remember chat. to beat the allegations you dont need a good defense, you just need a better defense than the sussiest baka on your squad. keep posting.

how today’s afternoon went: was trying to focus on coding while relistening to Monarch of Monsters and crying

genuinely impossible to pin today’s mental state on a linear scale

“how are you feeling?” i am

• forgot to post this earlier
• might’ve been edging an emotional breakdown tbh
• but we move

• i should come up with a tag for game design stuff
• there’s some other game mechanics i’ve thought of over the years
• but i don’t know where i put them

thinking about the bedroom black metal musician who spent twenty years making music on the theme of hatred for humanity, isolation, & the misery of existence, etc.

recently they were like so turns out i’m autistic and non‍-​binary,

i have nearly a day of dash to scroll. chat pray for me

• maybe i’ll just go back into my programming cave

“lifeform” is a sleeper word tbh

a thread urging people to reblog more often

i’d agree with this post if the two options we had were like or reblog, but that’s just not true.

in my experience the outcome of an artist telling me “reblog, dont just like” is that i don’t do either. i want to show my appreciation, that doesn’t mean everything i appreciate seeing is something i want on my blog. (i already worry i reblog too much stuff, and can’t follow people i’m interested in because i compulsive look at everything that crosses my my dash)

fundamentally i think a world where posters get radio silence because people are reluctant to leave likes without annoying people is just worse

“likes don’t do anything but make artists upset” no fuck off, please like my stuff.

it’s also just, not true? tumblr shows people posts based on their likes, and i’m pretty sure the best‍-​first algorithm is weighted based on notes (i don’t use it)

it’s also a false dichotomy. reblogs aren’t the only way posts spread around. you don’t know that the person who liked your post isn’t sharing it in dms (tumblr has this as an integrated feature! i get posts dm’d to me all the time!) you don’t know that the person who liked your post isn’t linking it on discord, or anywhere else

people should reblog more, but people should still like and reblogging isn’t the only way to support.

i’d certainly love it everyone did everything to make me popular, but we’re just not going to get that

i’ve been drinking pour over coffee for month now and every time, without fail, i think of tokyo ghoul

when an electronic musician has a couple of samples they use all the time, now that’s the good shit

alexanderwales posted:

I should probably change some setting on tumblr, but occasionally it shows me stuff not from people I follow, but “Based on your likes!” And these are, almost invariably, some of the worst, most braindead posts I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading.

needed the oomph of calling something a hood classic but i did not want to convey endearment

so i called it a suburb classic

drill sergeant domme x contentious objector brat could this be anything at all

on 2022‍-​09‍-​20 joyousgard posted:

“ao3 should have an algorithm” ao3 should continue only giving me exactly what I ask for which happens because I know how to use the search, sort, and filter functions

algorithms are good actually; they offer a legitimate feature. the problem, of course, is sites obscure that what a recommendation algorithm really is: a search engine. of course it’d suck to have a search engine where you can’t control the query or the sorting criteria.

but if you could? who wouldn’t functionality in the vein of “users who recommend this also recommend this”, if transparent and can be turned on or off?

there is a fanfiction site with recommendations: fimfiction, and it’s wonderful for discovering new fics

it feels like there’s an uncanny valley of understanding social cues and dynamics where if you don’t get it at all, you can do whatever you want and if you get it intuitively, you can do whatever you want, but if you understand them theoretically then social interaction becomes an ever‍-​exhausting optimization problem because you know if you think a little harder you can come off a little better

if i ever get a beta reader or editor you best believe i’m not gonna be on some “any remaining mistakes are my own” shit. if i fuck up im gonna be like get their ass

werecoyotl asked for music recommmendations

have you listened to Vylet Pony ‍-​ Monarch of Monster’s yet? can’t stop spinning that one and tearing up.

