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inkofamethyst · 1 year ago

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25 August 2023

Okay, I'm finally starting to draft my Notion, and one page I'm adding will contain my saving goals. Each month, I plan to put aside anything I have left over toward some items I want to save up for! I'm already committed to saving 5% (may go up to 10%, we'll see) and investing 1.5% monthly (may increase to 3%... maybe), and then I'll save for specific goals (some serious, most fun) after my expenses. For me, almost any single item over $50 is an investment, and any frivolous item over $100 requires serious, long-term consideration before purchase (tbh anything unplanned over $25 feels exorbitantly expensive). I currently have six goals to complete in varying amounts of time:

bass guitar + kit -- I don't have a specific model in mind, but I think I want to learn bass as a treat for myself after passing quals!

american duchess shoes -- I just adore their oxford heels so much, but I think giving myself the time to actively save for them will help me decide whether I actually want them or just like the aesthetic on others

new laptop -- honestly I just want a laptop that's significantly more portable without sacrificing too much power/space (I don't know the slightest thing about computer specs though so I'm going to need a bit of research), and I want to save up enough to get a new one before my current one craps out on me (it's still going strong though!!)

england trip -- I would like to go visit a friend after my first year in grad school, but I'll likely have to dip into savings for this because that's a lot of money to save in a short period

starter emergency fund -- I know that I'm lucky to have familial support, but I want to have a base savings in my account I think to help with anything life has to throw at me. I won't be able to rely on my parents forever. I know you don't go to grad school to save money, and I know I want to live with a bit of comfort and glamour, but I still think this is an important goal to start actively working toward. Since I didn't spend much in college (and got a well-paying internship during lockdown which went directly into savings), I'm not that far off from my goal amount. Until I reach that amount, this one is my priority tbh (and I'll obvi keep adding after reaching this amount).

According to my Notion widget thing, I'd have to have $687 left over each month to reach all of my goals on time using my time and cost estimates (major note: literally $500 of that is going toward the possible england trip bc the turnaround is so quick lol,,,, ~$200 a month toward realistic saving goals aint actually all that bad).

I actually am looking forward to saving for things??? Which is weird and feels very adult. Like yeah having expendable income is nice but I love the idea of having a bit of patience pay off.

I was a little daunted by the idea of starting a Notion for my PhD because there are quite a few expectations I have for it, and I was afraid of not "getting it right" the first time (I recognized that it's unnecessary to create entirely new pages for each semester when I could just add them to a single dashboard to minimize the remaking I have to do each semester (grocery list, recipe book, etc), but this makes me feel like I would be stuck with whatever I crafted the first time even though that's obviously not true). That's a fault of mine that I have to work hard to overcome if I ever want to get anything done. But I watched a video about starting a Notion in ten minutes and the speaker plainly said to just start simple. Then build off of the simplicity in small chunks when you have the time. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep a lot of the same functions I've used previously that have worked (Academic Timeline, Spaced Rep calendar, grocery list and recipe book), add a savings tracker from a template which I know I want and will use, and worry about all the other little bits at a later date many later dates. Maybe I'll add a half-hour (or single-task) "Notion Tune-Up" to my Admin Friday routine. Play around and fix it up bit by bit brick by boring brick (da-da da da-da da da-da).

I'm going to be relatively close to one of the cities/venues where Welcome to Night Vale is performing on its tour this fall, and I am so so so so tempted to just buy a ticket and go alone. The only thing holding me back is not knowing exactly what my first semester will look like calendar-wise. Like I'd probably (maybe..) skip it if there was an exam the next day, you know? But that opportunity seems almost too good to skip considering the cost (esp since I'm going to have to miss out on The Crane Wives this fall even though they're coming near my hometown for their first tour post-pandemic and that kills me on the inside a little). I'd love to support my favorite scripted podcast if I could. I also just don't know the area at all or how safe it would be to go alone. I mean,,,,, I could just adopt a bit of the delulu and hope for the best. There are only a few more days for me to buy the ticket relatively guilt free and I'm pretty close to just doing it.

Today I'm thankful that my sibling had a good move in day.

I... ugh I really need to get started on my hair. My sister used a hack this last time on her hair where she braided halfway, banded, then came back to it after the roots were all done. I might implement that. There's no way I'll be able to finish all of my hair plus everything else I need to do if I braid every strand straight through. I want to be packed by Sunday night so I can use Monday morning as a last-minute-check period.

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zyrafowe-sny · 2 years ago

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Tag 9 People You Want to Get to Know Better

@avephelis tagged me in this about a week ago when I was still a little loopy on cough medicine and @imperfection-you-will-find tagged me in this today, so I'll give it a go. :)

CURRENTLY READING:

-Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher (I love her worldbuilding here and in the related The Saint of Steel series, I love her characters, I'm not always in the mood for the romance B-plot)

-Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (rereading the original French a chapter at a time and then listening to the French language audiobook of that chapter - this is partly because of the Collector in TOH, partly because my French is super rusty, and partly because I'm generally way overdue for a reread)

-various fanfic on AO3

FAVORITE COLOR:

It's not easy to guess based on my stuff or clothes, but it's yellow. I love the pure joy of it and it makes my heart sing, but I only want it in small quantities. I own a lot more purple and teal, and enjoy navy, brown, and warm charcoal as neutrals.

LAST SONG:

Subterranean Homesick Blues by Bob Dylan to understand a reference my partner made using a recent MoringMark comic meme template

LAST MOVIE:

Wakanda Forever. We never did manage to see it when it was in theaters/at the drive-through, but it just got on Disney+.

SWEET/SPICY/SAVORY:

If I have to choose, then spicy. It's delicious and medicinal when I'm sick (especially when it's spicy soup). I love vegetarian Tom Yum, vegetarian Tom Kha, and vegetarian spicy miso ramen.

I also really love the mix of sweet and spicy in pineapple and jalapeño pizza and Mexican hot chocolate.

CURRENTLY WORKING ON:

-Finally shaking off this bug

-Beta-reading A Potter's Field for theprincessofdenial (read her stuff!)

-An angsty Grimwalker Bilentine's Day fic (I've had the baby plot bunny since November or so but only started writing writing yesterday - might wind up wrapping up after Valentine's Day but that might be fine since this won't exactly be fluffy)

-A Collector one shot (started this almost immediately after watching FTF but then we got sick and this stalled out)

-A few one shots in my la familia Noceda series (most actively a couple Camila-focused one shots and a missing scene from Blood Brother)

-Plotting, writing, and revising in my Palistrom & Promises series (have to rethink Skara's characterization a little post-FTF, so I might bounce to another planned fic in this series first)

-Early stages plotting for a MannyLives!AU and other fic ideas

It's nice to have multiple WIPs/plot bunnies (I only got back into creative writing last October after a many-year hiatus - thanks, TOH!), but between executive dysfunction/bouncing between lots of things/writer's block/life, I'm a very slow writer.

I FEEL INCREDIBLY AWKWARD TAGGING PEOPLE BUT PLEASE PARTICIPATE IF YOU WANT TO

#thanks for the ask!#ask meme

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claire-starsword · 2 years ago

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The Shining Series’ lost mobile games

so, apparently japanese company G-MODE has an archive of old mobile games for the Nintendo Switch (and maybe Steam as well? so I’ve heard but i’m having trouble finding it). If you don’t know, Japan had a lot of unique pre-smartphone technologies, and a lot of games produced specifically for these platforms as well. Because these services have finally shutdown in recent years, these games are now inaccessible for the public and in danger of being lost forever, which sucks big time, so it’s nice to know at least one company that cares to keep them around, and their archive apparently even includes some third-party games besides their own.

how did I find this out? They’re celebrating the archive’s third anniversary by asking people of games they’d like to see added. They’ll be taking replies until April 30th. I don’t put much stock in that kinda thing, since i know nothing of business so who knows what kinds of negotiations are required for that kind of thing to begin with, it’s not guaranteed any suggestions will be added. Besides, I’m of the feeling that if certain big companies (like say, Sega, hypothetically) wanted to preserve their stuff they’d already done it on their own.

am I still clowning out there asking for shining force stuff? You silly bean of course I am. And more people are asking for Sega stuff as well. So I’m inviting you to clown with us, or at the very least get to know what stuff was once out there to begin with, because the Shining series has quite a few of these games, including tactical RPG entries that classic fans have always wanted back, and it sucks that they’re simply lost and uncared for now.

