#if I wanted to play by myself i would log on single player

[gnaga37]

my time when I usually play viddy games has gone unutilized for a while bc I have noone to play games with -_-

[askmrtorgue]

HEY! YOU THERE! WANT TO PLAY A TABLETOP ADVENTURE WITH A PROFESSIONAL STORYTELLER?

I'M MISTER TORGUE, AND THE NERD WHO HELPS ME LOG INTO THIS ACCOUNT ASKED ME TO DO AN AD FOR HIS SERVICES. I TOLD HIM I WOULD, BUT ONLY IF I GOT TO WRITE IT MYSELF. SO STRAP IN, DUMPSUCKS. IT'S PRODUCT PLACEMENT TIME:

--

DO YOU WANT TO PLAY DUNGEONS & DRAGONS BUT YOU CAN'T FIND SOMEONE TO RUN YOUR GAMES?

ARE YOU FED UP WITH A GAME MASTER WHO WON'T LET YOU STRAIGHT-UP MAKE OUT WITH THE VILLAINS OF THEIR STORY?

DO YOU WANT WANT TO LEARN TABLETOP RPGS BUT EVERYONE WHO TRIES TO EXPLAIN IT USES THINGS LIKE MATH AND SPREADSHEETS AND YOU CAN'T STOP THEM BECAUSE FATAL SUPLEXES ARE ILLEGAL ON YOUR PLANET?

THEN YOU NEED BENCOMPETENCE, PROFESSIONAL STORYTELLER AND GAME MASTER.

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THIS DEATH DADDY IS ABSOLUTELY ABOUT TO KILL ME AND I DON'T GIVEN EVEN A SINGLE F*CK.

NOT YOUR STYLE? NO PROBLEM, PLAYER, HE ALSO OFFERS TERRIFYING MURDER MOMMIES!

THIS WOMAN COULD DRINK MY BLOOD AND I WOULD SAY "THANK YOU"

OR MAYBE IT'S TIME TO EMBRACE EVERYONE'S TRUE SECRET DESIRE:

BE A MAGICAL GIRL THAT'S BAD AT ROMANCE!!!

BENCOMPETENCE ALSO HAS THIRSTY SWORD LESBIANS, A GAME ABOUT BADASS SWORDFIGHTS AND WARFARE IN THE GREATEST BATTLEFIELD OF ALL: THE HEART

WHEN OH WHEN WILL THESE TWO INCREDIBLE WOMEN ADMIT THEIR FEELINGS FOR ONE ANOTHER!??!!?

OR MAYBE YOU WANT TO KICK ASS, PACIFIST STYLE, IN THE NEW BLUE BOX ADVENTURES?!

TIME TO GO HIGH FIVE A DINOSAUR AND MAKE OUT WITH ALIENS!!!

BENCOMPETENCE'S GAMES ARE INCLUSIVE AF AND BEGINNER-FRIENDLY, BECAUSE GATEKEEPING IS FOR SH*THEELS AND TRASHGUZZLERS. WHETHER YOU'RE BRAND NEW OR HAVE PLAYED A QUILLION SESSIONS, YOU WILL BE RIGHT AT HOME. ALL THAT MATTERS IS THAT YOU GET IN THERE AND KICK THE NARRATIVE'S ASS RIGHT IN ITS D*CK.

HE EVEN HOSTS SEMINARS THAT TEACH YOU TO BE A BETTER ROLEPLAYER OR GAME MASTER!!

HE ALSO ASKED ME TO TELL YOU THAT SESSION 0'S ARE FREE, AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS!

WANT TO JOIN A TABLE? THEN LISTEN UP, F*CKTRUCKS, BECAUSE IT'S LIST TIME:

FIGHT OR MAYBE MAKE OUT WITH HOT EVIL VAMPIRES IN CURSE OF STRAHD (NOW AVAILABLE IN DEATH DADDY AND MURDER MOMMY)

I AM NOW STARING AT THE VAMPIRE AGAIN AND FORGOT THE NEXT BULLET POINT

JOIN THIRSTY SWORD LESBIANS AND BE AS BAD AT ROMANCE AS YOU ARE GOOD AT KICKING ASS

JUMP INTO THE BLUE BOX AND EXPLORE ALL OF TIME AND SPACE

SOMETHING ABOUT LEARNING HOW TO BE A BETTER ROLEPLAYER IN A PERSONALIZED LECTURE

THERE'S A LOT MORE TO SAY, BUT THE NERD WRITING THIS SCRIPT STARTED TALKING ABOUT CHARACTER SHEETS AND SOMETHING CALLED NARRATIVE AGENCY, SO I HAD TO BEAT HIM WITH A FOLDING CHAIR UNTIL HE STOPPED. YOU CAN HELP PAY FOR THE BODYCAST I PUT HIM IN BY SIGNING UP TODAY!

END OF ADVERTISEMENT.

[oeldeservesthenorris]

I absolutely despise that know-it-all blowhard Thomas Drance, so I rarely acknowledge his "insight", but for once he got it right and as an FYI so, enjoy this copy and paste article from The Athletic cause I really don't like to give them any more $$ than I have to:

Drance: Why Quinn Hughes has something to prove — ‘A lot of guys don’t watch the West’

SUNRISE, Fla. — There’s a quiet intensity to Quinn Hughes. It’s always been there, simmering a bit beneath the surface.

When it comes out, at least in terms of his public commentary, it’s expressed with almost stunning clarity.

Hughes lives hockey. His family lives hockey. There’s a reason he’s one of the smartest defenders in the game today, and it’s because he knows this sport inside and out. He tracks obscure records, he’s aware of the statistics and the conversation around the league, and yes, he noticed where he stood in recent lists of the best players in the NHL compiled both by ESPN and The Athletic.

“Oh yeah, I saw the lists, but I’m not going to comment on it,” Hughes said Saturday after playing his best game of the season, and perhaps the most complete single game of his career, in the Vancouver Canucks’ 5-3 victory over the Florida Panthers. “Maybe at the end of the year.”

Regardless of where Hughes ranked in the preseason lists, two things are certain moving forward. The first is that the Canucks’ first-year captain is clearly out to prove something this season: that he’s among the NHL’s best defensemen and that he can lead this team to the playoffs.

The second is that if he plays like this consistently, and if this team succeeds on his back the way they did on Saturday night, Hughes’ two-way play and his standing as a dominant blueliner will be completely undeniable.

Hughes, after all, was dominant on Saturday. In a game that featured a legitimate MVP candidate in Matthew Tkachuk, a perennial Selke nominee in Aleksander Barkov and Vancouver’s two near-40-goal scorers in Elias Pettersson and Andrei Kuzmenko — who broke the game open in multiple instances — Hughes was the best player on the ice. And it wasn’t close.

He had the game on a string and dictated the pace in all phases of the contest.

When the Canucks built their lead in the second period, it was Hughes who kept the puck alive on a Panthers clearing attempt, then walked the line when he retrieved the puck and uncorked a shot through multiple layers of the Panthers defense. His shot caused chaos in the Panthers crease and Florida took a penalty. Soon after, Vancouver took the lead.

Then as the Panthers pressed, dominating play in the third period, it was Hughes who proved capable of calming down the game. On multiple occasions he got in on the hands of Panthers wingers Carter Verhaeghe, Evan Rodrigues and Sam Reinhart along the wall, cleanly stripping them of the puck and turning play in the other direction.

It wasn’t perfect, and as the Panthers cranked up the pressure on Vancouver, Hughes was on the ice for a goal against. It was the first goal against that Hughes had been on the ice for all season. He’d logged 115:40 of total ice time in all situations to open the campaign before an opponent scored against the Canucks while he was on.

That may seem like an obscure stat, but it’s another one Hughes was aware of and tracking.

“Do you know that was the first goal against you were on the ice for this season?” I asked him postgame.

“Yeah, I was keeping track of that. By myself. I wanted to see how long I could go with that one,” Hughes admitted.

“Do you know how long you went?”

“Well, I know I went four games, 25 minutes a game, so that would be 100 … oh but wait, it’s only five-on-five …”

“Oh, I have the number for everything.”

“Whatever. OK, I was only tracking five-on-five. You counting everything?”

“Yeah, it’s 115:40.”

“Oh man, I was going to guess 118.”

“Pretty close, so you’re all over it.”

“Of course, I mean, I always hear it,” Hughes responded thoughtfully, that old chip on the shoulder beginning to show. “Y’know how it is. ‘He’s an offensive defenseman, but he’s not good at defending.’ And I’ve been plus the last two years, and playing big minutes. So for me, the stereotype is there. A lot of guys don’t watch the West, but I’m out here trying to do the best I can.”

Obviously, Hughes’ best is sensational, and not just offensively. Even traditional plus-minus — which dings a player with Hughes’ offensive profile given that he eats fake dashes for short-handed goals against and empty net goals deposited against Vancouver when it’s trailing — underrates his contributions. The simple fact of the matter is that last season when Hughes was on the ice five-on-five, the Canucks outscored their opponents 81 to 61 — for an on-ice goal differential of plus-20 (a far better statistic since it doesn’t arbitrarily mix game stats). When Hughes was taking a breather, Vancouver was outscored 88 to 131.

Or to put it simply, for those in the Eastern time zone: When Hughes was on the ice five-on-five over roughly 1,500 minutes, the Canucks outscored their opponents at a rate comparable to (and actually better than) what the Vegas Golden Knights accomplished as a team last season. When Hughes wasn’t on the ice five-on-five, Vancouver was outscored at a rate comparable to what the Anaheim Ducks accomplished as a team last season.

“He does some stuff though that’s world class,” said Canucks head coach Rick Tocchet postgame. “And when he defends, he defends with quickness. And that’s OK — he can still win a Norris defending with quickness, you don’t have to kill a guy in the corner.

“I think Huggy, he’s got a little chip on his shoulder about (the idea) that he can’t defend,” Tocchet added later in his postgame briefing. “About the idea that he’s just an offensive defenseman and no, he can defend. And I like that.”

Honestly, it’s past time for Hughes’ savvy, well-rounded, two-way game to begin to garner the respect it’s due.

Of course, it also speaks to the extent to which Hughes’ control of the proceedings in Sunrise on Saturday night jumped right off of the ice sheet that we’ve yet to mention his goal — his first of the season — which opened the scoring.

The goal came after Hughes made one of the most preposterous keep-ins at the blue line that I’ve ever witnessed live; an absolute marvel of hand-eye coordination on which the broadcast angle on the play — which still captured how impressive the play was — did the degree of difficulty zero justice.

Later in the shift, Hughes received a pass from J.T. Miller, changed the angle on the wrist shot and stepped into that first goal.

“Walking the blue line and shooting, he’s got a couple of moves that he worked on this summer,” Tocchet said when asked about how dominant Hughes was on Saturday night in South Florida. “Man, he worked a lot, I don’t know if people realize how much he worked. I don’t want to tell you what he does, I’m not going to give the other team a pre-scout.

“I’m not trying to put pressure on him, but his capability of walking the blue line is outstanding.”

Hughes’ newfound shooting mentality has been one of the most noticeable evolutions in his game in the early going this season. Through five games, Hughes is averaging north of three shots per game and nearly an additional shot-and-a-half per contest above his career average going into this season.

“I’m shooting more for sure, but it’s more about putting myself in spots where I can beat a guy and then shoot,” Hughes said. “Connecting my feet and my hands, beating a guy. In the past when I’d beat a guy, I wouldn’t be in a position to shoot it. I’m focused in on that now.”

Of course, there’s a balance. Hughes’ best skill is his passing and on a team loaded with world-class finishers, there’s a balance he has to strike in terms of distributing the puck. Of course, that’s a balance that comes naturally to a signal caller of Hughes’ calibre.

“I think the more I shoot, the more will open up,” Hughes said when I asked him if his new shooting mentality could open up additional passing lanes. “It’s more than my shot, it’s rebounds and tips. But on the power play, pre-scout, if I’m shooting a bit more they have to worry about that.

“That said, I have to be aware. Like would you rather my shot or Petey’s slap shot? It’s going to be Petey’s slap shot every time. And his slap shot opens up my shot, and when that happens, I’m going to try and use it.”

While Hughes managed to beat Sergei Bobrovsky with a point blast for his first of the year, his evolution as a shooter is about more than just his goal on Saturday. It’s that, in truth, he could have two or three already in this young season.

“Honestly, I think I could’ve scored in every game,” Hughes said. “I know the exact plays, too. I could’ve scored in Philly, I should’ve scored in Edmonton, I hit the post in Philly, but I also had a mini breakaway and should’ve just tried to go five-hole. I know I’m getting my looks so I know it’s going to come. And I’m getting more looks because of my mindset.”

Getting his first goal of the year was also something of a weight off of his shoulders. It took him until Dec. 27 last season to score his first of the campaign.

When he finally scored, he was nearing an ignominious record. It was a milestone Hughes was aware of, though it received little meaningful media coverage as it approached.

“It feels good (to score my first), I mean obviously I almost broke the record last year,” Hughes said when asked how he viewed his first goal.

“Huh, what record?” I interrupted, confused.

“Most games by a guy scoring a point per game without a goal.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. No, I think I was two or three games away, and that’s not a record you want to break.”

“Wait, were you tracking that?”

“No, but the trainers were busting my balls about it.”

There will be no ignominious goal-less milestones for Hughes to sidestep this season. And no ignoring Hughes’ dominance — on offence and in his own end, too — if he keeps playing like this.

[isshua]

Breaking the Wall (Find Comfort in Those Who Might Hear You)

Sagau Xiao x Reader

I haven’t been feeling great lately, so I decided to write this little story to cheer myself up. I had this idea about what might happen if Teyvat’s environment were to reflect your emotions whenever you logged on, and by extension whatever character you are currently playing as. I also wanted to write my own play on a character “breaking the fourth wall” in order to communicate with their player. This story follows the more classic sagau trope of how the characters are semi-aware of the fact that they’re living in a videogame but view it as a sort of boundary between their world and ours.

Xiao is a huge comfort character to me and I mostly wrote this for myself as a way to cheer myself up. I thought it came out okay though, so I decided to share it here. Hope you guys enjoy! :)

To break the Wall meant instant termination.

  Teyvat made this clear. It would not allow its people to make contact with the divine world. Forging a connection that extended beyond the mechanics of life was simply not meant to be. The Vessels could communicate with the Creator within the bounds of Teyvat’s laws; that was what being a Vessel was all about in the first place. For non-Vessels, then such hopes for communication with the God Above All Gods was impossible. That was how Teyvat was designed. That was how things were meant to be.

  Xiao, typically, did not mind following the rules. After all, he was an immortal being with thousands of years of experience in his belt. He knew attempting to break the Wall would result in his death. Long ago, before he had been chosen to be one of the Creator’s envoys, he hadn’t even cared about the Wall. Why would he want to break it? Meddling in such matters was not of his concern. His duty was to protect Liyue, nothing more.

  But then he got to know you. And his feelings for you only grew. When you chose to, you guided him through his daily tasks with kind words and praising whispers. When your golden light possessed him, his karmic debt would dissipate and he would feel a thousand years younger than he really was. You took him to places he never dreamed of seeing: the peaks of Dragonspine, the streets of Inazuma City, the dunes of the Sumeru desert. With you, there was a sense of adventure. With you, there was excitement. With you, he felt whole.

  You did not speak often, not that he was bothered by it. He was an introverted soul, one who appreciated the silence between the two of you whenever you would travel together. Occasionally you would comment on the environment or the enemy he was fighting. Sometimes you grew frustrated after completing domains-not with him, he understood, but rather with the horribly mediocre artifacts the two of you would receive. He liked it when you laughed. The noise was so clear and invigorating, he found himself hoping to hear it every time you appeared. He liked when you would softly hum some unknown tune from the faraway land you inhabited. He loved it when you acknowledged him, how he was a stronger and better version of himself only because of your dedication to him despite knowing the many sins he has committed. If you could have known the impact you had on him, you might find it amusing to see how easy it had been to steal the aloof Yaksha’s heart.

  There were so many things about you that he loved. But there was one single thing he hated.

  He hated it when you cried.

  The day began as a typical one. You had not possessed him for the entire week, not that this was something to be worried by. You typically did disappear due to some strange thing called ‘college,’ but you always came back. Xiao largely spent his day patrolling Dihua Marsh, slaying monsters, and saving the occasional mortal from dying at the hands of hilichurl tribes. He did not interact with anyone beyond stiff acknowledgment; the only person he did talk to on a regular basis was the Traveler, and the last he heard of them, they were somewhere in Sumeru, ever exploring, always curious.

  Your presence was not anticipated, but it was welcomed. When your golden light descended upon him during late afternoon and he felt your presence tugging at his mind, he felt contentedly unsurprised. Your voice echoed his name: “Xiao. Let me in.”

  He did not resist and allowed your influence to settle within his body. “You called?” he murmured, halfheartedly hoping for a reply. You never did answer him whenever he greeted you, but that was due to the Wall. Conversations were strictly one-way.

  He waited for you to take control. Whether it meant being teleported somewhere or just taking off into Dihua Marsh, he knew the two of you would be off eventually. He waited. And waited. A minute went by. He did not move.

  “Your Grace?” he called out, puzzled. He could feel you, he knew you were there. So why weren’t you interacting? Surely you didn’t appear just to stare at him, right? What is going on?

  Something wet fell onto his hand.

  He looked up at the sky and immediately noticed the ugly gray clouds gathering overhead. A filter of mundane color cast out the light of the sun. Droplets of rain started pattering down onto his face, his hair, and his clothes, leaving him drenched. But he did not stop staring. Because within his head, he could hear soft sobbing.

  The Creator was weeping. And so Teyvat weeped along with them.

  The first thing he felt was anger. Who hurt you? he wanted to ask. Who would dare make you cry? But as he listened to your cries and watched the rain come down, he realized that anger would do nothing to help. He could not solve your problems. After all, he was in Teyvat, and you were somewhere else entirely. His second reaction was to comfort you, but he could think of nothing to say. The issue of you two being separated was still in effect. The Wall would not allow him to offer you any consoling words. He had no choice but to let you suffer alone.

  But by the Archons, you were making his heart ache. Xiao was one to usually think that tears were for the weak, but he could not make himself see you in a pathetic light. Would it not be pitiful of him to deem his Creator as a lamentable coward? He didn’t even know why you were crying. You could be in danger!

  That’s when he decided. I have to make contact with them.

  It was a nearly impossible feat. But he knew he could do it.

  Break the Wall. Establish communication.

  He had never heard of anyone doing it before. Not even Rex Lapis, the strongest god he knew, dared mess with such an unpredictable, mysterious force of power. The Wall was not hard to find, but it took willpower to face it. Xiao didn’t know if he would perish the moment he did, or if it would take time for him to dissolve away. There were too many possibilities of failure. He could think of no way this sudden plan of his would lead to success.

  But your crying was like a million arrows piercing into his heart, and the pain of his karmic debt was rising as he continued to soak in your negative emotions. He was hurting right along with you-but if he could only talk to you, things could be made right.

  Xiao held out his hand, and his jade spear materialized. He braced himself and raised the polearm high into the air. Focusing on the ground beneath him, he concentrated and felt his surroundings. The energy of Teyvat came to him quickly, most likely due to being exposed to your power for so long…and then he pinpointed it. The moment of weakness. He brought his spear down with every bit of strength he had and tore into the fabric of reality. A gaping hole of darkness ripped right under his feet. He did not scream when he fell in, nor did he grunt in pain when he slammed into a glass-like surface after his short freefall. Everything was dark, except for the millions of green bolts of  electricity racing all around him at the speed of light. Your golden glow encompassed him and fended off the overwhelming power this Abyss-like area radiated.

  He looked at his hands. His weapon was nowhere to be seen, and the tips of his fingers were…glitching. In fact, his entire body seemed to be crackling-falling apart and knitting itself back together with technic shrieks. It was a sure sign that he was in a place not meant for him. He had done it; he had broken through the Wall. Now he was beyond it, but where, he did not know. Surely this can’t be the Creator’s domain, he thought. This place was far too dark, and there was no hint of your aura anywhere except for within him. But it had to be the realm in which he would form a connection with you.

  He could still hear your crying, but now, it was less ‘in his head’ and much more clear. Xiao walked forward, his footsteps echoing against the glass floor. “Your Grace!” he called. “Can you hear me? It’s me, Adeptus Xiao!”

  No answer. He was utterly alone in this place…but the sound of your crying was getting undeniably louder. Xiao pinpointed on the direction in which it was coming from and took off. With each step he took, the glow of your light grew brighter. He took that as a sign of goodwill.

  And then, he saw you. You were sitting at a strange looking desk with your head buried in your arms. Xiao slowed to a walk and crept tentatively up to you. He had never seen your physical form before, and only had a minor grasp of your appearance from the various statues of you scattered across Liyue and the abstract depictions of your form in history books. To be honest, he had been expecting you to be a bit more…god-like. The person in front of him did not look like an all-powerful deity. They were ordinarily mortal, and possessed no external qualities that differentiated them from the average human being.

