so. to start off.

i still love renpy! yes, i saw the post by renpytom about how there is ai-generated code in it! no, i don't like it! i have very complicated feelings about it! but do i still love renpy?

yeah!

renpy is the visual novel engine i have used for many years now to make games.

without renpy, i would absolutely not be making games full-time. actually, the reason i ended up quitting my last job & not looking for another one was because the game company i worked at had pivoted to making blockchain/nft games (in the year of 2023 too??? why??????) & i was so frustrated with the game industry & i was doing ok enough with my own games that i felt like i'd be fine if i just focussed on that.

in the timeline where i never touched renpy games maybe i would still be at that job or another similar one where i felt like i had no choice but to continue doing stuff i really didn't want to for money to live.

now, it's 2026. everyone has different thoughts about gen ai. there are some people who are against everything connected to it. others who love everything about it. most people are probably somewhere in between or just don't care.

i learn more towards the former. i don't want to use chatgpt or claude or whatever & i don't expect that to change.

i am also a vegetarian. however, i'm a bad one.

i usually don't talk about being a vegetarian because it's one of those things people don't really want to hear about. people always think that i bring it up to be morally superior or whatever, when usually it's just so that i can get them to understand why i don't want to eat one of their chicken nuggets when they won't take no for an answer.

for me, being vegetarian is a moral choice. & the thing about moral choices, i think they have to be choices - something you decide to do yourself. & i don't have any intention of forcing my choice on anybody else, even if i actually do think the world would be a better place if the meat industry didn't work the way it did!

now, about being a bad vegetarian. many people would say that i'm not a vegetarian because i sometimes eat meat products. i would never buy meat from the supermarket to eat, & i'd say 99% of the time i am eating vegetarian so i'm generally doing my best, but sometimes i will order something at a restaurant that i think would be fine & it'll have fish stock or something in it, & at that point the fish is already dead. the food has been served. i will just eat it. please feel free to write to the world vegetarian organisation & get them to kick me out of the club.

i have friends & family who eat meat. i go to supermarkets that sell meat. i live in a society that is generally very pro-meat.

i could theoretically try to only associate with people who don't eat meat & only buy groceries from places that don't sell meat, but it would be very very hard. perhaps that makes me a bad vegetarian too, because i'm not doing absolutely all i can to avoid meat.

the thing is, i think for things like these, everyone has to draw a line somwhere. for me, my line is i do my best to avoid meat when i can. sometimes i might eat some meat but i'm not going to beat myself up over it. i still eat animal products like eggs, though i do try to eat less of them.

i don't think that my personal choice to not eat meat is going to change the world. but it's something i do because to me, it feels like the right thing to do. at the same time, i'm not going to fight people because they eat meat. if a friend chooses to eat something vegetarian because we're eating lunch out together, it makes me happy! if a family member tries out meatless mondays, love it. but i don't think anybody can make a moral choice for somebody else.

similarly, there are things i do that other people could take moral stances against. for example, i ride airplanes to visit places & airplanes absolutely have a negative impact on the environment. i have friends who refuse to take airplanes because of this, & i respect their choice, even if it's not one i have made for myself.

that's kind of where i stand on gen ai.

i won't use it myself. i will do my best to avoid projects that use it extensively. if it's feasible, i'll stay on the last version of a tool that doesn't have an ai-generated commit. but i also understand that most major programming languages use it. most browsers do. most operating systems do.

maybe this will make some people think that i'm not really anti-ai then, if i'm only doing my 'best' & not actively cutting out any tools that have any ai-generated code in them. people are free to think that.

some other people may think that it's stupid to try to avoid projects that use it extensively since ai-generated code is so ubiquitous. again, people are free to think that.

but for me, i don't think that means i should just give up on trying to avoid ai-generated code in stuff. i do think there's a difference between a project that has dependencies that use ai-generated code & a project that only has ai-generated code. i don't think this is black & white.

a friend shared this post to me about the rereading project which talks about calibre, how it uses ai, & what the community is doing about it.

particularly what resonates with me is the part about the responsibility of the community. i think about what we, the renpy user community at large, have done to try to lift some of the weight off renpytom's shoulders - weight that he has been carrying for over 20 years, since renpy came out in 2004. we have benefited so much from a tool that helped us create in ways we may not have been able to do without it.

do i think it's ok for people to feel betrayed about the situation? yeah! how you feel is how you feel. i know i feel really sucky about it!

do i think people should downgrade versions or stop using renpy altogether? up to you! what tools you use is your choice.

do i think that people are being unnecessarily vitriolic to renpytom, an individual who has given so much time & work to the vn community for 20 years? absolutely, & again, i think this whole situation sucks! but i also am incredibly grateful to renpytom for what he's done for the community with renpy. i think it is possible to feel both of these things at once - i don't think they're at odds.

i don't agree with renpytom's stance on llms & ai-generated code, but i also think that if we don't agree, there are things we can personally do to take action, like downgrade to an older version of renpy, fork renpy (like it's open source! that's the whole thing about open-source projects... if there's stuff you don't like, the source is all there...), move to a different engine, &c.

i don't think we as renpy users have any right to demand renpytom do anything. i don't think any individual has any right to force anybody else to do anything. we can make our own choices, & so can everybody else.

am i saying people shouldn't take action for what they think is morally right? no! go yell down the politicians letting corporations build data centres. cancel your subscriptions for services that add ai "assistants". make your own fork of renpy without llm code.

you can choose how far you want to go - where you draw the line. you can tell people why you've made your choices & hope they'll join you.

but you can't make that choice for anybody else.

meatless mondays are nice & i hope you'll try it out if you aren't.