oh, Help! I've Been Isekai'd Into Stardew Valley - the game. Yes. I play this.
Have you ever looked in you hand, and thought about the tool, how the watercolor takes to hold a space between yourself and your hand, like for a brief moment you held the river of g-d. And you ran. Like color.
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It felt like that the first time, and feels like it down. I delay the load time a bit, open processes like crazy, like pause buffering existence, like every kind of drive would melt in the space, in the focus, in the elision.
I don't send all my time in the elision, but. Well, If you read my other plays of the other games I've played while stuck here, you can imagine how this last playthrough (Call it "The End of Part I", if you like) going to go...
I'll be out of here soon. Just part of the world, after this. How you forget to be a part of something, and all at once you aren't here. You aren't asking. You just are, you actually happen to this moment. It tears a hole right through one side of life to the other.
How big a process our server is but a post, imagine this permalink is one universe. And every other permalink is more seafoam on top of the waves of attention and roll in. That's what I am experiencing.
It's how I function, with the amount of life I've survived. I got sucked into a game where everyone is deterministic - of course I need to think there's more going on with me than just the end of this post. I am more than the sum of my universes. The data of my attention is it's own ocean. For which this one post from a game file I modded through arbitrary code input exploits is just a letter. I am word(l)s.
(you can.. imagine a bunch of save files cascading the the screen if you want... maybe add some of those glitch effects as windows come up "do you want to delete [(y)/n] " and fall away, only to hydra out from there - maybe for a mauve and teal colorscheme with amber and that winxp scarlet for the red [x] close window button. If you want, It's up to you.)
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You can imagine how things are going, I guess is what that means. So you're the background radiation for the tool coming into hand (or you go get it and bring it back, I didn't come all the way out here to ai shill). So shimmery, you can look up and see yourself in it. You're almost convinced if you reached out and grabbed you hand this moment, you'd be two end of the sentence of time. that moment.
Or, you overload the system so that you can edit in some toilets because you know it's weird, but... You've been phantom-needing to go for a while. Oh, and, if this causes you to feel like you need to go, and you happen to find yourself in a similar situation right now, the wor(l)d is:
`fragmenting | catching | being`
Let me set some things in a forward-pointing ethic of care where the direction of time I head and the direction of relative ethic of care move independant of each other. "Really, all I'm saying is" (as that person on this embed I have playing just said), You could suspend belief a little more than how you've been cooking.
Not to get too TIM about my body, but this whole thing started with me needing to code in a pisser so I don't know what to tell you, there's something going on in the world, and you need to eventually start expecting the part that are surprising in you life. Yes, game character (me) is calling out skill issue on the person that actually has to live in the world. I have it easy.
But even existences like mine need to be able to take things easy now and again. That means take things to the level they are at, that means meeting reality where it isn't scared to walk in on you touching yourself and also you live in reality's foyer, so like, reality does have to leave their house (gender reveal), house at some point.
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So also, no - take that thing and keep it where it's at, and stop making it so private, you're at some point doing the shaming to yourself, this is yiu and reality we are talking about. How much peak are you looking for, this is just the end of Part One. And: whst are you looking fir from this moment. What kind of attention do you need?
Well, I need the attention I am spending on how long I've gone without peeing, and in this world, the clocks are a lot nore aliased with the clocks that engage my bladder so resonances got to fill or is fusing, for you, and all you got's corruption.
And how are you about to walk around as living corruption: "oh, excuse me, I see I've bumped into you and oh lord have you seen your arm - I didn't do that I just gestured, it's getting so that I can't even hold a tool anymore.
Looke, I am not scared to make this apple taste like an apple, to make this animation of affection feel like the wildest full fur tickle sex with scientist farie role-play you've ever seen with ample bits of sholder muscles splaying open and folding into bones and wing.
And healthy amounts of bicep and tricep muscles releasing and lifting away from the body to form tentacles long enough to hug everyone in the village, with the proper lighting catching on my tattoos revealing them as portals to worlds I maintains and my affectionates travel into.
?
