#but not in a way that was really substantial

[trekbec82]

What we really need (and I've requested) is a setting that allows users to turn off coloured text in posts (at the viewing end not the sending end), the way we can turn off coloured tags - and likewise, a setting that forces subscript to be normal size. That way folks such as yourself can use coloured text (and subscript for those who like it) as much as you like, and folks like me can read it all in plain colour at normal size. It might be tricky to implement, but it'd improve accessibility pretty substantially, I think.

listen to me. listen. your actual job in life, and it sucks that your 5th grader teacher didnt explain this adequately enough, is to ask for help when you need it and to accept charity when it would take a weight from your shoulders. Otherwise you end up like Sisyphus- or even worse, Walter White

[catflowerqueen]

Yet another au idea that is funny specifically to me, and that I am posting to subject you all to my weird sense of humor:

ISAT au where when Siffrin joined the group by fighting off that Sadness, their weapon of choice was an old shovel that was so old that it ended up breaking during the fight. They end up joining the group specifically because they are seeking a replacement shovel, and have yet to find one in any of the towns that were visited on the journey (either because the towns were disorganized in the chaos, the town didn't have shovels meeting their specifications, or the ones that did were already frozen and he wasn't just going to steal someone's shovel like that when they didn't know if they were still using it, especially since they can't justify it as being for weaponry/"saving the country" purposes since that Sadness fight proved that shovels aren't really the greatest weapon, compared to when they pick up anything and everything in the House that catches their fancy)

Why was he wielding that shovel, you may ask? Because he'd been trying to dig a hole big enough to turn into an underground bunker. Not to try and hide from the King or the curse or anything--they just thought an underground bunker in the woods might be a nice place to live. A sort of permanent base without having to worry about things like property taxes. Or just decided on a whim.

When they go antiquing with Odile, they specifically are looking for shovels/digging tools (even though an antique shovel probably wouldn't hold out long enough for his specific purposes).

...They probably do come across some shovels which would work, but still come up with millions of excuses for why they aren't "good enough" because that way they continue to have a justification for staying with the group beyond the whole "we have to save the country from this curse" thing.

(Would work especially well if this was one of those universes where Siffrin is basically a hermit who lives in the woods because they just came to Vaugarde recently and don't know the local language, so has no idea that the freezing isn't just a natural phenomenon and that the group is travelling with a specific end goal and foe in mind. Maybe they were planning on digging their underground bunker in the neighboring country and had no idea they'd wandered across the border into Vaugarde because they used a path people don't usually traverse.

And/or had actually dug quite a substantial amount of the bunker already in said neighboring country and didn't realize he'd accidentally tunneled into Vaugarde when creating one of their periodic air vent shafts.)

[maxdibert]

Look who's back, I hope this isn't bothering you, but my friend really thinks that suffering violence doesn't justify being a violent person and I really need to talk to someone about Severus.

Not long ago I asked my mother with exactly these words “if a person grew up amid violence and only suffered violence, is it abnormal for them to be violent?”.

And she said: Not always, it depends from person to person. Some will be different from the experiences and environment they lived in, while others will not. But the chances of a child who has suffered violence also being violent is 98%.

And it made me think about how people see Severus as an exception and not a statistic. And, for some reason, they make it a competition of traumas and belittle his suffering because he is not a perfect victim who swallows his spite, forgives those who hurt him and pretends that everything is fine when it is not.

Experiencing violence doesn’t justify being violent, but it can explain it. There’s a substantial difference between justification and understanding. The reason why someone is the way they are doesn’t mean that behavior is acceptable, but it helps to understand their character. This is essential if you’re working with that person professionally, for example.

That said, this has many nuances because experiencing violence is just one of many factors that can lead to antisocial behavior. If violence occurs in isolation and the victim has resources and support, the likelihood of them developing violent behaviors is significantly lower. For example, take an average bullying victim. They may have suffered a lot at school, but that’s just one part of their life. What if they had a group of friends outside school? What if they had a stable relationship with their parents? And if none of that happened, what if they found a safe space with people who respected and valued them when they went to university? The environment is crucial both for healing trauma and for the development (or prevention) of problematic behaviors. The problem for victims of violence, in terms of their cognitive development, isn’t so much the violence itself but the resources and tools they have to heal afterward. And healing requires many factors.

