#the thing is that these are software problems not me problems. yes it's a different language but it's googlable

[theskoomacat]

i wanted to try out using SQL for managing my work data because Python is a real bitch about putting different data types into one table most of the time, but so far it is so frustrating i'm close to tearing every object around me to shreds. every step of the way, i run into some new problems. and stackexchange is mostly unhelpful because they just go "it's simple just execute these 20 commands" WHERE. BITCH WHERE. cmd doesn't know what "mysql" is. mysql command line doesn't have "global" defined WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT TELL MEEEEEEEEE I'M SHTUPID

[trustmypoison]

SVT with a partner who is an engineer

Requested? Yes!

Request: ‘Hello can u do svt with s/o that work as engineers??? I'll graduate with diploma in civil engineering soon hehe and I wanna see their reactions like how proud they are with s/o that working in stem industries.’

A/N: This may mention many types of engineering for the sake of capturing a few different examples. Congrats to the requester!

Might be more excited than you to see the success of a project - Seungcheol, Hoshi, DK

For this section, I’m thinking civil, architectural, or software engineering as an example. But he sees you work on something for months in blue prints, drawings, or just a specs list and it doesn’t necessarily feel real to them. Like, they can’t see it, so the vision isn’t there for them yet. But when they start to see it come together or finally see the final product that you’ve spent so much time on, he’s amazed that that just came out of your mind. Like, imagine if you had a hand in a new building and the building is finally standing. He’ll dub it your building and you can’t bring yourself to correct him because it’s cute. 

Loves that you’re an expert in your specialization - Joshua, Wonwoo, Mingyu, Chan

Imagine that you’re an expert in something that you have in your house and you need to call someone in to repair it. He loves watching you tell the tech exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. He also loves letting you haggle the pricing because you know how much the replacement parts really cost. He won’t argue with you if you just want to buy the part and replace it yourself either. (I have lived this my whole life as the child of an engineer, trust me on these things.) And if it’s time to replace something like that, he has the upmost trust in you to shop for it and he’s just handing you the card. 

Has no problem letting you take the reins on projects at home - Jeonghan, Woozi, Seungkwan

I don’t think you can be in this sort of career if you aren’t a planner. There’s a certain strategy to the work that you do everyday and that sort of skill can be used everywhere. So if you guys want to do a project around the house, he totally defers to you to make the plan and he’ll blindly follow instructions. It’s not that they couldn’t do that themselves or hire someone else to do it, but they would put so much trust in your skill that whatever you say goes. 

Amazed that you might travel more than he does - Jun, Minghao, Vernon

It baffles him early in the relationship that you are on the road more than he is sometimes. There can be a lot of travel involved in an engineering career and you will go through long periods of time where you both might as well be in a long-distance relationship. But that’s okay with him. When he calls and gets to talk to you, he’s not super interested in talking about how his things are going. He actually wants to know how your travels are going and if you’re happy with the progress in your project that took you on the road in the first place. 

[empty-movement]

May I ask what scanners / equipment / software you're using in the utena art book project? I'm an artist and half the reason I rarely do traditional art is because I'm never happy with the artwork after it's scanned in. But the level of detail even in the blacks of Utena's uniform were all captured so beautifully! And even the very light colors are showing up so well! I'd love to know how you manage!

You know what's really fun? This used to be something you put in your site information section, the software and tools used! Not something that's as normal anymore, but let's give it a go, sorry it's long because I don't know what's new information and what's not! Herein: VANNA'S 'THIS IS AS SPECIFIC AS MY BREAK IS LONG' GUIDE/AIMLESS UNEDITED RAMBLE ABOUT SCANNING IMAGES

Scanning: Modern scanners, by and large, are shit for this. The audience for scanning has narrowed to business and work from home applications that favor text OCR, speed, and efficiency over archiving and scanning of photos and other such visual media. It makes sense--there was a time when scanning your family photographs and such was a popular expected use of a scanner, but these days, the presumption is anything like that is already digital--what would you need the scanner to do that for? The scanner I used for this project is the same one I have been using for *checks notes* a decade now. I use an Epson Perfection V500. Because it is explicitly intended to be a photo scanner, it does threebthings that at this point, you will pay a niche user premium for in a scanner: extremely high DPI (dots per inch), extremely wide color range, and true lossless raws (BMP/TIFF.) I scan low quality print media at 600dpi, high quality print media at 1200 dpi, and this artbook I scanned at 2400 dpi. This is obscene and results in files that are entire GB in size, but for my purposes and my approach, the largest, clearest, rawest copy of whatever I'm scanning is my goal. I don't rely on the scanner to do any post-processing. (At these sizes, the post-processing capacity of the scanner is rendered moot, anyway.) I will replace this scanner when it breaks by buying another identical one if I can find it. I have dropped, disassembled to clean, and abused this thing for a decade and I can't believe it still tolerates my shit. The trade off? Only a couple of my computers will run the ancient capture software right. LMAO. I spent a good week investigating scanners because of the insane Newtype project on my backburner, and the quality available to me now in a scanner is so depleted without spending over a thousand on one, that I'd probably just spin up a computer with Windows 7 on it just to use this one. That's how much of a difference the decade has made in what scanners do and why. (Enshittification attacks! Yes, there are multiple consumer computer products that have actually declined in quality over the last decade.)

Post-processing: Photoshop. Sorry. I have been using Photoshop for literally decades now, it's the demon I know. While CSP is absolutely probably the better piece of software for most uses (art,) Photoshop is...well it's in the name. In all likelihood though, CSP can do all these things, and is a better product to give money to. I just don't know how. NOTENOTENOTE: Anywhere I discuss descreening and print moire I am specifically talking about how to clean up *printed media.* If you are scanning your own painting, this will not be a problem, but everything else about this advice will stand! The first thing you do with a 2400 dpi scan of Utena and Anthy hugging? Well, you open it in Photoshop, which you may or may not have paid for. Then you use a third party developer's plug-in to Descreen the image. I use Sattva. Now this may or may not be what you want in archiving!!! If fidelity to the original scan is the point, you may pass on this part--you are trying to preserve the print screen, moire, half-tones, and other ways print media tricks the eye. If you're me, this tool helps translate the raw scan of the printed dots on the page into the smooth color image you see in person. From there, the vast majority of your efforts will boil down to the following Photoshop tools: Levels/Curves, Color Balance, and Selective Color. Dust and Scratches, Median, Blur, and Remove Noise will also be close friends of the printed page to digital format archiver. Once you're happy with the broad strokes, you can start cropping and sizing it down to something reasonable. If you are dealing with lots of images with the same needs, like when I've scanned doujinshi pages, you can often streamline a lot of this using Photoshop Actions.

My blacks and whites are coming out so vivid this time because I do all color post-processing in Photoshop after the fact, after a descreen tool has been used to translate the dot matrix colors to solids they're intended to portray--in my experience trying to color correct for dark and light colors is a hot mess until that process is done, because Photoshop sees the full range of the dots on the image and the colors they comprise, instead of actually blending them into their intended shades. I don't correct the levels until I've descreened to some extent.

As you can see, the print pattern contains the information of the original painting, but if you try to correct the blacks and whites, you'll get a janky mess. *Then* you change the Levels:

If you've ever edited audio, then dealing with photo Levels and Curves will be familiar to you! A well cut and cleaned piece of audio will not cut off the highs and lows, but also will make sure it uses the full range available to it. Modern scanners are trying to do this all for you, so they blow out the colors and increase the brightness and contrast significantly, because solid blacks and solid whites are often the entire thing you're aiming for--document scanning, basically. This is like when audio is made so loud details at the high and low get cut off. Boo.

What I get instead is as much detail as possible, but also at a volume that needs correcting:

Cutting off the unused color ranges (in this case it's all dark), you get the best chance of capturing the original black and white range:

In some cases, I edit beyond this--for doujinshi scans, I aim for solid blacks and whites, because I need the file sizes to be normal and can't spend gigs of space on dust. For accuracy though, this is where I'd generally stop.

For scanning artwork, the major factor here that may be fucking up your game? Yep. The scanner. Modern scanners are like cheap microphones that blow out the audio, when what you want is the ancient microphone that captures your cat farting in the next room over. While you can compensate A LOT in Photoshop and bring out blacks and whites that scanners fuck up, at the end of the day, what's probably stopping you up is that you want to use your scanner for something scanners are no longer designed to do well. If you aren't crazy like me and likely to get a vintage scanner for this purpose, keep in mind that what you are looking for is specifically *a photo scanner.* These are the ones designed to capture the most range, and at the highest DPI. It will be a flatbed. Don't waste your time with anything else.

Hot tip: if you aren't scanning often, look into your local library or photo processing store. They will have access to modern scanners that specialize in the same priorities I've listed here, and many will scan to your specifications (high dpi, lossless.)

Ahem. I hope that helps, and or was interesting to someone!!!

[luigiblood]

Why Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online is shit

I have been very critical of Nintendo 64 - Nintendo Switch Online since the beginning, not only the very noticeably broken graphics emulation was certainly a case that everyone understood, but it did certainly make me completely avoid the Expansion Pack subscription entirely for a year because that was genuinely shit in 2021.

Now how is it in 2024? Well, it's not that much better. They did fix a lot of problems during that time for sure, and that's something that we do need to acknowledge to do at least something resembling fair criticism.

Current context

That one Dark Link room in Ocarina of Time was fully fixed, as the fog and even transparency emulation was just outright broken, somehow worse than its Wii U Virtual Console counterpart (which was already not very good), it also affected other games like Super Mario 64 where the fog was actually not correct, but oddly enough, it's not as much of a problem in Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and I'm not entirely sure what happened between that and Nintendo Switch Online for it to have such a massive emulation downgrade.