(Note: should you really decide to reply the tweet, here’s a template if you don’t know japanese:

タイトル: [game’s name, preferably in japanese of course]

メーカー名: [name of the company that made the game]

#GMODEアーカイブス)

So let’s begin with the games that have already popped up in this blog:

Shining Force Chronicles I/II/III (シャイニング・フォースクロニクル I/II/III)

The Shining Force Chronicles trilogy were ports of the Game Gear’s Shining Force Gaiden games. As you can see above though, they had different graphics. They are also very weird in that they seem to have been vvvvvery briefly available on Play Store as well? And then removed? And then accessible only through a Sega subscription service that has also shutdown??? so yeah it’s weird, but Android versions seem to exist as well, despite being just as lost. I tried very hard to find apk files but got nothing. If you ever do,

please

Ahem. At the very least, sprite dumps of the games (SFCIII here) exist in the Shining Force Central forums, so we can enjoy the updated graphics to some extent. I’ve even posted some comparisons between them and the originals for Gaiden III - Final Conflict before, but while the battle sprites there are only resized versions of the game gear ones, I and II did better and straight up redrew some to make them distinct as opposed to palette swaps.

Here’s some examples, pretty cool right? Sadly the game’s animations were more limited so there aren’t as many frames, but I still appreciate the heck out of these.

Shining Road -to the force- (シャイニング・ロード　～トゥ･ザ･フォース～)

I sadly cannot find footage of this game at all, so all I know comes from the archived website. It seems to be a turn based dungeon crawling RPG where you and your party members move together tile by tile and must figure your way through the dungeon without getting separated. Each of the four playable characters has their own attack range, and depending of your formation around enemies, it is possible to unleash combo attacks.

It’s hard to judge without seeing the game in action, but it feels to me they were trying to mix up the tactical rpg roots of the series with the dungeon crawling and smaller parties of Shining Soul, and in fact, the game does lift assets straight up from the Soul games. The character sprites however have a lot more color and are very pretty in my opinion.

Story wise it takes place in the same world as Shining Tears, following the story of Affen, a treasure hunter who dreams of becoming the first human Beast King General of the kingdom of Bestia. I’m not too familiar with the Tears setting to comment on that, but I’ll note that two out of the other three party members are said to dislike humans. The game got a sequel, Shining Road 2 -Priestess of the Dark Dragon- (シャイニング・ロード２～黒き竜の巫女～) which seems to be essentially the same in terms of gameplay.

Shining Force EXA Mobile (シャイニング・フォースイクサモバイル)

Sadly I cannot find footage of this one either, but as you can see in the pictures, this one is a tactical RPG like the classics, but with the world and cast of Shining Force EXA. The archived website is poor in information compared to the other games here, but it mentions the Geo-Fort being playable and capable of upgrades like in the PS2 version, which might be this game’s distinctive feature in terms of gameplay.

Story wise, it seems to take place somewhere during the original game’s plot, with the characters being transported to another world by a mysterious gate, losing their memories in the process. It sounds like a very excuse-y filler plot, but according to the one liveblog i managed to find, it actually delves into Toma’s backstory quite a bit, and also introduces new characters related to Faulklin and Duga.

I didn’t play EXA but did enjoy the story quite a bit, so I’d love to see more of this characters. Out of all games in this list, this is the one I’m most curious about. Sadly I can’t even find pictures of its exclusive characters though... I’d love to see an older dog boy in the series.

Shining Wind X ~Weissritter War Chronicle~ (シャイニング・ウィンド・クロス　~ヴァイスリッター戦記~)

Ah, the classic japanese of putting letters in names and reading them however you want. That is meant to be read as “Shining Wind Cross”, and it’s a tactical RPG like the classics, with the world and characters of Shining Tears/Wind fighting a bunch of dark elves.

What little footage I could find of it sadly does not show battles, but it shows certain assets are lifted directly from Shining Force Chronicles, and the archived website confirms that yup, it plays very much like the Chronicles/Gaiden games, alternating between tactical battles with a party of up to 12 characters, and HQ stops where you manage your party, items and everything else. These HQ stops also allow you to talk with your party members, including choosing dialogue options that might deepen your bond with a character, unlocking extra story events. As a soulblader, the main character Soma also gets to select a partner each battle and do special link skills with them, whose strength also depends on your bond with them.

Thankfully this one also has a character page so we see the whole playable cast, which includes a bunch of centaurs, blind foxling monk, and, crow birdman ninja, which wields a staff?? for some reason??? i’m a bit confused at his class but he does look sick as hell and that’s mostly what i want of a shining game.

So yeah, this is mostly all I know about these mobile games, if anyone has more info please let me know, it sucks that they and so many others are stuck in limbo, and finding any information at all is hard, everybody say thank you Wayback Machine for what little i have here. Also, if anyone wants direct translations of certain pages here let me know, I did summaries only because i don’t want this post to get even bigger.

#lost media #shining force #shining force exa #shining wind #shining series #shining force chronicles #shining force chronicles 3 #shining force exa mobile #shining wind x #shining road #you don't know how much it hurts that exa and sfc3 are the only ones to have no website at all #direct attack on me as usual #and yeah yeah i did promise comparisons with the other sfcs as well i will do it eventually #but ripping sprites from sfcd in particular will be a pain in the ass so don't expect it soon #it's the reason i put it on pause #long post

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mangoisms · 2 years ago

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hi!! i'm a fan of your fics and your writing and im so curious to know your writing process? like, how you outline, the programs you use to organize chapters, etc etc. would u be willing to explain it? i've been trying to organize my stories better and u seem to have a great grasp on it. i'm also willing to come off anon if you'd prefer to answer privately or smthn lol!

hi!!! thank you so much!!!! i have no problem explaining everything here, no worries! i'm happy to talk about it if it'll help out others ^_^ it'll be under the cut since this got long... sorry T_T

so, for me, when it comes to fic ideas, i usually know it's something feasible if i have more than a few scenes in mind, along with maybe some pieces of dialogue, and i know i can sit down and actually outline. for, say, wwt, i got that idea when i was writing dgfh and i knew immediately it was something i wanted to do and go in more depth on. (but some stuff is just a passing interest that i can talk about it but not something that i can actually do, if that makes any sense? like when i'm done talking about it, that's pretty much it.)

then with outlining, i like a concrete layout for things. i tend to have my outlines in notion for quick reference anywhere. i have a specific brainstorming template that i used for frmb, dgfh, wwt, and the others and it looks like this

(this can be edited, of course, with things added and things removed) another part of my process -- i tend to need a general scope of the landscape but it's not as hard as it seems. usually i just google [city name] neighborhoods and i'll have the city itself pulled up in maps or something to get a handle on directions.

aside from that, i've also found it incredibly helpful to outline/write out specific beginnings and endings. the beginnings are easier but endings are wayyyy harder and i know i need to put something done otherwise it might not come together how i want it. it's not necessarily a specific point, but rather more of a scene, like a vision for the end.

(i don't know if ANY of this makes sense btw so if you have any more questions, please feel free to let me know!)

but ok, back to outlining. one thing for me that i did for wwt and then again with that new tim fic (that i still need to make an acronym for...) is that i actually wrote out a rough outline in my journal and then i copied it to notion and elaborated more on certain points as more ideas came to me.

sometimes i have the urge to outline strictly in notion -- which is what happened with frmb -- but other times i like to actually write things out and then i'll copy it to notion just because i don't always have my journal.

alongside this, i also love making playlists! playlists are soooo central for my fics! genuinely i can't have a fic without a playlist LOL.

once all of that is fulfilled -- i can start writing! for me, i use a combination of google docs and a writing program called scrivener. google docs is mostly for when i'm writing on my phone. when i'm on my laptop, i will use scrivener 95% of the time.

i bought and downloaded scrivener from here. it's $59 USD but they have an education discount that's based on an honor system, so you don't even have to be a student/prove you are a student and it's $50 USD.

the good thing about scrivener, though, is you're buying a license to it, which means once you buy it, it's yours forever. no subscription nonsense or anything, which i really like. for that, i think it's super super worth it to get it. i also think, with all the capabilities scrivener has (which i'll get into), it's not as expensive as it could be. but of course, it still is an expense, but i've had it for four/five years now and it's absolutely paid for itself.

so, within project files, you can do things like set word count goals for chapters, keep track of your statistics and writing history, organize folders, etc etc. this is what frmb's project file looks like

and i kept dgfh and wwt in one project file since they weren't that long/big on their own, so this is what their project file looks like

there is just. SO MUCH you can do and i haven't even really figured out how to use everything or what tools there are. literally right now as i'm typing this and clicking around on scrivener, i apparently discovered that it has. a whole ass name generator

this certainly could've have come in handy earlier.... but now i know. and now you and everyone else knows! so. i write primarily in here and i also do my editing here. i won't get into the editing but scrivener also has a tool that lets you compile chapters into an epub file, which i've utilized to edit/read much more closely in book format.

so that's really it. i use notion for outlining and then i use scrivener for writing and organizing everything else! i hope this answered your question and i'm terribly sorry this got so long but if you have any other questions/i didn't cover something, feel free to let me know ^_^ i don't mind at all!

