Pastelbat @pastelbat@awoo.space

The uncanny irl forerunner to many an FPS map

Just watched Descendant Of The Sun, aka "Shaw Brothers make Superman 1978, but set it in Fantasy Ancient China"

It has:

So many onscreen drawn effects.
So much coloured lighting.
So many people explode. (So many!)
A temple set with a skybox that makes it look like a real life Half-Life map.
Bumbling not-Clark Kent looks after a sassy parrot.
Really impressive practical effects.
A drunken rendition of The Superman theme on an 80s synthesizer

People tend to think 'crow, then a little bigger' and not 'medium-sized bird of prey, then a little bigger'

If a 2kg bird with a 1.5 meter wingspan randomly flew through my front door I think I would be too shocked to angst at it about my ex

Ravens are *really really big*

Like, I caught a glimpse of a common buzzard sat in a tree the other day and thought at first it might be a raven, and uh

Nope, keep going, bigger than that

(Image shows a Common Buzzard & a Common Raven, also has a dead prey animal)

https://live.staticflickr.com/4063/4515917807_18cdcc0393_b.jpg%7C%7C%7C%7C

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-5ON3qHy5I

Baaaaaaaaaaaats!

Flappy little nighttime friends..

@lioness I've heard (but not seen first-hand) that historical wargames have some extremely indepth mud rules.

Am exhausted from being teacher/organiser/most-social for 3hrs, but it went really well I think. We got through all the essential stuff and all the feedback from players was really positive. Will do character creation together next session.

@hokaze@queer.af thankyou!

Session 0 of GMing a Genesys campaign with some friends later today.

I have done prep, I am not nerve

Much

Lately I've been playing a miniature-based solo RPG that Mophidius recently released, called 5 Parsecs From Home.

I've been using it as a creative writing prompt, doing session writeups with the framing of a cult 90s scifi TV show, and with photos from the game during play. (And randomly generated Blaseball names, because Blaseball has the best names)

[CW: Descriptions of violence to people/scifi critters]

Episode 1: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRzdezAkRP4X8OgA82-IQFN9vux-a25jBOSgkvEZudbShpbR24BMQwf3L-cwN7YurfJ3AOjWUtBceYM/pub

Episode 2: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRUXfgEUp3Zf2_dPmXOxrajAuF0IQ40MkfS5kR11pZyXhZUXwzfk8RmeKmKM3hd8-9DK1zbnW_F8J9C/pub

@lioness Would it explain much if I said the first one was sculpted approx 20 years after the rest were?

The Seraphon lineup are an odd assortment of mostly Very Very Old kits, an updated range from around 2014-15, and a couple of models since then.

(Pictured: My Lizerds!)

https://reductress.com/post/i-want-to-honor-keeping-kink-out-of-pride-but-my-kink-is-bank-sponsored-parade-floats/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cslu7zFmPjM

I cannot express how happy this wrestling match between two invisible men makes me. It's so good

Does anyone have any recommendations for indie gamedev servers or communities?

I really miss the queer indie scene on Twitter, but the thought of going back to Twitter makes my soul try to crawl out of my body to escape

There's "simplify for general consumption" and then there's "simplify to the point yr biases become the dominant message". Primitive/developed distinctions definitely fall in the latter category.

Everything evolves! Some species just refine or develop different traits from others, settle on traits that are more recognisably distinct from the rest of the group, or are more recognisably distinct from their ancestors.

Like, a rat 'looks' more like an early mammal than a bat or a kangaroo, because it fills a similar ecological niche to many of them. That doesn't make the rat more 'primitive' or the kangaroo more 'developed', and it doesn't mean the rat's been twiddling its genetic thumbs while the others evolved 'past it'.

It's a way of introducing evolutionary concepts that carries a whole lotta baggage that's false and encourages an outdated view of Natural Heirarchies and all that Aristotlean jazz.

Oooh

This pop biology book on ants uses "primitive" and "developed" species unironically and without caveats

I am having some Strong Opinions here