#this is an half baked idea but i think a system where you had to disclose who the author/orginator of anything sold was

[kraniumet]

“you want me to not have copyright on my own work? you want a big megacorp to just be able to take my work and make money on it, or making it so nobody will ever see it, leaving me entirely out of the loop, if they desire?”

the current copyright system:

[cressidagrey]

Recipe for Love - Peach Cobbler

Summary:

Azriel finds a bakery and creates his very own reward system.

Warnings:

Kinda Rhys Bashing, but when don't I do that?

A/N:

thanks to @k-godling for listening to me rambling on about this and finding the perfect name for that Bakery! This will eventually be a series consisting out of One-Shots, so if you have an idea, shoot it my way! (Also, if anybody actually tries out that recipe, let me know lol)

Peach Cobbler Filling 2 ½ cups sliced canned peaches ¾ cup canned peach syrup ¼ cup brown sugar (packed) 1 ½ tablespoons cornstarch Few grains salt Dough 1 tablespoon granulated sugar ⅛ teaspoon baking soda 1 cup prepared biscuit mix (or your own biscuit recipe) ⅓ cup cultured sour cream 2 to 3 tablespoons milk (if needed)  Sweet or sour cream for topping

Place peaches in bottom of casserole. Mix peach syrup, brown sugar, cornstarch and salt. Pour over peaches. Set casserole in hot oven, while mixing dough. Stir sugar and soda into biscuit mix. Add cream and milk to make soft dough; mix lightly. Place by spoonfuls on top of hot peaches. Bake 30 to 35 minutes until well browned. Serve warm with sweet or sour cream. 

The Spymaster of the Night Court was contemplating killing his High Lord. 

Or maybe it was Azriel contemplating killing his brother. 

Maybe it was both. 

Whatever it was, Azriel was definitely mentally planning Rhys’ tragic demise as he trudged his way through Velaris. 

It wasn’t the first time he had done it. Wouldn’t be the last time either. 

He would never actually go through with it. 

(Probably.)

Regardless of how annoying Rhys was… regardless of how the words of last Winter Solstice were still echoing in his head. 

Alone the thought of a pleasure hall made him want to throw up these days, after all.  

He didn’t. Azriel knew better than that. 

It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. 

It was his own fault for allowing himself to fall in love with a mated female. It was his own fault for thinking that maybe he had a chance…for thinking that maybe…

He had never had a chance. Pretending otherwise wasn’t going to help him. 

Rhys had made himself clear months ago and then had done the same again today…today when Lucien had asked Elain to dinner and she had agreed. 

Of course, she had agreed. Azriel had taken himself out of the running months ago. 

Azriel had followed his High Lord’s order to the letter. 

Azriel had done everything that was asked of him, even when it had broken his fucking heart and left him…desolate. 

And as a thank you, he got Rhys’ crooning in his mind that See, Az? They worked things out. 

They had. Good for them. 

The food had tasted like ash in his mouth and he hadn’t managed to get down more than half a plate. Not more before he had excused himself, citing unrest in Spring…and had walked out of the River House without even properly seeing where he was going. 

Away. Far, far away. 

He had half a mind to let the shadows take him away. Maybe somewhere deep in the Illyrian Steppes, where there was no being anywhere near him. Where he could throw his magic at a mountain and destroy some rocks with the fury that embered deep within him…

You should get a treat! The shadows told him brightly at that moment, nearly making him stumble. 

What?

Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised him. 

The more forlorn he got, the more depressed…the more optimistic they became. The more they tried to get him to smile…the more they fed him with petty gossip included in their intelligence gathering… the more they did everything to make his life easier for him. 

They were trying. 

It was sweet.

I am not a dog, he grumbled back to them. He wasn’t. 

And besides…he didn’t deserve a treat anyway. For what? Doing his job? Surviving another week? Not killing Rhys during lunch that day? Not wringing Lucien’s neck for politely asking Elain to dinner? Not scratching out somebody’s eyes like a rabid…

Of course not, Master, the shadows agreed easily. You should still get a treat. Something nice, just for yourself. 

Something nice, just for yourself, he turned these words around in his head. 

He did have a lack of that in his life, but then he always had. He had never really had started to amass anything…collect anything…no little things to litter his rooms with…not even as much as a hobby, unless one called insomnia and stabbing the practice puppets in the House of Wind until they were reduced to rubble that. 

All of it was just…his job was his life and that was it. 

And it wasn’t like he deserved it anyway. 

Just like he didn’t deserve a mate, didn’t deserve Mor and didn’t deserve Elain…He didn’t deserve a fucking treat either. 

He clearly didn’t deserve anything that made his life easier. 

There’s this little bakery, the shadows proposed quietly. You could buy yourself a slice of cake! 

A slice of cake. A slice of cake before flying back to the House of Wind, barricading himself into his room and writing another report. 

A slice of cake before he would let the loneliness take over completely…before he would never even allow himself to look at any female ever again because he was not going to go through this pain again. 

Being a little bit overdramatic, Master? the shadows asked him with a sigh and he wanted to growl. 

No. No, actually, not really. 

Why shouldn’t he be overdramatic? 

At least in his own damn mind. It wasn’t like he was throwing that into anybody’s faces. Even when he had wanted to. He had wanted to scratch that smug little smile off Rhys’ face with his bare hand and…

You don’t, Master, the shadows sighed. You didn’t even want us to steal his favourite jacket. 

They had offered. They had offered to make Rhys’ life filled with annoying inconveniences. Azriel had said no after that Winter Solstice. Now he was reconsidering it. 

The problem was just that it wasn’t going to make him happy. 

The shades would be petty and that would be it, but he wouldn’t…it wouldn’t make him feel better. 

He would still feel unfairly treated…he would still feel always pushed to the edges of his family…the one whose emotions didn’t really matter…who’s happiness wasn’t a priority, not even a footnote, set firmly behind whatever was good for the court and that was that. 

He was the one send to do the dirty work, the one expected to deal with it, because clearly it didn’t bother him… which was a lie. Of course, it bothered him. But his skillset made him the obvious choice so…

Mor and whatever these 5 centuries had been…Mor who could have outright turned him down when he had yearned for her and had never bothered to do so. He was still waiting for her to do it. Even now. 

His hands clenched slowly, the scars feeling tighter. Autumn was coming…as soon as the leaves began to turn, the joints started to hurt him. 

They have double chocolate chip cookies, the shadows whispered like it was a state secret. He couldn’t help but bark out a laugh. 

Sugar was his one weakness. 

The shadows knew that. 

It would just be a few copper coins…maybe a silver one or two…his steps faltered.

One slice of cake? As a treat? Just a few minutes sat in one quiet corner of a bakery…alone. With just his shadows…that did sound…nice. 

As a treat for not killing Rhys, Azriel proposed. and for not doing anything, saying anything…for keeping his temper in check. 

He could work with that, right? 

It could be his very own reward system. One slice of cake for…for surviving another week. For not faltering. For not scratching anybody’s eyes out…for not loosing his temper and go into the illyrian Steppes and destroy a small mountain in a fit of rage. 

Huh. 

Maybe the shadows were onto something.

One shadows wrapped himself around his wrist and started tugging him along and Azriel followed. 

Down the bustling streets of Velaris, towards the outskirts of the Rainbow. 

There, Beehive Bakery took up the ground floor of a brownstone Townhouse…a yellow and white striped awning stretching over the length of it. It’s name was screamed from it’s sign above the door that was pushed open, quiet but lively conversation reaching his ears from within. There were three tables outside, filled with people, but as he walked into the shop, careful to tuck his wings into his body…there were still one or two tables left. Even one right there in one corner. 

It smelled heavenly in there…like vanilla and almond, wafting out of the oven thet must be in the backroom…a young High Fae was manning the till. She looked young. More a teen than anything, dark curly hair covering her head…Her limbs hadn’t yet lost all their coltish length. 

“Welcome to Beehive Bakery, what can I get you?” she asked him with more enthusiasm than  he had seen in a long, long time. 

For a moment, he came up short, eyes roving over the baked goods laid out behind the glass of the counter…and then finally snagging on the first cake in front of him…Peach Cobbler. It looked…great with a golden brown crust…there was one slice missing so he could see the perfect orange of carefully sliced peaches peeking out. 

