Annoyed about something? RANT!

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TheReaper
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by TheReaper »

I hate the music from Dual Destinies, I love some of the orchestral themes, but I hate how every time I play the game, the themes blend too much together, probably the orchestral theme that makes it seem that way, but the music always seems to be only one music whenever the theme switches, it's really annoying for some reason.
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by energizerspark »

Spoiler : selfish nonsense :
okay so my parents like to buy me dvds sometimes
that's fine and I appreciate it
but for christmas they got me a blu ray player
if you're going to buy a blu ray player then get blu rays to watch on it
don't just keep buying dvds
if you're not going to bother buying any blu rays then don't spend lots of money on a device specifically for playing the things you're not going to buy
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by 123fendas »

I can't submit to a certain DeviantArt group.
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by Sleuth »

This isn't really a rant but it IS something I've wanted to articulate for a long while now.

I also posted this uncensored on C-R because there I can say the word "dang".

oh no i've said the forbidden word
Spoiler : Sleuth vs "Kindred Spirits On The Roof", Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Love :
So to begin: Romance grinds my gears. But to be more specific, I'm talking romance in fiction, and even more specifically BAAAD fiction romance.

There's this one VN that recently came out on Steam, IIRC, and it was getting praised for the story and characters and all that. I wasn't really interested, but someone I follow was doing a playthrough of it and I am very desperate for things to listen to and waste more of my time with. Long story short, the game reminded me why I hate romance so much to begin with.

I guess I should start on a slightly more positive note in that I recently saw some romance stuff I kinda enjoyed in Fire Emblem: Awakening. I thought the S-Rank supports were all pretty fun because of the characters' personalities playing off each other and stuff, plus the addition of a child helps widen the range of dynamics that can be explored rather than limiting it. They also felt natural because of the buildup from the previous supports. It wasn't super deep or anything but I thought it worked fine and DEFINITELY could have been done worse.

But so why do I like FE:A's romance stuff and not every other romances in the world? Well, like most things on the internet, I suppose it comes down to self-gratification. The main reason I never cared much for romance fiction is because it always felt to me so extremely self-indulgent and wish-fulfillment-y, existing in stories for the sake of itself, like an ouroboros of blushing and shipper squeals. And I guess as far as that goes I don't in any way begrudge the people who DO enjoy that sort of thing because what the hell does that have to do with me, but at the same time when romance stories like the one I've been sitting through get praised for such "deep characterization" and "romance" it just makes me wonder "Why".

Anyways, here's where I finally get to the actual subject matter: the VN is called "Kindred Spirits on the Roof" and it's a VN about lesbian ghosts. It is also terrible. Well, I exaggerate but it really drove me up a wall and hearing that nobody else has really critiqued it so far kinda made me a bit nuts. I guess this is sort of a mini-vent where I talk about all the things I hate about this game but also just romance stuff in general that watching people (who enjoyed the game) play this VN made me realize.

Essentially one of the issues I have with romance stories in general is that, unless they're a tragedy, it's basically a forgone conclusion: these characters aren't happening to find connection, intimacy and a strong relationship through the maelstrom of life and circumstance, they've been created by a writer to get the audience to "ooh" and "aah" and yes all storytelling is this kind of manipulation but with romance it feels so horribly blatant. Say, if a romance story is in the background of a larger story, like, say, 2 of the Power Rangers falling in love over the course of their season, that can be engaging; there are actual risks there (ok maybe not with Power Rangers but whatever) the couple might not end up together; it could turn out to be a tragedy, circumstances could change-- With romance, they're just gonna hook up by the end. With Power Rangers (or whatever) you're able to invest yourself in the characters for reasons other than wanting to see them file their taxes with another person, or like them for reasons beyond "wow they're a cute couple". With romance, it's a cute couple. That's it. There's no goal (beyond, you know... Filing taxes) there's no threats to worry about. There's some drama in the middle, but it's meaningless padding in face of the inevitable. Just like life itself. But anyways back to why Kindred Spirits On The Roof is KinDREADFUL SPEAR-its through my TOOTH.

In KSOTR, one of the couples is having drama and fighting for some reason I don't fully remember. But it probably wasn't very well done even by romance standards because the players themselves were complaining about it. When you have a couple who's clearly going to end up together fighting, there's really only two questions to ask: 1) "When will they get back together" and 2)"Holy shoot will they just get back together so I don't have to sit through any more of this NEEDLESS DRAMA". And not even the players ever really thought the game was suddenly going to go "you know what, let's break up this couple, they DON'T get a happy ending." Now I get that romance stories are gonna do what romance stories do-- But I just can't understand how anyone would find this enjoyable to have to meander through the fighting and conflict unless it's A) an interesting and nuanced conflict that brings up relevant themes to both characters and/or the world they inhabit or B) legitimately dramatic with stakes that could potentially end their relationship. The conflict in KSOTR is neither of these things-- The characters themselves admit that they're just acting dumb and the story isn't going to have any legitimate stakes; why would it? The only place with less stakes than a romance story is Uncle Greenie's Vegan Barbeque.

