#life is full of decisions

[nearlycassidy]

angel eyes 🕊️

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

historical drama/sitcom where two gay best friends (woman and man) get lavender married--and proceed to spend the Fancy European Honeymoon their parents paid for acting as each other's wingman

[evan-buck]

9-1-1 R.I.P Buck's loft (2019-2025)

[quicksilversnails]

Took some notes from the Wild Life retrospective episode of the Imp & Skizz podcast featuring Grian because I thought the behind the scenes info was really interesting!

(3:15) The wild cards were all kept totally secret from the players (apart from Grian), with the exception of the superpowers and finale (as they required the players to set keybinds)

(3:45) The players were given files containing the required mods each week, which were named things like "creeper rain" to throw them off

(4:12) Wild cards were a combination of data packs and mods

(4:38) Grian told them not to read the folder name to avoid spoilers (which is kind of impossible), so everyone fully believed there would be creeper rain lol. Grian was saying it in jest but everyone took it seriously and were apologetic about having seen it, to which Grian told them not to worry

(6:58) Grian originally contacted a data pack dev called Brace for help with programming the wild cards. Some, like the shrinking/growing could be achieved with minecraft attributes, but the snails were too janky and unusable. Grian still liked the idea though, so he reached out to mod developers Henkelmax and Breadloaf, who designed the pathfinding/behaviour from scratch

(8:49) They had a debugging mode used to test the pathfinding of the snails, shown in the podcast and in Grian's credits

(10:09) Grian wants most of the credit to go to the development team and artists, as he was mostly in charge of ideas & organization!

(10:39) Grian's only regret with the snails was that they were too fast in session 3, leading to unexpectedly many deaths. They were apparently not so difficult to get away from during testing, but perhaps the testers were more used to them than the players were

(11:44) Grian: "We did develop to the lowest common denominator" ie. prioritizing how players would struggle over how worrying about if players would do too well

(12:56) Oli's voice for the snails was iconic. It cost Impulse a life because he intentionally stayed closer to it to hear the voice lol

(13:42) Danny was in charge of the snail models and animations

(14:11) During testing, the snails just sounded like Oli, which made it feel weird. They pitched up his voice so that it'd be less immediately recognizable

(15:18) The snails' jumping attack was meant to be clearly telegraphed: they would stop, wiggle, make a "ooeee" sound before jumping. Many players had their friendly creatures volume turned very low/off (as cows and other mobs are loud), which made this attack much less obvious for them

(16:57) The growing/shrinking had the least testing done for it, as it was the simplest conceptually and to program. This meant that the falling off of blocks due to the shrinking hitboxes wasn't anticipated

(17:55) Before the 1st session, Grian told them that he didn't think anyone would die to the wild card. Pearl's death made Grian pretty nervous, as he didn't want everyone dying too early in the season

(19:29) 6 lives were given, knowing that many of the death to the wild cards were unexpected/unfair. The intent was for ~3 lives to be allocated for wild cards, and ~3 for PvP.

(21:13) The developers were all fans of the Life Series!

(22:43) The shrinking/growing was intentionally pretty simple to ease players/viewers into the concept and build up toward more dramatic wild cards like the snails

(25:38) In the hunger episode, Grian didn't know which foods would be good

(25:58) Grian thinks that "it's unfair that Grian already knows everything" is valid criticism, but that it's important for him to be involved with the ideas. Having someone else do that is like having someone else record his videos: Life Series is his brainchild

(26:35) Well before the season began, while they were still developing the concept, Grian asked the other players for wild card ideas that would meet a few criteria. All of them ended up being unused for one reason or another. Impulse thinks his ideas were very "inside the box" because he was viewing things through what was possible in vanilla Minecraft. His idea was to have a scavenger hunt where the players would search to find a relic. The first person to find it would get a buff. Skizz's idea was for every player to turn into a random passive mob for every given interval of time. They would have to find every other player of the same mob type as them or else the whole group loses a life.

(29:44) The food qualities were weighted by the rarity of the item, so very common blocks like dirt and cobblestone would never give anything good. The other items were randomly selected

(30:23) Regular blocks/items cannot be made edible normally, so they had to circumvent that and custom code a fix for items not stacking correctly

(32:41) While a lot of players do want to win, the main priority is creating entertainment, which prioritizes playing recklessly

(33:20) The food wild card wasn't included in the finale because it would've felt like "too much". There was a higher risk of technical issues since it changed the data values of items, and Grian didn't want someone's last death to be because they ate their sword. In his mind, it was a good and fun wild card, but didn't need to be repeated in the finale. Impulse points out that they all would have collected more rare items by that point, removing the incentive to search for blocks to eat

(33:46) The wild cards in the finale were nerfed from their original sessions. The shrinking/growing had a smaller height range, the snails moved slower, etc.

