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toast-the-unknowing · 1 day ago

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This post is really making me churn over some thoughts that have been stewing for, well, at least a year. Because a year ago, I found out that someone had plagiarized several of my fics.

At the time, I struggled to articulate exactly why it upset me as much as it did. In a way, it didn't matter, because I didn't need to articulate it: People were supportive. People told me, yes, girl, you get to be upset! And there were big, obvious reasons that it was upsetting, reasons that I could identify. But I felt like there was something else. I kept asking myself, "Well, why DOES it matter, really. Nothing was TAKEN AWAY FROM YOU. Your fic is still up there with all the comments it ever had." It had more comments than before, even. People who read the plagiarized versions came and said nice things to me. These were people who never read the canon, people who therefore never would have read my fic and never would have commented on it. So in purely transactional terms, in the question of the absolute number of comments I got, I actually came out ahead. In a way. So why was I upset?

Reading this post today, this bit really stood out to me:

Attention obviously wasn't why the writer was writing--they were writing to participate, and they didn't get to. At all.

I think that's the piece that I was struggling to put my finger on. I think it matters that the plagiarism happened in a period of my life when I felt even less than usual like I had a community to belong to. I reckon a lot of people are feeling that way, in this era we're calling post-covid. So it hits those people, it hit me, even harder than it might have otherwise, to feel shut out of participating in a fandom community. For some people that's maybe the last place they really felt they had any community left.

I imagine, for the folks in the secret discord rec servers, that the secret discord rec server IS their community, but that's not much help the folks outside of it. The answer obviously isn't "you shouldn't HAVE secret discord rec servers!" because the horse is out of the barn on that one, my friends, and besides, I don't want to be out here saying you have to let everyone into all of your spaces. This isn't elementary school, you don't have to bring enough for the whole class. And the idea of "well, if you HAVE to have a secret discord rec server, then you have to go leave a pro forma compliment on the fic itself"…idk, man, that's not it either. Increasing the comments that just say "I liked this!" is going to make a lot of writers smile and have a spring in their step for a bit, sure, but it's not going to do much to restore a sense of community. Saying "hi, how are you" when you bump into your neighbor is great, but if that's the only interaction you ever have with anyone in your zip code, that's not much of a neighborhood.

It's one of those twisty situations where I hate the picture as a whole and yet I don't find any individual action objectionable. Sometimes people don't leave comments, even on a fic they really loved. I'm not going to shame or berate anyone for that. Sometimes people tell their friends about things they loved. Sometimes those conversations happen in spaces that aren't visible to others, because people like to hang out with their friends in their own spaces that are free of people they don't know or don't like.

None of that is in and of itself malicious. (I bet some of the shit that gets said on some of those secret discord servers gets pretty nasty, but hey: all the more reason to be saying it somewhere I don't have to see it.) And yet when OP said they have been systematically excluded by the very people they thought were part of the community they thought they could participate in, it resonated with me, specifically about the time someone stole my fanfic and reposted it in a fandom that I didn't know existed.

What do you do about a situation where the intentions are totally different, the causes are totally different, but the end result feels so similar?

I've been thinking about communal vs individual story telling a lot lately, because I'm getting back into improv, and when you do improv people tend to ask you do you do stand-up, will you do stand-up, when will you do stand-up. I usually tell people that I don't do stand-up because it's so much fucking work. But I'm also realizing more and more that I love improv for the communal aspect, and I find the solitary nature of stand-up demotivating.

I've written screenplays and I've written novels and I've mostly written exclusively fanfic, and I think a lot of the reason for that is fanfic has that communal aspect. That's part of the fun, and that's part of the motivation. You write fanfic because "this is a gift for a friend and I know she'll love it, this is an exchange fic for someone I don't know so I went and read their whole blog and I HOPE they'll love it, this is a trope I loved when I saw someone else do it, this is a trope I fucking hated when I saw someone else do it so I'm going to do it right, this is an idea that was circulating tumblr as a three sentence plot bunny that caught my imagination and won't let it go, this is an opinion I have about this ship and I have GOT to know if anyone else sees it the same way, this is a thing I love and please won't someone love it with me…"

The communal aspect can also be part of the motivation in the sense of "fanfic is a faster and easier way of getting external validation than going through the slow and grueling process of publishing and marketing a book with no built-in audience." That's fine. If folks are hoping to get some compliments for their fanfic, they're allowed to hope for that, and telling them "you SHOULDN'T care about that, and therefore it doesn't matter if you get it or not" is unlikely to change hearts and minds, except in regard to those hearts' and minds' opinion of you specifically. It's also missing the point. If you say, "Toast, you ONLY do improv because you don't have the attention span for stand-up," you're skipping over and discrediting all the special beautiful moments that can only happen in improv. You're missing the point.

