#its been a little samey

[1800duckhotline]

for the flaws it has and there are many. bg3 is definitely a game that manages to make it not boring to do the very same choices over and over again. or maybe its just that i love routine and am terrified of changing things up

[two-headed-septim]

Y'know, I've been replaying the Elder Scrolls games, and out of every post and article and whatever comparing morrowind, oblivion, and skyrim, there's one thing I feel that oblivion definitively did best that I don't really see talked about, and that is the icons.

Both skyrim and morrowind to various extents went in the direction of having their ui elements be renders of the 3d elements of the game. Both games did this with their map and with the icons for items (insofar as skyrim even had icons, they literally just show you the ground model of the object). Skyrim also did this with magic, and skills (sort of, with the constellation, which was cool in its own way). Morrowind did at least have skill and spell icons but they were kinda samey imo. For skills, combat is blue, stealth is yellow, magic is red, and the icons themselves are tiny. Same for magic, each school got a color and the icons were sort of neat but didn't really represent the effects well to me (although I did like them being the daedric alphabet).

But in oblivion, the ui work is a lot more colorful and interpretive. For items it's not much to right home about, just a fairly typical rendering of what the item is, but skills and magic is where this truly shines. Each skill has a beautiful icon representing it that looks like an illustration out of a medieval book and the magic icons add so much feeling to the spells you cast. Paralysis is a scorpion, chameleon actual has a cute little chameleon, each summon shows you a drawing of what you summon. I love the interpretation, and it just feels incredibly nostalgic to me. Also quests have little icons to go with them! Same with faction ranks! The ui art in oblivion is central to the kind of story book atmosphere and is a really cool part of the game that I don't think gets talked about enough

[ganondoodle]

was watching another totk video and through that found out what the reward is for completing koltins quests, honestly im not really surprised but also baffled and it really just shows, once again, that totk kinda does exactly what you shouldnt do in a sequel imo.. double down on all the bad stuff of the previous title

at this point i have talked about various problems in detail but i just keep realizing over and over just how much of the wrong lesson they seemed to take from botw, they recycled almost everything from botw by changing some paint or some words, made a giant game even bigger and filled it with boring and tedious busy work that has mediocre to insulting rewards EVEN MORE than botw

game too big and empty? make it TWICE as big, change barely anything about the map of the previous title and the new added map(s) is ONE biom that almost everywhere looks the same and even emptier with little to do

too many krogs? MAKE IT MORE and double down on the literally shit reward bc its the SAME just with one more stack of shit

too many shrines with short puzzles? ADD EVEN MORE and make them even shorter and easier to complete, alot of them not even involving a puzzle and multiple being an utterly out of place tutorial that could have been explained to you in a single text box

rewards in the overworld being mostly either a krog or a shrine which gets repetetive with shrines being ALOT and krogs being wayyy too many? add even MORE shrines and EVEN MORE krogs, but now add over a hundred of caves to it that all get repetetive after just a few of them and you only do them for a shrine or a currency you have to collect to get one cool looking but pretty bad to use armor set and a piece of cloth for your parasail that you can only use one of at the tiem and to switch have to go back to a specific NPC, theres ghost lights to collect which only serve to yet again buy one armor set from a set of NPCs and ar meaningless afterwards, the light roots dont require you to do anything but walk to them and the reward for finding them all is a "you did it" sticker that doesnt even stick (its useless)

weapons break too quickly? well make the weapons you can find even worse to force you to fuse a material to it so its at all usable BUT IT STILL BREAKS and when it does it breaks not JUST the weapon but ALSO a material, materials that you will need for now EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE armor upgrades too, weapons cannot be rewards anymore either bc they will always have to be fused with something to make them stronger bc none is strong on its own- this also applies to THE MASTERSWORD, something ALSO complained about that it still 'breaks' even after empowering it through the DLC in botw, and now it cant even BE empowered (bc no DLC) unless you fuse soemthing to it (to. the. MASTERSWORD.) EVEN THO EMPOWERIGN THE MASTERSWORD IS THE ENTIRE POINT OF ZELDAS ULTIMATELY MEANING- AND CONSEQUENCELESS SACRIFICE !!

the dungeons were to samey and simple? make them look different but keep the core structure (activate terminals in completely seperate from each other "puzzles", fight boss) while also makign them be even more skippable (climable walls, the ceiling jump ability- something the titans DIDNT have) with incredibly easy bossfights that end with an embarassing copy and paste scene that hits you over the head with long known and obvious information over and over

people didnt like how the story was so detached from everything in the present? well, make the story and the present EVEN MORE detached from anything in the present, so far in fact that there is literally no connection to it aside from zelda who is the only connective thread and is also only treated as such (she is as personality lacking as sonia as soon as shes yoinked into the past) and the suddendly and out of nowhere intruduced architecture and history that wasnt a thing in botw but is treated like it was always there

people didnt like how far botw was detached from all other zelda games? ok totk is not only FURTHER detached from those it also completely detached itself from its on predecessor :)

people didnt like the memory system? ok make it WORSE then, its a linear story now that you can ruin by seeing even one out of order, they are super short and dont give you anymore context to anythign than the things you could figure out yourself or were already told really, instead of giving you views into a characters personality you get to view a basic plot summary of a story that is so flavorless and predictable i knew what would happen from the start yet acts like its being vague and cool that i felt like i was beign treated like a literal toddler

too few enemy types? well, we will reuse the old ones EVEN MORE thant before over twice the map and the new ones that are there are either utterlly irrelevant to change up the gameplay or largely feel like the old ones just with a paint job (constructs), the griocks looked cool at first but are just a more annyoing version of the lynels (who feel like an actual duel, akin to a proper boss)

even the things that were adressed, or attempted to, didnt fully work, like the bosses ARE more unique, but also still so incredibly easy and ALSO have multiple duplicats just sitting around in the underground despite them being supposedly the root of the problems of the regions (i like refighting bosses, but id rather have a character that lets me choose ok i wann fight this one again and teleporte me into a vision or sth- also the most fun fights arent even part of it (koga) )

the rain complaint got a new effect type to counteract it, which ... doesnt work well, you need specific materials to make potions with that effect which you also need to upgrade the only armor set wit hthat effect that ONLY works once you upgrade it (i think ... i dont know how high i got it but if even the full upgraded set doesnt negate the rain effect i will not be surprised either lol) also it adds just yet another effect type that spams your inventory and you dont really need .... or i might be the only one that saw no value at all in the "attack up when hot" new type of effects bc it felt so specific and situational while also having a way better option (just make it a standard attack up thing?) at least in my eyes-

