I wouldn’t want you to feel like you’re “wrong” or that we’re “attacking” you though. I see where your coming from, I just don’t agree with your view and thus voicing my own opinion.
Peace and Love (on the Planet Earth)
3 Likes
Yo.
Must say, I downloaded this for shits and giggles thinking it would be a quick horny thing, and now I’m 100+ hours in the game. I truly didn’t expect this level of love and detail put into something like this for fucking free. Kudos 
.
I’m at the end game room and got a few questions:
- Can you go back to Lantrum?
- Is there a post game?
- Is the ski ever gonna open up?
-
- Can we go back to alhambra so Clara can finally try the chocolate whatever?
- I still got these quests:
- Chuck - Got the photo with the women. Is there anything else besides that?
- Hotter than hot - I suppose coming to this room means that we go back in time and there isn’t a post game per say?
- A gift for heidi - I think I did everything, since the last one was the sequence where they get high;
- Visti the grand vizier - Guess everything is done. Mob boss has no new quests, last one was the one where we go back in Esse’s memory.
- Furthermore, I’m missing a memory cristal, the 4rth one counting from the left, at the before last row. The slab says “Who doesn’t love manual labor”. Is this the one from alhambra or something else?
Questions aside, thank you so much for this game expereince. I really didn’t expect to spend so much time in this.
4 Likes
The problem with the argument you’re using, though, is that it assumes the pacing of the game is properly tuned, and that the payoffs are all worth it.
That’s not true. SB doesn’t feel like one game, it feels like two completely different ones that were fused together to make single, much larger game. It feels like somebody made Some Bullshit, then made Some Bullshit 2, and then hooked them together, with original split happening somewhere around Nordhaven or just after. The entire front half of the game, the first 50-ish hours or so, is utterly different from the back half. Your arguments and positions are correct and hold water… for everything during the second half.
It’s very obvious when playing this game that you’ve focused on the latter half of it, adding more and more scenes, side quests, and content to that part of the game. And I’m really glad you did, I like all of it.
But an awful lot of the game has to happen before we get there. And those arguments AREN’T true for the front half of the game. They’re not true at all. The ‘payoff’ scenes can be hours apart from one another, if not more, and several of them feel fairly weak and thematically inappropriate given what happens, like Emmy being force fed the contents of multiple silos worth of raw food over a long and complex segment of the game, but somehow only ending up with a belly around the same size as herself by the end of it, even though she ate at least a full ton of grain and fruit. Esse had a bigger stomach after eating a pile of mushrooms in a cave during Bad Borken, and Emmy had a larger-or-nearly-equal sized stomach after their cover was blown during the Merchant House Meeting.
And I’m pretty sure you agree with me on that, because you’ve said on several occasions in the past that you intend to go back and rework the beginning parts of the game. It’s not hard to guess what the ‘rework’ would entail, and I personally hope you do, because I think it would greatly improve the game. One of the reasons I don’t really want to replay Some Bullshit is because I don’t want to go back through the beginning, when there’s so little to enjoy there compared to the latter parts.
The beginning is also depressing for other, unrelated reasons. Like it being the only time in the game where Emmy is treated as a real character, and not a cartoon parody of herself. Everyone gets character development EXCEPT her over the course of the story, and seeing what she was like in the beginning is depressing when you know where it goes. The broader plot is not kind to anyone who tried to like Emmy for who she was.
The problem with fetish content constantly thrown in your face is that if you are the average male, you will finish what you are doing and stop playing shortly after. You will never progress and never see more of the game. Why would you?
Because I like the story and want to keep going?
Are you guys NOT playing all of these games one-handed?
That’s literally 70% of the reason I didn’t like Evoria. You can’t play the entire game with just your mouse.
As a completionist, I must say, this isn’t even my fetish. The reason why I actually kept playing was because I saw there is a story, effort put into the gameplay and teh characters, so on. It is far from perfect, yes, but it was enough to have me hooked for 104 hours and have me create an account and come here ask for more.
That is just my opinion, however. I do think that was a constructive critic. Only one thing, on the silo part of the game, it was constantly hammered that there were little resources and part of the gameplay was going around to find food. Guess it makes sense her not having eaten literal tons.
3 Likes
I mean, he did go back and touch up the early game. Have you played Some Bullshit 2.0 onwards? That was the whole point of that big update, and that specific scene you mentioned got new artwork for it.
I’m sorry, but I think you’re being a little entitled here. Even if the early half isn’t as fetish-heavy as the latter half, isn’t that better than if it was the other way around? I think it makes sense for things in the game to get progressively better.
6 Likes
Excuse me, but may I get help with these, pls?
Can you go back to Lantrum? - > Yes, the docks by the goblin brewery. Talk to the Priest looking dude.
Is there a post game? -> Not really, you can walk around and do things you did not accomplish
Is the ski ever gonna open up? -> Probably not, its a lot of manual work to get skiing going and while its a fun mini game, I think it was played enough. Clara eating a years supply of chocolate in one sitting would have been a fun scenario, but maybe too predictable.
Can we go back to alhambra so Clara can finally try the chocolate whatever? -> Let's assume she got it eventually when they visited a second time. She enjoyed it a lot.
I still got these quests:
Chuck - Got the photo with the women. Is there anything else besides that? -> You finished it
Hotter than hot - I suppose coming to this room means that we go back in time and there isn’t a post game per say?
A gift for heidi - I think I did everything, since the last one was the sequence where they get high -> That's the finale
Visit the grand vizier - Guess everything is done. Mob boss has no new quests, last one was the one where we go back in Esse’s memory. -> You completed it
Furthermore, I’m missing a memory crystal, the 4th one counting from the left, at the before last row. The slab says “Who doesn’t love manual labor”. Is this the one from alhambra or something else? -> This is the emmie waitress side quest thing. I'm surprised you don't have it, the only requirement is that you beat the chapter + waitress completion.
