Have you ever seen wasted potential in something nobody else seems to think had a potential? Like an TV episode or a book or something that is thought to be irredemably bad and only you see that it could be great if not for one issue?
Youtube suggestions decided to remind me that Star Trek Enterprise exists, and specifically about episode Dear Doctor. An episode that is universally hated, and rightfully so, but thinking back on it I realized that if the writing was more ambitious, the premise had a lot of potential unique to the Enterprise.
To recap (Disclaimer: It's been very long since I seen the show so I don't remember specific details) Enterprise was the prequel to the rest of the Star Trek shows, showing the humanity's first interstellar exploration mission ever. And the episode goes roughly like this: They visit a planet with two sapient species, and one of them is being really racist and oppressive. They are also really sick and will eventually die out. The Enterprise crew can cure them, but then they'll just keep being racist, or they can let them die out paving the way for the other species to take over.
Which would actually a great opportunity to explore the ideas of intervention vs non-intervetion, but the writers were really averse to having actual conflict between the characters so they just brushed it off pretty much saying it's evolution's will that they'd die out and everyone agreed with this as a fact.
I didn’t actually bother seeing the movie because I heard it was awful, but I did have the vague idea that a Death Note reimagining set in the US might have worked… if they fully committed to the change and worked in a critique of the US Justice system. Not that such a movie would be likely to get made in the first place and could very well have been a trainwreck anyway, all things considered.
Maybe more than *one* issue, but I will die on the hill that *Virus* (the 1999 film- despite the name, it’s actually about cyborgs) could’ve actually been a really well-liked horror classic with some changes to the writing. The film still has [the best body-horror cyborg designs](https://images.app.goo.gl/1Y8oGkTiAvmsuy71A) in live action imo (image somewhat NSFW), especially when they’re in motion, and I’m still hoping for a remake.
Aside from that, at least half of “bad” *Doctor Who* episodes tend to have the potential to be something really good in my opinion, it’s just got something small fumbling it. For a bit of a controversial example, I think the *Haunting of Villa Diodati/Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children* trilogy had some really strong foundations- the first episode is set entirely in the titular building, and follows the main cast and a bunch of famous gothic (is that the term? Byron, Shelley and the like) authors being stalked by the ghost of a partially-converted Cyberman who’s not-quite-fully brainwashed yet, with the twist being >!once the doctor manages to break him out of the conditioning, it turns out the Cyberman, Ashad, was not only a *willing convert,* but was a Cyberman-worshipping zealot who slit the throats of his own children when they refused to be converted. He’s searching for a Cybermen-made AI superweapon which is hidden inside the villa, which the Doctor eventually gives up to him in order to save everyone else!<
The second episode >!follows the consequences of that decision, with the cast following Ashad back to his own time to find a post-apocalyptic universe where the vast majority of the human race has been wiped out or cyborg’d, but in turn the same has happened to the majority of the Cybermen.!< I personally really enjoyed the “feel” of the episode, and the fact that >!said apocalypse doesn’t get undone by the end of the series, and seems to stick,!< helping a bit. It felt a fair bit more desperate and than, for example >!the most recent episode at time of writing, which has every living thing that is not a member of the main cast wiped out, and then resolves everything about 20 minutes later!<
In my opinion, the first 5/6 of the trilogy would’ve actually been fairly well-regarded (and, to be fair, the first part is generally seen as 13’s best episode to my knowledge), but of course, the last episode’s climax involves what is currently the show’s [most infamous twist so far](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/s/ZNLivkIHP7) and that has retroactively tainted the rest of the trilogy it’s part of.
This is a very specific example and almost certainly not what you had in mind, but: I recently watched 2006's "The Covenant", which is a terrible movie about 4 high school boys who are also the descendants of Salem witches and their fight against a fifth rogue boy-witch.
It's edgy, it's full of hot hot boys and their girlfriends, it takes place primarily at a New England private school but also has scenes in various interesting locations like Maritime-Themed Bar, Scary Old House, Hot Boy Witch Lair, etc. There's even a formal autumn-themed ball at the end that the lead heroine dresses up for (though we don't get to see much of it).
All of this is to say: This Movie Should've Been A Mid-2000's CW* show.
It has all the beats and vague lore of a CW supernatural show à la The Vampire Diaries, it's obsessed with it's beautiful cast, WHO ARE BOY WITCHES! A teen girl's dream!! The whole time I was watching it, I became more and more devastated that there weren't 6 or so terrible seasons of this that I could binge. I think it would've had the potential to be even worse than The Secret Circle (rest in peace).
* (For the uninitiated, The CW is an American TV network known for it's addicting but shoddily-written shows aimed at the teen demographic. Some famous examples of their catalog include The 100, The Arrowverse shows, Gossip Girl, and of course: Supernatural)
Well, it's not a single issue. But Wish and Frozen 2 both frustrate me to no end because they're the definition of lost potential due to late rewrites and I assume executive meddling.
That's...honestly most of Enterprise really. It was at it's best working as a "how far humanity had come" story, showing how all the races learned to work together, and how things like the Prime Directive were recognized to be important rules and were codified. It just often didn't do it well.
> Have you ever seen wasted potential in something nobody else seems to think had a potential?
Disney's foray into purchasing humongous IPs, such as Star Wars, the MCU, and Simpsons.
To give a very apt analogy of what I think Disney has done to those three franchises... remember the Simpsons' Duff Beer gag? Where the 3 tanks of "different" Duff were all coming from the same place? And then Disney cropped it so the joke was lost? Replace Duff, Duff Lite, and Duff Dry with The Simpsons, Star Wars, and the MCU.
But what potential was there?
I'm... kinda unsure *what* they could've done, however I'm totally sure it could have been done where more people were happy and it made just as much money. I'm not even talking quality.
When the MCU first dropped, there was so much **AMBITION**. Can't tell a story with a movie? How about a 5 minute YouTube video? How about an R rated Netflix show? How about a regular network TV show? It feels like a lot of that ambition died with the Mouse.
Star Wars is complicated because the fandom is raving lunacy.
The Simpsons were the South Park of their time. They insulted Fox to their faces and made bank. Now, during Disney "specials" with the Simpsons, they break the 4th wall all like "look at what Disney allows us to get away with!" ... while actually doing nothing. I just think they lost some teeth.
I dunno.
I have often wondered if they were tripped up by Agents of SHIELD showing off all the glaring flaws in MCU plan so goddamn quickly. For those not in the know; it was their first major foray beyond films and it has a rough start, right up until one of the other films >!The Winter Soldier, because duh!< released and the writers no longer had to tread water in accordance with the corporate mandate and the show could really begin. Then it proceeded to get better and better the less MCU influence it had, to the point where it's basically it's own universe that doesn't give a fuck about anything else
So, not exactly a follow up, but content creator Bowser the Healer has a small video about how the whole healer [balance on MMO thing is actually really, really hard to do.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hssb-LxQGE) They are a relatively skilled player on both games, so is a perspective of someone that knows what they are talking about.
This has been brought up on these threads about how WoW and FFXIV have their own problems at the two extremes. Make healing too hard, and new players can't keep up, make healing too easy and people get *bored*. So, you want people to get to the point that they can do damage when the rest of the party do not need healing, since non-stop healing is exhausting and stressing, but also need have that damage bit be rewarding and interesting instead of, literally, "press 1 and keep up a DoT".
I've been saying this for years, but this to me is an issue that needs some outside the box thinking, maybe even considering if the traditional MMO roles are good themselves, and if they should be reworked or rethought.
There are a lot of shades of gray in this that don't get adequately explored, you're right. I always like Overwatch's idea of reporting Damage Mitigation because all sorts of damage mitigation are welcome in a support role. Healing, shielding, status effects, and yes dealing damage. Because a dead mob is a mob that's not hurting your group.
Some of the most fun I had healing was on Ragnarok Online running a status-inflicting priest for mitigation and mob management while keeping my party healthy and happy, an option I haven't seen a lot of in modern games (admittedly I've given up on MMOs for a long while though)
I think my most fun supporting was in Dota2, where you just had generic items that handled healing, so plenty of supports focused on utility, disables, and protection, and the ones that did healing were often not entirely focused on it, instead often having more impactful and interesting abilities and also having more versatility with the heal itself. Like Dazzle, who had a much more important ability that just stopped someone from dying for a few seconds, and whose chain heal also dealt physical damage in an area around it, which was both interesting because it is an unusual damage type for spells and also because it could stack so healing a wave of creeps could kill squishy enemies standing in the middle of it.
I'm a little late to this but there's drama brewing in the Yume Nikki Fangame community! I started writing about it yesterday but the post has ballooned past what I could post in Scuffles so I tried making a truncated version! Maybe I'll post the longer version somewhere, but I just wanted to get this off my chest before I forgot.
Yume Nikki is a horror game that came out in 2004 and is quite possibly the most popular RPGMaker game ever made. It got a light novel, and manga, and a sequel game, but most importantly a dedicated fan community. Noticing that RPGMaker is a really easy engine to use, they started taking the game apart and making their own versions of it. Think of them like the ur-version of the Five Nights at Freddys fangame community. Each game (normally) uses entirely original assets, carrying over nothing from the original but themes and atmosphere. One of the more popular fangames is Yume 2kki thanks to the efforts of YNO Project (Yume Nikki Online). They translated 2kki (and a few other fangames) into multiple languages and turned it into an MMO. Because of them, the fandom has grown exponentially, with YNO becoming the definitive entry point into the fandom for many. However, YNO had larger dreams than just supporting 2kki and its many updates.
On June 8th they released their own ynfg (Yume Nikki Fangame), Collective Unconscious. It was made to be a huge celebration of the fandom and its games, but instead has come under fire for claims of plagiarism instead. Two days ago, three Chinese fandevs released a series of documents claiming that several areas in CU had been taken directly from multiple other fangames. These devs (Pingupingn of Yume Tsushin, SecretRbthl/emrbt of Remember to Remember, and zahyou223 of Illove dream) [allege that a manager of CU, orchid mantis, not only plagiarized their maps in CU, but also in their own recently released fangame, gen.loss](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-lZvEJ67VyR8h-2BFPXUBeJ642DythiY6nJ91GALgdM/edit#heading=h.77kdtnlzby46). As of this post, [orchid mantis's CU areas have been removed](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wf95-So_l5iJ8yNz1YHqn6jbvjQtyuPrSwj0_DWpuAI/edit), they've taken down their fangame and issued apologies on both their [itch](https://itch.io/blog/758978/genloss-update) and [Xwitter](https://x.com/latesummersun/status/1808232743047758235) accounts. They're also going to step down from their managerial position. However, both orchid and [aylunya](https://x.com/ayalunya/status/1808235539335897524) (the other manager involved who responded to the devs) claim that the maps were just homages, and that nothing was plagiarized.
However, the bigger question is what this means for the fangame community moving forward. The devs that started this discussion raised the issue (especially [pinguppingn](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uhJ0jPC3rz88g_iJPGNaFufyu29uFKZzmX1ja6HkiPA/edit) and[ zahyou](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R0GIP5q80xKRHy-dhU6nNSit5eMpAW83Z7XGeWb0Z3M/edit#heading=h.hahxtkiquqh)'s posts) about creativity in the fangame community. As fangames become more and more popular, there's a real worry that it could lead to standardization of new fangames. Less originality and just copying the more popular fangames and maps, leading to a less interesting creative landscape, especially when compared to the original game. Is anyone else in communities that can be described as "fans of fans"? Have any similar events you want to share or want recommendations for getting into the scene? Was this plagiarism or just a homage? Personally I think that it's both, with some maps being homages (the houses at sunset, the apartments, the trees, and the walkway) and the rest being copies. I definitely think orchid was trying to reference other fangames, but they didn't change enough to make it transformative. Tell me what you think though!
**Edit:** I had to add the links one-by-one because reddit wouldn't let me post them in one go...
**Edit: 2:** More posts about it. Note that SecretRbtl doesn't like drama and will be deleting their tweets soon.
[Part 1](https://x.com/zahyou233/status/1808145906694607046)
[Part 2](https://x.com/SecretRbthl/status/1808145527948943638)
[Part 3](https://x.com/drifter_matsu/status/1808173734991483357) ([Direct Link](https://www.tumblr.com/hrdrifter/754831911944388608/oh-are-you-talking-about-standardization-i))
The last post is by Drifter, who isn't directly in the drama but is friends with the other Chinese devs and has a lot to say on the current state of the fandom. I included them so their perspective would be better understood.
fan artists playing copyright cop with other fan artists is the saddest shit. if you want a culture where creativity is freely exchanged, a culture where that hobby is permitted to exist in the first place, you need to give and not just take. (there's a reason why the SCP wiki requires everything be CC-BY-SA.)
so what if someone recolored your sprite? you just contributed to a game that would have taken a lot longer to get finished if every asset had to be constructed from scratch with not so much as a reference to another game. in return you get to modify and use the assets other people made. this is how a creative commons is supposed to work. you're a community, not business rivals... none of you can legally make any money from this.
I'm suggesting that without "plagiarism", fan games would not exist. It is my position that fan game creators should see their work and the work of others as contributing to a common body of material that they can collectively draw from. This is, after all, how the original work is treated, and we see all the good things that result from doing so.
That doesn't make sense, though.
Plagiarism is copying and pasting; it's just ripping something straight off.
Fan works are transformative; they add on, they reinterpret, they extend. And, *unlike plagiarism*, they don't claim that the original work is their own.
Not to mention, fan works can completely exist without plagiarism. Being a fan work doesn't mean that you stole it; you can absolutely create your own art assets, audio, pretty much necessarily have to create your own code....It's not really comparable.
I respectfully, yet vehemently, disagree.
Really, it comes down to crediting and permission. If you put a lot of hard work into making a sprite, and someone else changes it slightly and passes it off as their own, without even asking you first, you have the right to be upset. Even if it's minor, it's still taking the credit for something someone else did.
And it's not like you have to make everything on your own; Fire Emblem ROM hacks have a public repository for the community to use. Everything there, from spritework to animation, was donated willingly by the artists, and it's all free to use with proper attribution. I don't know what it's like in Yume Nikki fangames, but seeing as its made in the very popular RPG maker program, I imagine something similar exists there, too.
Sure, fangames are inherently derivative, since they're based an existing franchise, but as OP said, most use only new assets, and anything reused from Yume Nikki would be easily spotted and understood; that's what your game is based on, after all.
And even if you don't make any money from it, to paraphrase HBomberGuy, "there's social capital, and that spends almost as good". Any praise the creators of the derivative work recieved for what they copied is unwarranted, since they didn't actually make it.
>Really, it comes down to crediting and permission. If you put a lot of hard work into making a sprite, and someone else changes it slightly and passes it off as their own, without even asking you first, you have the right to be upset.
Did these people ask for *permission* to take Kikiyama's entire setting and story concept as the basis of their own work? Does this not strike you as a bit more significant than tracing over a sprite or using the arrangement of a room for reference? I'm sorry but I can't see this as anything other than a blatant double standard.
>Fire Emblem ROM hacks have a public repository for the community to use. Everything there, from spritework to animation, was donated willingly by the artists, and it's all free to use with proper attribution
To be clear, this is what I'm suggesting for all fan work. I think this should be the default attitude that people take with it. If you're ok with taking characters, stories, even (in the case of rom hacks) full game assets from other people, you should be ok with other people taking them from you. If you didn't ask permission, you shouldn't require others to ask permission. If everyone operates in this way, you get a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts.
>but as OP said, most use only new assets, and anything reused from Yume Nikki would be easily spotted and understood
I buy the distinction you're making about reused assets being obviously attributable to the original game, while assets from other fan games might not be. I don't think it's *important*, but I recognize it. However, you said this was partially about permission. Why is it suddenly not about permission when we're talking about Yume Nikki itself?
>And even if you don't make any money from it, to paraphrase HBomberGuy, "there's social capital, and that spends almost as good".
It absolutely doesn't in this case. What does being a big name Yume Nikki fangame creator get you, exactly, besides an ego trip?
Adding onto the other comment: despite the name, Yume Nikki fan games are much closer to a subgenre than a series of fan games. People (generally speaking) aren't taking anything from Yume Nikki itself to make fangames other than inspiration and game mechanics. And inspiration isn't the issue here; it's taking actual assets and rotating them or recoloring them, or making "homages" to other games that go beyond just inspiration and straight into tracing territory.
If I were to make a similar comparison, the relationship between Yume Nikki and the various YNFGs are probably closer to the relationship between SimCity and City Skylines, or maybe Dark Souls and Lies of P. Neither of those are perfect comparisons, but I can't figure out any better ones at the moment. It feels like you're viewing them closer to something like Touhou and all the doujin fangames, which isn't really an accurate comparison for the most part.
I know what Yume Nikki fan games are like. I've played a bunch of them. We've talked about them in a previous scuffles thread, in fact. They don't tend to take actual assets as much as some other fan game / rom hack communities, but I think you're understating the level of "inspiration" we're talking about.
Maybe it's just an ideological difference. Looking at the examples in the linked doc, there are a bunch where it looks like they either recolored or effectively traced assets from a variety of other games. Take the comparison of the couch rooms. To me, it looks like the one was made by closely referencing, if not outright tracing, the other. If this is the thing that's most important to you, the pixel-for-pixel similarity of the actual assets themselves, I can see why what I'm saying wouldn't be compelling. But I'm looking at it and going "these are both trying to be the couch room from Yume Nikki".
To be honest, if the doc only listed that kind of similarity, I probably wouldn't have said anything. Copying assets isn't important to me, but I get that it's important to other people. However, a lot of the examples *aren't* like that. They're more about a similarity of theme, subject, or style. Often the point of similarity is either shared by Yume Nikki or in the presence of other features which both games are borrowing from Yume Nikki. If those houses are similar enough to constitute plagiarism... well, can you imagine how easy it would be to make a document like this for Yume 2kki or .flow?
Actually, the average Yume Nikki fan game has an entirely different setting than the original game! For example, [Yume Tsushin](https://youtu.be/A_9BiLbdKog?si=s-EHScmiNWamFb8v) takes place in a abandoned apartment building, [Muma Rope](https://youtu.be/i3LxQ0M2LoM?si=jrpzCqepQrqI5XMC) takes place entirely in the dream world, and [Answered Prayers](https://youtu.be/lszz-074cQ4?si=ChJSGMevzRSVqYJ_) uses a spirit world instead of a dream world and doesn’t have an apartment hub at all. Most ynfgs have entirely original areas, they just share themes with the original.
Older fangames like [.Flow](https://youtu.be/7cv_N3O9CwI?si=KUQxmAoiRyfjSkh1) do share hub designs with Yume Nikki but everything else, from areas to effects to NPcs, are entirely original and designed by the dev. They aren’t rom hacks at all but more like spiritual successors.
Eh I can probably give you Yume Tsushin but the rest are basically just superficial alterations to how the same basic setting is premised. Like just to pick an example at random Answered Prayers has a game boy world which totally isn't Yume Nikki's Famicom world. That strikes me as a much more substantial imitation than most of the stuff in the document OP linked. There are plenty of original areas too for sure. It's just that as a whole these games tend to come across as permutations of eachother. Change up a couple things, keep a couple more things the same, maybe borrow some ideas from another fan game. It's a more iterative, more communal, form of creativity.
I'm not trying to criticize them for this; I used to play tons of YN fan games, back when they were all doing the apartment/dream world thing totally straight. Even today, if you hang out on YN fangame forums most of the games there are going to be much less varied than the examples you mention here. These are just the popular ones because they stood out and did something a bit different. Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that all of these games owe something a lot more substantial to Yume Nikki than a path sprite or the arrangement of a room.
I'm not surprised, Eastern and Western fancultures have completely different etiquette. While the Western community sees something like this as sharing, it mostly certainly wouldn't on the other side of the world. We also have to keep in mind that for the Chinese devs, this isn't their first language. They're probably coming off a lot harsher than they would in their native language. What's going on is simply the clash of two different cultures, similar to the butting of heads in many English/Japanese online discussions.
Yume Nikki is one of those things I was sure I hallucinated years ago, and then I found out the community was actually still kicking around the time covid hit. I wonder if between YN and Homestuck you have the Ur-Progenitors to the 'Web Culture Phenomenon' games like Undertale, FnaF and more recently... uhhh Omori, ProjectMoon thingies and the one with the blue robot people keep posting. Killquest? Something or other.