... ill stop here .... this got longer again didnt it O-o

[centrally-unplanned]

I have been taking my fit-and-starts second stab at playing Victoria 3 - I did a Japan run, and a Korea run, and this is a very frustrating game. It bothers me because its deep core is probably the best of Vicky so far. It understands that the appeal of these game is Factorio-esque; you want to build up this cool little supply chain that goes chug chug chug I make-a the widgets and numbers go up.

Vicky 1 was ofc just pure cheese; most goods could just be dumped on the global market with no buyer and do fine, certain goods were just hard-coded to be profitable, and insane things like 100% of import costs coming out of the government's budget pushed you towards a kind of samey, slapdash hyper-industrial mercantilism. Vicky 2 was the opposite - so opaque in its function that you as the player didn't really have agency over it, as the vaunted World Market just does its thing. Your strategies "worked" no matter what you really did though, so you just kind of followed basic "build factory in same territory as RGO" logic and let the system run itself. Both of these systems made for functional-but-not-exceptional gameplay loops.

Vicky 3 is more complicated than its predecessors, but in ways that makes how the economic system functions more concrete. You have local prices for goods, wider markets with clearly labelled high-and-low demand, and clearly defined "production methods" where buildings can commit to better tech at the cost of different inputs. As a player you can build factories, farms, and mines of a dozen different types anywhere, so you always have agency - and those new production lines gives you goals. Invent steel tools, so now your tooling workshops can make more tools but will need steel instead of iron as a input? You can switch over the lines...but make sure you have enough steel mills! And oh, that drives down the price of tools once you do it...so now your cattle ranches can justify switching their line to tool-assisted butchers! And now you make more meat, your local cost is low, but oh in the Russian market meat prices are high - as shown by that little gold coin icon it - so you can export it now!

Things are looped, contingent, and based on your decisions. It is simple, of course, you are making lots of little, easy calls that build you up over time - which is what makes it fun. It has to be simple, because otherwise it is a dizzyingly complex web of a million markets, it would never work. You feel like you are actually building the economy without being overwhelmed by it.

Which would be great if it wasn't stapled to one of the worst political & military systems I have ever seen, played with a UI God abandoned in shame.

So you can join the markets of other countries? Like you have your own market as a default, so you can click the "market" tab and it will show you how much wheat your country makes, how much iron it buys, etc. All good. But if you join another country's market, now that tab shows the collective market, everyone's wheat, iron, etc. Useful but like obiously I am not playing the market, I am playing the country; so how do I see how much wheat I make?

You can't.

You actually can't! Idk maybe they patched it in recently, but I couldn't find it and all the reddit threads I google from 2023 say you can't. Are you planning to declare independence and wanna see if you make enough food for your people? Too bad! Fuck around and find out I guess. I saw one thread where someone's advice was "save the game, declare independence, screenshot the new market, then reload". Quantum timeline level of experimental design going on in these guys' Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It isn't even the gameplay implications that bother me the most - this is a game about building an economy. You want to see what you built! And they stop you. It is baffling, and is just the tip of the iceberg - there are so many things like this. One of my favourites is that your "construction sector" is a hybrid of government and private projects, sometimes it is you spending the money, sometimes investors. Okay, cool, when it is you spending it comes out of your treasury, right? Well, yes, but the way they show that is when everyone spends it comes out of your treasury, but the private sector reimburses you for their share. Which you will not understand your first ~3 games, and instead just see huge red numbers on your budget screen and panic. And you are just left asking why? Why do that?

Beyond UI, the political system is just half-baked. It is "interest groups", each has baseline popularity, and verrrry slowly that changes as your economic structure changes (or revolutions). And to change laws you initiate campaigns to drum up support with roll dice to pass/fail. Which isn't a bad baseline, but it completely fails to capture how political change occurred in the era. Like the Meiji Restoration is "done" by you putting industrialists in power and kicking out the "landlords" lol. Japan didn't have industrialists then! Landlords are the ones who did the restoring of Meiji.

More importantly than inaccurate it isn't fun - to change a law you just arrange a coalition in power than kind of backs it, then pray you get good random events. In Vicky 2 they had a lot more railroad-style decisions and stuff you could do to capture history, "hit this military score benchmark and launch a civil war" kind of stuff. It wasn't complicated, and it was less organic, but it was pro player agency, you could take active steps to achieve it. In Vicky 3 it is mainly waiting or cheese - people often talk about getting the Meiji Restoration by deleting all your armies at game start and launching a civil war immediately that the AI will lose by default. A checkbox decision is better than that!

The military mechanics are the epitome of their "systems over gameplay" approach. What they wanted to do was two-fold; reduce micro in Vicky 2 where it is "click army to province" over and over, and "balance" the game by making combat not reward micro where players could cheese the AI. Very valid goals, I totally support it. What they did was built a system where armies auto-move to "fronts" and their AI can't handle it, but now as a player my agency over my units is gone so I can't fix it. The UI is awful, you can't even really tell armies to attack or defend, they just ~whim. You have to do a lot of clicking to fight the system - yes it is less clicking than Vicky 2, but in Vicky 2 that wasn't mentally taxing, it was fun enough to wage the war you wanted to wage. Everything was concrete and in your control.

