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harmonea harmonea @kbin.social

Middle-aged gamer/creative/wiki maintainer FFXIV, Genshin Impact, Tears of Themis, Rimworld, and more Don't like? Don't read.

Posts 22
Comments 375
When there's shenanigans at Risa, it's the usual suspects.
  • I swear some days I see as many memes about the people posting memes as I see memes from those posters.

  • Elon Musk gives X employees one year to replace your bank - ‘You won’t need a bank account... it would blow my mind if we don’t have that rolled out by the end of next year.’
  • "Clobber" implies violence, which is somehow even less elegant than the standard phrase that the haphazard "cobble" implies. Given the shitshow of X so far, clobber probably works better even if it's not the usual way to phrase this at all.

  • Question to the ones that fully left Reddit
  • FOMO is a weird term to use here because it implies some anxiety that I could be seeing more stuff than I am.

    I get bored sometimes. There isn't enough content here to keep me super engaged, and interesting niche subs about certain small games and whatnot are missed. I end up swapping back and forth between my front page here and my youtube recs, willing something interesting to appear.

    But I'm not feeling the slightest anxiety that I'm missing some stranger's idea of wit on a site I don't go to. There's way too much internet for me to ever think I was seeing it all in the first place, so I'm more than fine with missing the latest lyric or pun comment chain or the hottest new AITA fiction.

  • CD Projekt never considered a Cyberpunk expansion set after the main game's endings: 'No need to water them down. Sometimes less is more'
  • I feel like this is an overly negative light to paint something fans of your game seem to want. There's an undercurrent of "your wish is bad and you should feel bad" to this.

    I appreciate that CDPR has a strong vision for what they want their game to be, but I think if I were one of those fans who wanted to see more of the post-ending setting, I would feel a bit gut-punched by how thoroughly dissed and dismissed my kind of love for the game was.

    Maybe CDPR is okay with that though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • Looking for fediverse platform for a minimal corporate website.
  • I don't think the fediverse has this, but I'm a bit confused why so many of these comments are puzzled at why you would want it. We have fediverse twitter, fediverse insta, fediverse reddit, fediverse discord, etc -- why not fediverse facebook/myspace/carrd? Where users could just have small personal (or corporate) pages about themselves that aren't as blog/news focused on the main(user) page.

    I don't even think it would be a huge stretch to implement: a big focus on user page customization with a small microblog interface taking up a portion of the screen would do it. (Disclaimer: not saying easy to create, just not that far out of reach vs everything else the fediverse has).

  • Texas Republicans Ban Women From Using Highways for Abortion Appointments
  • Pretty sure it's just meant to be an additional charge they can tack on once they figure out why you're not pregnant anymore.

    They can't stop women from getting out-of-state abortions, but they can criminalize using Texas roads to get there, just like the feds can get you for misusing the postal service or an electronic device to commit fraud on top of the fact that you committed fraud in the first place.

  • There are more women with incel beliefs than men and nobody cares/labels them
  • Are there some women who have higher standards than they, themselves, live up to - sure. But that's not what makes an incel.

    An incel is someone who believes:

    1. People of my preferred gender kind of suck, mostly
    2. Despite mostly sucking, people of my preferred gender tend to have high standards <-- you are here
    3. Those high standards exclude me, and I think that's unfair; it makes me angry that they won't give me the chance I deserve.
    4. I'm tired of playing nice when none of them will give me the chance I deserve. I've written their entire gender off as trash, and my new hobby is constantly berating them.

    People rarely say #3 and #4 out loud, so once you're at #2 -- which you are -- people are going to start making some assumptions.

    And yes, there are some women past #3 and #4 themselves, sure. We've all heard the occasional "men are pigs," and that kind of intolerance shouldn't be accepted no matter who it comes from. But it's absolutely not many/most of us, and if you think so, you're either being overly critical or surrounding yourself with the wrong kinds of friends - both of which are on you and show you need to de-incel your thinking before you go off the deep end.

  • And the city would even place them at booths all over for the public's doxxing convenience
  • THEY ARE lol, we actually kept it because we couldn't believe it. No intention to ever look at the thing, just a "how funny is this" moment.

    (Disclaimer: Canada)

  • And the city would even place them at booths all over for the public's doxxing convenience
  • We actually just got our yellow pages in the mailbox last week or the week before, I think. I was baffled. I was like they still MAKE these?

    Shit was no thicker than an old GamePro magazine. Just the businesses who are still buying ads I guess.

  • Love Burnout
  • Met my husband playing an MMORPG. It grew naturally from regular chatting in guild to hanging out and doing random stuff in-game together to feelings. We've been married for over 15 years now.

