#need to leave to an appointment -_-

[icewindandboringhorror]

On average, what is the total MONTHLY amount that you spend on dining out*?

*(This doesn't only count going out to restaurants, but also stuff like picking up fast food to bring home, getting a coffee on the way to work, getting a premade sandwich from a grocery store deli during lunch, buying a quick snack from a convenience store or food cart whilst walking somewhere, ordering a pizza or any other food to be delivered to your home, etc.)

*(If you often dine out in groups/as a household: calculate and divide the costs so that you get a Per Person average. This is for YOU individually, NOT the total household/group costs)

(I'm sure polls similar to this have been made before (very common topic), I just haven't personally seen one that I can remember, so, I was curious to do my own! I was discussing this with a group of people today and it was very interesting to see how widely the number varied between individuals. :0c )

(Reblog for bigger sample size if you can, and feel free to explain your answer in tags if there's anything extra to add!)

[reegis]

Heyyy so i saw like, one doodle you did of raph & tim, i love it, they are my favourites ever. Can i please have more?

the duo ever

[lumsel]

Basement Syndrome

Why do first levels in roguelikes suck so bad?

Consider it. You're playing your favourite roguelike, starting up a new run, but before you get to the fun part you have to slog through that part. You know, the boring slog at the start of every playthrough that you gotta suffer through before you hit the fun part. The Mines in Spelunky, the Desert in Nuclear Throne, the Basement in Binding of Isaac, if they've all got one thing in common it's that you just can't wait to get out of them. What gives? This is Basement Syndrome: the tendency in roguelikes for the start of the run to just broadly suck ass.

There's two big reasons Basement Syndrome is so pervasive in the genre:

The first is Difficulty. The first level in a roguelike is generally designed to be a new player's introduction to the game. It has to be! It's the first thing you're confronted with when you hit play. So this first level bears the burden of introducing the player to the game's mechanics and expectations in a controlled environment. The designer is understandably reluctant to throw new players in the deep end, so this first level will usually be mechanically less complex so you can come to grips with how everything works before the game starts switching things up on you.

Add on to that how a lot of roguelikes take a kind of arcade approach to progression. You measured your success based on how far you progressed in a run. You'd get good enough to beat level one, but then you get stonewalled by level two. Then when you're good enough to beat level two, you get stonewalled by level three, and so on, until you hone your skills enough to beat the whole damn game. Each level is a new spike in difficulty that you have to conquer to beat the game, and you measure that progress to mastery by your runs reaching further and further into the game

This is pretty standard stuff, it's a difficulty curve, everyone does this. But, of course, in a roguelike... you gotta replay that super simple easiest first level every time you die! This means the first area has to juggle a dual responsibility as a new player's introduction to the game, and the start of every elite player's run. That's not an easy balance to strike-- and most games don't strike it!

The second is Variance. Modern roguelikes use the player's build as a source of variance from run-to-run. As you play through a run, your character will accumulate new items that give them unique attributes which come to define their playstyle in some way. This has become a ubiquitous part of the genre, and it makes sense! It's a great way of keeping the game fresh and interesting as you replay it again and again, by changing the way in which you engage with the same problems the game tosses at you depending on the tools you've been given.

The problem, though, is that if the bonuses that define your build are something that accumulates over the course of the run... then at the start of the run, when you've got the least bonuses, that's where the variance is at its lowest. The first area in a roguelike takes place before your build has taken shape -- if every run begins in the same place and then branches out into something interesting, but the start of the run is happening before that branching has occurred. Which means that the feature that makes roguelikes as replayable as they are -- the variance -- is straight up not present through the first level or longer. It's the same shit every time!

So, alright. Basement Syndrome is basically two problems walking in lockstep. And the bad news is that these can be pretty tough problems to solve. But the good news is, you can stand on the shoulders of giants here, cause these are a known problems. Roguelike devs the world over have concocted solutions for one or both of these. Let's take a look at some of those.

Solution 1 (Difficulty): Just Fuckin Skip That Shit

If the first level sucks so bad, why not just not play it? This is the problem Spelunky set out to answer when it invented the Tunnel Man. Once you've showed true mastery of the first level, you can accumulate resources that allow you to buy skips past those early levels that let you get stuck right in to the good stuff.