Severus represents the case of a victim of violence who suffered it not just in one environment but in all of them. As a child, he experienced abuse at home, and as a teenager, he was bullied at school. He comes from an environment where he has no tools to cope with that violence because he grew up extremely poor, and his parents were participants in the abuse. The abuse continues at school, where bullies make his life hell, and once again, the adults around him not only fail to intervene but either force him to keep quiet or even reward his abusers (James being made Head Boy, for instance). He grows up in an environment where violence is normalized, and the adults in his life constantly justify or validate it. The only people who accept him are the Death Eaters, who are themselves a highly violent group. Everything around him during the most crucial stages of his cognitive development fosters not just a normalization of violence but a justification of it.

When he leaves the Death Eaters, instead of finding an understanding environment where he can start fresh, discover himself, build friendships, and maybe construct a new life, he is trapped in the same school that was a nightmare for him, with no tools or ecosystem that might allow him to heal or attempt to overcome his trauma. Dumbledore doesn’t help; he treats Severus like a soldier, trapping him in that violent cycle with his role as a double agent and feeding his guilt precisely to make him more effective for his plans. Severus isn’t a colleague; he’s a tool.

In my opinion, if he had been able to escape all of that, focus on his own life, and build something for himself, yet still remained violent, then his behavior would be absolutely inexcusable. He would have had opportunities. He would have had the chance to choose to change but refused to do so. However, a person with Severus’s past, environment, and position had no opportunity to change because he lacked the space or means to do so. No one offered him a hand. He was alone, he had nothing, and when someone finally gave him something, it was only to imprison him in the cage of his demons and use him for their own ends. He couldn’t escape from that.

It doesn’t make sense to blame someone for being resentful when their entire life has revolved around an endless cycle of suffering. People like that never end well.

[restinan]

I don't actually think that shooting the ten guys with the wealth has literally never made things better at any point in the history of man. If you actually read my post instead of pattern-matching it to the nearest easy thing to dunk on you might notice that I don't ever say anything incompatible with there being a wide range of outcomes. That said, it really is the case if you read history broadly there are trends in how well countries do if they descend into political violence and civil war. It tends not to make things better. Yes, there's a distribution- it's not a good distribution.

I understand that's a bit rude to accuse you of pattern matching to something dunkable rather than actually thinking, but you're the one who opened by attributing people who disagree with you to propaganda from the US government and fantasy novels. I get that that lets you feel pleasantly smug but there are in fact historically literate people who disagree with you for real reasons.

The American Revolution is probably one of the examples of "just kill some people" working out well you're thinking of here. It's genuinely true that things worked out well, but the American Revolution was a very weird civil war. The American revolution notably preserved most of the existing ruling class and didn't substantially disrupt the general structure of society. If you want to argue that wars of secession specifically have a very different track record from popular uprisings or attempting to use political violence to stabilize a country you'd have a good case for doing so. That said, even in that reference class the American Revolution had much better results than typical.

Perhaps you're not thinking of something so famous and instead thinking of examples like the overthrow of the government of communist Romania?

If you're making predictions from the American Revolution and the French Revolution and a handful of overthrows of dictatorships at the end of the Cold War and not on the banal, boring, usually forgotten peasant uprisings in Early Modern Europe, or the various peasant uprisings and descents into warlordism in Ancient China, or the slow rise of political violence and decay in norms in the Roman Republic (a shiny popular example, but still not one you should leave out- reversed stupidity isn't intelligence and we have a disproportionate amount of insight into this one), or the dozen instances of political violence in the early twentieth century aiding in the rise of the opposed party from the people doing the violence, or the communist attempts to swiftly restructure society in ways that accidentally caused massive famines, or the general outcomes of civil wars in the late 20th century, or the hundred other things in this vein, you're going to end up wrong about things.

Yes, the distribution of outcomes is wide. Yes, it is not entirely negative. That doesn't mean anywhere near as much as it might seem. A lottery which has a 50% chance of killing you horribly, a 20% chance of torturing you before you die, a 30% chance of leaving you alive but worse off, a 10% chance of not much detectable change, and a 10% chance of making things a small amount better, is not a lottery worth playing. That doesn't correspond to the political violence lottery, it's just a simple example.

The obvious response to this is that we should be examining the cases where it goes well to see how to get results like that. That response is a good response. However, to do that you need to know in the first place that violent revolution isn't a magical cure-all. You need to know that it tends negative or you won't even bother figuring out how to make it not do that. You need to know that the present has a larger list of fragile improvements and so you can't just use outcomes from nobility in 13th century France or even 18th century America to make predictions.

