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teaveetamer Ā· 10 days
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Ao3 will likely be fine. The reason why Patreon and Gumroad (Never heard of it before this very second) went full choir boy is because payment processors and advertisers are throwing a puritanical fit. Ao3 doesn't sell anything and doesn't run ads, so they're not subject to the same external pressure. Don't get complacent or anything, but if they fold it'll probably be from a different kind of pressure (most likely politicians realizing queer people like something and trying to destroy it "for the children").
That said, this is exactly why I get so annoyed when people say you should be "trying to appeal to the most people possible" or whatever. It always results in pandering to the loudest lowest common denominator, because the whiners are the people who share their opinions the most. 99.99% of people do not give a shit if a company runs an ad next to something horny or if other people use PayPal to buy porn, but the puritans and puriteens are the ones who yell the loudest, so they get to destroy marginalized communities and make everyone else unhappy.
God with the fact both Gumroad and Patreon are choosing to be purity obsessed to the point characters LITERALLY have to consent..in FANARTā€¦thanks to Patreon new rules and Gumroad just straight up purging in less than a day, and itā€™s clear to me that things are clearly going to get worse. Never know when AO3 will be hit by all this.
Transformative fandom, especially I'd say transgressive fandom (heavy themes, queer exploration, smut) is always going to be at odds with the commodification of the Internet and the desire for ad revenue. Most advertisers have not-so-mild freakouts at the thought of anything above a PG rating and so sooner or later, pretty much all social media platforms and fandom spaces get purged and that's usually an indication of some big shiny new owner or partnership.
It also can lead to the death of the platform or a huge exodus so we'll have to wait and see there methinks.
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teaveetamer Ā· 13 days
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Secret good guys who def only hated the Nabateans for their eeeeeeeeevil rule and are perfectly ok with everyone else. Iā€™m glad FEH took this opportunity to show them in a more sympathetic light which totally justifies their genocide (sarcasm, if you couldnā€™t tell)
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teaveetamer Ā· 13 days
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I haven't played Awakening (maybe one day) but it's paradigm shift not only feels like something only noticed with hindsight but also feels gradual. Compare that to FF15 where the paradigm shift was sudden and immediate (I mean yeah there was Kingdom Hearts to ease people in but that's a different series).
I'll admit I have less than zero knowledge of Final Fantasy so I can't really speak to this comparison.
But yeah I think Awakening was a bit of a "boil the frog" scenario, except the last few notches went up just a tad bit faster than expected. FE4 had pairings but no supports, which evolved into supports and pairings but no endings (outside of Roy) in FE6, which evolved into supports and pairings with endings in FE7 and 8, which then became supports but no endings in 9, and endings but no supports in 10 (which I'm chalking up to the weirdness of having what was clearly always intended to be one game split up into two games), which evolved into the explicit marriage in FE13 and 14, which was just tweaked ever so slightly in FE16, which went back to the FE6 style in FE17... which everyone complained about because we've been used to having supports AND paired endings for seven mainline entries now and the fandom actually quite likes it despite how much they complained about Awakening featuring it as a prominent mechanic.
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teaveetamer Ā· 13 days
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To give another example of a pandemic game, Animal Crossing New Horizons. It was everywhere in 2020 and 2021. But after the pandemic faded, I don't see anyone talking about it as much.
I actually almost used ACNH as an example because that was my pandemic flop lol.
Listen I played New Leaf and I was like "oh I don't really like Animal Crossing". Tried New Horizions after some initial reluctance because everyone was talking about it and I was like "ok, not like I have anything better to do and maybe I'll like this one better" and guess what? I still don't like Animal Crossing!
I would have never bought it if it weren't for the pandemic, and I will not be buying another Animal Crossing game unless there's a major shift in the series. Not that I want that. I have plenty of other games that scratch that itch better than Animal Crossing and I acknowledge that a lot of people DO love it how it is. I don't need every series ever to appeal to me specifically.
