Queer Blue Sky @queerbluesky - Tumblr Blog

given the current climate this pride especially i feel i must mention that i love my trans friends, i stand with trans people in the fight against transphobic legislation and those who would enforce it, and this blog is not a good place for you to be if you do not vibe with that

queerbluesky

As someone who lives in Ireland, society has shifted from "anti-gay" to "pro-gay" so quickly and so thoroughly that sometimes I, a gay man, feel like I'm not even queer. My job requires I meet so many people and I experience almost no hostility; people from all walks of like treat me with kindness (although they perhaps overindulge in unfunny jokes). But do trans people get this experience? Uh, no. No they do not. I am often asked, even in professional contexts (I work for a major pharmaceutical company) to sanatise or justify the transphobia of the people I meet. ("Oh, well being gay is one thing, but I just don't think [most transphobic shit you've ever heard].") These people get no quarter from me. "The bravest thing you can be is yourself. I think trans people are amazing. Can you imagine how happy you might be if you did what was good for you, no matter what other people might think?"

hbmmaster

biggest regret with the paradoxes video is that I should have spent like one more sentence explaining the barber paradox because a lot of people somehow completely missed the paradox part of it and just said stuff like "uh why doesn't someone else shave the barber"

hbmmaster

common "solutions" to the barber paradox ("in a town where everyone must be shaved and there's one barber who shaves those and only those who do not shave themselves, who shaves the barber?")

someone else shaves the barber (that would make the barber someone who does not shave themself, which would mean the barber shaves them)

the barber shaves themself (this would make the barber someone who shaves themself, which would mean they aren't shaved by the barber)

the barber is shaved by a different barber (a different barber still counts as a person.)

the barber is shaved by a razor and not a person (if this counts as not shaving themself then nobody in this town is being shaved by the barber and this does not actually fit any part of the scenario described)

the barber is a woman (women actually count as people so she still needs to be shaved)

the barber is bald (bald people are people too.)

the barber isn't shaved at all (the barber is also a person)

subaru-copilot

it gets to a point that is just weirder if they didn't fuck

subaru-copilot

you did all this and it was not even because you wanted to bang him? weirdo

#piwo x nest

princess-of-phyresis

they're selling anti-ai slogans on sweatshop-produced t-shirts. i don't need to write the poem for you to get it do i

un-javi

princess-of-phyresis

you are not required to exploit sweatshop labour to produce merchandise in order to participate in society though are you? most people don't.

victusinveritas

But wait there's more.....

https://mybricklog.com/blog/bricks-minifigs-corporate-stole-old-mans-200000-lego-collection

elisamaza

the CEO of patreon posted this video about Reckless Ben’s account:

elisamaza

bruh

Reckless Ben's investigation into the allegedly stolen $200,000 Lego Star Wars collection just took a weird turn

Reckless Ben, the content creator who recently exploded in popularity after a series of videos investigating a missing Lego Star Wars collection worth $200,000, has fled to Mexico following his arrest by the American Fork Police Department in Utah. The oddly contrived mystery surrounding the justification for Ben’s arrest has resulted in a “Mormon Mafia” conspiracy trending online, as those following the story believe that the owners of Lego aftermarket reseller Bricks & Minifigs, who are accused of stealing the collection, are being assisted by American Fork police due to their connections with the Mormon church.

54625

flicking back through my procreate library what the fuck was this

pillowspace

Things to look for in this:

Fish

Eyes

Body

astronomical-bagel

derinthescarletpescatarian

This is one of the greatest pieces of art in the world OP

no-sharks-on-the-sun

they killed him for this

agnesmontague

ive invented (note: dubious claim) something i call the bear diet which is mostly fruits and vegetables with fish as the main protein source and something like once a month you eat a few hyperprocessed foods of your liking because that is when you, the bear, raid a dumpster in the suburbs

stellarskyes

after the hyperprocessed foods, do you take tranquilizers to simulate getting captured by animal control and returned to the wild?

agnesmontague

i would settle for melatonin gummies but well. knock yourself out

#knock yourself out

gondorrevealparty

one of the best things a batter can do in baseball is to launch that thing 107mph directly into the crowd

#myfatherdiedlikethis

cataplat

cooking with trauma

queerbluesky

this comic is a great example of the kuloshov effect. First and third panels are identical but boy do you read the faces differently.

qi-mera

More of you need to learn about these ☝️

jadenebula

mosslingg

My liege im sorry to break it to you but your advisor that's actually evil and wants you dead turned out to be straight. I know you really wanted to have an enemies to lovers situation with him. Yeah I'm afraid the poisoning didn't hold any romantic intent behind it. The king of the enemy kingdom is bisexual though, I could send him a letter? Yes, I'll make sure to include multiple threats of homoerotic nature. You will have your toxic yaoi, my liege

lilyblisslys

me with the. When she. When her. When the she her me

mollyjames

thydungeongal

I've often personally fallen victim to this line of thought but on more examination I don't think there's necessarily that big a disconnect between "characters in D&D (and other similar fantasy RPGs) are often at best amoral" and "the characters are portrayed as heroic." You can look at it both from the point of view of mythic heroes (who were often morally questionable in their actions and "hero" status had less to do with being a principled actor and more with being a larger than life figure) and from the point of view of irl hero worship, where even people who do kinda messed up things can be placed on a pedestal. "Violent agents of the status quo" and "heroic figures" don't have to be mutually exclusive if you take the latter statement as being more about societal perceptions.

