#because those are generally less fleshed out than pcs anyway

[rainia]

i don’t know why dnd podcasters seem to often have this anxiety over playing a character with a different gender to them. Like just play the character as you would any other. but you use a new set of pronouns. It’s like that simple. No you don’t need to put on an exaggerated feminine/masculine voice. no, you don’t need an in depth understanding of psychology. funnily enough, people with different genders to you are still, in fact, just people. go figure I guess

[brazenautomaton]

Fixing Afterlives: The Maw, First Visit

So our Shadowlands journey starts with the Maw. You know what? People hate this scenario now because you can’t skip it and have to go through it on every character, but the first time through, this is actually really good. You’re kicking in the gates of Hell with a platoon of Death Knights and then everything goes tits-up and you don’t have a beachhead and you’re lost and wandering and there are awful, awful things everywhere and you’re hiding and isolated and need to learn how to escape. You just need the option to skip it on your alts.

Plus the aesthetics of the Maw are great. They sell what it is -- the hostile architecture, sinister crystal formations, the way everything seems swept and shaped by a windstream of souls. We’ve seen plenty of environments that look like a Hell of flames. This is a Hell of pure suffering. Pain is what lives here. Pain is all that enters and pain is all that is produced. It’s only after you went farming Stygia for a while that the pain gets inflicted on you.

So we assemble the crew, get the exposition while we put together the Helm of Domination, get given a portal stone to establish a beachhead, and we bust in to find the four captives: Anduin, Jaina, Baine, Thrall. We rally the Death Knights into enough of a formation to make it in and find the evidence of Jaina, and I like that, I like how you track her by the huge formations of ice -- it shows you her power and the mark she leaves. Finding her is mostly the same although her dialogue is less generic and content-free (from now on assume I apply this caveat to all dialogue). She’s more confused and disoriented and even though she’s fighting it’s with a resignation that she knows it won’t work and she’s starting to think she’s only hurting herself by trying. She acts like she has been there for years. But you say you and the DKs are here to save her and she follows against her better judgment and agrees to try and find Thrall, who she struggles to remember, but seems to be trying very hard to be able to remember.

Then the Mawsworn Kyrian show up and laugh about her hopelessness, and you fight them. And they kill the shit out of you. 

More and more and more of them keep coming and they’re level 60 when you’re level 50 and if you do some bullshit to survive eventually one of them will grab you by the neck to Silence you, lift you into the air, and do the ol’ Val’Kyr Special and fatally drop you. You unavoidably die.

This is necessary early to establish what dying in the Shadowlands means. Play a special graphic effect when the player dies, something more drawn out and grasping. Play a sound effect appropriate to race/gender of the PC of them struggling against great pain and gasping. Then you appear next to a Spirit Healer (yes normally in the Maw you just respawn alive so you have to pick up your Stygia like in Dark Souls, we’ll explain the discrepancy later), a Mawsworn Spirit Healer, who says “No. Your suffering will not end. The Maw claims you.” and then starts to chase you the fuck down with a bunch of shades. You need to run, as a ghost, to claw your way back into your body. Obviously, if the shades catch you, you get dragged back to the start and the Spirit Healer fucks with you a bit. 

Your body has been dragged over to the area where Jaina and the rest are hiding; they fled while you were being merced. Jaina sees you stir. And she says “I’m sorry, champion. Death is no respite here. It is so hard to fight the pull… I struggle to even remember my body when I try to return.”

Jaina has been brutally killed over a dozen times. This is not her first rodeo. This is not her first escape attempt. This is not the first time she’s killed that particular Mawsworn tormenter whose name I don’t recall. It doesn’t end. It never ends. She doesn’t know why she tries any more, when she knows it will fail and she will die and suffer and claw her way back to her flesh and every time it gets harder and harder. All it buys her is the ability to offer futile resistance and maybe that isn’t even worth it.

Mood: established.

From there it goes mostly the same. You try to pump the shades for info about how to escape and they don’t know, they can’t know, they can’t even want to escape. The info you get is a memory of spitefully hating someone who fled to the waystone. You rescue your buddies. You see the Jailer fuck up Baine, only instead of giving him a spirit poison, he fucking snaps the dude like a Kit-Kat and drops his lifeless corpse, and you drag it to safety. You don’t need to find a poison dagger to counteract the spirit poison; you need to keep him safe and clear a path for his spirit to flee back to his body. Thus reinforcing what the danger here is and how it’s different and what they fear.

And while you do this, at some point, you run into Sylvanas. Maybe she just walks up to you while you’re all collected around Baine trying to help him revive. Since the Jailer won’t be saying “it’s not like you won anything b-b-baka, it was just a temporary setback,” you need to establish that feeling that he views your victories as completely meaningless. Sylvanas knows you’re here saving Baine. So does the Jailer. It does not matter. You cannot accomplish anything. 

Thrall kills her dead. She just gets back up. She has an escort for her soul to go back to her body. “How many times are you going to try that before you learn it’s futile? Come now, Thrall. I know you’re smarter than this. I know you respected me more than this.”

And then stuff like “How could you do this, Sylvanas? How could you betray the Horde?” Thrall is incredibly angry and offended at her. He thought he knew her. “Neither of us had any illusions you were not a monster, Banshee Queen. But I trusted you anyway because I knew you wanted what was best for your people. You were a monster, but a loyal one. How can you now turn your back on what little principle you had?” Sylvanas is hurt by this, but she doesn’t linger on it.

Jaina, however, is desperately trying to flatter her. Do this to sell the kind of impact this has had on Jaina, and what this suffering drives her to. “Please, Sylvanas. I know you were my enemy but you were an honorable one. It isn’t too late. Someone as cunning as you must know that this will end in ruin. I promise… I promise… I will surrender if you let me return. Kul Tiras will become servants of the Forsaken. Just, just let them live… please, you could rule our world, not slaughter it…”

Jaina breaks down in tears. Yes, she just tried to surrender her people to the enemy for mercy. Jaina is breaking. All of them will. The Maw is a Bad Place and makes them give up hope. That’s how we sell the threat. Not by making the enemies bigger or spikier, showing how they have broken these heroes. Less screaming anger. More pain.

Sylvanas scoffs at her offer. “It doesn’t matter where your people’s loyalty lies, Lord Admiral.” And then she says the phrase that will become a motif: “Nobody escapes the Maw.” She leaves. She doesn’t care what you do. It doesn’t matter.

