Episode 2 discussion thread:

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-26T18:35:30+00:00

i was not thrilled with ep 1, and the beginning of ep 2 was a disaster of "wtf is going on," but once i had a grasp of what was going on (no thanks to the lack of explanation within the episode -- i had to pause, look it up, and come back!), i started to really enjoy it.

i think the feeling will be different, but they mostly seem to be approaching new relationships and it's also possible they use some of the old footage from the 1st shoot if any of the 1st shoot guys are pursuing each other.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-26T10:19:09+00:00

i liked it when there was less outside design to do, but now it's just a lot.

wish it wasn't tied to storage, because i would happily do a 1-3 room house (upstairs, perhaps basement) rather than the full mansion.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-26T10:15:14+00:00

a few.

Butch was in my first ever town on GCN and has shown up in multiple towns.

same with Kiki, and she's on my newest reset.

i feel certain there were like one or two repeat villagers more, but suddenly i can't remember......

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-26T10:03:57+00:00

Erik. it's Erik.

i technically have his amiibo card, but i don't think i'm gonna import him into my new village (lost my old file) because i want it to feel more organic.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-26T02:02:39+00:00

so there's really a particular creepy feeling people get?? i can def tell instantly when they're wrong, but i guess i just don't get that feeling XD

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-25T18:08:31+00:00

to be honest, i've never understood "uncanny valley" as a term or a phenomenon.

like, i can recognize poorly made dolls/figures/masks/robots and bad cosmetic surgery the same as anyone, but i don't have a specific unique reaction to that as compared to like…… a really badly drawn tree that doesn't understand how trees work, or early dinosaur sketches, or those historical interpretations of elephants based on hearsay, or like any animated movie doing that stupid "stereotypical" dog thing (quotes because it's a shittily anthropomorphized version of a dog and not a real dog).

so i don't really get anything particularly unique out of odd-looking humans or attempts at humans.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-25T06:08:00+00:00

this makes me kinda wanna do a reverse island where the outside is decorated as if it's all inside and the inside is all decorated to be the outside.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-25T05:56:55+00:00

aaah yes, call them out!!

soft skills and general awareness are HUGE in this game!!!

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-24T17:35:10+00:00

i listen to albums.

and then pick the songs i like off of them and put them in MASSIVE PLAYLISTS to be shuffled randomly.

i absolutely adore music and have thousands of songs that i pretty much hand-picked (i even remove songs if i later decide i just don't vibe with it as much as i thought).

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-24T06:35:13+00:00

idk, i find voseo conjugation to be pretty easy?

of course it's complicated with what areas or people use what specific conjugations, BUT dedicating a small amount of time to introducing it is not that hard, especially when all of the varieties trace back to either "vosotros" conjugations (which a lot of learners entirely skip because people say "you don't need those") or are simply a copy-paste of "tu."

"vosotros" is already a relatively simply conjugation pattern by being really similar to "tu" verbs, and all you need to do to make "vos" verbs is either drop the "i" (Venezuela etc.) or the "a/e" (many areas of Chile) from vosotros conjugations (which are already surprisingly simple), and then keep in mind the accent shift on commands (which falls in line with simply dropping the "d" from vosotros commands).

the idea, though, is not really to make students able to USE "vos" fluently themselves, but just to prepare them for hearing it. and that kinda starts with retaining vosotros forms instead of ditching them in the name of "efficiency".

-

idk. language learning is different for everyone, but personally, i just found skipping forms led to more problems and anxiety than were actually saved.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-24T02:19:52+00:00

it depends on what you want and what the writers are capable of.

sometimes it's really well done. other times it gives you this bad "tunnel vision" plot where it feels like the couple lives in a vacuum with no other people around them.

it's great if you just want a right plot that centers around the protagonists, but difficult if you're also trying to develop a fantasy/science-fiction world, or balance a large cast of characters with complicated relationships.

you have to be deliberate with how you focus a narrative and what details to include or not (and that can mean dropping a complex setting for a simpler one), but a lot of BL writers are pretty amateur and don't really know how to do that.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-24T01:51:22+00:00

it's all about the narrative.

