#gaming wankery

[prokopetz]

The constant rolling disaster that is Overwatch's game development aside, what really perplexes me about how Blizzard is handling the broader franchise is their continual insistence that a canon narrative exists in spite of their equally continual refusal to tell anyone what it is.

Like, okay, the events of the games aren't canon. Fair enough: the games are multiplayer-only, and you can't account for player actions.

Oh, and the animated short films aren't canon either – they're properly understood as in-universe propaganda, not depictions of actual events. That's a little high concept for you guys, but fine.

But surely the comics are canon, right? Well, no; some of the comics (we're not telling you which ones) were canon at one point, but the writing team has decided to go in a different direction.

My dudes, what is left? The weird Source Filmmaker porn? Is that canon? Well, apparently it's at least as canon as anything else!

[hell-of-heavens]

Hi! Thank you so much for responding!

I expect myself to play FGO very casually because turn-based games are a hit or miss for me, so I do not expect to enjoy it as much as it did! The power of engaging storytelling is not to be underestimated! I have watched the Babylonia adaptation, but I heard the anime fumbles with the pacing. Looking forward to experience the story properly!

Funnily enough I started FGO because LB6 is dropping in NA. I heard only Good Things about the story & its cast and I really, really like Oberon from the bits and pieces I managed to gather from LB6 playthrough and the voiced dramalogue. I am looking forward to collecting the entire cast—I thankfully got Oberon, and Castoria & Morgan is on my top list of my most wanted servants next year.

I have not read (or rather watched the playthrough of) LB6 in full, so I can't exactly compare it with Inazuma, but even at first glance, LB6 casts are imminently more compelling compared to Inazuma. Inazuma wants to have Political Intrigue and War Plot but the game also refuses to write the consequences that come with that. I keep comparing Ei with Lion King myself, they have some similarities in their effort to preserve humanity eternally. You can't help but notice how badly HYV handles Ei, and what we could get instead.

(As a sidenote: What makes Nasu's writing good for me is not only that he is a technically skilled writer—which is true!—but like ... he is really really interested in the characters and the themes and his own writing, and it shows! I have my own issues with the OG Fate route in Fate/stay night but it is an overall satisfying experience. And his sincere interest allows him to grow significantly as a writer, you can see his growth through how he revisits themes and characters in his later works. Camelot adds depth to Artoria's character and it makes me appreciate her so much more. I suppose LB6 would do that as well. But anyway. Move along.)

It's such a shame that Genshin keeps fumbling with the ideas they have because they do not know how to build their ideas into a coherent storyline. You're right that there is some progress in their writing, but I do not know if they learn from their past mistake or if they are just doing damage control from their past mistake because it does not feel like .... a meaningful improvement? They sure have more playable characters involved in their main storyline, they write a longer arc to avoid rushing their story, but all of them feel like ""lip service"" instead of an attempt to better articulate their story.

It's kind of funny that they avoid having playable characters with Cool, Larger Than Life Concepts while also writing a main story on a grand scale. The disconnect between the whole Khaenri'ah endgame lores/Archon/Abyss Twin and most of the playable casts ... there is a lot of disconnect between the concept they want to convey and the Actual Thing In The Game that it strains my suspension of disbelief.

Suffice to say that I am very curious how Lyney & Lynette's storyline will be handled going forward because it really feels like Genshin is afraid of their own cast.

I ... really do not expect much? I have not started Fontaine—FGO's writing damns Genshin, as you put it yourself. I am not looking forward to being disappointed with the story at the most basic level possible after experiencing a well-written chapter. And I do not look forward to relying on headcanon and fanfic to fill up basic characterization and worldbuilding ....

I did see the twin's "revised" drip marketing yesterday, and all I can think is that "wow, Genshin is surely great at building hype through careful use of online marketing, if only they could build the hype through organic storytelling!" It's very cynical of me, but it's been years & we all know the game's pattern. I would be very, very happy if the game proved me wrong. But I'm not going to hold my breath.

I remember being excited about how Collei and Kaeya could possibly interact when Sumeru drops because of their previous interactions in Webtoon. The game seems to avoid bringing up their past conflicts, though. The amount of intriguing background and narrative thread that the game wasted is ... staggering.

Anyway, it's really nice discussing this with someone else. Most of my friends are in Fontaine Hype Train, and I do not want to ruin their experience but I just ???? at the whole thing.

