wow thats gay

me: “yeah I dated a guy in high school who came out as gay. it was before i knew i was a boy so needless to say it didn’t work out”

coworker: “damn dude was preordering”

other things this coworker (who is a cis guy) has done/said:

—got confused about why I’d never been a boy scout because he forgot i was trans

—told me he was gonna get top surgery scar tattoos to match me after i get mine

—laughs at all my trans jokes, even if they’re supremely unfunny

—calls me big dog (and him little dog) even though he is about as tall as two of me

— “I can’t believe she would say that transphobic thing to you. In June? Pride month?”

Once I said "My gender is whatever's funniest at the time" and my coworker stops dead in his tracks, turns slowly and says "So are your pronouns honk/honk?" killing me instantly

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

why did she sign off with that

I’ve missed the 09 bois so much ⊹˚. ♡

Reblog to make it die faster

This is the funniest way you could've put it

Ok so I answered this with no coffee somewhat curtly, but I just reread and you weren’t actually being THAT rude, so I’m gonna give this another shot. Plus,  it genuinely bothers me that there are people out there who can’t fathom how a lesbian might be able to write convincingly about attraction to men, because it leads me to believe there are people out there who might struggle to understand that humans can write convincingly and compassionately about human experiences they haven't personally been through, which is alarming in a lot of ways. So instead of being annoyed I’m going to make an attempt to describe my experience as a lesbian writer who writes about gay men.

First off: I have been out as a lesbian since I was 13. I have only ever had dated women save for weird prepubescent elementary school attempts at boyfriends. I have never had any sort of sex with a man and I’ve never been attracted to one beyond a vague sort of aesthetic appreciation which allows me to discern when men are objectively good looking. That being said, when I write from the point of view of someone who is attracted to men, I AM, to some degree, drawing from my own experience of attraction: queer attraction.

Queer attraction and gay desire are unique. They don’t function the same way heterosexual attraction/desire does.  They’re shaped differently, they evolve differently, they happen in spite of fear, in spite of shame, cultivated in the darkness and born from connection, from authenticity from sameness. They exist without a rubric, and without the same symbolic weight heterosexual desire carries within society.  It’s really easy for me to imagine the ways in which men are attracted to other men because I know what it’s like for me, to be attracted to women. I know the way that queer desire exists outside societal constraints, I know the way I was confused by it and fought it as a kid, I know the way I later learned to embrace it and feel pride and joy about it. I know how it feels in my gut, in my bones. These are the experiences which inform the way I write about attraction in my stories, not that nebulous understanding of what makes a man hot or not that I mentioned above. 

Furthermore, bodies are bodies and humans are humans and it honestly feels weirdly gender essentialist and myopic to act like the things that men might find attractive about other men are SO different than the things I, as a lesbian, am attracted to in women. I am attracted to strength and sweat and body hair. I’m attracted to gender nonconformity and difference and unique, intentional presentation. I am attracted to other lesbians, and the unspoken, magical energy they have that I, as another lesbian, can pick up on. The things generally associated with women being attractive mean nothing to me, like I don’t get and am not attracted to 90% of Hollywood actresses of models. My attraction is queer, and I am attracted to queerness. This is something that I assume generalizes to many queer men, as well.

So when I’m writing about attraction I don’t ask myself  “ok what’s hot about men that this man would notice?” I ask myself, “when I’m into something what do I notice? When I’m into someone’s pheromones where do my eyes go, what do I smell when I share space with them?” And it’s literally never something gender specific. That’s such a weird straight person thing to be attracted to gender specific markers, like “ah I love his man abs or how manly he is” like hell no when you’re into someone you’re like “oh god they breathed on me I can smell their breath, there’s a drop of sweat at their temple, their tendon just flexed in their wrist, when that breeze comes by I can smell their deodorant and maybe a hint of their sweat under it and fuck I want to feel the heat of their skin so fucking bad.” And those things are universal! All people have breath, and sweat, and tendons, and warm skin.

