brianyaksha.bsky.social
Frequently ENnie-Nominated Writer & Designer of Sandbox Toolkits, Narrative Designer, Horrorist. Also an ENnie-award winner. Communist.
7,653 posts
1,460 followers
322 following
Active Commenter
comment in response to
post
I have things I could say but I've lost my capacity to speak like a normal human being.
comment in response to
post
If you're asking for the game connected to this generator, it can be found at any of these links:
heycentaur.itch.io/kala-mandala...
www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...
heycentaur.com
comment in response to
post
From my memories of them, yes. Alas, I did not inherit any of them.
comment in response to
post
My grandmother also had so many things made in this style.
comment in response to
post
I feel as though I love the topic, it's one and the same. Only a difference of catalyst.
To give a stage because it is deserved vs to give a stage because it is valued; a stage is given all the same. My end results are what is perceived, not and never my toil.
comment in response to
post
Ah yes, happy pride.
Non-binary and bisexual here.
The religiosity of the poetic parallels are not lost upon me. I'm rather sure that's the fun little joke of all this ordained Doubt. How quickly it slots in, how much it asks me to question and to gaze upon.
I'd have done well centuries ago.
comment in response to
post
...This was meant to be a query for what people might desire to see in a Desi-themed thing. But I've mostly just spoken to what I disdain, and what already exists.
No shock to be found in this tangent or deviation. This is the whirlwind of my mind, a flaying cyclone of shame, arrogance, and hope.
comment in response to
post
There have always been palaces and suffering.
I am truly damned by the weight of the challenge, that I must advocate for the humanity perceived of those within and all around, against the precedent of how little they seem to matter within this medium.
Like goddamn. That's a tall order. And yet.
comment in response to
post
It bothers me further that I realize how much of this pursuit is that which I must shoulder and perform alone if I am to have a hope of conveyance that despite my colonized self, might grant a dignity hardfound.
Bums me out that this is catalyst for pursuit. To stab at injustice.
To be perceived.
comment in response to
post
I have said, more than once, I dislike many works which do not love their subjects as they claim to. Love means good times and bad, warts and all, the full spread of emotion. It is not exaltation of the immaculate.
It bothers me that I seem to be asked to show the depths of my love for meaning.
comment in response to
post
Perhaps this is the horror of seeing myself in things, but never with a human dignity. Never undefined by the most overt parallels for sake of being comestible by those who would be denied the wonderment of all that could be.
I revile the lack of meaning which prescribes upon me a foul meaning.
comment in response to
post
I do not know how to feel as I consider the grand works which could be performed, the weight of the labor, the intercession of my own doubt and the divine demand that I am ordained to Doubt put upon me.
Meaning is what drives me. Anger at a lack of substantive meaning drives me further in a fury.
comment in response to
post
There is so much more than any of us shall ever come to see and know and love and cherish; I do not wish to serve as herald for this truth. That should not be upon me. And yet, how many times have I shared this process with a brahmin of means and had them belch down at me for want of the erasure?
comment in response to
post
...Perhaps this is my long way of looking at the market for things and seeing how little humanity is really offered up in fiction for those who look like me. How often we are meant to represent as heralds a singular viewpoint of a religion an audience does not appreciate to dare think upon.
comment in response to
post
Thus that mantra which haunted me during the depths of the pandemic, when questioned about the nature of faith the people in a small village would simply say "Only death is inevitable" as if to allow themselves the hope of faith, but to not be defined by it.
All that is certain is an end to this.
comment in response to
post
I have read enough about the silversmithing traditions of a small village to know how it speaks to a human struggle, to a desire to create meaning, to create beauty at the cost of beauty, how the invalidation which could come tarnishes the past, present and future.
The divine are not party here.
comment in response to
post
And it sucks to have to think and delve upon all of this, as a Shaivist heretic atop it all; because the /people/ and their /humanity/ is lost in all this religiosity sucking up the air. Which is exoticism when someone not of it writes it, and which is just bad/jingoism when someone of it does so.
comment in response to
post
It would have nuance.
And sure a lot of this likely comes from the 4th Grade World Studies issue of how people look at Hinduism in the west. A thing that is treated as unified and orthodox, under a singular banner. Which is... not how that works at all. No more unified than any other belief system.
comment in response to
post
Like, I look at these products and everything has purpose and is defined by a mandate from above - but its treated in a way that'd be deconstructed elsewhere.
In a European setting, the idea that if you do not go to Church you go to Hell and suffer eternally as a canon fact would have challenges.
comment in response to
post
Commonality is treated as bond by that religiosity, with no mind for regions, denominations, diffusion, etc. People become faceless without definition of their faith, and that sucks - because I think there is something to be said for the fatalism of such faith: "Only death is inevitable" as mantra.
comment in response to
post
The exoticism of it all sucks, as does the lack of commentary on casteism (and even then, its the varnas they show as if they're 1-to-1) and it falls into like... Bollywood action shenanigans? Religiosity ensconces it to a hegemony, at the cost of the secular humanity of myriad differing regions.
comment in response to
post
I remember the year that took place in my high school - the hard pivot from "conceal everything" to "tell us everything." They neve gave a reason for why it was suddenly safe to share everything.
