#of course you have BLeeM

[headful-of-worms]

Being a fan of dropout means being in love and deeply impressed with like 20 different people

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

I shouldn't have to make this post but Nintendo fans are trying extremely desperately to position the company whose cock they love the taste of in a good light and are generally doing this by spreading misinformation about the legalities of emulation so let's go over a number of the fabrications shall we?

Emulation is illegal to monetize This has so far been one of the really big ones that's taken traction, usually partnered with the sister lie that yuzu was paywalling access to early access builds. These are both lies, and are untrue. yuzu is far from the only modern emulator to be monetizing itself, plenty of mobile emulators do it, but developing an emulator for money is entirely legal. We have pretty much all of our emulation precedent set thanks to a series of lawsuits in the very early 2000s thanks to Sony suing an emulator called Bleem. There's a lot to say about Bleem, but Bleem was a commercial emulator. You could buy Bleem, in stores. At no point was there ever a court decision that Bleem was wrong to do so (despite Sony's best efforts).

Emulating current generation software or hardware is illegal. This is also wrong, and kind of fundamentally misunderstands a lot when it comes to emulation. Once again, Bleem was at the time emulating current generation software. It was a generation in its twilight, but Bleem first released in March of 1999: the Playstation 2 was not out yet. The reason why current generation software does not tend to be emulated is because we do not really have the tech or processing power to do it yet. The Switch's lower specs are entirely the reason it has had an emulator developed well ahead of the PS4 or the Xbone.

Yuzu's early access build allowed people to play Tears of the Kingdom ahead of release date This one is a couple of different statements packed together, and while I'm given to believe there's a chance other games may have been playable ahead of release, this specific statement is a lie, and maybe the funniest one on the list because it's a lie that's not even backed up by the lawsuit.

The lawsuit is extremely clear in its language that it was modded instances of Yuzu that could play Tears of the Kingdom ahead of release date, not publicly accessible builds of Yuzu. Nintendo's argument here lies in Yuzu being open source: part of the lawsuit alleges that Yuzu is responsible for any and all acts of piracy done by its users, whether or not they used official or modded builds of Yuzu. This is, of course, a fundamentally fucking insane position to argue from. It is not a particularly uncharitable reading of this as an attack on open source software to begin with, as this precedent would make any developer liable for ANY illegal action taken by someone who modified their code. Supporting this, in my opinion, makes you an asshole and liable to be clocked in the fucking mouth.

4. Literally anything involving this screenshot.

I've seen this screenshot maybe three or four times with different takes on what exactly Illegal is happening here and I'm pretty content to just call it vibes at this point. Whether this is an intelligent screenshot is a different matter, but no one has been able to point to anything actually illegal being done here. There is already precedent in allowing one to make their own back-ups of software they own, even if decryption or bypassing copy protection to do so, which is a large majority of software. Switch games are not the only games that are either encrypted or have copy protection, and this is both not the earliest generation to do it AND its not the only industry that does it.

The only point of interest here is the date, which I've seen literally no one bring up, but this correlates into another point: personal piracy is still not something Yuzu is liable for. It's a dumb thing to broadcast, but it doesn't change anything material about the software.

5. Yuzu folded because Nintendo had a smoking gun

I, I just, I'm sorry this one isn't just a lie its a really naive and incompetent view of the faults of our legal system. If anything, the settlement seems to indicate the opposite. If Nintendo was sure they had Yuzu dead the rights, they wouldn't have fucking settled. Both parties need to agree to settle! Nintendo is actively interested in trying to set legal precedent that emulation is illegal, because Nintendo is great at saying obviously wrong things with a straight face.

This could be a reason, but remember, this was a civil lawsuit, not a criminal one. Civil lawsuits have a difference in how evidence is handled, and it's pretty likely that Nintendo just has more evidence than user does on account of being able to afford a larger legal team and having planned for this lawsuit in advance, regardless of how strong that evidence actually is. It's why most of the arguments in the lawsuit read kind of insane. Civil lawsuits are not handled "beyond a reasonable doubt".

