It's me, ya boi

the person reading this is gae

[arro-now]

Addressing a few concerns

So, I assume most of you don't know, but there is a bit of drama inside the Paralives community. It's funny because this whole thing is revolving around The Sims 3.

TwistedMexi made his first paywalled "early access" mod called Sims 3 Camera, and I've been working on the same thing as he was. 1. Let's get the "clone" allegation out of the way first.

(Source: TwistedMexi's discord server)

TwistedMexi is accusing me of cloning his mod, but let’s look at the facts. Thankfully, I always use GitHub, so the commit dates are there to prove it.

(2026-05-26 22:27:02 +0200) is a timestamp of the first commit with hash d82ddd909e06833b0f8d5d439ad602d04a4f3e08

(2026-05-27T19:57:44.000+00:00) is a timestamp of the publication date of his Patreon post.

Honestly, I didn't know I could see the future, but ok.

2. The second thing I want to address is that currently there are a lot of awful comments directed at Tmex. PLEASE do not harass other creators.

3. Regarding early access and paywalls: My mods are developed in my spare time as a passion project. I believe in keeping my work accessible to everyone, which is why all of my content will remain completely free, forever. I believe the community should play a role in maintaining projects if the original creator steps away, which is why I always share the source code for my projects Free mods are a pillar of a healthy community, whereas paywalls only lead to gatekeeping and unnecessary drama. My hope is that more creators choose to release their mods in a way that prioritizes community growth and shared resources.

A reblog would be greatly appreciated to help spread this message.

Thanks for reading,

xoxo, Arro Ps. If you want to see a broader discussion on this topic, I recommend this Reddit post that goes way more in-depth than I do. It's a good read.

[prickly-paprikash]

It isn't just that Knives Out protagonists win by being kind and steadfast. They win by sticking to what it is they're good at. What they've been called to do, as thankless and as demeaning as those jobs can sometimes make them feel. They didn't play the "game" like Benoit did. They just did what they knew they were good at.

Marta wins because she was a nurse and a caregiver before anything else. She wins the inheritance because she gave Harlan companionship, not just medical care. She gets the truth out of Ransom because she acted as a nurse, trying to save Fran even though she still dies in the end. Had Harlan just fucking listened to the actual medical expert in the room instead of himself, he would have lived.

Helen wins because she's a third-grade teacher—her job is literally educating, caring for, and looking out for kids. Glass Onion isn't just the working class vs the wealthy, it's an actual functioning adult woman vs a bunch of adult-sized toddlers, whining and throwing temper tantrums and thinking only of themselves. She plays games with her third graders, and in the end she wins by making a game of destroying everything Miles ever held dear, even getting the others to side with her.

Jud wins because he's an actual fucking priest, who actually embodies everything his god taught. He doesn't try to poach Wick's "flock" or anything, nor does he allow himself to surrender to anger and vindictiveness in the way Wick did. Jud is absolved of all his crimes because he just wants to do good by his church, in the name of his god.

Just as Blanc is an excellent detective, so too are these three spectacular at their jobs.

Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig just keep reiterating the same points in every film and I do love them for it.

• Respect the working class

• Fucking respect women.

• Listen to the local queer person who is excellent at their jobs and you will go far.

• Be kind in a cynical world.

[kashisun]

What pisses me off the most about there being early access content for paralives is the fact that it’s an INDIE GAME. it’s not a multi million dollar company like EA. It’s an early access indie game and some of you are so fucking greedy for cash that you wanna profit off of it? We already have to deal with this shit in the sims like the community is fucking infested with it and now you wanna do this to paralives when they literally told us that we’d always be getting updates for free???? Loser behaviour. You’re a loser

[facilitatingmyaddiction]

don't be shy, drop the names so I can block them

[honourablejester]

I’m realising as I browse around that I really love lore when it comes to ttrpgs, games and game worlds. And by that I don’t mean I like to obsessively learn lists of dates and wars, and the names of leaders of factions, I mean …

I like learning weird, juicy details about the worlds of games. I like finding little nuggets that say things about the set-up and culture and assumptions of the world. I like finding fragments of ideas to hang whole story and character concepts off.

I love that in D&D 5e’s Spelljammer, the Astral Sea is full of the corpses of dead gods that you can fully sail up to in your ship. Just. Floating out there. Waiting for you to rock up to them.