badumtish





im so sorry

anyways back to Kindle Spearmints on the Truth. The other thing about this VN was that the love stuff just kinda... happens. Like, one second, the girls are just going about their business, and then BAM suddenly it's true love or something. Take the protagonist girl for example-- She doesn't seem to care much about romance at all at the beginning and stuff, but then around midway through she's suddenly getting the FLUSTERED HEARTS for her childhood friend. Unless the plot twist here is that there's a love virus slowly enveloping the school, this just kinda... happens. Like, I guess it could be that she's been in love all along and didn't know it? Wait no that's the stupidest thing I've ever typed since 6 sentences ago. BTW the childhood friend ALSO just kinda realizes "oh I guess I'm in love with you too". What exactly happened? I see this sort of thing all the time when fiction romances are involved. At the MOST it'll be like, ONE thing a character says or does that instantly sets off the blushing apocalypse, be it in anime, cartoons, TV, etc. How do the blind fall in love? Is love like a virus and you just get symptoms of it? "Oh man that person makes my heart beat fast, I must be in love. Quick, shoot me now before it's too late". Is it like that episode of Gumball where everyone becomes a happy zombie?

But not to rag too hard on Kindred Spirit Tracks, I'm pretty sure most of the other casts have reasons for their attractions, but most of the time it does seem to boil down to some weird, vague, impossible to quantify "thing" that just makes them be in love. This further makes me feel the whole inevitability of the romance story-- Like God almighty is sticking His holy fingers in the world to make it so that this relationship will bloom. Good thing He's doing that instead of fixing cancer or something, I really care about these two strangers getting together to pay their taxes. It's like playing a video game with God Mode on-- You see the problems, they might stall you for a bit, but they're not gonna ever stop you and it's only a matter of time before you're mopping the floor with their internal organs. Or like when a patronizing kindergarten teacher sets up a 2 inch hurdle for you to leap over; yaaay they did it, they overcame virtually nothing but their own foolishness and got to file their tax returns together whoooo! Take that, IRS! It's like the whole thing is rigged to begin with. Imagine if other kinds of shows did that, like an anime where there hero can never lose ever because he's the strongest mothereffer on the whole plane

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oh

ok I did that for a joke but it really isn't the same thing. One Punch Man's conflict has little to do with the actual fighting-- That stuff is just extra compared to the story about Saitama trying to gain recognition and respect, and the stuff about what a "REAL" hero is. It IS a bit set up to win but not nearly as much as these romance stories. Kindred Spirits and those like it might as well be titled "Just File Taxes With Each Other Already: You Know The Couples Now Watch Them Meander About For 13 Hours". Where's the satisfaction in going "oh man that couple they showed on the front cover is doing the exact same thing I saw there except 30 minutes in!" To me it feels the same as going "oh sweet when I dropped that book it totally hit the ground". They're stories that don't exist to tell you anything new or interesting; they exist to tell you the same thing, that yeah, they're gonna make out and there's a hint of drama here and there but it's all good in the hood, so just sit back and watch them. And don't get me wrong; all fiction is manipulative as dang. Everything I've said can apply just as easily to other poor executions of different genres. All stories are is lying, but I think when it comes to stories, you have to consider A) the message the lie is trying to give, and B) how well or poorly the lie is told. With romance, the message is "romance is good". And the way the lie is told is just... telling us. Repeating it, with little effort on the storyteller's part. Because they just have to have two people act flustered around each other, and we fill in the rest. It's a feel-good hugbox that exists for its own sake.

Alright I might be going on too harsh here because again, there are people who like this stuff and I can even understand why-- Well at least I think I do. I think we, as human beings, like closure, and there is something really satisfying from predictability-- It's familiar, comforting, it means that things are working as they should. Just because I prefer my stories to be a bit more on the unpredictable side doesn't mean I'd prefer it if, say, my keyboard put out a different letter each time I pressed it. There's comfort in these kinds of simple, clean stories that I can kinda appreciate, and maybe if I could get past my personal misgivings with romance, I'd probably enjoy it more. There ARE romances I do enjoy, and I think that's more about how those lies are told. Like I said before, I can get behind a background romance-- It adds stakes and tension if you aren't sure whether the romance will really happen or not. And if there is a strong message behind it, a la Romeo and Juliet, or if the characters are just fun to have together like in FE:A.

