void-shouting

If I'm honest, I have never felt that a cis man has ever truly loved me for me and has really only loved me for what they thought I could do for them. I don't particularly care what gender the person I'm in a relationship with is, but I can truthfully say that the 'love' I've received from cis men has rarely had anything to do with who I am and more about what they think they're owed for being in a relationship with someone.

And that's deeply sad on all accounts.

If someone has repeatedly voiced that they do not have patience for the same (unnecessary) activity, and you routinely ignore that and demand their assistance...

... you are not listening to their boundaries, and you do not care about them.

I have stated, on more than one occasion, that you either need to stop playing a game if you refuse to actually learn how to play it and demand that I effectively backseat game for you. There is a difference between needing help sometimes and demanding help because you refuse to actually try to solve something for yourself since you deem every puzzle as too hard (or that you refuse to look up a guide because “it's too hard to find guides,” which is also not my problem when I've told you how to look for different guides and given you the resources to find them).

It's such a petty thing, but it's such an indicative situation of a much larger problem.

Stop asking me for help when you refuse to try to do anything for yourself. I don't mind helping you, but I mind having you treat me like I'm here to do everything for you because you refuse to put in any work on anything at all.

Him: “I don't want to go to work.” Me: “You're working from home, so you're not going to work.” Him: “I don't want to work, though.” Me: “That's convenient since you've spent half the morning bothering me and making sure that I couldn't work on anything that I've been wanting to work on because you're spending all your time distracting me.” Him: “That's rude.” Me: “How exactly is it rude to voice my frustrations at the person causing them when I have voiced this exact frustration to you every single fucking day you've ever worked from home? So you know it annoys me and that it makes it impossible for me to do my projects, but you don't care that it does. If anything, I'd say that that is rude and not the fact that someone's telling you that they're annoyed.”

... I wish he'd fuck off, honestly. And I wish that my status as an immigrant with unstable work didn't coerce me into staying with someone who claims he respects me but can't even take five seconds to think about someone other than his goddamned self.

Just because I have music playing does not mean that I'm welcoming people to interrupt me while I'm writing, thanks. Maybe take the biggest hint (which is a pretty obvious hint of someone focusing on a computer and a word processor and typing quite a lot) and all the small ones (short answers and responses) and go away unless it's necessary.

Which so far it hasn't been.

(I think this call for attention would also be tolerable if he'd actually stop doing it when I'm working on things. He never bothers me unless I'm working on something, and it makes me insane.)

“I don't need you to narrate your life to me.”

... And then he continues to narrate his life at me, despite the fact that I have repeatedly said he doesn't have to.

“Let me try again: I don't WANT you to narrate your life at me.”

... And then he continues, despite the fact I've made it clear that I don't want it, unless there's something I need to know or he needs me to actually know (like “I'm going to run 24km today and will be here” as opposed to the constant narration of what workouts he's doing in the house).

Can people respect boundaries? ANY boundary?

Looking through some otome Reddits... And I keep seeing people being all “I'm so glad this character is done with his neighbour's shit!”

... His neighbour offered him and his girlfriend each a basket of bread and talked about opening his own bakery. And then said hello to them the next day and invited them to visit a competitor cafe with him. (First he invited the girl, and then the love interest was like “No, we go together” and then the guy was like “Sure! Come along with us!”)

If he should be 'done' with anything, he should be done with his apparent girlfriend's shit of being vague about their relationship all the fucking time? Which the game constantly does with her, like she doesn't want to say “I am dating this man.”

Like, the scene where he's “done” with the neighbour features his neighbour being like: “Oh, your hunters [a group of people who protect the city from Wanderers]? You must be colleagues!” And she's like “Yeah, he's my partner.” She leaves it at that, so whatever. But then he could've just been like, “And she's my girlfriend.” Or she could've said something more. That's not this character being “done with his neighbour's shit” but him reacting in jealousy, rightly or wrongly.

And that's also how the scene is written and MEANT to be read because you're constantly being told that he has mood swings and a dark cloud over his head where the main character is involved. You're being shown and told that he's JEALOUS. Multiple times over, in fact.

The fact that people playing with and engaging with this media can't read that for what it is? When it's clearly written, explicitly so... Is deeply sad and speaks loudly of the state of the world.

Someone please tell cis men that talking about their ejaculate is probably not a good way to entice someone into wanting to have sex with them, especially when the person they're trying to have sex with has already told them a dozen times that they find it appalling.

Or, to put it shortly: Someone tell cis men to fucking listen to their partners, full stop. About everything. And not just about sex but also definitely about sex, including initiating sex.

If your partner doesn't like something, doing more of that thing ISN'T GOING TO HELP YOU. And the only person you have to blame when you don't get what you want is yourself, even if you're more likely to blame your partner for “not being nice.”

I don't want to be mean to journalists in a time where journalists are being targeted, but.

