#that is a GREAT resource actually

[sharonisthebettercarter]

i need to see moar of billy struggling to grasp his powers, that some good shit<3

temp v threw him through a loop so real v?

OOOOOHHHH~<3<3<3!!

[pinyatapix]

how i imagine Minecraft Alex's personality to be like vs how i imagine Minecraft Steve's personality. duality of minecraft

[invinciblevalentine]

atp i would snort reeve tuesti fic like cocaine.

if anyone knows any fics that put reeve through the blender like “Son” by She_sees_in_the_dark or “Through Another’s Eyes” by CorsairOriginal—

i need to see that man under enough pressure to make a diamond crack. For my health.

[poetrysmackdown]

what makes a poem a poem? does it have to be written in a certain way? is this question a poem if i want it to be?

Fun question! This is just my personal sense as an avid reader and less-avid writer of poetry, but for me it’s useful to distinguish (roughly) between poetry as a genre and poetry as an attitude or philosophy through which language and the world can be understood. And of course these two go hand in hand. I see poetry the genre as essentially a type of literature where we as readers are signaled, somehow, to pay closer attention to language, to rhythm, to sound, to syntax, to images, and to meaning. That attentive posture is the “attitude” of broader poetic thinking, and while it’s most commonly applied to appreciate work that’s been written for that purpose, there’s nothing stopping us from applying that attentiveness elsewhere. Everywhere, even! That’s how you eventually end up writing poetry for yourself, after all. There’s a quote from Mary Ruefle floating around on here that a lot of folks have probably already seen, but it immediately comes to mind with this ask:

“And when you think about it, poets always want us to be moved by something, until in the end, you begin to suspect that a poet is someone who is moved by everything, who just stands in front of the world and weeps and laughs and laughs and weeps.”

Similarly, after adopting the attentive posture of poetics, there’s plenty of things that can feel or sound like a poem, even when they perhaps were not written with that purpose in mind. I’ve seen a couple of these “found poems” on here that are quite fun—this one, for example. The meaning and enjoyment you may derive from the language of a found poem isn’t any less real than that derived from a poem written for explicitly poetic purposes, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be called poetry.

That said, I do think that if you’re going to go out and start looking for poetry everywhere, it’s still important to have a foundation in the actual language work of it all. Now, this doesn’t mean it has to be “written in a certain way” at all! But it does mean that in order to cultivate the attentiveness that’s vital to poetry, one needs to understand what makes language tick, down at its most basic levels. It will make you better at reading poetry, better at writing it, and better at spotting it out in the wild.

Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook is an extraordinary resource to new writers and readers, and a great read for more experienced folks as well. Mary Oliver’s most popular poems are all to my knowledge in free verse, and yet you might be surprised to find her deep appreciation for metrical verse (patterns of stressed/unstressed syllables), as well as for the most minute devices of sound. In discussing the so-called poetry of the past, she writes,

“Acquaintance with the main body of English poetry is absolutely essential—it is the whole cake, while what has been written in the last hundred years or so, without meter, is no more than an icing. And, indeed, I do not really mean an acquaintanceship—I mean an engrossed and able affinity with metrical verse. To be without this felt sensitivity to a poem as a structure of lines and rhythmic energy and repetitive sound is to be forever less equipped, less deft than the poet who dreams of making a new thing can afford to be.”

In another section, after devoting lots of attention to the sounds at work in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, she writes,

“Everything transcends from the confines of its initial meaning; it is not only the transcendence in meaning but the sound of the transcendence that enables it to work. With the wrong sounds, it could not have happened.”

I hope all this helps to get across my opinion that what makes a poem a poem is not just about the author's intention, and not just about meaning (intended or attributed), but also about sound and rhythm and language and history, all coalescing into something that rises above the din of a language we would otherwise grow tired of while out in our day-to-day lives.

I'll always have more to say but I'm cutting myself off here! Thanks for the ask

[sunshinegremlin]

CALLING ALL PPL WHO STRUGGLE TO KEEP A CALENDAR!

I used to keep a bullet journal years ago but I completely fell off it once COVID began. Since then, I have had no calendar to keep my life together.

As someone with ADHD, a calendar would help me stay sane, but every time I tried to get back into it, no matter what I tried, it never stuck. Therefore, my life was a mess.

But while reading a Webtoon (called "30 Minutes With You" if you're interested, it's really wholesome) the main character does daily doodles in her pocket calendar, and then it clicked.

I've been doing daily little doodles in my pocket calendar and I've generally kept up for two months now! Overall, it's been really fun AND has kept me more put together!

Here is an example:

You can get a pocket calendar from Dollar Tree for $1.25 (if you're in the US and Canada)! I use blank office labels cut into the right size as the white squares I draw on just because it looks better.

This has also really helped my memory, because once stuff happens my brain forgets it immediately. It really makes me feel like my life is fuller and it's been easier to look back and see how far I've come!

