Ethan Krause, Author at Hard Drive

Man With Low Speed Stat Waiting for His Turn in Argument with Boss

Posted on August 1, 2021 by Jake Menez

CUPERTINO, Calif. ー A workplace argument quickly took a turn for the worse earlier today as office worker Dennis O’Hara was totally steamrolled by his boss due to his low speed stat, shocked co-workers confirmed.

“It was hard to watch,” admitted Miguel Nuñez, an accountant also working at the Jenova, Barrett & Wallace investment firm. “The crazy part is that O’Hara was in the right. The boss was screaming at him in our meeting for not following up with a client, but Mr. Logan was the one who said he’d reach out to that client in the first place! If had only been wearing equipment that increased his speed by just a little bit, he probably could have explained the situation before it got out of hand.”

O’Hara was reportedly stunned at his loss following the showdown.

“I have no idea what happened,” stammered O’Hara while sipping water from a little paper cup with shaking hands. “His stats are total trash; I should have been able to end the argument before he got a hit in on me. I’ve always been faster than him, but he must’ve gotten a buff from his quarterly bonus. Thank God I tend to run a more defensive build and that my charisma countered his critical hits. I thought I was done for. Jesus.”

Other colleagues weighed in after having seen how poorly O’Hara performed in the confrontation with his new boss.

“Dennis may need to do some training if he’s having trouble taking on his own boss,” suggested an intern as she paced back and forth in a small, repetitive pattern in the conference room. “It’s easy to gain EXP by walking around and getting into arguments with weaker opponents like Starbucks baristas and elderly women at Whole Foods. These locations can be found on the map screen in the main menu!”

At press time, the tables had finally turned in O’Hara’s favor as he used a summon material to call his Human Resources representative to fight in his place.

Female Character’s Pants Have No Inventory Slots

Posted on August 1, 2021 by Chandler Dean

AMARILLO, Texas — Less than half an hour into her playthrough of a sprawling open-world RPG with seemingly limitless possibilities, local gamer Jennie Popova was perplexed to discover that her female character’s equipped pants had no inventory slots.

“At first I thought maybe I just couldn’t carry anything early in the game,” Popova recounted. “But I created another save file with a male character, and his pants have four deep, highly functional inventory slots. I don’t know why the game’s fashion designers assume that just because I’m a woman, I don’t also need to carry around cutlasses and gemstones and heart containers like any man would.”

Popova quickly discovered that her experience reflected a broader systemic issue gamewide.

“I went to a merchant to purchase some pants that did have inventory slots,” Popova shared with an air of exasperation. “But then I came to find out that the inventory slots were purely decorative. They’re just fake squares—you can’t fit anything in there. If you’re gonna put in the work to make it look like the pants have inventory slots, why not just actually give them inventory slots?”

When pressed X for comment, the merchant insisted that there was a reasonable rationale behind the design choice.

“There’s just not a lot of demand among female chosen ones for inventory slots in their apparel—so it would be totally impractical for us to carry them,” insisted the merchant as he crafted a platinum trident with an MSRP of 999,999 coins. “There’s a reason designer packs are a four billion gold industry—do you really think it’s just because they’re the only inventory option we provide for female characters?”

A source close to Popova confirmed that she purchased a designer pack from the merchant because it’s the only inventory option they provide for female characters.

At press time, after realizing that the merchant also didn’t carry any armor in her size, Popova had to resort to purchasing a Big Kids chestplate instead.

Dumbass Smash Bros Crowd Cheering for Character Who Just Died

Posted on August 1, 2021 by Jeremy Kaplowitz

BATTLEFIELD — The unseen crowd watching Roy and Ganondorf battle it out on the floating platforms known as Battlefield were reportedly just stupidly cheering for the fighter who just died, according to frustrated sources close to the information.

