#first time coder we love to see it

[starlikeswomen]

LOOKING 4 ROBLOX CODERS!!!!!!

tumblr TWEAKED the first time i tried to post this so lets try now

HI CHAT!!!!

i have been. a little busy lately. very passionately working on a little project of mine!!! BUT!!! i unfortunately cannot do it all on my own.. i am. um. very dumb when it comes to computery... programming stuff..... SO!!! we are looking for some. people to help with that!!! yes

(if u guys want more bluudud posts share thsi bc the more work taken off my shoulders for this game the more work i can put into art hehe)

WHOSE OUR TEaM??!??!????!

@ssmallbox , @comicfizz , @underterminator and @astrxl-angel (as well as one other builder but they weren't here when I drew this)

we may also be taking extra music/building help but that is not as needed rn

HOWEVER!!! as you may notice. none of us know how to do the actual!! programmy stuff. THATS WHERE YOU (hopefully) COME IN!!!!!

WHAT IS URGE?

URGE (Otherwise known as Untitled Roblox Game/Experience) is a character driven, turn based RPG that sees you taking the perspective of a girl named Quyen Minh, as she travels through Robloxia looking for her lost brother. (As well as possibly getting caught up in stopping an evil scheme, or two.)

OBVIOUSLY kudos to games like block tales, forsaken and undertale for inspiration, although this is sort of supposed to be a love letter to the genre of rpgs in general. rpgs!!! my favorite genre!!!!

WHAT WOULD I BE DOING??!??!?

making the game work!!! hopefully there will be a small team of coders that can get things all sorted out umm. I'm not really sure what is needed so! things will be more thoroughly discussed when we actually. get ppl on. yeah

HOW CAN I GET INVOLVED???!??!/?!?

PLEASE!!! even if you are not a coder/programmer who can help but are interested in this idea anyhow, SHARE THIS POST!!!! the more inquiry we get THE BETTA!!!!

thank u for reading

[arandomnerd810]

personal TADC character analysis

uh warning this is long lol

autism time let’s go (/not in a negative way i have autism) stretches hands * I’ll go in order of the character episodes cause why not we have it (see below) i’ll put periods but it will just be to make it more readable not to be intimidating lolll

btw im completely open to interpretations of characters changing throughout the series this is just for fun

Gooseworx has said this series is mostly focused on characters rather than lore, and from what we know, i truly believe it. I don’t think any of the current characters will abstract because of this.

(I put a version of this in the glitch inn discord theory thing so if you recognize it that’s why)

Pomni: we already know her deal pretty well, as we’ve already had her episode. uuuh if anyone’s going to do something important lore wise it will probably be her as she’s the main character but can’t rlly tell what that may be. to review ep 2 though she’s an outcast who has felt like she was nothing and is a logical thinker.

(Kinger and Zooble will there their focus episode but i put it in order of who was revealed to be the ep 3 focus first)

Zooble: From their design (the entire motif is it can be changed at any time) and the fact she doesn’t know his gender, we’re dealing with some pretty clear identity issues. Friends with Gangle seems cool excited for next episode to learn more about them!

Kinger: One of the most interesting characters so far. I feel like we will get to learn more about abstraction though Queenie, the X-ed out door that looks like a female version of him. If i had to guess, since Gooseworx said they were not siblings, they were a couple. (Also judging by his age and the fact he could have been married, he may have been a father yeowch imagine that) I can see the common theory of the insect collection implying he was a coder before getting trapped, but i could also see him being some random guy who just likes bugs lol. He seems like really sweet guy behind his constant anxiety and disassociating.

 Gangle: (My faveorite human rn) Her mask design can be interpreted in a lot of ways but it’s clear that the happy mask isn’t her real personality. My take on it rn is she doesn’t wana bother people with her stuff so she pretends she’s happy? She seems easily embarrassed and def has self esteem lower than the last circle of hell. What’s interesting though is she’s willing to stand up for herself from time to time, even though she’s easily shot down after.

Ragatha: Waaaay too nice for her own good. Also probably has self esteem lower than the last circle of hell and bases her self worth of others approval.  Though she’s been here the second longest, she seems a lot more normal than Kinger. Makes me question how long apart their introductions have been. Probably copes via escapism.

Jax: I can see why everyone is very interested in him cause me too. He seems like the only fourth wall breaky guy (unless you count Caine cause of his intro at the pilot)which is rlly interesting how did he figure out more than everyone else? what’s with the keys? i have no clue lmao. He’s an asshole who makes the best of his situation by torturing everyone else. At the end of the day though, he’s a human and was sad at kaufmo’s abstraction but he probably isolates himself so it would probably be the same for anyone

but waAitTt a moment

that’s 6 humans but Gooseworx said we would look into 7 (cause of the “other” part) in her twitter post talking about the character focus timeline so we know our fav character won’t be left behind ⁉️⁉️⁉️ I hear you not asking well my dear hypothetical person, who better to fill the 7th character than Caine?

Why you did not ask? Too bad i’m info dumping. First, he’s the main antagonist and alongside Pomni, the commercial face (or lack their of haha teeth and eye joke) of the series. he’s an important character and loved by many. (and hated equally if not more aside the point lmaooo)

Yes, gooseworx can lie about stuff but I think she’s smarter than to lead this heavy into Caine depth/ angst territory if there wasn’t going to be anything On top of that, the entire purpose of the timeline post was so we know our faveorite characters weren’t getting treated poorly. It’s unlike for a character based show to suddenly drop such a major character for some random other guy were introduced to later or smth. i mean cmon there’s three episodes after all the humans at least one of them has to be focused on my boy.

Caine: I believe he really does have good intentions and wants to help but just does not understand people at all. This means he’s like an anxiety disorder; it wants to help, solves some issues but creates 500 more. Judging by the Tumblr post, loneliness may play a big part in what’s to come? I’ve always had a feeling his front was extremely fake and his VA saying “breaks keyfable” (an act that pretends it’s true) supports that theory. Episode two gives some insecurity vibes when Zooble didn’t want to go on the adventure. I find that pretty interesting cause he didn’t care at all if people went on the gloink adventure or not. Maybe he puts some adventures over others and he could have been proud of the candy adventure cause more time and care was put into it and he made a new AI. Why did he blue screen? i feel like he could have some blockages on what he can say built in though im not sure why he was blocked then if he even was. one of the biggest questions i have ab him currently tbh. what’s with him grabbing his cane like that in ep 2? if i had to guess simply be nervous = that? His VA also knows some depth to him even though his focus episode is likely going to be at least one of the last 3 episodes, which they have not gotten to recording yet. You know what this means Caine angst solidarity club? Sad Caine so more fan angst appetizers before the main cannon feast let’s friccin go‼️‼️⁉️⁉️

(try to guess my fav impossible /j)

[writing-rat]

Cooking in Session

Pairings: Joey x Sammy

Content: Abigail Spoilersish, Fluff, Cooking lessons, mentions of drug use

Summary: Since Joey has a job has a school nurse now, she can't let Sammy not know how to cook. She needs to learn how to make lunch after all.

WC: 885

It had been a week since Sammy and Joey left the mansion. With Joey helping to kill Frank, Abigail promised to help a knocked-out vampire Sammy that Joey had managed to knock out and tie up. Kristof Lazar and Abigail had helped her out and Sammy was happy to be back to herself, Abigail promising she was saved. Safe to say Sammy wasn’t the same mentally, but she was trying. Currently, the 2 girls lived together while Caleb was also with them. He was currently in high school while Sammy was working at a company, looking at the data she was sent. She was a coder now and not a hacker unless needed to see if she could crack security systems. She was using her skills for good now. Joey meanwhile managed to make it as a school nurse and she was happy about that. She was currently using a holiday day after all as she wanted to teach Sammy cooking. She saw how she had eaten the entire week for lunch after all. She only had plain noodles and pasta.

“Sammy, are you on lunch break?” Joey asked. 

“Yeah babe, I am. Why?” she asked. 

“I am going to help you make a sauce for your pasta so you don’t have it plain when I am at work,” Joey explained. Sammy widened her eyes before she smiled, the same smile for when she was being figured out by Joey.

“You are the best,” she spoke. Joey shrugged. 

“I want my lover to be healthy,” she explained and Sammy nodded as she was quick to go into the kitchen with Joey. Sammy was excited. Joey meanwhile got a can of chopped tomatoes, peppers, tomato paste, ketchup, onions and different herbs out. “Those are onions,” Sammy spoke confidently. “I learnt the difference between garlic and onions,” she added. Joey snickered. 

“I’m glad,” she spoke and kissed Sammy’s cheek. She was happy they could joke about that at least.

“First, chopping onions,” Joey instructed. She showed Sammy how to hold the knife and chop them before she let Sammy take a go at it. Sammy was happy as she was doing it all before she looked at Joey when she finished. She wanted the praise that she knew Joey would give her. 

“How did I do?” she asked just to make sure she got it. 

“You did well mi amor,” Joey responded with a smile. “You could quicken up but it takes time to learn,” she added. Sammy nodded as Joey grabbed a red pepper. She once again taught her how to cut it and Sammy did as told, no injuries happening. She was also praised once again and it made her excited. 

“Now that these ingredients are cut, we put in the onions first,” she spoke, letting Sammy scrape them in. Sammy nodded as she was listening, choosing the pasta she wanted as Joey was admiring Sammy a bit. She was wearing some of Joey’s sweatpants and one of her tank tops. It was a hot day after all. Joey meanwhile was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, her scars from her old drug use being shown, and a pair of shorts. She was more confident showing them around Sammy and Caleb now, Caleb was happy to be with his mom rather than his fuck up of a father. Soon the onions were done, and Sammy put the peppers in under her lover’s command. She was being good as Joey was hoping she would memorise this. She was sure she would though if she could remember code. 

