Rundown (10/25/2026) All Shall Fear The AI Clones

This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Are People ACTUALLY Playing AI Generated Game Clones?
• Xbox Helix Could Cost $1,200 to $1,800 (I’m Impatiently Waiting For The Collapse)
• Shrek 2 Remastered Announce (Nostalgia Milking For $30 A Pop!)
• Trump Administration Cancels Umamusume Concert (Let Horse Girls Radicalize You!)
• BioWare is DEAD (Murdered by EA and the Saudis!)
• Natalie Watched Sinners (This End Slate Piece Got Too Long!)

---

Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Are People ACTUALLY Playing AI Generated Game Clones?

This week’s header image is a heavily modified version of a screenshot from Drunken Goddess Reflux, made using Paint.Net. I do not believe I used any third-party plug-ins this time, but shout out to dpy, BoltBait, and Zach Walker for their plug-ins, they help make art SO FUN! The use of a real human mouth on an anime girl was lifted from Pseychie, who does pretty good videos on the gacha industry. And the color scheme is modeled after the Akumako art that Missy did for me last year.

Over the past few weeks, one of the more pervasive topics I have been seeing has been toward AI generated clones of existing games. People throw an existing game concept, video, or demo into an AI, and watch it make a functional clone, or do most of the work for them, and then put it in front of people in order to get acclaim and attention. It does not need to be perfect— it can never be perfect— but it can be good enough for people who are content with consuming slop.

This has caused certain developed to react by pulling demos and changing their pre-release hype cycle out of fears that their games might be cloned by AI. The biggest example was the destined-to-be-viral Drunken Goddess Reflux by Alliance Arts, a studio who, for the record, is content with using AI assets in their work. After announcing a demo to premiere with Steam next Fest Q4 2026, they decided to pull the demo, citing fears that it would be cloned by AI pundits.

This act of cloning is sought out by unscrupulous individuals seeking clout, acclaim, or money. It is a natural evolution of a grift economy that we have been inundated with over the past few years, but now with even less effort required to prepare a product. I will not chagrin any developer or publisher who gets cold feet at the sight of this, but in observing discussions about this, I have to ask… what precisely are they afraid of?

Yes, getting their game copied, of course, but just because someone makes a derivative version of your game, that does not necessarily hurt you. A game is ultimately a product, and it is meant to achieve some combination of three things: Commercial success by selling a lot of units. Critical acclaim by being a good product with positive buzz and/or ratings. And communal success by cultivating a fandom of people passionate about the game and eager to both promote it to others and partake in multimedia ventures. Do AI generated clones of games, or otherwise derivative products attempting to cash in on a major game, truly detract from any of these things? Well, I would first need to ask a very simple question: Do people actually play AI generated video games, let alone buy them?

Now, the answer is assuredly yes with some caveats. Steam is awash with low effort trash as a rule, and that trash has been AI generated for quite some time. However, I have not heard of a derivative AI generated game— not a game with AI stuff in it— being widely played, let alone purchased, and I know that none of them would ever get rave reviews. Really, there are only three markets I can imagine for these games: People who cannot afford, access, or otherwise play the original game and only have sloppy seconds to enjoy. People who have never heard of the original and do not seek out any more information than what is before them. And people who are quality insensitive, a term I pulled out of my ass that means price insensitive, but for quality.

I don’t want to discount that these are not significant markets to be concerned about, especially if this is your job. Of course they are! And we have actually seen an example of this clone epidemic happening earlier this year. Back in June and July,Meccha Chameleon was doing mad numbers and clones were hitting Roblox a matter of days after the original launched on Steam to immense success.

While I cannot say for certain they were AI generated, I’m sure that many of these imitators used plenty of AI generated code/assets to expedite the project, and this even lead the imitators to cumulatively outperform the original. That was the story back in in July. Nowadays, Meccha Chameleon has died down considerably, but both it and the Roblox clones are pulling in impressive numbers, drawing in CCUs of roughly 8,000 and 10,000 players a day respectively.

