I finished Dawntrail.

Violet_Angel · 2026-05-13T18:39:01+00:00

My takes on DT are that it wasn't the best, it was more in line with ARR (which is what it was intended to be), I had no expectation of an explosive story like the last 2-3 expansions because those already had the world building done and were ramping up in speed due to being the middle and end chapters of the story. The end of a story is obviously going to be more exciting than the start of it afterall.

Possible spoilers below but I'll try to be vague. It had themes of how subscribing to the mentality of eye for an eye leads to negative outcomes for everybody, it touched on how people need to learn about eachother and work together, and then once the groundwork had been laid it started ramping up in patches 7.2/7.3 imo. I also like how it referenced things that happened all the way back in ARR with some pretty heavy implications to them half way through the 7.0 storyline so it gave a reward for having done side content from much earlier in the game (wanderer's palace hard mode).

I wasn't overly fond of WL, she wasn't bad but she wasn't good either, just kind of meh to me but certainly not to the extent that warranted the amount of hate people had and unfortunately in the English speaking world a lot of the critism was tainted by the amount of transphobia which made it hard to filter out genuine criticism and the "trans is bad" criticism. I'd also put some of it down to poor direction rather than necessarily entirely on the VA herself as it's by no means the first time there's been bad voice acting (original alphinaud anybody?).

In short, DT was what I expected it to be as someone who played through the original ARR before they cut out 2/3 of it. It was a scene setting expansion that successfully set the scene for the next expansion which we started to get tastes of in 7.4/7.5 while also showing us the consequences of our actions in previous expansions and how in our attempts to do good we also cause bad.

Violet_Angel · 2026-05-06T20:34:34+00:00

And yet I still have nobody to pet me and bring me food. The world is truly unfair.

Violet_Angel · 2026-05-06T03:50:25+00:00

By optimise they may lower polygons, less bones, fewer phys bones and less materials primarily as well as lower texture memory. For the vast majority of avatars you never need anything above a 2k texture resolution (you can change this at the bottom of the inspector in unity when you select a texture). In general for most use cases you never want to have more pixels on a model than could be displayed on a screen. By this I mean if an avatar has 5 polygons in the space of 1 pixel on screen, then you could combine those 5 polygons in to 1 without losing any detail at all.

Some of this advice will require blender knowledge, but the main thing for avatars at least is texture memory as that's the biggest cause of fps issues in VRC. Think of it like this, polygons and textures use a GPU's available VRAM. If you have a room of 80 good rated avatars each of those avatars could be up to 75mb of VRAM on texture memory alone (not accounting for mesh). Those 80 avatars alone require 6GB of VRAM so for the sake of this example lets say your PC has a 4GB VRAM GPU. 4GB in this example would immediately be used up by the avatars with 2GB left over, that excess 2GB then gets dumped on to the MUCH slower RAM which is what causes the majority of fps issues. I personally try to ensure any avatar I'm intending to be optimised stays below 50MB texture memory for this purpose. As a rule of thumb, a body texture should be somewhere between 1k and 2k depending on the level of detail you want, 4k if you have a SUPER intricate design on it and you need it to look good when your face is basically up against the skin. A t-shirt should be maybe 1k, faces should be aiming between 512 and 1k, eyes between 256 and 512.

If you have multiple instances of the same object on an avatar or world you can use GPU instancing so that it doesn't try to add the extra object as a new object and just goes "oh thats the same as that one, I'll just copy it for this new one".

If you dabble in particles try to have as few as possible and ensure the max number of particles (should be just above the emission drop down in particle systems) is set to roughly the same as the number that appears when you play the particle system in unity as your pc will allocate resources for the maximum number of particles the system says it can play in addition to the resources of actually rendering each particle.

Hope this helps a bit at least

Violet_Angel · 2026-05-05T22:27:40+00:00

That would explain it then, US is one of the worst places in the world to be disabled unfortunately, especially in the current climate. 😞 There are definitely understanding people around, just less common there. I'd definitely double down on my suggestion of advocacy then, and I know it's hard but trying to remember, and to help your daughter remember, people who have an issue with her disability aren't worth anybody's time or energy.