(36:21) The personalized snail skins were a late addition by Danny, who made 18 skins very quickly

(36:49) Grian did not anticipate the snails becoming as popular with fans as they were. After the session released, they had the idea to release the snail merchandise, which directly funded the rest of the season

(39:20) Grian spent what "felt like every day" testing with the developers. They'd record the sessions on Tuesdays, meet up with the dev team, talk about what need to be done, testing, bugs, etc, edit and upload on Saturday, and would get a few days grace before starting again

(40:01) After the snail session, Grian was worried that the season would be very short due to all the deaths. They were considering toning down the later wild cards but ultimately didn't change them too much

(40:36) The time wild card was carefully balanced. If it had gone even a little faster, many players likely would have died because they wouldn't have time to react to threats like baby zombies or creepers.

(40:57) While sessions normally run for a variable amount of time, session 4 was hardcoded at 2 hours. Grian ended the session ~10 minutes early, just after they hit max speed, because he felt like things were getting dicey

(42:46) When the wild card first activates, it looks a lot like the server had frozen or crashed. Grian told the players before the session started that it would look like the game was broken, but that it isn't broken. Skizz tabbed out anyway and missed the beginning 😔

(43:30) Having the rain start just as the wild card began was a good visual indicator of time slowing down. This was a suggestion from the dev team (probably Brace)

(44:41) Impulse and Grian "cheesed" the end of the session by going branch mining. Grian wanted players to take advantage of the wild cards (eg. mining quickly, helping to kill someone), and not have them just be an annoyance.

(45:30) Keeping the client and server-side time stay in sync was challenging. The sky's motion was changed to be smoother on client-side. The players were also not as fast as the server (around 2x faster), the server was going faster than that, and the time of day was even faster

(46:56) The sounds were pitched up/down based on the speed to add to the effect

(27:46) In testing, if the players were made 7x faster, it would be basically unplayable, which was why it was capped at 2x speed. This made mobs very dangerous, as they were now faster than players and could catch up to you and kill you easily

(49:01) On several occasions, they had to extend the fuse duration of creepers to make them more fair. In the time session, their speed was only increased by ~10%

(49:39) Usually, Grian was the one to test the wild cards and notice when things like creeper speed would be an issue, since he was the one with experience making videos

(50:50) A challenge with balancing wild cards is accounting for the playstyles of so many players: reckless players like Scar and Skizz, "kind and gentle" players like Bigb who would stay off to the sides, and "the sweat squad" (Scott, Impulse) who play very cautiously

(52:48) Trivia Bot was the only wild card that was not planned in advance. Grian was struggling to come up with a wild card for that episode, and wanted to have a wild card available that could give people lives in case many people died to early wild cards without it feeling cheap.

(53:33) Trivia seemed a little boring on its face, so presentation was essential

(54:34) This one made Grian the most stressed due to all the moving parts involved in making it (coding and pathfinding mostly by Henkelmax, visuals by Hoffen, audio/music, questions)

(55:08) Trivia Bot's design was based on Grumbot and Mettaton from Undertale. Hoffen drew concept art shown in the video

(58:32) They show Trivia Bot's custom animation for becoming a snail and it's really cool

(59:12) The music was the most stressful part of the project. Grian spent 2-3 days looking through Epidemic Sounds for a Trivia Bot theme song and couldn't find anything good. He commissioned Zera @hopepetal for a theme song, which is played in the podcast. However, Grian realized he needed a full audio package, so he commissioned Oli late in development, who created the final soundtrack and many audio variations

(1:01:38) Grian wants to send appreciation for everyone who worked on the project, even if their work ultimately went unused

(1:02:58) Skizz was happy to give back however he could by staying on standby in the final episode as a zombie, as the players were able to "reap all the benefits" of the hard work of the development team

(1:05:21) Grian didn't know any of the trivia questions beforehand, which were done by fans of the series. The goal was for ~50% of the questions to be answered correctly, which was approximately met

(1:07:11) Players couldn't get questions about themselves because it would be too easy. This would encourage players to leave their bot, allowing other players to mess with them

