u/Wolfman_1546

First off, I hate this. This is not me being dramatic or overreacting. Ending physical media is a death knell for game ownership and I am not okay with it and you shouldn't be either.

Now here's what I've noticed. Every time a decision like this gets made, the hardcore gamers and influencers lose their minds. And they're right to. But there's a problem. The outrage cycle almost never actually works. The last time Sony tried to shut down the PS3 store, the backlash caused a delay. That's it. A delay. They just tried again and this time they're not blinking. That's because these companies have figured out that we will bitch, we will moan, we will make videos and sign petitions, and then we will keep handing them our money anyway. They have bet on that every single time and they have been right every single time.

The only thing that has ever actually worked, the only thing that will ever actually work, is making it stop being profitable. That means a full, focused, long term boycott of Sony. Cancel your PS Plus. Don't buy another Sony product. Don't touch another Sony game. Don't give money to anything Sony has their fingers in. No half measures, no "I'll just finish this one game first." The line has to be absolute because Sony will absolutely try half measures themselves. They will walk a few things back, wait for the sentiment to cool, and then try again. That cannot work this time.

I know that sounds like I'm calling for revolution over video games. Maybe I am. But here's the thing, this doesn't get discussed honestly enough. People act like organized consumer action is some insane overreaction when the reality is it's the only lever we actually have.

And here's the part that really kills me. I don't think it's going to happen.

I don't think hardcore gamers are united enough or have the willpower to disengage long term. A full boycott is next to impossible to maintain when the thing you're boycotting is also your hobby. And mainstream gamers, which is the majority, don't know and honestly don't care that they're getting financially screwed. They will keep handing over their cash and laugh at the rest of us for taking this seriously enough to try and organize. That's the trap and I genuinely don't see a clean way out of it.

So here's my practical advice for the people who actually give a shit. Buy physical whenever you can. If you're a PC gamer, stay on Steam and GOG. Steam isn't perfect but they have built up enough goodwill that they can be trusted for now, and I believe they have plans in place that would allow most games to be retained if they ever did go down. GOG is the gold standard though. DRM free. You actually own what you buy there. You know, like you should.

Because that's really what this is about. It's not that digital media is bad. It's that you don't actually own what you're paying for. If you did, this wouldn't be the crisis it is. Physical media bypasses that entirely. No server required. No authentication. No "foreseeable future" language that carries zero legal guarantee. Just a disc and compatible hardware.

The PS3 store closing is a preview of where all of this ends unless Stop Killing Games finds real success. A ton of games are going to be lost to time. The people who care have seen this coming. The only way it stops is if it stops being profitable and that takes a level of will and organization that I'm honestly not sure this community has.

I'm suggesting we start with Sony specifically because it's easier to boycott one than all of them. If we can financially cripple one company enough to force a real reversal, not a delay, a reversal, the others will get in line. If they don't, we keep going. But unless that happens, this is our reality. Companies will keep finding new and inventive ways to squeeze every last penny out of us while giving us less and less in return.

Oh and one last thing.

If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't theft.

Max Brooks wrote one of the greatest zombie novels ever made. Hollywood gave us Brad Pitt running very fast. A Paramount sequel is now in development and will almost certainly do the same thing.

I wrote the pitch for the version that actually deserves to exist. A faux documentary limited series where the real Max Brooks plays himself, structured exactly like the book, with found footage, dramatic reenactments, and an episode breakdown detailed enough to show exactly how it would work on screen.

If you are a World War Z fan, a horror fan, or just someone who gets frustrated when Hollywood strips the soul out of source material, this one is for you.

The Wolf Den Blog

So let’s just get this out of the way upfront, the 2013 film is not a bad film by any real meassure. As a blockbuster action horror it works, and works well. The wall climb scene is a great bit of iconic imagery. The twist that the undead ignore the sick is a fun and inventive choice for a zombie flick. Brad Pitt is doing what Brad Pitt does best. If you watch it cold with no expectations it's a good time and I feel like the box office kind of proved that.

