#I managed to download most my stuff at least so there’s that

[referencees]

Goodnight sweet prince

[indefiniteavatar]

So basically, in a case about him shoving money at someone so they shut up about him. . .he can’t shut the fuck up himself. I would say something clever and funny here, except the sad part is that this is just so normal in current politics that it’s just. . .not hilariously absurd behavior anymore? Not to say that it’s not absurd - it is beyond such, but it is just. . . predictable, I suppose.

I guess this is how I feel about politics lately? Either I get mad at everything or I try to laugh at everything and normally that works because politicians usually aren’t so tragically stupid so very often, but now I just kinda have to chuckle at the particularly eyeroll worthy things like this, and try to ignore everything else or my brain will explode.

[glamourscat]

Hello hello!

If/when you have the time to do so, it'd be pretty cool to see some headcannons about the type of nerd stuff Tim does/is into. Like what kinds of games and shows he's into, "nerdy" behaviors of his, would he ever cosplay, etc. I personally think that he'd be into Dungeons and Dragons (not sure to what degree though).

Also, as an alternative, you could do headcannons about Tim with a nerdy!S/O who "matches his freak", so to speak.

Anyway, that's pretty much it! Have a nice day/night!

TIM DRAKE NERDY HOBBIES HCS

Tim being into DnD is actually canon! The game he played in the comics was called Warlocks and Warriors

So, to what degree would he play? I think a pretty serious one

Not necessarily every week game night sort of thing, but at least once at month, or when he and his group can regroup to play together

I can see him going deep into the character making. Choosing the name accurately to the ability they have, the powers and so on

He wouldn’t be necessarily into “solving” games, like cluedo, for example. He is a vigilante, it’s a big part of him sure, but he also needs a break you know?

Games that represent too “close” to his real life would be a no no from the get go. Monopoly, cluedo and anything of the sorts

He is the type to prefer table games. Regrouping with his friends and play cards or anything really, just makes his night

In terms of video games I can see him play mini games (?) like small horror, thrilling ones on his pc. Otherwise he enjoys going to the arcade more. 80/90s style games are more up to his liking

Though, something he really LOVES, is Pokémon. He has a Nintendo switch just to play Pokémon games

Guilty pleasure are cooking mama, animal crossing and super Mario

The type to download the sim just to recreate you guys on the game and your love life

Loves legos. Especially the big set ones, he finishes them so quickly

A star wars fan

I see him as someone who really would enjoy watching anime and reading manga

Definitely fantasy ones, especially ones with mythical creatures, aka vampires (?) idk I just get those vibes

But heavy on the type of anime that play mind games. That are filled with mysteries, foreshadows and twists, confusion and maybe dive slightly into psychology too

JJK, blue exorcist (manga), attack of titans, erased, Steins:Gate, detective Conan, the case study of vanitas, odd taxi, psycho pass, the perfect insider, black butler, death note, monster

He would love to go to anime conventions

Definitely the type to lose himself around the stands 24567 times

Buys way too much merch

Has an extended collection of Funko pops, mangas, collectors editions and figures

Very big on graphic novels, comics and fantasy books too!

He is into coding. Something he really enjoys is creating little interactive websites pages for his s/o

Like this one

Collects the most random shit. Like I imagine him travelling for missions, state to state or outside the US and all of the sudden he brought back a collection of the most obscure handmade thing he could find in that place.

Big into astronomy. Hell, he is the type to randomly say in a conversation “today Mars will be visible at so and so degree, so I’m busy tonight” (I don’t even know if that’s possible but that’s besides the point)

Photography, although not as “nerdy”, he loves it. His style is more urban leaning. He manages to capture what he wants in his work perfectly

lastly, HE DEFINETLY COSPLAYS!!! i mean, look at canon

© GLAMOURSCAT (all rights reserved. do not share, modify, translate and re-upload my work outside of tumblr)

[ravenstargames]

✦ LOST IN LIMBO — 2024 WRAP-UP + 2025 MILESTONES

And here we are, after the holidays! Another year has come to an end and this one was simply incredible. You can anticipate what our most important milestone was for 2024, but there has been a lot going on this past year that maybe we all have forgotten. So let's see what these four friends have accomplished this year, and what's coming for a 2025 that already looks promising!

Good news is that we achieved every goal we set up for this year! Isn't that awesome?! We published our first demo, hosted our very first casting call (and it was nuts!) and so much more! Let's see it :3

✦ OUR STUDIO, RAVENSTAR GAMES, WAS OFFICIALLY FOUNDED ON JULY!

Let me tell y'all that when you finish college, keep studying because it turns out the job market is absolutely devastated and cannibalized, and then have an existential crisis, the last thing you think about is saying "fuck it we ball" and open a studio. I mean, we are literally four people with no stable jobs (well, Kayden is an exception) and with no previous experience making a game entirely by ourselves.

So this was a huge step for us. A scary one. A terrifying one, and still is. But we've survived so far, so let's hope we can still do just that—survive at least long enough to start living. Calling this our job would be a dream come true, but there's still a long road ahead until that!

✦ WE SUCCESSFULLY FUNDED LOST IN LIMBO ON KICKSTARTER!

And you were right if you thought this was our most important milestone of the year!

Honestly, I low-key thought we weren't gonna make it. As I said—four people with no budget, paying for what we couldn't do ourselves with what our grandmas give us on Christmas—what were the chances anyone would be interested in helping us fund our game?

