Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
No bio...
User ID: 214
Something I noticed being in the Homestuck fandom for a while, during content droughts what seemed like the majority of the new fanart you’d see produced was like this; black butch Rose, trans Jade built like a linebacker, basically everyone brownwashed, visually queered, and made uglier and/or fatter. When big updates would drop, more normal people would come back to the fandom, and you’d see a lot more art that was pretty and actually representative of the characters. I think the people who are still making fan content for a more obscure piece of media that hasn’t seen updates in years are more likely to be weird, deep into queer subcultures, or have an axe to grind with representation.
It can get annoying, especially in the modern media environment where Twitter and other social media collapses the distance between creators and fans. Relatively small groups of very motivated people can exert surprising amounts of influence on creators these days, pushing for their preferred (queer) ships to be made canon. In the case of Homestuck, the creator would go as far as to reboot the whole story and make gay everyone who wasn’t gay yet besides John. See Korra and RWBY for other, less extreme examples.
It has made me much less tolerant overall, seeing how quickly fandoms get overtaken and everything has to be made gayer to accommodate them. I don’t mind LGBT people being represented in theory, but as a straight person I don’t get any enjoyment out of reading about such relationships, and representation seems increasingly zero-sum when a property giving some gay representation inevitably leads to them demanding more and more.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
3mo ago
Thank you! That metric is interesting, and I can believe it. In my experience there has never been a drawback to showing affection or saying I love you.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
3mo ago
That is great advice, thank you. We have been together a long time and like to say we're still in the honeymoon phase. I hope ours lasts as long as yours does.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
3mo ago
Thank you! I hope yours goes great as well.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
3mo ago
Thank you! That sounds a lot like our current situation. I'm not sure if it will feel any different after getting married, but I think I'll be more than happy if things stay the same.
I'm getting married this week. I am getting more and more nervous as the date arrives, but I don't have any doubt that she's the right person. We started dating in college and have been together ever since. I feel very lucky that we got to grow up together, instead of meeting later in our lives.
I don't post that often so you probably won't know me, but I've been reading every week and posting intermittently since the move to /r/themotte in 2019. I'm incredibly grateful to this place for being what it is, and to the people here who keep it active and interesting. I wanted to share with everyone since I'm usually very private, but I also would welcome any advice you have for the transition to married life, or more generally for staying happy together for the rest of our lives.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
I mostly agree regarding female benders, but in the episode OP is referring to, the warriors who humiliate Sokka are Suki and her Kyoshi warriors - all non-benders.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
The original Michael Bay Transformers is exactly this type of period piece. It encapsulated everything about that era of early-2000s American culture; military dudebro Call of Duty aesthetics, jingoistic patriotism, frat boy humor, etc. That type of theming was dead and buried by the 2010s, but is maybe making a resurgence now. I remember hating it at the time, but it does feel nostalgic to see now with how different everything became.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
I haven't played Silksong and probably won't for a few years, so I'm taking Hollow Knight as a standalone text in my view of the Pale King. The games were released 8 years apart, and teams change, priorities change, and the gameplay need to have a new play area will also require the writers to carve out new reasons for it to exist. Once I get around to playing it, I'll see how I feel about everything.
My impression was that some of the bugs had sapience, like the mantises and moths, but not most or all. I think the gameplay is evidence for the Pale King's continued presence being important. He was there once, and there was a thriving civilization. He is gone now, and 90% of the creatures you meet are now feral beasts who attack on sight. I had also thought that the general claim of bugs gaining sapience after coming to Hallownest to be true, which implies there must be a sizeable population of insects who were not already higher-minded who benefited from being uplifted. Most of the bugs shambling about Hallownest who meet your nail would probably prefer if the Radiance had never shown up and the Pale King had continued to rule.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
This is fair when it comes to using jumping as a defensive option. The game doesn't tell you that it makes the bottom half of your body covered in I frames, or that it recovers faster than rolling, and both of these things are non-intuitive. Elden Ring doesn't want you to only dodge, but it doesn't want to tell you that outright... The obtuseness these games have in terms of how basic mechanics work is a fair criticism to make. I will say at least in its defense that many things are opaque on purpose to get you to ask for help from someone who knows how they work, whether that's from a friend you know who is a veteran or people online. Collaboration with fellow travelers passing by to untangle something seemingly impossible was a large theme of the first Dark Souls, and it's held out through the series.