There's also the fact that legal cases can be extremely expensive, even when you know you are absolutely in the fucking right. I want to link this video by James Stephanie Sterling as evidence of this. They were completely in the fucking right, and the lawsuit still took an incredible amount of time and monetary expense to argue, and that's against an opponent who you could reasonably confuse with a scarecrow. This is ultimately how Sony eventually "won" against Bleem. Bleem never lost any of its lawsuits against Sony, in fact Sony ballsed it up twice against Bleem, but Sony continued to file lawsuits against Bleem and its company over and over, until Bleem literally could not afford it and went bankrupt.

There's also the matter of precedent. If Yuzu had taken this court, and lost, it would be really bad. There's a lot in this court case that you don't want precedent leaning towards, and due to, uh, America's current political climate and judicial regime, there's a fair chance the judge would have just sided with Nintendo anyways. Settling the lawsuit, while to be entirely clear, sucks complete ass for Yuzu as they were basically eliminated, protects the sphere of emulation as a whole.

So what was the salient parts of Nintendo's case?

The parts of Nintendo's case that hold the most weight have to do specifically with the encryption keys used to de-encrypt Switch games, and how those keys interact with the DMCA. There's no legal precedence to back this up, this is thoroughly untested grounds. This is actually where the buck stops with the Bleem cases: this one never went to a judgment for Bleem and hence never established precedent.

There's a pretty reasonable chance that Nintendo had a chance to win the lawsuit off of the back of this point. This doesn't make it a guarantee, but it's the part of the lawsuit that's actually important.

What happened with the settlement?

Well Nintendo got to legally extort the Yuzu devs and their parent company for $2.4 million. This is, strictly speaking, chump change to Nintendo but I in particular hate this part of lawsuits with a passion. In addition, as per the conditions of the agreement, all copies of Yuzu that were released and in development under the purvey of the company must be destroyed, the company and its devs can no longer work on Yuzu in any way possible, and they cannot work on any other emulation software. This is why Citra also closed down by the way: it was an unfortunate emulator in the cross fire. This in and of itself, is a tragedy, since this is basically court mandated brain drain. Undoubtedly Yuzu will be forked and someone will continue development on "Zuyu", but the loss is still felt.

Why should I care? Piracy is illegal.

This is where I'm going to wax philosophical for a moment, but Frankie my dear, I do not give a damn. Nintendo could have had full legal rights to do this, and I would still be of the opinion that Nintendo's legal team are ghouls and shouldn't feel safe showing their faces. This is how I felt when Nintendo shut down Emuparadise. Whether something is illegal does not impact whether it is right. Laws exist in a state of being able to be both just, unjust, or both.

Emulation is extremely important in the preservation of gaming as an artform, something that the game industry is extremely against in all forms. There's money to be made after all, and attempts at making sure that games are available to play are often attacked and criticized. This is part of the reason I'm so against the existence of copyright law. It doesn't matter what the intent of a system is, but it does matter what the system does, and it's transferred an overwhelming amount of power into the hands of large corporations while largely screwing small creators over.

I do not believe art has a price tag to it. I do not believe that art can and should only be enjoyed by the people a company has decided to sell it too. I do not believe that companies like Nintendo should be able to throw their legal weight around and ruin people's lives. You should be able to play Mother 3 and Shin Megami Tensei without having to wait for their parent companies to decide they actually want to sell it to you.

Piracy does not inflict meaningful damages to Nintendo. Despite Nintendo's whinging, Tears of the Kingdom sold over 20 million copies in half a years time, something that we can estimate to have made Nintendo about $1.4 billion in revenue. We live in a game industry which does not care about its game devs: it's perfectly willing to underpay them, to overwork them, and to eventually let them go. Nintendo is not innocent here. They have a history of mistreating their contract workers, and I personally know that these are not the only allegations that hold water.

In short, fuck Nintendo. Pirate all Switch games until the end of time.

[4dznsalamanders]

