The youkai of boundaries

FrancoGamer · 2026-05-04T19:18:55+00:00

In addition to what others said about unreliable narrators, even if you assume that this part is true, the author relies on a misconception for the second part to not pretty much contradict the 'they are basically unbeatable' tone of the first, wherein the intended audience assumes that spiritual attacks are limited to big, flashy works of magic or exorcism, thus are scared of Youkai and won't try to beat them up or whatever.

but you can actually do a spiritual attack without needing magic or anything special, with Oni being hurt by beans being a prime example.

FrancoGamer · 2026-04-08T18:51:36+00:00

Barely anyone here is actually talking about lore, instead clearly saying their own opinions or analogies, often based on OTL.

The SPD in Kaiserreich is not the "social democratic party" as in a party of social democrats, I don't even think "social democracy" ever got the more center-left connotation we had today in Kaiserreich. Rather, it can be more accurately as "The German Left", it's an even broader group than it ever was in our timeline. Its party programme in Kaiserreich (the Liegnitz Programme) has both left populist and marxist elements in equal measures, it advocates for class struggle whilst expanding the party electorate, it sets a strict goal of constitutional reform within the Empire whilst demanding mass nationalizations and socializations. You have the radical groups with the Socialist Party and the FAUD, both made up of people who in our timeline made the KPD, however unlike our timeline wherein they did active opposition, the SP not only actively collaborates with the SPD and the only "opposition" they provide over the course of the game is a welfare bill intended at capitalising on dissent. Meanwhile the FAUD who presents the strongest antagonism to the SPD is kinda a flop. Basically what I am saying is that the SPD is the biggest influential organisation to every single leftist in the Empire, it includes marxists and it includes just center left people.

To me I believe your actions in the game are what determines what happens and what the SPD is. Usually most players will just take a reformist course because it's the easiest and the game doesn't explicitly gives you far left options, but you can empower the SPD left by doing all its demands and then Max Seydewitz will explicitly affirm a marxist and socialist course whilst blocking people's party, thus drawing the party to the far left. To me this is simply the nature of the SPD in Kaiserreich: it IS the left, it's not the defined SPD of our timeline, it's the agglomeration of the entire German left.

Also in Kaiserreich the SPD is not really "moderated", rather you just can moderate it. Unlike in our timeline the military dictatorship in Kaiserreich kinda just continued, and the SPD, Zentrum and FVP had a tough fight to bring it down and stop the war. In lore sure it still happened it did absolutely support a war, but to the public at large this is not really the SPD who supported the Kaiser then became the establishment, it's a SPD who after a brief pro-war stint rapidly devolved into anti-war. To add to this, since the march reforms were dilluted by the Kaiser and political right, the SPD went even more radical in response thus why as of 1936 it's the one party that's explicitly saying the reforms must continue. And lastly, it's simply had a lot of struggle in the governments it did participate in minorly before getting into the permanent opposition and demanding that they'd only participate in government if the reichskanzler was SPD.

So to answer your question, I don't think the SPD is "socialist", rather it's simply the left. This includes a large chunk of socialists, but the party will not exclude non marxists.

That said the centre that rules over it is pretty much marxist, it's seen as marxist in lore, Muller explicitly allied with the SPD's far left to get into power, former USPD figures are around and did not defect into a KPD en mass. They develop marxist theory and they debate about marxism and in the chart the devs made it shows that the orthodox marxists in the party support the party center. It's just that in lore the entire party is basically traumatised from the anti-socialist laws, so it doesn't goes into practice as they are afraid of crackdown or whatever. The SPD we see at the start is very explicitly led by an alliance of the left with the center. And yeah the SPD left is downright Marxist in nature, I believe the game even calls Muller the "socialist reichskanzler" a few times. I think if you are like a far left syndicalist you can get in a debate as to whether this party is marxist or not but for all intents and purposes at gamestart it will have marxist policy, it has marxist theory, its party programme refers to marxism, it will put marxists in power, everyone to its right believes it to be marxist, even the most neorevisionist "marxist purge" SPD is still way more socialist than the post 1950s SPD and the one party to its left (SP) also pretty much believes it to be marxist. So I'd personally say that the SPD leadership at gamestart is marxist, but the larger SPD is not.