For attacking though, at least from watching my new friends play, I think most people playing will feel out a correlation between using heavy attacks/jump heavies and how quickly enemies get their guard broken to allow for the incredibly-important critical attacks. In this case, I genuinely think someone who doesn't already have preconceived notions of how these games play (thinking light attacks are god and heavy attacks are worthless because that's how it works in Dark Souls) is going to have a better time. A lot of newcomers seem to have less of an ego about using magic or powerful Ashes of War as well.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
Having to mess with the camera in combat is annoying, but in DS1 and 2, enemies move and attack slowly enough where this is doable while still being able to react to attacks coming in. Additionally, you can free aim the direction of your attacks while they're winding up to hit groups of enemies without having to rely on the cursor tech you mentioned. And since your stamina regenerates so painfully slowly in 2, having uninhibited movement directions to allow you to execute walk/run based evasion more reliably becomes that much important.
Once you get to DS3 and Elden Ring, enemies are definitely too fast and relentless to not have lock on activated unless you're executing a specific type of dodge or magic attack that calls for unhooked camera.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
I’m of the opinion that the Pale King Did Nothing Wrong. He gave the gift of sapience to the insects of Hallownest, and the extreme measures he took to save it were understandable given the gravity of the Radiance sickness. That the mountain of corpses and the in the void and the Hollow Knight doomed to suffer were his children and not someone else’s counts for something too. The Hollow Knight arguably failed in its job because the Pale King raised it as his son before sealing it in the egg.
He is most definitely vain, and self-interested. But so are many of us, and he does more to justify those traits than most. And worship is a more than fair expectation in exchange for sapience. I would make that trade happily if the alternative were being a mindless beast.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
8mo ago
Dark Souls 2 has a reputation for being very unfair because people try to play it with the camera lock on, a mechanic that restricts your movement when activated, and predictably get bodied by the mass of enemies that jump them. If you learn to play with the camera unlocked and dodge without rolling, it’s a whole different experience. Unfortunately, the game’s tutorial teaches you to lock on, so it’s not really an unaware’s player's fault for having this happen to them.
Dark Souls 3 is most definitely rollslop. Dodge roll and light attack spam is optimal for 99% of the game. Elden Ring imo is not; jumping is a vastly superior option to evade attacks in many situations, as is running, strafing, horse iframes, etc. Roll is a now a tool in your kit, not the whole arsenal. Your offensive options are not nearly as restricted either, as heavy attacking and jump attacking are now very powerful options. I believe, but can’t prove, that a lot of Elden Ring’s difficulty complaints come from DS3 veterans who refuse to do anything but dodge roll and light attack and don’t engage with the new mechanics.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
10mo ago
To clarify, Ted was a Red attack on Blue academia, Waco was Blue oppression of religious conservatives? That's more or less my understanding of the two incidents.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
11mo ago
I’m hoping Ascent of Ashes lives up to the hype I have for it. Getting another real time with pause colony sim would be a dream come true, especially if it’s more focused on exploration and combat than Rimworld
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
11mo ago
I just read the first chapter of Most Evil Trainer and it was promising. Should I have been looking on SB for fics this whole time?
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
11mo ago
That’s promising then. The Mewtwo POV chapter was such a cool way of doing the concept of AI in the box that I can probably cut the author some slack. It was just when Bill came to lecture you about AI safety that I lost it. Is there anything else in a similar vein you’d recommend?
I've been reading the fanfiction Pokemon: The Origin of Species on and off recently. It's a rationalist take on the Pokemon setting in the same vein as HPMOR, if you aren't familiar. It's had some good ideas and moments, and can be delightfully brutal, but I just got to the chapter that introduces Bill and was put off by the author dropping a bowling ball on my head about AI safety, with lines ripped (cited?) almost 1:1 from Big Yud. It feels almost... quaint? But more tiresome than anything else; this isn't a new topic for anyone who had read a lot of Rational fiction or blogs.
