domain:aporiamagazine.com
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
7m ago
Have you heard of The Matchless Kungfu? It's practically beat for beat what you're looking for, even if it's closer to Wuxia than Xianxia:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=o-4snPeCyWw
Another game of potential interest, Amazing Cultivation Simulator:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=wJxM3POU92w
Warning- Sseth's videos are both incredibly funny and incredibly NSFW.
ThisIsSin
Liberty has an anti-privilege bias
9m ago
Why haven't we seen other major media cater to girls-but-also-boys in this way, instead of the torrent of flawless mean-spirited girlbosses that we did get?
Because someone mentioned it above: the flawless mean-spirited girlboss is a religious thing, and most show writers are, if not necessarily that religious, encouraged in that direction by the suits. Problem is, of course, that because their religion is a religion of hatred, people need to have some other motivation to watch it.
The best example of a show post-MLP to not be outwardly religious in this way is Gravity Falls.
SkoomaDentist
11m ago
I firmly believe there is a good number of strong female characters that western/American male audiences have been fans of. Even in the action-centric genres, Ahsoka from the the Star Wars Clone Wars tv show, Katara from Avatar, and Vi from Arcane, Gwen Stacey from the newer Spiderman are all examples of very well received female characters.
How can you write such list and omit The two strong women in western action movie canon: Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor? Zero girl bossing, 100% believable authority, Significant Relationship Stuff, all while exhibiting classic female traits. I’ve never heard a single guy say anything bad about either character. It’s just a shame that both movie franchises ended after only two movies.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
15m ago
Started playing Project Highrise. I was a big fan of SimTower as a kid, and this is the best spiritual successor I've played yet. The mechanics are more interesting and complicated than SimTower which is nice as an adult. It's very sandboxy, by which I mean the difficulty levels are not scaled -- in easy mode, it feel like you just get infinite free money (even with "infinite money" turned off), where normal and hard actually require you to carefully build a flywheel before you can start building financial momentum. The different types of tower you can focus on (residential, commerical, hotel, office, mixed use) makes things strategic and rewards multiple playthroughs.
Overall, good value for money if you like sim games.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
26m ago
The amount of content in Genshin Impact is absolutely staggering. I know everyone thinks of it as just a gacha but it's gigantic compared to full-price open world rpgs too.
It's got a huge map with lots of verticality and ambient content, puzzles and regional features. It actually looks pretty, unlike Skyrim. A tonne of characters with their own unique abilities. Mechanical complexity beyond just stacking on more attack.
And the story just goes on and on and on. There's a fair bit of BS they put in like 'you NEED to sit through endless tedium with Zhongli gathering ingredients for this ritual before you can go to not-Japan', clearly they want to do artsy character-development and worldbuilding stuff rather than just gacha moneygrabbing. That's just the main story, which is well over 100 hours at this point.
Then there are heaps of character side missions which are also long and voiced. And then dozens and dozens more area missions which are unvoiced but are still long with plenty of cinematics. Or just exploring the huge map, that would take ages.
There are more limited-time events than you can shake a stick at. Player housing. A card game. Really the only things missing are deep endgame like Path of Exile's mapping system and proper modding.
There is however a grindy element to it, you have to kill a bunch of bosses over and over again and pick huge numbers of flowers to level your characters and advance through the story. Surprisingly it seems you can't even skip this by paying, which seems odd to me given it is gacha. You're supposed to pay to get the character you want, not to skip the grind. I refuse to pay either way.
But WTF were Starfield devs doing with their 400 million if the Chinese can make something so huge for 800 million, get whales to pay for it all and have it actually be good too? Does Call of Duty Black Ops really cost nearly that much to make?
