I can't be a hater on main (read: my author/reviewer bluesky account) but on god this is making me such a huge hater. Fantasy is such a "hot" genre rn but the number of GOOD fantasy books I've read this year is very low

The thing about TTRPGs is that they're a different form of storytelling which often necessitates shorthand so you don't spend twenty hours exploring the nuances of your quest-giving monk. Relying on these conventions Cannot replace nuanced and compelling prose storytelling

If you have the charming thief or the evil NPCs cult or the fantasy tavern or the alcohol-obsessed middle aged man: stop. Think. Is your understanding of how you want to make fantasy entirely constructed through the fun games you play with your friends and 'classic tropes'?

Incidentally, this is why most good soulslike games put save points max 30 seconds away from their roadblock bosses. Not doing so is a design philosophy of a particular type, but I don't think it makes for a fun play experience.

I put the game down not because it's too hard, but because the game is actively hostile towards multiple boss attempts. This is a several-minute runback through challenging platforming. I like the game, but when I hit the exact same problem for the third time, I gave up.

But my best professional skills are the ones that people claim (incorrectly, because I've seen it in action) can be replaced by AI. I don't know how I'm meant to find something new and secure when so much capital is being thrown behind failed attempts to get a machine to do it instead.

The turnover at my job is ludicrous. I cannot even count the number of people who've left this year, but it's something like 20% turnover on my team alone. Some of them have been "heavily encouraged" to leave quietly after periods of illness. It's not a good environment!

I'm entry level. If the sales of what I work on come down if/when the buyers cotton on to the lower quality, it's people like me who'll get quietly restructured out of employment. Just like they conveniently restructured the DEI managers out of existence earlier this year.

I'm pretty decent at this job, and being left to do it is fine. It's the constant interventions and shifting expectations that are so fucking demoralising. That, plus the constant evidence that "volume > quality" across the whole company, makes my job feel precarious.

-rewarding the people who are the most okay with taking shortcuts for the sake of productivity. They're forcing us to pump out a product at increasingly low editorial standards while nitpicking every perceived possible mistake into the ground.

I'm so sick of it!!

This job pays pretty decently for what it is. The culture at MY office is good, but the senior team isn't based here. So the general company and overall team culture is absolutely fucking rancid. It's caught between rewarding the people who are Most Right (resulting in hostile team dynamics) and-