#like it was designed by a committee

[wandringaesthetic]

In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2003) the titular Prince gradually loses his clothing as it is damaged. First his hat, then his sleeves, then his shirt. I always found this delightful. It's a fairly common trope for the female action hero to gradually lose bits of her costume and have it be justified by damage and injury, but we don't give men this treatment as often. Sure he's got no shirt for sexy/cheesecake reasons, but he's also looking more beaten and bloodied as the game rolls on. He's getting more desperate. He's losing bits of himself. More skin equals more vulnerability.

Anyway, in Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (2024), Sargon (player character, not the titular Prince, easy mistake to make) starts out with no shirt and extremely ripped abs. Fine, as an aesthetic choice, but losing your shirt hits way different than never having a shirt to lose, doesn't it?

[thetwilightroadtonightfall]

Scala’s beloved, age 25 😊 (he probably wears this til his late 30s, give or take)

[original concept/sketch]

[lexiord-art]

Last but not least, Isabela!

At 24 years old and standing at 5'5", Isabela is a self-proclaimed investigator of all things strange. As a Witchblood, her specific lineage has always had a connection to the supernatural and things that are best left forgotten in the shadows. Despite this, her passion and odd fascination for the horrors that lurk just out of reach has led to Marcus and co. to encounter creatures that, even in their world, are perceived as myths. Little does she know that she, along with everyone else, have ties to these dark legends one way or another...

[flowerakatsuka]

kuroba not liking to talk about their time in high school and the one yotsubana florals employee that's actively attending akatsuka high hating kara's guts so he refuses to tell him where he goes to school is doing a lot of legwork when it comes to the whole " kurokara don't realize they went to school together until the reunion " situation.

[resplendent-dwellings]

[prompt-master]

“The Steering Committee was known to have at least four major members consisting of scientists who researched human talent. They were the highest authority in Hope's Peak Academy, even above the headmaster, but they had a tendency to let Jin Kirigiri take the blame if there were trouble. They created The Reserve Course Department and were major players in the Izuru Kamukura project and upheld the school's ideology that focused solely on talent as the humanity's hope.

Sometimes the committee could even overrule decisions of headmaster and scouts and explicitly dis-involved them in the admission decisions of students, which is how they admitted Junko Enoshima into Hope's Peak Academy. While they were not murderous like many other villains in the series, the Steering Committee's decisions greatly helped Junko and allowed her to achieve her evil goals.”

Understandable that you don’t know them that well, they’re like the villain that you never see the face of. The above is why I think it’s so weird for Makoto to have almost the same pin

I think the far more likely option is that since they're in such a high position on hpa and clearly stand to benefit from hpa's prestigious and pervasive image on the public......that they make hpa merch and naegi had a pin cuz he's idolized them

[pepprs]

update i have to apply for my own job for the SECOND time in two years by wednesday and im taking my learners permit test on friday which means i have to finish absorbing the drivers manual by then. the way i am LONGING to walk into traffic.

[identityquest]

This is the design I created for the nonprofit we worked with. Their museum panels are made on trifold 36x48 posterboards, so they can be easily transported when they do community outreach events.

This board conveys the history of two schools that served the local black community before desegregation, and includes photographs and quotes from alumni and professors who attended and taught at the schools before and during desegregation. I tried to capture the overwhelmingly positive feelings that graduates had towards the school and its teachers, while being respectful of the history of the area and the ultimate fate of the sites.

While I did the work to put this together, I wouldn't have been able to make it without the team I'm part of. I owe a huge thanks to my supervisor, the team lead, and one of our copyrighters for helping me get this together.

[corvuscorona]

hey. hey. hey. hey. hey so in ff16 they give you a flash step that goes forward but when you're a big monster (happens for setpiece boss fights only) they give you a roller skating move that goes sideways instead. but then there's a fight where they give your monster form a forwards flash step too.

and IN THAT SAME BOSS FIGHT, you need to do it Twice in a row to close the distance between "outside the big AOE attack" and "guy you need to punch after he does the AOE" & this sums up basically everything you need to know about how AGGRESSIVELY MEDIOCRE the combat really is in this game.

anybody who tells you it's good is either lying or is remembering 1 of like 2 and a half really nicely-tuned fights, one of which was optional. and the health bars were still too fucking stubborn in all of them.

[robertsbarbie]

just found out someone that said genuinely awful things at our graphic design senior showcase is in the same board group as me not to be dramatic but ending it all 🫶

[merfolkplantgay]

It's great that everyone is wanting to support Bioware and their newest game but we don't have to tell ourselves stories.

The answer is that it is cheaper

it is cheaper

Do you think the face textures in Veilguard are so smooth because these are the complexions we downloaded for Inquisition? 😅

[porcupine-girl]

An important message to college students: Why you shouldn't use ChatGPT or other "AI" to write papers.

Here's the thing: Unlike plagiarism, where I can always find the exact source a student used, it's difficult to impossible to prove that a student used ChatGPT to write their paper. Which means I have to grade it as though the student wrote it.

