#this game because i dont understand a single forum post about it

[falmerbrook]

ok sorry one more observation: I think the other major thing keeping me from enjoying it as much as I could is that it really does feel like I'm 10 years late to the party.

I keep writing posts trying to pin down what my problems are with e/so, but I think it really boils down to the fact that I don't like mmos but I feel an autistic obligation to play this one specifically

[permanentclawgrip]

okay this was originally part of my roommate rant post but imma do it separately because its more of a critique of a mindset:

I do not understand rapid completionist collecting culture

i know what youre saying, "eve, what the fuck are you talking about that makes no sense" let me explain

theres probably a proper term for it but I've noticed a worrying trend specifically in online spaces recently of rapid completionist collecting culture. basically a subculture of wider collectors which focuses on the attainment of a "complete collection" as fast as possible and often with a disregard for the actual content of what they are collecting. i have seen posts about this in comic collecting forums. ive seen similar kinds of posts on video game forums. my experience with it has been through my roommate though, who i will kind of vaguepost about (nothing new for this blog tho).

My roommate, who we'll call Adam (not his real name) for the sake of brevity, has a real strange relationship with these cultures. I first noticed it soon after i moved in with him, when he decided to watch every publicly available tv show and movie that marvel has made,,, ever,,, including every ,,, single ,,, saturday ,,, morning ,,, cartoon. this small feat took months. all catalogued in a nice tidy spreadsheet noting the runtime of them, the episode count of the shows, which storylines were adapted (iirc), and his overall rating (again iirc). this was not a months long project because oh he only watched an episode or two a day, no not at all. i would leave for work with some x-men cartoon playing in our living room and come home to fantastic 4 playing instead. every day. hours upon hours. it was not a simple, "oh one day ill watch them all eventually". it was a dedicated marathon of back to back to back marvel. it honestly completely burnt me out on all things superhero just being in proximity to it.

so what is there to take from this? "let people like stuff!" "its just a show why are you so mad?" well its hard to put my finger on it to be honest without sounding pretentious or hyperbolic. ill try my best...

in just a second...

first lets get pretentious!

i personally find this style of engaging with content to be very shallow. ive always kind of had a bone to pick with background watching, having a show on while doing some other task, but this is different. while background watching is annoying imo, most of the time people are doing so with shows that are kind of built for that (think sitcoms or light dramas) where you can kind of tune in and tune out on a whim and the point is more on the other activity that the show is the background stimulation for (i.e. homework, sewing, cooking, hanging with friends, etc.). in short, when background watching, the point is not to really watch the show. so that should be the polar opposite to what my friend was doing, right? nope! all these stats and all this time, just to usually be playing destiny or scrolling through DiscussingFilms' twitter posts for most of it. this is a recipe for not really getting anything from these shows.

secondly, the binge model is kind of horrible for story engagement or thematic understanding. there are very few stories in long form media which adapt well to binging. it has been discussed before, so im not going to re-litigate those arguments here, but suffice to say that binging is bad actually. pair that with these shows mostly being background fodder and it just strikes me as profoundly pointless.

Maybe I just have different wants from my media than others, but i usually like my media to have a point beyond just "it looks cool" or "it belongs to an ip i like". spin offs dont really excite me unless theres a reason for it to exist beyond just "hey look at this cool side character! guess what? theyre a main character now!" yes a lot of good stuff has come from "spin off" series (look at puss in boots: the last wish as just one example), but their mere existence will never excite me. i prefer to really watch movies or tv shows that im interested in: dim the lights, grab some popcorn, and set aside time to really engross myself in every detail. its not for every show and it is a little time consuming, but the depth in every piece of art that you learn to see is so worth it. but maybe thats not everyone priority.

okay now lets get hyperbolic!

im not going to sugar coat this and itll sound weird, but i see a lot of similarities between this kind of hyper obsessive yet shallow fixation and some very very disgusting subcultures online. and i dont mean that because i dont understand them. i mean that because i am sadly referencing many of the boys and young men who fall down the alt-right pipeline through porn fixation. if you do not know what i am talking about, youll have to trust me on this because i do not think that anyone should look these things up on their own because good god every trigger warning possible applies if you look at some of these peoples accounts. they make my stomach churn and i am pretty resilient to things. basically for those who dont know, what im referring to is a subculture of predominantly young men who become obsessed with porn and porn stars to the point that it is all they can think about. if this is giving hints of incels, it should because the venn diagram is actually just a smaller circle within a larger circle. their obsession and incel nature leads them to the expected political and social beliefs: misogyny, transphobia, grooming, forced marriage, etc. truly some of the worst humans.

now is this a leap? admittedly yes. but i dont think the comparison isnt without merit. the initial actions are the same and both lead to heavy levels of social isolation. sure you have your in group that understands every reference you make, but beyond them, you become stunted. that social isolation is the most dangerous fuel for a man to have.

overall thesis

i could write at length about this topic (and who knows i might one day) but ill keep it brief for now. in short, this trend of hyper obsessive binging that ive seen is extremely confusing to me at best and potentially dangerous at worst. i wish i had a way to break people's habits with this kind of thing but sadly i do not know how.

[pyrosomatic-metamorphosis]

I posted 16,890 times in 2022

That's 11,593 more posts than 2021!

324 posts created (2%)

16,566 posts reblogged (98%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@/theminecraftbee

@/panziku-nox

@/galaxy-minecart

@/beacon-lamp

@/loud-whistling-yes

I tagged 4,879 of my posts in 2022

#queued up to queue - 2,379 posts

#double life smp - 256 posts

#reblog - 212 posts

#double life spoilers - 173 posts

#liveblogging - 35 posts

#trafficblr - 32 posts

#mishapen sketches - 30 posts

#hermitcraft spoilers - 28 posts

#fic - 27 posts

#dsmp - 26 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#most web content is based on the ‘algorithm’ nowadays but most forum and archiving sites work by showing what is most recent in the topic

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

fancy lad

747 notes - Posted June 14, 2022

#4

the shrekification of grian

887 notes - Posted March 5, 2022

#3

"You're like the sun- vicious and burning" - ZombieCleo

1,134 notes - Posted July 8, 2022

#2

Is anyone else feeling so normal about desert duo being the last green lives because im. normal. so normal. Theyre the only pair thats sustained each other theyre not just the last greens theyre the only pair only duo where one has not killed the other. this game is designed so that one partner Always kills another but not them. Only them. grian keeps killing scar but not this fucking time and scar isnt careful but he’s still staying alive anyway despite being Known for his deaths and. Theyre the last greens. Theyre the only ones that have kept each other alive. im so normal.

1,653 notes - Posted July 8, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

*lays down* im thinking about minecraft again and the empty spaces you create. the flat lands. the grand halls. the picture perfect buildings and towns that no one lives in. have you ever entered a multiplayer world and found an empty town? it's like. people were there. there were players there, once, and maybe there will be players there again, but there aren't any now. now there are only empty buildings and straight-lined roads where forest used to be.

have you ever made a building that's just too Large? four chunks, one empty room. Or maybe found a megabase from the ground. you are so small, and the world you've and your players have made is so big.

i've seen so many people talk about how empty and lonely single player worlds are, but my favourite world is a single player one. i live in a valley and I've killed the dragon, and i live in a cave. it's messy and its homey and nothing fits together. i go to large multiplayer worlds with giant towns for hubs and its perfect. no one lives in any of the houses, no one explores them. we are all journeymen, never locals. "life" is a prop we hold up against the void so we don't keep staring into its depths.

or what about the big churches? the monuments? the gorgeous, sprawling builds that take hours and hours and are stunning and are so empty. when they're finished the builder moves on to the next project and the building stays. do you understand? the buildings are always lit up so nothing will spawn but nothing will spawn anyway because there's no one there. there are skyscrapers with a few chests and a crafting table inside. the purpose of the building is to be built and once its purpose is fulfilled it doesn't just go away. the buildings haunt their own halls, perfectly pretty and lovingly made and eventually forgotten.

i dont know. ive played this game for a decade. i've beat the ender dragon twice. i start a world and i restart them and i restart them and i restart them. there are posts going around that say that the world itself is not for you, but sometimes the things you build aren't for you, either

1,882 notes - Posted August 31, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[ronnytherandom]

I forgot to watch content all week so i wrote about games ive been playing

9/2/2021: The Truman Show

You should fear your fears but embrace them and use them to guide you into the unknown, to explore and experience what life has to offer. Fear stands between you and the fullest experience of life so you must pass through it to better yourself. Heed not the walls built about you and the chains made to hold you. Though the architects insist it will preserve your life, containment is anathema to life. Do not take in faith the benevolence of powers that be; instead trust those who would support and liberate you, guide you through fear and into life.

As best I can lay it out, I think this is the philosophy of the Truman show but there is so much more to read into it also. There is critique of systems of commodification and celebrity (i.e. capitalism) reducing human beings to a consumable good as well as encouragement to find and pursue your goals despite adversity and even sensibility which is also tied to the illusion of economic responsibility. You can’t put a camera inside a human head, you can never “know” them without being an active and intrinsic part of their life, but also there is need for reciprocation. If one half exists with ulterior motive then the entire relationship is rotten; sincere humanity is what creates real connections. Without such your world is fake. A world built around one person is a world where no one can truly live. All these actors have given up basically their entire lives for the sake of watching Truman have his life built around him by outside forces, have allowed themselves to be commodified and dehumanised for the good of one man, Christoph. The man at the top has delusions of grandeur and thinks only of his own bottom line, he cares not for his subjects but simply wants them to do as he tells them because it benefits him to commodify their lives and interactions. Even then he cannot stand to lose control and in seeking to demonstrate Truman’s “realness” he structures his life so thoroughly that eventually there’s no reality left, only a script and adverts. But the people watching still empathise with Truman because everyone in the working class understands what it is to be trapped because real life is our own Truman show and one day we must all pass through fear, step out of the dome and create a real life for ourselves outside of the system of commodification which consumes everyone’s life and removes all realness and sincerity and emotional catharsis from it.

