#also. i didn't make use of these but the game does make itself very accessible

[pippuns]

finished ff16 :)

[tobiasdrake]

Your statement about the lack of Goku’s “poison” in Gohan’s heart makes me very excited for your thoughts on Super Saiyan 2. It’s fascinating that at his most bloodthirsty, Gohan is willing to drag out a fight even more than his father would be.

Oh yeah. Super Saiyan is a hell of a drug. I talked a bit about it here but focusing in a bit on Gohan:

Accessing tremendous power for short bursts at a time was always Gohan's big thing. He's never been able to keep it up for any length of time, and consequently it's never been more than a momentary distraction for his adversary.

But it's what he had. This was the power that was uniquely Gohan's own. Originally referred to as Gohan being a "Super Saiyan" before that term was later redefined to mean something different.

It's honestly never been clear what these explosive bursts of ki and battle fury are supposed to be beyond "Something something hybrid Saiyan". Goten and Trunks are hybrids too but their abilities don't act like this. They're much more traditional Saiyans, whereas Gohan's demeanor seems like 98% human and the remaining 2% is him snapping into a momentary Saiyan battle frenzy.

"I'M SO MAD I'M GOING TO HIT YOU WITH THE MOST POWERFUL ATTACK I'VE EVER IN MY LIFE-- well that failed. Okay, I'm done. That was literally all I had."

Kinda feels like this is meant to be connected to Super Saiyans in some way, right? Like. Setting aside Nappa literally calling him a Super Saiyan, it's not that dissimilar to what happens to Goku on Namek.

After Frieza kills Krillin, Goku snaps. The same way Gohan typically snaps.

And he's filled with intense power and intense battle fury.

It's worth noting that in the race to see which proto-Super Saiyan would ignite their transformation first, Vegeta directly equated Gohan's snaps to the Super Saiyan and wondered if he was actually the closest of all.

He's ultimately proven wrong when it's Goku, not Gohan or Vegeta, who ignites his Super Saiyan transformation for the first time. But it certainly is interesting the way Gohan's hybrid powers and the Super Saiyan are being conflated, and I generally wonder if this is something Toriyama simply didn't elaborate on sufficiently.

Because this conflation of Gohan's hybrid strength and the Super Saiyan forms the basis of what would later be known as Super Saiyan 2.

Goku's plan for winning the Cell Games is to trigger Gohan's rage powers as a Super Saiyan. This became the focus of their training after he gave up on breaking the Super Saiyan's limits.

Limit-broken Super Saiyan forms suck actually, so Goku decided it would be better to perfect the form itself while working within its natural limits.

Instead of trying to trade up to a stronger Super Saiyan form, instead the plan became to become better at being Super Saiyans. Part of which, something Goku had already been working on with Gohan before he broke the limit, was reining in form's heightened aggression and battle lust.

This was pretty much the crux of their training. How do I Super Saiyan without bleeding ki? How do I Super Saiyan without blind fury? How do I Super Saiyan without berserker movements? How do I Super Saiyan as a martial art?

But you can also see the wheels turning in Goku's head in retrospect, can't you? The similarities between Gohan's rage power and the Super Saiyan? Goku's planning to use Gohan's rage flareups to defeat Cell. Meanwhile, for the focus of their training, he's teaching Gohan to resist the effects of enhanced aggression without losing the power it brings, instead mastering that power to make it his own.

Goku did a bit of a tricksy there, didn't he? There's a reason Kaio officially declared Goku to be a formal master back on Namek.

He does make a miscalculation by assuming that just being in a fight will be enough to make Gohan snap.

Gohan has the spirit of a hero, not the spirit of a warrior. He's only ever snapped as a reaction to people being hurt; Never to win a fight. Doesn't even need to be people he cares about; He once triggered to save a Namekian child in a village under fire. But that's where his motivation lies. His fury isn't battle lust, it's outrage for the mistreatment of other people.

So, bit of a flaw in the plan. Story wouldn't be interesting if everything went off without a hitch every time. But once it works, it works.

It's super weird that the Buu arc made this an attainable form for Goku and Vegeta because the way it's presented here is uniquely Gohan's own. What would later be called "Super Saiyan 2" in a way that is hilariously disrespectful to Super Vegeta and Super Trunks was originally just. Like. Gohan's rage power channeled and controlled through his mastery of the Super Saiyan.

The one fed into the other and the result was this.

Still compassionate.

But merciless.

And cruel.

Fun fact: The anime dials down some of the violence with Cell because some of the shit in this arc is gorey as fuck. Toei made all the Cell Juniors erupt into blue smoke upon death to avoid having to animate too much of the intense violence Gohan inflicts on them, such as that decapitation seen above.

They did a similar thing to Cell himself. Cell gets torn up quite a bit to show off his regenerative abilities, with the anime replacing shots of Cell's vaguely drawn but bloody insides:

With. Uh. Whatever this juicy rubber anus is supposed to be.

Anime Cell, I have so many questions about your internal biology. But I digress.

Gohan's first order of business is, true to the heart of his character, to snatch the Senzu away from Cell and help his friends. Even in the grip of even more Saiyan battle lust than Goku's training prepared him for, Gohan's still a hero first and a warrior second.

Gohan learns from his mistake, grows as a fighter, and resolves this time to bring an end to--STOP

HERO TIME

He just. He can't help himself. This is who he is in his heart of hearts. This is literally:

All over again. This is who Gohan is in his heart of hearts: A kindhearted and compassionate boy who cares more about helping other people than about winning fights.

Even the Super Saiyan can't take that away from him.

[centrally-unplanned]

As I normally do, I very much enjoyed Folding Idea's latest video, an interpretative discussion/cinematography flex about James Rolfe aka Angry Video Game Nerd. Anyone treating the history of the internet with the depth it contains, as a culture & medium unto itself, is gonna get a win in my book.

It also hit on a point I find myself always coming back to in cultural history; how often people confuse chronology & causation. The Angry Video Game nerd is, of course, one of the most influential "Youtubers" to ever exist, by virtue of being one of the first ever do, in video format, media reviews via a comedic lens. There are years where you can say he was the center of the whole genre. He inspired legions of imitators, some incredibly directly referencing him in their identity, and when you talk to a ~30 year old online creator today who does things adjacent to that space, you can bet good money they watched AVGN when they were a teen.

(I didn't - my stereotypical influence is the Red Letter Media Prequel Reviews)

But is he that influential? Depends on your meaning, of course. Because when you ask people what that influence is, they say something like "pioneering comedic, caustic, hyperbolic review video essays". Which, he did, but he invented none of those parts. As the above video outlines, caustic, exaggerated reviews of media have been around for about as long as reviews have existed as a consumer product; making them entertaining for their own sake is an incredibly logical leap to take. AVGN was coming around in a time where slapstick violence and faux-rage was entirely the vibe of the internet; Penny Arcade had been doing its thing for over half a decade before AVGN's first video was published.

And more importantly, video content in those days was obviously going to lean towards things like comedy and "skit" styles compared to say text reviews, because it complemented the medium better. It takes a lot of niche craft to make a rage speech pop on text; it's much more accessible to just be a good actor and be visibly raging. Going even more downstream, the "media mix" of people consuming content about the art they like or engage with was so old hat by the 2000's that consumer brands were using it as fucking jargon in marketing meetings. There isn't a world where this kind of content would not have appeared. It had to, the culture demanded it.

This is no grand dig at AVGN of course - this is to some extent true of all artists. As Olsen's video notes, what set AVGN apart was that James Rolfe was not a game reviewer; he was a filmographer, he had gone to film school, he was trying to make movies. Which in 2004 meant that he had a ton of cameras and lighting and equipment to make viable content in a way others did not. He had a technological advantage in exploring a new medium, one that would fade as webcams and lighting rings became as cheap as dirt, or shift as markets for crazy stuff like vtuber rigs would evolve. And of course the specific way he went about his content did imprint itself on the medium.

