prokopetz

[prokopetz]

An incomplete list of extremely specific yet publicly innocuous kinks mentioned in the notes:

aerial videos of highway overpasses

airline preflight safety announcements

armchairs

barbecue tongs clacking against a grille

cross stitch patterns with large blocks of solid colour

freshly laundered denim

geometric floor tiles

maple syrup

popping balloons

raincoats

receiving eye exams

RGB computer lighting

rolling large numbers of dice all at once

the smell of peanut butter

the sound of documents being printed

stirring soup

People tend to throw out the phrase "extremely specific kinks" as though that inherently implies something transgressive, but in my experience, the overwhelming majority of extremely specific kinks are so innocuous that you could see them in public and not even clock them. For every person who can only get off to having their nipples electrocuted, there are a dozen who are volcanically aroused by seeing their partner wearing one specific pair of socks.

#nomenclature #sex mention

[prokopetz]

Iain M Banks: What is a weapon? What does it mean to use a weapon? Can a person be a weapon? Is there a difference between using a weapon and being a weapon? Is this difference meaningful? What kind of person would choose to be a weapon?

Also Iain M Banks: Here's a sapient starship with a scat fetish.

#media #literature #iain m banks #the culture #worldbuilding #unsanitary

[prokopetz]

Well, it's going from doing niche fanart of a popular retro bullet-hell shooter about cute girls blowing shit up to making your own retro bullet-hell shooter about cute girls blowing shit up, for one.

(I guess the connection is more obscure if you're principally familiar with the Touhou franchise via secondary media and the fact that its main thing is being a series of retro bullet-hell shooters about cute girls blowing shit up isn't what springs most readily to mind!)

It's always fun to see people manage to turn niche interests into serious undertakings, particularly if you've been passingly familiar with their work for a long time. Like, I'll see a post with a username I recognise cross my dash and think "hey, that's the person who used to draw pictures of Patchouli Knowledge with a dick the size of her forearm like a decade ago – I should go see what they're up to these days", and it turns out the answer is "their solo-developed bullet hell shooter about cute android girls is trending 100% positive on Steam".

#tumblr #blogging #social media #fandom #gaming #video games #game development #penis mention #swearing

[prokopetz]

"It's better to do one thing well than two things poorly" is definitely a solid rule in game design, but I have to admit a weakness for old console games that were basically two different games stacked on top of each other. Zelda II: The Adventures of Link (top-down exploration overworld which becomes a side-scrolling action platformer in dungeons), Blaster Master (side-scrolling metroidvania which becomes a top-down arcade shooter in dungeons), and The Guardian Legend (top-down action RPG which becomes a vertical shoot-'em-up in dungeons) are all titles I remember fondly, but I think my favourite example of the type is the Super Nintendo version of Jurassic Park, which has a brightly coloured Legend of Zelda style top-down overworld, then when you go inside buildings it becomes a survival-horror first person shooter. It's a game-mechanically incomprehensible choice which actually makes perfect sense in terms of emulating the source material, and it's a small disappointment to me that nobody's ever made a serious effort at elaborating on it.

#gaming #video games #game design #violence mention

[prokopetz]

That may well be the most execrable bit of onomastic wordplay I have ever seen, and I think I love it.

#media #comics #webcomics #kill six billion demons #ksbd #wordplay #puns #nameology

[prokopetz]

I'm asking you because I've seen people ask you similar questions before. Why are kobolds, as a fantasy creature, so nebulous?

Generally when people say orc, goblin, elf, dwarf, werewolf, vampire etc. a person can have a pretty solid idea of what traits that animal will have. I guess because they're usually copying that species from the same similar source works?

What happened to kobolds? I used to know them as a kind of german folklore creature, but then also as a short lizard person, and most recently there's been Dungeon Meshi, which gives the name kobold to anthropomorphic dogs.

Well, the trick is that none of these terms have a standard definition. In folklore, the words "elf", "dwarf", "gnome", "troll", "goblin", "pixie", etc. are used more or less interchangeably – all of these words might refer to the exact same folkloric critter, and conversely, the same word might be used to refer to several completely different folkloric critters, even within the same body of regional folklore, to say nothing of how their usage varies across different regions and over time.

Literally the only reason any of these terms have "standard" definitions in modern popular culture is because one specific piece of media got mega-popular and everybody copied it. For example, Tolkien is responsible not only for the popular media stereotypes of elves and dwarves: he's responsible for popularising the idea that "elf" and "dwarf" are separate kinds of creatures to begin with. Similarly, while Bram Stoker's Dracula isn't solely responsible for cementing the idea of what a vampire is in popular culture, it did standardise what vampire magic can do, and it helped cemented the idea that a "vampire" and a "werewolf" are different beasties, which hasn't always been the case.

So the short answer is that there's just never been a mega-popular work about "kobolds" to provide a standard template for the type. Most modern depictions in Anglophone popular culture ultimately point back to the interpretation set forth by Dungeons & Dragons, but D&D itself has gone back and forth on the whether they're tiny dog-people or tiny lizard-people, with the tiny dog-person version being the earlier of the two, so even folks who are directly cribbing from D&D will vary on this point depending on which particular edition they're name-checking.

