Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 2)

[filler]

@grok make a pivture of john brown as a furry

[wsippel]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/oh-no-ive-been-blissfully-unaware-of-how-much-better-lossless-quality-music-sounds-until-now.1415311/#post-150475438

So it seems that maybe YouTube Music Premium applies dynamic range compression/audio normalization by default with no way to disable it.

I'm confused. Youtube Music Premium isn't lossless to begin with and doesn't claim to be lossless, but pretty much everything is compressed to hell and back these days anyway. That said, Youtube Music does appear to have the highest loudness limit of all streaming services at -7 LUFS.

[Greatness Gone]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/january-24th-2026-another-shooting-by-ice-in-minneapolis.1415095/page-49#post-150487021

ICE look like brutal Combine soldiers from Half Life, and then you got the Nazi/Hydra cosplay guy walking around like Red Skull.

[Snoopy]

Wasn't really the focus of my post, but im mainly clarifying there that I'm not calling for a violent response to this. I think massive peaceful demonstrations are still the best path, as the Minneapolis protestors have been doing despite the bullshit rhetoric from the trump admin

Yes. Walking down a street carrying a sign is most definitely going to be the thing to stop ISIS executing people.

[Greatness Gone]

Apparently, sexism in fiction is when a female character is not the focus of the narrative. 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/clair-obscur%E2%80%99s-writing-is-pretty-dang-sexist-actually-spoilers.1415452/#post-150488311

I'm aware this thread is probably going to be like swinging a bat full of nails at a hornets' nest. But I need to rant.

First off: yes, I know the game was written by a woman. Things written by women can be sexist (see: any book by Sarah J Maas or the wizard TERF). Internalised misogyny is a hell of a drug.

Having finished this game Friday night, I've been stewing on why the supposedly super sad and emotional story didn't move me at all and why a game that is so perfectly catered to my aesthetic preferences (belle epoque! floating islands! magic painting! steampunk vibes! a soundtrack that absolutely rips!) has failed to grab me. And then in the shower I had a revelation. The way this game treats its female characters is straight garbage.


At first I was like yay, our party is three women and one man, this must be a woman-centred story. Sophie dies in the prologue but it's to set up the state of the world and her death is much more about her than Gustave's angst so eh. (A female character dying is not inherently misogynistic so please don't try to misconstrue me.) When Gustave died I was like ohhh he was a decoy and Maelle is the ACTUAL protagonist! and got excited for a hot second. Like a fool. Then Verso—tragic, noble, tortured, handsome, angsty Verso—showed up and it all started falling apart.


Verso is like a narrative black hole swallowing up everything around him, but especially the female characters. Every woman in this game is either Sister (Maelle/Alicia and Clea), Mother (Aline) or Love Interest (Lune, Sciel, Julie) to him. I guess there's Golgra, the sentient talking paint brush who has tits for some reason and is entirely a comic relief character. Maelle/Alicia, Clea and Aline are self-explanatory. Julie is Verso's long-dead girlfriend he killed when she got suspicious and tortured him for answers about the Paintress, thus kickstarting Verso's mission to destroy the canvas. Lune and Sciel have some scenes that are so romantic coded I genuinely thought they were being set up as a couple but nope! they're both romance options for Verso. Well, Sciel is only a fling because she's still carrying a torch for her dead husband. which brings me on to point two and my biggest issue with the writing:

Clair Obscur is a story about grief and how it can destroy people. Okay, I get that. It's a compelling theme most people can relate to. But why is it that the people destroyed by grief and driven to act in wildly irrational and self-destructive ways are literally always the women grieving their dead menz. Maelle and Aline are killing themselves to stay in a make believe world because Verso died. Sciel tried to kill herself because her husband died. Clea is the exception but Clea is also portrayed as a Massive BitchTM who is cruel to Alicia and manipulates men (Simon) for her own ends (and she's the best character in the game 💅🏻).

But thankfully for these poor crazy women, they have their sensible men around to save them from themselves for Their Own Good: Renoir for Aline, Renoir and Verso for Maelle/Alicia and even Esquie for Sciel (but she still miscarried for the Pregnancy Angst). Painted Renoir supports Aline's agenda but that's because she (being so irrational and emotional of course) made him that way.

