#‘this is a FUN and REWARDING experience’

[foxykate42]

Streaming is incredibly enjoyable and fun, but it is a completely different experience than just "playing games".

Sometimes after a stream, I'm so drained, I just sit in silence on a different game, just listening to my friends talk.

Other times I'm so wiped out the only thing I can do is go take a nap/go to bed.

If you ever think to yourself that "streaming must be so easy, its just playing games", then go fucking do it, try it, see how you feel.

You are mentally ON, the whole time. Looking at chat, filling holes in conversations, checking audio, making sure that your face tracking software hasnt crashed in the middle of the stream, keeping an eye out for follow/sub/donation notifications, keeping up with the conversation your stream mates are having AND keeping track of what's happening in whatever game you are playing.

Again, I find streaming incredibly fun and rewarding. I hope at some point I can do it full time without worrying about my financial situation.

But it is not EASY. If you think it is, like I said, go do it.

And this is to say nothing of the prep work. Audio equipment, streaming/capture software, cameras, a good computer, twitch configuration, moderation settings, finding people you trust to moderate discords/chat, advertising, social media management, clipping and edditing vods to upload other places, and so much more.

It's so many different plates spinning at one time, with hundreds, or even thousands of eyes on you.

That all takes energy, effort, skill, and learning to accomplish.

So yeah, it's not a plushy, cushy, "I don't have to work hard" thing to do. It's work, it's creation, it's entertainment. You are a one person TV/Movie studio. You are a manager, director, actor, editor, and PR team. You're lucky if you have one or two other friends to help with any of it.

Again, if you think streaming is easy, then go and do it yourself and come back to me then. If you do it, and you find it incredibly easy, then congrats, go off, dab on them haters. But I bet you it won't be easy.

Unless you're rich. Then just drop wads of cash on all the hard parts and "just sit there and play games"

twitch.tv/katertots42

Wish I could explain the material difference in stress between playing games for an audience with the main goal of entertaining them and earning a living vs playing games to relax while talking to friends

[physalian]

Seen a couple varieties of post on here in the realm of “nobody owes you fic comments” and… actually?

Some of the reasoning was like “you aren’t entitled to praise” or “maybe nobody commented because it’s bad and it helps you write better” which is… you’re supposed to interpret my silence as constructive criticism is not great. Or, the big one, “write for yourself”.

Cool.

First of all, nobody "owes" you fic comments? I'm sorry, is this a new bitcoin I haven't heard of? Is there a bank collecting interest on fic comments? Do you have a strict budget of commentability? Ffs you should want to comment and show that you like something, you gatekeepy cynic.

I write plenty for myself. If I choose to post what that writing is online, I am doing so because I am seeking engagement. Every fic out there is posted under the presumption that the writer wants feedback, otherwise you could easily disable comments, likes, kudos, and shares. Even if somebody in the notes says “y’all don’t have to read this I’m just archiving it”

… Do you really believe they mean that and wouldn’t be excited that somebody gave kudos anyway? Have you ever met people?

Saying this because writing is supposed to be fun. I love writing for myself, but the moment I decide to share it with others, the whole of my enjoyment of my craft is split right down the middle, 50% ‘I’m happy with this’ and 50% ‘are you happy with this?’.

If I’m not getting feedback, I will keep it to myself. Time is the one thing you can’t get back and if I get a more positive and healthy experience just keeping shit to myself and not risking silence from the void, then I’ll do that, and you won’t get fic. Not here holding fic hostage or anything, but if I’ve only got 8 hours out of my week to write and one private WIP makes me happy while one pubic WIP is just a reminder that no one likes it… I’m going to put the effort into the private one, the one that’s written for me.

Now I’ve never largely participated in fandom in the first place and am utterly shocked whenever anything I write for older fandoms gets engagement and I’m not posting with the mindset of “if this doesn’t get 5 kudos fuck ‘em” it’s a subconscious thing.