“‘Roy’s our boy. Roy’s our boy.’ Yeah, well your boy just fucking died, dumbass,” said Ganondorf after clutching it out in battle with just one remaining stock. “I’m so fucking sick of this shit. As a lowtier, it’s hard enough as it is getting any respect in this competition. You know how annoying that is? Not to mention that everybody’s always saying I’m just a Captain Falcon clone in the first place. Uh, I have a sword now, assholes! The least you can do — the fucking least you can do — is cheer for me when I’m winning a fight. You don’t have to cheer for the guy who just got kicked into oblivion, maybe. But that’s just my two cents, I guess.”

According to those familiar with the situation, however, Roy disagrees with the Hylian villain’s assertions.

“The crowd isn’t chanting for who dies the least. They’re chanting for whoever their boy is. That’s me,” Roy said. “Sorry you can’t handle the fact that no one likes how much you complain about how bad you are at fighting. ‘Wahhh I’m too slow!’ Grow up. You’re always going on about how you have to get a hard read if you wanna get a kill. Well this is Smash Bros, not War and Peace. Go fuck yourself, Ganon.”

When asked to comment, members of the crowd themselves seemed unclear about the argument.

“I just like to say people’s names,” said one wireframe crowd member, who asked to remain anonymous. “Like when I see Ike show up on the stage, I’m like, ‘oh. I like that guy.’ It helps me keep track of what’s going on too. Sometimes I don’t know who’s fighting, and then everybody starts saying the person’s name, and I’m like, ‘cool, that’s Donkey Kong. Now I know.’ I just like hanging out with my friends and watching live entertainment.”

At press time, members of the crowd murmured, however, that they wouldn’t mind getting to say the name ‘Waluigi’ for once.

Kinda Scary: Friend Still Talking About How Thanos Had a Point

Posted on July 31, 2021 by Jacques Mouledoux

VICTORVILLE, Calif. — According to close friends who are a little frightened by the behavior, local accountant Craig Rubio is still talking about how Avengers villain Thanos had a point in movies that came out upwards of three years ago.

“Look, I don’t think the fact that Craig continues to praise Thanos’s thoughts on population control is an issue for the authorities,” remarked Craig’s drinking buddy Marcus Wright, referencing Thanos’s plan to kill half the world’s population in Avengers: Infinity War (2018). “But I definitely avoid talking about China’s one-child policy with him.”

While most MCU fans have moved on to talking about the new Disney+ series Loki or the movie Black Widow, Craig’s friends report that he has never stopped talking about the last two Avengers movies.

“At first he was just parroting the same talking points everyone else was making at the time of Infinity War’s release, you know, about how Thanos was ‘actually kind of the protagonist’ and how the film was ‘really his hero’s journey.’ It was annoying but we didn’t think anything of it,” explained Craig’s co-worker Dana Lee. “But it’s been like three years since that movie came out and he still constantly brings up Thanos’s relationship with Gamora. The way he tears up talking about it certainly demonstrates a worrisome ability to overlook kidnapping and mass murder.”

According to Craig’s dwindling friend group, Craig saw Avengers: Infinity War six times in theaters and, even though he was reportedly “furious” about how Thanos’s story resolved in Avengers: Endgame, he hasn’t stopped quoting either movie since.

“It’s one thing to hear him say things like ‘Perfectly balanced, as all things should be,’” explained a former college classmate of Craig’s, who wished to remain anonymous. “But it’s extremely disconcerting to hear an adult man keep saying ‘I am inevitable’ completely out of context.”

And while Craig’s friends said they wished he would move on and see any other movies, they admitted things could be worse.

“I try to look on the bright side,” said Wright. “At least he’s not talking about how it made sense when Walter White poisoned that child in Breaking Bad.”

Disney Confirms Success of ‘Jungle Cruise’ Could Lead to Movie Based on Splash Mountain

Posted on July 31, 2021 by Jake Menez

LOS ANGELES — Following the success of their Dwayne Johnson led film Jungle Cruise, Disney announced today that it will begin production soon on another film about one of their famous rides, this time based on Splash Mountain.