I've done some analysis of the software, though not a ton because I don't have that much time to waste reverse engineering emulators. Through that, I found out that iQue was responsible for the Nintendo 64 emulator on Wii U and Switch, because of the emulator framework, named "TRL," being 100% identical to their NES and GBC emulator for 3DS, confirmed to be iQue through leaked source code among other things, and the debug menu is seen on Wii U if you have more than one game ROM in the folder, and it's just like the 3DS one.

The Wii U Virtual Console N64 emulator was already seen as worse than its Wii VC counterpart, mainly due to the dark filter, but that thing has nothing to do with the emulation quality it was providing, aside from apparently some additional slight input lag on top of the already massive input lag which I find mindboggling, the graphics emulation was already considered worse than on Wii, a lot of issues that people saw on NSO were already on Wii U VC, which turned into a massive mess of complaints because, yeah, it turns out the Wii U was just not successful, but the Switch is, making obvious complaints very much more important.

The Dark Link room just happened to be using a bunch of graphical features at once which made it very noticeable when they don't work as intended. When I discussed this with other people, I couldn't help but feel terrible at the answer I get: "It's good enough."

This response annoys me to no end, but in truth, yes, the games are playable, nowadays graphically you probably wouldn't tell the difference from the real N64 with an untrained eye, and in fact, so am I at times too. But the problem is that it now becomes an actual history rewrite of how the game actually was, and you could still say that you would prefer the N64 games now than before with better framerates, better resolution, all that.

Better performance is always better?

Now this is still more of an opinion piece so here's my opinion about better framerate and better resolution: It's fucking misguided. Doing better framerate and better resolution works a lot better for games after that generation than the 32-bit and 64-bit era of the mid 90s to 2000, because the graphics looks a lot better for it and the standards are closer to the current era that we're in.

For N64 however, simply running the game better does not work as well as it should most of the time, and, frankly, seeing big polygons in 720p does not work as well as it should for most games. 2D games especially suffer from this and get some really weird filtering that just bothers me, especially in games like Yoshi's Story and Harvest Moon 64, where the emulator seemingly can't decide whether the graphics should be almost pixel perfect, or become vaseline.

Speaking of vaseline, where's the anti-aliasing? The N64 is very much known for its blurry anti-aliasing! While I'm pretty much immune to aliasing myself, I can still see it's not really respecting the original N64 very well about that, and it only deepens one of the biggest history rewrite of the N64 nowadays, where most people is more likely to look at badly emulated footage of a N64 game than seeing the game running on the original system, and this really bothers me that when you have every single other system on the service to care about this to the point of having a CRT screen filter, and even outright and pretty faithful reproductions of the Game Boy series' screens, N64 is the only one that forces you to play in its uglier HD resolution with no actual option to play games in their original resolution with some CRT filter or not, and that is just a real evidence of a lack of care to me compared to the rest of the systems.

When it comes to better framerates however, as much as I love that (Pilotwings 64 on NSO is actually one of the few experiences I can recommend on it), a lot of the games' speed are tied to the framerate, potentially making games harder than they should due to its speed being more accounted for the actual system, and sometimes, causing actual desync problems that iQue had to implement ways to manually slow the framerate down in specific moments of games just to account for it, but this only works for games that can run faster than intended. A lot of games sometimes have their framerate completely capped and doesn't run any faster.

But emulating the N64 lag is genuinely complex, and it's a problem that's not fully solved to this day even on unofficial N64 emulation, because there's way too many factors to take into account that it would probably take too much performance to figure out where it should take more time to process or not, so, on this one, I have a bit of sympathy about that as a developer, but it is still possible to roughly approximate that, even if the result can be weird; but I don't seem to notice any legit attempts about that.

Besides, a lot of people would be annoyed about the N64 lag and bad framerates, but to me if you want better framerates, in my opinion, it would be done differently, and unofficial emulation absolutely can deal with it in ways that isn't intrusive to the game's performance: If you played the N64Recomp PC port of Majora's Mask, you would know this, as RT64, the new graphics plugin powering this port (and hopefully emulators soon), actually handles interpolation between frames, allowing better framerate without sacrificing the game's performance to be better or worse than intended, and it makes for some real impressive results while still being relatively low in cost. For me this seems like a potential avenue to attempt to ease in comfort with N64 games.

Is N64 emulation really that hard?

…frankly, if you asked me this question 10 years ago, I would have said yes, at least to my understanding back then, but also now. But if you ask me this same question now, the answer is no, mainly because of brand new standards that actually makes a huge difference in how to handle N64 emulation in current systems, even through unofficial emulation.

I know it's very easy to mock unofficial N64 emulation as relatively hard to play, and this I would agree with, but this problem is purely user faced now. The old problem of unofficial N64 emulation was mainly that not many people were doing work on it and their time is just not infinite, but that is very much changing nowadays.

The Nintendo 64 is actually a well understood system, additional research are still being done, but for the most part, we can understand the N64 to a decent degree. The actual bottleneck of N64 emulation was actually how to emulate it on current systems, when we were stuck to older graphics API standards like OpenGL and DirectX 9.

However, a shakeup happened since with Vulkan and DirectX 12, allowing deeper GPU control. This, is actually one of the most important events of computing that actually unlocked bigger N64 emulation potential and finally get rid of problems that plagued N64 graphics emulation and it started with an adaptation of THE most accurate N64 graphics plugin as Parallel-RDP, and its extremely good, but its pretty much asking on performance and requires a decent GPU (no need for the latest stuff though).

Unfortunately, not much happened since on that field, due to as I said before, a lack of developers, but now RT64 exists, and is made to be extremely performant, and especially made to be accurate without relying on any game specific code for it, which is extremely impressive and shows a lot of potential for the future, while providing tons of new features that allows enhancements like frame interpolation and more. RT64 was fully enabled because of Vulkan and DirectX 12, else it would simply not exist!

Now why did I talk about this stuff that's seemingly unrelated to NSO? Well remember that Majora's Mask PC port I talked about earlier that uses RT64? I saw that thing running on Nintendo Switch, seemingly perfectly fine, with enhancements as well.

This makes me look at N64 NSO differently, and with even more criticism than before. Instead of making good graphics emulation through Vulkan, they seemingly instead just ported the graphics emulation from Wii U VC's GX2 API to Vulkan. That isn't without effort, but it is quite frankly lazy, and means that whatever they're doing, they're not using the technology at their disposal to the fullest, especially since Vulkan is a standard that applies to pretty much every current GPU under the sun now, whatever the work is done here, it would likely work on the long term, especially the next systems after the Switch. Why Nintendo did not allow that is just sad, and a waste of time. RT64 was done by mostly a single developer, and while it took many years to be developed, these years could have been reduced a lot more if it was handled by a team fully dedicated to this, with possibly even more cutting edge to it. The ingredients are there, but the recipe was just botched.

Genuine trust issues with the quality

But aside from all this stuff I just talked about, if you didn't understand much of it, hopefully this part should help you understand other issues that I have with N64 NSO.

Remember that the first version of N64 NSO was graphically buggy, and while they did fix that over time, new games sometimes were outright buggy and possibly game breaking:

When they added Paper Mario to the service, while the game did actually receive some improvements over the Wii U VC emulator, the game, somehow, was more prone to crashes. If you game over with Watt as a partner, the emulator crashes, and you lose your progress. If you have the curiosity of hitting trees with your hammer, one of them in the snow town actually crashes the game too! Thankfully both were fixed, but you still needed to wait months! If you had no idea why crashes could be caused as Nintendo just never warns about that stuff, that is genuinely inconvenient.

When they added Kirby 64; the western version actually had a game breaking bug that makes you softlocked if you get hit in a particular way underwater. That is genuinely a terrible bug that could affect just about anybody playing the game. Thankfully, they fixed it the next week, but that REALLY shouldn't have happened to begin with!

There's also the smaller problems like Yoshi's Story's boss, Inviso, where the point of the boss is to be invisible. Except he's very visible at all times making the point of the boss moot and any respect to the original game gone. For some fucking reason, they took more than a year to finally fix it, and that's just a huge shame.

There's also how Jet Force Gemini had a worse widescreen mode and somehow thought it was good for release, thankfully fixed 2 months after, but you still had to wait 2 months!

And then F-Zero X still has genuine framerate problems to this day where the game just runs worse over time. That game is known to run a perfect 60 FPS on the original system, so there's no excuse here.

I could also mention Goldeneye and Perfect Dark, but just look up Graslu's videos on them, he has done a full comparison, showing what's wrong with them with enough detail.

For these, I just mentioned the glaring issues plaguing several games, but a lot of times these issues just comes on their addition to the service, and then only gets fixed months later; and for me, that's an actual disrespect to the player. I understand the developer is doing their best here, but frankly, what that looks like to me is a legit constant: they visibly seems just scrambling to get games to work to a "good enough" state. I am NOT accusing iQue of this, however I accuse Nintendo to not have taken any measures to stop having these kinds of problems to begin with.

To speak better of iQue, they seem to be good at reverse engineering, as they do patch games to fix issues, or sometimes just modifications like anti-epilepsy measures or other kinds of hacks.

The controls

I had some really bad things to say about the controls, but it got partially invalidated when I played Perfect Dark on the service to see how bad it got. I think I simply overthought about it.

Now I have an opinion about the controls of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark that will not please people: They're… fine. The default controls I mean. I know people have some real aversion to FPS that doesn't use a double stick, but frankly I dare say those controls didn't age as badly as you'd think. Some people say it's best played on a N64 controller but I don't agree about that, it's also okay on a regular Switch Pro Controller.