But not thaaat much; I think time has not been kind to AVGN. The humor is of course dated to its time, the MTV's Jackass of video game reviews. And as the medium of self-published video essays has evolved, the medium discovered approaches far better than comedic skit shows. Much longer content is possible, you can ride on parasociality and authenticity instead of endless "joke moments" (Or go the reverse - every comedy video from the old days is too long, a tiktok-level joke stretched over 5 minutes). Some of this was tech dependent as well, of course - youtube had duration limits on uploads in 2005! Making 4 hour Star Wars Hotel videos was not possible outside of stringing "Part 1 of 37" video playlists together. But time and culture marches on as well, and I don't think the average creator today is pulling from 2005 Youtube much at all, really. They are different eras.

As mentioned, if you ever deal with doing causation in cultural history, you run into this all the time - people essentially going "work X was first, and therefore invented the genre and influenced all after". And I don't think it really works that way - establishing causation just takes far more detail than that.

[kef-meister]

Metroid Prime .... 4!

While they aren't Star Fox or F-Zero fans (I see you), the fans of the Metroid series have had their patience tested multiple times over the series' lifespan. On June 13th 2017, Metroid Prime 4 was announced to the world. Now, June 18th 2024, Metroid Prime 4 has been given a release window: 2025.

It's been seven very long, very interesting years. But instead of dwelling on that, it's time to go frame-by-frame on the release trailer and give some notes on why that particular part stands out to me. I've gotten so hyped I've gotten analytical. This is what it means to go even further Beyond. ________________ 1. "Cosmic Year 20X9 Galactic Federation Research Facility" Metroid (1986)'s manual states that the Galactic Federation was established "in the year 2000 of the history of the cosmos", and that the original story of Metroid starts in 20X5.

Given that the Prime games are allegedly happening in the story-lines between Metroid and Metroid II … there's a continuity error with the main series, which I'm hoping is addressed rather than hand-waved.

Metroid II: Samus Returns (2017) has a trailer claiming it took place "less than a year" since the previous adventure. So that'd be in either 20X5 or 20X6 - the latter of which would place it in the same year as Metroid Prime: Federation Force. If that's the case, then Super Metroid would take place in 20X6/20X7 … but Prime 4 takes place in 20X9???

That this sequence takes place on a Galactic Federation Research Facility is VERY interesting though, especially considering the Big Reveal later on. 2. Samus' Gunship!!! I've watched this frame-by-frame and I'm convinced that the ship which is landing is pre-rendered, whereas the stationary ship allowing Samus out is the actual model. It's an incredibly clever trick to save on resources.

The ship itself is the Hunter-class gunship from Metroid Prime 3! What stands out here is that Samus is leaving the ship from the TOP panel - where she previously would enter and exit this ship from the bottom lift just behind the cockpit. I think it's also missing the Ship Grapple upgrade. Then there's the recreation of Metroid Prime's intro with Samus' space jump; the music; the zoom-in; HUD turning on ... Uuugggh, 11/10. Give it to me now. Put it into my veins and make me a weird hybrid.

3. Samus' Power Suit! It's Metroid Prime 3's Varia Suit, right down to the missile launcher design. This makes me feel VERY certain this story is going to take place very shortly after Prime 3's conclusion - like how Super Metroid follows up almost immediately after Metroid II.

The Morph Ball seems to behave almost exactly like it does in Prime 1 with its wonky physics. Loving this, seems to suggest the Prime 1 Remaster had a very solid engine ready to re-use. Prime 2/3 remaster when? 4. The Heads-up Display The HUD actually matches Samus' actual visor design! After Prime 1, the visor changed shape but the HUD didn't - now it has the extra notch at the top. It's higher contrast; Energy goes into the top notch, and the Map (now all blue!) has directions on it now.

Missiles take up one of the four slots on the left is weird. Maybe there's less Beams. The HUD doesn't seem to react when Samus switches between Beam and Missiles???

The Combat Visor makes a great distinction between which things are friendly, which are hostile and what you're locked onto on its little mini-map in the top-left.

The Scan Visor isn't intrusive with its overlay - and shows 2D images instead of 3D ones. Seems to make a better distinction between things you have and haven't scanned yet.

Going off of Metroid Prime Remastered, I legitimately think there's a team at Retro Studios doing their best in regards to (visual) accessibility. Love that. 5. Space Pirate Action Scenes! These tube-tastic dipshits keep looking more and more like Halo Elites and it bothers me, but they're here and awful! Blowing up a door!

Around 1:05 there are Galactic Federation humanoids wheeling away a thing. We like things here. We also have some friendlies fighting alongside Samus here, but they're most clear on the minimap.

6. The Big Reveal Later On Holy shit it's Sylux MetroidPrimeHunters. Holy shit, it's about time this fucker showed up instead of being a 'secret ending' cameo. I am absolutely loving the guitar riff in the background for the stinger here.

I'm very convinced those floating jellies are Mochtroids - not Metroids. It'd explain why they aren't latching onto anything. The biggest question is whether Sylux used the egg he stole in Federation Force - or this GF facility has been making Metroids. The GF will never learn. 7. To Go Even Further Beyond Samus has left the building. In this shot she's still in the Varia Suit. These avians on-screen have longer necks and brighter plumage than the 'birds' we've seen on Talon IV; there's no other creatures on-screen.

BONUS: The logo looks like the rendering of a black hole. That's probably not important at all.

Okay thank you for reading. See you next mission!

[pspkisser]

⚙️ This laptop was saved from obsolescence! [10 mins of read]

Hello!! i am making this post here to raise awareness for PC and laptop upgrades, and how it should motivate you to do that same thing to preserve yours for longer or to give it the power you need! this will feature my history with mine, as well as the steps i took to be able to make him breathe life better! this is the story of his journey, and how it went to this current day.

his name is samuel, he is an asus fx570u and i bought him back in september of 2018 after i turned 13! he was brand new during that time and priced at 800 euros, offering only 6 gb of memory and an HDD as his specs. however he does have an 8th gen core i5 as his cpu and a geforce 1050 ti for his gpu. for something marketed as a gaming pc, it's pretty low and it wouldn't allow him to run fast enough, especially for highly demanding software and causing some compatibility issues. it wasn't severe, but as i was stuck with an hdd, that meant operating systems would run pretty slow on it, also leading to long software loading times. this is made worse by the fact that its bundled system, windows 10, isn't designed to work efficiently on hdd in the first place, but at least that means i have my hands on a windows key to be able to use some windows exclusive programs..

i mainly used him to be able to use advanced video editing software and customize the games i have on it for my own taste, because back then i loved making youtube videos and it was a passion i've had for years until i've partially retired from it. i rarely bought games on it and instead opted for free-to-plays, and overall had a good time with him.

unfortunately within only 3 months, his HDD broke down and i sent him to technicians for them to replace it with another one. it was a minor accident i've had but it formatted all my data, even though it didn't matter much since i uploaded most of it to the internet. i just had to be gentle with him by trying to not moving him around too much to stop that issue from persisting... but it was still low-end in terms of system performance. i finally used him for 1 year straight before moving on to a tower pc, feeling tired about his slowness and believing i couldn't do much about it.

i used that other (unnamed) pc for almost a year, starting from 2020! they seemed to work better since it had windows 7, but embarrassingly enough that version itself stopped receiving official security updates months before i started using it, even though i was careful while accessing the internet with it. its performances were also low, but didn't really matter much since i didn't take so much advantage from the power of samuel. suddenly, i had the foolish idea of installing windows 8.1 on the latter to try to deal with the performance issues on 10, but it led to even more compatibility issues since the drivers i used were meant to be for 10 only. only by early 2021, i got win10 back on him and started using him again to get more power again.

