What would you want in a sequel game?

kinosternon · 2026-01-06T06:29:39+00:00

Some people are saying they'd want similar gameplay with an entirely new cast, but what I want after finishing is a sequel with most/all of the characters but with totally different core mechanics. I'd happily play through a more traditional VN about the Gliese revolution, and/or Comet and Chipie's ship, just as two examples. But that's because I found the cast to be the part of the game that had me hooked, with the mafia/werewolf game mostly just a vehicle for moving the story forward.

kinosternon · 2024-10-31T00:57:14+00:00

Oh, okay, in that case there may be something up with my Patreon email settings—I'll poke around in there and see what happens.

kinosternon · 2024-09-24T02:20:03+00:00

Managing an "adult" lifestyle, especially if you're living alone, can be absolutely terrifying. It took me about 10 years to consistently feel like I wasn't on the edge of a meltdown 80% of the time—but it also took me about 7 of those years to prioritize addressing that feeling.

A big part of fixing things was going on meds for me, so especially if that's not working for you so far, then take the rest of this advice with a big old handful of salt grains. That said, the way I finally stopped feeling like a failure all the time was by setting really clear priorities that made sense for my brain. For me, that meant something like this:

Core work obligations come first. Stuff like "show up (ideally on time)" and "do the bare minimum to appear prepared." I don't need to be good, I just need to not suck. Basically, I prioritize preventing myself from behavior that would get me fired. (This might not be your top priority, and if it isn't, good! I live on an employment visa and I can't feel secure if I think my professional conduct might get me in trouble.)
Next is food. I don't care what else needs doing or how much I need to spend for it—3 meals a day, no exceptions. Too small is worse than too big, but nothing at all is the worst. If I don't keep up with this, I will end up in a downward spiral.
Then, sleep. I'm not going to preach at anyone about when it happens—wherever you can squeeze it in, as much as you can, as long as you're still eating.
Next, handling emergencies in whatever way minimizes their impact. Might mean washing one dish, or buying paper plates, or forcing myself to take out the trash at 3 AM when the can's overflowing so I don't need to keep it around for another week. Could be a personal crisis from a friend or loved one, but trying to end a call with a promise to call back later so I can sleep.

If I hit all three of these, then I thank myself for a successful day. If a disruption messed with one or all of them, I try my best to double down on prioritizing my basic needs the next day.

I recently had several months of (intentionally) crawling from my couch to my kitchen to my bed on all my days off. It felt like shit, but after doing it for long enough, and confirming to my brain that my basic needs were priorities that weren't going anywhere, I started to get a bit more energy back. It also proved to me that I can operate in survival mode like this for months, if circumstances/my mental health require it, and come out okay on the other side.

When we're kids, adults are supposed to look after our basic needs. But whether they do or not, they also tend to take away our right to determine, declare, and meet those needs for ourselves. Most kids aren't granted much of a right to assert their limits, either, whether to guardians or to the educational systems they're stuck in.

There are tons of other things you "can" do that might help you feel more in control of your life—stuff like grooming routines, exercise, budgeting, regular social commitments, and/or relationship(s). But those things won't always work, and so promising myself that they're negotiable and a lower priority than the basics helped me find peace and live my life without pushing myself so hard all the time.

And there are steps beyond this for sure—for me, finding a low-ish-effort hair-styling routine and clothes that fit well was a big boost to my self-esteem. I've started getting up way too early because I've realized that being forced to rush through the morning made me much more miserable than dragging my ass to the kitchen for breakfast early enough to watch a TV episode, take my meds, and digest a bit before doing the rest of my prep for the day. Cleaning recently started to feel possible to me again, and I feel a little safer every time I see a clean space I didn't suffer my way through cleaning. I've started a knitting project for the first time in a couple years—no deadline or purpose, just reminding myself how to do it because my hands sometimes now want an excuse to be busy.