I think the thing that hurts the film the most is the title.

So for starters, World War Z (the book) has no single protagonist. That is by design and its kind of the entire point. The oral history format exists specifically to get rid of the trope of having you view a worldwide event through a single pair of eyes. And this too is by design because how could a single viewpoint ever truly capture the weight of an event like that? The moment you put a single person at the center of a story like that, you haven't just changed the adaptation, you've inverted its entire foundation. World War Z is about collective human failure and survival across dozens of cultures simultaneously, while the movie is about one exceptional man who figures it out the problem and races to save the world. Those are not the same story. They are almost entirely opposite each other.

Additionally, the chapters that help make the book extraordinary, Redeker, Breck Scott, the Battle of Yonkers, the tenth man doctrine, the geopolitical texture of how different governments responded based on their actual real world priorities, none of it survives. Because none of it fits inside the neat little action horror box they’ve constructed. A two hour action film built around a single movie star has no room for a South African strategist who designed one of the most horrific survival solutions the world could imagine. It has no room for a pharmaceutical grifter sitting in an Antarctic luxury habitat with zero remorse. It has no room for the quiet devastating irony that the most technologically advanced military in human history was catastrophically wrong about what kind of war it was fighting. These are the things that make the book so well loved and hit hard with its fan base, and they are also the types of things that this cookie cutter Hollywood blockbuster had to cut for the sake of mainstream appeal.

So the question I have is what could actually work?

The only format that can do this book justice IMO is the one Brooks was essentially already writing. A faux documentary. A limited series structured exactly like the book, where a fictionalized Max Brooks travels the world conducting on camera interviews with survivors years after the fact. The war is over and the watchers are being taken on a journey as he assembles/creates the record of what happened.

I think this what Brooks wrote perfectly lends itself for this exact type of storytelling. Flashbacks illustrate what survivors describe. Found footage, body cam, helmet cam, news broadcasts, security feeds, functions as documentary evidence rather than stylistic flourish. When we see the Battle of Yonkers through soldier mounted helmet cam, we are watching footage that was meant to showcase military dominance become the record of catastrophic failure. The format turns their hubris into a fantastic storytelling tool.

The format also solves a problem that I think has no solution in a conventional drama. You cannot put the moral weight of the Redeker Plan into an action sequence. You cannot put Breck Scott's remorselessness into a chase scene. These are performances. They live in faces and voices and the silence between answers. A documentary format lets them be exactly what they are without having to translate them into something else.

IMO, prestige television is the only medium with the runtime and the patience to do this right. And the documentary limited series, given what The Jinx and Making a Murderer demonstrated about what that format can do dramatically, is the only structure that actually honors what Brooks built. Also, It should be rated R. This story is rough and gruesome and the only way to do it justice is to showcase that. It should be hard to watch because the war was hard to watch for those living it.

So who’s with me?

Max Brooks wrote one of the greatest zombie novels ever made. Hollywood gave us Brad Pitt running very fast. A Paramount sequel is now in development and will almost certainly do the same thing.

I wrote the pitch for the version that actually deserves to exist. A faux documentary limited series where the real Max Brooks plays himself, structured exactly like the book, with found footage, dramatic reenactments, and an episode breakdown detailed enough to show exactly how it would work on screen.

If you are a World War Z fan, a horror fan, or just someone who gets frustrated when Hollywood strips the soul out of source material, this one is for you.

The Wolf Den Blog

Hoping someone here has cracked this. I'm running Bazzite with KDE Plasma, two Asus VG27A monitors at 1440p/165Hz, an RX 7900 XTX, and an Xbox Series X as the source. Controller is an Xbox pad on the Xbox Wireless Adapter. PC is wired on 2 gigabit fiber, Xbox is on strong 5GHz Wi-Fi. Network is not the bottleneck.

