This Week’s Topics:

• Rundown Preamble Ramble: Artificially Difficult Taxation
• TSF Showcase 2024-14 Ojou-sama Irekawari by Yuniba (TSuniverse)
• TSF Showcase 2024-REJECT_1 Watashi-tachi ha “Byplayer” [We Are Supporting Actors] by Harada
• April Fools Ain’t Cool, Except For When It Is (The April Fools Rundown)
• STOP KILLING GAMES!!! (Ross Scott Launches Legal Campaign Against Live Services)
• Not Safe For The Powerful Puritans – Part II (DLSite Has Been Screwed By US Credit Card Companies)

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Rundown Preamble Ramble:
Artificially Difficult Taxation

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT TAX ADVICE!
IF YOU WANT REAL TAX ADVICE, GIVE ME MONEY!

As a tax accountant, it is only natural that I have some mildly complex feelings on how the American government handles income tax. Now, I am naturally far more knowledgeable of the way income tax works compared to the average US resident, but that does not mean I like the system. When it is logical and makes sense, I do like it. However, the system is almost diabolical in its complexity, when… it really shouldn’t be.

This is in part due to how income tax is one of the most powerful tools of the US government, and the system has been revised, abused, and altered by various administrations over the decades. To the point where someone who did their own taxes 40 years ago would be rightfully baffled by the modern system. And a common person who only thinks about their taxes once a year… is royally boned without someone, or a user-friendly piece of software, to aid them in understanding this system. Because the rules and forms keep changing every ten or so years.

Also, rather than just having one income tax system… there are like 42. Federal tax and state taxes, because America was designed for arbitrary provinces to have a good degree of control over how they run things— and how much they want to oppress minorities. However, I’m going to just focus on Federal individual taxes as most state tax returns are supplemental to the Federal return.

Okay, so taxes are complicated because the rules around them are complicated, keep changing and differ depending on one’s residency and where one does business. But why doesn’t the IRS do everything in their power to make it easier for people to file their return? Sure, they have the Free File program for lower income folks. And people can just download PDF forms and manually fill them in with their information, like a rube. 

But… why doesn’t the IRS just release software for people to file their taxes? Or just let them fill out forms in the browser? Sure, that would be a considerable expense, but if, approximately, 200 million people need to do something, then I think that warrants spending… over $200 million a year in software development. Well, there was a time when that seemed like it was possible, but it didn’t happen for the same reason most good things don’t happen in the US. Because industry and capitalists view taxes as a way for them to make money by developing proprietary and redundant software.

There are something like a dozen different tax prep programs out there, each of which is updated every year, but they all do the same damn thing. Take inputs and generate tax returns that are electronically filed with the IRS and the departments of revenue for various states. This is a multi-billion dollar industry, and you know what multi-billion dollar industries can do? Change the US government. And they did. They defunded and limited the abilities of the IRS, preventing them from developing software that did everything the likes of common scapegoat TurboTax does. 

It is all a prime example of private industry denying government services in order to create redundant products that do little but siphon money from average people. And what makes it all the more frustrating is that… tens of millions of Americans really should not even need to do their tax returns.

You know those tax forms you get in the mail? The W-2s, 1099s, 1095s, and all that malarkey with nonsensical nondescript names designed by and for human-based robots? Well, the IRS is given a copy of every one of those forms (assuming they are submitted correctly) and has the ability to generate not only a transcript of this information, but generate a tax return using it. The IRS has a lot of people’s income tax information… which begs the question of why do people even need to file returns?

Well, the simple answer is that not all income is reported to them. The IRS does not know how money trades hands across America and knows what is and is not income, they just have specific forms that represent certain income. If you get paid for something and no paperwork is issued, then the IRS does not know that you received that income. Similarly, the IRS does not know how much people pay for business expenses, charitable contributions, or depreciable work equipment. I’m not even sure if they know your property taxes, though those are technically public information.

The IRS is provided with some information, but not all relevant tax information, so they cannot systematically process everybody’s return without omitting key information. …However, I think that approach would work and would be accurate for tens of millions of people.

Now, I don’t have hard numbers that assign a level of complexity or how ‘document driven’ a tax return is. But, as a tax accountant, there are several different tiers of complexity among the clients I come in contact with. In fact, I think they could be divided into seven or so different buckets, all of whom have different tax needs.

• Working Class Employees
• Retirees
• Sole Proprietors and Creatives
• Fake Contractors
• Independent Investors
• Miscellaneous Messes
• High Net Worth Individuals

Working Class Employees are people who are treated as employees and are likely given some degree of job benefits, such as health insurance, retirement accounts, etc. Most of their income comes from… working. While they might have additional income like interest from a savings account or dividends, they likely won’t have tax-deductible expenses unless they have a home mortgage. And, under current tax law… good luck deducting that with the standard deduction being so honking huge.

People like this have incredibly easy returns that boil down to just keying in data into the tax software. Everything is driven by reported documents and as such I don’t think they should need to file a return. I think the US government should process their information, send them a summary, and ask them to confirm that these numbers look right. If they do, then they can confirm, pay the liability, or get a refund deposited to their bank account. But the confirmation and summary are essential steps, as the government should not assume they have all income records.

