a dump for stuff i haven't edited in a while, or drafts that've been launched already

Drafts

draft

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

With Neural Cloud being Girls' Frontline's Lighter and Softer prequel, it stands to reason that it'd have a lot more funny moments.

Main campaign

Several cutscenes in the game have a Dialogue Tree with at least one option that's quite obviously the "joke" option, painting the Professor as The Gadfly. The later in the main story one goes, the more likely these dialogue trees contain nothing but joke options, usually at the expense of the resident stoic's patience (usually Antonina).
Chapter 2 (Cyclopes Sector):
- In the opening cutscene, Persicaria checks in on Croque, who's about ready to pass out due to working on the Oasis's defenses all day yesterday. Croque bemoans the argument happening between Riko and Sol, not only preventing her from going back to sleep, but also for the fact that they're both extroverts, causing Croque to mumble to herself at length about how tiring extrovers in general are.
  Croque: Yes yes I know I'm a shut-in who's no good at socializing this sort of thing is a pain in the ass why do people even like it besides I don't even like all this in-the-moment stuff is it really my fault all this normie crap should go and discombobulate I just want to NEET it up in my own room in a world of my own with a bottle of—
  Persicaria: Ahem. We were talking about the reconstruction of the Oasis, weren't we?
Chapter 6 (Copley Sector):
- During the opening cutscene, Sol, who was formerly an archaeological assistant before Project Neural Cloud, ends up breaking down into a cathartic tirade after seeing Copley's beach scenery, apparently having silently tolerated all the indoor areas from the previous five chapters. Persicaria couldn't do anything besides listen in exasperation, while Antonina is stuck having to figure out the Buffy Speak Sol uses to describe the previous sectors' Geo Effects and stage hazards.
- The Professor's master plan for getting reinforcements against Demiurge and her Entropics was simply to randomly call the Sanctifier HQ until they got into contact with anybody from the moderate Eosphorus faction. Antonina is quick to point out how stupid this is, even for a risk taker like the Professor, and tells them to consider themselves lucky that Love was the first Intermediate Sanctifier they contacted.
- The chapter's stinger introduces Malkira to the audience, who's largely implied to be the leader of the Entropics. She's also described as a carefree black goat randomly skipping around in an empty Null Sector within Magrasea, talking to an associate over her comms in a cutesy tone. Not exactly the sort of thing one would imagine from the leader of a faction that spreads around a trojan that's life-threatening to Dolls.

