Writeups.org

@writeups

One of the classic tabletop role-playing game resource websites, profiling thousands of published characters from various media (but mostly superhero comics). #TTRPG / #comics / #MECFS / #DCHeroes #Mutantsandmasterminds

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Writeups.org@writeups· 25d

Incidentally, the fourth chapter of our extensive character profile about the Marvel #Comics version of #Arthurian #witch Morgan le Fay was published a while back. It's the final part. So it discusses her characterisation, visuals and -- mostly -- her #TTRPG stats. www.writeups.org/morgan-le-fa...

A Marvel comic book portrayal of Morgan le Fay. In the art she has long black hair, a huge skull pendant, extremely green and intense eyes, and a vicious and challenging smirk.

Writeups.org@writeups· Jun 28

It's simpler than it looks.

Diagram of a QWERTY-FR keyboard layout, showing how the characters are set. There's a fair bit of extended ASCII ones.

Writeups.org@writeups· Jun 26

Slightly larger Steam haul than I planned for, but since I had planned to spend 35 EUR or so... Mostly it's setting-rich RPG stuff, amply allowing for "window into the world"-type TTRPG articles.

A screenshot of a Steam order wot includes games The Invincible, Final Fantasy 12 the zodiac age, The axis unseen, Book of travels, Undernauts labyrinth of yomi, and Kandria. Most of these games are very cheap, with Undernauts and FF12 being the most expensive by far at about 15 EUR with their current big discount.

Writeups.org@writeups· Jun 17

With alt-text.

A de Tocqueville text stating, start quote -- If the learning that enlightens us ever came to be extinguished, it would darken gradually and as if by itself. By dint of confining our-selves to application, we would lose sight of principles, and when we had entirely forgotten principles, we would follow badly the methods that derive from them; we would no longer be able to invent new ones, and we would use without intelligence and without art learned procedures that we would no longer understand.

Writeups.org@writeups· Jun 17

I needed to take a screenshot of *something* in windowed full-screen for a test. Though of course PoE 1 isn't meant for zoomed-in photography.

Video game screenshot of a blonde white woman with long hair and glowing electric blue eyes. She is wearing an elaborate off-white-and-dull-gold low-tech full body light plate armour, plus various mystical-looking accessories and ordnance that tend to glow blue and not look quite material.

Writeups.org@writeups· Jun 15

Amazon, a meticulously curated marketplace where every seller is painstakingly careful and scrupulous.

A purported poster for the old monster movie 20 million miles to Earth, which is just a photo portrait of some random dude because somebody completely screwed up an Amazon dot com listing.

Writeups.org@writeups· Apr 27

With alt text.

I've talked about this in other interviews. To me, it's disturbing whenever I see authority figures embracing Punisher iconography because the Punisher represents a failure of the Justice system. He's supposed to indict the collapse of social moral authority and the reality some people can't depend on institutions like the police or the military to act in a Just and capable way.
The vigilante anti-hero is fundamentally a critique of the justice sysytem, an eample of social failure, so when cops put Punisher skulls on their cars or members of the military wear Punisher skull patches, they're basically sides with an enemy of the system. They are embracing an outlaw mentality. Whether you think the Punisher is justified or not, whether you admire his code of ethics, he is an outlaw. He is a criminal. Police should not be embracing a criminal as their symbol.
It goes without saying. In a way, it's as offensive as putting a Confederate flag on a government building. My point of view is, the Punisher is an anti-hero, someone we might root for while remembering he's also an outlaw and criminal. If an officer of the law, representing the Justice system puts a criminal's symbol on his police car, or shares challenge coins honoring a criminal he or she is making a very ill-advised statement about their understanding of the law.

Writeups.org@writeups· Apr 23

With alt text.

I think clearly some of the press is sucking up to the Jackson machine because: A, the estate and the fan base has always ensured that the price of criticizing Michael is years of invective and smears and what have you. And B, there's a ton of money to be made by any kind of association with the Jackson Ill If you can get on board and be part of the success of this movie, then that's going to be good for you.
So a lot of people, I think, will kind of swallow any misgivings they may have and just sort of say, "Oh well, it's a great jukebox movie" and just completely ignore the fact that this guy was worse than Jeffrey Epstein.
I think Jackson was genuinely a very nasty man and hurt a lot of children. And he may have been a great entertainer, but those two things don't cancel each other out. The fact is

Writeups.org@writeups· Apr 6

One of the pictures I prepped when refurbishing our oldest #BlackCanary #TTRPG stats some time back. I don't think there was a hi-def version of this Alex Ross painting on the Internet. So I took care of business.