  But then you lifted your head to scrub your tears away, and his breath was lost within his chest. Within your eyes he could see countless stars, and flecks of gold were scattered through your hair. All around you, there was an explosion of light, and Xiao was exposed to the warming feeling of your aura at an even greater intensity than usual. This was you. You might have looked human, but you were undeniably, most definitely his god.

  “Your Grace,” he uttered, kneeling at your side. “It’s alright, I’m here now. I heard your cries. You called out my name. Please, let me speak to you.”

  You didn’t respond. The connection still wasn’t there. Xiao tried again. “Your Grace, can you hear me?”

  You let your head flop back into your arms and continued to sob. Xiao leaned back on the balls of his feet and couldn’t help but growl in frustration. That damned Wall was still keeping you and him apart! What more did he have to do in order to simply talk to you?

  His eyes flitted to the strange device set up on your desk. It had the appearance of a box, but at its front there was a screen, and on it was displayed a shrunken image of Dihua Marsh. This must be a divine mechanism. It’s a way for you to forge contact with Teyvat. What…what would happen if he touched it? Would that finally allow him to communicate with you? He had his doubts, but it was worth a shot.

  Without hesitation, he pressed his palm over the screen. There was a jolt of energy that started at his fingertips, then rocketed through his entire body. He shuddered at the electrocuting sensation and refused to allow himself to flinch away, even when every instinct in his body was telling him to do so. The Wall was trying to repel him; like hell he was going to allow it to do that.

  With his other hand, he reached out to you. At first, he was nervous to touch you, for why should a creature tainted by karmic debt and innocent blood be allowed to embrace the God Above All Gods? He shakily slipped his hand over your cheek and raised your head. Your cries stuttered, and your eyes widened open in confusion. You were not looking at him, but rather at your divine mechanism’s screen.

  “Don’t cry,” Xiao whispered. He swiped your tears away with his thumb. “There is no need to cry. I’m here. I’m with you.”

  He desperately hoped you could hear him. He hoped even more that you would reply.

  You had no idea what the hell was going on.

  Today was a horrible day. A day filled with anxiety and embarrassment and ruined expectations that things might go right, only for them to go wrong. When you returned to your room and let yourself collapse into your desk chair, you thought playing your favorite game might cheer you up. After all, losing yourself in a fantasy world was practically the best way to forget what the real world was like.

  You logged into Genshin Impact and found yourself where you left off last time you played: in Dihua Marsh. Your current character was Xiao, and he stared blankly out at you while you waited for the game to catch up with your internet and for everything to load in. But you did not feel any happier. In fact, you felt worse. The events of the day were just too much to simply forget, and pretty soon, your hand slipped off of your mouse as you slumped forward onto your desk and started to cry. It did not feel good to let your emotions out. The sobs shaking your body were ugly, and the tears staining your cheeks made you feel gross. But you couldn’t stop, and frankly, you didn’t expect to for quite some time. These were tears you had been holding in all week; it was only a matter of time before the dam broke and the water came rushing out.

  You did not expect to feel a sudden intuition to lift your head. You did not expect for your body to automatically follow that intuition, either. It was like someone was lifting it for you, and when your blurry eyes raised to focus on your computer’s screen, you were shocked to see that the in-game chat box had a message in it. It didn’t make any sense. You weren’t in a co-op world, and you were pretty sure you were far too preoccupied with crying your eyes out to accept someone’s co-op request. Could it be a glitch? Far too curious for your own good, you clicked on the chat box and opened it.

  Two words had been sent to you by an unknown entity with no icon. “Don’t cry.”

  “What…?” you mumbled.

  More messages appeared. “There is no need to cry.”

  “I’m here.”

  “I’m with you.”

  This had to be some sort of joke. Someone hacked your account. This had to be a real person.

  It was then that you noticed Xiao was gone.

  “I know what it feels like to break. I understand what you are feeling.”

  “Just know that I am here for you. I will always be here for you. All you have to do is call out my name.”

  “Xiao?” you breathed.

  You felt the phantom sensation of someone wiping your tears. The scent of Qingxin flowers wafted fainty around you.

  “Yes,” the chat-box answered. “I am here.”

[snapscube]

hihihi ok. so i’m in my last of us fixation mode and i’m being extra silly about it but i NEED to know what’s ur current opinion on the last of us hbo?? also i logged onto tumblr and saw a lot of rly good points defending joel’s final choice and i remember during the last of us pt1 playthrough u had differing opinions so i wonder if u think the show’s differences affect that at all? btw i LOVE ur stuff and cannot wait until u do last of us pt 2 wehehehehe!!! anyway besides all that i just want u to know that u are one of the things in my life that makes it easier to get up in the morning

I still feel exactly the same about the final events as I always have! The show didn't change it for me, and actually being able to remove myself from being in control of the situation in the game and actually just watch the events play out in show format solidified that further. The connection I have to Joel as a player when I play the game really helps me understand his perspective more and stomach the goal a bit more easily, but without that immediate intimacy it puts into perspective for me how kinda monstrous the whole thing is from every angle. Obviously I don't ever lose that sympathy for him, and I never stop understanding why, because the whole point of the conflict is that no one is in the right. Ultimately I think the damning thing for every single person involved is that they removed Ellie's agency from the equation, and I still stand by that. They all should have talked to her. They should have told her the truth. All she wants is for her immunity to matter, and I believe that they may have been surprised at the lengths she's willing to go in order to make a difference, whether it's ultimately the right call or not.

I don't know what arguments you've seen exactly in defense of Joel's choice, but personally I don't really agree with one I see a lot and I'd expect will pop up again now that the show is over, which is the whole "well who's to say a vaccine would have worked anyway?????" angle. I think, while reasonable from a meta standpoint, completely ignores the intended framing of the story in order to more conveniently justify a protagonist that the story through its entire runtime is trying to tell you is a little bit of a piece of shit. It's pretty clear and safe to assume that the ultimate intent here is that... yes, the vaccine WOULD have worked. Maybe not in the sweeping way they hoped, but Ellie's sacrifice absolutely would have done something. The whole moral dilemma of the situation really does not make any sense unless you give them that as fact imo.

So then, assuming that is true, you have to wrestle with the idea that Joel is willing to take down the entirety of humanity for Ellie. And not really for Ellie, because none of this is what Ellie wanted. The game AND the show QUITE LITERALLY SPELL OUT for us that Ellie really really really does not want to go back to Jackson without finishing what they started, regardless of the cost. Joel's reasons for saving Ellie, while understandable, are ultimately selfish and rooted in his own trauma and having just seen the light at the end of his grieving over Sarah. Again, incredibly sympathetic, but it's selfish. I know we like to joke as much, but Ellie IS NOT his daughter. They share a similar bond after everything they go through, but by the end of the game you can already feel Ellie pulling away from that notion because she's starting to realize Joel doesn't have the same commitment to the idea of her immunity being meaningful as she does, they're only a few miles away and he's already asking her to give up and go back to Jackson with him.

Then, of course, I think what ultimately damns Joel in my eyes on a poetic/storytelling level is his decision to lie to Ellie after it's all over. That's the nail in the coffin for me. It would be one thing if he said "they were going to kill you on that operating table without even telling you what was going on and I couldn't let them do that", but instead he lies to her to make sure she's still able to see him as the father he desperately wants to be again. It doesn't change anything. He tells her her worst fear has come to pass: her immunity, this unexplainable thing that has taken so many of her loved ones from her, is completely useless. Not only that, but now even more people are dead. Including Marlene, who's known her since birth. The only thing his lie changes is the fact that he's responsible for it all.

Anyway, part of what I love most about The Last of Us Part II is how it follows up on these threads and you may be pleased to know that I actually just started streaming the game last night after the HBO finale premiered cause I was so pumped up I couldn't wait any longer haha. So you'll be seeing VODs for that soon :)

[dreamingkelz]

I’ll admit, I’m a little nervous writing this, but I’ve been thinking in circles a lot lately, and I thought writing my thoughts down would be helpful and maybe alleviate some anxiety? This isn’t really criticism about anything, so much as observations and analysis and just a general attempt to understand some of the weirder things I’ve experienced being in this fandom.

With that said, let’s get started.

I’ve talked in the past about how protective I feel when it comes to the eggs. I don’t like people threatening to kill them. I don’t like when the story puts them in danger. I don’t like how neglect deaths are still a risk. And after a few close calls over the past few days, egg welfare is in the front of my mind again, and I’ve found myself questioning why I feel this way. It’s strange, isn’t it? As many people have said, they’re just a bunch of pixels in a video game, aren’t they?

First and foremost, I want to preface this by saying I’m a writer, and more specifically, I’m a writer who loves angst. I’ve always drifted towards tragic narratives. I want to see the characters I’m invested in get tested. I want to see them cope with trauma and loss. I love when a story can make me cry. I’m not necessarily a fan of child death as a narrative device, but of all of the stories I’ve written, my favorite does see the main character watching four of his five children die in increasingly horrific ways over the course of fifty chapters, so it’s definitely not a dealbreaker for me. If the QSMP was an ordinary story, I think I would love the tension and the horror of the situation. As is, there have been some interesting character developments to come out of the constant threat of death, or the trauma caused by past deaths on the server.

So then why? Why does the thought of egg deaths still fill me with a nauseating sense of dread?

To start with, the QSMP is not an ordinary story. I don’t think any story told through this particular style of Minecraft roleplay is or can be. This is real-time player-driven roleplaying, and I think there are three medium-defining factors at play here. One: every player (usually) streams their perspective. Two: characters appear and disappear from the story based on the players’ streaming schedules. And three: while they are online, we will experience every single thing that happens to the players.

Combined, we end up with a narrative that simultaneously has characters that are better-developed than can be found in any other medium, while also somehow being worse. Any character is likely to have a vivid, colorful personality, deeply engaging relationships with the people around them, a rich inner life, and their own unique perspective on any events that occur on the server. But that same character might inexplicably be absent from a plot beat that they are heavily invested in, solely because the streamer isn’t available for that particular stream. Plotlines get dropped for any number of reasons. Backstories are, more often than not, cobbled together from references to past servers that the player has taken part in. All-in-all, narrative and even character takes a backseat to the players - their identities, their schedules, their playstyles, their comfort.

It is also worth repeating that everything that happens on the server is unfolding in real time. The narrative doesn’t cut away when the story stops, at least not for most of the players. There are a handful who might log in with a single focus for the day, stream for one or two hours, then log off again. But many more are there nearly every day for several hours at a time, and a lot of that time will be dedicated to non-story events - building, doing dungeons, making machines, or just hanging out with the other players. While any player on any stream can be prone to breaking character to talk about events from their offline lives, these long, lore-light streams are especially prone to it. And there are some players who specifically try to avoid participating in lore altogether. At the end of the day, they are streamers first, and actors in a story second.