This means that, even three months later, there are clones that are still getting thousands of players each day, though I have to ask if this is directly hurting the developers. Per my grasp, the answer is no. With Meccha Chameleon, the problem is less that the game is being copied, and more that it got put on Roblox, where the original has no presence. Because there are tens of millions of people who only play games on the Roblox platform and cannot, or will not, engage with the medium beyond Roblox. Roblox numbers do not represent lost sales, as people with no money (children) cannot buy things on their own.

Now, one could clapback at my comment here and say that the problem is less about the money and more about the mindshare, about what the culture feeling. That, regardless of financial metrics, the fact that any AI generated clones are making a splash on social media, doing numbers, it harms both the original games and to gaming as a whole, as it is normalizing the idea of AI clones. I agree with that, but my counterpoint is that just because something is widely seen, or gets engagement, does not mean people actually like it, or want to engage with it beyond a novelty.

Furthermore, I have to ask if this whole concept of AI generated clones of games, of software in general, is not just another rendition of piracy, but shittier. When you are cloning something, you are inherently making something derivative, unoriginal, and things like the AI generated version of Adobe Creative Suite are just another form of piracy. If you are feeding a game to an AI to make a clone, is that not just a way of reselling/distributing a pirated game but with additional legal hurdles because the law is an old turtle?

Piracy, of course, is a threat to the revenue of any product, yet there is already nothing stopping 90% of games from being cracked at launch and spread across the internet. It happens immediately for several games, offering a free alternative for millions upon millions of broke people to play. However, gaming has been trekking along for the past 15+ years with piracy becoming less and less of an issue. So why would someone pirating and cloning a game, selling it or a demo, be an existential threat? Well, by making it just trivially easy to access.

Next example, we have Skate 3 (2010) for Xbox 360. Now, Skate 3 is a game that has emulated pretty well on Xenia for a good while, due to strides being made on the emulation front. Then it received an AI-assisted recompilation, using the emulation work of Xenia and other projects as a jumping off point. The game was even understood enough for it to be used in all manner of mashups, most of which are memes, not games. However, what is more scary are the browser ports and the fact that someone put an uglier version of the game into Roblox.

Pirating and emulating a game is wicked easy. If you cannot do it, that’s like not being able to torrent— a skill(et) issue. Still I cannot look at these and argue that these are not more convenient to many people than the two more proper approaches. Meaning buy the game from the Xbox store— as it is only available on Xbox consoles— or downloading Xenia and a ROM from your local file sharing site. But why do that when you can just play it in your browser or through the biggest games platform on the world?

With the barrier to entry to use AI so low, with so many modern games using uniform and well understood game engines (Unity and Unreal), it is not off of the table to think that this sort of thing could happen to ANY game. To go back to Drunken Goddess Reflux, someone could absolutely use AI to replace the titular girl with whatever waifu they want, using AI generated artwork images. Someone could take the game and have an AI make it playable in a browser. And assuming the game was made in Unity, like the developers’ prior games, I am sure there is a pipeline that the AI could use to just put it in Roblox, microtransactions included!

This is all just piracy, yet instead of the official version being the easiest and most convenient— Steam won by being easy and frictionless— the pirated versions are easier to access, because the work of accessing them can be circumvented through AI.

Now, if I were a major games company, I would DMCA the everlasting FUCK of any website or developer that was engaging in what I find to be unambiguous copyright infringement. Unfortunately, such resources are not available to indie game developers. Indie developers will need to fight against a wave of AI generated clones and AI-assisted piracy that is going to spread like wildfire to an audience who, very well, might not give a shit if a game is jank, if they can play it in a browser, on their phone.

I want to look at this and make an old piracy argument, or perhaps truism: If people actively choose to pirate a game, or don’t care if it’s stolen from the original developer, they are not lost sales. Instead, this genre of customer is never going to buy your game are not your audience.