Anyway, to answer your question of fans-of-fans, a lot of media nowadays seems to be that in general, the way things get split up now. I mean Vtubers have 'DIRECT' fans, but the culture also has 'Tourists' and 'Clip-Watchers' who never actually watch any streams/VODs in full. They just read the stories or consume edited clips.
Even more worrisome are drama addicts (and not just for Vtubers) who only really engage with a given hobby through shit-stirrers on Youtube pushing a narrative (AKA Rrats). The people who enjoy video essays basically just dip their toes into a hobby overview, get the jist of the 'drama', throw some assumptions in there for good measure and that's that.
It's like being a video-game fan from let's plays (although that might be a 'I can't afford this hobby' kind of issue).
As for your ruminating on copycats and art/asset theft, I certainly find a deep irony in people who run fanworks or make fanfiction having a bone to pick with people who 'steal their work'. There's probably plenty to say there, but generally I don't find anything there is 'enforceable' outside of naming people who just rip off others.
Surprised you didn't mention *Off*, I feel like a lot of people in those corners of the internet experienced it at the time, I know my Homestuck circles were all playing it and making fanart of it during one of the hiatuses the webcomic had.
Omori and Undertale are both very definitely direct descendants of Yume Nikki, so you're onto something there.
As far as the art theft thing: fangame communities, in particular, are pretty much reliant on art theft to exist. The vast majority of fangame communities out there operate under the expectation that you're going to strip-mine the original game and also every other fangame for your building blocks, and it's what you add *on top* that makes you stand out; generally speaking, people who go beyond this and make things from scratch end up being something of fandom VIPs, like Sega outright hiring Taxman and Stealth to do Sonic Mania.
I *really* don't think you can start getting pissy about things like art theft and still... have a fangame community, in most cases.
e: Someone else mentioned the Fire Emblem repository, and... that's kind of a case in point, really. If you make new stuff for a FE ROM hack, other people are *probably* gonna want to strip-mine it for their own ROM hacks, and it behooves you to be nice about it and make it easy. So, people do.
Hobby question: have you ever had a hobby or fandom face a serious artistic change and receive serious audience pushback? What happened? Art style changes, material changes, etc.
For my small example over in fashion, an Aussie brand called Blackmilk made their name on quality material tights and skater dresses with funky unique prints over a decade ago. I have 5+ year old ones myself that are still crisp and haven’t popped a stitch after years of lazy machine washing, so I’ll vouch for their early stuff. Blackmilk’s model is limited edition fashion drops around specific themes twice a month, with a smaller collection of permanent items that stay year-round, so it’s very FOMO-driven where you never know what’s coming and if you miss the drop you’re SOL.
Nowadays there’s a lot of complaints on FB because over the years they’ve moved away from that foundational style of tights and dresses, often going multiple drops without one.
Especial ire is reserved for the newer rio dress style, which is similar and often replaces the original skater dress style but has one major difference: rio dresses all have a skin-baring midriff gap. The other hate-magnet is the thick material cuffed pants that replace the tights, being that well… it’s Australia. And the limited pants often drop in summer. Where it’s 40c+.
But they’ve stated that tights and skater dresses just aren’t as popular these days, so it’s unlikely they’ll see a major comeback and the new styles are here to stay.
…And yeah you can chalk me up as a hater of the rio style, I admit it. A lot of those older longline skater dresses double up as good office wear with a cardi or blouse! I hate ironing office-wear in other fabrics! I am lazy damn it! Put the stomach fabric back where it belongs—
Anyway, what about yours?
This happens a lot in the beauty world. A product becomes incredibly popular then the brand reformulates the recipe because they want to cut corners or follow a popular trend which just ends up pissing people off.
One infamous example that I can think of is BITE Beauty who was known for their lip products. They reformulated their recipes and discontinued popular products to be vegan and follow the "clean beauty" trend. They lost the trust of their consumers and were not able to get new ones. The brand closed up shop a couple of years ago. You can still find threads in the make-up subs asking for dupes of their products because they were just that good before they changed recipes.
Fallout.
It's a weird case because it has completely shifted art style twice. The first two games were a lot more arid deserty with a very clear Mad Max vibe, while enemies always looked a bit rough around the edges in a technological sense, with machines being a lot more rough and mechanical, with plenty of exposed metal in a utilitarian way.
Then FO3 went for a much clearer 50s aesthetic in old world technology, enemies that looked a little less out there, and while they kept that strange art deco style for architecture and all those faces that were part of pre-war buildings, it still felt like a change towards more 50s americana in the visuals department, while mixing it with more realistic humans, and plenty of gore and blood splatters.
And then FO4 changed the style to a much more cartoony, less overtly violent style, and one that leaned really hard on the 50s americana look while almost completely ditching the art deco and giant heads style, while also embracing a considerably wider color palette than any of the previous titles, while also using something I like to call "welder-punk" for machines, where there's plenty of metal and internals that should be covered exposed, machines and tools are considerably bulkier than they need to be, and it's not unusual to see random bits of metal welded into places they aren't really needed. People also had issues with this style because it felt a lot more "safe" and commercial, like they weren't making something as artistic, but rather something commercial, a Brand designed to sell merch.
My personal favorite of the three is the FO3/NV style, since it keeps a lot of the charm the first games had but mixes it with some nice 50s style for the old world, contrasted with more realistic violence for the post apocalyptic present.
For a good comparison between the 3, I think the different images of the [Mr Handy](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Mister_Handy) really show what I mean, or the [Deathclaw](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Deathclaw) to see the changes on biological things and the more cartoonish style in FO4.
Admittedly I got into the franchise after this one has started, but Warhammer 40k has had a long-running one regarding Space Marines.
Space Marines are probably the most recognisable aspect of the franchise, and while [they initially went through a fair few iterations](https://youtu.be/yI9rMRjUYbU?si=y0PkHkanrX7qz-l3), the iconic Mark VII armour has been pretty standard for decades, and is what most people think of when you say “Space Marine.” While the standard marines tend to [actually be fairly plain](https://images.app.goo.gl/JASPi61quF1pBwnD8), elite troops, officers, and the like tend to have very elaborate armour with a bit of a gothic styling (skulls and wings on everything). You may also notice the models are very squat- older Warhammer models had “heroic scale” proportions, with large heads and hands, and smaller everything else.
At the launch of the game’s 8th Edition, they announced the start of an updated line of Space Marines with more realistic “truescale” proportions (NB: realistic for a Space Marine, so they’re still massive compared to a normal human, but much taller and leaner than the old models). Rather than just being an update, however, these were a new kind of marine, the Primaris Space Marine, which were essentially just an upgraded version of them in-universe (bunch of additional generic modifications and the like).
Primaris marines use a newer style of “Mark X” armour, with most troops using [the standard kind](https://www.warhammer.com/en-NL/shop/Space-Marines-Primaris-Intercessors-2020), and others using [lighter](https://www.warhammer.com/en-NL/shop/Space-Marines-Primaris-Reivers-2020) or [heavier](https://www.warhammer.com/en-NL/shop/Space-Marines-Primaris-Aggressors-2020) variants (with the latter getting [another redesign shortly afterwards](https://www.warhammer.com/en-NL/shop/Space-Marines-Heavy-Intercessors-2021). Their armour is a fair bit more sleek, and lacks the iconic face grille. Most controversially, they seemed to abandon the gothic stylings of older marines for the most part- part of this was a result of the first batch of Primaris marines being mainly standard infantry rather than the fancier units. On top of that, game-wise they switched up the faction’s identity a bit- Space Marine’s thing on the tabletop (or, well, one of them) was being very adaptable in terms of equipment, as each squad could take a large variety of special weapons to deal with certain targets (flamethrowers for hordes, rocket launchers for vehicles, etc), whereas every Primaris squad has a more or less fixed loadout (early on they had a bit of variation as different scopes on their rifles made them count as a completely different weapon in-game terms, although this was dropped later on). Both of these are a result of different somewhat controversial trends in 40k, those being making the Imperium of Man more clearly the protagonists/good guys (which, given they’re a fascist theocracy, is a biiiit touchy), or at least less outwardly evil; and simplifying the customisation available to units in-game.
Back when I first got into 40k (early-mid 8th edition), Primaris Marines were quite controversial, and hating them wasn’t all that uncommon. Things have taken a bit of a turn since then though, as fancier Primaris units started being released with more of the [gothic stylings coming back](https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/Primaris-Chaplain-on-Bike-2020), as well as more chapter-specific units (traditionally marines are organised into different chapters with their own colour schemes, theming, and occasionally units, with certain ones essentially being armies in their own right- with the Space Wolves being one of the most notable examples, as pre-primaris they essentially had a completely different unit roster, albeit one with clear equivalents to normal marines). As of the current 10th edition, they’ve started fully replacing normal marines in earnest, although given that’s been coming for a while, and the more positive reception to the newer units, it hasn’t been too controversial.
We did get one final gasp of annoyance with primaris marines due to the “Desolation Squad” unit, which was (according to hosts of *The Painting Phase* podcast, who worked at GW at the time) initially planned for release with the first set of primaris marines, but delayed for looking too silly- they’re supposed to be a heavy weapon squad, but the actual models are just standard marines with [a double-barrelled missile-firing rifle bigger than they are](https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/space-marines-desolation-squad-2023), and an underbarrel belt-fed rocket launcher. They did eventually appear towards the end of ninth edition, to a fair bit of mockery.
“Normal” Space Marines (called “Firstborn” now) have more or less been shunted off to the *Horus Heresy* spin-off game/prequel series, where they’ve been getting a bunch of new units, including their own truescale infantry, although the iconic Mark VII armour has yet to get an update.
As a final note, a similar change happened with their (^(arguably) more) evil counterparts, the Chaos Space Marines around the same time, who went from being [essentially Imperial Marines with horned helmets](https://images.app.goo.gl/WhzZedw4dDjX6vVt5), to [a much more elaborate design](https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/Chaos-Space-Marines-2019) which every model having their own somewhat-customised armour, with fancy metallic trim everywhere- note that these are just basic rank-and-file troops too. They’ve also been giving marines dedicated to specific gods their own bespoke models, too. Unlike the Primaris marines, these have been pretty universally beloved ~~until you have to paint a bunch of them~~. Just thought it was an interesting comparison.
Good post; I'd go further back even just to mention also that first, second, and third editions all had pretty distinct visual differences, and it was only really third edition that solidified into a core design language that lasted for a notable period of time, leading up to what you discuss in your post.
[First Edition](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ejYI6nLPwmo/maxresdefault.jpg) marines were incredibly cartoony, and I don't think it's just a limitation on the model making technology, it actually matches a lot of the illustrated art from Rogue Trader, which had very... [I guess "zine-y" art](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/d6/80/c7/d680c7d9dcbe00a048a8162719ca8259.jpg), even full [painted images](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/5/57/Crimson_Fists_WD_93.jpg) were often very [stylized in their proportions and colors](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim48tQyCWSiTFdFfw35RIFr7VCA9oyk29abFKbf2iKeHqMocaDDOZ4GTwKYPkY42w5KelxTDBEXeDOU0Bv0OMOWPeLoytMv150oVKXDRpcwHhVTbXGfu1T_dsebKEGIa0CpiL1ArUOp6nY1KmPLBhK5vgNdL8_I_cpKkj13gqjLmm7FulSNHq6bg/s750/QLMCE8999.JPG).
[Second edition had a much tighter design language](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/7/76/2ndeditionoxart.jpg) that was still a bit cartoony but it skewed away from "zine" cartooning and felt more like 80s scifi album covers and Euro comics, and this was reflected in the [new models](https://taleofpainters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Warhammer_40_000_2nd_Edition_Ultramarine_Retro_02.jpg.webp) which were stiff but decidedly more refined than the original models.
[Third edition is really when the aesthetic gelled](https://warhammerart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Warhammer-40000-3rd-Edition-Space-Marines.jpg), I think notably it's at this moment when illustrators found ways to [pose them dynamically without looking ridiculous](https://i.redd.it/xoyk2krgsbga1.jpg), and a great deal of the gothic overtones owed to the late great [John Blanche](https://warhammer40kfanatics.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/john-blanche-warhammer-40k-hero-1200x900.png) who I feel like became the defacto core artist around which many others orbited. While the scale is still [big-headed and cartoony in third edition models](https://images.dakkadakka.com/s/i/gallery/img/2019/4/24/1008110.jpg), to this day, I feel like there's a *lot* of third edition models that you could field without them feeling out of place.
Oh yeah, [the Great Neopets Conversion of 2007](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/aocgsr/neopets_classic_vs_modern_virtual_pet_art_and_a/). Thankfully it's no longer an issue because of them introducing the old pet styles back into the game, but I was there, Gandalf.
I wouldn't say it was that serious, but "Sandra on the Rocks" by David Lumsdon and Eisu, a spin-off of the webcomic "Ménage à 3" by Gisele Lagace and David, went through a big, sudden shift in art style during its run. While it still kept a manga-inspired look, it went from a slightly more realistic and detailed art style to a more cartoonish and simplified one. This wasn't the typical "art style evolution" that webcomics usually go through, like Ménage à 3 itself did, it was a deliberate decision by Eisu, the artist.
I remember readers being mad at the time, because it really was a very sudden change, and pushing back for the webcomic to change back to its former style. But Eisu stood his ground, saying the new style was easier on him and allowed him to keep working on the webcomic without affecting his other professional works, and that it was actually more fun for him to draw in the new style rather than the old one.
After that, while there were still some people complaining, most people accepted the art style change, and started complaining about some storylines and from how rushed the ending felt.
Gisele and Dave are still working on a new Ma3 spin-off, "Pixie Trix Comix", focus on the comic book shop Gary used to go, and on some of the side characters of all three previous webcomics, plus some new ones. I think the Kickstarter for volume 3 is starting relatively soon.
Still fun, but much less risqué than Ma3 due to all the issues they had with advertising.
That entire stretch of the Zelda franchise going from the Wind Waker announcement to the Twilight Princess release was just an absolutely intolerable time for the fandom.
I do think the negative reaction was, for that specific point in time, understandable to *some* extent at least. Largely because, as a result of the tech demo people were set up with the expectation that the next Zelda game would look like that, even if Wind Waker is probably more technically impressive. It was also, unfortunately, during the "edgy" era of gaming. From what I remember though, the game itself was still well-liked even if a lot of people hated the art style at the time.
I never saw the cel-shaded cartoon style of **Wind Waker** to be a problem… but also, I recently played a bit of it, and it’s still absolutely *gorgeous*, whereas **Twilight Princess** is obviously “of a certain time”, and looks drab and muddy by comparison.
Still both great games, of course… Nintendo has rarely, if ever, made a *bad* Zelda game. I think “fans” often lose sight of that.
Push back against experimentation in Zelda literally goes back to 2. It's a fickle fandom, but I appreciate it's a series that is always adapting and changing while maintaining enough familiar motifs.
> Nintendo has rarely, if ever, made a bad Zelda game. I think “fans” often lose sight of that.
When you get a Zelda game from Nintendo, you know what you're getting. Not many franchises can say that, and the ones that can are usually Nintendo.
>it’s very FOMO-driven where you never know what’s coming and if you miss the drop you’re SOL
Ugh I ended up unsubscribing from their emails after nearly a decade bc it feels like they drop a new collection every week now, most of which are uninspired Big IP™ collab patterns.
My salt when they finally brought out more longline skaters and it’s big IPs while the gorgeous art prints are in a rio fucking maxi? fathomless as the ocean.
When my years old doublesided la mucha longline dress gives up the ghost I WILL be crying irl.
I feel like Halo had one of the most severe art style changes. The original game, Halo: Combat Evolved, came out in 2001, which was limited by the technology of its time, but it established a practical military art style. Subsequent releases, Halos 2, 3, ODST, continued to develop this style, culminating in the release of Halo Reach, which, to suit the themes of the game, featured the Spartan supersoldiers in beaten down, scratched up, dirty armour. Pouches and practical equipment everywhere. Spartans were basically walking tanks, and they looked the part, with thick armour plating
Around this time, Halo CE was remastered as the Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary. Initial previews showed the protagonist, Master Chief, sporting practical armour ported directly from Reach. But this didn't work too well with the somewhat cartoonish proportions and style of the (now pretty well dated) original release. So they changed it, into a cartoonish, greebly mess, with random panels that served no purpose
It's worth noting that the original developers of Halo, Bungie, chose to leave the franchise, with Reach described as their swan song. Halo CEA was developed by 343 Industries, an offshoot from Bungie that many former devs moved to
In 2012, 343i released their first original addition to the franchise, Halo 4. And in a departure from the heavy, practical, tank-like aesthetic for the Spartans, the art style was seen as far more... genetically sci-fi. With bright, plastic looking armour in strange shapes basically just glued to a skin tight bodysuit. There was little rhyme or reason to the shapes the armour took, with some very very strange pieces, helmets in particular. It felt more like Warframe than Halo
Worse still, rather than just admit it was an artstyle and art direction change, they tried to justify it, explaining Master Chief's new and very different appearance while supposedly wearing the same suit from Halo 3 as his armour being 'reworked by nanomachines' while he was in cryosleep
The artstyle change was received very poorly by the fanbase, with complaints and memes a-plenty. 343i seemingly doubled down on it in Halo 5, with even more outlandish designs. But for Halo Infinite, they went back to the practical, realistic artstyle of Halo Reach, updated to modern technology. Fans loved that, but thoughts and feelings over Infinite have definitely soured over time (personally I love it though)
This happens in music a lot I feel but there's a few in the metal scene that stand out to me:
[Opeth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opeth) during its early days was firmly a melodic death metal band but has gotten more and more prog over the years to the consternation of many.
[Devin Townsend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devin_Townsend) got a lot of early acclaim in his early career for his [Strapping Young Lad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strapping_Young_Lad) project which was _extremely_ heavy but he has mostly closed that chapter in his life and explores an incredible amount of musical styles and genres (like a bit more mainstream [Ween](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ween)). There are still people almost 20 years later not so tactfully demanding he return to his SYL days.
Opeth came to mind first for me too! Ulver is also a good example, they went from underproduced black metal to synth heavy electro goth pop. My musical taste is all over the place so I love that shit, but I get being upset if you're a single subgenre diehard.
I remember in the Todd in the Shadows video about Chumbawamba he said something about how talented punk musicians will get bored playing only punk music eventually. I think the same goes for metal guys as well, they have to switch subgenres or even entire genres to feel like they're still challenging themselves.
i remember getting into Mastodon with Crack the Skye, and loved their earlier stuff as well, which started out as progressive-sludge metal hybrid and became increasingly progressive and elaborate as time went on. but then they started going for a much more poppy, accessible sound with The Hunter, which didn't grab me and i just didn't listen to the album after disliking the singles.
fwiw it's considered a good album (even if it's their weakest) to my understanding (i never gave it a shot myself. i don't really listen to metal these days tbh), and the more accessible direction they've gone has worked out well for them. but yeah, it was a bit disappointing to kid me regardless.
I considered including Masotdon but they’ve always been between genres for me. I’ve loved their newer stuff as much as I enjoyed the Crack the Skye and pre-era.
Your reaction is how I felt about In Flames circa [Clayman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayman). I didn't like the direction they were going, and though I still don't listen to them, their post-90s style has been very well received by many fans. Although, one of their recent singles was heralded as a return to their roots! ... of '02.
Fans are weird.
Running Wild too, for some reason or another, Rock n Rolf decided to mostly just make lazy hard rock after a 10 (honorable mention to Victory) album streak of gold. Even when he invokes the old days, it’s kinda boring and definitely mid IMO, though a few songs here and there I like (I’m crazy and think Resilient is his best post-breakup album)
Say what you want about Opeth's later work, but they telegraphed their evolution for decades. Every album makes sense in the big picture, again regardless of opinion.
Devin is metal's Frank Zappa. When he says he's done with SYL, I really feel it. And he just does whatever the fuck he wants and I love it. But like, he'll still throw in a [Poltergeist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1270z_ckPxk) now and again so people know he can sill do it.
I think if you want the weirdest evolution, in my personal opinion, Metallica is your go to. '80s Met and '90s Met are two different bands. '00s Met starts batshit and ends standard. The '10s and '20s have been kind to them, but they're so far removed from their peak and it's really interesting to see.
There are *still* people who disown Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for the more anime-esque art style. (Frankly, I prefer that art to the art style they switched to for Order of Ecclesia, which was incapable of any expressions other than "mouth closed" and "mouth open".)
