rainydayhaze

[rainydayhaze]

Sorry to be that person, but "girl math" doesn't mean "girls are bad at math". It's a way of saying "how many women use math irl"

Like "If I get hit with armor, it doesn't count because my health remains the same"

Or "I returned $30 and spent $5, that's a net positive, so I basically got this for free"

Not that girls literally don't understand math and don't get that things cost money. It's a simplification of thought processes and analysis, actually implying high-level thinking, not "girls are so bad at math we don't even try"

I know, it's not that serious, but taken out of context it sounds worse than it is.

ohhhhhhhh my god you cannot make“teehee girls just use a different kind of math around shopping to justify buying more stuff cause they’re girls using girl math” into a feminist statement it IS an actual problem to ascribe not only gender (woman) but childishness (girl) to poor financial literacy and say that the kind of math girls do is actually exclusively related to the domestic sphere when we talk about shopping or buying food or presents or little treats. Do you fucking hear yourself

[rainydayhaze]

Fun with Achievements

Achievements create this really interesting tempo you can play with.  You read the text, and then, you hit an achievement, and it pops up there at the bottom.  It hits with this ba-dump! tempo. 

It’s like when you read a post here, and then you look down and you see some clever tag at the bottom, it hits you with a one-two punch.  The post, the tag.  That’s what an achievement can you.  You read the text, you read the achievement.

It creates a really fun dynamic.

The very presence of an achievement tells the reader “there is a path here that you might never have considered.  Try it.  There’s rewards there for you.”  You Explored the Dark Cavern without a Light.  You might not even have realized that there was something interesting about going without a light, or that it was even possible.

An achievement, because of that ba-dump! tempo (I need a better way to describe that) can act like a punchline. You make a choice, see the result, and then the achievement pops up like a little snarky editorial or authorial comment at the bottom. It's a moment where I, the author, talk to you, the player in a very direct way. If you take the "Mysterious Benefactor" Sponsor in Jolly Good, the achievement says the following:

An unmissable, or very very easy achievement towards the start of the game gives a nice connection between author and player.  It says, “there are achievements here.  Some will be easy to find, and some, you’ll have to range abroad.  Here’s an easy first one.”

What I don't love is achievements for romantic paths. That always makes me feel like the game is treating the love interests like paths to be achieved and it takes me right out of the feeling of romance.

When something bad happens to the character, awarding an achievement tells the player, you didn't do something wrong. Quite the contrary. You played and experienced a unique path. It tells the player, well explored. It briefly distinguishes the player and the character in this way.

An achievement demonstrates what's important for a player: in Tea and Scones there is going to be scene where a character cannot be saved from a terrible fate. The achievement will note that the player has successfully completed that storyline. The important point is not that it was done successfully, but that the player pursued that storyline to its natural conclusion.

Achievements can acknowledge or laugh at weird little edge cases in which a player tries to do something bizarre, like "sit in a chair for entire cocktail party without getting up" or "get bonked in the head more than twenty times over the course of the game." These are not things you would do if you wanted the best possible outcome, but things that you can do, so why not reward them with a little thumb's up from the writer?

I love achievements that create a whole new game. This one from Choice of Robots is so much fun, because it makes the achievements themselves into a sort of obstacle course that you have to set out to avoid, and chart your course--it's strikingly difficult. It's the rarest achievement in this game!

Consider an achievement that rewards something perplexing. 

You get this achievement if nothing blows up in Chapter Six's ending, which, if you get it makes you wonder what could blow up, and then when you replay, you will start looking around to see what you can blow up. This is my idea of a good use of an achievement.

Come visit the Noble Gases Club here for loads and loads more discussion of game design and musings on the elements of interactive literature.

[rainydayhaze]

Canada Federal Election Dates

April 18 - 21: Advance Polling April 22: Mail-In Voting Application Deadline April 28: Election Day

You do not need to bring your voter card with you. Just bring a valid piece of ID to your designated polling station [See Valid ID Criteria here].

Didn't get your voter card / not sure where your designated polling station is? Find your polling station here.

source for above graphic [as seen on April 18, 2025]

[rainydayhaze]

An explainer for why I don't fuck with algorithmic social media

If you give a pigeon a little button to peck that releases pigeon food, it will push the button when it's hungry.