But we still had to do it, because making it this far and not risking not being funded would be madness. So there we were, opening Photoshop with tears in our eyes, watching our mediocre bank accounts get obliterated and working on the Kickstarter graphics with nothing but glitter and Jesus.

Also, we were asking for a lot of money and it was our first project. We've seen firsthand a lot of projects fail, a lot of people being scammed, and a lot of projects not going like the audience and devs wanted. So I thought we were a bit doomed.

Well, turns out there are people who believe in us and our project, so I was proved wrong. Maybe our graphics were really cool in the end, huh? I worked my ass off on those! /silly

So 980 people donated almost 60k euros and on September 27th, Lost in Limbo became officially a thing. Which is wild. I don't think I believe it still, honestly.

Of course, not everything went smoothly! As first timers we made a lot of mistakes, but we knew we were going to mess up something. Sometimes it was us, sometimes it was Backerkit or Kickstarter...Truth is watching a million YouTube tutorials, reading articles or learning about other devs' journeys doesn't make you ready to run a Kickstarter. There's some stuff you can only learn while running it!

So we ordered our merch, had our 🎉first delay🎉 because we made a mistake with our pins, and managed to deliver our digital goodies to our backers without blowing up (almost) anything.

✦ WE FUNDED OUR VERY OWN SOUNDTRACK!

And it'll consist of 19 original tracks by our wonderful composer Tomás Palazzi! 💜

✦ WE RELEASED OUR FIRST DEMO!

And overall, people seem to enjoy it! In fact, we recently reached +10k downloads and +71k views on itch! T^T

Of course, getting our demo out there was nerve-wracking, but we received a lot of love, and that includes wonderful and constructive feedback from a lot of folks who love our project and want it to succeed in its best form. Incredible content creators played our demo, reviewed it—and we've met amazing and stunningly creative people in the process!

However, as with anything you publish for others to see, not everyone is going to like it, and I think as a team we needed to also be exposed to that. There have been negative reviews that have helped us improve, and some others that have made us realize that our game, just like any other, isn't for everyone, and that's okay—our game isn't perfect and it won't ever be, and that's okay. As creators and creatives, accepting the critiques that help us improve is as important as letting go of the ones that contribute nothing, and to accept there are some things we don't want to change.

Of course there have been nasty or rude reviews, (most of them private) and albeit there were very few of them, but that was guaranteed. We try to have a few laughs at those!

✦ WE CREATED OUR OWN DISCORD SERVER!

And it's brimming with life!? We are almost 400 members and I may be biased, but it's full of amazing, supportive, and incredibly creative people. It feels so strange to see people talk daily about your game, about your characters—theorize, laugh, ask stuff...I can only hope our members feel at home as much as we do, because even if we can't interact with everyone all the time, just reading y'all makes us extremely happy :')

✦ WE STARTED WORKING ON OUR EXTENDED DEMO!

And it's going great! The script is doing better than expected, even if I'm editing more stuff than I originally planned. Implementing feedback we received during our survey is helping me improve the pace, storytelling and dynamism of the script. I'm an overthinker so I know I'm most likely editing / adding more stuff than I planned, but so is the way of the west.

Raquel has (as you all know) been working on the reworked sprites, and for now there's 4/7 done! 💜 We also have finished one of the new backgrounds and one is close to being done. That's 2/3!

Also, thanks to y'all buying extra stuff via Backerkit, we've managed to raise a bit more money and have been able to commission Airyn for help on the extended demo, as well as Allie (our editor) and the wonderful, the Ren'py Jesus, Feniks, to help us with our programming adventures! So technically we didn't reach our second stretch goal (outsourcing) but the extra coins have allowed us to hire some help!

That's all for 2024! Phew! Now, our plans for 2025 are quite simple (me when I lie).

First of all we want to ship our Kickstarter merch (more on that on a Kickstarter update coming soon!)

Finish production for our Kickstarter artbook

Release our Extended Demo

For now, we are aiming for a June 2025 release of the prologue, and the first chapter of every route will follow soon after.

Open our Patreon!

We have to think about this thoroughly, plan it, and make sure we can offer quality stuff worthy of your support. Some of you have asked a lot about a Patreon but we want to make sure we make it right!

On a personal note—this year I have been working on my OCD, as last year, and booked with two therapists. My therapist (the one who diagnosed me last year), and a different one specialized in OCD. This year has been full of highs and lows, but I'm in a much better headspace than I was last year, to the point of my meds being lowered! ✌️

I also enrolled for my PhD program like a month ago, and I got accepted after a lot of college shenanigans that almost became my villain arc. So this year is going to be funny for me!

Every member of the team has had their personal issues to deal with this year. Mental health, family, etc. It hasn't been an easy year for us, but I'm happy to say we've been there for each other.

And I think that's all! Overall it has been an insane year. Very productive, very nerve-wracking, and incredibly awesome. We can only hope this year is as good as 2024 if not even better, both for us as people and for our game. We hope your 2024 has been good, and we also hope you are excited to make 2025 a year you can be proud of; but most importantly, a year in which you can take care of yourself, be at peace with who you are, discover new things about yourself, and crave a path to the future you want to live!

Talk to you all soon! 💜

[door-insurance]

Not to be dramatic or anything, but thank you for your great chasemarsh art and for drawing the girls. Sometimes I genuinely worry that Victoria and Kate would be forgotten by this fandom, when they shouldn't bc they're also very important female characters to the story. people tend to treat Max and Chloe as if they're the only female characters so thank u for doing Kate and Vic justice!

Heya!