So if your professor can't prove it, why shouldn't you use it?

Well, first off, it doesn't write good papers. Grading them as if the student did write it themself, so far I've given GPT-enhanced papers two Ds and an F.

If you're unlucky enough to get a professor like me, they've designed their assignments to be hard to plagiarize, which means they'll also be hard to get "AI" to write well. To get a good paper out of ChatGPT for my class, you'd have to write a prompt that's so long, with so many specifics, that you might as well just write the paper yourself.

ChatGPT absolutely loves to make broad, vague statements about, for example, what topics a book covers. Sadly for my students, I ask for specific examples from the book, and it's not so good at that. Nor is it good at explaining exactly why that example is connected to a concept from class. To get a good paper out of it, you'd have to have already identified the concepts you want to discuss and the relevant examples, and quite honestly if you can do that it'll be easier to write your own paper than to coax ChatGPT to write a decent paper.

The second reason you shouldn't do it?

IT WILL PUT YOUR PROFESSOR IN A REALLY FUCKING BAD MOOD. WHEN I'M IN A BAD MOOD I AM NOT GOING TO BE GENEROUS WITH MY GRADING.

I can't prove it's written by ChatGPT, but I can tell. It does not write like a college freshman. It writes like a professional copywriter churning out articles for a content farm. And much like a large language model, the more papers written by it I see, the better I get at identifying it, because it turns out there are certain phrases it really, really likes using.

Once I think you're using ChatGPT I will be extremely annoyed while I grade your paper. I will grade it as if you wrote it, but I will not grade it generously. I will not give you the benefit of the doubt if I'm not sure whether you understood a concept or not. I will not squint and try to understand how you thought two things are connected that I do not think are connected.

Moreover, I will continue to not feel generous when calculating your final grade for the class. Usually, if someone has been coming to class regularly all semester, turned things in on time, etc, then I might be willing to give them a tiny bit of help - round a 79.3% up to a B-, say. If you get a 79.3%, you will get your C+ and you'd better be thankful for it, because if you try to complain or claim you weren't using AI, I'll be letting the college's academic disciplinary committee decide what grade you should get.

Eventually my school will probably write actual guidelines for me to follow when I suspect use of AI, but for now, it's the wild west and it is in your best interest to avoid a showdown with me.

[random-doctor-on-the-internet]

I'm french and like many people here, watched the ceremony out of pure spite. Was I surprised? No. Fucking annihilated.

It had EVERYTHING:

- Random kids carrying the flame

- Gays.

- French cancan't

- Furries

- Lady Gaga???

- Craftspeople and public workers

- Bloodshed, cannons and a metal band

- Masked genderless silhouette parkouring their way through the whole mess

- More gays

- Polyamory

- Non-binary dancers and actors

- POC dancers and actors

- Disabled dancers and actors

- Whatever the fuck was going on with those poles

- Lesbian kiss?

- France's most hated rapper singing a song written entirely in slang in front of THE FUCKING INSTITUTE DEDICATED TO THE FRENCH LANGUAGE?

- Her being accompanied by the National Guard orchestra.

- Gays. SO MANY gays.

- MINIONS???

- Hundreds of top quality instruments getting fucked up by the rain.

- Drag queens, opera dancers, fashion designers and...oh, yeah, Alsace.

- National icon Philippe Katherine but make it blue

- 100 years long horse ride

- Damn that armor's looking fine

- Giant balloon ascending to the sky and...just fucking staying there cause they had nowhere to put it

-Did I tell you about the gays?

Holy fuck.

I'm flabbergasted. I'm bamboozled. I'm lying dead on the ground, holding my last breath.

I mean yes, it was funny. Yes, it was strange. Yes, it gave France a super weird reputation.

BUT DO YOU REALISE THAT THE DESIGN COMMITTEE JUST SAW THE RISE OF OUR EXTREME CONSERVATIVE PARTY AND DECIDED TO THROW A MASSIVE "FUCK YOU" AT THEM???

I think I'm in love. Call me french in training.

[lexiord-art]

Starting off the second half of the group, Fiora!

Second oldest of the group at 26 years old and 6'3", Fiora is an ex-track team member turned head of the new gardening club, soon-to-be valedictorian, popular among many thanks to her Faeblood heritage, and manager of her parent's florist shop while studying to become a botanist. She's the gentle motherly figure of the group and regularly dotes over her friends and family. Given how much she has to juggle, she somehow finds the time to work out with the boys of the gang; don't underestimate her strength despite her lithe body.

