#ActionButton

[bgm05]

why does tim actionbutton rogers look like beakman's world i'm gonna lose my mind

[eccentric-nucleus]

so there's this old actionbutton review of prototype (that has apparently been removed from the actual website, which i guess is fine b/c on reflection the review overall isn't super good) that has a part that i think about a lot.

Prototype is clearly a game that was originally meant to be a challenging action game that took the concept of super-powered main characters out of the ego-trip where you simply explode in ever greater fireballs the entire universe, like a Final Fantasy character in a platformer, and into the realm of the thoroughbred racer. A realm where the power is a tool that must be used carefully, because there’s so much of it, that there’s too much of it. Restraint is what we play video games for, in a sense. We restrain ourselves from making the wrong choices. We take pleasure in our sense of timing. We enjoy learning and growing and doing and, above all, not doing (the same thing over and over, due to failure).

b/c like... yeah that's the thing with power? power invites complications; that's kind of what power is: the ability to affect change at greater magnitudes, which invariably means a reduction in your fidelity of control. unintended side-effects and all that. but the entire concept of the 'power fantasy' is about not having the drawbacks of power, & that's what video games are all about, so it makes sense that that doesn't really come up that much in games. leveling up is just Good, it makes you better at things, because if it made you worse gamers would find that to be bad design, etc

this also comes up constantly in progression fantasies. unsurprisingly!! b/c their thematic content is entirely the power fantasy, so of course getting more powerful is an unalloyed good.

there's another prose chunk in a similar vein i think about a lot that's from a wizard of earthsea, near the beginning: duny (as a kid, before he's named ged) has his island raided by barbarians and they're gonna burn down the town and kill everybody.

He had worked all night at the forge-bellows, pushing and pulling the two long sleeves of goathide that fed the fire with a blast of air. Now his arms so ached and trembled from that work that he could not hold out the spear he had chosen. He did not see how he could fight or be of any good to himself or the villagers. It rankled at his heart that he should die, spitted on a Kargish lance, while still a boy: that he should go into the dark land without ever having known his own name, his true name as a man. He looked down at his thin arms, wet with cold fog-dew, and raged at his weakness, for he knew his strength. There was power in him, if he knew how to use it, and he sought among all the spells he knew for some device that might give him and his companions an advantage, or at least a chance. But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.

(incidentally i think reading progression fantasies has made me a worse reader. they're frequently so wordy and yet nothing happens, and the writing never really says anything or has specific sentences that capture the mind, and so i've gotten into this really bad habit of skim-reading through them snatching out nouns and verbs. so now when i go back to reading prose that's actually, you know, good, i still end up skimming it and missing out on relevant details, since relevant details actually matter in real stories, instead of just being wordcount padding.)

anyway the rest of a wizard of earthsea is basically all about the relationship between knowledge and power and what responsibility comes with that.

i guess this is yet another post all about how i really don't like the thematic simplicity of all the progression fantasy but boy have i been thinking about that a lot as i've been writing other stuff. fun fact, 'goblin cave', my royalroad story, and 'blinded by the summer sun', the tmnt porn i've been writing, have basically the same themes b/c they're both actually about the blunt nature of power + the problem of needing power to exist in the world vs. the grotesque nature of people who seek only power. b/c as you can see by all the above that is kind of a thing i've been thinking about a lot recently. it's just one of them has turtle porn.

i mean i'm fairly sure i've mentioned it here also but they're very heavily influenced by dead zones of the imagination, which i would recommend everybody read. it's only like 20 pages.

To be more precise: violence may well be the only form of human action by which it is possible to have relatively predictable effects on the actions of a person about whom you understand nothing. Pretty much any other way one might try to influence another’s actions, one at least has to have some idea who they think they are, who they think you are, what they might want out of the situation, and what their aversions and proclivities are. Hit them over the head hard enough and all of this becomes irrelevant.

It is true that the effects one can have by disabling or killing someone are very limited, but they are real enough—and critically, it is possible to know in advance exactly what they will be. Any alternative form of action cannot, without some sort of appeal to shared meanings or understandings, have any predictable effects at all.

[...]

