#ftes actually having a impact

[review-anon]

Dude, if someone had the balls/ovaries to tell me to have a sex change because they aren’t comfortable with my gender, then they can go fuck them selves. If they can’t accept me for anything part of my identity (my race, gender, sexuality, etc) then they’re unworthy of my presence. The fact that people are ignoring that Tenko actually regressed her character growth of accepting that she’s a friends with a boy over her being woke, then they don’t care about Tenko developing as a character.

//It doesn't help that FTEs, while they are nice and help with a character's depth and development, never have a tanigible impact on the plot.

//I know why this isn't the case since they are optional but its one of my pet peeves that FTEs and the choices you make them don't impact the narriative or plot. Its especially bad when certain FTE reveals are revealed in story, like Maki's for example.

//While I'm not sure if this is the case, I can't help but feel that this is where Despair Time does it right since I feel their FTEs actually do have a impact on the narrative, since we see Whit and Charles bonding and Nico and Rose's interaction allows the former to steal the turpertine from the latter. I might be wrong and its a complete coindience but its one big feature it jas.

//Like Tenko's FTEs have her grow up, realise her men hatred is born out of her being a complete moron, and eventually accept Shuichi for who he is. And then you have the bonus event which says "lol fuck that" and go back to Tenko being her usual misandrist self.

//Its almost as they were written by two different people.

[windcarvedlyre]

Rewatched part of ch1's trial and found something else that's really interesting in hindsight!

We're all familiar with Komaeda's FTE; over a decade later, there's still some room for debate wrt whether he was telling the truth about his diagnoses or not. My stance was already that he was telling the truth, instantly regretted it, and lied that he was lying, and I will die on that hill. I think the above lines reinforce my stance further.

Hear me out. I might as well make this a comprehensive 'Komaeda wasn't lying' post while I'm at it.

For reference, here's the entire final FTE.

The reasons I already had to believe him are as follows, ordered from strongest to weakest:

Komaeda almost died from despair disease; he was much more severely affected than Owari and Mioda. Lymphoma can weaken your immune system, leaving you more vulnerable to infections. While Komaeda's degree of illness could also have been due to bad luck, this could easily be an intentional hint about him.

He claims he's wanted someone's love all along. Again in chapter 3, after the trial, Tsumiki targets his lack of loved ones and seems to genuinely perturb him, indicating this is a real insecurity:

Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, or bvFTD, can have symptoms that align with a lot of his social and behavioural issues in the game. bvFTD symptoms can include saying socially inappropriate things/being rude and insensitive, rash/impulsive behaviour, empathy issues, and rigid thinking, among other things. Do I even need to cite examples of these? He can still hide things and manipulate people sometimes, but his ch4 investigation segment proves he's genuinely socially impaired. He sometimes fails to understand the emotional nuances of other people and the impact his words will have. For example:

(Though he still has moments of self-awareness and introspection; he acknowledges he's pessimistic in his introduction and worries he'll make Hinata hate him by saying weird things in Island Mode.)

Issues with memory, cognition in general, etc, are more of a thing in later stages of the disease, so Komaeda having significant social impairments but still being extremely sharp and lacking noticeable lapses in memory makes sense.

Physically Komaeda just doesn't seem healthy in general. He's pale, skinny, his hair is white (possibly fading into a pinkish brown that I could see being his hair colour in the past), and- at least in Japanese- he sounds really breathy and wheezy. I once laughed in a way uncannily similar to his ch1 breakdown when I had a chest infection. With asthma. Stage 3 lymphoma symptoms can include chest pain, shortness of breath, weight loss, loss of appetite and fatigue. If it's still stage 3 it's present in lymph nodes above and below the diaphragm but hasn't metastasized outside of the lymphatic system yet, but if it's advanced to stage 4 since his diagnosis then it may have spread to his lungs as well- having further potential to cause respiratory issues.

In his second-last FTE he starts to tell Hinata about something before he entered Hope's Peak but stops himself, not wanting to 'burden' Hinata. And leaves immediately to end the conversation. He'd just told Hinata how his parents died in front of him, showing zero awareness of how bad it was or how it would affect Hinata, so it must have been real bad for him to do this. And makes it less plausible he was impulsively repeating something from a book later, imo.

Iirc at least one spinoff manga runs with it being true, depicting him in a doctor's office during a nightmare. I'm too tired to hunt this down now; maybe I'll edit it in later.

On a meta level I just find it less compelling for the final reward for spending so much time with him to be 'Here's some actual vulnerability- lol psyche, remember he's manipulative? He might still want sympathy, you be the judge'. It would make the aborted confession at the end the only thing we can't infer from elsewhere in the game already. On the other hand, the diagnoses being real, and him trying to take it back and distract Hinata with an incitement to kill him (before also trying to confess his crush and aborting that too, he's a mess there), really really adds depth to his character.

Semi-tangentially, some people with bvFTD also develop neurological problems that affect movement- eg. making them slow and stiff. There's no evidence for or against Komaeda having this in canon afaik, and I've read it's more of a thing in later stages of the disease, but in the ch1 trial he talks about the threatening letter as if it's in his actual handwriting, and if so... it looks pretty stiff, doesn't it? Either it was angular on purpose or the writer has trouble with fluid hand movements. Let me know if he displays fine motor skills anywhere else, I guess.

The only real counterargument is that he's outlived the 6-12 months he was expected to, but:

The estimate is presumably from the cancer, which is treatable. FTD can take years and years, even 10+, to reach the later stages.

That's an estimate, not set in stone, and real people have survived after being told they have X months to live without supernatural luck.

In either case, it doesn't matter how dire the prognosis is if Komaeda's involved. If the chance of him surviving something isn't zero it will probably happen. When he finally managed to kill himself it wasn't even real.

Anyway, the thing I started the post with! Compare the lines below.

In both cases he's said something that could make others feel bad for him, immediately takes it back, and claims he did that on purpose.

But he wasn't actually lying in the first line, albeit hamming it up a little. He wanted someone to kill him. This happened while he was still pretending to be the killer, after Saionji asked him why he sent the letter. He dropped a hint about the truth and then deflected away from it, likely intentionally antagonising people to distract them from thinking too hard about what he just implied and make them more averse to empathising with him.

So what could that imply about the lines from his FTE?

TL;DR: He told the truth about having cancer and dementia, your honour. There's not only strong evidence for this but precedent for the sort of deflection he made afterwards.

[thefandomenchantress]

Chapter 2 Episode 15 Spoilers below!

Since Ace being the culprit has brought about so much pain to ace lovers, including me, I figured I'd make a list of all the good things that him being the culprit brings to us. Even though Ace will (probably) be executed next episode, that doesn't mean that nothing good came out of this, right?

-Ace's backstory may be revealed much sooner than expected! Before we would've had to wait for chapter 3 or chapter 4 and so on, but since Ace will be gone soon, almost everything not revealed next episode will get told to us in a bonus episode! (I think every dead person gets one of those? Idk if that's officially confirmed). I doubt Teruko's gonna find, like, Ace's diary in chapter three detailing his life story, so if we're ever getting the Taylor Lore™, it'll be in a bonus episode! Plus, a bonus episode would come out a lot faster than the whole of chapter three, so more Ace content sooner no matter what happens in it! And there's always the chance he gets picked for an FTE, since dead people are on the list of options.

-Ace canonically has neat, fancy handwriting. Begone rumors of Ace having illegible, traditionally boy-ish handwriting, he actually writes like a 19th century scholar and I find this very funny. More evidence for my 'Ace likes reading and writing and wanted to become a romance author' crack theory, since he also reenforced his particularness about vocabulary in chapter 2 part 2. (Our only remaining question: Does Ace actually have terrible spelling ('responsibel'), or did he just think Eden would?)

-Ace is very good at being sneaky and often overhears things he shouldn't. I can't wait for this to be used as a plot device in numerous fics ("XANDER YOU'LL NEVER GUESS THE SHIT I JUST HEARD DAVID SAY ABOUT YOU WHEN HE THOUGHT HE WAS ALONE").

-Ace will have to be included in the dead (formerly a) trio posts forevermore. Get ready for Xander-Min-Arei-Ace shenanigans.

-Now that the cast has been forced to acknowledge that being dumb and angry aren't Ace's only traits and that he's just as human as the rest of them, Ace is much less likely to be seen as just those two things by the average viewer. Ace's popularity, or at least the amount of dislike towards him, seems to have shifted since the last episode, and I'm happy more people are able to enjoy what his character has to offer now. He's a cool little guy. I've literally NEVER seen the Ace Markey tag this busy before.