“One Slice of Peach Cobbler, please,” he requested. 

“Coming right up,” she chirped brightly. “Some tea as well?” 

Azriel answered in the affirmative, quietly charmed by her sheer enthusiasm…A few moments later he exchanged a couple of silver coins for a plate holding a slice of peach cobbler, topped with a dollop of cream and a delicate teacup. 

He took both to the table he had sussed from the beginning. Clearly the worst place in the whole shop…but for his usage, it was perfect.

 The darkest corner, right in the back…covered in shadows…nobody would be able to peek at anything if he did choose to read some reports…and nobody could surprise him from the back. 

It was perfect. 

Perfect was also the only word he could imagine for that Peach Cobbler. Quite frankly it was best thing he had ever eaten. Tart but Sweet…and the topping crumbling and the peaches ooey gooey…it was so good it was startling. He could just get a teeny tiny bit of cinnamon in there…

Alone that Peach Cobbler had been worth every single coin. 

By the first forkful, he felt likes osmehting in his chest was easing. By the time he was left with only a third of it he was already dreading to finish the whole piece, because then it would be gone. 

And that just didn’t seem fair. 

He watched the people entering and then leaving again, some just coming for a single loaf of bread, some of them buying pastries or slices of cake to go…some sat down with a friend and conversed with them…The Beehive Bakery seemd to be a quietly buzzing hub of Velaris. 

The young girl behind the counter was busy fulfilling orders and smiling at every customer, some that called her by her name, Juniper. 

Halfway through the afternoon, a new female joined her behind the yonder. This one older, much tinier, her body filled out with lush curves…Blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders, held back by a handkerchief. 

“Done for the day?” she asked Juniper, and Azriel watched silently how she nearly absentmindedly fluttered around the space, replacing empty displays and generally making sure everything was in order. 

“I can stay if you need me, B,” Juniper said quickly but the blonde female waved her off, handing her a envelope from one of the pockets in her frilly pink apron. It had strawberries all over it, Azriel realised with some amusement. Juniper took the envelope, opened it to sneak a peek and then stared at her again. 

“That’s too much,” Juniper complained, clearly longsufferingly but B just laughed. 

“No, it isn’t. It’s just enough,” she promised and Juniper hugged her in thanks. 

“Thanks, B,” Juniper mumbled, before hanging up her apron and disappearing. Leaving B or whatever her name actually was, clearly in charge. 

In the meantime, Azriel had the shadows find him some of the reports he needed to read that were enchanted for secret keeping, only been able to be read by his eyes and his eyes only. 

B knew seemingly everybody that came into the bakery, knew the names of every customer, knew their order…and so Azriel settled in at that table and spend the rest of the afternoon, reading his report and draining his tea until only dark dregs remained. 

He listened to the cadence of her voice as she talked and relaxed in that little corner, where nobody paid him any mind. Nobody flinched away from him. 

Nobody cared. 

It wouldn’t stay his only visit. It would become a weekly tradition, a habit that he shouldn’t have but still had. 

Because he wanted to go to the Beehive Bakery. 

It was the one thing he wanted. 

What Azriel wanted had never mattered. 

Not really. 

Unless it was right here. Unless it was him buying himself Peach Cobbler and cream.

Unless it was him sitting in the darkest corner and just watching. 

[cerastes]

I'm thinking back on my experience with IS2 and IS3 -- both as someone who loves the game mode on his own free time, as well as someone who has streamed hundreds of hours of both -- as, yeah, thing is, the most exciting part of IS3 was definitely the scramble to get the Week 1 Waves 15 clear. It gave an achievement in the horizon, something to strive for, a real endgame challenge that required team building knowhow, execution, and luck.

But after that, it never quite reached the same level of fun as playing or streaming IS2 consistently got. In a lot of ways, IS3 was an improvement, but so many things were half-baked, that you couldn't help but imagine the version where these ideas were legitimately fleshed out: The Light system exists almost exclusively as an extra layer of punishment, and the punishments associated with light ranged from "slap in the wrist" to "you got Metastatic and your 3 damage dealers have it". One particular IS3 exclusive enemy, quite the common enemy at that, requires you to build around it at higher Waves or just fight a constant uphill battle forever: If you don't have at least one source of air Stun, you're constantly at the edge of losing Lives or the run. One end boss, The Last Knight, suffers from Overwatchitis the way the entire gimmick it has is that it inflicts you with hard crowd control (freeze) for basically 80% of the map's length, which, yes, it's an entirely manageable boss, but god it's so mind-numblingly boring. And that's not mentioning that going for that boss can just be a bust at any time if you don't have a Gopnik Solution, further limiting your build options. Another boss, Izumik, while thematically sound, is another slog to deal with, needing around 6 minutes of dealing with a an actual ton of enemies while trying to prevent it from absorbing said horde of enemies before you can even start damaging it (and it's got baseline 150k HP, 2000 DEF, and 70 RES so it's not a fast deal, either) while regularly unleashing map-wide 8 second Stuns after it becomes vulnerable. It's just not fun to constantly have to deal with "oops your entire gang is hard CC'd" as a main mechanic while trying to whittle down what's already an incredibly durable boss. Of course, fun is subjective, but at least everyone I've asked, from my circle or otherwise, has agreed that it's a slog to have to deal with that.

IS2 wasn't without flaws, but I have a lot of fond memories running the most disgustingly crappy meme comps requested by viewers on stream, and never really thinking "this is straight up hopeless", sure, sometimes it'd be difficult because we had a straight up ass team, but that's all it was: Difficult. There's so much that can go wrong in IS3, and that's not necessarily bad at all -- it's a roguelike mode, after all, it comes with the territory and I would not have it any other way -- but at least, in IS2, whenever something goes terribly wrong, you still have things you can do about it, when things go terribly wrong in IS3, and the way they can go wrong without it being any bad decision of yours (such as oops! Metastatic on your key units) makes luck that much more punishing and thus outside of the player's agency in a game mode that otherwise demands a lot of execution and knowhow. Luck is more impartial in IS2, basically, while Luck mostly exists as either punishment or avoidance of punishment but very rarely as a benefit in IS3, and I hope IS4 is better about this because, look, I enjoyed IS3, but it very rarely reached the consistency of IS2 in terms of quality, in my opinion.

[ahoyimlosingmymind]

About lava cake, I want to hear your thoughts about how Marella, as a pyrokinetic, is technically considered talentless in the matchmaking system. Therefore making Fitz and Marella a bad match. How do you think Fitz would react when he realizes this, knowing this could end up in a similar way to Sophitz?

-lava cake anon #2 ;)

Oooo this is a hard one. I'm open to any thoughts!!! @autistic-daydreamer @myfairkatiecat @sacrificialloving

What I'm about to write is so half-baked, I apologize in advance lmao I think it would begin with Alden or Della pulling him to the side and noting how much time he's been spending with Marella-- at this point, Fitz knows he has feelings for her, but he's also very aware of the ramifications. They remind him how important his reputation is, and how it will hurt not only him, but Marella, her family and his own.

He doesn't want this to end the way it did with Sophie. He doesn't want to care about it. But he does- especially as his age creeps closer and closer to the time he's expected to have a winnowing gala. For a while, he starts to distance himself from Marella.

And because she knows him so well, she clocks the reason almost immediately. However, she doesn't confront him on it immediately like she normally would. Because part of her is just as terrified of being a bad match. she doesn't want to hurt his reputation either. She doesn't want to ruin his life. And really, she doesn't want to handle the scorn either. They've talked about it in the past, how big of a deal it is to do things by the book.

But the desire to be with one another is so powerful, that at some point- Fitz takes a leaf out of Keefe's book- finds a forbidden cities leaping crystal and asks Marella to go to the human world with him. It's stupid and reckless. He's never done anything like this. But he's really starting to feel trapped, and well-- he's not friends with Keefe for no reason. He understands his childhood bestfriend's desire to run. He's just never been brave enough to do it before.

But this situation is the final nail in the coffin. And he's just like 'Well, let's seen if Keefe's method really works.' (it's the first time he feels he's ever done something for himself. It's freeing. and terrifying.)

