aoanla - Network

(via @kweerious )1. First #ttrpg ever played: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st Edition)2. First you ever ran? Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st...

(via @kweerious )

1. First #ttrpg ever played: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st Edition)
2. First you ever ran? Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st Edition)
3. Played the most? D&D 5e, sadly
4. Run the most? Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st Edition)
5. Favourite? The Burning Wheel
6. Most recently played? Traveller (Mongoose 2nd ed)
7. Most recently run? D&D 3e/homebrew mashup
8. Want to play? The Burning Wheel, Blades in the Dark, Pathfinder 2e, lots of things
9. Want to run? The Burning Wheel, Blades in the Dark

I was reminded just now that frequently Adam Curtis turns out to be annoyingly perceptive about things. (In this case, HyperNormalisation...

I was reminded just now that frequently Adam Curtis turns out to be annoyingly perceptive about things. (In this case, HyperNormalisation basically predicts where we've ended up, a decade later - and All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace was pretty strong too...)

Urgh, it's annoying that I just learned that #Fedora is apparently adding/thinking about adding "AI" to the core distro? I was...

Urgh, it's annoying that I just learned that #Fedora is apparently adding/thinking about adding "AI" to the core distro? I was just about to move my laptop from Windows 10 -> Fedora, and now I have to download a Linux Mint or Arch or something else distro instead. (Luckily, of course, I found out *before* I did the big install this weekend...)

The Witch From Mercury spoilers I guess, from 2023So, I finished watching all of 2022-3's Gundam of the moment, The Witch From Mercury...

The Witch From Mercury spoilers I guess, from 2023

So, I finished watching all of 2022-3's Gundam of the moment, The Witch From Mercury yesterday, and I am... conflicted about it.

A lot of this conflict comes from the failure of the writing to pay off themes that it seemed would be explored properly - the The Tempest references are mostly superficial (Suletta is a pretty good Miranda, but ironically most of the things named from The Tempest are poor matches) and there's hints of much better things they could have done with that theme (Elen Ceres' clones might have been worked into a Caliban themed strand, if we take Peil's all-female directorship team as a Sycorax stand-in), and really mostly mislead. The Utena parallels work better - there's the interesting decision to invert the personality types of our Bride (Miorine is decidedly driven and determined more like Utena than Anthy), and the "Prince" (Suletta is *very* like Anthy, passive and obedient to the antagonist of the piece) - but Utena's metaphysical concepts run in a different direction to what this series wants to explore, ultimately.
The school setting does provide for an interesting contrast to the "corporate machinations" - but it also means that we never really get detail on a lot of the context that we need to engage with the commentary the show is trying to make at that level.
And, in the end, I think this is responsible for the second-half of season 2 seeming to run on mini-deus-ex-machina; revelations with little proper set up (the code in the tomatoes for Miorine, and then Miorine suddenly having hacker skills never evidenced before, for example; or the eleventh hour "Prospera is dying" thing); and a somewhat confused moral center (the person with the purest motives for doing evil is arguably Shaddiq, and he's basically the only person who seems to be suffering any consequences in the epilogue).

So, I enjoyed the series as a whole, but it also left me with a feeling that it *really* needed at least another series to give it time to sort itself out.

#thewitchfrommercury

And that's my facebook account deleted. (hurrah)

And that's my facebook account deleted. (hurrah)

So, whilst I'm still processing the emotional journey of 1000xRESIST, I discovered today that you can actually watch The Witch From...

So, whilst I'm still processing the emotional journey of 1000xRESIST, I discovered today that you can actually watch The Witch From Mercury for free on YouTube (officially, even). This may or may not be related to the fact I'm on the Discord for the former...

So, I watched the prologue of TWFM for the first time.
...now I have *two* sets of dramatically induced emotional trauma to process.

(But, I did stay for the 1st episode proper and wow, yeah, I already see why people immediately spotted Utena references. Which is of course good, because Revolutionary Girl Utena is amazing.)

#thewitchfrommercury #utena #1000xRESIST

I'd add to the above that I am surprised that in all the reviews I have just read of 1000xRESIST, only one of them mentions Umurangi...

I'd add to the above that I am surprised that in all the reviews I have just read of 1000xRESIST, only one of them mentions Umurangi Generation as a comparison, given that they have several thematic connections... (the fact that one is essentially a visual novel and one is a mechanical homage to Jet Set Radio is really besides the point here).

#UmurangiGeneration #1000xresist

So, I just finished (all of) the endings of 1000xRESIST. It might not be a surprise, given all the plaudits it got, but this is a *really...

So, I just finished (all of) the endings of 1000xRESIST. It might not be a surprise, given all the plaudits it got, but this is a *really good* game - and it's also got a lot of... surprises in it. It's also one of the most *artistic* games I've played for a while, in the sense that there's a very strong sense that the designers really had definite senses of the visual (and ludic) effect on the player of staging and so on. I guess it's difficult to talk more about without spoilers, but I was surprised to realise 50% of the way through that this is partly a game about *communication* and *translation* (but not perhaps in the way this is usually thought about).

#1000xresist

The #EdinburghWinterSchool25 was really even better than I was hoping - it feels good just to be surrounded by people who also care about...

