#and there is no urgency

[elles-home]

just realised i’m consuming one piece at four different ways these days

1. rewatching wano arc (currently act ii. big mom washed up on kuri beach)

2. current manga releases (end of egghead)

3. current anime releases (beginning of egghead)

4. manga read from the beginning (this is the slowest going. only finished three chapters so far)

[inbarfink]

When talking about the distinction between Simon Petrikov and the Ice King,  it’s important to remember that originally, the Crown wasn’t trying to turn Simon into Ice King -

It was trying to turn him into this guy.

At the time, the Ice Crown - or rather the Wishing Crown - was programmed with Gunther’s wish to become Evergreen. So everything related to making the current wearer like Evergreen is a very direct result of the Crown’s Magic. The physical changes -

And the obsession with the name ‘Gunther’ -

And maybe some of the irritability and anger issues -

That is something the Crown is very directly forcing unto its current wielder. 

But everything else?

Ice King, personality-wise, was not much like Evergreen at all, or even like Gunther's view of him. And Ice Finn of the Farmworld Universe was also pretty different from the both of them.

At the time, I remember people assumed Ice Finn’s behavior is more indicative of what the Crown is actually trying to do with its wielders. That Ice King is so different because of Simon’s subconscious resistance against the Crown - while Finn’s much younger and dumber brain is a lot susceptible to the Curse’s influence to become some sort of mad world-conquering emperor of ice and snow. 

But, with the context of the Crown’s actual backstory. That doesn’t seem very likely anymore. I think what’s actually happening there is that the Crown is just trying to make its wielder an Ice Wizard on par with Evergreen (who was the Actual Goddam Ice Elemental) and that means pumping the wielder’s brain so full of Magic, Madness and Sadness to a level that is bound to overwhelm anyone.

And Simon’s and Farmworld Finn’s very different behaviors after putting on the crown is indicative, more than anything, of how their psyche reacts to Madness and Sadness in general. You know, Finn has a very proactive and kinda aggressive personality - and you add Crown-induced-Madness-and-Sadness and a compulsion to use Ice Magic as much as possible and you get all of…. this 

Meanwhile, for Simon, the compulsions of the Crown originally filtered exclusively via the language of protection 

As his madness always manifested as romantic obsession 

And using goofy humor to try and deny the pain he’s going through 

Because that’s how Simon’s mind specifically reacts to being flooded with so much Madness and Sadness.

That’s why there’s so many parallels between Ice King and the sort of mistakes and screwed-up stuff Simon does right now! He’s even kidnapping people again!

Because the Madness and Sadness of Ice King might’ve been induced by the Crown, but now Simon has plenty of personal home-grown Madness and Sadness inside him - and it’s no surprise that Curse-Induced or not, his mind reacts to it in a sorta-similar way. (Although obviously not as intensely, again, there was a LOT of MMS in the Ice Crown).

Now as for Ice Thing, and the fact that he seems to be actually rather well-adjusted under effects of his version of the Wishing Crown. I mean... not by the time of the 1000+ Era, but that’s literally eons in the future and also maybe more Gibbon’s fault. Even if the Crown will eventually take some sort of toll on him, for now he seems to be doing pretty well considering his wish. I mean, there's still some sort of Loss of Identity stuff going on

But everything we've seen of Ice Thing (in the present day, at least) shows him as a friendly and cheerful individual that gets along well with others. A far cry from how maladjusted every single wielder of the Ice Crown acted.

At the very least, if there's any notable amount of Sadness in him, we really haven't seen it yet.

There might be several factors here:

First things first, I should acknowledge the possibility that it’s just that Orgalorg’s eldritch brain is better at intaking all that MMS juice. That could play a part, but I think it’s probably more important, at least thematically, to look at the distinction between ‘I wish to be Evergreen’ and ‘I wish to be Ice King’. 

First in the sense that while Ice King was occasionally mean to Gunter at times - he was generally much kinder than Evergreen ever was for ‘his’ Gunther. So, like, pretty much the one Personality Flaw of Ice King that you can directly link to the Ice Crown’s attempt to mimic Evergreen is the occasional anger issues.

And how they relate to Gunther’s view of Evergreen, so grumpy and controlling and constantly saying ‘NO!’

(Both Finn and Simon’s demonstrable not-crown-induced trauma responses can make them pretty short-tempered as well. So I’m not going to say this is purely the effects of the Crown. It still probably plays some sort of factor at why the wielder of the Ice Crown is Like That).