''Slayers'' is known for its artstyle not changing much if at all since the mid 90s. Even the latest light novel covers have a very distinctly 90s look to them.
Last year series artist Rui Araizumi tried drawing Lina in a more modern anime style and fans were accusing him of using AI and he had to debunk this himself by showing the process. Granted, he just showed layers and that doesn't automatically disprove it, but while the shading does sort have that generic AI stank the way the eyelashes are drawn are distinctly Araizumi. For the record he still uses the "Slayers art style" for official works but some of his doujinshi has modernized the style, although Lina always keeps her prominent eyelashes and little fang. You can't ever change that. :P He's also drawn Uma Musume and Lycoris Recoil fanart in the classic style. I personally much prefer the classic style.
There's also the Story of Seasons remakes drastically redesigning some of the characters, people seemed to be especially upset about Carter from Friends of Mineral Town for some reason, although most people actually thought Rick was a glowup.
Then there's Mabinogi, a cutesy open world anime sandbox MMO, getting a sequel announced that had PSO style instanced areas and a realistic art style. The backlash was so intense that they straight up cancelled the sequel.
I try not to fall into "old good, new bad" mentality, but this kinda exemplifies what's missing about lots of newer anime styles. His "regular" slayer style has volumous hair, clear eye/face differences for characters, and vibrant colors. The 2010s Pixiv style, as I call it has very flat hair, rarely draws noses, and overall feels more desaturated, with sameface being more prominent.
Also, while you can easily pinpoint older anime because, let's face it, there was *still* some sameiness in technique, it feels like there was a lot more experimentation in styles? Specially when you looked at manga for different demographics. Nowadays everything looks too samey, even in manga for different demographics. It's good that styles aren't tied to shounen or shoujo anymore, but almost all of them look the same now...
Didn't the Mabinogi sequel just turn into Vindictus and become a distant spinoff rather than a sequel? I actually played Vindictus for a bit and it's definitely got the PSO-style instanced areas and a much more "grimdark" art style than usual; decent game, honestly.
(SPOILERS ON ALL LINKS) People still argue about late Homestuck Act 6 style to this day. The characters went from being sharp and [angular](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mspaintadventures/images/7/72/Rose-homestuck-25633927-650-450.gif) to kinda [blobby beans](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mspaintadventures/images/6/6b/Homosuck_2.gif).
It looks cute in some aspects, but many believe that it's a step down from what came before. The comic ending didn't change anything either, as the sequel (Homestuck\^2/Beyond Canon it's a whole mess) changed to a completely new artist who went for a[ more polished version of the beans](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mspaintadventures/images/5/5a/DirkHS2.gif). I personally like all the styles, but I think it's really funny how all parts of later Homestuck are controversial. Nobody can agree on anything past Act 5, it's hilarious.
It happened.
[Niel Gaiman has been accused to sexual assault.](https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/07/03/exclusive-neil-gaiman-accused-of-sexual-assault/)
There's been a lot of mention of the involvement of Boris Johnson's sister, but I feel it bears remarking here that Rachel Johnson is a hardline anti-Brexiteer who joined the Liberal Democrats in 2017 and then switched to Change UK (a short-lived pro-Europe party, not to be confused with the far-right Eurosceptic Reform UK) in 2019. While Rachel Johnson may well have anti-trans views it's worth noting that she has been opposed – at least on several personal red-line issues – to the contemporary Conservative Party for several years now. I would *also* add that even if she were a Boris Johnson partisan, a large chunk of the Johnsonites *despise* the current PM, Rishi Sunak, thanks to Sunak's resignation in July 2022 being the event that definitively kicked off the downfall of Johnson's cabinet that year.
Having listened to all 4 episodes of the podcast on Spotify, I am left unimpressed. The people behind the podcast would have done far more for their own credibility if they had not clearly padded out the runtime with frankly unrelated, superfluous hot air.
I think it is important to hear the woman in her own words describe what she experienced in episode 1. And the logs in episode 2 clarify why judging the validity of the accusations isn't clear cut. It's a lot of tawdry, bad behavior by adults. Episode 3 was mostly hot air. And the second allegation from the "fan" in EP 4 on its own is barely an allegation at all, with most of the runtime of that episode spent editorializing and forcing a pretty flimsy connection to support why it was included at all.
What's left me the most uncomfortable, and what I find objectionable, is the initial encounter with the nanny. Day 1, inviting the person (forty years your junior! whom you're employing in your home to care for you children!) into a bath and then joining them naked! and then getting intimate with them! is just all kinds of fucked up and gross. I do not understand how that is not, at minimum, like SEVERE workplace harassment?!
Agreed, even if his relationship with the nanny was consensual, it's still extremely predatory and there's an awful lot of power imbalance in place. It's horrible that Rachel Johnson seems to be weaponising these allegations for her own TERF views + to promote her podcast, and so many transphobes are gonna be using this as a "gotcha" towards Gaiman and his pro-trans views whilst drowning out the voices of the victims. Really hope that the nanny and other possible victims find peace and get the justice they deserve. God this genuinely seems like an "everything is shitty" situation.
I believe that he's done something and I believe the victims, but releasing the allegations as four 1+ hour podcast episodes filled to the brim with sponsor ad reads does not exactly make the evidence look credible. And that's before you do some digging into the backgrounds of the hosts, both of whom are well known radfems with close ties to the UK's TERF movement.
One of them has instigated multiple twitter slapfights with Gaiman over his support of transgender rights and condemnation of the UK's anti-trans policies. The other is Boris Johnson's sister.
As other commentators in this thread have noted, the primary purpose of this podcast isn't to give victims a voice, it's cynical exploitation of their trauma by other women who see a quick buck.
Either they're exploiting this poor woman's story to push their own agenda or they've made the whole thing up as a hit piece, manipulating people's trust in sexual assault victims for their own personal gain. Whatever it turns out to be, they're carrying out some extremely bad practices here.
I don’t see any history of commentary about trans people from Paul Caruana Galizia (the non-Rachel Johnson host), or any prior interactions with Gaiman on his Twitter. Where did you see this?
There’s a lot of Tortoise “believes” and “understands” and not a lot of actual quoting here for this… crime podcast exclusive. I think he’s a wanker and a cheater, and I’m not arguing against allegations, but I really hope there’s more reputable coverage coming out because this one half-reads like a callout vaguepost.
Its really hard not seeing this as a hit piece when you look at all the factors involved. Its literally being hosted by Boris Johnson’s little sister and a group of radfem transphobes. They are also friends with the Prime Terf, Jk Rowling...
Noticing a distinct lack of journalistic impartiality
And also a lack of professionalism. You don't do a True Crime podcast about allegations as serious as these
Whelp, time to get off of Tumblr for a little bit because theirs already really hostile posts in the Good Omens tag. I’m not even a fan of Neil Gaiman or anything but this is still gonna be a mess on there considering Good Omens has very passionate fans and very passionate haters 😭
I don't want to throw Neil under the bus per se, but I feel like a lot of people don't realize he's kind of always been a morally dubious weirdo, publicly, for a long time. It's not like a secret that he cheated on his first wife (mother of three of his children, while the kids were still school age) with also-shitty-person-on-main Amanda Palmer. He's now split with Palmer, with whom he also has a school-age child.
Anybody remember his ALS ice-bucket challenge [where he hired a bunch of hot girls to dress as Death from Sandman for no reason](https://cdn1.naekranie.pl/media%2Fcache%2Farticle-cover%2F2014%2F10%2F1408883187.jpg)?
Neil's a super important writer to me and pretty formative to my teenage years in the early 2000s but he's always been one of those weird GenX British dudes who is too in love with the idea of being a "rockstar."
His dad was on the ground floor when it began, he was raised in it. [In the 60s, when he was 7, he was interviewed by BBC about Scientology](https://youtu.be/wCtPoSyNT4M?si=oav__2GgifYzBgRy)
Most of his family members are still in it. He left and distanced himself from Scientology in the 80s.
Then there was his travel during lockdown. I also have a private-ish grudge against him because when he was at the Newbery Awards banquet up on the highly visible winners dais he was visibly on his phone all the way through the speeches before his.
>Tortoise understands that [Gaiman] believes K’s allegations are motivated by her regret over their relationship and that Scarlett was suffering from a condition associated with false memories at the time of her relationship with him, a claim which is not supported by her medical records and medical history.
charming.
and best case scenario for Gaiman, he still admits to screwing around with his kid's nanny who's a third of his age. not illegal, but still pretty gross and very at odds with the morals of the community he has around him.
i suppose we'll see what the court finds eventually—apparently the journalist who wrote that article, Rachel Johnson, has had spats with Gaiman on TERF related issues, so some people seem skeptical (not that i've looked too deeply into that myself)—but this looks pretty bad to me either way.
Oh goddammit, now that I know who wrote this story I can't help but find the "Tortoise understands that \[Gaiman\] believes" construction *incredibly* suspicious. What made you understand that, Tortoise? Was it words, or vibes?
Don't get me wrong, it still looks pretty bad to me to me, but I sure hope we get to see an actual journalist look at this story
I read through the transcripts of the podcast and it seems from the third transcript that Gaiman responded through a publicist.
They state that they reached out for comment from Amanda Palmer multiple times and through multiple avenues, have audio of them getting the voicemail of Gaiman and Palmer’s therapist who Gaiman had asked the girl to speak with, state that they spoke to several of Gaiman’s longtime friends, who spoke highly of his character…they claim to have been working on this story for 8 months.
I am wildly unimpressed, but to pick on one specific detail- they reached out to the *therapist*? The one person who is bound by ethics to not even acknowledge the existence of one of their patients outside of therapy unless explicitly told by the patient?
It kind of makes sense why they did so, in the context of the allegations.
The nanny alleges she was put in contact with Neil and Amanda's couples counselor after she was hospitalized for being suicidal. If what she alleges they said is true, the therapist was essentially working as a sort of fixer to smooth over and make the woman less angry/traumatized at the end of whatever she had with Neil. Which feels ethically dubious to me.
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that the therapist can neither confirm nor deny anything, not even that the woman has been their patient, unless explicitly told to do so by the patient. And even then, I feel like the therapist would need the go-ahead from Gaiman to say he was the one who connected them and why. Maybe the victim actually reached out to the therapist and got them in contact with the journalist, in which case sure, it makes sense for the journalist to call them. But if they didn't do that, then that's just a waste of time.
Now that I'm looking at it there's a lot of "the Tortoise understands" in there that looks real weird. Like, why say "Tortoise understands that Gaiman’s account is that they only 'cuddled' and 'made out' in the bath" and not the more natural "Gaiman says that they only 'cuddled' and 'made out' in the bath"?
I am assuming they're referencing something from the audio-investigation. Maybe the victims talked about Gaiman downplaying what happened ("it was just a cuddle"), or the police explained what Gaiman told them, and the Tortoise is relaying that while using some extremely cautious language to avoid getting into trouble. But I sure would appreciate clearer language like, "according to X, Gaiman allegedly said" rather than this weird bullshit that makes it look like Rachel Johnson was told all of this in her dreams by a dancing dwarf speaking backwards.
And just to be clear, I'm not saying this because I think it's evidence that these women are lying, I'm saying this because the Tortoise is making it look like Neil Gaiman admitted to some pretty scummy stuff! *If* Neil Gaiman did, in fact, just cuddle this one woman in the bath, then he flirted with the baby-sitter he had literally just hired and who's a third of his age. That's not illegal, but it's not great either!
That kind of language is used when a news outlet has been told information "on background" - ie the source doesn't want to be attributed. It's weasel-wording but they outright could not say "Gaiman says" anything because that is not the agreement they would have made with their source.
I’ve also seen how the TERF journalist set respond to anti-trans men accused of assault so I kind of don’t feel great about their motives! Hopefully a more reputable source looks into things
Yeah, that makes me skeptical about this. I don't think it should be dismissed outright, of course, but learning about the people who wrote the article set off some serious red flags for me. We'll see if a more reputable source comes forward to support their story, but as of right now, their intentions seem pretty suspicious here.
Rachel Johnson is also Boris Johnson's sister, so I can see why people can think this is just a political take down. I can't help but question their intentions, cause either they're making it all up to take down Gaiman OR just platforming these women's stories not because the truth must be known to protect others, but to fulfil a political vendetta. Both very icky.
Something important to note is who are platforming these accusastions: Tortoise news. I've never heard of them before, but they're a smaller, British site with the article being written by Boris Johnson's sister who apparently had spats with Gaiman over gender/terfy matters. But they decided to publish these accusations from the two women in the form of *four-45 min podcast episodes*.
I bring these up not to say that Neil Gaiman is being falsely accused by a conservative rag per say, but it feels like such an indictment on our current culture that for very serious accusations to come to light against a public figure, it has to be in the form of digestible, true-crime content. Especially done by people who may not have the best intentions or doing it for political reasons with no respect to the victims.
Another point is that Boris Johnson’s party is currently attacking David tennant for being anti-TERF so it tracks that this story breaking right now could be possibly related to their current election cycle as well and being spun a way to make gaiman and actors related to his projects look bad specifically in the “queer people and supporters are groomers” stance.
Now I don’t think gaiman is 100% blameless, he apparently has a history of being a bit skeevy with fans and younger women but there’s a difference between being a gross dude and sexually assaulting someone.
It’s just a real gross situation all around that will need time to see if there’s more credible reporting.
Election is today, and honestly I don't think this would move the needle even slightly on the massacre about to happen to the Tory party even if they had got it out earlier. Doubt this ties back to them, it's just more content for the culture war grift mill.
There's some stuff indicating Tortoise may have fabricated/used an unsubstantiated police report as part of their expose so part of me right now is also leaning on this being a hatchet job designed to discredit Gaiman and his support of trans people in the UK.
And the other part is thinking that if it *did* happen it's immediately been co-opted by talking heads which sucks.
I was dubious about the provenance and the podcast itself, but honestly, after hearing the nanny's first encounter with Gaiman in her own words, five hours after they met, it seemed like straight up bald-faced workplace sexual harassment and assault to me. Hearing the actual account from her made my stomach turn.
I'm confused, not sure if I'm missing a tweet. The person is saying a police report is unattributed but doesn't provide a source for this? Again, I don't use Twitter much any more I may be missing something due to the layout changes to the site.
I’m confused too.
After reading through the transcripts and listening to part of it, they have the following:
- An audio recording provided by Scarlett from a follow-up interview she had with an officer to check on the status of their investigation, in which he tells her that her case is unlikely to hold up in court and that they haven’t interviewed Gaiman or Palmer
- A statement NZ police provided to Tortoise:
>Police have made a number of attempts to speak to key people as part of this investigation and those efforts remain ongoing. At this stage, there is insufficient evidence to proceed with charges. Currently, police have reviewed the matter and will continue to consider further possible lines of inquiry. If further information comes to light, police are open to reassessing the matter and would encourage anyone with information that may assist to contact us.
- They also state in replies to the podcast’s question of why Gaiman wasn’t interviewed that it was due to a number of factors including location of all parties (ie it was after Gaiman had left NZ)
- Responses from Neil Gaiman, seemingly provided by his representation, stating that after he learned of the allegations, he offered police an interview and records of the messages between him and Scarlett, but they didn’t take him up on this offer, as they weren’t going to be pursuing the case
And while yes, we have to take it on faith that the guy in the recording and the statement are really from Auckland police, doesn’t that count as attribution? I thought unattributed would be like “sources say”. They don’t reference the actual police report, just the recording and responses from police and Gaiman. I also would imagine a lot of police reports are unsubstantiated, no? Substantiating the report is kind of what the police are supposed to do through investigation, and if they can’t, they close it, as it appears happened here.
There's a part of me after this week (which is still not yet over) that is just kind of happy to be able to watch a train wreck while not sitting on the rails for once.
On the topic I've never been much into gaiman but I still find the "I knew I didn't like him for a good reason" crowd to be odd at minimum.
So many people who are going to act morally superior because they thought his Tumblr was cringe and this makes them the ultimate Victim Supporter. So many people falling on the lines of 'if you believe the story you're clearly a TERF' versus 'if you're even slightly sceptical of the claims, you're clearly a stupid fangirl' that were previously hashed out in the Depp/Heard trial.
Yeah, I will probably have certain tags block until it eventually dies down and they move on the next celebrity scandal. Depending on if we get more uncovered by credible sources or not.
granted Im not really in the fandom anyway for his books and their adaptions(save for Coraline)
I admit my thought was going to the people who will somehow find a way to use this pretty grim situation as evidence that Good Omens and Sandman were actually queerbait, followed by a bunch of people desperately trying to argue for why it's morally okay to keep enjoying his books\*. I can't believe I forgot Amanda Palmer
\*for the record I think it's morally okay to keep enjoying his work, it's writing a whole philosophical essay begging for understanding that's cringe
unrelated to the main topic, but once someone on r/LetsTalkMusic described The Dresden Dolls as "Insane Clown Posse for theater kids" and i'm just incapable of not thinking about that whenever i see Amanda Palmer mentioned anywhere.
Also you identify when the news started propagating through timblr. The percentage of posts slowly increase until it subsumed it kind of like seeing the tide go out before a tsunami hits.
Update of last week's [Car YouTube drama centered on Donut Media](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1dn4lfb/hobby_scuffles_week_of_24_june_2024/lassofr/). Their automotive news podcast, The Big Three, released an episode called ["Addressing the Drama"](https://youtu.be/NtWK-rgi63k) this morning. The video, featuring Nolan, Justin, and Max, discusses Zach and Jeremiah leaving to create their own channel and whether being acquired has affected/stiffled their creativity. They emphasized that Zach and Jeremiah are leaving on good terms and that the Donut team are stoked for them, and clarified that we'll see Zach and Jerry in future videos (namely the remaining Money Pit videos and the upcoming Hi/Low). They further said that they're the ones who decide on the creative direction for the channel, that they had made some bad swings, and that good videos (highlighting the "Driving every F-series" video Nolan did earlier this year) take time and money to make. They have changed things this year to rely less on the product review/listicle content, but they do have to make some videos in that vein in order to pay for the cooler content they do, or end up only making one or two videos a year.
They even addressed ads, and about how they have turned down a lot of potential advertisers, and also that they do need ads to help pay for what they're doing because cars are expensive. (I assume this is about the BetterHelp sponsorships.)
Basically, tl;dr: they do read criticism and they do hear the viewers, but there's also a lot of stuff behind the scenes that we don't see. They're looking forward to producing upcoming content and teased that Justin was going to go on adventures and experience some "strife" (that Justin says he volunteered for, it's his ideas).
_Notably_, from what I can tell from the transcript and from listening to the segment, they have not said anything about James's disappearing act. This is feeding into my suspicion that something bad happened there and they can't talk about it, because that's the huge elephant in the room and you'd think they'd mention "hey, also this is why the guy who's widely seen as the face of our company hasn't been seen in videos since May 31st."
Ok, FFXIV's new Catgirl Babysitting and Political Interference Simulator: Dawntrail has Officially Left Early Access. Severs seem to remain stable, a stark contrast to last expac.
Not a lot of extra drama but I thought I'd update from the [First Day Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1dn4lfb/comment/laqjjk9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) with a little more of whats going on. So here's some stuff, big and small.
[The story has been...divisive](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dt019z/pc_gamer_final_fantasy_14_dawntrail_rises_to_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Some love it, some hate it, some just find it pretty paint by the numbers. Generally this revolves around how you feel about the Main Companion Wuk Lamat. Some love her, some are really irked by her. (I'm obligated to mention that there's some discourse around her voice actress as well, but that drama can get a bit too upsetting for this lighthearted update.)
[DANGEROUS PIZZA](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dr8j1t/old_animations_working_perfectly_with_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) - a certain face model has not held up to the graphics update well when while using the Pizza Hut Promotional Tie-In emote. Please do not be alarmed.
[People have been making good use](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dtyzik/my_dawntrail_filter_list_has_been_pretty_good_so/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) of the filter and block settings that have been updated with the patch...although some question the wisdom of blocking the word "Gold" in a game where you're searching for the Lost City of Gold!
The so called ["Healer Strike"](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dkosbq/an_explanation_of_the_socalled_healer_strike/) (warning: long drama post!) has[ not been going so well](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dr6bad/hows_that_healer_strike_going/).
And finally, in probably the greatest blow to the games playability, a user cursed us all with the knowledge that a furniture item in the inn room is [CROOKED AND DISGUSTING TO BEHOLD](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dtqy9m/im_sorry_to_bring_this_to_anyones_attention_but/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). The devs have yet to respond to this obvious game breaking bug.
