#they just want to larp as revolutionaries

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

[snekdood]

Im not uncomfortable when people eat meat around me. I am however uncomfortable when people expect me to eat it too otherwise im weird or have "bad vibes" or whatever bc some of you assholes decided all vegans are fascist or whatever

[rethrone]

the US left's and working class attachment/defensiveness of the military is just insane to me. they will talk about cops this way and that, but then believe you're being a saboteur to valuable movement building if you don't want to be around a vet. "repentant" ones get so much precedence in conversation, even in hypotheticals, it's crazy.

i know "larping" is a very commonly lobbed insult at the western left but it's really so true. like you're talking about how these people have radical tactical/battle perspective and that's why you need them to organise, and you're bringing up why the revolution let certain tsarist guard live for this purpose only, ignoring later purges and comparing your revolutionary conditions to russian peasants. to justify letting this person talk over others. to tap into their revolutionary potential where they will magically train the common man to fight because they're all tactical geniuses. it's just pure larp, you can't take these people seriously, and no person affected by imperial wars has to put up with it. cringe movement, like the turkish left's attachment to k*malism.

go get turtle island and flint clean water and stop talking about how one day you'll have a blazing gun battle with the us govt lmao 😭

[crippled-peeper]

If the edgy fuck harrasing you is who I believe it is.. did you know this psychotic bitch and her equally dumb vile gf support the venezuelan dictatorship just because maduro *claims* to be socialist despite him being the most blatant example of a guy getting rich at the cost of an entire country?

https://www.tumblr.com/tgirl-jdpon/757538801519411200/venezuelans-deserve-to-be-oppressed-for-wanting

Bitches want to LARP as the mythical marxist revolutionary poc in the global south so baddd

OH MY GOD FUCK

ANON ITS EXACTLY THEM

IM SCREAMING HOW DID YOU KNOW

DO THEY DO THIS SHIT OFTEN???? OMG

that fact doesn’t surprise me either. they’re also self proclaimed “maoists”. like hardly a standard deviation from being complete trolls

I can’t imagine being so fucking insufferable

[spot-the-antisemitism]

"Tumblr is really the anti-Arab website. This is the website that lets fandom bloggers run scams like Dashcon and that stupid cartoon bear shit without the organizers facing any repercussions but when people want to flee genocides, they suddenly cared about scams"

1- Those examples are literally not true At All? When the Mrs Officer and Mr Truffles was just a "cute" meme the artist that did the fanart for an *hypothetic* cartoon had literally nothing to with the failed GFM and yet they're bothered for it to this day? And the OG Dashcon sure as fuck has a lot of concequences

2- Awww look who can't larp as a holy revolutionary savior of the arabs anymore while playing Elden Ring 🥺

AWW they projecting their biases on us

[goblincow]

401% FUNDED | ONLY 5 DAYS TO GO!!

Field Agent Handbooks: Observancy Dept. 1924–28

Sharpen your ESP skills and seek out suspicious activity as a pendulum-dowsing Field Agent

This set of four Field Agent Handbooks are an always-on solo RPG/LARP to play with when out and about. They’re created as in-world artefacts from the 1920s, made for you to note your observations about the world around you through a lens of suspicion. 

1924 – Revolution

We suspect the animal kingdom of plotting a revolution and you are here to help us understand their devices.

Our mission in the Observancy Department is to spot any such behaviour or signs of suspicious activity, note them down, and draw our conclusions.

Additional pages include:

Blank map with grid references

Table of potential signs of revolutionary activity

List of weather types and symbols for notation

1925 – Leviathan

The age of flight may still be in its infancy but we have heard worrying reports from our aeroplane and dirigible pilots of glimpses of giant beasts roaming the aether, just out of sight.

Our fresh mission is to observe the clouds, look for unusual shadows & formations, and attempt to discern the activity and anatomy of these sky-bound leviathan.

Additional pages include:

Common anatomy of leviathan (hypothesised)

Illustrated chart with types of clouds and symbols for notation

Illustrated chart for estimating distance to horizon

Table to identify the Beaufort Number for the wind

List of weather types and symbols for notation

1926 – Communication

While we looked upward, we didn't think to concern ourselves with the growing cacophony in our very own gardens, forests, and fields.

Our mission turns to our leafy neighbours to see if we can understand their speech and intuit their meaning throughout each season.

