man what the fuck ever
kitty-cat-mint asked:
love ur little animations. they feel like trinkets to me. curios. shiny rocks.
wading through a desolate landscape of content generated in unfathomable quantities without a single breath of human intent genuinely sucks the soul out of my body.
i want to watch a crappy video made by a real person, recording their computer screen with their phone because they dream of making a minecraft let’s play but don’t have a clue how to use OBS.
i want to read an unfunny comment that exists because a real human being at a keyboard somewhere snickered to themselves, before typing the same joke others’ve already made a thousand times before them, and hitting enter because they just couldn’t help themselves.
the human touch means everything to me. i think all the little things are beautiful.
i suppose sometimes it just takes time to grow up and learn to cherish them
aweeee!! i’m so delighted to know that they’re appreciated <3 i Love to give trinkets to friends and family,,,,,,,,,,,,,
okay made a sequel to that other "what even is a video game?" poll! this one has 150 questions. enjoy? and of course, here's the response data.
i know you said no nuance allowed but i KNOW deep in my heart “video game” is only a useful descriptor because of how it’s used contextually!
— i would argue you CAN classify virtually any experience on an animated display that you can interact with as a “video game”
but in practical conversation, when you describe something first and foremost as a “video game”, you are usually alluding to it having conventional video game attributes.
if it lacks most of the attributes listeners expect from a video game, a different descriptor might give them a better idea of what it is, even if it’s still technically a video game!
i didn’t comment on your Homestuck Medium Discourse at the time but this is exactly how i feel about that — homestuck is absolutely a video game, but if you described it like that to someone who knows nothing about it, they would probably feel a little bit surprised/misled by you once they start playing it!
if you had described it as a “webcomic with interactive elements”, they would likely feel much less misled.
like most descriptors: video game is a spectrum.
something can be a teeny bit a video game or EXTREMELY a video game.
when i say Super Mario Bros. (1985) — the “video game” point on the collective cultural consciousness heat map lights up red hot!!! but when i say Google Earth (2001) … not so much, even if i do think it is enough of a video game that i’d answer “✅ video game” accordingly on your poll!
i think in truth everyone wants to be silly and play but they're just waiting for permission
i have been trying to learn to foster in myself for awhile now, the spirit of play and childlike fun having. like. im serious about the psychological benefits of playing toys. and ive noticed, there is a barrier created by the sense of adulthood that everyone is waiting for someone else to break
like.... this is easiest when doing a kind of, "yes, and" improv situation, because in that situation youre being actively given permission by another. when playing like this ive noticed in myself and others, a way in which the apprehension dissolves really quickly , and it's really exciting
its like theres some kind of deep embarrassment that pervades almost everyone. a fear of looking silly. but when you get past it, behind it, there is ALWAYS a deep and innate desire to have fun that is covered up. ive seen this even in adults who are like 80 years old if you start being silly enough
one time i started playing with my steel tongue drum and a rubicks snake infront of an old man and he asked me for a go and within minutes he was super into it having fun banging drum and making shapes. ive seen people who are otherwise very serious moved by the power of text roleplay silliness
yesterday my friend and i had a lot of fun playing with a puppet and its making me think a lot about this barrier and how to break it... like... the more i think about there being a barrier like that. the more i want to destroy it entirely. i'm a pretty shy person in actuality but I WANT TO PLAY
ive tried looking for actual literature into this topic psychologically but i struggle to find anything useful. there doesnt seem to be anything to 'teach' you how to play as an adult. i want to give myself permission in every possible scenario and foster environments where others can play too...
everyone should make a little promise to themselves to give themselves permission to play a little more every single day
I'd like to recommend the works of Vivian Paley to anyone who this post resonates with! she was a teacher and child development researcher whose instincts about child psychology were ahead of her time (she was doing a lot of this work in the 1950s and 60s), and saw Play as a tool for learning, social development, storytelling, and many other aspects of early development.
It's not exactly the type of literature I think you may be looking for, OP, but I think her books are incredibly interesting and tap into a facet of what you're looking for.
the two books of hers I've read are called You Can't Say You Can't Play (1993) and The Boy Who Would Be A Helicopter (1991), but this post was a great reminder for me to read more of hers.
She has been on the radio to read excerpts and create reenactions from the above texts, which you can listen to here and here.
enjoy!
i have got to get my father to sit down and focus and actually watch some portion of HLVRAI before he dies. im constantly haunted by the knowledge that all this incredibly innovative, completely grassroots improvisational theater--which is frankly some of the most cutting edge "new media" that currently exists and gets zero credit from academia or the larger art world for it because you have to be an exact 50/50 hybrid of annoying shakespeare college guy and annoying extremely online guy to understand what's even going on--is happening ON TWITCH for an audience of people who, while appreciative, are only experiencing it in the context of it being a "[a joke about a] video game stream". there should be regular columns in the New Yorker about stuff like Jerma's Dollhouse stream, one of the most well-known pieces of performance art in the classical sense that currently exists. it just bugs me. i dont know what to do about it. i used to be able to get paid to write really long articles about stuff like this in Kotaku and Wired etc but there's no readership for that either, and there wasn't then. no matter who im trying to explain how groundbreaking this stuff is to, they will need like a 30 minute preamble about either the world history of live theater traditions, or why the joke a gnome just said originated on the Something Awful forums in 2004 and why it matters.
of the two types of annoying guy you have to be to get this particular angle on this medium, the theater people are the ones who are going to get more out of it with much less explanation, but when you spec out of academia you lose touch with that peer group except for the other dilettantes, who are extremely few and far between. there's nothing anyone can do about this except vaguely plan on writing a book someday
for the first time ever in human history we are experiencing as an audience an improvised, live, ensemble theater production from the first person perspective of one of the actors. there should be a new paper about this on Academia.edu every week!!! its a big deal!!
me trying to explain to a theater person why someone is trying to distract Gordon and keep his field of view pointed a certain way while they delete the Lanky Kong prop they just spawned behind him by accident: its like that scene in A Night At The Opera where Harpo climbs the matte paintings during Il trovatore and drops the Potemkin(?) backdrop behind the Anvil Chorus
them: ohhh i get it. lmao
me trying to explain to the average twitch viewer why they keep calling the Vortigaunts "Vonneguts": so first up have you ever read "a book"?
them: no
walking along (messy cel animation)