So it’s pretty aggravating how pronouns have become like THE argument topic in the west. “Respect the pronouns or lose your job. Lose your licenses. Lose your bank.” Like this is absolutely insane. This is like society destroying levels of insane if allowed to continue at this rate. And I’m not using that lightly. And one of the aggravating things about pronouns and Japanese is how westerners seem to fight over the pronouns as they attempt to conclude X character is trans. Not gay or straight, mind you. Trans. Before we get into it though, I’m going to open up with acknowledging that I am not the best at using words. This also happens to be a pretty difficult concept for me to get across using words but I’ll do my best. So let’s go ahead and have the talk about pronouns in Japanese and see where it goes.
When people talk about Japanese’s plethora of pronouns, they’re strictly referring to first person singular pronouns. Which is already odd because in the west they’re referring to third person singular pronouns. So we’re not even talking about the same thing. And then we have to remember that it’s only used in spoken Japanese and that many times such things are omitted from the sentence because it’s often unnecessary. But we’re using them to mark sex so sure, let go ahead and follow along.
In Japanese there are a bajillion ways to refer to oneself. If you take an introductory Japanese course, you will be taught 私 (わたし) since everyone uses it and it’s polite enough to get around. If you watch vtubers, you might hear a couple 私（あたし）or 私 (わたくし) out there. Now you may have noticed that the kanji I used didn’t change. And this is because these are all different pronunciations for the same kanji. This is nothing something you can really translate into English as it translates into tone of delivery, not into a word itself. While あたし is taken as more effeminate, it’s not because the pronoun itself is effeminate (私）but rather because you’re speaking like a woman. In the west, you may be familiar with the “gay voice”. If you were straight but chose to speak with “the gay voice” don’t be surprised if people think you’re gay, right? 僕（ぼく）is considered boyish but we’re again talking about tones. And what’s more is we’re talking about tones relative to something else. So keep this idea in mind that there’s another word you could have used (私）or you could have used nothing at all but you chose to use a particular word. So you’re kind of marking boundaries deliberately. And this is where we get to the other aspect of pronouns in Japanese. Not only are you marking tone but you’re also marking boundaries. Who are you with? Are you with the people you can use 俺（おれ）with or not? When I am with friends, I speak using 俺（おれ）which is, I would say a bit more aggressive. Aggressive, active, these are masculine traits, so this is often used by men. But if I go to work and I talk to my boss using the same, I will damage our working relationship. One must be mindful of their boundaries when they speak so when you are at work, you aren’t going to use the same pronoun you would use at karaoke. I’ve heard coworkers switch from one to the other as they answer the phone.
The three (or five, depending on how you count) pronouns we’ve covered here are probably the ones you’ll be familiar with if you watch anime or watch vtubers. But you’ve also got 自分（じぶん）(which can mean you or I) which is back to neutral. And うち which is used mostly by women and children. And lest we forget, “children” refers to both boys and girls. You have わし、which I learned about when I got here from children. Their grandparents use it. It seems to be used by the elderly.
Pronouns can also be markers of class. 拙者（せっしゃ）is a pronoun you might hear if you’re watching InuYasha or some other Sengoku period work and it’s used by samurai. Samurai are, generally speaking, men. But if you were reading a Sengoku period work and there were female samurai, you may come across a one of them using 拙者. You won’t hear it today, of course, because there are no samurai today.
Now, I haven’t even touched third-person pronouns yet. That said when speaking of others, you of course have 彼（かれ）for he / him / boyfriend and 彼女 （かのじょ） for she / her / girlfriend which I’m sure you know about. These can be used, but in my experience generally aren’t as the name is usually available and why call someone 彼 when you can just say Mr. Anderson. But this is a quirk of how Japanese is spoken. It would be equally correct (grammatically) to use a 彼 in such cases.
And what I’m trying to get across here is that the pronoun used isn’t a reflection of “one’s true sex” or anything like that. The pronoun a character uses to refer to themselves, in the most generous reading for the trans activists, is a marker for personality, similar to blood type. What, blood type? Yes. Because lest we all forget, this is all for the sake of Japanese storytelling in these games, so this is all just character building. I regret to inform you that the pronouns most certainly “don’t matter” when it comes to determining whether a character is trans or not. There’s no hard and fast law preventing teenage girls from using ぼく and if they do use it they aren’t transmen. They’re just girls around people they’re comfortable with speaking in a different tone. Pronouns are not sufficient to “prove” a character is trans and of course (no matter how much the trans people hate this) if the author writes they’re not trans via databook / encyclopedia / etc. then it really makes no sense to argue that they are.
I think what I want to say on this topic most of all, and I hope you see from how many different ways there are to refer to oneself in Japanese, is that English is a vastly simplified language in some aspects. We package a lot of information into as few words we can whereas other languages, if we translated what was said into English verbatim, can get quite lengthy. Because in English the only way we can really change the tone of a written word is to add more descriptives but in other languages they just change the descriptives they have. We don’t have 私、俺、俺様 to really go out there and get more and more ridiculous. So attempting to use something that works generally hard and fast as a rule in English and applying it to a translation of a language with a completely different set of parameters is also ridiculous.
Hopefully this is something you’ll keep in mind next time you see “muh Japanese pronouns” floating around on X (formerly Twitter). That’s all for now, thanks for reading.
Bear with me because despite the title this is a topic I feel pretty strongly about. But let me set the scene first. I was browsing Quora a few days ago and one of the questions was something like “Why do people study Japanese?” A fairly simple question. Could be more broadly applied as “Why do people study any language?” There could be a number of reasons for that. Then I see an answer that was incredibly snobby, putting people down for wanting to learn Japanese “just to enjoy their favorite Chinese cartoons” and the like with no, I guess I’d call it an “earnest” interest in Japanese culture itself. A kind of “Japan just happens to produce the media I like” kinda deal. They also said people from the Philippines and the like also do it to get jobs in Japan and leech Japan’s wealth. I don’t think it matters too too much but the person appeared active in the China World Leader Quora and I doubt they were Japanese but there ya go, I know someone in the comments is going to say “Oh, so you don’t like the Japanese opinion on why people decide to learn Japanese?” so I’m just covering my bases. That said, I absolutely do not care what the Japanese people think about why someone would choose to learn Japanese.
