This is random but I absolutely hate how people assume that having something as a special interest (or hyperfixation) means that you have extensive in-depth knowledge about it. Especially since it’s mostly neurotypical people guilty of this (though I’ve seen plenty of nd do it as well.) We’ve been told an annoying amount of times that “you don’t actually have a special interest in x, you hardly know anything about it” by people who have a lot of background in the subject. Like no where in any description of a special interest does it say it makes you an expert in the subject. Some people only fixate on the idea or aesthetic of their special interest. Some only on a surface level knowledge of it. Some people just simply aren’t compelled to dig deeper. I’ve never had the urge to look much into learning more about most of my spins, and when I’ve forced myself to I end up bored and don’t pay attention to whatever I’m researching.

I just need people to understand that having a spin doesn’t require substantial knowledge in the area to be valid. We just want to casually talk about what we already know and maybe learn little tidbits from others without being told “educate yourself” or that we’re invalid.

he sounded SO WORRIED

I think a lot of folks in indie RPG spaces misunderstand what's going on when people who've only ever played Dungeons & Dragons claim that indie RPGs are categorically "too complicated". Yes, it's sometimes the case that they're making the unjustified assumption that all games are as complicated as Dungeons & Dragons and shying away from the possibility of having to brave a steep learning cure a second time, but that's not the whole picture.

A big part of it is that there's a substantial chunk of the D&D fandom – not a majority by any means, but certainly a very significant minority – who are into D&D because they like its vibes or they enjoy its default setting or whatever, but they have no interest in actually playing the kind of game that D&D is... so they don't.

Oh, they'll show up at your table, and if you're very lucky they might even provide their own character sheet (though whether it adheres to the character creation guidelines is anyone's guess!), but their actual engagement with the process of play consists of dicking around until the GM tells them to roll some dice, then reporting what number they rolled and letting the GM figure out what that means.

Basically, they're putting the GM in the position of acting as their personal assistant, onto whom they can offload any parts of the process of play that they're not interested in – and for some players, that's essentially everything except the physical act of rolling the dice, made possible by the fact most of D&D's mechanics are either GM-facing or amenable to being treated as such.*

Now, let's take this player and present them with a game whose design is informed by a culture of play where mechanics are strongly player facing, often to the extent that the GM doesn't need to familiarise themselves with the players' character sheets and never rolls any dice, and... well, you can see where the wires get crossed, right?

And the worst part is that it's not these players' fault – not really. Heck, it's not even a problem with D&D as a system. The problem is D&D's marketing-decreed position as a universal entry-level game means that neither the text nor the culture of play are ever allowed to admit that it might be a bad fit for any player, so total disengagement from the processes of play has to be framed as a personal preference and not a sign of basic incompatibility between the kind of game a player wants to be playing and the kind of game they're actually playing.

(Of course, from the GM's perspective, having even one player who expects you to do all the work represents a huge increase to the GM's workload, let alone a whole group full of them – but we can't admit that, either, so we're left with a culture of play whose received wisdom holds that it's just normal for GMs to be constantly riding the ragged edge of creative burnout. Fun!)

* Which, to be clear, is not a flaw in itself; a rules-heavy game ideally needs a mechanism for introducing its processes of play gradually.

The point is, as a game designer, you are never going to win over the all-indie-games-are-too-complicated crowd by explaining how simple your player-facing rules are and how seamlessly they support the narrative, because their experience of playing Dungeons & Dragons is that they can simply opt out of engaging with any player-facing part of the game they don't care for, up to and including opting out of everything and making the GM do all the work, and they're coming from a culture of play which has a vested interest in treating this as a valid preference. It doesn't matter how light your rules are, you're not going to beat an expected level of engagement of zero!

