#but this? this helps with the insight

[pageofheartdj]

Wait no it's a pure coincidence I swear xD

AvPD from cluster C, NPD from cluster B, SzPD from cluster A.

Gotta get them all for f's sake xD

[abellarts]

[Sometimes, you just need a friend]

Happy Jon Sim and Cats Day everyone!

I wanted to do something this year and I've been getting into 3D art so I went and did this, and yeah that is a 3D model! Spent a couple of days on it as I wanted to practice my skills. Anyway have a purr-ific day J. Sims and Cats day everyone :3

[Video Description: A recording showcasing different angles and details from the sculpture featured in the earlier painting.]

[quicksilversnails]

Took some notes from the Wild Life retrospective episode of the Imp & Skizz podcast featuring Grian because I thought the behind the scenes info was really interesting!

(3:15) The wild cards were all kept totally secret from the players (apart from Grian), with the exception of the superpowers and finale (as they required the players to set keybinds)

(3:45) The players were given files containing the required mods each week, which were named things like "creeper rain" to throw them off

(4:12) Wild cards were a combination of data packs and mods

(4:38) Grian told them not to read the folder name to avoid spoilers (which is kind of impossible), so everyone fully believed there would be creeper rain lol. Grian was saying it in jest but everyone took it seriously and were apologetic about having seen it, to which Grian told them not to worry

(6:58) Grian originally contacted a data pack dev called Brace for help with programming the wild cards. Some, like the shrinking/growing could be achieved with minecraft attributes, but the snails were too janky and unusable. Grian still liked the idea though, so he reached out to mod developers Henkelmax and Breadloaf, who designed the pathfinding/behaviour from scratch

(8:49) They had a debugging mode used to test the pathfinding of the snails, shown in the podcast and in Grian's credits

(10:09) Grian wants most of the credit to go to the development team and artists, as he was mostly in charge of ideas & organization!

(10:39) Grian's only regret with the snails was that they were too fast in session 3, leading to unexpectedly many deaths. They were apparently not so difficult to get away from during testing, but perhaps the testers were more used to them than the players were

(11:44) Grian: "We did develop to the lowest common denominator" ie. prioritizing how players would struggle over how worrying about if players would do too well

(12:56) Oli's voice for the snails was iconic. It cost Impulse a life because he intentionally stayed closer to it to hear the voice lol

(13:42) Danny was in charge of the snail models and animations

(14:11) During testing, the snails just sounded like Oli, which made it feel weird. They pitched up his voice so that it'd be less immediately recognizable

(15:18) The snails' jumping attack was meant to be clearly telegraphed: they would stop, wiggle, make a "ooeee" sound before jumping. Many players had their friendly creatures volume turned very low/off (as cows and other mobs are loud), which made this attack much less obvious for them

(16:57) The growing/shrinking had the least testing done for it, as it was the simplest conceptually and to program. This meant that the falling off of blocks due to the shrinking hitboxes wasn't anticipated

(17:55) Before the 1st session, Grian told them that he didn't think anyone would die to the wild card. Pearl's death made Grian pretty nervous, as he didn't want everyone dying too early in the season

(19:29) 6 lives were given, knowing that many of the death to the wild cards were unexpected/unfair. The intent was for ~3 lives to be allocated for wild cards, and ~3 for PvP.

(21:13) The developers were all fans of the Life Series!

(22:43) The shrinking/growing was intentionally pretty simple to ease players/viewers into the concept and build up toward more dramatic wild cards like the snails

(25:38) In the hunger episode, Grian didn't know which foods would be good

(25:58) Grian thinks that "it's unfair that Grian already knows everything" is valid criticism, but that it's important for him to be involved with the ideas. Having someone else do that is like having someone else record his videos: Life Series is his brainchild

(26:35) Well before the season began, while they were still developing the concept, Grian asked the other players for wild card ideas that would meet a few criteria. All of them ended up being unused for one reason or another. Impulse thinks his ideas were very "inside the box" because he was viewing things through what was possible in vanilla Minecraft. His idea was to have a scavenger hunt where the players would search to find a relic. The first person to find it would get a buff. Skizz's idea was for every player to turn into a random passive mob for every given interval of time. They would have to find every other player of the same mob type as them or else the whole group loses a life.

