Anyway, on a more serious note - on Dec 10, an under 16 social media ban will be enacted in my country.
At this stage, Tumblr is not one of the sites that has been selected for the ban and - for now - will not require any form of age verification to remain online. That could change at any point, and I will not be staying on any site that requires personal identification to keep my account.
In Australia, unlike the UK, each site must come up with it's own methods of identifying a user's age. There must be an option that can verify age without using identifying personal documentation as evidence. Realistically, the larger social media sites will probably be using their own algorithms to determine if anyone isn't the age they say they are and will not require any sensitive information, but. Well. This is tumblr. We're still fairly anonymous, and we don't have one of those. So, they'll need to come up with something else, if they even bother.
I'm still not sure how this ban will shake out or how any smaller sites will be handling the change, but I'm not playing ball with anything that could compromise my personal security. We have enough sensitive data leaks in this country, I'm not tempting fate.
If I should lose access to Tumblr for that reason, I will be deleting this blog. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that! But if I suddenly disappear without warning, that's what's happened.
But it's not happening yet, and hopefully not anytime soon! Or ever.
I've truly enjoyed my time on this site, and I'm extremely grateful for the friends I've made and to everyone that's read my rambling thoughts. I really hope I'll be able to stay here.
Thoughts on 6.6. Archon Quest, if you have finished them?
I haven't! I've gotten as far as the evacuation to Caravan Ribat. Here's what I've got
god collei got stiffed so bad up until now. it's actually humiliating this is the first time her having been experimented on comes up in the main game.
The most exciting way to experience a messed up "everyone's switched careers" prophetic dream sequence is, definitely, to have one guy just tell you about most of the weird switches instead of getting to experience them yourself. (I know this game is lazy but sometimes I am still floored by it.)
Wait whats the problem with gold and the shade of life
Hi! The short answer is: in concept, nothing. There's a lot of media where an equivalent concept would be really exciting. In practice, I couldn't care less and that's pretty much a Genshin problem.
The long answer:
At the risk of sounding petty or judgmental, it irritates me a lot when Hoyo games makes big, important-sounding statements about things that would only matter or make sense to me if a) I read their excessive info dumps to eke out whatever scraps of relevant lore I could find, b) watched the supplemental videos on YouTube or read character bios that seem to be a substitute for actually… writing things in the main story and c) bought into the extremely poor set-up this game offers for most of it's storylines.
Example A: There was a huge dramatic reveal in Amphoreus that Lygus' true identity was Zandar One Kuwabara. I had to stop playing and go find out who that was, because the game clearly expected me to already know. To my knowledge, the only places I could've heard about him were either a few old interactables or if I'd decided to waste my time sorting through the game's archives.
Example B: Despite being a fairly major antagonist in pre-canon Mondstadt that heavily impacted multiple members of the cast, Eroch's conclusion was entirely confined to Varka's bio. Reading this isn't the same as experiencing a story with Eroch - it actually comes across as "Genshin couldn't be bothered writing a storyline dealing with Eroch". (Bonus: I believe the start of the current Archon Quest, 6.6, is the first time that it has actually been mentioned in-game that Collei was experimented on by Dottore - at least to my recollection, and I was keeping an eye out for it... which means the game is currently paying off on a storyline from the webtoon despite having ample opportunity to introduce and utilise it in the Sumeru AQ.)
Example C: I have never met Gold. She's one of the Sinners and Witches we see or hear about the least in the main story. The only time I've seen a Shade was when Capitano (underwhelmingly) loopholed his way into fucking over the Shade of Death to save Mavuika. This is not an impressive first showing for a Shade, so I'm automatically unimpressed by them. Gold merging with the Shade of Life should be a hugely impactful moment, but I've been given so little reason to invest in either of those characters that something that should blow my mind feels hollow and meaningless.
None of these things are normal! Here specifically, I can't think of an equivalent move in another piece of media that was delivered to me before I even got to see either of the characters involved. If there is an equivalent, we usually get... to see the scene in some capacity, even if its the characters' debut? As opposed to just getting told off-hand by another character, and then we move on?
The presentation is so lazy that the fact that Hoyo expects me to care about it at all feels hugely presumptuous - like it can give me scraps, and I'll eat them up.
This is also right at the conclusion of Paralogism, which... to put it very briefly, was definitely a chapter that felt like it took the easiest way through every possible character conflict. (I am sparing you paragraphs of Paralogism whinging here.) Offering this as the continuation right after the characters I already know and kind of like got handled as disappointingly as they were is very...
"So, hey, this storyline we've been hyping since year 1 has been concluded super boringly - but you're excited about us continuing it with characters you haven't even met yet, right?!" Like, wow, no. I do not have the goodwill for any of that. Incredible you think I would. Genshin is, as always, writing cheques they cannot cash.
I open Daemons of the Shadow Realm. I learn that the male protagonist is shorter than his sister because of lacking nutrients. I check off "milk propaganda" on my checklist.
Rereading Naruto and yet again Sasuke is hilarious with how fast he went blind with his own sharingan because the second he got mangekyo he was using that thing every fucking battle. Itachi was probably screaming at him from the afterlife.
The more I go back and read Naruto the funnier Sasuke is. He's a prodigy yes but he's just a guy. The moment he got power to keep up with the monsters of the series he fucking started using that shit like he's addicted to drugs and then he realized I don't have the chakra for half this shit. He's literally the only character along with Sakura and Hinata that still actually show what happens when you don't have enough chakra in the Naruto universe.
Sasuke is hilariously self-destructive, tbh. It makes sense because he isn't thinking of anything else (to the detriment of literally everyone around him), but it's very funny the extent to which every possible way Itachi tried to calm him down totally failed
Death? Nope
Brainwashing? Sorry, total failure
He's just getting worse, Itachi!!!
(I would say Sasuke isn't just a guy, all the main Uchihas are ludicrous + reincarnation.... whatever, but yes he's definitely put through the wringer to keep pace with Naruto. Also Kakashi's chakra exhaustion was definitely a major thing for ... the entire series? I think? I believe his reign as Hokage is 50% him getting his own training weights removed by losing the Sharingan... apparently he does some crazy stuff in the novels.)
