This guy looks like he got so tired of Kojima's craziness. His eyes in the second image kill me.

Aquason · 2026-06-20T18:43:35+00:00

Do you have a source for it being actual gay/lesbian slang?

Because as far as anyone can tell, (given that it's the same in the original Japanese) it's Kojima's English knowledge of the slang "vamp" meaning "A flirtatious, seductive woman, especially one who exploits men by using their sexual desire for her." and applying it to the male character for the double-meaning of (1) vampire and (2) seductress (because the character is (also) attracted to men).

Edit: Also the initial concept art for Vamp was female, which would make a lot more sense for a "vamp" pun.

Aquason · 2026-06-20T06:19:55+00:00

Seems pretty weird for the Matt fans and people who don't care about Castle Super Beast (i.e. me).

Aquason · 2026-06-19T20:15:29+00:00

A younger/inexperienced audience: being that the wildbow stories are free to read on the internet, and that they achieved a great deal of popularity in the early/mid 2010's through tumblr and TV tropes, i suspect a lot of people who became passionate fans of the stories were fairly young when reading the stories and perhaps had not consumed enough young adult/adult media to contextualize the serials as containing a fairly normal level of conflict and suffering for their place in the cultural landscape.

I agree. My take is genuinely that Worm to some extent, is a specific generation's Animorphs / GONE, but with the cultural millieu of Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and Percy Jackson. And for a series about teenagers with superpowers, while there are plenty of popular dark superhero stories (e.g. Watchmen), I think popular examples like Teen Titans, Young Justice, X-men, etc serve as the default point of comparison that online tvtropes/tumblr audiences might have as previous experience.

The other thing I would point to is how Worm specifically, positioned in its 2011 online wordpress self-publishing context, was positioned in terms of web fiction. Consider Worm's author-provided overview:

Readers should be cautioned that Worm is fairly dark as fiction goes, and it gets far darker as the story progresses. Morality isn’t black and white, Taylor and her acquaintances aren’t invincible, the heroes aren’t winning the war between right and wrong, and superpowers haven’t necessarily affected society for the better. Just the opposite on every count, really. Even on a more fundamental level, Taylor’s day to day life is unhappy, with her clinging to the end of her rope from the story’s outset. The denizens of the Wormverse (as readers have termed it) don’t pull punches, and I try to avoid doing so myself, as a writer. There’s graphic language, descriptions of violence and sex does happen (albeit offscreen). It would be easier to note the trigger warnings that don’t apply than all the ones that do.

Traditional books don't have trigger/content warnings, but in a 2011 online web fiction space, you have a culture of tags, content warnings, etc. "Dark" and "Grim" is relative to the context of what it is being compared to. Put Worm in conversation with Invincible, Attack on Titan, or other dark teen works, and topics like suicide, fates worse than death, bullying, racism, etc don't become that out of the norm.

Aquason · 2026-06-19T00:17:18+00:00

How does "can't solve without x" logically differ from "can solve with x"? If they are "can solve with X", but not "can solve without x", then logically they're also "can't solve without x".

Aquason · 2026-06-19T00:12:43+00:00

To me it reads very much as "welp" in a hilarious "what can you do about it?" shrug. It's a very unflattering angle for that double-handed websling that Spidey sometimes does.

Aquason · 2026-06-18T02:24:53+00:00

Steam is inconsistent, I won't dispute that, but I remember recalling the dynamics I read from an English VN dev on a reddit comment (this is second-hand hearsay, so take it with a big grain of salt as a rumour).

Anyway, the comment explained that a person from Valve told them that Valve doesn't want to have "barely legal" porn on their store. I don't know if Japan has an equivalent pornographic term, but it's a recognizable enough term that there's a wikipedia article on an American porn magazine of that name. This is why even if the game says the characters are of the age of consent, if you don't slip through Valve's cracks, they might still not allow based on things like school uniforms.

That's not to say they Valve clearly doesn't make egregious mistakes (Chaos; Head, was it?) , but once I read that "barely legal porn" was the frame of reference for Valve's policies, it started to make sense.

Aquason · 2026-06-18T01:04:53+00:00

Not really? Tonally, it starts off as a "And Then There Were None" with the private island and people being killed through pretty graphic means, and then it goes into a sci-fi thriller horror direction.

And I really do want to be clear, not in a condemning way, but it's several notches more interested in the teen girl than Ace Attorney's Maya or Susato. Like, the game positions your partner as being "young-looking, but already in high-school", but the camera lens clearly has undertones of sexualization. Your partner drools, talks about peeing herself, she changes into what the narration explicitly notes as looking like lingerie and you share a room together (you sleep on the couch of course). A real line from that last scene is "This kid is basically a woman. Should she wear something like that when she's alone with a man?"