so the low-end performance persisted for very long. back then i never knew how to upgrade pcs, so i was only used to replacing devices with others which wasn't cost-efficient. after realizing i used windows for well over 10 years, i had the idea of switching to a mac and as a result, for xmas 2021 i got myself a cute yellow silicon imac, who goes by the name of sarah! but switching to macos posed new serious challenges, such as getting used to the lack of windows compatibility and the missing features that i was used to for a long time. most of the creativity i did with her was drawings with firealpaca and krita, and cgi with blender, which wasn't really much. still, she is pretty glossy and also powerful for many of the tasks i'm performing with her. originally i also intended to sell samuel, but that never happened (i low regret that decision so much i swear).

in late 2022, samuel's performance apparently had had a big hit... he now takes approximately 20 seconds to open any program and it seemed to me like something was wrong with him. at that time i also gained interest in linux since it's a libre OS capable of much more flexibility, essentially allowing it to revive old PCs. i finally decided to get linux mint to work on him via a dual boot with win11 (what was i thinking when i "upgraded" him from 10?). the performance seemed a little better from then, but programs still took very long to open. for that reason, he had often been collecting dust as he finally became unusable.

finally we've reached 2023. this is the year i decided to take on tearing down devices to learn how to examine problems inside of them. after checking samuel's performance again, i noticed that his HDD was having extremely low writing and reading speeds compared to my tower, which made me feel disappointed. but that's when i finally decided i could be able to replace his hard disk with an ssd, a new generation which is more durable, faster, quieter and energy-efficient...

but i still had a good wait until it was possible. suddenly with my money, i found an ssd which only costed €30, and it made me happy that this would be a quick way of healing up samuel! so i rushed to get it, and finally opened him to prepare everything... unfortunately, his keyboard has to be lifted up in the process, and there are flex cables connected between it and the motherboard. but taking out the hard disk thankfully only requires a few steps; removing some screws, then inserting the SSD inside of it. after that i quickly put linux mint back into him. SO SPLENDID...

for only the price of a high budget indie game, now he can open programs very fast, close to how fast sarah can do, and just about any task works perfectly well on him with way less bugs! thanks to that fast upgrade he's become viable for daily drives again, even though i don't have other desks suitable for pcs which makes me less motivated to use him. really wish id be able to since the architecture he has (x64) means he has a lot more software he's able to handle natively...

but then, i hadn't upgraded his ram. i said before that he only had 6 gb of it, and that meant he could only work with a few programs before becoming bloated. and as i like doing power tasks on him, that obviously causes problems. so one day, i went to a pc part store out of curiosity, and became shocked when i found small ram carts that could be compatible with my laptop. after some talk with the seller, i bought 2 ddr4 carts each containing 8 gb and clocked at 2666 mhz, more than double of what i used to have. after that it was time to take on a challenge to be able to insert them myself.

when the seller asked me if i needed assistance to have the carts inserted into my laptop, i giggled internally because of my past stories with learning how to open devices and trying to troubleshoot or modify them internally. i obviously declined it which saved me money, but also meant i had to do it all myself. after an hour of painful manipulations which required me to take out the entire motherboard from samuel, while that next step was also difficult i was finally able to insert the carts into it, before placing all his components back into place. and after such a long time of waiting...

i've finally done it!

Samuel is feeling very well right now!! despite his cpu and gpu dating from over 5 years, now he can do even more tasks at a time, while also being able to read them faster, a massive improvement compared to when it was stuck with an hdd and only 6 gb of ram. i'm guessing those low specs were for the purpose of saving manufacturing costs, but until you'd find use for the components that you'd remove, they'd end up becoming waste. and with a free os like linux mint, it adds up to an even more optimized experience than windows 10, which comes with so many unwanted stuff and can't be customized very well.

have you had a similar story to mine? did that pose you challenges? i took over 40 minutes to write this entire piece of text, but it should at least be very well detailed! on the best case scenario i hope it would inspire others to do some research on upgrading PCs to preserve their lives and especially save costs. Thank you for reading the entirety of it, don't hesitate reblogging it if you think it would interest your own audience! peace for all of you 💙

[agoddamn]

Albrecht in Duviri seems to avoid all the other extra-Duviri oddities: namely Teshin, Kullervo, and the Drifter.

To a degree this might be timeline funkiness; Duviri clearly has a timeline that's not linear to the game itself. But you're telling me the man goes to a pocket dimension for research and doesn't research any of the other visitors?

He does set himself up with Thrax, who is a reflection/inversion/bunshin of the Drifter and therefore at the center of the mess. But was he just conveniently not in Duviri at the same time as any other visitor (Acrithis makes it sound like the Drifter, Teshin, Albrecht, and Kullervo have all been in Duviri for a while)?? Or was he consciously avoiding anyone who might puncture his weird savior fantasy?

I mostly wouldn't think much of this, except it's something of a behavior pattern for Albrecht because he also avoids the Tenno in the Orokin Era. No contact with Rell, who is 1v1ing the exact guy that Albrecht is so worried about. Yeah, the Tenno were secret, but Albrecht clearly had access high enough to know about them. There is no way that the Father of Void Travel was not consulted after a big Void accident that used his jump drive--but Albrecht didn't involve himself in the Tenno research.

(Mechanically, this is because that was Margulis and the Lotus's arc and already largely written without space for him to be retconned into the project by the time he started getting focus in the narrative. However, I think there's gotta be a character reason for it too--and not just because that's more interesting.)

My best guess is that it's Albrecht's controlling tendencies at work. He might find the Tenno interesting from a research perspective, but he has no control over the project and it's too large for him to bully his way in and take it over the way he wants. He's also afraid of Void research in very specific ways, I think. There's that little bit in the Vitruvian about how he kept track of what other people saw in the Void and how he was disturbed that no one's experience matched his. I think he was afraid of finding out what the Tenno could have seen.

[creepyjealousy]

I don't really post much and neither do I really know how posting works. but I felt like a further explanation about this was needed.

THIS IS LONG! TAKE YOUR TIME TO READ!

My name is Keith, and I'm a long member and a moderator of the "Bully Breasts" server.

PART 1

Recently there has been a, i suppose you can call it, "call out post" about our server. I would like to begin with the fact that the information said account has given is very misleading.

see image below.

The owner of the server, and close friend of mine, has already posted an explanation after trying to reach out to the account. Their user is @emrekchu, please check the original post out.

see images below of Emrekchu contacting them.

as you can see, we've waited several days for a message back. after we didn't get one, we decided on making a post explaining the situation (Emrekchu's post)

PART 2

Now I would like to explain stuff myself.

Yes, we do have a channel where we discuss topics that go beyond mature humor. Yes, I myself have done this. Yes, I've said stuff that contains sexual topics. But none of this had the intention of putting someone in danger. most of us in the server are teens and have mature potty humor, but whenever we went too far we've been called out for it and we didn't do it again, with MYSELF as a big example.

I would also like to say our "NSFW" channel, does not contain any actual NSFW content, there's no porn, no body pics. none of that. and we STRONGLY are against that.

We also have rules in our server that DIRECTLY says that we do NOT tolerate sexualisation of a minor.

see images below.

We've had situations where these rules have unfortunately been broken and set minors in danger, but we quickly take action and have banned such people.

PART 3

(we had a response this exact moment I've been writing this.)

I would like to also say that I am very disappointed by how this was handled. The original poster, bullyworthlol, hasn't even joined the server. they got screenshots sent by a different party. so not only is there no ACTUAL context or explanation, but they didn't even have any experience themselves.

see image below.

I think this is extremely unprofessionally handled for an "exposing" account.

