graysquirrel7

[graysquirrel7]

[graysquirrel7]

11/12/2024 When it comes to human rights, it’s really hard to Agree to Disagree. https://thedevilspanties.com/archives/16415

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Oh yeah this the ONE!!

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How to Ditch Amazon

Support your local libraries and the small businesses that are actually making the products you want.  Fuck Jeff Bezos and the systemic, universal worker abuse, gaslighting, and brutality they live off of.

[graysquirrel7]

Activism is not cold-calling.

Activism is not cold-calling, and this is critically important to understand.

I'm seeing a lot of posts on here about 'building bridges' and 'finding community,' and then (extremely valid) response posts saying "BUT HOW??" And I'm going to explain something that can be very counter-intuitive: there is strategy involved in community.

As a longtime volunteer labour organizer, I’ve taken and taught many trainings on the strategy of talking. Something that surprises a lot of people is the very first thing you do in a union campaign. You sit down with your organizing committee, take out pen and paper, and literally map it out. You draw a physical map of the workplace: where are the entrances, exits, break rooms, supervisor offices. Essentially, ‘where is it safe to have a union conversation.’ Then you draw another physical chart of your coworkers. You sort out who is union-friendly, openly hostile to unions, or somewhere in the middle, and then you plan out very deliberately and carefully who talks to whom and in what order.

Consider: If Vocally Leftist Jane walks up to Conservative David and says "hey what do you think about unions," David is going to shut down immediately. He's not inclined to listen to Jane. But if Jane talks to Moderate Jason and brings him into the fold, then Jason is a far more effective strategic choice to talk to David, and David may actually hear him out without an instant reaction.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If Conservative David turns out to be Alt-Right David, and could be dangerous to follow organizers, we write him off. We are not trying to reach Alt-Right David. We are trying to reach Conservative David, who may actually be persuaded to find solidarity with other employees as fellow workers. Jason is a safe scout to find out which one he is. It does no one any good if Leftist Jane (or even Moderate Jane who is a visible minority) talks to Alt-Right David and puts herself on his radar. Not only has she done nothing to convince Alt-Right David to join a union - she's probably actively turned him against the idea - but now she's also in danger and the entire campaign is at risk. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jane was NOT a hero for doing this. The organizing committee was foolish and enacted a terrible strategy to everyone's detriment.

Where you can make a difference is with people who will listen to you. You having a conversation with your well-meaning but clueless Centrist Democrat Auntie, and maybe gently helping her understand some things the media has been glossing over, is way more strategically useful than you marching up to MAGA Neighbour You've Met Once and trying to "build community" or "understand" them. They don't care. They're impervious, dangerous, and cruel. But maybe your beloved auntie will think about what you said, and then talk to her friend Anna who IDs as "fiscally conservative" but didn't vote because she can't bring herself to get on board with Trump. Then perhaps Anna talks to her brother Nic who has MAGA leanings but isn't all the way there yet. Proto-MAGA Nic would not have listened to you, nor would he have listened to Centrist Democrat Auntie, but he might absorb some of what his sister is saying.

This is not a cop-out or an echo chamber. This is you spending your time and energy strategically and safely. You are not a useful activist to anyone if you’re dead. Anyone who is telling you to hurl yourself directly at MAGA assholes like cannon fodder has no understanding of the strategy behind community building, and you should feel comfortable writing them off.

Last point: If you are tired, emotionally devastated, and/or in danger: take a break. This post is for people who would feel better jumping into action, not for people who are too overwhelmed to even think about it right now. You are worth so much even if you’re not actively Doing Activism, and your rest is worth more than “a break period so you can recharge and Do More Activism.” We all deserve the individual dignity of being worthy of comfort, rest & safety just on the basis of being human, outside of whatever we're doing for others' benefit. To deny ourselves that dignity is to devalue ourselves, and that’s the absolute last thing any of us should be doing right now.

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[graysquirrel7]

I do think that the rise of fascism is directly tied to the decline of communal values.

So on the one hand, you have capitalism, which relentlessly tells you that everything is a competition, your value as a person can only come at someone else's expense, some people are just intrinsically better than others, and your position on this hierarchy is determined by what's in your bank account. On the other hand, individualist liberalism can only answer this with a sort of weak-tea "self-esteem" discourse, which at best amounts to "try your best! Do what you love! It doesn't matter!" and at worst amounts to shouting "Everyone's a winner!", a position that even children automatically view with cynicism.

Never is there any discussion that maybe value shouldn't be intrinsic to the self. Maybe your value is in how much you make life better for other people. Like, do you make a worthy and necessary contribution to society that helps other people? That adds to the net happiness of the world? Then congratulations, you should take pride in that. Someone who plants a bee garden for free is worth more than a hedge fund manager who only contributes misery to the world, even if he makes a lot of money doing it. Someone who uses their body to block, however temporarily, the export of weapons or the laying of pipeline is infinitely more valuable to society than the skilled engineer who makes his living designing them. Even simple activities like telling jokes or doing chores are worth infinitely more than developing advertising software that only makes people annoyed and parts them from their money!

Like the moral of that movie It's A Wonderful Life wasn't that the guy should go on living because he really tried his best and maybe he'll finally get to do what he wants with his life once he saves up his pennies; the moral was that he should go on living because he'd made life materially and spiritually better for his community. We need that energy!!

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...I mean, ffs, you know how you know you're at an actual leftist event? Everyone is mad at everyone else. We irritate each other more often than we agree on anything.

"I escaped the alt right but I have a hard time when leftists yell at me." My friend that is out national sport. Yelling at each other is how we bond.