This one gets kind of held back by most of the games that implement it implicitly punishing you for using it. Spelunky treats the ironman run as the "true" way to beat the game and you'll be down on items if you skip to the end anyway, and Nuclear Throne has the oasis shortcut but because of how that one scales difficulty you'll be behind on weapons and score for the rest of the run. Maybe Enter the Gungeon was better about this but I did not like that game so I never found out lol. A shame, too, because I really think there's promise here. Just skip the boring bit! It's fine!

Solution 2 (Difficulty): Metadifficulty

Many Roguelikes escalate difficulty by ramping up the challenge with each successive level in a run. But what if there was another way? What if, once you got good enough at level three... level one got harder instead? Enter metadifficulty. This is systems like ascensions in Slay the Spire and Heat in Hades, where beating runs grants you access to new tiers of difficulty that add complications to the entire thing, allowing the devs to scale game difficulty in such a way that the run can START hard and not just GET hard after an indeterminate time.

This can be done wrong, like if you amp up the damage without increasing the complexity of the start, you've potentially made the game more tedious but not more interesting. But it's not too hard to add some modifiers that change up behaviours enough to add interesting wrinkles to the early game. Even something so simple as a time limit can really complicate how you view that first level, pushing things enough to add engagement to even the start of the game.

Solution 3 (Difficulty): Alternate Start

Pretty straightforward one here. Just swap out that shitty first level for an actually good first level. The Repentance expansion of Binding of Isaac lets you switch over to Downpour after playing the first floor of the Basement, and in return you get a free reroll on every item room in the alt path. You could also see Hades II's surface route as a variant of this as well.

I think this is a really promising solution on the difficulty side; it's all the benefits of Just Fuckin Skip That Shit without the sorta cheaty feeling it brings. There are potential issues with actually incentivising the alternate start, though. Why play the harder (but more interesting) start level when you could play the easier (but more boring) start and not have to risk anything? Sometimes you gotta come up with tricky ways to force players into enjoying themselves when they won't do it themselves.

I'd like to see this one explored more. Both the abovementioned games implement alternate starts as part of a whole entire alternate game route, and yeah, not every roguelike is gonna have the resources for that. It'd be neat to see some roguelikes that have this sort of thing but really just for the first level. Who knows? It could work better than you think.

Solution 1 (Variance): Start Bonuses

So if early game variance is such a problem, why not just... add variance to the early game? Every run, at the start of the run, why not give the player some huge big bonus that could help define their run? That'd at least make the start more interesting, right?

It's a good idea that immediately runs into an issue, which is that couldn't you just restart the run over and over until you get the start bonus you want? Cause if players are doing that, that actually totally defeats the purpose -- the run variance you so carefully cultivated is now obliterated by degenerate player strategies! Every run starts the same way again! Fortunately Slay the Spire already figured out how to handle that in a pretty elegant way, which is that the cool start bonuses are only granted if you reached the first boss. This means you can't just hold R until you get a good start, you're forced to at least commit a little to every run if you wanna keep seeing those cool bonuses. Smart!

Solution 2 (Variance): Frontloaded Upgrades

So, run variance in a roguelike is the result of a number of accumulated bonuses, all of which work together to define your run. This is all well and good, but... does it need to work this way? What if the first few upgrades in your run are more consequential than the others, causing your build to rapidly take shape right at the beginning and the rest of the run becomes tuning?

This stroke of genius is exactly how Hades II handles it! You've got five primary slots for upgrades that affect your active abilities and your method of MP gain, and you can only have one upgrade in each slot. These slots rapidly fill up at the start of the run, and the upgrades that hit these slots are far more consequential than most of the passive upgrades that don't touch a slot, so the shape your run will take is rapidly defined nearer to the start of the run and the rest of the run is just tuning (you'll notice Hades 1 attempted a similar system here, but that game beefed on run variance in general so it didn't really land.)

In theory this is vulnerable to the same reroll problem that start bonuses are subject to, with players just resetting after the first 2 upgrades instead of the very start of the run, but both Hades games do their own work to train the player out of getting restart happy by making you forfeit all metaprogression resources if you quit out of a run. You have to either finish the run or die to make it count, and killing yourself can be surprisingly tedious in those games, so... fuck it, why not tough it out. It's surprising how well a little bit of careful incentive engineering can get a person to change play patterns. At least, it worked on me, anyway...

