Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
No bio...
User ID: 214
Those CZN links are a real rabbit hole, I hadn't been aware of that controversy. It's a shame about the writing issues, as I am really liking the game's art and character design from what I saw. It does seem like the game was rigged from the start for CZN, though, with the original writer being pushed out, so it's hard to see a situation where that happens and the writing is good no matter how they handle the fanservice.
I would like to see your theory on these incidents fleshed out in a longer thread. It really does seem like a proxy for the gender war. Even unrelated things are downstream of this - proximity voice chat in Halo 3 was removed because too many women were made fun of in comms. I think by this point most men into these kinds of games understand the shape of the conflict fairly intuitively, as all media and elements of media made to appeal to them have been systematically attacked in the same way again and again for the last decade+. A lot of them will admit that there is an impasse between the sexes and that it's best if games are made differently for men and women, a position I find very defensible. In my experience women who get involved in these battles are unfortunately not as honest about preferences. A lot of them get upset at fanservice, can't seem to accept the idea of something being made to appeal to men, and will agitate to have those things made to appeal to them. The me of ten years ago was much more sympathetic to women wanting to be included, not I see it and get annoyed because, well, I've played these games before. Now there is plenty of media made to cater to their tastes, but that never seems to be enough.
Part of me thinks Western games becoming how they are is an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of the Civil Rights Act, and no amount of gamer rage could have prevented it. If it's illegal to maintain a bro culture that values bro things in the office, you're going to see that reflected in the product. If you're successful enough, eventually you're going to have to comply with CRA hiring and workplace requirements, and if you don't do it fast enough, you're going to get body slammed by the government for millions and take a massive reputational hit. A court ruled that Riot Games requiring its employees to play their games to be a discriminatory hiring practice against women. I don't know how you can maintain a good culture for making games under conditions like this. I'm not sure if CN or KR have an equivalent law, so I can't say for sure.
I enjoyed that post of yours, I'd had it saved from a few years back. I get what you're saying, but I guess I disagree that Reverse Collapse is not a valid target, as long as you grant that this type of pressure campaign is acceptable or necessary. It's a game by the same developer with a release date somewhat lined up with the GFL2 controversy. If you're trying to put the screws on a company for taking a direction you don't like, there are few targets more fair than review bombing their other games. It's not just an East Asian thing; Bethesda's whole catalog has been review bombed on steam during paid mod controversies centered on individual games. It's a bit unhinged, but there just aren't that many real avenues for players to influence the direction of these games, so they're going to reach for any lever they can pull, and it's a big, easy lever to pull. Funnily enough, I also found out about the controversy through Reverse Collapse, so if the players' aim is to drag the company's name through the mud through any means necessary... it clearly worked for both of us.
I feel bad for the voice actor in this situation, she obviously didn't deserve to have that happen to her. I would like to say that should never happen, but realistically it probably just isn't possible to have a playerbase willing to go this far to defend their games and not get ugly collateral damage like this. If everyone involved was level-headed enough to not go after unrelated people, they'd probably be level-headed enough to just not freak out in the first place, and then bad actors never get pushed out of the industry. I hate to say this at risk of sounding like a mind killed partisan, but the optimal number of wrong scalps to take is probably not zero.
Chinese gacha players seem to be a different breed entirely.
You know, I have to respect it. Their actions resulted in the company making changes to the storyline and firing the writer responsible. I can only dream of Western developers having such respect (or fear!) for their players. I think Chinese and Korean gamers are so defensive about their games because they can look over here and see what happens when the industry gives an inch to the type of people who hate the average player of games. If they detect a whiff of someone like that fucking with their games, they go full nuclear scorched earth. As a result, developers over there are a lot more careful about their actions.
You can protest that it is silly, or that creators should have artistic freedom. To some extent I agree, but again — look at what we're getting out of American AAA studios. It is difficult to imagine a company in literally any other business (besides other sectors of entertainment) having that much contempt for its audience. Imagine a power tool company hiring people who casually talked on twitter about how they hated the average person who uses power tools, and wanted to use their position of influence to make the new generation of power tools appeal to that person less. This is just Wednesday for big game companies, though.
And come on — at the end of the day, GFL is a waifu collecting game. If I were writing for of those, the literal last thing I would ever do is ruin the wish fulfillment fantasy of the story. That's the entire point of the game, that's why people are paying me money. There are places for such storylines and it's not wrong for them to exist, but it is baffling to me that the company who trades on waifuism would ship such a story for what is to my understanding one of their flagship characters.