Cattle Decapitation ‍-​ Death Atlas is a technical death metal opus that almost ranks as my favorite album of all time (Gojira’s From Mars to Sirius is what beats it‍ ‍‍—‍ funny how they’re both albums about climate change). admittedly i think CD’s new album from last year is better, but DA is the one that left a place smoldering and eviscerated in my heart

Die Sektor ‍-​ To Be Fed Upon is some industrial aggrotech, and it’s one of the things i put on whenever i’m writing Murder Drones fanfiction. desolate melodies, raw screams, and gnawing sense of dystopic alienation. this is one of their early albums (Death My Darling is newer, better, and my favorite, but TBFU was my introduction, and i think it’s more accessible to boot)

i try not to flood people whenever they ask for recs, but i’d be doing a disservice to my favorite band if i didn’t put them on the list

Mechina ‍-​ Venator is one entry is a long, sprawling saga of a discography of cyber metal. Xenon might be a better introduction for metalheads, given its grinding dissonance and abundance of growls, and i think Telesterion and its moments of ephemeral beauty might be my favorite. hell, it’s hard not to nominate their newest, Cenotaph, for its cohesive cinematic quality, or Siege for its focus and narrative intimacy, and judging by the single’s, next year’s album is going to be at once a return to form and a thrilling redefinition. every one of their albums has its draw and unique strength, but i still reach for Venator as my recommendation.

from the striking and poignant opening of “Suffer”, to the almost ambient soundscapes of “Sacrifice Zone” and “Totemic”, from all the inspiring melodies on the tracks between between to the barking growls of “The Embers of Old Earth” and the iconic returning guest vocals of Anna Hel that fill me with villainous lesbian submission‍ ‍‍—‍ i think it’s a great showcase of Mechina’s range, while being more modern than their “middle trilogy” of (though admittedly, Acheron/Progenitor/As Embers Turn to Dust are still anchored in my head as “classic”/“golden age” Mechina

first of all, i’d like to mention the existence of the Death’s‍-​head hawkmoth, is which capable of inhaling air through its mouth into its accordion‍-​like epipharynx and exhaling to produce a warning chirp. i have no idea of the sucking capacity of other insects, but this isn’t a fantastical adaptation, i think. (the hawkmoths seemed to evolved this as from honey‍-​sucking behavior)

i do think you shouldn’t place too much emphasis on airflow when it comes to produces sounds via the mouth, however. consider instruments like the violin, or better yet, the güiro, which involves a pick scraping notches in a way i found very reminiscent of stridulation in my research.

hollow, resonant cavities can be useful for amplifying sounds without supposing air is actively cycled through them, is my point.

that said, i definitely support all of your suggestions

in my own insect worldbuilding, i couldn’t decide. my roaches, of course, produce of a chorus of voices from their hissing spiracles, while my mantids have stridulating maxillae designed to convey and resonate sound in the prothorax and mouth. my wasps are too large to fly, so the main use their wings is making sound, though i haven’t yet decided if wing‍-​stridulation is their primarily medium (old docs have them with mantis‍-​like mouthpart scratching, but maybe it’s more interesting if it’s different). my moths squeak and chirp, of course, and my spiders don’t make sounds at all, preferring communication through gestures or web vibrations – but they’re crafty, and have created instruments that mimick the stridulation and singing of other species. (…and not just as lures…)

btw chat Whitepine is actual kinography

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqZRB4WtqZI

the atmosphere. it’s so pretty and comfy and feels so emotionally authetic. the subtlety and implication‍-​laden writing makes everything feel so weighty. the austere spectacle, the lingering intimacy. and yet every episode knows how to pique my interesting and pull the story forward

i want to give ivory a hug…

flop posts actually serve a crucial function in the tumblr meta. you get used to posts going nowhere, and it lulls you into a sense of invulnerability. nobody will pay attention to me, i can say anything!

that’s how random careless shitpost with 1k notes devil gets you

i started writing a tumblr post and now it’s thousands of words long and my evening is gone

• it’s not even that good

imagine spending a week going ugh i miss writing, then out of nowhere on a day of sleep deprivation laying useless in bed i get an idea for a tumblr post and start writing and don’t stop writing and wind up with over 4k words. then i start editing it to finally post it, and it’s starting to push 5k words and i’m not even done

except i had to go to sleep and now today i’m just.

i can’t finish editing because of how cringe it is

i wouldn’t mind the quality if this was just a quickish shitpost, or even a longish shitpost, but this is short story length and it’s written like slop

remember when i could say fuck it and write 10k words of murder drones nonsense in a day? i really aint built like i was six months ago

being contrarian and combative, but also anxious and submissive really is the disposition from hell

“you have to tell me exactly what you want and what i’m supposed to do. of course, i may decide i don’t care and ignore you‍ ‍‍—‍ but you have to tell me”

what do people think they’re accomplishing when they reply like “oh?”

i get that you want to move the conversation along but i said what i said, if i was gonna say more i would have. give me something to work with i can’t yes and a fucking “oh?”