And that is not a factor in how Gunter views Ice King. For him, Ice King was a doting and loving father figure - so if the Crown was ever trying to implement any sort of specific negative personality traits, this is absolutely no longer a factor. Because the original Ice Crown was a reflection of Evergreen’s abuse, and now Ice Thing is a reflection of Ice King’s fatherly love.

Which is, itself, probably an echo or remnant of Simon’s own strong parental instincts. 

Secondly, while the Crown was trying to make the Ice King just as powerful as Evergreen…. Ice King was obviously not as powerful as Evergreen. Because he was already a second-rate copy of the Ice Elemental’s power, and because Ice King was often just too doofy to use his powers correctly and probably because some remnant of Simon’s original sensible self is subconsciously holding his powers back.

Either way, being ‘like Ice King’ as Gunter sees him requires less Magic than being ‘like Evergreen’ as Gunther saw him - and therefore less Madness and Sadness. Leading to the wearer or, um, the eater being a lot more well-adjusted from the get-go.

And I think that the implication that Ice Thing has fused with the Crown, so there's never going to be another poor sap who puts on the Crown and gets Ice King'd. But if there is one somehow... at least the process is going to be less mentally detrimental that time around?

Maybe one day Simon could look back and appreciate how much he (or Ice King, or both of them, or however you want to look at the situation) is responsible for basically neutralizing the Crown that ruined his life in the first place.

[tomaturtles]

HAPPY SONIC FRONTIERS FIRST ANNIVERSARY TO THOSE WHO CELEBRATE (inspired by this)

[botanyshitposts]

ok INCREDIBLY old content originally meant for this blog but in 2018 when i was just a wee lad with a little spinner propeller hat and big rainbow lollipop i went to a carnivorous plant convention in california and met a bunch of people who breed/collect/study these guys. one person was this collector who was slowly working on leaving the hobby or at least no longer growing plants, and he had a bunch of carnivorous plant related files he was charging like 50 cents for or something, and so i came into possession of these, which are examples of the kind of paperwork you have to have done to legally ship/trade endangered species of both plants and animals. functionally very boring paperwork, but something i found like, incredibly fascinating. i blacked out the personal id of the person and then immediately forgot to ever upload them, lmao.

these plants were bred and raised in a greenhouse and sold abroad, not taken from the wild, but because the species are endangered and often protected in their native countries (most of these are nepenthes, asian pitcher plants, a huge family spread throughout oceania and southeast asia), there's a lot more documentation that needs to be done regardless of their origin, both on the end of the seller and on the end of the buyer.

the rabbit hole on carnivorous plant trade is deep and kind of wild. there's plenty of common, non-threatened, greenhouse-grown pitcher plants on the market that people buy all the time, even non-collectors, but there's a whole debate to be had on if it's morally okay to be collecting the more endangered/rare of these plants in the first place. the big argument for breeding is that breeding them in captivity means there's more supply that's not poached from the wild, meaning poachers have less of an incentive to take the risk of taking adult plants from their habitats; from what i've heard, sometimes countries will issue permits for breeders to collect some wild seeds just to create a non-wild breeding pool to drive down the price. predictably, however, you also get people who are very much willing to pay a lot of money to get as rare of a plant as possible.

anyone familiar with the allure valuable plants have had over people throughout history can imagine the rest, but here's an article about a guy who started buying poached plants to enrich his private nepenthes collection, who then got busted by a fish and wildlife service agent embedded in his carvirorous plant circle. the plants this guy was buying were being sold to him without any CITES paperwork or declarations like the ones above; it was literally just a guy in indonesia taking rare plants from the woods around where he lived, selling them over facebook marketplace and ebay, and mailing them overseas as an undeclared 'gift' to get around customs. frighteningly small steps to take on all sides, to be honest.

