#the paradigm shifts are the Point

[prayerith]

square enix i’m begging you to remaster the ffxiii series and make it playable on modern systems

you’ve remastered nearly every other mainline final fantasy game. please. please. please

[lesbianshadowheart]

the lack of fandom insanity about aloy hzd is crazy to me.....she was literally born of immaculate conception to be the saviour of a world that doesnt want her. she was the loneliest girl in the world the first and last of her kind. while gay

[captorations]

delighted by what RTD did with letting 14 keep his own tardis, and still use it, even as he's nominally retired. i've said this before but the idea that the ordinary and extraordinary cannot coexist is infuriating to me; i *hate* endings where an exclusively mundane life is seen as a grand reward, as if creativity and mischief and wonder are kid things to be left behind. that's just such a miserable outlook on life to have! you make peace- literally and figuratively- with the ordinary, but without looking for and delighting in the extraordinary, you deny yourself some of the best parts of life. i know i'll be fighting "and then the magic goes away" endings throughout my career as an editor and it's a relief to see that i won't be fighting alone

[treevore]

god god god god i'm so normal about my dnd character kre'gahn god i'm gonna start eating sheetrock GOD!!!!!!!!!!!

[weirwoodsugar]

a storm of swords

[genderqueerpond]

also I Do think we're getting season whatever-this-is backwards

[themyscirah]

What if I read a bunch of Aphra comics and got her into my top 20 on locg. What then

[aquarian-sunchild]

Had a friend in middle school who was Jehova's Witness (I believe), who was exempt from saying the pledge for religious reasons. She explained that her family believed in a spiritual pledge to God, not to a nation. That made sense to me.

[kaerinio]

also, throwback to when dany's flirting with daario, and she's just like 'soooo . . . you know how to use those blades or are those for show?' his response is legit: 'i like to kill and i like to fuck, and i'd tell you all the names of the men i've killed, but it would take an eternity.' and dany just giggles and kicks her feet and is like 'HE'S SO HOT.'

[littlestarprincess]

I'm working on building a paradigm/System (like in an isekai lol) using mind palace techniques, basically? I think it's my second attempt this week and it's going much better than the first.

The goal is effectively to create mental systems that facilitate skill development. I'm starting out with a social skills one, but ideally will also be able to develop isekai style Systems for other areas of my life (specifically house stuff and finances, but it'd be neat to develop them for other things too!)

Breakdown below:

To measure how effective it is, I will mostly be observing what kind of people I'm attracting into my life, since otherwise social things are a little abstract, but basically I'm visualizing a game screen for different aspects of social interaction, as follows:

External view: This is a mental mode to just quickly sum up what kinds of people I'm interacting with. The only information here is what kind of flower I associate their personality with (roses, lilies or daisies).

Flower Shop View (Counter): this view covers the flowers I grow (natural inclinations and communication style etc) and the flowers I am presenting people with.

Flower Shop View (Display): This is where I'm putting the kinds of people I want to attract (in the forms of flowers).

So with those three mental "screens", I'm populating them with the flowers that feel right -- or lacking intuitive guidance, that seem most appropriate -- as a sort of mental note. It's set up like an idle mobile game.

The primary system is a rock-paper-scissors setup between the three flowers types I'm working with (Rose beats Daisy beats Lily).

As I develop the paradigm, it will gain complexity (more types of flowers, utilizing the vases in the display case to represent different types of relationships, different areas of the counter being used for different areas of my life, etc) just like leveling up in a mobile game unlocks more features.

So far, I have had some interesting revelations about how I interact with people:

I tend to attract dramatic and bold types who are absolutely dismayed when I outshine them. This is because I have a nature that overpowers them but present myself as have a nature that is weaker than them. (Solution: aligning how I present myself with how I am.)

Flip side of this is that people I respect also tend to be disappointed by me for the exact same reason -- I present myself as being as "good" as them, but I am actually a bit colder and more reserved. (Same solution as above.)

I am attracting people with a personality type I don't like because I'm avoiding presenting the traits I associate with those people when those traits show up in myself. (Solution: expressing those parts of me instead of repressing them.)

"In game", I'm just moving flowers around as a mental note of where I'm putting energy and how to present that energy.

So when I resolve to present myself more inline with my true nature, it means since I mentally "grow" lilies, I should put lilies out on the counter instead of daisies (which I actually have less of anyway). And since I'm trying to balance out the rose energy in my life, I mentally split the roses between the counter and the display case.

In theory, this should help my subconscious express itself the way I want it to.

I'm also making notes of shadow work/self reflection related questions this inspires as I go.

[kuzann]

Been thinking about. When the Outsider unleashes Vlad's Inner Judge. Being found wanting by his past selves. Realizing he's turned out like his tormentors and is basically carrying on their "legacy", that they've "lived on" through him...