2 Likes
You have confused me, as you say the beginning of the game has the least amount of fetish content and long breaks between the pay offs. But this is the part of the game where the controllable Emmie fullness to sprite system actually works? So you don’t like that part after all? I didn’t blanket remove it, so where there are big breaks is fine according to your own argument earlier. It goes all the way until the cruise where I disable it for the “getting a key” quest, and realize it was better off. With it off, you get right to where you say the game is better paced out.
Secondly, my idea between “old and bad” and “new and good” is much earlier than your model. I think the game really starts at the ski chapter. That’s where I figured out I can do custom music, added non combat puzzles and mini games, added in more of a real “story” in the town rather than just “go here, kill this.” I love ski town, the cruise so much. I think they play better than some of the later content, like in Bad Borken. The best dungeon is the city sewers, I’m extremely happy with how that free roam area worked out, with 2-3 hidden scenes and lots of jokes. So when you tell me that these were bad areas and not worth replaying, despite you getting to ski town in like… an hour, I’m going to have to agree to disagree with you. The rework was really more about how in town 1 and town 2, you fight 4 sets of slightly harder enemies and then fight a boss in a row. Not fun, not interesting. So I reworked town 1. I didn’t know how to rework town 2 other than sprucing up the food warehouse, so it and the brewery remain as short combat sections.
You have to understand, I made the game on my own time and I prioritized what mattered, new content. What’s better, a patch saying “I’ve updated the thing you already saw and beat to be less annoying” or “I’ve added a whole new area”? Clearly the latter. I didn’t focus on the latter half, the game got better as it went along as I got better. Not only is this the first story I’ve ever wrote, this is literally the first thing I ever touched in rpg maker. My very first project, not even a test project before it. I learned everything I know along the way. Many times I had to make due with the resources I had with my limited skillset. You wanted a much bigger Emmie belly for the factory section, but I didn’t have one, nor did I have the ability to get one. So I put in what I have. Latter I had an artist and spriter, so I had better (or bigger for you) belly sizes.
Also, I don’t know how you think Clara gets any character development because out of everyone she’s exactly the same. Emmie to contrast was a scared naive little girl and she becomes a food gremlin who really has a personality only around Ellie. I can see not liking that change and yeah, I’ll admit, Emmie and Pro are flanderized parodies of themselves at the end. Emmie becomes more of a gremlin and Pro becomes pretty silly. I don’t claim to have the best writing and it was hard to handle Emmie’s character as a fetish object. I still think she’s cute and, I hope, entertaining to read.
Look, I’m glad you liked the story despite not liking Emmie (which is astounding to me) but you have to know, most people are here for the fetish stuff. They will experience significant shame once done and will close out the game the same way someone closes out 5 or 6 tabs of their browser post-deed. It is what it is. I’m happy that some will push past to continue playing, but I doubt that is the standard player. I’m sorry some scenes didn’t pay off for you as they did for me, but I’m glad the second half of the game worked so you got something out of it.
I should add here, I don’t think your own feelings are wrong for you. You absolutely can feel scenes don’t work or not liking the characters. What I made isn’t perfect.
10 Likes
Well, all that’s good has an end.
Good job everyone on this. Those 100+ hours I got in already weren’t for naught.
I understadn this is a lot of work, but I will hold some hope for more of this in the future.
May I ask about the other projects? I suppose “it came from lantrum” is a what if for clara? And the others are just comunity questions being answered?
I noticed this most recent reply of yours, and tbh, I somewhat feel this game transcends the fetish component. I mean, all that effort with the mini games, the story, character interactions, so on, that’s literally why I kept going. But once again, this isn’t really my fetish. Nonetheless, kudos on such a great gaming experience.
Also, sorry, but by going back to lantrum, I meant the city itself. And the mansion. You know, hang out with esse and other stuff.
I’ve gushed about your game enough already. But. As someone who matches that annecdote about closing tabs when done, SB is a game where I will intentionally make saves before the fetish content so I can come back to them later because I didn’t want to stop playing. I wanted to see how the story continued.
I was also one of those people who first tried this back when it was early in development, and I stopped just after the brewery because it wasn’t doing it for me. A year later someone convinced me to push through to the ski town, and damn, I was hooked from there.
Massive props to the speed and range of improvement/ability you showed in just a few short chapters!
Also, I don’t know how you think Clara gets any character development because out of everyone she’s exactly the same. Emmie to contrast was a scared naive little girl and she becomes a food gremlin who really has a personality only around Ellie. I can see not liking that change and yeah, I’ll admit, Emmie and Pro are flanderized parodies of themselves at the end. Emmie becomes more of a gremlin and Pro becomes pretty silly. I don’t claim to have the best writing and it was hard to handle Emmie’s character as a fetish object. I still think she’s cute and, I hope, entertaining to read.
I had responses to everything else you brought up, but I put it on hold to focus on this, because this wasn’t the reply I had really been expecting. And weirdly enough, I think this is a teachable moment about something. And that’s more important than, I don’t know, debating where the real break in the game’s style happens or whatever.
You really don’t think Clara got any character development in this story? You don’t believe you gave her any? I’m surprised to hear that. I had assumed what you did with her was deliberate and intentional.
Clara does get character development in this story. She actually gets some really significant character development, especially given what sort of character she is (i.e. a helpful villain).
Contrary to what most creative writing classes or teachers will tell you, there is no particularly consistent formula or checklist for writing a great story or making good characters. They will insist that everyone needs character development, and that the writer should try and make every character sympathetic to the audience. Neither of these things are actually true.
There are many different kinds of characters, and what people do or don’t see as triumphs and failures for those characters is almost entirely dependent on the context in which they exist. That is why writing is an art, and not a science. It is too contextual and situation-dependent. There are characters that essentially require development because of who and what they are. There are also characters that don’t need any development whatsoever, or that benefit the most from negative development. It’s all contextual.
