#and i've got a fun project i'm working on with null

[weeb-cheese]

So I do have the first volume containing the book of murder arc, so I’m scheduling in starting the next deep dive! (still having to wait until I can get volume 10 to actually finish the arc) I”m very excited, but also mostly curious as to how scatter brained I’ll get while working on 2-3 videos at a time. 

[theinstagrahame]

Time again for the Crowdfunding Haul post!

(And I guess another amateurish product photo shoot)

This one's feels slightly different because this is all stuff I pre-ordered, crowdfunded, or otherwise got prior to being laid off at the end of June (so it'd be real nice if people bought some games from me). Coincidentally a dozen or so of them happened to come to completion around June-July of 2023, some of them.

Here's what came in: Top row: Monster of the Week: Codex of Worlds, Runecairn Bestiary, CBR+PNK, Miru and Miru II (or MIIRU)

Middle row: Ritual: A Folk Horror Game, Plant Girl Game, and A Dungeon Game

Bottom row: Sleeping Heart of the Garden, Hard Wired Island: Tales from L5, Broken Heart of the Castle, the Moss Mother's Maze (for a Dungeon Game), and Null

Why I'm hyped for these:

Monster of the Week: Codex of Worlds: MotW is a hugely influential game, but also it is a lot of fun. So it's really hard to pass up an expansion. I've also been noticing a trend of bringing Forged in the Dark-style group sheets to PbtA games, which I think is an interesting one.

Runecairn Bestiary: Who doesn't love a good monster manual? Runecairn is a beautiful game, and the marketing for the bestiary supplement worked on me. Incredible art, stats for monsters. One of the things I've felt is missing from some solo games is a good sense of monsters you can encounter, and this fills that gap nicely.

Miru and Miru II: I was intrigued by Miru and picked up a copy on Itch. I haven't read it yet, but the premise and the art definitely grabbed me. I was a little sad that I'd missed the initial print run, so when there was a crowdfunder for a reprint *and* a sequel, how could I not?

Ritual: A Folk Horror Game: World Champ Game Co is one of several Indie designers that never miss. It also comes with a small deck of ritual cards with really visceral and cool images that I think adds a ton to the game. That said, I am also a huge sucker for limited edition print runs... So when I saw there may only be a handful of these available, well, I jumped.

Plant Girl Game: I learned about this one on @partyofonepod, and was so intrigued by the game, and the creator, and the world that it proposed that I had to know more. It's a game focused on family, on community, and on peaceful resolutions to small-town problems. So it's definitely an odd one out on this list, but the ways in which it's different are also one of the reasons I so love TTRPGs.

A Dungeon Game and the Moss Mother's Maze: I followed the evolution of Bissette's A Dragon Game into A Dungeon Game on Twitter, from shitpost to full-fledged game. It was really fun to watch, and to skim the Designer's Commentary on the original ADG. So, when I heard there'd be an adventure module (aaaand again a limited print run for the main game...) I leapt on it as fast as my email could carry me.

Sleeping Heart of the Garden and Broken Heart of the Castle: I've followed a few of the creators involved in this project on Twitter for a while, and generally was intrigued to see what they could do with a system-agnostic adventure. I was surprised by the size when they arrived, because you get to expect the half-page zine format. But I think these books are beautiful and I can't wait to explore them.

Hard Wired Island: Tales from L5: HWI is a stunning piece of TTRPG content, and I've been wanting to dig into the world further. So, a collection of short adventures? Hell yeah! It even came with a really catchy little soundtrack, the final track for which I think about all the time when considering Cyberpunk content...

Null: Everything Spencer Campbell puts out just shreds. I did nearly sleep on Null, but I was intrigued by the recent trend of Play-to-Lose games that I've seen coming out lately. There is something kind of powerful about going into a game knowing your character won't come out, which I think allows you to make different decisions. I was interested to see where this game fit into Campbell's catalog, as well as into my own play style.