Apparently Genshin Impact is second only to Monopoly Go in cost, the latter is pure marketing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop
In 2025, the game surpassed $1 billion in marketing spending since its launch.[12] The game generated $5 billion by April 2025.[3]
What a sad state gaming is in, Monopoly Go makes considerably more money. There's always sloppier slop.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
27m ago
· Edited 16m ago
A day of minor discoveries:
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There do, in fact, exist trains that get one from Scotland to Manchester in a reasonable amount of time. I thought they were a myth. I also discover that the demographic most likely to strike up conversations with me are middle aged to elderly women, is it my honest appearance? I do enjoy talking with them, but I wish younger women would try. Maybe they have daughters, next time I will strive to ask.
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I should go find a job in hostage negotiation. Why? When I first settled in the UK, I was quite dismayed to find out that my extended family here don't really get alone. Which is an understatement, certain branches have refused to speak to each other for almost as long as I've been alive. I'm beginning to think my parents sheltered me from such news in my youth. Seeing this, I kinda took it upon myself to mend bridges. The current agenda is to get a cousin to talk to two great uncles, one great-aunt, and another uncle. He's a good guy, and while it's his dad that caused things to devolve into a Cold War, I've ascertained or elicited the fact that nobody else seems to hold it against him. Most haven't seen him since he was the height of my knee, and apparently I'm the first one to share any pictures at all. Primary tactic is to point out to my cousin that I get along with him, and that our uncle gets along with me, which, assuming transivity, implies they'll get along with each other. They definitely share a fondness of the most ridiculously loud suits I've ever seen, though one raids Vinted and the other Temu. If I had a wife, I'd leave this to her. Alas, wishing I wasn't single doesn't change things, and apparently my own grandma was great about keeping a boisterous family from going for the throat, and so is my mom. Maybe the inherited gene is X-linked.
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I ended up here, visiting one great-uncle at the behest of another. Unfortunately, it seems the latter was rather vague about what he planned to do with me. I find myself with no clear plans for the weekend, but making quite pleasant conversation despite the age gap, though I discovered that they also have the world's loudest burglar alarm when I tried to tiptoe downstairs to retrieve my headphones.
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I was arguing with @Fruck about the correct way to initiate absolute novices into the productive use of LLMs. I used the example of my own dearly departed grandma, but here, I hope her very much alive sister-in-law and her husband will suffice. Telling her to anthromorphize ChatGPT as "almost a human" and telling her that "it's very smart" seemed to capture intended behavior and convey the desired lesson. "Where does he live?" She asks in suspicion. "Probably in a computer a few blocks away", I say, eliding details unimportant to an 85yo lady. I taught it to speak to her in her native language by default, I taught her to use it to find the weather forecast, her husband to do... something. They were immensely shocked by the sheer competence of the voice mode, especially after I used it to debug a printer old enough to vote. I would have, given the time, figured out that the print queue had about 500 pages of junk in it, or that the despite my great-uncle replacing the printer cartridges, the blinking red light did actually mean they weren't seated correctly. But I value my sanity, and fixing printers isn't the best way to keep it. It also probably saved them a decent amount of money on the technician they were trying to call (the bloke was enjoying a bank holiday), and I didn't even charge them more than a very delicious Indian dinner.
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No, a model of iPhone 12 years old will not run ChatGPT. No, not even in Safari. I saw error codes no man was meant to see. He says he will buy a new one, or at least a model launched this decade. His wife quickly points out that he is lying.
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A 4yo Android will. Even if it runs Android Go, and takes a good 10 minutes to reboot. Even if the keyboard encourages thoughtful typing by running at 5 Hz. The far older iPhone is still far zippier, and I hope Google takes note.
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My great-uncle was a GP. His stories are wild. The early NHS is nigh unimaginable. Many stories of incredible amenities, like midnight snacks for doctors, or almost as believable, free housing. He was paid £60 starting out, he told me. "Per hour?" I asked. "No, each month". I heard tales of medical malpractice that boggles the imagination. A GP they knew tried to prescribe adult doses of paracetamol and some antibiotic to a 3yo child. It was caught by a pharmacist before someone died, but the lady kept working for a good few years longer before a bloke from higher up showed up and politely told her to resign within 24 hours.