The problem: Xbox Remote Play caps at 1080p, and fullscreen on my 1440p panel looks soft because the stream gets upscaled. I want the sharpest possible 1080p output. Windowed 1080p in Greenlight looks great, but the window is small and I want fullscreen.

What I've tried: maxed bitrate in Greenlight (40 Mbps slider, 20 Mbps protocol cap), played with H.264 profile options, tried both 8-bit and 10-bit color, confirmed Adaptive Sync is off. Tried dropping the monitor to 1080p in KDE Display Configuration and got garbled scanlines every time, even with refresh rate dropped to 60Hz first. Same result on both monitors. Tested both XStreamingDesktop and Greenlight as clients.

What I'm asking: Has anyone gotten KDE Wayland to switch a VG27A to 1080p cleanly? Is there a Mesa/AMD integer scaling or GPU-side scaling trick for pixel-perfect 1080p to 1440p upscaling on Linux? Does the VG27A OSD have a 1:1 mode I'm missing? Any Remote Play client that handles upscaling better than Greenlight? Or am I just stuck and the windowed approach is the real answer?

Hi everyone! I'm fairly new to this and have only been playing for about a week as a Sirin archer. Overall the game is fun and I want to keep playing, but I've got some mixed feelings and wanted to see if anyone else is in the same boat.

Combat is okay. As an archer it can get a little stale at times. The magic system helps keep things interesting but I wish the powers were a little more substantial. My Decoy doesn't always pull aggro and the damage is minimal. Would be cool if there were ways to actually strengthen the magic beyond just stacking Virtues.

The world is interesting but the game seems to lack any real in-depth story. I'm finding it hard to care about the world or what's happening. I get the rough shape of it (Fey, Ode, all that) but it's not really told to me, it's just... around me.

The quest design is my biggest gripe. It feels like the game can't decide if it wants to be open-world or have a dedicated linear quest system, so it hedges on both and does neither very well. Stuff that feels like it should chain (unlocking the smith, then potions, then the next thing) ends up spaced out by hours of grinding random materials.

I'm also still struggling with armor and weapons. I've been in the same gear this whole time. My guess is progressing more content unlocks it, but it's so slow. I don't know how the average person does it. The smith only has weapons and armor I can't use, so that's a no-go for me right now.

All that said, there is something here. The foundations of the game seem solid, it just feels incomplete, which makes sense because it's an alpha. Just curious if my experience is unique, or if I'm missing something, or if this is just how it is for everyone right now.

EDIT: So it seems I'm not alone and my expectations for the game were maybe just a little unreasonable given the state of it. Thanks a ton for the helpful feedback, everyone!

Hi all, just got my code and created a character last night. I got as far as the dude with the quill before needing to stop playing and engage dad mode. Does anyone have any advice or tips for someone just trying things out?

Hey all. I updated my story manually to the new genre and subgenre system a little while ago and I am trying to figure out if the transition affected anyone else's discoverability.

Before the change I was getting consistent daily readers and even the occasional spam comment which at least told me my chapters were being surfaced to someone. Since the transition my last couple of chapters have gotten zero views and zero comments of any kind. Curious whether this is a known issue during the migration, whether stories that were not updated early took a hit, or whether anyone has noticed their rankings or traffic change since the new system started rolling out. Not panicking about it, just trying to understand how the new system works and whether there is anything worth doing while everything settles.

Still working on my part 3 of why Rhysand gets grace and Tamlin doesn't, but I have to say this reread and interacting with Tamlin's defenders has been eye opening. I still haven't changed my position, but seeing what areas specifically his defenders latch on to has been incredibly illuminating, and I love that these interactions have opened my eyes to bits of the story I hadn't noticed before. Even though it hasn't swayed me, I now find Tamlin even more interesting as a character than I once did. It's been a truly interesting experience and I'm excited to keep going with it.