You'd think journalists would have better critical reading skills, considering their work. But so many of them don't seem to be able to engage with the points people are making, especially those who are white cis men who just want to mansplain why someone's wrong (when they aren't).

The EU didn't end the forever wars, even between the nations. It created nations that were forced to capitulate to more powerful nations under the guise of “acquiring resources.” It created nations that have been stuck in perpetual exploitation of others just because they're seen as lesser by the Western powers. It strengthened militarised border guards (because many of them are part of the military, not just police) that were granted the “right to protect themselves” by shooting migrants at their borders or pushing migrants into the sea or detaining rescuers for keeping people safe.

It creates systems that deport people who are seen as lesser or as “bad” because they refuse to assimilate (no one should ever assimilate—there is a strong difference between assimilation and integration). It allows “safe” countries (which aren't entirely safe) to send people back to places where they know they could die. It allows “safe” countries to upend people's lives without notice.

It didn't end perpetual forever wars, and that is EU propaganda. It strengthened their violence under the guise of “good” policy.

And it's doubtful that the “forever wars” (another propagandistic tool, for the record) will ever truly be stopped. All of us are walking into a range of far-right bullshit, and they will happily murder us all while they fight amongst themselves.

Just like the monarchs of old.

The more that I play otome games (or even games originally marketed as otome, even though they dropped it for whatever reason), which often feel more like cash grabs than actual stories, the more I want to fix them.

The entire opening sets of chapters to Tokyo Debunker are nonsense, and they don't even give the sense that the main character has a reason for being there beyond being a self-insert (who doesn't seem to do anything that a player would want, so I don't know how they're a self-insert). I'd rewrite all of that, and I'd also go through and fix more of the chapters to at least create relationships (of all sorts) between the main characters and all of the others.

Mr Love Queen's Choice is just hilariously terrible and really seems like a game that got entirely confused about what it wanted to do or be. The characters (other than, as always, the self-insert main character) are all usable, though. However, and it's because I get tired of the whole “must love cops” and “must love people with money,” I'd actually change them to interact with the world around them and change with it. Granted, I might also shift them to lower positions.

This is a similar problem that, hilariously, Love&Deepsace has. And it's probably because they're effectively running the same kind of story and both involve 'evol' and 'evolvers'. Again, L&D's main character is absolutely obnoxious. I don't understand why people want these hyper-intelligent people who know everything but are somehow entirely oblivious to literally everything, especially as it doesn't even work well in a character. (This isn't to say a person who is smart and talented can't be oblivious, but it's... in the extreme in these games. Your self-insert character is capable of everything! But they don't know anything! Which doesn't make sense.)

The Obey Me! series (both games) definitely had this problem, but it was often a bit more forgivable because the characters were more endearing and kind of made up for the boring main character. All of the Ikemen games've also got this problem, too. Again, the other characters make up for the main character in a lot of ways, but the main character is overwhelmingly like a boring paper doll that's only been given a handful of outfits; they don't have different personalities for different people (or rather, different mannerisms when around different people), and they respond to problems in identical ways even when it doesn't make sense.

There are only a handful of games that have managed a quasi-self-insert well. One of them is Tears of Themis. I think this is because they treat her more as a character in her own right, but the player gets to give her a name. Her obliviousness at least matches her own confusion about situations rather than her wandering through the story being well-informed and capable but entirely confused about everything. (Though, I don't remember if this is how the early story started. The later stories and events have at least made an effort to make her a person who engages with the world around her.)

Lovebrush Chronicles actually managed this well, too. But again, it's because they made the main character a person in her own right, but the player can name her. Sometimes she's obnoxious, but the ways in which she is obnoxious fit her characterisation and aren't out of place. It's easier to overlook those things (or not overlook but not be angry at them) because they fit in, and the story acknowledges this.

And while it's not at all an otome game (in the traditional sense but does the same things), the absolute best game for having understood how to make endearing love interests but also have engaging storytelling? Is somehow NU: Carnival (regardless of version you play, since there is a censored version called “Bliss”). For something so smutty, it's absolutely amazing how they can manage to stick in some heartfelt storytelling and make it feel fluid. The other thing is that they figured out that self-inserts were tedious and actually harder for the player to engage with, so Eiden (a named protagonist) is part of the story, has a character, and engages with the different people in different ways because they've realised that he needs to. He's not drastically different with one character than another, but he's shown to be adaptable to their personalities (and that they're also adaptable to each other).

And that last thing is wild to me. It's great! But it's so funny to me that the game with actual outright sex and graphic depictions (not just euphemistic storytelling) also figured out how to make it fit with the kinds of 'chaste' storytelling that a lot of these other otome games just can't handle. (Also, I hate how the Ikemen games bill themselves as “spicy,” but they still... use excessive euphemism and often get close to being spicy and then run away from it. “I won't touch you” isn't spicy, especially when it's followed up with literally no engagement between the two lovers. That's just one-way denial and nothing more.)