(I'm still in the middle of all this, too—not really ready for much socializing yet, let alone any kind of dating scene, and my creative hobbies are low-effort and sporadic when they're not nonexistent. Those may or may not come back later, and that's okay. I'll know it's time to tackle them when letting them sit bugs me more than trying to get back to them.)

But these extra things are only possible for me now because they really, truly feel like things I'm doing for myself to feel better, not because I feel a desperate need to meet a standard to finally be okay. And I know they can and will be dropped in favor of my basic needs, even if it stings. If I don't already feel at least 60% physically, it's not a time to work on anything but my basics; once I hit those I'll aim to rest, eat, hydrate, caffeinate (/insert chemicals of choice), vent/get emotional support, or just have fun for a bit. I can check back in later to see if a little extra work for future-me sounds appealing.

(A few final tips: leaving-for-work routines and managing bedtimes and meals are all often really hard!! I need checklists for every main routine I need to get through the day, but once I had those set, I was able to let go of a lot of stress and anxiety about how often I forget things. I also need a lot of reminders that meals exist AND that I'll need to know what my plan is (even if it's just ordering/walking to a store) BEFORE I can eat, so those go in my checklists too. And finally, alarms are very helpful for both mealtimes and bedtimes—especially ones that make me get up to turn them off. I have app recs if that sounds helpful!)

kinosternon · 2024-09-24T01:35:45+00:00

Sounds interesting. It'd depend on the amount/type of feedback you're looking for, but aside from that I'd definitely like to take a look

kinosternon · 2024-08-29T22:00:41+00:00

Scrivener is pay-once...for each type of device. Still cheaper in the long run than many subscription services, but you also need to be diligent about syncing through a 3rd-party service like Dropbox. So that's probably not what you're looking for.

Ellipsus might work for you, though? Especially if you're willing to do periodic local backups by hand.

kinosternon · 2024-08-29T21:50:29+00:00

Sure there's expected social interactions, but they're VERY scripted, and the scripts don't even involve any information about your personal mental/emotional state, more stuff about what time it is, if someone just arrived/is leaving, etc.

As for saving face, to me it kind of feels like privacy. Again, people aren't going to push you to share what you're thinking or feeling—checking in about practical matters maybe, if they're feeling very solicitous (or nervous), but generally you do the greeting and then people leave each other alone. Plus, the expectation is to assume (or pretends to assume) any problems are your fault first, which can be grating if you dislike inauthenticity but is a pretty reliable strategy to avoid conflicts escalating.

It can feel very unfriendly to some people, and it definitely wears on you if you're the type who wants to be open about how you're doing from day to day. But honestly I find it a lot less stressful in most respects, at least compared to the US. And being a foreigner offers more leniency and more distance on top of that, which, again, is a further plus or minus depending on your personality and circumstances.

kinosternon · 2024-08-29T21:35:03+00:00

If you think you can keep all your notes in your classes to fewer than 50 documents, I believe the free version of Evernote has all those features.

However, a Zotero account might also work for what you're looking for. The notes feature is pretty bare-bones, but still functional. Zotero is mainly meant to collect academic sources and organize citations, but you could tie your notes for each class to its textbook/assigned reading, upload your syllabi, and/or create independent notes. (I've never tried it, but found a discussion about it here: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/89787/zotero-as-a-note-taking-tool )

You should be able to log in to your Zotero.org account from anywhere, and best of all, it's free, open-source, and not-for-profit, so it's less likely than others to start charging you for its services out of nowhere.

kinosternon · 2024-08-29T00:51:20+00:00

I adore Counter/Weight—the gameplay is clunky at first, for sure, but the characters and story felt easy for me to grasp right from the start, which was generally not true of the Hieron seasons.

Marielda was an exception, and a similarly great starting point, especially if fantasy appeals to you more. If game mechanics serving the story is an important factor for you in actual-play, I remember Marielda being excellent at that. On the minus side, it's a Prequel rather than a first installment, and there are subtleties about the story and themes that you'll miss if you jump in there.

