Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

@spacewastrel@snouts.online Good luck! :D

@mona@cybre.space On the other hand, I initially watched it with the sound off and was braced for it to be from the NRA, GOP, god knows who. When I found out it was from some fly-by-night company trying to hawk T-shirts to mall ninjas, I laughed out loud. What a chump show. (Sadly, a chump having a public breakdown is roughly as dangerous as a mastermind having one...)

There's a comment down in that thread describing this as "not fascism, just fascism branding," and I think there's some validity to that. Again, I'm not convinced it's much less dangerous, especially since it's arguably more insidious than outright fascism. But it's still amazing how much of this alt-right "revolution" is taking place purely in the simulacrum, the same hazy world where reality TV, urban legends, and football rivalries exist...

@catoxis@snouts.online @anthracite We should still hang out once we're local, if you're cool with meeting up! :D

@Leucrotta Exactly. This is a mad science lab the way *I* would frickin' design it. One part Deep 13, one part Yoyodyne, one part L Ron's SeaOrg, one part mid-90s Wizards of the Coast... O:)

@zx3 *really adds 'mandatory john lithgow cameo, suck it zed ex, heart emoji' [sic] to the game notes* <3

Homebrew system is coming along nicely, with some mechanics that simulate (and enforce!) loss in a clever way I'm really proud of. I also figured out a way to punish players for hoarding good cards, as well as a "false hope" mechanic that encourages people to hold risky cards in the futile hope they'll get safer to play. >:D

A premise is coming together, too: imagine an alternate-universe 1988 drawn right from right-wing moral panics, where furry fandom has connected with the corporate self-improvement scene and morphogenetic fringe science, and mutated into a New Age transformation cult backed by West Coast IT money. Basically Yoyodyne, except you have furry TF cultists instead of Red Lectroids. :>

The PCs start as captives in a secret biolab on this transformation cult's hidden compound. Their creators are trying to bridge the gap between human, animal, and spirit and basically reverse engineer angels.

They're also trying to meet their creations halfway. This mostly involves stalking around the compound in creepy animal masks, injecting themselves with untested mutagenics, and speaking in tongues while tripping balls on acid.

The PCs must not only struggle to escape alive, but to maintain their sense of self, stay connected to their fellow specimens, and understand why they're being manipulated. The longer they stall, the faster reality and autonomy slip away from them...

Inspirations: Scanners, The Thing, Videodrome, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Upstream Color, Liquid Sky, The Cube, In the Mouth Of Madness, A Cure For Wellness, Dark City, The Shining, Suspiria, Cabin in the Woods, Eyes Wide Shut, and Mandy. It's going to get pretty dark (also, darkly pretty).

@Phorm I mean, I was raised Italian, right under a sign in my mom's kitchen that says "Zitto E Mangia." I can't help myself.

And granted, it's actually genuinely plausible that the food in California is that much better. I just... I dunno, I lived broke-ass in Cleveland for long enough that I don't care if it's on a paper plate and I have to fish a purple hair out of it, as long as it's good and reasonably hygenic.

Maybe I'm more of a canid than I like to think. ^__^;

"Your Honor, let the record show that I did not stab the defendant until I got to the word 'aesthetic.'"

#ShutTheFuckUpAndEat
#YouEntitledYuppieClumpOfBiomass

I knew the moment I saw this that the son of a bitch would be from California.

Granted, I had already seen him two-star a local sushi bar for letting their roll of plastic wrap be (gasp!) out in plain sight, so I was kind of cheating...

Honestly? I'm a terrible, prejudiced person but I'm kind of glad I'm going to end up in NOLA instead of Los Angeles. I... I don't know what this guy is, but I don't want it.

Took an extended break from the day jeorb to play with that horror RPG thing. Found a couple neat storygame options (thanks, @001zlnv ) but wound up tinkering with my copy of the Silicon Dawn and putting together a system.

I kinda like where it's going. You draw a hand of seven. All the court cards, tarots, and specials go back into the deck but go onto your character sheet as plot connections, unpleasant fates, and occult abilities you can buy _later_ in the campaign.

Then you redraw to seven cards and (scene missing) until you've got five Minor Arcana left in your hand. Their suits determine your PC's starting dots in Safety (swords), Insight (wands), Humanity (cups), and Authority (coins).

Their *ranks*, however, determine how good your PC's starting position is and how much they have to lose. Those cards start outside the deck and in the player's sideboards-- but each gets tagged with something of importance to the PC, proportional to its number value, and they have to sacrifice it to add that card to a skill roll.

