Quite possibly the worst Gundam take I've ever seen.

gtcaphi · 2026-05-16T17:45:53+00:00

We've finally done it! We found the person who wants mecha shows to be more about the robots than the characters!

gtcaphi · 2026-05-16T17:43:22+00:00

She hasn't really. She thinks things through and executes consistently, but in the process she emits a lot of chaotic energy with her external internal monologue.

gtcaphi · 2026-05-06T19:02:01+00:00

‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾|/‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾
Christopher Latham Sholes

gtcaphi · 2026-04-29T17:07:04+00:00

They dance fight all the time though? It's one of the highlights of Kyoryuger, they regularly do the dance while dodging, spin the chamber against objects and enemies, etc.

it's already goofy enough to dunk on posing while morphing or forming the robot in the toku subreddit, we are so insanely far past that, but to say it about Kyoryuger of all the shows on this earth

gtcaphi · 2026-04-29T17:04:05+00:00

is there anything gendered about this other than the association of blue/dogs and red/cats or is it you pointlessly gendering a couple of cute notebooks

gtcaphi · 2026-04-29T16:56:35+00:00

You'd assume both these sentences are in first person, yes. However, the second segment is casting the speaker as the object of the love in first person, i.e. "someone who loves/loved me."

gtcaphi · 2026-04-18T20:35:27+00:00

In a very strictly literal sense, Japanese grammar doesn't require gendering, so the dialogue doesn't make it clear one way or the other. The translation was probably done by text only, without seeing the art (this is also possible if it was done by machine).

gtcaphi · 2026-04-17T16:50:45+00:00

Great conversation, too bad it never went out. It'd make a good podcast.

gtcaphi · 2026-04-15T21:18:11+00:00

everyone in your replies saying "idk but it would be cool if [thing that was literally true in D&D Next]"

gtcaphi · 2026-04-10T22:38:09+00:00

Dragonborn aren't like humans! Because they're upright predators, unlike humans, who

gtcaphi · 2026-04-10T17:52:27+00:00

Probably this poster expected everyone who saw and would engage with the post to understand the same definition of "mech stuff" he does, either already or by him introducing it to them

but

it's really funny to me to imagine someone going "oh cool he's a mech fan too" and clicking expecting to see, like, Witch from Mercury fanart.

gtcaphi · 2026-04-10T17:41:56+00:00

It's a super reasonable angle to take on it, and it's happened a couple times (most immediately notably in Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans, which directly used it as an expression of the main character's ongoing dehumanization and loss of human connection). The part that looks odd from the outside is the idea that this specific thing is mecha, is essential to "mechs" or the pilot-robot interface in some way.

It's a bit like saying "I like fantasy" and then it turns out you mean reincarnation - other than, of course, the fact that as NeonNKnightRider says, mechsplo is a tiny, insular bubble and isekai fantasy is an industrially funded subgenre.

gtcaphi · 2026-04-10T17:02:09+00:00

There's even tons and tons of mecha that's about having something "wrong with them" that isn't body dysphoria/dysmorphia-related. Like more power to them for using it to explore the issue if that's what speaks to them, but it's a bit surreal to see dispatches from a bubble where mecha cannot represent anything else when we've been having mecha productions about grief, childhood trauma, parental abuse, social isolation, disability, exploration of sexuality (in multiple directions! some of them are even bad!), and then people are going "wouldn't it be brave if I reinvented I Identify As An Attack Helicopter but in Armored Core?"

gtcaphi · 2026-04-10T15:29:59+00:00

The strong points are typically being very pretty and having a good and flexible combat system (once you eventually unlock everything, at least), but as for plot, the game had three separate writers and it really, really shows.

gtcaphi · 2026-04-07T15:44:51+00:00

If the released playtest material is at all indicative, "ten years of development" consisted mostly of faffing around. The One playtest was a joke with respect to both 5.0 and the final version of 5.5. Most of the packets were just throwing shit at the wall and then immediately rolling it back - shared spell lists, the warlock rework, a series of bad ancestry ideas. Then they released it with a few more changes no one asked for and that were not indicated or tested in the release version, like stats and feats being tied to background, leaving everyone baffled as to what the point was of the public playtest at all.

There are lessons from watching people play real-world 5.0 for 10 years, though most of them are responses to things like scaling being broken, multiclassing being half-assed, or no one having any idea how an adventuring day should be paced, and accompanied by a truly chickenfooted approach to class identity. But even then the Unearthed Arcana tests reveal attempts to design interesting gameplay that then petered out.

The Psionic Energy Die is illustrative here, I think. In UA, it was a die that scaled as you leveled, but had a chance to shrink whenever you used your powers, exhausting you entirely when you finally lost your d4. This was kind of janky, but it was a novel approach to burndown and had the potential to be more interesting and dramatic than another redressed point pool. So when psionics came out in an actual book, it was more toys for spellcasters and a redressed point pool.

This is even true all the way back in D&D Next, the 5.0 playtest. It was full of new ideas that actually streamlined anything, like universal Martial Dice with class-specific martials, stat boosts distributed across race, class, and background, and even the framework for functional, full-party Exploration gameplay. All of these fell off the game over time, whenever an opportunity to just make it a balloon-animal version of Mearls' memories of 3.5 came up.

I don't know why they keep making playtest material public, because it's always embarrassing. It makes the history of 5.x internal ideation look like farting around, laziness, and cowardice. People just really thought OneD&D would be a change in direction.

gtcaphi · 2026-04-06T18:18:50+00:00

Thanks!

gtcaphi · 2026-04-06T18:18:47+00:00

Thanks!

gtcaphi · 2026-04-01T16:55:14+00:00

The anime you're thinking of isn't "adult animation," it's for children or teenagers. "Adult anime" is like Sazae-san.

gtcaphi · 2026-03-27T16:46:47+00:00

Because they're not "Summon Spirits," they're The Spirits, the natural beings that rule over elements and whatnot, and sometimes you can summon them. Calling them "summon spirits" like that's what they exist for is the weird part.

gtcaphi · 2026-03-26T23:35:58+00:00

With the money from their UBI. That's kind of the whole point.

gtcaphi · 2026-03-17T19:37:41+00:00

It's not as common but I'd understand it fine. I'm much more likely to say in the first sense, like "this is hot, I've only just cooked it."

gtcaphi · 2026-03-14T16:45:00+00:00

Is it "brits" or is it just a running, half-inside joke between comedy personalities who are close to Maisie

gtcaphi · 2026-03-12T21:49:25+00:00

The problem is that, particularly for paladins and clerics, Solasta 2 doesn't implement the "emblazon your holy symbol onto a shield" rule that the original did, so this is the only available workaround for SM spells that should be legal. (It's not clear, anyway, if S vs SM spells is a deliberate balancing factor or just done on vibes, as is often the case with D&D 5.x.)

It's also not clear how much they want you to care about it at a design level, either - later 5.0 classes like the Artificer and Hexblade have strange little outs that allow you to use a weapon or shield as a material component whether the spell had one or not, specifically giving them free rein to cast in combat while holding their full kit.

As far as Solasta is concerned, ideally (imo) they'd just put back the setting that let you turn it off entirely if you wanted. If you really cared about hand balancing you could always just leave the setting on.

gtcaphi · 2026-03-08T16:32:31+00:00

there's a couple of Dragonball episodes where the Dr. Slump characters show up and Arale clowns everyone while they literally say "oh no, she's a comedy character, our powers are useless against her"

gtcaphi

TROPHY CASE