(also, fun fact: another example of carnivorous plants that get poached are wild venus fly traps, which are only native to north and south carolina in the US. from what i understand it's a mix of people who genuinely did not know it's a native species and people who really are just going out into the woods and digging up plants to sell online. sometimes poaching is closer to home than you'd think!)

anyway. wild and interesting times in the land of plants recovered from a hard drive lmao

[trans-androgyne]

“Where there’s no name for a problem, you can’t see a problem, and when you can’t see a problem, you pretty much can’t solve it.” - Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality

To those who can’t seem to comprehend why transmascs are insisting on a word to describe their intersection of transphobia and misogyny (and conditionally anti-masculine sentiment)

[guzhufuren]

hands in the bedroom sex scene sped up for horny purposes

Uncensored wuxia BL Meet You At The Blossom (2024)

[vintage-tigre]

[dovewingkinnie]

why did he do that

[coffeecakeshop]

Before I started watching House, I knew that he would commit crimes sometimes to make his diagnoses, but I didn't realize he was breaking and entering literally every single episode. He doesn't even try to hide it. He says some shit like "I know you're lying to me because I went through every single trashcan in your home, raided your fridge, and harassed your neighbours" and the patients just sit there and take it. They don't even question it. Sure, Dr. House. Read my diary while you're at it.

[ya-what--ya-erster]

jackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbijackkellyisbi

[b0tster]

As a "not contract bound" dev who works on a project that you are (I assume) completely in control of, how do you choose the release date and why'd you choose one before finishing the project? Asked not in a "why'd you do that to yourself" way but in a "I wanna understand what's the logical process behind it, maybe it is smart to do it and I wanna know why".

I thought that it'd be logical to first have a finished thing and then say that it'll be released at "date_name_wgenever", instead of setting a certain date and then crunching yourself to fit it. But maybe it helps you somehow to not overwork yourself on the project thinking that if you have all the time in the world, why not add a thing or two, which results in project taking forever to be marked complete, or maybe you just have a pet birthday at that date and wanna make it symbolical lol, idk.

let me be clear here

i am not crunching on bbkart, or any of my projects for that matter

---

now, with that out of the way, time to talk about time frames and productivity. our labor doesnt operate on a linear scale. spending a decade on a game compared to a year will not mean that that game will be 10 times bigger. humans just dont work like that.

something ive picked up over the years is that productivity is like a gas: it will expand to fit the box its put in.

if u give urself infinite time, the gas will just dissipate. but of course if u squeeze it into a release thats too tight, u get an explosion (crunch).

now, im more of a 'find the fun' kinda developer. i make my tools and mechanics based on a loose concept and then decide what the game will be after once i have everything in front of me. in that initial period i do not set a release date, its impossible to predict how a games dev cycle will play out, so i dont bother and just focus on finding whats fun.

once the final game actually starts to take shape, i am capable of making an informed decision on how much labor is needed to finish, and i set an internal date that i do not make public. once im a few months out from that date, i will make an adjustment if neccesary (both bbpsx and kart had their internal date pushed back by a month) and then announce it. that sets it in stone and I have a runway to release.

mark darrah (bioware) talks about something he calls the 'hockey stick', which is the idea that once u get to a certain point, completion urgency kicks in and u get the drive to make the decisions neccesary to finish the game. cut this, reroute focus to that, crunch on this (dont do that last one, ever, but its important to bring up where crunch manifests. some advice: you either cut or you crunch. choose cut).

darrah talks about how to trigger completion urgency (one example is making a demo, be it publically released or exclusive to an event) and the fact of the matter is that a deadline will do it. of course, if completion urgency kicks in too close to the deadline, you get crunch, but if it kicks in earlier u will get things done in a way that doesnt leave permanent damage on your body and mind.

i know this is a very long winded answer, but i hope i was thorough enough to explain the benefits of setting a deadline and how that doesnt always have to end in crunch, like the question implied.

[sabo-torao]

obsessed with this thing that he does

[rapidhighway]

so much is happening (nothing is happening)

[nobrashfestivity]

Saburo Akagi, Seizo Tashima, Shigeru Akimoto, Poems Of Urgency, 1972

[hotdrinks]

Just got to Daisy's first appearance and I forgot how violent their first interaction is. Jon's fledgling beholding powers emerging, and Daisy so clearly disturbed that she told him her story. Daisy keeps saying she's done answering questions, Jon disregards that completely and keeps asking, and she keeps answering!! Even though she's so disturbed! Even though she doesn't want to!! And it's the first time in season 2, maybe even in the whole show thus far, that Jon sounds sooo completely happy. Like. He's delighted, he's well fed, he's ENRICHED, he's having fun!! And he doesn't know he's even doing it, consciously. But also. He must, deep down. He doesn't even know about The Eye and yet he's already flexing his wet little newborn Archivist wings. AAAAH Haha Jonathan a darkness is unfurling within you from which you can never escape 🤪