people say folks with adhd struggle with "delayed rewards" aka long term goals and as such we tend to focus more on short term rewards. what they don't talk about is that at when we Do accomplish long term goals we don't actually feel anything proportionate to the amount of work we did to achieve it. In my head I suffered for a while and then money spontaneously appeared in my bank account.
Gem: I did see my favorite hate comment ever today though? I-I think it might be my fav-my favorite hate comment. And--it-it was that I'm turning Hermitcraft gay. (she laughs) It-it gave me a-a very good laugh. It--they, they meant it as hate, so genuinely, but I did not take it that way.
Gem: Like--(giggling) I. Find myself in situations so frequently, where the men are roleplaying kissing each other, and if I could stop them, I would, okay. I would be more homophobic, I would stop them! I can't! They keep going, I (through laughter) I don't know what it is.
Gem: But it's not me, it's-it's th--nobody's holding a knife to them right now and making them do that. (laughs)
Gem: They're just like it. I don't-it's not me. (laughs) God, it was one of my favorite comments I've gotten. I-I immediately sent it to Grian. (laughs)
Gem: (eight seconds of silence) I'll take credit, if I-if somebody has to take credit, I can. (laughs) But I don't think, I don't think it's me. (five seconds of silence, then, laughter) Entry (? she says a Twitch chatter's name here) thank you for the twenty-three months, I haven't, but I'll look into it. I have heard--well, I've heard of Project Hail Mary, actually--
Gem: I should read that, I have heard a lot about it. (six seconds of silence, then reading a comment) "It's not you." Yeah, I don't think it's me, unfor-the men are just like that. They-they're-they-they're like it. Already. I don't know. They-they came like it. I didn't--it wasn't season eight that that started.
Alot of my friends give me crap for watching mcyt and yea I kind of get it but this? This is really why I watch it. It's not just hermitcraft; I feel like it happens with most great roleplay servers or whatever you'd call them.
It's not just these men, I think it's Minecraft roleplay. Mcrp: you get to be as gay as you want. No repercussions.
hello fellow artists. google has fallen. pinterest/duckduckgo AI filters don't work. do not despair; here is a list i made of places to find reference images without having to sift through piles of worthless garbage. (for future editing convenience i am just linking my blog post on dreamwidth.)
✨ good places to find art reference that are not full of AI trash 🌈
I'm not the one you really want
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• Do NOT re-upload my art.
• Do NOT use my art for generative AI training.
• Using my art for profile picture(s) is OK with credit.
HEAR ME OUT. HEAR ME OUT.
I think it's longer than just 1225.
The way the narrative actually treats it, we haven't yet gotten the code in the guitar. While we saw the first 3 digits as 1 2 2, Kris tears us out before we can finish it, and then there's the entire holiday manor SOUL sequence in which we struggle with Kris over the guitar, and then Carol shows up and ruins everything.
Susie then goes on a long speech about how everything was going perfect until Carol showed up and then emphasizes:
That we will have to make another attempt on the Guitar Code tomorrow.
This is re-emphasized later on if you inspect the shelter:
We know where one of the codes *is* but not its actual value. At least in the eyes of the story, we did not successfully retrieve the code hidden in the guitar. We will have to try again later in the story.
But when discussing this with others, I commonly got a reply to the degree of:
" But we already know the code inside the guitar, it's 1225! Why would we waste time going back to get it when we already know it! "
And to an extent I get that. But I would like to propose something:
The code isn't 1225. At least, not completely. Consider this: If the code were just 1225, wouldn't... wouldn't Susie just be able to memorize that? It's 4 digits, it surely wouldn't be that hard. And look at what she actually says:
Not, "I couldn't really make it out", or, like, "I forgot it", but, she "didn't get to write it down". That to me seems like specific phrasing. You wouldn't need to write down a code that's only 4 digits, would you? Maybe at some point to keep it safe, but, in the moment? Susie's... Well, Susie is Susie, but surely she's not that stupid.
I refuse to believe Susie would see "1225" and go "Oh, shit, it's the code! I need a pen and paper right now, there's no way I can memorize this for a few minutes."
And so I propose a solution: It's not just 1225. It's 1225 plus some additional numbers- potentially a year? Probably the year Dess went missing. That could add up to 4 additional numbers, making it an 8 digit code, making it more reasonable that Susie would feel a need to write it down.
Potentially foreshadowing for this also exists. Remember this scene?
The joke here is literally that there's a "code" that seems to only have 4 inputs at first, Susie literally suggests memorizing it, but then it's revealed that it's too long to memorize and must be written down, pen on paper.
Feels like it could be foreshadowing to me.
