The mute system is a little confusing. Basically, Twitch auto scans the video for what it thinks might be copyrighted audio, then it mutes that section for you to prevent you from getting a copyright strike. This is all automatic and set to extremely paranoid because when a big wave of copyright enforcement went around a few years ago, that was equally paranoid and ridiculous. People got copyright strikes for 2 second snippets of something you could barely hear in the background. It was bad.

But the auto mute isn’t a strike or even a warning. It’s no authority at all. It’s just a random automated guess at what companies might be looking for when doing their scans. It’s there to protect you in its weird and uncomfortable way.

You can dispute, but that puts the responsibility for any claims on you. You’re waiving the protection. It might be fine, but if it isn’t you suffer the consequences. So generally it’s usually not worth the risk to bother. But a mute is no big deal. It doesn’t hurt you or count against you in any way.

tl;dr: nobody is actually claiming that audio is copyrighted, except some robot scan thought it might be and better safe than sorry.

If you like QfG, you might be interested in Heroine’s Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok on Steam. It was released for free and I imagine that hasn’t changed. But I still ended up donating because I enjoyed it so much.

Random thoughts in no particular order:

Circle of the Moon was actually not made by IGA. It was developed simultaneously by Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe while IGA worked on Harmony of Dissonance in Tokyo. However, to me Circle ironically feels closer to an IGAvania of the two while Harmony feels like IGA was trying to make something partway between Symphony and a classicvania.

Aria and Dawn are generally the best liked portable games, but OoE has a loyal following due to its much higher difficulty more reminiscent of the classic games.

Harmony of Despair is surprisingly enjoyable. Even if you missed the boat, it can still be enjoyed on a PS3 emulator with all the DLC and even online multiplayer. It’s honestly a blast.

There’s also a mobile game called Grimoire of Souls and, for the really obscure stuff, some Japan only Castlevania casino games.

Of the PS2 games, I remember quite enjoying Lament of Innocence and keep meaning to give it another play someday. The other one I forgot completely.

I’m looking forward to Bloodstained 2!

Edit to add one more: there’s a Sega Saturn version of Symphony of the Night where you can play as Maria. It’s Japan only, but a translation patch can be found online.

For me it comes down to how you use language. Mental health is important to me and I recognize the power of words, so I care more about the impact of language use. No matter how much you reassure people that it’s okay to fail, failing still feels bad. It makes people feel like … a failure. That seems counterproductive and unnecessary to me. Why make people feel bad when they did nothing wrong?

You can specify exactly how and why it’s a failure if you want, and you’re not technically wrong. I’m just not principally concerned with being technically correct in the first place. I’m reframing the standard narrative because I hate to see it go unchallenged. So for anyone who’s hurting and reads this and feels like shit, this time I’ll be the one to say something.

That’s what I strive for in any relationship: staying together purely because we choose to. I don’t want someone to stay with me for any other reason, and I want my partner to know that I choose them. Not out of obligation or necessity, but because I truly want them close to me. It’s simple but meaningful.

It’s also okay to fail. I agree with that as well. I just won’t see a relationship - marriage or not - as a failure if it brought two people happiness for a while until they amicably decide to end it. It’s only a failure when it makes them miserable or when they end it by needlessly hurting the other person. But… that’s still okay if they can at least see what they did wrong and learn from it. We all make mistakes.

I see it mostly as a legal contract and legal status, but with a lot of extra baggage heaped on top. It’s an overloaded concept that tries to cover too many things at once, making them all suffer. Separate out the legal business and you’d lose the need for an explicit declaration that this union is to exist in perpetuity until cancelled by either party. Sure sounds full of romance when stated that way, doesn’t it?

But realistically, we all know you can get divorced. While we might hope it’ll be forever, we also know we’re still not gonna stick around if things get too bad (nor should we). Nobody has the shocked pikachu face when marriage isn’t forever after all. No matter what the vows say, in practice we pretty well accept that it’s a big commitment, but not a permanent one.

I think it definitely applies to relationships. It does you and any of your partners a disservice to say your relationship was only a success if one of you died.

A person isn’t a thing you possess. They have needs that grow and change with them. If those needs ever stop being compatible with the relationship, then the relationship should end. That’s not failure. It’s wanting the person you love to be happy.

This is a mistaken take driven by corporations. Artists and creators generally don’t own their own copyrights. It’s the first thing they’re forced to sign away to get any kind of contract, publishing deal, or other form of access from the big players who hold the keys to the kingdom. Nobody is making even a million dollars let alone more without going through them, and they don’t agree unless they own those rights.

