nvm this is still on my brain. kim does not like to watch harry suffer… to say that kim takes satisfaction in harry’s pain is a huge misconstruing of his character.
the “getting thrashed like a schoolboy” line comes from a board game, lol. it’s a tease, not a cruelty. there’s never any line that implies that Kim enjoys seeing Harry taking actual morale damage.
he can be amused if you fail a check, but the check is always relatively inconsequential, and again, Harry isn’t taking damage in these.
Failing to pry the trash bin open:
Failing to shatter Ruby’s lorry window:
(also in both of these examples he only responds smugly if you choose for Harry to stubbornly dig in his heels. if Harry gets huffy, Kim teases. If Harry backs down right away Kim won’t rub it in, which feels significant to me! it reminds me of that recent post goin around about Kim meeting your energy!)
and here’s some reactions to failed checks where he does take damage.
Failing the jump to get your cloak:
Failing to break down Plaisance’s door:
he’s not laughing if Harry’s taking damage because he’s not a dick lol.
aaaaand here’s some other instances of morale/health damage and kim’s reactions.
alternate dialogue for failing the harbor jump:
after the call with precinct 41:
seeing bullet holes in the wall:
most significant examples to argue this point for me come when harry has done something to jeopardize the RCM’s image. which kim goes on and on about the importance of maintaining— and yet even here, he still extends worry and assurance.
telling Billie about her husband and handling it badly:
hardie authority check failure cock carousel:
aaaaand the car. this line is one of the most mask-off kim moments we get in the game in my opinion, honestly.
tying this back to the schoolboy line— that line doesn’t show up if you have a negative reputation with Kim. if you have <1 rep, it gets replaced with him calling it “about four hours of our lives that we'll never get back,” lol.
it’s affectionate ribbing!! twisting it into anything else is bizarre 2 me lmao!
anyways. kim is a foil to every other cop we meet in the game specifically because he doesn’t view harry as a punching bag or a lost cause. gottlieb does nothing but sling jabs and glib jokes about harry’s health. torson+mclaine and the others laugh at harry’s panic attack over the radio. in response to harry’s suicide-by-car attempt(!!!!) jean yells about RCM budget. all kim’s lines in response to harry’s check failures and health-damage are consistent, explicit textual contrast against the callousness of the rest of the RCM. twisting kim’s character here requires a bad faith interpretation of the whole game.
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i really like the lock picking in Skyrim because it's an actual skill that i, the player, have gotten good at.
like, i have never put a single perk point into the lockpicking tree, but i can pick any lock in the game in ten picks or less because i have a system that i developed into a practiced skill i use on all the locks.
That may sound like a useless or broken game dynamic, but it's one of my favorite things in the game actually -- the locks in Skyrim are built a certain way, and i, as a player, have developed the skill to pick them based on experience, practice, and the development of a process.
i actually wish more things in more RPGs were like that.
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Saw a vid that claimed that tfothou was "pro ai" because of a thing Madeline said about how someday ai could be used to write TV and movies, and it made me want to eat drywall.
You are not ment to side with Madeline Usher. Nothing in the show is saying you should side with her, especially not with ai. Madeline is obsessed with the idea of immortality and wants to use ai to do it but none of her technological achievements get off the ground, at least not further than managing Fortunato's records and business dealings. Like, the one ai she makes, lenore's ai, is a broken, hollowed out shell of lenore that only says one word on repeat. It's about the fruitlessness that is seeking immortality and the hollow lifelessness of ai. It's not pro-ai at all.
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