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mayorofcattown · 4 years

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lol it’s been a while, but finally making an update on the original VN I’ve been (very slowly) working on. I meant to do this like a month ago but wanted to finish up some sketches first and then all of well everything happened and I got distracted oops. planning on just posting most general updates on here tho, there’s not much point putting original stuff behind a paywall atm, I figure the better way to get ppl interested is to talk abt it here

anyway I’ve decided to just jump right into making it rather than trying to make another smaller game, mostly cause I haven’t had any better ideas and also cause the coding was honestly easier than I expected anyway.

Been making some progress on the design/aesthetic stuff (like the logo and sprite/menu roughs above), plus some boring back end stuff setting up some of the mechanics/systems the game is gonna use in renpy, which tbh sounds way fancier than it is... but anyway this will get long so I’m gonna put the rest under the cut

I posted it above, but I made a new logo! I honestly wasn’t planning to at first, I was just making some minor updates to it so I could try out some interface layouts, and then next minute I’d been fussing with it for like four hours, oops. But I like the way it turned out (tho I might fiddle with the i a bit more...) it fits the aesthetic nicely, tho I still need to make an actual like. vector version of it to actually use in things

here’s a comparison of it next to the old one if anyone’s curious (old one is top)

anyway, as for the game itself I’ve mostly just been setting up the different stat systems, and I’ve got a working glossary, stats and friendship system going, though they’re very bare bones at the moment, as you can see below

they weren’t actually as hard to put in as I thought they would be tbh, the glossary was actually harder weirdly enough ha ha. though they’ll probably get more complicated once there’s actual Content to deal with...the actual game itself is still very basic tho

I have been doing some interface designs, all still very rough wireframes tho. most of them honestly were basically illegible to anyone but me, but I do have this nicer looking wireframe of the stats page that I put together. I tried to work as much with the existing renpy layout as possible, as editing the layouts of things in renpy is a Huge Pain compared to just changing colours and slapping nice background art in is lol. the fourth character here is a character who I’m still working on finalising some of the design and story for, so I can’t show her yet, but Soon

one new character I Can show off tho (as you can see from the first sprite art I posted, ignore how messy it is, they were mostly just to rough out the interface) is this guy:

I am very indecisive abt names but I’m like 90% settled on naming him ‘Kai Parata’, he’s a young mechanic working at his family’s mechanic place where he mostly works repairing mechanical pets. He and Trinity become very good friends ;)

On the subject of the story, I haven’t been working on it as actively as the other parts, in the sense that I haven’t written any actual scripts or anything, mostly just spit balling ideas around parts of the story I’ve been struggling with. I’ve had this story idea since I was like, 15, and that’s definitely meant a lot of the writing process has been course correcting Bad Ideas I came up with when I was a teen lol. And the ‘bad idea’ I’d been struggling with lately was the police elements of the setting. I’d been pretty hmm abt it for a year or two now already but these last few months were uhh definitely the nail in the coffin that made me actually commit to changing it. While the story never really framed them as ‘good’, I mean its a dystopia the cops being shitty is basically a genre requirement, and it’s a fairly minor part of the story, I still didn’t feel anyone would be comfortable reading abt it, and I def wasn’t comfortable writing it anymore.

But once I actually dug into it, I realised it wasn’t actually super critical to the story, I’d rly only made a cop character in the first place cause I needed something to contrast a ‘hacker’ and that’s the first thing I thought of, but once I thought abt it there were wayy better options. Turns out making the character guy working in security at the big wig tech firm Skyler hacks into accomplishes literally the exact same beats story wise, fits way better with the story’s themes and world building, and also gave me a tonne of ideas for his backstory which I’d been stuck on for a while. And it isn’t going to make people’s skin crawl anywhere near as much... It’s certainly a much better direction for the story either way.

Anyway, that about wraps up most of what I’ve been working on. Next I’m probably going to start setting up the interface designs in game, and (hopefully) actually plotting out some of the story. I might also do some rough sprites and things too. Also actually design some of the environments too oops... anyway we’ll see.

Currently my plans for actually releasing stuff is probably just work on the game until I’ve got most of the core elements designed/implemented, and then just release a demo of the first few chapters for ppl to play so I can test it/gain interest. I had been considering doing like a mini spinoff first, but I never had any good ideas lol so I’ve just decided to go with a demo version. Who knows how long it’ll be before that happens tho, while the story doesn’t need to be finished I will need a p decent portion of the art done to even release anything. But things are getting there ya know

#honestly it felt like a hadn't done much but seeing it all compiled here it actually looks like a lot lol #tho it is over the space of like idk. 6 months???#VNS #art #I guess?#original art

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brin-bellway · 6 years

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Sort-of-tagged by @maryellencarter.

the last movie you watched: I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised if I haven't watched a movie beginning-to-end since seeing Mockingjay Pt 2† in a theatre. I'm not really big on video.

(Which is also why I haven’t done the favourite-movies-as-gifs meme @agapi42 tagged me in. Sorry, Agapi: I do appreciate that you thought of me, but I don’t think I’m the right person to do that meme.)

Edit: wait, hang on, I saw The Force Awakens (I think shortly after it came out on DVD), and that would have been more recent than Mockingjay. So that puts a new cap on how long ago the most recent movie could have been.

the last tv series you watched: There is...a distinct possibility that I have not sought out any TV since Daily Planet ended. Again, not big on video. Mom has been watching The Worst Witch and Merlin, usually while I am in the room.

the last webseries you watched: I know I watched Red vs Blue a few years back (think I got partway through S12). Neither my sense of the boundaries of "webseries" nor my sense of what time things happened is good enough to say if there were any more recent than that.

the last comedy special you watched: I agree with maryellencarter, re: what does this even mean.

