an unfortunate case of covid kept me from playtesting @sweetbeagaming 's stunning neighborhood save as much as i would have liked, but there's no denying how absolutely stunning this save is!! @theneighborhoodsave

well, well, well...................... guess the 'vid does want me, after all

psssssssssst. you're wonderful. and ily. that's all. that's the ask.

pspspspspspspspspspsps guess what you're wonderful too and all my 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍 right back at you. that's all 😘 and i hope you're feeling better!! nothing knocks you on your butt like the 'vid.

so i have covid after all.

— I would like to apologize for my absence.... I finally had the displeasure of catching the big C

 so uh i have c*vid fklajfdklds so i guess i’ll be around a bit more the next several days.

so it’s not c*vid but i am very sick so i won’t really be on my blogs this week sorry fam

*thinks about [redacted]*

" I think I hauve covid. "

Not me rewatching the pandemic special and laughing at how Craig, who has been friends with Clyde since childhood, is even tired of his shit of refusing to get vaccinated akgdsvbjstjh

i’m trying to figure out what i would like to acknowledge -- honestly, i’m not fond of the COVID-era (even though the beach is a really nice concept that i would like to implement in a non-COVID setting) of greys, and i don’t feel like rehashing the pandemic that we’re currently living through. i don’t want to acknowledge things past season 18 as well because i chose not to acknowledge s17. i’ll come back when my head isn’t pounding, but i gotta regather my thoughts.

i am in so much trouble for class tomorrow oop 🙃🪦

I finally caught the covid from my fiance. Took its' damn time.

Thank god I chose to stay in isolation with him instead of going to work until I got a positive result (my state in my country lets close contacts continue to go to work if they test negative every day).

Hey y’all! Just wanted to update that I seem to have caught covid (tested positive earlier today), so progress on all my stuff is gonna be even slower until I’m recovered. I feel like I couldn’t think my way out of a paper bag right now — the brain fog sure is a thing, huh? This is my first time getting it and I have to say, so far it’s a 0/10: Would Not Recommend, I feel like microwaved garbage

Anyway, just thought I’d let you guys know that if I’m even more sporadic about posting, this is why lol

Victor Chaos and Butter's Obvious Control and Autonomy Issues

(where I over analyze south park because I have brain rot)

Butters as a character is someone who does not have a lot of control or autonomy over his life. His strict and abusive parents who constantly ground him instead of you know parenting. The other children in his life like Cartman who manipulate him.

The "bad ending" in Post Covid I think is interesting because Professor Chaos evolved specifically out of Butters feeling angry at the world.

With Professor Chaos he was trying to gain some of that autonomy to hurt the world who hurt him. It makes sense that as a persona that evolved because of that feeling of helplessness that he assumes Victor Chaos permanently.

His anger issues manifest in him trying to gain control of his life, there's a reason he became invested in his "brand". A brand is to give control over how others see you. There is insecurity in this feeling of being helpless.

In Post Covid, Butters/Victor Chaos has never had full autonomy for the majority of his life. He went from being grounded in his home to being in a mental institution. He was grounded and then grounded again.

Whether his parents or by an institution, he never had personal autonomy. Not even as an adult where in theory he should have the most control. His entire persona and identity is built around someone who is desperately trying to.

The way Victor Chaos says "I think Butters was a twerpy little loser kid whose parents didn't love him" again this is a defense mechanicism, Victor Chaos is reclaiming space by distancing himself from "Butters"

Victor describes him as a "twerpy little loser" aka the opposite of who Victor Chaos is trying to be because that twerpy little loser kid felt angry at his lack of autonomy and control.

...and yes he did this through NFTS unfortunately.

The reason why I think this is interesting is that it mirrors what happens to people in real life. A lot of the angst and anxiety around being a child is the lack of agency a child has.

As a child there are not many rights available. Your parents decide how they parent you and if they parent you, you cannot choose where you live. You are stuck.

I think a lot of children go through those feelings but it is particularly strong for children with neglectful or abusive parents. But it could also mirror the experiences of disabled people, who are often robbed of their bodily autonomy.

Victor Chaos was his way of getting back at that but in the overwhelming circumstances and trauma Butters became Victor Chaos completely. Which is why he will continue to attempt to exert control even in extremely unhealthy ways...like trash talking people lol.

Not paying you shit so you can waste it on weed

so you come into MY house, tell me what to do with my life, then imply i waste donations on weed. who even are you? do you know how weird it is to rock up to strangers anonymously to be a cunt? do you want to kiss

A conversation/interview video with Casey Hudson called "Casey Hudson Interview: Mass Effect Director on New Studio Humanoid Origin and His Next Game": [source and watch link] In the video they discuss topics like previous BioWare games and the early days at BioWare.

Part of video description:

"In this career-spanning interview, I talk to Mass Effect creator Casey Hudson about his philosophy on game development, projects like Star Wars: KotOR, and his new remote-friendly studio, Humanoid Origin, which is hard at work on an all-new sci-fi game IP."