Hope it helps! 💛

[rickybaby]

Daniel addressing the negative reaction to his team’s new name

[sadkachow]

THE (CATHOLIC) SCHOOL I (UNWILLINGLY) GO TO HAD AN ASSEMBLY ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH TODAY AND??? THEY SHOWED A VIDEO OF MARKIPLIER???

THE SPEAKER DOING THE PRESENTATION CLICKED TO THE SLIDE WITH THE VIDEO ON IT AND MY BRAIN JUST BUFFERED

SHE WAS LIKE "Have any of you ever heard of Markiplier before?" AND I WAS LIKE ???????????

[riacte]

so hey guys i finished dungeon meshi yesterday and i'm still thinking about it

[iamthepulta]

I think I'm slowly getting a picture of a narrative. This is tricky though. If I had uh- known what the fuck I was doing six months ago, I would've titled the presentation, "Alum mining, trade, and metallurgy from Bronze Age to Present" and called it a day.

The lax definition of alum's chemistry also makes it really hard to pin down. It ranges from hydrous to anhydrous (impure and pure) aluminum sulfate salt to aluminum clay. Civilizations until the Roman era just kind of pointed at white shit, called it alum, licked it to see if it was sour (not salt) and tossed it in the chemical vat.

There were also specific locales for the good shit. So instead of saying 'alunite', you'd say 'alum from the Hittites', or 'alum from Egypt'. One could be used for tanning, but the other was used for a fancy blue glaze (cobalt-clay). You could also produce alum from alunite, like on the isle of Lesbos (Sappho historical romance novel with alum when??)

But. Within all this. You have the Babylonians primarily using it as a tanning agent and wool-dyeing. The Egyptians used it as a glaze, for pottery, and medicinal/metallurgical uses. Apparently blue beads were making it all the way to China and Scandinavia at this time? The Romans took the metallurgical uses and cranked that up to 11. After the fall of Rome, the Arabs used alum for all the above and Germany was also using it metallurgically, but my research ends here right now.

In the present, alum is still used as a mordant (dyeing agent), but is more often used as a water treatment flocculant (filtering impurities). It's also more rigorously defined as either ammonium, potassium, or sodium hydrous aluminum sulfate. Whether we still mine it is unclear?? It doesn't seem to be the case: we mine aluminum, get aluminum oxide, which either goes to Iceland to be made into pure aluminum, or is sold separately and then added to Na2(SO4) to make alum.

It doesn't really pack the same punch I wanted it to with clothing though, because it's not really used for that. Chromium sulfate is now the primary mordant if you're doing chromium tanning, which is environmentally bad and kind of like nuking a hide to make it tan fast. I guess I can track down where the chromium is coming from, and how they make that.

This isn't even getting involved in plastic production, or rayon, or nylon, or the history of fast fashion and petroleum. I think the end line of this will have to be something vague and unspecific, like "disregarding the non-renewable resources that go into <I want to say artistic, but they're not artistic. The proper term is probably female-driven industries lol> fundamental human tools can lead us to overlook industries that have just as much impact - economically and socially - on geopolitics."

... I can already see the first question on that being, "what are some other non-renewable resources you think have been overlooked?" :') ahh, idk. I've been reading for 30hr. I'm going to go to sleep. I'll run away from the podium or smthg.

to do: I should reread Al-Razi with alum in mind... the translator is not Levey, so I have to chemically check all the names she gives minerals. But I distinctly remember alum coming up several times and tripping me up.

Also chromium sulfate manufacturing/mining; saving this chrome/ferric reference because I haven't seen them written altogether anywhere else.

[centaurianthropology]

Why Spenser Starke is a Fantastic Horror GM (and the Core Fantasy in Candela Obscura)

So, I have seen some rancid takes about Spenser Starke online. Less so on this webbed site, largely because people around here are not in a pissing contest to prove who’s the most cynical, superior, and dickish. But there have still been some mind-blowing ones, from “he says UM too much” (guess who else does that? Brennan, but I don’t see these people criticizing him), or “he describes scenes like shots in a movie and that’s BAD WRONG” (while you might not stylistically enjoy it, I for one adore seeing a new interpretation of how to narrate while GMing, and think he’s doing great).

But the two that rub me the wrong way most are that he “controls the narrative too tightly” and doesn’t allow the characters to meander too long before throwing them back into the narrative, and that he’s “too harsh” in that even mixed successes tend to net characters damage of some sort. I saw accusations of “GM vs Player” mentality, but everyone was clearly enjoying themselves and the experience.

And that, I think, highlights the fundamental disconnect between these complainers and what’s actually happening on the screen: they don’t understand the core experience.

