#We can't stagnate. We have to keep getting radical with it.

[system32sys-hub]

Hey, 21 notes, this one's a banger! I feel like following up on this because, like I said in the tags, this only scratches the surface.

To put it bluntly, I do not believe that health is a meaningful, useful, or ethical concept. To put it even more bluntly, health does not exist.

We live in a world that moralizes the concept of health to the point where discussions of it inherently cannot be separated from healthism - the idea that health is superior, controllable, or achievable. This mindset is everywhere, from the rudest bigots to the most invested fat liberationists, there is always, always, always the impression that health is mandatory.

From my research and observations, the concept of health is largely a collection of performative behaviours, many of them not actually benefiting disabled, neurodivergent, and fat people, especially those with higher support needs. An example would be exercise, something touted as universally good and enjoyed - a cure-all if you will - being very able to cause harm, especially in the environment that healthism creates; one of obsession, control, and force. The same mentality goes for other "wellness" and "fitness" concepts.

If we understand the idea that we cannot become mentally or emotionally better through obsession, control, and force, then we should be able to understand this for our bodies. Our human experiences are full of variability, and expecting that to just stop at a certain point doesn't make sense.

I think it's imperative that we separate ourselves from the idea of health as a whole. The concept of unhealth cannot exist without health, and the concept of health cannot exist without moralization.

You might be wondering, very naturally, "how do we take care of ourselves, then?" and my answer to that varies heavily.

Life is full of both-and situations. You are the author of your own life, and you can't control everything. Every single person is their own little microcosm of lived experiences, and should be inherently respected... as long as they're not bigoted.

And that very concept is an important facet of anti-healthism; you can do what you want with your body, but do you really want to do something bigoted, including believing in health as a concept?

Okay, I'm gonna put a controversial opinion out here.

I see a lot of people in the fat liberation community focusing on health. A lot of people don't seem to have fully deconstructed the fact that health does not make you morally superior, but more importantly, have not deconstructed health as a whole.

In a world that moralizes health, especially in relation to food and weight, we have to constantly doubt what we are learning about this concept. Can we trust the scientists who made Ozempic to tell us about how inferior fatness is? Can we trust the journalists writing about the "obesity epidemic" to recommend these so called health-boosting foods? So much of the modern concept of health is based off of systemic biases, and ones that we're blind to at that.

My opinion is, health is an incredibly vague, and often unhelpful concept. It is largely uncontrollable, let alone with food and exercise. You cannot diet, exercise, meditate and stretch your way out of marginalization, denial of medication, mobility aids, or surgery. And this is only talking about the people who have the privilege and/or ability to act upon these things.

My recommendation is to instead focus on the individual experience as a neutral one; "I have trouble walking" "My weight affects my ability to breathe" "I cannot process this information". Healthism is not only fatphobic, but ableist, and these two things go hand in hand.

This relies on a social framework of little to no fatphobia and healthism to begin with, but guess what. We can forge that world.

[hadesoftheladies]

the fucking GALL of racist radfems to claim that men of colour are more misogynistic and violent than white men because of culture is incredible! "immigrant men of colour are more likely to assault white women because of sharia law" like please show me the stats?! and tell me why this is 100% a cultural thing and not a class thing while you're at it. no one is telling you to trust any man, but the idea that men of colour are just culturally more barbaric is not only untrue but deeply offensive. the idea that child marriage is purely a brown people thing is so laughable i can't fathom it. it is borderline gaslighting women of colour by saying that white men are socialized to somehow be more humane because of "european culture."

after all, most sex tourists/serial rapists are white men and most serial killings are committed by white men. which better demographic to get away with sexual violence against lesser humans like the coloureds? :) we all know that the richer men are the more they use that freedom to exploit and victimize. what do you think your little storm troopers the government sent to our backyards are doing? keeping peace? :) not raping innocent women and children here while they train for a war your emperors will invent? :) are white men just more evolved or are white women just better protected by their financial status? fucking morons.

but more egregious than anything is the complete lack of accountability when it comes to white culture. y'all LOVE to talk about how european/western culture is all about ethics and scientific discovery and progress and IT'S A FUCKING JOKE. white supremacy is white culture. imperialism is white culture. pornography is white culture. incest is white culture. colonialism is white culture. consumerism is white culture. who do you think enforced patriarchy on egalitarian, matrilineal and matrifocal indigenous people groups? like wHitE cULtuRe is one of the most violent things to happen to this planet and the human race. white culture is holy wars and grand conquests. white culture is brute force and large-scale violence for the sake of the elite.

