#basically just less scripted stuff

[xxxantanddeccerxxx]

i love love love LOVE these lives. i hope they do them for every im a celeb from now on

[inkblackorchid]

Reasons why I had to put the duel from chapter 4 of the WIP into a separate, new chapter, exhibit A: This is the duel, now in chapter 5. Just the duel. I didn't even add any of the other stuff that's supposed to happen in this chapter yet.

[loregoddess]

back on my nonsense (I'm replaying Three Hopes)

[arolesbianism]

Sorry for failing to post more than once every 3 am anyways more stalien icons 👍

[tchaikovskym]

Man this day sucked balls

[anyroads]

OK you know what, if we're gonna talk about Bake Off then fuck it, let's do this.

It used to be this wholesome, lovely show! We used to watch it for the bakers! And the learning! And the light banter and occasional bit of coy innuendo! What happened?

Channel 4 happened. When they bought the show they made a number of changes, most of them Not Good™️. Not just in the sense of them resulting in a lot of 😬 and 🫠 moments, but in the sense of how they changed the show's purpose, atmosphere, and brand.

Look, I know most people are just like, "whatever, it's just a baking show," and yeah, sure. But it's one of the UK's most successful TV exports, and where it once shifted the tone of reality competition to being wholesome and supportive of contestants, it's since moved towards creating tension at the contestants' cost. So aside from the fact that most people watching it signed up to watch a nice show, it has also shifted the goalposts of what that even means. And that, lovelies and gentlefolk, is some bullshit.

I decided to break my rant analysis into four main parts: theme weeks, the hosts, the judges, and the bakers. Let's get to it!

Theme Weeks:

If you watch Bake Off, you know the show's always had a specific theme for each week. The staples that come up in most seasons are:

cake

biscuit

bread

pudding/dessert

pastry

patisserie

Less common but consistent are things like caramel and chocolate week.

Then there are the fun episodes! When GBBO was on the BBC, this started out with things tea week, tarts, pies, tray bakes, basically little tangents still focused on emphasizing specific baking skills. In Series 6 (still on the BBC) they had their first nation-focused theme week with French week -- fairly innocuous given that a lot of patisserie is French, France and England share much more culture than either cares to admit [Norman Flag dot gif], and it was a nice change from watching Paul make the bakers do recipes that involved boiling things while talking about how wonderful boiled doughs are (are they, Paul? Are they?).

The show kept mixing it up with innocuous themes like advanced dough and alternative ingredients weeks, European cakes, Victorian week, batter week, and botanical week. And while it was frustrating to watch Paul Hollywood mispronounce things like the Hungarian Dobos Torta and lecture bakers on babka when he clearly knew nothing about it (or about Jewish baking in general, go off Past Me), the show's general attitude was that the judges had their own opinions, which were separate from the immutable facts around the chemistry of baking (more on this later) and shouldn't affect how bakers are judged.

After the show moved to Channel 4, the number of themed weeks increased and more of them focused on specific countries. In 6 seasons on the BBC, there were only two country-focused theme weeks, and in 5 seasons on Channel 4 there have been five. And while they've also had themes like vegan baking, roaring 20s, the 1980s, spice week, etc. the show has really started to go hard on exoticizing other cultures in outright disrespectful and racist ways. There's been Italian and Danish week, German, Japanese (it wasn't, it was East Asian week), and now Mexican week (which doesn't touch on interspersed Jewish bakes that didn't get a theme week, like versions of bagels and babka set as technical challenges that were borderline hate crimes and mansplained by a guy who has no idea how to make either and once wrote in a cookbook that challah was traditionally eaten during Passover). Each time the hosts played up the theme with racist bits and jokes that can be used as evidence in court if your case is "why should shows with scripted content have a professional writing staff."

Which touches on other issues the show has now...

The Hosts:

When GBBO was on the BBC, the show was hosted by ✨Mel Giedroyc✨ and ✨Sue Perkins✨. They encouraged the bakers! They'd hold stuff for them sometimes! They were interested in them! If a baker had a breakdown, they would start singing copyrighted material to render the footage unusable! When the show moved to Channel 4, they left, though I'm not unconvinced that Channel 4 offered them impossible to accept contracts to force them out so they could rebrand the show. They replaced them with Sandy Toksvig and Noel Fielding. Sandy was a lovely host in the vein of Mel and Sue, and she and Noel had a relatively sweet rapport, but she left a few seasons ago and was replaced by Matt Lucas.

Noel Fielding is mostly known for his quirky brand of comedy, a sort of British Zooey Deschanel who's goth from the neck up, an upperclass British gay divorcee from the neck down, and basically an early 60s Beatle re: trousers. Matt Lucas has almost definitely never watched a single episode of GBBO and his most redeeming quality is his thinly veiled contempt for Paul Hollywood.

The two treat the baking tent as their personal playground. Far from the supportive attitude of Mel and Sue, they tend to get in the bakers' way during the most stressful moments, especially when they try to do hilarious "comedy" bits (I can't not put that in quotes) like Noel's talking wooden spoon thing, or Matt talking over Noel to do time calls. During theme weeks like Japanese and Mexican week, they do culture-specific bits that are both racist ("just Juan joke" and "is Mexico a real place?") and unsurprising, given that both Matt and Noel did blackface on their respective sketch shows and absolutely could and should have known better because it was already the current fucking century.

All this to say, there's now a separation between the bakers and the hosts, as if they're on different shows. The hosts are doing their own thing and the bakers are doing GBBO. The show has gotten meaner to the bakers, and the hosts aren't there to support them anymore, they're just there to be comic relief. Because when you refocus your show on stressing the bakers the fuck out, you need a forced laugh I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

The Judges:

First of all, a sincere congratulations to Paul Hollywood who managed to squeeze I jUsT cAmE bAcK fRoM mExIcO aNd YeT sTiLL pRoNoUnCe PiCo De GaLLo As 'PiKa De KaLLa' and I aM aN eXpErT oN s'MoReS wHiCh aRe MaDe WiTh DiGeStiVe BiScUiTs AcCoRdiNg tO mE, aN eXpErT oN s'MoReS, just two in a giant pile of astoundingly wrong hot takes, into a short enough time span that they all aired within Liz Truss's term as Prime Minister. A true man of accomplishments.

