#thinking about branching out with my text-based memes

[meta-with-anne]

Fan Ethnography

In a conversation a few days ago, my best friend, Rose, asked me what should have been a very simple question. “What fandom do you plan to focus on for class?” 

I knew Rose’s answer before they told me, our fandom discussions have been a highlight of my life every few days for going on four years, and I knew that mine—as it seems so many of my answers in life tend to be—was much less concise. “It doesn’t feel right to pick one, but I already know my lens,” I tell them in an Instagram voice note, an on-going “whenever you’re around” conversation that after about a year of use must amount to hundreds of hours worth of discussion, nearly all involving our fandoms and fan culture at large.

Me 'n Rose (Bestie in Fandom)

I have identified as a “fangirl” for as long as I can remember, long enough that I still can’t always bring myself to use the more widely accepted term of “stan”, long enough that although I was officially too young for an account I have vivid memories of 2013-15 tumblr culture, long enough that despite only being twenty-one I have earned the term “fandom elder” entirely on accident. Maybe I was six? When my older sister Abby introduced me to a song called Fearless, only for me to be paying out the nose to see Taylor sing it live fifteen years later on the Eras Tour. I might’ve been eight, when this madman in a bow tie lit up the hospital room where I was getting cancer treatments. I definitely couldn’t have been older than eleven, though, by then I had a tumblr account, a rotating cast of dedicated fandom OC’s, and a t-shirt reading “Booknerd” with the classic Harry Potter-Percy Jackson-Hunger Games “Big Three” logo right beneath. By the time I entered middle school I was a self declared expert on the television shows Doctor Who, Glee, Star Trek, and Criminal Minds, and had read (or rather listened) to the Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Lord of the Rings series’ over a hundred times through, etv. There’s not much else to do when you’re a chronically ill child, stuck in bed, alone, and desperate to live without having to leave the hospital. 

Me, at 12, thinking my Eleventh Doctor shirt was hot shit

Although it is arguably the least interesting branch I hit while falling down the tree of intersectionality, as the child of lesbian parents, as an ethnically Jewish person, and as a someone who was born—and has spent my entire life—chronically ill and disabled, my identity as a woman has always been the one that has effected my fandom experience the most. (I must acknowledge here that I can only speak to my experience as one cisgender white woman, and that the experiences of those who are women of color, trans, nonbinary, and/or not attracted to men, are invariably going to be not only much different, but in many ways much more difficult than my own.)

For as long as I can remember, I have navigated the world with a hyperawareness of gender-based violence and discrimination, I think it’s impossible not to do so when growing up in an all-girl family, much less one where both my moms had experienced said violence, and where they both used fandom to cope themselves. If there was a time I did not, it was before the age of ten, when I was a victim of CSA at the hands of the medical system and the men who run it; to this day I can’t listen to the particular Lord of the Rings audiobook I had playing when it happened without bursting in to tears. It is imperative, in my view, to understand my hyperawareness of misogyny, to understand my experience with fandom. I came in to fan communities, and spent much of my formative time in them, in the proliferation of the peak NLog (not like other girls) years.

Who run the world? I mean not my family of girls...but it would be cool if we did

Bombarded with memes, texts posts, and a general atmosphere that the only “correct” way to exist as a girl, and especially a young girl (specifically one who was twelve pretending to be fifteen), was to not be like other girls. I must not be “shrill”, overly argumentative, disdainful of the casual sexism that lurks underneath the surface of many fan spaces, I must not bad-mouth venerated male creators (bad mouthing, of course, including questioning why it is so unreasonable to wish for a television writing team with more than a single woman), I must not overtly enjoy things like makeup, but I must still be effortlessly pretty (preferably with blue “orbs” and a red messy bun), I must not like pink (purple is usually fine though), and I must not actually say I am not like other girls, but must look upon their love of Taylor Swift, Gossip Girl, One Direction, and Twilight with disdain all the same.

This avalanche of expectations, reinforced by my online companions in fandom communities, as well as by my “enemies”, those who sent anonymous messages that I should kill myself for committing the great sin of writing a Doctor Who Jack/Nine/Rose “Makeover” one shot, caused an inordinate amount of cognitive dissonance, and was often deeply isolating. In my “real life” girls who shared my interests in clothes, makeup, sewing, and my nearly decade-long membership in Girl Scouts were not interested in talking about X-Men comics, Star Trek Expanded Universe novels, or the latest episode of Doctor Who. In my online world I could get my head bitten off in an instant simply for saying I thought it was unfair “girly girls” were usually portrayed as vapid and dumb in series like Percy Jackson and Harry Potter, and god forbid you have the audacity to like Molly Hooper on Sherlock or worse, Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones. 

An edit I made circa 2015 of my favorite Sansa Stark quote

Over the years my involvement in fandoms have waxed and waned, I’ve been bullied out of three (including anonymous death and rape threats in two and getting doxxed at the tender age of thirteen over one), Doctor Who, Marvel, and Taylor Swift. All for different reasons, but all really coming down to the idea I like “traditionally feminine” things too much, whether that be “pretty” actors like Matt Smith, “feminist” heroes like Captain Marvel, or “girly” albums like Lover. And yet, I keep coming back, I came back after the Game of Thrones finale (and have two over 100k viewed fanfics on AO3 to show for it), I came back for the thirteenth and fourteenth (no, I will not call him fifteen) Doctors, and have even tentatively poked my head back into the Avatar the Last Airbender and Percy Jackson fandoms with their respective renaissances.

BEHOLD A very dumb photo montage I made at the ripe old age of thirteen of aforementioned pretty actor (I still quote "I was called dumbo as a child" on a regular basis)

It’s easy to ask why I continue to subject myself to the “fandom experience”, and in turn to chalk it up to the chemical processes involved in my ADHD, my desperation for a community I can participate in despite my chronic pain and fatigue, or simply the fact I got involved so young I don’t know how to live without them. I think it’s a lot simpler than that, though, I think it’s because I process the world through writing, and because above else I love to write. Whether it be fan fiction, meta, or original works branching off from the questions the media I love continually invites me to ask, writing is my great passion, and the fandoms and franchises I fall in love with are the ones that spark my motivation to write; whether I’m analyzing Taylor Swift lyrics, breaking down the celebrity culture I’ve watched for over a decade in my original novel, or writing fan-fiction where once in a while I still love a good makeover montage. Fandom introduced me to writing, writing became the way I process the world, and in the circular nature of life, writing is what will always bring me back to fandom.  

That was a long post, thanks for reading, here's the best meme anyone has ever made for me (everyone say thank you Rose)

@theofficeofdocmalone

#255fandom

[synnthamonsugar]

savathun for the accurate depictions meme?

Pick a character I am likely to have Feelings/Opinions about and I will give and explain the top five ideas/concepts/etc that I believe are essential to accurately depicting them.

Savathun's also a hard one to get a read on. A lot of these are more in the realm of ... concepts and archetypes and vibes that I strongly associate with Savathun rather than cut-and-dry traits that I headcanon her having, though you can definitely derive specific traits from these.

1. Tricksters. Granted, this is not so much a feeling as it is well-established subtext. Hell, Truth To Power elevated it to TEXT, all-caps, shouted from a megaphone:

Call me Coyote. Call me mantis, serpent, Cagn, Anansi, call me Sri-cleans-his-brother's-stomach.

Which like, okay, at the time I wasn't sure if this was accurate to her characterization, or Savathun trying to paint herself as the protagonist of her story, but now that we know she's stealing the Light and bestowing it to her people ... she is an archetypal trickster-culture hero.

I think that any accurate depiction of Savathun has to take into account those character types and what they represent: moral ambiguity, transgression, boundary-crossing, refashioning, disruption and redistributing power. Getting into and out of hard situations and suffering the consequences of actions, but never for long.

2. Transformation.

SHE GOT INTO A CHRYSALIS AND IS PUPATING INTO A MOTH. DO I HAVE TO SPELL THIS OUT.

But seriously, that every time we've heard from her she's been different - as Sathona, as a young Hive God slain by her brother to become stronger, as an undercover agent infiltrating a society to study their Wish Dragons, as Eris by letter (and the mask slipping and cascading through a set of identities before looping back to Eris again), as Scribe Savat, as a voice beyond an event horizon, as the Taken Queen, as Osiris, as a big honking chunk of amethyst who croons promises to us.

I like to play around with that idea in my written and drawn depictions of her, having her take different forms for different circumstances, be different things to different people. because that feels natural for her at this point.

3. Esoteric and occult practices, especially alchemy, which is best known for its pursuit of immortality and turning base elements into precious ones, but also dealt with the idea of spiritual purification, all of which are relevant to Savathun's story. That it's arguably the most "scientific" field of magic by forming the early foundation of chemistry is also important here.

I'd also like to give a shout out to chaos magic, which is a results-based branch of magic. Its rejection of absolute truth and objective reality, and its self-proof - that it works because the practitioner believes it does, free of any higher powers - feels immensely Savathun-y to me.

So I like to view and write Savathun as a scientist-magician, a witch, an experimentalist, a proof-writer and programmer of realities.

4. Family issues. As I've said before, I can't not read Savathun's departure from the Sword Logic and her sibling(s) as a metaphor for leaving toxic family situations. Especially when she's attempting to forge new, almost-familial bonds with people (Crow, The Guardian) which reads to me in the same sort of way as people getting out of bad family situations trying to find people of their own.

To that end I think she should have a kind of ... yearning, for her first life with her siblings, before the pact, for the world she destroyed, for the bonds forged and annihilated over the years. And for the life she could invent, for the friends and allies she could make.

5. Niceness. Not goodness but niceness. I think Savathun should always be friendly, always be helpful, even when she's doing the worst thing imaginable, because she's doing it for the right reasons. (Source: Savathun.) Her kindness is her menace, and her terror is her familiarity. There is no contradiction to her between being our friend and destroying us.

#destiny #savathun #asks

[phcking-detective]

1-49 for the ask meme. I'm tryna Speedrun some Arthur content

Do you have freckles?

Some! not really on my face, but definitely on my arms and shoulders

Do you drink tea or coffee? How do you take it?

I take my tea and coffee how I take dick (and sex in general): No. I'm allergic 🥰

What was the last song you listened to?

Crazy on You by Heart, I have a playlist that's called "Songs That Feel Electric Blue" and has 80s pop/rock, 00s pop that has the same vibe, the Weeknd, and remixed sea shanties :)

Do you sleep on your back, stomach or side?

Side! I can sleep a little on my back and not on my stomach at all

Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?

No, I need complete silence, darkness, a steady temperature, and nothing else touching me to sleep. No pillows, no partners, no stuffed animals

Do you prefer drawing or writing?

Writing!

What’s your ideal number of blankets to sleep with?

A regular sheet, a knitted blanket, and then on top of that I have a lightweight throw OR a slightly heavier fuzzy throw blanket, and I alternate between which of the two is my Third based on temp

What’s your favorite band/artist?

Apashe; favorite individual artist: Alec Benjamin

Next favorites: Valentino Khan, MISSIO, Glass Animals, Billie Eilish, and grandson; I almost always like Lorde, Bishop Briggs, Florence + the Machine, Two Feet, Imagine Dragons, K. Flay, and Dua Lipa

When is your birthday?

April 4th yeah I'm an Aries, fuck you read my horoscope first 😎

How tall are you?

5' 3" mayyybe 5'4"? got boots and sneakers with 3" lifts tho

What color are your eyes?

Grey-green, honestly more on the grey side

Who are five (or more) people you want to hug right now?

my friends! Elaina, Giq, Ruby, Marn, and Ameera <3

Fears?

water, what lives IN the water, that I'm the evil twin, being completely Alone after my mom dies, that I'll never pass as male

What’s your favorite color?

Red has canonically always been my favorite, but I'm trying to branch out more into pink and blue lol

What’s your favorite season?

Spring

Want any tattoos? What of?

yeah, I need to get a small tattoo of a heart on the inside of my right ankle to honor a promise made to my sister

Want any piercings? Where?

ehhh no not really

and this is where I'd put my dick piercing--IF I HAD ONE!!

Who is the last person you texted?

my mom, always, I don't even need to look that one up lol

Do you have a best friend? How long have you been friends?

uhh my online friends totally count for this right? all of u *kisseys*

What/who do you miss?

my sister (died), previous best friend (stole my money and married a cis man with my exact same name)

How was your day today?

I worked out for half an hour and was an Exhausted Lump for another two hours after that, but I'm about to have pizza delivered so the day has recovered nicely

How much sleep did you get last night?

I need 12 hours of sleep to feel even slightly OK and that is not an exaggeration

Do you believe in aliens?

do I believe? no. maybe. do I fucking hope so?? Yes.