Moreover, it's made me apprehensive about the direction of the story and unsure if I want to continue. I enjoyed rationalist concepts applied to the Pokemon world, and the author trying to make real various concepts and moves in the game. I'm not interested in it turning into another AI/ending death story... which seems like where the author or main character wants to go given recent events in the story.
Has anyone else read this fic? What were your thoughts. I'm only on chapter 37/143 myself, so I won't be able to talk about events far in the future.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
11mo ago
We've had the same issue with Hlynka
Funny in hindsight, given that OP was revealed to be a Hlynka sockpuppet recently. Not sure if you saw.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
11mo ago
How are gender relations in China, in your experience? We have a lot of issues and stories like this in the West, though South Korea always seemed the most insane to me in terms of complete gender relation breakdown.
Also, welcome to the Motte. I would love to read about more Chinese culture war skirmishes like this, and I'm sure I am not alone in that. These stories tend to not make their way to the English side of the web often.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
I would have agreed with you only 5 years ago. I used to browse /tg/ a lot, but the quality on there has steeply declined. Very few stories are posted there any more, and all discussion threads are derailed by posters spamming NoGames or accusing other posters of being Bumpfag. I can't speak to the other boards, but that one used to pump out so much iconic content and has been reduced to a shell of itself.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1yr ago
They were hacked by a Soyteen from Soyjack.party, as @Eupraxia said, not a state actor. The hacker restored the /qa/ board, which is where their site culture originated from and whose deletion caused them to move. This KF thread has a good overview on what their site culture is about. It is... weird, so be warned, but very funny if you enjoy schizo humor. They're well-known for raids of other imageboards, so this type of hack is only unusual for its scope.
This rDrama thread has more information on the hack and here's showing the hacker posting about how they did it.
The issue is not that the gay relationships I see are not genuine enough (with the solution being to consume even more genuine LGBT media), it is that they come at the cost of things I actually want to read about. Whether it is the main focus or just the spice, I enjoy M/F romance in my media. Gay romance does nothing for me. Possibly it’s just a relatability thing, but I imagine this is why representation is such an important point for activists - most people want to see themselves in their stories. I believe you when you say you enjoy straight relationships, but I still would bet that on the whole, gay people don’t get as much enjoyment out of them as they do homosexual romance. I understand why they’d push for more and more representation, but it doesn’t change that their tastes are adversarial to mine.
Most of the examples I gave came at the explicit cost of a hetero ship that the story had previously pushed, sunk after years of fans aggressively pushing for the gay alternative until it became canon. Yang/Blake in RWBY is a pretty obvious example of this. Homestuck was even more egregious; by the end of the story it seemed like every character not named John Egbert was in a gay romance, or about to be. I would call these changes anything but cynical (the creators probably felt strongly about their inclusion by the time they did it), but they ruined big parts of the story for me nonetheless.
Somewhat related to this subject is something I’ve been wanting to write more about for a while. Non-toxic straight relationships in media where the man takes the role of protector and emotional anchor while the woman is more emotional, soft, delicate, in need of protecting, etc. are a lot harder to find these days. This has been stigmatized heavily from decades of feminist criticism, so writers tend to avoid depicting women that way with men. This type of pairing has not gone away entirely, though - the only time you see it is when the writer makes the man into a woman. Historia and Ymir in AOT, or the relationship between the two researchers in this SCP are the examples that come to mind right now, but if you keep an eye out for it you’ll see what I mean. You can probably find counter examples in anime, obviously, or in Western media if the couple is toxic, breaks up, someone dies, or is otherwise sunk.
To preempt the what does this matter response from other people reading: abandon the reigns of cultural criticism at your own peril. Much of what people believe about the world comes from the media they consume. Fandom culture is upstream of future creators. LGBT people are active and relentless in pushing for what they want, and as a result the media landscape has gotten much, much gayer in the last decade. Your family, friends, children, coworkers, etc. will all be influenced by media to some degree, so it’s something to take seriously.
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