bisexualshakespeare

[bisexualshakespeare]

Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern on Backerkit now!

Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern is a GMless one-to-three shot TTRPG based on games like MF0: Firebrands and The Sundered Land. It's a collection of 20 mini-games where former adventurers open a tavern together and reintegrate into society after a life on the road.

What happens after the adventure? What does daily life in a fantasy world look like? Stewpot draws inspiration from stories like Dungeon Meshi, Redwall, Frieren, and Bartender, as well as various aspects of D&D. It's a great way to wrap up a long-running fantasy TTRPG campaign.

Start a garden, cook monsters, run a festival booth, reforge old weapons, flirt with mysterious strangers, and more in a new version of the game with tons of art and new storybook-style layout!

(more info and full description of the mini-games in the read more!)

The structure of the game is based on characters having an Adventurer Job, with Adventurer Experiences that represent their abilities and powers, and a Town Job with Town Experiences. You can make new characters just for the game, or bring in old characters and recreate them with the existing Experiences or write your own.

As you play the game, you'll cross off Adventurer Experiences as you let go of them or let them fade into the background, and gain new Town Experiences that take their place. Along the way you'll upgrade your Tavern and give each other Keepsakes!

Games from the old Itch.io PDF version (0.41):

The First Step: Before you decided to put down roots here, before you found this group of friends, what were you doing? What was the first thing you learned about how to live in town?

NPC Sidequest: Your adventuring days may be over, but there are plenty of people in town that could use your help.

Wear and Tear: There’s always something to fix, or clean, or pay off.

Market Day: You never would have guessed how many things you need just to keep a tavern running. 

Homegrown: There’s something special about using ingredients grown nearby. Why not give growing your own a try?

Sliced: Sometimes supply routes get disrupted. Or maybe you just want to stand out from the rest of the taverns. Whatever the reason, you’re playing this game because you want or need to do one thing: cook with monster parts.

Romancing a Stranger: Someone in the tavern makes eye contact with you, and their gaze lingers a little longer than you’d expect. Your co-workers urge you on, and make every excuse they can to send you over to talk to the lovely Stranger.

Off the Clock: Where do you go after the tables are wiped down? Who’s heard every story you have about the worst people who have walked in?

A Friendly Tavern Brawl: Every tavern has its rowdy patrons. You know they’re good at heart, but sometimes when the ale is flowing and spirits are high, things get a little out of hand. How do you handle the situation?

Festival Day: Your town has a few festival days a year, and they’re some of your busiest. How do you prepare? How do you handle the influx of people?

A Bard's Tale: During your time as an adventurer, you accomplished many daring deeds. In fact, some of those deeds are retold to this day by travelling bards.

A Glass of the Gods: Sometimes a troubled adventurer will come in, looking for answers, and letting them drink themselves into oblivion is the wrong answer. It's up to you  to  mix the perfect drink, something perfect for the situation that can push the adventurer to look inside and find the answer on their own.

A Distinguished Guest: Someone important is in town, and they’re already almost here. The tavern has to be at its best for this guest. After all, they might leave a generous tip.

In the Rhythm of Things: Time passes. Rough edges are sanded down. Before you know it, life in town has become like breathing. You gather in your favorite part of the tavern and wonder where the time has gone.

New games for this crowdfunding campaign:

Shields and Skillets: Enchantments are volatile things, especially when they sit unused for long periods of time. You have to let go of your old equipment before it’s too late.

Shelter from the Storm: Early one morning, you feel it. A familiar ache in your bones. Something is coming.

A Funeral: As an adventurer, you said farewell many times. Sometimes it was only temporary. Most of the time, it wasn't. 

Retracing: You've left town for something: an errand, a vacation, an old favor. Suddenly, you recognize the route you're traveling. You've been this way before, during your adventuring days.

A Fleeting Memory: Something about the way the fire flickers lingers in your mind. The smell of hay and clover brings a tear to your eye. A fading memory resurfaces.

A Familiar Face: An old friend you haven't seen in a while has stopped by. Why not show them around the town and the tavern?

#dnd gn

[bisexualshakespeare]

How to Tell If That Post of Advice Is AI Bullshit

Right, I wasn't going to write more on this, but every time I block an obvious AI-driven blog, five more clutter up the tags. So this is my current (April 2024) advice on how to spot AI posts passing themselves off as useful writing advice.

