#one of which is 10 pages long

[low-sodium-sri-rachaa]

rant because I need to blow off steam

[musings-of-miss-j]

'how to write a good character arc' 'follow this act structure for your plot' 'best checklist for worldbuilding' 'the correct way to design a magic system' 'you're boring your readers with long descriptions' 'the correct amount of exposition' i don't know man. what if i do whatever the hell i want.

[pollen]

.

[savage-rhi]

Magenta 😟

[reel-fear]

Honestly, every single time the whole 'poppy playtime is a bendy rip-off' stuff ever shows up I find it all extremely unconvincing and silly.

For one thing, rip-off usually is meant to imply that it's a cheap lazy copy of a better more polished thing, and uh. Sorry but even from chapter 1? Poppy Playtime is a better game than Bendy, it has a simple but understandable story, the game manages to be thrilling, creepy, and very intense at times... I mean that Huggy chase in the vents ALONE puts it way above Batim for me.

I mean BATDR had the most slow stupid chase I've ever seen [and every other encounter with the ink demon is text telling u he's there and then a timer goes down and u get jumpscared] and batim's chases were either silly or just not nearly as theatric or terrifying as that.

When making the vent sequence I mean not only is it absolutely horrifying to realize how fast Huggy is in there but also it's so theatric and cool? The fact that you round a corner after thinking you escaped only to see a terrifying animation of that thing crawling toward you is awesome! I wish Bendy had stuff like that!

And all the stuff it shares with Bendy are generic things Bendy ripped from other horror games/media anyways. I'm not saying Poppy Playtime isn't inspired by Bendy I for sure think it is but Bendy is such a generic story that somehow fails to do tropes 100 other horror games have done any comparison only makes Poppy Playtime look better.

"It has employees being sacrificed for their company" That is not a concept Bendy invented, literally look at any of the sci-fi horror series Bendy is very inspired by. This is literally a twist in the original Alien.

"It has a scary woman forcing you to do tasks for her" Once again, not a concept Bendy invented, a scary mysterious person forcing you to do fetch-quests is a concept found in tons of horror media. And at least Poppy Playtime gave you a chase with her and let you defeat her, look at poor malice. She's barely on screen for more than 10 minutes before she gets stabbed.

"It has a cult worshipping the monster" This is something tons of horror games and media have done too. I mean In The Tall Grass has a guy who worships a giant magical rock in the middle of a grass maze, Bioshock [which Bendy has only been taking more and more direct inspiration from while failing to grab any of the compelling parts] also had a lot of themes of religion and cult-ish behavior, almost every horror media franchise has at one point done a cult thing.

Bendy couldn't even come up with a reason Sammy worships the ink demon, the best motivation we've ever gotten is just that 'he's crazzyyyy the ink made him insaneeee'. Who is the cheap rip-off here?

At least Poppy Playtime gave their cultist a motive for worshipping the monster + a proper boss fight that feels intense and looks awesome! Bendy didn't even let you kill Malice [she got stabbed in front of you and then just collapsed on the floor how thrilling] meanwhile you get to kill three of the villains in Poppy Playtime and the gameplay and action in those scenes have only gotten better as the game went on.

I mean Sammy walks into a room and goes "AAA SCARY I'M BEING MURDERED" then later shows up and for NO REASON sees a normal human man and assumes it's the ink demon before once again someone else kills him for you. In Poppy Playtime you defeat Catnap as he floods the world with this horrible nightmare-inducing gas that intensifies the color palette and his design. Fight off versions of him that are illusions that you need your flare gun for, then watch in a wonderful animation as he mistakes the monster for his savior before getting killed by it, in a brutal way I might add, which game are we accusing of being cheap, lazy garbage again?

I just find this argument to be people who Really Really need to find a reason to hate Poppy Playtime which I think is silly. The devs being weird, shady people is already enough reason to dislike the game, you don't need to invent reasons why secretly every part of the game is malicious or bad. But esp when I see Bendy fans saying they don't support Poppy Playtime or dislike it bc of its devs or even saying its cringe ummmm.

I have bad news about the fact Bendy's devs are worse and it took not one, but TWO over an hour long videos to cover it all. Plus the Bendy games are just the worse games in every aspect, if I could sell my batim copy for a copy of Poppy Playtime I wouldn't hesitate at all.

Saying this as a bendy fan, we have no right to be super judgy towards Poppy Playtime. If Poppy Playtime is embarrassing cringe, Bendy is too and is way more embarrassing of an interest. We shouldn't spread misinformation just because we all want to hate Poppy Playtime, you can dislike Poppy Playtime without making up a bunch of nonsense to justify it.

