u/Billycatnorbert

No I’m not crazy, hear me out.

So we know, generally as we have been taught in the games that weavers take human corpses and turn them into phantoms. We are taught this pretty early on in the game and it is restated a few times throughout the game.

But when a corpse is corrupted and claimed by the typhon, being warped into a phantom, we still get to see their name. But a lot of the phantoms in the game spawn in to keep the areas populated and prevent places being too easy to move through. And none of them tie back to humans on the station.

In fact if we wanted to, we could track everyone on the station down to their exact corpses if we wanted to. So surely I can’t be that far off when I assume that these phantoms are not human corpses. I’m sure we could hand wave it away as a game mechanic, but for a game so well thought through, so meticulously and lovingly put together it seems unlikely to be an oversight. So where do yall think, or know the additional phantoms come from?

This is like my third discussion post now, and I’ve got to say they’re pretty fun so I wanna keep it going. My last one had some angry little kitties who disagreed vehemently with me, which is cool cause that’s part of the discussion but before I say anything if yall wanna get angry, I’ll take it but don’t direct it at the other people in the comments or the author/stories in question. Yk how it goes.

So my last two posts were about stolen tongues and the hidden webpage and why I think they fail as stories. I like analysing and discussing where I think other stories fail, as a writer myself. It’s fun to analyse and learn from others. So I thought it’d be fun to take a look at one of the most polarising authors on the cast. I think a lot of people get up in arms about the depravity and harsh themes that Elias uses in his works, but I fundamentally disagree on that being where the issue lies.

I think the issue is that it’s unearned, which also hints at why I think feed the pig is his best story (that we’ve heard on the podcast). I know some people got a little uncomfy or up in arms about Tommy Taffy. So let’s put that one aside for now and look at there’s something wrong with dad. Cause I think there couldn’t be a clearer example of the issue, which is not the depravity itself, but the fact that it’s completely unearned. There’s no thematic or narrative reason for it except for the fact that it is.

Tommy Taffy, as I said rides the line between this is close to horrifying and then too much. Why? Because the two scenes (one in the first and one in the second) don’t add to the story at all. We’ve already set up that this is what’s going on and how things are in the house. We get the (I think pretty effective) scene outside the sisters bedroom. Which is both (I think) worse, and earlier in the story. Seeing another graphic scene after that, which is only there for a first person perspective but does not further the narrative or escalate the steaks makes the scene completely unearned, and then makes an already rough topic and scene that much less unpalatable.

I want to talk about tall dog, but I’m not going to because I don’t think I followed the story well enough. Personally I’m not a fan of the episodes, just because it seems like the live format includes the boys stopping every sentence to have a bit and riff. Which is fun (I do like) but causes my almost empty brain to really struggle to keep up with what’s going on in the actual story because it keeps stopping and starting a lot more than the usual podcast format does. For that reason I won’t touch on it, though I remember thinking it’s pretty fun.

So now let’s talk about feed the pig. Why do I think it’s his best? Because it follows a narrative arc. We open the story with the Mc having committed toaster in bath. He was depressed, he wanted an easy way out, he took it. He couldn’t be bothered to keep going, and he took the cowards way out. We then get the intro and he meets people from the black farm. The dude jorking it and cumming ants is pretty depraved, but narratively speaking it represents one of the two futures he has to choose between. We also have the girl, who represents the main characters own choice, having chosen to stay because she was afraid and thereby suffering for all eternity.
So when the Mc decides to feed the pig, it’s him taking the difficult path, and pulling himself through against his own cowardice. He got there by giving up, but he gets out through his own commitment and it creates a really tight juxtaposition for the narrative arc to follow. So everything from the kid getting shotgunned in the face, to the dude going putting ham on his pig in blanket, to the main character getting eaten like a bug feels earned and deserved. That, to me is where the importance lies.

It’s not about having making depravity tolerable, but rather earning the right to put it in your story. That’s my opinion at least, but yall can let me know yours. See you in the comments xxx

Edit: I should also add. Regardless of how you tolerate his work, I think we can all appreciate that he is an excellent writer. I’ve seen a lot of hate towards him on this sub and I do think it’s undeserved cause he’s a fuckin sick writer.

