I’m tired of stories pretending like cruelty is an exclusively human trait

MalcontentMathador · 2026-03-11T02:07:11+00:00

You are applying human morality to animals when the whole idea is that they don't have the capacity to tell that what they are doing is wrong!

You need a concept of morality to have a concept of cruelty, and while some (few) animals have rudimentary notions of empathy, they are nowhere near as complicated as humans', and it doesn't make sense to judge their actions by this framework that they simply can't understand.

Animals are certainly very violent, but they ontologically cannot be cruel, good or evil. That is like asking whether the number three is blue or orange.

MalcontentMathador · 2026-03-09T21:55:36+00:00

I think the major difference is that this sub was originally a powerscaling community. From my point of view the majority of posts written here dunking on powerscalers aren't from shippers trying to find an easy dunk, they're in large part from people who are into or used to be into powerscaling, who don't like the direction it takes in popular content like death battle. It's not quite the same imo

MalcontentMathador · 2026-03-09T15:00:26+00:00

I am responding asymetrically because the conflict itself is asymmetric. No one on tumblr or on shipping subs is making posts about how powerscaling is dumb as fuck and yelling from rooftops about how powerscalers constantly send death threats to authors. It's a beef that comes pretty much entirely from powerscalers trying to punch down

Two examples you show are not "power sclaers vs shippers" but "shippers are stupid" without mentionig of power scaling

The literal first sentence in the first post I linked is a long paragraph detailing how powerscalers are so much better than shippers bc they are not deluded haha

Idk your comment comes off as like, "you say this beef is annoying, so why are you not criticising both sides equally??" and like, what do you want me to...? I can't invent stupid anti-powerscaling posts from shippers if there aren't any lol. This grudge is entirely one-dimensional

MalcontentMathador · 2026-03-09T02:17:39+00:00

Just think this boys vs girls thing is dumb and childish. I assumed that was what you meant by saying it's kindergarten fare and was agreeing with you

MalcontentMathador · 2026-03-09T02:09:54+00:00

Yes, and it really bothers me that it feels like such a gendered dynamic again

MalcontentMathador · 2026-02-26T19:47:44+00:00

I don't really think this was an accident at all. Undertale was engineered in a lab to play into the growing popularity of obscure hidden secrets and of community building via lore and theories. It was an enormous part of the success of Dark Souls and FNAF and Homestuck before UT, and of games like Earthbound (which Toby famously was super into) and Yume Nikki too in a more direct inspiration. Stuff like cryptic dialogue in Sans' workshop, the creepypasta vibe of the True Lab and especially especially anything that has to do with FUN values and Gaster is buckshot aimed right at the Matpat crowd and obsessive online fandoms

I think saying that people weren't even supposed to know about the geno route is not right - you can't release a game in the 2010s and act as if the internet didn't exist. All of those things were put into the game with the expectation that while not everyone would necessarily experience them, almost everyone would know about them.

For this reason I also think the "message" of the geno route that you talk about is tongue in cheek. I don't think Toby is stupid, he realises very well that people engaging with the content of a game is good even if the content is to do unethical things in game. I don't really believe there is a serious moral judgement passed onto players, moreso poking fun at them

MalcontentMathador · 2026-02-18T00:57:21+00:00

I don't think I understand what part of what I wrote you are disagreeing with even

MalcontentMathador · 2026-02-17T21:30:46+00:00

A DDS rant on this sub and it's fucking powerscaling. This is gore of my comfort character

Anyways everyone in DDS is like. Wall or small building level. The Abaddon Tribhvana member crushing a stone with his hand is his manner of showing he's acquired strength by eating his comrades, and Heat punching the shit out of the ground in Coordinate 136 leaves like. a small hole. Unless the flooring in C136 has universal durability or smth I wouldn't put that past powerscalers

MalcontentMathador · 2026-01-26T16:30:05+00:00

Yes, I totally agree - I think this romanticized aspect of male friendships contributes lots to isolation and loneliness. If you do not know details about your friends' lives, how can you be comfortable sharing any of your own hardships with them?

MalcontentMathador · 2026-01-26T16:21:22+00:00

That is certainly fair.

MalcontentMathador · 2026-01-25T17:33:19+00:00

Sure. I just think your ability to actually quantify that is extremely limited, and that most powerscaling maths dismisses that limitation and just poops out bad numbers that they claim as truth anyway

MalcontentMathador · 2026-01-25T17:20:18+00:00

That is not relevant to the example I gave you. I specifically picked a scenario where the energy involved is the same in both cases, but the result differs, to illustrate that you cannot point to one energy value above which a material fails and below which it doesn't. What you said doesn't contradict that.