The internet was and remains, so much of what they feared it would be.
comment in response to
post
Yeah. There is something nice to seeing a being you love fade slowly with grace and joy. Kinda stokes the hopes of what comforts we might have.
comment in response to
post
Twas pumba I meant, but good to see the beast endures.
comment in response to
post
But yes, playing is nice - helps get a sense of what works and what doesn't, especially if its with rules that you've written. Or a hack thereof for your own hack.
comment in response to
post
Which in turn means she views my former player character in the same light, but at least he had an excuse - he was doing drugs and trying to plot out the killing of a demon lord. Sango has no idea the old PC was 50% delusional and going full Disco Elysium monologue about most things.
comment in response to
post
Ever since space samurai Captain Riker got shot in the head, I've been playing a jarhead disaster lesbian Henchman 21/VI/Shauna from Yellowjackets mash-up.
She's the only one calling a mutiny a mutiny, and she's come to realize all the kuge are absolutely brainless egotistical jackasses.
comment in response to
post
That said, this wasn't a TTRPG book - and thus I am spared from having to be the change I wish to see in the world yet again.
comment in response to
post
It also turned me into a sublime hater of shit reviews where people are just dunking on things, or where people use stars or even numbers to try and speak of merit.
There is a format, especially in TTRPG things, which I think could be of far greater utility and use for all parties on the output.
comment in response to
post
Which is not to say I have not read every book that I own.
I have. All of them.
I'm one of those rare and special sorts of crazy people who had a lot of spare time on my hands about five years back.
Made me want to actively be a better custodian and appreciator of aspects of craft as a result.
comment in response to
post
I think my main takeaway is that it isn't something that you want to exist in a way where you could talk a cave bear into reforming its natural ways, or something that a warlord could just ignore. Social mechanics require societal intercession to have worth. Otherwise words are just utterances.
comment in response to
post
Its a whole thing. I like my hack for Vaesen/L5R because I like Darkest Dungeon-type stress tracking, and I like how it is about adhering to societal expectations/self-worth, and collapsing as you deal with how its a false construct.
But that's a setting/theme thing. Not broadly applicable for use.
comment in response to
post
I've been tinkering with ideas of implementing social mechanics within a non-social mechanics type framework; as a way to create information economy presence which is like... reactive rather than active in mechanical use?
I ideated/rambled on about it here:
bsky.app/profile/bria...
comment in response to
post
BUT it isn't for all things, and it gives me cause to consider the nature of how social mechanics fold into the information economy of play.
If you come in wielding enlightened communist philosophy, cool - but you could end up as Harry DuBois talking tall to someone asking about the weather.
comment in response to
post
Which... while a bit dramatic at times, helps sell the idea that "the kids aren't all right" and that the society they serve is bullshit, deeply bullshit.
Unmask someone and now they can't stop crying. It creates bullies and makes politics and humanity so fragile.
Been having fun with that.
comment in response to
post
Reveal the enemy to be compromised in their reasoning before they reveal you to be overly emotional in yours - because the crowd, the court, the set-dressing, demands adherence to decorum.
And once shamed properly, you crack and realize how everything you bought into is performative bullshit.
comment in response to
post
So its less coming in and wielding a sophist remark like someone wields a blade, but rather trying to endure potential "HP" loss that will allow others to seize upon you and reveal something about you, all the while getting your pieces in place to do the same to others.
comment in response to
post
Almost a week late, but I have some thoughts as I've been experimenting with it on a few ends lately. I've been happy with how I've implemented them in my L5R Vaesen hack - as they function as a Darkest Dungeon-esque stress mechanic. Tools used to convey expression avoiding/provoking humiliation.
comment in response to
post
Makes it hard to know where I am exalting specificity and where I am condemning it by otherizing it. I'm sure the specific Shaivist perception I'm dealing with really doesn't help me socialize well with a lot of Hindu folks.
Probably has a lot to do with issues of certainty vs doubt/wonderment.
comment in response to
post
I think the real long and short of it is that I am a mixed Indian person living in the heart of empire, born from vile usurpers on one-side and from kinslayers on the other; socialized in a small rural port town.
They got more sea monster in the great Loch Ness than they've got the likes of me.
comment in response to
post
...to the shock of very few, I've become much better at editing for others than writing for myself, because I fall back upon my bullshit real easily.
comment in response to
post
One has looked upon the world and does not value the ugliness that exists, is disgusted by it. The other contends with the illusion and is delighted by the novelty, the new, the fascinating permutations. It does not care for the context, it is beautiful because it is new - regardless how horrible.
comment in response to
post
Its why you kill the Buddha you meet upon the road.
And that's fun to play with in this academic scenario lens. The one who sought enlightenment has grown callous. The one who is enraptured by the beauty of existence is vile on a cosmic scale. But the latter is closer to enlightenment in thought.
comment in response to
post
I just find it always a bit interesting to play with the imagery of those who seek enlightenment but only end up doing horrible things - as this is true to life. Enlightenment shall find you if you seek that which can allow for it; to be good, to be moral, to be kind, to do no harm. To seek facets.
comment in response to
post
Thus the only validity being from my grandmother's deeply regional esoteric bloodline and cultural traditions; because she is not of those who usurped the mandate - and the daeva seems to be pretty thematically appropriate about this whole circumstance of doubting purity.
Though now I'm far afield.
comment in response to
post
Which is... always a thing I have thoughts on, given I know the depths of my bloodline and despite what my brother may claim in his pursuits of being a true and proper Brahmin, I contend we are marauders and we usurped the mandate - which if it has any worth, would disdain us.
comment in response to
post
Administration which once held love for the work, now tired and unwilling to acknowledge fault lest the last embers of that old self be snuffed; VS new blood that loves the work and only the work and who could upend everything because nothing matters but the work.
Plus colonialism vs enlightenment.