The communal nature of fanfic is a huge part of the joy of fanfic. And the fact that it is a communal act means that, as the community is drains away, it becomes harder and less fun.

I don't know what we do about the alienation that so many fans are feeling. Sometimes it sounds like all of that it's so hard to make friends as an adult discourse, where the more that you hear people say it, the worse of a problem you know it is, and yet it almost feels like the omnipresence of the complaint should itself be the solution somehow -- all of you are lonely? Go be each other's friends! Everyone in fandom feels disconnected? Go talk to someone, boom, now you have a connection!

That's obviously not how life works, and to the extent that there's structural forces at play dismantling our communities, they can't be solved by individual acts of leaving a comment, or sending an ask, or @-ing an author when you post a rec. A lot of the comments I've received on fic have been self-contained niceties, which I loved getting, but which didn't go beyond that.

But some of the comments have led me to go create more art. Some of the comments have made me feel a sense of belonging. One comment straight up gave me insight into my own psyche that I did not consciously possess before that. And some comments have led to friendships, and one of those friendship meant that this weekend, I had a silly little conversation about a silly non-fannish thing, and the 'aha, there's a fic idea in here' part of my brain lit up and I wrote four thousand words of a brand new fanfic for the first time in a year and a goddamn half.

I don't know that I have a point. Fandom has been a lot harder and less fun for me lately, because of enshittification and capitalism and social media and my mental health and the hours that I work these days and the rise in streaming and the general underwhelmingness of a sequel which failed to revitalize a fandom I had really been enjoying writing for; maybe I just needed to talk my way through all this to remember that harder and less fun is not impossible and joyless. But it is still harder and less fun, and I wanted to remember that, too. I like the grace that this post has with both readers and writers. I think that's a good place to start.

feedback and fic in fandom (3 f's of our own)

This conversation about feedback on fic says everything I’ve been wanting to say better than I could say it. But I’ll go ahead and try anyway.

Over the last five years or so there have been some great discussions around the rise of commodification of fanworks and decline of fandom community. This commodification looks a bit like enshittification of the internet: a cool site exists; its popularity makes someone realize they can get money from it; it has more and more ads; the site adds features to drive engagement, including The Algorithm; the things that made the site cool start to fall away. The site exists now as a vehicle purely to get clicks, and the people on it are on it solely to get clicks—to make money, to be successful, for some kind of social cachet.

AO3 doesn’t have advertisements. It’s not making money. But what is happening to fandom is proof of concept that enshittification changes the way we as humans engage. A cool website in 2004 was often a community space where you could meet people, have conversations, find cool things, and make cool things. A cool website in 2024 is either a content farm that will continually feed you enough content to hold your attention, or a social media site where your participation will come with stats to show you whether you are holding the attention of others.

AO3 wasn’t built to be a community space. It doesn’t have great functions for meeting people and having conversations. The idea was that, because fandom community spaces already existed, AO3 would serve the part of that community where you can find the cool things and store the cool things you made. It was meant to be a library in a city, not the whole city itself.

But it was also never meant to be a website in 2024, a content farm constantly generating content solely for your clicks and eyeballs and ad revenue, or a social media site where the content creators themselves vie for your clicks and eyeballs.

The most common talking point when people discuss the enshittification of fandom is the folks out there who are treating AO3 as that first kind of enshittified website: the content farm. This discussion is about how people treat fanfic as a product for consumption.

The post that kicked off the discussion on @sitp-recs’s blog was about someone who wasn’t getting very many kudos or comments on their fic, and was feeling pretty demoralized about it, then joined a discord server and found an entire channel dedicated to people loving their fic. But those on that server had never come to share that love with the author, which the author found really discouraging.

There are more and more stories like this. Someone on tiktok pulls a quote from a fic on AO3 and makes a 10-second video with them staring at a wall, the quote pasted at the bottom, music playing over it. It has 100,000 hearts, and 100 comments with people gushing over the fic, which has 80 kudos on AO3. Overall, people notice more and more hits on their fics, but fewer and fewer comments or even kudos. Fewer and fewer people seem to feel the need to interact with the author, instead treating the fic like a product to be used and discarded—which the enshittified internet (a stunning feature of late-stage capitalism!) encourages. The fandom community is dying, these stories conclude.

I agree. 100%. Both of the stories above have happened to me—viral tiktoks about my fic, secret discord channels to follow and discuss my fic—and let me tell you, it fucking sucks.