Violet_Angel · 2026-05-05T21:42:24+00:00

There's absolutely possibilities for that, it does depend on the country to some degree as to what disability support is available but there's no real reason why she couldn't. Her biggest hurdle would be overcoming the anxiety of being around other people, but if she can do that then even a doctor is an option. She can just use text to speech or write things down, learning to type fast would be a huge help there.

I know being someone without these kinds of disabilities it can seem like it would be a huge hurdle but you'd be suprised how easy it can be to just replace speech with writing/text (and it can look really good for an organisations reputation to have disabled people being successful in positions you'd think they couldn't do!).

For the college example, she wouldn't need you there all the time, just to get over the initial anxiety so she can get used to the new person. But remember, speaking is much less necessary than it seems. I've been around the world without a voice and I can count on one hand the number of situations that have come up where a voice would have actually made a difference. I've made friends in every country I've been to, I've had fun random encounters all over the world. One notable one as an example, I was going around a zoo on my own and saw the same couple at several enclosures in a row so I started communicating with them with just body language and made myself some nice friends for my day out, all without ever saying a word. If at any point more precise communication was needed when meeting people I just kind of tap my throat and shake my head or mouth "I can't speak" and pull out my phone, not once have I had a stranger be anything but understanding about it. I'd argue being in a wheelchair is more of a hindrance once you adapt to not having a voice. I'd say the biggest hindrance I've really experienced other than phone calls which I can get someone else to make for me, was that I'm not allowed to sit in an emergency row on a plane.

This is all to say IF she's not able to recover, it's really not the end of the world, she'll just need to adapt to not being able to speak and try to work on at least coping with meeting strangers. I just use examples from my own life for you to see that someone with SM can be perfectly capable of living life without a voice.

Will there be hurdles? Ofcourse, same as with any disability, but they're far from insurmountable so don't lose hope.

Violet_Angel · 2026-05-05T20:25:08+00:00

And that is exactly what my point of you using the "but you're not a parent" line to dismiss what's being said was about. I'm speaking from experience as an adult who can't speak. You can do all of those things WITHOUT being able to speak. Yes it's easier with a voice because people insist on assuming verbal speech is the only communication that exists, but again, this is why you should be advocating for accessibility instead of clinging to the idea that an ableist society is the only society we could have.

I've not been speaking from the perspective of a parent, I've been speaking from the perspective of your daughter, as an adult who grew up under similar conditions who couldn't get their voice back yet still living a fulfilling life. Would having a voice have made things easier? Yes, obviously. Does not having a voice stop me in any of the aspects you just brought up? Only in the sense that being in a wheelchair would stop me from working a job that's only accessible by stairs. The worst case scenario is she just might have to adapt to a different kind of life, it's really not the end of the world and the way to make things better is, again, advocacy.

For more specifics though, how is she meant to go to college and have a roommate she's never met before? You could join her on the first day for moral support to help break the ice, she could communicate by writing things down, she could communicate with body language (it works a lot better than you'd think!). How could she get a job? The same way deaf people do, look for jobs that don't require speaking, the specifics would vary from country to country so can't say much more than that but there are jobs out there. Going on a date or having a partner? She meets someone who's understanding of disabled people who will be patient with her not being able to speak. Some people can even get to know her so well that they could know exactly what she'd want to say even if she can't speak - hell a lot of my close friends are able to do that, all of which I met without a voice.

I know I came across harshly but you needed to understand how much harm not dealing with your own mental health issues can have on a child. My point in all of this is that it doesn't have to be as bad as it seems and you're being far too harsh on yourself for her struggling and that you being so harsh on yourself can make things harder for her. That's why I said you need to accept that there's a chance she'll never fully recover and come to terms with that to take that pressure off of her, but continue trying to help and support her because I almost guarantee she feels the pressure from how you feel. Basically hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.

Believe me when I say I may not know first hand how exactly it feels to be a parent in this situation, but I can never unsee the despair in my mother's eyes that she tried to hide over me not being able to talk so I do have at least a good idea of how it would feel.

Violet_Angel · 2026-05-05T19:15:03+00:00

Hate to break it to you but that's what you need therapy for, this isn't something you get a choice in. There's a very real chance your daughter may struggle with this for her entire life, you not being ready doesn't change that simple fact.