Here...look, as Korea I declared war on China to gain independence. Then the UK - not my ally, just separately, declared war on China as well. So now we are kindaaaa on the same side? At which point half my army auto-reployed to Hong Kong because a "new front" had "appeared". One my one boat. Then the UK declared war on me as well and then 50% of my army was fighting the UK in the South China Sea alongside the Russians (???) while the other half of my army is sitting there at home facing the Qing troops along the Yalu River going "bro, wtf?". At one point a newly spawned army of mine tried to auto-redeploy to Senegal.

All of this is just so preventable - you wanna reduce micro? Make combat provinces really big. You just invade "Manchuria", no clicking from Jilin to Mukden, and have bordering armies support each other defensively or something like that so you don't have to dash back and forth. Don't try to make your AI "do it for you" because it clearly can't and you want to play your own game. I'm sure the above will get better as I learn the system but I can just see the hundreds of players who saw this system and insta-quit, because until you "understand" it, it stabs you in the back. Not what you want out of a game.

Anyway enough me whinging about the game for way too long - the fundamentals are strong in the end. I will test out mods, I could see an overhaul mod really fixing everything except maybe the combat (and then you just cope). I definitely want it to work, the potential is high.

[domwitch]

I really like your posts because theyre always so different. Like 99% of the femdom stuff out there is just "i make him beg to take my strap and he's a good little bitch for me before he's allowed to eat me out" and its all just so boring and samey

Thank you! I've always been daydreaming about different scenarios and stories since childhood so now as an adult I get to share the horny ones. I'm glad you like them, personally I feel like they're also pretty samey bc most of my posts are just the same sex acts over and over again.

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

hey silly question maybe. do you know why cars are so boring now? like im on the wikipedia page for the cadillac eldorado for Reasons and it's a really visually interesting car through all the generations up until like. the tenth in 1979 when it just kinda looks like. every other car (if a bit more square) is this just like, the Capitalism Thing of shit getting more and more boring and samey over the years? or is there like a reason. idk much about cars but this has always annoyed and confused me, i miss interesting looking cars :(

Well, it should be noted that the tenth generation Eldorado's case is a peculiar one. As I've gone over, old American cars tended to be refreshed every other year, and the Eldorado, meant to represent the top of the top of that uniquely American idea of opulence, was perhaps the car most supposed to do so. Hence, as you'll have found, its ninth generation launched in 1971, just 18 years after the first - thats' how long the only generation of Italy's best selling car at the time, the Fiat 500, was sold for.

You wouldn't have expected that generation to stick around for more than four years - no other generation did, and almost all lasted half that. However, 1973 had other plans. Namely, the fuel crisis that completely eviscerated demand for mastodonic fuel guzzlers.

Sales would decline the following years, with little tweaks here and there but no major update, which would have been money down the drain as existing owners could barely afford to fill up the damn things, let alone upgrade, and what were potential customers before couldn't afford to fill up the damn things full stop. So when the new model finally came, this big aspirational car was shrunken down to get on with times of shrinking aspirations.

Nigh on 5.20 meters (for yankees, that's roughly 4/207ths of a Titanic) will hardly seem short to European sensibilities, but let's remember, that's coming from 5.70. You could walk between two walls that far apart. The width, too, decreased by a whole 20cm (for yankees, that's roughly half a rabbit), which in car width terms is massive - like, it's the difference between a Mini and a Mustang.

This to say, the tenth generation Eldorado is oft maligned as a fall from grace, one of the most popular examples of why the malaise moniker stuck to this era of American cars - so not exactly the fairest assessment of how cars changed with time. How about, then, we start our analysis by looking at a car with a much better received update, shall we?

Of course, the Mk1 Volkswagen Golf (for yankees, that's roughly a Rabbit) was a smash hit the world over, so much so that in Mexico it remained on sale as the Citi Golf as recently as 2009(!), and if I didn't think it the best looking Golf that ever was I probably wouldn't own one...

...but unless the only kink you're into is the Hofmeister, I don't see how the second generation's styling is such a downgrade as to bemoan the state of things. And frankly...

...maybe it's just the boiled frog syndrome, but I can't spot a point in which anything 'went wrong', so to speak. Which leads to the all-important question:

You say you miss interesting looking cars, but I do have to ask - when did they ever leave?

Have a browse of my pride post (no, really, go read it, I think it's one of my best ever) and point me to the boring cars within it, because me, I don't see any. And I suspect the reasons are similar to why you see older cars as more interesting.

For one, given the point of the post, all the cars shown are some flashy color, and each is different from every other. This, however, is increasingly becoming an anomaly as greyscale gobbles up an ever increasing share of the market, meaning on average, modern cars are less colorful, and thus less visually interesting. I've written about cause and effect of the greyscalification of cars, and suffice to say I'm not a fan of it - but I feel like that is a discussion separate from car design itself.

Then, of course, there's that those in the post are all cars that I like, so that selection was curated (albeit only by my personal taste). But that is also the case when we look back at older cars: what you see around and what you hear about is what people cared enough about to preserve and to discuss - not just in terms of models but of versions, specs and even colors. If you look at car shows like Radwood or Oblivion, which celebrate 80s and 90s cars, the very time period you referred to as the beginning of the end for interesting design looks like its heyday!

Yes, that trailer is factory.

