Chocolate / Ruby 💖☕

So I finished Mario Wonder so I can watch the playthrough of one of the YTers I currently follow without ruining any of the surprises, and if I was a pro game dev I'd pay next to anything to get a running feed of their thought processes to try and understand how they're exploring the game and learning to play it.

I'm now all but convinced there's genuinely no accounting for game literacy in game design. Certain conveyances in the game that I thought were so obvious as to be literally elementary soared so far over their head they went into fucking orbit. They don't tend to act out to the camera, very scarcely interact with chat, and seemed to be very focused on enjoying the game; so I genuinely don't think it was the "streamer effect" at play.

And I don't mean to make myself sound like I'm saying I'm better than a speedrunner (they used to do that back in the day); there's likely going to be a lot of stuff they'll figure out automatically that I struggled with myself.

While looking up information about Yoshis' and Nabbit's mechanics, I found two articles that concerned me: one that explained the mechanics but failed to do so in any sort of detail I was hoping for, and another that complained about Yoshi not being allowed to pick up powerups and how this "denied them an integral part of the experience" because they weren't made aware of it until several levels in - when the character selection screen has a warning plastered across it that explicitly says as much. The YTer I watch made the exact same mistake, multiple times.

It's just so fascinating and a little frustrating how, at least in practice, nothing can be assumed to be "obvious" in games - even if and when it's written in plain language front and center.

Was just having a nice long chat with my friend @tiffbun about the whole-ass weird-ass and extremely fucking opaque use case that cohost is clearly designed around, and realizing that I'm actually, literally going to have to reframe my relationship with this website within the context and expectations I have from social media writ large - assuming that the team manages to adhere to whatever those design principles are, of course.Honestly, at this point I'd love to know exactly what those principles are so I can better understand what to expect from this site rather than wishing for functionality that I was never even intended to have, because it's not what the team set out to create in the first place. As a "content creator" online I'm inclined towards treating these platforms primarily as tools, and tools are meant to solve problems, right?Well, not cohost. Cohost is starting to feel to me like its own microcosm - it's not here to solve a problem, it's here to provide its own experience. If you joined cohost simply as a replacement for Twitter, as I did originally, you're gonna be sorely disappointed, as I know many people were from their (and yes, my own too ) repeated complaints about it. I still think some features would improve users' quality of life on here without compromising that experience too much but, by and large, I think I'm gonna chill out a little bit about that, moving forward.It feels a little hypocritical of me to be putting out niche content based on my own tastes, interests, and yes, my own philosophy too; then show up on this site that's so well made and clearly based upon clear intent only to expect that it bend to my whims, just because of what I've been taught to expect from previous platforms I've used.They've already implemented tagging pretty much perfectly , which anybody who's followed me for a while knows is one of my biggest bugbears with just about every fucking content sharing platform as a variety fetish artist. Letting users curate their experience online is as important to me as my own freedom to express myself however the fuck I want (yes, terms and conditions do still apply) , largely for the exact same reasons.I really should be happy with the rest of what we have to hand, learn how to make best use of the featureset that we've got, and see what new and crazy stuff they might come up with as a result of them remaining largely unbothered by chasing after whatever standards were established by other platforms before it.I just want to know if there's a way to better understand where they're coming from, so I can more easily get to that point, and I might even learn something in the process too.

Was just having a nice long chat with my friend @tiffbun about the whole-ass weird-ass and extremely fucking opaque use case that cohost is clearly designed around, and realizing that I'm actually, literally going to have to reframe my relationship with this website within the context and expectations I have from social media writ large - assuming that the team manages to adhere to whatever those design principles are, of course.

Honestly, at this point I'd love to know exactly what those principles are so I can better understand what to expect from this site rather than wishing for functionality that I was never even intended to have, because it's not what the team set out to create in the first place. As a "content creator" online I'm inclined towards treating these platforms primarily as tools, and tools are meant to solve problems, right?

Well, not cohost. Cohost is starting to feel to me like its own microcosm - it's not here to solve a problem, it's here to provide its own experience. If you joined cohost simply as a replacement for Twitter, as I did originally, you're gonna be sorely disappointed, as I know many people were from their (and yes, my own too) repeated complaints about it. I still think some features would improve users' quality of life on here without compromising that experience too much but, by and large, I think I'm gonna chill out a little bit about that, moving forward.

It feels a little hypocritical of me to be putting out niche content based on my own tastes, interests, and yes, my own philosophy too; then show up on this site that's so well made and clearly based upon clear intent only to expect that it bend to my whims, just because of what I've been taught to expect from previous platforms I've used.

They've already implemented tagging pretty much perfectly, which anybody who's followed me for a while knows is one of my biggest bugbears with just about every fucking content sharing platform as a variety fetish artist. Letting users curate their experience online is as important to me as my own freedom to express myself however the fuck I want (yes, terms and conditions do still apply), largely for the exact same reasons.

I really should be happy with the rest of what we have to hand, learn how to make best use of the featureset that we've got, and see what new and crazy stuff they might come up with as a result of them remaining largely unbothered by chasing after whatever standards were established by other platforms before it.

I just want to know if there's a way to better understand where they're coming from, so I can more easily get to that point, and I might even learn something in the process too.

We're not the ones pushing gender ideology, IT'S FUCKING THEM (you know who).

We want an Agender society, one that isn't so fucking concerned about who gets to be which of the apparently only two possible prescribed options. They're the ones who want it enshrined in the arbitrary Church of Westernized Society™ to make sure everyone has their assigned role and they bloody well stick to it religiously.

FUCK them for putting all this shit on us, when they're the ones trying so fucking hard to fit a square peg into a round fucking hole.

So today's learning experience is that I can apparently muster plenty of energy towards getting shit done on a consistent daily basis, so long as I don't also need to put much conscious effort into regulating my mood.

Once I have to deal with something emotionally demanding, all bets are off and I need to be extremely careful with the mental energy I'm likely hemorrhaging while doing literally anything that's particularly involved in conjunction to the added emotional effort.

Fortunately I've been doing really well lately, so despite the intensity of The Feelings™️ I was dealing with today, it seems to me like I've built up a bit of a reserve of resilience towards these kinds of taxing times.

I know there's a limit though, so I need to be careful and I'll probably be better off pacing myself a bit more conservatively over the next couple of days.

My therapist/counsellor has really helped me with being mindful of my own mental health. A lot of it involved guiding me through my own thought processes and practicing healthier approaches towards introspection, but I'm still so thankful for all she's done for me over the years.