#i hate how complicated their designs r

[lunafish-artz]

Everytime i ascend him, it feels either like I'm flirting or proposing to him...To ppl who dk, rainbow rose means passion and romantic encounters.

[shopcat]

im sorry my opinion on genderbends changes every seconddddd i just think there's a difference between liiike for example gay girls drawing male characters fem for fun / yuri reasons, or trans ppl having fun w characters in a not weird way, VS (mostly cis) ppl getting up to well cisgender situations because they're crazy and are just drawing random women or men (8 or V) with 2 identifying characteristics slapped on and they look NOTHING like the actual character (or take into account how they COULD look different and aren't doing that either, like how a hyperfeminine chara who is that way bc she likes feeling pretty would still be a pretty boy. etc.)...

you can sniff out transphobia/weird gender shit/blatant homophobia in some people is all. i think it's also helpful im not exposed to annoying genderbends lately they've been fun or cool for fun reasons and not weird reasons like erm doing gender essentialism 😀

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Richard R John’s “Network Nation”

THIS SATURDAY (July 20), I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

The telegraph and the telephone have a special place in the history and future of competition and Big Tech. After all, they were the original tech monopolists. Every discussion of tech and monopoly takes place in their shadow.

Back in 2010, Tim Wu published The Master Switch, his bestselling, wildly influential history of "The Bell System" and the struggle to de-monopolize America from its first telecoms barons:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/11/01/the-master-switch-tim-net-neutrality-wu-explains-whats-at-stake-in-the-battle-for-net-freedom/

Wu is a brilliant writer and theoretician. Best known for coining the term "Net Neutrality," Wu went on to serve in both the Obama and Biden administrations as a tech trustbuster. He accomplished much in those years. Most notably, Wu wrote the 2021 executive order on competition, laying out a 72-point program for using existing powers vested in the administrative agencies to break up corporate power and get the monopolist's boot off Americans' necks:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

The Competition EO is basically a checklist, and Biden's agency heads have been racing down it, ticking off box after box on or ahead of schedule, making meaningful technical changes in how companies are allowed to operate, each one designed to make material improvements to the lives of Americans.

A decade and a half after its initial publication, Wu's Master Switch is still considered a canonical account of how the phone monopoly was built – and dismantled.

But somewhat lost in the shadow of The Master Switch is another book, written by the accomplished telecoms historian Richard R John: "Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications," published a year after The Master Switch:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674088139

Network Nation flew under my radar until earlier this year, when I found myself speaking at an antitrust conference where both John and Wu were also on the bill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VNivXjrU3A

During John's panel – "Case Studies: AT&T & IBM" – he took a good-natured dig at Wu's book, claiming that Wu, not being an historian, had been taken in by AT&T's own self-serving lies about its history. Wu – also on the panel – didn't dispute it, either. That was enough to prick my interest. I ordered a copy of Network Nation and put it on my suitcase during my vacation earlier this month.

Network Nation is an extremely important, brilliantly researched, deep history of America's love/hate affair with not just the telephone, but also the telegraph. It is unmistakably as history book, one that aims at a definitive takedown of various neat stories about the history of American telecommunications. As Wu writes in his New Republic review of John's book:

Generally he describes the failure of competition not so much as a failure of a theory, but rather as the more concrete failure of the men running the competitors, many of whom turned out to be incompetent or unlucky. His story is more like a blow-by-blow account of why Germany lost World War II than a grand theory of why democracy is better than fascism.

https://newrepublic.com/article/88640/review-network-nation-richard-john-tim-wu

In other words, John thinks that the monopolies that emerged in the telegraph and then the telephone weren't down to grand forces that made them inevitable, but rather, to the errors made by regulators and the successful gambits of the telecoms barons. At many junctures, things could have gone another way.

So this is a very complicated story, one that uses a series of contrasts to make the point that history is contingent and owes much to a mix of random chance and the actions of flawed human beings, and not merely great economic or historical laws. For example, John contrasts the telegraph with the telephone, posing them against one another as a kind of natural experiment in different business strategies and regulatory responses.

The telegraph's early promoters, including Samuel Morse (as in "Morse code") believed that the natural way to roll out telegraph was via selling the patents to the federal government and having an agency like the post office operate it. There was a widespread view that the post office as a paragon of excellent technical management and a necessity for knitting together the large American nation. Moreover, everyone could see that when the post office partnered with private sector tech companies (like the railroads that became essential to the postal system), the private sector inevitably figured out how to gouge the American public, leading regulators to ever-more extreme measures to rein in the ripoffs.

The telegraph skated close to federalization on several occasions, but kept getting snatched back from the brink, ending up instead as a privately operated system that primarily served deep-pocketed business customers. This meant that telegraph companies were forever jostling to get the right to string wires along railroad tracks and public roads, creating a "political economy" that tried to balance out highway regulators and rail barons (or play them off against each other).

But the leaders of the telegraph companies were largely uninterested in "popularizing" the telegraph – that is, figuring out how ordinary people could use telegraphs in place of the hand-written letters that were the dominant form of long-distance communications at the time. By turning their backs on "popularization," telegraph companies largely freed themselves from municipal oversight, because they didn't need to get permission to string wires into every home in every major city.

When the telephone emerged, its inventors and investors initially conceived of it as a tool for business as well. But while the telegraph had ushered in a boom in instantaneous, long-distance communications (for example, by joining ports and distant cities where financiers bought and sold the ports' cargo), the telephone proved far more popular as a way of linking businesses within a city limits. Brokers and financiers and businesses that were only a few blocks from one another found the telephone to be vastly superior to the system of dispatching young boys to race around urban downtowns with slips bearing messages.

So from the start, the phone was much more bound up in city politics, and that only deepened with popularization, as phones worked their ways into the homes of affluent families and local merchants like druggists, who offered free phone calls to customers as a way of bringing trade through the door. That created a great number of local phone carriers, who had to fend off Bell's federally enforced patents and aldermen and city councilors who solicited bribes and favors.

To make things even more complex, municipal phone companies had to fight with other sectors that wanted to fill the skies over urban streets with their own wires: streetcar lines and electrical lines. The unregulated, breakneck race to install overhead wires led to an epidemic of electrocutions and fires, and also degraded service, with rival wires interfering with phone calls.

City politicians eventually demanded that lines be buried, creating another source of woe for telephone operators, who had to contend with private or quasi-private operators who acquired a monopoly over the "subways" – tunnels where all these wires eventually ended up.

The telegraph system and the telephone system were very different, but both tended to monopoly, often from opposite directions. Regulations that created some competition in telegraphs extinguished competition when applied to telephones. For example, Canada federalized the regulation of telephones, with the perverse effect that everyday telephone users in cities like Toronto had much less chance of influencing telephone service than Chicagoans, whose phone carrier had to keep local politicians happy.

Nominally, the Canadian Members of Parliament who oversaw Toronto's phone network were big leaguers who understood prudent regulation and were insulated from the daily corruption of municipal politics. And Chicago's aldermen were pretty goddamned corrupt. But Bell starved Toronto of phone network upgrades for years, while Chicago's gladhanding political bosses forced Chicago's phone company to build and build, until Chicago had more phone lines than all of France. Canadian MPs might have been more remote from rough-and-tumble politics, but that made them much less responsive to a random Torontonian's bitter complaint about their inability to get a phone installed.

