Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
banner
ringoidlabs.com
Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
@ringoidlabs.com
Home of Bitkin, the City of Elseways, Tessera, and whatever else the Wandering Mind sees fit to turn its energy to. Current project: a series of assorted small things
More late-night Elseways musing. "Flavyrinth" is a brand name of candies they have there, noted for coming in a "combinatorial flavor explosion". Each one is a blend of two or three out of a palette of a few hundred base flavors. Some of them work, some of them don't, and they all look identical.
February 14, 2026 at 9:58 AM
Patch! Our story's protagonist, in a very lightly-colored sketchy style. I'm still experimenting with how I want this whole thing to look. I have a few ideas, but it's going to take time before I finally settle on something.
February 14, 2026 at 6:52 AM
A sketchy Glimmer Bitkin, testing out a new color scheme and another pair of legs. He lives in a muddy marsh, so a mossy green-brown color scheme fits. He collects marsh gases to power all of the System's lighting, while spending his free time writing poetry and philosophical meanderings.
February 14, 2026 at 5:48 AM
Still working on getting gesture drawing to feel more natural. Here are a bunch of Fala sketches, but given my typical character designs, she's definitely "easy mode". How do you define a strong line of action for someone who naturally stands in an L shape?
February 13, 2026 at 8:05 AM
Reposted by Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
Today is Quintidi the 25th of Pluviôse in the year 234.
Pluviôse is the month of rain.
Today we celebrate hares.#JacobinDay

More information on hares
February 12, 2026 at 11:14 PM
Reposted by Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
happy birthday gromit 🥹 🎂 🐶
February 12, 2026 at 5:05 PM
There's a neat confluence of holidays coming up on the 17th. We get, at the same time:
• Chinese New Year
• Mardi Gras
• Ramadan (starting at sundown)
February 12, 2026 at 5:53 PM
Maybe stayed up a bit too late, but I've got a chart of most of this Bitkin project and that means I can start on rough drafts. There's still one big overall implementation thing to figure out, but even without that I can start on art. I really want to learn more gesture-y expressiveness, too.
February 12, 2026 at 10:32 AM
Reposted by Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
This is incredible. Like the previous few years, near all of the electricity capacity added to the grid was clean energy. The Inflation Reduction Act helped this - it made solar & wind cheaper but it also for the first time had a standalone incentive for grid storage. Look at the growth in storage!
Final EIA-860 is out, and 2025 really did it: 54 GW of new U.S. electric capacity, 96% clean. Solar again carries the offense, and we built more storage in 2025 than the cumulative total through 2023. More and more and more additions... but also record low retirements.
February 12, 2026 at 4:38 AM
I like the idea of Elseways having a car manufacturer called Minsky Motors (entirely for the "Minsky Pickup" pun). Most people there get around on mass transit, but there are still reasons some people need trucks, and Minsky builds them. Reliable, electric, even hackable if you've got the time.
February 11, 2026 at 10:40 PM
Reposted by Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
The more f*cked up the world is, the more it needs us w/ a regulated nervous system & realistic trauma recovery blueprint, so we can effectively live our values & push back against the darkness out there.

Personal recovery is a necessary & powerful tool in the cultural struggle.
February 11, 2026 at 5:27 AM
Perfect tagline for this book.
February 11, 2026 at 2:29 AM
Yeah, that's how it worked. My granddad always went by Bud or Buddy, never mind what his birth certificate said.
Baffled by transphobes insisting that the name on your birth certificate is Your True Name Forever when it was common in my grandparents' generation to just...pick a name you like and use that, nbd. I literally found out both of my grandma's birth certificate first names FROM THEIR OBITUARIES.
February 11, 2026 at 1:42 AM
Reposted by Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
At least with a MUSH I can make rooms and have an inventory :) I can invite people do my dungeon and everything!
February 10, 2026 at 11:49 PM
Saying goodbye to my job was not easy and left me persistently nauseous, but it was the right call. The specter of burnout was drawing very close.
February 10, 2026 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
This would have been a good point for someone to have asked, is that really how things work? Or is vacuum in fact an excellent insulator? www.ft.com/content/a5cf...
February 10, 2026 at 1:24 PM
Reposted by Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
And, in the very room in which he sat, there were books that could take you anywhere, and things to invent, and make, and build, and break, and all the puzzle and excitement of everything he didn't know—music to play, songs to sing, and worlds to imagine and then someday make real.
February 10, 2026 at 8:02 PM
Post a banger that isn't in English.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTw9...

I confess I don't really know what makes a song quality as a "banger", but this is in Mongolian and is both catchy and very haunting at the same time.
February 10, 2026 at 2:14 AM
Reposted by Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
If a door gets left open here for any length of time it summons the elusive but impressive garage peacock.
February 9, 2026 at 8:07 PM
bluesky-map.theo.io seems to think I'm "plausibly on the fringe of indie game developers, but really more part of the New Zealand Progressive Left". I'll grant you "progressive left" but the closest I've ever gotten to NZ was watching the Taskmaster series based there.
February 10, 2026 at 12:43 AM
Reposted by Brillig J. Bandersnatch @ Ringoid Labs
Where the tollbooth had been just the night before, there was now nothing at all. He searched frantically throughout the apartment, but it had vanished just as mysteriously as it had come—and in its place was another bright-blue envelope, which was addressed simply:
"FOR MILO, WHO NOW KNOWS THE WAY"
February 9, 2026 at 11:01 PM
The fact that I don’t have to animate the Bitkin for this project is making me want to stick more limbs on a few of them. I wonder if any will volunteer.
February 9, 2026 at 9:04 AM
Poking around my family tree some, I discovered I have an ancestor named Arbogast Kremp, and I immediately need to name a character that.
February 9, 2026 at 12:12 AM
PDF files can have passwords you need to enter in order to open them. Same with Zip archives. Between those two I think I can accomplish exactly the gameplay I want — the Bitkin game "book" will be a nested set of these, each password being the solution to a puzzle.
February 8, 2026 at 10:46 PM