In the interest of fairness, I need to preface this with a disclaimer that, due to the fact that I've been watching Bake Off for most of its run, I'm biased. Specifically, I can't stand Paul Hollywood's smarmy, classist, egomaniac ass because he's proven time and again he's more interested in looking smart than actually knowing what he's talking about. Since the show moved to Channel 4, they've changed the occasional handshake Paul would give bakers to the HoLlYwOoD hAnDsHaKe™️. It's gone from being an emphasis of someone's skill to a goal, a reward, and one that emphasizes the judges' place above the bakers.

The judges used to function as teachers, imparting their skills and insights to the bakers. When the show was on the BBC, the voiceover leading to a judging would focus on the bakers' work being finished, saying how it will now be evaluated based on their skill and how well they met the brief. The voiceovers now, on Channel 4, focus on the judging (literally saying something along the lines of, "the bakers will now be judged by Prue and Paul"). There is a clear distinction Channel 4's producers have made, to mark that the show is now about whether or not the judges approve, not whether the brief was understood and executed well. On the BBC, it was irrelevant whether the judges liked a particular flavor, as long as the bake was well-made. Now, the bakers are expected to know the judges tastes and cater to them, which is frankly bullshit. A judge doesn't have to like a flavor to know whether or not it was executed well, ie. is it carrying a bake and was it meant to etc.

The judges have been turned into a brand. Cynically, Channel 4 knows that by building them up and focusing the show more on them, they can exploit their image more for profit. In the process, they've become much more biased and their own biases have come out as well. Most recently in the flaming dumpster fire that was Mexican Week, Paul Hollywood tried to intimidate a baker by telling them he had just gotten back from Mexico (which must have been a fruitful learning trip if he couldn't even learn how to pronounce pico de gallo correctly). Where do I even start with this? Here's an amateur baker from England (the show specifically casts middle and lower middle class bakers for the most part??) who likely can't afford trips to Mexico, who lives in a country with incredibly limited access to Mexican cuisine, who is expected not only to understand the cooking and baking traditions of a completely different culture but to do so well enough to play with it and do something creative with it. On top of which, one of the judges is now using his privilege of traveling halfway around the world as some kind of leverage, as if this were a bar that any amateur British baker could clear.

Prue, meanwhile, has openly asserted her biases against cultural flavors and textures, prioritizing her own personal preferences over them, as if they were in any way relevant to the skills and knowledge necessary to execute the tasks she sets to the bakers. She has also been consistently elitist, criticizing bakers for choices they made that were clearly informed by their experiences within income brackets that are too low and foreign for Prue to comprehend. She once had a go at a baker on a Christmas special because his Christmas dinner themed bake didn't have a turkey, even though it was clear from the stories he shared of his own Christmases that his family likely couldn't afford one. "It's not really Christmas dinner without a turkey," Prue said into the camera angrily while sitting on a chair made of live orphans and telling the ghost of Christmas Future to come back when he had another museum gift shop necklace for her to round out her collection.

The show is no longer about which baker has the best skills. It's become about which mortal can appease the gods of Mount Olympus, ie. the judges.

The Bakers:

Remember when the show was about them? Channel 4 doesn't! Because this is a reality competition show, the bakers are chosen both based on their skills, as well as cast-ability. They're cast as characters, distinct from each other, from different areas, age groups, ethnicities. All of them are amateurs. All of them are middle or lower middle class. They've ranged from college students to supermarket cashiers to prison wardens to scientists.

Something I noticed when the show moved to Channel 4 is that the baker who goes home in the first week is always wildly behind the rest in skills. I have no proof of this other than my eyeballs and deductive reasoning skills, but I think that Channel 4 deliberately casts a ringer each season who they think will be an easy send-off in the first week, just to get the audience's feet wet.

Anyway, like I said, this show used to be about the bakers - about them building skills and learning, and having walked into the tent with a self-taught foundation and understanding of the processes and chemical reactions involved in baking. When the show was on the BBC, the end of each round had some (often brief) moments of tension - will they finish in time? Will they get their bakes on the plate before time is up? Did they forget to add sugar to their batter and only remember at the last minute? In the end, they usually managed to finish and we'd all breathe a sigh of relief and think, yeah! You go, Bakers Who I'm Rooting For!

Now, on Channel 4, the end of round drama has been stretched to be so much longer that they've composed extra music for it. The bakers often seem out of their depth, whether because the instructions for the technical challenge are too vague (bake a lemon meringue pie??? As if anyone in the UK under the age of 60 has had one in the last decade???), or because they were expected to bake something that required a more than a basic foundation they weren't told of. Often it seems like they just aren't given enough time, a tactic used by reality competition shows to manipulate contestants into giving the cameras more dramatic content. On top of all this, the hosts get in their way, instead of helping them plate their bakes. As has been pointed out before, when everyone fails the challenge, the real failure lies with whoever set it.

In conclusion:

The show no longer exists to teach the bakers - and the audience - skills or knowledge. It now manipulates contestants for dramatic effect and prioritizes showing conflict over wholesome content. Channel 4 sees the bakers as social media content they can churn out season after season, and don't care about them because in a few months there'll be a new batch to exploit. Meanwhile, the judges are also out of their depth, co-opting recipes from other cultures and butchering them horrendously, while the camera gives them nothing but status as they hold bakers to the expectation that they learn how to make things very much the wrong way. If you saw any of the tweets about Mexican or Japanese week, or read my post on how Paul Hollywood isn't allowed to go near babka ever again, you'll understand.

