long rant about wheatleys fandomication and how much i despise it vvv

like sorry, i dont understand how you can play this game and make Wheatley anything BUT a stupid, pathetic incel. HE was the one that woke Chell from cryosleep to save HIMSELF. it was never about her, he didnt know who she was or that she was important. hed killed 10k+ ppl cus he sucked as his job and he didnt fucking care, he just needed some human somewhere who could do puzzles and use the gun to help him get out. and then chell fucking helps him and the worst she ever does is simply NOT SPEAK TO HIM. she isnt even rude or mean or do anything to endanger him. she just doesnt give him attention. and then when they are both about to escape HE BETRAYS HER !!! and then has the AUDACITY to turn the wholeee thing around like he was a malipulated victim. he acts like chell was going to leave HIM when she LITERALLY LEFT NO INDICATION OF DOING SO !!! SHE DIDNT DO SHIT DAWG, and people who make an argument of him being "underappreciated" are fucking insane. he was doing the whole thing to save his own ass, and was rude to chell the entire time. he sounds a little polite bc hes british, but dude. the very first thing he says to her face is that she looks terrible. he very obviously despises humans and doesnt care about them, its shown throughout the entirety of the game. he talks down to chell like shes stupid the whole time. when he does betray you and try to kill you, its VERY relentless and without remorse. hes not doing it for attention, he just wants you fucking dead.

and then even at the VERRYYYYY END OF THE GAME !!!! when theyre are both being pulled into space. he asks for HER to let go and get herself killed so he can fix things.

AMD THEN EVERYONE JUST FORGOT ABOUT EVERYTHINNGGGG THAT HAPPENED IN THE FUCKING GAME BECAUSE HE SAID SORRYYYY??? HE SAID SORRY ONE TIME ???????????? AFTER HE LOST EVERYTHING like theres a huge pattern of him only being nice and apologetic when he KNOWS that hes weaker and cant win. hes a coward.

and like 70% of the fan content i see of him is him being so nice and polite and complimenting the person he's with and showering them with love. like BRO IS NOT RESPECTABLE !!!! HE SUCKS !!!! HE WOULD NOT BE A LIKEABLE PERSON !! or worse people make him really cool and sexy which like 😑 CMON BRO HES A LOSERRRRRR !!! LOSERCORE HE IS NOT COOL IN THE SLIGHTEST HE SUCKSSSSS

i just will never understand why ppl who love a character so much will strip them of everything that makes them who they are just to fit their comfort needs. like just ?? go consume different media with nice characters??? 500% of the reason i love wheatley is how much he sucks. if you dont like that, i dont understand why youd even gravitate towards liking someone like wheatley.

i've shared some of Alex Freed's narrative writing advice before and i recently read another article on his website that i really liked. particularly in branching/choice-based games, a lot of people often bring up the idea of the author "punishing" the player for certain choices. i agree that this is a thing that happens, but i disagree that it's always a bad thing. i think Freed makes a good case for it here.

...acting as the player’s judge (and jury, and executioner) is in some respects the primary job of a game’s developers. Moreover, surely all art emerges from the artist’s own experiences and worldview to convey a particular set of ideas. How does all that square with avoiding being judgmental?

[...]

Let’s first dispel–briefly–the idea that any game can avoid espousing a particular worldview or moral philosophy. Say we’re developing an open world action-adventure game set in a modern-day city. The player is able to engage any non-player character in combat at any time, and now we’re forced to determine what should occur if the player kills a civilian somewhere isolated and out of sight.

Most games either:

allow this heinous act and let the player character depart without further consequence, relying on the player’s own conscience to determine the morality of the situation.

immediately send police officers after the player character, despite the lack of any in-world way for the police to be aware of the crime.

But of course neither of these results is in any way realistic. The problems in the latter example are obvious, but no less substantial than in the former case where one must wonder:

Why don’t the police investigate the murder at a later date and track down the player then?

Why doesn’t the neighborhood change, knowing there’s a vicious murderer around who’s never been caught? Why aren’t there candlelight vigils and impromptu memorials?

