MrHoatzin

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Posts posted by MrHoatzin

  1. Posted

    I've been working on this story for a while now. I am not anywhere near done with Hobo Lobo. Ok, that is not true, the light at the end of the tunel is so visible. I just have to free myself from daydreaming about the other project, work, real life, fun, self-loathing, twitter, etc to actually wrap it up.

    The new story is shaping up to be in a format of a puzzle-less adventure game, where you the reader are the compass of the protagonist, but there are no real puzzles to solve or conversation options to navigate. You're just exploring this world and there happens to be a character that you're sortof following through his story. And he talks to people and you get to decide which lines of dialogue to pursue or in what order. Gates are formed by story beats that you need to read before narrative will continue out of an area, or explicit moments of navigating away from an area, like leaving down the road starts the much-talked-about journey with no turning back, etc.

    I came up with this story while thinking of something to debut this new web-based comic cms that I have been thinking of and building on and off (mostly off) for at least three four years (ugh, whois storyboardo.com says domain was registered 08-nov-2011).

    The cms, Storyboardo, what little of it I have built is kinda badass! The proof of concept is sexy and there is nothing like it out there still. I imagine it as a decent basic solution for anyone to host their comics in a classy setup but it will have some other tricks up its sleeve. Namely layers—with backgrounds, sprites, styled text objects and any kind of arbitrary content definable into a new layer type—with its own properties tied to rules for display, methods of interaction, behavior—in the admin side and the frontend. On the frontend, as a reader, when you click the next button, sometimes it will move you to the next page, sometimes it will change the sprites around, sometimes it will just advance the speech bubbles. Storyboardo effectively adds pacing and special effects and pans and zooms and freer visual editing abilities into the repertoire of your webcomic artist-writer.

    SO!

    Do I build it?

    I have a proof of concept and a small mountain of PHP backend groundwork, a working purpose-agnostic data server that is the backbone of everything else I'll graft onto it, smatterings of AJAX and a fun extensible oo structure. The interface is fun and unobtrusive. I'll have fun with the v0 default design for it. :tup:

    But it is going to be such a huge time sink to get it off the ground. My update schedule history is fucked as it is. Herzog the Vile is technically still only taking a break. :tdown:

    But but Storyboardo's a neat idea! I can totally make it and make the world a better place. Lots of good karma and hopefully some secondary good vibes from other people's adventure game-comics! :tup: :tup:

    But but but, I really want to tell my story and not get bogged down in the production and maintenance of an open source project. :tdown:

    Hobo Lobo for all its promise of novelty is clunky as hell. Due to the games I have played with z-indices, I can't plug in accelerated CSS transforms of today's whizbang web upon its main parallax movements without breaking everything. I dread making some kind of unforeseen deal with the HTML of today in making Storyboardo that will bite me in the ass in the medium-long run. :tdown:

    Even now, four years later, I can't make a good mobile version of Hobo Lobo. Only way I see to get it on tablets and phones and looking good is a rebuilt nativeish (i.e. not html) code special edition. :tup: / :tmeh:

    But Storyboardo is not about cutting edge effect-heavy motion stuff with a million PNGs requiring infinity production to make happen. It is a bit more resilient a structure. :tup:

    And having something technical to bite into will keep me sane in those times when I need a break from writing, drawing, etc. :tup:

    But I get to deal with technical things if I decide to go the non-Storyboardo route, so I get my fix of wearing many hats anyway. And I yearn for the possibilities of effects and polish that come from not building for the clunky broken bullshit that is the web and its production pipeline. :tup: :tup:

    The audiences of today would not be baffled by my comic-like non-game if I release it as one as they might have been a few short years ago. :tup:

    And maybe I can sell it more easily as an executable than a website? I was thinking about giving a prologue for free and selling access to following episodes of the story through some kind of tbd store mechanism that would plug into Storyboardo... but on the other hand in-app purchases are a known quantity and I probably don't have to dick around with boilerplate code nearly as much. Having it on computers around the world makes it more real somehow than if it were sitting on a single server and merely visited.  :buyme::fart:

    It is really an opportunity cost thing I guess. I waste so much time locked in weird abstractions as it is, of thought, of engineering. Who cares for yet another sexy cms with ideas and whatnot? I just want to get my stories in front of people.

