#‘this is a FUN and REWARDING experience’

[thebookewyrme]

No rebloggjng this twice in a row because don’t come crying to me about “effort is hard, capitalism blah” when the thing in question is FAN CONTENT. The whole ENOTRE POINT of fan content is to make something for you and enjoy the journey, and then share it with your friends so they can enjoy it too. Who cares if it’s shitty at first?? Did you have fun making it? Did it remind you why you love those characters? Congrats, you did a good job. Fan content is outside of capitalism, it has its own barter economy (though capitalism does creep in around the edges sometimes). Fan content relies on putting your whole heart and soul into showing your love for a piece of media, and then sharing that with other people who love that media.

You know what AI doesn’t have? Love. Computers cannot have emotions at this point in time, no matter what Data tells you. AI created fan works are soulless husks of what to many of us is a passion project. They make a mockery of the thing we do with no expectation of reward or advancement but purely for the joy of creation.

If you’re not getting to experience the joy of creation, why are you even bothering to pump out more sub-par drivel the rest of us will have to wade through to find the things with human heart and soul in them?? What do you even get out of this??

just saw a fanfic on ao3 have a dedication for chatgpt... that section is meant for your horny perverted mutual who proofread your work, you violated sacred law and you will be torn apart and laid bare btw

[talenlee]

What Is Truth (in game worldbuilding)

The question to start with: How do you present information as truthful in your world?

Okay, there’s a lot going on here, and it involves defining in order to get some specificity. The principles might be universalisable but I sure ain’t gunna pull it off here. This is primarily considering world-building for a game, and not the world-building for a conventional narrative explanation like a story or web serial or whatnot. Those are worlds where you can, amongst other things, go back in time and change the setup you have for the story you want.

And you should.

That’s what editing is.

But in the making of a world for a game, you have to make a way for people to interact with a playful space that gives them boundaries and things to interact with (that are cool and fun or ‘engaging’ if you want to be technical) and that means you need to confer the reality to these players in ways that you, the person building the world, may struggle with depicting.

The task of depicting truth is different in storytelling for a conventional narrative and for a game. Particularly, games have an interface layer that typically speaking, players have to have some reason to believe they can trust, and the job of the interface is to serve as a window between the reality of the game (ie, you are a player interacting with a playful device) and the fiction of the game (there are fuckin DRAGONS man).

See, one of the easiest ways to convey ‘true’ things to your players is to describe ideas in an entirely objective sense. This is this, this is that, and then you use objective measurements as much as you can, in the objective voice of a narrator. This is fine, this works out just okay, and I don’t want you to feel bad in any way about doing this this way, but when you present information like that, you have presented that information as reliable. That creates a sense of trust which you then can just poop down your leg when you have to explain that something you told them isn’t true.

Obviously you can be okay with this, I mean it doesn’t matter if a Metroidvania videogame has to indicate that an early message log was a lie. It needs to be done with a bit of care though because say, if a game opens by telling you that you’re using a stun gun to knock people out through the whole game, and then reveals, shock horror, that actually it’s a murder gun that has been knocking people into death with kill bullets, then the result isn’t going to be a player feeling an emotional distress at the realisation that they were doing something wrong because they trusted the wrong person, you’re going to have a player rejecting the experience, falling out of the fiction and going: this is bullshit.

(Because it is bullshit.)

I think on this because I think about how I present information from Cobrin’Seil. Cobrin’Seil is a D&D setting. It’s meant to be made for people to play in in a setting that is primarily mechanically oriented, where the world can be represented by reasonably reliably systems. Wizards in the top of the world and the bottom of the world can both cast spells that are similar and those spells may work differently under the hood, within the fiction, but are still reasonably coherently reliable things. The same is true that the followers of a death god can heal people with spells that may look entirely different to the spells of a god of the harvest but in the end, the people experiencing the outcome still wind up healed.

I think that the world of Cobrin’Seil is more interesting and more rewarding to write about if there is a strict delineation between the concrete and reliable — rules information — and the social and communicated — things people talk about in the world. That is to say, if you need to roll a few d6 or d8s for a thing, that’s rules information, segregated, and, thanks to 4th edition’s excellent trade dress (the way the books are designed to look) we have a good standardised way to express that. But if you want to know about the world, the things in the world and the way they relate to one another, then that’s where you talk to people and people have biases, and all the information presented in the world is presented as if it is being told to you by a person.

When I’m discussing the world of Cobrin’Seil, then, I know that it’s easy to state questions from a near-objective narrative position, but to deliver answers it should always have an attribution, a source. That source then gets to be someone potentially wrong, and to bring in their own biases and their own opinions.