Why doesn’t the victim’s son grow up to become Batman?

We construct our game worlds in a way that suits the genre and moral dimensions of the story we want to tell. There’s no right answer here, but the consequences we build into a game are inherently a judgment on the player’s actions. Attempting to simulate “reality” will always fail–we must instead build a caricature of truth that suggests a broader, more realized world. Declaring “in a modern city, murderous predators can escape any and all consequences” is as bold a statement on civilization and humanity as deciding “in the long run, vengeance and justice will always be served up by the victims of crime (metaphorically by means of a bat-costumed hero).”

Knowing that, what’s the world we want to build? What are the themes and moral compass points we use to align our game?

This is a relatively easy task when working with a licensed intellectual property. In Star Trek, we know that creativity, diplomacy, and compassion are privileged above all else, and that greed and prejudice always lead to a bad end. A Star Trek story in which the protagonist freely lies, cheats, and steals without any comeuppance probably stopped being a Star Trek story somewhere along the line. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, takes a more laissez-faire approach to personal morality while emphasizing the large-scale harm done by men and women who strive for power. (No one comes away from watching Game of Thrones believing that the titular “game” is a reasonable way to run a country.)

These core ideals should affect more than your game’s storytelling–they should dovetail with your gameplay loops and systems, as well. A Star Trek farming simulator might be a fun game, but using the franchise’s key ideals to guide narrative and mechanical choices probably won’t be useful. (“Maybe we reward the player for reaching an accord with the corn?”)

Know what principles drive your game world. You’re going to need that knowledge for everything that’s coming.

[...]

Teaching the player the thematic basics of your world shouldn’t be overly difficult–low-stakes choices, examples of your world and character arcs in a microcosm, gentle words of wisdom, obviously bad advice, and so forth can all help guide the player’s expectations. You can introduce theme in a game the way you would in any medium, so we won’t dwell on that here.

You can, of course, spend a great deal of time exploring the nuances of the moral philosophy of your game world across the course of the whole game. You’ll probably want to. So why is it so important to give the player the right idea from the start?

Because you need the player to buy into the kind of story that you’re telling. To some degree, this is true even in traditional, linear narratives: if I walk into a theater expecting the romcom stylings of The Taming of the Shrew and get Romeo and Juliet instead, I’m not going to be delighted by having my expectations subverted; I’m just going to be irritated.

When you give a player a measure of control over the narrative, the player’s expectations for a certain type of story become even stronger. We’ll discuss this more in the next two points, but don’t allow your player to shoot first and ask questions later in the aforementioned Star Trek game while naively expecting the story to applaud her rogue-ish cowboy ways. Interactive narrative is a collaborative process, and the player needs to be able to make an informed decision when she chooses to drive the story in a given direction. This is the pact between player and developer: “You show me how your world works, and I’ll invest myself in it to the best of my understanding.”

[...]

In order to determine the results of any given choice, you (that is, the game you’ve designed) must judge the actor according to the dictates (intended or implicit) of the game world and story. If you’re building a game inspired by 1940s comic book Crime Does Not Pay, then in your game world, crime should probably not pay.

But if you’ve set the player’s expectations correctly and made all paths narratively satisfying, then there can be no bad choices on the part of the player–only bad choices on the part of the player character which the player has decided to explore. The player is no more complicit in the (nonexistent) crimes of the player character than an author is complicit in the crimes of her characters. Therefore, there is no reason to attempt to punish or shame the player for “bad” decisions–the player made those decisions to explore the consequences with you, the designer. (Punishing the player character is just dandy, so long as it’s an engaging experience.)

[...]

It’s okay to explore difficult themes without offering up a “correct” answer. It’s okay to let players try out deeds and consequences and decide for themselves what it all means. But don’t forget that the game is rigged. [...]

Intentionally or not, a game judges and a game teaches. It shows, through a multiplicity of possibilities, what might happen if the player does X or Y, and the player learns the unseen rules that underlie your world. Embracing the didactic elements of your work doesn’t mean slapping the player’s wrist every time she’s wrong–it means building a game where the player can play and learn and experiment within the boundaries of the lesson.

