David J Prokopetz
@prokopetz.bsky.social
Main site at https://prokopetz.net
Some of y'all are having cinematic flashbacks in response to familiar scents, and I'm just like
SENSORY CORTEX: You've smelled this before.
ME: Okay. Where?
S.C.: This is important.
ME: Right, but why?
S.C.: You've smelled this before.
ME: Yes, we've established this.
S.C.: This is important.
SENSORY CORTEX: You've smelled this before.
ME: Okay. Where?
S.C.: This is important.
ME: Right, but why?
S.C.: You've smelled this before.
ME: Yes, we've established this.
S.C.: This is important.
December 28, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Some of y'all are having cinematic flashbacks in response to familiar scents, and I'm just like
SENSORY CORTEX: You've smelled this before.
ME: Okay. Where?
S.C.: This is important.
ME: Right, but why?
S.C.: You've smelled this before.
ME: Yes, we've established this.
S.C.: This is important.
SENSORY CORTEX: You've smelled this before.
ME: Okay. Where?
S.C.: This is important.
ME: Right, but why?
S.C.: You've smelled this before.
ME: Yes, we've established this.
S.C.: This is important.
Level one of understanding Hornet's characterisation in "Silksong" is picking up on the fact that she thinks many of the monsters she faces are cute.
Level two is understanding that this appreciation for their cuteness does not in any way diminish her enthusiasm for killing them with chainsaws.
Level two is understanding that this appreciation for their cuteness does not in any way diminish her enthusiasm for killing them with chainsaws.
December 28, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Level one of understanding Hornet's characterisation in "Silksong" is picking up on the fact that she thinks many of the monsters she faces are cute.
Level two is understanding that this appreciation for their cuteness does not in any way diminish her enthusiasm for killing them with chainsaws.
Level two is understanding that this appreciation for their cuteness does not in any way diminish her enthusiasm for killing them with chainsaws.
Coming to the end of a longish piece of writing thinking I did a pretty good job of maintaining the academic register, then doing a quick search for errant contractions and being informed I used the word "it's" 83 times.
December 28, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Coming to the end of a longish piece of writing thinking I did a pretty good job of maintaining the academic register, then doing a quick search for errant contractions and being informed I used the word "it's" 83 times.
A heartwarming holiday tale of a person overcoming their unexamined prejudices and learning that each of us has a responsibility to make the world a better place using the gifts we're given after discovering that their penis has perfect laminar flow.
December 28, 2025 at 12:58 AM
A heartwarming holiday tale of a person overcoming their unexamined prejudices and learning that each of us has a responsibility to make the world a better place using the gifts we're given after discovering that their penis has perfect laminar flow.
Like, the good luck charms many baseball fans practice are absolutely a form of ritual magic from an anthropological standpoint, but imagine what American baseball would look like if Protestants didn't have hangups about ritual magic being Satanic and didn't need to maintain plausible deniability.
December 27, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Like, the good luck charms many baseball fans practice are absolutely a form of ritual magic from an anthropological standpoint, but imagine what American baseball would look like if Protestants didn't have hangups about ritual magic being Satanic and didn't need to maintain plausible deniability.
Fantasy RPG setting where cooking works the way it does in crafting-based video games, like if you assemble a sandwich just right it can let you shoot fire from your eyes and shit, so cooking is a tightly regulated art. You can get thrown in a dungeon for marinating without a license.
December 27, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Fantasy RPG setting where cooking works the way it does in crafting-based video games, like if you assemble a sandwich just right it can let you shoot fire from your eyes and shit, so cooking is a tightly regulated art. You can get thrown in a dungeon for marinating without a license.
I will accept that housecats ORDINARILY do not hunt cooperatively, but whenever a mouse gets into my house, my cats will literally coordinate to flush it toward me so I can grab it with my special Mouse Catching Glove and chuck into the field out back, so clearly it's a skill they can learn.
December 27, 2025 at 10:54 PM
I will accept that housecats ORDINARILY do not hunt cooperatively, but whenever a mouse gets into my house, my cats will literally coordinate to flush it toward me so I can grab it with my special Mouse Catching Glove and chuck into the field out back, so clearly it's a skill they can learn.
The real problem with Commander Data is in half the Data-centric episodes he's the realest fucker in the room and in the other half he's an autistic caricature to point and laugh at, and the showrunners seemed to have been convinced it was the latter that offered insight into the human condition.