Things are legitimately different in the period where wealth flows almost entirely from land and just killing people and taking their land will mostly just work to enrich yourself. Even then, doing a bunch of it via an outside-the-norms-method in a polity and eroding the legitimacy of whatever is stopping the descent into violence from kicking off earlier tends to result in more and more violence over time. That trend really isn't hard to notice. Almost every single time without exception you end up with the place in general being drastically worse off. Usually the people who started the cycle end up very dead and frequently their family ends up extinct or less powerful than they started. Yes, they cared about different things- it was still usually a mistake to kick off a period of violence by their own values. For an example of this, consider literally any period of civil war in the history of China. Yes, someone manages to succeed and end up the next dynasty. The odds of being that someone aren't great. Assassinating your uncle to end up Emperor has a better track record. if not a stellar one. It's also not a mass uprising, and has a lower chance of kicking off a civil war.

If all you do is notice a lot of the people who hold a view are unsophisticated and stupid, find a couple counterexamples, and then smugly posture about how there's nuance, you see, you may legitimately be doing better than the idiots. But you need to actually know the distribution to be right, you can't just notice some other people know less than you and assume that means nobody knows more. Historians can tend kind of stupid in a lot of ways but there is actually something you get from having seen a broad overview of history. Not as much as a lot of historians like to pretend, but "just using a bunch of outside-the-norms violence to try to make things better for you personally was a high risk strategy before the modern world, doing it to make things better for people in general or for the sake of preserving a polity's stability was harder still, and the modern world makes it all work a lot less well" is one of the things that is, frankly, somewhat overdetermined.

What people care about is usually whether something makes slides into dictatorship more likely. Whether it makes famines more likely. Whether it makes instability and a lot of suffering more likely. Whether it tends to make things worse by our values, both when people don't care much about that and even when they do. The answers there are pretty clear. Yes, there's a distribution rather than a universal single outcome. It's not a good one.

[aotopmha]

All of the takes from the higher end FFXIV players I've seen recently feel so out of touch/narrow-minded to me.

I see people complaining about healers when I ran the most recent dungeon as one just the other day and we wiped several times.

I already saw someone complain that the FFXI raid is "easier than Aglaia" when every single run I've had has taken a significant amount of timer and at least a one or two wipes on a boss or two (or more).

Compared to all of the other Alliance Raids, I actually feel like the challenge here is to learn faster play, rather than to avoid wiping. It's the first time I've seen an Alliance Raid reach the end tail of the timer.

Granted, this is the first time I've done anything "on content" (and I've only seen footage of older day one runs, so maybe previous first day runs of Alliance Raids were similarly difficult), but to me, all of this stuff at the very least feels so much more unique and substantial than a lot of the encounters in a bunch of the previous expansions; this feels really cool and unique in its own right.

Prishe's proximity attacks, the group fight with the Archangels (which has a pretty cool use of interrupts), and Shadowlord's twists on various AoE attacks themselves are really cool.

And to me difficulty isn't the only value of an encounter.

They just don't seem to understand that not everyone consumes the game the same way they do, don't seem to have the ability to put themselves in others' shoes nor have the ability to understand that only a small portion of players play at their level.

I don't play healer often and I felt challenged by the recent dungeon.

I felt this whenever I saw some complain about Endwalker encounters, as well, but there I got it better because I could understand the complaint about how formulaic some of the encounters felt.

All Dawntrail encounters have felt unique and, most of all, substantial, to me.

And that was my personal gripe with particularly Endwalker's patch content. Many of the bosses did not have mechanics which evolved and/or had quite slow-paced useage/distribution of mechanics.

I suppose a game has the responsibility to entertain players on all levels of play, but this time around I understand the complaints much less as I see a lot of truly inventive encounter design that brings in ideas the game hasn't used much before.

And even after I stepped into harder content (extremes), the normal content never automatically became a bore to me; just different type of content.

In the end, I suppose I just disagree with people's consumption philosophy, then.

I think the game doesn't need to be "hard", just "substantial", so I suppose it's a very specific difference of opinion, which simply clashes with this different perspective and doesn't gel with the reality within the game I've seen.

I hope those who are unhappy will get something that makes them happy, but I also struggle a bit to see what the encounter designers could do to please this perspective.