So I, like everyone else, am shaking the bars of my cage trying to understand what the hell 4Dawgz is DOING We've gotten a couple of wild facts for her character this episode and last weeks: 1) absolutely hates Riz SPECIFICALLY for some reason, despite him consistently being the most respectful towards her (he actually tries to say her name proper) 2) she has a lot of anger towards the Bad Kids (and Riz), and 3) she was very casual killing Buddy Dawn, even though that doesn't immediately help her... admittedly, it does threaten the Bad Kids by removing revivify, but homegirl saw Gorgug soloing a purple worm, Adaine being untouchable, Fig smiting as if she's been a paladin for years, and The Ball absolutely rocking this fight, Fabian was there, all while Kristin was being pretty conservative and prioritizing heal spells, so KipKettle has no reason to believe the Bad Kids are in true mortal peril. What does this all mean? Well, idk about you, but Kipper's absolute inexplicable rage, combined with a bunch of other weird minutia, has me pondering the Time Quangle again, and the fact the Bad Kids DID do some minor chronomancy pre-shrimp jump, I think we have more time shenanigans to go... ESPECIALLY since that girlfailure found the rogue teacher at 8:01 am, I agree with some of the theories I've seen suggesting she's stuck in a time loop. I think she hates Riz because he is consistently the one realizing, connecting the dots, and ultimately the driving force that thwarts her in her scheme, forcing her to do another loop. Her complete contempt might look unreasonable, but maybe she's been trying to complete her task for YEARS, stuck in highschool because some random hot goblin kid can't ever mind his own business. I've been sympathetic to the "BLeeM would never have such a blatant BBEG like this, there has to be a twist" crowd, and I think FishFlower RedPan callously murdering her party cleric DOES NOT negate this - as far as she's concerned, he might be the 57th Buddy Dawn she's met, so why would she care when this loop will probably fail again? If this theory is anything substantial, she literally has nothing to lose, because she can just start over again? Anyone would appear irrational and be incapable of seeing an unbiased perspective, so of course she would claim things aren't fair: she's witnessed the same group of clowns dunk on her repeatedly in every iteration. Why bother doing unique adventures that are unpredictable when you can be the RatGrinders and have the same base slate with less chaos to try and enact your grand plan?

[someoneshotacricketwitharocket]

wait you guys know what we need in a future season of dimension 20?

okay so intrepid heroes cast yes?

in all the promotional content it's not really,,, entirely clear who's DMing this season, and the plot doesn't seem to be that concise. Anyway everyone is confused AF and watches the first episode yes?

Brennan DMs the first episode, as people assume bc it's the intrepid heroes right? Like if course BLeeM is the DM for them.

Except.. the episode (or maybe two) is a Doozy, it's long and after the set up and vignettes it's straight into battle and everything seems more or less tied up right?

And damn a two episode season is the shortest that's ever been done, surely we get more content, there seems to be more in the season trailer?

and then.

and Then.

Except,,, he doesn't get out of the seat? He keeps going? And maybe the heroes have the same character, or a completely different one (but still in the same setting). and BLeeM is introducing his new character in this setting. And we follow a similar storyline if meeting the new PCs, having a battle and roleplay and lore drop (which happens over 2/3 episodes).

After the first two/three episodes, we see one of the intrepid heroes sitting in the DM booth, and at first we all think "oh haha another intrepid heroes bit just like in previous seasons. This'll happen for like two seconds and then BLeeM will come back and take over." (this is probably Zac sitting in the DM seat, considering).

By this point the audience has worked out what's happening and is Freaking out ("yeah Murph Did sound kinda like a DM in the season trailer, but that could've been some cool character arc he was having").

And so Each Small Arc within this season is DM'd by a different intrepid hero and we get their own interpretation and adaptation of the world!

This would be a logistical Nightmare (regarding planning for the plot and just general shenanigans) but it would be So Damn cool.

I think the order would be smth like

1. Brennan

2. Zac

3. Siobhan

4. Ally

5. Lou

6. Murph

7. Emily

8. and maybe BleeM again? maybe even Aabria!!

Anyways please let the intrepid heroes DM I Need to see it

[quarterlifecrisis-activated]

The funniest but also most on brand thing BLeeM could do is make CornCutie GoldPot is her not being involved with the rituals at all. Like I have this feeling lowkey that she is just really into being class president and that’s it. It also fits into the RatGrinders not being real adventurers. Their XP grinding for school so of course this type A semi-leader of the group only care about school. They don’t get the bigger picture of what’s going on because to them school is the most important thing. And the Bad Kids are the opposite.

Also I don’t think we’re focusing on Mary Ann Skuttle enough. Like yes she’s adorable but do you remember what she did to Gorgug at tryouts? Like they keep saying giants tore up those trees but when Brennan was describing the murder scene all I could picture was Mary Ann running down Gorgug into the bleachers. Like BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA!!! That’s Mary Ann all over it. Also for her being so nonchalant when everyone else is losing it to rage strikes me as a red flag.

