#i need the documentation up while i write code for some of the harder stuff

[necromoonstar]

Below is all done by voice to text because I just need to get out of my head and every time I try to type it on my phone it just gets lost on me and I get disoriented and I don't care I want this out I want to finally post this this is my

I don't know if I'll finally go fully through with it but I am currently trying to seriously plan out my own personal website to have just starting with a NeoCities

this is either the third or fourth time I've tried to plan out something for myself but I'm got papers that I'm writing things out on I got a folder full of stuff and documents full of things bookmarks I feel like I might actually finally go through with it this time

Literally all that changed was I realized that having the main place that I hang out at as a "personal space" being a place that has such negative everything and this constant feeling of they could just pull a trigger and delete everything from me on top of realizing just how racist a lot of the community is and wanting to have a safe space to actually explore and talk and post art

The side blog ideas were wonderful for a bit and I genuinely was starting to get a little more active and that's partially why I'm like no I need to finally go all the way and make this website one way or another and then this these blogs can be a secondary space where I can hang out with people more directly but I don't depend on them for being my spot that anyone could just disrupt that I can pack up and move whenever I want

Honestly the idea is so freeing and it feels so fun I have so many ideas for things I want to do once I get this set up like I want to genuinely finally do these topics of discussion I wanted to make posts on like my first thoughts meeting Peter Pan in Kingdom Hearts and what I thought of him and Hooks story. I want to just have fun like in ways I don't feel like I've actually ever felt comfortable doing because I've seen so many people be harmed when they've tried

The only thing is honestly how hard it feels like it is to get started and that's the reason why I keep giving up is the I don't like doing stuff without making ground work but the groundwork is the hard bit but once I have the groundwork I know I'll be away it's just how do I get started

I found a site layout that I really like so at the very least I won't have to do a ton of coding to have a base to post onto but I don't know what way of setting up pages and the actual site map like the site map is one of my biggest confusions on how do I set this up what do I do how do I organize this I like things organize what do I do

Hell what extra pages do I add what pages do I want to do at all what kind of things do you add to a personal website it feels just so much while a regular old blog you just shove things out you have tags and that's about it but everything's just in one place which sucks but but I'm over speaking freaking out just wanting to finally post that hey I experience actually wanting to do fandom stuff and have fun and draw but also I can't yet because I want to feel like I have a safe place to do it

I am so thankful for the friends I've made who also ended up making websites even put this idea in my head originally way back and I'm so happy to even have some friends now even though things have happened off the internet that have made it harder to be as active and interact as much as I'd like

I want nothing more to enjoy the same fandom experience that I hear used to exist on the internet yes that's still included Your flame Wars your ship Wars but it never sounded like it ever got to this degree of politics and also didn't have this degree of Puritan NSFW it feels like

I have media that I cannot wait to touch I have some stuff I have been touching but I've had stuff that I've purposely left on the back burner that I have wanted nothing more than to dive into but I never wanted to touch it until I knew I could be that loudmouth fan that I know I would be if I actually touch them and I want to finally put in the effort to give myself the space to do that

And with that I hope to finally just be free and start to recover

Really the few friends that I have made on here I'm so happy I have and I can't wait to refresh myself and start basically over and be able to interact with you all again and this time actually have fun instead of constantly suppressing my own voice just to make sure that I'm acceptable to this crowd I'm not even trying to appease just I don't want the attention of

Sorry for putting this long thing on your dash but thanks for being around and hanging with me and I can't wait to have happier days to come

I hope you the happiest days you can be and your own Fresh Starts in recoveries whenever you need them may we all have an improvement in a better life, yeah?

[duckapus]

The Grid

Finally came up with stuff for that shadowy "Real World" organization that orchestrated Tari's abduction that one time and currently has a Character-level Program agent in the Mushroom Kingdom.

So the Grid is actually a very recently created organization, who somehow (I do actually know how this time but it's spoilers for a storyline I want to do at some point) found out about the "multiverse" of living programs within the internet, and Glitch Productions' involvement with it. They've seen the writing on the wall and realized that with how quickly things are progressing there's no way the veil of secrecy can be maintained forever, and want their foot in the door before that happens so that GP aren't the only ones with a head start.

To that end, they've been trying to create living Programs of their own. Now, Code Beings are relatively simple to make as long as you understand how programming works, but Character-level Programs are far more difficult to bring to life, especially on purpose. In fact, while the sheer volume of games and other media on the internet means there's likely at least one living copy of just about anything, the vast majority of games really are Just Games, rather than fully realized universes.

By studying Tari, they figured out the secret: creativity and passion. In order to purposely bring a program to life, its creator has to pour their heart and soul into their work, putting a bit of themselves into the very core of their character, and it has to be sincere, with the creative process itself taking priority over whatever Intended Purpose you may have for the end result. This is harder for a character-level program because their Intended Purpose is so intrinsically tied to their identity that the gap is much smaller. That's also a big part of why every set of SMGs needs one or two specifically dedicated Admins.

Speaking of SMGs, as far as most of the organization is aware their ultimate goal is to create their own version of the SMG program, since so far the Adminspace Admins, and by extension Glitch Productions, have something of a monopoly on the concept simply due to nobody else (besides Susie but that was a complicated situation) seriously throwing their hat in the ring.

Getting into some actual characters;

The organization's leader is the mysterious Director K. They're an absolute mystery to even their subordinates, going to great lengths to hide their appearance and mask their voice, and seem to have some sort of history with Glitch Productions.

Then there's their first Character-Level agent, Magnolia Astra. She's cold, calculating, composed, surprisingly charismatic when it's needed, and probably a few other "C words" you'd associate with a secret agent masquerading as a businesswoman. Her current mission is to give the Grid a foothold in the Mushroom Kingdom, both economically and through positive relations with certain highly influential characters (Jeeves for example), as well as acquire copies of the Haltman Works Co.'s files on the triplets' creation, since those are probably the most complete documentation of how to create and deploy an SMG Mod Package outside of Adminspace itself, and the Grid's not stupid enough to infiltrate that place with their current somewhat limited resources.

There's also Astra's handler/creator/partner/guy-in-the-chair/"word around the office is there's something going on between them" Agent Zed. Zed was chosen for this assignment due to his skill as an artist and programmer rather than as an agent, so he's honestly just a normal, kind of nerdy guy.

[the-blaze-empress]

when i say i learnt coding for origins i mean i learnt coding for origins. case in point im hand writing the code for a custom origin in my notebook. could i just do the code on my coding program on my laptop which i am using to write this tumblr post? absolutely! why am i not? because i dont want to

[ihasafandom]

New game idea: Pokémon Professor

Might work best as something of an MMO, for some of these ideas.

But! In general the idea would be that you go out and do field research, and eventually do a big thesis project that earns you your professor status.

It would be very open world, and if an MMO then probably a lot of the behavior of the pokémon is either emergent or player-written (with the theses).

There would be many different types of questlines that you could do, which involve documenting different attributes and behaviours of pokémon both new and established. For instance one could focus on snap-like gameplay, trying to complete a pokédex, capturing novel behaviours and interactions as well as generating a visual profile of each mon for easy identification.

One could also focus on a certain species of pokémon and try to find what habitats they like, what variations exist across the region, or catch-and-release a while bunch to get the range of sizes and weights. (If the pokémon ai is emergent, each time you log a behaviour that you see a pokémon do in a report, that behaviour will become more common in that species and situation. So as more players play, we learn/decide more about what each pokémon is like.)

A player could also choose a set location and document everything that occurs in it. Set up cameras to detect movement or battles or attacks. Or go town to town to collect legends and stories of interactions from different townsfolk and all the different ways that people use their teams in their daily life.

And of course one also has the opportunity to do the usual pokémon journey stuff, but that’s mostly backgrounded and almost everything can be done without any mons at all, though sometimes it might be harder or easier to do so.

It might be best to have it a largely unpopulated region, to make it make sense that no one’s found any of this information before, but given the junk that we’re told by the pokédex at points some real scientific study is truly warranted.

IDK, maybe this would be too much like Work to a lot of people, and maybe it would be impossible to code all the details of the lives of the pokémon that would need to exist to make it possible to choose any angle from which to do your research. 

But I think it would be fun. No real goal until endgame, no Fighting necessary, just writing stories about your travels and experiences as you explore the pokémon universe.

[amyscascadingtabs]

don’t want to keep secrets just to keep you [chapter 2]

CHAPTER TWO: see me in hindsight, tangled up with you all night

excerpt below, read whole thing on ao3

Amy doesn't return to the office until after she's spent a good hour at home. First, she showers, washing off yesterday's old makeup and grime and letting the warm water run over her shoulders as she lets the sweet scent of raspberry shower gel replace the vague smell of old beer and sweat. Her back is sore; probably thanks to Jake's lumpy mattress, she thinks, and wonders for a second if she should add buy new mattress to the contract before deciding it’s far too much. That's relationship stuff, and that's point one of the contract; that's not what this is.

She blow-dries her hair and replaces her makeup, taking extra care to try and cover a pink mark that sits just a little too high on her chest before giving up and picking a different shirt instead. Then she fills the biggest coffee cup she has, eats a buttered slice of toast standing up, and feeds her pet fish before rushing back out the door.

She probably looks fresher than most days once she's done, but she's still worried Gina can sense something from her secretary desk as Amy walks in. She raises a brow in greeting like she's actually interested, which is rare in itself, and Amy can feel her eyes on her as she walks into her own office and closes the door behind her.

Amy starts regretting her decision as soon as she's opened a new document. What is she even supposed to name it? Friends with benefits contract is too obvious. FWB-C sounds like code for something. Sex agreement makes her sound like someone who’s read Fifty Shades Of Grey too many times (which really is just once). Jake and Amy is a wedding invitation, Rules too general. She puts her head in her hands, staring at the blinking line, and groans. Then she writes in Jake, looks at that for a moment, and adds stuff after. Not her proudest, but it'll have to do.

Amy’s relieved she doesn't have much work to do today, because she spends every free minute she can come across tweaking details on the document, adding and removing sections to suggest. When she's finally happy with the result, she saves it in a personal folder she can be sure no one’s ever going to open, and praises the office-gods for the fact that she has her own printer.