Just copy Ivalice step by step? Just complete bullshit with bad telegraphing? Because that's where I felt like a bunch of Ivalice's challenge came from. It was challenging because some of the telegraphing could take a bit to parse and at points only made sense if you paid attention to every little tiny detail. It was challenging because it was pretty unintuitive and while I enjoyed it a lot and the bullshit is "funny", it's not "fun".

Math isn't bad because of the math, it's bad because you have to figure out how it works first. It can tell you "vitals", but the first time you do this, you don't necessarily automatically make all of the connections in the short time the fight gives you. And I personally think this is an issue of conveyance/bad design.

How are you supposed to figure out you need to let the sniper shoot you rather than use to shield to shield yourself in the moment? Where is the logic in that?

Even the magnet stuff is actually good.

Good conveyance is vague, but still solvable in the moment, like Prishe's wind-up punches.

But as said, I suppose I consume video games differently than most FFXIV/MMO players because in my mostly single-player gaming experience bad conveyence/design isn't "part of the fun", it's just bad design.

I can love a game despite it having these issues in its encounters, but to me it is an aspect to criticize when it happens and despite the repetitious nature of MMO design, I think this issue shouldn't just be glossed over because I think you can do challenge without these clunky elements.

[afreakingdork]

Writing Request: Kenkey Songfic 🧡

Now @tmntxthings requested that I sonically bathe in No One Noticed by The Marias and write about whatever I came up with, but she also told me to listen to it earlier this week and said it reminded her of Kendra so I was totally swayed! 😤

Totally takes place in the AENEM universe 🤭 sorry not sorry 💞

From now until the poll closes, if you can prove to me that you voted Hassan/Mikey in this poll then I will write any short 100-400 word request like below or draw you a doodle of your choosing!

ᴰᶦˢᶜˡᵃᶦᵐᵉʳ: ᴵ ᵃᵐ ⁿᵒᵗ ᶦⁿ ᵃⁿʸʷᵃʸ ᵃˢˢᵒᶜᶦᵃᵗᵉᵈ ᵒʳ ᵉⁿᵈᵒʳˢᵉᵈ ᵇʸ ᵗʰᵉ ᶜᵒᵐᵖᵉᵗᶦᵗᶦᵒⁿ ᵒʳ ᶦᵗˢ ᶜᵒⁿᵗᵉˢᵗᵃⁿᵗˢ.

A little forlorn all ages below the cut:

Kendra laid on her mattress with her cheek smashed into her month old sheets. There was debris of crumbs that sometimes ghosted of her skin, but she had slept in far worse. it was better than scratchy prison blankets, but that wasn't what was making her skin crawl.

She was staring at her text chat with Mikey.

His last message was dated six days ago.

Her responses had never been super prompt, but she had gotten back to him within a few minutes that day.

It was innocuous.

He asked if she would watch a video.

She asked him why he hadn't sent the link.

Then nothing.

She left her screen on as she rolled over.

Her stupid stained ceiling stared back at her.

What was his problem?

For months he had been nothing but interested.

He was obsessed with anything.

Or maybe she just told herself that.

Maybe she had lost her mind.

Was she really laying her missing him of all people?

Why?

There was no reason.

He had just crashed into her life and looked at her like she was the only person in the world.

Her cheeks were hot because her pillow was substantial.

Blood was pooling.

She rolled the other way from her phone so they would cool.

The shift rolled within folds of her sheets and revealed those dead skin particles.

What was shed and schlep off.

The pieces that easily fell away with time.

Isn't that what they had done?

He'd gotten his fill.

He'd held her and that was it.

Those bits of his interest wilted and were shed like anything else.

It wasn't like she'd been excited to see him.

She hadn't gone out of her way.

It had been a plan.

Pretend to chase him.

Get close enough to gain access to her home.

It was never about him.

It was about his connection.

Like that scent of wooden paintbrushes and a hint of vanilla that always clung to him.

She fought her pillow by punching it straight off the bed.

She had lost it.

Thinking about this.

Thinking about him.

The way he held her.

The way he both paid attention and didn't.

He knew arm's length like no one else.

Only him.

That truth collapsed her chest and she had to sit up.

Her room was dark as it had been for hours.

Her eyes had adjusted just enough that she saw the shapes.

The end of her bed.

The rack for her clean clothes.

A pile for the dirty.

Her shitty router in one corner.

Empty.

That was the feeling.

Emptiness and a hollow that she hadn't know before.

She pushed against his ribs to try to keep them together.