…And that right there is the point that I really want to focus on. What people are doing with AI here is wrong. It pisses me off that people are blatantly stealing a cult classic wholesale, adding in microtransactions, and profiting off of it. And stealing an indie game in general just makes you a no-eyed dip who can’t even muster a shit. This is a mentality that nobody truly in the mod, emulation, fan game, or indie scene would ever approve, yet in this AI-based larp ‘n’ grift economy, people are operating under different, anti-moral, rules.

That being said, I won’t cry death until I see the financial market toward human-made games take a hit as these AI generated games thrive. Mindshare is fickle, it’s an ebb and flow, but money— revenue— will always be the tentpole for success in a market.

…Also, I have to ask if the compute costs, the token costs, of these AI clones is not going to make this process prohibitively expensive. Like, I cannot even IMAGINE the server costs for a website that lets you play Xbox 360 games online with other people. Sure, some people will throw good money after bad out of passion, but in their economy? That makes no sense to me. Though, perhaps, people with extreme wealth are willing to fund it because they want to watch things break, burn, because they think they can profit from a new order. I don’t know how they would benefit from a world where everything must be touched by AI before it can pass through the tubes of the broader social internet, but I’m not the redsest fish in the pond.

---

Xbox Helix Could Cost $1,200 to $1,800
(I’m Impatiently Waiting For The Collapse)

The state of games discovery is positively dire. Releasing any game on PC is under threat to AI generated clones and AI enabled piracy. And despite consoles seeming like they would be in a better spot, as walled gardens, they really aren’t. Crap still floods onto them, cert is dead, and if you have been paying attention, have become a dramatically worse deal.

• Tariffs and supply chain constraints have increased the introductory price of a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series by $200.
• The component crisis, caused by AI, has caused PlayStation to have its worst month since 2013, during the last gasp before the PS4, while Xbox had its record worst month ever.
• The end of physical games on PlayStation, and dismal state of Xbox at retail, has robbed these consoles of one of the main benefits of console gaming— physical game sharing with friends and family. All while offering no digital bandage à la Virtual Game Cards on Switch or Family Sharing on Steam.
• Consoles have a closed digital market without any secondary storefronts à la GOG, Humble, Fanatical, Green Man Gaming, or any kosher Steam key reseller, along with a worse “discount culture.”
• There is a growing irrelevance in the broader culture of gaming as countless viral games for gamers debut on PC or skip PS5 or Xbox entirely. Which is compounded by how EASIER it is to stream and share game footage on PC, which does wonders in the modern social media landscape. Like, consoles are JUST NOW getting Peak (2025), and if you think any other big non-exclusive game is going to pull a GTA VI and only launch on consoles, you’re wrong.

I think the prospects of the PS5 and Xbox both SUCK now, and that the Switch 2 is the only reasonable option. Well, for as reasonable as $500 is for a souped up gaming tablet. But at least with the Switch 2, there is not a looming threat that things are going to get dramatically worse in two years.

Since the component crisis, RAMpocalypse, or… what is Wikipedia calling it— …2025–present global memory supply shortage— sure, fine, that. Since THAT, speculation has been raging about how expensive the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Helix are going to cost. Insiders are throwing around numbers like $680 for the memory and storage alone, while a recent corporate puff-piece by Fortune, glazing Asha Sharma as being the right fit to “save Xbox,” threw around the price range of $1,200 and $1,800 for the next Xbox.

Wow, we are just flying past $1,000 consoles, aren’t we? I guess the $1,050 Steam Machine was a sign of things to come.

If this is what the next Xbox will cost, then the next PlayStation will not be far behind, and if these prices are to be believed… then they just priced out the lower bent in this K-shaped ekonomy. The real unemployment rate among the coveted young adult demographic for games is at a concerning low, and their buying power is dwindling as a result. This is far beyond what most parents can or will spend for holiday presents for their children. If the likes of Sony and Microsoft are only targeting the HCE (Highly Compensated Employee), Investor, and Trust Fund class, they are simply begging for irrelevance. They will lose a generation, give people an excellent point to pivot to a new platform, and exasperate a growing rift between them and their Evangelist customer class.