TLDR: I think the code in the guitar is an 8-digit code, not a 4-digit code, thus solidifying the idea that Yes, we Do have to go back for the Guitar.
UPDATE!!!
In the Weird Route, her dialog here is slightly different.
She claims she found the guitar, noticed the code, then took the Guitar to the living room?
This makes absolutely no sense, if the code is a 4 digit code. This basically deconfirms the idea that her problem was that she didn't get to SEE the code- she was alone with it!
The problem was that she needed to WRITE. IT. DOWN.
I can't believe I neglected to consider this before. It's so real, the code has to be longer than 1225, there's no way it makes sense if it's not.
been thinking a lot about people's varied reactions to the chaos & perceived inconsistencies around the rules of limited life and because i taught games professionally for a decade and have done a lot of reading on games academically, I have a few propositions for the fandom to consider.
proposition one: Your interpretation of gameplay events is not the same as a monolithic "the narrative" to which all players are equally subject.
Narrative is not what happened, but the interpretation and meaning attached to the events that occurred. Narrative is when we "give experience a form and a meaning." (Harris-Miller)
This construction of narrative - giving meaning to experiences - can occur in the way a video is cut an edited, as well as in the audience's interpretation after the video is released.
Social play is player interaction, both in the derived from the structure and rules of the game (being "It" in tag) as well as the social roles brought from outside the game. (1)
In transformative social play, players use the game context to transform social relationships.
Most players in the life game are more concerned with narrative as it relates to transformative social play - such as, what does this event mean for me, my alliances, my enemies, and the shifting of roles along that spectrum?
Narrative within the game is dynamic and always changing in response to ongoing events and shifting relationships. Viewers' narratives about the games are more static since they exist outside the game context and are not a part of ongoing social play.
Letting go of a single unified "narrative" lets us think about the differences, tensions, and resonances between players' in-game construction of narrative, the narrative constructed by the player's video edit, and the retrospective audience construction of narrative. (*)
proposition two: Fairness is decided by the players, not the rules.
Playing a game requires trust and safety with the other players. (DeKoven) Even in tic-tac-toe you have to trust that your opponent will take reasonable amounts of time per turn before you sit down to play.
We can distinguish between ideal rules (rules as writ, such as a physical rulebook) and the real rules (the general consensus on what playing the game should look like). (2)
Real rules can include how sportsmanlike behavior is defined, and when "breaking" a rule doesn't count; a common example is forgiving a player who genuinely made a mistake on accident and did not intend to "break" the rules.
The real rules are what actually matter in developed gameplay, and they can be negotiated and constructed inside the game as new events, situations, and dynamics occur. (3)
Brushing past Scar's "illegal" kill on greens is not him getting away with breaking the rules, it's the group coming to a consensus on the real rules of the game. Cleo asking Impulse if her kill on him can count and him finally agreeing is not the breaking of (ideal) rules so much as it is defining the real rules.
proposition: Players' own individual motivations and definitions of sportsmanship or interesting play inform their contribution to the general consensus on real rules and leading them to play "imperfectly" in favor of having more fun or staying true to something.
Purely optimal play is boring to the players and viewers, and taken to an extreme allowed by the ideal rules, would violate the real rules implicitly agreed to by the players.
"Optimal" gameplay in the life series could look like hiding in a hole underground for the entire game if the end goal is to survive the longest, but that would make a boring video and would likely be considered supremely unsportsmanlike by other players and their audiences.
Playing perfectly optimally is one motive to play a game, but is basically never the sole motivator if it's one at all.
Even if everyone in the life series has a goal to "keep playing the game as long as possible," that could mean being focused on winning, or being focused on making allies or not making enemies, or it could compel you to give up your life for someone else who's running out of time because to you to play the game is to play together. (4)
Scar is a perfect example of someone who consistently chooses "non-optimal" goals such as always having the enchanter and goes to great and stupid lengths to achieve it even if it means sacrificing winning.
This "non-optimal" play provides something for other players to play off of and react to, often leading to transformative social play, significantly meaningful narrative, or interesting negotiations of real rules. (5)
synthesis: The most interesting narratives are born out of situations where players negotiate the real rules, not ones where the (ideal) rules are broken.
The life series is inherently highly experimental - even as more seasons build on the experiences of prior ones, the constant addition of new mechanics mean the game is more or less always being playtested rather than simply played.
The "rule" against carrying Third Life into Last Life failed because it is basically impossible to eliminate the out-of-game contributions to social play, especially in a social deduction game where knowledge of other players' habits and behaviors is useful metagame (6) currency that can't be un-learned.