CBR+PNK: Been getting into Forged in the Dark stuff lately. I also nearly let this one pass me by, when I'd heard that it was aimed at one-shot games. But, I was still intrigued to see what could be done with Cyberpunk in the FitD framework (and besides, maybe there's a way an enterprising designer could campaigns in there...). I was glad I picked it up, because I started playing games with some friends over Discord, and I was able to pitch this. We've been enjoying it. It's even serving really well as a prequel to the Beam Saber campaign we're planning (Also really convenient that it arrived before we finished the one-shot). Besides, the physical edition did turn out really nicely:

Bonus game-related stuff:

I picked up Inhuman Conditions (right) because I'd heard it on Friends at the Table. It seems like an extremely fun game, but also the Sangfielle campaign episode(s) where they play it are ones that I think about a lot. Also, one of the things I love about FatT is their ability to wield the power of play to do incredibly powerful things.

The Tears of the Kingdom Strategy Guide I kinda wanted less because I was stuck or wanted tips on playing TotK, but because the bundle I got for my Switch and Breath of the Wild came with one, and I kinda wanted to put both on the shelf. Zelda has been one of those series that I've always had throughout my life, so I've got a lot of emotional investment. The two strategy guides are beautiful, and I will probably end up skimming through it when I've gotten through the main game.

[blessphemy]

✨ Fic Writing Review 2023 ✨

thanks for the tag @non-plutonian-druid!

the actual format of this game is this post but i rearranged it a bit so that i could hide my extremely long list of fics under a cut

Fandom fic events 2023

Murderbot Diaries New Year Gift Exchange

Yuletide Draft Dodgers

Murderbot AUpril Collection (open and accepts submissions)

2023 Aspec Murderbot Diaries

2023 PresAugust

We Were It // It Will Be Us: A TMBD Art Exhibition (open and accepts submissions)

Botober 2023

Upcoming 2024

Events:

i'm doing the Murderbot Diaries New Year Gift Exchange (2024) :3

Perhaps i'll post something for the annual 3/3 for Three collection idk (this collection is open and accepts submissions, and it spikes on March 3rd of each year)

WIPs:

Gift exchange fic

Absolute monster of a nullverse!network effect AU fic. i'm trying so hard to get draft 1 of this beast finished it's been beating my ass for over a year but i'm gonna Get It

Continue Via Solitude updates.

a 5+1 ASR bad ends fic that explores some meta shit. namely trust, forgiveness, and sci-fi horror genre vs canon.

Words and fics 2023

let's find out just how cringe (fun) i've been on ao3. i'm like. jeebus creebus i've posted a lot this year huh.

105,486 words of fan fiction. all of it murderbot. let's look at them going right down the statistics page (default sorted by hits, tho it gets kind of messy at the end with and i got lazy):

30,336 words of Via Solitude, an All Systems Red AU where murderbot has to do wilderness survival.

~5k words that's just a repost of Threat As Greeting, except with fresh interactive CSS effects.

3,346 words top 3 SURPRISING things you didn't know about the SECUNIT who pulled you out of an INCINERATOR (2023 gift exchange) outsider POV from the characters featured in Wells' pre-canon short story

1,502 words Aspec Drabbles (for the Aspec Murderbot Diaries event) it lot of fun to work with strict 100-word drabbles.

13,837 words References NULL: Logs From Project Murderbot [nullverse] the most purely concentrated angst/whump from the nullverse series yet. handle with care or skip it.

6,552 words How To Go On A Camping Trip - a guide for anxious SecUnits who are bad at vacationing (2023 gift exchange) i really liked this one tbh. fun standalone.

2,488 words Improve Your Baby AI With This One Weird Trick! (2023 gift exchange) my personal fic-titling theme for the gift exchange was "clickbait."

7,875 Alien Refuge (AUpril inspired) This is a Homestuck crossover, and reportedly the first time multiple people willingly interacted with homestuck-affiliated content, and they liked it. gottem. it's also pretty good, i did a nice job injecting homestuckism tone into the murderbot narrative style If I Do Say So Myself.

911 words No Comment: Shut Up And Dance [nullverse] fluff and humor. tfw your secunit friend (murderbot) is crashing in your living room and you (dr. ratthi) have insomnia.