When people retire in the United States, their tax situation often becomes far simpler. They are no longer earning much, if any, income, and they are getting by on a combination of three things. Investment income— stocks, dividends, and interest. Social security, a government pension plan where people receive payouts based on their earned income throughout their working life. And retirement accounts, which could be private, run by a fund, or be an annuity treated as a retirement account because… shut up.

Retirees’ income is almost entirely document-driven and the only times it isn’t is if they are still technically working, do some side job, or are paying a lot for medical expenses. These scenarios could necessitate filing something, but generally speaking I think they should not need to file anything and they should be sent a summary by the IRS to confirm their income, liability, and refund for the year. These people are old, made their money, did their work, and should not need to fuss around with a return in general.

Sole Proprietors and Creatives are people who do not receive their income from salaries or wages, but rather from individuals and contract work for companies. The IRS generally does not understand what these people’s tax situations are like as, unlike employees, they can deduct business expenses from their income. Supplies, equipment, utilities, rent, professional fees, software, the works. However, the expenses must have a direct business use or conform to not obvious requirements. 

For example, if one needs to drive as part of their job, like if they are an electrician going to people’s houses, they can deduct their on-the-job auto expenses. But if they have an office they commute to every day… sorry, those miles cannot be deducted. Similarly, business meals are only sometimes allowed. If one has a meal with a business associate, then half that meal is deductible. And if someone is outside of the area they usually work, and grabs a $10 lunch, then they can deduct $5 of that lunch.

These things are a complicated web of if statements, are very context sensitive, and feature so many obscure rules that most people in this camp don’t entirely know what is or is not tax deductible. Well, unless their accountant gives them a full walkthrough and they take notes. I don’t think most people in this camp could complete their own return without getting at least three things wrong. And there is no way in hell the IRS could figure out what their actual income is. So, it would be best if they go to a tax accountant to make sure they don’t botch something up.

Fake Contractors is my personal terminology for people who should be employees… but are made contractors instead. Under common law, an employee is defined as “anyone who performs services for you is your employee if you can control what will be done and how it will be done.” But over the past 40 years (thanks Reagan), there has been a shift in people performing service jobs at designated locations where they must abide by strict rules… yet are compensated as contractors. This often includes service workers, part-time workers, entry-level positions across the board, and people who are ‘on call.’ 

Businesses love this arrangement, as they get all the benefits of having employees with none of the crap. They don’t need to worry about paying payroll taxes, offering benefits, or firing workers whenever they feel like it. But for employees, this arrangement sucks. If someone is a contractor, they need to pay self-employment taxes in addition to regular income tax, which could easily double their tax liability depending on their income level. 

This makes sense for actual Sole Proprietors, as they can also deduct business expenses and get the future benefits of Social Security and Medicare. But with Fake Contractors, they can barely deduct anything. If someone works at a retail store as a contractor then… What expenses could they deduct? Not mileage. Not the lunch they bring in every day. They can deduct any supplies they pay for out of their pocket— which they should not be buying in the first place. But, most of the time, the only things they can deduct are their household phone and internet. Because you cannot be in business without a phone or internet. If someone is a contractor, they should take their phone and internet. Not a percentage. 100% of what is attributable to them!

Fake Contractors should consult a tax accountant because they are getting screwed over by their employer. The IRS could reasonably assess their taxes based on their reported non-employee compensation, but these people should take every damn deduction they can.

And to any naysayers, yes they can deduct half of SE taxes and get QBI deductions. But crunch the numbers for a single person making $30k from a W-2 versus someone making $30k from ‘contract’ work. In fact, I just did. W-2 tax liability would be $1,721, while the contractor tax liability would be $5,365. Admittedly, the W-2 person would have additional withholdings of $2,295 for Social Security and Medicare, but those are taken out with each paycheck. And the difference is still an extra $1,349. If someone hires you as a contractor, when your work is, by common law, employee work, then you’re getting scammed out of real money.

Going back to simple stuff, Independent Investors are a niche of people who make their money through investments, rather than earned income. They do this by trading stocks, passively earning income from interest, dividends, or crypto they bought before 2017 and hodled like a good little shit-diamond-bitch-ass-ho-asshole. These people, weirdly enough, also have largely document-driven returns. …Except for the crypto folks. IRS hates crypto because it’s unregulated and the scene is full of liars. But if someone sticks with regulated financial assets and securities… then their returns should be pretty simple. It’s just interest, dividends, and stock sales, all of which are reported by brokers and can be plugged into a return.

…Except for instances where securities are ‘non-covered’ or the brokerage lost the original basis, which happens. In those instances, the IRS is not given the information they need to determine a person’s return, so they cannot generate an accurate summary. Doubly so if they are in crypto, because the IRS uses TaxBit, and TaxBit should be renamed to TaxShit, as it is the worst crypto platform on the market. It makes ZenLedger look good, and not like trash designed by a bunch of knuckleheads.

Now, I think this could be avoided for traditional securities if the IRS… just demanded that brokerages report more information and gave them everything included in a consolidated 1099-B package. I’m not even sure why they don’t demand this stuff. But if people keep it simple… then investors should be able to just get a summary sent to them and sign it off. Sure, you have odd crap like US government interests based on a portion of dividend income, but there’s no good reason folks at Schwab or Fidelity couldn’t report that. It’s just algebra, dude.