So what would fix all this? Scrap the current judges and the hosts altogether. Bring back Mel and Sue, and replace the judges with expert bakers who have a love of their craft and want to share it with others. The draw of GBBO used to be its warmth and comfort - if Channel 4 isn't going to start its own version of Master Chef For Bakers, then it needs to stop trying to find a balance of how it can insert that vibe into GBBO. It can't. That's not a thing. Stop trying.

[queerxqueen]

Hey quick question! I saw that you talked about the legitimacy of 8flix and I just saw these pictures:

Do you think 8flix actually is connected to the writers and has read the legitimate scripts?

Thank you <33

Could not care less about what 8flix Nick thinks of Byler and if anything this is confirmation that he's a scheming opportunistic grifter who took advantage of the byler community back during scriptgate.

Do I think he possibly has real scripts for season 4? Yeah, sure. But I've seen the official season 4 scripts (bc dustin book author privileges) and I still think byler will be canon. As much as I'd love to analyze the script stuff with you, it's very much under my NDA, so I can't, but I will say that anyone who expects season 4 scripts to have concrete answers to byler is severely misguided. The season 4 scripts do exactly what the season 4 show did, which is show us Will's feelings for Mike and Mike's apparent love for El while hinting at a deeper internal struggle for Mike that viewers are not meant to be privy to just yet. The scripts do the same thing the show did, which is show viewers rather than tell them all the ways Mike's relationship with Will is different, more open, and healthier than his relationship with El.

You don't need the scripts to confirm or deny Byler if you actually trust in your own analysis of the show and the groundwork they've clearly set out for Byler over the seasons. You don't need leaks or spoilers from randoms on Twitter, you don't need hints from the cast, you just need to watch the damn show and have a basic understanding of how romantic tension is built. Stop searching for answers from people who don't have them, people who are just saying shit for clout, people who are just viewers like the rest of us. Yes, that includes me and other byler blogs. Everything I need to believe in byler is in the damn show. Everything I need to confirm that byler is canon is going to come when season 5 comes out. Everything else? It's just noise, my friends.

So TL;DR I think he's full of shit and just speculating as a viewer so for the love of god can we all just trust in our own media literacy instead of panicking every time some random person spreads byler doubt

[directdogman]

Dogman, how do you write SO WELL!?!? I love all your characters and I need to know what/where you find inspo from...

Ha. Every writer is just someone who apes the creative processes of their inspirations. For video game writing specifically, there's two answers for me.

Toby Fox is always gonna be a huge inspiration for me. I've written plots and characters before and had to abandon ideas after realizing I'd accidentally written part of UT again. Even some of the ideas I used were undeniably inspired by UT in a subconscious way and ofc, I included several explicit references to UT in my last series. Toby's a very clever guy who likely pays very close attention to the art he consumes and tries to figure out how to maximize how much his work connects with his audience. Whatever his process is, it works.

The other answer is a lil funnier: Scott Cawthon, but specifically the legend, not the man. For context: Back in the earlier days of the FNaF fandom, people had a hyper-inflated view of Scott Cawthon's writing skills that largely came from how little of a presence he had back in those days. In the vacuum of Scott actually explaining his own process in detail, people got caught up in his genuinely creative way of hiding exposition in his games using cryptid and (then) unexpected methods, and a narrative formed (one that he's since refuted.)

While he never implied it tmk, fans broadly believed that he constructed these sweeping and complex narratives with tons of cohesive moving parts, with the games essentially acting like the mere tip of his lore iceberg. People even thought he wrote so much that he had whole games worth of lore outlined from the beginning! In the first Dawko interview he gave, he clarified that this wasn't the case and explained roughly what his process was (basically just outlining rough theme ideas + aesthetics for future titles.)

However, that legend made younger-me's mind run wild and any time I wrote a story, it became very difficult for me to not keep writing down ideas while completing the grunt work that followed me finishing my scripts. When I finished DSaF 1, I already had DSaF 2's draft written and by the time 2 was done, I had enough lore for a 3rd game on paper (and a lot more stuff that I didn't use.) By the time three was out, I had pages upon pages of unused concepts/story ideas and more or less just had to decide to call it quits or else I'd be pumping out entries forever!

That's why if you go back to those older games, there's references that directly refer to future plot-points in pretty casual/easy to miss ways. (Like Henry's mention in DSaF 1, Dave being heartless in DSaF 2, Jack being soulless in 1, and even Blackjack being Jack's soul in 2. Most of 3's major plotpoints are implied somewhere in 2 and some of 2's in 1.)

DT is much the same. By the time I finished writing it, I had fairly detailed drafts for arcs for each of the characters, some early material ended up getting completely recontextualized (and even modified in small ways to not conflict with the wider ideas I came up with.)

I get really into writing my stories/characters and I always wonder exactly how things ended up where they are, what characters think about but don't say, etc etc. This is why I have an obscene amount of Crown lore that I have very little to do with rn (since he impacted the whole world so deeply.)

This extra stuff also includes plenty of sequel material ideas, though I didn't think I'd even get a chance to use them since DT performed pretty meagerly before the big release and I was expecting to have to move onto something new. Though it turned out that Scott didn't actually write his games this way (by his own admission), it's the correct answer for what my core writing inspiration for writing game narratives is.

Hope this helps!

[mywitchyblog]

Forgot to say this too :

Alright, listen up, you judgmental assholes. I see y’all out here screaming about how "wrong" and "creepy" it is for someone to age themselves down in their DR to hook up with someone or relive some youthful romance. Meanwhile, you’re out here aging yourself up for the same exact reason, but somehow, in your twisted logic, that’s perfectly fine? Bitch, be fucking for real.

Let’s cut the bullshit: If aging yourself down to date or fuck is wrong, then guess what? Aging yourself up for the same reason is just as fucking wrong. There’s no moral high ground to be found here. You can’t call someone out for shifting into a younger version of themselves while you’re over there shifting into some older fantasy version of yourself just to live out some “mature, powerful lover” scenario. It’s the same game, just flipped.