Arguably the biggest thing that launched ACNH as high as it went was just... it was a normalcy simulator in a time when our lives were decidedly un-normal. Lots of "cozy" games were. 3H was arguably that in some ways too (look at all these kids just going to school like we can't anymore!)
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teaveetamer Ā· 13 days
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That's the thing! I think my biggest ? with regard to the "future games should be more like 3H" criticism is like... what exactly about 3H do you want to see carried into the future? There's two things I see people praise 3H for and say should be carried forward: story and characters. Even if I agreed that 3H had this amazing perfect story and characters, I don't see how you would be able to recreate either of those things without causing the series to stagnate and stagnate pretty hard almost immediately.
If your main complaint is that the stories or characters of FE games should be "more well written" then that's completely subjective and nebulous. What I consider well written is probably pretty different from what someone else might consider well written. Well written is also not a quality 3H exclusively "owns". If you mean you want the story to cover similar themes, plot beats, etc. to 3H... why? Why exactly do you want a future story to cover the exact same ground a previous story covered? Who would actually enjoy that experience? Can you even articulate what, precisely, you think was good about 3H's writing beyond the dubious "moral grey" label (which is frankly a term so overused by this fandom that it has completely ceased to have meaning)?
In the same vein, how do you make characters "more like 3H characters" without just being clones or very slight variations/repeats of 3H characters? Well-written is entirely subjective remember. If you liked, for example, Marianne for being a specifically relatable depiction of a particular mental illness, then how do you replicate that connection in a future character without just making Marianne again? And again, who actually wants that? Cuz Fates kind of tried that with giving a lot the BR characters the "we have x at home" versions of the Awakening characters' tropes and that was pretty universally panned despite Awakening having a pretty beloved roster. Because most people don't actually want the same thing regurgitated over and over again in slightly different forms.
Why would you want future games to just re-do 3H over and over again? If we actually got Dimitri 2.0, Edelgard 2.0, Claude 2.0, etc. would you actually enjoy them as much the second time around? Or would you get immediately bored and critical and demand something new? Like genuinely, it's important to ask yourself what you enjoyed about those characters in the first place, and if it's something you could actually carry forward into a new game in a different enough way to justify its existence. I love the hell out of Dimitri because he is, in part, a unique inversion of what you expect from Fire Emblem lords. He works so well specifically because he defies series-ingrained expectations. If you were to try to do that again then it is no longer unique. It no longer defies expectations because it becomes the new expectation, which means it becomes boring. There are elements of his character which I think could be carried forward into a future game. I think it's entirely possible for FE games to explore the trauma their blue lords experience in a similar but unique way, but I know if they try to redo Dimitri they will fail. And that's okay.
And I hate to say it but trust me, people do not always know how to communicate what they want when it comes to media. People usually know instinctively, but not articulately. If you put it in front of them they will know that they wanted it, but if you asked them to explain what they want they will frequently be unable to. Half the time the thing they say they wanted and the thing they actually wound up enjoying have a huge disparity. It is also not always feasible for a company to appeal to certain parts of the market. For that reason it is not always smart to listen to what people say they want. The discerning creators can tell the difference between when they should listen and when they shouldn't.
"It's on the devs if they can maintain a newbie boom" Did this guy went into FE thanks to 3h ? Everyone knows IS hardly keep the same formula
I don't really want to focus too much on the content of the statement, I prefer to keep the focus on the "wtf why did you screenshot someone else's ask (who has you blocked) and reply to it? You're not the fucking president of the United States. No one was specifically going to seek your input on this completely mundane observation, and if they did then they would have sent the ask to you in the first place." But I do just want to point out a completely obvious observation, which is clearly what OP of that ask was getting at: not every series *wants* to keep their "newbie boom". Sometimes the newbie boom isn't healthy or desirable for a series.
Technically speaking companies do want to appeal to the most people possible, but companies are also aware that you cannot please everyone. Broadest possible appeal is not always the move that is going to make you the most money. In some cases it's far better to have, for example, two more narrowly focused series that strongly appeal to two different core demographics rather than one series which middlingly appeals to two different core demographics. Call of Duty and Stardew Valley are both massively popular games, but no one would honestly decide that mashing them together would be a good idea.