But from these observations about fandom enshittification, the discussion continues in a very odd direction. The solution to the death of fandom community is our favorite enshittification buzzword: engagement. We should engage the authors. They’re producing these products for free. We consume them at no cost. We must demonstrate our gratitude by paying them back.

It’s as though the capitalist consumption that the enshittified web encourages is so ingrained within us that we must think in terms of payment, in terms of exchange, transaction. Or as though, by forgoing payment, authors are some kind of martyrs defying capitalism, and the only way to honor their great sacrifice is comments and kudos.

Indeed, the discourse around this sometimes does veer away from capitalist rhetoric into something that smells almost religious in desperation. Authors are gods who bestow us mere mortals with the fruits of their labor benevolently, through love; the least we can do is worship them. Meanwhile the authors adopt the groveling sentiment of starving artists: I produce great art; I only humbly ask that you feed me in return.

These kinds of entreaties make my skin crawl for a number of reasons. I’m not a god. I’m not writing because I love you. I don’t expect your worship or even your praise.

I think the thing that disturbs me the most about it is that it suggests that authors (or, if the OP is feeling generous fan work creators) are the most important people in fandom. I’ve even seen posts stating that without creators, fandom wouldn’t exist—as though readers aren’t just as important. As though conversations where people discuss characterizations and plot points and randomly spin out interpretations and ideas and thoughts related to canon are meaningless. I’ve even seen people scramble to include folks having these discussions as “creators,” as though realizing that these people are necessary and integral to fandom communities but unable to drop the idea that the producers are the ones who are important. As though that person who just lurks can never count.

Is this what community is? When you join the queer community, are you expected to produce a product of your queerness? If not, must you actively participate and give back to the queer community in order to be considered a part of it? Or is it enough that you are queer, that you exist as a queer person and want to be around others who are queer, you want to be a part of something? What is community, anyway?

The problem with people raising the authors above everyone else in the community and demanding that tribute be paid is that they are decrying the “content farm” style of 2024 website out of one side of their mouth, but out of the other side are instead demanding that AO3 become a 2024-style social media website. Authors are influencers. “Engagement” and clicks are the things that really matter. They are in fact suggesting that the way to solve the commodification of fanfic is by “paying authors back” with stats.

Before anyone comes at me with the idea that comments aren’t just “stats,” I will clarify what I mean. There are literally hundreds of posts on tumblr alone claiming that any comment “helps” the author. Someone replies that they are shy to comment. Someone else replies that incoherent keyboard smashes, a single emoji, or the comment “kudos” are all that is required to satisfy the author, all that is required as tribute—all that is required as payment to keep this economy healthy.

I’m not condemning the comments that are keyboard smashes or emojis or a single kind word. I receive them. They make me happy. If anyone wants to leave such a comment on my fics, I’m really grateful for it. But this is not community-building. This is a transaction. In @yiiiiiiiikes25’s excellent response in the post linked at the beginning, they point out that “you have a cool hat” is something that is “perfectly nice” to hear from someone—and it is! We all want to be told we have a cool hat! But as they go on to say, what builds community is interactions that are deep and specific, interactions that are rich in quality, not in quantity. A kudos or a comment that says only ❤️are lovely things to receive, but they don’t build community.

My reaction, when I see people begging for kudos and comments as the only means by which to keep fandom community alive, is very close to @eleadore's. I want to say, “No. Readers do not need to comment or kudos. Believe not these hucksters who claim to know the appropriate method of fandom participation. Participate as you feel able, or not at all; nothing is required of you.”

I’ve been told before (several times) that I’m not qualified to participate in such discussions because I am an established author who has some fics with very high stats. It doesn’t matter that I have also been a new writer with almost no one reading my fics. It doesn’t matter that I still write in new fandoms where no one in that fandom knows me. It doesn’t matter that I, like any human being, still care about receiving recognition and attention and praise.

And maybe that’s correct. I personally don’t think that billionaires have a place in deciding the direction of the economy, and--if we're really going to consider fandom an economy--in fandom terms, if I’m not a billionaire, or even a millionaire, I’m definitely in the infamous “one percent.” So, just as no one wants to hear Elon Musk say “money isn’t everything,” maybe it’s not my place to say “kudos isn’t required, actually.”

That said, I’m not the only one who has a problem with the stats-based discourse around fandom community. However, the main counter-response to this discussion I see goes something like this: you shouldn’t be writing fic for validation. If you’re writing for attention, you’re doing it for the wrong reason. Authors should write fic because they love it without any expectation of return.