Both Pro and Clara are the kind of character that don’t need character development, albeit for different reasons. They could remain static, and still be entertaining and serve their purpose in the story.
Pro is a Gary Stu, he’s great at everything, right about everything, and has functionally no weaknesses beyond his duty to Emmy and the Governor, which the audience won’t perceive as a weakness because nearly everyone will view that as a further virtue. His perfection is balanced against his position in the world and how he is presented. He could be very obnoxious under a different context, but instead you cast him in the role of the almighty janitor: unambitious to a fault, content with his role as a guard captain, trying and failing to herd around an increasingly unruly flock of clowns under increasingly ridiculous and absurd circumstances that no one could possibly have been prepared for. He succeeds in spite of this, which feels satisfying. He is a Hercules in the midst of his labors, wearing a McDonald’s cashier uniform. There is a joke here, and the joke is that Pro tries to be reasonable, everyone and everything around him refuses to be reasonable, and then something goes wrong and he has to deal with it. Cue laughtrack.
This is funny. It’s a good joke, and it continues to be a good joke no matter how many times it happens. Pro does not actually need to change at all to fulfill his purpose. You DO change him, and it’s great that you did. You went above and beyond on that. But it wasn’t strictly necessary.
Clara is a different sort of character from Pro. But like him, she also doesn’t really need to change. Clara is introduced to us as a villain, that is our strongest impression of her, and every minor detail we see about her and the Inquisition throughout the story reinforces that. Clara is not a good person. She and the Inquisition routinely accuse and convict innocent people of crimes they didn’t commit. Two reasonable authority figures we know and trust, Pro and Heidi’s brother, DO NOT like or trust the Inquisition, and consider them violent and dangerous thugs who cause at least as many problems as they solve. The game is filled with rumors and suggestions that the Inquisition does things like demand protection money or steal equipment, and Clara’s own actions as a member of our party reinforces this: we see her do it in person many times, and everyone treats it like it’s normal for Inquisitors to do this.
So Clara isn’t a good person. She’s a villain protagonist, maybe an antihero at the most optimistic. There is also a recurring joke with her, which is that something bad and humiliating will happen to Clara, which is self-inflicted approximately 80% of the time. And everyone laughs at her pain and hypocrisy.
Like Pro’s recurring joke, this also remains funny more or less forever, because the audience is continually reminded that Clara is not really a good person. People like seeing assholes get what they deserve. Clara being humiliated or putting herself in a position of humiliation will never not be funny, because we all agree that she deserves it. If Clara was less of an awful person, if she was more innocent or morally upright, if she wasn’t perpetually haughty and arrogant, the continued abuse would eventually make people feel sorry for her. The audience would begin to get angry on her behalf. But she is haughty, she is rude. And what she experiences is very often because of her own choices or personal failings. Thus it continues to be funny, because she never really learns her lesson, and even if it isn’t her fault, she certainly deserved it, whatever it was.
Strictly speaking, she didn’t really need to change either.
But she did. In fact, there are at least three major ways in which she changed.
1.) How Clara views Pro has done as near a complete 180 as is likely possible for her character to manage. In the beginning, she despised him. Even after his name was cleared via circumstance, she believed he was incompetent, stupid, and utterly beneath both her and her organization. She refused to even use his first name, calling him “Taggert.”
However, over the course of several story arcs, her opinion did eventually shift to the point where she holds almost exactly the opposite opinions that she did in the beginning. Clara begrudgingly admits that he is extremely competent and intelligent, she openly laments that almost no one in the Inquisition is as dedicated or incorruptible as he is, and she notes that he is shockingly good at faking being a member of the Inquisition during the few moments in the story where he had to. She also shifted from refusing to call him by his name or apologize for her rudeness, to saying please and thank you and referring to him as Pro, which is a nickname only Emmy and certain members of the Lantrum Guard are ever seen using in-game.
She’s softened up to him so much, in fact, that if Heidi didn’t exist, it wouldn’t be hard to infer some sort of crush. Even the other members of the Inquisition comment on this, with the two Inquisitors that appear during the end of the alien abduction sequence noting that Clara gives her attache extraordinary leeway, that she seems to behave completely differently around them (Pro specifically in this case), and that if they didn’t know better, they would think Pro was some sort of ‘special’ friend or family member.
But of course, that’s impossible. Everyone knows Inquisitor Van Damm doesn’t have friends.
2.) How Clara views Emmy has shifted dramatically as well. Obviously we don’t count her opinion shift once they reach the castle, because that’s not character development per-se, it’s just a character reacting to new information.
However, Clara goes from viewing Emmy as an immense burden and annoyance that just so happens to be a VIP, to viewing her as a friend and confidant. She makes plans with her, organizes ideas with her. She wants to do things ‘with’ Emmy. If something ever happens that would cause Pro to go off on his own somewhere, you can be absolutely certain Emmy and Clara are scheming together nearby. And on at least two separate occasions, she becomes weepy drunk and admits that she’s come to view Emmy as the little sister she never had, being the youngest in a family of brothers.
Clara’s relationship with Emmy improves so much, in fact, that no matter what choice you make at the end of the candy shop sequence, Clara will interpret it as being Emmy burdening herself to help her.
3.) And finally, there’s fundamentally two kinds of character development. Positive and negative.
The difference between them is fairly self-explanatory, but just to be clear: positive character development is when a character changes in a positive way, like some hard-boiled detective managing to kick a smoking habit he’d had for years. And negative character development would be if that same detective picked up smoking again after his daughter was put into a coma during a shootout.
They are both changes to a character, but they move the character in different directions: positive development builds them up, while negative development degrades them and tears them down.
Generally speaking, for a character to feel realistic to an audience, they need both types of development. And the positive developments should either break even with our outweigh the negative ones, unless you’re trying to be deliberately depressing or explicitly depict somebody’s downward spiral.
