#number one Google it and read reviews

[sanyu-thewitch05]

Not people making a whole hashtag(#sick of the smut) against smut on social media and a publisher jumping in on it:

More of people talking about the hashtag:

Video 1

Video 2

And on the smut in YA discourse that’s been talked about along with this hashtag, I’m a fresh 20 years old(birthday was last month) meaning I’ve been(and still am) reading YA for a good portion of my life. Yes, I know YA is for 12-18 year olds. But, 12-18 is a large developmental gap within itself. This shouldn’t really need to be said, but not every book in the YA genre is going to be able to cater to the age range that’s included in the range for reading YA. The singular or few smut chapters in YA that’s everyone’s having discourse about isn’t for 12-14 year old YA readers, no debate about that.

The singular or few smut chapters are for the 16-18 year old readers, because that’s what lines up with the developmental experiences of someone within that age range. Especially the 17-18 year old readers considering they’re either in college or about to be going to college. Sex and dating normally starts to be more relevant or interconnected topics or things people are going through at that point in life. This shouldn’t need to be said(again) but 16-18 year olds(speaking as a former 16-18 year old) aren’t going to really relate to the level of romance that would be appropriate for a 12-14 year old. They’re on different ends of the puberty spectrum and in different environments(mainly 17-18 year olds).

More in the tags

[curlicuecal]

playing science telephone

Hi folks. Let's play a fun game today called "unravelling bad science communication back to its source."

Journey with me.

Saw a comment going around on a tumblr thread that "sometimes the life expectancy of autism is cited in the 30s"

That number seemed..... strange. The commenter DID go on to say that that was "situational on people being awful and not… anything autism actually does", but you know what? Still a strange number. I feel compelled to fact check.

Quick Google "autism life expectancy" pulls up quite a few websites bandying around the number 39. Which is ~technically~ within the 30s, but already higher than the tumblr factoid would suggest. But, guess what. This number still sounds strange to me.

Most of the websites presenting this factoid present themselves as official autism resources and organizations (for parents, etc), and most of them vaguely wave towards "studies."

Ex: "Above And Beyond Therapy" has a whole article on "Does Autism Affect Life Expectancy" and states:

The link implies that it will take you to the "research studies" being referenced, but it in fact takes you to another random autism resource group called.... Songbird Care?

And on that website we find the factoid again:

Ooh, look. Now they've added the word "some". The average lifespan for SOME autistic people. Which the next group erased from the fact. The message shifts further.

And we have slightly more information about the study! (Which has also shifted from "studies" to a singular "study"). And we have another link!

Wonderfully, this link actually takes us to the actual peer-reviewed 2020 study being discussed. [x]

And here, just by reading the abstract, we find the most important information of all.

This study followed a cohort of adolescent and adult autistic people across a 20 year time period. Within that time period, 6.4% of the cohort died. Within that 6.4%, the average age of death was 39 years.

So this number is VERY MUCH not the average age of death for autistic people, or even the average age of death for the cohort of autistic people in that study. It is the average age of death IF you died young and within the 20 year period of the study (n=26), and also we don't even know the average starting age of participants without digging into earlier papers, except that it was 10 or older. (If you're curious, the researchers in the study suggested reduced self-sufficiency to be among the biggest risk factors for the early mortality group.)

But the number in the study has been removed from it's context, gradually modified and spread around the web, and modified some more, until it is pretty much a nonsense number that everyone is citing from everyone else.

There ARE two other numbers that pop up semi-frequently:

One cites the life expectancy at 58. I will leave finding the context for that number as an exercise for the audience, since none of the places I saw it gave a direct citation for where they were getting it.

And then, probably the best and most relevant number floating around out there (and the least frequently cited) draws from a 2023 study of over 17,000 UK people with an autism diagnosis, across 30 years. [x] This study estimated life expectancies between 70 and 77 years, varying with sex and presence/absence of a learning disability. (As compared to the UK 80-83 average for the population as a whole.)

This is a set of numbers that makes way more sense and is backed by way better data, but isn't quite as snappy a soundbite to pass around the internet. I'm gonna pass it around anyway, because I feel bad about how many scared internet people I stumbled across while doing this search.

People on quora like "I'm autistic, can I live past 38"-- honey, YES. omg.

---

tl;dr, when someone gives you a number out of context, consider that the context is probably important

also, make an amateur fact checker's life easier and CITE YOUR SOURCES

[vamptastic]

i very much like this article. it radiates person from the UK talking about what they think florida is like, don't get me wrong, but it is very insightful nevertheless. i live near the villages and while the place has a distinctly stepford wife kind of vibe and also radiates pure racism, the optimist in me is always like "why isn't there a train here" and refuses to accept that the answer is "because poor black people might take it". here's a couple bits i thought were good and one i found ridiculous:

this bit is very real, very scary as a jewish person, and very very funny. the sheer prevalence of extremely far right conspiratorial thinking in the villages cannot be understated, but at the same time a lot of jewish people retire there from the nearby neighborhood on top of the world, which is interesting.

then again perhaps i overstate the actual prevalence of jewish people considering i know most of the jewish people that live within 50 miles of the villages, and far less of the non-jewish ones. apparently only 0.1-0.7% of the villages is jewish, but only 35% of the villages are religious at all, and only 2.4% of the US is jewish. they do have a chabad so that's something. actually in conclusion i think there are way more jewish people around here than there actually are because i know all of them. point cancelled.

the last two paragraphs are what fully sold me on this article, despite the very british brand of "florida is a uniquely terrible hellscape" that i find annoying since i live here and am normal. the real tragedy of the villages is not so much a cynical, look at all these privileged old boomers and their horribly dystopian town, these guys are what's wrong with america, we should let it sink into the ocean. it's that they're still people and we still have to care about them and the very worst of them, the people that live there and love it and think everywhere should be like this, are dragging the rest of their generation down with them, and even they will still die in the end and it will be sad and awful even if they were shitheads.

this part, however, is stupid, and the kind of thing you write when you've been to the villages and nowhere else in central florida. the counties the villages encompasses are marion, sumpter, and lake county, and they have a rather negligible political impact on marion at least.

to go on a not so brief tangent. marion county is fucking huge and is the governing body for a huge amount of surrounding small towns. basically anywhere too far from a major florida city to be incorporated into that county. to illustrate this (all numbers rounded to the nearest thousand for convenience): the population of marion county is 385,000. the population of the largest cities within marion county are 65,000 (ocala), 25,000 (the shores), 19,000 (marion oaks), and 5,500 (belleview). the remaining 270,500 is made up of a lot of very small towns like citra, dunnellon, and fort mccoy, as well as a small share of the villages. i cannot find an exact number on how much of the villages actually holds political power in marion county, but the total population of the villages is 72,000. if it's split up evenly between all three counties, that's 24,000.

i know this is a bad hill to die on but i assure you marion county is organically stupid, and the at-most 16% of potential votes held by villages citizens is annoying, but definitely not some sort of all-consuming old people dictatorship.

as for the other two, sumpter county is made up entirely of towns with a population under 5,000, with an overall population of 135,000. lake county is made up of a large number of towns from 10,000-25,000, with some smaller towns in the mix, and a population of 395,000. certainly the impact there could be non-neglible, but i'd need to know the actual number of villages citizens voting in these counties. they could be having a significant impact on sumpter to be sure, and carrying the weight of entire independent town in lake county, but that's only if the zoning is an even 3-way split, which i doubt. unfortunately i cannot find the fucking numbers.

i guess the authors overall thesis with this bit is that the villages are in danger of overtaking marion, lake, and sumpter county. i think this is a bad conclusion based on the outwards perception of florida as a place dominated by retirement communities and bereft of independent culture. marion county outdates the villages by over a century, and much of the look of the villages is reminiscent of the few remaining historic areas of ocala and belleview, down to the old trolley tracks (unlike the villages, we indeed had a running trolley). it's also a good 20-45 minute drive to get there from ocala.

i mean, fundamentally this article is silly and melodramatic and the author is poking fun at themselves a bit throughout it. that being said, make fun of the villages all you want, but if you wanna make fun of ocala, you say we ride to school on cows and fuck our tractors, not that we're all elderly rich retirees.

ocala tangent over, sorry. real ones know that i am insane about my hometown but explaining why would be tantamount to doxxing myself. here are a few other random criticisms:

-i also feel it is worth mentioning that i find the author's need to harp on about how disgustingly fat people in the villages are to be annoying, particulary when there is no further analysis of health in the villages, and particularly when they also say the villages is full of unnervingly fit elderly people. methinks this speaks more to their personal views on fat people than any meaningful commentary.