That is to say, if the people who joined the FE series with 3H enjoyed things about 3H that are antithetical to the existing FE series, it is not in any way beneficial for the series to try and keep those players. Attempting to would, most likely, just result in both groups being unhappy at best or driving off the previous core playerbase at worst. I'd say the Resident Evil franchise is a pretty good example of this kind of corporate "mass appeal" strategy backfiring. You can only go so far before the thing people enjoyed stops being the thing people enjoyed.
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teaveetamer Ā· 14 days
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Relating to prev prev post because I do have more to say, I do think there's a degree of survivorship bias going on with Engage's perception among the fandom.
A mutual of mine at one point made the observation that sales are not necessarily reflective of the quality of the current game. They are a referendum on the previous game (at least in part). It's just a fact that buying something tends to come before you actually get to experience it or make an evaluation of its quality. You can read reviews but the biggest thing that is going to inform your purchase of a game is your experiences with previous games in that series (if you have any). That's obviously not the only factor that affects sales. There's also marketing, trends in the industry, timing, etc., but it is one of them. Fates sells well in part because a lot of people really liked Awakening and wanted to try more from the series, then 3H sells well because a lot of people really liked Fates and wanted to try more from the series, etc.
To put it more succinctly: just because 3 million people purchased 3H does not mean 3 million people enjoyed 3H. There is inevitably going to be a chunk of people who pick up the game, decide Fire Emblem is not a series they enjoy (anymore) based on the game they played, and then not proceed with any future games. This is especially true of pandemic games, which had their sales boosted in part because a lot of really bored people were willing to try a lot of new things.
Which is where the survivorship bias comes in. The people who are going to be around talking on the forums, anticipating the trailers, etc. are the long time fans of the series who enjoyed or at least weren't put off by 3H, and also the people who were introduced to the series with 3H, enjoyed 3H, and were looking forward to the next entry thinking it would provide more of what they really enjoyed. Not the people who weren't even looking at Engage from the jump because they didn't like 3H and decided the series wasn't for them.
That lends itself to the assumption that the reason Engage "didn't do as well" is because it's not enough like 3H, because that's what a very vocal portion of the people within the fandom are saying. The fact of the matter is, there could be hundreds of thousands of people who hated 3H who simply aren't around in the fandom to share their opinions anymore. Frankly, wouldn't it make sense to assume they make up a chunk of those "lost" sales between 3H and Engage? Because the vast majority of the people I've seen complaining relentlessly about Engage... I mean, they still bought Engage. Despite the complaining they're not actually a lost sale.
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teaveetamer Ā· 14 days
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This is a thought connected to my previous post but it didn't quite fit with that one, so it's gonna be its own thing.
For as much as people complained about Awakening making the series too much of a dating sim or whatever, the division between pre-Awakening titles and post-Awakening titles is really not as vast as some older fans of the franchise make it out to be. Awakening doesn't add new mechanics so much as it emphasizes mechanics that already existed in the series in other forms.
FE4 already featured baby optimization mechanics, and FE4+FE5 and FE6+7 feature a cross-generational story. Pretty much every non-remake game in the series, at least from Genealogy onward, featured create-your-couples mechanics to some degree.
The main thing Awakening did was place a more explicit player-proxy in the game for you to attach yourself to (where previously you were expected to view the lord or one of the characters of the game as your de facto proxy, but when you get to pick their hairstyle and change their name I guess it becomes cringe) and introduce extremely basic QoL improvements which made the series vastly more accessible to your average person. Most people who picked up Awakening did not pick it up and find an experience that was, at it's core, extremely different from anything Fire Emblem had done before.