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My own actual grandpa used to teach my great-uncle back in med school, charging a modest rate. The latter did not get a refund after marrying the former's sister.
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Do not grow old in a distant land. If you find yourself in such a position, it is very sensible to sell property you bought at around £20,000 for about 200 times that much (not inflation adjusted). Your friends will grow old too. Your family, if you have any, will move to the big city. Come home, to the Third World, and live in nigh unimaginable luxury.
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Should I buy a 20 year old BMW with less than 50k miles? Apparently the stories of cars lovingly maintained by grannies who only drive them to the shop are - sometimes - real.
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I need to marry someone who is a good cook. From their stories, social bonds with friends, colleagues and neighbors were sparked by the aroma of excellent Indian cooking, and cemented unshakably for decades once they got to actually taste the food.
cjet79
28m ago
I believe there is like some form of gamers depression, where a game that is too good can truly ruin a gamer. And its not too good in the sense of like "oh my god this is my dream game and the best thing ever".
But more that its like "oh wow this is the perfect feedback loop of addiction, skill up, and reward" and once you hit that game, or a few of them nothing ever scratches the itch quite right ever again. Kinda like a first hit of heroin it ruins everything else. My game was EVE online and Skyrim. The first burned me out on teamwork based online games, and the second burned me out on personal skill up type games. I've been chasing the dragon on both for a while. I think you got burned on Tarkov.
SkoomaDentist
29m ago
The terminator.
cjet79
37m ago
Dream game recently has been something I've thought about making.
A mix between the Wuxia genre and the Heroes of Might and Magic overworld mechanics. Instead of controlling a civilization and multiple heroes. Its just one hero, or not really a hero, but a cultivator. The cultivator you control is trying to advance in realms. An end goal of true immortality and full unkillability. Massive world to explore.
Thoughts on fun/cool features:
- World is only randomly generated once, and then hand populated with a bunch of cool features. World is large enough that a single playthrough would only let you see 1/100th of it. But online guides to cool spots, or the joy of finding your own cool spots could carry over in different playthroughs.
- Game is about cheating. I always love wuxia stories where they have cool "cheats". An absurd ability to make money, turn back time, or gain stats that no one else can. Difficulty mode at the start of a game is chosen entirely by how many "cheats" you want to turn on.
- Roguelite option. One of the cheats could be resurrecting with similar character stats in the same starting place (or stats that improve based on past lives).
- Areas or parts of the game are brutally and stupidly difficult. They are possible to avoid with knowledge about the world. Or possible to beat with some of the cheats. Or are endgame challenges.
- Reactive world. Over one very long life or multiple lives watch as the world evolves. Demon factions take over if not stopped. Cataclysmic beasts destroy wide swaths of land. Beast tides sweep through human cities. Humanity paves over and extracts the hell out of all available resources in their area.
I just have this feeling that the lore of such a game could be like Dwarf Fortress adventure mode. A kind of cool organic story telling. I've thought about making the game as a dwarf fortress mod rather than its own standalone thing.
Its one of those true dream game ideas where it just keeps growing way out of proportion and obviously its a pipe dream cuz I just keep stuffing so many features in it. I likely wouldn't even be able to enjoy it that much if I made it, because someone would have to know the secrets. But part of me wants to find a way to use AI in the creation of it, and have it modable enough that I could build the system of the game, and then just input an AI mod folder that makes everything new and fresh for me.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
39m ago
My dream video game is to get a Final Fantasy VII remake which is actually good. :(
Actually, this is why I'm hoping AI gets good enough to build complex software. I can never build something like that myself (I can program but I can't do music, 3D modeling, etc), but it would be neat if I can have AI build something like that for me someday.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
40m ago
The problem is that States are also extremely risk averse, and therefore terrible as shareholders in anything that requires flexibility and innovation.
Semiconductors are hard because you need levels of investment similar to large civil projects and that flexibility to be successful.
However USG is uniquely good at throwing money at zany things for long term strategic gains as States go, so maybe it will work out .