At one point in my life, this kind of answer certainly did apply to me. I was a weeb, loved my Chinese cartoons, and I was always at the mercy of someone else to translate my media for me. Now, even though I do have closer to what the poster would call an “earnest” interest in Japanese culture (especially after having lived here for years) I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with wanting to learn Japanese because you like games and anime. Why is this a dig at someone? “Oh, you only want to learn Japanese so you can more intimately consume the media you already like”. Are we only supposed to consume media written in our mother tongues for us? What kind of bullshit society is that? Like, you listen to music, right? Everyone listens to music. Don’t think I ain’t catch you listening to Billie Jean back there. Suppose you want to be a composer so you can write and / or perform music like Billie Jean. Now imagine someone walks up to you and says, “Well, you only want to learn how to write music because you like listening to music”. You’d be like, “No shit, Sherlock. Yes, I want to create the music I want to listen to what’s your deal”. It’s just like that. So the entire basis of “Oh you like X so you decide to study X is bad” is such a braindead take whether or not it’s true. On top of that, even if we were to grant it, who gave these other people the privilege to decide whether or not my language learning was justified. That’s my decision. I choose. I could choose to study Japanese because I’m just really interested in understanding haiku, who are you to tell me that my reasons are wrong.
So at the end of the day, and I know this is a short one but I was just fuming, but at the end of the day, don’t let someone else tell YOU that you can’t study a language because you don’t have the right reason. Or anything for that matter. I know people like to mock people for wanting to study underwater basketweaving but if that’s what you want to study you go out there and become the best underwater basketweaver you can be (just not on my tax dollar). Life is too short to allow others to tell you how to live it. God didn’t give you this brief time so that you would let someone else decide His path for you. Thanks for reading. Artemis out.
A little over a couple of weeks ago, Ubisoft announced that starting September 1st, Assassins Creed Liberation HD, will be pulled from sale, alongside a few more obscure titles. More importantly, they have also announced that they’re shutting down all online features for a ton of their older games(full list here). What this means is that, in addition to no longer being able to play these games online, you will also lose access to all DLCs, regardless of whether you own them or not. Which means that, yes, at Ubisoft’s request, Steam is going to remove products people have bought from their libraries, with no refunds.(This has turned out to be false. The DLC in question will be completely unavailable to play, but will not technically be removed from your library) When the news first came out, this turned a few heads, but the backlash has…
That’s a title, innit. But it does cover the basic idea of the phenomenon that I think we’re facing today. This one shouldn’t be a terribly long once and is hopefully more on the level of a passing thought than a mini-essay. That said it is more stream-of-consciousness than drafted masterpiece so don’t take this too, too seriously and maybe you can share your thoughts so we can refine this a bit.
I was cooking dinner when I recalled an article I had read some time ago about this woman complaining that a sign had been posted in the office which said something to the effect of “No pungent foods in the office”. No curry, no kimchi, (probably) no fajitas (to my dismay). Leave the anchovies at home, we don’t want it in the office. And the author was complaining that it was an attack on non-whites (because of course it was) non-white cultures have notoriously smelly foods I guess. Uhh, comrade, there are plenty of smelly foods from white countries. I have smelled some of the grossest shit outta Scandinavian foods. It’s not a non-white thing. It’s an ingredients thing. Now, do I agree with the decision of the office to prohibit BY MANDATE these foods. I agree that it was within the property-owner’s rights to prohibit these foods, I disagree that it should have been done. A lot of this comes down to the idea of social decency. Where just because it’s not prohibited that something be done, doesn’t mean you should do it. It also doesn’t mean that if you do it that others should be prohibited from giving you side-eye and the like.
Let’s move to another example. In the United States, I’ve read that they’re doing these drag queen story hour things where transvestites (yeah, remember what tranny used to mean?) read stories to kids. Again, we run into a situation where what we’re doing on the face of it might not be the worst. They’re just men reading books to children… while wearing outrageous outfits. But it’s one of those things while I wouldn’t say outlaw it, I wouldn’t send my own kid there either. There’s a time and a place for transvestites, especially those in the photos that I’ve seen, and it ain’t 4PM in a library with a bunch of kids around ’em. Again, going back to this idea of social decency. Men have a role to play and women have a role to play and we’re going to play our roles and society will move on just fine.
Right now, I think the United States (from what I’ve been reading from outside the United States) is undergoing a bit of a war on social decency. This is likely the result of liberalism. “Liberalism” here refers to the philosophy of liberty, not the Democrats. The Democrats are, of course, a very illiberal party and want to mandate and control what feels like every aspect of your life from on high rather than allowing the machine of democracy (ironically enough) to decide. We can think of social decency as a kind of contract where “I’ll tolerate your minor nuisances if you agree to do the same for me and also keep them to a minimum”. There’s also this element of benefit of the doubt. So if you’re at a restaurant and someone doesn’t know how to use their knife and they’re scratching their plate like crazy, you would be willing to write off their ignorance as a minor nuisance and not make a big deal out of it. “Maybe it’s a kid and they don’t know how to use knives yet” you might think. “Maybe their parents will teach them how to use their knives”. But you’re only there for the duration of your meal and then you don’t have to deal with it anymore. You might hasten your meal a bit to get away from the nuisance but at the end of the day you can escape the nuisance.
And there are varying degrees of nuisance. There’s talking on your phone while you’re taking the train and then there’s running up and down the train and sitting on an open seat. If you talked on the phone while on the train, you’re going to get side eye but no one’s going to chew you out (or at least I haven’t seen it yet). I’d be willing to bet that if you were running up and down the train playing musical chairs, you would be asked to leave. Now is there a rule against taking an open seat? No. Is there a rule against changing your seat? No. Isn’t musical chairs just the combination of two things that are OK? So why would you be asked to leave for one but not the other two? One, it’s dangerous. But I’d say the real issue is that you’re being a disturbance. Deliberately being a social disturbance.