This is, in my opinion, missing the point of what is meant by fandom community.

I wrote fanfic before I knew that fanfic, as a concept, existed. I read books; I wanted them to be different; I wrote little stories for myself with new endings, with self-inserts, with cross-overs, with alternate universes. I did it for myself in the 90s. It never occurred to me that anyone else would do this, much less that people would share.

As @faiell points out—creating and sharing are two different things. I created fics for myself, but I decided to share them in the early 2000s because other people might like them, too. And of course, I wanted to hear whether other people liked them. How could I not? I might decorate my home just for me and not for anyone else’s preferences, but when people come over and say my house is nice, how can I not enjoy that? And if a lot of people think my house is nice, which encourages me to post pictures of it online, isn’t it understandable I might do so with the hope that more people will say my house is nice? And, honestly, if no one is appreciating my pictures, I probably won’t continue to go through the trouble of taking them and posting them. I’ll just enjoy my house that I decorated without sharing, the end.

When I found out there were whole fannish communities where people discussed canon and tossed ideas around about it, made theories and prompts and insights into the characters, fics they had written and recs for other fics and analyses of fics and art based on fics and fics based on art—I wanted to be a part of that, too. Now, sometimes, I write fic not out of an internal need to do so but out of a desire to participate in that community.

The idea that we write fic only for the love of it, then post it only because we possess it, is a process entirely centered on the self. It’s fandom in a vacuum. The idea that we share this thing, that we feel pleasure if someone likes it but feel nothing at all if no one says anything about it, that it’s completely okay to be ignored and unseen—that’s not what a community is either. That’s some weird sort of self-aggrandizement through self-effacement—because yes, there is often a weird kind of virtue-signaling in this kind of discourse.

I say this as someone who has virtue-signaled in that way: “some people write for stats, but I write for myself.” It’s bullshit. Sure, I write for myself, but why post it on the internet? Honestly, said virtue has a whiff of the capitalist machine, which would like you to produce for the sake of production, work for the sake of work. The noblest among us expect no recompense for that which they give!

The reason that I’m bringing this back around to capitalism is that capitalism actively works to dismantle community. The reason that folks are out here pleading for “engagement” in order to “pay back” authors for the products they give us “for free” is because people no longer even have the language to discuss how to participate in meaningful community. And frankly, how to build back fandom community, in the face of enshittification, is getting harder and harder to see.

But I do think that if we value fanfic and the fanfic community, it’s really, really not constructive to judge whether someone’s reasons for writing fanfic are valid. It’s also weird to me that it would be considered wrong that someone’s reason for sharing fanfic is because they would like to receive some recognition for it, when in fact that seems to be the most natural reason in the world for sharing something so private and vulnerable with the world.

Let’s go back to that idea of how hurtful it is to find out your fanfic is trending on tiktok without anyone from tiktok saying anything to you about your fic, or how it can be painful to find out there’s a secret discord channel dedicated to your fic. The people who respond to that with, “Ah, but you shouldn’t be writing to get attention!” are missing the point. The fic did get attention. It got lots. Attention obviously wasn't why the writer was writing--they were writing to participate, and they didn't get to. At all.

However, if your conclusion is that the author was upset because these particular stats were not accruing under this author’s profile, thereby preventing them from achieving the vaunted status of BNF and influencer—I don’t know, maybe you’re right. But I don’t think that’s why I, personally, have been hurt by these things, and I doubt it’s what hurt the people in these posts either. They’re hurt because they want to participate, and they have been systematically excluded by the very people they thought were part of the community they thought they could participate in.

Sure, if those folks from tiktok and the discord server all came and showered the author with kudos and comments that said “kudos,” the author might have felt satisfied enough with the quantity of this recognition that they would continue writing. But in the end, this still does nothing to address the problem of fandom community, in which the deep, meaningful recognition, interactions, and relationships in fandom are getting harder and harder to have and to build, as a result of how people now expect to engage in online spaces.

So, how to address the problem of fandom community? You probably read this long, long post hoping that I had an answer, and for that I must apologize. I don’t have solutions. My intent was to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. I wished to outline the problems that I’m seeing in what was hopefully a slightly new or at least thought-provoking way, rather than offer solutions.

But, now that I’m talking about being prescriptive, maybe I can offer one suggestion, which is—maybe the solution to this isn’t about prescribing behavior. I do understand the irony in writing a prescription saying we shouldn’t prescribe people, but I’m going to write it anyway:

Maybe we shouldn’t be telling anyone the appropriate reasons for writing fanfic or for sharing it. Maybe we shouldn’t be telling readers they need to kudos or need to comment. If we’re going to go pointing fingers, we should be pointing at the institutions of capitalism that have made the internet what it is today—but I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem either.

