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www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
Patrick Willems @patrickhwillems.bsky.social ⋅ 1m
The Verge @theverge.com ⋅ 2d
Transformers Wiki @tfwiki.net ⋅ 2d
Josiah Hawthorne @josiahhawthorne.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
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️𝓝𝓪𝓷𝓲 
oh shit…
Well that’s Sal’s edge, right there. No other speedrunner gets laid.
I mean, who would want to, their whole deal is being done with things super fast. “I think I can shave two more seconds off if I think about Rogue from X-Men in a silk ted-that did it!”
Rogue is kind of an awkward fantasy girl, unless you’re into having Leech in the Joyce chair.
Eh, there’s enough ways to make it work that it’s fine. Collars, odd power interactions, not letting the parties touch…Art works best if you have limitations.
Or do how I do and imagine you’re Magneto.
Or just dont’ think about that part. It’s not how I work, but I know plenty of people who do.
I just have trouble imagining someone being enough of a nerd that Rogue is their fantasy girl, but not enough of a nerd for their next thought to be, “But how would we deal with her powers?”
(I cannot confirm or deny having put thought into how to deal with Rogue’s powers in an intimate situation.)
((Actually, I guess that’s kind of a pointless disclaimer, given that I already mentioned the “Leech in the Joyce chair” solution.))
Easy: My dick has plot armour.
Last I checked, Rogue can control her power now. So let the fantasies run wild(er).
Do her powers work through latex?
…. I’m trying to workshop a counter-example hinging on a 100% completion speedrunner, and I can’t seem to get it more than 90% finished. Better keep working on it.
Personally, I fully plan to speed run getting my GF off, I also plan to go for the high score with her, too. Get her the fastest orgasms and the most in one session.
Wow, and I thought Lucy and Walky were going to win the prize for most awkward conversation.
What’s the prize for that, again? And do we split the prize in case of a tie, or award both conversations the full amount?
The conversation is the prize!
The real prize is the awkwardness we found along the way!
Blaine face
Amber: I was stabbing at the ultimate embodiment of evil!
Sal: I was a kid!
Amber: I know but so terrifying! Also, I couldn’t stab my dad. Yet.
Dumbing of Age Book 14: In the Fog of My Petty, Misdirected Rage
Still don’t understand this mario stuff lol
So, video games are a thing. Some people are very good at them, and want there to be ways to judge that skill. One of those ways is speedrunning, beating the game as quickly as possible. This is often a combination of routing skill(figuring out the fastest way through the game), player skill, luck, and consistency.
For popular speed games, the route for beating might be incredibly optimized, with the original Mario’s shortest category being so clearly understood that we know what the theoretical fastest time down to the frame is. And the game has no relevant luck elements. So it’s entirely down to player skill to hit that fastest possible time.
But, at the time this storyline began, we didn’t actually know that hitting that time was possible, and hundreds of people have tried for extended periods without hitting that time. (there’s only 1 run currently that has crossed the main hurdle for that). Amber is in-universe trying to beat that record, and has been working for months at it. Sal, since then, has picked up the game and gotten the WR in a handful of tries. This annoys Amber, since it both takes away an accomplishment she wanted(even if Amber hits the key skip now, Sal got there first and will get the accolades/invites/etc), and also minimizes all the work she put into it(why work for months if someone else can just show up and do it easily? Amber is going to take that as a sign from the universe that she sucks.)
(SMB1 is not a speed game I care about, so details of this might be wrong)
Video games are measured in frames per second. Frames are usually locked to 60. Mario 1 is a game people have been trying to play as fast as possible for 35 years and the final accomplishment is saving exactly one frame (1/60th of a second) in one specific interaction without making a single mistake on any of the other hundreds of hyper specific inputs as well. Amber has been doing it for months, years in our time, and the community has been doing it for decades.
Sal had a quick fuck, got bored, and did it in an afternoon.
Amber is, understandably, bitter.
I’ve been watching the discussion of speedrunning and thinking, “why?” until I recalled how good it felt to complete Colossal Cave Adventure without any wasted moves. I never thought to time it, though, and probably wouldn’t now. To each yx own, I guess.