The result of all of these factors is a server with an incredibly thin line between fiction and reality. There is a distinction between the player and the character they play, yes, but in any given stream the difference between the two can become murky.

But how does this tie to the eggs?

In the beginning, it wasn’t necessarily so bad. The eggs were just cute little blobs that followed their respective players around and needed to be taken care of. There was even a lot of confusion in the earliest days as to whether or not they were controlled by AI. If that was all they had stayed, perhaps we wouldn’t have gotten so attached? The problem came when they started talking.

Suddenly, the eggs were able to communicate things they liked and projects they wanted to work on. They were able to tell jokes, and express complicated emotions, and let the personalities they’d already started fostering shine. They started carving out niches in the community of the server - people ask Dapper for help with engineering projects and mod-related information; Richarlyson’s art is plastered over every other business and he even does concept art for builds; the eggs form relationships outside of their assigned player, with eggs and players alike. Some of them even have their own ongoing storylines. Parents are careful to make sure that every egg is taken care of every week, and everybody freaks out if they see an egg go down in chat.

Yes, the eggs are cute. They’re small and meant to evoke human children. The players are explicitly told to protect them, to raise them, and keep them healthy and happy. Of course everybody would become attached. But isn’t it strange to get this attached?

If cute child characters were all they were, I would think so. But that isn’t the case. In practice, the eggs are effectively players themselves.

Players that only exist in the context of the server.

Players that the server is actively trying to kill.

And I think that is the problem. The eggs are characters in a story, but the story has such a murky line between fiction and reality, that they wind up feeling real. After all, they follow the same rules as the other “characters” when it comes to portraying a character. This isn’t like a Cucurucho or a Walter Bob who come online once in a while to hang out, but clearly have an off-screen role to play in the story as well. The eggs may not stream their perspectives, but they spend nearly one hundred percent of their time interacting with players, and if they’re not with a player, they’re assumed to be sleeping. Furthermore, depending on whose perspective you watch, you’re going to spend a minimum of three days a week watching egg content, and when they log on, they tend to stay for hours. If you were watching in the beginning, they were online every day. That is a LOT of time to “get to know” these characters who so convincingly mimic the players.

Effectively (and unintentionally), the QSMP has tricked the audience into forming parasocial relationships with a handful of fictional characters.

I have never cried over the death of a fictional character, or even had a particularly strong reaction. When a character is in danger, usually my reaction is excitement over the narrative possibilities the situation could create. I love tragedy in fiction. I love horror. I love drama. And on the server itself, this is how I’ve consistently felt about inter-player conflicts. My engagement is at its highest when there is some kind of narrative tension between the player characters (and the fandom reactions to this kind of thing deserve their own essay).

But when Dapper lost his first life, I was so viscerally upset that I nearly dropped the series to protect my mental health. I have pointedly refused to watch any stream where an egg dies if I know it’s coming, and I tend to avoid streams dealing with the aftermath of their deaths as well.

Because no matter how much logic you throw at the situation, it still feels real. If a player character perma-dies, or is banned, or just chooses to leave, they may no longer have a presence in the server, but it’s still clear to the audience that only the character is dead. The player exists outside of the server, and for the parasocially invested, it’s usually still easy to keep up with them if one wants to. The eggs broadly do not have that luxury. Once they’re dead in the story, they cease to exist altogether, and in an environment where the fiction/reality line is already so blurred, that is going to have a strong impact on the audience. No amount of hearing “they’re pixels in a video game” is going to mitigate that.

I think the best case scenario is that they grant the eggs the same immortality as the players, whether it be through hatching or some other means, and allow them to come and go as suits them. The eggs have fulfilled their initial purpose, and the server would really benefit from removing this hurdle that disincentivizes chaos and recklessness and incentivizes harassment from a highly-stressed audience. Multiple players have already said they have no intention of returning because they don’t want to deal with the fallout that will come from potentially hurting an egg. But all of these eggs have carved out a real place in the server, and it would be a shame to lose that.

The eggs are important to the QSMP and a major draw for a lot of people. And I don’t think that needs to change. But I do think that there are ways to use the eggs for narrative drama without having to force your audience into subconsciously believing that their favorite streamer has died. The QSMP, and servers like it, provide a unique storytelling medium with its own advantages and challenges. And as with any medium, it’s important to be aware of what these challenges are in order to tell the best story possible.

[chilpilled]

ive been bingeing survivor lately because the current season is really good (q sweep) and ngl i cant stop thinking about dunmeshi survivor. laios obvious challenge beast who keeps finding idols, not even on purpose he just likes exploring the island and stumbles upon them on accident. the kind of player who’s dogshit strategically and completely on the outs (doesnt even know theres any strategy happening) but becomes a threat due to constantly winning immunities and finding idols and being endearing so people go from thinking hes easy to take out later to desperate to get rid of him. probably a very polarizing figure for viewers, i think casual fans love him for being a nice and earnest quirky character while superfans hate him for his lack of strategic prowess. i dont see him winning but he probably gets at least a few votes if he makes it to final 3 and he gets asked back for sure because jeff loves his quirky characters.

chilchuck might be a sleeper individual immunity challenge beast (a lot of challenges are dependent on carrying your bodyweight or dexterity) and is probably also narrator of the season. every time a conversation happens it cuts to a chilchuck confessional where hes sitting on a log being like „i hate these people i want to drown myself in the ocean. i want to poison the rice.“ not quite a goat but hes probably too abrasive to win many jury votes, tho it depends on who hes sitting next to. i dont think he wins but he probably becomes a fan favorite due to his bluntness and gets asked to come back in a later season but refuses.

kabru is doing 4d chess and running laps around everybody both socially and strategically and would probably get taken to final 3 where he sweeps the jury if he didnt get weirdly focused on laios and end up alienating his alliances. kabru strong early beginning, obvious winner edit being able to run the game while keeping his threat level low midgame, to meltdown over laios literally just running around the island pretending to be a dog, and getting voted out shortly before final tribal. becomes an iconic figure comparable to the likes of angelina and is definitely asked back, but also for sure on a season where laios comes back too.

senshi has no strategy but everyone loves him for being the provider and also just a genuinely great guy. is probably making his tribe elaborate meals every day and comforting them after challenge losses. everyone loves senshi but unfortunately that makes him too big of a threat so he gets taken out during midgame but everyone is really upset about doing it, they just know they have no chance against him in final 3. it doesnt matter if senshi is left out of every vote, its senshi so the jury would vote for him anyways. after the votes are read he probably slaps his knee and goes „aww you got me good guys well played!“ without a hint of anger and everybody knows it was the right choice to vote him but they still feel awful. probably hugs everyone and gives them some words of encouragement before leaving. huge fan favorite and gets asked back on multiple seasons but is unfortunately always voted off rather early because hes simply too big of a threat. a messianic figure.

marcille probably hates the island and is only there because falin is. probably good strategically but lets be honest here she would suffer every single day shes on that island. kept in the game through sheer determination to make the merge and see falin again, but is probably voted out not long after, because her and falin are dangerous together and couples always get broken up. fierce falin advocate on ponderosa. falins strongest soldier.

falin is probably just a very strong social player. shes not the most strategic, but is probably brought into votes just due to how likeable she is. senshi also serves as a shield for her threat level, so i can see her making final 3 without having a vote cast against her. probably sweeps the jury, partly because marcille has been campaigning for her on ponderosa, partly because shes just genuinely likeable and people want her to have the money, partly because i cant think of any person potentially sitting next to her that people would rather vote for. just strategic enough that fans dont really have a problem with her win, and nowadays people are more open to social gameplay, plus shes beautiful and a great person so yeah. falin wins because everybody loves her and everybody loves her for winning. marcilles work is done.

itutsumi isnt part of the game shes just kinda hanging out on the island. nobody knows why or what shes doing there but shes laying in the sun and napping. there are probably a few votes for her at the final tribal so there needs to be a revote. you can NOT vote for izutsumi. stop booing

[ellraiser]

Mudborne - Devlog #02

Hey everyone! Been awhile since I opened up Tumblr to write something - I've been trying not to add the pressure to make myself post every single month, as half the time I don't have much to say and the other half making it something I HAVE to do prevents it from being something I WANT to do But it's been a little while of working on Mudborne stuff in between all the final APICO update stuff, and I wanted to share where I've got to so far with your new fav frog game

Back To The Drawing Board

So if you haven't already seen, one of the main things I'm doing with Mudborne is updating the style and the art. The gamejam version was made in a week, and a lot of that was shameless art rips of APICO with some reskins - which was still cute but after working in the APICO "style" for nearly 5 years now I wanted something different. For that I'd already played with a few ideas:

The game is set in a pond, so I wanted it to be mostly water. This meant thinking about what the landmass or even buildings would be like - I've always found the land style I did for APICO really weird as it's severe top-down but all the sprites are like sortof side view? So I wanted to work with that in mind and have the land match that perspective more. I also really liked the idea of the stone slabs as the land instead of dirt, as it had a nicer overall vibe and helped the mud stand out from the "dirt" of the early ideas. I also wanted to have lots of plants and nature stuff that wasn't necessarily interacted with but added to the overall scene. One thing I really hated with APICO is it relied on the trees/shrubs for balance of the overall palette, so this time I wanted enough flora scattered across the waters to make it look pretty all the time not just before the player has a killing spree with their axe. What I ended up settling on after a few weeks was this:

As you can see it's mostly water, with some large stone slabs to act as "land" and break it up, and lots of green. I wanted a consistent darker outline for anything you can interact with, which then let me have a lot of "background" flora and scenery.

The stone slabs also felt like a perfect place for buildings - I'd tried an attempt at a few building designs, but overally didn't really like how they fit in with the world

Having the stone slabs as the buildings felt more natural and the little extra details of grates and drains and windows I think helps sell it more as lived in. Also by having a fixed "size" of the blocks in tiles, I could match that for the inside so all the spaces matched up when going in and out (and also means I'd be able to show "hidden" rooms while inside that give you a clue to how to get into them)

To finish it off, I worked on the menu designs to see how the UI would fit in - there's some similarities to APICO's basic UI style but I changed the colors a bit and added more space around all the elements. I also wanted some clearer slot stuff, so like mushrooms and their powder/magic mud to have a small icon for the mushroom, buckets to have a liquid icon - I'd made a few sprites in APICO that were far too similar, so I wanted to avoid that this time round.