(29:44) The food qualities were weighted by the rarity of the item, so very common blocks like dirt and cobblestone would never give anything good. The other items were randomly selected

(30:23) Regular blocks/items cannot be made edible normally, so they had to circumvent that and custom code a fix for items not stacking correctly

(32:41) While a lot of players do want to win, the main priority is creating entertainment, which prioritizes playing recklessly

(33:20) The food wild card wasn't included in the finale because it would've felt like "too much". There was a higher risk of technical issues since it changed the data values of items, and Grian didn't want someone's last death to be because they ate their sword. In his mind, it was a good and fun wild card, but didn't need to be repeated in the finale. Impulse points out that they all would have collected more rare items by that point, removing the incentive to search for blocks to eat

(33:46) The wild cards in the finale were nerfed from their original sessions. The shrinking/growing had a smaller height range, the snails moved slower, etc.

(36:21) The personalized snail skins were a late addition by Danny, who made 18 skins very quickly

(36:49) Grian did not anticipate the snails becoming as popular with fans as they were. After the session released, they had the idea to release the snail merchandise, which directly funded the rest of the season

(39:20) Grian spent what "felt like every day" testing with the developers. They'd record the sessions on Tuesdays, meet up with the dev team, talk about what need to be done, testing, bugs, etc, edit and upload on Saturday, and would get a few days grace before starting again

(40:01) After the snail session, Grian was worried that the season would be very short due to all the deaths. They were considering toning down the later wild cards but ultimately didn't change them too much

(40:36) The time wild card was carefully balanced. If it had gone even a little faster, many players likely would have died because they wouldn't have time to react to threats like baby zombies or creepers.

(40:57) While sessions normally run for a variable amount of time, session 4 was hardcoded at 2 hours. Grian ended the session ~10 minutes early, just after they hit max speed, because he felt like things were getting dicey

(42:46) When the wild card first activates, it looks a lot like the server had frozen or crashed. Grian told the players before the session started that it would look like the game was broken, but that it isn't broken. Skizz tabbed out anyway and missed the beginning 😔

(43:30) Having the rain start just as the wild card began was a good visual indicator of time slowing down. This was a suggestion from the dev team (probably Brace)

(44:41) Impulse and Grian "cheesed" the end of the session by going branch mining. Grian wanted players to take advantage of the wild cards (eg. mining quickly, helping to kill someone), and not have them just be an annoyance.

(45:30) Keeping the client and server-side time stay in sync was challenging. The sky's motion was changed to be smoother on client-side. The players were also not as fast as the server (around 2x faster), the server was going faster than that, and the time of day was even faster

(46:56) The sounds were pitched up/down based on the speed to add to the effect

(27:46) In testing, if the players were made 7x faster, it would be basically unplayable, which was why it was capped at 2x speed. This made mobs very dangerous, as they were now faster than players and could catch up to you and kill you easily

(49:01) On several occasions, they had to extend the fuse duration of creepers to make them more fair. In the time session, their speed was only increased by ~10%

(49:39) Usually, Grian was the one to test the wild cards and notice when things like creeper speed would be an issue, since he was the one with experience making videos

(50:50) A challenge with balancing wild cards is accounting for the playstyles of so many players: reckless players like Scar and Skizz, "kind and gentle" players like Bigb who would stay off to the sides, and "the sweat squad" (Scott, Impulse) who play very cautiously

(52:48) Trivia Bot was the only wild card that was not planned in advance. Grian was struggling to come up with a wild card for that episode, and wanted to have a wild card available that could give people lives in case many people died to early wild cards without it feeling cheap.

