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William Hughes

@plumberduck.bsky.social

680 followers 180 following 1.3K posts

Staff writer for The A.V. Club, co-host of Everything To Guppy on the Duckfeed podcast network, creator of the idea "What if John Wick fought Dracula?"

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · Nov 15

For new followers, my posts on here fall into three categories of various levels of irritating:

1) Posting pieces of my A.V. Club writing I think didn't completely suck.

2) Letting people know what I'm streaming on Friday/Saturday nights

3) INTRUSIVE THOUGHT DISPOSAL

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 2h

We are going to be walking around PRGE together next week and it's going to turn into a nuclear firestorm of bit energy.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 1d

ICE signing bonuses are UBI for guys who've gotten their photos put up behind the counter at at least three bikini coffee stands.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 3d

Haha, no, I wasn't laughing at you, I was thinking about a parody version of Master Of Puppets where they go "Obey! Your! Pastor!" What's that? An ass-kicking, regardless? Right you are, guv'nor, no protest from me

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 3d

I don't think the game puts its very best foot forward with its verbal comedy but the timing on how it deploys stuff is so good so often.

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 3d

There's a bit I wrote about in Baby Steps where the game basically dares you to step off a ledge that will lose a LOT of progress and I previously wrote about the dignity of not giving in to it but it turns out that being a nihilism pervert is also p. good. www.twitch.tv/plumberduck/...

Twitch

Twitch is the world

www.twitch.tv

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m. I know last night I said I would actually progress in Baby Steps but then we started late and I saw a cardboard box on top of a ladder so I had to spend three hours getting THAT but now we're going to progress

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

Pinkwater wrote weird books about weird children for weird children and I devoured those suckers.

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

Fingers crossed that Dwayne Johnson and Benny Safdie's Lizard Music adaptation is a huge hit and spawns a whole Daniel Pinkwater extended universe. Can't wait for Snarkout Boys And The Avocado Of Death as their version of The Avengers

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

I try not to write too many things that are JUST dunks on societal bad actors but, like, sometimes the spirit of the dunk moves ya

Reposted by William Hughes

Brian Floyd @brianmfloyd.bsky.social · 8d

if you’re a visual learner i made you some maps of where the people quoted in this article as supporting portland being occupied by troops live

tilting oregon is a far portland suburb kind of

clackamas oregon and im being generous giving it the town and not the county

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Reposted by William Hughes

Charles PM @charlespulliam.bsky.social · 4d

Wrote about the entertainment industry trades trying to will this nonsense into existence

The Verge @theverge.com · 4d

Tilly Norwood is a gen AI psyop

The point is to normalize generative AI in your mind.

buff.ly

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

You're also going to run into the fact that you automatically recruit a couple of characters who are just mechanically better than generics, and you're never going to field more than 5 people in a fight, so unless you just want to play with more classes there aren't a lot of reasons to go deep.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

BARGING IN you only need one squad but you should recruit a bunch of scrubs to do errands

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

Either die a hero or live long enough to become The Grink

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

Even 20 years ago, the mention of the word "cookies" meant you were probably going to at least see come cookies. Today, though...?

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

It's a good game, Rodrigo. Good things happen in it.

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Reposted by William Hughes

MIST COULD PASS. @mrreciprocity.bsky.social · 4d

In which @plumberduck.bsky.social unlocks a powerful new speedrun technique:

Twitch

Twitch is the world

www.twitch.tv

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

I am creeping steadily closer to the absolutely deranged position of naming Baby Steps my GOTY

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

Partly it was probably just a result of me playing the PSX version when I was 13, but in my memory his rebuttals to the many villain speeches he gets over the course of the game were a lot less eloquent. His motivations also felt a lot more stock, "Gotta save my sister!" stuff.

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

Fairly? It has some really infamous difficulty spikes, and it's not great about explaining a couple of its mechanics. (Notably, some esoteric stuff regarding how accuracy works for spells.) Finding effective character builds is really fun, but making and testing them involves some grind.

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

Meanwhile, Delita Heiral is essentially unique as a character for this franchise. He'd be the "villain" in a less confident work, but he's written with too much intelligence to fall victim to any of those tropes. Reads like "stock anime rival," acts like Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish.

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

Among other things, The Ivalice Chronicles was my first time with the War Of The Lions script, and I really appreciate how it treats Ramza Beoulve. In my memories, he was kind of a Shonen protagonist dumped into the middle of Game Of Thrones, but the dignity of his conviction is so much better here.

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

A little late to the party but I wrote about how Final Fantasy Tactics remains pretty close to the perfect game: Somehow one of the most enjoyable RPG grinds of all time, while being married to a story that Final Fantasy, as a whole, has never really come close to topping.

The A.V. Club @avclub.com · 4d

Settle in this weekend with a sharp sendup of filmmaking and an updated masterpiece. www.avclub.com/staff-picks-...

Staff Picks: A Bollywood Studio chaser and a potent video game remaster

www.avclub.com

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William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

I deleted that joke because although it was totally benign it was too easy to imagine it as a screenshot on Twitter

William Hughes @plumberduck.bsky.social · 4d

www.twitch.tv/plumberduck/...

Twitch

Twitch is the world