Now let’s get to the real MVPs of hypocrisy: teenage shifters. You’ve got a real special brand of double standards, don’t you? Y’all will shift to a DR where you’re suddenly married with kids, living that adult fantasy life like you're some grown-up with a mortgage and responsibilities. Then the next day, you’re back in a high school DR, flirting with your 15-year-old sweetheart like it’s nothing. And yet, these are the same people who have the audacity to label adult shifters “creepy” for shifting down to experience young love or redo some teenage memories they missed out on. How the fuck do you not see the hypocrisy?

You can’t have it both ways. You defend your shifts by saying, “Oh, teens are also horny too so it is okay for me to script sexual stuff.” But then, as soon as an adult mentions wanting to relive a younger stage of life, you’re all up in arms, crying “predator!” Girl, sit down. You’re doing the same damn thing, just in reverse. You can’t pretend your shit is squeaky clean when you’re basically flipping the script to suit your fantasy.

And here’s where it gets real funny: y’all love to age yourselves up to live that mature, adult life, but when you come back to being 15 or 16 in your DR, suddenly you wanna cry about how your "maturity" is affected? Please. You’re switching between being a married 30-year-old in one DR to being a high school junior the next, but it’s the adults you want to come after? Y’all really gotta wake the fuck up.

Then, oh the fucking nerve, teenage shifters will sit there and script full-on adult relationships with older partners in one DR, then hop back to being a teenager dating another teen in the next DR. And y’all don’t see the contradiction? How’s it okay for you to be all up in adult business in one DR, but when an adult shifts down to experience young love, you wanna call them out? Make it make sense, because it sure as hell doesn’t.

Oh, and let’s not forget the real kicker: The pressure y’all feel to cram in all these shifts before you hit 18 in your OR, like once you become an “official adult,” those fantasies will suddenly be seen as creepy. So, there’s this mad rush to get all your DR desires in before adulthood hits, like you’ve got some moral deadline. Really? You’re creating a ticking time bomb for yourself, thinking everything's okay now, but if you did the same shifts in two years, you’d call yourself out? How is that not completely fucked up logic?

And let me not forget how some of you teenage shifters treat shifting like cosplay. You’re out here playing dress-up in your DRs, accusing adults of being creepy, and yet you’re scripting yourselves into stripper DRs or pornstar fantasies, acting like that’s somehow less weird. Bitch, please. You’re over here aging yourselves up to hook up with adults, or worse, aging down your adult love interests to match your age, and you still have the nerve to point fingers at others? That’s some next-level mental gymnastics right there. Y’all are doing cartwheels with your logic, and it’s honestly embarrassing.

Here’s a real mind-fuck for you: A 15-year-old shifts into a DR, lives there for 40 years, then comes back to their OR and dates someone who’s still 15. By your own logic, they’re now some kind of “predator” because they’ve lived for 55 years, right? But flip it around, if they shift back to being 15 and date a 55-year-old who’s aged up in their DR, suddenly that’s a problem? Where is the consistency here? You’re out here with a ruler trying to measure everyone else’s moral standing while standing in a pile of your own bullshit.

It’s like trying to apply chess rules to poker—you can’t just make up the rules as you go along to justify your own shifting decisions while dragging others. Every reality is different, every context is different, and trying to slap your one-size-fits-all judgment on someone else’s shift just makes you look like a clown. Shifting is nuanced, it’s complex, and y’all really need to stop pretending you’ve got some moral blueprint for everyone else to follow when you can’t even keep your own shifting ethics straight.

Bottom line: If you’re out here aging yourself up for the same shit you criticize adults for when they age down, you’re a hypocrite. Period. Either admit that both are fine, or recognize that both have the potential to be problematic. But you can’t keep pretending that aging up for some weird-ass fantasy suddenly makes it all okay. If you’re out here policing other people’s shifts while turning a blind eye to your own ? you're full of shit.

You don't get to rewrite the rules just to fit your narrative and then sit there acting like you're the moral compass of the shifting community. If you’re out here saying that aging down for a fantasy is creepy but think aging up for the same purpose is perfectly fine, you’re not only delusional, you’re a straight-up hypocrite.

And let’s get real: the double standard isn’t just ridiculous, it’s fucking exhausting. If you’re playing the same game, whether you’re aging down or up, it’s still the same manipulation of age for personal gratification. The moral high ground you think you’re standing on? That shit doesn’t exist.

So here’s your wake-up call: Stop preaching about what’s “right” or “wrong” when you’re shifting if you can’t apply the same scrutiny to yourself. You either gotta accept that shifting age—whether up or down—comes with some ethical complexity, or you need to shut the hell up and sit down. Because if you can’t see how aging up to fulfill your fantasies is just as questionable as aging down, then you’re not as woke as you think you are.

So next time you wanna criticize someone for how they shift, take a long, hard look at your own DRs and ask yourself: Am I being a hypocrite? If the answer’s yes, then maybe it’s time to step off your high horse, own your shit, and recognize that you’re not above anyone else. Either own it across the board, or get off the fucking ride and let everyone shift how they want to. Stop acting like one version of age-changing is somehow more acceptable than the other.

[ghostly-omens]

Anyway Quackity was one of the people on DSMP who was most involved in and invested in lore. Las Nevadas and the Butcher Army and the Red Banquet and everything with L'Manberg. He clearly loved telling the story he wanted to tell and playing on a roleplay server.

But a lot of creators have pointed out that the most fun they had on the server was when they were doing improv, when they were reacting to things that happened and building the story naturally that way. When things got scripted, when creators had to come up with and write and execute their lore basically on their own, when it stopped being playing and started being acting, that's when you got players disengaging and losing interest and motivation. By the end, literally every bit of lore was scripted. Most of it was prerecorded just so it could end up telling a complete story, instead of starting a dozen plot threads that had to be abandoned when the other people involved didn't answer your DMs or the big lore day that was meant to move the whole server's story along didn't happen. The last big, whole-server lore event only happened because Technoblade was dying. Communication was so bad that was the only thing that could get everyone to get organised enough for a single day of lore, a story event that had been set up for months.