    But Storyboardo could be its own word-of-mouth marketing engine that delivers said stories in front of people... etc etc etc

     

    :campbell::frusty::broken::dopefish:

    What do you guys think?

  2. Posted

    I don't want to force anything on anyone, christ.

     

    I took exception to the point that because Apple Cider has never, ever explicitly listed herself as poly, the world ought to take that automatically and absolutely to mean she would never, ever be open to dating someone who is, or a couple, under any circumstances. That explicitly clarifying this point is somehow an afront in and of itself. I was talking about that parenthetical in her post, completely independently from the fact that the person asking in that specific scenario was an uncouth jerk.

     

    We're all assuming a lot of random different things about the vague hypothetical scenarios at hand apparently. My "clarifying the point" as above has been taken to mean out-of-the-blue interrogation by a belligerent stranger—which is insane!

  4. Posted

    I don't disagree with anything you've said, Deadpan. There is a lot of nuance in how relationships work. My bottom line is that things in relationships need to be talked through and not taken for granted.

  5. Posted

    I don't think it's dumb. "Interested in friends" is pretty explicitly "not interested in sex or romantic relationships" on OKCupid.

     

    Sorta but not really. Interested in friends does not appear in search results for other things, but is still stealth present, hanging out, congenial—shielding one somewhat from being propositioned by randos, while allowing one the leeway to make the first move. For example.

  6. Posted

    All I am saying is having INTERESTED IN FRIENDS checked on OKC without any kind of explicit explanation and total absence of anything related to poly anything (i.e. assuming monogamy to be a set-in-stone default unless otherwise stated, burden of responsibility being on the wide world to make correct assumptions) and then being outraged that people would dare ask is dumb—aside from how dumb it is to just filter for bi girls and spam them artlessly.

  7. Posted

    So you could say that polyamory is the same act but given consent, so that there is no breach of trust. That obviously means polyamory requires very explicit consent and boundaries drawn but does not necessarily need to apply to all parties. You can have one sided polyamory if it feels a comfortable situation.

     

    We (me+Sal Limones on these here forums before she deleted her account on account of much too much time spent arguing the feminism thread) have tried to have explicit boundaries about what is and isn't permitted (homo only, no falling in love, no pet names, etc), but we found out that we were constantly renegotiating and breaking them in arguably edge ways. Instead, we settled on a system of talking through what is going on in our extracurricular relationships, with the other having a power of veto over things.

  8. Posted

    All I ask from anyone, ever, is that they respect my boundaries. If you can't do that, there's no way I can trust you in a friendship, much less a sexual relationship.

    So wait, does this mean "absence of no means yes" because as far as I am concerned "friends only" is a no, but I am also incredibly squicked out by the idea of "well you didn't say you're against it specifically anywhere so..." vs. "Oh, you said specifically you ARE open to it!"

    C'mon.

    Absence of no doesn't mean yes, it means UNKNOWN. Your little strawman there makes it sound like I'm advocating rape. People have all kinds of nuanced personal reasons for filling out dating site bureaucracy in a specific way, and in my experience I can only make educated guesses as to why.

    Say we hit it off online, and we go on a platonic friend date and we seem to hit it off real well irl and I like you. A) At some point you mention your bad experience with pushy jerks who don't listen and just wanna fuck you. B) You keep giggling and smiling at my stupid jokes, your pupils dilate and you look away coyly whenever our eyes meet.

    If A, I will probably not be pushy or ask at all. If B, I will definitely describe what dating me would look like (if it hasn't been established, that I am poly, can't do an exclusive soul-melding gig, but that I'm not into random hookups etc), and ask how binding your FRIENDS ONLY blurb is. If A+B I will just wait and see if you're a flirty person in general or if there is something more to B instead of being a pushy jerk.

    Why perceive clarifying boundaries to begin with to be an affront to your sovereignty?

  9. Posted

    Ugh sorry about this, I hope it is as coherent as it feels in my head.
     