I know that in Cobrin’Seil, I am biased towards presenting wizards who study things and write things down as a useful source of studyable information. I also know I don’t necessarily verify that information or make it widespread. Sometimes I like that because there are some things I want to be objectively true. For example: Wizards can prove that racism is based on nothing meaningfully true. On the other hand, that doesn’t mean people don’t believe in racism or engage in it, but that there is some objective authority in the universe that can say ‘look, this is a social system that sucks, and ‘detect racism’ spells won’t work.’

Otherwise, though? Things like how magic works? What gods can do? How fairies can manipulate reality? That stuff is all competing theories, maybes, possibilities, and I try to make sure it’s always at least three competing theories.

That bias remains, though, right? And it stands to reason, I, a person working in academia who is working on higher education, would likely see the advantages to and potential authority of a system like that. But that also demonstrates something of my biases towards, you know, things being written down. I could have it so that there are shamanic songs and lyrical poetry that carry important narratives of truth… except I’m not good at writing those, so I don’t.

This is what you need to be mindful of. There are ways to represent what’s ‘true’ in your worldbuilding, in the information you present to people, but you need to also be mindful of your biases. You need to maintain a sense of truth that players can engage with and you need to be mindful of where it’s okay to lie to them.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[bardic-tales]

I figured today I would focus on some facts about Bianca that I have been developing recently or over the last few months. They are going to range from romantic to the mundane. Also, there is mention of BDSM practices below.

While Bianca is a demisexual, I also label her as pansexual, too. Bianca does not care what anyone's orientation is. As long as a person developed an emotional bond with her, she could become attracted to them.

Bianca is also demiromantic. She made her living for six years as a romance author. I am a sucker for sticking an author / writer character into my stories.

Both Sephiroth and she are touch-starved, but to varying degrees. Sephiroth is not use to physical contact. When Bianca first hugged him, he was stiff and leaned away from her touch.

However, they do engage in BDSM practices. He is the dominant partner. Bianca would be considered an alpha submissive. She enjoys her bratty role.

Sephiroth will manifest his wing as a sign of dominance when she is too out of line with her brat persona. He has also used his telekinetic abilities to hold her down. This is never down in an abusive way. She consents every time. Sephiroth is the only being she trusts, which is ironic in its own way.

However, one of her 'rewards' is she gets to brush and style his hair. It's a bonding experience between the two. He also likes to brush and braid her hair, placing flower crowns on her head in their dreamscape. This keeps the Hades and Persephone theming of their relationship.

Bianca sees herself as an avenging angel, as well as the self-imposed title 'Priestess of Jenova' to honor Sephiroth and their plans. She harbors a hatred for humanity after everything that happened in her life.

Bianca prefers to wear Sephiroth's clothing when she can. He does NOT mind sharing his clothes, as he sees this as claiming her in a way. She loves to envelop herself in his scent, as she has heightened senses due to her demonic heritage. His scent provides her comfort on those days when her past is just a little too much for her. She boasts that she can smell him 100 miles away. This has lead to a nickname 'his bloodhound'.

Fun fact. I was going to make FWC an isekai in this newest rewrite. I found it funny that with Bianca's reality bending powers that she could have made 'One-Winged Angel' play on the Planet when Sephiroth fought Cloud. There are times when she does play music from her world, but seeing that they are on a different planet, Cloud, Sephiroth, and the rest do not understand the music.

Her favorite music is gothic rock and darkwave, industrial rock and metal, alternative rock, trip-hop, and symphonic metal. As she was teleported onto Gaia in '96, her musical tastes stay stuck in the 90s.

Bianca is 5 foot even. I often head canon Sephiroth to be 6'5". Since she is so much smaller than him, she will often levitate off of her feet to hug him or give him a kiss.

tagging some fellow mutuals: @themaradwrites @littleshopofchaos @serenofroses @megandaisy9 @watermeezer

@nightingaleflow @prehistoric-creatures @creativechaosqueen @chickensarentcheap @glbettwrites

@seastarblue

[btsbs]

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[bixels]

In the past, people in the Animal Crossing community would make fun of Tom Nook as a sleazy landlord. Since then, he's really rehabilitated his image as this 'heart of gold' businessman (he's the one who puts bells and furniture in trees for you to find! he adopted orphans! he donates to charity!), but New Horizons genuinely paints the most devious version of him.

He's successfully privatized settler colonialism: you pay HIM to move to a "deserted island" (which apparently the oceans in the AC world are just full of) and start a colony that he is directly invested in. At best he's running a weird vacation package scam (you arrive on the island with no money and in debt for "using his services"). At worst, he's using you to set up company towns. For god's sake, he literally has his own fake currency that he forces you to use to pay off your debt. But don't worry, he's repackaged it in a way that definitely doesn't sound like an MLM scam: the Nook Mileage Program!

