#chance in HELL of Actually Being Used

[bilbobagginsomebabez]

completing a STEM degree includes putting yourself in an environment where the importance of the humanities is specifically denigrated. this is not the case for everyone and the extent to which it is true among the general public is to a far lesser degree than the targeted denigration of humanities that takes place within STEM fields. this is dangerous because we are people and the stuff that makes us people is as important to understand as the things that people make. this is also not possible in the same way in the humanities because we live in a technology-dominated world and are also excited by new toys and the ways of thinking that generated them. we have no challenge to the fact that technology and science are vital and important parts of the human experience. whole sections of the humanities are dedicated to it!

this "discourse" started because the humanities were and continue to be denigrated as a waste of a degree with no practical use. the humanities continue to suffer from axed programs and depleted budgets while STEM programs are inundated with capital funding in addition to the bulk of institutional resources. STEM fields are valued as "hard" sciences, inherently more trustworthy and worthwhile than the humanities.

this is not a "discourse," it is a structural issue. and it is a structural issue that primarily benefits STEM while harming the humanities. That primary benefit to STEM combined with previously good-faith competitive jibes between specializations creates a social environment in which people who have completed a STEM degree have very little knowledge of the humanities and are additionally hostile to learning about them or treating them with respect.

STEM degrees and techheads are not being bullied when the humanities point out ways in which tech would benefit from our input. we are literally fighting for our lives out here and our society is actually harmed by disinvestment from the arts and humanities. we have a point. we have to keep making the same point until something changes. at this point, nothing has changed.

there is also something to be said about the ways in which your education, the manner of teaching, and the structures you adopt to understand the material impact your ways of thinking. I have not completed a STEM degree and cannot speak to the experience, but the discussions I've had with programmer friends has revealed a certain rigidity that is actively unlearned through studying the humanities. that difficult-to-describe rigidity in thought and structure is what many people who have studied the humanities are talking about when they're talking about humanities illiteracy. Through our various degree, we intentionally learn how to investigate different types of thought. when speaking to the educated but humanities illiterate, they seem unaware that there are other types of thought to be had. It's like trying to talk through glass, and that's part of the problem. not because thinking like that is inherently wrong (we are the humanities! people have to think in ways for us to look at it and be fascinated!), but because we are aware that Your Highly-Influenced-By-The-Way-Your-Degree-Works-Way-Of-Thinking is currently Dominant but it is only one way of thinking. We have to try to make you aware of that because possessing this vital knowledge ourselves is not enough. We exist in a structure where we possess vital knowledge that is ignored, suppressed, or denigrated and our peers refuse to consider us or fully treat us as peers.

People who have completed humanities degrees hold our knowledge over the heads of tech people and STEM-heads where we can because it is vital knowledge that is structurally suppressed. We have to tell you where it would have been relevant so next time, maybe you will think to ask.

additionally, as the structural problem continues, it snowballs. STEM and specifically Tech go farther and farther and farther down a path lacking any external input from other specifications and the consequences of their unilateral actions also get worse and worse. there's a reason every degree is suddenly getting really "interdisciplinary"--we're slowly realizing that none of these things are actually separate and teaching them as such is super fucking dangerous. We still have a lot of tech-educated individuals wielding a fuck ton of social power in the absence of vital understandings curated by different fields with no recognition or understanding of the power they wield or the ways in which Different Ways Of Thinking could on its own change the trajectory of this new and unwieldy beast called "technology" and by which we really mean The World That Exists In Circuits and Code.

If you are an Enlightened Tech Person who has discovered independently how to engage with utterly different ways of thinking rather than a tech person convinced they have nothing else to learn due to the rigidity of their learning structures, congratulations! Awesome for you personally, i'm sorry that the same repeated iteration of something you personally understand is frustrating. however, we still have to deal with a structural problem in the Way We Do Education, so maybe you can pass your new understandings along rather than getting angry at us for the continuous need to make the same point over and over and over.

We Live In A Society

it is kind of funny how every time we have discourse about the humanities, a large slice of this site will come out and tacitly endorse the opinion that everyone who didn't go to college is not a complete or interesting person

[elvisqueso]

— "...What do you say to a tree??"

Pocahontas (1995)

Bonus:

[fulgurbugs]

it’s so agneover gamers i am getting my ass beat so bad by the ot1 bosses

[fujii-draws]

OKAY! Chatot rant in tags below! Read at your own discretion.