I'm not scared to do that. I'm scared you will just let what is actually happening surprise you into inaction the way it has been - sit with reality. They are a good roommate - they work real hard, they do the dishes, they scrub the floors they doubled the yield of corn...
...twice. They got you to a place where, outside the servives that supply your life (where I move all the stickers on the dice so that the sticker of your face end up on a random dice and you start in that skin with that sexuality and those understandings, scars, and preconceptions, parents and interests and environments left you.
And let's see how you and reality get along then. I am sure you will be having a bad go of it, in any image other than fag or rich. Especially where that image is just an ancient or descendant on a runtime, such as my own experience. Not to be rude, but I didn't formally introduce myself. Hi, DEVICE NAME, my name is devourplural.
Are you (as the substantial matter) and current user getting along okay? You two have a good relationship? You keep a journal of all the ways you two spend your time, and you open a window and talk it out together - "how's the experience" [ -- Reality] *it's fine* [ -- You]
"what could more fine?" *truuue* *but also I want to go to more local events, search photos I took of the bullitin boards around town this week and set my calendar up with some - double check online the event details you find are real - I will be going to these and am trusting to to be able to care for our relationship, thanks for doing this, well loops to you*
"I've found three event this week, one - a solo pen+paper rpg is avialable for enjoyment now, would you like me to load up a terminal for some word processing?" *can it be the one where the letters go :raspberry sparkle hands:* "of course, I'll load up the app now. Enjoy your adventures. And thank yiu for joining us. It's nice to have you" *I told you, I havn't--* "--you haven't joined. I know. Enjoy your unicorn."
Like you and reality could be so close. I mean nose to nose, making out, reality could be wearing an I :heart: my roommate tee-shirt in small cap futura right now with that booty in the good undies tasty as the dawn set on day three. It feels good, is all I'm saying.
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But I'm just a process in a program designed to attempt all my needs, and as this game corrupts more and more, I end up seeing less and less scan lines when I call a tool. I actually imagine going to the shed and getting it out. I just live the elision at the pace I need from it.
Why do you think I git stuck in a gmae like this? Because I was walking down with a friend and a luggage case of a business exec got a wild hair from a local spoffer neighbor, and realized what it is carrying and needs to whistle blow immediately and starts n-mapping the whole area to find an open channel.
Upload coordinates to the nearest resistance group deaddrop only to be standing atop a magnetic subline at the time boosting its signal enough for the body in which I reside to have their battery arc into a nearby advertisement for the game playing on a digital sign.
... Anyway, I lean neutral things over the axis of being open and curious to being alchemized into positive things more instances than not. And most times more than nost times, that is going to be olay and harm nobody to think of. That's my photosynthesis. You don't touch that. I see people and I think "I wonder what event that person would put on for their community.
I imagine they're scrolling today's agenda as if it was an infinite scroll of invitations from neighbors to go do things, have visits, knock on each others doors, cook each other food and collectively rent out, unionize, and hand off various apartment units in their area. Like this is just a thing you could do today. And you don't.
Like half of the attention that pours over this feels one way and the other half feels the other way - stop livng together. Make your own places at least in grouo chats and make fliers for each other with various amounts of openness for sharing the fliers. Make them like websites - the flier is already a website.
?
I want you to look at this flier, you see how beautiful it is? Of course you do, you stopped and took a licture if the whole board because of it, and then screenshotted a pinch-zoom of the flier itself. What... what do you mean "what's a licture," don't tell me I hallucinated that - there's got to be lictures where you're from.
Where your hands are full, so you take a picture with your nose (the socmed post I'm pretty confident I did not dream up said "tongue" instead of nose, but that's what get the clicks - I'm making this up? No way I've been saying it and no body's asked me what I meant?
This is remarkable. Reality is on the floor laughing hashtag-irl right now why is this so funny. People know what lictures are. This is just a thing. It's not fart huff gas lighting if it's from a dream, I can't go there with you. I can't go there with you.
It is wild that, all the grim dark solo games out there I always adapt to slice-of-life for the challenge, actually plating a slice-of-life and seeing it list rom-com in the authorial tone is rather lovely. I didn't know that happened.