Hmm...*googles “comedy special”*

This appears to mean a recorded stand-up act, especially but not necessarily on Netflix. It has been so long since I watched stand-up that I really couldn’t say who it was, let alone which specific act.

the last podcast you listened to: Talk the Talk, as is traditional on the ride over to an exam. (I had my accounting midterm today.) The episode in question was apparently locked behind a Patreon paywall some time after I downloaded it, but it's about Chinese puns and censorship.

the last game you played: Video game: Flight Rising. My familiar fund is coming along nicely, though gems per se are a bit hard to come by at the moment what with the new Starmap gene. Board game: Wormhole, a locally-designed trivia game (mostly history and geography, with the occasional science question) my parents found at Value Village (thrift store chain, pretty much the Canadian version of Goodwill). I later saw it at a board-game store for 90% off, so I guess it wasn't too popular. (And indeed, nothing relevant comes up when I google it.) It's okay as trivia games go, though the difficulty level of the questions feels pretty variable (and they aren't divided into distinct difficulty levels). App game: I don't play these much at the moment. Whenever Pokemon Go sends me a "we miss you, here's some free stuff to entice you back" code I pop in, redeem it, and then immediately leave, so technically Pokemon Go. (I figure there's a good chance I'll start playing again at some point, and I might as well acquire a stockpile of double-XP items and egg incubators for if/when that happens.) Actually *playing* might have also been Pokemon Go, or it might have been sudoku.

the last book you read: Hmm. My reading has mostly not been in book form lately. Probably Welcome to Floating Point. (That’s just the first one, not the whole trilogy: I haven’t finished the rest yet.) The author's habit of using "spoke" rather than "said" as the default speech marker is a little irritating, but I liked it otherwise.

Alternately, if you want something more traditionally published and/or costing money: Pyramid of Peril. (Though, in fairness re: costing money, the audiobook is now free. But I already owned the ebook, and I prefer text to audiobooks anyway.)

the last comic book you read: I don't read comic books myself.

the last webcomic you read: I think XKCD was more recent than Parhelion.

the last song you listened to: "Tried", by Assemblage 23.

the last musical you listened to: I don't really do these either. By default, then, “Once More, With Feeling”: the only musical whose soundtrack I own.

the last thing you searched online: Online, I'm not sure. I looked up kewra on Wikipedia this afternoon, but it wasn't online because I didn't have Wi-Fi. (Well, come to think of it I didn't actually *check* if the Indian food store had public Wi-Fi, but I doubt they did.)

the last outfit you left the house in: A green Girl Scout camp T-shirt (Girl *Scout*, not Girl Guide: that's how old this shirt is), brown leggings, plain white socks from the big pack I bought in Florida upon finding the socks I'd brought weren't enough for all the walking around Disney I was doing, hiking boots, utility belt††, one-litre water bottle on shoulder strap.

(I don't especially *like* camping, but I tend to wind up with Camper Aesthetic anyway, as a side effect of prepper tendencies. I never leave the house *intending* to spend the night in the woods, but I also never leave the house without enough gear that I *could*, if necessary, do so. Also, hiking boots are comfortable.)

(For the record, it has never yet been necessary. I have still never used my foil blanket. But if I ever need it, there it will be.)

the last completely unnecessary thing you purchased: I was going to say McDonalds food, but it was a post-exam treat, which disqualifies it by the rules maryellencarter's answer uses.

Mind you, I normally go to Tim Hortons--which is noticeably cheaper than McDonalds--for my post-exam treat, so arguably the *additional* $5 vs getting a Timmies bagel *was* completely unnecessary. (But I had a coupon for a free medium fry and drink with purchase, and it had been a long time--actually, hang on, I can literally look that up: it'd been a little over two years--since I bought any McDonalds, so I decided to go for it this time.)

---

†Fun prosopagnosia fact: Katniss Everdeen looks a lot like I would without glasses, but Jennifer Lawrence looks nothing like me.

††Maybe I should make an updated list of utility-belt contents: I keep finding myself wanting to link to it and only having the 2012 version available.

#when Mom asks me what I want for my birthday/Hanukkah and I've run out of ideas #I look at the camping section of Amazon and see if I can find any Useful Thing inspiration there #pretty sure that's how I found the solar-powered phone charger #(which I don't own yet but I expect I'll get it for my birthday)#oh look an original post #meme #adventures in University Land #food #(ever since the Pillowfort thing I've been noticing just how often my posts link to previous posts on my Tumblr)#(almost any post where I contribute significantly #--rather than just ''hey here's a neat thing''--#is part of a broader context of my other writings)#(and many of said writings are comments)#(the following category tag was added retroactively:)#101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers

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truthwillmessyouup · 7 years

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“Gender-fluid world is muddling young minds”

Article by Claire Foges on the Times UK Let us call it Rosa Parks Syndrome (RPS), after the brave woman who refused to give up her bus seat in 1950s America to make way for a white person. Parks risked her safety to fight real injustice and is rightly hailed a hero. Today, those in the grip of RPS yearn to have similarly important battles to fight. Never mind that all of the great legislative battles on equality have been won, they long to find the next progressive frontier; plant the flag of justice in fresh territory; find a new issue about which they can proclaim they are on “the right side of history”.

This week it became clear that the cabinet minister Justine Greening is afflicted with a severe case of RPS. Her idiotic proposal that we should be able to switch our gender about as easily as switching our energy provider comes, tellingly, around the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act 1967 (when homosexuality was partially decriminalised). Seeking a landmark progressive moment of her own, she proposes to do away with the professional diagnosis usually required for gender change, and instead allow us to simply declare that we are a man or a woman.

The idea has been criticised, rightly, for the impact it could have on women when men are able to declare themselves female and thus enter female-only hospital wards, prisons, refuges, changing rooms and so on. But we must urgently give more thought to the effect of such radical change on children, too, the messages it sends and the confusion it sows. Pleas to “think of the children!” are easily parodied. Yet when the fundamentals of identity are being shaken in such a way isn’t it is right to ask what the impact is on those whose identities are in the busiest phase of formation?

Children are being led to believe that gender is simply a lifestyle choice

Well-intentioned efforts to support transgender people have led us, very quickly, to some bizarre positions. To state that gender is binary is tantamount to bigotry. To raise the biological fact of XY and XX chromosomes is inflammatory. It is asserted that we all sit somewhere along a spectrum of gender identity, and can float between maleness and femaleness. Anatomy is irrelevant. Psychology trumps biology. This is the new orthodoxy, now given the seal of government approval by Greening’s proposal.

Many of the adults among us may dismiss this with an inward roll of the eyes, too polite or too wearied by political correctness to demur. But children are increasingly presented with these complex and confusing ideas as unarguable fact. They are being led to believe, on social media and in schools, that gender is simply a lifestyle choice.