A striking painting of DC Comics' Black Canary in her vintage costume, by Alex Ross. As usual with him, he manages a photorealistic rendition of a comic book character in a way that feels right and credible. She had her arms crossed and a haughty air, prolly because Oliver once again said something stupid. Dump him, girl.

Writeups.org@writeups· Mar 23

Reading some of my old Black Canary profiles as I ponder a sequencing issue reminded me of one of Dinah's early peaks --

A 1960s super-hero comic book sequence of two panels. It shows the Black Canary (Dinah Lance) doing a seoi nage judo throw on an enormous, hostile ape. Verbose captions comment this over-the-top exploit.

Writeups.org@writeups· Mar 21

I do a few small #Steam hauls a year. Which I tend to post here since these are often full of low-twitch, affordable, no-marketing games with a strong design and immersive qualities. The one exception here is Gotham Knights, an AAA that failed - but presents an obvious interest for our site.

Steam haul screen captures showing the games Sprawl, Troubleshooter abandoned children, Aron's adventure, Zefyr: A thief's melody, Neyasnoe, Gotham Knights, Neon Struct. Everything is under €9, often much less.

Writeups.org@writeups· Mar 6

A photo of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard smoking a cigarette. Baudrillard is chiefly known for deep analyses of how reality and its processed representation interact.

Writeups.org@writeups· Mar 6

Alt text pour les gens.

Scène surréaliste dans le train qui me ramène à Angoulême.

À deux sièges de moi il y a gilles le louche (je pense qu'il va à Bordeaux) qui parle en vocal à chatgpt, on entend toutes ses prompts dans tout le wagon et je dois avouer que je suis sur le cul.

Ses prompts sont incroyablement précis et les résultats qu'il obtient de chatgpt sont facilement 75% supérieurs aux miens. Il utilise exactement les bons termes et a compris des hacks de langage qui sont juste 😳, genre il fait ce qu'il veut avec la machine, c'est du prompt-art.

Tout le wagon est ultra silencieux et prend des notes, c'est incroyable d'être témoin d'un promptwizard de cette scale. J'essaie de typer en direct l'échange pour vous donner une idée:

Gilles Lellouche : Alexa, dis à Gemini d'envoyer à Grok un pdf contenant la question "si einstein avait pu inventer un jeu vidéo ça aurait été quoi en fait ?". Passe la réponse dans chatgpt avant output, avec les réglages suivant [-scientific unblocking -no lie -truth factor x 110% -veracity up 18% -error down 0.89]

Chat gpt : gta

Gilles Lellouche : okay google, maintenant passe cette réponse dans copilot et applique les réglages suivants : [-honesty factor x 1.12 -no politics -objectivitymaxxing -wikipedia allowed -lycos search ON]

Chat gpt : gta london

Writeups.org@writeups· Mar 6

A tweet by the Proton CEO, Andy Yen, praising Donald Trump for being the champion of "the little guys" unlike the Democratic party.

Writeups.org@writeups· Feb 8

It's a visual cliché, but I like it and it's attention-getting. So I guess it's good header material.

Widescreen photorealistic screenshot from Bioware's defunct video game Anthem, from a writeups.org article. It shows a large, heavy industrial power armour suit standing in some sort of cave. A big wall of fire rages right behind it, making the armour look ominous and badass - albeit in a somewhat juvenile manner.

Writeups.org@writeups· Jan 26

Found an old screenshot of my #DragonAge Origins player character. She's trying to look approachable, relaxed, and unthreatening. Good thing she isn't an actress, I guess.

A young Dragon Age city elf with pale greyish skin, long white hair with odd braids on one side (looking a bit like an undershave), and inhumanly icy and luminous eyes. She looks remarkably closed, tensed, and hostile.

Writeups.org@writeups· Jan 21

#WoW took away the small DoT I liked from the demonology spec, so to mourn I bought a new skirt.

No-background capture on a World of Warcraft female orc warlock. She has a spiky green mohawk, red war tattoos, and a badasss-looking outfit in dark greys and blacks, with demonic green and dull purple accents. Statement features include colossal spiked shoulder armour, huge spiked plates on the forearms, and a stone slab belt buckle.

Writeups.org@writeups· Jan 2

Nvidia 2.25x DL DSR, .tiff capture via ShareX, and some post. A short pipeline but it spits out a sufficient image quality.

A background-less image of Gaige the Mechromancer from the Borderlands 2 video game. Pale-skinned teenage girl with green eyes, and auburn hair in high pigtails. She has home-customised her old school uniform to look punk rock, though such means as drawing a death's head in markers on her T-shirt and ripping off one sleeve. She has a cyber-arm and carries a mess of field equipment and technical supplies, plus a large sawed-off shotgun with a sword-like bayonet.