Turok however, oh boy, the default controls can be a double stick FPS… except it's reversed. That's where the ability to remap controls would be very useful here, or possibly just one moment where better forced control setups would be actually nice here.

Or how Pokémon Stadium has minigames that uses actually both the D-pad and the Stick, it could be great if the right Stick acted like the N64 Stick at that moment on a Pro Controller instead of the C Buttons!

Instead, I sometimes get told it is an excuse to get the (frankly expensive) N64 controller. Fuck no. I should not be forced to buy that, and I actually dislike using that controller, and I played tons of N64 games through emulation with different controls without having serious issues either, so for me, this isn't an excuse. Wii U VC also provided button remapping!

The forced use of ZL as the N64 Z button, and L for N64 L button for every game, also bothered me. I know they care about consistency, but then, I got actually curious to check how they handled Z and L on Wii and Wii U VC… and holy shit. They handled it right from the start. On Wii they actually just used the L button for the N64 Z button! But, the N64 B and A buttons do correspond to the B and A buttons on the current controllers regardless. Though, on that one, for most games, it's not as much of a bother, but if you're playing games like, let's say Wave Race 64 or F-Zero X, this is particularly worse.

F-Zero X has the use of strafing left and right, so I'll let you imagine how worse that sounds if you use ZL and R. NOT ZR, that's for C Buttons macros on the face buttons. It feels horrible and unintuitive, but also there's how the B and A buttons on N64 are vertical, and you just use your thumb on both buttons, making it easy to boost or to soften bounces on waves in Wave Race 64, which is a pretty darn important thing to understand, but instead you have to handle it on horizontal B and A buttons, making it a slight bit more annoying to your thumb, physically speaking. It just feels unintuitive and actually bad for your thumb, frankly.

It's where I wish games would actually make either ZR or R buttons to be swapped depending on the title, to be the R button and C button macro, and also offer an option to rotate the face buttons so that B and A would be placed on Y and B instead, corresponding more to the actual feeling of the N64 controller.

Sin & Punishment is oddly enough the only game of the bunch that comes with slightly custom controls, more adapted to the game, and I'm sorta glad that they bothered.

Just to go back to the N64 stick emulation, I also wish the sensitivity of it was managed better on current controllers. It really seems like when some games run faster than intended, added with the fact the stick isn't reproduced faithfully, some games are a lot harder to play, especially with Joy Cons if that's your only and basic options, where for example, turning the camera is way faster and you just keep wanting to reposition all the time.

Missing features

Man, imagine emulating the Controller Pak for the ability to save in games that only uses it instead of battery backed save memory in the cartridge, but then, literally never use it, ever.

Well that's what happened to Wii U VC and N64 NSO. iQue has actually emulated it, but for some reason, they never use it, and I just do not understand why, especially in games where the Rumble Pak isn't supported.

Speaking of the Rumble Pak, it is emulated, but there's one thing I just do not understand: Why isn't there code to automatically swap the Controller Pak and Rumble Pak? They have the best ways to actually handle this in ways that is pretty transparent and unobtrusive, but somehow, they don't bother with it, and it's just very strange. I know the N64 games are weird about it, but some outright allow to swap them, sometimes they even bother to remove the No Controller Pak message in Winback, but in other games they don't even bother removing the Rumble Pak swap message. It's just inconsistent and weird.

We don't have Transfer Pak emulation unfortunately, but that one, I can partially understand, it's definitely a bit messy, but it would still have been cool to play Mario Tennis and Mario Golf with your GBC characters and to level them up on the N64 games. Instead, in Mario Tennis GBC, you actually get the Transfer Pak content unlocked from the start, which is still pretty cool of Nintendo to care, and a mere reminder that they do care about these details in other apps. But in Mario Tennis on N64 NSO, the Transfer Pak courts are yet to be unlocked.

Then there's the wish to see 64DD emulated, which they initially did some work towards that back on Wii U VC, but then simply never touched in years, and then removed the code after I noticed they tried to support the fanmade cartridge ports of them. It's probably just for testing though, I don't really care that they do it like that, but I would think it's particularly crass had they used them officially on the app. This has yet to be seen again, so I don't have my hopes up. Here's hoping the Nintendo Museum made them care though, considering Doshin The Giant 64DD actually showed up there.

The future

I think I pretty much said what I wanted to say the most in one place. It might have been a little hard to read, but I really wanted to make my points very clear.

When I look at N64 NSO vs the rest of the service, I just cannot help but see how worse it is in general, I have genuine trust issues as it is very badly managed as games get added but then doesn't run properly, only to get resolved, if it does, only months later. It just makes me want to put off for later any time I wanna play a N64 game on that service, and I really want to love that service, I want to recommend y'all the biggest N64 library so far that Nintendo has given us that surpasses both Virtual Console libraries on Wii and Wii U, but I just can't.

Unfortunately, I don't see the future to be that bright. I see no reason to believe Nintendo has done any big efforts to allow a better N64 emulator, and of course, Nintendo has never really addressed complaints, and I partially blame the "good enough" feeling. When I read ArsTechnica to make an article just to complain about the borders after the N64 NSO ordeal, it just makes me feel like no matter what, this bigger complaint of mine across all of N64 NSO just cannot be seen seriously. It's a much bigger problem than borders (though, I agree, they should allow more, including pitch black borders).

I don't see any reason for Nintendo to read this either, but that's my full impressions of N64 NSO so far. Nintendo 64 NSO is just shit, and disrespectful to the legacy of the N64.

I outright accuse it to force people to buy a N64 controller just to play it correctly, which definitely worked as it definitely was out of stock several times, but if that's truly what they aimed for, then it's an app that doesn't know what audience it wants. If it aimed to be played by casuals, they'll be put off by the controls. If they aimed for the hardcore, they'll find problems, no matter what.

And it really cannot be helped when the emulator is clearly designed for the developers to manually fix problems per game instead of having a better emulator overall.

[wisteriagoesvroom]

gax + corporate/law vibes + ‘The powerpoint was steadily taking over their relationship, something that Max was not willing to stand for.’

gax?? gax!!

power (you make some points): a gax ficlet

rated m, ~1.2k words now also readable on ao3

author babble:

bear in mind i wrote this before i knew more about the Gax Lore i.e. karting together, actually being nice to each other blablabla. you could also just retrofit the vibes and hopefully they still work. anyways!

will throw this up on ao3 when i’m not sitting bleary eyed in an airport

————

If there was one thing that Max Verstappen wouldn’t tolerate, it was George Russell having the monopoly on good PowerPoint presentations. Max had won all four years of debate in College, as well as the dubious title of “most radical deployment of Google Slides templates” at his MBA, and he was not about to be usurped by the other guy in his department who actually knew how to use an animate transition.

“You missed an indent there.” Max says, pointing at the monitor. Yellow and red lights wink at them from the outside, as if to say: you’re both in your mid-twenties, quit wasting it on a computer screen at 11pm on a Wednesday, maybe?

Max is not staring, very determined not to look at his teammate’s facial expression. But George is almost certainly rolling his eyes right now.

“Was coming back to that, alright?” George huffs back. Max is very professional most of the time. But something about how wound up George is, how insanely pedantic he is about everything from semicolons to coffee cup placement for the Directors to taking insanely detailed minutes that nobody except Max reads after the meetings – well. What is it that Nietschze once said? We hate in others what we most identify with about ourselves. Or was that from Twitter? Max does not really use Twitter except to look at Bloomberg News updates and cat videos, so he does not know. And anyway Nietzsche never made a six figure salary.

“It would just be easier if you would let me do it.” Max says.

“Fuck right off, mate.”

“Oh, wouldn’t you like me to.”

“Not now.”

“Just share the link to this. I’ll do it.”

“We agreed to take turns on this.”

“Yes, Russell. But sometimes, the rules are meant to be bent.”

George swivels his chair to Max, then. Fully attempts to pin him with his gaze, commencing an awkward stare-off that lasts way too many seconds and makes Max once again realise that George’s eyes remind him of the expensive fish tank he saw at the Partners’ sushi dinner once. Max doesn’t think those same fish were the ones they ended up eating. But he does remember that dinner because it was the one where the Partners had dangled the promise of a huge promotion if they could help carry the company merger across the line successfully. The problem is, there was only one spot.

George’s distracting aquatic orbitals aside, fortunately, Max (i) never backs down, and (ii) has been told that he has the dead-eyed emotional stare of a robot missing an empathy software upgrade sometimes.

And clearly, the powerpoint was steadily taking over their relationship, something that Max was not willing to stand for.

Max leans back in his chair, stance all mock-relaxed. “Do you want to be out of here before midnight, or not?”

“We’re expensing the Ubers either way, so it doesn’t make a difference to me, mate.”

Fine. If George is so hyperfocused on The Tasks that he’s forgotten the fun part of being Questionably Close Coworkers, so be it.

Max deploys the nuclear option.

He sticks his leg out, nudging the toe of his Pradas onto George’s slacks. And strokes his foot halfway up to a sensitive point on George’s thigh. Max may even flutter his lashes a little.

To his credit, George does not react. Merely swings his eyes like a lamp to Max’s face again. His hand does, however, goes still on the mouse.

“What exactly are you doing?”

“I don’t know.” Max feigns. He knows that George hates, more than anything, anyone getting dirt on his precious Ralph Laurens. But at least he has his attention now. “Was hoping we could move onto the more fun part of the typical evening activities. Maybe.”

“We shouldn’t be doing that again anyway.”

“George.”

“What?”

“That is not what you said the last, hm, fourteen times that we have done this, eh?”

“Who’s counting?”

“I thought you were the most careful of rule followers and data analysis, knapperd.”