But you have to still hold on to that sliver of hope that maybe the waystone is a way out. So you get Baine up and you sneak past this big-ass Maw army that can fuck 31 flavors of your day up. The jailer notices you and sends out a force to stop you at the waystone, and he repeats the phrase when he sends out the order: “Nobody escapes the Maw.”

So there’s the event, you fight off the army while the waystone charges, the army gets bigger and bigger, the charge meter gets stuck at 90%, you go to kick it and it teleports you to Oribos.

The mob descends on the other captives. Sylvanas and the Jailer look completely unconcerned with your escape. After having clearly seen you physically leave the Maw, Sylvanas brushes it off with “Nobody escapes the Maw.” Dun-DUNNN! Cutscene end.

You appear in Oribos. The Protectors stop you because you stink like the Maw and what the hell dude, yada yada. This is when you get a tour of the city, here’s the profession trainers, the bank, the transmog. Only secondary details need to be changed here. One, this is an instanced version of the city where no other players exist (you are the first one there, nobody else is). Two, Lich King Bolvar (hashtag #notmylichking) arrives from Azeroth and says SOMETHING to justify other players coming from the Maw but being less important than you. Something like, he saw what you did, there are other adventurers from Azeroth still in the Maw, his DKs are hunkering down in defensive positions and will try to make their way to the Waystone once it cools off because you already activated it, since you are the more special one, and there might be a chance that a couple others might have an echo of your power because they have had similar adventures. You are the True Maw Walker, and the context of the massively multiplayer element is “for your story, all those other guys have shitty Maw Walker powers that only work once you opened the pickle jar for them.” They can’t bring passengers, either.

Third, not the most importantly but yes the most importantly, if you are Forsaken or a Death Knight or Mechagnome or whatever you get a special dialogue where you say “Why do you keep calling me a ‘living mortal’? I’m not alive. I’m undead / a machine / maybe something else like maybe I missed the fact that vulpera are made of rocks and string.”

So Tal-Inara or whoever can be like “Oh, THAT’S what that is. Something was odd about you, mortal, that I couldn’t quite place. I call you ‘living’ because your soul is still tethered to a body. To us in the Shadowlands, to be bound in a vessel like this is far more important than the nature of the vessel itself.” That’s why people keep calling you “living”, to them you’re easy to mistake for one.

Kyrian in the Maw is disturbing news, and also WEIRD, because as Tal-Inara reminds us, “Nobody escapes the Maw.” Why would the Kyrian go down there when they can’t come back? It is terrible but not unheard of for mortals to try and speak to the Jailer but they never GO there because they can’t get out. And yet Sylvanas just walked in there? And he is mustering armies? Better go to Bastion and find out what is up. Let’s crank open this gateway, and...

[vg-sanctuary]

Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling

Moonsprout Games - Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC - 2019

I don't like the core gameplay of 99% of all RPGs, but the ones I do like have been some of my favorite games I've ever played. case in point, Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling, a modern interpretation of the classic Paper Mario formula and an ideal example of indie developers adding to the legacy of a cult classic. its main feature is turn-based combat with action commands, like old Paper Mario or the Mario & Luigi series, and strategy in its intentional design and small health and damage numbers that goes way beyond "spam damage and heal every third turn, use mana items as needed". (in case you want to be 100% blind for your playthrough, past the Keep Reading link are some very minor spoilers: an item a specific cook can make after a side quest, some basic enemies, environments that are about halfway through the game, and the names of some medals.)

“wow, vg-sanctuary posting about a game that's not even two years old at time of writing? and it's an RPG? are you not a retro/legacy blog anymore? who are you and what have you done with the writer?” I still am a retro/legacy blog, mostly, just this time I thought I'd share something that its developers still get money from, and whose developers aren't mega corporations. and I just beat it, enjoyed it, and really felt like writing about it because it still doesn't have the popularity it deserves even after that puppet guy on YouTube talked about it. not that this post is going to reach any significant number of people, but still. I'll write about some more indie games sometime in the future. (and indeed I am writing about another RPG and you better believe it has a lot to talk about.)

anyway, Bug Fables starts with a brash little bee called Vi and a polite and honorable beetle named Kabbu wandering into an explorer's guild and not having a partner to join the guild with. they reluctantly decide they're going to fight together because companionship is a requirement for this guild, foiling off each other and sometimes off their third friend Leif, a blue moth they find in a cave, for the whole game. every character has a distinct personality and all the party members get some valuable character development through a side quest, which I really liked, but I'm no connoisseur of RPG stories. while I'm on story, people that come here looking for a well-made world will get what they want from the many optional lore books hidden around the world.

the plot becomes more complex and compelling as the game continues, though it generally lets gameplay take the spotlight. which is great, because the gameplay is also mostly great. about a third of it is doing puzzles on the overworld using the abilities of each character to move forward a la the Mario & Luigi series. they generally make use of whatever your newest overworld ability is, and some areas early on have inaccessible things you have to come back to, sort of like a Metroidvania except it isn't required to do this for progression. some puzzles take longer they could because they involve using Kabbu's horn to repeatedly fling an ice block many times over a distance. it's never egregious, but it could have been faster if the guy would use his arms. this is a minor caveat and not a majority of the game.

a lot of people probably don't know how the combat for this or Paper Mario works, and it's really important to Bug Fables, so I'll explain that here. it's turn based, which is typical, but basic attacks and skills need you to time a button press to do as much damage as possible. you can also time a button press when an enemy attacks to take less damage. Paper Mario and Bug Fables also both have medals instead of other equipment that give characters higher max HP or a new skill, for example. you have limited medal points and stronger medals require more points.

this is going to sound like a lot, but any RPG's combat will sound like a lot if you try to detail it in a single paragraph. the game introduces these things slower than I am here. in Bug Fables specifically, the character standing in the front of the group does one extra damage but is more likely to be attacked, and you can pass turns from one character to another in exchange for that character dealing one less damage (which is a lot because basic attacks only deal two damage by default). certain enemies can only be hit by certain attacks; some enemies fly, so Kabbu can't hit them until Vi knocks them down with her beemerang. not a typo, beemerang. and many of Bug Fables' status effects have upsides -- being paralyzed reduces damage taken everything by one, poison has many medals that make it a good thing, and being asleep heals the sleeping character every turn. there are others that are straight up bad things, though, and usually don't come until later. all of this adds up to even small encounters having strategic depth, which is great, and if you don't feel like small encounters you can just avoid them. skills that would typically be relegated to one character, like healing and support skills all going to one, are instead split between party members to make decisions more difficult in a good way. there's also a lovely medal that instantly kills any enemy the game deems too easy for you, sort of like in Earthbound.