-find it odd as well that they throw in a brief mention of how labour is provided to the villages (from surrounding decrepit small towns) but don't mention that the people who do minimum wage labour in the villages are by and large either black or visibly queer or both, and that the villages are 96% white, compared to ocala's 64.7%, lake counties 66.6%, and sumpter's 42.4%. so there's something going on there, and it is very much a villages thing, not a central florida thing.

just overall, this article is quite good but it's soooooo painfully obviously written by a british person who came here to write a sensational article about retirement communities. i appreciate that they came out of it with a thoughtful angle, and that most of the criticisms here are things ive ranted about to my parents while driving into the villages, and the article is very very funny. i just kind of wish people would give a shit about the rest of florida.

-and for a last nitpick, i find the whole "florida is a horrible inhospitable wasteland, nobody should live here" thing to be irritating. certainly the number of people who live here now is only possible due to air conditioning, but the natural landscape of florida is really very beautiful. the seminole and calusa people have been living in my corner of florida for a very long time, and while my white ass may be on the verge of heatstroke at all times, i guess i just kind of find it disrespectful to act like people only live here because the natural environment can be beaten into submission when people can and did live here long before that. get the fuck out of the villages and go take a hike through a mangrove forest and then swim in a cold spring and it won't seem so bad, i promise.

the villages are a horrible suburban hellscape and there are many very kind elderly people who deserve to live somewhere that is actually designed to accommodate their needs without being akin to a prison, rather than the idealized image of retirement that the villages actually accommodate. but retirement communities dominate the international image of florida in a way that leaves the rest of us in the dust, and i know this article is not the worst example of that, but it does bug me immensely. i need to just start writing articles of my own, i think.

[todays-xkcd]

Hint: If you ever encounter this puzzle in a crossword app, just [term for someone with a competitive and high-achieving personality].

A Crossword Puzzle [Explained]

Transcript

[A square 15x15 crossword puzzle is shown. Only 21 of the 225 squares are black. The black squares are in a pattern that are 180 degree rotationally symmetrical. Three black squares down from the 11th column and similarly three black squares up from the 5th column. Three black squares out from the right in row 7 and then two more black squares diagonally up from the end. Similarly three black squares out from the left in row 9 with two more black squares diagonally down from the end. A single black square is three above the first black square on the diagonal going down to the right and similarly there is a black square three under the first of the diagonal squares going down to the left. (Row 6 column 12 and Row 10 column 4). Finally there are three black squares on a diagonal crossing over the central point by going up from the left through the central point (Row 8 column 8). There are numbers at the top of every column (except the one that is a black square) and similarly at the left edge of all rows (except the one that is a black square). There are also numbers at the bottom of every black segment (except the one that reaches the bottom) and all rows after black segments except the one that reaches the right edge. In total all numbers from 1 to 51 is written. They are written in reading order from 1 to 51.]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

[Below the square there are two rows of clues for each number that belongs to across (rows) and to the right there are one row of clues for each number that belongs to down (columns). Both segments have an underlined and bold title above the clues. ]

'''Across'''

1. Famous Pvt. Wilhelm quote

11. IPv6 address record

15. "CIPHERTEXT" decrypted with Vigenère key "CIPHERTEXT"

16. 8mm diameter battery

17. "Warthog" attack aircraft

18. Every third letter in the word for "inability to visualize"

19. An acrostic hidden on the first page of the dictionary

21. Default paper size in Europe

22. First four unary strings

23. Lysine codon

24. 40 CFR Part 63 subpart concerning asphalt pollution

25. Top bond credit rating

26. Audi coupe

27. A pair of small remote batteries, when inserted

29. Unofficial Howard Dean slogan

32. A 4.0 report card

33. The "Harlem Globetrotters of baseball" (vowels only)

34. 2018 Kiefer song

35. Top Minor League tier

36. Reply elicited by a dentist

38. ANAA's airport

41. Macaulay Culkin's review of aftershave

43. Marketing agency trade grp.

44. Soaring climax of Linda Eder's ''Man of La Mancha''

46. Military flight community org.

47. Iconic line from ''Tarzan''

48. Every other letter of Jimmy Wales's birth state

49. Warthog's postscript after "They call me ''mister'' pig!"

50. Message to Elsa in ''Frozen 2''

51. Lola, when betting it all on Black 20 in ''Run Lola Run''

“Down

1. Game featuring "a reckless disregard for gravity"

2. 101010101010101010101010 [sub]2→16

3. Google phone released July '22

4. It's five times better than that ''other'' steak sauce

5. ToHex(43690)

6. Freddie Mercury lyric from ''Under Pressure''

7. Full-size Audi luxury sedan

8. Fast path through a multiple choice marketing survey

9. 12356631 in base 26

10. Viral Jimmy Barnes chorus

11. Ruby Rhod catchphrase

12. badbeef + 9efcebbb

13. In Wet Let's ''Ur Mum'', what the singer has been practicing

14. Refrain from Nora Reed bot

20. Mario button presses to ascend Minas Tirith's walls

24. Vermont historic route north from Bennington

26. High-budget video game

28. Unorthodox Tic-Tac-Toe win

29. String whose SHA-256 hash ends "...689510285e212385"

30. Arnold's remark to the Predator

31. The vowels in the fire salamander's binomial name

32. Janet Leigh ''Psycho'' line

34. Seven 440Hz pulses

37. Audi luxury sports sedan

38. A half-dozen eggs with reasonably firm yolks

39. 2-2-2-2-2-2 on a multitap phone keypad

40. .- .- .- .- .- .-

42. Rating for China's best tourist attractions

43. Standard drumstick size

45. "The rain/in Spain/falls main-/ly on the plain" rhyme scheme

[tac-the-unseen]

Stalker König

CW: talks of mental health, concerns not taken seriously, stalking, talks of Guns, Reader is doing their best, you better be ready to Google the meaning of flowers 💕

Your eyes shift to the oven's clock.

1:23 am

You huddle in the corner of your kitchen, silently crying, and shaking with every bone of your body. You desperately clutch a kitchen knife while praying that….that thing goes away.

For the past three months the shadows have been terrorizing you. You Know that when you look into the dark, something is looking back at you. Everybody you've talked to has told you, you were crazy. You've been called paranoid, and a few days ago someone called APS on you. They'd decided that you weren't in any immediate danger, but said they'd come back to check on you.

Tonight you couldn't sleep. Your body shuddered with terror with just the thought of closing your eyes. It's been a combination of little things that has built to this.

At first it was just small things going missing. Pens you left out, the sticky notes you doodled on, jewelry you didn't wear often. In fact the only reason you noticed things of yours was going missing, was because you wanted to wear a particular pair of fancy earrings to a company event. You looked for 30 minutes before just wearing another pair.

Then your favorite book disappeared. After a long day you were really looking forward to reading that book in bed before you passed out. But when you entered your room, the book wasn't on the shelf. You looked up and down, but you couldn't find it anywhere. You throw one of your other books across the wall out of frustration and left it there for the night. When you woke up that book was gone too.

Then things you've never owned started to show up in places you frequent. A red beaded bracelet you've never seen before showed up next to your kitchen sink. That new lipstick shade you've been wanting to try, You found it in your medicine cabinet when you went to brush your teeth. All that is spooky at best, but what really frightened you was a single bullet left on your office desk.

You told your boss you were sick and went home for the day…or at least that's where you told him you were going. You went straight into a public area like the women of your past have told you too, if you think you're in danger.

Kidnappers never take their victim in a crowded area.

Safer in numbers.

Cry, scream, kick, but never stop fighting.