And so when Quackity comes up with his own server, he wants it to have a strong roleplay element (if that's what the other creators involved end up wanting). Quackity loved his roleplaying on DSMP. But he wants it to be fun for the creators as well as for the fans, and the way lore was fun on DSMP was for it to be improv, not for it to be creators acting out a script. But things got scripted because once they set up a story, it had to escalate in a specific way in order for it to be narratively satisfying, which made it less fun. A single arc is fine, but things just won't work for more than that without at least a loose script. By the end DSMP wasn't roleplay, it was acting. Some creators managed to tell satisfying stories, but it wasn't the same as when it was a bunch of friends messing around doing Hamilton Breaking Bad improv because it was fun. The DSMP, for a good chunk of its life, was not fun to play on. So people didn't.

But how do you set up satisfying, coherent stories over a long period of time while also maintaining the fun roleplay element? Someone needs to guide them and develop them, but it can't be the creators on a server if you're going to keep the fun roleplay element.

Hence the admins, and their role not just maintaining the server, but in developing and guiding the story. Their role is basically a GM, in tabletop roleplaying terms, and the creators get to be player characters roleplaying in reaction to that. Creators don't know much more than we do; how many times have creators said they don't get told shit, have they been told to log on and been faced with huge big developments they didn't see coming and have to figure out how to roleplay that? QSMP works kind of like Dungeons and Dragons but in Minecraft. Keeps the story consistent and escalating, without the need for creators to sacrifice their own enjoyment of their content.

I don't know how stuff like Karmaland works, maybe Quackity got it from there. But as a former Dream SMP fan, I see Quackity taking the best part of DSMP and finding a way to make it work for something a lot more sustainable and ambitious, keeping it fun and enjoyable for both fans and creators.

[the-heart-of-leo]

Nick's so far under the bus that they might as well change the oil while they're under there.

Okay, because I'm a bit of a masochist and I have adblockers...

I'm going to count how many times James throws Nick under the bus:

@2:40 – 'This fell upon Nick as well, as a non-binary person on the ace spectrum, they wanted to include asexuality and non-binary representation to our videos. But because Nick's experience is not universal – There is no universal experience – people felt that we were delegitimizing their own experiences because we focused on Nick's.' (The reason we were acephobic was because we (meaning Nick) didn't think other ace people had problems and when it was pointed out to us by The Ace Couple that ace people did, in fact, face discrimination and conversion therapy, we (meaning James) accused them of homophobia and sicced their followers on them.)

@6:38 – 'The work Nick and I were doing on the channel...' (Because Nick was here too! Not just me!)

@10:46 – 'I was much more interested in the production of the videos than the writing of them, at this point. So after three or four videos, I brought Nick on as a main writer for the channel. The idea is that they would write the vast majority of the scripts. I would film, voice, and edit the videos and we'd split the money that came in.'(Nick was the main writer for the channel! In case you forgot...)

@14:40 – 'And then my mom died... and I became completely useless. I couldn't think straight, at all, so Nick had to completely take over writing duties.'(DID I MENTION NICK WAS THE MAIN WRITER. ALSO MY MOM DIED; FEEL SORRY FOR ME)

@19:44 – 'When Nick got back, he believed the script needed a first page rework. This was also when he told me he was going to be moving back to Ontario permanently soon as he wanted to live closer to family and live in a bigger city with more opportunities. This was a punch to the gut for me. We'd been living together since 2015 and had become quite dependent on each other. I felt like there was no way I could make this movie without him.'(We couldn't make the movie we promised because SOMEONE DECIDED TO MOVE and since I'm co-dependent on him, I moved with him and screwed up everything. Oopsie.)

@26:32 – 'But by accepting as many sponsors as we did, which became very important when Nick and I started living apart and suddenly had two rents to pay, we ended up needing to produce even more videos. Which, along with the work on Telos and making sure everything was okay with my dad while living thousands of kilometers away meant I had even less time for writing – putting more stress on Nick and leading to even more copy and pasting from me.' (See what you did, Nick?! We have to pay TWO rents now and we need to make even MORE videos. I'm not creepily co-dependent on my asexual ex-roommate at all!)

@32:50 – 'I know what misinformation had made its way into our past videos. That was not something we intended; in some cases it was information I was told by people I considered experts. In other cases it was information that we had researched. In other cases it was things that Nick had learned in university.'(Nick told me some of this stuff! ((which is fair because NICK ADMITTED HE DOESN'T DO RESEARCH)) In other cases it was because I assumed I knew what happened because I'm the smartest person I know so of course Lesbians had it easier! I just forgot that Radcliffe Hall's books were banned and destroyed because of that head injury I talked about earlier.)

And here's an honorable mention where the smug “I'm smarter than you” BS comes to visit:

'To those who say I plagiarized the plot from the novel Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix – Read the book. It's nothing like the plot of the movie. And 'The Final Girl' is a trope in horror movies so if using the Final Girl trope is plagiarism then basically everyone who's made a slasher movie since Texas Chainsaw Massacre owes the Toby Hooper estate some money.'

So, much like how James doesn't understand why people aren't upset at him because of citation issues, he doesn't understand that it's not the fact that he's using the 'Final Girl' trope... it's the fact that he stated the book as a favorite of his and then... suddenly he's writing a movie about the aftermath of the Final Girl. And given the plagiarism, it can not be taken in good faith.

First off, if you just google 'First Final Girl', it just says Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of the earliest examples. Another possibility for the 'First Final Girl' was actually Black Christmas which was released the same day in Canada so it is literally tied.

Secondly; the final girl trope is not required for slasher movies. One of the first 'proto-slasher' movies was actually Psycho so there were a few good decades between that and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. (I could try and make a case that Lila Crane should count as a Final Girl; maybe even Mrs. Bates/Norman as a subversion... but I'm not that invested or interested.)

