#2024 post mortem

[thepoliticalvulcan]

Trump didn't win, the Democrats lost.

As I write this on Friday November 8th at 10:29 AM, there are still votes yet uncounted but the overall shape of things is clear and they provoke interesting questions.

This was a low turnout election. Not 2016 low, but much lower than 2020. Even after all of Wednesday and Thursday to finish counting high population states, Harris is still trailing Biden's 2020 tally by about 10 million votes. Which is not as bad as the 15 million that internet arguments on Wednesday and into Thursday will be using, but its still quite bad.

Even Trump, while the winner, is still several million votes shy of his 2020 tally.

The temptation to blame Biden is real and I agree with it. I think he was a good President in the sense that he had some notable and worthy achievements despite intense opposition, but the failure to have the humility to honor the implicit promise to be a transitional figure and not seek reelection I personally feel is unforgivable. Its hyperbolic often to say unforgivable, but at least at this moment I do not foresee a Jimmy Carter style rehabilitation in Biden's future.

I think this is a shame, not just because Trump won, but also because I did like Kamala Harris at least as a person. I soured on her as the finish line approached but I recognize that she was presented a no win scenario and tried to make the best of it. She had to run a campaign in which she could not meaningfully go rogue without provoking questions about why she'd stayed in the administration if she held strong dissenting opinions or making Biden into even more a lame duck than he already was.

What does her heart truly hold? Would she have meaningfully distanced herself from Biden on any issue of consequence? I guess we'll have to wait for the inevitable post election rebuttal book.

Maybe the fact that I did find her charming is a reflection of myself. I've not liked every answer she's given to every question but as someone who is sometimes inarticulate and a bit of a wonky dweeb, I get it. This doesn't present as authentic outside the college educated liberal set, clearly. Which means I'm likely even more out of touch than I know but all I can do is explain my values and how they connect to my preferred policies and issues and hope for the best.

Its all any of us can do.

And we can do that better.

The moral cooties theory of communication and association needs to die. Now.

Harris should have gone on Rogan.

Walz should have gone on Rogan.

This would not have likely changed the outcome, because in reality liberals, progressives, and socialists should have been doing on Rogan for YEARS.

Rogan says transphobic, misogynistic, racist, and downright scientifically stupid things.

All true.

So fight him.

Don't outsource this to shitposters in the comment sections, go on his program, and make the case to his audience.

A host can be acting in bad faith but still be the gatekeeper to a large audience that is not reachable with a sit down on The View or the Ezra Klein Show and Harris didn't even go on the Ezra Klein Show! The most respected liberal intellectual pundit, one who burned a lot of credibility to say what everyone was already thinking: that Biden should drop out and he did it months before that stupid debate with Trump, someone Harris almost assuredly owes quite a bit to for creating the permission structure for people to advocate for dumping Biden and she didn't go on the show.

We cannot keep having candidates do this.

Enough "safe" interviews.

Enough "platforming" or "legitimizing" discourse.

Go argue with the transphobe on his own show. If you persuade even 0.1% of his audience, maybe that 0.1% will be in districts you need to win.

Having these millionaires go talk to unfriendly millionaires doesn't mean you're legitimizing them, you're using them to access their audience. Period.

And knock it off with the "platforming" discourse around media and allowing unfriendly people an opportunity to talk. If the electorate comes away with an interview with JD Vance or some other grifter weirdo liking them instead of seeing them as liars code switching for a more moderate audience, then we have bigger problems than the media doing a "both same."

And for the rest of us, tolerating misogny, transphobia etc. is not what's called for, but learning to talk to people outside our group chats is. We were wrong after 2016 to double down on "my labor isn't free" "its not my job to educate you" "Google is your friend" - you don't have to feed trolls, but its clear that after almost a decade, "cancel culture" and "platforming" discourse has failed. Completely and disastrously. The very people these ideas were supposed to protect are now going to get hurt the worst by the lazy virtue signaling of the rest of us who had the emotional and physical safety to make GOOD arguments on their behalf.