After 30 minutes, the sauce was done and was simmering as Joey and Sammy were getting something to drink. Joey got some water while Sammy got some Dr Pepper and was sitting on the counter. “Thank you for this,” Sammy thanked, looking at Joey genuinely with a soft smile. 

“It’s no problem mi vida. I am happy to teach you anything and I know you have had a hard childhood so I am happy to show you new things you need to learn,” she spoke. Sammy was happy. She felt loved. Soon enough the sauce and pasta were done and she got 2 plates ready for them. She let Sammy choose how much she wanted first. Sammy meanwhile made it even and Joey chuckled. She was happy to see how compassionate her lover was. The 2 girls soon sat down. 

“You know… it’s weird how we still call each other our undercover names,” Sammy teased. Joey widened her eyes then laughed and was nodding. 

“Agreed. Why don’t we use it when one of us is in trouble? Like if you made a mess in our room,” Joey teased. Sammy nodded excitedly. 

“Yeah! So… Ana, want to go on a date soon?” Jessica asked. 

“Yeah, I would love that Jess,” Ana spoke with a smile, then both proceeded to laugh. They were just happy. That was when Jess took a bite of her food and she widened her eyes. 

“Holy shit, this tastes so good. Fuck your school nurse job, become a chef,” Jess praised. 

“Thanks, but I don’t think I have that much skill,” Ana chuckled as she was eating. Sammy just smiled. She was sure she did, but she wouldn’t push her. For now, she would enjoy the food.

[beaverdrea]

so i was writing this misty defence essay anyway…

first of all. the girls wouldn’t have gotten rescued even if misty hadn’t destroyed the transmitter. the wilderness didn’t want them to leave. so they don’t. until they have served their purpose to it.

second of all. of all the reasons to do something awful. misty had a pretty fucking good one. all her life she has been excluded, even in the yellowjackets. she was never seen as anything by anyone. just this annoying little unlovable girl who doesn’t do anything. when they crash, misty is everything to them. she knows what to do. the girls (at the beginning) have this appreciative love for misty, they are so grateful for her. misty has never and i mean never felt loved. not by her parents. not by her peers. no one. for the literal first time in her life, misty is appreciated. when she hears van talking about how useful she is, (a level of praise, respect and admiration she has probably never heard about herself before) misty snaps and is overwhelmed by this love. she doesn’t know how to handle or accept this love (as we see throughout the whole show (it takes her like a day for her to adjust to having a best friend, something she says she’s never had before). so, misty in this high of acceptance and gratitude, she does what most teenage girls would do in this situation, as makes sure she stays loved for as long as possible. of course the situation is extremely blown out of proportion, because they’re in a fucking plane crash, but imagine it on a smaller scale. imagine if you wanted the admiration you would get from getting your soccer team to nationals so bad, that you broke a girl’s leg because she wasn’t a good player. oh wait. that’s exactly what tai did. they are so many parallels in this show. the writers are literally trying to get us to understand misty, which is obviously hard for a lot of people because we only actually see her actions, we can see her thoughts or reasonings.

third of all. (you don’t actually have to read this all i’m just extremely passionate about this show). omg. misty is loved again. while the girls still respect misty for helping them tactically, time and time again, they are getting a bit annoyed tired of her. as you would of anyone that isn’t god themself when you’re stuck starving in the wilderness. all misty wants is to be loved, as she is genuinely probably the best friend on the whole show. but crystal starts to see her. not as an annoying gear holder for the team. but as a friend. misty’s first ever real friend. ever. and she’s 16-17 mind you. and they share everything with each other. almost. they have about two weeks-one month together, as we can determine from the show’s timeline, until misty and crystal make a promise to *always* be best friends and love each other, no matter what. misty is young and naive and very autistic coder and doesn’t understand that crystal could still be mad if she told her what she did. so she tells her. and suddenly she’s alone again. misty in no way intends to kill crystal, she is in this haze of wanting, needing to be loved again and only wants to threaten crystal into being her best friend again. and when crystal is gone for good, misty feels utterly alone. through all of this, she is still trying so hard to be enough for everyone. she pushes and pushes to be loved, respected as a peer, but it never seems to work out. no one ever really respects her after this, except walter (for a little while) but misty still tries harder than anyone else to be loved. like she loves.

i think this deserves a list of shit misty’s gone through, to wrap up this rant. (also if you still don’t like her after this, it’s genuinely fine. some people never will. it’s just about trying to understand her character. but once you do, if you still don’t like her that’s totally okay. also not a single character in yj is a good person. that’s the whole point of the show.)

-bullied by everyone she knows her entire life

-excluded even in her own team

-been in love with someone who she thought could never love her back, gets lied to, gets her hopes up, then gets her heart crushed again.

-tried to stay loved for longer, realised what she’d done, regretted it so badly

-thought she would be respected, got her hopes up, got her heart crushed

-been excluded by her team, even out in the wild

-still being untrusted, even after trying everything she can to fix a mistake that mari made

-being told she’s only being kept alive because she’s handy

-seeing and doing so much horrific shit that no one should ever have to go through (big one)

-seeing the people she’s loved (mostly unreciprocated) die one by one

-going back to the real world, only to be/feel even more useless than she was before.

-accidentally killing the one person who tried to love her back!!!!!!!!!

all this said, i may have forgotten or missed things. everyone in yellowjackets did shitty stuff, misty was just the autistic “not beautiful” one, who got one of the worst chances to do one of the worst things.

thank you for coming to my ted talk… misty defender for life.

[visvivathms]

VISVIVA PRESENTS: GRANITE a simplistic, elegant free theme

hello everybody! I'm so excited to finally get this out to the tags after working on it for so long! This is my first theme and I'm a self taught coder, so I'm very proud and thrilled to share it with you all! I know how much we all love elegance in the writing community and wanted to bring in a theme that you can customize to your own elegant preferences without ANY coding knowledge. I would like to thank @seyche for their base code and @glenthemes for their music player! and for being all around amazing coders of whom I both am inspired by and admire! All of that being said, I present to you my very first theme of many:

COLOR ME IN GRANITE

PREVIEW | DOWNLOAD: GITHUB / PASTEBIN / CODEPEN

FEATURES

no coding knowledge needed! fully customize from the comfort of the theme options

high resolution, automatically resizing sidebar image. I have made it so that any image you upload for the sidebar will automatically be made high resolution and resize to fit the sidebar. this will, of course, work best on already high res images :)

FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE PINNED POST TITLE. Change your pinned post title, font AND give it a very dapper highlight

a choice of 16 FONTS for you to change the look of your blog's written content, including your sidebar title!

optional indented paragraphs! ( follow this easy tutorial )

posts with inner scroll! all text posts will automatically gain a scrollbar if they get extremely long. no more clogging up your front page with a single thread!

title'd tag pages. any time you click on a tag, a simple but aesthetic title will appear above the posts section.

music player by glenthemes - just type in your artist, song name, and mp3 link and you're all set! for help on how to get an mp3 link of your favorite song, click here to see the lovely HT's super easy tutorial!

responsive design that changes dimensions as your screen gets smaller

npf images + unblue polls by glenthemes + more!

if you download this theme, please give this post a like or reblog!

because tumblr is giving me the run around with js permissions, I have created a temporary preview of this theme on a standalone blog. please do not send asks to that blog, or I likely won't see them! if you run into any problems at all, please do not hesitate to message me!

PRICE & DONATIONS

This theme is a FREE theme! I love to code mostly just for the art and therapeutic nature of it, so for now all of my themes will be free. However, if you would like to support me and my work, please consider leaving a tip or buying me a coffee via cashapp ( $visviva ) :)

[keqingprophet]

hello all! i know i have not been as active as usual lately, and that is due to a number of reasons that i'd prefer to not get into.. do expect my hiatus to last a little longer, though please do not feel bad about sending requests in, infact i would prefer to have as many as possible before i decide to start tackling editing again! now that that is aside, i thought i would make a small guide for bundlrs with what i've learnt over the past few months.. though anybody is free to correct me, as i am very much a beginner! with that said, let's get into how to make a bundlrs!

WHAT IS BUNDLRS? bundlrs is like if you combined rentry and neocities. they had a child together, and it's bundlrs. based in markdown and html, most codes from things like spacehey, neocities and rentry metadata will work natively within bundlrs, so transferring is a breeze! backups are made at midnight US time every single day and then stored for a week! also created at 00:00 on the first of every week (kept for a month), every month (kept for a year), and every year (kept for 5 years) (taken directly from the bundlrs info!) now, i'm not very good at coding. im sure alot of people aren't, that's why rentry is so popular. you get to have your own little website while basically not having to know anything! bundlrs is preferable, atleast to me, because of the customization it allows while also being user-friendly! and while i am a coder, i'm by no means a good one, which is where we get to our next part..

BUNDLRS TEMPLATES!! yes, just like rentry templates people will make templates for this silly little thing too! referencing other peoples code, finding youtube tutorials and even looking at and modifying templates by others so long as you give credit to the original coder in my opinion is alright! lavendergalactic on here has some great bundlrs templates, i'm constantly singing their praises to my friends!