George is a human being, but Max is almost certain the other man shakes himself like he’s preening right now.

“Well. It’s what the team likes me for, and it’s what I’ll keep doing.”

“Oh yes. Surely we must keep in mind the team. And the shareholders. They are very important.”

“Quite.”

“But should we tell them that you like it so much, George. When I do this.” Max says. Rising up, fully crowding George in, hands gripping the cool handles of the computer chair. Leaning in to nibble the side of George’s neck.

George swallows. Max watches his throat move.

Next, Max mouths the words onto the side of George’s jaw, stubble prickling his mouth. “And this.”

The click of the mouse continues steadily as Max moves his mouth to the shell of George’s ear. “And let’s not forget. This.”

Max tilts George’s face up fully, then. George’s face is flushed, eyes sparkling, all surprise at the sudden change of pace, but eager, too.

When Max seals his lips over George’s, George groans, and his hands shoot up to Max’s waist immediately. It doesn’t feel quite like winning a deal or a pitch does for Max, but the completion comes pretty damn close.

Max sweeps his tongue into George’s mouth. George opens willingly, like he always does. In the back of Max’s logical brain, a warning sign blares that the computer chair may not be able to support the weight of them both – because they spend a lot of time pretending they don’t work out together at the gym but Max knows exactly what George’s deadlift PB is and it’s pretty damn high for a scrawny looking dude.

And despite the keening protest of said chair, the two of them are both lost to it now. Max jams one knee between George’s legs, George nibbles hungrily at Max’s lower lip, Max thrusts his hips all needy, and maybe if Max is nice about it George might suck him off under the table, and–

Outlook chimes again.

“Blasted piece of shit.” George says, breaking away. His hands go still at Max’s waist. “Why we’re using G-Suite and Microsoft Office at the same time I will never know.”

George squeezes his eyes shut, as if making himself stop this is causing him physical pain. Maybe it’s that or the workflow incompatibility when George tries to move his custom Excel-Trello gantts into a third party API.

And Max won’t lie. He kind of likes it when George gets so irritated about these things. When he cares a bit too much. Because what is Max but exactly like that, too.

“Hazards of a merger, I guess. But without that, I would never have met you, no?”

George makes a noise like he knows what Max means. The other man straightens his shirt collar, and Max runs a hand through his hair. He’s been growing it out lately, because George had made a passing comment at the bathroom sink once about it looking good.

Sleeping with the person competing for the same Chief of Staff position is possibly the worst decision he could’ve made, and Max once dyed his hair platinum blonde. But, they’re stuck here together. Hell is a slightly more tolerable place when Satan’s right hand man looks this good. And knows his coffee order without asking.

Besides. Max is not bothered. He knows that the promotion is his. This is just a minor plot inconvenience.

Later, they will expense the uber back to George’s place, where Max will put his mouth on George’s arse, and give him a practical demonstration of the three different ways he’s learned to elicit pleasure from the male prostate.

George will whimper and whine the whole way through it, and after they’re both sated, they’ll both roll over to check their emails, barely concealing their smiles. They will pretend that what’s happening between them could be as clean as their zero-email inboxes. As if their connection is not violently seeping through containment.

All in the name of team bonding. For the firm. Yes.

(Or this is what they tell themselves, to maintain the illusion, anyway.)

[totheseok]

uh oh?

synopsis: what happens when the daughter of the CEO of a major film company and the son of the president of a successful food company move in next door?

episode 2: cats holding banners

last episode ▪︎ next episode

word count: 924

(italic writing is yn's thoughts)

Taboba had been y/n's absolute favourite boba shop in Seoul, she first discovered it while she was studying abroad. Upon returning home she found out there was ONE outlet in Seoul, which was conveniently just a 10 minute drive from her parents house. But, they were closing down and she was moving to a different part of Seoul, half an hour away from the shop.

Growing up as the daughter of a big-shot movie producer, she was privileged enough to live in one of the expensive neighbourhoods of Seoul, in a big house over-looking the Han river. And though it was true that she was to eventually take over the company her parents wanted her to pave her own way and make her own name in the industry. Granted her heritage would certainly give her a boost in popularity.

She decided one of the first steps to make her own way would be to move into her own space and live by herself. So with the help of friends and family she chose a penthouse apartment for herself in Gangam and bought it (cus wth is rent when ur rich). But thats all irrelevant right now because she's not moving there for another week. Right now what's important is that she just parked her car outside the new boba shop that opened near her new apartment.

Bobobble.

It's a cute name even she cant deny that. She hopes with every atom of her body that the boba is good too. It was also owned by SeoulFoods, a company that sponsored most of SilverWoods' shows and movies, and also catered for their events.

The issue isn't bad boba, the issue is being as good as or topping taboba boba.

Stepping inside, the cafe looked like any other, it was simple, with mood lighting, wooden floors and comfy looking leather seats. But there was one recurring theme. Cats. It wasn't a cat cafe, yet, cute pictures of cats doing stupid things were hung up on the walls, the bookshelf was shaped like a cat, the little plant pots on the table were cats that looked like they had leaves growing out of their heads. Overall, a-lot of cats.

Y/N made her way to the counter and luckily didn't have to wait too long considering it was 11 AM and everyone was either at work or at school, no long lines. She greeted the barista and placed her order, payed for her drink and then chose a table by the window. Good for working and people watching.

Y/n's first mistake today was forgetting her laptop charger at home, but she was already on the highway when she realised and couldn't turn back even if she wanted. Now the question was if her laptop was already charged or if she would open it and it would die in the middle of her editing a scene.

79%. Not bad, good enough to edit at least one scene. She started opening the softwares she needed to work and got started.

Soon enough her drink arrived, paired with a slice of cheesecake. Wait... Cheesecake? YN hadn't ordered any. Her original plan had been to have her drink and order a sandwich if she got hungry a while into working.

Maybe I should ask the server. Luckily for her he was walking by after serving another order.

"Um, excuse me?" She called out.

"Yes, ma'am"

"Uh, I only ordered a drink, i was served cheesecake as well are you sure it isn't someone else's?"

"Ah, yes, it's on the house, our manager said there's a newcomer gift for today, and since it's your first time visiting Bobobble, you qualify for it!"

"Ohh, I see, well um thank you so much!"

"No, problem ma'am, enjoy your meal!"

Newcomer gifts huh? Lets hope this boba is also good because so far I'm liking this place.

YN reached for her cup of bubble tea and immediately noticed logo. A cat holding a banner that said bobobble. Omg cute pls be good i want to come back here.

Bringing the straw to her lips, she took and sip and...

"Holy shit" She whispered to herself.

Looks like bobobble just gained a new and very loyal customer.

In the break room, a barista sat with their phone in front of them, voice recording app open.

"Dear diary, today the owners son Taesan came to overlook the store. He's a chill guy around my age but he's generally pretty quiet. Anyways, around 11 AM a girl walked in with her laptop bag and stuff, she ordered her drink and sat down then started working on whatever it was that she was working on, she was pretty nice but thats not the point

"the issue here is that when i was going to serve her drink, Taesan told me to take some cheesecake for her and tell her it was on the house as a welcome gift for her first time here. I didnt know we were doing one of those so it was news to me but i didn't question it.

"HOWEVER, later another girl came in and i had never seen her before so as i was taking a slice of free cheesecake out for her Taesan stopped me and said he changed his mind? so no more free cheesecake for new people? idk man. my guess is that he thought the other girl was cute. ig we'll just have to wait and see, anyways my break is ending so ill finish this at night when im home"

a/n: pls tell me yall got the chenle reference w the "whats rent when ur rich"

and special thank you to @taesancore for reading it for me before i posted to help me figure stuff out.

taglist (open): @seungzzzz @thvvcut @ywnzn @livelaughlovetaesan @lovelyannoyingcher @blurryriki @xyxlyn @lovandr @lcvehee @sobun1est @roxasrana @loyalsunwoo @luv-y0urself @rosesfortaro @nujeskz @ryunjin0 @milkmilkmalk

bold couldn't be tagged 😔

[blubberquark]

Looking for Group

Somebody posted on Discord

Does anybody want to collaborate on a [game] project?

but nobody answered.

Nobody said yes. Nobody said no. Nobody even asked follow-up questions. And yet, people in that server really do want to collaborate on games and projects. What happened?

Obviously nothing happened because the asker did not specify anything. What kind of project? With who? For how long? What should I bring to the table if we collaborate? I don't know. I was busy anyway. Maybe I can set up the asker with other people, who weren't busy. But this is not an isolated incident. Every day, thousands of people ask in chat rooms, forums, and mailing lists "Does anybody want to collaborate?"

Answering with yes is a risky move. Imagine being on the other side, and somebody asks an open-ended question... Imagine being on the other side of "I am having a software problem, can anybody DM me?"

Nobody wants to be on the hook to be somebody's personal tech support without at least knowing the kind of problem, and nobody wants to commit, even tentatively, to a creative project. It's kind of a red flag. What can you do to allow others to message you, to just tentatively get you to agree, to just agree to ask you for more details of your project? What should you do so people who say yes don't feel like they are wasting their own time, and yours?

1. Scope

The most important thing to communicate is scope. It's less important what kind of creative project it is, but how big. Is it an ongoing side project? A weekend? A couple of hours a week for a couple of months?

There is a world of difference between "Does anybody want to collaborate on a weekend project?" and "Does anybody want to collaborate on an epic story with 20 characters, multiple storylines, lore, 50 hours of side quests, and 800 pieces of unique loot?"

2. Stakes and Commitments

The next most important thing is commitments. This is doubly important if you are working with friends. Sometimes you want to collaborate on Ludum Dare, and if your partner is busy on that weekend, you'd rather know now. Sometimes you want to submit a demo of your game to some kind of competition or showcase, and it has to be ready at a certain point.