#actually quite excited about the name generator #i often need a throwaway name sometimes and it becomes this whole thing of me taking time to google stuff LOL #so now i can just use them... thanks anon 🫡 i would not have discovered it without this ask #inbox #anonymous

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atan-orofarne · 13 days ago

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One thing jumped out at me in here:

Since Squarespace is templets, they legally own whatever you make.

I think it is important to note that they do not own any of the material you upload. They do not own your photos or the things you've written. They don't own the stuff you make.

They own the system that's used to deliver that material, and they own the designs and tools that their employees have created to serve that material.

And that does make it a lot harder to migrate to another service — you can't just pick up the design and move it, you have to recreate things in the new service, and the design will almost certainly look different.

But that's the fundamental tradeoff in using a no-code website service. It's not portable, but it's easier entry. You're not having to make difficult technical design decisions, you're not having to support and update your website and the software it runs on, and you're not having to pay someone individually to make and maintain a website for you — and then pay for web hosting on top of that. That stuff adds up, and some of these template based sites are good choices for people running a small business and looking to just have a website out there.

Like, I work for a small company that has a custom-brew WordPress site that we host on our own VPS (virtual private server — one option of many for web hosting), and I know that we pay thousands each time we do a website overhaul and update (every 5ish years, so as to not look dated compared to the competition), and pay at least $20/mo for the hosting. That makes SquareSpace's $23/mo business plan sound not terribly unreasonable.

Another place I worked, one of the employees ran the WordPress site on the cheap, and it was a mess. Took forever to load because it was full of plugins — and we got breached multiple times (just the site, not our internal network) with our site getting hijacked and used to spread malware and scams before the person was able to recover it, wipe it out, and reupload everything. It was a stressful mess.

And all that stuff gets WAY more complicated if you throw an online shop into the mix. Getting all these components to link up together is not easy, and the alternative to a bundled service will often be just paying someone (more) for support — which is great if that's what you want and you can afford it. But these kinds of at-scale offerings can actually be the right choice for some people and businesses.

This isn't an endorsement. I'm not saying they're a good company or anything. I've not used them, and I'm not saying you should. I just have some experience in this area. If this is something you're looking to do, do some research, and try to make the right choice for your needs — for most folks who aren't looking for a sideline in technical work, it'll probably be some sort of service, though, and they all have these drawbacks.

Fundamental life advice: never trust a product from a youtuber/influencer sponsorship

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denimbex1986 · 10 months ago

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With his first feature film “Weekend,” Andrew Haigh not only impressively began his own career as a director, but also promptly wrote himself into queer film history in 2011. He later achieved something similar with the series “Looking,” but the Brit also directed works as diverse as the hetero-marriage drama “45 Years” with Charlotte Rampling and the whaling miniseries “The North Water” with Colin Farrell. Now he is back with “All Of Us Strangers”, a heartbreaking romantic film of a very special kind, which stars Paul Mescal, Jamie Bell and Claire Foy alongside lead actor Andrew Scott.

Mr. Haigh, "All Of Us Strangers" is based on the novel "Summer with Strangers" by the Japanese Taichi Yamada, whose story you have changed significantly. In your film the protagonist is gay and there is also a love story. What was it about the template that appealed to you?

Andrew Haigh: I was fascinated by the basic idea, which I have now adopted unchanged, namely the idea that as an adult you meet your own parents again, but they are the same age as you. Unlike in the case of my protagonist, mine are alive My own parents still do, but I'm now 50 years old and I also know that they won't be there forever. So I wanted to write a story about loss and grief - and about how much in life remains unsaid and how little we sometimes know about the people with whom we actually have the most important relationships.

But that alone wasn't enough for a film?

I found it interesting to add a gay romance to the story because I see a connection there. Our relationship with our parents and our relationship with our sexuality are connected. And above all, our understanding of love is shaped by our relationship with our parents. What we experience there has an impact on every subsequent love relationship and the rest of our lives. Love is really a strange thing that you have to learn. You have to understand how to give love to a person, but also how to receive it. Of course, familial and romantic love are two different things, but in each case related. Both cases are about compassion and being seen and understood. If you are denied this the first time, it will make things difficult later on.

The protagonist Adam is, by the way, even in the original, a screenwriter...

Of course I didn't want to change that, especially since I was trying to make the story as personal as possible for myself anyway. The author of the novel is also a screenwriter himself. So it's no coincidence that the film now feels like an act of writing in which you retreat into yourself. Just as I try to create a world with this story, my protagonist also creates a world in the encounter that is not entirely real. We both examine our own lives through art.

You have now gone so far that you have actually chosen the house in which you once grew up as the backdrop for Adam's youth house. Wasn't that almost too personal?

I made the decision more instinctively because when I was writing the script I always had my own childhood house in mind. Even though I hadn't been there for 40 years, I remembered every detail. In my gut, I decided to see if we could actually shoot there. However, I hadn't considered how strange and emotionally wrenching the experience would be. Standing in my parents' old bedroom or my former childhood room with Andrew Scott, who ultimately also plays a version of me as Adam - that was really strange, but somehow magical. The little boy back then would never have dreamed of earning a living doing something like that.

Was there anything cathartic about the experience?

Yes, much more than I expected. It was only when I was working that I realized how much these topics I wanted to talk about would resonate with me personally. And how much honesty the film would demand of me. That's why I'm very relieved at how well the film now seems to be received by audiences. The catharsis would probably have evaporated if everyone hated him. Instead, I recently sat at the London premiere with 2,000 people in the Royal Festival Hall and felt clearly that “All Of Us Strangers” also seems to have a cathartic effect on others. That was a very, very special moment.

You had probably already shared the film with your husband or your parents, right?

My husband has seen the film over and over again as it was being made and it means a lot to him. The film is very special to me, so it is to him too. And in a way it's about both of us, so we have our own, shared relationship with All Of Us Strangers that we don't share with anyone else. As for my parents, things are more complicated. My father is not feeling well and unfortunately he won't be able to see the film. I showed it to my mother in advance, which was certainly not easy for her. My childhood was not uncomplicated; my parents separated when I was nine or ten years old. All the personal elements that are in the film naturally touched her in a completely different way.

You've already briefly mentioned your lead actor, Andrew Scott. What made him the right person for this role?

Normally I'm not one of those people who insists that queer characters have to be played by queer actors. But in this case it was actually important to me because it's about extremely specific experiences. I felt like I needed someone for the role who had experienced what it was like to find their sexual identity in a homophobic time when gay men were dying of AIDS everywhere. Someone who, perhaps like me, grew up with the feeling that coming out was actually unthinkable and that you would have to live a lie forever. Whatever you do, until at some point it no longer works. I share this pain, this trauma, with my entire generation, and Andrew and all other gay friends my age have these experiences in their bones to this day. Of course, all of this can be explained and made clear to other people. But only those who have experienced it themselves can fully understand it.

Even the moment of coming out, which Adam experiences much later in the film, is ultimately something that is difficult to understand unless you have gone through it firsthand, right?

Absolutely. Of course, coming out is different for every person, but many things about this experience are always the same and still apply today. This procrastination, sometimes for years, and the fear that it builds up - it somehow becomes part of your DNA. Which isn't surprising, because the moment you come out to your parents, you say something that fundamentally distinguishes you from them. You tell them that you are different than them, and so you confront them with something that they will never 100 percent understand. Unless, of course, your own parents are also queer, then the situation is completely different.

Given all of the experiences I just mentioned, would you say that there is such a thing as a specific queer loneliness?

Oh, that's an interesting thought. In principle, of course, everyone can be lonely, regardless of their sexuality. Just because you're straight doesn't mean your life is automatically uncomplicated. And it's not the fact that you're gay or queer that makes you lonely. But it is often the reaction of the world around you to you as a person that leads to your loneliness. How the environment deals with queerness, the feeling of being different, emotions such as shame that have been internalized over the years – all of this can of course be at the core of loneliness, which then perhaps actually becomes a queer experience on a very individual basis. Even if, from the outside, the symptoms are the same as those of a lonely heterosexual.

Finally, we have to talk briefly about the music in the film. “The Power of Love” from Frankie Goes To Hollywood, for example, plays a special role. Why?

I have a personal connection to every song in the film, from the Pet Shop Boys to Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I was ten years old when “Welcome to the Pleasurdome” was released, I think it was my first own album. “The Power of Love,” this incredibly epic pop song about love, played on a constant loop for me. Of course, I didn't know at the time what a great queer band they were, but it makes my childlike enthusiasm for the song even more interesting. Because I now understand the longing that was addressed in me, I simply had to use the song in this story.

It's really fascinating how gay British pop was back then. In addition to Frankie Goes To Hollywood or the Pet Shop Boys, “All Of Us Strangers” also briefly pays tribute to Erasure...

There was never again a time like the first half of the 80s. It's incredible how much queerness was on screen back then, from Culture Club to Wham! to the Communards and Bronski Beat. Was there anyone back then who wasn't gay? (laughs) But then AIDS came along, homophobia spread with a vengeance in society again and everything changed in pop. At least in the UK. This musical queerness never existed in the USA anyway.'

