#the game gets so much more interesting

[the1trueanon]

Idea 1: Vanessa quits her job

This idea is based on my interpretation that the Vanessa we see in Security Breach isn't really her; it's Vanny controlling her. Vanessa's consciousness is there, but all that she can do is just watch, like viewing your own life through an old television.

So after the 3-star ending, Vanessa would be left with a job that requires skills that "she" technically never had. She can't just pull up Vannys memories (which i have her being able to do because extra pain :D) because there are no memories of how to do that job, a final "f*ck you :D" to Vanessa from Vanny before she left.

(I feel this needs a bit more of an explanation. Vanny had an instinctive knowledge of how to use any electronic device, courtesy of Glitchtrap/Afton. This meant that she never had to read any instructions for any of the surveilance equipment that she used on the job. She also never looked down at keyboards when she typed the passwords needed to access the security computers sinceVanny had all the passwords to herself. All this means is that when Vanessa looks back at these memories, they are effectively useless.)

So now all Vanessa has left are her own memories of watching herself push random buttons that do random things. It would be like trying to learn how to fly a plane solely by watching someone else do it.

Vanessa also realizes that she'd have to still assist lost children after hours, a thought that truly scares her. It's not because she doesn't like children, no. In fact, I believe Vanessa used to work really well with children due to her former position as a video game tester/coder. This might not make much sense, but is elaborated upon in idea 2.

It is also stated in the game in one of the logs that you can find that she was not recommended for a position as a security guard, so it just makes sense for her to leave afer being freed.

So she would put in her 2 weeks notice, but not before working out some special deal with the plex that allows her and Greg the gremlin of chaos to visit the pizzaplex whenever they want and for any length of time.

As for what job she would try to go back to? It would be her old job of beta testing and coding. She was evidently very good at it based on those cut AR emails. It might sound like tempting fate, but I think that Vanessa would be a heck of a lot more careful this time if she was put back on the VR project. That assumes that the project is still even active.

That way she can make sure that what happened to her, never happens to anyone again.

YES!!! THE RETURN OF GAMER GIRL NESSA!!!

I agree though, I don't think Vanessa would stay at the Plex for long after all of that. I think at this point, depending on how long she's been there under Afton's control, she might have some qualifications now, but definitely not enough to keep going as head of security.

I also just..... don't think it's a job she would actually like. I really feel like Vanessa was supposed to be a lot different, personality-wise. Especially when you think about how she is described (sort of) to act in the AR lore emails. A job as head security isn't just out of her work ability, it doesn't really fit her.

However, while I agree that Nessa would likely go back to game development/testing, I'm not so sure she'd be able to work on the VR project anymore. It's likely that it's out of beta -- Glitchtrap still stowed away, now in every copy -- and is out in the world. Both because it makes sense to me in the timelines between VR, AR, and Security Breach. I don't think Nessa quit testing on the VR game, I more feel that she completed it, either under Afton's control or of her own validation to keep Afton from taking over and doing anything worse (because we love that internal struggle of "do bad things or let the thing that could control you do worse" >:D), and then just never took on another game, instead being forced to take head security position at the Plex.

I do totally agree that she remembers what Vanny did :) Girl's gotta get her new dose of trauma from somewhere XD

[tea-n-ink]

Homesickness is where the heart is

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[hildegardladyofbones]

One of the best things about Disco Elysium by far is that it does not fear ugly women. The world is full of ugly men, but ugly women are so hard to come by.

[daily-sifloop]

Day 44: Little Goody Two Shoes (game by AstralShift) AU

Spoilers for Ending No. 1 - Moira under cut

[vaggieslefteye]

ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴄʜᴏᴏꜱᴇ ↳ anonymous asked: HUSK and ALASTOR or angel and valentino?

[syl-stormblessed]

everyone loves talking about the batshit worldbuilding in WoT but I feel like everybody tends to overlook the Vaguely Evil Elves From Another Dimension that have their own officially licensed chutes and ladders-esque board game that you Cannot Ever Win

[nydescynt]

Thematic Analysis of Hades II: Why You Can Never Go Home

(At some point I might make a video on this, but for now sharing my thoughts via textpost. Spoilers ahead!)

So the text of the story of Hades and Hades 2 are Zagreus breaking out of the House, and Melinoë breaking in.

