Crouton @croutonsquared - Tumblr Blog

Posts

orcboxer

game sells poorly -> layoffs

game sells well -> also layoffs

orcboxer

the only thing the video game industry hates more than piracy is making video games

milanesa42

“The employees need a larger salary” “hmmmm large celery”

transfemininomenon

when your non-binary friend offers to buy you dinner and the waiter hands you the bill

herpsandbirds

Blood Pheasant (Ithaginis cruentus), males, family Phasianidae, order Galliformes, Laojun Mountain, Lijiang, China

photograph by Wild Safari Saga

melgillman

Here’s HSTHETE, the 24 hour comic I drew this year! Thanks to everybody who followed along on twitter this weekend as I posted these pages <3

PS: if you liked this, there’s a whole book of these comics available now!

melgillman

I’m reblogging this 7-year-old comic of mine because, not only is it somehow still circulating, it just passed 400,000 notes??? Thank you, several hundred thousand internet strangers, for keepin’ this ol’ goat girl goin’ so long

(Also hi, I’m still making fairy-tale-flavored lesbian romance comics and have a new one coming out very soon…)

mintsheri

I don't play monster hunter, but I was very fond of Grammeowster Chef

pokemon

Would you get Grubbin a Soda Pop?

pokemon

Grubbin gets a sody pop as a treat

homunculus-argument

Hey btw, another worldbuilding thing: You can, and actually should have weird and impractical cultural things. They’re not inherently unrealistic, for as long as you address the realistic consequences as well.

Let’s say you’ve got a city where there’s tame white doves everywhere. They’re not pests, they’re regarded as sacred, holy protectors of the city, and the whole city cares for them and feeds them like they’re pets. They’re so tame because it’s a social taboo to hurt or scare one. Nice pretty doves :)

Then someone points out that even if they’re not seen as pests, doesn’t having a completely unchecked feral pigeon population - that not only isn’t being culled, but actively fed and cared for - mean that there would be bird shit absolutely all over the place?

A part of you wants to say no, because these are your nice, pretty doves. To explain that there’s a reason why they’re not shitting all over the place, maybe they’re super-intelligent and specifically bred and trained to not shit all over the place. The logistics of how, exactly, could anyone breed and train a flock of feral birds go unaddressed.

An even worse solution would be to not have those birds, editing them out of the world. No, they spark joy, you can’t just toss them out!

Now, consider: Yes, yes they would, but the city also has an extensive public sanitation service that’s occupied 90% of the time by cleaning bird shit off of everything. One of the most common last names in the area actually translates to “one who scrapes off dove shit”, and it’s a highly respected occupation. And thanks to the sheer necessity of constantly regularly cleaning everything, the city enjoys a much higher standard of cleanliness, and less public health issues caused by poor public sanitation.

The doves do protect the city. By shitting fucking everywhere.

moonybyte

While I absolutely love your idea, I just want to say that you can easily reduce public bird shitting from Pigeons by offering them comfortable lodgings where they can sleep and feed. Sure, you need to clean THOSE, but the pigeons shit a lot less all over town.

The Augsburg concept has one big pigeon house every 500m in which wild pigeons are fed, protected from weather and have nesting opportunities. Cities doing that have WAY less uncontrolled populations (since they can take out eggs if they feel they need reduce the population), way less shit AND a healthy population since it’s easier for veterinarians to notice and get to sick animals.

So I’d say one can of course still keep your general idea……but there’s also those MASSIVE palace-like pidgeon houses and only the most worthy are allowed to enter and directly interact with the pigeons (feed them, heal them, clean their lodgings). One big entrance for the human servants (priests??) and millions of small holes for the pigeons.

In fact, one could potentially turn your idea around IN THE PIDGEONS FAVOR. So your world is like ours and most major cities have a big feral pigeon population. And most of those cities HATE the pigeons and try to fight them and stuff. And they think that pigeon worshipper town is frigging cuckoo. BUT when comparing, then pigeon worshipper town is ridiculously clean and beautiful. No bird shit everywhere, no ruined house facades and statues from erosion through bird poop. Pigeon haters go “how tf are you so clean, you have birds EVERYWHERE???” and the worshippers shrug and show their little bird temples spread around town that keep their precious birdies AND their town pretty.

plucky-passerine

I think this is a really good example of how research can greatly improve your worldbuilding! You don’t have to be perfectly accurate - it is fantasy after all - but the real world is so much more clever and beautiful than any of us know

curlicuecal

advice that’s stuck with me: you don’t have to work inwards to justify a premise (e.g., ‘how would it ever be plausible to use snakes as currency’) as long as you work outwards in interesting ways from that premise (e.g., ‘how would a society that used snakes as currency look different? what would they use for wallets?’)

gholateg

I love this idea that OP thought there wasn’t a town that had already handled it’s “We fucking love birds you guys, like for fucking reals” problem already through sheer human chutzpah.