[nyaaamato]

AKATSUKI ASSEMBLE! late day 1 pic for @obito-week 🎉

[technoregression]

Oh and by the way it’s just a small theory but I don’t think it’s going to get as bad as everyone’s talking about with this tariff thing that’s going on. BECAUSE.

I think that expired orange is menacingly clever in that he knows what his zombie supporters will hear and understand, and he knows what we’ll hear and understand. He’ll make life bearable for them and unbearable for us (mass deportation, stripping rights of minorities and women, promoting school shootings, so on)

But similar to 2020, after people have had enough, he’ll shit in the bed on his way out and let the stench of it fester throughout and within the walls. That same stench will linger over the next president’s 4 year term like a haunting.

It is is plainly obvious that Russia’s terrorism in Ukraine, and covid, and isntreals terrorism etcetcetcetc (and the mismanagement thereof) all contribute to the “unprecedented” times of financial and housing and wellbeing crises we’re suffering through.

But no. Not to them. To them, one president walked out of the White House, and another walked in and flipped a light switch which made the whole world go dark. To them there’s no such thing as cause ….. delay ….. effect. It’s just “I feel fact bad right now, who is president? Oh. It’s his fault.”

“Why can’t I afford groceries right now?”

“Oh well it’s actually because 8 years ago the unite-“

“It’s because of sleepy Joe!!!”

I derailed there for a minute.

TLDR the theory is that he’ll pull the same shit on his way out making us think like they’re trying to win another presidency. Meanwhile he’s actually caused so much instability that the next 4 years is just maintenance and repair under extreme conditions, like trying to build a house during a hurricane or whatever.

[uselessandgay]

While we’re all talking about the election from the points of policy, the major issue here is turnout. 2020 won for Dems because of vote by mail. 2024 happens and people are standing in line for five hours again in dense, blue areas. Would you wait in line for five hours to vote for Kamala Harris, when she isn’t bringing anything new or exciting to the table and can’t even promise an arms embargo?

I would not. There’s nothing exciting there that people want badly. No rent relief programs, no healthcare relief programs, only a weak, moderate vision for how to improve the lives of her constituents. And Liz Cheney was supposed to be exciting?

The left needs to include young men.

[everydaym0nstrosity]

Owen Davis - Morbid Pathology (2024).

[skyshard13]

I wrote up an blog post/postmortem for my last game, GUARDIAN ANGEL. I go in depth about a lot of the design decisions in that game, as well as a lot of things I wished I could have done better. Go check it out here!

[bitchinyoga]

Election Post-Mortem

Written and buried November 6 2024 Rain breaks over broken brittle earth scarred by months of drought. Why break now? Sunshine would be too ironic. Dear nature you hid the sun and dampened our fire. The absence of light suits our mourning this post-mortem morning. Shock waves whitecaps in my veins. We are not the people we believed we’d be. The second election of Trump is undeniable…

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

I was originally more optimistic they will learn because they can't keep doing this shit forever. A lot of the media that traditionally supports the Democrats like the NYT, Washington Post and a few others have decided they needed to tone down their rhetoric. That and the fact the Washington Post refused to endorse Kamala Harris is a sign of that. That and there are some post-mortems from more Democratic establishment types realizing where they went wrong.

But then I see the reactions online from the people on the ground. And it's usually middle to upper class white women losing their shit so maybe they didn't learn a whole lot. Seeing the white women go ape shit like that feels like a repeat of 2016.

Hopefully, this is in the short term and in the long term they do realize where they went wrong because, the people of America deserve to have better political candidates than what we have been getting for the last 8 years.

The more Internet™ I read today, the more convinced I become that democrats are Going To Learn Nothing™ from this

[wat3rm370n]

They will keep asking this question because they cannot see the obvious.