No Personality - Look up a long-running writing blog, you'll notice most people try to make their posts engaging and coming from a personal perspective. We do this because we're writers and, well, we want to convey a sense of ourselves to our readers. A lot of AI posts are straight-forward - no sense of an actual person writing them, no variation in tone or text.

No Examples - No attempts to show how pieces of advice would work in a story, or cite a work where you could see it in action. An AI post might tell you to describe a person by highlighting two or three features, and that's great, but it's hard to figure out how that works without an example.

Short, Unhelpful Definitions - A lot of what I've seen amount to two or three-sentence listicles. 'When you want to write foreshadowing, include a hint of what you want foreshadowed in an earlier chapter.' Cool beans, could've figured that out myself.

SEO/AI Prompt Language Included - I've seen way too many posts start with "this post is about..." or "now we will discuss..." or "in this post we will..." in every single blog. This language is meant to catch a search engine or is ChatGPT reframing the prompt question. It's not a natural way of writing a post for the average tumblr user.

Oddly Clinical Language - Right, I'm calling out that post that tried to give advice on writing gay characters that called us "homosexuals" the entire time. That's a generative machine trying to stay within certain parameters, not an actual person who knows that's not a word you'd use unless you were trying to be insulting or dunking on your own gay ass in the funniest way possible.

Too Perfect - Most generative AI does not make mistakes (this is how many a student gets caught trying to use it to cheat). You can find ways to make it sound more natural and have it make mistakes, but that takes time and effort, and neither of those are really a factor in these posts. They also tend to have really polished graphics and use the same format every time.

Maximized Tags (That Are Pointless) - Anyone who uses more than 10 one-word tags is a cop. Okay, fine, I'm joking, but there's a minimal amount of tags that are actually useful when promoting a post. More tags are not going to get a post noticed by the algorithm, there is no algorithm. Not everyone has to use their tags to make snarky comments, but if your tags look like a spambot, I'm gonna assume you're a spambot.

No Reblogs From The Rest of Writblr - I'm always finding new Writblr folks who have been around for awhile, but every real person I've seen reblogs posts from other people. We've all got other stuff to do, I'm writing this blog to help others and so are they, the whole point of tumblr is to pass along something you think is great.

While you'll probably see some variation in the future - as people get wise to obviously generated text, they'll try to make it look less generated - but overall, there's still going to be tells to when something is fake.

I don't have any real advice for what to do about this (other than block those blogs, which is what I do). Like most AI bullshit, I suspect most of these blogs are just another grift, attempting to build large follower counts to leverage or sell something to in the future. They may progress past these tattletale features, but I'm still going to block them when I see them. I don't see any value in writing advice compiled from the work of better writers who put the effort in when I can just go find those writers myself.

[bisexualshakespeare]

Another thing is that when this aggression started, we were so worried about winter and how displaced people in tents will survive it. Earlier this week the temperature in Gaza hit 38 degrees (100 Fahrenheit) and we are now wondering how will displaced people survive the heat in those tents.

#palestine

[bisexualshakespeare]

Here's the first song from the Memora Wanderer OST - #1 Tranquil Journey!

#music

[bisexualshakespeare]

I saw a post a long time ago where someone joined a fandom because they saw people were having fun on her dash and there were a lot of poc in the fanart. They start listening (i think it was a podcast) and find out that few to none of the characters were canonically non-white and in fact there was some mishandling of race within the canon. This person then blamed people in fandom for i guess incorrectly advertising to her?

I just want to say: fandom is not advertisement. Fandom is not endorsement. If you are considering joining a fandom because people seem to be having fun on your dash, that's great! Talk to them about it! I'm sure if this person reached out to any one of the artists they would have gladly explained that they purposefully draw them in defiance of canon because they or people they love are poc!

If you are joining 911 because it's on your dash, you gotta remember it is a network tv show. It relies on large swaths of america tuning in through cable. There is copaganda. There is racism. I know it seems like it but you are not actually seeing the whole show in gifs.

#fandom

[bisexualshakespeare]

From artist Saif (@saif0_0ali) on Instagram + Tumblr

“Love is stronger than your hate.”