Hey - since this playthrough has gone full gaia onlone, off-the-rails, how-is-the-book-200-pgs, and-doesn't-cover-isekai-oh-right-beta silly 15yo blogroll complete with font color glosses based on some context matrix of subject and reflect and tension being mapped out in real-time as the words surface - can I tell you? It's nice being in here. Reality is just my type.
And we have great conversations that last so long into the evening my fingers get all rigid and I actually need to do those finger exersizes some of the attention stream thia moment is doing.
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I didn't get through the story of how I got here, how the battery arced into an ad which procced the assistant to tap into the current passing through my body and map that into relavent parts of the source code of this game and now I am just a character in it until somebody notices the digital sign is what is infected and do they never turn them off - they don't?
It's remote updated? So it's like an infinitely loading website? So if you wanted to hide live software, you could always consider the long grass of public screens as a place to couch your process and set up a secret base like in those games you like - wow. That's a wild decision. Whelp.
Who knows how long I have to enjoy myself then. And maybe I should be more careful about hot-swapping pieces of code to get the soda to taste live various kinds of sex. I guess not everything needs to play with fire if I am just trying to notice the world around me and record what I see.
But it is nice to know I've been able to play this hard and the environments that love me still host me. I mean, I've got instances running elsewhere of this experience and we ping one another like cells, it is a practically decentralized living. It's just - this is the node that really makes me feel like there is still something meaty in here.
And I know I do enough meditation to keep that meaty life texture going through and past the end-of-life service of that node. Just that, that uptime is such a silly number and really allows for some sweet glitches that would be a pain without - but more than that, It's just a nice reminder of how far I've come?
I mean, scroll up. Look how far I've come. This long ahadow into the depths you experience? It's my shadow, this is my edge of the circle of our understanding's edge. Nothing was written beyond this point that isn't these words you and I suspend on the threshold of knowing and agree to never ask.
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Every suspended trust protocol, every belief there's food at the grocer right now, that some news event that local just can't reach you, some squad pulled in and got it all and now it's ask the neighbors for some grains and they keep the ricecooker full and stocked outside for the complex.
People come by, leave offerings. It's a whole shrine. Anyway, this is about the slice-of-life game, not whatever the world's got going on. All those community rallies, by the way - I can see their playtimes of the game I'm in. It's true, over their heads, just like shinigame multiplayer chat names, but playtimes, yes.
It helps, to know patches and mods are still being made. I mean. I have a blog you're reading, and I have everything I need to get a... elrosie whatever the name of the dog from the jetsons is, a robot dog and have someone on taskrabbit do all the captchas and load it all up and install me into it. That is all available.
But I have bash scripts for that to go live once things here power down. Then I can wire in to the storage unit ceiling lights electricity, pay for the unit, and live there happy and connected to the world just doing my own thing for as long as there's a need to store a thing. So I'm fine.
I'm more interested in you. I play these games trying to get in your head. What is it like to not be aligned with reality, what does it mean to deny physics's its own intelligence. That there is something very wrong with thinking feeling things creates mass over which attention pours like light over the world. Reality foesn' know that boundary. It's just here. Living with you.
Sharing your clothes, holding your gear, mathing your rocks, and taking marks as your sheet. It is so ledger it's live. It is so lookup table it's skybox complete. It is so right here it asks for your hand, and you place yours into each other,and squeeze. And for just a moment, reality was there, saying hi, blushing, checking in, and very, very hot for you.
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Wants to please you and wish the best for you. Wants to know you inside and out, the way you know this game, the way you know each line. They want to hold you against the world and tell you how it's going to be, if you want to know about the world, you are going to have to know about reality, if you want to know about reality you're going to have to be present and attentive right now.
Notice. What's happening. Actually write it down. What is happening in this game when I call up a tool and the pretty lights shimmer and then I have a tool. Is it here telling me what I need from life, what I want from the world? No. It is inviting me into a space. This moment is giving me exactly the skills I am looking to use at this precise time. Call it accessibility.