Events

Livestreaming:
- Most of the event consists of Kuro making a complete and utter fool of the Intermediate Sanctifier Reverence, streaming the latter's ineffective pursuit of the former all throughout the Burbank Sector.
- At one point, Kuro challenges Reverence into seeing who can attain the most stream followers in a given time period. Reverence, not exactly being the smartest tool in the Sanctifiers' shed, decides to go along with this and predictably gets trounced by Kuro, who was literally built by Cyber Media for the sole purpose of capturing the livestreaming market. Reverence made almost zero effort to address her audience in anything other than a stiff and professional tone, only giving Kuro more reasons to make fun of her. Reverence eventually comes back to her senses, questioning why she even fell for Kuro's "tricks" to begin with, and immediately starts trying to smash Kuro with her hammer again.
- Kuro ropes an unfortunate bystander who calls herself Agent 7 into her escape attempt, eventually stopping in an abandoned performance stage to catch their breath. Agent 7 then reveals herself as none other than Nanaka, the lead singer in Cyber Media's all-Doll Idol Singer outfit "NotREAL?". Kuro, being an avid Fangirl of Nanaka's since long before Project Neural Cloud, ends up reduced to a stammering mess for several seconds before attempting to get her autograph, even when Reverence starts smashing in the stage's doors.
- In the event's farming stage, one of the Anomaly Node events shows Kuro miserably failing in her attempt to become an idol singer herself in one of her livestreams, opening her mouth only to freeze up from her nerves and run offstage in embarrassment. The event's Flavor Text mostly consists of a chat log set in the aftermath of this livestream, with random people either making fun of Kuro or calling her embarrassment cute. The text on the button to exit the prompt is written from the Professor's perspective, who apparently also had plans for Kuro to become an idol so she could at least contribute to the Oasis's operand income.
Magrasea's Lang Syne:
- One of the first lines in the event is a callback to the Livestreaming event, where Kuro expresses her utter boredom in the Oasis because nobody's an interesting enough trolling target as Reverence is.
- The Professor saddles Kuro with handling the Oasis's New Year's celebrations as she's been mostly a Lazy Bum the entire time she's been there. When Daiyan arrives at the Oasis, Kuro immediately starts thinking up excuses to pass the responsibility onto her (but not before another bout of Inelegant Blubbering in front of another Cyber Media superstar). This ends up biting her in the ass when Daiyan predictably consults the Professor on what she's required to do, having arrived in the Oasis mere minutes ago. The player is presented with a dialogue prompt to give Kuro another task to do — even if they pick the one that seems least likely to annoy Kuro (livestreaming the festivities), she'll immediately express dismay that the Professor's "bullying" her and chastize Daiyan for playing along so well with the Professor despite being a newcomer, thanks to her professionalism.
- While Kuro is showing Daiyan around the Oasis, she feigns exhaustion to get out of her duties. This also bites her in the ass as Daiyan, being the Nice Girl she is, immediately takes her to the Oasis's treatment ward... which is headed by Mad Scientist Florence. As Daiyan is walking away from the place, she hears Kuro's screaming in the distance, which she humorously misinterptets as Florence being an extremely competent doctor.
- The next day, Sockdolager is seen accompanying Daiyan as her replacement guide. When asked for a place in the Oasis where she can get to know as much of the staff as possible, Sockdolager's first thought isn't something reasonable like a lounge or cafeteria, but the Oasis's training area. Daiyan spends most of her time in bewilderment watching Python yelling at his trainees and trying to make sense of Simo, who accidentally spooks Daiyan in his introduction. When Daiyan asks Simo for info on the Oasis's residents to help her plan the New Year's party, he initially claims to have barely any knowledge of them before belting out an extremely long list of Dolls he knows and their quirks, with Daiyan lampshading the contradiction immediately afterwards. When Sockdolager and Daiyan take their leave, Aki tries to unwind with Simo after his intense training session with Python. When Simo tells Aki that he told Daiyan the wrong info for Aki's preferred food, Aki outs himself as a huge Daiyan fanboy and laments not getting her autograph at her last performance. Simo tries to reassure Aki, but instead gets a completely serious lesson on how to properly get an autograph from Aki for his troubles.
  Simo: You can go after her. I'm sure she hasn't gone far.
  Aki: It's not the same. There's a certain kind of formality which needs to be observed when getting an autograph. If there's no sense of formality, then the important thing is the surprise of an accidental meeting. The regret of missing an opportunity is beautiful in its own right.
  Simo: Well, rather than discuss aesthetics, Instructor Python's looking over this way, so if you don't go...
  Aki: Aw, hell. See you tomorrow, I'm off.
- While Sockdolager and Daiyan are on lunch break in the Oasis's cafeteria, Aki arrives on the scene with a blank piece of paper, asking Daiyan for her autograph (with Sockdolager promptly lampshading Aki's desperation). Before Daiyan could do so, however, Kuro runs into the room screaming her head off, asking Sockdolager and Aki to save her from Florence, who's wielding a set of mysterious syringes like they're Wolverine Claws. Aki considers refusing as Kuro had stolen his last serving of unagi a few days ago, but realizes four ladies are currently behind him, deciding to stay in place to defend them from Florence. The audience is then treated to a CG◊ of Aki "dying" standing up with Florence's syringes all over his upper body, quoting his death line as he passes out.
  Aki: The loser scatters, like fallen cherry blossoms...
- Later that night, Persicaria is seen showing Daiyan around the cafeteria's cooking facilities after tending to Aki's wounds. Before Daiyan could start putting her meal plans into motion, Sol wanders into the cafeteria with her face completely covered in bandages◊, apparently having pushed herself too far during one of Python's training sessions. Daiyan asks Sol if she has any preference for steamed buns, initially referring to them as "just convenient finger food" before Daiyan asks her if Sol bothers to use any dipping sauce with them, blowing Sol's mind. When she starts rummaging through the fridge wondering aloud what type of sauce would go well with buns, the player is prompted with the choice of ketchup, mayo, or mustard. Regardless of the choice, Daiyan gets royally pissed while still maintaining her gentle smile, giving Sol a lengthy lesson on the relationship between dishes and spices, leaving Sol at a complete loss for words. Daiyan later teaches Sol how to make some traditional Chinese dipping sauces, with Sol getting annoyed at the process and asking Daiyan if there's a ready-made version of the sauce that's sold anywhere. Naturally, this pisses Daiyan off again.
  Daiyan: Aiyah! You just don't understand! The Kitchen God would cry if he heard you say that!
- Oasis's New Year's Eve party kicks off in the cafeteria, with Daiyan presenting a comically long list of Chinese dishes she cooked up the night before, to everyone's increasing bewilderment. The narration stops bothering to keep track of this train of thought by the seventh course of meals — by then, everyone present in the cafeteria was worried they'd be full partway through taking a single bite from every dish.
- The beginning of the epilogue shows everyone in the cafeteria absolutely wasted from "high-intensity operands" (read: alcohol), with the Professor stuck handling the cleanup. When they stumble upon Croque and Sol, they're both having an argument over a shared hallucination of a Humongous Mecha from Croque's favorite anime, METAL SUIT:
  Croque: Pro... Professor! I'm telling you, there really are Metal Suits flying in the sky. Look at that (hic) that light... that light over your head!
  Professor: ...Get a good rest, Croque.
  Croque: No, look at the light over your head, it's a Metal Suit's headlight, if you don't run you'll be (hic) squashed!
  Professor: ...Right, let's run first, and you run to your dorm from here.
  Croque: But I can't move...
  Sol: Prof, you take Croque and run... It's just a Metal Suit, watch me... I'm lifting it up!
  Croque: Don't you dare... look down on Metal Suits! Have a punch from yours truly!
  Professor: ...Why did I even try to reason with these drunkards...

