Fishin' in the stream of consciousness (all-purpose, no topic chat thread)

My friends' homebrew dnd game is going live on Twitch now - check them out!

 

I just lost my entire Sunday afternoon to this game: https://ooblets.com/

It's still in pre-release, so it has some issues, but it's really fun. You're the protagonist and you move from an island, to the mainland of Oob. and the mainland of Oob has these cute little creatures called Ooblets. They're kind of like Pokemon, except you don't fight other Ooblets with like cartoon violence, no, there's dance battles! The graphics are really cute too! It's a mix between Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley and Pokemon, and it's fun!

 

I watched a few hours of a stream of ooblets, and can confirm its cute and very fun looking

You can give your ooblets little hats

 

today I learned of Banned Together Bingo, which I feel like a few people on here would be interested in. it's a fic writing event where the prompts are all taken from reasons given for banning books and movies! here's a bit from their FAQ:

the deadline to sign up was back in May but the fill deadline is next January and I assume they're going to be doing this again next year.

 

It's disappointing to binge watch two seasons of an anime and find out there's basically no fandom for it.

 

Way late, but I discovered TickTockStuck. Body horror is my jam! Maybe I should try doing some monster designs of my own.

 

@vuatson Oh my God, the prompts are the funniest thing I've ever seen.

 

Jenny Nicholsom released her Brony video, good stuff


Some CWs

Spoiler

- video of art sold at brony con thats nsfw/suggestive pony art
- video of suggestive pony art of child pony characters on a product sold at brony con
- some clips of a documentary thats ableist/ implying bronies on the autism spectrum need mlp to teach them stuff??

- Jenny will kinkshame you

Idk what else thats the most egregious that I rememeber

 

Also CW for discussion of use of racial slurs in old content by people who didn't know they were slurs at the time (she blanks out the slur and doesn't say it, but).

On a related note, add me to the pile of people who had zero idea she was behind Friendship is Witchcraft. That kept constantly turning up in my Youtube recs back when I listened to brony music a lot in like 2012.

 

I believe there is still a sale going on for this for the next two days or so. Also highly recommend! I bought it after watching someone stream it and have been streaming it myself. IT DOESN'T ASK YOU TO PICK A GENDER DURING CHARACTER CREATION AND I LOVE THIS. Any character can wear any hairstyle, any or no facial hair, and any outfit. You can go to the salon for the facial hair, or to change your hairstyle, and the clothing store to get different (and probably more choice of) outfits.

One thing that's interesting to me is people comparing Ooblets to Pokemon in game vocabulary.

A game's vocabulary are the verbs available for interacting with the world and stuff in it. In a text game these are very obvious because you literally type them. In a graphical game there is still vocabulary and it probably even still has descriptive names because that's how coding normally works if you don't want your every coworker to fantasize about ritually murdering you. Traditionally, the default set of vocabulary for many genres of games has been oriented around fighting. You got your "shoot" and your "stab" and so on. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it is an interesting topic of discussion, especially because once you've put words to it you can consciously start making different choices about your game's vocabulary.

I think Ooblets has really benefited from this sort of discussion. Pokemon is much, much older, and the devs would not have had the opportunity to read and think about it in the same way that a developer working right now would probably be unable to avoid. Since Ooblets is a new game, and I'd guess they did put thought into their vocabulary. Instead of your Ooblets fighting wild Ooblets, they have dance battles. It's adorable, fun, and everyone gets congratulated on their performance at the end.

 

A game I did not expect to see while browsing through the ps4 store is Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. I remember struggling to get through that book years ago.

 

Hey @swirlingflight and @prickle, you guys helped me find a specific dice maker a couple weeks ago and now she's agreed to take a commission to recreate those dice. I'm so psyched and I wanted to thank you two again.

 

hell yeah! i look forward to seeing the results of it :D

 

I made my first ever set of dice, and have gained the confidence to try other things with epoxy resin.

 

pretty!!!

 

Question; Homestuck AUs with weird body-horror shit going on are a dime a dozen and I love them all (Heinoustuck, TickTockStuck, and so on). Are there any in other fandoms? I've never seen designs for, say, Harry Potter characters as surrealist demon nightmares.

 

Undertale has a couple of somewhat body horror AUs, though I don't know if they're as focused. Mostly things positing "what if monsters were cannibals?" or "what if these monsters fused into a gooey shared body&mind?"

(This is almost certainly in part because how much of the fandom came from Homestuck)

 

In that case, I ought to try making some for my other fandoms. Already in progress discussing a Redwall/Hazbin crossover, which I guess is tangentially related...

 

Transformers likes to sidle into that sorta territory sometimes, though canon is so good at creative body horror that it’s rather a hard act to follow.