iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 9m

... in... uh... lighter news... I got Bowie a new chew toy, he loves it.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 24m

… Can men, like, stop? That’s it. Is this about the Jacob Geller allegations? Rape culture in general. Fuck me.

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Sardonicus @sardonicus.eu · 1h

‘Anna Pavlova in Russian costume’, 1911 dancetabs.com/2012/08/anna...

Anna Pavlova wearing a traditional elaborately beaded kokoshnik and Russian court costume

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Last Feast of Harlequin @feastlastharlequin.bsky.social · 2h

This is one where I want to see a remake that tosses a lot of the original—the obtuseness, trial & error frustration—but preserves 100% of the story, characters, etc because I think SIREN could be considered up there with the goats of the genre. see @eurothug4000.bsky.social vids below for more

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 2h

… you know, it’s sinking in for me, depressingly, how age and disability can and will impact my ability to appreciate certain games.

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Hello, it's Dan McDaid @danmcdaid.bsky.social · 3h

Everyone is saying this is good, and they're right, it is. Don't read it till after you've seen the film though as it arrives at many interesting, thoughtful conclusions you might want to reach for yourself.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 3h

Letting my Deck recharge, I switched consoles… and opted to try out another old survival horror classic: Siren (or Forbidden Siren, depending on the region). … 20 min later, and I suddenly understand why it’s an acquired taste, to say the fucking least.

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NO GODS, NO MASTERS, BISEXUAL DISASTERS 🇵🇸 🇺🇦🔞 @travisteatime.bsky.social · 4h

Audience expectations aren't helping. Any RPG, any D&D derivative, will inevitably get minmaxed. Granted, EVERYTHING gets minmaxed because that's just human impulse, but what genre attracts Munchkins the most? RPGs. And what genre loses most of its ~je ne sais quoi~ once you "solve" it? Horror.

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NO GODS, NO MASTERS, BISEXUAL DISASTERS 🇵🇸 🇺🇦🔞 @travisteatime.bsky.social · 4h

Which is honestly pretty baffling considering Survival Horror *started* as an offshoot of the JRPG: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_H...

en.wikipedia.org

Sweet Home (video game) - Wikipedia

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NO GODS, NO MASTERS, BISEXUAL DISASTERS 🇵🇸 🇺🇦🔞 @travisteatime.bsky.social · 4h

If I had to guess, it's because RPGs, more than every other genre, went down a path of pure player empowerment and wish fulfillment which naturally puts it in opposition to horror. It's not impossible to reconcile these genres again, obviously, but there is quite a gap you have to bridge first.

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Adam Makey @darkestadam.bsky.social · 4h

SMT's a weird one for this too. Earlier entries were more spooky than they are now.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 4h

Suddenly reflecting on the strange relationship between horror and RPGs, at least in video games. Can’t toss a brick in the TTRPG industry without hitting a hapless horror game, but in the land of electronic interactive fiction…

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 5h

@doriandawes.bsky.social Guess who's kicking off October with a horror JRPG they watched you play during your stay in Montreal, to get a taste of horror/JRPG history for themselves? (it's me, it's me!)

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Claire E. Aubin @ceaubin.com · 18h

I also want to be clear that I don’t mean a conglomeration of circumstances *will* make *everybody* bad. Just that imagining yourself/anybody else to be naturally (due to empathy) above the world we are all subjected to is a fantasy. Like good things, anybody on earth is capable of very bad things.

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Claire E. Aubin @ceaubin.com · 18h

Imagining people who do evil things to be devoid of empathy is a way of comforting oneself, because we all know that we feel empathy and therefore are not the kind of person who could do *that.* It’s much scarier to know that a conglomeration of circumstances can turn basically anybody bad.

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Claire E. Aubin @ceaubin.com · 18h

There is a reason that alcohol played such an enormous role in the Holocaust, for example, because it in many cases provided a sort of empathy-dampening mechanism for perpetrators who wanted to commit violence without remorse but may have otherwise been unable to.

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Claire E. Aubin @ceaubin.com · 18h

Okay so I don’t think this is true - historically speaking, mass violence consistently comes from an attempted rejection (rather than a *lack*) of empathetic impulses, which exist whether we want them to or not, and desire to distance oneself from an externalized target.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 6h

I hate we have tangible proof of art’s material impact on reality… and it’s mostly as fuel for other people’s psychosis.

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NO GODS, NO MASTERS, BISEXUAL DISASTERS 🇵🇸 🇺🇦🔞 @travisteatime.bsky.social · 10h

Few games are as suited to collective nostalgia as Eternal Darkness, a game that not a lot of people consider excellent, but everybody *liked*, and that also comes with such a hilariously rocky & unique development history. You just always have something to talk about with it.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 16h

... I... I just finished reading this Slate article about Rod McKuen. I- Holy shit. I need to stare at a wall for a minute. slate.com/culture/2022...

slate.com

Fifty Years Ago, He Was America’s Most Famous Writer. Why Haven’t You Ever Heard of Him?

He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Then he disappeared.

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Lauren Ortega @laurenortega.bsky.social · 17h

God the Soul Reaver series and Eternal Darkness are essentially my gateways for a lot of console related stuff. So like instead of Zelda or Resident Evil in my heads it's always these. I think it's also not surprising where my tastes in fantasy and horror literature went.