Thank you for the kind words, both Kate and Victoria are hella important characters and I'm glad to see them still get love. One of the things that motivated me to start making fanart was seeing how barren the other character tags were compared to Chloe, Max and Rachel

At some point Chasefield was the 2nd most popular ship in the fandom but as time went on I feel like the new batch of fans we're getting didn't really explore the game's world as well as the older generation did or got into the franchise through watching speedruns or even worse, they saw tik tok edits of only the max/chloe scenes and nothing else

It's actually painful lol we used to have ask blogs for characters like Brooke, people would do shitposts and scenarios that involved all the other blackwell kids- now whenever i feature them somewhere id get questions on who's who

I'm hoping that my project at least has that old fandom spirit of appreciating Arcadia Bay and the world building

---

speaking of VortexVN, I'm gonna start doing monthly updates. So far in January I managed to do the following;

-Added in an achievement system

It's gonna be list/text only, adding in pictures and stuff is just beyond my basic programming knowledge but I will include funny references specific to each route

-created a character sheet for Victoria:

i actually don't like how her sprites turned out i'm gonna revamp them next week

-Polished the waking up cutscene:

won't show the whole thing but this is the third frame

also just wanted to say that the demo launch was a success!

As of January we reached 59 downloads for the PC version and 80 browser plays for the web version, so in total 139 people played the demo... Holy shit amazeballs

Now going into this I knew it will never reach Love is Strange numbers and level of hype cause it's been almost 10 years but oh my god I didn't expect this many people playing lol

It’s kind of a gamble making a fan game featuring a divisive/antagonistic side character

my goal was around 50 downloads and browser plays for the FINAL RELEASE of the game, we hit that shit on day one with the goddamn demo- ya'll are amazing for that

I'm gonna try my best to get this project done as soons as May or June of this year, game deving isn't easy but I will try to update yall on a monthly basis.

Next week's tasks are the new journal entry and revamping Victoria's sprites

[cedarwoodtears]

ud characters playing the sims bc im bored

ashley: for such a sweet girl you’d be surprised at the fact she has a lot of sacrificial mods..what do you need them for?????? she still has her cute little family households of course but why do you have THREE serial killer sims. tbf they’re some of her ocs so it makes sense!! she loves making her ocs and making them have cute little happy domestic family lives…but also. so many strip clubs ashley we get you wanna look at virtual boobs LMFAOOOO we know all the animations you have downloaded yeah..it’s okay no shame in it girl ✊ ash doesn’t like playing around other people though she would rather not flash them….

chris: dedicates his time to breaking and exploiting the game…the ways this man thinks of ways to get a million simoleons you would think this man is el0n reincarnated no LOLLL even he’s got to step back sometimes and be like “this is a little fucked. oh well” and goes back to trapping pregnant sims in the pool and forcing them to constantly spawn cradles outside because they’re immortal and stuck in a constant birth loop. it’s entertaining as hell though i can’t blame him hours absolutely fly by when he’s breaking the game, half the time he’s just on call with his friends and sometimes sharing his screen so they can watch the horrors

emily: spends HOURS in cas. don’t ask how much cc she has on her computer. she stopped checking long ago. barely ever plays in live mode or build mode but always has the most EXQUISITE JAW-DROPPINGGGG sims. like wow i didn’t even know pixels could look this good. she’s made over all the townies and loves to make more…and they all manage to look unique in their own way she does NOT struggle with same face syndrome. em has made herself and the sim version of mike fight and she killed him LOLLL she used to do that with all the people she didn’t get along but now that she’s made up with a good majority of them they’re good friends in the game now..how cordial!!

jess: build mode GODDD oh my gosh she does not play around like that. you’d think her dream was to be an architect or interior designer the way she plays. she managed to rebuild the washington lodge amazingly!! it took her awhile to get the confidence to go back up there but she took her reference photos and got back..it took her a few weeks but she did it!! that’s her biggest achievement so far but she also just generally makes super nice houses!! like girl if you don’t use your talents in the real world NOW!!! we need you jess please save us from these ugly modern homes..babygirl..babygirl please…she hates modern homes. some of her favorite styles are gothic revival and mediterranean ^^

josh: he sometimes uses it to cope with his sisters deaths…he has a save file with them and him and he spends a lot of nights making them all a happy family with no worries 💔 usually he gets real sad after and doesn’t touch it for a few weeks….but then his next save is his mafia kingpin drug dealing multi millionaire who is the king of willow creek and has 80 girlfriends LOL josh what a life you’re making your sims live..either that or making the most old pathetic senile men do crazy stuff WHYYYYY is that man a stripper he’s about to die in one day LMAOOOO he occasionally uses the sims as inspiration for his short films funny enough!! maybe not the mafia one. or the um. other one. i’m sure him and chris would be down to poorly recreate it and laugh at it though

matt: has the WORST luck when playing…his guy somehow always manages to get caught on fire, drown, get into fights, get abducted by aliens, get stuff repossessed, all the bad things you can think happened in the sims has happened to him. tbf he doesn’t really know how to play so that doesn’t help LMAO he makes sure to save constantly at least!!! matt does his best to keep a happy family though even if it means doing a little money chest here and there ahem..kaching…motherlode…it’s not cheating if it’s for the better. that’s what he says. so it’s not wrong. matt also loves making the moms knit for the kids too i just think he sometimes wants to take knitting ideas from the game so he uses the moms to do so..

