#wow its a whole new game

[staticpoison]

Having done embrace!durge on my first playthrough, doing a normal Tav run is kinda surreal. There's so much content. Who are all you people?? You have a storyline? I killed you in cold blood cause I thought it would be fun, but I actually love you??

[mekatrio]

hmmm.

[seventh-district]

so uh. that 2.2 Special Program, huh

[astrxealis]

hiii :333 i think i am alive !! ( small update in da tags )

[vaugarde]

not to complain abt a thing every pokemon fan and their mom has complained about but man i just realized another reason why not putting the battle frontier in oras was a failure of a decision- because the next game, sumo, and its postgame kinda hinges on you already knowing who anabel is, and i think a good chunk of the fandom either didnt know or didnt recognize her at all because the last time she appeared was in the deep postgame a game that had come out nearly a decade before. so having the battle frontier, or at least the frontier brains, in oras would have reminded the audience and told new fans who anabel was and given us a reason to care about her

[toastsnaffler]

every time i experience attraction im like wow guess im attracted to ppl on a person by person basis bc there is no possible connection I can make between any of these ppl! and a couple months later I'll realise ohhh. I have a TYPE type.

[wp100]

picked up the pokemon anime again. gonna try and finish it as soon as i can.

i dont want to. i have one season left with ash then i might call it an... anime. i miiiiight give the new one a go, but there's no ash, so what's the point

[hiddenbeks]

so many thoughts abt how schewpid the jedi council is in kotor but also not sure if i should write abt any of them before i finish the game because it's entirely possible that i'm still missing some critical information,

[gifti3]

i finally watched the pilot for the amazing digital circus

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[mlkmart]

sometimes all i need to do for my hfw gameplay to feel fresh to put aloy in a new silly lil outfit and face paint and its like a whole new game

[oddinry]

TLOU HBO IS SO FUCKGIN GOOD ARE U KIDDING .

[ssparksflyy]

what's he got that i don't? 𝜗𝜚 ⊹ ‧₊˚

pairing percy jackson x fem!reader summary based off this request!! an i actually love this request sm 😋 in jealous percy we trust

PERCY sighed dramatically as he plopped himself down on his bed, scooting up to put his head in your lap. he'd just gotten back from a meeting with chiron about helping out with teaching new campers how to handle swords and was quite frankly, exhausted. he'd spent his whole day running around, going from lesson to lesson, already helping out with all sorts of things. he hadn't seen you since breakfast and desperately needed to feel you close after his hectic day. walking into his cabin to see you sitting in his bed reading made him feel like maybe the gods didn't hate him and they knew how to answer his prayers after all.

"long day?" you asked, moving one of your hands down to his hair and ran your fingers through it while the other continued to hold up your book.

"mhm" he hummed in response.

"what'd you do?" you followed up.

"teach, teach some more, help out, then go teach again" he said, "i didn't even ask to be a teacher."

"you didn't ask for a lot of things, just another thing to add to the list babe. im sure the kids who need help greatly appreciate you and your teaching"

"i guess"

you sat in silence for a minute, continuing to play with percy's hair and read. he would've been fine staying like that and maybe even wouldve ended up falling asleep in your lap, but he had hardly spent any time with you today. he wanted to talk to you more and kiss your lips and hug you, but your nose was stuck in that stupid book he didn't even understand.

"whatcha reading?" he asked and lifted his head up, moving it to rest his chin on your stomach.

"the hunger games" you replied.

he mumbled a quick 'okay' and kept his head on your stomach, looking up at you and watching as you read.

as much as percy loved quiet moments like this, it was the opposite of what he wanted. he knew you enjoyed reading, and now was one of the few opportunities you got to read in peace, but he hadn't seen you in hours and (even though he wouldnt admit it) was in desperate need for your attention. when he saw you smile at something in your book, he decided to try for a conversation again.

"whatcha smilin' at?"

you looked away from your book, "nothin. just this guy."

he got up and furrowed his brow, "what guy?"

"he's not real, percy."

"don't matter, what guy is making my girl smile like that?"

you rolled your eyes, "a guy made of ink and imaginations. that's who."

"lemme see" he said, holding out his hand for you to hand him the book.

you handed him the book and watched as he squinted his eyes, trying to read it.

"i can't read."

"i know."

"what's it say?"

he handed you the book back, ""i don’t think it’s going to work out. winning . . . won’t help in my case," says peeta. "why ever not?" says caesar, mystified. peeta blushes beet red and stammers out. "because . . .because . . . she came here with me.""

percy pauses for a second. "you were smiling at that? what does it even mean?"

"see! you dont get it, it's nothing." you said, trying to brush it off.

"mmm i think its something" he said. he already had your attention away from reading your book, now it was just a matter of keeping it up.

