On topic fandom griping though. Soulslikes fans get really weird about like there being shit that is really good. Like you don't have to use fucking sloth talismans and they're useless in higher difficulties anyway, Nioh players. Please calm down and stop telling the people who are using them to get through the game that they're shitty people that don't deserve video games. Not everyone playing Nioh is going to become a way of the demon by myself motherfucker. Some people are just going to beat it the one time using summons and sloth talismans and that's fine? They already nerfed the damn things. I love hard games a lot and think that the difficulty of things like Nioh is key to why I enjoy them but also like...It's fine if there's overpowered shit in the game. And it's fine if that stuff lets someone who might not otherwise beat the game beat it. There's definitely a pride to take in getting good at a game and you should be allowed to feel accomplished for learning shit or doing a tough thing but like...Toxic pride that involves shitting on other people who aren't as into that kind of enjoyment is ass.
It's double stupid because dumb cheese strats can also ease people into playing harder non-cheese styles, too. Even if you're straight-up playing on God Mode, you can get a sense for like, range and movement and timing and where you should be looking on the screen and the kinds of patterns the game is likely to pull on you, so if you decide you changed your mind and would like to get your ass kicked, actually, you've got some confidence and systems knowledge to help you get over the first slopes of the learning curve.
Finding dumb cheese strats is also like. An extra layer of fun even when you are good at the game. Because you start going "Oh, if I use this and this and this I can one shot the boss maybe?" These can also be very useful for farming and farming is a major part of Nioh's gameplay loop. Part of the fun of farming in games like this is finding the most efficient ways of doing it. Sloth? Sloth made farming efficient as fuck.
I've definitely found interacting with the speedrun portion of a soulslike game's fandom more pleasant than the regular side of the fandom :'|
man okay SO this is going back a ways but like back to fate nonbinary/trans characters, there are a SHOCKING amount of canon ones BUT i feel seriously uncomfortable with them being described as like? good, intentional rep? because several of them feel like an attempt to "degay" characters, and while I A Nonbinary Person know that an enby flirting with someone can be exactly as gay it doesn't seem like the fate writers considered that it's like how there's definitely bisexual female characters, but their bisexuality is used for fanservice or a joke, and all the bi male characters...don't get to have focus on that.
YEAH like. And all the ones where it's not like. Creepy jokes about how lascivious it is that you ~don't know~ are NB for magic reasons. And it's awesome and all when someone has transcended to a higher plane of existence and become too cool for gender but when the writing is so weird and creepy about every single instance where a person has The Genders just, like, the way a person does going about their life, it. Puts a damper on that. still want someone to write a Mordred character study where every chapter is a different interpretation of their gender and exploring their relationship to it because as far as I am aware canon has NEVER actually given Mordred's POV on their feelings, just used "gets mad if called a girl" as a Wacky Character Quirk.
no one in fate can just Exist As Trans. they have to be like. a supercomputer or a fusion of multiple spirits or made out of clay or a creepy horrible pile of jokes (looking at you, d'eon) and dear god. OKAY SO. mordred is my ABSOLUTE FAV whom i have at level 100 and i'm working on 10/10/10 skills. i am so tempted, now that you've said that, to write that fic. because My Personal Lean is transmasc enby but that's obviously affected by me being a transmasc enby.
Mordred is excellent and there's genuinely so much thematic depth to exploring that, given their history! What does it do to a person to know they're the child of a woman who magically compels everyone who looks at her to see her as a man, and then have to hide their face for literally their entire life because they don't have a sword imposing the concept of kingship to do that for them? But canon just Will Not because we gotta cater to the creepy straight dudes every second of every day and I guess hinting at gender nonconformity is transgressively sexy but acknowledging that people can have genuine feelings about their gender is too icky. And then the not-creepy-dude Western fandom just gets into huge fights with each other over different Mordred headcanons when really, we should all be banding together to rescue Mordred from the writers of canon.
in between the creepy dudes going "ooooo sexy tomboy, trans people are gross and shouldn't touch our franchise" and the discoursey side going "NO ONLY ONE HEADCANON IS CORRECT" i've given up on any good trans content coming from fate fandom if people aren't arguing about mordred they're arguing about astolfo and that one's equally exhausting
It's especially dumb because everyone into this godforsaken franchise already has to slow-roast canon for juicy bits as a matter of course because of a) the massive disparities in writing quality and characterization both within and across installments and b) the fact that half the damn series isn't available legally stateside and a significant subset don't have translations at all.
i cannot hit the agree button hard enough like????? digging for lore in this fandom is hard enough, and everything is wildly nonsensical and has been retconned at least 8 times. you can just go "gender is what you make of it" and Drop The Argument god but seriously tho i want us to get a Normal Human who's nonbinary it will Never Happen Ever, i know. but pls.