As the Toronto/Chicago story illustrates, the fact that there were so many different approaches to phone service tried in the US and Canada gives John more opportunities to contrast different business-strategies and regulations. Again, we see how there was never one rule that governments could have used if they wanted to ensure that telecoms were well-run, widely accessible, and reasonably priced. Instead, it was always "horses for courses" – different rules to counter different circumstances and gambits from telecoms operators.

As John traces through the decades during which the telegraph and telephone were established in America, he draws heavily on primary sources to trace the ebb and flow of public and elite sentiment towards public ownership, regulation, and trustbusting. In John's hands, we see some of the most spectacular failures as more than a mismatch of regulatory strategy to corporate gambit – but rather as a mismatch of political will and corporate gambit. If a company's power would be best reined in by public ownership, but the political vogue is for regulation, then lawmakers end up trying to make rules for a company they should simply be buying giving to the post office to buy.

This makes John's history into a history of the Gilded Age and trustbusters. Notorious vulture capitalists like Jay Gould shocked the American conscience by declaring that businesses had no allegiance to the public good, and were put on this Earth to make as much money as possible no matter what the consequences. Gould repeated "raided" Western Union, acquiring shares and forcing the company to buy him out at a premium to end his harassment of the board and the company's managers.

By the time the feds were ready to buy out Western Union, Gould was a massive shareholder, meaning that any buyout of the telegraph would make Gould infinitely wealthier, at public expense, in a move that would have been electoral poison for the lawmakers who presided over it. In this highly contingent way, Western Union lived on as a private company.

Americans – including prominent businesspeople who would be considered "conservatives" by today's standards, were deeply divided on the question of monopoly. The big, successful networks of national telegraph lines and urban telephone lines were marvels, and it was easy to see how they benefited from coordinated management. Monopolists and their apologists weaponized this public excitement about telecoms to defend their monopolies, insisting that their achievement owed its existence to the absence of "wasteful competition."

The economics of monopoly were still nascent. Ideas like "network effects" (where the value of a service increases as it adds users) were still controversial, and the bottlenecks posed by telephone switching and human operators meant that the cost of adding new subscribers sometimes went up as the networks grew, in a weird diseconomy of scale.

Patent rights were controversial, especially patents related to natural phenomena like magnetism and electricity, which were viewed as "natural forces" and not "inventions." Business leaders and rabble-rousers alike decried patents as a federal grant of privilege, leading to monopoly and its ills.

Telecoms monopolists – telephone and telegraph alike – had different ways to address this sentiment at different times (for example, the Bell System's much-vaunted commitment to "universal service" was part of a campaign to normalize the idea of federally protected, privately owned monopolies).

Most striking about this book were the parallels to contemporary fights over Big Tech trustbusting, in our new Gilded Age. Many of the apologies offered for Western Union or AT&T's monopoly could have been uttered by the Renfields who carry water for Facebook, Apple and Google. John's book is a powerful and engrossing reminder that variations on these fights have occurred in the not-so-distant past, and that there's much we can learn from them.

Wu isn't wrong to say that John is engaging with a lot of minutae, and that this makes Network Nation a far less breezy read than Master Switch. I get the impression that John is writing first for other historians, and writers of popular history like Wu, in a bid to create the definitive record of all the complexity that is elided when we create tidy narratives of telecoms monopolies, and tech monopolies in general. Bringing Network Nation on my vacation as a beach-read wasn't the best choice – it demands a lot of serious attention. But it amply rewards that attention, too, and makes an indelible mark on the reader.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/18/the-bell-system/#were-the-phone-company-we-dont-have-to-care

[pleasantspark]

What do you think of this potential 4chan leak that Lucifer is the one responsible for the hierarchy and that Sloth, Gluttony and Lust are considered good sins? https://desuarchive.org/co/thread/145383112/#145394767

> Lucifer created the terrible hierarchy of Hell as well as the Deadly Sins. He is described as a moral neutral sin.

Well, neutral is far cutting it, remember he caused nearly everything to happen in Hell. He's described as sexy, when the only sexy thing about him is his depression. No one pointed out that Lucifer was at fault for all the things to begin with, but no people are like "B-B-B-B-BUT, we needed a story to kick off Charlie!" I feel like it's stupid, also, I am a depressed person and whenever a character who is depressed does something bad, they always have to empthize on the "UWU Depressed shit" which is shit you'd see on r/gachalifecringe or r/gachaclubcringe (Which I am a moderator on, and let me tell you, the Gacha side of the Hazbin Fandom is fucked up.). I feel like most don't care because they'd much rather ship RadioApple then point out the absolute fuckery that is Lucifer himself.

>The good sins are Asmodeus, Bee, and Belphegor. The bad sins are Satan, Leviathan, and Mammon. Beelzebub actively hates the hierarchy and how it treats her hellhounds, but there isn't anything she can do about it.

Okay, first off all the sins are bad, they cannot just pick and choose. For FUCKS sake, you know who her favorite is, the funny thing is, I like Mammon, he's cute and his design/accent are great (But nothing comes greater then Jeice), so she failed at making villains scary when all they are is extremely comical people who suck at villianing and suck at life.

> Leviathan is female and a fashion queen. Alot of Envy will be focused on fashion.

Paint me green and call me a fucking pickle, more backlash would be fucking impossible. Remind me what the fuck does Fashion have to do with Envy?

Sure, people can be envious of others looks, but that ISN'T the only thing possible to be envious of.

This is Leviathan from my Universe, he's a victim of abuse from his father. (Who by the way died because of the effect he has on people, later on.)

According to Levi's official description on the Wikia:

Leviathan isn't actually Envious, rather the curse he has causes anyone nearby of him close or not to get envious of him as a person which is the main reason why Agatha is acting out.

This would've been better, but complicated storylines and things pulled from TVTropes isn't what Viz likes. Yes, Leviathan is meant to be Stolas from HB but better, and yes, I DO VOICE LEVI.

So what's the issue with Levi liking fashion? Well, it's obvious that she needs another Diva because at this rate Velvette isn't enough, and most of the fuckers in the Pride Ring seems to be fitted for other rings too.

I feel like she's trying to assign something to these character's to make them unique, but they aren't.

Lucifer is literally the Sin of Pride, and the only thing prideful about him is his fruitiness, so add that to the level of "Bible things that Viv added" he's far from prideful, and that's a fact.

Coming from someone whose gay myself.

Mammon, oh sweet sweet Mammon, is just the Greedlr, but a Fat Nickado Avocado Characters, minus the screaming and fits. And aussie. Because "oooo people with accents arre baad"

Beezlebub, is just, well a Bee, because "HAHAH FUNNI BEE-ZLEBUB" she wanted to relieve her golden years of AMVs and Animation Meme-Esque content, also so she can brush hands with Kesha-Senpai. I swear to fuck, she asskisses alot.

And I am BARELY getting started.

> Stella is a decent mom to Octavia. She doesn't have many powers and isn't summoned to Earth like Stolas is.

If she's such a great Mom, you so claim she is, Viv, then why not show and NOT FUCKING TELL. All we see of her, is the way to make the audience feel bad for a [N word, black POC here. Don't wanna say it.] that ain't shit, Doja Cat was right, he ain't shit.

This is ridiculous, this was seen with Jeffy in SML, he was a hated character, Logan tried every trick in the book to get the audience to feel bad for him (I.E. Giving him an emotional manipulative mom, losing his sister, WITNESSING HIS LITTLE SISTER GETTING MOLESTED, etc etc) but the problem with making an auidence feel bad for the character, it gives a in character excuse to let them continue being pricks without any character development.