Marella agrees to go with him after a few weeks of radio silence. Because in the human world they can just be. They both agree that this will be their final hurrah, and then, they wont pursue anything with one another. They'll follow the paths laid out for them. However, this does not work, and they end up just secretly dating-- the lie dangling over their heads.

Fitz, of course, realizes he's a hypocrite for it. For suddenly being so willing to do this with Marella, where he wasn't with Sophie. His whole life he has been watched and seen as an image. But Marella is the first girl to truly see through to who he really is, and to shed the false perceptions she had of him early on in their friendship. Whereas, part of him- though he denied it at the time- always felt like Sophie also saw him as perfect in many ways. It was an idea she wasn't quite ready to let go of when it came to him- It feels different with Marella. And besides, Sophie has Keefe now. (but of course, Sophie is still hurt by this when she finds out. Not enough to cause friendship ruining drama, but definitely like 'damn ok ig' lol)

Marella gets exposed as a pyrokinetic at some point, which leads to massive scorn, on top of people finding out they're together.

It's a mess. They probably break up a few times in between everything-- but then one day, things calm down. The Neverseen is defeated, and real societal changes are made, and while it isn't perfect, you can't erase a way of thinking completely, it makes it easier.

Or maybe they just fake their deaths and go to live among humans idek

[umihoshi]

some tips for people who just started living on their own

It's been 4 years now, and I'm not regretting a single day that I moved out. No more adapting to what my parents want, no more reporting where I'm going or who I'm bringing over, I can create my save haven the way I like it. For me, it was really the start of becoming myself.

But, there's a bunch of stuff here and there that would've been nice if I had known it from the get-go. And I thought: let's share them!

1 what appliances to invest in?

one thing that is going to come back every single day is cooking. and food is expensive AF if you're not careful. I found 2 great ways to save a bunch of money and they both rely on one thing: Invest in a good freezer! Many grocery stores have systems where they price down things that are close to the shelf life date. One of our local grocery stores can go up to 70% discount! But the problem with those is, you need to eat it right away.... OR DO YOU??? Freezing things close to expiring will let them last for a full freaking month extra. and vegetables go even longer. Plenty of time to use it when you need it (just don't forget to thaw) Be careful though: once you thawed it, you can't freeze it again.

Items are usually also WAY cheaper if you buy them in bulk. Chop them up and in the freezer they go! This one's also great if you don't always have the energy or drive to cook: cook up a large pot of whatever you like, put it in containers and freeze them. I always like doing so with pasta sauce and then cook the pasta fresh~ But it also works great with stews, curry and other types of sauces. stores like IKEA have containers that are just the right size for one meal.

For some of you, the next one may be a no-brainer, but.... My mom was really proud of how fast she was with doing the dishes. She was always like 'why get a dishwasher, I'm faster if I do it myself'. And I have lived up to that same idea up until half a year ago. My kitchen was always a mess, I didn't feel like cooking, inviting people over was embarrassing. I exhausted myself every time visitors would come and I had to fight that monster pile. Please, if you recognize these problems: invest in a dishwasher. Life became SO MUCH easier. My house is clean, my mind is more at ease, social contact increased cuz it's not as big a hassle to clean before guests show up. I really wish I wouldn't have wasted those 3 years fighting a monster that was this easy to tackle in the end...

2 easy cooking

Though it's also a bit of an investment: cooking becomes fucking easy with an airfryer. No oil is added, so it's a bunch healthier. you just put the temperature and timer and it's done. and a lot of things can just fry simultaneously. chuck in some meat and potato's at 400F (200C) for 20 minutes and all you'll have to worry about is adding some vegies with it. springrolls, pizza, potato's, meat. it all gets nice and crunchy too. (prepare vegies in a rice cooker for the same don't-have-to-keep-an-eye-on-it experience. you can cook them simultaneously with rice too!)

Something that became one of my fave dishes of the late is 'stir fried whatever'. it goes like this: Bake whatever meat you fancy, great with egg or tofu too. add whatever vegies (straight out of the freezer is fine). add stir fry sauce in whatever amount seems nice (little for coating, more if you want it to be saucy). make some carbs and you're fucking DONE! no measuring, no thinking what spices to use, it goes with anything and everything. and your local grocery has probably like 5 different flavors. (or at least, it does here. dunno if that's true for America...) like it creamy? add half a cup of soya milk. it takes like 10 minutes tops (not counting the cooking of rice/pasta/potato/bread)

3 think in money or think in space

With tricks like a good freezer, saving money with discount products becomes a whole lot easier. But there are also different discount products that can save you a lot of money. my mom always used to buy like.... packs of 4 toilet rolls. and if you calculate it, buying 3x4 rolls is so much more expensive than buying a 12 pack. But what you'll need for that is space. Try keeping account of a spot like that in your house. cupboard underneath the sink, the spot where they installed the boiler, top shelves you don't often use cuz it's high up, on top of the fridge, garage. I live in an apartment and have a small storage space for my bicycle. Perfect spot for non-consumables. (be careful to keep them out of reach for mice) think toilet paper, tissues, cat litter, soap, shampoo, toothpaste. they'll be good in 2 years too, and you'll still be needing them all the same. I once found this 6 pack of toothpaste for like 3,-! aint no one selling 1 tube for 0,50 when I buy it once I need it.

dunno if this is of any use to someone, but I hope this can help out anyone to safe some money, time or energy! Because it sure did for me.

[koreanbibliophilegirl]

I suppose I should talk about possible/confirmed plan changes to my WIPs?

(Fair warning: I've mostly calmed down, but I don't want to work myself up again, so I'm gonna be writing in a normal tone. I promise I'm not ignoring or trying to make light of the whole thing! I just don't wanna talk too deeply about it. All the love and support to Shelby Shubble & all victims of abuse!!!💖)

First off, I believe characters are separate from their creators- anyone who continues to create content about c!Wilbur has my support and respect!

(I will most probably continue to consume content related to c!Wilbur as well, though I will tag him as "c!Wilbur" now, rather than "Wilbur Soot"- I've been tagging all dsmp characters only as their corresponding CC's names, mostly out of laziness. For instance, c!Tommy wasn't tagged as "c!Tommy", he was tagged as "TommyInnit". I don't want to change my whole tagging system, but c!Wilbur at least will be tagged as "c!Wilbur" from now on!)

None of my writing was RPF in the first place, it was all about the characters- but I'm not sure if I myself am ready to freely write c!Wilbur or fanfiction!Wilbur stuff yet. Maybe I never will be; idk.

So here are the changes I'll be making!

DSMP Superpower AU: c!Wilbur will stay. I was planning to include all the DSMP characters(The 'mains', at least, I'm not sure about secondary characters yet), and the notion of leaving c!Wilbur out doesn't really appeal to me. So c!Wilbur will still appear here!

Temporal Transcendence: Honestly, at first I thought TT!Wilbur would be irreplaceable, but after some thought, I was surprised to find it might just work! Karl and Niki would play bigger roles than I expected, but it could definitely work. Heck, it might even be better than the original plan! So I think Wilbur will likely be cut from TT.

Oshi No Ko but Happier AU: I'm on the fence about this one. Wilbur's character isn't CRUCIAL crucial, but he's still pretty important. The outline of the plot will look much different if he does indeed end up getting cut out. So I'm gonna mark this WIP as a solid "idk" and just work it out as I go.

Rarepair Royalty AU: I've never talked about this AU. This one is a bit funny, cuz cutting Wilbur's character out actually solves some of the problems I had with the outline! The plot will actually work out better if Secondborn Prince Wilbur didn't exist- so he's definitely cut from this one! I just need to find someone new to pair with Karl. (Probably Seapeekay; I have the currently ongoing MCYT crackship brackets to thank for the ship!)

Lucky Star: Another fic that's never been talked about- this one is my newest WIP! :D I wasn't even sure where I was going to fit Wilbur in- a character called Wilbur never even existed here. Well, he did, but I'd deleted him for plot reasons a while ago and was in the middle of trying to find another slot. (Cyberknife is Techno's dead twin in this WIP btw- he's not a replacement character for Wilbur, the twin was always going to be Cyberknife.)