    The trick was that neither of us was looking for romance and treated each other as friends until we gradually came to realize we really liked each other's company more than a friendly amount. I think that's the thing a lot of people get wrong; people get so worried about their love lives that they forget to just treat others as people instead of as potential partners.

  • It's getting to be soup season. What are your favorite soups?
  • I have a clone recipe for Chili's chicken enchilada soup that I love making. Don't do it often though as it's like 50% cheese....

  • A survey on user experience in fediverse (Lemmy, Mastodon, etc.)
  • Oh I see.

    It would have been nice to have that in the post description for those of us who aren't as willing to hand over data (even anonymized) for certain uses.

    Thanks for locating it!

  • A survey on user experience in fediverse (Lemmy, Mastodon, etc.)
  • What's the purpose of your research? Curiosity? A student thesis? A professional paper? Are you a dev actively working on improving the fediverse?

  • This might sound weird, but why is vegetarianism invalid while "piracy" isn't?
  • Okay but seriously, what is this pedantry even? I wasn't trying to put forth some all-encompassing thesis of every reason people might pirate, nor do I accept that "needs to be in on all the current memes" is some reason one is entitled to media. And neither point has anything to do with the discussion we're having with OP.

    Bizarre as heck tangent.

  • This might sound weird, but why is vegetarianism invalid while "piracy" isn't?
  • Your comparison is still really, really unclear. Are you comparing the consumption of "extra products" for vegans vs vegetarians to the consumption of "extra products" for piracy?

    If so: Do you really not understand that limited physical demand differs from unlimited digital demand? If a vegetarian eats, idk, an egg a day.... that's an extra 365 eggs that had to be produced and were paid for, thus supporting the industry, when you could have hypothetically decreased demand and possibly caused a drop in production. Whereas the media consumed by pirates incur neither profit nor cost (in that if we assume they would never have paid for those goods in the first place, it isn't a lost sale). There is no production cost for there to be 1 sold copy and 1 pirated copy vs 1 sold copy only.

    Though tbh, I'm just devil's advocating the vegan position here. I really think you had a handful of bad encounters with militant vegans and assume the majority of the threadiverse thinks like that. And, well... we don't? What even is this "lemmy culture"? The amount of confusion and responses that aren't addressing the point you meant to make should show you that most of us are not engaging with this on the line of thought you assumed we would.

  • This might sound weird, but why is vegetarianism invalid while "piracy" isn't?
  • Hey man, I'm willing to be honest about what I do. I'm not entitled to consume that media just because it exists, and I'm not going to beat around the bush about that.

  • Is it actually possible to change your personality
  • I haven't looked into the benefits of electroshock with BPD, but I'd recommend taking a look at Dr. Daniel Fox's workbook for an at-home DBT/attachment theory foucsed program. BPD is one of the few PDs that has been provably shown to be able to change. If you have $30 or so to spare, it can't hurt.

  • Is it actually possible to change your personality
  • It's a slow and difficult process, but yes. There are certain personality disorders that can be provably put into "remission," and if people with conditions that severe can change their personalities, anyone can.

    You have to learn how you've been conditioned to think and feel the way you do, and get a lot of self-discipline re: stopping to notice your feelings, figure out why they're arising, think through the consequences of acting on them, and choosing a better way.

    I hate to use terms like this since they're so often the territory of conspiracy nutjobs, but you're basically deprogramming yourself. For example, a sensitive person who's been exposed to a lot of bullying might have learned some pretty intense defensive reaction, so you'd have to stop every time you think "what did he mean by that?" and think of why that's your first reaction, then choose to believe the best possible meaning even though your feelings scream at you not to. And you'd maybe keep a journal to remind yourself of all the times you were right to assume the best, since a defensive mind discards the positive and overemphasizes the negative.

    This sort of thing is best accomplished with the aid of a mental health professional, but there are workbooks you can get if that's out of cost/feasibility reach for you. You'd need to know your deal to know which ones to focus on.

  • This might sound weird, but why is vegetarianism invalid while "piracy" isn't?
  • I don't really understand why you're comparing these two things? One is a group of people refraining from consumption of certain goods for personal reasons - health, ethics, climate impact, whatever. The other is a group of people consuming arguably more goods than they (we tbh) deserve since we're not willing or able to pay for it for one reason or another.

    A better analogy would be comparing piracy to... I don't know, a veg-eater of whatever type who still enjoys the taste of bacon and resorts to stealing it because it's better to hurt the meat industry than to pay? It's a product that person really doesn't really need and absolutely would have never paid for, yet the person still wants it and obtains it in a way that hurts the industry.