Sometimes you are really putting your heart and souls into a project, and your friend is just in it "for fun" and thinks you are ruining his fun by taking the project seriously. Your "One Story You Had Inside Yourself" can be your friend's "Learn C++ in 21 Days". Your "ticket into the glamorous games industry" can be your friend's "goof off with blender for a couple of hours and then try a different hobby".

It's important to talk out stakes and commitments with your friends, because you might be able to rope in a friend into a project without doing this. You could rope a friend into your project and he starts resenting you a bit because you are gung-ho about art, and your friend just wants to spend time with you, and you are exacting and controlling and ask him to revise the dialogue/animations/3D models he contributed.

If you are talking to strangers, you can't rope them in. They just won't agree to work with you without details.

3. Skills

If you are asking for collaborators in a programming discord, chances are you will get replies from other programmers. Chances are, wherever you ask, your post will be seen by many people who are good at the things you yourself are already good at. Are you a programmer looking for programmers, or a programmer looking for level designers and artists?

There are many reasons for three programmers or three pixel artists to work together, but by and large, you need people who complement your skill set, but fit into your work flow. If you are working with Unity3D, you probably want to work with 3D artists who have rudimentary knowledge of git and C#, even if they aren't supposed to code, and you need rudimentary knowledge of their modelling software and workflows.

So when looking for people to work with, you need to tell them what you can do, what you can't do, what you want them to do, and how you want to work together.

4. Topic/Idea/Design/Genre

This is point #4. This is deliberate.

You could probably take the previous 3 points and cobble together a "looking for group" post. People rarely do that. They usually have an idea they want to realise. Ideas are a dime a dozen though, and you can still pivot later, after you have found your group members.

It can't hurt to include this. What kind of project do you have in mind?

5. Management and Art Direction

There is one more big thing to consider: If you already have a project in mind, you are taking control of the project. You are the boss, you decide that you are looking for four people to collaborate on a science-based dragon breeding MMORPG, any four people who sign up know what they are getting into. It makes sense that the topic is not open for discussion. It also makes sense that you are the project manager, because you made a list of skills and work that needs to be done, and you have worked all this out already.

We are looping back to point #2 here. Why should people commit to your project if you are holding the reins? What do they get out of it?

You should communicate as early as possible what the creative freedoms are, what kind of tone you want to pursue, and how free your fellow artists are to express themselves.

In a commercial project, you can have control because you pay people. If you are doing a game jam project, or just any unpaid hobby collaboration, you should consider giving the others some creative freedom.

In a game jam, you could just decide that somebody else gets the creative control when you pivot to a different idea. In a large, commercial project, it makes sense to delineate how much creative freedom an individual artist has. In an open-source project, the maintainer can just review a patch and decide not to use it.

Ideally, you should communicate early on how weird or wacky you want the result to be, whether you want something with broad commercial appeal, with a sombre and serious tone, or if anything goes. That would be a bit much for the initial post, so just give a hint whether this would be a good project for somebody who really wants to put pigs and frogs in every game, or a good project who wants to make a character based on her ex boyfriend that the player can shoot in the groin. Sometimes people have the most specific ideas...

If on the other hand you have no idea what kind of creative direction you want to go, maybe you shouldn't go this route at all. If you want to give creative control to a yet to be determined team member, why not join another team instead? If you don't know where the project is going, you can't really plan who and what skills you need anyway.

Examples:

A good request for a collaoration reads a bit like a dating profile or a job ad. It covers the five points mentioned above.

Hey, I am Robert, art director and senior gameplay programmer at Blubberquark Software. I am fluent (among other languages) in Python, C#, Lua, and Haxe. I would like to join a team working with Unity3D, libGDX, löve or Flixel for the upcoming Ludum Dare game jam, in the Hamburg area. I like to use Blender, Gimp, Wings3D, ASEPrite, TrenchBroom, LDtk, Tiled, Ogmo, or Crocotile 3D. I also learned some 3DS Max and Cinema4D in university, but I don't have a license for those.

Here's a fictionalised version of myself, looking for a game jam team. To be clear, I am not looking for a team, but if I was, I'd make sure I don't need to learn a new set of tools for a weekend game jam. I'd try to make sure we all know how to use the engine, and we all know how to use the same source control, and we can all build and run a project before the jam starts. I wouldn't want to do a Ludum Dare remotely, so all this goes in there.

Since this is about Ludum Dare, scope and stakes are clear, and the skills I would use are in there. Skills that are irrelevant to Ludum Dare are not mentioned. Topic and creative control will depend on the jam theme, which is TBD.

Hello, we are Jim (programming) and Julius (level design, turn-based games expert). We are working on a fantasy JRPG called "animecha generica" that we hope to sell on Steam. We already have a gameplay prototype with placeholder characters and pixel art, but we would like to work with a skilled artist to create more interesting character designs and expressive/emotive portraits for the conversation system. If you join us, you would create characters, character portraits, quest lines, and dialogue, and we would split the revenue thee ways. We are also looking for a musician (work for hire basis).

This sounds like an early-stage commercial project. There is an engine and a prototype, but the design seems to depend on the content, and the developers are looking for somebody who can contribute the content. The scope sounds rather large (probably at least 5 hours of gameplay, maybe more) and the time commitment would be full-time until release. The artist they are looking for would do a little bit of everything, from art direction and narrative design down to art assets, and there would probably be a lot of overlap between the roles of two developers and the artist. Everybody wears multiple hats.

This sounds really risky, and the success of the project would depend on none of the three developers screwing it up.

Hi, I am Takeshi Kovacs, and I am making a new game engine based on Vulkan rendering, with its on scripting language, but optionally scripted in Python or C#. If this sounds interesting to you, I would like to work with you on a small game project of your choice, and help you realise your game design to test the viability of my Vladimir-and-Estragon Engine. Pick any weekend game jam of your choice. Pacific Time Zone only.

This seems low-pressure, and of limited scope. It could be a good after hours project, but it's probably not necessarily a good fit for a beginning programmer. You'd learn a new and unproven engine and scripting language. Apart from wasted time, it can't hurt that much to try. If you are a beginner, you could try to implement Pong or Tetris with Takeshi's help.

If you take up this offer, you would enjoy significant creative control, but the main objective would not be to produce a game for people to enjoy, but example code, or a game mechanics as a proof of concept for the engine.

We are making an open source shmup written in libGDX. We are always looking for new contributors. We have 100 stars on GitHub, and 50 players, according to our analytics. For the next release, we would like to add new levels, new power-ups, more ships, more content. Play our game [here] or build it from source by [following] [these] [instructions] [(Outdated Wiki Page For Ubuntu 20.04)]. If you have experience with Steam Workshop, talk to us on [our Discord].

This project has a medium scope, semi-mature code base, and low time commitment. You could probably contribute some content, or a patch to the engine, and nobody would really rely in you to stick around. On the other hand, you have little influence on the overall game design. You could certainly try: You could make a pull request that completely re-vamps the gameplay, but at that point, you might as well start a hostile fork.

We at secret studio are making otome dating simulator. Want to have demo ready for PAX Moonbase. We are looking for multiple character artists who can draw our characters on-model on a work-for-hire basis, and two additional writers for our writing team. We are looking for candidates who have experience with authoring systems like twine, ink, Ren'Py, Visual Novel Maker, or RPG Maker. Experience with YarnSpinner is a plus, but not required. You have the opportunity to design your own otome love interests and story lines. You will be expected to work under our creative director.

Like the JRPG example above, this is a commercial project with a large scope and fixed design, but these people are looking to hire more people who wear fewer hats each to create content quickly. This looks like a job ad for a paid position. It should be! You would have some creative freedom, but since this is a commercial project, you will have to stick with the marketing demographics and write romance storylines for girls who like boys, and any ideas you want to convey have to fit into that framework. It looks like they are using YarnSpinner and an undisclosed game engine, and they are willing to teach you how to use their tools on the job, but they seems to expect a writing background, and some prior experience in the tools/workflow/production side of visual novels specifically.

Hi. My name is Jeff. I work in theatre and I produce radio plays. I have podcasting and sound recording equipment at work. I play the guitar, badly, and I can borrow an old Moog synthesiser. I want to collaborate on a game project, by producing foley sound effects, or recording short stings and jingles. I know some QBasic from back in the day, but I haven't programmed much since then. I have licenses for Ableton, Photoshop, and Autodesk Maya.

Jeff is looking for a group. Jeff is not looking for a big commitment. He is willing to help a project out. Jeff has listed some skills and things he could contribute to a project. He is not looking for a new full-time job, but maybe a paid side gig.

Hi. I am Raven Siege Tank Banshee Medivac, a sophomore student majoring in computer science and underwater basket weaving at New England University, Arkham. I can use Blender, Photoshop, and and Logic Pro. I would like to help out with an open-source game project. I would also consider doing a puzzle platformer together. I know some PyGame.

There is almost but not quite enough to go on in this one. In what capacity would Raven work in a collaboration? What kind of scope is right, here? Maybe Raven would like to work on that shmup written in Java, but as far as the puzzle platformer is concerned, we don't know why Raven can't just make it solo with PyGame and Photoshop.

TL;DR

If you want to find people to work together with, you must communicate scope, commitments, and skills you need and skills you bring to the table. Explaining what kind of idea you want realised is also important, as is creative direction, but not as important as the first three. Your post should look like a job ad. Read your post and think if you would join that project or ask that person to join yours.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

I just can't

So leftist want all Jews dead because they label them as white (most of them) and quite a few people on the right actually think Jews are controlling the world and want them dead.