I also wanted to keep the main UI as minimal as possible, just some indicators, a current quest log, and then the tooltips if hovering something - this means I've got some flexibility later to add some more stuff. Once I got this coded up I'd tweak a few things, including the design of the titular mud itself, but overall things pretty much match those final concept arts above.

===

Lost In A Dream

With that done I wanted to work on the next main part of the design - the dream world. In the gamejam when you dream you visit the big frog god and they tell you your progress, but what I actually want is a whole dream world that acts as an "opposite" to the waking world.

With APICO I always felt like the gameplay was fun but the NPCs and story and exploration was pretty non-existant. In Mudborne I wanted to expand that, have a similar "maths for fun" genetic puzzle to work on as the core game but then have a much richer world to explore.

With the dream world I could have things change between the worlds - new doors and rooms appearing, broken bridges now fixed, stone lilypads disappearing. By using the big froggy pools the player can switch between the two, and access new areas they couldn't before, along with new frogs or mushrooms or NPCs. This ends up with a sort of APICO x Metroidvania in a way, you find different mushrooms, create new frogs, and based on the frog genetics you can "unlock" these gates to get to new areas - some part of the main story, others optional to learn more about the secrets of the world, but the different frogs will gate your progress and exploration. It also gives me a lot of scope to do fun things with the differences between the two worlds, whether thats trees turning into jellyfish that float around, or NPCs being different and saying/selling different things.

It also has some importance within the story itself so I think it should end up as a nice mix of fun gameplay, cool vibes, and a nice story to tell.

===

Something Old Something New

With the overworld itself I'd done a lot of changes, looking at the gamejam you can see just how much differs, not just colors but the world objects too.

Some of the items I still liked, like the mushroom designs or the basic tools, some I think make for a fun "nod" to APICO, (like the frogspawn being the honeycomb sprite but modified), with the objects themselves though I wanted to try and match that new "perspective" shared by the stone buildings and the trees.

I also wanted to start using some more colors and have things less flat, so it was nice to finally move away from a lot of the stuff I'd drawn for APICO. When it came to the menus though, I still think the rough style of menus worked really well - it's been battle tested and I know what worked and didn't, but the UI has always been pretty solid. The main changes I did was update the spacing between elements to give the slots + UI inside menus more space, and then I wanted to change some of the border/header styles slightly and have the tiny lilypad icon in there too. To start with I just fleshed out a bunch of the machines I had in the gamejam plus a few extra ones (also yes thats a slightly different shade of brown to APICO, you have good eyes!)

I really liked some of the menus have these sort of "mini" interfaces inside that showed a bit more of what is going on in the overworld, so wanted to lean into that a bit with some of the other machines. I also still liked the idea of having some mechanism stuff - for APICO players I appreciate it's lost the charm, but anyone new to Mudborne thats never heard of ol' bee game can still appreciate it!

===

Maths For Fun

As I started implementing the mechanics some of the menus changed a bit - for the current "vertical slice" I'm making for pitches, the main machines I needed were: - Spawner (frog+frog = frogspawn) - Grinder (mushroom = powders) - Cauldron (mud+powders = magic mud) - Nursery (magic mud + frogspawn = tadpole) - Feeder (tadpole + bugs = frogs) - Bed (skip ahead time)

The main differences to the gamejam version is the extra step with mushrooms (so that you don't have to find + pick as many mushrooms as you'll get multiple powders from one), the cauldron accepting up to 3 powders that can be the same or different (so one magic mud can have 3 buffs), and the nursery having multiple layers (so you could do 3 different genetic changes or use a +1 mushroom 3 times for a +3 in one step) The nursery change is the most important here, as being able to do 3 buffs at the same time is important as it's part of the genetic puzzle I'll explain later - but it also removes some grindyness, instead of needing to do 3 cycles for a 4 trait to become a 7 trait using a +1 mushroom, you can do just 1.

The feeder expands the process to include bugs you find to feed the tadpoles - once they grow they'll appear in the overworld as actual frogs again to catch, but this time they might be some new species depending on the genetic modifications you made with the mud. I'm still playing with what the different bugs might do or how which bugs are decided as needed, but I think it gives me a lot of room to play with from a mechanics standpoint. The final "new" machine I needed was the actual teleportation pools - these would have the genetic "lock" that you need to make a frog to match.

The puzzle starts off simple enough, get a frog that matches the 7 traits the pool requires. Putting a frog in the pool starts the little coloured lines to "move" from left to right, stopping if the number the frog has doesn't match whats needed. Once you have a frog with all numbers matching, all the dots can join up, and the pool unlocks to be used to travel between worlds.

"That's easy" I hear you say, and yes! To start with this is easy enough, sure you might need to combine different mushrooms to counter certain modifications you don't want, but you can cycle frogs as much as you want to keep modifying until you get there. However this is me making a game so obviously I need to then show you something that makes you cry - which is when I introduce the concept of ancestors to the genetic locks

Instead of just looking at the traits of the frog, it also looks at the traits of the frog of the previous generation, and maybe even the generation before that! So starting from the first "column" you need to jump to the next one in a single frog cycle, using the right mushrooms to modify the numbers in one leap (ha). 

You then might need to do that again (and again) until you have a frog that has each previous generation matching whats expected. There'll be some tools to help you "predict" this, as well as lots of different mushrooms you'll find as you explore that do different things, +1, -1, *2 AND -1 etc. Planning this out is a nightmare as you can imagine...

Also having 7 traits each with 7 values means a lot of combinations (823543?!?), which means I can "hide" a lot of frogs to be discovered. For example go scroll back up and look at the "finished" concept art without UI for both the waking and dream world - notice that piller on the left? By travelling to the dream you can get the missing numbers that give you a trait "key" you could make to find a new frog.

In this way there can be a bunch of frogs you have to find to progress through the pools to new areas, some frogs you can get through experimenting (what if I do 777777?) and some found through clues in the world. 

===

What Next?

So right now I've planned out all the mechanics and I've been starting to implement them into a prototype of sorts (in my new favourite engine LÖVE) to make sure it all feels fun and has the right vibe, so lots of little bugs/critters roaming around, a cute day/night cycle, weather etc

I'm trying to spend more time on little details and effects in the world, all very small stuff but all adds up without the player realising, reflections or pollen or subtle movement. 

The goal is to then finish that as a vertical slice I can use to pitch to publishers, cos although APICO did well that was a couple years ago now, and outside of this final update I essentially have no releases until Mudborne is done so money is pretty tight :')

While doing that, I'll be continuing on with the game, starting with the first "training" area that will essentially become the demo. My plan is to release the demo later this year showing that first area, while I continue finishing the game to release in 2025 - right now the demo on Steam is still the gamejam version, which while it has some of the vibes it's not the full concept of what I want Mudborne to be, so I'd like to get that updated to really show people what they can have to look forward to.

I have a lot of the full game mapped out now, in terms of the story, areas, npc, general mechanics etc. I'm also literally mapping it out, each area on some graph paper, so will be interesting to see how closely I follow this for the demo + full game, esp. as I've already changed the houses (and is a nice analogue break for my poor eyes)

===

As I mentioned at the start, having to force a devlog every month didn't work great for me, I'd rather do larger devlogs now and again to catch you all up with what I've been doing over a couple of months otherwise it feels like I'm scraping the barrel some months when I've been busy on other stuff. I do share the odd video + sketch in Discord now and again, so if you want to come chat about it I'd love to see you there, but I'm committing to do devlogs when I can so you can keep up with everything <3 ~ Ell

[sumthinganarchy]

Well we've come this far,

I remember when splatoon 1 came out, I wanted it so bad but I couldn't have it cus we didn't owe a wiiU (I was so confused back in the day about the wiiU that I thought splatoon was ON the wii lol). During this time is when I would looked up videos and art on Google and YouTube, this is what kicked started my love for spyke, which I fell in love with.

I remember splatoon 2 well as well, marina was my favorite idol, and spyke was here again (tho you couldn't talk to him). I remember how I would try doodling myself as a inkling in class, and one of my friends telling me about the game since they had a switch.

A couple of months before splatoon 3 came out, I had some money laying around and decided to buy splatoon 2 (tho I should have keeped it for splatoon 3). I didn't play multi-player as I didn't have online (and I got scared ), I made to throw single player a bit, but I finally beat it a month or so before I got splatoon 3 (evey time I'd log in, I'd squid flop in front of spyke's window for motivation)

I got splatoon 3 on Christmas from my dad, and I payed for online and the dlc by the end of the day, and I love it, I love that every one grows up

I'll be making a drawing soon (probably by the end of the week)

Goodbye splatoon, we love you<3

[cerastes]

Did you stop playing FF14 for any particular reason? Did something make you not like it anymore?

Nope, I still highly recommend the game, with the caveat that the game aspect of it begins in the Stormblood postgame (Tsukoyomi specifically), and before that, it's not at all a video game because there's no gameplay beyond having a functioning brain and being able to press buttons, and the other caveat that the storyline really starts in Heavensward, because the writing before then is a powerful anesthetic. This may sound like I'm backhanding the game something fierce but this is my honest, good faith opinion of a game I legitimately enjoyed and do not at all regret spending both time and money on. If you go in with those warnings in mind (in my opinion) it's an amazing experience overall.

I stopped playing simply because I accomplished all I set out to do on it. I am not an MMO guy. I started FF14 with these objectives:

Find out if the narrative was as good as people claimed it was -> It was!

Play through current Savage content through Party Finder -> I did that! It was fun.

Join a static and play Savage content with them -> I did that! I loved my static, the voice chat was always fun.

Then, I found my favorite content in the game: Bozja. That gave me an extra objective:

Beat all 6 of the superboss duels in Bozja, collect all Pages, become Emblazoned (10/10/10) and basically, clear Bozja 100%.

And I did all of it! Technically, I'm at 99% because I am only missing the Delubrum Reginae Savage clear, but I need 47 other players willing to play that if I want to be able to attempt it. It's already old content, so not a lot of people try it anymore. Hell, even getting a queue for regular DR is an ordeal. But otherwise? I busted my ass learning all 6 duels, beat them, and got all Pages.

And when I finally beat the final duel, Lyon's 2nd duel, and finished all that Bozja had for me... I sort of didn't want to play anymore. I would log in for a few more days but I would just sort of meander around Coerthas, decorate my house, or play the market, but... I wasn't really playing anymore. I would just yawn a lot and find myself with nothing to do. After around a week of that, I realized I was done with the game. I 'beat' FF14. I accomplished all I set out to do. I had fun.

So I cancelled my subscription and uninstalled. The game did its job, and it did it amazingly well. I had fun. I did not want to play it anymore, because I was satisfied and had nothing left to do in it.