(53:33) Trivia seemed a little boring on its face, so presentation was essential

(54:34) This one made Grian the most stressed due to all the moving parts involved in making it (coding and pathfinding mostly by Henkelmax, visuals by Hoffen, audio/music, questions)

(55:08) Trivia Bot's design was based on Grumbot and Mettaton from Undertale. Hoffen drew concept art shown in the video

(58:32) They show Trivia Bot's custom animation for becoming a snail and it's really cool

(59:12) The music was the most stressful part of the project. Grian spent 2-3 days looking through Epidemic Sounds for a Trivia Bot theme song and couldn't find anything good. He commissioned Zera @hopepetal for a theme song, which is played in the podcast. However, Grian realized he needed a full audio package, so he commissioned Oli late in development, who created the final soundtrack and many audio variations

(1:01:38) Grian wants to send appreciation for everyone who worked on the project, even if their work ultimately went unused

(1:02:58) Skizz was happy to give back however he could by staying on standby in the final episode as a zombie, as the players were able to "reap all the benefits" of the hard work of the development team

(1:05:21) Grian didn't know any of the trivia questions beforehand, which were done by fans of the series. The goal was for ~50% of the questions to be answered correctly, which was approximately met

(1:07:11) Players couldn't get questions about themselves because it would be too easy. This would encourage players to leave their bot, allowing other players to mess with them

(1:07:57) Grian felt a little left out from the discovery element of the wild cards, and decided to mess with Scar by hiding his bot. He wasn't expecting Scar to die from it, and could tell that he was genuinely a little upset by it. Grian felt bad about it, which led to a genuine in-game alliance between them

(1:12:32) Grian was very close to letting Trivia Bot give lives as rewards, but decided it would feel too cheap

(1:14:38) Mob swap was slightly toned down, with more camels and sniffers spawning

(1:15:07) Evokers didn't drop totems anymore. Instead, there was a minuscule chance a warden or wither would spawn, which would drop a totem if killed. Grian was a little disappointed that the warden got cheesed in the end

(1:17:45) Having the mobs start passive and turn hostile was mostly for the presentation, building anticipation, and so players could predict where mobs would spawn and react accordingly, making things feel less unfair

(1:20:32) There was no superpower made for Skizz (or Mumbo presumably)

(1:20:38) The superpowers were another late addition. There was a large design doc where Grian created all the powers, which were handed over to Henkelmax and completed over 4 days

(1:21:42) Grian avoided superpowers involving strength, that could cause someone to die easily. Most of the powers were social or movement-based, which couldn't be used for offence as easily

(1:22:25) Some powers were randomly assigned, others weren't. Impulse's was random. Cleo's, Bigb's, Lizzie's, Grian's were assigned.

(1:24:25) Grian gave himself the mimic because it could easily backfire (like in Grian's fall damage death), and because it would've been confusing for a player who wasn't aware of the other powers. They likely would've spent the episode just figuring out how everything worked and not actually using the power to its best ability

Lots of discussion about the superpowers and how they interacted in the episode itself, go watch if you're interested :)

(1:33:38) Talk on how the series "standard" rules evolved since 3rd Life. There was no keep inventory, and no restrictions on enchanting levels or potions, which created slow or unbalanced fights

(1:36:23) 3rd Life was designed to be an experimental series, which made Grian eager to improve it. For example, some people just weren't dying in 3L, leading to the boogeyman in LL, and so on

(1:37:17) The goal with the seasons isn't to one-up the previous one, but to create a different experience every time, which keeps things engaging for the creators

(1:38:31) At the end of each session, Grian would ask the group if they had fun and how they felt about the wild cards. According the Skizz, the answer was "a resounding yes"

(1:39:08) Grian had moments throughout the season where he personally felt like things didn't go well for him, and was anxious for the rest of the group's episodes. Things worked out while editing the raw footage, though. His issues were never with the wild cards themselves, but his own actions (traps not working, spending too long branch mining), but would always find funny moments in his footage

(1:43:41) Everyone in the Life Series cast genuinely likes and genuinely respects everybody else in the group. This allows them to make the show and get mad at each other, because they know it's all just in-character

