#and i've given no indication that it is afaik

[op-sys-chaos]

There's ppl arguing in the comments section of a fic I wrote and I'm like...

Guys.

It's not that deep.

Spoilers ahead for one of my fics

They're arguing over whether or not a character, who is in a bad situation and can't leave it because assassins will try to kill him and his loved ones if he does, should be forcibly taken out of that situation anyway, regardless of his concerns for his loved ones safety and whether or not he feels the bad situation is dangerous.

...THEY'RE GOING TO DEAL WITH THE FUCKING ASSASSINS! OBVIOUSLY!

They're not "overriding his desire to stay away" by taking out the assassins because he only wants to stay away to protect them from the assassins!

They're not "overriding his right to choose if he stays in the bad situation" because once the assassins are gone he can actually pick for himself!

And guess what! He may not even have to pick between which situation to stay with! Because people on both sides of this situation love him and want him to be happy so they'll let him do what he thinks is best! Sure, they might be working to cook up options for him, but that's all they are! Options!

Geez, y'all, I get that this fic isn't 100% lighthearted but it is entirely built on the back of angst-driven shenaniganery. It's not meant to be that deep and it's not meant to cause arguments on the right thing to do when a character is in a bad situation and whether or not you leave them there and how either option could traumatize them!

And besides, there are more than two options! "Forcibly take him, ignoring his wishes to keep us away for everyone's safety" and "leave him alone and never speak to him again" are not the only two options here!

For fucks sake, if it's that deep I'll give you the fucking answers. The people who love him, on both sides, are going to 1) deal with the problem of the assassins and 2) work together to find ways to combine the two halves of his life, assuming he's okay with that, but they're gonna plan it out first so he has pre-prepared options and doesn't have to worry about that aspect unless he doesn't like the given options and wants to make his own. Then he gets to pick his favorite solution and be surrounded by people who love him no matter what he chooses, and guess what, he picks to maximize how many people that is!

So yeah! Not that deep!

Geez y'all.

I get it, this fandom loves talking about complex trauma. And I know this character is neglected. But this fic was not meant to dig that deep into his home life. It was about reconnecting with those he lost and bringing together those he loves on both sides of his life through identity shenanigans. No one's taking the extreme, traumatizing option to fix the problem. They're working together to fix it as a family because that's the theme of the fic. Chill.

[endiness]

Debunking misinformation about Netflix's The Witcher (Part 7)

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5] [Part 6]

"The writers were mad that Henry Cavill wouldn't do any shirtless scenes or sex scenes."

So. The origin of this is based off of an episode of the Deuxmoi podcast that alleges that Henry Cavill was ultimately fired for sexist behavior that caused production delays — which has obviously never been officially confirmed. However, just to entertain the idea for a second to debunk why exactly Henry Cavill not wanting to do any sex scenes and/or nudity might've been a problem as I've seen people bring this up against the show a lot…

Obviously actors shouldn't have to do any nudity or sex scenes if they don't want to.

She told us: ‘I had a body double for the sex scenes, and she was always there. Flora. But I didn’t, I only used her for the first sex scene because I realised very quickly in that first sex scene that actually, I didn’t feel comfortable anyone else portraying Yennefer, because it’s still acting isn’t it?’

And they don't have to. Anya herself, at least initially, used a body double for her first sex scene on the show.

"The first thing that happens is we sit with the actor, and we have a conversation [about the scene]. If the actor is not comfortable, that scene is rewritten. There is absolutely no way that we proceed forward unless everyone is comfortable. Of course, if at any time someone does feel uncomfortable, not even just the actors themselves, but anyone else on the set, we stop immediately and reassess."

That's Lauren's stance on the filming of nudity and sex scenes on the show.

Lastly, we have a rather curious addition to the crew. Lizzy Talbot has been tapped as the intimacy coordinator for the show. For those of you who don’t know, an intimacy coordinator is a rather recently invented position for film and TV and their duties involve ensuring the well-being and consent of actors performing in intimate scenes as well as making sure the intimate scenes are filmed according to a previously agreed choreography. What this informs us about the story is that yes, there will be intimate scenes in Season 2.

The show also hired an intimacy coordinator from season 2 onwards and they were also used for Blood Origin.

“Lizzy Talbot was our intimacy coordinator and she was just brilliant. She made it like a stunt, really,” O’Fuarain said of the intimate scenes.