Tome AU: SBI literally only serves as Tommy's rich and powerful family here- at least, up to where I've fleshed out. Wilbur's only moment in the spotlight is when he argues with Tommy over dinner, bc he doesn't like how Tommy "got stuck" raising baby Shroud with Purpled(who found Shroud in a trash can), & is caught glaring at Purpled. I'll edit him out maybe. Or leave him, he's not a major character after all. idk.

Others(Mostly Bedrock Bros-centric): Honestly, I never could figure out how to write Wilbur's character that well. So 'Wilbur' isn't too big a character in most of these. Will likely cut.

Tom and Bunnypig(Bee and Puppycat AU): You know what, I think I'm going to make this half-baked idea into a proper WIP. Wilbur never existed here either, so yeah.

CONCLUSION: The whole thing is a mess, and I'm sad and mad, as we all are, but I'm gonna stop thinking about how horrible Wilbur Soot is & focus on how brave Shelby Shubble is!

I'm intrigued at what removing a single character did to my plot outlines, and hopefully, this will open a lot of new opportunities in my writing. I'm certainly looking forward to how my writing skills will develop after this.

To everyone who's actually read through this; thank you for reading this whole thing, I know it's kinda long.😅 Have a cookie and a hug, we all need it🍪🫂 Remember to drink water & eat something! All my love💖💖

[balsa-margarita]

Why I'm disappointed in Starbound (and why I still like it, somehow)

So, Starbound. It's an indie game you may or may not know of, whether you've seen it in furry art or heard people call it "ripoff Terraria" or something, or perhaps even played it. What is it, though?

To put it simply, Starbound is a 2D procedurally generated space adventuring game, created by Chucklefish. (I got some images from their press kit to show you what I mean.)

As you can see, there is a lot going on here. First off, there are multiple sapient alien species other than humans in Starbound (it's most obvious with the Floran in the third image) and there's also a distinct storyline to follow. All of that means lore, and this is where the issues start. Immediately.

Starbound takes the idea of "culture as costume" as a model to work off of, rather than a criticism. Take the Hylotl, a race of fish-people. Everything about their culture is taken directly from Japanese culture in real life - they have anime, samurai, and Japanese-inspired architecture. None of this, though, is very deep or well-thought-out. It's just kind of... there, you know? And this is how it is with most of Starbound's alien races (Avians are ripoff Mesoamericans in a lot of ways, Novakid are stereotypical cowboy Western characters) with only a couple of exceptions. At times, this weird lack of thought can be downright insulting, such as with the Floran - who are carelessly modeled after stereotypes of the "cannibal tribe." There are also over a dozen races in the game, and you can only play as seven of them. The others' lore is even less thought out.

Now, you would think that the actual story would be better, right? Well... sort of. The overarching enemy is an entity called "The Ruin," which is a literal living eldritch planet monster (which you kill at the end of the game in a scene much more badass than anything else Chucklefish came up with) which is being aided by a xenophobic human cult that is trying to wipe out all of the other races in the universe. Pretty interesting, aside from the very generic name... but the generic name gives it away. Not only is the Ruin one side of a pure good/evil dichotomy - which, in my opinion, is a bit of a tired way of doing things - but the rest of the writing just feels lazy. Not enough actual eldritch horror in the story where the big bad is an eldritch horror, and not enough focus on the space xenophobes' xenophobia. When you play through it, it feels kind of cheap, and as someone who talks a lot about lore (and writes fanfiction) I have issues with that. But the problems don't stop there.

Guess why it feels cheap? Because it is.

Starbound is one of the worst optimized games I've ever played, up there with things like Pokemon Scarlet/Violet - possibly even worse - and is riddled with half-baked mechanics and terribly shoehorned game progression and design. (Multiplayer in particular is horrific - the game has no strict physics update at all, which basically means people playing the game at different FPS play it at different speeds. As you can imagine, this ends terribly for all involved.) All this is because Chucklefish used unpaid labor - often from teenagers trying to get into the game industry! So, of course, when these people inevitably left because they weren't paid, no one kept working on whatever they had been in charge of... it was a disaster. A total, unmitigated disaster. That's where Starbound stands today.

Unmodded Starbound, at least.

The core concepts of Starbound - bumming around on procedurally generated planets, questing, and being a space landlord, among other things - are still really cool. But it could have been so much cooler! Wasted potential in a way that no other game I've ever played is. This is where mods - and one mod in particular called Frackin' Universe - come in. Frackin' Universe does its very best to fill in the holes left in the basegame, and add new systems that rival some Minecraft tech mods in complexity. It can't fix everything, but it's the closest Starbound will ever get to being a really complete game. (Part of me really wishes I could take the IP from the idiots at Chucklefish and give it to the Frackin' Universe guys. They could make an excellent remake.)

That's it. That's the rant. I just... I really wish Starbound was a better game with development that hadn't been led by a moron who bailed from Re-Logic.

[magicspace114]

New faces - food adventures

So, assuming care of this strange little alien was actually not the best idea you've come up with. For one, they could get sick from anything and what were you going to do? Take them to a human doctor? Give them human medicine?

First, you figured the best course of action was to find out what they could and couldn't eat. Toby's stomach grumbled and you chuckled as the kid curled their arms around it, flushing with embarrassment.

"Alright, Tobs, what do you eat? I'll try and find a substitute that might work."

"Tobs? Didn't you already shorten my name to Toby?" Toby tilted their head.

"Well yes, but this is where human nicknames get weird. You can have even shortened versions or longer versions of short names. Typically, if you're close with a group of people, you'll pick up lots of nicknames, some not even related to your name." You said, heading to your kitchen and not even looking back to see if Toby was following you. You heard the clip clopping of his hooves on the wood. "I've got nicknames like 'flower', 'maisy', 'Taco gremlin', all manner of names really." You shrugged, opening your fridge, "so, food. Do you eat fruit?" You pulled out a punnet of strawberries that you were keeping for a special occasion. This was a rather special occasion.

Toby just blinked for a minute, trying to keep up with your conversation. Were you talking too fast again? On seeing the fruit though, Toby's eyes widened, "what are those?"

"They're strawberries. Pretty fresh still," you pulled the film off and ate one yourself, passing another to Toby.

Toby took it carefully, looking it over in their hands. "Are all those seeds?" They pointed to the specks on the outside.

"Oh, yeah. They don't have any taste or anything. They just pass harmlessly through our systems. Will they be a problem for you?" You asked.

"I-I don't think so," Toby looked down, "I heard that seeds are designed to make it through digestive systems unharmed as a dispersal method. If they survive your systems, they should survive mine, right?" You smiled and nodded. Toby took a small cautious bite.

You waited. There was a moment of silence where both you and Toby held your breaths. Then the sugar kicked in and you saw it kick in as soon as Toby registered it. Their eyes widened and they looked back at the strawberry, taking another, larger bite.

You just laughed. "Like it?"

"Yes!" Toby said, "this is great! I've never tasted anything like this before."

You laughed more. "Want another one?" You asked when Toby finished their first.

"C-can I?" Toby asked, voice cautious again.

"Of course," you smiled, "all you need to do is ask." You handed them another and they ate it up. "As great as it is that you like them, we could look into what filling foods you can try. Strawberries are more of a treat."

"Well, back home, we'd have these green, leafy plants that we'd eat from. They're very cellulose based but they have plenty of vitamins in them." Toby explained, "my moth- uh- well- Mylaiha would also use some ingredients to make this thing called uh- Pola. It had to be baked and it smelled lovely when it was fresh. I'm not sure what the equivalent would be."

"Hmm, can you maybe describe what the ingredients are?" You asked, "we like to bake things too, we might have something like that."

"Well, um... there is seeds and roots that are ground into a powder. She'd mix it with some other things like water and um... well... I don't really know. I wasn't allowed to see how she made it." Toby shrunk down now.

"Seeds and roots ground into a powder?" You pondered, "that sounds like flour to me and when you mix it with water, it turns into a paste like dough. Are you describing bread?"

"What's bread?" Toby tilted their head to the side.

You smiled and pulled out half a loaf of bread from your cupboard and gave them a slice to investigate. They turned it over in their hands, squeezing it gently then ripping it a little. You just held back another chuckle at how child-like they seemed, like a toddler given play-doh for the first time, having no idea what to do with it.