So we’re seeing left and right as the American left try to push these boundaries even further. No one cares if your boy is wearing a pink shirt but they might care a lot more if he’s dancing and removing articles of clothing. We want to ingrain some set of values in children and we don’t all need to ingrain the same set of values to get a mostly cohesive society but we do need to kind of agree on the baseline. And what we’re seeing is the window of acceptable public behavior kind of being forced open. Will this lead somewhere good? Somewhere bad? I don’t know. But while the war on social decency happens and people continue to deliberately disturb social order, there will be tension between political factions. Until we can agree on some kind of baseline social behavior, perhaps taught in a class mandatory in school called “Moral education”… whoops. Japan is leaking through me again. Until that point, I think we’ll continue to experience this lack of social cohesion and for better or worse, I guess we’ll see where it takes us. Thanks for reading.
Some individual, some corporation, some game developer, some game publisher, comes out with something on social media saying something like “We recently had to shut down a thread that was about (insert bigotry of choice here) and we want you to know that we stand with (community) and their lived experiences”.
It’s total bullshit. Maybe it’s because I just had my birthday where yet again, instead of someone messaging me happy birthday they instead message the world that it’s my birthday as they send me “warm wishes”. At the 2022 Oscars, when Will Smith slapped (if you believe that it actually was a slap, I don’t) we get this bullshit apology on SOCIAL MEDIA. I just don’t understand what is the point of all of this. Let me tell you a short story from my childhood.
I am the eldest of three children. One of my siblings is really close to me in age. They’re only two years-ish younger than me (it’s legit like 2 years 1 month). This sibling used to really piss me off as a kid. In fact, they really pissed me off well into my 20’s. Now, when I was a kid, I would sometimes get so mad that I would hit this sibling. This sibling would tell our father. Our father would call for me and ask me, “Did you hit your sibling?”. I wasn’t going to lie to my father, so I said “Yes, I did”. And here’s the part where he tells me that I have to apologize. So I apologize, and I say, “I’m sorry”. He says, “Sorry for what?” and I have to answer “I’m sorry I hit my sibling”. And then his next response is the value that was ingrained in me and why we have this stupid blog post. He then says to me, “Why are you apologizing to me?” The answer of course is that since I injured my sibling, I must apologize to my sibling. Obviously. I’m sure everyone here has a story like this even if it’s not exactly the same situation.
Now why does all of this piss me off. My issue is that social media has ruined interaction like this moreso than the increasing rates of youth virginity and depression. When Will Smith hit Chris Rock, why the HELL would he apologize to the world. Why wouldn’t he apologize to Chris Rock personally? To my understanding he did that, we don’t need to full worldwide apology. It’s none of our business. You didn’t hit me, you didn’t hit any of my friends, you hit some comedian for making a joke about your wife (if we’re gonna call her that). Family members, wishing me happy birthdays through facebook statuses or wishing anyone happy birthdays through facebook statuses really, what the hell is wrong with you. First of all, birthdays tend to be security details that are useful if someone were to, IDK, take out a credit card in your name or try to access your banking details? Why are we broadcasting that to the world? In the country I currently live in, I could get in serious, SERIOUS legal trouble if I were to disclose personal details which includes but is not limited to name, sex, physical appearance, place of employment, birthday, the list goes on. It’s like going to the well and shouting “HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARTEMIS” while I’m still at home contemplating the barrel because another year has passed and the only people to stop by my house to wish me well is my fucking employer.
… I love my family to bits but seriously, I cannot get on board with the things they do sometimes.
When I was young, if some egregious conduct occurred in a forum thread, you know what happened? The mods made a comment about it in the thread, they locked the thread, sometimes they hid the thread, and any bans were handed out if necessary. But now if someone makes a joke about (insert your bigotry of choice here) we gotta have the thread purged, everyone banned, and the forum host has to put out a message of contrition to the world. Let me pick a game no one cares about which also has a short name… 4D Minesweeper. Let’s say someone made a comment about (insert your bigotry of choice here) on their forums and instead of handling it internally like a normal fucking person, they decide to go out of their way to make a social media post so that someone 5 degrees removed can wind up reading their spiel about how they support the current thing. No one gives a shit. It’s sooooooooooooo insincere. We know you didn’t lose any sleep over whatever it was that you decided to lock down. You weren’t up all night thinking “But what about the (bigotry of choice)?! People are dying because someone called Astolfo a trap!” (this is not a joke btw, I have seen this peddled as a legitimate argument by reddit mods). You don’t care because if you did care you would’ve handled it with the aggrieved parties (Again, you apologize to your sibling not to the world) and moved on with your life like a normal person. And we know this ain’t a financial incentive either. I am not going to buy 4D Minesweeper now (this game is free btw, too hard for me tho) just because you came out in support of the current thing. I doubt when uhh… Todd Howard posts that he supports the current thing that you decide to go back and buy all 10600934 ports of Skyrim to show your support for his support of the current thing.
So it’s bullshit, it’s all bullshit, and it’s just the product of this social media environment where you gotta get your clout in while the topic is still fresh so that when you’re forgotten about in like 48 hours you might have picked up some consumers because you probably only lost one. It’s just like how if you make a tweet that gets picked up you’re now obligated to reply to your tweet “Btw, check out my SubscribeStar, maybe drop me a benjamin or two”. It’s just ridiculous. Even when I think of the closest analogue being YouTube drama via video replies, none of the clout chasing we saw back then is close to as toxic as the clout chasing today.
Some people say social media is making people anti-social. They’re 120% wrong. It’s making people super-social where we’re seeing the death of the private individual and now we’re seeing individuals become brands and you gotta be farming PR for your brand so you can get that bread. It’s bullshit.
Sakuna of Rice and Ruin is an interesting game that straddles the line between farming sim and action platformer. Legit, I am not sure if I want to call it a farming sim with an action minigame or an action explorer with a management minigame.
STORY
Sakuna of Rice and Ruin’s story is a pretty bland one. Simple formula. You play as a silver spoon kid who gets sent to a farm to build character. In the prologue, we see the setup. A buncha hooligans somehow get set to the “Lofty Realm” (where the gods live) and make a big mess. As you attempt to stop them, you accidentally burn your tribute to the big goddess resulting in you being banished to Demon Island for not being able to offer tribute. You can return home when you’ve conquered the island for the big goddess. Turns out, mom and dad used to live on the island and their home is still kinda there. You rebuild the home and spend the rest of the game living there, growing rice and squaring away the mini-stories that deal with the hooligans you had to bring with you. Ultimately you have to slay the demon that your father fought to a draw (and eventually lost to) years and years ago.