You walked into a casual sit down restaurant and spent all night looking up what kind of bullet you were clutching in your palm.

A 9mm, just a small hunk of metal.

But you've never even held a gun, let alone own one.

You want to believe that a coworker accidentally dropped it on your desk, but it was perfectly placed. It was set up underneath your computer monitor, just out of sight for those passing, but when you sat down at your desk only you could see it.

This was deliberate.

This was not a coincidence.

But why? Why would you leave a bullet on someone's work desk? Is this a death threat? Is someone threatening your life? That thought alone made you crumble faster than you expected. You fought back tears while trying to think of who you might have pissed off.

The Receptionist you at your office? All you said was that you wouldn't be attending her baby shower. And anyway she got her revenge by ‘accidently’ eating your lunch.

The Uber driver you gave two stars too after he made a creepy comment about your chest? He just gave you a one star review a few minutes after.

That one girl in highschool that didn't like you? She peaked in highschool, you doubt she'd have the guts to pull off this stunt.

By the time you're ready to leave, it was night. You felt the fear fraying at your edges, the shadow’s non-existent eyes watching you, so you called one of your friends to pick you up.

You faked being drunk on the ride home. When she asked you about work, you said that they cut your shift without telling you and that you didn't mean to get wasted.

You're not sure she bought it, but she never brought it up.

When she pulls up to the house, you thank her, and pretend to stumble out of her car. She made sure you got inside before leaving and you haven't spoken since. But you couldn't worry about that now.

Your paranoia creeped in and made you check every corner of your house. Afterwards you crashed onto the couch and watched Judge Judy until you fell asleep.

When you woke up one of the blankets from your bed was wrapped around you.

You don't remember doing that.

You've never done that before. That panic in your stomach quaked and you got up to do another search around your home.

You found nothing, but called in sick anyway.

Two days later, and back at the office, you were clacking away at your keyboard when one of the mail distributors knocked on your door. The carrier was 17 if you remembered right, he was one of their nicer carriers. He was always kind to everyone in the office and was always telling jokes.

This time instead of carrying a letter or a stack of files, he was holding a large bouquet of Coral Roses, Anemones, red carnations, and Heliotropes. It was a gorgeous assortment of warm tones with just a little cool tones to balance everything.

“Caught someone’s eye?” The boy asked playful. You stand up to accept the gift. “Does it say from who?” You ask curiously. “Nope, just that it's for you.” You pick up the flowers and set them onto your already crowded desktop. “Someone has a secret admirer!” The boy teases and chuckles at his joke. “At least they're not cheap. I've delivered flowers to people before, but nothing this big before. Who ever it is, they really like you, or really need something from you…” he pause for a second “Well, it's a nice jester non the less.”

“I suppose it is…Tell you what, if you snag me an extra muffin from the community breakfast tomorrow morning, I'll make sure to update you if anything else comes up.” you hold out your hand to him. He thinks about it for a second before shaking your hand. “Deal!”

By the end of your day, you gently placed the flowers into the passenger seat. You've spent all day thinking about the flowers and who sent them. Just like the bullet, you didn't have a clue, But it was still nice to be appreciated like this.

No one's gotten you flowers before.

Because this was your first ever bouquet you dislodged some flowers and tied them upside down into your closet. You also persevered some in salt. You put the rest of the flowers into two glass bottles with some water.

You thought about persevering more, but you felt like that was a bit excessive. Besides you don't know where or who they're from….what if they are from the same person that left the bullet?

Those are two very different messages…

Soon enough You begin to spiral down a rabbit hole of anxiety and theories. deciding to (hopefully) sleep it off, you crawl to bed and bury yourself in your blankets.

Suddenly your body jolts you awake.

Through the sleepy haze you don't know what caused you to wake. You look at your phone, that You apparently forgot to charge, and realize it's 2:56 in the morning.

You try and rack your Brain for an answer to your sudden consciousness.

Then you hear it.

Glass.

Glass sliding across the floor in another room.

You look at your phone again.

3%

You figure it's better than nothing, plug it in, and dial 911.

“911, where is your emergency?” A female voice asks through the phone. Then your breath hitches in your throat.

Yes, you know Where you are. But you don't know Where the danger is. You don't even know if there is danger. And even if you did the house is silent, any noise you make could alert whatever is in your house.

You quietly breathe over the phone and slowly lay back down.

“Hello? Is there anybody there? This is 911, what is your emergency?” The woman asks.

You just breathe over the phone and quietly as possible.

“Is there something there that makes you unable to communicate?” The woman asks, finally understanding.

You hum a quiet yes, As inaudible as you can manage.

“Okay. I'm going to find you using your phone's pinged location. I need you to stay on the line with me so we can find and help you, okay?” she asks in a more hushed tone.

You just hum again and strain your ears trying to hear any sound.

You realize that the glass sound has stopped. And quiet footsteps start shuffling around your home.

You can hear doors opening and closing.

Soft breaths.

It's then you make another realization. It's now right outside your door. You can see two large shadows on the bottom of the doorway.

In a panic you turn your phones volume all the way down and hang up. You slide your phone back onto your night stand and pretend to be asleep.

And just in the nick of time too.

Your door softly creeks on its hinges.

The air is still and heavy, making it almost impossible to breathe.

You know you have to keep an even and low breathing pace. One of the tips you picked up in health that randomly stuck in your brain is that sleeping people use less oxygen.

If you wanted to sell this fake sleep, you'd have to force your body to deprive itself of its most valuable resource. Only for a little bit. Just until whatever, whoever is standing in your doorway leaves.

It moves forward

You only know this when they step on the only creaky floorboard in your room.

Whoever is in your room is dead silent.

You have to remind yourself not to furrow your brow when they continue their movement.

The air is still again

It lingers

You hear the sound of fabric shifting and stretching right next to you.

The terror in your chest scratches at your ribs when you feel the gentle movement of your hair sliding behind your ear.

You have not idea what to do.

What do you do?

You rack your brain for what normal people do when they sleep.

Snore? No, if you start now it would be a dead give away.

Mumble? Mumble what? What do people mumble in their sleep? Nothing you can come up with on the spot, that's for sure.

You decide to make a bold move and as lazily as you can shift your body's position.

That's what people do.

You push deeper into your pillow and raise your knee to about stomach level. It's a totally normal sleep position and almost everyone moves in their sleep.

A knot in your stomach churns. You fucking hate yourself. What if they don't buy it? What if you're digging your own grave? For fucks sake you don't even know if the intruder is armed.

The intruder chuckles softly and the shifting of fabric once again is dangerously close.

You think they just stood up?

Whatever, if they're moving, they're likely leaving.

Suddenly you can hear the faint sounds of sirens. They sound only a few streets away.

Your admirer clearly hears the same thing and swiftly makes their move out of the room.

It still terrifies you how quiet they are.

You hear the glass in your hallway slide once more only followed by the sirens getting much closer.

It's only when you hear a pounding at your front door and the announcement of police, do you peel open your eyes and take a deep breath.

When you reach over to retrieve your phone do you feel something else touch your hand.

You readjust your vision and your eyes widen.

A flower

Or flowers

Bright, vivid red flowers.

One stalk, several flowers.

They take hours looking through your home, questioning you.

They tell you to find somewhere else to sleep tonight.

Like you'll ever sleep again.

You put on shoes and walk to a late night convenience store and wait out the stars there. You explain yourself to the cashier and they let you loiter in the store.

But you can't keep the flowers out of your head.

Your phone is only at 28% so you don't have much time to mess around on there.

It takes about 8 minutes but you finally find the flowers that were ‘given’ to you…

Red Salvia…

You really weren't crazy…

Thanks for reading <3

Totally forgot I wrote this.... My bad gang...

Also don't worry about the inconsistencies, I wrote this like 6 months ago and only updated a little bit.

