I'm way down in the M-hole, which sounds bad, and maybe it is. Maybe it's not safe to be in the M-hole for this duration. One reason might be the prevalence of M down there, or Monsters. It's literally their hole and they don't like it when you go in. Obviously you need guild authorization to hunt monsters but, uh, it's not super hard to get.

Monster Hunter is Monster Hunter, as I suggested before; there's not much profit in trying to talk about it casually without descending into theorycrafting or combo patterns or whatever other kinky pervert stuff. There's always something different and each weapon has an affinity group of adherents online who want to pore over the changes their sacred implement has undergone between games. But, like war, it whirls around a static and unchanging core.

So I would like to talk forever about the armor set I'm planning, and its various procs, and the meta aspects of how that build works with the party, but this thing's impervious tungsten slug is the last item really worth mentioning to someone who isn't already in the M-Hole. The loop. The motherfucking loop.

Kill Monster
Make Gear From Monster
Kill Bigger Monster

I was fucking around with Mork the other day in a Link Party which basically lets both of us do whatever we want, and it will let us know is a friend is doing something we can help with. On my side, I'm traversing the campaign so it doesn't just invite people to watch cutscenes or whatever - but as soon as you're adventuring, as soon as the cutscene is over and it's time to get down, it puts out the RSVP without me interacting with it at all. So, I would chew on the campaign to get to endgame, and he would grind his gear until he got an invite, swoop in like a God of Death wearing something that looks like a spider fucked a tree, and leave. After a few iterations of this process, I set my controller down on my mousepad. "This is drugs," I said. "It's drugs."

There is probably a strip or two just on the profane rituals you have to undertake to get multiplayer going, but it's only really profane the first time. Between lobbies, Squads, Link Parties, and Environment Links, you have a buffet of slightly different, socially granular thresholds you can establish for your personal comfort. I know how to get what I want out of it now, but man. It's trying to manage and diagram a level of interpersonal ambiguity and discomfort I wasn't even aware existed.

(CW)TB out.