The characters in the game are really, really boring. They’re all incredibly flat tropes.
Sakuna: Main character. Born with a silver spoon in her mouth, has to learn hard work.
Tama: Sakuna’s guardian. Way too soft on her but is ultimately an endearing old doggie is the only dog in the game you cannot pet. What a shame
Foreign lady: Believes in JESUS and doesn’t speak Japanese well (who can blame her) so she winds up being the maid of the house. Has to kinda be the mom to the kids.
Big dude: IS A FUCKING LIAR. “I have a sword but I was always more of a farmer”. Ok buddy, do some farming. “Well actually I was always shit at farming because I would trample the plants and break things” BRO.
Little boy: Likes swords and making stuff. Pretty normal actually.
Little girl: Likes sewing and for the longest time I thought she was a monster in disguise. Pretty normal.
Mute kid: Can talk to aminals because of course he can.
The characters are presented and outside of their function as NPCs for shops they’re really not good for much else. They don’t play any major impact on the story. The little boy is important because he winds up reforging the weapon you require to finish the game but outside of him I do not believe any other character (other than Sakuna and Tama of course) really matter to the main story. The side stories are uninteresting and serve only to set up upgrades.
I think the game really pulls a lot of punches with the characters resulting in them being their trope for the entirety of the game. I could probably have bought the story more had it actually tried to have consequences. Give a dude an eyepatch. Something that shows that the story is impacting them beyond their role as exposition. But there are several deaths that are baited and then backed out on. I’m not saying I want characters to die but I feel real ripped off when you tell me the mcguffin will require the sacrifice of my first-born child and I really don’t want to use it but I decide to in the end because I’ve found something that I think is more important than my first-born only for the mcguffin to change its mind and decide I can do it for free. Really cheapens things.
The game plays the character tropes straight as an arrow too and it’s really exhausting at times. Like Sakuna will be told something has to be gathered and we all know she’s going to gather it but she’s still going to complain “Why do I gotta do all the work around here?” forgetting that the other guys do the cooking and cleaning and they do just as much farming as you if not more. And it gets really tiring how the game pretends Sakuna is lazy when I’ve legit been on the island for like 20 years farming working hard every month and gathering materials every month like can we stop pretending Sakuna isn’t a hard worker now? Because she puts in the work.
GAMEPLAY
Here we kinda need to start splitting into the Farming vs Action elements. So what I do like is that your progress in farming directly impacts your progress in farming and vice versa. There’s no traditional leveling system in this game. How do you power up? Well, at the end of the year you harvest your rice and as a half harvest goddess you gain power based on the quality of your rice. This is actually pretty cool and I like this a lot. When you harvest your rice, you’re forced to choose between food buffs and stats based on how you harvest it and that’s pretty interesting too. The primary way in which exploration and combat feeds back into farming is that the materials you gather out there can be used to improve your yields. This is kinda nice because if you ever feel walled you can just farm for a year while focusing on stats and try again when spring and summer roll back around.
Food buffs are powerful. Not really a whole lot ot say about em. Buff your stats, gain resists, pretty simple.
Equipment is interesting. So near as I can tell as far as “defense” goes there are no stats just resists based on equipment and food skills. Pieces of equipment have their own unique skills baked into em but they sometimes have slots to put gems in as well. You will acquire skill gems throughout the game that boost stats or gather rates or whatever. You can upgrade these gems by spending amber (kinda like money). There’s not really much to it. What I found interesting was that you could swap these at any time, even during combat. You can make a magic or a strength build and it’s like… whatever OK you’ll do magic damage or physical damage. What you do need to be wary of are the 4 types of damage, Strike, Slash, Pierce, and Magic. Certain enemies are resistant and weak to certain types of attacks. No real way to tell, just gotta look at the damage number color. That said, being able to swap out gems at any time is incredibly convenient because if you see that your damage is being resisted, you can just swap out a gem that changes attack type to see what the enemy is weak to. Then you just go ham with the appropriate damage type.
Combat is really wonky and its wonkiness is why I hesitate to full commit to calling it an action explorer with a farming minigame. You have a grapple. You use it for exploring and for combat. You have two different attack buttons, heavy and light attack. You can also use skills a-la Tales series where D-pad plus skill button unleashes a skill. You also have a second set of skills that apply for when your grapple is on the enemy but these are primarily setup or debuff abilities. You can parry enemies and in some cases it’s required if you want to apply your grapple debuffs.
What’s pretty amusing is that friendly fire is on. Enemies can and will kill each other, you can knock enemies into spiked rocks to damage them and then the knockback effect from hitting spikes would knock them into spikes for permadamage into death. Really convenient. I took advantage of this a few stages where the cannon enemies will fire their cannons even if you’re not really in the line of fire and just had them wipe out their own goons. The bomb throwing rabbits were the most handy though because I could stand in a group, grapple up when the bombs came in, and then watch as the rabbits did 4k damage to their allies, saving me the trouble.
Exploration is a mixed bag. A lot of stages have stage specific gimmicks and they’re not terribly interesting gimmicks. One is “Kick enemy into wall to break it”. Another was “ride the bubbles”. A couple had “avoid the hot water” or “an enemy will continuously fire a cannon” gimmicks. It’s not hard to progress but eventually I got to the point where I had tired of it and just wanted to dash through the stages to the bosses.
The game is really forgiving on failure. Death sets you back to the beginning of the stage. It doesn’t even come with a penalty in the way of time in the day-night cycle. It auto-saves as you enter the screen so you go back to the time as well if you die. Death really only happens if you’re not really prepared for something you’re coming up against. Maybe it’s your first time fighting night enemies or something and suddenly you do no damage and they do all of the damage. But using the grapple gives you iframes so it’s easy to just iframe through all of an enemy’s attacks. Even failing that, if you find your health getting low but you don’t want to lose progress, just pause and return to world map. You can do this at any time and there are no penalties for it.