December 27, 2025 at 7:25 PM
The real problem with Commander Data is in half the Data-centric episodes he's the realest fucker in the room and in the other half he's an autistic caricature to point and laugh at, and the showrunners seemed to have been convinced it was the latter that offered insight into the human condition.
Reposted by David J Prokopetz
"fix the statues? do we look like we're made of drachmas"
December 27, 2025 at 8:24 AM
"fix the statues? do we look like we're made of drachmas"
Some day I want to see a game that takes the David Cage esque overwrought-drama-puncuated-by-awkward-quicktime-events approach to its logical conclusion and presents a serious drama piece that smash cuts to a WarioWare-style minigame every time the player needs to do something interactive.
December 27, 2025 at 8:18 AM
Some day I want to see a game that takes the David Cage esque overwrought-drama-puncuated-by-awkward-quicktime-events approach to its logical conclusion and presents a serious drama piece that smash cuts to a WarioWare-style minigame every time the player needs to do something interactive.
The fun part about debating demarcation on the Internet is that it's impossible to tell whether you're talking to someone knowledgeable making a subtle point, or someone so ignorant they think they're smarter than the experts. I once had someone insist to my face that "Contra III" is a metroidvania.
December 27, 2025 at 3:45 AM
The fun part about debating demarcation on the Internet is that it's impossible to tell whether you're talking to someone knowledgeable making a subtle point, or someone so ignorant they think they're smarter than the experts. I once had someone insist to my face that "Contra III" is a metroidvania.
Checking my feed on Christmas morning like "oh, hey, the autistic lesbian serial killer game must have updated".
December 27, 2025 at 2:35 AM
Checking my feed on Christmas morning like "oh, hey, the autistic lesbian serial killer game must have updated".
It's convenient having a transmasc friend who's also kind of an idiot because the flat "dude" lets you efficiently call them a dumbass in a gender-affirming way.
December 27, 2025 at 2:23 AM
It's convenient having a transmasc friend who's also kind of an idiot because the flat "dude" lets you efficiently call them a dumbass in a gender-affirming way.
Semi-open-world 2D platformer about fixing a high-tech facility where the player's movement tech is static, but completing objectives causes various "Celeste" style platforming gimmicks to become active throughout the map. This game exists purely to cause arguments about whether it's a metroidvania.
December 27, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Semi-open-world 2D platformer about fixing a high-tech facility where the player's movement tech is static, but completing objectives causes various "Celeste" style platforming gimmicks to become active throughout the map. This game exists purely to cause arguments about whether it's a metroidvania.
I love it when period media about ancient cultures depicts the stonework in their architecture as very rounded and blobby in a way that makes it 100% clear that the designer was simply imitating the way it looks now. Like, what the fuck is erosion? Obviously it just started out that way.
December 27, 2025 at 12:30 AM
I love it when period media about ancient cultures depicts the stonework in their architecture as very rounded and blobby in a way that makes it 100% clear that the designer was simply imitating the way it looks now. Like, what the fuck is erosion? Obviously it just started out that way.
Reposted by David J Prokopetz
A salute to all the artists braving X or Bluesky or whatever their NSFW-permissive social media cesspool of choice is in on the one day they'd have every excuse not to in order to post Christmas-themed cock at the most topically relevant time.
December 25, 2025 at 12:18 AM
A salute to all the artists braving X or Bluesky or whatever their NSFW-permissive social media cesspool of choice is in on the one day they'd have every excuse not to in order to post Christmas-themed cock at the most topically relevant time.
A salute to all the artists braving X or Bluesky or whatever their NSFW-permissive social media cesspool of choice is in on the one day they'd have every excuse not to in order to post Christmas-themed cock at the most topically relevant time.
December 25, 2025 at 12:18 AM
A salute to all the artists braving X or Bluesky or whatever their NSFW-permissive social media cesspool of choice is in on the one day they'd have every excuse not to in order to post Christmas-themed cock at the most topically relevant time.
Makes a metroidvania and puts the final 1% completion behind a platforming puzzle with no developer-intended solution, as a treat.
December 23, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Makes a metroidvania and puts the final 1% completion behind a platforming puzzle with no developer-intended solution, as a treat.
Honestly, the "OMG they have a Homestuck header" thing is overplayed. There are literally millions of you fuckers. Creeping a new friend's blog and seeing a header based on a shitty 2000s webcomic you've never met a second fan of in your life, that's REAL mortifying-ordeal-of-being-known shit.
December 23, 2025 at 7:22 AM
Honestly, the "OMG they have a Homestuck header" thing is overplayed. There are literally millions of you fuckers. Creeping a new friend's blog and seeing a header based on a shitty 2000s webcomic you've never met a second fan of in your life, that's REAL mortifying-ordeal-of-being-known shit.