If in the future politicians start telling you we need to use the dividends of this ownership for social programs, that's your signal that Intel will become irrelevant.
KingOfTheBailey
45m ago
@self_made_human's recent posts about the pretty-but-dim model from this week's thread are a sad counterexample. You might get no shortage of men wanting to sleep with you, but it was the social technology of enforced monogamy that made them commit. Identifying who will stick is a prerequisite to choosing a suitor, and seems like a much harder question.
dr_analog
top 1% of underdog fetishists
50m ago
IMO these companies would benefit from having shareholders with very long-term focused horizons like governments.
It's not too unusual in Europe for strategic companies like Airbus and VW to have this.
KingOfTheBailey
50m ago
The show bible for My Little Pony is on archive.org, and it has some interesting things to say about how they positioned the world. It's also from 2009 so it predates the woke spillover:
What does it take to make someone fall in love with a brand? What makes a series of stories you heard in your childhood memorable for you entire life, so much so that you want to share them with your children once you become an adult? Think of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter. These brands settle into the hearts and memories of their audience and remain there. Why? These brands are worlds. The possibilities within these worlds are vast, yet there is a defined logic and structure to these alternate realities, making them highly believable. Moving more inwardly, these worlds have limitless lands where limitless types of beings and characters can live in them. You see, it is not just the world that the audience loves, but mostly the characters that live within them and the different, yet somehow similar trials they must face in their lives.
This approach has been utilized for countless intellectual properties, including Transformers and G.I. Joe, with much success, but has fallen short when attempted with girl properties. Perhaps this is because the softer gentler nature of girl properties felt limiting to those who would try. And all too often the worlds created for girl properties are left vague, ambiguous and generic. But I do not think this has to be so. A girl world can be set up the in the same manner, it is the intentions that must be different.
Rather than set the stage for epic, dramatic adventure stories like the examples above, a girl world should set the stage for friendship, heart and laughter as well as adventure--- adventure that is more fun and exciting than dramatic and epic, but adventure nonetheless. With only that alternate intention, the same strong history, mythology, back story and even the alternate logic and physics of an alternate world will serve the same purpose to endear you to the characters and make the stories memorable.
This sounds right to me, though the contrast between the corpospeak and the graphic design is certainly pretty jarring. I never watched it (not even when it was big), but there's a richness to the detail of the world and characters. Contrary to modern female character design, every character page has a "bad points" section as long as her "good points" section, and this is probably one of the reasons it had such a strong following in its heyday. Characters' bad points cause conflicts or avoidable problems, creating room for the ponies' good points to shine and resolve them.
The target audience was very carefully designed, and they knew they were targeting boys too (given the bronies of the 2010s, perhaps it worked a little too well). Some cut-down quotes from p65, if you want to read it in detail:
- Girls (6–11): My Little Pony offers 2 elements that are very important and popular to girls: relationships and fantasy. (Snipped much more from this point.)
- Preschool (3–6): The ponies are cute. Preschoolers own ponies. The stories and morals within are nice enough for parents. Little kids want to watch big kid stuff. They'll watch.
- Boys (believe it or not): They won't admit it, but they'll watch. When their sister’s watching it, they'll balk and act like it’s dumb, then they'll sit down and watch it. For the same reason Moms will find My Little Pony interesting enough to happily share with their daughters, the compelling conflicts, the strong characterizations, the silly humor and (most importantly for boys) the ADVENTURE, the boys will watch, too. Really
- Moms: We've got a few good points going for us when it comes to Moms. First, the original buyers of My Little Ponies are in their late twenties to mid-thirties and are likely to have daughters within the target age range, 3-11. Bringing back elements of the original ponies from the 80's ... will nurture a sense of nostalgia, something that is not difficult to do with Gen-Xers. Second, compelling storylines (ie: truly engaging conflicts, both external adventure and internal relationships,) characters with depth and complexity, clever and silly humor that doesn’t talk down to kids and even a few jokes that might go over the kids’ heads will all engage Mom enough that watching My Little Pony will become a fun thing for Mom to do with her daughter. Not only will Mom be sharing her favorite childhood toy with her little girl, but she may actually enjoy watching, too!