As long as one remains within the domain of theory, then, I would argue that simplification can be a form of intelligence. The problems arise when the violence is no longer metaphorical. Here let me turn from imaginary cops to real ones. A former LAPD officer turned sociologist (Cooper 1991), observed that the overwhelming majority of those beaten by police turn out not to be guilty of any crime. “Cops don’t beat up burglars,” he observed. The reason, he explained, is simple: the one thing most guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to “define the situation.” If what I’ve been saying is true, then this is just what we’d expect. The police truncheon is precisely the point where the state’s bureaucratic imperative for imposing simple administrative schema, and its monopoly of coercive force, come together. It only makes sense then that bureaucratic violence should consist first and foremost of attacks on those who insist on alternative schemas or interpretations. At the same time, if one accepts Piaget’s (1936) famous definition of mature intelligence as the ability to coordinate between multiple perspectives (or possible perspectives) one can see, here, precisely how bureaucratic power, at the moment it turns to violence, becomes literally a form of infantile stupidity.

and so on. that's power, baby! the power to define a situation and stop anybody else from objecting to your framing. by killing them!

[rileryk]

EGX NO NATSUYASUMI [september 2022]

my second year of game art kicked off with a project all about self-improvement, and so i got to work on practicing more environment art - mainly on procreate. (i included a couple of examples of this environment practice at the bottom)

here’s the deal though. in late september, two big inspirational events happened: 

-i went to EGX on a college-organized trip and met kareem ettouney from media molecule for a portfolio review/career advice talk. this was a huge deal for me, as i’ve been a fan of the games he’s worked on for most of my life, so the surrealism of meeting him and his wise advice gave me this unprecedented motivational power that i really still can’t get over. love that guy

-the seventh video in the actionbutton review series by tim rogers, action button reviews boku no natsuyasumi, released a few days after that (EGX was thursday, boku was the following sunday). this video was HUGE for me, as a fan of the channel already it caught my attention and had me hooked, but the subject matter of millenium kitchen’s 2000 playstation game boku no natsuyasumi was itself inspirational. seeing the different background art and intimate portrayal of a mid-70s japanese summer in crunchy PSX pixels and polygons made me wanna try to draw one of its gorgeous environment scenes myself.

and so the following thursday i produced this, all in one straight college day between 10am to 4pm, out of a pure force of passion provided to me by two titans of artistic influence. it means a lot to me, even if the outcome could be a lot better :,)

[corvuscorona]

sometimes I think about how my wife watched Thos Slow Translation of FinalFantasy7 & told me I should also watch it because the guy who made it was insane similar-ways to the way that I am insane, like that there was a venn diagram overlap in there somewhere, & it's easy to forget how TRUE that is when tim actionbutton is in Video Production Hell for forever so anytime I hear him say stuff it's unscripted. unscripted tim actionbutton is basically not very much like me at all; HOWEVER. the second this guy starts writing words down in a selective order on purpose it becomes undeniably clear that he fucking LOVES SENTENCES, and that's where allll the parallels live

[dojimakojima]

One of the most frustrating things in this world, is telling someone about a thing you like and care about, only for them to not even pretend to care a little bit.

My mother does this sometimes. I try to think ahead of all my conversations, if I tell someone about a game/youtuber I'm really fixated on, I try to think ahead and make a "list of points" to go over if I end up talking about it. Really, I'm trying to make the conversation as interesting as possible for the other person, its selfish, because if I do a good enough job, then maybe they'll check it out too, and I'll have someone to talk about it with.

Me and my friends have similar tastes in media, so talking to them about something, even if they aren't interested in it directly, they're interested in me, and in the things I'm passionate about and are willing to listen. I try to keep my tangents short and organized, so they aren't stuck talking about it forever. So it feels good. I used to be way worse, to be clear, and I wouldn't be able to stop talking about one thing for weeks, but now I'm able to control it better.

I try bringing up something I like to my mother and often she just... rolls right past me. If I don't get an abrupt subject change out of disinterest from her, I'll probably get a "just get to the point". It's really frustrating because I try coming up with ways I can share the things I like, in the most abstractified, short (<2mins), interesting way possible and she doesn't bother reaching out to try and listen. I even preface them with "Can I tell you about something I like/game I've been playing/show I've been watching", and she often just says "No, I'm tired" in a stern tone. There's never a time when she isn't tired.