-We got so many cool Ace CGs guys. SO MANY. Including one where he's hanging upside down on the swing set and looks weirdly cute for someone in the middle of a murder plan.

-Also new sprites! The DRDTdev gave Ace a redesign knowing full-well that it would only get a singular chapter of use, and I massively respect that. We already got some new sprites in part 2 of chapter 2 so far, and I'm guessing next episode he'll probably have at least one more breakdown sprite before he dies.

-For someone who no one in the cast liked, he's definitely going to leave an impact. He's finally made at least some of the cast realize what happens when they ignore the issues right in front of them. Ace shouts about how everyone hates him and sees him as an insufferable idiot? Eh, probably nothing, we don't have to worry about that. Sure, multiple people told him he's gonna die next in here, and he almost got murdered, but that won't amount to anything. What's he gonna do, murder someone--WAIT SHIT Ace step away from the Arei I repeat step away from the Arei-- (plus Teruko parallels). I'll probably go more in-depth about this sort of thing in a different post.

-WE NEVER GOT TO SEE WHAT'S UNDER HIS GLOVES. Kyoko and Mukuro both had hand-related secrets that connected them to the plot later on, does that mean Ace will have some sort of relevance to the mastermind or overall lore later on? Like a Mai tattoo situation? (Or maybe it's another thing that may be alluded to or discussed in the bonus episode)(Or left to interpretation but I hope not because I have so many theories).

If you have any more suggestions for other good Ace-related things the culprit reveal brought us, let me know and I can add them to the list! We need as many good things as we can think of right now...

[anonzentimes]

zen am i just projecting or am i cooking when i say komahina are both soooo incredibly anxiety disorder coded

like i’ll start with nagito bc to me that one’s more obvious. this guy has ocd. holy SHIT nagito has ocd. and it’s completely reasonable for him to have developed it! his luck means that things go wrong for very little reason all the time, he knows the luck has Rules to it, of course he’d develop little “rituals” (read: compulsions) to try to minimize bad luck. plus, frontotemporal dementia often causes symptoms of ocd as well (though i’d argue he very well could have developed the disorder before his diagnosis). nagito is always so convinced that Something Bad is going to happen Because Of Him even if he has nothing to do with the situation. “xyz thing happened earlier so something awful will happen now” that is obsessive-compulsive thinking!!! i just know he counts every step and Has to close doors 8 Times “just in case.” he probably has some form of moral ocd as well considering how convinced he is that he’s a terrible person who isn’t worth anything. oh and of course he doomspirals like no fucking other

as for hajime. i might really be projecting with this one but also i’m Right. generalized anxiety disorder. his primary fear response is fight. hajime is so stressed out about everything all the time and this is why he’s kind of bitchy. he’s Anxious. you see this a lot in the prologue where even before monokuma shows up hajime Is Not Trusting Of This Situation bc what the fuck!!! where is he!! what do you MEAN just enjoy it how did he get here!!! he’s surrounded by strange people on a strange island with a fucking stuffed rabbit and you expect him to NOT freak out??? hello??? he passed out for sure bc his adrenaline response got so intense that his blood pressure got weird and oh down he goes. but it also shows in subtler ways. his thought patterns and constant questioning of things— he overthinks a LOT, from monokuma’s plans to why his classmates are Like That to I Must Be So Normal to his mystery talent to What Is Nagito’s Deal Actually. in the prologue and chapter one, nagito gets hajime to calm down by distracting him— specifically, he teases hajime and riles him up. this gives him a healthy outlet to put that fight response energy into, and thus the anxiety recedes. hajime calls himself a “coward” in nagito’s 5th (? maybe 4th) fte— before i got my gad diagnosis, i thought of myself as being overly sensitive and nervous— hajime, who isn’t very good at deciphering emotions in general (likely due to not being able to talk about them at home but that’s a different story), would probably see his anxiety and identify it as cowardice. he also just… worries. constantly. about everything. whenever a classmate goes missing, whenever nagito goes missing (he proceeds to question WHY he’s worrying with nagito a lot which ties back to the overthinking), whenever anything new happens on the island, etc. mainly though i think hajime’s gad shows in his insecurities. he is deeply afraid of mediocrity, of his best not being enough. i think a lot of his fears stem from the idea of being forgettable or unremarkable— he wants to make an impact on the world, and the thought of dying before he can, whether it be in the killing game or just the rat race of life, horrifies him. but he doesn’t know who he is, he doesn’t know how to make that impact. he’s terrified that he, hajime hinata, is not enough. that he’s boring, unremarkable, destined to be just another salaryman, part of the mob. that’s why he worries about his talent so much, that’s why it hurts so much when nagito starts treating him worse in chapter 4 (someone who was once his biggest source of comfort is now affirming his worst fears), and that’s why he was such a good target for the kamukura project. hpa saw his insecurity and fear and preyed on it. most people wouldn’t sacrifice themselves for some experimental project. but when you’ve fought to get to a place that you pray will be able to make you special, and they tell you “we can make you special, but it will change who you are,” and you Don’t Like who you are because you feel deep down that who you are will never be enough, well. why wouldn’t you take the offer? you get to Be Something. you get to make an impact. who cares if you lose yourself? that guy was boring.

ANYWAYS that got away from me a little bit. i could keep going (like abt hajime’s fight response and nagito’s fawn response) but this ask is long enough lmao. point it they both have undiagnosed anxiety disorders i know it i Know It please tell me you see what i see

Hii!!! Sorry it’s taken me so long to get around to answering this! I was waiting for a good moment to type up a response since I think such a long ask, especially from an oomf, deserves a thought out reply. To be straightforward and simple: yes, absolutely yes! I think the interpretations that Hajime has anxiety disorder and Nagito has ocd is very fitting. I don’t know as much about ocd as I do about anxiety, so I don’t really talk about it in fear that I may be rude or inaccurate, but I definitely so heavily agree every time I see it. As for the anxiety disorder I’m not sure if I really have it but my anxiety is a pain and I am taking supplements and have started taking meds for it recently (fingers crossed those actually do anything helpful), but this is to say that I relate to Hajime a lot in those sort of moments and when you phrase it like that I realize it is probably because of the anxiety he experiences alongside his character beats. For Nagito I can say, “Yeah! Everybody makes such great points about him having Ocd! I really like that interpretation even if I don’t know about it as much,” and then with Hajime it’s like “Yes! This is canon to me I know about this and I say so and relate to him and it fits incredibly well!” :D

also lowkey I’ve been having that weird feeling where I miss them,,, and reading this has made me miss them less so thank you very much hehe I love Hajime and Nagito very much and agree with your points heavily, appreciate you sending this!

[tobiasdrake]

Okay my turn to pick your brain but. if Miu survived Case 4 - didn't kill Kokichi, but didn't get killed - how do you think that would impact the rest of the game? And how do you think she'd react to the late game discoveries?

(I have thoughts but want to hear yours!)

Miu tends to be pretty sharp, to the point that she often has things figured out long before everyone else even if her reasoning doesn't hold water.

Additionally, something I find really interesting about her backstory is that Miu is convinced that her identity is fake. As usual, she has the details wrong; She believes, based on the backstory Tsumugi wrote for her, that she had her brain augmented following a car accident which made her super smart.

It seems implied, to me at least, that some of Miu's Miu-ness comes from a belief that her body is the only part of her that's truly her own. I actually thought that was stated in her FTEs but I went back and read through them and I guess that must have been my own interpretation.

But we do nonetheless see her reverence for her physical form. Not just in her incredibly aggressive sexuality, but also in her objectifying remarks to Kaede and her weird blood-and-fingernail cooking for Shuichi. She isn't just horny; Miu seems to identify as a flesh and blood body more than she does as a human individual, and she engages with others from that level. She actually gets offended if you don't objectify her.

Whatever the case, while she is very proud of her allegedly augmented genius, she has a strong reverence for her physicality above her intelligence or personality. Which, given the nature of the endgame revelations, puts her in a unique position.

The augmentation thing may or may not be true for the character of Miu Iruma but it is not true of the real actress playing her. However, the essence of the thing - That Miu is living a falsehood, that someone went into Miu's brain and reconfigured her to be this way - is something she is 100% right about.