However, there’s a funny little quirk to this. Which is that negative developments aren’t necessarily perceived as negative by the audience, if it’s happening to a bad person or someone who otherwise deserves it. I.e. if the negative developments are karmic in nature, then they can be seen as positive.
And because of this, the “Clara Gets What She Deserves” comedy bit actually comes across as positive development to the audience, even if it technically isn’t.
Unlike Emmy, who starts with basically nothing (because of what her character is), both Pro and Clara are whole and complete people by the time we meet them in the story. They are adults, with fully developed opinions, attitudes, and morals. So when they backslide or bad things happen to them, it doesn’t come across as nearly severe as it might have if it happened to, say, Emmy or Ellie.
For Clara specifically, her negative development is obviously her backslipping willpower and ability to control herself, as well as her willpower in general and her expanding waistline. But because she’s not seen as a good person, both her devolution and the consequences that invokes are recieved positively, not negatively. And people’s opinion towards Clara as a character IMPROVES as a result.
Plus it plays into the fetish, but we’re sort of skimming over that.
Which is a lot of words to justify a fairly simple statement, which is that Clara’s ongoing karmic humiliation is registered as character development by the audience, even if it technically isn’t. Because Clara is already a fully-formed adult, and because she deserves it, it feels good to watch her get a metaphorical cream pie slapped in her face.
That’s too long to read, but I wanted to justify my points with some reasoning.
There’s something really important to take away from this, and it’s that character development doesn’t have to be these sweeping grandiose gestures. It doesn’t have to be an entire arc dedicated to someone, they don’t need to win dramatic arguments or have profound earth-shattering revelations.
Sometimes character development is a soft touch. Sometimes it’s just admitting that someone you looked down on is a lot more competent than you thought. Or that a person you thought was a moron and a liability, is actually someone you’ve started to see as family.
Why did you think you hadn’t given Clara character development, Nerds? Because you hadn’t consciously thought to? Because you weren’t deliberately trying?
Sometimes, that isn’t necessary. Not for things like this.
If you disagree with me. If you think I’m wrong about all of that. If you still believe you didn’t give Clara any character development. Let me ask you a question.
If the Clara we see from the absolute start of the game, her very first appearance, were to meet the Clara from later in the game/after the end, would they resemble each other? Would they get along?
No. They don’t resemble each other at all, and they certainly wouldn’t get along. Beginning Clara would call Latter Clara a fat, weak-willed cow that has betrayed everything both of them fought so long and hard for, and accuse her of going soft in more ways than one while dramatically sinking a finger into her counterpart’s gut. Latter Clara would hiss back that Beginning Clara is a naïve, overly repressed hack living in the shadow of her brothers, that she reeks of daddy issues and has even fewer friends than Pro, and say that if she thinks she’s gone soft, she’s welcome to take a fucking swing and find out.
This would then devolve into a massive, no-holds-barred catfight, with biting, scratching, and hair pulling. Latter Clara ultimately wins due to a combination of having more practical experience in combat and belonging to a higher weight class. She ends the fight by sitting her significantly larger ass on Beginning Clara’s head, pinning her.
Pro then tosses her a victory chocolate pastry, which she catches without using her hands, and he holds up an 8/10 sign. Emmy holds up a 10/10 and a 5/10 sign, because she’s voting for two. Pro has his cool guy glasses on.
If you compare the two Claras side-by-side, it becomes very obvious just how much Clara has changed. Generally for the better. Certainly for the fatter.
And that’s an important thing to understand. It’s important for everyone who wants to write to understand that character development DOESN’T need to be dramatic to still have a profound effect on the characters involved.
The total sum of every bit of character development Clara gets in this story probably numbers less than 30 sentences total, buried and scattered across 80+ hours of RPG dialogue.
And yet even so, you changed Clara for the better. Without even realizing it.
Bob Ross was a painter, but most of his advice applies to other forms of art as well. And as writers, we should learn to appreciate our happy little accidents.
As for Emmy… I don’t really want to get too deep into that right now. A lot of the review I’m working on is based on the characters and my thoughts on them, and this thing with Clara feels like it went on for too long already.
But just to be clear, what bothers me about Emmy isn’t that she’s a food gremlin. I EXPECTED that, going into this. It’s a stuffing fetish RPG. I think it would be weird for someone to complain about that.
What bothers me is that she’s not anything else.
Pro and Clara are the types of characters that don’t need character development. You could leave them exactly as they are, with no changes at all, and they’d still be fine.
But Emmy is a naïve runaway fleeing into the world. That’s her character archetype. That kind of character needs development, desperately so.
Not only do you not really give Emmy anything, but what little development she does receive is negative. She regresses in nearly every respect. One could say that her gradual loss of self-control is entirely expected, and part of what everybody signed up for. That’s fair.
But I don’t understand why she needed to become stupider and more naïve over time. I don’t understand why she shifted from actively acknowledging that The Voice was evil and malicious and meant her harm, to trusting The Voice so much that she puts it over Pro, her dedicated protector that she clearly feels familial affection towards.
Pro is a whole-ass man. Clara is a whole-ass woman. Giving them entirely negative character development could work, under the appropriate circumstances, because of what they are. But Emmy isn’t a whole and complete character. She’s a naïve runaway, her starting line is zero, she doesn’t get numbers to work with from the beginning. You have her start at zero, then only push her backwards from there.
Even this wouldn’t feel so odd, if it weren’t for the fact that everyone ELSE gets character development. She feels worse specifically because she’s standing alongside the other characters in the story. She is directly compared against them. They all feel varying degrees of three dimensional. She feels one dimensional.
In fact, this is even stranger with the revelation that you didn’t intentionally give Clara character development. Because now I can’t help but wonder how you didn’t accidentally give some to Emmy in all of this. It almost feels like you were deliberately holding her back.
My favorite arc in the story is the River Cruise. And the reason why is not only is it extremely well-written, but also because it’s the last time we ever see Emmy as a real character in the story. In terms of showcasing everything that Emmy is, the Cruise is perfect. It’s a 10/10 segment.