Philosopher Michael Sandel on What Trump’s Win Says About American Society | Amanpour and Company - Amanpour and Company - Nov 15, 2024 “Hey but the Democratic party used to be in favor of the average working person, why do you think they got tagged as the party of what you call the meritocratic elites that look down on others?”

PA Democratic Party politicians celebrate corporate giveaway. Chloe Humbert Nov 18, 2024 Less than 10 days after having to deny being elitists who’ve abandoned the working class, to defend the party’s historic defeats they announce millions of taxpayer money being given to a literal bank.

[super-kristuff]

Frontline Factory - Postmortem

I made a game for GMTK gamejam! I waited this long to post anything mostly because I was absolutely drained by the end of the 96 hours. This ended up being my lowest rated GMTK submission at #4312 out of 7,639; however, I feel like this is my greatest game yet. I feel like the game received the rating it did because of a tricky control scheme, poor tutorialization, and a punishing learning curve. I think the most interesting part is that elements 1 and 3 were actually somewhat deliberate on my part.

So, the original plan was to have the game be a top-down puzzle game like Overcooked. I wanted the player to be hastily running around with robot parts in hand and the element of scale to be enforced by the size of the robots the player had to make and the complexity of the builds. Obviously this was somewhat large in scope, but I felt getting the game to a playable state would be achievable.

Pretty quickly in development, I realized it would be faster to test features with a click and drag system. I justified that the player would be able to grab and drop in a similar manner, but I never got around to that. I decided that the player could just be a crane floating on the screen, and the drag and drop could be the primary mode of interfacing with the robots.

This wasn't super outlandish considering Last Call BBS and Mech Builder were both big inspirations for this project; however, I think the deviation from keyboard to keyboard AND mouse is a huge reason why players found my game to be confusing. I really wanted to challenge myself and build something more than just another 2D platformer, and I really think that I accomplished that goal. I'm not really sure how to describe the genre of my game, and that weird exploratory space is something I've been building towards for the longest time.

HOWEVER, I think by accomplishing this goal, my game is now outside the standards of videogame literacy. Everybody has some experience with a 2D platformer, but unless a player has played Last Call BBS or Mech Builder, it is safe to say that this would be a new experience. This isn't exactly a negative, but it does mean that I couldn't lean on players 'figuring it out', and I really needed to have any kind of tutorial at all.

Playing a lot of games during the gamejam, it's kind of embarrassing that I didn't have any kind of tutorialization in game. I wrote all the instructions on the floor of the main level, and even hid some behind the robot thinking "they'll have to move the robot now!". In retrospect, having some picture instructions on a dedicated page from the main menu would have been much more helpful and just as easy to implement.

I saw a shocking number of games with opening cutscenes, and I feel like I could have maybe pulled that off? It would have been a crunch from time pressures, but I don't think it would have been impossible to do something simple. Optimally, I think making an introductory level or two, where the player just needed to connect a single piece or submit an already completed robot, could have helped break down the complexity to a digestible amount.

Finally, I think my original motives of an Overcooked style game amplified my mistakes from lack of instruction. I added a timer and a bit of screen shake to make the player feel like they were under a bit of pressure, and I think this clashed horribly with the confusing atmosphere I had created. When I finally had the chance to pass the game to my little brother for playtesting (a couple days after submission), it took him two or three game-overs just to finish reading the instructions.

This was actually a concern of mine during development, but because I was able to beat the game in half the time, I assumed most players would have a bit of challenge to beat it within the time. I actually still feel like the amount of time is fair if only I had a better system in place for player instruction.

The timer also clashed horribly with my brother's prefered gaming setup: a school issued chromebook. The game is basically unplayable with any kind of touchpad, fullstop. I've always had a wireless mouse for my laptop, so I didn't even consider the play experience without it. Which, was a huge blunder on my part.

I think that about sums up my thoughts on the game. I was thinking about maybe expanding the game into something more akin to the original vision, but I thought that making this postmortem would not only be easier but also help to sort out my thoughts. I honestly feel like the amount of polish I've accomplished with this game is unparalleled by any other game I've made up to this point.