She's been living in the shadow of her own falsehood since the day she woke up in Ultimate Academy for the first time. And she seems pretty chill with it. She already believes someone fucked with her head and implanted her personality; It's not that far of a leap from there to Tsumugi being the one that did it.

And if anything she seems more intrigued by the possibility than upset. Shuichi had to stop her from trying to disassemble herself with a wrench to find out how she ticks. She's not upset that someone allegedly took a jackhammer to her brain and gave her secret cyborg intelligence without her consent; She just wants to know how it works.

So as far as the endgame revelations go, I think Miu actually has a leg up on the competition when it comes to processing the idea that her identity is a fiction.

[chihirolovebot]

what would an au where the phys is the mastermind be like? have any thoughts abt this plagued your silly mind?/pos

my silly mind omggggg <3333

mastermind!phys is so . ok i swear i talked about this before but it was definitely awhile ago or maybe in the discord . the idea of mastermind phys is so interesting to me because it sort of reminds me of what they were kinda going for with shirogane ? but to me the downfall of her was that she was too plain and kind of too boring that the impact of her being the mastermind was very much lessened. v3 is the first game that the mastermind is someone who was with them from the start and through the whole game with them and it feels sort of wasted to reduce her to a total tertiary character with zero depth unless u do her fte's ( which virtually nobody did because we were all focused on the actual interesting characters )

mastermind phys reminds me of what i would have liked to see shirogane be. more close personal ties to the main cast and survivors, impact on the trials but not like , ouma or momota levels of impact, just occasionally contributing something very niche and useful and having enough deductive reasoning to show that they're cleverer than the average student but not as much as someone like ouma or saihara . phys' close friends in a mastermind au actually become a little sinister then - saihara, the smartest. chabashira, the strong. kiibo, the audience surrogate. like they're all sort of staged around phys to protect them at all times, because if those people trust you you're basically guaranteed safety.

always a sucker for like . this is so niche but. a character who could in some circumstance be extremely scary and powerful, but in canon is just a very passive peaceful guy who was no interest in confronation. but like the ult physicist could be someone very very scary . phys is extremely smart in their field of knowledge and although their specialty is quantum mechanics, they're very knowledgeable on almost every field of physics. if they wanted to they could do some very scary shit with it . might even be a really cool tie-in to the executions, like , oh phys totally designed and built the set themself, do you like it ??? i built it especially for whoever was being executed!

so thats kind of creepy . i would need a whole new thing to ramble about how this would affect their relationship with ouma .

[cosmereplay]

Happy Fanfic Friday, and happy my birthday months! This week I'm recommending my fics from the Fumbling Towards Ecstasy universe. What would it be like for Shallan, Kaladin, and Adolin to have a relationship in canon? What would it take to get them together, and how would it impact them and the people around them?

Lies Illuminating Truths - 4000 words, rated General. As a prelude to their relationship, I wondered what would it look like for Shallan to actually grapple with her status as a lighteyes? Ishnah presents Shallan with some qualitative research that challenges her to think differently.

Fumbling Towards Ecstasy - 120,000 words, rated Mature. Contains skippable sex scenes. Contains fanart! I wrote this in a partly metaphorical, partly literal fever in the months after I read Rhythm of War. Shallan tries to be a good wife and fails. Kaladin faces his PTSD head on. Adolin grapples with the implications of their class differences. They use Stormlight inappropriately. They love each other. It's set post-RoW but there's no canon plot elements mucking up all the fun relationship stuff I wanted to play with.

If We Have Each Other - 15,000 words, rated Mature. Contains a skippable sex scene. This is a Rlain and Renarin focused fic that takes place in the background of FTE. It explores Rlain's isolation from singer customs around Mateform, and how he and Renarin negotiate that, with a little help from their friends and family.

FTE Epilogue: Cuddles - 1000 words, rated Teen. This is a little ficlet I wrote to accompany a lovely piece of Shakadolin art that lamaery made for my birthday. Definitely check it out for the art!

[goshdangronpa]

ibuki 🤪

Yeethaw it's Best Character

Favorite thing about her: There's so much to love!!! Her spunk, her look, her distinct voice ... Something really underrated about her, though, is her emotional maturity. For all her quirks and silliness, she's among the wisest people on the island. Her FTEs with Hajime are unique in that she's the one helping him deal with personal hang-ups, not the other way around. The advice she gives resonates perfectly with the themes surrounding the characters' dark past and the better future they can create.

Least favorite thing about her: It really is messed up that she tells Mahiru to "snatch some shots" when Mikan accidentally exposes herself in a tumble, but I think she'd relent if she knew about that girl's circumstances. So maybe the real worst thing is her hilariously rude takes on music. No, Ibuki, there is more to drumming than making loud noises!

Favorite line: "Welcome to the world of girls' love! It's slippery when wet!" There's much to criticize about DR's portrayal of LGBTQIA+ chars but I love how overtly queer many of these characters are, especially the enthusiastically girl-loving Ibuki.

brOTP: Whether you like it as a romantic ship or a friendship, Ibuki's bond with Imposter is a genuine delight. She takes their crappy Byakuya attitude so good-naturedly that they can't help but respect it. If they'd lived past Chapter 1 ... well, I'll go into that more as I develop my Ibuki protag swap project, but suffice to say they'd have a strong impact on each other. She'll help bring the individual at the core of the Imposter, and they'll help Ibuki channel her boundless energy into being a genuine force for hope.

OTP: You already know. I've liked some noncanon ships even before I knew the concept of shipping (zutara was just so obvious to me even as a kid), but tsumioda is the first to make me lose my damn mind. "Sweet girl helps sad girl" is irresistible, especially with my spin where the sad girl helps the sweet girl right back. The whole "Mikan once killed Ibuki" is a dealbreaker for some, but it actually seals the deal for me. This extreme interpersonal conflict is the kind of barrier that, once overcome, will make them both better people and better partners for each other than they ever could've been ... Oh my god, I talk about them like Nagito talks about hope, HELP

nOTP: I don't think I have any nOTPs - only ships that are more interesting (or funnier) as failures. Sayabuki is one. Ibuki strives to always be herself, no matter how that might alienate potential friends and fans. Sayaka would call that idealistic and naive, having her own motivations for doing things she otherwise never would. A clash would be inevitable. In fact, have a surprisingly detailed relationship arc for them in my head, taking them from musicians on the same tour to secret lovers (and first love, on Ibuki's end) to bitter exes. I'll write that fanfic someday.

Random headcanon: Ibuki's always so brazen when flirting with people, but when she develops an actually serious crush, she gets really awkward and even more motormouthed.

Unpopular opinion: I don't think Ibuki would immediately be all smiles and forgiveness with Mikan after they all wake up in the pods. A girl who prizes being real with people got taken advantage of in the worst way by someone she called a friend. Even for someone as friendly and emotionally stable as Ibuki, that's gonna require some deep reflection, emotional processing, and tough conversation! I do agree, though, that they'll eventually work it out (and fall in love)

Song I associate with her: HEY BIG MAN PUT THE MONEY IN MY POCKET

Favorite picture of her: The one I drew!

[a-student-out-of-time]

If you could rewrite SDRA2, what would you change about it? Assuming you keep most of the core concepts? Also how would your rewrite work in ASOOT?

//I'm not gonna go into how it would affect ASooT, but I'll give you 10 ideas for how I'd improve SDRA2:

If you're going to have Mikado revealed from the start, don't make the Voids take backstage to his antics. Hajime's reveal was pretty good, but I feel like we need a bit more discussion and foreshadowing in regard to the roles and identities of the Voids throughout the story. Add more intrigue outside of the FTEs with everyone and make it really seem like anyone could be a member.

More foreshadowing for the reveals throughout the game, from them being in a virtual world to the Voids' backstories to the reason why everyone's here. All of it being shoved into Chapter 6 made the whole thing bloated and convoluted.

If you really want to have your big-tiddy serial killer waifu, the least you can do is give her an actual purpose in the story. I like what Mod Poi suggested, where she actually captures and interrogates someone- maybe Nikei- and figures out that he's a Void. Setsuka's death in this chapter would then be even more impactful, since they were working together, and have a major role in his decision to abandon Void altogether.

Hibiki lives. She was screwed harder than anyone in this game and I will forever stand by that as fact. This way, she can play out an actual arc and get the chance to grow as a person, maybe even becoming a major influence on the survivors.