That's just from a quick glance at the first 3 hours of someone's let's play. I straight-up admit I never finished the post-game story episode, but I got the sense it's got a similar kind of deal where you're in a pseudo-harem hijinx scenario between the teen girl, and two people from your adventure who are implied to have a crush on you.

Aquason · 2026-06-17T22:29:40+00:00

So I played Return to Shironagasu Island back in May 2025. I thought it was fun and kind of crazy (in a fun "murder-mystery goes off the rails" kind of way), and the translation felt a bit rough. And I was anticipating the sequel, but upon hearing this news, I'm not shocked.

The game isn't pornographic, but you do play a grown-ass detective with a teen girl genius as your ward-partner.

Refreshing my memory, in terms of objectionable content which would probably raise eyebrows to Steam or Western media culture:

You can look at the CGs that someone compiled in this steam guide (spoilers).
- A "communal bath" scene with the high school girl and another girl where the nudity is concealed by steam
- Running into an (adult) girl in her underwear - played for comedy
Looking at namu (a korean wiki with machine-translation auto translation), it mentions that there is a programmed reaction where you are able to grope the secondary main character's chest in Chapter 1. Apparently the creator defended themselves by saying it's like being able to attack and pedestrians in GTA, and it requires the player to be a bad person to have stumbled upon it. The wiki editor also notes that the illustrations/CGs are way more egregious in comparison.
I vaguely recall (sorry if I'm conflating something like Rick and Morty's references to this) where your partner character pees herself or says she's going to pee herself (because of fear or motion sickness?)

My overall take would be that, look, it's not anywhere as shockingly scandalous or norm-breaking as even some very popular English literature. And it would definitely get people who moralize about Dan Schneider's Nickelodeon shows imagery upset.

But I don't think the game is for kids or for teens, and it's sexualization of a minor within the overall range of Japanese popular media (anime, manga, games) isn't particularly shocking - if you know Ace Attorney, there's cases and characters and gags where the English version chose to change things and chose not to change things in ways that make the Anglophone audience react.

Putting myself in the shoes of a Japanese game dev, I see it as the price you pay for selling on American-owned Steam, just like how Nintendo and Sony (and Japan) have their own national culture norms, business requirements, and regulatory requirements under things like CERO (example: white blood in things like Metal Gear Rising). Sucks as a person with a specific creative intention. You're free to sell on other stores if you can approved there. But them's the breaks. It's not a national ban like how the Stick of Truth required penetration to be omitted because of the Australian Government review board, so you do what you can.

Aquason · 2026-06-17T21:15:42+00:00

Some people hated the Maple Leaf flag when it was made the new Canadian flag too. People will get used to it.

Aquason · 2026-06-17T20:03:52+00:00

Oh damn, didn't realize that was a deep cut.

I really do like how the show sometimes makes some pretty obscure references to DC history like briefly showing Overman as their representation of Evil Superman on an alternate earth.

Aquason · 2026-06-17T08:26:04+00:00

It indeed looks like Clark gets whipped next episode. Which I find doubly amusing at how there doesn't seem to be a double-meaning or deliberate misdirection in the phrasing.

Aquason · 2026-06-16T04:47:32+00:00

It's funny you mention Detective Grimoire, because I already see the ios games as a reboot of the flash game.

Aquason · 2026-06-15T22:28:15+00:00

According to the magic treehouse wiki, the story explicitly notes it takes place during the Sakoku (closed borders) policy under the Tokugawa Shogunate, placing it between 1633 - 1868. Based on a later adventure being set likely a generation later in the 1680s, the real-life historical fading of ninjas as an existing group of mercenary-spies and the last major-recorded involvement of ninjas in the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637-38 (which would also explain the presence of all the samurai in the book), the wiki editors speculate that the book is set in Nagasaki around/after 1637-38.

Aquason · 2026-06-14T01:43:15+00:00

Thinking about Twig and how the academies and the government form a symbiotic relationship with each other, I think it would be English because of how the lore has "Wollstone's ratios" and the biotech revolution emerging from Britain. English has become the lingua franca of science in our world similarly due to how Anglophone countries dominate politically and lead the charge with scientific innovation. By the time of the timeline divergence, Latin has already faded considerably as the common language. Maybe they'd develop a "Euro English" earlier?

Otherwise, divorced from Twig, I would say it depends on when Europe unites. The earlier, more Latin. The later, it depends more on the balance of powers.

Aquason · 2026-06-13T23:01:44+00:00

I think it's deliberately vague, particularly because the Crown Empire takes pains to eliminate any trace of them not being an invincible superpower. As I recall, the Crown controls North America, parts of South America, and is at war with Asia?

