Tragic news
[CW mention of suicide]

Well, today I was going to work on DMA timings (besides, the notes in the previous post aren't quite right, go figure), but I learnt about what just happened and decided I would write this post instead. This is not the kind of thing we can ignore.

Our fellow emudev Near committed suicide. While the consequences leading to this sort of event can be complex, the role bullying and harassment have played into this is clear. Those people have blood on their hands.

I want this post to be a homage to Near. Their work on emulation and preservation has been astounding. These domains are important to me, thus I've always had great respect for Near's work. The amount of time and effort they poured into this is well over what I can hope to do, so I can only commend the dedication they have showed.

Rest in peace, Near.

I also want to reiterate that we at the melonDS team stand with our fellow emudevs, and against all practices of discrimination and harassment like those that have led to the deaths of too many of our fellows already.

There is no neutral position on this matter. I cannot stress this enough. Trying to remain 'neutral' enables the oppressors.
branchus says:
Jun 28th 2021
Registered just want to reply the post...

First R.I.P. Near/Byuu

I spent a lot of time with bsens emulator and it is one of my best loved emulators, really sad about what happened.
poudink says:
Jun 28th 2021
I haven't used BSNES much. I played through about five minutes of Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei on a fork of it that had hacks allowing HD graphics and widescreen, but that's about it. I did, however, find the work done on it admirable. I have read some articles written by Near and it has greatly influenced my current views regarding emulation and preservation. Before seeing this post, I knew next to nothing about Near himself outside of his contributions to the emulation scene, so for me this really came out of nowhere, but I understand that we lost one of the most important figures in emulation and this has honestly really been shock for me. Not just his death, but also the circumstances surrounding it. Rest in peace, Near.
Hydr8gon says:
Jun 29th 2021
I wasn't super familiar with Near, but I'm certainly aware of their contributions to the scene and I have a great deal of respect for the time and effort they put in. I saw them around the emudev Discord server from time to time... it's horrifying to think that the person behind those messages, who I've actively seen typing, is no longer here. The people responsible for the bullying and harassment that led to this truly sicken me. Perhaps even more sickening is the fact that this isn't the first time we've lost an emudev to something like this. Rest in peace, Near; you will live on in our hearts, and through your amazing work.
amami says:
Jun 29th 2021
RIP. I didn't grow up with the SNES and didn't follow its emulation scene, but Higan is well known as one of the best regarded emulators out there. What a big loss.


On a related note, with your activism and your status as a trans woman, I imagine you have your share of haters too, Arisotura. Stay safe.
Arisotura says:
Jun 29th 2021
I do. you can google 'arisotura 4chan' or similar to see how nicely they talk about me (ideally wear a hazmat suit while doing so). nothing I don't expect from them, though.

y'know what they say, haters gonna hate.

anyway, thanks.
Cybersphere says:
Jun 29th 2021
I don’t understand why to touch this. It makes no difference to me who a person considers himself to be. Much more important is his work. I used his snes emulator and will use it. It is sad, of course, that everything turned out like this. And many thanks to the author of melonDS for the wonderful emulator.
fintogive says:
Jun 30th 2021
yeah i heard his death. really sad... his work is legendary with bsnes reminds me of that time someone on the dev team on the dolphin emulator (if i recall) did something similar. i cant remember jump off a bridge or something like that. unfortunately being a programmer from what i heard is very stressful.
Stevoisiak says:
Jun 30th 2021
@fintogive: The Dolphin developer was Rachel Bryk. It's hard to believe it's been 6 years since she passed...
blaze06 says:
Jul 3rd 2021
As someone who loves snes games on PC and as a fellow lover of Bahamut Lagoon, this is some pretty sad news. R.I.P Near.
tolly765 says:
Jul 4th 2021
Registered an account just now to comment on this. The work Near did on the emulation scene was incredible, and I'm sure a lot of people are going to be devastated by this news. It's horrifying to hear that this happened because of awful people on the internet. R.I.P Near, you will be missed.
Emm_Initiative says:
Jul 9th 2021
Did you read about how your "friend" Byuu offered his money and services to KiwiFarms?
poudink says:
Jul 9th 2021
I think I heard he offered money to get the thread taken down
Compa says:
Jul 10th 2021
@poudink: They offered their entire life savings to get the thread taken down I believe. Nothing happened. (Also, fuck, I remember that with Rachel Bryk - haven't heard that name in a long time, but damn that brings back some memories...)

The worst part about the whole scenario is that KiwiFarms will likely be able to survive for as long as the owner remains close friends with CloudFlare's higher-ups since well, we all know that one CDN has essentially half the entire internet under its name somewhere along the lines... Guess it's corruption at its finest, and on both sides of the political spectrum, corruption is bad.

near/byuu will always remain in the spirit of future projects due to him pushing the focus back onto accuracy and preservation of hardware to the point of being able to do 1:1 replication on different devices. If anyone made us all aware of just how important the integrity of such things are within emulation, it's them. I have to wonder too if this had relations to their ROM/game "hoarding" thing too - while hating on transgender people, more specifically far-left furries/weeaboos who tend to lean adjacent to these types of communities as a whole, is a common theme among KF users... I wonder if near/byuu's game prototype collection - which remained unreleased - provoked extra circlejerking from that community, which is something even a lot of people outside KF took issue with.

Personally berating something like that is just entitled dickness and ignoring the bigger picture for your own selfish benefit, even if prototypes and rare things are cool, the bigger picture is that legal distribution is sketchy and questionable, while hardware reverse engineering and using such projects that come out of it is not in any way, shape or form as long as the patents have expired. Pretty sure higan/bsnes's existence has benefited and inspired so many more people than some obscure game's prototype being released.

(Is it just me or is everyone's username male?)
poudink says:
Jul 10th 2021
Is it just me or is everyone's username male?

If you're talking about the color, nah. This'd be true of a normal Acmlmboard, where username color is decided by gender, but it's not the case on Arisotura's boards.
Compa says:
Jul 10th 2021
I'm referring to how my profile is set to pink on the board, while my name is coming up as blue on here. :P
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