Don't reveal Iroha as a Void until Chapter 5. The only reason she was revealed halfway through feels like it was just for more antics, and instead you can have continuous uncertainty in the group but them choosing to work together anyway, maybe to honor Shinji and Setsuka's memory by following their goal of trying to turn the Voids to their side.

Give Iroha an actual goddamn arc, and maybe make Hitaru, Jiro and Akemi canon : P

Give the Voids some actual focus outside of just their status as antagonists. I hate LINUJ's view that they were doomed no matter what they did, but if you wanted to go the tragic route, at least give them some character focus for more pathos.

Tone it the fuck down when it comes to the grimdark. None of it adds to the story.

Make Teruya more of a focus, rather than just having him there for the sake of having him, and don't have him snap for the sake of including another kraaaaaazy character moment.

Let the characters actually grow and change.

[yomiurinikei]

Okay I needed to add one more thing too.

Tsuhara and Tsuhigo both are rad as hell but..

What about

What about

Haruhara.

I love how Haruhiko wanted to dropkick Monokuma so bad

easy option theyre all dating <3 love wins

i see ur other ask + am planning on maybe doing some rambling/analysis on it, so this will be more lighthearted! i think that like.... while overall theres a lot of queer coding in dra, which leads to a lot of interesting ways of interpreting relationships (every character is like. either queer coded, or has interesting interactions with a more queer-coded character).

soooo. i think they should all just date <3. they all have two hands!!! im generally a bit more tsurugi focused with my thoughts because theres just so much material when it comes to how he is when it comes to romance. but i think haru and kinji could be vv fun together- OH.

so building off my "cupio haru could be a fun hc" post (id link it but thats... all it rlly says), and combining that with my kinji hcs, specifically the idea that kinji isn't really in touch with what he wants and doesn't realize the need he has that's going unmet. i think haru who wants love and a relationship and is just so into the whole idea of it, who also is very... dedication/obligation driven (this is part of a larger analysis but tldr haru is very interesting when u look at how he views his relationships with people and how labeling people as friends vs not friends impacts how he treats them), but doesn't feel attraction to any particular person, would be very fun with kinji whos just entirely tapped out of his emotions, who has these wants, these feelings, that he has zero conscious awareness of.

i think the getting together stage with them would be vv cute cuz u have haru who's very conscious of the whole thing, how they're growing closer together, and shit, hey, could this maybe become a relationship? and then u have kinji whos just been put on a rollercoaster blindfolded and has no clue whats happening or whats about to hit him.

i have this issue where i share thoughts that have a bunch of context behind them but don't give the context and then i come across like i have no grasp on these characters. but. tldr haru comes across in the game as being driven by what he feels he /should/ do for people and is very conscious of how his relations impact things. and kinji is just. "is this friendship?" after saying the most romantic coded things to yuki in his ftes. so i think they'd be fun together!!!

also i love haruhiko so bad <3. he's such a funny little dude i feel he v often gets reduced to either his romance with satsuki or his "bro!" energy and its such a shame because i love both those aspects of him, but when he's written comprehensively, without focusing on just one of those parts of his personality, it's so great, he's actually a fairly cohesive character as far as linujs writing goes. so i get a little picky because no one gets him perfect which is evil because he actually does have consistent writing.

he should have gotten to dropkick a monokuma

[danganronpasurvivoraskblog]

To Mod: I only watched the Danganronpa Trials throughout the series. But now I can say that in v3 that I'm currently playing outside of trials. Tenko's hate towards men and her obsession with Himiko was obnoxious. Angie is basically Teruteru were he rarely gets non-pervy dialogue, while and gets very rare non-Atua dialogue. Also Angie is extremely shady, even more so so ce she only has smiling sprites. Kaito's blind optimistism is annoying. And Miu pervsion towards Shuichi during FTE & Love Hotel was honestly more disturbing than Teruteru's Rice Ball.

//The biggest problem with Dangnronpa V3's writing, and I've said it before and I'll say it again, is that the dialogue is far more repetitive than it is in any other installment in the series.

//And for Danganronpa, that's saying something.

//Every V3 character has basically one personality trait, and nothing else, and all their dialogue and interactions are based around that one trait.

//For some of them, it actually works in their favor. Shuichi, Maki, Kaito, Kaede and Kokichi are five of the most interesting and fun characters in the series in my opinion.

//But for every other character, it honestly works to their detriment. Keebo, Tenko, Gonta, Angie and Tsumugi in particular. Their traits get really old REALLY fast.

//And what sucks more is that in the case of Tsumugi, her trait actually ruins her entire premise. Because she's such a nothing character and doesn't have any unique traits besides making stupid references at every given opportunity, the impact upon finding out she is the mastermind is softened GREATLY, to the point where the first time around, I just didn't fucking care.

//Keebo and Gonta are good characters, but are just spoiled by the constant chanting of robophobia, and both gentleman comments and how he flies off the handle when people don't like bugs.

//And Tenko and Angie are just made straight up unlikeable.

-Mod

[review-anon]

Since we're doing THH, how about I just throw you into the minefield and ask about Chihiro?

Are we seriously gonna go through Trigger Happy Havoc characters in order of how they died? Because it seems like that's your method Anon.

Now Chihiro is easily my favourite Trigger Happy Havoc character. While physically he, yes I'm using he/him pronouns and I will explain why, is one of the weakest, that's on the physical side. Mentally though? Chihiro is easily the strongest person out there. As it takes real guts to see your secret be about to be exposed but rather then bulk under pressure decide that no he wasn't gonna hide anymore, and he was gonna to get stronger so he could face the secret.

He's also a super helpful character as while he dies in Chapter 2, thanks to his talent he's left a Alter Ego of himself behind which extends the lifespan of the character tremedously and also gives interesting character moments between Makoto and Kyoko. While his "death" in Chapter 4 was sad, it diid mean he was able to save Makoto in Chapter 5's execution and then once the survivors got out he became the main AI for Future Foundation so yeah, short physical lifespan but bro left a legacy. Plus his work is why literally every AI character can exist. Chiaki? Usami? Heck if you go into the Another series both Mikado and Sora can be arributed to this smol programmmer. That is a sizable impact someone can leave on the franchise as a whole.

Of course we need to address the massive elephant in the room and that's Chihiro's gender identity and for that I say one thing; Westerners fucked up big time as you guys did a epic fail on Japanese culture. Under the cut because this is gonna get spicy

All of the Trigger Happy Havoc cast are based on various subcultures that existed in Japan during 2008-2010 (when the game was being made) and in the case of Chihiro his subculture was Otokonoko which is where men who had feminine qualities would dress up as women. This wasn't done because they idenified as female, but because gender roles in Japan are still quite strict and if one exhibited "unmanly" qualities they would be bullied so one would crossdress to prevent that. And that's precisely what happened to Chihiro, he was quite feminine, everyone picked on him so he dressed as an girl to avoid the bullying. But at no point does Chihiro see himself as female, in fact if you gift Chihiro feminine gifts during FTEs he gets quite angry with them, which is a major red flag for him not being actually trans.

A common argument I see is that trans wasn't a topic discussed at the time the game came out and that's why its so seemly offensive, but unlike the West, Japan doesn't have as many issues with trans people because of the whole social harmony. Due to how strict gender roles are, if one was to transition from male to female, it would be as accepted as a homosexual would in the West. Heck there's plenty of icons in Japan such as Birdo and Vivian who are confirmed to be trans and they are nothing like Chihiro is. Bear in mind these character have been around longer then Chihiro. So its not like Japan doesn't know the difference, they do. Its just they know when someone really is a boy believing they are a girl and not a boy hiding from bullies by pretending to be a girl. That is what Chihiro is.

The real message of Chapter 2 is how toxic gender roles can be as the strict gender roles not only lead to Chihiro dressing as a girl, it also led to Mondo having a lot of anger issues because he couldn't process the very real grief of losing his brother since "real men don't cry." Heck Genocider Syo's whole thing could also be gender roles being bad as she targets young handsome men exclusive.

So how come Chihiro became the target of a trans storm and toxicity? As I mentioned the message of Chihiro's character didn't translate very well overseas since unlike Japan, gender roles are a lot looser over here so as such people thought Chihiro was trans as that was the only point of reference they could identify with. Of course not only is this wrong but its insulting to both Chihiro and actual trans people.