(1:44:50) It'd be hard to top Wild Life in spectacle, and Grian doesn't want to start an arms race with himself. The next season could potentially be closer to 3rd Life, but Grian's not sure yet. For Grian, Wild Life was the most enjoyable

(1:45:20) Grian: "As long as people keep enjoying [the Life Series] then I'd love to keep doing it"

(1:49:35) With the finale, Grian knew how the wild cards played out the previous sessions and was able to adjust them

(1:49:56) Grian's goal was to create safe chaos where everyone knew what was happening and wouldn't die to them, which didn't go entirely to plan. The snails were 60% of their original speed and people still died

(1:51:03) Grian made a precise timeline of when each wild card would start/stop, it wasn't randomized.

(1:54:16) All the superpowers were randomized, with Bdubs' power being removed from circulation because it didn't have much use in a finale setting

(1:56:10) It was important for Grian that in the final moments, the wild cards were removed, so there were no interruptions. The timing worked out well because there were a few people left and it ended within ~10 minutes (this implies that the change wasn't based on # of players alive, as people had speculated based on Gem's death)

(1:58:48) The players all randomly switched to zombie skins throughout the session to mess with people on NameMC. Well-played :)

[ataleofcrowns]

I just answered an ask about this and didn't publish it since it was way too long, but since I gave away the answer to that person I may as well post it here, too.

This is about the "right" choice in X's route in their CH7 scene, specifically the first romance decision the Crown has to make in order to resolve X's argument with Behram. Read more for spoilers!

Verbatim from the game, the choices state:

“What about you, [X]?” You expect an apology from [them] as well.

Accept Behram’s apology on behalf of them both.

The person who asked me this thought the second option was the better one and interpreted it as the Crown defending X, but for the record, that is absolutely not what that choice means.

There is no option to "defend X" from Behram, because what X did at the coronation was a huge misstep. X is the one who instigated that argument and caused a scene at the Crown's coronation. That's basically like one of your friends starting a fight at your birthday party with another guest, except 10 times worse--sure, you can assume X had a good reason for it (and they do), but in the moment, the Crown does not know that yet. All they know is X starting an argument and blowing up on Behram at a VERY public and incredibly important event.

If your Crown chooses to accept Behram's apology on behalf of both of them, that in essence means letting Behram speak for X, which X absolutely does not appreciate considering that they hate Behram. Hence, why they also do not appreciate having the Crown basically listen to Behram and ignore X in that interaction. Plus, letting X's misbehavior slide does not win you X's respect either.

X respects it much more if the Crown holds them accountable, and also listens to them: in other words, if the Crown treats them like an equal.

So choosing to essentially dismiss X in that CH7 scene carries over into the CH9 scene, where the Crown has a similar dismissive attitude and lacks respect for X (provided that you do not have enough romance points--there is a way to choose the "wrong" choice in CH7 and still have enough points to get the high romance variant in CH9).

So, that's a bit of clarification and character analysis for the X romancers 💖

[thelesbianthespianposts]

bored, have some of my favorite animorphs quotes

[francesderwent]

thinking about snarky cultural/theological commentary and. the thing about snark is this: it’s easy, and it’s instant gratification. it’s easy because you’re playing to a likeminded audience. you get the way they think, you know the sort of things they find ridiculous, and so you know what’s going to play well with them. it’s not that hard to come up with a zinger that’s going to earn you applause from your own side. it’s also pretty easy to make another human being who’s not on your side look stupid, because we’re stupid creatures and we all have plenty of exploitable weak spots. it’s preaching to the choir, and it’s preaching meanly to the choir. and then, your snark bears all its fruit right away. you get the glowing feeling of having scored points against the enemy while being patted on the back by your friends for being so brave. if you succeeded in being snarky, you get the rewards of snark that very instant.