So... James was true to form, he just wanted to be a smug asshat and try and seem smart over something easily googled.

[eightyonekilograms]

I went to the Apple Store yesterday to try the scripted demo of their VR headset. My overall impression is that it's the best possible execution of what might be a fundamentally flawed idea.

The passthrough video is pretty incredible. It's somewhat dimmer than reality, and the color accuracy is just OK, but it's more than good enough to feel like you're looking through clear displays at the real world. I'm told the passthrough on the Quest 3 is even better, but haven't tried that and can't comment. One thing is that there is a weird motion blur effect when you turn your head, I'm not sure if that's a display tech limitation or introduced deliberately by the software as a workaround for a different display tech limitation.

The resolution is 4K per eye, which, as mentioned, is more than enough for a powerful sense of presence in the real world. One of the nifty bits of the demo was when you turn the dial to tune out the world and suddenly you're sitting by a mountain lake, and the feeling of actually being there is overwhelming. The dystopian implications of needing a VR headset to sit at a mountain lake aside, it would be cool to have one just to have your office be anywhere you can imagine. Not $3500-before-tax cool, but cool.

Wow sports leagues are going to love this thing. I don't give a shit about sports and even I was thinking, "If the NBA put a stereoscopic camera courtside and sold you games for $50 a pop, I'd absolutely buy that"

But 4K per eye is not enough to do work, not even close. The experience of using normal computer-y applications on this was not unlike plugging your laptop in to a TV that's at the normal TV distance. You can do it, it works, but it's not anyone's preferred way of working. Text is amazingly legible, but only at sizes that are equivalent to having a single webpage take up your entire 4K monitor at normal monitor distance.

It is not particularly comfortable. Part of this might be that the store demo makes you use the "catcher's mitt" strap, which only goes around the back of your head and so gravity has to be countered only by the pressure of the thing against your face. Reviewers have said that if you use the other band that goes over your head the situation is better, but still.

A lot of early comments were making fun of Apple for having the battery be an external thing you put in your pocket and attach with a wire, but I think that's just fine: we all walk around with giant batteries in our pockets anyway, and anything you can do to have less weight on your head is a Good Thing. But then Apple took all those weight savings and spent them on making the stupid thing out of metal and glass instead of polycarbonate. It's nuts! It's like if you made a car that was 500kg lighter because you invented magical tech for keeping the engine somewhere else, and then went "great! with all the weight savings now we can build the body out of lead". Apple, you don't need to fear plastic. Plastic is good! Plastic built modern civilization.

You control it with a combination of eye tracking and pinch gestures. This is the main piece of evidence of my "best version of a bad idea" thesis: it works really, really well; so well that I can tell this is probably an evolutionary dead end. It's just fine— miraculous, even— for dragging windows around and doing the basic stuff the in-store demo has you do. It's amazing that you can more or less have your hands anywhere, including on your lap, and the recognition works perfectly (by contrast with the HoloLens I tried 5 or so years ago where the gesture recognition was total crap). But it's immediately obvious that you can never do serious manipulation of your computing environment with this.

The takeaway is that it's incredible for passive consumption of specifically-made media, assuming that ever exists at scale. But it will be a long time before we're gogged in like Hiro Protagonist to do our office jobs this way.

[crazycatgirl420]

Fuck Around, Find Out

Ghost King Danny tutors Impulse, Bart Allen, in Summoning magic after a horrible drunken Summoning disaster.

Part 1

Monday came much too soon. Danny had spent his weekend preparing his first lesson for Bart, considering he was so deep in his non-belief of magic that he nearly started a war, Danny decided they would have to start with the basics as taught to newly formed entities in the Realms.

Danny removed his pc and monitors from his desk, snapping on a white board attachment and putting several notebooks, pens, pencils, and markers in the drawers. He held his folder of lesson plans and his own notebook. At exactly four o'clock he put one hand on the desk and appeared right in front of his Contractor.

There was a crash sound behind him, and a wide eyed red-head on the couch, a game controller in his hand.

"We agreed on four to six for your lessons." Danny reminded him. "We have a lot to cover and I do not want to spend my entire existence teaching you."

Thee human grimaced but nodded. "What are we doing today?"

"You'll be learning to read and write," Danny said. "Magic is its own language, if you don't know it you can't effectively use it."

Bart spent two hours copying the Infinite Realms Dictionary of Magic into his first notebook while Danny read it aloud.

"There are six hundred and seventy languages used in this dimensions magical script," Danny explained. "As a living being born of this realm you only need to be fluent in those six hundred seventy languages, which is a lot less than what I had to learn as a being of the Infinite Realms-"

Bart paused in writing, glancing at the book he was copying from. '670 Alphabets, Beginning to End'

"I'll leave you with the Dictionaries to study in your own time. On Wednesday we'll go over grammar, and Friday we'll practice speaking. You'll have the weekend to practice as you wish and next week will be your first set of tests,"

"Tests next week?" Bart asked. "After only three days of lessons?"

"This is easy stuff," Danny said. "You're magical friends learn this as young children before they even choose a specialty."

Bart had a week to learn six hundred languages. He couldn't believe Raven or Zatanna knew all these languages, and only a week to learn them all was insane.

"Keep working," Danny said. "We don't have time for you to change your mind now. You signed a contract, I can't even explain what that entails until you understand magic script. The gibberish you scrawled on the floor in your drunken Summoning could've been the end of your deminsion and every deminsion that surrounds yours."

Bart kept writing.

Two hours for Bart tended to feel like an eternity but Phantom taught at the same speed Bart lived his life normally. There was no slacking off for milliseconds waiting for outside time to catch up. Phantom kept up, as soon as Bart finished a notebook another was handed to him. Phantom recited the dictionary and passages on culture, history, and traditions with ease, asking questions and having Bart read the passages as he copied them down.