There's no judgment like self-judgment, after all.

[elkian]

So I never really questioned Kabru and Mithrun's dynamic given what's coming up, but that episode really emphasized some stuff to me. We know already that long-lived races, particularly elves, have a tendency to dismiss the other groups as being childlike. But the sheer infantilization that everyone, and specifically Kabru, have to deal with in that episode really hammers it home.

When Kabru mentions his adoption, pretty much all of the Canaries start immediately treating him like a toddler. And we know from flashbacks in the manga that he received pretty much the same treatment from his adopter - I wouldn't say he was quite treated like a favored pet, but it's much closer to that than any kind of healthy relationship dynamic.

So when Mithrun stands up, gets in his face, looks him eye-to-eye and says: "You're plotting something. I'm going to find out what.", that? That is the first time in this scene - maybe in his life - that an elf takes Kabru seriously. Mithrun has his own thing going on, but regardless of his reasoning, he addresses Kabru as a person and an adult. As someone with complex motivations who could potentially trip him up. I don't doubt Kabru has in the past used that infantilization to his advantage, but it's blatantly obvious that he doesn't enjoy it. Who would? So Mithrun starting their relationship by treating Kabru as a peer explains a lot about their dynamic down the line, in my opinion.

Kabru doesn't have to prove his humanity, his personhood, his adulthood to this man, one of a group infamous for how they treat younger species. It must feel like one hell of a paradigm shift.

EDIT: I've seen it pointed out on this post and others that Kabru also shows Mithrun understanding and decency and sees him in a way that others haven't been and I think that's a very important parallel and good point.

[orlesianhennin]

I really feel like so many people who hate Vivienne for being power hungry do not fully grasp and appreciate the desperation that Vivienne feels because she conceals it so well… as little content as she got, she honestly is expertly written and presented and it’s why it disappoints me so much when people hate her for surface level reasons… her writer deserves so much more appreciation.

I think it is subtle because she hides it and you really have to care about the character to seek out these threads and understand her motivations… she is in danger of total irrelevance, being cast aside by society (and history), and she is forced to ride the coattails of some upstart organization because all of the institutions she is invested in have either totally failed her or cast her aside.

She is clearly a prideful person who does not readily admit this… but her true talent is how clearly she can evaluate this and understand her own position. She suffers no delusions. She knows the Circle’s standing in society is diminished to nothing if it doesn’t house and account for the majority of mages, and she is left with just meek Chantry loyalists and sycophants who are lost without her guiding hand, as even otherwise pro-Circle mages with any sense have abandoned ship and left both rebels and loyalists at this point to see where the chips fall (Ellandra) - and the Chantry itself has been all but decimated in terms of military and political power. The one lifeline she has is the Imperial Court, and the fickle nobility have moved on from her - the mages are now a threat that she cannot control or offer any meaningful opposition to, and Celene’s favor has turned to Morrigan, and Vivienne does not know if she will ever have it again. She knows Bastien is dying, and that all that she has left at court will be those who hold kind feelings towards her such as his family, and that is a position she can never accept - being at the mercy of others.

We meet Vivienne, this impressive, powerful mage, who has made a life for herself by maneuvering brilliantly, all to improve her own standing, at a point where she is in danger of losing everything she has. And she doesn’t let on, at least not explicitly, but she joins the Inquisition out of desperation - it’s obvious she sees it as an opportunity, but the gravity of the situation for her isn’t clear from the start. She refuses to lay down and fade away. Vivienne would never had joined this fledgling upstart organization if she was in a better position at Court or there wasn’t a vacuum of power. She is very close to having nothing left, and starting over - and so she does. Before the rug can be pulled from under her, she gets out and sets off for herself again.

Vivienne, often accused of pride, privilege, and self importance, comes to the Inquisitor out of pure humility. She knows she is reduced. And her gamble ultimately pays off, and the Inquisition becomes the political juggernaut that it does, and she becomes more powerful and important than ever just by association. And I like to think, especially with an Inquisitor who respects and befriends her, that she plays no small part in shaping the organization.

I think this is also why, potentially, she plays it so cool at the Winter Palace. She doesn’t get involved… she doesn’t need to. Simply being present is a statement to the court, and she truly doesn’t care about who wins; it’s not just the Game, it’s personal, despite what she claims. That they cast her aside, and now they are interested again… not necessarily in her, but still, she sees the paradigm shifting again. She is now a part of the organization who gets to change Orlais, and favor with the Inquisition is quickly becoming just as important as favor with Celene.