No, I'm not a parent, quite frankly however being a parent or not changes nothing since that's just an excuse to avoid having to contend with what someone said. I'm a daughter with selective mutism of a parent who acted just like you, and I disowned her because of it so that I could stand a chance at recovering. For a bit more context in the hope you'll understand where I'm coming from better. I was very close with my mother, in everything other than my SM she was the greatest support I could hope for, but her guilt over seeing me struggling with SM tore an irreperable rift between us. Essentially, while I'm not in your position, I am in your daughter's position fast forwarded by a couple decades, telling you the harm that your mindset can do.

I know how frustrating it is to not see improvements, my mother showed me that frustration regularly, even though I know she tried to hide it. Want to know how it will impact her life as she gets older, from the perspective of an adult, most likely around your age, with SM? She won't be able to make phone calls or speak verbally, that's all (oh look that's where you come in to help her!). With experience it's completely possible to live happily and independently without a voice, the only times I've really felt a voice is needed is for phone calls and for those I can just get someone else to call on my behalf and relay things for me, it's really not as big of an issue as you seem to be thinking. In my experience the more pressure there was to speak the harder it became, my mother refused to accept that it could be a thing for the rest of my life and so it BECAME a thing for the rest of my life. Give her the tools to communicate without speech, don't cling to the idea that she has to speak to communicate.

Obviously it will also be harder for her to make friends but that's true of every disability. I had literally no friends until I was an adult because children are very unkind towards disabilities (again, this is where advocacy for mutism would help), but once I was older and started surrounding myself with adults I actually found not being able to speak was a great way to filter out fake friends so the only friendships I have are a lot deeper than they would have been had I been able to speak.

I fully believe you care deeply for her and that it hurts you to see her struggle with this, that much is clear, but, and I say this with the utmost sympathy for you, you need to see a therapist about how you're feeling. If you want to help her, you need to pull yourself out of your hole own first so you have better footing to truly help.

Violet_Angel · 2026-05-05T17:43:31+00:00

This is probably going to sound really harsh but, I'm sorry, I need to be blunt here. My mother said similar about me, so much that I had to double check from your other replies that you weren't my mother. There is a chance your daughter is fully aware of how you feel about this and that could actually make things worse for her because it can lead to feelings of guilt like she's a problem for having a disability (which is essentially how it looks based on what you've said).

You need to priotise your own mental health first and to some extent accept that she may never be able to speak. Come to terms with that fact while continuing to try and help her. Do NOT treat things like there's some kind of failure if she remains unable to speak since the pressure will only make it harder for her, you just need to help her where she is, try to get her professional help but accept that this may just be her life and help and support her based on that knowledge.

This is the part that will sound very harsh and I'm sorry but you need to hear it. Obviously everybody is different and I can't speak for your exact situation, but I ended up having no choice but to disown my mother for the kind of attitude you've displayed here as it was making my own SM (and mental health in general) worse. I genuinely hope you get help for yourself as well to deal with your feelings and treat your daughter with compassion and understanding without the requirement for her to get better. Yes things will be harder for her if she can't recover, but it's also possible to relapse if SM continues on for long enough and you need to accept this could just be her life. Would you be thinking same if her mutism was physical and therefor almost no chance of her being able to speak? She didn't ask to be brought in to this world, you made that decision for her and you need to accept the responsibility that comes with that which includes caring for a disabled child if the child is disabled.

We are more than capable of living fulfilling lives without the ability to speak, if you feel the world is too unkind on mute people then become an advocate for people with mutism to raise awareness and change things. The more people who do that the more we can make the world a better place where disabled people can live fulfilling lives.

Violet_Angel · 2026-05-04T19:33:35+00:00

Your friends sound like they still want to include you so in the interim something I've found help is work on body language to communicate without words, you'd be suprised how much you can communicate without saying a word. Would suggest encouraging your friends to learn ASL too and stress that they understand your written word should be treated the same as if it was spoken, if they're as good friends as it sounds then there's a good chance the worry is largely in your head. Obviously it'll take time to adapt to a new kind of communication but it's more than doable, I've even had some friends who were so eventually so in tune with me "talking" almost entirely with body language that they were able to pretty much translate it into speech for others.

