idk what I'm doing, heyoooo

I might make games or write or something else on this blog, who knows. I sure don't. 28 she/her, asexual disaster woman

[zegollygosh]

Hi, I'm Golly. I'm a software developer and a game designer and a writer. Those are, at least, the major titles I like to apply to myself. Figured I should actually announce my project for those on here who find me somehow.

I'm working on a text game tentatively called The Merchant of Mytos. In it, you play a merchant who's exploring the continent of Mytos. You'll visit the different nations that exist on it, meeting different people and sharing in their stories and adventures while building your own reputation and skills as a merchant. You'll have the option of what to specialize in with trade, and how you interact with the world. It's very early in development so things may change, but I'm having a lot of fun.

I'm primarily on bluesky under this same handle, ZeGollyGosh, but I may post here more often to discuss my thoughts, plans, and difficulties.

More room to be talkative lol

[zegollygosh]

I have a blog now! Hooray!

Not a tumblr blog (you guys are looking at my tumblr blog) but an actual website blog! Crazy, I know.

Anyway, feel free to check it out! I made two posts so far and I'll likely update here when I make new posts.

As a warning: this account is going to be focused on tech discussions primarily (though I'll try to make a lot of it accessible-ish). If you'd like to see more artistic stuff, check out @gollygoshgo :3

[croxovergoddess]

Ko-fi sketch for @zegollygosh!

Such a cute design!!

[zegollygosh]

Its my mushroomy girl!!!! Pip!!!! :D

[zegollygosh]

I don't think I shared this yet here.

Introducing: Pip! My lil pathfinder cleric mushroom gal! Due to things she doesn't remember, she's not quite a Leshy but we're using that as her base (hence the doodles of what she'd look like if she was a full Leshy).

She only remembers a few months of her past and cannot read! But that's okay, she's learning the best that she can (note: she's not good at learning).

I'm having a blast playing her. She's so passionate and fun and while she comes off as supremely dumb from time to time due to her low int, she's actually got a very high wis and I love coming out with little golden nuggets of wisdom from time to time.

She also has a Very Sad Past which is always fun to play with. I will keep that past to myself though because A. Even I don't know the full details and B. I may want to write about her sometime.

[fae-papercuts]

Oh hey, look, I did another recording! Thought it would be good if I did one of my own, and I really like this one.

Please enjoy my reading of "Still A Monster", a story about what happens when you decide you simply have to ask Medusa about herself

It's too big for Tumblr, so I have to start putting files on my website. On the positive side, it means you can download them as mp3s and keep them forever. On the negative side, I don't know if my website is prepared for streaming reasonably large files to many people at once, so let's find out if it falls over. You can read the text while you listen along, too.

[them-faetale]

If it gives you feels, you have to tell me. Thems the rules.

[zegollygosh]

Absolutely excellent! I did get the feels (though I didn't get to experience the story until now) and it's a wonderful story. Absolutely gutted by the twist. Excellent work!

[darkcomedies]

evoking bertholt brecht’s “the way people cast a play!” quote as a spell against prescriptive, stereotypical, fatalistic typecasting

[darkcomedies]

idk what to tell you except go look at the fishwives

[zegollygosh]

Let me just go on a little rant here for a second as I scream into the void about how AI is slowly eating everything I love and I feel like I'm being swallowed up too.

To be clear about my opinion of AI; I find that it's not always useless like people enjoy saying it is, but it's so... hollow. And it's easy to stop thinking when you use it, so even at work, where I'm required to use it, I'm using it sparingly and with the requirement that I check what it spits out and I try my best to learn and internalize the information rather than just passing it along mindlessly.

So my boss has always liked AI. For the past year he's been getting more and more involved, going from vibe coding to agentic agents to multiple agentic agents. At first we were just being pushed to try it out. Incorporate it occasionally, do a bit of research with it, have it write a message, etc etc etc.

And all the while we were getting these speeches that steadily got more and more alarming.

No, your job will not be in jeopardy because of AI, just keep working hard and do good.

AI will speed you up, so while you're not REQUIRED to use AI, you'll need to keep up with it.

AI is the only way you can keep up with AI so you have to use it, or else we'll replace you with someone who will use it.