Or if you just like using later D&D's black and white cosmic morality you can just go "well the player characters are on Team Good so because of metaphysics their actions are cosmically Good," and while I do occasionally enjoy those types of campaigns, like it's fun when the bad guys live in Skull Keep and orcs look like Maleficent's goons, a lot of the time it's a bit too simplistic for the sake of making the world feel lived in and responsive. Of course it's peak when orcs do look like Maleficent's goons anyway, because that style rips. The armies of Chaos can be just some guys who think black leather and spikes are awesome without being Cosmically Evil and I'm like As a Goth I Must Agree.

queerbluesky

I don't know if I'm missing something, but as an Irishman the campaigns I've run (back when I was spending my misspent youth on 5e) grappled directly with colonialism. My players were always playing characters whose home was being colonialised.

It's easy to feel good about murdering avatars if colonalist violence (in my first and most long running 5e campaign, these were elves inspired by the British empire) and then the players can meet the people who were there before their civilisation arrived (in my case, fey whose fyewild was being corrupted by all of these hideous cities sprouting up) and get to deal with fun moral questions of realising that *they* were the descendants of a previous colonial power.

You get the juice, the crunch, and you can fucking murder and Elf with RP and feel great about it.

thydungeongal

I have posted before about how sometimes well-meaning attempts at running D&D without some of the more unfortunate dynamics can often backfire but in a way where most people don't even register it backfiring. Because when you take the step of "oh D&D's various 'evil humanoids' don't just exist in a vacuum and given the renfaire colonialism on display it's kind of impossible not to read them as somewhat racialized" many people will then go "okay but we still need some people who player characters should be allowed to kill guilt-free, so let's replace 'orcs' with 'bandits' because killing bad criminal people is perfectly ideologically neutral." At that point it's like "okay so your characters are no longer the racist kill squad, now they're just the Tough on Crime Vigilantes."

But I feel I should make clear that D&D the game itself is not exactly at fault here: like, okay, it is sort of at fault in the sense that it is a game of fantasy killing people with swords and magic. And it is easier for people to accept the killing with people with swords and magic part when they can imagine that their characters are at least to a degree justified. That is sort of just built into the game (and the game has built into its lore varying levels of making the fantasy of killing certain types of guy justifiable).

But D&D is not at fault for making people go "okay so it's bad when you kill orcs simply because they're orcs. It's better when you kill people who are bandits, who are a class of evil criminals where killing them is actually wholesome and sensible." Like, yeah, most people probably don't think about it that deeply, but the reason people don't think about it that deeply is ultimately ideological.

And the ideology is basically "it is bad to be racist but it's good to be a tough on crime vigilante."

krongbly

I don't disagree with this post but I do think there's an important element being left out here which is that 9 times out of 10 players are engaging in combat primarily as a form of self defense. Most of the time it's less of "we can kill these people because they're criminals and that makes it ideologically neutral" and more "these NPCs are trying to kill us and the most effective way to stop them right now is to reduce their hit points to 0 which, if they fail their death saves, means they will die."

I think "vigilantes tough on crime" is actually kind of a bad descriptor for how most parties operate. This definitely varies wildly from table to table but I think for the *average* table there's honestly a solid chance that either your players are friends with at least one criminal NPC or even that they themselves are criminals. There's even an entire class who's fantasy is "criminal."

thydungeongal

I don't think the self defense point actually holds true in a meaningful sense.

In older editions of D&D, which were much clearer on the expected gameplay being "go into the dungeon and steal the stuff," there wasn't really this layer there. The rules for combat were generally quite harsh on player characters so combat was certainly something they didn't want to get into too casually, but ultimately the player characters were just going into the dang monsters' house and stealing their stuff. The monsters were arguably the ones acting in self-defense (but they're evil so who cares).

But in the WotC editions the self-defense justification is still fraught because modern D&D especially is an action game. It's a game where characters mostly have access to various methods of visiting violence upon their environs and where the gameplay itself rewards them for violence, because combat is the main source of experience as written in all WotC editions of the game and characters primarily grow in combat effectiveness.