PART 4

I am by NO MEANS saying the actions we've done, that made people uncomfortable without our knowledge, are valid. But I am trying to tell you to reach out, we are a very welcoming and understanding community. we listen, we change, we improve.

But I'm also saying that we do not force you to interact with our community if you don't feel comfortable with how we act. I highly suggest you don't interact with us if this is the case. yes, we will listen to feedback, but we still have dorky crude humor.

Also I literally have an introduction which says "if I make you uncomfortable, please tell me"

see image below.

I am now 17, by the way.

PART 5

I would like to inform everyone reading this that we have already discussed this situation and made changes and improvements.

we decided to change the age limit to only people of 14 and above. We've also decided the "freaky channel" (actual name) can only be accessible by asking the owner or moderators, we have age roles to check who's allowed in or not. (were not gonna ask for a fucking ID that's wild)

We also decided to make the channels; "cosplay" and "face rev" private and only accessible if you've been in the server for longer than a month (we manually check this) to provide more privacy.

We will not be kicking any adults out of our server, Bully is a game from the 2000s, ofcourse it has fans that are adults now. Plus, Bully itself has mature humor, sexual topics, and more. (again, not justifying weird behavior)

CONCLUSION

Me and Emrek are taking accountability for this, and the blame if needed. you can contact me on discord @keithcobain, Emrek @emrekchu and Sushi (other mod) @isushik for further discussion.

[galedekarios]

First of all, thank you for your never-ending dedication to creating content about our beloved Wizard.

After having played much of Act I at my best friend's house, part of me is eager to try the game in its entirety and experience the romance with Gale at my own pace, but after seeing your very accurate analysis of the lack of content and the disparity in terms of his character's story, I was quite disappointed. Rose, do you think I should buy the game considering the plot hole that Larian reinforced? I'd be lying if I said Gale isn't the reason I want to get a copy of BG3, as silly as that might be. I trust your opinion, that's why I'm asking.

you're very welcome, thank you for your message! 🖤

i don't feel comfortable saying what you should be spending your money on.

what i can say from my own personal experience is that i still had fun playing the game, despite my many criticism of the game itself and larian as a company.

the combat is very fun to me, so if that is something that you also had fun with while you played act 1 then that could be a plus for you. if you are playing on pc, the mods that are out there also add a lot of variety and quality of life stuff.

i think what is important to keep in mind from my personal perspective as someone who has played early access and the full release of the game: act 1 is the most polished part about the game. there are no buts or ifs here. it's where the most interactions happen, between you, your companions and the world around them. it's where most of the secret areas are to be explored and where many quests, small and big, happen.

i'm saying this because act 1 can't be used as a fair metric of what to expect from the rest of the game.

act 1 has been polished largely by early access player feedback over several years. the other acts didn't have that advantage. act 2 is still good because the atmosphere is great and ketheric is an amazing antagonist, but it lacks all those little secrets you can find and the quests there are minimal. i also still maintain my opinion that act 3 is an unstructed narrative mess and one that i doubt will ever be fixed, unlike what larian did for dos2 with the definitive edition. in both of these acts interactions with the companions grow very rare (with the exception of as*trion across all 3 acts and shadowheart in act 2), the quests are often bugged, and the choices you make just... cease to matter most of the time.

if you are only interested in gale's story, i might actually advocate waiting for a sale if you have the patience to spare. because sadly, the reality is depending on which companions you prefer, with larian, you do get less content for the same money. larian does those sales very rarely, but i've seen it happen. so i would wait until the game drops in price. i've seen a sale recently which dropped the price to something around 40-50 bucks for the standard edition, which is still expensive but i think more justified.

[greenplumbboblover]

Looking at your Downloads page, I see you have a section entitled "Terms of Uses", in which you have numerous restrictions on how players may use your CC. I was wondering where you think you get the right to restrict usage of your material, since EA owns all rights to anything made for Sims games. Additionally, and in particular, the Sims 3 EULA specifically says that there can be no restrictions on how players use each others CC (section 2B4). Why do you think these laws don't apply to you?

Hey there,

First things first: I get why people ask others about this. I really do. But I think we sometimes forget that, TOUs, from a *legal* perspective, are incorrectly set up. (with other words, even with my TOU, I could technically never send a DMCA claim as the setup is incorrect).

We shouldn't forget that creator TOUs are there from a more morally correct perspective. My personal feelings on people just grabbing my items, especially meshes I meshed without asking, and then claiming as their own is just a dick move. Whether the EULA allows it or not. In the end, we're a community. Not a company.

Conversions on the other hand, that i've done (which my TOU does say) you can do all you'd like with it, as I don't own those meshes/textures at all. All rights reserved there.

Now, diving into the contract:

Section 2B4 says the following:

B. Contributing Content through The Sims 3 Launcher (Emphasis on LAUNCHER here)

(...) 4. In exchange for the right to use content contributed by other users through the Software, when you contribute content through the Software, you expressly grant to other users of the Software the non‐exclusive, perpetual, transferable, worldwide, irrevocable right to access and use, copy, modify, display, perform, and create and distribute derivative works from, your contributed content in connection with the Software, and to distribute and otherwise communicate your contributed content as a component of works that they create using the Software, for example, The Sims lots or The Sims videos, without further notice, attribution or compensation to you. You hereby waive any moral rights of paternity, publication, reputation, or attribution under applicable law with respect to EA’s and other players’ use and enjoyment of such content contributions in connection with the Software.

(SOURCE: https://media.contentapi.ea.com/content/dam/eacom/en-us/eula/eula-the-sims-3-row-pc-11-2015.pdf)

The way I, personally, understand it, and I read Copyrighting & Rights documents A LOT for my work and often confirm my findings with a third party, is:

It has to be content that's from and to the Launcher. Specifically with the exchange website in mind. We're talking Lots, Sims, Sims3pack store items. Videos recorded from TS3 > The sims 3 Launcher. Screenshots even. This is what this section specifically refers to.

The content needs to have come in a Sims3Pack specifically. Package files cannot be installed through the launcher, and therefore rules this part of the contract out as a potential illegal move. In fact, reading the full contract, it's a very gray area in said contract.

The "Software" (The sims 3) can't make meshes for you. It can't make textures, it can't make a script mod for you, but what it can make is the following within the game itself to share: Lots, Sims, Worlds (well, the TS3 Worlds EULA would come into play here, which is practically the same as TS3's), CASPart presets (So NOT CASparts), Patterns (again, TS3 Pattern tool EULA, assuming you didn't use a third party tool for this instead). Sharing "Objects" (in the sense of simply Presets), Pets and "Tattoos" (in the sense that, within CAS, you save your "Layered" tattoos and then share it on the exchange). With other words, the things you download OR share from/to the exhange, but not limited to third party websites, where the content also has to be installed through the Launcher. Those are the people you want to talk to, when they're complaining that people are modifying their Sims3packaged Sim/Lot. I'm the wrong target for this EULA honestly and sending this ask to.

In fact, just to do other people some favours, let's go through the whole Section B in a summarised, humanly readable way (Remember this is for the LAUNCHER)

EA/Origin account grants you the ability to download/upload from and to the launcher and it's websites (The Exchange for example)

Don't upload copyrighted stuff to the Exchange. EA has the rights to remove them then.

EA can use your lots/sims/presets of CASparts/objects in their promotion materials. As well as your images and videos even. You automatically grant permission to this once you share it to an EA website. (The Exchange)

See above.