"It looks different," Toby mumbled.

"It will. We tend to add other things into it like sugar, yeast, I think white bread is meant to have fortified calcium in it too." You listed off, turning to look at the ingredients list on the loaf.

Toby took a bite. You watched as they chewed, their face twisting thoughtfully. Like with the strawberries, you could see their whole thought process. First, there was confusion as they tried out the new taste and texture on their tongue, then it turned to thought as they compared it to their memory.

Finally, Toby just shrugged, raising their eyebrows and nodding. "It's alright. I think I like it. It's a bit similar to Pola."

"That's good," you nodded, "there are many different types of bread. We could try more later. Right now, let's make you a proper meal." You ruffled their hair before turning away to make something with bread. Surprisingly, Toby didn't flinch away at the contact like you'd expected. If anything, you thought they leaned in a bit.

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[solar-sunnyside-up]

Did you know that cottagecore has been known to have ties to fascism and colonialism?

this was the link added in a separate ask, and it is a very good conversation so I'm putting at the top here!! https://www.tumblr.com/solarpunkcast/189377668416/time-to-stop-tagging-cottagecore-alongside Yes I am very aware of this problem. While I think it's a problem to fix, I don't think it's worth abandoning the entire thing. To be brief though if you can't read the linked think yourself, cottagecore, and trad like sub cultures always have ideas of colonialism, classism, ableism, racism, sexism baked into them. And in general just a very western perspective to things. So I totally understand why this is gross to ppl who are looking to escape those systems through solarpunk. These points are the most important part to this convo, I think these points should be on everyone's mind when interacting with almost any aesthetic. We as a solarpunk community aren't safe from Nazi shit. we aren't safe from our bigotry seeping in. And if anything I post is either tied to or supporting this you let me know I'll sort it out (with violence and arson where needed) I think cottagecore in particular is a … weird one. A lot of its bones of cottagecore are related to why ppl like Solarpunk. But not just that. It was born in a time of isolation, of the government abandoning it's citizens during a plague, of burn out over ungrateful and exploitive jobs. Ppl where rejecting the American Dream in mass, questioning the appeal of city and career. Instead they wanted so badly to make clothes for their friends, to read books on rainy days and make soup, to have control over their food supply. I know many ppl in solarpunk who started in that initial trend of cottagecore and then realized they didn't have to day dream about a cottage lifestyle that half of them couldn't even live bc of accessability. They could build it where they were. For me the reason is bc cottagecore is this gutteral reaction. There is something WRONG with society, and our natural instinct, particularly when burnt out and too tired to even dream of a better place, we think of running away. Run away from war, from environmental disaster, from the bigots on your doorstep that want you dead. Run. it's the only option!! But then they tend to create small social circles through crafts and recipes, jokes about coliving with friends in the city, and somewhere in there they realize ppl need each other. Slowly the mentality goes from a flight response to a "I'm going to just do what I want in the place I already live" and mutual aid and common spaces form almost on accident. But bc of the base appeal, just like homemaking circles, the community that doesn't examines things further tend to breed this  Colonialistic, ablest, sexist culture of farm life being the only answer. But I don't blame cottagecore for this if we don't give them any other options to remove the bigotry but keep the helpful, kind and sweet parts. I like to think about it like Riot grrrl, a group with good intents that didn't dissect just ENOUGH of the problem to remove the racism from their ideals. But there where still parts worth saving, parts worth reusing and refining and protecting. There were ppl in these circles that took it to the next step of equality, that handled that problem of solidarity and inclusion. But many stayed within the Riot grrl circles to refine this rather then abandon it in its entirety. I think it's worth letting cottage core go through the process of letting them know better is possible even within their aesthic niche. Just know I'm not turning my eye from this, I won't ever turn my eye from the truth. I know it's a festering wound that could kill off any good intent it had. I just think it should be given the chance to realize the overlap we have.

[allycat75]

So I hear ASP may be getting some traction, Boston Dumb Fuck.

JUST DON'T! And hear me out. This one is going to be long and harsh, but it needs to be said.

(I don't give a fuck if he ever reads what I write, but this one is bigger than him so if any of you trolls who work for him want to pass this on, feel free).

There are many reasons why ASP needs to die a quiet death:

It was a half baked idea to begin with- it was noble to try to create a site for the "young people" where they could find information quickly and easily about issues of the day. But it was myopic to limit it to elected officials, who all have their own agenda. It needed to expand to possibly cabinet members or advocacy groups. You can never truly be fair and balanced, but as we have seen lately, those we elect are not always intellectual arbiters.

Your reputation is in the shitter- so to the general public, either you married a racist antisemite (don't worry, if you continue to push this site, it will come out) or if you admit to the PR you are now a known liar and hypocrite, not what you want to represent based on the goals and aspirations of the site. And have you seen your IG numbers lately. Oy! I haven't seen that much crimison since The Red Wedding. And these are probably your Dick-pic Protection Squad fans, who used to support all of your flights of fancy. What you have left are most likely bots, clout chasers and people who forgot they were following you. Besides, ASP was the old, Captain America Chris Evans. He is long gone. He self immolated and burned everything to the ground. I know there were circumstances we aren't privy to that made you choose this path, but like it or not, this was your decision and there are consequences. As a few wise men from England said "you can't always get what you want (but you get what you need)".

Our democracy is teetering on the ragged edge- the last thing we need is to try to boil down complex issues young voters are going to be taking to the polls into 2 minute chunks. I know our brains have been tik tok-ified, but that works for explaining how to make slime, or dissecting how a PR stunt between a Portuguese Nazi and a privileged former superhero could go massively wrong, but it is not the right tool to discuss the complex issues and high stakes that are riding on this election. At best it will be ineffectual, like bringing Highlights for Children to the book club where they are discussing War and Peace. At worst it gives an insidious platform to those who wish to undermine our political systems. You are running out of decent Republicans who can represent their position, if they have a clear position at all.

I have noticed you tend to dig your heels in when things start to change and you may not be ready for it. I saw this when you were dating Jenny and you started to listen more, but I think you stopped because you didn't like what you were hearing. I bet there were voices telling you Ghosted was going off track and was going to be a festering turd of a movie, but instead of pivoting, you plowed ahead, full speed. I won't even get into the nightmare mess you are in right now, but see bullet 2 above to be reminded.

I sense you have not had much struggle in your life. Everything has come fairly easily and I can see why. You are very charming and endearing, who wouldn't want to give you everything. But lessons were never learned. Now, hopefully you are learning them and they will stick.

To continue this project now would be pure ego, and don't you talk all the time about the egoic mind, or some shit. I don't know, I never understood it, always thought it was mental masterbation. But you seemed to believe it. You don't want to be the guy hanging out in the high school parking lot, years after graduation. We already know that isn't a good look for you.

[tiredassmage]

pledges made on bloody knees from the WIP game?

Nervous laughter!!!! So, remember how I mentioned Tyr would fuck up and make poor decisions even knowing the outcome was anything but good?

This is that. So I could get it out of my system instead of continuing to ruminate on it and watch it become progressively worse (considering recent discussions, that was maybe... half-successful). That's why the details of this are half-baked because I just needed to purge angsty dialogue out of my brain.

And also that like three-month long moment I had about "you know what would be romantic? The inherent tragedy of Tyr and Malavai catching feelings for each other and oh my god, Theron, I think you're developing a type. (Emotionally compromised Imperials. Rough one, buddy.)"

What could possibly go wrong? :,)))

“Tyr!” Malavai hissed as he snatched the Commander’s arm, desperation tearing through the professionalism that so often grounded him when little else could.

He’d spent hours running strategies and tactics for when this day would come. It’d never done much to tame the fear that would claw through his stomach whenever he faced down reality.

“If you go in there…” Malavai swallowed harshly. Tyr’s storm-gray eyes calmly leveled with his and he felt his heart sink.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

“You know what they do with traitors, Tyr. Please… This is suicide, Commander!”

Tyr offered him a faint smile, almost apologetic. “This was always the plan, Major. We both knew that,” he said quietly. Still, he reached out and gently caressed his love’s jaw.

