robryk @robryk@qoto.org

@fasterthanlime@octodon.social WDYM by Mastodon allowing that? Do you mean "my instance applying a patch that allows me to send quote toots"? Quote toots are at least passably displayed by vanilla mastodon when received over federation IIRC.

@grrrr_shark Yeah, that wouldn't be my case at all (with mass-mailing), true.

Though I'm afraid we will soon have a blocking ecosystem with a strong positive feedback loop :/

@grrrr_shark @Optional

Hmm.. Poor spiders can't procreate anymore (because the eggs will burn), can't eat without lots of help (lest the food burns before they get to eat it), might find it hard to hunt (can't spin webs in case they hunted that way), might be setting their abodes on fire constantly, and might be attracting predators (because they're very bright at night).

But, they may have noticed that it's sometimes useful to be on fire: you are less likely to be eaten when you're on fire, you can't freeze in cold weather if you're on fire (and spiders, being small, will have problems with low temperatures; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO7PmwZc6qE), being on fire can be used to boil water.

So, maybe the spiders would be willing to negotiate to get the ability to switch the fire on and off at will in return for not harming the hapless wizard(?)?

Also, have they already set something on fire? It might be amusing if the frequency of random fires increased around the party and that caused weird (and incorrect) suspicions from random other people in the vicinity.

@grrrr_shark I imagines a cat doing moderation tasks. The image was very amusing :)

@grrrr_shark Ah, I see.

I was at least once in a position where I was considering e-mailing an admin of an (non-single-user though) instance asking them to reconsider blocking mine. In the end I decided against doing so, because I find it hard to write things in a way that won't be in practice misinterpreted in such situations (I end up writing things that are literally correct and terse, which sadly end up being read quickly, which causes them to be misread; I feel very bad being verbose because it feels like I'm wasting someone's time then).

@grrrr_shark Some instances show a UI element in the sidebar that gives a link to the administrator's account. Yours doesn't, which might cause people to think it's not yours (or are they e-mailing your admin contact email?).

@grrrr_shark @Optional Flaming spiders? How much do they need to eat to sustain the flames?

@retr0id

o.O

So... remote access is also cut off? I wonder who's been responsible for doing _that_.

If not, I really wonder what kind of sabotage would be made in any way easier by ability to physically access an office.

@joningold This leaves me confused. I thought that this was a major revelation for Aliya, who wanted to find Heaven's Vault (presumably because she expected it to be a vault of ancient writings? at least this is what I assumed was a significant part of her motivation) and then realizes that it's not the kind of thing she was looking for after all. I thought that the only reason this was not an explicit part of gameplay was that the game has no way of knowing when the player has realized that, so it's impossible to do that without running both the risk of spoiling the player _and_ of belaboring the (already) obvious.

Was the intention different?

@joningold So if a character is driven to discover physics (because they observe its effects and are puzzled), physics becomes backstory?

@joningold Actually, a more concrete and obviously known to you example: what about meaning of the word that is translated as vault in Heaven't Vault?

Well, one might think that meanings of ancient words is not lore, because the game is about discovering them (both from the POV of the player as well as the character). Let's for a moment assume otherwise.

If we think that those meanings _in general_ are lore, then _that one in particular_ might still be backstory by virtue of being basically equivalent to one of the central pieces of mystery in the game: what the Heaven't Vault is.

Is this in any way similar to how you think about the lore/backstory distinction?

@joningold Aside: this might be very literally an edge case (i.e. a case on that fuzzy boundary you're talking about), even if the volume taken by cases of this shape is probably a nontrivial fraction of the total volume of the space of stories. The reason I'm asking about it is that I find it way easier to understand definitions (or things-that-are-intended-to-impart-an-intuitive-definition) when I can see what they do in edge cases and what property puts those edge cases on the edge.

@lau Oooh, I forgot about Dzienniki Gwiazdowe in this context. Thanks, it's a very useful source of framing when trying to think about a neutral-gendered sapient entity.

@joningold

I'm not sure I see the difference: in both cases (how turbolifts work vs. existence of secret level) the statement of fact remained true, only the knowledge of characters and reader changed. In both examples the knowledge of the reader _does_ change. Do you mean to have the piece of information in the turbolift example the information is ~generally known to the characters? If not, I don't get the concept of the detail moving/not moving.

If yes, then would having the story be partially about characters discovering that detail change things?

@joningold Is it fair to say that in the way you use these words, lore refers to the rules of the world's evolution (i.e. the rules that allow you do predict what will happen if you know ~everything about the current state of the world) and narrative is the description of the particular evolution that's happening during the time period (and spatial area) the piece of fiction describes? (Where we understand "state of the world" at the level of detail/precision that the reader is expected to.)

I'm curious what you'd think about the boundary between lore and backstory in fiction that goes way deeper than usual on the "precision of the world's description" axis (for example, Clockwork Rocket that has the characters discover their world's physics): is it shifted towards putting things that would ordinarily be in lore into backstory or not.