I figure I spent more time doing housekeeping like cooking (simple A+B=C or A-becomes-B crafting), buying items, and arranging medals in Bug Fables than in any other RPG, which is because it was designed that way. by the way, cooking recipes start hidden, but a foodie at each restaurant will share some strong ones for free, which is a big help early on. anyone who's played The World Ends with You (i.e. me) will be spoiled by its excellent quality of life: no consumable items and you instantly heal to full after every encounter. it makes items seem like a ridiculous formality that RPGs only still have because they've had them for years, but in Bug Fables any item that isn't simple healing -- a lot of them aren't simple healing -- has great strategic use, and the exact way you spend your medal points can determine whether you win or lose any fight, especially bosses. for example, one character having one extra damage for two turns when they typically only do two is pretty important, especially when they use an attack that does multiple hits, and having it in item form saves valuable medal points and skill points. part of that time was kind of a waste, though, because I generally had one set of medals I use for multiple enemies and one I use for single enemies like bosses. being able to save loadouts would have helped a lot. I would like to compliment Bug Fables on allowing you to restart any boss with different medals without having to repeat cutscenes, and commend it for letting you do-over your level up bonuses late in the game when it starts to matter.

it's not like spending a lot of time on strategizing before fights is strictly mandatory. I was mostly playing on hard mode where enemies have more health and more difficult attacks, and mostly with a medal called Hard Hits that makes all enemies deal one extra damage in exchange for extra money after each fight. it can be less difficult if you'd like, but it's never mindless; even if you're doing a strategy that manages 20 or 30 damage (again, a lot in this game) in a single turn, it takes effort to choose your medals to do so much damage and actually play the strategy out in combat. the combat strategy is the best part of Bug Fables, and it makes each fight almost like a puzzle. I've typed some form of "strategy" six times so far, which is fair because it's the best part of Bug Fables. don't let it put you off, though, it's RPG combat strategy, not chess-like or RTS or something, so if you've enjoyed any other turn-based RPG it should be easy to get used to.

it's also worth mentioning the ample side content. each chapter of the game unlocks a handful of side quests, some about trading, some about combat, and almost as many bonus bosses as main bosses. you're allowed to fight them fairly early on, and a few become available after the final boss that are actually a bit harder than it in classic Paper Mario fashion. basically, if you like Bug Fables, there's a lot of it to play. there's even a trading card minigame because of course there is. it's fairly fleshed out, too, and unlike the one in Chocobo Tales the animations between turns don't take six years. the reward for the whole card side quest isn't something that's important for combat, so you can skip it if you don't like it; I didn't especially like it so I think that was a great decision on the developers' part.

rewards for some of the other side content, though, are so good it's kind of a wonder they can be completely skipped. it doesn't make the game harder to not have those skills or medals, but they are some of the best in the game and undeniably really useful. they make great side quest rewards in that sense, but it's important to know for the people that usually wouldn't do side content. I don't know if that's a common kind of player, but just in case. (this game's 100% achievement has been earned by a sky-high 5.9% of players on Steam. usually it's more like 2% or less. the point is none of the extra content is overly obtuse.)

I will complain about the forced stealth sections though. and be astounded that they fixed the main issue with them in the last stealth section. these are minor caveats and take well under an hour total unless you're really, really, really bad at sneaking, but they bothered me when I got to them. I mean, I understand why they're in the game, I understand why Zelda has them, but I didn't really like them. the main issue for all but the last stealth section is that there's no vision cone or other indication that "if you stand here they will see you" or even an opportunity to recover from mistakes which are incredibly important for playable stealth. the last stealth section does have a vision cone and does have an opportunity to recover from mistakes, which is a great step up. I would like to use even more italics to remind you that these sections total less than an hour of gameplay. Zelda: Breath of the Wild's forced-ish stealth was much worse than this.

I don't know where else to put it, so I'll add here that the soundtrack is great and the graphics are perfectly Gamecube-y and the sprites capture the cuteness of Paper Mario really well, even though they're, you know, bugs. each environment is distinct and themed well, and each one’s music matches well. I really wish I knew how to talk about music because there are a lot of different songs in this game that work well for what they go with. boss music sounds intense and boss-y and appropriate for each boss you're fighting, the not-music hits just right, and everything else feels good. some songs use Nintendo 64 MIDI instruments, which I loved. and the bee boss music has a synth that sounds like bees buzzing.

anyone that likes RPGs -- and even some people that don't -- will probably enjoy the story and strategy that make up the excellent Bug Fables. it goes beyond being a homage to Paper Mario and becomes its own thing entirely, though its roots are obvious from the art style. not that this takes away from it -- Paper Mario is a great legacy, and this manages to be even better. for all its little bad things there are a dozen great ones. I admit I haven't played the classic Paper Mario games, but this made me want more -- I guess I'll have to go back while I hope for Moonsprout Games to continue forward.

[autumnslance]

7. Have you ever regretted a ship, romantic or otherwise?

Yep. Hard to RP for over 20 years and NOT have a few regrets or things that I could have done differently, and learned from.

I’ve had at least 1 romantic ship that wasn’t working out, and then the player made a drastic decision about his character without my input. The decision was apparently made because he didn’t like someone else I’m friends with and we RPed our characters as found family. Rather than talk to me about it, he just killed his character suddenly with no warning. I was already intuiting an off feel about the ship (and some other unrelated issues with the player in our guild discord) before that and considering ways to ease out and hadn’t had the chance myself to discuss it with him when he pulled that. If I revise that character’s main story for Ao3 posting, I’ll probably just write the romantic ship out entirely. It didn’t contribute or change much anyway, which seems harsh to say, but reading back recently from a purely literary analysis standpoint, it’s also true (probably due to the player’s aforementioned issues with my friend).

There was a situation where my roommate and I made a joke about our engineering WoW chars finding a construct and rebuilding it. A guildmate took the concept, ran with it, and made a construct that my character had a hand in rebuilding. Then the construct gained sentience, and eventually through the “Curse of Flesh” aspect of WoW’s story, became a Real Girl. The player had decided on various things for the construct, including the gender presentation and I signed off on the reasons why in the course of rebuilding, but in the end I was ambivalent about how the player portrayed a girlish char at the time, as well as the insistence my young 20s char was her “mother” even as she looked and acted mostly adultish herself, and trying to make more of the relationship, and I eventually had to talk to him about backing off on those ties as I just wasn’t feeling what had been an offhand OOC joke being made into a major IC relationship and responsibility for my character, so they ended up a little more neutral—still connected, but not quite so close, as the robot girl is pretty independent.

