Sharkeh @sharkehthereal - Tumblr Blog

Digital circus' biggest problem is that it was written to be a niche show aimed at weird analytical queers with actual media literacy and it accidentally blew tf up and hit the mainstream and a bunch of people who have never had a second thought about anything got into it

alexanderwales

Humans in fantasy settings with multiple races have kind of a problem, which is that it's hard to figure out what their "thing" is.

The biggest problem with establishing a "thing" for humans is that humans are the baseline for our understanding of the world, and any axis you move humans along, you're immediately cutting down the possibility space of all other fantasy races.

For example, if you said "humans are fast", you would be left with the problem of having to make all other races slower. If you said that humans were smart, you would have to make all other races dumber. There inherent problem here is that elevating some human trait as "their thing" blocks out concept space.

One of the stock characteristics that humans get is being all-arounders, which is boring but preserves them as being a baseline species. The other big one is "adaptability", which I think tends to be a decent choice because it means that humans can show up everywhere, but also means that there's nothing that humans are excluding anyone else from doing. There are other options, and I know everyone has their favorite.

I do have some affection for writers who decide that humans will exist at some extreme, with all other fantasy races being warped around that. There's some nice commitment to the bit that comes from deciding that yes, humans are at least a foot taller than any other race, or that humans are the mayflies of the mortal species and have by far the shortest lifespans.

remcycle

Earthlings

Industrious hominids.

Earthlings, also commonly called humans or terrans, hail from the water world Earth, third planet of the yellow dwarf star Sol. They are a race of inquisitive, cooperative upright primates, and relative newcomers to the galactic scene.

Earthling culture is organized around tribes, with tribal sub-units known as families, and congregations of many tribes known as nations. Since 2020, humans have united under a single world government called the United Nations (UN).

Above all, earthlings are productive. The scale of earthling industry and manufacturing are unmatched by any of their galactic neighbors. While they have not advanced as far technologically as many other civilizations, they make up for it with sheer volume, often brute-forcing their way through technological limitations.

For example, when humans first visited their moon, Luna, they didn’t wait to develop efficient and safe repulsor-lift technology to achieve orbit. Instead, they simply strapped three intrepid humans to the nose cone of an oversized ballistic missile and threw them at the moon like a dart at a board.

What’s impressive is that it worked.

One year after joining the Alliance and being given a technological jump-start by the Chenjesu, humans had already surpassed even the Yehat starship clans in terms of bulk resource extraction and wartime manufacturing, soon becoming the primary materials supplier for the entire Alliance of Free Stars. Their ability to erect productive asteroid mines and outposts quickly (though not always efficiently) provided their new allies a much-needed shot in the arm in the face of the invading Ur-Quan armada.

If there is a downside to this tenacious drive toward industry, it is perhaps a species-wide myopia for the consequences of their production. After all, humans created the genetically-engineered Androsynth almost without a second thought, but with disastrous long-term consequences. Industrial waste products had nearly driven their home world past the brink of habitability in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. And when they revealed to the Chenjesu the vast stockpile of nuclear armaments they had amassed in just a few short decades of international cold war, well… The earthlings present at this meeting assumed the Chenjesu ambassador's stunned silence meant that the ancient crystalline being found their stockpile impressive. It's hard to know what a rock is feeling, but declassified records of a later conversation between the ambassador and his retinue provide a more accurate term: disturbing.

alexanderwales

Humans in fantasy settings with multiple races have kind of a problem, which is that it's hard to figure out what their "thing" is.

The biggest problem with establishing a "thing" for humans is that humans are the baseline for our understanding of the world, and any axis you move humans along, you're immediately cutting down the possibility space of all other fantasy races.

For example, if you said "humans are fast", you would be left with the problem of having to make all other races slower. If you said that humans were smart, you would have to make all other races dumber. There inherent problem here is that elevating some human trait as "their thing" blocks out concept space.

One of the stock characteristics that humans get is being all-arounders, which is boring but preserves them as being a baseline species. The other big one is "adaptability", which I think tends to be a decent choice because it means that humans can show up everywhere, but also means that there's nothing that humans are excluding anyone else from doing. There are other options, and I know everyone has their favorite.

