Comments | andrewducker: Interesting Links for 19-08-2016

andrewducker

Interesting Links for 19-08-2016

Aug 19, 2016 12:00

Plans for 2,000 homes at Edinburgh Marina receive full approval (tags: edinburgh housing construction trams ) All Olympic 100m winners compared in one race (tags: visualisation race olympics history ) US ready to 'hand over' the internet's naming system (tags: internet names usa ) Uber and Volvo partner up, robot ride-sharing starts this summer ( Read more... )

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lilchiva August 19 2016, 13:37:44 UTC

Your Romantic Fantasy thread is the most satifying tumblr read ever. If you know of where I can read more informative exchanges like that, I'd love to have them pointed out to me. Anyway, I had no idea that these genres were as linked as they are. And, your friend is spot on about the LGBT stuff. But my favorite is " Evangelion was a groundbreaking grimdark apocalyptic disaster as notorious as it still is famous, and its audience was pretty well split in every way imaginable, including on whether they hated it or not." This was exaclty the case among my local nerds.

For everyone who forgot about this classic

fub August 19 2016, 14:33:38 UTC

I also enjoyed that piece about Romantic Fantasy. I don't think I ever read anything in the genre. There is an RPG specifically set in a Romantic Fantasy setting, Blue Rose. There was a successful Kickstarter last year to update it from a D20 to the AGE system. There's an art preview in the updates there.
I might get the PDF out of pure curiosity.

lilchiva August 19 2016, 14:52:12 UTC

In the 90's it was basically the only place for "gay wizards". The problem, of course, is that it was mostly striaght women writing this. So, there were no lesbians. And, the hot gay sex was really quite tame, when compared to actual hot gay sex.

Ya know, it was like this:

( ... )

fub August 19 2016, 18:06:24 UTC

Oh wow, that cover! Emo guy hugging a white horse with huge eyelashes...
Take a look at the art preview for the new Blue Rose edition to see stuff that rivals that cover.

Looking at the story of the demise of the genre, it seems like it wasn't that good but it scratched particular itches. And then when media came along that also catered to those tastes, it sort of evaporated as it lost it's audience.
But I do think that the themes are not dead -- not by a long shot. If you look at Bioware games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, there's lots of emotion and romance (and yes, gay sex if you want it), but the world themes are a bit more grim...

lilchiva August 19 2016, 18:48:05 UTC

My goodness. Yes, I am replaying the Mass Effect series in my 'video game allotment" as we speak. This is that; yes. I think you have just answered the "why" of Bioware's enduring appeal ( ... )

fub August 19 2016, 19:50:23 UTC

The Witcher doesn't really let you customize your character -- there's a lot of 'male gaze' in there too. The fanbase for Bioware games is both male and female, but the fanbase for The Witcher is predominantly male, from what I understand. But it does have consequences to the choices you make as a player, so it has that in common with the Bioware games.

I am reading through the Dragon Age RPG rulebook, which also uses the AGE system, but I haven't played it. So I'm not sure how it holds up in action. Surely D20 is the big player in RPGs, what with Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons. You could play nothing other than a D20 system and not get bored -- which is in fact what a lot of RPG players do. I've run D&D 5th edition games, and while I don't actively dislike the system, it's merely okayish. But nothing is going to displace D20 as the dominant player, and certainly not AGE because it's too niche.

lilchiva August 20 2016, 01:45:43 UTC

Re: Witcher. I think most RPGs are a bit male gazy. Generally, that's only an issue when it goes to outright mysogny. ie your mission is "beat a hooker". But, that might be why I get bored with them and find most of the stories sophmoric. I thought the Witcher was excellent. But, I haven't finished it. I haven't finished Sleeping Dogs either. I like Rockstar games but the last one I finished was Bully. Bully came out a looong time ago. I haven't finished a GTA since GTA III. But, I have messed around in them ( ... )

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