That last bit especially!

why do they always end up as blonde white women  😭

some hyper famous artists like Van Gogh transcend overratedness and become underrated because they're so normalized. Like I'll look at a van Gogh and I'm like wait this really is amazing you guys don't get it

Shakespeare is like this

Every time I see a Van Gogh that’s not one of his better known pieces it absolutely blows me away

Have you seen this shit my liege? smh unreal

Saany with a hug 🩵

Any day now

people have suddenly started reblogging this post of mine from february 8th, 2012. great bit everybody

Hey y'all, some members from our ttrpg community some help.

Beth and Angel Make Games are amazing designers and constantly lift others up.

They've put together an Unhoused Fundraising Bundle.

Please share and support if you can!

look, i'm sorry to say it, but if you really truly want to see more queer representation in media, you're going to need to be okay with seeing representation that you don't relate to at all. you need to be okay with media that has queer characters but none who share your specific identity. you need to be okay with media that has queer characters who do share your identity but who you find completely unrelatable. this is because you are not the only queer person on the planet and queer people who are not you, including queer people who you share no similarities with besides your queerness, deserve to see themselves represented.

you also need to be okay with media that shows a queer experience that you personally find uncomfortable. it's okay if you hate coming out stories, but other people find them valuable, so they need to exist. it's okay if you're a masc trans guy and you feel uncomfortable seeing femme transmasc characters, but femme transmascs do exist in real life and also deserve to see themselves represented. it's okay if you're uncomfortable with queer stories that involve cheating or abusive/toxic relationships or queer characters who are not good people, but other people find a lot of meaning in those stories, so you need to be okay with the fact that they exist.

please stop calling out creators—particularly queer creators—for writing queer representation that you don't personally relate to. if you want every queer person to be able to feel represented in media and if you want every queer creator to be able to make the stories they want to tell, you're going to have to learn to accept that some stories will feel completely unrelatable to you, and that's okay, and it doesn't mean those stories are "problematic" or "bad representation"

One of the reasons you might find yourself reading a book and feeling like stuff Just Happens is if the obstacles and conflicts the characters encounter do not result from the choices the character has made. In character-focused stories it’s satisfying to see characters run into obstacles THEY HAVE CREATED, specifically obstacles they have created by MAKING WHAT THEY THINK ARE THE RIGHT CHOICES.

Sometimes a contributing factor for this problem is that the characters know themselves too well. People rarely act out of fully conscious awareness of their own thoughts and feelings, so it’s weird when characters in a story do this. You can get a ton of conflict out of characters thinking they want Thing X, getting Thing X, and realizing it was actually Thing Y they wanted all along and now they have to deal with making the wrong choice.

If most of the protagonist’s problems are ultimately caused by their own reaction to situations, not by the occurrence of situations per se, it keeps the momentum going and it gives the audience something to sympathize with. I LOVE when someone tries their best and just makes things worse.

It is fairly baffling to see coming-of-age stories that have this central problem. How can you have a coming-of-age story in which the character’s choices and mistakes do not contribute to either the plot or the growth of that character. Psyduck perplexity dot jpeg

Not calling anyone out though. Not about anyone specific 🦄

spiritkeep is an upcoming multiplayer campaign-length ttrpg that helps players heal from trauma through play

spiritkeep is a community restoration game where the player characters comprise a special taskforce who undertake missions such as diplomacy, intelligence gathering, rescuing potential allies, seeking boons from powerful spirits, stopping ecological damage, and more in order to heal their dying town ... whether they're trying to be helpful, running from legal consequences, seeking stability, or grasping at belonging, this group of lost souls are on this journey together. there is no giving up until this place can be a home

players collaboratively craft a region and a town together in a world full of nature, diverse peoples, and spirits. then, the game master guides them on journeys into the world designed to help players heal from complex trauma during long-term play

player characters in spiritkeep are based on storybook tropes. their archetype and paragon define the role they fit into in the story. are you a knight or a shepherd? a revolutionary or a ghost? a damsel or a trickster? your choice out of 18 total options gives you abilities called keywords that shape how you interact with the mechanics and the world around you