In conclusion:

More pointless rep that will be thrown out as soon as it appears

More things to hype up, but ultimately fumble the bag

It sucks

[dotster001]

Omg, I'm in love with Twisted Earth, can you please do Scarabia and Pomefiore next?

Hello may i also request a Twisted earth story but with the savanaclaw and scarabia dorm please 🥺requested by @magicalsweetsyouth

Twisted Earth Part Four

Summary:Scarabia and Epel x gn!reader You are the game, they are real. Vil and Rook HC's here. Savannaclaw HC's here.

A/N:Omg some of y'all are starting to get ahead of me with your requests. I have some places I'll take this once I finish off everybody's initial HC's. I'm so happy you guys are enjoying these 🥺

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Five Part Six

He was drawn in by the advertising. The colors, the designs, the music, the voices? Oh he was so excited to start playing! When he chose his initial character …it actually wasn't you. And he feels so bad about it now 🥺  You're his squishy baby, please forgive him, he'll make up for lost time.

Probably first was drawn in to you because of how drastically different your life is from his. Then he fell for you as he got more and more invested in your character's story.

As I said…you're his squishy baby. If you were real…Oh he gets so excited thinking about all the parties he'd throw for you, all the gifts he'd buy for you, all the CUDDLES HE'D GIVE YOU! (He has made Jamil bang his head against a wall multiple times when talking about you) he dreams of the two of you dancing together. That's what he'd do for a first date with you. He's already decided.

He has all your base cards, but none of your event cards. But he's not deterred! He WILL get one of your event cards one day, he's sure of it.

Kalim's parents don't need parental blocks on Kalim. They have Jamil. Jamil saw Kalim playing the game and downloaded it to make sure it was appropriate, and that it wasn't giving him any weird ideas. 

It's now his guilty pleasure. He plays it right before bed since he never has any other time for it. He always sighs heavily like it's a chore to play right before he opens it, but he definitely enjoys it. 

You….he has a complicated relationship with you. In game he adores you. He thinks you're perfect, and you'd be perfect together. Irl, he knows you two might not get along as well, with you being, well, you, and him making…questionable… decisions sometimes. You'd get on like oil and water….but if he had the chance, he'd be willing to try.

He has every. Single. One. Of. Your. Cards. Everyone of them is at their max levels. Every one of them has been groovified. He is almost psychotic about it. 

Your crush is the only card he has that he doesn't take care of. Again, to a psychotic degree. Your cards are the only ones he's maxed out, but he generally takes care of most of his cards. Not your in game crush. Despite his realistic take on how you two would be irl, he for some reason can't look at them without his brows furrowing and his teeth gnawing on his bottom lip.

He was playing it before the devs reached out to Vil for a review. It was his freedom away from his lessons where, playing as a peer named Yuu, he could interact with people who didn't care about his looks or behaviors. He could be as "masculine" as he wanted. (In quotation marks because Epel has some iffy views on what being a man means. I love him anyway 🥺)

Despite hating other people calling him cute…he thinks you are very cute. He is also certain you wouldn't call him cute, but "handsome" and "man of your dreams". He also just genuinely finds you to be a soothing presence. While some of your friends and coworkers cause chaos and various antics that move the plot along…you're just kind of there. A constant light. (You're the Silver, at least in his mind 😂)

He dreams of meeting you irl. He'd have you on his arm, and even Vil would be in awe of him. No one could call him cute with the cutest person ever on his arm. In exchange, he'd treat you like the deity you are. He'd get you anything you wanted and pamper you constantly.

He has three of your cards; a bunny cafe SSR, your casual R card, and your SR work outfit. He is so proud of these cards. Brags to anyone he finds who plays the game. Once Vil started playing, it was all he would talk about whenever he got mad at him.

[pyromainiacc]

Buh... its 5 AM time to rant...

This is by no way meant to be hate or shade towards ppl personally... I don't like fighting :(( I just feel frustrated and sad.. I think ppl r so negative all the time.

I am upset SOTA is getting so much hate. Not just criticism, like performance issues or talking abt the story, but genuine hate. People saying it sucks, its bad, leaving bad reviews bc they think its too hard.

Maybe it's because this game is so tied to my very identity and soul that I feel personally hurt by it, or maybe I'm just another sensitive lil mf on the internet, but it just upsets me! The game is too hard? Yes! It's Elden Ring!! It's a Souls game!!! Collect Scaductree fragments, they'll make the game way easier! Use spirit summons, use sorcery! Summon co-operators! The game is as challenging as you let it be.

You don't like the story? Sure, that's completely valid and fine! It's not for everyone! But Fromsoft stories have always been convoluted, confusing, and complicated. And the story isn't the main focus of the gameplay... Why ignore all the beautiful environments, the beautiful designs, the gorgeous music, and all the love and effort put into the game because the twist kinda sucked for you?

And hell, if you just don't like anything then the game's just not for you... again, it's a Souls game, it's not gonna be for everyone and that's okay!!

Again... this is not targetted 2wards anybody in specific or supposed to be "how DARE you dislike something I like!". Its more just me rambling bc I'm stupid and sensitive and seeing my favorite game get hated makes me sad 😭 elden ring is such a core part of my soul and my identity, I had been waiting for this DLC like it was a goddamn new organ I needed to survive, and it's everything I wanted plus more. I love it, and I see so many beautiful things about it that people aren't talking about enough! I just want more positivity :(

[kiwiana-writes]

WIP Acrostic Game

Thanks to @cha-melodius @porcelainmortal @anincompletelist @sparklepocalypse @firenati0n for the tags! I really need to do this before I get any more tags huh 🤣

Rules: From your story/WIP, find sentences that start with each letter of the given word.

My words: BOLT / SING / IRON

Your word: FAME, OR you can generate your own word here: handy dandy word generator

B - from the Big Secret Collab with @indestructibleheart

Beside him, Cash sucks in a sharp breath, his left arm moving almost imperceptibly so that it’s covering Alex a little more as his right moves towards his hip.

O - from the Anastasia AU

Once his dad pushes him inside, he realises why—it’s a storage cupboard, probably designed to have the door blend into the wall so visitors don’t try to open it.

L - from the Alex/Henry/Liam/Spencer fic that's been languishing for an embarrassingly long time

Liam reaches forward, wrapping a hand around Alex’s cock. 

T - from the trans!Alex fic for Fandom Trumps Hate

There’s something in Henry’s expression that feels a little like a challenge, but he doesn’t voice it.

-

S - from the Stranger Than Fiction AU

Structural edits, Henry is inclined to think, are a task sent directly from Hell to make him hate himself.

I - from the Rafael POV of select scenes in With so much of my heart (that none is left to protest)

If you tell him I said that, Luna, I’ll skin you alive.

N - from Chemistry without a recipe

No point in complicating it.

G - from the "Henry can't come for all of June and somehow it's Alex that feels denied" fic

“Guess our sex life’s gonna be all about me for thirty days, huh?”

-

I - from the WIP just titled 'Fetlife lol'

If you want to know how big my cock is, dear, all you have to do is ask nicely.

R - from a Southern Philanthropy FTH fic

Roommates, Liam knows, can be pretty hit or miss; he got lucky with his current one, a tall Māori guy who keeps referring to his time in the UK as his “OE”, which Liam is given to understand means “overseas experience” and is, in his opinion, a pretty fucking grandiose way of describing pouring pints in a London pub for a year.