Humans are THE pack binding specie. A way will be found.

shaudo-of-a-doubt

For anyone else interested in or looking for more information about pigeon houses, the traditional word for them is dovecote.

asteroidtroglodyte

Guano

Guys bird guano is incredibly valuable fertilizer! Now if you’re going for biological accuracy you’d need your fantasy doves to be seabirds but like. Almost any natural product can be made into something if you have a consistent supply of it! On my continent we used to use brains to tan leather! like. all chemistry comes from Nature: we just harvest and purify. Your Bird Temple People could have a lucrative trade good (maybe the process of turning the guano into a tradeable product is the main work of your Court Wizard / Alchrmist) I mean I like where you guys have been going with this but also how did we get 3 layers of worldbuilding deep without acknowledging the crop-boosting product in the room

gaymolegaming

I wish irl grinding was as fun as in videogames tbh. Like yeah i need to go to work a thousand times but after that i have enough materials to buy a house. But alas, houses arent real

puddlesl1me

really love how funny partner is as a mechanic in mtg.

“Halana and I have a bond that’ll never be broken.” yeah yeah sure alena now please partner up with slurrk, all-ingesting. yes i want you to partner up with slurrk, all-ingesting. no dont worry about the name. "what about halana" what about her. no you dont get to fight with your wife. fight with the slime. you fight with the slime now.

feefal

The rot consumes

For week one of Funguary, theme: Decay

vexwerewolf

keatxu

abandonware should be public domain. force companies to actively support and provide products if they don't wanna lose the rights to them

omikronsoul

Game companies hate emulation, but none of them seem to understand that a lot of us would just buy ROMs from them directly if we could. I don't want a fifth remake of Final Fantasy IV, I want to pay five bucks for the 3MB file you already made bank with thirty years ago. Nobody who wants to play something for the purpose of retro gaming is going to consider a $40 remake as the alternative option, and we're certainly not going to let the original dissappear. They're crying about opportunity cost for a product they're not even selling.

justletmeremember

op i know you're probably talking about like, video games, etc, but this is also critical for research science - my lab has so much abandonware, either because the company's out of business, or the company decided to not maintain it, and it's a fucking nightmare. we have two windows 95 computers that are CRITICAL for performing experiments/data analysis because the software needed is abandonware. one of the main roles for a guy in my lab is to maintain these little dinosaurs because if they go out, we lose access to ~20 years of raw data for research. part of why is that these companies also make their own file types, and make it difficult-to-impossible to convert those file types without their specific software. by habit, i convert all research files to more generic versions (txt, pdf, tif, etc) so that i minimize risk of losing my shit, but some stuff can't be converted.

for example, we have a microscope that is perfectly functional, good microscope, but its software is abandonware because the company refused to maintain it. the company is still in business, still makes essentially the exact same software, but they made all of the old tech incompatible with new software to force people to buy the new microscope tech. it would cost a quarter million dollars to replace this microscope. this perfectly good microscope.

so like, i know a lot of people look at the original post here and go "well op just wants old video games to play" (which is valid! games companies should not be able to push shit to abandonware and then close it off) but also this is critical for like. biomedical research. if y'all had any idea how much basic infrastructure built on science relies on shit that is technically abandonware, you would probably be horrified.

jollysunflora

#there is so much abandonware just...out there being used and carefully maintained#because nothing quite replicates the functionality

vetchtibbles

welcome to my farm where I keep my dark horse my black sheep my scapegoat and my underdog. my canary in the coal mine died ages ago

your-personal-ghost

It’s a mess here: someone looked your gift dark horse in the mouth, led it to water, and jumped back on it. Your ducks aren’t in a row, someone counted the chickens before they hatched. Your geese are silly, your brown cows aren’t explaining how, and every one of these sheep is a wolf but they don’t even notice with the amount of wool over their eyes. I’m fining you one million gold coins.

vetchtibbles

it was the goat blame the goat