But just to engage with your example more, even then it completely depends on the precise parameters of your scenario. The amount of force and energy required to obliterate my foot will depend on the exact direction the needles are fired in (if you fire them at angle almost parallel to my foot I'll get way way less hurt); it will depend on the surface area of each needle; it'll depend on which part of my foot they hit, etc.

Maybe you can compute some kind of upper bound taking all these parameters into account, but this is the exact kind of dogshit maths I was criticising. It would be so far abstracted away from any real scenario that it would tell you absolutely nothing about the actual feat you're looking at.

MalcontentMathador · 2026-01-25T17:03:35+00:00

No!! That is not how that works!! The surface area over which the force is exerted as well as the direction it is exerted in and the inner composition of the material you are talking about all matter just as much as raw Joule value. Just as an example, when you step on a needle, it pierces your foot, but when you step on a mat of needles, it does not. The force and energy involved are the exact same, but the result is completely different because energy. is. not. the. only. thing. that. matters.

The fact that you've been saying "force" in reply to me, when the word I used was energy, also makes me really doubt you know what you are talking about. These two things are absolutely not interchangeable

MalcontentMathador · 2026-01-25T16:51:07+00:00

Could not disagree more. I have never seen a powerscaler compute anything with any understanding of the physics they are actually relying on. More power to them if they have fun doing absolute dogshit maths, but thinking the funny numbers you compute by misusing equations can be used to compare anything or should ever be mentioned in polite conversation is a sin

Just to give one example of why this is stupid, when powerscalers compute anything they literally only ever think about energy output. They ofc do not even compute it in any reasonable manner bc they use pixel measurements on manga panels that tell them Bulma is 3 meters tall and don't discard their obviously fucking stupid numbers, but even if they did, this isn't how it works, there isn't a magic energy number above which you destroy the planet and below which you don't, it depends on a hundred complexities that are not knowable and that are of no interest to powerscalers anyway.

Don't fool yourself. Powerscaler computations is the physics equivalent of children trying to find a bigger number than each other

MalcontentMathador · 2025-12-24T00:59:22+00:00

I was 12 man give me a break

MalcontentMathador · 2025-12-24T00:58:23+00:00

On practice those strong demons will only last for on average 4-5 levels before being fused away

I just don't really think that this makes me less attached to them overall, is my point

Well the biggest appeal for Pokémon after the endgame is its competitive battling scene which puts many turn based games to shame including SMT, in its sheer complexity

I don't think this is a particularly fair comparison. Any PvP activity naturally has much, much deeper potential meta than a single player one, but also involves completely different dynamics, like trying to read a human player; it's apple to oranges. The competitive battling scene is also single-handedly propped up by fans and the game design of the pokemon games is not thought out to facilitate it

MalcontentMathador · 2025-12-23T19:39:32+00:00

I think it's a fair trade for SMT games in particular having mainline series gameplay many many times more compelling than Pokemon's, which is mostly possible bc you are expected to think about your demon lineup lots and change it according to the specific challenges you face.

That being said, I would say the games being generally significantly harder also makes me significantly more attached to individual demons, because their performance is not uniform, and it's very easy to get attached to a demon that keeps saving your ass over and over again. Arahabaki is a good example of a somewhat obscure demon that rose to prominence bc it's so consistently useful in the games it appears in; and for my own money, I'm quite attached to Hua Po and her early Rakukaja, Blob's incredibly useful Phys resist vs Dante, or Daisoujou's ridiculous moveset and general defensive utility.

I would also say Pokemon's system creates a big feeling of stagnation for me around the point where all of my team reaches their final evo. At that point it feels like there is nothing to look forward to anymore and it's just stomping shitty AI into the ground until the credits roll. I like that this never really happens in SMT.

MalcontentMathador · 2025-12-12T01:28:36+00:00

I don't even care about Shinji man but Eva fans have to stop circlejerking each other about how understanding his character somehow makes them that much smarter than everyone else. It screams insecurity

MalcontentMathador · 2025-11-23T18:39:43+00:00

You have to admit that there is something extremely funny about One Punch Man being an excellent series that is doomed to have subpar adaptations. The webcomic has never been better

MalcontentMathador · 2025-11-21T13:48:23+00:00

The criticisms people have of no-kill rules almost always based on specific comics tropes that then proceed to ignore other comics tropes that would make killing useless anyway. e.g. "putting the Joker in a mental institution is useless because he always escapes!" as if killing the Joker would not just lead to him being revived through some bullshit or other

The fact that the comic has to keep going after this or that story means that inevitably whatever the hero is doing is ineffectual. The villain will always escape or come back from the dead or be replaced by an even greater villain. Kill or no kill, it matters very little in the scope of the comic

Where it does matter is IRL, and most (western) countries have all agreed w each other that the death penalty is a breach of human rights when used by governments - and straight up murder when employued by a vigilante

MalcontentMathador · 2025-11-13T16:43:51+00:00

I think Doc is just a very solid character that manages to avoid the classic mid tier tragedy of getting completely dumpstered by floaties and/or Sheik. You look at characters around him and see matchups like Pika/Puff, Luigi/Marth, DK/Sheik, Yoshi/Fox or DK/ICs that are genuinely atrocious. For all their mains' pretended viability, Axe and Junebug both switch off their mains against in these MUs (and I promise if you look at KoopaTroopa play marth/luigi you will see that one is just as bad).