I love that in Sunless Sea, the king of the drowned is the way he is because he fell in love with an eldritch sea urchin from space, and successfully married it. His niece is an angry sentient floating mountain whose mother is a goddess-mountain and whose father is a face-stealing humanoid abomination. This is fine and normal.

I love that in Starfinder, there are mysterious bubble cities in the surface of the sun that the church of the sun goddess discovered and cheerfully occupied despite having no idea who the hell built them or for what purpose.

I love that in Dishonored, the entire industrial revolution that has built the empire we’re in the midst of saving or destroying was built on the properties of whale oil harvested from eldritch tentacled whales that live half in the oceans and half in an eldritch void personified in the form of a weird-ass black-eyed shit-stirrer of a deity who was formed from a murdered and sacrificed child. And this is largely a background detail.

I love in the Elder Scrolls that the dwarves up and fucking vanished, as a race, at some point in history and absolutely nobody has any clue what happened to them or where they went, but their technology is so insane that ideas like ‘they time-travelled’ or ‘they erased themselves from existence’ are absolutely on the table.

I love that in Numenera, so many incredibly advanced civilisations have risen and fallen on this world that it’s absolutely littered with bonkers science fiction artefacts that have caused the current medieval-esque society built over top of them to develop in bizarre ways, and also you can find a mysterious artefact that absolutely baffles and delights your character, but that you the player will fully recognise as a slightly-more-advanced thermos flask.

I love that in Fallout, an irradiated post-nuclear apolocalypic hellscape, there’s a cult that worships the god of radiation as they have come to understand it, and they are mysteriously immune to radiation with absolutely no explanation whatsoever. They’re not ghouls, the usual result of fatally irradiated humans with some resistance, they’re perfectly normal humans who can somehow just tank rads all damn day. It could be a mutation, but Lovecraftian gods apparently do also fully exist in this setting, so it’s also possible that maybe they were on to something with this Atom thing.

I love that in Heart The City Beneath, there’s a mass transit train system that they tried to hook up to the eldritch beating god-thing buried under the city so that they could metaphysically chain the stations together more easily, which went horrifically and metaphysically wrong in entirely predictable fashion, and now there’s a whole order of train-knights who have to keep people safe from the extradimensional weirdness magnet the network has become.

That, and all the fantastic little details you can stumble across. There’s a biotech augmentation in Starfinder called an angler’s light that gives you a little angler-fish bioluminescent antenna on your forehead, and it was developed by asteroid miners who needed light but also both hands free for work. In Dishonored there’s a festival that everyone pretends is outside of time so nothing you do during it can be held against you. There’s a god of snuffed candles mentioned in a single line from Heart The City Beneath who has pacifist cannibal priests, and that is literally all the information you get on him.

While things like the history and geography and timeline of a world do also fascinate me, I’m not really here to memorise stuff like that. I’m here to find weird little nuggets of information and worldbuilding and delight in them. Give me funerary customs and weird myths and oddly specific circumstances and baffling little objects and absolutely bonkers cosmological implications. Give me the corpses of dead gods, and aesthetic movements with highly specific backstories, and bureaucratic fuck-ups of titanic scale, and mysterious things that seem to break all other rules of your setting with absolutely no explanation because people in-universe have no fucking clue how they work either. Why are the Children of Atom immune to radiation without ghoulifying? Not a clue, but Confessor Cromwell has been cheerfully standing in that irradiated pond that kills the player character with about 10 minutes of exposure for the last year and he’s still absolutely fine.

I just. I really love lore. I like my settings to have some meat in them, some juicy details to dig into, some inexplicable elements to have fun trying to explain. Particularly that last bit. I feel like a lot of people when building worlds feel like the rules have to be absolute and everything has to have an explanation, but nah. Putting some weird shit in makes everything immediately feel bigger, more real, because we don’t have even half an idea of how our world truly works, there’s always something we just don’t fully understand yet, and you can put that in a fictional world too. Some mysteries, some contradictions, some randomness, some weirdness. There’s a line, obviously, this depends on execution, but a little bit of mystery really does help.

Lore is awesome. And weird lore is even more so. Heh.