Unfortunately, it must be said that unique and interesting cars have become fewer and fewer, as the ever increasing regulations make it even more expensive than it already was for smaller brands to emerge and the economic status of things makes it increasingly harder to justify a funky, daring picks for the biggest purchase of the average person's life - let alone the purchase of a second car, which tends to be what more extreme offerings were bought as. A brighter future seems to be ahead, though, with Toyota's incredible GR Corolla/Yaris and 86 apparently about to be joined by yet more spicy goodness and Mazda teasing a return of the rotary engined sportscar. For the twentieth time, sure, but after having seen the Motocompo revival actually happen, I am ready to kick that football.

(because you knew about the new electric Motocompacto, right?)

But there's another thing that post's selection had going for it: variety. Pretty much every car in it was in a wholly different category from all the others, and that is bound to make each car within it seem a lot more interesting than if it had been surrounded by cars of its same segment.

The survivorship bias outlined above also results in far more variety than you would find in normal traffic: even setting aside the halo car dynamic whereby the most special -and therefore most interesting- cars are usually niche offerings with very low sales figures, people tend to remember, discuss and seek out cars that represent some extreme - be it the fastest, the most expensive, the greatest, but also the slowest, the cheapest, the worst... and the tallest, the lowest, the biggest, the smallest, and so on. In short, the cars you'll find the least interest for are the everyday, quietly competent cars that make up the bulk of vehicles on the road.

Although, going far enough back in time, even those appear interesting to us, because their context's norm was so different from ours that even the cars that most adhered to it seem exotic to our sensibilities.

But when actually viewed in their own context...

...that impression tends to be stifled.

Unfortunately, it seems to me as though variety is also being stifled nowadays, with a growing share of body styles on sale becoming SUV/crossovers, and the increase in platform sharing reducing automotive outliers (for better and for worse).

And I should note: as for the other industry shifts I mentioned, the driving force isn't Big Capital or The Evil Economic System or what have you. It's the consumers. Sure, we can blame manufacturers for turning every model into a more profitable SUV, but they couldn't do this if they didn't sell, and they wouldn't do this if people didn't see them as more prestigious vehicles worth paying more for. We can blame manufacturers for killing weird car projects, but usually they get axed because people don't buy the things. Dealerships still order grey cars because no one digs their heels about having theirs yellow. So on.

So in short, old cars have always looked more interesting, because time alters our perception of them in ways that make them seem as much - and it also happens that lately the car industry has gone in the opposite direction to those alterations, causing new cars to seem less interesting. So, in short, the problem is the comparison just isn't apples to apples.

I think this is why that Golf evolution does not show any trend towards boring or away from interesting in my eyes - because it mostly strips those factors away. Here's a bunch of generations of the same car, all silver, all presented with no context bar the version before or after, all in the same body style which, for its entire history, was a common sight pretty much anywhere. (Also helps, of course, that the Golf's evolution had no wacky twists and always nailed the zeitgeist.)

This not to say that I can't complain about modern car designs - but for that, don't compare apple to apple... compare it to Microsoft.

See, I can think of many modern designs I find bland and devoid of personality, not because of a lack of styling effort but precisely due to an overabundance of it: so keen were the designers to put a crease here and a fold there and a kink somewhere to make the brand's seventh SUV set itself apart from the other six that the design became too overburdened with details to have a clear message - like a story with too many events for them to express a cohesive point.

Or, indeed, like this parody of Microsoft packaging in which their design principles are applied to the iconic, nay, legendary packaging of the original iPod.

This is an actual Microsoft video btw. This was made internally by Microsoft's marketing department.

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question: if you liked this post, you might like those - or the blog’s Discord server, linked in the pinned post!

[olderthannetfic]

When there was an anon about "To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods" a few months ago (or so?), I got curious and looked at the Goodreads reviews linked and at other reviews and the description.

Haven't looked at them this "round" of the asks regarding it, but IIRC I got the impression that it may originally have been a fanfic that had its names and some details altered to be published as an original work because IIRC some reviewers said there was little exposition as if one were already knowledgeable about stuff like the characters and world setting. Of course, I may also be (and most probably am) absolutely incorrect in this assumption.

The "mob" of angry reviewers also kinda gave me the impression that they may have been a friend group (based on their very similar phrasing and vocabulary and accusations, which may still also just be coincidental) who disliked the author for fannish reasons or something else and decided to take their (fannish?) dislike to the published literary world with the author's first publication... but again, I may just be wildly misinterpreting things and may have read their reviews in bad faith.

Regardless of whether or not the book is a "colonizer romance" or badly written or even disrespectful or tasteless or something else, I feel sorry for the author...

--

I wouldn't assume this. Usually, when het fics get the serial numbers filed, they're from one of the big het ships with a whole culture of doing this and it's all very open and liked by the fans. Some review would say which ship at the very least if not what the original title was.

However, I would absolutely assume that a book that reads like fic is by an author whose past experience writing is mostly with fic and who reads a lot of fic.

I also have the impression that some authors in the romantasy space are people who like sff settings on TV but don't have a lot of practical experience in how one establishes sff world building in a novel. They may have cool ideas, and these ideas may show up by the end of a book or later in a series, but the beginning doesn't have much flavor. Someone coming from a more book sff background would probably either explain more up front or whet people's appetites to understand the sff elements by giving a lot more sense of the setting. (But they might fall down on the romance aspects.)

There are also plenty of cliques in booktok, booktube, book twitter, etc., so a group of angry reviewers could be coming from somewhere like that and not from fandom beef.

It's also possible that the reviewers all sound the same because they read/watch the same book influencers who talk a certain way rather than because the reviewers are friends with each other.

Very likely, you're picking up the vibes accurately. I just think there are some other possible reasons for these vibes.

--

Poking around goodreads reveals a bunch of Corrain drama spillover. Search 'corrain', 'youtube', 'reylo', etc. for the reviews that give a sense of where samey-sounding people might be coming there from.