When was the last time you cried? Why?

oh here's a really neat trick! instead of getting upset and crying about your own life, which makes you sad and accomplishes nothing, simply project your trauma onto fictional characters, deliberately read fics about this trauma that will trigger an intense emotional reaction, imagine fictional characters providing Comfort Character with love and support actually, and speedrun therapy within the comfort and safety of your own home!

What’s your favorite decade?

none of them, I'm still holding out for literally ANY DECADE AT ALL that doesn't suck and in which I have actual rights, thanks

What are some seemingly childish things you like?

overly long sleeves, blanket forts, uhh can't really think of much else

What’s your favorite book? Or just one you’ve read a few times?

gonna recommend these: All Systems Red by Martha Wells, Hunger Makes the Wolf by Alex Wells, The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen

How are you, really?

yeah, thanks for asking!!

Does it take you a long time to make decisions?

I make Broad Decisions fairly quickly, ie: Yes I want to do [x]. I then spend two weeks researching every possible facet and detail of [x]

What are you looking forward to in the near future?

the fucking pizza getting here I am so fucking hungry oh my god

What are you looking forward to in the distant future?

probably have top surgery next year; giving myself a year to save up sick leave and not stress about hospitals and bills again after having a hysterectomy just a few months ago

If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go?

Rome. I've been twice and I love it so, so much!

Do you sleep with your door open or closed?

closed, nani the fuck??

What’s your favorite flower?

sunflowers! they remove radiation, they're a beautiful yellow, and my sister loved yellow flowers

Do you currently have a squish?

pretty much all of my coworkers at the library. I wish we hung out more outside of work or even just texted / talking

Do you like your middle name?

haha yeah I just got a name change to make it what I want

Do you prefer dogs or cats?

dogs, but only because of how much I love Chow Chows, which are basically the cats of dogs

Do you have any phobias?

cotton balls. HATE them

Do you stay up late?

I try to go to bed at 10, usually succeed at 11. I consider anything past that to be "late" and past 1 am to be Horrible

Do you like the beach? Do you prefer it sunny or cloudy?

yes, I love the beach but only if I can go swimming in the ocean! it needs to be warm

cloudy, actually. despite the above, I sunburn like a miserable little caucasian-to-lobster :(

What’s your favorite cartoon?

tom & jerry

Tag 5 of your favorite blogs

literally just my friends, yall know who you are

Do you have siblings? How many?

one, she died about four years ago

Who was the last person you said “I love you” to?

my mom

Is there anyone you would die for?

my mom

What do you need when you’re sad?

my mom

also, bread. and money.

Have you memorized your phone number?

as opposed to what??

Who’s someone you can trust with your life?

my mom!!

What does your last text say?

"Hi, I love you! Enjoy your supper <3" from my mom

#can you tell where I ran out of steam? lol #ask #answered #elaina-writes-things #long post

[digimonghostgame]

𝕲𝖆𝖒𝖊 𝕽𝖊𝖛𝖎𝖊𝖜: 𝕬𝖒𝖔𝖓𝖌 𝖀𝖘 (𝕻𝖑𝖆𝖞𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 4/5) 👨‍🚀

𝕯𝖊𝖆𝖗 𝕿𝖚𝖒𝖇𝖑𝖗,

No, this is not a late April Fools gag, I promise! (I've already done one of those!) Earlier this week, I mentioned I wanted to try something new, branching out from my typical posts about Ghost Game episodes and news. I'm a pretty avid gamer, spending most of my spare time, when I'm not watching Digimon or writing posts about it, playing games on my PlayStation 4. (I would have upgraded to PlayStation 5 by now, but online scalpers have made that awfully difficult.) As such, I thought doing some game reviews from time to time would be a good way to add some variety to my blog and mix things up occasionally.

I'm sure if you've spent any time on the internet in the past few years, you've likely seen one of these little armless astronauts looming in your social media news feed. It's been pretty hard to escape the memes surrounding this game, and as such, it didn't take long for me to start getting annoyed at them and grow to hate the game before I had even played it. I never really gave it a chance, passing on the game during the peak of its popularity in late 2020, despite the fact it was free on mobile devices. However, while skimming through the PlayStation Store's catalogue of games the other day, I stumbled upon Among Us there. I was pretty shocked to see it on PlayStation 4, and with its cheap price tag of $4.99, I figured I'd take a gamble and give Among Us a go to see what all the hype and meme culture a few years prior came from.

Among Us is a game in a rather niche genre known as social deduction. In social deduction games, players are assigned hidden roles which usually correlate to two teams based on demeanor, "good" and "evil". Players utilize clues they discover to try and uncover everyone's hidden roles and weed out the "evil" players from the "good". In Among Us, the "good" players, or Crewmates as they're called, work together to complete simple tasks in the form of minigames. These tasks are scattered around various rooms in each level, and the Crewmates must complete all of their tasks in the level to achieve one of a few possible win states. The "evil" players, known as the Impostors, must stop the Crewmates from achieving this task to trigger their win state. They do this by killing Crewmates, one by one, until the Impostors outnumber the crewmates.

It sounds a lot like titles such as Dead By Daylight or Friday The 13th: The Game, but what sets Among Us apart from other asymmetrical multiplayer games are the discussions and debates held between players. If a Crewmate finds the dead body of a fellow Crewmate, they can report it to force a meeting between all players. Crewmates can also force a meeting at any time with the Emergency Meeting button located in the center of the level. During meetings, Crewmates (through a text chat window) will discuss anything suspicious or damning they witnessed while going about completing their tasks, while Impostors have to be on their toes and use their wits to appear innocent to the Crewmates. After the discussion timer expires, a voting timer begins where players must cast votes on who to toss out of the level to their doom. It's pure democracy, so the majority vote is what determines the outcome. Making good decisions and asking tough questions in meetings can lead to another win state; voting off all Impostors or voting off enough Crewmates.

Among Us is a game with a simple gameplay loop and premise that uses social interactions between players to make no two matches feel the same. I think this the biggest factor in why I enjoy it so much, every game of Among Us I've played has played out drastically different from the last, and I've had many hilarious stories unfold during the time I've spent with the game thus far. It's easy to see now why it exploded in popularity in 2020, giving people a place to have social interaction with others in a time where that was scarce. The entertainment value skyrockets for this game if you have some friends to play it with, as you can get together on apps like Discord and Skype, or host PlayStation Party Chat rooms, to do voice chat discussions during meetings. Talking instead of typing your responses out really amplifies the fun, and perfoming stealth kills on your friends as the Imposter is maniacally entertaining, especially if you get away with it! It also helps that there's four different levels to play on and a really nice progression system that was added to the game a while ago.

One common complaint of Among Us for a long time was the lack of anything to work towards or do outside of matches. An update released for the game a few months back that added in a level progression system. Each match rewards you with XP, and you get a different amount depending on the game length and your performance in the match. Also included with the update was a bunch of new cosmetics to dress your Crewmate up with, unlockable with an in-game currency called Beans, and Cosmicubes, Among Us' take on the popular Battle Pass model found in other popular free-to-play games. Cosmicubes have their own currencies seperate from Beans, and you make one your primary Cosmicube in order to earn currency for it after each match. Cosmicube currency can be spent on cosmetics inside its respective Cosmicube, which will unlock them for your Crewmate to wear. Certain Cosmicubes or cosmetic bundles can be bought in the Shop with Stars, a premium currency purchasable with real money. While I'm not normally a fan of this sort of "grindy" game design, implemented in most games to keep players busy and encourage microtransaction sales, Among Us does a lot of things right that make it more palatable than its contemporaries.

Most cosmetic bundles on the shop range from a measly $2-$3 of real money, an amount which won't even get you a cheap emote or cosmetic on Fortnite or other free-to-play games. Cosmicubes go for about $9, comparable to a Fortnite Battle Pass. However, unlike those, Cosmicubes have no expiration date and won't ever be taken away from you. You have as much time as you want to complete them, and it takes far less time to do so compared to a Fortnite Battle Pass. For example, the Polus Cosmicube (which costs 3,000 Beans to unlock) is one I've been working on for about 4 days so far. I've recently completed it, unlocking all of its cosmetics. Fortnite designs its seasons to push players right up to the final days in order to complete their Battle Passes, a huge three month commitment to get what you paid for to unlock. When time starts running out, many players are pressured to resort to buying time skips in order to receive all content they bought access to from the Battle Pass. These skips are purposefully expensive, making Epic Games (Fortnite's developer and publisher) a lot of money off of FOMO. (The fear of missing out) With Among Us though, the pressure is off. The game prioritizes having fun over milking the player's wallet, and I really appreciate that in any game these days.

Even though I really enjoy Among Us in terms of its gameplay and progression system, I have a few gripes with it that I think should be addressed, in particular with the PlayStation 4/5 port. These gripes don't reflect Innersloth's efforts (the developer of Among Us), but those of PlayEveryWare, the developers of this port. I understand that Unity isn't exactly the most stable or optimized game engine out there, but it is arguably the most flexible. Unity powers Among Us, and it likely made porting the game to other platforms a breeze for PlayEveryWare. I think more could have been done in terms of polish with the PlayStation port, however.

One major annoyance is how clunky navigating menus is. I understand that Among Us was designed with touch screens in mind, and I appreciate the effort of mapping touch screen icons to PlayStation buttons to make the game feel more natural on a controller, but menu navigation is a mess. I've gotten stuck on certain screens and menus before, unable to navigate through them or even select certain options. Sometimes the menus broke so badly I had to close the game and restart it. I've even had the PlayStation on-screen keyboard fail to appear in the middle of meetings, rendering me unable to communicate efficiently with my fellow players until I restarted the game. Also, the quick chat system you can do with a controller is a mess, free chat with a USB keyboard is highly recommended if you aren't in a voice chat group playing with friends.

In addition to this, an even more egregious issue with the PlayStation version is the frequent crashes. I've had Among Us crash my PS4 back to the home screen around eight or nine times in the few days I've played it so far. The first few crashes were especially bad as they corrupted my game save. The thing that stopped me from requesting a refund for this game was the fact that I had made an Among Us account prior to all of this happening, so nothing was lost. If you don't make one when you first start playing like I did, you're risking losing everything you've unlocked and purchased if the game crashes. If you decide to play Among Us on PlayStation, make absolutely sure you're logged in to your Among Us account before you play. I also advise backing up your save data to your PlayStation Plus cloud storage regularly, (I do so after every play session just to be safe), as save corruption will reset your gameplay stats list (viewable in the main menu) to zero. If you don't care much about that though, save corruption won't effect you significantly, so long as you have an Among Us account.

Lastly, while Sony does allow crossplay between other platforms with Among Us, a huge downside of the PlayStation version is that Sony has blocked account linking to other platforms. This is unfortunately not out of character for Sony, who have been extremely stingy on cross platform features for many years leading up to now. However, in this day and age, especially with crossplay titles like Fortnite (on their own platform no less) that feature full crossplay support, it makes you wonder why they still block certain games from some of these features. If you play Among Us on another platform, such as mobile or PC, you can connect your account to the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One/Series ports for cross platform progression. All of your Cosmicubes, Beans, Cosmicube currency, cosmetics, your Crewmate's outfit and your friend code will appear on the versions of the game you've linked your account to, allowing you to play Among Us anywhere and take your progression and unlocks with you. Thanks to Sony, this will never be a feature PlayStation gamers have access to for this title, meaning your progression is locked to PlayStation 4 and 5 and can't be taken anywhere else.

Despite the gripes I have with this port job from PlayEveryWare, backing up your save regularly and getting your account made/logged into before you start playing are all you need to do in order to solve most of these issues. Clunky menus are still a problem, but those always seem to correct themselves after restarting the game in my experience, so if they get too crazy, a simple restart will suffice. If you don't mind playing Among Us on your PlayStation exclusively, like me, account linking isn't that important either. Also, if you're a Rachet & Clank fan, you might get a kick out of the PlayStation exclusive Rachet hat and skin, as well as the Clank pet. Overall, Among Us on PlayStation 4/5 is unpolished and scaled back in terms of features, even compared to other console ports, but it's still a lot of fun. Given its cheap price, even if you're on the fence about trying the game, I'd say it's worth giving it a shot. If you have some friends to play with, you're in for a real treat, but even if you play with random players online, it's still a blast to play (provided you have a USB keyboard handy). If you have another platform to play the game on though, that will likely be the better place to play Among Us. It's a simple game to learn and understand, with a lot of depth and mind games to play once you learn the ropes. No two matches are the same either, thanks to its unique focus on robust social interaction between players. It's a good time all around, no matter what you play it on!