But the wild thing (and the reason Hades 2 is much more interesting to me) is that both games actually have almost inverted themes from that text. Zagreus is intent on uniting a household; Melinoë is discovering the home she's fought to return to is rotten to the core.

Zagreus, despite his entire textual goal being to leave his home and family, is narratively & thematically working to bring the family and household together. His mother comes back and is reunited not just with him but her husband, mother, and entire extended family. Achilles and Patrocles, Orpheus and Eurydice, Asterion and Theseus: Hades is a story of people metaphorically coming home and making peace with where they are (Sisyphus, Thanatos, Orpheus). Everyone basically gets a happy ending, credits roll, problems all resolved or en route to be solved. Everyone is home.

(Important to note: we never see a human in the first game. We see shades, and gods, and monsters, and the closest you get to a mortal living thing is the satyrs. This is a story concerned with the realm of the gods.)

In contrast, Melinoë has no home - besides being estranged from her childhood home, she literally lives in a tent. In case the theme was too subtle, presumably.

Now, she has been fighting her entire life to become powerful enough to return home and reclaim her family - that seems Zagreus-adjacent on its face. However, there isn't a home to return to- Hades is in shackles, the rest of her family trapped in time. At this point in Early Access, on both a metatextual & diegetic level she quite literally can neither make it to Mt Olympus or into Zagreus' room - she cannot go home, she cannot meet her family.

Consider the others: Odysseus' presence seems to tie into the idea of a long journey home, but this is an Odysseus who lived and died and now has other (inhuman) priorities. He loves them, but has no interest in reuniting with Penelope and Telemachus at this point. Nemesis dislikes her siblings, and is more concerned with the equal application of "justice" than whether it has any reforming effect. Narcissus and Echo eventually talk and part more amicably, but that's the best that can be said about their relationship.

Hecate refuses to be called Melinoë's mother: she will not distract from the "true" family that Melinoë has no memory of ever meeting.

Instead of Ares and Dionysus (enjoyers of chaos and least affected by the toxicity of the family in Hades 1) we have Hestia and Hephaestaus- a goddess who helped murder her father and a god constantly belittled by his own family. Their tense and frequently bitter interactions with the other Olympians are evocative of the central theme being explored: what if there isn't a home to go back to? What if your family is unforgivable? (What if you want to forgive them anyways? What if you need to?)

This theme is why Arachne is in the game, and Athena is not: likeable, first-helper-of-Zagreus Athena turned Arachne into a spider out of petty anger. How do you reconcile that?

Moros (lovely, kind Moros, who gushes at Odysseus like a fanboy) and his sisters the Fates did horrible things to mortals out of boredom. The same mortals whose bodies you can see stacked up like cordwood in Ephyra, who you repeatedly claim you are fighting to protect from Chronos. Moros can neither confirm nor deny that the current events could have been set in motion by the Fates. How do you reconcile that?

Polyphemus raises sheep. He genuinely loves and cares for them, is protective of them. He also eats them, and is confused when Melinoë implies a contradiction.

How can you love someone and be willing to kill them? For survival? For fleeting satisfaction? For vengeance?

Is Chronos' willingness to eat his children so morally heinous that it makes him worse than every cruelty the gods have wrought? Worse for who?

[dyketubbo]

ik some people dont like considering the fact that minecraft is a game into their interpretation of lore but tbh i really like lore that acknowledges that their lives adhere to video game mechanics and thats a part of why i like that tubbo doesnt shy away from including his knowledge of game mechanics in his roleplay. it adds to his character and story and tubbos knowledge of how the game works directly translates to his character being extremely intelligent and skilled

and i think a big part of why people dont like acknowledging that tubbo isnt fail rping by using the game mechanics to his advantage is because they dont like admitting that hes intelligent. they dont like him being more than just the dumb bee boy. they dont like him being able to get a one up on their faves even though their faves are using game mechanics to their advantage too, hell because their faves are doing it too.

using game mechanics to his advantage isnt fail rp. being intelligent and skilled in his own way isnt fail rp. the admins keep him in line when they need to and when they dont they let him do his thing because no matter how many people get upset about it, tubbos knowledge of how the game works is fun and its cool to see.

a good roleplayer knows how to use the medium to their advantage. tubbo isnt failing rp or breaking the no metagaming rules in any way that actually ruins anyone elses enjoyment. hes just using the medium to his advantage. minecraft is a video game and there are literally plot points that depend on acknowledging that. tubbo is intelligent and on top of that he is a good roleplayer and its fine that he roleplays in a different way than some other ccs do because that makes him interesting. if you dont like it then theres a very easy solution: dont watch him

[yuri-is-online]

I'm asking this question because I find it an interesting topic. It relates to the criticism the Tokyo Debunker MC receives.

