#(i don't think this needs saying; but anyone whose design is used will be credited!)

[gunpowder-arti]

hey guys

so! my 1-year anniversary of hyperfixating on rw is coming up (March 28th) and I want to do something for it (although my adhd ass is pretty bad with deadlines, it's the thought that counts, right?)

as much as I criticize rain world's fanon and fandom, I do stick around for a reason. This might seem a bit backwards, but if i didn't genuinely care about the community, I wouldn't criticize it--I wouldn't engage with it at all.

i am aware that i have been... a bit of a dick, at times (one particular occasion comes to mind), and i hope you all believe me when i say i regret that wholly and fully.

overall, my experience with this fandom has been wonderful. and as such, i am asking you all:

send me your slugcat designs!

i have an idea for a project, but i need your designs. any slugcat, or all of them--although survivor might show up a bit more than the others!

also send me your aus, dynamics, etc. i'm not sure how many i'll manage to show, but i know i'll need at least:

one mentor/apprentice or teacher/student dynamic,

one romantic ship,

and one friendship or familial dynamic

(although, if you want your headcanons to be featured, i would recommend not going too heavy on the shipping, or at least sending in something other than shipping--as much as it would be wrong to not showcase such a big part of the community in what is ultimately a tribute to said community at all, i personally am very, very aro and romance repulsed, and as such somewhat uncomfortable with nearly all ships [or at best tend to favor platonic dynamics], sorry)

you're free to send in iterator designs, too, but i can't guarantee i'll use them! this is a slugcat focused project, and while i might throw in an iterator panel or two, i can't guarantee it. ultimately my vision is very loose for this, simply due to the nature of the thing, haha

(for full transparency: it will be a lyric comic, if you dont want to see your scugs set to my music taste, you are free to scroll on by)

...that's enough rambling! go slug ur cats

#(i don't think this needs saying; but anyone whose design is used will be credited!) #rain world #lore pearl #broadcast pearl #< for collaborative/interactive (?? words are a fuck) stuff like this

[titanrpg]

how i learned ttrpg design, part 3

you can check out part 1 here and part 2 here

as always, this is about my personal experience learning ttrpg design, and i claim no particular expertise or authority on what constitutes "good" game design

3

so far, i've discussed the games i drew on for the start of my ttrpg education. now let's talk about how to improve (when you need to/if you want to). now, i'll say i don't think "improving" is a great way to think about it. i prefer to think about it as "how to be aware of the tools you need to accomplish your design goals"

for some people, the three games i've discussed are plenty for them to get started. these people tend to like experimenting for themselves and then doing more research when they need help. (i fall in this category.) other people may want to read more before starting in earnest. this is also a smart way to go. (obviously you can go overboard with researching so much that you never actually start, but we are far from that place here.) either way, at some point you'll need more information than you currently have.

how do you find the wisdom you seek? the best answer is simply asking for help from people you look up to/trust. but i've never been good at asking for help, so uhhh this post exists

quick story time. i recently visited maryland to go to my partner's sibling's wedding. in a local comic shop's manga section, i saw this book. i was like, oh fun, it's a manga about kids playing a goblin slayer ttrpg.

but then, when i opened the book...

mechanics!!

it's a TTRPG!! i don't know anything about goblin slayer, but now i'm combing through this book for cool tech. of note so far: at the end of every round of combat, each player has to make an attrition check. fail that, and your fatigue score goes up. at 4 fatigue, you fall unconscious. at 5, you die. punishes long fights and incentivizes players to find alternate solutions. it uses only d6s. and there are sections of fiction illustrated with beautiful manga art. these choices feel old school to me, but it came out in 2019. now i'm really excited. i'll get to see what japanese osr is like!

to me, this pursuit of ttrpg tech feels like discovering an ancient library and searching through old tomes for the power i seek. and there's an online version of this that anyone can dig through for ttrpg tech: osr blogs

old school renaissance/revival, or "osr," as far as i understand it, is a ttrpg genre/design paradigm, typically along the lines of old school d&d. i'm not the best person to explain this, but the way i think about this school of design is it tends to prioritize player skill over character skill. it's the difference between solving a puzzle and rolling to solve a puzzle. because of this, they often make really cool mechanics for challenging players that don't just amount to "roll a 20, do the thing." they also tend to share their thoughts on traditional blogs.