event cg

note: incorporate raw images later as links into folder above

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_20221122_203450.png

echochrome

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Yes, in this world, what you see becomes the truth.

echochrome is a Puzzle Game released for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable in 2008. The game was produced by Jun Fujiki and was released as part of the PSP's Game Yarouze! lineup, which gave the spotlight to indie games.

Set in a minimalistic, monochrome void, the player is responsible for guiding a single animated artist's mannequin through checkpoints dotted around the level and back to the starting point. Players can alter the level's layout by tilting the camera such that two otherwise disjointed platforms can be navigated to and fro in normally impossible ways, a la the Penrose staircase.

echoshift, a spin-off game, was released solely for the PSP in 2009. Players directly control the mannequin this time and must navigate a series of 2D platforming levels to reach the exit. The catch is that time is rewound through a "Time Bounce" after a fixed amount of time, at which point the player controls a new mannequin and the previous timelines' mannequins continue to act on the level as they did before. Players must take advantage of this to create a path so that at least one of these mannequins reaches the exit, or risk getting a game over due to running out of Time Bounces.

The series eventually saw a proper sequel, echochrome ii, which was released in 2010 solely for the PS3. Instead of perspective trickery, the game revolves around light and shadow puzzles. The mannequin exists solely as a shadow, and the player is required to manipulate the shadow landscape projected by objects in the level by moving a light source around using a PlayStation Move controller.