#media #tropes #folklore #popular culture #kobolds #gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #dungeons & dragons #d&d #violence mention

[prokopetz]

If we're gesturing toward D&D, gnomes are another case of inconsistency over time there. Early on, they're depicted as short, big-nosed nature lovers, but late in the Second Edition they take a hard swerve to being a monoculture of wacky inventors owing to the breakout popularity of the Dragonlance campaign setting, then the Third Edition jettisons all of that and turns them into skinny dwarves. I'm not sure what the Fifth Edition thinks it's doing with them, and I have a sneaking suspicion the game's authors aren't 100% sure either!

I'm asking you because I've seen people ask you similar questions before. Why are kobolds, as a fantasy creature, so nebulous?

Generally when people say orc, goblin, elf, dwarf, werewolf, vampire etc. a person can have a pretty solid idea of what traits that animal will have. I guess because they're usually copying that species from the same similar source works?

What happened to kobolds? I used to know them as a kind of german folklore creature, but then also as a short lizard person, and most recently there's been Dungeon Meshi, which gives the name kobold to anthropomorphic dogs.

Well, the trick is that none of these terms have a standard definition. In folklore, the words "elf", "dwarf", "gnome", "troll", "goblin", "pixie", etc. are used more or less interchangeably – all of these words might refer to the exact same folkloric critter, and conversely, the same word might be used to refer to several completely different folkloric critters, even within the same body of regional folklore, to say nothing of how their usage varies across different regions and over time.

Literally the only reason any of these terms have "standard" definitions in modern popular culture is because one specific piece of media got mega-popular and everybody copied it. For example, Tolkien is responsible not only for the popular media stereotypes of elves and dwarves: he's responsible for popularising the idea that "elf" and "dwarf" are separate kinds of creatures to begin with. Similarly, while Bram Stoker's Dracula isn't solely responsible for cementing the idea of what a vampire is in popular culture, it did standardise what vampire magic can do, and it helped cemented the idea that a "vampire" and a "werewolf" are different beasties, which hasn't always been the case.

So the short answer is that there's just never been a mega-popular work about "kobolds" to provide a standard template for the type. Most modern depictions in Anglophone popular culture ultimately point back to the interpretation set forth by Dungeons & Dragons, but D&D itself has gone back and forth on the whether they're tiny dog-people or tiny lizard-people, with the tiny dog-person version being the earlier of the two, so even folks who are directly cribbing from D&D will vary on this point depending on which particular edition they're name-checking.

#media #tropes #folklore #popular culture #kobolds #gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #dungeons & dragons #d&d

[prokopetz]

I'm asking you because I've seen people ask you similar questions before. Why are kobolds, as a fantasy creature, so nebulous?

Generally when people say orc, goblin, elf, dwarf, werewolf, vampire etc. a person can have a pretty solid idea of what traits that animal will have. I guess because they're usually copying that species from the same similar source works?

What happened to kobolds? I used to know them as a kind of german folklore creature, but then also as a short lizard person, and most recently there's been Dungeon Meshi, which gives the name kobold to anthropomorphic dogs.

Well, the trick is that none of these terms have a standard definition. In folklore, the words "elf", "dwarf", "gnome", "troll", "goblin", "pixie", etc. are used more or less interchangeably – all of these words might refer to the exact same folkloric critter, and conversely, the same word might be used to refer to several completely different folkloric critters, even within the same body of regional folklore, to say nothing of how their usage varies across different regions and over time.

Literally the only reason any of these terms have "standard" definitions in modern popular culture is because one specific piece of media got mega-popular and everybody copied it. For example, Tolkien is responsible not only for the popular media stereotypes of elves and dwarves: he's responsible for popularising the idea that "elf" and "dwarf" are separate kinds of creatures to begin with. Similarly, while Bram Stoker's Dracula isn't solely responsible for cementing the idea of what a vampire is in popular culture, it did standardise what vampire magic can do, and it helped cement the idea that a "vampire" and a "werewolf" are different beasties, which hasn't always been the case.

So the short answer is that there's just never been a mega-popular work about "kobolds" to provide a standard template for the type. Most modern depictions in Anglophone popular culture ultimately point back to the interpretation set forth by Dungeons & Dragons, but D&D itself has gone back and forth on the whether they're tiny dog-people or tiny lizard-people, with the tiny dog-person version being the earlier of the two, so even folks who are directly cribbing from D&D will vary on this point depending on which particular edition they're name-checking.

#media #tropes #folklore #popular culture #kobolds #gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #dungeons & dragons #d&d

[prokopetz]

My family never went camping anywhere with a giant novelty chess set when I was a kid, but there was the place with one of those modular plastic playground set things that were all the rage in the early 1980s that nobody was allowed to use because it was filled with bees.

