#Yes this is the game project. YES I am commited to the bit of having the main character go through a long running pronoun-quest.

[canmom]

This an interesting angle. I've never been particularly taken with trying to determine True Art from False Art on the basis of specific qualities of the piece.

(I did ok-ish but not exceptionally on the AI art quiz, probably with a slight bias for misattributing human pieces as AI ones - like many other respondees, I found the Impressionist pieces hardest to distinguish, since they very much play to the AI's strengths.)

There are many different ways you could describe "art" as a human activity, I'm sure there's a post somewhere where I make a list, but a really big one is its communicative function - one purpose of art is to somehow pass on some aspect of our 'inner world' to another person, through a lossy and limited channel.

That a signal can be easily imitated doesn't mean it doesn't carry contextual information. For example, I could ask a yes/no question of enormous emotional importance - "should I take the shot", "has the baby been born", "will you go out with me", "am I a good girl" - and be answered with either "yes" or "no". It would be trivial to generate a machine which randomly substitutes for this communication - that's basically all a magic eight-ball is.

The amount of information that can be contained in an image of a given size and colour depth can also be calculated. For example, the number of fullscreen images that would fill my current monitor at 8 bits per channel would be 2^(3440 × 1440 × 24) �� 3 × 10^35788372 - about 15 megabytes uncompressed. It's a number that seems astronomically huge, though effectively the amount of information is much less than you'd calculate since all the likely pixels are correlated. The same goes for other art forms, like novels (encoded as, say, UTF-8 strings or PDFs) or pieces of music (encoded as sound files, MIDI, MuseScore files, etc.). The exact number is complicated, you end up getting into Kolmogorov complexity and shit like that, but the point is that it's finite.

If we want to claim that all the information about a human life that Hofstadter describes (grief, despair etc.) is in there somehow, we're claiming that this finitely many bits is adequate to capture all the nuances of a human life. I don't know that that's true!

This, however, doesn't really seem to align with how we interact with art. Human production and exchange of "art" is a social act - I would describe it as being continuous with "play". When we observe a piece, we are opening a communications channel - at least a one-way channel. The person on the other side sends some information into the channel, and we process it somehow.

Since it is a lossy channel with limited information, we must infer various things about the other mind on the opposite side of it. If I show you an artwork that I made, we might have a conversation about how I did it, why I made the choices I did. If I feel something looking at the work, I might imagine that you felt something similar, and designed the piece to evoke it intentionally (a guess that will often be wrong but sometimes still productive). I might also look at what specific choices you have made, compare them to the choices others have made in the same medium, etc etc.

We form these inferences on the basis of experience - the more you learn about making art, the more you learn to appreciate other peoples' art and vice versa. And we project these experiences, usually plausibly, onto other artists.

(Perhaps I am saying all art is in a sense performance art? Seems like a tasty soundbite, though I'm not fully sure I wanna commit to it.)

I'm not meaning to claim that a computer couldn't simulate this kind of 'how did you make it' interaction too. This line of argument was anticipated by Turing in his original 1950 paper on the 'imitation game' that someone links in the comments above, where he describes a poet undergoing a viva voce test interrogating their word choices, and argues that a computer might be programmed to give convincing answers to such a test. I imagine he's right - for a paper written in 1950 he makes some surprisingly sharp predictions for how future AIs might be made, such as the idea that an AI could be built to be 'educated' like a child. (He also thought the evidence for ESP is 'overwhelming', but hey, can't win 'em all).

A lot of the context around art would be quite easy to forge, had you a mind to. For example, suppose I go to a film screening, and someone is introduced as the director so we can all clap them. Did they really direct it? I don't know! You could totally send an actor. Less conspiratorially, if someone says they made an artistic choice for x or y reason, they could be lying about it, or misremembering, or most likely oversimplifying a complex and inscrutable process down to a simpler story.

At some point you have to take something like that on trust, or else simply accept that being lied to about it is part of the game you're there to play! (c.f. Oshi no Ko.)

Anyway, the sudden arrival of a new process that can produce, at least sometimes, near-indistinguishable output to various types of communication, throws a spanner in the process. If we're feeling uncharitable, we could call it something like a DDOS attack, stuffing the channels with spurious inputs that don't fit our design assumptions. I think that goes too far, though. AI gen doesn't preclude communication, but it does need we need to think differently about what is being communicated.[1]

So to consider that last question, if art is like a game, could you train an AI art to produce art that is meaningful to humans only by 'playing against' itself, like AlphaGo Zero? I don't think this is so likely. The rules of Go are strict and well-defined; the rules of what humans find meaningful are inseparable from the history of interacting with other humans, which is why art constantly evolves. Training an AI on existing human artworks is training it to compress and interpolate/extrapolate that dataset; training it to optimise for "making novel art that expresses something in a form that its interlocutor could understand" requires it to be interacting with someone.

You could imagine a training process with an "artist" AI and a "critic" AI (a sort of more sophisticated GAN, where the adversary is optimising not to distinguish human/AI art but to judge it on aesthetic grounds) - but how would you get the "critic" AI? Whose taste would it express?

Admittedly, the developers of image generators are constantly refining their models in response to users, so they are being optimised to appeal to someone, not just interpolate existing artworks. But I think it would be very hard to remove humans from the equation entirely. And the present means of providing feedback to the AI are very crude.

For an AI to learn from interacting with other AI (and the world), I feel like you'd need a whole new process that isn't about minimising loss against input-output pairs. Romantically, I imagine it would be closer to how humans learn from life, but I don't really know what will 'work' in the end.

below: some other remarks that were excised from the main post.

[1] We can view AI image gen as another channel for communication between humans, with its own set of inferences to make. If someone shows me a picture they've generated with AI, there's no point asking why they painted this bit that way, but I might approach them more as a curator and ask why they chose this generation over others, or how they went about prompting it.

The AI artists who go to the trouble of finetuning their models with LoRAs for a specific end goal, or using more involved processes with multiple stages of generation, probably have most to 'say', either through the work they generate or how they'd discuss it. (I find it very endearing when someone trains an AI to serve up a hyperspecific fetish.) And the more I know about how AI images are generated, the more I can probably have a productive conversation.

In this light, the "problem" of AI is mostly one of deception, insofar as it tries to look like something else and thereby tell a misleading story. That's probably a big reason why why it brings the rancour it does, although it doesn't explain all of it. It's not (usually) a forgery of a specific human's work, but it is designed to forge spurious communications in this channel in general, so the channel is 'noisier' - and this could be thought to undermine many of the contexts, i.e. the operating narratives and social games, which are why we exchange art in the first place. Over time, we'll presumably end up renegotiating the 'games', and spawning new ones, as humans always have.

And of course, the issue of provenance and plagiarism in art - particularly when prestige and money get involved - long predates AI and is full of all sorts of bizarre contortions when you look at it closely.

More intriguing is whether there is some possibility for "real communication" between humans and AIs - that is, could there be an AI output that does respect the 'rules of the game' in some way. This is harder to imagine! Like, if you ask why we aren't solipsists, we could point to how much we resemble other humans and say, all things considered, seems very unlikely we aren't the same type of entity. But I only know 'what it's like to be' a human. Conversely, while I know a reasonable amount about how AIs work, the attention mechanism and latent-space vectors and so on (thanks 3blue1brown), the analogy isn't so clear anymore, so I don't even know how I'd determine whether there even is a 'what is it like to be' under all the 'noise' of communications aggressively optimised to fit the patterns of something a human might say. If there is, it's probably very alien to all of my experience.

Ironically I feel like the current model of 'AI', which teaches us to regard any generated output with suspicion of having 'nothing behind it', would make it harder for any 'real', agentive, subjective-experience-having AI to make itself known to us. But perhaps it's good that we're forced to sharpen our criteria of what we're looking for out of these things.

Anyway, all of this is probably just idle imaginings, because nobody can figure out how to make anything like enough money to justify the exorbitant costs of training and operating AIs, so at some point this whole speculative bubble will go up in smoke and whatever AIs continue to be in use will likely remain about as good as they are today, or stupider - at least until the next 'AI summer' when a new paradigm emerges.

Thinking about that that "slop accelerationism" post, and also Scott's AI art Turing test.

I also hope AI text- and image-generation will help shake us loose from cheap bad art. For example, the fact that you can now generate perfectly rendered anime girls at the click of button kindof suggests that there was never much content in those drawings. Though maybe we didn't really need AI for that insight? It feels very similar to that shift in fashion that rejected Bouguereau-style laboriously-rendered pretty girls in favor of more sketchy brush work.

But will we really be so lucky that only things that we already suspected was slop will prove valueless?

As usual with AI, Douglas Hofstadter already thought about this a long time ago, in an essay from 2001. Back in 1979 he had written

Will a computer program ever write beautiful music? Speculation: Yes, but not soon. Music is a language of emotions, and until programs have emotions as complex as ours, there is no way a program will write anything beautiful. There can be "forgeries"—shallow imitations of the syntax of earlier music—but despite what one might think at first, there is much more to musical expression than can be captured in syntactical rules. There will be no new kinds of beauty turned up for a long time by computer music-composing programs. Let me carry this thought a little further. To think—and I have heard this suggested—that we might soon be able to command a preprogrammed mass-produced mail-order twenty-dollar desk-model "music box" to bring forth from its sterile [sic!] circuitry pieces which Chopin or Bach might have written had they lived longer is a grotesque and shameful misestimation of the depth of the human spirit. A "program" which could produce music as they did would have to wander around the world on its own, fighting its way through the maze of life and feeling every moment of it. It would have to understand the joy and loneliness of a chilly night wind, the longing for a cherished hand, the inaccessibility of a distant town, the heartbreak and regeneration after a human death. It would have to have known resignation and world-weariness, grief and despair, determination and victory, piety and awe. In it would have had to commingle such opposites as hope and fear, anguish and jubilation, serenity and suspense. Part and parcel of it would have to be a sense of grace, humor, rhythm, a sense of the unexpected and of course an exquisite awareness of the magic of fresh creation. Therein, and therein only, lie the sources of meaning in music.

I think this is helpful in pinning down what we would have liked to be true. Because in 1995, somebody wrote a program that generates music by applying simple syntactic rules to combine patterns from existing pieces, and it sounded really good! (In fact, it passed a kind of AI turing test.) Oops!

The worry, then, is that we just found out that the computer has as complex emotions as us, and they aren't complex at all. It would be like adversarial examples for humans: the noise-like pattern added to the panda doesn't "represent" a gibbon, it's an artifact of the particular weights and topology of the image recognizer, and the resulting classification doesn't "mean" anything. Similarly, Arnulf Rainer wrote that when he reworked Wine-Crucifix, "the quality and truth of the picture only grew as it became darker and darker"—doesn't this sound a bit like gradient descent? Did he stumble on a pattern that triggers our "truth" detector, even though the pattern is merely a shallow stimulus made of copies of religious iconography that we imprinted on as kids?