It's very clear that many reviewers heard all about the book long before they read it.

[theygotlost]

I figured just giving a litany of band names and saying "theyre really good dude trust me" with no further info wont encourage anyone to actually check them out so I've carefully selected a few of my favorite "niche" albums to recommend with a little write up so you can decide if you'd be interested 😁 or you can pelt me with rocks thats cool too

Now Hear This by Sumack (2000)

A mostly indie rock/power pop record with that distinct Y2K-era brand of Quirkiness that I love so dearly. I think of it as a fusion of Fountains of Wayne's Traffic and Weather and Beck's Odelay. it's hard to believe I only found out about this album 6 months ago because it feels like I've been listening to it for years. Regarding Saturday and Superdome are the real standout tracks.

Swim Out Past the Breakers by Telethon (2021)

Telethon's concept album The Grand Spontanean is a harder sell due to its length so this is the more accessible pick. I admit their body of work does get bit samey after a while, but they channel everything I love most about this upbeat style of power pop/pop punk and I gladly eat it up.

Sand (And Other Mysteries) by OK Glass (2021)

Every once in a while someone will recommend me an artist because "they sound like They Might Be Giants" but I haven't heard anything else that sounded THIS much like TMBG. it's uncanny to me how perfectly they capture the essence of TMBG's 2000s/early 2010s era. I feel bad comparing them to another band so heavily but, as John Linnell once said, I'm Impressed.

The Chinchilla Album by Uncle Outrage (2008)

Hooray electroclash!!! this band is chaotic, abrasive, and irreverent but each track is mercifully short. rather MSI-adjacent (for better or worse) but with a crunchier, scrappier production. some dumb fun for when I want the audio equivalent of sour skittles.

note: these two aren't nearly as niche as the others which I didnt realize until I double checked the stream numbers after writing this but whatever I still love them and I will tell people about them every opportunity I get !

Dangerous Jumps by Shredders (2017)

A side collab between rappers P.O.S and Sims with producer Lazerbeak, all members of the hip hop collective Doomtree. infectiously catchy, polished beats and energetic flows. I especially reccommend if you like Run the Jewels. check out the rest of the Shredders discography as well as the solo artists' and Doomtree's work, all of it's amazing!!

The Swimming Hour by Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire (2001)

Andrew Bird's solo work is far from obscure, but lesser known are the three albums released under this name at the beginning of his career. this quickly became one of my favorite albums ever after discovering it just a year and a half ago, and it's another one that feels like it's been with me forever. A wonderful tableau of twangy folk blues, haunting ballads, and the orchestral sound of a bygone era.

[anonymousredactedconfessions]

Sorry if this is long, but I just want to get this off my chest in a space where people realise that despite the love you can have for this world and its characters, there’s things you can also be unhappy with and just need to vent about.

I’ve been a fan of Erik’s stuff for years, and at first it was lovely dovey boyfriend roleplay with a little plot, and then grew into something more. Something deeper with lore and plot and complexities. Now it feels like it’s reverted back to simple boyfriend roleplay. And if that’s all Erik has the motivation for right now, fair enough. But I just feel like the videos are so half-hearted these days. Like this channel is an afterthought for him.

Now I understand that he’s probably got a lot going on in his life, as he’s hinted at before, but I would rather get less videos where he gets to spend more time on creating the complex stories we love rather than churning out half-hearted content that I’m losing interest in.

Erik is the first YouTube creator whose patreon I signed up for to support him, as I genuinely liked everything he was doing, but this past year or so it feels like things are lacking. The characters feel 2D. It’s all fluff and barely any angst or serious conversations/action/drama. The listener characters feel like empty shells with no goals of their own (with the exception of a few), there’s not much happening in a lot of the popular characters’ lives, yet people keep voting for them (David, Milo, Asher, Gavin, Guy etc) in polls and we get the same videos over and over instead of giving attention to the more complex (and arguably more interesting at this point in time) characters like Anton, James, Aaron, Elliot, Geordi, Morgan, Hush, etc.

Everything just feels so fluffy and samey - and I could get that from any other boyfriend role play channel. I miss the interwoven plot lines and drama. Where couples had their conflicts and worked through things together. Now every relationship feels too perfect.

I’m sticking around because I hope that when Erik has more time and things calm down for him that the videos will improve. To me, they’re not what they used to be, and I miss Erik’s videos from the early days of the channel. Every so often a video will drop and it’ll instantly pull me back in because it was so well written and kept me engaged with the story and characters, but those videos are few and far between these days 😔

.

[danvillecheese]

in regards to HNG music i feel like so far s2 has just been a little bit weaker than s1? a lot of the songs in s2 have just been rock-y kind of songs with not much difference. i swear theres like multiple robbie wyckoff ones in a row where he starts them all by going OH YEAH which doesnt help much at all...

s1 had a lot of variety i think.. tiny white tux/hora loca/trouble in the bayou etc are all pretty different but it seriously feels like every song in s2 is either gonna be light pop or some kind of rock. hopefully whenever the next batch gets dropped i get proven wrong but so far its all so samey

i’m hoping it’s bc they’re saving all the good songs for the pnf revival lmao

[landgraabbed]

mini gaming log from july-september

it's been a long time since i did one of these! these last few months in gaming i've mostly spent with games i've previously played and shared, namely unexplored 2 and kynseed. new games included miitopia (which i've talked at length about as i played it), and the two games featured here: sticky business and fields of mistria!

sticky business: it was a very cute and short game. a very nice palate cleanser after playing rain world, which pushed me to my limits. the sticker making is fun and so is managing your business! you get limited time each day (although you can toggle that off) to pack orders, design and print stickers, and deliver them. as you make different designs you get special clients with their cute little stories to share. it got a bit grindy at the end after i'd made the stickers i was interested in making and was waiting to finish some stories, though. played it on both steam deck and pc.