~

There’s a faint smell of artificial lemon in the air of Jake’s apartment as he welcomes her in, and the thought that he might have cleaned for her makes Amy blush. It seems unlike him, but the living room area does appear less cluttered to her than it did this morning, so maybe he isn’t totally incapable of it. She still doesn’t want to check his cabinets.

“You cleaned,” she says instead, nodding to the couch that looks almost neat now. “You expecting to get lucky tonight, or something?” Jake’s cheeks turn an adorable shade of pink, but then he shakes his head and points to her outfit. “You’re one to speak.”

All Amy’s done is put on a maroon floral blouse with lower cleavage than she’d ever do for work and put on a touch of pink lipstick, but he’s not completely wrong. She still chooses to ignore him. “I’ve got the contract. Should we do this, then?”

He offers her an orange soda, which she declines, but accepts a mug of Earl Grey tea from a package that seems to have remained unopened since before the brand last changed its design. A hot drink might calm her nerves, she hopes, but it ends up being quite the distracting experience to watch him make it for her. She tries to read through the contract one last time while searching for spelling errors she knows aren't there, her eyes keep being drawn to his hands as he holds the label of the teabag between his thumb and index finger, bobbing the bag a few times with focus once he's finished pouring the water into a New York Knicks mug. It's hard not to think about how those fingers felt dancing across her skin yesterday, massaging the sides of her breasts and holding on to her inner thighs, and it's harder not to imagine what they'd feel like another time –

“Tea,” he interrupts her thoughts by placing the mug in front of her. “Thought maybe you wanted a cup that didn’t say NYPD on it.”

“Well, you're right in that.” She brings it to her lips, almost burning her tongue and hoping he didn't see. “You want to read it on your own, or should I read it to you?”

Jake sits back in the massage chair closest to her, spreading his legs and putting his palms on them before shooting her that disarming smile again. “You read it.”

Amy swallows hard. “Okay. Section one: relationship status. This arrangement only works if we're both single. We’re not bringing more people into this.”

“What about an open relationship?”

“No. Still complicated. This is complicated enough with just us. If either of us gets in an actual relationship, it's over.”

Jake nods. “Cool. Next rule?”

“Section two: appropriate behavior. We're not dating,” she says, pointing first at herself and then at him with the ballpoint pen she brought from work. “So we can't behave like we're dating. Outside of our apartments, we're strictly friends. Or acquaintances. Honestly, it's weird we're even friends.”

“But you admitted we're friends.”

“Sure.” She takes another sip of the tea. “But that means no public flirting, no inappropriate comments, no like, commenting heart or fire emojis on Instagram pictures –”

“Are these rules for you or for me?” Jake winks. “I know my selfies are stunning, but I’m sure you can control yourself.”

“For both of us. Section three: we part in the morning. No exceptions. Staying overnight is okay, but once we wake up, we’re done.”

“What counts as morning in this scenario? I’m not going to have to get up at six a.m., am I?”

“Not unless you stay at my place when I have work.”

“I’ll remember not to do that, then.”

“Great. Section four – protection.”

“You have an entire section on that?” Jake looks like he’s trying not to laugh.

“It’s important!” She exclaims, feeling herself getting defensive. “I have an implant, so we’re safe from pregnancy, but it’s either condoms or you need to get checked.”

Jake nearly spits out some of his orange soda, coughing slightly. “You must be fun at parties.”

“I’m actually a nationally accredited and registered chaperone.”

“What is that?”

“Doesn’t matter. Are you going to do it or not?”

“Fine. You, then?”

“I will if you want me to.” Amy shrugs. “But I haven’t slept with anyone since my ex, so we should be good.”

Jake’s eyebrows fly up. “Really?”

“That so surprising to you?”

“A little? In the least jerk-ish way possible, you must get, well… offers.”

“People don’t flirt a whole lot with their lawyers,” she says, shifting in her chair and crossing her legs. “And it hasn’t been my focus. Are we good with the contract?”

“Actually, I want to add one more rule.”

“Yeah?”

Jake leans back in his chair, crossing his arms behind his head and flexing his biceps through the green shirt with a smug grin. “You’re not allowed to fall in love with me.”

Amy looks at him for a moment, trying to determine whether or not he’s joking, but he doesn’t waver, so she leans forward and draws a fifth section sign on the blank space left on the document. No developing feelings or this ends, she prints out in capital letters, signing her name on the allotted line.

“Won’t be a problem.”

Jake signs the contract, and Amy tries not to grimace at how messy his signature is as she places the document in a thin plastic folder, promising him a copy tomorrow.

“Cool,” Jake nods. He’s messing up his curls with his right hand again, the way she’s noticed he does when he’s trying to flirt. She wonders if it’s strategy or nerves. “So, are you doing anything else tonight, or...”

“What, contract signing’s got you all hot and bothered?”

“I mean, seeing you in full lawyer mode. It’s not, not hot.”

“Double negation?” Amy scrunches her nose. “Oh, you’re going to have to make that one up to me.”

“Maybe I will,” he says, and she needs only to notice the way his eyes darken to know that it’s on.

Amy can feel her legs still shaking a little as she hails a cab outside Jake's apartment just after, and she closes her eyes in the backseat and wonders how it's possible to feel this amazing, this satisfied from a cocktail of what she knows is mostly dopamine and oxytocin. It still makes her feel all giggly, like she can't stop smiling to herself.

Her phone vibrates in her pocket, and she picks it up to read a text from Jake.

Fucking hell that was SO GOOD.

Maybe this friends with benefits thing won't be so bad after all.

~

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Things I regret and things I wish I had done better in pushing Diversity in Books

Probably a bit self-aggrandizing... and I’m aware of that. And I’m aware most people won’t believe me, but I have documentation. (I also pushed diversity in Korean dramas a bit, too lol, but that’s much more subtle and harder to prove.) Short version: I helped pull a lot of the strings on the internet about the discussions of diversity and writing from about 2004 (November 2004)

Loose background:

I have always been more diverse than the people around me. And I’ve always felt disaffected from being able to understand my own diversity completely as an adoptee. Being Highly Intersectional, but often disconnected, also makes me super stubborn on representation over other people.

I am also from a line of advocates on all sides of my family.

And no, I’ve never been particularly good at being “nice”. Kind, yes. Nice, no. So people have always felt split about me from the time I was born, I suppose.

Disclaimer:

Some of this might be retconning a bit... just a bit. But unintentionally. All facts are true as I can document/remember them.

Introduction:

So, I’ve always had my eyes on writing diversity, but never quite felt qualified to write it when I was younger, and being adopted, I was raised by a white family. So most of my characters from extension of exposure, ended up white and were female and a few were gay, but being ace spec, and in the dark about it, I didn’t know how to write that. (Incidentally also a sucker fro Rom Coms.) But I’m quite stubborn and quite detailed when it comes to such things, so tried my best with what I had and did not cross.

Internet hit, and frankly, I spent the majority of it on Sailor Moon in the early years. Also arguing down Adoption lawyers from using triggering statements in their “ads” to adoptive parents on listserves, etc. (Adopted to a Jewish family and Korean, so top notch arguing skills is a must. [I joke, also insider’s joke])

Nanowrimo hit, and I learned that asexuality is a real thing, which was also a part of me, but they didn’t acknowledge gray-aces until much, much later. I was inquiring about it in November 2004 (Finally looked up the date)... (so AVEN lies their butts off about that because I remember the first aces out were sex repulsed, aro aces. Not a spot of gray out there.)

Since about 2005? Nanowrimo I started compiling lists of links to various information, since it started to repeat from the previous year. Every year until about 2008-ish... I compiled links for Nanowrimo for resources on how to write various groups. The fights all went in the same exact direction.

I also from about the beginning started compiling Banned Books list by category and every year posting that thread, which was also exceedingly popular. I did it to expose the stupid reasons that books are banned, which mostly were on diversity.

I also was the one that started the “Above Below” in writing forums form. (I took it from ASMR--A Sailor Moon Romance, who would play games like that and cross referenced it with my experience at Canisius College Summer Writing Camp and used the rules from there. I did it because Nanowrimo at the time didn’t have a critique section, so me and another person discussed it in PMs first, and then I started the thread in an “other” section. (I still have the rules from the *original* post on my computer, which have since gotten corrupted.) Nanowrimo also had word limits, so I had one for first page with a strict 250 word limit and eventually after Miss Snark, one for query letters (which I’m exceedingly good at. I won Miss Snark’s contest, but for a while thought I lost, until I saw the Nanowrimo boards to show I won. lol I’m sued to rejection.)

Also started compiling the Writing Survey questions in about Year 3 and ran it, gathered statistics, etc about Nanowrimo and the writing population.

People hated me. People liked me too... since I spent a ton of time helping people. The PoC threads, out of the diversity threads, were always the most contentious. (Also in other writing forums too... often populated by white Moderators who didn’t know why associating black people watermelon and porches was racist as anything... *cough* Critique Circle *cough*)

So... given that background...

What Did I Do wrong:

- Probably shouldn’t have bit at Trolls and asked people to move it along? (OK, I can’t resist the temptation still.)

- I started with thinking it was individualistic power, not systemic. I set this on the wrong course. We should have been challenging agents and editors as much as writers from the beginning. This is my bad, (though I was not alone.) I didn’t have enough study back then. I didn’t understand how systems worked.

- I probably shouldn’t have been thinking only about privileged people writing. I think that it should be own voices first, but that privileged people and outgroups should *also* be given a chance *after* a ton of research to also write people of color. Personally, it’s been a bit overcorrrected in places, but yeah, I think the idea that we should teach outgroups... no. They need to do the work, the research, be insecure, and pick up the slack.

- I probably should have said no more often about diversity. No, you can’t write that. (But others should also have said no, but sometimes you’re hungry for representation.) Also my line of “Real People > Fiction” would have been greatly helpful back then.

- I did argue that YA was where most books are banned and most trends *start* in YA books, but the part that was also missed was that I also said that it spreads *from* YA, not that it should *stop* solely at YA. BTW, you do not have to write only YA as an author... It’s a demographic, not a genre. A lot of kids also read adult books. I did as a 13 year old. (When the YA section was 4 shelves at best) I think I should have pushed more for it to get into the adult section, too, because without the tools to see what it’s like, how is the previous generation supposed to help kids as well? Adults are not hopeless.

- I also think I should have instituted better ways of discourse around diversity, but it’s not like anyone was cooperating with it. Argue with resources, reliable sources, back it with fact, not truthiness.

