It’s funny, because someone claimed the character designs looked good in concept and I looked it up so see if they looked better in concept, but no. Sure they are technically well drawn, but their designs still look like shit in my opinion. I don’t get a sense of character at all.

On the other hand, I came across an artist named Kevin Trentin, who had decided to have fun redesigning the characters and they look so much better the way he did them.

He even bothered to give the characters some much needed personality. Amazing.

I think it’s a very interesting topic in general. Very frustrating too because the important discourse is always shut down by some people who have had too much ideological cool aid. It is a shame because at the end of the day, these companies are predatory toward all of us and should not be defended as fiercely as some people are. I just want entertainment at large to produce worth while art, be it books, movies, games etc. Good stories, great characters, well made art and so on. Stuff that can move people. ❤️

The issue for me is that the character designs in western games are just ugly and bad designs. That doesn’t mean that all the characters have to be hot and sexy. You can have unconventionally attractive or even unattractive characters that are still appealing to look at because they are designed well. There is an art to a well designed character. Not a game reference, but a good example of a well designed and unattractive character in entertainment is Long John Silver in Treasure Planet. Nearly everything about his design is unsexy, but he is still appealing to look at because the character has soul, his design tells a story about him, his ambitions and the humanity he has, but tries to suppress. He has a recognizable silhouette, his color palette is earthy and warm, the contrast between the dark of his pirate hat + coat against the white of his shirt tells us that he is complicated, has both good and bad in him. Often when he hangs out with Jim alone, the dark hat and coat are nowhere to be seen and he’s mostly wearing white. His shape is round and soft, often a shape related to kind ans trustworthy characters. His hat and coat have sharp edges, the hat is literally a triangle, a shape that we subconsciously associate with danger. He is both a father figure, a safe person for Jim to lean on, but he’s also treacherous and dangerous. He is a cyborg, half machine, half doghuman or whatever hrs supposed to be haha. Warm and soft, and cold and mechanical. That is such a brilliant design for a character who is somewhat of an anti-hero.

With some of the shit I have seen coming out of gaming in recent years, it’s not just that the characters are physically unattractive, it’s that the clothes and color palettes they have been settled with is as unappealing as possible as well. To the point where it’s nonsensical to look at. I don’t get a sense of the character’s history or personality when I look at many of these designs. It looks slapped together. Concord was a great example of ugly af designs that felt entirely void of personality and purpose. Colors were clashing, silhouettes were nonsensical and the clothes didn’t fit together at all and communicated nothing about the character to the player. They also all had the same mid value if you turned on the graycale. No contrast anywhere.

I know people desperately want to perpetuate the narrative that gamers just hate these types of designs because they are stupid incels who want to wank to the characters in game, but that is and has always been an intellectually lazy argument used to dismiss fair criticism.

You can have ugly characters that are well designed. Most of the ugly designs we see coming out of western gaming are barely designs. It is what happens when you press a randomizer button and purposefully look for the ugliest result as possible.

I heard a theory that they do this on purpose to give players incentives to purchase better looking skins which would not surprise me in the slightest. The games industry has become so predatory and lazy in the past ten years that it honestly deserves to fail. The fact that they get to hide behind political correctness and blame the criticism from their customers on racism, sexism and whatever other ism is out there is nothing more than a pathetic deflection from the real issue. They treat their customers like brain dead consumers who should be shamed for demanding a better product and they use minority groups as a shield against valid criticism.

It is pathetic. Even more pathetic that so many people are falling for this marketing tactic, that permeates almost all of the entertainment industry. It is shameful.

If you’re experiencing that amount of physical pain in your 30s, you need to exercise more, my friend.

I had 2 years of inactivity due to an intense workload and my physical health plummeted. Have been going on regular walks and eating better the past two months and I feel like I de-aged from a senior citizen to my actual age.

Also, stretching helps A LOT when it comes to stiffness and soreness. Don’t underestimate the wonders of stretching.

You don’t have to live in misery like that. Would can work on it, my friend! 🤗

True. I enjoyed season 1. Quit the show after season 2 because I found it so awful and lame. I can only imagine what the later seasons were like, lol.

So, what you’re telling me is that both sides are right and wrong simultaneously :b

I think it’s kinda funny walking back and forth between left-wing and right-wing spaces because depending on where you are, the world is in vastly different places according to both.

Something like Twitter has never done better and bluesky is on its way out according to right-wing spaces. Meanwhile here, people are talking about how Twitter is dead and bluesky is on the rise.

I can’t confirm or deny either because I refuse to use either service, but I do find it both amusing and a little concerning just how far apart from each other these two camps are when it comes to having a read on what’s happening in the world.

This gave me a u/SpontaneousH flashback.

When it comes to crows and the like, nothing would surprise me. They are so smart and creative that you could probably convince me of all sorts of things they can do and I’d go “sure, why not?”

And thanks. It was a really nice walk and we got to see and meet many cool animals. We also came across some ravens in the forest and a nice little slow worm chilling on the path.

I think we have yet to go on a walk where we haven’t experienced something kinda cool. Both with animals but also with the landscapes we have visited. I like the mundane magic of everyday life tbh.