You scored 350 out of a possible 350 using 271 turns.(Unix port of the original, which comes in Slackware’s bsdgames package.)
I think that’s actually faster than the fastest possible run without dwarf or pirate interference. I had a very conveniently-timed pirate encounter on my way back from the troll bridge that meant I didn’t have to make another dive into the deep cave to retrieve the eggs (the second time), emerald, and vase. I just grabbed them then and picked up the treasures I’d been carrying when I went to get the pirate’s chest. I had to go back for the pearl after getting the trident back from the pirate, but that’s a much shorter trip. I also had to ditch my axe to carry all the stuff from the pirate’s stash, which could have gone badly, but I got lucky and the only dwarf I met after that was at the top of the orange column on my way out, so I lost him sliding down into the Bird Chamber.
He’s a plumber who has to rescue a princess from an evil, fire-breathing turtle. Sometimes his insecure brother helps him. Sometimes they all play tennis or go go-karting together.
I didn’t know how much I needed this synopsis! lol Thank you. It all makes sense now.
I always interpreted it as a Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog situation.
I’ve decided the whole thing is a show that keeps getting rebooted, like Ninja Turtles. The current actors do a lot of charity sporting events and goofy game shows between seasons, thus the various sport/racing games and Mario Party, respectively.
That’s pretty much how Shigeru Miyamoto squares the lore and continuity of all the different Mario games. (The characters are like actors in a troupe, whose roles are flexible in service of the particular game’s needs.)
Damn it, now I want the game where Super Peach and her brother Mario have to save Princess Bowser from the evil King Luigi.
yay for post walnut clarity
You’d think Sal would have more tact than to just casually mention you just finished banging the ex of the person you’re trying to apologize to.
She does. She also has a non-zero amount of spite. Sal and Amber’s relationship status is platonic it’s complicated.
Sal and Amber’s relationship status is platonic it’s complicated.
…well put. Complicated further by their shared friendship with Amazi-Girl, so that’s also a thing, but I think secondary.
Yeah, I drafted a couple attempts at a statement that acknowledged all parties to the relationship before going with something that didn’t mention Amazi-Girl directly.
Would she? I feel like tact isn’t her strong suit, historically
Judging from what we’ve seen of them, tact isn’t the strong suit of any of the Walkerton clan. Well, the dad seems like he might but he hasn’t really talked enough for me to get a read on him…
His whole thing is being the reasonable parent while also excusing his wife behavior so I say tact is a skill he has well trained.
He’s a born boat-steadier.
Walky can actually be relied on to employ his tact in choosing to avoid emotionally fraught conversations that are likely to blow up in his face.
… granted, that’s tact in the CHOICE to avoid them, not tact in the actual avoidance.
Sal can be tactful when she so chooses. She doesn’t often choose to be with Amber.
There WERE those time she tried to attack her for literally no reason but her badly managed trauma.
Amber dumped Danny so she has no cause to complain or be angry about Sal’s lack of tact.
….is what everyone has been saying about Lucy and Walky so the same standard applies right?
We’ll find out, I guess!
Yes, actually. Why is that even in question? If you’re not dating someone, who they fuck is none of your business. They can fuck your dad if they want to, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
people have emotions that aren’t logical. shoving uncomfortable things into their face for no reason other than making them uncomfortable is generally considered rude.
Talking about something isn’t shoving it in their face.
Thanks, Captain Obvious.
It’s none of their business, but also not unreasonable to just not want to hear about it, too. Or really to hear about anybody’s fucking, really.
Then she can shut her ears off.
Is it possible to learn this power?
Yeah, just develop ADHD and wait for someone to mention your name in another room.
Sal isn’t trying to apologize, though. She didn’t do anything wrong.
Sal doesn’t do tact but she’s also very direct, which is a double-edged sword. When she started dating Danny she told Amber immediately. She’s also not going to sugar-coat anything.
When where and why is she trying to apologize here?
It’s almost admirable that Amber manages to somehow be mad despite having no high ground. I guess I’ve underestimated her power.
