People keep calling the hinted relationship between Naru and Shiba yaoi, but I don't think that's correct. When Ookuma asks them if they're a man, they very explicit say their sex is male. Now, that could just be an artifact of the translation, but it seems like a very specific and unusual wording. They also always appear in very feminine clothes and act in a more traditionally feminine way.

My guess is that Naru is actually trans. or at least somewhere on that end of the spectrum, in contrast to Mizuki who just prefers more masculine cloths both still thinks of themselves as a woman and who gets surprised when people mistake them for male.

Definitely seems like Naru's at least habitually crossdressing. Not sure if I agree on defining the relationship as yaoi or not yaoi. Question is whether "yaoi" is really just "male homosexuality", and thus based on sex, not gender, or if the classification is commonly used based on gender over sex.

I'm pretty sure it wouldn't end well if you told a trans woman, who's interested in men, that she's engaged in male homosexuality.

last edited at Oct 27, 2020 10:45PM

Or Naru could be a cisgender male who is simply gender-variant, i.e. diverges in his behavior and/or gender expression from the norms for masculinity and femininity (which is not limited to transgender people) by having a decided preference for adopting a very feminine appearance while not putting much thought into what label he should identify with, and he's acknowledging the fact that he's diverging from gender norms.

Yup. That's what I meant by "on that end of the spectrum" and why I used 'they' instead of 'she'.

For your information, the Japanese line that Naru said is "まぁ 性別上は". Japanese doesn't actually differentiate between "gender" and "sex" in its native vocabulary, using 性別 for both (although it seems to primarily mean biological sex); the only available alternative for when distinction is necessary is ジェンダー, a transliteration of English "gender".

That's good to know. So they might not have been making as much of a distinction as I initially thought.

Thank you.

In the second panel, the first character looks like an arrow pointing towards Shiki, while the bottom two symbols look like an arrow pointing towards Komachi followed by an X. So the sin is actually Shiki's?

it reminds me of "48km" a brazillian gl webcomic with the same dinamic

Is there an English version available?

What does her wooden tag say in the second and fourth panels?

^ Her friend is Alice, and Alice's girlfriend is Yuuka.

The Author said the ship was Alice Sanae on twitter, so I think the tag is wrong.

(see 'Tan Cirno' and 'Zombie Reimu' memes for more)

I thought Tan Cirno was actually supposed to be tan due to using summer energy, or some such nonsense, during an incident.

People keep calling the hinted relationship between Naru and Shiba yaoi, but I don't think that's correct. When Ookuma asks them if they're a man, they very explicit say their sex is male. Now, that could just be an artifact of the translation, but it seems like a very specific and unusual wording. They also always appear in very feminine clothes and act in a more traditionally feminine way.

My guess is that Naru is actually trans. or at least somewhere on that end of the spectrum, in contrast to Mizuki who just prefers more masculine cloths both still thinks of themselves as a woman and who gets surprised when people mistake them for male.

Also, on an unrelated note, I'd forgotten this series was by Mochi. It's so different from most of their other works, but I really liked the less completely crack tone and setting. I hope we see more in a similar style, if not an outright continuation.

And I don't really see her parents as conservative. Overprotective - sure. But she obviously has 0 issues with dating another girl, even less than a regular person. Maybe she is just an airhead, but I don't think that is something she would be taught in a conservative household of a wealthy family.

It's worth noting that the same openness to new experiences that lead to her easily accepting Mizuki is also shown in other aspects of her personality. For example when she was confronted with new, and potentially unpleasant, dishes she decided to go for them without hesitation. That's more than just ditzyness and it's not a character trait you'd expect from overly conservative households.

last edited at Oct 26, 2020 6:45PM

Huh. This is starting to remind me of Durarara. Everyone's crazy, everyone has some sort of secret, and there's at least one mob of faceless psychotic henchmen. If Mitora takes them to a Russian Sushi place, then the only thing they'll be missing is a headless delivery girl.

So a love-triangle? hmm... seems like a cool idea. hope it doesn't end badly.

If page 6 is anything to go by, I have my doubts. Still, I'll be looking forward to the answer, one way or the other.

The brown haired girl looks like Makoto, from Sailor Moon and the artstyle fits perfectly. It took me reading the tags to realize she wasn't.

Is saving a girl from a molester just a common way to start romances in Manga? Sweet Blue Flowers, My Love Story, and now this.

That's really just an indictment of Japan's problematic view and handling of molestation in the first place. Molestation and assault is so normalized, it's disgusting.

Really? I thought they had women only train cars for that type of thing.