One attempt to recover is to say Chopin really did write music based on the experience of fighting through the maze of life, and it's just that philistine consumers can't tell the difference between the real and the counterfeit. But this is not very helpful, it means that we were fooling ourselves, and the meaning that we imagined never existed.

More promising, maybe the program is a "plagiarism machine", which just copies the hard-won grief, despair, world-weariness &c that Chopin recorded? On it's own it's not impressive that a program can output an image indistinguishable from Gauguin's, I can write such a program in a single line:

print("https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gauguin,Paul-Still_Life_with_Profile_of_Laval-_Google_Art_Project.jpg")

I think this is the conclusion that Hofstadter leans towards: the value of Chopin and the other composers was to discover the "template" that can then be instantiated to make many beautiful music pieces. Kind of ironically, this seems to push us back to some very turn-of-the-20th-century notion of avant-garde art. Each particular painting that (say) Monet executed is of low value, and the actual valuable thing is the novel art style...

That view isn't falsified yet, but it feels precarious. You could have said that AlphaGo was merely a plagiarism machine that selected good moves from historical human games, except then AlphaGo Zero proved that the humans were superfluous after all. Surely a couple of years from now somebody might train an image model on a set of photographs and movies excluding paintings, and it might reinvent impressionism from first principles, and then where will we be? Better start prepare a fallback-philosophy now.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Quest Continues...

(part 1- part 2)

[sunderingstars]

☆━━━━━ ⋆⁺｡˚⋆˙‧₊☾ ◯ ☽₊‧˙⋆˚｡⁺⋆ ━━━━━━☆

✩ ‧₊˚ ⌞ INTRODUCTION ⌝

sampo analysis m.list

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— hello & welcome to my dark twisted mind (full of sampo theories)

— this is the first major analysis project i’ve taken on, so i’m very excited to lay out all the evidence i’ve found — i’m trying to keep it as open-ended & -minded as possible, even though i’m biased out of sheer interest towards the aha!sampo theory.

— i’m sure there are things in here that are common knowledge, but since i tracked down every single sampo reference and voice line (literally) on the wiki during an obsession-induced state for the better part of two months, i’m hoping there’s some information here that may be new or less-discussed as well!

— i’ll be uploading each sub-topic as a separate post (because i have a lot to say about so many things), but depending on your preferences you can always follow/block the ⌞ 🎭 ⌝ tag, which is going to be the tag i use for anything relating to this project.

— here’s a brief outline of the topics i’ll be covering:

visual cues + art (aha splash art, kit, body language & confidence, performance & performative emotion, eidolons, etc.)

vocal cues + voicelines (third person references, voicelines, worldview, self-awareness, gender, etc.)

scene analysis (intro scene, belobog, sampo & sparkle’s conversation, fourth wall breaking, mr. cold feet, dream bubbles, etc.)

specific topics (placement in the narrative, jokes & situational comedy, the astral express, etc.)

specific theories (“retirement,” playing the long game, risk vs. reward, man or muppet?, “committed to the bit,” aha is not exempt from The Rules, etc.)

extra info on the masked fools as an organization, aeonic consciousness, and sampo character details outside of elation!sampo theories

as well as counterarguments and a conclusion + anything i feel like adding along the way!

— the next few posts i’ll be uploading will be my masterlists (yes, plural, i am insane 😔💔) so i can get ahead of the curve, then it’s onto the real meat of things. this is a passion project for me, so i am very grateful for everyone’s support thus far (seriously, y'all are so sweet) !!

— as always, feel free to send me asks if you want elaboration on one thing or another, or just want to talk about your own thoughts/theories. hope you enjoy!

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© analysis by sunderingstars. do not copy, repost, translate, modify, or claim my work as your own.

[ufopigeon]

to the random ass proshippers

I’ll block proshippers and I won’t throw any first punches if I find the accounts. Just block n’ move on. Think what you want, but think it away from me. This is for the ppl who are going after others both anonymously and in the open, and being insistent about misunderstanding his character. It is absolutely absurd that some are really trying to PUSH the mere implication that the Postal Dude could be a pedo/have pedophilic tendencies, or that “it makes sense for him”. Some of you are ragebait I’m sure, but I also sadly think some of you are really genuine. And this is also the last I am going to speak about it. Just wanted to do something longer on behalf of everyone else who does not agree with this random influx.

The Postal Dude is obviously designed to be an ambiguous character, allowing players to project various characteristics onto him. HOWEVER, this doesn't mean that any and all negative traits can be justified. Ambiguity in character design is meant to give freedom in interpretation, but it doesn't equate to carte blanche for projecting extreme or inappropriate characteristics that aren't supported by the game’s narrative or the developer's intent. Assuming that a character would commit any and all bad acts simply because they commit some is a lazy and inaccurate approach to understanding character design.

The argument that, "Durrr he’s literally a mass shooter, why is it so far-fetched for him to be a pedo too?" is a slippery slope fallacy. It’s that same exact shit all the edgelords try to use when they say (just so they can justify attacking any queer fans, same way SOME proshippers want to feel justified in attacking those who disagree), “The Postal Dude SPECIFICALLY hates gay people and trans people and wouldn’t support them at all/be grossed out by them! Why? Uhh, because he’s literally an evil, vile character! Duh!” Sure he is. No denying that. And sure, you can think that about him. But it’s just fundamentally inaccurate. Just because the games allow for extreme behaviors doesn’t mean they endorse or include every possible immoral action.

And just because a character engages in morally questionable actions doesn’t logically lead to them engaging in the worst possible behaviors. The creator's stance is crucial in defining the boundaries of the character. If the creators have explicitly stated that Postal Dude would never engage in pedophilia (just like how they explicitly stated he wasnt transphobic) and that such content would never be included in the game, this is a definitive limitation on what the character can be reasonably interpreted as. Again, I don’t care if you hold a private opinion that differs. But when you start accusing those who disagree with this extreme interpretation of being the weird or wrong ones, that’s where it becomes an issue.

Dude's actions, while extreme, are presented within a certain context that aims to criticize or mock certain aspects of society. Pedophilia is not something that fits within this satirical style. Yes, even for Postal 1997. I don't care if it is generally considered more "serious" than other games, they still had Dude throwing out stupid-ass catchphrases in a silly radio-host-sounding voice that was obviously supposed to be a stark contrast to what was happening on screen (“Buttsauce”. “Smells like chicken” when burning NPCs. Really now? Go ahead and listen to more from the original. They’re all silly one-liners.). It was a shock at the time and a bit of dark humor. Following games only increased this aspect.

All in all, Postal Dude’s actions, while immoral, are usually presented in a way that allows for some level of detachment or absurdity, keeping them within the realm of dark comedy. Yes, 1997 is still included here. It’s an absurd game. One man took out hundreds of people and was armed to the teeth, even with literal rocket launchers. His main weapon has infinite ammunition. It was an obviously over-the-top video game with a loose connection to reality and an even looser message about “something something mental health and everyone has it in them to go postal”. It was a game made to shock people. Pedophilia, however, is universally considered an irredeemable act, something that cannot be framed in any context that would make it acceptable or even darkly humorous. The distinction between immoral and irredeemable acts is crucial here. The Postal Dude can be morally ambiguous, but crossing into irredeemable territory would fundamentally alter the character in a way that the game and its creators/99.9% of the fans do not support.

Also: “But muh 1997 promo art where it says his girlfriend was 17!! She says they just started dating 3 weeks ago!!” Yeah. The same photo was used with the girl also saying, “It was so weird. He told everyone I was his girlfriend, but I only met him once.” It says “live” near the bottom corner, implying this was an interview with the girl AFTER the crimes had taken place. In the promotional pic where it states she’s 17, it also says she DIED of third degree burns while he was on his rampage. Now that doesn’t really add up, does it. How can this girl give an interview after everything is said and done while also dying in the middle of his killing spree?

AKA, these promotional photos were reused over and over because they were on a budget and really not thinking about it, and are absolutely not valid for legit storytelling purposes at all. RWS has even said this themselves.

[rosakuma]

Predictions on What Might Happen in Drdt ch.3 Part 2

Continuing from part 1:

Hu: So going with Hu, I think with Levi being injured, David being revealed to be a scumbag and distrustful, and Eden probably not being able to be the best condition to help everyone, Hu will probably try taking this role as leader. To which…will immediately backfired I feel like. Mostly because Hu is as flawed and a hypocrite as everyone is. Hu has always trying to be the mother role model for the group and we seen how her efforts to be fails. Along with the fact she did let herself get too attached to Nico for whatever reason(maybe she sees her self in them thus why she projects in protecting them so much) which lead to her defending an almost murder and worsening Ace’s state to commit to his plan. She says at the end of ep16 she doesn't believe they need to blame themselves for Ace killing Arei. Which while yes, it is Ace’s fault for killing Arei and making others dislike him. But that does not mean that they’re all innocent in this either. Her, David, Veronika, Teruko a little bit at the beginning, Nico, and Arturo with the part with Eden are responsible factors for the entire mess happening too. I think Hu will try to deflect blame off of her and focus on trying to gaining Nico’s trust again, to which I think they’ll probably blow up on her. Why? Oh well mostly because of her constantly talking over them and trying to defend them resulting them looking worse. This I think will also leave Hu in a vulnerable state to where she might struggle in this chapter as well.

Nico: Nico will definitely struggle thanks to the consequences of their actions last chapter. With almost committing murder on Ace, this will lead to them probably being isolated by the group or the group being suspicious on their actions towards them. I mean Nico really is screwed as if another murder happens, they will immediately be a suspect. Rose will have hard time forgiving them or even to hang out with them since they made her felt used+ even themselves admitted to not trusting anyone. Hu trying to hang out with them will make them both look bad since it will be hard for anyone to trust them not being suspicious of the next murder. I think Nico will go through a rough patch next chapter due to this and have a hard time taking responsibility since they think no one will ever forgive them for it. I hope maybe Nico can be able to still apologize in the end and make up with Rose or anyone for them to have potential friends again.

Levi: Okay so Levi’s fate is undetermined right now due to whether or not Arturo can save him. Personally I believe Levi will live and go through a character arc of learning how to empathize with others and even grieve over deaths since I think Ace’s death/sacrifice will help with this. Mostly to show Levi that despite how hard it is to understand people, there are people who care about him and want him alive despite him being revealed as a murder. To which I hope Levi ends up as a survivor as I am very interested in this potential character arc for him. Although the question remains will Levi be able to participate in the class trial for ch.3 or be out of commission until ch.4 like how Nekomaru was in DR2 when he got fatally injured?

