#they're just have a polite conversation

[aaeeart]

this scene in Rebel Resolve 🤭 let's ignore what happens next <3

[vaguely-concerned]

another fun little thing I recently discovered: if you don't rat them out, you can actually find the crow and venatori lovebirds from that one runaround quest in treviso hanging out together in the grand necropolis! (apparently pearl has an uncle in the mourn watch who's taking them in for now and they're planning where to go next. crow lovebird seems. less than elated by all the skeletons but very happy to be with bae lol)

I think you have to finish either (or possibly both?) emmrich's loyalty quest and all the mourn watch side quests to find them, they're sitting at a little table up past the stairs at the beginning of the level just off the eluvian point that's broken earlier in the game

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

the thing about gaeltacht courses is that most people are really nice but then there are just one or two whom you'd rather walk into the sea than talk to for one minute longer

fortunately the sea is quite close by so when the upper beginner/lower intermediate european student starts making edgy jokes about the troubles and repeating what random comedians have said about brexit, you can do exactly that

[brick-van-dyke]

If there's one thing I've respectively noticed from Zionists and defenders of Israeli war crimes, it's that every source, argument and potential avenue to explore each explanation is riddled with cherry picking, moving the goalposts and mental gymnastics to explain why their conclusions, which typically are barely even related to the sources they use, somehow overshadow literal reality and what we see with our own eyes.

While scrolling, one example I came across was the repetitive misrepresentation of BLM, antifa and quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, as well as statistics, scholarly journal articles and government website information. These are all good sources, yet every single time they're mangled completely until the only possible "interpretation" of any of them is "well Israel is right to defend itself after shorting rockets beforehand because the retaliation was brutal and all Arabs are bad by default therefore". As if any of these sources are even about individual exceptions of Israel versus hatred towards Arabs.

I think what I find most absurd, as someone in the middle of their own studies, is how every bit of critical thinking and logic goes out the window as they do every single thing possible to do what professors worldwide say NOT to do when evaluating sources. It's like watching a race to see who can tangle and misconstrue scientific information to fit their world view the fastest. Then said people say "um actually I studied at university before so it's actually not wrong that I'm doing this exact this everyone is warned not to do because I have a permit". Ignorance I can forgive, but willful and arrogant manipulation? That's another thing entirely.

[almoststedytimetravel]

Randy is a very funny character to me because once to get to Azure, every interaction pre-chapter 4 is just him doing something silly, then the game cutting to his inner monologue for him to be like "oops I felt happy for 0.01 seconds too long better feel indescribable shame and guilt for the next hour!"

[soonhoonsol]

you guys ever get tired of friends who only talk about themselves? how do you respectfully tell them off?

[neonphoenix]

Hate the number of people I know who just want to leave the US because of xyz political issues that don't exist in the imaginary other country they hope to move to. Not One of these people ever puts in the leg work to make the world around them better (at least one isn't even registered to vote) and it is literally the height of privilege to think you can just go live somewhere else where someone else has made everything work without doing anything to participate in your community first.

[psalmsofpsychosis]

one thing about me is, i'll always always always value creativity and experimental ideas and stories and new structure-breaking narratives above established "commonly valued" creations, even if the creative idea's execution is less than ideal, even if the established story is "perfect and spotless". Like, i literally dont care, unconventional and paculiar and unexpected works of art are infinitely more valuable to me whether in subpar execution state or in perfect structure. If you did it differently and did it your way your creation will always be more important to me than any predictable and "proper" narrative made in complete and utter obedience of well reinforced explicit and implicit rules. "this is very well made in all the technicalities look at all these clean details—" catch me give a fuck. It's cliche, repetitive, it's boring, i dont care. We live in a time where obedience of known metrics seemingly ranks higher than any form of outside-the-box creativity and i'm done with it. Say something new, say something personal, say something earnest and paculiar and weird or i'm out of this theater.

[elytrafemme]

i really do wish at least one of my family members had a normal perspective on politics. not in the sense that any of them have bad takes persay but just that literally none of them approach the broad concept of Politics in an effective manner

[vaguely-concerned]

as I am replaying origins -- a game which, to be clear, I love very VERY much -- I can't help but feel that people do don the rose coloured glasses on it a bit specifically when it comes to the range of dialogue options you're actually given to work with at any given time (something I've seen my fair share of silent vs. voiced protagonist discourse about over the years *smokes tired cigarette in survivor of a decade of DA tumblr*). like... there are a couple of situations where you're given a decent range of responses, but the vast majority of the time you have about three dialogue options, and often they're presented sort of like 'polite/bland/unprovoked near-cartoonish levels of assholery'. arranged like, y'know:

I am [BLANK]. It's an honor to make your acquaintance.

You can call me [BLANK].

How dare you speak to me. Fuck you and your family back five generations. I'm going to rob your mother's grave before your eyes.

(sometimes if you're real lucky you get the secret extra 'Something else/I'm bald/but I'm a dwarf!' option)

I'm not at all saying it's worse in that aspect than the other games (Dalish Inquisitor 'Who's Mythal' just entered the chat), but I do think it's worth considering that this might be a bit of a franchise original sin that has been present since the beginning, as indeed it is in most rpgs because making rpgs is real hard, and you notice it more with the dialogue wheel format than when the responses and questions you can ask are all laid out in a list together

[apollosholynipple]

First year student: "This book says hellenistic sculptures have 'baroque-like, pathetic forms'? What does that even mean?"