(1:07:57) Grian felt a little left out from the discovery element of the wild cards, and decided to mess with Scar by hiding his bot. He wasn't expecting Scar to die from it, and could tell that he was genuinely a little upset by it. Grian felt bad about it, which led to a genuine in-game alliance between them

(1:12:32) Grian was very close to letting Trivia Bot give lives as rewards, but decided it would feel too cheap

(1:14:38) Mob swap was slightly toned down, with more camels and sniffers spawning

(1:15:07) Evokers didn't drop totems anymore. Instead, there was a minuscule chance a warden or wither would spawn, which would drop a totem if killed. Grian was a little disappointed that the warden got cheesed in the end

(1:17:45) Having the mobs start passive and turn hostile was mostly for the presentation, building anticipation, and so players could predict where mobs would spawn and react accordingly, making things feel less unfair

(1:20:32) There was no superpower made for Skizz (or Mumbo presumably)

(1:20:38) The superpowers were another late addition. There was a large design doc where Grian created all the powers, which were handed over to Henkelmax and completed over 4 days

(1:21:42) Grian avoided superpowers involving strength, that could cause someone to die easily. Most of the powers were social or movement-based, which couldn't be used for offence as easily

(1:22:25) Some powers were randomly assigned, others weren't. Impulse's was random. Cleo's, Bigb's, Lizzie's, Grian's were assigned.

(1:24:25) Grian gave himself the mimic because it could easily backfire (like in Grian's fall damage death), and because it would've been confusing for a player who wasn't aware of the other powers. They likely would've spent the episode just figuring out how everything worked and not actually using the power to its best ability

Lots of discussion about the superpowers and how they interacted in the episode itself, go watch if you're interested :)

(1:33:38) Talk on how the series "standard" rules evolved since 3rd Life. There was no keep inventory, and no restrictions on enchanting levels or potions, which created slow or unbalanced fights

(1:36:23) 3rd Life was designed to be an experimental series, which made Grian eager to improve it. For example, some people just weren't dying in 3L, leading to the boogeyman in LL, and so on

(1:37:17) The goal with the seasons isn't to one-up the previous one, but to create a different experience every time, which keeps things engaging for the creators

(1:38:31) At the end of each session, Grian would ask the group if they had fun and how they felt about the wild cards. According the Skizz, the answer was "a resounding yes"

(1:39:08) Grian had moments throughout the season where he personally felt like things didn't go well for him, and was anxious for the rest of the group's episodes. Things worked out while editing the raw footage, though. His issues were never with the wild cards themselves, but his own actions (traps not working, spending too long branch mining), but would always find funny moments in his footage

(1:43:41) Everyone in the Life Series cast genuinely likes and genuinely respects everybody else in the group. This allows them to make the show and get mad at each other, because they know it's all just in-character

(1:44:50) It'd be hard to top Wild Life in spectacle, and Grian doesn't want to start an arms race with himself. The next season could potentially be closer to 3rd Life, but Grian's not sure yet. For Grian, Wild Life was the most enjoyable

(1:45:20) Grian: "As long as people keep enjoying [the Life Series] then I'd love to keep doing it"

(1:49:35) With the finale, Grian knew how the wild cards played out the previous sessions and was able to adjust them

(1:49:56) Grian's goal was to create safe chaos where everyone knew what was happening and wouldn't die to them, which didn't go entirely to plan. The snails were 60% of their original speed and people still died

(1:51:03) Grian made a precise timeline of when each wild card would start/stop, it wasn't randomized.

(1:54:16) All the superpowers were randomized, with Bdubs' power being removed from circulation because it didn't have much use in a finale setting

(1:56:10) It was important for Grian that in the final moments, the wild cards were removed, so there were no interruptions. The timing worked out well because there were a few people left and it ended within ~10 minutes (this implies that the change wasn't based on # of players alive, as people had speculated based on Gem's death)

(1:58:48) The players all randomly switched to zombie skins throughout the session to mess with people on NameMC. Well-played :)

[visenyaism]

I would like to extremely respectfully point out that if Rhaenyra were a man, the fandom would never stop glazing her for her terrible decisions. We can't support women's wrongs until we support their rights!

Source: the amount of redditors very earnestly posting about how, like, Dany and Daena the Defiant and any other Targ lady who dared to ever breathe in the direction of having autonomy over their lives are all crazy.