David: Alright..lets get to David. So with David definitely taking the antagonist role and knowing his goal towards the killing game. I assume he will take advantage of causing murders to happen just like in ch.2. Which while it will be harder for him to easily manipulate others since he reveal his true colors, I think with how this group is going, they’re going to make his job easy. Also begs the question about Teruko’s secret since we know that David actually has Teruko’s secret and not Xander’s(evidence in the second bonus episode ). Will David reveal Teruko’s actual secret, keep quiet about it until later in the story, or use it to blackmail Teruko into something since we know that secret will destroy any trust others will have towards her.

Rose: Finishing off with Rose, just like Charles, she is traumatized by Levi almost dying and Ace dying. My girl cannot catch a break huh? I think Rose’s mental state is getting worse with her memory affecting her in both forgetting and remembering the deaths clearly. Not to mention being tired all the time and Nico’s betrayal towards her. This can lead to bad things for Rose if she cannot get good support from others like Teruko or Eden. I mostly think Rose will be involve with the possible storyline with Nico next chapter while maybe developing a stronger relationship with Teruko since she defended her in the trial.

With that out of the way of establishing where each our characters are at, lets start discussing how I think the chapter will go.

I’ve seen people in the fandom point out how Drdt seemingly follows some similarities to DR1 specifically in each chapter along with the motives. To which if true, then that would mean ch.3’s motive would be about money. Now if the trend of the motives not actually being the reason why a murder occurs continues, then it makes sense no one in the group will murder for money. The only two characters I think could actually used and need the money is Teruko and Rose. We know clearly Teruko isn’t going to do that as even though it technically would help her not be homeless anymore, she already decided on living in the killing game since it provides her nesscities free of charge. Plus I think she would believe her luck would just destroy the money or anything she bought with it anyways. Now Rose on the other hand could actually use the money as a way to maybe get out of her debt to Richard Spurling since he is the only reason to get her family out of poverty. But I don't think she will murder anyways as she doesn't seem like the kind of person to plus her mental state of seeing dead bodies is so bad, I don't think she’s capable of committing murder without it scarring her permanently.

So what will actually cause the murder? Simply put, discord in the group. No not the app or the chaotic draconequus, the huge disagreement on the group’s part. What I mean exactly is how I think everyone will be at each other throats for having another murder committed. There definitely some in the group who either is to blame to some part of Ace killing Arei, think they are to blame for what happened when they’re not, or are innocent in the matter. The people who caused part of the problems last chapter I think will try to deflect blame off of them and create discourse in the group about not accepting consequences of your actions. This will cause others who want them to take accountability for it to be frustrated and might cause people to isolate each other out of distrust(basically pull a Teruko). Now not everyone I believe will be like this as I think Teruko, Charles, Whit, Rose, Levi, and Eden will be out of the equation in terms of the blame game. J I think definitely with being the most outspoken on murder and morals will be the leading one in wanting others to take accountability even if she doesn't forgive the murder for killing. Hu I think will try to not take any blame for Ace’s murder, Veronika will either deny it or accept it without guilt, David dgaf he’ll either admit it or say f*ck off, Nico while taking accountability for doing wrong in committing the murder, won’t apologize for it as they don't expect forgiveness towards them plus not thinking its their fault for others’ actions(hence that secret quote) and Arturo we know definitely will try not taking accountability for his actions since he already doesn't want to acknowledge he has a part in his sister’s death.

With that being said, there is two ways I think the daily life will go in terms of how it will lead up to the murder.

Way 1# Matchmaking~❣️

That's right! Whit is going to match make everyone! Truly if everyone joins together and form the ultimate polycule, everyone shall be saved!/j Okay okay for real though, I do believe Whit will actually use his match making talent, but not for shipping wise and instead to try to get everyone to be on friendly terms again. Mostly like the stress of the group might have Teruko or Charles suggest to Whit to try using his talent to help everyone. This can lead to some interesting combos and a potential pair that might end up causing the murder.

Why you may ask? Well going onto how DR1 ch.3 went. Celeste manipulated Hifumi into killing Kiyotaka before then killing him to be able to escape with the million dollars promised by Monokuma. Meaning victim B work with the killer to kill victim A and then the killer killed victim B would they were working for. Thus allowing the two victim count to happen.

Way 2# Despairful Entertainment 😈

With the group in shambles and barely hanging with everyone blaming another for what has happen, this cause others to be more distant to each other. With high tensions, you think there would’ve been more drama right? Well perhaps, but I assume everyone would think it be better to rather interact less with each other while still seeing each other. Thus less conflict and paranoia of someone trying to murk them. While leaving in the air of who is to blame for this misfortune upon them. I’ll cut to the chase here and say this route is mostly the idea for a Veronika culprit or at least victim B route. Mostly because this fits her of taking matters in her own hands just to be able to entertain herself again or in a twisted way, try getting the group back working together for one goal? Because with no one interacting with each other or willing to hang with each other, this will cause Veronika to probably panic and worry since her excitement over horror or murder is the only thing preventing her from committed that on herself.

Okay going through the two scenarios, who would be our main culprit and who would be our victims? Since we established that the culprit this chapter would have to be a girl or one of the guys to balance the gender ratio, lets go over our options.

Culprit option 1: Veronika Yep, kinda obvious she was a pick with route 2 tailoring to her. Not to mention a lot of people(including me) are thinking she’ll die in ch.3 as she does fit the vibes of a ch.3 killer. Now yes, there has been conversations before that disprove she would try to commit murder as that would prevent her from continuing the killing game to see all the thrills and kills+she might not want to die since her secret is her trying to take up her talent to prevent SH. But in this scenario, she’s desperate and push to her limit to act. Even if scenario 2 doesn't happen, I can see this happening in scenario 1 IF Veronika gets paired with David. Why you ask? Well since David’s would still try to continue his goal of ending the killing game via getting everyone kill, I can see him trying to manipulate any of the others in a way they don't suspect it to get them to kill. Not to say that David gonna immediately tell Veronika to “Go kill someone”, but rather put the idea in her head via paranoia of what will happen if no murders happen. Which kinda would be karma in a way towards her because she used scare tactics to scare Ace into good behavior when it just increase his paranoia and desire to kill to save himself. David using a scare tactic or something to increase Veronika’s paranoia of what will happen to her if she doesn't act sounds perfect to me. Plus even though this isn’t really a thing to have to be required to fit the parallels to DR1’s ch.3, the ch.3 culprit of that game was very obivious and since we all think she’s gonna be the culprit, yeah it fits the bill. But unlike Celeste, I think Veronika would be able to create a way more complicated murder that makes it hard to pin it on her since she has a lot of knowledge on murders thanks to her horror talent.

Culprit option 2: Hu Sorry Hu nation for accusing your girl again, but to be fair….she would make sense to be a culprit this chapter. NOW HEAR ME OUT! Hear me out, this is in no way saying Hu will be the killer because of Hu hate. Despite me being mad and disliking Hu at the moment, I do like her character in being a flawed individual who’s trying to change from the past. Though we know despite Hu trying to change from the “hopeless” girl she was in the past, she’ll been struggling with that in trying to be the mother/supportive figure role. Knowing how Hu is going to face consequences of keep trying to defend Nico from last chapter will cause others to either not trust her word anymore or be upset at her trying to know what to do to help the group without letting them decide since she is known for kinda talking over others(mostly Nico). Not to mention our poor girl will probably be struggling trying to take the leader role that David had now that he’s no longer fulfilling that and the support role since I think Eden will be in a bad state of mind to be unable to fulfill that role too. With all that pressure and this group looking down hill, I can see her survival instincts kicking in and telling her “You must escape”. Now that would kinda be too similar to Ace’s motive of “I don't want to die”, which is why back then I thought she was the ch.2 killer as before I figured she would kill Arei to be able to live and change. But perhaps this time the motive while also being to live, Hu probably would commit murder to avoid having to pay for what she has done. Specifically her secret quote is what makes me feel like she could be a culprit whether this chapter or the next. Hu: I want to pay for what I’ve done. But even then, I still want to live. Hu feeling responsible for what happened last chapter whether its either to cause Ace to commit murder, defending Nico despite them being in the wrong, or to talk over others like Nico and projecting what she think they’re feeling(when its actually her), I can think it would be some something hard for her to accept. Hu needs to feel important as while we don't know much of her backstory yet, Hu seems to need to be this role as perhaps it's what only keeping her going to prevent her from going back to her old self. This could definitely work in scenario 2 even if I tailored that route to be more of Veronika route as with the group in shambles, Hu can’t be the role figure to help them. To save them, to save herself.

Culprit option 3: Arturo Arturo is as of right now actually kinda hard for me to see as a ch.3 killer as much he might fit the vibes, I feel like the end of ch.2 is actually setting up some character development and spotlight for him that doesn't seem like its leading to him committing murder? But let's go over the hypothetical anyways in both scenarios. So if scenario 1 happens, whether he gets paired with David who manipulate him or someone else, I can see the activity just not working regardless and tensions are still high. We know that Arturo will definitely get some blame into Arei and Ace’s deaths as while he may didn't increase Ace’s paranoia to kill, he did threaten Eden. To which if he never did that, then Arei wouldn’t have died from Ace over hearing their conversation. Now yes while it can be argued since they brought it up that Ace might’ve was just trying to kill Eden regardless since she is the easiest to kill, Arturo just gave Ace an a opportunity to get him possibly Scot free with killing either of them and blaming the other. We know that Arturo struggles and feels like he can’t save any lives not just because he’s specifically a plastic surgeon, but because he feels responsible for not being there for his sister when she killed herself because of him leaving. So I can see the killer route for him in a way to not feel responsible for indirectly

causing Arei and Ace to die. Along with if the scenario of Levi not making it, that would increase his mental state to be worse in blaming himself or others in failing to save people.

With the main options out of the way, I’ll go ahead and give a mini explaination why I don't think anyone else could be the culprit for this chapter before I get onto the victim options.

Teruko and J: Obviously not going to commit murder(unless self defense probably) because against murder. Plus no ill will strong enough against anyone to push them to kill. Eden: In mourning rn and has no grudges against anyone to kill them. Also probably similar reasons to Teruko and J. Charles: Literally cannot commit murder unless the method allows him to be far away when he does it thanks to his phobia. Also no reason to commit murder anyways. Whit: No reason I can think of why he would commit murder. Maybe if Charles is the victim? But kinda a stretch that would happen. Rose: Similar to Charles, her memory and mind feeling like it's breaking down would prevent her from being able to commit murder. The trauma it alone would not be able to let her live peacefully if she succeed. Nico: I don't think they’ll commit murder again after almost committing one and regretting it. Not to mention currently dealing with guilt and blame of murder allegations stuck to them.