So if this was a problem for production (which, again, we have no official confirmation of), it likely would've been because Henry Cavill was very controlling when it came to Geralt's physical depiction and didn't want to use any body doubles or stunt doubles and insisted that only he ever physically portray Geralt on screen:

"From the very beginning, he said he wanted to be involved in the actual stunts. He didn’t want to use movie magic or camera tricks to pretend it was him. Anytime Geralt is on the screen, even if it’s just his hand reaching for something or his hair flipping through the frame, it’s always him."

Which means that if he did shut down any nudity and sex scenes, he essentially would've been shutting down the idea of Geralt as a character (as opposed to Henry the actor) ever engaging in any of those scenes. (Which, if you know anything about the books, would've actually caused significant problems with the story later on.)

"The show made Henry Cavill go on a dehydration diet for shirtless scenes."

Henry Cavill talked about the dehydration diet on Graham Norton's show and at no point in time was there ever any indication of the role that production played in that decision. Now, is it likely production was involved in at least some way? Yeah, probably. But afaik there is still no indication either way of just how much it was their decision, his decision, both, or what.

However, I do have to note that given that Henry Cavill almost nearly blinded himself because he blew off the advice of his doctor who told him that he could not wear his Geralt contacts for an extended period of time without risking damage to his eyes:

"I was only allowed to keep them in for three hours at a time, well I supposed to only keep them in three hours at a time. […] My eye-technician was always pushing me to say like, “No, I don’t care. I don’t care what you need to shoot, take, take the bloody contacts out, because you will start to go blind after a while”. I was sure she was probably selling a slightly more dramatic version of the truth, because I do tend to be a bit stubborn like that. And I’ll say, no, it’s alright we can shoot couple more hours will be fine. And she said, we won’t be fine. You’ve got to take them out now. There’s lot of volcanic rock in the Canary Island, and when it picks up a lot and it’s all this stuff, which becomes very, very light and dusty. It got in behind the contacts, so my eyes ended up being scratched. I didn’t realise it was scratching so we went back to Budapest after our trip to Canary Islands. But it got to the point where I couldn’t really keep my eyes open, my eyes were watering, had to try and wash everything out. Very, very stingy, very painful, but I just thought it’s just because I’m tired and not getting much sleep and I just need to muscle through it. It got to the point where my technician found me hiding in the shadows of my eyes closed because it was was very bright. She said take them out. And I said, No, No, I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine. Just give me some things to dab my eyes before a scene will be good. She put her foot down and said, “No, I’m stopping shooting until you take them out”."

And how he'd wear his armor practically 24/7 in order to break it in because he wanted it to look realistically worn down (and nevermind it's literally canon in the books that Geralt buys himself new clothes anyway 🙃):

"He wanted, for instance, for the armour to look like it had been worn for years and years. So he made breakfast in it and he would sleep in it. We were like ‘you don’t have to do that by the way’, but he’s that invested in embodying his character."

And how he insisted that only he ever physically portray Geralt on screen, including for things minute as closeups of his hand or shots where Geralt's just a blip on screen because the shot is from so far away:

"So for the action, if I’m going to take on a physical role, which has a lot of athleticism to it or whatever it may be, I’m going to bring myself up to that level so I can perform that role to the fullest. It’s important to me that the audience knows this and they see the character at all times. They see all the work that I put into designing this character in every single move, look, glance, shrug, walk, step. For the long shots, they were saying, we’re gonna save time because we don’t need you in the shot because it’s just so far away and I said well, has the person who you’re going to have double me studied the way I move as Geralt? And they were like, he’s your double, and this is so far away, it doesn’t matter, and I say, it does matter because that informs the audience about this character. What we, as human beings do, is we study people’s movement without even knowing it. We’re watching how humans interact with the world, how they interact with other people. We then make a decision upon them, whether it be minor or major decisions, it doesn’t matter. So watching Geralt, even from a distance, was very, very important to me and so with the action, it’s even more important."

Like, js, but I don't exactly think it's out of the realm of possibility that he had more of a hand in that than anyone and anything else given how weirdly obsessive he was when it came to the physicality of the role. (There's also Freya and Anya referring to the dehydration as "his" diet in this video, btw.)