But I do think that describing this problem, understanding what it actually is, not blaming readers for it and not blaming authors for it—I do think that helps. The discussion I linked at the beginning of this post is what I think of as the fandom I miss, the fandom that's now harder and harder to access, the fandom that is dying. That fandom was a social space where people had opinions and disagreed and went back and forth and gazed at their navels and then talked about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In the words of @yiiiiiiiikes25, it was a fuckin’ discussion about hats. And we’re hungry for it.

#fandom #writing #long post

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yooniesim · 2 days ago

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ok unfortunately for yall the dash made me have a thought so now I gotta ramble lol

but ya know. maybe it's bc I've had so much time away from here and all the bitching (/affectionate) but over the past couple years, I get less angry about this shit and more solution-minded. and I don't mean for the community as a whole (that's impossible lol) but in a sort of... personal circle/responsibility type of way. like what we can do among ourselves without the confrontation aspect bc, just being honest- from my perspective & experience, the anger and the bitching doesn't really accomplish shit. not to say it ain't justified, & it's important to raise awareness for sure, but i swear me & a lot of others that have been talking about this for a long time have just been barking in circles without anything budging one way or another. which leads to burnout/emotional exhaustion not just for the ppl in question but for followers/mutuals/friends. I spent far too long and waaaay too much mental energy thinking that being the loudest and the boldest would get something to change. but the scammers keep scamming and the shit just keeps going. and sure it's fun as hell to shoot the shit and pick and bitch and laugh with your mutuals. baby yall know I love a good simblr circlejerk. but ya know, when you sit down and think about it it's a lil depressing. and the ppl you're talking to/around are already Aware and eventually the anger wears off and they're just tired of hearing about it. you're preaching to the choir and everyone is just pissed and tired with no clear goal to work towards.

Part of that exhaustion is why i made @alwaysfreecc as a positive way to boost always free creators, without focusing on the paywallers. as well as always supporting alternate ways of getting paywalled cc. but I think it takes a lil more than just that. I think, like the post I just reblogged was saying, people need to learn how to make their own content too. I know there's a learning curve, but so many things paywallers make are outright easy to do yourself. Some aren't- there are paywall creators that put great effort into their content and make it worth your money- but a lot of them are. And that isn't to say you should make everything yourself, there's nothing wrong with supporting creators that make content you find interesting or wouldn't want to do yourself, but it can be really rewarding to learn how to make simple edits and recolors on your own. And, image editing and 3d modeling skills can also benefit you elsewhere in life! Whether professionally or when modding other games. Knowing how to make cc in sims helped me figure out how to make certain things for skyrim and fallout, for example. Hell, it's just plain FUN to figure out and do, and I think the community could always use more of that.

Also, sometimes it's freeing to just, stop using certain creators' content. Like, i used to be bitching yet downloading stuff off dhm and shit, out of spite mostly cos half the stuff I didn't even like. But since I cleared out a lot of paywallers' stuff, besides a few I think are worth it/doing things honestly, it just feels better. I don't even think about those mfs anymore until I see something about them on my dash and then I can barely remember who they are lol. You don't realize how much you really don't NEED any of that shit & how you were kinda just downloading it to be downloading it, until you toss it. AND it feels great to have mostly always free creators' content & support them. Liiike i feel proud of ppl i saw get started and are STILL FREE and making awesome stuff, it's exciting! even when I'm not playing the game, I see their posts and be like "dang I need to grab that when I update" or "man they've gotten so much better in so little time" or "wow I never thought of that idea/seen that before". Bc always free peeps get to be so damn creative bc they don't have deadlines or turning off their paying audience to worry about. Like it's so cool and positive and I love that.

idk, just. based on what I've experienced here, i feel like it's kinda time to focus less on what the assholes are doing now (aka the same exact thing they've been doing for years) and more on what to do to make our own personal experiences better. which I know a lot of us are doing! I just wish I personally had done it earlier lol so maybe someone else needs to hear that too. like toss these dummies to the curb and replace them is what I'm sayin. If not in the whole community but just your personal circle. raise awareness as needed sure but don't let em take any more of your energy. cos if you are petty like me (😂) it'll hurt em way more to cast em out than yell at em. all the ppl that have bitched at me yet still have my cc in their folders come to mind lmfao, cos personally that gives me more satisfaction than anything else so I know it's probably the same for the scammers! Like a "you hate me but you can't bear to not use my shit huh 😏" type of deal. Don't give em that sick pleasure! (/projecting) Just focus on you and yours and make some sick ass content for yourself, then share it to me thx 💅

#ceci speaks #nonsims #text #the paywall issue #gif warning #ceci speaks a lot more #long post #long ass post!#sorry yall know i aint written a think piece in a while

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sufferingink · 3 days ago

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the way that TMA has altered my brain chemistry is unreal so here's 911 characters and their fear alignments (without having watched past season four):

Buck: I don't think his would actually be The Lonely. while that's certainly part of it, I think too much of his fear comes from the idea that he's replaceable and filling too much space and needs to hide parts of himself to be loved and if that's not The Stranger, I'm not sure what is.

