void-shouting

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.)

... Some people really need a better definition of “try.”

As in, to actually attempt to do something rather than pretend you're doing it for the sake of saying that you did and then basically go, “Well, I can't do it.”

Continuing my frustration for the way in which our cultures and societies support cis men in toxic and anti-social behaviours, I really think more cis men need to revise how they interact with others.

When I've been in relationships (romantic and friendships) with people who weren't cis men, I encountered a higher frequency of people making what are actually requests for help. “I'm struggling with this thing. Can you show me how to do it when you have time?” “This thing is really difficult. How did you do it?” “Are you able to help with this thing?”

And it's not to say that they never made demands of a person's time, but I found it much easier to simply and indirectly correct them when they did because the response was rarely defensive or hostile. Which is because that's how a lot of us who aren't cis men have been socialised over time... This is particularly true of those of us who've been socialised “as girls,” since we were expected to be accommodating of pretty much... anyone (but especially cis men).

Meanwhile, every relationship I've had with a cis man has included things like “I can't do this” and then them stopping to impatiently look at me, as if I should just drop everything to help them. Or, when it comes in the form of a request, I don't know what it's for. “Can you help me?” with nothing more than that. Help you with what? When you just demand-via-request like that, I can't even tell if it's an urgent request or one that doesn't have a set time.

And when I'd do the same simple and indirect corrections, I'm also met with hostility and rudeness. But it's framed as if I am being rude for not giving up whatever time I have to acquiesce on command.

This is such a simple interaction that way more cis men, particularly within European and American contexts, need to stop and reflect upon. Like, seriously... It's a small reflection that can lead to a lot of understanding. Maybe you should learn to adapt to others, making us feel like we can actually engage with you instead of feeling like we're constantly battling.

If you want to have sex with someone again, maybe you should actually treat them with respect and engage them as a human being with thoughts, feelings, and opinions...

Instead of blow them off every time they tell you why they don't want to have sex with you.

“The way you talk about sex is really creepy” should be enough of a hint that, maybe, you need to reconsider your relationship with sex and the people you have sex with. But instead of reflecting upon any of that, you'd really rather tell someone that you're “not actually creepy.”

Which does further damage because it invalidates the feelings they have when they engage with you.

Why would they want to have sex with you if that's what you're doing?

But this is all too common in relationships with cishet men. The only people who are never truly forced to question anything about the world because they assume whatever it's been should always be true. Depressing.

“If I get charged twice, then you'll just have to help me.”

Of course, I will have to help you. And it's not “help,” if we're honest. It's not you asking for advice on what to do and how to do it; it's you demanding that I do it for you because you refuse to learn how to do basic fucking things in a society where you have to interact with people.

“But you're better than me at that.”

Yeah, because as someone who was raised as a girl, I was forced to learn how to talk to people whether I wanted to or not. You, as a boy, got the privilege of having your mommy do everything for you when it was “too much.” Meanwhile, I was coerced into engaging with people and handling problems largely on my own. It didn't matter if talking to new people made me uncomfortable (and still does); it just mattered that I “learned to socialise.”

Meanwhile, no one even made you feel a sliver of discomfort. They did everything for you, to the point of detriment.

Asking for help is fine, wanting people to help is fine.

Demanding people do things for you because you refuse to learn how to do the basics, especially when you're demanding it of people who also feel social anxiety (but apparently, it's “not as bad” as you, for fuck's sake)? Fuck off.

For the record, baking and cooking are... not that different? Baking uses an oven, but the principles in 'cooking' are also applied in 'baking'.

Bakers use unclear directions all the fucking time: “Cinnamon to taste.” “A pinch of salt.” If you swap out ingredients in something, you usually have to rework the recipe yourself.

People pretend baking is this strict chemistry where there are no unknown variables and that baking is entirely confusing and full of problems! But they're the same process.

Just that you're using a fucking oven to make something that is likely closer to bread or cake than you are a roast chicken with potatoes or whatever.

Honestly, baking is not “more clear” than cooking.

As an autistic person myself, there are an increasing number of times where other autistic people annoy the fuck out of me.

Specifically, the ones who make zero attempt to learn anything and then default to “well, my autistic brain wouldn't like this.” It's fine if you don't like it, and I don't even think you need to bring autism into it. Because it's probably more that you don't like it rather than your autism doesn't like it.

And I say that because what you're doing by bringing your autism into your likes/dislikes is basically finding ways to say that all autistic people should function that way and that it's wrong if we don't. And even if you don't mean that, that's how it feels.

Because the rest of us on this fucking spectrum can realise where our autism plays into something and where it might play into it but really it's just that we don't like it. You can just not like something without medicalising it, y'know.

Someone immediately discounts what you're saying and then gets mad at you for being upset.

“Why are you like this?!”

Gee, I wonder why. It's not like I want to have an actual conversation with someone or anything.

I get so tired of someone always forcing me to do things by their own schedule and desires and whims. All the fucking time.

It doesn't seem to matter what I'm doing, what I'm working on, if I'm in the middle of something... Whatever. It only matters that he wants to do whatever he wants to do it when he wants to do it.

Everything else isn't important.

Being in a relationship with a cis man, particularly one who sees himself as “not like other cis men,” makes my life so much harder and more difficult.

He always makes me feel like cis men, especially cishet men, just have no desire to question anything and that they will find every excuse to avoid doing so. They have no desire to question their relationship to society's definition of masculinity or what “masculine” even means. Rather than challenging what it means or who can access “masculinity,” they'd rather just continue to succumb to society's demands and pretend it's purely out of their own identity.

They have no desire to question their relationship to sex and how that makes other people uncomfortable, including people who they want to have sex with. And full offense, but that does not make anyone want to have sex with them. If anything, the increased discomfort makes people want to avoid having sex with them. I do not want to have sex with someone who talks about it with such disrespect and talks as if every person they desire sexually is an object.

They have no desire to question gender and how they see other people, even if they're tentatively supportive of gender non-conforming people. Hearing a cis man constantly refer to my genitalia and relate it to the gender he perceives me to be (seeing me as 'a woman' despite being agender)... makes me sick, and it makes me feel as if he doesn't see me for who I am. I'm just, to him, a 'pussy to stick it in'.

And even if he doesn't actually feel that way, it's what he says. When I say that it bothers me, I'm “funny” because I “get fussy over little things.”

But if they bother me this much... How are they 'little'?