As a healer main for a long time, I’ve had instances where I’ve regretted getting involved in plots with some players and their characters at all, due to the drama and neediness and extricating myself and my characters, and dealing with the IC and OOC fallout, was an exhausting process that taught me to be more discerning and cautious about what plotlines and characters I do get involved with. I also had to really set down some limits on being treated as an IC Counselor and doing therapy style RP things as it was extremely exhausting and difficult, and all some folks wanted me/my characters for. It’s one of those things I recommend not RPing out, but discussing in general terms how characters approach therapy, what happens, and where to go next as a background thing given the difficulties inherent in counseling and the sheer emotional burden it can create in what’s supposed to be a hobby. We don’t ask healer chars to actually perform surgery, or know all those details, we really shouldn’t be putting that on counselor types either given the necessary real world training. IC advice and emotional talk is cool, but there are limits and using another PC as your own free therapy is out of bounds, and some of those situations got that way; they didn’t want my character giving their character help, they wanted me to help them.

Otherwise, there have been a few times where I’ve ended up IC interacting with characters and our muses hit it off well as friends and colleagues, but I have issues with the player for whatever reason and so am as polite as necessary in the OOC channels and interact IC as my characters would, but I don’t get involved deeply in plotlines with them. Some people just don’t click well and that’s fine, no need to be a jerk about it, so long as it isn’t anything actually terrible/dangerous to others.

Most of these examples are online RP based; most of my tabletop/more traditional small group games with a GM, have been less of an issue with relationships and interactions between characters, as there’s a bit more structure, smaller/more intimate groups, and knowledge and trust of other players, and rarely have things gotten as tight as they do in long running freeform. Sometimes there are player or character issues, but also usually a GM to mediate the issues and make some decisions as needed for the health of their game.

[arecomicsevengood]

“Follow Your Own Star”

Lately I’ve found it hard to shake the feeling that everything of value is being destroyed, but we are being given simulacra in exchange, while we wait, to soften the blow. The relationship between the U.S. economy and what actually has value is basically nil, obviously, and COVID has only highlighted that, but beyond that, being in isolation has brought to light how much of what I consider “real” because it exists outside the bounds of money is nonetheless vulnerable. We’ve been given podcasts to fill our working hours with parasocial relationships where once we may’ve had genuine camaraderie with our coworkers. We’re given desultory political candidates to vote for in the absence of those who would govern in accordance with our actual beliefs. It feels like an elaborate art heist is taking place, where the masterpieces are exchanged for forgeries, and the endgame of those seeking to enrich themselves is to set a bonfire of all that’s made us human, all we’ve invested our true selves into. All this can occur only because our relationships have been made increasingly transactional already. I wondered at the start of quarantine how many couples, with the ability to see one another in the flesh compromised, had switched to having “sex” over Skype, how many intimate relationships were compromised by distance into resembling cam shows. Partly this curiosity was a way of comforting myself, as I came to the understanding that I would not be entering into anything approaching a real romantic relationship for the foreseeable future.

In the context of all of this, reading a book that feels reminiscent of the work of another artist feels like a minor thing, but it slips easily enough into the larger pattern. After reading Roaming Foliage by Patrick Kyle, I thought “Huh, this is very much a CF/Brian Chippendale thing.” Then, after reading Eight-Lane Runaways by Henry McCausland, I thought, “Oh, this is even more like a CF thing.” Both are, I think, appropriate for kids, which Powr Mastrs isn’t, but I also never read Powr Mastrs and felt like the thing that made it good was its BDSM pornography elements. People have been biting CF’s style for years — enough for him to address it with a little note in the third Powr Mastrs book, instructing them to “follow your own star.” Simon Hanselmann admits the similarities between the character design for Owl and a character in CF’s story in Kramers Ergot 5, Hanselmann’s subsequent popularity seems to suggest a moment where something becomes less of a direct influence and more just something that exists generally in the world. It’s art: Inspiration, influence, and appropriation are all part of the game. Reading Hanselmann, I’ve wondered what his work would’ve been like before exposure to his most obvious influences; reading these, I wondered instead if they would still have been made had Powr Mastrs 4 ever come out, to finish out the story and close the system; it feels like, in a transactional relationship between artist and audience, the fact of a work remaining unfinished makes it more socially acceptable to steal from. For instance, think of the debt Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain owes to Rene Daumal’s Mount Analogue. It feels like an attempt to create something with an ending, to satisfy a desire for the logic to reach its conclusion. The comics fulfill a certain set of expectations, I found them a pleasant enough experience, satisfying on a certain level. However, on a deeper level, I found them completely unsatisfying, because they speak so directly to a sense of unfulfilled potential. They lack the thrill that CF’s comics provide, of totally transcending any expectations placed on them.

Measuring the impact made by CF, Paper Rad, and the Fort Thunder contingent is difficult to calculate, because there were so many radical gestures inside that work, and while some have been metabolized, others have not. The “reclamation of genre material in an art-school context” is maybe the most readily understood. Johnny Ryan’s Prison Pit probably wouldn’t exist were it not for these comics, but that’s such a “who cares” for me, such a dumbed-down and simplistic understanding of what makes these comics good. The silkscreening of covers is close behind, in terms of something that people really ran with. That’s fine, no one owns silkscreening, it looks great. What hasn’t really been reckoned with are the gestures against commodity fetishism. Paper Rodeo is progenitor of the free comics newspaper format, but the work that ran there is so much wilder than what you see in what followed, and most of it was anonymous. I understand why that was a gauntlet that wasn’t picked up, but is still one of the things that made an impact on its initial readership. Similarly, I haven’t seen anyone steal the CF format of the single-sheet xerox, with comics on the front and back. I guess that’s not surprising! But honestly? Sick format.

