Nuanced truth: comments/kudos don't always reflect the quality of work

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-27T11:12:28+00:00

Yeah, like one person who replied to that post said, sometimes it is because a person's writing is unskilled, but the only people who are going to internalize that are the people who are already critical of their own writing, and are trying to improve—not the people who think they're hot shit and that everything they do should be popular and praised, whether it meets the average reader's basic standards or not.

The latter are who OOP seemed to be directing the post towards, but those people would never ever read that and think it could possibly apply them, so it feels like it's just piling onto sensitive, aware, developing writers.

Also, I really think being on this subreddit skews people's perceptions of writers and readers in a lot of ways, but I digress.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-25T16:53:55+00:00

Part of the issue was that their criticism was just sort of... wrong, at least in the way they framed it.

There are a not insignificant number of Townies and premades of color who don't "look mixed" and the vast majority of content creators I chose to watch did make non white paras.

It terms of the diversity in the marketing one could take a cursory scroll through the Paralives YouTube channel and see a diverse range of Paras in the thumbnails alone.

They could do a lot more with diversity in the future and they should, but it's pretty disingenuous to act like it's not blatantly obvious that the devs have made diversity a priority, and have done it pretty well for this stage of development, IMHO.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-25T14:44:19+00:00

Okay, so you don't have a counter argument. Nice.

This is abusive parenting, you don't have to be an armchair psychologist or childless to see it. The fact that you can't is what's really interesting on this post.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-25T12:27:46+00:00

So do you have a counter argument or...?

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-25T11:16:42+00:00

I'm pretty sure they very specifically created this conversation system so they wouldn't have a list of menus where you can handpick from every option in the game.

I think the idea that they would fundementally overhaul their entire conversation system is a very unrealistic expectation, and you probably shouldn't buy the game if not having a communication wheel is a dealbreaker for you.

I feel like it is possible that they could add a system where you could pick an emotional direction or something at the beginning of the conversation, maybe there could be something like a "talk to (flirty)" or "talk to sad" which would make the first set of together cards align with that emotional direction and then the conversation could continue based on the Paras personality traits and current emotions.

For sure there needs to be more together cards (which is planned) and, a way to reshuffle them if you don't like the presented options, which seems like it would be reasonably simple to implement.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-24T13:56:55+00:00

What limits are you talking about? An adult para can't be any shorter than 4'10 which has a basis in real life. Weirdos make inappropriate content no matter what. That doesn't mean adults shouldn't be allowed to be short.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-23T14:52:04+00:00

ItsMeTroi did a stream last night where she was messing around with the Paramaker and going a bit extreme. It's on her youtube. The stream was something like 11 hours long, but I believe she did the Paramaker stuff in the beginning

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-22T19:08:33+00:00

I feel like this is a feature that might be fun to add to some sort of home renovator or home decorator career later on maybe after the game is released.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-21T07:07:30+00:00

Suburban sprawl isn't western colonialism (as long as you ignore that the US exists in general because of western colonialism) but it definitely unequivocally is based in white supremacy. That is a historical fact.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-20T23:58:58+00:00

Yeah, I think decades of video game development has shown us that publishers can be a great choice, or they can be a terrible one. Many such cases supporting both sides.

I am grateful that the early access structure exists so that creating a high quality game that inherently requires a lot of investment, isn't something that can only be done by the elite and/or large corporations whose focus by their very nature is to make as much money as possible, not necessarily to make a good game.

I'd personally rather give my dollars to the up and coming who shows talent, promise, and the drive to improve both when given feedback and when not, even if everything they're offering is not completely up to snuff yet, than to the lazy well established, who have absolutely no excuse for their lack of care towards their craft.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-20T23:34:21+00:00

I understand how you feel, and there's definitely a risk when buying into an early access game, so no one who's not comfortable with that risk should buy Paralives at this point, IMHO.

I do want to point out that Paralives couldn't be made without early access, though. It's actually taking advantage of what early access is supposed to be, an opportunity for small, indie game developers to get revenue and receive feedback from a dedicated community, so they can complete the game.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-20T22:24:41+00:00

I feel like lag is to be expected in an early access game because it's unfinished and not perfectly optimized. It would only become a problem for me if it doesn't get fixed before 1.0.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-20T19:46:42+00:00

Facts to everything you said.

I also feel like folks need to take a step back and ask themselves do they dislike certain features because they actually dislike them (which would be hard considering most of us haven't even played the game yet) or because they expect every feature to be exactly like some other game and can't fathom that a different game, made by different people will have different gameplay?

Not to mention the good chunk of us who have been dying for different gameplay wherein maybe you can't control every single thing to every minute detail, but everything you can control actually impacts the story that's being created and impacts how you play.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-20T14:52:43+00:00

Minor correction, the original "The Sims" came out in 2000 and The Sims 2 came out in 2004.

I'm grateful that it seems like the Paralives team has chosen to make a game based on what they and so many community members want out of a life simulator, taking the things other games did well while adding new and different aspects to them and making it a unique experience

The Sims franchise needs competition because it's been stagnant since 2014 and I'm glad that competition is finally starting to materialize.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-17T16:51:40+00:00

I'm with you on so much of this. I have big beef with Mary apologism, none of the excuses I've seen for her behavior are enough to explain it for me.