On the other hand, multiple times I've gone to get water/food from my kitchen and have run into my mother in the middle of watching one of her reality dating shows (Usually Single's Inferno, or Love Is Blind). Often, she pauses and unprompted, tells me about what's going on. I try to follow along the best I can and ask questions to show I'm interested. Even on harder days where I can't pay attention as well, I ask more basic questions to try and show her I'm interested, as she describes a season's worth of TV. Often she goes on for 30+ minutes. Eventually I have to say "I have people waiting for me/I have work/I can't talk right now" but I try to hear her out for as long as possible because I am trying to be interested. Sometimes, I'll ask her for updates because she lights up when she talks about her favorite shows. But she can't seem to extend the courtesy of even listening to the things I like.

And its sort of frustrating because I feel so passionate about something, and she doesn't seem to even want to be aware of the things I'm thinking about all day. One time I said two and half sentences describing a game I liked "I've been playing this very interesting game recently called The 25th ward. You follow three storylines. All about people trying to solve a mysterious murder that happens at the beginning of the story, detectives, hitmen and a journali-". Halfway through the word "Journalist", she asked me if I had any work I needed to do in an annoyed tone.

Edit: Because of moments like this, I only end up actually talking about the things I like and am obsessed with, very rarely with my mother. My friends know I've spent the majority of the year consummed by ActionButton/Tim Rogers' videos and essays, and I talk about him all of the time with my friends. I converted one friend into a semi-fan, who watched the Boku video with me, and the other friend doesn't like his style, but is patient with me. I've only brought him up like three times to my mother, one of which was because I ordered a shirt from him that was coming in the mail. Because the one time I watched a video in the same room as her, she called him annoying, and when I told her about his hyperthymesia, she said, "I think he's a liar, he's definitely lying about that." In that "100% positive, you'd have to be really stupid to believe that" tone, only my mother could do. It just made me feel so small. Even if that were the case, she couldn't even pretend to care, or just listen?

[megatreble]

The long video industrial complex has been a disaster for the YouTube video essay economy. Now some mf can be wrong for an even greater period of time. I only want to see 6 hour videos from Tim “ActionButton” Rogers goddamnit.

ah yeah man i love underrated, obscure indie titles. like Bioshock and Outer Worlds. better talk for an hour straight about them

[arino4u]

twitch.tv\actionbutton

[codehunter]

What do {curly braces} around javascript variable name mean [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:

What is this JavaScript syntax: {Ci, CC}? [duplicate] (2 answers)

Closed 6 years ago.

EDITAfter looking at JSHint I found this 'destructuring expression' is available in ES6 (use esnext option) or Mozilla JS extensions (use moz) and this however after reading it I still don't understand why it is used

I have come across the following code on MDN

var ui = require("sdk/ui");var { ActionButton } = require("sdk/ui/button/action");

What do the braces on the second line do and why are they used? Why are there no braces on the first line?

https://codehunter.cc/a/javascript/what-do-curly-braces-around-javascript-variable-name-mean-duplicate

[primria]

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[veenapanijoshi-blog]

“Few tips to keep you ahead of the social media marketing curve.”

[massmechhysteria]

Sometimes I want to sit down and learn how to properly use editing software (Photoshop, GIMP, Premiere etc) but I feel like I would lose the charm of having ideas and then they look awful like this

[evilbeepthemeep]

I can recommend ActionButton, Amelie Doree and Hazel.

All three do content on niche Japanese content though Amelie does focus on eroges so be warned

What kinda YouTube do you like?

I especially like informative and educational stuff and like. Video essays and such but ill give anything a go I am chronically content deprived

[lyriumrain]

My bedtime island shirt from actionbutton arrived today!! It's so stinkin' cute 😎💖

[czapata-information-systems-blog]

Getting to Know My Team: Google Docs

[adidick]

#wip Character idea for a talk I’m doing at Javazone in September here in Oslo on the history of our Design System at @sparebank1design . #actionbutton #designsystem #onebuttontorulethemall #button #illustration #characterdesign #characterillustration #procreate #instaart (at Oslo, Norway)