I'm so tired

Obviously I had to make his braid bigger, and longer. I extend most of the guys hair a little anyway, not even on purpose, but with braids, those tiny ones just don't cut it.

I also simplified the pattern on his collar (?) because the original was complete nonsense. And I didn't know what was going on with the inner sleeve so I just made up what I thought it should be.

And I painted his nails, because why not. Originally I wanted to give him the dead coral (?) pattern from his sword, but it was hard to make out that small and I thought painting each nail a different color was more his personality. It feels childish and whimsical.

But internet, as we all know, has become a weird place and you can’t even form a sentence or state an opinion before paragraphs and paragraphs of disclaimers or you’ll be eaten alive. Though this time, it’s important for me to state that one thing I will NEVER do is to judge or police the way others engage with the game, or media in general. I genuinely think there’s nothing inherently wrong with self-inserting/yumeshipping.

Still, we tend to equate critique with judgement and I think pointing out a potential threat is not the same as judging someone by saying “This is absolutely wrong and you’re a horrible person for doing this.“ I’ve actually written about this in a Boys Love manga context last year and step into any fandom or community of your choice, and you’ll see the very same discourse recycled, the very same stock lines under the guise of “argument“ being tweeted day in day out. Nothing new under the sun.

Anyways. Disclaimer over.

My first reaction to seeing the home feature was “Why?“ Of course I get why, but I did question whether it was truly necessary, and I’m not even mentioning the device storage stuff, after experiencing the feature a bit, the locked second floor and the lack of a kitchen etc. told me that it was only going to expand. My current opinion is while I do enjoy certain interactions like the one with the birthday plushie, the garden or with certain furniture like the swing, I wouldn’t be sad if it were to be discontinued tomorrow…

Mayyybe except for when Sylus runs up to MC with that giant body of his because he wants to cuddle with her on the couch.

Look at this chud...

Then came the IRL event where they built a 1:1 scale of the home and attendees could interact with the cosplayers. Not everyone interacted with the cosers as MCs themselves, some simply took photos of the cosers, but mainly, it seemed like the former.

Then came the homophobic fearmongering and pseudo-feminist takes about the gender-related changes. I couldn’t locate a trusted source so IDK whether that was a rumor or a leak. Then followed the confirmation from the customer service that all LIs are capital-letter heterosexual. Then I came to notice that shippy art is banned from online communities like Reddit and event contests.

Then came the baby sister discussion. I can only spare an exasperated wow.

Now Claire asks; is the AR Photo thing really the priority here? Did we really need the kitchen with so many additional features that will literally blow up our devices? I personally asked myself so many times; isn’t this supposed to be a mobile game?

My two cents is, for the company, yeah. I think it is that important. And everything I mentioned here has something to do with self-inserting.

The reason why I see a potential danger to self-inserting is that, to put it humorously, no one is immune to propaganda. Consume something long and frequent enough, and lines will blur. It will gradually get harder to take a step back and detach yourself, unless you spend conscious and constant effort to remind and ground yourself. Considering we’re leading lonelier lives, working at jobs or living in places that prevent us from being a part of fulfilling communities, forming friendships and romantic partnerships (if you’re allosexual/romantic) that energy, attention, and want will be directed to something soothing, comforting, and that will genuinely give you joy without the eventual discomfort or hurt real interactions have. And companies will use that against you for profit. The more you invest, both emotionally and financially, the harder it’ll get to put a distance between you and the game.

So of course the company will implement a home section where you vicariously live a domestic life with your fictional love interest or implement first-person POVs. People are already using gen-AI to make it look like they’re with their LIs and are feeding a game that they claim to love into a machine, so why not make that available in-game? Of course they’ll spend inconceivable amount of money, PLAYERS’ MONEY mind you, to erect that huge house and hold such an event where you can fake-sleep with your main. Again, I’m not saying these to be malicious or judgemental, but I’ve spent enough time in fandoms and rolled my eyes enough times to see where these blurred lines can take us and the irreparable damage it can do. Can, because not everyone who self-inserts are like this obviously.

When someone is so emotionally dependent and inserts themselves so deeply and seamlessly, whatever happens to MC or any changes made with regards to her feels like a slight against themselves. This is the very reason why a considerably sized group of players are not able to handle the politically incorrect themes in the game because in their heads, what’s happening to MC, is happening to themselves. Like, I will not be sharing the tweet because one, I don’t want to accidentally direct unwanted attention to them and two, that account was neither the first, nor will be the last person to say such things. But the tweet was about Valko and how creepy it would be if a man like that would appear on your balcony and acted like the way he did. I checked the comments too and the way I let out the longest sigh ever… Because that’s the thing, no one is appearing at your balcony. Or if you main Caleb and find his dynamic with MC compelling, because whether you like it or not them being siblings is canon, this doesn’t mean that you secretly want to smooch your brother.

N... no smooches for gege?