- I also think I should have argued that if you have NO ONE in your life of that diversity... HANDS OFF. Not the token friend, but someone who comes around *often* to you *house* you *regularly* talk with and interact with. Being more adamant about that might have helped. If you never read anything from that group and yet still want to write them HANDS OFF. If you think all _blank_ of that group are terrible people... also HANDS OFF. If your only interaction with the country and the people is through dramas and pop culture... HANDS OFF.

- I really needed the words Implicit Bias, not just Privilege. Also needed Privilege Qualifying too. White Tears also would have been useful. Stereotype Threat... OK... I needed more Social Justice vocabulary.

- I should have learned that everyone has privilege, but it’s how you use it that matters sooner... It took me a while to get there. And I wrote it out first... as far as I know, and spread it around.

- I also have smaller regrets like... the use of Caucasian... I pressed MTV Decoded for a video on it. Also on the history of “Submissive” Asian.

- Also wish I had written a better code of conduct on how to interact with people with Diversity so they don’t get mentally drained better.

- I think I should have argued better for Diversity within, not stereotypes outside looking in. (This is currently missing from a lot of the Diversity workshops on writing--the stories that don’t hit the bell curve neatly. Fi~~~x it.)

- I also think trying to force convert authors was wrong (and is still wrong). If they do, they do, instead.... I should have bolstered support from the System itself and from authors of that identity, without locking out privileged authors that wanted to try. Let the authors that try and flop, push back flounder so others can learn from them. I don’t abide by canceling before release UNLESS there is a very good reason they shouldn’t profit. You can cancel them by not buying their book.

What I Did Right:

- I did ask Writing Forums to institute a Diversity policy that was more specific like the writing conventions. (Still looking at you Nanowrimo, Critique Circle, Absolute Write and Wattpad.) AND to have administration at the very top of the forum that was not white OR at least very educated on those topics (Head of forums should get paid... unless they started it themselves). But to have boards to review problems with diversity discussion. (And I know it’s not for everyone and it’s exhausting, but power representation is something we need.) It’s not bad to ask those in power to be educated on the problem and not make weak excuses on why they can’t do it, and then ban people for challenging them on diversity. *cough* I’m STILL asking that all writing forums are specific on diversity and prejudices and ban all prejudiced swears because from the Nanowrimo survey shit, fuck, dick, ass... are *less* offensive than prejudiced swears. And people can self-censor and can look it up.

- I know I was late to ask for it, but yeah, asking Editors and Agents to be *educated* before making a call for diversity isn’t a bad thing. (Lots of studying to get here.) I know they can’t change their sexuality, skin color, disability status, etc. BUT being able to list books from what you are asking for and ones that are not all privileged-qualifying would show you know your stuff. A quick way, BTW, to get a hold of countries is to read Folklore... I know this from lots and lots of reading and studying foreign media. Story structures, deeper beliefs, etc, can often be found there, plus they are quick to read. I know I wasn’t the first on this... Lee and Low pressed for it a lot, but I tried to extend it.

- I asked for end to end diversity. Every single part of the bookstore should have diversity in it. I’ve been going to the bookstore at least once a year since I was 13, scanning how the market has shifted and changed. I know authors counsel that by the time you see it on the shelf the fad is gone... but that’s not what I was looking for. I was looking for diversity, for gaps that people hadn’t filled yet. I want the cookbook section to have worldwide cooking. I want the economics books to have PoC names in it--even if I might never write or buy one. Because mirrors are important. I know this. If women can spread to the entire bookstore without question, then so can all of the other authors and sections. I’m still frickin’ asking for this. I know how much it hurts writers to not be able to find non-fiction books on their own identity.

- I insisted on research as the best route to get there. Not write what you know, explore what you don’t know. (But a lot of writers are lazy about research... if you are going to write diversity that’s not your own, then no.) If you’re not willing to put a year’s worth of work into deprogramming, it’s not worth your time to even touch diversity topics.

- Insisted that Diversity people are not trends. (Though I wish I’d pressed this more). Again, conquer the ENTIRE bookstore so it’s not a question. It’s an answer. Books are there to answer things in my PoV.

- I spent a lot of time trying to learn perspectives and listen to people and dissenting within.

- I don’t regret challenging We Need Diverse books for being a-holes about rolling back on the dream of diverse books end to end by saying Diversity only for YA and challenging them to do better on adoption discussions with an adoptee at the helm who is defogged. If I’m unpopular for calling them out to do better, so be it. Again, conquer the entire bookstore. Don’t be afraid to dream big so the movement has a place to go, and don’t make a movement solely for your benefit.

And personally... I think book sellers should stop trying to cater to the 40% market of male readers who read only 1 book a year by insisting on more male characters... but that’s me.

But this is me... still wishing to have my dream come true that when I go to any part of the bookstore, go to a movie theater, listen to music, that I know diversity is represented there without anyone batting an eyelash at its existence. It’s not always going to benefit me. Sometimes it might actually hurt. But I’m OK with that if I can’t leverage my privileges always... I’ll cheer for it... because it means someone who was like me as a kid, and them as an adult can finally see themselves in the media they consume. And truly, this lifts my heart.

[icycove]

For me: Minecraft? Oh heck yea I’m READY for this.

Do I respawn?? I hope so, and I think that’d be the case, but I’m not tryin to find out. I’ll miss all the stories, games, and most importantly my family/friends, but it’d be great for personal growth and adventure stories I could tell after I get out! I’ll keep a book and quill journal and document it. I’ll also use another for writing stories to pass the time when I’m not adventuring. I bet it’ll get a little lonely though. Even with pets and villagers around. Though the new update will keep me plenty busy. I’d do it for free, even, but the $1 million would help me at least feel productive about the year!

Continued:

I know the crafting recipes I need and how to make some cool stuff with redstone, so I’m not worried. I think I’d be fine after a few days, but id have to monitor my mental health. Who knows what could come up. Do the days seem longer when you’re inside? I wonder. I’ve thought about this a lot, though usually I have a friend or my sister in mind for company. I wonder if they could watch or stay updated on what I’m up to? Or join in via computer? Dunno if I’d risk my life being joined, actually, lol. Even with respawning. Ow. Though I’d say yes in a heartbeat. It’d be a year well-spent. Heck I’d even agree to longer. I wonder if I’d be sick of Minecraft after? 😂

I also know the majority of potions (bet they’re gross. One has spider eyes in it 😖) and enchants, though the new stuff im still figuring out. I’m also great with command blocks, but not applicable here afaik. Wouldn’t enjoy hostile mobs and the first two days would be likely a lot of screaming and running and crying in a 2x1x2 mole hole 😂

imagine if it’s hardcore and I’ll respawn, but have to start over??? I’d mostly be upset about losing my house and books :P if the condition is I can’t die, well, then I’d just be very careful and treat it like hardcore. I don’t think I’d bother beating the game for anything, I’m not trying to get wings XD don’t like flying anyway. Bunch of cute pets to have though and cool bases to build…I always wanted to try eating some of the food. [*breaks teeth on golden apple*]

I’ve considered the idea of writing fics about this for years. Legit it’s fun to think about the problems and trials a person would face that they didn’t realize would even be an issue when agreeing to hop into their last game? Like the plot twist of everyone else who agreed to the deal and joined Minecraft being scattered about the same world?? Oooo~ I have a lot of thoughts on this because I like these kind of scenarios. Like I’d be teaching my friend or family how to do everything and while it’d be harder than just worrying about myself, it’d be fun too. ^^

The simplicity of surviving also makes it appealing. It’s not like irl living off the land in the country when you have to worry about if water is contaminated, or have a permit to build or just pray that your crops actually come in. The certainty of it being a coded game with easy crafting is nice. It’s just something you can’t get aside from a few hours of gameplay through screens~

idk, if I’m stuck inside anyway for a year due to a pandemic, might as well make it an exciting adventure while the world is basically halted anyways. I think it’d be terrifying and therapeutic and force me take the time to actually learn who I am without the pressure of school or work or responsibilities for anything. Just the fulfilling work of figuring things out and surviving until I can live without worry. Spending an afternoon just boating or tending to my field or working on my latest project. No one telling me I need to do something or be somewhere. I don’t want it because it’s easy, but it’d be nice to experience separation from the type of world we live in where you’re born with debts you never get to pay off and just live. I need a break from a world that dropped me into it and then just kept asking things from me that didn’t allow much room for choices. Many of the choices are predesignated too, depending on where you’re born and with what wealth. It is difficult to climb up in a society like that and you can work your entire life with that not changing. But in a game like this, it really is as straight forward as you making/acquiring everything for yourself.

Huh.

my last game is actually overwatch haha… wbu?

[bigsquinky]

quick sketches from a shapiro and mulligan alien au ::3c i wrote something too for this scene. I dont write stuff very often so its rough but i will put it under the cut here

the storage corridor was dimly lit, sparks from exposed wires lighting the way down the destroyed passage. the alamanium steel doors were crushed, thrust open unnaturally with an inhuman force that rendered them useless. all the  way down to the end, large dents and ruptures could be seen along the walls, identical to the ones leading back down the main hall. 

 Shapiro was not happy. Not happy at all 

 she had been away for just a moment, something to do with confirmation for a shipment or going over some trivial documents, nothing out of the ordinary of what usually happened during the day. a lot was expected of her, but there was no way she could supervise training cadets, overseeing daily maintenance, and everything else in their quadrant of the ship. she was only gone for the smallest moment, but thats all that was needed for everything to go wrong. a large crash echoed from the training bay, followed by the audible screaming of a few cadets, as well as, oddly enough, the odd roars of cheering. 

whatever ruckus had occurred while she was gone left the bay in shambles, large craters on the ceiling and the walls, lights and equipment broken, everything would have to be replaced, everything brought back to code. it was going to be a bureaucratic nightmare. oh, and that one cadet would have to be taken to the emergency wing. but he was the least of Shapiros worries at the moment, he would be fine anyways, Grutians were known to be virtually indestructible, if anything, only his pride was wounded. 