And then of course we get the ending, where either Verso forces Maelle out of the canvas against her will and Lune and Sciel are erased from existence without a word, thus rendering their entire story meaningless, or Maelle goes full denial and turns the canvas into her personal playground (torturing poor poor Verso for eternity in the process) until she eventually withers and dies because she can't let go of her imaginary friends. Teenage girls amirite.

The main takeaway from this game is that when their menfolk die the bitches go crazyyyyy. And that's not even getting into my other issues with the writing. GotY tho (/s)

Oh also the only named Black characters die in the first thirty minutes. But the game is Too Woke 👍

[HaughtyFrank]

Persephone is such a stereotypical man hater it's hilarious

[DavidCroquet]

Members only thread, but is Persephone trans?

I think "all the girls are crazy and only Verso & Renoir are reasonable" is uh...not exactly supported by the in-game narrative.

[Snoopy]

But thankfully for these poor crazy women, they have their sensible men around to save them from themselves

Yes

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/oh-no-ive-been-blissfully-unaware-of-how-much-better-lossless-quality-music-sounds-until-now.1415311/#post-150475438

So it seems that maybe YouTube Music Premium applies dynamic range compression/audio normalization by default with no way to disable it.

I'm confused. Youtube Music Premium isn't lossless to begin with and doesn't claim to be lossless, but pretty much everything is compressed to hell and back these days anyway. That said, Youtube Music does appear to have the highest loudness limit of all streaming services at -7 LUFS.

Dynamic range compression is different from compression for streaming. Add to that audio normalization and it would completely destroy the sound.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression

Edit:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/oh-no-ive-been-blissfully-unaware-of-how-much-better-lossless-quality-music-sounds-until-now.1415311/page-2#post-150490204

Get a good turntable and buy Jazz vinyls recorded before the 80s. Thank me later.

The first Japanese CD pressing of older stuff is usually pretty good. Get the Castle Black Sabbath though.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

[Hap Shaughnessy]

Members only thread, but is Persephone trans?

No. Maybe she's an uggo like Morrigan.

[HaughtyFrank]

The only thing I can agree with is it being annoying that Lune and Sciel lose their autonomy after Act 1. But besides that, I heavily disagree with this post, it feels extremely disingenuous.

Not to sound mean, but this reads very similarly to posts by chuds who will write paragraphs about why a game is "woke" for having a woman as the main character. The main criticism essentially boils down to "why wasn't Verso a woman!?" because the main complains seem to all revolve around Verso doing protagonist things (solving others problems) but happening to be a man while doing it. I can almost guarantee you wouldn't say the same thing about Horizon, a game with similar writing in the sense that most of the world's problems are solved by a single person (Aloy).

[nachobro]

dr poop is def having ai write his responses, they are all very similar sounding and full of double hyphens.

[xiceman191]

The only thing I can agree with is it being annoying that Lune and Sciel lose their autonomy after Act 1. But besides that, I heavily disagree with this post, it feels extremely disingenuous.

Not to sound mean, but this reads very similarly to posts by chuds who will write paragraphs about why a game is "woke" for having a woman as the main character. The main criticism essentially boils down to "why wasn't Verso a woman!?" because the main complains seem to all revolve around Verso doing protagonist things (solving others problems) but happening to be a man while doing it. I can almost guarantee you wouldn't say the same thing about Horizon, a game with similar writing in the sense that most of the world's problems are solved by a single person (Aloy).

Banned (1 month): Dismissing concerns around sexism. 

[Jansen]

Apologies if it sounded rude. I talked about this thread with some friends (5 total, 3 of which who are women) and all 5 agreed with what I wrote. I'm open for discussion if anyone wants to talk about what I said, because to me the OP post really does feel like something I'd see on reddit, but reversed.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/clair-obscur%E2%80%99s-writing-is-pretty-dang-sexist-actually-spoilers.1415452/page-2#post-150492811

Lol

[Uncle]

The only thing I can agree with is it being annoying that Lune and Sciel lose their autonomy after Act 1. But besides that, I heavily disagree with this post, it feels extremely disingenuous.