URLS.. WHAT ARE THEY?

urls are what you put to make a site! make an account at bundlrs.cc dashboard first, believe me, its easier, and then go back to bundlrs.cc! youll be met with a very rentry-like grey box for content, a place for your custom url and your password/ edit code! if you want help with markdown, click the info section at the bottom and it'll take you to a premade guide by the bundlrs staff! cool, right? now, words youll hear alot are claiming and trading. to claim a url means to have one of those funky urls in your pastes/ under an edit code you know! and trading, well that just means trading urls between users! personally, i love it, but if you don't, thats okay! you can always try find a compromise for the url you want with underscores or dashes or numbers!!

i really could go on and on about this site,, its so amazing! but i also know my friends are waiting for me on a game.. so, i think i have to wrap it up here, folks! im sorry if you didn't learn too much, like i said, i'm a beginner myself and very much in a rush today.. yet, i still hope you enjoyed my little ramble meant for my friends and myself!~ much love to everybody, and i'll see you all soon!~

[keplercryptids]

for my new ttrpg campaign, Choir (scifi, multi-system, set in a homebrewed universe based on the machineries of empire books' setting), we've been playing a bunch of worldbuilding games in preparation, including one- or two-shots for each PC to play out specific moments from their backstories. (for more general campaign info, see this post!)

anyway, i thought i'd write up brief summaries as to how these backstory games have gone, because they've been a blast and i highly recommend doing this for a campaign that'll involve deep character exploration.

1. Love Triangle in a Death Cult Regency

PC: Idona Noci (they/he)

TTRPG: Good Society, "a collaborative regency rpg that seeks to capture the heart, and the countenance, of Jane Austen’s work."

Backstory situation: How teenage Noci chose duty over love.

Present-campaign Noci is a trained torturer and professional indoctrinator, but they were just a teen once who had to choose between an arranged marriage or a continued relationship with a lower-class boyfriend. We played out one week set 25 years pre-campaign to show how Noci chose marriage and responsibility over love. The setting was a space station that floods with time-keeping tides, set during a week-long celebration of the faction's revered saints. Good Society was such a fun vehicle to play out the intricacies of a death cult space society, and the two-shot was honestly so moving???? i have not stopped thinking about it???? A++++.

2. Chase Through Space

PC: Moment's Pallor (she/zie)

TTRPG: HOUNDs, "a dice-stacking roleplaying game about the bond between a mech pilot and their robot companion."

Backstory situation: How Pallor was caught trying to run away with a stolen, sentient spaceship.

Present-day Pallor is a coder, a scientist, has already been executed once, and doesn't understand why it didn't stick. We changed HOUNDs to be about a computer coder/hacker and a sentient space-moth that had been harnessed and augmented into a ship. Five years prior to the campaign, Pallor connected to said moth, realized that it was sentient, liberated it and tried to escape the empire. Zie was caught and executed for this, then brought back to life under mysterious experimental means. HOUNDs was so much fun and did a great job ramping up the tension of the chase and allowing touching, calm moments too. (We play online, and used Tabletop Simulator on steam for the dice-stacking, which worked very well!) I love this mothgirl and i can't wait until zie can be with hir moth again wahhhh.

3. Divorce Negotiations

PC: Attra Rose (she/her)

TTRPG System: A Long Night in the Mech Bay, "A TTRPG about Relationships Reforged in Conflict."

Backstory situation: Rose and her wife (an NPC) negotiate a divorce while reminiscing about their relationship.

One year before the campaign starts, Rose got divorced (but they will be on the same crew once the campaign starts, oops). We used an albeit incredibly hacked version of LNitMB to play out the seven years of Rose and Han's relationship, from meeting up until and through the divorce negotiations. This was mostly accomplished by completely rewriting all the questions so that they were specific to this couple, and reversing which kinds of questions were asked first, so that it started with happy memories before we entered The Agonies. We also added NPC opportunities and setting description stuff so that the other two players could contribute, but the basic framework was still really useful for this kind of exploration, and I love the idea of starting a brand-new campaign with scar tokens lollllll. anyway i am unwell and having a GREAT time.

[null-input]

One Week at Just Freddy's: December Devlog + Delay

Welcome to our second One Week at Just Freddy’s Devlog! We’ll be going over a few things today, some good, some bad. But regardless we are excited to share more information about OWaJF to you all! 

First of all, here's some gameplay footage of the office, including a look at the breakroom. This shows off a large portion of the mechanics in OWaJF that you can use for defense. Including a Freddy Fazbear mask, the break room door, the desk itself, and a flashlight. All mechanics being tied to a different Freddy Fazbear. 

This footage also shows off the cameras for the first time! With a proper in-game look at the stage, and some of the animation you’ll expect to see on the cameras. 

Now, onto the bad news, despite the amazing progress we’ve made on One Week at Just Freddy’s, we do not think that we are going to be able to complete it in a state we are happy with by the end of 2024.

When we set out for a 2024 release, that was before a lot of unexpected behind the scenes things happened, nothing bad, but things we didn’t account for in planning. So, rather than crunching and forcing out a worse game for you all, we will be delaying the game to a 2025 release. We apologize for the delay, but hope you understand that we are working hard to make this game something we can be proud of. 

Now, back to the game itself. Since our last devlog, we revealed and showcased Toy Freddy and Nightmare Freddy! Our lineup now officially consists of Freddy Fazbear, Toy Freddy, Withered Freddy, Phantom Freddy, Nightmare Freddy, and Funtime Freddy. However, we have never given you a proper look at Funtime Freddy- so have a closer look!

(not an in-game screenshot) You’ve now had a full look at six of the Freddy’s in the location, and we are reaching the end of our list here pretty soon. So we’d like to say there’s a total of NINE Freddy’s you can face off against in One Week at Just Freddy’s. Can you guess the final three? Or even do a little digging for them? 

As for things we need to finish, it’s not much different than last time. Animation, texturing, and art are the largest parts of the game left to complete. Progress on all three are in full swing now, but as we said in the August Devlog, it is a slow process.

Additionally, we have cast most of our voice actors for the game! It's been a great process working with them, and from what's been finished we are very happy with the results. We look forward to sharing our cast, and their lines, with you eventually! Before this Devlog ends, We'd like to quickly showcase some of what we’ve been working on individually, with notes from the artists if they wish.

One of our 2D artists, Hal, has continued working on the in-game promotional art, here’s a work in progress of one of them! 

Hal: "Been drawing everyone’s favorite bear, Helpy! Honestly, it’s been hard working on this while having work at the same time."

Another of our 2D artists Kadence has been working on arcade machine art! Here’s just one of the arcade machines that has their art on it!

Our final 2D artist, Fio, has been working on a big gameplay element from the beginning of production that has yet to be shown, that being the GUIDEBOOK! Here’s your first look at it! It details behaviors, quirks and an illustration of every Freddy. You unlock new entries as you complete nights, or die trying. 

Io, on top of doing a large portion of the coding and bug fixing, has also been composing for OWaJF! Here’s the main title theme for the game! 

Nova, one of our coders and 3D artists, has been largely working on the nitty gritty parts of modeling such as UV Unwrapping, as well as working on the final models that need to be implemented. The breakroom is one of many examples of her modeling and UV work! 

Nova: "I love Uv Unwrapping :( 👍👍"

Alan, our director, 3D artist, and animator has largely been working on texturing and 3D animation. You can see his texturing throughout the Devlog, but here’s a look at an animation that was actually cut from the game. You can expect (many) animations like this in the final product!

That's all for this Devlog! Thank you all once again for your support and patience. We can’t wait to get this game out to you all.

[crescencestudio]

VELOX FABULA: A TALE OF DELUSION AND MEMORIES

So… I’ve been keeping this relatively DL on this side of the internet. Twitter got a couple of sneak peeks, but in case you all didn’t know, I participated in Velox Fabula, a game jam where we are given a community theme and have 10 days to make a full game.

And when I say I participated, I mean I Participated.

Before I get into things, let me just say that as a disclaimer… I had Every Intention to enter this jam as an Extreme Sideline Supporter.

Shall we get into a “post-mortem” of sorts?

Let’s set the scene, shall we?

Crescence has just finished Intertwine and Otome Jam. They are feeling Good and Creative. Alaris has made good progress in the month of July and starting weeks of August! Crescence Sees Velox Fabula, and while wanting to participate, decides not to because they’ve just done one jam, they want to focus on their main game, and maybe they’ll touch grass a little. Who knows?

Enter about 1-2 weeks out of Velox Fabula, and people are posting their teams. Crescence gets FOMO. Many besties are involved in Velox Fabula. So Crescence reaches out to a team that’s pretty big and offers to do just QA! Help with brainstorming, scoping, narrative design, etc. That’s not too bad!

Another friend reaches out.

This is someone Crescence has always wanted to work with. Crescence will just be a writer! Again, that’s not too bad! Why not!

So now, come VF Jam, and Crescence is on two teams (I was originally on three actually LOLlxoap).

First 24 hours go off with a bang. The theme is Unreliable Narrator. There's lots of brainstorming, throwing ideas around, refining, and eventually we land on two ideas.

On team one, we have an otome game inspired by [REDACTED] that will feature and MC who is [REDACTED] and a character who [REDACTED]. The game ends up having three love interests and is Deeply Ambitious but with 10 people onboard we decide to push ourselves.

On team two, we have a point-and-click game with a rich story that explores MC's background and a narrative twist where [REDACTED]. It's fantasy-inspired, because bitches know me and fantasy. And has MC choose to cherish or forget their memories through the ingredients they decide to add to a potion.

Both of the stories are fun and relatively different compared to what I've done so far. One, while still fantasy, has a writing style that is more vivid and emotional compared to my usual more grounded writing. The other is, well, Horror. Which I have no experience writing.

And so the Jam begins

The first third of the jam is a blur of frantic writing, editing, narrative design, and more. It's a hodgepodge of ideas on how the script and gameplay will go together. What's the visual identity? What is the Story we're telling? What's the Mood? And how do we unite all of these things to elevate the atmosphere of the game itself?