[beesmygod]

in an astounding twist of fate, im looking into what is actually going on with google adsense. they're in hot fucking water right now actually.

this summer, an enormous and scathing review by adalytics (an independent media research website) came out criticizing google for a myriad of things which could be politely summed up as "fraud". we're talking like. theye were taking money to serve ads on pages that got 0 views regularly. thats not what people pay for lol.

as a result google mysteriously issued some refunds (""credits"", because "refunds" sounds bad) but insists it was all normal. adexchanger has a summary of an adage.com article

Google vehemently denies the report’s findings and that the credits are in any way related. “Issuing credits to advertisers is not uncommon,” a Google spokesperson says, adding that “Adalytics used a flawed methodology to make wildly inaccurate claims about GVP.”

so over the last four or so months, google has been making core updates to its adsense network with, apparently, very little warning to the people using it. and everyone's numbers tanked. hard. oct 2023 appears to have been esp brutal. both the search engine journal and lily ray from amsive, apparently a huge name in marketing, released reports that are completely nuts. the lily ray one is esp detailed and has a timeline of updates

73% of overall respondents indicated that they have seen their Google Discover traffic drop to 0 during the past 3 months. Among websites that lost Discover traffic, the most common complaints were dramatic traffic declines; dropping to 0 impressions and clicks; extreme percentage decreases in clicks ranging from 50-99%, and massive losses in revenue from AdSense and other ad networks.

50 to 99%?! yeah that's a small sample size but that's a fucking hell of a swing and a trend.

according to the search engine journal google appears to be saying "well, we''ll see what we can do" the same way that you would say "let me look in the back" when you know full and well its not in the back. like this reads to me as "them's the breaks". which is uhh. i think a really big problem.

[felassan]

Game Informer:

"Cover Reveal – Dragon Age: The Veilguard by Wesley LeBlanc on Jun 09, 2024 at 02:00 PM This month, Dragon Age: The Veilguard (you read that right – Dreadwolf is no more) graces the cover of Game Informer. After years developing Baldur's Gate and its sequel early in its history, BioWare struck out to create its own fantasy RPG. That series began with Dragon Age: Origins in 2009. It was followed up with Dragon Age II in 2011, and then Dragon Age: Inquisition in 2014. While the Dragon Age series' history has its ups and downs, fans have been patiently waiting for BioWare to return to the franchise, and 2024 is finally the year.  We visited BioWare's Edmonton, Canada, office for an exclusive look at Dragon Age: The Veilguard, including a look at its character creator, its prologue and opening missions, and more. We also spoke to many of the game's leads about the name change, the series' shift to real-time action combat, the various companions (and the relationships you can forge with them), and The Veilguard's hub location. You can learn about the titular Veilguard, Solas' role in the game, and so much more in our 12-page cover story for Dragon Age: The Veilguard."

"But there are plenty of other excellent reads within this issue of Game Informer! Some of us flew to Los Angeles, California, to attend Summer Game Fest and the not-E3 weekend's various other events to check out new games, interview developers, and more. Our previews section is jam-packed with new details about upcoming releases we can't wait for.  Brian Shea flew to Warsaw, Poland, to check out two upcoming releases – Frostpunk 2 and The Alters – and he came away excited about both. Jon Woodey went hands-on with Final Fantasy XIV's upcoming Dawntrail expansion (and spoke to director Naoki Yoshida, too), and as someone with 8,000 hours in the game, his words are the ones you'll want to read.  On the freelance front, Charlie Wacholz writes about how last year's Dave The Diver is one of the best game representations of the rewards and struggles of working in the food and beverage industry, and Grant Stoner spoke with Sony and Microsoft about the development of process and history of the companies' Adaptive and Access controllers. And for a lil' terror this summer, Ashley Bardhan spoke to several horror game developers about why the alluring town known as Silent Hill is a crucial location to Konami's horror masterpiece.  As always, you'll find an editor's note from editor-in-chief Matt Miller, reviews from various freelancers and staff editors, a Top 5 list (hint hint: dragons), and more. Here's a closer look at the cover:"

"Not a print subscriber yet but want this issue? Well, you're in luck! Subscribing today – or within the next few days – will net you a print copy of this issue! You can join the ranks of the Game Informer print subscribers through our new standalone print subscription! Just head here to sign up for either one or two years at a fraction of the cost of buying the issues individually! You can even gift a print subscription to your favorite gamer! SUBSCRIBE TO THE PRINT MAGAZINE You can also try to nab a Game Informer Gold version of the issue. Limited to a numbered print run per issue, this premium version of Game Informer isn't available for sale. To learn about places where you might be able to get a copy, check out our official Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, BlueSky, and Threads accounts and stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks. Click here to read more about Game Informer Gold. Print subscribers can expect their issues to arrive in the coming weeks. The digital edition launches June 18 for PC/Mac, iOS, and Google Play. Individual print copies will be available for purchase in the coming weeks at GameStop."

[source] <- they explain at the link how to read this issue.

aaah they have had a look at the character creator!!! I can't wait for this coverage.

[copperbadge]

Lately, it's felt like every time I've started to work on writing, I'll just be getting into the rhythm of it when I get interrupted, either by work or the cats or because the time I'd booked in the library study room is up (you can only do two hours at a time, and only four hours a week total). It was getting to the point where I kept re-reading the same chapter or so of previous work but never managing to add to it.

So I tried an experiment this past weekend -- I found a really cheap rate on a local hotel room, and on Friday I took an overnight bag and a very old laptop with limited processing power and checked into a room about a mile from home for a quasi "staycation". I unpacked and had a quiet night on Friday, as prelude to working Saturday-Sunday. The idea was to write uninterrupted by other people, pets, the presence of all my Stuff around me at home, et cetera.

I had snacks but I also bought meals out, which was nice; I don't often order in or buy out when I'm at home. The way I set up was that I would do fifty minutes of writing with do-not-disturb engaged on my phone and then ten minutes of checking email, texts, etc. since often what pulls me out of writing is a text or an email that needs answering, or the anxiety that I'm missing one that would. If I set it so that every hour I check, well, nobody's going to die if something doesn't get answered in an hour, so the anxiety isn't there, and neither is the distraction. (I found a nice app for this, review later depending on how functional it continues to be for me, but it's a like $4 app called Forest.)

It worked pretty well -- writing for an uninterrupted hour, as long as I know what I'm working on, is very functional for me. I average about two thousand words, that way, though there is a limit to the number of hours I can put in. I ended up doing two hours in the morning and one hour in the afternoon, then switched from fiction writing to clearing out my tumblr drafts and some correspondence for the fourth hour. So it went something like

Go out and get breakfast, bring back and eat in room

Change into lounging clothes and do two one-hour sessions

Go out and get lunch, eat lunch out

Bit of a rest break back in the room

Two one-hour sessions, one of writing; when tired, switch to something that requires less creativity

Go out and get dinner, bring back and eat in room

And then in the evening the plan was to watch movies or catch up on reading, but I ended up being mentally weary, so instead I did some simple tarot reading. It was less divination or even meditation than just messing around, keeping the creativity stimulated; I did a couple of Creative Writing spreads, some very brief divination spreads (I nicked a nice three-card spread here that I mentally call He To Hecuba, and just used it in general rather than for a specific question) and then invented a spread when I was starting to get irritated that the same like, five cards kept coming up, more on this in its own post.

Sunday I did one more writing session but it was less successful, I think partly because what I was writing required a lot of research and partly because the previous day I'd dumped eight thousand words into the file. (Research took longer because I brought the most garbage laptop known to man, and the browsers crash if you try to open Google Maps, but in other ways it was ideal since there wasn't much I could do on it other than write.) But I had a good breakfast, got some rest, packed up easily enough, and headed home just ahead of the rain storm.

I don't think it's something I'll be able to do in that format especially often, since the deal I got on the hotel was an anomaly and Chicago lodging, even just AirBNB stuff, is stupid expensive. But in addition to helping get some work done it was a nice break, so I'm going to look into ways I could swing it on a perhaps monthly basis, or some other way to cheaply spend an entire day alone with decent access to a bathroom/snacks and a way to come and go easily. I've looked into coworking spaces before but they tend to be prohibitively expensive and don't really have the setup I'd prefer; there's a hostel on the north side with private rooms that I might try out but it doesn't seem significantly cheaper than a hotel. I might just have to pick one weekend a month and watch last-minute hotel price cuts where they simply want to fill a room for a day or two.