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Erin, on the side of caution @calliopeanim.bsky.social · 17h

The multiple characters shtick is genuinely great and is something I’ve seen almost no one else imitate. Jumping from setting to setting, time period to time period, with characters who are by no means guaranteed to make it to the final credits? Shockingly refreshing.

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Sapient PC-98 Tapedeck (Cosette) @cosettetape.bsky.social · 17h

I legit don't think we get the Batman Arkham Asylum Scarecrow prank "crash-to-Input-1"/"redone intro with the roles reversed" sequence without it.

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Sapient PC-98 Tapedeck (Cosette) @cosettetape.bsky.social · 17h

Like, its pulpy, its sloppy, its imperfect in every way, but it's SO ambitious & SO deliberately experimental that you can see its fingerprints on everything it influenced afterwards.

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Adrienne @adrienneleigh.bsky.social · 17h

This game's sanity mechanic is so groundbreaking people (including me!) still talk about it as a high-water mark DECADES later.

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Pseudandry @pseudandry.bsky.social · 17h

I played it start to finish exactly the one time and I don't think this game would really reward replaying it all that much for me as it was an experience of the moment. Plus I'm not going to frantically get up looking for my remote that I thought I sat on if I did it in the 2020s

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Pseudandry @pseudandry.bsky.social · 17h

I came to this as an adult and I think I was the perfect audience (person who likes pulpy horror fiction as a kid but hadn't played any horror games) who was exposed exactly the right way (once full through so the sanity stuff hit and the goofiness didn't linger enough to have me think too hard)

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Sapient PC-98 Tapedeck (Cosette) @cosettetape.bsky.social · 17h

Having just watched Majuular's vid on it, this game is to the growth of 3D survival horror what Ultima IV was to the growth of CRPGS beyond being just running around throwing stat blocs at each other. Its structure is still novel, its scares & deceptions are still unique, & its tone is unmatched.

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NO GODS, NO MASTERS, BISEXUAL DISASTERS 🇵🇸 🇺🇦🔞 @travisteatime.bsky.social · 17h

This is also why Dyack's still constantly taking sole credit for the entirety of Legacy Of Kain. Everything about the franchise that's actually GOOD and that people LOVE, it was written by a woman, and that injustice just cannot stand. Dumbass incel GGer. You should see his new slopcode F2P game.

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NO GODS, NO MASTERS, BISEXUAL DISASTERS 🇵🇸 🇺🇦🔞 @travisteatime.bsky.social · 17h

According to literally every other Silicon Knights developer who worked at the game, Dyack was the least important aspect of the game, he was the millstone, the game only got done in spite of him, no matter how much credit he reserves for it NOW. He is not the reason we never got another lmao

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 18h

Bsky seems to be crapping the bed again, none of my images are loading up.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 19h

"Bear Talks Games: Eternal Darkness." I'd played this once, years ago, as a rental. At the time, I don't think I'd played anything like it on the GameCube, and Luigi's Mansion doesn't count. Hell, I'm at least 50% certain this was my first proper survival horror game!

The cover for Eternal Darkness, depicting a pre-rendered 3D representation of a Stone Henge-like circle.

... unless that is, in fact, meant to *be* Stone Henge.

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Kyle Marquis @moochava.bsky.social · 20h

This reminds me of a *fantastic* Slate article by Dan Kois on '70s superstar poet and contemporary nonentity Rod McKuen. Just an amazing article.

slate.com

Fifty Years Ago, He Was America’s Most Famous Writer. Why Haven’t You Ever Heard of Him?

He sold 60 million books and 100 million records. Then he disappeared.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 20h

... I've now seen my first "Bowie recognizes his reflection and stares at it contemplatively" moment. No barking, more curious sniffing. Fascinating.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I say this as someone who lives here- There’s no one more insecure about their intrinsic Frenchness than a French-Canadian.

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🥨 Mr. Salty 🥨 @mrsalty.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Aggro coding on these Frenchmen is real buggy it seems.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Absolutely surreal interaction just now: Was walking Bowie, lost in my own thoughts piling mental memos for tomorrow’s game, when I heard a THUMP at a window: An old woman was banging her window at me, and that’s when I noticed I’d wandered onto the lawn in front of this duplex.

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Adam Makey @darkestadam.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I'm at that stage where realising how many people have unexpressive faces due to Botox is distracting. Not on actors as much but man... We need people to be human in a way that doesn't freeze beauty standards at 20.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Speaking of, she guest-starred in a season 2 Columbo episode, in a performance that 100% leaned into the role that made her face- with a twist. Now she was the aging beauty queen actress, cast down from the a-list and slumming it in TV movies (ha).

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I’ve brought this up before- But watching older media like Columbo… Now, yes, obviously, there were unreasonable beauty standards then, especially and always for women. But watching a 70s Columbo episode, it’s hard not to appreciate the range of faces on display, men and women.

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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Last week the Portland Police made a huge deal about a K9 killed in the line of duty apprehending a dangerous suspect. Turns out that K9 was shot and killed by...the Portland Police www.kgw.com/article/news...

kgw.com

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ. The entire administration needs to be shamed into oblivion.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

... unironically, Yoshiaki Kawajiri is slowly but surely turning into one of my favourite Japanese filmmakers / animators. What a singularly strange, pulpy, horny vision.

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Philby Bear (they/them) @philbybear.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Sidebar: Note to self, some day? Make room for VEEP. Love Julia Louis-Dreyfus, wild I haven't seen this yet.

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