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Thanks for putting this display together! I always find stuff like this super fascinating. I was too young at the time, when hacking communities like these sorta built their histories (like, pre-social media era, I guess), but as a sprouting RPG Maker user I was dimly aware of communities like these. Like, building both significant and/or irreverent/subversive things out of largely tweaked, hacked, and pirated assets on a largely-pirated piece of software? All while different communities and forums rose, played out their dramas, and splintered apart or fell into nothingness. I love reading about that kind of history whenever I can, and this display adds a whole piece of the picture, so thanks again for putting it out there ^^

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That was interesting. I've usually avoided this type of hack but I'm a pretty heavy supporter of the idea of trying to find interesting aspects in anything people create, so it's cool to see you've found such interesting angles in a medium like this. It's not at all the same sort of thing, but I'm curious if you'd enjoy the confusing art in CHIKO's Luckyman Rockman hacks.

I suspect that in general these cases of heavy "boy's club" "alt-right-y" type media filling the fields are the tragic results of marketing, unfair societal policies on who gets access to technology and support in doing so, and the simple realities of highly aggressive technological communities. I remember I essentially left the chiptune community entirely because it was too close to people I felt uncomfortable being near due to their right wing views. It upsets me a lot to think about how even today so many of these things are barely changing. I hope some day there's a more egalitarian world in these fields - it makes me sad to think of all the things that have brought me joy that essentially are forced into being straight white male zones because of shit communities or policies, when they really don't have any inherent reason they'd have to be.

I appreciated the art design and writing for this a lot. Good job. Also intriguing to think about using MV for expressing ideas in this form, I'd never considered doing that before.

Thanks for making it.

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hi NARF : ) thanks for the wonderful comment & thoughts ~ 

yeah, it's a difficult lineage to unpack, and i think it reads differently for different audiences - i always get lots of laughs when i have screenshots of bad hacks in my powerpoints at university, for instance, but someone in our community who has more context about where something like that may have come from would read it completely differently, etc... it's tricky to talk about but it also feels super vital and has been with me for a very long time. it's also a lineage that has so many ramifications throughout many digital communities for the past 20 years -__-  I'm glad you checked it out !