This is also true. Many in the fandom, especially male redditors are extremely misogynistic. Personally, I actually like the broad strokes of what fire and blood does with Rhaenyra in terms of making it clear that yes, she absolutely got her crown stolen because she’s a woman AND she’s also a very morally grey person who was very quick to resort of violence to maintain power, whomade things harder for herself in many ways, and whose downfall is partially her own fault as well as the fault of misogyny. I like that it’s complicated like that. However they don’t always execute it very well and I feel like as in the case of Jaehaerys George RR Martin goes actually way too hard in the evil column trying to complicate these characters there is too much overcorrection.

I could do without all of the virulent body shaming in that book. I could really do without all of the bastard discourse like actually having sexual autonomy and choosing the father of your children is totally fine and does not make you a bad person even though it created political roadblocks for her

[doctahchang]

kathryn janeway my favourite heroine of a greek tragedy

song is alt-j - philadelphia

[geeky-nightphilosopher]

🦇Batfamily🦇

*At a Socialite Party*

Dick: *acrobat chaos*

Jason: *Victorian chaos*

Tim & Babs: *Hacking chaos*

Cass: *ninja chaos*

Steph:*chaos*

Damian: *gremlin chaos*

Duke: * New to this and hasn't figured out his own chaos and looking over at Bruce*

Bruce: *Eye twitching, but face blank*

Duke: * To Bruce* I can never tell if you are laughing or having a mental breakdown.

[cementcornfield]

Ja'Marr's grandmother called him Marty 💜

[rottenteeth]

Science time with Rottenteeth!

To preface, DID is a trauma disorder just as PTSD is a trauma disorder, there is just heavier compartmentalization. Also there is nothing wrong morally with not wanting to, not having the resources to, or not being stable enough to recover. That isn't what this is about, its about the harm some people are causing to themselves unknowingly. My goal is education and harm reduction.

(Long post but many resources at the bottom)

Every system is different because everyone's trauma is different. This however, does not and will never apply to the treatment of dissociative identity disorder. There are 2 options if you want to recover and process trauma to the fullest extent. Being a functional integrated system and final fusion. These require the same treatment; stabilization, processing trauma, and the breaking down of dissociative barriers.

This means alter separation and the encouragement of treating them like genuine people, is counterintuitive to said path. Using people based language is not wrong, but genuinely believing you are multiple people will make your life much less functional. If you treat alters like separate people even with this knowledge, that is your decision and may be the safest option for your current situation. But it can and will make the future much harder.

Telling people with DID- a disorder that makes you disconnected from reality and fantasy prone- that a fully functional life and stable mental state is possible while "being multiple people" is not okay. Me and these other misinfo blogs aim to show people the true reality of this disorder and its treatment.

You wouldn't tell someone with PTSD that if processing trauma makes them feel bad then they don't have to process it to have a healthy life. You wouldn't tell someone with schizophrenia that they should embrace their hallucinations and treat them like they're real just because they feel real. Nor would you tell someone with depression that doing nothing and withdrawing from social interaction is helpful and a healthy path just because it feels the least taxing.

So why is it okay to endorse alter separation when we know that more alter separation=more dissociative barriers=less trauma processing? Why do we want people to not properly process their trauma?

Just because someone is more comfortable with the idea of being separate people (which occurs so that one can disown their trauma and emotions) does not mean it is a healthy recovery path. This disorder makes it so that "being multiple" is the most comfortable because that's what made life somewhat livable. That doesn't mean it's good, recovery will never be a happy comfortable process, it is a challenging and grueling process, it always has been.

It is okay to not be ready to accept alters as part of a whole, it is okay to feel scared when acknowledging that those things happened to all of you. Sometimes treating parts like people is a stage in the stabilization and trauma processing parts of treatment.

What isn't okay is making people think that treating yourself like you are multiple people in one body is a healthy thing long term. You are allowed to do so and my aim is to only educate these people about the long term harm they are doing so that they are informed in their decisions.

I think the confusion comes in because when we say alters are not separate people, it gets taken as us saying they shouldn't be treated with kindness and respect like a human. This is not and never has been what any of these accounts mean. Alters have individuality and may feel like different people and it is okay to acknowledge that, and they still deserve respect and compassion. But this does not mean they are people. No matter how severe your barriers are.

This disorder is not alter disorder but they are a manifestation of trauma and unmet needs. This doesn't diminish the fact that accepting this idea of being a fractured whole is incredibly hard and should be done with the help of a therapist during stabilization.