I do have some affection for writers who decide that humans will exist at some extreme, with all other fantasy races being warped around that. There's some nice commitment to the bit that comes from deciding that yes, humans are at least a foot taller than any other race, or that humans are the mayflies of the mortal species and have by far the shortest lifespans.

remcycle

Earthlings

Industrious hominids.

Earthlings, also commonly called humans or terrans, hail from the water world Earth, third planet of the yellow dwarf star Sol. They are a race of inquisitive, cooperative upright primates, and relative newcomers to the galactic scene.

Earthling culture is organized around tribes, with tribal sub-units known as families, and congregations of many tribes known as nations. Since 2020, humans have united under a single world government called the United Nations (UN).

Above all, earthlings are productive. The scale of earthling industry and manufacturing are unmatched by any of their galactic neighbors. While they have not advanced as far technologically as many other civilizations, they make up for it with sheer volume, often brute-forcing their way through technological limitations.

For example, when humans first visited their moon, Luna, they didn’t wait to develop efficient and safe repulsor-lift technology to achieve orbit. Instead, they simply strapped three intrepid humans to the nose cone of an oversized ballistic missile and threw them at the moon like a dart at a board.

What’s impressive is that it worked.

One year after joining the Alliance and being given a technological jump-start by the Chenjesu, humans had already surpassed even the Yehat starship clans in terms of bulk resource extraction and wartime manufacturing, soon becoming the primary materials supplier for the entire Alliance of Free Stars. Their ability to erect productive asteroid mines and outposts quickly (though not always efficiently) provided their new allies a much-needed shot in the arm in the face of the invading Ur-Quan armada.

If there is a downside to this tenacious drive toward industry, it is perhaps a species-wide myopia for the consequences of their production. After all, humans created the genetically-engineered Androsynth almost without a second thought, but with disastrous long-term consequences. Industrial waste products had nearly driven their home world past the brink of habitability in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. And when they revealed to the Chenjesu the vast stockpile of nuclear armaments they had amassed in just a few short decades of international cold war, well… The earthlings present at this meeting assumed the Chenjesu ambassador's stunned silence meant that the ancient crystalline being found their stockpile impressive. It's hard to know what a rock is feeling, but declassified records of a later conversation between the ambassador and his retinue provide a more accurate term: disturbing.

ace-disgrace-on-the-case

I think “gamers” don’t deserve Early Access, tbh

ace-disgrace-on-the-case

Is early access an excuse to release an unfinished product sometimes? Yea, for sure

But like. Functionally it serves as a way for live experience testing to be done on a game. It’s a way to dial it in on what people want, and on how to best make the game.

This means that, stars above, you don’t need to fucking review bomb it the second there’s a problem, you have avenues for giving feedback, stop saying the game is doomed because there’s been one bad update ffs

This brought to you by the embarassing state of people talking about both Slay the Spire 2 and Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core

im-a-luxury--few-can-afford

the average person's opinion can now reach media Creators with unprecedented ease and holy fuck does the average person have terrible game dev opinions

fleshengine

hang on where's the

#deadlock

ouppysister

"Are trans women bourgeois?"- the brightest minds of tumblr.com

ouppysister

Remember when this was hyperbole

yaemm

Some ships have flags, one of my favorite would be the skephalo flag. I thought it would be fun to create my own but for the Kerdlt nation.

What makes a ship flag is to have the colors of the characters. At first, I thought of the Aroace flag, to me personally, it speaks well to Kris and Berdly. The only problem to me is that I refer to Kris’ color as red instead of yellow. Then I started to wonder: “What colors would match Kris and Berdly as a flag?”

Got it! Blue, White, and Red!