It's not just TD's MC—it's a common theme in otome and gacha games. Genderless MCs in games like *Obey Me!* and *Twisted Wonderland* face less criticism than female MCs. Even though the genderless MCs get some hate, it’s nowhere near the backlash female MCs receive. For instance, *Twisted Wonderland* had debates about a female MC being unsuitable for an all-boys school, despite the presence of monsters and robots. This debate ended with a female MC in the *Savanaclaw* manga.

Another example is *Tears of Themis*, where the female MC is well-received in my opinion due to her having a character. I am very happy that she isn’t a self insert and people seem to agree.

In contrast, female self-insert MCs like TD's MC and *Love and Deep Space*'s MC get a lot of hate for what seems like trivial reasons. TD's MC is often criticized for being ordinary, while LADS's MC, who is strong and brave, also faces backlash, with some claiming she's rude despite evidence to the contrary.

In conclusion.

woman mc in this day of age can’t have flaws now….wait no they can’t be prefect either! As then they are Mary sue! What do you mean that LI are grey sue as well? No that not true Leo having a backstory would justify his actions don’t you get it? What do you mean we should hold the male characters as same standard? Jin treating mc as a servant is her fault as she didn’t say no…..😐 

... so I have two lines of thought about this particular topic, it is something I have thought about for a while because I am working on my own game/games and pay a lot of attention to what people think.

It isn't personality people like it is competence

The love and deepspace MC and Rosa from tears of themis actually have very similar personalities. They are bad at/hate studying. They really love food. They both are sort of dorks and known for being kind. What people like about them isn't any of those things, what they like is that both of them are adult women who you can believe live on their own. They actually have skills related to their jobs, you can believe Rosa is a lawyer and that MC is a hunter, the love interests aren't the only competent people in the narrative. I think this can sort of relate to the target audience for both of these games being working women, but that's for a different post. Right now I really want to focus on that concept of competence: the two other otomes I really love and want to bring up are Amnesia: Memories and Hakuoki. The Amnesia MC makes a lot of really stupid decisions, but as the game title gives away she has amnesia. There is an underlying explanation for why she's a bit dim so I don't see too many complaints about her personality (outside of Toma's route but that is a different story) because you don't exactly expect her to be competent. The same goes for Hakuoki's MC whose name escapes me at the moment, she is the daughter of a doctor so she is never made out to be incompetent in medical matters, but she isn't the best fighter. And she doesn't need to be that's the male love interest's role in this particular story.

The problem with MCs like our dear Luna? I believe you said her default name is, in Tokyo Debunker is that we don't exactly have anything she is stated to be good at beyond boosting Stigmas. The various ikmen games get around this by giving their MCs a job, but we don't have that for Luna so we don't have anything to show some backbone or character so people read her as being a bit of a doormat. Like I have said numerous times before, I don't mind this and think that so long as they keep allowing us to see her thoughts this the writing will be good. A relatively easy fix to this could have been to make her someone who really loves music and constantly talks about it, she was going to a concert at the start of the game so that little bit of character would go a long way for her to be more of a human for people to project themselves onto. Generally speaking, when writing an MC, it is perfectly acceptable to give them certain personality traits and a history. But if you do that you need to make sure the narrative respects that interest and does not use it as an excuse to make the male lead look cooler.

Gender Neutral MCs

*sigh* so you bring up Twisted Wonderland and I uh... have some experience with that fandom! And I have observed the gender wars over Yuu with a weary heart. I genuinely could not care any less about how people identify or the type of o.c.s they make, but some people really really care and if I am honest I find that a bit disturbing. It honestly makes me sad to see fanfic, which used to be a really accepting space, fight over writing... well anything really. m/m blogs screaming about how they don't want fem aligned reading their things, f/f blogs screaming about men, the f/m fic writers feeling the need to defend themselves writing for a female reader- doesn't that exhaust you? Why do you care so much? I do not have the energy to care about people writing fanfic I am not interested in reading, is this because I am anemic or have I managed to be normal about one singular thing?