And thank you for warning me about Agartha. Everything I know about the chapter sounds really, really awful ....

Hi, this is FGO recent player + Genshin disillusioned anon! I finished Camelot a few days ago & I can’t help but compare how Camelot vs Sumeru uses allies. In Camelot, our allies have personal reason to oppose Lion King, reflected in their decision. Not so much in Sumeru. It reads less of “we save Nahida because of personal belief/reason” and more of “we save Nahida because She Is Right.” I haven’t bought its emotional beat the first time but comparing them highlights Genshin Writing Issue (1/2)

What FGO is doing here is pretty much Basic Writing 101 but Genshin does not even do that? An attempt was barely made, and that’s me being generous. I want to be interested in the characters but the game does not even give a shit. And fandom eats that? I do not get it, at all, and I wish fandom actually scrutinizes the writing harder. (As a sidenote, I know Camelot is great and I have seen the full game playthrough before but playing the entire story is an emotional ride! Bedi ;;__;;) (2/2)

BEDI………… 🤝🤝🤝 He's so great. I loved the Camelot chapter, it was the one that made me sit up and go "!!??" for the first time. Nasu's chapters haven't let me down a single time since then. I'm glad you're still enjoying yourself :) Babylonia is a real doozy heheh

But yeah, the thing is… I don't think anyone working on Genshin KNOWS Basic Writing 101? Or at the very least, they know Of it but not how to Do it. Like, it does feel like they're learning lessons as they go. They're learning the sorts of things they SHOULD be including, like having characters Talk To Each Other in meaningful ways, or actually bothering to get you attached to characters before trying to make you feel bad for them, making sure the playable characters are in the story and At Least Do Something... and they even finally apparently listened to my cries and actually wrote an investigation phase into their mystery storyline (resulting in the worst detective work I have ever seen in any story, ever. My standards are exceptionally low on that btw. I have seen a lot of Noddy, Toyland Detective.)

I just don't think they understand how story structure, character arcs or, heck Ace Attorney trials work before they start trying to produce or replicate them. They know what they like and the story they want to tell but not how to tell it. I think that's why they're so much more comfortable writing all the cool stuff into the lore dumps than the main storyline; books and artifact lore and letters are a lot easier to write than any of the things IN those books, artifact lore or letters. And I think that's because even if they do have writers, the ones they have are amateurs, and whoever's in charge of supervising/editing their work has no idea what they're doing!

I think HYV is finally starting to recognise their own weaknesses, because… okay, it might just be me, but doesn't it seem like Genshin's side characters have been getting more mundane? I think they've finally started to recognise that if they put Too Much Cool Stuff into a character's backstory, players will eventually expect them to actually follow through and they backed TF off real quick. Diluc and Kaeya's Literally Everything, Albedo 'destroying Mondstadt', Xiao Fighting Ancient God Ghosts, Beidou vs The Sea Monster She Killed And Won't Let Anyone Forget About, the bizarre personality traits originally imbued into the 4star characters…. doesn't it feel like Genshin's avoided writing things like that into its new characters?

The "shove all the relevant information into their backstory" game point blank refused to engage with Collei's backstory or offer any insight into Why Cyno Is Like That in their LORE, let alone the main story. Let alone the main story it should be suuuuuper relevant to. No one has any out there character quirks and there sure doesn't seem to be any implication that anyone is doing any Really Cool Dramatic Fights off-screen anymore, because the players might expect you to actually write those things!

Suffice to say that I am very curious how Lyney & Lynette's storyline will be handled going forward because it really feels like Genshin is afraid of their own cast.

Obviously, FGO doesn't have any of these issues. It's written by actual professional writers that can like, write. Even when they screw up, the structure of the story they're telling is still sound because they know how narrative structure is supposed to work. It's just that… Nasu is SUCH a technically skilled writer that he nails everything Genshin fucks up so cleanly it damns Genshin by comparison. It is especially fun to compare Inazuma to Lostbelt 6 because they have enough superficial plot similarities that make Inazuma's failings shine bright as day.