In conclusion, I think Frontline Factory is a game that lost its original intent somewhere along development. I think a lot of reasonable microscopic choices led to a lot of macroscopic consequences. I'm extremely happy with how well the game turned out, and I'm impressed with how much I've learned.

This is kind of a lot, so I don't expect anyone to have read the full thing, but thanks if you did.

[lezliebrooke]

We hereby conduct this post mortem...

Maybe she's thinking about a getaway? In France?

She just looks so happy 🥹

We love to see it! She completely lights up the room 🩷

[theriverbeyond]

Rated E (18+) | 4.8k words

“I’m not a child, Pyrrha,” he says. Cam’s face is pulled into a scowl, and you like the way the skin between his eyes furrows. It’s different from how Cam does it, and you think it’s cute, and painfully endearing. “I’m—shit. I’m twenty-two, if you count the years post-mortem. Twenty if you don’t, and House age of majority is eighteen regardless.” “I was twenty-two long before the Resurrection, ten thousand years ago,” you reply. The eggs you’re trying to cook sizzle. “You’re too young for me, Sextus."

This fic was written for Fandom Trumps Hate 2024 (@fandomtrumpshate) as a gift to thank @beyoncesfiancee for her donation to Palestine Children's Relief Fund.

FEATURING:

Pal/Pyrrha, ft background Cam/Pal/Pyrrha dynamics!

What if we were both stuck in a body that didn't fit our gender OR necro/cav alignment.... and we were both on New Rho👉👈!

Notable Cougar Hunter Palamedes Sextus!

Psychosexual roleplaying AND bad meals!

Background Nona antics!

Wild speculation on how DIY hormones might interact with a Lyctoral Body!

The ever present shadow of grief!

[embraceweird]

The post mortem addition to the Bad Kid's parents' polycule was not on my 2024 bingo card

[hamishlinklaters]

MANHUNT (2024) Episode 2 : Post-Mortem

[runawaysiren940]

Here's the full script for the most recent video, minus where I ad libbed:

Dr. Moumita Debnath, a 31 year old doctor trainee, was found dead on August 9th, 2024. After taking a break half-way through a 36 hour shift, her corpse was found on a blood stained mattress. Her body bore the wounds of torture, from the wounds to her eyes, her pelvis, genitals, arms and legs. As noted in The Publica’s report, “The post-mortem report also noted that over 150 mg of semen was recovered from the doctor’s body, indicating that up to 30 men could have been involved in the violation of Debath’s body. The normal volume of semen produced by a male upon ejaculation typically varies from 1.5 to 5.0 mg, according to the online medical encyclopedia MedlinePlus” (Biase). Her family was told that she died via suicide, though her wounds made it obvious that this was not the case; however, this claim allowed the principal of the school to avoid filing a police report. The attempts to hide the crime did not succeed, and have resulted in protests across India and the medical industry, both in response to the lack of protections for medical staff, and because of the attempt to hide the crime. 

In the aftermath, searches for footage of Debnath’s gang rape have trended, as “According to Google Trends, queries such as “Moumita Debnath porn” and “Dr. Moumita Debnath video” have experienced surges across India, with “Moumita Debnath rap[e] video” experiencing a 110% increase in searches. As of the time of this writing, of all the queries associated with her name, “Moumita Debnath photo video” is the 5th most searched in India, while “Moumita Debath last video” is the 12th most searched overall” (Biase).

This isn’t the only horrific case of gang rape, torture, or extreme violence against women. In fact, back in 2023, Vidya Krishnan wrote an opinion piece published in the New York times on the topic titled, “In India’s Gang Rape Culture, All Women Are Victims”, where she writes: 

It is the specific horror of gang rape that weighs most heavily on Indian women that I know. You may have heard of the many gruesome cases of women being gang-raped, disemboweled and left for dead. When an incident rises to national attention, the kettle of outrage boils over, and women sometimes stage protests, but it passes quickly. All Indian women are victims, each one traumatized, angry, betrayed, exhausted. Many of us think about gang rape more than we care to admit.