white so called radical feminists LOVE to argue like men so often, throwing the "but where would the rest of you be without our accomplishments?" FUCK YOU. The answer is not so fucking traumatized and probably more populous! the sun wouldn't be this hot. our wildlife wouldn't be so diminished (your white men love hunting our wildlife for sport and prestige). our people wouldn't be so poor and sick. and yes, even our men wouldn't be so violent if white men weren't spreading pornography propaganda in every media outlet. "where would you be without the suffragettes?" (tell me how that's different from "women wouldn't have rights if we hadn't allowed it") we wouldn't have needed the suffragettes if your fucking grandfathers hadn't landed on our shores with guns and bibles. what, you think we just sat in the sun and diddled ourselves for centuries? you think we didn't have philosophy, medicine, language or science before you? you think we were just stagnating in a marsh, waiting for some guy called John to tell us how to make clothes and teach us hygiene? are white cultures the only ones capable of progressing? you think the only way humans would have been able to make smartphones is if a white person did it?

culture my FUCKING ASS.

[miirshroom]

Meet the New Boss Same as the Old Boss

Saw this comment on Reddit:

Having a bit of a sleep deprived day, which has the side effect that random pieces of conversation will remind me of musical lyrics that I haven't thought about in years. It's clear to me what Radahn's theme is: meet the new Elden Lord, same as the old Elden Lord. As presented in the DLC, the god Miquella's reign of "compassion" is a farce - you can't build a compassionate future on a foundation of violence. The measures that need to be taken are such that if you don't eradicate your enemy they will only become more radicalized. And if you do carve a bloody path and eradicate the enemy rather than just subject them to slow torment, then keeping your own people united and under control requires the creation of a new enemy - it never stops. History shows us how hard it is to stop being at war once a country starts it.

Radahn represents more than one kind of stagnation. In the Lands Between it is the stagnation of arresting forward progress. In the Shadow Lands it is the stagnation of wrenching a wheel up out of its track to watch it spin in place - repeating cycles of the past. Take it as extremely literal that Radahn is emulating Godfrey - he is repeating the same story again.

Rather than inflict the rest of my thought process on some random Redditor, I'm just going to post it here: "Won't get Fooled Again" by the Who.

We'll be fighting in the streets With our children at our feet And the morals that they worship will be gone And the men who spurred us on Sit in judgement of all wrong They decide and the shotgun sings the song I'll tip my hat to the new Constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again A change, it had to come We knew it all along We were liberated from the fold, that's all And the world looks just the same And history ain't changed 'Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war I'll tip my hat to the new Constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again, no, no I'll move myself and my family aside If we happen to be left half-alive I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky For I know that the hypnotized never lie Do you? Yeah There's nothing in the street Looks any different to me And the slogans are effaced, by-the-bye And the parting on the left Is now parting on the right And the beards have all grown longer overnight I'll tip my hat to the new Constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again Don't get fooled again, no, no Yeah Meet the new boss Same as the old boss

I've decided recently to lean into the concept that Elden Ring is intentionally structured as a crime scene investigation story, so the cherry on top here is that "Won't Get Fooled Again" was the theme song for the police procedural drama CSI: Miami in the 2000's. And while I was mostly into CSI: Crime Scene Investigations back in the day I did remember that the lead detective of CSI: Miami is named "Horatio Caine". As in the friend listening to the monologue that Hamlet delivers in a cemetery (where a pair of clowns have been exhuming the dead in the process of digging a new grave plot):

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that.

[soleadita]

excerpt from an essay by j. logan smilges that ripped my heart open this weekend:

“Not all neuroqueer intimacies are performances, such as the ones I discuss, but performance is a useful analogy for the bodyminds of marginalized people who are always on display. For many queer people, being on display is to be simultaneously seen and unseen, to be dripping with rhetorical energy that marks our nonnormativity and simultaneously overdetermines our personhood. We become the sum total of our perceived deficits. We are in excess of lack, overflowing with all that we are not, all that we can't do, all that we can't be, all that we can't become. To push back against these assumptions, discourses, and energies is hard work. It's labor and laborious. It's exhausting to justify our own existence. So neuroqueer intimacies offer a reprieve, a chance to stop pushing back and to take a break, together.

This is not the same as giving up. This is about realizing our collective limits. This is about acknowledging that playing the long game doesn't mean we have to postpone our joy until the final buzzer. To craft intimacies is to love on one another. It's to grab somebody else's hand—somebody else who is hurting too, even if it's a different hurt than your own—and cry at the bus stop. It's to put on silly hats. It's to eat a meal of snacks you all found at the gas station. It's to take a shower together, partly because one of you needs some help getting in and out and partly because why not, it's sexy. It's to see that same tiredness in a stranger's eyes that you've been feeling for longer than you can remember and just giving a nod. Because you both get it. It's to remind yourself that you're not alone, even when you're lonely. It's to stop performing in the middle of this performance we call a life and just fucking scream.