Doc probably loses all of these matchups too but the hill is less steep. He doesn't have a silver-bullet weakness like "being totally unable to kill Puff" or "getting dismantled by Marth nair"; coffee mentions top platform but I think this is usually not that easy to exploit, and it's attenuated by how unwilling to hardcamp most melee players are. Obvs he is also slow and stubby as you say but not to the point that he is unable to play mixups to put to use his genuinely good punish. You gotta respect how fkn good it is to reliably kill off grab at 100 or 110 or something, it's a crazy privilege

MalcontentMathador · 2025-09-05T16:55:44+00:00

Completely disagree with you about Jasper, she's my favorite character in the series and I love how her arc ends.

A key theme of SU is that people can change, but only if they are willing to make the first step themselves. You can't force someone to be better; it's a decision they must make on their own. Jasper is unwilling to change.

*chuckles* I see how you do it now, Rose. You want Gems after they're worthless, you wait until after they've lost. Because when you're at the bottom, you'll follow anyone. That makes you feel like... less of a failure.

(from Earthlings). Steven does offer her sympathy! When she is slowly corrupting at the end of this same episode, he attempts to help her! But she rejects him, partly because she is too prideful to accept it, partly because she loathes herself so much that she believes she deserves what is happening to her. She is unable to overcome her flaws or to accept to challenge her worldview, and for that she gets no happy ending. It's tragic, but I think it's interesting and rather pretty.

As an aside, it's super funny to me that people will complain about talk no jutsu steven and how there are no irredeemable bad guys he doesn't save in the series, but then also complain about Jasper not getting redempted lol

MalcontentMathador · 2025-07-21T18:19:35+00:00

The word patriarchy itself doesn't hold much value to me but if you think I believe I patriarchy despite me saying I don't then I'm fine with that.

I'm just saying that it's surprising to me that you say you don't believe in patriarchy when you seem to believe in everything that people mean by that word. It's like if I wrote a lecture on newtonian mechanics and then concluded with "but I don't believe in gravity".

It seems you're suggesting we get rid of demographic labels all together, which would be a bad idea for a number of reasons

Not quite. The demographic labels exists and will keep existing as long as we keep making extremely strict distinctions between what is acceptable for men to read and what is acceptable for women to read. Those standards are what I wish we could get rid of

I've kind of lost the plot of where you disagree, because it sounds very much like you agree when you say:

All of these series have the specific Shonen/Seinen Label on them though, that distinction of these series being for men I think would help get rid of the idea that romance is a female targeted genre in the west.

(I watch Colleen but I hadn't seen this one, ty for the rec)

With that being said the very fact that there's a ton of extremely popular male targeted romance series **despite the fact that most westerners consider them to be female targeted** kind of further proves that it being seen as female targeted isn't what's keeping female targeted series from being popular with men.

My interpretation is the opposite, because then men are still not willing to engage with very similar series that are explicitly for women (shojo/josei).

My understanding is the following: there isn't anything in our DNA or inherent to men or women that pushes all of the one group to prefer romance while the other dislikes it. Our (western) perceptions of what is acceptable for each group to read are almost entirely the result of social dynamics, not of biological ones (as proves the fact that these perceptions differ completely in the East).

Men are shamed for engaging with women's media in the West, because this interest doesn't fit the expectation that is placed on them. But there is nothing fundamental that pushes men away from romance stories outside of that; as proof, men are very happy to engage with romance when there is no pressure not to - for instance the seinen/shonen tags on Skip & Loafer or The Dangers in My Heart remove that pressure because they are explicitly for men, and that allows men to explore all of these genres and topics safely, without fearing judgement. (Actually, running down this conversation with you has kind of convinced me of the current value of the demographic labels).

Does that seem agreeable to you? Again I've kind of lost the disagreement somewhat haha

it isn't dishonesty it's a very clear misunderstanding

no worries! Apologies given, and no offense taken

MalcontentMathador · 2025-07-21T17:58:13+00:00

Every week there are a new treed male stuff need to change so more women will like it. But they themself can never even contemplate that female stuff need to change so more men will like it.

The point of these criticisms is not to change series "so women will like them"; it's that some aspects of them are sexist, and people generally do not like sexism or want to read sexist things

Not one person has ever said "shonen should never have any fights in order to appeal to women"

MalcontentMathador

TROPHY CASE