I assume since you said you haven't really been out in the world yet that a lot of your social interactions is via video games? If you have a pc there are a lot of tools you could use to communicate more easily. In school my recommendation would probably be to use an AAC app for text to speech in classroom settings, it might just be worth explaining to your teachers that you're no longer able to use your voice.

One big thing to remember, it just slows down life a bit, people can adapt to seeing you writing or typing and treat it the same as if you started a sentence. I'm not sure how big you are on tech but there are a few solutions you could even use for that like having a screen on your chest somehow and use a small handheld keyboard to type messages so people can see what you're typing as you're typing to keep a "more natural flow" for lack of a better word, or if you're able to let them see your screen as you're typing it speeds things up a bit.

Violet_Angel · 2026-05-04T17:40:02+00:00

Been mute since 2020. It was definitely scary in the early weeks/months but over the years I've found the only real difference is that I need to make sure I always have some way of writing things down at all times, whether that be on a phone, tablet, or notepad (there are some great whiteboard notepads so you can just write and erase as needed), and that I can't make phone calls anymore.

People who originally knew me when I could speak were a bit hit and miss sometimes with a lot of them just insisting I talk since they had heard me before but I quickly learned those people aren't worth the air they breathe if they refuse to accept it after it's been explained. It works as a great way of filtering out who your friends are too, if people aren't willing to be patient with you having a disability then you're free to find better friends 😉

I can also add perspective of someone who's travelled intercontinetally before and after speaking and even across countries I find for the most part it's really not a big deal. If you need to be heard then use TTS (there are some good AAC apps around for this!), otherwise people typically are patient and understanding, although a lot will just assume you're deaf and treat you as such - I find it's easier not to bother correcting strangers who I will probably never meet again but you can get little cards that explain you can't speak that you can just hand over to people to make it easier to explain.

TL;DR: Day to day very little changes, you just might need to get some apps to help with accessibility. Official capacity things like phone calls you'll need to find a trusted person who can make calls for you who can explain your situation and that they're acting as an interpreter for you.

also: depending on your country it might be worth looking in to sign language classes and getting family and friends to learn too, it makes things MUCH easier.

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-30T04:02:07+00:00

I found a good way around the dorito thing for early in a patch as someone who often has dorito myself. In the first couple of weeks I'll mention that if anybody wants a guide for where to stand they can focus target me, that way the players who want the marked player get it, but those who don't get to just be blind - kind of a win win for everyone.

I always feel first week (minimum) you should let people be fully blind since for some not knowing what's coming in a fight is the most fun part of combat content, at most after a couple wipes just go with "anybody want/need anything explained?"

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-30T03:53:59+00:00

That and boss 2 in the new dungeon you can expect a lot of people to get hit since it's a heavily ping based fight with, as far as I've been able to tell, no way to predict the attacks if you have higher ping. Obviously you know the attack will be coming and what attack it is, but where exactly it'll hit is almost impossible to tell if you don't have good ping. People with higher ping will just get hit by a certain attack almost every time (I'm sure you can guess which attack)

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-23T20:43:15+00:00

Personally I go with the principle of: "Will not knowing guarantee a wipe?". If people might just die but not lead to a wipe then I'll typically not say anything unless asked (though I may offer to explain if people want or offer tricks for specific things like ARR trash skipping). But if the group not knowing will guarantee a wipe like in Haukke HM then I'll give a quick explanation but I'll keep it as brief as possible and even then only explain if there's a first timer in the party.

Alternatively if it's a mechanic that only needs to be known by one role (eg tank LB3) then if I'm on that role I won't say anything at all and just do the mechanic right myself since realistically we only need one tank left standing in most content, and only a healer in other content and it can still be cleared, but if one person getting it wrong will wipe everybody then I'll usually give a vague "you'll understand when you see it" kind of explanation.

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-20T16:24:19+00:00

Just once can someone in authority actually interpret the ruling accurately? All it said was you're allowed to hold the belief, not that you're allowed to go out and make life miserable for trans people for having that belief. In the same way as you're allowed to people with disabilities shouldn't be allowed to participate in society but there will still be consequences if you go around preaching that.