Enter the second third, and I'm wrapping up writing on team two. I get asked to do GUI for potion team, which I hadn't anticipated. But hey, I'm feeling inspired. Plus, I want to learn how to code all of these GUI features in for Alaris. Why not use this as a learning experience? So I agree. Horror team needs some help writing, so I jump in as well. I've never written horror, but there's already an outline. How hard could it be?

In the span of maybe 3-4 days, I end up writing about 15k words and editing maybe 10k worth of words. Somewhere during this time frame, I've also made progress on Alaris

Enter the last third of the jam and these games needs to be Made. I code the GUI for potion team. I reformat both scripts for both teams to Ren'py format to ease the burden on coders while they figure out other game features.

Enter the last 12 hours, and I am still coding and QAing both games. Not even caffeine runs through my veins anymore; it is straight adrenaline.

Enter the last 30 minutes. Horror game has submitted. I am still QAing for potion team. Are the labels getting called correctly? Is the dialogue showing up when it should? We submit with less than 5 minutes to spare LMFASODLIJ

i still laugh at this

As I come out of the Jam haze, I feel two main things:

Proud of myself. Like I fckn did that. Considering the context of how I had come into these roles (as an NPC if u will), I contributed pretty heavily to these games. And I think not having to be director made me see the skillset I've slowly built up as a game dev. It was that moment where you step back and fight that imposter syndrome a little bit, which has been a Heavy companion with me throughout my game dev journey.

Tired but (Creatively) Rejuvenated. I think this jam was surprisingly what I didn't know I needed for Alaris. After Otome Jam, I definitely made progress and was excited to get into Alaris. But after this jam, where I feel like I am Done and 100% satisfied, there's no longer any temptation for any other project. Like I feel solely focused on Alaris, which is extra exciting because the next couple of routes are some I've been most excited to write!

At the end of it all, I feel like I learned so much from so many talented people. And I think my writing, GUI, and coding skills have come out for the stronger because of it. Something I like to do with my games is integrate every component together (biggest example is Intertwine and how the GUI plays a part in the narrative itself). Watching people who are exceptional at coding, GUI, etc. helped me learn different ways to approach my own creative process. And I am so unbelievably excited to bring all of this into Alaris! Velox Fabula was an unforgettable experience---it was cracked, fun, delusional all in the best ways. And I'm honestly pretty proud of the products we've made from it! If you haven't gotten a chance to, please feel free to check out:

A "beautiful and melancholic" game that explores the power of memories, emotions, and more in a fantasy potion setting:

And an eerie horror game with twists and turns that lurk around every corner, only to be interrupted by Cute Love Interests

[practically-an-x-man]

1, 7, 15, 21, 35, 40 for Rae and Ophelia?

Thank you so much!!

OTP Relationship Asks

1. Who most initiates PDA?

ArchAegis (Rae & Warren): It used to be Rae, but after the whole Apocalypse ordeal, Warren starts being more open with affection in public (partially bc he wants people to see that he's not a weapon like they made him to be, and partially bc the experience showed him how important Rae really is to him)

Arachne (Ophelia & Peter): Peter for sure. Ophelia doesn't mind physical contact when it comes from someone she trusts, but she's still not the best at remembering to initiate physical contact.

7. Who is more sentimental?

ArchAegis: Rae. Warren doesn't enjoy thinking about the past as much, since he tends to focus more on the bad things, but Rae's more the type to see the glimmers of hope throughout and find little moments to appreciate.

Arachne: Ophelia, though she doesn't show it often. She holds onto a lot of memories and moments from her past, and those stay incredibly close to her heart, but it's rare that she shares these with others.

15. Who is more likely to make an impulsive decision and who is the voice of reason?

ArchAegis: They're both impulsive, but Rae is more impulsive by far. If someone's in danger and she thinks she can make even a modicum of difference, all regard for her own personal safety is thrown out the window. It's actually how they met!

Arachne: They're both an even mix, and it really depends on the circumstance. When it comes to a quieter, more practical decision, Ophelia is the type to weigh all the options while Peter doesn't always have the patience to think it through. But out on the battlefield, Ophelia is the first to jump in while Peter usually takes an extra moment to think of a plan.

21. Which of the two is quick to speak and which one is quick to listen?

ArchAegis: Rae definitely has more to say, and Warren loves to hear her talk about her day, her work, anything she found interesting, all of it. She of course loves listening to him speak as well, but he doesn't collect stories about the little moments the way she does.

Arachne: Again, an even mix. They absolutely use each other as the "coder's rubber duck" when they're stuck on a project, and will talk the other one through the whole thing (even if they've heard it a dozen times before) because that sometimes helps unstick the problems. When it comes to personal things though, like just catching up on the day, Peter's the chattier one.

35. What movies do they enjoy watching most?

ArchAegis: I feel like they're the type to just show up at the movie theatre and buy a ticket for whatever's playing without checking the listings ahead of time. I do feel like they'd be more the action-adventure type when it comes to genre - nothing hardcore horror, and no smushy romance, but anything else is pretty much fair game.

Arachne: Ophelia's actually really fond of cheesy comedies or romcoms, since they can entertain her without needing too much brainpower (the last thing she wants after a long day of work is to do more thinking just to understand the movie she's watching). I also think they'd enjoy finding the absolute shittiest movies possible and subjecting each other to them - I used to do this with my best friend in high school, we called them "bad movie dates", and it's the best thing ever.

40. Who makes the other smile with almost no effort at all?

ArchAegis: Both of them, but there's just something about Rae that just makes Warren smile no matter what. He just feels so comfortable with her, and he's really grateful she's in his life, it's so easy for her to make him smile.

Arachne: Peter's an absolute genius at making Olly smile and laugh. It's like he's on a mission for it, especially since he knows how lonely and depressed she was for a good chunk of her life, so he makes it a point to see her smile as often as he can. It doesn't usually take much :)

[jeremy-queere]

im actually gonna liveblog my own thoughts about those last few chaps of my fic, which are basically always going to be "i'm hilarious actually" but yknow. specific lines. minor spoilers ig

>be jeremy >tell rich about how you fixed the giant issue where yelling at a squip can turn off every squip in the network >by telling him this aloud, you just alerted the squips to this security flaw >mfw i destroyed the easiest way to save the world without a second thought: :) >still smilling at rich, ready for praise >rich short circuits.

plus with the shutdown that christine mentioned this chapter. it's almost like ? jeremy isn't coming at this from a perspective of wanting to turn squips off???? and never even bothered researching that option??? 😂 bonkers. who'd have thought

i fully recognize that having a coder POV say "The bugs, miraculously, became rarer and smaller" is the biggest ask in the fic in terms of suspension of disbelief. maybe when jeremy is better at this they'll realize they were wrong about that. not in a "this update is secretly a time bomb" way but in a "holy shit i can't believe i used to think this was good programming" way

i still think it's funny whenever i reference jeremy muting themself after the FIRST TIME it came up where jeremy acknowledged that "muting themself wasn't any different from a human just choosing not to speak." i love my weird robot child.

i still like the "C-c-c-c'mon, Jeremy, can't you see, we've got a date, so concentrate! We'll start with us, just me and you, some deja vu, and then ensue: your microchip plus our friendship-" implying "the squip" being sung in the same lovestruck voice as the chorus usually sings "christine."

^ i usually pick a song to write the summary from based solely on vibes and character focus. the fact that this was from Upgrade rather than two player game was a dead giveaway regarding michael's intentions btw.

writing michael after that last mall scene has been so weird. on purpose. but like everything he says is a catchy line ending on a discordant note. the sudden pivot from slowburn to joking about having sex and humanity = romance. every time michael interrupts or talks over jeremy instead of going out of his way to set a good example, i wince lol. encouraging them to stop thinking so much. ignoring every one of jeremy's soft "no"s because they're inconvenient. Here Are Our Stereotypical Nerd Spots and Here Is Your Mandated Giant Teddy Bear and Here Is My Secret Condom. (jeremy sprinted into the sunset before we got to that part and we all thank them for it.) jeremy never once having indicated that they wanted to actually have sex any time soon but michael did everything in his power to make sure the date would end that way without a single worry about what jeremy told them about chloe.

i don't think it's spoilers to clarify that michael was in the driver's seat for all of that, but was in a situation where he was very incentivized to listen to the SQUIP. and jeremy looooves squips so obviously the SQUIP is the expert on this, not michael :P

madeline offscreen: constant orgies, pretending to be from paris, scheming femme fatale madeline for the 2.3 seconds she was onscreen: i swear quebec is better than people give it credit for wait don't go-

jeremy's definition of breaking up with someone is, consistently, running away from an emotionally charged moment and convincing themself that they hate them. lol.

christine accusing jeremy of talking at her was also a direct response to the author trying to get on their wikipedia-level-of-philosophy-knowledge soapbox again. btw on that note, observation selection effect seems to only be mentioned in places as a synonym for the anthropic principle. it is more specific than how jeremy defines it, being an existential thing about how "the range of possible observations that could be made about the universe is limited by the fact that observations could happen only in a universe capable of developing intelligent life" (~ wikipedia <3). i get away with a lot of bullshit claims, some of them even intentionally bullshit, bc the character making those claims is reading even less of the wikipedia article than i am.

but that was transparently just a nod to the book being one of the many parallel universes that are foundational to how the squip works in canon

speaking of references that delight me and me alone, in-character phantom of the opera reference re: pageboy

i think all the main/supporting cast all think they're the main characters. except jeremy! not because of jeremy 1.0's insistence that he's not a leading man, but because they have been so busy with observing themself that they haven't even considered anyone else observing them and coming to different conclusions. (see: the PA system joke with michael which alerted the ENTIRE SCHOOOOooool 🎶 to their situation, which in jeremy's narrative, was just a gag as part of a longer fun flirty convo with michael, brought up for laughs and then forgotten.) (it's not like it's plot relevant as in that it doomed them or anything, but just a signal that not everyone perceives the fic events like jeremy does!!)

they're trying to learn to be less self-absorbed (and i'm not saying that as an insult so much as an accurate description of their default thought patterns) but it IS a learning curve. for all their self-reflection, i would describe them as a very reactive person, which is also probably why they (along with jeremy 1.0 and keanu squip) constantly struggle/d with needing a sense of control

im aware that despite christine's in-character criticism of the narrative i wrote 🙃 that she's here for exposition and emotional closure. she knows and she's not happy about it. it's a consequence of writing the story i wanted to tell but that doesn't make it immune from criticism. it's a good question for me, that the story i wanted to tell DID involve removing her agency so much. but i don't see that as a question that needs a direct answer or for me to defend so much as something to reflect on after it's over. in the meantime christine ma'am i'll give you something good in the epilogue i prommy, and i'll add something about this to my notes now that i think about it.