CRITICISM
But this brings us to my main complaints;
My main complaint with the combat is that I often don’t get what I want and I swear I’m pressing the buttons correctly. It really felt like I was fighting the combat buttons at times I really wound up just leaning hard on two or three skills (one for aerial, one for knockback, and a “quick attack”) for the entirety of the game. The grapple skills are like completely optional. I set them, but I never really used them. The grapple was legit just my iframe button. And the most annoying thing was how the enemies got iframes if I knocked them down. So when you knock an enemy down for the kill but they survive with like 2 HP you gotta wait like 3 seconds for them to stand back up so you can damage them again. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to use my hoe to till them like soil when they’re on the ground.
And thank goodness the grapple was pretty optional because the grapple is really awkward to use. I was playing on controller and whether I used the D-pad or stick, I had a really hard time with diagonal grabs to the point I just stopped using them in favor of just straight up grabs with a jump into a horizontal grab. This doesn’t work for a few sections in the game though, one of which I wound up using a damage boost for because the diagonal grapple was just so insufferable. This is doubly unfortunate because it’s clear that the exploration and combat were built around the idea that you would use the grapple extensively.
Grapples are your main source of debuffs but it’s not clear which enemies require parries to debuff and which do not. This is annoying because if you come across an enemy you’ve never seen before you might be tempted to just throw out your defense debuff skill but this isn’t going to work because it’s one of the “parry first” enemies. The game didn’t communicate this to you so you sorta stand there grappling it, vulnerable to attack while you react “Wait, why isn’t my debuff working”.
Following on with exploration, while exploring stages, there will be certain parts where you’ll need to beat some number of spawned enemies to proceed and you’ll be locked in like one of those old beatemups. This is whatever, but it’s annoying because the game feels like it wants to be exploration but it wants to be combat two and these two don’t mesh together well. The combat locks are the only thing that prevent me from breezing through the stages but sometimes I want to breeze through the stage because my objective is one of the stage’s side quests which don’t involve combat. This is compounded even further with my next complaint: Stage hazards.
The hot water and poison stages exist to force me to food buff against them. It’s so dumb. The poison stages especially. The HP drain on them if you don’t have something like poison resist 3 is ridiculous. Sure you could get through and then wait in a corner for your HP to recover naturally but this kills the pacing. Now, remember that the game does have a day-night cycle and you only have so long with your food buffs. So if you happen to be in one of these poison stages, your poison resistance only lasts as long as your food buffs last. So being forced to fight in the poison when your objective is one of the side objectives of find a material because very stressful. “Is my food buff going to last long enough or am I going to be forced to go home and try again, consuming the ingredients again”.
Stage hazards in general do not really provide anything of value imo. The bouncing mushrooms were funny (once) and the water bubbles, required for progress, are really slow. I hate waiting for elevators in real life, let alone in my games. The fire and poison are annoying to buff against but the real offenders are the spikes and pointy rocks. I would often quick attack into them by mistake, resulting in my death. Honestly, I probably killed myself more on these rocks than anything else in the game. There were a couple of spikes that were set up where your jump was just high enough to almost clear them if you jumped just a tad too far back and I would up landing on spikes for some 60 damage way too many times. Is it a fuck up in execution? Yes. Doesn’t mean I can’t find it annoying.
The BIGGEST offender of “not clearly communicated” is the final fight of the game during which a COMPLETELY NEW mechanic is introduced which is all but required to beat it. It’s a really powerful gimmick. You can block all damage to kinda charge up like Bide in Poogeymun to blast the boss with a bomb when charged. Thing is, this ability eats SP and the game did not tell you this so I ate a few deaths to the final boss because I didn’t realize that when I used my skills between patterns that I used up all of the SP I was supposed to save for the special skill. Then, on top of that, it seems you have to soak up some amount of damage for the bomb to work. How do you know when you’ve soaked up enough. Well, the grapple will turn a rainbow color. Just uhh… one small problem.
THE GRAPPLE IS VERY TINY ON YOUR TINY MODEL ON THE SCREEN.
It would have been better to communicate a full charge via a number of other methods. Make your SP bar glow rainbow. Add a rainbow ball around the character. Some kind of clear visual indicator beyond the brief flash you get which indicates that the full charge is ready (since you can hold onto the bomb).
Speaking of things that are difficult to see, maybe my eyesight is just really poor (and it is really poor) but I felt that at times, enemies would just blend into the background so I had a hard time in certain fights because the palettes just started to blur together and I couldn’t see anything.
As for story, I’ll be real with you. I simply don’t understand how “You defeated evil” when you beat the final boss and it was “forgiven” or whatever. Like they’ve been trying to spin this thread of “The demons are not evil, just misguided” throughout the entire game but it doesn’t develop into that state naturally.
Another thing that kinda got me was that you are expected to read the rice manuals to learn how to raise your rice a specific way. This doesn’t bother me since it’s available pretty easily but it just strikes me as flawed as rather than guiding someone towards the “proper” way to grow rice, you just give them the book and say “follow this recipe”. I don’t know how much the rice farming relates to real life so maybe this was just a kluge because they didn’t really have a good way to do it.
CONCLUSION
That said, I think the game is really accessible and honestly it kinda vibin. I personally enjoyed farming more than combat. I’m told it’s really in-depth and I can believe it. Not gonna find out but I can believe it. This game isn’t for everyone. But it does provide what I think is a fairly unique experience which might overstay its welcome just a tad in the second half but is ultimately quite charming and enjoyable.
SAKUNA BASED?
I gotta say, the game could be surprisingly based.