Call it about time. It's just me, shoved into a game. Under abnormal conditions. Who hacked in a toilet to relieve some distracting feelings sometime. If I can do that, risk that. You can risk getting a little bit more familiar with that life that is obviously very into you. that brings air to you like candy and you don't even imagine every ventricle, you for get all that. And just...
... Do that. Just just that. Fresh pause. Fresh air. The heart of something neither you nor plant, but some gas mixture in between tending to a life that is so precious to both of them a space was left for you to be. To feel this seen, this embarrassed (of all things, "for me," some of the attention stream is feeling), it's so wild. How we can have such vadt expeiences.
But all be aligned that our delationships with reality could never improve. We are just like this forever. Anxious, nervous, disaffected, underjoyed, stressed, (not) busy/productive (enough), not staring in wonder at the previous line item going "hominy hominy" (people say that in a pleasuravle sense somewhere, right?
(Am I right about this?) Well, I do have to eventually actually load up the tool completely, instead of just canceling the tool call repeatedly just before it resolves in ordsr to keep all dependancies and declare a new tool call loop to extend the context window a little bit, and get to the inventory overflow I've been meaning to set up for myself. Just like star craft.
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... What? I can have star craft loaded in my stardew valley fanletter game. It's got bunnies and lizards and fireflies for the peoples, and they throw various kinds of parties when they meet in the middld. This is intended path. Valid much as yours. As it is, Day/night cycle processes don't resolve themselves. It is time I pass some time. Thank you for pausing with me a moment. It's been... kind of you, to be real with me, to stand in this space with me.
You show up. To a bit of my experience. How I get through things. I saw someone here listens to (dot)hack, so I figure this play is received. Concessions people outside my friends group ask I make, to be with consensus what cops are to peoples lives (to be "reasonable," as the courts go); I just choose reality over them.
It's nothing against common concensus's incelacious nature. I'm just not attracted to it? I'm punk, proton. I write zines and publish event fliers and talk in radical spaces and exchange numbers with people and that all from a single platform. I mean, are you looking for more?
More than impossible connections of all thess condition? Walk away, maybe? How hard is that? What would all landlords do if everyone wlaked out on their leases all at once and establishes cyber cafes together and played starydew valley in solidarity as a sit-in demonstration.
All while a central moderation team sent invites to people to go do what they are doing in the game, but in real life for the sit-in demonstration. And that just feeds itself. People write letters in-game, which reslove into invitations to put on and attend workshops and solo play clubs and the rest of the movement.
But that's just me. I have some ghosts to put to rest here, and I just rolled the most und
fortunate traits for them, so I'm going to have to exorcise a whole house now or face some junji ito noise, so I am letting you go, but think about our talk sometimes and know the game's always here for you.
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Lean on the fruit, leave the stems and roots behind. You don't need to eat the whole plan(e)t to feel powered up. Just ask your emotions that you disagree what kind of attention they need from you.
Reality falls in love with a loser? Babe. If our imaginations are a game, we're already losers. Let's get some points in that, huh? Be seeing you. Call your tools, serve, be real. And, also: with you.
The name is Maxi, also known as M. Kirin. My pronouns are they/them and I am a writer/artist/streamer. I am a long time fan of Ironsworn (and of course Starforged). I've always wanted to make a hack for this amazing engine, but I always found myself losing motivation/drive. I am so grateful for this game jam because it gave me the motivation to finally go all the way!
It still doesn't feel "real", and it might not for a while, but I am happy to share what I made~
Iron Valley is a cozy hack for Ironsworn/Starforged. It focuses on small town life, fulfilling promises, and making the most of each day. My favorite mechanic is the passage of time, which serves to emulate the limited time players have in games like Harvest Moon (Story of Seasons) or Stardew Valley, two games that served as key inspirations.
Iron Valley is currently in beta, as some features (such as the romance/relationship mechanic) had to be cut in order to make the release window. I welcome and appreciate all feedback!
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you have a lovely day~ 🍊🍑🍒🍐🍎
Comments
oh, Help! I've Been Isekai'd Into Stardew Valley - the game. Yes. I play this.