[emblemxeno]

Thinking about how Anankos and the Vallites have power of foresight and that Lost in Thoughts was written to contain Anankos' madness and bestial impulses but it also helped Corrin stay alive and succeed in fighting for peace centuries later, the song was for his child as much as it was for him oh wow oh gosh abuh ahshbfbbbmmmm

[soup-thing]

Here’s the thing about wyler tho. Look. Ship whatever you want. But I honestly don’t believe that Wednesday wants someone to match her in darkness or whatever Millar and Gough have been trying to push in interviews. She’s macabre, yes, and drawn to dark things, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she wants the company she keeps to fall in line with that. They couldn’t make that fact more clear with the Agnes storyline. Because Agnes reflected everything Wednesday is: dark, obsessive, hell bent on investigation. But Wednesday didn’t care. That darkness never interested her in the least, she never sincerely wanted her around for anything but personal gain. Sure, you can chalk it down to her distaste of Agnes’s lack of individuality, but even so, she did not respect that darkness, feigned or not on Agnes’s end. Who is she drawn to, though? Eugene, a sweet and sensitive boy who doesn’t deserve the mistreatment he receives from his peers. Enid, who is her opposite in every way but strength. Tyler, even, when she knew him only as the dopey, but well meaning boy at the coffee shop.

Wednesday seeks balance in her relationships. I think that is what actually holds her interest—the push and the pull of someone standing their ground before her, challenging her most self-destructive inclinations. That’s what she likes the most about Enid: she’s the only person to actively push her into evolving. And Wednesday does. She has been, throughout the show, both willingly and begrudgingly, due greatly to Enid’s influence. That’s simply not something that comes out of her relationship with Tyler. She doesn’t want someone to match her darkness, but challenge it.

And sue me, but I personally think it’s a far more compelling dynamic to explore.

[karmiciv]

Incredibly unserious

[bluemoonscape]

To me, this is the thesis of Alien Stage. For each duo and in more ways than one.

For Ivantill, Till might never have loved Ivan romantically, though we do have indications he may have. Either way, he didn’t love Ivan the same way Ivan loved Till. He didn’t obsess over Ivan the way Ivan did Till. He didn’t want to accept Ivan’s sacrifice the way Mizi accepted Sua’s sacrifice, but Ivan forced it on him. Till’s love was different from Ivan’s, but does that really matter? It was love, too.

Interestingly enough, Luka has both Hyuna and Hyunwoo’s hearts. Despite everything, Luka lived. Hyunwoo initiated the fight between them, and Luka reacted violently, which led to Hyunwoo’s death. Luka was shot at, and Hyuna took the bullet, killing her. Luka has lived in spite of everything because of their deaths. Hyuna loved Luka, but her sacrifice was one made partially out of revenge. Luka may have loved Hyunwoo when they were friends as kids, but he still killed him. He may have loved Hyuna, but he still hurt her. But it was love. Nonetheless, it was love.

And, of course, Mizisua. Mizi didn’t love Sua in a way that propelled her to sacrifice herself for Sua. Sua’s love was the kind that made it impossible for Sua to live without Mizi. If you recall their mental strengths, Sua’s is extremely low while Mizi’s is strong. Mizi knew Sua couldn’t handle if Mizi died. Mizi underestimated just how much Sua’s death would ruin her, but she was willing to bear it so Sua didn’t have to bear losing her. She might not have been willing to die for Sua, but she gave Sua a gift, too. She let Sua give Mizi her sacrifice. And that’s love. That was love.

Even Mizi’s monologue about Hyuna is riddled with the weight of this theme.

Mizi is bitter because Hyuna fought for so long for humanity—a wider concept than Mizi can perhaps even comprehend, having lived isolated and then in ANAKT her whole life. She fought for something that seemed to mean so much, and then she threw it all away for Luka, a man who Mizi seems to loathe and whom she thought Hyuna loathed too.

Mizi is angry because Hyuna’s love, Hyuna’s sense of justice, required sacrifice. For humans, and for Luka. Mizi’s lingering bitterness over Sua’s decision transfers to Hyuna, because why? Why does your love demand you to die for it for nothing?

But it wasn’t for nothing.

Because even though Sua sacrificed herself for Mizi, and Hyuna risked her life to save her and then died for Luka only ended in Mizi’s death by her own hand—Luka either dying and being replaced or continuing to be imprisoned by the aliens for entertainment—

Even if Hyuna’s love for humanity and belief in their freedom only led to children in museum displays rather than stages—

It mattered.

Mizi still destroyed the competition that ruined her and Sua. She still cemented Ivan’s sacrifice by saving Till.

Hyuna still got her justice. She stopped running. Even if Luka remains trapped, his life still means something.

