Aster's Blog

Tower of Babble

Posted: June 06, 2026

Originally posted: August 05, 2012

Category: essays

Tags:  #theatre

Octothorpes ^?:  #theatre, #philosophy

(Originally posted on tumblr which is why I’m speaking somewhat immaturely in this post. Updated some quotes and sources.)

I decided to amass the actual quotes of all the philosophers in the first song in Godspell. This is taken from the 2012 revival version. The quotes are bolded and the rest is for context. I couldn’t easily find anything other than vaguely-related-to-the-lyrics quips from Thomas Aquinas and I don’t plan on reading his entire internet-accesible body of work to search for the source of the song’s supplied sentiments so poo on him^[1]. Also wahh basic HTML.

Socrates

(spoken) I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy.

(sung) Wherefore, O men of Athens? I say to you:

Therefore, aquit me or not, but whichever you do

I shall never alter my ways

Never adjust my approach to this maze

Never reform till the end of my days

Even if I have to die many times

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(Originally posted on cohost, RIP)

I love translations, and I love translations of translations, and I love translations of translations of nonsense. That makes “Upward, behind the onstreaming, it mooned” from Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius one of my favorite little lines in Borges’ work.

The relevant excerpt explaining it is here – English translation by James Irby (I think) and Spanish is of course by Borges.

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After the Mind, the World Again version 2

Posted: June 03, 2026

Category: devlogs

Tags:  #after-the-mind-the-world-again-ashcan

Octothorpes ^?:  #ttrpgs, #gamedev

After more playtesting, I have a far more streamlined version of the game! HOWEVER, I don’t think I can paywall on a static site, so I’m going to direct you to itchio for buying the new $10 PDF (I know, not ideal, but not sure how to avoid that!) I’ve labeled the version on this site an ashcan.

Listing on itch.io!

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I moved my website to a local Forgejo instance I made to get code off of GitHub Pages (because of Microsoft’s *gestures at everything*). This was kind of a whole ordeal for the past week, but I think it’s working now. I’m using statichost.eu as my new hosting site, and it’s really neat!

The stack for this was kind of intense (for me at least) and I am really grateful to these resources especially:

• Ladvien Ngninx Reverse Proxy on Raspberry Pi (and kind of that whole series)
• Install Dockage on a Raspberry Pi - Made my life a lot easier when it came to editing Forgejo
• Eric from statichost.eu who figured out my builds were failing because I turned on “kill all bots” mode in Cloudflare (read: Security -> Bot Fight Enabled).
• Probably a bunch of other tutorials I forgot

I also had not-so-brief detours into trying to figure out SSH (turns out it isn’t possible via Cloudflare unless you use the cloudflared CLI!) and wondering why I didn’t have access to the Forgejo Runners UI (I had my Forgejo instance on v7 when the latest instance is v15 lol).

Trying to figure out how to schedule posts with Jekyll using the cron job idea from Deploy Github Pages on a Schedule by Sean Killeen, though I had to modify it for Forgejo. I set this post for the far future (tomorrow). I’ll see if it works 🤞

Pursuant to a thread in the Interactive Fiction forum about there being no real good choice-based IF equivalent to the Cloak of Darkness demo game, I decided to just make one.

Road of Darkness is a tiny adventure designed to be easy to port to a given authoring system. Unlike Cloak of Darkness, Road of Darkness is specifically designed to showcase the features of choice-based IF. Choice-based IF tends to prioritize branching paths, as well as conditional text, choices, and endings over a detailed world model. Therefore, the story and its specification are structured around highlighting those capabilities.

You can play my implementation of the game on IFDB, itch.io, or here on my website. I also made a page on IFWiki. The specification text is below, and I release it to the public domain (though credit is nice).

Premise:

Our heroic adventurer finds themself on a difficult road.

Specifications

The game begins in a forest. You stand before a crossroads that splits to the left and right. There is a man standing next to the path on the right, wearing a large, black, velvet cloak.

You are wearing a scarf, and can pick what color the scarf is.

These elements can be examined at the crossroads.

• The left path is well-lit and inviting.
• The right path is shadowy and scary-looking.
• The man has a generally suspicious manner.
• The cloak is magically absorbing the light on the right path.

You can start a conversation with the man at the crossroads. All conversation options with the man can be explored, and you can leave the conversation at any time.

• Ask about the left path: he will talk up how interesting and pretty it is, and encourages you to go that way.
• Ask about the right path: he will say the same thing as with the left path.
• Ask about himself: he will try to pass himself off as friendly, but it’s clear that he’s a dastardly thief with a dagger under the cloak.
• Ask about the cloak: he will only say it has very special properties. You realize the cloak has a tag that reads “Pull to turn off”.

These choices can be taken at any time and lead to the endings. You can’t return to the crossroads once taking them.

• Take the right path.
• Take the left path.
• (Hidden at the start): If you both examine the cloak and Ask the man about himself, it will unlock the option to Steal the cloak and run.

ENDINGS

All endings should reference the scarf and its color in some way.

• If you take the left path or take the right path (it doesn’t matter):
  • If you haven’t asked about himself, he follows you down the path, which magically darkens around you. He stabs and mugs you, and you die.
  • If you have asked about himself, you are ready for his attack and dodge it. You disarm his dagger and escape safely.
• If you steal the cloak and run:
  • If you haven’t asked about the cloak, you get lost in the woods as they darken around you. You ditch the cloak to be able to see again.
  • If you have asked about the cloak, you pull the tab and the magical darkness effect turns off, allowing you to escape the forest safely with the cloak.

I’m opening up art commissions again due to unfortunate circumstances in my life right now. Check out my commissions page here!

are you really dedicated to a single hobby where everything else you do gets channeled into you love of that specific craft, or are you hobbyamorous?

I put in functionality to add my art to the website and have it show up in the art page, so it’s not just all stale illustrations I have to remember to update (and then don’t). Additionally, I added specific feeds to every post category, as well as the games pages. That way if you’re only following me for one thing, you can get a feed tailored that one thing instead of a dump of all my random other hobbies (of which I have many).

Currently struggling with pagination but I’ll keep trying at it.

UPDATE: Got pagination working but only for the entire blog. Not sure how to do it for individual categories and tags yet.

Monsterhearts PCs

Posted: May 08, 2026

Category: drawings

Tags:  #ttrpgs

Octothorpes ^?:  #art

Drew the player characters in the Monsterhearts campaign I’m running! I’m having a blast in the game. Full drawings under the cut.

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Masonry of the Body fanart

Posted: May 08, 2026

Category: drawings

Tags:  #fanart

Octothorpes ^?:  #art

Drew fan art for the awesome horror comic, Masonry of the Body (it’s scarier than my drawing, I assure you).