Thanks for reading this game review! This is the first one I've written, so I'm sure things will improve as time goes on, but I think this something I'll do to give my blog a little more diversity with non-Digimon content every once in a while. Ghost Game is returning next week with episode 22, and I'm really excited for that! My old style of posts, covering the plot of each new episode in-character, will make a return once it airs, so stay tuned for that! I'll see you again soon!

𝖄𝖔𝖚𝖗𝖘 𝕿𝖗𝖚𝖑𝖞, 𝕲𝖚𝖑𝖚𝖘 𝕲𝖆𝖒𝖒𝖆𝖒𝖔𝖓

#gulusgammamon #among us #game review #playstation #4 #5

[sir-huffman]

tagged by: @songzhong​ (hello, here’s a wall of text, and I enjoyed reading about you Mao!) tagging: @you on the dash - aka you see this you’re tagged.

———  BASICS!​

Name: Duke ( any pronouns, but most use masculine  )

Face Claims:       - Itsuki Kamiyama from GOTH (professional like above)       - Suga from Night of Drizzling Rain (general)

———  THREE  FACTS!

1) I am an ISTJ and a Taurus...so take that what you will. I’d like to say I’m friendly, but tend to put a very large wall (of text) up so people know what they’re getting into with me and to give an explanation for my actions...as such I am very introverted and only have so much energy for interaction. This leaves me seldom to contact people in the RPC unless I have a specific idea in mind for our muses...which honestly I never do. The best is for me to just chuck a meme at people and see how our muses vibe. After that, well uh...yeah. I’m one of those RPers who have more people I interact IC than OOC cuz OOC interaction takes a lot out of me unless we somehow vibe well.

And by vibe well, I mean our muses generally interact well and aren’t apathetic towards each other. There are so many muns that I respect and consider friends and admire from afar, but we’re not close due to just our muses just not vibing as well as others (which is totes fine it’s just how things sometimes go, ya know?).

( you’ll find that I write a lot hence the read more )

2) I am very stubborn and have a little bit of tunnel vision in my own HCs and world crafting. My muses tend to be people who hold an authoritative and demanding presence where their opinions are stated as truth...which is the complete opposite of my own personality. But I’ve learned that I have to kinda draw my lines and I feel like I can probably give people whiplash between my timid and nervous nature and when it comes to defining my muses. Honestly I’m just very flexible with molding my muses to help fit for interaction, but I do have hard lines and like to make it clear if I’m bending my characters vs how they would naturally act...I tend to make my muses push overs unless I’m like 100% comfy...and even them I make them push overs...hence the amount of my crack threads because I have no sense control and just wanna have fun...with my tight assed muses.

3) That said...I’m just a meme. My main reputation is just being that one mun who RPs a Team Rocket OC with 6 Magikarps. But I truly just have two sides. The very crackish side where (1) I’ll just throw our muses in ridiculous situations and (2) the very angst heavy side that usually only talked about due to my muses handling trauma and very apathetic and nonchalant towards breaking hearts. And as I write this out I feel like I’m giving people whiplash on whoever is reading this since they see Huffman here and is like “oh, how cute what a soft boy” and then I bring up Morax who is just a monstrosity of a muse where I’m toning him down 99% of the time because...well...(*looks at hands*) he’ll end up killing a muse 99% of the time if I don’t stop him and that isn’t fun to RP.

———  EXPERIENCE!

My first experience in RPing in general was on an old website called TinierMe and also a mobile app called VampiresLIVE (lol). However I officially started RPing on Tumblr in 2014 as a Gijinka!Groudon blog originally known as theruleroftheland. After that I’ve slowly branched out of the Pokemon RPC but hold a strong connection with the friends I’ve made there (or kinda, I’m horrible at keeping contact with others since I disappear for months/years at a time). But I’ve found I’m most comfortable writing on tumblr due to the amount of formatting and organization that comes with RPing on here.

I’m slowly branching out to Discord (thank you to my dear RP partners over there who are patient with me because I’m slow) and becoming more accustom with being social over there.

———  MUSE  PREFERENCE!

Gender: 100% male to RP as. I find that I gravitate towards males since I have disconnection with male muses from myself and I like having that wall. Writing females get a little too personal for my own comfort so having that extra layer of distance really helps. Also it helps me look at things differently.

Multi or Single: 

I prefer single-muse blogs to run as I like keeping things strictly relating to my muse on one blog and another muse on another. Over the years I’ve been interested in throwing my old muses onto a multi-muse blog but honestly I can never bring myself making a multi-fandom multi-muse blog due to my own heavy need for organization.

As for shipping, I work under what I call a Quasi-Single shipping (aka multi- and single- ship). I operate under the impression that my muses are in an overarching timeline of their life that is heavily affected by their relationships. As such the MULTISHIP aspect is prone to have cheating and relationship overlap. I’m into having muses naturally engage in threesomes, foursomes, lying, cheating, misunderstandings, fights, break ups, get back togethers, etc. with all muses and muns participating together in the joy of it all. Jealousy and questioning of my muses’ relationships and actions are welcomed as I like having the sense that my muses are human and things aren’t so cookie cutter.

That said I am also SINGLESHIP in the sense that most of my muses are not polyamorous and are very much interested in having an end goal relationship where they settle down and marry. With who and how that happens really depends on both my muse and my partner’s muse. So whoever my muse is really shooting to get married to and actively advances will be my main single ship partner...or really whoever is going to influence my muse the most and I can see my muse actually yearning for (which honestly isn’t that many muses *cries*).

That said...Huffman in particular is going to be really hard to single-ship with as he is 100% dedicated his entire life to his lord and savior Lord Barbatos and this is the thanks he gets to Mondstadt and he will betray his own lover and such for Mondstadt.

He is also a(ego)romantic so he has a huge disconnection with serious relationships as he will honestly treat them just like he treats every other citizen in Mondstadt and it can slowly get to any of his partners since he just thinks is just apart of his job as a partner...which is the same job he has with the people of Mondstadt.

fluff/angst/smut:

Fluff: Generally I don’t find myself interested in fluff, but I realized that is only because of my previous muses couldn’t handle fluff at all. For this particular blog (Huffman) fluff is honestly the only thing that I can offer due to the nature of his character. Fluff with the undertone of angst is going to happen a lot, it’s not going to be sugary sweet fluff but just a result of Huffman’s very grounded and relaxed nature. He is calm and level headed, very rational (a little too rational) and very determined to make sure everyone is happy...and as such angst won’t really happen because Huffman tries to avoid such things naturally.

Angst: I enjoy angst, I’m that person who loves crying and my favorite tropes (especially in shipping) is unrequited love especially when it’s with a character who has so much love and dedication to one person. As such, I find that I’m more inclined to talk about angst than actually RPing it. I’m very slow (really really slow) when it comes to RPing unless it’s crack or relaxed banter. So when it comes to angst, I like to set time aside and fully write it out...making me having to respond weeks to months later...haha sorry. Also I naturally have muses who are apathetic towards angst and other muses feelings that is hard for me to write because I’m the opposite and I get heavily invested...it takes a lot out of me.

That said...most of my angst comes from very slow burns rather than actually writing it out. It’s more of the anticipation of the heartache, breakup, betrayal, cheating, etc. that I’m more inclined to talk about than actually RP...as stated above my muses are generally cold hearted and very accepting of any consequence to their actions...they tend to be planners and expect karma to creep up on them someday.

Smut: I am very particular about smut. I personally like talking about it but actually writing it takes a lot more time for me to do. There are some words that I refuse to write (which happens to be a lot of the smutty words lol) due to how I read them in my head irks me and doesn’t flow right (my worst subject in school was English so I don’t know many words okay). As such, it takes time for me to fully write smut and even then the way I tackle it is very action oriented rather than immersive (I like to think) so uh...RIP my rp partners who want to write smut since I usually respond when I’m half asleep and have no filter and probably stare at me like “wtf did I just read?”. I’m sorry my smut partners who have to deal with me.

plot/ memes:

Memes: I’m more inclined to send memes than actually get around to responding to them. I like keeping my thread count low because I’m slow and usually memes require immediate interaction (something that I may or may not have the time for). However, most of my threads come from memes that will fizzle out over time and I eventually drop without warning- it just how it goes.

Plots: I like plotting and defining pre-established relationships. Having to start everyone off with a blank slate isn’t something I like unless it just seems natural for our muses (ie. for Huffman he probs doesn’t know many Liyue characters, but he definitely is close to Mondstadt characters at least on a name basis). As such, I tend to like establishing relationships and then going from there so I know how Huffman will interact with them.

Plotted threads, however, take a lot out of me as I like coining an idea and then having a starter be written and then go from there. If there are checkpoints to happen, I get awkward because my muses are 95% certain to shift the narrative based on what is being written and the situation that arises. So heavily plotted threads isn’t good, but defining the trajectory of a relationship is something I’m down for...mostly because I’m a quasi-single ship and 99% of my muses relationships are going to fail naturally - which is something hard to bring up when there is ship talking happen.

#ooc: { about duke } #ooc: { long post } #//when you give up half way in editing this #//and just decide to leave this giant wall of text for those who wish to read it #//*kicks onto dash and leaves*

[kwantified]

nct dream on social media!

excluding weibo, messenger apps, and dating apps

note: this is purely my personal opinion. kinda inspired by my irls :)

mark

he loves to share what he does when he can

on instagram he’s the kinda guy who isn’t really... there

busy boy finding out about news a whole week late

when he posts stories it’s usually like... super vague pictures of music or lyrics he’s working on

probably one or two basic shots of food

AND ESPECIALLY

shares what he’s listening to on spotify I Kid You Not

if mark lee posts a story it’s probably going to be what he’s listening to on spotify

he’s more active on twitter because uh

memes

mostly quoted retweets tbh

his replies are always just “HAHAHAHAHA” or “LMAOOOO” and some goofy one-liner

has mutuals on stan twt because he likes to steal the memes

it’s honestly like ????

tweets mostly in english but korean is always there

you would find him laughing his ass off and why? because one of his mutuals tweeted something off of punhub

“can you perform under pressure?”

“no, but i can perform bohemian rhapsody”

or 

“doctor, it hurts when i do this”

“then don’t do that”

I SWEAR TO GOD THIS DUDE HAS THE FUNNIEST TL

not only because of punhub trust me

he’s mostly on local twt just on about netflix shows and music because he doesn’t have enough to time rlly branch out into one community other than his own

has tried uploading his works on soundcloud but just feels more comfortable uploading covers and stuff on youtube

he’d accidentally get in everyone’s recommended because hey here’s a talented man on the guitar who’s goofy and cute

BUT ANYWAYS

overall since he’s a very busy person he’s not too active, but social media kind of gives him a little laugh every once in a while so that’s great

renjun

say it with me, instagram

the prettiest golden hour selfies

your resident pretty boy

says he Doesn’t Care About Fashion but then posts a body shot of his fit smh

can’t complain because he’s mad fine let’s be real here

he has an account for every single social media out there but isn’t always active on every account

i swear to god he;s made a linkedin account

the way he’s probably made a mf foursquare account…

he’s just such an all-around sociable guy he just has mutuals everywhere

i mean the entertainment industry is all about connections so

go get it reonjeon!

makes an appearance in everyone’s social media like he’s EVERYWHERE

jaemin’s instagram? check. jisung’s tiktok? check! chenle’s twitter? check. he’s in everyone’s mentions fr

his stories are always reposts of other posts and of the stories he’s tagged in

work socmed! he makes his career look so comfy and homey from his posts and stories

was one of those guys who used to be super active on snapchat but gave up after insta stories became a thing

mans stalks more people than you think… he’s just a sly dude

not in a creepy way ofc he just gets pretty lost within the internet

you could actually play any trending tiktok audio and you’d hear him sing along every word in the background… what has this mf been doin??? uhm???

sends posts he thinks are funny to ig and twt gcs

mostly to jisung because he’s the only one who actually leaves SOME sort of reaction whether it be double tapping the text or going ㅎㅎㅎㅎㅎ

likes to visit pinterest every once in a while because it’s like a nice eye cleanse

it’s also good outfit and food inspiration in the cases that he feels like creating something non career related

in general he just likes looking for new ideas and sometimes pinterest is just a great outlet for a visual layout like that

renjun and jisung, THESE TWO

they scour the internet together

goin wild with the crack videos with jisung

jeno

this dude is nowhere

like. he has thousands of followers on instagram and for WHAT

twitter page: empty

snapchat: gave up after insta stories

insta stories: DOESN’T EVEN POST SO WHAT’S THE POINT

but he’s like almost always actively liking everything on your timeline

like... every post on your feed is “liked by jeno and xx others”