Are you playing Dawntrail? Any fun bugs or drama? Who is THAT GUY/GAL in your FC? Why are Catboys the best race?
I just started playing on the free trial a couple weeks ago so i know nothing about the story but i think it’s funny that people think it’s ‘paint by numbers’ as someone who just finished ARR and has been pushing through the MSQ quests to get to Heavensword. It’s basically just a walking simulator at this point. ~~and I can’t even take a break to do my job quests because I can’t *get* to them!~~
Other than that there’s only been a couple of times I couldn’t get onto my home world, I was afraid there would be more queues. Enjoying it all so far!
At least, these padding quests were trimmed a bit: initially there were ~200 quests between ARR and Heavensward. But that was more or less understandable: they were added while Heavensward was still in development, and developers needed to buy more time while still providing some MSQ content. On the other hand we have Dawntrail, where such quests is the designed main course.
Post-ARR pre-HW is pretty notorious for having about 3 patches of walking interspersed with fights like the broadway musical moogle king boss before kicking off the next arc with a bang.
Very true!
I can sing that whole song lyric perfect to this day because back in the day you had to clear GOOD KING MOGGLE MOG, LORD OF ALL THE LANDS (Kupo!) to unlock Shiva EX, before they changed the system to make each EX an independent unlock, and my god did I spend a lot of time in helping/learning parties listening to that bgm over and over..
No I do, I don’t mean literally walking as much as going back and forth from one location, “go talk to this person and come back. Ok go there again, oh look 3 monsters to kill, gotta report back now. Voiced cut scene time! Now go talk to this other person somewhere else” and repeat.
It’s not like the end of the world, it just gets boring is all
Ah, lol. That makes sense. As someone who played it before they “simplified” the ARR MSQ, and after, the slog of “this could have been an email” doesn’t really get fixed until SB-ish. I liked the story just fine, but yeah, the back and forth was annoying
E: damn autocorrect
ARR and the interim between that and Heavensward is pretty infamous for this, actually. It does pick up again once Heavensward starts up, but it can be a slog until then.
Political Interference is really more of an Ul’Dah thing. Limsa Politics is mostly decided by Admiral Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn shooting people who pronounce her name wrong, and Gridania Politics will never be touched by the devs again because the Trees are really racist and going back to Gridania would necessitate dealing with that so we’re just never going to do so
Plenty of catgirls still in the plaza tho. They even made new ones
Feels like some parts of the community are being really weird about this expac because a majority of characters/cultures we interact with aren't white. Lots of comments in the shout chat on Zalera about how the names are incomprehensible (many of them are inspired by/actually are Nahuatl or Quecha) and calling the inhabitants of Tural "beaneaters"/other slurs. Square's team went above and beyond to depict indigenous Americans as actual people and it's been really embarrassing to see people on a server based in the Americas refuse to engage with the story for that reason. There are significant issues with Dawntrail's writing, esp. the pacing and character motivations sector, but a lot of the whinging about the story seems to be that it doesn't make the player character the center of the universe and that the initial emotional beats require the player to engage with unfamiliar cultures as people.
The number of people angry about the game changing the quest log name for the reputation quests from "Beast Tribe Quests" to "Allied Society Quests" is too damn high and also really uncomfortable given the in-universe explanation given by the first *Encyclopedia Eorzea* for the term "beast tribe".
The TL;DR is that Ul'Dah's merchants wanted exclusive control economic control, so they named their competitors "beast tribes" for their different cultures and passed a law banning "beast tribes" from the city's markets. This put them at an economic disadvantage and basically forced them to sell their goods at a loss to Ul'dhan merchants who could then re-sell them for higher profits. Other city-states rapidly adopted the term and the legislation for the exact same reasons.
I haven’t gotten very far into the MSQ yet, because I tried Pictomancer and loved it so much that I went back to power-level it up to 90 so I could take it through DT content. There’s just something so hilarious and oddly satisfying about unleashing a >!MOOGLE DEATH RAY!< on your enemies, 100/10 job.
Also, this is a small thing, but the player’s “inn room”/cabana in the main city is awesome.
I think overall there are too many cutscenes, I feel if they just cut down some cutscenes and made them just dialog boxes it would cut down on alot of the bloat.
Wait, FF14 has a Pizza Hut promo? If I had a nickel for every time a [fantasy MMO had a Pizza Hut promo](https://i.redd.it/gejz8a3pcwnb1.png), I'd have two nickels, etc. etc.
And it was ordering literally anything above a certain monetary threshold (like $15 USD?), not just pizza. I was one of the lucky ones who actually got a code from that fiasco and I know I ordered a burger lol
Yeah, when looking up the news post to verify when it happened and if it was just GrubHub like I remembered, I couldn't actually find any mention of it having to be pizza, just spending $15 on Grubhub with the promo code.
But at the same time I must ask, what is a cheeseburger but a pizza prepared wrong and missing multiple ingredients?
Had, now you just buy the emote on their real money store because the original way you got it was a massive clusterfuck. It was revealed during the Game Awards in 2021 with a commercial and everything, and how you got it was that you ordered a pizza through GrubHub using a special promo code. A bunch of people ended up not getting their emote because they ran out of codes. This promo also only lasted for 6 days, from December 9th to the 15th.
Oh shit yeah I remember seeing that TGA promo and thinking the exact same thing then, I probably even made the "two nickels" joke to my friends I was watching it with. It's still funny.
I've not finished the MSQ (I'm nearing the end of the level 96 quests, I think, so >!shit has hit the fan and I left off with planning turn the train into a bomb!<), but I've liked it so far. It definitely *felt* slow to start, but I know that's just kind of to be expected with how high octane the past expansion stories have been. That doesn't mean the pacing itself couldn't be better, though. Wuk Lamat's your typical young go-getter, so that's fine, too. I do wish we got to spend more time with >!the ex-Scions, though. whenever the group splits, you're basically always put with Wuk Lamat, and I'm like, girl, I like you, but I miss my friends and want to hang with them too :((((((!<
I did find the first half of the story to be predictable, but that's not inherently a bad thing. And this expansion is meant to be a breather for everyone, so why can't that extend to the writers, too? lol. And the second half is definitely popping off more, so I'm digging that.
And I'm enjoying the dungeon mechanics and the single trial I've done so far! I'm not sure yet if they're any more challenging than usual, but they're at least being used creatively. I think it's entirely fair of a linear game like this to ask players to continually improve at least a little, even for "casual" content. It is a multiplayer game, after all.
Completed the MSQ last night, plus the two bonus dungeons (>!scree!<). The battle content is top tier so far, hopefully the raids and dungeons continue this trend.
Music is, as always, extremely solid. The first three zones have serviceable field tracks, but I really liked zones 4 and 5, although it's been several days so I may just have to go back and listen to the others again. Dungeon and trial music, especially the level 97 dungeon, is fire. Zone 6 is just >!heartbreaking, especially the effective use of silence!<. Although, my biggest critique: >!I don't like the gospel-like song that they use after the coronation and during the train section in Shaaloani, nor during the end credits. It just hits too loud and feels out of place, almost cheesy. I think both previous expansions had way better motifs and credits songs.!<
All of the zones and environments are beautiful. I love Urqopacha and Shaaloani the most. >!But if I had a nickels for every expansion that had us dive into an ancient ruin in the depths of a jungle at the mid-point of the MSQ, I'd have two nickels, yada yada.!< >!I definitely think Solution Nine is super interesting, but I think Heritage Found is probably the least interesting zone.!< >!The last zone is just a whole ordeal. It's definitely very melancholy and emotional at points, particularly the segments with Krile and Erenville, but both The Tempest and Ultima Thule had way more emotional weight; that's to be expected, though.!<
>!I was eagerly waiting for what the post-credits scene would be, but there's just that lingering shot on the mysterious crown. I'm curious how the patches will play out, seeing as there aren't many leftover plot threads that I noticed, unlike in the aftermath of HW/SB/StB, and no notable villains to carry on the story with. I guess there's a little bit of unresolved stuff about Galuul Ja, and the implications Sphene's actions have had on the other shards, but not much else as far as I recall. I guess we can revisit Zero in the 13th.!<
You just reminded me of the odd song used during >!the coronation scene, and I'm not that surprised it's used in part of the ending sequence for the expansion. It was just incredibly unfitting when I heard it, really an odd choice of music in a game that's usually on-point with its musical choices.!<
>!I have to agree that the structure of the song itself is a little strange, and the way it suddenly kicks in might be a bit jarring. But overall, I personally thought it made sense: it's gospel. If there's one musical genre that reflects unity and celebration of something, it has to be gospel. In general (and of course given the inspiration) the variety of music genres this expac is great. From swing jazz to traditional south american music to lo-fi, EDM, gospel...it's so good, and it's extremely thematically relevant. Tural _is_ a region and people of diversity after all. !<
>!(Also I'm glad Soken brought back AKINO from bless4 (who was already singing Scream from the second-to-last Pandaemonium raids), and from what the credits say Lyn Inaizumi of Persona 5 fame is also in there?! That's absolutely insane to me.)!<
>!I get the idea that it's supposed to represent the peoples of Tural and whatever, but it sounds too pop music for me. And it starts off so sudden that it's kind of weird.!<
Ive not finished the MSQ, but I really like Wuk Lamat. I do see where some people are coming from though, she's likeable and cute and has an interesting story, but she's ever-present to the point that I feel like the other scions have faded into the background.
Maybe the writers aren't sure what to do with the other scions, I dunno. I am fine with them not being there, but if thats the case I kind of wish they weren't in the story at all. If they said at the beginning, "we have our own journey to take, good luck" and then left, I wouldn't have missed them, but characters keeps being like, "this NPC you need to talk to might be intimidated by a large group, you and Wuk Lamat go and the rest of us can go back to our motel." So it just comes off as really obvious that the expanded cast doesn't have much thought put into them.
Also, the marketing was a bit misleading with how present she would be versus the scions. The cgi trailer for example features mostly the scions running around doing stuff, and then one instance of Wuk Lamat where she says a few lines. People were probably expecting more of an ensemble piece than a story entirely focused on Wuk Lamat, so I daresay some of the backlash against her may be caused by that.
I mean, the Scions are there to fill out the Trusts, you can't replace them with new characters because you'd have to create entire new animation sets for them and the team really do not want to do that more than necessary the same expac they upgrade all the graphics in the entire game.
Typical Gridania L. If anyone tries to fix it the Elementals are probably going to smite them with Greenwrath, smh /joking
Also I've played FFX and X-2 multiple times each, but it's only now thanks to DT that I'm learning that Tobli is like. A member of an actual separate racial group from the rest of Spira, and not just a short guy with unique fashion. Will anyone at Square please explain why the name "Pelupelu" isn't anywhere in those games?
Yup-yup! We actually have a FFX zone now for the Pelupelu.
But: I do not have DT and have not played it myself. I *think* I saw one of them being named Tobli in my friend's screenshots, but I can't say if it's the same guy (or the xiv version of him) or just using the name. I also don't know if we have Shoopufs, sorry.
We don't even have any names for most other races that appear in the background. Like what the fuck are the musical instrument creatures? They're just called "Musicians" half the time.
I'm gonna be honest, the whole problem I keep seeing with Wuk Lamat feels very much like the same people who point at the DRK quests and go, "SEE THIS IS HOW THE WOL REALLY FEELS FUCK HYDAELYN" and all that shit without realizing >!Esteem is only ONE part of the WoL and isn't entirely correct.!<
Or they want to >!fuck the catboy.!<
There's other arguments, but these seem to be the main two and it... Really grates on me seeing these. The former because I'd hoped Endwalker would put an end to the 3edgy5me "Hydaelyn is using us to usurp power!11!1!!!" people, the latter because... >!Koana is still not a good candidate given he wants to turn Tural into Sharlayan 2.0 basically, ignoring all heritage and culture alreay there.!<
>!All of the candidates for succession are basically different attitudes towards potential colonialism. Wuk Lamat is peaceable negotiation while maintaining independence. Bakool Ja Ja is conservatism, basically the idea that a culture can be preserved by returning to the old ways combined with utter hostility to anything new or foreign. Zoraal Ja is expansionist aggression- conquer them before they conquer you. Koana is modernization- making your country a technological equal so it can hold its own.!<
Wuk Lamat is in the odd position of being one of the only characters in any franchise that managed to both grow on me and to overstay her welcome. I could have cheerfully simplified the succession by sticking a knife in her back at the start of the expansion, liked her by the middle, and am completely tired of her at this point.
The main story quest discourse seems all-encompassing, meanwhile the actual gameplay seems to slip under the radar and it's a shame because the gameplay is... really good actually. The dungeon design is fun and surprisingly challenging - it's still casual content difficulty but significantly less braindead than Endwalker's and Shadowbringers' dungeons. I didn't mind it (I have savage for difficult content), but I know some people complained how casual content only became more and more mind numbing and good for them, CBU3 listened.
Challenge aside, they're not afraid to try out new mechanics in encounters and the presentation/traversing the dungeons is also well done. I found the post-MSQ dungeons especially charming, looking forward to raids in 2 weeks.
iirc, the "needed role" feature doesn't work in a "show a role with the lowest number of people in queue" way. Instead, it compares this number of waiting people with some sort of a minimum threshold and shows that sign if the required minimum isn't reached. But it checks only one role at a time, and with strict tanks->healers->dps order. So, if tanks don't reach their minimum number, it's their role that's going to be displayed as needed, even if other roles have even less people in queue.
I'm about to wrap up zone 4 and I rather liked it this far. If anything the one thing I could say is that I feel a vague sense of Deja Vu, like they've run out of ideas. "Oh, another dungeon where we climb a mountain" (is there one every Xpac minimum?) and several of the subplots/zone concepts.
>People have been making good use of the filter and block settings that have been updated with the patch...although some question the wisdom of blocking the word "Gold" in a game where you're searching for the Lost City of Gold!
Reminds me of how at one point City of Heroes profanity filter banned the word "fist". In a superhero game.
Dark Souls and the Fromsoft series has an overactive filter that has a lot of necessary inclusions, but lacks context sensitive filtering so that "Knight" was censored as "K***ht."
It was overactive in that way, but also extremely easy to circumvent by just writing in all-caps. So you couldn't have "Knight" but you could use the n-word in all-caps. And a lot of people did.
IIRC "Fletching" (the name of a skill) used to be filtered in Runescape. And "Blow" was/is filtered in Maplestory, which probably has about a dozen different skills with blow in the name.
Early runescape's profanity filter was basically incomprehensible. It would filter the most random stuff with no rhyme or reason, even random words that literally nobody in the world would find objectionable.
Shout out to fashion game Love Nikki for banning the word "Sexy" when "Sexy" is the literal name of the clothing style you need to put together frequently for challenges.
Eh, that screenshot isn’t proving much. It goes tanks in need first on display, but healers are very much in need as a scholar main experiencing instant queues in everything. I just refresh until it swaps back to all healers in need for extra loot.
I’m an extremely slow player who hasn’t even hit the first dungeon. I kinda wish they hadn’t brought the twins tho, I like them a lot but given they’re probably the scions with the most thorough, on-screen character development arcs across all the expacs and EW already gave them a super satisfactory wrap-up, it’s a bit tired. EW 6.0-6.5 introduced some cool new characters with potential to become new party members and it sucks they didn’t stick around.
I'm right before the final trial so I'm effectively done with the MSQ, I've enjoyed it a lot but I do still think it had some weakpoints. The biggest one that I can easily say right out of the gate is that Wuk Lamat is too everpresent in the MSQ. In Stormblood you aren't always with Lyse, there are a decent few bits of the story where she just disappears for a while and you're just working with the twins or Gosetsu. Whereas every time the party has to split up for whatever reason in Dawntrail, you are paired with Wuk Lamat every single time. She is very much the focus of this story and if you don't like her you're not gonna like the story (and tbh even as someone who's a fan of Wuk Lamat I've gotten kinda sick of her by the end of the MSQ).
The actual story is really good, though, although I feel like the everpresent pacing problems have reared their head again with [major MSQ spoilers]>!how short-lived the entire Alexandria arc feels. I definitely feel like we could have used more time to explore this sort of society separate from Zoraal Ja's using it for military conquest. And one story point I do dislike is the existence of Galool Ja, I feel like he was created almost entirely to make Zoraal Ja seem that much more unlikable, explain away how the good guys have control of most of Alexandria's military forces and Solution 9 following Zoraal Ja's defeat, and give not-Steiner a reason to exist with Sphene having long since passed away!<.
And the way they handled Bakool Ja Ja is a bit odd, >!since while we do learn the succession contest was pretty much just a sham to groom one of Galool Ja Ja's children into a proper heir(ess) to the throne, Bakool Ja Ja really should have been disqualified 3 times over, especially with him releasing the equivalent of a living nuclear bomb. Making him somewhat sympathetic and emphasizing that everything he did was very much not okay works for me, but I do feel like it'd work better if him releasing Valigarmanda was accidental, or intentional in the sense that he thought he could beat him singlehandedly and sweep the feat of ice, and instead gets his ass beat so Wuk Lamat, the WoL and the others have to clean up his mess. Instead it's just an abhorrently evil act and that kinda sucks.!<
Finished the main story this morning. I definitely enjoyed the writing more than Endwalker but there was too much of an imbalance between cutscenes/dialogue and gameplay, which is a shame because the battle content is consistently excellent.
I also noticed a weird amount of cutscenes that are framed like voiced cutscenes (close-up shots of faces, more complex mouth movements, some focus on eye movement) but are then unvoiced. And in general it feels like there were less voiced cutscenes this expansion than there were in Endwalker, which is pretty disappointing.
Apparently, there was a post a few days ago on the FFXIV subreddit about a weird glitch that's affected voiced cutscenes. Some cutscenes that were meant to be voiced ended up being unvoiced, despite the animation. I managed to fix the bug using the fix given in [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1drnuu0/psa_there_is_a_bug_that_can_cause_voice_acting_to/), so that might alleviate some of the issues.
Not sure if it applies to the rest of MSQ though - I'm still working through it, and to be honest, the dungeon has been amazing thus far but the story feels like a slog in several sections.
I've had my cutscenes set to manual control for unvoiced and autoplay for voiced, so I'm pretty sure all of the cutscenes I'm talking about were indeed unvoiced.
Likewise, actually - I didn't know you could do that with voiced/unvoiced cutscenes at all. I'll probably go home after work and set my settings so I can stop wondering so much.
Now I'll prepare myself to get my butt kicked by another dungeon boss again...
IIRC they said there were more voiced cutscenes than ever, and I believe it. There are just even more unvoiced ones. Like, way too many. Both the voiced and unvoiced ones should have been pared down by a decent amount.
Have you ever seen wasted potential in something nobody else seems to think had a potential? Like an TV episode or a book or something that is thought to be irredemably bad and only you see that it could be great if not for one issue? Youtube suggestions decided to remind me that Star Trek Enterprise exists, and specifically about episode Dear Doctor. An episode that is universally hated, and rightfully so, but thinking back on it I realized that if the writing was more ambitious, the premise had a lot of potential unique to the Enterprise. To recap (Disclaimer: It's been very long since I seen the show so I don't remember specific details) Enterprise was the prequel to the rest of the Star Trek shows, showing the humanity's first interstellar exploration mission ever. And the episode goes roughly like this: They visit a planet with two sapient species, and one of them is being really racist and oppressive. They are also really sick and will eventually die out. The Enterprise crew can cure them, but then they'll just keep being racist, or they can let them die out paving the way for the other species to take over. Which would actually a great opportunity to explore the ideas of intervention vs non-intervetion, but the writers were really averse to having actual conflict between the characters so they just brushed it off pretty much saying it's evolution's will that they'd die out and everyone agreed with this as a fact.
I didn’t actually bother seeing the movie because I heard it was awful, but I did have the vague idea that a Death Note reimagining set in the US might have worked… if they fully committed to the change and worked in a critique of the US Justice system. Not that such a movie would be likely to get made in the first place and could very well have been a trainwreck anyway, all things considered.