It also helps it happened around the time Elden Ring was about to release, haha. A friend of mine said "well, it makes sense you love Bozja so much, it's practically solo content with other people instead of multiplayer content" and, it made a lot of sense: I prefer doing my thing, by myself, instead of necessarily needing people for content, and having to go along (forgive how this will sound) with their fuck ups holding me back, when I'm doing perfectly well by myself. That was the appeal of the Bozja duels, really: It's super difficult content, but it's 1 on 1, if you lose in a duel, it's because YOU fucked up, not because one of the other seven people fucked up and took you all down with them. Every time I lost a duel, it was a learning experience, and the solution was simple: I need to get better. I simply need to play better and learn the fight better, that's it. I can't get better for one or more other people in a group of eight. I can get better for myself. Ergo, I like solo content. I mean, I pretty much played through FF14 as a single player game, anyways (I'm so sorry, everyone that made a Coeurl character or transferred to Coeurl because I was there, I'm a hermit in essence, at the end of the day).

But, again, I loved my time with the game and I seriously think it's a wonderful game. I didn't stop playing because I dislike it. I love FF14, it's just, it did its job, and smashingly well at that.

[ashhisemax]

Dev Log One

The aim of the game is to play through the story of RWBY in a fighting game. These Dev Logs will cover the whole process.

These are the details about the Main Menu, and then further details about each option:

Main Menu:

Story Mode: Tells the story of the RWBY show through fights, (similar to the Injustice games), following the main girls. 

Challenge Mode: Following story is an individual challenge/story mode where players select an individual character and play through the story of their fights through RWBY.

Free Play: Choose a character to play as against a single character you choose.

Shop: Gachapon style to spend Lien won during fights.

Collectibles: 3D models of characters, weapons, and arenas from the gachapon machine.

Options: Various options.

Credits: Credits of everything used in the game.

Story Mode:

Gives the option of playing Easy, Normal, Hard. The story mode goes through the story of RWBY from start to finish (whenever the finish is at the point of reaching it). After finishing the first fight involving a character, they’re unlocked for Free Play. After finishing all of the fights involving a character, that character is unlocked for use in Challenge Mode. The only characters controlled are Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang. In between each fight is a short text that explains the story between each fight, why the fight is happening etc.

Challenge Mode: 

Play through a single character’s storyline throughout the world of RWBY from start to the finish of their story. Can choose any costume for the character that has been unlocked and play through the whole storyline in that costume. For example Ruby’s would only follow her fights, so any fights involving Blake from the Story Mode wouldn’t be played (for example against Adam). Depending on the costumes found from the Shop could have extra fights (finding Ruby’s Beacon Outfit would unlock the food fight from Volume 2 in her Challenge Mode, which is otherwise unseen).

Free Play:

Choose any character, select their costume, then select the opponent, select their costume. Select the difficulty, and then select the arena. Then fight. At the end of the fight receive Lien based on how well the fight went, difficulty rating etc (this is the same for all fights, regardless of Story, Challenge, or Free Play).

Shop:

This is where the collectibles are collected. There’s a gachapon machine or some kind of lootbox selector where you buy lootboxes/gachapon. None of this uses real money, it is entirely through the Lien that is earned from winning fights. There are three sets of collectibles: Character Models, Weapon Models, Arena Models. Character Models have a subsection that is under a separate loot table called Costumes. These are separate costumes that do not carry a different moveset, but some of which can unlock fights for the character in Challenge Mode (Ruby’s Beacon outfit will unlock the food fight against team JNPR). 

Collectibles:

View any and all collectibles. There are various different types of collectibles, all of which are collected from the Shop. 3D Character Models, 3D Weapon Models, 3D Arena Models. They are all viewable and also have a small description for each.

Options:

Change various options such as controller layout, keybindings etc. Usual options for video games.

Credits:

View the credits that say who did what, where it came from etc.

As I’m starting from the very beginning, with very little coding experience and zero game development knowledge or experience.

I’ve done a bit of research and know that if I want any chance of actually finishing this game, then I need to start small.

So I’m starting with a Pick a Number game. Then I’m going to follow the below plan (however there may be extra steps added in) to build myself up. 

Hangman

Choose Your Own Adventure

Choose Your Own Adventure (Longer, with more options and possibly multiple endings - or even more multiple endings)

Rock, Paper, Scissors

Pong

Minesweeper

Tetris

Asteroids

Space Invaders

Platformer

Snake

Pac-Man

Moonlander

2D Side Scrolling Fighter (similar to Injustice iOS). This will be an early test-run style of a version of the game.

At some point - not sure at what - I’ll do a test version of the gachapon. 

The entire time, in the background, I will be working on characters, modeling arenas, doing animation, planning, writing the in between texts, I will not stop working on this game.

[msvorderofoperations]

New dream diary.

This one was kind of odd in its tone. At times deathly serious, and others incredibly superficial. I dreamed that I was in a far future kind of setting where this game had kind of taken over the world at large for good and for ill. It existed in many forms: a miniature based war game, a trading card game, and mixed reality massively multiplayer online video game. I say mixed reality, not just as something that incorporates real world objects into itself, but as something that directly affects reality as well. It also conferred great powers on high level players. But I will get back to this in a bit.

Another aspect of this dream was that I was in a polyamorous relationship in a sort of hub and spoke system. Myself and a few other people were romantically involved with this one woman, but weren't really involved with each other. And for whatever reason, the polycule all lived together, except for the woman we were all romantically tied to. Some of them I got along with great, and we were good friends, but this one guy I did not much like at all and we pointedly tried to spend as little time around each other as possible. This is borne out at one point by this guy talking up how much time they are going to spend together the next time she visits, and I take him at his word. But when she arrives, she specifically wants to be with me.

This is awkward for a number of reasons, not all of them interpersonal. I had been prepping for a day to myself, playing a single player version of the card game which was offline but could still record progress and would update my associated stats upon the next time I logged in. I also had not fully bathed, and this is where the dream took a very tonally strange tangent. Instead of bathing at home like would be the sane thing to do, I instead find out about a fully automated robotic bathhouse in India, and opt to use it instead. Doing so involves me fully teleporting myself to the complete other side of the world, which I do as a lark. But in doing so, I forget to bring my shampoo, so my hair is still a greasy mess. And again, instead of just doing it at home, I feel the need to make the trip once more.

Unsurprisingly, one of the things our shared romantic interest wanted to do together was have sex. But in thinking I was not going to be partaking today, I gratified myself shortly before she arrived. Which the dude who lied about her being with him today (sorry that I don't have names here, my dream did not provide any so I have to describe everyone in terms of my relationship to them) makes fun of me for doing. Which, in addition to being shitty by itself, he implies that by doing so I am unworthy to be in a relationship with her because of it. For her part, she does not seem to pay this any mind. She is actually quite interested in the details, because she finds the idea of me touching myself to the idea of her very hot. From here the narrative starts to pull away, as for whatever reason my dreams will often be sexually charged but they almost never actually feature any explicit sexual content.

The narrative then takes on a more limited-omniscient perspective, showcasing the shared goings-on of the other members of the polycule as I am away with our shared love. Specifically, it starts with one of the people I am friends with investigating a recent, and hugely influential moment that happened in the MMO part of this game. It was a group activity that involved trying to stop the latest attack from the antagonist faction, which went about as bad as it could have. All of us had different roles and skill sets, which we had tried to apply as best we could to minimize the impact of this event. I will spare the unimportant details, but the long and short of it is the my role was the intelligence gatherer, and I found out what the object of this enemy incursion was. Despite being about a large scale attack across many parts of the in-game space, the main objective for them was a bomb, planted in a playground at a school. I tried to warn people of this, saying "Its a bomb, in the mirror in the playground." But for whatever reason my messages were becoming garbled and what people heard was "In the mirror underground" and no one could make sense of it, so they took it as being spam.

While the thing with the bomb was happening, the guy who was determined to undermine me was dealing with his own problems. He had proper heard my warning and had been trying to make his way to the school to either disarm it or evacuate. Unfortunately, he had run afoul of the bunch of extremely dangerous high-level enemy monsters. They were the weird giant worm-like things that could move shockingly fast, and had minor reality warping powers. Specifically, they had the ability to redirect kinetic weapons fire elsewhere, which was a big problem because that was the main way this dude engaged in combat. The last time he had fought these things, they redirected his bullets into another member of the polycule, and killed them. Vowing to not let that happen again, he instead tries to escape, but it proves very difficult as he has become surrounded. The one merciful thing about these worm enemies is that while they have incredible hearing and absurd reaction speed, they are completely blind. So while he can't find his way free or fight out, as long as he stays calm he isn't in much danger himself.

Eventually though, the time to stop the attack passes and the bomb does end up going off. It is discovered in the aftermath that the reason the placement went undetected was because the explosive being used is a new, novel compound that does not read as an explosive. It is functionally an inert mud in basically all circumstances, but once the catalyst is introduce it becomes a hyper-powerful energetic explosive. To the point that all it took to blow up this whole school was something about the size of a tennis ball. And the very weird thing is, the catalyst is blood. Any kind will work.

Also in the ongoing investigation, there is a secondary site where no lives were lost but has fairly significant structural damage. In winding back the game state to see how bad it actually is, he sees that a player was present at the time of the event. It turns out to be the guy who was trapped by the worms. It seems in his frustration at having not been able to stop the explosion, in the ensuing chaos after he went on a destructive rampage in a place where there were no people present and then used the editing powers granted to high-level players to make it look like it was done by the opposing faction.

When my time alone with my paramour comes to an end, my friend quietly confronts me with the information that the other guys was responsible for the secondary destruction. We are keeping it on the down low not because we place any blame on him, but because we see that this event has enormously effected him and that we want to try and help him work through what he's going through. So we opt to try and organize a group activity for the whole polycule.

While that is happening, the subject of all our affection tries to make good with the dude who is clearly Going Through It and low-key making it everyone's problem. She tries assisting him with other aspects of the game like the TCG and the miniature, but at every juncture, he brushes her off and intimates that he is better off alone. Which obviously is very upsetting to her.

In the meantime however, we have finished our planning for the group excursion. We opt for something simple in just taking a walking tour of an area downtown and sampling the food and drink available at the best places there. As we are are out and about, an incident occurs. In a shared roadway, a dude in a pickup truck doesn't stop for us, and I end up doing pretty intense damage to it to stop it before it hits anyone. In trying to fix up his truck in the aftermath, I end up kind of ham-fistedly apply the high-level editing powers that I have only recently been given access to. I try to restore the surface of the hood of the truck back to what it was, but end up incorporating the surface of the road and the dirt beneath into it's appearance. While my friend shows me more direct ways of utilizing the powers to more useful ends, the troubled guy goes to check on the driver.