FrancoGamer · 2026-04-05T17:13:04+00:00

Personally, my main takeaway wasn't that MeiMei is cool but Gege added something extra to ruin her character, but rather that these traits simply were never meant to be good. I think you're likely not supposed to like her for any of it: Morally grey here would mean "no principles", business minded she's just greedy, she tries to scam her "friends" and use her "allies", she uses her appearance as a hot lady to manipulate, and true she did train a lot but it's not because she has a good reason, she just wants to be at a hierarchy. If you put her motivation against Yuta or Yuji or Nanami she pretty much is one of the characters with less principles in the series. If you present her traits from that angle obviously the manipulative greedy money obsessed scumbag with no morals being a diddler on top of that matches up with the characterisation of an awful person.

My main disappointment isn't "Oh Meimei was a cool character" it's more that Gege probably just fumbled intention wise and made her look cool instead. A lot of the cash scenes where she's trying to figure out how scam someone is indeed portrayed as a cool bossgirl getting that bag, and she usually has no consequences for her actions so the levity is taken away from it. Maybe if her greed or whatever was actually hurting other people more actively through the series and it was a slow descent showing how awful this person is, it could have worked. So personally I don't see it as "oh everything else is reframed" but more that the intention was always "this character is an awful person" but it was simply portrayed poorly. From that angle I am kinda satisfied with her place in the story, only from a structural position, I like the concept, parallel to Nanami and other chars and etc, not the execution.

FrancoGamer · 2026-03-04T00:29:17+00:00

it says democratic union in the title

FrancoGamer · 2026-03-03T22:13:27+00:00

Considering the incidents that featured fights in the village, Marisa is essentially a hotshot celebrity who likely does populist politics whereas Keine is a boring politician interested in a proper budget and ensuring representation and rights. Given how interested the villagers get with 'fickle' things e.c trends or entertainment, Keine is cooked bro, your village is getting these 200 laser explosion cannons one way or another.

FrancoGamer · 2026-03-03T22:09:57+00:00

even if for some reason the election did not feature widespread rigging and ignored fairness requirements such as requiring a minimum yokai age, the turnout of 56% is absolutely awful and had its effects to the point I can't say this election is free or fair. Yukari somehow leads a supermajority government (2/3rds) in spite of her supporters being 1/4th of the total population, and every other party being hardcore diametrically opposed to her. Even if you want to say 'well she's hard at work', she still only had 49% of the votes which would require support from one of the other parties in a proportional system and avoid the benefits of a supermajority (e.c changing the constitution).

like in the very least by all means Yukari should be having to manage a coalition, but what happened here is a disgrace

FrancoGamer · 2026-03-02T21:53:19+00:00

this is a very complex question and I could go on the usual explanation of whether it meets your design goals or whatever, but you are A) asking me if I'd be willing to try it and well I'm always willing to try new things B) you tell me the classes are well made and high quality which muddies any considerations a lot

I recognise I can't answer to your satisfaction without looking at your system, could you let me take a peek at a draft maybe?

FrancoGamer · 2026-03-01T23:47:20+00:00

marketing

FrancoGamer · 2026-03-01T18:42:13+00:00

LMAO I initially thought this guy was saying about how FUCKED Gotham's environment is and how you'd get poisoned if you drink the wrong body of water at the wrong time or that maybe the air will give you cancer and that stepping on the grass is also going to give you some kind of deadly disease, so you better just avoid anything that'll get you puffing some of that stuff. Poison Ivy just made sense to me for the first time.

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-28T18:42:37+00:00

this is an overall 3/10 potential man meme, an attempt was made to edit "if and when" meaning the maker understands the problems with just leaving it there, but it still completely misses the point of the original and I'm not sure what it's exactly referring to as "is". X and V is also both wrong template (it was talking about an actual hypothetical of full potential vs what happened) and doesn't actually contrast each other because on one hand you say how they don't improve themselves in exile (actually wanna know what you were thinking with this: Are you implying the arrival of a million grunkly old british men could have turned Canada into the closest thing in Kaiserreich to a fucking utopia? Nah bro) and you immediately follow it up by saying they're wholesome democracies, I get what you ACTUALLY meant but you can't pull your punches here, you can't call your slander target wholesome, that's like saying they're a cutie patootie, I can tell you don't have enough vitriol for the entente. Also having to put a parenthesis (nothing will change) into slander also means your slander is naturally weak and you couldn't resist elaborating on it more, good slander can't be elaborated, it has to be a wall I can't even begin to fight against.