on the other hand, seeking to share the truth you possess in a mode in which it could actually be received—that is, says St Thomas, according to the mode of the recipient—that’s hard, and it’s so far from being instantly gratifying that you may never see the fruits of it in this life. not only are you not thinking about your likeminded audience, you’re not even going to trot out the truth simply in the way you understand it and call it your best effort. rather, you have to try to get inside your interlocutor’s frame of mind and understand how the truth you know is going to fulfill their own priorities and longings. you have to understand them so well that you see the truth of their position, even if that truth is buried very very deep, and then see how that truth connects them to the truth you see. you have to be insightful, and compassionate, and so, so patient. you don’t get to score any points, with anybody. your interlocutor might still get annoyed with you and turn around and make you look stupid. but you can’t just say “I’m going to speak the truth and I don’t care who hears and how they take it”—you have to care how they take it, because the truth is relational, it’s given and received, not just spouted into a void. and frankly you have to care how they take it because you have to care about their salvation.

don’t get me wrong, there are times in every person’s life when they will be called to stand up and be counted, to put fumbling words to what they hold most dear even if they can’t make everyone understand. but I don’t know that it’s a virtue to be always focused on being seen saying the truth, with no consideration given to who hears you and what they’ll hear in it—and it’s certainly not a virtue to be always focused on being seen saying the truth in a mean and funny way. “instruct the ignorant” is a spiritual work of mercy. but instruct the ignorant does not mean “instruct the ignorant while making the knowledgeable laugh and/or high five.”

[beautifulsimswherearethey]

the pottery studio next door

inspired by @moonwoodhollow's Zora Ceramics build

[woman-respecter]

idk if it’s my place to advocate for a sex/dating strike because it seems kinda hollow coming from someone who wouldn’t be dating or having sex with men in the first place but i think it is something that het and bi women should seriously consider.

[thepersonalwords]

You have a choice: pursue your dreams, or be hired by someone else to help them fulfill their dreams.

Jay Samit, Disrupt You!: Master Personal Transformation, Seize Opportunity, and Thrive in the Era of Endless Innovation

[recent-rose]

yknowwww there is something... deeply uncomfortable about the way mel never speaks directly to viktor in the 'build hextech weapons' scene. she really only speaks to jayce. plenty of people have pointed this out already but like the one scene they actually share a meaningful interaction and she treats him like he's beneath her. all this after jayce has emphasized how important viktor is, that hextech is theirs, together. she unequivocally ices him out, there's no other way to interpret this scene. the way it's shot too - from viktor's perspective, looking up at her, as though to reinforce the same belief in him. like he doesn't even bother expecting respect from her - or anyone from the upper echelon of piltover. he's fully accustomed to being dehumanized by everyone around him at this point. sometimes even by jayce, despite the trust they clearly have in each other.

then of course after this scene is viktor experimenting on himself. it's pretty clear that he has internalized his own dehumanization. crazy.

[classicslesbianopinions]

any tips for teaching yourself ancient greek? I can't take a class rn (schedule overlap) and I just got a student assistant position and my professor said it would be good if I could for now learn to read terms in greek,, I want to learn it at a later point properly but for now, any tips or resources?

hi okay sorry to take so long on this i wrote out a whole response and thought i'd posted it and then i woke up the next day and realized i had not. and then i had things happening constantly

anyway! if you mostly just need to read individual terms, the most important part is learning the alphabet, which you can almost definitely do online, but also any good textbook should start with an alphabet/pronunciation guide. i would also look up videos of people pronouncing ancient greek to make sure you're understanding the textbook--i had some funny accent confusion in my first greek class that was easily resolved because we were speaking out loud, but if you're studying independently you might not get corrections until too late. (note that most people pronounce ancient and modern greek differently, although i've come across people who were taught ancient greek with modern pronunciation, and of course people whose ancient greek pronunciation is influenced by their knowledge of modern greek.)

