I advocate for logical and consistent viewpoints on controversial topics. If you’re looking at my profile, I’ve probably made you mad by doing so.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Not great. Sort of lost my will to post after a bunch of experiments over at !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca

    If I post pure questions in the weekly thread, the only people that respond are the few that can articulate things in detail.

    If I post questions with some opinion added because people respond more frequently to those (even if I do not believe the opinion), we get scads of aggressive comments and downvotes which buries the thread quickly.

    To top that off, if I respond in other threads in Lemmy, I get people digging up the weekly threads (or responses therein) and trying to use those as ammunition against me. It’s super disheartening.




  • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.catoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldPlease hurry
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    12 days ago

    usufruct

    So… reading the Wikipedia article on it for more info, it doesn’t seem to place any limits on what you can own. It simply lets you makes allowances for others to use something of yours. It doesn’t seem to mention forfeiting unused property in the least.

    It’s basically just being a landlord, but with other stuff, no? I’m not following how this isn’t corruptible unless there’s something I’m missing.




  • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.catoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldPlease hurry
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    14 days ago

    No political system is perfect. Ever.

    They require constant vigilance. They require battling. Human greed is capable of corrupting every system that a human mind can create.

    Anyone that tells you they have a perfect political system that would never need fixing is a liar, an idiot, or both.










  • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.catoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.worldTo those who hate anime, why do you hate it?
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    2 months ago

    I generally don’t talk about it, but because you asked, I have seen a lot of anime and hate most of it. I have seen Hellsing, Hellsing Ultimate, about 9/10 of the OG run of Fullmetal Alchemist, a lot of Ranma 1/2, Serial Experiments Lain, Akira, some Death Note, La Blue Girl, some tennis one I can’t remember the name of, Castlevania, a few Studio Ghibli movies, Attack on Titan S1 & 2, random episodes of Samurai Pizza Cats, all of One Punch Man, Interspecies Reviewers, Slayers, some DiC Sailor Moon, some early Pokemon, and a few Dragonball, YuGiOh, Digimon, and Naruto episodes.

    I don’t count early GI Joe or Transformers even though they’re technically anime, but I didn’t like those either.

    Of those, I liked Interspecies Reviewers, about 1.5 seasons of OPM, 1 season of Castlevania, and Hellsing Abridged (because it’s fucking hilarious).

    Here’s a random top 10 of reasons:

    1. Anime has a horrible habit of having a great premise, a lot of repeated setup, and then zero payoff followed by a new season escalating with the same. In short, great at premise, poor at developing it into a story. And endings? They have no idea how to end a series except for fighting bigger bad guys…
    2. And that’s IF they can even be arsed to finish a series. I’m aware of the timeframe dynamic between manga and anime. It fucked over Game of Thrones too. Maybe we just agree not to start a show before the source material is done?
    3. Much of the animation looks abysmal and the “serious” ones seem to have an awful habit of just… panning over a background or frozen characters in a scene for fucking ever to fill time. I made note of this during Serial Experiments Lain to my friend who was making me watch it and it basically ruined the show for him. It completely wrecked the pacing and was done CONSTANTLY. There were 45 second pans (which I would start audibly counting after 10 seconds) while the main character just monologued “I’m 12 and this is deep” bullshit that was nearly completely disconnected from the plot. There was no reason to do this. Even recent shows like Castlevania did this.
    4. Shit just happens that doesn’t make any sense in context of the world they’ve set up. This is endemic from anime I’ve seen. Anime fans think that randomness is “creative” instead of just “throwing shit at a screen because the writer had a fever dream and it doesn’t matter at all if it makes any fucking sense”. Spirited Away is basically just this. No, randomness is not creativity, Katy the Penguin of Doom.
    5. They’re just a different set of tropes than American cartoons, many of which I find to be nonsensical, twee, or cringe-inducing. Bloody nose when you get a boner trope, I’m looking at you.
    6. I fucking hate Japanese voice acting (and often for the most part the Americans who dub it, especially in kids shows). This started when Sailor Moon came over and I wanted to kill everyone in the immediate vicinity whenever most of the characters spoke. That shrill panic screaming that was in SM and Pokemon was awful.
    7. In the same vein, I also can’t stand constant “reaction sounds”. Someone saying something mildly surprising that you should have easily realized 10 episodes ago isn’t an excuse to stare blankly and make an “AH”, “OH”, or “UH” noise (sometimes followed by a small choking sound) roughly four hundred times per episode. Humans don’t do this.
    8. They make movies that just do random shit and don’t have anything to do with the show (if not outright contradict the show). Dragonball is especially notorious for this.
    9. A really weird number of them throw in Nazis seemingly at random, appropriate time and setting be damned. Need a bad guy? Fucking Nazis!
    10. I am constantly inundated with friends that like anime telling me that I should watch whatever their new anime obsession is despite it conforming to 3/4 of bad things on this list because obviously I just haven’t watched the right anime.

