#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)

[quitlebee]

oh shit, for real?

[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.

[raffi-cat]

showstopper cute guy ✨

[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)

[mariacallous]

What sucks is that the US, due to the Build Back Better Plan (with legislation like the IRA and the IIJA and CHIPS and so forth) actually was re-establishing a really solid manufacturing and industrial sector and creating a lot of opportunities for new jobs to replace outdated industries and professions, particularly in rural and geographically diverse areas...only for it all to become totally fucked by Trump and the GOP and their bullshit.

We had a flourshing domestic manufacturing and industrial sector, in places that often got overlooked by policies and governments. And it's all being slaughtered.

[milkcioccolato]

Entanglements - remake

Old version here!

[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.

[gwinver-art]

:'>

[8amira8]

youchie

[tchaikovskaya]

You can’t make me hate Chappell idgaf even when she says shit I think is Not It i still feel like… that soldier shielding knives from the sleeping child meme for her. Like every other pop girlie has been scared into silence or submission (if they object at all, which…) please let her run her mouth lmao it’s refreshing. Every heavyweight PR media training person would ruin what she, as a [newly] high profile entertainer, has built and what she/her act really is about.

In some ways, her saying thoughtless things is a component of her Whole Thing yknow?