Gremlin

“I’m an equal opportunity offender. I make fun of everybody.” - Guy whose identities all align with the systemically dominant power groups in his cultural and geographic context

Or maybe "Alibi" for the catchy matrix app version. :>

"Partners in Crime"

In my ajumma era. 🧑🏻‍🦱

In Alpha Complex, citizens are judged not by the color of their skin but by the color of their clearances. 🌈

Yep! They're a metavariant of orks.

One of my favorite things about this drop is that it introduces Dokkaebi, AKA Korean Goblins, into the Sixth World as playable Shadowrunners.

Hopefully, they'll be an exciting option for those who've wanted more impish/goblin-like metas without the HMHVV baggage.

[My best Bialystock voice]
Step 1! We find the worst game ever designed!
Step 2! We fire the dev team!
Step 3! I kickstart 2 million dollars!
Step 4! We shit out AI slop graphics and code and launch early access!
And before you can say Step 5, we drop support, take our 2 million and go... to RIO!

Vashti (@vashti@hachyderm.io) Attached: 1 image Why #Ao3 was down yesterday:

Omg, absolutely incredible reason for AO3 to have been down hachyderm.io/@vashti/1147... (alt text at original)

If you have anxious dogs, a helpful trick I learned is that playing Taiko drum music can help cover up fireworks or construction sounds.

It probably won't work for everyone, but it helps my nervous little dudes get down to a manageable threshold when meds and distracting treats aren't enough.

Sure, I assume most people will miss it. But if even one person reads a story about, for example, organ harvesting or secret human experiments or something, and it makes them reflect on the importance of bodily autonomy in a new way, I think that's important.

It's also an interesting and important challenge, to see if I can take something very personal and make the topic resonate with readers from a very different background.

Sure, sometimes I weave stuff into metaphor. I'm actually SUPER privileged to not fear censorship on the level many creatives do. (Not that I haven't had content edited out before.)

Often it's just because it's more interesting artistically not being restricted by the limits of literal reality.

I do think there's value in both realistic, complex depictions and escapist fashie-bashing power fantasies, especially for audiences who are themselves oppressed.

I just hope that I'm providing enough tools for people to safely explore those facets and tell the stories they need to tell right now.

Evil can wear the faces of concerned, "well-intentioned" neighbors and your own worst lizard-brain impulses. But sometimes it wears stupid pointy hoods.

When I fill that toy box, I do try to include exaggeration, comedy, and absurdity, as well as subtlety and nuance, realism and metaphor.

Because sometimes evil is mundane, insidious in how pervasive it is and the cruelty it inflicts. It can also be galling in its stupidity and incompetence.

(Caveat: while this should go without saying, but these viewpoints are mine. Don't take them as any greater industry representation. I promise, I'm not that important. Anywho...)

You put in the Tesla Dealership and suggest how to mechanically abstract what molotovs do and how lithium batteries burn. You offer NPCs and example premises: various oligarchs and activists and cops and dracula w/ motives & backgrounds.

Then you invite players to use them to tell a story.

When you're making and publishing content for an RPG, the way I think of it is like ... you're basically making a toy box, and offering it for other people to use.

When writing for a game system, there's an absolute art to trying to create something that players can engage with, can use to tell stories that resonate with themselves and their players, opens up dialogue about resistance and ethics and reality while creating opportunities for escapism and joy.

As someone who hobby-writes for the kind of "elf games" with both, I think about this a LOT. The whole thread's worth a read, even if there are points where I disagree or think need nuance. But it underscores why we must think critically about media we create/consume, including "anti-fascist" works.

...And of course, the cis-est of the fuckboys who talk about being "red-pilled" and think The Matrix is just about trenchcoats and cool shades and believing they're secretly smarter than everyone around them.

This is what happens when people don't critically engage w/ the media they consume. They don't equate cyberpunk with hypercapitalist dystopia and resistance, just aesthetics.

So we end up with a bunch of milquetoast techbros for whom cyberpunk just means tech noir for white guys with yellow fever.

Is this an established group? If so, it might be worth it to flag your concerns with other members you trust. Also, it might be worth looking into safety tools, not just for content triggers, but also just to slow things down when things are getting out of hand, like rules debates.

🎵 life is like a hurricane /
here in duckburg /
flat beaks, quackers, budget cranes /
those are duck slurs 🎶

That's a relief! Meta specifically has been implementing a lot of shitty anti-trans/queer policies lately.

If they start asking for proof again, Meta accepts things like grocery store loyalty cards and library cards, which are faster to get your name changed on while you're waiting on legal docs.

I keep seeing people driving Teslas with the emblems pried off, which has the exact same energy as "Maybe if I take the swastikas off my uniform, people will just think I'm just really into Hugo Boss."

Also, I do appreciate the more genuine responses mixed in with the rest!

For people cold responding who aren't bots, I get it, but please, do yourself a favor and link your portfolio somewhere obvious. I'm NOT looking, but if were and couldn’t find your art right away, I'd assume you're spam/fake.

(To clarify the original post and address the wave of chat requests consisting of "Hey there," I'm NOT currently looking for new artists, just trying to improve how I communicate with ones I've already vetted. I have a growing list of people I've been meaning to order from but keep chickening out.)

Honestly that's a brilliant idea, and a good excuse for me to end up spending hours on Picrew for very important research purposes. Thank you!