“We’ve always had tremendous success with movies based on Disneyland rides,” explained Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Chapek. “The Pirates of the Caribbean series was a runaway hit and The Tower of Terror is a very popular streaming choice around Halloween as well. I’m told we did some sort of a Tomorrowland movie with George Clooney, but I never got around to seeing it. Either way, it seems like a no-brainer than our next major release should be based on one of our most popular rides: Splash Mountain. Honestly, it’s pretty crazy to think we never did a movie about it in the first place!”

The news surprised animators with Walt Disney Studios, who seemed confused by Chapek’s comments.

“When I heard we were going to start working on a movie about Splash Mountain, I was a little wary,” animator Chuck McGrath explained. “I was sure we must have already done a movie based on this. The funny animals, the catchy songs, the racist undertones. Everything about it felt like a classic Disney movie. But nobody I talked to had seen any movie based on it and there was nothing on Disney Plus, so I guess not. I think audiences are really going to be excited to see what we come up with for this one. It has the potential to be as big as Meet the Robinsons!”

Disney Park fans rejoiced at the news, particularly those living near Walt Disney World in Florida.

“Finally, a Disney movie that doesn’t pander to the Hollywood elite,” cheered Floridian Jed Maclure. “My daughter came home from college last fall and told me Splash Mountain — my absolute most favorite ride — was problematic because it’s based on the racist Uncle Remus stories. I told her ‘you got a lot of racist uncles but ain’t one of em named Remus. It’s just a ride about a funny talkin rabbit in the good ole Antebellum days.’ If there’s some sort of issue, then I don’t care. That bunny makes me laugh.”

At press time, Walt Disney Pictures was expected to announce a cast for the upcoming Splash Mountain movie. Although fans have shown concern about the potential lack of characters of color, Disney quelled any fears by confirming that they have already cast Harry Shearer to voice all of them.

DM In Over Their Head After Player Character Decides to Go to Therapy

Posted on July 31, 2021 by James Knapp

HARRISBURG, Penn. — Dungeon Master Stan Wixler is reportedly “way out of his element” after one of the player characters in his current campaign has decided to seek professional in-game counseling, sources confirmed.

“My role as a DM is to craft a world where literally anything can happen, and then to fade into that world and let my players explore it at their will,” said Wixler while perusing the DSM-5 for anything goblin related. “But there is no way I’m ready to help this character work through the emotional trauma of the goblin slaughter from three sessions ago. How would I even go about that? I don’t want to be too stringent about rules or anything but we’re supposed to just be having fun here. How is that gonna work when forty-five minutes of every session is devoted to amateur therapy?”

Party member Dana Getty was surprisingly supportive of her compatriots decision to seek help.

“We’ve been through a lot together. And Stan has been great at adjusting the campaign for us, and I just hope he can provide our stalwart companion with the help he really needs,” said Getty, rolling a persuasion check to request that another character in the town tavern pass his character a tissue. “And preferably before we leave on our next quest. I know how hard a DM’s job can be sometimes, but if he didn’t write anything about my orc barbarian’s childhood trauma into his notes, then what are we even doing here?”

At press time, Stefan had hit an emotional roadblock in his therapy when dealing with memories of his father, Horshak the Eviscerator.

Esports Champion Announces He’s Goin’ to Kingdom Hearts

Posted on July 30, 2021 by Chandler Dean

LAS VEGAS — After emerging victorious from the 2021 Global Fall Guys Ultimate Championship Showdown Series and being asked what he’s going to do next, esports athlete XxBlazeLordxX proudly announced to reporters that he’s goin’ to Kingdom Hearts.

XxBlazeLordxX, who purchased a Game Hopper pass that will allow him to travel freely between all thirteen console, mobile, and PC iterations of the long running series, says he’s excited to share the special experience with his family during their visit to the happiest action role-playing video game franchise on Earth.