The self-defense angle I feel is not supported by the game's rules itself, but is more of a narrative contrivance introduced by groups to make their characters feel more heroic.

My friend @tenleaguesbeneath once described it as, and I am paraphrasing, "characters hunting things for sport but the things attack them first so they can claim self-defense." Characters want to get into fights (because that's where the rewards are), characters primarily grow in terms of being able to get into cooler fights, but because getting into fights on purpose isn't heroic there's an angle of "those goblins started it" to make the characters feel more heroic.

I don't think this is a bad thing per se. It is one way to make the power fantasy of D&D feel less like the characters are violent thugs and more like heroes. But like it is basically a group of mercenaries going into a warzone, they can't really say "well we didn't really expect to have to kill anyone on our mission, but sadly, circumstances conspired against us." Fighting is what the game wants them to do and I don't think anyone is wrong for wanting to portray the player characters as engaging in self-defense, but it's only self-defense through a very crooked lens imo.

lumpout

Linking this to the modern "revenge porn" action movies like John Wick and Nobody.

The self defense/revenge motivation is a fig leaf for indulging in gleeful violence. While modern DnD fictionally positions the party as the righteous castle-doctrine empowered heroes; we should at the very least be critical of why it is doing that. It's functionally identical to the fantasy of "what would I do if a bunch of terrorists/bank robbers burst into the room?" Just because there's an in-universe reason as to why you get have to murder all those people in flashy and fun ways does not mean that it isn't what you (the player) sat down at the table to do.

jambeast

And the key thing to remember is that violence is awesome (in fiction) and we don't have to justify it to anyone.

brazenautomaton

Yeah this post is horseshit and the ideology behind it is soul poison. If you demand a Maoist struggle session for your D&D campaign for its ideological implications then 387.44 million miles of wafer-thin circuits is not enough to express the extent to which you need to go fuck yourself. The assumptions and demands you make are based in a concept of human experience that only exists to serve your politics. This is not how human beings engage with art, this is not how human beings engage with stories, this is not how human beings engage with games. You are suffering under this monstrous worldview and you are monstrous in attempting to inflict it on others.

You are not revealing a secret pro-vigilantism argument, you unfathomably vast stumblefuck. You are revealing that you have conditioned other people to be afraid of speaking up against you and they're unable to fight your openly malevolent bad-faith attacks, so when you threaten them with Unpersoning for some game mechanic or setting detail you don't understand, instead of standing up for themselves and telling you to fuck off they shuffle to the closest equivalent of it that they think won't get them yelled at.

thydungeongal

I'm sorry you feel that way. I personally enjoy playing D&D and thinking about stuff like this. :)

general-cerberus

why do you enjoy playing a combat oriented game when you think combat in the game is morally wrong? Like theres none violent tabletop games you could be playing instead

cavegirlpoems

i mean what's wrong with just... playing a game as a bad person? I for one *love* playing games where my PC is not really a good person. See, eg, most Vampire (and World of Darkness) games. Once you lose the assumption that your PC 'should' be a good person, a whole lot of gameplay avenues open up.

But then again I like playing Sabbat games so maybe I'm just weird.

thydungeongal

There's literally nothing wrong with it, but the reading comprehension squad on Tumblr has decided to go with a reading of my post that says "D&D actually should conform to my personal political views and if it doesn't anyone playing it is a bad person" when I am emphatically trying to argue for engaging with the game as is without trying to rehabilitate it. Sad!

tenleaguesbeneath

If you aren't playing Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist, then you have no legitimate need for the rules of Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist (WTF 45)

But character generation is done before one begins play (WTF 62)

And the character generation procedures for an RPG are commonly understood as part of the game rules [citation needed]

These three premises add up to a contradiction, where the only two escapes are by asserting that WTF's character creation procedures are not, in fact, rules of WTF but instead something else, perhaps setting elements or norms of play culture, or by coming to the conclusion that it is not possible to legitimately create a WTF character.

jennamoran

a more pressing question is whether you were playing WTF when you wrote this post and if not what the heck you thought you were doing using its rules

tenleaguesbeneath

That's unknowable without a Wisher involved.

Also making this post was not needful. So legitimate or not, I didn't have need of the WTF rules because I didn't need to make the post.

I'm also not entirely convinced that examining the structure of something qualifies as using it.

jennamoran

I'm also not entirely convinced that examining the structure of something qualifies as using it.

More seriously, to address the original claim, legitimacy does not derive from the text of a roleplaying game but rather from the will of the people. It cannot derive from text because nobody can know what a text actually says.

binghsien

Are you intending to imply that "the will of the people" is itself legible? If so, how? To whom? Via what method?

jennamoran

probably the simplest way is a Knowledge + People roll, but one could also look for which character creation efforts are legitimate and work backwards

mevil

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