#i've never played it. if that matters

[setaflow]

The dichotomy of Brennan helping with ability score rolls for newer players:

Titan Takedown: Preps high-level base stats for the cast, with everyone having a 20 in their two most relevant ability scores and no one really having a genuine dump stat (no one's character has below a 14/+2 modifier in any ability), which allows the players to play to their class strengths and not have to worry about fucking up as much in a shorter, tighter campaign.

Fantasy High: Ally Beardsley rolls a 4 for Kristen's Dex and has to live with with the consequences of that for 6+ years

[yuzuuu4]

if only he could come out of the screen

[habibialkaysani]

filed under things kathony fans deserved but will never get: anthony in a sherwani at their wedding, with an epic orchestral cover of dekha tenu playing as kate walks down the aisle towards him in a red lehenga a la that scene from mr and mrs maahi

but alas I may deserve nice things but that does not mean I will get them

[wumblr]

LMAOOO. they implemented housing co-ops and deprecated landlords because they were, surprise, game-breaking

Let’s start with Rent. Most likely you have run into complaints of “High Rent” in the game, so let’s talk about it. To complement the Land Value changes in patch 1.1.0f1 in March, we have tweaked how Rent works. First of all, we removed the virtual landlord so a building’s upkeep is now paid equally by all renters. Second, we changed the way rent is calculated. For those interested, the calculation looks like this: Rent = (LandValue + (ZoneType * Building Level)) * LotSize * SpaceMultiplier​ This of course affects the “High Rent” notifications you may have encountered, but we’ve tweaked those directly as well, so they are now based on the household’s income. That means that even if they currently don’t have enough money in their balance to pay rent, they won’t complain and will instead spend less money on resource consumption. Only when their income is too low to be able to pay rent will they complain about “High Rent” and look for cheaper housing or move out of the city. Besides rent, households and companies need to pay for the building’s upkeep, which in turn affects the level of the building. When they pay the full upkeep fee, the building condition increases by a constant amount until the building levels up and the tenants start paying towards the next level. Similarly, if they cannot pay it, the building condition decreases by the same amount until it’s in such poor condition it collapses.

this uses the words "based on income" but it's less like income-based rent control and more like putting on a damn sweater because the electric bill is too high (?)

for the cardinal sin of "reposting a tweet screenshot that was a text screenshot where the font is so small it's completely illegible," you have been sentenced to "not doing that" with the added notes entered into the public record that "you made me look it up and i ended up reading about inter-subreddit drama regarding why r/loveforlandlords got deleted and replaced with r/loveforlandchads," and "this resulted in me reading unironic use of words like 'rentoids' and/or phrases such as 'safe space for landlords, the most essential and oppressed profession' as well as baldly incorrect usage of the term 'verily'"

[camellcat]

aughh rewatched my favourite ep today and !! vamp willow still sort of confiding in xander even after she realized he wasn't her xander. he asks if she's okay and she straight up tells him no because everything is so horribly wrong and he obviously doesn't know what's going on because he's alive now but he still cares about her, doesn't he? yes. clearly. so maybe they can stick together like she's used to. and then she shuts down the moment someone else walks into their bubble

feeling very normal about this

[sergle]

you bitches have got to watch Scavengers Reign if you haven't yet, i'm only a few episodes in and it's already completely unlike anything else i've ever seen

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

I bring a sort of "flawed female characters can be fun and enjoyable blorbos - both flawed in terms of having character flaws and in terms of having occasionally flawed writing" that it appears many, many, many people do not like

[docholligay]

I hate it when someone debates something I say and I have to be like..."Can I answer this because we are having fun, or do you take this super serious for real?"

[vaguely-concerned]

btw my headcanon for sophia amell in veilguard is that she has been 'oh no... I think your letter got lost on its way to me first warden... too bad, I'll just stay here in amaranthine until I hear from you, then.... is this a letter I see before me...... a tragedy. I can't read all of a sudden. my eyes. you sent a messenger? my messenger now I'm adopting them. no message received sadly try again'-ed all summons to go to weisshaupt, so she's in denerim with alistair when stuff starts to go to shit and at least they spend the impromptu superblight together. they may both be right on the edge of the calling (? we just don't know!) and ferelden might be about to fall, but at least they're king arthur and merlin-ing (erotic and romantic connotations) it up together at the end of the world and kissing and holding hands about it. and what more could I hope for for them. that's what beating the odds looks like for wardens I think.

