The Elf Half

Last night, bluesky exploded with the discovery that itch.io has delisted/shadowbanned pretty much all its "adult" games - they don't show up in a search anymore, even if you have the 'show me adult content' turned on, even if you are the game's creator.

They are still listed on the creator's pages; they are still in the bundles they've been in, and the "search title/author/tag" on the bundle pages still works.

Some games have been removed entirely - with a claim that they violate the TOS and therefore the creators can't receive payment, so itch will be just keeping their money thankyouverymuch.

After a mad scramble to figure out "what's going on and why," Itch mentioned payment processor issues on its Discord (which is going wild with drama; it does NOT have enough moderators for this), and eventually released a statement:

We have “deindexed” all adult NSFW content from our browse and search pages. We understand this action is sudden and disruptive, and we are truly sorry for the frustration and confusion caused by this change.

Recently, we came under scrutiny from our payment processors regarding the nature of some content hosted on itch.io. Due to a game titled No Mercy, which was temporarily available on itch.io before being banned back in April, the organization Collective Shout launched a campaign against Steam and itch.io, directing concerns to our payment processors about the nature of certain content found on both platforms.

Itch instantly caved to their "Warriors for Innocence."

( Specific game info )

I'd forgotten how much I love https://theyfightcrime.org.

He's a lonely skateboarding shaman with a winning smile and a way with the ladies. She's a bloodthirsty wisecracking wrestler who hides her beauty behind a pair of thick-framed spectacles. They fight crime!

He's an unconventional soccer-playing grifter in a wheelchair. She's an orphaned foul-mouthed socialite from out of town. They fight crime!

He's an oversexed ninja werewolf fleeing from a secret government programme. She's an enchanted snooty advertising executive with a knack for trouble. They fight crime!

( something-something fic prompts )

I have been reading the TTRPG space on bluesky.

1) Everything is commercial. Soooo much "buy my thing." You might think there'd be a mix of "buy my thing" and "hey come watch/listen to our playthroughs" but no. It's all "buy my thing."

2) It's really, really hard to avoid D&D and Pathfinder.

3) I had managed to forget how wank in TTRPG spaces goes down. It's never just "D&D has taken over the hobby and that sucks." It has to include "people who play D&D are stupid/cowards/wimps/conformist shills." Possibly with a side of, "if people were paying attention to what's good, they would buy my thing..."

(I do not like D&D. I do not play D&D. I have thought many negative things about D&D, and about D&D evangelists. I have never thought the only reason people play D&D was because they were too stupid to look at other game systems. I am damn well aware there is a ton of inertia involved, plus the hassle of convincing your entire gaming group to try something different.)

4) We don't have any shared vocabulary and this is a problem. Or rather: We have some words - crunchy, rules-lite, narrative game, OSR, "role-play vs roll-play," meta-gaming, RAW, probably a few more - but we have zero agreement on what they actually mean, on which games or play styles fall under which term.

5) Unlike the fanfic communities, there has been no serious meta looking into what's changed when a former on-paper hobby went digital. There are blog posts and such, but they're scattered as hell. And 2/3 of the discussion is weird hand-wringing about what people will or won't buy, not about how the hobby itself changes when the rules are on a screen rather than paper.

+1) If there are discussion groups about TTRPGs-as-a-fandom, I can't find them. Dammit.

+2) Don't get me started on the gleeblor.

Yesterday's tea club was virtual, because the weather is icky and I didn't want to be out after dark in the rain. So we had tea - KtE had some kind of chai, and later a lapsang souchong; I had Bone Daddy which is one of the "always keep this in the house" blends. (We may not always succeed at that, but it's very much "buy it again when we run out or notice we're getting low.")

And we played multiplayer games online. Spent some time dealing with tech issues - my audio is weird; Steam decided to switch to Big Picture mode (I probably tapped the wrong thing but wow that was painful); we had to pick a Discord spot that KtY could join later, and so on.