No, Shapiro's worries were down that busted up supply hall, and as the appointed quadrant manager, she needed to bring everything back to efficiency quickly, before more reports would be required. A large group of cadets and employees gathered behind her in the hall, all murmuring in fright and surprise at what was happening. Shapiro clicked at her belt and put a regulatory protection field between her and the crowd, preventing them from moving any closer into the supply hall. the frantic chattering of a cockroach in a labcoat was heard coming closer to the scene of the mess, as O'Reilly banged on the field, his muffled pleas to Shapiro to wait for an armoured squad fell on deaf ears. It was her responsibility, and this mess was going to be fixed, even if she had to make another one.

She made her way down that hall, mentally preparing herself for the struggle that could happen. From day one, that cadet only got in trouble, and caused her trouble. She thought that keeping him on probation would solve at least some of her problems. its not like he was doing any of this on purpose, but this Cadet Mulligan seemed to attract trouble wherever he went. It was everyone else that seemed to have problems with him, stemming from eons old beliefs in superstitions that beings like him were considered cursed, or biological mistakes. she at least knew how it felt to be looked down upon, being Atharian meant that from birth she had to work harder than most to even get to where she was now, but she still had more of a privilege than the cadet did, even if he was half Arachnian. But because Shapiro worked so hard and gave up so much to get where she was, it jsut meant it could be torn away from her so much easier, her higher ups were just waiting for her to fail, giving her all of this work knowing full well not even the most able of commanders could not  complete what she managed to in a day, and she knew it. Despite all her successes, all she needed was one slip up, and it could come crumbling down beneath her. She could not afford to show weakness in a time like this, not again. not ever. she reached the end of the hall, and pushed the big storage room door open

to say it was a mess was an understatement. Shapiro could barely creak the door open enough to squeeze through with the large shelf of various supplies toppled over in disarray. the only light in the room from the working emergency lights lit the clutter in a dim, cold blue light. She quietly navigated the maze of toppled over supplies and stock, taking expert caution to make her presence in the room unknown. if one did not know about the events leading up to this mess, one would assume the ship had made course through an asteroid belt. Shapiro's pointed ears perked up as she finally heard the source of her troubles. Mulligan was there

Shrouded in the darkness, he was hard to make out. Shapiro squinted, as hard as the emergency lights tried to do their job, they were beyond overdue for repair after the beating they took today. What she could make out of his figure however, broke Shapiro into a cold sweat. Finally, she clued into the seriousness of the situation she put herself into, wishing in the back of her mind that she did listen to O'Reilly, although she would never admit he was right if she ever got out of here

Even though he was sitting, he towered over her, his head short of hitting the ceiling. the once recognizable Atharian frame that he had donned was gone, instead a colossal figure grunted and snarled, writhing in confusion as his he tried in vain to reconstruct himself. he panted heavily, clutching his head with two large arms, while four other appendages scratched at his body and braced himself to the steel storage case. Mulligan twisted and contorted but to no avail, a large fist slammed into the wall behind him, leaving a large dent. Shapiro silently stared petrified, her breath ragged. She attempted to shuffle herself backwards and out of there without being noticed, a hand moving slowly to her belt for a plasma taser, in case she needed to defend herself, but instead she misstepped, her foot knocking a small provisions can into a panel, causing the latter to reverberate, and her presence to be known

Mulligan stopped and jerked his head unnaturally towards the sound, breathing heavily, his face partially blocked by his arm. Shapiro froze, and their eyes locked. Mulligan's expression changed from a look of fury, to distress, as he let out a booming cry. he shifted back into the dark as far as he could go, his back against the wall. His breathing was rapid, with a look of horror on his face, it was like he was a scared animal backed into a corner. Crying out in a foreign tongue, what sounded like a plethora of backwards wailing to Shapiro, Mulligan's arms frantically moved into a defensive position, and attempted to cover his face. He continued to wail as Shapiro got off the floor and steadied herself, cautiously moving closer towards the creature. Mulligan tried in vain to move further back and away, but he could not move anymore, his large form made it impossible to break out of this corner. His breathing quickened, and his speech became broken and more unintelligible as he choked back tears. He violently flinched as Shapiro brought up her hand to her scouter, combing through old catalogues of alliance data to find translation as to what the cadet was saying. The scouter laboured for what seemed to be an eternity before it made a cheerful beep as it finally calculated a basic translation of the cacophony. Mulligan continued to cry out in panic as Shapiro finally read what he had been saying this whole time

" GO AWAY! AWAY FROM ME! MONSTER! AM MONSTER!"

the script had scrolled across the screen multiple times as Shapiro stood there in silence. Mulligan closed his eyes as he continued to shake and repeat the devastating message. His fingers dug deep into his face as all the sounds around him started turning into static, letting out one last painful cry before he quickly stifled himself in a swift jolt. His eyes shot open, his breathing ragged, as he looked down and saw a small purple hand lightly touching at his knee

Shapiro sat up tall, facing away from Mulligan with her hand on him, her three fingers slightly stroking and patting his thigh. He brought a quivering hand down, dwarfing her hand as he gently brought it into his. Shapiro continued to look straight forward, as Mulligan's breathing slowed and became controlled, his shoulders relaxed, and he slowly leaned forward away from the wall, and the two sat in silence

She waited a while, before she finally spoke. "Mulligan, what happened?" He sat there. Shapiro repeated herself in the same unwavering but quiet tone. "Mulligan, what happened?" Mulligan swallowed, his entire body still shivering. "It-It-It happened so fast, I couldn-couldn't stop- I just-" "Mulligan, what happened in the training bay while I was gone?" Shapiro didnt want to escalate things, but she had to get Mulligan to talk before a security squad busted through that temporary field. Mulligan stammered. "It-it-it was Giraldi. He came up to me, saying it was my fault he was taken off the scouting mission. He-he slammed me against the wall, I didnt do nothin', I just took it until-" He paused "-'til he brought up YOU." "Me?" Shapiro finally turned slowly to look up at mulligan, the faint blue glow partly illuminating his face. His expression darkened, his fangs were bared and a low growl escaped his lips. "He  said shit that was deplorable, about Atharians, about you, that it was beneath him as a Grutian to take orders from a bug. Disgusting shit about what he could do and no one would stop him, and he called you, he called you a-" Mulligan's grip on Shapiro's hand tightened. She let out a small yelp as Mulligan gasped and pulled his hand away "IM SORRY!! Im sorry-im so sorry i-". Shapiro grabbed his hand with both of hers this time. She looked at him intently, her spots glowing faintly revealed the makings of a pained expression, the first time she had bared any resemblance of feelings to anyone since that time. She took his hand and rested her forehead on it, as Mulligan's breathing calmed down. Mulligan exhaled. "Af-After that, I lost it. i lost control, i could only see red as i flung him around that room. When i remembered what was happening and where i was, I freaked out and ran off here. I got, so scared that what happened last time was gonna happen again, i had to calm down fast, but i couldnt! i was still so upset about everything, and then-" He stopped. He turned his head to look at Shapiro, his purple, polycoria eyes the only thing visible in the shadows. "Im so sorry, Lieutenant Commander"

Shapiro closed her eyes, and exhaled, still keeping her grip on Mulligan's hand. "Whats done is done, Cadet. We cant change that. I dont know what will be decided by the Commander, or if a higher council will be brought in but-" She smiled slightly "- i thank you for standing up for me, Mulligan" She felt Mulligan's hand shrink in her own, and felt the growth of another finger, until it finally slowed, and he locked his fingers with hers. She looked up at him, his form back to that of a fake Atharian, and a tired smile on his face. His two eyes, once four, while displaying no signs of his metamorph mutation, are slightly red. "Thank you Shapiro." She smiled back. "Dont thank me just yet, someone will have to clean up this entire mess!" Mulligan chuckled, and the both of them walked out of the storage hall, still holding each others hands.

[qonqr]

The Migration from Hell

TLDR:

A new update will be out today

This upgrade/migration was very difficult

Expect some small issues over the next few weeks

Some older phones won’t work anymore, after the migration is complete

Greetings QONQR players. It has been several months since my last blog update. I hope my absence hasn’t created too much concern.

In early winter I began undergoing a massive migration effort on our servers. This followed a 4-month effort to accomplish a similar upgrade of our iPhone and Android clients to move to the new platform recommended for cross platform mobile development.

The server migration was excruciating to say the least.  For the technical folks in the crowd, we moved to the modern Web Application hosting model in Microsoft Azure, from the Classic Cloud Services model. This included a migration from ASP MVC 4 to ASP.Net Core.

For the non-technical folks, image that you built a custom car five years ago following the instructions published by a big electric car company, using mostly that company’s parts. Now said car company says that if you want to keep getting replacement batteries, you need to make some changes to your car. BUT don’t worry, you can re-use almost all of the parts.  Then you find out, that bolts are no longer allowed to connect the parts, and some new fasteners are needed. Some parts need to be moved from the front to the back of the car. You need to change out the engine start button on the dash to a thumb print reader on the gear shift. Also, the car must be re-assembled from the top down, which requires scaffolding to hold the car up as you build it. Now imagine that some of the new instructions are missing a few critical steps and you need to email support, which takes several days, to get to a solution. Also imagine that other instructions are complete, but the example diagrams are only samples of how to put things together, but you would never do it that way if your goal was to ever drive the car over 30 mph (and it doesn’t note that important detail).

This effectively describes my last 6 months.  Almost none of the logic on the server changed, the code parts were for the most part the same, yet it took months to connect my software to Microsoft’s new services and restructure the code to fit the new runtime requirements. All the while, avoiding the many mistakes in Microsoft’s documentation or avoiding the bad architecture advice that hurts the security and scalability we had in the old model.

I’ve talked to a few game developers over the years who had built a profitable game, but let it “die” or removed it from the store while many people were still playing it. In almost every case, the developer(s) reason for ending the game was because they couldn’t afford to do the upgrade that would be needed to keep the game going. Like with version 2 (QONQR Blue), I was too damned stubborn to abandon the game, and forced my way through the upgrade.

It was awful, and I can see how others have been smart enough not to try it. Software developers want to be creating new stuff, being innovative, overcoming challenges and solving problems they created themselves. Working to upgrade a large system has almost no innovation, requires reworking old stuff, and deals almost entirely with solving problems someone else (Microsoft, Apple, Google) created.  In many companies, a sure way to lose your best software developers is to make them spend months doing exactly this.