They all loved each other and the world differently, but it was love too. And it’s never for nothing.

[pawnyao]

Regrets

[browngurl99]

Mizi and Ivan are truly the unreliable narrator duo of all time

On one hand, we have Mizi claiming "I did not love her enough"

On the other hand, we have Ivan claiming "He did not love me in the slightest"

And both of them were so wrong

[mourning-at-night]

he cut his hair he removed his name he picked out new earrings. he’s collarless. he rides a motorcycle. his rebellion isn’t just something to be commercialized and laughed at and beaten out of him anymore he’s smashing through glass and rescuing kids i’m going to lose it

[thelesbianluthor]

I saw a lot of people hating on Enid and saying they ruined her character but imo it makes perfect sense that she is doing what is doing

This is the girl who was incredibly lonely because she was a werewolf with no pack, she is a social creature who craves connection and she does wish to be appreciated by others and loved.

Of course becoming popular and having the chance to be in a pack and "normal" for their standard, is something she is gonna throw herself into.

Enid wants to enjoy the perks of being liked and finally being a part of a pack and she doesn't want to get herself in trouble again (something she never wanted in s1 in The first place) but she wants to be with Wednesdays and is upset that Wednesdays feels distant.

Her being afraid to confront ajax but not being into him anymore because she feels wanted by a werewolf is the most predictable series of events. She is a teenage werewolf and she is getting something she had been excluded from for years, of course she will be blinded by that.

But clearly being with Wednesday (not necessarily in a romantic lens btw even though I am a wenclair girlie) is something she wants so bad she becomes jealous the second she feels like her position in Wednesday life is threatened by Agnes. She may not want to be involved with trouble and murders but she will not stand by and let Agnes take over because Wednesday is literally someone she cannot imagine being without.

Enid's struggle has always been about desperately wanting to be liked and trying to find her place, the difference is that before she was excluded by her people for being a late bloomer and now she has what she always wanted with the pack and a family that would accept her even if she had never wolfed out with the addams.

And we know that when it matters Enid will always choose Wednesday. They are ride or die this is the theme of the season.

[alg3braicc]

don’t get me wrong! I really like tyler as a character.

I just don’t really understand why everyone is romanticizing what would be a REALLY unhealthy relationship dynamic and calling it “dark romance”.

I constantly hear people say he is perfect for her because “Wednesday likes monsters and violence and blood”. but having interests in macabre subjects is a completely different thing than being with a monster who is constantly trying to kill you and your friends. Morticia and Gomez aren’t trying to constantly kill each other and never have tried. Wednesday and Joel were very understanding towards each other and connected because they were both different. Tyler and Wednesday would not be healthy at all, even with Wednesday being an Addams.

Still, I do really love Tyler’s complex conflicts and backstory. He would make a wonderful villain, but a horrible love interest for Wednesday.

[emeruga]

run to the meadows

[burr-ell]

Regarding a recent anon, one of the things I've found most disturbing about a lot of stan behavior—not exclusive to FE3H's Edelgard, though certainly a common trait among her loudest fans—is the insistence that their faves can do nothing wrong and actually everyone ELSE is the bad guy, regardless of the clear evidence to the contrary.

It's interesting that this behavior occurs in fans of villains, heroes, and anti-heroes alike. I've seen it in fans of Edelgard and Kipperlilly Copperkettle, but I've also seen it in fans of Starfire and Imogen Temult, in fans of Laudna and Daenerys Targaryen. Well-crafted characters, lackluster ones, heroes, villains, doesn't matter. Now to be clear, the most mainstream and widespread forms of this occur in fans of male characters—Solas and Kylo Ren's fandoms are full of it, as are those of Caleb Widogast and Tony Stark. In those cases the fan behavior often crosses from annoying into explicit misogyny and racism, and it is absolutely correct to call that shit out when you see it.

The thing is, though, it's precisely because that phenomenon is so widespread and the poor behavior so blatant that it gets a lot of discussion, and the behavior of the aforementioned female characters' fandoms is either ignored or seen as excusable. It's understandable not to want to criticize how people support female characters, especially when those male characters' fandoms' loudest voices treated them so poorly. But frankly, acting ugly is still acting ugly no matter who is doing it or why, and under the surface of "supporting a female character" often lies ideas rooted in subtler forms of bigotry.