And now we're at:

Here's the top ten companies that have cut down their work force via AI, I just felt like bringing that up today

Followed by the absolutely wild statement:

Don't worry, though, if you embrace AI you won't be fired because the only ones being fired are the ones who refused to join the bandwagon

Which, y'know, doesn't quite feel like an accurate statement! I'm the kind of person who will put a lot of faith into people when I shouldn't but, crazily enough, I don't feel very comforted by this declaration.

I wanna believe the guy's heart is in the right place, but now it's eerily sounding like he's working HIMSELF into the thought of how downsizing would work. Which doesn't bode well for me, the newest person on the team.

Maybe I'm reading too far into it, but I'm going to keep sending out my resume and working on some portfolio projects and hope somewhere nicer picks me up. They have to be out there.

Right?

It's scary out here for me at the moment. Everyone and everything I love is held up by my career and it doesn't feel exactly stable at the moment. In the meantime, this horrible thing has wormed its way into my brain to the point where I often wonder "could AI do this better/faster?" when I'm learning things and it eats away at me every day. The joy of creation is so dampened by that thought. I never used to compare myself to other people but now I'm not comparing myself to other people, I'm comparing myself to the idea that there is a "technically right" way to do the things I want to do.

[zegollygosh]

What Am I Up To Again?

Oh right I can be a person online.

I'm working on a little bracket game these days!

The concept is simple. You make a lobby, invite your friends, then choose a category of Thing. You and your friends all put in candidates until you reach the chosen number for the bracket. Then you seed the data by organizing them based on which you think has the highest likelihood to win (so the best ones don't eliminate one another too early). Then you and your friends all vote on the bracket one round at a time, until a winner is chosen.

So far, things are going well, but I find that when things start becoming so complex I can't easily just broadly add features, I start losing interest. Hoping this lil guy is a small enough project I might actually have a thing to post for once other than random rambles.

Whatever, at least progress is being made today!

In news about the Merchant of Mytos, it's on hold again because I... suddenly got a new idea in my head and I want to restart it for a fifth time because I'm just like that I guess. I made myself a deal, though. If I can get this bracket game completely done, THEN I can do the Merchant of Mytos again. Until then, Merch has to stay a browser based experience and not a MUD like my heart desperately wants it to be suddenly.

(seriously, wouldn't it be fun to be a merchant running around a MUD town with other users? It'd still be a primarily solo experience because I don't think I'd be able to balance a player-led merchant economy but still, it'd be neat af)

But I'm going to be good and make this bracket game. Definitely. No backing down this time.

(I hope)

[beggars-opera]

Not to be that person, but if you remember this, how's that newfound back pain going for ya babe

[vocabulary-altering-posts]

PHRASE ADDED!

LET'S DO THE FORK IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL

LET'S DO THE FORK IN THE GARBAGE DISPOSAL

DING-DING-DING DING-DING DING DING-DING DING DING-DING-DING DING-DING DING DING-DING DING DING-DING-DING DING-DING DING DING-DING DING DING-DING-DING DING-DING DING DING-DING DING

[crabussy]

mesmerised by this random photo taken by the hiking club I'm part of. the soft cool tones and radiant warm tones, the composition and lighting...

[crabussy]

I think this is the best part of this photo. the point of that entire trip was to find and read an old storybook that they knew was at a particular hut. he genuinely is reading it out loud to the others. I can't remember what it was about, but this scene is the cozy and well deserved reward of a wild endeavour through rugged terrain. I think that's beautiful [:

[cilantroodon]

[ID 1: A group of three hikers sitting at a table. Two of them are resting, the other is flipping through a book. Various items are scattered across the table, and they are lit by a small candle.

ID 2: Tumblr tag that says: what is he reading that put them to sleep. End IDs.]