The part that I do find interesting, and I know TS2's EULA had the same thing, is the following (I bolded the interesting part):

2. Intellectual Property Rights and Ownership. A. Reservation of Rights. You have purchased a limited license to the Software and your rights are limited to the license grant above and subject to this License. You may not otherwise copy, display, distribute, perform, publish, modify, or use the Software or any component of it. You are prohibited from making a copy of the Software available on a network where it could be used or downloaded by multiple users. Except as expressly licensed to you herein, EA and its licensors, as applicable, owns and reserves all right, title and interest in the Software, and all related data, characters, themes, objects, storyline, images, photographs, graphics, animations, video, music, text, and the associated copyrights, trademarks, moral rights and other intellectual property rights therein. This License is limited to the intellectual property rights of EA and its licensors in the Software and does not include any rights to other patents or intellectual property. Except to the extent permitted under applicable law, you may not decompile, disassemble, reverse engineer or created derivative works of the Software by any means whatsoever. You may not remove, alter, or obscure any product identification, copyright, or other intellectual property notices in the Software. All rights not expressly granted herein are reserved to EA

Now, you may think the term "Created Derivative works" must mean specifically modified meshes, but I'm guessing this was actually put in for in case someone is modifying Speed tree trees.

Besides, the meaning is:

Derivative work refers to a copyrighted work that comes from another copyrighted work. Copyrights allow their owners to decide how their works can be used, including creating new derivative works off of the original product.

Regarding the part of software modification: Third-party tools (such as S3PE) would seriously edge the line here, contract speaking. They don't have disassembled/reverse engineered code of the "Software" but they do create a copy of the content(s) in memory. (Think: meshes, textures, reading of package files)

The contract, however, is in this section extremely vague for a court to figure out whether they also mean textures/meshes taken from the game and modified as an override.

So if I have some feedback for their lawyers who wrote this, here you go :p. Though, let's be honest, the contract is only set up with EA's services in mind. I actually think those are the huge shortcomings in this contract.

Sorry this got so long. But I've had these talks SO often, that it's getting a bit tiring.

Please PLEASE PLEASE send the contract first to a third party that has a degree in law (which I have done, to someone who does international laws & Software laws), before sending asks like these. I know you mean it out of goodwill, I really do, but it's simply incorrect the way you're interpreting it.

[coconox]

my whb progress

as of nov. 11, 2023

i feel like i should've done this when i finished chapter 4 like weeks ago but better late than never ig

general info

lvl: 31

status: f2p

when i started: launch (10/03 my timezone)

ver: erolabs

team setup

post-halloween event my team consists of 5 light chars, 1 some other element (usually either leraye, belial, or paimon)

before that though i did use marbas before minhyeok, though sadly i'll probably rarely use marbas or any of the healers in the future since the artifacts when they work properly heal faster :')

here's my team in action!

here's everyone with their lvls and artifacts!

skill lvls: (normal attack-ultimate-passive)

mammon (cake): 4-4-4

mammon (selfie): 1-3-1

satan (selfie): 1-4-1

beelzebub (selfie): 1-3-1

leraye: 1-3

minhyeok: 1-3

secret club

i mainly focus on mammon, so i'll just be showing those here. i'm 1 story away from completing mammon (cake)'s and 2 stories away from completing mammon (selfie)'s!

materials

i do the absolute bare minimum for dailies and weeklies nowadays. since most of my chars are higher than lvl20 i've just been focusing on unholy board for most of the time i've been playing. as much as i wanna focus on skills i'm kinda held back by the game's very limited access to pies (you can only get them in shop + it's the rng boxes most of the time). hopefully there'll be more options to get pies that aren't purely dependent on rng in the future 😔🙏

i also wish candies weren't rng either, or there is rng but also an option to exchange one type of candy for another. as shown above i have absolutely way too many candies for the other kings and almost none for mammon :'))) the grind truly never ends

overall thoughts / reflection

this section is just something for me to look back on when i do a progress post again in the future. i'll break this down into sections so i can stay consistent with laying out all my thoughts. also this won't be spoiler-free

STORY

i find it somewhat interesting? i can't really put in a bunch of input since we've only explored one of the many areas of hell. i set my game to have a male mc, and there's still a lot of issues with making pronouns consistent :'). i do have a few cgs missing despite completing all the chapters that are out currently but those missing ones might be for future chapters so idk (kinda bothers me a bit to see missing cgs despite completing everything). unholy board stories are also ok? it's pretty tedious to get through so many objectives for only a little bit of story and also all the h-scenes and devil's tango bits in unholy board stories are written like they were made for wattpad lol

GAMEPLAY

tl;dr very tedious lol

addressing the elephant in the room, i'm aware there's still a lot of bugs. i won't be going too in-depth about them since they're only temporary and didn't make that much of a significance towards my overall gameplay so far (aside from the leather gloves not working, but that got fixed in the halloween patch).

i'm glad we have autoclear in resource stages but i wish we had autoclear in story stages as well (and in the future event stages too). it would also be nice if there was an autoplay feature, though that's more of a personal preference since a lot of games i play have that option and i don't get bored from doing everything manually.

the 6-7 stages in chapter 4 seemed a bit unnecessary? the story itself is rather short so i guess i can understand why they would wanna pan out as much playtime as possible, but at a certain point it does get really boring and demotivating to progress. it also sets a certain precedent for future chapters, if the battles in between each small bit of story keep slowly increasing how many stages will chapter 10 have? chapter 20? i honestly would've preferred 3 battles in between each story, or if you're gonna have 5 battles in between each story, have some of the story in those battles. aside from the tutorial, an example would be in chapter 3 right as the angels attacked the hospital and mammon took mc out with him to fight (3-73). those battles could've 1. gave a tutorial on how to use mammon and 2. talk about how strong he is like in the story right after those battles (3-79).

on a different note, i wish the "meta" wasn't so skewed towards all the l cards. as i progressed through the story i would look up guides on bilibili, only to find that most if not all the guides are heavily dependent on l cards (and levi which is the only king i don't have 💀💀), only non-l card would usually be leraye 💀. it also feels a bit unbalanced considering light and dark are usually the recommended element for every battle and can go against literally every element including their own. i wish there would be more opportunities for other elements and characters to shine and hold up well so that even if you don't have certain l cards, you can progress through the game just as well as those with the certain l cards

RESOURCES

i briefly mentioned this while going through the materials i currently have but i wish a lot of them weren't so rng heavy. it really adds to making the game tedious especially when you have to level multiple devils of the same element. having a resource stage for candies and pies would be great. it would also be great to not make everything so expensive ㅠㅠ 116 gems for one (1) candy?? a multi of red keys costing almost 2k gems?? atp i just focus on leveling up rather than getting pulls

GACHA

after the whole 'minhyeok needing yellow keys' situation i've just been hoarding keys and using gems on stuff like ap since i have nothing else to really use them for aside from pies. the gacha rates seem really,,,, sad, and the fact that the bloodshed cards banner is p2w only sucks, which kind of makes me worry for future cards being released. i got pretty lucky with getting both mammon's signature artifacts, as it's one of the requirements to progress through unholy board, but other than that i never really had the best of luck with any of my pulls. i got minhyeok at hard pity, and it took idek how long to get leraye, my conclusion is just that my luck sucks in this game lol

[retphienix]

Alright, thinking on it, I think I AM throwing in the towel.

I'm just hard walled by eternity Abominationn. He seems pretty fair, I don't see anything absurd about his patterns or what have you, *I* am just not experienced enough in terraria movement + bullet hell fundamentals.

When it gets "too hectic" I get skittish and move out of range (and into a bullet I should have seen) instead of confidently staying near the boss and pouring damage in and Abom seems like too much of a step up for me to adjust and learn from currently- maybe (HOPEFULLY) after I get some more games / mods of this ilk under my belt I can return and finally take him out fair and square :) I really do hope so because this mod has been SICK.

I was able to take out the entire cast, on Eternity from the very beginning, without a single mod to help make it easier

Just the fargo package, magic storage (quintessential for modded runs in my opinion), Angler Shop + autofisher (base settings) because I didn't want to farm fish quests (I still did a lot of them because it turns out Fargo makes the angler quests instantly reset which does quite a bit for improving them), and that's kinda it.