Additional pages include: 

Signs and shapes to look out for

Size estimation chart

List of weather types and symbols for notation

1928 – Giants

From the landscape sprung the flowers, but who formed the landscape? Newly uncovered texts indicate the folklore might be true and giants may have indeed roamed and shaped the earth.

Our mission is to lower our gaze to the ground to identify oddly shaped mounds, mimetoliths (rocks resembling faces), gouged earth, and suspicious urban planning decisions. Under the hills there may be sleeping colossus.

Additional pages include:

Signs to look out for

Common rock types

How to draw landforms & rocks in an isometric fashion

I wanted to shine a light on this project because I met Luke at Dragonmeet in December '23 and fell in love with the way he thinks about RPGs, graphic design and play/ritual/thinking-the-world in his games!

I can't recommend this project enough and I've been waiting excitedly to support it and see it succeed! It really represents everything I think is special about RPGs and the things I also want to explore in this design space *and art movement* and if you have any interest in TTRPGs beyond the scope of dungeon games, Luke is making some of the freshest and most evocative design you can find in the entire medium.

Everything you see here is directly from the kickstarter. Go back it! I promise you'll be glad you did, there are few more unique and inspiring things you could spend your money on in TTRPGs right now!

[sunsinourhands]

So I have been thinking about what factors of media and stories that give me the largest sense of longing. And I think it comes down to three major things: a sense of community (in group), a sense of potency, and a sense of hope. And for the sake of this post I will be referencing mostly anime but also live play tabletop series.

Nakama

So when I say a sense of community or in group, it is usually referenced as ‘nakama’ within Japanese. This is usually translated as ‘friends’ in English but that doesn’t really fit the actual meaning. This is the group of people who are your inner most circle. These are the people who will put themselves at considerable risk in order to help another member. In shonen series like the Dragon Ball franchise, Fairy Tail, and One Peace, this means frequently putting your actual life on the line. It’s the same as a party in tabletop dungeon crawler.

One good point of reference for this is Laios and Shuro’s relationship. They were not on the same page. Yes they worked together often in the same party’s but Laios thought they were nakama, and Shuro was just too polite and conflict avoidant to tell Laios that he hated him. Like their perception was completely mismatched. Laios thought they were ride or die for life and Shuro thought of Laios as an annoying coworker—which explains a lot of Laios’s negative feelings following that reveal.

I saw a post on here recently about the big difference between Lucy Heartfillia’s relationships with the people in her home vs her guild nakama. The people who worked for her parents were obligated / forced to engage with her. And her father was pretty bad pre timeskip. In the same way, her spirits were contracted with her, so they HAD to show up when she called. But her guild mates and especially her core team mates looked out for her both out of a sense of duty and an actual sense of affection and protection over a member of their found family. And that’s another big difference between nakama and anything else.

In contrast, a lot of people in real life don’t have anything like that. Many of us come from abusive or otherwise unloving families. Many of us were not protected by bullies by anyone. And many of us are slowly learning that many of our friendships were one way and we were either tolerated as the butt monkey or kept around to be exploited. Hell, I broke off a friendship of over 10 years earlier this fall because I realized that the person I thought of as my ‘nakama’ didn’t actually care about my feelings—and they only wanted me as a WOC accessory to confirm their leftist clout.

I cannot count how many friendships I have seen and in a really nasty betrayal, and many people keep a very firm distance these days. You have to. And it is very difficult to find any community that actually acts in a pro-social way, because a lot of people actively prey on groups like that. Or people are actively only out for their own interests to begin with.

I would also note that some people are not intending to be malicious I m, but that they were never taught or modeled how to be an actually good person underneath the surface level. So they are fundamentally incapable of it—and many are too uncomfortable with that idea that they will never grow out of it. Ego integrity is one hell of a drug. Plenty of people would also rather be keyboard warriors and engage in revolutionary LARPing than vote or grow some fucking carrots. They would rather blame everyone else, instead of look at how they have become additional bullies in their own communities.

Personal examples : the half dozen bad actors in my local mutual aid group that actively exploited the group to farm money. There is also the supposedly ‘good person’ card-carrying woke WOC head of the local no-Nazis farmers market who embezzled 800k and never paid the farmers—causing several to shutter permanently. Including multiple farmers of color who were already operating in the red in order to donate food to the needy in that same community.

I would put forward that existing without an actual support network is so fucking painful and difficult that this is a core part of the wish fulfillment you find in media.