"You have until I return on Wednesday to learn all six hundred and seventy languages here." Phantom said, pulling several stacks of books out of the desk. "Feel free to ask those magical friends of yours about magic script of you don't believe me, though your inability to believe them was what lead to this in the first place,"

Phantom left just like he has appeared, with a flash of light and an ice cold breeze.

Bart groaned, eyeing the stacks of books with regret. This was going to be a lot of reading.

[aguyinthepubliceye]

BREAKING MY SILENCE...

my partner and I have been watching different Ride The Cyclone productions. So far we've watched the off-broadway 2016 production (and just in case i'm mistaken, its the one played by Gus Halper, Alex Wyse, Tiffany Tatreau, etcetc. I will also be referring to this one as the OG even though is not cus im too lazy to type allat again), and some of t he more recent ones done in universities. I think it shocked us both to see the differences in the script. I mostly have qualms and complains around Mischa and Ocean's character. Mischa's has to do with how he's portrayed rather than the scripts, like Ocean's. In the newer ones, Ocean is portrayed as such a mean girl especially with the whole improvisation thing. They made her so superficial when in the original it really felt like she was trying her best to (as repetitive as it sounds) be her best and change the world positively even though it gave her a feeling of superiority for believing she is better than anyone else, that it came from HER being capable of changing the world. And by the end instead of reviving herself, she revives Jane and comes to terms that this is how she will affect the world, through giving someone else the chance to live again. That also means that Penny might not even remember her, and that's a whole lot development for Ocean cus she's not thinking about what her mark will be in the world and the changes SHE will make, but rather giving someone else the opportunity to live is purely selfless cus she gets absolutely NO reward, not even personal achivement or nourishment. It's just character development which kind of looses her effect when she's turned into a smart ass MEAN mean girl with airs of moral superiority that make no sense when she's bullying just because. Basically, yes she does think she can change the world but her superiority comes from moral and ethics, not just cus she's like 'im just better than anyone else cus im so slay yas girlypop'. They just pushed it too far with some of the stuff they changed/added (I will admit the improvisation bit was funny, if only it didnt ruin her character ((imo)) I feel like Mischa is being interpreted much more dumb than he actually is. They make him SUUUCH a himbo but almost fully negatively. It seems like they are putting characters in boxes. I enjoyed the OG because - much like he himself says - he gets hyped about things BUT in Halper's interpretation conserves that ''gangster'' more or less serious/chill persona and it's not just some loud ass class clown type of character. We didn't watch much of talia but even thinking of those interpretations singing Talia clashes so much because it feels so dumb'd down compared to the 'og' since he's kind of stupid and silly so it feels like Talia really is just a silly first love, he's being delusional and shit like that. Instead of the Mischa we first saw who already seemed far more realistic and less stereotypical, so it makes more believable for him to be so in love with Talia and that being the whole argument of his desire to live. GRANTED WHAT WE SAW ARE UNIVERSITY PRODUCTIONS so im not sure they were full on actors but still, it bothered me so much to see that twice, i had to get it out of my system bro. No hate to the actors tho these things happen, whateverrr anyway gus halper slayed that role, i have yet to see a Mischa that has so much ACTUAL passion and doesnt dumb down his rage thanks for listening im done yapping please dont yell at me thanks x2!!

[myrmica]

mer my dear mutual mer i would like to ask you how do i get into lifesteal

HELLO FARLANDS!! you've come to the right place. Step into my office.

this is an interesting question with a variety of different answers. a lot of the time people seem to direct you towards videos rather than stream vods, which does makes sense, because they're more accessible and the barrier to entry is definitely less daunting.

but lifesteal videos aren't episodic, they're designed for a viewer to be able to jump in with little to no context at any moment. they throw a lot of information at you fast as hell, and events spanning hours and hours of footage are condensed down in ways where most of the meat gets cut off. i have a hard time absorbing information from or remembering what happens in lifesteal videos because of the editing styles... i don't claim that this isn't in large part a taste thing, but in videos you miss the complicated character moments, and the sense of pacing/chronology, and all of the things that happen that don't translate well to video logic. and you don't get to see (as much of) the dimension of things where the fact that everyone is trying to make videos can be character and story relevant information. all of these things are what make lifesteal season 4 my favorite minecraft roleplay ever in the world. i guess i would say that i do like lifesteal videos, but mostly in relation to the livestreams.

all of which means that while pretty much any lifesteal video ever produced can make for a perfectly serviceable starting point, it doesn't really get you any of the things about lifesteal --i-- care about. and you're asking ME. So.

what is the deal with lifesteal in general?

you probably know at least some of this already, but for the sake of the thing:

lifesteal is a server based around a mechanic where, upon killing someone, you gain one of the hearts off of their health bar up to a maximum of 20. if you lose all of your hearts you're banned, but this is temporary and players can be revived. it's also a server where you're free to steal and destroy builds to your heart's content, and people toy with breaking the rules they do have often. so it naturally follows that lifestealers are generally interested in pvp, and have a social system where the most important relationships are your teammates, who come before basically anything else. lifesteal IS roleplay but it isn't scripted, and what they mean by unscripted is that the outcomes of a conflict can't be predetermined, because that would defeat the point—if something goes wrong, it goes wrong. (and hopefully, it goes right for somebody else.)

why season 4?

short answer, because it's the one that has the guys i care about in the situations i care about. the long answer is at 9k words and not even close to done yet so you're gonna have to wait a bit on that one.

the medium answer: while you could go back and watch through season 3 in detail, or try to just start watching season 5 and keep up with stuff live as it happens, that's not what i did. i have it on good authority that the mer guide to lifesteal season 4 works, because i did that, and also because my friend whose initial reaction to lifesteal was "wow this subz guy is loud..." and then radio silence for months has since sat through 30 hours of princezam building stream of his own free will. see review below:

lifesteal can be sort of an acquired taste. i think a lot of the time it either clicks for you or it doesn't, or you have to see the right thing and then suddenly the appeal starts making sense.