The attack speed meter lets me check how much % melee speed I would need to reach the next use time (didn't really use it this playthrough but I appreciate the accessible info) and no Inferno is a new favorite for getting that oldschool inferno potion graphic out of my eyes lol

Doing all that is kind of incredible to me :P I wasn't kidding when I said prior to this my experience was basically "I beat classic (barely) and beat expert with a mod that added content that was like 1.1-1.2x the strength of vanilla :)"

The trophies are in order of when I beat them from top to bottom, left to right. The top row is everything up to moonlord*, below on top of my main house are the normal champions, and then at the bottom next to my forest pylon is Erid, the named champion and very clearly an actual boss full-stop lol

* with one exception- the offhang wooden platform to the side is to denote a boss added after I already got to end game and so I DID beat him, but it was in one shot because he is a pre-hard mode boss and I didn't want to dig through all the items trying to figure out a "fair" build to combat him (and having to eat a bunch of health debuff fruits to get to pre-hard mode numbers), I didn't really get to experience him but that's fine~

But enough nonsense, more ramble about the mod itself:

Fargo's Souls mod is somehow EXACTLY what I scoffed and said I assumed it was based off the few pieces I'd seen, and NOTHING AT ALL like I assumed lmao

I assumed Souls was a power-fantasy "Everything is overpowered" mod where you shoot 10 billion particle effects and have accessories that give you every effect in the game because I had seen the ultimate soul you can get.

I also (funnily enough) assumed it was probably "Bull shit mega hard for no reason". I didn't bother considering how these two thoughts would intermingle, it didn't matter to me lol

I was pretty definitively, wrong but there's some truth in what I guessed lol- Souls is extremely well balanced around itself on eternity difficulty and offered what I would call like a solid 3-4 steps up in difficulty without being bull shit. It also paces itself A LOT and I'd say pretty well.

You can only access weak enchantment accessories in pre-hard mode and all of them are fairly balanced around pre-hard mode eternity remixes put in place, it was challenging and fun!

Then hard mode lets you start playing with some improved enchantments and you start getting better (there were some pre-hard) combined accessories based on the bosses you can face and it all balances pretty damn well!

Post cultist lets you get some more moderate buffs with the ancient manipulator, then moon lord lets you start making forces and basic souls for a BIG bump in efficacy- before you beat moon lord this mod visually doesn't look anything like what I expected as everything is definitely stronger (us and the enemy) but things aren't 10 billion particles and explosions yet (well, wizard + meteor before they reworked it but mostly)

POST moon lord it becomes BIG CRAZY EXPLOSIONS AND SPEED, and yet it honestly felt earned lol

Yes, the base world of the game becomes a playground, but the remaining bosses still demand so much of you that it feels like a fair step up in your own power. Beating Erid gets you some more upgrades, then after you beat abom you can get even more powerful weapons and the like, and then beating mutant will let you start making the Ultimate Mega Insane stuff that I thought the entire mod was like before actually trying it :P

To be blunt and concise: I think this is my favorite terraria mod atm :)

I have played a handful of them at this point to completion, and I keep finding mods I think are INSANELY quality (AND THEY ARE!!!) but this one really did genuinely blow me away. It was fun like the entire damn time- it was GOOD challenge- GOOD struggle for me.

And the fact I got to experience so much of it in Eternity mode (MY FAVORITE WAY TO PLAY TERRARIA AS OF TYPING- ETERNITY FUCKS!!!! THE BOSS REMIXES FUCK!!!!!) rules :D

I made it all the way to the final 2 super bosses, that's pretty sick :)

Anyways, my plan as of typing is simple.

I'm gonna slap on the Fargo Paper Mario Badge mod, grind out some badges, and give the final 2 bosses another attempt. Maybe it works maybe it doesn't.

My reasoning being that I know from experience that the badges are entirely overpowered- just nutty effects overall.

They aren't "You now 1 shot the boss :)" pieces, rather it's stuff like "Insane health regen" and "Free 50% more defense".

I'm ASSUMING (bad track record) that this will be enough of a nudge that I can overcome them on eternity mode and I will be able to make those final souls just to say I did. It'll be cheapened, maybe I shouldn't, but considering my current plan of "I GOTTA replay this mod when I get better" I'm not too concerned.

If it's not enough then that's that- game over (for now) and I'll settle for having tabled this mod as one of my faves for another day :)

[mikuchan]

my Tavs😊

@gaeldricge the deep lore lol

Findingway - wild magic sorcerer

I made her just to run through the game again as research for Something to Play For, but I really like her. She was born to a family of respectable and scholarly wizards in Baldur's Gate -- no one will confess to who made a deal or slept with a devil, but she suspects her mother. Either way, her appearance + her uncontrollable magic made her the odd duck out. She has a troubled relationship with her family.

At boarding school she met & became close to another tiefling student. He told her how some tieflings choose their own names based on who they are, or who they want to be -- and so 13-year-old Wilhelmina James, desperately trying to figure out where she fit in the world, became Findingway instead. Actually I took the name Findingway from the FFXIV Lopporit because I thought it was cute and didn't expect her to become more than a research vessel

She is a control freak who bottles everything up until she explodes and does something dumb, and/or makes a stupid power grab. She's eaten every tadpole, got the hag eye + ate the skin piece, exploding blood, etc etc and is mad none of them fixed her situation. Try as she might, she's chaos on two feet.

She has I think 23 Charisma and can talk her way into (or out of) aaaanything, but she's not very smart. She's not evil, but is closer to amoral than pure good; she puts herself first. She's romancing Minthara.

She hoards gold and food. It makes her feel important. She has about a million bottles of wine right now, and her future plans are to open a wine boutique in Baldur's Gate.

Yrollam - Dark Urge high elf barbarian

Yrollam woke up in a crashing nautiloid with no memories, but luckily there was this super cool necromancer there to help her. Now it's Yrollam's job to carry bodies and books for her new BFF Elberos (my husband's Tav), and she does it with pride.

She's very much a 'pleeease let me bloody my hands for you' type. Eager to please and with very few limits.

Before the game, she was scholarly and unethical, more of a mad scientist vibe. Currently, she is struggling with controlling her Urge. She's romancing Wyll while Elberos romances Minthara.

I drew her AU where she didn't meet Elberos and she went with Auntie Ethel instead

Sabine - drow druid. I put her at the end even though she's my favorite, since her info runs longer

She was born the third noble daughter of a very low Menzoberranzan House. Seeking Lolth's favor, her parents thought she would make a worthy sacrifice, so they left her as a toddler at the entrance of a giant spider nest. However -- the spiders were sentient but not Lolthsworn, leading to Lolth taking offense at their waste (leaving a precious noble girl out for random spiders? really?) and rejecting their clumsy 'offering.'

Lolth punished her parents instead with a cave-in (killing both her parents, and spelling doom for their now-leaderless House) which also cut off the heretic spiders from her city. The spiders, however, found the drow child, took her in, and raised her as their own.

Sabine is the closest name in Common to what the spiders call her, which is itself a bastardization of the drow name her parents gave her (Z'brnn) - so it's the name she uses aboveground. After reaching adulthood, she left to learn more about drow, figure out where she fits into the world, maybe find a new way into Menzoberranzan... she can wildshape into a spider, but she's uncertain whether she wants to do that permanently so she can return home and fit in with her family, or -- now that she's found so many friends and loved ones -- stay a drow and remain aboveground (more or less - she loves her spider fam, and will visit them whether spider or drow!).

I changed her hair when she got to the city + added some age lines.