    On the poly thing, I'm willing to give Apple Cider and other women who've told me similar things the benefit of the doubt that the couples who contacted them were using poor judgment (in being able to appropriately screen women who would be good matches), or were not being respectful in some other way.

    I have no issue with polyamory, literally none. But my understanding of poly couplings was consent, respect, boundaries, etc. If I literally list myself as ONLY looking for FRIENDS, a couple (of any stripe, most of this was actually heterosexual "open" marriages or committed couples looking for threesomes, not even all poly) looking at me for sex is not negotiating with me on respectful premises. I grasp that being poly opens you up to a lot of intense scrutiny and trust me, I empathize as a queer woman. Being bisexual means being hypersexualized literally all the time if you are visible, among other things. However, every time I was approached by someone, it was always the man of whatever relationship it was, it was always "want to hang out with me and my wife/primary/etc" with the "and potentially more" hanging out there despite requesting no "more" at all.

    I don't care who you are or what you do in your life, but respect people. I can grok that it's hard to screen for potential other poly people since it doesn't seem like they have similar sites for meeting like OkCupid but I thought poly people tend to list that kind of thing in profiles.

     
    I get that people are creeps, that they proposition in crass, counterproductive ways, that women just get treated shittily all around, that bi people are subject of prejudice from all sides, vilified, erased, etc. I also think that absence of absolute negation to openness to poly things doesn't mean that you would not be open to it under right circumstances to right persons. It is a dating site after all.

    The thing is, I don't really care much for creating an insular community of poly people that can sit separate from the mainstream society—like the gay community, safely ghettoized and neutralized in its radical potential. I want to stumble upon someone who strikes my fancy and feel free to inquire about connecting with them, either on a purely sexual or a more emotional level or anywhere in between. Feelings are fun and complicated.
     

    When it comes to polyamory, I see no moral arguments one way or the other, and think everyone should be more accepting and chill the fuck out :(

     
    There is so much drama and freaking out about tone and manners and insult and trauma in the way relationships are managed or mismanaged, conceived or misconceived, and explained or not explained to young people. Everyone needs to chill out about perceived transgressions and impropriety and boundaries and just talk things through. Sex is a big deal and not a big deal.

    Human relations are infinitely negotiable and the wacky ossified institutions of marriage, monogamy, heterosexuality, monosexuality are socially pernicious bits of social engineering encouraged by both sides of the state+church good cop+bad cop shtick and should be seriously reconsidered. The more I look at it, queer seems like the baseline, not the exception.
     

    The thing about polyamory isn't that I'm necessarily against it, but rather that everyone around me is more or less against it. The specter of going on more than about 2 dates with multiple people at a time and the other people "finding out" is fairly fear inducing.

     
    I am kinda bummed POLY is even a THING, like the formulation of "I AM POLY" implies that it reflects a kind of inner material truth about me versus others which is not justified. All I am doing is allowing myself to fall for other people and negotiating all of my relationships with an extended latitude. This is not something that muggles cannot do, it is just that everyone is trained by literary tradition, telenovelas, taboos, etc that non-monogamous non-heteronormative behavior results in jealousy and crazy mad drama antics and that this is why it is an abnormal way to be.

    To a large extent this same stigma of needing to BE A CREATURE OF A CERTAIN MOLD, to recognize yourself as a taxonomized other, besets a lot of bi people who don't act on half of their attractions because they're afraid of being labeled as gay. Because they don't feel gay all the time, they might as well stay default, and not act—but it is the acting itself that creates that illusion of material nature in the social sphere to begin with, not the other way around and the available labels are entirely too limiting (see Judith Butler). Why do we have to go through the ordeal of labeling our material nature before we even know we're into it, whatever it may be?
     

    Let's say maybe a few weeks, instead? Some level of mutual agreement where you've gotten past the idea of meeting someone just to see how it goes and are doing so because that's what you want. Like, if you're seeing Jane on Fridays and John on Saturdays that's basically wacky sitcom level territory for most people. I actually do prefer the idea of exclusivity, but I know I've felt internal pressure to "make a decision" faster than I would have if I had met people at different times.