Then my least favourite Youtuber decided to throw nuclear waste onto the topic and make the worst video I ever seen in my life on the matter which just reeks of Western imperalism, bias, and is allergic to criticism on the matter. Honestly people like them are part of the problem, most people are misinformed on Chihiro being trans and just a little knowledge into how Japanese subcultures and how gender roles are really much stricter out there then here could help matters greatly. But you always get the ones who decide to be toxic about it.

I do think this problem isn't as bad as it was in the past as most of the really toxic bastards have moved on or don't use Tumblr, and more people accept that Chihiro was never meant to be a trans representive. That and people are just more informed now.

I'll be honest there was a point I was scared to talk about Chihiro due to the fact I didn't want to get doxxed and death threatened by people, especially since I come from what is known as "TERF island" to these people. But now I realise people who start shit like that are losers and I don't need to worry about them anymore.

Either way, I will be okay talking about Chihiro when I do the Valentine's Day review and I have some big plans for him.

[g0nta-g0kuhara]

[Taken from under the cut]

"The localization definitely did change some things about the portrayal of Angie’s religion, but I would hesitate to say that they changed the overall feel or messages of Chapter 3. The original was already pretty… well, I don’t know if “atheistic” is the best term for it, but the point of Chapter 3 in the original was definitely to have a kind of clash between western and eastern religion that reached a boiling point. I don’t think any of the general negativity associated with Angie and her cult, or Korekiyo and his séances, was impacted by NISA so much as it was already there in Kodaka’s writing.

As far as I could tell when playing the localization, in fact, Korekiyo’s translator didn’t change or alter much about his dialogue. Other than the “Kiyo” nickname, I agreed with most of the choices they made (translating “Kagoinu Village” and the “Kagonoko Ritual” as the “Caged Dog Village” and “Caged Child Ritual” respectively were really good choices or a localization, in fact, since they made them easier to understand). All of the reveals that happen in the post-trial (as in, those reveals, about his sister) were adapted pretty straightforwardly from the original. Nothing was cut or altered significantly; his motives really were that messed-up.

As for Angie, the term “brainwashing” actually is a direct translation and not something altered or swayed by the localization! The term 洗脳 (“sennou”) comes up as early as Chapter 2 in both the original and the localization. I believe the first instance of it is in an optional dialogue session with Himiko on the night of Saihara’s first training session, where she mentions that she should’ve “had [Angie] undo her brainwashing sooner.” The following morning, when discussing Himiko’s magical show, Angie is pretty quick to change the subject and avoids answering any questions when she’s asked by the rest of the group what she did to Himiko.

What’s more, there seems to be a very intentional correlation between Angie’s talent and Mitarai’s. While not entirely the same, the two bear definite similarities which come to light especially if you do Angie’s FTEs. In her third FTE with Saihara (her 5th overall if you did Kaede’s), she shows Saihara a picture she was painting, only for him to lose consciousness immediately upon looking at it. When he wakes up again and asks her if there’s anything intrinsically special about the painting itself, she says she’s not sure, and that she just “creates her art exactly the way god tells her to.”

It’s pretty heavily implied (more like confirmed, in her FTEs at least) that her artwork is how she gets people to listen to her and do what she asks, both on her home island and within the religious student council she sets up. There definitely seems to be a much larger degree of free will involved with her abilities than there was with Mitarai’s, the game is pretty emphatic about the fact that she does brainwash people to go along with her ideas. The effectiveness of her brainwashing is up for debate, though; Saihara remains pretty unaffected in his FTEs with her despite her best attempts to force him to marry her, Tenko was only pretending to join the student council in order to keep an eye on Himiko, and I highly doubt Tsumugi was ever actually brainwashed because of, well, reasons.

Overall, the general feeling with Angie (in the narrative at least) seems to be that she was someone whose intentions weren’t necessarily bad, but that she still did some pretty unsavory stuff nonetheless. It’s pretty clear that she does, in fact, want the killing game to end—she’s one of the most outspoken characters of the opinion that “greed” and “desire” only lead people to commit murder, and that they’d all be better off staying within the school and making it comfortable for themselves, rather than continuing to try and escape the school.

Unlike other characters who have brought up similar plans before, like Celes, I think Angie did genuinely believe what she was saying, too. There’s an optional dialogue moment in Chapter 4 if you click on the door to Angie’s lab while exploring around the school, where Saihara pretty much outright says that he couldn’t agree with her methods, but that he does realize that she was trying to stop the killing game in her own way, then follows up with a really nice comment about how he’ll never forget her. He has similar comments for most of his classmates following their deaths in each subsequent chapter, but I thought it was a really nice touch nonetheless.

As you point out though, if there is a fault in the localization to be found, it’s in changing Angie’s god altogether from a very general, unspecific god to “Atua.” Ever since I heard about that particular localization decisions, I couldn’t agree with it for a number of reasons, not least of all that it’s extremely disrespectful, as Atua is an actual, real deity in Polynesian mythology. Adapting a real-life deity and applying it to a character whose backstory, island, and god are all deliberately undefined (and fictional) is a very bad choice all around.

Angie already suffers from a lot of bad, racist writing tropes on Kodaka’s part in the original. It’s pretty clear that since she’s both dark-skinned and a “foreigner” (and we don’t know anything regarding whether her pre-game self is actually a foreigner or not) she was designed to be the “exotic, quirky island girl” whose religions and culture teeter between baffling and downright creepy.

The portrayal of her island’s religion and customs already isn’t positive in the original game; between “blood sacrifices,” purchasing organs and children off of the internet, and the hypersexualization of both Angie and her people (she tries to take off Saihara’s clothes in the same FTE I mentioned before, and there’s a lot of talk about the people on her island “comforting” each other sexually or “sharing the bride” at weddings), it feels like Kodaka was just one step short of calling them “un-civilized,” which is… eugh.

Taking all of that messy and unsavory writing and directly correlating it with actual Polynesian culture and mythology is such an incredibly disrespectful decision, moreso when I highly doubt that Angie’s translator for the localization is Polynesian themselves or did any actual research into the subject. There was no need to slap a name onto Angie’s god in the first place—her island and culture are still entirely undefined in-game, so why NISA felt that her religion needed to be equated with a real-life one is still beyond me.

Other than the general racism though, I don’t think a lot of the rest of Angie’s dialogue was changed. There was a brief, optional line in the bonus mode when she comes to invite you for a date where her translator decided to have her say “Alola!” (which, you know, a Pokemon region based on Hawaii isn’t even the same as the Polynesian islands, but okay), but otherwise her translation was pretty faithful to the original dialogue. I think her translator didn’t have too much of a problem capturing the feeling of her character; their main problem was simply the decision to make an unnecessary correlation between Angie’s fictional, made-up religion and all its negative aspects and with actual Polynesian religion and culture.

Overall, I think a lot more of the issue stems back to Kodaka’s own racism and flawed writing, though. I don’t think he was trying to leave a message of “religion = bad, always” in Chapter 3 so much as he was just… unaware of how it might come across to others. Religion in Japan is decidedly different from religion in the west, so it’s important to remember that Kodaka was writing from a Japanese perspective, rather than an all-around western atheistic perspective. He definitely wanted a sort of clash of ideas between Angie’s very foreign, western, cult-like religion, and Korekiyo’s research into eastern culture and spirituality, but the writing got… well, very messy along the way.

This is just my take on it all, anyway! The association with Angie’s religion and “brainwashing” was definitely there in the original game, even very early on, but I do think the localization would’ve improved overall if it hadn’t bothered trying to put a real name to any of it. Thank you for asking this question by the way—it’s always good to clear this kind of stuff up, especially since all of the “Atua” changes must make it really difficult for anyone playing the localization to know how much else was or wasn’t changed in Angie’s dialogue. I hope I could clear a few things up!"

here's a question ive had since the localization came out; did the localization do anything to enforce more of an athiestic bent and put angie and shinguji in a more negative light wrt religion and spirituality (particularly angie)? or has that always been there? the whole "brainwashing" angle felt p harsh, not to mention saying angie's god outright is Atua instead of the general "my god" that the translations seemed to have. plus akamatsu seemed very internally harsh about her god in their FTEs

The localization definitely did change some things about theportrayal of Angie’s religion, but I would hesitate to say that they changedthe overall feel or messages of Chapter 3. The original was already pretty…well, I don’t know if “atheistic” is the best term for it, but the point ofChapter 3 in the original was definitely to have a kind of clash betweenwestern and eastern religion that reached a boiling point. I don’t think any ofthe general negativity associated with Angie and her cult, or Korekiyo and his séances,was impacted by NISA so much as it was already there in Kodaka’s writing.