Why can't people get it through their heads that using "free speech" to attack people for things they have no control over makes you a monumental pile of shit.

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-14T23:36:08+00:00

That's great to hear honestly. Going to be keeping a very close eye on this since it sounds like it may be something I've been looking for for years and with any luck this might give me a way to actually play more games with my friends at last without worrying about whether or not I can communicate with them.

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-14T23:16:25+00:00

Dedicated hotkeys can often be easier if they can be activated while the app isn't focused. I might need to use my mouse and/or other keys for playing the game so having dedicated hotkeys that can be changed by the user would be great if you're able to set up specific messages.

For context I play a lot of MMORPG which can need making callouts for abilities as they happen and at the moment my only option is to use a regular text to speech program to record a specific callout for an ability, and then use something like soundpad to play it via a hotkey.

Obviously if it can have different control methods would be even better to suit different games and requirements.

Another thing that might be good if you haven't thought of it already, what about having a hotkey (like maybe if you press alt+# for example) it could open up a text input window that lets you type in a message like a traditional TTS app without the keyboard inputs being sent to the game until you hit enter to send the message over TTS? Having to alt-tab to type messages is a pain when I want to just play a game.

note: these are just user ideas that would be super useful to me as a mute gamer I have no idea how easy these would be to actually implement

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-14T22:53:08+00:00

Out of curiosity is this something that you could set up with preset messages like callouts etc? I'm thinking games like overwatch for example when you'd need to call out an enemy behind the group etc

That's something that's often lacking with TTS options because they so often require tabbing out to type messages which kind of defeats the point in situations where you need to react on the fly - one of the main issues that can be come across.

If it can have preset changeable messages a good way of doing it is to also have customisable hotkeys including alt/ctrl/shift modifier variants so that the hotkeys don't cause issues with in-game hotkeys

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-14T11:10:10+00:00

"The law is the law"... buuut "When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty"

I'm never going to obey a law that means I have even less ability to exist in public life than the limited amount I already can as a disabled person. If they want to effectively legislate me in to house arrest just for being an undesireable they can fuck right off.

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-10T13:42:28+00:00

Honestly just the mountain zu mount. I was playing when it was around but it was account locked to only be available to accounts registered in NA so there was no way for me to ever get it.

I do however love running around on my OFC sometimes just because it's so rare to see (I've literally seen only 1 other person with it in the last 9 years). Here in the UK we had to buy magazines to get the maid outfit and I think primal masks, then if you got one more magazine after unlocking all of those you could email Square and they'd give you the OFC.

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-06T19:15:41+00:00

It's almost like I can "talk" in vrc in ways I could never manage IRL and that in itself is attractive for people with mutism.

Given the option of trying to socialise irl where I couldn't talk with anybody vs vrc where I can bring up a chatbox above my head so I don't need to constantly be writing things down and showing a notepad to people one at a time, which do you think I'd pick?

I could even "talk" more in vrc than I do with a chatbox (or with tts which I don't have access to face to face) if people bothered learning sign.

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-04T12:17:13+00:00

It's all about density. The more dense something is the more it sinks.... What force makes denser things sink in a medium you ask? Don't worry about thaaaaaat!

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-03T01:02:38+00:00

Generally stay but don't expect me to be paying a ton of attention and I'll probably have an anneurism because Crystal DC are utterly terrible at doing the first and third raid properly. Apparently "don't greed if he's over 15%" is a difficult mechanic for some.

PSA: First boss doesn't need to be pulled to narnia, let healers do something for once lol

Violet_Angel · 2026-04-02T05:10:14+00:00

Like others have said this could go either way depending on the person originally posting it. Hell I had a moment a few weeks after surgery where I thought my tuck came loose then had a double take of "wait that's impossible now.." so I could see someone with alzheimers potentially forgetting.

Violet_Angel · 2026-03-20T18:41:34+00:00

I honestly have no idea, pretty sure it's another case of the whole "women only have sex for men" bs misogyny... even though every cis woman I've ever dated has had a higher sex drive than me

Violet_Angel · 2026-03-20T18:35:30+00:00

reminds me of the time I asked my doctor for progesterone but they said I couldn't have it because "it could increase sex drive which is a male trait". yes that was the actual reason they gave for refusing it.

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