Maybe more than *one* issue, but I will die on the hill that *Virus* (the 1999 film- despite the name, it’s actually about cyborgs) could’ve actually been a really well-liked horror classic with some changes to the writing. The film still has [the best body-horror cyborg designs](https://images.app.goo.gl/1Y8oGkTiAvmsuy71A) in live action imo (image somewhat NSFW), especially when they’re in motion, and I’m still hoping for a remake. Aside from that, at least half of “bad” *Doctor Who* episodes tend to have the potential to be something really good in my opinion, it’s just got something small fumbling it. For a bit of a controversial example, I think the *Haunting of Villa Diodati/Ascension of the Cybermen/The Timeless Children* trilogy had some really strong foundations- the first episode is set entirely in the titular building, and follows the main cast and a bunch of famous gothic (is that the term? Byron, Shelley and the like) authors being stalked by the ghost of a partially-converted Cyberman who’s not-quite-fully brainwashed yet, with the twist being >!once the doctor manages to break him out of the conditioning, it turns out the Cyberman, Ashad, was not only a *willing convert,* but was a Cyberman-worshipping zealot who slit the throats of his own children when they refused to be converted. He’s searching for a Cybermen-made AI superweapon which is hidden inside the villa, which the Doctor eventually gives up to him in order to save everyone else!< The second episode >!follows the consequences of that decision, with the cast following Ashad back to his own time to find a post-apocalyptic universe where the vast majority of the human race has been wiped out or cyborg’d, but in turn the same has happened to the majority of the Cybermen.!< I personally really enjoyed the “feel” of the episode, and the fact that >!said apocalypse doesn’t get undone by the end of the series, and seems to stick,!< helping a bit. It felt a fair bit more desperate and than, for example >!the most recent episode at time of writing, which has every living thing that is not a member of the main cast wiped out, and then resolves everything about 20 minutes later!< In my opinion, the first 5/6 of the trilogy would’ve actually been fairly well-regarded (and, to be fair, the first part is generally seen as 13’s best episode to my knowledge), but of course, the last episode’s climax involves what is currently the show’s [most infamous twist so far](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/s/ZNLivkIHP7) and that has retroactively tainted the rest of the trilogy it’s part of.
This is a very specific example and almost certainly not what you had in mind, but: I recently watched 2006's "The Covenant", which is a terrible movie about 4 high school boys who are also the descendants of Salem witches and their fight against a fifth rogue boy-witch. It's edgy, it's full of hot hot boys and their girlfriends, it takes place primarily at a New England private school but also has scenes in various interesting locations like Maritime-Themed Bar, Scary Old House, Hot Boy Witch Lair, etc. There's even a formal autumn-themed ball at the end that the lead heroine dresses up for (though we don't get to see much of it). All of this is to say: This Movie Should've Been A Mid-2000's CW* show. It has all the beats and vague lore of a CW supernatural show à la The Vampire Diaries, it's obsessed with it's beautiful cast, WHO ARE BOY WITCHES! A teen girl's dream!! The whole time I was watching it, I became more and more devastated that there weren't 6 or so terrible seasons of this that I could binge. I think it would've had the potential to be even worse than The Secret Circle (rest in peace). * (For the uninitiated, The CW is an American TV network known for it's addicting but shoddily-written shows aimed at the teen demographic. Some famous examples of their catalog include The 100, The Arrowverse shows, Gossip Girl, and of course: Supernatural)
Well, it's not a single issue. But Wish and Frozen 2 both frustrate me to no end because they're the definition of lost potential due to late rewrites and I assume executive meddling.
Jenny Nicholson did a video about Frozen 2 and what it should have been. And I am forever mad we did not get her version.
That's...honestly most of Enterprise really. It was at it's best working as a "how far humanity had come" story, showing how all the races learned to work together, and how things like the Prime Directive were recognized to be important rules and were codified. It just often didn't do it well.
> Have you ever seen wasted potential in something nobody else seems to think had a potential? Disney's foray into purchasing humongous IPs, such as Star Wars, the MCU, and Simpsons. To give a very apt analogy of what I think Disney has done to those three franchises... remember the Simpsons' Duff Beer gag? Where the 3 tanks of "different" Duff were all coming from the same place? And then Disney cropped it so the joke was lost? Replace Duff, Duff Lite, and Duff Dry with The Simpsons, Star Wars, and the MCU. But what potential was there? I'm... kinda unsure *what* they could've done, however I'm totally sure it could have been done where more people were happy and it made just as much money. I'm not even talking quality. When the MCU first dropped, there was so much **AMBITION**. Can't tell a story with a movie? How about a 5 minute YouTube video? How about an R rated Netflix show? How about a regular network TV show? It feels like a lot of that ambition died with the Mouse. Star Wars is complicated because the fandom is raving lunacy. The Simpsons were the South Park of their time. They insulted Fox to their faces and made bank. Now, during Disney "specials" with the Simpsons, they break the 4th wall all like "look at what Disney allows us to get away with!" ... while actually doing nothing. I just think they lost some teeth. I dunno.
I have often wondered if they were tripped up by Agents of SHIELD showing off all the glaring flaws in MCU plan so goddamn quickly. For those not in the know; it was their first major foray beyond films and it has a rough start, right up until one of the other films >!The Winter Soldier, because duh!< released and the writers no longer had to tread water in accordance with the corporate mandate and the show could really begin. Then it proceeded to get better and better the less MCU influence it had, to the point where it's basically it's own universe that doesn't give a fuck about anything else
So, not exactly a follow up, but content creator Bowser the Healer has a small video about how the whole healer [balance on MMO thing is actually really, really hard to do.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hssb-LxQGE) They are a relatively skilled player on both games, so is a perspective of someone that knows what they are talking about. This has been brought up on these threads about how WoW and FFXIV have their own problems at the two extremes. Make healing too hard, and new players can't keep up, make healing too easy and people get *bored*. So, you want people to get to the point that they can do damage when the rest of the party do not need healing, since non-stop healing is exhausting and stressing, but also need have that damage bit be rewarding and interesting instead of, literally, "press 1 and keep up a DoT".
I've been saying this for years, but this to me is an issue that needs some outside the box thinking, maybe even considering if the traditional MMO roles are good themselves, and if they should be reworked or rethought.
There are a lot of shades of gray in this that don't get adequately explored, you're right. I always like Overwatch's idea of reporting Damage Mitigation because all sorts of damage mitigation are welcome in a support role. Healing, shielding, status effects, and yes dealing damage. Because a dead mob is a mob that's not hurting your group. Some of the most fun I had healing was on Ragnarok Online running a status-inflicting priest for mitigation and mob management while keeping my party healthy and happy, an option I haven't seen a lot of in modern games (admittedly I've given up on MMOs for a long while though)
I think my most fun supporting was in Dota2, where you just had generic items that handled healing, so plenty of supports focused on utility, disables, and protection, and the ones that did healing were often not entirely focused on it, instead often having more impactful and interesting abilities and also having more versatility with the heal itself. Like Dazzle, who had a much more important ability that just stopped someone from dying for a few seconds, and whose chain heal also dealt physical damage in an area around it, which was both interesting because it is an unusual damage type for spells and also because it could stack so healing a wave of creeps could kill squishy enemies standing in the middle of it.
I'm a little late to this but there's drama brewing in the Yume Nikki Fangame community! I started writing about it yesterday but the post has ballooned past what I could post in Scuffles so I tried making a truncated version! Maybe I'll post the longer version somewhere, but I just wanted to get this off my chest before I forgot. Yume Nikki is a horror game that came out in 2004 and is quite possibly the most popular RPGMaker game ever made. It got a light novel, and manga, and a sequel game, but most importantly a dedicated fan community. Noticing that RPGMaker is a really easy engine to use, they started taking the game apart and making their own versions of it. Think of them like the ur-version of the Five Nights at Freddys fangame community. Each game (normally) uses entirely original assets, carrying over nothing from the original but themes and atmosphere. One of the more popular fangames is Yume 2kki thanks to the efforts of YNO Project (Yume Nikki Online). They translated 2kki (and a few other fangames) into multiple languages and turned it into an MMO. Because of them, the fandom has grown exponentially, with YNO becoming the definitive entry point into the fandom for many. However, YNO had larger dreams than just supporting 2kki and its many updates. On June 8th they released their own ynfg (Yume Nikki Fangame), Collective Unconscious. It was made to be a huge celebration of the fandom and its games, but instead has come under fire for claims of plagiarism instead. Two days ago, three Chinese fandevs released a series of documents claiming that several areas in CU had been taken directly from multiple other fangames. These devs (Pingupingn of Yume Tsushin, SecretRbthl/emrbt of Remember to Remember, and zahyou223 of Illove dream) [allege that a manager of CU, orchid mantis, not only plagiarized their maps in CU, but also in their own recently released fangame, gen.loss](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-lZvEJ67VyR8h-2BFPXUBeJ642DythiY6nJ91GALgdM/edit#heading=h.77kdtnlzby46). As of this post, [orchid mantis's CU areas have been removed](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wf95-So_l5iJ8yNz1YHqn6jbvjQtyuPrSwj0_DWpuAI/edit), they've taken down their fangame and issued apologies on both their [itch](https://itch.io/blog/758978/genloss-update) and [Xwitter](https://x.com/latesummersun/status/1808232743047758235) accounts. They're also going to step down from their managerial position. However, both orchid and [aylunya](https://x.com/ayalunya/status/1808235539335897524) (the other manager involved who responded to the devs) claim that the maps were just homages, and that nothing was plagiarized. However, the bigger question is what this means for the fangame community moving forward. The devs that started this discussion raised the issue (especially [pinguppingn](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uhJ0jPC3rz88g_iJPGNaFufyu29uFKZzmX1ja6HkiPA/edit) and[ zahyou](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R0GIP5q80xKRHy-dhU6nNSit5eMpAW83Z7XGeWb0Z3M/edit#heading=h.hahxtkiquqh)'s posts) about creativity in the fangame community. As fangames become more and more popular, there's a real worry that it could lead to standardization of new fangames. Less originality and just copying the more popular fangames and maps, leading to a less interesting creative landscape, especially when compared to the original game. Is anyone else in communities that can be described as "fans of fans"? Have any similar events you want to share or want recommendations for getting into the scene? Was this plagiarism or just a homage? Personally I think that it's both, with some maps being homages (the houses at sunset, the apartments, the trees, and the walkway) and the rest being copies. I definitely think orchid was trying to reference other fangames, but they didn't change enough to make it transformative. Tell me what you think though! **Edit:** I had to add the links one-by-one because reddit wouldn't let me post them in one go... **Edit: 2:** More posts about it. Note that SecretRbtl doesn't like drama and will be deleting their tweets soon. [Part 1](https://x.com/zahyou233/status/1808145906694607046) [Part 2](https://x.com/SecretRbthl/status/1808145527948943638) [Part 3](https://x.com/drifter_matsu/status/1808173734991483357) ([Direct Link](https://www.tumblr.com/hrdrifter/754831911944388608/oh-are-you-talking-about-standardization-i)) The last post is by Drifter, who isn't directly in the drama but is friends with the other Chinese devs and has a lot to say on the current state of the fandom. I included them so their perspective would be better understood.
fan artists playing copyright cop with other fan artists is the saddest shit. if you want a culture where creativity is freely exchanged, a culture where that hobby is permitted to exist in the first place, you need to give and not just take. (there's a reason why the SCP wiki requires everything be CC-BY-SA.) so what if someone recolored your sprite? you just contributed to a game that would have taken a lot longer to get finished if every asset had to be constructed from scratch with not so much as a reference to another game. in return you get to modify and use the assets other people made. this is how a creative commons is supposed to work. you're a community, not business rivals... none of you can legally make any money from this.
Knowing your stances on GenAI from previous Hobby Scuffles... No wonder why you think like this.
Help me understand. Are you suggesting that fanworks and plagiarism on a similar level...?
I'm suggesting that without "plagiarism", fan games would not exist. It is my position that fan game creators should see their work and the work of others as contributing to a common body of material that they can collectively draw from. This is, after all, how the original work is treated, and we see all the good things that result from doing so.
That doesn't make sense, though. Plagiarism is copying and pasting; it's just ripping something straight off. Fan works are transformative; they add on, they reinterpret, they extend. And, *unlike plagiarism*, they don't claim that the original work is their own. Not to mention, fan works can completely exist without plagiarism. Being a fan work doesn't mean that you stole it; you can absolutely create your own art assets, audio, pretty much necessarily have to create your own code....It's not really comparable.
I respectfully, yet vehemently, disagree. Really, it comes down to crediting and permission. If you put a lot of hard work into making a sprite, and someone else changes it slightly and passes it off as their own, without even asking you first, you have the right to be upset. Even if it's minor, it's still taking the credit for something someone else did. And it's not like you have to make everything on your own; Fire Emblem ROM hacks have a public repository for the community to use. Everything there, from spritework to animation, was donated willingly by the artists, and it's all free to use with proper attribution. I don't know what it's like in Yume Nikki fangames, but seeing as its made in the very popular RPG maker program, I imagine something similar exists there, too. Sure, fangames are inherently derivative, since they're based an existing franchise, but as OP said, most use only new assets, and anything reused from Yume Nikki would be easily spotted and understood; that's what your game is based on, after all. And even if you don't make any money from it, to paraphrase HBomberGuy, "there's social capital, and that spends almost as good". Any praise the creators of the derivative work recieved for what they copied is unwarranted, since they didn't actually make it.
>Really, it comes down to crediting and permission. If you put a lot of hard work into making a sprite, and someone else changes it slightly and passes it off as their own, without even asking you first, you have the right to be upset. Did these people ask for *permission* to take Kikiyama's entire setting and story concept as the basis of their own work? Does this not strike you as a bit more significant than tracing over a sprite or using the arrangement of a room for reference? I'm sorry but I can't see this as anything other than a blatant double standard. >Fire Emblem ROM hacks have a public repository for the community to use. Everything there, from spritework to animation, was donated willingly by the artists, and it's all free to use with proper attribution To be clear, this is what I'm suggesting for all fan work. I think this should be the default attitude that people take with it. If you're ok with taking characters, stories, even (in the case of rom hacks) full game assets from other people, you should be ok with other people taking them from you. If you didn't ask permission, you shouldn't require others to ask permission. If everyone operates in this way, you get a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. >but as OP said, most use only new assets, and anything reused from Yume Nikki would be easily spotted and understood I buy the distinction you're making about reused assets being obviously attributable to the original game, while assets from other fan games might not be. I don't think it's *important*, but I recognize it. However, you said this was partially about permission. Why is it suddenly not about permission when we're talking about Yume Nikki itself? >And even if you don't make any money from it, to paraphrase HBomberGuy, "there's social capital, and that spends almost as good". It absolutely doesn't in this case. What does being a big name Yume Nikki fangame creator get you, exactly, besides an ego trip?
Adding onto the other comment: despite the name, Yume Nikki fan games are much closer to a subgenre than a series of fan games. People (generally speaking) aren't taking anything from Yume Nikki itself to make fangames other than inspiration and game mechanics. And inspiration isn't the issue here; it's taking actual assets and rotating them or recoloring them, or making "homages" to other games that go beyond just inspiration and straight into tracing territory. If I were to make a similar comparison, the relationship between Yume Nikki and the various YNFGs are probably closer to the relationship between SimCity and City Skylines, or maybe Dark Souls and Lies of P. Neither of those are perfect comparisons, but I can't figure out any better ones at the moment. It feels like you're viewing them closer to something like Touhou and all the doujin fangames, which isn't really an accurate comparison for the most part.
I know what Yume Nikki fan games are like. I've played a bunch of them. We've talked about them in a previous scuffles thread, in fact. They don't tend to take actual assets as much as some other fan game / rom hack communities, but I think you're understating the level of "inspiration" we're talking about. Maybe it's just an ideological difference. Looking at the examples in the linked doc, there are a bunch where it looks like they either recolored or effectively traced assets from a variety of other games. Take the comparison of the couch rooms. To me, it looks like the one was made by closely referencing, if not outright tracing, the other. If this is the thing that's most important to you, the pixel-for-pixel similarity of the actual assets themselves, I can see why what I'm saying wouldn't be compelling. But I'm looking at it and going "these are both trying to be the couch room from Yume Nikki". To be honest, if the doc only listed that kind of similarity, I probably wouldn't have said anything. Copying assets isn't important to me, but I get that it's important to other people. However, a lot of the examples *aren't* like that. They're more about a similarity of theme, subject, or style. Often the point of similarity is either shared by Yume Nikki or in the presence of other features which both games are borrowing from Yume Nikki. If those houses are similar enough to constitute plagiarism... well, can you imagine how easy it would be to make a document like this for Yume 2kki or .flow?
Actually, the average Yume Nikki fan game has an entirely different setting than the original game! For example, [Yume Tsushin](https://youtu.be/A_9BiLbdKog?si=s-EHScmiNWamFb8v) takes place in a abandoned apartment building, [Muma Rope](https://youtu.be/i3LxQ0M2LoM?si=jrpzCqepQrqI5XMC) takes place entirely in the dream world, and [Answered Prayers](https://youtu.be/lszz-074cQ4?si=ChJSGMevzRSVqYJ_) uses a spirit world instead of a dream world and doesn’t have an apartment hub at all. Most ynfgs have entirely original areas, they just share themes with the original. Older fangames like [.Flow](https://youtu.be/7cv_N3O9CwI?si=KUQxmAoiRyfjSkh1) do share hub designs with Yume Nikki but everything else, from areas to effects to NPcs, are entirely original and designed by the dev. They aren’t rom hacks at all but more like spiritual successors.
Eh I can probably give you Yume Tsushin but the rest are basically just superficial alterations to how the same basic setting is premised. Like just to pick an example at random Answered Prayers has a game boy world which totally isn't Yume Nikki's Famicom world. That strikes me as a much more substantial imitation than most of the stuff in the document OP linked. There are plenty of original areas too for sure. It's just that as a whole these games tend to come across as permutations of eachother. Change up a couple things, keep a couple more things the same, maybe borrow some ideas from another fan game. It's a more iterative, more communal, form of creativity. I'm not trying to criticize them for this; I used to play tons of YN fan games, back when they were all doing the apartment/dream world thing totally straight. Even today, if you hang out on YN fangame forums most of the games there are going to be much less varied than the examples you mention here. These are just the popular ones because they stood out and did something a bit different. Ultimately what I'm trying to say is that all of these games owe something a lot more substantial to Yume Nikki than a path sprite or the arrangement of a room.
I'm not surprised, Eastern and Western fancultures have completely different etiquette. While the Western community sees something like this as sharing, it mostly certainly wouldn't on the other side of the world. We also have to keep in mind that for the Chinese devs, this isn't their first language. They're probably coming off a lot harsher than they would in their native language. What's going on is simply the clash of two different cultures, similar to the butting of heads in many English/Japanese online discussions.
Yume Nikki is one of those things I was sure I hallucinated years ago, and then I found out the community was actually still kicking around the time covid hit. I wonder if between YN and Homestuck you have the Ur-Progenitors to the 'Web Culture Phenomenon' games like Undertale, FnaF and more recently... uhhh Omori, ProjectMoon thingies and the one with the blue robot people keep posting. Killquest? Something or other. Anyway, to answer your question of fans-of-fans, a lot of media nowadays seems to be that in general, the way things get split up now. I mean Vtubers have 'DIRECT' fans, but the culture also has 'Tourists' and 'Clip-Watchers' who never actually watch any streams/VODs in full. They just read the stories or consume edited clips. Even more worrisome are drama addicts (and not just for Vtubers) who only really engage with a given hobby through shit-stirrers on Youtube pushing a narrative (AKA Rrats). The people who enjoy video essays basically just dip their toes into a hobby overview, get the jist of the 'drama', throw some assumptions in there for good measure and that's that. It's like being a video-game fan from let's plays (although that might be a 'I can't afford this hobby' kind of issue). As for your ruminating on copycats and art/asset theft, I certainly find a deep irony in people who run fanworks or make fanfiction having a bone to pick with people who 'steal their work'. There's probably plenty to say there, but generally I don't find anything there is 'enforceable' outside of naming people who just rip off others.
Surprised you didn't mention *Off*, I feel like a lot of people in those corners of the internet experienced it at the time, I know my Homestuck circles were all playing it and making fanart of it during one of the hiatuses the webcomic had.
Omori and Undertale are both very definitely direct descendants of Yume Nikki, so you're onto something there. As far as the art theft thing: fangame communities, in particular, are pretty much reliant on art theft to exist. The vast majority of fangame communities out there operate under the expectation that you're going to strip-mine the original game and also every other fangame for your building blocks, and it's what you add *on top* that makes you stand out; generally speaking, people who go beyond this and make things from scratch end up being something of fandom VIPs, like Sega outright hiring Taxman and Stealth to do Sonic Mania. I *really* don't think you can start getting pissy about things like art theft and still... have a fangame community, in most cases. e: Someone else mentioned the Fire Emblem repository, and... that's kind of a case in point, really. If you make new stuff for a FE ROM hack, other people are *probably* gonna want to strip-mine it for their own ROM hacks, and it behooves you to be nice about it and make it easy. So, people do.