Naturally, existing PS5 and Xbox owners are going to be enjoying and playing their consoles well into the 2030s. The PS5 should sell 100 million SOON™, and 35 million Xbox Series owners is something. However, in lieu of these systems getting the coveted 15-year-long hardware lifespan, I think people will just go elsewhere.

Where is elsewhere? Well, the four answers are as follows: Pivoting to phones, as phones can run oodles of games— especially if you void your warranty. Going to PC, which simply is the place for gaming in my mind. Going to Nintendo, as everybody who’s anybody wants to get their games on the Switch 2, and while it is not fun to hold, it is a sensible device. Or go into the “retro gaming” scene, which is where I get wicked confused, because how do you math this?

So, because of the circles I fly into, I have pretty much always seen or heard of people who still play older game systems with some degree of regularity. 40-something game reviewers who still prefer playing on the original hardware, as it feels different and has unique vibes. Self-described DS fan girls who are literally younger than the system itself. Or people who like the PSP because they can hack it into a music and emulation beast. I see people ages 27 to 45 bugging out over the AYN Thor or any of the other deluge of retro-themed handhelds we have been seeing as of late. Which, while propped up by piracy, homebrew, hacking, and so forth, thrive as electronics that one owns and controls. In a world of platforms, it is their thing, their way.

I understand that this is a niche… but how the hell do you quantify it or compare it to anything else? Short-answer is that you really can’t without doing an extensive survey and extrapolating that information. Unfortunately, very few people are willing to do so, especially when that information could negatively affect platform holders in the eyes of shareholders. Hearing that 10% of the non-mobile gaming audience had given up PC and mainstream consoles and taken up emulation and Chinese handhelds is something that I would love to hear, but nobody with power would. And you know how this industry is with selectively disclosing information for the sake of power and leverage.

All of which pisses me off because it is impossible to understand the world just on vibes, videos, and personal experiences. You need to convert the world into math to understand it on a large level, into a system with numbers. …Or at least that’s the only way I can understand something.

To try to affix a conclusion onto this spur of consciousness, I see the industry shifting, crumbling on myriad fronts. While I know I cannot predict the future, I feel the need to keep my eyes open on what is happening and where it could be. The future of the cultural heart of the biggest entertainment industry in the world, is being adversely effected by generational socioeconomic circumstances, but I can see a brighter future.

I can imagine a future free from the lust for powerful hardware, from the bondage of corporate control, where there is no uniform culture, no singular identity of gaming, but myriad facets and pockets of intrigue. …Yet I can also see a barrier being erected as the internet is clamped down, game downloads go offline, and everything goes to streaming to prevent it from being pirated by AI. All while, simultaneously, every game has its own layer of AI gloss by manufactured demand.

---

Shrek 2 Remastered Announce
(Nostalgia Milking For $30 A Pop!)

Okay, okay, I desperately need something STUPID to chew on, and this is easy on the teeth. Revealed through the big Steam Achievements leak a few weeks ago, it finally happened. DreamWorks Shrek 2 Remastered has been announced, and it is coming to PS5, Xbox Series, Switch, Switch 2, and PC on November 10, 2026.

Akumako: “Yikes! You better watch out, GTA VI! Between this and Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered, you’re fucked!”

So, first question: Why? Of all the games from this era to remaster, why the movie licensed game Shrek 2 (2004)? …Because money, of course!

After a decade of irony shaming, the Milnullz and Zoomies have accepted that Shrek and Shrek 2 are actually quite good movies, and not just because they had them on DVD and watched them dozens of times as a kid! (For me, it was the first movie on VHS, but thought the series was cringe and lame in the 2010s, when it was school play fodder. I used to be a professional videographer.)

With Shrek 5 coming out next year, people are prepping themselves, and possibly their childspawns, for the nostalgia bomb, and Shrek 2 the video game was pretty big. It was a 4 player co-op action brawler and mini-game sort of affair and released on all three consoles. If you were an American console kids with friends who came over to play games, there was a pretty good chance you played Shrek 2. Hell, I actually played Shrek 2 for an hour or so back in the day at a friend’s house, a couple months before I got my GameCube, and I sucked ass at the game. The friend’s name was Zack Lawrence, nicknamed Z-Man, my best friend during third grade, lived in a townhouse, moved to Las Vegas before fourth grade, and I never talked to him again.