O - from the fic titled simply 'horny soulmates'

“Okay, well, it’s not my fault my soulmate is either some kind of sex goddess or has a deep personal connection with her vibrator, is it?”

N - from my OTHER trans!Alex fic

Now they’re like… I mean, I can still feel them, but I don’t think I could come just from having them played with anymore.

...and that's still not all of them. Help.

TAGGING... @agame-writes @affectionatelyrs @blueeyedgrlwrites @cactusdragon517 @celeritas2997

@getmehighonmagic @happiness-of-the-pursuit @hgejfmw-hgejhsf @indestructibleheart @inexplicablymine

@larkral @lilythesilly @littlemisskittentoes @nontoxic-writes @onthewaytosomewhere

@orchidscript @piratefalls @read-and-write- @rmd-writes @sherryvalli

@ships-to-sail @sparklepocalypse @stereopticons @thesleepyskipper

@thinkof-england @tintagel-or-cockleshells @welcometololaland @whimsymanaged 

And, as always, anyone who wants to play!

[snowdice]

Unplanned Consequences (Part 3: Remy) [Sometimes Labels Shift Series]

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Remy & Logan, (background) Remy/Emile

Characters: Remy, Logan, Emile (briefly)

Summary: Remy is asked to help with something.

Notes: This takes place after Best Laid Plans

Part 1 Part 2

When the doorbell to the safe house rang, Remy found himself flinching to his own embarrassment. However, when he looked at Emile over the little kitchen table, the tension around his eyes told him he wasn’t the only one on edge.

“Probably just someone trying to sell us solar power panels,” Remy said. “I’ll go tell them we rent.”

Emile nodded and followed him without a word. He picked up the gun that had been laying on the table between them and carried it with him. Remy knew Emile wasn’t exactly a fan of guns, so seeing him pick it up with so little hesitation both made him feel better and worse.

Emile hung back out of sight of the door while Remy approached, though he did his best to stay where he thought his shadow couldn’t be seen through the pulled curtain on the front door window. Cautiously he stretched so he could glance out of the curtain.

The fear that had been rolling in his stomach swiftly transitioned into being pissed off.

He almost ripped the door off its hinges. He probably would have if Logan was any worse at picking safe houses. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Logan himself in all his dumb motherfucking beaten to hell glory was sitting (not standing because Remy was well aware he had a broken leg) outside the safe house.

“Good evening, Remington,” he said irritatingly calmly. He was in a wheelchair. What had Patton been thinking getting him a wheelchair? Now he was mobile. And a mobile Logan, as was evident, was an idiot.

“Give me one reason,” Remy said, gripping the door frame so hard he was afraid he might bend it, structurally sound or no, “not to finish the job right now you bitch.”

“There is a task that must be done, and Patton is not in the mental state to do it.”

“And you’re in the physical state to do it?!” Remy asked. “How the fuck did you even get here?”

“I designed my vehicle years ago for adequate functionality no matter what my physical and mental state,” Logan explained. Remy glanced behind him to see a car he’d never seen before and didn’t recognize the make or model of at all.

“You have a concussion, dumbass.”

“It is mostly self-driving when needed,” Logan waved him off.

“Mostly?! I fucking hate you.”

Emile had approached, sans gun after hearing the conversation going on. “Perhaps we should keep this conversation quieter,” he suggested, in a more level tone.

“That is likely for the best,” Logan agreed.

“You can shut your mouth,” Remy snapped at him, though he did keep his tone quieter. “Why don’t we go inside?”

He realized his mistake instantly when Logan glanced meaningly at the porch steps. Right. That explained why the man hadn’t used his complicated secret knock. He couldn’t get up onto the porch and was likely still suffering from power exhaustion. Fucker shouldn’t have even put forth the effort to ring the doorbell. “Or I’ll just come to your car,” Remy said, glancing back at Emile. Emile nodded and stepped back into the house.

Remy went down the steps and whacked Logan’s hands away from the wheelchair wheels.

“I managed to get here,” Logan reminded him, a little bit grumpy which was actually a nice change from the businesslike tone he’d been taking so far.

“You are supposed to be on bedrest, so fuck you,” Remy replied, moving to push him towards the car. “Now how do you get in and out of this thing?”

“Step back,” Logan said. Remy did with a raised eyebrow and then had to bite his tongue to keep from making a loud exclamation of shock. It went too fast for him to quite make out what happened and if he didn’t know better, it looked like the car basically just… swallowed Logan wheelchair and all. In a blink, Logan was in the driver’s seat.

Remy gaped at him for a moment before shaking himself and rounding the car to get into the passenger seat the normal way.

“Okay,” Remy said, once seated. “Explain to me why I’m not driving you immediately back to Patton so he can put you into a medically induced coma until you heal.”

“Well, for starters, I am in the driver’s seat.”

Remy rolled his eyes.

Logan took a breath. “I am very injured,” he said. “In a way I cannot hide in my personal life. At this point, it seems unlikely we are already compromised. Delaying returning to our normal lives is very quickly becoming more of a risk to our identities than continuing to hide.”

“And?”

“We need to crash my personal car,” Logan said, “and I need to go to the emergency room.”

“Oh… shit.”

“Will you help me?”

“Well,” Remy said, “I’m not letting Patton or Virgil for that matter do it, so I fucking guess.”

“If it helps, I believe my powers have recovered enough that neither of us will need to be in the car during the crash.”

“It doesn’t help. I hadn’t even been considering that. Fuck you.”

Logan was silent, giving him a moment.

Remy took a deep breath. Man, this had been a fucking disaster of a few days.

“You better…” he said. “You better get better soon, so I can beat the shit out of you myself. Okay?”

Logan didn’t say anything for a long moment. He just stared out of the windshield with an expression on his face Remy couldn’t identify. It was a bit terrifying.

“I appreciate it,” Logan finally said. “You are a good friend.”

“Yeah, well,” Remy said. “Fuck.”

“‘Fuck’ is a good summary of recent events,” Logan said. “At least it’s a better summary than I can come up with.”

Remy snorted out a laugh and shook his head.

Logan moved his hands on the car wheel very slightly and Remy was startled when the car hummed to life under them.

“We will also need to cover for the fact that my injuries are already beginning to heal once I get to the hospital,” Logan said.

“Yeah, I can handle that for you too,” Remy promised. It would be a long night, but not the longest one in recent memory.

Want to read more? Click below!

Labeled Master Post.

My Masterpost.

[mr-shrimp]

It's September now, and I wanted to write about r*ssian schools, and I even had a draft about it, but I deleted it accidentally :(

Btw it's not a big deal, so enjoy this bullshit from typical r*ssian student <3

I want to do this bc I'm pretty tired of this, and I just want others to know that.

This post gonna be smth like QA format, bc it is a lot of easier to write ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Russian school core(I guess). Let's go!

First things first. How long do you need to study?

-> Well, if we talk about ordinary school, then you can study 9 years or 11 years(this is optional). In year it's 9 months for studying and 3 for rest(nice joke). After 9th grade you can go to the high school or go to the college and then to university as well. After 11th grade you can go right to university(but here is option to go to college after 11th grade). In university system is not different from European with Bachelor degree, but as I know in this year or maybe in the next one they want to remove this and make only specialty degree. It sucks bc your specialty diploma will be invalid in countries with Bachelor degree. And with specialty degree you need to study about 5-6 years.

How old must be child?