If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food every 5 pecks, it will peck it more often.

If you give a pigeon a button to peck that releases food at a randomly selected, always shifting number of pecks, the pigeon will peck that fucking button all day long.

Algorithm based social media is not set up to give you the best most fun stuff all the time, it is set up to give you a bunch of stress and nothingness with a randomized reward of something that actually makes you happy, because they want you pecking that button all damn day. It is a slot machine of content, meant to keep you putting in quarters made of your time and attention till you've nothing yet.

At least if I'm having a shit day on my own Tumblr home feed it's because I've made a bad choice about who to follow and I can fix it.

[rainydayhaze]

learning lately that a lot of confidence is about owning up. like "yeah i'm a little addicted to my phone right now" or "yeah i'm not really over this person yet" or "yeah i still get pretty anxious in crowds" just saying anything at all but then following it up w "but i'm trying to get better" and being super nonchalant and unaffected. so powerful. you would literally be undefeatable in the face of even the most judgmental person. no one can judge you for things you already know about yourself and are trying to improve on. the trick is to know yourself from the inside out, to hold yourself accountable, and to actively improve every day. like that is literally the secret to never feeling like you're at the mercy of somebody else's judgment

[rainydayhaze]

generative AI literally makes me feel like a boomer. people start talking about how it can be good to help you brainstorm ideas and i’m like oh you’re letting a computer do the hard work and thinking for you???

[rainydayhaze]

What is Eat Me that you referred to on a post about narrator voices in IF?

Hello and thank you for the ask!

“Eat Me” is an interactive fiction game by Chandler Groover. It’s one of my favorite horror/puzzle IFs (despite only reading the transcript of ClubFloyd’s playthrough) for its fairytale-like narration and setting, vivid descriptions and witty wordplay.

You play as a child with a bottomless stomach and must, as the title implies, eat your way out of a castle made entirely of food. Yes, this includes the residents of the castle, such as cheese guards, a salad gardener*, and frog legs lord. This is all narrated by a cheerful and sometimes ominous** voice urging you to chomp up anything in your path. For example, this is the game’s intro:

My dear child, listen, and I'll feed you a tale. It begins with dinner denied. No bread, no butter, not even dessert. A mean repast by the meanest measure, enough to make a stomach grumble and an ill will stew. Enough to leave a tongue yearning for sugarplums. You know what's next. It's what happened. An offer, something sweet, something simple, and you swallowed. Children are such trusting people. What you ate grew into a hole deeper than mere hunger: it swallowed you. Now, just as you were served, you shall be served again.

I felt squeamish at several points, so if you like this kind of thing, Eat Me might be the IF for you!

*I had an equally disgusting dream somewhat related to this section, LMAO

**info withheld because spoilers

[rainydayhaze]

Three Narrator Voices in IF

When I teach writing, I always teach about "sweet, tough, and stuffy," the awesomely named three major writing styles written about in the 1960s by Walker Gibson.

I think about these all the time, though, particularly when I read interactive fiction and see the way the narrator talks to me. But when one writes in second person, these styles ring out with incredible clarity.

Imagine your character is presented with three doors, and you have to choose which to go through.

The sweet IF narrator talks like this: "So, my dear. I wonder which you'll choose here? Good luck..." And then after you choose, something like "Oh no, no, no! I can't believe you did that!" The sweet narrator is really intimate with the reader.

The sweet narrator is trying to be a character in the story. When people review this game, they are going to talk about how much they love the narrator or they will talk about how cloying and annoying they found the narrator.

The tough IF narrator talks like this: "Three doors. Make a choice." The tough narrator of interactive fiction is down to business. You make a choice, and the tough narrator says, "You swing the brass door open, and there's the treasure room you've been looking for. Are you looting it, setting it on fire, or calling out to your friends?"

The tough narrator is here to propel you through the choices and has no interest in being your friend.

The stuffy IF narrator talks like this: "You see, before you, three doors arrayed in a line. You examine them, and determine that it would be best if you opened one of them. Which door you open, however, is a question that you consider carefully. At last, you make your decision." Then when you open the gold door, the narrator says something like, "The gold door, then. Perhaps lured by the gleam of the precious metal, or perhaps by some dim memory of legends of this place, you swing the gold door open and consider the chamber within."