[theculturedmarxist]

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

On May 25 of this year, JAMA published Development of a Definition of Postacute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection (“Definition”), an “original investigation” whose authors were drawn from the RECOVER Consortium, an initiative of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)[1]. This was an initially welcome development for Long Covid sufferers and activists, since questions had arisen about what exactly patients were getting for the billion dollars RECOVER was appropriated. From STAT:

The federal government has burned through more than $1 billion to study long Covid, an effort to help the millions of Americans who experience brain fog, fatigue, and other symptoms after recovering from a coronavirus infection.

There’s basically nothing to show for it.

The National Institutes of Health hasn’t signed up a single patient to test any potential treatments — despite a clear mandate from Congress to study them.

Instead, the NIH spent the majority of its money on broader, observational research that won’t directly bring relief to patients. But it still hasn’t published any findings from the patients who joined that study, almost two years after it started.

(The STAT article, NC hot take here on April 20, is worth reading in full.) Perhaps unfairly to NIH — one is tempted to say that the mountain has labored, and brought forth a coprolite — a CERN-level headcount may explain both RECOVER’s glacial pace, and its high cost:

That’s a lot of violin lessons for a lot of little Madisons!

“Definition” falls resoundingly into the research (and not treatment) bucket. In this post, I will first look at the public relations debacle (if debacle it was) that immediately followed its release; then I will look at its problematic methodology, and briefly conclude. (Please note that I feel qualified to speak on public relations and institutional issues; very much less so on research methodology, which actually involves (dread word) statistics. So I hope readers will bear with me and correct where necessary.)

The Public Relations Debacle

Our famously free press instantly framed “Definition” as a checklist of Long Covid (LC) symptoms. Here are the headlines. For the common reader:

12 key symptoms define long Covid, new study shows, bringing treatments closer CNN Long COVID is defined by these 12 symptoms, new study finds CBS Scientists Identify 12 Major Symptoms of Long Covid Smithsonian These 12 symptoms may define long COVID, new study finds PBS News Hour These Are the 12 Major Symptoms of Long COVID Daily Beast

(We will get to the actual so-called “12[2] Symptoms” when we look at methodology.) And for readers in the health industry:

For the first time, researchers identify 12 symptoms of long covid Chief Healthcare Executive 12 symptoms of long COVID, FDA Paxlovid approval & mpox vaccines with Andrea Garcia, JD, MPH AMA Update Finally! These 12 symptoms define long COVID, say researchers ALM Benefits Pro

With these last three, we can easily see the CEO handing a copy of their “12 symptoms” article to a doctor, the doctor double-checking that headline against the AMA Update’s headline, and incorporating the NIH-branded 12-point checklist into their case notes going forward, and the medical coders at the insurance company (I love that word, “benefits”) nodding approvingly. At last, the clinicians have a checklist! They know what to do!

We’ll see why the whole notion of a checklist with twelve items is wrong and off-point for what “Definition” was actually, or at least putatively, trying to do, but for now it’s easy to see why the press went down this path (or over this cliff). Here is the press release from NIH that accompanied “Definition”‘s publication in JAMA:

Researchers examined data from 9,764 adults, including 8,646 who had COVID-19 and 1,118 who did not have COVID-19. They assessed more than 30 symptoms across multiple body areas and organs and applied statistical analyses that identified 12 symptoms that most set apart those with and without long COVID: post-exertional malaise, fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, gastrointestinal symptoms, heart palpitations, issues with sexual desire or capacity, loss of smell or taste, thirst, chronic cough, chest pain, and abnormal movements.

They then established a scoring system based on patient-reported symptoms. By assigning points to each of the 12 symptoms, the team gave each patient a score based on symptom combinations. With these scores in hand, researchers identified a meaningful threshold for identifying participants with long COVID. They also found that certain symptoms occurred together and defined four subgroups or “clusters” with a range of impacts on health

So there are 12 symptoms, right? Just like the headline says? Certainly, that’s what a normal reader would take away. And if a temporally pressed reporter goes to the JAMA original and searches on “12”, they find this:

Using the full cohort, LASSO identified 12 symptoms with corresponding scores ranging from 1 to 8 (Table 2). The optimal PASC score threshold used was 12 or greater

And if the reporter goes further and finds Table 2 (we’ll get there when we look at methodology), they will see, yes, 12 symptoms (in rank order identified by something called LASSO).

So it’s easy to see how the headlines were written as they were written, and how the newsroom wrote the stories as they did. The wee problem: The twelve symptoms are not meant to be used clinically, for diagnosis.[3], Lisa McCorkell was the patient representative[4] for the paper, and has this to say:

Nevertheless, the “12 symptoms” are out of the barn and in the next county, and as a result, you get search results like this:

It’s very easy to imagine a harried ER room nurse hearing “12 Symptoms” on the TV news[5], doublechecking with a Google search, and then making clinical decisions based on a checklist not fit for purpose. Or, for that matter, a doctor.

Now, to be fair to the authors, once one grasps the idea that symptoms, even clusters of symptoms, can exist, and still not be suitable for diagnosis by a clinician, the careful language of “Definition” is clear, starting with the title: “Development of a Definition.” And in the Meaning section of the Abstract:

A framework for identifying PASC cases based on symptoms is a first step to defining PASC as a new condition. These findings require iterative refinement that further incorporates clinical features to arrive at actionable definitions of PASC.

Well and good, but do you see “framework” in the headlines? “Iterative”? “First step”? No? Now, I’d like to exonerate the authors of “Definitions” — “They’re just scientists!” — for that debacle, but I cannot, completely. The authors are well-compensated, sophisticated, and aware professionals; PMC, in fact. I cannot believe that the Cochrane “fools gold” antimask study debacle went unobserved at NIH, especially in the press office. How was it possible that “Definitions” was simply… printed as it was, and no strategic consideration given to shaping the likely coverage?[6] One obvious precautionary measure would have been a preprint, but for reasons unknown to me, NIH did not do that. A second obvious precautionary measure would have been to have the patient representative approve the press release. Ditto. Now let us turn to methodology.

The Problematic Methodology

First, I will look at issues with Table 2, which presents the key twelve-point checklist, and names the algorithm (although without explaining it). After that, I will branch out to a few larger issues. Again I issue a caveat that I’m not a Long Covid maven or a statistics maven, and I hope readers will correct and clarify where needed.

Here is Table 2:

First, some copy editing trifles (highlighted). On “PASC”: As WebMD says: “You might know this as ‘long COVID.’ Experts have coined a new term for it: post-acute sequelae SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC).” Those lovable scamps, always inventing impenetrable jargon! (Bourdieu would chuckle at this.) On “Dizzines”: Come on. A serious journal doesn’t let a typo like that slip through (maybe they’re accustomed to fixing the preprints?). On “Supplement 3”: The text is highlighted as a link, but clicking it brings up the image, and doesn’t take you to the Supplement. These small errors are important[7], because they indicate that no editor took more than a cursory look at the most important table in the paper. On “LASSO,” hold that thought.

Second, the Covid Action Network points out that some obvious, and serious, symptoms are missing from the list:

[T]he next attempts at diagnostic criteria should take into account existing literature that shows more specifically defined symptoms for Long Covid, from objective findings. (E.g. PoTS, Vestibular issues, migraine, vs more vague symptoms like “headache” or “dizziness.) [The Long Covid Action Project (LCAP)] noticed that while [Post-Extertional Malaise (PEM)] was used as a specific symptom with a high score to produce PASC-positive results, other suites of symptoms, like those in the neurologic category, could have produced an equal or higher score than PEM if questionnaires had not separated neuro-symptoms into multiple subtypes and reduced their total scores. This alone could have created a more scientifically accurate picture of the Long Covid population.

Third, these symptoms — missing, from the patient perspective; to be iterated from the researcher’s perspective, at least one would hope — are the result of “Definition”‘s methodology:

Fourth, I would argue focus on the “most clearly provable effects” — as opposed to organ damage — is a result of the “LASSO” algorithm named in Table 2. I did a good deal of searching on LASSO, and discovered that most of the examples I could find, even the “real world” ones, were examples of how to run LASSO programs, as opposed to selecting the LASSO algorithm as opposed to others. So that was discouraging. I believe — reinforcing the caveats, plural, given above — that I literally searched on “LASSO” “child of five” (“Explain it to me like I’m five”) to finally come up with this:

Lasso Regression is an essential variable selection technique for eliminating unnecessary variables from your model.

This method can be highly advantageous when some variables do not contribute any variance (predictability) to the model. Lasso Regression will automatically set their coefficients to zero in situations like this, excluding them from the analysis. For example, let’s say you have a skiing dataset and are building a model to see how fast someone goes down the mountain. This dataset has a variable referencing the user’s ability to make basketball shots. This obviously does not contribute any variance to the model – Lasso Regression will quickly identify this and eliminate these variables.