[thespianinthebackcorner]

Dreams of an Absolution Analysis!!!

ok, it's taken a bit to get around to doing this but I'm doing it now. I rarely do these so bear with me because analyses are not my Thang, so to speak. Analysis under the cut because I already know this is gonna be a long post LMAO. And for people who don't know me, I've played 0 sonic games where Silver makes a lore-relevant appearance (except for the first 5 minutes of Sonic and the Black Knight but he's not even in those 5 minutes). This is entirely what I can infer about him based on someone telling me his lore in a nutshell and reading into this song. <3 sorry if I say anything blatantly disproven by canon

So there's a pretty obvious implication that the vocals in the song are from Silver himself. That's the common consensus from what I've seen. With this in mind we can infer that the song itself is his own thoughts.

The first verse seems to be him commenting on how trivial most people's problems are in today's society. "All your troubles, are they all what they seem?" To me, that's him basically saying "you're getting worked up over nothing". And it makes sense- for Silver, who comes from a world in constant hell, getting worried over losing an item or something is really trivial. He's not quite realising that it's the safety of the modern world that allows people to be worried about stuff like that, because his own stress over the future clouds his vision a little. He doesn't realise most people don't care too much about stuff like that, because he's constantly either alone or in the company of people like Sonic and Blaze who are usually in a similar stressful situation. (He's very rarely seen in casual contexts, from what I know.) That statement is backed up by the next two lines. "Look around you, then you may realise all the preachers, all with their lies." If I were to reword it with the context I've just applied, it sounds a little like he's saying "stop worrying about trivial things and start worrying about the corrupt liars that are in power." Or something like that. He's directing the attention to what he considers a problem that affects the overall future of society. Which is a very Silver thing to do, worry about problems a little too big for a 14-year-old kid- psychokinesis powers or not- to actually help with.

The first bridge highlights a trope break that I really like about Silver- he knows the future, yes, but he's not a fortune-teller. He's working with the knowledge he has to make a hopefully positive change, but he doesn't actually know how what he does will affect the future. And he doesn't know that much about the past he's in, or even anything at all- after all, he afaik had no way of getting history education. It's like knowing something happened in the middle ages that caused all our problems here, but knowing jack all about the middle ages. The people in the present have a more informed idea of how what they do could change the past, because they know more about what's going on. Hence, "I might know of the future, but you still control the past." Only the people living in the present know if they'll be able to stick together through the hardships ("if you'll be together") and if what they really have a chance ("if we shall last").

The second verse annoys me a little (i know you're allowed to not be grammatically correct in music but still) but I'll do my best regardless. It does stump me a little, I will admit. To me, he seems to be asking if the people from the present also have regrets, and if given the chance, would they go back and fix a mistake. The exact wording he uses is faux pas, which is used to describe some incredibly embarrassing social mistake- the type to keep you up at night cringing, y'know? Which is interesting, because the first verse indicates that Silver doesn't particularly care for worrying about trivial stuff like that. In fact a good chunk of his character is often taken as disrespectful because he doesn't worry about making these kinds of mistakes as much as he should. (Considering he knows he's in the right and doesn't expect people not to believe him.) Perhaps he does worry about it and wishes he could fix mistakes of his own. Or it could be read as a curiosity towards people in the past who do worry about things like that.

After that we have another bridge that just about carries the same meaning as the first, although it does mark the beginning of the song focusing a little more on the "now" and less on the future or the past.

The chorus is the piece that I think conveys the true tragedy of Silver's character, and that tragedy is why he's my favourite. To understand the chorus we have to understand what an Absolution is. An absolution is by definition a release from someone's guilt, obligation or even punishment. In a Christian context, it tends to refer to release from sins. (Thankfully we don't have to worry about Christianity here.) If we reword the song with that in mind, we realise that what Silver dreams of is release. Over and over again he is tasked with fixing the future- iirc there's an implication somewhere that he's been reborn several times to fix it in different ways but I'm not sure about that- but every time he resets the timeline he dies, because he's not needed in a world where the future is peaceful. Thus, he never gets to live in the future he fights for. What he dreams of is the chance to not have to go back in time and fix it, to just be able to be born in a peaceful world and live his life without that pressure. He wants freedom from his metaphorical chains, from the duty that ties him down. But every time it stays the same- his dream stays a dream, and no matter how many times he saves people's lives from a broken timeline, in the end the cycle just starts back up again and he never really gets to see the fruits of his labour.