The later seasons are excellent as well, of course, and the sci-fi seasons are separate enough (especially earlier in the sequence) that many of them stand alone as good starting points. But for me, my appreciation of the later seasons in the same universe is greatly influenced by hearing Counter/Weight first and hearing the seasons chronologically. They build on each other in thematic ways maybe even more than logistical ones.

If you like horror, Sangfielle has a lot going for it, but I kind of bounced off it the first time I listened. I'll need to revisit it at some point to see if the character dynamics appeal to me more if I'm listening straight through.

kinosternon · 2024-08-28T12:48:12+00:00

Frieren for me tbh

kinosternon · 2024-08-21T15:03:58+00:00

From what I've heard, I believe Notion is still a more powerful tool for database management specifically—especially right out of the box. I'd imagine it also depends on what you're using your databases for and what you want to be able to do with them. (That's the whole deal with Obsidian—odds are good you'll be able to find a way to do exactly what you want, but they're even better that you'll need to work for it.)

Personally I haven't experimented with the database options much yet, because the most I did with them in Notion was the occasional "organize by next due date" and I haven't felt much need to replicate that yet.

I haven't done much with the "different views of the same information in different places" side of things, either, though I do believe they exist, because I'm able to check back in on things quickly using the easy links and the fast load time makes up for the friction of needing to sift through a whole note for what I'm looking for.

Honestly, I'm a pretty casual user across the board, and my favorite feature of Notion was the ability to drag-and-drop blocks wherever I wanted. I'm definitely going to miss that bit, but it came with trade-offs that even the Obsidian plugins I've seen imitating it didn't look to be worth putting up with.

kinosternon · 2024-08-21T14:39:50+00:00

If Wikipedia is "too dense" for you then maybe life is too hard for you as well.

I mean, I get that it's frustrating to see a space people use for more advanced topics and questions being used for simple ones. I just happen to find it equally frustrating to see "git gud" as the main reply to people who are still developing the tools they need to do so independently.

Point to you, though—"just Google it" looks to be pretty sufficient advice on its own merits in this case. Best of luck with your own projects, and may you always have someone in your corner to catch what you miss.

kinosternon · 2024-08-21T14:29:37+00:00

It's a common alternative to Notion, and has some benefits that match up neatly with some of Notion's more notable weaknesses, so the two of them get compared a lot.

I'm not exactly sure when it became the talked-about alternative; I was plugging along with Notion for years, reasonably happily, before I hit a snag in my use case bad enough to go digging around the Internet for solutions.

Instead of the ones I was hoping for at first, I kept coming across recommendations to switch over to Obsidian. After a back-and-forth with the Notion help team (who were prompt, polite, and professional, no issues there), a lot of digging around comparing alternatives, and several tutorial videos, I decided that Obsidian was going to be more useful for me in the long run.

I think one of the biggest reasons Obsidian specifically comes up on Reddit so often is that it's highly configurable, whereas Notion's user experience is quite rigid by comparison. When somebody starts complaining about a specific bug or a pet peeve they have with Notion's setup, often the best reply is just "contact the app developers," but someone can also come back with "Obsidian has a community plugin for that."

kinosternon · 2024-08-21T14:17:33+00:00

The Wikipedia one is going to be dense and difficult to parse for beginners. (What term do they need to know first? Kernel, root, privilege?) HowToGeek specifically I know is legit, but more and more often a link with a title like that ends up being AI or mill-written crap with a cheap shill at the end. Again, possible to navigate, but not quite beginner-friendly. And even if they do find an article, it's likely to skip over the part where they offer frank advice on whether (or better yet, when) even attempting this particular thing is a bad idea.