Anyway, that's the rundown. Basement Syndrome is still a pretty pervasive issue in roguelikes -- even the ones I've mentioned above often still have the issue, just to a lesser degree. But still, it's a solvable problem! Lemme know if you think I missed anything, and thanks for reading!

[ganondoodle]

(Original art) Xaror, any pronouns, species (?), age (?)

short summary about them; they act as both an antagonist and an ally since they are only really interested in what they want or whats fun to them, they are immortal and call themselves 'death itself' since they have a special connection to souls (being the only one able to communicate with them) and the ability to seperate souls from their bodies in such a way that nothing can harm the soul afterwards their main goal is to .. bother and disturb the 'celestials'*, which they hate, as much as they can, breaking into their palace, freeing prisoners, destroying research, destroying the place, and most importantly, making as many souls unusable to them as possible-

they dont want to destroy the celestials though, they cant fight them anyway and this game of doing 'good' only with the goal of annoying them is their most treasured activity, so Xaror doesnt intend to stop them from killing or hurting anyone, only from harvesting what they are actually after (though Xaror doesnt actually care as little as they think they do about people, and has a soft spot for demons)

most of their appearance is later into the story; Zaphira (the empress) had been in coma and the medical facility she was treated in was destroyed by Shargon (orange eyed demon who acts as her bodyguard for the first part) in an attempt to save her from her estranged relatives taking over her country after they heard of her decline in health, she is believed dead but washes up on the shore of the mountain Xaror resides at years later (it has a reason, too much to write here) and they slowly nurse her back to health, the reason they give for it is that they found their first encounter very fun, thats all (is it?)

(more lore under the cut bc this is already so long .. im trying to keep it short q-q ......... this is stuff i have been working on since i was a kid so uh, some things might be cheesy but i cant change them anymore ..)

just to get some basics out of the way; theres three worlds, the celestials palace, human world and demon world, each are their own planet connected via different gateways

*celestials (possibly not final name, loosely based on angels) are the last remaining "survivors" of their planets demise, when their world died the most powerful among them cannibalized the weaker to sustain themselves until there were only less than 10 left, who each turned into different beings from it and dont resemble their own people much anymore, they built a palace from what was left on their world that protects them from space as its atmosphere collapsed shortly after- however they still needed something to live off; they discover the human world and are delighted to find rather short lived people with powerful souls, the best kind of sustenance for them (now), they aim to herd them like cattle, but a problem arose when it turned out another world has long been in contact with the human world; demons

demons are semi immortal creatures that act as protectors for their world, protection they extended, more or less secretely, to the human world ensuring them a long and secure life- the celestials need them to die at their whim though (demons are few in numbers, hard to kill and rarely have offspring, not an ideal target); as they worked out a plan on how to get rid of demons one of the celestials, Xanthriel (time) grew somewhat fond of people as they spent alot of time in the human world to observe and research them; in the end turning on their own completely, but losing the fight against Uriel (knowledge)

Xanthriel was supposed to be executed for their betrayal, but it doesnt work, instead they are splintered into many parts after a lot of struggle, most body, memory and most strength is one part (ending up as motionless forever bleeding corpse kept locked up in the palace), the rest is some time later gathered together and reforms as a seperate, weak mockery of them, they embody Xanthriels emotion- Xaror, without memory, strangely cut to pieces (hence all the missing limbs and broken halo) but driven by an unstoppable desire to disturb the celestials (they live seperate long enough to each become their own person, at some point Xaror discovers Xanthriels body after all and they merge back together, though as they are now two, Xanthriel only takes over once directly after merging, stays silent for a long time and lets Xaror be themselves, only later revealing that they are there at all .. hiding perhaps- i rarely have specific ideas for voices, but Xanthriels is like, like coarse rocks being violently rubbed against each other, less voice more noise)

(also, the celestials use Xanthriels blood from the day of their execution to create a plague that nearly wipes out all demons, only the youngest of them survived, effectively robbing them of everything, culture, history, knowledge etc- as demons rarely have children, like a complete restart of their society, they disappeared from the human world, and over time being largely forgotten as actually existing- the celestials wanted them all gone however, so they kept kidnapping them to try and find somethign that would work similarly against the young ones too (and then in general, bc the only usable blood of Xanthriel was from the day of their fall, and that has long since been used up) one of the young ones was Shargon, he was the only one still alive from his group