I feel frustrated by bad romance because the lie is poorly told. They ask the viewer to fill in the blanks because they know that the audience really WANTS to see them together. That's my problem with Kindred Roofs on the Spirit. It feels like a weak lie banking on the player's own investment more than the strength of its own writing or intellect, and the praise for it bugs me when it's such a shabby, weak lie. And I was not willing to give it an inch.

i guess for me, Kindred Spirits Filing Their Tax Returns On The Roof just didn't stand

a GHOST of a chance










someone put me out of my misery
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by Gumpei »

Sleuth wrote:
Spoiler : :
Say, if a romance story is in the background of a larger story, like, say, 2 of the Power Rangers falling in love over the course of their season, that can be engaging; there are actual risks there (ok maybe not with Power Rangers but whatever) the couple might not end up together; it could turn out to be a tragedy, circumstances could change-- With romance, they're just gonna hook up by the end. With Power Rangers (or whatever) you're able to invest yourself in the characters for reasons other than wanting to see them file their taxes with another person, or like them for reasons beyond "wow they're a cute couple". With romance, it's a cute couple. That's it. There's no goal (beyond, you know... Filing taxes) there's no threats to worry about. There's some drama in the middle, but it's meaningless padding in face of the inevitable. Just like life itself.
I meant to comment on this bit a while ago but forgot. And, don't take this as me defending Kindred Spirits (tho I do think it's cute), take it more as my own rant that takes sort of an opposite position from yours --
Spoiler : :
I actually (tend to) hate it when romance is subjugated to a side story in something, largely just because that's what most romance in fiction is. Damn near everything likes to shoehorn a romance in the background that nearly always tackles the same beats because "the traditional romance story" is something that just wounds up tacked on to whatever larger story is being told around it--it's not the focus, thus it's usually as one-dimensional as can be. I find myself gravitating way more toward things where the romance is the core of the story because there's much more uniqueness and scale in how it unfolds and the central nature of it tends to offer more significant arcs to go along with it rather than simply having it be a thing that happens eventually alongside more important matters. That's not shipbait, that's just what the story is about; shipbait is more in line with just having romantic developments happen in the background as tertiary additions to the plot, which is what most things do. Like I love Awakening, but how many of those romances actually feel real to you? How many supports convince you that these two are totally ready to marry and diddle immediately after three conversations with each other? Shakugan no Shana was a show I fell in love with because it subverted the usual shonen formula by instead having the action play second fiddle to the romance, which was the true heart of the story. Sure, there are plenty of generic romances out there as well (and I get the sense from the way you're talking that you've come across mostly bad romance stories, but it's not like there's an objective barometer here), and yeah they probably are still going to get together in the end (not always!), but I find saying that mitigates the drama is as valid as saying all superhero stories are bad because you know the hero's gonna prevail in the end. Like, if that's something that mars your enjoyment you probably just shouldn't be watching/reading superhero stuff.
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by Bad Player »

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH

I accidentally de-linked my My Nintendo and NNID accounts, and now I can't re-link them. lksdjflkdsjfkldsjfkldsj

Well, I'm writing a support email to Nintendo, so hopefully they can fix this... Worst case I think hopefully I can delete my My Nintendo, and then make a new one...? (I don't think I have anything connected to it; everything should be on my NNID... right?)

EDIT: Somehow got them re-linked. That's good.

I... can't find any way to contact Nintendo to tell them that my problem has been fixed, besides sending in a new support ticket, which I don't really want to do... so there isn't really anything to do but hope that Nintendo doesn't think my account is weird and delete it.
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by energizerspark »

boy I love having to restart my computer in order to change a simple setting
that by all means shouldn't have been changed anyway
I don't remember changing it

related: apparently windows just doesn't let you open certain types of file if your UAC is off
which begs the question of why allow the user to turn it off in the first place
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by Reecer6 »

HEY, LIGHTNING STORMS IN TEXAS, STOP NUDGING A BRANCH CLOSE TO THE POWER LINES AND KNOCKING THEM OUT FOR 0.5 SECONDS SO MY COMPUTER STOPS GOING OUT

i don't even HAVE all that much information that i'm ever losing, but that doesn't stop it from BEING ANNOYING to restart my computer constantly

and by constantly i mean it's happened three separate times in two nonconsecutive days

but stop
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by ArkhamKnight »

So my electricity has gone off. Along with my fans, AC, and any other form of cooling.
IT'S THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER. IT'S LITERALLY FRICKIN' 50 DEGREES CELSIUS. AND THEY DECIDE TO CUT THE POWER.
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by Enthalpy »

After and hours and hours and hours of debugging, the latest Catalysis release...

...seems to be completely impossible due to two bugs such that I can fix one bug if and only if I don't fix the other. This is depressing.

EDIT: Never mind, it turned out that I was just not reading the error message correctly! I'll take this, gladly.
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by 123fendas »

why must Misdreavus be so hard to find in Pokémon Alpha Sapphire

and it took me a good 30 minutes or more to find Clefairy
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by Enthalpy »

I come home for three days between Europe and my summer research... only to find that I'm back in a hotel because we don't have an actual house right now because our realtor is incompetent. Yay.
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by 123fendas »

I'd really like to change my username on here (drastically), though I understand why you don't let us do that.
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by ArkhamKnight »

Just got dominated in CoD. Man, I should just stick to Uncharted. :x :sideglance2:
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Re: Annoyed about something? RANT!

Post by FenrirDarkWolf »

NOOOO I can't get colds or fevers like normal humans
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I get freakin ear infections
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