemed to glow with energy. As Horos mumbled something both profane and anxious under his breath, the electronic display distorted, and then a hologram of a humanoid being donning an exquisite robe spawned. It lifted its hand and spoke, "You, Horos Bipros of Terra, are in illegal possession of the Key Interface. As the Daero, it is our duty to protect it, and so we require that you immediately surrender it to us. We have already fired a weak warning shot. Give up now or face our wrath." Horos held up the orb and answered, "I'll give this to you if I can use it first!" "Absolutely not," the being responded. "Well, then you can kiss my ass!" He put the Key Interface back into his pocket and pressed a button, which caused the image of the being to disappear, and then fiddled with the control board until a robotic voice echoed 'All weapons engaged to rear.' Horos put his thumbs onto a pair of red buttons on the steering wheel and mumbled, "Eat shit, Daero!"

Moving my research back to the outside of the ship, I began to examine The Bugger's wings. Each of its four wings actually had a particle cannon equipped onto it, and all were facing the ship's rear. One of which, specifically the gun on the upper wing of the left flank, had been mutilated almost beyond recognition, with its parts hanging out and most of the barrel missing. The other guns were bent and damaged, but still had their basic shape left. Nothing was functional, however, and most of them were likely damaged beyond repair. Had this ship perhaps gotten into a fight? I returned to the inside of The Bugger and my search went on.

The Bugger hummed for a moment before several consecutive blasts erupted from the ship's wings, sending a volley of partical beams backwards and into the Daero cruisers. Each one was met with an invisible force field, making them dissipate before ever reaching their targets. Automatically, the hologram of the being reappeared. "And so you have chosen death..." "Get out of my face!" Horos bellowed, smashing a button so hard that it emitted sparks, which sent away the hologram once more. Before he could fire again, the whole ship shook again and the robotic voice said, 'Wing B1 damaged, Cannon B1 disabled. Engaging rebalancing protocols.' An orange light began to flash as the ship stabilized. "Oh, Goddamnit, I just got that thing repaired. This will cost me so much to fix-" The ship once again was forced sideways, and the voice continued, 'Thruster A disabled, point of penetration in sector D3 detected. Engaging automatic emergency landing protocol.' "Emergency-landing my ass!" Horos screamed, pulling a lever that sent the ship moving vertically. He fired the guns again, which flew backwards and into the Daero's impenetrable shields. One final quake launched The Bugger to the left and into the gravitational pull of the nearby Hequre moon.

I chose to move upward into the cockpit to examine the damage. The windshield was completely shattered, and the control board was not much more than a heap of scrap and rubble. The roof had collapsed at some point, further intensifying the mess of irreparable plate and scrap blanketing the room. The steering wheel protruded out of the pile like a monument, with two red buttons allocated atop each arm. I navigated the mess and began clearing it away, in an effort to find what could be The Bugger's late pilot.

The lights flashed red and orange, and sparks sizzled from the ceiling and walls. "No, no, no, no, no! Shit, no, I can't die this way!" Horos cried, "What will the crew do without me? There's so much stuff I haven't done, Goddamnit!" Horos fumbled with the buttons, but little came of it. The robotic voice came, but it was distorted and unintelligible. Grinding his teeth and gripping the steering wheel, Horos mightily pulled the wheel up, but the ship's momentum was already too great for him to reverse. Heruqe's brick-red ground was fast approaching, and a blaze had began to form around The Bugger, making it into a spiraling, fiery meteor. In a final second of desperation, Horos slammed his fists onto the control board and bellowed, "Work, dammit!" before the ship crashed and exploded in a burst of flame.

After roughly thirty minutes of rummaging in the rubbage, I finally came upon a human hand, brutally seared and bent in many unusual ways. There was almost no flesh remaining. Throwing about some more garbage, I uncovered more of the body until a skeleton could be made out. The skull was crushed and about a foot away from the rest of the body, and everything below the waist was utterly obliterated. However, there was one object in the chaos that was completely undamaged, smooth and pristine. Laying roughly at the corpse's waist was a small, metalic orb that was rapidly flashing with a sharp green light, which hummed and shone brilliantly through the cracks between the metal.

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