My personal theory is that the commodification of fanfic and fandom has made people think there is something fundamentally wrong with properties that are marketed towards people who are not them. The reaction to Love and Deepspace not having a male MC option sort of cemented that for me, there is nothing wrong with wanting a game where you can be a man or non-binary and date anime boys. There is also nothing wrong with writing m/m fanfic for a property like lds, or wishing you could play as a man in it. I think there is a genuine market gap in good games for people who aren't fem aligned, but you do not get good games by harassing people or implying they suck for wanting games where you can play as a woman. You get that by financially supporting projects aimed at you! There is a blog I follow on here called @amaregamesdb. They post a bulletin of projects, both vn and if, with an emphasis on making people aware of projects that aren't simply otome (ie male love interests with a female protagonist.) I think the people who run it are also the people who coined the term "amare game" to use for games where the MC isn't necessarily female. They also ran a blog to help people like me learn how to code if/vns so I am very grateful for them, so please do give them your support.

I write for a gender neutral reader because I wanted to write interactive fiction and felt like I needed to practice doing so. I have continued to do because honestly? I really enjoy it. I love seeing how many different people identify with my writing and are moved by it. There are some projects I want to do in the future (original works, not fanfic) that I probably will lock the MC to female for, but I want to continue providing gn fic for people for as long as I write. And original projects too! I have two in particular I am working on behind the scenes. The solution to the problems like "what gender is yuu really," if you will permit me to preach for a second, is to not care. Yana said Yuu was meant to be you, and dear reader I don't actually know who you are! So you can be whoever it is you wish to be in your heart and I will make room for you to sit next to me. I'll even make tea (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

[maladaptivedaydreamsx]

not me immediately getting jude from this

who did you guys get? 👀

[littlebittyhollowbugs]

Time to think about how alone the pale king was when he died. He had lost everything. His kingdom yes, but even his closest relationships.

His trusted friends, who became dreamers, gave up their lives and all for a hopeless cause. His wife was driven away by her guilt and her grief. His child who he had learned to love, he sacrificed for nothing.

Almost every character that we know of who had a personal relationship with PK had either been sacrificed or had left him.

And of course all of it was his own doing. (At least largely his own doing.)

Still he sat completely alone in that throne room when he died there.

[rosietrace]

Okok I know we all hate Tobias but I wouldn't mind if JLB ever decided to write a book about his life

[hellspawnmotel]

terranigma, a cool game

[manasurge]

Just a bit of lore relevant vent art (with terrible proportions bc apparently I mess that up horribly when I'm tired ugh. Watch me regret posting this tomorrow. The head size is already driving me mad bc it's too big, and I can feel myself wanting to abort this mission already) of Mourynn just, lying down on top of one of those large elevated Pale Tree roots far above the Grove (and far away from everyone else), and during the time between the early years and before the Personal story. Caithe is gone (Destiny's Edge), Wynne is gone (bc well, y'know...), even Faolain is gone (bc of Caithe in DE), and she's just feeling miserable, lost, and alone. (Her hair is in between her sapling hair and the Zhaitan hair, so it's grown out a bit bc she's depressed, and she's meant to be in the new outfit she designed, but I'm in the process of redesigning it a bit, so I've made a few tentative changes for now. Her collar is now just an extension of her clavicle leaves which can be put up like a collar, or can be draped down over her shoulders or back)

[ganondoodle]

kind of expected that the ability breakdown wouldnt get that much traction (especially on twitter bc if it doesnt do well in the first few hours it might as well be dead) but what i didnt need to wake up to was looking at my twitter notifications and thinking there was a long comment on it at first but then i read it and it turned out to be some guy having dug up one of my old totk tweets where i talked about how zelda was treated-

and if a quote retweet with a thread attached already starts with "this entitled brat didnt understand that zelda was being a history nerd by being in the past and getting to experience it herself" with two screenshots attached of the end of totk with zelda staring at the cam all uwu (which has ??? to do with their point??) i dont even want to know what else was in that thread

if thats how the majority of the fandom is then im even less surprised that nintendy doesnt even have to try to write anything good :I

ah yes, i am a game nerd, and by putting me in a game where i stand around doing puppy dog eyes while being shoved around by NPCs is me being a game nerd OBVIOSULY