Selfsurprise

The humour in PBF is always really close to the bone. You never know whether to smile in mirth or cringe in shock. That being said the Super Mutant Hero Team! one genuinely made me chuckle out loud. I'm not sure if it's heroic stances of those molerat mutants or the looks of sheer balls-to-the-wall panic on the two kids faces that does it for me...

Broken Clouds by Gaussian Curve

That's why I still come to the forums. I might meet a like-minded individual or two.

Banned for not being as discerning as TheTron852.

Bad news: Turns out he/she is an avid member of a local apocalyptic cult. Welcome to the family! Good news: The election results are in. You've won!

It's definitely cooling down here in the West Midlands. About bleeding time too if you ask me. It finally makes sense for me to be listening to grim nordic frostbitten black metal in my free time.

Exeris by Urzeit

Ape Escape 2 + Final Fantasy 13 = Final Apestasy Ostensibly a fantasy RPG about monkey people doing battle with a terrifying machine god that wants catch all apekind in a giant divine net. In reality, a fantasy RPG from Japan that inevitably feature an overtly creepy and sexualized cast of androgynous anime monkeys.

"I couldn't decide wether to go blonde or become a red-head, so I became both!"

Banned for being too cute.

Granted, but it unleashes a torrent of Rule 34 art and fanfiction the likes of which this world has never bore witness to. This has a profound and overt influence over all media and on the arts industries that over the course of a hundred years society splits into two distinct cultures. The first being a loosely associated caste of normal humans pejoratively called "tektites", the second being a terrifying abhuman elite that mimic the post-hypersexualized cast of the Zelda movie that tyrannically rule over the tektite classes, engaging in all manner of cannibalistic orgiastic atrocities. I wish I could come up with a new thread for the forums every day.

8/10, simple, but the sentiment is perfectly sound. "It is more vital to study men than books." - La Rochefoucauld

Bad news: We will be sending you to Pluto. No, I'm afraid there's no time to say goodbye to your family. Good news: A new Silent Hill game is going to be released!

Sorry, I had to emphasise this bit...

Contradistinction: A "distinction made by contrasting the different qualities of two things", according to Google. A useful but loathsome sounding word. I can't quite get over the prejudice that it's the words contrast, contradiction and distinction just smushed together into a hideously chimerical whole. You have to contort your face into an expression of disgust in order to say it out loud. Definitely my latest least favourite word.

Some good 'uns from the Perry Bible Fellowship...

Hand of Fate.

In some ways the vagaries and retrospective "inferiority" of the PS1's graphics didn't dilute the abject disgusting horror of the enemies and environments. It's like waking up in the middle of the night, not knowing where the hell you are and suddenly being cornered by a Robert Fry painting that's mysteriously and horribly sprung to life.

I have to concur with this point. I often think that even something epistemologically valid like investigative journalism has been far too subsumed into capitalistic ventures and often under the "patronage" of someone else's narrative and agenda.

Speaking for my own personal taste, I prefer let's play/playthrough videos of a more comedic bent. If I'm ever invested enough in the idea of a specific game then I'm more than likely to play it myself and reach my own conclusions. Apart from a couple of individual instances when I acquired a game because of a review I've seen, I don't want the experience marred or details revealed to me effectively "spoilt" by someone else's experience. The beauty of something in the vein of Jim Sterling's Squirty Plays or AlChestbreach's "reviews" (say that with a nudge and a wink and a pinch of salt) of Fallout: New Vegas mods and indie games, is that I'm watching something that I my myself aren't enormously likely to purchase or even want to play. Combine this unavoidable fact with either the cheeky yet weary snarkiness of Jim or Al's cartoon-like character-conjuring irreverence and in my humble opinion you've got yourself a very entertaining and successful let's play video.

Are you aware of a branch of philosophy and critical thinking called phenomenology, Helio? At it's core phenomenology posits that as much as we subject and invest the world and all the things therein to our own individual sense of meaning - or assign a lack thereof, which is hardly any different to reading symbolism or purpose into an object - our sense of "self" is equally shaped by the "thingliness of things" (to paraphrase Heidegger) and that our sense of personable subjective mindful self interacts with a much more objective world of artefacts, materials, states of matter, events and bodies in a way that's much more dualistic and complementary than our egos might openly willing to recognize. This is actually less harrowing and shallow than it might first seem. Unlike entropic and nihilistic trains of thought that contend with the idea that life and human endeavour is inherently devoid of meaning, or even Rand-esque objectivist modes of thinking that argue that reality exists separately from individual will, phenomenology contests the idea that human thought and agency are somehow divided apart from their immediate situation, or that somehow humanity has a binary choice between either ideologically removing ourselves from or subjecting ourselves to reality as the only possible philosophical stances. One French writer who was associated with the phenomenological school that might be prudent to bring up is the erstwhile Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty conceived of the human mind and body in an unusual but useful manner. He proposed that as individuals we were in possession of two bodies simultaneously, or more accurately two conceptual iterations of our bodies. He called the more familiar of the two iterations the "personal body" which he associated with both conscious and subconscious thought, our emotional and sensate feelings, our sense of personality and selfhood, and all natural senses and feelings associated in living within and experiencing life within our own bodies. The second and seemingly more distant iteration he called the "prepersonal body" which he associated with a biological and historical truth that (to a degree) separated the fleeting "self" from the organic lineage of our bodies, essentially arguing that the prepersonal body was an element in an inscrutable cosmos of matter. Whilst we are undeniably in possession of a personal and prepersonal aspect from birth, the prepersonal body "existed" long before our individual birth and will continue to exist long after our eventual deaths. In his own words, the prepersonal body invoked a "world more ancient than thought". You might be wondering where I'm going with my knowingly strange ramblings, so I'll surmise the point I was trying to relieve your apparent fears with. You seem to be worried that somehow your interest in computer games overrides everything else you perceive as being meaningful, i.e. relationships, family, creative endeavour, etc and all those other semi-fictitious things found on the rose-tinted pathos-laden checklist that societal norms uncritically demands we desire. Ignore all of my outré preambling the just ask yourself the one real simple question that your commentary raises. Do you feel as though you are missing out? I think Vapymid's point that if "you don't invest into something - you are not walking away unharmed" is quite prescient and has a sincere value, but only you can honestly determine what it is you value and what it is that makes you content in the-here-and-now. I'm not going to patronise you or presume to "know" what you are feeling, but given that I've garnered an impression that you and I aren't entirely dissimilar from each other, I'll share a little something of my life experience and that which personally drives me. Things that tend to depress me these days are other people's prescribed agendas and uncritical/insincere conduct. Adulthood for me has been a slow but steady acceptance that I'm not cut out for all the social trappings, familial desires or even cherished tropes of individual fulfilment. I'm not against those things, in my opinion misanthropy (for all it's rad cultural cachet) is too futile and one-dimensional to sustain oneself. But I've ultimately come to realize that I'm most content with a roof over my head, a full belly, a desire to keep in touch with friends and family out of love and a need to remain earthbound, but peculiarly at peace with nobodies company other than that of a good book or two, or three... For all the stress, hardship and suffering that life subjects us to, do you truly need to subject yourself to such despairing scrutiny in regards to being involved with something you adore? "A wise man needs few things to make him happy; nothing can satisfy a fool. That is why nearly all men are wretched." - La Rochefoucauld, Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales

Autumnal Embrace by Skyforest