mike: his sims are always so ROWDY and WILD wdym your sims are bad as hell. and not in the good way. homewreckers, leaving toddlers homeless and constantly getting into fights and having the whole neighborhood hate you like mike 😭😭 not his sim self though. no that man GRINDED for WEEKS to max out all his skills and become the prime minister. and also have like 50 friends and an amazing romantic partner and be a multimillionaire all while being dashingly handsome…just like himself in real life, no?!? nah he knows that’s not true but doesn’t mean he can’t wish!! but yeah if it’s not himself in the sims they’re all such objectively bad people LMAOO we need to take away the extreme violence mod from him..

sam: always cheats to make the animals constantly in a good mood and never age bc she can’t let them die that would be wrong…sam loves making super long family lineages though like one of her favorites is her royal family of canada one..not the most realistic duh but it’s a silly little hobby of hers she’s had since she was a kid!!! there’s always an ominous graveyard outside the house with all the ancestors though. just a bit creepy. anytime she sees a ghost she sends it back to the spirit realm she will NOT have them roaming around!!! sometimes she just moves them onto another lot bc she’s trying to deal with 8 sims at once and well it gets a bit distracting having random furniture start floating when 3 of your sims are about to accidentally starve

[olderthannetfic]

As someone who's college age: yeah, there's a TON of people my age who don't know how things work and don't try to learn. Can't unzip a zip file, want to know where to download anime but haven't tried looking it up, ask things on subreddits a Google search or quick search on the wiki would answer, ask questions answered in FAQs or by professors or in the syllabus, say they can't download and install a new browser or app or program because they don't know how and they never think to look up how to do so, go months without logging into their student email because no one explained to them how to do so and they never thought to ask anyone how to do it, go months without washing their laundry because they don't know how and they also don't know how to look up instructions on how to do it, don't know how to cook and can't Google a recipe so they throw things in a pan and pray it works out, don't understand how to back up files, don't know how to attach a pdf to an email to send to a professor, cannot manage to put stuff on a USB drive + go to the library + print it off of the library computer, etc.

I spent most of freshman year teaching people things. The year after, my patience got more frayed and "Google it" started coming out of my mouth a lot more. This last year I gave up and now if people fuck themselves over, that's their decision. I'm not going to stand there begging people to do basic things they should already know how to do.

It was really funny when someone from Career Services came to talk to us about resumes and said we didn't need to put down 'can use Microsoft Excel' on there because everyone knew that and all but three people said actually no, they didn't. People who are 40+ really think we're all good at tech by default, like we fall out of the womb clutching a little phone already making spreadsheets in Excel or coding computers or whatever.

Meanwhile in reality you see a ton of people posting on tumblr going, "How do I post fic on tumblr?" whose blogs proudly state that they're under 18. The thought that you could just type into a Word doc and then copy and paste onto here never hits. And it's not going to.

I hate to break it to millennials and older people but yeah, actually, my generation does in fact have morons. We're not a moron-free demographic. I'm pretty sure moron-free demographics don't exist, tbh.

--

It infuriates me that my father (in his 80s) is always saying to me that he needs to find a 12-year-old to explain his tech to him. I (40s) keep telling him it's more like a bell curve or something. We had a blip of people being taught in school or having their asses kicked about technology. But then it went away again.

I think we made computers and then phones much more accessible, which is great, but we forgot we still need to teach people things. I know not everyone got explicit instruction in school even in my era, but it seems like the US, at least, phased some of that out as we started assuming The Youth automatically knew it all.

That said... in my day, college freshmen were also terrible about doing their laundry, so some things never change.

[1eos]

mx kendra, do you have any advice for job hunting? I'm about to start looking(again), but its always so intimidating - have a lovely day!

how it feels to start job hunting in the 2020s:

but yes i have advice for you anon! last time i went job hunting i got serious enough where i was reading 'askamanager' blogs and shit like that to really make sure i wasn't wasting my effort

so kendra's advice to job hunting in the most effort effective way:

first and most importantly is to understand that job hunting rn is simply a numbers game. it's not you it's just that the society we're living in is full of shit. for every 10 job postings, 4 are fake, 1 has an internal candidate in mind already, 3 are just posting jobs to look good and the rest are legit but slow af

bc job hunting is a numbers game its easy to be discouraged if you're not receiving responses consistently as proof that you're not just throwing shit into the void so its superrr imperative to try your best to apply to legit jobs. ive found my best success using indeed as a method of jobs being brought to me and then going on the company website myself and applying. this also doubles as a way to make sure a job posting/company is real

keep a spreadsheet of applied jobs. i just googled 'job application spreadsheet template' and picked one of the first ones i saw, made a copy, and then modified it to suit my needs. keeping a spreadsheet was one of the best things i did bc it can help keep track of jobs you've found and haven't applied to/ones you have applied to/and if you're like me and had a goal of getting a state job i could pre-empt when the interview requests were gonna come in lol 😭

resumes/cover letters. whew. probably the most important part of job hunting. ai scanning or not its a good rule of thumb to have skills mentioned in the job description to match the job posting. what i did was dedicate a folder in my google drive to job stuff and made a folder for each kind of jobs i was interested in. from there i would find a job i wanted to apply to and tailor an old resume to have a bunch of the shit mentioned in the posting on the new resume. i'd save it in the appropriate folder with the date i edited it. if you haven't been in the habit of tailoring your resume you may be doing this a lot but eventually you'll have so many variations you won't have to do much editing if at all. and i do the same with cover letters. i have a general template for my cover letter and then tweak them for each kinds of jobs im looking for. this + ditching linkedin helped me A LOT