  • Ace T'Ken@lemmy.catoCasual Conversation @lemm.ee*Permanently Deleted*
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    2 months ago

    But they are portrayed differently and there are entire threads about how “modern audiences” don’t like the American Pie way.

    The three things you mentioned there in The Boys were not for titillation, they were played for humor or shock as was the (overwhelmingly) male nudity. And the actions are mostly done by the bad guys. A butt shot of a Starlight body double in the most recent season isn’t comparable and is a stinger to someone being raped. Sex and sexuality is portrayed poorly and as kinda gross throughout.

    American Pie had a scene for titillation and the actions were carried out by the protagonists. Sex and sexuality is portrayed as fun, nothing to be ashamed of, and a normal part of life.

    The OP is correct. It was never about not being able to reference creepy sex practices by bad people. That was never off the table.

    Things are different now, and I would argue in a very unhealthy way.



  • It looks like I will be nearly the only dissenter here. I didn’t care for the game.

    PROS:

    • The music and sound design were completely appropriate and fit the world.
    • An initially interesting story setup.
    • Some of the planets have a SUPER cool premise and are a joy to explore.
    • The DLC adds some much-needed (albeit mild) horror elements.

    NEUTRALS:

    • Achievements are implemented, but are mostly for irrelevant side activities. Do you like using a guide to figure out how to get all the achievements? Well, you will have to.

    CONS:

    • This is not an adventure game, this is a puzzle game first and foremost. If you are not down with figuring out hundreds of vague Dark Souls-style lore blurbs scattered all over in order to work out how to solve environmental puzzles to progress, do not get this game.
    • In the same vein, if you are not down with having a loop end before you’re done exploring an area only to have to trek all the way back there and go through everything all over again in case you missed something, do not get this game. This could be partially solved by having the logs you find on a planet permanently NOT GLOW any more after you had read their chain, or maybe a ship notice letting you know there were undecyphered texts on a planet still. I had to re-tread an astounding amount of ground just to make sure I wasn’t missing something.
    • When your ship directs you to a planet that you need something from, the navigation on some of them is so obtuse that I found several places I could not find again even after dozens of visits to their planets. A map or better signposting would alleviate this.
    • The characters were deeply forgettable, and you are constantly inundated with dozens of gibberish alien names so unless you follow a lore guide or take notes, you’re not going to figure out who did what. And speaking of…
    • The story has a veneer of “pretty good sci-fi” but is told quite poorly. You will beat the game, get the incredibly lacklustre ending that doesn’t close out the story in any way, and watch one of many lore explanation videos that will make things click into place. The fact that the lore videos have SO MANY HITS is endemic of the fact that this is a narrative poorly delivered. You will find the lore in random order. If spread over multiple sessions like I played, this will mean you will not make some absolutely needed connections.
    • Many things do not make sense within the context of the world and there is no reason for them to be happening at the time except for the hand-waving “It’s a video game” excuse, which breaks immersion. Why only now is sand being moved from one planet to another at the beginning of a cycle? Why only now is one planet being broken by lava? These (and other that I can not speak about due to spoilers) are not explained - the systems have existed for ages and would have (and should have given the environments they set up) occurred before this, but because it makes for a more interesting setup, it all happens now.
    • The controls are… an acquired taste at best. Look at many of the negative reviews; many state the controls as an issue. There is a reason for this, even though I did become accustomed to them over time. I swapped to a controller and it was less bad. The keyboard and mouse controls are abysmal.
    • I played the final build after the DLC came out, and even this far in development, I had some severe bugs. Controls would get “stuck” and force a game restart, achievements didn’t unlock correctly, etc.
    • I wound up quitting because I didn’t know what to do next and didn’t care to watch yet another video to figure it out. There were hundreds of text logs that may or may not have been useful, and no idea how to find what was missing to help me progress without consulting guides, and it became too much. I eventually realized that I was just throwing time into a hole with nothing to show for it. It genuinely felt like it wanted me to give up and I couldn’t help but oblige. I just… stopped. I hated it. I kept doing the same thing over and over and eventually felt that I wasn’t enjoying anything. I hate the very concept of repetition as a game mechanic unless executed well; this wasn’t executed well.
    • Despite quitting, I have seen all the endings. The real ending is legitimately nonsense and is basically an appeal to emotion while leaving the reality of the universe behind. It abandons the premise with what can only be described as a narrative hug that does essentially nothing, but presents the veneer of “feel good.” It is nothing. It is empty. Everyone but me loves it for this, and I can’t figure out why.

    CONCLUSION: Meh? I really don’t understand the adoration people have for this game. It’s a mediocre non-combat roguelike with about 3 hour of content they’ve spread over 20 hours. It feels very much like a case of style over substance. This game genuinely makes me sad. I really wanted to like it, but… ugh. It feels like work.