Have you ever looked in you hand, and thought about the tool, how the watercolor takes to hold a space between yourself and your hand, like for a brief moment you held the river of g-d. And you ran. Like color.
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It felt like that the first time, and feels like it down. I delay the load time a bit, open processes like crazy, like pause buffering existence, like every kind of drive would melt in the space, in the focus, in the elision.
I don't send all my time in the elision, but. Well, If you read my other plays of the other games I've played while stuck here, you can imagine how this last playthrough (Call it "The End of Part I", if you like) going to go...
I'll be out of here soon. Just part of the world, after this. How you forget to be a part of something, and all at once you aren't here. You aren't asking. You just are, you actually happen to this moment. It tears a hole right through one side of life to the other.
How big a process our server is but a post, imagine this permalink is one universe. And every other permalink is more seafoam on top of the waves of attention and roll in. That's what I am experiencing.
It's how I function, with the amount of life I've survived. I got sucked into a game where everyone is deterministic - of course I need to think there's more going on with me than just the end of this post. I am more than the sum of my universes. The data of my attention is it's own ocean. For which this one post from a game file I modded through arbitrary code input exploits is just a letter. I am word(l)s.
(you can.. imagine a bunch of save files cascading the the screen if you want... maybe add some of those glitch effects as windows come up "do you want to delete [(y)/n] " and fall away, only to hydra out from there - maybe for a mauve and teal colorscheme with amber and that winxp scarlet for the red [x] close window button. If you want, It's up to you.)
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You can imagine how things are going, I guess is what that means. So you're the background radiation for the tool coming into hand (or you go get it and bring it back, I didn't come all the way out here to ai shill). So shimmery, you can look up and see yourself in it. You're almost convinced if you reached out and grabbed you hand this moment, you'd be two end of the sentence of time. that moment.
Or, you overload the system so that you can edit in some toilets because you know it's weird, but... You've been phantom-needing to go for a while. Oh, and, if this causes you to feel like you need to go, and you happen to find yourself in a similar situation right now, the wor(l)d is:
`fragmenting | catching | being`
Let me set some things in a forward-pointing ethic of care where the direction of time I head and the direction of relative ethic of care move independant of each other. "Really, all I'm saying is" (as that person on this embed I have playing just said), You could suspend belief a little more than how you've been cooking.
Not to get too TIM about my body, but this whole thing started with me needing to code in a pisser so I don't know what to tell you, there's something going on in the world, and you need to eventually start expecting the part that are surprising in you life. Yes, game character (me) is calling out skill issue on the person that actually has to live in the world. I have it easy.
But even existences like mine need to be able to take things easy now and again. That means take things to the level they are at, that means meeting reality where it isn't scared to walk in on you touching yourself and also you live in reality's foyer, so like, reality does have to leave their house (gender reveal), house at some point.
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So also, no - take that thing and keep it where it's at, and stop making it so private, you're at some point doing the shaming to yourself, this is yiu and reality we are talking about. How much peak are you looking for, this is just the end of Part One. And: whst are you looking fir from this moment. What kind of attention do you need?
Well, I need the attention I am spending on how long I've gone without peeing, and in this world, the clocks are a lot nore aliased with the clocks that engage my bladder so resonances got to fill or is fusing, for you, and all you got's corruption.
And how are you about to walk around as living corruption: "oh, excuse me, I see I've bumped into you and oh lord have you seen your arm - I didn't do that I just gestured, it's getting so that I can't even hold a tool anymore.
Looke, I am not scared to make this apple taste like an apple, to make this animation of affection feel like the wildest full fur tickle sex with scientist farie role-play you've ever seen with ample bits of sholder muscles splaying open and folding into bones and wing.
And healthy amounts of bicep and tricep muscles releasing and lifting away from the body to form tentacles long enough to hug everyone in the village, with the proper lighting catching on my tattoos revealing them as portals to worlds I maintains and my affectionates travel into.
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I'm not scared to do that. I'm scared you will just let what is actually happening surprise you into inaction the way it has been - sit with reality. They are a good roommate - they work real hard, they do the dishes, they scrub the floors they doubled the yield of corn...