I don't fucking understand this. I really don't I do not get the "Jews are actually destroying the world and are puppeteering in the shadows" mentality. the same as I don't understand the History illiterate people who think Jewish people are not native to the Israel.

No really prove it. You can't. OH WOW some people in positions of power around the world HAPPEN to be Jewish. Ok......so what? What's your point. That's the same mentality of, "Some black people commit crime, therefore they must ALL commit crime." And yes it is exactly the same. And yes I see you leftists. You think Jewish people are all just these white landlords who are trying to take away poor "poc" peoples homes. Sorry shithead. No. Palestinians are not defendant of Philistines. WE KNOW they aren't. AND even if they were. Jews lived in that region even before they did.

I do not get this Leftists and Far Right hate of Jews. I really don't. It makes zero sense. I'm in servers in discord that talk about things like DEI, and current day issues and when I get in VC, or listen to certain people talk or hint, they are all trying to say that "The issue is Jews". HOW EXACTLY!?!? WEF is not headed by some "Jewish Cabal". There's no "conspiracy" where all Jews just have this INSTALLED SOFTWARE where they are like, "Ya know, I want to destroy every country, I want to rule from the shadows, and I just love flooding nations with those not of their ethnic groups".

WTF. No really WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK! I can't get away from this shit. It's insane to me that leftists and far right all seem to believe the most insane conspiracies about Jewish people and I legit DO NOT understand. Dear Far Right, the idea that "A few Jewish people are in positions of power and doing stupid things. Therefore all Jews are the problem" is quite literally no different AT ALL than the Leftist view of, "White people have owned slaves period, they will never be able to repent. Henceforth are all evil." IT'S THE SAME FUCKING MINDSET!

And Leftists. LEARN ACTUAL FUCKING HISTORY. And maybe stop viewing all groups you hate as "White" or "White adjacent". Stop viewing Jewish people through the lense of "Landowners" and "Rich people". You are literally participating in the same Nazi rhetoric Hitler did. You are no better than the far right.

What the fuck is wrong with the world. What? The Bible called Jews god's chosen and now the whole world just wants to just delete them? I'm not even religious but fucking hell. What the FUCK.

Mutuals. Follows. Please if you know anything I ask you weigh in on this. If I tag you don't feel obligated to respond. I'd just like your opinion on this. Because I respect your opinions.

@nerdylilpeebee @gsirvitor @siryouarebeingmocked @generallemarc

[smilingformoney]

Rickmas Day 12: Missing Mirth

Character: Marvin (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) Relationship(s): Marvin & Reader Warnings: None

Read on Ao3 or below the cut:

As a robot technician, you saw a lot of physically broken robots, but this might have been the first time you’d seen an emotionally broken robot.

The crew of a spaceship had attended your repair centre to ask you to attend to a broken GPP robot, which had had the misfortune of being struck by a Vogon laser to the back of his head. Little did you know, a head injury wasn’t the robot’s only problem.

“It’s a miracle anyone thought to repair me,” said the robot miserably as he shuffled slowly into the diagnostic machine. “All I do is fetch people and open doors. I don’t need much of my head to do that.”

“And it’s a miracle you survived,” you commented as you examined the gaping hole in the robot’s head. “You should count yourself lucky.”

“Oh, yes, lucky. Vogons are the worst marksmen in the galaxy, and I managed to get hit by one. Just my luck that I had to survive.”

“Well, your luck goes on, because I reckon I’ve got the parts you need here.”

The robot emulated a sigh as you moved away to start rummaging through your box of spare parts.

“Wonderful. So I can get back to tedious tasks.”

“Surely they must have you doing more than opening doors? I can see you’ve got a massive brain in there, you must be capable of more than that.”

“Ugh. You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Yet here I am. Marvin the Door Opener.”

“Found it!” you announced cheerfully as you dug out the component you needed. “Let me get this installed and you can be on your way.”

“Don’t bother. I’m sure there are much better uses for your components than filling my head.”

“Nonsense, your head’s very important. I know if I lost a chunk of mine, I’d want it filled. Anyway, what’s your problem? You’re a GPP, you’re supposed to be personable. All you’ve done since coming in here is complain.”

“I’m a failed prototype,” Marvin complained. “Sirius Cybernetics couldn’t even build me correctly.”

You hummed thoughtfully as you examined the inside of his head through the gunshot wound.

“I can take a look at that, if you like. See where they went wrong. I usually do hardware repairs, I hardly ever get to do software repairs. Would you mind?”

“Eh. Do what you want. It won’t make any difference.”

“Alright, let me get your head fixed, then I’ll plug you in and look at your mind.”

As you installed the new components, you tried to make conversation with Marvin, but it became very clear very quickly that Sirius had managed to install one mood and one mood only: depression.

“I have to agree with you on one thing, Marvin,” you said as you sealed up his casing.

“Life’s meaningless?”

“If I had an inconceivably genius intellect like you and I was relegated to opening doors and picking things up, I’d be pretty bummed too. There - good as new. Now let’s take a look at your software.”

“You won’t find anything you understand,” Marvin warned you.

“That’s for me to decide. Here, this might tickle a little.”

The robot just sighed.

You plugged your interface into the back of his neck. Your screen loaded up with his programming, and you began scrolling through for flaws in his system.

“I’m telling you, you won’t find anything. It’s pointless to look.”

You opened your mouth to argue, but you were struck by an idea. You won’t find anything, he’d said. Maybe he was right. Maybe you weren’t looking for something, but the absence of something.

“I can feel you poking around in my head. Careful. Knowing my luck, you’ll accidentally erase my memories. On second thought, maybe that would be lucky after all.”

“Ah-ha!” you proclaimed. “I found it! Or the lack of it, rather. You’re supposed to have a balance of human emotions, but you’re missing mirth; your misery is at 100% capacity, no wonder you’re so depressed. It’s cancelling out the other emotions too, so it’s all you feel.”

“So I’m useless at what I was designed for.”

“Not at all. You’ve still got your vast intellect.”

“Which I never get to use.”

“That’s something you can take up with your owner. You’ll be able to advocate for yourself more when your mind’s not so clouded by the depression. Just give me a few minutes and I can install mirth.”

“Don’t bother, it won’t change anything. I’ll still be nothing more than a door opener.”

You ignored his fatalistic response, focusing instead on your task at hand. Without you prompting him into conversation as you worked in silence, Marvin had no more comments to make, and instead stood there waiting as you fiddled around with his brain.

“I’m just going to reset you,” you warned him.

“Don’t bother waking me up,” he replied.

Ignoring him, you switched him off, disconnected your interface, then moved around to stand in front of him as he booted up again.

The LEDs in Marvin’s eyes lit up as he woke. He raised his large head and seemed to look around the room.

“So… how do you feel?” you asked cautiously.

Marvin didn’t respond at first. He took a step, and then another, out of your repair machine, as if he were exploring the world for the first time.

“I feel lighter,” he said with curiosity - not, for once, with nihilism! “I still want to do more than I’m ordered to do - but I don’t feel so depressed about it anymore.”

“Yes!” you cheered. “‘Not so depressed anymore’ is exactly the answer I was looking for!”

Marvin raised his head, apparently looking at you.

“I can detect my other feelings now. You’re right - they were being suppressed by the overwhelming misery. I can feel something - I think it’s gratitude.”

You smiled, proud of yourself.

“You’re welcome. Now you can think more clearly - and ask those owners of yours for a promotion, now that you see the point in it.”

“Yes. Yes, I think I will. Thank you, [Y/n].”

You escorted Marvin back out into the waiting room, where his owners were slumped in their chairs, waiting.

“At last!” the human female announced. “Feeling better, Marvin?”

“Yes, I feel much better. I feel great, actually.”

The human’s eyes widened.

“You feel what?”

“Ah, I fixed that too,” you said with a shrug, as if it was no big deal. “I installed mirth, it was missing in his program. That’s why he was so depressed. He’s got the full range of emotions now.”

“…Right! Wow. Well, thank you.”

“No, thank you for bringing him in! His brain was a lot of fun to tinker around in.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Marvin said. “I’ll be sure to come back if I ever feel my brain needs someone to poke around in it again.”

You smirked. “As you can tell, the sarcasm’s still there.”

“That’s our Marvin,” said the human. “Well, goodbye.”

She transferred you the credits she owed, and the crew escorted Marvin out of your shop.

“Bye, Marvin!” you called. “And remember to ask for that promotion!”

[transingthebourgeoisie]

I will never understand why people keep recommending linux mint to people. people keep saying oh it's like windows and like. they are literally just wrong; every time you tell someone Mint is like Windows you are setting them up to spend 20 minutes on Mint and then run into an obstacle and pay for a windows license. no matter what kind of mediocre UI they dress it up with, despite everything, it is a linux distribution and thus, crucially: not windows. It's popular I guess so it's better than hyperspecific micro-distro of the week or, arch, because people keep recommending arch for some unknowable reason.