Here are some good resources:

[carmen-berzattos]

Y'all. I'm just gonna say that Hozier at Red Rocks is an out of this world experience. He's just incredible. He sounded amazing. The acoustic were out of this world. And he was so sweet! He kept pausing between songs to say something along the lines of "holy shit this place is beautiful". At some point he pointed to one of the rock formations in the ampitheater and went "whose hands scultped this?" One of my favorite moments was when he said that he has moments where he cannot believe that this is his life, this is one of them. And he said that if he looked straight ahead and took in a full image of the crowd, it gets really overwhelming and distracting. He seemed so happy and excited to be there and I was so endeared the whole time I love him SO much and I cannot wait for night #2 tonight!!

[hashtag-naturalchickproblems]

How therapeutic was it for AJ and Paget to shoot those scenes?

This is what they deserve😭😭😭😭

[add1ctedt0you]

[trainingdummyrabbit]

i am so very normal about donned quix ote...

[fluffs-n-stuffs]

_____ used Destiny Bond! _____ is hoping to take his attacker down with him!

-

(Belatedly) celebrating the one-year anniversary of the 'Destiny Bond' comic with a rare, fully-illustrated piece. A bit of extra context and rambly thoughts under the cut 🫶💖💕

A little over a year ago, I posted the first part of the Destiny Bond comic, originally intended to be a one-off doodle exploring the consequences of Morty's prophetic abilities on his relationship with Eusine.

That sketchy doodle of mine ended up being a whole narrative project spanning across a few months, before I eventually took a pause on it to focus on my mental health (having reached a low earlier in the year).

It was a daring enough project in and of itself, especially with how I had spontaneously taken it on when I was still recovering from a years-long burnout with 2D art. Though (temporarily) stopping sooner than I had hoped, I can confidently say that this little comic project of mine had helped to rekindle my love for drawing as a whole, and had further lead me to meeting some of the most wonderful people and friends in this small corner of the Pokémon fandom (whom also happen to be obsessed with these two silly guys from the GSC/HGSS games). It's a project I hold dearly to my heart, and one that I hope to revisit and continue once I feel ready to do so; as the story has yet to truly kick off (I'm not even joking we're still in the prologue technically I'm yelling /lh).

I hope to be able to share the rest of this story with you all one day, in whatever new form it'll take as. For now, I want to say thank you, from the deepest parts of my heart, for supporting this passion project of mine - and to assure you to tune in for the future of this title. 👀✨

[thefirstknife]

thoughts on Crow's character being reduced into Uldren-but-not-quite? I'm not happy with these past few weeks of dialogue, I feel like suddenly everyone treats Crow as just the guy that did those horrible things, and this week he's also taking responsibility for those actions *he did not take*. sure, his corpse did it, but wasn't a whole year of storyline based around the fact that Crow and Uldren are separate persons? why is every other character acting like none of that ever happened?

I don't think he's really being blamed for those things, it's more that he now has those memories and reacts to them in a distinctly Crow way. He's the type to take the responsibility for those things, even though it wasn't really him, but he remembers it all so in his mind, it's his problem.

It's actually a fairly complicated issue that is unique to Crow: how should Guardians who fully remember their past behave? Crow decided to make amends for things that his "past self" did, even though it's not him, because he remembers it so vividly and it bothers him. This doesn't mean that other people are pushing it on him; they're clearly not. Petra has numerous lines where she tells him that nothing Uldren did is on him, and so do other people. So I'm pretty sure they're not acting like it didn't happen, given that everyone is often reassuring him that he's not being blamed for Uldren.

But for Crow, he remembers doing those things. He didn't do them, but he remembers them and it bothers him. It's probably exceptionally difficult to think of yourself as not that guy when you have that guy's life in your head. I don't think people often consider how this must feel for Crow. He wasn't just told what Uldren did. He was given the full package directly into his head. Uldren's deeds aren't stories to Crow, they're effectively his life. A life of a stranger, but his life nonetheless.

Obviously, they could've gone with not giving him his memories back. But since they did, I think that Crow's behaviour (especially given how compassionate he is) makes sense. He remembers those things as his own, even though they're not his own, but he feels like he should be making amends for them. I think that's the crucial part of his arc; he knows what Uldren did, he acknowledges that it wasn't him, he KNOWS it wasn't him, but nobody else will make those amends and nobody else is working to fix those wrongs, so he feels responsible to do it.

That doesn't mean that the story is suddenly about Crow = Uldren; it's not. It's about Crow's choice. Crow isn't Uldren, but he's choosing not to ignore their connection even if he would be completely accepted if he did ignore it. I think that's what gives Crow's story an element worth exploring.

[strechanadi]

Mathieu Ganio

Onegin

photo El Beweging