minimink @minimink@awoo.space

Woke up to milquetoast "no erections at pride" takes, and you know what? Fuck off. There is still the unstated assumption that passive observation of sexuality and nudity is harmful for kids. An assumption that I do not share.

The Word of the Day is Societal POCD.

As it turns out, the unholy intersection of respectability politics, queerness, sex, and kink is a topic that gets me *SUPER* mad!

Literally the "Is there somebody you forgot to ask???" Meme

IF YOU ARE NOT DIRECTLY ENGAGED IN THE ACTIVITY YOUR CONSENT IS MEANINGLESS

TFW you want to control other people's expression and bodily autonomy by fabricating some need to 'consent' to other people's dress and expression.

Gotta love when the 'Dirtbag Left' engages in literal respectability politics because the "kevins" they keep trying to recruit push their overton window to accept anti-queer rhetoric wrt sex and kink.

Attempting to speedrun RE8 on stream! https://twitch.tv/gracetveit

Who knew that a show based on an edgy comic book (that also attempts to rationalize and redeem fascists) would have a fandom that is chomping at the bit to engage in misogynoir when the Black female love interest sets boundaries in a relationship./s

Playing some SFV for shits and/or giggles: https://twitch.tv/gracetveit

Whee, depressive wave

Following up on this, I did *acquire* .hack//infection, and right off the bat I'm pretty gosh dang charmed, coming from my own experience playing MMOs. Certainly getting more 'RP Server' vibes than my own experiences, from how seriously characters are treating the threat of being killed in-game, but I love the minutia surrounding the framing, from the message boards to the 'player characters' running around the town hub.

I watched Red Bard's video on the .hack series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxUErZM8M2E

and it made me think about my own history with the series, so-to-speak.

I watched .hack//sign years ago as a teen and fell in love with. It was a show that I was actually kind of worried wouldn't hold up, but even having watched it a couple of years back, I'm still enormously fond of its tone and pacing.

Funnily enough, the emotional resonance that series had on me has made me reluctant to check out any of games or other bits of .hack media, because I'm worried it won't live up to my weird expectations that sign gave me. Especially when people only reluctantly recommend sign because of the perceived faults that made me fall in love with the series in the first place.

If you *ARE* interested in getting into the genre, please come hang out in my discord! https://https://discord.com/invite/pGtfqrw
It's new-player focused, and very furry/queer.

Played through a bunch of the Guilty Gear Strive second beta (8-9 hours in total, by my estimation), and I wanted to give some of my thoughts:

- The lobbies and general network infrastructure needs work. I was spending more time trying to find and connect to matches then actually playing. There were several instances where the game would fail to connect me to my opponent, or cut out right before the match started. Considering this was a stress-test beta, I'm not *super* worried, but I am a tiny bit paranoid that the instability was outside the scope of the beta's purpose, and that the first few weeks of launch will be equally rough.

- The ranking system is super interesting imo. It abstracts your rank as a 'floor' in a tower. The interesting design choice is you can basically (assuming matchmaking is implemented in the full release) queue as any rank at or above your level, but not below. Ideally this means people who are confident can queue for higher-ranking matches much quicker, instead of grinding out the lower ranks for points. There is also a 'secret' last floor that you have to go 5-2 in in order to fully unlock, or you will be locked out. In the beta, I was able to grind out to the last floor (though I have not been able to fully unlock it yet), so I'm curious how well the floors are able to regulate the differences in skills between players given a few weeks for the playerbase to settle.

- The matches themselves felt almost universally great, once a connection was established, and if Arcsys was using the same leniency settings as before, that means this is the best netcode in any fighting game released to date.

- The gameplay itself felt a lot slower than past Guilty Gear titles. The change in the Gatling system (linking attacks to form a simple combo), the huge counter-hit punishment, and enormous hit-stop makes this feel a lot closer to a Street Fighter game than classic Guilty Gear. Personally I'm fine with that kind of mentality, but I can see a lot of older fans bouncing off of this title before to long.

- The training mode is pretty good, with the ability to set recovery options on the dummy. I would love to be able to see frame-data, but Arcsys seems to be adamant that feature be hidden.

All-in-all, I'm pretty happy with the beta. I'm super curious how Arcsys are going to take feedback from this event, and what changes will be made in the full release. If this would be your first fighting game, I highly recommend checking it out, as I feel it's a good game to focus on fundamentals with, and the online will all but guaranteed to be the best on the market.

Final Fantasy XIV just straight-up introduced Stand Users as a job

Proof that playing a fighting game within the first two weeks of release (or before, as betas allow) is a great 'in'.