iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I made the rookie mistake of running out of money and gas on the same grocery trip today Would anyone be willing to send me some gas money to keep me going? I need gas for work & I fucked that up Ko-fi.com/paninikill

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I don't expect that we're equipped to do that because it feels like no one has actually tried to stop their kids from getting into regular Fortnite as is with all of its existing philosophically similar problems, and I don't think it would be an easy thing even if more people were to try

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The thing that's going to be hardest about this is raising the next generation of kids to not get sucked into this slop by the marketing just kind of innately working on their dumbest peers and kids not really having any particular reason of their own to resist the resultant ambient peer pressure

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 8h

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Fuck the Marvel Legends Rivals Venom + Jeff the Shark 2 pack looks incredible in person but I will simply not have that particular amount of money to spare for that particular thing at any point, especially given how recently the last time I bought a $60 ML 2 pack for a Venom figure was lol

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

I don’t normally subscribe to anything this metaphysical but it has been really difficult to interpret 20 wrestlers and 1 ref dying within the span of 5 weeks right when I was getting ready to start wrestling myself as anything other than a message from God and/or the universe that I shouldn’t

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

If you are a FFXIII trilogy person you need to be playing Qliphah in Providence’s Shadow If you are a Silent Hill or Alan Wake or Deadly Premonition person you need to be playing Silver Pines If you are a Hollow Knight or Momodora or Salt & Sanctuary person you need to be playing Metamorphosis

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

If I do get pulled in by some Transformers in the near future it’ll probably be Wild King stuff cause that’s been tempting but I know it’s going to feel extra overpriced if I do when it’s such an easy 1:1 value comparison with Miniforce dino combiners

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Not something I’m going to actually buy regardless though, I think I’m completely off of the buying Transformers-brand Transformers train until/unless I’m in a higher income bracket where I dgaf if they’re overpriced Otherwise I’ll just be picking up more SAMG figures as they make their way West

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It’s hard to deny the heavy lifting that my general love of cassette bots, hot pink, and pop idols does to just make Rosanna appealing, but I think I have to be feeling some ironically-detached nostalgia to be even considering inviting Kiss Players into my home lmao

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Somehow the years going by and me eventually developing my own genuine interest in similar but less ill-advised weird fetish horror shit have led me to a place of ironic nostalgia for Transformers Kiss Players that makes me kind of want a Rosanna figure to commemorate that one time TF went off rails

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I this year I paid under $180 for a Miniforce combiner with a torso bot bigger than modern Leader size and five limb/wing bots bigger than modern deluxes Hasbro or Takara or for that matter even a 3rd party TF company would make me basically sacrifice my first born for a set that size

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It has gotten to a point where I feel unequivocally like I get a better value proposition from importing SAMG toys and paying above MSRP than I do buying Hasbro toys at Target at this point

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Saving money by traveling, somehow

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Planning a trip do Detroit for literally the primary reason of how cheap y’all’s weed is

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I hate how rightfully prepared I am at all times for shit like what’s coming out about Jacob Geller

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I see why it has filtered the fuck out of players tho lol because both pure visual novel storytelling and really technical RPG combat are niche things for turbo nerds but the surface aesthetic feels enough like a Persona game etc. that it might grab people with slightly more mainstream expectations.

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Qliphah in Providence's Shadow is a masterstroke of being decisive about scope It is like, just VN sequences and battles. Like they straight up just asked what is this game about? A story and a combat system. So fuck it we can cut everything else.

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

But it’s also in the same breath a solution to hack modern developer sensibilities into feeling like they made a complete experience despite being meant to be cleared in 30 min Devs don’t have the confidence to rely on the player *deciding* to replay a short game, it needs to be a baked-in format

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I think both devs and players look at a game that is just actually 30 minutes long and many don’t really get it but still find that to be a really satisfyingly paced chunk of game So meta-progression is a solution to hack modern sensibilities into understanding playing a short game repeatedly

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I think of it as the same taste thing happening to devs as has happened to players A lot of people who would not be very inclined to make or play an arcade-style experience where the only meta-progress is skill practice still crave the format of a game that breaks up into nice discrete 30 min runs

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Part of me believes they should reissue the fuck out of the Max Gokin Big O and part of me dreads to imagine the new inflated price point

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Both existentially painful and a bit hilarious how on-the-nose it is for a gacha game social media account to post a drink recipe that would literally poison their players

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I am mad that I don’t want to validate the developers of Kingdom Come Deliverance because I have booted that shit up before and I must admit it really gets the neurons firing; we need people inclined to make that type of shit for less questionable ideological reasons lol