We tried for Don't Starve Together first, because we were hoping KtY would wake up to join us. She didn't, and I have established that I do not like survival games with no point other than survival. We had it on easy mode; I played until I died twice - once to a tentacle thing lashing out of dark/corrupted land, and then... to the same tentacle, when going back to pick up my stuff.

I could've gone back a second time and been more careful: Grab 1-2 items, back off, dodge in and grab an item or two, etc. But by that time, I was frustrated by both the survival activities and the lack of goals. If I'm going to wander around in the Horror Woods full of Creepy Things and collect sticks and berries and logs and flowers - at some point, I want to build a house and set up a safe zone. I gather that's not what the game is about, so we quit.

Then we played Bokura, which I liked a great deal more. I like puzzle games. I don't like pixel art (like, I normally refuse to even consider playing pixel-art games) but this one turned out okay. We didn't finish the game but we did play for five solid hours, and we loved trying to coordinate our activities over Discord when we got separated. I'd love to find more games like it; recs welcome.

I also picked up a copy of Astroneer, which is on sale for another few days. I like shape-the-world games and if I could tolerate Minecraft's art style, I'd play it for days.

I arrived after the first pot had been made but was still warm; we had Dosti Tea because Eldri is visiting for now. (I am about halfway through RRR; we chatted a little about that and some about other Bollywood & Telegu movies.)

Had a second pot of Dosti and then Bone Daddy. Both very nice.

The day was scattered. Our place had been without hot water or gas for several days - the day after the election, our building caught fire (or rather, a nearby fire spread to us), and while it was put out fairly quickly, they shut off the power afterward (2 hrs) and then shut off the gas to check the lines for leaks.

...They finally did the inspection to get it back on Saturday at about 9pm. We have gas to the stove, and hot water now. We don't have a heater, because they turned on the heater to check it and said OH FUCK NO that is not the shape those flames should be. We are capping that off and putting it on the repair list.

(I am unsurprised; I have long suspected problems with the heater. But it's very frustrating because it's only recently turned cold at night.)

Anyway. Tea club meeting was a bit morose and tense, as would be expected. We don't want to talk politics but it's hard to think of anything else.

Saturday's teas were Akito Sohma, which we've had before and liked, and Shigure, which we hadn't tried before but turned out well.

We also noted that Hatori's tea smells medicinal, and now checking the ingredients, I can see why. We are likely to save that one for when someone feels sick.

I am currently sick but not that kind of stuffy nose, sore throat, fever illness that wants a ginger-lemon-mint concoction. (I have called a doctor. Conclusion: It's a virus-something that's going around. Treat the symptoms. Get rest & drink liquids; take OTC meds that seem appropriate.)

I haven't decided if I feel guilty spending substantial time every Saturday traveling to & from KtE's place and just chatting while we have tea and snacks (there are many, many things I am Not Getting Done for this), or if this is Valuable Rest Time so I don't hit burnout.

...I may have already hit burnout. Someone posted a thing on Tumblr about it and I wound up thinking, oh. Those are. Those are my symptoms that I've been wanting to figure out what to do about.

So I looked around online, and discovered the following things:
1) Burnout, like lack of sleep, does not have any workaround solutions, no shortcuts. The solution is DO LESS STUFF. Relax the schedule. Possibly, do NO stuff for a while. (...Like anyone has time for that.)
2) Also like lack of sleep, recovery is long and slow and may not ever reach pre-burnout levels of productivity.
3) Aaaaaallllll the job-related news, psych, and listicle sites believe "burnout" is related to having a paying job; whatever level of "I have been overwhelmed for so long that I am now numb and just going through the motions" that SAHMs get, gets no mention in those articles despite sharing a fuckton of symptoms with people who work 60-hour weeks and are expected to be on call at night for multiple years.
4) "Mom Burnout" does have its own collection of articles, including some handwavy notes that this can be a medical problem. These do not connect to the business side of things. You are apparently allowed to have one or the other form of burnout; having both a job and home responsibilities is not actually possible, or it doesn't lead to stress, or something like that.