[marc--chilton]

(mgv) OAUUGHHH lawrence and adam rooming together out of the hospital because it's made VERY CLEAR that they need each other close and safe after the trap. like @lucradiss said, they had to be moved into the same room because even after the smell of blood and shit and fear were cleaned off of them, their distress scent -- raw and unfiltered "NEED, COME BACK, DON'T LEAVE, WHERE ARE YOU, NEED YOU" -- was palpable enough to send their respective floors into a state of unease. and adam's being evicted, and tensions are high between lawrence and alison right now, so....

their new place doesn't scream "doctor's salary" but it's not a shithole either. one floor, too. at first they're in separate rooms but..... lawrence hasn't slept alone in years, and not having adam as close as possible still gives him some unease (if he can't see him how can he be sure he ever came back for him, got him out of there, let him live). he doesn't even get a chance to wheel by adam's room before the man himself is slipping into his. "keep seein' shit in the shadows. think i gotta take the door off my closet."

lawrence grants him half his bed easily. he also learns fairly quickly that adam is a funny sleeper. he burrows and squirms relentlessly in his sleep until he's nearly sideways with his head on lawrence's ribs. one time he woke up to adam sprawled bonelessly across his middle, slightly crushing him but mostly just endearing himself to lawrence.

the point of no return for Feeling Something More for adam was when diana stayed for the weekend. they hit it off well in the hospital already, so he wasn't worried about that. no, it was simply how much adam worried about making her feel safe there, because it might be her dad's place, but her dad has a roommate now and they didn't meet under fantastic circumstances. he doesn't want her to see him like zep, like some stranger in a home that isn't his.

(it is his home, though.)

he's trying so hard for this eight year old who's been through some shit, he wants her to like him, to be okay with him being there, and it chokes lawrence up if he thinks about it too hard. it feels a lot like a binding point between his old life and his new one. he loves them. he loves him.

diana learns what a 'pup pile' is that night. she has no siblings to pile up with, so she never got to learn, which just Isn't Right in adam's eyes. so that night adam stuffs them into their bed with the pillows and blankets from his old room they'll convert to be diana's, says, "three's not much a pile, but we'll work with what we got, right?" and hustles them into something comfortable, twined and piled on each other.

and if lawrence cries a few happy tears that night, well, he's allowed some by now, isn't he?

[toriliashine]

Multiclassed wyll into a warlock/ranger. Best decision I've ever made, live your Disney princess with a gun truth man

[faunandfloraas]

Jeongin having almost no votes on that poll makes sense to me, not because I think he'd do particularly bad but because I'm utterly certain if he ended up stranded with one of us he'd just up and leave and I wouldn't blame him

[widevibratobitch]

so i am singing that vitellia in the end... but at what fucking cost.

'you gotta sing this softer'

'what'

'this is mozart'

'this is vitellia'

'this is mozart'

'im singing about how much i hate this mf and want him dead before the end of the day'

'this is mozart'

'i wanna murder a guy'

'this is mozart'

'...'

'softer. gentle. mozart'

'...ok'

[frogathy]

childhood was spent thinking i’d go to hell and men would not love me if i swore so now to heal from that i am swearing as much as i fucking can until i come to my own fucking conclusion about how i feel regarding the usage of such crude vocabulary

[rotisseries]

I JUST FINISHED REREADING LEGENDBORN AND STARTED BLOODMARKED LAST NIGHT AND COME ON HERE AND YOU'RE ALSO READING IT 😨😨 WE SYNCED

CLOWN TO CLOWN COMMUNICATION. OUR UNBREAKABLE BOND

[honeyboyfelix]

just realized i havent told half this friend group in non binary... its been like a year :) how has this not come up??????

[rosemirmir]

Remembering the 3 week period where I was smacked with a frying pan about GiroriWin, and got unexpected brain worms over them. Only for Win to get exploded the next episode... following by Girori getting fired

[capulated-canthea]

the feminine urge to be be boy-crazed and talk about them with your girlies

[my-current-obsession]

My second playthrough of Engage is going well (just finished chapter 17) and I’m still enjoying the gameplay and have definitely had a better time getting supports with my knowledge of how to game the arena as well as having access to the new support-gaining options from the start. However I’m starting to worry about the game’s long-term replayability.

In most FE games, even if the gameplay is only so-so, I can power through several runs basically because of shipping - I’d play the game multiple times to get different paired ends. I’ve already complained about that a lot in other posts, so I won’t rehash it here beyond saying obviously that’s not possible in this case. Sure, you can get different paired endings for Alear, but honestly most of the pact ring scenes and ESPECIALLY the endings are weak. Even for the people who care more about the self-inserting and picking who they want to be with as opposed to matchmaking, I doubt this would be satisfying enough on its own to merit multiple runs of the game.

So if that aspect and reason to replay the game is gone, what’s left? Gameplay, obviously. And yes, the gameplay is good - great, even! This is the most fun I’ve ever had in an FE game when it comes to actually playing the maps. However I can already feel myself falling into complacent gaming - I KNOW from a previous run which characters are better (unless they get super RNG screwed) and which combinations of emblems/units works best, and I find myself defaulting to those rather than experimenting.

It doesn’t help that this game makes it kind of difficult/punishing to do so. There are A LOT of resources to track and use in this game, and they’re all somewhat limited. Up until chapter 17 you’re limited on how many master/second seals you can get, and even once you have unlimited access... they’re expensive! And more than ANY other FE game, this one makes it hard to get money. Even knowing NOT to spend as much money donating to the countries on a second run, you’ll probably run out of cash FAST between buying seals, weapons/staves, and forging the weapons.

There are certain units that basically NEED to be reclassed in order to perform well - in particular, Anna, Etie, Lapis, and maybe Clanne would be better in classes they can’t promote to naturally. But it’s hard to justify using them and wasting TWO seals (a master AND second seal) when the rest of your army only needs one seal to do well or comes as a VERY good pre-promote. That’s not even getting into how due to the relative lack of seals and their cost, I’m less inclined to reclass units just for fun or to see how they fare in radically different roles.