(ID 1 via @banquetsinger)

[bakedbakermom]

saying ao3 needs to censor certain content is like saying a museum can't have still life art that includes strawberries because you don't like them.

these are not real strawberries. you do not have to, and in fact cannot, eat them. no one with a strawberry allergy will be harmed by looking at them. no migrant workers were exploited in the picking of these strawberries. there were no questionable farming practices or negative environmental impacts from growing or transporting them.

because - and i cannot stress this enough - they are not real strawberries.

if you don't like strawberries, you don't have to look at the paintings. in fact, you can get a map of the museum that lists what works are in what rooms and just. not go in there. if you see one by mistake, you can look away. just keep walking. there's plenty of other stuff to see.

yes, real strawberries can cause real quantifiable harm to real people.

but again. these are not real strawberries.

you may have whatever feelings you like about strawberries, and so can i. you can draw and write about whatever fruit floats your boat, and so can i, even if that happens to be strawberries. and we can hang our art side by side in the same gallery, provided you understand that my strawberries are not about you (and your kumquats are, shocker, not about me) and that - and this is true - neither are real.

and when the fascists break down the doors and grab all the strawberry paintings and heap them in the street and set them on fire, please know that they are coming for your kumquats next.

so if you want a place where you can show off your beautiful kumquat art safely, you're gonna have to tolerate having some strawberries in the next room.

and that's okay. because the strawberries aren't real.

[torchwood-99]

"I love you but you're doing wrong in a way I cannot condone" and "I hate you but you're being wronged in a way I cannot stomach" are top tier and I need more of them.

[pocketsizedpanther]

Yall be careful!

[naamahdarling]

"it's all fake looking ugly slop! Weird fingers! You can always tell!"

I need you to realize that literally none of these things are true, and that by continuing to believe them, you are making yourself gullible.

[respectissexy]

One thing that has made me a much more well-adjusted person is a clip I once saw of Hank Green saying that anyone can be in amazing shape as long as being in amazing shape is one of their top three priorities.

(This is obviously a generalization that isn't true for everyone. But it is true for most people and I'm proceeding from there.)

This "top three priorities" framing has genuinely reduced my tendency toward jealousy and self-comparison a lot. Now when I feel envious of someone’s spotless, aesthetic home, I think to myself, “Having a spotless, aesthetic home is probably one of their top three priorities. It’s definitely not one of mine, so I shouldn’t expect my home to look like that.”

Or when I see an influencer with a body that takes a ton of work to maintain: “Maintaining that body is obviously one of her top three priorities, because it’s her livelihood. My livelihood is my brain, so I’m never going to prioritize my body like that.”

It also helps me to identify areas that I actually DO want to prioritize more. I realized in recent years that my envy for my friends who prioritized writing more than I did was NOT going away, so I started to prioritize writing more. (Not top three, but higher priority than it has been in the past.)

[respectissexy]

I love doing notes for therapist-posting on tumblr because I get tags like this.

[zegollygosh]

Behold. A VR treadmill.

This is called the Maratron, an yes it is just a manual treadmill with a mouse taped to it, thank you very much. I love this idea so much and I wanna get more people to know about it.

Credit where credit is due, the original creators (Clasted Bheeks) video is here and the guy who iterated on it (fer sler) is here, my own iteration of the code is here, and you're welcome to make any improvements, changes, or suggestions though I'm working on it between obligations so there are things I already am trying to do that I can't yet accomplish.

The general overview is this: a mouse is taped to a manual treadmill, and the program (rewasd or the program fer sler wrote or my iteration) translates that into joystick movement.

I have yet to test the controller on any game but Skyrim vr and it works decently well! I think I do need to build a system of straps because right now I'm holding the bars as I walk and it makes it hard to do anything with my hands while moving. It has already gotten me walking half a mile a day even when I have other obligations and that's more than I can say I was doing before.

I'll likely have much more tomorrow when I have a day off to just tinker with it, but I'm generally having a blast with this.

[triviallytrue]

[dikdikpronouncedxylophone]

[taahko]

i think some of you dont like narratives or stories or characters i think you just like fanfiction tropes

[taahko]

protagonists can and will be sexist, racist, insensitive, cruel, stupid, etc, especially towards the beginning of a story. these are called character flaws and they are a surprise tool that will lead to narrative fulfillment later

[mapswithoutwyoming]

And sometimes "narrative fulfillment" doesn't mean "the character overcomes their flaws" or even "the antihero is punished for their flaws"! sometimes it means the narrative says "wow was that fucked up or what? anyway i'm rod sterling"