POV storytelling and why you can't remake 2D Megaten games into 3D
Recently I was in a chatroom with Japanese fans and one of them commented of a rumor that it's interesting to think about:
There's a rule in Atlus games that "if the protagonist uses a computer, demons are 2D, but if the protagonist sees them with their own eyes, they're 3D".
This would be the logic behind the difference of visual cues across titles where some protagonists see demons through a screen while others are on the same plane as them, which also happens in other subseries. ⬇️
Take Devil Summoner, where the early protagonists make use of the latest technology while Raidou represents a summoner in the Taisho Era (1910~1920s)...
Or the progression where SMT:If humbly introduces the concept of "guardians" with small changes from the mainline system at first and then diverges more concretly into what we know now as Persona, in which they're considered 'abstract masks' that humans wear and clash against internally.
After releasing a lot of games on PS2 where the protagonists didn't use COMPs (and consequentially alienating old fans), they revived the Demon Summoning Program in the DS and 3DS games.
Strange Journey was particularly immersive about it, where you start unable to see demons at first, but this gradually changes as the Demon Summoning program is installed and you manually gain data of demons from each encounter.
This is inherited in SMT4; in the overworld Flynn and Nanashi are both in 3D but cannot discern what they're up against until they're looking at them through a screen.
Of course, exceptions can also be incorporated. When even normal humans who don't use a COMP can see something in 3D, that means the thing in question is being visible on purpose.
Take Navarre, Shesha and a certain entity of 4 letters......
In SMTV, the main character doesn't use a COMP for similar reasons as Demifiend, but they still went as far as adding the detail that the normal people around him still require one to see what they're dealing with.
Isn't it fascinating to think that'd mean the researchers are looking at Nahobino from a 2D POV similar to many of our COMP-wearing main characters?
So I rest my case that
1) comparing 2D and 3D (similar to first person POV to other POVs) is like comparing apples and oranges, they're methods of narrative with different purposes;
2) dual screens are able to give an incredibly unique immersive experience to a setting that relies on technology for survival in a chaotic environment filled with magic and supernatural phenomena in which the controlling character doesn't have knowledge of.
apparently amazon's AI catastrophically fucked up and equated bytes with gigabytes so started billing aws customers literally billions of dollars for their data usage
By the way it's like. Really fucked how society's thoughts on epilepsy is just "get over it." Seizures can cause permanent brain damage. Seizures can kill people. Seizures hurt like hell. Allow me to reiterate that seizures can kill people. And you're just gonna casually put flashing lights, a common trigger for seizures in your advertisement, in your animation meme, in your edit, on your billboards, without even thinking about putting a simple disclaimer? That's unbelievable. Your little anime edit could deadass cost a life and you're not gonna put a warning because it's "inconvenient" or "people like that shouldn't be on the internet" (ableist) (the problem exists outside the internet also). Or you'll give insufficient ones like putting it in the captions or only giving like one second before the flashing lights appear, meaning that the trigger's already in motion before anyone who needs the warning can read it and save themselves from literal physical danger.
We need to start commenting under other people's posts about how to properly warn for flashing lights and eyestrain. We need to be emailing and calling companies about their possibly triggering advertisements that could induce seizures. We need to stop tolerating ableism and start speaking up for the more vulnerable.
Also, stop putting epilepsy warnings. That's like saying "warning: schizophrenia" on a post including unreality or "warning: dyslexia" on a post with a typing quirk. First off, the disability mentioned isn't the only group of people that this could trigger. Second, it doesn't truly get the message across and instead makes it worse for those with the disability-- scrolling through the epilepsy tag on Tumblr should get you to view the content of other epileptic people, but no, you just get a bunch of flashing lights and eyestrain, even though you could instead tag for, oh I dunno, flashing lights and eyestrain.
Anyways this Disability Pride, and for every month that comes after, think about epileptic people and others who are triggered by flashing lights/eyestrain. Happy pride to those who experience seizures too frequently due to the unaccommodating and ableist societies we live in!
makes me so sad when my friends refuse to pirate things and insist on paying for a streaming service EVEN when i offer to do it for them or teach them. like pleaseeee i have a vpn i have a plex server i can get you whatever you want. don't buy disney+ i can be your little poob i have it for you.
Goodmorning to the Anthropic Claude AI training scraper that suddenly decided to request 660 thousand pages (exactly the number I had remaining on the starter plan) and brought Pikiwedia down.
Sudden switch from diverse user agents like chrome, safari, messenger preview to Just Claudebot. I'm not even mad though, this is maybe the funniest thing possible, because I've inadvertently poisoned their training data with thousands of fucked up articles with normal urls.
Pikiwedia perseveres, back up with a better robots.txt. I hope Anthropic has a gery vood time with Pikiwedia's data :))
germansingergirl
pixelskylines
romaincrisis
areudirty
origamiaround
gracieabrams
vaporwave
kianamaiart