    (The analogy doesn't hold up since stealing physical goods has a different impact than distributing digital copies, but it's the best I've got off the cuff)

    E: okay, after reading your other comments, I'm both confident this didn't address the point you wanted and confident I don't really understand your deal well enough to do so. Both of these groups have some members who have a problem with industry practices and others who are into their chosen lifestyle for other reasons. It seems like you've made some odd decisions about which groups are most prevalent among each and are framing your premise around that, and I don't think we're going to see eye-to-eye on it when the premise is Like This.

    Or are you trying to say veganism should be more widely accepted because "DRM is wrong" is roughly equivalent to "animal suffering is wrong" re: "industry bad"?

  • Otome Games @kbin.social harmonea @kbin.social

    Another day, another fierce need to lick Vyn's collarbone mole.

    Another day, another fierce need to lick Vyn's collarbone mole.

    \#TearsOfThemis #OtomeGames

    \#Otomegames

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    /kbin meta @kbin.social harmonea @kbin.social

    My (https://kbin.social/tag/kbin) account seems broken? :\\ For the last month+ I can't get any thread I create to show up in its magazine, even when the magazine is a local one. Comments are f

    My #kbin account seems broken? :\\ For the last month+ I can't get any thread I create to show up in its magazine, even when the magazine is a local one. Comments are fine, microblog posts are fine, threads show up in my profile but never the magazine.

    Admittedly I don't try very often, but that makes it all the more disheartening when I feel like "yay, I finally have something worth sharing" and, well, no apparently I don't.

    \#kbinMeta

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    Otome Games @kbin.social harmonea @kbin.social

    I played: Butterfly's Poison; Blood Chains

    I recently finished playing Butterfly's Poison; Blood Chains and thought I'd leave a review to get some conversation going in here.

    I'm not sure how I even heard about this one honestly, I just remember grabbing it "for later," forgetting about it for a while, and finding it like a forgotten $20 bill in last year's winter coat one day. Sweet.

    I'm surprised I haven't been able to find where I saw it mentioned, as after playing it I can't believe there aren't certain segments of the internet up in arms about it. There's quite a bit of "problematic" content especially with regard to age gaps, consent issues, and family relations. I personally can enjoy that sort of taboo content as I have a good solid wall between fiction and reality, but this isn't an otome for everyone, and I'm surprised people aren't madder about it. In particular, the bad endings can get very dark.

    It's an interesting setting I feel like I don't see much of - Taisho era Japan, when the country seems to be struggling with its identity and how much western culture to adopt. The player character is a girl who's just come of age in a financially struggling noble family, and the story opens on a lavish birthday party meant to find her a good husband before the household collapses. Of course, the party doesn't go as planned, but I won't spoil anything until I warn you (and even then I'll only talk about personalities and content flavors, not actual events). The story is written in third person, for those who find that sort of thing important (makes no difference to me), and the MC has a canon name that's voiced in the dialogue if you choose to use it instead of changing it.

    As for the love interests, we have:

    • Shiba, a nouveau riche businessman who's obsessed with the MC
    • Fujita, the gentle and reserved family butler who's watched the MC grow up
    • Hideo, a brash soldier and the MC's childhood friend
    • Mizuhito, the MC's older half brother, a lazy artist who appears to have little care for anything but the company of prostitutes
    • Majima, the distant family gardener and MC's first crush
    • Kyoko, an elite businesswoman who's the subject, and dealer, of numerous illicit rumors

    I enjoyed all the routes, found the setting and mystery pretty interesting, didn't feel like the guys who didn't catch my interest dragged the story down, and didn't regret any of my time spent with this VN. However, I didn't come out of this one with any new figures for the "fictional men's hall of fame" in my heart.

    I was also kind of disappointed to learn the original JP release was R18 with numerous NSFW scenes, while the English translation I read was a PC port of the (understandably, but sadly) censored Switch version in which entire 15+ minute scenes are reduced to a vague description line or two in which you can tell something sexy happened but see almost nothing about the character of how the guys approach it. There is NO H-patch for this one that I could find (or find mention of), but there are fan TLs of the NSFW scenes online that I was grateful to find.

    Overall, I would give it a good 8/10 or so since I enjoyed it throughout but didn't get that "special something" that would leave it on my mind for years to come the way some other stories/LIs have.

    That's about all for the spoiler-free stuff, but I want to end by saying more about my impressions/opinions of the love interests, and while I won't spoil the actual events of the story, you might still prefer to discover this stuff on your own, so here is your...

    !! SPOILER WARNING !!

    ...since I still don't know of any hideable spoiler markup here on the threadiverse.