I think people are happy accepting it because uhhhh Genshin is played by a) a lot of casuals and b) meta-fans and c) lore nerds and that means that people often just accept the story for what it pretends to be instead of scrutinising it for what it is. I get that, sometimes I just wanna turn my brain off and only half pay attention to a story I'm reading and I definitely have a threshold for bullshit I'm willing to accept. Genshin just… even when I'm trying to be charitable, it always punches through all the allowances I'm giving it…

I think some people also just enjoy taking the character prompts and filling in the gaps themselves, rather than have the story do it for them, or that also low-stakes fantasy feel good fluff is appealing sometimes (and Genshin is definitely more comfortable trying to write that). On the other hand, I feel like I see people "filling in the gaps" for the story with stuff that isn't there, like their mind is auto-filling the missing parts of the story or linking up themes/information in ways that SEEM logical but aren't actually the case....

I've seen a lot of predictions or comments about the Oratrice that don't like up with canon, for example. But given the story that Genshin started setting up in Fontaine, those predictions/comments feel like the logical path the story regarding the Oratrice should be taking... or, you know, all the character arcs Genshin tried to write, I think there was a lot of 'filling the gaps' on some of the details of those!

Anyway, glad to hear from you again! I hope you keep enjoying FGO :) Just, uh, maybe skip through Agartha.

[nerozane]

. (Bg//3 salt on the wanker satire article)

So I uh looked at the satire article (which yes the writer for w*ll should have not been so callous to applaud this awful joke about this. You don't see St*phen Ro*ney cheering satire articles punching down Astari*ns abuse) in question and I'm like 😬😬😬

I have so many issues with this. But the main points were, 1) Why are comedy/satire writers weird about BDSM and make it a joke and apply BDSM relationship/sex dynamics to unwilling participants. And 2) not surprised people yet again don't pay attention to the black character who is demi.

[hajima-7]

yknow im being even more annoying with this on twitter, but it rly RLY pisses me off how a lot of, seemingly new, fans are trying to hype up bioware as like a .. gotcha at larian

"oh i hope at least THEY wont fuck up their only black companion"

"i hope THEY won't pander to the fans so much"

bby, idk how to tell you, bioware invented this shit. they had Gaider who's answer to "is fenris a person of color" was "im not giving ppl fodder for this wankery, interpret it as you like" ...

and also just...Jacob in mass effect

THE ENTIRE "COUNCIL" who's feedback they will listen as theyre developing the game like...

lets be real here for a sec, they both suck equally. and bioware sucked first lmao.

tl;dr stop simping so much for companies pls

peace & love <3

[meowm1x]

lmao it's so funny being away from tumblr for a bit, and coming back now and then and still seeing that weird niche corner of pro-ai leftism.

meanwhile in the time i've been away from here, i have been bombarded with non fucking stop ads from companies about why i should buy their ai. ai in our phones, ai in our google, ai in the animation, ai in art programs, ai to make up people to fall in love with, make money with ai, buy buy buy use use use

sorry but this weird circle of acting like you're sticking it to "the man" by being a leftist who uses it and being extremely dismissive of the criticisms of how this tech has been co-opted by right wing cunts and furthering late stage capitalism is just.. so childish, especially in the face of how it has become so integrated with the companies that are already selling our data and making our lives a living hell.

yes, people trying to copyright art styles is stupid. yes, people jumping at the word AI even when it's a super benign thing like programming video game characters, that has been around for literally years, is very dumb. no, i don't agree with those idiots.

but being constantly spammed with all these tech companies trying to sell me on it and woman being harassed with deepfake nudes just proves to me it is a problem with capitalism and bigotry now more than anything. and trying to call artists that barely scrape enough money to live ""reactionaries""? lmao. get the fuck over your wankery.

[verecunda]

I don't know whether he's talking about ROP, WOT, The Witcher, or whatever... but frankly it's bold of anyone involved in GOT or any GOT-related project to slag off the writing of any other TV show ever.

I like HoTD but I don't like people associated with that show if they're gonna talk shit about other fantasy shows to prop up theirs. Is this about WoT or RoP? If WoT, he thinks WoT isn't doing the work and doesn't have three dimensional characters? 🤨 I mean I have talked with some people who think WoT show isn't doing as deep character work as HoTD (but we're at the point in the series before that even starts in the books imo) but to say they're not three dimensional and you can't root for the characters is kinda insulting.