there's a particular incident where she saves his life through the power of spirit healing and. maybe the guiding hand of Something that seems to still reside in the petals of the rose he gave her that she's worn in a little glass vial around her neck and that have not withered all these long years, and it inspires actual myths and romantic literary traditions and folk ballads and all sorts of nonsense that outlast them both. neither of them care tho they're just. hugging right now. drenched in darkspawn blood like the old days. resting their foreheads together. taking every moment they may have left just to be together. whatever you do don't go without me. wherever you go let me go too. and with you let me be buried, and where you go after that let me go with you then as well. (of course. of course. after all of this, where would I ever go without you. the one good thing about the blight is that it brings people together. the one good thing is that it brought me to you.)

[thefirstknife]

New article with more details (from Jason Schreier who first broke the story). If you can't see it, I'll copy the whole text under read more.

About 100 employees were laid off in total (8%) and one of the main reasons listed is "underperformance," "sharp drop in popularity" and "poor reception of Lightfall."

So you know when for the last year and a half content creators have been shitting and pissing on the game as a full-time job and the amount of negativity and ragebait content became the only thing to make content about for them? Well they certainly won't take the blame, but I will let it be known. These people either don't understand the influence they have or they do and they're doing it on purpose, and I don't know which of these two options is worse, but I am 100% confident that their campaign of rage and hate contributed to this.

You don't base your entire community around constantly hating everything about the only game you play (despite clearly not enjoying it anymore) and somehow avoid galvanising thousands and thousands of people into perceiving the game negatively. Imagine being employees who have barely worked there for 2 years and the only community reception they've seen is 24/7 hate train for their work and then they get fired because of "poor reception" and "drop in popularity." How can they not take that personally? I am absolutely devastated for these people who delievered a banger product and who were met with an unrelenting barrage of toxic gamer children which ended up having more sway over their boss than them.

Which brings me to the next bit and that's FUCK THE CEO. He is now my mortal enemy #1. I am projecting psychic blasts directly into his brain. What an absolute spineless coward who is more willing to bow down to fucking gamers than to protect his own employees. This is absolutely rage inducing because this has happened before. From the article from 2021 about the toxic culture at Bungie:

Reading this shit from the new article absolutely fucking sent me into blind rage because I immediately remembered this. Another instance of employees suffering because of comments on reddit. And because of toxic players. And proof that leadership is not protecting employees and is instead siding with players.

Match made in heaven. Asshole gamer content creators and asshole CEOs, all of whom sit at home on piles of money made from someone else's labour. I hope they all explode. None of the people that worked on this game deserve this.

Another article with an infuriating comment from the CEO:

In an internal town hall meeting addressing a Monday round of layoffs that impacted multiple departments, Bungie CEO Pete Parsons allegedly told remaining employees that the company had kept “the right people” to continue work on Destiny 2.

"Kept the right people." Really. Veteran composers weren't the right people? Die!

Bloomberg article in full:

Bungie’s decision to cut an estimated 100 jobs from its staff of about 1,200 followed dire management warnings earlier this month of a sharp drop in the popularity of its flagship video game Destiny 2. Just two weeks ago, executives at the Sony-owned game developer told employees that revenue was running 45% below projections for the year, according to people who attended the meeting. Chief Executive Officer Pete Parsons pinned the big miss on weak player retention for Destiny 2, which has faced a poor reception since the release of its latest expansion, Lightfall. The next expansion, The Final Shape, was getting good — not great feedback — and management told those present that they planned to push back the release to June 2024 from February, according the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The additional time would give developers a chance to improve the product. In the meantime, Parsons told staff Bungie would be cutting costs, such as for travel, as well as implementing salary and hiring freezes, the people said. Everyone would have to work together to weather the storm, he said, leaving employees feeling determined to do whatever was needed to get revenue back up. But on Monday morning the news got worse: Dozens of staffers woke up to mysterious 15-minute meetings that had been placed on their calendars, which they soon learned were part of a mass layoff. Bungie laid off around 8% of its employees, according to documentation reviewed by Bloomberg. Bungie didn’t respond to requests for comment. Employees who were let go will receive at least three months of severance and three months of Bungie-paid COBRA health insurance, although other benefits, such as expense reimbursements, ended Monday, sending some staff racing to submit their receipts. Laid-off staffers will also receive prorated bonuses, although those who were on a vesting schedule following Sony Group Corp.’s acquisition of Bungie in January 2022 will lose any shares that weren’t vested as of next month. The layoffs are part of a larger money-saving initiative at Sony’s PlayStation unit, which has also cut employees at studios such as Naughty Dog, Media Molecule and its San Mateo office. TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz wrote in a report Monday that “events over the last few days lead us to believe that PlayStation is undergoing a restructuring.” PlayStation president Jim Ryan announced last month that he plans to resign. Many of the layoffs at Bungie affected the company’s support departments, such as community management and publishing. Remaining Bungie staff were informed that some of those areas will be outsourced moving forward.