create an interview cheatsheet. you probably already know the job hunting sphere has a language and culture all its own. personally as someone with a touch of the 'tism it do not make sense to me so i have unknowingly not navigated interviews as well as i could have. what's helped? ask a manager. seriously. miss allison has helped me blend in as a normie soooo much 😭😭😭😭 if you have any specific questions/have any specific weaknesses just search the site but what really helped me was the list of good interview questions. oh and for the longest i could never come up with a good question to ask my interviewer but one day google recced me this article and now every time i ask 'so what would separate a good candidate from an excellent candidate in this role' and when i tell you my interviewers gag every time lollllll. i also went through 'boost your interview iq' [pdf download link here <3] and jotted down notes on how i can answer common interview questions to quickly be able to go over the night before

study the job posting before the interview btw and try to drum up at least one correlating anecdote for some of the major points of the job bc they WILL ask you that lollllllll

[tricitymonsters]

I know I put a lot of attention on Steam because of the sheer size of the marketplace and the effort Steam itself takes in marketing for devs but I really wanted to take a second to shout out TCM's numbers on itch.io because I really feel like the game found it's first platform there and I especially want to highlight what a great community it is for Indie Devs of all experience levels.

So I have TCM split up between 4 titles on itch- the main one is for all the new stuff and then each beta has it's own homepage. Downside, it kinda splits all my metrics up but the plus side its much easier to navigate for yall so I'll refrain from complaining lol.

Now given we started with just the Mori beta in late 2021, and added chapters slowly over time, here's where we're at right now.

Views: 312k

Downloads: 22.3k

Browser Plays: 35.6k

Ratings: 347

Collections: 5295

Comments: 189

So there are a couple really interesting things going on with this data. Let's analyze

Firstly, the numbers on the main chapter beat the *hell* out of the beta numbers. BUT this makes sense as more people are going to find the main game or PLAY the main game first at a vastly higher rate. So even though that game page has been up the least amount of time, it gets *by far* the most traffic. For example, if we take away the main page numbers, here's how the betas are doing on their own:

Views: 63.3k

Downloads: 5.4k

Browser Plays: 18.2k

Ratings: 133

Collections: 847

Comments: 42

So, if you were an indie dev posting your game on itch.io, these numbers should tell you to carefully consider how you're going to organize your game- especially if it comes in multiple parts. When I was going through the betas I did consider keeping everything on one page and therefore aggregating all of my traffic stats into one place but there are pros and cons.

Mostly, I went with separate pages because:

It's easier to organize files for downloads per character/game piece than to have a huge list of system-specific builds for every character that players have to scroll through. It's just hard to parse out.

Second, I thought that breaking up the chapters like this might help me better gauge each character's popularity via their stats. This... sort of worked. Because the Mori beta went up almost a year before Amir's, his numbers are MUCH higher and I have to be careful not to conflate that with his raw popularity. Another tricky note is that since Mori was the first chapter uploaded, many people will play his beta and then if they decide they're not into the game, won't play the other two characters, which again inflates Mori's numbers.

It was obvious in the gap after Spooktober 2021 and Amir's chapter that I had a project worth pursuing but the way I structured itch.io has made it hard to accurately gauge how popular exactly each character is.

Most of you know I'm running a popularity poll right now for some milestone art and while I expected Mori to lead (even with all the caveats I just listed, he does tend to be the most popular of the bunch) but I did not expect Akello to be *right* on his ass, even before weighing the patreon votes so.

Goes to show you that understanding structure and traffic trends can really go a very very long way to engaging your audience and build a stable, fun community around your game.

Another huge advantage to itch is that- in generalities- the community and ecosystem there is much kinder to beginner devs and passion projects. On steam, I'm taking up the same marketplace space as AAA multimillion-dollar games and while the eyeballs that comes with that is great for TCMs longevity hopefully, it also comes with the reality that I'm marking a queer niche adult visual novel right next to Mainstream Gamers. Now, I do want to be extremely clear that my experience with Steam so far has been really good- TCM has good and (more importantly) honest reviews, people have passed constructive critique to me and been extremely reasonable, I've managed to connect to some content curators who have similar tastes... But Steam is also the home to like. "Oooh Naur Woke Games Kill Art" Lists and stuff so. My experience on Itch is that- while some of that exists to a certain degree- the general ecosystem is much more forgiving and less sharply fractured.

I'm not sure that I would change anything I've done in the point leading me here so far, I think that by and large I've made the best choices I could given what I knew at the time and also managed to roll with the punches as the come but my experienced advice at this stage is definitely for an indie dev who hasn't landed a solid success yet or a hobby dev looking for feedback to start with Itch.io as a place to build your game's community.

There are other game hosting sites too, like Gamejolt, for instance, but while TCM used to be on Gamejolt their content policies and audience demographics were not a great fit, as was my experience with Newgrounds.

So. there are MANY choices but in all I'm grateful I didn't jump right into steam and also that my itch.io audience has been SO supportive and so enthusiastic about rating/commenting/and curating TCM to help spread the word. Especially since early in the project I had basically no marketing budget (I have a very small one now that covers the occasional blazed post but still).

ANYWAY thanks for reading my big dumb rambling posts but I really wanted to shed some light on the virtues of Itch after I've been chasing my own tail trying to get Steam working for me the way I want.

[chojrak-making-things]

Two-Colored Coin. This was built for Cjplays shell challange a few weeks before. A little messy and colorful, but tried to keep it cheery. I rebuilt it onto 30x30 lot, so it could fit smaller lots. The path lead almost to the edge of lot, but the lot itself was off road too.