On Facebook, users can choose from a buffet of 71 gender options: polygender to two-spirit person. Last year the children’s commissioner sent a form to schoolchildren asking them to pick one of 25 genders that they identified with (withdrawn once the press started to take an interest). Girlguiding has said that boys as young as five who identify as girls can join the Rainbows or Brownies. Scores of schools have abolished “boys” and “girls” from their dress code. One of the country’s leading private schools, St Paul’s Girls’, now considers requests from students to be known either as gender-neutral or as boys. Pupils aged 11 to 15 “can have discussions at any time to explore their gender identity”. No doubt where St Paul’s leads many other schools will follow.

I am no expert on children but I would suggest that most like certainty and clarity. They thrive on stability and are made anxious by chaos and blurred boundaries. Instead of “liberating” children from social constructs, the new orthodoxy on gender identity gives them the burden of endless choice and introspection to work out who they really are. If they don’t enjoy “girly” things like make-up are they perhaps a boy? If they have a crush on people of both sexes could they be agender? If they simply feel different to everyone else and uncomfortable in their own skin, common enough in adolescence, might they be genderfluid?

How disorientating this must be when combined with the usual insecurities and identity-searching of being young. While some would argue that the “old-fashioned” way of classifying children as boys or girls (according to biology) is restrictive, I would counter that for the vast majority of children it is liberating. It frees you from endless negotiation with yourself about what you are.

Widespread mental health problems, from self-harming to eating disorders and anxiety, reveal that children are suffering increasing distress. The causes for this are complex but might we quietly suggest that encouraging them to question the very essence of their identity will not help?

Of course there are very small numbers of children whose feelings of gender dysphoria require serious clinical intervention. But when the Tavistock Centre (the only facility specialising in child gender identity) has seen referrals increase six-fold in the space of five years, it is right to ask whether some of this anxiety is being influenced by external factors; mature concepts absorbed by immature minds.

I am no curmudgeon who yearns for the “good old days” when children with gender dysphoria were tortured by feelings of difference. “Freak” has always struck me as the nastiest insult in the English language and I long for its extinction. Our guiding instinct in these matters must be kindness. But we must be very careful that in seeking to support the tiny minority of children who feel trapped in the wrong body we do not create a world of confusion and anxiety for the rest. ----- This article was behind a paywall so I thought it was best to repost it here for general reading.

#radfem #gender critical #radical feminism #radical feminist

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lainahastoomuchsparetime · 5 years

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So that’s what I’m gonna do.

Let’s get the Night Vale presents stuff out of the way because I think those are the most well-known things, and, while good podcasts, probably the least interesting for a rec list.

Welcome to Night Vale is probably the podcast that got a ton of people, including myself, into podcasts in the first place. If you don’t know, WTNV is a fictional radio show about a little desert town and the strange things that happen it. It’s super queer, quirky, and has some really good creepy moments. Librarians scare me because of this show.

I don’t really keep caught-up on this, but I do listen to a bunch at once every so often and catch up. With 154 episodes, a couple bonus episodes, and a bunch of live-shows, you’ve got a lot of backlog to keep you busy. Start at the beginning, though.

Alice Isn’t Dead is a horror podcast about a woman who sees her supposedly dead wife on a news broadcast and sets off to try and find her. And it only gets weirder from there. This series has an episode that has creeped me out more than anything else I’ve probably ever listened to. There are three seasons with ten episodes each, plus some bonus episodes. The series has been completed.

Within the Wires is a dystopian science fiction series about a strange alternate reality world. Season One is told through a series of relaxation tapes. Season Two is a set of art museum tour tapes. Season Three is a collected group of audio notations from a man to his secretary.

I’m a pretty big fan of this one, honestly. I don’t love the second season, but it’s still very solid and the third is super interesting. This is a very strange world, and I really like it.

Each season tells a separate story, but they do all take place in the same world. Very queer, as expected from Night Vale Presents, honestly, with a neat bonus being season 3 being narrated by a trans narrator. Ten episodes each season, and season four started September 2019.

Let’s talk about some of my other favourite things!

The Black Tapes was one of the first non-Night Vale podcasts I listened to and it’s still one of my favourites. Funny story, I thought this was going to be a non-fiction podcast. I mixed it up in my head with… Lore! It was totally Lore. Oh, I forgot I listened to a bit of that. So, in my head, this become a non-fiction podcast about urban lengends the way Lore is non-fiction about scary stories/historical events/whatever Lore’s deal is, I didn’t actually listen to that much of it.

And, boy, was I confused after the first episode. Or two. Eventually I realized this is a fiction horror podcast about journalist Alex Reagan’s research into Dr. Richard Strand’s work debunking paranormal activity – specifically the cases he has not been able to debunk. (Strand is basically a fictional version of James Randi, who’s an interesting dude.)

It begins as kind of a Monster of the Week story, but eventually expands from that into bigger arcs in a very natural way. It’s one that manages to balance telling the story without losing sight of where they started out. The third season is a little underwhelming, which sucks as it’s currently also the last season, but I suspect they might be working on things behind the scenes. There’s rumours about NBC working on a TV series, and also rumours about a fourth season. I would support that. It’s one of my favourites.

There’s also a series that takes place in the same universe called TANIS, and I think RABBITS is in the same universe too, but I wasn’t really super into either of those. This, however, is a big favourite.

The Bright Sessions is a science fiction podcast about therapy for people with psychic powers, or as the podcasts says, the strange and unusual. I am also strange and unusual, so I liked this. This is a very positive podcast. It does go a whole lot into a strange world and has some really exciting plotpoints, but a lot of it is just about healing and growth. It made my heart do things a bunch. Not a scary one.

Relevant to my book people, there is a YA book featuring two of the characters coming out (whenever) and I have an eARC of it so you might be seeing a review of that soon. Hopefully.

This also has a ton of queer rep, including an explictly ace character. It also has a musical episode. Yes, that’s as cool as it sounds. There are 64 episodes, plus a bunch of bonus episodes. There’s also a spin-off series but it’s behind a paywall so I haven’t checked it out. This is a satisfying complete series without it.

ars PARADOXICA is a science fiction podcast about Sally Grissom, a physicist who accidentally invents time travel and sends herself back to 1943. And then it gets really weird. If you really like science fiction, this is the one I’d recommend the most. It’s very important to listen to this one in order, as it’s very plot heavy.