[benevolenterrancy]

I've been looking at your art with Jin Guangyao like million times and noticed that his face features kinda fluctuate on different non-chibi drawings. Curious if you just like trying different designs or does this just reflect changing with age (he's almost a teenager as Meng Yao and a fully grown adult after the timeskip after all), and generally if you have any particular headcanons on his appereance?

Sorry, I'm just a little (or not a little) obsessed with character design XD

ha ha ha man I wish I could give a cool answer about how yeah, you totally saw through me, I am definitely intentionally making little fluctuations to mark the passage of time etc etc, except I'm tragically not 😅 The closest is that while he's Deputy Meng Yao I do try to make him a little more... optimistic? Give him a bit more youthful pride and confidence that he's finally succeeding and might have a chance to get what he wants? So I guess that ages him a bit between Meng Yao and Jin Guangyao, in theory... but when I'm not drawing silly comics, things just tend fluctuate and I'm not always very good at sticking to one look (I like trying different things!) All I can do is hope my art continues to improve... they're certainly never hiring me for animation or anything that requires consistency!

My headcanons about his appearance that I do try to keep in mind but might not come across in my art:

I almost always try to give him a somewhat round face, or at least rounded cheeks, I'm not sure why but I imagine him with quite a soft looking face... youthful, even as he gets older, and I think he'd be willing to play into that

I usually draw him smiling (because if something has made him show a distinctly different emotion he's probably alone or shit's popping off) and I'll often add dimples as part of my JGY Visual Shorthand (along with critical things like Goofy Hat)

WWX was able to see the goddess statue carved to look like Meng Shi and assume it was a statue of JGY, so I assume he has fairly delicate, almost feminine features -- she was supposed to be beautiful and he looks like her, ergo he must be pretty!

I imagine him with very straight hair, and I think he found this mildly frustrating with the Nie who I usually give more of a wave to -- his hair doesn't hold braids as easily as the Nie brothers! Frustrating when he's trying to fit in!

(listen I know the braids are a show thing not a book canon thing but I will die on this hill) I subscribe to him keeping his Nie braids under his hat you can't take this from me

This doesn't come across in my art because I just do whichever is more fun or fits the comic requirements at the time, but I imagine while Meng Yao / new to the Jin, he wore cuffs at his wrists, anything to keep his sleeves back, for pure practicality's sake. As sect leader I like to imagine he doesn't, and goes for the long, billowing sleeves and more layers as something of a status symbol: he doesn't need to worry about dragging them through dirt or blood or ink anymore!

[sysig]

Go play pretend on your own (Patreon)

[pushing500]

Your posts are wonderful and make me want to start making art of my rimworld playthroughs and also post them on tumblr <3

Thank you so much!! I'm so happy you like them ❤️❤️

I definitely think there should be more RimWorld content on Tumblr, so if you ever post any art, I, for one, would be ecstatic!

[peppermint-jade]

"I've seen many things, my friend. But you're right, nothing quite as wonderful as the things you see."

[vaguely-concerned]

sophia seeing cailan's body hanging there when they go back to ostagar, and suddenly all she can see even through the rot and the ruin is just how much he looked like alistair...... :'(

a mental image that totally will not haunt her through alistair's many years on the throne as rebellions and assassination attemps come and go. doesn't send her unhinged and unwise even a little

[pickaropoprocks]

Fighting battles that have ABSOLUTELY been seen before (wanting to restart my Animal Crossing New Leaf town so I can begin the game from scratch and as myself as I am now vs. not wanting to restart my town because nostalgia and I'd miss my villagers)