No, person on the internet, I do not think it is a good idea to look at North fucking Korea as a writing inspiration for a Fantasy Country in a story where a bunch of sympathetic characters are soldiers or agents of the government.
Baffling claims made by fans #102828: that Dave Strider was "obsessed with Jewish weddings". He made an extended metaphor about them once and appeared in a scene of newlyweds being waved around on chairs which included everyone. What?
Sometimes streamers/letsplayers do a grating voice for characters and it can be a huge turn off. Sometimes its on purpose but a lot of times it isn't. Personally just think its a rly bad choice and makes their gameplay unlistenable
I saw this fan game called friendsim 2 with the same logo and calling it a sequel to hiveswap friendsim like idk literally name it anything else and make a different logo
the tumblr fans of solar opposites feels like it kind of, doesn't get that it's an adult cartoon where the writers do edgy shit cause its funny and will never give the gays what they want? Idk, maybe it's cause i'm jaded when it comes to adult cartoon writing, like there's some sincerity in Solar Opposites that I enjoy (my friend says we're rly scrounging for the scraps with this one), and there's stuff which I don't rly enjoy but kind of tolerate So idk, there seems to be a disconnect with what the content is vs what is wanted? Like I get it, but yknow just make the fan content you wanna see in the world, cause this average edgy adult cartoon won't provide
...did they miss the bit where it's made by the same people who make Rick and Morty. Like, not to say that show doesn't have interesting things in it, but it is very much itself and you really can't expect it to stop being edgy and only taking glancing shots at sincerity once in a blue moon.
I've seen multiple people going on about how the hemospectrum is a horrible analogue for human racism, and it is, but what's making them think it was meant to be an analogue for human racism and not just a cool weird thing for an entirely alien species? Even as that, I agree there are parts which could be better handled, but the concept that someone could be trying to write aliens as alien seems to fly entirely over these people's heads.
Good heavens, it was a pun! Blue blood is a class thing, not a race thing! Then it became a pretty neat bit of worldbuilding. Not all oppression is racism or a racism analogue, so of course it’s not gonna be very good at something it wasn’t trying to do. In unrelated news, it looks like the diacritic marks have been removed from some but not all MDZS/Untamed tags. Example chosen at random showing how the diacritics just abruptly stop, and note how some of the names appear both ways in different places: Spoiler: probably a large image knowing phones I have mixed feelings. I mean besides my feelings about diacritic marks appearing mostly in ship tags of all possible places, which are already the most confusing things to read, what with everyone having so many names. My feelings about that are Why, but I suspect the answer is that it’s a change that’s still in progress. I feel bad for the people who really wanted Pinyin with diacritics because it’s how Mandarin ought to be written from their point of view as Mandarin speakers. As someone who doesn’t speak or read Mandarin and just wants to be able to read fic tags on English works, my brain is heavily relieved by being able to see the names without diacritics because it’s like, physically much easier to process? Maybe it’s related to that trick where all the letters in words are scrambled but the first and last letters, and as long as all the ones in the middle are present, they can be in any order and you can still read it? I think that despite my efforts, the diacritics interfere with my ability to process what letters are present in the names, which makes them actually really challenging to read in a way that can’t be fixed by just trying harder. And I have tried harder. I’ve been very slowly learning some Mandarin regularly for maybe two months now? Veeeeery slowly, but I’ve been practicing at least every other day if not daily. I did it because I wanted to be able to read, hear, and perhaps even pronounce these characters’ names. I’m making measurable progress with that. So it really, really isn’t for lack of trying, but I still just don’t process the letters nearly as well with the tone notation. The last mixed feeling component is that I don’t remember tones easily because I’m not used to them being a part of language. If I want to be reminded what the tones should be where in various names, I’ve gotten used to being able to scroll AO3 real fast until I find the name in the tags. Now it’s harder to do that. Guess I’ll have to find something else. Grumble grumble we fear change grumble grumble. Overall it’s a relief though. I don’t primarily want to use AO3 tags for pronunciation notes, especially when it makes using them as anything else, like tags, much harder.
