This Week’s Topics:
- Rundown Preamble Ramble: The 108 Genres of People
- Japan’s Game Preservation Society Goes International! (And the importance of Charitable Organizations)
- Facebooks Shuts Down Armature, Sanzaru, and Twisted Pixel (Facebook Buying Oculus Shot VR in the Legs…)
- Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid! Came Out Last Week (It’s A TSF Visual Novel!)
- New World Will Be Dead In A Year (Amazon Gaming Has Been A Huge Failure…)
Rundown Preamble Ramble:
The 108 Genres of People
After my 2025 Ramble— which is the informal name for Natalie Rambles About 2025— I received questions from several people about a phrase I used in that rambly showpiece. “Genre of person.” I thought this term was self-explanatory, but upon further reflection, it probably isn’t. The term genre of person does not refer to any particular official listing of types of people, but instead loosely refers to the idea of putting people into arbitrary categories.
This type of grouping of humans is something that people, consciously or not, do all the time, and not for any nefarious purposes. It’s a way to refer to a specific personality, visual presentation, or vibe of a person that someone sees frequently. If you are reading this, you probably know the genre of person terms like Chad, Stacy, Tyrone, or Karen are referring to in internet parlance. It’s a way to identify a target audience for a product, which is something you probably had to do if you ever took a marketing college class. Or to simply refer to a type of dude one runs into regularly. Even terms like nerds, jocks, alt chick, e-girl are examples of this. Identifying someone based on their horoscopes or blood types. All of these are ways to refer to a genre of person.
As humans observe things, they like to give them names, find some way to grouping certain things together while dividing others. And when dealing with a large number of humans, as one does in the average daily life, it’s pretty much necessary for them to come up with ways to simplify the people they engage with or see on the street. Just deeming them human is too broad, and when looking for ways to quickly categorize them, they rely on shortcuts. Some are more immediately measurable like age, race, gender, even class via clothing and context. But as people go about the world, they either pick up or come up with their own shorthand to further categorize people. They look at clothing and hairstyle as extensions of their persona, and they quickly categorize them into an appropriate bucket based on the information available to them.
This is all very high school stuff, assuming you took electives, so I won’t pry much further. However, I probably do this more than the typical person. Or at least I try to be more aware of this habit than most. I am admittedly a judgy observer, and try to glean information off of people through social cues, as I was told that was what normal people did. In my own neurodivergent ways, I mutated this concept into something weird. I paired it with the inherently dehumanizing experience of looking over people’s text-based messages and comments on the internet. And I began grouping people into vaguely defined genres. All based on quick observations that can and often do calcify as I grow to know people, see people, or extrapolate character traits from media onto behaviors I see in humans through work or reading assorted comments. (I am referring to forum posts, Discord messages, and tweets as comments here.)
Why do I do this? I do this because I am a dejected asocial dork who feels like she has never had a broader place in the world, and busies herself by creating self-indulgent writings for a small audience. And also because I’m autistic, and autistic people generally like being able to categorize things. Hell, did you see how insane that Pokémon project I was talking about last week was?
As for why I have adopted the phrase “108 genres of person,” that is just a cheeky reference to 108’s status as a sacred number in a lot of Asian cultures. This cultural importance has lead a lot of Asian media to use the number 108 to signify certain things. Like Suikoden games featuring 108 heroes, the Pokémon Spiritomb being a ghost created from 108 souls, and anything derived from the 108 Heroes concept. 108 is also a number that sounds decently big, but manageable, has a certain level of mathematical coolness, and seems decently exotic in a Western context, at least compared to, say, 128. Which is just a computer number. It sounds good and is expansive enough of a listing of genres to be vaguely believable. People have tried to condense every type of story down to 7 variants, so is it really that hard to buy the idea that there are only 108 types of dude in the world? You probably couldn’t name 108 types of person off the top of your head.
To make things clear, I don’t ACTUALLY believe that people can or should be categorized like this. That’s dumb, dehumanizing, and denies the robust number of individual traits and quirks that make a person… a person. But it can be difficult to treat everybody like a person in a world that is so transactional, that makes deep connections harder to achieve. It’s easier to view millions as… lesser. Dumb unwashed, slobbering, universally inferior masses that do not warrant the same luxury of humanity that people one knows and cares about.