though almost everyone in spiritkeep is human, humans in this world are diverse and often magical. you probably come from one of several lineages that has been bound to the magic of the world by the many kinds of spirits that live around you. sunfolk burn bright, but have to be careful not to hurt others. animalfolk have been blessed - or cursed - with the traits of predators and prey. you may even come from a mixed lineage, meaning there are many hundreds of possible combinations to start your character with

in spiritkeep, players work collaboratively to flesh out the world and its local cultures and societies as well as the town they're trying to restore. but in this game, the world is always animist, full of nature, and full of many kinds of spirits. you may seek help from the great spirit of the mountain ... or the meek house spirit who lives in your fireplace. a human-like spirit may accompany you to aid you on a journey ... or you may struggle past the nightmare of a violent spirit beyond your comprehension

through it all, you must take care of your own personal spirit, through which you can unlock memories, heal from harm, gain advancements and boons, and even change your role in the story

players interact with the mechanics through a full set of dice, rolled in pairs. choosing which dice to roll indicates the level of effort your PC is putting into their action. larger dice are a limited resource gained through rolling the smaller ones, meaning you have to pace yourself and learn from failure in order to have a better chance to succeed later. however, consistently putting all your effort into actions can lead to burnout, which leads to conditions, which leads to breakdowns ... potentially harming yourself or the mission

your stats indicate various strategies you can take to overcome a challenge rather than concrete skills, and are also added in pairs. they represent how you think, how you embody yourself in the world, and what you value. there are no good or bad stats to have, only different strategies helpful in different contexts. will you roll Gentle + Tactful to sway the nervous princess to your side? will you need to roll Grounded + Hardy to safely weather the sudden storm?

game masters are supported in spiritkeep with varying levels of NPC creation, lists of prompts, roll tables for missions and complications, and a great amount of advice. GMs will have a lot of agency over the story without pre-defining the narrative or character arcs, guided by the players' collaborative worldbuilding as well as prompts and questions built into the PC's playbooks

the game is designed based on scholarship from therapeutically applied ttrpg, trauma, play therapy, and disability experts. the creator, Luka Brave (that's me!), has a masters degree in writing studies and psychology with a focus in game studies, and a work history in neurodivergent-focused social work, disability advocacy, and community service.

spiritkeep is the subject of my thesis

if you like my work, you can follow along with me:

questions, feedback, or offers of collaboration or sponsorship can be sent to luka (at) psychhound (dot) com

the way westerners will only listen to you about anything if you use exclusively western sources... its like trying to convince a MAGA person of some obvious fact but you can only use as a source fox news. this is how theyre making us live

no matter how much they hate their governments and their corporations for what they've done to them, they are still the only voices they trust, the only arbiters of truth and reality for them, they will trust their torturer before they trust a foreigner

Legend of Pokémon ⊟

My heart skipped a beat during that half-second between me seeing this and then realizing it’s just a fan-made mock-up (from @ksw_mgmg, via @BlueApollon). With all the Zelda series crossovers lately, though, who knows, maybe Hylian Pokémon trainers could happen one day. I mean, until the past couple of years, I would have never expected that Link or his outfits would one day pop up in games like Mario Kart and Bayonetta.

Here’s what each of the images say, from top to bottom:

Much thanks to TC reader Puck for the translations!

BUY Pokemon Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire, Our Holiday Gift Guide

here’s more !! 💕

Zelda Heritage Post

I know it’s emotionally unsatisfying, but such apparent contradictions need to be treated less as hypocrisies, flaws, or “kinks” in the system. We shouldn’t even treat them as “double standards” in the abstract, but rather see them for what they are: the very mechanisms through which a system actively reproduces legitimacy and decides who is heard, who is civilised, and who is a problem to be solved or ostracised.

are you a ttrpg creator who offers an audiobook version of your ttrpgs? please reblog or reply with a link to your game if you want to be included on a list of ttrpg audiobooks for a chimera hearts project!!

This is good information to know.

I might need to culturally appropriate the Asian greeting just to see how it goes.