From the very beginning, Emmy is insightful enough to realize that Heidi and Pro are in love. She’s also insightful enough to realize nothing is ever going to happen between them unless she manipulates them into it. And she loves Pro enough (platonically, I believe the Greeks would use the word ‘storge’ here, which describes the type of love that exists between a parental figure and a child figure) that she wants to help him, just because she can.
She then showcases her intelligence by concocting a plan, her dedication by following through with it, her cleverness to improv even when parts of the plan fall through. And ultimately showcases her self-control, selflessness, and willingness to resist temptation by rejecting The Voice outright for the entire cruise, and refusing to drink the bottle of wine that Pro had voiced an interest in from the start. Which also played a key role in getting him and Heidi together.
Yes, she is naïve. And yes, she is ditzy. She doesn’t understand what sex is, she has no conception whatsoever that Pro and Heidi are fucking like apes on a nature documentary special two cabins over from her. But in the context of her cleverness, her intelligence, her competence, and her sincere care for Pro as a person, that ditziness just makes her more adorable. All of her strengths, and all of her flaws, are clearly on display during the events of the cruise, and the ultimate outcome is a positive one.
This is the last time we see that. This is the last time we see this Emmy. One by one, slowly and without comment, her strengths disappear after this, until only her ever-growing flaws remain.
Emmy is never this strong again.
If you took Emmy from later on in the story and brought her back here? She would fail the cruise plotline. She actually fails at every single step.
Later Emmy is not aware enough of the people around her to recognize that Heidi and Pro are in love. She would not be insightful enough to realize she needs to push them together, even if she did recognize it. There’s no reason to believe she would care enough about Pro to try and do this, when she spends the majority of her time thinking about herself only. She’s not smart enough to come up with a plan to make it happen. She lacks the focus or dedication to try and see such a plan through, she would get distracted or forget what she was doing. Even if she had a plan and could commit to it, she’s not clever enough to think her way out of the problems and pitfalls that will inevitably happen when things don’t go exactly as they should.
And there is absolutely no way, in this or any other hell, that Later Emmy is holding on to that bottle of wine for the approximate week it takes for the events of the cruise to conclude.
That’s what bothers me about Emmy. It’s not that you made her a food gremlin. I’m completely fine with that, and would go so far as to say people should expect it. And it’s not that her self control gets worse and worse as time goes on either, because again, I’d say that should be expected, given it’s a fetish game about belly stuffing. She’s clearly possessed by some sort of gluttony demon right from the start, no lore elaboration required. She has a literal devil on her shoulder, constantly telling her to give in. Of course her self-control will erode.
What bothers me is that she gets stupider, less competent, and more naïve as time goes on, and loses all of the other features and traits she had in the beginning that made her likable as a person. All for no readily apparent reason I can see. I don’t know why this happened, I don’t get why it was necessary. How is she going on more and more adventures, but somehow becoming less competent and aware of danger?
Clara is actually especially damning in this regard, because she proves that you’re very capable of portraying someone’s self-control getting worse without making them look stupid. So what you did to Emmy doesn’t feel like an accident, it feels deliberate.
There’s a word for what Emmy becomes in this story. And that word is ‘pet.’ Emmy’s ultimate trajectory in this story is that she becomes a pet that the more responsible people around her are forced to look after.
And I think that’s actually really sad.
I don’t hate Emmy in this story. Emmy and Pro are my two absolute favorite characters. I think you could have kept both of them exactly the same, without any real changes and developments at all, as the only two characters in this story. And it would have worked out just fine, because the dynamic they have is just that strong.
I love Emmy. What I hate is what happened to her.
I agree with you, that Whippsbruk and The Cruise are the two best arcs in the story. So what changed? And why? I genuinely don’t get it. That Emmy was better, she really was.
1 Like
this gotta be the longest reply ever posted on this website LOL
10 Likes
Okay, I’m going to say here that while your Clara comments are kinda nice and your positive and negative character development is a good argument. It’s not wholly true or even fact to writing. If we want to go that way. You mention that they’re “grown-ass adults” but character development is not just “coming of age” nor is it specifically for the young. You can have character development for a dying old man at the end of his life very, very easily. And your argument for positive and negative character development could also be turned very much on its head, it’s also possible to have an old man pass away by the end of a story either with negative or positive character development and not necessarily be “tragic.”
So… Emmie. Your argument for Clara also applies to Emmie. Emmie at the end of the story is not Emmie at the beginning of the story. And your comments about Emmie trusting The Voice, is also quite wrong. Because Esse undergoes some significant character development too. Very very similar to Clara. In fact, Esse is a far greater antagonistic force in the story and winds up concluding the story as not only going beyond something like “necessarily evil” but she speeds right past “lesser of two evils” into nearly “benevolent fairy godmother” levels by the end of it.
And Emmie? Emmie begins the game a little spoiled, a lot sheltered and winds up finishing the game pretty much in a kind of Harry Potter Wizard kind of finish. She’s like a sequel or two away from becoming Lantrum’s “Merlin”
And before you might want to interject any kind of morals to say Merlins or Harry Potters (or even Emmie) it’s worth looking at CONTEXT. The world of SB is a very different kind of world. It’s the kind of world where yes, you can have “Wise ol’ Emmie” sitting on a stump helping herself to a mountain of sweets while also speaking truth to power. Emmie is far more than “Food Gremlin” because she’s really powerful, world-savvy Food Gremlin. Plus she also largely learns to share. Even if it’s a bit begrudgingly.
None of this even touches upon “The Fetish” which is kind of a looming elephant in the room. People watch porn and it’s not the best writing, or the best acting. But that also doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter or have values. The scale and grade are different. Some Bullshit is far more better than just Fetish fodder and at the same time it does a damn good job being damn good at Fetish and damn good at being a story. And a damn good job of being a game.