And this disdain towards the unenlightened masses, towards the undefined majority, and need to generalize them, is something I am particularly bad at. I dismiss things that I deem “wrongfully popular” like the institution of sports, conservative pundits with death cult audiences, games like Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Roblox, or the entire concept of mainstream culture. I tend to assume that evil is popular with people I don’t know, because it must be popular with someone. And that most people are not “worth” interacting with. I know this is stupid, that it is wrong, but it is easier to acknowledge this simplistic narrative than to accept that everything is in a constant state of chaos and billions of people are trying to pretend that this “society” thing we have going for us is “real.”
I am a person born into a complex world, and in order to comprehend its breadth, I tend to rely on ways to simplify things. …I’m pretty sure everybody does. Because if you try to acknowledge that everybody is unique and multiply that by 8 billion, your brain will explode!
Japan’s Game Preservation Society Goes International!
(And the importance of Charitable Organizations)
So, here’s a good bit of news. Last year, I talked about how the Japan’s Game Preservation Society was struggling to secure funding and was requesting donations from an international audience. Per an update published by Time Extension, this call for funding has worked, but GPS almost immediately began facing separate issues with the Japanese government, who pulled their funding for the charity. Why? Because apparently showing the packaging of games and covers of magazines is a breach of regulations, and this preservation society is not allowed to “scan full pages of magazines for private archiving.”
Both of these restrictions strike me as…the dumbest crap ever. This is something that libraries have been doing since the advent of microform. Since before World War II. According to the government, GPS need to caption every image they scan, images can only be supplementary, and they had to cut off access to people who were actively using these materials for research. GPS, in response to this viciously unreasonable affront to their very purpose, has decided that they need to expand going forward… by bringing operations to the United States. …Of all places.
Game Preservation Society is in the process of working through administrative work, establishing themselves in New York, and working with a law firm who is providing services pro bono. They are keeping things as lean as possible, with no office of anything, but need help from a number of knowledgeable people in order to establish the database they want to make available to anybody interested in games history. By creating this New York “sister organization,” they hope to have an online library similar to the Video Game History Foundation. But in order to launch a venture like that, they need money. Money they are currently collecting donations via their support page and a monthly Patreon membership.
Now, one could highlight how trying to do anything for any public good in the US may be shortsighted with, well… how this year has played out so far. However, it has been proven that libraries like this can exist in the US under the US’s fair use laws. Could that be in jeopardy? Maybe, but this is a solution. …And one that I feel could be useful in securing funding, depending on what type of organization GPS’s New York branch is established as. Because if they can become a 501(c)(3), like VGHF, that could be a huge help.
…That’s right kids, it’s time for Tax Time with Miss Neumann~!
Simply put, donations made to a 501(c)(3) are deductible on individual and corporate tax returns. This makes it easier for a non-profit organization to receive corporate donations, while incentivizing individuals, particularly individuals with a high net worth, to donate to the organization. Because if people donate to a 501(c)(3), they can lower their tax liability in certain situations.
This is an area of wealth management that is interesting in its own right, and is in a particularly odd spot after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act HR-1 passed in July 2025. A bill that changed the tax code by making certain changes from the 2017 tax bill permanent while adding temporary ones. And one of these changes was to charitable contributions. Effective January 1, 2026, individuals can deduct up to $1,000 in cash to a 501(c)(3) from their taxable income. $2,000 if they are married filing jointly. This encourages regular working class people who don’t pay mortgage interest or property taxes to make smaller charitable donations, and I think it is a good change.
However, they also simultaneously discouraged larger entities from giving money to 501(c)(3) charities. People who can itemize— typically homeowners and particularly wealthy individuals— do not receive any tax benefit unless they donate at least 0.5% of their Adjusted Gross Income to charity. So if someone had an AGI of $80,000, then they are not able to receive any benefit on your first $400 of charitable contributions. This is a stupid decision, especially when other changes to the tax law mean that more people are going to be itemizing.