This is also way more queer than you’d expect a podcast set in the 40s to be. Sally is explictly asexual and heavily aro-coded, and there are several other major queer characters. Honestly this just has decent representation in general, and most of it is handled in a very sensitive way. A lot of things like racism or antisemitism aren’t just brushed aside as being “Well, it’s the 40s”.

Partway through this, there is a plot involving gun violence. The creators talk about their decision whether to include it or not, and they begin to give content warnings before each episode when needed. I really appreciated that.

This series is complete at thirty-six episodes, with a couple bonus episodes. There’s also a crossover episode between this and the Bright Sessions.

Now, if you’ve never listened to a podcast before and you’re a little intimidated by the idea of getting into something really long and involved, I’d recommend this next podcast.

The Message is basically a mini-series. It’s a science-fiction podcast that, and no one is going to get this reference, kind of reminded me of the movie Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invasion. My brain makes weird leaps sometimes. We all kind of just need to run with it.

Produced by GE, it tells the story of a college student making a podcast following the team tasked with decoding a message sent to earth by aliens seventy years ago. There are only 8 episodes, and most of them are only about 10 minutes, so this is a very good beginner podcast.

Not a super queer podcast, but there is a nonbinary character among the main cast.

I also listened to GE’s second podcast, Life-After, but I wasn’t as big a fan of that. The two are not related storywise.

The Far Meridian is another one I think is pretty approachable for beginners. The episodes tend to be under twenty minutes. And this one is more of a fantasy podcast than science-fiction like a lot of the others have been. I would almost say this has a bit of a magical realism theme, and the writer has talked about being influenced by that genre.

The main character of this, Peri, is an agrophobe who wakes up one morning to find her lighthouse has begun traveling the world. Over the course of the show, you begin to realize how weird the world she’s exploring actually is. The second season especially does some things I personally found super creepy, and I loved it.

It deals with a lot of trauma and anxiety, especially in the second season, but it’s handled so well. They end every episode with “May you always find your way”, and I find that really fitting and also comforting. It’s not a fake Instagram type of positivity. It feels hopeful.

Peri is a Latina woman and I believe most of the cast are people of colour. Peri is also queer, but generally does not want labels put on her yet. She’s okay not knowing. This, also, happens in a scene where another character defines her own bisexuality as being attracted to “cool girls and people who don’t really subscribe to that whole gender thing” which is great.

Overall, I’m a big fan of this one and I can’t wait for the third season in January 2020. Oh, hey, pro-tip: The Google Play feed for this doesn’t have the full second season for some reason, so you have to switch to iTunes or Spotify for the rest of it if you listen to your podcasts there.

Now this one I just finished listening to!

The Bridge is a science fiction podcast set in an alternate-world 2016 where a giant bridge (shocker) has been built across the Atlantic Ocean, taking place within one of the watchtowers on said giant bridge, which has been mostly abandoned and left to rot by the mainland.

Okay don’t make fun of me, but I’m kind of a new introductee to the idea of Lovecraftian lore/mythology? For some reason I kind of missed that whole thing until pretty recently. I only got semi-familiar with it because a Let’s Player I watch played a Cthulhu game, and then a youtube channel that talks about book adaptations I also watch did an episode about one of Lovecraft’s books.

So I’m gonna say this is kind of based on Lovecraftian stuff, but I don’t know enough to say if it’s inspired by it, or actually based on a specific work, but it has that kind of feel. The world in this is really interesting, with things like haunted houses and possessed puppets. They also do a great job with world-building of the way things were back in the heyday of the bridge.

One of the main characters, Bertie, is canonically queer, and talks about his fiance who passed away, and others have been confirmed queer by word of God, but I can’t find said word of God, so I don’t know who they mean and therefore can’t really talk about that. There’s been basically no focus on romance, though, so it not coming up hasn’t felt unnatural.

This has 14 episodes and a bunch of mini-episodes, and while there hasn’t been an update since October 2018, their twitter leads me to be it will be soon. I really like the world of this one, and can’t wait for there to be more.

Parts of it actually reminded me of:

Girl in Space, which is a science fiction podcast about a girl (duh) in space (duh) with only an artificial intelligence system, various birds, and a goat to keep her company… until she sees something on the horizon.

This is still a baby podcast, with only one season (the last episode of which I still need to listen to) but it’s interesting. There’s some things they’re hinting at that I am super excited about seeing explored in season two, and the worldbuilding is really fun. The sun is probably alive, y’all. And I mean, like, it might be sentient.

I have a couple of minor gripes with a similar thing to the Bridge, where characters have only been said to be queer outside of the actual show, but if the words “Cheese is delicious science” appeal to you, check this one out.

And speaking of mixed feelings:

The Box! The Box is a horror podcast about a college drop-out that finds a strange box (again, shocker) in the bookstore she works in, her discovery that it’s full of strange journals, and her search to uncover the truth about them.

There’s a lot I actually like in this. When I started listening to it, I was really missing the Black Tapes and they have the same sort of feeling at the beginning. I like this kind of podcast where a narrator tells you a story every episode, and then the world builds on top of that. It’s not everyone’s thing, but I’m into it. It’s a good premise, and for quite some time into the show, I enjoyed it.

And then it gets weird. And obviously it starts weird, most of these podcasts get weird at one point, but it starts to be strange in a way that I wasn’t enjoying. I started to find it more silly than scary.

There’s also a romance that I found dull as doorknobs, and there’s a thing that I would like to complain about, but I can’t confirm it exactly, and there are not transcripts so I can’t check something without re-listening to the whole podcast. As there are forty episodes and bonus episodes, I’m not about to just jump into that. So I’ll just complain about a lack of transcripts instead.

The Box also has times where the sound design is just terrible. There’s one episode where, in-world, it’s being recorded on a broken recorder, parts of it from another room. And, yes, it makes sense in-world. But to actually listen to it, I had it on full blast as high as I could and I still could barely hear it and missed a lot of the episode. And, again, no transcripts to read with it. And my hearing is okay. If you have any kind of auditory processing issues, that episode basically just says “screw you”.

