writing is just sitting in front of a computer and making up problems for imaginary people while ignoring your own. fun and casual hobby.
Acquired Stardust
tumblr dot com
we're not kids anymore.

titsay
hello vonnie
Game of Thrones Daily

Kaledo Art

pixel skylines

roma★
will byers stan first human second
styofa doing anything
ojovivo
dirt enthusiast

★

shark vs the universe
Three Goblin Art

if i look back, i am lost

⁂
RMH
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
seen from United States
seen from Mexico
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Switzerland

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Norway

seen from United States

seen from Austria

seen from Malaysia

seen from United States

seen from Australia
seen from Türkiye
seen from Norway
seen from Sweden
@ramblingandpie
writing is just sitting in front of a computer and making up problems for imaginary people while ignoring your own. fun and casual hobby.
discord letting you have custom emoji has really ruined my ability to communicate effectively on other apps. what do you mean i cant send jalute. what about givehand. cryingpat. torment. sittinghere. tvek. cant even send my wonderful beloved frogheart. whats the bloody point
summer sufferers poll: would you rather have…
the ability to repel all bugs so they can’t touch/bite/sting you
the ability to always be at a comfortable temperature while outside
no chafing ever again
trial by combat is such a funny concept. if youre not guilty then beat my ass
Sometimes it feels like my entire lawyer job is just telling people they're being fucking stupid
Girl, same.
I was gonna be like this is why I love not having clients but uh even without clients I still have to read a bunch of nonsense and respond to it, the advantage is that it's all in writing and typically to lawyers.
"accessibility" needs to stop meaning "low-engagement"
"we are making our TTRPG more accessible!"
"oh, did you make the font bigger and more legible?"
"no we're just doing the next edition in D&D5e"
"we're making our video game more accessible!"
"oh did you add an option to remap the controls?"
"no we just added an option to remove combat so the game is just a bunch of cutscenes"
"we made it accessible!"
"which part? what did you make accessible?"
"why, not playing the game at all of course! games are much better when they don't have any pesky game in them, especially for the disabled, who typically access the game parts even less."
To further elaborate (very long)
it is a very popular trend right now to add, like, features that skip the engagement with an interactive work of art, such as skipping combat or making combat impossible to lose in a combat-focused video game, or in the scene of TTRPGs making your TTRPG completely dumbed down or just hastily and mindlessly making it a D&D5e hack "because people already know how to play D&D5e and I want it to be accessible" instead of expecting people to actually read and learn and engage with a set of specific rules, and call all of that "accessibility" instead of adding "accessibility" features that would actually help disabled people access the "meat" of whatever the interactive art is.
If it's a combat-focused video game, some examples would be helping them engage with the full depth of the combat by allowing the controls to be fully remapped to something easier for their hands(or lack of hands), or the option to disable flashing lights or reduce the intensity muzzle flashes on the guns or something.
I think I have come up with a good example to illustrate this point. Let's say there is an FPS where you shoot aliens. Pretend it's, like, Halo but not specifically Halo.
And let’s say there’s a group of disabled gamers who are excited for this video game.
Missing Finger Guy, Deaf Guy, Colorblind Guy, and Poor Eyesight Guy.
Missing Finger Guy is missing at least one finger that corresponds to the Dodge button, he can’t reliably press it especially on short notice when aliens are coming at his character. So, he can’t really play the game because dodging is required to beat the levels. The game devs provide an “acccessibility” easy mode that turns off combat or makes the enemies do so little damage that he never needs to use the Dodge button. So, Missing Finger Guy can play the game now, right? Wrong. Dodging enemies *is* the game, and he still never gets to play with the Dodge button, or engage with any of the other elements of the game that are watered down by making enemy attacks not matter. To make the fun gameplay of dodging enemies accessible to this player, the answer is to allow remapping the Dodge action to a button that he can reach.
Deaf Guy
The game expects the player to rely on audio cues to know when enemies are sneaking up behind them or when a grenade lands at their feet or when an enemy is about to do a specific attack. Obviously the deaf player can’t hear these and can’t play the game because he’ll just die all the time to attacks which are literally impossible for him to predict. Again, this could be “fixed” by a mode that makes it so it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t hear a grenade land at his character’s feet by removing the consequence of death for failing to notice the grenade, or you could add the option to turn on subtitles for both story dialogue and sound effects like “[grenade beep]” and “[screatchure scream].” One of these allows the deaf gamer to play on roughly the same playing field as other players and react to threats the same way that hearing people can do that he can engage with the meat of the game, and the other doesn’t.
Colorblind Guy
The video game features enemies that are identifiable by their red and blue armor. Red aliens throw red grenades that you can catch and throw back, and blue aliens throw blue grenades that explode by proximity and you just have to fully avoid. Obviously, a colorblind player cannot reliably tell these apart, and would either have to try to throw back grenades at random and hope for the best, or just avoid all grenades to be safe. You could “fix” this by removing the consequence of death for getting exploded by a grenade, or you could fix it by adding a togglable colorblindness mode that switches the color distinction to something visible or adds some other distinctive feature besides color to one of those grenade types. One of these allows the colorblind player to engage with the intended gameplay of the game by taking informed risks by trying to throw back certain grenades, and one of them doesn’t, making it just not matter what decision he makes.