I’ve just been talking about comics, but Lightning Bolt playing on the floor is its own radical gesture, albeit one with an obvious precedent in the form of Crash Worship. The Forcefield oeuvre is its own thing. Those videos are great! The animation made out of photographing the cutting layers of multicolored clay… I wonder how much of this stuff hasn’t been picked up on because it’s the last stand of working with real world physical materials, before the coming of digital as the default medium for art students to work in. Obviously, the silkscreening has similar roots in physical media, and playing on floors relates directly to how you communicate with people when you’re in the same physical space as them. Real world community has distinct advantages, but many that came after took the trade for the benefits working digitally provides. Anyway. I could write a 33 1/3 book proposal for Lightning Bolt’s Ride The Skies that addresses all this stuff, but I also believe I would not be the best person to write such a book; I suspect those better suited would not be interested.

There is something so exciting about artists whose work feels overflowing with ideas, not just on a level of concept or drawing but also in terms of how the work is presented. That whole Providence/Picturebox crew was so abundant with this creative ferment that when I see others picking up on individual threads it makes sense on a certain level — you want more of a certain thing — but if it’s not backed up by something distinctly unique, as a reader I’m hyper-aware of what’s absent.

These artists also made books, and records, and it was their doing so that brought their work to a larger audience, including me. Not everything has to be a gesture against making money. But at the same time, radical gestures suggest the benefits made in fostering community work out better in the long term than leveraging oneself to be consumed as a commodity does. This is not to suggest that McCausland or Kyle are doing something wrong that will sabotage some sort of grand plan for utopia: I’m really just riffing here. If I buy electronic music mp3s online, I’m not necessarily going to lament the death of live music performance the same way I do when buying the mp3s of a jazz act. Looking at a contemporary superhero comic that feels dire and ugly will make me nostalgic for the Mike Parobeck comics of my youth, but a contemporary black and white zine exists in a completely different universe and might not remind me of anything. Certain things make you miss the world that was more than others.

It’s also worth noting that by all accounts Patrick Kyle has a bunch of people online ripping off his style but I have successfully been able to avoid such people. While Roaming Foliage is consciously modeled after the sort of weird adventure comics of not just Powr Mastrs, but also Brian Chippendale’s If N Oof,  What I am most often seeing and thinking “that’s a ripoff” is the presence of these geometrical patterns which are also similar to design choices made throughout his oeuvre. There’s a chaotic, obfuscatory energy approach to comics that he works with frequently, but so much of his other comics feel dark, melancholy, or paranoid whereas this feels much lighter in its tone. At the same time, compared to the claustrophobia of Don’t Come In Here, having his characters move about makes for an adventure narrative. Watching them wander, interact, and be given quests and goals belongs to this tradition that’s not unique to the Picturebox artists — but the feeling that this fantasy material was arrived at through adventure games like Zelda moreso than Tolkien makes for this sort of… generational level of familiarity, rather than seeming to occupy some sort of Campbellian myth-space, if that makes sense. The strangeness of Kyle’s art, where backgrounds overtake figures, suggests a sort of PC glitching, almost like the Cory Arcangel/Paper Rad collaboration Super Mario Movie, but achieved through photocopier technology of blowing up and distorting images. It is the sensation of a feeling being chased after that makes the book feel less exciting and more melancholy, though subsequently, that darker feeling might make the book slot into Kyle’s oeuvre so much that bigger fans of his might not even notice the resemblance I’m seeing.

McCausland has a list of acknowledgments in his book which includes CF alongside Herge and Otomo. I can sort of see them all, but Herge especially is an influence that’s been so widely absorbed by comics as a whole that I really only feel particularly aware of it in the case of Joost Swarte or something. McCausland’s resemblance to CF is reinforced by things as molecular as a resemblance in the lettering, which is really odd. The figures all have this youthful smallness to them, and I can’t tell if the characters are meant to be young specifically or if it’s just the way he’s learned to draw. I can see Otomo, but it’s definitely approached through the CF filter. Other trademarks, like the rendering of geometric shapes, the patterns of parallel lines, seems integrated, highlighted, by the “racetrack” premise that gives the book its name. However, he distinguishes himself because his work is more constantly busy, with the same general level of detail. There’s also these trees in the background, which seem like they’re rendered as these painted soft grey daubs, a type of texture you don’t see in CF’s darkened pencil work.

His storytelling is different, prone to large spreads, or showing the same character multiple times in a panel as they move across the landscape. (The dimensions of Eight-Lane Runaways are considerably larger than those of Powr Mastrs.) There are nonetheless panels that seem exactly like CF drawings, but with a less cryptic sense of humor. It feels more populist, like it’s based around what a person liked, and in the act of working it out, subtracted the mystery. What would’ve been a detailed “money shot” in a CF sequence is here the baseline level of drawing detail that never gets subtracted from. It’s really fascinating to me how this makes it less good, I think many people would prefer it.

I wrote most of this before learning that Anthology is releasing a new CF book next week. You can order it and see preview images at the Floating World site. You can draw your own conclusions. CF’s on his own path such that you might not even note a resemblance between his new images and McCausland’s. We’re all living on the same planet, orbiting the same sun in an expanding universe, subject to the will of an accelerating time.

[acetechne]

I'm confused on how many ocs are there. Can I join this? Is there a St John's?

ok [cracks knuckles but unsuccessfully and just does an awkward hand stretch instead] here’s a crash course in What Is This Thing I Do

SHORT ANSWER: there are some ocs but while i basically know everyone in our lil group i dont take an official census of how many or who’s active etc. Re: joining, sure why not? and no there is not yet a St Johns and we’re kind of lacking in the east coast in general I’m afraid. We’re a loose unofficial conglomeration of people who met through a common hetalia project or two and so some of us make ocs - there’s kind of an unspoken rule that if an oc for a place already exists and the person is still active its polite to not do duplicates, but its not a hard/fast rule. It’s no fun to play favourites and start drama you know?

LONG ANSWER which is probably gonna get long so I’ll explain below the cut.

ONCE UPON A TIME i dunno if you guys all would remember this but ONCE UPON A TIME in 2008-9 the (English) Hetalia fandom was young and we were all really excited about this Thing that was pretty limited as far as I’m aware to Livejournal, which is how I found 

The I Am Matthewian Project (2009-2011 ish?)

you may have seen us around youtube or deviantart- basically its a hetalia fan project about Canada and his 13 provinces and territories (created by ctcsherry) and we did voice acting and stuff- I was the VA for Yukon and the most recent VA for Alberta and I did a lot of art for the project that i can no longer look at without cringing because HAHA what is anatomy. The project is currently on hiatus indefinitely and a lot of us have drifted our separate ways so I try to keep tabs on everyone where I can but I’m also Kinda Shy and don’t like prying or tracking people down all the time. Would I change some things about how the project was done or some of the dumb kid things I said or did or whatever? Yes. Do I regret the fun times, the art improvement, and the friends I made? Not on yer life bud.