What part of petty misdirected rage don’t you understand?!/j
The person making you mad having the high ground rarely makes people less mad, at least in my experience.
more joyce and joe thanks
Why would Amber have assumed Sal was left-handed?
She didn’t. She stabbed Sal’s right hand, thinking Sal was right-handed.
I think Sal is left-handed and Amber reached across her to stab her right hand thinking she was right-handed.
Oh, I didn’t remember where Sal had been stabbed or if she wears gloves on both hands, and assumed the gloved hand she was gesturing with was the stab location (because of glove).
Of course she wears gloves on both hands. Otherwise she’d constantly sweat on one hand and/or the other would freeze. She’d be distracted nonstop.
Plus being asked 1,000,000 times: why do you wear only one glove?
The tension’s so thick you could cut it wit–
Glad to see someone take a stab at that joke. I’m sure people held off because they weren’t sure they’d be able to cut it.
Phone. Tension so thick you could cut it with a phone.
I certainly wouldn’t try. I’m clumsy enough with words that I’d be walking a real knife’s edge trying to stay appropriate.
Guys, cut it out with the knife puns.
What’s your point?
Too edgy
Amber’s glaring daggers at Sal.
Slightly off topic but the slipshine advert featuring unique characters makes wonder if slipshines actually highlight characters we don’t see in the main story? Is there like a new story in IU featuring unseen characters in the official smut?
Clearly its Bizzaro World Joyce, Jennifer and Walky, like in Seinfeld.
Nice commentary on how racist and sexist the gaming community can be. Yeah, some people are definitely immediately disbelief her. Loudly and angrily.
Actually I think this one is a bit of a miss on Willis’ part. Old game speedrunning groups tend to be very inclusive, and there are more than a few high-profile community members who are visible minorities, outspokenly queer, etc etc. A very different crowd than the usual horde of goons hooting about CoD or LoL or whatnot.
Maybe so, but Sal doesn’t know this.
Maybe that specific group is, but if it made any kind of news and reached beyond the group…
Even inclusive groups will have loud assholes, they might meet more backlash but they will still complain.
Oh COME ON, Amber, overshare!
I am shipping them,
I’m tempted, but we have word of Willis that Sal is straight, and I feel like if there was an ounce of the Sapphic in Amber we would have seen it in dialog regarding her or Joyce’s fics.
Look when it comes to gay ships, especially ones like this one, canon sexuality can be disregarded. If you put gay characters in straight ships, it’s pretty shitty, but the opposite is free game.
That’s fair. I suppose it depends on what the shipper wants from shipping. I’d rather something canon plausible, but Ray’s reasons are their own.
Even if you clear the “Sal is canonically extremely straight” the next hurdle is that even if Sal liked girls Amber would be pretty low on a list of girls Sal would want to date
I very strongly disagree because it’s usually under the guise of “So-and-So was bi this whole time actually” but ‘bi’ here means “They actually will never have another het relationship again and those were actually why said character was miserable the whole time.” Which, as a bi person in a het marriage always feels really shitty for reasons I have trouble putting my finger on.
People can write what they want, I’ll read anything if it has a good story, I just think that if an author says “x is ” it should be viewed as some degree of shitty to change it regardless of which direction it’s moving.
(Clarifying here that I’m talking about situations where a character’s sexuality is explicitly stated. Like the author or the character outright said “I’m straight.” If it’s never stated and the straightness is just inferred from them being with the opposite gender then I agree it’s free game to pair them up with whoever you want or to explore those dynamics. Also you can do it anyways.)
There is just a different standards for straight characters that gay ones for obvious reasons.
The author didn’t say they all work at a coffee shop where nothing bad ever happens either. Neither shipping nor fanfic is about what the author has said is canon and they get absolutely no input on it. Nor should they. It’s generally bad policy to be reading fanfic of your own work in the first place or at least to admit to it. Besides giving the author input into who you ship gets far too close to the bad old days when an author might sue you if you made the wrong two characters (usually both male) fuck in your fanfic.
Sometimes a person just wants to explore what a relationship between two (or more) characters looks like regardless of what canon says about whether those characters would conceivable get together or not and I think too many people have been forgetting that lately. And forgetting that leads both to people thinking that what the author has canonically said matters when it comes to shipping two characters and the equally shitty harassment of authors by people who think their ship should be canon.
