Aether (moved) @Taylor@awoo.space

Updated the bigger versions of my avatar to the new seams/etc, so spent a bit of time today being a big dragon~...

Even as I still doubt the label of "dragon" itself, the feel of dragon does seem possibly more me the more that I think about it.

... except I think I've felt the same thing about kitsune and Amaterasu, so, ehhh??

drrrrgn

I think the main reason I'm getting these sorts of thoughts lately is that I look at the state of things regarding the apocalyptic fears and anxieties that come with climate change, a pandemic, and political nonsense... and I find myself thinking...

These sure are Interesting Times.

Why are These Times the ones "I" am in?

Why am I here?

...

Why am "I" "here"?

Where will "I" be in the next life?

Will I be in a life in the future? Or maybe in the past?

Will I be within the proximity of this life? Or could I be reborn on an entirely different world?

Why am "I" not "someone else"? Or have I "been" someone else? How do I know I'm not someone else "right now", and "I" simply haven't got there yet? Or maybe "I" already have been "someone else"?

If I won't have another life in this reality, where will "I" be? From some outer reality, why did I then choose to be "here", in this life?

An awful lot of "why" questions for things that simply "are".

I found a world with some lovely lighting, and the framing of a mirror that made it feel like a real object rather than a Large Reflective Wall, and it felt pretty good to just gaze at myself... ...

Spent some time in VR because I wanted to be dragon... ...

Twitter has made a bunch of UI changes - less elements are coloured or filled, and the font has become extremely corporate and uncomfortable to read.

Now a lot of people ask, why did they change such things? ... for engagement. It's always engagement.

They want you to click things. Watch more people, post more tweets, make the numbers go up for the investors. It's psychological manipulation of the masses all to make Big Numbers for someone's pockets.

Twitter, other social networks, mobile apps... the whole lot of them are all doing these tricks, and I really do grow tired of it.

I'm very particular about getting my GUI stuff consistent, so I'm just furrowing my brow at how the blue effects behave a little differently between these screens depending on how I've set them up...

Oops, it turns out that in the default code a method was being run that clears actor (party side) actions.

This same method has aliased code that resets charges for the party. This was being run during the "pre-battle phase".

Doing away with this line calling this method, the alteration of the battler turn charge seems to be behaving much better.

My problem at the moment, is that I seem to be resetting and reshuffling the turn order each turn, so while I can reduce a turn "charge" to zero if that side is at a disadvantage, the next turn everything gets reset and the advantage is lost.

I'm sure I have some way to check if an invisible "round" of turns is complete, but I'm not sure where that was... or if maybe it was in an older version of this project...

Current struggles with creating advantage/disadvantage in battles in my CTB code be like:

I went to Shibuya today~.
Also Shibuya.
And Shibuya.

Being a dragon is... good...

I'm sorry it probably gets old that the best way I can think of to post about fuzzy nice dragon shape thoughts is "dragon good"...

Additional pictures from my friend. Seeing me in a feral posture is pretty nice...

VRChat remains very good for identity validation and body things. Even with a shape not strictly me, just being able to be non-human and put myself into the experience is wonderful.

Flammie in particular is a good shape, because being able to see wings is a lovely experience...

I'm not sure how this happened, but it did.

Sqrrrrrk go the toy limbs...

Today in VRchat I found this rubbery gel-filled kinda critter with a massive tail, and it's just a really lovely aesthetic~.
(World unrelated.)

Thinking about the progression of my references over time...