Sense of Potency

No, not that kind. I’m talking about the concept of knowing that your actions have a measurable effect on your environment. It’s both having a skill or ability that you know can be applied to fix something unpleasant, make something better, and the experience knowing that it has done so in the past and faith it will do so in the future.

This can include the battle strength of any shonen character, or Chilchuck’s skill with traps, locks, and generally being stealthy. In fiction, people generally have an idea of how they can help and how much help that will be. In a tabletop game, this is knowing that your presence is VALUABLE and that both people can rely on you and they will make the choice to do so instead of mistrusting you. For example, everyone knows that Bulma Briefs can basically fix any technology or science related problem. She can also just throw money at it. Sensei WILL be able to cook whatever the fuck is found and killed.

But real life is a consistently fresh and more intense hell of people devaluing your efforts, your experience, and your value. I cannot explain the degree of emotional damage I took after graduating with my masters and being offered $12 an hour for a company I knew very well was charging people at least $120 an hour to see me.

Undergraduate degrees don’t get anyone shit these days. And they are prohibitively expensive on top of that. People with decades of experience and skills can no longer put food on their tables. Dudes with a Chat GPT subscription think they are artists. Art theft, plagiarism, and other forms of outright stealing are rampant. There is a huge sense of impotence and powerlessness inundating every fucking second of our lives.

Can I fix an issue? Fuck if I know. Probably not, because I can’t go up against Johnson and Johnson. The power imbalance is outrageous.

Many times when people try to organize, some plant or someone who decides to break the line ends up fucking over the whole thing—because somehow they think they are special and identify far more with the oppressing billionaires.

Despite the existence of people who do have good intentions, no one has the fucking time for others anymore. Everyone is too depressed, too burned out, and too busy scraping by the skin of their own teeth to do anything else.

So the idea that hard work, persistence, and maybe some cleverness, may actually yield results? A literal fantasy.

A Sense of Hope

This is something I always found very foreign after a certain age. People in media seem to have this ingrained knowledge that 100% good times and better days lay ahead after the struggle.

But for those of us geriatric millennials, it’s been one blow after another. Those of us who busted our asses to get a degree because that would guarantee a future? Hahaha. Yeah fucking right.

Hope is a hard thing to maintain. Maybe it would be easier if you could count on the people around you or an actual support network. But people drop each other over nothing—and I am not even going to get into the o-kimochi yakuza.

[arwainian]

Reading This Week 2024 #44

This weekend I was away at my very first LARP! So the reading log is coming a bit late to you since I got back yesterday afternoon and immediately collapsed from exhaustion. While I was away, I got a lot of really excellent recommendations for more books to check out from my fellow cast members. It seems reasonable that the best people to get fantasy and scifi recs from are people who are also dedicating their weekend to being in the woods in November in order to smack each other with foam swords

Finished:

turning corners, tolling bells by rozecrest on ao3 this is a Fourteen Fifteen/Tender Sky yearning fic! I think I really love the micro trope in tenfour fics where they actually kiss fairly early on, but then Fourteen dies (as they do) and that memory gets lost in the transfer, artifically extending the amount of time they spend in the unexpressed feelings zone

Between Heaven and Earth by theorangewitch on ao3 the Partizan/fe3h crossover I needed. Gucci Garantine just fits so well into a fire emblem story. miss transgress oblige would obviously align with a dubious noble revolutionary

"She Commands Me and I Obey" by Ann Leckie this is a short story set in the imperial Radch universe! Breq is a character in it, but notably not the perspective character. I think it's really interesting that if you aren't familiar with the series already and so dont know about ancillaries, Breq (or Ultimately-Justice-Shall-Prevail) just comes across as an extraordinarily athletic and observant person

Started/Ongoing:

I think the theme for my current reads right now is horny women? this is completely unintentional on my end but I shall elaborate

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, read by Ell Potter angsty lesbian horny. so fucking repressed. please Stephen find a woman to fuck and get all of the shame and self-hatred out of your system.

Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid, read by Stina Nielsen straight horny (i think? i'll leave my options open to interpret her as bi). i want this girl to fuck her alcoholic ballet love interest man, and the reviews surely promise me that she will. i want this for her because she deserves some pleasure in her miserable witch life

Shadow by Anne Logston also straight horny but rather than dramatic and angsty this is hilarious. this is a pocket sized fantasy paperback about an elf thief woman and nearly every chapter ends with her finding a new guy to fuck and i am SO happy for her. you go Shadow

[texas-gothic]

"Organization will be no harder under Trump than it already was the first time."

have you been paying attention? the supreme court just made it legal for a president to do whatever the hell he want, he and other GOP nutjobs have openly talked about a dictatorship. the machinery wasnt in place the first time around but it sure as hell is now. if he wins a second time , its pretty likely your not going to get an opportunity to vote again, organising is going to be straight out illegal. even if you manage to avoid that the judges he stuffs the benches with are going to be fucking things up for the rest of your life whoever's in power.

o all the people that are going to die or have their lives ruined by the laws that shitstains government is going to bring in so you can larp at revolutionaries are real people not just props for your fantasies.

So your solution for all of this is that we all get out in vote (hoping that sheer force of numbers can out maneuver the Electoral College, which is the only actual part of this that matters) for a Centre-Right Party that does nothing, and is no longer even making campaign promises, forever and for always, and make sure they win every election until the fascism just goes away all on its own?

That's not a very realistic plan.

And, historically, it's not one that's worked. Ask the Weimar Republic how well that went. After all, the Nazis didn't win the election that brought them into power. The doddering old man the people actually elected gave it to them.

Let's be clear about something, also: the most successful of organizers have worked under the threat of autocrats. The Tsar, Chiang Kai-shek, Batista, these men were not allowing people to speak out against them without reprisals. Rosa Luxembourg was up against the entire German Imperial War Machine, and she didn't let that stop her. If you live your whole life being cowed by what the cruel and powerful will allow you to do, then you were never really serious about making things better, were you?

And y'know, you can feel free to call getting out there and organizing people, educating people, and trying to find another way through all of this LARP if you want, but at the end of the day, all you're doing is pushing a button once every few years. If you're afraid of hard work, you can just say that.

This will be the last time I respond to any of these questions. Electoralism is not a valid avenue of political action when the available parties do not and will not represent you. Congratulations again to the French for having an actually progressive force on the ballot.

[margbarcisforever]

i feel like there’s a real strain of adventurism or “LARPing” to be countered in the so-called revolutionary left and to be honest with you i don’t think the odds of a successful revolution in our lifetimes are very high… but the people who say shit about how any violent conflict is unwinnable offer no real alternative either! they just want you to get out and vote.

the world gets worse every day and they are siphoning away soooo soo many people into their dead end dream of reforming capitalism while it rips the heart out of the global ecosystem.

even if their solution would work eventually, there’s no goddamn time for it! they’ve been trying for a century and gotten nowhere!

[dog-uncrushed]

think im hitting a kind of fatigue at the larping as analogue thing -- ive had a flip phone for couple months now and not sure the good its done me exactly... the most noticeable change is using my laptop more, which has become the only computer in my life. The vulgar doomscroll and media bingeing havn't gone away theyv just become less convenient and therefore more conscious processes , which also means more violent processes (the forces at work are naked). So i have come to contemplate my addiction and its withdrawals more...

one part of me wants to ride out the experiment as an exercise in discipline. yet another part of me wants to cave in: cant i have a critical consciousness of our living in a culture of image, celebrity, self-mythos, pornography and envy and so on while still participating it? The luddite phantasy is to not participate and thereby win new freedom that consists in its return to the Old. Non-participation precipitates analogue activity: the luddite is as active among his books and notebooks as the egirl is on the web. But I worry that the Luddite's phantasy is a phantasy of purity: the internet is dirty, books are clean. This sets up superegoic circuits: going online and getting dirty becomes a temptation because it is a transgression. Routines of self-flagellation and ablution that correct for transgression reinforce a dependence upon the dirty internet even though they ostensibly cut against it.

Here are the seeds of fascism. The luddite is a reactionary: reject Modernity, for it corrupts absolutely and embrace tradition which corrects and absolves absolutely. It doesn't look Reactionary for the luddite identifies Capital as the culprit of corruption: he has the same enemy as the Revolutionary. Yet Marxism insists that we cannot try to resolve the contradictions of capitalism by going against the momentum of Capital which throws the Modernist project into the future, the Communist project must reconcile itself to these contradictions and incorporate them into its social organisation and Not resist them for the sake of returning to an earlier time without contradiction: for everywhere contradiction reigns. A logic of purity, like the one envinced by the superego is one that seeks to eliminate contradiction. But in practice it exploits contradiction instead of eliminating it: the idea of purity promises salvation while always delivering denigration. The more one tries to be pure the more one finds oneself impure. The fascist leader and the superego are one in setting up impossible ideals of salvation which function to demarcate lines of purity and impurity, of 'us' and 'them'. The luddite fancies himself a puritan isolate, separated by 8"inches of gorilla glass from the great zoo of the terminally online "They".