As for where the money angle comes in, the remaster will cost $30 and feature online co-op. Because people these days don’t live near their friends nowadays, they will inevitably all buy a copy, play through the game once, then put it aside. That’s $120, less 30%, going to the developer and the rights holders, which is a pretty sweet deal.

So, who is handling this routine re-release? Why, Asypr of course, who has been something of a porting powerhouse for twenty years and has worked alongside Crystal Dynamics with their line of Tomb Raider and Legacy of Kain remasters. Hell, they even ported the original PC version of this game to Mac back in 2004. Now, I doubt any of the original staff from that job are still around, and this is based on the CONSOLE version that people actually played, not those kids who were playing Shrek 2 for PC.

Unfortunately, Aspyr is still facing some stink allegations after they bungled a few of their recent projects. Their 2024 re-release of Star Wars Battlefront 2004 and 2005— I’m not going to use the numbers if I ALSO need to include the year— was a disaster. They could have possibly fixed it, but after three updates, the project was pulled for whatever reason you want to speculate. Then, in 2025, they announced a remaster of Deus Ex (2000) that gave an optional modernish visual style and proper controller support to the undisputed classic. People fucking hated it, it was delayed indefinitely, and all pre-orders were refunded. Is it canceled? Yesn’t!

How about Shrek 2 Remastered? How does it look? Eh, not that great in my eyes. In order to capture the look of the original film, the 2004 game was not afraid of being a bit murkier with its textures. Grass, crates, pumpkins, whatever, it was all meant to look as realistic as any of those things would be in the movie. It made the world feel more realized, more evocative, and like a place that was given the same time and attention that any other game would have gotten. Aspyr, in their efforts to modernize the game, did a lot to homogenize its look, to make it look less like a PS2 game and more like a kids game. The colors are more saturated, the lighting is flatter, character models were redone without the polygon limits of the original, and the textures look to be replaced with something higher res yet less detailed. Then there are things that just look… wrong, like the featured turret section where you need to hit hot air balloons. Except these balloons are so bright they are glowing, when they looked far more natural in the original game.

I get that this makes the game, generally, look more modern, and that this represent a significant amount of work. However… why are you putting more work into making a nostalgia property look less like the original game? Oh, because this is what people actually remember? One, you don’t know that, and two, they probably remember the PS2 game looking like a PS2 game, and this doesn’t look like that anymore. Throw the original game in HD, it still looks the same because it has all the same bits behind the hood. By changing the look, this remaster supersedes the game’s visual identity, one of the key reasons why someone would resonate with this game.

Akumako: “Eh, it was probably a rights holder mandate. Blame Larry Ellison, as DreamWorks is part of Skydance nowadays.”

…So buying this game is supporting the Ellison Dynasty?

Akumako: “Eyup!”

Well, I’ll be damned.

Akumako: “You will be, come New Year’s.”

---

Trump Administration Cancels Umamusume Concert
(Let Horse Girls Radicalize You!)

It’s been a minute since I talked about overt politics, so let’s discuss one of the more direct examples of politics affecting video game fans. Umamusume is one of the bigger online live services at the moment, due to its roguelike simulation game gameplay, excellent character work in every facet, and highly devoted and skilled fandom. If you feel around the culture of video games online, there are certain titles that outperform any financial or player count metrics, and Umamusume is one of them. It is capturing the modern generation of horsegirl enjoyers, and the fact that it is just adorable sports idols makes this game crack to a terminally online genre of person. A culture maker, if you will.

In another life, I would be HARD into Umamusume, but instead I am just observing from the sidelines, watching as the series garners enough of a foothold in the Anglosphere to warrant an international concert in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, international travel in America is a mess, even from a stalwart ally like Japan, and the Trump administration has made it clear that they do not want any foreigners in this country, even if they are Sieg Heil tier Trump stans. (Get destitute, Milo!) The character voice actresses applied for a travel visa to perform this concert well into advance, but such arrangements were ultimately denied.

