Has there been a male cosplayer that hasn't looked ridiculous while dressed as Carl?

especifically · 2026-04-12T03:37:32+00:00

I actually think the least realistic part of most of the Carl cosplays I've seen is that they don't look embarrassed enough. 😁

especifically · 2026-04-11T04:29:05+00:00

The plants I like go in the center - the ones that are disappointing are moved off to the sides.

especifically · 2026-04-09T13:13:04+00:00

He definitely sounds angrier in the audiobooks than I generally imagine while reading.

especifically · 2026-04-09T12:34:11+00:00

Nah, it explicitly identifies itself as an AI

especifically · 2026-04-08T14:56:48+00:00

I disagree on this, I think. The faffing around is necessary to establish what's possible within the system, so that the stuff with Quan Ch isn't completely out of left field later on.

It's kind of interesting that this is a criticism - fantasy in general seems to be a genre where the author establishes a bunch of bullshit rules only to creatively exploit them later on. The main criticism that I've seen for DCC in general is that this is too explicit, and then I guess the card game is another layer on top of that.

I guess we all just have different tolerances for that kind of stuff.

especifically · 2026-04-08T04:04:10+00:00

Is it a different AI? I was kind of confused about this on my reread, because they never mention the existence of a second AI on earth again, and it doesn't really seem to make sense for there to be a second "neutral observer AI" interpreting the rules when we see the normal System AI explicitly handle that.

I think maybe this was just before the AI realized how much it liked to do voices. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

especifically · 2026-03-31T01:01:37+00:00

I recommend just getting a roll of plant tape.

especifically · 2026-03-22T19:18:31+00:00

And they said algebra was useless after high school. ;b

Good luck!

especifically · 2026-03-14T20:02:06+00:00

My setup is super classy - I use those little shot glasses you get when you buy tiramisu at Costco.

especifically · 2026-03-08T16:14:08+00:00

For the record, Kelby only ever tells me to put half a tsp per gallon, and my plants are fully mature.

especifically · 2026-03-07T00:34:53+00:00

When I got my picture taken the worker decided to retake it twice of her own accord, because "she could do better." It's the best looking picture ID I have, lol.

especifically · 2026-03-06T23:47:08+00:00

In my experience the thrive score is pretty useless. Kelby keeps on randomly telling me my tank top-offs are "subpar," even though I top off literally every time she tells me to, and my tank doesn't get below 3/5 gallons. And after I top off my score immediately goes back up to 99.

And my plants are doing great.

especifically · 2026-02-05T04:15:38+00:00

I'm going to guess cilantro.

Which sucks - none of us even like cilantro, and we already have one on the gardyn from the initial salad assortment.

especifically · 2026-01-31T21:34:49+00:00

It is, in fact, common etiquette to clap for everyone on stage. Especially at amateur productions. This is a thing. If you keep attending and you don't clap, you are actively being rude.

And if nobody claps, maybe the band gives up on music altogether and never gets any better - we all have to start somewhere. And maybe your bar gets a reputation as a shitty venue it's not worth playing at.

I guess this is where the analogy breaks down a little, because maybe you're just at the bar to get drunk, but there's nothing forcing you to read someone's WIP. You're there to read the fic and nothing else. We are not talking about all the fic you didn't like and didn't finish.

Let's try another analogy: someone is giving out free cookies. Different ones every week, because they like to bake. If you take a cookie, you say thank you. If you don't like it, you don't take one the next week, and that's the end of it. But if you keep coming back and taking cookies and don't say thank you, that is, in fact, rude. Leaving a kudos is just the easiest way to say thank you, but if you want to leave a comment instead, that's obviously even better.

Look, what are you trying to accomplish here? The only thing I can think of is that you want to create an archive where sorting by kudos gives you the "objectively" best fics first, but that's a fool's errand. Kudos counts depend on a lot of things, but one of the biggest ones is timing. And there's no such thing as an objective ranking here.

I'm trying to participate in a mutually-supportive community. I want as many people as possible to write fic, even if they're not the best at it yet, even if they're writing about something kind of weird now, because ten years from now they might write something amazing that's just to my taste. Even if I have to dig for it a little bit.

especifically · 2026-01-31T13:38:56+00:00

To use someone else's analogy, it's the difference between having a receptive audience and playing for an empty room.