Similarly, corporations are now discouraged from giving to charities, as they must meet a similar floor of charitable giving before they receive any benefits. A corporation can only deduct charitable contributions that were in excess of the first 1% of their taxable income. Meaning a corporation that made $250,000 in taxable income would need to give more than $2,500 to charity to receive any tax benefit.
Also, just to make this abundantly clear, I am not being comprehensive here. Tax law is complicated, and I’m just discussing the most common limitations here. There are all sorts of phase outs and oddball exceptions to consider.
I bring this up because I think the US is entering a very odd situation in regard to funding for charitable organizations. Where corporate donors and wealthy donors are discouraged from making smaller multi-year contributions and encouraged to go all out with occasional big years of contributions. A corporation that has previously given 2% of their taxable income to charity each year now has incentive to instead give 6% once every three years, as they get an additional tax benefit.
The same is true for people with ample money in the bank. Less affluent individuals, however, have all the reason in the world to give money to 501(c)(3) charities in these trying times, up to $1,000 a year. Tax brackets complicate the tax savings, but it should be a 10% to 22% tax savings, at least. This is not a lot in terms of tax savings, but this $100 to $220 saved on taxes is not only staying with the taxpayer, but it is specifically NOT falling into the hands of the Federal government.
…Or, if that sounds too complicated, you could just not pay your taxes if you don’t want to support the fascist regime of US government. Still file your returns, and pay your STATE tax return, assuming you like your state and want them to be able to fund services you benefit from. But the Feds? I don’t care.
Also, if you want help on anything tax related this tax season, I am an Enrolled Agent authorized by the IRS to prepare tax returns for individuals and organizations. If you are interested in my services or advice, please email me at Tax at Natalie dot TF. I would write out the full address, but I don’t want any AI spam bombarding my emails.
Facebooks Shuts Down Armature, Sanzaru, and Twisted Pixel
(Facebook Buying Oculus Shot VR in the Legs…)
Well, this is unsurprising. Meta née Facebook, owners of What’s App and Instagram, is starting this year strong by taking a cleaver to their game development division, shutting down three developers. Three developers who all have their own storied history and were all subjected to the same unfortunate fate. All had immense potential across an early slate of titles that, while flawed, represented a burgeoning skill set that could be refined into something glorious with enough time and money. Instead, they were brought into the VR gulags. A move that removed them from the broader games industry, before being bought by an uncaring corporate apparatus that wanted hits, killer apps, and ways to make VR the next big step in global communication. Which, unfortunately for them (meaning fortunately for us), hasn’t happened.
Armature was a studio founded by former developers of Retro Studios who wanted to try their hands at making something new, and they were poised for great things. They were going to work on an edgy FPS Mega Man X reboot called Maverick Hunter which, contrary to what some might say, I thought it looked dope. Their spin-off title, Arkham Origins Blackgate (2013) was a solid little Metroidvania adaptation of the Batman Arkham games. ReCore (2016) represented an opportunity for them to get their teeth wet on a AA project that stood out as the only promising thing coming out of Xbox at the time, showing that they could make a modern shooter. But it did not net enough acclaim to make waves.
Sanzaru was being pushed as a noteworthy 3D platformer developer after their work on The Sly Cooper Collection (2010), Sly 4: Thieves in Time (2014), the two decent Sonic Boom 3DS titles, and being the main developer on the Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon remake. They were not as potential rich as the other two, but I still have mad respect for anyone who was making 3D platformers in the 2010s. I was hoping that, eventually, they would go on to work on their own 3D platformer or some revival. Instead, they fell into the VR mines, produced two VR titles, and are now… dead!
Twisted Pixel… really hurts though. I was a big lover of Xbox Live Arcade games back in my teens, and thought it was one of the greatest innovations in gaming. It gave people access to smaller, more focused titles with slightly lesser production values all for a cheap price and with a demo, so you could try every game you were interested in. And one of the most reliable developers on XBLA was Twisted Pixel.