However, I do like how they work social topics into the stories. At times it can be a bit clumsy, but I give them kudos for trying, at least. There’s an episode that includes real-life audio from something related to a real death of a black person by police brutality. I believe it’s in the episode Strange Fruit but I don’t remember and again, no transcripts. I find this especially frustrating when it comes to potentially triggering material.

This one’s currently on hiatus and I’ll probably check it out whenever it returns (it’s a show prone to long hiatus), but I wouldn’t recommend it unhesitantly. It does a lot of things I like, but I definitely have mixed feelings overall.

Palimpsest is another horror podcast. It tells a new, standalone story each season, with all their stories relating to memory and things that haunt us. I liked both, but especially the second season.

Season one is about loss and memory and forgiveness, and what it means to be haunted by something. It’s largely about the relationship between the MC and her sister and the romance is very minimal, but there’s some (what I call) incidental queerness. It’s not in a way like a Night Vale Presents thing is, or the Bright Sessions, or something like that, but it’s nice not to have it ignored.

GIANT trigger warning for gun violence and child death. Also, there’s thing on-going theme about the creepy sound of a wooden swing in the backyard and, as I was listening to this when I went for walks, I realized I walk past three different wooden swings.

Season two is set in the late 19th or early 20th century or so, and is based in Irish fae mythology which is totally up my alley. This is also the series where the idea of immigrants and people being raised by immigrants having accents confused someone so much I almost didn’t listen to it based on their review. I’m not salty about that, obviously.

Season two is also really freaking queer. Overall this isn’t a really scary horror podcast – it’s more eerie and a little sad. And eerie and a little sad is my favourite mood for ghost stories. My only real complaint is this also doesn’t have transcripts available.

Spines is a pretty recent listen for me, one I really enjoyed. This is kind of like a mash up of all the things I liked about The Box and Darkest Night and Archive 81 without any of the things I didn’t like in any of those. It’s definitely horror, with some body horror elements, and some… is tasteful gore a thing? Body horror and gore elements are used very tastefully and sparingly, and to great effect.

It’s the story of Wren, who wakes up in an attic covered in blood, with no memory at all, and some weird cult ritual surrounding her. She runs, and starts the podcast in an attempt to find her friends, who she’s sure were in the attic with her, and her other half, Zachary, the only name she can remember.

It’s weird but good weird. Solid world-building and really good character building. There’s a particular message that I appreciated that being someone’s “soulmate” didn’t mean you didn’t have a choice in whether or not you wanted to be romantically or sexually involved with them. It’s subtle but again well-handled.

Also, Wren is queer and this is really trans inclusive. There are several times where the show goes against the usual cisnormative thing most media would say in a similar situation, which honestly makes sense as it’s written by a trans writer. There’s also a very significant canonically intersex and nonbinary character, voiced by the writer of the show.

This is a creepy, weird little podcast that made my heart very happy. It’s complete at three seasons of eight episodes each and honestly quite underrated. Big recommend.

Finally, let’s talk about my favourite podcast.

I recently learned that the term “weird fiction” exists as a genre label. Mabel is very much weird fiction. In Mabel, Anna Limon begins a new job as a home health caretaker to an elderly woman named Sally. The house is… strange, and Sally is strange, and Anna probably shouldn’t look too deeply at any of that, but of course she does.

It is a horror podcast with deep folklore/mythology roots, possibly also somewhat Celtic/fae based, but it’s such a blend of things that I can’t draw any hard lines of things I specifically recognize besides one or two things, and that makes it so unique.

Listen to Mabel in the fall. Listen to Mabel when it might rain, when it’s a little windy, when the leaves are crunchy under your feet. When the air smells just a little like decay. Or, you know, whenever, because it’s great, but it is an amazing fall podcast. It’s also super queer, fyi.

Mabel has forty seasons currently, with I think five seasons? There is also a five-part bonus series. It’s really cool. If you don’t listen to anything else I recommend, listen to this.

I also listened to Limetown but I feel like everyone’s heard of that one, and I’m currently listening to Ghosts in the Burbs which so far is kind of interesting, but I’m only like two episodes in.

Alright! Have you listened to any of these? What did you think? What podcasts would you recommend for me? Did you enjoy this post at all? Comment and let me know!

Peace and cookies, Laina

I kinda just wanna talk about podcasts So that's what I'm gonna do. Let's get the Night Vale presents stuff out of the way because I think those are the most well-known things, and, while good podcasts, probably the least interesting for a rec list.

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justmonicca · 7 years

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FE: Fatesnalysis

My current opinion on Fates under the cut. It got very long when complaining about story/characters. Read if you want to. I don’t know enough about FE15 to argue about it yet, and I doubt that I ever will (I’m only going to play it once).

My FE14 opinion as of today

Gameplay- I genuinely liked the gameplay of FE14, and the addition of the Dual Guard system was good. Many units seemed very overpowered, though, which left me blazing through REV and BR with Ryoma and Xander, leaving most other units low-leveled and in the dust.

Map Design- The map design of most of Fates was very fun. CQ's map design is some of the best in the trilogy (I'm mostly referencing Port Town Dia) and BR's may be lacking, but it does its job. REV's map design has got to be some of the worst map design I have seen in the FE games I have played. Chapters 11 and 12 of Revelation can be especially tedious. Chapter 25 of REV was very, very tedious and very hard, even playing it for the first time through. Otherwise Fates' map design was good.

Story- The story was all over the place, with plotholes and overall just a bunch of kinda dumb moments from both Corrin and the rest of the cast. From a progression sense, due to the world map not being open, it felt very weird and static going from place to place. If you think about it in a sense of Awakening's map, the progression of the game makes little sense. It *felt* like I was progressing because of the chapters and difficulty, but in terms of map and story, I felt like I was going nowhere. In Fates' first six setup chapters, nothing really happens, to be honest. You go from place to place and only in ch. 6 does anything *meaningful* and truly plot important happen. Besides that, and I notice this in all three paths, you don't really do anything until the very end of the game. Even then, the final bosses cease to be truly meaningful in my opinion. In CQ's endgame, you fight Takumi, who reappears to finally get revenge. It felt like a meaningful boss fight when you think about it in terms of fighting Takumi one final time, but beyond that, you're not really doing anything *meaningful*. In BR's endgame, Garon's dragon form makes only a little sense, but I didn't like it very much. It felt like a really anticlimactic boss fight. In REV, you fight Anankos, but my qualms with his fight are that you only see him prominently in the last two/three chapters, and his connection with you is hidden behind a paywall. The other issue with REV is that you don't really do anything by killing Anankos. I don't think Hoshido and Nohr will completely stop fighting simply because the royal families have been united. Besides that, Garon is left unresolved, which made me quite mad considering he's more plot important than Mikoto and Sumeragi.

