(The protagonist is the sword btw. Psychic flight, so his catgirl wielder gets a lot of benefits)

Discover has an alliance with JCB, the #1 credit card of Japan. https://www.jcbusa.com/adding-jcb-card-acceptance/

And the reverse: https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/international-use/

Discover (mostly) works on JCB, and JCB (mostly) works on Discover terminals in USA.

This means that Discover is a ‘guest’ on Japan’s credit card network. It’s JCB that will have the main say of what is or isn’t allowed in Japanese payments.

That’s why I’m pretty sure Discover can’t fuck around. They literally aren’t powerful enough. JCB is the credit card power in Japan who is stronger than Discover. Even if they have Capitol One backing Discover now (and Diners Club International… And Pulse), Discover is too small to bully.

But the alliance system (JCB allowing Discover cards to work on most JCB terminals in the country) naturally allows Discover to still be used in the vast majority of Japanese transactions.

Discover has enough ‘alliances’ to be a card worth using. But also isn’t big enough to bully like Mastercard or Visa. Maybe that changes in the future but today I think Discover is our best move at a reasonable alternative.

Could you explain?

I’ve heard of years of examples of Visa/Mastercard DIRECTLY going after the Japanese Doujin market. Never have I heard of anything from Capitol One.

https://boundingintocomics.com/video-games/video-game-news/nier-creator-yoko-taro-voices-concern-over-rise-in-credit-card-companies-refusing-to-handle-adult-content-if-they-have-control-of-the-clearing-house-they-can-even-use-it-to-control-speech-in-o/

This isn’t a new issue at all. I’m glad that the Internet suddenly cares about it but there’s so much shallow shit and bad thinking right now I’m worried that this movement dissipates before any serious change happens.

But yes, please find me an example of Capitol One being a problem. I can mostly think of Visa, Mastercard issues with maybe one or two AmEx (but much more rarely and maybe those few exceptions AmEx had a point).

This is a payment processor issue. Not a bank issue. PayPal, Stripe and such are also issues, as well as Google Pay and Apple Pay in theory.

Steam suggests that ‘Payment Processors cited Mastercard Rules’.

Itch.io suggests that Visa specifically sent them a note, but more importantly that Stripe forbids sexual content.

We need to be smarter about this. We cannot just let random Twitter and Reddit outrage memes control us.

Fortunately, Visa and MasterCard have been assholes to a large number of international folks so I’m kinda okay with this? But the controversy this past month on these sexy games is poorly researched in general IMO.

We are seeing big tech (Reddit and Twitter) flex their muscles and see how easy they can attack other companies. It’s not even clear if the correct targets were chosen in this instance.

EDIT: my method of protest is to get a Discover (or AmEx if you prefer) so that we stop giving 3% of all of our commercial wealth to Visa or Mastercard. At least we can hit them in their revenue stream.

I don’t believe that Discover or AmEx is big enough to seriously bully these organizations around. So there’s safety in picking the distant 3rd and 4th place credit cards, just economically speaking.

There is also the fact that Discover has an alliance with JCB (Japans credit card) and RuPay (India) and UnionPay (China), meaning Discover is likely too weak to have gross international influence. (Relies upon local processors to get their card around the world).

Why? My research upon the Manga Library Z issue says that when Visa/Mastercard cut off Manga Library Z last year, both Discover and AmEx continues to support that controversial store. So that sets Visa/Mastercard as the troublesome ones, while Discover/AmEx might not have the strength to be troublesome yet.

This isn’t war. It’s political action.

It’s beginning to be violent political action though. Strategizing in these times and thinking ahead is going to become more important.

Sunset Riders SNES.

There are several powers that are just restated omnipotence.

Perhaps my favorite is Featherine Aurora from When they Cry. She is the author of the story you are reading. The world exists to please her (and her audience). She cares little about the pains any individual feels as they all serve her greater purpose.

It’s ‘Just Omnipotence’ but it’s written in a way for very meta interactions. But yeah, her power to create and change the world is ultimate, she literally can do anything.

I can’t remember if there’s anything like the hyenas in Hamlet, but I kind of don’t think so

Gravediggers at the Elephant Graveyard.

Not: Gilgamesh is the oldest still surviving written story.

There was writing older than Gilgamesh. There were cities and culture before 2000BCE. Its just so old that nothing at all survived beyond that time period.

There’s the Bronze Age Collapse, Burning of the Great Library, and many other events that destroyed history in the 1000BCE period. Those old people may have had older records than Gilgamesh, but all we have today is Gilgamesh if that makes any sense.

There’s an evil uncle and ghost dad visits

Evil Uncle who becomes king. Former King becomes a Ghost Dad after Hamlet/Simba goes crazy on drugs. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern (Timone and Pumba) jump in and provide 4th wall breaking commentary and comedy.

You seem to have missed quite a few references.

King Arthur isn’t “one story” though. King Arthur is closer to 1100s-era fanart / fanfiction culture.

EVERYONE was making King Arthur stories back then. And guess what? They contradicted. That’s why we have Excalibur vs Sword in the Stone (sometimes they’re the same sword. Sometimes they aren’t. Its a big contradiction because there’s no singular author).

The Chinese Great Novel “Journey to the West” is truly one story by one author with multiple millennia of copycats. Meanwhile, King Author is basically a millennia of copycats without anyone knowing who the original was to begin with. Very different fundamentally.

Black Panther is clearly Hamlet in reverse.

Even got the spirit of ancestors / ghost scene, kings, wrong princes, duels and lots of killing.

The heros journey.

Its been copied so much no one really knows what the original was.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero's_journey#/media/File:Heroesjourney.svg

I’m sorry Gundam: Witch of Mercury.

Downfall.

Anti-Nazi is not supposed to be funny, not in today’s politics. Seeing Nazism for what it is and how Nazis saw themselves is best IMO.

Old messed up meme. I guess its better than “An Hero” or other fucked up jokes we had a decade ago but still kind of distasteful IMO.

Card Catalogs were these index-cards we kept in a cabinet that helped people look for a book. And don’t say “word of mouth”, because card catalogs didn’t help with that. Card Catalogs helped you go from “Author or Subject” to “Book”, so you were literally trying to figure out a book you already “had an idea” about.

Tell me, how do you look for new books today? Do you use Amazon’s search engine? Google’s search engine?

Internet Directories were these lists of webpages that we used to organize. It was before webrings. The gist is that an internet directory is a list of cool websites on a certain subject, and we can keep those lists organized. Alas, no one used them after good search engines were made.

Curated TV Networks are losing out to Netflix, Youtube, and TikTok. All of which are search-engine based media consumption technologies. All hail the algorithm.

Now tell me where “search” is actually losing in our society. Maybe Google isn’t as dominant as it once was, but Netflix is still a damn search bar.

Maybe TikTok is finally something different: you don’t even search anymore. The algorithm assumes it knows what videos you like and shoves the next video into your face.

As someone who has grown up watching Card Catalogs lose to electronic search, Internet Directories lose to electronic search, photo albums lose to electronic search, Curated Network Televisions lose out to ellectronic search, large-scale advertising lose out to electronic search…

I don’t know. But whatever it is, 20 years from now, we’d say “Why didn’t you have a search engine that could do that for you?”

Somehow they wrote Hank Hill to be a very nonpolitical Texan. I’m not sure if on the spectrum describes him as much as he’s a slightly exaggerated Texas hard ass character.

I mean, King of the Hill is also a cartoon. A better one with more authenticity.