"you wanna know? fine." you huffed, "im smiling because i remember when i read this for the first time and i was freaking out because katniss and peeta hardly even talk in this part of the book, and he just reveals that he's got a crush on her, but you don't know that he's actually faking it - but at the same time he's not - because it's set in katniss' perspective, so you're left all 'what was that?! what does he mean!!!' and it becomes something that peeta does again later cause he's smart and knows what cards to play in order for people to like him!!"

he looked at you in surprise, "oh- wow, sorry." he apologized, taking your hands in his, "so is peeta your favorite character?"

you knew you could just give him a simple yes and be over with the whole thing, but if he wanted the truth, then the truth is what he would get.

"yea, he really is. he's just the perfect guy" you said smugly, opening your book back up and pretending to start reading again.

"pfff- yea right! what happened to imaginations and ink?" he said. you could hear the slightest bit of jealousy in his voice and decided to keep going.

"doesnt take away the fact that he's perfect" you said as a mattter-of-factly.

"oh yea? well i think he's a fake nobody."

"fake nobody or not, he's still really smart, strong, an artist, a great baker, handsome in the movies-"

"josh hutcherson is not handsome."

"im gonna act like you didn't just say that." you said, realizing this was going the way you wanted it to, "but gods, did i mention how good of a boyfriend he is? i mean the way he cared for katniss?? hes literally everything a girl could ask fo-"

"hey you know im your boyfriend, not him, right?" percy asked, his tone sounding unsure and annoyed.

you stopped there and put your book down. you didn't think he'd actually be bothered by you talking about a fictional guy. he was never really the jealous type, had he actually taken it seriously?

"perce... are you.. jealous?" you asked in disbelief.

he gave you an offended look that you could tell was fake, "what?! no! course not! why would i be jealous of some fake baker dude??"

you couldnt help but laugh as he continued to try and defend himself from your 'wild' and 'indecorous' 'accusations'.

"i wasnt accusing you of anything! just asking!!" you said through your fit of giggles.

"yea you were! i feel very attacked right now, i though this was supposed to be a safe space!!" you only laughed more.

once you managed to get yourself to stop laughing, you moved closer to percy and pressed a kiss on his cheek. "i was just joking, you know that right?"

he mumbled a quick 'yea' while moving over to your side so he could put his arm around you and pull you into his chest. he left a kiss ontop of your head as you got comfortable in his embrace, putting your book on his nightstand.

percy had gotten his chance to talk to you, and now was able to hold you close, just like he wanted. yes it took listening to you ramble about some other (fake) guy, but who cares!! before finally closing his eyes and falling under hypnos' spell, he only had one more question about the book you were reading.

"by the way, who's finnick odair?"

"OHMYGOD, SO-"

[teriri-sayes]

Reactions to The Incomprehensible's Chapter 330

New title - 42. Me?

Brief summary: Cale's allies waited for news of DHB. Raon introduces egg Eden to everyone. Cale explains to his allies about the game world, Eden's situation, and his plate.

==========

Today had lots of funny moments. First up was Eruhaben. He was thinking about how he always treated DHB as a kid even though DHB was the third oldest among Cale's allies. So Eruhaben decided that from now on, he should now treat DHB as an adult and an equal...

Imagine his shock when he meets DHB as... a dragon egg. 🤣🤣🤣 Eruhaben stood there for a long time, dumbfounded. 🤣🤣🤣

Sheritt was relieved to hear that DHB was saved, though we did not get to see her reaction upon meeting egg Eden. Meanwhile, the two kittens treated Eden as their new youngest. 🥰🥰🥰

And the way Raon introduced egg Eden Miru to everyone was like this Lion King scene:

Eden was so embarrassed at all the attention and affection he was receiving that the egg was shaking from embarrassment. 😂

When Cale explained about the game world, On and CH snitched on what Cale had been doing. 🤣🤣🤣

Cale: explains to everyone about the game world Eru: Wait. More than that-... Are you saying that you're called the Worst in the game? Cale: Umm... I didn't say that On: Yes, he's the Worst. HD: Interesting. I'll guard this place. I don't understand what you guys are talking about anyway. On and CH: He also has angel blood mixed in. Lock: Wow, he's an angel? CH: He also has demon blood mixed in. Currently, Cale-nim is the boss of the 3rd and 7th Evils among the Eight Evils. This will be of great help when fighting enemies in New World in the future. Eru: Sigh. Well, increasing your work is a talent too. Cale: feels wronged No, I didn't mean to? Cale: Really! It just happened on its own even when I stayed still, okay? Of course, I threatened the Vicious Dark Bear to get the 7th Evil. But the rest just happened without me knowing! Eru: Pfft. Narrator: Eruhaben didn't believe a single word Cale said. Cale felt wronged.