That’s one of the many reasons why fiction exists. For you to play around with these ideas from a safe distance. And i can’t reiterate this enough but the motto “seeing is believing”, as in thinking people only perceive the surface level information without any secondary associations, or assuming they’re incapable of layered thinking and understanding metaphors, have no ability to discern what’s ethical and what’s not, is the cornerstone of fascist thinking. This is why “risky“ art is always immediately banned during dictatorial regimes. Please, i kindly urge you to at least watch a video essay on fascist aesthetics and how they come about. It will make so much sense, I promise.

The same goes for changes with regards to gendered honorifics and appearances. I’m not saying the company wants to introduce a male lead because they’re all so queer friendly, it’s all LGBT flags left and right at the headquarters. First of all, there must be some sort of demand and moreover, I’m sure they see an opportunity to capitalize on, especially with how popular BL and danmei are right now. More players mean more immersion, more engagement online, more money spent in-game, on merch, and on IRL events.

However, the arguments I saw against it literally made me lose the already few brain cells I have left. What do you mean LaDS is a safe space for women and introducing a male lead, which is OPTIONAL btw, is threatening that safe space? It’s so absurd that I don’t even know what to say!! As I’ve mentioned, I can only assume but, these people are probably cishet women, and an optional male lead is experienced as a threat to their identities and their connection with the love interests. Not only these arguments are deeply queerfobic, but also extremely harmful to feminist thought because these right-wing ideas are packaged as leftist/feminist rhetoric.

LaDS is a game that offers so much variety to players and everyone has their own reasons and preferences as to why they continue playing. Some primarily enjoy the romance and interactions, hence tough battles/bosses, slow pace in upgrading cards, and intimacy points are probably super frustrating for them. On the other hand, if you enjoy the battle aspect, a super easy Hunter Contest will leave you unsatisfied and as many points out, there will be no meaning left in upgrading your cards. If you’re heavily into lore, you’ll be furstrated by the pacing of the release. If you’re into home design, you’re probably jumping with joy. Obviously you can be a bit of everything as well, but I’m sure you catch my drift. Everyone will have a different opinion on these newly implemented features that will cater to certain people but not the other, so Infold needs to keep a delicate balance, in which they fail spectacularly.

I’ll soon be celebrating my first year, so you can consider me practically a new player, and I’m -personally- someone who enjoys replaying and revisiting so I have no qualms about the current pace, I actually think it’s a bit too much for me. I main Sylus and I’m equally frustrated about his missing cards/branches since I even skip promise cards that aren’t useful to me build-wise. Btw, did we even get a free login-and-claim Sylus card? I guess Nightglow was like that? Anyways.

But at the same time, I still haven’t even thoroughly played the main story yet and I’d rather they handle the lore with care instead of rushing or explaining everything word for word like they did in Silverwing. From a lore-pacing point, and because I tend to think I’m in it for the long haul, I’m personally more or less alright and again, personally, enjoy a slow pace while acknowledging the imbalance between leads. I definitely hear older players and I’m not invalidating their distate. From a farming point, however, older players, big spenders who max out their companions or build teams for multiple love interests probably breezed through battle stages. And once you’re done, there’s no other way to pull for the new cards except for opening up your wallet.

I played Tears of Themis for almost 5 years and one of the pitfalls there was that the battle system is extremely simple so you pull the cards solely to experience the story. The levelling up, buffs etc are all so simple and straightforward that you have so much materials left unused. This is excellent for people who are in it for the stories, but not having some type of challenge makes the game dull after a while. The same goes for Nu:Carnival, I think I played that for two years, I got bored of the battles after a while and eventually dropped it.

However, what Tears of Themis got right is the pool and banner system, along with options to farm. At some point they fully separated the leads, and implemented a rule that protects older players where if you pull an SSR card you already own, regardless of its rank, your pull count doesn’t reset. Older players all have those standard SSRs, and the new players likely wont, but they’re still getting a new card of their fave. There are many aspects like this and in my 4-something eyars, I never once needed the monthly pass. The only times I bought individual packages were I had 5-6 pulls till I got the card and I had no other way to farm them. I always skip cosmetic purchases as well, so I paid veeery little money.

Weird and unnecessary tangent aside, because the game’s immersive side is lucrative and is easier to get the players hooked on, I wonder if the trajectory is shifting towards there. Because the more someone’s cornered the more there’s a possibility they’ll start thinking of just paying for that promise card because otherwise they won’t have a new story to experience or a card in that color would benefit their team. Or maybe people are just going through the motions simply out of FOMO. The world operates on FOMO and the next shiny thing to steal your attention.

All this yapping just to say that it’s possible that Infold/PPG are leaning heavily into the immersive side of the game simply because they think it’s more profitable when that unilateral love and devotion a player feels is kept alive through such means.

What do you think about the new update? Let me know in the comments, and if you'd like to listen to me yap while you do other stuff, the video version is here: