teaveetamer

[teaveetamer]

Y’know thinking about it, one of the most vital steps to making real change is the ability to name and then criticize the problems.

So the fact that corporations have apparently convinced huge swaths of people that criticism is automatically an attack on not only the work, but the people who made it (think of how many times you’ve seen someone criticize a game or a show only to be met with “the author/writer/show runners don’t owe you anything!” Is kind of genius. Abhorrent, but also genius.

Not that criticism never happens, but it’s more contained to only the very egregious examples. So all the company has to do is avoid the VERY obvious pitfalls, be nominally progressive in one or two cases, and they can convince huge numbers of people to, for example, ignore covert misogyny in their work AND attack anyone trying to call attention to it.

[teaveetamer]

show me where someone said they wanted to put a bullet in you specifically. Never happened. By the way I care more about helping the innocent and wrongly imprisoned than anything on here or discord. I donate to the innocence project every month. I'm also sending money to a falsely accused guy in a very high profile homicide case, though I will not specify who. I raise awareness of official misconduct and how touch DNA has been used to wrongly convict people. That's my calling in life. What are you doing to help people in a worse situation than you. Probably nothing

I wasn't going to publish these but honestly, I have to point this out. Either this is Raxis, Vagrantsea, one of the people in the death threat screenshots, or some other party that has been directly involved in the harassment... or this is a COMPLETE rando with NO stakes in this conflict trying to convince me that if THEY are a good person, that somehow makes the people who harassed me justified to harass me. If it's the latter, that just elevates this ENTIRE ask to the level of absurdist comedy and I can't not share that. Like, imagine if you saw someone get mugged, it's on video, and as they're being arrested a complete rando who doesn't know anyone involved jumps in to be like "no they couldn't have mugged anyone, because I donate to charity!" But for the sake of argument, we're going to assume this comes from someone actually directly involved.

So first, congratulations! I hope you do actually do all of those things. But also, what a weaselly, pathetic little argument to make in response to me, again, talking about how I've gotten death threats and harassment. "You weren't harassed even though there's screenshots of it, and even if you were I'm actually a GOOD PERSON, SEE!"??? What exactly do you expect my response to be here? "Oh well I've been getting stalked and harassed but anon donated to the innocence project, so I guess I can't be upset anymore"? Would you also think it's okay for someone to beat their spouse at home as long as they donated to a homeless shelter sometimes, or can we acknowledge that doing a good thing doesn't cancel out the shitty things you do?

And sure, since you asked, I do in fact do things IRL to help people in a worse situation than me. It's, like, my actual job. I also don't bring that up at every opportunity, unlike you apparently, because I'm not a cowardly little rat who needs to hide behind the suffering of marginalized and abused communities to justify stalking people and sending them death treats over a PNG girlie. I'm sorry if what you've done to me has made you feel like a bad person, but that's entirely your own damn fault for doing it. If you want to prove you're a good person, then maybe it's time you stop trying to justify and excuse your shitty behavior and start taking responsibility for it.

[teaveetamer]

Hi anons, if you're curious where someone threatened to kill me, I have screenshots of it in my pinned post. Please consider learning how to read before bothering me further :)

[teaveetamer]

It's also kind of hard to just ignore everything going on when there's a very large Discord server directly connected to a very large subreddit that has multiple mods spout explicit genocide apologetics and advocate for oppression. Especially since it's a known thing that people in their get influenced to do very shitty things directly because of the behaviors that get normalized (like diaphin from a while ago or vagrantsea recently, and of course raxis being the most prominent example).

Plus I know that the other anon didn't want to be rude and I don't think they are, it's just that it's super weird to go "why are you still talking about discourse" to people who... aren't really talking about GAME discourse that often recently? At least from what I've seen it's more "here are people who have a pattern of serial harassment please keep an eye out for them because they have stalker tendencies" which is a little more serious than Ladlegard.PNG.

Pretty much yeah. And it's WILD because they'll be like "No see, we had to threaten to kill you because you posted publicly about how you don't like a fictional character, see how you're the one making everything worse by continuing to have opinions publicly that I have to threaten to kill you over >:(". Like sir, one of these things you can DEFINITELY ignore by blocking, muting, etc. and it literally would not have impacted you at all, and one of these things is an actual threat to my safety and it was actively getting worse when I wasn't talking about it, because these people get comfy when they don't get pushback for this absolutely deranged behavior and it escalates.

So like yeah I'm sorry I have to keep talking about this. I, too, would rather not have a bunch of freak losers on the internet threatening to put a bullet in me and spewing Nazi rhetoric over Video Game Opinions, but unfortunately not talking about it is no longer a viable option.