The name kinda says for itself, blue and yellow were mainly used here, or at least outside. Yellow is more pale and toned down.

Lot uses most expansion packs and a few stuff pack, but mainly world adventures and supernatural. It's to download as package here, or as simpack on the exchange. More pictures under the cut.

...

Floorplan of both floors

Salon and kitchen bellow

Not much windows in this long room, but somehow I managed to make it not that dark.

Bellow dinning room with angles

Kid / Teenage room. There's also desk in corner, but not visible here.

Main bedroom in vivid purple.

Weird angled bathroom next to purple bedroom. I don't like decorating bathrooms, but this luckily didn't have space, so problem was gone.

Now the second floor. There's a laundry room in entry room.

Nursery. There's no stairs or ladder, sims have to walk over one-tile balcony to get there. I couldn't build walls here and connect these two rooms, because of the challange.

and here's bathroom next to nursery, nothing extravagant.

Cozy corners bellow

That would be it. There's also video with all submissions on Cjplays channel. Though he sign me in video with my other nickname, which I only use on youtube. There's still my submission on his discord server with this house, if anyone would want to check.

[kafus]

hey, so i finally got around to dumping my gen 4-7 saves, and i'm dumping the pkm files with pkhex to make it easier to throw stuff into bank - i'm wondering if any of the mon files would be useful/interesting to you at all? i have a lot of old event mons - i think most of them for gen 3/4 i put them on a flashcard and traded them over so the same ones might be floating around the internet, but i know for 100% certain i went to this distribution and at least one toys-r-us one so there might be unique ones of interest i know i also have a bunch of ex-shadow pokemon as well as the ranch mew and phione

(and absolutely no worries if this isn't interesting at all - i just thought of your celebi story while categorising and figured i'd ask :) anyone else sees this who's interested just let me know too

gen 3 i'll have to look into if i can use my flashcard and an old ds to dump it or if i have to just pal park stuff but. might be cool stuff i didn't transfer...)

oh super cool!! i’m unsure if i have any personal immediate use for anything but if you upload the files for the event mons in bulk i’d be willing to do the manual labor of crosschecking with publicly available distributions and separating which ones are original to you and which may have been downloaded and injected from the internet. always very cool to have new event pokemon backups even if they’re from an already backed up distribution (like, different IVs and whatnot).

on the note of gen 3 backups, you can back up gba games pretty easily with a ds flashcard and an old DS or DS lite actually, i used to do it that way before getting my GB/C/A backup device. you can find a tutorial for that here if you need one: https://projectpokemon.org/home/tutorials/save-editing/managing-gba-saves/using-gba-backup-tool-r55/

i definitely think it’s worth backing up the whole save in its original form not just for the pokemon itself but i would check all your games for any interesting wonder cards or in the case of gen 3, mystery event data as well!

[fungalwyrms]

From @diableriedoll s post :)))

Vampire the Masquerade Questions for players/storytellers!

1.Are you a VtM player, storyteller, both or neither? If neither, how do you get your VtM fix?

-I ran my groups first game, and am now also a player! I got my fix by running it lol.

2. How and when did you get into VtM?

- I had a friend tell me he wanted to play a few years ago in college but we both knew nothing about the system, so I downloaded the V5 pdf.

3. Which edition do you play/ prefer?

-We play homebrewed V5 where we pull from old versions and add new stuff.

4. What's your favourite clan? Why?

- Tzimisce and Ravnos. The Dragons because I FUCKING LOVE NASTY BODY HORROR SHAPESHIFTER!!! Also a lot of the lore just fascinated me, especially the Different canon Tzimisce. Ravnos is definitely because the Bane and Compulsions are fun to me. I love when my characters have some kind of negative side effect. The no haven and needing to move every night is fun.

5. What's your least favourite clan? Why?

- Probably Torreador but it’s just because their Bane is kind of Boring. People can make some fun ideas with them I just find the bane kind of blasé.

6. Which clan haven't you played/ developed but would love to try?

- Banu Haqim, and Ministry.

7. What is your favourite discipline? Why?

- Vicissitude :3, I love you body horror.

8. Describe your worst Messy Critical and/ or Bestial Failure that you've played/ seen/ suffered.

- NA still as yet to happen

9. What's your favourite piece of VtM Media? eg. Games, books.. The TV series...

-….theres a tv series…. (My favorite media is the Tabletop game but also Bloodlines is fun)

10. What's been your favourite interaction throughout your VtM experiences? Can be in game, playing video games.. anything.

- inside bit but @ my friends “I lied” and Norn (tzimisce) Flesh Changing out of sight and everyone freaking out because all they could hear was flesh tearing. Only for that character, Norn, to become the biggest joke NPC (with love and hate.)

You and Your Characters

11. How many characters do you have?

- uhhhh 45 according to Pinterest. ((THERES MORE it’s 48)

12. Who was your first Character?

-First character I designed fully was a Nosferatu named Micheal who ran an underground Courier system in a city where Nos were mostly unaligned.

13. Do you have a comfort character? What makes them special to you?

- I have 3

Aodh (Ravnos) I had initially written him to die in my game but some character interactions with a player developed into a cute romance that means a lot to me and actually saved him in the game.

Killian (Nosferatu) Her story is just one I related to when I wrote it, religious trauma and things.

and Dr. Johann (Tzimisce) I made a sad old man who is everyone’s dad. Yes he’s a scary dragon but that’s besides the point.