She was the Tav I made in early access + again in my first runthrough. I'm going to restart her because I couldn't recruit Minthara back then. Also, she romanced Astarion/Halsin but I think she would be a better fit with Gale (very curious woman + excited infodumper) so I'm changing that on her new playthrough.

She was excited to meet the drow prostitutes. She hired them for several hours just to sit and talk with them about drow culture.

Her Dream Visitor took the appearance of her (bio) father, who she only vaguely remembers.

There's an AU where she was not taken in by the spiders, but by a different House who followed her parents to the edge of the city. They killed her parents in Lolth's name, destroyed their House, and took Sabine (Z'brnn in this canon) + her older sister. She's a Lolthsworn ranger in this timeline, traveling with my husband's Durge (who was redeemed in his playthrough, is evil in this one).

Bonus, Elyon (Ellie) - Dark Urge assassin rogue (based on my neighbor's kitten who went HAM on a pigeon outside...), but I lost heart in her. She was going to be my super-evil playthrough but I don't want to kill Isobel, so she's just stuck in Act 1 forever

[ipusingularitae]

I'm feeling that some ppl interpretate the [man hurt → fascist] like we can't hold men and patriarchy accountable for the process. like "oh if you didn't hurt him he wouldn't have descended into fascism in the first place". and i truly need these ppl to give a closer look into the processes and institutions.

bc it's not coincidental that these men go to fascism and conservative spaces and ideologies, it's not something that happens to happen. and i feel like a lot of ppl are blaming marginalized and oppressed groups for feeling enraged and not wanting to be around others that reproduce oppression in the first place, like everything wasn't a consequence of a system that constantly sustains individuality and those behaviors towards them (marginalized groups)

like, it's kinda obvious when you see the bigger picture. but on a smaller level, some responses to, for example, barbie and ken relationship in the recent movie, or snow and lucy gray. yeah it's funny "the boy was heartbroken and became a fascist" at first bc it's so absurd, but then when a bunch of ppl start to take that seriously i get... concerned.

the barbie movie had a clear premise, yes, and the mirroring of the real world to barbieland is there. no, kens shouldn't be invisible and maybe we shouldn't focus on a capitalist and liberal society in the first place, but ken relying on patriarchy isn't supposed to be taken on a simplistic way. if we take the mirroring aspect, the way ken take patriarchy is WAY different than the way women take counterculture movements, especially considering that feminism is about equality and not matriarchy. SO it's not to be taken on a superficial level, there's a reason why men go to patriarchy in the first place bc men does not grow in a women dominant world. the way women use feminism is not the same way ken used patriarchy. feminism should be a movement that also targets capitalism, and so yes (surprise) the approach on the movie was white and neoliberal.

although you can to use your access in information (internet) to go deeper into other ways to approach the topic, the hunger games one makes me much more concerned. because a lot was very clear. other things i think should've been more clear, like the way coriolanus despised lucy and sejanus very much in the book (we know why they didn't make that more obvious tho). but essentially i think there's more discussion to have in more complex ways in this story. bc it shows how one thing is connected to the other, how the stuff do not go alone.

the way he acted towards lucy and his subsequent response to her not complying to what he wanted makes it clear how he didn't descended into conservative ideology from nowhere. since the beginning he felt like the world owned him something, like he deserved more (and I'm not talking ab just his financial situation, although that is linked too). bc his father was a great army man, and they were from a dominant space before the districts dared to rebel, and so he had this thing being reaffirmed all the time - how he didn't had what he was supposed to have, this greatness. and ppl bully him for it, they make fun of him and that makes him feel more wronged. so when lucy gray does not accept what he wanted, when she realizes what their life would be and runs away, he goes to the thing that was there all along. it wasn't a new outside thing, it was present in his life since the beginning, it was there before him, and ppl would say that it's simply human nature so... why wouldn't he go along with it?

i think the barbie movie did a good job when they showed that barbie putting ken aside wasn't right and it came connected with her alienating herself from her existence. but the movie didn't show how everything is connected to the systems and the economic, social and cultural structures, the movie does not try to show how maintaining the system will continue to do harm, or how the hierarchy system it's the problem in itself. it goes so far into saying that "someday maybe the kens will have as much influence as women have in the real world" but does not provide the first step to dismantling the culture that has been fucking everything up since 16th century (at minimum) - again, very white and neoliberal.

but THG saga shows us how everything is linked. and so seeing ppl putting it on a simplistic way makes me very concerned and confused bc... IT'S THERE. and it's not subtext, it's not implied, IT'S THERE. OPEN AND EXPLICT AND WELL EXPLAINED IN 4 BOOKS/MOVIES.

anyway that was a big rant, thanks for coming to my tedtalk

[centrally-unplanned]

To recount a twitter story, Kenny Lauderdale posted this very normcore review of the English release of Gainax VN Princess Maker 2 from the May 1996 edition of the (Michigan) Times Herald:

It includes some great quotes, like Japanese professor Etsuko Yamashita believing its existence is a step back for feminism - very amusing given how gender-equal the player base for these games is today! Time marches past us all. Sometimes for the better - it cost $140 in Japan on release!?

But what I found interesting was the art featured - because that isn't Princess Maker 2?

This is PM2, that girl above is not our player-named protagonist.

Turns out that is art is from Princess Maker 3:

You can see specific scenes like the beach as well, in case you had any doubt. This is weird though because, well, Princess Maker 3 came out in January of 1997? More than half a year after this article was published! Which means they somehow had access to promotional material for Princess Maker 3? Which to be clear absolutely did exist at the time - in fact, Princess Maker 3 was bought up by Sony as a limited release for their brand-new console the Playstation. PM3 was actually featured on the cover of the first ever volume of the Dengeki Playstation magazine, released in January of 1995 (the PS1 coming out in December 1994):

Alas I haven't found a copy of this scanned online, so I can't say what it contained. This being two years before the game's release does honestly point to some development hell drama, the timeline for a game back then should not be that lengthy. Man, wonder what was happening at Gainax in 1995 that might have been a distraction...

Still, we have a question of how this American newspaper article got their hands on them. It also seems worthwhile to note that this article is syndicated - it was published in a dozen newspapers across the country around this time, but with different titles and photos to fit each paper's needs. And other papers do have correct Princess Maker 2 screenshots on them!

I have no grand answer here or anything, sorry guys, but I think we can infer it. The article itself actually mentions that a "third one" is now in the works, which is something they would have learned from the publisher of the English version, IntraCorp (they weren't reading Japanese press magazines in 1996!). IntraCorp likely wanted them to mention it because they themselves were going to hopefully license it, assuming the first (well, second) one was successful - this was their first foray into this specific licensing niche, previously making action games like Witchaven II: Blood Vengeance. In early 1996 they sent out copies & press kits to reviewers, and I am guessing that copy almost certainly included - perhaps poorly labeled - promotional material for Princess Maker 3 as well that Gainax had provided them, so they would mention it in the article and seed hype. The harried layout editor at The Times Herald opened the wrong folder and threw them on the page by mistake - after all the author didn't work for him, he worked for the Associated Press. He had no experience with the game to know his error.

We will never know because this is a niche curiosity from almost 30 years ago, sure, but we will also never know because the game being reviewed above...was never released! IntraCorp declared bankruptcy soon after the publication of this article. They were not the localizers themselves - a team of 4 people called SoftEgg were - but their contract with them was binding enough that it left the virtually-finished translated copy in perpetual legal limbo. Eventually it was leaked onto the internet as a form of abandonware a few years later. The hard-working men of America never got to be "Sim Dad" in 1996 unless they were intrepid enough to be UseNet Forum users hunting down and running Japanese-language romhacks.

