@tsar

Not sure what you’re in to, but for uplifting shows that still have an emotional core, it’s hard to go wrong with A Place Further Than the Universe.

Four girls, for various reasons, deciding to set their goals on joining an expedition to Antarctica. There’s some emotionally charged scenes in it, but for the most part, it’s about finding yourself, and the things that motivate you.

Alternately, based on the action-heavy stuff you mentioned earlier, you might want to check out Mob Psycho 100, if you haven’t. Turns the entire idea of power progression on its head. It, too, is about self-actualization (With a whole bunch of fights in there, too.) There are no side characters or throwaways. Every single person has their own shit going on, and even characters or archetypes that most shonen fare would introduce and then forget about, the show circles back on. The fighting, while present, is not the point. The point is to become a better person, and to put in the work.

Some stuff happened and I’m staring down the barrel of an eye-wateringly large dental bill. Financing is reasonable so I’m not entirely fucked, but hey America? Can we stop pretending teeth aren’t part of our overall health?

Fuck’s sake.

@L-B-Heuschkel

Wait, is this a thing? Oh, fuck AI. That’s how to give sentences flavor! Nuh uh. A million percent not changing.

I really enjoyed Deltarune Chapter 4. An unexpected amount of character depth and some great music. More fool me for thinking there were only 4 chapters, though. Guess I’ll be waiting for the 5th chapter in 2026! (And… for 6… and… 7…)

I have… thoughts about the ending of Expedition 33.

Spoilers, don’t read if you haven’t beaten it:

Spoiler

Anyhow! That’s a lot of words, but with those words said: The game was a solid 9/10, with 10/10 combat, art direction, music, and vibes. Super imaginative and refreshingly weird, and the amount and quality of the music is a triumph. The moments that hit hard hit like a freight train, and I’m going to be thinking about lots of these characters for a long time.

@KDraygo

Deeply frustrating all the same. I mean… 9 awards, including… Best Score. For Solo Leveling. In a period that included Apothecary Diaries and Frieren. No. Get right outta here with that snub.

The Anime Awards’ days of not being taken seriously are certainly coming to a middle.

Not even worth being mentioned in the same sentence as the rest of those shows, and of course it wins.

@SqeakyClean

People on the internet can indeed be fake. But it’s worth trying, all the same. I have online friendships that have endured for several decades, and they’re often the people who will sit up with me at 3AM on my darkest days and keep me afloat.

Whatever’s been happening, try not to let it get you cynical.

@Jennkryst

May the next one be even remotely as progressive!

One. Setting aside all the social aspects, going higher is a balancing nightmare, and there’s no way to square the drastic differences in player power without extensive homebrewing.

Have the other spheres represented by GMs (and only GMs), and don’t have them overshadow player power unless it’s in service of a Big Bad that will eventually be faced.

And just in general? Never stick Mage or Changeling in with Vampires or Werewolves. The power differential is just stupid.

Struggling pretty hard. I’m LGBTQIA+, and it feels like the US is becoming a more hostile place than ever. My partner and I are basically alternating between literal panic attacks and each day’s headlines feel like a fresh hell. Trying to prop up my community members spiraling in group chat, and I just don’t know what to say anymore.

In 2017, it was the stupidest timeline but we just had to knuckle down
In 2025, I’m out of jokes, and this feels like literal hell.

@dvoraen It’s been quite some time since I saw a trailer, raised a brow, and immediately set a reminder for the launch date on my phone. That looks like it could be pretty damn rad.

@Testament said in An Arx Peeve Thread:

The peeve is that I miss you. It was nice to have a place to go if nothing else to hang out.

Fuck you.

To expand on this peeve, a long commute means that I finally have an excuse to get back into reading for the first time in an embarrassing while (or listening, but whatever), and the first book I picked up was “The Way of Kings”, and now I have such a freaking longing for magical fantasy again.

I miss Arvum, I miss how scary magic felt, I miss Adepts, I miss the people I played with all the time, and I am cursing my total inability to get it together enough to want to try to bother to sandbox.

Popping by the Murder for a drink and a truly questionable stew, or the Training Center and bouncing around and hero-worshipping the folks who were kicking butt, or were brave enough to step into the ring. Miss lurking by the beach on a cold winter’s day, perched on a little rocky outcrop and gazing in the general vicinity of Cardia. Slipping through the darker places between the boroughs into the expansive world between and feasting on a truly unhealthy amount of wine and lemon bars.

Curses, y’all.

As adoption of AI has changed, my former views of ‘hey, this is a fun toy’ has changed into resentment. Mostly, eliminating drudgery and as a super-charged oft-lying google is all I’ve been using it for.

Ironic, as my assigned initiative at work for 2025 is to become the in-house AI specialist. Just what I always wanted, being the person whose product is a hammer in search of a nail, while also being responsible when the hammer decides it’s a fork about 20% of the time.

Tch.

@Gashlycrumb

Yeah, I think I kind of see it. In trying to be coy about the narrative in your attempt to courteously avoid spoilers, it resembles what some AI do in presenting a surface-level response to a prompt, a fun fact, and summarizing what you’ve just said in the final sentence.

It’s not like that’s a criticism of the review - it’s just (unfortunately) similar to the sort of thing that ChatGPT burps up, because … that’s the point, right? It recognizes what to look for in something classified as a movie review and pattern matches for it.

Per a reddit post on /r/MUD: https://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/1geyisw/armageddonmud_permanently_closed/

ArmageddonMUD has been permanently closed. For more information as to why, you can visit the game’s discussion forum and the post regarding it here: https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,61081.0.html

On behalf of the ArmageddonMUD team, past and present, thank you to the players of our game that shared their time and passion with ArmageddonMUD. As we close the final chapter of this beloved world of bone swords we built together over 32 years, when we think back we’re filled with wonderful memories. Together, this community has shared epic battles, forged lifelong friendships, and lived countless stories. May these memories live in the hearts of all who walked the sands of Zalanthas.

-Halaster, Producer of ArmageddonMUD

There are some rumbles about some bad actors in staff freely sharing character interactions and disseminating RL information, and as it’s a closed codebase, some of the inner workings of the game.

Anyone have further insights?

Aw.

When you find a video game and it’s lots of fun and then you look at the patch notes and see that it’s on maintenance mode and no longer receiving updates because it failed to capture a base within 8 months of launch. Live service games live such brutal, fleeting lives.

(Omega Strikers, for the curious.)

I whinged and complained about it in the complainy threads so much that it felt like cheating not to post the resolution:

After a year and a half, I got top bid on a house. And I’m so excited and terrified for the parts that come next, but the hunt is finally over!

@Coin They will. This being a tiny crunchy granola ‘we’re your friends’ employer, it was just a knife in the gut to see them treat it like a Fortune 500 company would.

Not surprising. Just disappointing.