Accordingly, the concert had to be canceled, as the voice actors could not legally travel to the venue, due to the unquestioned racism and rampant hatred of foreigners by the Trump administration. After months of anticipation, and people spending thousands of dollars flying to LA, booking a hotel, and buying tickets, it’s just not happening. Just heading over to the subreddit or Uma Twitter reveals that everybody know the truth, because there is no hiding this shit, and I am frankly GLAD that this is happening. Not because I want Uma fans to suffer, but because sometimes the pain needs to come home for the denser sorts to get it.

A lot of people, hundreds of millions of people, they will follow whatever principles whose aesthetics they vibe with, and will only even consider changing their mind when their actions personally affect them. Motherfuckers will not think leopards are a threat until they see one eating their or their mother’s face. And some will still be all rah rah leopardz 4 lyfe, because they’re fookin’ stoopid. And at this point… anything that pushes anyone closer to the edge is a plus in my book. It may be a reactionary response, but hey, radicalization has to start from somewhere. …Also, White horsegirl fans are lowkey destined to be radicalized into bitter communist trans girls or outrage-addicted fascist man-children. It happened with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic— I was a brony for the first three seasons — and it will happen with Umamusume. I don’t know why this happens, but it’s the power of Horses X Girls X Whiteness.

Umamusume publisher Cygames, of course, has begun refunding the patrons of this canceled concert, but they are also going above and beyond. They have announced that they will reimburse would-be attendees for any cancelation fees incurred, but for those who were already in LA, they have offered to reimburse people’s travel and lodging expenses. This is… incredibly generous of them, something they are under no obligation to do, as they are NOT at fault, and will assuredly earn them a lot of goodwill across the community.

This should serve as a warning to ALL foreign performers wishing to hold a concert in the US: Don’t. You might be able to in five years or so, but until the Trump Administration is over and done with— assuming they don’t AI generate a ghost of him and have the first “Super “””Intelligence””” President”— do not come here. It is not safe for you in the best case scenario, and you will just hurt people by getting their hopes of when/if your travel permit is denied.

---

BioWare is DEAD
(Murdered by EA and the Saudis!)

Welp, BioWare was shut down. After the critical/commercial/cultural failure Anthem (2019), a game made through abuse, stress casualties, and publisher fuckery, it was clear that BioWare was on their way out. After the commercial/cultural failure of Dragon Age: The Veilguard (2024), a game made through constantly changing goalposts and too many mid-dev reboots, it was a wonder that anybody was left at BioWare. What was once a golden child of the western games industry was shrunk down to a shadow of a phantom and then EA was bought by Saudi Arabia.

Last year, when this acquisition was announced, I acknowledged that there was no way BioWare would make it through this acquisition. I reiterated this belief when the deal was finalized two months ago, saying “Bio[W]are? I would be shocked if they are still around this time next year. ” Evidently, I was too generous with that figure, as BioWare has been closed within just over two months. After being reduced to a single studio with only 50 people, the company is closing its doors, everything they were working on over the past two years is going to be trashed, and another storied developer has bitten the dust.

Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur’s Gate, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, BioWare of 2026 was, sadly, not the studio that made any of these remarkable titles. The studio was ravaged and ransacked for the sake of short-term gains over the past decade and change, but it is still deeply upsetting seeing this all end. The only future for these IPS and legacies is to be leveraged as financial assets and the archives raided for who knows what purposes.

Knights of the Old Republic was a stellar moment for the western RPG genre, doing so much to push the genre forward while delivering a realized and then modern Star Wars RPG experience unlike any that came before it. Even playing it in 2009 on the 360, I was still thoroughly impressed by what it was doing, and how gripping its story could be. Mass Effect was a series that defined the seventh generation to me, and something that filled me with creative aspirations that I carry with me to this day.