Written in arabic calligraphy over colors of 🏳️‍🌈 the pride flag and two men kissing.

“It’s not a sin to be yourself.”

Written above an image of a dark skin bearded person wearing hijab, make-up and a nostril piercing. Colors of the 🏳️‍⚧️  trans pride flag in the background. A slur for ‘Trans Woman’ written on their cheek. It can also be read to mean ‘Intersex’ or ‘Third Gender’. (In this context it could be a way of reclaiming this slur)

“Trans pride.”

Written in arabic calligraphy with an image of a smiling trans masculine person with mastectomy scars that bleed the colors of 🏳️‍⚧️  trans pride flag.

“God does not make mistakes.”

Written in arabic calligraphy with the image of two women in hijab holding each other closely with colors of 🏳️‍🌈 the pride flag in the background.

This artist’s Tumblr @saif0ali + Intagram @saif0_0ali

The artist’s shop here ( https://www.redbubble.com/people/LLuz/shop )

#digital art #accessible art

[bisexualshakespeare]

I've always had chronic fatigue. I remember being twelve, and an adult mentioned how I couldn't possibly know how tired they felt because adulthood brought levels of exhaustion I couldn't imagine. I thought about that for days in fear, because I couldn't remember the last time I didn't feel tired.

Eventually I came to terms with the fact that I was just tired, and I couldn't do as many things as everyone else. People called me lazy, and I knew that wasn't true, but there's only so many times you can say "I'm tired" before people think it's an excuse. I don't blame them. When a teenager does 20 hours of extracurriculars every week and only says "I'm too tired" when you ask them to do the dishes, it's natural to think it's an excuse. At some point, I started to think the same thing.

It didn't matter that I could barely sit up. It was probably all in my head, and if I really wanted to, I could do it.

When I learned the name for it, chronic fatigue, I thought wow, people that have that must be miserable, because I am always tired and I cannot imagine what it would feel like if it were worse.

Spoiler alert, if you've been tired for a decade, it's probably chronic fatigue.

Once I figured that out though, I thought of my energy as the same as everyone else's, just smaller in quantity. And that might be true for some people, but I've figured out recently that it absolutely isn't true for me.

I used to be like wow I have so much energy today I can do this whole list for sure! And then I'd do the dishes and have to lay down for 2 hours. Then I'd think I must gave misjudged that, I didn't have as much energy as I thought.

But the thing is - I did have enough energy for more tasks, I just didn't go about them properly.

With chronic fatigue, your maximum energy is obviously much smaller than the average person's. Doing the dishes for you might use up the same percentage of energy that it takes to do all the daily chores for someone else.

If someone without chronic fatigue was to do all the daily chores, they would take breaks. Because otherwise, they're sprinting a marathon for no reason and it would take way more energy than necessary. We have to do the same.

Put the cups in the dishwasher, take a break. Put the bowls in, take a break. So on and so forth. This may mean taking breaks every 2-5 minutes but afterwards, you get to not feel like you've run a marathon while carrying 4 people on your back.

Today, I had a moderate amount of energy. Under my old system of go till you drop, I probably could have done most of the dishes and wiped off the counter and then been dead to the world for the rest of the day.

Under the new system, I scooped litter boxes, cleaned out the fridge, took the trash out, cleaned the stove, and wiped off the counter and did all the dishes. And after all that, I still had it in me to make a simple dinner, unload the dishwasher, and tidy the kitchen.

It was complete and utter insanity. Just because I sat down whenever I felt myself getting more tired than I already was.

All this to say, take fucking breaks. It's time to unlearn the ceaseless productivity bullshit that capitalism has shoved down our throats. Its actively counterproductive. Just sit down. Drink some water. Rest your body when it needs to rest.

There will still be days where there is nothing to do but rest, and days where half a load of dishes is absolutely the most I can do. But this method has really helped me minimize those, which is so incredibly relieving.

[bisexualshakespeare]

For U.S. folks, a guide to state supreme court races in your state this year: https://boltsmag.org/your-state-by-state-guide-to-the-2024-supreme-court-elections/

These downballot races can have a huge impact on life in your state. If you have judges on the ballot this year, please read up on the race!