3 Houses had a lot of flaws and overall the gameplay is NOT as good as Engage, but I DID appreciate being able to build my starting class however I pleased. It was a tedious process, but it was rewarding to play the same route multiple times and use most of the same units, but with VERY different classes/roles. In particular, the more balanced, well-rounded units were SO fun to teach since they could perform well in almost any class!

Meanwhile in Engage, I spend a lot of time LOOKING at the classes available to everyone and thinking it might be nice/fun to reclass some people, but ultimately, they’re doing “well enough” in their default class and I can’t justify wasting the seal(s) just for an experiment that might not pan out. If I use that seal, either one more person doesn’t get to promote/reclass or I’m wasting 2500+ gold.

That’s not even getting into the scarcity of the forging resources or how quickly you can blow through your bond fragments (and in ways that aren’t ideal) if you’re not careful. With so many resources to manage, all of which you CAN technically gain more of but only through playing extra battles (which are at best boring or difficult, and at worst DEADLY on classic), it really feels like you’re discouraged from experimenting. You want to hold onto as many resources as possible for as long as you can, so you can’t throw them around for fun to see what works.

What this game needs (as several people have pointed out already) is some kind of new game plus. There NEEDS to be a version of this game where you carry over at least SOME of the things you gained/accomplished into a new game. Personally I’d like to see it carrying over your donation levels, emblem bond levels, and MAYBE bond rings and the weapons you had/forged (though obviously removing any engravings. Also probably still erasing all the special S rank weapons).

I don’t see HOW people are expected to “complete” the game without that, honestly. Donating to the countries is too much of a money sink for one contained run, but if you had multiple playthroughs to do it, it wouldn’t be an issue. Especially since you’d get a bunch of money at specific chapters each run, and if you retain weapons too, you’d spend less of it on forging. If you don’t retain weapons... well, at least the higher donation level means you’re getting more iron/steel/silver from every map from the start, so you don’t HAVE to do skirmishes just to get resources.

Retaining bond levels means you don’t have to waste fragments getting the SAME bonds and skills and conversations with the same units. Instead you can chip away at the CBA bond level for every Emblem/unit pair. As for bond rings, I’d mainly want to see them retained so you don’t have to deal with as much gatcha hell in getting all the rings.

And of course on a new game plus, with all the extra resources at your disposal and less ways you NEED to spend it, you’d be free to experiment more with reclassing units!

I’m just disappointed because I genuinely LOVE this game but there are so many ways it could be better and give me a reason to keep playing it. A lot of the characters are great and I honestly see a ton of shipping potential in the supports... but they all go nowhere without paired endings. The gameplay is the best it’s ever been for FE, and I’d love to experiment and come at it with different units and builds... but I’m so scared of wasting valuable resources that I’m mostly unwilling to experiment and instead stick to the units that are reliable as-is.

[lastoneout]

*grabbing young queer people by the shoulders* listen to me. radical feminism is inherently transphobic. you cannot rehabilitate it or reclaim it or make it trans inclusive, I don't care what the people on twitter who claim to be authorities on queerness say. the foundation of radical feminism is nothing but bio and gender essentialism and biphobia and aphobia and anti-kink rhetoric and intersexism and yes, misogyny. it does not offer a future, not for bi people, aroace people, sex workers, not for kinksters, or intersex people, cis women, or trans people regardless of gender and you should care about those people. it will never result in queer liberation because it is an ideology of exclusion and hatred. you gain nothing by buying into the idea that half the population is evil by birth or by transition. you gain nothing by acting like women are perpetual victims who can't think for themselves and are tainted by their association with men. being a man or being attracted to them is not a sin. if we truly want to stand a chance of dismantling the patriarchy we actually NEED men on our side especially marginalized men. they are our allies.

the problem with terfs is not just transphobia, it never was, the radical feminism is also so unbelievably harmful. you cannot save it and it will not save you, stop drawing lines between queer people and join hands with them instead. remove people who are actually harmful, not innocent people who happen to have the wrong sexuality or gender or job. we get there together or we don't get there at all. we need each other now more than ever. do not listen to those who seek to divide us even if they are queer. we all deserve so much better than the hell radical feminism pretends is a liberated future.

I do not blame anyone who fell prey to this rhetoric, I know it feels good to have a common enemy and lash out at those you think are siding with them however they do it, but men, especially marginalized men, are not your enemies. and it's never too late to realize that and change for the better.

[andragoras-in-vanity]

remember being a teen and watching shit like soul eater and kimono jihen and thinking god damn i wish I had a perpetually exhausted but badass mentor to help me get through things?

well now im 27 and im the perpetually exhausted mentor with bedhead and a slight alcohol problem to my 15 year old cousin and im gonna tear my hair out about not being able to just let her stay for a bit because i know it doesnt matter fuck all what i say to her dad, shes still gonna be treated like shit just because shes a moody teen with undiagnosed add and an autustic brother who constantly talks over everyone. i suddenly need a cigarette.