One of the most interesting things I have encountered in private chats is the topic of abuse and assault, and how there seems to be a lot of resentment around it on both sides. As someone on the Rhysand side, I can't count how many times I've been accused of being okay with SA for my take, and I don't think I am alone in that. When it happens, it's always done either in an attempt to shut me down right out of the gate, or when the person I'm engaging with has run out of arguments. But the reverse is true for a lot of people on the Tamlin side. They get the same thing. Way too many on the Rhysand side will accuse them of being abuse enablers or being okay with abusive people, and do it in the exact same context it gets done to us.

We talk a lot about trauma and trauma responses in this debate, and it's kind of funny that a lot of us seem to have our own trauma response from the debate itself. If you are doing this on either side you are not arguing in good faith, and you should be called out for it by your own people, not just the other side. That's the only way this stops being the norm.

Curious if people on both sides actually agree with this or if I'm off base. Let me know.

Hey everyone! This is a continuation of my last post from three days ago called “Context, Intent, Motivation. Why Rhysand Gets Grace And Tamlin Doesn't.”

For those that haven't seen it, you can read it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/acourtofcanon/comments/1sjpzyk/context_intent_motivation_why_rhysand_gets_grace/

Now that post was a very lengthy dive into the entirety of ACOTAR. There was also at least one person willing to go through my 13 page breakdown and attempt to respond to almost all of it. That being the case, I think it might be easier to take MAF in smaller chunks so that anyone wanting to counter me doesn't have to also write pages worth of responses.

For this part, I want to start with the first two chapters of MAF. I am much further along in the read but like I said, I think smaller chunks are better for a Reddit style breakdown.

Now if the differences I tried to highlight in the first book were not enough for you, then I have to say that the first part of MAF might as well be called "Here is exactly how Rhysand and Tamlin are different and why you should not see them the same." Rereading this book makes me remember exactly why it is that Tamlin gets hated on so much. It's honestly a struggle to reconcile what we see here with how his defenders can legitimately argue moral equivalency between him and Rhysand.

We pick up 3 months after the first book. Both Tamlin and Feyre are visibly traumatized and I say both because I do know plenty of people on the Rhysand side of this debate like to gloss over that Tamlin is also going through trauma, that shouldn't be a debate. The events have taken someone who is already hyper protective and possessive and dialed those traits up to a million. He can't sleep, he shifts into beast form and guards the room and monitors doors and windows. The dude is paranoid. I say all that not because it's a valid justification for his actions (it's not) but it does inform his actions and that shouldn't be ignored. Conversely Feyre is also wrecked. She is having nightmares, can't sleep, and vomits almost nightly while alone in her room.

One thing I want to highlight here is that neither of them are actually able to comfort each other. "It had become our unspoken agreement — not to let Amarantha win by acknowledging that she still tormented us."

That isn't a slight against Tamlin, mind you. I simply bring it up to point out one in a long list of reasons why Feyre and Tamlin are NOT good together. Their relationship is and has been largely physical. I brought up Tamlin's actions UTM as one point about this and that thread continues here. Neither can talk about the issue, all they can do is ignore it, and for Feyre the justification is not letting Amarantha win. At first glance this can seem like solidarity. What it actually describes is two people in complete silence about their trauma with no support structure between them. The agreement protects the fiction that they are okay. It does not help either of them actually recover and enables Tamlin's already present issue with not getting what Feyre really needs to heal. "Sometimes I wondered if I heard his breath catch, only for a heartbeat. I never had the nerve to ask if he was awake." He may know she is sick every night. The text does not let him off that hook.

