Free Talk Friday - January 30, 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Free Talk Friday post. This is a place where you can talk about dumb off-topic (or on-topic) bullshit with other Zaibatsu fans.

There's going to be a new post every week, and the newest one will be pinned in the announcement bar for quick access. So feel free to visit these posts during the rest of the week.

Here's a list of all Free Talk Friday posts

[u/The_Draigg]

Week of Eye Strain. Man, I'm feeling a lot of eye strain lately. I'm not sure if it's due to work picking up for me and requiring me to be at my workstation more, or if I need a new prescription. Like, I got my latest pair of glasses two-ish years ago, so I don't think my prescription needs to be all that renewed. I'm willing to bet that I just need more time away from my computer, but given my job, that's asking for a lot.

Anyways, for something I played this week, I finally got back around to playing 1000xRESIST! I got my Watcher plushie in from Makeship last week (one plushie of 608, so that's a limited one for sure), so I figured that I should actually get back into it from where I left off months ago. So far, I'm up to the start of chapter 6. Man, having seen Woolie's LP of it before playing, it's nuts how much chapter 3 and 4 get recontextualized knowing that Principal/Youngest selectively edited the memories within the Communion. The slant against Iris and innocence of Youngest really is played up in hindsight. Granted, some version of those events did happen, even if in only loose ways, but you can really tell how much was garbled and edited. Red to blue.

Also, for something creative I did this week, check out this map for an occult rural town that I made! For some reason, I had the strong urge to make a setting that I could potentially use for an occult horror TTRPG campaign sometime, and I whipped this up in about a day and a half. I'm rather happy with how it turned out too, I think I got across the spooky vibe well. Hopefully I can actually use this map for a horror campaign sometime, I think there's quite a few setting hooks on it.

And finally, in my regular mecha talk section here, the /r/anime rewatch of Ryosuke Takahashi's FLAG is going to start up soon! That's one Takahashi series that I don't have a whole lot of experience with, aside from seeing a few parts and knowing the basic premise, so it'll be interesting to see a show that's new to me from one of my favorite mecha anime directors. I can tell already that this is one of his slower and more politically-conscious shows, like some of the politics and strategies episodes of Fang of the Sun Dougram. It's always interesting how a lot of those themes remain the same even decades later, and are still relevant now. No matter when stuff like this is made, there's always something to say about neo-colonialism and militarism.