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smallcatsims · 2 years ago

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Medieval Career Defaults

Alright, I’ve got another mod for you. It’s not as fabulous as my face templates but potentially useful to other simmers who do historical gameplay.

There are some amazing career replacements on Plumbob Keep by Bethgael and Morganna, but they don’t quite cover all the maxis careers, and I would have sims wanting to become a journalist/entertainer/etc and having to just ignore those wants, letting them take up slots. I decided to make my own, and I would never have figured it out without this tutorial from episims so props to them.

Also I tried to make these as flexible as I could for different historical games. Note that I am not a history professor or anything like that and please don’t send me hate mail just because I got some detail wrong. I play my historical hoods (some mix of medieval, regency, victorian, cavemen.. I have a westeros neighborhood too) pretty much based on aesthetics and I’m sorry if some details aren’t completely accurate. I’m also very new to modding and haven’t done much except edit the flavor text and chance cards. I don’t know how to make new icons, change the career rewards, and I’m not even sure if the text on the ltws will match the new career names.

Today I have a few defaults for you, for three different careers. I do plan to upload a couple more of them later as well. I included versions with the maxis pay and with pay reduced by about one half since I find my sims get too rich too quickly with maxis pay, especially for historical sims. More details under the cut but I’ll put the links up here because I get a bit rambly lol.

Defaults with

maxis pay

reduced pay

Artist - replaced with.. artist. But there’s no fashion photography, comic book writing, making llama souveniers, etc. There is some art forgery and the top level is still called “visionary” but the chance cards are altered to be more period accurate. In the medieval times, artistry was considered to be much more of a practical and well paying career than it is nowadays. Artists worked in workshops where a master artist would enlist apprentices and other underlings to fulfil commissions. Your sim will go from an apprentice, work their way up through a workshop, and eventual become a royal artist.. until their work is so universally revered that they are considered a visionary.

Entertainer replaced with.. entertainer. I swear not all of them are this boring lol. It’s mostly very similar, lots of juggling, ventriloquism, singing for knights at court, becoming a court jester etc. There are a couple of “woohoo work” levels just to be warned. Custom chance cards, meant to fit the time period.

Journalism replaced with.. poet. Now this one requires some explanation. I had a lot of trouble coming up with this one. Newspapers are a pretty new invention, considering that so many people didn’t know how to read during the medieval era. News was delivered by town criers for many years, which I could not figure out how to make a 10 level maxis career out of. Sometimes news was delivered on little brochures like Lady Whistledown in Bridgerton, and news papers obviously became a thing at one point but I would have to do so much research to try to make that accurate at all and the way it works varies significantly across times and places. I ended up making a Shakespeare inspired poet/playwright career. Again, custom chance cards to make it period accurate.

I’m planning defaults for the adventurer and intelligence careers as well. The adventurer career will be just called dread pirate and filled with 10 levels of pirate stuff. The intelligence default is based on the spies from sims medieval. I have a lot done, I just haven’t finished the chance cards for those two careers. Chance cards are hard and take forever to write. I worked really hard on the ones in these so I hope you enjoy!

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verbosebabbler · 2 years ago

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DIV Style and UL Style Comments: ZampanioSim East

I initially privated this because after I, through more webcode shenanigans, found what to me felt like a cheaty way to get passwords, but if all ways are ok than I'll reveal at least this much of my findings. Still personally unsure about revealing the passwords, but that's something for later me to figure out.

I know nothing about webpage coding, nor do I know much about ZampanioSim East, even though I’ve been exploring it forever so far. But I did find comments of things in the web code, but I think they might be like actual spoilers. Weird to say, since we have had things like direct author commentary, but those felt intended to be found. This feels like miscellaneous comments about how to make the game or what more to do that got left in the code. I’m posting them below under a read more here. Apologies if these somehow are spoilers; the nature of making ARGs is you can’t expect what players won’t find and can’t expect what players will find.

DIV Style post coffin trial of killer plus live blogging of a tgifradys

UL Style

if you "go up" in game mode, leads to jr in a chair attic mode (instead of a genuine moment of forth wall breaking connection chair JR just wants any info on the "real" zampanio, especially any cached copies of that dead faq link. twisting the one moment of truth in indie games like this into more lies (while also being true because yes plz if you make zampanio fan works plz send)

JustTruth ends with you being assigned your TrueClasspect now that you've answered all possible questions

when Truth and Game intersect you meet god (at end of adventure). JustJR mode where i explain why i made this game, sitting in a chair

truth and game true = meta map of zampanio if you are in true mode AND game mode at the same time

gigglesnort fnaf mod is creepy pasta

secrets under construction component, shitty geocities gif of construction.

creepy pastas scattered throughout the site, based on themes, of the form: "You sit down to play a game. It's weirdly obsessed with X. theme1 creepy. then thene2 creepy. * lightly themed ghosts (just enough variation for gaslighting) Suddenly, you can feel the pounding behind your eyes. "let me out" you hear, "let me out"."

a QUEST has a title, text and a reward, all strings. (so you can say that a companion themed quest gives +1 loyalty and a god quest raises your acolyte level, etc etc)

quest screen (has to be at end so can reference ITEMS and GODS (the two gods both are trying to woo the PLayer))

for each theme, finally break out PERSON from noun , refactor SKILL CREATION to use person place or thing rather than generic noun * store missing TEMPLATE PLACEHOLDERS (VISUAL_EFFECT, MONSTER_EFFECT, OBJECT, LOCATION, ADJ, INSULT, COMPLIMENT,CLASS, ASPECT, COMPANION, CITYNAME) in consts (missing CLASS, ASPECT, and CITYNAME, COMPANION NAME) * for each theme, write out a super tiny quest or two with TEMPLATE PLACEHOLDERS The city guard knows it takes a PERSON to catch a thief, and they have come to you. The ADJ OBJ has been stolen from the LOCATION, with no witnesses. Will you be the one to finally crack the case?" "if there is a companion who has a theme that matches TEMPLATE theme, they slot into anything that needs COMPANION name" * on player creation, generate quest array from themes. title is procedural from the theme of the template chosen. * quest screen (copy CITYBUILDING SCREEN as a start) has list of quest titles (upgrades to summary of quest plus the fake skill points you'd get for completing it)

https://zampaniosim.fandom.com/wiki/ZampanioSim_Wiki

pretend to know facts about the user, such as they play cookie clicker slow owl sounds in cctv mode need more reasons for people to hang around with ghosts blackbirds cipher wasted ominous song (you blew it) literally index page of ZampanioSimsim update death popup to focus on "new character to play as" not reincarnation jadedResearcher — Today at 5:08 PM note: when its time to go live, have LITRPGSIM e point to something ominous jadedResearcher — Today at 7:12 PM jadedResearcher — Today at 7:20 PM *persephone, hades, demeter quest. QUESTS are more "combination of side quests and overarching story plot". (think land quests) * session 0 is "the game is real i swear" notJR, the core of Truth is "zampanio was never real but the creepypasta faq was" notJR, and the core of game mode is "the game wasn't real and you couldn't accept that" notJR. * port in fractal shit post (cant compile dart version anymore), associate different states of the fractal with diff words from gaslight array * gaslight cursor revals a radius of true color (hidden yellow things in the pictures?) * post screenshots of this ramble hidden in Truth (is it readable in cctv mode???) * one password is aviary full o fanimated gull skeletons * another is just skelejr sitting in her wheelchair * sprinkle right pws at the 'end' of each path and more *zampanio (not the sim) is designed to spark Obsession in a target and convince them to attempt to enact or oppose the end of the world (the End can either cause the Unbinding of Chaos or the Binding of Madness). if you unbind chaos then the page reloads and you are a player with every theme at once and then some. if you bind maddness the page reloads and you are a custom spawned player with a coherent and human created backstory, skills, buildings, etc. regardless of which mode you can do a new ritual to Balance the Scales and return to regular mode. Which ritual you can attempt to do is decided by seed, and in order to Unbind Chaos you need to have 9 specific items spawn (from duskhollow) and attempt to use them in GAme Mode (they all have custome effects)

link to fake ramble of someone trying to find all the secrets and easter eggs of LitRPGSim (not the fake Zampanio game, the sim) including fake ones

fractal sim plus radio???

third path: press esc too many times and perma crash the menu, leaving the spiral sitting there goin "…" and it …panicking and activating win mode????

first ending where you max out skills (or played long enough to reach the heat death of the universe (thru auto clicker)) and menu finally closes and then fake credits role

sub titles unlock only when you unlock skills related to them. you have to discover them, essentially

zero player game where you get little mini stories about what you 'did', like "used Medical Crown to heal a king" or whatever. if the game were working PROPERLY it should praise you for whatever skill you've used the most, but obviously you've never used a single skill so it just picks one at random or glitches out. have console logs about ERORR NO FAVORIE SKILL FOUND etc.

if i ever do a lets play of zampanio it should be a hacked version that never goes live that is different in many very important ways but subtle at first

#discoveringzampanio

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everlune-evotide · 3 years ago

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Bingo template made by @hyba

Almost a blackout but not quite! I guess I don’t do 100% evil characters, and I have clumsy characters but none are hopeless.

