#frustrating as well

[kuuhaiyu]

i really can't emphasize how heartbreaking it is that the recent harassment campaign against @/90-ghost (among others; see: 1, 2, 3) has led to well-meaning people telling others not to listen to him. he is one of the most visible survivors of the genocide here on tumblr. his entire journey of escape is so well documented! and yet, it only took a few people confidently pointing fingers to create an entire witch hunt accusing him and other palestinians of being disreputable scammers and liars.

i can't help but feel like the reason why people were SO eager to believe those accusations, is because it was uncomfortable to see posts from palestinians every day asking for our time, attention, money, and support; so when someone presented the perfect excuse to ignore all those posts and asks while also taking the high ground, people just LEAPED onto it. they wanted to believe it, because it would be more comfortable.

honestly, i understand feeling overwhelmed by bad news, by the number of asks and messages in your inbox, and so on and so forth. i understand needing to set boundaries for yourself so you don't get burned out. i think this is really when you have to have a set of principles to fall back on, even when you're tired, uncomfortable, angry, and/or sad. so here's the one i suggest, which has been working for me best: don't make your discomfort with this situation into someone else's problem, and for god's sake don't make it a public problem.

if you hate seeing fundraiser posts or news about gaza, i can't emphasize this enough, JUST MOVE ON. KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND SCROLL PAST! all you have to do is absolutely nothing. which is what you were doing anyway, so it shouldn't be hard. if you don't have the heart to read, or reblog, or share, or donate, or support in other ways, at the very least, don't obstruct the efforts of people who ARE trying to make a difference. this is, quite literally, the least you can do.

[artidoesthings]

Okay, so it starts just before the plot of Houses.

Byleth fails to kill this kid named Shez, right? Well, Shez has an Agarthan in their head like Byleth has Sothis. Shez ends up running into the House Lords before Byleth and Jeralt meet them, and ends up killing Kostas. Shez then gets dragged to Garreg Mach and offered to become a student under the house Jeritza ends up teaching. Your house then goes to take out the remaining bandits from Kostas's gang and you end up rescuing Monica. Something happens regarding each individual lord's homeland, and you end up going to help resolve it. The school ends up shutting down and the students sent him.

This is where the plots diverge. Everything changes depending on who you follow. Claude focuses more on dealing both with Almyra, TWSITD, and the Church. Dimitri deals with corrupt nobles and being attacked on both sides by TWSITD and the Alliance. And Edelgard is waging war on multiple fronts and is left going back and forth on rescue missions in between Ferdibert angst. On both Claude and Edelgard's routes, they team up.

You also are constantly fighting Byleth, and you need to decide to recruit them or not. If you do, you get the good open ending! If you don't, people who usually die in Houses end up dying here and you get the bad open ending!

H.

huh.

alright.

[alchemicaldesignquery]

TTRPGs: Degrees of Separation

Dipped back into the design chatter around these, recently, and saw some new rules or structures from a few different areas, but one consistent thing I always come back to from my own time trying to design a TTRPG and that I see in the design space:

How many degrees of separation exist between your players and the story you're telling?

There's a lot of differing views and opinions out there honestly, none of them perfect, many of them serviceable, when it comes to how to count the degrees and/or how to alleviate the separation (usually through rules, sometimes through social guidelines, which my brain auto-corrects into 'narrative lubricant').

A player has knowledge of this world and how it works.

That player is operating a character in a (presumably) alternate reality that comes with a variety of differences to their own world experience

The world they are playing in's differences can mirror or have basis on the Player's world experience, but could just as easily include complete fabrications of the genre the game is taking part in.

The Storyteller/Narrator/Creator etc., will have access to a large amount of the workings of the world; the player, shy of reading a full breakdown of the world (or whatever has been written), will be missing gaps that, their character, would more than likely have access to.

The ST/NAR/CRTR will need to figure out how many details the character knows reflexively/with recall/with effort/by the dice, and present that information at appropriate times. (Note: they are still a person, capable of mistakes/missing details)

The Player, trying to navigate each of these degrees, will need an increasing amount of rules and exceptions to ensure fluidity of the story (very difficult to get right).

The degrees will vary from game to game (and player to player), but I'm often reminded that a lot of games like to off-load a bunch of this into the dice rolls and/or stats the game is using.

Not a bad approach, but it can result in missing a lot.

It's one of the reasons I advocate often for context clues based around present world knowledge and trying to incorporate that into descriptions. Register what the players might reflexively have knowledge about and translate it into the world they are playing in.

Ex - A player with sewing experience and/or fashion history knowledge, might catch onto context clues for a situation if part of it revolved around the description of some clothing (A ghost's outfit proving what era/time they are from > a brief history lesson of the era found in some archive or library later), even if their character might not normally have too keen of an eye for such details.

There's always a conversation to be had how much of that context can be gleaned w/o the character having that same of knowledge but don't discount the possibility of that character's associations over the years/decades/centuries that they have been alive. No telling what the character might have picked up in their existence within the world they are in, just from conversation.