Levi: He is literally dying, how would this man commit murder? Not to mention that 1. Levi if he survive would be set up for character arc of learning to care for others as Ace’s death started the set up for it, so it's strange to throw that away and have him kill. 2. While yes Levi doesn't feel remorse for if he kill a person, that doesn't mean he would actively go out to kill anyone in this game. We don't know why he killed his dad, but it's apparently not a big deal enough where the police didn't even bother with his case. One guy he killed was in self defense while the other two he did chase after them to kill them. But it could be argued that Levi only did that maybe because he thought they come back for him and kill him for killing their leader.

David: While David does want a murder to happen to be able to end the killing game, I don't think he would commit it as it would be too obivious he did it and then they would get it right. Plus he seems important enough as the antagonist to at least survive until ch.4 or 5(it fits him better to die in ch.5 to me).

Now lets get to the fun tragic part of who shall be our victims? To get out of the way, we’re going to exclude Teruko, Nico, and David from this as Teruko is our protagonist and Nico I don't think will be killed as they have a potential character arc for them to go through + gender ratio is only trying to balance out the girls and guys(not to say that Nico is invincible in terms of being killed). As for David, I'm just assuming plot armor of being the antagonist will allow him to live, at least until ch.5 since other antagonist like Nagito and Kokichi lived until that chapter. Also picks for the killers will be feature as victims whether they were a victim from the start or manipulated into killing before being betrayed or killed by someone else who caught them in the act.

Victim option 1: J So J I cannot see as a killer in the game with her strong sense of morals against murder and the fact she seems put together enough to not let any grudges to make her kill someone. But I can see in the scenario if she is at the wrong place, wrong time she could end up as a victim. Maybe Arturo killing her could be him snapping at her for her blaming him for the deaths of his sister and the others, but I think less likely to happen.

Victim option 2: Eden Eden being a very vulnerable state of grieving over Arei and what has happened can allow her to be off her guard to be pick for a target. But I will say that Eden will probably surround herself with others to keep her safe and to have as company to comfort her in losing her dear friend. Not to mention Eden will maybe still try at least helping with dinner with Hu so she might not be an easy pick if there’s at least someone near her.

Victim option 3: Charles So a couple of people in the fandom thinks that Charles will actually die in chapter 3 due to Whit’s joke line in chapter 2 about Charles dying at 3. Honestly it's a bit of a stretch for me. Like yeah I am a Charles survivor truther, but also if Charles was going to die, it would only be if Whit or Teruko wasn’t with him. Even if conflict arise between him and Whit, I don't think that will prevent him from having someone he trust be around nor Whit from not worrying about him. So I actually think Charles is safe here+ there is still more to explore with him that I don't think death would help be able to expand his connection to the main plot if he died.

Victim option 4: Levi

Okay this option I really don't like because I do want Levi to live til the end or at least long enough to complete his character arc. But here’s the thing. Potentially depending on Levi’s state on whether he’ll be bedbound in the infirimy or be active in being able to move, if the former is true, then that leaves Levi very vulnerable. I can see him being guarded/check on by a caregiver, but that doesn't eliminate the possibilities of either A. His caregiver kills him, B. The killer sneaks in when the caregiver left their post and kills him(allowing them to frame the caregiver), or C. The killer kills both Levi and his caregiver. Like I said, I don't really like this option as it feels disappointing if Levi wasn't allow to live as that makes Ace’s sacrifice worthless in the end. But I wanted to at least share the possibility.

Victim option 5: Whit

To be honest, Whit has a lot potential right now to continue living since he’s a mystery in terms of his mom, his true feelings, and whether or not this guy is the mastermind or traitor. So it feel weird if he just…died right here. Plus only way I can see someone targeting Whit is if its to get back at him for his match making idea I had for scenario 1 failing for them. Which is most likely not to happen. Also I just realized how funny that sounds, it make it sound like the killer killed Whit because he couldn't get them a gf, bf, or partner in the process. Whit be like “Sorry man, not my fault you have negative rizz”. Immediately gets stabbed. Not to mention he’ll be hanging out with Charles and Teruko a lot, so I don't think anyone could jump him easily.

Victim option 5: Rose

Alrighty now we’re getting to someone I can believe to be a victim for ch.3 even though I hate it because she is my top fifth favorite character. Rose is definitely not doing good with her mind failing her in her memory on other things except for observing objects or scenes in detail. To which now with Levi being shot and Ace dying from cardiac arrest, that makes the amount of people she witness dying or getting hurt 5(if she was looking at Ace’s execution). That number alone is probably destroying her and is worse as now if Levi survives, she won’t be able to stand looking at him as well like how its hard for her to look at Teruko due to just seeing her all bloody. This along with her possible narcolepsy leaves Rose very vulnerable to become a victim. Or worse, maybe she’ll actually let the culprit kill her to put her out of her misery. Rose already feels like her life is ruined with being in debt to Richard Spurling and not being able to create anything of her own. Add not being able to focus on things anymore with only seeing bodies, I can sadly see Rose taking the killer killing her as a mercy to end her suffering….if this happens I will cry hard and only hope she could at least make up with Nico before she dies(or alternatively have a scene like Hifumi to Aoi but with Rose to Nico).

Victim option 6: Arturo

Arturo to me if not the killer this chapter can either go as a victim or surviving until another chapter(I will say it would be interesting if he ended up as a survivor). I can see him possible becoming a victims more out of the other options of the guys specifically if Veronika is the killer. This is mostly due to her being around him the most besides J(well actually it's more of him being around J more). Perhaps if Arturo in a bad mental state if he fails to save Levi or is getting blamed for his sister’s death again, I can see Veronika perhaps taking advantage of this to bring him further in despair before then striking when he’s not suspecting it. Or alternatively trick him into a trap to maybe go to the movie theater room to think she just wants him to watch another horror movie, to then BAM! Here lies Arturo Giles. I kinda hope this doesn't happen cuz I am a big Venturo shipper(idk guys maybe he can fix her he cannot).

Victim option 7: Hu

Hu to me feels like she could fit more as a killer or the second victim than the first victim to be honest. I say this as Hu will most likely until being pushed away by most of the group’s conflict will remain close to others like Nico or Eden, which prevents the killer from immediately getting to her unless they plan to get Nico and Eden too. Now if Hu were to be the second victim and work maybe with the killer, I could see this happening in the hypothetical Veronika as the culprit scenario. We already know the two made a pact to keep each other's secrets a secret until the time to reveal them. So who’s to say that they wouldn’t make another pact to work together? There’s noting in the rules indicate that one cannot kill more than one victim nor that possibly two blackneneds can escape.

I can see where Veronika strikes a deal with Hu to both of them committing a murder and then escaping together. Which leads to two possible scenarios of A. Veronika betrays Hu(or alternatively in Hu!culprit route she kills her and betray her) thus paralleling Celeset killing Hifumi after Hifumi killed Kiyotaka for her. Or B. Both Veronika and Hu kill two people and then the trial only one of them can be voted for. I doubt the latter option will happen, so I feel like the former the way to go. Plus we could still have Hu’s secret quote come into play of maybe her talking to Veronika about having regrets over killing someone and wanted to pay for it, but she still wants to live. Where Veronika takes this as her possibly backing out of their plan and thus, kills her before she spills.

Victim option 8: Veronika

Getting to our last option for a victim being Veronika! So I can see Veronika being a victim this chapter in three ways. Like stated before, if Veronika planned a murder with Hu as a partner and then was betrayed by her, then she would be the second victim. Another way I can see Veronika being the victim is if she actually planning for her own murder. What I mean is what if Veronika(whether its Hu or maybe even Arturo) wants to end up as a victim to create a complex murder mystery to both fullfill herself of an entertaining murder, to sucumb to despair from not being able to keep herself entertain, or in a mess up way, get the group back working together by figuring out whodunnit for her murder. As bonus, the killer gets a free chance to escape the game if the group fails. The last option as she would say is boring as Veronika ends up as a victim via suicide. This option is really only if Veronika fails to be able to entertain herself in the killing game and instead succumbs to despair. Personally, I believe Veronika would try to fight against this and plan a murder before doing that. She’s all for the excitement of thrills, chills, and kills! Why would she waste the opportunity to enact on a murder mystery to just plainly end it all?

Now that we covered all our potential killer and victim combos, which out of all of them do I feel most likely to happen next chapter?

For the killers, I am tied between Veronika and Hu, but leaning towards Veronika a bit more.

As for the victims, I feel like for the female victim it might be Rose. As for the male victim, it's tied between Arturo or Levi as both scenarios I can see.

It will be awhile before we can see if anything I brought up might lead to something or be disproven and end up as a fun what if scenario. But I like to while participating in the community share some fun thoughts and ideas of what could happen. We have all the time in the world to speculate, so let's give it everything we got!

[ouch-my-ghost-skin]

1, 2, 7, 17 for the dbd ask game

hello anon <3

who is your favorite character?

CHARLES!! he's very relatable to me, and i love his style so much <33 he's also. pretty as fuck

2. which is your favorite episode? why?

episode 7. i low-key have a bit of an obsession with the world building of hell, it is so interesting to me. then of course charles' pure commitment to get edwin out of hell, the confession scene, the scene with simon, charles death scene & niko saving the day. this episode really ruined me, in the good way.

7. favorite headcanon from the fandom so far?

ooh, i have a few. but since a season 2 is not been announced yet (yes i'm refusing to give up lol), id say bi!charles because 1) in canon there are many signs and 2) he's my fave, i'm bisexual, so i am definitely projecting, just a little.

17. theory you have/had for season 2?

that desire would show up and parallel what the cat king did with edwin, with charles. when i discussed this with my gf we agreed that literal transformation into edwin, like tck had done (only then into charles), would be a little too similar, so maybe desire would use charles' already existing memories to show him what he wants so badly? this would both give us more insight to what happened in the previous 30 years and go hand in hand with the fandom's agreement that charles already looks so whipped for edwin.

(oh my god this became quite long)

thank you anon!! <3

[blubberquark]

Looking for Group

Somebody posted on Discord

Does anybody want to collaborate on a [game] project?

but nobody answered.

Nobody said yes. Nobody said no. Nobody even asked follow-up questions. And yet, people in that server really do want to collaborate on games and projects. What happened?

Obviously nothing happened because the asker did not specify anything. What kind of project? With who? For how long? What should I bring to the table if we collaborate? I don't know. I was busy anyway. Maybe I can set up the asker with other people, who weren't busy. But this is not an isolated incident. Every day, thousands of people ask in chat rooms, forums, and mailing lists "Does anybody want to collaborate?"

Answering with yes is a risky move. Imagine being on the other side, and somebody asks an open-ended question... Imagine being on the other side of "I am having a software problem, can anybody DM me?"