Some quotes/notes under the cut:

Covid was a strange time for everyone. Casey was a studio head at BioWare when the pandemic and lockdown hit; everyone went home. this was very surreal, but he "was sitting in [his] home office as the General Manager for a studio of several hundred people", and "it kind of worked pretty well, and then it just makes you realize that if that's possible, then maybe you don't need the big infrastructure, huge studio locations, maybe there's a different way to do it."

Casey is also a concept artist. when they were starting creating Mass Effect, he was really concerned with the Citadel and what the shape of it was going to be, so he did tons of drawings trying to figure out what it would look like.

In the early days of BioWare, the old BioWare culture had devs often out dancing on Whyte Avenue. many of the devs in the early days at BW worked on Whyte Avenue. just downstairs from them is where all the bars and restaurants were, and many of the devs lived within walking distance. at that time work was most of their lives. if they wanted to meet their friends at the bar, they were just downstairs or across the street. "This is not a lifestyle that you wanna maintain into your 30s and 40s, but that's kind've what it was like at that time. But because it was so, I think it was a really narrow existence in a lot of ways and half of it is in the winter, bitterly cold outside, that we then first of all have a lot of time to focus and imagine something but also you then really start thinking of like, what does the escape look like? Where do you want to be right now? Instead of in the middle of the winter in Edmonton working 12 hours a day. Where would you, what do you fantasize about? That I think is kinda what propelled a lot of the vision for these really epic places and a sense of escapism." - Interestingly KOTOR and ME1 both have levels/scenes near the end with beaches.

It took people 15 years to notice that the sentence in the opening segment of ME1 "and the civilizations of the galaxy called it.. mass effect" was an homage to Top Gun ("the pilots call it Top Gun"). this was put in there because Casey used to want to be a fighter pilot when he was younger.

Why did they have the Reapers in ME, these lovecraftian terrifying horror things? They originate from 2 things. BW really envisioned ME as "imagine that there was a movie that came out in the late 70s or early 80s". it was to be kind of in the vein of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, or Alien, and like it was like a major sci-fi hit that just didn't get released, only now you get to play it and be in that experience. "So that's kind of where we went with, not necessarily horror, but that sort of sci-fi suspense feeling. And then I think the other piece was, we were just really swinging for the fences. like, if there's a threat, what is the biggest threat? And if you're gonna make a decision in this game, let's make them agonizing decisions of the highest stakes, and so ME kind've has this feeling like, of everything being big and important and difficult choices and huge scale. And I think that's where it came from."

99% of the creature models for Neverwinter Nights were thrown in the trash. Casey made a bunch of models over the course of a year, as a major part of his role that year. Then the D&D 3rd Edition rules came out with concepts in them for how things were supposed to look. "I believe what happened was we were asked to just snap to those concepts, so all of these character models that I had made were just never going to get used. the irony of it is the one thing that did end up getting used was the giant spider model I did in my first day or two."

(on his first day at BioWare they gave him a concept for a giant spider, and in his first week he made this spider monster model.)

early screenshots of NWN were from a prototype as opposed to the proper game engine.

the interviewer mentioned that the NWN era was a stressful time, a dark time at BioWare. the publisher was going bankrupt.

the co-founder doctors Ray and Greg were very good at providing an environment that felt stable because they were shielding the devs from a lot of the existential crisis the business was in, so it felt stable, but they also provided real stability. "The games that we worked on, for many years, everything we worked on shipped and became a good game that brought revenue into the studio and elevated our status as a developer. But I know that it was a lot rougher waters than what we experienced. I'm always curious to follow up with Rey and Greg and find out what that would have been like for them."

The interviewer then mentions that things then got a little more exploratory at the studio at that time, and the fact that there were some cancelled projects. Casey: "At that point, we were becoming larger as a studio and growing the number of projects we had at a given time. I think at one point there was just more projects than we could sustain in terms of focus and just the logistics of getting that many things out. Prior to that though we had an amazing run, it was very rare to be able to ship everything that you work on, and I think we had that for quite a while."

At that time in games development, devs just worked on the game they were working on all day. Nowadays in game development there's lots of other things they often have to do during their day at work (like instead of and in addition to). in his new studio, Casey said he wants to try and work smarter or faster, and without ending up doing crunch time, and without working on things that end up needing to be downscoped.

He also discussed the development of KOTOR at various points in the video and relayed some anecdotes about KOTOR. for example, Jolee Bindo is named after his imaginary friend from childhood that he had.

On the naming of Anthem: "So that one, I've only heard the story secondhand because I came into Anthem at the very end. I was on that project at the very, that was going to be the next full game that I was gonna work on right after ME3. We moved onto what was going to be our new IP and it was called Project Dylan at the time. I worked on Dylan for about a year before I left EA. I was at Microsoft for a while. then after a few years, that project was still going and then had actually been announced as Anthem and had its E3 debut. So they already had their name, as of that point. As I understand, that was another one where it's just, you try a number of different names, and at this point, there are just so many things being copy-written that it's really hard to find a name that isn't blocked by an existing product. But I thought that was a great name."

In the early days of BW they generally didn't have much interaction with the publisher. "It just really felt like we could just go off and design something that was true to itself and was amazing for what we were making". it's harder and harder to do this nowadays as publishers and studios get bigger and bigger.

[source]