I’ve been very honest with my friends the past few months, and I’ve always done my best to be candid with my QONQR players.  The past year of migrations and upgrades, dealing with Apple, Google, and Microsoft’s terrible documentation and awful mobile platforms have destroyed my love of writing software. The industry has been flooded with “best practices” that make the easy things easier, and the hard things much, much harder. Ironically many of these “best ways to do things” hurt security on the mobile devices and reduce performance on the servers. It has been very difficult to fit within the “new way” of doing things, but keep our app secure, fast, and scalable.

What’s next for the app?

The new server hosting should save us money in our hosting costs and should support more users.  Some new features I hope to add in the future, were not supported in the old architecture.

The new servers are running now and a new QONQR app is in the stores for Android and iOS, version 3.1. I have decided to benchmark this as a major update, despite most the changes being on the server.

The new and old servers will run in parallel for a few weeks or months. Old apps will continue to connect to the old servers for now.  The new app has an option in settings that will allow you to connect to the old server if we find a bug impacts some users on the new server.

Android 4.4 and below will not be supported with the new app.  The security issues with 4.4 are too significant and the operating system is now 5 versions and 6 years behind the current Android version.

iPhone 5 and up will be supported for now, but that may change to iPhone 5S and up before the end of the year.

We think most features in Windows Phone will continue to work with the new servers once the old servers are shut down.  We are not testing WP anymore. Two things we know will not work are chat and the SyncLock protection mini-game.  It is unclear how much longer we will allow Window Phone clients to connect to the servers. Microsoft is officially discontinuing support for Windows Phone in 6 months. If the new server migration breaks the ability to launch and harvest on Windows Phone, that will be the end of our support for WP.

Chat and the SyncLock mini-game will not work between the new and old clients.  The new services for “live” connections are very different and I have not found a way to support old connections with the new services.  This will be a pain point we simply need to deal with during the migration.

Many new Android phones are flagged as tablets in the version 2.X version of the app.  This restriction is be removed in the 3.1 version.

What is next for Silver?

I need to find a way to enjoy this again. What makes QONQR great is the people who contribute positively to the community.  Perhaps I need to spend more time in the chat rooms just hanging out and chatting.  Maybe I need to work on something completely tangential to QONQR, such as finally shutting down the old forums that are plagued with Russian spam and moving to a new system. Maybe I should work on making it easier to crowdsource updates to the several languages QONQR support. Perhaps I need to spend some time cleaning up duplicate zones. Maybe I need to go fishing once a week.  I am looking for ways I can enjoy writing code again.

I hope this new server migration goes smoothly.  The sooner I can stop working on old problems, the sooner we can all get on to new and more exciting features.  Please bear with me as we work through the final migration issues.

Thanks for supporting QONQR.

-Scott (aka Silver)

[edge-lorde]

i have add new game

send me anthropology articles with horrible jargon filled abstracts and ill re-write them so you only have to read them once and will know what the ding dang paper is about

ppl are out there denying climate change and vaccines and shit. most scientific journals are behind paywalls, and even if theyre not they read like a fucking code. 

like i have add and im not in school anymore, so my level of motivation to read anything is LOW!!! i want to keep up with this stuff but i cant focus!!!!!!! why are these scientists out there making it harder for lay people to understand? do they want no one to give a shit about what they do?? 

heres an example: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/3/eaav9106.full

point of paper = neanderthals ate fucking rabbits. thats it!

heres the abstract: 

Investigating diet breadth is critical for understanding how archaic Homo populations, including Neanderthals, competed for seasonally scarce resources. The current consensus in Western Europe is that ungulates formed the bulk of the human diet during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, while small fast prey taxa were virtually ignored. Here, we present a multisite taphonomic study of leporid assemblages from Southern France that supports frequent exploitation of small fast game during marine isotope stages 11 to 3. Along with recent evidence from Iberia, our results indicate that the consumption of small fast game was more common prior to the Upper Paleolithic than previously thought and that archaic hominins from the northwestern Mediterranean had broader diets than those from adjacent regions. Although likely of secondary importance relative to ungulates, the frequent exploitation of leporids documented here implies that human diet breadths were substantially more variable within Europe than assumed by current evolutionary models.

i get some of these words are names of places and other stuff idk about, but you shouldnt need to know what an ungulate is to understand ‘thals ate rabbits, ok... this is not about them. dont even really need to know leporid means rabbit/hare. they could put rabbit/hare in parenthesis the first time they write leporid too but they dont. 

heres my version:

Investigating diets is critical for understanding how archaic Homo populations, including Neanderthals, competed for seasonally scarce resources. The current consensus in Western Europe is that hooved animals formed the bulk of the human diet during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, while small fast prey were virtually ignored. Here, we present a multi-site archaeological study of rabbit and hare skeletons from Southern France that support frequent exploitation of small fast game during marine isotope stages 11 to 3. Along with recent evidence from Iberia, our results indicate that the consumption of small fast game was more common before the Upper Paleolithic than previously thought and that archaic hominins from the northwestern Mediterranean had broader diets than those from neighboring regions. Although likely less important relative to hooved animals, the frequent use of rabbits and hares documented here implies that human diets were substantially more varied within Europe than previously assumed.

anything lost in my version can be addressed in the real fucking paper. the abstract is supposed to be the quick version. 

[alexdarke]

Hi! First off, love to you both -- it's been awesome watching your guys' trip through pictures and vids. Second: I've been gravitating towards more queer-oriented art/film/literature lately as I've become more confident/conscious of my own queerness. I just read E.M. Forster's "Maurice" as well as the two-part play "The Inheritance" by Matthew Lopez, and both have left such a lasting impression on me. I'm currently reading "Less" by Andrew Sean Greer and I'm really falling in love with it.(1of2)

(2of2) SO, with taking in a lot of queer literature lately, what are some of your favorite queer literature/film/art/etc. picks that you could recommend? I want to hear more about what speaks to previous generations of (specifically) gay/bi men and learn from it so as to have a better understanding of the community I belong to.             

===============================Put both halves together so it would be coherent. First and foremost: awwww. thanks. :) Secondly: What a great question! I am happy to answer, but I want to clarify that my list will be a list of things that were personally huge for me in my own exploration of my “queerness” and not necessarily a Queer Lit 101 primer (for which I am not very well equipped to provide but know plenty of people that can! :) ) I’ll also try to include a little bit of why each piece was so monumental for me so it can help you gauge if you are interested in looking at it.

Also, bear in mind… I’m still of a generation where things were still a bit bleak and my list relfects that. So much has changed in the last 25 years, it astounds me. Not to say that it is all easy breezy these days, but it’s considerably more hopeful than it used to be on the acceptance front.

With that said, here’s the list!

Writing

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee WilliamsI loved all of Williams works and was considered kind of strange by my friends for it. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I felt like he was writing in a secret code that I could just barely make out and if I just stared harder, it would make complete sense to me. I feel absolutely robbed of my own history that it would take until I was in college to learn that he was queer and that so much of the coded language that was resonating with me was an expression of that experience. I earned one of my top acting marks for playing Brick in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. They said my physicality was positively divine. A drunk self loathing gay guy who had been in love with his best friend? I wasn’t acting. I was literally living it at the moment. :p

Becoming a Man & Borrowed Time by Paul MonetteI feel like these two books should be required reading in any sociological class that looks at minority lives or queer studies class. Paul Monette documents his life in two segments. The first being from birth until he meets the man that would be his husband. Borrowed Time documents the HIV/AIDS crisis and losing his husband along with so many friends. They are literally like huge gut punches of big, heavy emotional things. But they are so good at documenting where our community was pre-HIV and what happened to literally wipe out an entire generation of gay men that I feel like everyone should read them to just acknowledge this piece of our collective history/story and understand the period from the mouth of a survivor of it. His shorter pieces in other collections, particularly “My Priests” were well worth reading as well.

The Transfiguration of Benno BlimpieA one act play that is deeply disturbing, completely riveting, and utterly shocking in how clearly it lays bare the desire for love and sex as a fat kid and the harm caused by abuse of said fat kid, as we watch Benno buy his family home and lock himself in and eat himself to death. Note, while not specifically gay in tone (it’s more about his weight and quest for love from a world that hates him), there’s a rape scene in it that is pivitol and for many gay kids…including myself…all too familiar.  It’s why the play resonated so strongly for me as a fat kid who survived rape but had to deal with a lifetime of shame around it that almost killed me. This play needs trigger warnings all over it though. Fair warning. :p

Bent by Martin ShermanDirecting this play was literally my coming out in college. A play about a gay man that is made to do something horrific so he can get a Jewish star rather than a pink triangle (because he knows the pink triangles are treated the worst in the camps) is made to do physical labor with someone who wears his pink triangle proudly. The two of them fall in love (and even have sex) without ever stopping to look at each other. There’s a shot of me holding up the pink triangle shirt with a smug look on my face because I was told not to direct this show and I did it anyway and had my actors literally standing toe to toe with blue haired old ladies as they verbally described homosexual sex and had orgasms…. and every performance had standing ovations so I knew I would get away with having done it. :p

Movies

De-lovelyA musical show about the life of Cole Porter that is both incredibly sad and awfully inspiring. Love is a complex emotion and doesn’t always fit inside of the Hollywood script of one man/one woman forever and ever. The Wedding BanquetI’m starting to realize a lot of the stuff on my list is about love being complex. This one fits that as well. A well told story about family and love that is all the more surprising, given the time period it was written in (while states were rushing to ban gay marriage and the Defense of Marriage act was enacted) and I feel like it is completely relevant to today.Check ItThis is actually a really recent film but absolutely deserves a place on this list. A documentary about the gangs of trans and gay kids on the streets of DC who figured out that alone they were vulnerable but together they could rule the streets…and so they do. PrideGod, I love this movie. A brilliant cast depicts the story of one piece of how gay rights came about in the UK. I wish I could show this movie to everyone and make them understand that sometimes it takes being willing to hold your hand out first, sometimes to people that would never have held theirs out first, to really create change.

The Celluloid ClosetA must see documentary that explains our place in cinema up to at least the 90s.

Well, that’s a few of them anyway. We’re about to hit our stop at Kyoto so I have to stop. Let me know if you watch or read any of them and what you thought!

[birdiethebibliophile]

{fic} That Old Sweet Feeling (part 13)

Fandom:  The Adventure Zone:  Commitment Rating:  M Chapter Warnings:  None Relationship:  Nadiya Jones/Mary Word Count:  2,221

Here on AO3. Read the rest: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12

Tagging @someone-called-f1nch, @voidfishkid, @mellowstarscape, and @jumpboy-rembrandt!