After the first chorus is where things start to get depressing. I'd almost call this song vent art in a way, considering how it almost shamelessly exposes the tragedy of Silver's character and how he feels about his constant fighting. The third verse expresses this, asking if "you" (which I am assuming is the people he knows- team sonic and all that) dream of who they could be at night, before saying that "happiness lies trapped in misery". For Silver, who as previously stated is in a constant sisyphian struggle of fixing the future and then dying without knowing if he did it right, it makes sense that he sees happiness as being surrounded by misery- he gets very few chances to be properly happy and is often depicted as a bit of a problem-finding machine with zero chill settings. He says he's an optimist, but there's some clear pessimism here, which makes me think he does get more than a little hopeless sometimes. He definitely doesn't have the most stable mental state, I'll say that.

I wouldn't normally say much about the bridge but I do want to point out how he says "and who knows what of our future, we can all try to change the past" here. The focus is now on whoever he's speaking to. He's seemingly taking himself out of the equation by referring to the fact that no one really knows how what they'll do will change things. That pessimism comes back here, to me, in these lines, as if he's saying "we can try to change the past but it could all be for nothing".

The rest of the song is repeats of the chorus and smaller lines that I can't really infer anything substantial from other than what they're directly saying. So I guess that's it. I can't even tldr this so if anyone was hoping for that... Sorry, I'm not great at summarising. Not great at analysis either and this probably doesn't even count as analysis by definition anyway. But still. Just with a basic nutshell understanding of his lore, I've managed to infer a lot from this song, so I'm curious to see what someone more experienced with Silver thinks!!! I will admit though he's been around for literally longer than I have (he debuted in 2006, maybe 5, right?) so this song has probably been analysed to death before, but I still wanted to share my thoughts. 💛Thanks for getting this far byeeeee

[hadleysmis]

I don't know anything about Japanese naming traditions, so I feel lucky that there was a comment by @bazemayonnaise who also discussed the names. (Since it's long, I've decided to copy and paste it instead of screenshotting it):

"

I'm no expert but I'm reasonably confident that these are the surface level name meanings - I would have to compare these to a Japanese dictionary of the period, etc, but am currently doing this on my phone in a train :3

Valjean- Jaan Gijūrō (邪安義十)

The combination of 邪安 as "Jyaan" isn't typical afaik, but as "安" can be "peace/safety" (especially in the antonym "fuan" or "unease"), I would read Jyaan as "Wicked peace" or maybe liberally as "wicked unease".

義十 (Gijūrō) is literally "morality/righteousness-tenth son", indicating that he was the moral tenth son of the Jyaan family.

Javert- Jashiro (蛇四郎)

"shiro" is fourth son and as op said 蛇 is serpant, so he's the serpant-like fourth son of an unnamed family.

Bishop Myriel-nun Mitsuki (光月尼)

光月 Mitsuki is "light of the moon", 尼is "ama" (nun).

Marius-Ushigoro (牛五郎)

As op said, Ushi is cow, and goro means "fifth son". Kind of understand Valjean suddenly having 9 siblings but Javert and Marius? wild.

Someone can prove me wrong but I wouldn't have said "ushi" was a particularly prestigious name to be given, and idk, it doesn't really hint at the same kind of "only grandson" vibes that Marius might otherwise have?

Cosette-Harue (春江)

Haru 春 springtime/prime of youth (or a youthful heterosexual romance) and e 江 inlet/bay or river, I think using the "e" ending to mimic the "e" in cosEtte.

Fantine- Otsune (お常)

The 「お」is the rather old-fashioned prefix of respect, and 常 can mean eternal but also with the reading "tsune" also as "normal/the usual state of things".

"

Yayy thank you so much for this additional info!

Japanese character names

Not much info out there on Les Misérables 1929( Aa Mujo, Seika Shiba ), but I managed to scour some fun info about it. Specifically, character names! The movie takes place during the Meiji restoration, so stuff had to be changed I guess. Citation about name meanings are from Pinar, A. Western Literature in Japanese film (1910-1938) ISBN 978-84-490-8727-1

Valjean- Jaan Gijūrō (邪安義十) The first kanji for his name means “wicked” or “evil”.