I unreservedly love this film.

14/2/2021: Assorted Game Reviews

Horizon Zero Dawn (Unfinished due to technical issues, 45 hours inc. parts of Frozen Wilds): This game is really cool and really fun. I think it is defined by its incredible setting which somehow creates a fresh feeling post-apocalyptic environment. Said environment creates intriguing alt-future lore and some very interesting environments to explore. I love the machine designs (especially tallnecks!) and was very sad to hear one of their contributing artists passed away recently but I’m glad their work lives on in this visually stunning game. I’m a sucker for Ubisoft-style open world games simply because it tickles a certain kind of itch and somehow this non-Ubisoft game has outdone Ubisoft on their own formula, which is hilarious, but also good for me as running around this world exploring and clearing map markers is engaging fun. Not least because of the combat. I have a minor criticism here that the combat feels slightly awkward on mouse and keyboard, the arrows never seem to go where I’m aiming, but aside from that the experience of fighting is a grand one. Enemies never lose their threat and I love the weak spot system the game employs which makes every tool useful in niche circumstance and rewards curiosity. It specifically manages this in a way that I feel the Witcher series could learn from if it ever returns; by making head on assault less viable and encouraging tactical hunting. I do feel this system makes hunting robots so fun that by contrast hunting humans becomes a chore however, though I noted this improves in the dlc with the addition of humans with elemental weaknesses limited in number as they are. I cannot speak for the story in entirety but what I encountered was pretty good, though I feel as if it was only just really getting going at the point where I could not continue. I find Aloy to be a compelling and well portrayed protagonist and though I can guess about her origin and the ultimate end of the alt-future apocalypse I still want to see how it plays out on screen, so will return to this as soon as I’ve fixed it.

Rimworld (122 hours. Familiar with but do not own Royalty Expansion):

Rimworld is one of those super special games that I don’t think I have a single problem with. Fair warning it can be brutal and is heavily dependent on RNG but this allows it to create truly unique and interesting scenarios on a constant basis. In the wider perspective it could be described as formulaic, with regular cycles of managing the settlement between raids and random events, but the devils in the details. Colonist traits, health and skills dictate how you play and sometimes you’ll be forced to adapt as some colonists simply refuse to perform some tasks. The depth of health particularly amuses me, in that each little part of someone’s body is modelled in a way. If you’re in a firefight you may take a single bullet which grazes your finger and you’re fine. Alternately it could pierce your human leather cowboy hat, your skull and kill you instantly and the game will tell you exactly what happened. The risk/reward element is addictive enough, and that’s without accounting for just how cool it is to see your colony slowly expand. Establishing more and more options for crafting is fun and shows off the full range of different items in the game which is fucking extensive. Between clothing, weapons, armour, sculpture and drugs to name only a few you have the opportunity to create many varied production lines either for your colonists or to trade for money and there is a lot of fun to be had here as well as it is quite satisfying to see psychoid you have grown personally become the cocaine your colonists snort to help them stay awake on limited sleep. From an archaeologist’s perspective it is especially cool to look back over your base and see the hints of how and why structures were built and remember the history of your limitations and development through structure. I think the lore of the universe is really cool too, a very 40k-esque kind of place except with far less order, somehow. But the universe does an excellent job of feeling alive and moving constantly on both a planetary and interstellar level. You can fully believe that while you build wooden shacks to shield yourself from terrifyingly low temperatures there are simultaneously rich pieces of shit living it up on the glitterworld that’s one system over. The music does an excellent job of creating the wild west frontier atmosphere the game cultivates to great effect. Ultimately, for just being a grid with a series of different numbers attached, this game does a fantastic job of creating a compelling, brutal and very real colony management experience. I dont think I can properly put into words the grandness and scope of this one. I didnt even mention the modding scene, which is expansive and tailors to basically any need you could have. The Rim is a terrifying place but theres so much fun to be had.

Factorio (86 hours, mostly 1.1): Having completed a game of Factorio I can tell you reliably that this is one of the best games ever made, thoroughly addictive and fun. If you like numbers, logistics, TRAINS, its gonna be your thing. Not to mention its probably the only documented case of a game with no bugs (so far as official forums are concerned). Strictly speaking this games combat is not the most engrossing thing but good lord do you feel it when you acquire a flamethrower. The way each aspect of the game (production, research, logistics, combat, upgrades for everything therein) feeds into the next is a really well constructed balancing act such that you must experience the full game in order to complete it and I always appreciate this kind of design. I think its one of the best tenets of factory game design especially as its something present in Satisfactory too. Beyond all of this generalised good the game is also excellent in its intricacies, the architecture necessary to build a maximum efficiency base, the level of planning and organisation that can be employed is mind-blowing. Not to mention the mod community, factorion is already an extensive experience and some mad bastards have seen fit to complicate it further, hats off to them. This really is a great moment in gaming.

 Destiny 2 (198 hours, all expansions, played some post Forsaken release, mostly Season of Arrivals onwards, spent roughly £20 on microtransactions):

This is a very interesting and enjoyable experience, but I must say it can be a bit controversial at times. What its does particularly well is moment to moment gameplay and design in all aspects. The game is stunning; between environments, cosmetics, shaders ships and ghosts there’s a vast range of incredible things to see, all rooted in the “pseudo-magi-science” aesthetic it’s got going on. The class design is excellent and you really do feel like you embody this rampaging madman / agile gunman / space wizard archetype, whichever you choose to play. The abilities, especially supers, are very satisfying. Everything has heft and power behind it which can be felt in all aspects of design; sound and animation is top notch. Movement is cool, you can feel how fast you move both on foot and in vehicles and the navigation has a little fun subtlety depending on your class jump, even if you can bounce unpredictably occasionally. But for the love of god why is the wall kick in there? It has only ever served to push me from a ledge into a bottomless pit. You're looking to remove antiquated content? Start there. Some guns are not so good to shoot but there’s such a great range of guns that are fun its like complaining about one drop in an ocean; and enemies are fun to shoot at, each faction distinct in meaningful ways and presenting an effective challenge. Speaking of oceans, that’s one way to describe the lore. I haven’t dived too deep but it keeps going down forever and everything I’ve read is intriguing. As a former Elder Scrolls lore nut this is something I could definitely sink my teeth into, though its much more of a pulpy sci-fi vibe than a pure nonsense vibe. I do think the game has a bit of a loot problem, primarily in regards to the conflict between high stats and looking good. This should never be a conflict, and yes you can apply ornaments to any purple gear but that’s not enough when I spend the entire time grinding power levels and thus must change armour and weapons on a constant basis to progress. This game needs a true transmog system and if not that, rethink how gear power level works. Perhaps rather than earning new instances of gear you always possess a version of it and the loot you acquire in missions just upgrades your instance to your current overall power level? This would serve to do away with the current upgrade system which I think is a needless additional grind. Perhaps it could be retained in using enhancement cores to empower gear as present but necessitating a whole upgrade module to keep your favourite weapon on hand is kind of painful honestly. There is also at present the issue of sunsetting gear, mildly controversial to say the least. If it’s necessary to streamline the game and make it function moving forward so be it but surely loot pools should be adjusted so you can actually get useful loot from older locations? And why sunset personal instances of gear which can be acquired at the regular power level anyway? I had to throw away my favourite bow and hunt down a new version of the exact same weapon for… what reason? I do think destination navigation leaves a little to be desired also. I get that having a physical hub world is meaningful but Destiny does not have a very extroverted community; I can count the times someone noticed me in the tower on one hand. And its not even like there’s fun activities to be found in the same sense as say Deep Rock Galactic, which really does take advantage of its hub. Perhaps for players who simply want to go about their business all of the vendors could be set into a menu system where just clicking an icon takes you to their menu from anywhere in the system rather than, per se, having to go through an entire loading screen (Which takes you to orbit and back) to reach a location which serves simply as the front for four menus. These are established player problems. As a dedicated PvE player I can say that this game is immensely fun in combat and growing in power does feel really good. It’s something I recommend getting into, there’s just some very large creases that need ironing which the Bungie should really take the time to address rather than pushing out new in game content every three months.