(And yes I'm allowed to call them Awakening babies, as an Awakening Baby myself)
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teaveetamer Ā· 14 days
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"It's on the devs if they can maintain a newbie boom" Did this guy went into FE thanks to 3h ? Everyone knows IS hardly keep the same formula
I don't really want to focus too much on the content of the statement, I prefer to keep the focus on the "wtf why did you screenshot someone else's ask (who has you blocked) and reply to it? You're not the fucking president of the United States. No one was specifically going to seek your input on this completely mundane observation, and if they did then they would have sent the ask to you in the first place." But I do just want to point out a completely obvious observation, which is clearly what OP of that ask was getting at: not every series *wants* to keep their "newbie boom". Sometimes the newbie boom isn't healthy or desirable for a series.
Technically speaking companies do want to appeal to the most people possible, but companies are also aware that you cannot please everyone. Broadest possible appeal is not always the move that is going to make you the most money. In some cases it's far better to have, for example, two more narrowly focused series that strongly appeal to two different core demographics rather than one series which middlingly appeals to two different core demographics. Call of Duty and Stardew Valley are both massively popular games, but no one would honestly decide that mashing them together would be a good idea.
That is to say, if the people who joined the FE series with 3H enjoyed things about 3H that are antithetical to the existing FE series, it is not in any way beneficial for the series to try and keep those players. Attempting to would, most likely, just result in both groups being unhappy at best or driving off the previous core playerbase at worst. I'd say the Resident Evil franchise is a pretty good example of this kind of corporate "mass appeal" strategy backfiring. You can only go so far before the thing people enjoyed stops being the thing people enjoyed.
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teaveetamer Ā· 14 days
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This the most cis male entitlement/audacity shit I have ever seen. ā€œI had to log into an alt account to even see this. Clearly they want MY opinion!ā€ Buddy. Pal. If someone gives a shit about your opinion then theyā€™ll send the ask TO YOU in the first place.
But remember everybody heā€™s just stalking and harassing Ezra because sheā€™s a big old bully who said a mean thing about his favorite png waifu! Clearly responding to her anon that has nothing to do with him or anything he claims to care about is the act of a completely hinged man just defending the honor of a woman who doesnā€™t even exist!
3H might be a trap more then a goldmine. Yes it brought the franchise tons of fans but if those fans are going to be dissappointed that any game post 3H isn't like 3H, they will never stay. In reality, they were going to leave the franchise as soon as they would realize that 3H isn't the norm of Fire Emblem
Yep - Hopes couldn't even replicate Houses, given the overall reception and how many JP fans were so vocal about their distaste of it.
Which on its own is... fine? I think IS is prioritizing FEH and getting players to stay on FEH over the mainline series at the moment, and lord knows they leverage 3H hard in FEH... but it does bring a conundrum from a development standpoint. I don't think they can replicate 3H not necessarily because of the quality of content (subjective statement there) but also because of the environment and timing surrounding it. You'd need to catch the cultural / gaming trends and also have a window where there is zero competition and a niche that desires that content... and given the time involved in creating a game, that can be difficult to predict and react to before the trend starts to die off.
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teaveetamer Ā· 14 days
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Kinda wild how the 3H fandom loses their minds over how ā€œdeepā€ and ā€œmorally complexā€ and smart 3H is when 95% of them lose their absolute shit over Rhea presenting the most basic Philosophy101 question of ā€œis it ok to do [bad thing] to stop [worse thing] from happeningā€. Doubly ironic when their line of reasoning is ā€œitā€™s never ok to do [bad thing] to stop [worse thing] from happening, but anyway hereā€™s my 500 page manifesto on why my fave needed to do [bad thing] to stop [worse thing] from happening, and also if you donā€™t agree with me youā€™re a pedo or groomer or somethingā€
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teaveetamer Ā· 17 days
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Canā€™t wait for them to be like ā€œomg how dare you bring up something that happened in the past! You canā€™t bring that up!ā€ like their entire justification for the sustained harassment they inflict isnā€™t just ā€œsomeone said something I didnā€™t like in 2020ā€
It's been a few months since that whole thing with that Edelgang mod peddling genocide rhetoric, I wonder if they ever moved on from believing such horrific things and using such horrific rhetoric-
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...so the answer to that is no. They have not.