[teaveetamer]

I really want to be rude and I'm not sorry if it appears that way.

Congratulations, I’m going to assume this is related to the sexual harassment I’m getting in my inbox. Very mature of you. I’m sure your mother is very proud of your big dick, since I’m sure she’s only the woman who has ever seen it

[teaveetamer]

I really don't want to be rude and I'm sorry if it appears that way, but why are you still engaging in all FE discourse? It's clearly not making you happy.

There's many cool project to focus on for FE ( there's a Blue Lions fanzine coming up!! ), and even outside of FE, I'm sure there's many games that could be to your taste? Idk if you already played it, but Baldur's Gate 3 has nearly everything cool FE have while being a really good game!

Discourse make us all miserable and we often end up doing things we regret, if not just for the time wasted talking to asshole. I know how it is, I was there before.

Blocking people and tag then moving on sometimes is for the best ( even asshole like Raxis, he might have stalker-ish behavior but the best that can be done is ignoring him ). I was sad to see your profile bc of random discourse, I would love to find you the same way but this time for speaking of something you love.

Anon I’m going to take this in the best possible faith here, and no I’m not assuming you’re being rude

1) I do have a blog which is ENTIRELY dedicated to just talking about things I love. It’s called my main blog, which used to be linked to this one, but I had to remove that link after one of the more deranged members of the fandom chose to follow it and comment pro-genocide stuff on my fun polls about which PNG is the sexiest. I also still write fanfic, livestream, participate in niche-r discord severs, and run several side blogs and accounts for events and tournaments, none of which I advertise heavily here because, again, a subsection of extremely deranged fans of a particular character seem to take it as an invitation to be extremely deranged.

2) I made this side blog explicitly to quarantine fandom negativity from my more positive endeavors, and frankly I have been trying (key word trying) to wind down its usage for years now because, frankly, I have better things to do and I don’t have that much more to say about 3H itself anyway but…

3) I have blocked the losers who are engaging in this kind of behavior. The problem is that they do not respect that block and continue to stalk, harass, and repost the things I say anyway to various social platforms, which has led to death threats made against me (among other things) because they are unwell beyond anything a block button can fix.

And 4) since I am not the only one these people do this kind of thing to, I figure the least I can do is warn people of their deranged behavior by using what little platform I have here.

So anon if you want to see me do something I enjoy, chances are you’ve already seen me doing it even if you didn’t realize it was me. And if you would like to see this blog stop posting, I highly encourage you to call out dangerous fandom behavior such as stalking, death threats, false accusations of pedophilia, harassment, etc. when you see it.

And sorry this took me a few days. I spent most of the week with a nasty sinus infection and I spent all my energy Thursday on going to work and class

[teaveetamer]

Ao3 will likely be fine. The reason why Patreon and Gumroad (Never heard of it before this very second) went full choir boy is because payment processors and advertisers are throwing a puritanical fit. Ao3 doesn't sell anything and doesn't run ads, so they're not subject to the same external pressure. Don't get complacent or anything, but if they fold it'll probably be from a different kind of pressure (most likely politicians realizing queer people like something and trying to destroy it "for the children").

That said, this is exactly why I get so annoyed when people say you should be "trying to appeal to the most people possible" or whatever. It always results in pandering to the loudest lowest common denominator, because the whiners are the people who share their opinions the most. 99.99% of people do not give a shit if a company runs an ad next to something horny or if other people use PayPal to buy porn, but the puritans and puriteens are the ones who yell the loudest, so they get to destroy marginalized communities and make everyone else unhappy.

God with the fact both Gumroad and Patreon are choosing to be purity obsessed to the point characters LITERALLY have to consent..in FANART…thanks to Patreon new rules and Gumroad just straight up purging in less than a day, and it’s clear to me that things are clearly going to get worse. Never know when AO3 will be hit by all this.

Transformative fandom, especially I'd say transgressive fandom (heavy themes, queer exploration, smut) is always going to be at odds with the commodification of the Internet and the desire for ad revenue. Most advertisers have not-so-mild freakouts at the thought of anything above a PG rating and so sooner or later, pretty much all social media platforms and fandom spaces get purged and that's usually an indication of some big shiny new owner or partnership.

It also can lead to the death of the platform or a huge exodus so we'll have to wait and see there methinks.