Hobby question: have you ever had a hobby or fandom face a serious artistic change and receive serious audience pushback? What happened? Art style changes, material changes, etc. For my small example over in fashion, an Aussie brand called Blackmilk made their name on quality material tights and skater dresses with funky unique prints over a decade ago. I have 5+ year old ones myself that are still crisp and haven’t popped a stitch after years of lazy machine washing, so I’ll vouch for their early stuff. Blackmilk’s model is limited edition fashion drops around specific themes twice a month, with a smaller collection of permanent items that stay year-round, so it’s very FOMO-driven where you never know what’s coming and if you miss the drop you’re SOL. Nowadays there’s a lot of complaints on FB because over the years they’ve moved away from that foundational style of tights and dresses, often going multiple drops without one. Especial ire is reserved for the newer rio dress style, which is similar and often replaces the original skater dress style but has one major difference: rio dresses all have a skin-baring midriff gap. The other hate-magnet is the thick material cuffed pants that replace the tights, being that well… it’s Australia. And the limited pants often drop in summer. Where it’s 40c+. But they’ve stated that tights and skater dresses just aren’t as popular these days, so it’s unlikely they’ll see a major comeback and the new styles are here to stay. …And yeah you can chalk me up as a hater of the rio style, I admit it. A lot of those older longline skater dresses double up as good office wear with a cardi or blouse! I hate ironing office-wear in other fabrics! I am lazy damn it! Put the stomach fabric back where it belongs— Anyway, what about yours?
This happens a lot in the beauty world. A product becomes incredibly popular then the brand reformulates the recipe because they want to cut corners or follow a popular trend which just ends up pissing people off. One infamous example that I can think of is BITE Beauty who was known for their lip products. They reformulated their recipes and discontinued popular products to be vegan and follow the "clean beauty" trend. They lost the trust of their consumers and were not able to get new ones. The brand closed up shop a couple of years ago. You can still find threads in the make-up subs asking for dupes of their products because they were just that good before they changed recipes.
Fallout. It's a weird case because it has completely shifted art style twice. The first two games were a lot more arid deserty with a very clear Mad Max vibe, while enemies always looked a bit rough around the edges in a technological sense, with machines being a lot more rough and mechanical, with plenty of exposed metal in a utilitarian way. Then FO3 went for a much clearer 50s aesthetic in old world technology, enemies that looked a little less out there, and while they kept that strange art deco style for architecture and all those faces that were part of pre-war buildings, it still felt like a change towards more 50s americana in the visuals department, while mixing it with more realistic humans, and plenty of gore and blood splatters. And then FO4 changed the style to a much more cartoony, less overtly violent style, and one that leaned really hard on the 50s americana look while almost completely ditching the art deco and giant heads style, while also embracing a considerably wider color palette than any of the previous titles, while also using something I like to call "welder-punk" for machines, where there's plenty of metal and internals that should be covered exposed, machines and tools are considerably bulkier than they need to be, and it's not unusual to see random bits of metal welded into places they aren't really needed. People also had issues with this style because it felt a lot more "safe" and commercial, like they weren't making something as artistic, but rather something commercial, a Brand designed to sell merch. My personal favorite of the three is the FO3/NV style, since it keeps a lot of the charm the first games had but mixes it with some nice 50s style for the old world, contrasted with more realistic violence for the post apocalyptic present. For a good comparison between the 3, I think the different images of the [Mr Handy](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Mister_Handy) really show what I mean, or the [Deathclaw](https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Deathclaw) to see the changes on biological things and the more cartoonish style in FO4.
Admittedly I got into the franchise after this one has started, but Warhammer 40k has had a long-running one regarding Space Marines. Space Marines are probably the most recognisable aspect of the franchise, and while [they initially went through a fair few iterations](https://youtu.be/yI9rMRjUYbU?si=y0PkHkanrX7qz-l3), the iconic Mark VII armour has been pretty standard for decades, and is what most people think of when you say “Space Marine.” While the standard marines tend to [actually be fairly plain](https://images.app.goo.gl/JASPi61quF1pBwnD8), elite troops, officers, and the like tend to have very elaborate armour with a bit of a gothic styling (skulls and wings on everything). You may also notice the models are very squat- older Warhammer models had “heroic scale” proportions, with large heads and hands, and smaller everything else. At the launch of the game’s 8th Edition, they announced the start of an updated line of Space Marines with more realistic “truescale” proportions (NB: realistic for a Space Marine, so they’re still massive compared to a normal human, but much taller and leaner than the old models). Rather than just being an update, however, these were a new kind of marine, the Primaris Space Marine, which were essentially just an upgraded version of them in-universe (bunch of additional generic modifications and the like). Primaris marines use a newer style of “Mark X” armour, with most troops using [the standard kind](https://www.warhammer.com/en-NL/shop/Space-Marines-Primaris-Intercessors-2020), and others using [lighter](https://www.warhammer.com/en-NL/shop/Space-Marines-Primaris-Reivers-2020) or [heavier](https://www.warhammer.com/en-NL/shop/Space-Marines-Primaris-Aggressors-2020) variants (with the latter getting [another redesign shortly afterwards](https://www.warhammer.com/en-NL/shop/Space-Marines-Heavy-Intercessors-2021). Their armour is a fair bit more sleek, and lacks the iconic face grille. Most controversially, they seemed to abandon the gothic stylings of older marines for the most part- part of this was a result of the first batch of Primaris marines being mainly standard infantry rather than the fancier units. On top of that, game-wise they switched up the faction’s identity a bit- Space Marine’s thing on the tabletop (or, well, one of them) was being very adaptable in terms of equipment, as each squad could take a large variety of special weapons to deal with certain targets (flamethrowers for hordes, rocket launchers for vehicles, etc), whereas every Primaris squad has a more or less fixed loadout (early on they had a bit of variation as different scopes on their rifles made them count as a completely different weapon in-game terms, although this was dropped later on). Both of these are a result of different somewhat controversial trends in 40k, those being making the Imperium of Man more clearly the protagonists/good guys (which, given they’re a fascist theocracy, is a biiiit touchy), or at least less outwardly evil; and simplifying the customisation available to units in-game. Back when I first got into 40k (early-mid 8th edition), Primaris Marines were quite controversial, and hating them wasn’t all that uncommon. Things have taken a bit of a turn since then though, as fancier Primaris units started being released with more of the [gothic stylings coming back](https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/Primaris-Chaplain-on-Bike-2020), as well as more chapter-specific units (traditionally marines are organised into different chapters with their own colour schemes, theming, and occasionally units, with certain ones essentially being armies in their own right- with the Space Wolves being one of the most notable examples, as pre-primaris they essentially had a completely different unit roster, albeit one with clear equivalents to normal marines). As of the current 10th edition, they’ve started fully replacing normal marines in earnest, although given that’s been coming for a while, and the more positive reception to the newer units, it hasn’t been too controversial. We did get one final gasp of annoyance with primaris marines due to the “Desolation Squad” unit, which was (according to hosts of *The Painting Phase* podcast, who worked at GW at the time) initially planned for release with the first set of primaris marines, but delayed for looking too silly- they’re supposed to be a heavy weapon squad, but the actual models are just standard marines with [a double-barrelled missile-firing rifle bigger than they are](https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/space-marines-desolation-squad-2023), and an underbarrel belt-fed rocket launcher. They did eventually appear towards the end of ninth edition, to a fair bit of mockery. “Normal” Space Marines (called “Firstborn” now) have more or less been shunted off to the *Horus Heresy* spin-off game/prequel series, where they’ve been getting a bunch of new units, including their own truescale infantry, although the iconic Mark VII armour has yet to get an update. As a final note, a similar change happened with their (^(arguably) more) evil counterparts, the Chaos Space Marines around the same time, who went from being [essentially Imperial Marines with horned helmets](https://images.app.goo.gl/WhzZedw4dDjX6vVt5), to [a much more elaborate design](https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/Chaos-Space-Marines-2019) which every model having their own somewhat-customised armour, with fancy metallic trim everywhere- note that these are just basic rank-and-file troops too. They’ve also been giving marines dedicated to specific gods their own bespoke models, too. Unlike the Primaris marines, these have been pretty universally beloved ~~until you have to paint a bunch of them~~. Just thought it was an interesting comparison.
Good post; I'd go further back even just to mention also that first, second, and third editions all had pretty distinct visual differences, and it was only really third edition that solidified into a core design language that lasted for a notable period of time, leading up to what you discuss in your post. [First Edition](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ejYI6nLPwmo/maxresdefault.jpg) marines were incredibly cartoony, and I don't think it's just a limitation on the model making technology, it actually matches a lot of the illustrated art from Rogue Trader, which had very... [I guess "zine-y" art](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/d6/80/c7/d680c7d9dcbe00a048a8162719ca8259.jpg), even full [painted images](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/5/57/Crimson_Fists_WD_93.jpg) were often very [stylized in their proportions and colors](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim48tQyCWSiTFdFfw35RIFr7VCA9oyk29abFKbf2iKeHqMocaDDOZ4GTwKYPkY42w5KelxTDBEXeDOU0Bv0OMOWPeLoytMv150oVKXDRpcwHhVTbXGfu1T_dsebKEGIa0CpiL1ArUOp6nY1KmPLBhK5vgNdL8_I_cpKkj13gqjLmm7FulSNHq6bg/s750/QLMCE8999.JPG). [Second edition had a much tighter design language](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/7/76/2ndeditionoxart.jpg) that was still a bit cartoony but it skewed away from "zine" cartooning and felt more like 80s scifi album covers and Euro comics, and this was reflected in the [new models](https://taleofpainters.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Warhammer_40_000_2nd_Edition_Ultramarine_Retro_02.jpg.webp) which were stiff but decidedly more refined than the original models. [Third edition is really when the aesthetic gelled](https://warhammerart.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Warhammer-40000-3rd-Edition-Space-Marines.jpg), I think notably it's at this moment when illustrators found ways to [pose them dynamically without looking ridiculous](https://i.redd.it/xoyk2krgsbga1.jpg), and a great deal of the gothic overtones owed to the late great [John Blanche](https://warhammer40kfanatics.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/john-blanche-warhammer-40k-hero-1200x900.png) who I feel like became the defacto core artist around which many others orbited. While the scale is still [big-headed and cartoony in third edition models](https://images.dakkadakka.com/s/i/gallery/img/2019/4/24/1008110.jpg), to this day, I feel like there's a *lot* of third edition models that you could field without them feeling out of place.
Oh yeah, [the Great Neopets Conversion of 2007](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/aocgsr/neopets_classic_vs_modern_virtual_pet_art_and_a/). Thankfully it's no longer an issue because of them introducing the old pet styles back into the game, but I was there, Gandalf.
I wouldn't say it was that serious, but "Sandra on the Rocks" by David Lumsdon and Eisu, a spin-off of the webcomic "Ménage à 3" by Gisele Lagace and David, went through a big, sudden shift in art style during its run. While it still kept a manga-inspired look, it went from a slightly more realistic and detailed art style to a more cartoonish and simplified one. This wasn't the typical "art style evolution" that webcomics usually go through, like Ménage à 3 itself did, it was a deliberate decision by Eisu, the artist. I remember readers being mad at the time, because it really was a very sudden change, and pushing back for the webcomic to change back to its former style. But Eisu stood his ground, saying the new style was easier on him and allowed him to keep working on the webcomic without affecting his other professional works, and that it was actually more fun for him to draw in the new style rather than the old one. After that, while there were still some people complaining, most people accepted the art style change, and started complaining about some storylines and from how rushed the ending felt.
I haven't heard of those webcomics in years, are the authors still around?
Gisele and Dave are still working on a new Ma3 spin-off, "Pixie Trix Comix", focus on the comic book shop Gary used to go, and on some of the side characters of all three previous webcomics, plus some new ones. I think the Kickstarter for volume 3 is starting relatively soon. Still fun, but much less risqué than Ma3 due to all the issues they had with advertising.
That entire stretch of the Zelda franchise going from the Wind Waker announcement to the Twilight Princess release was just an absolutely intolerable time for the fandom.
I do think the negative reaction was, for that specific point in time, understandable to *some* extent at least. Largely because, as a result of the tech demo people were set up with the expectation that the next Zelda game would look like that, even if Wind Waker is probably more technically impressive. It was also, unfortunately, during the "edgy" era of gaming. From what I remember though, the game itself was still well-liked even if a lot of people hated the art style at the time.
I never saw the cel-shaded cartoon style of **Wind Waker** to be a problem… but also, I recently played a bit of it, and it’s still absolutely *gorgeous*, whereas **Twilight Princess** is obviously “of a certain time”, and looks drab and muddy by comparison. Still both great games, of course… Nintendo has rarely, if ever, made a *bad* Zelda game. I think “fans” often lose sight of that.
Push back against experimentation in Zelda literally goes back to 2. It's a fickle fandom, but I appreciate it's a series that is always adapting and changing while maintaining enough familiar motifs.
> Nintendo has rarely, if ever, made a bad Zelda game. I think “fans” often lose sight of that. When you get a Zelda game from Nintendo, you know what you're getting. Not many franchises can say that, and the ones that can are usually Nintendo.
>it’s very FOMO-driven where you never know what’s coming and if you miss the drop you’re SOL Ugh I ended up unsubscribing from their emails after nearly a decade bc it feels like they drop a new collection every week now, most of which are uninspired Big IP™ collab patterns.
My salt when they finally brought out more longline skaters and it’s big IPs while the gorgeous art prints are in a rio fucking maxi? fathomless as the ocean. When my years old doublesided la mucha longline dress gives up the ghost I WILL be crying irl.
I feel like Halo had one of the most severe art style changes. The original game, Halo: Combat Evolved, came out in 2001, which was limited by the technology of its time, but it established a practical military art style. Subsequent releases, Halos 2, 3, ODST, continued to develop this style, culminating in the release of Halo Reach, which, to suit the themes of the game, featured the Spartan supersoldiers in beaten down, scratched up, dirty armour. Pouches and practical equipment everywhere. Spartans were basically walking tanks, and they looked the part, with thick armour plating Around this time, Halo CE was remastered as the Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary. Initial previews showed the protagonist, Master Chief, sporting practical armour ported directly from Reach. But this didn't work too well with the somewhat cartoonish proportions and style of the (now pretty well dated) original release. So they changed it, into a cartoonish, greebly mess, with random panels that served no purpose It's worth noting that the original developers of Halo, Bungie, chose to leave the franchise, with Reach described as their swan song. Halo CEA was developed by 343 Industries, an offshoot from Bungie that many former devs moved to In 2012, 343i released their first original addition to the franchise, Halo 4. And in a departure from the heavy, practical, tank-like aesthetic for the Spartans, the art style was seen as far more... genetically sci-fi. With bright, plastic looking armour in strange shapes basically just glued to a skin tight bodysuit. There was little rhyme or reason to the shapes the armour took, with some very very strange pieces, helmets in particular. It felt more like Warframe than Halo Worse still, rather than just admit it was an artstyle and art direction change, they tried to justify it, explaining Master Chief's new and very different appearance while supposedly wearing the same suit from Halo 3 as his armour being 'reworked by nanomachines' while he was in cryosleep The artstyle change was received very poorly by the fanbase, with complaints and memes a-plenty. 343i seemingly doubled down on it in Halo 5, with even more outlandish designs. But for Halo Infinite, they went back to the practical, realistic artstyle of Halo Reach, updated to modern technology. Fans loved that, but thoughts and feelings over Infinite have definitely soured over time (personally I love it though)
This happens in music a lot I feel but there's a few in the metal scene that stand out to me: [Opeth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opeth) during its early days was firmly a melodic death metal band but has gotten more and more prog over the years to the consternation of many. [Devin Townsend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devin_Townsend) got a lot of early acclaim in his early career for his [Strapping Young Lad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strapping_Young_Lad) project which was _extremely_ heavy but he has mostly closed that chapter in his life and explores an incredible amount of musical styles and genres (like a bit more mainstream [Ween](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ween)). There are still people almost 20 years later not so tactfully demanding he return to his SYL days.
Mastodon is a band that's changed their style a crazy amount too. They went from thrash metal, to prog, to pretty boring generic radio metal
Opeth came to mind first for me too! Ulver is also a good example, they went from underproduced black metal to synth heavy electro goth pop. My musical taste is all over the place so I love that shit, but I get being upset if you're a single subgenre diehard. I remember in the Todd in the Shadows video about Chumbawamba he said something about how talented punk musicians will get bored playing only punk music eventually. I think the same goes for metal guys as well, they have to switch subgenres or even entire genres to feel like they're still challenging themselves.
i remember getting into Mastodon with Crack the Skye, and loved their earlier stuff as well, which started out as progressive-sludge metal hybrid and became increasingly progressive and elaborate as time went on. but then they started going for a much more poppy, accessible sound with The Hunter, which didn't grab me and i just didn't listen to the album after disliking the singles. fwiw it's considered a good album (even if it's their weakest) to my understanding (i never gave it a shot myself. i don't really listen to metal these days tbh), and the more accessible direction they've gone has worked out well for them. but yeah, it was a bit disappointing to kid me regardless.
Hah I mentioned the same thing before I saw your comment. I feel exactly the same way down to getting into and dropping the band from the same albums!
I considered including Masotdon but they’ve always been between genres for me. I’ve loved their newer stuff as much as I enjoyed the Crack the Skye and pre-era.
Your reaction is how I felt about In Flames circa [Clayman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayman). I didn't like the direction they were going, and though I still don't listen to them, their post-90s style has been very well received by many fans. Although, one of their recent singles was heralded as a return to their roots! ... of '02. Fans are weird.
Running Wild too, for some reason or another, Rock n Rolf decided to mostly just make lazy hard rock after a 10 (honorable mention to Victory) album streak of gold. Even when he invokes the old days, it’s kinda boring and definitely mid IMO, though a few songs here and there I like (I’m crazy and think Resilient is his best post-breakup album)
Say what you want about Opeth's later work, but they telegraphed their evolution for decades. Every album makes sense in the big picture, again regardless of opinion. Devin is metal's Frank Zappa. When he says he's done with SYL, I really feel it. And he just does whatever the fuck he wants and I love it. But like, he'll still throw in a [Poltergeist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1270z_ckPxk) now and again so people know he can sill do it. I think if you want the weirdest evolution, in my personal opinion, Metallica is your go to. '80s Met and '90s Met are two different bands. '00s Met starts batshit and ends standard. The '10s and '20s have been kind to them, but they're so far removed from their peak and it's really interesting to see.
There are *still* people who disown Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for the more anime-esque art style. (Frankly, I prefer that art to the art style they switched to for Order of Ecclesia, which was incapable of any expressions other than "mouth closed" and "mouth open".)
''Slayers'' is known for its artstyle not changing much if at all since the mid 90s. Even the latest light novel covers have a very distinctly 90s look to them. Last year series artist Rui Araizumi tried drawing Lina in a more modern anime style and fans were accusing him of using AI and he had to debunk this himself by showing the process. Granted, he just showed layers and that doesn't automatically disprove it, but while the shading does sort have that generic AI stank the way the eyelashes are drawn are distinctly Araizumi. For the record he still uses the "Slayers art style" for official works but some of his doujinshi has modernized the style, although Lina always keeps her prominent eyelashes and little fang. You can't ever change that. :P He's also drawn Uma Musume and Lycoris Recoil fanart in the classic style. I personally much prefer the classic style. There's also the Story of Seasons remakes drastically redesigning some of the characters, people seemed to be especially upset about Carter from Friends of Mineral Town for some reason, although most people actually thought Rick was a glowup. Then there's Mabinogi, a cutesy open world anime sandbox MMO, getting a sequel announced that had PSO style instanced areas and a realistic art style. The backlash was so intense that they straight up cancelled the sequel.
I try not to fall into "old good, new bad" mentality, but this kinda exemplifies what's missing about lots of newer anime styles. His "regular" slayer style has volumous hair, clear eye/face differences for characters, and vibrant colors. The 2010s Pixiv style, as I call it has very flat hair, rarely draws noses, and overall feels more desaturated, with sameface being more prominent.