Time to briefly talk about all my OCs listed here

Magic Wielder: Waverleigh Hawthorne

I have a lot of magic wielders tbh but I picked her because I’m biased lol she is the daughter of a wizard/bard father (see: Barlin) and a sorceress mother (Aracelle), and her and her siblings are in an unspoken rivalry of who’s going to be a sorcerer and who’s going to be a wizard. Wizards are usually looked down upon by sorcerers. The family is supportive and loving but when Waverleigh doesn’t get her innate specialty power she’s pretty disappointed. Except she’s a late bloomer and her darkness powers come in full force and she can’t control them and she almost hurts people she loves AND embarrasses herself in front of her crush, Alias. She eventually goes on to travel with her crush and use her powers to help with his performances (he’s a horror bard lol).

Mischief Maker: Glace Stonebriar

He is the son of a prince, born into a royal family of prim and proper and he is bored by it. He doesn’t want anything to do with sea elf politics so he decides that he’s going to do his own thing. He steals his father’s display weapons just to prove he can, on multiple occasions (he puts them back). One time he cut off half his ear by accident with a sword. He doesn’t have an accent normally but he has given himself one. Kinda British I guess? Anyway he eventually runs away with his adventurer grandpa and they become privateers. Then he loses said grandpa and has to go find him.

Cursed: Zereus

Zereus studies curse magic, and there are consequences to this, consequences that drive him a bit mad. He leaves home to continue this study, finding religious artifacts, learning curses are connected to blessings, stuff like that. The land of Jernoctrr is cursed due to some crazy curse magic used during the war, and it’s spreading to infect the other lands. Zereus learns how to stop it, but in order to, he has to absorb the curse himself.

Food lover: Marley Hawthorne

Oldest son of Barlin and Aracelle. He’s a sorcerer that can conjure up basically anything out of no where. The possibilities are endless. He uses it to make sandwiches. This pisses his wizard twin Ignatius off to no end.

Inhuman: Xander

Xander lives in a world where demons have risen from hell and have began infecting creatures of earth, creating monsters. This is usually animals, but when a demon possesses Xander’s father and takes advantage of his mother, Xander is created. He’s mostly human except he has big black wings. He’s on the run his whole life, but meeting Dakota changes everything.

Bankrupt: Axel Hawke

Axel’s from Mars which is just a mining colony planet. It’s not a thriving community for the most part, and almost everyone is poor. Axel spends all his money that he’s saved up all his life on a broken down freighter ship and gets him and his best friend, Logan, out of there. They’re broke for a very long time, just scraping by on odd jobs. Axel borrows money from people he can’t hope to pay back and gets in a lot of trouble by doing this.

Morally ambiguous: Varian Drake

Varian is a Variant, the perfectly constructed heir to take over Brillig, a billion dollar science corporation that makes supervillains and has demonized superheroes. Superheroes have been forced to go underground. A group of three teens work for one of the most powerful superheroes (idr his name or what he does, it’s been forever since I’ve worked on this, I’m so sorry). The kids have been forced to come out of hiding when he goes missing. These kids break into a Brillig facility, thinking they know where their “dad” is, and instead they find an experimented on girl named Lunaura that they rescue. Varian gets intel on this, and infiltrates their base to get more intel because the hero they’re trying to find threatens the existence of Brillig. But Varian starts to genuinely become friends with the group (and fall for Project: Luminosity—Lunaura), so he becomes super conflicted. Once he’s found out he goes back to Brillig but he feels awful and has to decide what he’s going to do: follow in his father’s footsteps, or take him down like the true variant he is.

Nature dweller: Cerelia

Cerelia is a steam genasi Druid. She wants nothing more than to be a botanist, and grow all sorts of species of plants to study them. Except she has the complete opposite of a green thumb, and often destroys her own work on accident.

Liar, liar: Rosalind [REDACTED]

She’s the daughter of two of my Vespyr crew members (don’t want to give that away right now lol) and she’s a wild child. Mischievous, always getting up to no good. She ends up running away as a teen and becoming a spy of sorts, which requires a lot of lying to get out of trouble. Or, you know, into it.

Musically gifted: Barlin Hawthorne

Barlin is a traveling merchant wizard/bard. He has learned how to play all sorts of instruments over the years, and really enjoys playing obscure ones. That’s it, that’s the character intro

Annoyingly perfect: Justice Wells

Since Shane and Raelynn are married I don’t mind saying they eventually have a little girl. However she’s born without being able to use her legs, and she’s very weak and fragile with brittle bones. Even a simple cold could kill her. Her best friend, Kai, helps her in whatever ways he can. All she wants to do is walk but a fall could break a lot of her bones. She has a very good attitude about her disability, and doesn’t let it get her down, and even gives the glory to God. But as a preteen, Justice undergoes many surgeries to get a super strong mesh placed around all her bones, making her a super soldier. And then she’s playing every sport (which ends up controversial because she’s enhanced): soccer, martial arts, gymnastics, dance. Whatever she can excel at she does, and she’s humble about it. She soars above Kai’s skill level and he’s happy for her but he’s also envious of how “perfect” she becomes. She does still have flaws but a lot of people wave them off because of Justice’s past…she doesn’t let them. She wants to be held accountable for when she messes up. Luckily her parents have always held her to a high standard. It’s difficult for Kai because he starts living in Justice’s perfect shadow.

Influencer: Mercedes ‘Mercy’ McKinley

Mercy has her own fashion line so of course she advertises it online through being an Influencer. Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, whatever. She’s got thousands of followers that watch her fashion content where she styles outfits, shows her process in clothing making, etc. she has brand deals for beauty as well and works with other smaller fashion companies.

Good-hearted: Jasper Clearwater

Jasper has always had a loving, selfless heart. She just wants to be friends with (almost) everyone, and she wants to help in whatever ways she can. When she meets Echo, she wants to help him with his trauma, and he finally lets her in. She stands up to bullies, even if it makes her anxious. She advocates for her friends always. If something involves her friends, this normally shy girl has a voice about it. This good heart gets her into trouble sometimes because she prys too much, she pushes too much and it makes people uncomfortable and angry. When he friend group breaks up, she has a lot of work to do and a lot of pushback to deal with.

Athletic: Dakota Gordon

Dakota is a military brat. She loves guns and working out and wants to be in the military once she gets out of high school. She’s in powerlifting and ROTC. She also loves nature and hiking and camping and she will sketch things she sees. She has no problem going on the run through the wilderness and mountains of Arkansas. Mackenzie and Xander teach her more combat related stuff along the way and she gets pretty skilled at it. She’s just very capable and healthy.

#writeblr #writeblr community #writers of tumblr #writers on tumblr #original characters #original content #The Darkness Chronicles #The Light Chronicles #Legends of Lyre #Pieces #Lune writes #LunarTyphoon OCs #oc bingo

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tyrantisterror · 4 years ago

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THE A.T.O.M. CREATE A KAIJU CONTEST 3-D!!!

YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE SAFE! YOU THOUGHT THAT THE TIME OF MONSTERS WAS AT AN END! BUT YOU WERE WRONG, FOR NOW YOU MUST WITNESS…

THE A.T.O.M. CREATE A KAIJU CONTEST 3-D!!!

That’s right, it’s back! Celebrating the publication of The Atomic Time of Monsters Volume 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth! (which in turn completes The Ballad of Tyrantis arc for this series), I’m holding another monster design jam. The third of such jams, in fact!

Like the first A.T.O.M. Create a Kaiju Contest, the aim of this contest is to create kaiju that would fit within the setting of my big kaiju story series, The Atomic Time of Monsters. Think of it as me letting you into my sandbox to play with my toys for a bit, or like you’re being put in the director’s chair of a new ATOM-verse kaiju movie. That means your entry does have to fit into ATOM’s world, which in turn means that yes, there are limitations to your creativity here. But limitations can be good sometimes - they can make us explore options we wouldn’t consider when given completely free rein to do what we want!

(also you don’t have to make a three dimensional image or anything, the title’s just a pun on how the third movie in a monster movie franchise will often be a 3-D film)

Read below the cut to learn the rules and whatnot:

THE RULES:

1. You are limited to one entry per person. Work hard and make your entry count!

2. Your kaiju must have some sort of description of its physical appearance and its personality - you can submit a drawing or a written description (or both!) for the physical appearance depending on what you’re most comfortable with. Using the same template/format as my official ATOM Kaiju Files (https://horrorflora.com/monster-menageries/atom-kaiju-files/) isn’t required, but it was cool when people did it in the last contest, so feel free to do so this time too!