Javert- Jashiro(蛇四郎) The first kanji is for “snake”. Snakes were traditionally percieved in Japanese Buddhism as messengers of gods, but during the Meiji Restoration, the religious reform banned beliefs and worship of ancestral gods. Subsequently, negative perceptions of snake arose, and they acquired harmful symbolism.

Bishop Myriel-nun Mitsuki (光月尼). Myriel has here been adapted into a Buddhist nun. Her first kanji means light, or illumination.

Marius-Ushigoro(牛五郎) His first kanji means “bull”, suggesting a nonconformist personality, vigor and force.

Cosette-Harue(春江) Her first kanji represents spring or puberty.

Fantine-Otsune(お常) The kanji in her name means unchanging or eternal.

I only have the most basic of kanji skills and this is all cited, so if there’s anything to add or something that seems wrong hmu :) the film itself is not housed in any archive and is believed lost. At the time it was considered by ciritcs to be populist and made as a cash-grab because of the popularity of Les Miserables in Japan at the time. Here’s some surviving stills from it.

[thatstormygeek]

US politics in a header

The revised bill the Senate could begin debating soon would provide more than $60 billion in assistance for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $9 billion for humanitarian aid in Ukraine, Gaza, the West Bank, East Africa, South Asia and elsewhere, and $4.8 billion for “regional partners” in the Indo-Pacific region that would include Taiwan. An additional $2.4 billion would go to U.S. Central Command “to replace combat expenditures for weapons in the Red Sea,” according to a summary of the bill. 

Let's break those numbers down a bit with the aid of reuters

UKRAINE AID The bill includes $60.06 billion in additional aid to Ukraine. Much of that would come in the form of weapons and military equipment purchased from by U.S. defense companies and to restore U.S. stockpiles after two years of transfers for Ukraine's battle against Russian invaders.

So, ultimately a giant gift to US weapons manufacturers and defense companies. As expected.

ISRAEL AID The Senate plan directs $14.1 billion to Israel to support its war against Hamas. It also strips U.S. funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Israel has accused 12 of UNRWA's Palestinian employees of being involved in Hamas' Oct. 7 attack.

No details about where that $14.1 billion is going, huh. From other things I've read, it seems the same kind of deal as the Ukraine Aid - we "give" them money for them to buy weapons from us.

The second half is fucked. By that logic, the US gov't should be super excited to cut off funding to police departments nationwide since there's way more than 12 excessively awful cops out there. And that's assuming we take the info at face value. Which, given the history, seems kinda credulous.

WHAT HAS ISRAEL SAID ABOUT UNRWA OVER THE YEARS? Israeli authorities have long called for the agency to be dismantled, arguing that its mission is obsolete and it fosters anti-Israeli sentiment among its staff, in its schools and in its wider social mission. UNRWA strongly disputes this characterisation.

That same piece lists the number of Palestinian employees as 30,000. So the US is cutting off funding because 0.04% (or 0.09% if you're looking at only the 13k in Gaza, or at worst 1.5% if you include the 190 other alleged combatants) of the employees allegedly participated in a terrorist attack. Which is not to downplay the horror of the attack or that those who participated absolutely should never be in the employ of a humanitarian organization. But as there has been no indication (afaik) that UNRWA supported the attack or knew it employed attackers, and they fired people when information came to light, I don't see how cutting off funding to an aid organization actually helps them better screen their people.

Then again, we all know that's not what this is about.

HUMANITARIAN AID The bill would provide $9.15 billion in humanitarian assistance to provide food, water, shelter, medical care and other services to civilians in Gaza and the West Bank, Ukraine and other populations in conflict zones around the globe.

Back to this article, speaking of percentages, 9.6% of the money in this bill is earmarked for aid. That's it. We can dump over $75 billion directly into war (if you include the $2 billion for the US to continue to escalate in the Red Sea), some of which is going to attack the same places we are sending aid.

And absolutely none of this is remotely surprising because this is what the US does. This is how we operate. Both internationally and domestically.

[varyathevillain]

Could you stop being ableist with the transcripts? Are they perfect? No but it's a fucking improv ap ttrpg. For people like me with huge hearing and audio processing issues they've been a livesaver. Wonderful that you don't need them but complaining about them just makes you sound ableist. Not a good look.