(I think you could probably make a case for all of them EXCEPT the corruption. when faced with a decomposing dead body he stabs it without gloves to manually drain fluids. when faced with a maggot that had crawled from somewhere I'd prefer not to think about, he goes "maggot :D!" he's kinda chill around killer bees apparently?? I've not gotten that far. but he's not afraid of bugs or sickness or anything so long as it doesn't keep him from his people. tldr: Buck loves bugs too much to be a corruption avatar)

Eddie: that's The Desolation babey. Is terrified of losing everything, so blows up his life before anyone else can. routinely loses things, relationships, people in a dramatic fashion, usually descending into guilt spirals that makes everything so much worse. has yet to end a relationship on even remotely good terms, I think it's fair to say they'd all be better to not have been with him at all

Bobby: I'm actually not too sure about this one but I'll go with The Eye. After the fire that killed his family he talks about how he should have known better, both in doing drugs and in the building's many safety violations. He's a fire captain that takes the injuries of his people very seriously because they happened under his watch and he should have kept a closer eye on them. he's got religious guilt. he even immediately gets sucked into spying on people "just in case" just like one Jonathan Sims circa Magnus Archives season 2

Maddie: The Hunt. do I need to explain this one? her abusive husband LITERALLY HUNTED HER through the woods. not to mention her relationship with her parents. The Hunt is also the fear that the people closest to you would turn on you, and I think trying to erase your brother from existence, leaving you (a ten year old) to raise your OTHER brother, then completely ABANDONING YOU when you get into previously mentioned abusive marriage qualifies as a betrayal, one that has broken her trust in others to help her (Buckley parents when I find you-)

Chim: The Lonely. his mother died when he was young, his father barely speaks to him, one of his brothers died BECAUSE OF HIM (in his mind anyway), he refuses to admit he thinks of his found family as more his family than his blood relatives till his late thirties, and I haven't got to where Tommy gets reintroduced, but Chim's origin episode I'm sorry but he's trying a LOT, TOO MUCH to become friends with someone that's been exclusively a jerk to him, he strikes me as a lonely guy

Athena: The Hunt as well, and I'm not just saying that because she's a cop! that's only part of it- but she's also a black woman working in a police department. she's aware of how easy it is for officers to get away with basically anything, even aware of exactly how unsafe her OWN family is, yet insists on staying and insists that there are more good cops than bad. you can't tell me she doesn't doubt that every single day, and what if they prove her wrong? (remember what I said about the fear of being turned on?)

Hen: I'm feeling The End, but less in a Death�� way and more of "there's nowhere to go from here." Hen prides herself on her ability to learn and grow so naturally that hard stop, you will be exactly as you are now forever, scares her. also people keep telling me she's the only one yet to get a major near death experience soooo

Ravi: Buck

#evan buckley #maddie buckley #buck buckley #eddie diaz #edmundo diaz #bobby nash #maddie han #maddie buckley han #chimney han #911 show #911 athena #athena nash #athena grant #henrietta wilson #ravi panikkar #9 1 1 #911 abc #tma #the magnus archives

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femboty2k · 3 days ago

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we gotta stop making video games based on vibes and make them based on gameplay ideas and characters again. We can't keep doing "cozy uwu farming sim# 397230 with dateable one note characters" and "THIS AINT YOUR FORTNITE SHOOTER PUSSY BABY SHIT. THIS IS 90S ACTION BLOOD BOOMER SHOOTER GOODNESS!!!!!" because both of these things end up sucking. We have to stop designing for aesthetics. A game's art direction is VERY important, yes, but so is the part you PLAY. So many independent games are vibe based. Go look at the metroidvania over saturation. Everyone wants to be hollow knight or dark souls or metroid or sekiro or castlevania. And almost all of them play the exact same. We gotta ditch the vibe based development, you gotta think of game mechanics. Not everything has to be new but you have to make sure the gameplay is at least solid and fun. You Are Peter Shorts achieves something so many metroidvania platformers fail at simply by giving your little dude fucking smash bros combos instead of simple attacks. You can have fucking air game in that game. He doesn't even have arms. MECHANICS ARE IMPORTANT TOO. THE PEOPLE ALL MAKING MOVEMENT PLATFORMERS KIND OF GET IT, A LOT OF THEM LOOK KINDA BLAND THOUGH. SHMOVEMENT > FUNDEMENTALS BUT FUN TO PLAY > ALL ELSE.