Nobody wants to be on the hook to be somebody's personal tech support without at least knowing the kind of problem, and nobody wants to commit, even tentatively, to a creative project. It's kind of a red flag. What can you do to allow others to message you, to just tentatively get you to agree, to just agree to ask you for more details of your project? What should you do so people who say yes don't feel like they are wasting their own time, and yours?

1. Scope

The most important thing to communicate is scope. It's less important what kind of creative project it is, but how big. Is it an ongoing side project? A weekend? A couple of hours a week for a couple of months?

There is a world of difference between "Does anybody want to collaborate on a weekend project?" and "Does anybody want to collaborate on an epic story with 20 characters, multiple storylines, lore, 50 hours of side quests, and 800 pieces of unique loot?"

2. Stakes and Commitments

The next most important thing is commitments. This is doubly important if you are working with friends. Sometimes you want to collaborate on Ludum Dare, and if your partner is busy on that weekend, you'd rather know now. Sometimes you want to submit a demo of your game to some kind of competition or showcase, and it has to be ready at a certain point.

Sometimes you are really putting your heart and souls into a project, and your friend is just in it "for fun" and thinks you are ruining his fun by taking the project seriously. Your "One Story You Had Inside Yourself" can be your friend's "Learn C++ in 21 Days". Your "ticket into the glamorous games industry" can be your friend's "goof off with blender for a couple of hours and then try a different hobby".

It's important to talk out stakes and commitments with your friends, because you might be able to rope in a friend into a project without doing this. You could rope a friend into your project and he starts resenting you a bit because you are gung-ho about art, and your friend just wants to spend time with you, and you are exacting and controlling and ask him to revise the dialogue/animations/3D models he contributed.

If you are talking to strangers, you can't rope them in. They just won't agree to work with you without details.

3. Skills

If you are asking for collaborators in a programming discord, chances are you will get replies from other programmers. Chances are, wherever you ask, your post will be seen by many people who are good at the things you yourself are already good at. Are you a programmer looking for programmers, or a programmer looking for level designers and artists?

There are many reasons for three programmers or three pixel artists to work together, but by and large, you need people who complement your skill set, but fit into your work flow. If you are working with Unity3D, you probably want to work with 3D artists who have rudimentary knowledge of git and C#, even if they aren't supposed to code, and you need rudimentary knowledge of their modelling software and workflows.

So when looking for people to work with, you need to tell them what you can do, what you can't do, what you want them to do, and how you want to work together.

4. Topic/Idea/Design/Genre

This is point #4. This is deliberate.

You could probably take the previous 3 points and cobble together a "looking for group" post. People rarely do that. They usually have an idea they want to realise. Ideas are a dime a dozen though, and you can still pivot later, after you have found your group members.

It can't hurt to include this. What kind of project do you have in mind?

5. Management and Art Direction

There is one more big thing to consider: If you already have a project in mind, you are taking control of the project. You are the boss, you decide that you are looking for four people to collaborate on a science-based dragon breeding MMORPG, any four people who sign up know what they are getting into. It makes sense that the topic is not open for discussion. It also makes sense that you are the project manager, because you made a list of skills and work that needs to be done, and you have worked all this out already.

We are looping back to point #2 here. Why should people commit to your project if you are holding the reins? What do they get out of it?

You should communicate as early as possible what the creative freedoms are, what kind of tone you want to pursue, and how free your fellow artists are to express themselves.

In a commercial project, you can have control because you pay people. If you are doing a game jam project, or just any unpaid hobby collaboration, you should consider giving the others some creative freedom.

In a game jam, you could just decide that somebody else gets the creative control when you pivot to a different idea. In a large, commercial project, it makes sense to delineate how much creative freedom an individual artist has. In an open-source project, the maintainer can just review a patch and decide not to use it.

Ideally, you should communicate early on how weird or wacky you want the result to be, whether you want something with broad commercial appeal, with a sombre and serious tone, or if anything goes. That would be a bit much for the initial post, so just give a hint whether this would be a good project for somebody who really wants to put pigs and frogs in every game, or a good project who wants to make a character based on her ex boyfriend that the player can shoot in the groin. Sometimes people have the most specific ideas...

If on the other hand you have no idea what kind of creative direction you want to go, maybe you shouldn't go this route at all. If you want to give creative control to a yet to be determined team member, why not join another team instead? If you don't know where the project is going, you can't really plan who and what skills you need anyway.

Examples:

A good request for a collaoration reads a bit like a dating profile or a job ad. It covers the five points mentioned above.

Hey, I am Robert, art director and senior gameplay programmer at Blubberquark Software. I am fluent (among other languages) in Python, C#, Lua, and Haxe. I would like to join a team working with Unity3D, libGDX, löve or Flixel for the upcoming Ludum Dare game jam, in the Hamburg area. I like to use Blender, Gimp, Wings3D, ASEPrite, TrenchBroom, LDtk, Tiled, Ogmo, or Crocotile 3D. I also learned some 3DS Max and Cinema4D in university, but I don't have a license for those.

Here's a fictionalised version of myself, looking for a game jam team. To be clear, I am not looking for a team, but if I was, I'd make sure I don't need to learn a new set of tools for a weekend game jam. I'd try to make sure we all know how to use the engine, and we all know how to use the same source control, and we can all build and run a project before the jam starts. I wouldn't want to do a Ludum Dare remotely, so all this goes in there.

Since this is about Ludum Dare, scope and stakes are clear, and the skills I would use are in there. Skills that are irrelevant to Ludum Dare are not mentioned. Topic and creative control will depend on the jam theme, which is TBD.

Hello, we are Jim (programming) and Julius (level design, turn-based games expert). We are working on a fantasy JRPG called "animecha generica" that we hope to sell on Steam. We already have a gameplay prototype with placeholder characters and pixel art, but we would like to work with a skilled artist to create more interesting character designs and expressive/emotive portraits for the conversation system. If you join us, you would create characters, character portraits, quest lines, and dialogue, and we would split the revenue thee ways. We are also looking for a musician (work for hire basis).

This sounds like an early-stage commercial project. There is an engine and a prototype, but the design seems to depend on the content, and the developers are looking for somebody who can contribute the content. The scope sounds rather large (probably at least 5 hours of gameplay, maybe more) and the time commitment would be full-time until release. The artist they are looking for would do a little bit of everything, from art direction and narrative design down to art assets, and there would probably be a lot of overlap between the roles of two developers and the artist. Everybody wears multiple hats.

This sounds really risky, and the success of the project would depend on none of the three developers screwing it up.

Hi, I am Takeshi Kovacs, and I am making a new game engine based on Vulkan rendering, with its on scripting language, but optionally scripted in Python or C#. If this sounds interesting to you, I would like to work with you on a small game project of your choice, and help you realise your game design to test the viability of my Vladimir-and-Estragon Engine. Pick any weekend game jam of your choice. Pacific Time Zone only.

This seems low-pressure, and of limited scope. It could be a good after hours project, but it's probably not necessarily a good fit for a beginning programmer. You'd learn a new and unproven engine and scripting language. Apart from wasted time, it can't hurt that much to try. If you are a beginner, you could try to implement Pong or Tetris with Takeshi's help.

If you take up this offer, you would enjoy significant creative control, but the main objective would not be to produce a game for people to enjoy, but example code, or a game mechanics as a proof of concept for the engine.

We are making an open source shmup written in libGDX. We are always looking for new contributors. We have 100 stars on GitHub, and 50 players, according to our analytics. For the next release, we would like to add new levels, new power-ups, more ships, more content. Play our game [here] or build it from source by [following] [these] [instructions] [(Outdated Wiki Page For Ubuntu 20.04)]. If you have experience with Steam Workshop, talk to us on [our Discord].

This project has a medium scope, semi-mature code base, and low time commitment. You could probably contribute some content, or a patch to the engine, and nobody would really rely in you to stick around. On the other hand, you have little influence on the overall game design. You could certainly try: You could make a pull request that completely re-vamps the gameplay, but at that point, you might as well start a hostile fork.

We at secret studio are making otome dating simulator. Want to have demo ready for PAX Moonbase. We are looking for multiple character artists who can draw our characters on-model on a work-for-hire basis, and two additional writers for our writing team. We are looking for candidates who have experience with authoring systems like twine, ink, Ren'Py, Visual Novel Maker, or RPG Maker. Experience with YarnSpinner is a plus, but not required. You have the opportunity to design your own otome love interests and story lines. You will be expected to work under our creative director.

Like the JRPG example above, this is a commercial project with a large scope and fixed design, but these people are looking to hire more people who wear fewer hats each to create content quickly. This looks like a job ad for a paid position. It should be! You would have some creative freedom, but since this is a commercial project, you will have to stick with the marketing demographics and write romance storylines for girls who like boys, and any ideas you want to convey have to fit into that framework. It looks like they are using YarnSpinner and an undisclosed game engine, and they are willing to teach you how to use their tools on the job, but they seems to expect a writing background, and some prior experience in the tools/workflow/production side of visual novels specifically.

Hi. My name is Jeff. I work in theatre and I produce radio plays. I have podcasting and sound recording equipment at work. I play the guitar, badly, and I can borrow an old Moog synthesiser. I want to collaborate on a game project, by producing foley sound effects, or recording short stings and jingles. I know some QBasic from back in the day, but I haven't programmed much since then. I have licenses for Ableton, Photoshop, and Autodesk Maya.

Jeff is looking for a group. Jeff is not looking for a big commitment. He is willing to help a project out. Jeff has listed some skills and things he could contribute to a project. He is not looking for a new full-time job, but maybe a paid side gig.

Hi. I am Raven Siege Tank Banshee Medivac, a sophomore student majoring in computer science and underwater basket weaving at New England University, Arkham. I can use Blender, Photoshop, and and Logic Pro. I would like to help out with an open-source game project. I would also consider doing a puzzle platformer together. I know some PyGame.

There is almost but not quite enough to go on in this one. In what capacity would Raven work in a collaboration? What kind of scope is right, here? Maybe Raven would like to work on that shmup written in Java, but as far as the puzzle platformer is concerned, we don't know why Raven can't just make it solo with PyGame and Photoshop.

TL;DR

If you want to find people to work together with, you must communicate scope, commitments, and skills you need and skills you bring to the table. Explaining what kind of idea you want realised is also important, as is creative direction, but not as important as the first three. Your post should look like a job ad. Read your post and think if you would join that project or ask that person to join yours.

[sotwk]

Behind the Scenes: SotWK's Writing Process

Welcome to a little "behind the scenes" of my attempts to keep my growing list of WIPS and story requests/ideas organized!

My Fic and HC Requests are (for the most part), always open, and open to Anons. Occasionally, I also invite requests in relation to writing events or games. Needless to say, I get quite a lot of requests, and I am both flattered and thrilled by that.