(also, the celestials use Xanthriels blood from the day of their execution to create a plague that nearly wipes out all demons, only the youngest of them survived, effectively robbing them of everything, culture, history, knowledge etc- as demons rarely have children, like a complete restart of their society, they disappeared from the human world, and over time being largely forgotten as actually existing- the celestials wanted them all gone however, so they kept kidnapping them to try and find somethign that would work similarly against the young ones too (and then in general, bc the only usable blood of Xanthriel was from the day of their fall, and that has long since been used up) one of the young ones was Shargon, he was the only one still alive from his group (he wasnt the strongest or special, he was jsut the last in the row and always got the lowest dosage) when Xaror found them in yet another break in into the palace and got him back to the demon world .. where he was promptly blamed for the others that were taken and treated like a pretender/fake/spy bc what he got put through changed his eye color (something that demons cannot change in any form) to one that does not exist among 'real' demons (orange ... notice the inner color of Xarors broken halo? :) ), some even suggesting killing him, but none of them were brave enough to do it (they were all kids still) .. except Eadrya (the big blue-ish one, largely regarded as the strongest demon alive) but Shargon managed to escape, and since then lived largely in isolation- this is part of why he is so hated, and why he starts to spend so much time in the human world after rediscovering the pathway there)

[iero]

This tattoo artist I'm looking to get tatted by in the UK emailed me, like, three weeks ago like, “Hey, what dates will you be in the UK and I’ll make an appointment for ya!” I messaged them the dates the very next day and now… Nothing. I sent a follow-up like two weeks ago, just checking in, and still nothing. I’m debating on sending an Instagram DM, but I don���t want to be annoying, especially since l've already done it once before to them (but it DID get me a response)… Advice?

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

The way I have not written a single word for like a month it feels like I have been busier in the last two weeks than I have been in the last four years of my life and will continue to be busy for the next two weeks I got one day between a four day family trip and a sib visit gotta sew a monkey during the trip and if monkie kid drops in that time I will simply combust

[soullessjack]

me incoherently yapping about how the revival should be a prodigal son type of thing between jack and dean to pick up from how season 14 frames them as Abraham and Isaac and have actual reconciliation between them since we never fully got it by the end of s15

[cherriesandcharms]

its my first time working somewhere that actually has rules and enforces them around providing medical certificates for sick time and i am highly annoyed by it

[thedisablednaturalist]

Office disability culture is so fucked in environmental science and fieldwork. Like the mindset that to do the job you have to be in perfect physical health or you should just quit. Like I'm not talking about something that is 100% physical labor here, everything is mostly achievable with aids and you don't need to be able to do every single thing. But there's this weird like..pride..that my older coworkers have. They work out in the gym and brag about how many reps they did. They tease each other for having medical issues. They don't ask for accommodations because they fear that their legitimacy will be hurt. That it means that they can't do their job anymore. That they won't be TRUSTED to do their jobs anymore. That it will get taken away.

So they FURTHER hurt their bodies by not resting, not taking breaks, not using ergonomic equipment, not using safety equipment. Not drinking enough water. Not using mobility aids when they are so old that it's supposed to be acceptable. They don't use the scooters at the grocery store, they don't use their handicapped placard, they don't use knee pads or compression gloves.

And here I come in, 24 years old, looking perfectly healthy. And I use walking sticks, I sit down a lot, I have my care bag, I have a ton of gadgets for making fieldwork more comfortable, I have boundaries and limits, I wear braces and knee pads and compression gloves. I use my handicapped placard.

They react in one of two ways:

1. How DARE I. I'm so lucky to be young and no one sees THEM having to do all those things (literally nothing is stopping them but pride). Like old man if you need a break take a fucking break. I'm not going to hurt my health to make you feel better about hurting yours. I'm not risking a flare up to spare the 65 year olds feelings. Im gonna take my break and use my equipment cause my boss doesn't care as long as the work gets done. I'm tired of glares from 100 year olds making themselves struggle across the parking lot when they could also be using the fucking scooter. (I never take the last scooter, there's always another available. Also it's not my fault if walmart only provides 2 scooters for the whole store).