IDK. I think a lot about stuff like this. Jacob Geller said in a recent video that his baseline for all games is that they'll be fun, so he likes to expect more out of them emotionally or tonally or philosophically or writing wise. And I think that's good, but I think vibe based development is antithetical to not only that but also the base line that a game should be fun. Are the myriad of stardew valley clones FUN or do they just have charming art styles and attractive characters? For some people that IS fun I suppose, but they all play the exact same. IDK! I'm not calling for constant innovation! Just put your own spin on something every once and a while! Study more than your source material! Look at other games! Be inspired!

#video games #please dont be annoying on this post #Im leaving reblogs on for now

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victorluvsalice · 6 months ago

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Sims 4 Wednesday -- Potential Tiny Town Challenge

Hi all! As we're between Chill Valicer Save updates this week, I wanted to talk to you about something I discovered relatively recently and have been thinking about off and on -- The Tiny Town Challenge! I first learned about this challenge through seeing a thumbnail for James Turner's version on YouTube, and, curious, tracked down the original challenge and rules to see what it was all about. You can get the full rule set and take a look at the original lot and Sims Deligracy created at the link above, but the basic gist is that you spend the challenge setting up a tiny town on a large lot (preferably 64x64) for seven Sims. Each Sim has a specific money-making skill that they must use to earn the funds to build their house on their specific sub-lot, and a favorite decor style and color that must inform what their house looks like. Each Sim is moved in individually, once the previous Sim has finished their house, and the challenge ends when all seven houses and any communal area is fully built.

I took one look at that and I was like "yeah, I'm into it." XD Both because it sounds like a fun challenge, and because it's a challenge with minimal set-up (which is the problem with the challenges I personally have come up with previously -- I think they'd be fun, but they require a loooot of prep!). Having thought about it for a bit, I have some ideas about how I'd like to do the challenge myself -- and some problems that I'm going to have to figure out before I can set this up as a potential alternate save file to the Chill Valicer Save:

-->Location: I decided relatively quickly that I'd like to do the challenge in Windenburg, setting up a little community on The Crumbling Isle (something like how Plumbob Paragon set theirs up). I almost never play in Windenburg, so I figured that setting the challenge there would be a good way to encourage me to wander around that world and see the sights. And I already have some ideas about using the other lots to make a true town out of the island -- like turning one lot into a Community Space to get a community garden going, or another lot into a retail store that a couple of the citizens run. Might be fun!

-->Citizenry: Well, you guys know me -- of course the first three residents of the tiny town would be Victor, Alice, and Smiler. However, I'm having trouble deciding on who the other residents of the town could be. The way I see it, I have two options for the rest of the group:

Option One: Add Victoria Everglot and Emily Merrimack and do a "Four Victorians Riding A Roller Coaster" polycule thing on the tiny town lot! This would be fun as it would allow for amusing and adorable polycule shenanigans...but the problem here is the color schemes. Specifically, while Smiler is fine with their primary color being Yellow, Victor, Alice, and Emily ALL suit Blue being their primary color (Victor has his blue butterfly and blue tie -- plus I've always headcanoned it as his favorite color; Alice has her iconic blue dress; and Emily has her blue -- everything), and Alice and Victoria would both suit Red (Alice has that iconic red blood splatter on her apron; Victoria has her red dress). Now, I know how I could fix this for Alice -- make her primary color Green, to match her eyes -- but I'm not sure what to do about Victor and Emily. I mean, when it comes down to it, Emily would have to get Blue, look at her, but the only other alternate colors I can think of for Victor would be Black or Grey, and that would result in a depressing-looking house. :( So yeah, bit of an issue there!