…While Dragon Age, to me, was just a pair of two good-ass RPGs that further made me realize how versatile and expansive game stories could be, and the importance of a strong central cast of characters. They all convinced me to give more games in the genre a shake, and made me appreciate games for their stories more than I did at the time.

BioWare had a legendary run in their prime, and for that, to everybody who worked there. I want to thank the people who gave me these formative experiences, these enthralling memories, epic journeys, some of the most compelling companions I’ve ever seen, and enriching the lives of millions. You pushed the medium forward, and I hope that you are still out there, still creating, and applying what you learned as you continue to strive to make the world a more curious and interesting place.

Akumako: “Oh, and the Saudis laid off like 350 other people across several studios, including senior staff at developers like Maxis and Full Circle, the Skate 4 guys.”

…You’ve got to be bloody kidding me! Why does this ALWAYS happen? What is the POINT of acquiring a studio if you just BREAK THINGS after a few months?

Akumako: “Hey, don’t stress about that, because the same article confirmed that Star Wars Battlefield 7 is in development at Respawn and DICE!!”

…You don’t count the canceled entries! …Even then, shouldn’t it be 8 or something?

Akumako: “Who knows! If you do, shoot us a comment in the biddly-boop down below!”

Ugh. As always, this is to be expected. This is what comes from acquisitions, and from treating game companies as financial assets to use to siphon money and harness cultural panache over, you know, a bunch of studios making art.

---

Natalie Watched Sinners
(This End Slate Piece Got Too Long!)

Watched Sinners this week with Missy, at her request, and yeah, that was a pretty darn good movie. It’s a period piece that starts as a distinctly Black drama set in 1930s Mississippi that, after the halfway point, becomes a White vampire vs Black people movie, which I’m surprised isn’t a genre into itself because of the obvious parallels. Despite some room for pushback, I do consider it a strong piece of Black art. A work of art laced with oodles of themes and bits of systemic analysis that just flooded my head once I was done with the film, saw its ethos and sat with it. …Or maybe watching video essays by Black people has just primed me to look for this stuff when watching media. Probably a bit of both.

Moving in whatever order suits me, theme one: The Black church. While a vessel of community for Black people, the Black church is built on a faith that was not made by or for Black people. It practices, scripture, and traditions are all traced back to behaviors designed to control, pacify, and convey a level of White conformity. Music, dance, and art serve as far better and more freeing forms of self-expression for Black people, based in centuries of African tradition, however uncouth or improper they may be in the eyes of Black dudes who look like they get their hair did by White folks. It may be family, but it ultimately is no salvation, for the words of God know no owner, and can be opted by anyone for any purpose. White spiritualism ain’t shit.

For those not in the know, Sinners is a vampire movie, and vampirism here is pretty much just a metaphor for White Supremacy. It represents the assimilation into a dominant social class that exists to consume and siphon off everything of value from its victims. Their swagger, sexual techniques, music, art, language, general skills, and even community. None are immune to it, all can be lured into it, obeying their new master of White Supremacy, maybe capitalism depending on how you read it. While someone else can kill your master, that does not mean they are freed from the allure, as they will either perish, or will walk the Earth in a half-alive state, unable to reclaim the freedom they once had. Which is probably a bit too literal of a reading, but I’m not sure how else to read the ending scenes.

It is made explicitly clear that, while Black people are the target of this White vampirism, they are not the only one, with a Chinese couple falling victim to it just as anyone else, and the vampirism itself stemming from an Irish man. Considering the era, this was around the time where Irish and Italians were being brought into the flock of Whiteness, accepted in order to prevent them from allying with Black people to form a threatening coalition. However, the exact portrayal— having Native Americans hunt this Irish guy who “corrupts” a Klansman family— is a bit head-tilting to me. I’m probably looking into that too literally. Would not be the first time~!