Which is not a hypothetical, that was occurring. I will leave you all with the opening quote from the rec.arts.anime group's User Manual for navigating your Nihongo copy of Princess Maker 2, preserved still in the roms you can download today:

We all know of Gainax as being the wonderful company that brought us Wings of Honneamise, Otaku no Video as well as multitudes of garage kits and other paraphenelia. However with the release of Princess Maker 2, one might think that their true calling is in computer software! This band of self described otakus which managed to lose almost all their profits in the anime business have come back by releasing several computer games (some of which were on display at Anime Con).

...written, of course, in 1994 :)

[ultraviolet-ink]

What do you think about asoryuu?

Oh boy, this one's going to be a bit loaded, so here's a bit of a preemptive apology for a ramble/word vomit/rant on my end. Suffice to say ASRY is a NoTP for me. When I was first getting into DGS all the way back in 2019/20, I was a bit ambivalent towards the ship. I had only watched a playthrough of the first game, and I had the feeling that Kazuma was going to come back, but the ship didn't really scream to me at that point, and it kind of befuddled me to see how it was so popular (and a bit of a tangent, I think people only really ship the 1-1 dynamic, but that's a convo for another day). If you even look at the header of my blog, it is no secret that I ship Ryuususa, and it is my OTP. When I had watched the fifth case on the playthrough, I was sold on that ship, and the last moments really sealed the deal for me-- there's something really compelling about the goodbye scene between Susato and Ryuunosuke at the docks, and the localization legitimately made me cry (happy tears of course!) Being a little naive, I started to post about it and I got... a LOT of harassment calling me a lot of names/accusing me of being okay with a lot of really horrible things (intrusive thoughts WHOOOOOOP). The harassment was so bad that I only recently opened up to my therapist about what had happened, and I was pulling away from servers/people I thought I was friends with/wouldn't treat me horribly. I found a lot of solace with people who were also violently harassed pre-localization (shout out to the Baroryuu community, you all were really kind to me, and I am proud to also be a Baroryuu lover <3), when I say it was drama filled pre localization, I mean it. I can even point out when my harassment started to March of 2021 when someone on twitter said not to read my dgs fics since I was a proshipper (I hadn't even called myself that at this point, and honestly I don't really use that title [idk how else to describe it lol], but I do follow that philosophy and call myself anti-harassment), and since I hadn't had a twt at that time, they linked to my ao3, and since I put my tumblr on my fics, I got a LOT of disturbing anons. Even when I made my server, I used to have a link that anyone could click on (word of the day is naive lmaooo), and I got a lot of creeps coming in trying to surveil the server and make sure their friends weren't in it (one person was even trying to get access to the nsfw section which was FUN). After reading this, you're probably thinking "what does this have to do with ASRY?". A lot of the major bullies in fandom HEAVILY shipped ASRY, and would harass people who shipped other ships (Baroryuu and Asobaro shippers were racist, Homuryuu shippers were okay with incest because of that stupid "greatest family in the world" line, etc.). All in all, it came with a lot of entitlement and anger that other peopled DARED not to ship that ship. Those sorts of people really tainted the ship for me. As for the ship itself, I can definitely see why people love it a lot (especially 1-1), but I really didn't like Kazuma in 2-4/5. I found him to be really particularly awful and obtuse (which, makes perfect sense in the story! Who wouldn't be in his position?). I was also mad that he only said ONE (1!!!) thing to Susato when he got his memories back (despite HER recognizing him and getting the ball rolling), and it was basically "Thanks for helping out my friend, bye!" (#justiceforsusato lol). Even at the end of the game, I still was mad at Kazuma and didn't really like him. It's only due to my friends (namely @leafyemeralds and her VERY GOOD TAKES in our convos) that I eventually started to warm up to him. Now he's my personal punching bag to Atone(tm) XD I suppose TL;DR I'm not a big Kazuma fan, harassment made me really dislike the ship, so I don't ship it (also, can ASRY shippers tag their stuff? this is more of a problem on twitter, but it happens on tumblr. Filters can only work if they're there =3=)

[practically-an-x-man]

IDK who to ask you this about... Um... free choice??

5, 6, 7, 13

also 16, 18, 20, and

21... is there anything you'd like to share about your characters, their experiences, Pride, etc?

Thank you!! I think I'm going to answer this for Jimmy, since you're familiar with him and I haven't answered any of these for him yet :D

Pride Themed OC Ask Game

5. How did you figure out your oc's identity?

It was a combination of two things: one, I got some queer vibes from Lars when I watched the movie; and two, making a character a ghost means there's all sorts of historical culture and perspective you can play with, and I figured that would be interesting.

6. How does your oc feel about labels? Theirs, or in general?

In general, he's getting better about it. There are a lot of labels that are new to him, even ones that wouldn't necessarily be foreign to a modern queer person, so he's still trying to learn what they all mean.

For himself, his labels are possibly a little old-fashioned (it took him a while just to switch to "gay" when the common term in his time was... not that) but again, he means well and is trying to get caught up to speed.

7. Is there something that could cause your oc to question their identity? What?

Not really. He's been reminded of his identity his whole life, and most of his afterlife, for better or worse. He's questioned if it would be easier to suppress that part of his identity for societal reasons, just to marry a woman and ignore those feelings, but he didn't question his identity itself.

13. Would your oc be open to a poly relationship? Why or why not?

He'd have to work through some socially-ingrained standards of monogamy, since he comes from a time that was very strict about marriage and family values, but I think individually he'd be open to it once he worked through it. He's a loving, affectionate guy just by nature, I could definitely see him in a poly relationship if it presented itself.

____

16. Did you ever change an oc's identity when they were already established? Why?

I answered this one before, but the short answer is: yes in drafting/brainstorming, not once I've started publishing/posting their stories.

18. Do you prefer to give your ocs specific labels, or keep it unspecified? Why? If applicable, do you change their labels depending on circumstance?

It depends on what the OCs' perspective on it would be, based on their particular social and historical experiences.

People like Jasper and Katherine are more likely to understand or use microlabels, since they're younger, in the modern age, and have access to the internet and queer communities.

Kestrel and Eris would understand the different labels but wouldn't use them, since they view their gender identities as innate or outside modern labels. Kestrel's identity is tied to them being a changeling, and Eris' perspective is influenced from centuries of witnessing human views on queerness.

Jimmy, or my less-spoken about OC Vivienne, wouldn't give themselves specific labels because those labels didn't necessarily exist in their time periods. Vivienne would technically be nonbinary, and her being a siren is a metaphor for that, but in her time period that term didn't exist the same way it does today.

Rae, Robin, Madison, and Nikoletta might understand some labels but not all of them, due to their time periods or social circumstances (ex. Rae and Robin being from the 80s, Madison from the 60s, Nikoletta having spent most of her life in prison/isolated)

Anyway. Very long answer just to say that it depends on the OC.

20. Have your ocs helped you in self discovery? How?

Oh, absolutely. I process a lot of things through my OCs, and I've definitely worked through my thoughts on my identity using some of my OCs. Writing as a whole is a good way for me to process things, my identity included.

21… is there anything you'd like to share about your characters, their experiences, Pride, etc?

I think one of the biggest themes in my writing is this idea of "I love you enough that I want to learn", where one character is introduced to a particular community through their S/O and may not understand it immediately, but cares so much about their partner that they make a genuine effort to learn and understand. Sometimes this is candidly queer, like Jasper and Kyle's relationship; other times it's through superpowers or other fantasy elements, like with Nikoletta and Abner (their powers also represent chronic illness) or Warren and Kestrel.

Usually it's a mix of multiple things too, like Billy adapting to both Quinn's being transgender and her disabilities. It's just a repeat theme for me, but in a good way.

I think it's because I tend to write what I want, and as someone who is both queer and has physical difficulties/disabilities, I really just want a partner who will be open to learning about my experiences even if they don't understand it from the beginning. I don't expect someone to "get it" right away, I just want someone to be willing to put in the effort.