[bisexualshakespeare]

A video that shows the Ao3 homepage with the user not logged in. The narrator says, "This is what Ao3 looks like when you don't have an account."

The background changes so that Ao3 is in dark mode (Reversi) and the narrator says, "This is what it can look like when you do have an account."

Upbeat music begins to play and the video shows the homepage of Ao3 with various different skins applied. Each skin is listed below.

Peachy Keen site skin

Glowy Dark Mode site skin

Rainbow site skins (light and dark)

Pink and Green Frog-Themed site skin

Game Changer site skin

Minimalist (purple) site skin

Art Deco Light Mode site skin

unpublished site skin that is inspired by Simply Twilling

Dark Mode Galaxy-Themed site skin

If you don't yet have an account and you want one, go to the Ao3 homepage (by tapping on the site name at the top of the page) and tap on the Get Invited! button.

You need to provide an email address in order to get an account. This should be your own address and one that you can access. Your email is the only way that Ao3 will ever contact you. I recommend not using a school or work email address to sign up for Ao3.

Invitations are sent in batches, and they're currently sending out 6000 per day. They limit how many they send in an effort to reduce spam on the site. You can see where you are on the waitlist by entering your email address on this page. Right now, the wait time is about 11 days.

You can still read fic on the site without an account, but you need to have an account to change the site's appearance, to post a fic of your own, to save bookmarks of fics and various other things. You can leave kudos and comments without an account, but your kudos will be listed as guest. Once you get an account, it will list your username instead.

#lil ao3 ad lol

[bisexualshakespeare]

what’s the pink they put in pink lemonade that makes it so poppin

#tumblr classic

[bisexualshakespeare]

[ID: screencap from willow 2022 of airk, looking at elora. superimposed text reads: wwow youre gorgeous. ive never wanted to fumble someone more in my life, mind if i sit here and look up at you with big puppydog eyes.? /end ID]

#actual quote #airk tanthalos #willow 2022 #text post

[bisexualshakespeare]

in 2015 I needed a job really bad for reasons not worth getting into. i was living in ohio for like 6 months & i just applied at every place within a 30 minute drive from me and i got a call from the local Game Stop mere minutes after submitting the online app, which was obviously a red flag but I wasn’t in the position to be picky.

so they tell me when to show up for orientation & I get there the day-of but the store is closed & locked. i text the manager & he says back “oh yeah. i manage two Game Stops and open them alternate days.”

apparently the Game Stop I originally applied to is open Mondays Wednesdays Fridays and the other one is open Sundays Tuesdays Thursdays Saturdays.

They’re 15 minutes apart. I don’t ask whether it would make sense to just have one store locally that is open daily, bc maybe the guy knows something I don’t.

So I get to the other Game Stop and walk in and it seems like there’s no one working there. There’s just a single woman in there wearing an ankle length leather trench coat. She didn’t greet me when I came in & she’s just browsing.

After ten minutes I ask her if she’s seen any employees and she’s like “oh I’m an employee.” She’s not wearing a name tag on the trench coat.

I tell her I’m here for training and she tells me the manager hasn’t come in yet. “he falls asleep playing xbox all the time but if he’s on live we can try pinging him to wake him up.”

I play Xbox and that absolutely doesn’t sound like a thing you can do in the way she’s describing it but once again maybe she knows something I don’t.

I ask if we have an Xbox that we can use to “ping” him and she says “yeah the one in the back we play on.”

She has an English accent by the way, a very specific & posh one which usually wouldn’t be relevant but we’ll get there.

So before she leads me to the Xbox-in-the-back she goes “oh damn. our internet has actually been down all morning, I forgot. We need to call the provider and have them come out and fix it. Can you do that?”

Can I call an unnamed internet provider and schedule them to come do service at a business where I don’t even technically work yet? Idk. She gives me their number and I call them and they put me on hold.

People are walking in and she’s not greeting them. She keeps browsing and people assume like I did that she’s another customer so they’re coming up to the counter where I’m on hold to ask me for help, and then I have to say I can’t help them and to ask the woman in the trenchcoat, and then she says “we can’t sell you anything. internet’s down.”

this goes on for 30 minutes and every time the store is empty she’s chatting at me and I’m on hold and then a man walks in the door and he says “sorry I fell asleep on live again haahaahaa” so this is the manager and the minute she starts speaking to him she no longer has an English accent which has me confused because it did not sound fake.