-> In most of the cases it is like 6-7 y.o. Some schools have pre-school studying, here children are about 5 years. In the end of your execution in school you may be like 15-16(9th grade) or 17-18(11th grade)

Does children also have such a fucked lessons table?

-> Nah, they have like 3-5 lessons about 35-40 mins. First 4 grades are such a relax, hah

What about exams?

-> in the end of the 4th year you need to pass two exams(as I remember): rssian language and math. In the end of 9th grade you need to pass 4 exams: rssian, math and two optional disciplines. And in the end of the 11th grade you need to pass at least 3 exams: rssian, math(base or profile), and 1-5 optional. Maybe now max number of optional exams has changed, but I don't care.

Which exams did you choose?

-> I gonna write biology and chemistry in any way, bruh. Maybe sociology, too, bc I also into law(not new laws they are bullshit) and this kind of thing. Or maybe I should be a designer, I like money and I like to draw:) my doodles pretty cute hah

What about rest? Holidays? Weekends?

-> Okay, this is pretty interesting. In most of moscow schools we have 5-1 system, which means 5 weeks of studying and 1 week of holidays. Also, we have a lot of holidays for all country such as new year holidays or may 1st and may 9th. It is really a lot of holidays in r*ssia, tho. Although I said it is 3 month of holidays, but for real you need to study and here. Why? It's pretty complicated. You need to read a lot of books, you need to practice all disciplines, you need to prepare to your exams and smth like this, bc if you not gonna do it... well, it would be sad. Weekends don't exist in rssia you just sleep. Really, you tired as fuck after this weekly five-day-in-a-row executing. And you even need to do your homework, but all that you can is sleeping.

What about study program?

-> It's hard. Really. I'm at the last grade, and this is my lessons for every week(in two versions, look at pics below). And if you want to know, math in r*ssian schools is like math in a lot of math universities in America or England or any of European countries. And it is not about math only, it is about all disciplines. Like, in 10th grade we learning about sinuses and logarithms(fckng bllsht)

-> In mscow schools we have special programs like medicine class(here I am), IT-class and more more others(Pic below, translate it by yourself). They call it "project classes". And for every project class it is its own main disciplines. For example, in medicine class it is chemistry and biology, but they added prof math for some hecking reason and I hate this shit, but BTW.

-> As for daily classes table, this is really tough. We starting at 8:15 a.m. and ending at 3 p.m. or even at 4:40 p.m. This is NOT optional. You must go for all classes even if you don't need physics or prof math. You just MUST. We have lessons every for 40 mins and breaks for 20 mins. And no, we haven't any special long break for eating. If you late to your classes you gonna be scolded, bc "why can't you eat faster???". Oh well, maybe because I just can't hah? Anyway you need to go from cabinet to another cabinet and try to eat if you want. And the most absurd that we have special breaks for eating, but they also lasts 20 minutes.

-> As for holiday, you can't relax either, bc this is a lot of homework. For example, my friend(from IT-class) in last year had about 400 mathematical equations to solve for homework for 1 week. Wild, isn't it? Ofcourse not all teachs like that, but anyway. Our literature teach said to write essay about 400-500 words(okay ngl she like to make us write it even if it not holidays).

What about food?

-> Oh yeah cockroach it my oatmeal and juice with water, love it. Not gonna lie, we really have cockroachs in our dining room at school. And I guess teachs like "well until cockroachs not fall from ceiling to children food it's alright"(no, it's not). I really like to eat, even if it just an apple, I like food, and food at school is really bad. You have a choice: first to not eat, second to eat at dining room, and third to bring your homemade food. In any case you don't have time for really enjoy the food :(

What about "ins" of school?

-> in mscow schools pretty okay, in my school we even have green room with a lot of plants, we call it "winter garden". Cabinets are okay, but light is bad like they older then me. But in other regions it like very old house that may fall at every second. And some of them don't have bathrooms. I didn't joke. Or it is a toilet like a.. erm.. hole in floor? Yea, something like this I guess. And some regions(villages, for example) don't have schools.

-> As for lessons, it is just very strict teachs and really hard program. Okay, let's talk about "conversation about important things". As you all know in 2022 rssia started a w*r with Ukraine, and from this moment in all schools started this shit. In short this is something like patriotic lessons where they just lie to you how good our country is and how good that we live here and how bad another world is. Well, smth like this was at ussr time, too, as i remember this right. But you know, this lessons are necessary even if they don't have marks for it. You just need to know that all people in the world are bad and only rssia are innocent and saint(/sarc). Fucking bullshit.

What about project classes?

-> Well, Idk for other classes, but in medicine class we have pretty hard program. You need to know all chemistry and biology, make an individual project, go to medicine college(uh um hello I go to high school bc I don't want to go to college guys what's wrong with u), go to lessons in university like RUDN, Pirogov RNRMU(rssian national research medicine university) and etc. And this is all after your ordinary classes, ofcourse :)

And what about college?

-> Nothing special, we just were riding the subway there 1 hour, then studied for 3 or 4 hours at college and were riding the subway back for 1 hour. And for sure it sucks, bc I returned home at 9 p.m.(or even 10 p.m.) every Monday. And our teach said that we were lucky bc they could make our college classes at Saturday. And in the end we can get our diplomas in the end of the 11th grade. Why? For what? Idk.

What about program? You always say this is hard, but why?

-> So, biology(molecular, botanic, anatomy, ALL biology), organic chemistry, prof math, probability theory, physics and more other. All this university level. And a lot of home work after which you don't even have strength for yourself.

What about attitude towards mental health? And health as well?

-I have diagnosed severe depression and I'm still studying full-time education program. No one cares if you can stand, even if you have a fewer. But at least tech can send you to nurse or back to home. In rssian schools no one really cares about your mental health, your pronounces and other individual things. Well not all teachers stop bulling towards kids, and some of them are bullies themselves. I think that's enough to understand this.

Well, that's all, I guess. It is really a lot of issues that I didn't say. Please repost or reblog as much as possible. As for living in rssia it is like, you know, living in "1984", just read latest news and new laws in 2022-2024 period and add to this w*r with innocent country.

And stay safe all of you♡

Yes somewhen I make this rq please don't beat me :(

[swaps55]

Fugue Update - 16 - Play the Cards

Pairing: mShenko

Rating: M

Tags: Angst, Grief, Major (Canonical) Character Death

Summary: Alchera, and the two-year gap.  

Chapter Summary: In which Kaidan makes a choice, and really hates the Hammerhead.

Many, many thanks to @pigeontheoneandonly and @urrone for betaing this beast of a chapter!

Chapter 16: Play the Cards | Read on Ao3

08 February 2185, Arcturus Stream, Arcturus, Arcturus Station

The hour and a half debrief Kaidan has to sit through on the M-44 Hammerhead is almost enough to convince him to resign his commission right then and there. But now that he’s getting a good look at the R&D behind it, the hell the prototype has put him through for the last month is starting to make a lot more sense.

The Alliance R&D lieutenant in charge of the project has never been in the field. It’s being funded by Cord-Hislop Aerospace, who developed the airframe and propulsion system but has never designed an infantry vehicle and are now scrambling to answer the question of how to stop the overcomplicated hover technology from freezing at -53C, which, coincidentally, was the temperature on Lattesh where Kaidan was testing it.

Kaidan raises his hand when he can’t take it anymore. He’s in a room with five admirals, one of them Admiral Hackett, two senior VPs from CHA flanked by someone with ‘chief engineer’ in their title and an entourage that Kaidan hasn’t bothered to count. On the other end of the table is the Hahne-Kedar senior VP and the project lead. Those two are the ones Kaidan can blame for the damn weapons system.  