Anyway the cities started as a roleplay thing and it’s kind of surprising since I’m really not a good roleplayer and I really don’t enjoy rping that my ocs, out of all of them that were made on those old boards, survived the longest. They’re nearly ten years old, man! But yeah, as far as I’m aware Ed and Cal are the only surviving OCs I created back in those early days- you can still see some of the old designs floating around dA but they were never really fleshed out and more just created as a little roleplay game between us that wasn’t really meant to go anywhere (although a couple of us, myself included, did sneak OCs into finished IAMP episodes).

Project Canada (2013-?)

So apparently people actually enjoyed and missed our lil videos so the project got rebooted. New admins, new fans, a couple of veterans from IAMP, that sort of thing. Same province and territory characters, new direction. Or… lack of direction idk xD; I loved being an admin for the project but we never really got off the ground because I think we rushed a little too fast and I ended up leaving my post for a variety of reasons. I’m making a go of it on my own now which is why I don’t speak for everyone who posts in the projectcanada cities tag (but lets be honest 90% of that tag is Me haha, I’m the annoyance that made the tag necessary in the first place)

The projectcanada cities tag is generally people who are or were members of this little group- we’re by no means an exclusive club and not all ocs were created /out/ of the project, I’m sure some people like me saw the opportunity to bring back some old ocs and revitalize them with a new audience and new people to brainstorm with- these might have been roleplay ocs or ocs doodled for fun or ocs that came together out of the fear that - like in the IAMP - we’d create ocs for the fun of it off stereotypes rather than putting a huge whack of thought into it, haha. (I admit though, for our own storytelling purposes quatsch and i got together to make a halifax oc thats not necessarily ‘canonical’ in the sense that we’re two angry albertans who haven’t ever been that far east, so if anyone would like to breathe some life into the design we’re happy to collaborate etc etc)

So yeah we’re not exclusive but we’re not organized either, which is why I’m hesitant to speak for everyone. I’m generally the most active so people generally come to me with questions and I can point them in the right direction, but I don’t really have any intention of making anything ~official~ looking of who’s around and who’s not because that would be a whole other boatload of work that I don’t wanna do and also I’m personally ok with interacting with whoever (so long as you don’t expect me to seriously roleplay because thats Not what I do and I’m no fun). And I mean if you’re interested in the project itself as far as I know there’s still room for more members, but idk when if ever anything is going to happen at this point.

My Personal Feels

Honestly since my ocs transcend both iamp and pc and are probably going to outlast both of them at this rate, it’s kind of weird that i haven’t gone back to tagging them as ‘aph’ rather than pc but eh i like my little spin-off-of-a-spin-off nook in the hetalia fandom. But yeah I’m not going to police the tag, aside from saying things could get Messy with duplicates both using the pc tag. So for example say you got a winnipeg oc that’s not affiliated with our lil group- thats a-ok! cool, if I like them enough i’d be willing to use them in my own stuff if i dont have a pc character for it if you’re ok with it and dont mind them interacting with this “universe”. I’d still probably tag your oc as ‘aph winnipeg’ or something if you dont have a specific tag for them. There’s not really an ‘expiry date’ on ocs or how long their creators have been away, but after about 5 years and a project reboot i tend to feel pretty Weird about using ocs when their ‘parents’ arent around to supervise, you know? but again that’s a personal hang up of mine. Another personal hang up of mine is I really am mostly interested in ocs created by people living in that place or really into researching it or who have good inside jokes because that’s the reason I really love this fandom, but hell it’s not a requirement (sweeps my multitude of alberta ocs under the rug because I haven’t been to most of them lol)

so yeah thats the long and the short of it, feel free to ask any more questions and I’ll do my best to answer. I don’t mean to brag when I say I’m probably the person to ask about these things, I just mean I’m nosy and I haunt this little corner like a plague so I’m more or less in touch with everyone in it. :) haha

[shadyb00ts]

Horizon: Zero Dawn - A Review

Right, gimme a moment to compose myself after the INCREDIBLE RIDE that was this fucking game.

Okay. So. Picture it: E3 2015. There I was, minding my own business, completely PS4-less and only scoping out upcoming PC titles since at the time I was a proud PC gamer. Deep down I was always bitter that I probably would never get a PS4, though, so I usually knowingly avoided any footage of PS4 games like inFamous: Second Son, Uncharted 4, etc. I’ve always been a naturally jealous person, so seeing footage from those games at the time sorta stirred up some jealousy there.

But regardless of that, I still end up seeing the original gameplay trailer anyways. And holy fuckballs, I was so pissed. There in front of me was footage of a game that was literally MADE for me, I swear to god. It had all the elements that I loved in a game. Let’s list them, shall we?

Lush open world with gorgeous vibrant landscapes and incredible graphics: check and check

Female protagonist that looks badass and is voiced by ASHLY FUCKING BURCH: check, check and check

Bow and arrow combat: check

Stealth: check

RPG elements like side quests, skill trees, dialogue trees, etc: checkcheckcheckcheck

Intriguing and mysterious story: check

Platforming and climbing mechanics a la Tomb Raider & Uncharted: check

Honestly, I could go on and on but you get the idea. I never thought I’d see the day where a game could so perfectly fit the criteria of everything I like. So 2-Years-Ago-Me was completely heartbroken since at the time I was convinced that I’d never own a PS4. It was up there with Kingdom Hearts III as the games I thought I’d never get to experience.

Flash forward to now, having been a PS4 owner for about several months. This game was pretty much top priority on what to get, so as soon as it was available for preorder, I clicked that shit so fast I almost broke my mouse. So naturally, when the game finally became playable, I completely immersed myself in it.

This may be a bold statement, but I think Horizon is going to be one of my favorite games of all time. For real.

So all those elements I listed up there were true, but there were also additional elements I love that I had no clue were even in it, prior to playing. Like for example, I had no idea just how deep into the RPG category it was going to go. This game was so freaking immersive. I was immediately in Aloy’s shoes and experienced the world through her eyes, starting from childhood. And then what a pleasant surprise it was when I discovered that the game presents you with moral choices, too! At that moment I knew that the game was going to exceed my already extremely high expectations.