Keep reading

[anonzentimes]

i find it honestly kind of insane how misunderstood komaeda is online like maybe its because i did his ftes on my own playtrough but just from playing dr2 once to me he never felt like a "uwu hope boy" or a "hope obsessed male junko", he just felt like his own guy with his own reasons that have nuance and arent bound to black and white good or bad mentalities, and because i got all of that from 1 playtrough i honestly thought nagito was not that hard to understand and now i see people boxing him on one or the other and i just sit there like did we play the same game ???????

im also someone that overthinks a lot and wants my interpretations of characters to line up with canon as much as i can and i dont dare to talk on the internet about characters i dont fully grasp so its bonkers to me how many people are so openly completely missing the entire point of nagitos character........

It really is annoying how some people completely miss his character or think he has to be stuffed in specific categories, part of what makes his character so great is that he cares so much and is so sweet but is morally gray when it comes to his absolute beliefs/obsessive coping mechanism but even in the end his moral grayness doesn't have ill intentions. He's messed up by the circumstances of his life and the diagnosis also impacts things, he's still a really sweet boy who cares a lot and all of that is a MIX. Nagito is basically the moral grayness added to Danganronpa 2 that makes its messages more impactful and interesting. Nagito is practically a parallel to both Makoto and Hajime, and with his own sweetness and personality, problematic coping mechanisms from circumstances/luck cycle, and appearance it creates somebody completely new and wonderful. Somebody who's Super LOVABLE!!! In fact Nagito is so easy to misinterpret that the Wiki actually says "He's revealed to be a psychopath," which kind of undermines everything about him as well as isn't actually correct to the definition of a psychopath >:(

also the male Junko thing is inherently wrong because his mindset is completely different and Junko is also well written in her own way, the crazy eyes make people think of it or make jokes about it but it's just completely wrong Lol. Nagito loves Hope and believes despair is absolutely NECESSARY for Hope. Again, more of a parallel to Makoto, Not Junko. And then for the whole "uwu" boy it's like, c'mon dude. I know you didn't say these and are indeed agreeing with annoyance with these statements but I get annoyed too so I wanted to add a mini ramble about it too HAHA!

Anyways, I guess overall I just wish people could enjoy him with completely understanding him more, It feels really good for me at least. Probably because he's the biggest special interest i've ever had in my life and mere mentioning him gives me happiness, but I digress I think he doesn't have to be put into specific boxes. Good people can do bad things, he's a complex character with a lot of depth. In a weird way his character is definitely over the top fantasy from the franchise being that way, but what Danganronpa does is make that feel real. In that aspect Nagito feels realistic with how he isn't just black or white.

thanks for your ask and thank you for letting me ramble on my birthday <3 :D!!!!!

[l-1-z-a]

The Sims 2 Dev Twitter Thread Part 1 by Jake Simpson

Sims 2 Dev Thread.

I'm going to do several of these, all will be prefaced by this title, so those of you interested can find them easily.

I'm just putting stories and details in haphazardly, as I recall them, so don't expect these to be too organized:)

So firstly, who am I, and how come I can talk about this? Well, I'm Jake. I was hired by EA in Nov '01, right after 9/11. That actually impacted my ability to go to interviews at EA in SF at the time. But I was determined to get the job, and so I persevered.

Previous to this, I worked at Raven, on titles like Soldier of Fortune, Star Trek : Elite Force and Jedi Knight II. Before that I was at Midway, making Arcade games like NBA Jam, Revolution X and WWF Wrestlemania.

I was actually hired by my friend Jonathan Knight @jk00 - who was a producer on Sims 2 (and also a bunch of the Sims 1 expansion packs) - to work on Sim City 4, but before I ever started, the job was switched across to Sims 2, which I was extremely happy about.

I was the lead simulation and tools engineer for Sims 2, and was with it from about 3 months from inception to shipping, two and bit years later. When I arrived, there were about 10 people on the project. When we shipped, there was about 250 FTE's and contractors working on it.

I worked for the lead engineer, one David Gregory @dgregryc who was and is a terrific engineer, manager and tech director, who has gone on to great things since EA and remains a good friend to this day.

I also ended up EA's first release engineer for Sims 2, and at one point had about 20 object engineers reporting to me, who actually built all the objects for Sims 2.

So yeah, I can talk about development since I was there for pretty much all of it, deep in the inner circle of people making stuff.

So, where to start telling stories?

Sims2 was built on top of Sims1, unlike Sims3, which was a complete re-write from scratch (undoubtedly the right decision, since we inherited a bunch of tech debt from Sims1, and Sims3 could never have done what they did sitting on our code.)

As a result, we inherited the Sims1 tools for building worlds and those had to be rebuilt completely, since the plans for Sims2 were so much bigger than Sims1. Will Wrights tagline for Sims2 was "A more bitchin' human simulator'.

Now, I'm not going to reference Will too much in these stories because while Will is considered The Father of The Sims, he wasn't actually around that much. Will is very much 'been there, done that', and while he was available for consultation, he was already off in Spore Land.

I asked him a few times for advice when I was changing his base algorithms - and he's so smart that when I proposed things that wouldn't work, he could ask just one question for me to see where it would fall dow. Truly an incredibly smart dude.

But other than that, he was very hands off of his baby. He watched from afar but wasn't in many meetings, unless I made a point of pushing him to come because I was changing root functionality of the simulator.

We knew we wanted to make Sims 2 basically Sims 1, but with everything turned up to 11, particularly the rendering. We actually had two pHD coders in that area. We had specialist coders for the animation system, and another for path planning.

We had a huge production team and we actually tried 10-15 new game features in Sims2 that actually worked, but ultimately got cut for either UI reasons or because they just weren't fun, just tedious time sucks.

For example, we had a memory mechanism, where one sim who witnessed something first hand could actually communicate memories to another Sim. So if Sim A saw you pee yourself, Sim A could tell Sim B about it, and Sim B would react to you as though he'd seen it.

The problem was, Sim B would start laughing at you the moment he saw you, but you'd have no clue why - there was no easy UI way (without words) to tell the player why that sim knew something they'd never seen. So that idea got scrapped. We had lots of blind alleys like that.

Incidentally, The Sims as a franchise tries never to use words in UI, in order that there is little to no localization requirements for the game itself. In fact, that's where Simlish - the made up language for the Sims - came from.

Funnily enough, the number one bug report The Sims gets from non English speaking lands is that "I can't set the Sims language from English to my language". People who can't speak English think the Sims are speaking English!

We had about 8 people we used to generate that language, the same people used on Sims 1. They would literally sit in a booth and watch the animations the sims would do for interactions and then generate sounds to go with it.

Note, there is NO linguistic background for Simlish. All those websites that claim there is are absolutely wrong. It was entirely made up, of gibberish sounds, that was made up on the spot by the voice actors.

We were constantly amazed at people who felt they could see patterns where there were none. We'd pass round links to websites where people claimed to have 'worked out the language'. I guess you'll see what you really want to see...

The house construction tools for Sims 2 were rebuilt from scratch and at about half way through production, they were considered finished and then a lot of the Assistant Producers would spend days playing with them.

EA use to have small competitions to make the most amazing house on a lot using these tools, just to really test them and the rendering, so that not only could they be built, but they would also render at a decent frame rate.

Some of what they built were truly amazing, and I'm really sad none of these shipped. I remember one incredible castle structure one of the guys built, with torches and flickering lights everywhere. It was truly stunning.

Originally Sims 2 was supposed to ship with 5 neighborhoods. About halfway through production we began to realize that constructing a neighborhood took on the order of 2-3 weeks, and we were constantly having to dump what we'd built and start again, due to file format changes.

So this was pared down to 1 neighborhood, until I realised that all the design was being done in Excel, in a spreadsheet, and the painstakingly copied across, value by value, into dialogs in the tools in Sims 2.

I ended up building a Spread Sheet importer into the Sims 2 tools, and boom, three weeks work done in one key press. This is what enabled Sims 2 to ship with the three neighborhoods it did. At that point, we were limited by physical house construction time, which still took days.