Poor Eyesight Guy
You get the formula by now. The *actually* accessible feature would be allowing him to adjust the text to be more readable instead of making it not matter if he can read the directions that tell him how to get through the minefield safety by removing the consequences for stepping on a mine.
A mode that simply removes consequences for failing to engage with and react appropriately to the threats the game presents is, at best, appealing only to people who don’t actually *like* the gameplay in the first place, while still shutting out the people who *want* to engage with the full depth of the gameplay but can’t because of some disability that prevents them from doing so as intended.
Because the gameplay isnt just seeing the cutscenes and getting a “level cleared” achievement, it is dodging the enemies, throwing back the grenades, listening for the screatchure screams, etc..
If there is an enemy who is super tough from the front and will kill you if you can’t get around behind him, you don’t make the game more “accessible” by making him so weak from the front that it doesn’t matter where you shoot him, or making his attacks so weak that you can shrug them off long enough to whittle him down from the front, youve actually removed this enemy from the game by making him just like the common enemies that can be shot from the front. You have actually made the element of the gameplay provided by this enemy inaccessible by doing this, because the quick thinking and tactical usage of the game’s features required to get behind him *is* the gameplay.
It’s much easier to explain this via video games but it goes for tabletop games as well. A TTRPG is more truly accessible for having big easy-to-read font and clear explanations so that players that want to engage with that game’s rules can do so even if they have reading difficulties, than if it just went “eh it doesn’t matter if you read the rules or not.”
Difficulty levels are not disability accomodations. OP explains that very well through their examples here.
I like difficulty levels, sometimes I don't enjoy a specific aspect of gameplay or I just want to blast through from cutscene to cutscene, and being able to toggle a zero-consequences baby mode is a nice option to have.
But most of the time I want to play the game, and to do that I need to remap half the controls. Let me remap them, don't treat me like I'm incapable of playing video games or like I don't deserve rewarding and engaging gameplay just because I can't move the mouse as precisely as the other guy.
It's like, you make a museum accesible by putting in ramps and elevators, not by telling wheelchair users that the art on the upper floors isn't all that great and they shouldn't want to see it in the first place.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here, and most people who follow me are very much of this opinion. But like... So much accessibility talk is not actually about letting people engage with your game who otherwise couldn't due to a disability or physical limitation. Rather, it's an idea of accessibility in the way a CEO would want a movie to be more accessible to a wider audience. As in like, "This movie's audience is too niche and it's ideas are too lofty, make it more accessible." Both of these are "accessibility" in a sense, but those are two VERY different definitions of the word, you know what I'm saying? Ideally, I'd like art which is naturally inaccessible through it's themes and difficulty and ideas to nonetheless be something people who have physical limitations (Or... Well, technological limitations, economic limitations, whatever else) can experience
Yes, this is a term that is being co-opted to prioritize corporate profits by appealing to a "wider audience" which includes people who don't actually like the product, while leaving disabled people shut out and, in many cases, calling them ableist for saying "an invincibility mode is not an accessibility setting, instead give me tools that will let me play the game without an invincibility mode the way everyone else who likes the gameplay can."
People in the tags are already going "hello i am the strawman from your post! I bought a game without realizing there was combat in it and i don't like combat so invincibility mode was an accessibility setting to me because it let me avoid the game i don't like!"
ACTUAL ACCESSIBILITY FEATURES IN GAMES:
Option to hold or toggle buttons for running
Quick Time Events on a toggle, or not involving quick, successive button presses (just one press)
Ability to change the colour, font and size of subtitles!
Ability to re-map buttons
ABILITY TO USE A NONSTANDARD CONTROLLER
Ability to change brightness, colour saturation, lighting intensity and filtering
ABILITY TO TURN OFF FLASHING LIGHTS OH MY FUCKING GOD
Volume control that lets you turn up the dialogue and atmospheric sound but turn the music down
Ability to turn off camera shake and blur
And you might ask 'well how is x an accessibility feature'
But consider:
People who have issues with their hands (muscle weakness, missing fingers, impaired reflexes)
Folks who are hard of hearing or have other hearing issues
Epileptics and other folks with light-sensitive seizures
THE FUCKING FLASHING LIGHTS AND CAMERA SHAKE HOLY HECK.
I hate them so much. I honestly think that Genshin Impact caused nerve damage (it was while I was playing it regularly that my migraines developed a new feature of hemineuralgia! But we didn't realize that was connected to migraine and the other migraine symptoms weren't cropping up. Do not recommend.)
My reflexes and hand-eye coordination are shit and you know what I loved so much? Mass Effect 1. Pause, aim, and then shoot. Oh my word. Life changing. I basically never play first-person shooters but I could handle that. Even with the other games, there were enough strategies that didn't rely on needing really good hand-eye coordination and I love it so much.