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teaveetamer Ā· 19 days
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The thing that gets me through the relentless harassment tbh is knowing that people like these dudes donā€™t tend to live very happy lives. Theyā€™re sad and alone because they compulsively burn every bridge they manage to build (usually with zero awareness that is what they have done). Thereā€™s a reason why, AFAIK, these dudes donā€™t seem to have accumulated many friends in their years in fandom, and most of the people Iā€™ve encountered who have known them donā€™t have very kind things to say. Even some of their olā€™ ā€œpalsā€ from their rancid discord server donā€™t have very nice things to say.
Like they wonder why itā€™s so easy for us to find stuff from their pastsā€¦ itā€™s because people from their pasts didnā€™t much like their behavior either, and are willing to pass info along. When you piss off everyone everywhere you go that does wind up catching up to you. And like, thatā€™s sad. I wish they wouldnā€™t do that and instead made positive friends and authentic connections, but they justā€¦ donā€™t seem capable of it.
I made one comment, ONE comment on a post I personally agreed with and here comes that Raxis guy and the bowbis or whatever person to argue Iā€™m wrong and nitpick, do they just park themselves on the net to find every little thing possible? I blocked them both because I see what theyā€™ve done to others but like can you let others breathe? Iā€™d get off anon but Iā€™m a little afraid theyā€™ll make me a target too I just wanted to rant to someone because this is ridiculous and I figured youā€™d understand
Ugh, sorry Anon - and yeah, I really do think they check regularly and by regularly, I mean every few hours or so. I think there was an offhanded comment I made once on someone else's post and within about two hours... our favorite DebateMeBro had reposted it on Twitter.
(like y'all. Two hours. Mind - there are multiple blogs, websites, social media accounts this guy stalks using various methods. Gotta wonder what his daily itinerary is like that he can devote so much time and effort to hate-stalking so many people.)
They do seem to have major boundary issues as well as entitlement complexes that would make Veruca Salt weep in jealousy, and I wish someone in their real lives would stage an intervention from time to time so they can find new ways to use all that free time + energy. All we can do on this end is block, warn our mutuals and friends, and occasionally clown around about weirdoes who think saying something they don't like about a character they project onto so much is the biggest crime known to mankind and far, far worse than any other *~evil icky lies*~ that people say on the Internet. It is truly going to pay dividends long erm for them and then some that they "corrected" the haterz so much.
(Seriously though - imagine Rax n' Pals going to a job interview and stating their strongest victory was winning a debate over lore and they are super-dedicated to fact-checking loser Mooners. It makes me giggle just a little bit.)
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teaveetamer Ā· 23 days
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While I wouldnā€™t outright call it ā€œsocial media colonialismā€ eitherā€¦ I think I can see other anonā€™s point.
The Edelgard community is at home in their subreddit and their Discord server. Clearly, both platforms and the Edelgard subcommjnities in them, have a culture that is different from Tumblrā€™s, both of because how the websites work and because of the internal works of this communities itself.
Clearly, they have been attempting to establish a presence on Tumblr as well over the past years, to varying degrees of success (they mostly only interact with each other and seem to look down on other users, judging by various comments in the Discord server as well as publicly on Tumblr itself). Which would be absolutely fine, them as individuals wanting to interact with more people who like Edelgard. I mean, she does have fans on here as well. The thing is, itā€™s not that. It clearly seems to be a community effort (supported by the fact how they mostly interact amongst themselves) and they very clearly do not want to be here ā€” at least, judging by the more or less frequent complaints about Tumblr, its userbase, and the blatant disregard of Tumblr culture, tagging only being one example.
Yes, Tumblr can be very different from other social media sites. Iā€™m not saying newcomers immediately have to adapt it, or to adapt it fully at all. However, itā€™s been years at this point, and the Edelgang is still doing this shit, still looking down on the platform and its users (and expressing that), at most regarding them as pawns to assimilate into their own space.
While it might not outright be colonialism, the mindset of it (and by extension, religious mission) is absolutely there (which is kinda ironic due to the hate boner these folks have against a fictional religion).