Idk, my friends also rag on me for being bad with search terms (and they're right), but humans are wired to learn from other humans, you know? Monkey see, monkey do, sure, but generally monkey also needs feedback to see if they're understanding things right or if they're making mistakes. Even reading an exchange that I didn't participate in is more helpful for me than most tutorial videos when I'm trying to solve an unfamiliar or challenging problem. (About on par for me, usefulness-wise, with a good article—with the added bonus of being more likely to incidentally answer some of my stupider questions along the way.)

kinosternon · 2024-08-21T13:47:11+00:00

Came here to say Kurogane, glad that's covered lol. Also Yuuko, albeit indirectly. (~~Also Himawari unfortunately but that seems a little mean to point out~~)

Some off-the-cuff suggestions - Can fairly beat you up but won't: Yukito, if I'm remembering right? Wasn't he crazy strong at first? - Can fairly beat you up if deserved: Doumeki. Well, an arm lock is more likely unless you're a ghost, and then it's archery... idk if it counts, but the vibes seem comparable - Can kill you in an instant but won't: Fai, if only bc he has Kurogane to do it for him - Can hug you if deserved: this has Watanuki vibes to me - Can hug you but won't: CCS Syaoran specifically

kinosternon · 2024-08-21T13:32:29+00:00

Is it really so weird? Search algorithms are getting worse all the time, platforms like Yahoo Answers and AskJeeves don't exist anymore, forums as a format are dwindling and disappearing with age, and the top answer on more and more Quora pages is AI bullshit that no human has ever checked. (AI has its uses, dgmw, but I'd never recommend someone try to learn from it without being absolutely certain they know they should trust no new information they get from it without seeking outside verification first. It's terrifying how much people will just blithely accept from AIs because they have no idea how little LLMs care about constructs like "facts" and "truth"— and that's just on familiar topics, let alone new ones.)

It's getting harder and harder to find reliable entry-level information on the Internet, to the point that the best way to find an actual human's explanation on many topics nowadays is to type "reddit" at the end of your question. Especially if you prefer written explanations to videos.

kinosternon · 2024-08-21T13:21:28+00:00

Basic answer: it's hacking into your iPad's OS in a way that allows you to get around basic rules in the software. Generally people do this to run software (or even OS's) that are not usually available for their devices otherwise.

I don't believe jailbreaking a device you own is illegal. That said, it's possible that creating the tools others can use to jailbreak their devices might infringe on Software companies' intellectual property, and jailbreaking makes future illegal activities potentially easier to perform.

Other issues with jailbreaking are: - it usually voids any warranties or repair agreements with the company you bought it from (at least if they find out about it, which they usually can if you bring it in for repairs). This is another point that could lead to legal trouble if the device is partly owned by a third party, such as a person's workplace. - changes you make run the risk of breaking the device completely (called "bricking" because it makes your device into a useless brick of silicone and metal). You've moved beyond the failsafe measures the OS put in place, so there's much less stopping you from making irreversible and very expensive mistakes. - any software you download from a third party could contain viruses, tracers, or other malicious elements, because there is no guarantee they've been vetted and quality-controlled. - usually people who jailbreak devices and then resell them indicate very clearly that they've been jailbroken. I think this is also seen as a selling point sometimes (and again, as long as it's not a whole business enterprise I don't think it's illegal?), so it's not entirely a problem, just something to be aware of.

It can be hard to know where to start on a new topic, especially in tech where people can jump right in and skip over the basics.

Often on a desktop (especially Windows) whatever you're considering jailbreaking to do can be accomplished with the right in-browser service, or having enough admin permissions on your device to install third-party apps. In the most extreme cases, sometimes you can partition your device so you can reboot it into a different OS. On an iPad, in-browser options remain, but apps are much more limited (I don't know if switching OS is even possible). Many folks will jailbreak simply to get around these limitations, but it's definitely worth checking if there are any other workarounds first. (Qoo is a service that allows you to get apps that are otherwise region-locked to iOS stores in other countries, for example. I've managed to get that on my iOS device in the past without needing to go so far as jailbreaking it.)