[teaveetamer]

Secret good guys who def only hated the Nabateans for their eeeeeeeeevil rule and are perfectly ok with everyone else. I’m glad FEH took this opportunity to show them in a more sympathetic light which totally justifies their genocide (sarcasm, if you couldn’t tell)

[teaveetamer]

I haven't played Awakening (maybe one day) but it's paradigm shift not only feels like something only noticed with hindsight but also feels gradual. Compare that to FF15 where the paradigm shift was sudden and immediate (I mean yeah there was Kingdom Hearts to ease people in but that's a different series).

I'll admit I have less than zero knowledge of Final Fantasy so I can't really speak to this comparison.

But yeah I think Awakening was a bit of a "boil the frog" scenario, except the last few notches went up just a tad bit faster than expected. FE4 had pairings but no supports, which evolved into supports and pairings but no endings (outside of Roy) in FE6, which evolved into supports and pairings with endings in FE7 and 8, which then became supports but no endings in 9, and endings but no supports in 10 (which I'm chalking up to the weirdness of having what was clearly always intended to be one game split up into two games), which evolved into the explicit marriage in FE13 and 14, which was just tweaked ever so slightly in FE16, which went back to the FE6 style in FE17... which everyone complained about because we've been used to having supports AND paired endings for seven mainline entries now and the fandom actually quite likes it despite how much they complained about Awakening featuring it as a prominent mechanic.

[teaveetamer]

To give another example of a pandemic game, Animal Crossing New Horizons. It was everywhere in 2020 and 2021. But after the pandemic faded, I don't see anyone talking about it as much.

I actually almost used ACNH as an example because that was my pandemic flop lol.

Listen I played New Leaf and I was like "oh I don't really like Animal Crossing". Tried New Horizions after some initial reluctance because everyone was talking about it and I was like "ok, not like I have anything better to do and maybe I'll like this one better" and guess what? I still don't like Animal Crossing!

I would have never bought it if it weren't for the pandemic, and I will not be buying another Animal Crossing game unless there's a major shift in the series. Not that I want that. I have plenty of other games that scratch that itch better than Animal Crossing and I acknowledge that a lot of people DO love it how it is. I don't need every series ever to appeal to me specifically.

Arguably the biggest thing that launched ACNH as high as it went was just... it was a normalcy simulator in a time when our lives were decidedly un-normal. Lots of "cozy" games were. 3H was arguably that in some ways too (look at all these kids just going to school like we can't anymore!)

[teaveetamer]

That's the thing! I think my biggest ? with regard to the "future games should be more like 3H" criticism is like... what exactly about 3H do you want to see carried into the future? There's two things I see people praise 3H for and say should be carried forward: story and characters. Even if I agreed that 3H had this amazing perfect story and characters, I don't see how you would be able to recreate either of those things without causing the series to stagnate and stagnate pretty hard almost immediately.

If your main complaint is that the stories or characters of FE games should be "more well written" then that's completely subjective and nebulous. What I consider well written is probably pretty different from what someone else might consider well written. Well written is also not a quality 3H exclusively "owns". If you mean you want the story to cover similar themes, plot beats, etc. to 3H... why? Why exactly do you want a future story to cover the exact same ground a previous story covered? Who would actually enjoy that experience? Can you even articulate what, precisely, you think was good about 3H's writing beyond the dubious "moral grey" label (which is frankly a term so overused by this fandom that it has completely ceased to have meaning)?

In the same vein, how do you make characters "more like 3H characters" without just being clones or very slight variations/repeats of 3H characters? Well-written is entirely subjective remember. If you liked, for example, Marianne for being a specifically relatable depiction of a particular mental illness, then how do you replicate that connection in a future character without just making Marianne again? And again, who actually wants that? Cuz Fates kind of tried that with giving a lot the BR characters the "we have x at home" versions of the Awakening characters' tropes and that was pretty universally panned despite Awakening having a pretty beloved roster. Because most people don't actually want the same thing regurgitated over and over again in slightly different forms.

Why would you want future games to just re-do 3H over and over again? If we actually got Dimitri 2.0, Edelgard 2.0, Claude 2.0, etc. would you actually enjoy them as much the second time around? Or would you get immediately bored and critical and demand something new? Like genuinely, it's important to ask yourself what you enjoyed about those characters in the first place, and if it's something you could actually carry forward into a new game in a different enough way to justify its existence. I love the hell out of Dimitri because he is, in part, a unique inversion of what you expect from Fire Emblem lords. He works so well specifically because he defies series-ingrained expectations. If you were to try to do that again then it is no longer unique. It no longer defies expectations because it becomes the new expectation, which means it becomes boring. There are elements of his character which I think could be carried forward into a future game. I think it's entirely possible for FE games to explore the trauma their blue lords experience in a similar but unique way, but I know if they try to redo Dimitri they will fail. And that's okay.