It had never been a problem before.

She had spent her life like this.

All the years that shaped her memory.

She went at this life alone.

She wasn't going to let some orange idiot slip between the cracks of that.

Not when he could leave without a trace.

Her eyes widened.

In all her time trying to make enough of a connection that she could get what she wanted from him, she never realized how far he had kept himself from her.

He barely talked about his family.

She didn't know where he lived.

She had his number and nothing else.

In an instant, everything she wished that wasn't true came to fruition.

He'd made her aware of her loneliness and then left her to stew in it.

It had been so easy for him.

She couldn't be here anymore.

Not when he knew where it was.

She could get away.

She could start again.

it wouldn't be the first time.

It was with her last shreds of control that she found her old purple stain jacket and put it on, one arm at a time.

It fit.

She looked right at her door, not back, and moved to grab the knob.

It opened to moonlight and the shape of a man similarly reaching out.

It took her tired eyes time to adjust.

To Mikey and his casts.

One on his leg and one on his arm.

The bandages around his head.

They way he broke out into a smile.

"You heading out?" He asked almost timid.

He never was.

"It's been... It's been awhile..." He huffed with some effort.

Injured.

"My phone kind of..." He gestured over himself with the wrapped arm in a sling and winced for it.

He noticed.

"I've been trying to see you, but I was only cleared for tomorrow, well, today, and it's midnight so... today!"

She surged forward with only the intention to take.

Into his one good arm.

To hold.

To console.

She guessed she was sort of over waiting.

That was why she had been about to leave and he squeezed her in place because he knew.

[dear-mi]

Ok! It feels only necessary to explain this blogs name.

So, the novel I'm currently writing is called 'Dear You'

In this story is a character known as Mi, which is an OC I've been using to write for the last 8 years or so.

Her name was originally Miso, and came from my first ever attempt at writing a story, called 'Dear Mi' Obviously I've reused the title, it's a good sounding title and I didn't want it to go to waste.

Either way, Dear Mi was about Miso moving to a new city and school on account of her dad's work. It does the whole typical slice of life thing, going to a new school, making a new friend group, dealing with bullies, finding yourself, etc. The only real interesting part about it is that Miso had an imaginary friend that she would often talk to. This dialogue would act as a display of introspections, thought, and what not, because the imaginary friend didn't really speak. It acts just as a wall that can listen, a silent Grecian chorus if you will. Yet, throughout the story, it becomes more active.

Most would assume that it would symbolize everything she still holds onto that's holding her back, but it's actually the inverse. It's suppose to represent all the ways she's grown, and remind her of her own journey.

The next story Miso featured in didn't have a name. This time, she couldn't actually see color in the world, everything was black and white manga style. She did still have that imaginary friend, and she could see one that everyone else had, that they didn't know they had. Whenever she interacted with someone and their imaginary friend, the world around that person would gain its color. So she goes around painting the place by reminding people of their own story.

After that was another piece known as 'Tellings of the Sky' The world was again, still black and white. However, the sky was different. It not only had color, it could change color, and even change shape. The imaginary friend is gone, and so is everyone else. It's completely desolate of all other sentient life.

This story follows two characters though, Miso, and a boy I never got around to naming. They both live in their own world like this, and the story is written through diary logs of the two as they explore the world. Eventually, however, what one person writes shows up in the journal of the other, and the two start to interact across worlds. A whole bunch of weird reality shenanigans happens, and the story ends with the two worlds merging.

I've written a couple poems about her, one called 'For Whom the Bells Toll' and 'Buttercups' and this all wraps around to 'Dear You'

In 'Dear You' however, Miso isn't even the main character. I changed her name to Mi, and gave her a younger brother aptly named So. Miso's age changed very much across the stories I'd written about her, and this time her and her brother are on the younger side.

Within the prologue of 'Dear You' Mi and So meet the main character, and are essentially adopted by them.

The main character does have a name, but goes nameless until after the underground arc of the story. Within 'Dear You' Mi also plays a much more prevalent part in the story than her brother, and that's probably me just projecting my favor but eh, it's fine. If I really wanted to I could just bring Miso back entirely, but So does have his own arcs and everything already, I'm just not as much invested into him as character. That'll change as the story develops, but for the time being Mi, the outcome of Miso, is still just where a lot of my focus has gone.