Some of the series' most iconic narrative moments - the end of 3L or DL, he loves me, etc. are born out of the tension between ideal and real rules, where players are forced to take a stand or advocate for something opposed to the "ideal" rules such as allying with reds, sticking with your soulmate, or that there can only be one winner. (7)
I'm offering the above as a way of showing that I think these imperfections and changes between seasons are actually the coolest thing about them and have the potential for transformative fan works in addition to transformative play.
if limited life's copious tnt minecarts via skynet and highly-manual, inconsisent giving and taking of time for kills which may or may not be deserved according to strict interpretations of the rules as stated aren't to your taste, that's just how it is sometimes! It's understandable to not enjoy ideal rules that are loosely defined or interpreted or are imperfectly implemented from a mechanics perspective, but understanding that the players of the actual game did agree and consent and get to negotiate the consequences and meaning of these imperfections is not some unfortunate side-effect but in fact an important part of any gameplay.
The various types of narratives and the various motives for playing mean there can't be a single unified narrative for all players - but thinking about these things in terms of tensions and synergies opens doors for talking about the many narratives and the relationships between them. you can hold multiple seemingly-conflicting narratives as a viewer and put them in dialogue and produce new meaningful narratives in their contradictions or overlap! go forth and embrace the chaos and tension between the chains of context that produce meaning and the freedom to look at that complex web and derive fuller meanings from it!
because this post isn't long enough, more citations and examples from the series below the cut:
Some footnotes:
(1) Social roles within the game are more artificial than the ones that exist outside of it. That doesn't make them less meaningful, but when we consider the consequences of breaking a social role defined by the game compared to a real-world breaking of a promise or law, it's hard to forget the artificiality of the game. The consequences are relatively minor; the morality of betrayal, for instance, during a game can be acceptable because of that artificiality where it would be reprehensible in real life.
(2) A few different ways to think about game rules that are not mutually exclusive but complementary to each other:
Three layers of game rules: the underlying constituative rules of a game, the operational rules that directly guide player action, and the implicit rules of proper game behavior, such as etiquette.
Piaget's developmental stages from the Moral Development of Children are useful background here: the first stage is loose play without rules, second is strict adherence to ideal rules, and the final adult-leaning stage is the understanding that the real rules are what matter. You could call putting ideal rules over the real ones juvenile.
"Ideal rules refer to the "official" regulations of a game, the rules written in a player's guide to Zelda or printed on the inside cover of a game of Candyland. Real rules, on the other hand, are the codes and conventions held by a play community. Real rules are a consensus of how the game ought to be played." (Rules of Play)
(3) "It is not that the basic rules of the game undergo a radical change; rather, they are experienced within a social context that decreases their value in favor of a socially-biased ruleset over which players have more control."
(4) I'm thinking of Bdubs in Limited Life session 7 here, since he gives time and stays alive, but if you take this concept a little further and more broadly you just get players like Skizz.
(5) Metagaming, defined broadly for my purposes as the larger social context of the game and not just the pejorative, could be its own too-long post, but I think it's worth mentioning as an avenue for thinking about the complex dynamics of the life series as social play. For example, Etho consistently is thinking from a metagame perspective, from stalling by accusing Cleo of metagaming or remarking that Scar's lost the dramatic moment so he can't attack now in Last Life, or threatening to break roleplay in Limited Life when he's mad at Scar.
(6) From Rules of Play: "Sutton-Smith's model for player roles includes an actor, a counteractor, and an overall "motive" or format for play. For example, if the motive is capture, the actor's role is to take, while the role of the counteractor is to avoid being taken. [...] In Sutton-Smith's model, the roles of actor and counteractor are both equally important in constructing the experience of play." I don't think this model is sufficient on its own, but it's a worthwhile point that conflict is part of the game and is in fact desirable within certain bounds.
(7) Scott in LL is really interesting narratively because his motivation is at odds with what the game asks him to do: he is extremely true to his word and chooses to take the penalty of being knocked down to red rather than trying to kill someone and making an enemy of them and/or failing and dying anyway. He's not breaking any rules, but his choosing to experience consequences because of his own motivation and social relationships is compelling. It pays off when he wins, and it pays off again when Cleo can't bear to kill him in DL - the metagame element of past social play relationships and player knowledge of other players contributing to the current dynamics of social play.
ETA: An important point I also wanted to make but didn't have space for up top is that Jimmy being a "canary in a coal mine" as a result of always dying first is not some immutable truth about fate that actually influences his games, but if you can accept that it's not actually fated then you can start to think about and react to the way that the in-game players construct narratives in response to the actual events of him always permadying first. Joel's futile attempts to prevent this are a product of previous seasons' social play, the transformative current social dynamics, and his own player narrative (again, narrative as meaning giving form to experiences).
