murderturtles

[murderturtles]

I don't know much about Call of Duty but based on this Google image search it appears to mostly be about men kissing each other

[murderturtles]

[murderturtles]

What? Huh? You want me to stop? Sorry my ears don't work too good and I can't hear you over the wet slapping. The fish? You don't like it when I hit you with the fish? Why?

[murderturtles]

Gosh I hate grind culture. My little sister just started medical school and all of her orientation leaders are like “you absolutely cannot have a life WHATsoever you WILL have to give up EVERYTHING besides this program say GOODBYE to your hobbies and relationships” and now she’s calling me feeling guilty for running and going to the grocery store and that’s just WRONG! And that is exactly what I was told starting law school as well, and rejecting that mentality was the best thing I ever did but it was so hard not to buy into. Anyway if any of you are in an intense academic program PLEASE take time to sleep and eat and exercise and maintain your relationships and keep up your hobbies! you are not a robot who exists solely to study and I promise that living a life and staying physically and mentally healthy is not going to make you fail

[murderturtles]

i feel like what would totally kill the republican party or at least kneecap them for awhile to the public would be for trump to die mid office. if trump dies after his presidency ends, the media would saintify his image like they do by calling him a “controversial figure, loved and hated by many.” republicans will ride on that image of trump like they do with reagan and i bet the short-attention span of americans will forget all the horrid things he has done if he leaves office and dies years afterwards. but if he died (particularly from natural causes) while still in office, republicans will scramble to assemble any form of identity outside of trump, which none of them do. they have nothing to explain to their base about doing anything in the future bcuz the whole party has been centered on trump and following his commands. without trump, republicans are nothing

[murderturtles]

[murderturtles]

HEY GUYS!!

GUYS!!!

FRANCE HAS REACHED THE REQUIRED NUMBER OF SIGNATURES ON THE CITIZEN'S INITIATIVE AGAINST CONVERSION THERAPY IN THE EU!!

ONE COUNTRY DOWN, SIX TO GO!!

We also need still quite a few signatures in order to reach the one million required.

As to date, the six other countries with the most signatures are:

Spain - 38.72%

Finland - 30.31%

Ireland - 24.86%

Netherlands - 24.15%

Germany - 23.54%

Belgium - 23.09%

So yeah, still a long way to go, but we ARE slowly getting closer. Don't stop now! Don't let this stay within the community, either, if you have any friends or family who are open to queer rights, get them to sign, too!

[murderturtles]

Imagine if they find Luigi innocent and he has to go through the rest of his life as That Guy Who Got Turbodoxxed That One Time Because Everyone Thought He Was An Assassin.

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just got back into gardening so i’ve forgotten. are basil leaves supposed to be this big

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[murderturtles]

civic duty

[murderturtles]

So I published an article on Rascal News this week about the Korean RPG scene and I thought I’d tell you the story of that story. Around late November last year, I was listening to the Korea episode of the World of RPGs podcast. In that podcast, the host Moritz speaks to a number of people from a country to try and paint a picture of that country’s scene. One of the people he spoke to was Oh SeungHan, who is a translator and indie publisher.

SeungHan tells a story about an incident in 2016 in the RPG community where an anti-feminist mob attacked one of the most prolific indie designers in the community for a t-shirt she owned. The t-shirt said, “Girls Do Not Need A Prince”. It sounds like a mild statement but due to complex political reasons, this slogan had become a rallying point for some very angry, right-wing men. The thing that grabbed me about the story was that SeungHan said that the biggest publisher in Korea, Dayspring Games, came out strongly against the hate on display. Apparently, this was the catalyst for an influx of women into the hobby and led to the demographics of the community shifting – from majority male to majority female.

I was fascinated. So I reached out to Moritz for SeungHan’s email. Then, I reached out to SeungHan. I thought I was just going to talk to them but they amazingly put me in touch with Choi Mika who was the woman at the centre of the incident in 2016. Luckily, Mika was kind enough to speak to me. I didn’t really ask her a lot of questions–since this was email and I wanted to the conversation to happen in Korean, I basically said, “Can you tell me what happened in your own words?” and let her tell it how she wished.

Mika sent me two long emails telling her story. SeungHan acted as the official translator but despite the language barrier, it was clear to me that Mika was a really clever and funny person. Even Google Translate was good enough for that!

I had initially reached out mid-December but by the time, we had gone back and forth twice, it was suddenly February. Emails were missed, personal events got in the way, you know how things are. Sometimes that’s how long it takes.

Then, through Chaosium, I got the email of Kim Sung-il, co-founder of Dayspring Games, and exchanged emails with him to get at what he remembers about the incident. He responded instantly and explained why he felt it necessary to make a strong political stand–a risky action because at the time, the majority of the country was voting the other way! (When the same thing was happening to employees of videogame studios, almost all of them bent over backwards to assuage the haters.)

It’s rare to find a story where a terrible incident (that Mika still finds it difficult to talk about) led to something positive. And honestly, the truth might be more complicated than I can perceive. But both Mika and Sung-il tell me that no such incidents have happened since and RPGs are now seen as a safe space for women. At a pre-pandemic convention that Dayspring organized, about 70% of the attendees were women.

It was such a blessing to share something as wholesome as that and I couldn’t resist another chance to talk about it.

[murderturtles]

y’all really recommend books like: title, there are gay characters, enemies to lovers, young adult, written by poc

not once do i ever see a summary

[murderturtles]

hey does anyone wanna do the funniest thing ever

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[murderturtles]

i cannot believe what i just witnessed in the oval office. trump literally screaming at zelenskyy telling him “we hold the cards”, threatening world war iii, and accusing ZELENSKYY of “not being ready for peace”. jd vance interjecting with “have you said thank you once”. cannot overstate the level of contempt i have for vance and this entire administration.