Some Triple-A games that exist today don’t have great stories, or great gameplay and yet are considered Great games. Why? Because they’re good at what they do.
Some Bullshit is also great at what it does and it does a LOT. I sunk nearly 200 hours into this game -start to finish- and that doesn’t include the times I’ve gone back and replayed my favorite scenes. And nearly every time I replayed a part I’ve gotten more of out it.
I believe Some Bullshit is a masterpiece. A beautiful food-filled fun comedy romp with heartwarming characters, silly antics, stereotypes, archetypes and things that just make you go “Oh wow, hey!” Goblins? The Goblins in Some Bullshit don’t feel like Goblin archetypes, certainly no goblins I know. And yet at the same time they totally ARE goblins. Then on top of that they’re fetishy goblins that really, nowadays? You find them all over A.I. chat. (for better or worse and make of that what you will)
Nerds created something amazing here, whether he knows it or not. Whether you know it or not. Whether any of us want to admit it or say it or whatever. This game is great, from start to finish. There is no moment in the game where I feel like the game “shifted” there’s no moment where I stop and go “hey, why did that happen? That shouldn’t have happened…” All the things that transpire to these characters are BELIEVEABLE WITHIN THEIR WORLD. They make sense. Their choices make sense. Our choices make sense. Nobody’s “Out of character” all of a sudden. Or at the very least if someone is out of character (Emmie in that latest investigation add-on game) there’s eventually a justification there that gets revealed because of the plot.
So you want to say some things aren’t exactly strong plots. Sure. But they are plots, they are side quests and main quests and meta moments and laugh gags and sweet scenes and “boo hoo hoos” and yes, Fetish. Vore, Food, Boobs, Ass.
Dasho, you’re kinda moving goalposts to suit your arguments. And I get that you have arguments you want to make. And I get that you want to make a review of the game. But end of the day, it’s gonna be your opinion. Not fact. I agree with parts of what you’re saying. But not “the whole” of what you’re saying. I think you’re wrong about a few things. Just like I think Nerds is wrong in thinking this is just some fetish thing that brings shame.
I love this game. I think a lot of people do. There’s 4353 comments here across numerous users and that’s only the posts and comments people felt they wanted to make, nevermind the people staying quiet or not sure what to say.
So please… your opinion is your opinion. You’re welcome to your opinion. But you’re also kind of waving it around REALLY REALLY hardnosed about it. Like your opinion matters so much that the rest of us in this forum aren’t welcome to disagree. I certainly feel like the mood is hostile. Which is why I’m speaking up.
Check yourself, mate. Take a breath and maybe consider if what you’re doing is constructive or just criticism. Weigh whether it’s positive or negative. And then maybe… consider if its a nice thing to say or not.
I’m not going to say any more on this.
I think Emmie and Pro and Clara and Esse and Heidi and even Zyntris for how little we got to see of her are all really neat compelling characters and I want to see more of them. And again, I think Some Bullshit is a masterpiece. I was sad when it came to a conclusion and I thank my lucky stars that we got three short stories, a couple extensions, like the interrogation and Now You See Her. As well as It Came From Lantrum.
I wasn’t expecting any of those. And we got them. And they were also good.
So… yeah, I implore you to take some time and just rethink things. Maybe they’re better than you think.
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Help this game is so good we’ve accidentally entered a debate class
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No but actually I never thought I’d see such a profound discourse (am I englishing right?) about an RPGMaker game. I’m generally used to people screaming that they’re right and everyone else is an idiot so this is a great change of scenery.
I can’t feel like I can speak too much about character development, but I will say this about Emmie: while she’s definitely become a bit more selfish over the adventure, and food has become her primary thought and motive, she’s quite definitely still smart. She’s a prodigy at figuring out magic on her own, so much so that Esse is almost annoyed at how good she is. You could argue that it doesn’t belong here, but in the small game Now You See Her where you play as Prolumbo Emmie devices a smart plan that, altough imperfect, still works for a bit against arguably the Sherlock of the SB universe and is able to fool Esse (who conquered like, basically of Earth). And in the stories that Clinko uploaded on deviantart for Nerds, Emmie demonstrated strenght by taking down a vampire, that is to say a powerful magical being and demonstrated being able to recognise romantic interest between two people by realizing that the rich dude who’s name I forgot that kept inviting Clara wasn’tinviting her for her status of Lord Inquisitor but becausehe was genuinely interested in her. And Emmie realizes almost immediately, and basically gives Clara a chance while still executing the plan pretty much flawlessly. Meanwhile, Clara was so busy stuffing herself with “no consequences” that it took her until the end of the dinner to realize what took Emmie all of 5 seconds. And Emmie still paved the road for Clara without forcing her to walk it, despite having no incentive to do so other than her own good will (and consider that Clara was an ass to her when she saw how tired she was after her training regime).
So I would dare say that Emmie has not regressed as much as you say she did. She’s definitely hungrier and more avid(?) than before but she’s also still smart and good-natured in the end, albeit a bit more sassy
Man, good thing I didn’t have much to say, huh?
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You can’t say that. You’re the best writer on the forum and it beats solid 80-90% of normal, Steam games.
While it’s obvious that the story was slapped together as it developed, your dialogue writing skill is simply god level. The jokes, moving the story forward without making it sound dry or stupid, staying true to the character, creating so many distinct personalities and once again the jokes. None of these are easy and you’ve nailed them all.
So I just wanted to pop in and add my two cents.
I’ve written here before, but again, thanks for creating this story, Nerds.
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“Everyone’s opinion is great and equal, but maybe you should keep rethinking things until yours more directly aligns with mine.”
That’s cute. I’ll be sure to give that suggestion the consideration it deserves.
Also, you threw around a lot of casual spoilers for someone trying to say ‘be careful and check yourself.’ Try to avoid explicitly naming the fourth party member.