     
    A lot of married people also go cruising for the wrong reasons, to solve their busted relationships, giving the whole poly thing bad rep. I'm a very competent lover. Why not deploy these finely-honed skills on other cool people? I don't have to automatically elevate them to the same status in my social pantheon that my partner of 7 years has. She has veto power over who I date. And we trust each other. When you start talking to people about what to expect from a relationship, you notice how arbitrary the divinely-sanctified lattice of relationship rules is and how much it varies person-to-person. Romantic relationships like all relationships are built up, you accumulate affect and trust and gain power over one another. It is not really a binarily binding thing the way we traditionally implement it for some reason.

    And then some people just don't feel like it, and that's totally fine. This is about doing what feels right after all.

    Sorry for slutting up the life thread :kiss:

  11. Posted

    I understand that at different times in their lives people are looking for different kinds of relationships with different formats of commitment. Some people just can't wing it, and that's cool. But the more I think about it, the more I'm as knee-jerkilly annoyed by people who self-righteously groan at polyamoury as they are at my supposed moral failings and apriori assumed creepery.

    It's great that you're exclusively into the patriarchal property arrangement view of relationships and all, but in my experience most people don't ever really think about having different kinds of relationships with different degrees of intimacy with different people concurrently because it is such a huge taboo, everyone is sour at the idea and there's no role models out there. How does one figure out you might be up for it if not by asking?

    This is the same kind of tone macho dudes get when a gay guy approaches them—as if being solicited by The Other taints them in any way at all. HOW DARE HE ASSUME SUCH HORRORS ABOUT MY CHARACTER, etc.

  13. Posted

    I would've chopped that poll into several, damn. Or you could have people sort them by order of preference and basically do an instant runoff. Then make all of them in order in which people voted for them cause you just have to do all of them anyway, no?

     

    I am looking forward to Dune tho!

  14. Posted

    This thread grows so fast, I'm so proud. Maybe this was mentioned but maybe not.

     

    Speaking of historical examples of counterpatriarchy and some societies around ancient Messopotamia, it is important to bring up what is going on in west Kurdistan right now. I was kinda late to the freaking-out-about-Kobane party but observers who've been paying attention for the past couple of years are calling it an armed social revolution led by women. In the west media it has largely been covered TMZ-style "28 Sexiest Freedom Fighters of the Levant" but there is some real cutting-edge feminist experimentation on going away with the capitalist nation state, seen as the source of the bondage of women and permanent barrier to peace, in the region and in general.

     

     

    My trek through learning about this stuff started with Dilar Dirik and I've yet to really make sense of how all of this stuff works on the ground, but it sure looks fascinating. And it's happening live.

  15. Posted

    That police is supposed to solve crime and protect the people is a clever bit of propaganda. The purpose of the police is to hunt for code violations and enforce property rights.

  21. Posted

    Off-Topic: I was confused/amused by the main photo in this weekend's Double Fine newsletter:

     

    attachicon.gifdoublefinenewsletter.jpg

     

    I scrolled down half the picture and noted who the mugs belonged to, before continuing to scroll and being startled by the crotch Schafer face. This is the optimal way to internet this picture.

  22. Posted

    I really dig the Kraken as far as rum goes, even though I bought my first bottle just because of the branding ¬¬

     

    It is strong and spicy enough to cook with. I doused a heavy chocolate cake with it just yesterday and it came out delicious.

     

    kraken_bottle.jpg

  24. Posted

    They do, they really do! Did you listen to the first/last segment of the podcast, or did you see Taras Bulba at one point? Man, the podcast must sound like a bunch of weird mouth noises to you.

     

    I read yer blog

  25. Posted

    The Cove, close to the San Antonio College, started out as a laundromat. Then they opened up a car wash, so people can wash their cars too, made sense. Then they opened up a little food place, so you can eat while you wash things. Food was good so it soon evolved into local-food-only fancy hippie establishment. So they built a bar, have live shows. Then they grew out a beer garden with a playground in the middle, and annexed some kind of dwelling that they turned into a party rental house. You can still do your laundry there.