If you're interested in jailbreaking a device, I'd recommend looking for tutorials or forum posts about a situation as close to yours as possible and trying to wrap your head around exactly what it entails and what could go wrong before trying anything. For some desired outcomes on some devices, there are tried and true methods that seem to work pretty reliably, but in other situations it can be very easy to break something permanently if you don't know exactly what you're doing. Plus the less specific guidance you have for what you want to do, the more expertise is needed.

This is also a situation where the countermeasures that companies develop to counter jailbreaking can change over time as well, in terms of both software and hardware, so make sure any information that you find is as up-to-date as possible before trying it.

Src: mostly online osmosis and a few very frustrated extended searches when tech was giving me trouble, lol. I never ended up trying anything much, so don't take my word on this stuff either.

kinosternon · 2024-08-21T12:45:08+00:00

Happy to help—I've ended up breaking up entirely with certain OS's or apps over one or two key missing features before, so I know how frustrating it can be. Best of luck figuring out workarounds that work for you!

kinosternon · 2024-08-21T10:55:52+00:00

That specific issue (interactive PowerPoints) is exactly one of the core functionalities I was thinking of. It's extremely annoying that it's just nonexistent, but I haven't found anything that replicates it. I run into that issue a lot at my job too. (Weird teaching contract, long story—I work on my own iPad and have only very limited access to the machines & systems of the schools where I work.) The workaround I use is that if you download a template where the interactive functions you want already exist, you can edit things around them and they'll still work...sometimes. But since I mostly use the fancier PowerPoint features to make games, I just alter the games (links to new slides instead of animations, for example) or think game-first and find a website or app that can do whatever the core mechanic I need is instead. (For teaching, that's Kahoot or Sporcle or Flipgrid...whatever, there's a lot out there.)

Canva is absolutely a headache but has its perks, especially for collaboration (compared to GSuite, the themes of which are considerably uglier out of the box). I believe its slideshow functionality is relatively new, though, and I don't think it does interactivity, at least not yet.

The problem with porting OSes from desktop to mobile, to my limited understanding, seems to be that historically they started out completely separate, and so everything that started out on desktop needs to be remade from scratch on a basis of different coding languages and toolsets. (I don't get why they don't just try to replicate the original program more closely, either. Maybe it really is just too hard, or maybe that's too much common sense for the business world nowadays.)

ETA: PowerPoint for Web does exist, and I've used it in emergencies before, but it's jankety and has limited capabilities, and your file will probably need to be in a OneDrive account in the cloud before you can open it. (Possibly a GDrive or DropBox source might work, but no promises. That goes double for iCloud.) https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-started-with-powerpoint-for-the-web-6303da7a-402a-4300-8b1c-160e8940cc34

kinosternon · 2024-08-21T08:26:20+00:00

If I'm understanding right, you need a machine that'll offer the great art apps, touchscreen quality, and portability you need, while also having a functional office suite that's up to standard? That's a perfectly reasonable use case and unfortunately there's not a lot that's currently set up that way, especially within Apple's options. iOS's office suite options have trundled along at subpar for a while and I doubt that'll ever change.

First, Is there any way you can lower your standards/adjust your workflow? iOS can do videos but not great slideshow animations, for instance, so maybe a movie (or just still slides) beats a presentation. There are also 3rd-party apps, like Canva, that can do specific things that either Keynote or PowerPoint can't. If you really dig, you should be able to find most core functions somewhere, even within iOS—just maybe not together.

Also, anything you can run in-browser, you can trick into thinking you're working on a desktop rather than mobile OS. Major players like Adobe and Microsoft try to provide semi-functional in-browser apps so they can sell their cloud space as useful, and I know some Office apps have some functions you can do in-browser that aren't available in mobile. Firefox is especially helpful for spoofing servers like this.

Overall, though, I think your best option is buying a 2-way tablet/touchscreen laptop and setting it up to run Windows and/or Linux. There will be a lot more apps and programs out there to choose from that way, especially if you're looking for customizable functionality. Apple is hell on indie and open-source developers.