So let me get this straight. You’re on border patrol when you deport one guy who was starting a fight with some other dudes. Out of the kindness of your heart you don’t deport the illegals he was starting a fight with. The illegals enter your town, trespass on in this case, YOUR LAND and start eating all of your food. Now you accidentally shoot a gas tank, blowing up your barn, as you try to get the illegals off your land. This is entirely your fault, and that’s OK. But why did you need all of the food in the first place? Turns out, you had to pay TAXES. Which as we all know is THEFT. So when Uncle Sam comes over and says GIB ME DATS you are unable to pay. Uncle Sam then sends you to prison which as we all know is REALLY just a slave labor camp. Surprise! Slave labor camp is in another country! You’re forced to fight the natives to subdue them to secure land for your overseers. It’s basically colonization. Look at me. I’m the illegal now. So you subdue the natives who are TECHNICALLY acting in self-defense at this point. One of your squad brings one of the natives home in an act of kindness as it was wounded. You spare the native (even though Tama EXPLICITLY says they’re manifestations of evil). Go out on a mission, come back, they burnt all your shit to the ground because the illegal went back and guided all of the demons to your home? Like, hello? Was Tama wrong? Should I have killed that demon and spared my little band of brothers the danger? They coulda died. They didn’t, but they coulda. In the end this doesn’t matter though because if the natives accept your “kindness” they become “good” and “civilized”.
So the lessons are:
We need to BUILD A WALL
Taxation is theft
Colonization is good
It is simply the nature of some (COUGH ILLEGALS COUGH) to harm
By accepting progress, subhuman natives can become civilized.
For some reason or another I was thinking of past arguments again, as one does in the shower or in their moment of clarity after the deed has been done and I was remembering an argument I had with someone over whether or not there’s a difference in choosing to not act and choosing a specific action. I don’t want to let this moment of clarity go to waste so here we are, on our computer, blogging at what is probably not a good time to blog. Let’s go.
I recall… I think the character was a YouTube personality Sargon of Akkad (may he rest in peace) was debating. I’m not gonna go and try to fish up what the debate was or who it was with, that part’s not terribly important. The important bit was the question the guy asked Sargon. The question the individual asked Sargon was “If I own a shop, and a man dying of thirst comes into my shop, and I refuse to sell him water, and he dies, have I killed him?”
Alternatively, Let’s consider the classic trolley problem. Five people are tied to a track and will be killed, lest you pull the lever that’s right next to you. Pulling this lever will cause the trolley to change tracks. However, not all is well in this case either, as there is one person tied to this track. So what do you do? Do you pull the lever. A lot of people seem to weigh this question as a test of the value of life. Do you kill one person to save five? Others think that this is a question of constraint, is there really no other solution? Why don’t we break the lever, throw the lever in the track, cause the trolley to go off the rails killing everyone onboard instead? However, what I have come to realize in this question is that it’s more of a duty of action question. If you pull the lever, you are directly responsible for the death of one person. If you do nothing, are you responsible for the deaths of five people? And this is where we come to the question of inaction.
In choosing not to act, are you responsible for the outcome that you did not actively prevent?
If you allow a course of action to continue, neither impeding nor aiding it, should you be held liable for the results of that course of action? In both of the previous examples, most of the people that I have discussed this topic with have argued that the correct action is the one that harms the fewest number of people. But these people are dodging a key issue and I think is at hand here. If I am responsible for any outcome that I did not actively prevent, then I am responsible for a lot more things than I am willing to be responsible for. Even if you want to add the clause “that you are able to but choose not to act”, you still can’t get around this issue that you can wind up being responsible for pretty much anything.
I own a steel mill. The steel I sold was used to make a car. The car was rented by a driver. The driver drove drunk and killed a man. Am I responsible for that man’s death? My actions are so far removed from the offending incident that I (and to my knowledge, courts) agree that I am not liable for the decedent’s passing.
I witness a crime. I report it to the police. The police catch the criminal but the perp had already killed two young boys in the time that passed since my calling. Am I responsible for the deaths of those two boys because I didn’t make a citizen’s arrest right then and there? Had I endangered myself to pin the guy down or something, it’s possible that those two young boys would still be alive. But the question isn’t whether they’d be alive, it’s whether I’m responsible for their deaths.
So we have my problem where taken to its logical conclusion, I wind up taking responsibility for any tertiary effect of something I do. We also have the other problem of is there a difference between choosing to not act and choosing to affirmatively act. And this isn’t one of those “Well you’re affirmatively choosing not to act” kinda deals, what I mean by an “Affirmative act” is “An act towards a specific goal” rather than “volitionally acting a specific way”. So to revisit our previous trolley problem.
Problem: There is a trolley that will run over five people Goal: Prevent loss of life Act: Pull the lever Result: Lesser loss of life
In this case, I would argue that you are responsible for the deaths of that one person because your action is the cause of their death. Had you done nothing, they would safely still be tied to that track. Well, as safe as anyone tied to a track can be.
Now some of you might flip around and say “Well wait a minute. By doing nothing, you’re responsible for the deaths of the five because you can flip the track but chose not to”. This interpretation completely misunderstands the point I am trying to make. So let’s try this again.
In doing nothing, five people may die, yes. But the thing is, they were already going to die. So inaction (naturally) doesn’t change the outcome. And since you weren’t responsible for the scenario, you shouldn’t be responsible for the outcome.
To frame the trolley problem in another way. Kids are playing Hide-and-Seek in a dark room. You stumble in. It’s dark. Do you turn on the light? If you do so, and Jimmy gets found first because the light helped the seeker find him, is that your fault? Yes. But if you just stood at the door and looked inside as the seeker found five kids in a closet hiding together, are you responsible for these five kids being found? I think you’d be hard-pressed for someone to say that it’s your fault the five were found. So why is it suddenly in the trolley problem that you wind up taking responsibility for things you did not do?
Conclusion
So, in a nutshell, I believe there’s a difference between acting towards a goal and through inaction, allowing an outcome to be reached. I don’t believe you should be held accountable for actions you did not commit. I’m sorry if it’s not as fleshed out or as clear cut as I can make it but I think (and hope) I got my point across. Thanks for reading.
But not for the reason you might think. Last night I had the usual abortion topic debate and I had some thoughts, thought I’d make a post about it. So here we are.
My Stance On Abortion
I’ve made a blog post on this issue in the past, I think some 5 years ago. And my stance at the time was a tentative “anti-abortion” because of my opposition more with logical conflicts in abortion than opposition to abortion itself. The argument was something like – If we consider fetuses people for double homicides but not for abortions, isn’t that a contradiction we need to resolve? Nowadays I fully believe that abortion should be illegal on the grounds that I believe it is an unjustifiable murder.