In 2011 a woman was raped every 20 minutes in India, according to government data. The pace quickened to about every 16 minutes by 2021, when more than 31,000 rapes were reported, a 20 percent increase from the previous year. In 2021, 2,200 gang rapes were reported to authorities.

But those grotesque numbers tell only part of the story: 77 percent of Indian women who have experienced physical or sexual violence never tell anyone, according to one study. Prosecutions are rare.

Indian men may face persecution because they are Muslims, Dalits (untouchables) or ethnic minorities or for daring to challenge the corrupt powers that be. Indian women suffer because they are women. Soldiers need to believe that war won’t kill them, that only bad luck will; Indian women need to believe the same about rape, to trust that we will come back to the barracks safe each night, to be able to function at all. (Krishnan)

Just from recent memory, I can recall several other horrifying cases. 

In a rare case of justice, in May 2024, a pair of brothers were sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a 12 year old girl. To hide the crime, they then burned her alive in a coal furnace. (The Hindu Bureau)

In 2012, 22 year old Jyoti Singh was “beaten, gang-raped, and tortured in a private bus in which she was travelling with her male friend, Avnindra Pratap Pandey. There were six others in the bus, including the driver, all of whom raped the woman and beat her friend.” She later succumbed to her wombs, while her friend supposedly committed suicide. (Khan)

Many rape cases end with the woman dead. It is horrifying to me, from across the globe, to know that women live under constant threat of sexual assault, and while all assaults are horrific, the cases which break into the international news sphere from India are especially cruel and disturbing. It is the culmination of a deeply traditional and patriarchal society, wherein the devaluation of women is compounded with caste and religious issues, along with the rise of pornography. Porn is the instruction, and rape is the practice; though clearly, there was no need for instruction. 

Famous cases include:

The Suryanelli rape case, where in 1996, a sixteen year old was lured with a marriage promise, kidnapped, and was raped by 37 men during her forty day captivity. Although initially 35 of 39 accused were found guilty, in 2005, all 35 convicted were acquitted of charges. 

The Pararia mass rape, where in 1988, at least 14 women were gang raped by the police force, and had their homes looted after they protested against being removed to make way for a damn being built. “India Today reported Sinha's concluding statements were: "It cannot be ruled out that these ladies might speak falsehood to get a sum of Rs 1,000, which was a huge sum for them." (Bonner)

In many caste altercations, women are targeted because to rape a woman is not done just to her, but is meant to be an insult to the community and the community’s honor. In an environment where religious and social conflict occurs, women are especially vulnerable as targets of sexual violence. 

However, what the internet has provided is an avenue to share the debasement and horror of gang rape with other men. It prolongs the suffering and harm to the victim and her family; but also serves as a warning to other women, and as an enticement to other men. Come, they say. Look at what we did. See how we were despicable and got away with it? You can too. 

A 28 year old tourist and her husband were robbed, then man beaten, and the woman, raped by seven men in March of 2024. Since they have taken down the video detailing the event from their social media, I will not show that here, or go deeply into detail. However, in the reactions to the incident, one can note a pattern of behavior, not just from Indian men, but also women. 

The BBC reported: 

“The chief of India's National Commission for Women, Rekha Sharma, also sparked criticism after she responded to a post from a US journalist who wrote that while India was one of his favourite places, "the level of sexual aggression" he witnessed while living in the country was "unlike anywhere else I have ever been". He also gave a couple of examples of sexual assault faced by women he knew.