"Increasing your work is a talent too." 😂😂😂 Eruhaben stabbing Cale where it hurts. 😂😂😂 And Cale feeling wronged because "it just happened without him intending to"... 🤣🤣🤣 Cale, how can you achieve slacker life if you have a talent for increasing work? 😂😂😂

Lastly was Cale explaining on what happened to his plate... 🤣🤣🤣

Cale: I have no plate anymore. The heart and glutton inside me ate the plate full of dust. Of course, the life force of the world made this process easier. Eru: …Your heart ate it? Cale: *excitedly explains how his plate turned to dust and scattered into his blood, making his body stronger. Also how he will be fine as long as his heart was okay and his blood was flowing fine* Cale: You could say that it’s like my whole body has become the plate. Isn't that a wonderful thing? Narrator: Cale couldn't help but laugh. Cale: Hahahaha! Narrator: Then Cale laughed and realized. Cale: Hahaha…haha…ha… Narrator: That he was the only one laughing. For some reason, his allies's expressions were vicious. Cale sipped his lemon tea cautiously. And he muttered timidly. Cale: Umm, I got stronger.

Cale, I think you need to explain first about your ancient powers. I'm sure they're confused about your "heart" and "the glutton inside me" eating your plate... 😂😂😂

Then casually explaining that your plate broke so badly it turned to dust. Mila turned pale and had to be supported by Dodori. Eruhaben clenched his fist. And Rasheel looked like he was about to cry as he questioned why Cale was still alive then. 😂😂😂

Cale laughing out loud and stopping when he realized that everyone was looking at him viciously afterwards... 🤣🤣🤣 You'll be fine as long as your heart was okay and your blood was flowing? Who's the one who once stabbed his heart? Who's the one who constantly bled? You think everyone will be relieved to hear that "you'll be fine"? 🤣🤣🤣

Ending Remarks It seems the Aipotu arc is nearing its end. The glutton priestess eating Cale's plate though... Crybaby, why are you saying she's scary when you ate it too? Anyway, next chapter will be about Alberu's call to Cale. I can already imagine him saying "You're driving me nuts" once he hears what Cale had been up to. 😂😂😂

[officialdaydreamer00]

Dear Star Child, if this letter could see it's way to Idia Shroud, I would be most grateful. If you could get the gummy sharks to Idia I would be very happy, but the rest of the sweets are for you ^w^

Dear Idia Shroud,

Wow, it has been a while since I've written a letter that's not for school. Nvm, I have never written a letter outside of school; guess I'm finally putting that knowledge to use… Oh where to to begin, I'm rlly bad at doing the whole social thing yet if you would let me I'd be yapping on for eternity but luckily this is a letter and I have to condense it.

Well, Happy New Year! How the sale going? From what I can see into your world it looks amazing especially Ortho's gear. I'm always so impressed that someone was able to make a robotic body that ranged in movement-- here it feels like we just barely started to touch on robotics here, yet you are designing outfits for Ortho like it's nothing. Honest question, did you bless me with luck for the gacha or something did you know I fell like right when the clock hit midnight or someth, but srsly getting three SSRs without even indenting on getting them is something? I had to get a blessing from you or something. My irl would say that is a blessing from you… they have said "At this point I'm scared your obsession with Idia will transport you into the game" well I do wi Imagine if that happened? I don't even know what I would do? I think I would miss my friends but idk if they would miss me.

ANYWAYS, thats sad, moving on. I could have actually missed all of this I could have been boring and sad and still stuck on my utdr phase. Though it wouldn't be too bad Undertale and Deltarune still have th- WAIT YOU ARE A PURE SOUL-- FREE FROM UNDERTALE SPOILERS. Well I know whats happening if I ever get isekai'd. Gosh I would love to actually sit beside you and watch you play games. It's almost fascinating watching someone who is good at games play… Ehe.. I rlly don't know how to end this? Thx for existing please continue to do that.

P.S. Rlly srry for an typos, I wrote this at like 3 am cause I woke up n couldn't go back to sleep.

~ Your moonlight

(HELP ITS 4:30)

oh I LOVE THE BLUE THEME!! had a bit of oopsie delivering this letter but it's all good!! ( ^-^)/ *

Hey Moonlight.

Ugh nvm that sounds cringe please ignore that-- You know I'm not good with this thing either, so I'm gonna ramble if you don't mind. (I hope you don't or it'd be so embarrasing hhhhhhh)

I guess because of our worlds' differences that you'd find Ortho's gears impressive. I mean, I still do, and he's my brother now, he's gotta have the best tech to accomodate his needs. Your world sounds lowkey slow if they haven't even scratched the basics of robotics yet. Still I gotta hand it to them for making a kinda gateway connecting our worlds together.