And I’m not moving goalposts. You’re just choosing not to understand or acknowledge my point. Clara and Emmy are not the same. Even if Emmy got exactly the same development Clara did, it still wouldn’t be enough, because Clara is already a real person by the time we meet her.
Clara has an identity. She has things she is good at. She has beliefs and ideals. She has weaknesses, but she also has strengths. She has things she would fight for, and she has things she would die for.
She is an established entity by the time we meet her. Pro is also similarly established.
Emmy isn’t. Emmy is not that kind of character. Total amnesiacs, heavily sheltered or coddled teens/young adults (i.e. runaway royalty), a clone fresh out of a vat somewhere. And nearly all child characters, just children in general. They’re all the same sort of thing, they’re blank slates. They don’t know who they are. They don’t have an identity, they don’t have ideals or values yet. Part of the story, if it has a main character like that, invariably involves finding the answers to those questions. Or watching them grow up and develop those answers for themselves.
Let’s assign entirely arbitrary numbers to this, for a visual aid. Characters have a score that determines how real and developed they are. As developments happen, positive and negative, their scores slide up and down to reflect what’s happening with them.
Clara has a score of 30, because she’s a whole adult woman when we meet her. Pro has a score of 100, because he’s literally a Gary Stu, he’s grossly talented and can basically pull new skills out of his ass whenever he needs them. We’re constantly getting reminded of it, it’s basically his whole bit. And Emmy has a score of 0, because she’s a blank slate. She has no ideals, motivations, or values yet. Theoretically, the story is supposed to give these to her, she develops them over time. Her score should rise (and occasionally dip) over time until it’s somewhere between 50 and 80, approximately. That’s fairly standard for a main character/protagonist.
Clara gets significant amounts of negative development, which doesn’t really affect her score, because she’s a villain. If anything, it improves people’s perception of her. So that breaks even, we just won’t count it at all. So she slowly creeps up from a 30 to maybe a 45 over the course of the story, with her gradual development into someone who begrudgingly cares about Pro and Emmy.
Pro is basically invincible and his score barely matters. Even when the story goes out of it’s way to use authorial fiat to kick him in the balls, it doesn’t do anything. He also explicitly overcomes one of his only stated weaknesses (poor social skills) by making many casual friends and one real best friend, he’s the only person in the group who gets an actual relationship, and he gets a major hobby that is integrated directly into the story, which about a dozen side quests revolve around. He starts tall, reaps huge benefits throughout the story, and all the negatives of his being a Gary Stu are neatly negated by his own comedic position within the story. So he’s 150+ by the end of this, his score is off the page.
Emmy gets some positive developments early in the story, probably putting her at around a 15 or 20. Then she loses them, and continues to lose more and more over time as the story turns her into a cartoon version of herself. Not only are the major questions of her character left unanswered (i.e. she never grows into an adult), but she ends up somewhere in the negatives character-wise, and pretty firmly remains there for the rest of the story. She hovers around a -15, with occasional massive hits from particularly egregious blunders dropping her even lower (like the beginning of Bad Borkin). She never makes up enough of the difference to even break even back to 0, let alone feel like a real person in her own right (i.e. matching Clara’s starting score of Functional Adult 30). Her early highs, attained during the River Cruise and Whippsbruck, are never revisited.
Emmy and Clara are not the same. Complimenting Clara’s subtle developments while saying what Emmy gets isn’t sufficient, is not “moving goal posts.” Because Emmy needs so, so much more than what Clara gets. Because she’s a blank slate archetype, and Clara is not. Clara can exist in a holding pattern where she more or less breaks even forever, because she’s a real, whole person. Emmy is not. Clara could get away with no development at all, because she’s already a whole person. Emmy is not.
Clara is an adult woman. We know what she stands for. We know what she lives for. We know what she will die for. We know what her strengths and weaknesses are. Nobody is waiting for Clara to come into her own as a character, she already is.
Clara and Pro can both endure negative development and backsliding, because they are fully-formed adults with set ideals. No matter what number you put next to Emmy’s age to legalize the fetish content, she still comes across as a borderline child in a coming-of-age story, because that’s just what she is, that’s her archetype. And you can’t beat a character like that with such aggressive negative developments, because they’ll crumple. Emmy can’t take the kinds of things that Pro or Clara can just shrug off. She’s not a full person yet like they are. A full person is what she’s trying to turn into.
“You’re a meany pants, you’re being pessimistic, you just want to hate on something, it’s all just your opinion. I can’t believe you’ve done this.”
I don’t care about your emotional responses to what I said. None of it is an argument, it has no point. It’s boring. If you think I’m wrong, answer these questions:
What is Emmy’s identity (the answer can’t be eating)?
What is Emmy good at (the answer can’t be eating, or taking credit for things the Voice does)?
What does Emmy believe in (the answer can’t be eating)?
What are Emmy’s ideals (the answer can’t be eating)?
What are Emmy’s strengths (the answer can’t be eating, or taking credit for anything the Voice does)?
What would Emmy fight for (the answer can’t be eating)?
What would Emmy die for (the answer can’t be eating)?
What are Emmy’s personal goals (the answer can’t be eating)?
What does Emmy consider to be her personal burden or duty in life (the answer can’t be eating)?
What does Emmy want for her future (the answer can’t be eating)?
What are Emmy’s dreams (the answer can’t be eating)?
If Emmy was left alone, what would she do with herself (the answer can’t be eating)?
How does Emmy define right and wrong (the answer can’t be eating)?
What does Emmy love the most in this world (the answer can’t be eating)?
What does Emmy hate? What does she fear? What would she run away from, or try to avoid at all costs (the answer can’t be “not eating”)?
If I give you this questionnaire. If I ask you to fill it out. And if I forbid you from using any derivative of “eating” or “food” as answers, or from giving Emmy credit for things The Voice does. How much of this can you actually answer? How much could you fill out if I insisted on citation for any claim given (“yes, right here in this scene, Emmy says her dream in life is to X, I didn’t infer or guess it”)?