[moonguilt]

please give me more kl headcanons.😔

OKAY people this got WAY out of hand and i wrote 7 pages of an entire au plotline so uh. sorry everybody but it’s gonna be split into at least a couple different postswe’ll call this CHAPTER 1: (chapter 2 can be found HERE)I roleplay on MMORPGs so you’re gonna have to deal with my self indulgent online roleplaying AU. There will be klance but I have to SET THE STAGE first so bear with me. basically this is just multiplayer online video game roleplaying garbage. on that note, enjoy.

hunk and pidge were the first ones to discover the video game “Voltron.” they dicked around on it just to test out the game controls and perhaps get coding ideas for a game they are trying to create, but they ended up kinda enjoying it. the gameplay has its issues but is overall pretty fluid.

hunk plays a rogue. he has to turn the game volume down sometimes because of the gross gorey noises the game makes when he stabs people. he probably would have rerolled as a different class just to escape the gruesome sound effects, but he really likes being able to enter stealth. he says it makes him feel “safe”

pidge plays a mage. hunk is under the impression that it’s because she wants to play a class with high intelligence points, and pidge doesn’t correct him. but really she just likes the idea of turning her enemies into frogs

shiro is hanging out with matt one day and ends up watching pidge play. he wants to be Hip and Cool so he decides to create a trial account and see if he likes it. turns out, he’s TERRIBLE at the actual gameplay (his computer reflexes are Bad and he keeps dying to basic mechanics on literally every boss fight. matt downloads the game and creates a priest out of pity just to help keep shiro alive while he levels)

“this is demeaning for everyone involved”

“you’re the one who has died seven times now to haxus. literally all you have to do is not stand in the fire. you’re a FULLY ARMORED PALADIN TANK how are you dying so quic—wait a minute. shiro. shiro why are you still wearing your level 1 starting gear.”

however, he finds out that the server they’re playing on has a roleplaying community! he figures he doesnt need swift reflexes to roleplay, so he starts dipping his toe into RP and discovers he really likes it. he enjoys writing stories about his heroic character, and enjoys combining those stories with the stories of other people he meets in the game. it’s like collaborative fantasy fiction writing, and it quickly becomes a passion of his

pidge and matt tease him endlessly for it. hunk is an angel and is very supportive of shiro’s new hobby. he is the only one who will listen to shiro gush about his character. unfortunately when shiro designed the character, he did not have a good grasp on roleplay, so the character is goofy looking and has an overly dramatic backstory involving dragons and a lost royal bloodline. hunk kindly chooses not to comment on it, and instead helps him develop new ideas and plots for his character’s adventures

eventually shiro manages to convince hunk to give RP a try. hunk is very careful and does a lot of research on the Voltron universe lore. he reads all the fanmade wiki pages, roleplaying guides on the game forums, etc., until he feels confident he can create a good character. he does (and eventually goes on to be a popular community figure who hosts huge server events and is friends with literally everyone, but that is several months down the line), and he and shiro begin their roleplaying adventures together

hunk gets Really Into It. fast. like faster than shiro. and he takes it SERIOUSLY; he is a total lore nerd & WILL tell you (in a very gentle, caring tone) if your character’s story/actions do not comply with the game’s established lore

“your character’s outfit is so cool! btw tho, I noticed you mentioned your character was born in the castle of lions—just wanted to let you know, it was actually only rediscovered and unlocked about 10 years ago in the game’s timeline, so it wouldn’t really make work for your character to be born there, since they’re 27 D: but if you want I can help you come up with a different birthplace :)”

keith, lance, and allura had thus far managed to resist the voltron bug. they just aren’t into mmorpg stuff, they insist. single-player games, sure, but open-world multi-player? sounds weird

lance falls first. Hunk hits him with the puppy dog eyes and its all over for him

he creates the most ridiculously beautiful character he can

“i dont care about whether my guy is a freaking dps or not, hunk, i need him to have an ass like a kardashian. WHERE IS THE BUTT SLIDER HUNK. i have a NICE ASS and i want it IMMORTALIZED IN PIXEL FORM”

he does, in fact, end up picking dps. hunk shows him the archer class and he lights up like a christmas tree

“i know you always wanted to bone legolas, so”

“i wanted to BE legolas, not BONE him, HUNK”

“sure lance”

allura falls next. her and lance’s weekly “self-care spa sessions” turn into lance rambling about all the wacky stuff he and hunk and shiro got up to that week, and she eventually cracks under the pressure because she Hates when there’s a new fad and she doesn’t understand it

“and then this guy came up to us and started roleplaying with us in ALL LOWER CASE and shiro and i wanted to d i e but hunk was all ‘nooo he’s just a newbie in need of some pointers’ and then spent the next TWENTY FREAKING MINUTES giving this guy tips and tricks about grammar and punctuation–”

within 2 days she has gotten almost halfway through leveling her new druid healer because she is Determined damn it

coran, allura’s uncle, also begins playing shortly thereafter. allura never says why exactly, but it does seem to be a direct result of her influence somehow. he plays a gunslinger class because he’s “always wanted to be a ‘rooting & tooting cowboy,’ as you call it!”

for whatever reason, he is Very Good at the game, like freakishly skilled. everyone is kind of afraid to question it so they just accept it and move on

he and pidge are really the only ones who are focusing on the actual game content anymore, so they start doing high-level raids together and then begin to gain something of a reputation as a terrifying duo in player-versus-player combat.

keith is resilient. he is a notoriously stubborn boy and no amount of puppy dog eyes from hunk or persuasive lectures from shiro will convince him to step outside his comfort zone

but lance, well. lance knows exactly how to get keith to do what he wants

“i bet you just know my character’s way cooler than yours would be”

“?? no. i literally dont care about your character or anybody else's”

“huh. guess i will just always be better at video games than you”

“are you seriously still trying to hold your killbot phantasm score over my head. you got lucky”

“i am the peerless king of video games–”

“are you listening to yourself. do you actually hear the words coming from your mouth.”

“–undefeated because you are too much of a coward–”

“fuck OFF send me the fucking download link you loudmouth”

keith takes. forever. to design his character.

lance is leaning over the back of keith’s chair, giving outrageous suggestions (and blatant lies) that keith pointedly ignores

“keith. keith if you give him neon orange hair it boosts your speed, did you know that?”

“choosing big ears gives you greater perception stats keith”

“keith listen to me, you gain the ability to breathe underwater if you choose a broken nose—OW, what the hell–”

keith takes SO LONG that eventually lance has to leave for dance lessons and when he gets back keith is only JUST finishing up

turns out he took so long because he wanted to use every resource available in the game to make the character look like a carbon copy of himself. the end result would have been impressive if it wasn’t so eerily accurate

“you’re seriously naming him keith kogane.”

“it’s my name!”

“keith it’s a ROLEPLAYING game. you’re supposed to play a ROLE”

“and my role is keith kogane.”

“that doesnt even fit the naming conventions for the humans in this game! hunk would be having a FIT right now if he was here”

“good thing he’s not”

keith selects the warrior class because, as lance repeatedly and petulantly insists, he is a “boring basic bitch fuckboy”

“im the fuckboy?? thats rich coming from a guy who plays an archer because he has a big fat crush on orlando bloom in a blond wig”

“HUNK is spreading LIES okay I do NOT have a cru–”

“i dont know what you see in him. he’s literally just a white lotor”

“you TAKE THAT BACK”

to be continued :)

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

1, 4, and 10! (Frankly, I'm interested in all of these, but I'll take these to start!)

Thank you! These are from this ask meme

1. What made you start writing fanfic? 

Hmmm you know, I had read, I think, 3 fanfics ever (i’m lumping the 3 harry potter novel-length Neville POV pdfs a friend sent me in college once into one group tho), before 2015. And always only things friends had linked to me/I wasn’t seeking them out myself. I tried looking some up once to see what the hype was about but never got interested in anything, even when the writing was objectively good (I think some Marvel, some Dr Who, etc that friends posted and which crossed my dash).

Trying to be as brief as possible on the leadup details, after a very low period for all of 2014 and while I was between jobs/living with my parents, I started DA:I just after Christmas and put in 104 hours/beat the game within 8 days, one of which I did not play at all during. So! You can say the Obsession had kicked in as they are wont to do.

I had a job lined up for March onward but nothing to do for the rest of Jan/Feb, so I played the game another two times, joined the good ol Bioware Social Network/forums, followed a bunch of new people on tumblr, and joined an online chat group or two about Inquisition! Fanfic was popular with everyone else, and while at first I wasn’t as interested in it as I was in talking about game meta/lore, after reading a couple I realized I actually enjoyed videogame-based fanfic much more than the kinds I’d bounced off before. I’m pretty sure it’s because in the games you get to make your own character/choices, so you don’t always know what’s actually coming next, and there’s someone “new” you’re reading about even if the other characters are the same. There’s just a lot more room to develop characters and side storylines while not contradicting the main plot, since a lot of what happens in games is implied/off-screen conversation/skipped over time-wise. It was also a good outlet for the mess of emotions DAI left me with (as a solasmancer: :( :( :( ), and it was people I knew who were creating it, so it was a fun way to engage with the online communities that were at the time my only social outlet. 

As someone who has written my own stories since childhood (I’d won NaNoWriMo that year with an original middle grade novel concept), it was pretty natural for me to transition over, about a month after I finished the game. My first couple attempts were very much figuring things out/playing with the genre, but I jumped in pretty fast. I wrote two short/messy one-shots, a few tumblr only drabbles ≤100 words, and then the third fic I ever started is Fallout From the Fade, my on-going longfic that is now the single longest story I’ve ever written and its been uuuhhhhh 5 years whoops. It’s been a long process but I’m the kind of person who jumps around between ideas but if I latch onto something it doesn’t really leave me (even the NaNo novel from 2007… i was 15… please i dont want you in my brain anymore) so even though sometimes life takes me away from stories for a long time I always have them in my head and intend to come back to them :) 

The biggest thing for me though was tumblr prompts/prompt boards. Fanfiction was the first time EVER that I was actually writing for an audience instead of myself (I have entire original novels that no one’s ever read on my harddrive). I very quickly learned that I’m good at writing angst and oh boy it’s a rush to directly hear from people that they Felt Something because of what you wrote. So most of my story stars I get from the kinkmeme or asks because then I know, specifically, that I’m writing something someone else wants to read. It’s also interesting to me in the psychology that way–I will often read through peoples blogs to get an idea of what they’re into theme or headcanon wise, and incorporate those into my works. I am very interested in the reader/work relationship and having that extra element of control over it is something I like to play with. 