[imsobadatnicknames2]

I mean... while I don't think you're wrong about how the goal of mechanics like reaction rolls or morale rolls probably is more "let's introduce more randomness" than "let's treat our enemies as living creatures rather than punching bags for the PCs to kill", but I think saying that the difference in the playstyles encouraged by the mechanical design of old-school D&D vs modern D&D is a matter of simply how structured the game is ends up being extremely dismissive of the ways in which the design of old-school D&D does organically disincentivize combat as the default encounter disposition on the player side (regardless of if that was the design goal or not) by making combat an extremely suboptimal default way to respond to encounters.

As you say, the flavor text of various monsters in modern D&D is a clear indication that combat should not be the default assumption, unless the players choose to ignore it. But the thing is. In modern D&D you *can afford* to ignore it in a way that you really can't in earlier editions of the game.

I'm gonna be using the 1981 edition of Basic D&D (a.k.a. B/X edition) as my example here because it's the edition I'm most familiar with, but pretty much all of this is applicable to all TSR editions of the game (except maybe 2e)

In all editions of D&D, HP is a resource, and turning an encounter into a fight is synonymous with consuming it. However, in editions like B/X, this resource is scarce and hard to recover. At early levels, even the beefiest classes in the game are never more than one or two solid hits away from 0 HP (my last B/X character was a fighter who started with 4 max HP at level 1. FOUR.), and once you reach 0 you're DEAD dead, no negative HP like in 3.x or death saves like in 5e. Magical healing is scarce (clerics can't even cast ANY spells until level 2. At which point they gain the ability to cast ONE spell per day), and without magical healing you naturally heal at a rate of 1hp PER DAY of rest.

By contrast, in something like 5e (or, to a lesser degree, even 3.x), where your characters have larger HP pools, there are several guardrails to prevent you from dying once you reach 0hp, your cleric is a much more plentiful source of magical healing, and even without access to magical healing you can use short rests to recover a substantial chunk of hp after a fight, HP is a resource that is much easier to justify spending. It's plentiful, easy to recover, and even running out of it is less of a big deal.

My point here being that, when you're playing an edition of the game where every time a fight happens there is a not insignificant chance that someone might end up dead within the first round of combat (and even if everyone does survive, the fight will likely leave the party in a state that might take several in-game days to fully recover from), you kinda can't afford to ignore any opportunity to NOT turn an encounter into a fight.

Like sure, in an edition like 3.x talking down the goblins instead of fighting by opening trade negotiations is a cool thing that MIGHT happen if the DM crafted the encounter that way and the players are so inclined. But in B/X talking down the goblins instead of fighting by opening trade negotiations is something you want to be doing as often as possible unless you want a TPK every couple sessions.

Like... I think there's something to be argued about how much these games are ACTUALLY played that way, but if we're looking purely at the gameplay style incentivized by the game design itself, I think it's plainly wrong to say that there's not a palpable difference in the degree to which combat is mechanically incentivized in post-3e D&D vs older editions.

So there is a pretty clear shift in playstyle between TSR D&D and WotC D&D: for better and for worse, D&D 3e introduced the idea of encounter balance, de-emphasized mechanics that had previously encouraged the GM to think of the monsters as real living creatures (reaction rolls, morale, etc.), and it had the effect of making D&D a much more combat-focused game. D&D has always been a game that's opinionated about combat, it's basically the most expressive and detailed form of play regardless of edition, but combat in the TSR editions was not exactly zoomed in and tactical. The WotC editions purposefully made combat zoomed in, granular, and tactical.

And this has had an effect on playstyle: since combat is now the main form of player expression what players actually want is for their characters to get into combat. Because combat is the most fun part of the game. But the game has also changed from the largely amoral dungeon-crawling game into a game of fantasy heroics (even though a lot of the trappings of the amoral dungeon-crawling still remain, which contributes to the dissonance), so you can't just have the player characters going into combat for the sake of it. That would frame the player characters as kind of Fucked Up, and we can't have that in our supposedly heroic fantasy.

What you end up with is a variety of contrivances like "they're bandits," "they're cultists," or, my all-time favorite, "they attacked first" to make the action seem morally justifiable, even though gameplay is still motivated by a desire to fight. The monsters fight to the death and, importantly, can often not be reasoned and negotiated with, partly because combat is supposed to be the fun, engaging part everyone is here to do, but also because if they actually acted like reasonable people it could cause dissonance with the whole "the player characters are the goodest heroes."