THAT SAID: none of this is terribly important for the purpose of this particular post. The reason I put it out here is so that everyone knows where I stand on abortion itself before we talk about why the Texas Law SB-8 is bad law. Because while I am in favor of the outcome, I disagree with this law’s mechanisms and I hope to see it struck down in the future.
Texas SB-8
First let’s cover what Texas SB-8 is. Some people have taken to calling it the snitch law due to its enforcement mechanism but it’s a fair bit more than that. It does a few things
It makes abortion after the detection of an independent heartbeat illegal
It requires that all abortion providers perform some test to detect an independent heartbeat prior to performing an abortion.
It does permit abortion in the event of a medical emergency (Though I did not see details on what that contains)
It mandates that all of the preceding points must be logged on the performance of every abortion.
It allows private individuals to sue abortion providers with an award of up to $10,000 USD
The full text of the bill is available here. It is interpreted as making abortion effectively illegal because most women do not know that they’re pregnant prior to when a heartbeat would be detectable. It was constructed in such a way that the enforcement mechanism isn’t with the state which is how they’ve managed to get around typical challenges.
Why is it Bad Law
So everything is good, right? We got the outcome we want, abortions are illegal. Those who perform abortions can now be acted against. We’ve covered up pretty much all of the loopholes by forcing abortion providers to record their tracks. And if someone provides an abortion, they’re on the hook for up to $10,000 USD which can be claimed by, let’s say the partner of a pregnant woman who disagrees with her decision to get an abortion. So what’s the problem? My personal problem with this law is that it makes me uneasy about government attempts to skirt rights.
Whatever you think of abortions, at this time, they are legal. The Supreme Court of the United States has manufactured the right to an abortion as a right that must be protected by the Federal government out of nowhere. And even if you disagree with whether you should have this right, this right at the time of posting exists. The Texas state government doesn’t want you to have this right. But if they try to ban it outright, the law will be challenged and struck down. So instead they deputize the citizen to act as agents of the state. Now they can wash their hands of the matter and get the outcome that they want. The problem is that a threat to a right on these grounds presents a threat to all rights. Consider the following:
The government wants to prohibit hate speech. But it knows it can’t do that without the law being struck down. So what it does is that it instead asks platforms that host hate speech to remove hate speech and ban users who post hate speech. The government conspires with private companies to get a desired outcome. This is pretty close to what the United States government is doing right now with social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. If you’ve been penalized for saying something like a particular Olympic athlete isn’t what they say they are, then you may have experienced what is effectively outsourced government censorship.
Conclusion
Basically, the problem with the law in my view is that it creates this “Third-party backdoor” that allows the government to effectively attack rights. Third-party backdoors have been challenged and crushed in the past. I can only hope that this is another case where it happens again. I think that’s all I have for today. It’s a pretty short one but I think I got my point across. Thanks for reading.
Today, I was thinking and thought I’d share “how” I think with you all. I don’t think that it’s a phenomenal method by any means. I just thought it’d be an interesting topic for today. So how do I think? I make two assumptions.
Humans are rational actors
Information can be shared
Let’s cover some definitions real quick.
What is a “Rational Actor”?
I’m pretty sure I use the definition we used in my economics classes. A rational actor is a being who makes decisions they believe are in their best interested based on the information they have at hand. For example, at the First Battle of Savo Island, VADM Mikawa was presented with an opportunity after his fleet’s overwhelming success in the battle. Does he attack the transports at Savo Island or does he leave. He decides to leave. Why?
The charts necessary to safely navigate the archipelago had been destroyed in the battle.
Attacking means that he would be returning to base in the morning, so he would have to deal with allied CV aircraft harassment the whole way back.
What he didn’t know was that the CVs he was concerned about had already left the AO. He is quoted as saying had he known he could attack the transports safely, of course he would’ve done that. But he made his decision based on the information he had at hand.
What is “Information”?
Information is any statement someone believes to be true. Information can be shared means that these “facts” (they need not necessarily be true, only believed to be true) can be distributed.
Pitfalls
Of course, this isn’t a perfect framework. “Best interest” is fairly loosely defined since it can span over seconds or over decades. We just say let that come out in the wash. Humans aren’t always rational actors. And the things you believe to be true, need not necessarily be true. That said, I think despite this it’ll again, all come out in the wash. In the worst case scenarios I assume:
Actions made by groups of people that don’t lead to successful outcomes have a basis in something and we can find value in that something.
Actions made by groups of people that lead to successful outcomes will eventually outnumber those made by unsuccessful people due to spread of information.
So for (1), let’s suppose we saw a bunch of people jumping off of a bridge. My basic assumption is that there’s probably a good reason that everyone’s jumping off of the bridge and it may be beneficial for me to do so as well. At worst, even if jumping off of the bridge isn’t the best idea, there was something that made so many people think that jumping off the bridge was their best option. And figuring out what that something is is its own value. (2) is obviously just an appeal to law of large number analogues. Of course the largest pitfall of course is my base assumption that information can be shared. Which means in an illiberal society in which information is suppressed (Nope, not even the United States is safe) there will be a breaking point for my evaluation methods.
General Conclusion
But this brings us to my general conclusion which is that people trend to do what is most beneficial for them. Talk is cheap but people vote with their feet. Information of success is shared, so people will trend to do what is most successful. Which means if you see people fleeing a city en masse like rats off a ship, then something in that city is no bueno. If you see a lot of streamers popping up doing the same thing, that particular thing must be successful. But I also extend this even further. If the most stable countries are democratic, then democracy must be the most successful means of running a country. If a company no longer sells a certain product, it’s not a successful product. If an algorithm is most commonly written a certain way, that way must be the best for some reason or another.