Quinn bit the inside of his lip in a vain attempt to prevent it from trembling. “Commander…” It was a kindness, really - the ability to fall back on titles. It was a way to offer each other space, to pace themselves. “I… Sir, even if they don’t find you, the blast radius on these charges…”

The Commander sighed quietly as his gaze dropped. “We can’t afford to let them get this thing in the air, Major.”

The risk was too great. But even that Republic agent hadn’t-

“I…” Malavai’s eyes stung. He rolled his jaw and swallowed harshly. “I… understand, Commander…”

Everyone call Tyr a bastard for taking Malavai with him because Theron wouldn't take this half as well and, tactically, it was easier to have an Imperial officer at his side rather than the ex-SIS agent. He knew exactly what the fuck he was doing and I'm still mad at him for this. Played them all like a fiddle and has the audacity to tell them it's okay.

I haven't worked on this in months (did I really start this in September??? Of course I wrote it late at night, that sounds like a thing I'd do) because I still don't trust him. And I still have no idea where they're taking the saboteur storyline and I swear- If they encourage this bullshit, I'm suing Tyr for everything he's worth.

And also I haven't emotionally recovered from this part, either:

“Malavai, make me a new promise.” Tyr watched him steadily, stilling him with his careful words. “Look after Theron, alright..? And you’re still a father, Malavai. I need you to stay here, okay..?”

Literally don't look at me @ my own ocs, as if I wasn't in enough pain, I just thought it'd be silly to make it worse. On myself. With bg SW/Malavai. Is part of the reason I haven't dedicated to this because it hurts me to write? Possibly. Very, very possibly!

Not pictured is somewhere, Theron is getting into as close to a fistfight as possible over holocall with Jonas for letting Tyr go through with this. Send your prayers to Jonas because I do not envy him trying to explain this.

[oatmealaddiction]

I am so sorry to come careening into your asks like this, but that post you reblogged where OP directly conflates conservatism with nazi germany is driving me insane. it’s like, has it occurred to people that painting a whole community as remorselessly evil perhaps has some drawbacks? maybe that history can also tell us about other times having no empathy for ‘the enemy’ has worked out well for all involved?

like. I get that conservatives have done violence and significant harm to our communities. those things are unforgivable. at the same time you cannot simply write off like half of the US for having bad politics. fight against them, fight against fasc alt right shit, just don’t say there’s something innately wrong with those shitheads that is beyond changing. that’s such eugenics bullshit.

There's a good book called "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" by Hannah Arendt. Arendt was a Jewish woman who fled Germany and the book was about the trial of Adolf Eichmann, an SS Officer who oversaw the deportation of many Jewish people to Auschwitz. What Arendt found after studying Eichmann was that at the end of the day, in spite of everything, he was just a normal guy. There was nothing off in his psychology, he wasn't mentally unwell, and by all accounts he was a regular citizen who had 'enthusiastically' upheld the system that the Nazi's put in place. Eichmann harbored zero guilt for any of his actions up until his execution, and argued throughout the trial that he bore no personal responsibility for what he'd done. I don't think it's inaccurate to compare conservatism to fascism these days given how many alt-right members are chomping at the bit to install an authoritarian in office, but if all you're going to say is that Republicans got the "Nazi" gene, you've got a misunderstanding about what makes people evil and how they justify evil to themselves. It's not that conservatives are born without the capacity to feel for others or that because they were born bad they became conservative and because you were born good you became liberal. When evil is systematized by those in power and held up as a status quo, doing depraved evil shit becomes ordinary and normal. For example, plenty of Americans still think it's normal and justifiable to enact the death penalty because it's been systematized as part of our criminal justice system. It's the status quo, so therefore it must be upheld no matter how immoral it is.

Frankly, I'm not going to sit here and try to defend conservative beliefs at a time when the Supreme Court is out here just chipping away at everyone's civil rights and white supremacists are breaking into the capital. I don't particularly feel bad writing off the people who continue to vote for and empower fascists. How do you empathize with someone who thinks you're a child predator or that you shouldn't have bodily autonomy? How do you keep your heart open to people advocating that teachers be shot for using someone's correct pronouns? Personally I think galvanizing more liberals into using their vote strategically and engaging in political action will have faster positive action than trying to win over the group who's dictated by bigotry. That said, it's important to understand that these views have been baked into America before the Pilgrims even got here. These ideas didn't pop up over night because an evil person invented them, they've been present for thousands and thousands of years. The conservative party acts the way they do because transphobia and misogyny and racism are normal aspects of American culture that have been systematized into our government and our society, Conservatives believe that because those things are normal, therefore they are just. So I take issue with the idea that there's something inherent in their brains or psychology that turned them evil, and that liberals are immune to this problem. Liberals will uphold the status quo too, albeit with different lingo. Plenty of liberals engage in True Crime podcasts where they celebrate when the police infringe on civil liberties in order to catch a serial killer. "No ethical consumption under capitalism" is often used as a blanket excuse to ignore unfair labor practices. The Queer community loves to accuse it's own of toxicity and predation just as much as the conservatives do. During the Heard v. Depp defamation trial, tons of liberals rejoiced at the way the legal system was used to silence a DV survivor and were happy to support suing a woman for talking about abuse. A lot of the time the people saying things like this, do not think of themselves as doing anything wrong. Evil is boring, and it's normal, and oftentimes those who act immorally do so without a single ping of their conscious. Thinking that conservatives were born with abusive personalities is the exact thinking people had about Nazi's in the wake of World War II. Americans assumed that there was something fundamentally sick and broken in the Nazi psychology, when in actuality it wasn't that different from the institutionalized segregation and systematized eugenics America itself had going on at the time. Being a Nazi was super normal in Nazi Germany just like being a racist was super normal in America. If you tell yourself that there's something fundamentally abnormal and inhuman in the actions of your enemies, you miss the wider picture of the systems they're part of. Worse, you're telling yourself that you could never be like that, that you could never do what they did, rather than examine the ways you're already complicit in abusive systems. Bigotry and abuse and apathy towards injustice are all human traits, and buddy we're all human.

tl,dr: Conservative politics aren't evil people politics, they're ubiquitous and we probably all hold them to some extent. So do your due diligence.

[ryssabrin]

finished kotor 2! that last like two hours of the game really drags lol. having a game where the combat system revolves around a party of companions and then having levels where you’re left by yourself can be fun and interesting but not for the entire ending of the game. i had to do the first phase of the final boss twice bc i slipped up right at the beginning of the second phase and died without saving. really annoyed when i figured out how much easier the second phase is lmao. for some reason my lightsaber attacks were just not doing any damage at all (they kept missing? no idea why) so all i could was slowly chisel down her health with all of the two offensive force abilities i had and rage every time she spammed the life drain ability. anyways. now that i’m done venting about that wow! the story was so good!

i think you can def tell it switched developers part way through bc parts of it feel very bioware and parts feel very obsidian. all of the companions have really interesting story hooks but either i sucked at progressing their dialogue or they’re just not written with much depth past a certain point. atton and kreia get a lot of focus and then mira gets a decent amount (but feels much less connected to the main story), but bao-dur, visas, mandalore and the droids get hardly anything. (why was hk-47 even there?) i did dantooine last so i didn’t see much of the disciple (slight blessing in disguise bc i was not expecting smellis to be in this game lmao), but he seemed like he might have had more focus than the droids. i know some of it is tied to your force alignment but still lol. loved what was there in terms of the character writing but a lot of it felt half baked, unfinished, or just missing key moments. there being no loyalty missions of any kind is very felt. i just barely managed to make atton a jedi right before the part of the game where your companions just aren’t there anymore.

if they’re ever able to remake the kotor games, the first one would be pretty easy to just one-to-one remake. add a voiced protagonist, dialogue wheel and proper character creator, beef up the gameplay and cutscenes (and flesh out the romances) and that’s it. but kotor 2 i feel like would need a full restructuring. the main story around the exile and kreia is so good. the way it digs into how different force users experience and relate to the force and how that affects them is good good star wars content and obsidian really nailed that. i wish sion and nihilous were more fleshed out and actually interacted with the exile more to really hammer home that idea and atton’s addition shouldn’t be locked behind figuring out his weird influence gains lol. anything that doesn’t tie in to that kind of falls to the wayside though.

i think it work better if it were less of an rpg. keep the player on their own for the most part with some story sections giving you different companions as uncontrollable npcs. you can keep the sections where the party splits up and you play as a diff character but have it be a set character with a similar moveset. keep the companions in set locations, maybe on the ship maybe not (mira really doesn’t have a reason to leave nar shadaa and mandalore doesn’t need to leave dxun tbh), and have them each have a questline. that would allow the player to engage with the companions as much or as little as possible and focus in more on the exile as a character and their interactions with kreia. the exile could honestly stand to be more of an established character with less player input as blasphemous as that sounds lol. keep most of the dialogue choices and the ability to play it light side or dark side but anything about the exile’s past should be set. and the planet order shouldn’t be variable. i followed the “best” planet order according to google and i didn’t like it actually lol. korriban should absolutely be last as it’s the only planet where you don’t get a companion, you fight sion for the first time and it has that whole optional vision quest thing. dantooine or possibly nar shadaa could be first and the other second with onderon third.

all in all i’m very happy i finally got to play this game and would be so stoked if it got a remake but i don’t think i’ll be doing a dark side run anytime soon lol.