It’s a “Imma try this out. Oh, ok, well posting online feels no different than keeping it to myself and in fact the act of getting nowhere makes me feel a little worse, so never mind let’s take that down and go back into the safe space of a private Word doc.”

The act and love of writing is not intrinsically tied to the approval of our readers. The act of sharing our writing is.

Especially with fanfic: fic is designed for sharing, it's the act of showing love and support over a beloved story.

And this weird idea of “only good fics get kudos” is like… babe, people gotta start somewhere. I’ll read a lot of “bad writing” that has a good idea just executed poorly and still have something positive to say. It’s not hard. Being nice takes, like, 5 seconds.

Tap the kudos, send the bare minimum of a heart emoji through the comment, hit submit, and go about your day. You’re not out here rewarding “bad fic” with attention. We can all tell which fics are of higher quality and one little comment isn’t going to turn a bad writer into an egomaniac. You aren't rewarding bad writing, you're telling a hopeful writer "I see you over there standing awkwardly in the corner, here come join the rest of us, it's okay, we're here to have fun".

All of this shit is free. They write for free, your account is free, kindness is free.

So be kind.

[polarmoon]

my top 24 screenshots of 2024 🌙

this year has been really big for me when it comes to getting back into simblr, after years of long breaks and inconsistency since 2020. i really feel like i'm back in the swing of things, and i'm really happy about it! i also hit 10 years on simblr this june which is wild, and i'm currently a few followers away from a huge milestone :') thank you guys for making this year so special and great!

@kari-sims tagged me! it was a fun little walk down memory lane. i'm not gonna tag anyone, but i do encourage ppl to do it regardless! it's really nice to look back and give your own screenshots some love. <3

i've played a ton of signal hill this year and there could definitely be more of them in this post, but all my favorite screenshots are unedited! i really have to get around to editing and posting those. maybe i'll do a big signal hill queue in january to get caught back up.

my biggest project this year has been rebooting the fitch legacy, which i started prepping in the spring and posting this summer. the prologue section was one of my more ambitious projects i've had on simblr believe it or not, probably since i did legit storytelling back in like 2014-2015 honestly

i'm super proud of how it turned out, even if i'd probably go back and refine my editing process now that i've learned more about what i like. going back and retelling the original first generation through an updated and realistic lens was so much fun!

playing with benji has made me learn to love ts4 again, which has been so rewarding. it's not perfect, but it's nice when you have a sim you actually care about, and benji is definitely that sim for me. i miss him and have been itching to get back into his save but i really want to see if a bands pack is coming next year first lmao

meanwhile my occult legacy has been a really good way to occupy myself while i wait to play the fitches again. it has gotten me out of my comfort zone a lot, and i'm having a ton of fun with a more casual but still challenging and interesting save. it will probably end up on the backburner eventually, but for now i'm really enjoying it and i'm excited to see where things go. i especially love percy, and i'm really excited for his generation, which has been keeping me motivated to play more!

and finally some misc shots. couldn't forget pippa, since her post blew up when i wasn't expecting it and so many people seemed to love her. what a creature. i should honestly upload her tray files or smth

bonus! some of my fav cas shots from this year :) im trying to experiment in cas more, and i think it's going okay. i also wanna just make some sims in ts2 for fun for once since i'm usually solely gameplay focused in ts2. and just posting more in general when im actively playing.

if you've read this far, ty for coming along for the ride, and happy holidays! <3

[btsbs]

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[greyplainsttrpg]

This has gotten me to think a lot, so I hope you do not think that I'm arguing for the sake of "being right on the internet." I have a lot of opinions about horror in TTRPGs that I haven't fully materialized I guess, so this is kind of eking those out.

