infectiouscartography

[infectiouscartography]

Entry level jobs haven't existed since the 2008 crash. 90% of hiring managers won't hire recent graduates. A quarter of job listings are ghost jobs. Companies hire part time so that they don't have to give benefits. Federal minimum wage hasn't increased since 2009. The True Unemployment Rate is 25%. Master's are the new bachelor's. For most the job search takes over a year. 75% of resumes are never. actually seen by the hiring team.

[infectiouscartography]

If we're being 100% honest with ourselves as game designers, we've gotta admit that this notion that "story focus" means making the GM do all the work is not a bugbear that's unique to the Dungeons & Dragons fandom. Think of how many self-identified "story focused" indie RPGs you've bumped into that have a great deal to say leading up to the point of rolling the dice, but once the dice have actually been rolled and the time has come to interpret what those results mean, those same rules that were so keen on procedural rigour just moments ago simply shrug and go "I dunno, have the GM make something up?"

[infectiouscartography]

Fuck it, I didn't want to make a post on this but it's bugging the hell out of me so let's exorcize the thought.

Lilo and Stitch is an extremely good children's movie. I've been working at a daycare for over five years now, and out of all the children's movies I've shown to an auidence of twenty or so school-age kids (i.e. between the ages of 5 and 12), the only movie that's held their attention as well as Lilo and Stitch is The Emperor's New Groove, and the only one that's held it better is An American Tail. Of those three, Lilo and Stitch has won the vote of "what movie we will watch" the most. It not only entertains kids, but emotionally captivates them from start to finish, because it very thoroughly understands how to engage children on their level. It's a smart, tightly written children's movie.

The feat of story-telling genius it pulls of lies in its ability to reach both where children's imaginations want to go and where their lived real-world experiences lie - most children's movies focus on one or the other, but Lilo and Stitch dives deep into both. On the imagination side, there's Stitch's whole plotline of being a little alien monster being chased by other weirdo aliens onto earth because they want to stop him from running amok and causing havoc (which, of course, happens anyway in fun cartoony comedy/action spectacle). On the real-world side, you have Lilo's plotline of being a troubled little girl who has an abundance of very real problems that, like an actual child, she struggles to comprehend and deal with, as well as the many adults in her life that care about her to some degree but all struggle to fully understand her. Kids want to be Stitch and run amok and cause cartoony havoc. Kids, even the least-troubled kids, relate to Lilo, because all of them have been in a similar situation as her at least once in their lives.

Balancing these two very different stories, with very different tones and scopes to their respective conflicts, is a hard writing task, but Lilo and Stitch manages to do it in a way that seems effortless with one very powerful trick. The two plots are direct mirrors to each other, complete with the characters involved in each having foils in the respective plot. To break it down:

Stitch, the wild and destructive alien gremlin who everyone has labeled as a crime against existence, is Lilo, the troubled young girl who's viewed as a "problem child" by all the adults in her life. In both plotlines, Stitch and Lilo are facing the threat of being "taken away" from the life they know because they act out, and in both plotlines, we see that this is an unfathomably cruel thing to do to them and will not actually solve the problems they have.

Dr. Jumbaa, the mad scientist who made Stitch because making monsters is what mad scientists do, and who had no intentions of ever being nurturing or parental to anything or anyone in his life, is Nani, Lilo's older sister whose parents died when she was young and now is forced to act as a parental substitute despite not being mentally or emotionally prepared for that responsibility yet. Both Dr. Jumbaa and Nani are trying to get their respective wild children in line with what society wants them to be, and both are struggling hard with it because they in turn have a lot of growing to do before they can actually accomplish that.

Pleakley, the nebbish alien bureaucrat who ends up being assigned to help Dr. Jumbaa despite being mostly uninvolved in creating the whole Stitch situation, is David, the nice but mostly ineffectual guy who's crushing on Nani and wants to help her but doesn't really have much he can provide except emotional support. Ultimately Pleakley and David prove that said emotional support is a lot more helpful than it seems on the surface, as they give Jumbaa and Nani respectively a lot of the pushes they need to become better in their parental roles.

The Grand Councilwoman, who runs the society of aliens that is trying to banish Stitch forever for his crime of existing, is Cobra Bubbles, the Child Protective Services agent who is in charge of deciding whether or not Lilo needs to be taken away from her home forever for, ostensibly, her own good. Both are well-intentioned and stern, with a desire to follow the rules of society and do what procedure says is the most humane thing to do in this situation, but both lack the understanding of Stitch/Lilo's situation to actually help until the end of the movie.

Finally, we have Captain Gantu, the enforcer of the Galactic Council who is a mean, aggressive, sadistic brute but is viewed as a "good guy" by society because he plays by its rules (well, when he knows can't get away with breaking them, anyway), who is the counterpart of Myrtle, the mean, aggressive, sadistic schoolyard bully who is viewed as a "good kid" by other adults because she plays by the rules they established (well, when she knows she can't get away with breaking them, anyway). Both Gantu and Myrtle are, in truth, much nastier in temperament than Stitch and Lilo, but are better at hiding it in front of others and so get away with it, and often make Stitch and Lilo look worse in the eyes of others by provoking them to violence and then playing the victim about it - in fact, both even have the same line, "Does this look infected to you?", which they say after goading their respective wild-child victims into biting them.

The symmetry of these two plotlines allows them to actually feed into each other and build each other up instead of fighting each other for screentime. The fantastical nature of Stitch's plot adds whimsy to the far more realistic problems that Lilo faces so they don't get too heavy for the children in the audience, while the very real struggles of Lilo in her plotline bleed over into Stitch's plot and make both very emotionally poignant. When both plotlines hit their shared climax, they reach children on a emotional level few other movies can match - the terror of Lilo being taken away from her family, and the emotional complexity of that problem (Cobra Bubbles pointing to Lilo's ruined house and shouting at Nani, "IS THIS WHAT LILO NEEDS?" is so starkly real and heart-breaking), is matched and echoed in the visual splendor and mania of the spectacular no-way-this-is-going-to-work chase scene where Stitch, Nani, Jumbaa, and Pleakley all team up to rescue Lilo from Gantu.

The arcs of the characters all more or less line up. Nani confronts her own failures to be a guardian and parent to Lilo and resolves to do better and learn from her mistakes. Jumbaa, who through most of the movie protests to be evil and uncaring, nonetheless comes to not only care for Pleakley, but more importantly for Stitch too, and ends up assuming the role he never wanted but nonetheless forced himself into from the start: he is Stitch's family. Hell, the moment that reveals this is really clever - Stitch goes out into the wilderness to try and re-enact a scene from a storybook of The Ugly Duckling, hoping, in a very childish way, that his family will show up and love him. Jumbaa arrives and, coldly but not particularly cruelly, tells Stitch that he has no family - that Stitch wasn't born, but created in a lab by Jumbaa himself. But in that moment Jumbaa is proving himself wrong - because Stitch's creator, his parent, DID show up, and did exactly what happens in the story by telling Stitch the truth of what he is. It can't be a surprise, then, that later in the movie Jumbaa ends up deciding to side with Stitch, to help him save Lilo, and to stay on Earth with his child.

David and Pleakley go from being pushed away by Nani and Jumbaa respectively to essentially becoming their partners in the family. The Grand Councilwoman and Cobra Bubbles finally see how cruel their initial solution of isolating Stitch and Lilo from their family would be, and bend the rules they are supposed to enforce to protect and support this weird found family instead of breaking it apart. Gantu and Myrtle are recognized for the assholes they are and face comeuppance in the form of comedic slapstick pratfalls. And most importantly, Stitch and Lilo both get the emotional support and understanding they need to thrive and live happy lives as children should be allowed to do. It's like poetry, it rhymes.

It's a very precise, smartly written movie. It's a delicate balancing act of tone and emotions, with a very strong theme about the need for family and understanding that hits children in their hearts and imaginations. It's extremely well structured.

...

So it'd be kind of colossally fucking stupid to remake it and start fucking around with the core structure of it, chopping out pieces and completely altering others, with no real purpose beyond "Well, the executives thought it might be better if we did this."

[infectiouscartography]

So much this. I've been in academia a LONG time and while many professors are liberal and passionate about that, they also do their best to respect student beliefs. Students, however, often become more liberal when they have to work alongside diverse people that they've never interacted with in their small white towns.

It's the same reason I have hope for the future more than a lot of people. Millennials and younger have been forced to interact with people who are different from them because of the internet. And so a lot of younger people are more liberal than before.

"College is a place of liberal indoctrination."

And what possible motive would liberals have to put their indoctrination behind one of the biggest paywalls to have ever existed?

College is often the first time that someone regularly interacts with a diverse crowd. College is often the first time that someone is encouraged to think for themselves instead of blindly trusting their parents.

They're not being indoctrinated to be liberal. They were previously indoctrinated to be conservative and are now being freed from that.

[infectiouscartography]

Taverns & Bars Map Pack

Welcome to a warm interior with flickering fireplaces, the scent of spiced ale, the clatter of dice, and the hum of whispered rumors and raucous laughter. Strangers, sellswords, and storytellers gather at worn wooden tables in this tavern.

Cheers everyone! Welcome to the Taverns & Bars map pack. It features 7 total maps, including various taverns, cellars, and a kitchen.

Patrons get access to gridded/ungridded and watermark-free maps. The grid size of each map is 24x32.

Download the first map for free on Patreon.

[infectiouscartography]

wikipedia no longer being anywhere near the top of search results when looking up anything feels eviscerating

[infectiouscartography]

a fun little bit of obsidian backstory for y’all… eris isn’t a good mother, but she’s not exactly the worst either.

[infectiouscartography]

Some women are conditioned to be fragile and weak, and to believe that it's a sin to outperform a man. Her feminism would involve allowing women to be strong.

Some women are expected to be strong at times when they can't. Her feminism would involve reassuring her that it's okay to not be strong.

Some neurodivergent people are raised to believe that they're too stupid to ever amount to anything. Their disability activism would involve reassuring them that they're capable.

Some neurodivergent people are raised to believe that they're smart and gifted, and are expected to live up to impossible standards. Their disability activism would involve allowing them to fail, make mistakes, be stupid, etc.

Some children are constantly reminded "you're the child, I'm the adult" in order to deny their autonomy. Their youth rights activism would involve treating them like an adult at times when they feel ready for it.

Some children are treated like adults in order to justify increased expectations or to downplay abuse against them. Their youth rights activism would involve allowing them to be a child.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to oppression. Each individual person's experience is different. Whatever trauma is caused by their oppression, the activism should focus on undoing it.

[infectiouscartography]

Okay so what you want to do is go download Daggerfall from GOG. It's free and it's an absolutely massive open world RPG that is still unmatched in sheer scope by the later Elder Scrolls games. Now, remember where you installed that game so you'll know where to find it.

Then what you'll want to do is head on over to the Daggerfall Workshop to download Daggerfall Unity. Daggerfall Unity is a port of Daggerfall into the Unity engine which already incorporates some basic quality of life upgrades (like WASD + mouse gameplay, fixing bugs, allowing you to turn off the game's awful "hold down the mouse button and drag the cursor around to simulate swinging" combat system for more sensible click-based combat, you can find this setting in the game's Options menu) but now you also have access to an absolutely massive modding scene. If you want you can pick up some mods that make the game "prettier" but like the game is already beautiful as is

DAGGERFALL SKELETON ATTACK

[infectiouscartography]

While I rail against the idea of GM prep being like "preparing a nice story for your players that their characters can be slotted into and also as a GM it's your duty to integrate the characters' backstories into your prep or else you're a bad GM" because it often results in linear narratives with very little room for player agency but also it's an unhealthy dynamic to expect a GM to weave together a coherent narrative out of the ideas provided by multiple people who might have completely different ideas about what the game should even look like. But there's also more to the practical angle than "it's hard to prep:"

If a player whose character is deeply integrated into the narrative of the campaign suddenly needs to leave the campaign you've left yourself with a narrative void and unlike in Hollywood you can't just go recasting that shit. No one's gonna buy into this new Goblin Steve, his new player can't even do his voice properly.

By prepping games like this you're really setting your whole campaign up for failure in most cases. How about: the story isn't something the players write for homework before the campaign, right? The NPCs that matter are not authored connections your players gave you as assigned reading before the game even started. The story is whatever happens during sessions and the connections that matter are those that characters build during play.

There is of course some nuance to this but like: we see so much talk about GMs being expected to integrate player character backstories into their prep (and then their players not being engaged anyway because they felt the GM did it "wrong") and about how GMs are burning out and it's a thankless job and like. Could there perhaps be a solution?

[infectiouscartography]

Hello, everyone!

A reclusive wizard lives far into the icy North. The adventurers, seeking the wisdom of said sage, embark on a chilly journey to meet them.

But the adventurers don’t have the welcome they expected, and getting inside the tower will prove a bigger challenge than they imagined.

The creature tokens for this map are a Frost Mimic, a Human Frost Sorcerer and a Human Frost Wizard. Emerald tier gets the Frost Mimic while Diamond tier gets all three. In addition, Sapphire tier gets extra creature token variants.

You can see a preview of all of this week’s Patreon content here.

Thank you very much for taking a look and be sure to check out my Patreon where you can pledge for gridless version, alternate map versions as well as the tokens pertaining to this map.

[infectiouscartography]

Shoutout to my dad who accidentally moved into an up and coming black lgbt neighborhood and was very disappointed to learn that all of his “new friends” weren’t actually interested in how to use iNaturalist or where he saw coyotes on his walks 😔🙏🏻

[infectiouscartography]

I was compelled by some sort of curse maybe to do nothing but make this for the past day and a half.

@reliqvia tagging op because it wouldn't let me put videos in the reblog

[infectiouscartography]

I'll always talk up internet radio stations because I don't think the average person is aware that they're free, can run in your browser (or in any program that can connect to them), work on your phone, run better than a youtube tab, and give you a much better selection of music than you could get from a general algorithmic playlist

(also lots of them have live shows which you can tune into for free)

[infectiouscartography]