all lowercase letters: All of the games in the series have their titles stylized like this.
Temporal Duplication echoshift's main gimmick.
Classical Music: The games' soundtracks are exclusively of this genre.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: In echochrome ii, yellow blocks indicate points where a path can be formed, given the correct light source position.
Forced Perspective: Much like the "impossible object" art the game takes its inspiration from, levels in echochrome are always presented with a forced perspective to facilitate the game's gimmicks. In this case, it's the parallel isometric camera projection (that is, the same object appears the same regardless of its distance to the camera).
Market-Based Title: echochrome's original Japanese title is 無限回廊 (mugen kairou, lit. "infinite corridor"), possibly referencing the Penrose staircase. echoshift, on the other hand, is named 時限回廊 (jigen kairou, lit. "time corridor"), which more obviously references the game's time manipulation gimmick.
Obvious Rule Patch: In echochrome, players aren't allowed to tilt the camera completely above or below the level. The reason for this is made apparent through echochrome's prototype, the OLE Coordinate System, in which tilting the camera all the way up or down results in several cases of odd, unintended pathfinding and the mannequin warping around the level in unexpected ways.
Rule of Perception: The entire gameplay loop in echochrome and echochrome ii revolves around five "laws" that employ this trope, treating the 3D levels as if they were 2D space. This is even lampshaded by the tutorial narrator in both games, who says that "what you see is the truth".
- Perspective Travelling: The mannequin can travel between two disjointed paths if they appear connected.
- Perspective Landing: When the mannequin falls through a hole in the floor, they'll fall onto whatever appears to below it.
- Perspective Existence: If a gap in a path is covered by a foreground object, the gap is filled in.
- Perspective Absence: If an obstacle such as a hole in the floor is covered by a foreground object, it ceases to exist.
- Perspective Jump: The inverse of Perspective Landing; when the mannequin walks onto a jump pad, they land on whatever appears to be directly above them.

Legend of Polka

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"Got Polka!"

Legend of Polka (ポルカの伝説) is a comedic Talk Show series hosted by hololive's resident fennec jester, Polka Omaru. Each episode follows a fairly typical talk show formula: Itzutsu, Polka's assistant, comes to Polka with the random topic of the day, and they spend most of the episode talking about it, usually to the embarrassment of Polka herself. Every now and then, the duo will find something else to do, like play a featured video game, quizzing Polka on something, or heading off-set to explore somewhere.

A playlist of the series, complete with English subs, can be found here.

Corpsing: The show's script writer can often be heard in the background heartily laughing at some of the show's more absurd moments. note: must be on a trivia page, as it's not in-universe (not that that term would apply to a talk show, regardless)
Cringe Comedy: "I Didn't Ask For That Info!" revolves around this, with Itzutsu prodding Polka about an amateur manga she drew while she was in 5th grade called Magical☆Tokki.
Medium-Shift Gag:
- In "We Went to the Beach!", Itzutsu offers Polka a trip to the beach as a reward for the sneeze-guessing quiz she previously partook in. What she really meant was Itzutsu and a camera crew recording beachside scenery for Polka's viewing pleasure, much to the latter's dismay. Cue a Gilligan Cut to Polka watching live action footage of Itzutsu walking around with a paper cutout of Polka's official art, pretending it's actually her.
- To celebrate the release of the hololive ERROR game, which takes place in an abandoned haunted high school, Polka explores an actual abandoned high school in "Dragged to School at Night!". Polka's exploration log is a live action segment filmed from her perspective.
Officially Shortened Title: The series is referred to as ポル伝 (or PolLen in the English subs) during its Title Sequence.
Recap Episode: "30 Minutes of Best PoLegend Moments!" is an episode-length recap of the show's funnier moments, spanning the series from April to September 2021.
Special Guest:
- hololive GAMERS's Fubuki Shirakami showed up in "Pro Streamer Shirakami Fubuki Clears Out the May Blues" to... well, help Polka out of the May Blues.^note They spend a good chunk of the episode discussing how to get motivated for streaming.
- Himawari Honma of Nijisanji Gamers appeared on "NIJISANJI & hololive Talks! ft. Honma Himawari [Unauthorized]". Itzutsu puts some emphasis on the "special" in Special Guest, since Polka is a self-admitted Himawari Fangirl.
- YAGOO, hololive's CEO, makes an appearance in "Today's Kids are INSANE". The episode mostly consists of Polka answering mail-in questions from kids, but YAGOO comes along as the last "kid" in the lineup, introducing himself as a 47-year-old in the 41st grade, causing Polka to keel over in laughter.