WHERE IS THIS DUDE

texting him becomes a game through all the different dm platforms online

like will he open his twitter dms today or will he only answer if you furiously facetime him

some days it’s katalk and somedays he just chooses to ignore you

PURPOSELY SO YOU HAVE TO CALL HIM

anyways when he does post on instagram it’s usually just his surroundings and daily activities

or his cats

yeah

does a lot of things with his friends so you’ll probably find him tagged in the dreamies’ stories

but not anywhere else for some reason

he’s more active on twitter!

he kind of feels more relaxed on twitter since it isn’t based on images

tweets out of context things

like a random “fml” out of nowhere and you’re like okay i guess

pretty vague too

doesn’t really make an effort to make any mutuals because it’s kind of like a vent place for him

stays on private

friends only so... about 30 followers and that’s it

people who follow his Instagram don’t really know his twt so it relieves him a bit

food videos on youtube

not mukbangs but like

very nice cooking videos

like have y’all heard of Nino’s Kitchen

he loves that shit BET

the greatest mix between dry sarcasm, humorous attacks and beautiful food

mans just likes real life interactions i guess

haechan

youtube addict! 

gamer haechan

he could spend DAYS on youtube and just forget about time and space altogether

just finds the best rabbit holes to go into from music to snails to gaming to fancams

also on tiktok but his tiktok is on instagram ya feel

finds it stupid but so, so entertaining

loves watching those makeup and art tiktoks because they’re so well done

humor tiktoks on his explore page

number one edit fanatic

mans loves watching edits on instagram and how they’re so well made like 

he’s truly one to appreciate art

his stories are uploaded on the weirdest times of day

want a video of him serenading the camera at two in the morning? sign yourself up

twitter is lowkey his diary

he just tweets whatever is happening all day errday

sometimes he completely forgets about the existence of twitter altogether so there are days where he’s on twitter every second but there are weeks where it’s just CRICKETS

loves to listen to other people’s playlists

open to new vibes (but no hateful vibes!)

still does snapchat streaks... hm 

and who might he be talking to?

his snapchat streaks are always the same shot of the window or some scenery from his apartment

the kind of guy who snaps you until goddamn 4am

make room for online boyfriend hyuck

goes on twitch for the fun of it when he’s too busy to play

finds it real satisfying to just see the streamers engage with the audience while being real good at what they do

either way he’s just always on youtube but when he isn’t he’s usually just consuming content instead of uploading content

but when he does post anything it’s like quality!!

jaemin

unlike jeno, this man is EVERYWHERE

and when i mean everywhere i mean he’s also on letterboxd (!!!) and soundcloud

maybe this is just an excuse for me to force the jaemin film and photography student agenda

this man has customised every part of every profile on social media

except for linkedin

folks, his instagram is just pictures of everyone else but him

even on soundcloud his self-written songs are sung by other members in nct

his insta stories are the only place you can actually hear his voice

insta stories are just food and friends

and by friends i mean wtf moments at the dream dorm

memes all over twitter

steals memes pretty regularly

like he’d always like the tweets before stealing and those tweets would always end up in your tl so whenever he uses those memes in your convos it’s just like

aHa i see

posts “mood” tweets

mostly replies to other people rather than making his own tweets

loves to do deep dives on youtube because he always discovers the cutest music

also gets the best inspiration from youtube

has a few favourite youtubers and genuinely appreciates their content

again, inspiration

watches lots of movies but doesn’t really leave any reviews so he just gives a few stars (or none) on letterboxd

the kind of guy who’s glued to his phone

i don’t blame him

his phone is full of content

still on snapchat apparently

but he’s the kind of dude that just sends streaks every day and updates his snapchat story like never

his streaks... lmao

usually goes for a black screen with a plain “s” or just a random shot of his bedsheets

but if he considers you a close friend he might get distracted and send you a bunch of videos of him playing with filters

he really does think they’re quite the fascination

maybe he’s just bored lol social media is pretty expansive

chenle

he’s like jeno but gives less fucks

so... instagram and twitter are equally chaotic

such a mood

just makes you go WHAT IS THIS DUDE UP TO

this dude is usually just Chillin

and he gets bored so he just brain farts into twitter

whenever there’s a basketball game he’s watching he’ll fill your entire timeline with out of context reactions

also kind of a random out of context dude who posts things at the weirdest times of the day/night

doesn’t give enough fucks to go on private

gets a lot of followers on twt solely because so many people find his life so fascinating like hm...

what might zhong chenle be doing at this time of day

on instagram it’s kind of a different story because uh he might have to think twice about whether or not he wants a certain picture on his feed

but then again, no fucks

so he’s like meh okay sure i’ll post it

pics of food and places he’s been to and laid back selfies and #tbt type beat

NOT WAYV’S TURN BACK TIME I MEAN THROWBACK THURSDAY

but he does a lot of promo for nct and wayv

get that bag boy!

chenle on instagram is like hyuck on twitter: he can go weeks being completely inactive but one day he suddenly remembers the existence of instagram and posts five pictures in a day

all with either no caption or like the vaguest “ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ” or “哈哈哈哈”

if y’all have seen his weibo then y’all would know his twt would be filled with “哈哈哈哈哈”

mentions everyone (especially jisung) in each and every single one of his insta stories

replies to random comments

eternal chenle menpa how bout that

goes on wattpad and ao3 for the fun of it

actually kind of enjoys some of the work on wattpad... his fav trope is enemies to lovers

that one mutual that casually likes all your tweets

he would literally spam like all your pictures/tweets as soon as you guys become mutuals and it’s sweet

comments on everything

always dragged in jisung’s tiktok antics

knows all the tiktok dances by heart even though it looks like he’s so unbothered

thinks tiktok is cringey but HIGHKEY gets into it

jisung

now this dude is on tiktok but he doesn’t really fetch for clout

he likes doing short freestyles

the challenges are cool too and he’s had a few mutuals on tiktok so that’s nice

but this dude screams TWITTER and YOUTUBE

watches shit like vox and jubilee because it’s so interesting to him

has been through a vsauce phase but eventually got bored because they didn’t upload a lot

youtube is there for his deep dives and curiosities

also is subscribed to a lot of youtubers so his recommended page is super diverse

comments on videos with the most candid thoughts

youtube has been a big part of him honestly especially as a child who didn’t really get a formal education

he’s just kind of learning from the internet

doesn’t bother with instagram because... he can post pictures on twt too...

eventually gets instagram anyways so 

the pictures/videos jisung sends on lysn bubble are literally his insta feed

but on twitter he’s just kind of vibin

says he goes on twt 5 times a day so there we go

likes those generational tweets and tiktoks that go like

“kids born after 2005 will never understand this”

his retweets bruv

he just retweets funny one liner replies from viral tweets

also keeps up with the news (ehem this was the boy on the political section of daily korean news let’s hear it)

rather than just korea he’s pretty interested in international news too so he’s a pretty outspoken guy

doesn’t really do a lot of tweeting himself though since he just kind of goes “헐” or “대박” or “ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ”

him and renjun are youtube buddies just because. yes.

usually spirals into crack compilations

like renjun, he’s also seen pretty often in other members’ mentions

ESPECIALLY CHENLE THIS DUDE WONT SHUT UP ABOUT JISUNG

but he honestly really likes being mentioned and being active online because he’s spent most of his life either practicing or online so

feels like home huh

kinda gen z spirit there lmao

#this was rushed #haechan gamer! #jaemin film student agenda uh #renjun is THE boy on instagram #jeno... nowhere to be found #mark gettin clout without trying #khchenle is everything #nct dream #mark #jeno #renjun #donghyuck #haechan #jaemin #chenle #jisung #nct #nct scenarios #nct dream imagines #nct dream headcanon #nct drabbles #nct blurb #nct headcanon #nct dream social media au #social media au #nct jeno #nct mark #nct chenle #nct jisung #nct jaemin

[mimzy-writing-online]

Image Descriptions Make You a Better Writer

Writing is a form of art and imagination that can’t be expressed visually the way most other forms of art can, and yet words can fill your heads with images of places you’ve never seen or even considered before.

So reasonably, it’s probably good to practice describing things to people who can’t see the thing you’re describing. and the best way to do that is to learn to write image description.

What is an image description?

It’s a paragraph of text written to describe the image it’s attached to, and it’s written for those of the internet who can’t see the image because they’re blind or visually impaired. Blind/VI people often use screen readers which read all the text on screen for them, but screen readers can’t understand and describe images, so they rely on someone writing an image description down so that blind/VI internet users can understand the image they can’t see.

It’s a form of accessibility, similar to adding wheelchair ramps and elevators for people with mobility disabilities, or adding closed captions to videos for the Deaf/HOH.

Those accommodations make it possible for people with disabilities to share important parts of life with people who are abled. And image descriptions make it possible for Blind/VI people to enjoy the important parts of life able bodied people experience.

And learning to write image descriptions will improve your writing. Here’s why

If you’re someone who struggles to describe the scenery you’re seeing in your head, it might be helpful to have some scenery visually in front of you to describe.

It can be a nature photography image, architecture, people, background setting, anything. Having the image in front of you and allowing yourself the time to describe it effectively and concisely will improve how you describe these images in your writing.

It’s important to note that you should avoid purple prose while writing these, keeping it from being too abstract. There’s nothing wrong with purple prose and if you enjoy writing it than by all means run wild with it. But, it makes things harder to understand, so avoid it in image descriptions.

Writing image descriptions for memes is a different experience.

Memes are abstract images and it takes knowing the context to understand the joke. And memes are evolving every day. We have a dozen new memes every month and they have their own evolution.

So you’re describing an image to someone who’s never seen your meme, and you have to learn to explain the context in a way that makes sense. It’s not like describing a tree or a building, where the person listening to these image descriptions has some experience with the tree or building and can use some sensory memory to fill in the gaps.

Eventually you learn how to describe images in new ways, how to introduce new and abstract concepts to someone who hasn’t experienced that type of humor much.

And having some experience explaining new, abstract concepts might be helpful if you’re trying to explain some unique world building context, I’m just saying.

Writing image descriptions for screenshots or articles, tweets, and other social media will teach you how to explain all the necessary information and prioritize what your reader should know first about what there is to see. Which, again, when in writing you should learn who to prioritize which details come first and how to build on them. These are probably the easiest images to describe, so they’re a good place to start.

The real reason why you should write image descriptions?

It’s accessibility. You’re literally providing someone a chance to join in on the experience of this post by including the image description. People who rely on image descriptions are left out of the loop when entire conversations are based on just one image that they can’t see and have no context for.

If you’ve ever used Tumblr on mobile and you see post after post where images won’t load due to data limitations, then you have a small idea of what it’s like to be left out of the loop on these posts.

There’s a screenshot of an article headline? Great, but it looks like a grey box to you, so you don’t even know what the headline says, just that people are arguing about subject headlines, timing, politics, and semantics.

There’s a screenshot of a tweet, but it’s a grey box to you so you don’t even know that it’s a tweet. All you see are the lines of people adding things like “queen” and “slay” and “ooh, tea” but again, no context for why everyone likes this image. Or they’re roasting the person in the screenshot, but again, you don’t even know that it’s a person.

That is the best way I can explain the experience of being left out of a conversation to sighted people. You have everyone’s reactions, but not what the conversation is about. Sometimes you don’t even have a reaction, just a series of eight grey slides that have no context added.

How to write an image description:

Most image descriptions are put in (paranthesis) or [brackets] and usually begin something like this:

(Image Description: photo of a grey and white kitten on a tree branch, looking at the camera with blue eyes. The kitten looks calm and unworried. End Image Description)

[Image Description: Distracted boyfriend meme. Distracted boyfriend is me, checking out re-rewriting parts you’ve already finished (the other girl) instead of looking at parts that still need to be written (the upset girlfriend) End Image Description]

[I.D. Screenshot of an article headline from The New York Times that says, “Jeff Bezos set to make another 100 billion off Amazon slave labor.” Author, Guy Steves. Includes photo of bald Jeff Bezos in a three piece suit and a second photo of a 40 million dollar mansion. End I.D.]

Please note, the above New York Times article is fake, obviously, I just made that up off the top of my head.

I don’t have photos, but those image descriptions get the idea across without the photo, don’t they.

Final Note:

I understand if you don’t want to add image descriptions all the time. I feel that way too. There are a lot of things I think about reblogging and then don’t because the image description is too much for me, like very long twitter threads or comic strips for example.

Most of the time, if I have an image I want to reblog, I put it into my drafts folder and add an image description and some tags before I toss it out into the void of tumblr.

An option you have is to go through the notes and look to see if someone else has already added an image description and you’ll reblog from them.

One thing you should absolutely not do is find an image that already has an image description and find a way to reblog or repost without the image description. It’s fucked up and I don’t respect anyone who does that. I don’t know why that happens, but I’ve seen people do that and it upsets me.