Next up we have people who, for one reason or another, are just in a screwy tax situation and are what I dub Miscellaneous Messes. Maybe they are planning a divorce, maybe they came into a lot of money from a family death. Maybe they have addiction or brain problems and need someone to organize their haphazard financials. Maybe they’re just a bit of a chronic liar and compulsively enjoy hiding cash from the IRS because CRIME MAKES THE BODY EROTIC!!! These people need tax accountants the most, and are the most likely to be misunderstood by the IRS. They’re the freaks, the fools, and the fuck ups.

Even if the IRS issued a summary to these people, they would not understand it or be able to articulate why it is wrong. And they are the sort of people who, along with businesses and sole proprietors, should prop up the private tax accounting industry. They are harder nuts to crack… but they are the sort of clients that you want. Because they can be billed a shit ton because they require a shit ton of work and that work has a shit ton of value. But here’s the best thing about messes like these. They can be fixed and people can be reformed! …They almost never are, but they can in theory. Just like racists and pedophiles!

Then we get to High Net Worth Individuals, and in America you typically do not get to be part of this elusive class without doing some quirky investment stuff, or having a bizarre tax structure. Such as having most income go to a partnership that splits income by 61.5%, 29.2%, and 9.3% across three trusts that are then reported back to the individual return. …All to avoid estate tax. If that made your eyes go cross-eyed for a moment… then you can understand why a tax professional should be the one to prepare returns for rich folks. Because they get up to some smelly horseshit and the documents do not tell the full story.

…Hold on, what was my point here? …Right. I’m pretty sure that a good 30% to 50% of Americans should have their taxes just be done for them automatically by the IRS. As a tax accountant, I want to help people and deliver value to them. And I am delivering very little value when punching in numbers to prepare a basic return, sending it to them for eSignature, eFiling it, and then assembling a paper return. That takes like three hours, costs a few hundred bucks, and all it does is tell the IRS something they could figure out if they had the right funding.

Machines and software should take care of the routine and mundane busywork that comes with taxation. The results should always be reviewed and approved by a human. And more complex situations should be addressed by humans as, quite simply, you cannot trust software to behave intelligently or ask the right questions.

Also, I know for a fact that the IRS would make better tax software than ProSeries.

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TSF Showcase 2024-14
Ojou-sama Irekawari by Yuniba (TSuniverse)

Starting off things for Q2 2024, I’m still in crunch mode at work, so I decided to do the most sensible thing and create a spreadsheet featuring TSF Showcase worthy materials. And in my re-examination of my catalog, I realized I forgot about another showcase candidate that I originally considered for Natalie Rambles About TSF Comics. It wasn’t right for that, so I just wound up using a screencap in Natalie Rambles About TSF. Meaning it’s definitely good enough to be the headliner for a new quarter!

Ojou-sama Irekawari— or Refined Lady Replacer if you prefer— wastes no time getting started. Eyeless self-insertable protagonist Fred snags a magical body swap potion that will let him steal the body of the local ojou-sama for a full day. Her name’s Amelia, but I’m going to call her Ojou-sama because I think it’s funnier. He snags it off-screen, leaves the ojou disheartened and shocked, and does what any sane body swapper would do. Hit up his new mansion, sexually harass the maids because ‘it’s okay if we’re both girls’ and then head into his bedroom to masturbate until he passes out.

The following day, knowing his time as a lady of a refined calibur is at its end, Fred visits his buddy Hans and does him a solid. More specifically, a titjob where he does not take off his top and only undoes a few of the buttons which… I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Probably because titjobs often end with cum on the woman’s face or the top of her breasts, and if a shirt’s in the way, you’re gonna get cum stains. But here, the cum stays in Fred’s cleavage for some reason. Then, being a good bud, Fred smears the boob cum over his stolen panties, because “that’s insanely erotic.”

Satisfied by his sexual escapade, Fred walks away only to come across the real Ojou and her sister, Cynthia. Cynthia earlier caught Fred masturbating and, with burgeoning suspicions, believed that this eyeless creep was her sister. Fed explains that this swap only lasts a day, so he’ll free Ojou-sama in a day and, emboldened, Cynthia uses this as an opportunity to go on a rant at Fred, decrying him for defiling her sister’s body. Yet before she can finish calling him out for being a nasty pervert, Fred’s body gropes her butt and runs away.

So, they swapped bodies back? …Nope! Fred’s still in Ojou-sama’s body and gains the ability to read Ojou’s memories appears to be! And I just love Fred’s narration as he discovers this.

Though, I do have a slight issue with Fred’s theory here. While Fred clearly gained access to Amelia Ojousama’s memories, I don’t think that Ojou would just up grab her sister’s ass and run right when she gained Fred’s memories. That makes no sense. An ojou would not give up her body just to be a perverted commoner unless she is thoroughly corrupted. And this one definitely wasn’t! Instead, I think this has to be… another soul split! Kind of like Becoming Lindsay, just with the classic memory access problem solver. But, wait, hold on. If this is a soul split situation, then what happened to Amelia Ojousama? Is she just gone? …Yeah, I think so. I think this ojou is DEAD!

Blissfully ignorant of what happened, Cynthia says that her newly unswapped sister should take a bath to wash away the pervert stank. Fred the ojou-sama agrees, gets naked, fawns over himself, as he is the man who got it all, but as he relishes in his victory lap, Cynthia comes in, having once more seen through his guise. She demands that Fred gives her sister’s body back— even though I’m pretty sure she’s dead— yet does not have a way to force Fred to do anything. Cynthia loves her sister, so she’s not going to roughhouse her body.