You're no longer just his tenant or his temporary part-timer, you're his business lackey. The entire tutorial section of the game has you spending actual weeks running around completing tasks and doing hard labor to set up his colony. You're even tasked with preparing his properties and finding buyers for them. No, you aren't a tenant anymore. You work for the landlord. You are directly responsible for finding tenants for him. And he doesn't even fucking pay you. Not for setting up town hall and museum, or his nephew's shop –– which is the ONLY store on the entire island that sells necessities –– or bringing KK Slider to town, or helping populate his town. Not a single cent. No, actually, you have to pay HIM to BUY infrastructure like bridges and stairs and park benches. And all the while, he's telling you're the "resident representative"; you get to call the shots! That the reward is the community's progress. That what you're doing is in everyone's best interest (but most importantly, his).

Since NH's release, people have done a lot of legwork to say that Tom Nook isn't a capitalist while the game shows him at his very worst. He owns the only general store in town. You're forced to use a phone that he modified and branded as his own. Buy Nook-branded furniture and merchandise at the self-serve kiosk in the town hall, a governmental building! There's no conflict of interest here!

But hey, if you're tired of being the landlord/business mogul's goon, you can also find work as a deluxe resort home designer for a company that also pays you in their special company currency that can only be used to buy their products instead of a real salary! Because that's what the Animal Crossing franchise needs! More vacation homes!!!

[zilodak]

I’m a complete beginner when it comes to any coding and I’m not sure if you are or not, but was it easy to begin making the site using rarebit?

I'm a complete beginner as well! I've only coded a navigation bar back in middle school for an assignment and then never again, so Rarebit was overwhelming when I started.

However, you'll realize that it's pretty straightforward the more you read the code over and over again. I suggest opening up the Rarebit folder in an external terminal that isn't Neocities like Visual Studio Code and download the Live Preview plug-in from Microsoft. This let's you see your website in live time and not have to code blindly like in Neocities.

HTML is extremely straightforward and easy to grasp. It's CSS you have to learn and worry about since it's what makes your website look like your website.

I haven't touched Javascript yet, that's a bit more complex, but nothing a YouTube video or a forum can't help with.

It just takes time and patience like any other skill to learn!

I recently learnt how to use flexbox!

[some-stars]

okay so. kind of a weird thing. i just finished the dp&w making of, which was reasonably fun but pretty missable, and right as it finished i realized that shawn and ryan ALWAYS used "deadpool" to refer to the character. never his name. i mean maybe once or twice that i forgot but virtually never. they and hugh did say logan and wolverine about 40/60, but honestly that still feels weird to me coming from a fandom context. and, idk. there's a gap there. it feels emblematic of the gap between the people who get to make this kind of movie (cis white men), and the people who don't (us, for the most part). and how what they see as the most important elements of the story and characters are fundamentally out of alignment with what we want. there's a lot of overlap, which is why we're drawn to this stuff in the first place, but it's never going to actually line up. idk it's pretty disheartening but we carry on i suppose.

[eerna]

I was like "hm let's check out thisisnotawebsite.com just to see what it's like" and it's been hours at this point

[seventeendeer]

just watched the barbie movie everyone was discoursing about last year and I can't help but feel like a lot of the problems in its execution could have been avoided if the kid character's arc had been about learning to embrace girly stuff as an act of rebellion against the adultification of teen girls while barbie went full butch transmasc

[druidonity2]

Dragon Noodle Soup :3

[creepyscritches]

Since I stopped regularly posting my art online it's nuts the psyche reset my art brain went through. Ego death of whatever deviantart mentality. I'm back to drawing w markers bc it's fun, baby. Making my weird little things and breaking crafts bc it's not always an unusable result lol. Waiting to get back to my 12yr old mary sue generator brain, it's the next step to making more things I enjoy making

[sleep-tight-pupper]

one thing about me is that I looove savescumming in videogames. "ooh i wonder what this dialogue option will do" *save & reset* "hmm that's not the item I wanted" *save & reset* "ugh I could have saved that character if I hadn't missed" *save & reset*

haters will tell you it's not fair or that you should learn to live with the consequences of your actions but I say that I like to have fun, actually

[llumimoon]

Super duper silly and sketchy gif I made of Normal when trying out animation for the first timeish <33

[pipskippy]

2023 art summary ヽ(´w｀) i ended up not posting most of my stuff for the latter half (yet) but i’m really happy with a lot of what i worked on!!!!!

[the-eye-of-the-dragon]

Art fight roundup! I had a lot of fun doing this this year :)

In order: Sen (BG3) for @kazehita Sirius for Freuevan Lia Bravo for @crabbys-stuff Beatrice for @aceair Skye for yellow_snow69 Addy for DoodlingDweebus Falena Dal for Deenosaurs Sade for Artistpatato

[antirepurp]

i don't think sonic translates particularly well into open world environments so it probably would be for the best if future games didn't go the same route as frontiers HOWEVER. they should return to the formula of huge hub worlds to give us a space to run around and goof off in like in frontiers. i want them to take sa1 06 and unleashed and expand on what they did. maybe make seamless transitions from hub world into stage environments who knows!!