Also, I strongly disliked DL's premise and thought the best parts were the chosen soulmates precisely because I think predestination is best left to Calvinists and choice, especially in opposition to prescribed rules or narratives, is the most interesting thing in the world. Of course Etho and Bdubs in Last Life is what hooked me and I am also smug that the players tend to refer to the series as "last life" even if 3L came first and it's been two whole seasons since then.
(*) On meanings:
I think that meaning is necessarily the complex web of relationships between any given things, and there is no objective meaning to anything. Words and events have no meanings outside of our interpretations of and dialogue about them - this is not nihilism, but a beautiful gift of communicating with other people. A real deep dive into semiotics is beyond the scope of this post and also my own abilities, but it informs this view. I don't think you have to read academically to know it; you can find the proof in arguments about whether a pop tart is ravioli. A stupid argument, but one that is negotiating the boundaries of words' meanings by drawing on the words' relationships to other words and the things those words represent. It's the act of making meaning, not uncovering it. So too is watching the life series and arguing about or making arguments for a certain narrative angle or emphasizing a detail etc. - I just think it's a loss not to celebrate the complex web that tugs in many different directions with many different motives. It's less simple, but much richer.
She realizes its a loop almost immediately. Pearl isn't stupid. She looks around the circle and sees the familiar group, some in old clothes, clothes she recognizes, and she knows. When Grian announces that their soulmates will be randomized in a few minutes, when he calls go, she starts trying to fix it right away. That's her mistake. She clings to Scott's side, citing their closeness in the previous game, a desire to stick to what she knows. It's an easy lie. It's the two of them and Cleo who start gathering resources together before the roll. The message pops up in chat IntheLittlewood got the achievement [We Need to Go Deeper] and some part of her sings in vindication. He would have gone with or without her, he never should have blamed her.
The dice are tossed and their soulmates are chosen, and Pearl sets her flint and steal at her feet, giggling as the fire damage is reflected on Scott. Scott and Cleo are both taken aback at her eagerness, off put by the way she casually brushes off the damage. Scott scrambles to heal while Pearl smiles. He stares at her with wide eyes.
"You're crazy," He says, "I can't believe I've got a soulmate who's crazy! I don't want to stick around for this,"
He walks off and Pearl scrambles to catch up. Cleo looks at her sympathetically, putting a shockingly gentle hand on her arm.
"I'll talk to him, you wait here," They reassure. So Pearl does. Because surely it won't happen again. This is just a misunderstanding. She shouldn't have laughed. But it'll be okay, right? Cleo is so much better at making Scott see reason than Pearl is, even if she doesn't understand why.
Pearl waits. She waits and waits, only venturing a little further into the cave where they were mining to gather enough iron for gear before returning the entrance. It's turning night soon enough. A wolf wanders up to her, sniffing around curiously. Pearl's got a few bones from skeletons, so she may as well tame it, she figures. As it sits at her feet and she first runs her fingers through its coat, she recognizes it. Tilly. Her girl found her again. Pearl gets down on the stone floor, settling criss-cross, and just pets her, eyes filling with tears. She never thought she would get this again. Tilly looks so much better than when Pearl last saw her, wild and rugged but undamaged.
The zombies are calling outside before Pearl gives up. Her hands find the familiar pattern of her tower. It's not the same height, she doesn't make the roof the exact same way, but it's a tower all the same. Cleo doesn't come back for her until the session is almost over, and by then she's resigned herself to being alone.
"I can't convince him, I'm sorry. I don't know what's up with him," Cleo explains, "But I'm not going to stick around and let him freak out over nothing. He and Martyn can have each other. I'll stay with you. Screw the universe, we can choose our soulmates,"
Pearl is shocked. This wasn't even a possibility in her mind. But Cleo brings a bed, builds a floor in the tower just below Pearl's. They end up both living there, away from the draft, while the top floor is used as storage. Two beds set up across from each other. Pearl has gotten so used to sleeping alone. But the sound of Cleo's snores is not unfamiliar to her. They settle into a rhythm, building their army of dogs (not as large as the one Pearl had before. She doesn't need their warmth). Pearl never finds her way to the box, she shies away from Grian's fishing rod game, and Cleo beats away any rumors Scott spreads that Pearl has gone crazy.
They don't last until the end. Their first death is Pearl's fault, she meets a creeper while mining for diamonds. Their second is Scott, caught by the warden in the ravine. And for their last, Scott and Martyn manage to tick off Grian and Scar, and that's it for them. Pearl doesn't learn who wins, she's not allowed to watch like she normally would.
Because she wakes up again, in that circle at the start of the game.
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