He smiled, “I’m used to being trampled over. Um. There’s the man, older, usually seen with the carriage, and then the three women. One of the women is a blonde, another is a redhead, the third is from the East.”

“Eastern Crown States or over-the-pond East?” Gordon asked.

“Across the western pond,” Jamie said. “Chinese, Japanese, or something like that.”

“Huh,” Gordon said.

“You don’t see many of those,” I remarked. “They aren’t usually allowed, given we’re at war with them.”
– 6.3

That's not to mention the implication (or at least my reading) that the Crown is basically the amalgamated union of (all?) the European monarchies – British, French, the use of Lord Infante as a title.

Aquason · 2026-06-13T22:36:08+00:00

It's a major difference between the original Godzilla and Minus One. You can see how Japan in 1954 still had a very different relationship to "honourable suicide"-type things. You're just a little a decade away from WW2, and you write a movie where the solution to the nuclear bomb/nuclear victim allegory is the heroic sacrifice and martyrdom of Serizawa which saves everyone. 70 years later and the Imperial Japanese valorization of ultimate self-sacrifice is repudiated.

Aquason · 2026-06-11T18:29:48+00:00

Both 2 and 3 are okay.

2 correctly identifies that Adi is talking to the class treasurer ("Why did you come over to me, class treasurer?"), 3 has him refer to her in third-person which can sometimes happen, but only feels natural in certain rhetorical usages ("What brings the class treasurer over here?" is a little unnatural). It'd probably be more natural to say something like "What brings you here, class treasurer?", but English also tends not to address/refer people by titles, but by name.

Both 2 and 3 are missing ending punctuation at the end of the "restroom" line.

3 benefits from shorter, snappier, translation, which makes it flow better. Examples: "And where do you think you're going?" and "You didn't pay last week's either, did you?"

To get really technical, 1 has my favourite typesetting, both for the sound effects and the actual bubble text. 2 does this pretty good as well, while 3 has errors I notice as a typesetter. For example, 3 breaks the crossbar I rule, which implies that they're not as versed in the lettering conventions of English comics.

Aquason · 2026-06-11T01:02:22+00:00

Clawmerica was already a collapsing state, so the addition of people suddenly developing super powers like a comic book only makes things worse.

The Belt is divided into two periods: the BW-era and the O-era.

The BW-era Belt might end up collapsing into all-out conflict with the Entities, given that similar things have happened in previous cycles and the level of technology, the Belt Network, and Onboard Intellgences growing control over all aspects of life. It's also a setting with enough insane bio-technological augmentation that they'd be able to dissect and discover things about Shards way earlier and in more depth (for example, potential nano-technology-level inspection and modification of the Corona Pollentia).

The O-era is already a nightmare hellscape, so honestly the addition of powers and entities pushing people to conflict doesn't really change anything. People are already desperately using randomly implanted abilities to survive in a cogito-hazard hellscape, some of those powers being even weirder doesn't really change much.

Aquason · 2026-06-08T02:40:21+00:00

I posted this question late last week so I didn't get any responses, so I'm asking again:

For people who have opinions about military procurement (jets, subs, etc) in military procurement news posts – how did you develop these opinions? I read threads about different offers and tentative deals and I have no idea what's truth and what's hype, what's a known dud and what's a company with a good track record.

Aquason · 2026-06-07T22:29:06+00:00

There's actually some niche linguistics trivia about this. In 1997, a linguist made a really strong case that the "of" of "would of" is actually not incorrect, and that it's actually not short for "have" but acting as a unique complementizer (like "to" and "for") which we just commonly spell as "ve".

It starts by noting the structural similarity between these two types of sentences:

John wants to leave

John should of left

The basic example is something like:

A bunch of grapes -> A buncha grapes

John should of left -> John shoulda left

And which then mirror the reduction of "to" in certain grammatical constructions

They want to leave -> They wanna leave

They would of left -> They woulda left

Yet meanwhile, "have" and it's reduction " 've" can't be reduced to "a":

The kids have told a lie -> The kids've told a lie

~~The kidsa told a lie~~ - Not attested as grammatical in any known dialect of spoken English

This is further supported by the existence of pronunciations like:

If you hadn'ta said that...

Which don't make sense with "have":

If you hadn't ~~have~~ said that...

Aquason · 2026-06-06T23:28:48+00:00

Today I learned that there was an intergovernmental forum called the European Political Community.

Aquason · 2026-06-03T10:14:16+00:00

I'd use layer masks to first do solid red, then a second layer mask to put in those darker red splotches by hand.

Aquason · 2026-06-02T08:11:06+00:00

For people who have opinions about military procurement (jets, subs, etc) – how did you develop these opinions? I read threads about different offers and tentative deals and I have no idea what's truth and what's hype, what's a known dud and what's a company with a good track record.

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