In fact, I can often tell when a writer is straight BECAUSE when they discuss attraction in their stories it’s not based on universal, human, pheromone type shit, it’s always weird and gendered and informed by what’s considered attractive in the mainstream. It’s a man’s biceps, his chiseled jaw, the way his stubble looks, his washboard ads, his size. Same with women—they describe her fragility, her breast size, her softness. And I absolutely see this style leak into fan fiction as well, and always is strikes me as gender essentialist and 100% unrelatable. Straight people are told what is attractive in the opposite sex and they buy into it and that  is how they approach descriptions of characters who are the object of desire. But I feel like as a lesbian my attraction has far more in common with a gay man’s attraction than it does to cis het attraction! You mentioned the “raw appeal” of men--that phrase means nothing to me, I’m writing about the raw appeal of GAY SEX, I’m writing about a hunger big enough to risk safety and acceptance and normativity to pursue. That has nothing on whatever cishet women find sexy about cishet men, idk. 

Lastly, on a super basic surface note: good writers are both imaginative, sensory, and compassionate. This allows us to imagine situations that we have not experienced, parse out sensory details about that experience which make the reader feel like they’re there, and compassionate enough to imagine what it would be like to be in that situation even if we never have before.

Most writers have not lived their books, they’re just good writers. It’s dangerous to act like writing convincingly about something means we must harbor a secret desire to do that something. Lesbians (or ace people) who write convincingly about attraction to men or sex are likely just practiced writers who have worked to find that balance between imagination and compassion. Just like crime writers and horror writers who write convincingly about murder and violence but absolutely aren’t partaking in such things  Fiction is not autobiography, and there’s a well documented tendency for people to assume marginalized writers are always writing about themselves, where white male writers can put on any mask they like and have that chalked up to talent.

Here’s some supplementary reading about this.

stop assuming i’m writing about myself 

why are women’s novels always mistaken for autobiography? 

I hope this clarifies things, and also makes you consider the structures at play when you “can’t wrap your head around” why a writer might be able to convincingly convey something outside their experience in the future. 

I drew a little something for the Hiveworks micro comic summer~

Because I'm only seeing other Jews posting about this, non-Jews I need you to be aware that for the past month or two there has been a wave of bomb threats and swattings at synagogues all across the US. They usually do it when services are being livestreamed. I haven't seen a single non-Jew talking about this. High holidays are coming up in a few weeks, which is when most attacks happen against our communities. We're worried, and we need people to know what's happening to us.

Kindergartens AU scribble!

aaaaand a medieval AU for the bbg’s  I’ll take drawing armor and swords over guns any day!

My personal favorite Neil Ellice tiktok comments 🫶

This buzzed around in my brain hard enough that I created my first piece of digital art.

He noticed it as soon as he took up his post in the Tower... Guardians, hundreds of them perhaps, all flocking to him in small groups throughout the day.

Some simply stood there, watching him, which thankfully wasn't out of the ordinary for Guardian behavior, but some walked up and thanked him for his service to the Vanguard, for his strength through everything the universe had thrown at them, for being someone to look up to, an inspiration to all.

Zavala couldn't help but feel moved by their words and actions, some bold faces even wordlessly embracing him in hugs tight enough to make the Titan proud. He didn't question their motives or reasons, why some saluted and offered him swords of Light, standing vigil with him for hours, why some seemed to be misty eyed as they spoke like they were saying goodbye.

He saw the strength of community, of Guardians silently banding together to show him love and admiration he did now know was possible. With a smile on his face, Zavala looked out to where the Traveler once hung in the sky and, for the first time since its departure, knew that Humanity and Guardians alike, would survive.

Rest in Peace, Commander….

This map is the most up to date version as of 3-4-2023 and takes into account all recent movement on anti-trans legislation

this gif is like... almost biblical. as if hes experiencing a pharaohs curse...

wtf were you gonna say

Please respect my privacy

my deepest apologies

I forgive you

Anyway me when I suck that pharaoh good and hard through his scaramphigousus

Merlin remake where everyone’s a muppet except Leon

@vvysteria Vi these tags are ABSOLUTELY correct. You’re right and you should say it. Every single one of these is god-tier, and I’m not entirely convinced that you haven’t born witness to a prophetic vision of the alternate dimension where this exists