“My kid’s obsessed with Xehanort. He loves collecting all those hearts of pure light and shards of darkness that comprise the legendary χ-blade,” XxBlazeLordxX said with a glint of childlike wonder in his eye. “So I can already tell you that we’re gonna be spending a lot of time fuckin’ around at the Destiny Islands attractions.”

In addition to making sure his son has the time of his life at Kingdom Hearts, XxBlazeLordxX admitted that he’s still a kid at heart who’s looking forward to the trip for personal reasons as well.

“God, I hope I can get Sephiroth’s autograph,” XxBlazeLordxX said wistfully as he began to plan out his weeklong trip to the Square Enix/Disney collaboration. “I’m gonna have to show up before the loading screen ends if I even want a chance to get a decent spot in line. Then I can always get Goofy’s autograph later—nobody’s gonna wait in line for that shit.”

“Oh!” XxBlazeLordxX suddenly remembered. “And we GOTTA ride Hollow Bastion.”

While XxBlazeLordxX was excited for his trip to the hack-and-slash fantasy series, he remained clear-eyed about the strategies he would have to implement for a successful visit.

“I’ll tell you this right now: we are sneaking our own keyblades into that [critically acclaimed multimedia universe],” XxBlazeLordxX insisted. “I made a lot of munny off of this tournament, but not paying-9999-munny-for-a-souvenir-keyblade munny.”

At press time, XxBlazeLordxX also made sure to thank his mom — who was right upstairs.

Grand Theft Auto VI Delayed Until Rockstar Can Come Up with a Scrotum-Based Pun Name for Bitcoin

Posted on July 30, 2021 by Patrick Coyne

NEW YORK — In an official press release circulated earlier today, Rockstar Games has confirmed that the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI will be delayed indefinitely until they can finally come up with a satisfactory scrotum-based pun for Bitcoin.

“The next Grand Theft Auto game is roughly ninety-nine percent complete. The plot, character designs, development work, and testing is done. Hell, we could basically ship the full game tomorrow if we wanted to. But we’re still struggling with just the right ‘nutsac’-inspired name to really take Bitcoin down a peg,” explained Rockstar president Sam Houser. “Believe it or not, peppering our massive digital world with juvenile ‘69’ jokes and naughty innuendo has traditionally been the most difficult part of game design for us. Hell, we’re the people who called the ‘Nasdaq’ the ‘Bawsaq.’ After soaring that high, anything less is a slap in the face to the fans.”

Rockstar story editor Dana McKenna explained how crunch culture has affected the team’s ability to produce new high-quality sexual innuendos at a constant pace.

“At one point I suggested we call it ‘craptocurrency’ and ‘Buttcoin,’ but then Sam threw a PS5 dev kit at my head and screamed that my idea was ‘some low-rent, ‘Saints Row’ bullshit.’ And how we needed to be better,” said McKenna. “Before I switched departments, I was a developer. I remember working 17 hour days on Red Dead 2 and pissing in empty Sprite bottles rather than leaving my desk, just so I could meet our unreasonable deadlines. Those days seem like a relaxing tropical vacation compared to this waking nightmare of dick and fart puns.”

Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Rockstar’s parent company Take Two, expressed his frustration with the GTA team’s perfectionism.

“We unfortunately got a call from the local police department informing us that several members of the Rockstar team were harassing a group of middle school boys and begging them for help in generating some pureile sex jokes,” said Zelnick. “Don’t get me wrong, I do appreciate calling a carpet cleaning place ‘Cleveland’s Steamers” or a jazz club “The Rusty Trombone,” but we need a new game, already. At this point, we can probably only milk GTA 5 for another 12, maybe 23 years, at most.”

As of press time, a lowly night janitor at Rockstar had been promoted to Director of Creative Development after scribbling “Titcoin” on a chalkboard.

Editorial: Jeff Bezos Has Purchased Our Website and, Unrelated, Has Anyone Noticed He’s Super Hot?