fields of mistria: the current farming sim darling, although i am eager to see how chef rpg shakes things up. i've had my eye on this one for a long time and honestly it matches and surpasses expectations. i love that the devs clearly paid attention to what feedback people had for stardew valley, such as seasonal outfits and character customization. it is in some ways a standard farming sim done right and in others it throws its own spin on things. i mostly am enamored with the npcs. their design and personalities are really interesting, and i love how rich the interactions between the different characters are! i find some main quest goals to be rather grindy and samey though, frequently boiling down to a mix of gathering coins, wood, and stone. i hope they start to incorporate the different facets of the game more rather than logging and mining primarily. played it exclusively on the steam deck

[clownkiwi]

genuinely hate the way heaven and hell is set up in hazbin like. in all honesty. whats the point of using the dantes inferno layers of hell if you are only allowed to use the pride layer. for every sinner. why the fuck would that make sense. like. a serial killer would be in the like. idfk wrath or lust (bloodlust) layer. dantes inferno isnt even fucking canonical to the bible.

the angel designs are flat, their movements feel stilted to me, all the humans in heaven just have a color swapped monster design just like the sinners.

and no fucking shit people think alastar is fucking white, you only find out that he mixed race from somewhere else. i only found out through my friend that the guy is half black because he saw a video or something of her drawing alaster in his human form (this sounds aggressive, but i am not doing that towards you this is in total agreement wirh you)

also i think adam as an angel is stupid as shit from like the standpoint of someone who is interested in the bible in the way greek myth isnt "canonical"/is separate from greek gods

the designs look like theyre still a fucking pain to animate, and i do genuinely like a lot of the designs, i think angel dust is iconic and uh. the bat cat guy looks pretty cool, i think theyre more for like. comic books.

story feels flat and rushed, and very much like i'm watching a childrens show for adults, and i fucking hate adult shows that think putting sex, seears, blood and gore in their product is soooooo fucking mature and cool of them and its just boring and samey and it fucking sucks. if hazbin was nade by someone else i'm sufe the peoduct wouldve been handled so much better and treated the audience like adults

LITERALLY THIS THIS THIS!!!!

for the first part, of the lore. the lore gets so much more fucking confusing and lamer if you watch the spinoff helluva boss. they go into more detail & spend more time in the other layers for each episode, but theyre all so lame and predictable. the lust layer is pink and full of clubs & bars because. romance??? the greed layer is green and pretty much chicago, especially with the demon mobs (demon mobs Should sound more fun). the wrath ring is red/orange and like The Middle Western Desert that literally takes place during the Wild West from USAmerica. LIKE they made dantes inferno LAME!!! wheres the imagination??? was the best you could come up with for greed "chicago" and wrath "the wild west"???? come on

and the way heaven and hell are addressed is so much more confusing. like. the angels have a Moral code Not To Kill, even if theyre demons (in the episode the angel opposite of IMP are focused on, they lose their jobs when they indirectly kill a guy they weren't supposed to kill), which comes into direct conflict with what the angels Were ALREADY DOING IN HAZBIN???

itd be one thing if they were taking place apart from each other in the timeline, and we don't really know that ATM, but they're supposed to take place in the same universe, so they never really seem to make up their minds on what they wanna do with that???

AND LIKE the core concept of hazbin hotel is broken from the very worldbuilding the show is built on. no demon would ever wanna work on redeeming themselves by just going to a hotel, and even in cases when they do, its really just to sabotage each other, before they solve their problems like. my fucking little pony. i cant believe this was a show made for the same target group as bojack horseman or moral orel, it makes me sick

and this idea isnt broken either!!! it can work!!! the good place worked and improved on this idea In Strides and did it with much more maturity and respect for its audience than vivziepop could even do for two of her shows

like hazbin hotel & helluva boss could be improved upon, they just need Better Writers and a Stronger Vision for where the story could go. im not even being a hater Just Because (altho i am), i'm just really upset that this was the direction the show is seemingly going to with no stop. ive seen people that have looked up to vivziepop as inspiration and felt deeply betrayed when the story was shit, when the writing was horrible, its really disappointing to see. i think the only people left watching this are people who think what vivziepop is doing is good, even if she spends more than half her time online looking up her shows to try to fight back against any and all criticism

[ganondoodle]

.... back on my totk rewrite thoughts so, poll time (pls read before voting o3o )

no matter how cute tulins design is, i like teba more and he had at least a little bit more to fall back on from botw than tulin did, given how little time is spent on these characters (and the time that is is just ... so flat, its all so tasteless, no flavor) hes just as much, or little really, as the champions descendants were in botw .. if even, though this game should have been the time to go hard on narrative, sicne the world was established now would have been the time to dig into the story more

im considering making teba the 'sage' (no sages in my rewrite but for understandings sake) and possibly with a .. 'backpack' tulin, they are a team and work as one (doing proper character arcs is hard to do in a game world like botw, given how isolated each area is and how little everyone interacts, id focus more on having some active troubles and dangers- team getting seperated etc. to make it feel like theres actual stakes instead of a flat one scene character 'arc' and then some baby puzzles that i hesitate to even call that)

(i still havent found a workaround for the abilities yet, botws way of doing it was very well integrated and made sense with the story, i dont want to repeat that but also dont want to have the shitty totk way, - killing a character off in the present to have them aid you in spirit is interesting only if not applied to everyone bc then it gets all too samey again, something something items in a way--- regardless of how im gonna solve that issue, i like the idea of them working together just like you are actively traveling with zelda as your companion and it will work whether i give them actual abilities or not)

[newwavenosferatu]

So here's an OOC post about some of the setting changes I made for my own WoD games, as I combined some 5th edition lore with majority v20 stuff.