I still think social media is a scourge on this earth, I just don't know if its a scourge that one has to quarantine from. It comes down to this: we're all attention-whores today whose personalities start to freeze and crumble without warm and steady streams of recognition. Turning off the taps of recognition leads to the zombie like withdrawal state of total passivity that scrolls to court the abyss.

Against the abyss I toast to activity: Here's for activity! I drink to the text post

[hellsvestibule]

It’s not really fair to say like, All of the limbus people are bad people. Some of them have more or less redeemable qualities but all of them have like, some degree of major character flaw which the plot wants you condemn. Gregor is a kindhearted victim of a corrupt system which exploited him and just wants to survive however hes been so abused he now thinks lowly of people like himself to the point of having no qualms about killing them, he’s literally proud to admit he’s a bootlicker, Hes Not Like Other Bugs but he’s also your like, calmest most “normal” and reliable sinner. Rodion -was- a revolutionary but now she’s a loser and gambler who doesn’t really believe in justice, but she will steal for you, and she’s kinda got those MILF vibes, so,! Dante, the prototypical “stand there and watch people suffer” person, will stand there and complain everyone is just watching them suffer, but you can see changes to the base concept from inferno dante where after watching a sinner struggle they will start to understand them and speak on their behalf as though understanding them as part of the collective.

So it’s not 100% cynical about these people being irredeemable it just wants you to know why they are “sinners” why their stories weren’t about good heroic people, and by sort of portraying them as your unpleasant coworkers or strangers you’d sit next to on a bus, the plot both recontextualizes them as understandable modern tropes (my favorite example being, that Don Quixote is an LARPing otaku genki girl in the most miserable setting possible, making her annoying to everyone around her) but why that paradoxically makes you want to see them do better bc making them normal people removed of any meaning of their main character syndrome (and there is an adjacent gag where the side characters will sometimes look more like main characters with anime hair colors while your sinners by and large have npc vibes) it makes you want to treat them with the compassion and sympathy you would someone normal in their position

On the other hand, this is my perspective of it removed from knowing anything about the other PM games. Bc I’m sure some of that will explain changes to the setting and plots. Like they aren’t straightforward executions of the stories, at all, they are unique characters named for them, but they build from the themes of them or at least the ones whose stories I’ve read seem to.

[roachliquid]

I had to take a while to think about this post before coming back to it, because like... yeah. This is all true, and there's even more complexity at play.

Bethesda is always like this when it comes to storytelling. They portray history as this Grand Looming Thing that, no matter how distant it becomes, still echoes into the present and often comes directly back to be relevant once again. And it's not that this is completely wrong! But it's typically delivered in this incredibly pretentious, "we are all but puppets of the past" kind of way, that also consistently centers the biggest and most dramatic players of history as if they're objectively the most important.

So we have Morrowind, where you're the direct subject of an ancient prophecy involving a god who is physically present and affecting things. You have Oblivion, where the plot centers around the empire's royal lineage and the Grand Historical Moment of its end. You have Skyrim, where an ancient breed of warrior gets brought back in full glory to stop an ancient evil dragon, and everyone who exists now, and is living their lives in the present day, is merely the stakes of this Grand Ancient Conflict.

So when we get to Fallout, of course they want to focus on pre-war lore. Of course they want to dig deep into Vault-Tec's lore and make a setting where post-apocalyptic survivors are LARPing the Revolutionary War. To Bethesda, the history is the setting, like a badly misinterpreted take on Lord of the Rings.

And I can't say this approach is without merits. After all, it's their emphasis on this shit that allowed the Fallout TV show to deliver some incredibly incisive and powerful twists that (IMO) genuinely change the setting for the better. But at the same time, the TV show is an outlier, because it actually takes time to be critical of this shit.

Bethesda's writers don't want to be critical. They want to unironically wank over the 1950s and the Revolutionary War and the Great Ideal that the U.S. was supposedly founded on.