It's at this point that this take a turn for the worse. The driver is fully unconscious, which is odd because the truck had been moving very slowly at the time of the accident. In checking his face against records, it turns out that this guys is a known collaborator with the enemy faction and is wanted by the authorities. As this is happening we have opened the hood to see if there was any damage to the engine that we can repair. And we find...nothing. No engine, no battery, nothing that would allow this car to move under it's own power. Just ruptured containers and what looks for all the world like clay soil. We quickly realize that this car was being used to smuggle whatever this substance is, and by hiding it in the engine bay and impelling it through unseen means, cursory searches wouldn't find it. Some kid grabs a chunk of it, and before anyone can stop him, all hell breaks loose.

In handling it and tossing it to himself, it hits a mosquito and it becomes abundantly clear what this stuff is. it explodes with a incredible report, and the whole scene erupts in incredible carnage. Because of how crowded this place had been, the viscera keeps reigniting it, all while the shock of the explosions push the remaining amounts of the stuff all over the place. It has a terrible cascading effect where is seems that there is no safe place to be. Even those off street level in the buildings above are succumbing to secondary and tertiary explosions. I am able to survive the initial blast and try to corral people to stem the tide of violence, but nothing seems to be working. While all this mayhem is going on, I see my love trying to save someone who has broken off from the group. And I see in excruciating detail as a rogue piece of debris catches her in the head and immediately and soundlessly kills her.

At this point I wake up.

[agirlnamedhagrid]

Get to Know Me Better

Thank you for the tag:  @ereborne! I always appreciate being tagged in these even if it takes me months to get around to filling them out!

Relationship status:  single

Favorite color(s):  Grayish purples and marshy greens and dusty pinks

Favorite food:  so many! But I’ll go with custards because so many of my favorite pastries and desserts are custard-based.

Song stuck in my head:  "Made You Look” by Meghan Trainor. Honorable mentions (because I get a lovely jukebox of snippets of all of them rolling through my brain simultaneously) include: “She Had Me at Heads Carolina” by Cole Swindell, “Thank God” by Kane & Katelyn Brown, “What My World Spins Around” by Jordan Davis, and “Heart Like a Truck” by Laine Wilson. It should be noted that I really resent Heart Like a Truck - I don’t care for it but damn it gets stuck in my head nonetheless.

Last thing you googled:  “Elves in lord of the rings” because I could not for the life of me remember Elrond’s name. I am ashamed.

Time:  11:14 p.m.

Dream trip: I really, really, really want to see Australia (mostly to visit the Australia Zoo) but also I desperately want to run away and spend more time in Ireland and see Scotland. Someday, maybe.

Last thing you read:  I just finished Hail Mary by Kandi Steiner. It’s a ridiculous college sports romance but it was exactly the fluffy break I needed after The Cruel Prince.

Last book you enjoyed reading: I don’t really read books I don’t enjoy to some extent. But the last book that I was gushing over and oh-so-happy about reading was The Kiss Curse by Erin Sterling.

Last book you hated reading: Okay, so the last book I really hated reading was a paranormal romance I borrowed off of Kindle Unlimited and it just. . . it was truly let down by terrible editing and a very muddy concept. It was bad. So bad. And marketed so poorly. What was advertised was not in anyway what I read.

Favorite thing to cook/bake: I have been really into entremets lately - little layered domes with a baked element, a mousse, and a fruity center and some sort of glaze or shell. It’s been lots of fun. I also really enjoy baking breads.

Favorite craft to do in your free time: I have been very into crochet lately! I am making lots of little stuffed creatures and truly loving it and I have a very exciting project planned for after my birthday. I am going to be making a snake with rows colored based on the books I finish reading in the course of a year. Like a temperature blanket, except a reading log snake.

Most niche dislike: I hate bananas. Can’t stand ‘em. They are the worst fruit. Also, possibly even weirder, I hate the stupid bandage tape they use with cottonballs whenever you give blood. I am allergic to the medical adhesive used in most of those things. Basically, if it ain’t Band-Aid brand, I don’t want it.

Opinion on circuses:  I went to one when I was younger. It was. . . okay? It was kind of overwhelming for me, even though they didn’t use many of the classic “circus” animals due to welfare concerns (yay! a big win!). I like ren faires, and I like feats of human ingenuity and creativity, but circuses are just a little off for me. And I especially don’t love circuses that don’t understand the ethics/welfare needs for animals they use.

Do you have any sense of direction: sort of? Don’t ask me road names/numbers, but give me landmarks or drop me somewhere and tell me to walk myself back to the car and I should be good.

Tell us about your D&D character: I have not played in years, but I have recently been invited to join an all-bard oneshot in a couple weeks? I’m really tempted but also pretty intimidated because I haven’t played in years and this would be a remote campaign with some potentially weird player dynamics. (The DM is one of my best friends who also happens to be my ex and the other players would be all female -- his girlfriend, his gf’s friend, and one of his old friends I never met. Although I have met his gf and she’s incredibly awesome, so maybe it’s just me seizing an excuse because I don’t know how to RP anymore.) I have to give them my decision by Wednesday and I have a built-in out of work stress, so all opinions and/or advice welcome :P

[the-expose-on-girls]

Toxic Policing of Arbitrary "Modesty" rules in the Church

How a Biblical virtue has been twisted into a weapon and a disguise for the jealous and insecure

Those were the days, when church summer camp was the best week out of the entire year---even better than Christmas morning. Days spent adventuring in the great outdoors, evenings spent in worship, late nights playing crazy games with friends, hearty food, and the level of sleep deprivation that makes everything hilarious. The first morning after camp was over, after sleeping for twelve hours straight to make up for the past week, we all began looking forward to next year's camp.

Sadly, the magic at that camp ended well before my friends and I aged out of attending. It ended when some people hit a point where they started stupid heart-breaking, friendship-ending drama everywhere they went, especially at camp. One of these little episodes involved a fresh-out-of-high-school youth leader, who was also the leader of the popular girl clique at church. She was the darling of worship team (guitar player AND lead vocalist), the Dream Christian Girl who everyone wondered how she could be single. (If asked, she would say that she was waiting for God to bring her The One.) She was the girl all the guys 13 through 22 had a crush on at some point. She was the prettiest, the most pure, the most Godly, the most talented, the most selfless, the most kind. She was THE Proverbs 31 Woman and any guy who got her would be the luckiest guy in the world, right? Of course.

It was the summer of 2014 and everyone was preparing to board the buses for an excursion to the lake. Sunscreen? Check. Towel? Check. Change of dry clothes? Check. I had all my things ready to go and stood in the lobby talking with my friends while I waited for the call to board the bus. Miss Popular meandered through the groups of kids, making sure everyone had a towel in hand. Suddenly, she approached me and ordered me to go put on longer shorts, saying that mine did not meet the Modesty Rules. I was surprised, explaining that I had bought these specifically for camp because they were the longest pair the store had. They were the longest pair of shorts I had. For the record, they reached the tip of my thumbs when my hands were at my sides, only a couple inches away from the fingertip Modesty Rule. Did I not get credit for trying? What did she want me to do, sew my own clothes?

"I don't care, go put on longer shorts," she demanded, her Proverbs 31 Woman smile fading away. The whole lobby was staring at me now, eyeing my "scandalous" clothing.

"I don't have anything longer. And even if I did, there is no way my mom could bring some from home in time for us to leave for the lake," I defended myself, justly upset at this point.

There was no arguing with my defense at that point, so she fell back on an accusatory lecture about modesty as everyone continued to watch the show. Basically, she implied that I was a slut (without actually saying a non-G-rated word like "slut"), was trying to get male attention, and wasn't a Good Christian Girl. NOTHING could be further from my mind than getting guys' attention; I just wanted to go have fun at the lake with my friends. After dropping that bomb on my head, she marched off, feeling in control for humiliating me.

The excitement of the bus ride quickly got my mind on better things after that run-in. We swam, played games, picked berries, had a picnic, then swam some more, for HOURS in the summer sun. At one point, I sat down on a log in the shallows to rest and that's when I noticed Miss Popular for the first time since we arrived. She was soaked after participating in a game and her thin, low-cut tank top had only sunk lower and gotten more see-through from the lake water, revealing her skimpy bikini underneath. When she leaned forward even a little bit, she flashed everyone in front of her. Her short shorts had ridden up her legs after all the running around, making my shorts look like guys basketball shorts by comparison. When she leaned forward even a little bit, she flashed everyone behind her. She looked ready to strike some teasing poses on a Hawaiian beach for a magazine cover. Although, in some circles, they would refer to her look as a wardrobe malfunction.

She frolicked around the lake like that all day and no one said a word to her---not the youth pastor, not a fellow leader, not one of her friends. No one. Oh, but the guys sure stared and enjoyed the show. Whenever she sat down, she had a nice little posse of admirers around her, looking SO not casual. Afterwards, the way she interacted with me was as if nothing had happened.

It's also worth noting that another camper that year had a similar wardrobe malfunction during our pool trip and no one, not even Miss Popular, said anything to her. I still wonder why.

Meanwhile, 17-year-old little me looked in the mirror and saw an ugly duckling, a half-drowned rat in my prudish shorts, raggedy old t-shirt, half-dried frizzy hair, concealer-free face, and scuffs of lake mud everywhere. I had a blast at the lake that day. But the conflict with Miss Popular annoyed me. I already hated the way I looked; did she have to humiliate me in front of everyone on top of it? And then the mustard on the paper cut was her strutting around like a half-dressed Vogue model the whole day. I felt even worse about my appearance.

For context, the church's Modesty Rules stated that for swimming trips, girls were required to wear a one-piece swimsuit with a baggy t-shirt and long shorts over the top. (Why the swimsuit type mattered if it was just going to be thoroughly covered up, I have no clue.) Miss Popular broke every part of that rule, but insisted on policing me about my shorts that were longer than hers. AND she said nothing to the other camper dressed like her!

That episode has annoyed me for years. The hypocrisy, the injustice, the unfairness eats at me. Plus, the way she embarrassed me in front of everyone and twisted the knife in my self esteem as a nice little cherry on top. (Not to mention, the slander against my character, accusing me of being a boy-crazy attention whore.) It has taken me YEARS to build up my self esteem and conquer my body image issues. I know, "forgive and forget", right? I don't hold a grudge about it, but I hold onto it to remind myself that she is not truly the nice person she pretends to be at church and not a safe person to be close to. I retell that story to teach myself and others a lesson about seeing the spec in your brother's eye, but not the log in your own. (Matthew 7:3-5) Basically, don't police others about shortcomings that you yourself suffer from.