Not to sound mean, but this reads very similarly to posts by chuds who will write paragraphs about why a game is "woke" for having a woman as the main character. The main criticism essentially boils down to "why wasn't Verso a woman!?" because the main complains seem to all revolve around Verso doing protagonist things (solving others problems) but happening to be a man while doing it. I can almost guarantee you wouldn't say the same thing about Horizon, a game with similar writing in the sense that most of the world's problems are solved by a single person (Aloy).

and the answer to this is that you can never turn a question around or looking at things from the other side, it is impossible to be hypocritical because good things are good actually and bad things are bad

yes we don't complain when horizon stars a woman, because games should star women because they're oppressed or something

"you said kill all zionists, well wouldn't it be racist and evil to turn that around and say kill all palestinians?" yes, but I didn't say that, I said the first thing, which is morally righteous and pure by comparison

yes it's ok to sing about what should happen to white babies, because they are not black babies, context matters

[Lonewulfeus]

Members only thread, but is Persephone trans?

I think "all the girls are crazy and only Verso & Renoir are reasonable" is uh...not exactly supported by the in-game narrative.

Why they doin my boy Monoco dirty like that

[Besticus Maximus]

dr poop is def having ai write his responses, they are all very similar sounding and full of double hyphens.

It's some impressive and progressive attention seeking from the lad tbf to him, guaranteed interaction and he's technically right enough for them not to ban him

[benji]

Members only thread, but is Persephone trans?

No. Maybe she's an uggo like Morrigan.

She opted out of patriarchal oppression years ago, but like Nepenthe often forgets she did:

[HaughtyFrank]

Apologies if it sounded rude. I talked about this thread with some friends (5 total, 3 of which who are women) and all 5 agreed with what I wrote. I'm open for discussion if anyone wants to talk about what I said, because to me the OP post really does feel like something I'd see on reddit, but reversed.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/clair-obscur%E2%80%99s-writing-is-pretty-dang-sexist-actually-spoilers.1415452/page-2#post-150492811

Lol

Oh he's so banned. They despise bringing up other women

[nachobro]

This guy is a Mexican living in Mexico btw.

viva raiders biatch  

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/january-24th-2026-ice-officer-murders-a-second-us-citizen-in-minneapolis-graphic-content-warning.1415095/page-54#post-150498847

[Taco Bell Tower]

Apparently, sexism in fiction is when a female character is not the focus of the narrative. 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/clair-obscur%E2%80%99s-writing-is-pretty-dang-sexist-actually-spoilers.1415452/#post-150488311

I'm aware this thread is probably going to be like swinging a bat full of nails at a hornets' nest. But I need to rant.

First off: yes, I know the game was written by a woman. Things written by women can be sexist (see: any book by Sarah J Maas or the wizard TERF). Internalised misogyny is a hell of a drug.

Having finished this game Friday night, I've been stewing on why the supposedly super sad and emotional story didn't move me at all and why a game that is so perfectly catered to my aesthetic preferences (belle epoque! floating islands! magic painting! steampunk vibes! a soundtrack that absolutely rips!) has failed to grab me. And then in the shower I had a revelation. The way this game treats its female characters is straight garbage.


At first I was like yay, our party is three women and one man, this must be a woman-centred story. Sophie dies in the prologue but it's to set up the state of the world and her death is much more about her than Gustave's angst so eh. (A female character dying is not inherently misogynistic so please don't try to misconstrue me.) When Gustave died I was like ohhh he was a decoy and Maelle is the ACTUAL protagonist! and got excited for a hot second. Like a fool. Then Verso—tragic, noble, tortured, handsome, angsty Verso—showed up and it all started falling apart.