- SchreckNet is still around! If you know me you know I love SchreckNet, and it while it getting compromised is a good metaplot development, I want to use SchreckNet in my games. The newest version, SchreckNet 3.0 uses a sort of VPN type deal. It's kinda like a reddit-radio combo where people go to different "tunnels" (channels/subreddits) where they get information uploaded in time sensitive transmissions. Most of these fade after a couple of days, and all tunnels are heavily watched and surveilled. It's a Nossie only deal right now, with some Nossies acting/posting on behalf of other clans.

-Hecata is a mini-sect, not a clan. Many members of the "necromantic" clans and bloodlines have joined together in a very volatile alliance for strength and protection. I know this is pretty much just v5 but I want to get rid of the idea that they are a clan in their own right, as I think them being a sect that some deathly Kindred join, but not all. There's still independent Giovanni for example

-Beckoning and Gehenna War are dialed back a lot. Not nonexistent but there are still plenty of elders and even older generations around. Many used the Beckoning as a clever disguise to advance their schemes, move to new territory, etc. Gehenna War skirmishes are happening around the world, not just in East Asia

-Sabbat is still around in plenty of places, if now being a bit more secretive in their operations.

-Many Anarchs still viewed by Cam as an unruly group population of their population, not their own sect. In many places, Anarchs are more of a problem for the Ivory Tower than Sabbat packs or other outsiders .Many Anarchs have also established their own small, but heavily defended Baronies nearby or even within Cam territories.

-WoD Orientalism and other Problems. Probably gonna be the part some people don't like, but I don't care. I'm not interested in perpetuating harmful, misinformed views of other cultures, in life or in my games.I love WoD and it's games, but it had some horrible ideas that are still haunting the modern iteration of the games. Frankly, The Banu Haqim, Ministry, and Ravnos are just stereotypes-as-clans. They have been partially improved, but it's very hard to distance them from their initial versions. I will eventually be doing a major rewrite for these clans to remove the more unsavory bits . This goes for other WoD games too however. I think the lore changes to W5 were mostly positive. However, the majority of the tribes are based on a weird understanding of culture and ethnicity which in removing that, which is in my opinion is a good step, did kind of leave the clans feeling a little "samey". It's not that there can't or shouldn't be a wide array of cultures that our splats are a part of, the exact opposite is true. But to have so many of these clans/tribes/etc being rooted in only stereotypes just doesn't . For example, only about 30% of Get fell to Hauglosk. The ones that fell were the worst of the tribe, and now the main tribe don't have any fashy undertones, basically just Klingon Garou, which is what I always saw them as. Ministry are probably going to be focused on a fictional vampiric deity rather than a real world one, and not be as connected to ancient Egyptian mythology. It's sometimes a thin line between talking inspiration from other cultures and appropriating them in the most stereotypical ways but that's no excuse for doing some research and treating other cultures with respect . Banu Haqim being focused on justice is an improvement from them being just foreign assassins, but I feel like it still comes from a weird understanding of Islam and its laws and traditions. Ravnos are perhaps the hardest to separate from their cultural "influences" (in quotes because it's one of the worst most basic stereotype of GRT people I've ever seen). Even getting rid of the travelling element that makes the stereotypical association undeniable and keeping them as a sneaky clan ruling from the shadows is just as offensive and backwards.

-

[frankiebirds]

rambling about mosley lane under the cut SORRY this got lon and maybe a little incoherent i am sick. TLDR: i liked it a lot and mgg is a really good director

mosley lane was so good?? i know it sounds weird to be shocked given its reputation but holy shit it lived up to it.

to be honest, i had expected some of the hype to be bias because mgg directed. not that i had any doubts that he was talented—a cast member directing episodes of the tv show they feature in is nowhere near unheard of, and doesn't always mean they're a good director as well as an actor, but i do feel like directing twelve episodes of that show implies genuine talent. also, while cast members directing is pretty normal, most of them don't have degrees in directing. mgg had one before he even started on cm, only studied acting in HS because they didn't offer filmmaking, and iirc has outright said directing is his actual passion.

and yeah, mgg is definitely a really good director. i might just be biased like i thought other people could be, but i honestly think that may have been one of the best directed episodes of cm. (i see 3x10 getting a lot of praise in that regard, which i'm sure it deserves if i look just at the directing, but i...don't like that episode, sorry). i don't really know how to describe the rest of cm's directing, because...i mean it's not bad. but imo it's very safe samey. there were a lot of moments in 5x16 where i noticed the directing and thought it was very good. maybe i was paying more attention because i knew people talked a lot about mgg directing, but i have noticed the directing and editing of cm before. just usually not multiple times per episode.

also—this one i can't (fully) give to mgg, because it's partially the writing, partially beth grant's performance, partially mgg's direction of that performance, and other factors from various people that contribute, but i'm really happy this episode had an unsympathetic female unsub. i get frustrated sometimes with the apparent notion (not in cm so much, i think cm is actually quite good with this) that women are always Good and Pure and therefor only do bad things for sympathetic and understandable reasons. (obviously there's some nuance. i was writing about the nuance but it got nerdy and off-topic)

ANYWAY. i really liked it :) if mgg directed a horror film i would watch it.

(p.s. "he was alive yesterday?" hit like a train despite the fact that i knew it was coming. simon mirren and erica messer can i Talk To You.)

[no1ryomafan]

now it’s time for no reason at 2 fucking am for me to give my opinions about every mega man series ✨ (again this is my opinion and also my time to expose how much of a fake fucking fan I am in some regards) imma go in chronological release order to my memory.