They have likely never played horror TTRPGs. They may have never played TTRPGs period, and instead are armchair DMs based purely on how Matt and Brennan DM, not really understanding that there are a thousand other ways to DM. But if they have played TTRPGs, I would guess that they’ve exclusively played D&D or its ilk. And I say that because there’s a very clear belief here that empowerment and ‘winning the game’, as well as wandering about freely to create your own narrative at your own pace are all fundamental parts of the TTRPG experience as a whole. But they aren’t. They’re fundamental to D&D, yes, but this is not what players come to a game like Candela Obscura for.

Each TTRPG has a central fantasy playing out. In D&D it’s heroic empowerment. D&D is mechanically built around getting more and more power and eventually defeating the big bad. A good GM in D&D, like Matt Mercer, focuses on giving out challenges, but always helping their players strive to overcome and grow and become better. This self-actualization is at the heart of the experience.

Horror games are not about that at all. The closest to that fantasy is something like ‘Vampire the Masqerade’ or other World of Darkness games, which do feature power growth, but the core fantasy is actually about learning that you are a monster. And embracing power will lead to even greater monstrousness. The horror in games like this is both political and personal, and the system is mechanically built to accommodate that horror.

And if you watch LA by Night or NY by Night, you’ll actually see that Jason Carl employs a fairly similar narrative tightness to his storytelling as that of Spenser Starke. Because a huge part of horror is about establishing and maintaining a mood. To do that, a DM has to keep a tighter rein on pacing, cutting from scene to scene and moment to moment in a way that is more directed than in D&D, because that helps establish and maintain the vibe being created.

Candela Obscura plays, thematically, a lot like one of my favorite games to run: ‘Call of Cthulhu’. CoC is a game all about disempowerment. The power differential between the players and the monsters is vast. Combat is vicious, short, and deadly, and direct combat almost always ends badly for an investigator. There is an entire chapter devoted to running away for a reason.

Both CoC and Candela are built on danger, vulnerability, and a constant sense of tension. And Spenser is fantastic at all of these. He keeps his narrative laser focused, moving between moments rapid-fire to keep up that tension, and to introduce new dangers. He is a ‘vicious’ DM only in so much as even mixed successes hurt. But this also keeps the tension up by keeping the characters and players on the edges of their seats. They are almost never safe. They are almost never well. They are constantly juggling dwindling resources. They are underpowered, vulnerable, and afraid.

And that’s the core fantasy here: exploring fear in a safe way. Being stressed out in a way you can leave behind as soon as the scene is done. Constantly living on the edge, fighting the odds, and knowing that you likely won’t succeed or will only do so at great cost. And he is masterfully keeping that intensity running through each session.

He gives characters time to talk about themselves, time for scenes to play out, until he feels the tension begin to flag, and then he pushes on. He never lets the air go entirely out of the narrative sails. He has a great sense of when a character needs a moment (his use of the red PTSD lighting exemplifies how closely he’s paying attention to his players and adjusting the setting to fit their moods). He sometimes pushes on, gets pushback from a player who wants another beat, and is always happy to give that to them. He keeps the pace up, but is always very careful to make sure his players have what they need to still enjoy this particular experience.

All this is to say that Spenser is absolutely killing it at being an exemplary horror GM. His sense of pacing and tension, his ability to direct action while still always embracing player autonomy, and using the mechanics of the system to never allow them to feel entirely safe are all great tools in a horror GM’s toolkit.

Horror games are not for everyone. Certainly there are plenty of people who only ever want the hero fantasy of D&D, but I think it’s important to recognize what the goal of a game is, and what constitutes success within those parameters, rather than parameters that only exist in an audience member’s mind, because they don’t really get how horror games work.

[lacnunga]

In the wake of the IA situation, I've seen a lot more posts circulating about using your local library and I just. Sigh

[missafroditee]

when i tell you that frontal lobe coming in hot.

[fallout-lou-begas]

just realized that with the combination of the mods Lock Those Doors and Forced Entry, murderfreak can now very literally break into people's houses in the dead of night with a fire axe, and then, of course, axe murder and/or axe freak them. this is enrichment in murderfreak's enclosure

[silkhy-john]

TTGFHs as an allegory for colonisers and their actions—almost ALL their actions—as an allegory for colonisation in its many facets?

“More likely than you’d think” doesn’t BEGIN to cover it.

[townofcrosshollow]

So a little while ago at work I was cashing out a woman who was mostly communicating with intonation but no words, which was perfectly understandable, and she seemed to understand what I was saying but I did more gesturing like I usually do with customers who may be deaf/hoh. At some point she made a motion with her hand that looked like sign language to me, and I felt a little embarrassed because I keep meaning to learn ASL and just... haven't. So after she left I started trying to see if I could figure out what she signed at me.

Boy. I was not prepared.

The entire fucking search results were just articles titled things like "sign language for beginners!" showing me words like "UP" and "MILK." I got so desperate I was typing in search terms like "basic american sign language FOR ADULTS"

[aeolianblues]

do people like. Not realise that it is possible to be critical of two things at once or