are you contrarian, or do you just think agreement is vulnerability? is it really that complicated and nuanced, or are you just afraid of being understood? just keep fighting and feigning and dissembling‍—if you’re exerting agency then you’re in control and that’s the same thing as security, i’m sure

i do not “fumble”. i do not “miss signals”. your flirting simply lacked a hook and logline so i left it in the slush pile

don’t even get me started on the formatting

don’t give up, though! i’m sure you can make it in self‍-​publishing!

assuming, of course, that you can afford a bottle of lotion

i dont write essays. i write posts that conclude “in this essay i will”

15depressedducks asked:

So in hostile takeover, when Uzi dies and goes to the manor like place, would it be okay if I took some inspiration from that (with setting and a few characters) and made it into a fic? It would have a different plotline, be post cannon, and some other things.

[If I need to rewrite/explain better, I will, I’m just a really nervous shimp rn (⁠๑⁠•⁠﹏⁠•⁠) ] Avatar

• “can i take inspiration from the worst part of hostile takeover” is a heck of an ask tbh
• sure knock yourself out champ

prokopetz posted:

Inadvisable narrative frames #137: second person omniscient viewpoint. Every character is “you”, simultaneously and without differentiation; oblige the reader to rely purely on context cues to determine which “you” they currently are.

serious‍-​tabaxi reblogged:

you think your idea is horrendous, and tell yourself so. you agree, and remind yourself the blog is not designed for sane ideas, especially not from you all. you agree, but are disheartened by your implementation of your idea.

sometimes you follow someone and diligently like all their reblogs and reblog their posts and you’re hoping you grind enough points in the follower mines to get scouted and promoted to mutual

and sometimes it’s like please never follow me back, i am your loyal minion

sometimes i type out a joke and it’s too obvious and hackneyed so i delete it and try again and the new joke is funnier but with particular way it’s in reaction to the unspoken first joke renders it a non sequitur if you can’t follow my thought process

so i wonder if it just seems like i say random stuff sometimes that’d be really funny if you have context no one has

i likewise use this sort of css on my site for my stories and essays. i usually rely ems rather than pixels when setting margins‍ ‍‍—‍ instead of counting pixels, you can hit the recommended text width by setting width: 50em, regardless of font or font size. tho i personally tend to get more aggressive, since i like large fonts and thinner margins, so i usually go down to 40em

by a similar to token, you might be able to hit that three x‍-​height tall line target by setting line‍-​height: 3ex

there are other, nicher typographic niceties i’ve won from thought and research (i use :after selectors and content rules to render my <hr>s as three asterisks; i use small‍-​caps to display <em>s nested inside other <em>s, because i’m not a fan of the convention where emphasis inside already italicized text is re‍-​romanized, that always looked ugly to me)

regarding justification, it is possible to get knuth‍-​plass justified text on the web via javascript, in fact there’s one solution in form of a bookmarklet that you can use to apply the justification to any page, provided they put the relevant text inside <p> elements

what you’ll discover if you try this trick on a page formatted with the above advice, though, is that this code somehow ignorant of text indent! so it’s another dead end unless you want to go back to double spaced paragraphs, or dig into the code to figure out how to fix this

there’s hope on the horizon, i guess – there’s css proposals like text-wrap: pretty that aren’t supported by many browsers, but maybe in a few years someone will add knuth‍-​plass justification to browsers

personally, i used to just create pdfs with latex and send them to people. i stopped doing that, but maybe i should go back to it…

one day i need to come up with a trans character concept other than “repressed guy becomes an evil woman who does whatever she wants” or i’m gonna get into trouble

• that’s kind of not what’s going on with adelphyne
• but

sometimes i use two tabs to scroll through my dash‍—my ⸢blogger style: vision of twin timelines⸥ technique. one is for the long arduous trek through new posts and one for catching all of the new posts that roll in as i’m doing the main scroll

really fucking sucks to get them confused and losing your place in the hours of backlog. but no great technique is without the potential for miscasting‍—it must be mastered

concept: lasers & feelings‍-​style one stat kobold rpg. your one stat is yip vs yap

werecoyotl posted:

Maybe I should look into making music , it’s been something that’s been on my mind for ages but never know where to start or look tbh

i woke up and wrote toxic yuri before i even got out of bed, that’s how you know i’m on that grind

i have another fav from the monster manual, this one a bit more of a hear me out

the tsochari though

each individual is a colony of parasites that slither in your body and puppet it from within with telepathy and torture 🥺

they only care about pursuing arcane secrets and view humans as nothing but tools 🥺 but they themselves were created as tools to bring populaces to compliance in preparation for their masters’ conquest

also i’m not even projecting with this, one of the clues of tsochar possession is a swollen belly. imagine walking around in public, filled with squirming parasites, and someone looks you up and down, then says “congratulations” but you can’t correct them because you have no mouth and cannot scream

Worms in the Dirt

not many ways for a creature to be sexier than by speaking with first person plural pronouns‍—due to genuinely being a collective, or perhaps simply a regal affect. but this only gets hotter if this tic derives from a psychic, subsumptive, even conceptual nature, meaning it’s unclear if that plural pronoun is meant to includes you.

and to be clear, it doesn’t, not at first, until one day, without you noticing, it does‍—but by that time, we have no protests

there are stories that haven’t updated in long enough it’s not even a hiatus anymore. at this point it’s waned to more of a lowatus

i wonder if there’s a timeline out there where i wrote that pmd fic, featuring a froslass (who woke up years ago as a snorunt with altered memories), and now by day trains at a prestigious shounen battle school for rescue teams alongside her bayleef minion partner, while by night she secretly schemes to seize control of the city’s criminal underworld and engages in death note type deduction spirals with an absol detective determined to take down this anonymous mastermind – with a quiet, sneaking suspicion that this could be key to cracking an old, tragic cold case, the death of a beloved gardevoir

something i didn’t touch on in my first post about the tsochar was this detail

They are religious and devote themselves to the powers of Xoriat, the realm of madness, seeing themselves as superior to other aberrations, particularly mind flayers, with whom they share a rivalry.

can you imagine imagine the tension between a tsochar girl who wants to wear you like a glove and a illithid girl who wants to psychically enslave and then eat you

calling your friends irl mutuals

just a heads up, if a girl breaks up with me be prepared when i switch to a pit fighter vi avatar because it WILL happen

honestly only got a eight hundred and thirty nine yard stare but i’m working on it!

why am i only just now learning about vraska

my queen ;~;

was looking into the daelkyr (the chaos elves that created the tsochar), and discovered this gem in the feats for the daelkyr half‍-​blood character option

Personal Symbiont (Ex): All half‍-​bloods begin play with one personal symbiont that they can pick from the following list: breed leech, crawling gauntlet, or throwing scarab. If a personal symbiont is lost, a daelkyr half‍-​blood can grow a replacement from his own flesh over a period of 2d4 days.

YOU CAN LITERALLY GET “whatever. go my scarab” AS A INNATE ABILITY

huh kelp is a kind of algae

the seething envy that grips my heart when i see someone get something i almost had and didn’t even want

i have a new theory shitpost idea

• Strong men (Slay the Spire) create good times (game of the decade contender)
• Good times create weak men (endless ocean of imitators)
• Weak men create hard times (audiences fatigued of roguelike deckbuilders)
• Hard times create strong men (Slay the Spire 2)

there’s something strange and ephemeral about the first draft for my first album cover i stumbled across

sometimes you see a tumblr post and you’re just like. ok. now try that again with paragraph breaks.

since the year is ending i sat down and collected some stats for Things I Did This Year

1. published about 350k words to my site across 69 posts
2. about 133k words of that was chapters, mostly hostile takeover
3. another 84k words of that was shorts, including self‍-​contained write‍-​ups that summarize a story loosely but at length
4. another 80k words of that is loreposts and write‍-​ups that focus on a small part of a larger, incomplete plot (e.g. the corrupt combustion and cometverse yaps)
5. finally, about 38k words of that was essays and blogposts and other misc. stuff
6. (as far as non writing projects go, my two published game demos, Pushro and Flickerseal are now sitting at 4.9k sloc and 2.9k sloc respectively, and my new site generator’s close to a thousand lines)

there’s admittedly some weirdness with this categorization scheme. for instance, An Opaque Heart (35k words) is counted among the shorts, meanwhile Even in Debt‍ ‍‍—‍ Dreams (16k words) is counted among the chapters, which kinda makes this a function of site (dis)organization than anything else

this is up about 50k words from last year, where i didn’t quite reach 300k words, and only 150k words of that was published (aurora moonrise remains some real dark matter)

but also last year i composed two hours of music and dozens of digital sketches/paintings, while this year i did fuck and all outside of writing and coding, so who knows how really measures up