Classic: I don’t hate it but I’m the only person who doesn’t feel strongly about it. I just can’t get invested into not only the gameplay but any of the robot masters besides a select few-I’m sorry I just don’t see the appeal-I do like the significant characters like rock, roll, blues and bass obviously, and learning about what influenced mega man as a whole made me appreciate it a little more but I don’t advise it as the series people should get into or like they don’t need to play every single game cause it suffers the most from being samey. (Really just play 11, but I also say this as the only classic game I actually finished 💀) Liked the Archie comics though and wish it continued… Tempo was neat.

X: Mixed feelings galore oh booooy. X and Zero shaped me to be the person who I was for ALL the wrong reasons- I still ship XZero I’ll just never admit to it cause if it’s a overrated pair and the fans can be bad, I just love the most basic fucking yaoi pairs. I like a lot of the other characters like Vile, Axl, Iris-for little she gets-etc. Besides that the X series has been tainted for me cause MAN it has the worst fandom out of the series. I’m sorry X fans are so fucking vicious and I don’t know why, I sometimes wonder if you guys like your own series even if I get it’s super flawed. X discussion can get so annoyed at points especially with the crowd of “oh the games after X5 suck so I don’t count them as canon” (yes people like that fucking exist. Ignoring how X6 CHANGE THE SCOPE OF HOW MMZ1 CAME TO BE) X is definitely that series of “interesting ideas but bad execution” wish MHX got to continue cause the first game had potential to fix the story. Also I never beat a single game but I keep telling myself I’ll beat X1 or X4…

Legends: The only series I haven’t played whatsoever BUT I did watch the cutscenes so I’m up to speed on the lore. Really find the lore cool and the characters are charming, it’s just a series that’s hard to talk about cause it’s all “WHERES MEGA MAN LEGENDS 3” and man I get being salty about that sequel being canned and I wish it happened too but can we talk about the actual series… Also Roll Caskett best Roll don’t @ me.

Battle Network: Okay controversial time this is the Mega Man series I give the least fucks about and it’s gonna shock you when you guys see how I feel about Star Force. Idk why but this series just- doesn’t appeal to me. I want to give it a chance, before the LC even came out I got BN5DS but I didn’t like liberation missions so never got passed the first one, and I still never got the LC and heck is the only LC I didn’t get because I’m sorry no matter HOW much you tell me BN good the pricing is not worth it. I couldn’t be bothered to get into the anime or manga too. Idk just mega man but ai seems like a cool idea and I don’t mind it being a rpg it’s cool mega man changed what it was yet still retained its appeal but BN doesn’t do it for me. It might just be because of the designs and characterization honestly.

Zero: Another mixed bag but NOWHERE near as bad as MMX, and this one I did finish! I like a lot aspects of Zero the story telling and the refinements to the gameplay but the reason I can’t be super invested is when people consider it the best part of the franchise when all of the games have a glaring flaw. I love Z1, it’s unironically my favorite but it’s also the most flawed entry, Z2 is overhated but you can also tell this game was rushed, which it was, Z3 is considered the best and it’s good but I think it’s overhyped to shit-X4 has the same issue tbh-it makes good changes but it’s level design threw me off even if it’s more fixed than Z2 and *sigh* Z4 was a necessary ending narratively but I FUCKING HATE EVERYTHING ELSE ABOUT IT. (Don’t make me talk about Z4, very few things make me mad like that game- it only gets some points for making me cry at the ending even when I knew what was going to happen though) Also the fandom opinions about the story aspect of this game makes me not trust anyone LOL. Zero is better written here then mmx and Ciel doesn’t deserve hate don’t @ me! Anyways my favorite asshole here is Harpiua. Basic pick but I just wanna put him in a jar and shake him.

ZX: YIPPPPPIE- Sorry that was the sound of me getting excited about my favorite entry of the series. I love this game- so much it’s unreal. Everything about it I fucking adore. Art style, characters, music, gameplay, THE LORE even if it’s something they didn’t expand on enough I still love the setting of ZX. Biometals are such a cool concept that I can’t be mad at the idea of X and Zero being rocks unlike other people, there’s so much potential with them. I will always be sad ZXC never happened but the games we got are so replayable to me and I go on a monthly replay- yes I have a problem LOL. I don’t really have a favorite between them- I def get why people prefer the first game but advent isn’t that bad you guys just suck. Favorite character is hard I love everyone. (I’m kidding, it’s Prometheus. But I do like everyone)

Star Force: So remember how I said my opinions on this would confuse you about why I don’t care for BN? Yeah it’s because I’m the one mega man fan who isn’t a coward and also fucking ADORES this series LOL. I understand it’s a huge diversion from mega man and BN at least still uses some characters but I think star force not having AU characters is why I like it more- and also I’m biased for aliens LOL. Omega-Xis one of the best characters in this series and you guys fucking sleep on him, love the general cast too though. Star Force 1 is also a game that means a lot to me, the story touch me and made me cry like Z4. Honestly I’d like it more then ZX if it weren’t for the fact I don’t fuck with the gameplay too hard cause I never replayed it and story wise it really peaked at 1. I don’t think star force 2 is as bad as everyone saids but I get why people don’t like it, star force 3 has the X4/Z3 problem: good but still has plenty of flaws. There’s a lot of changes 3 made I didn’t like and while the story was decent there was some missed potential. The ending was really nice though but after how some aspects of 3 turned out I couldn’t give a shit if star force 4 happens, if I’m being honest it’s the one canceled game I’m glad didn’t happen cause I think it could’ve actually ruined the series. (Sorry I don’t fuck with the geo being bad plot, it sounded like ass) Also yes if you ask I DO own all the games physically cause I’m fucking insane lol.

So given like- 3 of series I really finished I can’t really rank them but I just wanted to yap and give my opinion. Maybe one day I’ll try battle network or beat a x game…