My boyfriend and I have noticed similar friendships between sheep and crows. I dunno what the crows get out of it, but we have seen, more than once, that the crows kinda babysit the lambs and follow mother and lamb around the landscape. I managed to take a few pics of one such trio on one of our outings once:

I haven’t kept count on how many times we have seen this stuff, but it’s happened enough times at this point that I don’t think it’s a coincidence. The crow will literally walk on the ground next to the lamb at all times and be a lookout.

Considering my own current life situation, this is a very timely meme.

Gen X are also pretty tech savvy. Let’s not pretend like they didn’t pave the way for us millennial to learn how to fix computers.

I say, as a tech retarded millennial, but fuck it, I’m right.

I think she’s right. There is certainly a space in fiction for depressing dystopias, but personally, I think that it is also important to make space for hopeful stories about the future. Else it’s just too dark. Our news are depressing, our lives are depressing. Our fiction is depressing. If there isn’t much positive stuff to look forward to, then what’s the point? In the 1930s, 40s and 50s where war and crisis and recovery was on the menu, fiction tended to be more comforting and hopeful.

That’s why Disney’s Snow White was such a massive success in 1937. It gave people a break from their lives and allowed them to dream themselves away to a different world where everything was a bit simpler, where the downtrodden, yet hardworking and kind herione is rewarded for her efforts in the end. Many people may nor have had that happy ending themselves, but it must have given them some hope to watch a film about someone just like them who managed to pull through in the end and have her worth validated.

I mean… the one first 1950s sci-fi story I ever read as a kid was The Sound of Thunder. It is and will always be the first thing I think about when it comes to 50s sci-fi. And that story isn’t exactly happy or optimistic about humanity fucking around with tech and time, lol.

I don’t think they are the only ones on this platform, tbh xD I will say that I have run into some chill blåhaj people here and I have run into people who are affiliated with entirely different instances or what you call them that have displayed some of the most unhinged, unpleasant behavior I have experienced online. I was so close to just delete myself from this platform and forget about having any online social outlet after a series of interactions with particularly disgusting individuals on here. I can kind of see why they were banned off of reddit, ngl. I haven’t interacted enough with blåhaj people to say if they are as bad as that or not. Seems like a mixed bag to me.

The most pleasant people on here that I have met have mostly been my fellow Danes and all the Linux people. For whatever reason, the Linux fanatics just tend to be super welcoming and encouraging which statistically shouldn’t be the case. All lived experience tells me that groups that are obsessed with a specific topic/lifestyle are usually some of the worst people to be around. Doesn’t matter the subject. But somehow these nerds manage to be chill. 😆

Some of the weirdest shit I have seen in the LGBT sphere is how comfortable some of them are with dictating who is allowed to date who and whether or not their preferences are okay.

It’s the main reason I don’t really vive with the LGBT community. Don’t mind gays and trans and whatever else is out there. Normal people living their normal lives and loving the people they love and finding ways to be comfortable in their own bodies is how things should be.

But the LGBT sometimes reminds me of organized religion. It’s not the individual believer who lives his or her life in peace who is the problem, but the weird cultlike behavior going on in the group where everybody has to hold the same opinions that tend to become progressively more extreme over time until the church controls every aspect of your life. Including whom your are allowed to love.

But it is difficult to bring this up without immediately being labeled a phob because the LGBT owns non-straight sexuality and if you criticism the movement, you criticize all the non straight people.

BLM has similar vibes.

I just don’t like groups. Churches, political groups, grassroots movements, you name it. It all ends up the same in the end. With group pressure, control, shaming and ostracizing when you don’t toe the line.

If I learned anything in my 20s, its that being a part of any ideological groups is not in your best interest. No matter how good and safe it feels in the beginning.

I sometimes struggle to understand that people willingly partook in that trend with zero skepticism.

It is the same mindless behavior when people blindly go down the AI route and use it to think for them while burning the planet to a crisp.

I generally consider myself to be dumb as a brick most of the time, but fuck me if I’m not surprised when I see people I believe to be smarter than me skip down these lanes of absolute reckless behavior for no other reason than “teehee, it’s funny” or “teehee, it’s so convenient”.

Anyone who pay to give companies their DNA is either not thinking through their actions or maybe they are somehow dumber than me.

The semi-ironic part is that AI wasn’t even Spielberg’s movie. It was Stanley Kubrick’s, but he died before making it and since him and Spielberg were great friends, Spielberg decided ro make Kubrick’s last film in his honor. Must have been a difficult movie to make, both technically, but also emotionally.

It’s the same weirdness when some (usually) Christian Americans think it’s a gotcha when an atheist says “omg”.

I hope they bring that same energy to themselves when they live by the weekdays that were all named after Norse gods or refer to the other planets in the solar system by the names they were given from the Roman gods.

Omg did you just say WEDNESDAY? You believe in Odin, huh?

There are still DVDs and Blurays being made for new movies. Some movies are 100% digital, but in my experience they tend to be the ones that the streaming platforms produce themselves and they have an interest in keeping people on their service.

But most other movies still get dvds and blurays made and are still sold in stores.