This is my bad: when I say that the players "do not have an answer to the problem," I meant that the players do not have 'ready-baked' answers to the problem (because the solutions are extant in other media). Like, the final resolution of games that I run which I consider to be "horror-esque" are about making a bizarre moral decision with no 'right' (as in objectively correct) answers. The players absolutely have all the information they need to make the decision (which they gathered during the adventure), but pulling the trigger on any answer requires the players to question their engagement with the fiction. You can disagree with that as well, but that is closer to what I meant to say.

I think we do disagree on the nature of games. I do not believe that games NEED to be fun to be good or valuable. Like, what makes a game is that you play it---not that it is fun. I think games, TTRPGs in particular, are held down by their supposed need to be "fun." Horror is, as a genre, not fun. I do not have "fun" watching most horror films. I did not have "fun" reading Frankenstein. I enjoy horror because it provides experiences that do not require them to be fun to be meaningful. Like, is the Blair Witch Project fun? Is I Watched the TV Glow fun? Would a TTRPG adaptation of those pieces be fun to play? Should they be? In the case of horror video games, is Silent Hill, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, or Pathologic fun? Not really, no. They're something else which can result in fun as a biproduct, but the initial intent is not fun.

So long as the horror is not obscene, most people who come into a tabletop game are usually prepared for some amount of it to crop up, so it has not been an issue for me. Like, at what point is "you're fighting a werewolf" shift from action-adventure to horror? I argue it is the pacing and presentation of the scene. When do fairies go from fun-fantasy to fae horror? It's all about context. The difference in what I'm trying to do is that I do not tell the players "hey, this fight with the werewolf might be scary." Another example: is it absolutely wrong to premise an adventure on "investigate how this noble was 'murdered'" only for the party to learn that the supposed victim is actually a vampire that lives in a ghost house (and the party is locked inside)? Nobody has had an issue with it yet because it is introduced in pieces. It just sounds worse in theory than the actual practice. Greyplains, my system, is not specifically a horror game, however it works really well for horror elements I tend to use because the mechanics support a feeling of disempowerment (and provides an emotional reward for overcoming this).

My point about comedy is that TTRPGs tend to be rooted in some degree of 1) improv and 2) probabilistic failure. Both of which tend to produce humorous results. Funny and horrible are not antonyms though, so it really does not matter that much. I retract that point as being useful. My bad.

I don't know what "If it's not a game and it still forces you to do things inefficiently, that's just A Job." means exactly. I don't know what you mean by "inefficiently" in this context.

Sorry if this annoying lol.

I think that a flaw in a lot of the more ambitious horror RPGs I've read is that they all tend to go for the pitfall of Lovecraftian horror, but mechanize it, so it very often seems to end up as "roll to see if you lose sanity."

Some games, like Absurdia, handle this fairly well by not making it about your mental state along the way. It's more like... You can only handle pushing yourself so much before something bends or breaks.

but others, like Call of Cthulhu, seem to kind of operate on a "because I said so" type logic. From the APs I've listened to, at least, the GM seems like they just have the power to call for you to roll to Stay Sane or whatever. But it ends at the same destination, that dealing with The Horrors has a negative mechanical effect on your character, and if they experience too much Horror, you lose your character. the same as if they just die.

While this is interesting to think about from a narrative perspective, I think it ironically discourages players from playing like they're characters in a horror story. Which means everyone is operating on, like, Scream logic, where everyone is playing as The Guy Who Knows He's In A Horror Movie, even if they don't say it out loud.

What I'm MUCH more interested in, although I'm not sure how compatible it is with long-form play, is a game whose whole reward structure is built around Getting Your Player Characters To Do Stuff That Gets People Killed In Horror Movies.

Split the party! Go have sex in the guest bedroom while people are dying downstairs! Give in to the monster's threats/demands! Hide the weird not-quite-dog thing that followed you home under your bed for the night! Yeah, the killer will DEFINITELY fall for that trap! Wander off alone without telling anyone where you're going! It's FINE! If you survive, it's how you LEVEL UP!

[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.

[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

[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

[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!!!!!

[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!!