Honestly seeing people just blatantly be unfairly mean to Poppy Playtime only makes its critics look worse and makes it hard to take any backlash to the games seriously. Because surprise surprise if you spread misinformation to make a point people will quickly stop listening to Anything you have to say bc they won't trust you're telling the truth anymore.

[bashsbooks]

for bonus points, tell me what book it was!

[deelovesbooks]

i need everyone to be very proud of me, i booked a haircut with a new person at a new place I've never been before after going to the same hairdresser for the last decade

[raiiny-bay]

had an idea for yet another big project…

[coquelicoq]

i completely solved a cryptic crossword for the first time the other day! this is huge for me because i've always been so annoyed by them lol. but i kinda get it now, it is very satisfying to figure them out.

that said, there are several answers where i still do not totally understand the clues. if anyone who is familiar with cryptics (sometimes just called "crosswords" outside of the US) wants to help me out, i'd be very interested to hear your take!

this cryptic was in the 2022 puzzle mania edition of the nyt (released at the very end of the year), so if you are planning to solve it and haven't yet, i guess don't read this? lol. since i waited five months to do it i feel like that will apply to no one, but just in case.

i realized after drafting this post that the answer key is available online (here), but it did not actually answer my questions in every case, so i've kept my original text but added the answer key answer after each one in case it makes more sense to you than it does to me.

13A. Has misgivings about deception to an auditor (4): RUES. so "has misgivings about" is the definition of "rues". but i don't know what "deception to an auditor" is doing. could it have something to do with the fact that "rues" is a homonym and anagram of "ruse", a kind of deception? but i still can't figure out what "to an auditor" is for.

the answer key gives "homophone ruse" for this, so i guess i was right about the deception part, but i still don't get the auditor thing.

14A. A con almost grabs actor's awards left unbalanced (10): ASYMMETRIC. so EMMYS is hidden backwards in "asymmetric", which takes care of "actor's awards" and "left", and "asymmetric" means "unbalanced", i guess. so that leaves "A con almost grabs", along with the A and TRIC of the answer. i can't figure out how to make those relate to each other.

answer key says "a(symmE)trick – k (rev. Emmys)". fuck does that mean?? why are we subtracting the k? and i'm still not really sure what the con is there for?

26A. Concentrate for spare and strike (5): THINK. "concentrate" is the definition of "think". what is the "for spare and strike" doing??

answer key: "thin + K". okay i see how thin = spare but wherefore this K? does K stand for strike in baseball? that sounds vaguely familiar...

28A. African country returned Los Angeles family inheritance (7): SENEGAL. senegal is an african country, and it's also an anagram of angeles. i'm guessing the "returned" is a clue for the anagram? but what is "family inheritance" for? oh wait, senegal backwards is LA genes!! but then is it just a coincidence that "angeles" anagrams to "senegal", or is that indicated in the clue somewhere???

answer key: "rev. L.A. + genes". okay so it does sound like angeles being an anagram of senegal is a coincidence, or at least not covered in the clue?? seems like a missed opportunity but what do i know.

5D. Largely moderate Arizona city (5): TEMPE. tempe is a city in arizona. what's "largely moderate" doing here?

answer key: "temper – r". am i to understand that this is saying moderate = temper and the "largely" part of the clue is telling me to keep most but not all of "temper"?

[haemosexuality]

most of the schools i went to were catholic to its rlly surprising that i never had any type of religion class. it didnt actually affect anything other than us being made to stand in line and pray before class (and also sing the national anthem) but like you could just, Not do that and be chill

[mikecrewsteacup]

i am finally ALMOST in the last week of my semester, so i can finally get back to all my hobbies that require brainpower in 7-8 business days..... well in that + some recovery time

i have unresponded-to messages and memes and tagged things that i genuinely cannot wait to get back to, but they're all probably going to wait until after i've hit "submit" on my last final bc boy has this past academic year been a rough one

[macchiatogf]

my first draft of my capstone is a week overdue so i’m trying the ole sleep deprivation method (i.e. no sleep til it’s done) but now it’s 3am i’ve faffed my way into getting one more page done and the harsh reality that this paper is truly not going to write itself is setting in. what the fuck gives

[inked-out-trees]

Tell me about fixed point my friend. In return I offer a monologue from one if my stage scripts, Matthew's Marvelous and Mystifying Magic Act (ironically preceding my knowledge of magic goes wrong)

Matt Thank you, to those of you who have stuck around to see the latter half of the production. We’ve had a few minor hiccups, but the show must go on, as I have to fulfil a contractual obligation to our sponsor: Wowzafresh cleaning products; scrub away your past with the all new ultra deluxe exfoliator, not safe for human use. Anyways, it seems my parents have still not arrived, though upon checking my email I’ve found that in response to the tickets I sent my mother she has sent back a link to a two year course in Accounting. Perhaps she is hoping I will one day take after my younger sister, a rather successful paralegal, in having a career she can tell her book club about and not receive condolences in return. Still, as a brief note the rabbit has been captured and safely returned to its cage and Sasha and I will be arranging a carpool after the performance to get rabies shots. I would highly encourage any of you who may have come into contact with it to do the same. Now, back to the magic!