here's an amazing, meticulously catalogued library of keystone OSR posts

by marcia b., @/traversefantasy on twitter, who has an OSR blog of her own using marxist and freudian frameworks for analysis

rise up comus

by josh mcCroo, who's working on a game called his majesty the worm. pretty sure i don't have to say anything else

permanent cranial damage

by ava islam, whose assertion that "Armour Class and Hit Points are the same thing" blew my mind when i was starting out

goblin's henchman

which is where I found the hex flower tech that i adapted for HEXFALL's main mechanic

and one non-OSR blog, that of jay dragon

yes i am a possum creek fangirl. this blog is bananas good. if you haven't read up on playground theory, oh boy you're in for a treat

final takeaway: you never know where you'll find new tools and ideas!

obviously credit people and don't use what's not yours. but have fun and share cool tech with others when you find it!

hope this was helpful <3

p.s. another place that apparently used to have a ton of ttrpg activity was google+. every so often i hear whispers of digital libraries filled with all sorts of salvaged g+ ttrpg treasures. never seen an invite link with my own eyes though. if you hear anything, let me know, will ya?

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #how i learned ttrpg design

[recurring-polynya]

Your thoughts and headcannons on Nemuri Hachigou because I don't think she gets talked about enough, when in reality she's pretty interesting, she's essentially, a blank slate, Mayuri's second chance that I don't think he feels like he deserves. She's Nemu but she isn't and I think people(especially Mayuri) forget that a lot, that's a fascinating position to be in.

Puttin’ this under a cut because I’m gonna say some unkind things about Mayuri and I do not want to cause any distress to the many lovely people on this website who delight in his horrible antics.

This is not so much a headcanon so much as a thing I came up with for fanfiction purposes, but it’s all I got.

Right. So, like I said, I despise Mayuri. I just hate him. I understand that he appeals to some people, but I strongly dislike the dude and go to exorbitant lengths to avoid him ever appearing in my fanfic.

Additionally, I do not vibe with Nemu 7. She registers as not-a-person for me, she’s basically an extension of Mayuri himself. Don’t get me wrong, I find Mayuri’s treatment of her to be vile and I wish someone would take her away from him, but she comes off as very robotic to me. She is conscious, but she is not an independent being, if that makes sense. She is not a real girl. It’s funny that Mayuri keeps talking about how advanced she is, because clearly he means only her cognitive and fighting abilities. In terms of recreating a person, she’s incredibly primitive compared to the other mod souls we see. Take Kon, for example, who has a fairly limited powerset, but is never presented as less of a soul than any of the other characters. An even more interesting example is Ururu and Jinta. Ururu is described as being older than Jinta, and she is clearly “less human” than him-- she has less affect, she shifts into a distinct “attack” mode, etc, which implies that Jinta represents advances in mod soul technology. It’s notable that Urahara and Tessai and even Renji, in the canon scene where he protects the Shouten kids, never treats them as anything less than people. The contrast with the way Mayuri treats Nemu is stark. He likes that her feelings and personality are limited, he sees this as a feature.

I was completely unmoved by the entire chapter where Nemu died. Her sacrifice did not come across to me as anything indicating growth or humanity-- in every battle she's ever been in, she nearly dies because Kurotsuchi tells her to. She simply prioritizes Mayuri over herself. She always has. It’s simply the logical extension of her programming. A lot of people say they would have preferred Nemu to live and Mayuri to die and for sure I would have *preferred* that, but I have never seen Nemu as enough of a character to be worth rooting for. Like, at least Uryuu would have gotten some satisfaction form killing his clown ass, and that might have convinced me for at least half a second that he actually was on the side of the Quincy.

Caveat: if some talented fanficcer wants to write a short novel on Nemu discovering her humanity etc etc, I’m all for it, I’m just saying that canon hasn’t given us anything to suggest she would do more than just shut down without Mayuri to tell her what to do.