Thank you to all the people who express support to this blog and to the image descriptions. I’ve had wonderful bloggers add my image descriptions to their original post, I’ve had them reblog the original post (because there was a response they didn’t want on their blog) and copy/paste my image description with credit given. You’re all wonderful and I appreciate you.

#writing community #writing advice #writing tips #accessibility #writeblr #image descriptions #my post #my advice

[jinjojess]

Isn't that first thing in the brackets New Criticism? I'm not sure how that's a misuse, since the two go hand in hand

..Both of those things in brackets, even. (New Criticism anon)

Yes! Death of the Author is one of (if not The) most important tenets of New Criticism. New Criticism is all about looking at the text as a self-contained thing and only basing your analysis of it by pulling directly from it as your source.

A good example of this is to look at V3. If we ignore Kodaka’s Word of God comment that the audience in the game is not the same as the irl DanRon fandom and just look at what’s in the game itself, the conclusion you draw about the meaning and what you take from it as a reader is vastly different.

New Criticism is about the audience’s relationship with a work, without worrying about the author’s intentions, because that’s how you get the nice myriad of interpretations from a single work, since it’s just the text and the reader (and the reader’s own biases and preconceptions) forming the analysis, and there isn’t a Right Answer about what the text is saying as per the creator.

What this is NOT, meanwhile, is equivalent to the “Hatsune Miku wrote Harry Potter” meme.

Some people see Death of the Author and misinterpret it as meaning “the artist and their work should be evaluated separately in the court of public opinion--a creator who is morally repugnant can still create good art.”

(And there are even some people who are fascinatingly literal and think that “Death of the Author” means removing the creator’s name from the byline and pretending as if it spawned from the ether as a punishment for a creator who has done something horrible.)

While yes, these are analogous concepts, Death of the Author is a tool for literary criticism allowing for a wider set of interpretations, since the Author doesn’t get to rule out any possible reads themselves. 

Which brings me to...

Anonymous said:

What do you mean by grossly misuse?

What I specifically mean by “grossly misuse” is trying to take a tool of literary criticism and make a pithy post about how it’s only upheld by those with privilege, which is extra ironic since the lit crit tool you’re bashing supports your thesis to begin with.

If a creator insists to the high heavens that their work isn’t racist in interviews and tweets etc. etc. but it contains outdated and offensive stereotypes in the actual content of the work, then Death of the Author and New Criticism means that you are able to make a valid argument that the work has racist elements. 

People in the lit crit business don’t just throw their hands up at, say, the portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist and go “oh well, Death of the Author, lol!” and ignore all the period-expected antisemitism surrounding the character. Believe it or not, the actual branch of academia that covers literary criticism and discussing the canon etc. is not the same as the deluge of armchair analysts penning video essays for YouTube.

Which I could forgive, if this OP in question’s only exposure to lit crit was indeed YouTube video essays that literally anyone could put online...but it isn’t, apparently. Apparently they’re actually in lit crit classes and somehow think that “Death of the Author” means “we can’t criticize any writer who’s already dead because it won’t ‘hurt’ them” and like...wow. Woooooow.

So yeah, in my investigation they certainly seem to be in the same mind-space as the purity brigade, given how their reaction to less-savory moral aspects of an older work is “No one should read this!” and not “People should read this because it’s well constructed, but be aware of the elements that are now widely known to be discriminatory so that you don’t accidentally reproduce them yourself.”

Of course, the fault could also fall on their profs, who might just be shit at teaching. That’s also a strong possibility.

Anyway, I originally had a chuckle at the OP’s first post because “(insert any lit crit lingo here) is so white” reads to me as a comment about racial distribution in high level lit and creative writing programs, and yeah, it’s true. But then they expanded on it and meant that they thought that a classmate saying that they aren’t allowed to critique elements of works from a writer who was literally dead counted as “Death of the Author” and I did a double-take.

#ask #anon #lit crit #long post

[edenfalling]

Author Interview

Thank you to @thatgirlnevershutsup for tagging me :)

Name: Elizabeth Culmer

Fandoms: many and various, but at the moment it’s mostly Narnia and Homestuck with sidelines in Naruto and various corners of the MCU. 

Where You Post: Generally first on my Dreamwidth journal, and crossposted here on Tumblr. Then I stick them up on AO3 after a few days to see if there’s anything I want to tweak. (Except exchange fics, of course. Those go on AO3 first.) I put new chapters of my older WIPs on ff.net as well, but I stopped posting new fics there some years back, partly because I dislike their posting interface and partly because the atmosphere over there got really toxic.

Most Popular One-Shot: If you average hits and responses from all sites, that would be Definitions of Romance, a little Harry/Hermione ficlet I wrote in 20 or 30 minutes back in 2005. Going by AO3 stats alone, I think What Isn’t Broken (Can Still Be Fixed), a NaruSasu remix fic, still has the crown.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: Oh, The Way of the Apartment Manager, no question. Sometimes you write the right story at the right time, and apparently back in 2004-2005, that was a shortish novel about a grumpy retired genin getting inspired to reclaim her life after six-year-old Naruto becomes a tenant in the apartment building she inherited from her civilian parents. *wry*

Favorite Story You Wrote: This is a tie between The Way of the Apartment Manager, Out of Season (a Narnia fic centered entirely on Calormen), and Knives (a dark HP fic about Ginny Weasley). I love them for very different reasons, so which one gets my top vote varies from day to day.

Story You Were Nervous to Post: ??? ...I guess maybe exchange fics, sometimes, since they’re gifts and one is never quite certain one’s recipient will like them?

How You Choose Your Titles: Sometimes they just come to me. Sometimes I comb through quote collection sites for something thematically resonant. Sometimes I use a bit of the prompt text I’ve based the story on.

Do You Outline: If I know from the start that a story is going to be long, I outline before diving in. (This may be anything from a three-paragraph sketch of some general points of interest to a detailed scene-by-scene breakdown complete with comparative plot thread timelines.) If a story expands during the writing, I will often stop partway through and write myself a little note to assess where I am and where I’m trying to end up, and sketch a path of what points I need to hit/resolve in order to get from here to there. For shorter things, though, I don’t outline. What’s the point?

Complete: Over 500, and I’m not going to bother counting more exactly.

In Progress: ...too many. Let’s just leave it there, okay?

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: Right now I’m trying to finish up an old WIP oneshot, as well as two old prompt fics. I will write something for Yuletide, of course, and I’d like to get another chapter of The Guardian in Spite of Herself finished this year. Do You Accept Prompts: At specific times! Now and then I get bored/frustrated with my ongoing projects and throw open a mini-ficlet prompt meme. Outside of those periods, I am not really interested in prompts.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: All of them? I mean, if I’m not interested in the story, I’m not going to write it!

I tag: @asukaskerian, @significantowl, @othercat2, @ceescedasticity, @branch-and-root, @curlicuecal, @laylainalaska, and anyone else who wants to play!

#liz talks about writing #liz talks about personal stuff #liz talks about fannish things #memes and stuff #hey go look at the thing

[prismarine-parrots]

Tree of Life Pt. 1

Originally posted: 25 Feb. 2019

Ahahahahhaha

This five part-story earned me the title Thanos of Hermitcraft and created the first fanart and meme of any of my content. Send help for us all.

Part 2

Part 3

Part 3.5

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

No one had seen Grian in three weeks.

Normally, it wouldn't be too surprising for people to be quiet for a while. Everyone working on their own projects and maybe not in the right area to see the person in question.

But something was different with this case. The player list said that Grian was online, not AFK, so not outside the server in the community hub or working on a different project on his channel. In this case, SOMEONE would normally at least see him restocking his traveling-cart-that-never-travels, or flying around his base wasting rockets, or at the very least bothering Mumbo Jumbo, his closest neighbor.

Mumbo himself had not been too worried at first. When it had been a couple days since Grian has visited he had sent a letter though their mail system to make sure that 1. The mail system might actually be used and 2. Make sure Grian was alright. Not twenty minutes later Grian had responded that he was fine, just busy at his base.

The next red flag was when Zedaph realized that the only reason his Quartz, Warts, and Shorts shop was making sales was because Grian's cheaper traveling cart next door hadn't been restocked in weeks. While at first he was a little miffed at this fact, this started to get him worried. Grian was normally fairly good about restocking his cart, sometimes with his own supplies instead of getting extra, even if not shown on camera he still made sales. With the mining desert and gravel pit nearly out of both materials, people had started regularly going to Grian's shop, hoping for more of those grindy blocks in which he specialized.

When Iskall had private messaged Grian asking if he wanted to help prank DocM for the heck of it, Grian had declined, saying that he had been grinding blaze powder in the Nether. This has confused Iskall. Why did Grian need blaze powder? The only thing it was good for was eyes of Ender and potions. They had already beat the dragon and turned the End into a farm for shulkers and elytra, so needing eyes of Enders was off the list. But why did Grian need potions? Iskall has assumed a prank and asked if Grian wanted help with other potion ingredients, but he had declined in a rather cold "no," saying that the strawberry blonde didn't need any more stress right now.

It wasn't until someone not even on the Hermitcraft server, PearlescentMoon, messaged someone she knew was in the server to check on Grian, as he hadn't posted anything online in nearly three weeks, and hadn't given any explanation to where he may have gone.

When Iskall finally heard that he had called Mumbo, Xisuma, and False, hoping that maybe one of them could help.

"Heeeeyy Iskall!" X greeted as he swooped I'm in front of Grian's cart, where Iskall has thought to ironically meet because it was in the middle of the shopping district and an easy place to meet, not actually because they were here to talk about Grian.

"What's up?" False asked, using an ender pearl to warp into the side of the cart and bouncing off casually.

"Show off," Iskall muttered, recognizing the subtle PVP tactics. False grinned but before she could retort, Mumbo landed with a little stumble, grumbling about lag and elytra not working properly still.

"Hey Mumbo!" Iskall greeted cheerfully. Mumbo nodded silently as the others waved.

"Why have you called us, Iskall?" X asked curiously.

"Right, right," the Swede started, glancing around the small group, "now that we're all here, I'm going to get straight to the point. Has anyone seen Grian recently?"

Everyone shook their heads.

"I've been by his base a couple of times, but he's never there. He's replied to my texts at least, but hasn't shown up around my base in a while," Mumbo immediately recalled with a frown.

Xisuma was on his phone, a tool that everyone had for chat, inventory, surfing the web outside the server, everything. "It says he's online," he noted, turning the screen the other way and showing the online player list.

"He's been online for weeks," False informed, "Every time I've looked he's been on anyway."

"And yet no one has seen him? I was hoping that maybe you had seen him on another part of the server, like your fantasy district, False." Iskall sighed. The blonde girl shook her head.

"I think we should check on him. This usually isn't like him," X decided, prepping a rocket.

"I was wondering if there might be a glitch somewhere, and that's why he's been so weird. That's why I called you, X," Iskall explained as he took out a stack of rockets from his backpack.

"And I'm here because I'm closest to him I'm assuming, not because of my redstone or that I'm a spoon," Mumbo sighed jokingly. Everyone got a quick laugh out of that before Iskall patted Mumbo's back rather hard, making him stumble, before they all took off over the shoulder of the Statue of Hermity.

Within minutes the group was circling the massive tower in the middle of the ocean, an insane project for the newest member of Hermitcraft.

"See anything?" False called to anyone nearby.

"Nothing! Looks empty to me!" X replied.

Iskall blasted out of the bottom floor entrances. "The towers are mob traps, don't go in there!" he screeched, sounding thoroughly spooked.

"What about the basement? Or the upper floors?" Mumbo asked.

"He has a basement?" False questioned.

Iskall nodded. "I'll check there. False, want to come with? Mumbo and X, you go check upstairs. Sound good?"

With a quick confirmation from everyone, the pairs split to search the futuristic wedding cake.

Iskall had been down to the basement a few times before, if only in the first few weeks of Hermitcraft Season 6 when Grian actually USED his basement. There were chests down there that were collecting dust, and some poor cows trapped in a nano farm the NHO apparently never discovered.

"Oh my gosh, Iskall! Look at this!" False called from somewhere ahead.

"Coming!" Iskall replied and tried to find where False had gone off to.

He skidded to a halt when he found her on the edge of an opening in the shoddy basement, facing a massive opening in the rock.

"Woah," Iskall breathed. The cave was huge and clearly manmade, and the Swede wondered how long it must have taken for Grian to dig and terraform and decorate the cavern.

No to mention the large egg-shaped build floating in the air in the center of the cave.

"I think we found Poultry Man," False smirked.