While MLP was a breakout exception, it's an existence proof that the suits used to know how to make girl shows that that boys could watch. But all we have now are the corpses of old franchises going to resyk to be turned into slop. Why haven't we seen other major media cater to girls-but-also-boys in this way, instead of the torrent of flawless mean-spirited girlbosses that we did get?
DiscourseMagnus
1hr ago
There are so many layers of doublethink about it, but like many other bits of feminist media criticism, "men writing women" complaints are fundamentally horror at the thought that a man might ever have sexual thoughts about a woman without permission (both her permission and the permission of You, The Female Observer). Any realism concerns are a fig leaf. All of this is trivially revealed, say, when women make a "men writing women" complaint and are then embarrassed to discover that the writer was a woman writing for women about her real nigh-universal woman experiences which they already knew they shared when making the complaint.
Closely related: women policing "unrealistically" attractive female characters as a crude disguise for envy that they're prettier than them.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1hr ago
It's kino. Best show in years. Never mind best starwars show.
Take it from an old expanded universe grognard.
Quantumfreakonomics
1hr ago
You’re overestimating the effect weight has on a woman’s desirability. The most unattractive aspects of the median secular modern woman are tattoos and piercings, which are things she had to actively do to herself.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1hr ago
No, there is a female version of the hero's journey. It is not quite the same, notably the struggle tends to be more internal, but it exists.
Women have recurring mythic structures based on their own experiences too.
The recent feminist attempts to associate a queer style rejection of all structure and in particular of the causality structure of storytelling is not a woman thing, it is a feminist thing. And it's not even really that popular in its own circles.
Labyrinth starring David Bowie.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman starring Jane Seymour.
Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth.
There are plenty of high quality stories exploring the feminine side of the human condition. They're just a bit hard to find because you have to dig past the propaganda lists of explicitly ideologically feminist works. Not that those are necessarily bad, but they do hog the spotlight to a pretty insane degree.
Templexious
1hr ago
Not sure, I don't browse space battles much, people were just talking about pokemom fics and most evil crops up as one of the must-reads.
These grants have strings attached, including but not limited to: national security requirements, clawback provisions, profit sharing clauses, etc.
Intel can't use this money to go build a bunch of factories in China, which would kind of defeat the point of the CHIPS act.
This is just restructuring the deal over that money that the US desperately wants to give companies like Intel, but only insofar as it unwinds it's dependence on Taiwan and China.
TitaniumButterfly
1hr ago
He called the local game commission who told him that it didn't exist and that shooting it would be against the law.
I've received similar admonitions from government on other matters.
Hieronymus
1hr ago
Aspects of Encanto are great, but central plot elements are treated in a very unsatisfying way.
The magic of the setting appears in several different guises: Roman Catholic folk miracles, brujería, Disney princess magic; but it doesn't behave consistently with any of them, doing instead whatever the writers thought was dramatically appropriate at the moment. The movie collapses the object and meta levels of its major symbol in an unprincipled way that feels like a cop out. And even once it's established that the symbolism of magic = family love is all that matters, the backstory revelations undermine it: Was it grandpa's death that brought about family love?
Great animation, good songs, exasperating writing.
Susan Cooper's 'The Dark Is Rising' is pure young-adult adventure fantasy and done very well.
CS Friedman's 'Crown of Shadows' series is a personal favorite, and a twisted mix of sci-fi and fantasy and also done very well.
Hell, even the penultimate male-fantasy young-adult book 'My Side of the Mountain' was written by a woman.
I always considered it a bit weird when people bitched about the lack of female writers in fiction, when I turn to my bookshelves for 1970/80s fantasy and flip through female after female writer. If anything, it's the men that are lacking, not the women.
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