Anyway, functionally I wrote almost a fifth of a novel this weekend, and one that I wasn't feeling super on fire about; I'm feeling much better about it now that I've got some established plot going and I feel like I "know" the newer characters a bit better. (Also I'm enjoying writing Simon as someone who is absolutely entranced by his love interest and clueless that what he's feeling isn't mild antipathy because they met while fighting over ricotta.) So it was a big help, although if I were to put a budget line item in the Extribulum Press ledger for "writing staycation" it would wipe out my royalties surplus very quickly.

[allbluemin]

Sorry if something doesn't make sense, english is not my first language.

Ever since I watched the new movie in the Planet of the Apes franchise two weeks ago, it has been living in my thoughts rent-free and completely dominating my cell phone history. I've read so many reviews, theories, watched behind-the-scenes videos and interviews (I'm the obsessive type who can't JUST like something and has to make it an addiction, a necessity in my daily life) and of course I haven't stopped researching here on tumblr either. And it was researching here that I discovered:

The ship noa x mae.... tan tan tan!!!🥁 (I couldn't resist, sorry)

Anyway, that's not specifically what I want to talk about. But I've also discovered the discussions you're having about the ship, and I come here to humbly ask you: please don't stop, it's been my greatest entertainment over the last few days😅😂😂

Joking aside, it's been very interesting for me to follow this, because I've been using tumblr for 2 years and it's the first time I've seen a debate about it, and let's face it, in 2 years you discover A LOT here, especially if you consume diverse subjects, like me. You always end up stumbling and falling into a hole... maybe a dark one... maybe a strange one... and maybe you'll never get out of it 💀💀

The point is, my curiosity has led me to start a survey focused mainly on exposing opinions about this ship, focusing on people who consume monster/human-related content and people who don't.

I have no intention of starting wild fights with insults and all, I'm just looking for numbers and statistics. I'll be posting a poll with these same tags so that you can vote and talk civilly, and attached to the post there will be a Google form with some more information to fill in and make it easier to analyze the data (all done anonymously of course).

If you can help me it would be super interesting, thank you in advance!!! <3

[alexanderwales]

I was reading some of the discourse around Veo3, Google's new video AI that can do sounds and voices. Watching some of the things it's produced, it still has a fair number of rough edges, and I don't see anything saying that it can keep "on model" which seems like a thing you would need if you wanted more than a series of disconnected shorts.

But I saw a comment to the effect of "imagine how awesome it'll be in the future when you can press a button and just get a whole movie".

And yeah, if you could do that, it would be pretty awesome. (I mean, it would cost $2,000 at current rates, though those will probably go down. But ignore that.)

The thing is, watching a movie takes a pretty significant amount of time, so no way am I watching a movie that's been made bespoke for me unless it's better than what humans are making. I would watch a movie made by an AI if it had been vetted by people whose taste I trust, if it had rave reviews, or if it was in a niche that I really enjoyed. But that's a lot different than just pressing a button and trusting that the AI is going to cook me up something that I'll like. I can't trust that for a three second clip, let alone two hours.

One of the things that I find so wild about the pro-AI side of things is how often I see these sentiments about how cool it will be when it can do all these things, as if just taking for granted that the technological march is never going to stop, as if all the problems now are going to be effectively solved in a few years time.

And I always agree when there's an "if" involved. If it worked better, if we solve the problems, if it looked good, if the price went down. The problem is that so much of this feels like hopes and dreams to me, a hype cycle that's outpacing the actual technology.

Which is crazy to me, because when GPT-2 came out, I was beating the drum saying "this is a game changer, why are people not talking about this!" And then everyone on the pro-AI side went rushing past me, and the anti-AI side developed and has declared that it's never going anywhere, and I'm left feeling like the discourse went badly wrong somewhere.

[sunnie-angel]

your work is beautiful!! and congrats on the milestone!! could you possibly do apple picking + famous writer! reader? 😺

you're so kind sweet nonny, of course i can do that for you!

jason's always been a great fan of classic novels, but he's starting to run out of books to read and the staff recommendations section at the library always has one or another of your books featured so he gives it a try

he's hooked by the first page and swears to read anything else you've ever written by the end of chapter one. he's a huge fan of your work, so when he hears that you've got a brand new book coming out and you'll be doing a book signing to celebrate it, right here in Gotham, he was giddy.

Jason finally gets the new book and he's...actually really disappointed by it? but you wrote it and he still really wants your signature so he shows up to the signing anyway.

you ask him what he thought of it while scribbling your pen name and he can't help blurt out that he thought your other works were better. you laugh at his honesty and get his number to talk to him about it later, relieved that at least someone else agrees with you despite what all the raving reviews are saying.

heated discussion about books over coffee turn into slow dinners and walks in the parks with entwined hands. the puzzle pieces of your lives fit together so neatly.

in a fit of exasperation during a writing sprint you complain about not being able to just google how many stab wounds the human body can survive and the if bloodloss could create hallucinations. jason answers those questions way too quickly and the truth of his identity comes out.

one day, the newest dedication of your book reads: for j, my darling. the love of my life. will you marry me?

you can request more head canons as part of sunnie's soft autumn

[academicfever]

This is a good starting point but its not exhaustive by any means...

#Research 101: Part 1

##    How to find a good research topic?

It’s best to familiarize yourself with a discipline or topic as broadly as possible by looking beyond academia

Tips:

Be enthusiastic, but not unrealistic. For example, you might be tempted to throw yourself into finding out to what extent an entire economy has become circular, but it may already be challenging and tricky enough to find out which building materials are being recycled in the construction sector, and in what ways.

Be open-minded but beware of cul-de-sacs. You should always find out first whether enough is known about a topic already, or you might find yourself wasting a lot of time on it.

Be creative but stay close to the assignment. This starts with the topic itself; if one learning objective of the assignment is to carry out a survey, it isn’t helpful to choose a topic for which you need to find respondents on the other side of the world. One place where you can look for inspiration is current events. 

Although professors and lecturers tend to be extremely busy, they are often enthusiastic about motivated and smart students who are interested in their research field. You do need to approach them with focused questions, though, and not just general talk such as: ‘Do you know of a good topic for me?’ In many cases, a good starting point is the scholar themselves. Do a search on them in a search engine, take a look at their university web page, read recent publications,

In most university towns, you’ll come across organizations that hold regular lectures, debates, and thematic evenings, often in partnership with or organized by university lecturers and professors. If you’re interested in transdisciplinary research where academic knowledge and practical knowledge come together, this is certainly a useful place to start your search.

If you want to do interdisciplinary research, it is essential to understand and work with concepts and theories from different research fields, so that you are able to draw links between them (see Menken and Keestra (2016) on why theory is important for this). With an eye to your ‘interdisciplinary’ academic training, it is therefore a good idea to start your first steps in research with concepts and theories.

##How to do Lit Review:

Although texts in different academic disciplines can differ significantly in terms of structure, form, and length, almost all academic articles (research articles and literature reports) share a number of characteristics:

They are published in scholarly journals with expert editorial boards

These journals are peer-reviewed

These articles are written by authors who have no direct commercial or political interest in the topic on which they are writing

There are also non-academic research reports such as UN reports, data from statistics institutes, and government reports. Although these are not, strictly speaking, peer-reviewed, the reliability of these sources means that their contents can be assumed to be valid

You can usually include grey literature in your research bibliography, but if you’re not sure, you can ask your lecturer or supervisor whether the source you’ve found meets the requirements.

Google and Wikipedia are unreliable: the former due to its commercial interests, the latter because anyone, in principle, can adjust the information and few checks are made on the content.

disciplinary and interdisciplinary search machines with extensive search functions for specialized databases, such as the Web of Science, Pubmed, Science Direct, and Scopus

Search methods All of these search engines allow you to search for scholarly sources in different ways. You can search by topic, author, year of publication, and journal name. Some tips for searching for literature: 1. Use a combination of search terms that accurately describes your topic. 2. You should use mainly English search terms, given that English is the main language of communication in academia. 3. Try multiple search terms to unearth the sources you need. a. Ensure that you know a number of synonyms for your main topic b. Use the search engine’s thesaurus function (if available) to map out related concepts.