When I think about Mizuki in aini it’s like, I know something is just so off about her but I have trouble articulating it. It’s really frustrating cuz she was like my favorite character in the first game and when I play the first game I feel like I have a really good idea of who she is as a character. Like she acts strong and and hangs out with people much older than her and has to take on a fuck ton of responsibility but she’s also just a kid she cuddles with a rabbit toy she raises fish in the fridge she can be kinda gullible in the way that kids are and she doesn’t always understand more mature jokes. She acts sassy and hostile towards Date but she’s described as kinda and compassionate by Hitomi and she defends the weak and loves her friends deeply and thinks Aiba is cute. She pokes fun at Date for being grumpy at the shrine and then excitedly holds his hand and drags him over to the offering box to pray for his safety and she gets scared when there’s danger and she hugs Date for comfort but then tries to brush it off because she was taught to feel shame whenever she required basic attention and affection. She was hurt badly by her biological family and finds herself at home with Date despite her fears of him not caring for her. Like she’s a really solid well rounded character with strengths and weaknesses and her story makes me feel every possible emotion known to man

Then I play aini and I was soooo excited to see that Mizuki was gonna be a protagonist and that she had Aiba (its what made me buy the game immediately after finishing the first game lol) and then like. I honestly can’t tell you a damn thing about her character in aini. Like she’s the protagonist for half that game and I can’t think of any particular struggles she has as a character or like any moments where she stands out. It’s like, I know this is Mizuki she has the same basic features of that character but she’s not really given much? And anything new you learn about her is just like, retcons of her already established and well written backstory that just. Really didn’t need to be made and honestly they just kinda do a disservice to her character

Like first off there’s the Bibi twist which. Oof. I have some pretty complicated feelings about Bibi in general like okay. When she appears as the masked woman I was totally on board and thought she was really interesting and I was so prepared for her to be a favorite character her somnium is probably my favorite one in the game. And then she was revealed to be Mizuki. And it was revealed that we were playing as her for half of the B side of the story and we didn’t know it. Like, where to even begin. They stopped writing Bibi as her own character and she pretty much just became Mizuki except idk, she has a bigger grudge against Ryuki and has a heart condition I guess. And like I think it really speaks to how flat Mizuki was in this game if we can play as two completely different characters and have them be indistinguishable. Bibi shouldn’t be anything like Mizuki, they’ve lived completely different lives. And I hate the clone twist like good god I really hate the clone twist because IT ADDS NOTHING TO MIZUKIS CHARACTER OR HER CONFLICT. In fact it like, actively goes against her arc from the first game??? Cuz like half the point of Date and Mizuki’s relationship is there to show that family isn’t what you’re born with, it’s what you make. Both Date and Mizuki feel like their little family can’t exist because they’ve been taught, like most of us have, that biological family is the most important and real and valid way to have a family. You’re supposed to love and respect your biological parents because they MADE you, and Date has to live with the anguish that he can’t be Mizuki’s REAL father because they aren’t blood related. So like, to pull the rug away and go "oh yeah btw I guess Mizuki was adopted lol" it just completely erases what made her story so impactful to most people. And the clone reveal adds nothing like Mizuki doesn’t NEED this at all she wasn’t looking to discover the truth of her backstory because. There wasn’t any truths that needed to be discovered, we already know her deal and so does she. And her having a clone doesn’t really fit with the half to whole theme cuz like, she wasn’t looking for a fucking clone or like a secret sister or anything like that. It’s just stupid it’s so stupid