[lovelanguageisolate]

Extremely half baked research idea, I am probably a crank:

The neutron transport equation and the light transport equation are actually remarkably similar. This is why a lot of computer animation pioneers had been trained as nuclear engineers.

I wonder if the GPU support for ray tracing could be used to accelerate neutronics simulations, possibly at higher fidelity than existing simulations (which generally have to quantize time, positions, energies, etc., or use diffusion approximations).

A quick glance at a Vulkan ray tracing tutorial from Nvidia suggests that arbitrary shaders can be attached to ray-surface intersection events, which I presume leads to the creation of more rays. I think it would be fairly easy to go from a table of nuclear interaction cross sections to a bunch of shaders that represent scattering, absorption, neutron birth, etc. possibilities.

I don't know exactly how flexible GPU ray tracers are, but it looks like they can simulate diffuse reflection and anisotropic scattering behavior, which is more flexibility than a lot of neutronics code enables.

The lack of instantaneous travel can be dealt with by testing each neutron with a displacement radius sphere for each frame, saving the momenta and positions of each neutron, and buffering this for the next "frame". At a time scale of 1 user frame = 1/10 to 1 shake or so, this could be a really high fidelity sim!

The biggest obstacle I'm aware of is that hardware ray tracing apparently excludes ray sources outside the viewing frustum by default. The Wolfenstein notes says that they fall back on spherical harmonics, which is a strategy used by a lot of neutronics codes everywhere now. There also aren't a lot of opportunities for culling, as neutron simulations that go "off-screen" can still affect system dynamics. Also, a lot of neutron interactions are volume rather than surface phenomena, so you will need to do some computational geometry and scattering sim in an any-hit shader.

None of these problems seem fatal. In cases where the limitations of the ray tracer work against us, we can fall back on old school approximations that are used in traditional neutronics codes.

And thankfully, there are standard setups and computed values that are used to benchmark neutronics codes, so if the best ray traced neutronics simulation sucks, we could learn exactly how and brainstorm better approaches.

The main practical benefit this could have is tightening the feedback loop on the computation-driven design of nuclear systems so that nuclear engineers could iterate faster.

And I imagine having (coarse) real-time visualization of neutron behavior could be a great intuition-building tool, assuming that that performance-fidelity tradeoff is made correctly.

But is this idea really useful? Nah. The things holding back nuclear aren't really related to the time and expense of neutronics simulations. It's just cool that ray tracing has the potential to go back to its roots.

[miloscat]

[Review] Sonic Lost World (Wii U)

Super Sonic Galaxy!

After Colours, Sonic Team went all out on Generations, refining the 3D boost formula successfully (I've played Generations before so it's not included in my current run through). This is now the era where Colours had somehow been successful and Sega were all in on supporting the Wii U... for the moment. Racing Transformed had special Gamepad modes, and soon Rise of Lyric and the Winter Olympics game would be exclusives for the system, and meanwhile the big new platformer from Sonic Team got a Wii U release and a 3DS companion game by Dimps [to be reviewed later]. In a couple of years time when the writing was on the wall for the Wii U, Sega would port Lost World to the PC, but it's a Wii U game through and through.

On its home platform, Lost World can only be played with the Gamepad. The Wisps, returning from Colours, are controlled with gyro and touchscreen [optionally, thank goodness], along with between-level minigames. Otherwise the second screen shows the usual HUD elements of time/lives/rings etc., your level progress, hints, active missions, and a half-baked inventory system. It's an attempt at dual-screen gaming but I can see how it could all be reworked or moved to a pause screen easily enough.

Otherwise Lost World represents a complete departure from all prior Sonic games. They've totally rethought Sonic's physics, the controls, the whole gameplay paradigm, all in the name of... chasing Mario Galaxy's success, I guess. Now if you're challenging something so well-received, you need to do it well. Lost World doesn't.

The gravity gimmick is the headline feature, with 3D spaces often taking the form of long cylinders or small spheres that freely rotate as you move through them. 2D sequences have some measure of curving as well, but they're usually straightforward sidescrollers. To be perfectly honest I think the whole thing is implemented better here than in Galaxy itself as it doesn't push it too far, keeping it as mainly an aesthetic/structural feature. The returning Wisps remain gimmicky but they actually managed to make most of them work in 3D this time, whether it's old colours or new ideas. They're maybe a step up from their implementation in Colours itself and have less of a focus which also helps.

As for Sonic's movement, he has a run button now, maybe for the first time? The fact that he doesn't conserve momentum at all feels odd but is probably for the best with the type of platforming required. A parkour system is supposed to complement this by letting you run up walls and grab ledges; this is a good platforming crutch but often will misfire, only making things awkward and interrupting flow instead of facilitating it. There's also a wallrunning mechanic and dedicated parkour stunt button, neither of which I ever found useful, intuitive, or fun.

Sonic can spin dash which is used maybe a few times, and there are for some reason two separate homing attack buttons: one is a kick and can't snap you to the ubiquitous bumper launchers, the other is chargeable and combo-able and the key to doing any damage to bosses. The game didn't adequately explain this so I got through the first world or so only using the kick, which made the first boss miserable and janky... but I thought that the game was just like that! In the end though it still was a bit like that.

The game plays out one a Tiny Planet-esque landmass called Lost Hex, which is visually made up of floating hexagons. Well, it is in the map screen anyway, I don't think this really carries over into any levels... It consists of your typical platformer environments skinned over the same core gameplay: plain, desert, jungle, ice, lava, etc. but everything looks quite nice and unlike many other 3D Sonic games it runs consistently smoothly. Individual levels do a decent job varying the biomes, while some bonus levels get a bit more surreal and there's even a truncated boss rush themed after Sonic Team's Saturn classic Nights Into Dreams. The Wii U version also has some fun extras in the form of a short 2D level with a Yoshi's Story aesthetic that plays like a quite bland Yoshi's Island, and a Zelda level with a sort of hybrid Ocarina/Skyward Sword aesthetic that has a mini-open zone Hyrule Field and a sort of mini-dungeon that reskins Lost World's "tube interior" gameplay style. Modders have added these to the PC version so there's no reason to miss out.

The story is building off Colours, with the same writers returning with their weak jokes and shaky characterisation. This time there's more interaction between Eggman and Sonic as they're forced to team up; I like the concept although their dynamic plays out weirdly. Orbot and Cubot are a bit more fleshed out, and Tails is... participating. Amy and Knuckles exist, if only to call Sonic on Facetime twice to try and instil some stakes. Meanwhile the villain squad represent a new nadir for the franchise. The six Zeti have weird cartoonish designs and offensively stock personalities. For example, one of them is big and fat and likes eating and always talks about eating. Funny! Another one is the token girl; she is vain because she's a girl and get this, because she's a girl she's obsessed with her hair and makeup! Wow! Somebody get these guys a Bafta!

For the first time since I think Adventure 2, the animals that can be rescued from defeating Badniks have a gameplay purpose, even if it's just unlocking the final act of each zone. But they make for a persistent counter that marks your progress and a reward for minigames. In a level your rewards are Red Ring collectibles that unlock more minigame stages (these got old for me about halfway through) and lives. You can quickly go through lives on some sections but the game also throws a lot of them at you, and the DLC stages are a quick and effective source of life and animal farming.