"So calling G our on it when we find him," Iskall laughed. Then both his and False's phone buzzed.

<xisumavoid> come to the top of of the tower

"Let's go then!" False cheered.

They shot out of the bubble columns through the body of water underneath Grian's base and launched through the holes in the middle of each layer to the top.

"Too far guys!" Mumbo's voice called as they flew through the top layer.

"Oops!" Iskall chuckled.

"Coming right back down!" False called and they two glided into the smallest layer.

Xisuma and Mumbo were inside a vibrant garden that was in the top layer. There were vines growing up the sides of the cyan glass and parrots that squawked warily from a distance.

But the most eye-catching thing was the tree that grew to the side.

"What in the world?" False breathed when she landed.

"Don't know, but it doesn't look great," Xisuma said shortly, already on his phone and tapping at controls and Admin commands.

Iskall landed beside Mumbo, who was examining the tree intently with a concerned frown and creased eyebrows.

Every hermit on the server's life force was tied to a special tree. It was something new that they were trying, to prevent less deaths and item losses by being more careful and to fix a few issues that had happened on the technical side from previous seasons. A lot of the trees were unique to look like each Hermit, such as DocM's being rather sharply split between green and grey or Scar's currently being a palm tree. Most of the time they were no big deal. Each time a hermit died, the tree would take some damage in some way, such as a leaf dropping to the ground. Unless it was several deaths in a row, you couldn't even notice the difference in the tree. And even if you did die a lot, if you played it safe for a couple days your tree would be back to normal again in no time.

But this was different.

Grian's tree here in his aviary looked half-dead. It was normally a fairly simple oak tree, but with autumn red leaves instead of green. But half the leaves were fallen, dry on the ground, and the ones still on the tree were either brown or purple. A limb had even fallen, splintered and leaning against the trunk of the tree itself.

"Grian..." Mumbo murmured. He couldn't imagine what had happened for this to be the cause, or how Grian must be feeling if his tree was like this.

"What happened?” Iskall wondered, he started to approach the tree, but Xisuma called him back.

"It doesn't look like the tree has been healing over time properly," X muttered under his breath, his expression serious as he analyzed the details coming up on the server monitoring screen of his phone.

"We all know Grian dies a lot, could that be the cause?" False suggested nervously. X shook his head.

"This is over a long span of time, probably since the start of the season even."

"And Grian hasn't died since he's gone silent. It's not hard to miss a death message in the chat," Mumbo recalled, also pulling up the server chat on his own phone, "It's been three weeks, that should be plenty of time for the tree to have healed without any interruptions."

The sound of a firework going off and a rush of air as elytra closed up. The four hermits jumped as a newcomer stumbled into the garden, losing his balance and catching the broken branch to hold himself up as he landed.

"Guys?" A very pale- and sick-looking Grian breathed, before coughing into his arm and sliding to the ground.

"I think something's wrong..."

------------------------

Word Count: 1830

#hermitcraft #grian #mumbo jumbo #iskall85 #xisumavoid #falsesymmetry #tree of life au #ToL #this is just the beginning #glhf #becca writes

[goron-king-darunia]

Annon-Guy: Sorry I addressed you as a boy, Ms. Darunia.

Ah, that’s the beauty of it. Who I am in real life, my name on the screen, none of it really matters. At least not to me. Gender is very important to some people, and I 10/10 stand with that instinct to apologize if you think you’ve misgendered someone, but you have nothing to be sorry for in my case. I was assigned female at birth and I am very in touch with my feminine side, but to limit myself to only being the gender aligned with my sex is silly to me. So I’m genderfluid/agender or, as I like to say “What is gender? Can you eat it?” Gender, unlike sex, is socially constructed and it’s a social construct I wouldn’t mind living without. Or at least removing the strict binary of it. Masculinity and femininity (and androgyny too!) have some excellent aspects to them and gender is mostly about which aspects you identify with and how you express them. Hence the terms gender identity and gender expression.  So literally any pronouns are fine for me which is why I don’t list them on my bio.  But I get that. Normally you’d be 100% correct to call someone a male when they use the masculine noun “king” in their handle and use a male character as a handle. I’m most comfortable with people using the pronoun they want to use for me since online text-based interaction alone makes it impossible to distinguish gender from words alone. Especially when everyone posts 90% memes. I get gender wrong online all the time so I just like removing that confusion for everyone whenever I can since I personally don’t care about my perceived gender. That way, whatever you call me, it’s always correct. A name is just a specific sound or symbol set to indicate an individual and a gender is just a funny little nonsense word to discuss a person without a name based on traits that often align (but not always!) with certain sex characteristics.  But we live in a world now where things are a bit more fluid than they used to be and gender has become one of those amorphous things that you have to ask about. And sometimes you’ll make an assumption and be wrong. And that’s okay! Like I said, I’ve done it before with NB/Trans people who are my friends now, and I still sometimes trip up with NB/Trans people who are my friends IRL and closeted because the words they need change based on context. It’s a very “wiggly” time. Everything is flux and some of us are better at learning the new ins and outs than others. But even if I stumble with people’s pronouns a lot myself, I’m happy we live in a world where we’re able to branch out and muddy the water a bit on what gender is because to be fair, humans made it up and we should be able to have fun with it. TL;DR, you’re fine, my guy. I accept all pronouns including male pronouns. But I appreciate your first instinct was an apology. 

[moralanxietystudio]

“An RPG / Visual Novel / text adventure hybrid” is a mouthful - Roadwarden Devlog

In her Rock, Paper, Shotgun article, Jay Castello has mentioned:

The game’s genre is purposefully fluid. On (...) Studio’s website, the top frequently asked question says “I can’t figure out what is this game’s genre,” to which they’ve cheerfully replied “Me neither.”

When I mention Roadwarden in my Facebook posts or on Twitter, I usually struggle describing it. I keep saying things like “RPG / Visual Novel / text adventure hybrid”, but it’s not very... marketable. I like to use “interactive fiction”, which is arguably correct and sounds fine, but it doesn’t explain well what the player does in the game.

The main goal of this post is to sink deeper into this topic: how could we label Roadwarden? And what it actually is?

By the way, during the next couple of days I want to update the game’s demo. It’s going to be awesome.

Why am I looking for a label?

Why is the label important? Is it just because it’s convenient for social media ads?

When we categorize a game, we also set up the player’s expectations. If we call a game an endless runner, we make a promise. We claim that it’ll be easy to learn and hard to master, with a very stable pacing, without pointless plot and accessible from your phone. Sure, some endless runners can diverse from this premise or even completely fail at executing it, but making this label is an act of communication. Here is what I have to offer. Are yo interested?

And while Roadwarden fits into various definitions of specific genres, it makes promises that are not as commonly associated with its labels. It has an experimental approach to role-playing. Violence, that’s always plot-related and significant, not grindy. Exploration of a grim, detailed and consistent setting, but not a very heroic one. Dialogues used as the core of the experience, not just a tool. Humble adventures of a regular person in a world that overwhelms it. And I try to avoid common tropes in my story.

And I never ask myself “is it OK to add this new feature? after all, it’s not popular in this genre!”. I add everything that helps me make a better game. I put the experience above the marketing convenience.

A term “video game RPG” is famous for being a very vague label, pretty much impossible to define. It’s one of the most diverse branches of gaming. Every person plays RPGs for different reasons, thou we could probably make a list like 1) a complex story with possible side quests, 2) some character progression (both story-wise and through XP-like mechanics), 3) combat and exploration. If you prefer western games, you’ll probably enjoy 4) having important decisions. And you probably like 5) fantasy, eventually science-fiction with fantasy elements.

Sure, there’s a lot of variety - we have action RPGs, text-based RPGs, tactical RPGs, dungeon crawlers, rouge-likes... It’s really weird that the same label somehow covers The Witcher 3, Undertale, Final Fantasy VI and Wizardry from 1981, yet not Far Cry Primal, but that’s because these games are classified by an objective definition of a genre. We just try to say: “if you like X, you may also like Y. they’re kind of similar”.

Roadwarden as an RPG

When I develop Roadwarden I’m interested in things that most RPGs consider unimportant. And I don’t mean something like “I care about story, and These Other Games are all about combat”! That would be a silly statement. But I put an emphasis on aspects of the story which are often marginalized.

For example, in most RPGs you simply kill things (in self-defense!) and grind XP to get stronger. You can kill 10 packs of wolves and 25 boars and it means absolutely nothing. You’re just overcoming a barrier while trying to get a new level or reach the other side of the forest. Killing these enemies won’t be considered animal cruelty. Won’t destroy the balance of the nearby forests. Won’t starve the villagers. These animals are not Really a part of the story.

In Roadwarden, bandits don’t randomly spawn and die without influencing the plot. They are not some random loot waiting to drop on the floor for the player’s convenience. They have families, friends, goals, story behind them. They don’t want to kill you - they want your stuff. And they’ll try to rob you only if they know you can’t beat them. Without an unfair advantage they wouldn’t put themselves at risk.

In my game, violence means something. Nobody here dreams about it, aside of the most terrible, wicked people. Every death leaves a void, and void should be haunting.

In most RPGs you find a tavern, buy a potion and leave. In Roadwarden you spend 15 minutes talking to the innkeeper, and he’s not there just to give you a quest. He wants to know more about you. He wants to know what news you’re bringing. And if you can be trusted.

Also, potions in this game are rare and have taste. And aroma.

Your character isn’t going to have one hundred thousand coins at the end of the game, nor murder two thousand creatures to save a village inhabited by 30 NPCs. They characters are not waiting for The Chosen One or a master of martial marts that can save them. You’re just someone who tries to change your own life by doing something risky, in a realm that’s filled with people who don’t even know if they want you here.

Your character is a part of the world they live in. And I think most RPGs don’t do a good work reflecting this idea. Immersion should be something more than the constant pursue of better graphics, cinematics and more “freedom”.

So while Roadwarden is still a game that includes combat, trade, exploration, unlocking new abilities and building your character, it’s all put in a new context. And there’s a good chance that a portion of RPG fans wouldn’t be satisfied with something this different. I try to encourage them to take a look... But I don’t want anyone to feel cheated.

Roadwarden as a Visual Novel

Roadwarden may also not be a perfect fit for many Visual Novel fans, even though it involves a lot of narration, descriptions and dialogues supported by limited visuals. Roadwarden has fewer gameplay elements than most RPGs, but way more than most VNs - it even introduces simple survival mechanics.

Also, the story is non-linear - it’s very complex (what doesn’t mean “long”) and modified by how the player moves around the map. Many VNs introduce story branching, but I’m pushing it unusually far. And, of course, Roadwarden has way more choices than most VNs, even though some of these choices are focused on role-playing alone and don’t impact the game’s mechanics.

Not only that, but the visual style and the lack of common tropes that are appealing for the core VN-fanbase can be a big problem. I was even asked a couple of times if my game will involve any romantic relationships. Sure, there are successful VNs that don’t involve porn (VA-11 Hall-A), romance (Ace Attorney), manga-style drawings (Cinders), nor Best Girls, so I’m not saying it’s impossible to make one and prosper. But it’s playing against the odds.

All these things push me into being very careful here, and I usually feel that I should say something like “it’s a Visual Novel, BUT...”

Roadwarden as an adventure game

So let’s make a step back. There’s an argument to be made that Visual Novels are a sub-genre of (or rather, an evolution of) a more interactive label. Here’s how Wikipedia defines the adventure games:

(...) a video game in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and puzzle-solving.

That works, doesn’t it? It’s also fair to say that such a definition is very vague and doesn’t even exclude RPGs or games like Half-Life. Quest for Glory series, for example, is usually considered to have “RPG elements” or gets classified as a hybrid of both an adventure game and an RPG.

This vagueness opens adventure games for many subgenres, and Roadwarden graciously falls into a couple of them at once. It has scenes with text parsers, typical for interactive fiction, but its advanced dialogue choices could even categorize it as digital gamebook (CYOA-like). Probably a better option for us is a “graphic adventure game”, since there are Some graphics and few ways to interact with the game - parsers, in-game “buttons”, dialogue choices.

I have a pleasure to be a part of few adventure game communities and there’s usually a small range of titles that are constantly mentioned as the “classic” adventure games. Point & clicks (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango), graphic games with parsers commands (King’s Quest), sometimes games like Myst...

Text adventure games, while accepted, are not really discussed often. And it’s difficult to make silly memes about them, so they are a bit obsolete. However, a group focused specifically on text adventure games really doesn’t care about graphics.

It feels to me like there Should be a spectrum of graphics vs. text, and of visible interface vs. text parsers. But it’s not the case. Text adventures and graphic adventures are almost in different worlds - not because of what they are, but rather because of what communities surround them. And, once again, Roadwarden is in between. It’s not just a hybrid of an RPG and an adventure game, it’s also a hybrid of a text adventure game and a graphic adventure game.