Mild spoilers ahead, but nothing too serious, fair warning, I guess

This might sound like I'm throwing lightning bolts at prey, but I'm not trying to. It is my favourite game of all time, as I'm sure it is for many of you too, but this has been bugging me. I'm on something like my 5th playthrough right now, and I just had the thought. I've never really thought about it, but we open with Dr Bellamy getting vored by a lil tentacular boi, then gas hits, and you wake up again. Turns out the typhon breached containment. We got transcribe messages early on about how everyone is getting ordered to head to escape pods, etc. It is a stationwide panic blah blah blah, end yet no one thought to grab Morgan and help them escape? The typhon breach literally starts (as far as we can tell) in the simulation lab, so we know Morgan's "room" isn't a safe place to be. Everyone is running for their lives, including Alex, and no one goes to get one of the most important and revered heads on the entire station? Am I missing something, or does it not make sense to any of y'all either?

Edit: hey yall. Sorry I’ve not been replying to many people, I’ve been offline for a while. Some of you have been giving me super in depth answers and ideas which is really cool. I appreciate everything all of you have been contributing, and I’m sorry for not replying to many of you, but I appreciate all of the comments xxx

So, I don’t want to compare the two necessarily, that’s been done on here plenty of times without me starting another discussion on the topic. But I had a question/discussion about how the two match up to each other.

I’ve been playing mooncrash a lot recently. I’ve been in the final stretch of my university finals, and generally just been doing university work for most of the past 4 years. So I’ve not really had the time, commitment or mental space to start new games much. So I’ve been grinding mooncrash for the past year and a bit in my free time since I can do a few runs in an hour, not commit to the story and then just step away. Prey is my all time favourite game so the idea of an arcade like rogue lite that’s essentially just playing prey’s skin and mechanics sounded great. I’ve not played another game that plays much like prey, and the mechanics seem pretty special (stuff like the gloo gun as an example. The strategy of incapacitate, then attack feels unique to prey). But since I finished uni about a week ago I’ve been playing it a lot more. I did an all nighter the other night cause my body clock has been fucked and I wanted a hard reset so spent about 8 hours just grinding mooncrash and after that much time I just found myself yearning to play the full game.

I thought it was just nostalgia, but I booted up the original and oh mama. I started up a new game fresh and the second I hit that first mimic with a wrench I knew it was more than just nostalgia. For startes the Typhon fundamentally look different. The purple ish, tentacular, weird tv static look of mooncrash is kinda weird. After grinding the DLC for so long I went numb to it for the most part, but as soon as I entered the original, the deep black, shiny design of the mimics in the original look so much better.
The idea of yearning for the original started with me thinking about Morgan’s office. There was something so fun about having a safe(ish) zone with three turrets outside where I had to touch base with constantly. I thought that was the main difference but since I reopened the game, the environments feel different. The whole design of the environments feels different in a way I can’t describe. It could be familiarity. I could walk all of Talos 1 in my dreams (and have), but I know the mooncrash locations like the back of my hand and just don’t get the same feeling from them at all.
Obviously the dlc doesn’t have microgravity sections, and though I do enjoy the low gravity jump mechanics at the crater, I don’t find it enticing enough to compare in any meaningful way.

I could list off differences but I’ve been thinking about this for 2 days and haven’t found something that I’m convinced by. It seems like Prey has some intangible special sauce that I just can’t quite place my finger on but something definitely feels missing from mooncrash (it’s still very fun and I have been enjoying it a lot)

Any ideas what this intangible quality could be?

Exactly as the title says.
I’ve got a mix and it sounds fuckin incredible. Best mix I’ve ever made by far, but as always as soon as I stick the vocals on it, the whole thing gets dragged down. I wanna know, from recording techniques to end of mix, what do yall?
I’ve learnt a lot of stuff in terms of mixing, but I feel like vocals always get skated over as “record, compress, bit of verb and you’re done” and that just doesn’t seem or sound right to me. On all my demos I do double and triple tracking etc. I have a main vox straight down the middle, FET fast and then Opto slower compressor, running into a little verb with the rest of the track. Then a double track underneath of the same vocal line panned slightly left and right to add width and thickness. Then I double track my harmonies the same a little wider than the main double tracks, all processed similarly to the main vocal. But it just doesn’t sound right to me. It usually works well on my demos, but in the full official mix it sounds clustered and wrong. But even doing so with the main vocal, one main track it sounds laid on top and buried in the mix.
I’m doing hard rock and metal so there’s a lot going on in the full frequency spectrum around the vocals in the higher intensity parts of the song. I usually EQ the other harmonic content removing a little of the frequencies from 2-300ish to 2-4k only down the mid channel to make some space for the vocals. But still it feels like the vocals don’t sit well. The whole mix sounds lush and sexy and professional, and as soon as I put the vox in it sounds so amateur and crap.

What do yall do? Or what would you do?