(Hell, any history with whatever the world's Neurodivergents might be, would probably explain any sort of weird facts the character might contain lol)

[lesbianonna]

watching wars unfold because of religion is unnerving

[qoldenskies]

i think its so funny when people take the way donnie acts at face value even though its a horrible lie because he's a horrible liar, while understanding leo is bullshitting very well despite him actually being GOOD at bullshitting. many such cases

[shripscapi]

“Blue is a good color on you, my lady,” Jaime observed. “It goes well with your eyes.” She does have astonishing eyes.

[freckleslikestars]

Fred, you had a part people loved. I mean, my TV Guide interview was six paragraphs about my BOOBS and how they fit into my suit. No one bothered to ask me what I do on the show.

Sigourney Weaver as Gwen DeMarco in Galaxy Quest (1999)

[thefloatingstone]

Appleseed PDA montage to save you from reading endless pages of unimportant politics that don't amount to anything

also because I have nothing better to do, I'm bored, I'm moody, my gaming laptop is still broken so no BG3, and it's too late at night to start drawing after doing animation clean-up all day.

[riddlerosehearts]

and the universe said, i love you because you are love

[frownyalfred]

“This fic would be better if—” babe this isn’t your high school English class and my fic isn’t assigned reading. it’s something a stranger wrote on the internet without an explicit request for constructive criticism or suggestions for improvement. you are not grading my smut fic on a rubric (I hope).

if you cannot consume writing without needing to criticize it, that’s a you problem. stop leaving me these kinds of comments — and if you DO: for god’s sake, please make sure you’re actually objectively correct about the criticism you’re leaving.

[spending-life-pretending]

conservatives really wanna act like the “woke left” is winning the culture war or whatever when people are out here making basil and dorian brothers and casting white men to play heathcliff in 2024

[999999999inadream]

toby fox needs to add like a bit of narration in deltarune abt kris like "they themmed they/themily down the stheirs" cus i cant go on seeing them constantly get he/himmed in yt comment sections

[8amira8]

youchie

[quaranmine]

i think grian's whole fishing Thing this season is like the best example ever about how yes-anding things and going with The Bit is such an essential part of hermitcraft. like you KNOW this man did not have "build a cod dungeon shrine for the enchanted book gods" on his S10 plans but here we are,

[becca-e-barnes]

all i can think about is bucky literally BEGGING to eat your pussy. just on his knees, calling himself a needy slut, just looking up at you with puppy dog eyes while he just begs for your pussy on his mouth. ugh.

Men who are this into eating pussy have a special place reserved for them in Heaven. Hearing someone beg to go down on you is life changing when they know what they're doing 🙈

But you're so right, Bucky would be so willing to degrade himself like that just to be allowed to go down on you. He'd be on his knees, trying to ignore how full his balls feel, begging for you.

"P-please." His voice is so quiet you almost start to question if he said it intentionally. "I need to taste you. I can't think about anything else."

His cock twitches despite how heavy it looks, flushed and angry against the pale skin of his thighs.

"Really?" You tease, tilting his chin up with two fingers so he's looking at your face, rather than your body. "Tell me exactly what you're thinking. Describe it to me"

He doesn't miss a beat. "I'm thinking about how soft you are, how warm and silky your cunt feels under my tongue. I'm thinking about burying my tongue as deep inside you as I can reach and still wishing I could get deeper. I want to feel how wet you are but more than anything, I want to taste how wet you are. I want to dream about it for the rest of the week. Every time I stroke my cock I want to be able to remember how you taste."

Precum drips from his tip and you're not sure you can deny him much longer. Not when he's making it sound so appealing.

"Do you even hear yourself?" You do your very best to act like you don't love the sound of every word that has just come out of his mouth.

"I do. I sound like a shameless, filthy, desperate slut. The type of slut who wants to kiss and lick and worship your sweet pussy until you're so sensitive you have to force me to stop." His hand wanders between his own legs, tugging his stiff length to the mere thought.

He's not above begging and you know that. He'll draw this out as long as he needs to until he gets his way but there's very little sense in that when you want this just as much as he does.

"Lie on the bed." You give him time to make his way over before following, lining yourself up just above his face.

You take a second to smooth his hair, enjoying the feeling of his freshly shaved face against the sensitive insides of your thighs.

He's looking up at you, your eyes meeting his. "Thank you." The relief in his voice is clear right before he grasps your hips and pulls you down onto his mouth.

Fuck, he's incredible. This is the mouth you dream about when you're alone. His tongue massages your clit, stroking back and forth before dipping into your fluttering entrance. You swear he must feel what he's doing to you. You feel your cunt clenching and rippling, your muscles contracting in response to the pleasure and for a second you wonder if he can tell.

He's hungry for this; he has been for hours. He's moaning and slurping obscenely, his tongue buried in your cunt. You don't even need to look over your shoulder to know that he's alternating between fucking his own fist and gripping the base of his shaft tight enough to stop him from spilling his release all over himself too soon.

It's very hard to tell which of you enjoys this more.

[riickgrimes]

ZENDAYA as TASHI DUNCAN CHALLENGERS (2024) dir. Luca Guadagnino