Verso is like a narrative black hole swallowing up everything around him, but especially the female characters. Every woman in this game is either Sister (Maelle/Alicia and Clea), Mother (Aline) or Love Interest (Lune, Sciel, Julie) to him. I guess there's Golgra, the sentient talking paint brush who has tits for some reason and is entirely a comic relief character. Maelle/Alicia, Clea and Aline are self-explanatory. Julie is Verso's long-dead girlfriend he killed when she got suspicious and tortured him for answers about the Paintress, thus kickstarting Verso's mission to destroy the canvas. Lune and Sciel have some scenes that are so romantic coded I genuinely thought they were being set up as a couple but nope! they're both romance options for Verso. Well, Sciel is only a fling because she's still carrying a torch for her dead husband. which brings me on to point two and my biggest issue with the writing:

Clair Obscur is a story about grief and how it can destroy people. Okay, I get that. It's a compelling theme most people can relate to. But why is it that the people destroyed by grief and driven to act in wildly irrational and self-destructive ways are literally always the women grieving their dead menz. Maelle and Aline are killing themselves to stay in a make believe world because Verso died. Sciel tried to kill herself because her husband died. Clea is the exception but Clea is also portrayed as a Massive BitchTM who is cruel to Alicia and manipulates men (Simon) for her own ends (and she's the best character in the game 💅🏻).

But thankfully for these poor crazy women, they have their sensible men around to save them from themselves for Their Own Good: Renoir for Aline, Renoir and Verso for Maelle/Alicia and even Esquie for Sciel (but she still miscarried for the Pregnancy Angst). Painted Renoir supports Aline's agenda but that's because she (being so irrational and emotional of course) made him that way.

And then of course we get the ending, where either Verso forces Maelle out of the canvas against her will and Lune and Sciel are erased from existence without a word, thus rendering their entire story meaningless, or Maelle goes full denial and turns the canvas into her personal playground (torturing poor poor Verso for eternity in the process) until she eventually withers and dies because she can't let go of her imaginary friends. Teenage girls amirite.

The main takeaway from this game is that when their menfolk die the bitches go crazyyyyy. And that's not even getting into my other issues with the writing. GotY tho (/s)

Oh also the only named Black characters die in the first thirty minutes. But the game is Too Woke 👍

Now wait a second, Ree boycotted The Wizard game not because it's transphobic but it's sexist?

Edited: Incoming ban
Bigby92

User banned (3 days): Dismissive driveby in a sensitive thread. Account in junior phase.

LMAO

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/have-you-rewatched-the-mcu.1415293/#post-150471577

But I'm planning on starting a slow year-long rewatch of most of the MCU pretty soon with someone who is a casual fan and has missed even some pre-Endgame stuff. Should be fun.

I can picture her now.

[Taco Bell Tower]

Apologies if it sounded rude. I talked about this thread with some friends (5 total, 3 of which who are women) and all 5 agreed with what I wrote. I'm open for discussion if anyone wants to talk about what I said, because to me the OP post really does feel like something I'd see on reddit, but reversed.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/clair-obscur%E2%80%99s-writing-is-pretty-dang-sexist-actually-spoilers.1415452/page-2#post-150492811

Lol

Persephone

The main takeaway from this game is that when their menfolk die the bitches go crazyyyyy. And that's not even getting into my other issues with the writing. GotY tho (/s)

Oh also the only named Black characters die in the first thirty minutes. But the game is Too Woke 👍

Tech

This is just pure ragebait, and I'm disappointed that you'd resort to such a thing.

Edit: Typo

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/have-you-rewatched-the-mcu.1415293/#post-150471577

But I'm planning on starting a slow year-long rewatch of most of the MCU pretty soon with someone who is a casual fan and has missed even some pre-Endgame stuff. Should be fun.

I can picture her now.

So this confirms the MILF left the lil poptart after pulling factually incorrect to her kid. 

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/january-24th-2026-ice-officer-murders-a-second-us-citizen-in-minneapolis-graphic-content-warning.1415095/page-54#post-150498847

Last edited by a moderator: 31 minutes ago

[filler]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/have-you-rewatched-the-mcu.1415293/#post-150471577

But I'm planning on starting a slow year-long rewatch of most of the MCU pretty soon with someone who is a casual fan and has missed even some pre-Endgame stuff. Should be fun.

I can picture her now.

[filler]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/january-24th-2026-ice-officer-murders-a-second-us-citizen-in-minneapolis-graphic-content-warning.1415095/page-54#post-150498847

Last edited by a moderator: 31 minutes ago

[nachobro]

that poster is a chinese posting from china

[HaughtyFrank]

Last edited by a moderator: 31 minutes ago

Some people get banned despite editing their post and other people get their post edited by moderators so they don't get banned. And then the mods wonder why people think there's a double standard