The Maw (2009) was a solid entry in the coveted genre of feeding a little guy so he becomes a big guy and transforms, which is one of the best game genres ever made. (Shout out to The Munchables by the way.) ‘Splosion Man (2009) was a great retro-styled platformer that made great use of a two verb vernacular: move and boom. Featured some devious puzzle platformer challenges. And had a vibrant enough sense of humor to keep me coming back. Ms. ‘Splosion Man (2011) was just a better ‘Splosion Man in every way, à la Ms. Pac-Man (1982). Comic Jumper (2010) would have been a brilliant Conker-esque pastiche of comic tropes if the developers were willing to make the game 70% as long and more set piece-y. …But the studio pretty much lost its groove after Lococycle (2013).
Lococycle wanted to be an action game, but was too basic and rudimentary with its mechanics to be a good one. Its story was propped up by disconnected live action skits. While the majority of the game’s “humor” came a robot motorcycle physically abusing a Spanish-speaking Latino man. Using him as a weapon, dragging him against the road. And belittling his concerns because who speaks Spanish in Texas, lol. …That game would have been home to SO MUCH controversy if it wasn’t overshadowed by the Xbox One launch.
I might have said something about how these developers were dead to me the day Facebook bought them, but it’s still sad to see them end up in this state. Their past work and IP now under control of a company that clearly does not care about them. The people who remained at these companies are now out of a job, stranded, in a period where games layoffs are still rampant. And the games industry, the lineage of its studios, just got a little bit smaller.
…Oh, and it’s actually even worse than that, as Facebook terminated the employment of over 1,000 people. Great. Thanks. Glad that this company is still allowed to exist and that people still use their services. Fantastic!
Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid! Came Out Last Week
(It’s A TSF Visual Novel!)
Here’s something that I probably should have plugged last week. Lachlan Snell put out a new game!
For those who don’t recognize the name, Snell is the developer of a veritable menagerie of silly transformation-driven visual novels and RPGs. Specifically: Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme, Max’s Big Bust – A Captain Nekorai Tale, Alluna and Brie, Max’s Big Bust 2 – Max’s Bigger Bust, and My Mad Scientist Roommate Turned Me Into Her Personal Robotic Battle Maiden?!?
He’s a fairly prolific creator in the small niche of TF games, and I’ve covered most of his games over the past few years, coming away from them pretty positively. Unlike the TSF visual novels I typically cover, Snell’s games primarily focus on silliness and comedy above most other metrics, being set in a world with dimensional portals, diving magic, rampant transformations, and absurdist politics with its latter entries. If you like TSF visual novels— and you probably do if you’re reading this, I would wholeheartedly recommend checking out both Max’s Big Bust titles, as they’re chock-full of the zany TF nonsense you know I’m all about. …Or you could check out his new game, released on January 5th.
Help! I’m Turning Into A Mermaid! is an investigation adventure game that functions as a standalone title that follow a recent police recruit who is gradually turning into a mermaid, and by extension girl. All of which is spiced up with conspiratorial threats that seek to destroy Axon City— again— life sim elements, minigames, and even romanceable love interests for good measure.
Now, you might be wondering if I plan on doing a review of this game, and the answer is yes. …Just not for a while. I just finished going through one massive TSF VN, and I’m going to be busy with work and my next novel for the next few months. …But I am tentatively planning to check out the game after I’m done with Tax Season in late April. So look forward to a review in May or whenever.
New World Will Be Dead In A Year
(Amazon Gaming Has Been A Huge Failure…)
This is a last minute addition, so I’ll make it quick. After a decade plus of trying, Amazon is in the process of basically killing off their games division, having closed down several studios back in October 2025 and ended active development of New World (2021). New World is pretty much the only success story Amazon has had to their name after doing this for a decade, being a successful MMO through all metrics I could gather. Amazon claimed that they would continue to support New World throughout 2026, but I was convinced that the game would announce its End of Service for sometime in early 2027… and I was right.
This past week, Amazon announced that New World would go offline on January 31, 2027, and delisted the title from sale. Meaning nobody can buy it, only existing players can play it, and those players are now responsible for preserving this game going forward. Like most EOS announcements, it is an admission of failure from the management that society has normalized as an inevitability for all online services. That they must eventually come to an end and this project that people spent years upon years of their lives on, that hundreds of millions were soaked into, should just be discarded. Because it has been around for long enough.
