as a primarily Python dev I think every language should have comprehensions. no more .map((i) => {}) and .filter((i) => {}) and .forEach((i) => {}) just make everything comprehensions. I don’t want to learn LINQ I want to use comprehensions. no I’m not going to write a loop I’m going to make a comprehension. everything is a nail and comprehensions are the Forbidden Hammer

Ring of Guy-Jizz

https://social.vivaldi.net/@brucelawson/114551695722066376

I’ve been thinking lately about why I like moral ambiguity in some worldbuilding and not others, and I think it comes down to having an empowered faction that I can sympathize with enough to not want to wash my hands of the entire world lol. I think there’s a whole spectrum of moral greyness:

1. the author might be slightly ambivalent but it’s clear that they mostly agree with this faction/character, and they’re juxtaposing this faction/character with others in order to process their ambivalence (for example if they’re of two minds about something ethically, they might have two characters who fit into this category and who disagree with each other - each representing half of the author’s thoughts) (often the crew of the Enterprise in TNG will split into multiple examples of this during an episode as they disagree with each other about what the right thing to do is)

2. the author wrote this faction/character based on their understanding of a worldview that they don’t have, and it might come off like a caricature sometimes but it has enough nuance and sympathetic writing to not come off as pure evil (House in New Vegas, Quark in DS9)

3. this faction/character is basically just evil but they have sympathetic reasons (that probably don’t hold up to scrutiny) for doing terrible things. the author definitely wrote them to be villains (Killmonger in Black Panther, Caesar in New Vegas, Gul Dukat in DS9)

I think my favorite kind of worldbuilding is when there are a few tier-1 morally grey factions, and maybe a few tier 2 and 3. because then it feels like this is a world where people generally care about the welfare of everyone, and conflict happens because people disagree about what’s best for everyone

but if you have a world where there are no tier-1 factions, and it’s just tier 2 and/or tier 3, you often end up with a world that feels like it’s exclusively populated by awful people, and I don’t want anything to do with it lol. the same problem happens if all of the tier-1 factions are so disempowered that they don’t stand a chance against the tier 2 or 3 factions (the Followers of the Apocalypse in New Vegas are a great example of this, and I’m pretty sure Game of Thrones fits into this category too)

like if I can’t imagine the world turning into one worth living in, then why would I care about learning more about it or rooting for the heroes or anything else? I guess that’s what TVTropes calls Too Bleak, Stopped Caring

and I think the reason why I love TNG and DS9 so much is because those shows are able to explore morally grey questions through the lens of a cast of empowered tier-1 characters - so it’s not a question of “will the sympathetic characters ever be able to effect change in this terrible world?” it’s more like “there are multiple ways that you could look at this situation and what to do about it, so what’s the right answer?”

I tried Abiotic Factor a few days ago and my first impression is that I love how deep its mechanics are, and how the survival aspects of the gameplay feel. it’s like a first-person survival-horror Project Zomboid set in the Black Mesa research facility

you can disassemble stuff for parts, there’s crafting, it has co-op multiplayer, and the combat is really weird and creative. like you can throw a net over a creature, suck it into a vacuum weapon, and then shoot it at another creature to kill both of them. you can also build a base with barricades and everything

unfortunately it has hunger and thirst mechanics and I have no idea where to renewably get food in this game (or where to get food at all) and that has me so stressed out that I haven’t been able to play it again lol. I think I might need to just accept that my character might starve (and if I do then fuck this game) and play more of it anyway just to see what happens