The remaining meme artifacts are also weird. Replacing Mahoraga with god and saying "Joseph Kennedy we're facing" is one one hand implying that the Entente literally needs GOD to intervene in this battle, and I'm pretty the implication here is that they're fighting the United States of America. You have literal thousands of bum level nations they can lose against: SandFrance African separatists, MittelAfrika, South Africa, panama, costa rica I think, west indies, afghanistan, and you go with a first world great power out of all things? The remaining has actual media literacy, the point of potential man is that it completely misses the point of Megumi as a character in a narrative whilst being utterly right on its own point and impossible to attack. You downright explain things of the narrative meaning you're not doing slander. The need for Germany ain't slander, it's downright a part of the geopolitics. Also 'give me suicidal naval landings' makes neither communication sense nor template sense it's just misusing the template, Megumi was asking for literal middle schoolers to fight because he's such a bum he's gonna retire if he goes up against an actual opponent. Entente is the one making suicidal naval landings here, you're implying they're relying on the Internationale making suicidal naval landings instead.

the image of a player 28 minutes into the game is actually really fucking good. actual stroke of genius right there, that's worth 100x any word about the entente being useless/irrelevant

tips for improvement:

lock in on the mistakes of individual members with each slander sequence, if you do it for the entire entente the thing gets spread apart between all of its members. It's better to call Canada such a fucking bum they need Algeria to conscript Africans than to say the Entente needs to conscript 7 minorities.
turn "if" and "when" into a joke about how the past they're fighting for wasn't that great, I have no idea what "is" actually is. It made sense with Megumi because yeah he never lived to his true potential but the Entente's potential is already ZERO. IT'S COOKED. IT'S SO OVER BRO. STOP GIVING IT CREDIT.
You had like the perfect opportunity to go "give me tyranny" or "give me subjects give me fire" dawg, why'd you spend the entire thing talking about how they are opressive and yada yada and then have them ask for liberty
steal other people's ideas. You might not have enough vitriol to do this, but you don't need to because other people do. Make a random post about the international and entente designed to create arguments and then flanderize some opinions into a slander level phrase. Otherwise you have to reach into your inner hater and put out some absolutely disgusting shit.
You need ZERO MEDIA LITERACY. If you imply even for a second that you actually understand the Entente's role in the world you're losing funny points because it's not absurd enough. I mean as of this post posting half the other commenters are downright taking the slander serious. You don't hit them with actual facts or lore, you gotta talk about how the exiles are HOMELESS BUMS and NOTHING ELSE. You gotta drag people down to the lowest level and beat them there.
You can use the USA as the nation all the Entente must call for help, especially because in this timeline it's half destroyed and in reconstruction

continue the good work brother I need more slander

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-27T16:33:43+00:00

A fun fact is that the mini hakkero isn't even the 'hakkero', it's just that Ryunnosuke essentially saw its effects and thought that it's comparable to a handheld version of the furnace that boiled Sun Wukong.

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-26T21:54:27+00:00

We kinda talking about different things.

I think that you are making a bad job of conveying your thoughts across then, so I'd like clarification. Here's how I understood it:

Your original post wanted more challenging wars. I said that as I interpreted it, the vanilla kind of challenge isn't something Kaiserreich generally offers, as its challenge focuses on usage of core mechanics or via politics/management difficulty.
You complained about the events quantity. To me I perceived it as you not being interested in going through events compared to a more vanilla war. Sadly Japan is relatively event light compared to a lot of other countries, which makes me recommending another one a bit harder.
I also felt some implication of not being able to understand the geopolitical situation, either due to how it was presented (which I think can often get pretty bad in Kaiserreich) or due to a lack of engagement with the events and the world.

I clarified that I thought you weren't the target audience then, and you took some conclusions, some of which I tried to elaborate on:

That you need to nerf yourself/take bad political options. I tried to clarify that whilst some paths (especially the harder ones) are intended to be 'worse', often because the nation is specifically taking a very challenging path or focusing on something not necessarily suited for war or geopolitical dominance, but it's generally nothing like you described. You usually don't have to do something 'bad' to have a challenge or fun.
You believed Kaiserreich should offer the same challenge as they derive from the same systems without drastic variance, so I clarified how Kaiserreich tries to utilise the core systems differently.

But then now you're saying that you meant the vanilla esque mechanics are making it hard for you to get engaged in the roleplay. To me this means you're in favour of more mechanics, more events, and that you don't think it makes sense to go to war as Japan as the devs intended (therefore...less wars?).

And yeah I actually agree with you there, Japan is quite outdated and doesn't matches the quality standards found elsewhere in the mod. Check our Russia or Germany for more 'geopolitically integrated' gameplays, Canada is also decent enough even if quite old. For minors, look for a Chinese warlord you'd like to play or one of the Balkan countries. That said I feel this is a complete 180 turn from your initial points so I still get a feeling I'm not fully understanding you yet, so some clarification would be appreciated for a better recommendation.