I have little to no issues with the chapters in which you fight the eldest Nohrian/Hoshidan brother. They could have been done better, especially in the case of Xander's chapter, but otherwise they were okay.

Onto the plotholes/general issues, Fates had plenty of them:

Why does Azura's pendant kill her when she sings Lost in Thoughts All Alone?

Why do her song's lyrics *DIRECTLY* correlate with Corrin? I'm talking LITERAL correlation here, and it may make sense because Corrin is the protagonist, but it's very literal correlation and not even foreshadowing at points.

Why is Cadros barely mentioned?

Why is Anankos' backstory barely mentioned in the main story?

The fact that Anankos is your father and Lillith your sister is hidden behind a paywall

General inconsistency between the characterization displayed in supports versus story (biggest example being how Xander acts in Birthright).

Corrin's general moral inconsistency

Azura's lack of plot involvement until the very end and a few other times

Elise's death in BR being straight-up ignored by Xander

The royal families are so underdeveloped for some reason, (maybe) barring Takumi and Elise. There was time for that in BR and CQ.

Why is Sumeragi barely mentioned?

Why was Garon ignored in Revelation, while Mikoto and Sumeragi weren’t?

Characters- The good characters in Fates are few and far in-between. In my opinion, the three best characters in Fates are Xander, Takumi, and Nyx. Keep in mind that Xander is ruined in both BR and CQ by Fates' bad writing, but I enjoy his support characterization. Takumi's development in CQ was good (could have used work), but overall I like him a lot because of his personality and plot involvement. Nyx is genuinely a good character, and being a side one, I feel that it is kind of cheating to include her in my best character list. However, she is one of the characters in Fates to not be ruined by its bad writing simply because she is a side character.

The royal families, as mentioned above, could have used a lot more development. There was time for that in basically all routes, but it feels like Takumi and Elise were the only people to get good character development/characterization in Fates. Elise's death was very noble, and it is one of my favorite Fates moments. However, it is ruined by Xander's uncharacteristic patriotism for Nohr and to please Garon, who he saw at the beginning of the game willing to kill innocent people.

Most of the other characters in Fates are one-offs, or at that note, a few traits in one character. Some one-offs include Setsuna (clumsy), Silas (your "best friend" and nothing else), Arete (Azura's mom, taught her Lost in Thoughts, evil due to Anankos), Anankos even (evil, only shown to be your father/a good person through a paywall), Lillith (plot cart, steps in for no reason in CQ and BR, for some reason has NO plot involvement in REV despite Anankos being her father). The list can continue, but I won't write all that.

One of my biggest qualms with Fates is its treatment of Mikoto. In ch.5, as we all know, she is killed by Sumeragi. Corrin transforms into a feral dragon out of anger (despite not knowing Mikoto that well, thus no emotional semblance for player or protagonist). Mikoto is then seen in ch.24 of REV. My problem with this situation is that she is killed in every route despite being undeserving of death, and frankly, not needing to die in any routes at all. Her development is barely there, if at all, and her death makes no sense and does nothing for the plot.

Corrin's role as the protagonist of Fates is questionable. I believe the reason why Robin worked as Awakening's protagonist is that they were not an "established" character. By this, I mean that they were an amnesiac for a reason, their amnesia is explained, and the player learns with Robin as they travel. Corrin does not work as a protagonist because they are completely established. They have been in the world of Fates for a while now, but they have amnesia anyway. The biggest example of Corrin's amnesia is not remembering their childhood in Hoshido, and not remembering Silas. They do, however, for some reason, remember their early days in the Northern Fortress (ex: Xander's training, Felicia helping them while sick). Corrin also does not work as a protagonist because of their generally gullibility/stupidity and reserved nature. Corrin is easily fooled by Zola in BR, and they try to help Takumi through his possession in CQ's endgame despite seeing that he's clearly out of this world and committed suicide a few chapters earlier. They copy Garon's speech about rebellions being seeds, and nobody is fooled by it. Corrin tends to be inconsistent in mood, as sometimes they are reserved and a generally softer character, and other times (such as ch.27 of CQ) they stand up against enemies with no fear at all.

My other big qualm about Fates is its Corrinsexuals. Corrinsexuals are characters that have supports with Corrin ONLY. The worst examples of Corrinsexuals are Scarlet, Flora, and Reina. Scarlet led the Chevois rebellion with Ryoma, and they are shown to be friends in-game, yet she has no supports with him. Flora has supports with both Corrin and Felicia, and is implied to have a crush on Jakob, yet has no supports with him either. Reina should have a support with Orochi, seeing as they were both retainers of Mikoto, yet she doesn't. On the topic of supports, despite this being a game about choice, and its motif being choice (FE: *Fates* with an "s"), you are freely allowed to marry Azura (your blood cousin!) and your Nohrian/Hoshidan siblings.

Another issue with Fates is Lillith's plot convenience. She appears a few times in the first six setup chapters, and then once around chapter 25 of CQ and BR. She is only used for expository purposes, or a cheap "emotional" moment that means a lot to Corrin and the protagonists, yet means nothing to the player due to Lillith's small involvement.

Music- The OST of Fates could have been better. There are quite a few mediocre tracks, a handful of good ones, and two or three outstanding ones. It could have used some work, stealing part of Id (Sorrow) to use in Thorn in You, but otherwise it was okay.

Overall- 7/10. It was an enjoyable experience, and there are quite a few characters I like, but the story was what really kind of ruined it for me. I still play Fates to this day, mostly for its fun qualities and not for story analysis.

#fe #fe fates #fire emblem #fire emblem fates #long post #marie.txt

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thisdiscontentedwinter · 7 years

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hunger - chapter 6

Hunger master post

The animal clinic is closed when Stiles sidles up to the door the next night. He knocks, and shoves his hands in his pockets while he waits. Scott opens the door a few minutes later, a grin splitting his face.