What Mizuki needed was like, a new actual conflict that required her to overcome challenges and grow as a character. A lot of people, myself included, have complained about how her relationship with Date just isn’t talked about hardly at all, how he went missing for 6 years and they didn’t even get a proper reunion and the game kinda mocks you for wanting one. We dont get any context as to how Mizuki coped during that time like she was completely alone for the most major years of her life she was separated from the one person who was her real family and we don’t know what she felt during all that cuz the game refuses to talk about it. And there isn’t much indication that the adults care about this either, Boss maybe has a soft spot for her but that’s kinda the extent of it, she makes a joke that Date is probably off chilling in a hot spring in Atami so clearly no one is giving Date’s disappearance the weight it deserves. So like, we have this potential thing we could work with here like why is Mizuki a detective now and why does she care about this case? Because her dad was taken by tearer and has been gone for 6 years and she’s been all alone and she wants to find him and find out if he’s even alive and she wants to kick tearers ass cuz he tore (hehe) her family apart. And this can also give her an actual connection to Ryuki too like Ryuki is the one who betrayed Date and knew some shit about tearer and saw what happened to Date and he just never told Mizuki the truth and she’s spent all this time looking for Date so this would be like, pretty major conflict when it all gets revealed. And it actually gives what Ryuki did actual consequences that affect him cuz honestly the fact that no one seems to care that much about Date’s disappearance makes Ryuki’s guilt and depression seem completely fucking useless lol. So here we go, that’s some conflict for Mizuki to have and it gives her a personal connection to the case, we can add more to it but really even this alone is way more than what she’s given in the actual game. And I think just the big problem with her in aini is I think the writers were too afraid to do anything that could ruin her character or cause her to change too much so they just like. Didn’t write anything that could allow her to develop and instead just fucked with already established information about her which. I honestly don’t know how that is seen as better??? In what fucking world. It just feels really pointless to have even made Mizuki a protagonist to begin with since they don’t really do anything with her and lol I think the writers realized this so that’s why like. Ryuki gets all the character conflict but makes lowkey no progress in the case and the real investigation doesn’t happen until the Mizuki side cuz they needed to make up for the fact they didn’t write anything for her alskla

So yeah just to wrap things up, Mizuki just didn’t get to be a character in aini and she wasn’t given any interesting conflict despite how easy it would’ve been cuz the writers were too scared of doing anything with this character that could ruin her but dude. Dont fucking make her the protagonist then if you’re too scared of doing anything with her. Don’t piss me off like that

the sanrio five year olds death game has taken over my brain. anyway middle school au! shinta madoka and wataru are such a fun trio

Sometimes I look outside my scope of mutuals and I'm like.....I'm glad I'm not them (whole essay in the tags)

now bc of that one post abt zelda getting fridged whenever that one guy directs a zelda game im thinking abt tetra just getting turned to stone in ph and like. what would it have been like if she were an actual character in ph. what would she have done how would this have changed the story

Ngl it's very funny to see fans getting into arguments and Discourse about these games and then I'll see them be like "I've never played/watched X Y or Z game" like how are you gonna get aggro about something you only know about through vague tweets??

started mother 3 . real good so far but the battles r kinda driving me crazy w the rhythm game thing

happy 8th anniversary splatoon!

since i cant draw today or anything i will instead post one of the most Iconic Splatoon 1 Ads and also the one that has haunted my brain for years now <3

Why did Sims 3 run so much better on my piece of shit 10 year old laptop than on my i7 CPU one.

Starting to think switching out my mage for a sage mightve not been a good idea (<- rlly. Doesnt. Wanna grind for levels anymore.)

just could not get that 12th star in pure fiction. have retried so many times, ended up playing until way fucking longer than i should have. and yet i see people clearing the whole thing with fucking 70s. partly this is what i get for not having prioritized traces on my buffing characters. also this i guess is what i get for not pulling every single uber ranked 5 star even though part of it is getting fucked over by rng (I SEE YOU STANDARD WARP AND GEPARD AND FX). but also i guess this is what i get for rng fucking me over on so many halfassed to lousy relics? i think that's what gets me--is that it's just never enough. never enough 5* never enough pulling the RIGHT ones, never enough traces done never enough truly good relics bc the game won't GIVE me them

and it's not that i'm ftp anymore, i'm doing that little monthly jades subscription and the occasional bp here and there. but it's just never ENOUGH.

