iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mani @eyeznteef.com · 01/10/2026

love seeing this game's version of the otherworld. masahiro ito's flesh-and-rust was great, but i do love that each game gets to do its own nightmare now. i think i still enjoy walking around when there are no enemies more than the "actual gameplay", but the flavor and tone is still carrying.

the back alley in a scottish island town. the sky is ambulance-light-red. a bare tree spills over the alley, but above and around the tree, enormous metal pipes cage everything in.

a wooden box, centered on the screen. a text prompt ominously reads: "Will you open the box?"

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 30/09/2026

early into townfall - not sure about the gameplay, but man, the vibes are on point. i love that silent hill can be anywhere.

two men standing in a misty town square. one is looking in horror at the other - who is upright, eyes closed, with lumpy black fluid dribbling down his chest, and some sort of medical tube running into his mouth and down his throat. the other end of the tube extends into the sky.

an unlit room with cold blue concrete walls. through a doorway is a long hallway with metal grated floors, and a bright red light - almost white - fills the hallway from under the floor.

a humanoid creature rears back in pain. its body is distorted flesh, its arms are bound in front of it by a messy arrangement of gauze tape, and is smeared face is interrupted by a flat metal plate that runs through it, down the middle.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 15/09/2026

sticking out my tongue, behind which you can see my second, smaller tongue

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 08/09/2026

making these was fun as hell, and also really personal and expressive. i remember the year after i finally got diagnosed with ADHD and started trying medications for it - the notebook shows that time in my head pretty clearly. really loved how @parker.luckypaper.co reconnected me with this old habit

this marble notebook is covered top-to-bottom in the small rectangular warning stickers from prescription pill bottles, saying things like "Swallow whole, do not chew or crush", "May cause dizziness", "Take this medicine with a snack or small meal if stomach upset occurs", "Controlled substance: dangerous unless used as directed", etc. on top of all these is a piece of yellow CAUTION tape i used to decorate my room at the time, and at the bottom is a fortune cookie fortune that reads "You are a happy man"

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 08/09/2026

the collage party stuff that @parker.luckypaper.co shows off at the end reminds me of the notebooks i used to make when i was in college - covered in repurposed branded and municipal stuff and local that was fun to assemble.

photo of a a marble notebook from freshman year of college, covered with stickers like a standard "HELLO my name is" (cut off so that it just says "HELL"), a "NO GARBAGE" sticker i stole from the recycling bin in my dorm hallway, a handmade sticker from then-local zombie artist James Wrona, and several stickers from Threadless T-Shirts back when they were more indie and i was ordering from them all the time - along with many others

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 07/09/2026

i'm sorry, but if you're a resident evil fan, see THIS fucking shot, and think the director has to APOLOGIZE for it? then you like the dumb parts of resident evil more than the great parts of resident evil. the dumb parts can be fun! but they aren't what excites me about a new resident evil thing.

a shot from the upcoming movie RESIDENT EVIL, showing a dimly lit porch. the inside of the house is pitch black. human limbs - arms and legs - spider out of the doorway on all sides, top and bottom, like they are all fingers radiating out from some unseen appendage.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 06/09/2026

absolutely fucking loved THE END OF OAK STREET. a real movie's movie: 90 minutes of completely straightforward premise, conveyed with earnestness and whimsy. solid performances buoyed by delightful monsters. i've always got appetite for these sorts of movies. tons of fun.

anne hathaway stands in front of a 1980s suburban home, in a tight shot. just around the corner from her, on the other side of the house, is the silhouette of a toothy therapod mouth.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 05/09/2026

there was a time earlier in my relationship with the game where i was absolutely enamored with cards that just depicted little sea life, often simply and non-fantastically - horseshow crab, manta ray - hell, even the wacky little walking sponge. tiny bits of normal life in a magic world

Manta Ray from the Weatherlight expansion, showing a ray kicking up some sand on a sea bed, like a photo from an aquarium or documentary

Walking Sponge from the Urza's Legacy expansion, showing a little sea sponge carried by some crustacean-like legs. just a little guy

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 31/08/2026

shut up, shut the fuck UP, i am SO pumped for this card: 1. i love lofi girl; that channel has gotten me through panic attacks in the past 2. i have been waiting for a sick reprint of careful study for nearly 20 years 3. this is THE image that i would've wanted on the card aaaaaaaa

Careful Study from the current secret lair superdrop, with borderless art of the lofi girl working on her homework

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 30/08/2026

after finishing Ring by koji suzuki adn Cool S by @diebooth.bsky.social (go read it!!), i sprung for Strange Pictures by uketsu and uh uh it's...not very good! just like The Minecraft Movie is a perfect airplane movie, this is kind of the perfect airplane book - it's effortlessly terrible!

excerpt from Strange Pictures by uketsu:
Why didn't Yuki try to get help?
All she did was draw trick pictures.
'Pictures... Hey, wait a minute... ' Sasaki suddenly felt he had caught onto something big.
Kurihara had figured out the secret of the three pictures.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 15/08/2026

it was inspired by this comic by @hauntedsink.bsky.social & emily horne: this kid got a teratoma-style cancer that got wilder the more he got fed, & his mother refused to "hurt" him with chemo etc. it ended with him as a mouth in a basement, and mom fed him his friends who came to check up on him.

comic strip from "a softer world" by joey comeau and emily horne. over a black and white photo of someone walking out of an alley towards the street, captions read: "my daughter is a terrorist. a mother knows. she is my little girl, though. those people are strangers."