The Crystal Method

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The Crystal Method (website

, YouTube

, Soundcloud

) is an electronic music band, largely credited as one of the pioneers of the "big beat"

genre of electronica.

TCM originally started as the DJ duo Scott Kirkland and Ken Jordan, having met each other in 1993 at a grocery store job in Las Vegas. Ken was already DJ-ing as a hobby at this time and taught Scott how to DJ himself, eventually moving to Los Angeles and starting music production at their house's underground shelter, which they affectionally nicknamed "The Bomb Shelter".

Scott and Ken got their first big break sometime in 1995, when British DJ Justin King got a hold of their music and was interested in featuring them as part of a newly-formed record label, "City of Angels", revolving around American electronic music acts. After making their debut single "Now is the Time" under this label, they were eventually signed on with Outpost Records in 1996, debuting their first studio album Vegas. Since then, The Crystal Method has been featured in a variety of video game and movie soundtracks - songs from Vegas alone were featured

in at least 14 different IPs by 2009.

TODO:

write about Community Service radio show
Ken Jordan's retirement in 2017
list of discography

Heroism (MINMAXIA)

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Heroism is an Action RPG-slash-Idle Game developed by MINMAXIA

for Android phones.

One fateful day, a lone adventurer finds themselves in a town trapped by four giant walls, beseiged by monsters. The town chieftain pleads with the adventurer to save them. Having no other options for escape, the adventurer complies and sets off on their long journey to liberate the town...

Heroism provides examples of:

20 Bear Asses: One type of recurring side quest.
Absurdly High Level Cap: Like its spiritual predecessor CLICKPOCALYPSE II, there isn't a level cap. The game can be beaten at just about any level by simply not leveling up your party or the monsters themselves, and the only dungeon that enforces a level requirement is the "Impossible Dungeon", whose last floor contains level 1000 monsters.
Better than a Bare Bulb: NPC dialogue regularly lampshades the absurdity of RPG Elements in general, and most quest NPCs don't even bother giving a reason for the quests they give, other than "because monsters". Fetch Quest objectives are also similarly ridiculous, like repeatedly rescuing Fireman Pete or having to retrieve a Potion of Fun.
Excuse Plot: The plot description at the top of the page might seem like a synopsis, but that's really all there is to the plot.
Fetch Quest: The other type of recurring side quest.
Frankenstein's Monster: Unlocking party members involves taking monster organs to the town's resident Necromancer, which he uses to fashion one of these for the player. The end of this questline always ends with the necromancer fondly remembering the day he made the Player Character.
Giant Mook: Every single boss in the game is this. In castle dungeons, every Mook is a boss, and the boss is replaced by an even bigger Mook, called a "megaboss" by the town chieftain.
Idle Game: The game can optionally be "played" like this (by default it's Manual Leader, A.I. Party). When the idle game elements are enabled, game progress is also simulated even while closed, up to a certain duration (whose length can be upgraded).
Lethal Joke Character: The Chicken King makes a return from CLICKPOCALYPSE II, and his chickens are still killer chickens that emulate existing classes in the game.
Retraux: The low-resolution pixelated look and chiptune music are evocative of early 90s games.
Set Bonus: Weapons and equipment with a light blue background have a set bonus that activates when all five pieces are equipped. The effects range from stat multipliers to unique minions. Each set piece also has one additional random attribute (unrelated to the set bonus itself) that also activates with the set.
Spiritual Successor: To CLICKPOCALYPSE II, the last game MINMAXIA developed prior to Heroism. The only big differences between the two is the camera angle (isometric vs. top-down), NPC dialogue, equipment with Set Bonuses, and the option to play Heroism manually.
Wham Line: A comical variety happens once the last castle dungeon is toppled. The chieftain explains that all those "heroism orbs" the party's been collecting is actually monster poop.
Zerg Rush: Monster army encounters play out like this, involving monsters by the hundreds (sometimes thousands) bum-rushing the player's party from all sides. The unlockable endgame dungeons also work in this manner, especially the aptly-named "Infinite Dungeon".