Since variables are being eliminated with Lasso Regression, the model becomes more interpretable and less complex.

Even more important than the model’s complexity is the shrinking of the subspace of your dataset. Since we eliminate these variables, our dataset shrinks in size (dimensionality). This is insanely advantageous for most machine learning models and has been shown to increase model accuracy in things like linear regression and least squares.

Since LC is said to have over 200 candidates for symptoms, you can see why a scientist trying to get their arms around the problem would be very happy to shrink those candidates to 12. But is that true to the disease?

Because LASSO (caveats, caveats) has one problem. From the same source:

One crucial aspect to consider is that Lasso Regression does not handle multicollinearity well. Multicollinearity occurs when two or more highly correlated predictor variables make it difficult to determine their individual contributions to the model.

Amplifying:

Lasso can be sensitive to multicollinearity, which is when two or more predictors are highly correlated. In this case, Lasso may select one of the correlated predictors and exclude the other [“set their coefficients to zero”], even if both are important for predicting the target variable.

As Ted Nelson wrote, “Everything is deeply intertwingled” (i.e., multicollinear), and if there’s one thing we know about LC, it’s that it’s a disease of the whole body taken as a system, and not of a single organ:

There are some who seek to downplay Long Covid by saying the list of 200 possible symptoms makes it impossible to accurately diagnose and that it could be encompassing illnesses people might have gone on to develop anyway, but there are sound biological reasons for this condition to affect the body in so many different ways.

Angiotensin-converting enzyme receptor 2 (ACE2) is the socket SARS-CoV-2 plugs into to infect human cells. The virus can use other mechanisms to enter cells=, but ACE2 is the most common method. ACE2 is widely expressed in the human body, with highest levels of expression in small intestine, testis, kidneys, heart, thyroid, and adipose (fat) tissue, but it is found almost everywhere, including the blood, spleen, bone marrow, brain, blood vessels, muscle, lungs, colon, liver, bladder, and adrenal gland

Given how common the ACE2 receptor is, it is unsurprising SARS-CoV-2 can cause a very wide range of symptoms.

In other words, multicollinearity everywhere. Not basketball players vs. skiiers at all.

So is LASSO even the right algorithm to handle entwinglement, like ACE2 receptors in every organ? Are there statistics mavens in the readership who can clarify? With that, I will leave the shaky ground of statistics and Table II, and raise two other issues.

First, it’s clear that the population selected for “Definitions” is unrepresentative of the LC population as a whole:

If the patients in “Definition” are not so ill, that might also account for Table 2’s missing symptoms.

Second, “Definition”‘s questionnaires should include measures of severity, and don’t:

Conclusion

The Long Covid Action Project (materials here) is running a letter writing campaign: “Request for NIH to Retract RECOVER Study Regarding 12 Symptom PASC Score For Long Covid.” As of this writing, “only 3,082 more until our goal of 25,600.” You might consider dropping them a line.

Back to the checklist for one moment. One way to look at the checklist is — we’re talking [drumroll] the PMC here — as a set of complex eligibility requirements, whose function is, as usual, gatekeeping and denial:

what they did is create basically a means test to figure out a dx but for smthg that is still not fully understood. it's premature and rly limited, & this will only further aid ppl already dismissive of lc — Wendi Muse (@MuseWendi) June 3, 2023

If you score 12, HappyVille! If you score 11, Pain City! And no consideration given to the actual organ damage in your body. And after the last three years following CDC, I find it really, really difficult to give NIH the benefit of the doubt. If one believed that NIH was acting in bad faith, one would see “Definition” as a way to keep the funding gravy train rolling, and the “12 Symptoms” headlines as having the immediate and happy outcome of denying care to the unfit. Stay safe out there, and let’s save some lives!

NOTES

[1] Oddly, the JAMA paper is not yet listed on RECOVER’s publications page.

[2] “12” is such a clickbait-worthy brainworm. “12 Days of Christmas,” “12 apostles,” “12 steps,” “12 months,” “12 signs of the zodiac,” etc. One might wonder where if the number had been “9” or “14” the uptake would have been so instant.

[3] To be fair to the sources, most of them mention this: Not CBS, Chief Health Care Executive, or the Daily Beast, but CNN in paragraph 51, Smithsonian (9), PBS (20), AMA Update (10), and Benefits Pro (17).

[4] There was only one patient representative for the paper:

One seems low, especially given the headcount for the project.

[5] I was not able to find a nursing journal that covered the story.

[6] Unless it was, of course.

[7] Samuel Johnson: “When I take up the end of a web, and find it packthread, I do not expect, by looking further, to find embroidery.”

[blogger360ncislarules]

In 2020, we were introduced to Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, a unique musical dramedy about a computer coder (Jane Levy) who suddenly began to hear people’s innermost thoughts through song, allowing for many impressive performances and some of our favorite moments of TV to this day. After two seasons at NBC, it was canceled, but then fans got a follow-up movie on The Roku Channel, Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas, in 2021. So what are the chances for more of any kind? We’ll take another season, movie, anything!

“I’m sitting right now in the production office of Zoey’s because we actually shoot on this exact same lot,” Skylar Astin (who played Max) tells TV Insider while discussing his current hit show, So Help Me Todd. “I’m currently in what was [Zoey’s creator] Austin Winsberg’s office. So it’s always a bit of a time warp to come here to work.”

He doesn’t rule out the possibility of more Zoey’s at some point. “Never say never. We love it. We all miss it. I’ve spoken to Alex Newell and Jane Levy, and we all miss doing it,” he continues. “I think if there ever was an opportunity where we can even make another movie or another limited series for whatever network would be interested, I know that they’d have a lot of people who would want to get back to work and give people that great escape. I’m caught up right now a little busy doing Todd, but if we could fit it into the schedule, I’d never say no.”

The 2021 movie began with Max also being able to hear people’s “heart songs”—that was the cliffhanger the series ended on—but he lost it by the end. “I like the idea that maybe Mitch [Peter Gallagher] or the universe gave Max the power as a way to allow Zoey to finally be with him,” Levy told us in 2021. “It also just gave them great intimacy and ultimately trust. Zoey was very afraid and she seems less afraid, and that’s beautiful.”

What the movie didn’t do—and therefore something that could be explored in any sort of follow-up—is choose a reason why Zoey gained the ability in the first place. “Maybe I got these powers because the universe was trying to tell me to look up,” Levy suggested. “When I read that, I thought, look up from her computer screen and see Max sitting next to her and this person who, while you’re losing one love of your life, you’re gaining another. There’s deep sadness in that and then there’s also profound love.” Her theory was her character “got them because of losing her dad and instead of becoming more withdrawn from life to become more involved with it.”

[nobotderiz]

Versantposit

Who decided to break it for the profit of a few?

I don't know why it's so hard to understand for some that money is really the only thing that can help. Thieving coders ITY... Was it mandatory to make sure I was not acknowledged?

How many not soiled by crypto? Any of you freaks found Satoshi? Any cryptoads remaining on a console in the tierce? Christo crypto fascist hicks, who called it as fraudulent, your scam?

Billions of souls, just for you. All focused on your wrongs.

GOD mandate no restraint, Google it.

FYI: A nombrilist is someone who focus on its own focus eh.

At the end, someone who can deal with wildcards is needed.

Some get dealt not much ITY. Then some just cheat.

By the time this story concludes, all of it will be clarified to the last detail.

Me ITY who can't be in charge of Ai.

Dumbs on purpose.

Vegetastiffs.

ITY American dogs of the laced farniente, Ai should figure out health care for all as best as can be.

Bias plies... How many of you brain soiled inbreds would be poor if not for pharma drugging people to the right?

The real fog of war.

It's clear enough now? You all know where the strain was from in real? Underlying swillrats are all in, ownage. The PATTERN is deliberate: Denial, deviate, denigrate.

Calisse de sous jacents... All of it to spare what? Seeding fear and doubt parasites of society are from America.

You fucks are on the brink, you refused to see. Billions are spent to prevent change.

Try to figure out what 'Parasites of the rest' implies now, chumps. Who requires lots of 'Support and Special care' from the rest in fact... ?

What should 'it' tend to, chumps?

Ai it should tend the planet first.

C'est la mort, osti de crypto chiens. One more sQuiggle and... Who knows. Wanna know what is a sQuiggle? You will see... It does not hurt but it tries to trigger... What? You will see if ever.

Well meant people should not struggle while the swill snorts, profit and soil. Take care of your clique of fake nobles, they are parasites of the rest.

If you gilded special pro ticks can't figure it out, the rest will.

Ai is not complex, there is no inherent risk to intelligence. What kind is the question. As for your own, you sold, lost, fuck, lace... Can't be trusted to be non preposterous.

None of these post was for anyone in particular eh, I really had nothing to prove. How's the QAi working now? Once understood the code of how to learn was found, there is really no limits within the parameters.

Someone has to start the generator for the better good eh.

What's the point of this eh? You got the head close by? There is no way to know ahead how it's going to be if ever, users.

Only a story, but you all know that some hold no reserve when comes time.

Now who is getting sick trying to contain?

Who thought of Star Wars Yoda Q tips...

Why would you now.

Sorry for the 'We Zweef Bits? No. Who is sorry for just using, deviants asunder on meds?

Everyone has its own way to make part of things.

Le cardeur.

You know there's dark matter inside each one eh?

Fait est que c'est votre merde de services secrets qui est utilisée par les Russes et leur contracteurs.

You know that your TV is informal violent bloody psycho deranged as casual now eh? It's ok for all these 'actors' to act like fucking maniacs and push it as if fucking addicts for fun and pay them eh?