Roadwarden is a hybrid, and that’s not sexy

In conclusion, here are some of the genres that I think are strongly present in Roadwarden:

· RPG;

· Visual Novel;

· text adventure game;

· graphic adventure game;

· digital gamebook.

Also, I heard opinions that “it feels a lot like a tabletop RPG”. What makes me happy, since it’s intentional.

Some of my game’s features are not exclusive to any specific genre. All of the labels I’ve listed tend to be story-heavy and support their plot with dialogues (or even narration), often include inventory management, allow you to role-play a protagonist and tend to use fantasy settings. Others, however, are genre specific: parsers, open world exploration, mechanically progressing protagonist, simplified visuals, resource management...

Roadwarden is a hybrid, what means it’s going to have a problem appealing to fans of a specific genre. Yet, at the same time, it’s a game that’s not restricted by its labels - and I don’t think genres should limit our designs. My game can include all the things it needs. It can be unusual, experiment and creatively look for new ways to explore.

I just hope I can earn your trust.

#indiedev #indie game #devlog #rpg #visual novel #pixelart #text adventure #adventure game #video games

[moonguardsecrets]

hi im berenal

So I'd like to preface by saying I don't really use this blog too much, I mostly read it every now and again but that's about it. I've been relatively quiet concerning this issue but frankly I don't think that's the right way to go about it anymore, so I'm just going to address some stuff.

I've always believed in being pretty transparent about my issues, especially beef with other people. So while this blog is all about being anonymous, I'm just going to put up my side of this whole thing.

1. Concerning my guild/our story. There's a post I've seen pop up a few times that we've accused Blizzard of copying our stuff for Drustvar. While there's some striking similarities between some of our stuff and Drustvar, we know that Blizzard doesn't care about some random guild on MG. It was a meme. Maybe it's cause sarcasm gets lost in text, idk, but we've never actually believed that our stuff was stolen. We've actually fully embraced the similarities and have been super looking forward to the Drust stuff cause it's a cool concept, but this idea that we've somehow been slighted by Blizzard/earnestly believe that there was a copy thing isn't true. It was a joke that I guess went over poorly outside of our guild. We still say it as a joke in our casual conversations, accusing a specific guild mate of being a blizzard spy whenever something funny happens. It's a little outlandish to me personally that it got taken seriously but hey I'm not going to point a finger around, I'm just clarifying that the Blades as a group doesn't actually think this.

As for my character, which I've seen people saying I try to roleplay Greymane, thanks I guess? Berenal as a character is meant to be insanely patriotic. If they ever turned Genn into a villain, Berenal would follow him, unless it was done so in a really weird way like old gods or something overtly obvious. The character is meant to echo Greymane's statements, but I've never tried to pass myself off as Genn IC or state I have absolute authority from him or whatever.

Our guild is centered around Gilneas foremost and we put a lot of our narrative in-house rather than post it up publicly because we don't believe in forcing an intrusive narrative. I know I've been accused of such personally when Flames of War was doing Ashenvale, though I'll address that a bit later.

2. Concerning the titles of ranks in the guild. Recently a post came out, which was deleted because it did include the name explicitly of our stuff, that was talking about a title given to one of my officers. The post included a mistranslation, saying it translated to queen. That's just blatantly not true. For some background, the position was a recent creation because our previous council system wasn't working too well for this branch so we downsized it to the main officer in charge of the branch of the guild.

Given that this is our pagan project, and they have their own language (which yes, we do proxy with Irish cause I'm not a linguist and I don't have the means or time to make my own language up), we used an amalgam of a few words to describe it. The title roughly translates to an arbitrator of law/leader of law. Not king, not queen. In fact it's not even a noble position either, it's an elected one that if Aleyina were to ever step down, it'd go to whoever was elected next. We use the title Grand Master, Spymaster, Rionasai, and a few others throughout the guild. They're all on the same level of 'power', and countless other guilds have similar structure. I'm not sure what drove the need to lie about that but I'd just like to clear that misconception up before I go into my next point.

3. Concerning the pagan project in my guild. My guild has had a pagan project in it for roughly 4-5 years. I put up the original article for it about almost a year after we started it. It's a story I personally started back in Mists of Pandaria and have cultivated alongside several others for years, it's something I only recently managed to hand off into other people's hands for running it because I couldn't focus on it, I have other narratives and stories that I tell in my guild, but here's the proof of how old this story is. (Note, at the time the Pagans were called "Wickers", which is actually where the whole drust meme even comes from on our side.)

https://i.imgur.com/7rgG9t5.png

I was fascinated with the bare minimal lore that Blizzard provided for the Old Ways and Harvest Witches/Wizards that I tried to expand on that by making a group of people based around the ideology of an expanded religion that roots its self from a common point in druidism.

What started originally as a side group grew into an entire branch of our guild and has since been something I've personally invested years worth of time growing and developing as a writing project alongside others. We've made a point of making nearly everything in this branch original content and it's at the point it's at after four to five years of growth and development alongside the main narrative of the guild. It's a project that I have personally cultivated with the help of others for years and has been personally invested into by the guild as a whole through nearly three expansions now.

On top of it, a while ago we were accused of having said our runes were celtic or something. That's not true. They're stylized elder futhark, we've never bothered to hide that. In fact, I've attached some images below.

https://i.imgur.com/q5MHveU.png

This is an image from Varian's grave in Stormwind. The runes are translatable elder futhark, and this is the closest representation to Common we have in the game.

https://i.imgur.com/C9jc7sG.png

This is an image from Haustvald in Stormheim. These runes too are Elder Futhark, though they've been slightly stylized and include some runes that are gibberish it's meant to represent Vrykul. The angle's a little bad but if you go there in game Elder Futhark is literally lining most of Stormheim. You can translate these as well, it's pretty nifty.

The premise of our written language for the project we have for runes has never been 'celtic', we just based it off whatever Blizzard ended up saying was 'humanity's language'. Our group takes some minor inspiration from norse and celtic themes, but the majority of it is original writing, and the runes themselves are based around the idea of having descended from vrykul runes; so we just kept to the format that Blizz themselves are using for humans in the game.

4. Concerning Flames of War. While this one has largely died down, I'd still like to address it. Flames of War is a team effort, something with over ten coordinators that all of us still actively communicate with one another fairly regularly. During this time I'd been claimed as a dictator, or that I was giving special attention to myself/my own. Flames of War has never been solely 'dictated' by my actions. Every major decision has been either voted on or come to consensus one way or another, including story decisions. Sure I'm the dude who made the server but I've forfeited any real 'power' that gives me in favor of a council system. Ergo, if you're mad at me for something that happened in Flames of War, I highly encourage you to re-assess the things that happened and either speak to myself or another coordinator. We're not in this for some weird power play or whatever, this is a video game in the end of the day and unlike some past 'moguls of the server', I'm earnestly just looking to make my virtual barbie doll be in some cool situations, not make him grand poobah of the alliance or whatever. I can speak on behalf of the rest of the team and say they feel the exact same way.

5. Concerning our adherence to lore. I know there's been some people who have accused my guild of breaking lore/saying I don't care about lore. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a giant lore fanatic and for whatever reason people use me like an almanac in a few servers for lore questions. I really honestly do try to keep the boundaries of my guild within reasonable lore parameters. Despite the rumors, no, my character doesn't have regular casual chats with Genn Greymane, no, our lands are not 'flawless with millions of gold and soldiers', no, we don't RP like we run Gilneas either. All we're trying to do is have fun with the game and tell a story of a rundown kingdom trying to get back on it's feet.

6. Concerning deleted secrets. Yes, I've requested secrets be deleted before because, honestly, ever since this nick-name stuff started it's stopped being remotely ambiguous. Sword of Genn isn't even remotely ambiguous. Neither is Knives of Greymane, that's just changing one word. The rules for the blog on the side state anything that can be considered trolling or abuse of anonymity is grounds for removal of secrets; so I've just used those rules since honestly, a lot of these are really weird accusations. Each time I've been willing/or have provided screenshots to prove the contrary. Not all secrets concerning my guild have been deleted; only the ones that break the rules. This segways into my final point.

As I said at the beginning of this huge post, I've always been a believer of transparency. If you have issue with me, or any of my guild mates, I'm honestly imploring people to contact me over Discord or in game. My tag is:

Berenal#0693 In game it's just Berenal, no weird letters. I'll be online in Boralus.

You don't need to contact me on your main account if you're afraid I'm going to 'out you' or whatever. Any conversation we have will be one on one between us. You can even delete it afterwards, I don't mind. So come to me on a throw-away discord account, let it out to my face, or maybe we can even hash out our differences. I'm more interested in getting this shit done with than trying to start a flame war, honestly. In the end of the day this is a game to me and mine, and we're all paying 15 bucks a month to have fun. I've cleared out my block list entirely, so there's nothing stopping people from contacting me.

I do hope folks reach out so we can hash our differences out and do our own thing, instead of whatever vendetta seems to have brewed up over play pretend for god knows what reason. I earnestly don't understand the point of the majority of these vitriolic posts; it just seems to subsist off the idea of throwing words around for what real reason? To upset people? I don't get it. I don't see what posting incessantly here about it does to fix anything.

If you've got issue with me or my guys come talk to me about it, my door's open.

[fantroll-purgatory]

On left side theres him before entering the medium,on right side theres him when he gets an new shirt and prototypes to make shoes with light laces,striped shorts,blue tooth headphones(badum psst)and an way more portable virtual boy glasses,i want the players to wear gray shirts on this universe,also i want my kids to look or have to do with alpha and beta kids,i wanted him to get same face,text and maybe hair as John and Jane,also the kids will get the remaining aspects:doom,blood,rage and mind,fun fact,jellyfish troll was an trollsona of him and this is a kid?sona of me,and same with all the other kids.

Lives in Earth,but in an alternative universe

Name:???? Martinez

Martinez is too long (it’s 8 letters, where you need 6 or 7), so I’ll probably recommend Martine. For the first name… maybe Odel? As a reference to Odell Down Under, a 1995 video game about the ocean/being a fish. It seems like you enjoy the water and ocean creatures a lot, and you have a theme of underappreciated old games here, so I thought it’d be fitting! 

Odel Martine. 

Age:14 years

Strife Specibus:Spade kind,as reference to one of his favorite games,dig dug

The shape of a spade looks kind of like a jellyfish, so that is fitting.

Fetch Modus:relation modus,he relates stuff to another stuff,if he wants an kitten,he will need an 7,number of lifes of cats,if he needs a bar of chocolate he thinks on division signs,they are divided on little rectangles

How about Ordered Jelly-Fish modus instead. It’d act kind of like a tree modus with the Base item at the top, but there’s a relational structure going down. So like you said, for example, if he has a cat in his Main Slot, all branches from there have to be somehow related to cats. So he could have one tentacle that involves the number 9, one tentacle that involves Softness, one tentacle that involves meat, etc. 

Blood color:red??

Symbol and meaning:same as trollsona,jellyfish

Looks too much like a plain squid right now. I might change it to 

This Jellyfish from Yoshi’s story!

Username:i will re-cycle the Joven_Bidente to the way he swaps letters and the desire to see stuff,the fact that he likes pairs and he speaks spanish

what about vivalaAguaviva, theoretically “Long Live The Jellyfish” ?

Quirk:tries his best on perfect grandmar but swaps words and letters,tries to make everything a pair numb#r,uses $ymb°l$ depending on stuff and tries censor when saying sheet,funk,etc.

I don’t think you need the symbols, it clutters too much for a human character who has no real reason to utilize such a quirk.

Special Abilities (if any):he can summon his “fuaa” and destroy everything on a 1meter ratio,also light synesthesia

I don’t… know what this means, the “fuaa” thing. The closest I can find is a meme? Like a psychic energy? But the guy claimed fortune-telling and the ability to raise the dead? And that it’s an internal willforce when you think you can’t do more… I’m guessing this AU world you’ve created is one where people have superpowers, so if you want this, I guess it would be more of a ‘last resort’ power than anything? Him summoning his will in order to effect change around him? 

Light synthesia works fine, though.

Lusus/pet??:he got an betta fish that will prototype to an sprite)

Did the fish raise him or does he have an actual parent?

Personality: shy but alternate to strong

This is a really vague personality! If you want him to be a doom player, you should focus on him being someone with a hard life. Someone who’s not so self-assured, but who is a good ear to listen to. Maybe someone who needs to learn to stand up for himself- the Potential to be strong. To justify the dersite assignment later, you need to make him someone who’s either really worried about the past or future and someone who isn’t satisfied with his current position in life.