Preston Garvey has the potential to be an incredibly complex character. He's a Black man who has decided that the best way forward is to imitate an era of history that blatantly had no place for him. This is a position that, in the real world, could easily expose him both to a lot of racism (casual and otherwise) from his compatriots, and a great deal of criticism from the conspicuously absent Black community of Future Boston. But it can never come up, because the story is so up its own ass, it can only think of these through the lenses of white American propaganda. The Minutemen were noble then, they're noble now, and since we're (supposedly) over that whole racism thing they're also diverse.

And speaking of historical omission, I can't help but notice an absence of Indigenous communities in this setting. I'd like to think that's because reservations and open land weren't high-priority targets for bombing, but at the same time, I have no reason to believe the writers even thought that far. Because their entire concept of this land begins and ends with the story of colonialism and the empire that was built on its soil.

I feel like this is why Bethesda keeps setting its games in the ruins of major cities. Because their concept of the United States begins and ends with its institutions, with its history and government and the stereotypical trappings depicted in vintage advertisements. The idea of this place as a living land, both older and more endurant than any one history - and in fact, home to both a myriad of histories and living, adapting cultures - just doesn't exist. To them, the only America that exists is the United States, in both a real and theoretical sense. The idea that people might build something new is antithema to all their writing sensibilities.

And that's a big issue, because Fallout at its inception diverged massively from the status quo. The first game takes place less than ninety years after the Great War, but in that time there has already been a dramatic shift in the way civilization operates for former citizens of the U.S. Then as soon as Bethesda takes the wheel, we start to see a shift in focus toward former seats of political power, and the desire to rebuild not just civilization, but specifically the civilization that occupied these places before. Which is not only an incredibly frustrating choice, but an incredibly strange one, since they've also made it perfectly that they have no intention of actually allowing any significant rebuilding at any point.

The end result is an ourobouros of worldbuilding that, if it continues in the way Bethesda has been going, is just going to get more and more frustrating to try and participate in. I mean, it's already there, but at this point there's still time to change their direction and make things better if they wanted to. But as long as they keep freezing the setting in this place of crapsack history wank, and I'm pretty sure that's what they'll do, people are just going to get more disillusioned until they stop caring about the setting at all.

Todd Howard’s brain is equal parts American idolatry, stupidity, and a pathological need to lie

[reallyamerica]

I have literally no intended use for it in the long run even as someone who does a lot of costume stuff, but I’m really tempted to buy $70 regency era front closure men’s trousers just because I really wanna wear them with a white blouse with several buttons undone tucked into them and my tall leather riding boots and look like I would be the brooding earl of some estate in England that would be the main character’s love interest in a period drama but the plot twist is I’m a dyke with revolutionary ideals and as soon as I open my mouth the illusion of mystery and broodiness will be dispelled and replaced with the reality of my sunshine-y dumbassery

[kiri-instinct]

"Overthrown by theocratic fascists at the behest of the US government"? The same US government that attended the Guadeloupe Conference, where President Carter DIRECTLY said he is in support of the Shah of Iran? THAT US government supported the same Iran that it now claims is its greatest adversary? The same Iran whose first act upon its inception was to call the US Great Satan?

You, a white New Yorker who evidently barely understands anything you talk about even when it comes to the western liberal slop you live off of, have decided that YOU, of all people on this blessed Earth, good or bad, can weigh in on something with this much confidence and audacity, just because you can cry about the non-existent 'progress and tolerance' Iran lost when the self-indulgent hedonist monarch who cozied up to the US took miniskirts to exile with him? You think YOUR opinion as a 'revolutionary' LARPer from the imperial core has any weight on the issues actually suffered by those in parts of the world YOUR LOT bombed and terrorized since Pope Urban II told you that we are your enemies, and those who came after him told you that we are but regressive idiots who must simply be brought to an "educated" (white) way of life by your "graces"?

You do not speak for us, and you are not a sympathizer by the virtue of the fact that, like many of us, myself included, you have queer tendencies. You are a propaganda piece for just another part of the white Western imperialist core that wants to feign its ignorance and bigotry towards other parts of the world as wanting the best for us -- which just so happens to align very well with your white-centric way of life that you pretend is anything but.

Go back to LARPing about the revolutionary acts you are far too scared to contribute to but totally believe in with all your heart and condemning Christianity to an audience utterly confused by your incoherencies. Leave talking about the problems of the Middle East to people who know what they are actually talking about because at least then you embarrass yourself to a far smaller group of people.

