Arkyn

but then I realised that same challenge would be infinitely more funny with folks who have atypical or horror OCs

lil tidbit about Solar

i decided to try a romcom i somehow missed i the 2000s 'head over heels' and i got 3 and a half minutes in and we're introduced to the lonely MC with bad taste in men as evidenced by her extremely short list of ex boyfriends, including her first boyfriend when she was 11 or something because i guess that's still relevant in her adult life.

so she's resigned herself to never finding love and prefers to ignore men to focus all her energy into her career.

this job is immediately presented as though it's for spinsters with no hope of ever finding a man.

the mc's lesbian bestie (whose first line involves her being scolded for being too sexual in the workplace, but moving on) points out their colleagues as evidence that they're doomed to a romance-less, sexless life if they don't switch up their shared career path. the colleagues are three old women, so-dubbed "the menopause triplets":

these women are presented as if they have no idea what's going on at any given moment. this is 2001, and presumably this is an entry level job requiring low effort and no experience.

then their boss bursts into the room, unceremoniously bumping a large painting into the door jam and walls, announcing that it's a new project for our MC.

our MC is thrilled to see the painting. apparently it's a light in the daily slog at her dreary job for loser women with nothing going on in their lives.

And that job is? Conservator of paintings (specializing in Renaissance) at the New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The painting being handled like an old couch on its way to the curb?

The Bacchanal of the Andrians by Titian.

Her lesbian colleague who is presumably also a a highly trained & skilled curator finds it depressing that the MC is so excited about the painting.

It doesn't have a population or community. It has employees. It's basically just the Catholic Church's corporate headquarters.

It was only legalized in 8 US states (the 8th only a few months before), and wouldn’t be legalized nation-wide until 2015.

It was only legal in TEN COUNTRIES in 2011. We wouldn’t hit 20 countries until 2017. (Australia was 23rd)

As of today (April 14, 2026), I believe only 38 countries have fully legalized same-sex marriage. Out of somewhere around 200 countries in the world. That’s only ~19% of countries.

I am kinda an oblivious person, and was unintentionally sheltered as a kid. Didn’t even learn about gay or trans people till I was in my teens. And by then I’m certain it was legal in my state. I don’t remember ever having any real thoughts about it, just ‘huh neat’.

Cause as someone who has played and enjoyed both they are very different games. The only thing I can think they have in common is the creature collection aspect. (And in that case yes Palworld clearly took inspiration from Pokémon’s style) But in terms of actual gameplay, they are very different games. One is an RPG and the other is a survival crafting game.

I love Palworld but it doesn’t scratch the same itch as Pokemon and vise versa.

Like in pokemon it’s built around the pokemon battles and there’s something fun about putting together a good team and battling with them. With all the held items, moves, abilities, consumables and switching out you gotta use your wits to succeed and there’s just something satisfying about that.

Palworld is about the base building and exploration. It’s fun to do a few raids or dungeons. But the real fun is in optimizing your base. Breeding the best worker pals and make number go up.

Both are amazing and I hope they both go far.

That being said I’m now running into the opposite problem where I’m getting tired of reading stories where humans are just like overpowered gods compared to every other species.

I wanna read stories where we interact with creatures with completely different strengths and weaknesses than us. Stories that acknowledge the evolutionary path humans went on and explore how that makes us different from creatures that evolved from a different path.

Like we evolved from tree dwelling primates, we are likely a lot more comfortable climbing than say a species that evolved from a burrowing animal who would be more comfortable in enclosed spaces than us.

Or the human endurance, we evolved to be persistent pursuit hunters. It’s where our sweat comes from, it’s part of our thermal regulation that allowed our ancestors to run/walk for miles after their prey. We likely have way more endurance than any creature that evolved from an ambush predator but they might be faster or stronger.

Or going back to our hunting methods we also evolved to use projectiles. Like our brains and arms literally evolved to throw with distance, power, and accuracy. Us having athletes that can throw a ball at over 90 mph would be insane to a species without that adaptation. Maybe we even developed projectiles earlier in our civilization than other species. But they likely have their own sport based on something we might not even be able to do.

There are so many cool features that we can have different than other species. And there are so many features other species could potentially have that would be awesome to us. Like imagine the dexterity of something that evolved from a cephalopod. Or the agility from something that evolved from a feline.

Did not know there was more, and I definitely know what I’m going to be reading for the next week… or actually I should probably start next week because I have a lot of shit I need to get done this week

ASMR sounds and hearing too much mouth or body noises just give me the heebei jeebies. I just can’t with them (same with the video ones with squeezing slime out of something. Need to look away fast or I feel queasy)

(Mild tangent but the only ASMR thing I’ve ever understood was this one streamer who does campfire songs ASMR. To be honest, I do not understand how those are the same thing at all. One is creepy noises that make my skin crawl and the other one is someone gently singing? Just doesn’t make sense.)