That is basically it for the first chapter but I wanted to highlight this situation not as the smoking gun for Tamlin but a continuation of patterns we have already seen in the past book. There is no denying Tamlin is broken, that isn't the issue. The issue is how he responds to his trauma and how it affects those around him versus Rhysand's handling of equal trauma. And again, let's be clear, Rhysand is just as traumatized as Tamlin. An all powerful being who could fly was locked under a mountain for 50 years away from those he loved, away from his court, and sexually assaulted during the entire span of that time. Let's also not forget that Amarantha forced him to her bed deliberately every single year on the night of Starfall just to really make it even worse. “Every year that I was Under the Mountain and Starfall came around, Amarantha made sure that I … serviced her. The entire night. Starfall is no secret, even to outsiders—even the Court of Nightmares crawls out of the Hewn City to look up at the sky. So she knew … She knew what it meant to me.” And I said all that because a common response as a defense to Tamlin is that he's been traumatized. I brought up patterns of hypocrisy from Tamlin defenders in my last post and I bring this up to address them here as well. If you are going to use trauma as a justification for every terrible act Tamlin does, then you have to apply that standard equally. Trauma is always a factor and should be considered, but I don't give Rhysand a pass for his bad actions because he is traumatized. That's the whole point. It's the choices people make in response to the trauma that matters, not the trauma itself, at least not for the point I'm making.

Next we move onto chapter 2 and this is where we start seeing the broader patterns continue. We learn that Feyre has been begging Tamlin to go to the village and help with rebuilding for the last 3 months and he keeps denying her that. "He'd said that every time we had this argument; every time I begged him to let me go to the nearby village." This is the first instance we see where Feyre is being denied what she wants and what she is saying she needs. Tamlin is removing her autonomy here because he decided she isn't safe, not because Feyre decided it. It's a small incident but one of many that when taken together show the simple fact that Tamlin does not care about what Feyre wants or needs. It's all about his choices and what he thinks. Tamlin defenders will cite protection here and then bring up that we learn about Naga and other creatures still in Tamlin's lands, but that in and of itself is exactly where a lot of us take issue. Tamlin withholds the danger to keep her inside, then uses that same danger as justification for keeping her inside only when she pushes hard enough to force his hand. She asks Tamlin directly at the stables if she can go to the village. He says it's not safe because they're still hunting Amarantha's beasts. She pushes back saying the wards are up. That's when he drops the Naga detail — "Lucien hunted down five naga yesterday." He reveals it not to inform her but to shut down her argument. And Lucien's wince confirms it was coordinated. He knew she didn't know and let that stand until Tamlin needed the information as a weapon to end the conversation. And Lucien also knows he's now pissed Feyre off by playing along, which is also important because it isn't just Feyre that sees his actions as wrong, it's Lucien too. And what gets me the most is the point about this only being revealed as a tactic to restrain her. Feyre is being deliberately kept in the dark about what's going on but she needs that information in order to make an informed decision. Rhysand gives her the info she needs to do that, Tamlin doesn't, save when he needs to use revealing information as justification for keeping her locked up. Keeping someone safe and keeping someone ignorant are not the same thing. Tamlin consistently conflates them.

Then we go back to Feyre's wants and needs. There are other more subtle events here that demonstrate that Tamlin puts the needs and wants of others above the needs and wants of Feyre. First of these is the wedding dress. While he privately agrees the dress is absurd and laughs with Feyre about it in private, he still sides with Ianthe anyway and tells Feyre that “she knows best.”  That is not deference to good judgment. That is choosing the path of least resistance at Feyre's expense while maintaining the illusion of unity with Ianthe. Then there are the dresses that Ianthe puts Feyre in daily. "I hated the bright dresses that had become my daily uniform, but didn't have the heart to tell Tamlin — not when he'd bought so many, not when he looked so happy to see me wear them." That is someone swallowing her own preferences to manage someone else's feelings while running on empty. She is not choosing this life. She is enduring it to protect him from having to reckon with what she actually needs.