The whole arc is a subtle one as she really doesn’t get much attention, but if you pay close attention, it shows how expertly Vivienne plays politics. We already know she came from nothing and maneuvered into a powerful position. But I think not everyone realizes she is nearly back to nothing when we first meet her… and through the course of the game’s events, by allying with the right people, she plays the game well enough to become an advisor to the most influential person in southern Thedas… and potentially even Divine. But her initial plea to the Inquisitor, for all the great lengths she goes to keep up the appearance of strength and invulnerability, comes from a place of utter desperation.

[thydungeongal]

There's this idea floating around the general TTRPG space that's kind of hard to put one's finger on which I think is best articulated as "the purpose of an RPG is to produce a conventionally shaped satisfying narrative," and in this context I mean RPG as not just the game as it exists in the book but the act of play itself.

And this isn't exactly a new thing: since time immemorial people have tried to force TTRPGs to produce traditional narratives for them, often to be disappointed. I also feel this was behind a lot of the discussion that emerged from the Forge and that informed the first "narrativist" RPGs (I'm only using the word here as a shorthand: I don't think the GNS taxonomy is very useful as more than a shibboleth): that at least for some TTRPGs the creation of a story was the primary goal (heck, some of them even called themselves Storytelling games), but since those games when played as written actually ended up resisting narrative convention they were on some level dysfunctional for that purpose.

There's some truth to this but also a lot of nuance: when you get down to the roots of the hobby, the purpose of a game of D&D wasn't the production of a narrative. It was to imagine a guy and put that guy in situations, as primarily a game that challenged the player. The production of a narrative was secondary and entirely emergent.

But in the eighties you basically get the first generation of players without the background from wargames, whose impressions of RPGs aren't colored by the assumption that "it's kind of like a wargame but you only control one guy." And you start getting lots of RPGs, some of which specifically try to model specific types of stories. But because the medium is still new the tools used to achieve those stories are sometimes inelegant (even though people see the potential for telling lots of stories using the medium, they are still largely letting their designs be informed by the "wargame where you only control one guy" types of game) and players and designers alike start to realize that these systems need a bit of help to nudge the games in the direction of a satisfying narrative. Games start having lots of advice not only from the point of view of the administrative point of view of refereeing a game, but also from the point of view of treating the GM as a storyteller whose purpose is to sometimes give the rules a bit of a nudge to make the story go a certain way. What you ultimately get is Vampire: the Masquerade, which while a paradigm shift for its time is still ultimately a D&D ass game that wants to be used for the sake of telling a conventional narrative, so you get a lot of explicit advice to ignore the systems when they don't produce a satisfying story.

Anyway, the point is that in some games the production of a satisfying narrative isn't a primary design goal even when the game itself tries to portray itself as such.

But what you also get is this idea that since the production of a satisfying narrative is seen as the goal of these games (even though it isn't necessarily so), if a game (as in the act of play) doesn't produce a satisfying narrative, then the game itself must be somehow dysfunctional.

A lot of people are willing to blame this on players: the GM isn't doing enough work, a good GM can tell a good story with any system, your players aren't engaging with the game properly, your players are bad if they don't see the point in telling a greater story. When the real culprit might actually be the game system itself, or rather a misalignment between the group's desired fiction and the type of fiction that the game produces. And when players end up misidentifying what is actually an issue their group has with the system as a player issue, you end up with unhappy players fighting against the type of narrative the game itself wants to tell.

I don't think an RPG is dysfunctional even if it doesn't produce a conventionally shaped, satisfying narrative, because while I do think the act of play inevitably ends up creating an emergent narrative, that emergent narrative conforming to conventions of storytelling isn't always the primary goal of play. Conversely, a game whose systems have been built to facilitate the production of a narrative that conforms to conventions of storytelling or emulates some genre well is also hella good. But regardless, there's a lot to be said for playing games the way the games themselves present themselves as.

Your traditional challenge-based dungeon game might not produce a conventionally satisfying narrative and that's okay and it's not your or any of your players' fault. The production of a conventionally satisfying narrative as an emergent function of play was never a design goal when that challenge-based dungeon game was being made.

[ot3]

to be clear im not saying the fact that data centers use a bunch of water is a non issue but i think that the ramp up of environmental demands made by the tech sector to provide more cutting edge technology for corporate use has been the standard for decades. and i think acting like AI is somehow anything other than a point on a graph of this trend is disingenuous. theres a lot of weird exceptionalism and fearmongering around AI use some of which i think is warranted - the exacerbation of disinformation being the primary one - and some i think is complete horseshit. such as the idea that ai image generation is somehow an affront to the creative spark of humanity or something. theres a lot of weird moral decay shit cropping up around AI that i jsut cant fuck with. it's a tool! its another tool! it does not represent a fundamental paradigm shift in humanity's relationship to making things