Cards that get sacrificed in this way go back into the deck... and trigger "hauntological" effects (bad memories, hallucination scenes, EVP phenomena, undeath etc.) that bring the lost thing back into the PC's life when they're dealt randomly, giving the system a bit of a Legacy board-game feel. Cards accumulate histories, usually icky ones, over time.

Skill checks are built such that you MUST throw one or more cards (from your regular hand, not your Sideboard of Doom :) ) at some kind of challenge each turn. You can throw as many cards as you like at something, but the lower their value and the more mismatched suits, the more collateral damage is inflicted on your world and its stability in the process.

Obviously there's a ton more work do to, but I've always wanted to try a card-based system for an online narrative RPG, and this feels like a pretty good start for randomly generating Videodrome-type reality breakdowns...

Next stop is to put together a bibliography, I guess, and figure out exactly what kind of horror I'm going for, then start breaking it down into tropes and pasting them onto card mechanics...

@Leucrotta I just did basically the same thing with the "Twenty-Two" episode of the classic Twilight Zone.

To be fair, the heroine had a REALLY nice plush leopard. 😻​

I've also been very faintly tempted to run an RPG online, since the first chapter of Parallax is nearly finished and I'd like a break before I start chapter two. And because I miss the hell of out RPGs.

Hmmm. Memo to self, see if there are any good psychedelic horror storygame RPGs and anyone in my circle foolish enough to let me run one. >:D

You know what I'm REALLY in the mood for right now? Basically a reskin of Darkest Dungeon, set in the 1960s to 1980s, in the same genre as Beyond The Black Rainbow, They Live, and Scanners. A psychotronic conspiracy horror rogue-like, I guess?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_qBsHuJb40&feature=youtu.be&t=20

#moodsnapshot #horsefeathers #grumpyoldcat

@001zlnv Yup, I muted him after two or three attempted exchanges, too. I could smell the fedora on him. >_<

@Phorm "Djanny, I'm ruining my bottle..."

@Aradia *puts a little garland of flowers on your head a la https://tinyurl.com/y6xdjc5a *

FWIW, the example that inspired me was an otherwise really nice analysis of Alan Resnick's Live Forever As You Are Now, a fake self-help infomercial that satirizes tech-guru transhumanism.

They were spinning these HUGE theories out of the fact the video was full of short jokes, which they'd decided was a symbol of false humility on the part of the tech world and don't you see how their advertising does blah blah blah...

And I gently pointed out, um, Alan's 5'4" in RL and his troupemates make a point of teasing him about it in EVERY. SINGLE. THING. THEY. DO. They once did a sketch about him sleeping in someone's shoe.

And like I said, this kid had some really good ideas! I'm so glad they did this, and an error like that is well worth all the good insights! But I bring it up because it feels like this kind of high-school style "THE RED CURTAINS ARE A SYMBOL OF VIOLENCE, BECAUSE THE AUTHOR WANTS TO MAKE A STATEMENT!" criticism is... basically the only thing that we've got. And there are so many other ways to criticize fan media that better reflect the real creative process.

So, yeah. Good criticism is the exact opposite of a jigsaw puzzle. Good critics _know_ they're just taking rough, random pieces and super-gluing them together in interesting patterns. Some of those patterns will be drawn straight from the pieces' actual shapes. Some will be total guesswork. Some will require an X-Acto knife. And that's fine... but the more aware of this process you are, the better your criticism will be.

A narrative is the exact opposite of a jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces should NOT fit together perfectly-- because there are no pieces and, therefore, no edges to lock or not lock correctly.

I've been looking at fan theories all evening, and while I've also seen some really clever, insightful stuff, it still worries me how obsessed this kind of "folk criticism" is about making every single piece of content finds its place in a Grand Unifying Theory, some final and all-encompassing answer to What The Author Is Telling Us Here.

That's a very specific variety of literary criticism at work there, one that's taught in most high schools, and it's one that most of my college education in lit-crit was devoted to undoing. :)

It's possible I'm just playing the old priest here, advancing my own dogma at the cost of an equally valid one. But I'm a creator myself, and I'm married to a creator, plus yanno, I've read a hell of a lot about how media is made.

IMHO, the worst thing about fan theories is that they simultaneously revere and eliminate the author, turning them into a godlike entity who never does anything unless it's for a perfect, abstract thematic reason. And I KNOW most media doesn't work that way. I've _been_ the one scratching my head at the script, wondering exactly why the hell what some plot token was still doing there-- or even making the judicious decision to keep something that makes no plot sense because it's just so damn funny.