You could set your story in a historical setting in which the countess and the gardener are truly forbidden from passion, or a fantasy world where the ogopogos and sasquatches are sexy rivals.

The amount of pirates on the covers of romance novels is the direct result of this.

Or just have a lukewarm type of forbidden-ness, like “his family’s greeting-card store is in competition with my family’s greeting-card store” or “we’re coworkers.”

And the hallmark channel answer. I had a coworker who would watch those every single day. I vomit at the visuals (how do they get them so consistent and apparent? You can tell just from the opening shots and title!) of a hallmark to this day.

I mean, that was bad, but I hated the movie more for turning it into feel-good drivel about the boss actually being kind and caring about her employee(s). The book ending, where the character realized her own self worth and started making her own decisions, was so much better than the american bullshit about putting up with a boss’ bullshit because they’re actually such good people and will throw a few dollars off the balcony for you to catch.

I enjoy it, but not nearly as much as helluva boss. It was too much like children’s programming, where the solution/chekhov’s gun/learning-through-song experience didn’t feel like it naturally flowed.

Why would you think they were ever on?

you are a slut

but will you treat me like one?

This actually happened to me with Jade from Beyond Good & Evil

Mine was loona from helluva boss. I wondered what the fuck this wolf thing that kept cropping up in random places was, then found the show and thought it was brilliant.

I think there’s an entire generation of us that thinks tubgirl, goatse (I remember reading the guy’s story, or at least someone pretending to be that guy and writing the story), beheadings, and hatchet vs. genitals are completely normal experiences. Who didn’t watch all those, right?

I’m mildly amused that you think there are any gamers on lemmy that still use microsoft. Isn’t it mandatory to use linux to access the fediverse? ;)

For ubisoft, I have no idea. Everything I seem to read around here indicates most are dissatisfied ever since one of the assassin’s creed games a decade ago or something.

The prisons that hold death row inmates are not private, for-profit companies. The numbers have been falling steadily and are incredibly low. Still a problem, because that number is high enough to have stupid amounts of influence, but it has nothing to do with death penalty costs. Those are all because we afford death row inmates a large amount of appeals, which costs ‘lawyer money’ where some prosecuting lawyer pretends he wasn’t on a salary and they claim it’s worth X hours x Y wage, and the defense attorney does the same but with a little more truth because he is getting paid by the hour.

or if it’s “natural” to be attracted to 14yr old girls as an adult man (all topics I’ve seen on Lemmy)

Wait, what?

I won’t do what you tell me.

Group think and social pressures. It is remarkably easy for humans to find themselves behaving like those around them. The progression doesn’t even have to be fast. Imagine that when the israeli military fought wars in the mid 20th century, they started thinking of the enemy around them, and then imagine how long it has been since then with no corrective measures ever taken on those lines of thinking. NOW add in that israel has mandatory military service. The ones who choose to stay are going to be the ones that can agree and fit in with those now very evolved thoughts of hatred, and of course they will bring their own worse additions as they try to prove themselves to those the esteem, the already putrid military members ranked above them.

You’re not wrong, but there are a lot of places in america where law enforcement presence is a long way away. Those places also typically have two lane highways and not much, if any, shoulder. That makes stopping the truck easy enough. Add to that the heavy presence of hideaways in the forests around, and you could jack a fair amount from a truck and shuck it into your box truck before skedaddling to a rural dirt road and all of its pullouts right quick.

To this day, I still wonder if the massager that my parents had, and LET US USE ON EACH OTHER, was actually marketed as a massager. It was basically the wand from the image above, but instead of the little egg/tooth vibrating thing on the end, it was like a massive UFO shape with different contours cut into rubber around the edge, and was big enough that it would be the appropriate size if we used it as a mace. Like, were they the typical ‘too innocent’ to think about it as a sex toy types, or was it really meant to be a massager?

Thoughts I shouldn’t have at night for $500, alex!

Yes! That’s the one! That damnable skull!

It feels like such a silly example now that I know the game, but tales of symphonia made me give up for about three years before coming back and beating it. There’s a section where you’re supposed to go to a specific city to progress, but there’s a semi-secret long way around that lets you experience a different character’s story early. Well, I somehow sucked at following directions and went the semi-secret way, and then couldn’t figure out how to get ANYWHERE that let you do anything. I wandered around the same continent for several months (playing a few hours a week) before moving on.

Jesus, the finding people thing was tough, but finding the quest item that I had already looted from a grave and either dropped or sold to a random merchant? Game ending, man.

AND use at least an adblocker, and even more important, something like noscript where you can see what the website is trying to load onto you. Ublock origin lets through an ungodly amount of crap on those streaming sites.

I just got bit in the ass by bitlocker when my laptop motherboard died. I had to do the unsafe bootloader hack to get back into the drive.

I don’t know if you’d consider visual novels a game, but even if the ‘character’ you’re playing is a male, the feminine aspects come out really well in Doki Doki Literature Club.