Hello,
As everybody knows, content discovery on Lemmy can sometimes be a bit tricky.
To help smaller communities to get more activity, I launch this thread for people to promote the communities they are active one.
One important criteria: please only promote communities that have been at least one post in the last 7 days. And if there is none, feel free to post there and then promote it here!
That kind of politics is very likely to be nearly universally agreed with on an owl community… at least I think, so you’re probably safe.
I usually won’t stalk profiles, I really only do to check “are you for real or are you just trolling”, and now what with the Fediverse being a new thing I’ll sometimes check on people to see if they stopped commenting too.
I’m a bit oversensitive and politics gets a lot of engagement, naturally, and there are so many politics magazines or magazines that aren’t strictly politics but will post a political meme or about where inflammatory politics intersects with their usually non-political point of interest, and that’s so so so many to filter out that I just don’t trust I can look at All on my instance without seeing something enraging or “look how awful the world is today!” when I already know about that thing and don’t want to spend my time getting worked up over it yet again. I know it means I lose out on fun interactions like the ones you have, though, and that’s a tradeoff I take, especially since I supplement by subbing to !newcommunities@lemmy.world, and either that or Fedigrow has the active communities thread. I also used https://sub.rehab/ when first coming here from Reddit to replace all the subreddits I enjoyed, so I tried to hit all my interests I would be remotely interested in talking about online.
Yeah, given the games are visual novels and usually don’t have much gameplay besides that (there are stat raisers like the Tokimeki Memorial series, I’m not really personally interested in Anchored Hearts but am aware of it because it is supposed to have some gameplay beyond just usual visual novel making choices, Boyfriend Dungeon is hack-and-slash) they put a lot into story or characters in order to keep it engaging. As someone who started with more traditional gaming before I found otome games, I would love to see more otome that also includes more traditional gaming. Some of the otome isekai genre things I consumed (more detailed explanation of what otome isekai is here, but in short the name should tell it all: girl/woman isekais into an otome game) feature otome that also is a real RPG with levels and everything (off the top of my head, Villainess Level 99: I May Be the Hidden Boss but I’m Not the Demon Lord, Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte, definitely have the game in the story be an RPG otome, and I don’t recall what kind of genre The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior was but the title should tell you it definitely wasn’t just a visual novel) which, if it isn’t another misunderstanding of otome or artistic license being taken, implies that such games exist in Japan and just went unlocalized. But most otome are just straight up visual novels, so you have to sell them to us on the story, characters, and art only. Sometimes the music is really cool, but you don’t really sell an otome on its music. Even if it’s Band Camp Boyfriend. It’s pretty cool. I’ve seen that some men play otome for the story and/or the romance and I definitely welcome that and them.
Curious what anime you like, and if you’ve joined any anime communities on the Fediverse. Or on Mastodon. Thinking of finally trying Mastodon after a year being on Lemmy and Kbin only. (I know my account age has me starting in September, but I instance-hopped.) I think I remember people on Fedigrow talking about anime communities they set up.
I have a multi-community set up with a few of the anime communities since they were a little sparse until recently. I don’t comment too much there, as there I’m mostly a couple seasons behind and don’t want spoilers, I mainly go to see series announcements.
I have a pretty wide range of shows I watch. I’m watching Frieren right now. Recently finished up with Ancient Magus Bride. Steins’ Gate might be my favorite more serious series, and Gintama is probably my favorite comedy. I haven’t watched much romance, but I really loved Fruits Basket and I recently read Insomniacs After School. Summertime Render was a good supernatural thriller. Golden Kamuy was a great historical fiction. Spy x Family has been very enjoyable, and I’m really enjoying the current arc in the manga about the lost love story between the school teachers at the beginning days of the war. I like the cute girls doing cute stuff stories like Yuru Camp, Super Cub, and Dairy of Our Days at the Breakwater.
I’ll have to check out some of your recommendations, even if only to get a better idea of otome. Romancing men is not of particular interest, but you’ve got me intrigued on these storylines now. I do like the social interaction and relationship building parts of Persona more than most of the dungeon crawling, so it may be interesting to me to watch one of the series you mentioned.