If what you ship and what’s canon matches that’s a happy accident but neither side gets to tell the other what to do.
What’s the issue with reading fanfic about your own stuff? I’d absolutely wanna see what stories people were coming up with for my characters, it sounds cool.
It opens you up to weirdos deciding you plagiarized their fanfic in your latest installment of the work they based it on.
Hell, slashfic itself started with Spock/Kirk. Two characters that behaved straight in the original material. But that didn’t stop the literarily-productive fans!
That’s some genuine paranoia if Sal really thinks the *modern* internet would be inclined to disbelieve her record because of her race. Like a lot of this stuff, it woulda been more understandable 30 years ago, but today’s “progressive” bigots would be much more inclined to assume that the white girl stole the record from the half-black/half-white one.
I understand where that resentment comes from and I don’t blame people for feeling it, but when it becomes that paranoid, it’s getting in the way of recognizing when actual progress along these lines has occured.
The competitive gaming space is overwhelmingly white and male, and in general the farther you are from that description the less respect you are going to get. “Girls don’t play video games” didn’t die in the 90s, as much as we wish it were so. And on a purely demographic basis, an overwhelmingly white and male group, especially an insular online group of people who are generally socially inept, is going to trend conservative or alt-right. Or, in 2024, just full on fascist. It would come as no surprise to me if “they cheated/hacked/fake news/etc” wasn’t instantly said about any newcomer who didn’t fit the expectation of what a speedrunner looks like.
Out of curiosity, do you actually have first-hand experience with speedrunning communities? My experience is very different from what you describe, so if so I’d be curious to know which games you found this in.
Yeah, my experience with the speed running community has been that there’s a shockingly direct white-male-to-transwoman pipeline, that most of the people in it are LGBT in some way, and also incredibly left.
“Competitive gaming” like CoD, LoL, esports, basically any game where you’re looking at a team of people attacking another team, THAT is pretty white and male and non-inclusive. The speed running community is not that at all.
Plus, even if Sal was full white, there would be an immediate, “Oh she’s a fake gamer no way she did it”. Amber does have an appearance closer to what the internet would expect for a gamer girl – Glasses, shorter, chubbier, baggier clothes, etc.
I think its an understandable level of cynicism on her part. Huge portions of her life have been impacted by being a dangerous/hot black girl, to the point that she feels like she needs to play into that stereotype for self-defense if nothing else. I’d even say its part of why she really love her relationship with Danny, how she doesn’t need to be all of that, he’s a giant dork who is at home with being a giant dork and cares about who she actually is at the core, so she can let her hair down, so to speak.
I also think that she’s very wrong about this, though. Nothing I’ve seen about the speedrunning community implies that they’d be gatekeepery about individuals performing speedruns, Awesome Games Done Quick might have a high “straight white male” quotient, but they’ve always seemed quite welcoming of anyone that isn’t in that mold.
But we can go “she doesn’t know the community, she’s been through shit, her assumptions are understandable” regardless.
While I’m sure that Games Done Quick is not the be-all, end-all of the speed running community, and that there’s probably pockets of people who despise them, I feel the need to highlight the culture I’ve absorbed through multiple years of hanging out there:
– On top of the two main charity marathons, they do two smaller ones in the spring and fall that are exclusively “Women, or anyone who defines themselves as a woman in a way meaningful to themselves.” So mostly women and NB’s that are genderfluid, or femme presenting, and many transwomen.
– They do… At least 1, if not more than one, black speedrunning events, highlighting black members of the community (I know Juneteenth is one event, I think there’s another)
– “Trans Right” routinely wins bid wars to name characters/save files, with community members donating in the $500-2000 range to actually win that bid war. “Trans Rights are Human Rights” is an incredibly common send-off for the hosts/runners as they leave.
– They proudly display everyone’s pronouns under their tag on the streams, and I’d say the organizers/people in charge are fairly evenly split male/female/trans, with maybe a slight lean/overlap towards male.
– One of the major charity runs is for Doctors Without Borders, who primarily operates in non-white countries, and many of the interviews/what they do segments are subtitled and non-English.