I never played New World, and mostly heard bad things about it, but even if I don’t like a piece of art, that does not mean that I would ever approve of removing it from existence. Amazon, however? That don’t care. They never cared. And they will never care about anything more than their global capital dominance.
Progress Report 2026-01-12
It’s GOOD to be back!
2026-01-11: Wrote 2,200 words for this Rundown. The preamble and Game Preservation Society bits. Wanted to do more, but four hours of anime and nonsense ate up the afternoon. And I was arguing with Missy about the ideals of the puppygirl lifestyle and what it means to have passing fantasies. Continued going through the outline for Verde’s Doohickey 2.0 Act 3. Got bored with the review for now and after reaching the end of mini story arc 1, decided to finally start writing this thing, going through the first scene of July 1, writing 1,200 words. Though, I may need to begin with something more interesting than a damn group chat. Whatever. Scenes can be added easily.
2026-01-12: Was busy for a good chunk of the day with LONG conversations with friends. Work went longer than I would have liked due to a super complex return that I had to recreate for an amendment, without the original docs. After 6 hours, I still could not get it right because it’s so damn complex. I fucking HATE recreating returns like this, especially when this work is normally not billable. Wrote 2,700 words for VD2.0, writing the second of four main scenes in the July 1st chapter. I dunno how I took 600 words of outline and expanded it into that.
2026-01-13: Wrote 1,200 word Facebook and Mermaid bits. Made the stupidly involved header image for this week. Made the Facebook header. Worked until almost 19:00 again, because my boss is bad at assigning me work. Decided to edit this Rundown, the clock hit 00:30, and I called it a day, as I do not like to start things after midnight. …Then I managed to write 650 words of VD2.0 after doing some location research.
2026-01-14: Wrote 5,900 words for VD2.0. I also had to re-read some sections to get the continuity callbacks and character voices right, as this project is immense. But I can feel myself getting back into the groove, and I love it. I am even happy with what I re-read, when I always dread re-reading my own work. I feel like I am writing DOPE TSF when things get going and the emotions are served up. I am SO BACK, and I could not be happier about that. …But I do fear that this will become WAY too long. I managed to turn 2,000 words of outline into over 11,000 words, and I’m not done yet. So dangerous! But I need to pain the mood, establish the foreplay, and keep things sexy but efficient!
2026-01-15: Today was a Shrinie’s birthday, so I we had an anime watch party, finishing up No Game No Life. It would be a better show without the anime perviness and with more politics. Then I decided that, because I had the day off, I may as well do 9 hours of CPE. My boss has been hounding me to take care of odd straggler work when… bruh, I have worked 60 hours this year so far. 50 of them were spent on set up shit. You’re the boss. YOU tell ME what to do! Wrote 2,300 words for VD2.0 Act 3, finishing chapter 1… and it’s over 13,000 words. Why am I like this?
2026-01-16: Wrote 4,100 words of story for VD2.0 Act 3 – July 2. This is the new format, let’s see if I stick with it. Wrote the 500 word song parody for Act 3, which involved transcribing a song. Not sure if I will do a second song in this Act, but I would LOVE to include Addicted by Helly Tree in something.
2026-01-17: Watched No Game No Life: Zero, and it is a very odd prequel. The setting is wildly different, tone is wildly different, but the characters were largely different versions of ones from the original series, if not the same ones. And the fact that Shuvi and Riku, who are step siblings in the main continuity, are depicted as lovers is… it’s telling that the writer just wanted to ship these two together so he could tell a romance, but was afraid of getting pushback for featuring incest. Meanwhile, I am not a coward! I will write incest with the lights ON! Wrote 1,500 word tangent for next Rundown. Wrote 1,500 words to polish off the main component of VD2.0 Act 3 – July 2. On to the other component! Wrote another 400 words to introduce the next segment before realizing that I just NEED a super detailed fashion catalog or something to help with character clothing choices. Because I need some guidance and I don’t want to scroll through the internet for this shit.