[sayruq]

A UN investigation found that US and UK-manufactured weapons or parts were likely used to bomb British doctors working for British and American organisations in Gaza in January, the organisations involved have highlighted. Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) also said this week that Israeli officials have offered six different explanations about why the residential compound housing their staff was hit. The compound, which was not close to any other buildings, was struck around 6am on 18 January by an F-16 jet which "most likely'" fired a 1,000-pound "smart bomb", the UN investigation found. A month earlier, the Israeli military had given the British defence attache assurances that the site, which had been designated a safe zone and was located in the southern Gaza town of Al-Mawasi, had been marked as a protected, humanitarian area. The strike left several staff members and a bodyguard with non-life-threatening injuries, severely damaged the compound and was said to have forced the organisations to stop taking foreign doctors into Gaza as the healthcare system collapsed.

[markrosewater]

Hi Mark. With a lot of talk recently in the online space about the unreasonable outrage and horrendous death threats towards the Commander Rules Committee and Commander Advisory Group, I want to thank you for being the proverbial "shield" for some of the most heinous and grotesque backlash towards WOTC as the unofficial public representative for MTG. I know it can be absolutely draining for your mental health to receive harassment in this position, so I just want to say I am grateful and empathize that you are in this position. With that being said, as one of the most prominent faces of Magic, is it possible if you could say a word or two about the aforementioned harassment towards the RC and CAG to deter these harassers and possibly share your own experiences regarding unconstructive hate to help the victims of such depravity (if you're comfortable sharing)?

There are advantages and disadvantages of being one of the faces for Magic. When people like something we're doing, even when I had nothing to do with it, I get lots of praise. Most players only know a handful of Wizards employees, so they tend to assume that the people they know are responsible for the things that are happening.

There is, of course, a downside to that. When things happen people dislike, I'm also the light rod for complaint. Whether or not I had anything to do with the issue in question, I get the blame. I am Head Designer. Many times, I did have a hand or a say in what happened. And when I'm responsible, or partly responsible, for something, I try to own up to it.

Players are not a unified front though. When we do thing X, some of you will like it while others will not. I often will get complimented for the same thing I'm being yelled at for.

From time to time, we do something a majority are unhappy with. At times, we do things a majority are *very* unhappy with. That's when things can get a bit ugly. There are a lot of civilities built into daily life. There are just things you don't do or say to another human being. Most of that goes out the window online.

For some reason, the anonymity combined with just how social media has evolved has emboldened people to do and say things they never would in person (and I should also acknowledge society has changed in ways that even what's acceptable in person has changed).

What this means is I get a lot of negativity, some of it very personal. I'm not just talking about people criticizing the in-game choices I've made (or often didn't even make), but comments on me as a person, about who I am and what they think of me. People tell me that want bad things to happen to me. Not just getting fired (although that's a popular one), people vocalize, sometimes quite graphically, about things they want to happen to me.

The first few times this happened, I took it pretty hard. Having lots of people attack you online, saying horrible things about you, is tough. Humans look to other humans for approval. It's just built into our DNA to want others to like us. Having people attack you hurts. You have trouble sleeping, eating, it just weighs on you emotionally.

I was bullied as a kid. This really isn't much different except its much higher in volume and very public.

With time, I learned to adapt to it. It's not that I enjoy people saying nasty things about me. It still sucks, but I've found ways to process it. I came to realize that someone being nasty is more a commentary on them than me. And I adopted a philosophy of looking past the words to the message behind it. Most people complaining didn't like a choice we made about the game. I could focus on the feedback and less on the delivery method. But that took years, and it has a lot to do with who I am as a person. I enjoy the things I get to do with a public profile, so I accept what comes with it.

I've made the conscious choice to build a thick skin and weather social media, so I can continue doing what I love. It saddens me that I have to.

I say all this because I don't know if people really process the harm they're doing when they get negative online, especially towards another person. Most people do not have the years of processing angry messages like I do.

Words have an impact and that doesn't matter whether you're speaking them directly to someone's face or typing them in the privacy of your home.

Bullying is not okay. Cruelty is not okay. Making a conscious choice to belittle another human being, especially because they made a choice you disagree with about a game, is not okay.

When you use ugly words, you are doing harm to another human being (sometimes many human beings). Imagine if someone attacked you like that, or a loved one, or a friend. Don't do something to another human being that would cause pain if it was done to you.

That doesn't mean you can't communicate unhappiness. It doesn't mean you can't vocalize that you disagree with a decision made. I would stress two things. One, make it about the decision and not the person who made the decision. Explain why and how the decision impacts you, not what you think of the person because they made the decision.

Two, watch your language. As I said above, words have power. They can be used to build or to destroy. Is the language you're using designed to hurt? If so, don't use it. Use other language. If you need to take time to calm down, do so.

Community is what we as individuals choose for it to be. One of the things I love about the Magic community is how kind it can be, how accepting it can be, how uplifting it can be. But that's because we each individually choose to do that. The Magic community can get ugly, but only if we allow it to become so.

So please, the next time you're making a message designed to do something destructive rather than constructive, take a moment to reflect. Why are you doing this? What is your goal? Is it your intent to hurt someone? Because that's what negative language does.

I ask the Magic community to be better. I know we have the potential. I've seen it.

Be part of the solution, not the problem.

Thanks.