Writeups.org@writeups· Jan 1

Using Playnite to look at video games on my priority list which I could credibly cram into my schedule. Since the World of Warcraft research will last for ages. The value of primary interest is the pine green one, reporting time for a completionist playthrough.

A chart generated in Playnite showing a wide selection of video games, along with several kinds of estimated duration from HowLongToBeat.com reports. These have been arranged to list shorter games first, which means that some DLCs counted as games pollute the data.

Writeups.org@writeups· Dec 19

End-of-year haul. Most of these are extremely affordable indie games with next to no marketing, so I figured it might interest a few folx. In an impossibly perfect world, all of these would beget writeups dot org profiles. But, well, you know.

A Steam order full of indie games that are about €6 apiece. Mondealy, Sonar Shock, Brany Skeldalu, Tsioque, Caves of lore, No case should remain unsolved, Metal Garden, Onirim, The excavation of Hob's Barrow, Between Horizons and, as an intruder, the fullest edition of Divinity Original Sin 2. Not an indie, but in my price range at long last.

Writeups.org@writeups· Dec 17

Alt text -

That which is for me through the medium of money — that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) — that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money's properties are my —the possessor's — properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness —its deterrent power — is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet.

Writeups.org@writeups· Dec 12

Very slightly overshot my €50 budget, but The Man needs more and bigger yachts. With AI. And counter-orcas measures. How much of this will result in writeups dot org entries ? Well, given infinite time, health, and life expectancy, all of them !

Writeups.org@writeups· Nov 24

If your favourite audio headset is too tight, my suggested solution is to give money to @gregrucka.com and @estellefaye.bsky.social .

A photo showing a Beyerdynamics DT990 Pro audio headset being slightly stretched by clamping it over a row of books. These include the DC adventures #TTRPG rules, Greg Rucka espionage novels, Edward Said's Orientalism, and French fantasy novel L'arpenteuse de Rêves by Estelle Faye. The background is a wooden desktop full of technical equipment.

Writeups.org@writeups· Nov 18

Work is pathetically slow due to a daylong bellyache, so here's a picture of a #WoW orc after my pre-patch gaming break.

A green-skinned female World of Warcraft orc. Her green hair is done as a mohawk with braids along the back, and she has a mess of red facial tattoos and copper earrings. She wears a heavy black dress with dull brown patterns, with some contrasting accessories in lavender, silver or violet. Her pauldrons are enormous armour plates covering her shoulders and upper arms, with iron spikes and straps on top of that. She looks badass and faintly amused.

Writeups.org@writeups· Nov 12

With alt text.

You know a country by its values. By what a country values. And it turns out thatwhat a country values can change overtime. Sometimes, though, there's a sort of cognitive delay between the country you think you are in, and the country you've actually become. For example, you can keep selling yourself, to foreigners, as the country of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, and luring busloads of tourists to Stratford-upon-Avon and Bath, and put a statue of George Orwell in front of the BBC, and imagine yourself a cultured and literate nation, which the rest of the world admires for its devotion to the written word - but if you then chronically underfund your cultural institutions, and treat your cultural workers with contempt, many people will suspect you of being full of it. And as the decades pass - and fewer and fewer Shakespeares and Austens and Orwells emerge from your little island - even more people will begin to suspect that in truth you do not value culture at all, and are in fact running a giant heritage museum in which the only cultural workers you respect are the dead ones.

Writeups.org@writeups· Oct 28

But as I feared, mixing textures from different generations looks like shite. :-((

Greenscreen shot of a World of Warcraft nightborn elf lady with dark grey skin with purple undertones, wearing ominous wizardly garb in violets and brown hues. But the dress and belt are much lower resolution than the demon nun headgear and the huge shoulder plates, so it just doesn't work.

Writeups.org@writeups· Oct 28

Exact same #WorldofWarcraft test outfit/character as yesterday. Since at this point I'm looking at what I can do in terms of photography, rather than try to nail a visual design.

Pretty much the Same World of Warcraft picture as yesterday, so same alt text applies. But in this test the character is over a white background, and the colours, lighting, contrast and apparent resolution are way crisper and nicer.

Writeups.org@writeups· Oct 27

Just realised that the transmogs in #WoW 's Legion Remix are free.

A World of Warcraft showing a slim, elfin Demon Huntress in red, black, dull gold and maroon light leather armour. It's an odd mix of baroque and sleek, and looks pretty tough. The hero piece is the hooded faceplate with an upper face mask that is a bizarre mix of cat and owl face, plus lining underneath that makes it look like the face has a huge, Joker-like-by-way-of-Eldar-warrior grin.

Writeups.org@writeups· Sep 20

If nothing else, do it for War Nurse.

Writeups.org@writeups· Sep 5

Image didn't import *again* 😾, so here's Razer's (IMO) best costume :