However, I also work full-time (albeit always in front of a computer), and I have two little kids (who attend preschool, whew), so I have much less time to focus on writing than most creators here.

But I love writing, and I love using it to make people happy even more. My rule is, I will accept any requests (that reasonably fall within my guidelines, but I can be flexible!) as long as you can wait patiently for me to deliver on them. I always give my best effort to make it worth your while, and I will never ignore your request or give up on it without checking with you first (yes, this includes Anons).

I have no wait list. I do not work on requests "in the order they were received". I work on whatever story speaks to and cooperates with me that day, and that means shuffling amongst up to five WIPs at a time. That's simply how my brain works, unfortunately.

All my fanfics / your requests are always, and forever will be, FREE. They're gifts I am honored to give.

I am constantly saying, "I'm working on it" or "It's on my list", and I would like to offer just a bit of proof of that. So, especially for those who have been waiting a long time (and those who might have to wait even longer), I present my Google Drive's Organized Chaos to show how I keep all those WIPs in check:

Drafts in Progress: Stories that are closest to completion, and the ones I am currently trying to focus on.

Drafts on Hold: Drafts that I have started, but have stalled, so they're on the back burner for now.

Headcanons: I usually draft my headcanon requests straight on Tumblr, but sometimes they go on here.

Ask Screenshots: Where I save Asks that I responded to/deleted, but I needed to save the text for the sake of notes. Also lovely Asks that I save for posterity.

Valentine Event: I received so many Asks for this event that it required its own folder.

Gifted Graphics: Always hoping for new contributions to this one! (not subtle enough?)

And now, for my Fic Tracker Spreadsheet, which tracks ALL Tolkien fics I write, both requests and my personal projects:

I redacted the "Requestor" column to preserve some surprises. I track the estimated "Status" aka percentage of completion as a way to motivate myself, because getting to that blessed 100% is the Holy Grail for me!

WIP: Every fic that's on the "front burner" and I'm actively fighting to complete.

Requests/Concepts: Contains details of all requests and ideas I have which will eventually jump into the WIP tab.

Valentine: Remember how I said I received so many responses to this event? Yeah. I'm still determined to finish them all, though!

To Read: Yup, I track all the fics of friends that I intent to read here, too. That's how important those are to me.

I truly hope all this info doesn't scare anyone off from sending in more requests! I hope this gives Readers/Followers a little more faith in me and show that I take all requests I receive very seriously. They are the most important part of what I do as a fanfic writer.

I may be slow, but I'm committed and determined!

If you have any questions about the above, or about your requests, I'm open! Please keep sending in requests! Thank you for your support and patience!

Link to my FANFIC REQUEST GUIDELINES

Tagging some of those folks who are currently waiting on requests: @quickslvxrr @laneynoir @ladyweaslette @scyllas-revenge @lathalea @g-m-kaye @absentmindeduniverse @aduialel @friendofthefellowshipsnerdblog @jordie-your-local-halfling @ladyk8tie @blueberryrock @the-phantom-of-arda @tamurilofrivendell @achromaticerebus @klytemnestra13 @glassgulls @the-fragile-heart-of-a-lady @guardianofrivendell @a-burr-a-hobbit @literary-eclair

[mandokero-eboy]

Should probably make an intro post huh?

Hello there. I'm Dan. I am 23 years old. My house is in Venezuela. My home is in Toronto, and I am ideologically opposed to the institution of marriage. I do software stuff for a living but my passion is game design, and it feels very weird to say "design is my passion" in light of memes but I'm committing to it. I am now deviating from the Yoshikage Kira monologue to let you know I'm a queer anarchist, a kinky hedonist and AuDHD. When I have the pleasure of being away from Venezuela I enjoy going to social and kinky events and I have a lot of favorite spots in Toronto, but that's a bit difficult here because nothing ever happens.

The main purpose of this blog is mostly to talk about my hyperfixations, my kinks, and probably game design stuff but mostly probably where it intersects with the above. DMs and asks are welcome.

Describing one's queerness with labels is cool and all but I'm going to do use TV Tropes on top

Extreme Omnisexual: Label of convenience is bisexual, I have a preference that varies depending on mood but I will flirt and engage in Casual Kink with a really broad range of anything which falls under the Harkness Test.

Marry Them All: I'm polyamorous, this is my preferred solution to any love triangle real or fictional. The expectation of monogamy makes me actively uncomfortable and I think monogamous people are really insecure.

Ambiguous Gender: Gender is weird, use whatever pronouns you want I'm not your boss.

What is this thing you call "Love"?: I am not straightforwardly aromantic but I have some trouble relating to traditional ideas about romance. I've heard this be labelled as Nebuloromantic or Idemromantic (yes the trope choice is problematic when applied to real people bear with me)

I occasionally post about politics. I am sex positive, queer positive, and an anarchist and these are my main political priorities. But that's not the main purpose of this blog so I won't elaborate unless I'm actually posting about that. I might get into a slapfight if something makes me mad on my dashboard and for that I am sorry.

Kinks + Tags under the cut

The Kinky Part:

I'm a switch. Broadly I'm interested in hypnosis, tease and denial, dollification, exhibitionism and honestly most things. One of the things I'm most fixated on at the moment is the intersection of games and kink, particularly analogue games but I think sex video games are underdeveloped as well. Casual sex is good but ranked competitive sex is better.

You can use most titles for me if you're so inclined except goddess and if you're interested in domming me let's say i have pretty high standards. Minors obviously DNI, don't try to play with me if you're under 20+ (but you can still hang out) and if you're above 35 you better be extremely hot and have money or so help me. Otherwise go ham

Limits: sissy, bathroom things.

Will straight up block you: raceplay

My cool + epic tags:

#eboy shitpost: for when i make funni hahas #eboy hornyposting: self explanatory really #eboy slapfight: when i'm fighting people. feel free to mute this. #eboy politic: when talking politics #eboy sadposting: for sadposting #eboy ramble: otherwise generic textposts in long form #eboy gamedev: if i ever design to post about my regular game projects i'll do it here #eboy audio: TBA :3 #eboy script: TBA :3 #eboy writing: If I write fiction or anything like that I'll put it here. #kinky games: will use it to reblog hornyposts from other people about making sexual games. #kinky game dev: for when i make kinky games myself #hypnosis ideas: this is my main kink so i'll reblog things to do to my subs sometimes #hypnosis games: for when the kinky games and the hypnosis intersect, my favorite kind #hypnok1nk: for more general hypnoposting #my butt: if i ever feel like posting selfies #meme: if i make a meme image myself, not a repost #hyperfixation: for writing about whatever i'm currently watching #Invisible Pants: This one is for posting specifically about my current DnD game with friends and my character in that campaign, Invisible Pants the Tabaxi Rogue

More generic tags

#art reblog #ttrpg #anime #gaming #neurospicy #gamedev

Gotta tag these retroactively.

[bakafox]

Having to unsubscribe from more and more 'leftist' Youtubers who are committing to the bit that it's more important to bash the Democratic party and Joe Biden as if they're just as bad as Trump than it is to just focus on the fact that Trump and the GOP are the absolute fucking worst.

Especially since they keep pulling the 'Biden is senile and a drooling zombie' card since the fucking debate. Biden's fucking speech impediment has always been known about. He's always had pauses and problems finding words sometimes because of it, like friends of mine who struggle with that sort of shit do. 'Debating' someone like Trump on live TV isn't something a president needs to be able to do, but they'll focus on that gleefully and still never bring up all the left-leaning policies the Biden Administration has successfully pushed over the last 4 years or that were blocked by the fact Dems don't control congress, senate, or the supreme courts and

I am just begging people who haven't recently refreshed themselves on how the US system even is supposed to work to watch some stuff and refresh themselves.

Like, is the system pretty busted and rooted in shitty racist and classist shit? Yes, but it's not going to be fixed before this election, just like it isn't fixed before other elections because not enough people are willing to work for things like ranked choice voting in between election cycles.

But the system also isn't completely dead yet, and right now there's game plans and blueprints on how to at least survive within it- and how to push for changes in between big election cycles by voting the right people in during even smaller election cycles.

Those are the times you beef up third party ideals or whatever, because yes, right now, when the presidential election happens the only two choices that mean anything numerically for the electoral vote system are Republican and Democrat.

If you want to call that 'not a real election' or whatever, fine, but even if there's only two choices, one choice is still actively less harmful than the other, and if the only applicable choices in a shitty election have differences, and electoral results actually have a chance of being honored even if the less awful side wins it's still actually an election that matters. Is it a shitty choice? Is it not much of a choice? It's still a choice, and it's still a difference that can be made.

Of course with Project 2025, the Republicans plan to finish gutting and rearranging the US government to suit their desire for a theocratic dictatorship, which means they are actively working to make elections completely irrelevant or end them entirely. There will no longer be even a map or blueprint for anyone who isn't a white heterosexual Christian (of the kinds of Christians they approve of, I will bet five dollars that once in office the evangelical protestant type Christians are going to start throwing other denominations under the bus, because five dollars is all I even have right now,) to follow.

All of the between-election activism and community support and service that needs to be done is already hard, too, yes, but it will be much harder if Trump, a guy who has literally talked about having protestors on college campuses shot or deported as Hamas sympathizers, and people who think like him and will unequivocally back him takes over.

There's no real choice, but if the Democrats control senate, house, and presidency, there's actually room for a choice to grow if people don't just give up the minute the election is over and actually seek and work towards the reforms that are desired.

If the GOP gets any more seats and the presidency, I cannot stress enough that we are probably going to be living in an actual, literal, dictatorship, which by all definitions, the US is currently not, despite what I see people trying to twist definitions around to say it is because a 2 party system isn't great.

I am just so tired right now, the lives of so many people, including those of people I know personally, are on the line with this vote. I've only just gotten to celebrate things the Biden administration has done for disabled Americans and yet I know that if Trump is elected, we're going to go immediately at least back to shit like 'people buying you food can reduce or stop your SSI' if not worse since the GOP are pretty open about wanting to axe Medicaid and disability with social security.

Biden's administration has put protections for LGBT people in at the federal level, and it is remaining state's rights shit that's keeping it bad in red states, which is complicated as fuck, but if the GOP get their way, their stripping out the idea of state's rights will go after the states that are sheltering trans people or providing abortion care and asylum.

Project 2025 and Trump have made a VERY big deal out of wanting to deport millions of people and have ICE raiding churches and schools. (Oh hey remember what I said about even other Christians are gonna get shat on if maybe they're inclusive or whatnot?)

And for that single issue: Yes, Trump will be worse for Palestine. Also worse for Ukraine, Sudan, and pretty much everywhere else there is a genocide happening.