(He is visibly startled by the smoke bomb this time, not managing to exit before it dissipates. Instead he just waits for Sasha to open the curtain.)

man i'm starting to think that you didn't find the goes wrong franchise... the goes wrong franchise found you

as a (fictional) scientific concept, the fixed point theory is a maxim of time travel that suggests that the progression of events is relatively immutable - summed up in the phrase anything that has happened will happen, and anything that will happen has happened. mainly, if a person goes back in time to do anything, whatever they do will ultimately contribute to the version of the "future" they know. vanessa speaks to this rather confusingly in the first chapter: "if she went back and time and killed her grandfather, she wouldn't cease to exist because her grandfather wasn't actually her grandfather, and this was how time was and he would always die like that. or something."

specific events are known as Fixed Points - moments in time that everything surrounds, like nails in a string, things that Cannot Be Changed, even as little bits and pieces shift and twist. most of what we know as history consists of fixed events. the shattering of the cornely drama society is also a fixed point.

this reminds us, as time travelers, that despite the freedom and adventure that comes with it, all our choices still have lasting effects - you can't go back and change it once it's happened. as a bonus, it means that the cpds didn't fuck anything up when they went to the seventies 😁

(also, it's just very important to the plot.)

thanks for the ask you're the best!!!

[isaacathom]

Just finished reading Master and Commander, which I overall enjoyed but found a bit difficult to read (O'Brian is clearly very knowledgeable about nautical matters, and unfortunately I am not, and so my mind glazes over). I mostly enjoyed being able to compare it with my memory of having read the Hornblower books, and how similar events are handled very differently by the narrative. which was cool!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A sexy, skinny defeat device for your HP ink cartridge

Animals keep evolving into crabs; it's a process called "carcinisation" and it's pretty weird. Crabs just turn out to be extremely evolutionarily fit for our current environment:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-animals-keep-evolving-into-crabs/

By the same token, all kinds of business keep evolving into something like a printer company. It turns out that in this enshittified, poorly regulated, rentier-friendly world, the parasitic, inkjet business model is extremely adaptive. Printerinisation is everywhere.

All that stuff you hate about your car? Trapping you into using their mechanics, spying on you, planned obsolescence? All lifted from the inkjet printer business model:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

That GE fridge that won't make ice or dispense water unless you spend $50 for a proprietary charcoal filter instead of using a $10 generic? Pure printerism:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/12/digital-feudalism/#filtergate

The software update to your Sonos speakers that makes them half as useful and takes away your right to play your stored music, forcing you to buy streaming music subscriptions? Straight out of the HP playbook:

https://www.wired.com/story/sonos-admits-its-recent-app-update-was-a-colossal-mistake/

But as printerinized as all these gadgets are, none can quite attain the level of high enshittification that the OG inkjet bastards attain on a daily basis. In the world championships of effortlessly authentic fuckery, no one can lay a glove on the sociopathic monsters of HP.

For example: when HP wanted to soften us all up for a new world of "subscription ink" (where you have to pre-pay every month for a certain number of pages' worth of printing, which your printer enforces by spying on you and ratting you out to HP over the internet), they offered a "lifetime subscription" plan. With this "lifetime" plan, you paid just once and your HP printer would print out 15 pages a month for so long as you owned your printer, with HP shipping you new ink every time you ran low.

Well, eventually, HP got bored of not making you pay rent on your own fucking printer, so they just turned that plan off. Yeah, it was a lifetime plan, but the "lifetime" in question was the lifetime of HP's patience for not fucking you over, and that patience has the longevity of a mayfly:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/06/horrible-products/#inkwars

It would take many pages to list all of HP's sins here. This is a company that ships printers with half-full ink cartridges and charges more than the printer cost to buy a replacement set. The company that won't let you print a black-and-white page if you're out of yellow ink. The company that won't let you scan or send a fax if you're out of any of your ink.