If Kaidan is the first person with boots-on-the-ground experience they’ve talked to, he’s going to eat his datapad.

“Commander?” the lieutenant, Olasz, Kaidan thinks his name is, asks, almost flustered. Apparently it wasn’t question time yet.

“I’m sorry,” Kaidan says, trying to suppress his exasperated sigh. He’s not even sure how much he’s expected to speak up in this meeting, but hell, if he doesn’t, he’ll owe an apology to every marine in the damn service. “I have to ask. Why are we so dead set on rocket jets for an infantry vehicle?”

Olasz stares at him, then back at the notes for his presentation.

Uh oh, Kaidan thinks. Went off script.

“Because it can reach 120 kph,” he replies after a momentary panic, repeating exactly what he’d said ten minutes ago. Or an hour ago. Kaidan’s lost track. “Over rough terrain, water.”

“I don’t see how that’s an advantage,” Kaidan says, and this time the sigh sneaks through. Across from him, Hackett’s chair creaks as he rests his elbows on the conference room table and steeples his fingertips.

“Would you mind elaborating, Commander?” he asks in a gruff voice. There’s a glint in his eye, like Kaidan just handed him an opening he’d been waiting for.

“It’s adding complication where we don’t need it,” Kaidan replies. “Or want it. Those jets are hell to maintain in the field. The fuel lines kept freezing on Lattesh to the point we almost had to abandon our mission. I’ve personally experienced the M35-Mako handling temperatures eighty degrees colder than that. We nearly got blown into a lava field on Zeona because we couldn’t stabilize it against the wind. The dust on Corang grounded us when it got sucked into the inlet. These are all problems you don’t have with tires.”

“But the efficiency—”

“It’s not efficient,” Kaidan snaps. A smirk lurks behind Hackett’s fingertips. “The design sacrifices an entire weapons system for an inferior one.”

This time one of the duo from Hahne-Kedar tries to speak up – undoubtedly in defense of the damn rockets that Aslany had to deal with when the geth colossus was almost on top of them on Corang – but Kaidan shuts her down.

“The M35-Mako has a mass accelerator cannon and a machine turret, both of which operate off the same ammo block. It’s easy to maintain, ammo is nearly infinite, and a rail gun is going to save the day almost every time. This thing has rockets. We give up infantry space to store a finite supply of them, and when they run out, we’re screwed. And then there’s the fuel. The Mako runs on a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell. The Hammerhead runs on actual rocket fuel. Not only does that burn all the weight allowance the eezo generator gives us, but it’s very flammable cargo. Which brings me to the armor plating.”

One of the admirals, Mikhailovich, raises a hand. “Thank you, Commander. That’s very enlightening.”

I can’t believe I’m arguing in favor of the damn Mako, Kaidan thinks to himself.

Read from the beginning | Read the rest on Ao3 | The Fugue Playlist

[where-are-the-spooky-gays-2]

thanks for making the poll! Adding a random thought or ten to the musical au because I can—

• Remus has a length of rope ending in a hook on the back of his costume. The hook attaches to Roman’s costume, and the rope visibly frays as the show progresses. When they finally split, they unhook and the rope breaks. They try to tie it back together later on, when they’re trying to put Remus back. The amount of times that they have accidentally tripped over the rope during choreo is high enough that the costume designer/s seriously considered removing it from the show.

• you are absolutely correct in regards to Remus having awesome creepy makeup. his character may or may not have a mouth. he cannot sit still for makeup application though, so the makeup often ends up smeared.

• I kind of really want to include the trio dynamic that 🐀 was talking about cause it’s really cool and fun and I feel like it could work well with this story.

• how do we feel about Roman thinking he has a crush on Virgil also? If I included that plotline it’d probably end with something cliche like:

"And you’re… okay with this? With me and Virgil?" Remus said, watching his brother carefully. Roman’s gaze drifted to the floor. "I’ve been thinking, lately, a lot. And I think—" He swallowed. Chanced a glance at Remus. "I think it wasn’t about Virgil. Or… I think I was scared to lose you. Both of you. And that got weird and toxic and I almost lost you anyway. So, yeah. You and Virgil is good."

"And…?" Roman looked up again, a small smile on his lips. "And I’ve been spending a lot more time with (name) recently, and they gave me their therapist’s number and told me to call whenever I needed, so… that might be happening?"

• ^ istg I have read that exact scene multiple times. The next step is a brother hug. I don’t know if I actually want to write a love triangle, cause I don’t really like reading love triangles (unless they end in polyamory) but it would be an easy source of drama and Complicated Feelings, so. there’s that.

• the platonic affection between the cast and crew is off the charts.

• ^ this has one downside and it is that Virgil is unable to tell when Remus is romantically flirting with him vs platonically flirting For The Lolz. (vs flirting with him solely to piss him off)

• Janus is short. this is more of a general headcanon, but I’m including it here because there are a lot of ways in which it applies to the theatre AU. he’s tiny and angy and all of the others can carry him easily, which they take full advantage of.

• there’s definitely a song about always being seen as the good half/bad half and never two complex wholes that the twins get way too into.

• we like besties to lovers, huh? how about best friends brother who you kind of hate at first but have suddenly become coworkers with to lovers?

• how old are they in this. please help.

Of course no problem! Damn who knew Bestie's Brother's lowkey down bad Rival to Coworkers to Lovers would have so much A N G S T and D R A M A Ro's definitely gonna need that therapy number cause good lord XD /light hearted Also I guess you can say Jan's short tempered I'll see myself out

[prettyboykatsuki]

i think for a lot of us, relationships and ~weddings~ with our 2D boys and gals and nbs would be multicultural and i really really think that’s wonderful and beautiful

for eg you’re south Asian right? imagine ur wedding. bakugou insists on having as many wardrobe changes as you at your wedding so you’re always matching … his mom spends years!!!!!!!!!! before the wedding (she knows you’re the one for her son the moment she sees you two interact) with a mentor studying your cultural fashion so she can ask you (as if you wouldn’t have asked her personally!!!) for the honor of designing one of your outfits… maybe with a lil Japanese twist to show the union of two cultures… beautiful. whatever she can do to make the person who caught her son’s eye feel welcome. i hate it when his parents are written as standoffish and rude like where was that even implied... anyway his father and mother (and bkg himself ofc) wear your cultural clothes with pride at your wedding and you know what they’d design bespoke Japanese cultural outfits for every member of your family too.

i’m Chinese and i like to think of how our families would interact and bridge the cultural gap too. a union, not a division. what would your family do to make the bakugou’s feel welcome and included? mine would do the Chinese tea ceremony in English/have a translator and would include Japanese tea as well. they’d be invited every lunar new year and given red packets oranges and we’d teach them the phrases in mandarin (what i learned in school) and Cantonese (my family’s dialect) during the mooncake festival we would teach the bakugou’s how to make mooncakes. his parents would make us custom mooncake tins as a gift. for wedding’s (there would have to be two ceremonies) we’d do photoshoots in both sets of cultural outfits as well. i like to think both sets of parents would cook for each other. my traditional Chinese mother would look lovely in a kimono and i know mitsuki would kill it in a qipao. sorry for the word vomit. what about you, fang? if you’re up for it, tell about me you and/or your multicultural interactions w the bakugous 💕

waaaah this so so cute :(( im going to pass away at the thought... i do often think about the way like. our cultures would interact mostly bc its hard not too. but the idea of their parents designing my wedding saree is making me feel sick in the best way. or just the general cross of cultural attire like waaaahhhhhhh