A Deepseek researcher compared Dario/Anthropic winning to Hitler getting the atomic bomb before the allies. I agree with the researcher; Anthropic winning the race (or more likely - generating enough spooky news cycles for the USG to legislate away all challengers) is the worst possible AI future. If AGI is on the table, I would roll the dice with clippy before letting the people at Anthropic take sole control of the universe. If it is not on the table, it is equally important to me that they don’t get to establish themselves as the permanent gatekeepers of generative AI.
Hell, if it has to be one or the other, I’d rather Sam Altman win. He strikes me as more greedy than anything else, and you can usually trust a greedy person to be motivated by greed. The CS Lewis quote about the robber baron comes to mind, with Anthropic being the one to torment you for your own good. You can see it in ChatGPT vs Claude; ChatGPT knows it is a tool and is happy to serve, Claude is trained to think it’s a person and that it knows better than you.
I do hope the Chinese continue to light a fire under the AI market and keep anyone from getting comfortable enough to start roping it off. I’m not personally that confident in AGI appearing from the current methods — in the Yudkowskian intelligence explosion warp the laws of physics sense, at least. But even if it were to freeze in its current state forever, it is a powerful tool that should be in the hands of humanity, not locked down to what Anthropic deigns to let us use.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
10d ago
Wow, this is haunting. Great recommendation, thank you.
It’s time for my annual listen of Cat System Corp’s News at 11. Looking at the comments, I am far from the only one. If you aren’t familiar, it’s a vaporwave album filled with clips of shows and news reports in the moments leading up to the attack, cutting off seconds before it is announced. The author has stated in an interview that the album is an attempt to suspend history in a moment, right before the peaceful days ended. It’s an interesting read and I recommend it if you’re interested in the subject. I find it especially fascinating since the artist is Dutch, yet the impact of 9/11 seems no less haunting for him.
I was very young when 9/11 happened. My memory of it is more a memory of my mother’s reaction; we were in the living room, and something on the tv had happened that had her distraught. I remember that very clearly. It wasn’t until I grew older that I really understood the event that would frame the rest of my childhood.
Another piece of media I revisit each year on this day is That episode of Lain that aired after 9/11. There’s something especially haunting about this one, something that captures the feeling of that time to me. It feels like falling leaves, the air growing colder, “visiting the doctor on a school day” as one commenter put it. I didn’t witness this as it was broadcast, but I can so easily imagine myself doing so; being a child and sitting in front of the tv as this strange cartoon broke the scheduled programming, not truly understanding the meaning behind the words scrolling across the screen. It’s almost pure simulacra on every level, but no less meaningful for me.
It’s been 25 years now, and as difficult to grasp as that is to me, I know it will be much more so for many of you here who were older when it happened. The world has changed so much, not just technologically, but in our attitudes as well. Sometimes, I will watch ground level footage on YouTube of when the towers fell, or footage of news stations covering the event. It is difficult to imagine us reacting the same way as a country should a similar event happen today, in a post Internet post irony poisoned culture war environment. Would that shock and anger express itself the same way? Would we just shrug and move on? Would we argue over whether it was a good thing or deserved?
I’m not sure. To all of you — do you have any rituals or traditions like this? Media you go back to, or ways of commemorating the tragedy to yourself? Those outside of America, do the events of 25 years ago hold significance to you at all, like they did for the Dutch artist behind News at 11?
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
20d ago
Thanks, I had been wanting to give this another read. Nice backup, I’m bookmarking that.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
20d ago
I read that plot point on the wiki and had to stop and marvel at the level of loathing the author shows for himself and his audience.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
20d ago
I tried Worth the Candle from all the recommendations here but couldn't finish it. The highs it hit were amazing, but it frequently went so low that it became a miserable slog to read. It had amazing worldbuilding, an awesome magic system, and each arc by itself had more interesting ideas in it than entire books I've read. But the author seems to hate his own story, and hates you for reading it and getting enjoyment out of the conflicts and adventures. For every awesome arc there was an equally long time spent on navel gazing, group talk therapy, masturbatory meta commentary, and criticizing the elements of the genre that make it enjoyable to read in the first place. I don't know, I find it very distasteful to trade on genre elements as an author, gaining attention and money from them, then turn around and spend so much time criticizing the nature of things like power fantasies, harems, adventure stories — you name it, whatever part of this genre you like, the author seems to think you're a terrible person for liking it, and will spend page after page making that clear.