"Did you ever report the incident to police?" Ms Sharma wrote. "If not then you are totally an irresponsible person. Writing only on social media and defaming whole country is not good choice."” (Sebastian)

Victim blaming is constant, and serves as a deterrent from seeking help, reporting incidents, or enacting change. In the aftermath of the 2019 gang rape and murder of 27 year old Priyanka Reddy, Indian filmmaker Daniel Shravan ranted on social media that  “The government should encourage and legalize rape without violence,” and, “Girls above 18 should be educated on rapes and not deny the sexual desires of men.” He also went on to say that, “Rapists are not finding a way to get their bodily sexual desires [met],” which is compelling them to kill.” (“After a Woman in India was Raped and Murdered, Her Name Trended on Porn Sites”). Because assault and violence against women is so common in India, it makes sense that victim blaming, from both sexes remains so strong, as “according to Inside Southern, the reason for victim blaming is: “People may blame a victim in order to remove themselves from an unpleasant event and therefore confirm their own invulnerability to the risk. Others may perceive the victim as different from themselves if they label or accuse the victim. People console themselves by saying, “Because I’m not like her, and I don’t do that, this would never happen to me.”” (Ram).  In other words, it a pacifier, a way to manage the dread that comes with realizing the ubiquitousness and unpredictability of sexual assault. If there is something you can do to avoid being assaulted, then it must be her fault. And you must be safe, because you don’t make those choices. 

That men make up a large contingent of the judges and lawmakers that in turn pass the laws which allow rapists to walk free iillustrates the universal truth that Anna Maria Mozzoni, a popular Italian feminist theorist, wrote about in 1895, “You will find that the priest who damns you is a man; that the legislator who oppresses you is a man, that the husband who reduces you to an object is a man; that the libertine [anarchist] who harasses you is a man; that the capitalist who enriches himself with your ill- paid work and the speculator who calmly pockets the price of your body, are men.”

It’s easy to forget when the violence is not happening in front of you, when you can excuse it, or look away, or claim that there are forces at play that you don’t understand. It’s easy to say that the problem is with a people or a religion- 

But the truth is that woman hating is universal. A passing interest in anthropology will only show the manifestations of this hatred in creative ways throughout space and time.

Works Cited

“After a Woman in India was Raped and Murdered, Her Name Trended on Porn Sites.” Fight The New Drug, December 2019, https://fightthenewdrug.org/woman-in-india-raped-and-murdered-her-name-trended-on-porn/. Accessed 21 August 2024.

Biase, Natasha. “Name Of Female Doctor Who Was Gang Raped And Murdered In Indian Hospital Appears On Porn Sites As Men Seek Out Footage Of The Assault.” The Publica, 19 August 2024, https://www.thepublica.com/female-doctor-who-was-gang-raped-and-murdered-in-indian-hospital-appears-on-porn-sites-as-indian-men-search-for-footage-of-crime/. Accessed 21 August 2024.

Bonner, Arthur. “Pararia mass rape (1988).” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pararia_mass_rape_(1988). Accessed 21 August 2024.

The Hindu Bureau. “Two get death for raping, burning alive minor girl in Bhilwara.” The Hindu, 20 May 2024, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/rajasthan/two-sentenced-to-death-by-pocso-court-in-rajasthan-court-for-raping-burning-alive-minor-girl/article68195867.ece. Accessed 21 August 2024.

Khan, Aamir. “2012 Delhi gang rape and murder.” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Delhi_gang_rape_and_murder. Accessed 21 August 2024.

Krishnan, Vidya. “Opinion | In India's Gang Rape Culture, All Women Are Victims (Published 2023).” The New York Times, 2 June 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/02/opinion/india-women-rape.html. Accessed 21 August 2024.

Ram, Anjali. “Never Ending Tales Of Victim Blaming And Shaming.” Feminism in India, 12 December 2022, https://feminisminindia.com/2022/12/12/never-ending-tales-of-victim-blaming-and-shaming/. Accessed 21 August 2024.

Sebastian, Meryl. “Outrage over Brazilian tourist's gang rape in India.” BBC, 3 March 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-68444993. Accessed 21 August 2024.

[skyshard13]

I've finished putting together a (somewhat belated) postmortem for my Velox Fabula 2 entry!

You can read it here: