t-saan

[t-saan]

[t-saan]

Its obvious to me when people who post about canaries in mines have never met a canary. Like yeah the miners had a special device to revive the canary because canaries are one of the most adorable creatures on the planet and they make adorable little chirping sounds and honestly probably loved the sounds of machinery and people talking so it was probably loud and friendly with the workers. Whatever though maybe meet a canary sometime and youd understand

[t-saan]

[t-saan]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

[t-saan]

Voyager AU where by season 6 Janeway has abandoned nostalgia and decorum all together and has moved the entire ship into a captured Borg cube. The cube is Voyager now.

When they first take the cube over the Borg Queen calls them on subspace zoom to threaten them but Janeway pretends the queen is muted and then hangs up on her.  

Neelix installs a huge kitchen running on borg transkinetic superneural circuitry. The leola root lasagna still tastes bad.

The new holodecks span 7 decks. The controls tries to assimilate the crew about once month but that’s only a 5 % increase compared to the old holodeck death rate, so they live with it.

[t-saan]

ds9 episode concept: a high profile murder occurs while garak is busy taking some INCREDIBLY illegal drug he somehow procured. He is later questioned by odo and immediately becomes suspect number 1 because hes so incapacitated he cant come up with an alibi. He cannot say he was doing the incredibly illegal drug because he doesnt realise the federation would not publicly execute him over this. Bonus if he was doing suspicious shit the past few days to procure the orion syndicate disco dust that doomed his ass

[t-saan]

I wish I got to see more of Herald Viktor enjoying his new fully mobile body and healed lungs so here some soft headcanons of things I think he’d do in his early commune days:

- he helped carry as many materials for houses as he possibly could. Very much akin to middle schoolers trying to carry the most folding chairs.

- he got so involved in every activity in the commune. Gardening, building houses, cooking, you name it, he was doing it.

- I cannot overemphasize how many games he played with the commune kids. I feel like a part of him was healing his inner child by playing all the games he never got to as a kid so now he’s getting really excited about tag.

- Speaking of him with the commune kids, he definitely used Jayce’s blanket as a baby sling at one point when he was healing a baby’s lungs and he had to constantly monitor them.

[t-saan]

Czech Viktor and most of you think he's lightweight for whatever reason, but actually:

Gala starts

(20:00h) 08:00 pm - everyone's sober

(22:00h) 10:00 pm - lightweights tap out, the heavyweights get started, Jayce is out of commission

01:00 am - the heavyweights divide into normal mode and veteran, Mel is out of commission

03:00 am - two standing

06:00 am - Ambessa taps out, Viktor asks her if she needs a pause

Rictus tapped out yesterday and the only thing that stands between them and certain death if anyone were to attack them is warmed up Viktor

[t-saan]

Polish Viktor

More specifically Ślązak Viktor. And Zagłębiak Steb. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Also, some extra explanations for non-Poles below:

1) Kraków tends to have really bad air quality in the winter.

2) Viktor is singing a very vulgar rendition of a 1939 song. The text in the picture translates to: "Golden chrysanthemums / in an empty half-litre vodka bottle." The rest of the verse (not in the drawing) goes: "are standing on the grand piano /and nobody fucking waters them." The whole song is full of profanities and tells the story of a woman cheating on the person singing it. Basically, it sounds quite funny when you sing it loudly and badly, especially when drunk lol

[t-saan]

I miss when everyone on my dash listened to Welcome to Night Vale so there’s be a good chance that on any ole day someone would reblog a quote that would grab me by the throat and forcibly ascend me to a higher plane where I understood myself and the universe better and with more kindness but also a little spook

[t-saan]

If there is an infinity of universes in Arcane, an infinite number of variables and possibilities, then there is one where the commune in Zaun works.

Where Viktor is not killed, there is no war to convince him that to save people he has to erase their, and his humanity. Where the 'hive mind' is really a benevolent thing. The peace is not a result of mind control, but of people living safe, pain free lives, where they are loved and supported by a tight knit community. Just because it's easier to be peaceful when you are not suffering.

There is a world where Viktor touches Jace's mind before he is shot, he sees all the ways he can bring destruction to the world - and then, he doesn't. They talk. It's messy for both of them, but Jayce has seen and survived much by that point and Viktor learned to be wise, just because someone in that makeshift camp of freshly healed shimmer addicts had to. He got good in soothing troubled souls. Even without the hexcore. And Jayce always knew how to soothe him.

In time, when they both feel certain that the future Jayce saw can, WILL, be avoided, Viktor heals his leg and joins his mind with his own, and with all others. It's a cry of relief when they realise they still can argue, and bicker. That they are connected, but not amalgamated. Bound, but not restrained. A thousand voices, each imperfectly beautiful in their own way. Each still very much human. Always free to come and go. Always free to choose.

There is a world where Viktor, the mysterious and elusive Machine Herald who takes audiences floating in an arcane cathedral, can be found cursing in his native language because a set of runes he was experimenting with burned of his eyebrows (again). His partner laughs him off for dressing in random drapery, especially when the wind blows it up over his face. He keeps doing it because it's more dramatic that way.