Confident in his position, Fred fondles himself in front of his new sister… and quickly pegs her for an incestuous pervert who wants to have sex— hard sex— with her older sister’s body. So Fred takes advantage of her love, having Cynthia suck his nipples, lick his feet, rest in his lap, and do kissy-sissy stuff. Finally having an onee-sama who is willing to sexually love her, Cynthia confesses that she loves the new Ojou-sama and the two cum together, bonding themselves as lovers.

While Ojou-sama Irekawari is pretty basic when broken down like this, I think it is incredibly effective at what it does, and has a wonderfully endearing tone. Not counting the cover or character list, this is a 24 page comic that manages to back in a lot of ideas without feeling rushed, unfocused, or like it is leaving potential on the table. It knows what it wants to do, is executed by an artist skilled enough to bring their ideas to fruition without any material compromises, and it does not waste a single page. That includes sex scenes too as, despite being a hentai comic, I would argue that it prioritizes comedy above sexual thrills.

Characters are brazen and focused on their desires to an extreme. There is something silly or goofy to enjoy on just about every page. The story is rightfully shameless with its execution, neither bothering to dwell on morals nor revel in immorality. And the translated script got a chuckle out of me in a few spots. While erotic comics can be— and are— a way to explore serious and complex subjects, I will forever have a soft spot for scripts that take the piss out of themselves like this.

Then there’s the artwork itself, which manages to hit a lot of soft spots that I’ve come to internalize in doing these showcases. Yuniba has their own distinct style, is great at character expressions, and manages to use the medium well to create something visually dynamic and compelling to read through. It’s got flow, it’s got style, it knows when to deform things and go to cake on the details, and it manages to feel lively with its paneling and presentation. 

Ojou-sama Irekawari is short, sweet, and efficient. It alone got me curious about this TSuniverse person, so I started following their works… and I forgot about them after they released Kanojo to Oji-san no Karada ga Irekawaru TSF in July 2020. Doing a few minutes of digging, it appears they have transitioned to the ‘patron artist model’ which is my term for artists who primarily focus on releasing requests for those who financially support them. With their platform being Fanita and their works primarily being shorter form manga, often only eight pages per idea.

I think that is simply too short to tell a compelling story most of the time, and I don’t like it when artists put everything behind a subscription like this. It’s more consistent revenue for them, which is great, but it obscures their work behind a paywall and makes it harder to access and… save. Seriously, the process of laboriously saving and naming every page of a comic has discouraged me from supporting certain creators. Because I do not want to spend three hours doing boring file management work just to get access to their backlog. But hey, at least they’re still active and still creating their TS universe.

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TSF Showcase 2024-REJECT_1
Watashi-tachi ha “Byplayer” [We Are Supporting Actors] by Harada

…Yeah, this was my first pick for TSF Showcase this week, but after writing it up, I realized it did not meet the quality or curiosity standards I try to push with TSF Showcase. However, it was not bad enough to be scrapped, so… consider this a Rundown-exclusive bonus installment of TSF Showcase. Something I found while perusing my catalog for potential candidates. A 40 page one-shot that just barely meets my qualifications for TSF and is so strange that I could not just put it back in my storage bin.

Watashi-tachi ha “Byplayer” begins by introducing Himeumi, a refined young lady (or ojou-sama) with the looks, acclaim, and academics that place her at the top of the social pyramid at school. So naturally she has a crush on the ‘high-spec prince’ of the school, Oujiyama. She’s a planner, a dreamer, a traditional girl down to her diction, but as she is plotting her perfect high school life, someone throws a basketball at her. She exaggeratedly narrates on how getting hit by a ball is bad for her image— yes, she is that vain— but before it can collide with her, she is saved by Wakikawa. An athletic boy whose face is obscured by his long eroge protagonist bangs.

Though, ‘saved’ is kind of a misnomer, as right after he whaps the ball away, he trips and the two’s heads go thunk. This, naturally, swaps the two’s bodies, and as Himeumi wakes up in Wakikawa’s body, she does not take it well. Panicking, shaking, sobbing, and slowly coming to grips with the surreality before her. Meanwhile Wakikawa is unenthused by this, immediately jumping to look for a way back, and being picky about how Himeumi touches his body. Which is something you don’t often see from average or athletic male characters in a body swap scenario.

In fact, something about their whole dynamic strikes me as unusual. Himeumi behaves exactly how a person of her genre would behave in this situation, being overzealous, disgusted, and vying for control. While Wakikawa is… emotionally disengaged. He does not want to babysit Himeumi, wants to pursue the simplest and most effective solution, yet knows he needs to remain civil with her, while not fully trusting her. Nobody enjoys anything about this situation. Both want to swap back with no delay. They don’t hate each other. But they also cannot cooperate despite their mutual goals.

Anyway, after going into the bathroom to help each other pee in one of the most aggressive shouty ways possible, Oujiyama walks up to them, a meter away from the bathroom, together, and just leaves. Himeumi says she wants to die afterwards, while Wakikawa tells her to live in a scene that… just beautifully captures the tone of their relationship with its simplicity. 