The #EdinburghWinterSchool25 was really even better than I was hoping - it feels good just to be surrounded by people who also care about accessible, open and inclusive teaching of coding to all kinds of communities. There's some really exciting things out there, including using #Inkle Ink to teach coding to English students, of course the excellent keynotes, and lots of other stuff I will unpack when I have processed it. Interesting how much #knitting came up, too...

Great to see the talk version of Felienne Hermans' "A case for Feminism in Programming Language Design" @...

Great to see the talk version of Felienne Hermans' "A case for Feminism in Programming Language Design" @ #EdinburghWinterSchool25

Really good talk from Maeve Murphy Quinlan @ #EdinburghWinterSchool25 "Coding by whom? Coding for whom? Coding with whose interests in...

Really good talk from Maeve Murphy Quinlan @ #EdinburghWinterSchool25 "Coding by whom? Coding for whom? Coding with whose interests in mind?" emphasizing a lot of points about the need to actively consider how any teaching process affects all of the cohort not just the assumed default. (With particular application to equity)

Survived the Pair programming demo @ #EdinburghWinterSchool25 run by Pawel Orzechowski (actually, it's a good lesson that pair...

Survived the Pair programming demo @ #EdinburghWinterSchool25 run by Pawel Orzechowski (actually, it's a good lesson that pair programming techniques do encourage a lot of the things we want students to pick up as new programmers - or collaborators on any complex task)

So, almost 9 hours into #AnimalWell and, I am still not sure it's actually a great game. It gets better once you unlock options...

So, almost 9 hours into #AnimalWell and, I am still not sure it's actually a great game. It gets better once you unlock options (it's a Metroidvania after all), but there's some extremely tricky platforming needed to finish the "basic" challenge in the game, and save points are definitely too far apart. (I've gotten exactly 1 of the "final items" so far, and spent an hour trying to get one of the others and failing and respawning stupidly far back.) Plus, very distressing noises in one section!

I'm going to try to post some cool things from my 2024 . Let's start in kinda reverse order with something from betwixtmas -...

I'm going to try to post some cool things from my 2024 .
Let's start in kinda reverse order with something from betwixtmas - visiting the Kimono exhibition @ Dundee V&A

It's also the first time I have been in the V&A and it's an interesting building- plus they had the Dundee Tapestry on display as well

#vadundee #kimono
#dundeetapestry

Positive things from 2024: my first #WorldCon (in Glasgow) - and meeting lots more cool people there, teaching more, finally visiting a...

Positive things from 2024: my first #WorldCon (in Glasgow) - and meeting lots more cool people there, teaching more, finally visiting a friend in Warsaw who's wanted to show their home city to me for years, getting more involved with positive collaborations for decolonialisation and progressive things.

Hopes for 2025: recognition for some of those things, and perhaps less travel [I can only hope]. Maybe meeting more of the cool people I only know on the internet?

2024, let me explain ... no, there is too much: let me sum up. This was a complicated year for me - incredibly busy, and very stressful in...

2024, let me explain ... no, there is too much: let me sum up.

This was a complicated year for me - incredibly busy, and very stressful in work-I-get-paid-for terms (partly due to circumstances outside my control and partly due to taking on extra things - and far too much travel!) and work-I-don't-get-paid for terms (Roller Derby World Cups are complicated beasts). I'm not sure I'm entirely looking forward to 2025, but I guess I survived 2024?

And I did get to teach 2 workshops on #Julia !

So, despite my misgivings, I decided to buy #AnimalWell because people kept talking about how great it is (and that the platforming...

So, despite my misgivings, I decided to buy #AnimalWell because people kept talking about how great it is (and that the platforming isn't hard).

Reader, the platforming (well, traversal in general) is hard, in a slightly slippery way that doesn't feel good for what it wants you to do - and it doesn't have enough save points.

(It *is* beautiful, but I am very close to giving up on the beauty because of the gamefeel after an hour, it's that offputting.)

I just completed all 25 days of Advent of Code 2024! #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/(Yes, I was trying to be good to myself today...

I just completed all 25 days of Advent of Code 2024! #AdventOfCode https://adventofcode.com/

(Yes, I was trying to be good to myself today and not look at 19, but I tried the simplest possible approach to it I could think of, thinking it wouldn't work, and it did!)

Doctor Who Christmas 2024Someone ( @vincent ) said that they felt like Doctor Who was colonising the past here, and I think that's...

Doctor Who Christmas 2024

Someone ( @vincent ) said that they felt like Doctor Who was colonising the past here, and I think that's somewhere part of my feeling of discomfort too.

Doctor Who Christmas 2024I have to admit I'm not a fan of the "star of joy"/"Christ's birth" thing at the end -...

Doctor Who Christmas 2024

I have to admit I'm not a fan of the "star of joy"/"Christ's birth" thing at the end - and not just because it gets the date wrong (we know that if Jesus existed he was born when Herod was alive, and Herod died in 4BC...), but also because it's doing a lot of lifting on the whole "Magi seeing a star" thing, and is weirdly schmaltzy in an uncomfortably Christian way.

#doctorwho