There are also dialogue trees in which you can exhaust a lot of dialogue from, and I of course took every chance I got to choose all the options. I thoroughly enjoyed learning more about this intricate world Guerrilla Games has built and encountering its inhabitants. I loved finding out more about all the different tribes and their own unique traditions and religious beliefs, as well as their relationships with each other. It also helps that their outfits are all so fucking rad. In addition to all that, there are collectibles called “datapoints” where you could find various text, audio and holographic documents from the world of the “ancient ones”, and there’s so many interesting tidbits you can discover from these files. Guerrilla really has fleshed out this world as fully as they could. And let’s quickly touch on the diversity this game has. Man oh man, there were so many people of all different races throughout this game. Lots of strong female characters who weren’t one-dimensional, and I even stumbled upon a gay character during one of the side quests. The diversity showcased doesn’t feel contrived or there to appease the masses, it feels natural and well represented.

I was a bit worried about the story at first, since Guerrilla were definitely shrouding it in mystery and being extra vague every chance they got, which I guess a part of me did like, since it made me not know what to expect and heightened my sense of discovery while playing. But these devs have crafted a really amazing story with a likable cast of characters, including the star of the show Aloy herself. I’m a little biased about her though, since she’s voiced by Ashly Burch who I adore to pieces, but even regardless of that she was simply a wonderfully written character. I just loved watching the story unfold, finding out more and more about what happened to the world and witnessing Aloy finding out the truth about who she really is. The lowest expectation I had initially about this game was probably the story, but it didn’t disappoint at all. I was thoroughly hooked and craved to know more. I won’t spoil anything, since I want those of you who are going to play the game to be more engrossed by it as you have your own experience through it.

Those of you who have seen screenshots and/or gameplay know that this game is a visual masterpiece. The environments are lush and full of life despite the post-apocalyptic nature of it. Originally I had thought the Last of Us had the most gorgeous post-apoc landscapes of all time, but Horizon definitely takes the cake for this one, no question about it. There’s a photo mode available, and because the game itself is so beautiful, it’s probably impossible to take a bad shot. Even without using the filters provided, the graphics have that gorgeous pinkish glow that I always love in games, very reminiscent of Dragon Age: Inquisition I think. The screenshots in this review were some snaps I took using the photo mode feature, and it’s really fun to play around with. You could probably spend hours with it taking scenic shots and action shots to your heart’s content.

Now let’s talk combat. A game automatically has me sold when it has archery. My love of this developed through the 2013 Tomb Raider remake, which I’m sure I reviewed on here a long while back. It grew when I played the sequel to that remake, Rise of the Tomb Raider. This game takes that style of combat and amps it up to a hundred, adding a bunch of various unique and craftable arrow types, as well as multitudes of elemental traps and explosives. Most unique out of these is probably the Ropecaster, which allows you to tie down enemies to leave them immobilized. These are extremely useful for the flying machines that you’ll encounter later on in the game, since they can be pretty tricky. The combat relies heavily on weakpoint takedowns, so you’ve definitely gotta have real good aim in order to slay them robots, especially the bigger ones. Unlike most action games, you can’t just go in guns blazing and continuously shoot arrows at random spots on the machines’ bodies. Focusing on their weakpoints is key, as that’s where all the real damage lies. Most of the robots are also weak to specific element types, so exposing those weaknesses gives you an even bigger advantage. Some enemies you could even strip off their ranged weapons and use it against them, which I thought was fucking radical. I did it more than a few times and it was a hell of a lot of fun.

There’s also melee combat in this game, although I rarely ever used it to be quite honest. The only use I found for melee are the silent takedowns during stealth, but in battle I would say ranged is the way to go. Battles with the machines are very exhilarating and intense, since they are clearly much more stronger than you, even the weaker ones. There are also human enemies like bandits and cultists, but they’re pretty easy to pick off since all it takes are headshots, basically. The machines are the real challenge. I played on Easy since I’m a scrub, and have always had no shame in playing games on easy difficulties anyways since, unlike most gamers, I’m not much of a fan of challenge. Basically for me, Easy is my Normal. That’s just how I roll. But even easy mode was a bit of a challenge at times, at least for me. I had some trouble with the huge, stronger machines. Then again, I pretty much spent the entirety of the game doing nothing but side stuff and power-leveling, so by the last few main quests I was already at max level. But even at max level and wearing arguably the best outfit in the game, the final boss was a lot to handle.

I’ve spent the majority of this review gushing about this game, but was there anything I disliked? In all honesty, not really all that much. Most of my negatives are pretty much small nitpicks. I thought the climbing mechanics could’ve been a little bit better, since unlike Tomb Raider or Uncharted, most of the platforming can be done just by pushing the left stick and only pressing the jump button once in a while. I would’ve liked it better if the jump button was more frequently used during platforming, basically. You also can’t filter between icons on the map, and the map interface can get pretty hectic as a result since there’s so much stuff cluttered in it. Not sure why they didn’t add the option to filter between machine sites, collectibles, etc. Would’ve made for an easier time navigating.

Another negative is probably how I wish the outfits were more customizable. As it stands, each outfit is already one full set, and the only modifications you can make are by using two or three slots where you can insert mods to increase certain effects like elemental resistances, stealth, etc. I wish it was a little more in-depth in that you could get different pieces for each body part, like most RPGs, and maybe be able to insert modifications to each individual armor piece. Actually, the modification system in general, for both outfits and weapons, is a bit too simplified for my taste. You can’t really upgrade them, it’s as simple as just inserting a mod or two and you’re done. This may be ideal for more action-oriented players, but since I’m an RPG enthusiast, I find it to leave much to be desired. There are some other small nitpicks I have with the game that hold it back from being absolute perfection, but honestly they’re all pretty much easy to ignore. The positives crush the negatives.

So yeah, overall I’m extremely overjoyed with how this game turned out. It’s everything I had been hoping for and then some. It literally just came out a few days ago and already I’m aching for a story DLC or, hell, even a sequel. This game better branch out into a franchise; there’s so much Guerrilla can explore with this world that they’ve created.

I give Horizon a 9.75/10. 9.5 seemed a little too low and 10 seemed a little bit too high, so I thought fuck it, 9.75 it is. This game is near perfection, and if you have a PS4 or are going to own a PS4 in the future, then I swear to you that you won’t regret having Horizon in your game library. It’s a mishmash of various elements in open world, action-RPG gaming all rolled into an impeccable, beautiful package. And for all you trophy hunters out there, it’s pretty easy to platinum too.