2. It shows them its okay. Its okay to need aids. When I first showed up at my job it was very...macho..everyone was afraid of seeming old (theres probably only 3 of us under 30 in the whole department, most people are at least 50, mainly 65 year olds). Then they saw me using my walking sticks, taking my medicine openly, bringing a chair with me when working away from my desk, using my TENS unit. I overheard one lady ask her granddaughter what fibromyalgia was (apparently she had spotted my pain tracking journal).

My older coworker with a bad knee got a walking stick like mine and beamed when she showed me. The grandmother uses a cane and a walker interchangeably and more often. I get asked where I get my little portable fan and pocket heaters and special clothing. Even abled coworkers are doing it. My coworker who's younger than me sets alarms to take breaks now just like I do. People seem more comfortable using things that help them now.

My boss has really struggled. He has a lot of internalized ableism and hates thinking of himself as crippled. He spent his whole life physically active and strong and all these health issues and overexertion are catching up with him. Like he did environmental testing in areas with fucking radon. He did work where they threw asbestos around like snow for fun. He's done a ton of really hard physical work. He grew up with the mentality that pain was just something everyone has to push through. But I think seeing a young person make the choice not to push through is helping him a bit. He wants to make his own walking stick, he goes to the doctor more. We bond over having constant medical issues and I even gave him the name of my surgeon. Yea he still says stuff like "shoot me if I have to use a wheelchair" (not as much anymore since he now knows I use one) but he's getting there.

Yeah so I've had this in my drafts for a bit and I wanted to update that my boss has been walking around with a fucking broken ankle for the past couple of weeks. He thought it was just arthritis pain and eventually couldn't take it anymore and went to the foot doctor. The doctor has no clue how the fuck he's been walking on it. Now he has to wear the boot and he's banned from fieldwork while he heals.

Older people and the elderly need to learn that it's okay to not push through the pain and ask for help. Everyone needs to learn this, and not be like my fucking boss. Go to the doctor, get that sore joint checked out. Get those tests done. Use that aid. Stop walking on a broken ankle just because you can.

[lottieurl]

new psychiatrist seems really cool

[nsewell]

the high of succesfully scheduling a medical procedure i've been anxiety putting off for months can sustain me through winter

[dreamieparadise]

I finished my Dr appointment and am planning on not going back to class lmaoooo

Submitted my group assignment too, so I'm soooo over that headache and heartache!!

[disdaidal]

I wanna thank my irl friends who follow me here and also my beloved mutuals as well as followers who still send me kind messages and try to interact with me and my stuff even if I'm bad at doing it myself.

Honestly, things haven't been that great with me lately, so... it means a lot to me. Honestly. <3

[aro-carpenter]

My god

[batfambrainrotbeloved]

Tried to pack, got overwhelmed, now im watching Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders documentery on Netflix and planning chapter 11.

Yipeeeee~

[honey-skulls]

HUGE VENT

I'm sorry but i need to get this out, just please don't worry too much or take anything personally/gen

My routine these last two weeeks has been:

-Wake up at my 10 am alarm and spend the whole day in bed, mentally and physically exhausted, brain fog and no motivation for anything, only getting up to eat, having to wait for the "food time" hours to roll around that my therapist gave me because I'm not allowed to eat outside of those hours and if I'm hungry but missed the last food time then too bad, struggling to stay awake because again I'm not allowed to sleep out of the "sleep hours" she gave me and that includes naps, excitedly waiting for 21h30/22h to roll around so i can finally sleep

-Spend the evening mentally screaming in my mind because, while my body is still just as physically exhausted, my mind is suddenly sharp and full of ideas and motivation, but i'm still too tired to get up and draw

-Then spend midnight and onward rolling around in bed, hot and bored out of my mind because my physical tiredness also vanished, but i'm not allowed to get up and draw because it's "sleep hours" and i need to reschedule my body, and end up falling asleep at around 5 am

I'm totally not slowly loosing my mind 😃👍

Edit: Oh also the constant noise in my ears has gotten worse, i don't know what silence is anymore

Silence is actually worse than loud rooms

It's driving me insane

It's so loud