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 10/08/2026

look at this shit - skin and weight! i can feel it pressing its tail against the tree for grip there; it reminds me of how my ball python holds onto things by pressing itself against them. and of course that signature tedrick mouth anatomy focus. delicious!

marang river regent, from tarkir dragonstrom

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 10/08/2026

tedrick's creatures have a heft to them, in their thick folds of wrinkled skin and puffy masseter muscles and stubby claws - details that make you consider the subjects as plausible animals with weight and anatomy. god, it rules. @tedrick-art.bsky.social, your critters slap SO hard.

marauding brinefang, from caverns of ixalan

canopy gargantuen, from tarkir dragonstorm commander

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 10/08/2026

even though chomping kavu was printed first, the first time tedrick imprinted himself in my memory was in Duskmourne, where he illustrated all manner of amazing creature - from the wonderfully straightforward skullcrab to the brilliant and immediately memorable drowner and branchsnapper. gorgeous!

slavering branchsnapper, from duskmourne

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 10/08/2026

every now and then, i'll randomly stumble across the art for chomping kavu, and think "godDAMN that's a GOOD critter!" look at that chunkiness: bugger jaws than teeth, a chest that's trying to fit 4 appendages... finally checked the artist credit, and it's john fucking tedrick! that guy's amazing!

chomping kavu, from march of the machine

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 28/07/2026

i'm a big fan of bald, which rocks - but second suggestion is good-charlotte-style leopard spots

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 19/07/2026

oh hey that looks familiar having this shit on my wall rocks so hard, man - your work is so sick (sorry my room is so goddamn dark lol)

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 18/07/2026

my husband and i have a big fuecoco plush that we lovingly refer to as "our idiot son". hubby's traveling right now, but he apparently remembered the anniversary of us getting that plush, and hid a note under it before leaving. what a stupid fucking thing to celebrate. i'm over the moon <3

a photo of a hand holding a note in front of a big plush fuecoco. the note reads "hi mani! i'm 3 now. thanks for being a great poke-dad! love, fuecoco! (your idiot son)"

screenshot of a discord convo between me and my husband.
husband: "big fuecoco told me he has a message for you, so go say hi to him when you have the chance!"
i send him back the picture of me holding the note, and say: "i love you so fucking much. no wonder our son is an idiot, when we're both this goddamn stupid <3"
husband: "no thoughts head empty only love"

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 16/07/2026

hot rat summer might be what finally pushes me over the edge to update arena

a magic card back reward in arena, showing a shirtless rat man holdng a surfboard and drinking a fruity cocktail with a little umbrella

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 11/07/2026

hell yeah, looks just like him

knockoff plush of jax from The Amazing Digital Circus being sold on etsy. looks a little like a homestuck character??

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 09/07/2026

of course, the trailers are almost certainly trying to evoke Dunkirk vibes regardless of the actual movie. like, i think this shot is odysseus' men fleeing the laestrygonians (shown attacking them in the woods), but the trailer presents it like it's them charging to battle. still. more monsters!

a wide shot of soldiers running across a beach - but they're running away from the wooded land, and towards the surf, which makes me think this is them fleeing (earlier shots showed them being attacked by giants - the laestrygonians - in woods)

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 09/07/2026

first, there's just not enough monsters. polyphemus, sirens, scylla, charybdis, circe, laestrygonians, conversations with the dead - the Odyssey is a very MYTHICAL myth, and trying to play it as a grounded "soldier coming home" story loses all of that charm. gods and monsters, not soldiers.

matt damon as Odysseus, walking amid beached greek warships

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 08/07/2026

i think we did notice the arc of the main character of the entire show, actually

youtube thumbnail with Pomni from The Amazing Digital Circus and the text "how she changed"; the video title is "how gooseworx wrote the perfect character arc (without you noticing)"

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 27/06/2026

i take back my complaint about the cutscenes; i love seeing star fox get a soda from his shitty little minifridge

star fox getting a soda from his shitty little minifridge

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 15/06/2026

it feels very post-twitter, post-Harry-Potter, post...a lot of things, really. OBSESSION's multiple Customer Service for the Evil Product scenes are great comedy, but they really strike a chord, especially as we contemplate, say, Pokemon Go selling our gaming data to Child Murdering Drones Inc.

first panel of the penny arcade comic from June 12th, 2026. gabe says, shocked: "They've been using all my Pokemon Go scans to train killer robots?", to which an indignant tycho responds "Did you think they weren't?!"

