Everyone knows all about being a first-timer. We hear of the thing, watch attentively for years as it happens around us, crafting glorious tales of human transformation, painted-to-sainted whores and the other way round — or to quote a lovingly racist cartoon version of Hercules, «from zero to hero, just like that!». And we want in on the thing.

I speak not of sexual discovery or dalliance, although the metaphor certainly fits, but of Ludum Dare, whose low-hanging fruits I’ve been enjoying for many, many years now — I've only recently begun building up skills in computer graphics and attempting to teach myself game development; progress has been slow but steady, although what you people refer to as rapid prototyping, I still call an excruciatingly painful childbirth.

And so it was that I became resolved to pop my LD cherry. At the event’s quinceañera. With a non-game.

Well, the results are in, and everyone’s been super excited since the big reveal. I am too. The feed is positively burning, and I feel obliged to point out the extreme levels of rationalization going into the multitude of self-aggrandizing result posts being shared right now. Jam and Compo winners are obviously happy, but everyone else seems to be scratching their heads and looking for ways to present their results under a more favorable light. This has led to a variety of number-fudging tactics and statistical spin-jobs, in what seems to be rather "alternative" math for a programming crowd.

It's actually pretty fun! The worse your basic calculus (or that of your target), the better your results turn out. For example, watch my Theme score teleport from the bottom 2% to the top 25% as I check its relative position in the Jam against the total amount of LD38 submissions (see Total Abuse).

Relativism is all well and good, but please stop lying to yourself, to others, and to me. You've completed the Dare! Be proud of what you made and humble enough to own what you got in return.

:octopus: rules all datasets equally.