"Iran got American blood on their hand". Girl, your stupid ass nation overthrew their democratically elected leader, which led to the 79 revolution. The blood is in your hands

[irrigos]

this is only tangentially related to fl, but ive been thinking a lot about the genre of historical fiction where nobody is prejudiced ever (or if they are, it's in ways that aren't real, like being prejudiced against rubberies but not people of color, or are no longer relevant, like people in fl still being anti-catholic but not antisemitic. as far as we know anyway)

it's... interesting. it definitely has its pros, and i see why people would want to craft that kind of world to play in, but i also think it's worth acknowledging the downsides, too. also this post is really long but i couldn't find a good place to stick a readmore. look at my posts, boy

like, i get that nobody wants to write Period Accurate Racism Simulator, both for personal moral reasons (ie "I don't want to write racist texts") and for commercial reasons ("No person of color is going to want to buy Period Accurate Racism Simulator") but also... so much of society is structured around prejudice that historical stuff almost falls apart without it

i was in two Regency-era larps, and both of them were "no prejudice" alt history, one of which had a whole alternate timeline explaining why Britain was a global superpower even though colonialism didn't happen, and the other one... well never quite got around to explaining the worldbuilding. but both were in agreement that Queen Elizabeth I ended sexism forever (and also homophobia and transphobia i guess??)

but like... so much about what is iconic about the regency era (especially in regency romances) is the negotiation with extremely strict social rules, which were, at their core, about controlling women. a woman can't be alone with a man because that's improper! i mean... what if they fuck each other???? But if it's equally valid for this woman to be in a relationship with another woman, then... it would also be improper for her to be alone with other women? okay so she can't ever be alone... but if polyamory is a possibility, then i guess she can't be in groups, either, because they still might all fuck each other!!! so nobody can... ever be around anybody? of course, if we dont view a woman's assumed reproductive capability as a commodity that must be protected and secured, then we don't need to police who she is alone with, but then we remove the stuff that's fun and interesting about Regency romances! At this point, we're just writing regular fiction, but everyone's dresses are really high waisted.

And I mean, if we imagine a Regency era Britain where colonialism flat out did not happen... how are any of these characters this wealthy? How are they still using the products that were made accessible to Britain because of colonialism, like fabrics from India? If there were no colonies, then Britain didn't colonize North America, then there was no Revolutionary War, which means France didn't go into debt FUNDUNG the Revolutionary War, which means it wasn't in the dire financial straits that lead to the French Revolution, which means that Napoleon would not rise to power because of his military service DURING the French Revolution, which means the Napoleonic Wars aren't going to happen, but obviously we're still having the Napoleonic Wars because how are you gonna do Regency Era without its tentpole features, like people achieving upward mobility through exceptional military service against the dreaded Napoleon. And don't even get me started on how the history of Corsica would fit into all this!!!

People made the decisions they made because of the world they lived in, and if you change fundamental aspects of the world they lived in, its absurd to have them make the same decisions.

And on top of that, it actually ends up being kind of limiting for what kinds of stories you can tell. i mean, if no prejudice exists, then you can't have anyone interacting with it, internalizing it, or overcoming it. To have a character that, for example, is concerned about homophobia would be as bizarre in this setting as someone worrying about societal backlash because... idk their favorite color is red instead of blue. Who cares! Do you care? Clap if you care.

I know that's the fantasy some people like engaging with, and that's perfectly fine, but... well, it's not what I like writing.

I think Fallen London splits the difference pretty well- society still exists on the Surface as it always has (more or less), so you can still write characters engaging with it, but having London be it's own little pocket of equality has its own problems. I mean, if London was moved underground and the Masters granted everyone equal rights under the law, then that means no minority has ever campaigned for an expansion of their own rights and succeeded. There was no real Women's Sufferage movement in London, because there was no need. But there were Suffragettes who did cool stuff!! Stuff that might be interesting to engage with, but you can't, because of the setting. You have to overlook the accomplishments of real marginalized people, because the very premise of your story depends on the new government just... deciding to be nice.

Is this a problem that needs fixing? Nah, I don't think so. I think it was good when FBG went to remove some of the #problematic bits of text that still hung around (like changing the description of the Fourth City Airag so it's less... shitty, for example) because that doesn't fit with the tone they're setting. But I think it's fun and interesting to look at the opportunity costs of these decisions!!! im just having fun lol