(It is really, really weird how solid the schism is.)

5) The "tips and fixes" articles for mom burnout almost never include "demand that your partner do half of the laundry." They're all about taking breaks, scheduling downtime, keeping ties with supportive friends, and getting a hobby. Sometimes they mention "discuss the issue with your partner" just like the job ones say "discuss the issue with your manager."

Chronic burnout is recognized as a problem; solutions offered are individualistic ("have you tried mindfulness exercises? we have an app!") and based on "coping" rather than "here is how to rearrange your whole life's priorities so you're not caught in something that will push you to burnout" much less "here is what needs to change in society-at-large so that burnout become a rare thing among hyper-focused people, rather than a common result of having such diverse and draining hobbies as 'a job' and 'a family.'"

Anyway. While I'm trying to sort out what level of burnout I have had, and potentially still have, I think I'm going to continue to attend tea parties.

This meeting was virtual. I was sick - not up to traveling, really not interested in inflicting illness on other people. (I've been sick for most of the last week and a half, which is why this is late being posted.)

We had our first voice chat over Discord; I had more Warm Hugs tea; I don't remember which tea KtE had. But we also tried something new: Streaming a show together.

We watched Markiplier's The Edge of Sleep, his new scifi-horror thing that's on Amazon Prime. I enjoyed it very much, other than the moments I had to pause it to yell at KtE about how the characters were being stupid. (I mean. Horror movie in the woods: Everyone gotta split up and explore, right? Horror movie in modern-day city: Everyone apparently forgets how the internet works.)

It begins with a couple of late-night security guards getting off their shift at 2am or so, and heading out to a party. "Party?" I said. "WTF kind of party do you show up at 2am? Wait, no, off shift at 2am, it's gonna be 3:30 before they get there -- you don't have parties running hot at 3:30 am..."

They arrive at the party, and I was very, very gratified to see it looked exactly like 3am of a raging party: There's one guy on the couch listlessly poking a tv remote, and two guys swapping a bottle back & forth and sometimes doing lines off a table. There are empty bottles and food wrappers strewn around the place. Also, the girl Our Hero was hoping to see has already gone home.

And then TV Remote Guy falls asleep, falls off the couch... and they discover he's died. Our Hero rushes upstairs to talk to the owners of the house but... they are also dead in their sleep. This is when The Plot kicks in: Everyone who went to sleep last night is dead now.

Two thumbs up; much recommend; first season very good. Ends on not so much a cliffhanger as "okay, that was Part 1 and you have figured out some of what's going on; here is the start of Part 2 where shit gets real."

Apparently it's based on a podcast. I don't do podcasts, and I don't want spoilers. I'll wait for season 2. Also, if you can - go check it out, because it hit the top 10 on Amazon Prime TV before they officially started advertising it, and I would love to see Markiplier knock the hell out of the Hollywood-production-values tv shows.

Tea club was just me and elder daughter. Warm Hugs tea (which is amazing and is one of our always-keep-around teas), and later, Kagura Sohma, which was also pleasant. I was worried about the peppercorns (don't like pepper) but it wasn't an issue.

Since it was just the two of us, we held it inside, with laptops, theoretically so we could go over election stuff. We did not go over election stuff but I did give her a checklist sheet of the candidates & ballot measures. (Federal & state candidates are easy. District & city candidates require research. Also I have to decide if I want to recall our mayor.) (...Probably. Mayor is too pro-cop and has supported anti-tenant measures.)

Instead of politics, we did local gossip + Amazon shopping, since she moved out without a lot of basics. Got her a winter blanket, clothes, new shoes. Got us all set up on Steam's new family sharing system; it's changed. (No longer need to log into other people's computers to activate it. It has a limit of 6 people; not sure if it had that before, but since we have 3, we don't care.)

Exchanged video game recs. She's still my go-to "I saw this game and it looks interesting; do you think I might like it? person.