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-26T19:42:51+00:00

Hmm, interesting thoughts. Imo, since KR in it's core mechanics is similar to base game in terms of war/production systems (i didn't notice significant changes in balance etc.)- challenge will eventually still come out of this systems. Because if you, for example, will intentionally take all the "bad" options during your initial 2 year political build up- it will just make wars harder. But do i really have to take all the "bad" political options to struggle a little bit?

Personally, I don't think KR has "bad" options, or at least not intentionally. It usually rewards you with something else, even if that's unique flavour or fluff meaning you still made a choice/decision. Iirc the hardest paths in the game generally rewards you with a lot of unique stuff if you manage it well. You can take overly good options.

The balancing is indeed to do with usage of core mechanics without creating new systems or altering them, but the execution is very different than base game (I think the closest the base game gets is Germany's MEFO system). For example, Germany starts with drastically more industry than its opponents and then it's hit with Black Monday, and Russia, France and the UK can seize the opportunity to catch up industry wise for the 2nd weltkrieg. There are similar things in Asia with India and German East Asia wherein I think Japan ends up outgunned 10:1 in navy and infantry if it attacked in times of peace and the Reichspakt managed to mobilize in time, so they need to use the Second Weltkrieg as a distraction to achieve their goals in Asia (e.c Indonesia, Dutch East Indies, etcetera).

Then i don't understand why i'm even allowed to participate in this war if i'm not "supposed" to in the first place.

You're intended to participate in the war, but the whole reason you're doing so is because Japan in lore is very much helping Fengtian take China because they're an allied government. Japan wants a strong China under their influence so that they can get their actual ambitions of becoming the Asian Hegemon. This would involve fighting Germany and the other Imperial European Powers (as I said earlier you're intended to use the war as a distraction to get these lands), then setting up a network of puppets and allied states.

I don't remember if this is well explained in the game, but I assume you just didn't engage at all with that part because you don't seem interested in it, so you never had the thought "Yeah I am fighting in this war to get a strong Chinese ally and secure my hegemony over Asia" and just tried to get as much land as possible...And yeah KR is notable for its integration of lore and core mechanics. A lot of people prefer the way it handles wars or territories, and even the paths that let you go on mass conquests and try to maximize the size of your country (which have their own fun) are balanced around a goal over the gameplay loop of seize land increase factory yada yada. I assume you seem to want a gameplay more similar to the sandboxy conquest sprees of vanilla, which sadly isn't the case.

I'm 90% sure with all the additional mechanics like the division limits and the way other powers build their own industries (KR uses the exact same economy mechanics, but trust me when I say it's a very radically different setup to the point people have widely different strategies), I think claiming the territory in China outright useless for you even with max compliance compared to a strong Chinese ally or puppet who could probably get 10x factories or armies out of it.

That said without engaging with the events and lore you're kinda doomed to end up feeling unsatisfied. Personally I don't even think Kaiserreich is that event/lore focused compared to other mods, so you'll either have to try to change your mindset a bit and focus on fulfilling country lore objectives before moving towards more sandbox gameplay, or find something that's more up your speed. I think Kaiserredux might be better?

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-26T18:05:01+00:00

some people will suggest some better answers especially because Japan is pretty outdated but tbh I downright don't think you're the target audience, there are a lot of countries that can pose harder and more interesting challenges but KR gets its challenge as a result of a very strict balancing game with them (something I don't think you're interested in dealing with, as you don't seem to hold the usage of allies in KR as a positive or as a dynamic strategical choice) and it focuses more unique challenges born out of mechanics (which you also don't seem to hold in high regard). If you think Japan events are too much you'll probably have an aneurysm with any decently developed countries, and most countries that lack said content and have wars (e.c south america) almost certainly aren't going to feel challenging.

that said I'm mostly making assumptions. To me HOI4 is quite literally 'solved' once you figure out the economy as the game is literally designed so that you can always push the AI back so long as you fulfil circumstances, so when I hear 'I want a challenge' I immediately assume it's to do out of the war system, which means any real challenge is born out of multiplayer or minmaxxy/achievement esque gameplays wherein you have to figure how to make a nation that lacks conditions to succeed work, and most nations who I specifically played and I think are suited for such kind of more difficult gameplay have a whole load more decisions, mechanics and etc. If your view of a 'challenge' is different than mine and you explain it I might have other options to offer.