3. The kaiju you create must specifically be created for this contest - no repurposing characters you made for other, wildly different stories. This is not “trick TT into drawing/canonizing my main OC” time.

4. The kaiju must fit the setting and aesthetics of ATOM. I’ll explain this in more detail down below.

5. The kaiju should add something meaningful to the world of ATOM. The more unique and interesting your kaiju is, the more likely you will win the contest.

6. Don’t make your kaiju too dependent on pre-existing ATOM characters - no “Tyrantis’s long lost evil brother who’s the strongest kaiju in the world.” These should be to Tyrantis’s story what War of the Gargantuas is to Godzilla’s movies – heroes (well, monsters) of another story in the same world.

THE REWARDS:

I will make pencil sketches of the top 5 entries in the contest.

I will then make fully rendered illustrations (lineart, colors, & shading) of the top three entries.

The winning entry will be made into a model ala the ones I’ve been making for ATOM’s core 50 monsters, which can then be shipped to the person who created it (should they be able to cover the shipping costs). That’s right, your kaiju could be brought to life in THREE GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR DIMENSIONS! (Hey, we worked the gag title in to the prizes!)

THE DEADLINE: All entries must be submitted by July 3rd, 2021. You can submit it here on tumblr, via the horror flora e-mail, or any other channel you know how to reach me through. I’m in a lot of places.

THE GUIDELINES (TO HELP YOUR ENTRY FIT THE RULES AND WIN):

The smartest thing you could do if you want to win this contest is familiarize yourself with the world of ATOM by, y’know, reading all the material I’ve published on the subject. In addition to the many kaiju files that are free to read on horrorflora.com, there are now TWO, count ‘em, TWO novels in this series for you to peruse, both of which establish many of the rules of the setting as well as its general themes and tone! You can get them in either paperback or e-book formatting (I’d recommend the former over the latter since I lack the technology to make a really nice ebook, but if money is an object, the kindle version is only $1). Here’s the links again if you missed them:

Vol. 1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us!

Vol. 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth!

However, since I know reading a bunch of stuff is, y’know, not something everyone is inclined to do, I’ll jot some good bullet points for you in an attempt to outline how ATOM works in a brief, easily digested way:

ATOM is an homage to the monster fiction of the 1950’s and 60’s (i.e. the Atomic Age), and is set in those two decades, albeit an alternate universe version of them where, y’know, monsters and space aliens exist. If you aren’t familiar with the monster fiction I’m referring to, there will be some reference material provided at the end of this post along with some recommendations for further research.

Kaiju/giant monsters in ATOM work under very specific rules. There’s a full description of those rules at this link, but here’s the jist:

ATOM Kaiju are created created by the radiation of a mineral called Yamaneon, which naturally converts harmful radiation into its own unique energy. In natural circumstances, it takes hundreds of years of exposure to Yamaneon radiation for a creature to become fully transform into a kaiju (luckily, Yamaneon radiation slows the aging process while speeding up the healing process). However, an explosive burst of energy - such as the geothermal and kinetic energy released by an earthquake, or the blast of a nuclear weapon - can speed up the process, turning a normal animal into a kaiju within a matter of seconds.

All ATOM kaiju can heal grievous wounds within minutes or even seconds, are supernaturally strong and durable, and can convert harmful radiation to harmless energy that they then feed off of. Kaiju do not have an equivalent of old age, and can theoretically live forever (though their violent lifestyle means that few do).

ATOM Kaiju generally don’t need to eat unless they are severely injured, getting most of the energy they need from solar or geothermal radiation - but many still have instincts that drive them to seek out food from time to time.

Most ATOM kaiju stand roughly 100 feet tall (depending on their body shape), i.e. smaller than the original 1954 Godzilla. There are exceptions to this rule - younger kaiju can be smaller, while exceedingly old kaiju can be significantly larger, but these are rare.

In general, ATOM kaiju are significantly more intelligent and emotionally complex than people expect animals to be, though most are incapable of speech or complex tool use. There’s a reason ATOM Kaiju Files have a “personality” section.

Most ATOM Kaiju are tooth and claw fighters - ranged weapons are a rarity in this setting.

While the terrestrial monsters in ATOM look strange, they are intended to fit within the taxonomy of animals in reality - reptiles, mammals, fish, arthropods, molluscs, etc.

ATOM’s mesozoic era was dominated by a fictional clade of crocodile-relatives called retrosaurs, which are based on the outdated paleoart that one would find in the 1950’s/60’s fiction - i.e. when dinosaurs were viewed as trail dragging lizards instead of strange birds. You can learn more about retrosaurs here (https://horrorflora.com/2016/11/15/atom-kaiju-file-bonus-a-guide-to-retrosaurs/).

Kaiju appear on every continent in ATOM, but certain areas tend to be dominated by different types.

North America is mainly besieged by retrosaur kaiju and giant arthropods.

East Asia is technically also mainly plagued by retrosaurs and big arthropods, though they tend to look more fantastical and mythic - and, often, oddly well suited to being portrayed by a person wearing a monster suit.

Russia is beset by prehistoric monsters that seem to come from the Cenozoic, particularly the Ice Age.

Western Europe is plagued by creatures that vaguely resemble creatures from myth, if they were also prehistoric. Dragon-y lizards, fiery birds, etc.

Towards the mid-way point of ATOM’s timeline, earth is invaded by a coalition of aliens from different solar systems called the Beyonder Alliance, and as a result a bunch of alien monsters can be found on earth.

Mars and Venus both host (or hosted in Mars’s case) animal life. The surviving Martians colonized Venus, and sent some of their kaiju guardians to earth to help us fend off the Beyonders (who are responsible for the destruction of Mars’s ecosystem). Martian and Venusian kaiju have specific anatomical quirks, which you can see by looking at these kaiju files:

Venusians:

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/03/atom-kaiju-file-29-karamtor/

Martians:

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-39-kemlasulla/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-40-podritak/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-41-sombarvot/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-38-ullawdra/

Giant robots exist in ATOM, but are big, bulky, and incredibly expensive. Fancy beam weapons also exist, but are similarly clunky - there are no sleek, elegant machines in ATOM.

Since the fiction ATOM takes inspiration from was made at a time when interplanetary travel was only just beginning to be possible, its scope is significantly smaller than modern sci-fi. Alternate universes/dimensions were pretty uncommon because the idea of alien planets still held a lot of wonder to it. So, as a general rule, don’t try to go farther than the one galaxy.

ATOM is a setting for stories that are focused on humanity learning to coexist with monsters, rather than humanity destroying them. A certain level of sympathy is put into almost every creature of its canon, even the ones that are meant to be villains.

REFERENCE MATERIAL

Here is a playlist of 1950′s monster movie trailers.

Here is some reference material from various monster comics of the 50′s and 60′s.

Good movies to track down to understand ATOM’s inspiration and tone include Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster, Son of Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters, Them!, The Black Scorpion, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Gamera, The Giant Claw, and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

And here’s the intro cutscenes for all the different giant monsters in the PS2 videogame War of the Monsters.

#The Atomic Time of Monsters #The ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest 3D

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stargaze-issei · 4 years ago

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— "𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞" (𝐛. 𝐤𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐮𝐤𝐢 𝐱 𝐟𝐞𝐦!𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫)

𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭; when your father, the head of the japanese mafia, was killed, your childhood friend swore to protect you till his death. now, you're the empress of the underground world, and he doesn't know what's harder, to keep you safe or manage to hide his feelings. what will he do when, for the first time, your life's at risk and he isn't anywhere near?

𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞; mafia!au, angst.

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬; swearing, mentions of blood, guns, murder, kidnap, yk... mafia stuff.

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭; 2.7k

𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞; lemme know if u want a part two bc i felt like it was getting too long and i don't know if anyone will read it or like it 👉🏻👈🏻

"where the fuck are you?" bakugou's voice stroke over the phone, noticeably angry. he had told you several times to never go anywhere without him, which you mostly did, if it weren't for him being away a lot of times. nothing less was expected from your right hand, who handled every dirty job, and considering your line of work, it wasn't scarce. but you did had other bodyguards, just as trained as katsuki, willing to give their lifes for you, which was extremely better than having bakugou giving his life.

to his eyes, you were still the little girl from before. he saw you as a someone who needed protection. at first, you agreed. your father was murdered, someone managed to get through all his security and killed him, none of the guns he and his security team carried around could protect him, killing you would be like stealing a sweet from a baby. bakugou had always kept you safe, despite his agressive usual safe, he cared about you more than he cared for himself. so you stuck to his side, believing, hoping, he'd die for you. but that was a long time ago, now, you could defend yourself, and had raised a sense of loyalty in your people by your own. your father's empire was based in fear, yours? by admiration. you didn't see your people as working ants, but as important parts of a whole. still, anyone who was a threat to you, bakugou made sure to erase them forever.