Option Two: Add my young Emmett "Doc" Brown Sim (patterned off his appearance in BTTF: The Game), a fem!Malkavian Fledgling Sim I downloaded off the Gallery (which I'm already planning on calling Mal Kavian), a Preston Garvey Sim, and my take on a Wheatley Sim to the gang and just represent pretty much all my favorite fandoms and games in one go. The bonus here is that I've got the full roster of seven Sims; as stated, I'm representing a bunch of things I enjoy, not just the primary three; and I get a tiny bit of diversity by including a black character as a primary. However, there are also a couple of issues here:

I'm not entirely sure I want to do the challenge with the full compliment of seven Sims, as I have trouble wrangling a mere three sometimes in my Chill Valicer Save. And before you ask, no, I don't have For Rent, so I couldn't turn the lot into a Residental Rental and just play one family at a time. I'd have to really fight with my own micromanaging tendencies to get this to work!

We again have color overlap issues because Victor, Preston, and Wheatley ALSO all suit the color Blue (Victor for the reasons listed above; Preston because the Minutemen have blue as their primary color scheme; and Wheatley because his eye is blue in the game). Now, admittedly, this one is a bit easier to solve -- make Preston's color Light Brown to match his iconic duster (yes, Sims 4 actually distinguishes between Light Brown and Dark Brown -- the only color that gets that distinction in the sort!), and Wheatley's White to match his core's outer shell -- but still. I am apparently obsessed with Blue characters!

Now, I can think of an interesting way to solve this dilemma -- set up two tiny towns on the Crumbling Isle on the two biggest lots, and divide the Sims so there's like five or so on each lot. (Suppose it could be like Victor, Alice, Smiler, Doc, Mal Kavian on one, and Victoria, Emily, Preston, Wheatley on another?) That does mean having to do the challenge twice, and wrangling a lot more Sims, but... *shrug* We'll see how I feel!

-->Skills, Colors, and Decors: As previously stated, all Sims have to have a specific skill that they use to fund the creation of their home, and a favorite color and decor style that should inform the look of said home. Now, the decor thing is kind of a mystery to me (I mix-and-match styles all the time when building, and I don't have Dream Home Decorator to make Sims Like specific types -- though it does occur to me that I could just fudge it by having each house just reflect their canon in some way), but I do have skills and colors almost entirely locked down for almost all of my potential citizens --

Victor: His color would be Blue (probably darker shades of such), and his money-making skill would be either Painting or Piano (though I'm leaning toward Painting because I've always headcanoned him as being more private with his music)

Alice: Her color would be Green, and her money-making skill either Painting or Writing (leaning toward Writing because I like the idea of her writing her own books)

Victoria: Her color would be Red, and her money-making skill would be either Knitting or Cross-Stitch (since we know she likes to sew from seeing her working on her blanket in the movie when Victor climbs onto her balcony)

Emily: Her color would be Blue (brighter shades), and her money-making skill would be either Flower Arranging (for her bouquet) or Gemology (for the wedding ring that starts the whole Corpse Bride mess -- it just amuses me)

Doc: His color would be Orange (as part of the BTTF logo), and his money-making skill would probably be Robotics (since it's the most sciencey-one), though I wouldn't say no to Fabrication

Mal: Her color would be Red (because, you know, vampire), and her money-making skill would be Wellness (because it deeply amuses me to have a vampire from that clan doing yoga and spa stuff)

Preston: His color would be either Blue or Light Brown (as previously stated), and his money-making skill would be either Fabrication (because he's the settlement guy, and Fabrication is a lot like how the workshops work in Fallout 4), Woodworking (the more low-tech version of that), or Archaeology (because he clearly enjoys the past, given you find him hiding in a museum and his coat is apparently looted from another one -- probably have to use a mod to make it available outside Selvadorada, though!)

Wheatley: His color would either be Blue or White (again, as previously stated), and his money-making skill would be Programming (again, because of the hilarity factor -- I mean, Wheatley CAN hack in the game, but we all know just how "good" he is at it XD)

Smiler: Their color would be Yellow, and their money-making skill --

And this is where I run into a problem, because I'm not entirely sure what to do for Smiler. Because my version of Smiler's primary thing is chemistry (or alchemy, depending on the setting), and I'm not entirely sure how to best represent that with the skills on offer. Should I do Mixology, on the basis that I heacanon they are also awesome at mixing drinks? Herbalism because that's kind of close (I have a mod that puts Granite Falls bugs in other worlds, so that's not an issue)? Do I rely on Simsonian Library's Apothecary mod and related skill because that is arguably closer that Herbalism? Or do I just fudge things by choosing Mixology or something before turning them into a spellcaster and having them focus on the Alchemy section of the spellbook? Decisions, decisions...

But yeah -- that's what I currently have in mind for any future Tiny Town-related save files I may make! Not gonna guarantee that this is gonna happen, but it's a distinct possibility. :) And if you guys have any suggestions regarding how I should do the tiny town (and what the fuck Smiler's money-making skill should be), please let me know!