During your search, it is advisable to keep track of the keywords and search combinations you use. This will allow you to check for blind spots in your search strategy, and you can get feedback on improving the search combinations. Some search engines automatically keep a record of this.

Exploratory reading How do you make a selection from the enormous number of articles that are often available on a topic? Keep the following four questions in mind, and use them to guide your literature review: ■■ What is already known about my topic and in which discipline is the topic discussed? ■■ Which theories and concepts are used and discussed within the scope of my topic, and how are they defined? ■■ How is my topic researched and what different research methods are there? ■■ Which questions remain unanswered and what has yet to be researched?

$$ Speed reading:

Run through the titles, abstracts, and keywords of the articles at the top of your list and work out which ideas (concepts) keep coming back.

Next, use the abstract to figure out what these concepts mean, and also try to see whether they are connected and whether this differs for each study.

If you are unable to work out what the concepts mean, based on the context, don’t hesitate to use dictionaries or search engines.

Make a list of the concepts that occur most frequently in these texts and try to draw links between them.

A good way to do this is to use a concept map, which sets out the links between the concepts in a visual way.

All being well, by now you will have found a list of articles and used them to identify several concepts and theories. From these, try to select the theories and concepts that you want to explore further. Selecting at this stage will help you to frame and focus your research. The next step is to discover to what extent these articles deal with these concepts and theories in similar or different ways, and how combining these concepts and theories leads to different outcomes. In order to do this, you will need to read more thoroughly and make a detailed record of what you’ve learned.

next: part 2

part 3

part 4

last part

[rising-volteccers]

Alright, here's my unofficial review of the Takara Tomy Pokemon Moncolle Rising Volt Tacklers Transformation! Brave Asagi! figure.

I have to preface by saying that all figurines shown does not come with the kit! I already have them on hand by the time I purchased this. Friede, Liko and Roy are from the Takara Tomy Pokemon Moncolle Trainer Collection.

First and foremost, I can say that the material is pretty sturdy. The plastic didn't feel cheap, and it had quite the weight to it. The pieces were packaged in different sections, with the two halves, the base and other miscellaneous pieces separated. it came with an instruction manual (in Japanese and not colored, so it was a bit difficult for a visual learner like me) but the instructions were simple enough to follow even without using Google Translate.

The kit comes with a sticker sheet as you're expected to plaster on each individual sticker onto the different pieces. Thankfully, both the instruction manual and the sticker sheet are properly numbered so it's a matter of following along. I would suggest using tweezers because it was quite stressful to plaster on the smaller sticker pieces onto the figure using fingers.

I would say it took far longer for me (and my bestie who helped me assemble this) to plaster on all the stickers than actually assembling the ship, which wasn't too difficult with the instructions.

When assembled into the airship form, it's quite hefty. At about 30 cm tall x 33 cm wide, it's a pretty solid and sizable figure. I really like all the little details, from the side propellers being foldable and the spread out wings of the battle deck. The best part is that it has wheels!

When it came time to change it from the airship form to the inboard form, the instructions weren't too difficult to follow. The two halves of the airship acts as the base, with the propellers acting as pillars of support at the back. The two 'lifts' at the front also act as pillars, making the entire setup quite sturdy.

The ship inboard form is divided into five different rooms.

There's the kitchen area that came with the kitchen counter and fridge.

The engine room that has a little latch to reveal the Slugma. I forgot to take another picture from the other angle but the wheel part can both be spun and has Carkol in it.

There's the infirmary room at the back of the observatory deck with a latch that can open up at the back.

The bedroom area that you can choose between four stickers to plaster onto the screen. I plastered on one at the infirmary room's computer screen and decided to choose the Nidothing one for the bedroom, picturing it to be Liko's.

There is also the dining / meeting room area that comes with the table, two chairs and the partition you plaster on the cute stickers at. I really do enjoy the little detail of having the picture frames and the poster there.

There is also the little arena you place on the ground and the little hook attached at the front of the ship. Without the figurine, you can see the little captain's chair by the steering wheel, which is another detail I like.

Personally, what I like the most is that I can store everything onto the ship. Both the arena and the deck are actually two pieces of what I would describe as thin cardboard(?). I can use the arena to cover up the kitchen and the engine room, like I used the wooden flooring looking cardboard to act as support for the dining room and bedroom. When I want to change it back into airship mode, I store all the little props into the hollow parts of the ship and then cover it up with the cardboard.

All in all, it's definitely a nice figure to have if you're a fan of the show! While I already did have a few, it does make me want to buy all the other little Pokemon figurines to make the ship feel more alive, so I guess that's one way they pull you into buying more products.

Thank you very much for reading till the end! I personally give it a 10/10 Volt Tackles.

[zedecksiew]

THE BLOGGIES 2023: FINALISTS

(If you just want to skip to the list of BLOGGIE finalists, scroll to the "Who Are The BLOGGIES?" section below.)

+++

WHAT ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Awards for some of the best tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) blog posts to come out in 2022. There will be five awards: Best Theory Blogpost, Best Gameable Blogpost, Best Advice Blogpost, Best Review Blogpost, and, the biggest one, Best Blogpost.

I won Best Blogpost, last year. So I am hosting the BLOGGIES, this year.

+++

WHY ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Blogs are worth celebrating. Barring the actual playing of actual games, they are our most fertile field, our most volatile laboratory. Longform, text-based, and informal---they are a place to jot down our most outre design ideas. Free and publicly available---they are a vector for open debate and serendipitous discourse. Perhaps most importantly: relatively free of algorithmic social-media pressures---they are the best chance we have at a cultural memory.

I got into TTRPGs because of blogs.

The BLOGGIES are, at best, an affirmation of the above. At least, they are a way to celebrate 64 excellent blog posts from the last year, and maybe get them in front of people who did not read them the first time.

+++

HOW ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Nominations: I put an open call for blog-post nominations on Christmas 2023; I also canvassed the TTRPG communities I am part of. Nominated posts had to be from between 1 December 2022 to 31 December 2023.

I closed the nomination period on 1 Jan 2024 with 149 blog posts for consideration. I read / re-read them all.

I chose a slate of 64 finalists, according to the following metrics, in order:

Enthusiasm---a post got multiple nominations;

Diversity---no one blog was allowed to be a finalist more than once in a category (except the Reviews category, where this rule was tied to individual writers, due to shared review blogs);

Notability---a post was extraordinary in presenting a novel idea, addressing an important subject, or reflecting a community current.

Obviously, that last metric is highly subjective, and limited to my knowledge and perspective in the scene. I did my best.

I will not have final final say. Finalists will go head to head, vying for to be anointed best of the best by ballot. The bracket was seeded in order of number of nominations received. The BLOGGIES await your vote, o TTRPG folx.

+++

WHEN ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Throughout January 2024! Voting is >>>NOW OPEN<<< on Google Forms according to the following schedule (I will link to the forms and result threads as I post them):

First Week January - THEORY

3 January: Round of 16

4 January: Round of 8

5 January: Round of 4

6 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Second Week January - GAMEABLE

10 January: Round of 16

11 January: Round of 8

12 January: Round of 4

13 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Third Week January - ADVICE

17 January: Round of 16

18 January: Round of 8

19 January: Round of 4

20 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

Fourth Week January - REVIEW

24 January: Round of 16

25 January: Round of 8

26 January: Round of 4

27 January: Quarterfinals (winners in category) - Results

31 January - FINALS

+++

WHO ARE THE BLOGGIES?

Your BLOGGIES 2023 FINALISTS are (presented in bracket order):

(High-res version here)

+++

THEORY

🥉 (1) being a problem - playable orcs at the limits of humanity, from Majestic Fly Whisk Some deep thinking about the racialisation of the orc in elfgames, why mainstream fixes fall short, and ways to move beyond.

vs

(16) #132: Axes of Game Design, from The Indie RPG Newsletter An exploration of the design axes / spectrums on which every TTRPG may fall.