Now, we come to the point where we try to unpack the motive, the reasons behind the whole incident. Why did she do that to me and no one else? Why did no one say anything to her about the way she was dressed? WHY? A few theories spring to mind...

She has since posted quite a bit on social media about how she felt pressured over the years by people around her to maintain a slim figure. She lived on salad and spent a lot of time at the gym trying to maintain that look. It's possible that my super skinny figure made her feel insecure to the point that she would resort to verbally attacking me to make me hide the figure that bothered her. She didn't do the same to the other girl dressed like her because that girl's figure didn't make her feel insecure.

Male attention was obviously something she enjoyed on that trip. Maybe (though very unlikely), I wasn't as ugly as I thought I was and she felt threatened by me. She saw me as competition for the attention of a particular guy, and wanted to cover up that competition. It bothered her enough that she lashed out.

Maybe she was upset about something else unrelated and felt like venting that anger on someone. Once she did, she felt no need to do that to anyone else breaking Modesty Rules.

Maybe she's just genuinely a mean person underneath all that Good Christian Girl coverup and saw me as an easy target that day.

Whatever the reason(s), it's clear that the motivation wasn't teaching a fellow young lady to be more righteous, or she would have done the same to the other camper dressed just like her. If that was her motivation, then she also would have been leading by example. No, the scriptures were just used as a disguise to hide a very non-Biblical motive and a weapon to carry out a non-Biblical attack. If it was truly about the Bible, then all the girls there would have been held to the exact same standard by all of the leadership staff. But she was the only one doing the policing and she only had one target.

No one said anything to her about her own clothing because she was the golden girl and above reproach.

No one said anything to her about her own clothing because they enjoyed the show.

Am I a hypocrite for calling out what she was wearing? No. BY HER OWN WORDS (not mine), BY HER OWN RULES (not mine), she was intentionally dressing like a slut. Expecting her to live by her own rules she put in place is not hypocrisy.

This is just one, personal example of how modesty policing within and by the community of Christian women can be EXTREMELY toxic. It is selective, used as an excuse to shame only those fellow women who look "too good". It is an excuse to body shame, to make others feel bad about their bodies and cover them up, so the police-er feels better about her own body. It is a disguise for jealousy, used to slander and take down women who rattle one's insecurities just by existing.

[medicinemane]

Ok, this is the kind of thing that annoys me with minecraft. See, once you have an account, you kind of tend to stop noticing the DRM stuff going on with it, but... it's kind of bad if you think about it, needing an account to play even in single player?

Anyway, just went to log on to the server, realize oh yeah... 1.19, not 1.20 on the survival server, haven't updated or played it yet since I was working on the library

So I think to myself... ah hell, I'll just make my computer suffer a little and boot up a second minecraft client in 1.19

No, fuck you, your account is already logged in to one thing

Like fuck you man, I should be able to have open as many instances of minecraft as I want without having to pay for each new one

Minecraft's a great game, I love it... but we gotta be honest that it has some of the worst DRM of any game around, and in my book any DRM is bad. Even if it's not the kind that makes things quantifiably worse like deneuvo, sorry but if I own a product I deserve a clean version that I can use how I please

...so yeah, it is annoying having a "oh you own the software, and you own the world, but you don't own the ability to use it, that you have to log in to do, which means you'll never actually own it" (which I forgive in an online game... not in something with privately hosted servers)

Makes me want to pirate it out of principle, if it it wouldn't be a huge pain in the ass to do, I would

(This probably seems dumb, but to me this is along the lines or right to repair, in that I should own what I buy. I own my minecraft world, cause it's on my hardware and no one can take it from me. I don't own steam games because they can just turn off my ability to access them at any time... minecraft itself exists kind of half way between steam and actually owning... but it's like steam, which means it's not horrible but I'm also sick of not actually owning stuff I buy)

[floatingcatacombs]

On Playing Caves of Qud For A Month Straight and Developing an RSI

12 Days of Aniblogging 2022, Day 4

With the recent successful commercial launch of Dwarf Fortress, I wanted to take a break from anime and recount my own experiences this year with a keyboard-heavy procedurally generated game with terminal-esque graphics and a high barrier to entry: the one and only Caves of Qud.

It is, in short, incredible. This is my first classic-style roguelike, courtesy of a friend’s gift, and probably the only one I’ll ever need. Calling it expansive is an understatement, as the number of different items, enemies, and biomes should be downright overwhelming. But Qud does an impressive job easing the player into its world, especially with its mix of fully hand-crafted and procedural areas. See, all playthroughs rely on the same world map, so the overall placement of biomes will be the same. A desert to the west, mountains on the edges, a vast jungle in the middle of the continent, a river you have to ford or go the long way around to get to the west half of the map. But each individual screen in the overworld will be procedurally generated, so the places you’re exploring are unique every time. You’ll always start in Joppa, a small farming village in the salt marshes of the southwest of the map. Generally, the further east you travel, the more difficult enemies you’ll face. Joppa feels like a classic RPG first town, serving up “kill this monster” and “go into this cave” quests that will give you a few levels and ultimately point you towards the game’s main quest.

And what a quest it is. As a roguelike, there will be plenty of quick deaths, so each time making it to a new location feels like an incredible victory. Since the places you need to go are the same every time, you can gradually start to get a feel for when it will be safe to tackle the next leg of the journey, and how best to prepare for tackling specific dungeons. The quest structure feels similar to a Fallout game, where you’re tugged in general directions through asking around, but there’s plenty of diversions along the way.

So other than the mix of procedural and handcrafted elements, what does Qud bring to the table? Horns and cryokinesis! While the True Kin offer a more classic roguelike experience, wielding swords and guns and cybernetics that are useful but don’t shake things up too much, choosing to play as a mutant means sacrificing some base stats to become a furry with psychic powers. And let’s face it, that’s always going to be the more fun option. A lot of the mutations, especially the mental ones, feel like you’re getting away with breaking the game at times. Trapping someone behind a force wall and sundering their mind. Throwing yourself into a space-time vortex to escape the jaws of defeat. Beguiling an enemy who can create clones of themselves, giving you a new companion as well as a personal army. There’s plenty of useful physical mutations too, such as an extra set of arms or legs, claws to dig through walls, and three different kinds of stingers. Caves of Qud touts radical body autonomy as a feature, with multiple avenues for the player character to become more, or less, like themselves.

Unfortunately, said radical body autonomy doesn’t extend into the real world, and after falling in deep and logging over 100 hours in a single month, I found myself with a wicked repetitive stress injury from keyboard overuse. After taking a few-weeks break, Elden Ring came out, where I proceeded to do the exact same thing and worsen it. Once it became clear that my fingers weren’t going to feel better from rest alone, I finally dragged myself to a physical therapist, who got me on a regimen of daily hand and shoulder exercises. Instant improvement.

I suppose that’s radical in of itself, huh? After months of dealing with lingering aches and finger pain, someone was able to help me through just a few targeted stretches. I would have never suspected the shoulders otherwise! As it turns out, everything is connected, and exercises further up the body are sometimes what you really need to relieve hand pain. Real-life wizardry, I tell you, especially in contrast to my gastroenterological struggles, where it’s hard for doctors to to even figure out what the problem is, much less how to treat it.

between the orbs and the soup, this spell seems right up tumblr's alley

Getting diseased in Qud is a far more interesting affair. The game plays this great practical joke where the first time you venture into the abandoned factory Golgotha for the main quest, you’re almost certain to ingest black ooze and contract Glotrot. Glotrot is a disease that develops in stages, and ends with your character’s tongue falling off, not to mention puking up half of the water they drink. “I can live without speaking to people,” the player might think, until they realize that turning in the Golgotha quest requires them to talk through a communications panel. And that their puke will fall into the water container that they drank from, quickly contaminating their whole supply unless they take very specific precautions.

It’s such a good intersection of mechanical interactions! And we’re not even done yet. At this point, the player will probably tab out and check the Caves of Qud wiki for how to cure Glotrot. They'll discover there that the cure is made out of different ingredients every run, and said ingredients can only be learned by purchasing a medical book from the ape mayor of a small village in the middle of the jungle. This can be a pretty perilous trek for the player at this point in the game. When they finally make it to Kyakukya, there’s one last sucker punch, as having Glotrot lowers your Ego stat, making bartering for the book more costly. It’s the kind of prolonged side-adventure that will lead the player to try and avoid Glotrot at all costs in future runs, by eating honey and cooking all the disease-resisting meals they can before venturing into Golgotha.

Qud is full of black comedy moments like these, even if few are quite as poignant as catching Glotrot. It encourages carefulness by making deaths a ridiculous conflux of factors that always leave you wondering how you could have done things differently, either throughout the run or in the final turns. Only through expecting that everything will go wrong do you stand a chance of making it through. On the other hand, the more creatively you think, the more you can cheat your way through even the scariest of situations. It’s a blast to learn just how much you can do with your tools, and to swap stories around with other players.

my very first run, where I took "Evil Twin" as a mental defect because it felt on-brand. Who could have predicted such a tragedy

By the way, as something of a wiki connoisseur, Caves of Qud's is excellent! 99% of the technical information you need, as well as the occasional opinion sections on whether certain decisions like mutations and skills are worth it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game wiki go as far as citing classes and lines of code in the references section. I’m glad they were able to move from Wikia to independent hosting, it’s for sure paying off.

My final, unorganized thoughts on the game:

It has deertaurs.

My second favorite thing about Qud is how it scales up its setting’s technology the further the player gets. You start out in a relatively primitive farming village, and 15 levels later you’re having shootouts in abandoned industrial ruins, and 15 levels after that you’re locked in psychic wizard battles in the shadow of a massive space elevator. And since this process takes dozens of hours, this evolution feels seamless for how much it is.

Get a numpad! Technically this game is playable with just a laptop set of keys, but you’re going to have a comparatively bad time. You really want simple diagonal character movement and as many keyboard shortcuts as you can get.

You need to take care of yourself! Treat me as a cautionary tale, I had to take a 9-month break from this game and cut back on my gaming in general because I failed to. Do hand stretches every few days now so you don’t need to do them daily to ward off pain later. Google around or hell, just follow the b4nny stretches.

After dying in a particularly gruesome way by freezing solid and getting torn apart by a giant crab, I felt moved to write a short story about my companion who made it out and what she did afterwards. I hadn’t written fiction in nearly a decade, so for Qud to hook itself in my head in such a way that I needed to privately eulogize is really something.

Ask any Caves of Qud player about their most ridiculous solution to a problem in the game. You won’t regret it.

Did I mention it has deertaurs.

me n the homies