Wow, giant answer. Stopping there.

4. Do you think your style has changed over time? How so? 

I think I’ve gotten better at writing for the conventions of the genre. Fanfic is more about emotions than plot than original work, though both can play a role/stories can vary on how much of each they put in. But the more you write about a character the more you explore their backstory, personality, motivations, etc and I think the better you can understand them to write more. Really though, I go into each fic with a different style in mind though. Some are more economical, and I put a lot of work into show-vs-tell. Some I go past purple into ultraviolet with the prose, especially for shorter works. A lot of it is self-indulgent, but I’m pretty mindful about the tone I write in and what I want it to convey when paired with that specific plot.

10. What’s a theme that keeps coming up in your writing?

I have yet to meet someone as into the concept of meta-narrative as I am. I am constantly thinking about the relationship between the reader and what I’m writing, and how that will be affecting their reading experience. I’m big on using  fic to create a sense of tension, leaving people on cliffhangers wanting more, and basically using things like paragraph length/repetition/clues/word choice to either keep the reader engaged or jolt them out of the story for a moment in order to wring as much emotion from them as possible. There’s definitely times I don’t get it right but I think I hit the mark a decent amount. This is one of those things that’s “invisible” to the reader though unless they’re directly looking for it, so, I don’t know that it’s something anyone would think of unless they’ve talked to me about writing–though if you have, you KNOW i go off about meta-narrative within my first three comments.

For more traditional themes, on the physical side: as a career botanist/geologist, I am always very aware of nature and setting. Sometimes maybe too much so. So a lot of my metaphors/allusions/breaks between plot or dialogue involve nature in some way, especially plants, water, and light. I’m being very indulgent in a current WIP and going on about the weather (I HATE that weather is a stereotypical “boring conversation” marker because i LOVE meteorology and its very important!!! esspecially if u spend all day running around outside!! as both I personally and my OCs do) but I try to tone that down normally. 

On the figurative side: I write a lot about mental health while trying to keep it both realistic/non-glamorized but still as big as it really feels; I write about complicated relationships and not being fully aware of your own emotions/reactions (love me a flawed narrator); about things the character has lost like family/identiy/language; and I can’t keep away from stories about self-sacrifice, duty, transcendence, futility, and rage. I have yet to write a piece that can truly be described as fluff, I think.

Aaaand I’ve gone on FAR too much already, so I’ll end it there! Thanks so much for the q’s!

[bedlamgames]

Q&A #103

Today we have the Twine conversion, lesbian training mantras, social lube, a bunch of random stuff from the discord, and a whole lot more. 

[Anonymous said]: I'm really curious what the tally means for your twine conversion posts. Can't seem to figure out what its suppose to represent progress wise...

- Answered this last Q&A. Because of you asking I’ve now also added the explanation to what it’s about to every stream post so I hope that helped with understanding what’s going on with that.

[Anonymous said]: Suggestion: For races that start with a random corruption (ie: Succubi), have an option in full custom to spend points to either narrow what that corruption is (to be one of the four types, for example) or to outright pick one (for a much higher cost).

- That’s a good idea. Being able to pick specifically I think would be too much. There are ALOT of corruptions so that would mean many many menus to be able to select everything. Being able to pick one of the four types seems fair to me as something to spend points on in Full Custom. Added it to my notes. 

[Anonymous said]: Have a succubus slaver who used to be a lamia. On level up, she had the option to get the Fleet trait, which I thought was off-limits for Lamia due to their body shape. I think it's a bug?

- Good spot and should be fixed as of the last update. 

[Anonymous said]: Noticed a bug with No Haven 0.903: If you select a human (or once-human) for your character, and then quick restart, your next character will keep the human's Racial aspect Social Lube. On the topic of that Racial, it says " includes one human, and three other different races/subtypes gain an additional Success" Does that mean one human and three non-humans, or one human and three slavers each of a different race from each other?

-Took me awhile to work this out as going from human to human seemed fine. However you’re right that those with a heritage like demi-angels or succubi will incorrectly keep the previous racial. 

The second so as long as you have at least one human you can get the buff by say having a northerner, noble, wastelander, and convent. 

[Anonymous said]: hi bud, xfto/x421 here, its been a long time i guess. wanted to ask about the status of the no haven/twine conversation. i joined your picardo lately but couldnt post some reports since you dont allow guest-posts. well anyway, the report is about something ridiculous i have found after some restarts, the chosen main charakter (lamia) starts as male with the hard carry aspect(immense shaft) and different description than the ones the perks would give. 1/2

another question, feels like i asked something similiar in the past, how about the integration of different artpacks/access to older pics, or deletion of those that never get used? i guess that would requiere some more access to the game than you allow atm. maybe with twine? do you have a roadmap on tfgames or somewhere for the future of no haven? i know there are some more races you want to implement and improve some systems, but thats it, hope you are doing well in these times. 2/2

I do an update on the patreon every two weeks which is linked on the twitter. You do not need to be a patron to read these and is the best way to stay informed about what I’ve been up to. That includes the status of the conversion. To quickly sum it up;

It's at a stage where all the RAGS to Twine code conversion is basically done. What I need to do now is translate all that work into something playable and there's currently big logic issues with a bunch of the conditions and passages. So what I'm currently doing is trying to tidy up the visual look of the code with a bunch of idents with the theory that will make finding the errors easier.

Alas it’s not me disallowing guest posts... Picarto had some massive stonking issues and so they locked things down hard due to that preventing guests from chatting. I suggest a throwaway email site to get around that.

I don’t think there’s any art in the game file that’s not used as I try to keep on top of deleting the old ones. Not really down for doing art packs of the old ones as due to that not being my art so I see them as placeholder only until they can be replaced by commissions. 

I probably do need to do some kind of roadmap sometime. I’m less keen as it’s kind of a dirty word these days as due to the miss-use of them by others it’s got some bad connontations, but I’m also aware the alternative which is me randomly mentioning stuff on discord/picarto streams leaves the vast majority of my audience in the dark which is also really not ideal.

[Anonymous said]: [no haven 0.903] [Crit no longer grants Bimboborn] okay, but how do I get bimboborn now?

- It’s a corruption. Specifically Blessings of Perversion. 

[Anonymous said]: With the change to training where hypnotic slavers can fully embed the relevant mantras for blowjob, bimbo, and sissy training, could we also get that for lesbian training?

- Yes that’s the plan when I do the third part of lesbian training. Got a set of commissions planned just got to sort the funding and work out who I’m getting to do it. 

[Anonymous said]: hey bud, x421 here, again, might be already fixed because thats from no haven .903, but i recently had the witch queen super rare quest, you might want to proof read the quest and results, there are a few typos. i really did enjoy the writing nonetheless, just a quick question about that quest, as far as i understood this one, you only change your odds of the final result depending on how good you do on your way to the final, but the reward in the end only depends on the final result? 1/2

2/2 it just dawned on me that its been a while since you made an Q&A post so i guess i ll go and lurk on the tfgames forum in the next days, just one last question: i asked early in development about camp upgrades and you were not that convinced about that stuff, i understand you want the slaver camp as some bandit camp and not some castle/bastion or whatever, but since you added camp upgrades, maybe add proximity to a certain region? or something to spend supplies and gold in a 13month+ run?

- Hah! Okay will give it another read through.That’s correct yes. There’s also rewards on the way if you Critical those parts. 

There is a new gold sink coming soon in an upcoming update. I’ve also got plans for more camp upgrades coming later. 

[From the Patreon]: I'm that guy you replied to about the patch notes in Q&A 101. Solid updates. Bugs in the outfit system has driven me nuts since like, 2015, has it been that long already? I think it has. I like collecting them and something always blows up. This time, I ended up with a slaver wearing both the ooze outfit and ponygirl outfit. So there's that. Also I was disappointed the new Quicker then You'd Like wasn't interactive. Solid in any case though, thanks!

- I'll get them all one day I swear! Don't suppose you remember the chain of events that led to that? New QAYL was a patron requested one with the idea of having a big pay off for playing submissive which often involves playing sub-optimally.

[From the Patreon]: 1-ive been noticing when you choose to repick choices for an slave training assignment the slave gets added to the list of choices 2-also just how rare is the post-slave princess city assignment, cause i can never seem to get it even after selling multiple slave princesses 3-another thing is that the nightly puppet-leader stat is almost impossible to get again(either that or i have bedwarmers incapable of usurping me even thought i my current stats mean i couldnt win against even the subbiest slave)

- Will check 3 as you've not been the only person to mention that. 2 I know exists for sure as other people have definitely got it. Should be no rarer than any other rare City assignment, and thanks for the spot on 1.

[From the Discord]: Top 3 Animes of the 2010 to 2020

Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica the series was staggeringly good. Just redefined what anime could be to me. Film is a... well it was a thing. A beautiful thing with an ending which I still quite know how to feel about. 

Shirobako. It’s about creativity, craft, and about how people can come together to make something. It might not be something good, but dangit it’s been made and that’s worthwhile. It’s also from personal experience by miles the most accurate depiction of working in an office I’ve ever seen.