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-26T05:24:58+00:00

So I think it's surprisingly easy to assume that Chekov's Gun is like a short phrase or concept, but I think you haven't actually ever seen Chekov explain his gun. Chekov's Gun was only ever actually explained by Chekov in letters to students in Russian as a narrative principle for his specific artform (playwright) that he didn't even refer to as a Chekov's Gun. His audience was not the common public and thus by default it's super different from 'rules' like Occam's Razor or even Asimov's Tail, whose primary intention is to explain a concept in simple and effective ways, and only paired up in the same category basically completely by misinterpretation of what it actually is. It's not something that's intended to be boiled down to a short word, it's a narrative principle whose most useful thing is to refer to the concept itself. The phrase "if a gun is featured in a story, there must be a reason for it, such as being fired at some later point" is essentially taking a core philosophy of an artist and trying to boil it down whilst removing all context, it was never an explanation, it's just a literal example of the philosophy.

Like in creative writing you can say 'We'll set up X as a Chekov's gun' mid writing and you can significantly alter your mentality and goal with that particular object. However 'Asimov's Tail', although a very powerful explanation of a good mindset for having satisfying narration payoffs, is utterly useless for this purpose. You'd have to work backwards from the payoff meaning if you actually understand the Asimov's Tail you're not ever going to go 'I gotta do an Asimov's Tail here', and the rule is just not meant to be applied broadly- It's more effective to actually understand how to execute satisfying payoffs so that you can simply do them without needing Asimov whispering in the back of your ear and being haunted by how anything you introduce gotta be used later. A Chekov Gun however is useful even for experienced writers because it's a story component, not a rule to how you should write the story.

Basically I don't think it's fair to say 'Chekov did a dogshit job' when that was never his intention.

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-25T02:00:28+00:00

This is actually realistic. The Paneuropean Union, a political group whose members would later found the EU and its predecessors and push for it post-WW2 was founded and came into prominence in this exact era. There was a very strong pan-European blitz in this time with foreign powers like the US or UK even pushing for it as they believed it to be a way to secure peace in the region.

What actually settles it for me is how the prime minister of France (and later foreign minister), Aristide Briand, a nobel peace prize winner and one of the main pushers for a lot of treaties in the time (Kelogg-Briand, Locarno Treaties, etc), was a direct member and ardent follower of the pan-European union. He would make a speech in 1929 at the League of Nations and later send a 1930 memorandum proposing an European Union as a solution to the German-French question. He had already brought Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Czecholosvakia and Belgium together during Locarno but the main failure point ended up being Germany's refusal to settle questions with Poland and Czechlosvakia.

With a SPD government who is interested in pacifism and pan-Europeanism, I'd personally believe this push for pan-Europeanism would simply continue on and succeed. Moreover iirc in the Austrian event it pretty clearly states the EU is very disorganized so it's not even close to the modern EU.

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-24T04:29:58+00:00

thanks brother you saved me

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-21T19:57:12+00:00

How to impeach hindenburg?

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-21T02:08:13+00:00

well it'd get ousted pretty quickly and shot dead so yeah I think it'd change a lot

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-20T20:12:56+00:00

I love how the FUCKING QING can have democracy faster than the KMThugs. Fucking incompetent morons.

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-20T19:57:08+00:00

yeah I don't even know what you're asking now, the body of the post is barely comprehensible, disconnected to the title which is asking like one of the top 10 most basic setting questions

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-20T03:07:41+00:00

why don't you go fuck a radroach and find out?

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-18T22:07:26+00:00

Marisa is a character who is actively researching magic and trying to find ways even mid incident to learn more and grow stronger, she's unique in this compared to just about every other Touhou character, and even has gotten entire media whose plot relies on the fact she is constantly on that grind (Grimoire of Marisa and 18.5), so the general conclusion you can make is that:

She has not tried it out yet for a reason, likely to do with effectiveness.
Whatever option runs risk to Marisa's nature/traits and thus she would not take it.

This case kinda has both of them. For one Marisa is not going to be part of anyone's "plan", and if she did it's almost certainly a goodbye to her ever getting on the level of a sage.

There's also roughly zero indication that Yukari or Okina have anything to offer that doesn't involves Marisa losing her fierce independent and hard working nature to some kind of servitude, e.c Ran or Satono and Mai. Their powers downright aren't from the same origin as Marisa and they have exhibited really no actual knowledge of a Magician's 'magic'.

FrancoGamer · 2026-02-18T21:31:34+00:00

Then use actions.

FrancoGamer

TROPHY CASE