Every time I see a post lamenting how Viv used to draw weird furry erotica, or the 2012 ass "pedo bear" style comedy that was always a joke and just fandom bullshit. How Stella obviously was supposed to be fucking her brother but its been pulled back on, or how ValAngel is obviously kink shit(even if we're also taking it very seriously at the same time)
Like, everything about this show was supposed to By Freaks, For Freaks. From the character design, to the edgy humor.
But fandom culture has changed a lot from when Viv first started out in that OC's tumblrina time. Ship and let ship has almost completely died, purity culture and the normalization of second degree murder has resulted in a creative landscape thats so fucking terrified to be seen as "problematic", that art is being pushed aside and sanitized because no one has fucking basic reading comprehension.
I mean, that whole thing where people were telling Bryan Fuller that he's the reason that gay conversion camps are good and should come back full force. The amount of trans women I saw on Twitter become publicly accused of "cp". A youtuber at one point SAVED the "cp" on her computer, edited the "cp" into a cutesy thumbnail, and distributed it. So, either its not csem and she fucking knows it and wouldn't have saved it and reposted it but really wanted to to tell people to kill this one specific woman, OR this is how seriously these kinds of people take things like literal csem.
Like, is Vivziepop annoying? Yeah, kinda. Is she not necessarily the best writer in the world? No, not really. But she's not a pedophile or some serial abuser because she's a furry. I'm genuinely so baffled by people watching a Furry Show and then being like, "omfg......she drew.........furry porn?????". I wouldn't be surprised if at least some of the reason Hazbin/Helluva turned out so wonky(outside of amazon)is just, Viv didn't feel safe or comfortable actually expressing her art and telling her story. There's so many people who would jump for joy if she killed herself, because they think snakes are a good enough reason to kill someone. Not to mention, the baseless accusations about stupid and meaningless things muddies the waters of actual abuse or things that could be legitimate problems. There's a 50/50 chance the thing Viv did that was problematic will be "drew pictures" or "has bad working conditions" and both of these tend to be held to the same standard of shit we need to take her down for.
I hate how you can't critique anything anymore, because saying you're "critical of the media" is more often then not, just a fucking dog whistle for "omg pls pls give me the opportunity to harass someone for not giving in to the thought policing I PERSONALLY have made up." Instead of someone who actually likes analysis and media criticism.
I'd love to complain about Hazbin/Helluva, I think it kinda sucks!!! I'm genuinely heartbroken that something that was obviously meant for Weirdos has been appropriated by puritanical babies, like they're horny housewives ashamed of themselves because they like 50 shades or whatever.
25 notes
·
View notes
TL;DR: Steam just made library sharing so much fucking easier and so much fucking better. Instead of login-trading, it's just a simple goddamn invite.
Read this. Really. It's a good read. Because it shows that, full-stop, Valve isn't just doubling down on their stance to make sure that people can and should be able to share their copies of digital goods as easily as they can physical ones, but they're making it better and easier than ever.
But you know how Steam allowed you to, with either friends or family, link accounts with another person to be able to establish an ability to share game libraries with one another? The general gist of Steam Family Sharing was that, with a limit of five people plus you (six in total) on a limit of ten computers total could share account access to willingly mix your libraries. You could play theirs. They could play yours.
This was a huge boon. It was meant to emulate sharing a physical copy of a game. A way to allow children to play games their parents or siblings had bought without having to fork over double the cash to buy it a second game. But it had some major limitations and drawbacks, and was archaic to use.
If a person did not share the same computer, you had to manually log into that computer to give it and the accounts on it access. This wouldn't be a problem if both accounts were used on the same computer, but many households (and astronomically more family and friend groups) had multiple computers, all used by different people.
If that computer, at any point, was hard reset to any point before the sharing occurred, you lost access. And had to do the whole process again. This was also an issue with computer transfers. The whole kit and kaboodle needed to be redone on upgrades. On top of that, the old computer is now just dead weight that you may not realize you have to manually revoke access to.
Putting your account information on another person's computer opens up security issues. They could, intentionally or accidentally, land themselves on your account if the login information was stored. Which could easily lead to purchases or bans you did not want to happen.
If anyone was, at any point, playing any game on their own library, you had no access to their games. Even if it was a totally different game, you had to wait your turn as if waiting for their computer to be freed up to sit at. (Admittedly this is kind of like the "mom said it's my turn on the xbox" meme, but hey, kinda archaic.)
You could not choose whose library you accessed a game from. Not at all. It always prioritized the first library it gained access from, DLC access and multiplayer be damned. If another friend you were accepting games from had more DLC? Too bad.
And yet here we are. Steam Families Beta fixes EVERYTHING about the above issues. By just going through Settings > Interface > client Beta Participation and clicking onto Steam Families Beta? You get:
No more login sharing.
No more computer links.
You can now choose which person's library you borrowed from.
And you can play any other game from someone's library, even while they're in-game. It just needs to be a different game than what they're playing.
Pick five people. Invite them to your family. And now everyone has access to everyone's library. My goddamn library went from 150-ish to almost a goddamn thousand in ten minutes of setup.
Account sharing and password sharing are dirty words that "lose" billions of dollars. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Max. They aren't game storefronts, but they still allow you to access massive libraries and scream like you murdered their firstborns for daring to share your password with your mother after you moved out.
Microsoft tried pushing to demonize and undercut used games sales and borrowed copies of physical games. Remember the first attempt to reveal the Xbox One? People forget, but these vultures tried to make an always online console that checked to see if you were the account that owned the game, even if you had a physical disc, and prevent access to the disc's contents if you weren't the original downloader.
Valve walked the fuck up.
Valve tapped the mic.
And Valve dropped the fucking thing right onto the ground with one feature's revamp.
About the only issues I can see with this are twofold:
If someone sharing your library gets banned from a game's servers... so do you. No one else in the family does, but the both of you do. This is... rather unpleasant, because banhammers can be dropped quite frequently by mistake. I'd urge Valve to rethink this one, but I see the logic: don't cheat and effectively bite the hand feeding you. Still making me side-eye that, though.
If you leave a family you've joined? You have to wait a YEAR to join a new one. It's to prevent people form jumping ship to another group and screwing over who's in the former one in the process, but a YEAR? OUCH.
Problems aside, though... it's probably the biggest fucking power move I have ever seen a media distributor make in the current economic climate. It's the kind of thing that would let so many new games be available in a way that's easier than ever. Just a few clicks to send or accept an invite, and bam. Permanent access to dozens or even hundreds of new games with so much more freedom than earlier drafts of the system.
It's the kind of thing that slaps you in the face with positivity after so many Ls from the games and media industries. And I'm all the fuck for a W like this.
9K notes
·
View notes