Oh man this is very very hard deciding on the third so pick one of the following and I could probably make a strong case for it. 

Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon, Darling in the FranXX (yes really, yes even the ending), Lupin III: Part 5, Kill la Kill, Monster Musume, Flip Flappers, Demi-chan wa Kataritai, Zombieland Saga, or Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai.

Also while I was taking the question to mean series both Your Name and Promare are absolutely phenonemal films. 

[From the Discord]: Best recent Eurovision Act

Lena. Always Lena. 

[From the Discord]: What's the agricultural technological level of No Haven like 

It’s not hit industrialization yet. What makes the difference is and allows cities like Aversol and even bigger to exist is that the organization of the human empire is far better than it has any right to be for the other levels of development being able to keep an incredibly complex supply chain constantly flowing even if on the ground level it barely seems to be moving at all. There are also some much, much larger farms both on the Great Plains and further to the north compared to the much more isolated single/couple of households ones that your slavers raid. 

[From the Discord]: What have been some of your all-time favourite assignments, both in terms of working on them and how they turned out?

Love When Week’s End Comes for a recent one. Writing all the results in colour commentary (and all the variations for weather, events and outcomes) was a real challenge and I do like how it came out. 

Witch-Queen and Arisin’ for being the first times I tried to go for a different, more potentially disturbing/freaky mood, and I’m pleased with the results. 

Sable Masquerade as I really like the ‘bad end’ I came up with. Actually I like the whole thing as while the pitch from the patron obviously helped, a lot of it was inspired by a random superhero bondage party picture I saw on HF, which I decided to run with, and had a bunch of fun exploring. 

[From the Discord]: Weirdest bug and most difficult bug

The one that resulted in a male wisp riding a griffon was a fun one. 

Most difficult has to be the clothing management which as a previous question suggests I’ve still not entirely solved. 

[From the Discord]: If No Haven was an MMO, what race/class would you play?

Kreen rogue mainly as I really like the edit I did for the portrait which MidnightonMars later translated into a commission. 

If not definitely a lamia. 

[From the Discord]: Knowing what you do now about the design of the game, are there any game mechanics you wish you'd have implemented differently?

Clothing management. So very much clothing management. I’ve redone it entirely twice now, and it’s still not where I want it to be. 

[From the Discord]: What was your inspiration for creating the setting of No Haven?  Has the direction the game has gone varied from your initial idea? If so what has been the biggest change?

- It started off with adapting the chan game Deeper Dungeons which was basically a certain popular mmo with nothing different about it outside of it being porn along with some possibly unwise options of personal abuse. I first changed it by ditching gnomes for neko which to my mind was a clear upgrade. There even used to be an examine refference in the RAGS version to suggest they’d been in the region of the dungeons before being driven out.

Then it was a gradual process of adding with the occasional subtractions to get it closer to a more Warhammer feeling setting which has always been a major love of mine when I was still doing Whorelock’s in RAGS.

With No Haven it was a case of building on what I’ve done there and expanding upon that with the race lore and assignment descriptions. Biggest was probably when I did the favoured/unfavoured stuff and added a ton of extra backstory to various races to justify the choices made there. 

[numinous00]

RAWA answers questions!!

This is an “in-cavern” (but not in-character) interview with RAWA 2.0 from a couple of years ago (oct 2015) that I just stumbled across. I’d never seen it before so thought I’d post it here in case anyone else missed it too. It’s mostly D’ni language stuff. Quite interesting.

Click the link - http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=28054&start=15 or the “read more”

(Max): So in short, what was the inspiration or the basis for the D'ni language? Can you tell a bit about the origins of it? I suppose it's very Non-English, but does it for instance have any Arabic, Hindi, Japanese or some Asian influences? Or any correlation to other common languages and speech patterns? RAWA: Hmm... I realize that most will not understand this, but it is very difficult for me to be OOC as 'RAWA v2.0' here rather than IC 'Dr. Watson' when I'm literally 'In the Cavern'. It just feels so wrong. Having said that, it is an interesting story that I don't think has been told before, so we might as well go for it. Just don't tell Dr. Watson or the other DRC members. RAWA: I have always loved languages of all kinds. Just the idea that (somewhat) arbitrary combinations of sounds, and/or symbols could be imbued with 'meaning' is cool. A secret 'code' that groups of people more or less try to adhere to, to imperfectly share information with each other. What I say is not necessarily what you hear, even if we supposedly speak the same language. This is why I joke about taking things literally. Everything I hear, I try to 'hear' as many different interpretations as possible, and pick the most literal to respond to, even if I know they meant one of the other possible interpretations. It drives people nuts. A very simple example: My son: 'Can I have a soda?' Me: 'I believe you are 'able' to, but you are not 'allowed' to.' This comes from years of typing up email responses and having to go through every single word over and over, knowing y'all were going to dissect every syllable. BTW - Don't dissect this, please. It won't stand up to it. I got used to trying to guess what would be misinterpreted and trying to be very specific to address those reactions before they happened. I was not always successful, but I did always do my best to try to be clear, even if the answer was basically, 'I can't tell you that, yet.' Back to the language story. In sixth grade, I had the chance to take just a little bit of German during our lunch breaks. The idea that not just words changed from language to language, but entire modes of thinking fascinated me. Then in high school, I took two years of Spanish. A whole 'nother mindset. New grammar concepts. I don't remember many of the specifics, but the basic concept stuck with me. The rules are pretty arbitrary and could theoretically be just about anything. The important thing is that everyone agrees to abide by them and use them the same way, or no meaning can be conveyed from person to person. What I say is not what you hear if we do not agree on how the 'code' should be encoded/decoded. Some of this is unavoidable, because we bring our own experiences to the conversation. When I say the word "watermelon", my concept of "watermelon" is slightly different than your concept of "watermelon". When I say "watermelon", I remember eating waaaay too much watermelon when I was very young and getting sick from it. I could not eat watermelon again for years, and I still do not really eat it. If you never had a negative experience with watermelon, you probably do not have any of those connotations connected to it. Back to languages, sorry for the bunny trail. My next "languages" were from Tolkien. Wow. Clearly he had waaaay too much time on his hands. Amazing. Inspriring. Then came Hebrew. All just basic stuff, no formal classes, just bits and pieces I was picking up. After that was Tenctonese from a movie called Alien Nation (Mandy Patinkin, 1988). Their language in the movie was very complicated with clicks and pops and they had a script that looked like an EKG heartbeat with dots and wavy lines. I tried to figure out if they did all the work to make it real, or if they just faked it with randomness. Turns out it was pretty detailed. Cool. Then the TV series Alien Nation came out. Still good, but the language in the TV show was a simpler version. Knowing how long it takes to translate, and how hard it is to get actors to say "gibberish" in the first place, I certainly understood. The TV show's version of the language was easy to figure out. Standard English word order for the grammar. Many words were simply anagrams of their English counterparts. I recorded every episode on VHS tape, and watched it back. Keeping track of the subtitles. Learning new words. "Tagdot tay monga su. To tay mish uray." = "Tagdot (a character name) is among us. It is his time." (This is 25 year-old memory. I believe I am remembering it correctly, but I may have messed it up a little.) The point was - they got an "A" for effort from me - that it wasn't just random. When I started at Cyan, Myst's other languages were gibberish. See Achenar's recordings to the Channelwood natives. That was all recorded before I was hired. When it came time for Riven, I asked if I could take a stab at it. It might not be perfect. It might not be pretty. But it wouldn't just be random. I could at least do something like the TV version of Alien Nation did. I had no idea what I was getting into. I was always a good student. I was a pro at English grammar. "linking verbs: have, has, had, do, does, did, am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been", "Types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamatory", "Pronouns: nominative, possessive, objective", "who/whom?" "11 rules for the comma" No problem. I had a great English teacher, Miss Gaupp. She's 84 now, and still teaches English! Her father lived to be 105. so she might teach a whole 'nother generation! D'ni was mostly based on Hebrew as far as the alphabet structure works. Hebrew uses a dot on some of the letters to change some consonants from a fricative like "v" to a stop like "b". Tongue and lips are in the same basic position, the dot just tells you if you completely stop the air or not. For vowels, Hebrew usually uses an extra letter a yud (y) to make a dipthong. I simplified it a little and used the same dot that is used for consonants, only when it's on a vowel, it becomes a dipthong, usually sliding from the original sound to an "ee" sound. The language using suffixes and prefixes to show number, subject, etc. are concepts I remembered from Hebrew and Spanish. Small words attach together (agglutenative) "And, the, etc." attach to the words they modify. Hebrew and German do this. The number system and alphabet evolved together - this is from Hebrew. The combination of base 5 and base 25 came from the idea: what if I use my right hand to count like tick marks and my left hand to keep track of how many sets of tick marks I have. Their coordinate system (polar coordinates) came from Rand first. I am starting a website where I plan to start releasing more and more information about D'ni. Stuff that has not been released before. It's an ambitious project. It sounds good on paper, but in my current state I am coming up with ideas much, much more quickly than I can ever hope to execute them. My To-Do list gets exponentially longer. We're going to need a lot more "back burners" on our proverbial stove. And once i'm back to work full-time on Obduction, these new projects are definitely going to take a hit. (Zeke): Could you give us a little more background on the bahro (something we dont know about them) and where the bahro concept came from? RAWA: Sorry, Zeke. I still hold too much hope that we will be able to reveal that in a game or novel to just spill it now. RAWA v2.0 may be chattier than RAWA v1.0 was, but I still would rather you experience these things for yourself than simply be told them. (Zeke): Why is Myst island closed off to the public did you plan to have Myst island released to the public at some point? RAWA: In Uru, I expect? Yes, like everything else when Uru was initially designed - we were leaving ourselves a great deal of freedom for future expansion. (Zeke): Where are the D'ni bathrooms? Did they have ages that they went to for the bathroom? RAWA: My long-running, standard answer for that is: "That's why we don't allow you to swim in Myst..." (Zeke): Why was the jump feature so important in this game? RAWA: When you plan a game that is meant to evolve and change and grow over time, you want as many options on the table as possible. As many arrows in your quiver, tools in your belt, spices in your cupboard, [insert your analogy here] as you can get. Especially when it comes to puzzle creation. You wan the flexibility to make completely new kinds of puzzles than were made anywhere in the game before. Don't get me started on the original plans for the pods (Negilahn). Picking things up with your hands, for example. Kicking the traps into place in Eder Kemo. That was never meant to be the final interface. But it worked as a stop-gap until grabbing/ holding/pushing could be implemented at a later time. Then Uru was canceled before it began, and all those grand plans sit unfulfilled. (Acorn1): We know from a recent interview with David Wingrove that a draft of the Book of Marrim exists. But we also know it's been on the back burner for years. You've told us not to give up on it. Is there anything you can tell us about what would need to happen to that draft in order to ready it for publication? RAWA: It's on my bucket list. It won't be great if I write it, but there are several critical bits in it that have to be told, and told right. The rest of the "filler" story, I don't care quite so much about. The outline we worked on with David was good and all, but <shrug>. (Mister Magic): Are there any updates in the pipeline that you can let us know a bit about? RAWA: Which pipeline? MOULa? I'm out of that loop, sorry. Obduction? We are hard at work. I have been in the office several times, briefly. Much to my wife's frustration. On Thursday, Ryan Warzecha literally asked me one question that I had to think about. It completely drained me, and I had to stop to recharge. My RAWA v2.0 joke about the upgrade is more accurate than you probably think. As soon as I try to engage my brain in any meaningful way, I immediately, literally feel myself slow down. The clock starts ticking, and my energy is quickly dissipated. The more of my brain I try to use at once, the faster the energy is gone. So the joke now is that they get to ask me one question per day, and that's it. (Tai'lahr): I greatly enjoyed the YouTube video of you singing, RAWA, so my question is: Is there any chance you could be convinced to submit a song or two to be played during the weekly Uru Karaoke event? RAWA: You're too kind. It's awful. I was too tired to play well or sing well. The lyrics drive me crazy when they "pop" a word down to the next line as they expand. But it did its job - proves I have all the pieces to make -something- work. Now it just needs some love and time. RAWA: More stuff will be placed on my YouTube channel. I've already recorded the next one, I'm just working on the graphics and lyrics. Once that next one's up, I'll go back to redo As a Deer. That was mainly for my aunt. it's her favorite song that i play (cskid13): Can we call the content that is currently being created by the Intangibles "canon?" So, in other words, will their version of Kahlo be the "real" Kahlo, etc.? (cskid13) RAWA: Our philosophy has not changed. What happens in the Cavern happens in the Cavern. We just roll with the punches and try to weave everything into the story as best we can. We certainly didn't plan for any of the Cavern closings, but they are part of the story now. If y'all make Kahlo, it will be some version of Kahlo. If the DRC ever gets funding to come back, they might find an "older" Book that links to another version of Kahlo, just like your Yeesha book does. (maggie696): this brings our prepared questions to an end. We have only one last request - that you would visit us more often RAWA: Hope springs eternal that we eventually have to officially "burn that bridge while we're crossing it" (tm).