The fact that they need women only train cars should tell you something.

Yeah, this one didn't really land for me. There wasn't enough to show that they were childhood friends or that they were reconnecting after years of separation; you could substitute any number of different backgrounds and have them fit with little issue. Unfortunately, without that extra depth or emotional component, it's just the same two panels repeating, over and over again, in service of a joke that can't land without a twist that they don't have.

Wasn't a big part of the end of Spikes ark him explicitly not getting back together with her? Like she was his lost love, but she was also very not good for him.

It seems the reception on exalted has been less than luke warm, so I'm not sure if it's worth trying. Campaigns tend to work better when everyone's at least partially invested in the idea anyways.

Out of curiosity, is there any particular part of VtM that you guys like or is it specifically the entire vampire package?

RandomGuy posted:

Also, as someone who isn’t terribly familiar with White Wolf’s products? What exactly are Geniuses? And what is Exalted?

White wolf has 2-ish settings (that I am aware of): World of Darkness and Exalted. They're each set in their own world and tend to focus on different types of stories, but they also support multiple types of characters that get described in standalone (or mostly stand alone) books.

World of Darkness is their urban fantasy setting, which takes place in a version of the real world that also has a supernatural element that is hidden from most mortals. The main books in this series are Vampire: The Requiem (focusing on vampires), Werewolf: The Forsaken (focusing on wearewolves), and Mage: The Awakening (focusing on Mages). Genius: The Transgression is a fan made book, in the same vein as the above three, but focused on mad-scientist characters who work by creating strange technologies that don't necessarily follow the normal laws of physics. If you want to read it, you can find it here.

In case you're wondering, Vampire: The Masquerade fills the same role as Requiem, but in the Old World of Darkness, which is basically just the version that came before the current one.

Exalted, unlike WoD, takes place on a fantasy world with a geography that's completely unlike Earth's — for one thing, it's flat — with more high power, action-adventure focused, characters. The theme is also inspired more by martial arts stories and heroic epics, rather than the more psychological monster and urban fantasy fare that goes into WoD, though it certainly has its elements of morality and psychology as it's still a White Wolf game.

In Exalted, the original creators of the world created the gods to serve them. Those gods decided to rebel and imbued select mortals with a spark of their divine might, called an Exaltation. Their rebellion succeeded and they ruled the world alongside the exalts for a time. Shockingly this actually worked quite well, up until a curse from the original creators caught up with the Exalts and drove the strongest of them mad. They were overthrown and a few apocalypses ensued.

Eventually, a Dragon blooded exalt was able to bring some order to the world and declared herself Empress. People got to rebuilding and things went ... fine ... for centuries. Right up until recently, when she vanished without trace or explanation.

The current edition of Exalted has rules for two types of Exalts: Solar Exalted and Dragon-Blooded Exalted. The Solars are defined as the strongest type of exalt, they are the ones who were originally in charge before they went mad, but no one has seen them in a very long time. While you would be playing as a new Solar Exalt, the power level is still higher than I'm really comfortable dealing with.

That leaves us with the Dragon-Blooded Exalts. While most exalts are specifically chosen by deities and only exist in very small numbers (between a few dozen and a few hundred, depending on the type), Dragon-Blooded gain their powers as descendants of the Great Elemental Dragons and, as such, there are a lot of them. In fact, the ruling class of the current empire is composed entirely of Dragon-Blooded dynasties, though not all Dragon-Blooded are part of the ruling class or even part of the empire.

If I were to run an Exalted campaign, it would be Dragon-Blooded, though the specifics of that campaign would depend on the players and what they're interested in. That said, while I'm willing to run an Exalted campaign, it would be the first time I've run anything in this system.

HB4L posted:

So I'm assuming you wouldn't be up for it?

I'm not up for running a VtM game, but I'd be willing to consider playing as a Genius character in one under two conditions: The GM is at least decently familiar with running the system and I can talk to them beforehand to make sure my character will actually fit the story they want to run.

Both of those are purely practical considerations. Running a mixed game is more complicated than a normal one, and using a fan book adds an extra layer of complication on top of that, so it's best to have a GM who's familiar enough with the system anticipate some problems in advance and figure out how to deal with any they don't anticipate.

Similarly, as with any campaign that mixes in a drastically different type of character, it's possible for the odd one out to warp the story in undesired ways, either because their abilities easily solve a wide range of problems the other characters would normally face or because they require things that necessitate dragging the party in a different direction. Conversely, it's also possible for them to be relegated to an unimportant cameo status, where they're there, but can't really interact with the main plot or accomplish anything without pretending they're one of the normal characters. Neither of those outcomes are particularly fun, so I'd like to make sure my character would be able to fit within the campaign.