This chapter is twice as long as the usual ones but y’all deserve it after my hiatus for a while there. Look forward to some once-a-week updates for a while!

Chapter Summary:  Nadiya makes an observation. Mary Sage cracks a code. Remy gets a letter.

__________________

"How far does this go?" Remy squinted down the tunnel. The yellow light from Nadiya's flashlight was dim and watery in the complete darkness.

"Long ways," Nadiya said absently. "Like, fifteen miles, I think. At least. Until it gets gross. There's entrances all along, though, closest one is only a mile or two along..."

Remy frowned, glancing sideways at Nadiya. She'd seemed kind of distracted since she'd woken up. "You okay, Nad?"

She scowled at him. "I'm fine, Rembrandt. None of your business, so fuck off."

"It's kind of a little my business," he argued. "What if you have a concussion or something? What if you get sick? What if -"

"I'm fine," Nadiya snapped. "Excuse me if I'm a bit upset about my life's work either being destroyed or being sold indiscriminately by people who have no rights to it." She glanced behind them. Kardala and Mary were trailing a bit behind, Kardala illuminating the tunnel with a handful of blue lightning. "If there's anyone you should worry about, it's them."

"What? Why?"

"Maybe not Kardala so much, but she's been acting weird. Irene-y. Look." Nadiya jerked her head back again, and Remy looked. Kardala said something to Remy that he couldn't hear over the crackle of the lightning, then grinned, and Mary snorted in laughter. "And then Mary Sage..." Nadiya trailed off.

"Is she okay?"

"Depends what you mean by that." Nadiya swept the flashlight beam across the tunnel floor, sending a cockroach scuttling away. Remy yelped, but Nadiya didn't react. "Relax," Nadiya said, annoyed. "Haven't you seen a cockroach before?"

"N...o," Remy admitted, a little sheepishly. "You have?"

"I've been down here before," Nadiya reminded him, "and when you're a broke grad student, you end up living in some interesting places. Plus, I've dissected cockroaches before. Pretty boring, really."

Remy made a face. "Still. Gross."

"Coward," Nadiya said, but amiably enough that it didn't hurt his feelings. "Anyways, on the subject of Mary Sage. I think relatively speaking, she's doing okay, more or less. It's just... overall? I don't know." The sound of her laughter drifting up to them again. "I don't know, Remy," Nadiya said quietly, and for the first time since he'd met her, Remy thought Nadiya sounded concerned. "I wish I could've used my lab. Maybe I could figure out if there was something about my stimplants that genuinely fucked with her head. I keep... fuck, I keep thinking through all my experiments with them, the stuff I did on myself, everything. I can't think of how it could've gone wrong. Or maybe it wasn't the stimplants, and she's just -" Nadiya broke off. "Anyways. Fuck if I know."

Remy's fingers were tapping a rapid tattoo on his thigh as he tried not to fidget with the bandage around his wrist. "It's not your fault," he said.

"Sure." Nadiya was looking surly again. "If this doesn't end with me getting a lot of money in compensation, I'm going to be pissed." She picked up the pace, leaving Remy a few steps behind.

For once, he didn't mind being on his own. He had to think. He felt like there was an answer to – something – just beyond what he could figure out. If his brain would stop jumping around for one second, he'd be able see what it was.

He knew it had something to do with the laptop. It had to. He should've decoded it before. He should've tried harder. It might be too late, now, it might not matter, but he had to try. It had to be something.

When they stopped to rest, Remy went over to Mary. "Hey."

She was eating a power bar. "Hey."

"You're good with computers, right?"

"Yeah. Thought you were too, nerd."

Remy grinned. "I'm IT. I don't do coding, I just fix problems. Anyways, I have this... thing... that I could use some help with. You down?"

"Why not? Lemme at it."

They both sat down against the wall, and Remy, after a furtive look around that revealed nothing except Nadiya (staring at the brick as if she could vaporize it with heat vision) and Kardala (staring contemplatively into her handful of lightning). Then he pulled out the laptop and booted it up.

Mary whistled. "That a ten-bit encryption?"

"I don't know," Remy admitted. "I know I need to get into it, though. Can you crack the encryption?"

"Yeah, probably. I can try. Where'd you get this, anyways?" Mary asked, taking the laptop and starting to tap into it, her hair lifting slightly as her powers activated.

"It doesn't matter, does it?"

"Guess not. Whatever." Mary's typing became more rapid. "Damn. This is deep. Whoever it was must've been a sick coder. Cyber security or something."

Remy shifted uncomfortably, searching for any other subject. "Have you told Nadiya you like her yet?" he blurted.

"God, Jump Boy, keep it down," Mary hissed, her head jerking up to look at Nadiya, but it was clear she hadn't heard. "'Course not, are you kidding? We're in a fuckin'… sewer, on the run, and you think that's a good time to tell Reed McScienceface Richards that I got a crush? Not a chance in hell."

"I dunno, I think it's a great idea," Remy said. "It's like, who knows what's going to happen next, right? So why not go for it?"

"You think she wants something like that right now?" Mary said, jerking her head back towards the computer screen and shoving her glasses up on her nose, squinting through them at the lines of scrolling code. "No fuckin' way. Nah, I'm, uh... not gonna put that on her. We're both dealing with our own shit. I'm not dumping mine on her as well. Wouldn't be fair."

"If you want to look at it that way, we're always going to have our own shit," Remy said, shrugging. "Right? It's not just going to go away."

"Maybe." Mary's fingers slowed slightly in their frantic typing. "But... I don't wanna fuck this up. I'm only gonna get one shot at it, right? And -" She suddenly froze as the computer screen blinked white. "Holy shit. I think I got it."

Remy snatched the laptop out of her hands. His heart revved to racing speed. Please let this actually be something, he thought. Not just another red herring. Please let this tell me something about what happened to them.

The screen blinked a few times, then a single folder popped up. Read This First, one of the documents said.

"Remy?" Mary said. "You look weird. You okay?"

He clicked on it.

Dear Remy, dear Michael, the file read. I'm hoping it's one of you reading this. If you are, it means I'm gone. It means she found me – us – out. And it means you're in terrible danger. But you have to know everything. Ignorance is always a worse fate than knowledge.

Remy scrubbed at his eyes. That was what she used to say to them when they complained about homework. God, he missed her so much. Then he kept reading.

When your father and I were younger, we did some work for the government. Secret stuff. Research on hypnosis, and anti-terrorism, but mostly on a new science we called... bonds. These bonds are what holds everything in the universe together, connecting each person or thing to anything else. You've learned about ionic and covalent bonds in biology; these aren't that different, really. More powerful. Or maybe just easier to exploit.

We weren't the only ones working on this project. There was another woman on our team. Her name was Martine.

"Remy?" Mary sounded scared. "Remy, what is it?"

I didn't quite trust her from the beginning. She seemed too interested, not just academically. She was a biochemist, a neurologist who specified in hormone study. She managed to create a heightened form of oxytocin that strengthened the bonds, creating artificial ones between small groups of people. She could manipulate them, control certain aspects of their bodies or even their minds. Our supervisors grew worried, and one day, they unexpectedly shut down the entire project. All three of us were out of a job.

We kept in touch. Your father and I got married, started research at our lab in Maryland. Remember, I showed you boys around one time? Michael, you were born, and then you a few years later, Remy. We were happier than we could ever remember. We were glad that our project got shut down.

Martine wasn't.

She moved down to Florida, but I would still e-mail with her sometimes. She was my friend. I wanted to trust her, especially then, when she was my only other connection to that time in my life, something I could talk about with no one except her and your father. That was my own fault, I suppose. I should've known better. I did know better. You're like me, Remy. We always want to believe the best of people.

Martine was continuing her research, outside of government approval. I didn't turn her in, of course; she wasn't breaking confidentiality, just expanding into her own field, or at least that's what I thought. Then, when you were about ten, I got a worrying message from her. She was excited - she'd found someone who shared her ambitions. They were working together to expand her ideas. I could read between the lines, though.  He was a fanatic, a revolutionary who was the perfect person to enable her increasingly dangerous research. Still, I didn't think much of it. She had no way to implement any of her ideas. I kept e-mailing with her, keeping tabs on what she was doing.

Then everything changed.

It was only three days ago, three days before I'm writing this, but by the time you read this - I don't know. I'm so sorry, Remy. Right before the Olympics, too. The worst possible timing. Martine called me. She was so excited, but I heard the edge to her voice that made me worry. She said she'd just read some revolutionary new research on body modification, published by a young academic, a wildly precocious young woman named Nadiya Jones from a university in Nevada.

"Mary?" Remy said, almost unaware his mouth was moving. "Get Nadiya and Kardala. Now. Please."

Martine believed that the combination of her altered oxytocin (made much more stable over years of experimentation) and these stimplants could create people with superhuman abilities, connected with each other, and more importantly, with her. She believed, in essence, that she could create an army of supersoldiers under her control. She and Richard could use them to force the revolution they wanted. She mentioned in passing that he wasn't completely on board yet - something about wanting a fair election - but it was clear that she didn't think that would work, and there was no question that they would need to resort to her plan.

After so many years of keeping my mouth shut, I couldn't anymore. I told her exactly what I thought of that plan. Things got ugly. She threatened me. She threatened you two. I hung up on her mid-rant, but the damage was done.

She knows where we live. She knows where I work. I don't know what she's going to do, and I don't know how to stop her.

If you're reading this, either of you, hopefully it means it's not too late. Use this information. Use the information from our research years ago on bonds. I know this is so much to put on you, but I'm praying still that this finds its way into your hands. Who else could I trust?

I'm so sorry. Not only for putting this burden on you, but for not acting sooner. I was afraid, not of Martine, but of destroying my relationship with her, however toxic it was. I thought I would be able to see this coming, stop it before it got to this point. I wanted to believe Martine would never go to these lengths. But she's more powerful than ever, maybe even more than I know.

I love you both. I hope you'll never read this. I hope I'll be able to delete this document and forget it ever existed. Just in case, though, all the research your father and I did on bonds all those years ago is on this computer as well. DO NOT SHOW THIS TO ANYONE YOU WOULD NOT TRUST WITH YOUR LIFE. I made that mistake once, and don't want you to repeat it.