Onto Nemuri 8. I can’t believe they let Mayuri have another one. It makes my blood boil. The dude is an on-screen abuser and Kubo had the gall to try to make me feel sorry feel him (I did not) and then gave him another one.

So, I took her away from him.

I mentioned earlier that I go to great lengths to keep Mayuri the hell out of my fanfic, and usually the way I do that is to have my characters go through Akon whenever they have to deal with Squad 12. I think I started doing this because Akon is sort of weirdly familiar with Renji and Rukia in the TYBW, but I have projected all over him and he’s mine now. The way I assume Squad 12 functions, based on my career in scientific programming, is that Mayuri is like a primary investigator-- he's the Big Ideas guy and he spends a lot of time doing wholly self-directed research. He’s the face of Squad 12, so he has to go talk to the Captain-Commander and beg for money and defend blowing things up, but when it comes to science stuff, he does what he wants. Nemu is the lieutenant, and I think she handles most of the usual lieutenanting-- paperwork, meetings, etc., but I think Mayuri takes up a lot of her time by using her as a personal lab assistant on his wacky projects. There's nothing wrong with this, but I think in a lot of squads, the lieutenant is responsible for the day-to-day running of the squad and spends a lot of time dealing with their subordinates and other lieutenants. Nemu, instead, focuses on her captain. Now, the rest of the Gotei counts on Squad 12 for a lot actually-- gigai, Hollow tracking, Dangai monitoring, etc. etc. From the point of view of most science people, this stuff is mundane-- it’s all application, not development, and all the difficulty is in the twitchy little details. It’s frustrating and it’s unrewarding and you never get credit for it, and it is vitally important. There is a certain kind of science professional that makes a career out of this. They usually have master's degrees instead of PhDs, and they are usually tragically underpaid and underappreciated for what they do. In the real world, without these people, you wouldn’t have mass vaccination sites or weather data on your phone or cute li’l robots landing on other planets. In Bleach, these are the people keeping soul reapers alive in the field. And in my mind, this is Akon’s department.

So here’s the headcanon:

After Nemu’s death, Mayuri has so much sad clown pain about it that he wants another robot child poste-haste, but can’t bring himself to do the actual work, so he shoves it off onto Akon, with a list of the design specs he wants. The last one was pretty good, Akon can handle a few minor upgrades, it doesn’t need his personal hand in it. Thinking about going through all that work again just pisses him off, honestly. What a waste!

And Akon's like, yeah, cool, fine. It was heavily implied that he did a lot of the work on Nemu 7, it's just a matter of digging out his old notes and cleaning out some vats.

Except that, right around the same time, Rukia and Renji decide to have a baby.

Babies are super rare in the Gotei, and it’s not like those stuffy nobles are gonna let Akon look at their precious offspring. But Rukia is a rank weirdo, and Akon is their pal, so she’s always like “I hear they have these things in the Living World where you can pee on a stick and tell if you’re pregnant, can you make me one?” and Akon’s brain goes, “Wow, what even is the first detectable sign of a newly formed soul, this is very interesting.” So, at the same time he’s trying to grow a new and improved Nemu, he’s got access to the developing fetus of two captain-class shinigami. So when he has to pick between eight good candidate embryos to move to the next vat, he picks… not the one with the strongest reiatsu signature, like they did last time, but the one whose reiatsu looks the most like a real baby.

Akon reminds me of a lot of programmers I know, so I always sort of headcanon him as particularly interested in whatever passes for programming in Squad 12, and I think he takes special interest in revamping Nemu’s artificial intelligence system, which is primarily based on taking in information about the world and building up a realistic personality based on people she observes. In particular, it gives extra weight to “people who resemble her”. Nemu 7 was raised by Squad 12, so she came up very Squad 12, just like Mayuri wanted. Unfortunately, toddler Hachigou Nemuri’s algorithm unexpectedly decides that she has much more in common with toddler Abarai Ichika than any of the adult soul reapers around her.