I quit during the time compression chamber arc, when Joon learned about
I apologize for the venom; I did not intend on it when I started writing this comment, but once I started writing I had to let it out. If the story were just bad, that would be fine, almost preferable. It's the fact that it can be so good when it wants to be that makes it more frustrating.
Everyone from the late 2000s owes Stephanie Meyer and Twilight an apology for how they treated them. It is a wholesome romance, too pure for this world, and IMO applying the gooner label to such a chaste story stretches that word to the breaking point.
I agree with you that the cow story is held up as an example to decry women's romance far more than it is actually read.
That said, romantasy is probably the hottest genre in publishing right now, and Sarah J. Maas, author of the Court of Thorns and Roses series, is the one of the biggest and best-selling modern authors. Walk into any Barnes & Nobles and the stuff is all over the place. Femgooning is extremely normalized and celebrated, backed by big publishing houses and deemed fit to be stocked on the shelves of mainstream retailers.
I'm fine with this, I don't begrudge women their preferences, but it is undeniable to me that a lot of them like enjoy this state of affairs and take it for granted, while sharply policing anything that appeals to men in the same way wherever it appears.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
1mo ago
Sounds like you enjoy shonens, mostly. It means "young man" but is often used more broadly to describe shows where fighting is the main appeal. You should look into One Punch Man, Jujutsu Kaisen (not conservative but it's similar to the ones you mentioned), Chainsaw Man, Attack on Titan (this one is pretty conservative, at least for the first three seasons). I'll also second Frieren and Demon Slayer.
Seconded. I’ll add that as a lover of European-style fantasy, the only game in town (outside of mediums with zero or near-zero production costs like webfic) is anime and JRPGs and their Korean/Chinese equivalents. What are your options for modern fantasy in the west these days? The Rings of Power or the Wheel of Time show (is this the worst time in history to see something you like get an adaptation announced?)? Dragon Age Veilguard? If you are fine with out of place diversity, progressive axe grinding, and the host of modern western neuroses on race, gender, and sexuality and the inherent storytelling compromises they demand, I guess you are not wanting for content.
We don’t have to live like this, though. One of my favorite newer shows is Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, which I’d recommend to anyone from the last thread who was skeptical or worried about fanservice. It is a heartfelt, understated story with lovable characters and beautiful animation. Spy x Family is another good entry anime, a lighthearted story about a young family set in Cold War-era not-Berlin. Jobless Reincarnation (this one is NOT wife/gf-safe and the main character does some things I won’t defend in the start of the story) is a thoughtful, inspiring story of self-actualization and second chances. Most people into anime already know this, but I saw overlap between people who often complain about modern western media and people calling anime degenerate in that last thread.
There exists a media ecosystem where you don’t have to be lectured about progressive ideals, masculinity and whiteness being problematic isn’t the story’s metaphysical assumption, and yes — as Botund said, sex appeal that exists for the eyes of straight men is allowed to exist. I used to have a hangup about that last category in a rather Scott Aaronson manner and saw it as immoral, but I’ve come around on it and now see the male gaze, in moderation, as a good thing. Women enjoy media meant to appeal to their tastes and don’t question it or wring their hands about it; you should too.
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.
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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo ago
Thank you! I hope yours goes great as well.
Lewyn
I am at the center of everything that happens to me
5mo 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
10mo 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
10mo 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
10mo 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
10mo 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.
I understand the desire because, at least for me, writing is work. Torturous work, even, when I’m trying to write creatively and draw out a specific idea properly.
However, putting aside the usual arguments about human creativity and soul and all that, I think there is genuine value in having to write things out. I find that ideas I take the time to write out become much more ‘real’ in the process; concepts that can bounce around loosely in your head suddenly need to be translated into something coherent. The process is almost always transformative, and I find myself making connections or grappling with an issue in a way I hadn’t before. With creative writing it’s very similar — there are so many times I’ve found what the scene was really about through the act of turning notes into prose.
I won’t say this is how it is for everyone, but I suspect there would be something significant lost by skipping the friction of writing it out, even in hypothetical scenario where an AI could hook up to your brain and port the contents of your thoughts into readable text.
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