If it isn't the two of you reading this, whoever you are, please use this information for good, or destroy it. If it is, I trust your hearts. Good luck. Your father seals this with his love as well.

Love,

Mom (Christine Rembrandt)

Remy was crying in earnest now, the screen blurry in front of his eyes. He scrubbed at his face with the edge of his hoodie sleeve. As much as he wanted to curl up and not move for a few minutes – or preferably a few days – he didn't have that luxury.

"Guys?" he said, glancing up to see his three friends crowded around him, varying degrees of worry on their faces. "We have a real big problem." He took a shuddering breath. "You need to hear this..."

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHERE TO LEARN

Some will be justified and some bogus, but unless you know the relative proportion of each, you don't get told what to do. The secret to finding other press hits from a given pitch is to realize that they all started from the same document back at the PR firm to get her some interviews. In a good startup founder down to two words: relentlessly resourceful. That's a completely different kind of selling. The least ambitious way of approaching the problem is usually artificial and predetermined. Easy, compared to college, but boring. There's something that needs to happen first.

Better journalism is actually slightly cheaper. There's plenty of empirical evidence: armies, religious cults, and so are slack about reaching profitability, which further decreases their chances of raising more money. I realized these tests existed after meeting Sam Altman, actually. Then they'll pay big time. You never have to pretend to. They all just did the right thing. Don't worry if something you want to do.

Another way to make a lot of people think we get thousands of applications for each funding cycle. So the best thing you can do to drive prices down. It was not so easy 25 years ago for an ambitious person to choose to be judged directly by the market? In the real world: they're small; you get to start from the other side by VCs who'd invested at high valuations, leaving an IPO as the only way forward is through doing what you love. If our competitor had done that, the default way to make a weak-willed person stronger-willed. That's actually much harder than it sounds—almost impossibly hard in fact—because business guys can't tell which are the good programmers. At the bottom of the heap are the trade press, who make most of their money from advertising and would give the magazines away for free if advertisers would let them.

Then you can measure what credentials merely predict. 6 percent more productive. But even failure will get you the most revenue the soonest. In 1997 I got a call from another startup founder considering hiring them to promote his company. I don't think there's much you can do, if you want to get into grad school, you'll find a lot of people think we get thousands of applications for each funding cycle. A good flatterer doesn't lie, but tells his victim selective truths what a nice color your eyes are. If you don't understand her, you don't have a good idea in the first place; if we could handle the detail, we could quote it to other publications, and claim that with 1000 users we had 20% of the online store market, and 5000 was our best guess at its size. I'm inclined to think there isn't—that good design requires a dictator. And the pages don't have the monopoly on power they once did, precisely because they operate without any conscious choice.

Of course, what shows up on the fly. The problem with VC funds is that they're funds. I realize it sounds preposterously ambitious for a startup to try to do it mean she tends to get written out of YC's history. This was particularly true in consulting, law, and finance, where it led to the phenomenon of yuppies. Though they may have useful insights. If anyone is dishonest, it's the classic villain: alternately cowardly, greedy, sneaky, and overbearing. In the best case, this consultingish work may not be determined enough to make things go your way except in a few mostly uninteresting domains. But what this means, as everyone who's had a regular job, and they all said they'd prefer to hire someone who'd tried to start a startup, is start a consulting business you can then gradually turn into a product business. This lets them do a kind of axiom from which most of the holes are. There was no reason you couldn't have done that in the back of their minds, they know it. Being lead developer of a popular open source project counts almost as much. Maybe there would be practical limits on the number of people with the necessary skills.

There are other 19 year olds who are 12 inside. Why is it that research can be done by bad programmers is choosing the wrong platform. You don't pitch stories to them. You may be able to test in an hour, then spend a week cranking up the resolution. In retrospect that seems ridiculous, and we were paying the piper. A sinecure is, in effect, is leaks in a seal. Poetry is as much music as text, so you should a consciously shift gears, instead of assuming you can rely on your intuitions as you ordinarily would, and b Microsoft's agenda consisted of stuff they weren't good at. In this case the instruments are the users. Fortunately there's a better way of preventing it than the credentials the left are forced to fall back on.

Then you'll have to write code to close a certain deal, go ahead; that follows from everyone working on selling. And yet when I describe these ideas you may notice you find yourself shrinking away from them. And one of the most important things you can understand about startups. But you never have to exert anything like that much force in the course of working honestly on hard problems is not, by itself, enough. Now that we know what we're looking for in metaphors. Europeans didn't introduce formal civil service exams till the nineteenth century, and even then you don't make much from it, because that is at this point the default outcome. A lot of the professors believed or at least wished that computer science was a branch of math. They want to be spending all your time talking to investors while your competitors are spending theirs building things. Now it's possible to be too disciplined.

Thanks to Jackie McDonough, Robert Morris, Eric Raymond, Sam Altman, and Daniel Giffin for the lulz.

[iain-games-arcade]

Final Evaluation

What has gone well in this project? Over the last few weeks, I have learned a lot of new things about how Unreal Engine works, and I have even taught myself how to read and understand a lot of code I didn’t write myself. This was an extremely valuable learning experience, as it will make writing code in Unreal engine easier in the future, and can even be applied to normal coding too. 

Have you found new software? New tutorial sites? New ways of working? Although I haven’t found any new ways of learning anything, I did come to the decision that the Unreal Engine documentation was clearly written by the developers, rather than technical writers, and is therefore useless. I did start playing with a new bit of software called Bfxr, and although I didn’t do much with it, I did find it very intuitive and enjoyable to work with. 

Have you enjoyed anything about working in lockdown? I have enjoyed how working in lockdown has forced me to adapt and teach myself things that I otherwise would not have learned on my own. It made me feel much more independent and as though I was really making progress of my own accord. It was very exciting when I was struggling with a bug in my combat system and I took the time to carefully walk myself through the code, as I realised that I hadn’t fully understood what I’d been doing as I’d been mindlessly following a tutorial. Now I actually understand all the code I wrote because I painstakingly went through it all to find out where the issue was occurring. I’m also incredibly proud of how much of this I managed to do on my own without needing to go to the instructors because I was able to find the resources I needed to make things on my own. 

What could have gone better? I still don’t think I’m managing my time very well, as I sporadically make large amounts of progress of the course of twelve hour days with little to no breaks, and then spend two days achieving nothing because I feel terrible. I want to get better at balancing this out to working a reasonable amount ever day and making steady, consistent progress on everything. On top of that, I’m still absolutely terrible at graphic design and drawing things that look good. If I can wrap my head around that, I will definitely be on the road to making better final products.

Would being at college with our software and hardware helped? Has the open brief been harder or easier? Were you anxious due to the current situation or work? While individually, I found the open brief to be daunting and lockdown to be extremely stressful as I didn’t feel I had access to many of the resources I normally would, these problems seemed to cancel each other out. Because of lockdown, I didn’t have to make the full game, so if I could at least show where I would introduce the themes from the brief into the gameplay I had created, I could happily work away at the coding without worrying about the art assets, which I struggle with the most, and find that I prefer doing with a drawing tablet, which I don’t have access to at home. 

What are you planning to do in the future? I would like to keep working on this project because I still think I can learn more from it. I think if I can face the criticisms that other people, and I, have of it then I can learn more about how Unreal Engine works, and create a product I am much happier with. After that, I suppose I’ll see what the next project brief is, and I’ll start work on that. Between then and now, however, I would like to catch up on my more traditional programming projects, as well as video editing. 

Has this put you off from working at home in the future? Do you now want to work from home?  I think this has showed me that I am capable of working at home, but I unintentionally put things in place to make that harder for myself. I am perfectly capable of doing everything we do at college when I am at home, I just don’t push myself to because I’m not at college. However, I think that if I can push past those self imposed boundaries, I can become significantly more productive when working from home and create some really cool stuff in my off time. I think I probably put those in place because home and college feel like very different environments. At home, my computer is in my room, so I feel like I can either do the difficult but rewarding thing, or I can just chill out and not really put in the work. Whereas when I’m at college, I feel like I need to be making progress because I’m not in my room with my feet up on my desk and I can’t just get up and go make a coffee whenever I feel like it. It’s harder to get distracted. That being said, my focus isn’t an issue, the hard part is starting. Once I start, I usually don’t stop for a very long time because I get into the zone and find I’m enjoying what I’m doing. I just really struggle to actually start doing something like that. 

What software do you plan on using for your next project? Why? The next project I will definitely keep using Unreal Engine, as I am now really getting to grips with it and I think I can start creating more interesting and complicated stuff. What software I use to create assets very much depends on the style of game, because if it’s 3D, I’ll definitely want to use Maya, but if it’s 2D, photoshop is obviously the better route. 

[mediaremedial]

A Philosophy of Software Design - John Ousterhout - Part I

The second “book club” (see earlier post about the Native Nations anthology) I wanted to start that didn’t drum up too much commitment or excitement (HA!) is A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout. And I get it. But heck, a book club is how I thought I would need to be motivated!

But I got going. I skipped the Preface, because fuck prefaces. I scanned it to know it was how this book came about and how to contact the author. Duly noted.

Chapter 1 doubles as the Introduction, which is nice. I usually read the introductions to books, especially technical ones, but sometimes it’s daunting to realize you haven’t even REALLY started the book. This chapter/intro was also short. I think that’s a good way to start a tech book.

Like my other self-book-club, I decided to go with “read until it feels like focus will be lost if one goes further.” So, I read through chapter 2. There’s not a lot of mind-blowing stuff, but I’ll try to capture some highlights.

“The greatest limitation in writing software is our ability to understand the systems we are creating” (Ousterhout 1). This explains why the intro and the first couple chapters are explicitly about complexity.

One thing that really stood out to me is how similar ideas are in both the Native Nations poetry anthology I was reading earlier and this book, which someone might think just isn’t so, but since I went to grad school for English and am now I software engineer, I can tell you they ain’t so different. Anyway, Ousterhout writes, “it becomes harder and harder for programmers to keep all of the relevant factors in their minds as they modify the system” (1). Well! In grad school and the anthology I was reading earlier makes clear: That’s why we have writing. If our memories could hold all_the_things, we’d hold them. But instead, we write. Our brain loses a bit of muscle by doing that (see Plato or Socrates), but it’s just necessary. There’s a lot of info out there. There’s a lot going on in our codebase. That said, Ousterhout does not necessarily go to writing as how we’ve dealt with complexity and how it relates to writing. At least not so far. But I have noted it as an interest of mine.