There isn't a 'real' choice, is the argument, but there still is a choice, and it's one that has to be made to try and reduce harm and keep the boot from being so firmly on everyone's neck that no one can breathe well enough to fight it.

There also is not going to be a glorious revolution formed if Trump wins, there's going to be concentration camps, deportations, increased incarceration for profit, no social safety net at all, and more and more deaths including state-sponsored violence and murders. Facists like Putin, Bibi, etc will be emboldened and given more actual weaponry and support.

On paper maybe it sounds like something that makes a revolution happen in the US, but in reality it is far more likely that it further divides and crushes people into inaction.

Also in reality the US has a fucking huge military with drone strike capabilities and the Republicans will not hesitate to make the poor neighborhoods of any US city into craters, and groups of actual revolutionaries will be very scattered and isolated and much more poorly armed because the US is a big space- and there can be no counting on Canada, Mexico, or any other nations in the world for help. That'll be the start of WW3.

If there is a revolution against a GOP dictatorship it is not going to be glorious, it is not going to go well. It should not even be being considered as a preferred option by anyone who claims to be 'for the people' compared to harm reductive voting and then community activism and pushes for voting and government reform in a setting where there is still some freedom to do that.

[grim-faux]

An EXCERPT for Thin Therapy. Check out Chapter 1 in le link

@i-think-in-metaphors aka TheRandomSith played the disastrous and all-deserving Otto from the Sounds of Nightmares

naturally, I played the part of TTT Thin Man and the very well mannered and well adjusted TTT Mono.

__

Otto gently moved the boy’s hands away from his chair. “He's curious as all children are.”

The commit put a mischievous smirk on TTT Thin Man’s face. “Certainly. A very curious boy. You do not seem acclimated to such antics. I struggle to manage his outbursts. He can be quite 'persuasive', as the girl could already vouch for me.”

TTT Mono put all his strength into shoving Otto, leaning fully against the Counsellor and his chair. “Move. Go move.”

Otto looked down at the boy. “Where are you trying to take me?”

TTT Mono glared up at Otto from under his cap. “Am Mono. Make move. Ya'go. Am make go.”

“I understand. Where do you want me to move to?”

TTT Mono shoved hard, with his head now. “Y'go. Mono make move. See?”

A bit dismissive, TTT Thin Man offered, “It is common for children to utilize chairs and boxes to reach high places that have no hand holds. Such as doorknobs, high cabinets, a crack in the wall or a high vent. I cannot say for why he believes he needs you or that chair for....”

Otto gave Mono another look, torn between wanting to know why the boy wanted it to move or knowing how long he’d keep at this.

TTT Mono tried spinning the chair with Otto in it, to get his hands away from the desk. With a glance over the Counsellor, he debated on if biting would work, though biting was rude. “Make move am Mono.” He insisted, again. “Y'see? Move. Y'go, huh? Am show.”

TTT Thin Man sighed. “There is really no way to dissuade or stop him. When he has it in his head to accomplish something, it will be done. Even if it is to his own destruction....”

“I am currently using this chair. You will have to wait.”

TTT Mono gave a fierce child scowl to Otto, before putting more into his effort to brute force or shove the chair side. He whirled around and kicked at the desk, intent on getting it away from Otto, but it was too heavy. “No. Am have.” He went for biting, since Otto is the one being rude.

Otto held him back with one hand. “None of that now.”

TTT Thin Man did not bother to conceal his smirk. “Oh dear, I believe he has claimed you as his now. You are really in for it.”

Now the boy was in the process of climbing onto Otto! And get ahold of his arms. While doing that, he began kicking his heel against the desk. He was such a darling little child.....

In exasperation, Otto gripped the boy firmly under his arms and put him back onto the floor. “No.”

Immediately TTT Mono lunged for Otto, grabbing his knees as he climbed. “Rarr!”

While the very helpful TTT Thin Man made ‘an effort’ to hold back staticky snickers. “How unfortunate the other Broadcaster is not here to intervene. He is so tolerant of the monster.”

Deadpanned, Otto once more fought to dissuade the grabbing hands. But continued to fail. “Yes, you are quite scary. Why don’t you go show that to your guardian.”

Prepared to enjoy the unfolding skit, TTT Thin Man leaned his back to the wall and crossed his arm. “That is the thing, though. He does not usually pester me.... unless he wants something. Apparently, you have something, or he desires you to do some thing.”

TTT Mono worked to untangle his arms from the firm hands, and was also using his toes to cling onto Otto’s shin. With Otto’s hands preoccupied, he anchored his foothold and pulled himself closer.

At his wits end, Otto plucked the boy up and set him on the desk so he could be tall.

[facet-project]

pre-blog catchup diary

*disclaimer: this is ALL pre-alpha art. these screenshots are BEFORE visual development started. it's ugly. it's supposed to be. i was focused on programming and didn't want aesthetics to get in the way. pretend in your heart that this is all beautiful pixel art

anyway go below the readmore for details!!

i started working on this game in october 2023!! i had been learning gdscript before that, a little bit, but i hadn't fully committed to this project until then. pictured below is. the First build of the game vs the most current build. we've come so far.

the prototype was just a one-week build of the farming sim. so i could test how the time mechanic worked (time only moves when you do an action, you're not on a constant ticking clock)(this makes it much easier to strategize what you'll do in a day and letting the player go at their own pace, making the game feel more relaxed)(you can also... undo actions... which was just me testing out the code in this version but in the full version... will have different Implications)

i am all by my lonesome on this project. mechanically at least. my brother, girlfriend, dad, and my best friends are constantly helping me test things and i bounce ideas off of them all the time. it helps that my brother is a master GM and writer and my girlfriend is a software developer. and i lean very heavily on my dad for music/soundscape assistance. so yes, solodev, but also i am not an island

so the prototype was made when i was still learning gdscript past the phase of "tutorials for babies that produce a single number-go-up game" which is. hard!! since this is a much more complex project. it's easy to make anything in isolation, it's harder to figure out how to make new systems weave into a bigger project! fucking hell i didn't even know about custom resources!!!!

the prototype went off with FLYING COLORS though. girlfriend and brother played it over the weekend i gave it to them and it worked, it made sense, and watching the two of them test out the mechanics gave me some very good ideas for future builds. also nothing crashed and gf couldn't find any crazy exploits! (however pictured below is the incredibly fucked up floating rabbit glitch that i couldn't fix)

i finished it in june and took a break in july. august will be the first proper devlog for this! i'm excited to have a little dev journal around! i probably will only post consistently about once a month, with maybe some little posts here and there about characters or concept art i'm excited for

so what's next?

TIME TO GO BUILD ALPHA, BABY!!!!

which sounds exciting but i'm basically. starting from scratch again. new, fresh godot file. so it feels like i'm not very far in, even though i have an entire working prototype on my desktop.

and.... geez.... gotta actually make the pixel art and implement it into a working file???? so that it doesn't look like dogshit???? that would be nice. i didn't want to do it for prototyping/pre-alpha because i really wanted to make sure i had the capacity to code the game before putting my heart and soul into the art. and now i'm very certain i do?? it's not hard, it just takes time. and the time will pass anyway!!

i have two campaigns planned for the game, one that's smaller and one that's larger. the bigger one is the typical make your own character farming simulator, played straight in the setting. but i'm working on the smaller one first! you play as a specific character for the first year of the story. not all of the game mechanics are turned on for this mode, and it's more story-oriented than the straight Farming Simulator, so i think it's a good place to put development energy into. get it all ironed out. make it make sense before blowing it up on a larger scale. and it's more contained to test in which is a bonus

anyway. i'm going to post build updates on this on the last day of every month. and!! i'm not going to say a Lot about how the game works quite yet but the askbox is open. i don't think anyone will ask anything cause this is still in really early stages but it's there if you want it i guess

[hbyrde36]

@griefabyss69 really keeping me busy with the tag games AND I LOVE IT 💜💜💜

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

20! A few are short drabbles and one also one series that prob should have just been a multi-chaptered fic, so it sounds like a bit more than it is, but i'm super proud of my body of work so far

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

219,683 😱- which sounds absolutely insane to me considering i just started writing/posting in February of this year.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Only Stranger Things for now, but I could see myself doing this with future hyperfixations as well.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Times Like These

Shelter In Place

Caught in the Undertow

Life is a Game (and True Love is a Trophy)

Steve Harrington: Vampire Hunter

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes! I don't always manage to respond to 100% of comments, but I really try because they do mean SO much to me and i want ppl to know that and to thank them for reading!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't think I have any, at least right now, with an angsty ending. Happy endings always and forever over here 💜 Angstiest fic, in general, would be (i think) Caught in the Undertow.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

This is a tough one because, of course, happy endings always, but I like the hopeful and open ending to Times Like These. It's nice after all the rigamarole of the time loop.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

*knocks on wood SO hard* I have yet to get a negative comment on anything and I feel so lucky for that because I just know how dicouraging it would be. That said, it does make me wonder if I play it too safe sometimes, and so i'm considering pushing myself a bit more out of my comfort zone in the future.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I do, though usually as a small part to a larger fic. I have yet to write smut for the sake of itself. (though I do worship those authors that do. You are all wonderful and i'm not worthy!!) I'm still very self conscious of my spicy scenes, but i've been working hard at it and i'd like to think i've improved quite a bit since my first time.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I do! My fic - Steve Harrington: Vampire Hunter is the love child of Steddie and the long running Anita Blake vampire hunter novel series. It has been so much fun to write and I love every comment i get from a reader who has never even heard of Anita Blake but loved the fic anyway! From the moment I imagined Steve as Anita and Eddie as Jean-Claude, i just knew i had to do somethign with it. It's been an absolute blast and i can't believe it's almost complete.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No - but that would be amazing!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I havn't, but would definetely be open to the idea with the right person. (assuming i had the time to commit to it) I am doing the reverse big bang, which is not cowriting of course but is a collaboration and i'm super excited for it.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Steddie got me into this whole fandom/fanfic mess and they are without a doubt my favorite but i'll read just about any ST pairing if it's written well.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I plan to finish every project i've started, even those i'm not yet posting. For my own sanity i don't think I could leave anything unfinished (no judgement whatsoever to anyone who had left a fic unfinished though, this shit (and life) is hard sometimes!)

16. What are your writing strengths?

I don't know really, um, I think I do pretty good dialog? I know that's the part of writing I tend to enjoy the most, and the part i usually write first for any scene. I can hear my characters voices very clearly in my head so conversation comes easily and naturally most of the time.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Getting too caught up in the little details (and stressing about them) and letting it slow me down

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I havn't done it myself but i do love it in other fics ❤

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Stranger Things/Steddie! I'm a fanfic late bloomer and only started reading it a year ago, and writing it 9 months ago.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

You can't make me choose! I love all my children equally!