Right. Let me start this by saying that, originally, because of the way you've worded your ask, with how you're sending me this anonymously, and also because I never (afaik) put any of my criticisms in the official tags… made me think that you are simply a shit stirrer. But then I thought that maybe you're serious, that you don't quite understand my issues with the transcripts, specifically the RQG ones, and decided that I would answer your message in full.

First of all, I will preface that there will be no speculations on my part about how RQ handled the transcripts or their practices. This isn't the point. The second thing is that my complaints are directed specifically at Rusty Quill Gaming transcripts, not The Magnus Archives ones or for Stellar Firma, and will be discussing issues not only I, but many other fans have brought up on various discord servers and social media.

This is a full critique of Rusty Quill Gaming transcripts, including my personal experience with the fandom and wait for transcription, as well as much better worded arguments from @franzis-frantic-thoughts and @nossorgs, who I thank for helping me voice my issues as well as I hope I did.

The thing is, I am the person struggling with them, the person who needs the aforementioned transcripts, who now, starting December of last year, has a mental health diagnosis which includes an audio processing disorder as one of the problems I'm dealing with. I don't have to put it in a carrd or my bio for it to matter, and for my criticisms of the transcripts to be valid. But I've spoken to people about my problems, and about how the original fan transcripts, which were colour-coded and differentiated between players and characters in distinct ways, have made me able to enjoy the podcast in the first place, and helped me grow more familiar with the player voices. I still had to ask people on several occasions while liveblogging what was said in instances where I couldn't quite understand because of heavy crosstalk, English words I couldn't quite parse (as English isn't my first language), and soundscaping/vocal distortions interfering with my enjoyment of the podcast. JSYK, part of the reason episodes 211 onward had partial transcripts included was because fellow Patreon members with issues similar to mine (and me, as a Patreon member at that point) spoke up early on about being sometimes unable to understand what was said through the applied distortion.

The second thing is that I, myself, have worked as a freelance transcriber in the past, even if in Russian language, and frankly, if I gave my work away in a similar state as the transcripts for RQG were given, I wouldn't have been paid. Also, personally, I would've hated delivering a transcript similar in quality to the ones published in the sharepoint as an example of my work. Let me elaborate: there was, judging by the transcripts we were presented at launch of the website, a grievous lack of quality control, and a large number of errors made it to the released transcripts.

Rusty Quill Gaming is a hard podcast to transcribe, I'll give you that. As an Actual Play Podcast, one speaker having multiple voices, crosstalk, and "unusual" turns of phrase (i.e. Pathfinder mechanics and terminology) being used would pose great difficulties for anyone working on transcribing the content. However, the concerns are unrelated to the content of RQG, but basic issues that any professional in the field should have been able to avoid.

There were, as I'm listing, issues with transcripts such as:

many spelling and grammar errors, which indicate a lack of language skill (examples including rouge magician (where it should be rogue), Patreon being mislabeled as Patrion, double spacing being used between various words, and, to be honest, I'd be here for two posts more just listing every single mistake made);

misspelling of player and character names and misattribution of lines, with the most egregious example being the RQG187 transcript, which has Alex replaced by Adam, Bryn by Ben (despite later in the same screenshot being referred to as Bryn), various [unclear] notes, and Sumutnyerl turning into "Summit and Neil"; or the aforementioned example of “Patrion'' and double spacing including terrible… not just misspelling, but outright replacement of the names of Into the Wild characters (RQG175);

lack of consistent speaker tagging: in most transcripts, the players are not distinguished from the characters they are playing, and the formatting is inconsistent in the episodes that do note in-character speech. This makes the transcripts virtually unusable because they do not help with one of the most important factors in following the plot: Who is speaking;

lack of organisation: the very first episode (RQG1) is mislabelled as episode 25 in the transcript; the latter episode, in turn, only seems to be available in a word format, not as a pdf (this also seems to apply to other episodes, such as 203). the transcripts themselves are not labelled in a consistent pattern, meaning that they are not sorted consecutively by episode number in the RQ Sharepoint, making browsing in order of episode appearance in the feed difficult;

listing of content warnings is inconsistent, if present at all, with one remark noting that content warnings were unavailable because they were not listed in the (fan-made) wiki (transcript for RQG217)

Ergo, all of these transcripts are, unfortunately, barely scraping by in the quality department. Yes, they are here, but not up to par. Not just with the industry, but with their own transcripts for other shows. As someone who originally subscribed to Rusty Quill Patreon for RQG content and in hopes of helping RQ reach the official Patreon goal of financing transcripts, I feel like the company itself has not fulfilled its promise towards me as a paying customer and a fan, and feel valid in venting my frustration.

