Never thought about it at the time, but it is kind of surprising how quickly Pokemon tried going edgy with the card game. Like within the first year they went, "OK, you can play as the bad guys now" and as far as I know they never did it again. Little ahead of the curve on that, too, considering how every children's IP felt the need to get just a bit edgier post-9/11.
I've seen it suggested before, but is the running theory that 4chan wasn't a "naturally occurring" Internet cesspool, but a consciously directed operation from Epstein and his evil billionaire friends to funnel terminally online edgelords into right-wing ideology? I'll be honest, I don't know if I can get behind that one. People on the mid-2000s Internet could be fucking horrible without any help.
I was, regrettably, a high school 4channer. I quit the site years before Katawa Shoujo was released, so I don't really remember how or why I ended up playing it. Morbid curiosity? It would have been over a decade ago, so any opinions I currently hold about it are vague memories from a very different time in my life.
I went through Lilly's and Rin's routes and I liked them both quite a bit. Only read parts of other routes my girlfriend played, including Emi's and Shizune's, and I thought the writing was noticeably weaker. I could be wrong, but I think each character was written by different writers, so I guess it makes sense that some writing styles just weren't for me.
I've only played a small handful of other VNs, but I kind of fell off the genre because they didn't really hold my interest like Katawa Shoujo. Somehow a porn game featuring teenage girls with disabilities written by weebs from some of the worst corners of the Internet seemed to respect women better than some of the "best" visual novels I'd had recommended to me. How the fuck did that happen?
Oh god, no. I'm a beginner forager and I wouldn't even touch a mushroom I found unless multiple professionally written sources helped me identify it clearly. AI can't take spore prints, so...what the fuck?
It's not at events where shit like this is going to happen. It's everyday raids. My local NDLON group has 30+ vetted members struggling to keep enough volunteers on the ground at our neighborhood Home Depot to keep watch for the day laborers looking for work there. We have to be there every day from morning to afternoon. Home Depot just installed Flock cameras all over the lot, so they're going to know when we're not here. When ICE comes with the numbers they have in Minnesota right now, they're going to blow right through us. There will never be enough people. We all have to work.
I am reluctantly using Deep Seek for a few simple things that would otherwise be incredibly tedious. It has been working pretty great, surprisingly. But boy do I dislike the way it talks to me. Literally every follow up I write, positive or negative, is met with an uncomfortable amount of complements and praise. It's so off-putting to be treated like this stupid software's master.
I've been following Skyblivion for at least as long as you've been involved with the project, so first: Thank you so much for all your work. Second: Congratulations on the absurd amount of progress. That is so fucking impressive that you're this close to release.
I've been curious for a while now, but how prepared is the team for the final steps of QC before the big launch? I imagine the passion involved in creating this project from the ground up and seeing it to completion is excellent motivation, but even the most dedicated creators must hit a wall when it comes to the daunting task of bug fixing a Bethesda-sized game. Do you feel like you know what to expect when you get there or is it still kind of an unknown at this point?
I know next to nothing about this...company? YouTube channel? I tried watching one of their videos once and it was boring as fuck. But a group of my friends regularly meets up IRL with other fans of it through some Discord community actively sponsored by them. And somehow they actually get these fucking nerds out of their home and socializing. Just something I think about whenever I feel like organizing is too hard in my town.
Never thought about it at the time, but it is kind of surprising how quickly Pokemon tried going edgy with the card game. Like within the first year they went, "OK, you can play as the bad guys now" and as far as I know they never did it again. Little ahead of the curve on that, too, considering how every children's IP felt the need to get just a bit edgier post-9/11.