Small time creators can own their own work, but even then you have countless examples of creators who wouldn’t play ball so the bigger companies just plagiarized them and they don’t have the money to fight it. You need the backing of a big company to even enforce your claim against the other big companies that threaten it if it’s actually lucrative. And, again, they won’t unless they’re the ones that own it because you signed it away.

Copyright does not protect creators in the slightest. It’s a tool by and for large business used to legally steal from creators.

I see why you’d say they’re still experimenting - and they are within the confines of the souls formula. They definitely aren’t making carbon copies of past games. But, compared to the crazy variety and wild mechanics in their back catalog, the souls formula is pretty narrow. They’ve got a card battler, an adventure game series, a co-op puzzle platformer, and more in their portfolio. Demon’s Souls itself was a huge experiment: souls, messages, and invasions into a mostly single player experience were completely novel and even weird. Let’s not forget about world tendency, (even if we want to).

FromSoft was always like that: a bunch of totally random ideas you’d never seen before with enough good, bad, and weird to go around. The changes they make today are comparatively tame. Imagine if the next soulslike game did away with the entire magic system and instead you craft your own spells from elements (Eternal Ring). Or if they did away with respawns and overhauled the entire leveling system in Bloodborne like they did when trying to give Shadow Tower its own identity separate from King’s Field. They were wild, but that’s what gave the world soulslikes in the first place.

I understand why they play it safe. Honestly, they don’t have a choice. It comes with the budget. So I really don’t begrudge them the lack of experimentation too much. But I do find it sad because it’s our loss. They could do better, and who knows what other stuff they might have come up with if they were truly free to experiment the way they used to. What I really wish is for them and other devs to just make smaller games with smaller budgets. Still make the AAA games, just set aside a small amount to experiment with and try new things too. That way we keep learning, discovering, and innovating. We’d all have better games for it.

Skill issue on FromSoft’s part, and I say that as someone who has been a fan of their games longer than most people in this thread - more than a decade before even Demon’s Souls. Their original talent was always in detailed, immersive world design. Their gameplay was unpolished and experimental, but that’s something I liked about them. They got a smash hit with Demon’s and Dark Souls and made a hard pivot towards iterating on that formula. They still embrace their roots as a studio focused on detailed world building, but they’re trying to move more towards action and encounter design to cater to Souls fans. Where once they were highly experimental, now they seem afraid to try anything different.

A better studio could find a way for players to share that struggle and triumph while still allowing players of different skill levels to enjoy everything the game has to offer. That studio would be Supergiant with Hades’ God Mode option, which slowly gives more damage resistance each time you die so the player still struggles and gets better until the handicap and their improving skill meet in the middle. In the context of Souls, this could be separate for each boss. Or another entirely different approach could be taken. The point is merely that there are ways for players of different skill levels to still share in the same struggles, FromSoft is just unwilling or incapable of finding them.

So as a longtime FromSoft fan, I think they’re the ones who need to git gud.

In some states, saving her life would have been illegal. Many women rightfully fear living in such states even if they are not currently pregnant because it’s a dystopian nightmare. It’s literal body horror. Imagine being raped, getting pregnant, being forced to carry the baby, then one day the pain is unbearable and the bleeding won’t stop but the doctors just sit there and watch you die. Some might risk giving you a painkiller, others fear even that could put them at risk.

It’s not that it’s illegal to move to another state. But it might be a death sentence.

This is the quintessential McDonald’s experience. Every time I give in to that random pang of nostalgia, I know I’m in for some kind of disappointment. It might be a broken ice cream machine, an item that’s just out that day or been removed from the menu permanently, or something as mundane as having my order screwed up. In that, ironically, it rarely disappoints.

That’ll be $28.73 at the second window.

I don’t have a source handy, but from what I remember: yes, a feral child can learn language later, but never to the same level of fluency. It’s more like learning a second language. Also there is extremely limited data because it mostly comes from horrifically abusive situations.

If I remember right, the most interesting data came from a study that gathered deaf children from areas where they had no sign language. The young children rapidly developed sign language, but the older children (teens) had a hard time keeping up and did not reach the same fluency.

My pixel (5a) only does adaptive charging if your alarm is set for the A.M. If you’re second or third shift, it doesn’t even try. There’s no way to turn it on even in developer options. It was a pretty big wtf when I figured that one out.