If it's about RoP I still don't agree cause I also like the characters in that show even if I'm not quite as attached to them as I am to WoT characters

[monokumafightclub]

Genocide Jack for ask game

OH HELL YEAH

How I feel about this character: instant favorite from the moment she appeared in the first game. obviously could be handled LEAGUES better in consideration to her and toko being DID rep, but i'm not a system so i can't really weigh in on that beyond "even for 2010 the whole "serial killer alter" kinda thing is kinda oof". a fun character in spite of that, and she makes for some interesting interactions between the rest of the cast, both in her debut game and beyond. also crass funny girls are my weakness.

hopefully i'm not repeating shit from the last ask i made about her jhsgsdg there's a lot i could say but i just came home from a long drive

All the people I ship romantically with this character: komaru (of course), makoto, lowkey kyoko (and i fully blame you for this, it's an appealing duo), and. would it be self-wankery to say i do ship my own dangan chara with her. honestly i should draw that.

My non-romantic OTP for this character: non-romantic? okay as much as i don't want her to be in a relationship with byakuya at all (double for toko), i wanna see her bother the shit out of him. beyond that, i think syo and hifumi would make for an interesting duo! please, i wanna know if they'd either argue about yaoi opinions or if syo would absolutely hit him up for lewd commissions.

My unpopular opinion about this character: obviously repeating from the last ask i did about her but the yandere shit is overplayed. i'm not against it ofc, but i'd like more fanworks of syo as the hyperenergetic best friend who just so happens to kill guys sometimes and gets off on it.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: honestly i wish she got more story screentime in UDG, coz most of the time she's just used as an instant win button for combat encounters. is it just me or does she stop appearing in the story after chapter 4, i know you and i can't be the only people who noticed this.

also i think she should've smashed haiji's head in with a rock. as a treat.

also sorta tangentally related to both syo and UDG, i like how according to the UDG relationship charts, masaru is absolutely unafraid of the prospect of throwing hands with a serial killer

[garglyswoof]

Favorite Line Tag Game

Rules: Share a favorite line that you've read or written that impacted you! thanks @purplesigebert! I'll share a few moments I've read that have absolutely floored me. Some are about the subject matter, some are about prose. It's hard to pick out singular quotes, but rather paragraphs. I'll just tag @cbk1000 and @austennerdita2533 here because I think they would at least dig reading these, if not doing the game.

context needed for this first one: she is choosing to go on a space mission where she will not be back for 80+ years earth time.

"You wonder if you're a bad daughter, a bad friend, a selfish asshole placing her own intellectual wankery above the living, breathing people who poured everything they could possibly give into her, and were rewarded with the sight of her walking away forever." - To Be Taught If Fortunate, Becky Chambers. “When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.” - East of Eden John Steinbeck “It was the face of spring, it was the face of summer, it was the warmness of clover breath. Pomegranate glowed in her lips, and the noon sky in her eyes. To touch her face was that always new experience of opening your window one December morning, early, and putting out your hand to the first white cool powdering of snow that had come, silently, with no announcement, in the night. And all of this, this breath-warmness and plum-tenderness was held forever in one miracle of photographic is chemistry which no clock winds could blow upon to change one hour or one second; this fine first cool white snow would never melt, but live a thousand summers.” - Dandelion Wine, Ray Bradbury "There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realize that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realize, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, though you can put your hand out to where things were and feel that tense, shining dullness of the space where the memories are." - H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald

"Just when one can’t take anymore, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that." - Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto "A story is time itself, boxed and compressed. It is the briefest entertainment and simulacrum of real life, which is big and messy and requires a strange kind of endurance. The story is stylized for that flash of laughter and pain, thwarted desire and odd consummation, while life waterfalls with it - all of it - every day: prodigious, cloying, in decay. And when the story is finally over - even if the protagonist survives a spray of gunfire and goes on living-it's over. Meanwhile, life carries on, river-swift." - The Telling Room, Michael Paterniti

[tobiasdrake]

That escalated quickly.

Why? What possible reason could there be to offer this concession? He has to be going somewhere with this. It's such a weird thing to offer.

Incidentally, this guy doesn't sound like Serval or Shachi. If I had to place the voice, I think it's Icardi.

Okay, so it is a bomb too. I figured as much. I assume it's probably designed to prevent it from being easily removed, as well.

Incidentally, while Kodaka did not work on them, his Too Kyo Games co-founder Kotaro Uchikoshi is the father of the Zero Escape games, published by Spike Chunsoft right alongside Danganronpa.

Similar to Danganronpa, the Zero Escape trilogy also features a deadly game of intrigue and betrayal, and shares Danganronpa's love for the Prisoner's Dilemma as well as philosophical and metaphysical wankery. Though their games are significantly different from Junko Enoshima's Mutual Killing Game.