Then, after class, Oujiyama approaches Himeumi, asking about what she was doing with Wakikawa. The dialogue makes it sound neutral, yet the paneling hammers home how sensual this experience is for her. Their faces are close enough to kiss, crotches are right next to each other, and her beloved Oujiyama is touching her, or at least her shirt, while voicing concerns for her. Or at least her body. This is enough to make Himeumi wistful as she attends a fast food place with Wakikawa, who tries to get her to see reason.

Naturally, Himeumi gets frazzled by Wakikawa’s matter-of-fact approach to problem solving, and his questionable wording, so she winds up knocking her drink onto some thugs. She acts like a ‘weak man,’ pissing off the thugs, and recognizing this situation for what it is, Wakikawa decided to take matters into his own hands by speaking the thugs’ language. Meaning he kicks one of them in the face, knocking them out with one hit. Himeumi tries to stop him from using her body like that, only to get smacked in the face and… the two swap back with a successive head thunk. Huh. That rarely ever works.

Unconscious after the swap, Himeumi muses over what she just experienced, recognizing that, for his questionable demeanor, Wakikawa is a kind person and not as plain as he looks. …Something that’s hammered home when she wakes up and sees that Wakikawa’s… pretty hot when he doesn’t have his bangs blocking his face. Who knew! Certainly not the girl who was in his body.

This breaks Himeumi, as she was committed to her own image as a refined woman who wants a refined man. Not a rugged boy who will beat up thugs at the local McDonald’s WcRonald’s McMoe’s. As she muses over her feelings, she sees Wakikawa and Oujiyama go into a backroom together, and thinks that they must be fighting over her. That she is now the prize in a love triangle. She opens the door to stop them, egged on by vulgar grunting, and sees that… they fuckin’.

If you’re confused, welcome to the club. It turns out that this story was published within a compilation of boy’s love one-shots, and this is the author’s attempt at making a BL story that initially appears to be something else. It comes out of nowhere, 70% of the way through the story, and shifts the entire focus of the story. Instead, it becomes about how Himeumi needs to accept that the boys she liked are gay for each other. Not because she does not want to be with at least one of them, but because she recognizes the love they share. I mean, she saw them stick it in, and if that isn’t love… I don’t know what is.

Well, more specifically Himeumi recognizes that if she gets in their way, “then this story would not be possible.” Which relates to an overarching theme of this work. That the characters are somehow aware that they are part of a story. Applying the monikers of minor characters and main characters to people around them, and viewing their roles as something rigid and serious. I’m not sure how much of this is just the translator’s interpretation of Japanese social structures, where people are pushed into groups and boxes to make their society flourish. Or how much of this is the original author’s intent on making something meta or deconstructive. It keeps me wondering…

…Right, this is supposed to highlight TSF works, so how does Byplayer fare as a TSF story? It has some decent build up, a good dynamic between its swapped protagonists, and does slightly address the differences in bodies, even if both parties really don’t want to. Though, before it can really dig deeper into things… the swap is undone and the nature of the story changes, as if the writer got bored of the story they were telling. 

It’s a pivot that makes the story interesting to think about, and does lead into a direction that, while unpredictable, still makes sense within the context of the comic. However, I can’t really say it is a good TSF story because of that. Just a strange addition to the genre… that probably was never meant to be lumped in as part of the genre.

Also, there’s a flashback about how Oujiyama tries to kill himself with a razor blade because he is worried about being rejected by his peers if they find out he’s gay. This was written in 2015 by the way, and gay marriage still is not legal in Japan.

…And that’s all I got before I scrapped this segment. But rather than waste 1,200 words, I shoved it here. Don’t thank me, ‘cos I’m just treating y’all like a gaggle of piggies. 

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April Fools Ain’t Cool, Except For When It Is
(The April Fools Rundown)

I have such mixed feelings about April Fool’s as a concept. On one hand, I’m a creator who likes doing bizarre stuff and is into bizarre stuff. I think creative types should be free to fuck around, experiment, and pursue silly or wild ideas. Sure, the execution might be lacking, but sometimes all it takes is a silly little idea to spark the imagination of someone else or lay the foundation for something larger. Also, when working on a big project, it is highly helpful to pursue a silly small scale diversion. Ask any creative and they’ll tell you as much!

However, April Fools is often not used as a time for people to actually make something quirky and unique. Instead, it is often used as a time to troll, mislead, or lie to people, to tease something that someone knows someone else wants, only to remind them of the date. 

Anyway, loads of game devs took this opportunity, and it ran the spectrum as per usual. Sometimes it was just a few image mockups presented as a realistic addition that could come to a game. Other times it was clearly a silly trailer. Other times it was something that… should actually be a game. And in the best case scenario, it was actually something that you could actually play and enjoy.

Now, I did not really dig for them— that’s Gematsu’s job— but there were a few things that I feel like chronicling here before they are sent out into the ether, to be forever forgotten.

Despite the devs of Palworld being understaffed and working hard to keep their game relevant after its surprisingly massive debut, Pocket Pair released a mock trailer for Pal♡world! ~More Than Just Pals~. A fake dating sim visual novel with dating elements about romancing a possessive Katress, a lewd Lovelander, a timid Chillet who loves getting his belly rubbed, a tsundere human, and a creepy Black Marketeer. It’s a good spread of characters to choose from and… this would be a completely viable project that you could probably make with maybe four people, not counting translators. 