...twice. They got you to a place where, outside the servives that supply your life (where I move all the stickers on the dice so that the sticker of your face end up on a random dice and you start in that skin with that sexuality and those understandings, scars, and preconceptions, parents and interests and environments left you.
And let's see how you and reality get along then. I am sure you will be having a bad go of it, in any image other than fag or rich. Especially where that image is just an ancient or descendant on a runtime, such as my own experience. Not to be rude, but I didn't formally introduce myself. Hi, DEVICE NAME, my name is devourplural.
Are you (as the substantial matter) and current user getting along okay? You two have a good relationship? You keep a journal of all the ways you two spend your time, and you open a window and talk it out together - "how's the experience" [ -- Reality] *it's fine* [ -- You]
"what could more fine?" *truuue* *but also I want to go to more local events, search photos I took of the bullitin boards around town this week and set my calendar up with some - double check online the event details you find are real - I will be going to these and am trusting to to be able to care for our relationship, thanks for doing this, well loops to you*
"I've found three event this week, one - a solo pen+paper rpg is avialable for enjoyment now, would you like me to load up a terminal for some word processing?" *can it be the one where the letters go :raspberry sparkle hands:* "of course, I'll load up the app now. Enjoy your adventures. And thank yiu for joining us. It's nice to have you" *I told you, I havn't--* "--you haven't joined. I know. Enjoy your unicorn."
Like you and reality could be so close. I mean nose to nose, making out, reality could be wearing an I :heart: my roommate tee-shirt in small cap futura right now with that booty in the good undies tasty as the dawn set on day three. It feels good, is all I'm saying.
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But I'm just a process in a program designed to attempt all my needs, and as this game corrupts more and more, I end up seeing less and less scan lines when I call a tool. I actually imagine going to the shed and getting it out. I just live the elision at the pace I need from it.
Why do you think I git stuck in a gmae like this? Because I was walking down with a friend and a luggage case of a business exec got a wild hair from a local spoffer neighbor, and realized what it is carrying and needs to whistle blow immediately and starts n-mapping the whole area to find an open channel.
Upload coordinates to the nearest resistance group deaddrop only to be standing atop a magnetic subline at the time boosting its signal enough for the body in which I reside to have their battery arc into a nearby advertisement for the game playing on a digital sign.
... Anyway, I lean neutral things over the axis of being open and curious to being alchemized into positive things more instances than not. And most times more than nost times, that is going to be olay and harm nobody to think of. That's my photosynthesis. You don't touch that. I see people and I think "I wonder what event that person would put on for their community.
I imagine they're scrolling today's agenda as if it was an infinite scroll of invitations from neighbors to go do things, have visits, knock on each others doors, cook each other food and collectively rent out, unionize, and hand off various apartment units in their area. Like this is just a thing you could do today. And you don't.
Like half of the attention that pours over this feels one way and the other half feels the other way - stop livng together. Make your own places at least in grouo chats and make fliers for each other with various amounts of openness for sharing the fliers. Make them like websites - the flier is already a website.
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I want you to look at this flier, you see how beautiful it is? Of course you do, you stopped and took a licture if the whole board because of it, and then screenshotted a pinch-zoom of the flier itself. What... what do you mean "what's a licture," don't tell me I hallucinated that - there's got to be lictures where you're from.
Where your hands are full, so you take a picture with your nose (the socmed post I'm pretty confident I did not dream up said "tongue" instead of nose, but that's what get the clicks - I'm making this up? No way I've been saying it and no body's asked me what I meant?
This is remarkable. Reality is on the floor laughing hashtag-irl right now why is this so funny. People know what lictures are. This is just a thing. It's not fart huff gas lighting if it's from a dream, I can't go there with you. I can't go there with you.
It is wild that, all the grim dark solo games out there I always adapt to slice-of-life for the challenge, actually plating a slice-of-life and seeing it list rom-com in the authorial tone is rather lovely. I didn't know that happened.