[blueraith]

(About your Wonder Woman post) But isn't there a lot of female superheroes already? I mean, Wonder Woman isnt the first or last girl hero idolized. I havent seen that video, but I think the guys were trying to say they don't get why WW should be a bigger role model than any other hero. Or why girls strictly need girl heroes to look up to? I always liked Black Widow... I'm trying to understand how you see hero movies as sexist, because I'm a fan of those movies and I dont see the connection.

The hero movies themselves aren’t sexist. It’s the response to female hero movies, what few there are as well as the ones that are upcoming, that are sexist.

That’s mostly what I’m talking about. There are a good amount of female superheroes, but so many of them are merely female versions of preexisting male superheroes. Batwoman, Supergirl, Spider-Woman. There are a paltry few original female superheroes in comparison. Black Widow, Jean Grey, Wonder Woman. Those three are really the few in the public’s mind when they think ‘original female superhero,’ because female superheroes don’t get a lot of attention. They don’t get their own movies, and they rarely get their own TV shows. Most of the time female superheroes, of any type whether original or rebranded, are secondary characters in a male superhero’s movie.

Wonder Woman is lauded as a bigger hero for a few reasons. First and foremost, she’s Wonder Woman. She’s iconic all on her own for being one of the Big Three in the Justice League, being the most famous female superhero, and her TV show from the 70s. That’s an achievement list that the vast majority of female superheroes just can’t live up to. Second, she’s the titular character of the first successful female superhero movie. In fact, there really isn’t a long list of female lead action movies in general. Third, the movies was just plain good. It characterized Diana as a strong female character without forcing too many masculine traits on her. That, I think, was important. It have her a chance to fight and be tough and warrior like, but at the same time didn’t shy away from the fact that she is a woman. She loves babies and is soft and caring to her friends and family, and can be quite feminine when she wants to be. It’s a bit of a trope for a ‘strong female character’ to basically be a man in women’s clothing.

But, that really isn’t what those guys were talking about. They were specifically targeting fictional heroes and I think, they missed the point. It wasn’t just Wonder Woman, it was the fact that she was a fiction, half-deity, Amazonian princess, and they wondered why anyone would look up to that as a role model when they should look up to the director or a real person.

And on the surface, that seems like a legitimate question. Why not look up to a real person as a role model? I mean, Diana isn’t a real person, she’s a half-Amazon deity who has superpowers, what could you really learn from her?

But what can you learn from Superman or Batman? What can you learn from Obi-Wan Kenobi? What can you learn from any fictional character who is less than realistic? Of course no one is saying that Wonder Woman is a role model that children can reasonably and literally strive to be. You can’t grow up and develop or attain god-like powers. That isn’t the point of having a fictional hero.

And these guys completely missed that point. It isn’t what Diana is that is important for girls to look up to. It is what she does. In terms of her motivations. Not her superpowered actions, but her human ones. How she feels, what she thinks, the choices she makes, her beliefs. Those are what is admirable by children or anyone looking for a fictional role model. There is nothing wrong with having one. It is, I think, why we connect to fictional characters in the first place. Because we admire what we see in them and wish that their actions could be emulated in the real world by others or ourselves.

I’m not saying that Wonder Woman needs to be everyone’s favorite female superhero. She honestly wasn’t mine until I saw this movie. She’s the most well known at what she does, but I’m fairly certain that there’s a good argument that she’s not the best at being the greatest female superhero. I’m very favorable to Batwoman myself. I just think that the reason Wonder Woman achieved such viral note over this past summer is because of her movie, and people kind of took to her. It’s a damn good movie.

I’m also not saying that superhero movies are sexist. The men reacting to them are. Ask a guy if he wants to see a Black Widow movie made. Most of the ones online will say something like, ‘she doesn’t have enough of a backstory to sustain one on her own.’ I see it all the time on Reddit. And it’s bullshit because Black Widow won’t have a backstory unless someone fucking writes her one. That’s literally all that needs to be done to get her story that can be told in a movie. Write her damn story. But, instead, she’s used as a secondary character in everyone else’s movie.

‘Why are there women main characters in everything now?’

That’s the question people had with Ep VII when Rey was revealed to be the Jedi. When Rogue One was coming out. When that new Star Wars cartoon staring mostly female characters aired.

Captain Marvel was pushed back in favor of Ant Man 2.

Some men thought that Wonder Woman was pushing the lesson that men are inferior to women. Like. ????? What movie did they go see?

There is a ton of talk about this from men, over why women should have felt this, or thought that, after this movie came out. Criticism that women shouldn’t be so gung-ho about this movie because it’s just Wonder Woman. She’s not even real. What’s the big deal?

Because they don’t get it. They don’t get what it means to be starved of representation, of seeing your fictional heroes on the big screen, or celebrating them the same way men and boys get to do every day since Hollywood first existed.

It isn’t that Wonder Woman is the best female superhero that needs to be idolized above all others. She merely brought this lingering and ugly sentiment that women shouldn’t have any female superheroes to look up to, to light. It’s been in the background for years. I’ve argued this sentiment for a long time on old message boards, back when vBulletin was the most popular forum format. I used to ask why women couldn’t star in more movies or video games. And I was told, time and again, that women couldn’t carry a story on their own. That Hollywood was marketing to their most common denominator. That men wouldn’t want to play or watch something with a woman in it. Because women weren’t funny enough, or badass enough, or great enough. That men were better at these things than women are.

Wonder Woman is important, and she’s currently talked up right now, because she earned fucking $800 million dollars. Everyone saw this movie. This movie proved every single solitary thing those assholes used to tell young BlueRaith on those message boards she used to argue on. And it’s great. I am simultaneously angry at these assholes who are so surprised and freaked out right now while overjoyed that they’re freaking out. Because they were wrong.

