Nacarbac [any]

Larian’s character writing has never been very interesting to me - I’m not sure what it is, perhaps there’s a showiness to them that feels shallow. It doesn’t help that their back stories are almost always “supercool world-shaker who had a More Interesting Adventure than this… Level 1”, as that always starts them off on the back foot with me for entirely petty reasons.

By contrast with various other games, perhaps their character backstories and the talk they inspire are less about “the cool things I did and their Dark Consequences that now directly affect you” and more about life events that exist outside the Plot?

Eh, I’m probably remembering things a bit rosily…and, uh, I forgot that I was originally trying to say something about their appeal rather than just rambling.

TNG is so much better and nothing like this

Having just rewatched it, it’s honestly worse in a few places, because it tries to have Lwaxana/Crusher/Troi-centered episodes but all they can think of is “Ghost Rape”, “Lol Menopause”, and “Space Baby Jesus”.

TOS almost only ever introduces a woman for her to fall in love with the sexy male villain/god/robot, and while being basically treated as set dressing is bad in itself, at least they spend less time writing them badly.

I guess the difference is that TNG actually has some good representation of women mixed in.

After a day of Michael Bublebublyboo on repeat I had the “It’s beginning to look a lot like fish men” parody stuck in my head all night… it was much better, albeit confusing, to have a song I’d never heard stuck in my head.

I learnt a lot as a kid from an old point and click horror game called Biosys, about being stranded in a set of biospheres. It had a great in-game encyclopedia about the plants of various biomes, and you needed to use it to safely find food and water, etc.

Also learned about mescaline, white angels trumpet, and mutant maneating plant vampires that keep stealing all your precious CO2 facehugger style…

The question at the heart of Atlas Posted, “Who is John Tankie?”.

Stalker may fit. It’s not a scary movie, but I think it could be considered existential horror - though not quite in a tragic or hopeless sense.

Given the absurd cash incentive I wonder if that’s just an actual scam (well, slightly more of a scam) where they split the 8k to hire someone to be a date.

It’s those darned Gentlemen Space Adventurers who kept bringing back Skinmelting Hellflowers (Giant Hogweed) on their rocketships as an ornamental. It’s not even prettier, it’s just taller.

That perilous yellow haze in the photo proves it to be the work of that dastardly paragon of scientific cunning - the Fiendish Dr Food Munchu.

There’s a nice deconstruction of WWZ ongoing on SV.

Lets Read: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

It takes the form of a in-universe read through of the text, challenging the Hard Men Saved The World narrative as a piece of propaganda to support the US Junta and their overseas allies, by a survivor in Bristol. It reinterprets many events to actually make some kind of sense - North Korea isn’t a spoopy megabunker, but close enough that propaganda can spin it that way. Yonkers was a deliberate destruction of units and officers who were considered unlikely to support abandoning half the country to die and couping the government.