"don't talk to me like that, i'm your boss" you could feel him losing his shit, a smile began to form in your face. even when everyone respected you, he was still the same.

"you can't boss anyone if you're fucking dead, you dumb shit" a laugh came out of your throat, he couldn't avoid smiling at the sound "wait, oh, okay, i know we're you are. stay there, i'll be in three" he hung up before you could reply.

you looked back, at one of your guards who was just putting away his phone. of course they told him. why couldn't you go get your own coffee? being in the office all day was tiring, to be five minutes outside was all you asked for. a few seconds after, they handed you your coffee, obviously, a guard had to try it first, in case that barista wanted to suddenly murder you. of course he didn't.

"who let her go outside without me knowing, huh?" a furious katsuki appeared through the door, making a scene in the place. you gave him a warning look. if there was something you hated, was that. everyone in the area knew who you were, but why make it any more obvious. those people were just living their usual lifes, and people tend to get nervous around you. "the car is waiting outside" he understood, but you knew he was going to scold you anyways.

you walked outside, smiling, and got into the car, followed by katsuki and one of his subordinates, the other one got in the front sit, next to the driver.

"save it, i'm n–"

"the fuck you are" he cut you "your safety is my responsibility, if i say you can't go out without me, then you fucking don't. specially not when there are people after your head" there was no denying he was right, but still, it upset you.

"there's always people after my head, bakugou".

two weeks ago, two men went into your office. they were in charge of some dealing territories, though small, important. most contraband had to pass those places, you controlled those police departments making everything easier to your truck drivers. they were beaten, cover in blood and barely standing.

"our men, all of them... they all..." only one of them could talk, the other being too shocked to even look at you. "kazuhito's men, it was them... they said we had to tell you, they're coming after you" you couldn't show any fear in front of your so called soldiers, and your template remained at ease. a shout was enough to get those men the help they needed, after holding their hands, you promised to go see them once they were checked by doctors. you called bakugou as soon as they left, he was the first who should know and help you decide what to do next.

the kazuhito family had always been rivals, enemies of the worst kind. everyone suspect they were behind your father's assassination, but with no proof, even you knew it would be the biggest mistake to charge against them, despite your personal desires.

"i already told the drivers they had to take rout b for a while, but we can't let them just keep what's our" you explained to katsuki once he arrived. "those drugs have to get in town by us, damnit". it was clear how frustrated you were, those assholes had mess with your and your father's hardwork.

"if we retaliate, a war will unchain. your father tried to avoid that for years"

"and see how he ended up" bakugou didn't know if it was the anger, or you talking. "we will lose everyone's respect if we don't do something, they killed dozens of our people, katsuki".

he was trying hard to stay objective in that situation, but it was near impossible. a war would put you in more danger than ever, your life was at stake, and bakugou wasn't sure if he was willing to risk it. growing up by your side, your father taking him in when his parents died, you were his only family. more than that, he loved you. the only reason he was able to do his job right, was the fear of losing you. your head was already valued in millions, how could he protect you in the middle of a conflict, that would end only with your death or the kazuhito's leader's death? your power was bigger than theirs by little, but they did something that reckless, which meant they thought they had out powered you. had they? or were they just bluffing? had they miscalculated?.

"we're taking action, wether you support me or not" you looked into each other's eyes, you knew him enough to understand his fear, just not the reason behind it. your voice softened "but i'd much rather do it with you by my side".

"you're the boss" he spoke, already regretting it "i'll schedule a meeting so the high charges let everyone else know, i'm staying at your place so we can trace a plan".

and there you were now, being reprimanded by bakugou. he was extremely tired, he decided to stay with you until things were calmer, which could be several months from then. getting up at six a.m, going to sleep past midnight, being always looking for possible threats, it had given him bags under his eyes.

"i'm sorry" you said once you were alone with him, it was only then that you could let your guard down "i'm making this harder for you".

"yeah, you are. but it's my job, after all" that came out wrong, he thought. it wasn't his job, it was his fucking life purpose. he wanted you to live a long, happy life, as hard as it seemed.

"i guess it is" deep down, his response disappointed you.

"hey, look at me" out of nowhere, his body was insanely close to yours, you felt his breath in your face as he lifted your chin with his finger "there's nothing i wouldn't do for you, got that, dumbass?"

for a brief moment, the taste of his lips was all you could think about. i bet they're soft. but as fast as it started, it was over, katsuki pulled away harshly, inventing an excuse to leave. he had flown too close to the sun, so close that it burned his skin.

a few more people went to see you that day, asking for diverse permissions, advice and stuff like that. since it had been slow, compared to other times, you decided to home early. a call to your team, and the car was already outside. bakugou left instructions for your departure, because he had things to do somewhere else, much to his displeasure. you were accompanied by your escorts to the doors of the building, that seemed like a normal office compound. there were waiting two other guards, making a total of six people protecting you. way to go, bakugou.

"how's your wife, ryota?" you asked the driver. of course, not everyone fitted in the same car, so you got into the second one, middle seat, between a built up woman and a big man. you tried to remember everyone's name, but it was difficult.

"she's good, ma'am, sends her regards" he smiled at you over the mirror.

"and the baby? he must be a month old, right?" at the memory of his child, his face lightened "you should take some days off, i bet your wife and son miss you"

"i have a duty with you, m–" a loud impact interrupted him, the front glass had exploded. the car had an abrupt movement back and forward, all you could see was blood, everywhere.

the woman next to you took her gun out, in order to protect you , you thought, completely wrong. before everyone could react to her act, she shot the guard in front of you. you looked at your side, searching for someone alive, the same bullet that had killed ryota was in the guard's at your right forehead. besides you , the only other person was that woman. if she hadn't glasses on, that stare could've seen throughout your soul. then you remembered, katsuki made you bare with a knife under your sleeve. with a weird move, you felt its sharpness against your skin, it was there, but she read you like a book. before you could even pull it out, another shot stroke followed by a intense pain in you thight. the bitch had shot you. you blamed it on the adrenaline, because nothing hurt. what happened after was a couple of blurry images in your memory.

bakugou had called you more than a hundred times, you, the drivers, the guards, everyone in his fucking team, but no one knew anything. the cameras at your house never showed you arriving, your phone's location was off. he was out of his head, if he didn't hear from you in the next five minutes, someone's going to die. he rushed into his car, following your rout at a dangerous speed.

both cars were full of bullet holes, and every guard he had hired was dead. there wasn't a place without blood. tears of pure rage came to his eyes, fuck, it was his fault. he started to look for you, but the whole world was spinning around him. where were you? where was your body? were you alive?, this couldn't be happening. he had left you unprotected, alone, and now you could be dead, because of his uselessness. his phone vibrated in his pocket.

"sir, we– we have– the kazuhito's are here" he left as fast as he came. they had touch you, they had taken you away from him, and he wasn't going to let them get away with it, even if he had to go against a whole army, whoever was behind it all was going to pay.

a man in a suit was sitting in the chair of your office, smoking a cigarette, as calm as a rock. katsuki was so close to rip his head of right there, that somebody had to hold him down. his own people updated him, saying that he had gone into the building alone, with no weapons of any kind, not even a cellphone.

"where the fuck is she?" he crashed his hand against the desk.

"ah, mr. bakugou, please take a se–"

"tell me where she is right now if you want to keep your head, fucking bastard" his hand had wondered to the tip of the gun in his belt, menacing to blow up at any second.

"you won't do that, mr., if i don't return to my people in one hour, she'll be so fucked up that not even you will recognize her" a laugh surge grom bakugou, a dark, cold laugh.

"i don't have to kill you, then" one of the man's hand rested in the desk, like asking for katsuki to rip it off his body. as you did, he also carried knifes under his shirt. in less than a second, one of them was buried into the man's hand. he screamed, both in shock and pain, giving your bodyguard a hatred look. "what do you want, shitface?"

"i-it's quite simple, actually" his face was white as paper, and even though he wanted to talk normally, his voice shivered "we want you to take over the y/l/n's business, under our command of course" he let out a sigh, trying to keep his composure and ignoring his bleeding hand "if you– if you agree, she will have to leave japan and never..."

bakugou won't agree to that. not now and not ever. to give away what you and your father built from scratch, and spent decades keeping safe, was like killing your child, and your father's memory. to send you away, alone, where he most likely won't see you again in years, was also off the table. it wasn't funny anymore. he started walking around the man's chair, picking up his sleeves. he checked the clock in the office, he had forty-five minutes with the man, meaning, forty-five minutes to make him talk. he ressourced to every fast interrogation method he knew. the people outside the door weren't surprised when they heard the man's screams, even wondering what had taken so long for the boss to start acting. katsuki was never a patient man. his senses were blocked, he couldn't hear anything but screams and begging, all his eyes could see was pain through all the man's body, his hands felt nothing but warm blood. but for the first time in a while, he wasn't enjoying it. he was doing it out of need, the need to save you. every minute that went by, was a minute were your life risked. he never felt so close to losing his sanity.