This Viktor spent the early days of the commune healing, and building and soothing, and sometimes burying those brought to him to late, but he also weeped after the first time he realized that he spend the whole day on his feet and they didn't hurt. He is exhilarated when he runs around playing with the children. He can pick them up. For the first time, he is strong and mobile, and able to do all those things he never got to. The only time he coughs are when he gets a mouthfull of pollen walking through the fields, or a lungfull of smoke tinkering with one thing or other. Still, he mostly walks around with a cane. His body may not require it, but he feels used to that rhythm of walking.

He is calm and mellow, but it's not hexcore influence. The thing is a perfectly mindless power source on its own. It's in part his natural disposition, simply without the franticality added by impending death, and in part an intentionally adapted decorum he feels fits his new role. He still has his wit and his temper. He bickers with Jayce, with Jinx, even with Salo, once he mentally recovered after a very thorough reality check Viktor gave him upon his joining, to the point where the man actually realized his wrongdoings.

After a few years, Vander is mostly back. There are better and worse days, but he does get better.

Jinx never joins the commune for good, she has had enough voices in her head, but she comes and goes, doing what she can to the rest of Zaun. Talking with Viktor helps. So does getting Vander back. The voices never fully go away, but they don't taunt her anymore.

Isha only joins once she is grown. She can talk with her hands by then, and even once her body allows speach, she doesn't use her voice.

The commune grows. It never spreads all over the city, it's not a life for everyone, but those who come and stay, live very long, peaceful lives.

Mel visits regularly. She is a good friend to Viktor - they both expect a lifespan far, far greater than any other human. It's bittersweet, but they learn to take comfort in each other when Jayce, ever so slowly, ages, while they remain young. They experiment (fool around) with magic, walking through new unexplored fileds.

There is a universe where good intentions were enough. Where the love was there and it changed things, it saved many.

[t-saan]

It is interesting how shimmer came to be as an effort to bridge the gap in literal bodily strength/power against piltover especially seeing how so much of the population of the undercity is disabled and shimmer is used as a physical enhancer by them (eg. sevika, silco, viktor) to close that gap. The negative association of shimmer as being a way to "unnaturally" overcome disabilities is also worth looking at, for example, Silco using it on his eye is one of the first actions we see of him and it is meant to create a negative/villainous association to shimmer, later on that same negative view is passed down onto Viktor as his use of it marks the beginning of his "downfall".

Silco's push to produce and use shimmer is based on the idea of Zaun finally having enough power to defend from the oppression of piltover, however just like Viktor's use of the hextech on himself, this is is seen as a negative because he is striving to destroy the status quo and therefore it is bad.

Despite the fact that shimmer is also shown to be literally life saving, in the case of both Jinx and Viktor, even then it has a negative portrayal as it is heavily emphasized that it permanently alters the person, in the case of Viktor he "loses his humanity" while for Jinx her mental state deteriorates heavily and she becomes even more paranoid. Even with Salo's more limited use of shimmer for medical/soothing purposes it is shown as something he has to hide and be ashamed of, as did Viktor when he began using it.

We can also see the difference in characterization when it comes to Sevika vs. Vi, there is this almost animalistic reaction in Sevika when she uses shimmer, her eyes glow, she growls, her whole body shakes, her body is being altered. By contrast Vi's hextech gloves, despite also being an enhancer are not portrayed as damaging to her because she is not disabled. In hand with this goes the fact that Vi's enhanced power comes from piltover and it is being put in service of defending it/the status quo. So in the same way that hextech is good as long as it only benefits piltover; enhancers are also good as long as they don't permanently alter the "natural" body and it is not disabled people using them to "unnaturally" overcome that disability and/or threaten said status. Sevika's "bad unnatural strength" losing against Vi's "natural good strength".

Much of the writing, in S2 particularly, has this heavy emphasis against anything that is "unnatural" no matter how beneficial it may be and how many people it may help. This negative association with the "unnatural" overcoming of disabilities is perfectly exemplified by Viktor becoming an "inhuman" being as a result of it alongside with the portrayal of the commune being unnerving because everyone is "unnaturally perfect". Meanwhile Mel's magic is never questioned as bad, because hers is natural, so there are no negative consequences to her using it unlike Viktor who literally "loses himself and his humanity".

This very reactionary writing culminates when the plot insist that "Viktor needs to accept himself" = not heal himself through "unnatural" means = accepting he has to die due to his lower social status either as a disabled person or as a person of the under city, however you read that, the plot leads to the conclusion that the "noble and moral" thing for Viktor to have done was just accept that the status quo can't be altered and he was wrong for trying to go against it.

[t-saan]

"I want to be a dragon."

[t-saan]

A machine does your art and a machine does your thinking. If you have your hands replaced and you have your mind replaced, better pray that you have a soul, for else all that you are would scarcely worth it's weight in meat decaying in a prison of its own making.

[t-saan]

On Queer Vulcans

Do you think that transmasc vulcans take something that causes pon farr, or maybe it just comes with taking testosterone/whatever male vulcans have instead of testosterone. Do transfem vulcans experience pon farr, (or does it stop like with periods when you're on t?) or do they have to go through entire medical transition (which wouldn't be too difficult probably, as we learn in ds9.) Or maybe they can't get rid of it at all?? That seems really dysphoric.

What do nonbinary vulcans do?

Are there queer pon farr nightclubs. Important questions here.

[t-saan]

McCoy is a little bitch

[t-saan]

I want you to remember:

The fascists hate you too and they just will pretend otherwise until after they've killed the rest of us, before they turn on you.