Screaming doesn't save the world, at least not usually. Neither does nodding or showering or snacking or crying. Neuroqueer intimacies don't try to fix the stage we're performing on; they just try to change the script of the play a little bit, drawing their inspiration from the liberation we'll all get back to tomorrow. Right now it's about being with, being here, and being alive.

A part of me feels like I'm hedging, as if I'm making excuses for what queer silence can't do. I don't mean to sketch the limits of intimacy too definitively. I don't want to foreclose the radical potentialities laden in neuroqueer desiring-together. I mean only to dwell in the potentialities that don't pass radical muster. I want to see, honor, and celebrate all of the ways that we are collectively surviving. This is a nonhierarchical approach to activism and organizing, informed by a queercrip commitment to each person's boundaries, needs, and limitations. Neuroqueer intimacies and queer silence more broadly understand that world-building is sometimes a matter of world-living, of living and staying alive in this world. There is so much power in the commitment to keep going, even when that going feels like stillness, like stagnation.

Liberation work doesn't always feel liberating. Sometimes, perhaps even most of the time, it feels like you're coming up against a wall, like you're going in circles, like you're actually moving backward. After a while, these feelings can wear a person down to a point when they no longer feel like doing the work at all. It can be hard to keep going when it doesn't feel like you've been going anywhere. It's in these moments that neuroqueer intimacies are so important because they invite us to pause our work and return to our dreams, get back to our longings, invest in our desires. They ask us to catch one another's glance, to flirt, to hold hands, to dance. And here, in the space between the world we want and the world we have, is a little joy and a little love. It's not much, but it's enough for now.”

— from “neuroqueer intimacies” in queer silence (p. 208-209) by j. logan smilges

[biggaybunny]

I used to guffaw at the changes the more recent pokemon games had made to the core gameplay, but now I'm convinced that they're not enough. The pokemon games are bogged down by outdated, clunky mechanics that they're trying to work around when they should be thrown out all together.

The auto exp. all of the past couple games boggled me at first, for example. It seemed to make the game too easy. But the difficulty imposed by the level system doesn't really make the game more enjoyable. The exp and stat system were borrowed from traditional party-based rpgs (mostly jrpgs), but those games don't usually have an active-to-inactive party member ratio as bad as 1:5, often have level catchup mechanics, are usually less reliant on achieving favorable matchups in pokemon (you have less flexibility in your party after all), and are still notoriously heavy on grinding. You can always get more levels if you're willing to grind for it, but this is boring, and distracts from the rest of the game. You're not doing anything novel or interesting. Sure you can self-impose restrictions on grinding, but I'm talking about how the game is designed, not the individual play experience. If you don't have enough levels (and thus, stats) then any level of tactical play isn't going to help (don't talk to me about cheese strats), and conversely if you have more than enough levels, tactical play is rendered pointless.

The entire point of being able to carry a party of six pokemon is to allow you to design a strong and versatile team to handle the variety of situations the game throws at you; if we assume that the player and the enemies they are facing are always equal in terms of levels & stats, then the matchups are the difference. So what value is added by levels? Differentiation in stat distribution and totals serves to make some pokemon more useful in their role, but conversely makes other pokemon harder to use, since there will be a median that's balanced for and there will be pokemon below this median. It does also prevent the player from ever getting stuck; if they can't beat a challenge based on their team and their level of ability, they can "brute force" their way through. This is only necessary in a game with linear progression and hard progress checks, things that a player would need to "brute force" through to continue playing. So if the game is built without these, the problem -- and the need for levels/stats -- almost entirely disappears.

A more non-linear game can allow a player to return to a challenge when they have more experience with the game or a different party to tackle it with. There's still a lot of ways to have pokemon differentiate from one another and you can even include progression; in fact, it's already in the game. Each pokemon has a move list, including moves that will be learned naturally and moves that can be found in the world and taught to them. Often, moves acquired later in a pokemon's progression or in harder-to-reach parts of the game are strict upgrades to moves that come before; no one keeps Ember around once they can teach Flamethrower to their pokemon, etc.

It may seem like a radical idea, removing levels and even stats. But levels definitely seem like a headache for Gamefreak, judging by recent design choices. It was an idea copied from contemporary RPGs into the original pokemon that doesn't account for the fact that pokemon doesn't really play like, or want to be, a party-based RPG. And then there's the problem that if they put too much challenge in to their games, the response built in to the game is to have the player grind, and that's bad for game balance and for player enjoyment. This isn't a "pokemon is too easy" complaint, of course. It's a "pokemon is stagnating because its core mechanics were made in the 90s". And honestly this isn't even the only core mechanic I meant to touch on. I also take issue with the who catching mechanic, but I'll put that elsewhere. I'll be interested in seeing what the spinoffs do different about these core problems, if anything.