They went to the trouble of making character sprites, backgrounds, creating a vague concept, and doing the legwork needed to create a trailer. …But are most likely not going to do anything with it, when… they could just make a short 3 to 4 hour long gag visual novel. If they made Palworld for $6.7 million, this would probably cost a hundredth of that. If Sega can make The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog, and MSCHF can do stuff like Tax Heaven 3000, then Pocket Pair can make a damn Palworld dating sim!

Nikke: Goddess of Victory, also known as that anime girl jiggly ass game that is also cultural commentary, except it’s too subtle for its target audience of Korean men, got its own absurd Fool’s Goof. The game is a largely 2D mobile affair and to celebrate this mock holiday… they made a mockup trailer for a Dead Space themed shooter parody called Dead Spicy, yet bizarrely starring a character named Shifty. …I won’t pretend to know the lore.

Anyway, rather than making a few mock screenshots… they created a three minute long fake gameplay trailer. One that is so committed to the bit is contains subtitles, tutorials, a watermark stating that “this game is still under development.” It has implied crafting mechanics. A damn stealth section where the protagonist gets under a cardboard box like Snake. And a boss battle where the protagonist needs to shoot at shiny things to disable the shield of a boss robot, who she then destroys with a gatling gun.

It is a damn disgusting amount of effort to put into something that is meant to be a joke. Something so detailed and robust that… I have to wonder if it was actually developed in a game engine or was just animated to look like game footage. Yes, the camera movement looks unnatural and overly cinematic, but sometimes pre-release trailers futz around with those things. I’d make some comment on how ‘at least this is Tencent money being spent.’ However, for as much as I dislike Tencent, I like good games led by people with a creative vision a helluva lot more. Sure, a game like this would be a bizarre novelty, but bizarre novelties are a damn good reason to get up in the morning!

Key also decided to release a trailer that recreated the opening of the 1999 romance visual novel classic, Kanon, as a 16-bit game. Not quite a PC-98 game, or a SNES game, but rather something between. It’s a really cool tribute, and came with a similarly cool retro website. …But then Key took those down a day later. And nobody has reuploaded the trailer since. So… good job Key. You made something and then took it away before people could fully appreciate it. I’d rather you did nothing! Geez, as if I wasn’t paranoid enough. Am I going to need to save trailers I think are cool but so obscure they might become lost media? Maybe!

At least Cygames’ latest April Fools was a banger with a trailer and website for… HORSE GIRLS IN SPAAAAACE! Uma Musume has continued to be a worldwide success… if your idea of the world only includes China, Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. And if you do… c’mon, at least recognize Indonesia. 

So they decided to get silly and spend what had to be over $100,000 on a trailer, song, and website for Uma Stars, while also running a campaign for a limited edition hoodie. Good goof. Better music. And we need more space cuties. 

The folks at the Student Transfer dev team also had their annual April Fool’s build release. This time it was a rhythm game, dubbed Rhythm Transfer. Yep, they actually made a rhythm game in python and it’s mostly just a vessel for… AI generated music and artwork. The game contains 15 songs. One from the base game, 13 that were AI generated, and one auditory atrocity by xbp. By performing well in these songs, the player unlocks increasingly provocative AI generated CGs of characters in the game. One plain, one more risque, an underwear one, and finally a nude one.

Honestly, it’s pretty lame and I wish they just kept releasing updates for the gacha game from 2019. Maybe even create some scenario cards… However, because I am an insane freak, I actually went to the trouble of extracting all audio and image assets and compiling them into a fake album. Why did I do this? …Because I didn’t want to engage with it as an actual game, as its contents were not worth engaging with otherwise, because it was AI generated images and audio.

OH SHIT! Move over Student Transfer, ‘cos Cinnamon Switch just dropped Mice Tea Gaiden: Oops! All Gyarus! I was expecting this to just be a quick little shitpost, kind of like the Moth Tea gag they did a while back… but no, this is a full-length scenario that took me over an hour to get through. It has highly detailed transformation sequences. What had to be months of pent up gyaru gushing so potent it makes Gyara Ara~ (a Student Transfer scenario from the same writer, Gunzil) seem tame by comparison. And an all-star cast of cameo artists!

First off, if you haven’t checked out Mice Tea yet… do it. It’s a wonderful transformation visual novel, and while it is a bit light on the TSF stuff I so frequently talk about here, it offers a level of genre savviness and general quality that you seldom see. Especially from such a polished and robust production.

Set after the main Felicia ending, where everybody is working together at a co-op bookstore slash café, Oops! All Gyarus sees the whole gang… turn into gyarus after making some magical girl booze tea. The gyarufication affects all— except Sylvia as she is already mostly a gyaru— and the five gaggle about as a bunch of gyarus wanton do. Pampering themselves so they look ravishing, hitting up the club and becoming the center of attention, and then having an orgy back at home. 

It’s pretty close to the cumulative true ending that I wanted after playing Mice Tea… just lathered with various gyaru-isms. I’m not a particular fan of the aesthetic, but it was clearly a passion project for Gunzil and, as should be no surprise at this point, they knew exactly what they were doing. There’s really nothing more I want to add other than… it’s a good side story and I’m glad Cinnamon Switch is able to justify and support side projects like these… while developing two visual novels. Keep living the dream and delivering the goods, you glorious space horse girls.