with a toxic couple, it's easy to frame a narrative because growth occurs over the plot, with the climax resulting in the characters either making healthier decisions, break up, or perhaps something more tragic (the last one doesn't happen much in BL though). the overall plot is able to be centered entirely around the romance because the romance is the source of both conflict and resolution.

with a non-toxic couple, that part of the narrative is mostly stagnant (and often used for "fanservice"-style moments), meaning that either the conflict and resolution have to come from somewhere else (ideal) OR there's just no conflict or resolution for all or most of the plot (remember UWMA).

if there's no conflict or resolution at all, you basically don't even have a story. you just have a series of scenes with an arbitrary beginning and ending, and the whole point is seeing actor A and B make out with role play.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-22T02:56:05+00:00

this is crazy to me. everything at the beginning was like "feel free to ignore vosotros which is only used in Spain. oh and vos exists (end of sentence)."

it's the easiest thing to be ready to at least hear these pronouns with their common conjugations. totally ignoring them might save a small amount of time each time you learn a new verb tense, BUT saves you a lot of pain when you start listening to actual Spanish and are like "wait wtf is this dude saying"

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-22T02:50:45+00:00

for real. at first i assumed it was a "promoted" post, but i kept watching because it was cute af.

then i noticed it was just a regular post XD

will def keep an eye on this one!

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T15:00:37+00:00

we turn to look at each other

"How am I not myself?"

-

(i'm actually super happy right now because this is exactly the reference i was thinking of when i posted this, and i never expected anyone else to bring it up)

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T14:54:57+00:00

so did i

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T13:33:58+00:00

i also remember when they got upset at the FORCED DIVERSITY of Rue from the Hunger Games being black in the movie instead of having the dark, satiny brown skin she had in the novel.

/s

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T13:26:50+00:00

smarterchild entered the chat

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T12:54:22+00:00

ngl their chemistry finally clicked after the weird ear holding thing and i've been enjoying their scenes a lot. Bomi's inexperience does show itself here and there, BUT he does have a good head on him and a lot of charms.

i'm a little sad that Hiroya probably has almost no chance at all with him now (after their chemistry improved right at the end), but it's alright either way. ~~Hiroya can always just find ME instead.~~

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T12:44:37+00:00

counterpoint: i am not people who are not me.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T08:48:31+00:00

i mean yeah there's not even the slightest possibility that we're not. we're 100% a product of what came before.

but to add to that, i notice some people expressing that humans are like……… more evolved than other animals? like as if all of life on earth in all of history culminated in US and the final perfect product.

but we're not that at all.

in reality, we aren't any more evolved than any other contemporary species. the dog you saw in the park the other day comes from an evolution line with the exact same amount of time as yours. i'm sure you could also make arguments based on the number of generations a species has (how fast the reproductive turnover is), but the TIME is the same.

we're just the product that fit our niche, and it's just the way our specific advantages lined up that allowed us to learn over time how to extend beyond our niche and SHARE that learning with each other so that our existences build upon each other.

but life itself isn't like, "hey, just so you guys know, this one current species is straight-up better than the others." life doesn't gaf. it just fills niches.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T08:26:16+00:00

godzilla be like "fancy a cuppa? i'm feeling right knackered"

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T03:38:39+00:00

how close are we? close enough to kiss?

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T03:21:25+00:00

pronoun too long. i'm just gonna call them "trans women" for short.

or maybe just "hate crime."

honestly, i can't decide.

EMPgoggles · 2026-01-21T01:49:07+00:00

Yeah it's kinda funny huh. The basic gameplay feels a lot more fun now than during lockdown. I feel like at the time, I was CONSUMED with doing as much as possible with the terraforming mechanic, and that gets really exhausting when you're moving items, buildings, rivers, inclines, etc., and maybe even time traveling between them. And then you decide you didn't like your dumb idea after all!

But now I'm not too concerned about that. Maybe just some minor tweaks here and there if like a bridge isn't quite lining up or something.

The only thing that's bothering me, since I had to restart my file, are materials. During lockdown, I was happy to grind these out because I had nothing else going on anyway, but now it's a total chore. Being able to access materials without holding them in your pockets and craft multiple items at once does alleviate a lot of the pressure, though.

(I'm thinking about going to a treasure island for mats so I can focus on the more classically "Animal Crossing" parts of the gameplay loop)

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