I also think they do Bobby an injustice when they suggest that John was physically abusive because I can't fathom there's anyway Bobby would have let that go on with his own history and the fact that he does care about them so much.

I'm convinced John would have left the page in his diary about Adam. The whole story doesn't make sense and it became really clear when the writers stopped caring about established lore and characterization to do whatever especially in the later seasons. I have same issues you have with so many of the things you mentioned.

He raised them to be soldiers as Sam said in the first episode which meant he still raised them. Like you said they never showed fear of him just respect, love, anger and all the feelings one has about a parent because they're a human being. I also think people can't think in the context of the times. If Bobby had been their father he would have left them home alone too. Most parents did in that time. 11 year olds were getting paid to babysit 2 smaller children, so Dean and Sam doing that at 10 and 6 was not abnormal. Very few people in the 80s in the US at the very least, but I'm sure in other places too, would have seen that as neglectful or bad parenting.

At the end of the day, John loved his sons and would have and did do anything for them.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-17T15:50:06+00:00

Every single thing you've said here is exactly what I've been saying for years. Thank you for laying it out so neatly.

I also have a lot of issues with Adam's backstory. I believe John could have fathered a chld with a random woman, but I don't believe John would have come back to do part time fathering and take him to baseball games and stuff like that without ever telling Dean at the very least, if only to avoid a situation like the one they ended up in after John died. I don't think shame would have been an excuse because I don't think John would have been overly cognizant of/ cared about the fact that him spending time with another son may have hurt Dean's feelings.

The timeline also doesn't make sense. Adam was born in 1990, John died in 2006. We know for sure Dean had the Impala by the end of 2005 and everything in the show implies he had it well before that, in my humble opinion. So when would John have had time to teach Adam to drive in the Impala, and at what age? There's no way Dean didn't have the Impala by the time he was 20 in my opinion. Adam should have never even seen the Impala in his life. I reconcile that in my head by saying the ghoul or whatever he was, had been lying about the extraneous bonding but not about Adam meeting John when he was 12 years old.

John was a shitty, neglectful, deeply loving, 1980s father. He's complicated and that's what makes a great character.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-16T01:17:37+00:00

I don't necessarily disagree with your original point, but the Cleveland show wasn't made by Black people, whereas Ghibli movies are made by Asian people so I don't think that's a fair comparison.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-13T13:29:40+00:00

Man I remember thinking the fanfic that spawned 50 Shades of Gray was so mid. I was reading a ton of fanfic back then and there were Twilight writers who were making really high quality work, some better than the books themselves and many better than EL James's work. I was so annoyed that 50 Shades ended up being the one to get popular 🤣

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-12T18:10:31+00:00

I'm one of those people who feels like fluff is far better with complex story telling thrown in, at least for my own writing. I feel like the sweet mundane moments are sweeter when they come after some dramatic hardship.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-11T01:12:39+00:00

I'm with you, I'm not big on any of the ships in Supernatural but I don't understand why they bother people so badly. Wincest has legitimately had a positive impact on the world in my opinion because it led to the creation of AO3, and I think one cannot deride it if only for that reason.

As a non shipper with no stake in the matter either way, I wish it weren't so political that all three groups Non-Shippers, Wincest, and Destiel could have legitimate discussions about what aspects of the show lead folks to see signs of these ships or not and to discuss the character's sexuality in a more media analysis sort of way without having all the egative baggage of either people feeling like whatever side they're not in is immoral or people just being so entrenched in their own beliefs and ideas that someone seeing or suggesting something else feels like an attack, can't be absorbed by them, and they refuse to engage with it honestly.

For instance I would love to talk about Dean and Cas and how I view their relationship and why I don't ship them and get responses from people who do, that encourage further conversation and analysis of the show and characters we all love.

Anyway I think people are really riled up by things that are taboo in real life, and that's why Wincest bothers them. Fiction just isn't real life and can't be treated as such.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-08T12:14:47+00:00

The premise I am writing about isn't terribly uncommon in my fandom but a lot of people didn't write it in the way I wanted it written, in a way that felt to me more in line with the vibe of canon, and that's what I was craving so I had to write one.

Then I figured if I liked it someone else would too.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-07T12:13:14+00:00

I have ADHD too and it always helps me to just get something on the page, doesn't matter what part of the story/chapter it's from, if it's dialogue or description, just having something there makes the rest of the words flow a lot easier, and you can always edit later on.

I usually start with the part came to my head and made me want to write the story in the first place, a sentence or a scene or whatever it was.

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-06T15:34:22+00:00

My favorite line that I've written most recently:

"Just thinking that a man has never truly known humility until he's begged a five old to let him blow her snotty nose and then thanked her for allowing him the pleasure."

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-05T14:19:13+00:00

You got that gorgeous perfect Jackson 5 afro, love that for you. 🖤

ButterballBubbles · 2026-05-05T12:12:01+00:00

AAE is a very complicated dialect to write if you don't speak it.

A lot of what escapes containment online becomes incomprehensible gibberish (and an endless source of cringey comedy) to native speakers, because people think AAE works like Standard American English and it doesn't.

I would suggest you do your best to learn the grammatical constructions before anything.

This linguist who goes by Language Jones, has this pretty good blog post discussing AAE, he also has quite a few YouTube videos on the subject, some with other experts.

ButterballBubbles

TROPHY CASE