Deadly wristbands that will kill you if you try to remove them feature heavily in Zero Escape games. As do time shenanigans, which has me again wondering about Fubuki's Forte.

I'm not sure if it's a deliberate thing, but I'm definitely feeling the Zero Escape influence with this setup right now. So help me, if they start talking about morphogenetic fields....

Technically, even if you do disarm the bombs, you might still blow up with the watch. He never said disarming the bombs will disarm the watch. In fact, he said you're guaranteed to explode either way.

Traditionally, trying to remove the bomb bracelet causes it to auto-activate and kill you immediately.

Psst! You're saying the quiet part out loud!

I was wondering who we were going to see here. Yomi did seem to have run out of named underlings surprisingly fast, so we were due for an injection of new blood.

She is unapologetically sinister. Y'know what? It works. She's not a cop, she's CTU. That's military. The kind of folks who wear looking fierce as a badge of pride and decorate all their shit with Punisher skulls.

That's a look that says, "I have a license to kill indiscriminately, and it's hunting day."

And over here we have "What if Barret Wallace was Darth Vader?" This is not a man who is going to be defeated with a sound, logical deduction. This is a man who is going to be defeated by Sonic the Hedgehog firing Homing Attacks at his cranial plate, which is inexplicably his weak spot.

I love these new fascists already. I look forward to Yomi conveniently deciding to kill them off since that's how the game chooses to dispose of its villains.

[auxchamp]

i hate ff7 rebirth

I finished FF7: Rebirth finally. After loving Remake, I was super excited about this one, but it was about when I hit Cosmo Canyon I started to sputter out. By the end, I just put the game on easy and rushed the ending. I usually try my best not to be a hater in general, but I need to wordvomit all this out. Below are in order-ish the big reasons I feel sour about this whole thing.

It takes away from Rebirth - So, something my partner mentioned while waiting for Rebirth; it felt like one of the themes of this game could be fate v free will. Well, free will lost this one. Everything is closer to the original story than it did the end of Remake and there's nothing to show for it. What was the point of fighting the giant whispers at the end of Rebirth? And Biggs and Wedge were spared from death... one to die OFFSCREEN in a fucking SIDEQUEST? and the other just shot in the back for no payoff. "What's my place in this world?" well it's to fucking die and then the person you were talking to to make funnie quips as he runs away from your murderers.

Zack - This goes along with the first part, but I don't see any point in him being in this game, other than fan wankery. The opening scene and the fight with him and Cloud vs Sephi were super cool! The only thing that it does for me narratively is add Kingdom Hearts-level confusing bullshiterry to the story for no other reason than to be confusing bullshit.

Cloud sucks - Man, fuck Cloud from right after the flashback until the ending. I know he's got shit going on but... in the OG, it felt like Sephiroth just had a small, subtle influence on cloud during most of the game (except right before Aerith dies). Here, it's about as subtle as a gunshot. He just sucks and isn't fun to watch. It's NUTS how the rest of the party just....... sits on the sideline and watches him murder people, almost murder party members and almost every black cloak he comes across and act like a general prick through large chunks of the game. Again, there was a dark brooding in the original they replaced with way to over-the-top edginess here for... nothing but negative effect imo.

What the fuck is up with Sephiroth - He's pretty much a fucking god already! I think they felt like since this is a multipart release, they needed to have him more physically there for pacing and motivation reasons but... He already feels like a god. We have seen him go one-winged angel, saw his cocoon pre-god form already (WITHOUT BIRTH OF A GOD PLAYING, why), he seems like he can do whatever he wants. I get that Cloud physically handing over the black materia to his true self is a willpower win, when it happens, but... what the fuck can he not do already? Ghost army, merge worlds, kill people in other timelines, OVERRIDE TIME ITSELF? And each time you kick his ass, nothing happens. He just discards that husk and goes away. Nothing like ending two games in a row in a zero stakes fight.

Bad gameplay - I've got a few complaints here, some were also in Rebirth but show off more here. First off, playing as anybody but Cloud, Tifa or Yuffie sucks. Cait Sith is miserable in every way, Barret can't dodge worth shit, Aerith's attack is super miserable, Red XIII mechanics aren't fun. Second, this trend that a lot of modern games have: 5% bonus here, +10 stat there... the weapon skills are just mostly boring and not fun. I miss rebirth's system, it felt like it had more going on. Thirdly on this topic; some of the fights just sucked. Like, unblockable attack that is hard to dodge, and when you do get hit, the enemy gets like 10 hits on you while you are completely stunlocked. I don't feel like Remake had as many fights like this in the game. Finally, on this topic, getting interrupted also felt like a huge problem, especially with healing. Losing the ATB, MP and not getting a heal due to getting hit with a regular enemy attack is bad design.