Omochao's missions are a nice bonus for doing various actions, but you can only hold three at a time and I spent half the game with the same uncleared set because I couldn't figure out how "ceiling running" worked or be bothered to replay older levels that uniquely had certain kinds of Wisps. These reward items that can be redeemed mid-level but aren't very useful, and again there's a limit of five. Get any more and the game tediously prompts you to discard it or send it to another player via the now defunct Miiverse feature. Other mission rewards consist of various cosmetics for the co-op feature, which I think is similar to the Mario Galaxy "younger sibling" type of "multiplayer". And speaking of this era of Nintendo, Lost World also has the patronising "skip ahead a checkpoint" prompt if you die too many times, which I only ever activated by accident thus cheating myself out of gameplay. Thanks game.

The soundtrack by my new favourite person Tomoya Ohtani ranges from pleasant to "rivals Rooftop Run", which is high praise. I was bummed to discover that there is no new main vocal track this time as those have been highlights of his soundtracks, but Forces and later Frontiers make up for it by having tons of them.

Totally reworking your core gameplay concept is a big gamble which can either pay off (eg. Unleashed Day stages), or it can backfire (eg. Unleashed Night stages) [your mileage may vary, of course]. In the case of Lost World, on balance it's more the latter. There's certainly potential here but it's a shame to seemingly throw away the progress that had been made in getting to Generations. At least they picked that back up and hit a sweet spot for me with Forces, which makes Lost World a one-off that gets consigned to the "failed experiments" pile with the Storybook games. I guess over the long term the franchise is constantly reinventing itself and I respect that, but they can't all be winners. But before we dispense with Lost World completely, there's a 3DS version created by Dimps that I must investigate! Until then...!

[quill-of-thoth]

Okay but. Tiny swimming things on europa are more exciting, conceptually, than an alien civilization. Alien civilizations, and travel between solar systems, and people who we can talk to who aren’t us make great storytelling. But from a physics standpoint actually talking to aliens is an almost certain impossibility - for all the proposed solutions to faster than light space travel or instant communication, it’s likely that those problems are just too large in scale for it to be possible for us, or actually any civilization in the universe, ever, to solve them.  I know I talk about scale problems a lot but I think it’s one place where we don’t actually get enough scientific literacy education and that leads to people making policy and personal decisions based on presuming that science fiction is a “when” question instead of a “what if.” Say you could, I don’t know, reliably manipulate particles that exist also as fields rather than waves throughout the universe, potentially fixing the problems of communication degrading across the lightyears and also the speed of light meaning that we’re anywhere from four and a half years to the entire age of the universe away from getting any information from planets outside our solar system. You would still need someone on the other end to know how to build apparatuses that send information BACK. Then there’s faster than light travel, an even worse problem because it would probably require energy, and the scale problem gets worse, because you’re hoping to send STUFF rather than subatomic particles, and it’s very possible that there does not physically exist enough energy in possibly the universe to send, say, an intact car with living creatures in it, fast enough for those creatures to make it at enough under the speed of light to survive, even to our nearest neighbor Alpha Centauri. Even if we sent microbes and not people, even if it took us ten years to get to Alpha Centauri instead of the four and a half ish at lightspeed. Even if we sent a mars rover’s great great grand-bot to Alpha Centauri with some sort of decision-making process baked in and resigned ourselves to being spectators to a robot’s exploration half a decade after the fact.  Maybe physics gets weird in ways that we cannot predict that make this a less impossible problem. We’re not close to that. It probably seemed like we could be to people last century who thought “we’ve split an atom, the next frontier could be anything” but we knew that atoms consisted of separate parts since before 1900: it’s fundamental to how chemistry actually works, and we were poking around in predicting the results of chemistry during basically the entire 1800′s. We had an okay knowledge of what happened but not WHY.  Back to biochemistry, instead of physical chemistry: instead of the chemistry proliferation of the 1800′s, we have the proliferation of genetics in the 1900′s. We know (because genetics is a step up in complexity from chemistry: DNA is a complex, self assembling chemical process that exists only because with large enough chemicals there are very specific arrangements where it takes less energy to stay in shape than to dissolve into component parts - this is super simplified by the way -) and we’re still working on it. We’re going to be working on it for a lot longer than the idea of particles within an atom because there is so much more of it.  (There is also a LOT going the other direction, particles within particles, which is why we now know that the Higgs Boson exists instead of being so theoretical that it was nicknamed the god particle, but we have immense scale problems studying subatomic particles, and we don’t have the same problem for chemistry or biochemistry. Or microbiology. Time to re-enter europa.) The things Europa microbes could teach us in the fields of microbiology / biochemistry are way more important to our current state of knowledge as a species than if we could magically get cell signal to Alpha Centauri. We know how a lot of biochemical processes work, and why when they’re purely chemical. 

For example, we know that the lipid layer surrounding cells exists because, for chemical reasons, one end of a lipid hates touching water and the other doesn’t mind. So you put a bunch of lipid molecules in water and they self-assemble into little clumps, with their water-hating ends inward. Put enough in and stir and you get bubbles of lipid, where there’s water inside the bubble but the lipid is forming a layer, like a sheet of paper but impossibly thinner, water hating ends mashed together while the other ends look out into two separate seas. One sea has more salt than the other, but that’s okay: salt ions are so much smaller than lipids that they can just wiggle through the barrier. The lipids will turn a tiny tiny bit so the water hating ends don’t touch the ions, which they also don’t like much. The inner and outer seas make sure they have roughly the same amount of ions, and in doing so make sure they can have single atoms pass through. Water is only three atoms large. A lipid is about sixty atoms large. An amino acid is about twenty atoms large, and it mostly stays inside the inner sea if that’s where it starts out. The outer sea is more turbulent - complex proteins don’t form in it without breaking apart. The inner sea is calmer. Some proteins get so large that when they fold on themselves to reach the most compact structures they start having physical behaviors, like the motion stored in a tightly wound spring. Some proteins move in ways that interact with other proteins, without changing anything about their chemical composition. Somewhere in all this we get systems of proteins, and this is where we reach the unknown WHY stage, that get complex enough that they start assembling other chemicals, which in turn tell other proteins how to make more proteins. And sugars. And - well a hell of a lot of chemicals, it turns out. If you have some idea of how many grains of rice is a billion, you still don’t understand how many cells are in a moderately sized mammal. The scale difference between a million and a billion is not QUITE the same as the scale difference between a billion and a trillion but we’re getting close. The scale difference between an atom and a virus is similar to the scale difference between humans and the sun, in that math doesn’t quite break down when we think about it, but our ability to do math without technical aids does.  Europan life, no matter how unicellular, could teach us a lot about WHY life works this way. If they have the same proteins (or enough of the same) we can be reasonably sure that a lot of the chemical building blocks of life are simply the most durable organizations of specific chemicals in tiny envelopes of water. If they don’t, we’ll know that we need to broaden our search. If Europan life was microbes and viruses we would eventually know enough about them to track their evolution. If it was weird enough - say it lacked DNA and RNA - we would be able to discover a completely different principal of chemical self-organization leading to life. Theorizing a genetic structure that isn’t DNA/RNA in enough detail to be worth studying is a ludicrous amount of work: we are currently gamely trying to find different possible folds for individual proteins, which are usually smaller, by a combination of sheer computing power and luck.  A decade ago when I was actually taking microbio, it was infinitely faster and cheaper in terms of energy to have humans propose protein arrangements and have computers check them: shout out to https://fold.it/, which you can still play for the sake of science. The rise of machine learning AI hasn’t made a dent here: it likely won’t. The scale difference between colored pixels or individual word arrangements and the folds of a protein is probably also like the difference between a human and the sun. Finding life on Europa, whether it’s different than our microbes or not, could be the kind of connection in the field of molecular biology that discovering the individual components of the core of an atom one after another in the early 1800′s was: the Why that births a dozen new fields.  TLDR: a microbe not of this world is a larger amount of information than being able to talk directly to an alien and infinitely less impossible. 

do you believe in aliens

yeah but in the very boring "there's probably some tiny things swimming around on europa" way, not in the flying saucers way