Gonna laugh if you make the Nfb, House of Usher, and other game and show characters. Cause the glitch videos of Sims I've seen are a goldmine! And them just doing their own thing is hilarious sometimes.

very cute of you guys to pretend i'm not gonna finish this house and then never ever touch this game again lmao

when people complain about games like genshin and star rail trying to push you to spend money, I laugh because that's just them being bad at self control if they give in and feel the need to spend. you can play completely free and be absolutely fine. I was f2p on genshin for 2 years before I got the welkin to help while streaming on twitch to get a few more pulls to do at the end of my streams for entertainment. before that, I got every single character I wanted and a few weapons f2p (just from simply playing the game!) even with horrible luck (my average pity was 78-80 per 5 star. i think only 2 so far in my whole genshin career were under 75. and a handful of loses as well) so don't complain if you can't resist the urge. that's on you. they don't force you to spend. if you play the game normally and aren't trying to get every single character/weapon, then you don't need to spend.

but ALSO. the reason you can even play the games for free and we get such great high-quality content is BECAUSE PEOPLE PUT MONEY INTO IT. if no one did, you'd have to pay like idk, $80 or whatever games cost these days to buy, PLUS probably pay for every update like it's a DLC, so another, i don't know, $20 every couple months? or have to subscribe monthly to play. the fact that you get it all for free is because other people pay for stuff. so stop complaining about things costing real money and the fact that other people even pay for it, and start thanking the people who put money into it so you others who can't afford it don't have to!

Of i have to read the word 'dandori' one more fucking time-

ok since tears of the kingdom is coming out like. insanely soon i figured i’ll just dump how i’ve been feeling abt it here. i wont tag for them and i dont intend to share any but because i have been actively seeking out spoilers i will vaguely reference them here so… idk really long musings on this game and my feelings abt it

(im just writing this out mostly for myself since i really kind of just. want to really figure out how i feel about this)

i… am not excited for totk?

i’ve figured out a bit ago that my severely waning interest in botw and general anxiety and discontent surrounding totk is just that… these games arent for me. i dont enjoy open world games with half a million things for you to do like it’s basically a sandbox. i struggle to really enjoy singleplayer minecraft. the space stage in spore gives me genuine anxiety, both when i played it as a kid and again when i reached it as an adult.

botw and totk are not games for me, and that’s cool. i’ve figured that out.

so why am i getting so damn anxious about this new game?

i am getting totk- not entirely of my own volition, i live with someone who is very genuinely excited for it, so it’s pre-ordered digitally on our switch. i am going to play it and complete it at least once.

the gameplay and world of botw never really got to me, and even what snippets of gameplay i see for totk dont really entice me. it just makes me anxious to think about the sheer amount of new stuff i’ll be dropped in the middle of and how i really dont care about this version of link or zelda or anyone else in botw’s hyrule

and some of the story spoiler stuff and general direction this game is going in has me just worried that the zelda series is moving away from what it used to be into an entirely new direction, that being a direction that it seems like i wont enjoy as much as everyone else seems to

so then i guess my main worry outside of totk is that i just end up struggling to really feel connected to the rest of the community about this? being a contrarian is fun until everyone is enjoying something you for some reason can’t get yourself to

i dont have a lot of hope in the story of totk to harken back to… ANYTHING of worth that past games have built up and made to be so important and interesting. hype is a dangerous thing for a not-yet-released game, and while i think the insane amount of speculation and theories and hype around totk will cause a lot of people to be disappointed with the final story, i dunno if i really wouldve liked it even if the story actually piqued my interest

maybe totk’s gameplay will really hook me. maybe i’ll enjoy the massive open world and gmod-ass gimmicks. but what ive seen of the story makes me less interested and the snippets of gameplay i see just make me remember how bored i now am with botw

at the end of the day this is just a video game with tags on this site i can blacklist and videos i can ignore and lore i can brush aside because at this point loz canon is a suggestion more than anything

i just cant shake the discomfort of once again being an outlier as everyone i see loses their mind about this new game while i just feel overwhelmed by it. i have played botw for a long time and have long since worn it out. i played age of calamity to completion and have not touched it or cared for it beyond the music since. i am not excited about totk and i feel like i am in the wrong due to my opinion