Interests:Underrated/old videogames,keychains,ghosts and art

He should also be interested in the ocean and such.

Title:seer of doom

Page of Doom is what I would recommend, because of the fuaa ability and the potential I mentioned. 

Land:hmm….

Land of Frills and Tendrils, maybe? Both references to jellyfish, really. A risky, dangerous land with creeping, dangerous tentacles hidden among the pretty frills.

Dream Planet:Derse

Since Derse was the recommendation in the Glauce review, I’ll agree to keep it here, too!

Design:

First off, not to be rude, but please No One ever submit a double sized sprite with such terrible color artifacting ever again or I will just not be touching it. Anyways here we go. 

Hair: It was just John’s with some missing parts, so I made it not that. I based it vaguely off of the protagonist of Secret of Evermore’s hair, since that’s an old underrated game. 

Glasses: I decided not to leave them just a black blob and instead I made them a pair of goggles. I specifically based them off of the Light Amplification Visor from Doom. I thought it made a lot of thematic sense with his light synthesia. 

Mouth: The big teeth just looked awkward. He’s not a troll, he’s a human. So I made them into smaller, more even-sized. 

Shirt: I didn’t want it to be too similar to John’s, so I moved the outline out a little to make it wider and then reduced the belt size somewhat. I also made it a flat color. Which was so hard. All those colors. All those disparate, artifacted colors… I’ve seen hell. 

Symbol: Like I said, I replaced the squid with the Yoshi’s Story jellyfish. I also changed the color to sea green! 

Shorts: I didn’t want to rip right off the John shorts, so I sprited some new ones that are a bit shorter.  

Shoes: I had to edit the shoes a little to make up for the gap between them and the shorts. I also decided to make them darker just to fit the general grey you’d been going with on his clothes. 

I hope I provided helpful feedback!

-CD

#rice-22 #martinez #martine #odel #odel martine #fankid #review #redesign #cd review #submission

[fellowshipoffoucault]

Reading II: Design and Knowledge

Introduction

Today we can assume that life is much more impacted by vast majority of information that defines the courses of our thinking, reaction, consumption and action. In that sense the first thing that intrigued my thoughts of design and knowledge is C. W. Mills text, and his theory of “infosphere”. The concept of that “parallel universe” is co-existing today with other terms such as alternative reality, virtual reality or cyberspace. “We humans, alone among the earth’s organic creatures, live in both worlds at once”, said Mills in the text, and right that sentence is very important for understanding visual knowledge and our rethinking of what is means, and what it represents.

Do we live today in visual world, a world of images, videos, pictorial representations? Do we live in world of type, numbers, codes? Or do we co-exist in that micro universe, trying yet to find a correct place? Do we need that place, and do we need distinction of that micro universe? That were questions that stayed in my mind, while trying to understand different aspects of dissimilar texts which pointed out the crisis, the terror and the hope of design and visual knowledge.

The question of interpretation visual expression, knowledge, becomes arguable in the texts of Johanna Drucker. In her work “Graphesis. Visual Forms of Knowledge Production”, we can see different approaches to the existence and interpretation of design as arbitrary system, knowledge production and a rise of visual language that can be applicable in many other fields. But if we take the term “visual” and think about the epistemic aspect of its existence, we can see that it depends on the cognitive seeing of things. In that matter of speaking, its language is build on verbal description and formal set of visual elements, and it can not be objectified, rather, it is very empirical and depends on the viewpoint of one single person. No one can see the exact same color, as our cognitive senses are different, in that way, a language and its interpretation depend largely on person to person, from culture to culture, from social impact. Can we then create a universal visual language, that can be reliable? One big example of this are the traffic sings, pictograms, that are universal visual language throughout the whole world? But can it be applied for abstract ideas, for means of business, massive consumption? Today, we can say that we are constantly trying to break those boundaries and many times we create design systems, based on theoretical knowledge build in twentieth century. The Gestalt principles, the psychological work on colors, shapes have inevitably impacted how we define visual language and set some basic rules. Like mathematics, physics, design has also today a build a language that “in structuralist theory” has its own “set of rules”. But as Rene Thom has stated in the text, visual interpretation is unreliable, and that is where our main understanding of visual language builds like a hybrid space. A space, not defined, co-existing differently throughout many cultures and their viewpoint. That is why the significance of building it for information design and other means of visual representation for people is crucial. Because the culture of meme, as Gleick James has stated, can be viral, destructive and shape a knowledge that has not been yet defined. We can see the impact of that destructive idea today, on social media platforms, and how there are defining that space. But the struggle of defining the visual language becomes quite hard, once we understand that there is one thing that distinct arbitrary language from visual, and that is the narrative. The narrative caries expression, and it impacts our feelings, and by that means, it is empirical.  I would not wonder today about how that can be transformed to a mechanic mind, a robot, because the humans can not yet comprehend the abstract notions of it.

Can we say that our visual language is constantly building, like a plant that grows uncontrollably? And by that means, what kind of knowledge does the produce? What are the seeds? Memes?

The thinking of C.W. Mills and James Gleick are colliding and contributing to a very philosophical thought, and that is the meaning and the truth of work. When I talk here about the “truth of work” I consider the factors that are impacting the work of designer and his obligation to a very crude and consumeristic world that he creates for. It is inevitable in contemporary world that economy and marketing has a big impact on our understanding of visual language, and that is very well written in the text of C.W. Mills. Our contribution to this, is to understand the factors that are impacting it and trying to prevent it from going in different direction. But as it is said in the text of Gleick, the theory of memes can become viral, and it moves like an organism, but right this unpredictable organism is shaping our understanding, not just the visual world, but the moral aspect of being, creating and living. We live today just for the “new”, and yet we do not understand that “new” is already being set, in that way it is not new, but rather “manipulative”. That is what C.W. Mills text is contributing as major factor, and the idea of Memes somehow applies in that. The question of “craftmanship” is something that has being rising lately, but also breaking in smaller parts of thinking of designer as “consumeristic creator” or more precisely “consumeristic slave”.  The idealistic aspect of thinking about designer as craftsmanship, does not contribute the consumeristic way of thinking and living. To change that idea, we need to build visual knowledge, to try to plant the “seeds” and maintain control, but the contribution to that aspect does not need just designers, but “quite ironically” also economists, writers, philosophers, politicians, educators. Because design is a branch that glues everything together, and in that fact, it needs the help of other branches. The metaphorical thinking now somehow collides with the thinking of Gleick’s work, where we can say that not just ideas are organisms, but everything is a living organism. It moves, creates, shapes, but we cannot see it because it exists only in the infosphere.

- Strahinja

[blankbambosh]

Introduction, Reading II: Design and Knowledge by Hilla, 27th September 2020

I want to start this introduction with a mention that one week was quite a short time to digest all the information I got from the texts. Familiarity with the topics is always helpful to get a general view of the subject matter. I encountered quite many new thoughts in the texts this time. Probably I didn’t understand everything and for that reason some of the texts were uncomfortable at times for me to read. I can now see that this little intro here is highlighting quite well the topic of our discussion.

This time around, I just wrote down a list of my notes and what stuck with me and seemed important in each text.

Graphesis. Visual Forms of Knowledge Production by Johanna Drucker 

(I first read pages 2–12 and then pages 16–48.)

-  It surely seems strange that visualised information is in such a meaningful role in these days, however not all information or data is inherently visual. It is interesting to think why we hung up so much on visual presentations. My first thought to explain this to myself was to think that humans are visual creatures. In a matter of fact we still are taught that way at VCD (on Introduction to Information Design course to be exact.) However, quite recent study shows that eye sight is not so dominant in all cultures. 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181105160852.htm

Journal Reference:

Differential coding of perception in the world’s languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2018; 201720419 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1720419115

- We have a lot of knowledge and and data, that we have visualised a lot, so much so, that it is a default in our so called western society. The most used format to get information is through GUI or Graphic User Interface or just UI. We do not question interfaces nor do we question that are our visualisations of knowledge true or are they just presentations of a truth. In other words there are images that act as if they are the truth. My thoughts on this are conflicting quite a bit. 

I think we should be aware of how we create knowledge. The first reason why I think we should think other ways as well to present knowledge is the fact that not all people are able to see well or at all. They rely heavily on other senses that they can use and often times those other senses are emphasised in their daily lives. We have to make sure the knowledge is accessible in our UI centred world that is more and more online. https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

- I also started to thinks why our heavily visualised world is the way it is. I guess the majority with ability to see has out ruled and build a world that serves them. Knowledge in a visual form has reflected maybe so well what they were and are able to see that there was no reason or understanding enough to question it. Our world we live in has been good enough for the majority of people who also have power to keep the world as it is or change it how they like.

- What the text also pointed out is, that ”Despite its sophisticated knowledge of visual production, art history has not focused on visual epistemology as a primary concern.” That is an interesting thought, because it makes me wonder, what have I been studying at then Uni all along. On the other hand it seems so that not much ”theory” is standardised on our field. Is the knowledge of graphic design quiet information, which spreads mostly ”mouth to mouth”, from teachers to students by telling what is, rather than teaching ”universal knowledge” of graphic design. 

- A notion of graphic language was really hard for me to understand. I get the idea behind it, but my mind restricts me from seeing what it could be. Maybe Drucker has a vision of it, but me as a reader can’t quite figure it out. Is it even possible to come up with a graphic language, like notes are in music? Could all the knowledge and data we have be presented with ”a graphic language”? Drucker gives an example from the field of mathematics: geometry is one of the branches of mathematics, however it is heavily based on systematic and logical visualisations. The examples, Drucker shows in the book, that ”comprise the ’lnguage’ of graphic communication are more rhethorical than logical and their features can be described in terms of visual principles that relate to sight, perception, cognition, cultural conventions and norms.” Drucker also says that all these investigations of visual forms as a systematic expression of knowledge contribute to the search for a ”language” of graphics. There are many such ”languages” in the field of data visualization and information design, that merely try to represent knowledge that is quantitative by nature. Drucker says that ”The stabilization of graphical conventions in cartography was driven by needs specific to the profession, but it created insights that can be transferred to other fields.”

 Could we have a standard graphic language for qualitative knowledge. Would it obscure the information? Would it be very limiting? I can’t see what could be so I’m a very good example that we are the children of our time.

On the other hand I can help myself of wondering if we are missing a field of study that graphic design/visual communication design should have in order to be an established field of science?

Into the Meme Pool (you parasite my brain) by James Gleick

- Information and knowledge spread with ideas and humans (our brain) and our culture, are vessels for ideas to spread. Ideas do not have to have any scientific base or validation to spread.

Episteme means scientific knowledge and a system of understanding it. Episteme also means something like the mental walls of an era that has set boundaries and within those boundaries only certain type of ideas can be born and spread in a certain time. We are all quite inept to see what are the boundaries of our time. We also need to be very careful when we adopt ideas. 

If ideas gain a lot of space in human minds, they spread. If not, ideas fade and die. Popular ideas cause ideas that help evolve new ideas. In our visual culture we can see, that pictures as ideas or memes are quite contagious and spread easily and we have all the technology to speed up the spreading even more. Picture is not the meme but the idea of the meme. If tunes are also really contagious memes, why certain memes take visual form and some are audio? Who decides what physical shape or form memes are going to take? 

(For example, a comic artist Matt Furie published in 2005 a comic book called Boy's Club. Furie’s cartoon characters have a certain language that appealed many users in online venues such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, which have many users who delight in creating racist memes and imagery. Furie’s frog character Pepe the Frog in particular became a known symbol for such purposes and a subset of Pepe memes would come into existence that centered on racist, anti-semitic or other bigoted themes. The artist himself didn’t meant his Pepe the Frog character to be a symbol of racism, misogynism, anti-semitism, but the idea just got too much ground in the wrong corners of internet.) 

- I was also thinking, if the meme pool and ideas are somewhat connected to the mental walls of episteme, how much potential ideas and knowledge worth investing is ignored in our era. Those walls are limiting quite a bit how we think and what we think is possible.

The Man in the Middle by C. Wright Mills 

- The title ”Our Worlds Are Second-Hand” underlines the whole point of the text in the context of our reading list. We get so much information and ideas, that have been eaten and chewed for us many time before we get to digest them and truly think what the information is really about. The ideas that are second-hand are also products of times before us. The should be critical and ask more often: Are these ideas relevant in our time and relevant to us? In that sense communication and ideas limit our experience of the world we live in. ”The cultural apparatus” seems to be not for us, but for itself, like capitalism in that Grace Jones’ song Coporate Cannibal we listened to at the beginning of this course. Mills says ”The only truth are the truths defined by the cultural apparatus.”