YOU GOT? THREE?? SSR CARDS OF ME??? IS THAT WHY I KEPT FAILING GACHA EVENTS?? BC MY LUCK WENT TO YOU???? /j but congrats ig. Hope my cards been helping you through the game(?) By the Sevens, that is so weird knowing that I'm just a game character in your world.

But anywho, ignoring that blatant spoiler of fandoms I've never heard of before, for some reasons, I don't exactly mind having someone like you playing games with me beside Ortho. Maybe it'd be easier to breathe than going out and socialise with normies ugh.

Help how do I end a letter Happy New Year, may you be blessed with luck through the gacha system ig.

Idia Shroud

tags: @identity-theft-101 @twistwonderlanddevotee @ameleii @vioisgoinginsane @cave-of-jade

remember to reblog if you enjoy my works!! ^-^

[mekatrio]

cuz at first ajaa wasnt even meant to exist it was just meant to be the trilogy and thats it, then while theyre porting it over to the nintendo ds capcom gives them the green light to go nuts with a bonus pseudo-dlc case and By God Do They, making the longest case yet of RFTA with fully animated 3d cutscenes + an incredibly convoluted plot that makes the most out of aa1's 3 day trial system + fully modelled 3d rotational evidence, hitting heavy themes of police corruption and evidence forgery and whatnot like they went INSANE, cuz this was supposed to be IT. this was supposed to be ace attorneys big finale and farewell but SIKE oh my god the actual Ministry Of Justice has knocked on capcoms door and told them hey can you make some propaganda for us. so now the aa team has to make propaganda for them. right after burning themselves the fuck out from creating rfta. all that time spent on rfta which couldve been development time for ajaa.... too late. cant be taken back. apollo justice is designed in less than a week and theyre marketing this game while the team is still making it, takumi crazed madman that he is decides to not rely on old characters which while that is an artistic slay, sets up the stage for a marketing failure, and a new artistic team of infinite ambition goes nuts with creating derangedly detailed animations

⬆️ like oh my god are you insane. thank you so much BUT ARE YOU INSANE? all while still making 3d renders of evidence and random 3d animations and it looks so awesome BUT THERES NOT ENOUGH TIME, 3 wonderful cases are made but 4-4 falls on its face. 6 hours long instead of the usual 10 and only one cross-examination in the final trial and 2 whole main characters with no backstory like its bad. its going to be bad. but its too late. the most incomplete ace attorney game has to be rushed out of the gates and the sales are made But The Reception Is Bad. Real Bad. 2000s hater gamer crowds were the first of its kind, being massively fuelled by the internet, haters back then could sink their teeth deep into a company, which is what got nintendo scrambling away from their wind waker art direction to appease the gamers w twilight princess. so similarly when the hate for ajaa came on, cuz whattt phoenix disbarred and no 😤 old characters 😤😤, capcom scrambled to appease the masses. but oh oh whats this? takumi says 'yeahhhh Nah' and says he wants to make a game about his dog. OK. cant persuade him away from that. might as well let some new blood handle the franchise in takumi's place then, but for The Love Of God do not make an ajaa followup. the gamers will kill us. and so the aai duology was born....... cool........ first one's reception was so bad that localization plans were dropped entirely for the sequel. wow. takumi is fresh off from ghost trick but fucking what, 5 years has passed now, and the new hot console is the nintendo THREE ds. 3ds. wowwww. fucking... PROFESSOR LAYTON kidnaps takumi to make plvpwaa and ajaa continues to be left in the dust. fucking nobody wants him. poor orphaned kitten left in the street. all while the trilogy gets 9584948 million adaptations. and yamazaki twiddles his thumbs thinking abt making aai3 but after thinking it over hes like yeah ill try making aa5. capcom lets him and.......... its over........ they tell him sure go for it But Do Not Follow Up On Apollo Everyone Hates Him please make phoenix the protag. a recipe for disaster. and a disaster aa5 is. juggling THREE protags a complete mess and they do a popularity poll and wow would u look at who came first, fucking APOLLO. JUSTICEEEEEEE. its almost like.... gamers opinions..... are not valuable in the long run.. and popular opinion has never signified artistic understanding.... aa6 comes chugging along and yamazaki addicted to racism cranks out something even worse. both aa56 makes the sales it needs but mindless fanservice can only get u so far... its been nearly 10 years since the ajaa 'trilogy' titles released and the general consensus is that Aaja Was Good and aa56 Not So Much but what can you do now? heres the apollo justice trilogy please buy it and deeply lower ur expectations for coherent and cohesive narratives which have basis in reality thank u. bc u will not be finding that here. ajaa never stood a chance.. they werent doomed by the narrative. its worse. they were doomed by STUPID FUCKING GAMERS AND STUPID EXECUTIVE DECISIONS 😭😭😭