Oh I 100% understand their meaning, I just want to be precise with the language. Personally I describe it more likeā€¦ they ā€œChristopher Columbusā€™dā€ Tumblr/transformative fan spaces. They showed up late to the party to a community/culture that was already well established, then act surprised when the people present donā€™t automatically drop to their knees and treat them like kings and saviors and immediately bow to their will. Which isā€¦ nothing new unfortunately. IMO theyā€™re doing what straight men have historically always done to spaces (primarily) women and queer folk have built. They mock and deride the spaces (if theyā€™re even aware of them at all) as being worthless, deviant, gross, or a waste of time, but the moment they have tangible value they move in and basically say ā€œalright sweetheart thanks for keeping this warm for us, but now that Iā€™m here you can stop pretending like you can make something and let me leadā€.
And itā€™s frustrating because that ALWAYS means that the people who were already there get pushed to the margins or pushed out entirely, because no one sees the value in them. Just in what they built. I think it is VERY telling that people in their community who actively used Tumblr tried to teach them how to integrate into the culture more smoothly and they basically told them to go fuck themselves.
Believe it or not we LIKE tumblr and the way it works. If we wanted to use a space that worked like Reddit then we would just go use Reddit. So no we donā€™t appreciate them marching in and basically demanding we all treat this like Reddit and engage in Reddit Culture on Tumblr. And trust me Iā€™ve used Reddit for a lot longer than Iā€™ve used Tumblr, and Iā€™ve used Tumblr for a long time now. I know what this looks like.
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teaveetamer Ā· 29 days
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At least Raxistaicho is somewhat aware of Tumblr tag culture since he got major backlash when he decided to post his Engage playthrough untagged (I think people sent him anons to tag his shit properly at first, then proceeded to send him spoilers after he made fun of that and then he got upset and cried about having to close anons because people send him spoilers). Note that even after that, he still didnā€™t tag his shit properly, probably out of spite. Idk, seems on-brand for him.
Anyway, what Iā€™m saying is: at this point, there have been more than enough incidents for those people to become aware of Tumblr tag culture. At this point, itā€™s not so much unawareness as it is blatant ignorance, spite and, dare I say it, Social Media Colonialism.
Microphone drop.
I dunno if Iā€™d go so far as to compare it to colonialism but yeah you do make a good point. I remember when Engage came out he was spamming the tag with spoilers and he had numerous anons and commenters explain tagging to him. Which eventually escalated into spamming his inbox with spoilers (I guess to demonstrate how annoying it is to keep running into spoilers for something you want to yā€™know actually enjoy?) when his response was basically like ā€œfuck you I can do whatever I wantā€, so he definitely knows. He just doesnā€™t care.
ETA: Iā€™m pretty sure someone on the Edelgard discord (who actually uses tumblr) also explained tagging and blocking to him so yeah he definitely does not have any excuses.
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teaveetamer Ā· 1 month
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Hey I didnā€™t know what I was getting into until I saw your posts on his blog, but that vagrantsea guy is angrily arguing with my side blog, thecrestofblaiddyd. That blog has an audience of zero and he likely found the post because of the edelgard discourse tag. Isnā€™t that tag there so people can filter it out????
Yeaaaaaaah, uh, so hereā€™s the thing youā€™re gonna learn. The tags ARE there so people can filter them out, and you are using them properly I assume, but these guys in particular are either unaware of Tumblr culture or they just donā€™t care. So they seem to take the tags as an invitation to hunt you down and argue with you. Thatā€™s how they found 90% of the blogs they hate read and argue with.
That guy in particular decided to call me a Nazi for telling him to stop defending pro-genocide/Nazi rhetoric (my family is still Jewish btw) so I really recommend blocking the guy and putting the word out to avoid him.
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teaveetamer Ā· 1 month
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Don't you love how the "harassing" anons Raxis gets "from edelcrits" are almost all along the lines of "You are a grown man stop stalking people over pixels" while the harassing anons you get from him/"his friends" are literally sexual harassment.
Ikr
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teaveetamer Ā· 1 month
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I have the testosterone levels of an 18 year old
Damn you should probably get that checked out I hear that can lead to hair loss
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