14. Who is the (in character) oldest and the (in character) youngest? Would they like each other?

My oldest Vampire I made I think is Aura (Ravnos)

My Youngest is Killian (mentioned above)

Aura technically died when Killian was like a year old, but if they met in current somehow I think Killian would find Aura a bit Scary and Aura would probably think she was Camarilla.

15. Do any of your characters have a trait or flaw of your own? If so, what is it?

- Ha… most of them. Mostly

16. Do you have a character that was created from a dumb/ silly idea but now you can't imagine not having them?

-Oh absolutely. I think my first thoughts when I make any Tzimisce is usually a joke or half of one. Like Norn, Praying Mantis Joke turned Scary Flesh Monster.

17. You suddenly switch places with one of your characters, which one would you prefer to be?

-hmm… Eddie.. As a genderfluid I’d love to flesh change but also Scary goth girlfriend.

18. One of your characters takes your place, which one would you prefer to control of your life?

-OH GOD, Beck. I think he could manage my job and other stuff at my same level.

19. Which character is least spoken about? Speak about them now!

- hmmmmmmmm hard choice I yap a lot. Nuo is a super fun Brujah I made whose whole thing was being anal about how people communicated with the Anarchs in the game I was runnings city. She was mostly just a show off.

20. Is there something specific that influences you for your character creations?

- Other media, themes I like. Etc.

This or That

21. Tremere or Salubri?

- hard… hard, I made more Tremere but Salubri fun.

22. Ventrue or Lasombra?

- Lasombra

23. Banu Haqim or The Ministry?

- Banu Haqim

24. Caine or Lilith?

-HA… Lilith

25. Blood Sorcery or Thinblood Alchemy? 

- Honestly throwing a curve ball; neither, Koldunic Sorcery

BONUS QUESTIONS! (Not answering but leaving in for friends)

You have been given a chance to play your perfect Chronicle, let's build it! 

26. Who is your Storyteller?

27. Where and when is it set?

28. What is your sect?

29. What clan are you going for?

30. Your Coterie is yourself plus four other players. Who are they? (Can be anyone!)

@buggbears @huntersnightmare your turn.

[go-learn-esperanto]

So, I've been wanting to switch over to Firefox but I haven't because I'm just straight up kinda lazy, but with all this talk of KOSA and with Firefox apparently being one of the KOSA-safe browsers, (I have no way of confirming this, just what I've heard) I wanna switch over just to be safe.

The thing is, how much new stuff to I have to download in order to replace Chrome with Firefox? Ik it's not owned by Google, and I've got stuff like Google-owned apps like Maps on my phone so do I have to make a thousand different changes in order to effectively switch to Firefox? Or just download Firefox, make the switch and I'm good?

Hello!

Well, Firefox is just a browser. What that means is that if you want you can still use the Google apps on your phone. They aren't connected to chrome so if you remove chrome they won't stop working. You can also, if you really want, delete those apps but sign in on the browser, in your case Firefox, and you'll be able to use your Gmail and Google Maps but on your browser instead of having a specific app for that. You decide what's most convenient to you. I personally still use those apps, but if want to be extra secure and don't want to have Google tracking too much stuff about you you can choose to only use the browser.

Firefox will, by the way, give you the option to migrate all of your passwords from Chrome to Firefox. This means you have way less work. You just need to download Firefox, tell it to migrate your passwords from your Chrome (it means you have login with your Google account if I remember correctly), and it will do that for you, meaning you don't have to go and put your passwords to whatever site you use one by one. It's honestly really easy to migrate.

What do you have to understand: a browser is just an app that allows you to use various search tools. You can still use the Google search on Firefox if you want! I usually have DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine but sometimes I switch to Google (the search engine not the company) because I want to have a specific kind of search that DuckDuckGo isn't really managing to do. DuckDuckGo by the way is the search engine that tracks you less. That's why it's usually preferable if you want to not have all your search history being shared with third parties.

These are the standard search engines but you can add more if you want. You can use Yahoo or Wikipedia for example.

What Firefox allows you to do that chrome, on the mobile app, doesn't is to have add-ons, more commonly known as browser extensions. The normal Firefox app doesn't have many add-ons available but it has at least some and the ones that are available are very useful.

They're great for adding extra security protection, or just to have a better experience using the browser.

These are all 17 mobile compatible add-ons. Highly recommended UBlock Origin, Clear URLs and Privacy Badger.

You can technically have more but that will make it so you need to use the Firefox Nightly app instead of the standard Firefox. Firefox Nightly is a developer app and you need a lot of extra hoops if you wanna have extra Add-ons on your phone. To me it's worth it because it means I can have XKit Rewritten, Tumblr's saviour at this point, on my phone which almost makes me want to delete the Tumblr app. However you want to keep things simple so just Firefox will do just fine. No need to complicate things.

In conclusion:

Migrating is easy because you can migrate passwords from a browser to the other, you can still use your Google services on Firefox, add-ons are cool.