Realistically, none. You can’t honestly answer any of it. Maybe if we’re dishonest, and really, really stretch, you could get two or three. But you’re not filling this out. And that’s my point. Dread it, run from it, the truth still arrives. Emmy starts as a blank slate, and remains as such for the entire story.
We know the answers to ALL of these questions for Pro. We know ALL of the answers to these questions for Clara. We know the answers for Heidi.
Hell, we can fill at least half of this out for Heidi’s brother, and he’s a character that is so insignificant I don’t even remember his name. We know most of the answers to these questions for ELLIE. Think about that for a minute.
Emmy is a blank slate character. One of the burdens of having a blank slate main character, is that you actually have to fill in those blanks at some point. In large part, the purpose of the story is to go about doing this.
This isn’t a huge ask, it’s not some giant and convoluted issue. You can fill most of this list out in basically a single casual conversation with a character. We knew half the answers to these questions for Clara after meeting her once during her introduction scene.
Nearly every problem I have with Emmy could probably be resolved with, I don’t know. Three and a half sidequest chains, a few extra pet-the-dog scenes, and a few edits to some existing dialogue to make her less egregiously dumb. And that itself is part of the problem: most of this is so easily addressed, I’m not really sure I understand how it got missed.
Bad Borken in general needs a rework, on a related note. But who knows how controversial a take that is. I didn’t think “Emmy needs more scenes and agency in the story, because I like her and her missed potential is sad” was going to be a controversial stance either. But it’s summoned quite a few people who simultaneously declare SB to be a masterpiece while also vocally resisting any attempt to judge it by such standards.
You’re not helping Nerds, doing that. You’re not helping anyone. It’s a fundamentally selfish reaction. All art deserves to be treated seriously. Especially indy works.
Even if their creator thinks it isn’t important, or that their efforts aren’t worth much. ESPECIALLY then.
It’s also worth noting that I don’t think this is entirely Nerds’ fault. Because we have to acknowledge that at least part of this is because the Gluttony and Purity mechanic exists. In THEORY, this development for Emmy is offloaded directly onto us, the player. In theory, the choices we make should be defining these things about her.
But even in the very beginning of the game, the choices weren’t really frequent enough to directly rule over what kind of character she was. The system simply did not support that degree of control. And the whole karma mechanic AGGRESSIVELY falls off after you reach the Capital for the first time, so if there was going to be a shift towards State Mandated Character Development for Emmy instead of leaving it up to the metaphorical free market, it should have started around here.
Instead, the rest of the game seems to treat the situation as though we’re making a whole bunch of pivotal Gluttony and Purity based choices that are defining Emmy’s character in various side quests and bonus scenes… that don’t exist. And probably never will exist. Because the impression I get from playing is that Nerds regrets the karma mechanic in general, and will probably end up ripping it out completely if he ever does another major pass of the game.
Gluttony and Purity COULD be expended upon significantly, and spread throughout the rest of the game. Purity as a mechanic COULD be leveraged to serve as the primary source of Emmy’s character development in the story, especially if it was no longer directly opposed to Gluttony in it’s theming (i.e. if it stopped being the “No Eating” score and was reimagined as being Disney Princess Points). But the amount of extra work that would require basically ensures it won’t happen.
tl;dr, no, holding Clara and Emmy to different standards isn’t “moving the goalposts.” Clara and Emmy are two completely different character archetypes.
Clara is a villain who allies with us out of convenience, she is a whole and complete character from the start. We learn everything we need to know about her after two scenes.
Emmy is a blank slate and deuteragonist of the series (arguably she is the protagonist, and Pro is the deuter), the entire purpose of characters like her is that they grow into themselves during the story and either find those answers for themselves, or accept an answer from someone else if it resonates with them.
Giving Emmy the same amount of development Clara got is not enough, giving her ten times what Clara got wouldn’t be enough. Clara’s development was soft touch. Unless you’re writing a 10,000 chapter graphic novel or committing to an 8 year long original webcomic, you can’t ‘soft touch’ a blank slate.
We need to see bold and aggressive gestures being made. Emmy needs to learn how to cook to prove that she can control herself, and because she misses what food from home tastes like. She needs to finish learning to play the piano to overcome her childhood hatred of her tutor. She needs to get into multiple screaming catfights with The Voice over who is in charge, because Pro isn’t the only authority she should feel rebellious against. And we need to see the aftermath of that where The Voice turns off rapid digestion to spite her, but she refuses to cave and has to ask Pro for help because she can’t really leave the inn for the next few days. She needs to try and sincerely plan out and prepare a birthday party for Pro, mess it up through no fault of her own, cry, and then have Pro give her a hug and say it’s the thought that counts, and that he’s really happy she remembered his birthday at all. Then they have a much smaller party where Emmy happily shares her food with Pro, and ignores The Voice sulking about it.
None of this is complicated. Most of it could be improvised and ad-libbed in five minutes. And all of it could be humorous and have the fetish explicitly worked into it. But it needs to happen somewhere in the story. Clara doesn’t need this, Clara doesn’t need anything like this. But Emmy does. Because Emmy isn’t a real person until the story makes her into one. That is the kind of character she is. Their situations are not comparable.
Until at least half of that questionnaire gets filled out (and I mean actually filled out, not “I guessed and inferred”), there’s an argument that Emmy isn’t even a real person.
Ellie fills out more of that list than Emmy does. Ellie.
Really think about that for a minute.
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Man I wasn’t expecting to enter a damn debate class about Some Bullshit
I’ll remind everyone that it’s okay to have differing opinions and express them here. Having discussions and talking about the games featured in topics like these can be healthy as long as it’s kept respectful and falls in line with our community guidelines. Let’s watch things like dismissive tones, and knee jerk/emotional responses when discussing such things. We don’t want to shut down discussions or remove posts over stuff ideally, but if need be that will be the course taken, so let’s all keep it civil.
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