This is the stuff I come here for. There’s a lot of crap to wade through, even as small as Lemmy still is, but I like how someone like you has the space here to grab my intention and spread your enthusiasm for something I thought was definitely not for me. I know people have said similar to me too when I share things. I never intended to be a regular poster here, but it’s much more early internet community here where we can get to know each other better than on something huge like Reddit.
I am tempted by kbin and mastodon, as I’d like to be able to follow people too. I’d definitely follow you and a few of my regular commenters. The Fediverse has its own issues, but I think it’s the best thing we’ve got right now.
Have been meaning to watch Frieren after I saw a comment on a Dungeons and Dragons subreddit awhile back. The conversation was about the fantasy trope of elves being isolationist and sticking to their own. Someone gave a nicely-written explanation of how you could run that in your game as being because everyone else lives shorter lives than them, that it’s a phase in most elves’ lives where they say they’ll never be like their elder elves and they go adventuring, and then their friends die before them and they are heartbroken, and they go back to their walled elven communities because “what elf could bear that loss ten times over?” or some other closing line that hit the spot. The reply said Frieren was basically about that. Also have been meaning to watch Spy x Family!
About cute girls doing cute things: slice of life and themes of friendship are gender neutral. Men might fantasize about being with them: no significant male characters to threaten the fantasy, not even a “self-insert” MC who might not actually be relatable to the particular man. But what I think less people realize is that for women, it’s a female-dominated show, and there are no important men, so naturally the girls talk to each other about doing things unrelated to men. In other words, shows in that genre are nigh-on guaranteed to pass the Bechdel test. I’m a woman who watches cute girls doing cute things. I don’t spend much time thinking about the Bechdel test when consuming media, but I know other women do and I figure it’s a cool insight.
Honestly, I tell myself I play otome for the men, but really I get sucked in by the interesting premise or the main character’s personality or the main character being relatable to me somehow. From what I know of Variable Barricade, absolutely none of the guys appeal to me, but I want to play it anyways because of the tsundere MC and it being a dramedy. Playing My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom -Pirates of the Disturbance- and I’m only interested in 4 of the men, but because I’m enjoying the story/characters I’m going to play all 6 routes. If I get sucked in by a love interest it’s usually because I heard something about the way his route progresses, or he hits a particular character trope that I want to see in a love interest character that I rarely get to see in them. Although I do think part of the appeal for me is still romance—I consumed quite a lot of shipping fanfic up until a few years ago. For what it is worth I am attracted to men.
I really enjoy social interaction and relationship building mechanics in video games, and would love to see more games entirely focused around them, though with more mechanics than you see in visual novels. I also personally want to make a game some day about messing with them like a villain in a soap opera or teen drama, but I do not know if I’d actually commit to it, and I am definitely not looking forward to “so was she a bully in high school, or is she a bully victim looking to take the role of the oppressor?” questions asked in a similar vein to “so how many people have you killed?” questions for people who work on violent video games.
I also am enjoying this conversation! It feels like something that would not really be done on Reddit, but that is okay here. Or at least culture is not established enough here for anyone to tell us to stop and go away :P On Reddit I would have tried to take it to DMs and here, given issues with federation, theoretically I should be able to DM you from Mbin and you should be able to get it on Lemmy, but it might not work in practice.
I feel you’re in the right area with what to expect from Frieren, but it should still be different enough it gets you in the feels when it needs to.
Spy x Family is a ton of fun and is pretty well paced and has a good balance of serious and humor and emotion. All the MCs get pretty even focus as well, no one character dominates the series. You get some B plot stuff with the secondary characters also, so lots of POV. None of the arcs have lasted too long either. Anya is the star though, as far as I’m concerned as she just has so many great comedy moments and is so loveable in a dorky way and is drawn with the greatest expressions.