Honestly, I think the only reason that there isn’t even more diversity on the GDQ stage is just because they literally cannot make it more diverse. They go out of their way to make it inclusive.
Trans is not a separate category from male and female.
Neither are you
*runs out of the house in a hysterical tizzy, dropping several AAA batteries from my pocket*
Sometimes it is (non-binary people exist and are trans). I didn’t read the above essay, so I don’t know the exact way they referred to it.
I think it was just a misunderstanding on morleuca’s part– “women and NB’s that are genderfluid, or femme presenting, and many transwomen” was the part, and can see how that looks like “women and trans women,” but I think it was meant as “women, many of whom are trans women” (though I added the spacing).
I think it was the “fairly evenly split male/female/trans”, which is a bit more of a problem.
The intention seems good and the meaning clear, but as written it does imply trans is a separate thing from male/female.
is it supposed to say “evenly split male/female and cis/trans” or “evenly split cis-male/cis-female/trans”?
That makes sense, though it’s also possible that it’s referring to trans people who are in fact not male/female. And I get a lot of people would use nonbinary there, but I do know plenty of people who use trans as a gender category. It seems a bit splitting hairs as a focus; I wouldn’t say writing it that way is actually wrong, but I can see how people could take it separating cis and trans people of the same gender rather than going beyond two genders.
I meant people who are genderfluid, demi-whatever, or non-binary. There’s several different labels that trans is covering there, not just transwoman/transman
Yeah, if any error is to be had, it is similar to that of Joyce’s when she asked Dorothy whether or not she knew anyone of their friends who “transed all the way” (i.e. Carla)
There really is no such thing as “trans-ing all the way” because masculine and feminine are not opposites, but rather just two genders out of many, many different genders, most of which don’t even have names yet.
And yes, that means that NB (including genderfluid folk like myself) do in fact fall under the trans umbrella. ^^
If it helps any, when I said “evenly split male/female/trans”, I mostly meant that because there’s about 3 men, 3 women, 2 genderfluid/NBs, and at least one trans person that I know of?
So yeah, it’s evenly split between people who are cis/trans, and people who are men/women/NB, but since NB falls under the trans umbrella, I didn’t see the need to try and break down every gender present beyond “There’s a very solid amount of representation.”
Not “Trans women are not real women” but “Many people ARE trans or a third gender identity”
“Trans” covers “Non-binary, demi-boy/girl, genderfluid” and a bunch of other labels than just straight up transman or transwoman. Several members of the hosting team are third gender identities.
What’s this about “‘today’s progressive’ bigots”? I’m a little curious what that means.
I assume they mean the belief that in today “progressive” society, the ones who are now suffering from bigotry are the white and cishet people (and men) because….. Reasons!
I can’t speak about the speedrunning community in particular, but you say “*modern* internet” and compare it to 30 years ago?
Gamergate was less than a decade ago and a good chunk of that went full on fascist. Casual gamer fandom might be more sexist/incel than racist, but it’s really ugly out there.
What there is that’s different is that there’s a lot more progressive push back than there used to be, but that doesn’t mean the old school bigotry isn’t still common.
Did you not see what happened when they put a black guy in the new assassin’s creed or…?
Yeah… when you take a country with a very rich history of stealthy assassins and you make the protagonist a gimmick historical character who had no involvement with that at all. Smells like cultural imperialism.
Is that the new new one or one of the older new ones? I haven’t kept up in ages, so the last protagonists I remember seeing were British and Egyptian. I think maybe there was a Greek thing, but I’m not sure.
I assume so. The newest one is taking place in Japan and out of all the characters they could pick they picked Yasuke, a guy who was brought to Japan and became Oda Nobunaga’s samurai for a year (then Nobunaga died). The way I hear it the Japanese don’t even mind much and are like “Hey it’s Yasuke!” but I imagine there are different opinions on the topic. All in all it just seems weird to take Japan where Ninja lore is so rich and stuff a guy who has no connection to any of that.
I’m not a receptacle for your video game controversy hot takes.
You asked for info, don’t be annoyed that you got it.