Black capitalism and the desire to achieve the prosperity of White folks is directly criticized throughout the film as well. Two of the main protagonists are former soldiers who made crime bank in Chicago and wish to use their wealth to enrich a community of Black people. They ultimately achieve that, forming a juke joint and trying to spread their ill-gotten wealth where they can, but rather than view this as a social good, they view it as a business venture. Instead of building their own structure, they buy an abandoned building from an old White guy, directly enriching him while winding up with a fix ‘er upper, which they fix up through the power of community, not capital. They do it fast, start up an establishment, Black owned, all Black patrons— White passing Black folks are Black if they’re kinfolk. However, despite creating this new pillar of the community, they have only achieved this through monetary incentives and are immediately concerned with making a profit.

This is not some ideologically evil concept, like the vampirism thing, and more an acknowledgement of how Black community is going to be limited by the constraints of capitalism. Or, more broadly, the creation of third places will always need to contend with the costs of setting it up and the need to bring in capital to maintain its benefits. Sadly, you cannot maintain a third place using scrib. However, one of the underlying messages of the film is that, even if this community is temporary, fickle, and will be burnt down by fuckin’ vampires, you should still build the space. Even if it is just for one night, you should still thrive in it, delight in it, dance, drink, play guitar, and eat pussy. Because that’s what’s good in life, and members of an oppressed group, Black people specifically, owe it to themselves to cherish in these fleeting joys.

…But all of that is missing the BIG takeaway from this movie: Watching a sexy Black man righteously slaughter the ever-loving fuck out of some White Devils is a Good Time™. Hell, I literally made an entire novel full of that sort of shit. Not specifically Black people specifically, but they got two chapters.

---

Progress Report 2026-10-25

It’s just one of those weeks! I didn’t even mention the PHP thing because… holy shit is that an existential threat, that a foundational element of nearly all websites can be exploited with such ease due to a simple programming error.

---

2026-10-18: Wrote 5,200 words for the TSF Series #020 outline. Watched Wallace and Gromit and Night at the Museum with friends. Revised the AI bit with the Skate 3 example and some new perspective.

2026-10-19: Fucking absolutely miserable today and unable to do anything.

2026-10-20: Wrote Shrek 2 and Xbox Helix bits, so that’s 2,100 words. Made the header nightmare and that was maybe two hours of image editing, for fun!

2026-10-21: Wrote 1,300 word BioWare and Umamusume segments. Edited this harlot-ass-ho.

2026-10-22: Got hit with a super intensive crypto client who kept terrible records. AGAIN! And I was only given one exchange and one address. GREAT! Worked on this shit until 3 AM.

2026-10-23: New day, same shit! This is gonna take me FOREVER!

2026-10-24: UGH! Bossman told me not to work weekends, I did it anyway, working on this crap until 2:30 AM, again! Why? Because I want this shit DONE so that I can get back to work on TSF Series #020 and resume studying in a subject that I hate, will never use, and find hard to grasp.

---

Natalie.TF To Do List

• 2026-10-07: Fate Stay Night Remastered Review (Shiba & Rain Request) DONE!
• 2026-10-21: Natalie Rambles About Donkey Kong 64 Recompiled DONE!
• 2026-11-11: Ecstatica Review
• 2026-11-18: TSF Series #020: Chateau de Bitz
• 2026-11-25: Money for Girls: Amortized Review
• 2026-12-09: Natalie Rambles About Delicious in Dungeon
• 2026-12-30: Natalie Rambles About 2026
• 2026-??-??: Coffee Buns Review (TSF Game)
• 2026-??-??: re:Dreamer Review #6

• 2027-02-03: Danganronpa 2×2: Super Summer Slayhem Review
• 2027-02-17: Metroid 6: Ravenous Review
• 2027-03-03: Muramasa: Re;Venant Blades Review
• 2027-07-15: Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp – Act IV: Post Psycho
• 2027-??-??: Beast of Re;Incarnation Review
• 2027-??-??: TSF Showcase: Chronicstuss (Ouran Request)
• 2027-??-??: A Mirror’s Curse Review (TSF Game)
• 2027-??-??: Thread – A Tale of Identity, Monsters, and College Review (TSF Game)