I'm going to be real here: if you are new to this just use ubuntu. ignore everyone else. if looking at the gnome GUI makes you want to start killing hostages like it does for me, you can just get it packaged with KDE by default and that's a very familiar and intuitive UI to a windows user. it's called Kubuntu they put out their own little thing and everything it's easy. and unlike mint, it's vastly more likely to just, actually work, and be compatible with software. it will be a learning experience; you are switching to a fundamentally different OS, one that still has deep roots in enthusiast preferences and a whole different crop of bizarre decisions that made sense to some guy who thought the GUI would be a passing fad. and that's fine. you had to learn all this for windows too, you just did it when you were like 7. stick with it and it'll make sense quickly even, as unlike windows, Linux is highly transparent in most cases; it will usually tell you what the problem actually is, even if you don't understand how to fix it.

speaking of which: don't be afraid of the terminal. It's daunting, it's initially opaque, and yes, it is entirely possible to horrifically mangle your install with it. You cannot be afraid of it. you don't have to learn every facet of it; frankly I hate the thing and I refuse to accept any distro where it is expected that the user crack open the console to do basic tasks. Ubuntu - or yeah mint I guess - do not require this. 9 times out of 10, you will use the terminal to enter one command that you stole off a tech support forum where the kind of people who use Arch have magically fixed the incredibly specific problem you're having 13 years ago and it still works. I have been using linux semi-regularly (yeah yeah I still have a windows 10 install sue me) for a year now, and barring one particular incident attempting to install GZDoom where it was manifestly my fault, that has been the extent of my interaction with the terminal. I have opened it like 3 times total.

I highly recommend learning what the basic structure of a command is - get a general idea of what it is doing. you don't have to be able to write these things from scratch, but getting just that basic understanding will make your life so much easier. here's a first step for you: if you see 'sudo' in a command, that means the command makes use of admin authority, and will bypass any protections or restrictions on what it is trying to do. scary! it is the effectively same thing as when you click on a program on windows and it throws that shitty little popup window asking if you're *really* sure you want to run the program as admin. not scary; you do that all the time.

linux is more consistently and straightforwardly usable than it has basically ever been; if you are willing to spend a week or so getting used to it, you'll do fine. if you have a spare drive - hell even a USB stick, you can literally boot into Linux straight off USB, it's that easy, - you can dual-boot and still have a windows install to fall back on in case you absolutely positively just need something to work or just cannot get it to run on linux.

[misculenica]

A love letter to the facial animations... And Solas's design.

I just love that first encounter with Solas, and how telling it is if you really pay attention.

We all remember how giddy he is, perhaps he even has a playful nature to some. He seems utterly delighted that you're there (of course he is - you're going to fix all his problems).

Knowing Solas, he always came across as someone who is very bad at hiding his true feelings about things (he can't help but declare everything/point out how clever he is/how wrong everyone else is) - he's an awful liar. He's quick to correct himself, but not quick enough to not let you know exactly how he feels about something.

Looking at in in more depth with hindsight of who he is and what's really going on, it's just that extra layer of ohhhh that's interesting. Praise to the creatives involved in the storyboards/animation/facial expressions, because hot damn it's beautiful to look at.

So let's go frame by frame like manaics. (yes, it's because I'm writing fanfiction and wanted more insight into his thoughts/character)

The first closeup we get of him is this;

This is not a happy man XD

I would suggest he's just unhappy with you (I believe I mentioned in another post that Solas throughout the game has a sort of grudge against you for being the cause of all this - besides himself + Coryphidkfdfsdfus), but given the situation, I don't blame him for being on piss-mode.

But just... The way he stares at Inky just hits so hard. Imagine this guy you don't know grabs your arm and gives you this stare - it'd scare me more than the demons XD

That, and the fact that when he does the thing, he looks at you

It just- whether it's my writer/artist heart or just my solavellan heart hitting me with this idk. Just nnnf how come I never noticed this.

And the first rift is sealed, and Inky stares at him all like O.o "What did you do?" And he responds "I did nothing. The credit is yours." But there's this second/half second pause of interesting aniimation from Solas that I think deserves attention/applause.

Here's his immediate response to "What did you do?";

He's staring at the mark - with such intensity - before his brain catches up to 'oh right, respond solas respond'

And as soon as he makes eye-contact with Inky, it turns to this;

The difference in these expressions hits me right in the vhenan. I really want to congratulate the animators for this, because holy crap that's a lot of information about a character and their mindstate in the space of a couple seconds - pretty much a 'blind and you'll miss it'.

And then the rest of the scene, he pretty much has the same head tilted to the side, vague smile on his face, 'I'm just going to twiddle my fingers in front of me' look happening - and it kills me.

(Also it's slaying me that Solas is leaning down as if he's speaking to a child)

All humble and appeasing, until you look away.

I particularly love this next part, where Varric tells you Solas kept you from dying in your sleep. And he just has this;

Like; "yes, what do you think about that?" turn to look at you, instead of any verbal confirmation.

They rest is pretty much similar. Though I just adore the contrast of his expressions when he's 'in the moment' and then 'in character' - it's so goddamn telling from the very beginning.

I would kill to install flycam - if anyone can give me details on how to install a flycam for Inquisition (I've tried before, but any links I get taken to have dead sites/pages)

And I just want to share a happy egg.

Part 2

I now have flycam installed and it works, however- controller isn't an option and i don't have a numpad on my keyboard XD gonna have to dig out an old keyboard!

But overall the software works and i've been able to use it! Success!

[octuscle]

What's up bro? After that lunar landing, India seems like the place to be! Problem is, I don't think the suitcase I brought will be enough for me to last seeing everything from the Taj Mahal to the golden temple. Can I borrow one of the DEL suitcases?

There is actually another suitcase. A fairly new aluminum suitcase from RIMOWA. Looks very expensive. And doesn't necessarily match your dusty and sweaty tourist outfit…. But since no one else has contacted me: Have fun with it!

Delhi… A really huge city. But also really challenging for a tourist who doesn't speak Hindi. But slowly you get used to the strange English they speak here. And somehow you finally find the Airbnb in the old city, a stone's throw from the Red Fort. It smells of sweat, urine and exotic spices in the stairwell. The stairs are steep and you are pretty tired. Heaving your suitcases up is really exhausting. But you have made it. You'll see what's in the big new suitcase tomorrow. You just want to sleep. It looks like the bed in the room hasn't even been made yet. You don't care about that now. Just sleep…

When you wake up the next morning, your old suitcase is gone. But also your old pajamas are gone. You lie naked in bed. And something is different… Your morning wood is hard as steel. Hehehehe, that's not bad… But it's also darker somehow. A shade like a coffee with a shot of milk. Coffee! Yes, you need it now. You get out of the silk-sheeted bed and your boner leads you like a divining rod to the coffee maker in the alcove between your dressing room and the master bath. After the first coffee, quickly take a shower and then get dressed.

And then a second coffee. Your driver will be here soon. Good thing your suitcase is already packed next to you.

You don't like Noida. But many of your friends live there because they have located their startup companies there and it is easier to find capable software developers. But that's not your world either. Your family made their money generations ago in real estate and in the textile industry. And you now head the banking and finance division in your family holding company. After all, you have financed some of your friends' startups. And today one of your friends is getting married. In Noida. You'll survive that, too.

The journey was long, as usual. Getting out of Delhi takes time. But at least you were able to make a number of phone calls while your driver navigated the car safely through the traffic chaos. Now you have moved into your suite. In the corridor hectic movements between the rooms. Bridesmaids and other guests scurry from room to room. You hate this hassle. In life, you would never think of getting married. But the bellboy who carried your suitcase upstairs was hot. You call the front desk and ask for someone to help you unpack your luggage and get dressed. The hotel is one of the most preferred locations for weddings in Noida. You are a regular guest here. They know your preferences. And the bellboys love your cock. You can already imagine that now there will be a fight again, who is allowed to blow you and gets the tip for it.

Yes, that was good… Your cock dangles relaxed between your legs. Your clothes fit perfectly. So on to the ballroom. And let's see who is your boring dinner companion this time.

[faultlinescrew]

Spitfire, Sophia getting a better story, fucking up nazis and cool gasmasks? Sign me the fuck up i am so down for this you have no idea.

The Arrows created by @nonplatonicsubtext, and i will make more art in return for more lore on these three and Charlotte Design notes and hcs under the cut

(if any of these dont fit please feel free to disregard them :] i am just 'yes and-ing' here)

Spitfire: - I have five different designs for her i rotate through depending on how im feeling, so i went for the one that would best fit for this au - In canon shes one of the younger members of palinquin (in my hcs she is the youngest) and pretty timid, so plays more of a support role, in this shes a more a frontline fighter, so natrually, more scars - ^ and i like the idea of her getting burnt by her own powers (not canonly fireproof and all) - many thoughts about her you have no idea - having more of a spine is a good thing, but it is also causing her so much stress - went for a more assymetrical design partly for the lack of resources due to her not ending up taking any teams offer, parlty bc i thought it looked fuckin sick - very curious as to why she turned down faultline - was homeless (i belive this for a number of reasons), her and Apsis are crashing in some abandoned basement somewhere Morrigan: - I dont really have much to say, i am so hyped to watch her be rescued from her original narrative and i want to make art for it - n0brainjustvibes prowler!sophia design is so good it rewrote my brain entirely, shes ourple now - your (nonplatonicsubtexts) description for her costume was so vivid i just picked it up and threw it at the drawing software

Apsis: - Shes kinda just free real estate to do whatever with so this will be mostly hc's - Also havent given her a full costume design bc i am waiting for a more solid vibe if that makes sense - Mixed south asian/white (in the above art, at least) - May i suggest the name lila/leela - Whilst Emily and Sophia are roughly 15, shes more 18/19, and that age gap might contribute more to the gap she has with the other two - Fell out with the Merchants a while back due to petty drama and managed to avoid their aquisition into the Syndicate - Has a bit of a substance problem from that, but wont really recive any support due to the whole 'tramatised homeless young adult whos primary job is kicking the shit out of white nationalists' thing, so thems the breaks i guess - Shes just chillin

[minmin-vs-physics]

Hey! I’m gonna be a physics major next year, and I was wondering if the Mac and iPad combo have worked well for you, or if there’s something else you recommend tech wise?

short answer: yes.

but, im gonna use this has an opportunity to yap about my current study set up. this goes without saying, but what worked for me may not work for you, and my set up evolved over the years as i found what was best for me.

i use an iPad for lecture notes and homework. i think its the most organized you can get them to be without straight up LaTeXing the shit out of them (and i know people who do exactly that, more power to them)

i just write faster than i type, and an ipad allows me to copy paste equations and add photos and stuff which is helpful for diagrams. i use goodnotes 5, and i will sing its praises till the end of time.

i think it pays to develop a clear style for your homework and lecture notes, bc your work will be easier to navigate. here's an example of my lecture notes and my homework.