Nemuri 8 is a very successful sample in terms of power and intelligence but she’s also very boisterous, and the rest of Squad 12 is like “Akon do something” so Akon takes drastic measures: he asks Renji for parenting advice. Distressingly, Renji is full of useful ideas like “tire her out” and “only fight the important battles” and “we’re signed up for baby yoga, you wanna start comin’ to baby yoga? Your back is gonna thank you.”

Akon didn't mean to let them hang out so much, but Ichika is a very useful data point and also if he takes Nemuri over to the Abarai house, the girls will entertain themselves (i.e. chew on each other) long enough for him to have a beer with Renji and Rukia and honestly my man really needs that beer.

I don’t think Akon thinks of himself as Nemu’s dad past the first time when she calls him ‘Daddy’ and he corrects her (she only did it because that’s what Ichika calls Renji, very predictable quirk of her programming). She’s just a work project. She’s not even his project, she’s Mayuri’s project, he’s just handling the little details. Fathering just happens to be an adjacent field of study that he’s found to contain a number of very useful best practices.

I would prefer not to get into the detail of the physical abuse that Mayuri uses against Nemu 7, but I would like to think that Akon finds ways to protect Nemuri 8 from the same, or barring that, maybe this is what finally drives Akon to murder Kurotsuchi and become Squad 12 captain himself.

Other Nemuri Headcanons:

Her favorite book is Rejection of the Twin Fishes!, Captain Ukitake’s posthumously published children’s book.

She prefers to be called “Nemuri” over “Nemu.”

Nemuri’s second favorite person in Squad 12 after Akon is Rin, because he always has candy. Rin actually likes having someone to share his hobby with and helps her make a World of the Living Snack Bucket List. When other shinigami come in for gigai, Nemuri constantly tries to con them into bringing something back for her.

Rukia teaches her to cuss, but tells her never to do it around Akon. Nemuri never actually cusses around anyone, but really enjoys having Forbidden Knowledge.

Speaking of Forbidden, she is mildly obsessed with Urahara, even though she’s never met him. She’s constantly on the lookout for thumbprints of his work in modern Squad 12 technology.

The one thing she does have in common with Mayuri is an absolutely batshit personal aesthetic. She starts painting her face as a tween and is somewhat inconveniently both into piercings and inflatable outfits.

The true proof that she has surpassed her predecessor, at least in terms of humanity, is that she is able to learn the name of her zanpakutou.

Oh, if you want to read any of my fanfics with Nemuri, here's one where she and Ichika play football and here's one where she tries to con Byakuya into buying her shaved ice. I really like writing Nemuri hanging out with Byakuya because I think an adult man who navigates social settings via rigid system of etiquette and class hierarchy and a small child with a pile of Markov chains for a brain would be natural friends.

#nemuri hachigou

[bigskydreaming]

I get what you're saying about Deadpool and agree with a lot of it, but I don't think saying his pansexuality does more harm than good is appropriate. That's still peoples' identity no matter how its portrayed, he's still pan rep and you're saying that's harmful.

I can see how you drew that conclusion, and I don’t blame anyone for feeling negatively towards me or what I said there based on that conclusion. But I really don’t think that’s what I’m saying here, so let me try and say it a different way, that maybe does a better job of conveying what I really want to say. After that you can take it however you want - I mean, you can do that now anyway, its not up to me, I’m just saying at least you’ll have two takes on which to base whatever takeaway you see in this.

I believe identity, in terms of gender, race and/or sexuality is immutable. And any time I talk about identity along those lines, its with this perspective in mind. It’s….who we are, at a fundamental level that can’t be deliberately engineered or changed. To a degree where even arguments of whether it “should” be changed are irrelevant and shouldn’t even be entertained. Its a moot point. Who you are is who you are. If you are a man, you are a man, no matter what society has to say on the matter. Whatever your sexuality is does not change even if you change the labels you use to describe it at various times in your life. Etc.

So when I said “does more harm than good”, I was speaking very specifically of the way Deadpool’s pansexuality is written. NOT his pansexuality, or pansexuality itself. Because I CAN’T say that’s harmful, because I literally do not believe that’s an opinion I or anyone is even capable of having, not in any way that actually matters. Like, I could say it, but it wouldn’t make it true. Pansexuality, any sexuality, it just is what it is. It can’t be harmful or good, because those are completely arbitrary and irrelevant ways of describing something that doesn’t exist to BE harmful or good.

