Pandacolyte

yeah this is something i've really come around on just in the last few years. unfortunately it's just something that's incredibly easy to not think about too hard, especially when you're really in deep in those kind of artist spaces where like. the prevailing belief system underpinning the standard practices is that the deck is so far stacked against independent artists trying to make a living that anything you do to bring up your bottom line is justified, insofar as it is being done with your own artwork. and nothing about the difficulty and insecurity of being a working artist is exaggerated either! so the kneejerk response to be defensive to critiques of your business practices is one i understand even if i am no longer sympathetic towards it.

for me a big part of how i think about these sorts of things is. i know i'm never going to be any kind of political activist. i'm just not really a stable, confident, or educated enough person to functionally be in that position and don't see that changing any time in the near future. choosing where my money goes is pretty much one of the only avenues i have to actually live by the principles i claim to hold. so if i am going to genuinely believe that it's wrong to profit off of the underpaid labor of foreign workers in unsafe conditions, then i need to not use my money to have foreign workers in unsafe conditions do underpaid labor for me. that is the bare minimum.

you would hope that all of the labor concerns artists and other creative workers are currently experiencing regarding AI would result in them trying to develop solidarity with other groups' pre-existing labor concerns, but it seems for the most part that that's not the case. instead, it seems as if the most vocal and prevalent cohort of independent artists is closing rank, becoming even less receptive to scrutiny of their practices now that they feel the very essence of art itself is on the line. everything has been retroactively legitimized by the introduction of an existential threat to their way of life.

i think its not likely artist alleys themselves will improve, but i think instead we're going to see a split between the people who are okay staying the course on artist as Small Business Owner with all the baggage that entails, and those who find we can not maintain the cognitive dissonance necessary for that. It feels like the covid years signed the death warrant for Fandom as subculture and now it's just the culture. which means it's about time for the new subculture to splinter off. i think the divide between people who enjoy the legitimacy that comes from the mainstream commercialization of these previously niche transformative spaces and those who are detested by it instead is where that splintering will originate from.

you've probably already noticed that turn signals ("blinkahs") don't serve their usual function here - a common saying on the server is that using them as intended is just giving information to your enemies. you may be tempted to conclude that these "blinkahs" are useless. not so! they are exclusively used for parrying cars audacious enough to think they can just drive past you. the timing is a five-frame window beginning when you can first see the approaching car in your sideview mirrors. simply engage your blinkah and then immediately jump out in front of your opponent. if you get the timing right, you will build super meter. if you're too early, you've accidentally performed a safe traffic maneuver, resetting your meter to 0. if you're too late, you crash and may have to transition to direct PvP, which is outside the purview of this guide.

yellow lights can also be parried by running them, with the amount of super gained determined by how far you make it through the intersection before the light turns red. the ideal window you're aiming for here is between your front and back wheels crossing the white line

you can use your super meter to cast a variety of spells to hinder your opponents. popular meter-efficient spells include mainstays such as "Summon Double-Parked Uber Eats Driver", "Line-Skipping Merge", and "Greater Unmarked Cop". if you max out your meter, you can cast the legendary "Power Word: Storrow".

the super meter system works differently for bikes. obviously, since they lack blinkahs and run red lights anyways, they can't build super in any of the normal ways. instead, they build it up passively, since their very existence enrages every driver around them. to offset this, the spell list for bikes is a lot lower-power than the spell list for cars, mostly being focused on mobility or utility instead of offense (although there are some notable exceptions like "U-Lock Missile"). the capstone spell for bikes is, of course, "Post Misleadingly Edited GoPro Footage On Reddit".

I can’t help but envision appearing in their notifications constantly like this and laughing