Does that make sense?

Well seems like the 2 systems most people here are interested in are VtM and Exalted, so considering you're still against VtM, I guess Exalted would be the best bet? We can always run a trial session to get better hang of it/each other and once we do consider changing it again.

We could also do that. If we go exalted, would I be the one GMing, or does anyone else want to run a game?

From what I understand, running a WoD campaign that involves more than one "race" (vampire, werewolf, changeling, mage, slayer, etc) requires a lot of imagination, but it can be done.

Yeah, anything like that is going to be fairly reliant on an experienced GM and the right kind of campaign. I'm fairly confident that I could write a character that could fit, given those two conditions, but neither of them are reasonable constraints for this thread, which is why I only mentioned a mixed campaign in passing.

Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of the whole vampire esthetic. I don't have any problems with other players playing as vampires, but it's generally not something I want to deal with myself or something I'd want to center a campaign I'm running on.

In terms of White Wolf Published systems, Exalted and Dragon Blooded, in particular, seems interesting. For those who don't know, Exalted is set on a fantasy world with a largely Asian and Indian inspired aesthetic and players take the role of mortals who have been empowered by some form of divine gift. In the case of dragon-blooded exalts, this takes the form of ancestry that can be traced back to one of the elemental dragons.

While technically not published by White Wolf, there's a fan made book called Genius: the Transgression that uses their system and is set in the same world as Vampire, Mage, and a number of other books. In Genius you play as a mad scientist and, in addition to mad science gadgets, there are sort-of pocket dimensions based on what-if futures or speculative futures that failed to pass. I think you can technically run crossover campaigns, with mixed parties, using other books from the same setting, but that can get really tricky.

There are also three non-White Wolf systems I'd be interested in trying.

The Stuff of Legends is an Indie system that's still in development. It started as a spiritual successor to Legend, if you're familiar with that system, and it's d20 based, like D&D, but it is otherwise very different from either of those systems. Rather than choosing a single class, a character's combat abilities are primarily determined by three tracks, while their out of combat abilities are primarily defined by a point based perk system. The end result is a lot of flexibility when it comes to character build alongside more diverse and interesting abilities than you traditionally see in d20 systems.

There's also FATE of Cthulhu, which is a Lovecraft inspired variant of FATE. It's much less mechanically focused than White Wolf's stuff or SoL which can be good for some people. It also has some time travel/timeline aspects which seem really interesting.

Finally, I recently got a copy of Lancer, which is a mecha-themed system from the guy behind the Kill Six Billion Demons web comic. I haven't looked at it in too much detail yet, but it seems really cool and I'm pretty sure it comes with a digital character builder.

I'd be willing to play or GM any of those systems, except for Genius which I'd only be willing to play. (I'm less familiar with White Wolf's system and it's complicated enough that I wouldn't feel comfortable running a fan-made expansion for the first time.) I'm also willing to look at most other systems, except for D&D and Pathfinder, which I really can't stand.

@Nevri, making a thread for it might be a good idea. Personally, if it's going to be something White Wolf's published I'd rather go with Exalted or the Genius: The Transgression. There are also a few other systems I'd be fairly interested in, but D&D and Pathfinder are things I'd rather avoid.

Really? I was under the impression that Balderls Gate Planescape Torment were pretty similar to the official rules and they came out in '98 and '99 respectively.

Also, it's probably worth mentioning that Shadowrun is based of of, well, Shadowrun, not D&D. The two systems are fairly different.

Boss: "Work on your day off with no pay because I said so."

Me: "Fuck off."

Boss: "You're fired."

Me again: "I said fuck off. I already quit. Shove your unpaid overtime back up the orifice you excreted it out of."

Tip: You may want to skip the "You can't fire me, I quite" line. Forcing your old employer to pay unemployment insurance is a much better FU.

I haven't played any of the D&D arcade games, but I generally haven't been a fan of the pc games based on it, in part because of mechanical issues with 3.5 and how characters are built, in particular.

That said, if a bunch of people are really interested in playing non-D&D games, I might be up for playing or GMing, depending on what people want.

It's kind-of unfortunate that D&D is so dominant, because there are a lot of other interesting systems that are much harder to play, simply because everyone has heard of D&D.

I'm curious how often something like this ALL happens in Japan!!!!

How accurate are Mangas?

How accurate are sitcoms and soaps?