2,922 words MetaMorphoSys (AUpril inspired) listen i NEED the next big fandom trend to be an AU world where people metamorphose inside cocoons. hear me out. HEAR ME OUT. in this fic we take the fridge horror of canon murderbot diaries and make it visceral, wet, biological, and ethically Even Worse. get yr Amena emotions also.

0 words SecUnit Technician Bingo Card it's funny. idk.

3,438 words nullverse reference sheet [nullverse bonus content] self indulgent AU notes

2,290 words Systems: Splorch [nullverse bonus content] a friend of mine said "how long until we get a fic with #oviposition in the murderbot diaries ao3?" i took the answer to that question into my own two capable hands at 7.5 hours. you're welcome.

2,562 words Artifacts NULL: Fire Festival [nullverse] slice-of-life friend times with nostalgia vibes. how far we've come.jpg.

388 words Entries shared by the Society for Conservation of Feed Artifacts (SCFA) (created for TMBD in-universe robot art gallery, which is an open collection that accepts any submissions!) wait this reminds me i have one more to post. i'll get to it.

9,314 words in 31 fics written for (Botober 2023) daily prompts. turned out to be a fun exercise and exploration of bot culture tho it took me longer than the month of october to finish.

4 fanarts of fics that i liked.

26 fanbindings where i printed out and made booklets out of fics that i liked.

2 translations.

3,080 words Refrain [nullverse bonus content] if you're unfamiliar with my Brand this will sound unhinged. if you are familiar with my Brand you know by now that i have a knack for taking literally Anything and treating it with tender loving care and unexpected deft so this doesn't even surprise you. tl;dr it's porn of two bots having a deeply OSHA-unapproved Fuck Session, there's no genitals involved, and it's tagged #Vivisection. it's pretty good if you're into robots and perhaps mild gore.

Rules & Tags for this game

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass, just keep on scrolling.

@fishdetective @beatrice-otter @snugglyeldritchjellyfish @ilovedthestars and anyone who feels like it

[stupidbeecandle]

me: thanks for meeting with me today, Official representative of Xcorp. I'm excited to work with you guys to to provide [resource] to [vulnerable subcommunity in area].

Rep: of course, I'm excited to be a part of this, your research sounds fun! I know we have a lot of [vulnerable subcommunity] in the area, they've even got a formal support organization which we will be working with on this project

me: (knows this)

Rep: but are you sure they'll want [resource]? I've never observed the usage of [resource] in this area and I worry we may just have a null response here. Still, null findings are better than no research, right! ha ha we'll just have to see the effects measures in a year or so!

me: (has been a member of [vulnerable subcommunity] in the area for nearly a decade and helped to organize the grassroots effort for a support network formal organization rather than a tiny underfunded club in the local library basement. the little club i helped run fundraised and arranged informal drops of [resource] that were taken so quickly by locals with unmet needs that there was no [resource] leftover within 2 hours of the resource being made available)

me: haha yeah well, we'll just have to see.

[i-am-megalodonna]

So in elsewhere and elsewhen getting the collector is basically the whole goal of philip does collector in any way try to change the timeline of him being manipulated by telling luz to not help philip????? Does luz feel anything from the fact that philip knows the collector somehow? Does she ask him about philip? The that part of episode is sorta focused on the collector so it’s interesting to know how that would change

Me when I first read this ask: Huh, that's a good question

Me two minutes later: oh that's a good question

This took me a hot moment to figure out and I had to talk it through with my sibling, so take pride in that I guess, lol. Time travel plots continue to be the absolute bane of my existence in new and exciting ways. Gonna put this entire explanation under a readmore because this got lengthy. There'll also be a tldr at the end.

So this episode gave me... a lot of strife. But that's what makes it fun yknow. Anyway, the main problem is that Luz goes back in time because she wants to meet Philip and find the Collector because they presumably know how to make a functioning portal door. Immediate and obvious problem: she already knows the Collector, so she already knows that that path is a dead end. In addition, I've been working with the idea that the Collector tells Luz Belos' true identity from day one. So Luz would have literally no reason to want to go back in time (that I could see).