Which then leads us to the training argument. This one gets most of us because if protection is the ultimate goal, then training Feyre to be able to use and control her new abilities is easily the best possible way to ensure she is protected. If the dangers out there are truly that stark, then every option should be taken to ensure Feyre is ready to meet those dangers. Tamlin refuses, and I would argue that it's because Tamlin quite visibly has a desire for a pretty and quiet little wife who plans parties, gossips with courtiers, and paints pretty pictures. He does not want a warrior woman who does what she wants and can match him in power. His patterns show this over and over again. And then when Ianthe shuts the talk down with "why should the bride of the High Lord learn to fight if peace has returned?" Tamlin privately sees both sides but again sides with Ianthe. But there is a problem here. If there is so much peace, why the hell is the need for protection so high? Anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see the hole in this argument. They are either drowning in so much peace that training is unnecessary and Feyre needs to be free to go where she pleases and help where she wants, or the danger is real and present and she should be trained and informed to meet it. These things are mutually exclusive. Feyre will see this eventually as well and so should anyone reading these stories. It's not about protection, not really. It's about appearance and putting Feyre into the pretty little wife box that she no longer fits in, and I would argue never really fit in to begin with. Even if you grant Feyre in the first book's trappings about peace and enough time and money to paint, I don't believe that Feyre existed even by the end of the first book. That Feyre died when she made the choice to go back to the Spring Court. But I digress, if everything I have mentioned so far isn't enough, the fact that she refuses to go into her old studio or use the paints he keeps buying her for some reason should be one of the biggest signs. "Try out that new set I gave you for Winter Solstice." He is actively redirecting her toward painting when she has already established she cannot go into the studio. He doesn't know this because he hasn't noticed. He is maintaining the idea of Feyre he is comfortable with rather than engaging with who she actually is post-UTM. Feyre's relationship with painting is tied to her trauma and her sense of self. Continuing to buy paints and redirect her toward them is not generosity. It is a failure to see her. Most importantly, this highlights what I see as an intrinsic problem with Tamlin in regards to Feyre, he is blind to what’s going on with her. Now I know a lot of defenders will try to claim he isn’t a mind reader but that isn’t what I’m asking for here, I am as much of a big dumb oblivious due as anyone but if my wife and I went through a traumatic experience and she suddenly stopped doing something she absolutely loved to do before, I would absolutely notice and try to figure out what’s going on, not by her a bunch of stuff related to that hobby and keep trying to push her to do it.

Which brings me to the last point in this chapter. The sex as conflict resolution pattern begins here. The apology comes after, not before. "I'm sorry about earlier" is offered post-sex, then his fingers travel lower mid-conversation and the conversation ends. He is not engaging with what is actually wrong. He is managing her back to equilibrium through physical intimacy. This pattern becomes load-bearing by the study scene. Feyre herself admits in this book "we had always been good at that part." As I said before, physical intimacy is really the only way they connect. That's not a bad thing but anyone who has had a relationship like this understands they don't last and aren't truly deep in the way people need when they crave things other than the physical.

And all of this is just the start. We are two chapters in and right out of the gate, the focus is not on healing because they aren't really healing. They are broken and Tamlin instead of actively working to heal is instead actively working to present an image that is not real and restrict a person who is desperately trying to find something to help her break free. I want to end here on a specific point not about Tamlin but about Rhysand. It's been 3 months and not once has he called Feyre to him. We will learn this is by design in later chapters but it's an important note because whatever you think about him forcing her into the bargain, it's a bargain that he has not forced and will not force until it becomes absolutely necessary to help the person who made it. Even when Rhysand makes bad and selfish choices, he will often act on those choices in a way that shows he is more complicated than his detractors like to paint him. He knows his bargain was coerced and was prepared to let Feyre live her life if she was happy to do so. We know that because he will say it and I will deep dive into those quotes once I get to them, but for now, thank you to everyone who responded to my last post and to everyone who is reading this one. The next one I will be doing is on Chapter 3 but more importantly, on a topic I don’t think gets discussed enough with regard to why Tamlin gets more hate than grace. The Tithe. That whole scene reveals a lot about Tamlin and Ianthe, and none of it is complimentary.

This reread and these write ups are quite fun. I will do my best to keep up with them and I hope you all are enjoying them as well.