They make you "recalibrate" your printer or "clean your heads" by forcing you to print sheets of ink-dense paper. They also refuse to let you use your ink cartridges after they "expire."

HP raised the price of ink to over $10,000 per gallon, then went to war against third-party ink cartridge makers, cartridge remanufacturers, and cartridge refillers. They added "security chips" to their cartridges whose job was to watch the ink levels in your cartridge and, when they dip below a certain level (long before the cartridge is actually empty), declare the cartridge to be dry and permanently out of use.

Even if you refill that cartridge, it will still declare itself to be empty to your printer, which will therefore refuse to print.

Third party ink companies have options here. One thing they could do is reverse-engineer the security chip, and make compatible ones that say, "Actually, I'm full." The problem with this is that laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) potentially makes this into a felony punishable by a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine, for a first offense.

DMCA 1201 bans bypassing "an effective means of access control" to a copyrighted work. So if HP writes a copyrighted "I'm empty" program for its security chip and then adds some kind of access restriction to prevent you from dumping and reverse-engineering that program, you can end up a felon, thanks to the DMCA.

Another countermove is to harvest security chips out of dead cartridges that have been sent overseas as e-waste (one consequence of HP's $10,000/gallon ink racket is that it generates mountains of immortal, toxic e-waste that mostly ends up poisoning poor countries in the global south). These can be integrated into new cartridges, or remanufactured ones.

In practice, ink companies do all of this and more, and total normie HP printer owners go to extremely improbable lengths to find third party ink cartridges and figure out how to use them. It turns out that even people who find technology tinkering intimidating or confusing or dull can be motivated to learn and practice a lot of esoteric tech stuff as an alternative to paying $10,000/gallon for colored water.

HP has lots of countermoves for this. One truly unhinged piece of fuckery is to ask Customs and Border Patrol to block third-party ink cartridges with genuine HP security chips that have been pried loose from e-waste shipments. HP claims that these are "counterfeits" (because they were removed and re-used without permission), even though they came out of real HP cartridges, and CBP takes them at their word, seizing shipments.

Even sleazier: HP pushes out fake security updates to its printers. You get a message telling you there's an urgent security update, you click OK, and your printer shows you a downloading/installing progress bar and reboots itself. As far as you can tell, nothing has changed. But these aren't "security" updates, they're updates that block third-party ink, and HP has designed them not to kick in for several months. That way, HP owners who get tricked into installing this downgrade don't raise hell online and warn everyone else until they've installed it too, and it's too late:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

This is the infectious pathogen business model: one reason covid spread so quickly was that people were infectious before they developed symptoms. That meant that the virus could spread before the spreader knew they had it. By adding a long fuse to its logic bomb, HP greatly increases the spread of its malware.

But life finds a way. $10,000/gallon ink is an irresistible target for tinkerers, security researchers and competitors. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but the true parent of jaw-dropping ingenuity is callous, sadistic greed. That's why America's army of prisoners are the source of so many of the most beautiful and exciting forms of innovation seen today:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/09/king-rat/#mother-of-invention

Despite harsh legal penalties and the vast resources of HP, third-party ink continues to thrive, and every time HP figures out how to block one technique, three even cooler ones pop up.

Last week, Jay Summet published a video tearing down a third-party ink cartridge compatible with an HP 61XL:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ya184uaTE

The third-party cartridge has what appears to be a genuine HP security chip, but it is overlaid with a paper-thin, flexible, adhesive-backed circuit board that is skinny enough that the cartridge still fits in an HP printer.

This flexible circuit board has its own little microchip. Summet theorizes that it is designed to pass the "are you a real HP cartridge" challenge pass to the security chip, but to block the followup "are you empty or full?" message. When the printer issues that challenge, the "man in the middle" chip answers, "Oh, I'm definitely full."

In their writeup, Hackaday identifies the chip as "a single IC in a QFN package." This is just so clever and delightful:

https://hackaday.com/2024/09/28/man-in-the-middle-pcb-unlocks-hp-ink-cartridges/

Hackaday also notes that HP CEO Enrique J Lores recently threatened to brick any printer discovered to be using third-party ink:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/hp-ceo-blocking-third-party-ink-from-printers-fights-viruses/

As William Gibson famously quipped, "the future is here, it's just not evenly distributed." As our enshittification-rich environment drives more and more companies to evolve into rent-seeking enterprises through printerinisation, HP offers us a glimpse of the horrors of the late enshittocene.

It's just as Orwell prophesied: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a HP installing malware on your printer to force you to spend $10,000/gallon on ink – forever."

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

Image: Jay Summet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ya184uaTE