“Stiles! I’m really glad you came back, dude!” His expression falls. “I’m sorry about last time, with my mom.”

“S’okay.”

Scott lets him and the dog in, and locks the door behind them. That’s when Stiles realizes they aren’t Scott’s only visitors. Allison appears from behind the counter.

“Stiles!”

“Hey,” he says, and raises his eyebrows. “Am I interrupting something?”

They both go interesting shades of red.

“Uh, no,” Scott says at last. “Allison and I are working on a project, and we figured we could throw some ideas around while I cleaned up and fed the animals.”

“I also wanted to see the kittens,” Allison says, dimples appearing when she smiles. Stiles tries to picture her holding kittens, and figures his brain would melt with how fucking adorable that would be. A part of him wants to tell her that, to make a joke of it, but he doesn’t know her or Scott. Not really. He’s not their friend. He’s a kid who lives on the street. He’s a charity case, which is probably the best he can hope for.

“Can I use the computer?” he asks, nodding at the one on the front counter.

“You can use mine again.” Allison offers, and tugs her slim laptop out of her bag.

“Thanks.”

Stiles sets up in the waiting room, sitting on the floor and using one of the chairs as a table. The dog flops down beside him and puts his head on his knee.

Allison and Scott leave them to it. Stiles is aware of them talking and laughing in the background. It’s nice, not to have to jump at every sound. It’s nice to be around people he’s not scared of. Scott reappears once and sets down a Tupperware container. Chicken sandwiches.

“Thanks, man,” Stiles says. “You’re a lifesaver.”

Scott’s answering smile falters a little, and Stiles figures he’s not used to that phrase being as literal as it is.

Stiles goes to the Beacon Herald website. He skims the front page story about some animal attack in the Preserve where some guy has been ripped apart by a mountain lion—Stiles will not be wandering out there again—and goes to their search function. Luckily the Herald isn’t one of those newspapers where everything online is behind a paywall. He gets four hits on Kate Argent’s name. Two are related to some incidents she attended—a big traffic crash last year, and the evacuation of the Beacon Hills mall because of a smoke hazard that turned out to be a malfunctioning air conditioner unit. The third hit is one of those soft community stories, where she went to the Kindergarten and gave the kids a talk about stranger danger. The fourth hit is talking about the four new officers employed by the Sheriff’s Department, after what the paper calls the recent corruption scandal.

The article is three years old.

Kate wasn’t a deputy when Stiles’s dad was Sheriff.

Okay. So that explains why he didn’t know her voice.

It doesn’t explain how someone planted those drugs in his office.

Stiles closes his eyes and breathes deep for a moment.

There were drugs found in his dad’s office, and drugs and money found at the house. The house would have been easy enough to break into, Stiles supposes. But his office at the Sheriff’s station? It had to be an inside job. One of the men or women that his dad worked with for years did that to him.

And apparently it wasn’t Kate Argent.

Or Jordan Parrish either. Stiles recognizes him as the earnest fresh-faced deputy from the diner. According to his smiling photograph in the Herald, he was hired at the same time as Kate Argent.

He opens another page and Googles Kate Argent. The links to the Herald are the top hits, and there’s not much in the rest. There’s no listing for her under the white pages or anything. Of course there isn’t. Cops don’t publish their addresses or phone numbers online.

There is a G. Argent in Beacon Hills though, and a C. & V. Argent. Stiles gets a piece of paper from the front desk and writes down their addresses and phone numbers. There’s also a Christopher Argent, probably the same person as C. Argent, who owns something called Argent Tactical Solutions.

From the back room, a ringtone blares out. A moment later, Stiles hears Allison.

“Oh my god, Dad, no! You don’t need to come in and meet Scott! I’ll come out when you get here, okay?” She steps out into the foyer, and rolls her eyes at Stiles. “Because we’re project partners, that’s all! Fine. I’ll see you then. Fine.” She ends the call. “My dad is being a total jerk lately.”

Stiles’s smile wavers, and his heart aches. My dad, he thinks, and wishes those words could fall from his mouth without somehow tearing a gaping hole in the universe. He wants a dad who is a jerk sometimes. He wants a dad who calls him on the phone. He wants a dad who sticks his nose into his business.

He wants a dad.

The dog nips at his fingertips gently.

“He’s coming to pick me up because my mom borrowed my car today, and apparently some guy gets eaten by a mountain lion in the middle of the woods, and my dad suddenly thinks the town is overrun with them.” She sighs. “Ugh.”

Stiles closes her laptop, and climbs to his feet. “It also sounds like he thinks you and Scott aren’t just study buddies.”

Allison gives him a cheeky smile, and lowers her voice. “Right? And if he scares him off too soon, there’s no way we’ll ever be anything more than study buddies!”

Stiles smiles, but he’s out of step with this conversation. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to play the part of a friend or a confidant. Of an equal. This is what this is, right? A confidence? An overture of friendship? Stiles has been to a lot of schools in the past four years, and met a lot of kids, but he’s always been the newcomer, the outsider, the kid who’s there one week and gone the next, forgotten.

Allison’s encouraging smile falters.

Stiles is out of step with friendship. He drops his gaze. He gives Allison her laptop back, and folds his piece of paper up and slips it into his shoe for safekeeping.

***

The wolf pads back and forth in the waiting room of the clinic while Stiles finishes the sandwiches. The wolf is hungry too, but there are rats in the alley that will fill his belly later. His boy should eat now, if he won’t eat the rats later. The wolf wants his boy to be strong. He doesn’t want him to be sick again.

He pads back and forth, listening to his boy talking with Allison and Scott.

Listening to his boy’s heartbeat.

His ears prick when he hears a car outside.

It has a whine in the transmission.

Hunters.

***

The headlights from the car arc across the walls of the waiting room.

“It’s my dad!” Allison announces. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Scott! See you, Stiles!”

She lets herself out the front door.

Scott waves at her. He’s wearing a goofy smile, as endearing at it is awkward, and Stiles thinks it’s lucky that Allison knows what she wants, because Scott is way too awkward to actually make a move.

The dog tugs at Stiles’s sleeve, growling as it tries to tug him away from the open door.