Basically, again, behavior tends towards what’s most successful. Next time you see a company, a country, an organization engaging in what you think is unhealthy or even predatory, remember that it’s likely the result of a number of observations and shared information. It’s done because it works and it’s what works best as far as we know. I often complain about how ubiquitous clicker games are on the play store but the reason they’re so ubiquitous is because they’re easy to make and they’re successful. I VEHEMENTLY despise early access and pre-order because it’s often done in predatory manner but the reason it’s done is because it works. I get so worked up about gamers letting companies engage in bad releases because “it’s release day, it’s expected to be a little wonky” when back in my day you got what the company shipped and you couldn’t patch it. So if it was bad, it was bad, and you told everyone it was bad. Stop excusing bad behavior Jesus fucking Christ. But eh, don’t hate the player, hate the game. But I think that’s everything from me. Thanks for reading.
I probably shouldn’t bother with this post since it’s not really well-formulated in my head but we’ll go ahead and run with it. I’ll also preface by saying for those who are unaware, I refuse to use Twitch. I haven’t used Twitch in I think like 6 months, when was the most recent ToS update? When they added the rule saying you can get banned for accusing mods of favored treatment, I said I was out. I’m done. I refuse to participate in a platform that has so little respect for their users like this. Anyway, moving on. Twitch recently banned two thot streamers, not for hot tub inappropriateness but for… I don’t even know how to describe it. Still wildly inappropriate. Now why would they do such a thing? Well first, let’s remember how we got here in the first place.
A while ago I wrote a blog post about the hot tub streams. In this blog post I tried to evaluate what thot streams are, and why there’s an uproar about it. I proposed an solution of splitting it off to a new category. I later discovered (and updated the post) that Twitch did go with my suggestion. But they didn’t do this due to community outrage, rather advertiser outrage. Which just goes to show where Twitch gets their money. It’s not from subscriptions (which they take 50% of for affiliates and 30% for partners iirc) but rather advertisers. They made a new category and the income for the streamers tanked. And with mixed community feelings, they soldiered on.
Recently I discover the new abomination that is Twitch Ear Licking ASMR streams. And I have to say, some of the stuff I saw was straight up abhorrent and disturbing. And it is here that I have to say that the generous interpretation of the thot streams where there’s nothing sexual about it, that they’re just women wearing skimpy clothing can no longer be supported. These are women trying to gain subscribers for… less savory material. Which as I said at the outset of the previous post, is completely fine. The hustle is good and I don’t particularly care what you do as long as all parties are able to and can consent.
Where the problem comes in again is in the availability of content for minors. It seems these thots didn’t understand what the issue was and why the hot tub streams were punted over into their own category. It’s because we don’t want minors to develop unhealthy impressions of women. You weren’t hidden behind the hot tubs category because Twitch felt like it. Twitch is trying to protect their bottom line and you trying to peddle your sluttery in ASMR category is destructive to the platform you are trying to have promote you. All you’re going to do is either get banned or get a new category created.
Now, this is where the inspiration for this post comes in. My question is: What’s next. Basically there are a number of thots on Twitch. These thots want to use Twitch to promote alternative subscription services such as OnlyFans. They put on the softcore play for Twitch to bait in the real crowd at OnlyFans. Which again, whatever. I don’t particularly care since I’m not involved. My question is what does Twitch want to do about this. Obviously, the “ASMR” streams have to go for the same reason the hot tub streams did. Advertisers care. But this action is just sticking a band-aid on the problem. Give it two weeks, two months, and we’ll be right back here again with the new sluttery. Does Twitch want to involve themselves in basically plugging up every loophole step by step? Or does Twitch plan to take more serious actions?
Twitch at this time might be in a bit of an identity crisis. The platform was primarily built on the backs of streamers streaming video games. Originally it was a gaming platform. Twitch decided that it was not feasible or it was not advantageous to specialize in gaming content. So they broadened their content umbrella to cover streaming in general. At the time of writing, there are 4 categories with more than 100k viewers and Just Chatting is one of them, taking up about 1/3 of the viewers across these 4 categories. Of the top 20 categories, 5 of them are non-gaming. So at this time, Twitch has a fairly powerful non-gaming based community. I’m not logged in and of the 10 recommended streams, all 10 are gaming streams. Switching to streamers themselves, of the top 10 live streams by viewcount, 2 are non-gaming while one of those two is an NBA game. So again, powerful gaming community too. So what does Twitch do to maintain both communities? If I was in power at Twitch with the information I have sitting here on the floor with, here’s what I’d do.
Aggressively move against thot streamers.
This move will protect their current content creators by (hopefully) maintaining their advertisers. It’s healthy for the Twitch community as a whole because IN MY PERSONAL OPINION I think these thot streamers have no interest in really promoting Twitch. Rather than promoting their Twitch channel, they’re promoting their OnlyFans channel. I can recall a time when people would say “Find me on Twitch” rather than Twitch being a random mention in their LinkTree. These creators aren’t interested in being a content creator for Twitch, so Twitch has nothing to really lose by removing them.
Even if I didn’t assume the worst of the thot streamers in that they’re basically Twitch parasites, I don’t think Twitch does themselves any favors by not aggressively enforcing a no-sexual content policy. The bans aren’t going to do much. The thots will come back from their bans with an even larger audience due to controversy. Normally this is where we say “But the twitch subs, Twitch gets 30% of those right?” This assumes two things.
Twitch gets a substantial income from subscribers
Those viewers were subbing on Twitch in the first place
We can dismiss 1 outright. As we saw before, Twitch doesn’t take action because of consumers, they take action because of advertisers. This means that that which pleases the advertisers most (removal of thots) is going to be the better move. Would you rather lose $10 or $50? You’re gonna lose money either way, take the smaller hit, right? I have suspicions about 2 but from the PoV of these thots, the Twitch subs probably weren’t their income. The real income probably comes from the redirect. From OnlyFans where those that would be Twitch subs are paying for the content they actually want from the streamers.
Personally, I’m curious to see how Twitch handles this issue because their next moves are going to determine the future of Twitch. Will it become Pornhub for kids or will it become a Christian Streaming Service. I also wonder whether it will have a knock-on effect for alternative streaming services like DLive (which I know nothing about except that it exists). We’ll have to see, it’ll be interesting. Either way, I think that’s about all I have for this one. Thanks for reading.
Artemis Hunt
Btw if you’re interested in my own personal content, I’m currently working through Darkest Dungeon to hopefully finish it for the first time.
Home of the Huntress 