"outside the city! she's in one of our safe houses outside the city! i don't know which, please stop!" ten minutes before the timeline he finally gave up. your intelligence had all their safe houses, storages, garages, every location needed. not a second passed when one of yours men delivered a map with all the points marked. there were five in total.

"throw him outside in ten minutes" he shouted, walking to the armory "two teams, six people each, my fucking people, hear me? now, dammit! we're leaving in a minute, if i have to go by my fucking self, i'll do it"

when he was armed to the teeth, almost a dozen of people followed him outside. they were his most trusted men and women, being trained together, he knew they were as skilled as him, and they were all willing to put their life's at stake for you, their boss. in the car, bakugou barked the instructions. he had narrowed it down to two possible locations with all the information he had. if they had to kill every person in those places, then be it. he's going to get you back.

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radcatcrown · 1 year ago

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I'm not saying that its an negative thing, I'm saying that the potential to be exploited without protections to the skilled workers is pretty blatant; ie, the negative which you yourself identified. The flooding of mediocre art scares me too actually. There's an article from Robert Evans that speaks of other dangers of it beyond saturation: https://shatterzone.substack.com/p/ai-is-coming-for-your-children To your previous points: It is still a collage, you say for me its impossible to determine what works were used and due to the black-box of it all, yeah, I can't. But if I had access to the base materials, the database, yeah I'd have a better chance. And I would be peeved if my own hypothetical work was in there without even asking me. It may also be the dinosaur brain but I feel that there is a difference in scope and nature someone making a collage out of clippings or samples than one of these neural networks combing through the web to assemble data that it can use to create the products it is being asked to do. Beyond this I feel we're at a crossroads where an old world is crashing into a new one. Previously the art that existed, due to the material circumstances of the world, existed because somebody willed it into being with the technology and materials of the time. That art had an intent, a process and sometimes a message This new world gives us another paradigm, there is now a machine that can produce aesthetic products(since you hate the term AI Art lets go with that) with just intent, with an invisible, forgettable process. (And its not really a new question, movements like Dadaism and Pop Art dealt with those things.) Like I said before, "Making Art", and "Wanting to See a Specific Thing that has the Desired Aesthetic Qualities" are different problems that due to the conditions in the previous world fed into each other. But that may no longer be the case. This extends beyond just digital paintings. "Nothing, Forever" gives a template that, well, if you have the available tech you could straight up ask the Machine-that-makes-Aesthetic-Products to conjure up a brand new season of a TV show you like. Or even a brand new show with the desired aesthetics potentially. Its actually an interesting philosophical question that is on the verge of needed to be fully confronted; "If it could be so, if there was some sort of force or machine that could just create the things we want to experience, does everybody and anybody have the right to have their wills materialized?" In your examples I can still see artistry, these Aesthetic Products are used as components in a larger piece, not unlike how you could use mass produced bricks in a mosaic. Not to belabor the point but those guys are not asking the machine to make the mosaic. I do believe in democratizing art, like you I feel a lower barrier to entry for art would be good, but less because of being able to have the product, and more because I believe that a society that understands how art is made, how to make art, what it means and how it can be used would be an overall healthier society. And that's a problem the Machine-that-makes-Aesthetic-Products can't fix.

AI art discourse turns people into unreflective reactionaries.

There are several disabled people below explaining that a moral person would just suck it up, deal with the pain, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and the lazy mooches and parasites who don't want to bother ought to fuck off and get out of the way of the Randian superman who are actually willing to work hard.

I guarantee all of these people consider themselves extremely left-wing and compassionate.

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mittensmorgul · 4 years ago

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save me from andrew dabb and the tnt loop... hello 8.22:

Castiel: I like this bunker. It's orderly. Sam: Oh, give us a few months. Dean wants to get a ping-pong table. Castiel: I've heard of that. It's a game, right?

PING PONG. Why has this particular reference resurfaced in the last week or two just to torment me. I am tormented... but my torment is not over. This episode is full of angst about the story-- about Bad Guys™ literally using the story written by Chuck IN-STORY as a weapon and a tool.

Metatron-- having spent millennia collecting the stories of Humanity-- somehow ~missed~ the Supernatural series entirely. In addition to having cut himself off from angel radio, somehow not noticing the entire apocalypse going down a few years prior or the resurfacing of the Leviathan or Cas swallowing Purgatory and becoming the new God(stiel) for a bit. Like... none of that ever cracked through whatever warding and protection he’d surrounded himself with and pinged his danger warning systems. How isolated must he have been? Or how much had Chuck also been shielding him from discovering any of this? Keeping him on ice as a character in his Grand Narrative to let him discover everything he’d apparently missed while in isolation, only to set him loose on the story armed with the story itself?

It’s wild how many plot twists and Chekhov’s Guns Chuck managed to plant throughout the history of creation, and the discovery of Adam and Serafina in 15.17 just goes to show how well and truly seeded the narrative was, in retrospect. And Metatron, to me, seems like one of the biggest seeds-- him and his Tablets, which for me was the ONE time Chuck truly managed to manipulate Sam and Dean into breaking the universe, rather than “tricking” them into stumbling into the choices he wanted them to make. The s8 arc of the Demon Tablet Trials was the single time Sam and Dean made a cosmic-level CHOICE to break the natural order. They could’ve left well enough alone, let the status quo stand, but no... they decided that the gates of Hell should be closed and locked forever. And I’m so grateful they pulled a 180 at the last minute, even if that one bad choice, that one grand act of hubris, propelled the narrative for the next seven years. It still stands as Chuck’s own little egotistical proof that Sam and Dean are just as manipulative and corrupt as he was, that they would meddle with the cosmic order to that degree, even if they chose not to go through with it when they knew the full truth.

Poor Cas, though...

CASTIEL: Dean, I can go with you. Dean. I'm sorry. DEAN: For what? CASTIEL: For everything. DEAN: Everything? Like, uh... Like ignoring us? CASTIEL: Yes. DEAN: Or like bolting off with the Angel Tablet, then losing it 'cause you didn't trust me? You didn't trust me. CASTIEL: Yes. DEAN: Yeah. Nah, that's not gonna cut it. Not this time. So you can take your little apology and you cram it up your ass. CASTIEL: Dean, I thought I was doing the right thing. DEAN: Yeah, you always do.

And here we have the OG version of the s15 breakup arc... back then it led to Cas becoming vulnerable to Metatron’s manipulation, leading directly to Cas’s full exploration of his own humanity. Throughout s8, he’d had his eyes opened to the true nature of Heaven, and now I can’t help but see Metatron taking Cas’s grace and returning him to live a human life as a punishment that Chuck would’ve truly felt was a punishment, you know? Except... that’s not how Cas saw it at all.

And before I start getting angry that Cas was never allowed to accept his own humanity and choose the life that Chuck saw as a punishment because to Cas it would’ve been a GIFT... I’m gonna return to the discussion of villains using the story itself as a weapon...

Crowley did the same, just as the Leviathans had done in 7.06. He used the story itself to manipulate the Winchesters, in a slightly different way than before. The Levi’s used locations to set a trap for Sam and Dean, but Crowley went directly after the individuals they’d saved, choosing specific victims they’d saved that would hurt the most to lose, to convince them to stop the Hell Trials. Granted, the “villainousness” here was mostly based in self-preservation. If they slammed the gates of Hell and banished all demons from the earth forever, Crowley would’ve been stuck in hell, forever. And he would’ve hated it... So it’s hard to really fault him from taking whatever measures necessary to stop that from happening to him.

But Metatron... he took The Word, weaponized it like the Chuck Protege he was. Surely, he’d also spent the intervening millennia hiding out of self-preservation so the agents of Heaven wouldn’t tear into him to pluck out the information they needed to take over Heaven. I mean, they eventually organized the whole apocalypse deal even without the power of the angel tablet powering them up the way Metatron did. But with that tablet... well, any angel could’ve set themselves up as the new God. It was just the method Metatron used was just as manipulative and dodgy as Chuck’s own writing, since he’d used Chuck’s own stories as his template.

I just find all of this fascinating. It really is spirals all the way down, right up until the penultimate episode of the series. Then everything stops making sense and we got That™.

#spn 8.22 #dabb vs cars #Chuck's process #spn 15.17 #spn 15.03 #spn 15.09 #spiders georg of the tnt loop #destiel #the scheherazade of supernatural #s15 is weirdly a strange retelling of the major events of s8 until you hit #spn 15.20 #at which point it just randomly and incoherently jumps back to s2 to retell Chuck's Original Story before free will and humanity #became the ideals of the narrative

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