"Better than nothing" only applies to a certain extent here. Clear labelling of actors VS characters is needed in order to follow the podcast, the text should not be littered with mistakes, making them difficult to parse, and Pathfinder/RQG-specific terms need to be adapted to the style of the podcast, so that listeners with no prior knowledge can find their meanings through official Rusty Quill media, or via internet searches, afterwards. Even if these transcripts were intended as first drafts, to be revised and polished at a later stage, they shouldn’t have been published in this state.

It's the opposite of ableist to have standards, and to mention when things aren't good enough. That's the whole reason anything gets done with regard to accessibility. If you suggest that people should simply accept the substandard accommodations they're given and be grateful? That, for me, reads as ableism. If this were a too-steep ramp, or a parking spot labelled as “disabled parking” without actually being wide enough to accommodate getting in and out of a car as a wheelchair user, should the affected people still be grateful for what is, essentially, no help whatsoever?

I completely understand that transcription is expensive and time-consuming. If Rusty Quill were more open about issues with transcribing RQG from the beginning, people would have been more understanding. As it stands, the transcripts being of this quality not only makes them unusable to me, but actively harms Rusty Quill’s reputation as an accessible and inclusive company.

So, please, after all I've written, if you are serious about your ask, do tell me what do you find ableist about my previous venting re: RQG transcripts. I am actually quite interested in reading your response!

[goddessofblood]

@valkiliar So looking into these claims… First I checked your examples (and a few others) of similar designs. One Eevee-like Pal was just a fluffy dog, the other was pretty eevee like I'll admit, though eevee is just like, a dog lol. And the Lucario-like pal is Anubis. Like even named Anubis. I don't see them as particularly compelling examples of plaigarism since theres pretty good non-pokemon reasons most of these look like their uh, lookalines. I think the only really compelling ones is the blue eevee with a vest and the Meganium lookalike, and having 2-5 fairly similar mons out of 100 is not unreasonable I think. I would personally have preferred more interesting & unique designs, but I wouldn't say the palworld designs are 'immoral' or plagiaristic. I then looked into their older games. The game from 3 years ago is called Craftopia… and uh, its just worse Palworld. So yeah thats extremely shitty development practice. Almost as bad as the Don't Starve Together debacle, I'd say. Whether or not they'll continue updating the old game is unclear though- it got two updates last year, one in January and one in December. I wouldn't be surprised if it has been genuinely abandoned, and fans seem to believe it has been, but a studio big enough to create palworld probably has more than one team- and thus palworld and craftopia could be worked on by separate teams concurrently. Not completely damning, and frankly I do understand the decision to create a new game in a different engine, but if craftopia doesn't get any updates this year then i'd say its indicative of a scam (or at least scammer behavior).

As far as AI generation goes, I've not seen anything that actually suggests this game uses any kind of generative AI. I wouldn't be surprised per say, but it also isn't obvious to me that such things were used. The dev has worked with AI before, but afaik has not indicated its been used in this project. Now the game that has AI is just, a copy of a jackbox game but with generative AI instead of doing it yourself which is. you know, interesting to say the least. Theres a pattern of behavior emerging lol. But that isn't something I'd consider proof AI was used for Palworld.

Finally, regarding NFTs, I found one not-trustworthy source saying Palworld already has NFT integration? But since nobody else is saying that I kind doubt this is the case. However I did see that the CEO is a tech weirdo, including have built an entire crypto exchange. So previous scam experience for sure and a definite possibility that NFTs are integrated in the future. Just no concrete evidence that I've seen.

In all I'd say there is compelling evidence that the company (or at least CEO) behind Palworld is fairly likely to be scummy & I wouldn't recommend people support them (for their own sake, given the NFT stuff and possibility this game might be abandoned). That said, there isn't really anything super concrete there, so its largely speculation as to how & why they might be scummy. I can't say I'd blame anyone for playing it, but I do think its a bad idea nonetheless.