Bad Ending - I'm okay with bummer endings, but jeez. The confusing bullshit just undercut any emotions that I would've had.

Painful side stuff - A large chunk of the side stuff wasn't fun to play in my opinion. Chocobo gliding, racing, moghouses, queen's blood, the piano, and a large part of the protorelics just didn't do anything for me. For them to say this needed to be split into three parts and then fill the game to the brim with bland stuff like this is wild.

I don't give a fuck about Glenn - Fuck this guy and fuck Ever Crisis.

Overuse of One Winged Angel - yeah we get it, it's lost all of its impact.

[prokopetz]

Fourth-wall-breaking video game setting whose inhabitants are aware that only cutscene death is permanent, and have thus developed an elaborate system of customs and taboos to avoid accidentally triggering cutscenes in their daily lives. People have some intrinsic knowledge of whether the cutscene flag has been set, but they don't necessarily know why, nor are they automatically aware of whether they're one of the focus characters or whether they just happen to be in the vicinity, allowing for a wide variety of murder-mystery bullshit.

[theliterarywolf]

Someone on Twitter said that BotW/TotK fans feel like completely separate fans from general Zelda game fans, and as a primary OoT/Majora’s Mask fan, I have to say this feels like a legit phenomena.

Yeah, I have to admit that while I didn't initially like that take, the recent batch of discourses (ship-related, race discourse, speedrun wankery, and more) really make me sigh, 'Yeah, you know what? You're right.'

It actually brings up something interesting that I've been kind of thinking about as I play through ToTK (still nowhere near finishing. A certain temple... Ooh, I could make rants about my time in a certain temple)

A lot of 'BotW/TotK-only' Zelda fans are going to get a very rude awakening when the next Nintendo console comes out because, really, outside of another musou-style game, what else can be done with this version of Hyrule? They've already gone so far above and beyond that it's fairly obvious that, in 8-10 years, when we get a new mainline Zelda game, it's going to be in a completely different version of Hyrule, with completely different characters.

...Honestly, my bet is on Miyamoto finally getting that futuristic Zelda game that he's been wanting ever since he submitted the first draft of what would become Link's Crossbow Training.

[lazyvase]

Originally I didn't care about Propoketz's Overwatch post. While it was factually inaccurate, the heart of it was in the right place: "Overwatch's story is relatively bare bones despite being a huge game for several years." One would expect that a franchise as successful would attempt to make progress on the story. Propketz was never exactly an overwatch fan. Just a verbose poster who had a passion for game design and "metatextual wankery". His post is mot likely misinformation created or parroted by false sources or a lack of attention.

Yet as details arose, the situation became harder to ignore. First of all, people were believing propoketz's misinformation. This was merely annoying. It's not a big deal if more people are bad-mouthing a game that has tons of other problems. Ultimately, its a small drop in the ocean of Overwatch's obstabcles.

What started to boil my blood was the reveal that propoketz was deleting comments correcting him. From what I saw, even polite comments correcting him were removed. This is not a problem for Overwatch however. This is a problem for him.

Propoketz has shown his true colors. I recommend unfollowing and even blocking him. (Reporting is completely unjustified in this situation). Just as Purplekoop suggested: leave no attention to him. He's shown all he cares about is looking smart and correct. No matter the reality of the situation.

Leave the Elon Musk type to his Elon-Muskness.

[elcorhamletlive]

Bylers think just because Will have feelings for Mike, he’s obligated to reciprocated!

In their disturbing heads if you like someone you’re entitled to them!

I don't think that's the logic in place, Anon. From what I know, the argument most b/yler shippers make is that, narratively, the fact that Will has feelings for Mike means Mike should reciprocate. What that means is that, in the context of neither Will nor Mike being real people but made up characters whose desires and actions are entirely under the writers's control, writing Will as in love with Mike when they had no plans of making them end up as a couple comes across as pointless at best; and mean-spirited and depressing at worst. Unrequited love didn't have to be a part of Will's story, and people have a right to criticise the fact that it happened anyway.