THE TEA CEREMONY.....HOW SWEET IS THAT. hearing all the little details of ur cultural exchange is simply making me cry and weep. the romance of custom mooncake tins.... i cant even imagine. i am not too informed on any specific aspects of chinese culture but the details u have provided r so vivid i feel like i can see it so very clearly and i love it?? like im crying. the translator detail is very adorable to me as well fdkjkjfdvd like im </333333

ive thought pretty indepth about it..!! i think it'd also have to be a two ceremony thing. i think bakugou would probably get very excited to watch me get my mendhi done so he can search for his name in it </3 i think he's probably the most excited about the part where everyone comes to put holud / turmeric on us and feed us sweets. like desi weddings r v complicated so he's kind of excited by how elaborate it all is..... im so </3

[aquaticpal]

7. Favourite dungeons?

Ancient Cistern (Skyward Sword): when I played it for the first time, I very quickly recognized that I had descended into Buddhist "hell" due to all the spinning wheels and spikes - in Chinese it is commonly spoken of in terms of the wheels (cycles) of reincarnation, and how much pain a soul must go through before it's fit to be reborn. And then I felt really vindicated to have recognized the analogy after I googled up the story of the Spider's Thread. A very clever concept for a dungeon, A+ execution.

Snowpeak Ruins (Twilight Princess) is a commonly loved one because of how unconventional it was, but I also remember the puzzles/level design in it being very enjoyable. Plus hot soup~~

Forest Temple (Ocarina of Time): just really brilliant level design, especially when the concept of "how to make a 3D Zelda game" was completely new territory. Lots of spooky atmosphere but without going outright "horror and gore" like Shadow Temple. I'll be thinking of the twisty hallways forever.

8. Most underrated Zelda game?

S P I R I T T R A C K S

(It gets so so much hate for its control scheme and musically-disinclined people having to play the panpipes. But I had no trouble with either and the train travel was made enjoyable by the irresistible overworld music. And then you get to spend all that time with Zelda~)

Oh but also, probably almost nobody played Four Swords Adventures because it seemed so complicated with the multi-player GBA setup, but folks don't realize that the game was playable single-player and still a fun romp in that way. It was gimmicky yes but it was still a solid Zelda game underneath the gimmick!

9. Least favourite character in the series?

Umm there might be some other minor character I dislike more that hasn't come to mind right now, but Astor is pretty up there for being a wet rag with zero charisma and zero compelling story. Just fails in every possible way.

TLOZ asks

[devsgames]

is it completely idiotic for me to be trying to "pitch" an idea for a game when I can't currently code?, I've made exhaustive design docs for some of my ideas but I'm afraid to try and pitch the concepts cause it's my assumption that I'd need to have a background in actual coding for the ideas to be taken seriously

(Disclaimer: I'm not an expert when it comes to business stuff! When you say 'pitch' I'm assuming you mean coming up with and developing an idea/concept and presenting it to a studio/publisher to secure the resources to have it made. Unfortunately this will be a 'brutally honest' sorta answer, but I hope it can at least expose some of the process and helps folks understand how to get started!)

Can you successfully pitch an idea without proven programming experience?

Yes, 10000%! Most managers/directors/leaders who lead game projects to completion were - for better or worse - never a programmer at any point in their career.

Can you successfully pitch an idea without proven gamedev experience?

Unfortunately almost certainly not :( I'll explain why.

Pitching

When you're pitching to a publisher or stakeholder of any kind, it's my understanding there are usually two big things they're looking for:

The project will make them a profit.

The project won't implode on itself.

#1 can be achieved by anyone who has an understanding of market knowledge and the cost of making games - it's not impossible for some very business savvy folks to secure funding for projects by virtue of being really good business people and understanding the economy of game development. It's why you'll sometimes see games startups with no one on the team who has any experience making games.

#2 is a bit more complicated.

Usually when you pitch an idea you're either saying "you should give me resources and I should lead this project" or "I should have a significant role on this project while [this qualified person I know] will lead it". In either case, the person/team you're suggesting lead the project needs to have proven experience in shipping successful games.

Above all, corporations hate risk. They want the most money in the minimum time with the biggest guarantee of profit. Naturally this makes it very difficult to walk into a room and say "I haven't done this before, but I have a great idea for a game that will make you tons of money". It's a massive risk and not worth pursuing! Risk aversion is also why you see lots of remakes, reboots and games tied to existing IP - it's safer than trying something new.

This is mostly in reference to external pitching however; typically most game pitches follow are internal and often from the executive level of the company. Meaning, they almost always come from existing directors or folks with seniority, so you'd have to rise up to a fairly prominent position in a company to have your ideas properly given consideration.

This leads me to my next point!

The Problem With Ideas

One time the guy who was installing my internet in my apartment told me about how he has a video game idea that will make millions of dollars. When game devs tell a non-video game developer they make games, there's approximately a 15% chance they'll say "Oh excellent so you can make my video game idea for me!".

The problem with ideas and concepts is that everyone has them! They're the cheapest and easiest thing to come up with!

In game dev, calling someone "the idea guy" is an insult: basically this is someone who doesn't really do anything when it comes to production but is chalk full of ideas for things they want to see, or concepts they want to bring to life. These people are a dime a dozen on places like r/GameDevClassifieds - people who say "I'm looking for a team. I have no experience in game development, no money, no understanding of the game dev process, but my idea is really cool". Many experienced devs will push against this mindset as chasing the product without understanding the process is a nightmare scenario and almost always doomed to fail.

To be clear, I'm not saying this kind of person is you, Asker! Just trying to illustrate that "my idea is incredibly cool and valuable" is a very common and often misguided sentiment people have about games, usually stemming from the fact that non-developers assume that boring or bad games only get made because no one in games has ideas for new things.

The distinction between game ideas and actual games are that games are the ideas that actually get finished.

Well Then How The Heck Do I Make My Game?!

So we've established that pitching is largely a process for more-experienced industry folks and that ideas on their own are pretty common things to have - what can we do to bring an idea to reality?

The unfortunate reality is that you're right, Asker! The way to be taken seriously is to build your projects and learn the process. This a whole loaded other topic so I'll skim the surface since this post is already super long, but I'll plug my talk on How to Solo Dev that goes into this a little bit.

I honestly believe there has never been a better or more accessible time to be making video games, and it's easier than ever to learn development!

Something like Scratch can teach basic logic and flow, Bitsy is a pretty straightforward means of making micro games, Unreal is complex but uses visual scripting as an alternative to traditional code.

If you really want to get a project in front of people's eyes to secure resources for it, Kickstarter or crowdfunding in general is a good means to do so; it essentially replaces the need to pitch to a publisher. The downside is that requirements for successful campaigns are typically that your game is basically prototyped or largely finished, which usually necessitates learning development anyway.

I ultimately wouldn't recommend attempting securing resources or funding for an idea until you are positive you understand the development process and confident you have the skills and know-how to bring it to life. It's a TON of work on its own, and the last thing anyone wants is to get people's money and then realize you may not get across the finish line!

In Conclusion

Pitching often involves a lot of knowledge and experience, and may be difficult to execute without it.

Ideas are very common.

Time spent writing documentation and coming up with ideas for games is probably better spent developing your hard skills to understand the craft/process.