Not the least of which is because Cassette Beasts is right there! Its good! Better than Pokemon! Go Play It!

personally I am very turned off by the concept of a mon' catcher where you shoot & kill the monsters. That said, I also don't personally see the validity of the "plagiarism" accusations. From what I've seen, most of the monster designs are fairly unique & the actual gameplay is obviously substantially different. Theres a couple designs I'd say are obvious homages (the luxray like in particular) but for the most part similarities tend to be like, oh thats a sheep. Yeah thats what sheep look like. Not really plagiarizing from pokemon as much as... god?

[sirenalpha]

as someone who was a tomboy, this response was really rude, you didn't even tell the anon how to write a gender non conforming girl which is all that tomboy means, not that a girl is less of a girl for her interests and it's not a rude or negative term, afaik most former tomboys are fine or like the label

you're denying the reality that many girls lived through where they resisted feminine socialization and were punished for it, it is in fact a specific and shared experience gender non conforming girls have in common, what's wrong with using a well known term to describe that? You clearly knew what the anon meant by a tomboy character

"write a female character who enjoys doing whatever she enjoys doing" is actually terrible advice for writing a gender non conforming girl because that's ignoring WHAT she's interested and what she FACES for being interested in them

in case anon wants actual advice and not to be scolded here are some big points to keep in mind going from little kids up to high school because I don't know when you're setting this or the time you cover

-girls unlike boys are often treated as decoration and warned away from being active often through their clothing and hair so when gnc girls often get scolded for dirtying their clothes rather than being given practical clothing like shorts and pants that boys get, when they get the ability to dress themselves they'll pick practical comfortable clothing for what they're doing

-girls are almost universally told that they're not as good as boys in whatever they're interested in whether it's nerdy like the sciences and math and comic books or athletic like sports or other outdoor activities so gnc girls typically work harder to prove that their interests are legitimate and that they're good enough

-gnc girls often have brothers and take up interests similar to them so if one is into a particular sport they may be as well either that sport or a similar one

-gnc girls in my experience can fall into the not like other girls type of thinking and some may have almost entirely male friend groups especially if they're into sports for example and due to title IX in some cases if there's not enough girls to make a team a girl has to be accepted onto a boys team (this is more likely a high school issue) but some may still have a group of girl friends

-gnc girls may have a temper because as I've pointed out they get scolded a lot for not behaving like a girl and their interests dismissed and then when they get angry about it that anger also is dismissed

-pressure increases to conform and become feminine as girls age, most people and parents allow gender non conformity and 'misbehaving' up to a certain age and then you're expected to mature into being feminine that's where the phrase "they'll grow out of it" usually gets used and that pressure is definitely increasing under social media and modern make up culture, that's why you hear stories about tomboys growing up to be 'normal feminine women' they just succumb to pressure but not every girl grows up to become gender conforming and feminine

-another problem with this scolding is that childhood gender non conformity is an indicator of homosexuality for both girls and boys, some tomboys grow up to be gender non conforming lesbians (some call themselves butches among other labels), it is a reality that gender non conforming children can face homophobia, I'm not saying that anon needs to make their character gay or they have to tackle homophobia but it is something to be aware of if you're writing a gender non conforming character

anon, I hope you're not turned off from writing a tomboy character just because of this totally unnecessary and unhelpful scolding you got

I think there should be more tomboy characters written, especially ones that don't grow up to become feminine or get a make over to be feminine and pretty!

Any advice on writing a tomboy

We Need to Get Away from the Idea of "Tomboys"

When I was a kid, and still today to a large degree, if a girl showed interest in doing traditionally "boy things," she was labeled as a "tomboy." And that is super problematic.

The label is usually meant in a well-meaning way, but the idea that some activities are better suited to males or females boxes people in. Especially younger people. It makes girls feel like they can't enjoy climbing trees or playing in the dirt without being less of a girl. It makes boys feel like they can't enjoy cooking or playing with dolls without feeling like less of a boy. It makes nonbinary children feel like they can't enjoy something without taking on its stereotypical gender, or just furthers the idea that activities are either for boys or for girls exclusively. It's just a whole big mess, honestly.

So, for that reason, don't write a "tomboy" and don't categorize activities as being masculine or feminine. Write a female character who enjoys doing whatever it is she enjoys doing. Focus on who she is and what it is about her that makes her enjoy or not enjoy those things. ♥

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