luckily, the aftermath of zam betraying mapicc & ro in season 4 tends to have this effect on people, and it's a good jumping in point! i didn't actually start watching season 4 chronologically, i started by bouncing around the last couple weeks of the season and quickly discovering that it was bonkers fucking crazy and i needed to know more about this "eclipse federation" thing... so i don't really think knowing how it ends makes it less fun to watch, and if you wanted to just poke around at random and see what's up i wouldn't stop you. i went back and sat through everything between that aforementioned betrayal and the end of season 4 chronologically after i already knew how things ended up and it's thoroughly enjoyable that way. maybe even better than the alternative, because you're less likely to get caught up in how frustrating some of it can be. but if you would rather know as little as possible going in you can definitely give it a shot, and i do think there are parts that are probably even more fun if you don't know what's coming.

how do i do that though?

and here is my gift to you. when i watched through season 4 all i had to go off of was the vod archive spreadsheet, which is great & wonderful & awesome & the best thing ever, but it does kinda just have you clicking links blindfolded if you don't already know what's going on.

so eventually i started keeping track of vods as i watched, in a google doc. it has clips and/or timestamps and summaries for basically every vod in the second half of season 4. it's a little embarrassing because it records a bunch of my initial reactions to stuff but c'est la vie. it's also 85 pages long (it was 105! i edited my notes down!), but again you can jump around to get a lay of the land if you want, and how much stuff you skip is completely at your own discretion. have at it.

[y-rhywbeth2]

Random assorted stuff about the Forgotten Realms setting: For fic and roleplaying needs, or whatever. Brief stuff about language, "I'm going to kill everyone in this party except Wyll, who actually greets me like he lives in this setting," religion, magic, time and the calendar and holidays

The proper name of the world is Abeir-Toril, which translates to "the cradle of life" in an unknown long extinct language. It's abbreviated to Toril in common use. Fourth Edition decided that the Realms to retcon Abeir-Toril into being two sister worlds, Abeir and Toril, locked in orbit but not always connected so that it could force the Dragonborn in. *grognard voice* Even though there were ways to do that without literally blowing up the setting...!

You say hello by saying "well met." It's the default phrase and it's used all the time, despite only Wyll using it, for some reason.

Common is a trade tongue, simplistic so that it can be easily learnt for it to be spoken widely and understood by pretty much everyone. It is not much use for expression or for discussing complicated topics. Most people cannot read common if you wrote it down.

The language spoken in Western Faerûn (including the Sword Coast) is Chondathan, which is something like a romance language in structure. It is not unsimilar to common, but is more complex.

The majority of Faerûnian languages (including common and Chondathan) are written in the Thorass script.

Waterdeep is part of the Sword Coast North - also just called the North, and both Chondathan and the Northern language Illuskan are spoken there. Gale might speak both. (Illuskan is basically a Germanic language.)

Toril's inhabitants are polytheistic. The people worship all the gods who are relevant to their life: You pray to Chauntea for a good harvest, to Tymora for luck, to Waukeen for financial success, to Umberlee for safe sea voyages, to gods like Shaundakul and Selûne for safe travel in general... Generally you pray to the good and neutral deities for protection and help, and the evil gods in order to pacify them so they won't capsize your ship or have their priests sacrifice you or something. Some religious individuals also favour and worship one god above the others, not all of whom are clerics. Most of them are still polytheists, even clerics, and it's unusual for somebody to devote themselves to a god at the exclusion of all others. Apparently gods keep an eye open for undedicated mortals whose behaviours and beliefs align with themselves and often try to sway those mortals into worshipping them through dreams and omens and such.

All magic comes from the Weave (Mystra is the middleman between a god and their priest in this regard) and all magic is the domain of the gods. A ranger or druid must worship a nature deity who they receive their spells from, as paladins and clerics must serve a deity. Arcane spellcasters are not required to worship, and Mystra would only be allowed to cut off a mage in response to literally Earth-levelling degrees of stupidity, but many worship her by choice for similar reasons.

Days are 24 hours long. The equivalent to a week is 10 days long, and referred to as a "tenday" or, less commonly, as a "ride." Most people do not own clocks or other means of telling the time, and nobody really tries to keep track of an hour, mostly getting by through keeping an eye on the sky/light levels, as well as the activity of the people around them, and using habit and intuition.

In human lands (that is to say, pretty much all of Faerûn) the Calendar of Harptos is used. Twelve months long, 30 days in a month. It does weird leap year stuff with an additional five festival days between months, with the celebration of Shieldmeet occurring once every four years. January = Hammer - Midwinter/Deadwinter Day Feburary = Alturiak March = Ches April = Tarsakh - Greengrass May = Mirtul June = Kythorn July = Flamerule - Midsummer -Shieldmeet (occurs once every four years) August = Eleasis September = Eleint -Highharvestide October = Marpenoth November = Uktar - Feast of the Moon December = Nightal

Midwinter: Traditionally a day for making or renewing alliances between the nobility, who celebrate it with parties. If you're a commoner and you live in the North there are no parties and you call it "Deadwinter Day" and it's a day to hope your food stores hold out and that you don't freeze this year.

Greengrass is a festival to welcome spring. Traditionally, the wealthy gift flowers to the commonfolk who wear them or offer them for the gods relevant to summer (Lathander, sun god of renewal, for example)

Midsummer is about music and feasting and also pretty much it's valentines day, with betrothals and new courtships and dancing. If the weather is bad on Midsummer then that's a bad omen.

Shieldmeet is the leap day on the calendar. Traditionally rulers are to open their council to the common folk and listen to their voices on this day. Competition and tournaments (including ones for spellcasters) are a common feature in the festivals.

Highharvestide is, as the name implies, the harvest festival as the crops are all pulled in for winter. It's also the day travellers who haven't already left wherever they're staying leave before winter sets in

The Feast of the Moon is a holiday for honouring the dead and your ancestors.