[graysquirrel7]

[graysquirrel7]

Make the most of the next two months

Get all your vaccines

Travel while we have a functioning DOT

Read and buy books on feminism, anti-racism, pro-lgbt

Attend drag shows

Don't skip any of your classes

Read and buy history books

Find your out-of-state networks

Learn to carry cash

Get birth control solutions

Support the Biden/Harris administration

Postpone large purchases and save money

Be careful of what you say online, like un-ambiguous attacks against the incoming administration, especially in spaces that contain your full name or personal information

Feel free to add on.

[graysquirrel7]

Nonbinary includes the demiguys, demigirls, and autigendered people.

"The nonbinary afab who goes by she/her, dresses femininely, and uses a push-up bra when I—" when you what? What's wrong with her?

Is she not nonbinary enough for you? Is the way she experiences her queerness and how she presents not perfect enough for you? Nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny, right? So why is she the exception? Why does she have to hate herself to appeal to your standards? Why is she any less trans—any less worthy of respect—cause it's "not visible"? Queer solidarity my ass. Don't spout this bullshit on Pride, man.

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The Mos Eisley Cantina Effect

Every time I hear someone complain about "the Mos Eisley Cantina effect" in TTRPGs and stories, it grates on me. Not just because it's commonly coming from the same people who complain about accessibility and world building changes that make things more nuanced and less cut and dry.

This effect, demonstrated in Star Wars ep IV, is when you have a diverse array of characters at a cantina, tavern, etc., in a city. If you are building a world (or galaxy or universe) that has a wide variety of intelligent creatures, then any (and most, if not all) trading posts and port cities will have a wider client base than a homogenized homeworld or internal city. This is because when you have places for cross-border trade, everyone who participates in some form of commerce will be present in some fashion. If your world building is consistent, that will be all intelligent species/societies that happen to be able to access that port.

Mos Eisley is a "wretch hive of scum and villainy" in the Star Wars world building. Specifically, it's a smuggling post in service to an interplanetary criminal organization run by nonhumans. The cantinas of Mos Eisley are where flight crews of smuggling teams go during shore leave to kill time while their bosses meet with their fences, fixers, and handlers. Those cantinas are also where hunters of various persuasions will go to pump information.

In any setting where entire settlements end up going to criminal organizations, especially nonhuman criminal organizations, you're going to see a more varied collection of characters. Not just criminals, but also refugees and outcasts.

Which ties into another element of the Mos Eisley settlement in the Star Wars universe: there is a more homogenized faction in play. The human-run, human-dominated Galactic Empire. Their being modeled on imperialistic attitudes and bigoted people was entirely intentional. In coherent world-building, the existence of such a faction creates an unlimited supply of conflict around evading their laws and policies, an unending tide of refugees seeking safe haven, and yes, criminal enterprises chafing at Customs enforcement even as they sneak contraband in for the Empire's elite.

Settlements like Mos Eisley are far away from the areas directly controlled by the Galactic Empire, which makes them some of the safest populated areas for a variety of people, businesses, and associations that the Empire would never approve of. Coherent world-building takes this into consideration.

So of course the cantinas in Mos Eisley are going to have a wide array of characters in it. The universe of Star Wars has a wide array of characters in it, and the current state of that same universe has the most colorful, interesting, and diverse arrangement of them pushed into rim worlds like Tattooine, where their port cities like Mos Eisley are conducting business for groups that disagree with the Galactic Empire on one or more points.

TTRPGs

So why would someone mention this in a TTRPG? Because some of the biggest names in TTRPG have created settings (or are based in one) that are kitchen sink settings. That is to say that the world (universe) building of that setting has set up a wide array of various nonhuman intelligent creatures for the players of the TTRPG to interact with.

And be.

Which causes certain kinds of people to recoil, because they think that fantasy should be centered on humans and be generally homogenized. The best interpretation of this is they're wrong, childishly so, but they will steadfastly refuse to consider it.

There are genres that are. There are settings that are. These genres and settings that are more homogenized either don't have very many nonhuman intelligent creatures in them at all, or they have very bigoted framework under them, and thus need to be very carefully examined or outright rejected.

TTRPGs, especially the biggest name among them, have a long history of being built on racist tropes. There are elements of various fantasy genres that happen to be derivatives of racist tropes.

Without fail, the same kind people I've seen complain about "the Mos Eisley Cantina effect" in hub cities like Baldur's Gate, Waterdeep, Absolom, and so on, are the same kind of people who complain about the publishers of these games rewriting their own content to remove those racist tropes and revise their world building to be more inclusive.

Fantasy worlds, whether in a storytelling media like movies, shows, or books or a gaming media like TTRPGs, cRPGs, jRPGs, etc., are not actively harmed by being more inclusive. They exist as fantasy worlds for consumers to exist in a space where things are more vibrant, interesting, and have lower real personal stakes.

If you're running a game and you don't want your players to play a bunch of "weird" races because you don't like "the cantina effect"--stop and do some soul-searching. If your setting includes intelligent nonhuman creatures and involves some kind of setting-spanning conflict, why wouldn't members of those intelligent, nonhuman creatures be inspired to resolve or prevent that conflict?

The best interpretation is that you're childishly wrong in your approach to simplifying the player character party composition.

Every other interpretation involves your being the Galactic Empire, in ethics and policies. Especially if your plot involves sending a homogenized group out to save a world filled with a diverse population.

[graysquirrel7]

like to charge reblog to cast

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The fact that you can’t raise taxes on billionaires even slightly without them pouring money into fascist political movements is, of itself, evidence that billionaires as a class shouldn’t be allowed to exist in the first place.

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Friendly reminder to check your child's Halloween candy this year, I just found an endless labyrinth of physically-impossible tunnels reflecting the descent into madness of multiple unreliable narrators, each with their own obsessive goal that they pursue to the point of harming themselves inside of a snickers bar