Getting a headstart by collating this as time progresses rather than trying to go through a backlog way at the end of the year, though this in no way means I'll keep up with doing this each month. Inspired by 2023's version, naturally. Also going to be missing a lot of good posts (and probably including the same people a fair bit) simply as a consequence of what crosses my timeline.
This Post is not About Video Games by @PermanentReset
I have seen beauty, in so many forms. Beauty that leaves me wanting to turn a page, that leaves me wanting to binge a show, that leaves me wanting to re-watch a film, that leaves me wanting to find other works done by an artist. Art stirs something in us, and that is beautiful.
The Comforting Loneliness of Suburban Anti-Places by @shel
There is a depressing cloud that sets upon you from these environments. There is a feeling of disconnect from the world. An immediate derealization. I feel as though I have ventured outside of the world into a space between worlds not meant to be inhabited by anything living. Like I am swimming through the void of space without a suit on. Immediately everything feels hopeless, pointless, senseless. There are no stakes to my actions. No greater meaning to life. Other people do not exist, there is only that which I interact with.
Most illnesses and injuries are occupational illnesses and injuries by @tjc
It's not your fault. If you're sick or injured, it's not that you failed to eat the right foods, or do the right exercises, or be mindful, or use a standing desk or take breaks every hour or drink 8 glasses of water a day. If you didn't have to work for wages, no one would need to tell you to do any of those things because it would be easier to do them than to not do them. Your job is what makes it impossible to take care of yourself, and others' jobs are what makes it impossible for them to take care of you.
How To Be Smart by @mtrc
What are the ramifications of this? One important one is that we have elevated an entire class of people to positions of immense power and influence because they perform smartness rather than actually demonstrating competence at doing anything. In almost every case you'll be able to think of, this has had disastrous results.
thread on liminal spaces and travel by @Osmose, @lokeloski
However, as soon as I got on the highway and left the city, things changed: less traffic, larger lanes, smoother curves. The car sped up to 120 km/h and I turned the cruise control for the first time ever, and only had to turn it off when I arrived at the capital and the traffic caught up. The scenery along the highway changed a few times, with the woodland turning into shrubbery, then back to woodland. The car went up the mountains, and there were valleys so foggy it looked like someone dropped cotton balls all over them.
thread on TTRPG GM feedback by @Jama, @Scampir, @manwad, @amaranth-witch, @DeusExBrockina
the game is a conversation, and actually we should keep that conversation going outside of the scheduled session as well.
thread on work/effort by @pervocracy, @shel, @NireBryce
One of the most important things a mentor told me at my job is “Never give more than 90%. You need that last 10% to sustain yourself. You don’t have any more to give. If the library has to close because there’s not enough staff, then the library closes. That isn’t your fault.”
A List Of Useful Websites When Making An RPG by @insertdisc5
This is what I used to make my RPG game, but it could be useful for writers, game devs of all genres, DMs, artists, what have you. YIPPEE
Elliot Page's memoir and (finally) the Girls' Day postmortem by @renkotsuban
My grandfather spent all of his time gardening, raising his orchids in that cement courtyard or growing vegetables. There are pictures of me as a toddler riding on his back like a horse while he's bent over his precious plants. According to both my mother and aunt, those pictures are extremely shocking because it shows their father being fine with, even comfortable, around another person.
i am begging sfw artists to shut the fuck up about nsfw artists by @DieselBrain, @blazehedgehog
Then we had the early internet, right, where it felt like everybody was shunning the "attention whore." People with big personalities who are establishing an online identity and kind of control the spotlight wherever they go. And these two ideas comingled -- you can't control my sexual interest, you can't be an attention whore -- leading to what I think is this kind of behavior.
lake shore drive by @atomicthumbs, @queerinmech
always when you latch onto something, a feeling, a truth, a part of you that you missed, you can anchor it, you can bring it back with you - to waking life - to the world on the mundane side of the looking glass
Another World by @shel
Another world is not possible
All we have is the world we live in
If you listen closely, you’ll hear breathing
That is you, alive, still, despite it all
And that is all you have
Roleplaying and Forgiving Bad Game Design by @PermanentReset
The character, always, is distinctly separate from me, the player. I can peer into the character's mind, pull the character's strings, even move the character's limbs or make choices for the character - but the character is the character. I am not, for lack of a better word, incarnating the character. I am, at most, the character's conscience, not the character itself.
thread on video game layoffs, capitalism by @prophetgoddess, @eniko, @egotists-club, @DVD-Player, @danielleri, @MOKKA
Because infinite growth is impossible. Unsustainable. Once the system reaches those limitations, it will collapse. It will collapse absolutely. This has happened countless times throughout history. Time is a flat circle.