The movies aren’t sexist. But many of the reviewers, commentators, fans, and trolls surrounding them are.

[shenzhenblog]

3 ways to become a learning machine

I smile whenever I look at my university diploma hanging on the wall, because everything I learned then is no longer relevant now. Does it means that we should stop wasting all this energy, time and money on university? Not really: rather, as soon as we complete our “formal studies”, we need to become learning machines. I’ll rephrase it: we must become machines of continuous learning. We have no choice or we will be out of the game, left behind like cavemen after the Stone Age.

For a period of 25 years, as a HR executive, I began interviews with candidates by asking: “What have you learned in the last six-twelve months?”. Unprepared for this kind of question, many candidates weren’t able to answer: the interview was over.

If you have a Bachelor’s degree or a Master’s, do you consider it as the point of arrival, or the beginning of your journey? If you consider it the point of arrival, you’re deceiving yourself. Our long-term success and fulfillment relies on us constantly cultivating our minds. Do not think of your abilities as something immutable, but as something that you can develop over time.

I am convinced that we must have learning agility. By this I mean the ability to remain open to new ways of thinking, to learn continuously in an innovative way, to reflect, to go into unknown territories, and to leave behind our complacency and our torpor. Someone, somewhere is learning faster than you. To become machines of continuous learning, we must not forget three important rules:

Rule 1: Don’t be too much of a specialist.

Let’s start with a question: if you think of Leonardo da Vinci, what word comes to mind? Painter? Scientist? Writer? Inventor? Architect? He was all of these: as the embodiment of the term “Renaissance man”, he roamed between disciplines, avoiding the kind of excessive specialization that stops us being able to think and understand in terms of systems.

So the first rule is not to limit our learning to a single subject. Steve Jobs once explained why Apple products were so stylish, clean and perfectly designed: when he was a student, he attended a calligraphy course and wanted to translate this aesthetic into his company’s products. The design of Apple products is now iconic.

Returning to Leonardo da Vinci, the polymath once said: “Learning never exhausts the mind”. While few of us can aspire to his dazzling achievements, his appetite for learning is something we can all embrace. And learning is not something that happens uniquely at university, at night school, or at a professional course in your office. What we do in our spare time can provide lessons to energize our working life.

You coached an amateur sport team? You started to learn how to manage a team. You tutored students? You learned how to motivate people. You sold something, whether putting a piece of furniture on eBay or by doing an odd job for cash? You grasped the psychology of buyers. You took on an advisory role in local politics or volunteered in a campaign you believe in? Then you understood the complexity and dynamics of a group. You took visitors around a museum or showed them the sights of your city? Well, you learned how to capture people’s attention. You worked as a bartender? Kudos, you mastered a formidable skill: managing difficult (in this case, drunken) clients. You were a babysitter? Well, you fostered a sense of responsibility. In other words, many seemingly trivial jobs can still be key elements in your work experience.

Try to eat food that you cannot pronounce the name of, to learn 50 words from a foreign language, to mingle with people outside your usual tribe, to learn to read music, to memorize poetry, to get lost in a city you do not know (my advice: try Venice), to volunteer in a project you don’t really understand, to read a book you would not usually read, to switch off TV at least five days per week, to listen to music you would not normally listen, to watch a movie without volume to understand by observing body language: in other words try to get out of your comfort zone and dismantle the way you usually think. Learning will occur in a mysterious and magical way.

Looking out: A boy stands in an archway in Venice

Image: REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

Rule 2: Failure is part of success, if we learn from it

I have a serious problem in accepting that the opposite of success is failure. On the contrary, I believe that a key element of success is failure, provided that we learn from it. Over the course of our lives, we collect many successful failures, those experiences which may be galling at first but which ultimately teach us not to repeat the same mistakes. You learn by making these mistakes. As the Chinese philosopher Confucius wrote: “I hear and I forget. If I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” To this one could add, “if I’m wrong, I do not forget, I learn and I can explain it to others.”

As reported in the book “Work Rules!” by Laszlo Bock, head of the innovative People Operations at Google, the United States spent $156 billion on employee training in 2011, a staggering amount. Like Laszo, I do not think much of traditional learning methods, in which one person speaks while others listen and take notes; in a corporate setting, this is better known as “death by PowerPoint”. You learn a lot more by actually trying to do something new and considering failure not as some kind of fatal disease to be avoided at all costs, but rather as a healthy step in our learning process. Let me share some examples.

Who missed 12,345 goal attempts in his basketball career? Michael Jordan, who scored on “only” 12,192 shots, is arguably the greatest basketball player of all times. Thomas Edison created almost 10,000 failed prototypes of his electric bulb, before succeeding.

In the business sphere, what do Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? They all failed several times before succeeding in their endeavors, as this intriguing article explains.

Henry Ford wrote that failure is the best opportunity to begin again more intelligently. If we are never wrong, we have never learned anything of substance. Learning really means getting out of our comfort zone; in some cases, it can mean suffering before our ideas take off. Johannes Houshofer is a professor of psychology and neurobiology at Princeton. He posted a version of his CV on Twitter that was a long list of failures, explaining that failures are part of our learning experience, not something that we have to hide. If I were to write the list of my own failures this blog would be at least 30 pages long and, as my career progresses, my list of failures becomes truly impressive. So, I have invented a terms for myself. I have collected successful failures, and learned a lot from them.

Rule 3: Learning never stops

You never stop learning. In 1938, Ingeborg Rapoport had just finished writing her thesis in medicine and was about to become a doctor but, because of the odious racial laws passed by the Nazi regime, she was denied the qualification because of her Jewish heritage. She emigrated to the United States, where she continued her studies in medicine, working in many hospitals as a paediatrician and neonatologist before returning to East Germany in her fifties, where she founded the first clinic of neonatology East Berlin. In 2015, the University of Hamburg decided to remedy the injustice and, after 77 years, she defended her dissertation of 1938, and obtained her Degree at the age of 102 years. For her commitment to learning and fighting this injustice she is one of my heroes.

So: become a learning machine, enjoy successful failures and don’t stop learning even when you are 102. Let’s invent the future by investing in our learning. It will be – most of the time – a joyful journey to freedom, as nobody will ever take away what we have learned and our choices as people.

Note : This article was originally posted on Weforum

Paolo Gallo

Over the last 30 years, Paolo Gallo has been Chief Human Resources Officer at the World Economic Forum in Geneva; Chief Learning Officer at The World Bank in Washington DC; and Director of Human Resources at the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development in London.

3 ways to become a learning machine was originally published on Shenzhen Blog

[cyn009]

I just didn’t know...

So, not a lot of you really know me. I think most people follow me for the Critical Role, and gaming stuff I repost from other people. I hardly ever post something myself. And because of this, and because i feel like i need to atleast write this, this is the best place to put it. Its ok if no one reads it, but here it goes.

I have always had a big imagination. I was always the quiet, A honor roll student that always obeyed her parents, and wanted nothing more than to make them proud. While making homework and whatnot, i would watch my older brother draw. He is an amazing artists, and i remember feeling like nothing compared to him. He was better than me at everything i loved. Art, video games, he had a big group of friends that got together almost every day. The only thing i could do better was coloring. It also really annoyed me how my brother would draw these amazing pictures, but in the faintest pencil markings. I was always telling him, “You draw so awesome! Why not make it noticeable enough for people to actually see it?” He always shrugged and said that he didnt care if people didnt see it. I did care. I always looked up to my brother, and i wanted other people to know how good he was. So i asked him if i could make his drawings darker, by giving them a second pass of my own. Not altering the drawing, but simply making the lines darker. He agreed. So i started drawing his drawing all over again, until they were noticeable. Then he would ask me to color them, and i would. He got to sell a lot of his art at fairs and stuff.

I did have friends. I had a group of 4 guy friends in elementary school, who i spent lunch reading Harry Potter books with. I also had 2 girl friends that were my neighbors, who i would “play” barbies with. They would bring their Barbies and all their accessories, and i would bring my Link figurine. The one you could order from the OoT Zelda pamphlet. It was so boring... All they wanted was to dress up the dolls and all that. I wanted to have adventures! 

Never happened with them, or my friends in school.

Later i moved to the US, and i went to middle school, where i met my future girlfriend. I remember so vividly that she said i looked like a whore for dressing up in a dress for a school dance. She was not a good person. But i stuck around. She was different and we would talk about anime and manga. We had this thing that we would do during class in which i would draw a stick figure on a page and pass it to her, who would add a stick figure of her own, interacting with mine. If was amazing! It didnt matter what either of us added to the page, the other would just go with it and continue adding to this story we made together. 

Heh, you could say that my first OCs were literal stick figures. 

We continued friends until high school, where something strange happened. I say strange cuse i dont know of anyone else personally that did this, other than us. I started embodying my OCs. I would say that “Cyn” was in her room, and someone else was possessing my body for the time being. But not just anyone, it was my own characters. People i thought would be best suited to face things than little meek me. Be it school stuff, family stuff, working out, ditching class, even my personal relationship with my girlfriend. She was also doing the same. Acting as her own OCs. I dont know how it started, but it just did. and we kept it up for a long time. All through high school, really. Up until she broke my heart. But it was strange because the girlfriends relationship was between some of out OCs, but not all of them. Some would actively ignore the other, while others just wanted each other in more ways than one. 