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STOP KILLING GAMES!!!
(Ross Scott Launches Legal Campaign Against Live Services)

Over the past few months video game YouTuber Ross Scott, creator of Half-Life machinima series Freeman’s Mind and the excellent Ross’s Game Dungeon, has been building a campaign against live services. Following the announced delisting of Ubisoft’s 2014 open world racing game, The Crew, Ross has deemed now as the best time to take action against corporations, as he succinctly puts it, killing games. He has done the research, spoke to experts, and with the help of various collaborators, created a website telling people what they can do to spur government action. 

The goal of this project is simple. Force the governments of the world to do something about this anti-preservation anti-consumer practice and prevent the killing of games. Ideally, this will prevent the ‘end of service’ from making games permanently unplayable going forward, and this goal is being pursued on many different fronts. With petitions being penned for France, Germany, various other EU countries, the UK, Australia, Canada, the United States, and Brazil. 

However, in order for this project to work, thousands upon thousands of people are going to need to take action. It will take a lot of work and a lot of awareness campaigns, but it’s an achievable goal. 

How can you help? Well, just going to StopKillingGames.com will give you a list of detailed instructions based on where you live. However, there isn’t much that someone can do unless they own The Crew. I do not, so all I can really do is spread awareness.

If anybody reading this is one of the 12 million people who owned The Crew, I implore you to go to StopKillingGames.com and do your part. Not for me, but for the future of video games.

…Sadly, most of my audience is American, and America is nightmare mode when it comes to consumer rights laws. But if there is even a slight chance this could help, action should be taken. Because if this doesn’t work, there might never be a better opportunity.

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Not Safe For The Powerful Puritans – Part II
(DLSite Has Been Screwed By US Credit Card Companies)

…Fuck PayPal. Fuck MasterCard. Fuck Visa. I went on a tangent last month about how they were restricting and making platforms like Patreon and Gumroad worse for creators. I HOPED that I would not need to get pissed about this anytime soon. But noooo!

You know DLSite, that place I frequently link to whenever I talk about a TSF comic? The de facto site for a lot of doujin works? A hub and bastion of works from Japanese creators, including a lot of anime porn? Well, this past week, they announced they were no longer accepting Visa, MasterCard, or AmericanExpress. As for Discover… they accept JCB, which has an alliance with Discover, but you cannot use an American Discover card as a JCB card. I tried. It didn’t work.

This means that no western credit cards are accepted by DLSite, and PayPal has not been accepted for years. So, how the HELL can someone outside of Asia buy something from DLSite and support Japanese creators? They probably cannot get a JCB card, as they’re only available in Asia. I also have no idea how I would go about getting a Japanese payment account or convenience card, so I think payments might be unavailable to westerners… 

Well, at least when it comes to using fiat.

I was straight up panicking when I heard this news, as I love DLSite and think it’s chock full of great stuff! However, there is a workaround that sorta circumvents this issue. Because DLSite has a points system! By going to DL Pay, you can use any major credit card, or PayPal, to get a serial code that can be redeemed for points on DLSite. 

It’s freaking stupid, seems like it shouldn’t work, but you know what? This IS a solution! It’s a solution on par with buying a Wii Points card in a plastic shell, like it’s 2008, but it’s a solution. And if this is the way that NSFW creation needs to survive, on a damn points system, then sure, I’ll buy your damn fake money! ‘Cos in this shit system, motherfuckers gotta get bread, cream, and havarti!

Now, this should not be the case. I should be able to give money to anyone who draws a cartoon picture book, because it doesn’t harm anyone! There is no moralistic high ground here, and the real reason for this is the same reason anything in this capitalist shithole of a global society happens. Because it makes for better looking financials. 

The entire world has been fucked over by the pursuit of capital above all else. The only thing that matters to 90% of corporations is lining their undies, getting more cash, and making money, by any means necessary! And what do they want to use this money for? To make more money! It’s all a perpetual suffering machine with no end goal beyond the consolidation of wealth and consumption of all natural resources!

How do you solve this? Blow up the system, tear it down, find the power powerful, strip them of their power, and create something new. Reform may help, but it will not solve underlying issues, and it will require a global effort. Will that actually happen though? I don’t know. And I’m too much of a bitch-ass-bitch to do anything about it.

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Apple Gives Okay To Emulators on App Store
(Can The Children Experience REAL Games on iOS Now?)

…Hold on, that doesn’t fit the narrative! Apple, what are you guys on? Some of that kangaroo mucus no doubt.

As a refresher, a few Android emulators shut shop after the Yuzu and Citra delisting a month ago. Emulation has entered into dangerous new waters. Emulation enthusiasts are strengthening their guard and keeping their heads down. And wise people are backing up emulators. Just in case bad things happen! …Yeah, I should backup some installation files for every emulator I use.

Now seems like the worst time for any storefront to open the floodgates for emulation… but Apple just did, updating their policy toward “retro game console emulators.” This might be in retaliation to the EU getting a win over Apple, forcing them to accept third party app stores. Now, I have a feeling that these might not be strictly related, and I doubt Apple wants to draw ire from game companies— they want to turn iOS into a gaming platform after all. So, what exactly is the angle here? Could RetroArch, hostile UX and all, come to iOS? Well, it might… but how would people get ROMs onto their iPhone? I tried and… yep, I was able to download the ROM just fine. I can’t do anything with it, but I could direct an emulator app to its location.