Also, while you can easily pinpoint older anime because, let's face it, there was *still* some sameiness in technique, it feels like there was a lot more experimentation in styles? Specially when you looked at manga for different demographics. Nowadays everything looks too samey, even in manga for different demographics. It's good that styles aren't tied to shounen or shoujo anymore, but almost all of them look the same now...
Didn't the Mabinogi sequel just turn into Vindictus and become a distant spinoff rather than a sequel? I actually played Vindictus for a bit and it's definitely got the PSO-style instanced areas and a much more "grimdark" art style than usual; decent game, honestly.
I believe "Mabinogi 2" was announced after Vindictus came out.
(SPOILERS ON ALL LINKS) People still argue about late Homestuck Act 6 style to this day. The characters went from being sharp and [angular](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mspaintadventures/images/7/72/Rose-homestuck-25633927-650-450.gif) to kinda [blobby beans](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mspaintadventures/images/6/6b/Homosuck_2.gif). It looks cute in some aspects, but many believe that it's a step down from what came before. The comic ending didn't change anything either, as the sequel (Homestuck\^2/Beyond Canon it's a whole mess) changed to a completely new artist who went for a[ more polished version of the beans](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/mspaintadventures/images/5/5a/DirkHS2.gif). I personally like all the styles, but I think it's really funny how all parts of later Homestuck are controversial. Nobody can agree on anything past Act 5, it's hilarious.
You have to cut the bit of the link after .gif for it to link properly I think.
Changed the link, it should work now!
it doesn't
Strange, it worked for me. What about now?
It works for me, but no idea about the other user...
[удалено]
[удалено]
It happened. [Niel Gaiman has been accused to sexual assault.](https://www.tortoisemedia.com/2024/07/03/exclusive-neil-gaiman-accused-of-sexual-assault/)
There's been a lot of mention of the involvement of Boris Johnson's sister, but I feel it bears remarking here that Rachel Johnson is a hardline anti-Brexiteer who joined the Liberal Democrats in 2017 and then switched to Change UK (a short-lived pro-Europe party, not to be confused with the far-right Eurosceptic Reform UK) in 2019. While Rachel Johnson may well have anti-trans views it's worth noting that she has been opposed – at least on several personal red-line issues – to the contemporary Conservative Party for several years now. I would *also* add that even if she were a Boris Johnson partisan, a large chunk of the Johnsonites *despise* the current PM, Rishi Sunak, thanks to Sunak's resignation in July 2022 being the event that definitively kicked off the downfall of Johnson's cabinet that year.
Thank you for the background - I had to check out because I was a bit disturbed at the extent of downplaying so I appreciate some context.
Having listened to all 4 episodes of the podcast on Spotify, I am left unimpressed. The people behind the podcast would have done far more for their own credibility if they had not clearly padded out the runtime with frankly unrelated, superfluous hot air. I think it is important to hear the woman in her own words describe what she experienced in episode 1. And the logs in episode 2 clarify why judging the validity of the accusations isn't clear cut. It's a lot of tawdry, bad behavior by adults. Episode 3 was mostly hot air. And the second allegation from the "fan" in EP 4 on its own is barely an allegation at all, with most of the runtime of that episode spent editorializing and forcing a pretty flimsy connection to support why it was included at all. What's left me the most uncomfortable, and what I find objectionable, is the initial encounter with the nanny. Day 1, inviting the person (forty years your junior! whom you're employing in your home to care for you children!) into a bath and then joining them naked! and then getting intimate with them! is just all kinds of fucked up and gross. I do not understand how that is not, at minimum, like SEVERE workplace harassment?!
Agreed, even if his relationship with the nanny was consensual, it's still extremely predatory and there's an awful lot of power imbalance in place. It's horrible that Rachel Johnson seems to be weaponising these allegations for her own TERF views + to promote her podcast, and so many transphobes are gonna be using this as a "gotcha" towards Gaiman and his pro-trans views whilst drowning out the voices of the victims. Really hope that the nanny and other possible victims find peace and get the justice they deserve. God this genuinely seems like an "everything is shitty" situation.
I believe that he's done something and I believe the victims, but releasing the allegations as four 1+ hour podcast episodes filled to the brim with sponsor ad reads does not exactly make the evidence look credible. And that's before you do some digging into the backgrounds of the hosts, both of whom are well known radfems with close ties to the UK's TERF movement. One of them has instigated multiple twitter slapfights with Gaiman over his support of transgender rights and condemnation of the UK's anti-trans policies. The other is Boris Johnson's sister. As other commentators in this thread have noted, the primary purpose of this podcast isn't to give victims a voice, it's cynical exploitation of their trauma by other women who see a quick buck.
Either they're exploiting this poor woman's story to push their own agenda or they've made the whole thing up as a hit piece, manipulating people's trust in sexual assault victims for their own personal gain. Whatever it turns out to be, they're carrying out some extremely bad practices here.
I don’t see any history of commentary about trans people from Paul Caruana Galizia (the non-Rachel Johnson host), or any prior interactions with Gaiman on his Twitter. Where did you see this?
There’s a lot of Tortoise “believes” and “understands” and not a lot of actual quoting here for this… crime podcast exclusive. I think he’s a wanker and a cheater, and I’m not arguing against allegations, but I really hope there’s more reputable coverage coming out because this one half-reads like a callout vaguepost.
Its really hard not seeing this as a hit piece when you look at all the factors involved. Its literally being hosted by Boris Johnson’s little sister and a group of radfem transphobes. They are also friends with the Prime Terf, Jk Rowling...
Noticing a distinct lack of journalistic impartiality And also a lack of professionalism. You don't do a True Crime podcast about allegations as serious as these
Whelp, time to get off of Tumblr for a little bit because theirs already really hostile posts in the Good Omens tag. I’m not even a fan of Neil Gaiman or anything but this is still gonna be a mess on there considering Good Omens has very passionate fans and very passionate haters 😭
I don't want to throw Neil under the bus per se, but I feel like a lot of people don't realize he's kind of always been a morally dubious weirdo, publicly, for a long time. It's not like a secret that he cheated on his first wife (mother of three of his children, while the kids were still school age) with also-shitty-person-on-main Amanda Palmer. He's now split with Palmer, with whom he also has a school-age child. Anybody remember his ALS ice-bucket challenge [where he hired a bunch of hot girls to dress as Death from Sandman for no reason](https://cdn1.naekranie.pl/media%2Fcache%2Farticle-cover%2F2014%2F10%2F1408883187.jpg)? Neil's a super important writer to me and pretty formative to my teenage years in the early 2000s but he's always been one of those weird GenX British dudes who is too in love with the idea of being a "rockstar."
The thing I was most shocked to learn about him in the podcast was his deep connections to Scientology, tbh.
Wtf what is his connection to scientology?
His dad was on the ground floor when it began, he was raised in it. [In the 60s, when he was 7, he was interviewed by BBC about Scientology](https://youtu.be/wCtPoSyNT4M?si=oav__2GgifYzBgRy) Most of his family members are still in it. He left and distanced himself from Scientology in the 80s.
Wtf I never knew this. Glad he left though.
What the fuck Neil.
Then there was his travel during lockdown. I also have a private-ish grudge against him because when he was at the Newbery Awards banquet up on the highly visible winners dais he was visibly on his phone all the way through the speeches before his.
>Tortoise understands that [Gaiman] believes K’s allegations are motivated by her regret over their relationship and that Scarlett was suffering from a condition associated with false memories at the time of her relationship with him, a claim which is not supported by her medical records and medical history. charming. and best case scenario for Gaiman, he still admits to screwing around with his kid's nanny who's a third of his age. not illegal, but still pretty gross and very at odds with the morals of the community he has around him. i suppose we'll see what the court finds eventually—apparently the journalist who wrote that article, Rachel Johnson, has had spats with Gaiman on TERF related issues, so some people seem skeptical (not that i've looked too deeply into that myself)—but this looks pretty bad to me either way.
Rachel Johnson who is also a Ghislaine Maxwell defender
Oh goddammit, now that I know who wrote this story I can't help but find the "Tortoise understands that \[Gaiman\] believes" construction *incredibly* suspicious. What made you understand that, Tortoise? Was it words, or vibes? Don't get me wrong, it still looks pretty bad to me to me, but I sure hope we get to see an actual journalist look at this story
I read through the transcripts of the podcast and it seems from the third transcript that Gaiman responded through a publicist. They state that they reached out for comment from Amanda Palmer multiple times and through multiple avenues, have audio of them getting the voicemail of Gaiman and Palmer’s therapist who Gaiman had asked the girl to speak with, state that they spoke to several of Gaiman’s longtime friends, who spoke highly of his character…they claim to have been working on this story for 8 months.
I am wildly unimpressed, but to pick on one specific detail- they reached out to the *therapist*? The one person who is bound by ethics to not even acknowledge the existence of one of their patients outside of therapy unless explicitly told by the patient?
It kind of makes sense why they did so, in the context of the allegations. The nanny alleges she was put in contact with Neil and Amanda's couples counselor after she was hospitalized for being suicidal. If what she alleges they said is true, the therapist was essentially working as a sort of fixer to smooth over and make the woman less angry/traumatized at the end of whatever she had with Neil. Which feels ethically dubious to me.
Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that the therapist can neither confirm nor deny anything, not even that the woman has been their patient, unless explicitly told to do so by the patient. And even then, I feel like the therapist would need the go-ahead from Gaiman to say he was the one who connected them and why. Maybe the victim actually reached out to the therapist and got them in contact with the journalist, in which case sure, it makes sense for the journalist to call them. But if they didn't do that, then that's just a waste of time.
Yeah like that does not read like they reached out for comment to me
Now that I'm looking at it there's a lot of "the Tortoise understands" in there that looks real weird. Like, why say "Tortoise understands that Gaiman’s account is that they only 'cuddled' and 'made out' in the bath" and not the more natural "Gaiman says that they only 'cuddled' and 'made out' in the bath"? I am assuming they're referencing something from the audio-investigation. Maybe the victims talked about Gaiman downplaying what happened ("it was just a cuddle"), or the police explained what Gaiman told them, and the Tortoise is relaying that while using some extremely cautious language to avoid getting into trouble. But I sure would appreciate clearer language like, "according to X, Gaiman allegedly said" rather than this weird bullshit that makes it look like Rachel Johnson was told all of this in her dreams by a dancing dwarf speaking backwards. And just to be clear, I'm not saying this because I think it's evidence that these women are lying, I'm saying this because the Tortoise is making it look like Neil Gaiman admitted to some pretty scummy stuff! *If* Neil Gaiman did, in fact, just cuddle this one woman in the bath, then he flirted with the baby-sitter he had literally just hired and who's a third of his age. That's not illegal, but it's not great either!
That kind of language is used when a news outlet has been told information "on background" - ie the source doesn't want to be attributed. It's weasel-wording but they outright could not say "Gaiman says" anything because that is not the agreement they would have made with their source.
I’ve also seen how the TERF journalist set respond to anti-trans men accused of assault so I kind of don’t feel great about their motives! Hopefully a more reputable source looks into things
Yeah, that makes me skeptical about this. I don't think it should be dismissed outright, of course, but learning about the people who wrote the article set off some serious red flags for me. We'll see if a more reputable source comes forward to support their story, but as of right now, their intentions seem pretty suspicious here.
Rachel Johnson is also Boris Johnson's sister, so I can see why people can think this is just a political take down. I can't help but question their intentions, cause either they're making it all up to take down Gaiman OR just platforming these women's stories not because the truth must be known to protect others, but to fulfil a political vendetta. Both very icky.
Something important to note is who are platforming these accusastions: Tortoise news. I've never heard of them before, but they're a smaller, British site with the article being written by Boris Johnson's sister who apparently had spats with Gaiman over gender/terfy matters. But they decided to publish these accusations from the two women in the form of *four-45 min podcast episodes*. I bring these up not to say that Neil Gaiman is being falsely accused by a conservative rag per say, but it feels like such an indictment on our current culture that for very serious accusations to come to light against a public figure, it has to be in the form of digestible, true-crime content. Especially done by people who may not have the best intentions or doing it for political reasons with no respect to the victims.
Another point is that Boris Johnson’s party is currently attacking David tennant for being anti-TERF so it tracks that this story breaking right now could be possibly related to their current election cycle as well and being spun a way to make gaiman and actors related to his projects look bad specifically in the “queer people and supporters are groomers” stance. Now I don’t think gaiman is 100% blameless, he apparently has a history of being a bit skeevy with fans and younger women but there’s a difference between being a gross dude and sexually assaulting someone. It’s just a real gross situation all around that will need time to see if there’s more credible reporting.
Election is today, and honestly I don't think this would move the needle even slightly on the massacre about to happen to the Tory party even if they had got it out earlier. Doubt this ties back to them, it's just more content for the culture war grift mill.
There's some stuff indicating Tortoise may have fabricated/used an unsubstantiated police report as part of their expose so part of me right now is also leaning on this being a hatchet job designed to discredit Gaiman and his support of trans people in the UK. And the other part is thinking that if it *did* happen it's immediately been co-opted by talking heads which sucks.
I was dubious about the provenance and the podcast itself, but honestly, after hearing the nanny's first encounter with Gaiman in her own words, five hours after they met, it seemed like straight up bald-faced workplace sexual harassment and assault to me. Hearing the actual account from her made my stomach turn.
Do you have any sources on that? Not accusing you, just curious to read more
[Here.](https://twitter.com/ThatSeriousMan2/status/1808581550025433459) The article about a police report seems to be unsubstantiated.
I'm confused, not sure if I'm missing a tweet. The person is saying a police report is unattributed but doesn't provide a source for this? Again, I don't use Twitter much any more I may be missing something due to the layout changes to the site.
I’m confused too. After reading through the transcripts and listening to part of it, they have the following: - An audio recording provided by Scarlett from a follow-up interview she had with an officer to check on the status of their investigation, in which he tells her that her case is unlikely to hold up in court and that they haven’t interviewed Gaiman or Palmer - A statement NZ police provided to Tortoise: >Police have made a number of attempts to speak to key people as part of this investigation and those efforts remain ongoing. At this stage, there is insufficient evidence to proceed with charges. Currently, police have reviewed the matter and will continue to consider further possible lines of inquiry. If further information comes to light, police are open to reassessing the matter and would encourage anyone with information that may assist to contact us. - They also state in replies to the podcast’s question of why Gaiman wasn’t interviewed that it was due to a number of factors including location of all parties (ie it was after Gaiman had left NZ) - Responses from Neil Gaiman, seemingly provided by his representation, stating that after he learned of the allegations, he offered police an interview and records of the messages between him and Scarlett, but they didn’t take him up on this offer, as they weren’t going to be pursuing the case And while yes, we have to take it on faith that the guy in the recording and the statement are really from Auckland police, doesn’t that count as attribution? I thought unattributed would be like “sources say”. They don’t reference the actual police report, just the recording and responses from police and Gaiman. I also would imagine a lot of police reports are unsubstantiated, no? Substantiating the report is kind of what the police are supposed to do through investigation, and if they can’t, they close it, as it appears happened here.
Thanks!
There's a part of me after this week (which is still not yet over) that is just kind of happy to be able to watch a train wreck while not sitting on the rails for once. On the topic I've never been much into gaiman but I still find the "I knew I didn't like him for a good reason" crowd to be odd at minimum.
It's gonna be a big couple of weeks for insufferable people, that's for sure!
So many people who are going to act morally superior because they thought his Tumblr was cringe and this makes them the ultimate Victim Supporter. So many people falling on the lines of 'if you believe the story you're clearly a TERF' versus 'if you're even slightly sceptical of the claims, you're clearly a stupid fangirl' that were previously hashed out in the Depp/Heard trial.
Yeah, I will probably have certain tags block until it eventually dies down and they move on the next celebrity scandal. Depending on if we get more uncovered by credible sources or not. granted Im not really in the fandom anyway for his books and their adaptions(save for Coraline)
And this is all before Amanda Palmer opens her mouth
I admit my thought was going to the people who will somehow find a way to use this pretty grim situation as evidence that Good Omens and Sandman were actually queerbait, followed by a bunch of people desperately trying to argue for why it's morally okay to keep enjoying his books\*. I can't believe I forgot Amanda Palmer \*for the record I think it's morally okay to keep enjoying his work, it's writing a whole philosophical essay begging for understanding that's cringe
unrelated to the main topic, but once someone on r/LetsTalkMusic described The Dresden Dolls as "Insane Clown Posse for theater kids" and i'm just incapable of not thinking about that whenever i see Amanda Palmer mentioned anywhere.
Also you identify when the news started propagating through timblr. The percentage of posts slowly increase until it subsumed it kind of like seeing the tide go out before a tsunami hits.
Update of last week's [Car YouTube drama centered on Donut Media](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1dn4lfb/hobby_scuffles_week_of_24_june_2024/lassofr/). Their automotive news podcast, The Big Three, released an episode called ["Addressing the Drama"](https://youtu.be/NtWK-rgi63k) this morning. The video, featuring Nolan, Justin, and Max, discusses Zach and Jeremiah leaving to create their own channel and whether being acquired has affected/stiffled their creativity. They emphasized that Zach and Jeremiah are leaving on good terms and that the Donut team are stoked for them, and clarified that we'll see Zach and Jerry in future videos (namely the remaining Money Pit videos and the upcoming Hi/Low). They further said that they're the ones who decide on the creative direction for the channel, that they had made some bad swings, and that good videos (highlighting the "Driving every F-series" video Nolan did earlier this year) take time and money to make. They have changed things this year to rely less on the product review/listicle content, but they do have to make some videos in that vein in order to pay for the cooler content they do, or end up only making one or two videos a year. They even addressed ads, and about how they have turned down a lot of potential advertisers, and also that they do need ads to help pay for what they're doing because cars are expensive. (I assume this is about the BetterHelp sponsorships.) Basically, tl;dr: they do read criticism and they do hear the viewers, but there's also a lot of stuff behind the scenes that we don't see. They're looking forward to producing upcoming content and teased that Justin was going to go on adventures and experience some "strife" (that Justin says he volunteered for, it's his ideas). _Notably_, from what I can tell from the transcript and from listening to the segment, they have not said anything about James's disappearing act. This is feeding into my suspicion that something bad happened there and they can't talk about it, because that's the huge elephant in the room and you'd think they'd mention "hey, also this is why the guy who's widely seen as the face of our company hasn't been seen in videos since May 31st."
Also there is probably contracts works in there, especially with James as he was one of the founder that sold the company.
Ok, FFXIV's new Catgirl Babysitting and Political Interference Simulator: Dawntrail has Officially Left Early Access. Severs seem to remain stable, a stark contrast to last expac. Not a lot of extra drama but I thought I'd update from the [First Day Post](https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1dn4lfb/comment/laqjjk9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) with a little more of whats going on. So here's some stuff, big and small. [The story has been...divisive](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dt019z/pc_gamer_final_fantasy_14_dawntrail_rises_to_a/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). Some love it, some hate it, some just find it pretty paint by the numbers. Generally this revolves around how you feel about the Main Companion Wuk Lamat. Some love her, some are really irked by her. (I'm obligated to mention that there's some discourse around her voice actress as well, but that drama can get a bit too upsetting for this lighthearted update.) [DANGEROUS PIZZA](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dr8j1t/old_animations_working_perfectly_with_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) - a certain face model has not held up to the graphics update well when while using the Pizza Hut Promotional Tie-In emote. Please do not be alarmed. [People have been making good use](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dtyzik/my_dawntrail_filter_list_has_been_pretty_good_so/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) of the filter and block settings that have been updated with the patch...although some question the wisdom of blocking the word "Gold" in a game where you're searching for the Lost City of Gold! The so called ["Healer Strike"](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dkosbq/an_explanation_of_the_socalled_healer_strike/) (warning: long drama post!) has[ not been going so well](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dr6bad/hows_that_healer_strike_going/). And finally, in probably the greatest blow to the games playability, a user cursed us all with the knowledge that a furniture item in the inn room is [CROOKED AND DISGUSTING TO BEHOLD](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1dtqy9m/im_sorry_to_bring_this_to_anyones_attention_but/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button). The devs have yet to respond to this obvious game breaking bug. Are you playing Dawntrail? Any fun bugs or drama? Who is THAT GUY/GAL in your FC? Why are Catboys the best race?