I actively dislike b/yler and don't think it will become canon, but I don't disagree with this perspective. I do think making Will be in love with Mike at this point in the game was a mistake that will render any solution for this plotline on season 5 hopelessly hollow. I think the huge wave of support for b/yler theories stems in no small part from denial, as well as fans's desire to see Will having a good storyline and a win in the context of the narrative.

However, I will admit that in fandom discourse, this often manifests as people talking about Mike as if he is a prize and not a character with his own role in the narrative, which sometimes leads to icky rethoric. But I think this is an occasional side effect of general ship war wankery, and, therefore, unfortunately inevitable.

[faunusrights]

fandom wankery

can the author of The Name of Our Game please hand both the word processor AND the use of ‘…’ over to the authorities please. i’m begging you.

[golvio]

Something I noticed during my latest autistic/aspiring critical (as in “critical thinking,” not as in “needlessly negative fan wankery”) essayist note-taking playthrough of BotW:

On the Great Plateau, when Rhoam tells Link what happened to the Ancient Sheikah, he says “Their ancient technology disappeared long ago, or so it is said.”

But when I started making my way towards Kakariko Village as per the game’s recommendation, the second I get to the first sign of civilization, friggin’ Rensa, the stablehand at the horse tent, straight up says “That power put [the Sheikah] at odds with the king of the time, and they scattered across the land.”

The most generous interpretation of this is that Rhoam’s just reciting the super-duper sanitized version of the Royal Family’s history he got from his wife when he married into the family. But without that, well...that passive voice is sure doing an awful lot of convenient heavy lifting for you, old man.

I wonder which version of her courtiers’ history Zelda herself got?

Also, when Rhoam first tells Link about the calamity in his old man disguise, he’s like “For a century, the very symbol of our kingdom, Hyrule Castle, has barely managed to contain that evil. But just barely.”

UMMMM, HELLO? I KNOW YOU’VE GOT IT IN YOUR HEAD THAT TELLING LINK EVERYTHING OFF THE BAT WOULD OVERWHELM HIM AND YOU’VE GOTTA BE ALL MYSTERIOUS AND SHIT, BUT WOULD IT KILL YOU TO GIVE YOUR OWN DAUGHTER AT LEAST A LITTLE CREDIT? 😂

And the way Rhoam tells you to meet him at the Temple of Time. Like, sure, I get that this is the game’s way of giving you a tutorial about how to solve riddles and puzzles with your map, and the environment basically directs you to come back there if you haven’t figured it out by letting you see Goddess Hylia throwing a rainbow disco rave through the temple windows once you reach the foot of the mountain, but it feels like yet another dancer in the conga line of Rhoam being frustratingly obtuse. Like, we’re coming to the home stretch here and Link’s brain hasn’t exploded from all the cryptic hints you’ve been dropping, so can you please drop the riddles and just be honest and straightforward with me, peepaw?

Now, granted, I am extremely biased against Rhoam because I’d made up my mind to not like him during my first attempted playthrough, plus knowing that his stubborn maintenance of his pride never resolves meaningfuly through something like, oh, I don’t know, his having the humility to appear before his daughter and directly apologize to her for the way he mistreated her? But I digress.

The most interesting thing about this, for me, is that it suggests that the version of her own family’s history she got was extremely sanitized. Either her mom gave both Zelda and her husband an extremely abridged and propagandic version of the whole thing with the Sheikah, which Rhoam himself didn’t think to question either out of disinterest or his own obsession with keeping up appearances as someone who fucked his way to the top and needs to justify his leadership to the people as he’s not officially “of the bloodline” and merely acting as regent until Zelda’s old enough to take the reigns. But even the “nice, polite” version of the Sheikah schism we got from Cado at the gates outside of Impa’s house wasn’t that passive voice, outright saying the king and the kingdom turned against the Sheikah and banished them, even though as the “good guys” the Sheikah took great pains to absolve the crown of its responsibility and blame themselves for their own hubris in thinking they could be more powerful than the king.

Which makes me really, really intrigued about what convinces Zelda in TotK to both figuratively and literally “dig a little deeper.” Was she merely tipped off by her own goddess powers/proximity to Ganon, or is she actively trying to take a peek behind the curtain at the things her mother and father didn’t want her to see, for fear it would ruin their reputation as benevolent fairytale rulers or scar Zelda for life?