[velvetvexations]

This was absolutely another time where BLeeM was gunning for them to get it, it just went a lot better than the mall. Like, I know help actions have always gone unexplained on D20, but K2, in defiance of all logic, gets to roll as well AND somehow also gets Fig's help action?

This isn't really BLeeM's fault, of course. D20 is very, very different from most actual plays and doesn't have the luxury of being a full sandbox, so there are rails to adhere to. I don't really mind that in theory because I've always enjoyed video games with a similar level of freedom wherein you have a limited set of choices to mix-and-match to get a limited set of story branches and endings, but usually it's much more subtle than this.

I do wonder about how it would have gone if dice just kept misbehaving the way they did in the mall.

[kittyoverlord]

re. dropout, you said "On one hand, I feel like they're essentially being bullied by a toxic fanbase who has eaten up antisemetic propaganda and are forcing everyone they like to agree with their very specific talking points or else be labelled as facists" and "it feels like they did the math of what will lose them the least number of fans, and since Jews are such a minority, it's safer to cater to the antisemetic mob."

and I hear you. I have found so much of the dropout media content wonderful, funny, a source of joy. You also said that from now on, that enjoyment will be colored. And I hear you on that too, and I will also add some more colors to the picture the dropout antisemitism call is coming from inside the house. It is not just a toxic fanbase bullying internet creators - Ally Beardsly, Brennan Lee Mulligan and Izzy Roland are all involved in and promoting JVP LA, an organisation who hosts "revolutionary readings" of terrorist manifestos (PFLP specifically) to "further our understanding of the liberatory actions for Palestine". (entirely aside from JVP at large platforming and hosting convicted terrorists and murderers on a disturbingly regular basis because whatever, the victims were only jews) Am I worried BLeeM will walk into a synagogue and open fire during kabbalat shabbat? no, of course not. But I do think the nose-measuring at dropout is coming from the organisation, not the fans.

This is kinda how I'm feeling at the moment, yeah. And I just wish that Dropout as a company saw the position that they have and use it to educate their employees and audience on the nuance in these issues. Like, at least publically it seems that alot of the cast members and Sam Reich are friends, so ideally they would have a relationship where someone could say, "Hey, JVP isn't actually a good group, here are some groups that are working towards peace on the ground.", then the audience could hear a similar message from these cast members whose opinions they value so highly.

The fans are definitely not helping, but I am much more concerned about the internal politics at the company. It does feel like keeping their favorite pasty irish white boy et. al. is going to come before making Jewish guests feel safe and respected - Let's be real, if Brennan left Dropout would fall apart.

I am mostly hoping that Noah and Rachel are doing ok. Dropout could still turn this around and show up for their Jewish fanbase if they wanted to.

[velvetvexations]

On one hand, there are for sure things to criticize him for, like his treatment of Kipperlilly bordering on softly misogynistic and ableist, and he has some ideas about universal innate empathy that needs some reworking. Also, people do genuinely take it to a weird place, like as funny as it was that he was called a decolonial philosopher that was a thing that actually happened and ohhhhh my God that sucked.

But on the other, I think the definition of "hero" can be...broad. A lot of people feel deeply inspired by him, and publicly adore and praise him in a way that can be done healthily, I think.

I am, of course, very biased as one of those people publicly praises and adores him and has a lot of very big ideas about him being a Good Person above and beyond what it normally means to be a good person.

But I also feel somewhat entitled to, at least a little, given that I'm a queer woman. I truly can't judge him in all matters of social justice, but when people were assuming that Mismag 2 was going to be transmisogynistic because they didn't have a visible out trans woman front and center, or jumping to a bizarre worst faith conclusion about a balls old joke from TUC 2, it was like...you seriously think BLeeM would intentionally be transmisogynistic? That he'd be involved in something transmisogynistic?

"Anyone can be transm-"

Brennan Lee Mulligan would not make a joke where the punch line is 'lol chick gotta dick,' oh my God. It genuinely felt like people saw the praise he gets and just wanted to antagonize people lol.

So I think there's space for like, understanding that he's not literally perfect, but also letting him be That Guy to people, within reason.

i begin to fear the way people talk about Brennan Lee Mulligan. he is not a saint. he is not a hero. these are not real things a person can ever be, a white man much less besides