I do not like
* Pixel art, to the extent that I won't play Minecraft, which we are both certain I would love if I could stand to look at it. This also blocks 90% of games made with RPGMaker. (Srsly, if anyone knows a Minecraft mod that softens the corners and makes things NOT ALL SQUARE, let me know.)
* Anything that involves timed jumping (but will accept some, if I like the rest of the game)
* Anything that involves shooting (Not because I object to shooting in games, but because I suck at it, in a way that makes games not-fun)
* Games where you discover the rules as you go along and get penalized for not having known them in advance
* The art styles of Adventure Time or Rick & Morty
* Dark shadowy games where you can't see most of what's going on
* Sepia-wash games

So:
* No Minecraft
* No action platformers, no matter how pretty
* No shoot-em-ups, again, no matter how pretty, easy, or otherwise in line with my interests
* No MMOs, which seem to all be of the "tutorials are for losers" approach now
* No Disco Elysium, which again, we're pretty sure I'd enjoy if I could tolerate the art

This, of course, cuts out a whole lot of games.

Woe is me, I have only a scant third or less of my 10k+ indie games from game bundles to rely on. Plus my several hundred games on Steam. Oh noes.

Like Ross said - there comes a point where you have enough games to say, "I don't like that guy's mustache, so I'm not playing this anymore."

Less tea this time. Less meeting, too. I had Friday off work so I decided, "I will get caught up on my vaccinations! And hey, my doctor says there's a couple of others that have come into play since I was young and I should get those, too!"

...Five. I got five vaccines in one day, and the doctor who gave me the last three (because Covid+flu are done by waiting in line with everyone else getting them) warned me that shingles + Covid vaccines at the same time meant I'd feel like death warmed over for several days.

So I sent a note to KtE and said "Um I might not be up to coming over tomorrow." And the answer was, that's fine; she's coming over here tomorrow to make a flat of teriyaki chicken for the house so we'll have leftovers for a few days.

So she was here; I was fevered and achy but not at death-warmed-over levels (yay), and I said we should have tea. I washed a nice teapot, and she looked over what we had available and opted for Adagio's Make-a-Wish birthday tea.

I've never bought this tea. It gets included free in orders made in the month before your birthday (and you also get a discount). I dunno if it's "in the past they included the little 5-cups tin and now they include less," because my recent order only got a single packet, or if it's "my last birthday order was larger so they included the little tin." But anyway. I had a tin that claims it's good for 5 cups but is more like 8-10, and anyway we were only making 3 cups.

It's a lovely tea, sweet enough to not need sugar if, unlike me, you ever drink tea without sugar.

Things I have figured out:
* Whatever's in the tea called "Cream," I like it; I should find more teas with that.
* Also fond of the teas with chocolate bits in them
* Vanilla's okay; caramel's okay. Chai is good.
* White tea is good. I need to find a blend that includes white tea and cream.
* Rooibos is iffy. Can drink it; don't love it.

This week had the 2023 Year of the Rabbit tea again (because it's really tasty; I'm gonna have to look into adagio's white teas) and Akito Sohma, which I quite liked but not as much as the Rabbit tea.

...Which there isn't more of; it's discontinued; I need to figure out what else has white tea.

White Phoenix looks promising. So does Elevenses.

Husband came to the tea party, this time without mishap. KtY stayed overnight and husband objected to that. (It was a late decision; he didn't like that.) Eldri was in town and brought maple cookies; yay. Might be in town next week. Has RRR tea and wants to share that. Talked about the RRR Discord. Sounds like a fun movie; I should track that down. Should find someone to watch Desi movies with, because KtE does not like romance and Bollywood & related are, as far as I've found, all heavy on romance. (There are action movies. They still have much more romance than she likes.)

We probably need to sort out logistics for the tea parties. Eldri had a bunch of questions like "what time should I get there" and "what should I bring" and I was like... "uh... I kinda leave the house around noon? sort of? Probably? nd um. Snacks are good, I guess?"

It's settling in to be a lunch-ish time event. We should probably start planning for lunch-ish type foods, rather than just crackers & cheese & fruit.