做了5cm亚克力小粒牌奖励一下自己🥰🥰🥰🥰❤️

I've met him in person btw and he's a fucking sweetheart

[ID: Text-intensive Twitter thread from the Shapeshifters chest binders Twitter account in reply to a post by artist and author Ursula Vernon. Vernon says, A non-zero number of you apparently did not know that The Last Unicorn was a book before it was a movie. It is by Peter S. Beagle. It is made of spun glass and fairytales and iron knives and there are individual lines that I would give my lungs to have written. Shapechangers replies, I saw him every year at NYCC for several years straight, bought something at his table, asked him to sign it, and we spoke. He remembered me from year to year, no small feat at that con. He remembered which stories he'd told me. One year I came back with a different gender on. He squinted at me a bit and said thoughtfully, "I've seen you before in this place." All I had to say was, "last year you told me the story about the inoshishi." And his face cleared, and he leaned in with a grin and told me about a German guitarist who he traveled with, twice. Who transitioned between the first and second time, so he'd gotten to meet this person all over again on the second round. It was a wonderfully kind way to let me know that everything was fine. I was fresh out of the closet and I needed that, and maybe he could see it. The Last Unicorn is the best book in the world and I will defend it and its author til I die. the end. /end ID]

I don't usually talk about celebrities; artists, when I do, and I'm keenly aware that one needn't be a good person to be a hell of a heartwrenching artist. But Peter S. Beagle has written a few of my favorite things in the world, he's an excellent singer and filker, and this Twitter thread was dreadfully important to me. I don't want it going away as Twitter becomes Shitter, because it's so often bad news, isn't it? It's important to me to share trans joy.

i will chew through the fucking gag

I will develop spontanious stephen king-like telekinesis to stop this.

night and day

reblog to pet prev

she who watches

• “La liberté guidant le peuple” by Eugène Delacroix

and

• “13th attempt to break the Gaza blockade by sea”. Photo by Mustafa Hassouna (Andalou Agency for Getty)

Update!

The guy in this photo is called A'aed Abu Amro. Shortly after this image went viral, he was shot by Israeli Army but someone close to him said he was fine. I couldn’t find anything else about him, not even ways to support him directly. So I’m adding some relevant links to help as many people as we can:

Here’s a thread on twitter with GoFundMe links for Palestinians in need

The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA)

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF)

Medical Aid for Palestinians

You can find more links to support organizations here!

Please, if you can’t donate, consider taking 5 to 10 minutes to learn about the situation. I know is hard, but you don’t have to do it all at once.

Do you remember Mohammed El-Kurd? His interview with CNN went viral recently. His instagram is linked and you can find ways to support Sheik Jarrah through his linktree. Here’s a direct link for donations.

me when I'm 33

he made it

and we will be healed. and we are going to make it

you're just jealous because my mech extended its thermal control radiators from its back and they look like glowing red angel wings and yours is overheating because it was not designed for space combat

oh nooooo～ you can't even afford heatsinks? (⁠◡⁠ ⁠ω⁠ ⁠◡⁠)

i can't see behind you very well (nice placement on the radiators!) but i think the photon flash from one of my fission-fusion warheads just dumped like.... approximately 1 terajoule of energy onto your radiator farm? and they're so very good at transferring radiative heat, aren't they? :3c

oh no, their surface got sublimated? that's really bad for you, isn't it?～ if you can't reject heat, you might have to shut down your reactor entirely... or melt down, hihihi (⁠｡-⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠ ✧

i'm deorbiting both of us

Since the r-slur is making a comeback (you know, the word that starts with R, has six letters, and ends in D), I'm gonna make a little PSA:

For those who genuinely are confused about what word OP is talking about (and there's plenty of reasons somebody might not know it and dancing around it isn't helpful for them):

It's "retard" and the variant "retarded".

And because I've seen some people legitimately try to argue this: No, you cannot use this word to insult other people "because you reclaimed it". To reclaim a word is to apply that word to yourself as a means to stealing it's power from those who use it against you. As soon as you weaponize it against somebody else you're no longer reclaiming it, you're just hurling a slur at other people.

Most insults that end in -tard (aside from bastard) are variations of this slur btw, like fucktard. Those words get overlooked a lot but they're still horrifically ableist.