(8) The Genres the OSR Can't Do, from A Knight At The Opera Sketching the limits of the OSR playstyle by looking at genres which are too differently-bound for it to emulate.

vs

(9) RPG Transcript Analysis: Critical Role, from Trilemma Adventures Examining a style of play through transcript analysis (looking at what is actually being said during a session), with Critical Role as case study.

🥈 (5) Critical GLOG: Base Resolution Mechanics, from Goblin Punch A deep dive into dice and resolution mechanics, and what they do in practice.

vs

(12) My favorite problems, from Failure Tolerated A list of design problems in TTRPGs, and a case for game design and theory to be driven by problem-solving.

(4) Roleplay Is Folk Art, from Wizard Thief Fighter An impassioned call to consider TTRPGs as folk art as opposed to corpocratic walled-garden IPs.

vs

(13) ART, PRODUCT, BOARD GAMES AND MAUSRITTER, from Fail Forward Critique of reviews that accuse TTRPGs for being too slick; interrogating the assumptions behind the label “commercial”.

(6) Toolbox Design, from The Dododecahedron Considering the principles of designing TTRPGs like toolboxes, through the lens of Cairn RPG and similar.

vs

(11) Mario vs ActRaiser vs Final Fantasy vs Zelda - Types of Advancement in RPGs, from Rise Up Comus Identifying some general types of advancement in TTRPGs, using videogames as a comparative lens.

(3) Posters, Posers and POSR(s), from Prismatic Wasteland Relitigating whether the OSR is dead, and defining its successor, the Post-OSR.

vs

(14) psychosis is badly written in tabletop games, from paper cult “Attempting to mechanize something so intensely personal, different, and mutable as mental illness is complicated. I think that makes these depictions bad!”

(7) “Rules Elide” and Its Consequences, from Jared Considering the implications of the maxim that "a game is about X when you have rules for everything but X".

vs

(10) Models of High-Level Play, from Benign Brown Beast Loose but useful classifications for types of high-level play: domains; god-like play; etc.

🥇 (2) OSR Rules Families, from Traverse Fantasy Sketching the landscape of the OSR, how various systems function, and how their attributes cluster and trend together.

vs

(15) Moralising and manipulation in tabletop roleplaying games, from Playful Void The importance of having design preferences without tying these preferences to moral judgments.

+++

GAMEABLE

🥉 (1) Flux Space, from Papers & Pencils A point-crawl procedure specifically designed for labyrinths / dungeons that are architecturally confusing / samey.

vs

(16) Generating Elevation in a Hexcrawl, from Traveler's Rest Procedures and advice on how to generate a mountain-crawl: hiking-focused adventure geography.

(8) The Autumn of Summers, from False Machine God-monsters born of summer, the hunting culture around such beasts, and random tables to generate their attributes.

vs

(9) MIMICS, from Vaults Of Vaarn A spread of novel pretender-creatures, with ecological and social implications.

(5) Another take on demihumans as social constructs, from Cavegirl's Game Stuff What if we consider fantasy races not as separate species, but as differing social roles?

vs

(12) The Apocalypse Archive, from Bearded Devil An unfinished by exemplary #dungeon23 attempt that includes wonderful maps and soundtrack notes.

🥈 (4) Pointcrawling Character Creation, from Rise Up Comus A framework for tying character generation to a geography, generating history and familiarity with campaign locales.

vs

(13) how to be erased, from Straits Of Anian Procedures for getting lost and getting led astray, and the kith and spirits one meets in those places.

(6) Dungeon Skirmishing, from All Dead Generations Feature-complete skirmish combat mechanics for OD&D, and the design rationales thereof.

vs

(11) Zelda-Style NPC Personalities, from To Distant Lands A system of generating quick and punchy NPCs, inspired by the way Zelda videogames present NPCs.

(3) GULCH, from Mindstorm A starter town specifically designed for contemporary (horror, urban fantasy, non-fantasy) campaigns.

vs

(14) Down the Road: Local Situation Design, from Deeper In The Game A procedure for quickly generating a powderkeg situation in a local geography of play.

🥇 (7) Laws of the Land: meaningful terrain via in-fiction limits and conditions, from Was It Likely? A method to generate meaningful diegetic terrain and tone in an adventuring region.

vs

(10) False Equivalent Exchange, from The Graverobber's Guide A novel magic system, done in natural language, with discussion on how it could be used in play.

(2) Deeper Catacombs, from Benign Brown Beast Iteration notes and a presentation of a comprehensive dungeon tracking procedure.

vs

(15) Inadvisable Decisions (GLΔG), from The Nothic's Eye An evocative alienist character class, based on drawing the attention of alter-describable things from beyond.

+++

ADVICE

🥈 (1) How to Handle Parley as an OSR DM, from Goblin Punch Comprehensive notes on how to run non-combat encounters without resorting to boring rolls.

vs

(16) GM Pointers: Live-Text Games, from Shadow & Fae Good reminders on how to run live-text games better, so they are better coordinated and don't take forever.

(8) ONLY Roll Initiative, from Bastionland Considerations on how to adjudicate combats, if initiative were the only dice roll in a combat system.

vs

(9) Action Mysteries, from A Knight At The Opera Asserting that good TTRPGs mysteries involve action---not just figuring out the truth but opposing the antagonist's goals.

(5) Modular Ecology, from The Graverobber's Guide A practical approach to including gameable ecology in TTRPGs, by tying materials to specific locations and conditions of the world.

vs

(12) ULTIMATE ANIMIST MECHANIC: EVERYTHING IS A REACTION, from Alone In The Labyrinth How to run a game where all actions are resolved by reaction roll: everything in the world responds by how much they like you.

(4) Game Mastering Like A Park Ranger, from SILVERARM Advice about GM-ing, based on the real-world work experience of being a park ranger.

vs

(13) An OSR approach to Spotlight, from Permanent Cranial Damage The suggestion that intentionally spotlighting characters solves the real-life problem of spotlighting players nicely.

(6) #Dungeon23, from Win Conditions The idea that spawned a thousand notebook dungeons, plus salient advice on how to start / keep going.

vs

(11) The Storyteller Technique, from Possum Creek Games When writing TTRPGs, imagine your game text as a diegetic artefact in the world of the game.

🥉 (3) RANSACKING THE ROOM, from Mindstorm A simple and powerful three-step method to handle room-searching in games: inspect, search, and ransack.

vs

(14) Cairn Crash Course, from Widdershins Wanderings A masterclass example on how to write player guides to a game, for Cairn RPG.

(7) AN EXAMPLE OF FKR (NEAR-)DICELESS COMBAT (WITH COSMIC ORRERY!), from Underground Adventures Describing combat in a Free Kriegsspiel Roleplaying (FKR) game, useful in understanding that playstyle.

vs

🥇 (10) Re-inventing the Wilderness: Part 1 - Introduction, from sachagoat Figuring out problems with wilderness exploration, and applying a mental-map framework from urban-theory academia.

(2) Dungeon Design, Process and Keys, from All Dead Generations A detailed process to designing and keying a traditional dungeon adventure.

vs

(15) THE D&D IN MY HEAD: In Only 6 Load-Bearing Numbers, from I Cast Light! Identifying the essential and minimum rules you need to remember, to run D&D.

+++

REVIEW

🥇 (1) An Empty Africa - PF2E's The Mwangi Expanse and the strange career of Black Atlanticism, from Majestic Fly Whisk A review of Pathfinder’s "The Mwangi Expanse", and a discussion of Black Atlanticism's fraught relationship with its sourcelands.

vs

(16) What Hull Breach Teaches Us, from Mazirian's Garden An assessment of the Mothership RPG third-party "Hull Breach" anthology as a "new standard for anthology companions".

(8) Grave Trespass - Jim Henson's Labyrinth: The Adventure Game, from Bones Of Contention A review of the Labyrinth RPG. It’s got all these things which are "bad" in RPGs, so why does it work?

vs

(9) The First Rumor Tables, Part 2: Caverns of Thracia or Caverns of Quasqueton?, from Tom Van Winkle's Return To Gaming An investigation into the origins of rumour tables in TTRPGs. Did TSR plagiarise Jaquays?