The easiest thing to do would be to say "okay, it doesn't happen then". But I can't do that; if Luz doesn't go back in time and help Philip, then Philip doesn't get the Collector, and if he doesn't get the Collector then nothing in the show happens, and neither does my au. Plus we get cool aunt Lilith, and let's be real that's just indispensable. Point being, Elsewhere and Elsewhen is kind of a loadbearing episode.

In all fairness, I could just say that Philip finds a different sacrifice. I'm sure he could. But I'm not going to say that because it feels like a copout, and I don't do copouts (except for when I do, but I'm not here).

So after much deliberating and talking and writing in an attempt to add some sort of organization to my thoughts, I've come to the conclusion that I just need to change my au. The thing I mentioned at the beginning is now null - Luz doesn't know that Philip and Belos are the same. When Luz and the Collector meet at the beginning he tells her all he can about Belos' plans, but nothing about Belos' past. Mostly because he doesn't want her asking questions about their past, but also because they might not have thought it was relevant at the time. This would come back to bite them in the ass later (along with many other things).

When Luz learns about Philip and later on gets his diary, the Collector starts to get a little worried. But he can't rightly stop her from doing that because that would be hella suspicious. So they watch it happen and hope to the stars that it ends up being a dead end. They never did pay much attention to what Philip was writing in his lame book.

This finally brings us to Elsewhere and Elsewhen, where I will make one more small change and say that Luz is somehow prevented from hearing the Collector's name in the echo mouse's projection (which may or may not have something to do with the Collector themself). So she knows that Philip met with someone who supposedly knew how to make a working portal door, but not who. This last minute save doesn't help much, though, as this hole in information only motivates Luz more to go back in time and find out for herself.

Aside from that, Elsewhere and Elsewhen plays out pretty much the same. The Collector whines even more than normal that this is a waste of time and it's not worth it and there's no way they'll ever find one guy in a whole city and they should really just go home already. Unfortunately for him, Luz is having none of it. When they finally meet Philip, the Collector is silent.

When Philip uses them to get the door open the Collector learns something new, and they don't like it.

I considered him telling Luz that truth after E+E, but I realized it would be more effective if he didn't. His choice to reveal the truth to Luz in Hollow Mind is more meaningful character-wise if it's something he hasn't been willing to do before. At least, I think so. I'll probably talk about or illustrate that particular plot point more in a later post. But also, a large part of Luz's shutdown after going into the Emperor's mind is the guilt she feels about kind of being the reason Belos is able to end the world. If that reveal happens earlier, then most of that aftermath is diverted to there and she instead just feels angry at the Collector for lying to her again. This way she gets to feel both crushing guilt and anger. After all, why would I miss the chance to make Hollow Mind even more miserable than it already is?

I could talk more but this post isn't about Hollow Mind, and I think I've gone on long enough. There ya go, that's Elsewhere and Elsewhen. Hope this response sufficiently answered your question (and if not you can always ask more ha).

Tldr: The Collector doesn't tell Luz about Belos' true identity at the beginning, ultimately keeping the past intact. This information is revealed to her, by the Collector, in Hollow Mind.

[catbountry]

Weird question: seeing as how you were a former mod, how was Kiwifarms?

Stopped being fun a long, long time ago. Glad I left, though I feel as though I will be haunted by this for a long time, but I'm doing better and trying to be a better person. That's the TL;DR answer.

Null's policy of allowing users to say pretty much anything they are legally within their right to say led to a lot of people coming in from other banned sites or subreddits that had crackdowns on hate speech and general "they're making us look bad" vibes, to flood the Farms, and this drove off many of the older, more moderate users who simply wanted to use the site for internet gossip. It got to the point where randos would be popping up in threads I was a regular in and moderated and just spouting off conspiracies about black people, Jews and trans people with only a vague connection to the topic at hand, and I found myself afraid to do anything more than make fun of them for fear of getting chided by mods higher up the chain. I got a lot of shit for simply moving threads because I didn't ask permission from another mod first. Null knew the flood of reactionary posters was a problem, as those few that still stuck around referred to them as the A&H (Articles and Happenings) posters derisively, since they seemed to exist mostly to leave the worst kind of comments on any thread in that subforum. But Null also holds a lot of those same beliefs, so attempts to curb the problem were limp and ineffective.