A frequent request for the next revision of "Eat God" has been a bit more guidance for dealing with those stat blocks some playsets throw at you which represent large groups of NPCs. Thus:
![Excerpt of page 129 from revision 0.7.0 of "Eat God":
[begin heading] Group NPCs [end heading]
Some NPCs will be flagged as “group” NPCs. This indicates that the given statistics represent a group of characters who – while they may be given individual names and motivations as needed – are more or less identical for rules purposes and typically act in concert.
A group NPC is treated as a single large NPC whose listed qualities already include the advantage of numbers. If the God-eaters can arrange a situation where a group NPC is unable to bring those numbers to bear, its effective Threat rating is reduced by one point, or by two points if the God-eaters manage to catch a member of the group alone.
The God-eaters' own actions are similarly hindered: efforts to inflict Stress upon a group NPC suffer −1 impact if the action affects only a small part of the group, or −2 impact when harassing a single group member. Stress inflicted in this way is marked against the group as a whole, not against individual group members, even when only a single member is targeted.
This reduction is a normal impact penalty, and can be mitigated in all the usual ways, such as by spending Obstinacy on a test or tagging a mitigating Form. For example, effortful use of [begin keyword] Hundred-handed [end keyword] might allow a God-eater to wrestle a group NPC without penalty. Cooperative tests (p. 79) may also offset such penalties, as might any action which would logically be effective at dealing with a large group, such as giving a speech to a mob.
[begin sidebar]
Group NPCs do not represent a specific number of individuals, and it is not necessary to pick off every member of a group NPC in order to cause it to Stress Out – group morale can be a fragile thing. At the player's option, Stressing Out a group NPC by targeting one of its members might be described as the group beating a tactical retreat, fleeing in disarray, or simply suffering a breakdown of coordination.
[end sidebar]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2eo6pqby4dzwy4lz2f44p53x/bafkreifjimlaqcetticuwury6b7aahkwldiu2vpznfjyl7adxq6b5am7d4@jpeg)
December 23, 2025 at 3:51 AM
A frequent request for the next revision of "Eat God" has been a bit more guidance for dealing with those stat blocks some playsets throw at you which represent large groups of NPCs. Thus:
Streaming series whose promotional material promises Big Things for the season one finale, then just keeps going indefinitely without ever announcing a formal season break, leaving folks to speculate like "wait... was that it just now?"
December 22, 2025 at 6:08 PM
Streaming series whose promotional material promises Big Things for the season one finale, then just keeps going indefinitely without ever announcing a formal season break, leaving folks to speculate like "wait... was that it just now?"
The Penguin King Winter Sale is on! All games are 50% off, including "Costume Fairy Adventures" (a game of dress-up and shenanigans) and @zachrpg.bsky.social's "Cerebos: The Crystal City" (a surreal travelogue RPG about an allegorical train bound for a mythical destination).
itch.io/s/176871/pen...
itch.io/s/176871/pen...
December 22, 2025 at 6:46 AM
The Penguin King Winter Sale is on! All games are 50% off, including "Costume Fairy Adventures" (a game of dress-up and shenanigans) and @zachrpg.bsky.social's "Cerebos: The Crystal City" (a surreal travelogue RPG about an allegorical train bound for a mythical destination).
itch.io/s/176871/pen...
itch.io/s/176871/pen...
Challenge: least appropriate Christmas viewing list which technically adheres to the time-honoured "it's a Christmas movie if it takes place in December and/or there's snow" criterion.
December 22, 2025 at 1:35 AM
Challenge: least appropriate Christmas viewing list which technically adheres to the time-honoured "it's a Christmas movie if it takes place in December and/or there's snow" criterion.
"Fuck canon" has its virtues as an interpretive stance, but you've gotta know what the canon is before you can fuck it.
December 21, 2025 at 7:56 AM
"Fuck canon" has its virtues as an interpretive stance, but you've gotta know what the canon is before you can fuck it.
Every time I read a study on the performance of "agentic" AI, I think of the experiment where they tried to get an AI to design a robot that can walk, but it never did because it figured out building a really tall robot that immediately falls over is a cheaper way to maximise distance travelled.
December 21, 2025 at 6:55 AM
Every time I read a study on the performance of "agentic" AI, I think of the experiment where they tried to get an AI to design a robot that can walk, but it never did because it figured out building a really tall robot that immediately falls over is a cheaper way to maximise distance travelled.