Bay 12 Games Forum

... all I can really offer up as advice is to give a go at the fuckit genre. Screw gender, let's do robots. Or maybe ants. Asteroids! Tree-humping asteroids! Flesh-shaping sentient cacti. Whatever!

If the worry is about stuffing words in things mouths, write something without dialogue. If it's abusing character or whatever, kick that shit into overdrive and deconstruct or crackify everything. Do it intentionally so you won't do it accidentally -- with fanfiction, at least, the characters are not to be put on some pedestal, but torn down, ripped apart, and then have their entrails danced upon. Let fanon and canon be spat upon, and laugh in the face of those who complain!

If it's revealing things about how you view other humans, ditch the humans!

The only limitation or rule to writing is grammar, and that can be bent. So long as it's consistent and readable. Everything else is an artificial constraint to be used, abused, or discarded at will or whim.

---

... also, hundreds of pages of original fiction? Any significant amount of that in a single story and publicly available?

Anyway, giveaway thread links to LPs? Which thread? There's no links in the latest one.

Here's one. The totalbiscuit thing mentioned in the latest giveaway thread. A short intro-type thing, I think -- haven't actually watched it. There's some other in-game stuff on youtube.

S'kind of amusing how little confidence these so-called supporters have in their candidate, if they feel they have to cheat the system to try to get the win. Honestly, it's quite insulting to the person you're nominally supporting.

Assuming it's not a double-blind or something.

But anyway, yeah. Here's hoping they get all this corruption out of their systems before an actual election goes down. I'm just kinda' glad the primaries don't actually directly put anyone in a position of power at this point. Of course, the fact that there's so much shit stirring going down for something that doesn't really matter, well...

Not signing up! I actually won one of the copies last time we did a starfarer giveaway, so yeah.

Just chiming in to say awesome for running another one, and good luck to all. The new mode is absolutely delicious.

Okay, yeah, wow, what the hell. Sustainable development is somehow a bad thing? A plan of action that's not going to fail massively within a few generations is... somehow rights restricting? How in hell does that work?

Or... man, am I reading this right and the primary reason they're opposing a focus on sustainability is because some other country/countries is also focusing on sustainability? The major reason for the opposition is because someone else is doing it? Nevermind it might just be a good damn idea! People are calling these folks on the absolutely massive stupidity of that, right? Please tell me someone's actually calling them on this.

Does sustainable mean something different to these people?

"The philosophy and definition of sustainability, or sustainable development, is incompatible with and destructive to the principles and nature of our Constitutional Republic," Coleman wrote.

So... so, if I'm reading this right, the people this Coleman represents has now straight up said they want our country to fail in the future?

I mean, shit, maybe sustainability is destructive and incompatible to the principles and nature of our republic, but the alternative is incompatible and destructive to the existence of our republic. I think the latter's worse!

... I did get a question as to how, exactly, a country humps once, I think. Either how or what. Forget how I answered.

Also a question as to the sig's relevance toward an MMORPG. The answer to m'sig re: Mabinogi is "Sheep."

Probably not the best of advice or statement, but you seem to be doing the best you can in a hostile situation; dishonesty in regards to most people is just kind of par for course. It fucks you up a fair bit, but between some mental instability and the alternative... the hell choice is there? Deception or suffering, or rather lesser or greater suffering. Mental calculus done, at that point -- take the path of least self-destruction. In your case, that's damn sure not being open about things, not where you're at and in the business you're in.

And there's nothing in all that, that places any blame on you. The world and US culture in particular are fucked right up in a lot ways. You're doing your damnedest in a shit situation.

But yeah, paranoia results. It comes from living in a hostile environment -- and the environment you're in is genuinely hostile. Utterly feel for you, because while I'm not trans, I'm living in an area that's openly hostile to people that aren't bigots. Genuine honesty on a lot of things, in my life, would have probably gotten me physically beaten. It's crap, but if finding somewhere less hostile isn't an option, what fuck do, yanno'?

Anyway, advice to the better I can give is about the same advice the shrink gave me. Over time, and with great care, you'll build up a stable, so to speak, of people you can trust. That's going to be your lifeline. Anyone that's not in the barn gets the open fuck-you in terms of deception. Guess what I'm saying there is that yeah, you probably will have to talk to people about the transitioning honestly, face to face, but "people" doesn't equate to "those fuckers that would treat you like shit for it." Finding people won't be easy, though, and it might take years and years and years. Don't give up, don't bow down, etc, etc, etc.

I really do not see the problem with automation. If society (as a whole) can create the same goods/value with less overall human effort, that is, to me, not a bad thing at all. If anything, the problem is how that value is distributed.

Well, yeah, that's a good thing unless you only assign value to human effort -- that is, you can only function with a job. Less human effort necessary == less jobs. There's a set amount of human effort to go around, so you're going to have excess as you reduce the requirements of it. Which... leaves some people on the curb, in a system that only assigns value to human (individual, especially) effort.

You're right, but I just don't see that system sustaining itself, because who is going to be able to buy the damn chairs if everything is mechanized and there are no jobs/wages? Shit, it can't all be service industry can it? Moreover, I'm pretty sure the service industries of our economy took a fairly large hit in this most recent recession.

Well, you're right. It can't sustain itself. That's pretty blatantly obvious if you're taking an even remotely long-term viewpoint, but pure capitalism is almost strictly about short-term profit. Some people take the long term view and accept lesser short-term profit for more sustained long-term profit, but they're almost inevitably out-performed and annexed/squashed by those doing cut-throat (as in, cutting their own throat, really) short-term maneuvering.

As for the all-service, well.. eventually, yes. It will reach the point where there is literally no aspect of manufacturing that can't be done more cheaply via automation*. At that point, service will be all that's left unless folks are being intentionally inefficient -- and there's little profit incentive to do that.

*We're definitely not there yet, and there's a powerful social aspect involved (refusing to work in shit conditions), but it's rather inevitable assuming we don't have any massive knowledge/tech base loss in the future.

I just honestly don't get how this system isn't going to implode via automation as it currently stands. Ok, you're more productive, but who's going to be able to buy those chairs/why make them in the first place? Then there's that ripple/feedback effect we were talking about with all the other businesses not having customers to pay them. How are we going to afford "services," without a laboring group of people to support those services?

Well, the unskilled/lower end folks won't. They're largely screwed. You'll have a body of skilled labor, which will support an (overall smaller) amount of commodity consumption, and unskilled labor will exist only to the extent that it supports the maintenance and pleasure of the skilled labor. I mean, the states is kinda' the example of what's going down. If you don't have education and some sort of skill training, you're right fooked.

Paying for services? That's not a lot of what I'm seeing today at least. Fewer and fewer people seem to be able to afford that/consider it a luxury to have somebody else do something for you.

I guess I just don't see how you can sustain a paying customer base, vital to any capitalistic industry, like this. it just seems like weakening the foundation of a house or the fertility of farmland. What's supporting this crap?

Eh, bubbles, from what I see. Short-term gains allow for short-term profit and eventually undercut the whole system -- gaze in awe and wonder at the almost across the board increase in wealth disparity. It's kind of the inevitable results of strict short-term profit hunting. The ideal is that the ups and downs sustain itself in a general sense (the average is alright, you get highs and lows as you go along); boom bust and all that crap.

Of course, you hit the ahahaha-dumbass-m'fookers wall of finite resources eventually, but eh. No one seems to really care, or rather the ones that care can't really compete to the point they have influence -- see the above about short-term out-performance.

And I'm rambling kind of oddly right now, so take the statements with salt, or something.