It was regionally specific and very natural.

the manager asks what I’m doing and I say I’m on hold with the internet provider and he gives me a thumbs up and walks to the back.

so I ask how long she’s lived in the U.S. and say I’m always interested in the way people can sometimes go in and out of accents and she says “oh I’m American. he asked me to stop doing the accent so I only do it when he’s not here.”

Suddenly I wonder what I’m doing here and I tell her I need to leave and I give no excuse but at this point I didn’t feel like I needed one? She said okay! See you later.

The manager didn’t contact me and that night I got offered some other retail job I jumped on.

Three months later the Game Stop manager texts me and asks if I can cover a shift in an hour and I say back “I don’t think I work there? I left an hour into my training. And we never spoke again.” And he texts back “hahahaha right on.”

And you may think wow, what a strange experience that all was but recently I have spoken to friends who did work at Game Stop and when I tell them this story they don’t even blink. Nothing I say surprises them. I was at the average Game Stop

#this honestly kinda makes me wanna work at game stop #storytime

[bisexualshakespeare]

[bisexualshakespeare]

You know that Chris Fleming line that goes "Call yourself a community organizer even though you're not on speaking terms with your roommates"?

I honestly think every leftist who talks about the "revolution" like Christians talk about the rapture needs to spend a year trying to organize their workplace. Anyone who sincerely talks about building a movement so vast and all-encompassing that it overwhelms all existing power structures needs the dose of humility that comes with realizing they can't even build a movement to get people paid better at a badly run AMC Theaters where everyone already hates the manager.

[bisexualshakespeare]

My contribution to the @bbcmerlin-reversebang this year! I had the pleasure of working alongside the lovely @remaymberme and their story a single thread of fate(tied me to you) <3

Also a shoutout to the ever amazing @feuxx for betaing and helping me through the fest ^_^

#pretty #it glowwwws #merlin #fic recs #no id #fanart

[bisexualshakespeare]

#this is so fuckin cool #digital art

[bisexualshakespeare]

"A century of gradual reforestation across the American East and Southeast has kept the region cooler than it otherwise would have become, a new study shows.

The pioneering study of progress shows how the last 25 years of accelerated reforestation around the world might significantly pay off in the second half of the 21st century.

Using a variety of calculative methods and estimations based on satellite and temperature data from weather stations, the authors determined that forests in the eastern United States cool the land surface by 1.8 – 3.6°F annually compared to nearby grasslands and croplands, with the strongest effect seen in summer, when cooling amounts to 3.6 – 9°F.

The younger the forest, the more this cooling effect was detected, with forest trees between 20 and 40 years old offering the coolest temperatures underneath.

“The reforestation has been remarkable and we have shown this has translated into the surrounding air temperature,” Mallory Barnes, an environmental scientist at Indiana University who led the research, told The Guardian.

“Moving forward, we need to think about tree planting not just as a way to absorb carbon dioxide but also the cooling effects in adapting for climate change, to help cities be resilient against these very hot temperatures.”

The cooling of the land surface affected the air near ground level as well, with a stepwise reduction in heat linked to reductions in near-surface air temps.

“Analyses of historical land cover and air temperature trends showed that the cooling benefits of reforestation extend across the landscape,” the authors write. “Locations surrounded by reforestation were up to 1.8°F cooler than neighboring locations that did not undergo land cover change, and areas dominated by regrowing forests were associated with cooling temperature trends in much of the Eastern United States.”

By the 1930s, forest cover loss in the eastern states like the Carolinas and Mississippi had stopped, as the descendants of European settlers moved in greater and greater numbers into cities and marginal agricultural land was abandoned.

The Civilian Conservation Corps undertook large replanting efforts of forests that had been cleared, and this is believed to be what is causing the lower average temperatures observed in the study data.

However, the authors note that other causes, like more sophisticated crop irrigation and increases in airborne pollutants that block incoming sunlight, may have also contributed to the lowering of temperatures over time. They also note that tree planting might not always produce this effect, such as in the boreal zone where increases in trees are linked with increases in humidity that way raise average temperatures."

-via Good News Network, February 20, 2024

#long post #science #current events