    • Shiba is SO obsessed with the MC that several of the routes have "bad ends" that have her marry him anyway. As someone whose favorite LIs are the confident scheming relentless sorts with big fat bonuses for yandere and villainy (note: Shiba does NOT check some of these boxes and I'm not saying which ones), he ended up my favorite. This route is rife with consent issues with a dash of age gap; those who like a good hate-to-love arc will enjoy him.
    • Fujita was too gentle for me, but others will super appreciate his reserved sweetness and submissiveness. He has one bad end that's really not my cup of tea, but it's a pretty unusual one for an otome, so I can still appreciate that it was included. His route's problem content is the age gap as he's roughly twice the MC's age. Those who like to wear down a distant, professional LI until his control breaks will have a great time here.
    • Hideo... Now, this is the LI I felt the least for, but I appreciated that the obligatory childhood friend route wasn't all sweetness and simpering in this otome as he's pretty grumpy and tsun at the start. This route also suffered by blundering into the big mystery in a way that felt pretty unnatural to me, too. Right, as far as content warnings (bonuses? hee) go... the route definitely still has content some would consider a problem, but I said I wouldn't spoil the story events, so I can't mention it directly... those who really want the gist of it despite it spoiling a mild reveal early in the route should read back over this paragraph about Hideo and pay attention to the first letter of each sentence.
    • Mizuhito's route was surprisingly bittersweet; there's more to his listless lazy attitude and constant escape to the red light district than meets the eye. He probably has the most character growth of any of the LIs, and I appreciate that. The spicy (fan TL) version of one of his bad ends is really wild (and fun, IMO). His problem content revolves around the family relation; I have a high tolerance for fictional squick, but even I felt uneasy when he blurted out the line "I remember when you were a newborn" (or something to that effect). Those who like a broken LI they can "fix" will enjoy Mizuhito.
    • Majima... Based on my pattern of thirst in most otomes, this guy should have been my favorite. But something about him, while absolutely top-tier fun, wasn't as satisfying as he could have been, which let Shiba steal my top spot. The romance almost seems to interrupt his character arc rather than being the goal of it. Majima is enforced by the game to be the last route you have access to; you have to finish at least one ending from each of the other LIs to access his. His route has some consent issues along the way, as well as some other things I wouldn't dare discuss; by the time you get there, you'll know what you're in for. (I will say this route doesn't need any NEW content warnings, at any rate.) Majima's big appeal is, as you might guess from him being last, unraveling a mystery and discovering the layers under the MC's first crush.
    • I list Kyoko last because the romance on her route is left implied rather than direct (even though it's a very "Sappho and her Friend" type of obvious). She's a very fun character, and I give her a tie for my personal third place with Mizuhito. Her routes are short, and both the good and bad ends are important in their own ways, though I would say Kyoko doesn't have a "romantic" good end as hers focuses on the mystery instead. Only a broken MC can get truly close to Kyoko, and I want to give her bad end the trophy for darkest in the game (of course very debatable given some of the other awful things happening here).

    Thanks for reading - feel free to strike up conversation about your experiences with this game, whether this review piques your interest, suggestions of other otomes that someone who enjoyed this game might also be interested in, or whatever else strikes your fancy.

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    Reddit Was Fun @lemmy.world harmonea @kbin.social

    Goodbye RIF. I don't know how many years it was exactly, but I enjoyed my time with you.

    Goodbye RIF. I don't know how many years it was exactly, but I enjoyed my time with you.

    For the last few weeks, I left RIF on my phone but unsubscribed to all my subs, so I'd be greeted with an empty front page every time I idly tapped the time-wasting icon. And man, did I ever learn that I tapped that icon a whole lot.

    Thanks for the app.

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    Bag gremlin caught in the act

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    Otome Games @kbin.social harmonea @kbin.social

    I made a magazine for Tears of Themis at [email protected]. Aiming for a chill chat space here.

    I made a magazine for Tears of Themis at [email protected]. Aiming for a chill chat space here.

    Even if it's for little more than a spot to send ToT-related microblogs, all are welcome.

    \#Otomegames

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    What bedhead looks like on a long-haired cat

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    Is there a way to disable a magazine's custom CSS?

    I subscribed to a magazine that, in the last day, has changed over to an unreadable custom CSS that goes so far as to break site gizmos; no matter my theme choice, their custom CSS overrides my setting.

    Is there a way to override their override?

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    Cats @kbin.social harmonea @kbin.social

    Majestic orange floof

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    Otome Games @kbin.social harmonea @kbin.social

    The 2nd birthday card story for (https://kbin.social/tag/Marius) was pretty cute. His dynamic together with MC is adorable as always, and I feel like we haven't had his artistic side front-an

    The 2nd birthday card story for #Marius was pretty cute. His dynamic together with MC is adorable as always, and I feel like we haven't had his artistic side front-and-center in a while. I think they overreacted to the NPC of the week and his shenanigans quite a bit, but I can overlook it if I assume he was one of Marius' only friends for a few key years of his life.

    Wish this site had some way to mark spoilers for more detail.

    \#TearsOfThemis #OtomeGames

    \#Otomegames

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