And I hate to say it but trust me, people do not always know how to communicate what they want when it comes to media. People usually know instinctively, but not articulately. If you put it in front of them they will know that they wanted it, but if you asked them to explain what they want they will frequently be unable to. Half the time the thing they say they wanted and the thing they actually wound up enjoying have a huge disparity. It is also not always feasible for a company to appeal to certain parts of the market. For that reason it is not always smart to listen to what people say they want. The discerning creators can tell the difference between when they should listen and when they shouldn't.

"It's on the devs if they can maintain a newbie boom" Did this guy went into FE thanks to 3h ? Everyone knows IS hardly keep the same formula

I don't really want to focus too much on the content of the statement, I prefer to keep the focus on the "wtf why did you screenshot someone else's ask (who has you blocked) and reply to it? You're not the fucking president of the United States. No one was specifically going to seek your input on this completely mundane observation, and if they did then they would have sent the ask to you in the first place." But I do just want to point out a completely obvious observation, which is clearly what OP of that ask was getting at: not every series *wants* to keep their "newbie boom". Sometimes the newbie boom isn't healthy or desirable for a series.

Technically speaking companies do want to appeal to the most people possible, but companies are also aware that you cannot please everyone. Broadest possible appeal is not always the move that is going to make you the most money. In some cases it's far better to have, for example, two more narrowly focused series that strongly appeal to two different core demographics rather than one series which middlingly appeals to two different core demographics. Call of Duty and Stardew Valley are both massively popular games, but no one would honestly decide that mashing them together would be a good idea.

That is to say, if the people who joined the FE series with 3H enjoyed things about 3H that are antithetical to the existing FE series, it is not in any way beneficial for the series to try and keep those players. Attempting to would, most likely, just result in both groups being unhappy at best or driving off the previous core playerbase at worst. I'd say the Resident Evil franchise is a pretty good example of this kind of corporate "mass appeal" strategy backfiring. You can only go so far before the thing people enjoyed stops being the thing people enjoyed.

[teaveetamer]

Relating to prev prev post because I do have more to say, I do think there's a degree of survivorship bias going on with Engage's perception among the fandom.

A mutual of mine at one point made the observation that sales are not necessarily reflective of the quality of the current game. They are a referendum on the previous game (at least in part). It's just a fact that buying something tends to come before you actually get to experience it or make an evaluation of its quality. You can read reviews but the biggest thing that is going to inform your purchase of a game is your experiences with previous games in that series (if you have any). That's obviously not the only factor that affects sales. There's also marketing, trends in the industry, timing, etc., but it is one of them. Fates sells well in part because a lot of people really liked Awakening and wanted to try more from the series, then 3H sells well because a lot of people really liked Fates and wanted to try more from the series, etc.

To put it more succinctly: just because 3 million people purchased 3H does not mean 3 million people enjoyed 3H. There is inevitably going to be a chunk of people who pick up the game, decide Fire Emblem is not a series they enjoy (anymore) based on the game they played, and then not proceed with any future games. This is especially true of pandemic games, which had their sales boosted in part because a lot of really bored people were willing to try a lot of new things.

Which is where the survivorship bias comes in. The people who are going to be around talking on the forums, anticipating the trailers, etc. are the long time fans of the series who enjoyed or at least weren't put off by 3H, and also the people who were introduced to the series with 3H, enjoyed 3H, and were looking forward to the next entry thinking it would provide more of what they really enjoyed. Not the people who weren't even looking at Engage from the jump because they didn't like 3H and decided the series wasn't for them.

That lends itself to the assumption that the reason Engage "didn't do as well" is because it's not enough like 3H, because that's what a very vocal portion of the people within the fandom are saying. The fact of the matter is, there could be hundreds of thousands of people who hated 3H who simply aren't around in the fandom to share their opinions anymore. Frankly, wouldn't it make sense to assume they make up a chunk of those "lost" sales between 3H and Engage? Because the vast majority of the people I've seen complaining relentlessly about Engage... I mean, they still bought Engage. Despite the complaining they're not actually a lost sale.

[teaveetamer]

This is a thought connected to my previous post but it didn't quite fit with that one, so it's gonna be its own thing.

For as much as people complained about Awakening making the series too much of a dating sim or whatever, the division between pre-Awakening titles and post-Awakening titles is really not as vast as some older fans of the franchise make it out to be. Awakening doesn't add new mechanics so much as it emphasizes mechanics that already existed in the series in other forms.

FE4 already featured baby optimization mechanics, and FE4+FE5 and FE6+7 feature a cross-generational story. Pretty much every non-remake game in the series, at least from Genealogy onward, featured create-your-couples mechanics to some degree.

The main thing Awakening did was place a more explicit player-proxy in the game for you to attach yourself to (where previously you were expected to view the lord or one of the characters of the game as your de facto proxy, but when you get to pick their hairstyle and change their name I guess it becomes cringe) and introduce extremely basic QoL improvements which made the series vastly more accessible to your average person. Most people who picked up Awakening did not pick it up and find an experience that was, at it's core, extremely different from anything Fire Emblem had done before.

(And yes I'm allowed to call them Awakening babies, as an Awakening Baby myself)

[teaveetamer]

"It's on the devs if they can maintain a newbie boom" Did this guy went into FE thanks to 3h ? Everyone knows IS hardly keep the same formula

I don't really want to focus too much on the content of the statement, I prefer to keep the focus on the "wtf why did you screenshot someone else's ask (who has you blocked) and reply to it? You're not the fucking president of the United States. No one was specifically going to seek your input on this completely mundane observation, and if they did then they would have sent the ask to you in the first place." But I do just want to point out a completely obvious observation, which is clearly what OP of that ask was getting at: not every series *wants* to keep their "newbie boom". Sometimes the newbie boom isn't healthy or desirable for a series.

Technically speaking companies do want to appeal to the most people possible, but companies are also aware that you cannot please everyone. Broadest possible appeal is not always the move that is going to make you the most money. In some cases it's far better to have, for example, two more narrowly focused series that strongly appeal to two different core demographics rather than one series which middlingly appeals to two different core demographics. Call of Duty and Stardew Valley are both massively popular games, but no one would honestly decide that mashing them together would be a good idea.

That is to say, if the people who joined the FE series with 3H enjoyed things about 3H that are antithetical to the existing FE series, it is not in any way beneficial for the series to try and keep those players. Attempting to would, most likely, just result in both groups being unhappy at best or driving off the previous core playerbase at worst. I'd say the Resident Evil franchise is a pretty good example of this kind of corporate "mass appeal" strategy backfiring. You can only go so far before the thing people enjoyed stops being the thing people enjoyed.

[teaveetamer]

This the most cis male entitlement/audacity shit I have ever seen. “I had to log into an alt account to even see this. Clearly they want MY opinion!” Buddy. Pal. If someone gives a shit about your opinion then they’ll send the ask TO YOU in the first place.

But remember everybody he’s just stalking and harassing Ezra because she’s a big old bully who said a mean thing about his favorite png waifu! Clearly responding to her anon that has nothing to do with him or anything he claims to care about is the act of a completely hinged man just defending the honor of a woman who doesn’t even exist!

3H might be a trap more then a goldmine. Yes it brought the franchise tons of fans but if those fans are going to be dissappointed that any game post 3H isn't like 3H, they will never stay. In reality, they were going to leave the franchise as soon as they would realize that 3H isn't the norm of Fire Emblem

Yep - Hopes couldn't even replicate Houses, given the overall reception and how many JP fans were so vocal about their distaste of it.

Which on its own is... fine? I think IS is prioritizing FEH and getting players to stay on FEH over the mainline series at the moment, and lord knows they leverage 3H hard in FEH... but it does bring a conundrum from a development standpoint. I don't think they can replicate 3H not necessarily because of the quality of content (subjective statement there) but also because of the environment and timing surrounding it. You'd need to catch the cultural / gaming trends and also have a window where there is zero competition and a niche that desires that content... and given the time involved in creating a game, that can be difficult to predict and react to before the trend starts to die off.

[teaveetamer]

Kinda wild how the 3H fandom loses their minds over how “deep” and “morally complex” and smart 3H is when 95% of them lose their absolute shit over Rhea presenting the most basic Philosophy101 question of “is it ok to do [bad thing] to stop [worse thing] from happening”. Doubly ironic when their line of reasoning is “it’s never ok to do [bad thing] to stop [worse thing] from happening, but anyway here’s my 500 page manifesto on why my fave needed to do [bad thing] to stop [worse thing] from happening, and also if you don’t agree with me you’re a pedo or groomer or something”

[teaveetamer]

Can’t wait for them to be like “omg how dare you bring up something that happened in the past! You can’t bring that up!” like their entire justification for the sustained harassment they inflict isn’t just “someone said something I didn’t like in 2020”

It's been a few months since that whole thing with that Edelgang mod peddling genocide rhetoric, I wonder if they ever moved on from believing such horrific things and using such horrific rhetoric-

...so the answer to that is no. They have not.