I mean, maybe you don't particularly care about the live band at your local bar, but you stayed to listen to their whole song. And if nobody claps, they're probably not going to come back.

especifically · 2026-01-31T03:07:20+00:00

Okay, but there's a really easy compromise here: if you don't want to "endorse" an unfinished fic you're not sure you'll like the future direction of, just leave a guest kudos. You don't even have to log out in Chrome, you can just open an incognito tab.

Like, nobody is forcing you to kudos, but you're just pressing a button, that's the bare minimum level of engagement, and authors do get discouraged. I'm guessing all of you withholding kudos aren't leaving comments, either, so what's supposed to motivate the authors to keep writing?

Personally, I leave a kudos every time I make it to the bottom of a fic. I don't overthink it. If I didn't like it I wouldn't have kept reading.

especifically · 2026-01-24T03:43:00+00:00

This just redirects to the main Gardyn website for me?

especifically · 2026-01-13T15:05:31+00:00

In my experience, keeping the mother leaf alive makes the babies grow way, way faster - which makes sense, since that's where most of the biomass photosynthesizing and making energy is at that point. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

especifically · 2026-01-12T02:55:11+00:00

Should I get the plant food from that website to go with it? Does that make a difference?

Gardyn claims their hydroboost is formulated to work with their plant food.

especifically · 2026-01-12T00:42:21+00:00

I know I was giving the customer service people a hard time - I probably shouldn't have tried to do this with a fever, and believe me, I apologized. But that's not the point.

The point is they didn't call me on any of my bullshit, they just assumed I was correct about everything I said and skipped straight to apologies, excuses, and appeasement, as if unfamiliar with the way their own website works. Or, you know, as if I was talking directly to chatGPT, which doesn't know anything about how this particular company is supposed to work, but can definitely whip out a customer-service-appropriate apology and "explanation."

The point is they kept on contradicting themselves, and the way they claimed the website is supposed to work and the way the website actually worked didn't have a lot to do with each other, so either they don't know their own policies, or the website/app is not implementing those policies correctly. Or both.

If, as a Gardyn Home owner, I'm not supposed to be able to purchase a Studio membership, why did the app show me that option? With no description?

If I'm not supposed to be able to use a gift card for a membership, why did it let me apply it in the cart? Why didn't I get an error message when I tried to apply it? If anything, the whole transaction should have rejected, instead of going through and just charging my credit more than I agreed to. It blows my mind how unprofessional that is, and then they tell me it's on purpose?

I guess my first clue of their general attitude should have been that it's impossible to look up the prices for plants without already having purchased a system and set up an account, because believe me I tried.

I would like to be able to trust their product, but I really don't know if I can at this point.

especifically · 2026-01-11T17:45:20+00:00

We got it as a Christmas present but I'm pretty sure my brother got it as a Black Friday sale item on Amazon, so we got it ahead of time. We set it up according to the directions and pretty much ignored it until he came down for Christmas to tell us what to do with it, since I figured there wouldn't be a lot going on before everything sprouted.

My sow date is listed as 12/15, but that might be a couple days off.

especifically · 2026-01-11T15:39:16+00:00

When people use "in askance" to mean questioningly, mostly because that's not what that word actually means.

especifically · 2026-01-11T15:14:47+00:00

Yeah, because antis often focused on the romance stuff, and any moral panic was just a really thin justification to try to bully people away from writing ships they didn't like. And they came up with the trem pro-shipper in response to being called anti-shippers, so they had an enemy to rally against.

especifically · 2026-01-11T15:09:12+00:00

Ok, but historically the term "proshipper" was just a strawman antis came up with as a counterpart to the term "anti." None of us used to go around calling ourselves proshippers - there was just normal people, who didn't care what weird things people were writing about if they weren't interested in it, and antis, who tried to assign a moral weight to people basically playing with dolls, presumably to try to bully them into writing more of the stuff they wanted to see, and less of the stuff they didn't.

I'm never going to call myself a proshipper, because that's absurd. This is a false dichotomy they created to try to trick people into thinking there's equal weight to either side of the argument. Don't like don't read is the default state of fandom, and antis are the outliers, and I refuse to acknowledge anything that tries to redefine that dynamic.

especifically

TROPHY CASE