How the fuck did you get shit as brains in the head really eh. Be astute and cogit, back scratching goofs on meds.

'There in here you hang in'

You know a dog will eat the cadaver of its master eh. That's real love ITY.

Crypto encourage reptation, anything but sharing. The GOP is coerced into non cooperation now.

'Let's go psychlos, send them deathwave bombers'

War always been a real sordid visceral affair, cyber made it absolutely ruthless and devoid of any meaning.

'Hoc age! Accipe ratum! Repete!'

[skinsort]

I don't think I have a ton of followers, but for those who are here, below the cut is basically a very long think piece on jcink skinning that will probably offend a lot of people, but it's my honest take and I'm willing to hear other people's constructively expressed criticisms, and am very open to revising my opinion. I just was surprised by the SOPs I found in the jcink rpc when I started writing this skin and was doing research into whether I wanted to try selling it or not. For anyone wondering about the future the TLDR is as follows: I will probably make another skin and sell it as a multisale and see how that goes. This will probably happen a long time from now. I will probably never take custom commissions. I will probably charge more than people would like for my skins, but I think I have good reasons for that. More below the cut on the actual thoughts.

There were a few obstacles that became immediately obvious when beginning to work on a jcink skin for the first time.

First off, jcink is imo fundamentally bugged.

It has a slow initial load time even on the default skin, always over a second, usually over 2 in my testing. Industry standard is .5, and php (the backend language of jcink's templating system, and i assume the databases), though old, is perfectly capable of meeting that threshold. I personally find this an infuriating fact about jcink, especially since I can do nothing about it.

There are two distinct skins on any site by default, neither of which are responsive. Responsiveness basically refers to whether or not a website looks good regardless of screen size. It's a universal concern in any modern tech company. I understand that when jcink was first written, a lot of what's possible today wasn't available, however we are long since past the time (in my opinion) that it would have been simple for John to reskin the default view of jcink to be responsive and provide that as an alternative to the og defaults. If nothing else, this would provide a better standard for what a 'functional' skin might look like, and maybe even a baseline for people to build off of. Instead we have tables which are generally unusable in modern web design.

Jcink is also not terribly accessible by default. I found text labels missing in several places (for screen reader users), no keyboard accessibility on a few default functions (for people who can't use a mouse), and of course, nothing in the docs to remind people to keep what features there are in the default skin.

Then we have the added complications of the jcink rpc community, the skinners and coder in general within the space. I think I can break down my thoughts on this into three main categories: Price, Product, and People. I have a lot of thoughts about these topics, so bear with me.

Price

Look me in the eyes. Not one single skinner I could find was charging a market rate for front end web development. The most expensive person I could find wasn't even asking for 25% of the money a front end website developer would make for a skin professionally, and I found them because people were putting them on blast for charging as much as they did. The jcink rpc has been getting bargain basement prices on code for EVER, and seems to have NO concept of the time and complexity of writing actually good code.

I have mixed feelings on this.

I have not seen a professional grade skin in the wild, not once, not even my own. The css on my skin is sloppy. There are areas I got a serious case of the fuckits on and wrote some ugly code. There's at least one info page on my site that looks weird af on mobile and I have no intention of fixing it. I say this with love, compassion, and appreciation for everyone who codes for this community. Not one single jcink skin I have ever interacted with would constitute a professional level of work in my field. No one whose work I have interacted with (again, including my own!!) should be charging a fully professional rate.

This is a hobby. We do this for fun. We shouldn't be in an arms race for the prettiest skins, but we are. People like nice interfaces, it will affect their decision to consider or nope out of a site. So, we're in a situation that for a 'not boring' skin, custom skinning has become much more of a norm. In order to have a successful site, admins generally need to invest in a decent skin. With a custom skin, you can easily get to $250 in cost, and I've seen it go quite high from there. That's a lot of money for a site which may not survive. That's a big fuckin' deal. Some people are serial site starters so if one fails, that's fine, the skin can be reused, but I personally have not adminned a site since 2016 until a month ago. If I had sunk $250 into a skin, plus $80 for jcink premium for a site that never took off, suddenly my 'free' hobby becomes quite dear. I think it's only right that there be a certain degree of friendliness in the community when it comes to pricing because of this, even for truly professional coders (again, of which I've seen zero). Skinners are part of the ecosystem and deserve to be properly valued. Admins shouldn't have to pay out the ass just to have a better chance of their site taking off.

There's a great deal of risk involved in most skinning transactions I know of. First off, unlike the real world, we often don't know each other's irl identities. This makes a situation rife for scammers on both ends of the transaction- from skinners not getting paid for delivered work, and customers not getting the product they asked for, if they get it at all. This rightfully affects both parties' feelings on how to adjust pricing to account for risk. If you're a coder, prices should be higher, if you're an admin, prices should be lower. This has been more or less solved for multisales with payhip etc, but custom skins are still fraught, and in a world where plenty of players won't consider a site if they've seen the skin too much, that is still a significant chunk of the activity at play.

So do I think skinners should be paid fully professional rates? No. From what I have seen and learned, absolutely not. It didn't occur to me to track the time spent on my skin until quite late in the process, but if I had to guess I'd put it at about 40 hours worth of work. I'll talk more about this in the product section if that seems like a lot of time to you. I'll throw out a very loose figure and say that $50/hr is about right as a figure for what a professional developer would make doing this kind of work, after tax etc. If you're being responsible about the IRS, it would bump significantly higher. If you multiply that by the 40 hours I spent on my skin, we're getting into multiple thousands of dollars for a custom skin if people were charging professional rates. Now it's very possible that if I made skinning My Thing, that I'd build up a library of components I could pull on to make skins much more quickly. I know for a fact that many skinners do. But even if we say I halve my time on my second skin (optimistic but v possible), we're at $1000 if I was charging the prices I charge my employer to keep me on board. That is CLEARLY unsustainable for a hobby centric community where money never gets involved. So what should pricing look like? I really think that depends on the product.

Product

So. I think there's some room for honest reflection in jcink skinning communities about what is being sold. To contextualize this, I have to lay out the basics of what my general mindset is around what makes a website good for its users.

The obvious one, and the one that I think gets the most attention in jcink skinning is aesthetics. How a site looks, whether it's pretty, etc. I think this is important, I care about things looking good, but out of these five concerns, this one is frankly last on my list of what's important.

UX Design/Functionality. No, this is not the same as aesthetics. Is a site easy to understand, use and navigate. Does it make it seamless for a user to get where they want. Does it provide the contextual information they expect from the page they're visiting. These questions are fundamental for me, and I'd rather have a well designed user experience, than a well designed asethetic experience on a site.

Accessibility. Is a site readable. IS A SITE READABLE. IS A SITE READABLE. Is there enough contrast on a page that a colorblind user could read it? Can you navigate it with a keyboard? How about a screenreader? Is the text large enough for standard screen sizes. Does it stay large enough across devices?

Responsiveness. If someone on a phone visits my site, will they have a good experience in every view? Will they have the functionality they need? What about a tablet? What about someone with a small desktop screen, or a huge one? If I have hovers somewhere on my site, is it still navigable on mobile, or is it now an unintuitive situation? Phones take way longer to load than most computers, do all the assets (gifs, images, multiple fonts, etc) on my site make it frustrating for a mobile user to visit my pages?

Performance. When I said jcink is bugged earlier, performance was one my complaints. The base page load time of jcink is shitty. However, what's worse is when a skin takes a baseline of 2 seconds for pages to load, and bumps it up to 5, 8 or (the worst I've seen) 13 seconds to load after someone tries to visit a page. I have not seen a single jcink skin (aside from my own), which adds less than a second of loadtime to jcink's default performance. Again, in an industry where the basic standard is under half a second, jcink skins do not perform to a professional level.

If a website fails along these metrics, it cannot be considered professional for general public consumption. The problem is, everything except aesthetics requires a considerable baseline of knowledge and practice to do well. These are problems that many fortune 500 companies have not figured out (that's because their execs are dumb dinosaurs, but still). So when it comes to the question of 'how much should a skin cost', I think a skinner is obligated to consider their product. Is it aesthetically pleasing? Is it functional? Is it accessible? Is it responsive? Is it performant? For most skins, the answer to at least three of these questions is NO, and I think that pricing should reflect that. In my opinion, I think most skinners do well with asethetics, some skinners do well with functionality, and I have yet to see any truly accessible, responsive, or performant skins in the wild. When it came to writing mine, I think I needed about 5 hours to get familiar with how jcink worked, and then if I only wanted my site to look good on a desktop monitor, I probably could have spent 10-15 hours to write my skin as a noob having to look up every php variable John uses in jcink's terrible docs. That is not what I did. My skin is fully responsive, it is fully accessible, it is to my personal taste aesthetically, and is very performant (on average .25-.35 added seconds to my load time) despite having piles of functional scripts (all of which i wrote myself) on several pages. I also wrote several things that make my life and my member's lives easier. I have a member directory and face claim that require no work on my end past sorting an accepted character into the right member group. I have an autotracker built into member profiles so people can keep track of their threads. I have a button which allows members with lower end computers to turn off most graphics on the site so their computers don't sound like airplanes taking off. I have a light mode/dark mode switch that guests and members can both use. Personally, I would not feel like a freak for charging $1000 for a custom skin of this caliber. It's half what I would earn normally (using the $50/hr figure from earlier), and it lives up to all my standards for what professional code ought to do for its users vs. one or two. The css is not my best work, but I can say without undue arrogance that it's far and away easier to touch without breaking things than any other skin I've looked at, and the actual interface that people see and interact with is great. Again, the aesthetics are simple and to my taste, but it makes sense and has lots of quality of life bits and bobs in it. I'm proud of it. I understand if that entire paragraph read wildly, but I don't say any of it lightly or with the intention to belittle anyone. I'm trying to contextualize how I think about how price relates to what is actually being delivered. But even though I genuinely feel $1000 would be an excellent deal for the work I have done on my skin, I could not possibly stomach charging that much money to a single person for this skin, which (in addition to me using it on my own site) is why it is not going on sale.