Stiles sees a black SUV parked outside. A man gets out of the driver’s side door as Allison approaches.

He’s in his forties, maybe, but he’s in good shape. Better shape than Stiles, probably. He’s wearing jeans and a black t-shirt that pulls tight across his chest as he moves. He has graying hair and a stern expression.

Stiles’s heart clenches.

It’s the man from the Preserve. The one with the tactical gear and the guns. The one who saw Stiles and the dog, and stared at them, before he stepped back into the line of trees.

It’s Allison’s dad.

At the moment his focus in on Allison. He’s watching her approach with a frown, like he doesn’t know what the hell she’s been up to tonight, but he doesn’t approve on principle.

Stiles steps back from the door before the man sees him.

***

“How do I know I’m not going crazy?” his boy asks as they walk back toward the alley behind the diner. “That’s a thing. Going crazy.”

The wolf’s ears flick as he listens for the hunter’s SUV, but he can’t pick the sound of it from the rest of the distant traffic noise. He and the boy stick to the back streets. A dog barks at them from behind a fence. A cat streaks across the road in front of them. The night smells like cars and people and decay.

“Once is an incident. Twice is a coincidence.” His boy exhales heavily and scrubs his knuckles over his head. “It’s twice. Just twice. Coincidence. Synchronicity. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

The wolf whines.

Hunter.

It means hunter.

But also, I might be going crazy.” His boy chews at the strings of his hoodie. “Might be making connections that aren’t there. Like with the phone call. What if it wasn’t her voice? What if it was just that she happened to say the same thing? It’s not a smoking gun, is it?”

The wolf huffs.

“But also, I shouldn’t ignore instinct, should I?” His boy spits the strings out. “I just need some proof first. Or a confession.” His expression darkens. “But also, she’s a cop. The chances of fucking this up and getting shot are, like, higher than I’d prefer.” He laughs, but the sound is sour.

The wolf growls low in his throat.

“I wish I could call him, you know?” His tone wavers, and his throat clicks as he swallows.

The wolf looks up into the sky. The moon is a tiny sliver of light, riding high above the gray wisps of cloud that trail across the sky. Death is walking with them, silent and pale-faced. She smells of ashes. She has walked so long beside him wearing Laura’s face that the wolf thinks he would mourn her if she left.

But he sees the path that he and his boy are on.

Death will not leave them.

“I have to act,” the wolf’s boy says. “ I have to act.”

The wolf nudges into his side as they walk.

“They lied to me.” His voice belongs to a younger boy now. To a child. “They said he could call me. They said I could visit. They said if I was good, then I could see him.” His mouth twists up. “But then they said, no, you got in a fight at school. No, your counselor says it’s not the right time. No, it will be too upsetting for you. So fuck them, right? Fuck them.”

The wolf whines.

“I just want my dad,” Stiles whispers, and his voice dissolves into tears.

The wolf walks beside him, head hanging.

He and the boy are pack, but they cannot fill all the spaces that their losses have left behind. The wolf’s loss, and the boy’s, has been made by a piercing wound in his heart. It will never heal. It will always ache. Both the wolf and the boy have learned how to breathe through the pain, but it is still there. It is as present as the moon, as the whisper of the wind, as death.

The wolf isn’t sure whose injury is worse. His pack is dead. Dead is gone forever. But his boy’s father? Alive, but kept away from the boy? The wolf understands the light in the boy’s eyes now. He understands the boy’s need to rend and tear, to burn the world down. All that rage, just waiting for a target.

And, he thinks, the boy is very close to finding one.

He will need a wolf at his side then.

The moon was right to lead the wolf to his boy.

The wolf, and death.

#sterek #teen wolf #fan fic #hunger #discontentedwinter

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whathappensinadops · 7 years

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Last Week In Adops #20

This week I do the unthinkable and agree with Doc Searls. Discuss zombie websites. And something special happened with Jason Kint...

want to get this in your inbox every tuesday? subscribe here: https://tinyletter.com/happensinadops

You Either Die A Hero Or Live Long Enough To Find Yourself Agreeing With Doc Searls

The Advertising Industry Has Been Living A Lie

This article is so business insider it hurts. It hits on a fantastic topic, one that the author could devote 10k words to and really eviscerate some people but instead it stops just as it’s getting going. Mike Shields if you read this (and you have zero reason to read this) please keep digging on this article. Your final two bullet points are exactly what we need to hear more about. The rest of you should read this because it’s great, if short.

An Easy Fix For A Broken System

I can’t believe I’m saying this. I agree with Doc Searls. Not all of this article, mainly because Doc can’t help himself by overstepping his bounds and claiming “adtech is cancer”... sure man, pass that shit this way.

The vast majority of this article wrong and needlessly preachy (don’t stop being you, Doc) but like Sean Connery in celebrity jeopardy, despite Doc’s best efforts, he stumbles on a correct question.

It’s the same question that Mike Shields was asking and it merits an industry-wide conversation.

An Industry-Wide Conversation

Maybe it's finally time we ask ourselves- Are audience-based buys and brand safety requirements mutually exclusive? Have we reached the tipping point for audience-based buying? This feel like the moment people realized last-click attribution was actually a highly flawed system. And despite their effort, it doesn’t seem like throwing money at the problem (or more specifically at DV, IAS, WhiteOps, etc) is fixing anything. Maybe it’s time for a multipoint buying strategy. Maybe it’s time to realize that buying ads on a legit site just so you can cookie their users and find them for cheap on the open web is a highly flawed strategy. When any user can screenshot your ad next to an ISIS video and force your c-suite to craft apology letters… maybe where you’re buying is as important as who. I know I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before but it’s important we keep having this conversation. Every step we take to make it harder for shitty sites to get legitimate ad dollars is one that makes the web better. Maybe then big mouths will stop calling ad tech cancer. Or we’ll stop getting fake news banners on fact-checking sites.

Did Jason Kint Mention "Duopoly" This Week?

Holy shit. We did it! From 10/15 - 10/22 Jason Kint did not mention duopoly once! My work here is done. I'd like to thank my parents for not knowing twitter exists, my wife for not caring about adops, and of course Jason Kint for not even knowing I've been mocking him for the better part of 6 months.

Current streak: 0 weeks