Posted on July 30, 2021 by Jeremy Kaplowitz

We have exciting news here at Hard Drive! Following in the footsteps of great newspapers before us like the Washington Post, our publication has been purchased by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Also, and this is totally unrelated to the news we just announced in the last sentence, but has anyone but us noticed that Bezos is like insanely sexy?

Anyway, we think this is a terrific step forward for our little website and we want to be perfectly clear and promise right here and now that Bezos’ acquisition of our publication will have absolutely no impact on the standards of our editorial team. As Jeff guides us forward with his steady hands, taking our magazine into his big strong arms, we’re positive that we will be able to stay the course with our accurate reporting. Hard Drive will be exactly the same as it always was, regardless of our hot new owner.

But what if Bezos does something abhorrent and we have to cover it in our news section? OK well first of all, how would that even happen? I mean, sure, he did some shitty things at Amazon, and we reported on that when it happened, but maybe we were just reading it all wrong. When we looked into Bezos’ deep, beautiful eyes at our last editorial meeting (he sits in on them, but doesn’t chime in at all, unless he feels he has to), he assured us that he would never do anything wrong.

But under the bizarre hypothetical circumstances that Bezos does something bad, we would of course be able to criticize him. Despite Bezos owning our website, we are still a purely independent publication and he will never come between us and our incredibly unbiased reporting. And we don’t have to say this at all, but it’s important for us to note, once again, that Jeff Bezos is stupid hot. We’d love to wrap our legs around his cue ball head while he goes to town on our groins. It’s something we just noticed, sure, but it’s also something we would have said for years had we thought of it, and has nothing to do with the fact that he bought our publication.

At the end of the day, we’re simply very excited for what this means for our website. With a massive budget, we’ll be covering all sorts of new and interesting topics that our readers will love to hear about. Topics that most websites are too cowardly to cover, even. Plus, it should give us a lot to do now that we’ve decided we don’t really feel like covering Amazon or income inequality so much anymore.

And also… Sorry, we got distracted. Fucking damn, that Bezos really is scorching hot, huh?

Pretentious Man Prefers Japanese Dub of Anime Just Because “He’s Japanese”

Posted on July 30, 2021 by Camden Brazile

TOKYO — Local anime fan Hideki Kiyama received criticism from friends and family recently for pretentiously watching all his anime in Japanese despite his defense that he speaks exclusively Japanese.

“It’s like we get it, you’re an anime purist, but you don’t have to be so annoying about it,” explained Kiyama’s friend, American expatriate Adam Holloran. “I think the English dub actors usually do a good job, but it’s like he won’t even watch it without subtitles. Plus, a lot of the anime movie dubs have really famous actors in it. You’re saying you don’t want to watch Porco Rosso without Michael Keaton just because you don’t understand it?!”

According to those familiar with the situation, Online Anime Fan Club President James Sheer feels this type of persnickety behavior tarnished the anime community as a whole.

“Anime fans are stereotyped for being annoying and particular about this art form, so one guy refusing to watch anything but the Japanese version is really obnoxious, even if he only speaks Japanese,” Sheer said. “When he watches the Japanese version, I can tell he doesn’t even look at the English subtitles, this guy is such a douchebag.”

“And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been trying to teach myself Japanese so I kind of get where he comes from,” Sheer explained. “But I don’t practice by watching anime, I practice by matching with Asian girls on dating apps and trying to get them to talk to me in Japanese.”

Kiyama reached out to defend his actions. [Editor’s note: Kiyama’s quotes have been translated to English from Japanese.]

“I don’t understand what the problem is,” Kiyama said. “I just watch anime in my first language in my own home, and these people barge in and complain at me. I don’t even watch that much, I was doing it because they recommended it to me.”

Kiyama’s friends did not take the defense as a valid excuse, and are also annoyed at him for speaking some Japanese words with an accent.

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