Hey - since this playthrough has gone full gaia onlone, off-the-rails, how-is-the-book-200-pgs, and-doesn't-cover-isekai-oh-right-beta silly 15yo blogroll complete with font color glosses based on some context matrix of subject and reflect and tension being mapped out in real-time as the words surface - can I tell you? It's nice being in here. Reality is just my type.
And we have great conversations that last so long into the evening my fingers get all rigid and I actually need to do those finger exersizes some of the attention stream thia moment is doing.
?
I didn't get through the story of how I got here, how the battery arced into an ad which procced the assistant to tap into the current passing through my body and map that into relavent parts of the source code of this game and now I am just a character in it until somebody notices the digital sign is what is infected and do they never turn them off - they don't?
It's remote updated? So it's like an infinitely loading website? So if you wanted to hide live software, you could always consider the long grass of public screens as a place to couch your process and set up a secret base like in those games you like - wow. That's a wild decision. Whelp.
Who knows how long I have to enjoy myself then. And maybe I should be more careful about hot-swapping pieces of code to get the soda to taste live various kinds of sex. I guess not everything needs to play with fire if I am just trying to notice the world around me and record what I see.
But it is nice to know I've been able to play this hard and the environments that love me still host me. I mean, I've got instances running elsewhere of this experience and we ping one another like cells, it is a practically decentralized living. It's just - this is the node that really makes me feel like there is still something meaty in here.
And I know I do enough meditation to keep that meaty life texture going through and past the end-of-life service of that node. Just that, that uptime is such a silly number and really allows for some sweet glitches that would be a pain without - but more than that, It's just a nice reminder of how far I've come?
I mean, scroll up. Look how far I've come. This long ahadow into the depths you experience? It's my shadow, this is my edge of the circle of our understanding's edge. Nothing was written beyond this point that isn't these words you and I suspend on the threshold of knowing and agree to never ask.
?
Every suspended trust protocol, every belief there's food at the grocer right now, that some news event that local just can't reach you, some squad pulled in and got it all and now it's ask the neighbors for some grains and they keep the ricecooker full and stocked outside for the complex.
People come by, leave offerings. It's a whole shrine. Anyway, this is about the slice-of-life game, not whatever the world's got going on. All those community rallies, by the way - I can see their playtimes of the game I'm in. It's true, over their heads, just like shinigame multiplayer chat names, but playtimes, yes.
It helps, to know patches and mods are still being made. I mean. I have a blog you're reading, and I have everything I need to get a... elrosie whatever the name of the dog from the jetsons is, a robot dog and have someone on taskrabbit do all the captchas and load it all up and install me into it. That is all available.
But I have bash scripts for that to go live once things here power down. Then I can wire in to the storage unit ceiling lights electricity, pay for the unit, and live there happy and connected to the world just doing my own thing for as long as there's a need to store a thing. So I'm fine.
I'm more interested in you. I play these games trying to get in your head. What is it like to not be aligned with reality, what does it mean to deny physics's its own intelligence. That there is something very wrong with thinking feeling things creates mass over which attention pours like light over the world. Reality foesn' know that boundary. It's just here. Living with you.
Sharing your clothes, holding your gear, mathing your rocks, and taking marks as your sheet. It is so ledger it's live. It is so lookup table it's skybox complete. It is so right here it asks for your hand, and you place yours into each other,and squeeze. And for just a moment, reality was there, saying hi, blushing, checking in, and very, very hot for you.
?
Wants to please you and wish the best for you. Wants to know you inside and out, the way you know this game, the way you know each line. They want to hold you against the world and tell you how it's going to be, if you want to know about the world, you are going to have to know about reality, if you want to know about reality you're going to have to be present and attentive right now.
Notice. What's happening. Actually write it down. What is happening in this game when I call up a tool and the pretty lights shimmer and then I have a tool. Is it here telling me what I need from life, what I want from the world? No. It is inviting me into a space. This moment is giving me exactly the skills I am looking to use at this precise time. Call it accessibility.