The objects for Sims 2 (and Sims 1) are built by a new kind of content creator - Object Engineers. They would work meetings to work out what a new object would be, get some concept art, work out what Sim animations would be required, what sim requirements they would fufil etc.

Then they'd gather the art generated (3d models, with various states of completeness and brokenness) and also the animations the sims would require, plus sounds, and then they'd go away and write the scripts required for the Sims to be able to use this new object.

The scripting system was called SimAntics (there was some tortuous acronym for this, which I've quite forgotten, thankfully) and it was built into a tool that was built into the engine itself, so we could write and change scripts as the game was running.

We had about 20 object engineers on Sims 2, all producing content flat out. At one point, we worked out that given how much Sims 1 had earned to date, each object that an object engineer created was worth about $500k to EA. They took, on average, about 2 weeks to make.

Talk about a return on investment!

I built all the tools these guys used and the simulation stuff behind what the scripts did and how they interacted with the main game.

So because we'd had the experience of making Sims 1, and seeing all the expansion packs they'd made, we were in a much better position to build in stuff we knew we'd not use till those expansion packs came along.

For example, all the pet stuff was actually built and coded before the initial launch of Sims 2. We had pets in there, to test it, just we didn't build any. When the expansion came along, it was mostly just content creation (scripts, animations, models), not engine code.

Similarly, lots of the infrastructure for Open For Business was also there, ready to be used, when the expansion pack came along. That's not to say there weren't code changes, just the infrastructure to handle this stuff already existed.

There were LOTS of conversations internally about what we should ship with, feature wise, so we could leave ourselves space to make expansion packs down the line, because these were So Profitable for EA. The problem was, we were Sims 2, so more would be expected than in Sims 1.

But... we couldn't just load the game with all the expansion pack stuff from Sims 1 on launch. We couldn't have made all that content anyway, but still, it was a hard line to maneuver.

One thing that not many people know is that The Sims 1 was doing game analytics way before Analytics was A Thing. When you upload a lot to the web site, to share with others, you are actually uploading a bunch more data than you think.

Inside the house upload is also a bunch of information about your playing habits in The Sims. None of this information is identifiable to individual players - EA was way ahead of the curve in terms of player privacy - it was just data that indicated how people were playing.

Will was fascinated by this data. Real live big game playing data. He used to write lots of database queries to work out player trends and so on. This is actually where Spore came from; the idea that something you do, on your machine, can affect how others are playing their game.

The idea that you playing your single player game could affect someone else playing their single player game, by changing their environment in response to what you did in yours was like catnip to Will.

Anyway, Will identified four distinct player types for The Sims. The Maximizer, the Social Player, the Sadist and the Builder.

The Maximizer was someone who wanted to max out the Sims potentials. Top Job Track, best social interactions, biggest house, most money, etc.

The Social player wanted to explore the social interactions - see what The Sim would do in different contrived social situations. Lots of people saw a lot more in those interactions than there actually was code to drive!

The Sadist just wanted to find new ways to cause the Sim pain or kill them. Taking the exits away in a pool etc. On Sims 2, we added a bunch of random ways to kill a sim for this kind of player. E.g.

The builder was more interested in the house builder aspects of the game, often trying to build their own house, or their dream house inside the sims, using it more as an architectural tool than anything.

Incidentally, that's where The Sims came from initially. The original game Will set out to make was called DollHouse, and it was on a Mac. You had the house construction facilities, and the sims existed purely to come into the house and judge your efforts.

There was some rudimentary Sim controls, but it soon became clear that it was more fun to control the sims than to just build, and that's when it moved to the PC and became a 'real' product.

Worth also pointing out that Sims 1 had been in development for about a year at Maxis when EA bought them, and the number one thing that EA tried to do, several times, was cancel The Sims, because they had no clue what the game really was, or who the audience would be.

Anyway, back to the player tropes. What was interesting was that the 4 player types were split fairly evenly across all players, and even more interesting was that of the 4 types, they were split evenly between male and female players.

So, most sadists and maximizers were male and the social and builders were female. A fairly terrible indictment of the way the world is today, but also not terribly surprising.

Right, so lunch is over, and I'm going to get back to work now. I'll add to this thread periodically when I think of new stuff to say.

Oh wait! Before I go, one more story that is just too fun not to repeat.

During Sims 1 development, after EA had purchased Maxis, they really did NOT like the 'bathroom' need inside the Sims, where they had to hit the toilet.

They felt it was pretty revolting when the Sims failed to meet the need, and they wanted it OUT. Will, however, pushed back. "No", he'd say, "You can't have a human simulator without it." But EA was relentless on putting on the pressure on Will to pull it out.

Eventually, one Friday, Will buckled to the pressure, and said, last thing in the afternoon, "OK, I'll take it out."

Now, at this point, the bathroom system was in place and Will had populated the data values with stuff 'pulled out of his ass' (see what I did there?:) )

So, how many times a Sim would need the bathroom, how long they'd spend on it, etc, all of these values were just eyeballed by Will.

That weekend, there was a big article in the color supplement of the New York Times, talking about a bathroom Time and Motion study.

It turns out that the NYT article had all the details on the average visit, how many times a day, etc. And it also turned out that Will was ABSOLUTELY SPOT ON WITH ALL HIS BULLSHIT DATA. He was right on the money.

So that Monday morning, he went into work, faxed a copy of this article to EA, with an extra page on the end with the words "BATHROOM NEEDS STAY!" scrawled on it, sent that off, and EA never ever said another word about the Bathroom needs in The Sims:)

The End.

I was just thinking about both path finding and also how The Sims works, and thought I'd share some of those reminisces.

One situation that occurred with pathfinding is, do we let the Sims try and route to an object that they can't actually get to?

We actually planned out the entire route once a Sim decided to go use an object, so we could know "No, there are obstacles in the way, you can't get there", but we'd still let the Sims try, because otherwise they just looked precognitive.

Another problem we had was the Sims determining what next action to do. They knew their requirements and what objects are offering interactions that fulfill those needs. The issue was that if they took the best interaction, you ended up with the worlds greatest screen saver.

In the end, we basically randomized which interaction they would do, out of the top best 10 interactions they might possibly do. The function to do this was pretty intensive, and took a LOT of CPU time. We usually saw spikes when this function was run.

Oh, and one other thing that should be addressed. One of the surprising-initially things about the Sims 1 and Sims 2 team was that it was about 50% female. Now this, particularly at that time, was a Big Deal.

I very much attribute a lot of The Sims whimsy and fun to this fact.

The women who drove a lot of production and design carry most of the responsibility for how great The Sims, both 1 and 2, turned out.

More teams need more women on them, leading them, etc, because the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and The Sims is proof of that.

So the pee color story is absolutely true. We actually put in yellow as the color for the pee puddle and it was just SO gross, so our exec producer, Tim LeTourneau (one of nicest people alive), held a meeting where we sat and debated colors and how much gross we were OK with.

Just got home, had a cup of tea, and thought I might add to this.

So another feature we tried, that while it kinda made it to the final game, wasn't as we imagined it, was interruptable/add to interactions.

So with Sims 1, when you started an interaction, that's what the sim did, and that was that. With Sims 2, we added a queue, so you could queue up interactions. That was one of the first things I did.

Then we wanted interactions to be interruptable, so the Sim might start, oh, sitting in the hottub with friends. But then you could instruct them to go get drinks for friends, so they'd get out, go get drinks, serve them to the friends, then resume sitting in the hottub.

We actually got this working, but the problem was indicating to the player what was going on at any given time. The sim might be making dinner right now, but, what was his main interaction? How do we indicate that?

And was an interrupted interaction interruptable itself? If you were sitting the hottub, then going to make drinks, then some one rings the doorbell, are we still, in the original interaction? It all got very complicated very quickly.

One of the object engineers, using this system while it was still in place, built an incredible job simulation system. While the Sim was at work, in the "at Work" interaction, other sub tasks would show up in the task list on the side of the screen.

You'd have to respond to these sub tasks - e.g. "Got get paper", "Write a report" or "Arrest perps" or whatever was appropriate for the sims job. You didn't have to, but if you didn't respond to the individual prompts in time, the sims job performance would go down.

It was REALLY clever and really used the new system well, but because it was just so open ended and we couldn't work out how to limit it correctly, it got pared down dramatically in the final product.

The first object we built- and the one that was used as a test bed for almost everything new the simulator could do -was the hottub. It had multiple sims interacting with each other, it could offer interruptable interactions, it had everything we needed for test of all systems.