However… there needs to be a catch. Apple would not just direct half of the US mobile market to ROM sites. Or into buying those hard drives chock full of ROMs off Amazon or AliExpress. So, is this just a way to spur game companies to release older games on iOS? Is their gamut to get companies with legacy IPs to release their own emulator app and sell ROMs inside it? Because that… would not be the worst thing. Ideally, you would want the ROMs and emulators to be sold separately, but there are few things I would love more than an official ROM storefront. Sure, piracy will always be easier for games that can be downloaded in a literal second, but I don’t have a problem paying  a few bucks for old-ass games if I get files that I can keep in perpetuity. 

I mean, this wouldn’t be for a streaming service, so… what does this mean? Is this for certain companies to launch their own emulators with built-in games? Because they have been doing that for over a decade. I don’t know, and… I don’t particularly care, as I view my phone as a glorified 2FA tool and video player. I basically don’t use it for anything else

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Progress Report 2024-04-07

So, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for Foamstars after I heard someone share a track they like for it, and I have to say that… this is one game-ass game soundtrack. It covers so many genres and moods and artists that it barely feels cohesive. 

Some songs are genuine pop bangers and are staying in my music library for… ever, probably. POP! almost sounds like it was taken straight out of a show for 5-year-olds teaching children the importance and fun of washing, and I love it. Vitamin U almost sounds like it is AI generated with all of the processing going on with the lyrics. Most of the non-vocal tracks sound wrong next to the vocal ones, as I could easily imagine them being vocal tracks. While Ironclad D, and I’m being mean here, sounds like it was made by a 17-year-old Korean boy on a three-hour bus trip to university. (No shade implied with that by the way, some dope musicians used to be 17-year-old Korean boys.)

However, the good tracks almost universally have a problem that I almost never run into with music, where the songs go on for too long (except for T.G.I.YAY, the best track). I love songs that last long enough to engross the listener, but the structure of these songs made me consistently feel like they should be wrapping up at their halfway point. It’s such an unusual problem, and I’m not sure why I feel this way. I am far from a true blue music fan, but I have kinda shallow standards and even I can tell that something is up here. Maybe the person in charge of the OST mixing wanted to include every permutation from the game’s score. Maybe I’m just getting old and bad at enjoying music. Maybe the youths actually crave longer songs, even though I thought 2.5 minute songs were en vogue under a play-based model. I don’t know, and it’s weird.

Also, it’s a bit of a shame that Foamstars was a complete non-starter. I can tell that the game had some love put into it. However, it was developed by Toylogic Inc, the developer behind Contra: Rogue Corps. And published by Square Enix, a company that has a habit of destroying live services for breakfast, brunch, lunch, linner, supper, and dinner. Also, it was a PlayStation exclusive multiplayer affair that was released two days before Helldivers 2. 

I didn’t say a peep about Helldivers 2 in these Rundowns, but that game has been a huge hit. Which is a surprise, as the most memorable part of Helldivers (2015) was how it was the first PlayStation published game on PC. Now Sony cannot afford to not release many of their games on PC… Except for Foamstars!

…

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♫Scrubadub, Bubble Love, In My Butt!♫

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2024-03-31: Wrote 2,500 word preamble ramble, which was mostly tax-based venting. Edited 17,000 words of VD2.0. I should have done more but my boss made me feel like shit today and I didn’t want to edit any more.

2024-04-01: Uh… The 1,500 word April Fools rundown took me all evening to get through, as I had to play Oops! All Gyarus! and create the faux Rhythm Transfer album. I felt bad about that, so I powered through things until 2:00 and wrote 1,000 words for this week’s TSF Showcase. …Then I realized it wasn’t good enough. DONKEY NUTS!

2024-04-02: Made the header image, did the 1,200 word Ojou-sama TSF Showcase, grabbed the screencaps for the TSF Showcases. Also, I worked a bit late so time was finite. So much for my editing streak…

2024-04-03: I managed to get through 13,000 words for VD2.0. Also, wrote the 300 word Ross Scott bit.

2024-04-04: I was really burned out from work and super paranoid, so I worked until 10:30, did the dishes in my bathroom so I didn’t wake up my mother, and rode the exercise bike instead of showering. I prepped and edited the Rundown and wrote the 650 word DLSite bit earlier in the day.

2024-04-05: Edited 15,000 words, finishing Act 1 of VD2.0. …SHIT! Act 2 is 228k words? What the FUCK, Natalie? You should be in JAIL for this! Also, added the Apple thing to this Rundown. Got started on Act 2 with the first chapter, so that’s another 7,500 words.

2024-04-06: Went through the E3 chapter, so that’s 10,500 words. I was kinda crunching to get it done, so… hopefully I did a good enough job! …Yeah, I’ll need to take an editing break after the tax season crunch.

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Verde’s Doohickey 2.0: Sensational Summer Romp
Acts 1 and 2 Progress Report:

Current Word Count: 372,458

Estimated Word Count: 372,000

Words Edited: 162,304

Total Chapters: 33

Chapters Edited: 19

Header Images Made: 0

Days Until Deadline: 52