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 15/06/2026

what really stands out to me about the Faustian Product in these particular movies is the scenes they have where the desperate main character calls the customer service, where a bored agent flatly rejects their pleas while reminding them of the product's terms and conditions, blaming the customer.

shot from THE SUBSTANCE. elizabeth looks distraught and helpless on the phone.

shot from OBSESSION. bear looks scared and helpless at his phone.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 15/06/2026

thinking about how both THE SUBSTANCE and OBSESSION have their horrors start with a vulnerable person using a sinister product that just normally exists in the world. there's a lot more to both movies, but the way each of them frames the Evil Faustian Product feels really resonant right now.

shot from THE SUBSTANCE. the main character reaches for a bright green fluid in a snazzy labelled bottle.

shot from OBSESSION. the character holds a box for a knick-knack labelled "One Wish Willow"

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 15/06/2026

i ran a ttrpg game tonight where the party broke into a museum. this led to me cracking up mid-session, as i had pulled up the museum's actual website, and noticed its FAQ began with "I've found a dead animal. Can I bring it to the museum?" and then also included these two other questions afterward

Where do your specimens come from?

Why so many specimens?

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 14/06/2026

saw OBSESSION - it good! a straightforwardly brutal horror movie that goes exactly where you think it's going to go, and just does NOT let up along the way. "It's not a romance, it's love story." "Aren't those the same thing?"

still image from OBSESSION. a woman stands on the porch of a suburban home, completely silhouetted by the front light, a shadow. no other lights are on. there's someone in the front seat, looking back at her.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 13/06/2026

while we're talking about sincerity and meta-humor, can i just say that it feels like the merch store for The Amazing Digital Circus suggests a really different relationship to its source material than, say, the "it's trauma!" stuff from Silent Hill Ascension?

screenshot of items from the merch store for The Amazing Digital Circus. one is a shirt featuring Jax that says "I can fix him" (sold out), the other is a shirt featuring Pomni that says "I can make her worse" (best selling)

screenshot of merch from the official konami store for Silent Hill Ascension. a mug and a shirt that say "It's trauma!", referencing an emote that was launched as part of the interactive episodes

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 09/06/2026

i would really consider doing some dark shit to get wotc to stop printing foil-only magic cards. even with modern art direction and foil layers, the end result is ALWAYS that the bright parts of the art get darkened and smeared with random colors, making cool compositions messy and illegible.

the official digital image for the promo treatment of Overlord of the Balemurk: a gaunt figure is haloed by dark rose-colored light, which contrasts well with its periwinkle skin and makes the whole thing pop, especially drawing attention to the single eye in the center of its head

a photo of an actual physical copy of the card, encased in a sleeve. even in favorable lighting conditions, the foiling process darkens all the colors, making the elements contrast less.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 06/06/2026

i know that ragging on unreleased games is taking cheapshots, the discourse equivalent of a bag of mediocre potato chips, but to indulge just a bit - sinking city 1 was so dull, empty, and repetitive; and the screenshots from the sinking city 2 demo look like just more of the same.

a man with a trenchcoat and a fedora, driving a little motorboat through the flooded street of a city. from the demo for The Sinking City 2.

a man with a trenchcoat and a fedora, driving a little motorboat through the flooded street of a city. from The Sinking City Remastered.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 10/05/2026

i do wonder if part of has to do with which critics cover which genres. annapurna puts out indie but often acclaimed games, so i could see them being more likely to get assigned to someone who's not bought into the genre of whatever specific game they're covering (unlike VNs) and get this reaction

panel from a penny arcade comic of an angry guy holding up a cupcake, going: "cupcakes are dumb. they're not big, like a regular cake. they're small and covered in frosting. what, are those sprinkles? i was tired of sprinkles when they were putting them on cookies."

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 08/05/2026

finally! man, the late game grind to get all the legendary and mythical mons at the end of the dlc is chore. at least in the final Scarlet/Violet dlc, those bonus legendaries weren't needed for the dex completion. also, i love seeind professor grand oak. it's like a reward in itself. lookit him!!

professor grand oak telling me i've completed all the pokemon home pokedexes for pokemon legends z-a

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 08/05/2026

for the record, this is meme he sent me (with the adorable caption "each of us is both of these people"):

cate blanchett looking refined and imposing in her costume as hela from the set of thor ragnarok, looking down her face at a much shorter taiki waititi who is showing her something on an ipad. blanchett is labeled "my girlfriend after performing surgery all day", and waititi is labeled "me showing her i made it to master ball tier"