[aromantisk-fagforening]

someone with only 12 social media apps told me they had "every social media app" so now I really want to corrupt them into getting every, but only with partial success. That means still missing at least 20 that I can think of (though 2 they had before & deleted). I managed to get them to download one, maybe two others. I didn't tell them about every though, cause uh slow and steady wins the race. And low-key, I don't know if this person has enough commiting-to-the-bit-bones in their body to do this. It'd be sooo funny but I can tell I'm having more fun with this than them.

btw they do have social media apps that I don't have, even one I hadn't heard of. But I'm not really upset about that, I have 19 downloaded* on my phone (2 of them are also on my PC) + 2 that I use in browsers and there are 7 social apps I had but deleted. tbh I only regularly/semi-regularly use (only both active + passive) 9 (very different frequencies, but that's hard to use as an exclusion criteria, just know Tumblr is 100% number one)

*excluding the amount of apps I have for just mastodon, I think it's 7 or something, I just counted all fediverse apps as one.

also social tracking apps are included in the definition of social media here. Storygraph, Letterboxd, Strava, all those. And messaging apps (excluding sms/standard). And obviously the regular posting apps where you put whatever. Any app you can have friends or mutuals on basically, excl. YouTube and streaming stuff, cause average users are only fans.

(excluded steam also cause I was unsure, for example idk if most people use steam socially, and it feeeels like primarily a store & library, even though it has elaborate social features they are to me a tiny part of the app's purpose)

[starrz-ombie]

okay, hi! soo, i'm finally here to talk about the concert. sorry for not posting about how it went earlier, my arms have been too sore to write a big post 😭 but holy shitt, genuinely had the time of my life. seriously, nothing can compare. this was my first even concert and i'm so fucking glad. i screamed, i cried, i had the best time ever. the venue wasn't too crowded, unfortunately i couldn't see 100% of it, but i did see pretty well, just missed some parts closer to the floor and stuff, (take for example, couldn't see the part where they're like thrusting their hips up in skinz, but managed to see the nine and junji crotch grab by moving around slightly.) it felt so... i guess, real? like.. actually seeing them in person, not just on a screen. and, my god i love them so fucking much. it was genuinely so fucking fun. from kb introducing himself as hot armpit guy and nine as wookie pookie to jumping around during angel. god, it was so great. genuinely could start crying just thinking about it. i don't think i've ever had that much fun, i don't think i've ever screamed so much or felt so much excitement. it's honestly really funny, i was recording when they first came on stage and you can hear me just.. yelp because it was just so... so much. to see a group that became my ult group within less than a night and then became my biggest, and hell, maybe only or at least most prominent hyperfixation for MONTHS, in person. in real life. i got into onlyoneof around june of 2023. it was the middle of the night, and i think i just saw something about them, i think something about their queer concept, if that makes any sense and i just felt such an extreme urge to become a fan. and i'm so fucking glad i did. i swear, i got instinct part 2 and undergrOund idol #2 probably less than a week after. i looked into everything i could about them. i made sure to be able to recognize every single member and watch every single music video immediately. and i immediately knew yoojung was my bias. onlyoneof was the first, and maybe only, time where i've downloaded THOUSANDS upon thousands of photos of idols. not just saving them into pinterest boards but downloading them into my camera roll and everything. they seriously caused such an effect on me. it's pretty stupid, but i feel like they made me so much happier. things i cant say lOve was my first album comeback with them and i'm so grateful that i was able to go to their concert. i really don't think i'll ever be able to forget any of it. i'll probably make a lot more posts with little details about it, maybe a photo or two, i dunno. no videos, though, because you can hear me screaming my heart out in all of them and it's honestly embarrassing to share so publicly 😭 it was seriously so great, though. i felt so in the moment for i'd say the first time ever, really. the energy was so great, from both onlyoneof and lyons. from the really energetic songs like angel, where they encouraged us to jump around and stuff and they threw water on the crowd to the calmer ones like gravity where we were waving the lightsticks to the side all slowly (with the encouragement of kb of course) it was all so fun. and of course i have to mention the merch. as far as i remember, they had shirts, pins, popsockets, pins and little keyrings of each member. i got a shirt, 3 pins and a yoojung key right of course which is the cutest thing ever and matches the pc holder i have on my yoojung light stick photocard which is cute. seriously, best experience in the entire world and i truly hope i get to go again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, so on. thank you onlyoneof and lyon for such a magical and unforgettable night.

[skeletonmob]

There are days where I feel like giving up on art entirely.

I turned 30 this year, and I created my DeviantArt account back when I was 14, shortly after I started high school. So for just over half my life, I've been putting my art out into the world, and I have nothing to show for it. I have a handful of posts that get the occasional reblog or like here, but beyond that, nothing. The majority of the art I've posted here barely has any notes. The games I've made have only been downloaded a few dozen times. My social media accounts barely have any followers, despite that from a pure time standpoint, I should have at least a few hundred or a few thousand.

So it is a bit demoralizing to see artists younger than me with 500k followers on Twitter, or getting their dream job in animation. Then there's news articles about 'The Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25!' which don't help either. I am a bit jealous, but mostly demoralized like I said. It feels like I'm doing something wrong. It feels like I'm falling behind. It feel's like everything was a fool's errand and I was just wasting my time.

I know people will say not to compare yourself to others, but that's basically impossible. All this stuff is everywhere. And the most frustrating part is that the only solution to all this is just to keep going. I don't always have the time to jump onto every single art trend that pops up. I don't have the time, energy, or skill to manage and optimize my social media to get maximum engagement. Blazing every piece of art I post here would get expensive real fast. I've even thought about starting drama with random people, but decided against it. Making yourself look like an asshole for clout isn't great in the long run.

So the only solution I can think of is to just keep going. To keep doing what I'm doing. To keep banging pots and pans in the vain hope that someone will notice. But I've been doing that for 16 years of my life, and nobody has noticed me. In the back of my head I think, 'Maybe's it's better to just give up.'

And every time I'm feeling down on my art, I get a little bit closer to actually doing so.