Man, do I love this game. Jesus. Looks like I’ve found something new to unhealthily obsess over.

[kennyrobots]

answer in the form of an answer, part 21.

Would an immigration ban that targets Muslims make the country safer? Your answer: No Answers you’ll accept: Yes, and we should enforce one | Maybe, but we shouldn't enforce one | No Importance: Very Maybe it's the frequency illusion at work here, but the last three(ish) questions I've answered have a helluva political bent to it. (NOTE: At least, from the time of the original question...answering. Not sure if or how much OKC's redesign messed with the layout of these questions, in relation to each other.) Personally, I'm curious as to the actual efficacy of these questions, vis-a-vis actually getting people to answer their true feelings on here. Like, what's to stop a person from answering the PC way, but acting IRL contrary to what they're claiming? Yes, I'm aware that answering privately is a thing that exists, but still. In a very odd way (specifically the devil's advocate-y way I force myself to see all sides of an argument, even if the underlying premise is ridiculous) (kids in cages - that's kinda indefensible, y'all), I almost sorta respect the folks that say "Yes", because I think they're being truthful, and God knows my dumb ass loves authenticity. I do wonder about the folks that say "No", though (like myself, full disclosure). Of those folks that SAY "No", how many of them actually MEAN it, and who's just showing off? Genuinely curious. yeah - the redesign messed with a LOT of things, much less the order in which i answered questions. like, right now, the site’s...it’s not “unusable”, but damn, it used to have so much more functionality. like, right now there’s no real way for me to just browse potential matches (or even users in general) like i used to do - i’m basically stuck with either whatever random poor soul ends up foisted upon me in the discover tab, or whoever the site’s algorithms deem worthy of showing me in the questions tab, and the prerequisite for THAT is that i have to enter a question and answer to see who responded in kind. (also, there are 5K+ questions on this godforsaken site. i am literally going to die before i get to the finish line.) (just did the math - assuming they do not add any more questions in the intervening time (which ain’t likely), and assuming i stick to my two-questions-per-day schedule (which IS likely), it would take over 7 YEARS to post everything. so yeah - me dying is literally likelier than finishing this stupid fucking project. i feel like i should regret starting this, but fuck it - i’m already here. might as well keep going.) ANYWAY. i have a tendency of reading through all of a person’s questions whenever they pique my interest, because 1) as someone who writes a lot of fucking words, it would be both hypocritical and irresponsible of me to not read someone else’s lot of fucking words (even if being seen as hypocritical is not even a thing for me - i am openly hypocritical, because in the course of the whole “exploring the depths of my mind” thing, it’s become necessary for me to hold two or more conflicting opinions at the same time, just to be able to see as many sides of an idea as possible, and i don’t need things like “cognitive dissonance” slowing me down), and 2) as a result of plumbing the depths of my own mind, i’ve become interested in what comes out of the minds of others, especially on a dating site, where the express goal is to LITERALLY get to know another person. (an adjacent thought about this that i had while taking a shower today: some common advice vis-à-vis online dating is to not care so much about being liked, so that you don’t experience the feel-bads that accompany putting in so much work for so little return, but...that’s also the entire point of online dating - to be LIKED by someone. obviously, that’s greatly oversimplifying things, but still. something that struck me that i’ll probably flesh out in a later post.) (also, i use “vis-à-vis” a lot.) (unsure if that’s actionable in any way - again, another thing that struck me.) ANYWAY. obviously i’m an outlier, putting an explanation with every answer i’ve provided, but i’m both delighted when someone else puts an explanation in their answer (because then we’re allowed to go beyond the parameters of the question and the provided answers, which, no matter what, are limiting in-themselves), and saddened when i scroll through someone’s profile, and see that their questions are as barren as their main page. (like, i get that the advice is to keep it short and pithy, but man. y’all don’t have ANY supplementary thoughts about the question? no wonder y’all suck at conversation.) (here’s what i mean by the whole “limiting in-themselves” bit: aside from just expressing my insane personality, the thing i like having a blank space to provide an explanation is that it allows me to move beyond the question and answer itself, a lot of times in ways that surprise even ME, and I’M the one that’s writing it. without that option, you’re kinda just stuck with the options they give you, and i actually complain about that a number of times in my explanations, where there’s either not enough or too many answers given (normally the former), and that the actual answer’s somewhere in-between what’s there. i see that most people are okay with this, and, sure - that’s their bag. but then it leads to things like the above, where either an insane person or an HONEST person would answer in the affirmative, vis-à-vis (damnit) an immigration ban.) (or a stupid person - we ought to be inclusive, after all.) (i’ve actually thought about this in the context of “open-world” video games - while we (the royal “we”) marvel at how much there is to do, how you can do “anything you want” in the game, soonandsoforth, it’s STILL limited by what the developers INTENDED for you to do. sure, there are such things as exploits and outright cheats that allow you to do things that weren’t EXPRESSLY intended by the developers, but you’re still limited by the framework in which the game was developed. in other words, let’s say you wanted to play a session of GTA online in which you were a normal person that went to their banking job each day, and just had a normal home life, and maybe played golf on the weekends, because, y’know - BANKERS. in THEORY, i guess you could do that (i actually don’t know what you can and can’t do in GTA online, seeing that 1) i’ve never played it, and 2) i have no interest in doing so, because online multiplayer? yuck and no thank you), but you can only do that insofar that the developer - unknowingly or not - put the tools for you do to so in the game. if they didn’t? you’re shit outta luck - go blow up a car or rob a bank or whatever else you’re allowed to do in there.) (”why are you playing GTA online to be a normal person?” great question, and for no particular reason other than “why not?”, i suppose.) (just not a fan of being unnecessarily limited like that, is all.) (or are you in the habit of obeying even the unwritten rules all the time?) NEXTDAYEDIT: so actually, there’s a quote within a vox article that kindasorta sums up all that i tried to say in the preceding quite nicely: “ But mostly, this framing is misleading because, like pretty much any generalization of what goes on on a platform or in a subculture or within a generation, it completely erases the nuanced beliefs that actual individuals have.“ and THAT’s what i’m ultimately getting at, with my jumbo-sized word salad - by limiting yourself to the answers provided, without providing any additional context or explanation in the space that’s LITERALLY there for you to do so, you take some nuance out of the online dating conversation. (ONCE AGAIN, unsure if this is actionable in any way - just something i can’t unsee, is all.) (maybe the point is to actually talk about these things when you reach out and start conversations with folk. ...i guess.)