Me: "Oh, yeah... Yeah it's all just like... They tried really hard to go for realism. Like they have facial expressions and there's limbs everywhere. Pathetic is a good word but I guess you could say it's more dramatic in the modern sense of the word? Wait a second, you'll know it when you see it-"

*shows gigantomachy*

*shows laocoön group*

Her: "Oh. Yeah. I'll know it when I see it."

[zincbot]

nobody on gods green earth annoys me more than my coworkers man

[burningcomputerpersona]

everybody in my table while actively starting conversations with each other: oh yeah im a huge introvert and i don't have many friends

me who's been silent this entire time wondering how everyone knows each other and is talking to each other: ?????????

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

i have been in community with profoundly developmentally disabled peers and peers with brain damage my whole life, bc i had a childhood diagnosis. i have also been leftist my whole life; my mother was a marxist and raised me that way, and while their politics were absolute dogshit, they were lefty dogshit.

my entire life, i have seen leftist educators throw mentally disabled people away as "lost causes" because they couldn't engage with the material the way it was being presented. leftist outreach and education does, genuinely, have a massive lack of accessible material. to be blunt, people are not interested in retrofitting their leftist outreach to be accessible to people who learn best through episodes of sesame street.

as in, i have repeatedly faced outright laughter and cruelty over the idea that this could be a priority. or even something that we consider doing at all.

"people who are that mentally disabled don't need to know about these things," the kindest interpretation goes. ("people who are that mentally disabled don't interact with the world, anyway, they're all in institutions or monitored 24/7 by their parents," the uncharitable underlying assumptions go. "they wouldn't be a worker who needs a union. or a library attendee. or a member of the community garden. or a volunteer at the food bank. or or or")

the people i have seen this hurt the worst, over and over again, are profoundly mentally disabled people of color whose lack of access to accessible antiracist education is causing real danger in their lives. institutionalized disabled people of color who have learned racist ideology and behaviors from white authority, whether they were adopted by white families or incarcerated in care institutions run by white staff. who are treated lower than garbage by leftist educators, who view them as "lost causes," as unworthy of time and effort and attention, as deserving of their abuses because they... what... internalized the abuses that make up every aspect of their lives since birth?

i see people saying things in this conversation like "disability isn't an excuse for racism or transphobia or whatever, people have the obligation to improve themselves." oh, believe me, i have seen again and again how many privileged disabled people utilize their disabilities to punch down on others, try to escape accountability for their punching down by citing disability. but individual weaponization of identity is just that: weaponization of identity.

the power structures at play are what they are. it is a noble and admirable goal to want leftist outreach and education to be more accessible to all. if that is truly your goal, you must eventually reckon with the existence of people who do, actually, really need it presented in a picture book. or an episode of bluey. or a conversation where you only use examples of people they know in real life, using things that happened to them personally. the existence of people who cannot grasp forms of abstract reasoning, who need information presented as rules, or as guidelines, or as categories. the idea that yes, fully grown adults who need daniel tiger to explain racism to them are human beings who not only deserve access to that very thing, but who also deserve to be a part of leftist spaces and benefit from leftist organizing. are people for whom it might be INTEGRAL they get to be a part of leftism. are victims of racism themselves and suffering without access to antiracist spaces and community and support.

and you will need to reckon with the abject cruelty of your peers who laugh and mock the very idea of this. you need to reckon with the fact that a lot of people you respect, a lot of leftists doing genuinely good work, will respond to this by making fun of the people you're serving, even outright telling you their violent fantasies about these people. that is the experience of organizing in leftist spaces for profoundly disabled people. that is why so many of us burn out so fast. there IS a structural problem with mentally disabled people being seen as disposable and not a part of community. and it is EXTREMELY present in leftist organizing and outreach efforts.

[thedreadvampy]

I mean sure, I can understand this perspective, but I'm not sure whether most people feel less shaken to be thrust into conversations about "self-unaliving" than conversations about "suicide"

and I for one as a survivor would much rather unexpectedly encounter somebody talking about "rape" than somebody talking about how funny it is to have sex with somebody when they don't want to, a normal thing that doesn't need to be named because it's So Normal.

which is to say. this is a post about words. the words are not the distressing thing about the discussion. the distressing thing is the distressing thing about the discussion. sugarcoating, dodging or renaming the distressing thing doesn't make it less distressing but it DOES often make it harder to have a frank discussion about it or address it in serious terms.

[pinch of salt: solid probability from their blog that this person is a Literal 14 Year Old and the perspective from 30 and 14 are very different. I do stand by all the points I'm making but I think this conversation lands a lot different for people at different life stages - there is something to be said for the general issue that the internet has flattened social groups to the degree that I as a 30 year old can make a post to my audience of largely adult millennials that immediately enters the same conversational space as people half my age and still in school. that seems. ungreat. as the primary way we engage in conversation. but I don't have solutions to offer.]

you gotta be able to say "die"

you gotta be able to say "suicide"

you gotta be able to talk about "sex"

they're uncomfortable topics, YEAH for SURE

because LIFE is uncomfortable. Death and suicide and sex and pain are straight up going to happen. not having words for the way it discomforts you doesn't make it more comfortable, it just makes you less able to reach out about it.

even more vital, you gotta be able to say words like "rape", "abuse", "queer" or "racist". cause we fought fucking hard to name those experiences. to identify "rape" as distinct from "sex" and "racism" as distinct from "acceptable behaviour" and "queer" as distinct from "invert"

like the function of communication is not to minimise immediate discomfort. we gotta be able to talk about stuff that's hard or sucks or causes difficult conversations.

[pears-trinkets]

.