BeamBrain

As in, what's something you loved as a kid, found cringe as you get older, then gained a new appreciation for as an adult? Here are some of mine:

• Pokemon. I expect this will be a common one. It's got cute creature designs and fun tactical battling, and since I've outgrown my shame at liking cute things, I'll happily keep coming back to it.
• Yu-Gi-Oh. I still don't much care for the CCG (I'm opposed on principle to any game where your ability to win largely depends on how much money you're willing to sink into it), but the anime bursts with dorky charm and the video games are fun. A setting where reincarnated ancient sorcerers and billionaires are stone-dead serious about a children's card game is also a nice break from the modern plague of "well that just happened" Marvel soy banter.

Oni Tank T-34

Apparently there's a plot point that involves Gaia creating the Ratkin to eradicate humanity's "surplus population" through disease, which has some very uncomfortable implications, especially in the light of the gross indifference to human life that the ruling class has exhibited in the wake of Covid-19.

I realize this is hinged on a lot of assumptions (that this information is accurate in-universe and that Gaia, as the personification of the Earth, serves as a mouthpiece for the creators' environmentalist views), which is why I'm asking.

How much longer will they deprive us of Shadowrun: Hong Kong 97?

My org has like 8 events on the calendar for this upcoming week and I'll need to attend at least 2-3. The first one isn't until tomorrow but seeing those updates just drained me of energy and now all I want to do is lay down and tune out the world.

For the most part, the article speaks for itself, though I did want to add some elaborations of my own.

At first blush, Marta Velasquez, the game's protagonist, seems like the stereotypical Strong Female Character (tm): a misguided attempt to make an admirable female character by having her embody all the traits of toxic masculinity. What becomes apparent as one plays through the game, though, is that we're not supposed to admire these traits, and in fact the game spends a fair amount of time dissecting and criticizing toxic masculinity through her. Velasquez is a hazard to everyone around her, carelessly blasting her wingmen, sabotaging her organization so she can fly more missions, constantly threatening her coworkers with violence, and the world reacts accordingly. Her coworkers fear and despise her, her self-centered attitude gets in the way of her organization's mission, and she largely spends the game digging herself into a deeper and deeper hole. She is, at best, a terribly broken person in desperate need of therapy, only tolerated by those around her out of pity or necessity.

That's doing quite a bit with a female protagonist for 1994, and a hell of a lot more than any contemporary games I can think of (Metroid 2 and Super Metroid maybe come close).