Ok, fine. I'll say - Life is a Game (and True Love is a Trophy) is my current favorite because it is probably the most insane and creative project i've undertaken so far. It was a long time coming too. I had the idea for it way back in March, but I doubted my ability to take it on for a long time and only starting writing and posting it in july. It still feels intimidating to think about, but I love the way I've twisted canon to fit my weird idea.

No pressure tags! @penny00dreadful @thisapplepielife @manda-panda-monium @steddiecameraroll @chaosgremlinmunson @spoookysix @steventhusiast

[turtlemagnum]

i'm not sure a piece of media has ever impacted me so broadly as fallout: new vegas. maybe just as deeply, yes, but in terms of variety the ways are almost uncountable. i played it at a fairly young age, so it was probably a fair bit more influential than it otherwise would've been, but i'm not entirely sure. i think one of the most straightforward ways is my love of guns. i'm not sure i can 100% attribute it to new vegas, but if memory serves i wasn't really into gun nerd shit before new vegas. with the knowledge i have now of both its development and just of real firearms, i know that a lot of attention to detail was given to giving everything if not outright realism, at the very least a very deep-set sense of verisimilitude that acted as a stellar "foot in the door" for the interest to seep into my brain, so to speak. if memory serves, the project lead actually bought and shot a real lever action rifle to make sure he got it down as best he could in game, and frankly without that degree of commitment i'm unsure if the gunplay would've felt as "real" to me. i cannot express how deeply appreciative i am of that, i still remember the feeling of the gears turning in my brain as i tried to figure out why .223 and 5.56mm went in the same rifle, and it setting my young imagination wild

and that's only one aspect. in terms of music, i wouldn't say that my music taste is broadly inspired by the soundtrack but it has introduced me to country music i actually quite enjoy, adding to my eclectic tastes. in terms of writing and media literacy, analyzing it was very critical in my development of both taste and critical thought in regards to the characters and themes of the game. as such it also deeply influenced my own political beliefs, and i think the fact that it portrays almost every sapient character with a degree of personhood and reasons for doing the things they do and thinking the things they believe had a significant impact too. at the core of the writing of the non-bethesda fallout games, there's always been this overwhelming sense of hope in the face of adversity. i'd argue it's probably the main theme of the first game, and is still a relevant one up to new vegas. and i think it's worth noting that i have my own disagreements with what the game says thematically at times, and i maintain that if you weren't limited by the options that the developers allowed you the yes man ending would unequivocally be the best option, but that's less so the fault of the developers themselves and moreso a limitation of video games as a whole not being able to account for Literally Every Single Possibility in the same way that you could in a TTRPG or even just writing yourself; so i don't really hold it against the devs in the slightest.

i think that to a certain extent, feelings predate ideology. you're born with a fire in your gut, and you can't quite put it into words with any coherence until you're a fair bit older. maybe on the way there you pick up some beliefs from the older folks in your life, maybe even ones that you'll find to eventually contradict what you really value deep down. i was no different, really. i think above all i've always yearned for freedom. not in the conventionally american way, i'd argue that the "freedoms" american ideologues profess to hold dear for the most part, aren't actual freedoms. they're just what we're told is freedom, when in reality we live in as authoritarian a system as those we claim to be diametrically opposed to. this yearning, this lust for freedom that i've always had, i think new vegas really fed into it, for me. the fact that you can go wherever you want, do whatever you want, kill whoever you want, support whoever you want, just as easily help or harm whoever you want, it all amounts to an overwhelming sense of freedom; the kind of radical freedom that you just cant get in the physical reality we currently live in. it's an escape, a fantasy, one where you have a genuine choice of how you want to live your life. i hope that one day we'll live in a world where everyone can have the kind of freedom i hold dear in my heart.

[lostinfantasyworlds]

For the writers truth and dare game 😁

🪲,🍄,🪐

Hi Liz!!! Thank you so much for the asks!!! ❤️ 😁 🥰

🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here

I'm so bad at coming up with stuff on the spot so I'm going to cheat a little and use something I jotted down last night (which is probably more than 50 words 😆). This is for my main WIP, which I have talked about before but am not going to name so I can be all secretive and mysterious🤣: ------- "Do you have any informants in Hawaii?" Inuyasha asked.

Miroku seemed taken aback, but recovered quickly. "Actually, yes. One of my oldest confidants, Hachi, spends most of his time island-hopping. Why?"

"Could you -- Is there any chance he could -- Or you could ask --"

"Aw, are you trying to ask me for a favor?" His stupid blue eyes lit up like a child, and Inuyasha's hands balled into fists. "This must be important. You can do it, use your words."

Fuming, Inuyasha's cheeks burned, which he covered up by punching his annoying partner in the arm. He so badly wanted to tell him to forget it, since Miroku was pretty much insufferable when gloating. But since this was likely his only shot to help Kagome while they were gone, he took a deep breath and swallowed his pride.

"Do you think you could ask him to keep an eye on someone for me?"

"Stalking, huh? I didn't take you as the type."

"Fucking what -- no! I just...need to know she's safe. Alive. Nothing more than that."

"Oooh...she? This keeps getting better!"

Inuyasha's eye twitched, calling on every last bit of restraint he possessed not to knock the shit-eating grin off of Miroku's stupid face.

"Can you do that for me or not?" he ground out.

Miroku seemed to realize just how close he was to getting his ass beat, because his expression turned serious. "You just want a visual confirmation of safety?" Inuyasha nodded. "How often?"

"Whenever he can manage it...once a week, every few days, whatever."

"I believe that can be arranged. I'll ask him...on one condition."

"For fuck's sake, what?"

"That you tell me what the deal is with you and this woman."

Inuyasha rolled his eyes. "Why are you like this?"

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

I feel like Inuyasha and Kagome would probably move pretty fast in their relationship once she returned through the well. I imagine them being engaged and making out all over the place within the first few weeks. After all that time apart thinking they'd never see each other again, and since Kagome's decision to return is the ultimate show of commitment anyways, I think they'd want to make up for lost time and just go for it. That being said, I don't imagine them having sex the same day she comes through the well or anything like that. But I also don't think it'd take them a really long time to cross all of those milestones off their list. Somewhere in the middle, like a few weeks to maybe a couple months. I love reading fics that explore all of the different possibilities though, and can get behind almost any explanation/head canon.

🪐 ⇢ name three good things going on in your life right now

Work is slower than it's ever been at the moment, to the point where I have had days and days of absolutely nothing to do while working at home and still getting paid (I'm salaried). My bosses have shockingly not tried to give me any busy work (there really isn't much else to do since our work is entirely project-based), so I've had a lot of time to catch up on my life and do fun things lately. It is the ultimate luxury and very rare, so I'm soaking it up while I can because once things get busy again my entire life will go back to revolving around my stupid job.

My mental health has finally reached a stable place, and I've been feeling pretty good overall. After years of depression and anxiety, it's a huge relief to feel back on solid ground again.

Our house is coming together slowly but surely. We are just about to paint the room we're currently renovating, and then just have to do flooring and we'll have another space finished and ready to use!

I have a lot to be grateful for right now, things are good 🥰

Thank you again for the asks!

From the Writer's Truth & Dare Ask Game

[madstronaut]

baby's first soap fic (redux)

re-wrote this with the wrath of a thousand suns burning out after discovering my original post somehow disappeared/got deleted (even though the link was still in my masterpost? smh)

Reading: love you from afar by @roosterr

i found this while first tiptoeing into the depths of cod fandom on tumblr after huffing the gateway drug of simping for COD men (ghost fanart/fics) and the way johnny is portrayed here is what made me start looking up soap fics <3

once again so many absolutely delicious tropes here, key being clueless reader - though i vibe with reader being like "oh i guess im the person to leave a little treat for myself to find after a long day like my favorite choco on my bed" big mood reader, big mood - i aspire to your imaginary self-care standards

also johnny willing to bridal carry you after getting hurt and willing to stay with you at the docs? keep these kind of friends close <3

not me running to google language/meaning of flowers after roosty mentioned they were gardenias

i was late to the soap is canonically an artist/kept a journal game and freaking love it when writers incorporate it into their fics <3 also really brings to mind the phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" - i have drawn/been drawn by friends and etc. and truly so touching to see how your love ones see you through their art <3

i also love that soap panics when his little secret project gets outed to gaz and co. who already know about his crush - i fucking love having wholesome little secrets with the intent to commit random acts of love/kindness/chaotic good/etc. etc.

"someone went in your room while you were gone?" ghost's low voice caught your attention, "bit creepy, innit," he grumbled, his gaze darting between you and somewhere next to you.

"christ…" ghost mutters, shaking his head in exasperation.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA GHOST YOU HAVE NO FUCKING CHILL

"could be a good bonding exercise," price had the same entertained tone in his voice as he looked between the four of you, "any thoughts, soap?"

please god i would commit crime to read teh side group chat where they absolutely roast soap for his antics...and reader for how fucking clueless she is

i vibrated out of my seat at excitement of plot twist of fake!admirer sending a fake note and wanting to meet reader, 10/10 storytelling *chefs kisses*

also "hey sarge" to reader? yes we love a girlboss (is this still a pc term? idk someone correct me if its not, still catching up to the barbification of slang words and reclaiming of feminine power with 'girlmath' and 'girldinner' etc etc)

"in fact, i don't actually know you at all. i couldn't recall your name even if you held a gun to my head." FUCK YES MY QUEEN FUCKING GET HIM FUCKING STEP ON HIM *sry busy morphing into that rabid dog barking gif to hype reader up*

when johnny says your name in that deep, gravelly tone, your heart skips a beat and your eyes snap to meet his. "who was it." he asks, but it's not a question anymore, and every fibre of your being is telling you to just give in to him.

my god when the quiet/sweet/always happy-go-lucky ones get angry it is so hot terrifying

and UNF THE LETTER!!!!!! THE LETTER. Every single fucking thing about the letter is pure perfection and sunlight "you're my person" 🥺🥺🥺 THE STRAIGHT-UP I LOVE YOU *claps johnny on back for saying it straight*🥺🥺🥺 signing off with "your heart" 🥺🥺🥺

i love how reader immediately takes off running, fucking yes queen GO GET YOUR MANS??? HURRY THE FUCK UP???

the two of you stay like that for moments that feel like hours in each other's embrace, only pulling away when your lungs are burning and your lips are swollen. 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

"yer stayin' with me tonight, non negotiable." he murmurs, running a hand up and down the length of your spine. lmao negotiable?? sir??? reader did not even stand a chance??? who could tbh

last but not least, i learned the meaning of bawbag by googling it via reading this fic so once again, another absolute banger of a fic for cod fandom, ty for filling my heart soul ovaries brain with some much needed and at times completely useless light love and lore <3