For me the cute girls doing cute things are sweet peaceful stories I can relax to, watch them do hobbies (bonus points if they actually teach me stuff about those hobbies), and give me some insight into female situations and how they (may) act when men aren’t around. Asobi Asobase is supposed to be about a games club, but they rarely do any actual games and just chill or harass each other with lots of funny gags thrown in. Days at the Breakwater is about a fishing club. Do It Yourself! was fun, as that was a crafting club, but it started with the MC having her best friend not wanting to be her friend anymore, and we learn through the series about their relationship and what the problem was and how it resolves with some fun crafty stuff (and a very cute woodpecker!) along the way. I can get why there are people that watch them for ulterior resaons, but it seems kinda pointless as there are plenty of shows that provide that much more readily. I was so disappointed Farming Life in Another World went that way! The world was so beautiful, and the variety of female characters were so loveable and interesting (and the giant killer spider that only ate potatoes was so sweet!), but it turned into more about breeding with the natives like OG Captain Kirk than a show about farming that I was really hoping for. All the characters kicked so much ass, but were reduced to implied breeding material.
I don’t think I’ve heard of the Bechdel Test before, and it’s sad that has to be a thing! I’m male, but was primarily raised by both my grandmothers, so I appreciate stronger, more independent and assertive female characters. It’s one thing that I’ve really loved about One Piece. I had expected it to be more shonen-tropey, but there are so many kick ass characters of all kinds. Being female, small, old, or fat don’t have any bearing on how the characters are written. The author has talked about why should any of that influence how cool of a character they can be? It’s nice as a now older and rounder person that is still an anime/manga fan to see people still not being reduced to gag characters. Some of the smartest and strongest characters have been women and old people. It is a shame noticing when they female characters are written as things just to move story lines along or for fanservice alone. I’m not against fanservice at all, but I don’t want things that are just strictly that. I checked out Nagatoro after hearing how bad it was in that regard, but I honestly enjoy it and see it as an innocent coming of age story. They’re being more shy and awkward than they are being sexy. I only watched the first season, and while the POV is from the male MC, much of the focus seems to be the personalities of the female characters, obviously mainly Nagatoro, but from the beginning we see that she mainly just enjoys making the MC feel uncomfortable, and whenever she takes something a bit too far or things get too real, she gets embarrassed and we get a glimpse at the real Nagatoro who seems to be a very polite and caring person. It’d be easy to watch it as a pervy show if that was one’s desire, but I feel they’d be missing on on some great narrative elements by doing so. But I enjoy getting all the characters personalities flesh out in stories. The world just feel so one dimensional if you aren’t fairly exploring all the characters evenly.
Doing the reading yesterday about otome games, it did seem like many people play through to get all the endings. I guess that makes sense, as if you only had one or 2 characters you really liked, it would be too straightforward to play through. The more characters you get invested in, the more compelling it would be. It probably doesn’t help that the male version of dating sims gets catagorized as something for creepy guys to play, or that’s how it seems to me at least. It’s never the character the viewer would want to be in a show for example that is the one playing them. Hearing it described more as a graphic novel makes things make a bit more sense though. It sounds like a choose your adventure book, with the same replay value, and likely higher quality storytelling. From watching My Next Life as a Villainess, I did enjoy the characters’ personalities overall, and I liked their art style. It does feel a bit unusual to me to basically see a reverse harem though, where the male and female characters all had love interest in the female MC. Being unfamiliar with a bunch of the love/romance genres gets me a bit confused as to what is meant to be for a more general audience and what is for more…uhh…specific tastes shall we say.
For a game more revolving around relationships with some consequences, have you played Life is Strange? I only played the first one, but you can definitely be the friendly peacemaker or be rude and blow people off, leading to different consequences. There are only 2 actual endings, but the journey can be pretty different depending on how you play it, especially if you notice finer details in the backgrounds and conversations. It usually goes on sale pretty cheap. Largely female characters too.
I think a Mean Girls type game could be fun. It’s like GTA type games don’t make you a hardcore criminal, I think a bad girl game could be a healthy way to work through some of those pent up feelings people get and the desire to get back at people that where bad to you. Paths to either making eventual peace or viciously dominating the social circles could be in the same game for people that eant either type of resolution. It probably just gets lost in the “girls dont play games” stereotype, which is unfortunate.