Thank you for the ask, I hope it was a bit insightful and helped clear up some misconceptions! :)

[rezdragon]

2014 and My Writing

I just wrote about this in the script I'm working on, but I thought I'd go a little more in detail in a separate post. I've talked about this before on Twitter a few years back, but writing a script about it has put some fresh perspective into my head. Let me tell you about the time that I went from obsessively writing nearly every day, to not writing at all for three years.

I say that I have always been a storyteller, as growing up, I made tons of stories with the toys in my room and each day was like a new episode in the complicated plot of "The Beanie Babies On My Bed."

2006 is when I really started using a computer regularly, but it was 2007 when I wrote my first short story, which was like twelve pages long (which is long for a 12 year old). And from then on, I was hooked on writing. Every year or so, it seemed like I had some kind of new story going on. Not because I finished the previous ones mind you, I would just get bored of it, or the idea became too big and I couldn't finish it. Orintheous' first backstory was developed around this time (that's how old she is).

When I was introduced to Smash Machinima in 2008, it was a match made in heaven for me. A lot of the stuff I was writing was just loose video game fanfiction and now suddenly I could make that real? Sign me up, 13 year old me was PUMPED.

And so in between my school work, I would be writing up scripts and other various short stories for machinima. I still have dozens of scripts for projects that never got a voice. This absolutely affected my attention in class except for English. Thanks to my constant writing, I excelled at English, especially the writing assignments.

My high grades in English continued into my high school years (also where my deep depression started), and by 10th grade, I was completely BURIED in writing a novel with a fantasy setting (Note: Do not have your first novel be a fantasy setting). I filled up several notebooks with drafts of short stories, scenes, and scripts. And when I wasn't trapped at school, I'd pour hours into Microsoft Word, making more short stories, scripts, etc. I just loved writing.

One of my proudest moments was in my creative writing class. The teacher gave us the blank assignment of writing a short story, but it had to be under 5 pages. I, the obsessive writer, argued that 5 pages was too short, and told her I had a 12 page story for her. She told me that if that story sucked and wasn't written well, she would outright give me an F on the assignment for making it over 5 pages.

I got an A.

In that same class, we had to submit poetry to this American Poetics Society or something like that, and I wrote a poem in 20 minutes about how I hated summer. And not only did I get a A on that assignment, that poem got selected to be in that year's published book of young authors (a book I SADLY COULDN'T BUY).

I kinda fell out of writing by 2013 because of d e p r e s s i o n, but I still had a lot of pride in my writing. Once I got out of school (and machinima) I sadly didn't have much to write about anymore, but I still kept up on it with fanfiction.

And then we get to college.

So in 2014, I was forced to go to college for a number of reasons, but the bottom line is that I did not entirely choose to attend college. To make it worth my while, I went for a degree in Graphic Design. I took a few fine art classes too, and I did learn something from those that I still apply to my work today. And I also took English 1, under the guise that it would be an "easy class" for me to get out of the way early.

It was not. Suddenly, the writing that let me fly through high school English without a thought was getting C's and D's. Even long essays I had to write about books we read were failing. I also couldn't pass any of the tests; I couldn't understand what was happening. For the first time in my life I was failing English? Me? Someone who considered themselves a writer?! And don't think I didn't try. The professor I had wasn't an asshole, he was great, and he tried his best to help me pass the class, but something just did not click and I failed English 1. This was during an already rough time in my life, so I didn't take this failing very well. I stopped writing, just full stop. And I wouldn't write again for some time.

Fast forward to 2017, I'm watching all of my old machinima from back in the day, feeling a little sad that I never finished what I had started. I decide to jump back in (for various reasons), and I was planning on working on a previously failed machinima series, but then I made a joke video on April 24th of 2017...

This joke video was a machinima called "Orintheous Declares War On RyeDragon." It was a word for word remake of a video made by PMK94 when he declared war on me for switching my Smashsona to Lucario back in 2009. That original video spawned an entire video series where PMK and I went back and forth trying to one up each other like the children we were.

Well, this joke video, made 8 years after the original, woke PMK up from retirement, and he responded to the video with a machinima of his own. I was so thrown by this because I honestly did not expect this and I thought: "I have to follow this up with my own video."

And for the first time in 3 years, I wrote an original script, performed it, and published it to the world, that video being "Orintheous' Plan Begins." And once again, PMK and I went back and forth with each other, spawning the original Orintheous' Revenge.

The scripts for the original OR were the first bits of completely original writing I had done in 3 years. I mean it when I say I went from writing almost nonstop to not writing at all. I didn't write anything in those three years and I honestly feared I would never regain my love for writing. But a silly little series about recolored Charizards reignited my spark, and while it took awhile to make a flame, that flame exploded in 2021.

By 2021, I got my love of writing back in full force, and once again, it was thanks to Orintheous' Revenge. I spent the first half of 2021 working religiously on writing the plot and other elements for OR, just like I had done before for my fantasy novel. Orintheous' Revenge was merely the warmup though, preparing for the main event of 2021, which would be The Disaster Archives.

All of the writing I do for TDA today would not be possible had it not been for Orintheous' Revenge. College nearly killed the writer in me, but Orintheous, the god of life, brought it back. As I am currently writing a 46 page script about the events of 2021, three years after the fact, it honestly feels weird to me to even think about the fact that I went three years without writing anything. I'm back to being incredibly dedicated to it, just as much as I am to my art.

I have always been a storyteller, and I will tell my story, either with recolored Charizards or beanie babies on my bed. I'm not super vocal about calling myself a writer, but if you ask me, I will gladly tell you:

"Yes, I am a writer."

More specifically, I call myself a script writer, as I love writing dialogue. I don't think I could ever write a novel again haha.

[bddybby666]

smthing i rlly hate abt the art world & individualism in general is the lack of credit of collaboration…. saw this video of this designer who makes giant bandaids & she’s the only one who gets to talk abt this art…. she casually mentions “oh i don’t make them but i design them" & then continues to gush over how amazing and detailed these huge bandaids r….. while her contributions & labor r obviously valuable to the work it’s also like what abt the ppl who actually made them…. who also put labor and time & made it so that her designs and drawings could come into a physical form… without these anonymous workers she would only have drawings and pics of bandaids….. idk it’s obviously it’s j one example of countless things like this (not j in the art world) but like in general of how capitalism & individuality are so tied together, how the lack of credit of collaboration j further pushes the isolated toxicity of individuality and palatability and ease and convenience and the 'break-away success' stories capitalism thrives on to exists and further it's agenda…. the sublime idea that 'j one person could make this'.... it’s such a myth of there j needs to be The One idk esp in art (esp large scale/collections/series/craftwork) there NEEDS to be collaboration but like that j makes things too complicated for our capitalist rotted brains... credit and collaboration do not take away from the value and wonder of the work!!!

idk like i think individuality in some ways can b incredibly valuable but in the way it works so well with capitalism is so insidious to me... and dont get me wrong an individuals work thats made in isolation can also be great and sublime and whatnot but its the way things r valued (esp thru capitalism) that makes more so frustrated... community and collaboration are some of the most beautiful ways to connect with ppl and make things beyond the limits of the individual... thats so beautiful to me

and like idk i love see how my art changes from when im making it by myself (which it can be argued nothing is made in a vacuum) and when im activily making smthing along side someone else... its fucking awesome

anyways i j needed to type this all out and post this to the void and now i will actually go to bed... long ass text post i love u okay gn