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 03/05/2026

that's just so wild that even when i was looking at pictures of the two arts side-by-side showing the rings having the same reflections on them, i was initially like "ok but cmon, that can't REALLY have happened, surely" dan! THESE ARE THE SAME CARD DAN! THEY SHOW UP NEXT TO EACH OTHER IN SCRYFALL!

borderless art treatment of The One Ring in its first printing, art by Marta Nael. notably, the ring is floating in the air as it falls into the volcanic pit of mount doom, and you can see the browns, reds, and oranges of the rocky magmatic crags of the environment reflected on the ring's surface.

the one ring as it will appear in a borderless printing in the upcoming hobbit expansion. although it is now floating over an abstract background painted by Dan Frazier, the ring itself is the same as in Marta Nael's art (although without the elvish script on it visible) - including, damningly, the same reflections of mount doom on its surface.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 30/04/2026

"name 5 movies you've rewatched a million times - HARD MODE: NO STAR WARS, MARVE..."

mr satan, having no clue how utterly out of his depth he is, kicking cell. cell doesn't move at all.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 25/04/2026

look at this shit. how can you not be romantic about brewing

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 15/04/2026

ah yes, that's how locations work. everyone knows the most expensive parts of Infinity War was budgeting to travel to space for the Thanos scenes.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 12/04/2026

FUKK YEAH IT'S HERE AND IT RIPSSSS

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 11/04/2026

also did you know that grindr is in pokemon legends z-a

the player character is talking to a buff, dirty construction worker in a sleeveless top outside of some random sketchy door, who is saying "This must be my lucky day! You're just the kind of Trainer I was lookin' for!"

the buff construction worker says "All you wanted to do was wriggle through the pipe!"

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 11/04/2026

i am completely thrilled with what a sparkly little gayboy i can make in pokemon champions

the opening menu screen for pokemon champions with my custom character in the middle. he is exceptionally gay looking. like, dyed pink hair and sleeveless croptop gay. this little twink is here to hook up at HIIT classes and win pokemon battles.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 08/04/2026

for the years between "summon legend" and the introduction of "legendary" as a supertype, "Mirri, Cat Warrior counts as a Cat Warrior" was my favorite line of rules text in the whole game like, yeah, i hope she does!!

the original printing of Mirri, Cat Warrior from Exodus. at the time, "legend" was a creature type by itself, so any legendary creatures needed to have a line of text that gave them other creature types too. thus, we have a card named "Mirri, Cat Warrior", whose first line of rules text assured us that she does, indeed, "count as a Cat Warrior"

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 01/04/2026

finally stopped dragging my feet, and instead dragging some claws over the elite 4 with my team of gnarly meanies <3 i appreciate how the huge level gap between victory road and the elite 4, along with no real good place to grind the difference, means they are likely to be a tough fight. sweet.

the victory screen from Pokemon Fire Red after beating the elite four, showing my team: nidoking, gyarados, venusaur, aerodactyl, zapdos, raticate

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 26/03/2026

on the one hand, this cold has made it hard enough to think that work on the game has been slow these past few days. on the other hand, i finally finished enough of what i was working on that i can now actually commit it AND erase a bunch of my notes from my window

photo of a window, on which i've written a bunch of notes about some features for TRASHBRAIN that i've been working on

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 24/03/2026

you can see this in Griftlands (which is great, by the way). conversations are sometimes represented as "battles" using the game's deckbuilder combat system, and there's a totally different UX for that versus the conversations that are more visual-novel-like. (TRASHBRAIN is trying to merge the two!)

a screenshot of Griftlands showing a "battle" conversation. what's going on in the fiction is that two characters are arguing, but it's being handled as a deckbuilder-type battle, so the player's choices are general (e.g. "Deflect") and shown as cards in their hand, similar to other deckbuilders, rather than specific lines of dialog.

another screenshot from Griftlands, this time showing a conversation that's being handled more like a traditional visual novel. there are no cards or decks on the screen, and the player is given buttons to choose from that indicate exactly what their character will say/do next.

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Mani @eyeznteef.com · 24/03/2026

in TRASHBRAIN, i'm making a visual novel where your choices are driven by something like a deckbuilder, though. which means my choice can't simply be buttons that just appear - i need to communicate to the player that the choices are being randomly drawn, when you'll shuffle, etc.

a screenshot from Wildfrost. a hand of cards is that the forefront of the screen, covering the bottom third. on the left of the hand of cards is a pocket with more cards in it, indicating the deck the player draws from. on the right of the hand is an empty pocket, indicating where the cards from their hand will go.

a screenshot from Slay the Spire. again, we have a hand of cards in the forefront, even though each card represents an action that the player's character (shown on screen behind the cards) can take. there are also icons for the deck and discard pile, and when the player selects a card to take an action, that card moves up to the center of the screen as the action occurs.

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