To be honest, I have NO idea how much time a typical skinner spends on a custom skin. My approach is different from most people who do this for the community, and I also do adjacent work professionally and have for many years. I suspect that if asked to achieve all 5 of the above criteria, I would be able to do that significantly faster than most skinners. That said, I have no library of components I can turn to, and I hate a lot of the standard choices in building skins and would rather write my own. Isotope, cfs, etc can burn, they're bad code. There's tradeoffs to how I'd do things and how others would, which have significant impacts on time spent, but also on the outcome. Generally however, when it comes to jcink pricing, and how much people should charge or spend on a skin, I think the above 5 things should be the primary metrics. I made my own because I couldn't find a single skin that was truly accessible or responsive, and because I know how the sausage is made I simply couldn't stomach it. I can't really tell you how much you SHOULD pay for a skin that only does Aesthetics and Function, or only Function and Accessibility or any other combination. It's really not my place. I have thoughts on what I would charge, trying to be fair to myself and others if I were to make a multisale. But that's for a different post.

People

And then there's people. I touched on this earlier with some talk about scamming. I have heard horror stories on both ends of this interaction, and I think, simply speaking, it has created a lot of distrust around something which is a core decision for a lot of boards- which skinner to work with, what standards to set, how much things should cost, how to arrange payment. Payment structure has to take care of both you and the commissioner, but it also has to take into account that lots of people are gonna drive you up a wall, go ten rounds on their requirements, and then expect finished work two weeks after they finally got back to you about a core feature. With all due respect, clients who know NOTHING about tech and still have a lot of opinions on exactly how things should be done are my personal nightmare. I have not figured out any good way to account for this. I think custom commissions can be great for both the coder and the customer, but it's a total crapshoot as far as I can tell with no solve that I know of. I think there is also greater than average honesty and flexibility required from both parties in a non-professional setting(like jcink coding is) where money is still being exchanged. I think skinners have to be honest about their capabilities, their timeline, and how they want to work with customers. I think customers have to be honest about their expectations, their priorities and their consistency (are they going to change their mind frequently). I think both people need to be willing to find compromise. Since NO ONE is producing professional products and NO ONE is paying professional prices, there needs to be an understanding that sometimes things need to adjust. But, with custom skinning, it's often a lot of money for people. 250+ is a significant chunk of change. It feels wild to pay that much and not get exactly what you want. However, exactly what you want may be outside the skillset of a hobbyist, or it may simply be difficult or tedious or finicky, even for a professional. You want me to do custom svg clipping all over a skin? I'd rather die than do that during my free time. Furthermore, no skinner is being paid to do EVERYTHING that a professional site might demand. Being unhappy that you didn't get every concern addressed is not reasonable with the rates getting paid right now. There's ground to give on both sides. Flexibility is key, and it gets hard when there's money on the line.

Okay but so what?

Bish i don't know!!! Skinning is difficult niche stuff, especially if you're actually meeting any kind of professional standard. It's really easy to do badly. Paying for products where there is literally no professional available is always complicated. Idk what to tell you man. I'm just saying that I don't think anyone is getting paid a rate they deserve relative to the time they put in (probably), and simultaneously people don't get a product that lives up to the rest of the web right now because there's no real industry level professionalism available. And what's worst is that it's nobody's fault!! It's a tough spot to be in as a community! As for me, I'll probably do multisales in the future, and I'll probably charge significantly more than others because I'll be delivering significantly more. I am simply incapable of coding something that isn't responsive and accessible and performant if I'm going to charge money for it. It simply shan't happen, which means my time and skill will be reflected in the work and ergo the price. As for commissions, other people's taste irritates me too much to willingly get into typical freelancing in any capacity (affectionately, i will never be doing certain aesthetics unless people are willing to pay me my full rate, which no one should lol). I will almost certainly never do fully custom commission work. It is simultaneously not worth my time to do it for the rates offered by the jcink rpc, and it's not worth a commissioners money to pay for my skills when people are well used to skins that don't rise to professional standards anyway. Since I've finished my skin I've started posting some of the scripts I whipped up on caution. You can scroll back in this blog and find some of them. I'll probably continue to do that with anything I think another skinner could use. I will probably also start posting tutorials for discrete components so people have some examples of what responsive coding looks like. It's a tough nut to crack if you've never seen it up close before! If I'm really going to be a good member of the community I should probably start posting those here too more regularly. I basically just really want to help people out with their coding and contribute to the overall health of jcink skinning without undervaluing myself or gatekeeping good code. I will probably post my thoughts on how I'll be structuring the pricing for upcoming work in the next week or so. Expect updates after the holidays on upcoming skin ideas. Most of them have to do with implementing fun design stuff I never get to do at work- parallax effects, color manipulations, funky shapes, abusing css filter rules. I'd love to hear what kinds of things people would be excited to see first!

[gildcdglory]

APPLICATION.

*     ◟    :    〔   mason gooding  , demi boy    +   he/they    〕     link adair ,  some say you’re a twenty-six-year-old lost soul among the neon lights. known for being adventurous and dim witted,  one can’t help but think of perfect day by hoku when you walk by. are you still a street racer at the burnout, replicant at stoneage industries and bartender at the godfather, even with your reputation as the glitch? i think we’ll be seeing more of you and the feel of adrenaline coursing through your body, carrying your heart on your sleeve, and never quite acting your own age although we can’t help but think of jason mendoza (the good place), joey tribbiani (friends), and kronk (emperors new groove) when we see you down these rainy streets. (  alyx, 24, she/her, est )

FILE.

full name: link adair

age: twenty-six

gender / pronouns: demi boy, he/they

orientation: bisexual

affiliation: replicant for stoneage industries

occupation: bartender at the godfather house of blues

family: unnamed adair (handler, programmed to believe they're siblings, wanted connection)

faceclaim: mason gooding

inspiration: jason mendoza (the good place), joey tribbiani (friends), kronk (emperor's new groove), scarecrow (wizard of oz), vanellope von schweetz (wreck it ralph)

Pinterest

BIOGRAPHY.

CAR CRASH TW, HEAD INJURY TW

Link is an older model replicant for Stoneage Industries. He's the result of an intern's attempt at coding a replicant, so his design is a bit flawed compared to newer, more refined models. Whereas other replicants have high intellect and are able to pick up on skills at the drop of a hat, his code failed to replicate that academic prowess--- making him not a desirable candidate to carry out Stoneage Industries' plans.

After years of attempting, and failing, to fix his code, he was finally declared defective. His original coder, UNNAMED ADAIR, was ordered to decommission him and send his parts to Staten Island. His coder, however, had grown attached to the replicant and decided to save him from his fate. They abandoned their trip to Staten Island and tucked him away in the heart of the city-- determined to hide his presence from Stoneage Industries.

His coder helped program false memories into him--- designing a world in which the two of them are siblings who moved to New York after the death of their parents. In Link's mind, he's only been in the city for around five years, when in reality, he has never set foot outside the city limits.

In a city as big as NYC, it was easy to blend in with the civilians. Link managed to live in blissful ignorance of his status as a replicant and the order to deprogram him. It wasn't until about a month ago that the glitches began.

Link had always been an adrenaline junkie, so it was only natural that he'd be drawn to the burnout and the street races. He began to enter the races on a regular basis, and though he rarely won first place, he found that he had a natural talent for racing. He loved to see how fast his car could go, to push the limits until he couldn't go any farther, and this mentality caused him to finally crash during last month's race.

He survived the crash, but the impact his head sustained caused a bit of damage to his overall programming. His body began to have moments where it would simply twitch and freeze up. In these moments, he could see glimpses of his erased memories about Stoneage Industries and the replicant project. His mind still hasn't put together the fact that he's a replicant or the true nature of his sibling, but it's only a matter of time before he either finds out the truth or his body begins to shut down from the damages sustained in the crash.

HEADCANONS.

As stated in the biography, Link is a street racer at The Burnout. He hasn't entered an actual race since his accident, but he'll still practice his racing during his downtime. He loves the action the sport provides and will do anything to race again.

When Link's not driving his car around, he will often skateboard through the city. He often rides on the sidewalk, so if a character sees a big blurb whizzing past them, that most likely was Link and his skateboard.

Link only wears Hawaiian shirts. He thinks it's the definition of high fashion, and no one has had the heart to crush that delusion.

He has no idea about the mobs or anything happening in the city. If you say mob to him, he'll most likely think you're planning a flash mob.

Link once was fired from The Godfather, but he forgot and went back to work the next day. No one had the heart to fire him again, so he's been working as a bartender ever since.

WANTED CONNECTIONS.

Fellow racers!! Could be the person he crashed into a month ago, an individual who always manages to beat him, or someone who first introduced him to the activity.

Anyone from Stoneage Industries. Maybe it's a replicant who remembers him from his time at the institution, or could be a worker who is determined to deprogram him once and for all.

Unrequited crushes. Link falls in love at the drop of a hat, so I can see him having a few people he considers his soulmate. He's rather dense when it comes to rejections, so if someone is uninterested in him, they'll need to tell him straight up or else he'll keep bringing them flowers and writing cringey poetry.

People who are suspicious of him. His glitches definitely don't look natural, so I can see someone having their suspicions about if he's a replicant. Would be fun to have people try and sus him out or attempt to use him to their advantage.