It was a binary yes/no question, not a solicitation for a State of the Gaming Address.
And a person expounding on their answer instead of making a single word reply is just natural conversation. If you didn’t care for the human interaction part of the answer, you could have simply searched google for the information instead.
Cool Revali icon.
It’s a chocobo, but thank you! A friend drew it for meeee
Yikes. So many words to say “I don’t know what I’m talking about and actually racism is solved thx.”
Except for the reverse racism of the progressive bigots of course.
I am glad I choose to just skim the comments today and didn’t get involved in whatever bullshit you are spewing.
Look at the bright side, Amber. Sal just gifted you the secret. You just gotta bang before you make a speedrun.
…
… look, I know it’s not scientific, but with a testable hypothesis like that it CAN be scientific if you want.
I’m putting my bet down now, $10, is that Amber’s “bad decision while drunk” is getting laid and it helps her break the record.
Yeah, but with whom? Dang few single guys around who’re into the bits Amber’s got. Asher or Jacob? I see both being resistant.
Given Walky’s previous nervousness about him and Dorothy, and his recent fuckup with Lucy, it would be pretty in character for him to “it doesn’t matter on Garbage Roof” his way into her life again.
Yeesh, that would be even more dramatic and garbagey!
*starts making popcorn
New character!
post nut clarity doesn’t require a partner but would be amusing if she somehow hooked up with jacob despite ppl preducting he and lucy would get togehter
The question is honestly what weird pre-speedrun ‘rituals’ will Amber form because of this interaction.
Sal walking in on Amber stabbing a fake hand?
Amber stabbing her own non dominant hand then banging some dude named Ranny who looks and acts eerily like Danny?
Love how relaxed Sal is about this.
Let’s just put some SALT into that CUT. To help prevent infection!
Eeek, Sal, how many ways can you say “loser” without using the word?
The mods are asleep, everyone post nut clarity!
I know this isn’t the first time Sal’s hand dominance has come up, but this IS the first time I’ve realized she’s a lefty AND rides a motorcycle, which is VERY brave.
What is brave about a lefty riding a motorbike?
I like how these two can just casually chat about Mario speedruns, emotional trauma and stabbing each other in the same conversation. #bestfrenemies
Amber’s experience matches what we know about speed-running in RL.
Sal’s does not.
Willis tries to build a world as true to RL as possible. He’s been known to complain about the extra work this causes.
My brain hurts.
Sal (like me) doesn’t know a lot about the speed-running community
It’s not that weird that she’d assume the worst from a gaming community
I wonder how many ppl have ‘lucked into’ breaking a speedrun/gaming record
I remember seeing a vid of the hitman dev team reacting to someone completing missions super fast
I can totally imagine a scenario where someone’s playing a game on stream, having a break and letting a relative take over for a bit and them ending up performing super well or so in some esports competitive matfh
I love how just now I’m like “Sal’s left handed?”
Either I never realized or just plain forgot.
So I haven’t kept with the comics in about 4 weeks due to being on an extended vacations.
The last strip I read, Amber just burst into Danny’s room to yell at Sal for taking her Speedrunning Record.
This is the first strip I’ve seen upon coming back & other than the clothes change, I feel like I’ve missed nothing which just feels funny.
You basically haven’t missed anything. There was some boring stuff with Lucy (the comments were very normal about it}, Becky and Dina killed Nick and are currently in their way to the cop shop, Joe and Joyce talked about alcohol a little bit, and there’s a very lame dorm party going on that has no activities or music happening.
The cop shop is unrelated to the Nick thing, though, they just thought it’d be fun to test out Dina’s stealing powers on the doughnuts there.
This is just me being very particular about words, but I don’t think I would use the word petty to describe her rage. Her actions were completely unjustified, but describing her rage as petty makes it sound like Sal stole her muffin, not maker her fear for the life of her only friend. I do like the use of the word misdirected though.
She’s described it that way before, because it’s the kind of rage she feels she inherited from Blaine. I remember it reading it for the first time when she punched him.
Some days I’m really confused if this group is over- or under-achieving like crazy. They sure ain’t normal as much as the general college context might try to hide it.