... I should replay those.
Exciting news!
I had my rheumatologist appointment today. It's been 9 months (we usually do every 6 but I had a scheduling conflict). In those 9 months, I've done physical therapy and two rounds of trigger point injections, which got my body to a point where I could start actively working out again. I'm weightlifting because I love to lift things up and put them down, and progressing somewhat slowly because I don't want to put too much stress on my tendons bc they frankly suck at their jobs.
But today! Today during my exam I had only 4/28 inflammation-positive finger joints. And even then, mildly positive, like I wasn't jumping out of the chair when my rheum squeezed each joint.
My last appointment was, I think, 15/28? And several of those were strong positives (accompanied by a yelp or flinch). And that doesn't necessarily mean active disease but can include things like osteoarthritis as a result of the autoimmune arthritis, or scar tissue on the tendons.
And my knees and IT band were still positive but markedly less so.
So what does this mean? WELL. It means that after many years, and a lot of work, my joints are healing? Like it'll never be "all the way" healed because, uh, that's not how this works. My SI joints, heels, and big toe joints are, like, permanently fucked. Every step I take is still accompanied by pain. But. My hands and legs are much less janky, and I can do so much more, AND I can get the good endorphins from lifting weights???? And continue to have bones which is nice. I love not developing osteoporosis.
I am cautiously optimistic that the SI joint injections will help even more. But even if they don't... I'm so happy.
in chess the queens can kill each other which is toxic yuri and the kings can never get within a square of each other which is doomed yaoi
we all know adult humans dont get enough enrichment but the other day i was walkin home past an empty playground and impulsively ran over to spin myself on this zipline merry-go-round contraption for a few minutes and it really did feel like it unlocked some neglected part of my brain. like damn we really should all go outside and play more. fuck. they werent kidding with this play time thing. have you guys heard about play time. it could be huge.
idk at the end if the day maybe I really am just a curmudgeon but you simply will never convince me that mayor, senator, governor, or president are entry level jobs that can be done well with zero government or policy experience and the tremendous arrogance it takes to think they can should be disqualifying in and of itself.
hey guys so the hero that keeps barging in my tower seems to be using some sort of chronomancy called “quick saving.” have we figured out any counters for that yet or what’s the deal
you really do meet some of the loveliest people talking about blood and sex on the internet
auto immune disorders happen when the immune system ignores regulatory factors and begins attacking healthy bodily tissues, due to what scientists refer to as "sheer love of the game"
princeton university press is having a 50% off sale and i limited myself to just three books but the temptation to go back and browse for more is extremely strong
so i'm telling you all about it instead. it goes until june 9!
Pick up your ticket for Pride!
💙
💚
💛
🧡
❤️
💜
💗
🤍
🤎
🖤
💓
💖
Pick a heart then pass it on!
not every mutual fits neatly into an archetypal medievalism but there are some mutuals that im like yeah addressing you as “my liege” would come strangely naturally
what mutual is prev
my liege lord
my loyal knight
my wise wizard
my evil advisor
my brother in arms
my lady muse
my wild mermaid friend
my fellow alchemist
my dashing rapscallion
my monstrous foe
I actually do think we should discourage women from becoming housewives. Do not become financially dependent on a man. That's how a lot of women ended up dead over the years. A man gets violent suddenly and you have to choose between homelessness or potentially dying at his hand because you have an enormous gap in your resume and no degrees or certifications or anything that will help you pursue a career that will allow you to be financially independent. He owns your bank account. His name is probably the one on the car. Try and leave and he can report it stolen. Where will you go then?
Don't become a housewife.
And if you do become a housewife, take steps to protect yourself. Make sure you’re legally married, for starters; stay-at-home girlfriends have very little legal recourse to claim their partner’s assets in a breakup. Make sure your name is on the house deed/rental agreement, and have your car in your name, even if your spouse is paying for it. Have your spouse transfer money every month into an account solely in your name, so you can buy yourself things without needing permission, but also so you can save up to leave if needed.
If your spouse fights you on any of this, then don’t quit your job. The tradwife to poverty pipeline is real, and so is financial abuse.
also, many women/people experience controlling behaviour and domestic violence from their partner for the first time during pregnancy. don’t risk thinking “he’s just stressed, it’ll get better when the baby comes” because it won’t. neither you and your child will ever be safe with that man. get out as early and safely as you can
Adding: even apart from a breakup... my dad just dropped dead in January (no condolences necessary we were no contact for almost a decade) and apparently he and his fiancée had a financial plan that was "he lives forever or at least outlives her" and uh. She is. Kind of up shit creek! Because his pension stopped. The house was in his name. My sister and I are *fine* hanging onto it so she can stay there but, like, might not be able to because he had a ton of debt and the "sheltering the primary residence of the widow(er) from being forced into being sold" only works if you're actually married!
I mean don't get me wrong he also probably was financially abusive but.