(It's fine, actually, that Edelgard keeps Petra as a political hostage, and actually, it's a shame Cyril can't join up with her and totally help her end slavery (by killing the person who actually freed Cyril from slavery). Starfire was actually always black-coded because she had big poofy hair and was enslaved as a prisoner of war, and how dare Nightwing and Donna Troy have a problem with her killing her enemies. Deanna will be Imogen's new mom and will coddle and coo over her and Laudna, and her sole purpose in the story is to do everything she possibly can to get them together. Stans consistently refer to their faves as "girls" who never had a choice in anything, unless it was unambiguously heroic, and no matter how cute and soft-looking they look in canon, the fanart will sand them down more. The use of the term "girlfail" has gotten popular in these corners recently, and fans who use it get very defensive when you point out how gross that is when we have a bunch of Christian nationalists in the White House.)

In just about any given fandom, there exists a subsection of fans who will, in defense of their problematic faves, adhere to the Narcissist's Prayer:

That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did... You deserved it.

I'm not calling any of these fans or the characters narcissists; on top of it being irresponsible, I simply have no interest in doing so. (You don't need a clinical condition to be a tedious asshole.) But let's call it for what it is: there are very loud and vocal fans of female characters who want to project onto someone whom they believe is simultaneously a super powerful badass and blameless in everything they do, and they will inflict their nastiest high school bully fantasies onto anyone who pushes back, and will insist that they should be allowed to do this in the name of Defending Girls. I Mean Women.

Of course that's not on the same level as blatant bigoted hatred—but does it have to be before we can agree that it sucks?

[emblemxeno]

The next figure is HILDA?! Not even Claude?! if she can get a figure anyone can where is Azura? Robin? Xander? Ryoma? Alfred? Ivy? or how about some games that haven't gotten any attention yet like wtf stop with the 3H or at LEAST finish the house leaders? Did they slip Claude because of his skin color because that's REALLY gross

I'm gonna use this ask as an opportunity to do a little Hilda bashing, hope you don't mind lol.

Her entire character premise is fun and entertaining on the surface (I loved that one fancam edit of her with Beef FloMix playing in the back for example), but once you learn about Almyra and the shit that House Goneril does?

Yeah no. There's no way that she hasn't developed her delegating personality partially because her family keeps slaves. And ditto to her rat bastard brother, whose renown and fame could easily help sway things to humanize the Almyrans more but because the writers didn't give a fuck about Holst in 3H, all we get from him is mushroom allergies, doting on Hilda, being a hardass about Balthus' debts, and single minded ignorance and bigotry about Almyrans. With this exchange as well:

"So thoughtful and tolerant" yeah except he never thought about brokering peace with Almyrans until Claude had to set it up offscreen. Because why write the Almyrans as human beings with differing cultures when we can just write them as warmongerers who love chaos instead? And we can highlight how Cyril is great because he's not like the rest! /s

If I have to compliment anything about Hilda, the best part about her is her voice. Salli Saffioti has one of the most unique and expressive voices I've ever heard when she plays Hilda, and it's a joy to hear IMO.

But I really, really just do not like House Goneril and Hilda by extension. And you're right, it's complete bullshit that Edelgard and Dimitri can get figures, but Claude doesn't get one right after. This persistent treatment of him as this afterthought by both his creators and supposed fans of his home game is just plain gross.

And somehow, she still ranks highly year after year in CYL. I just can't wrap my head around it personally.

[emblemxeno]

Not to mention Hubert was close to the area where you can find the area where Flayn is taken. It's like he's guarding the area and then when Byleth and co find out where she is, he informs Edel so that she could dispatch slither troops and the Death Knight. Sidenote: but that conversation with Aurendal/Thales reminds me of a really bad faith take where some want to argue that Thales frames his orders as requests just because they want to absolve Edel of whatever agency of moral dubiousness she has.

Yep! I took his position as an indicator that he's involved in some way.

And you're so on the money with the pretzel twisting people do with their minds on Edelgard's moral character. Like, the fact that she employs Jeritza in the way she does at all should've already been an indicator. What's more, when talking to Byleth, she pretty much lays out how she considers the loss of Miklan's talent and skills to be more pressing of a matter than his morals or wrongdoings.

But that's just the thing. You can be skilled in any area, but you're not entitled to a position simply because of that, especially when your conduct and character do not meet standards. Edelgard thinks otherwise, and believes it's more relevant to put people to use rather than punishing them for crimes they've committed.