The Cohost Project Database by @mint
i thought it'd be cool to make a living doc of all the stuff peeps on Cohost are making here in the garden. This is the result! Check below to see what people are making. As the list (hopefully) expands, I'll begin to organize it by medium and the like.
The whole of Froissart has been translated twice by @sarantine
I am preaching to the choir here when I extol the virtues of the Internet Archive. It is a truly wonderful resource. But I doubt many people have considered its value in preserving the history of the 14th and 15th centuries. This is perhaps not its most important function, but it matters. I have studied the Medieval period because I believe the practice of history is a moral imperative; the continued thriving of the Internet Archive is a moral imperative.
thread on "realism" in video games by @OblivionLoading, @nex3, @mammonmachine
The pursuit of a kind of "realism" that's constructed entirely independently of any concerns for game design or player motivation. You can insult a merchant because you could in theory do that in the real world, and they will get pissed off at you inasmuch as that's expressible through game mechanics. The question of why a player would ever want to do this is totally irrelevant; these games see the idea of role-playing as a kind of simulation rather than part of the challenge of accomplishing the goals of the game.
I Was Reincarnated (Read: Invited to Lunch) Into a Google Office and Found That the Silicon Valley NPCs Live in a Different World by @ninecoffees
When they spoke, there was a quiet desperation to their voices. "This is why [our product] is good. We're targeting [current big audience] but with [small difference here] and we expect people will pay [X amount more]."
They were bleeding mass amounts of money. Didn't matter though. The next fundraiser was just along the corner.
They just needed to be bought out.
AI Is Already Better Than You by @mtrc
You cannot shame this technology into disuse any more. That only works if quality is something the people with money care about. The problem with the continuing erosion of the games industry, the dehumanisation of game workers and the brutal treatment of outsourced work, is that many roles in the games industry are already treated as if they were automated.
Sunday Night Poetry series by @hecker
Randall Jarrell was a poet, critic, and novelist. He famously wrote, “A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times; a dozen or two dozen times and he [sic] is great.” He also feared he would be remembered as a poet only for “The Death of the Ball-Turret Gunner,” based on his experiences as a pilot instructor in World War 2.
"The Economy" Is Not Synonymous With "Financial Stability" by @Sheri, @KaterinaBucket, @NireBryce
To economists, wars are just times at which money behaves differently, rather than people. Emotions are entirely secondary.
Yet people are the economy, aren't they? Just like how people are soldiers, warmongers, profiteers, and being slaughtered by the tens of thousands. Participating in the American economy right now is participating in the war. Our tax dollars are going to bombs and weapons used to kill innocent people overseas. If you're the kind of person to feel bad about that, it's understandable the vibes might be off.
thread on games as creative expression by @MOONMANiBE, @bruno, @portablecity
I think there's this idea that pure self expression is almost a higher calling of some sort, and that to be creative is to be driven by some inner demon that pushes you to say your thing as loud as possible and that will not be satisfied with compromises and outside interference. and there are some projects where that happens to me, though I suspect maybe less of them than folks might think.
on the merits of abstract art by @belarius, @SamKeeper, @sarahzedig
a failure, in art, to capture a pure emotion yet succeeds in capturing a distilled emotion-- not the one you set out to capture, perhaps, but the one driving the urge to capture it in the first place. is the repetitive act of trying and failing to communicate your intentions not a profoundly, universally human experience?
no one seems to know what to do without twitter by @MOONMANiBE, @bruno, @jeffgerstmann
I think a lot of people are in deep with a very bad misevaluation what Twitter was worth to them professionally. I'm not saying it was never worth being on the platform to anyone, but plenty of people got enamored with the idea that they could build clout and then convert that clout into professional access - jobs, funding, connections. And I think the reality is that for the most part, clout didn't really translate into any of that.