As my friend @tenleaguesbeneath once called it: what is actually going on is that the player characters are hunting people and monsters who have been programmed to fight to the death and never negotiate for sport, while justifying it as self-defence.

It's a simple power fantasy, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Sometimes you want to play a morally uncomplicated game about killing guys with cool magic swords. But I think it's also fun to think about what the specific types of monsters players end up fighting reveals about Society the invisible, unexamined ideology lying under the surface that the designers of even modern D&D have failed to examine. And to me it often reads like a frontier justice fantasy. None of that is to detract from anyone's joy of the game, and for me it's just fun to think about and post about this stuff while Still Enjoying the Game, but if someone expressing that opinion makes you feel uncomfortable, why? That's pretty silly imo.

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah

[dykedvonte]

Something something perhaps the reason Curly lacks a truly undamaged ID where his face is visible is to represent how much damage Jimmy had already affected on him throughout their relationship and the way Curly obscured part of who he is and what he stood to unintentionally cater to this toxic influence in his life.

[commsroom]

the scene at the end of who's there?: eiffel is cut off mid-sentence (addressing minkowski), minkowski calls his name twice, and hera says, "commander... he's not showing up on any of my scans. he's gone." vs. brave new world: eiffel is cut off mid-sentence (addressing hera), minkowski calls his name twice, and hera says, "he's... commander, he's gone." in idle hands, eiffel regaining his autonomy ("hera, it's me. i'm me again.") is described: "there's a SOFT WOOSH, and eiffel's eyes go from spaced out to sharp focus." in brave new world, eiffel losing his memory is described: "there's a SOFT WOOSH, and his eyes go glassy." in mayday, hera's voice is the last one eiffel hears, the last voice in his head trying to keep him from giving up when he's sure he's about to die. in brave new world, eiffel loses his memory mid-thought while addressing hera, and so she was his last memory, the last thing on his mind. whatever. whatever.

[crimeronan]

VERY NON-CANON SHITPOST:

amity finding out that her parents were involved in Whatever The Fuck You Call Whatever They Had Going On with darius & having a moment of sheer panic like. "what if darius is my biological dad. oh titan. is that why he puts up with me. is that why he's somehow been more present in the few years i've been in the coven than my actual dad has been my whole life. what are we"

at some point she lets this worry slip around hunter. hunter, trying not to look like the cat who ate the canary, is like. [thoughtfully] [not laughing at All] [Good Friend Emotional Support Voice] hmm. i guess you could just ask him?? i mean, if it's really bugging you. pretty sure he'll tell you the truth. then at least you'll know one way or the other

amity sits on this for a while because in some rational part of her brain, she IS aware she is being stupid. but after a few weeks of "what if," she finally DOES go to darius like HI. HEY. REALLY QUICK AREYOUMYDAD ACTUALLY DON't anSWER THAT. BYE FOREVER

darius, eyeing this kid who looks so much like alador you could mistake their childhood photos for each other: ....yes.

amity: oh. shit. like actually?? for real???

darius: yup. carried you myself. alador was way more attentive than he was to odalia with your siblings. well. half-siblings, i suppose. that must be why she's so awful to be around. jealousy doesn't look good on anyone. shame your dad never got over me, it must throw Such a wrench in their marriage. haven't you ever wondered why your mother is such a massive bitch??

amity: ......OH. okay. you're fucking with me.

darius, very patiently: yes, amity. I Am Fucking With You.

[lunar-years]

obviously Jamie not being in season 4 would suck mostly because I simply want Jamie to be there and to get more of his story and get to enjoy more interactions between Jamie and the other characters. At the end of the day though, I can just not watch s4, which I'm perfectly okay with.

what sucks EVEN MORE to me, and is far harder to avoid, is that not having Jamie in the show totally changes the *canon* of the character in a way that will inevitably bleed over into fan spaces, regardless of whether or not I'm actively watching. However they write him out (I assume it would just be having him go to another team) becomes the new "Jamie Tartt canon." And that small thing totally changes his story and we don't even get to see it play out! When i was perfectly happy playing in my sandbox of a million equally valid possibilities.

[ihopeucomehomesoon]

i get jealous of people who have real and healthy relationships with their family

[skitskatdacat63]

2024 Canadian Grand Prix - Qualifying - George Russell

[chainofclovers]

What if I actually actually actually take to heart the idea that when I lack concrete information—and can confidently assume that this lack will continue for some time—it's really and truly okay to just chill out and set my mind free to wander :) :) :)