but if I don't do it, I can't pay rent. I don't have parents to bail me out. I don't have savings. I'm disabled. this is all I'm qualified to do. I just have to put on the smiling mask and pretend all of this shit is normal as they wring more productivity out of my broken body.
i think it's hard to impart to those not in the industry just how violently Claude is being forced onto us right now
every single developer is being whipped into submission. my job description now reads "share AI tool setups with team" like I'm not embarrassed and horrified every time I open Cursor
woe! a thousand kittens upon thee
I'm just haunted by Jacksepticeye (popular youtuber), who really loved Undertale, utterly hating the experience of playing Deltarune, where he outright said "I don't want to see all this stuff, I just want to get to the LORE" while skipping through everything that might have been interesting to him.
I think we've gone too far, chat
it keeps coming back to my arch nemesis: aesthetics. Deltarune and Digital Circus rely so much on nostalgic aesthetics, lumped it with lore and mystery, that they feel ripe for the toxicity I describe.
Celeste has a certain level of nostalgia but then quickly breaks from it. Disco Elysium goes full avante-garde with its presentation at the earliest convenience.
Disco Elysium and Celeste managed to figure this out in different ways. Disco Elysium keeps you entertained with absurdism and social intrigue which then breaks into existentialism, but requires only reading comprehension as a skill. Celeste keeps its scope personal but demands your full attention through gameplay.
either way, I'm learning a lot about what makes a story fall into this trap. there is a certain threshold of "accessibility" to the narrative that lends itself to turning the whole thing toxic. there is a fine "skill-based" line you have to walk to make your intentions known, allow the viewer to come up with their own thoughts on it, but also not have it devolve into a rancid mess.
I haven't seen the same toxicity out of something like Celeste, which is almost universally beloved as well. I don't think "mystery and lore" is necessary. it's almost like a crutch at a certain point; the "mystery box" style of storytelling.
in contrast, even with all the problems the Touhou fandom has, the toxicity is almost antithetical to its "lore" - people go out of their way not to care.
the thing that I'm noticing about things like Deltarune and Digital Circus is that while "mysteries and lore" can add energy and popularity into a fandom, it almost always attracts fans who are functionally illiterate and will emit a huge amount of toxicity