I came to the forum, initially, to comment on strange people online and document a particularly unsavory character that was on Tumblr. But towards the end of my stint there, I found myself being completely miserable every time I checked a thread. I had talked about quitting for probably about two years, before another former Kiwi convinced me to just do it already, since I was doing nothing but complaining about the site. I resigned and Null gracefully accepted my resignation and dissolved the Tumblr subforum. That was on January 5th, the day before the siege of the U.S. capitol building by a bunch of crazy people... people that had a lot in common with the exact same posters that were making my time there feel about as fun as being dragged down a dirt road with shards of broken glass on it. And Jesus Christ, am I glad I got out of there before all the shit with Near/Byuu went down. In the time since I've distanced myself from the Farms, I feel better. I've been working on bettering myself and working my own little projects, and there's a lot of stuff I said on those forums I wish I hadn't, but at the same time, I also made friends there who felt similar to me, friends who just wanted to come to discuss the activity of really weird and dramatic people online. I think I felt a lot of gratitude towards the site in helping me learn a lot about the previously mentioned unsavory Tumblr user who turned out to be way more awful than I ever could have imagined, and that was a big factor for why I stayed on as long as I did, even though I'd been seeing red flags for years.

I'm trying to be more polite and accepting of others even if I don't understand them. I feel happier for it, which kind of fucks me up when people treat me like I'm still there. I don't know what good public groveling and begging for forgiveness would do, since a lot of the people who would hate me anyway would only hold my past over my head only to shove it in my face as soon as me and my big, fat mouth say something that they don't like. I also don't wish to make myself an enemy of Null. Realistically, I don't think he'd really care all that much if I started laying into him in public, but at the same time, I would prefer he at least remain neutral on me. This man runs Kiwi Farms mostly out of spite at this point, to the detriment of his own other life goals. I have a lot I could criticize Null about, but he was also Chris-chan's last line of defense against the trolls, and even then, he wasn't able to stop Chris from raping Barb. He didn't even believe it at first, and given how much time and money Null has put into trying to protect Chris, it's understandable why. Some people might say Null's only motivation was to continue using Chris as a source of discussion on the site, but I really do feel like Null felt a responsibility over Chris's well being and actually wanted Chris to be safe. Sadly, things didn't work out that way.

So, yeah. I'm not going to blow up at people for using Kiwi Farms as a source on some people doing some bad shit because KF users are more likely to use archiving sites that can't have take-downs issued by the thread’s subjects to hide their bad shit. I would definitely advise against joining the forums unless you feel like you absolutely have to, perhaps to clarify on anything as someone who was personally victimized or personally involved. And even then, I would suggest not sticking around. Post the info you have and get out. Many of the fun posters left a long time ago. I'm also not going to yell at anybody still using the Farms if they're not posting the kind of content that drove me away. People have their reasons for being there, and many of the threads have their own mini-communities and subcultures specific to those threads that were very different from many people's preconceived notions of the site. But if anybody is thinking of leaving, especially if they've been thinking about it for a while, I would say to just rip off that band-aid and do it. People just stop posting to websites without any explanation as to why all the time.

There are other places to get gossip on the internet. I still watch YouTube commentary channels and post to my friends about people making spectacles of themselves online... I just don't do it on Kiwi Farms anymore.

This post was originally going to be much, much longer, going into a lot of my feelings on internet censorship and my distrust of a small number of huge websites being controlled by a handful of tech giants, on my current dilemma in regards to how I feel free speech should be protected versus how dangerous I think anti-vaxxers are, and some anecdotes about times that should have been the thing that spurred me to leave, but I stuck around anyway out of some misplaced sense of duty. But this post is already pretty long and I don't want to bore you with a bunch of tangentially related ramblings. Suffice to say, again, I'm glad I left, but at the same time, while I said a lot of things I wish I hadn't and I feel like I've grown considerably as a person since then, I also don't regret having been there. I think what I do regret is not standing up for myself more, not pushing back harder against a culture that was becoming less and less recognizable to the one that was there when I joined in 2014. I don't really think I could have done that much to stop it, though.

It just sucks, man.