Okay, I completely understand that getting time off work can be a Sisyphean ordeal these days, but every time I run into the whole "only rich people go on vacation" discourse I'm thinking surely I'm not the only one whose childhood experience of "going on vacation" was piling everybody into the car and driving for six hours to pay twenty dollars a day for the privilege of setting up some leaky tents on a fifty-foot-by-fifty-foot patch of dirt next to a mosquito-infested pond in a "private campground" whose only standout features were a. an outdoor miniature golf course that hadn't been maintained in twenty years, and b. a truly breathtaking fire ant population.

#life #economics #vacations

[prokopetz]

Well you see minors under 25 years old should not be allowed to get gender reassignment surgery because what if they go to the clinic but instead of giving them a normal penis the nurses mess up and give them the evil penis. That's irreversible

#comics #memes #politics #uk politics #current events #transphobia #penis mention #evil penis mention

[prokopetz]

For the benefit of those demanding links:

It's not quite a clone of The Guardian Legend, but the inspiration is strongly present, so if you're a fan of the classics I'd definitely recommend checking it out.

(If you meant a link for the other thing, figure that part out yourself!)

It's always fun to see people manage to turn niche interests into serious undertakings, particularly if you've been passingly familiar with their work for a long time. Like, I'll see a post with a username I recognise cross my dash and think "hey, that's the person who used to draw pictures of Patchouli Knowledge with a dick the size of her forearm like a decade ago – I should go see what they're up to these days", and it turns out the answer is "their solo-developed bullet hell shooter about cute android girls is trending 100% positive on Steam".

#tumblr #blogging #social media #fandom #gaming #video games #game development #penis mention #swearing

[prokopetz]

It's always fun to see people manage to turn niche interests into serious undertakings, particularly if you've been passingly familiar with their work for a long time. Like, I'll see a post with a username I recognise cross my dash and think "hey, that's the person who used to draw pictures of Patchouli Knowledge with a dick the size of her forearm like a decade ago – I should go see what they're up to these days", and it turns out the answer is "their solo-developed bullet hell shooter about cute android girls is trending 100% positive on Steam".

#tumblr #blogging #social media #fandom #gaming #video games #game development #penis mention #swearing

[prokopetz]

Okay, I completely understand that getting time off work can be a Sisyphean ordeal these days, but every time I run into the whole "only rich people go on vacation" discourse I'm thinking surely I'm not the only one whose childhood experience of "going on vacation" was piling everybody into the car and driving for six hours to pay twenty dollars a day for the privilege of setting up some leaky tents on a fifty-foot-by-fifty-foot patch of dirt next to a mosquito-infested pond in a "private campground" whose only standout features were a. an outdoor miniature golf course that hadn't been maintained in twenty years, and b. a truly breathtaking fire ant population.

#life #economics #vacations

[prokopetz]

@pancakes-after-midnight replied:

did they finish the homestuck game

There's two reasons that can't be it:

The Homestuck Adventure Game Kickstarter was only twelve years ago; and

They already fulfilled all the physical rewards for that ages ago. It's almost exactly the opposite of how it usually goes: instead of fulfilling the core product and running out of money for all the fancy physical add-ons they included to entice high-rolling backers, they delivered the t-shirts and tote bags and plushies and whatnot in a timely fashion and then the core product turned into vapourware.

I just got a shipping notice for fulfillment of physical Kickstarter rewards at an email address I have not used in thirteen years.

I could probably dig through my message history to figure out what the fuck this is about, but at this point I'm inclined to let it be a surprise.

#life #crowdfunding #kickstarter #swearing

[prokopetz]

#tell me youre playing a source engine game without telling me youre playing a source engine game (via @technical-magi)

Look, I'm willing to put up with a lot from a self-consciously meta liminal spaces walking sim. The inappropriate use of ray-traced specular reflection; the clearly asset-flipped androgynous white marble statues; the corridor-that-makes-four-left-turns-without-intersecting-itself bit that was impressive when Duke Nukem 3D did it in 1996 but has since become practically expected – all this I will forgive. However, that wooden ladder I just climbed clearly made the sound of stepping on metal rungs, and this I cannot abide.

#gaming #video games #game design #audio design #sound design #walking sims #peer-reviewing the tags

[prokopetz]

Look, I'm willing to put up with a lot from a self-consciously meta liminal spaces walking sim. The inappropriate use of ray-traced specular reflection; the clearly asset-flipped androgynous white marble statues; the corridor-that-makes-four-left-turns-without-intersecting-itself bit that was impressive when Duke Nukem 3D did it in 1996 but has since become practically expected – all this I will forgive. However, that wooden ladder I just climbed clearly made the sound of stepping on metal rungs, and this I cannot abide.

#gaming #video games #game design #audio design #sound design #walking sims #this is a serious post

[prokopetz]

req'd by @prokopetz

there's a story here i know it

(this is a secondary upload, the first had a spelling error)

text: Great, advice from Mr. "It's Not Cuckoldry If You Fuck Both Of Them"

#calligraphy #sex mention #swearing #perhaps some day i will tell that story #but today is not that day