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I think you would like the new Silent Hill btw; I can’t tell if this discussion is coming up related to it or just coincidental timing but it’s very good IMO at vividly depicting a historical setting (but also a fictional town like Yakuza to be fair)

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Sorry I mean videogames are the most equipped to convey it despite being the least inclined toward doing so

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I think the same thing is true of animation for the same reason I think it’s interesting that the same thing is less true of literature which has theoretically no technical limitations But I think “how easy and compelling something is to describe” is a technical limitation that might favor history

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I think games funnel toward pure fantasy because on paper there’s almost no technical limitations on the imagination of the environment artists and people are reticent to introduce a big conceptual limitation Whereas with film it’s just *so much easier* to film things that exist or have existed

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Like I don’t think anything non-interactive can score nearly as many free “immersing me in a real world past” points as something like Yakuza Zero even if the specific neighborhood is fictional

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Eh…I do think the dearth of work like that is an argument for the immaturity of the medium but semantically I can’t agree that’s an area where games seem like a “lesser offering” because I actually think a historical sense of place is something video games are unfairly equipped to convey the best?

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

But I def wouldn’t be surprised if people push you over the $35K stretch goal at approximately the absolute last possible second

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Idk it was also during a time when videogame Kickstarters felt like they got a little more eyeballs than they do now cause it was during the days of people being hype to fund like Mighty No. 9 and Bloodstained so take me with a grain of salt cause I assume it’s gotten worse

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hmm idk if going into the morning changes anything, I personally was autistic about when we hit launch so ours ended during like prime time maximum people awake online hours But if it’s any reassurance the surge was genuinely really last minute like closer to the ending time than it currently is

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Is it the actual last day? Completely anecdotal but my experience was the spikes are the literal first day in the opening hours and the literal last day in the final hours and everything in between was a trickle that went slow enough to kind of make me nervous

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Like how I got into VNs is adjusting what mood I expect to go into them with from being when I want to play a video game (setting them up to seem understimulating by comparison) to when I want to read (setting them up to seem elaborately stimulating by comparison) and accepting if that’s less often

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It’s also an aging maturity thing, I used to respond to something failing really hard to appease my ADHD by feeling like “wtf this is too understimulating why would you make some shit like this” and now I just go “apparently I’m not in the mood today” and sit it down to give it another try later

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

There was a time when I could watch something artsy but boring and feel like that was it’s own type of slop, like artistic wanking Now that we are submerged in The Real Slop I’ve come to so deeply appreciate anything someone put their whole ass into fuck it I now have infinite patience for real art

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Local grocery store chains ads all play AI generated jazz now and it makes me want to be lowered into a grave The tonal whiplash just now as my YouTube ads went from playing AI generated jazz at me to a like super atmospheric trailer for the new Angel’s Egg release lmao

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Nothing has made me cling lovingly to my regular ass emulators more than every game ever made suddenly getting a vibe coded recomp and even official ports starting to probably be vibe coded

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If buddying up with fascists is what reliably gets you the most rich and thus provides you the most time and freedom to be a psychonaut or whatever, you might wind up being pretty chill with that when most of the fashy stuff you hear is said in a “just asking questions” way while you’re high af

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I mean it’s kind of a reddit atheism 101 argument to point out that if you believe this life is some bullshit you’re ultimately just trying to transcend you can be sold nihilism pretty easy, but that’s most of the explanation you need when dealing with comfortable rich white people

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Duncan Trussell is a good case study in how psychedelia/alt spirituality has this veneer of like love for humanity that makes that worldview seem incompatible with a fascist mindset But unfortunately that shit is 100% compatible with a kind of myopia and nihilism that can open the door to whatever

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is one of those things where I could keep revising it forever and orbiting around a slightly larger list of candidates but if I could go back and sort of proofread one thing immediately I would probably include Metal Gear Solid instead of having two fighting games

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Really hard to decide but this is fairly representative

“My 9 Games” chart showing 9 videogames that influenced me. My picks are: Street Fighter Apha 3, Ketsui, Yu-no, Link’s Awakening, Quake, GGXX Accent Core +R, The Ninja Saviors, Etrian Odyssey, and Disco Elysium

Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I was *already* so fucking hype for Qliphah in Providence’s Shadow and then I saw that normal people hate it and now I am like

Vince McMahon looking like he busted a nut

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Good games that I noticed are $2 right now on the Switch eShop: Boomerang X Shinorubi Murder on the Marine Express

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Ash Wednesday @ashwednesday.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

One of my all time favorite fg moves lol