But then I realized that it was just the france flag 🇫🇷

#theyre french for an amazing reason

shencomix

My Fitness Coach is a Dark Wizard [Complete]

applejuucee

DUDEEEE

nihilnovisubsole

Did you witness a cultural gap between the culture of the younger cadre of designers an writers then their gen xer counterpart? (Does gen x nerd culture can co-exist with it's tumblr counterpart?) In your experience does fandom play dominate role in your line of work?

i admit, i'm not really sure i parse what kind of answer you're looking for here, but it's been a while since i got a work-related message, so i'll do my best

is there a cultural gap between younger (i assume you mean game) designers and gen X designers? yeah, probably, but how much of that is normal generational divide? how much of a cultural difference is there from year to year in gamedev, or from project to project, or studio to studio? people who've done mobile or solo indie projects for their whole career will come to a project with different expectations from people who've only done AAA.

i've met older devs who pine for The Good Old Days. i've met others who said, "yeah, we used to sleep under our desks, thank god we don't crunch like that anymore." everyone's different.

can gen X nerd culture and tumblr nerd culture coexist? sure, if you want them to. i was born too late to experience gen X nerd culture firsthand, but i've never felt bashful about admitting i had a long background in tumblr fandom. i tell coworkers who aren't familiar with it that it was an interesting milieu to grow up in, and i've learned a lot, both good and bad, and all of it has been useful to my writing somehow.

i've never had an experience where an older coworker thought i was weird for making a particular pop culture reference or anything. in fact, i've had times where i was able to put some authority behind an argument with "i've been around shippers for nearly twenty years, i know what they pay money for." the trick, i've found, is to have a sense of humor about it. (not that tumblr invented shipping, obviously, but you get the idea.)

does fandom play dominate role (?) in your line of work? depending on what you're asking, this could go a few different ways:

is RPG game design primarily influenced by what devs believe will most lead to an active fandom culture? not that i've seen, no. fans and devs have a complicated relationship. the "fans are entitled" vs. "devs are jerks" discourse can be a real tar pit. devs do make design choices based on what they think will make a game most engaging, and with sequels, that can involve "what treats do we give returning fans." but it's sort of up to an individual artist or writer to go "i'm making XYZ choice because i think it will be fanfic bait."

do you, as a game writer, make most of your creative decisions based on the kind of fanwork you've enjoyed doing in the past? i imagine on some level i do, but that's just me. i enjoy exploring the same themes in both fan stuff and original work.

do many game writers have a fanfic background? more than there used to be, or at least there are more now who will openly admit to it. again, the "fanfic writer made good" class of author gets... you know... there's discourse, but all the fanfic-brained colleagues i know are amazingly talented. they have great instincts about how writing decisions will land with players emotionally, and they don't feel limited to the same one or two "classic" plot models.

hope some of that was useful!

kuwau

what character(s) do you associate with the person you reblogged this from?

#BOY

ogrepoppenangleaksofficial

gay-systemdeez

I wish fanfiction was more popular because then it would seem way cooler to hate on it.

#when has that stopped you before tbh

mumblesplash

it’s so magical and beautiful that there are sprawling interconnected cave systems carved deep into the earth by various geological forces and you don’t have to go in them. there are miles and miles of stone passageways in total darkness that require you to exhale all the air out of your lungs to squeeze through parts of them and you don’t have to be there. some of these squeezes are underwater and require cave divers to take off their oxygen tanks and push them through ahead of them and me i am above ground looking at the sky as we speak. there are untold subterranean wonders no human has ever seen and i will not be the one to discover them #grateful #blessed

mumblesplash

cave divers when they are happily married with kids and beloved by their community but theres a crack in the bottom of a lake called The Devil’s Rotting Esophagus where 57 people have died

sharkehthereal

ok but i understand cave divers

casualpretzels

Goldengraves (Postritual AU?)

Shout out to @onionsu for the inspiration for Apollo’s hair! Her art is fantastic go look check it out too!

In this one, I imagine Apollo needs help to get back on his feet, because after everything he is in fact, flat broke, dejected, and ashamed of everything he’s ever done. His whole life fell apart and now he’s back in New York.

He only served 10 years in this version as he wasn’t leading the war for very long, and at this point he was very much on the defensive to help save his people before his surrender. Although they still took action against him due to the war.

#apollo being a convicted war criminal is great i love him for that