I cared so much for her, that i allowed her to rope me into her family drama. It took over my life so much that i had completely replaced my own loving family with her broken one... I say that she broke my heart, and she really did. But i feel like it was the best thing she could have done for me. Experiences with her made me grow up from the perfect little girl that makes her parents proud to a girl that apparently had split personalities.

When she left... I was kind of lost. Having so many personalities out in the open as someone else taking care of my problem didnt work anymore. I didnt want to sound like a crazy person by telling people, “Im not Cyn, im _______.” I realized i had to grow up and admit to myself that it was just me, and i was being the person i wanted to be with the excuse that it was someone else. Because i was nothing. It took me years to get over that. I still sometimes find myself talking to one of my personalities, having full conversations and confrontations. I still feel like it helps me.

Anyways, when me and my grilfriend broke up, i found a new friend. She and I were part of a group of friends that self-published a manga magazine. We organized some OCTs and all that. It was cool.

In one of those OCTs, i met a guy from the other side of the world. We started RPing with each other and started creating this world together that i loved so much that we opened the chat RP to other of our friends from the OCTs. It later turned into a forum RP in this cute website that ran for 1000+ forum pages. If you could see us. All sitting at a table with out computers, like a LAN party, but were just RPing in type. Waiting for each other to post our next thing, and refreshing the page over and over again to keep reading the story. 

Eventually, the forum story reached stagnation with the other characters in the story, so me and my friend took it out to a two person roleplay chat once again. 

We roleplayed with each other for 6 years. This consumed my life just as the other personalities did. I would be with family, but my face on my phone, roleplaying and creating this world that it was just ours. And it was built for years and years, building upon the world i had created since elementary. It was this amazing place that only the two of us knew.

Then i started watching critical role and i wondered if i could do that! Roleplay with other people, maybe bring them into my world.

My first DM experience was typical. I over prepared, and made the encounters so hard that my friends ended up just abandoning the mission and not wanting to play anymore. Atleast not with me as a DM. 

I was nothing again.

So i let my friend be the DM, and i became a player in the world i had helped create for years. Mostly because she didnt like how i was managing the world myself. She wanted control of it, so she took it. I felt like shit about that, but i was not going to be a petty as her. This was just a game. It was not going to mess with the ‘canon lore’ of our imaginary world no one else knew as well as us.

Anyways, it is predictable that we had a falling out, and strangely stopped talking over night. My family had always told me how they felt like my friendship with her was holding me back, and i was determined to not allow that to happen. The loss of her friendship would not stagger me. I am stronger than that. I am strong.

......

I started DMing again. With only one player. The one guy from my group of high school friends that i would have never expected to stay friends with me or willing to face my crazy world alone. But he did! I felt like an idiot that i never took his friendship seriously. He deserved better from me. (btw, Hi, dude!) I DMed a game for him for almost six months, until i felt confident that i knew how to DM better, and he felt like he needed help.

I decided to not invite people we already knew... This was something new, me opening my crazy and letting people play in the world i would escape to in my mind. People we knew would judge me for being broken. Strangers would get to know me like this, and hopefully understand that this is normal for me. 

This was the best thing i could have ever done.

I made that world my own. I erased the places that hurt me and replaced them with adventures and so many new faces. NPCs. Names of people changed, their stories changed, I changed. 

Now i have a group of players that have just finished the first campaign in my world. A 2 year long campaign. And they wanted to return to that world immediately, now having started Campaign 2 without even missing a single session. Not only that, but they ask me for extra sessions! They cant get enough! They are excited to be there and experience the story i will present them! I didnt know... people would like it. 

I asked them what kind of DM they would describe me as. They agreed on “The Depressing DM”. The one that makes them face harsh consequences and situations that challenge their morality. I... I didn’t describe myself as happy until i dropped my old relationships, when out on my own with my world, and found new adventurers. I have always felt loved by my family, but i never thought others could love what i do. I still cant believe it is real. I am actually happy. They want me around because of who i am, what i do, and what i give them. I wished i had known sooner... But i am glad i know now. I am so grateful for my players, my friends. Thank you for welcoming me with such open minds, and joining my game. You guys make me happy. :)

[gsmatthews95]

War tourism: dutyful or distasteful?

So its been a while since I was active on this social media forum. Read "a while" as almost a week ago. It has been a productive week, one that has seen us discover Bosnia, learn about recent travesties and eat copious amounts if grease, yum. Bosnia it is safe to say has blown our expectations and left us suitably whelmed (yes the word whelmed is a thing in our vocab. It is when you are not over nor under whelmed so you are merely whelmed.) Having dithered about actually coming to Bosnia having bit heard much about it, our decision to come has proved very right and we're very glad we've come. Coincidentally, we're still actually in Bosnia and Herzegovina (currently in Herzegovina) at the seaside yaaaayy the sea. Its mid thirty degrees, finally we can see what everyone is england and Germany has been complaining about, and were camping for €5 euros each a night, perfect. The Bosnian coast is pretty funny cause its sandwiched in between two parts of Croatia, split and Dubrovnik and is only 12km long, luckily for us though it is 10 times cheaper than Croatia, which is why were here obvs, same coast but way cheaper. We are heading to Croatia next tho woooo but only to Dubrovnik to see some game of thrones, yeah baybey. But that is for a later post at a later time. Back to the present I am writing this currently sat on the stone beach overlooking the beaut sea under a palm tree. So let's recap the last week xoxoxo. The title should give a nice indication for the flow of this piece I believe. Bosnia has been tormented in living memory by the plight of war, siege and ethnic cleansing. The two cities we visited: Sarajevo and mostar are two of the main examples of these with the town of serbrencia (or something like that) being the third most eminent example of this. We went to a photo gallery/museum on sebrencia to gain an idea of the horror that occurred there. It was striking in Sarajevo how central war tourism was to the city and its culture. Unsurprising when the city has undergone a 44 month siege under 25 years ago. But every shop is selling bullets, guns, used helmets and some of the hostels are even called the Franz Ferdinand hostel (as ww1 started there) and the war hostel (a bit morbid eh?). The wars have dictated the tourism and a lot of the city. So, we decided to do a walking tour (free obvs. Who do you think we are?! Rich. Uh no.) It was good, we were the obly two on it, the guide was nice, it was chilled and we had fun although it didn't mention the siege much at all, you had to do a 20 euro tour to hear about that, no thanks. So we took history into our own hands and visited two museums, cultured AF I know. One as mentioned on the serbrecnia genocide and one on the siege of Sarajevo. They both helped impress the horror and death and destruction of the two events into our brains. It was all quite morbid and depressing really but also eye opening how such awful things could have happened in Europe in the age of the un during (just) our lifetimes. Mad. And we've barely heard anything of it. My degree was international relations and I'd only even heard of Bosnia because of a single case study I'd done in lower sixth, madness. Anyhow we feel a duty to preach the terrors we now know to be true. Expect a much more serious George when I return. The city of Sarajevo tho even after these atrocities was beautiful in the old town centre. Very ottoman Turkish styles with small stores, nice restaurants and cool bars with a lot of shisha. Everywhere had shisha. We wandered around d the outer parts of town too which bore much more of the remnants of the war. Bullet holes were a standard in most building and whole, empty and abandoned buildings were a norm, really sad but very striking. Im glad we saw it all. Oo last thing on Sarajevo. We wandered to a fort. The fort wasn't that exciting but the view was immense over the town and across a graveyard of identical white tombstones, another foreboding reminder of the past. It was jokes tho because there was a wedding photoshoot going on and twice we we in their shots and asked to move with the second time us actually having them taking our spit that we were in first, obvs we just know the best spots and they were jealous he he he. The last part of our time in Sarajevo was catching the bus to mostar, should be easy its just a train after all. Firstly we got there 1.5 hours early having got the wrong time for the train. Secondly we had no idea what platform to use as there were no signs and they were so unfriendly. It was deceptively stressful but we got our train. The reason we took the train by the way, not the bus, was cause it was cheaper, shock, and it was meant yo be very picturesque. Spoiler alert: it was. Mostar. We'd been recommended a documentary on the war in mostar as some homework so we'd understand the situation there fully. We did. It was grim. Mostar was massacred and when we saw the resultant city, we got it. Our hostel there was nice. It was small, cheap and had nice owners. The old town if mostar is beautiful. It was completely destroyed in 1995 but was removed with 11 million euros donated by sine eurozone countries. Its very small, cobbled streets and cramped shops. It had an old style beauty to it. Very touristy, thats a given and it was this very busy on these tiny winding roads but that didn't take away from its boutiquey prettiness. What is the main mostar attraction? The old bridge. Built by the Ottomans it was the only bridge, and had the longest arch, 30m, for a long time. It was nice. It was also the spit where locals jump off it Into the river 22m below. Thats very high. I get scared jumping off like 10. Some tourists also do it after a little intro course. It was funny, people give them money, its all good sport. A nice little watch. It was also well hot there, mid thirties. The water was freezing, maybe 10 degrees or lower, very refreshing but bloody freezing. We went for a few swims. We did another walking tour here, shock. It was good but not overly exciting. It was a nice few days capped off by me buying some new trainers. Fake adidas all stars. They look nice let's just hope they dont die on me. Bosnia has recovered a bit from its horrible recent history but is still baring a lot of the brunt of it. They have used the war to promote tourism which, while distasteful in that it caused so much damage and was so recent, has brought in money and promoted awareness of what happened here, or at least in our case. Its been good and I'll write another post after we've left Dubrovnik. What is dead may ever die. G.