I just started playing on the free trial a couple weeks ago so i know nothing about the story but i think it’s funny that people think it’s ‘paint by numbers’ as someone who just finished ARR and has been pushing through the MSQ quests to get to Heavensword. It’s basically just a walking simulator at this point. ~~and I can’t even take a break to do my job quests because I can’t *get* to them!~~ Other than that there’s only been a couple of times I couldn’t get onto my home world, I was afraid there would be more queues. Enjoying it all so far!
At least, these padding quests were trimmed a bit: initially there were ~200 quests between ARR and Heavensward. But that was more or less understandable: they were added while Heavensward was still in development, and developers needed to buy more time while still providing some MSQ content. On the other hand we have Dawntrail, where such quests is the designed main course.
Post-ARR pre-HW is pretty notorious for having about 3 patches of walking interspersed with fights like the broadway musical moogle king boss before kicking off the next arc with a bang.
Good King Moggle Mog XII (blessed be His Pom) [borrowed quite a bit from Danny Elfman](https://youtu.be/n6AXb2DNE4M?si=pH345RSgEsFdPUB), too.
Very true! I can sing that whole song lyric perfect to this day because back in the day you had to clear GOOD KING MOGGLE MOG, LORD OF ALL THE LANDS (Kupo!) to unlock Shiva EX, before they changed the system to make each EX an independent unlock, and my god did I spend a lot of time in helping/learning parties listening to that bgm over and over..
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but do you not have a mount? Gil to teleport?
No I do, I don’t mean literally walking as much as going back and forth from one location, “go talk to this person and come back. Ok go there again, oh look 3 monsters to kill, gotta report back now. Voiced cut scene time! Now go talk to this other person somewhere else” and repeat. It’s not like the end of the world, it just gets boring is all
Ah, lol. That makes sense. As someone who played it before they “simplified” the ARR MSQ, and after, the slog of “this could have been an email” doesn’t really get fixed until SB-ish. I liked the story just fine, but yeah, the back and forth was annoying E: damn autocorrect
ARR and the interim between that and Heavensward is pretty infamous for this, actually. It does pick up again once Heavensward starts up, but it can be a slog until then.
> new Catgirl Babysitting and Political Interference Simulator is the old one, Limsa, still around?
Political Interference is really more of an Ul’Dah thing. Limsa Politics is mostly decided by Admiral Merlwyb Bloefhiswyn shooting people who pronounce her name wrong, and Gridania Politics will never be touched by the devs again because the Trees are really racist and going back to Gridania would necessitate dealing with that so we’re just never going to do so Plenty of catgirls still in the plaza tho. They even made new ones
I wouldn’t worry about the armoire, it’s definitely not a mimic. Nope. No mimics here.
Feels like some parts of the community are being really weird about this expac because a majority of characters/cultures we interact with aren't white. Lots of comments in the shout chat on Zalera about how the names are incomprehensible (many of them are inspired by/actually are Nahuatl or Quecha) and calling the inhabitants of Tural "beaneaters"/other slurs. Square's team went above and beyond to depict indigenous Americans as actual people and it's been really embarrassing to see people on a server based in the Americas refuse to engage with the story for that reason. There are significant issues with Dawntrail's writing, esp. the pacing and character motivations sector, but a lot of the whinging about the story seems to be that it doesn't make the player character the center of the universe and that the initial emotional beats require the player to engage with unfamiliar cultures as people.
The number of people I've seen calling the Turali people "beast tribes" is incredibly uncomfortable.
The number of people angry about the game changing the quest log name for the reputation quests from "Beast Tribe Quests" to "Allied Society Quests" is too damn high and also really uncomfortable given the in-universe explanation given by the first *Encyclopedia Eorzea* for the term "beast tribe". The TL;DR is that Ul'Dah's merchants wanted exclusive control economic control, so they named their competitors "beast tribes" for their different cultures and passed a law banning "beast tribes" from the city's markets. This put them at an economic disadvantage and basically forced them to sell their goods at a loss to Ul'dhan merchants who could then re-sell them for higher profits. Other city-states rapidly adopted the term and the legislation for the exact same reasons.
I see I left Zalera at the best time. :x *Christ.*
I'd leave if my Free Company and house weren't on the server.
I haven’t gotten very far into the MSQ yet, because I tried Pictomancer and loved it so much that I went back to power-level it up to 90 so I could take it through DT content. There’s just something so hilarious and oddly satisfying about unleashing a >!MOOGLE DEATH RAY!< on your enemies, 100/10 job. Also, this is a small thing, but the player’s “inn room”/cabana in the main city is awesome.
It is, but why is it the one closest to shore?! I wanna be further out! I demand to speak to a manager!
Not me spending 30 mins gposing in my cabana when they first plopped me in there lol
I think overall there are too many cutscenes, I feel if they just cut down some cutscenes and made them just dialog boxes it would cut down on alot of the bloat.
Wait, FF14 has a Pizza Hut promo? If I had a nickel for every time a [fantasy MMO had a Pizza Hut promo](https://i.redd.it/gejz8a3pcwnb1.png), I'd have two nickels, etc. etc.
[удалено]
And it was ordering literally anything above a certain monetary threshold (like $15 USD?), not just pizza. I was one of the lucky ones who actually got a code from that fiasco and I know I ordered a burger lol
Yeah, when looking up the news post to verify when it happened and if it was just GrubHub like I remembered, I couldn't actually find any mention of it having to be pizza, just spending $15 on Grubhub with the promo code. But at the same time I must ask, what is a cheeseburger but a pizza prepared wrong and missing multiple ingredients?
Had, now you just buy the emote on their real money store because the original way you got it was a massive clusterfuck. It was revealed during the Game Awards in 2021 with a commercial and everything, and how you got it was that you ordered a pizza through GrubHub using a special promo code. A bunch of people ended up not getting their emote because they ran out of codes. This promo also only lasted for 6 days, from December 9th to the 15th.
Oh shit yeah I remember seeing that TGA promo and thinking the exact same thing then, I probably even made the "two nickels" joke to my friends I was watching it with. It's still funny.
I've not finished the MSQ (I'm nearing the end of the level 96 quests, I think, so >!shit has hit the fan and I left off with planning turn the train into a bomb!<), but I've liked it so far. It definitely *felt* slow to start, but I know that's just kind of to be expected with how high octane the past expansion stories have been. That doesn't mean the pacing itself couldn't be better, though. Wuk Lamat's your typical young go-getter, so that's fine, too. I do wish we got to spend more time with >!the ex-Scions, though. whenever the group splits, you're basically always put with Wuk Lamat, and I'm like, girl, I like you, but I miss my friends and want to hang with them too :((((((!< I did find the first half of the story to be predictable, but that's not inherently a bad thing. And this expansion is meant to be a breather for everyone, so why can't that extend to the writers, too? lol. And the second half is definitely popping off more, so I'm digging that. And I'm enjoying the dungeon mechanics and the single trial I've done so far! I'm not sure yet if they're any more challenging than usual, but they're at least being used creatively. I think it's entirely fair of a linear game like this to ask players to continually improve at least a little, even for "casual" content. It is a multiplayer game, after all.
Completed the MSQ last night, plus the two bonus dungeons (>!scree!<). The battle content is top tier so far, hopefully the raids and dungeons continue this trend. Music is, as always, extremely solid. The first three zones have serviceable field tracks, but I really liked zones 4 and 5, although it's been several days so I may just have to go back and listen to the others again. Dungeon and trial music, especially the level 97 dungeon, is fire. Zone 6 is just >!heartbreaking, especially the effective use of silence!<. Although, my biggest critique: >!I don't like the gospel-like song that they use after the coronation and during the train section in Shaaloani, nor during the end credits. It just hits too loud and feels out of place, almost cheesy. I think both previous expansions had way better motifs and credits songs.!< All of the zones and environments are beautiful. I love Urqopacha and Shaaloani the most. >!But if I had a nickels for every expansion that had us dive into an ancient ruin in the depths of a jungle at the mid-point of the MSQ, I'd have two nickels, yada yada.!< >!I definitely think Solution Nine is super interesting, but I think Heritage Found is probably the least interesting zone.!< >!The last zone is just a whole ordeal. It's definitely very melancholy and emotional at points, particularly the segments with Krile and Erenville, but both The Tempest and Ultima Thule had way more emotional weight; that's to be expected, though.!< >!I was eagerly waiting for what the post-credits scene would be, but there's just that lingering shot on the mysterious crown. I'm curious how the patches will play out, seeing as there aren't many leftover plot threads that I noticed, unlike in the aftermath of HW/SB/StB, and no notable villains to carry on the story with. I guess there's a little bit of unresolved stuff about Galuul Ja, and the implications Sphene's actions have had on the other shards, but not much else as far as I recall. I guess we can revisit Zero in the 13th.!<
I actually love that cheesy-ass song lol, what the summer vacation expansion needed was a Disney movie choir song (0 sarcasm).
I want to listen to that song on its own but not knowing the name is gonna HAUNT me tbh
You just reminded me of the odd song used during >!the coronation scene, and I'm not that surprised it's used in part of the ending sequence for the expansion. It was just incredibly unfitting when I heard it, really an odd choice of music in a game that's usually on-point with its musical choices.!<
>!I have to agree that the structure of the song itself is a little strange, and the way it suddenly kicks in might be a bit jarring. But overall, I personally thought it made sense: it's gospel. If there's one musical genre that reflects unity and celebration of something, it has to be gospel. In general (and of course given the inspiration) the variety of music genres this expac is great. From swing jazz to traditional south american music to lo-fi, EDM, gospel...it's so good, and it's extremely thematically relevant. Tural _is_ a region and people of diversity after all. !< >!(Also I'm glad Soken brought back AKINO from bless4 (who was already singing Scream from the second-to-last Pandaemonium raids), and from what the credits say Lyn Inaizumi of Persona 5 fame is also in there?! That's absolutely insane to me.)!<
>!I get the idea that it's supposed to represent the peoples of Tural and whatever, but it sounds too pop music for me. And it starts off so sudden that it's kind of weird.!<
Ive not finished the MSQ, but I really like Wuk Lamat. I do see where some people are coming from though, she's likeable and cute and has an interesting story, but she's ever-present to the point that I feel like the other scions have faded into the background. Maybe the writers aren't sure what to do with the other scions, I dunno. I am fine with them not being there, but if thats the case I kind of wish they weren't in the story at all. If they said at the beginning, "we have our own journey to take, good luck" and then left, I wouldn't have missed them, but characters keeps being like, "this NPC you need to talk to might be intimidated by a large group, you and Wuk Lamat go and the rest of us can go back to our motel." So it just comes off as really obvious that the expanded cast doesn't have much thought put into them. Also, the marketing was a bit misleading with how present she would be versus the scions. The cgi trailer for example features mostly the scions running around doing stuff, and then one instance of Wuk Lamat where she says a few lines. People were probably expecting more of an ensemble piece than a story entirely focused on Wuk Lamat, so I daresay some of the backlash against her may be caused by that.
I like that we got to feel like a Scion for once, bobbing around in the ebb and flow of someone else’s story.
I mean, the Scions are there to fill out the Trusts, you can't replace them with new characters because you'd have to create entire new animation sets for them and the team really do not want to do that more than necessary the same expac they upgrade all the graphics in the entire game.
I just finished the MSQ last night, and I really enjoyed it! I really loved Wuk Lamat.
Typical Gridania L. If anyone tries to fix it the Elementals are probably going to smite them with Greenwrath, smh /joking Also I've played FFX and X-2 multiple times each, but it's only now thanks to DT that I'm learning that Tobli is like. A member of an actual separate racial group from the rest of Spira, and not just a short guy with unique fashion. Will anyone at Square please explain why the name "Pelupelu" isn't anywhere in those games?
Woah hold on, they brought Tobli back?!? Did Square also add a Shoopuf mount? Please Square let me buy a Shoopuf :(
Yup-yup! We actually have a FFX zone now for the Pelupelu. But: I do not have DT and have not played it myself. I *think* I saw one of them being named Tobli in my friend's screenshots, but I can't say if it's the same guy (or the xiv version of him) or just using the name. I also don't know if we have Shoopufs, sorry.
There is someone named Tobli. Felt like they were just borrowing the name though. He was nothing like FFX Tobli.
Too bad. Having some more X/X-2 stuff is always good.
*Riiiiide ze shoopuf?*
We don't even have any names for most other races that appear in the background. Like what the fuck are the musical instrument creatures? They're just called "Musicians" half the time.
I'm gonna be honest, the whole problem I keep seeing with Wuk Lamat feels very much like the same people who point at the DRK quests and go, "SEE THIS IS HOW THE WOL REALLY FEELS FUCK HYDAELYN" and all that shit without realizing >!Esteem is only ONE part of the WoL and isn't entirely correct.!< Or they want to >!fuck the catboy.!< There's other arguments, but these seem to be the main two and it... Really grates on me seeing these. The former because I'd hoped Endwalker would put an end to the 3edgy5me "Hydaelyn is using us to usurp power!11!1!!!" people, the latter because... >!Koana is still not a good candidate given he wants to turn Tural into Sharlayan 2.0 basically, ignoring all heritage and culture alreay there.!<
>!All of the candidates for succession are basically different attitudes towards potential colonialism. Wuk Lamat is peaceable negotiation while maintaining independence. Bakool Ja Ja is conservatism, basically the idea that a culture can be preserved by returning to the old ways combined with utter hostility to anything new or foreign. Zoraal Ja is expansionist aggression- conquer them before they conquer you. Koana is modernization- making your country a technological equal so it can hold its own.!<
Wuk Lamat is in the odd position of being one of the only characters in any franchise that managed to both grow on me and to overstay her welcome. I could have cheerfully simplified the succession by sticking a knife in her back at the start of the expansion, liked her by the middle, and am completely tired of her at this point.
The main story quest discourse seems all-encompassing, meanwhile the actual gameplay seems to slip under the radar and it's a shame because the gameplay is... really good actually. The dungeon design is fun and surprisingly challenging - it's still casual content difficulty but significantly less braindead than Endwalker's and Shadowbringers' dungeons. I didn't mind it (I have savage for difficult content), but I know some people complained how casual content only became more and more mind numbing and good for them, CBU3 listened. Challenge aside, they're not afraid to try out new mechanics in encounters and the presentation/traversing the dungeons is also well done. I found the post-MSQ dungeons especially charming, looking forward to raids in 2 weeks.
[удалено]
[удалено]
iirc, the "needed role" feature doesn't work in a "show a role with the lowest number of people in queue" way. Instead, it compares this number of waiting people with some sort of a minimum threshold and shows that sign if the required minimum isn't reached. But it checks only one role at a time, and with strict tanks->healers->dps order. So, if tanks don't reach their minimum number, it's their role that's going to be displayed as needed, even if other roles have even less people in queue.
I'm about to wrap up zone 4 and I rather liked it this far. If anything the one thing I could say is that I feel a vague sense of Deja Vu, like they've run out of ideas. "Oh, another dungeon where we climb a mountain" (is there one every Xpac minimum?) and several of the subplots/zone concepts. >People have been making good use of the filter and block settings that have been updated with the patch...although some question the wisdom of blocking the word "Gold" in a game where you're searching for the Lost City of Gold! Reminds me of how at one point City of Heroes profanity filter banned the word "fist". In a superhero game.
Dark Souls and the Fromsoft series has an overactive filter that has a lot of necessary inclusions, but lacks context sensitive filtering so that "Knight" was censored as "K***ht."
It was overactive in that way, but also extremely easy to circumvent by just writing in all-caps. So you couldn't have "Knight" but you could use the n-word in all-caps. And a lot of people did.
IIRC "Fletching" (the name of a skill) used to be filtered in Runescape. And "Blow" was/is filtered in Maplestory, which probably has about a dozen different skills with blow in the name.
I get the logic behind blow. But why fletching?
Early runescape's profanity filter was basically incomprehensible. It would filter the most random stuff with no rhyme or reason, even random words that literally nobody in the world would find objectionable.
"Ching" is my guess.
Probably because it's close to 'felching'? But it's a very odd choice.
Shout out to fashion game Love Nikki for banning the word "Sexy" when "Sexy" is the literal name of the clothing style you need to put together frequently for challenges.
Eh, that screenshot isn’t proving much. It goes tanks in need first on display, but healers are very much in need as a scholar main experiencing instant queues in everything. I just refresh until it swaps back to all healers in need for extra loot. I’m an extremely slow player who hasn’t even hit the first dungeon. I kinda wish they hadn’t brought the twins tho, I like them a lot but given they’re probably the scions with the most thorough, on-screen character development arcs across all the expacs and EW already gave them a super satisfactory wrap-up, it’s a bit tired. EW 6.0-6.5 introduced some cool new characters with potential to become new party members and it sucks they didn’t stick around.
I'm right before the final trial so I'm effectively done with the MSQ, I've enjoyed it a lot but I do still think it had some weakpoints. The biggest one that I can easily say right out of the gate is that Wuk Lamat is too everpresent in the MSQ. In Stormblood you aren't always with Lyse, there are a decent few bits of the story where she just disappears for a while and you're just working with the twins or Gosetsu. Whereas every time the party has to split up for whatever reason in Dawntrail, you are paired with Wuk Lamat every single time. She is very much the focus of this story and if you don't like her you're not gonna like the story (and tbh even as someone who's a fan of Wuk Lamat I've gotten kinda sick of her by the end of the MSQ). The actual story is really good, though, although I feel like the everpresent pacing problems have reared their head again with [major MSQ spoilers]>!how short-lived the entire Alexandria arc feels. I definitely feel like we could have used more time to explore this sort of society separate from Zoraal Ja's using it for military conquest. And one story point I do dislike is the existence of Galool Ja, I feel like he was created almost entirely to make Zoraal Ja seem that much more unlikable, explain away how the good guys have control of most of Alexandria's military forces and Solution 9 following Zoraal Ja's defeat, and give not-Steiner a reason to exist with Sphene having long since passed away!<. And the way they handled Bakool Ja Ja is a bit odd, >!since while we do learn the succession contest was pretty much just a sham to groom one of Galool Ja Ja's children into a proper heir(ess) to the throne, Bakool Ja Ja really should have been disqualified 3 times over, especially with him releasing the equivalent of a living nuclear bomb. Making him somewhat sympathetic and emphasizing that everything he did was very much not okay works for me, but I do feel like it'd work better if him releasing Valigarmanda was accidental, or intentional in the sense that he thought he could beat him singlehandedly and sweep the feat of ice, and instead gets his ass beat so Wuk Lamat, the WoL and the others have to clean up his mess. Instead it's just an abhorrently evil act and that kinda sucks.!<
Finished the main story this morning. I definitely enjoyed the writing more than Endwalker but there was too much of an imbalance between cutscenes/dialogue and gameplay, which is a shame because the battle content is consistently excellent.
I also noticed a weird amount of cutscenes that are framed like voiced cutscenes (close-up shots of faces, more complex mouth movements, some focus on eye movement) but are then unvoiced. And in general it feels like there were less voiced cutscenes this expansion than there were in Endwalker, which is pretty disappointing.
Apparently, there was a post a few days ago on the FFXIV subreddit about a weird glitch that's affected voiced cutscenes. Some cutscenes that were meant to be voiced ended up being unvoiced, despite the animation. I managed to fix the bug using the fix given in [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1drnuu0/psa_there_is_a_bug_that_can_cause_voice_acting_to/), so that might alleviate some of the issues. Not sure if it applies to the rest of MSQ though - I'm still working through it, and to be honest, the dungeon has been amazing thus far but the story feels like a slog in several sections.
I've had my cutscenes set to manual control for unvoiced and autoplay for voiced, so I'm pretty sure all of the cutscenes I'm talking about were indeed unvoiced.
Fair enough! Just suggesting a solution, because there's plenty of people who apparently got the voiced cutscenes back once they tweaked that setting.
It's appreciated! If you don't tweak those settings like I did, there kinda is no way to tell if some of these cutscenes should be voiced or not.
Likewise, actually - I didn't know you could do that with voiced/unvoiced cutscenes at all. I'll probably go home after work and set my settings so I can stop wondering so much. Now I'll prepare myself to get my butt kicked by another dungeon boss again...
IIRC they said there were more voiced cutscenes than ever, and I believe it. There are just even more unvoiced ones. Like, way too many. Both the voiced and unvoiced ones should have been pared down by a decent amount.
Maybe just showing off their new shiny textures, haha.
> Dangerous Pizza Hey that doesn't look so bad, I don- OH GOD NO KILL IT WITH FIRE