balerion

joined 1 year ago
 

I've read a decent amount of theory and the like, but I'm ashamed to say most of it has been written by straight white guys. However, I did very much enjoy Racism without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva.

 

TTRPGs count as gaming, right? So tell me a little about what you have going on!

I'm currently in two DND 5e campaigns.

The first one is a homebrew setting, but still pretty standard as far as DND settings go. All the usual races. My character is Velena Zausek, a level 3 half-drow draconic sorcerer. Her backstory is that her drow father escaped the Underdark when he was young, then he and her human mother went on to start a successful weaving business. One day a badly wounded man stumbled into their town and they gave him shelter, fully expecting him to die. But he miraculously recovered, and then he claimed to be a dragon in disguise. As thanks, he offered them a boon: He would ask his dragon god to bless their bloodline. Thinking he was just nuts, they accepted and thought nothing more of it... until Velena hit puberty and started growing scales and setting things on fire.

When she reached adulthood, Velena inherited the weaving business but was bored to tears by it, so she decided to set out to be an adventurer. She and her buddies just finished fighting some drow who were about to sacrifice people to perform a ritual, and I suspect we'll try to figure out what their whole deal was as our next move.

Oh, and one of the party members is a draegloth (drow monster thingy) who took one look at Velena and decided she must be in charge lmao. Velena didn't initially realize this, but upon figuring it out she is so uncomfortable with it. I'm loving roleplaying it.

The second campaign is set in the Old Margreve, though I believe the DM just borrowed the setting and isn't planning on using any of the premade stuff otherwise. This campaign is newer, so I have less to say about it, but it seems really fun so far. Amusingly enough, we're following what seem to be drow through the forest, so drow are possibly the bad guys in both my campaigns.

My character is a Tabaxi swashbuckler rogue named Wind on Water. He just hit 4th level, and if anyone has any suggestions for feats, that would be appreciated. (I already have Alert.) He doesn't have as much of a backstory as Velena, but he grew up dirt poor in a big city and is adventuring to make money for himself and his brother. He and one of the other PCs are con men who were hiding out from their last heist when they got roped into this adventure. Their game was that his companion would steal from nobles, then Wind would "catch" him and turn him in for a price before freeing him. Kind of like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, if you've seen that.

Both Velena and Wind are a blast to play, but for very different reasons. Velena is my first DND character, so she's a lot like me because I figured that would be easier to roleplay. With Wind, I wanted to try something harder, so he's not much like me at all.

But enough about my bullshit. Tell me about your bullshit!

[–] balerion@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't back this up, but I've heard the mods there are literally feds.

[–] balerion@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

if MODERATORS are landed gentry, what the fuck does that make rich bastards like him?

[–] balerion@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

as a woke leftist, i hate tankies because y'all aren't leftists in any meaningful sense. the only difference between you and libs is which countries whose atrocities you justify.

[–] balerion@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

i've read marx. at precisely no point does he say anything justifying the various atrocities state capitalist countries have committed. i think he's wrong about some stuff, but even if you accept that his word is gospel, tankies are still just people who took leftist principles as an excuse for the imposing the kind of brutal authoritarianism that leftists are supposed to be against.

[–] balerion@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Exactly. Blaming individuals for systemic problems never gets you anywhere. If you can reduce your car dependency, sure, do that, but don't beat yourself up if you can't.

 
[–] balerion@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

just don't get married then. christ. we need an /r/arethestraightsokay.

 
[–] balerion@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago

I'd love to help you figure this out, but your second link takes me to a 502 error.

Anyway, my guess is that one instance you're on federates with certain instances, and one does not. So if you're on instance A and B, A federates with C, but B does not, so from B you won't see comments from C. But I admittedly don't know what the differences are between the comment sections you're seeing, so I could be completely wrong.

 
[–] balerion@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Not a subscriber yet, but I might become one after I finish Fantasy High.

 
 
 
 

Wore it and immediately got a dude telling me I'd "pay for that on Judgment Day." 10/10, have worn again.

[–] balerion@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I think I figured out I was bi when I was around 12? I don't remember exactly what spurred it, but the first female fictional character I remember thinking was hot was Franziska von Karma. God. She's the ideal woman.

And tbh I'm just now starting to wonder if I may have more going on than just "cis chick" gender-wise. I'm pretty sure I'm a woman, but I might also be something else? Uhhhh if anyone has resources for figuring out if you may be multigender, or just wants to talk to me about it, that would be appreciated lol

[–] balerion@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I already said that not everything Palestinians do to fight back is good or justified. I believe attacks on the Israeli government and military are at least potentially justified, but no, random Israeli citizens should not be killed. But even unjust violence on the part of the Palestinians does not change the position of victim and aggressor here, any more than the brutality that some Native American tribes exhibited against European colonists did. And what do the actions of surrounding nations have to do with Palestinians? Besides, I'd say the oppression of Palestinians goes far beyond what anyone could possibly consider reasonable safety measures. Frankly, you sound like an American conservative talking about the "invasion" at the southern border.

Genuine question, because I literally don't know this: Is the green in Israeli-occupied territory natural green that comes from good tending, or is it artificial green like all the grass in Las Vegas? Should it be there or is it a massive waste of water turning a desert into an unnatural and unsustainable oasis? And if it's the former, could the lack of green on Palestinian soil be because of the bombings and destruction of infrastructure/social frameworks that could support greenery?

[–] balerion@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

And none of that matters even one single iota to a Palestinian child who's just been shot in the chest. Go ahead, go up to a grieving Palestinian family and tell them, "Well, I'm oppressed too." So what? So fucking what? Having been displaced and oppressed doesn't magically make it okay for you to turn around and do the same thing to others.

I don't have a problem with Jews living in Palestine if they don't displace the Palestinians. But that's exactly what they're doing. Jews, like anyone else, should be free to live absolutely anywhere on Earth without fear. But they have no right to inflict terror on others. No amount of oppression could possibly justify that.

As for why recency of claim matters, I don't think it's necessarily that important, but I was making a point. However, you could make the argument in the case of Native Americans that they're still quite tied to the lands they live(d) on and often care for those lands in a way colonizers don't, and therefore their presence is important for environmental reasons. You can't really make the same argument for Jews and Israel.

Hahaha, what? Native Americans don't have anyone calling for their extermination? They're literally still subject to a genocide, like many racial minorities in the US. They were involuntarily sterilized up until the 1970s, and they're still treated brutally by the government (and especially police).

:::spoiler child sexual abuse I literally heard a speech in person from a Native man who was taken to a residential school and repeatedly sexual assaulted until he was suicidal while his age was still in single digits. There are people alive today who have experienced this stuff.

[–] balerion@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Why does any of that matter? Why does any of that make it okay to displace the people who currently live in a place? It's their homeland, too. They have at least as much a right to it as Israelis.

Shit, I'm for landback for indigenous Americans, and even I don't think non-indigenous people should be kicked off the land they currently live on and relocated. And Native Americans have a much more recent claim to American land than Israelis do to Palestine.

 
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