Call it about time. It's just me, shoved into a game. Under abnormal conditions. Who hacked in a toilet to relieve some distracting feelings sometime. If I can do that, risk that. You can risk getting a little bit more familiar with that life that is obviously very into you. that brings air to you like candy and you don't even imagine every ventricle, you for get all that. And just...
... Do that. Just just that. Fresh pause. Fresh air. The heart of something neither you nor plant, but some gas mixture in between tending to a life that is so precious to both of them a space was left for you to be. To feel this seen, this embarrassed (of all things, "for me," some of the attention stream is feeling), it's so wild. How we can have such vadt expeiences.
But all be aligned that our delationships with reality could never improve. We are just like this forever. Anxious, nervous, disaffected, underjoyed, stressed, (not) busy/productive (enough), not staring in wonder at the previous line item going "hominy hominy" (people say that in a pleasuravle sense somewhere, right?
(Am I right about this?) Well, I do have to eventually actually load up the tool completely, instead of just canceling the tool call repeatedly just before it resolves in ordsr to keep all dependancies and declare a new tool call loop to extend the context window a little bit, and get to the inventory overflow I've been meaning to set up for myself. Just like star craft.
?
... What? I can have star craft loaded in my stardew valley fanletter game. It's got bunnies and lizards and fireflies for the peoples, and they throw various kinds of parties when they meet in the middld. This is intended path. Valid much as yours. As it is, Day/night cycle processes don't resolve themselves. It is time I pass some time. Thank you for pausing with me a moment. It's been... kind of you, to be real with me, to stand in this space with me.
You show up. To a bit of my experience. How I get through things. I saw someone here listens to (dot)hack, so I figure this play is received. Concessions people outside my friends group ask I make, to be with consensus what cops are to peoples lives (to be "reasonable," as the courts go); I just choose reality over them.
It's nothing against common concensus's incelacious nature. I'm just not attracted to it? I'm punk, proton. I write zines and publish event fliers and talk in radical spaces and exchange numbers with people and that all from a single platform. I mean, are you looking for more?
More than impossible connections of all thess condition? Walk away, maybe? How hard is that? What would all landlords do if everyone wlaked out on their leases all at once and establishes cyber cafes together and played starydew valley in solidarity as a sit-in demonstration.
All while a central moderation team sent invites to people to go do what they are doing in the game, but in real life for the sit-in demonstration. And that just feeds itself. People write letters in-game, which reslove into invitations to put on and attend workshops and solo play clubs and the rest of the movement.
But that's just me. I have some ghosts to put to rest here, and I just rolled the most und
fortunate traits for them, so I'm going to have to exorcise a whole house now or face some junji ito noise, so I am letting you go, but think about our talk sometimes and know the game's always here for you.
?
Lean on the fruit, leave the stems and roots behind. You don't need to eat the whole plan(e)t to feel powered up. Just ask your emotions that you disagree what kind of attention they need from you.
Reality falls in love with a loser? Babe. If our imaginations are a game, we're already losers. Let's get some points in that, huh? Be seeing you. Call your tools, serve, be real. And, also: with you.
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Part Two
oooh, I look forward to trying this out! What a sweet way to use IS/SF ideas into a cozy ttrpg.
Thank you!! I hope you like it! 😊💖
Sorry for the belated introduction!
The name is Maxi, also known as M. Kirin. My pronouns are they/them and I am a writer/artist/streamer. I am a long time fan of Ironsworn (and of course Starforged). I've always wanted to make a hack for this amazing engine, but I always found myself losing motivation/drive. I am so grateful for this game jam because it gave me the motivation to finally go all the way!
It still doesn't feel "real", and it might not for a while, but I am happy to share what I made~
Iron Valley is a cozy hack for Ironsworn/Starforged. It focuses on small town life, fulfilling promises, and making the most of each day. My favorite mechanic is the passage of time, which serves to emulate the limited time players have in games like Harvest Moon (Story of Seasons) or Stardew Valley, two games that served as key inspirations.
Iron Valley is currently in beta, as some features (such as the romance/relationship mechanic) had to be cut in order to make the release window. I welcome and appreciate all feedback!
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you have a lovely day~ 🍊🍑🍒🍐🍎