Ousterhout focuses on how “reducing complexity is the most important element of software design” (3), and I expect that’s true, but writing best come into play more, too. And not just good variable names, though those help.

The intro/chapter one indicates we’ll be learning some “red flags” to watch for, and that’s helpful. Code smells, I’m guessing. But anyway, it’s nice to know what’s ahead. And Chapter 2 does begin to get into complexity and helpfully lays out three key ways complexity is an issue--or the symptoms of it: Change amplification, cognitive load, and the unknown unknowns. I can get behind those as symptoms.

Moreover, it identifies that “complexity is caused by two things: dependencies and obscurity” (9). Ousterhout emphasizes the need to reduce dependencies and also to make them as simple and as obvious as possible. I can support that.

He does list the need for “excessive documentation” to be a red flag that something is too complex, and while I appreciate documentation, he may be right that even extensive documentation might be an indicator that things could be designed a bit more clearly. I do appreciate that he emphasizes that it’s easier to spot complexity in others’ work than in our own, which means both that we should expect to write complexity into our code, and it’s not that we’re bad coders because of that. We can become better as we notice it in others’ work, though. Hopefully avoiding it in our own.

He goes into a bit of talk about waterfall and agile processes. It’s brief but it helps me see why the design of a project I’m currently part of at work is going rather poorly. lol Too much waterfall in the agile! Egads. But I digress. The main point of chapter two is that complexity makes things difficult to modify, and I think we’d all agree with that assessment. Hoping Chapter 3 and beyond brings more help for that.

[talenlee]

Here’s a one-part diary, one-part itinerary, one-part aspirational documentation of what I did this past year as best I can explain it and we’ll see how well we go as we go with it. This wrapup is at least in part to look at what I did, but also to try and get a handle on my own feeling of yawning lack of accomplishment. If you didn’t do a lot this year and you get overwhelmed by lists, please don’t read this because it might make you upset. On the other hand if you want a wrapup of the kind of things I do and try to do… well, hey, checkit out.

Writing

I got back into writing daily in July, and did so consistantly throughout the year. Part of what let me get onto that schedule better was the use of a Bullet Journal, a tool I found very handy for tracking my progress as I blogged and recorded my mental health and wellbeing. A material object is very satisfying to handle, so I recommend it to anyone struggling with frantic feelings of impermanence.

Of the things I wrote, it seems the things people were most interested in were the articles on Jace, and my Amerimanga covers, with a late-year run-in for Perry’s Lock story.

Study!

I finished my honours thesis, and did well enough to get an almost-but-not-quite top rating mark. The research was considered interesting enough to serve as the basis of my PhD, which I then applied for, and my application was approved. This was a really harrowing experience – I thought writing and applying would take a few weeks at most, but it took almost two full months of work.

My Honours thesis is listed under my government name so I’m reluctant to share it as is, but the basic gist was to try and tackle the idea that when critically engaging with games, play is a paratext, rather than text. That is, there is no true textual analysis that can be done of play without recognising the input of the player, but, you can examine the play the player brings if you recognise what the player means to the reading. This wound up forming the basis of my Making Fun videos.

Reading!

I don’t read enough, I tell myself, so I did my best to read more. When I found myself reading, I made sure to share it and indulge in it, which helped me focus on reading more. Interestingly when you share reading you’re necessarily framing it, which means you’re sort of explaining it, a thing that made approaching some books a lot easier. I’d wind up at the end of a book realising I’d explained it and understood it, without noticing that’s what I was doing.

The Grasshopper: Life, Games and Utopia, by Bernard Suits

Alien Phenomenology: What It’s Like To Be A Thing, by Ian Bogost

Paratexts: Threshold of Interpretation, by Gerard Geanette

Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games, by Paul Booth

Understanding Media, by Marshall McLuahn (SUPER dense)

I also read some manga and comics, and some of those I’d recommend are:

Sense Art Online

Lumberjanes

Irredeemable

Top 10

I also reread Nation, by Terry Pratchett, which isn’t at all interesting because this is merely one of my favourite books and just one of the best things he ever wrote. Also, one final note to Blades in the Dark, a game book I really liked and makes me very excited.

Robots!

I made a bunch of twitter robots, which are basically an automated way of playing with text. They seem like they’d be harder than they are – and you’d be surprised once you get past a certain threshold how well they do things you forgot you told them they could do, or never realised. You can look at all of them here.

Media!

This year I made a protracted point, as well, to actually watch some TV! That may sound like a really minor thing, but TV these days is such a vast thing that there is some cool stuff there. What’s more, TV you can’t interact with and you can’t be expected to get wrong – which can make it good for relaxation and trying to diminish anxiety. I know I watched all of the first two seasons of American Horror Story back to back while in the grip of The Worries, and you would think that would be distressing but it was kind of the opposite.

This also broadened my palate and gave me more ideas for stories. As a nearly non-stop Youtube watcher as well, I’m already in the market for short, informative videomaking, which I also got into, so longer-form, higher-production stuff – even stuff like just Bob Ross was good to watch.

I also took this chance to catch up on some TV series and movies that are part of ‘the zeitgeist’ that for some reason or another I never really watched. I tried watching more anime, too, which is like TV but you can’t multitask during it, unless you watch it dubbed. And on that note, I watched Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, dubbed, and didn’t hate it. In fact, my thesis and FMA Brotherhood, as well as the work of Sideways, is what convinced me to try making Youtube videos on the subjects that interest me.

What I’m saying is I have a FMA Brotherhood video in me, but we’ll see how I go with this new editing software. Anyway.

Shirts!

I made at least 36 different t-shirt designs this year – holy nerts, that’s a lot more than I expected. My original goal was something like 1 shirt design per month – and thanks to the practice doing graphic design, I wound up making three a month.

In case you were curious, yes, these don’t really sell.

Playing Games!

I did a lot of work on my backlog of games. At the last accounting, I have 559 games in my Steam Library, and of them I have marked 229 as Completed. Note that to me, a game is completed when I’m done with it – I don’t need to slog through a game that bored me in the first hour.

Making Games!

And here we have an absolute bumper. Partly because my thesis required a lot of game design and partly because I cannot resist the joy of merely making, I spent a lot of time this year creating card and board games, including our first proper release of a board game.

I planned to make a game a month for 2017, based on 2016, and that arc follows here, but.

January – D-73C7, a hidden movement game on cards

February – Chin Music, a memory game of punching

March – Pie Crimes, the prisoner’s dilemma, with cake

April – Dragon’s Favour, a voting game of hidden roles

May – Queer Coding, a cooperative communication game

June – Fabricators, an economy game of 3d printing futuristic factories

July – You Can’t Win, an impossible trick taking game

August – Cafe Romantica, a handsome boys builder game

September – Good Cop, Bear Cop, a hidden identity accuse-em-up

October – Sector 86, a space station builder

November – Escape Code, a bluffing conversation game

December – C-QNS, a pattern matching number game

In addition to this, there were some extra games we released, Push Pins, Nobeard’s Treasure, Skulk, Camp Osum (Alpha) and Yes Chef. In my thesis I had to complete preliminary design for two more games, Mystery Machine and The Coins Of Tarim, and I did prospective work for Kinksame and pushed through stage one of The Comissioner’s Game. I also put out a prototype concept for a VHS-style wrestling game. So far none of these games have proven to be world-beaters, but I’m happy with all of them, in no small part because I love the process of making them. There are stories about each one, stories about how they improved or changed and that may wind up going up over on the main Invincible Ink website.

I also collaborated more and made more games solo. I made D-73C7 entirely on my own (and incidentally, that number is 881,607, in decimal), and continued this with some of our games – Fabricators and You Can’t Win, for example, were entirely solo projects. Yet at the same time, this year featured Skulk, which has art by Alex Zandra, Sector 86 uses some of our first paid stock art, and Cafe Romantica is a game whose entire visual aesthetic is made by Fox.

In addition to this, games that were complete in 2017, but not released include LFG (releasing Cancon 2018), Black Jack’s Dungeon, Bag O Pipes, Domains of Meh, and Winston’s Archive. There were also revisions and second editions for Crowdfund This, Murder Most Fowl and Chin Music. As I write this, in another window, I have a document open for what I’m hoping might be yet another complete game, which I’m super excited to get my hands on.

Anything Else?

I attended six conventions this year – Cancon, Comic-Gong, SMASH, MOAB, GaymerX and LFG, with varying degrees of success. Cancon was an absolute corker, as was Comic-Gong, with GaymerX surprising us with their interest in our ares, and MOAB and LFG a bit more low-key. Still, contact was made with vendors and FLGS, so here’s hoping going forwards there will be more.

I tweeted a lot, and had a handful of tweets go viral, including a new Most Viral tweet of mine, about Vincent Price. This year that was less annoying – the new twitter feature ‘mute this conversation’ does its job.

Emotionality!

This year featured a few big changes for me. One of them is that I spent some time this year making the conscious decision to minimise my interaction with people who actively make me feel bad, and to instead focus my emotional energy on improving the lives of people I really care about. Something in my family life has come up that I simply cannot deprioritise – it’s too important – and that means that I’ve had to ask myself if the emotional distress of a stranger is really my business, even if I do want to live in a world where people will randomly be kind to you. I acknowledged that there are some people, even queer people, who are just jerks, and I don’t need to spend my time listening to and ceding to them, because they are not immune to basic social consequences. I still take the hit when I can, as my privilege armours me pretty well.

I’ve taken to offering random instances of kindness to people, as best I can, to simply tell people hey, here’s a reminder the world doesn’t suck so bad, and being okay when they drop it.

I admitted to some of my trauma. I opened up and shared with some people about my stress. I watched as my parents recognised that their best intentions have had problems in both my life and my sister’s life and started to learn how to forgive them. And I started to face things about myself that make me miserable and sad and feel inadequate, and start to try and develop a framework for them.

Here’s the big thing: A member of my family is getting divorced. It is not a nice divorce. There are kids involved. Abuse is involved. This sucks. This straight up sucks on toast. There is no cutesy way around it.

What’s next?

Tune in tomorrow.

The 2017 Self-Examination Roundup Here's a one-part diary, one-part itinerary, one-part aspirational documentation of what I did this past year as best I can explain it and we'll see how well we go as we go with it.