But I can see how I could have worded that more carefully, to make that distinction clearer.

My train of thought all day, my focus for these last several posts, has been entirely about the difference between writers writing identities and certain experiences solely to write people who have these identities and who’ve had these experiences….versus writers writing identities or experiences with a purpose, to get something out of it, with a goal in mind - whether this is just to get praised for being progressive, or because they think they’re educating people or doing something progressive or beneficial to people.

So this was just more of that train of thought, and along those lines. What I was criticizing was never Deadpool’s pansexuality, or having him be pansexual or his existence as pansexual representation. My criticism is of writers who write his pansexuality with an agenda in mind, no matter if they’re just doing it for their own career and brownie points, or if they’re doing it out of a misguided sense of social progressivism.

Anything other than a sincere and genuine interest in writing Deadpool because they want to write the stories of a character who is among other things, also pansexual. This doesn’t mean they can never write stories about his pansexuality specifically - I’m simply speaking of the difference in writing Deadpool with his PERSONHOOD centered in their mind and their priorities, versus writing Deadpool with his pansexuality centered instead.

And it goes back to what I was saying earlier, about treating certain experiences or aspects of a character’s identity as a TOOL, as something you use with a purpose instead of writing those experiences or identities simply to write stories about a character with that identity or having lived those experiences.

So my issue is not Deadpool’s pansexuality, and never was, and never will be. It’s about the decision of various writers, both professional and fanfic, to treat his pansexuality as a tool, and use it for specific purposes.

Because the second they do that, the second THEY treat it as a tool instead of an immutable, unchangeable, fundamental part of who he is….then by THEIR design….it becomes something whose merit is as much judged by what they do with it and how well they do it. Because they sent the message, wrote it into the story, that ‘Hey, there is a point to my “using” this, there is an endgoal, an agenda, a Reason.’

And at that point, like any tool, it can cut both ways. Just like fire is a tool - if you’re in a dark cave and can’t see and the only thing you have is the means to make a fire, that fire can be the tool you need, it can light the cave up, help you navigate. But I mean….if you end up setting your own hair on fire, it’s pretty fucking safe to say that tool has now officially done more harm than good, even though you set out with the best of intentions when using it. 

Same thing here, when you treat a person’s identity as a tool for your story to use one way or another. It can do what you  intended, be received the way you meant it to be, or it can have an opposite and equal effect if they fuck it up. Which, more likely than not, they will….because their willingness to treat it as a tool in the first place just showcases their priorities are probably not in the right place.

The second you sit down and write a story where a character’s sexuality exists in your mind in order for you to tell a story to educate people about that sexuality rather than just to tell a story where that character is that sexuality just like they’re the gender or race they are….you’ve gone from writing a story that CAN’T be judged on the basis of that character’s sexuality, because that character’s sexuality DOES NOT EXIST TO BE JUDGED….to writing a story that’s SUPPOSED to be judged based on how well that character’s sexuality served the purpose you had for giving them that identity.

And it is on that basis and ONLY that basis that I say I think the way Deadpool’s pansexuality is written in both canon and a lot of fanfic does more harm than good. Because I do not believe most of the people writing him are doing so in a sincere attempt to write a pansexual character, but rather with certain goals in mind. Some with the intention of getting credit for writing a non-straight character, being progressive and ‘cutting edge’ or even just controversial, and even some with the intention of him being read as pansexual representation rather than being read as a character first and foremost. And thus with how well or not he serves as pan rep ONLY being up for debate because they essentially ASKED people to have an opinion on something that really should transcend opinions and just…be. Making it less about him and more about ‘so how did I do?’ And there and only there, is where my opinion on their ‘use’ of him and his sexuality lies, with that opinion being not good, dude, if your goal is to represent pansexual people and their experiences, you’re doing shitty jobs because all I’m seeing here is stereotypes and negative reinforcement.

Anyway, I hope clarifying my words adds something to what I said previously, and I apologize for failing to do so previously.

#Anonymous