SuperBiasedMan

During the week I just finished House of Cards season 4. Overall, I stick with my opinion that the finale of season 3 was a great ending to the show. 4 is still fun and exciting drama, but the character arcs really ended on a great note in 3. I didn't care about any loose ends because I could imagine where they went and what went down next. More specifically

Thanks for the feedback phill! Glad that the Changes really made it work better, and that you liked the ending. I wasn't sure how to stop it for a long time but that just came up as a fitting capper eventually. I agree about repeating things in a more direct way, it is a confidence issue of not being sure that a meaning has carried. It's hard to know how clear and obvious this stuff is to somebody else. For the new theme! I have done another word map, but more helpfully I listened to the episode it was from. The phrase cropped up when the thumbs were wondering whether or not a Kinect would read a cardboard cut out as a human. That seemed like a really good thought to me, the idea of high tech computers being fallible in ways that are incredibly foolish to humans. So my idea was born from that, a story about a bumbling robot detective that makes faulty assertions, with hilarious consequences. I want to make it more silly and farcical. I don't have a plotline or details laid out, but I like the idea and what I'm thinking of as the world this is happening in. For fleshing stuff out, I got a fun new toy. Basically these narrative dice things, you can see a pic in the spoilers at the end of the post (the forums don't like me using Internet Explorer). They're just normal six sided die, covered with pictures instead of numbers. The idea is to roll them and take the result as narrative inspiration for your story/characters/whatever. I'm hoping that this will help me do some different things, alongside the diversifiers. On that note, I am going to update the first post with a couple new diversifiers if anyone wants to check back (and you should!). How're you folks getting on? Anyone fleshing out ideas?

This resedit stuff sounds amazing. I'd love a game jam on a similar principle where you make games with very open data and players are encouraged to mess with them and customise their plays. (this probably already exists)

Finally posting another pic! I made a nice lentil coconut curry. The ingredients were pretty simple, sweet potato, carrots and onions for veg. Lentils, curry spices, stock and coconut milk for the sauce. All in one pot, obviously. But the sauce actually came together really well. It already smelled good in the pot but it had a great consistency when it was done. Usually the consistency is what I screw up so I was quite pleased with that.

I'm 1 minute in. Did Jake make a secret bet with himself to see how many times he could say 'doy' before someone called him out on it?

Have you heard you about our lord and skeever Skeevus Christ?

Ok I correct myself, you don't have the easy option to mod things.

The downside to consoles is you don't have the option to just mod out the skeevy stuff. :/

Same! I made an overboiled pasta dish and a very adequately boiled curry. I'll get pics of my curry when I eat leftovers this evening. Might make a stir fry as well before the week is out.

New month, new theme! The theme for July is A Person-Shaped Thing is a Person. This one seems a bit more vague, so I have no idea what to do with it yet but I do have fun ideas on how to come up with a story concept. I'm also gonna try approach it differently to last time, and I encourage others to do the same! PS I don't remember at all why this was a title.

Agh I'm so sorry D: I did that update in a bit of a rush. I've fixed the first post now.

Also slight additional note that I don't think was said last week. There's also a line about the Shuffle Gate scandal ruining the career of the person who was cheating and instigated "shufflegate". :/ It's not inconceivable that this was an honest mistake where unrelated things painted an unintended picture, but people are still understandable sceptical.

Thanks for gathering those links, I nicked them to put back in the first post. I also added ratamero's entry in there. Also no! Your title doesn't need to follow the theme. Naturally a lot of people will use it as it gives immediate context for where the idea started (or if someone didn't have a specific title in mind they would just use it), but deviation is encouraged. (and Stapler is a good title ) Yours was a lot of fun to read phill. I liked reading the goofier tone. And it seems so obvious now to lean into the Boss part and make it a series of office emails.

Submit discreetly my lords, the end of month one is upon us. The deadline's not quite hit, but you don't have much time left. Everyone can then start reading up on entries, talking about them here and gearing up for our new theme on Monday. Get hyped cause I'm hoping for a good follow up. Looking forward to reading/rereading them all tonight.

My uninformed opinion as a show watcher only, is that becoming unanchored by the books has been a good thing. The show seemed to have a tenuous relationship with the books at times already, analogous to a dramatic historical fiction not really being factually correct to events. They liked taking inspirations and ideas but weren't committed to keeping it really the same. Now that it's more different, in some ways I'm less interested in what it's doing because it's less of the quirks that the books had. But at the same time, it's doing a better job of what it seemingly wanted to be the whole time anyway.

I think the difficulty with Firewatch is that depending on how you play or read it, Henry doesn't really change. The ending conversation can definitely lead to ambiguous results, and I've heard someone had an ending without ever mentioning Henry's wife to Delilah. My ending was not that Henry had learned something per se, but it did have a nice change where Henry was being made to confront what he had tried to escape. He had made no resolution or revelation, but what had changed was that he was now going to have to deal with his responsibilities, unlike at the start of the game.

One more quick Friends at the Table plug to say that they released a 20 minute episode of just Austin explaining the podcast, what past seasons were and future ones will be. It's a good way to get acquainted with what it's about, and see if you might be interested. Also it's Austin so just go listen to him for 20 minutes anyway. There is also a text guide, if you just want a quick read, that attempts a similar thing: http://careydraws.tumblr.com/post/144810140520/the-space-tragedy-season-of-streamfriendss (it's a bit older tho)

I also have a submission now! Space Boss: The Lord of Space I am very doubtful of what I turned out. :/ I should probably try something much simpler next time round. I had a lot of ideas but I didn't just pick one to run with. And despite all the ideas I had no clue how to end it so the last section is pretty flat. Oh well. I'm going to tackle next week's theme differently and hope I can get into more of a groove.

Intentional or not, I think an apology would be a good idea rather than just saying "Naw we didn't mean that" and moving on. (As far as I can tell there was no apology, but if I've missed something please correct me)

It's like a child who wants to run away from home and be independent without their parents telling them what to do. But after running away the child realises that their parents gave them an allowance and other conveniences. (also the child is probably a racist)

Yeah a couple people have thought about that (me included) and it's a fun idea! If I had a better mic I'd definitely be interested in doing my own for funsies.

*bows* M'lord.

As promised I finally have a new draft after some feedback. To be clear this isn't a full piece like the last one it's still without an ending (though I think I know what I'm writing towards now). I mostly wanted to change the tone cause I think I muddled different ideas last time and didn't consistently stick with anything. I'm hoping there's a more consistent tone here, even though I'm still trying to clash two different things, but I'll stop yammering now and post it. Also I've taken on board twig's suggestion, so submit by the 1st of the month. This leaves a few days gap of break before the new theme is revealed on the fourth. Hope that doesn't pressure anybody too much, looking forward to reading them all soon.

Yes, I was planning to message you tonight about that. Have a big of at think to prepare for your post. Let me know if you have any questions but otherwise you can post when you're ready on Friday.