(5) Standing up for D&D's Gen X: 2e (Part 1), from Mythlands Of Erce A full-throated defense of D&D2E, viewing it in the context of its time and as a refinement over 1E.

vs

(12) Systemcrawl: Break!! RPG, from Widdershins Wanderings A review and system analysis of Break!! RPG, which marries JRPG and OSR inspirations.

(4) Dungeon Crawls in Cinema, from Directsun Games Evaluating several films on the basis of how well they function as dungeon crawls.

vs

(13) Reasonable Reviews, from Rise Up Comus A general overview of TTRPG reviews, and what may or may not make them useful.

(6) Deep Dive: A|STATE, from The Indie Game Reading Club A review of a|state, and how it builds on and departs from the Blades In The Dark formula.

vs

(11) I Read Cloud Empress, from Playful Void A review of Cloud Empress, the first descendant of the Mothership RPG ruleset.

🥈 (3) Plagiarism in Unconquered (2022), from Traverse Fantasy A forensic analysis of how Unconquered plagiarised Ultraviolet Grasslands and Vaults Of Vaarn.

vs

(14) Rod, Reel, & Fist (Review), from Benign Brown Beast A substantial review of Rod, Reel, & Fist, a "system-forward fishing simulation RPG".

(7) Pedantic Wasteland - Vampire Cruise, from Bones Of Contention A review of Vampire Cruise, a largely system-neutral horror-comedy adventure set at sea.

vs

(10) Dragon Magazine: Player Advice Collection Overview, from Attronarch Athenaeum A comprehensive read-through and rating of 143 Dragon Magazine advice articles.

(2) Spire: The Monstrosity of Empire, the Necessity of Violence, from A A Voigt A comparative-literature analysis of Spire RPG through R F Kuang’s spec-fic novel "Babel, or the Necessity of Violence".

vs

🥉 (15) MICROBLOG: CHILDREN'S BOOKS AND TABLETOP GAMES, from Fail Forward Considering the influence of children’s books on TTRPG designers and works like "Barkeep on the Borderlands".

+++

It is difficult to describe how hard it was for me to whittle down the list of nominees to these finalists. I consider each of these 64 a landmark in 2023's TTRPG thinkings, and the folks from which they issue essential reading, going forward. They already deserve a prize.

So here it is, dear bloggers: a hand-carved linocut "finalist's pin" graphic you are free to use on your sites / posts, should you wish:

(High-res downloadable version HERE)

Thank you for writing! And good luck in the coming rounds of voting!

+++

CORRECTION: A blog post from 2021 (Not All Crunch Is the Same, from A Knight At The Opera), was included in the soft-launch posting of this list. An error on the part of its nominator, compounded by a data-entry error on my part. It has since been replaced by a post from the same blog with the actual most nominations (The Genres the OSR Can't Do). I have also double-checked my lists and all finalists. Apologies for my error!

[dawnfelagund]

Hello!! A while ago, I read your article on the transformational + affirmational values in the Tolkien fandom while I was researching for my thesis :P And just now I’ve very randomly stumbled upon your blog and I saw your post about your new article with JTR (congrats!!), and I realised, “wait hold on, I know this person”. So that’s vv cool!

I feel like the rest of this ask is more the kind of thing people do over email, but, well, chance brought me here, so… I’m wondering if you, as a published (!!!) Tolkien scholar, have any advice you���d be willing to share with someone (me!) who wants to get their work published as well? I’m also a bit lost about what the best, reputable journal for something Tolkien-related would be. Off the top of my head, I can think of Mythlore, JTR, and Tolkien Studies — except I’m very confused about whether Tolkien Studies is peer-reviewed or not… Any help at all would be appreciated!

What a fabulous question, and I LOVE to see Tolkien fans interested in presenting and publishing their work. I started as fan before I was a fan-and-scholar, and I currently keep a foot in both pools, and I think it's important to recognize that many Tolkien fans are discussing ideas that are not currently part of the scholarship. Many of us are engaging with the texts deeply and in ways that align well with scholarly work, and dare I say that many of us know the more obscure texts (like the HoMe, for example) better than many Tolkien scholars who are coming from the more academic side.

So Tolkien fans who want to become involved in Tolkien scholarship absolutely should. You have the ideas, the knowledge, and the skills!

There are a few steps that I'd recommend for the Tolkien fan-turned-scholar:

1. Familiarize yourself with the published scholarship. In fandom, we tend to engage with other fans, their fanworks, and their meta, and of course, we spend a lot of time in the books. While Tolkien studies has not traditionally been a field that leans heavily on familiarity with the published scholarship, that is changing. There is growing awareness that scholarship is being published that is rehashing ideas that have already been written, or published works are leaning too heavily on outdated literature, so I expect that journals will be increasingly rigorous in their expectations here.

Thankfully, of the four peer-reviewed Tolkien studies journals, three of them are open-access (only Tolkien Studies is not). Even if I do a search through Google Scholar or my alma mater's library, I always visit these three as well and do a keyword search, as anything published in them, being open-access, is really going to be seen as doing a bare minimum of due diligence: Journal of Tolkien Research | Mythlore | Mallorn

Of course, the state of academic publishing is still unfriendly to independent scholars, though it is better than it was ten years ago. Some publishers let you check out a small number of articles per month. I have luck finding academic books in Archive.org. If you live near a good public library system or a college/university library, interlibrary loan may be an option for books and articles. (Note that this is US-centric.) If you can find contact information for the author of an article, they will often share it with you. Scholars and academics want their work read and cited. They do not benefit from the status quo in academic published. (With three peer-reviewed articles and three book chapters to my name, I have netted a total $0 for my publishing efforts!)

Belonging to fan communities that tend to welcome scholarly approaches is another resource, as members who have access to academic databases and libraries are often willing to help find hard-to-source materials. @silmarillionwritersguild is one; I have definitely asked for help myself on our Discord server! If there are others, please recommend them!

2. Present your work at a Tolkien conference. This can occur at the same time as Step 1 and certainly isn't required, but beginning to attend and present at Tolkien conferences will give you access to feedback from other scholars and help you to refine your work for publication. There are a number of hybrid events that are primarily fannish and so tend to be friendly, approachable venues for your first presentation: Oxonmoot, Mythcon, and Mythmoot (which also has smaller regional moots) are three that I would recommend for first-time presenters coming from fandom. Local Tolkien societies may also put on occasional conference-like events, which are increasingly hybrid. When the SWG's newsletter editor (*cough* me ...) remembers to include it, we do a monthly round-up of calls for papers and proposals in our Around the World and Web section of our weekly email newsletter. This would include the events listed above, as well as more academic-oriented conferences, as well as calls for proposals for book chapters, journal special issues, etc. (Which reminds me that I need to post the June roundup ...)

We just did a three-part series as part of our Master Class column called "So You Want to Present at a Tolkien Conference?" that covers writing a proposal, putting together a paper and presentation, and actually giving the presentation.

3. Publishing your work. As noted above, there are four peer-reviewed journals with a heavy Tolkien studies focus: the Journal of Tolkien Research, Mythlore, Mallorn, and Tolkien Studies. Of course, journals with a broader focus (such as scifi/fantasy or British authors) might be viable as well, as would journals of other disciplines that may overlap with your focus (e.g., fan studies, narratology, film studies, etc.) And there are generally several calls for proposals each year for chapters in anthologies with a specific focus (e.g., I am currently working on a paper for an anthology on women and Tolkien). Robin Reid is a retired academic and Tolkien scholar and an incredible advocate for new and fan scholars. Her Substack publishes CFPs as she becomes aware of them.

Other advice and resources, please add as a reblog or comment! But, to wrap up, I want to say one more time to Tolkien fans who want to present or publish their work:

We, as fans, are talking about ideas right now that scholarship has not yet dreamed of.

We, as fans, engage consistently with the texts in deep and detailed ways.

We, as fans, are not less or inferior to those scholars who took a more traditional academic route. We have important contributions to make to the field of Tolkien studies! You can do this!

[sasheneskywalker]

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