personally what i would do is find a textbook and work through it. you want to make sure whatever book you use has tons of drills and passages to read for practice--the real way to get good is just to get a ton of practice, and get as much as you can as early as you can so then it'll be easier later. (i just googled out of curiosity and i found this pdf of hansen and quinn free on archive.org--i haven't used this textbook yet but i know it has a lot of drills/practice. you can almost definitely find other intro textbooks for free/cheap, and even more for expensive, but again, make sure there's lots of practice!) once you get further along, you can start finding easy texts to read. i recommend geoffrey steadman as a starting point there--he has a bunch of commentaries on both greek and latin texts that give a ton of grammar and vocab notes. also, intermediate ancient greek language is a super cool textbook that covers higher-level grammar and the pdf is free.

there are probably other online resources that might be helpful to you, but i'll leave it up to my followers to recommend those. in particular i'm sure there are people who do youtube instruction and stuff but i so prefer to learn by reading so i've never looked. there might also be online courses that would work for you.

also, if you want to read/practice with people, you are always welcome to join the book club discord server, where we do language study--i've been slacking on this, but at one point i was taking the server through a chapter each of intro textbooks in both greek and latin each week, and i'd like to keep going with that and when we're done start through more and more books so people can always jump in if they want to start learning/reviewing. we also read primary texts in greek and latin. (the "book club" itself involves reading texts in translation/in english--if you join the server, you're welcome to join those readings, but you don't have to! currently we're finishing up the iliad and once that's done we start the metamorphoses.)

[howparadoxical]

DC characters as Tarot Cards. Batman Edition

Bruce Wayne - The Emperor

Logic, Structure, having control and thriving when able to provide his strengths to others

Dick Grayson - The Chariot

Unstoppable force unmatched, Determined and steadfast on his path

Alfred Pennyworth - The Hanged Man

Non-action, waiting for events to unfold yet never quite involving himself with the change itself

Barbara Gordon - Seven of Pentacles

Maturity hard won, willingness to do the hard and intense work other cannot. She anchors the spontaneity of others

Jason Todd - The Wheel of Fortune

Repetition of habits, going back and forth between recognizing and denying his role in the cycle

Tim Drake - Three of Wands

The understanding things could be done better, seeking to improve himself and do something that matters

Stephanie Brown - The Star

Hope after going through hell, Ability and new desire to guide others with her new-found resolution

Cassandra Cane - The Hermit

Desire to know oneself, unattached to material things, reflection through isolation

Damian Wayne - Six of Wands

Discovery of goodness, acknowledgement of need to grow and forgiveness of himself for not being perfect

Duke Thomas - Two of Pentacles

Striking a balance in conflicting interests, transitioning through past to future, finding his limits

BONUS!

Robin, as a concept - The Fool

Excitement before beginnings, confidence untested but life changing

[snaplight-anxiety]

Ik frayed has lots of scott focus lots of scisaac bits etc. but my goddd frayed allison my beloved. Following her ex bf on a road trip to a cross country meet she is not invited to and bringing a friend with her. Multitasking always. Fighting with her father who she loves dearly but god does he infuriate her. Hallucinating her dead mother so she can berate Allison into doing stitches. Literally sewing up her werewolf ex boyfriend as he dies from his own guilt in a public bathroom and bleeds black goop. The way she says “unemotional” in the most emotional way possible it still fucks me up. NO ONE is doing it like her ‼️

[nexttimeisnotthesame]

"What flower is this? You seem to cherish it a lot." "It's called purple crape myrtle. Just some wild flowers."

[sorry-not-feeling-it-right-now]

The more I think about the different interpretations of the voices as characters the more I believe that the way different people write them depends on what they’ve been through in life, which greatly changes their perspective on how they see the voices. Cause one thing I’ve noticed is that despite how the core of the voices remains the same, how different people may read them as characters would greatly differ from each other, making them diverge at that point. How someone interpret Cold as a character may be different from how another person interpret him. They can see him as a person who had experienced great trauma and therefore copes by convincing himself that it’s no big deal, or just a different perspective looking into a situation. The game provides enough evidence to support both cases, and so it gives so much more freedom for interpretation.

A game about perspective having characters you can interpret in any way as long as you remember the heart/core of them—That’s kind of poetic I think.

(Edited to have this cause I have a stupid idea. Ignore this)