Right at the end of the project, I added a bug into the bug database that "When Sims are making Whoope (Sim Sex, basically), there was no 'invite' interaction". This was a joke - I was making a bug out of the fact that the Sims couldn't have threesomes.

This bug went all the way up the chain to the executive producer, Lucy Bradshaw, who marked it "Will not fix", with the comment "Not enough time for animations" :)

Maxis didn't say no to threesomes, just, they didn't have time to make the animations and scripts:)

Source:

https://twitter.com/JustJakeSimpson/status/1375520115920236544

[laugtherhyena]

This post is sooooo good i love the speculation about the secret notes and it's really gotten me thinking about Kizuna's because what would be on her's is something i think back to every once in a while.

The stuff about what she did with the other cheerleaders comes to mind immediately when you think of what could be in her note, but think with me for a second; why would this be Kizuna's secret when she tells this so nonchalantly to Yuki in her FTEs?

Don't get me wrong, it's by far one of the worst things she's done and it would for sure rever her relationship with others a lot, but it really doesn't seem like Kizuna herself considers that something to be kept under lock and key. Sure, she says it in one of her later FTEs, but she doesn't make a big deal about it like one of the other's "this is a moment I'm opening up to you Yuki" scenes, she really just says it like it's nothing, like she doesn't even care. So why should that be the content of her secret note?

I guess what I'm trying to get at here is; Does the character need to consider something a secret for it to be on the note?

Because Kakeru and Teruya considered theirs a secret, Mikako's was one as well since it's tied to her pre-game self and she had to keep it a secret since she couldn't say it, and Yuki's was a secret so well hidden within him that he didn't even know that.

So by that logic shouldn't Kizuna's be something that she considers a secret or at least wouldn't want others to know about? Because if that's the case I'm pretty sure her note would have something to do about her real wants/desires, like;

"Kizuna Tomori is a lonely person" or "Kizuna Tomori has no friends"

Because this is the kind of stuff that clashes directly with her overconfident popular girl persona and something like that coming out would absolutely piss her the fuck off, which is kinda the point with these notes no? Actually getting to people by exposing their secrets? Because otherwise i don't think the theoretical note would have had that much of an impact on Kizuna.

What Were They Keeping from Us?

So, I've began rewatching Weeby Newz's livestreams of Danganronpa Another; I'm currently on Chapter 2 during the reveal of the new motive. Here, the 13 surviving students are forced by Monokuma to take a note from a box containing the dark secret of one of their classmates. Only a very few are openly revealed: Kakeru Yamaguchi, Teruya Otori, Mikako Kurokawa, and Yuki Maeda's. Kakeru's secret, as abruptly revealed by Tsurugi, was that "Kakeru Yamaguchi was teased for being too big in elementary school", which is a trauma Kakeru reveals in his FTEs. Teruya Otori's secret, revealed by Kizuna, was that "he still sleeps in bed with his dad"- and of course, who can forget the classic "Mikako Kurokawa might actually be talkative?" as revealed by Yuki when glancing at his note after promising his classmates he wouldn't. Great job Yuki. Speaking of lucky boy, his secret was that "Yuki Maeda might know the identity of the mastermind"- which was true, depending on how you look at it. Regardless, we now have 9 students whose secrets were never revealed, which has always been a bit disappointing. I'm curious to know what skeletons these kids have in their closet- assuming it isn't just something stupid like Kakeru and Teruya.

Firstly, it's important to take into account that one of these secrets is also in the corresponding character's FTEs, so it stands to reason that the same can be applied to the others as well. Another point is that two of these secrets were actually foreshadowing upcoming reveals, so this may also be the case in at least one secret. Some secrets I'll speculate about will be purely based on knowledge about the character in question. Alright, enough with the introduction, let's go!

Akane Taira: I think Akane would have had a similar secret to Yuki- "AkAne TAira miGht kNow tHE IDenTiTy oF thE MaStErMind" and all that jazz. An underwhelming explanation, I know, but I can't be arsed to think of another possibility. Akane without her dEsPaiR memories is pretty docile and isn't the type of person to inflict harm or mayhem unto others, thus I can't see her committing any atrocities that haven't been wiped from her memory. If you have your own idea, please share!

Ayame Hatano: I see it two ways: in her FTEs, we learn she's had problems with her hamstring, which could have severe repercussions on her physical health if she were to push herself too hard when trying to achieve her dream of becoming an Olympic gold medalist. This secret may be more depressing than dark, but Ayame wouldn't like to have this kind of personal issue exposed to her class. However, if we're to be more macabre and use zero canon evidence to support our theory, we could speculate that Ayame's secret was that she had used steroids/drugs to enhance her performance because she feared her ailed hamstring might compromise her skill. This is an act of cheating that, if ever exposed, could result in Ayame being banned from all future competitions, effectively crushing her dream. Now THAT is some tea I could get behind!

Kizuna Tomori: Honestly, based on her final FTE, we learn that Tomori forces her fellow cheerleaders to sleep with the boys that bodyguard her so that she doesn't have to "waste her precious body" in that manner. Aside from attempting to commit literal murder, sexual coercion is the worst thing you can do to someone, so it stands to reason that such a fucked-up secret would be enclosed in one of those notes. If it were revealed to the rest of the class, I highly doubt they'd be so willing to let Kizuna back into their group, if only by virtue of not wanting to befriend what's basically a pimp.

Kanata Inori: This has zero in-universe basis, but I feel like it's fitting for such a sweet character like Inori to have a rather fucked up secret, such as she severely injured or killed a patient while operating on them. It was an accident, of course, but it would still weigh heavily on her tender heart, and I doubt she'd like to be reminded of it.

Kinji Uehara: Using point number two as stated in the preamble, I believe that Kinji's secret would be that he was the traitor working on Monokuma's behalf. Something like that would decimate an already strained relationship with his class, and Tsurugi would definitely forbid Kinji from joining his group after that- hell, Tsurugi might try to convince Kinji to kill himself or try to confine him to his dorm room for the remainder of the killing game. I doubt Tsurugi would show any leniency to Kinji even if he confessed that he betrayed them only to protect the lives of the orphans at his church, which the others may find to be more forgivable. Perhaps this conflict of interest could lead to the Kinjo cult disbanding early? Who knows.

Satsuki Iranami: Idk. This is Satsuki for Christ's sake. This girl has literally done nothing wrong in her life. ever. (Okay, I know she shot Haru, but it was an accident, and she couldn't help it) Like, the worst thing I could ever see Satsuki doing is like stealing candy as a child or some shit (watch Kinjo execute her for that). Girlypop has literally zero malicious intent towards any creature of any kind.

Haruhiko Kobashikawa: that he's a virgin.

Tsurugi Kinjo: Going by his FTEs, Tsurugi has a few skeletons in his closet- but what I think would really alter his relationship to the group would be the reveal that Tsurugi himself has killed. In what I believe is his third(?) FTE, we learn that Tsurugi shot a group of hostages -who were his colleagues from the police station- when they were being used as shields by a group of terrorists attempting a deadly attack in Tokyo. Although this deed was done for the greater good, I think this would be enough for his classmates to finally reject Kinjo's bullshit. He spent all of chapter two ostracizing and vilifying Kinji, Rei and Kizuna and demeaning them as "preliminary criminals" all because they refused to be under his control, yet fucking Kinjo out here is killing innocent people? I think the hypocrisy would send some of his biggest haters, like Haru, over the edge, and the Kinjo cult would disband sooner than it did in chapter three.

Rei Mekaru: that she adores and sleeps with teddy bears at night. Yeah, not exactly a heart-stopping, bone-chilling reveal, but knowing uptight, "I-am-so-mature" Mekaru, she would not be happy for that information to be known to anybody. It would be hilarious to read aloud, though. I get the feeling that Kizuna would never let her hear the end of it once she found out.

Ah, it's nice to fantasize on how the other student's secrets could have impacted the killing game if they decided to be like Yuki and take a peek at their notes. Although this concludes the characters that were around for when the second motive was introduced, I'll throw in a bonus question for y'all creative thinkers: what do you think the secrets would have been for the three students who were dead (Kiyoka and Mitch) or otherwise preoccupied (Kisaragi) and were unable to participate in the killing game?

I hope you found this lil' food-for-thought shitpost enjoyable, and that you have your own thoughts to share on this topic! Have a good day!