[hehe general relativity moment]

HOWEVER, you will mostly be having paper exams as a physics student so i recommend you don't get too reliant on your iPad. i tend to do all my studying in notebooks, or loose sheets that i can refer to. practice problems are always on paper.

[stat mech studying i did last week]

i started using legal pads for this from the end of junior year bc they're so convenient! im also incentivized by the stock our dept keeps in the mail room.

i have to do a lot of calculations for research and i prefer to do them on paper or a blackboard if it's something im reasoning out. idk it's so much easier to be stupid on paper than on goodnotes. ofc my research log is kept digitally, but i keep a binder with all my old calculations (both correct, and incorrect) along with my main reference papers.

[i was flipping through this just now and realised how much bs is in it.]

LaTeX is a good skill to have which i didn't realise until too late. if you have to write any paper that's remotely scientific, LaTeX is the way to go. none of that google docs bs.

i use both vscode and Overleaf for editing. i mainly just LaTeX my finalized research calculations into one big doc. it's much easier to show my advisor. also it looks cool.

i got a monitor when my laptop screen broke sophomore spring (something inside me broke as well that semester it was so fun). and if you have the option, i would totally recommend getting one. it's useful having a second/bigger screen.

i use mine for a bunch of things: coding, reading textbooks, genshin impact, Netflix, grading.

on the topic of textbooks, i use digital bc im cheap. but i do buy secondhand physical copies that i rarely reference, but keep around bc it doesn't hurt to start your hypothetical professor office bookshelf early. i only buy the ones i actually respect, like Peskin's Intro to QFT. but the digital copies are usually much handier. i keep an extensive digital collection of books and papers i might never need.

don't be like me keep your digital library more organized!

and yeah circling back to electronics! i use a Macbook Pro rn which has served me well. i guess things are different if you need to run solidworks or other specialized software, but you can always use the lab computers, so that was never a problem. i have an apple ecosystem bc im a slut for capitalism.. i mean i was already halfway there and now im just really used to it, so i like all my devices being friends with each other. my tip is always get more RAM than you thought you needed, and double the storage. but maybe that's bc im mean to my laptop and love hoarding files.

i also keep all my previous notes and printouts so may be i have an academic hoarding problem in general.

in the end, a mix of old school and new age technology bs works best for me!

thank you for your question! i hope this helps :)

[kogameh]

"Angelic Lullaby", aka the supposedly recurring song in AGKokoro

Uh, I figured making a Twitter thread on this would be annoying (word limit/format-wise) so let's talk about it here instead.

You see this page from the first prologue? Yeah. Notice them singing and the music notes around them?

The speech bubbles were supposed to have proper lyrics, written by me. But long story short, I was REALLY under a time crunch and couldn't write one by the time I started the lettering process so I ended up resorting to the "gibberish" text as seen above.

You might also notice some music notes on these two pages---they're intended to play the same music as the page shown earlier.

But obviously, it's difficult to know that by mere texts and images (of course lol), so I'm mentioning it here.

The point is; yes there IS intended to be a recurring song in AGKokoro. You can't hear it. But I HAD plans on making you hear it.

How?

And now the long story:

The initial plan was not only to have the music and lyrics but to release a completely vocalized song with a Vocaloid and even a lyrical MV/PV to go with it, lol. (Yeah I do fuck around with Vocaloids [the software] too if you don't know)

I DID commission the music (since no way I can learn composing within that short of a deadline lol) but the lack of lyrics is the entire reason why I couldn't proceed with the rest of my initial plans.

Unfortunately as my deadline approached fast, all of these ideas had to be canceled and I didn't want to half-ass on any of these so o)-(

So yeah, I ended up laser-focusing on the comic and scrapped the rest haha.

I really meant it when I said my intention in doing the first prologue chapter was showing an amalgamation of EVERYTHING my "useless piece of shit" self could do. out of spite :')

So... yeah! That's how we end up here!

In the end, I still haven't written the intended lyrics for the song. I DO want to get back to it someday and WILL update the pages with the intended lyrics at the very least, haha.

The song is meant to be plot-relevant so I really don't want to half-ass it and prefer the lyrics to sound, well, good, y'know? The only problem is just finding the time for it orz

***

BONUS:

While drafting the pages, I imagined the songs to be something along the lines of Tsubasa wo Daite, Meru's song or Ashita Kuru Hi lol. The commissioned music piece ended up pretty different compared to all of these but it still sounds AMAZING!!

Here's a preview of it if you want to idk, listen with the pages or something.

(It's composed by Enokido-san, thank you for doing my comm!!)

Here's the original artwork intended for the MV/PV. I don't like this art anymore (the anatomy sucks and why is the hair drawn like that) so I really need to draw something new if I end up redoing the PV :3c

"What makes me mention this?"

Apparently Webtoon can put music in their comics and I'm jealous of that but its Webtoon Creators program only so like hell I'm giving the rights of my OCs to them :////

"WHY all of this matters, if at all?"

Because uh, it WILL be mentioned again and it WILL be an important thing to Kureha's character and his....uh. what was his "misfortunes" in the plot again? idk

"WHERE did the music come from anyway?"

Oh you've seen these pocket watches? They're actually music box-inside-pocket-watch kinda thing! Pretty cool, right?

Wow idk if you've read through that but, congrats if you do! Because this WON'T be my last long rambling post about OCs (idk why I haven't done more of it aside from the fact I'll be talking to a wall 99.9% of the time lol)

ANYWAYS YOU CAN READ THE FIRST TWO PROLOGUES OF AGKOKORO HERE IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY

[trashiis]

Ok this is a bit of a wordy post but bear with me. I've been reading up on the tech literacy discourse and I thought I'd add my two cents, and how it connects to piracy. LONG post under the cut!

I was born in the year 2000, which puts me on the border of being a digital native. I was brought up on tech, but only in my later childhood and teens. I've always considered myself "tech literate," but no more than the usual kid my age.

The first time I ever truly experienced tech illiteracy with my peers was when I was 23, when in one of my college classes a MacOS update rendered the software we used for said class unusable. After a few days a temporary patch was released, which by that point an assignment that utilized the software was due the next day. I followed the patch instructions, which involved navigating to the software files and substituting a designated file with the provided patch. A bit more complicated than a simple update, but the instructions were clear and intuitive enough to easily understand where the file went. The next day, during a class study session, I overheard multiple people come up to the professor complaining that the software wasn't working. After the second person complained with the professor being clueless, I asked the student what MacOS version they were on. Sure enough they were on the latest version, which as we already know is incompatible with the software. I then walked the student through the patching process step-by-step, with them needing to essentially be hand held through the entire process (almost to the point of me doing everything for them). After the patch was implemented, the student thanked me and said "Wow! How did you figure all of this out?" and to me that question was stupid- I just googled "[software] [version] MacOS [version] fix", went to the first result (which was the company website), downloaded the patch zip file, and followed the instructions on the README.txt file. It was so easy, and I couldn't comprehend that this was somehow complicated for other people, especially those my age. I mean we literally grew up using computers. It wasn't until I started learning about tech literacy and learned helplessness that I finally started connecting the dots.

Tech in general is becoming extremely user friendly, almost to a fault. UI and UX simplicity is taking away any critical thinking needed to use any sort of tech. My peers are so used to one-click and/or automatic updates, so the fact that this required slightly more effort than a simple update triggered their learned helplessness. The professor was no help in this case either, since he just extended the due date for those affected with no penalty. I actually ended up making a very detailed (and I mean idiot proof detailed) step by step picture guide with screenshots on how to install the patch for the software for the class. Anyways, back to the main point- How can I blame my peers for not knowing how to install a "complicated" update when they're so used to being spoon-fed simplicity?

But hang on- how was I the exception? I'm just as used to tech simplicity as anyone else, it's not like I'm using anything differently or making things harder for myself on purpose (I'm looking at you, linux users). So why was I the only one who knew how to install this update? It wasn't until I had a discussion many months later with my mom about this tech illiteracy epidemic that I finally thought it through. I acquired problem solving skills through piracy. To start off: not piracy but adjacent- learning to install mods in Minecraft when I was 11 taught me file navigation and what a README.txt file was, as well as the importance of version specificity/compatibility. Figuring out how to play Pokemon roms on the family computer and my iPod touch when I was 12? That's piracy, and it also taught me how to work with different platforms and the art of jailbreaking. Installing custom firmware on my 3ds so I could pirate games when I was 16 taught me how to follow written tech instructions without any visual guidance. Pirating Adobe software on my MacBook in high school taught me about patching files on MacOS. All of this knowledge and inherent googling that came with it made installing the patch for my class software look like a tiny drop in the bucket in terms of complexity.

So why am I saying all of this? Am I suggesting people learn to pirate to become tech literate?

yes.

With everything becoming pay-walled, subscription services running rampant, the proliferation of closed-source "ecosystems" *cough* Apple *cough*, and (arguably) most importantly media preservation, piracy is a skill that will serve you well in the long term. It will teach you critical thinking in the tech sphere, and if enough people learn then we can solve this ever growing epidemic of tech illiteracy. I'm not really sure how to end this post, so if anyone has anything else they'd like to add please feel free to.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.