aquason

Really excited to hear from Derek! Downloading the podcast now.

This was excellent.

http://www.dw.com/en/berlin-finds-culinary-solution-to-combat-invading-crayfish/a-43675889

MAPL Canadian Content requirements are pronounced "Maple"

Nick Breckon is honestly my favourite host on the podcast. When Nick tells an anecdote, it's just exceptional. So I'm really happy that you're working to keep him on the podcast.

Congrats Nick! Vancouver is one of the few places in Canada that isn't frozen to all hell.

I thought that was 413?

Video Demonstration that Toaster Timers are completely random, along with another explanation of how toasters work: Do The Numbers On Toaster Dials Mean Minutes?

I figured that the events were true, but I'm suspicious of 'artistic flourishes' for the sake of humour and good storytelling. Like the wikipedia article says that 'for reasons still unclear' when it comes to Thomas Chappel burning down the island. Something true claims that it was because Chappel was a merry prankster. My suspicion is that it's not true that these were all treated as lighthearted pranks. I mean, Harvard students kidnapped people. That's unbelievable as is, but add in a 'oh boys will be boys' response and it seems like an outlandish exaggeration.

It's still totally a thing in Japan (as in, the O means 'Confirm' and the 'X' means cancel). As people have expressed online a common frustration at hitting circle and cancelling instead of confirming.

Oh so that's why Steve left the cast. I miss Steve a lot, and it might just be me, but I would trade him for Nick Breckon (sorry Nick!).

I want to be supportive and I do love the non-game related discussions (Robot News, Really passionate discussions about recent media, crazy diversions into hypothetical worlds, Nick Breckon), Idle Thumbs has always been to me 'Games. Video Games. Videooo Gaammes.' I don't know, maybe the fact that every week you felt obligated to talk about new video games you've played (you've mentioned that in previous episodes) gave it a unique spark that meant you talked about cool games I had never even heard of before. Your description of Miasmata stood out to me as a particular noteworthy episode. Your recap of your Crusader's Kings stream was amazing because it focused and retold a coherent story from a 12+ hours long livestream, filling in details and building up the characters with the help of Jake's contributions.

Chris, if you don't want to know what Senpais or the Difference Between Visual Novels and Dating Sims are, ignore this post. Also this is probably going to be really lame. Senpai is a Japanese word that means something along the lines of 'upperclassman'. It extends to outside of highschool, but it's a type of relationship between two people, an older person ('Senpai') and the younger person ('Kohai'). Japanese culture's pretty strict on formality, so in these types of relationships younger individuals are supposed to obey and respect their older individuals, while the older individuals are supposed to guide and help teach their juniors. Relating this to how it's portrayed in anime taking place in highschool, 'kohai' is a person one year younger/one grade below you, while 'senpai' is a person one year older/one grade above you. So why is this a meme? Well in Japanese, there's a lot of different ways to refer to a person depending on what type of honourific ('Mr. Jones' versus just 'Jones') you add to their name. In these types of stories, people either add '-senpai' to the the end of the person's name or simply refer to their upperclassman just as 'senpai'. It sounds bad in English to call your friend who is a year older than you 'Upperclassman', and it's difficult to explain all this efficiently in a translated story, so a lot of people became used to just leaving it untranslated (and leaving a translation note somewhere to explain it). In a lot of these highschool romance stories, there's a bunch of different characters who all are in love with the protagonist. Inevitably there's a girl that's one year younger than the guy protagonist, and thus calls that guy 'senpai'. The meme 'Notice me Senpai' or 'I hope Senpai notices me' is a meme because that story idea of a younger girl desperately wanting the upperclassman to notice her is so common and overplayed. Now onto Dating Sims and Visual Novels. Visual Novels are pretty simple really, they're a lot like Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Books (or 'Gamebooks', as 'Choose-Your-Own-Adventure' is still copyrighted), but with music, sound effects, and other things a digital medium can do. Some Visual Novels feature radically different branching paths, some feature many bad endings, and some are quite linear. Some of them even have no choices at all, which some people further distinguish as 'Kinetic Novels'. Some Visual Novels push more into adventure game territory, like the Ace Attorney series or 999, which includes heavy puzzle-solving, while others don't have much else besides clicking to advance the scene. While the stereotype is that all Visual Novels feature romance or sex, there are also plenty of games that aren't about that (including the aforementioned Ace Attorney series). 'Dating Sims' are a bit different/more specific, as though they are about romancing fictional characters, their defining aspect is that the relationship is discretely measured with systems (as part of the idea of a "Dating Sim") rather than narrative beats. In a hypothetical example, you give a girl flowers on Day 4 and you see that her love has increased by 5 points, and you go to the gym to increase your 'strength stat' to impress her. That's a Dating Sim. Some Visual Novels are Dating Sims, but not all Visual Novels (or even romance-based Visual Novels) are Dating Sims. Just to add a further wrinkle, Japan also categorizes certain games as "Bishojo games" (literally, 'pretty girl games', and because of English influence on the Japanese language, sometimes called "Gal Games"), which fits most people's idea of what a 'Dating Sim' is. Basically if it has pretty anime girls, then it fits, doesn't matter if it's mechanically an RPG, FPS, whatever. Conclusion: "Visual Novel" = Stories that are sort of like Video Games and sort of like books. "Dating Sim" = A systems-based game about romancing people. Hatoful Boyfriend is a parody romance visual novel, but not a dating sim.

- Jake Rodkin, Unintentional Poet @ 1:05:19

Literally catch it right after it ends.