The stuffy narrator is verbose and in absolutely no hurry to get you to the next choice. There isn't the same sense of very present personality as the sweet narrator--there's a certain detachment about it. This narrator is not your buddy.

Obviously you want to mix and match these when the moment calls for it. But I like having names for these voices--and once you know their names you will see them everywhere in IF narration.

--

Come visit the Noble Gases Club for more chit-chat about game design, writing, and lovely and idealized 1930s era comedy here.

[rainydayhaze]

It's so weird to me when people are like 'but that will cost the government money!' So what? They're the government, they're supposed to be spending money. What, you want them to take your tax dollars and then do nothing with it? Lock it all up in a big government vault and just look at it? Why are you so scared of giving a third grader lunch or a homeless person a house.

[rainydayhaze]

fuckin based and also really fuckin funny, thank you FBG

[rainydayhaze]

Reminder for Canadians: EARLY VOTING STARTS TODAY [APRIL 18] AND RUNS UNTIL APRIL 22!!! 🗳️

Polling station hours are 9am - 9pm for the four days

Eligible voters can still vote on Election Day [April 28]

The deadline to apply for mail-in voting is April 22.

If you didn't receive your voter card in the mail, you can find your designated polling station here. You do not need to bring your voter card to vote, just be sure to bring a valid piece of ID with you to your designated polling station.

Be sure to familiarize yourself with the parties, their policies, and most importantly: the polling trends of your electoral district.

Now is the time to vote strategically. If your district historically votes overwhelmingly for a particular party whose policies and ideals conflict with your own, it may be wise to consider voting for the candidate whose party has the best possible chance of ousting them from power; even if they're not from the party you would normally vote for.

Debates: Leader Debate [English] Leader Debate [French] * Reminder that the Leader Debates are two separate debates and not translations. Major Parties: Liberal Party of Canada New Democratic Party Bloc Québécois Conservative Party of Canada

Remember: Elections are not team sports. They are not popularity contests and should not be treated like sensationalized celebrity gossip.

Elections can have consequences, such as Alberta's health care system that has been progressively gutted down to bare bones so that the provincial Conservative Party could pocket its funding instead.

Be informed on who you vote for.

[rainydayhaze]

you'll get the urge as an artist or a writer to say out loud the things you're worried about "the proportions are off" "kind of out of character" "i'm not good at summaries" "didn't get as much detail as i wanted" "i made a mistake and here's how" and that's the self-conscious part of your brain telling you "it's bad and if you don't tell them you know it's bad then they'll think you're stupid" but you've got to ignore that little voice and pretend you think it's good or else that little voice is going to ruin your life

[rainydayhaze]

okay but there is something disquieting about this urge to cast fan writers as altruists. they give us all this for free!! well, no.

they’re sharing

it’s a key difference in perception. fic isn’t given. it’s shared. it’s part of a fandom community— in which readers are also an integral part.

it’s probably inevitable mission creep from the increasingly transactional nature of the internet and fandom-as-consumerism, which was always gonna happen after corps worked out how much bank there is to make from those weirdo fan people

but like. fandom is sharing. i think we’ve lost that somewhere.

[rainydayhaze]

no you have to contribute to your fandom if you don't want it to die. most fandoms die because people say 'it's so sad watching the fandom die when the hype dies' without doing anything about it. I'm not saying you have to push out 100k word slow-burn fic, I'm not saying you have to make fan art or gif sets or edits or anything. I'm just saying we as a community should contribute to our fandom if we don't want it to die, and by contributing, I'm talking about giving kudos, commenting on your favorite fics, reblogging your favorite art and just talking about your favorite characters. that's enough to keep a fandom alive. that's the most effective way to keep a fandom alive in my humble opinion.

fandoms die because people stop talking about it, fandoms die because people stop engaging with fan content once the hype is gone. what I'm saying is, mainstream media's hype may be gone, but our fandom can stay alive and thriving if us as a community don't let it die.

[rainydayhaze]

Can I Please Eat In The Computer Room Tonight? by Nicole Nikolich (2025)

[rainydayhaze]

[rainydayhaze]

How to Paint Light by jonhuangart