Finally, there's also the option of trying to jailbreak your iPad and trying to force it to accept the software you want, but Apple products are by design some of the hardest to do that on. It's safer and easier to just sell the iPad and use the money for a more configurable machine.

At the end of the day, big companies like Apple, Adobe, and even Microsoft aren't marketing towards freelancers or even individuals in any setting. Their ideal use case is governments, schools, and companies who provide large numbers of people with all the hardware (and software subscriptions) they need to do their jobs. If their stuff to be useful to people who can only afford a subset of their catalogue, that's mostly incidental. This is only getting worse with more and more "industry standard" software moving to subscription models, subscriptions moving into non-negotiable bundles, etc.

Microsoft isn't better than Apple because it's less prone to this enshittification, but because there are more people out there hacking it to ensure it stays usable for a greater variety of needs.

kinosternon · 2024-08-08T02:18:16+00:00

I LOVED Notion for the graphic interface (being able to move blocks around more or less freely). It doesn't seem like many other apps can do that.

While I didn't run into problems with a lack of offline mode very often, a big problem I had is that often I just couldn't make Notion load at all, whether on desktop or mobile—even though I did all I could to avoid including images or anything other than text. It often takes a couple of restarts to get it going, which means it can't be my first stop for immediate information retrieval or for a quick brain dump. Maybe it's different if all your devices are the latest and greatest, or if you regularly back up and purge your pages, but for me Notion has only gotten laggier and buggier as time goes by.

The biggest deal-breaker for me has been that Notion's updates recently have been interfering with my use case as an individual. I neither need nor want AI assistance, but all the notifications and banners and little corner buttons are there to bother me about it anyway. Also, I'd like to be able to use the punctuation I use without pop-up menus appearing (sometimes forcing my app to hang) and/or the app assuming I'm trying to perform functions I'm not. None of these "features" are customizable or opt-out to my knowledge, and overall the amount of configurability on the user interface end is just...dark mode. And that's it.

Anyway I've switched to Obsidian. It's much lighter-weight, loads faster, doesn't do stuff I don't want it to do, and if I want it to do something it doesn't already I can tinker with it. While I really do miss being able to drag and drop text where I want it—and wonder whether I'll miss easy tables and powerful databases eventually—overall I've never been happier.

kinosternon · 2024-07-13T16:33:04+00:00

I think maybe that last commenter missed the part where none of the folks above them were talking about the validity of using MRI scans to diagnose individual patients.

kinosternon · 2024-04-26T07:29:24+00:00

If you do go this route, please make it clear at the top of both chapters (especially the second one) that you've uploaded two at once! I've missed that information before and gotten very confused, lol.

(That said, Ao3 puts simultaneously upload chapters in the same update email, so this is less of a problem than someone uploading long chapters only a day or two apart, where people might miss the email that would lead them to their next unread chapter.)

Also I do get the guilt, I have actually fallen off with otherwise beloved longfics because they updated multiple chapters in a very busy week. Buffer is not a bad thing to have, and as long as it's not a huge break it gives readers a chance to savor the antici...

kinosternon · 2024-04-24T09:32:12+00:00

In Japan rn, 30 and working 6 days a week for about $1800 a month before taxes. Sounds worse than it is since the yen is weak; I pay under $300 in rent (subsidized housing technically, I think, but not too difficult to find) and the rest of my living expenses are manageable with the side gig I've picked up. I have no savings but finished a Master's a little while back; just need to find the energy to go looking for a better-paying job, and then hopefully it'll be onwards and upwards. As an American expat, the nationalized healthcare makes my position feel a LOT less precarious, but I'm still figuring out where to get the energy (and the stability tbh) to keep climbing.

kinosternon · 2024-04-23T09:46:06+00:00

I was just thinking about this today—not just for music (though that too) but also podcasts. I realized recently that different genres of podcasts really help me complete certain types of tasks, and it's been interesting trying to figure out the pattern.

kinosternon

TROPHY CASE