Fading softly

Japanese-American male all awesome. Aro-Ace. Multi-purpose fandom blog at the moment utterly obsessed with Journey to the West and Sun Wukong. Professional lurker. Pure Land Buddhist

[undeadhousewife]

[francisballerhide]

I'm so tired of Leftist-identifying reactionary white men. I'm so tired of reactionary white men wearing Leftism like a costume.

I actually don't know if I even qualify as a Leftist anymore, because for the last 10-12 years these exact assholes have been overrunning the political space and the discourse I have existed in since the early 2000s, and telling me I am not one. That they are what real Leftists look and sound like, and that I and everyone who looks and sounds like I do are shitlibs.

We all know the type: aggressive, insecure bro types who mainly want to be able to smoke weed and have healthcare, And maybe they do actually intend for other people to eventually have those things too, if they are ever given power they want - but the really important thing is that we give them the power they want. These dudes are constantly talking down to everyone else and condescendingly telling us what's good for us, and how awesome it will be when we hand them all the power they want.

Maybe they say all the right things when conditions are perfect. But they sure do like to say slurs and lash out when provoked! And consent seems to be something they have no actual regard for. And they are constantly begging us to see white supremacists as poor woobies failed by the system and perpetual victims of the class war who are deserving of nothing but our eternal tolerance, compassion, and forbearance, instead of going out and reading W.E.B. Du Bois like an actual goddamn Leftist would. But then that would be "Identity Politics," which they think of as a bourgeoisie distraction.

A lot of the older White Bro Leftists like this are actually ex Ron Paulers who hitched themselves to Bernie Sanders's star when it became obvious after 2012 that Ron Paul's ship would never come in. And underneath the costume they try to put on, this is what they still are. Maybe they learned all the right talking points. But the racism, the misogyny, the entitlement? It's all still there. And it's obvious if you know what to look for and listen for. It explodes out of them the moment they get even the tiniest bit of pushback about anything, or experience any kind of frustration whatsoever.

I do not live in Maine (and for one very good reason, will never live in Maine) and so my opinion of Graham Platner was never going to translate to a vote for or against. But I never liked or trusted Graham Platner. The Totenkopf tattoo, and the fact that he had it for 20 years before going "haha oops" and covering it up with something else, should have been enough of a red flag. No one should be shocked at all by the allegations that have come out this week. We should all be nodding and going "okay yeah. There it is."

My litmus test, since around the early days of Black Lives Matter in the early 2010s, has been this: what does Black Twitter think of this person? But since I have mostly divested from microblogging platforms, it has turned into: what does Black Leftist Youtube think of this person? If Black Leftist Youtube does not think this person passes the smell test, then this person does not have my support. It's as simple as that.

I have had a few slip-ups following white Leftist youtubers over the past few years. But as far as actual candidates, the above litmus test has never done me wrong.

[pagecommando]

Good catch pointing to Ron Paul Fandom. There's a famous/infamous copypasta about Bernie Fandom springing directly from the "Weed and No Taxes" incredibly online Ron Pauler faction in the Occupy Era. (All 'movements' where insufferable assholes grabbed the mic, made it about them, and grifted.) This now 11-year old comment has aged like fine wine and explains a lot of what's wrong with the current left. It also explains their move into conspiratorial Jew-hate at the behest of both foreign influence campaigns and domestic grifters and hate preachers. They want free shit for their (Deserving) friends only, and they need an enemy to explain why they don't have it and the GOP is both scary and has no agency so they need a larger conspiracy. Something strong and weak at the same time Mark it. Use it. Remember it.

Before Bernie Sanders, it was Ron Paul. Before Ron Paul, it was Dennis Kucinich. Before Dennis Kucinich, it was Howard Dean. Before Howard Dean, it was Ralph Nader. And so on and so forth back to Eugene McCarthy in 1968. For nearly fifty years, middle-class white college ideologues have latched onto this candidate or that, firmly believing that their political awakening has miraculously coincided with discoveries of Great Truths that escape the Brainwashed Morons that make up the electorate (and which just happen to align perfectly with their own particular socioeconomic interests), and that this Great Man is going to be the one to take the country to the promised land. And it's always the same story. Of course he is going to win. I like him, and I usually get the things I want. And he's popular. I mean, everyone I know likes him, and I know all sorts of people at the university I chose because its student body matches my hometown's income level, ethnicity, region, and politics. And everyone on the websites I visit likes him, and there are millions of people on the websites. (I visit these websites because their user base and content creators mostly match my own identity.) I literally don't know anyone who supports his opponent. (I do not consider the previous statement to be indicative of my own limited viewpoint, but rather consider it damning to his opponent.) And look, I voted for him on a bunch of online polls, and then deleted my cookies and switched IP addresses and voted for him again, and again, and again. And he's totally dominating those polls. See. I knew he was winning. I'll post about how he's winning on some websites. And hey, everyone else on these websites is doing the same thing. I bet he's winning. Of course he's winning. How could anyone not support my candidate? His opponent is basically the same as a member of the other party! Actually their voting record is >90% identical to my candidate's. But I don't really know that much about either candidate. I didn't really know who either were twelve months ago. But I'm super excited now! The media isn't reporting favorably on my candidate. They project he will lose. But they're corrupt. They're bought-and-paid-for. I don't even read them any more. Nobody does. Time to show the world that their lies won't work. Time for the primaries. We lost. Fuck. I literally cannot comprehend how this might have happened. The media said this would happen. The media are a bunch of corrupt liars. I guess the system is just as corrupt as the media is. This is not a good story. This is not a good democracy. Fuck this entire fucking corrupt system. I participated but I didn't get anything what the fuck fuck this noise fucking corrupt bastards and the goddamned cunt for brains sheep that vote for them the entire system is broken the parties are identical the democracy is a sham i'm never fucking voting again bunch of bought and paid for hypocrites fuck this fuck you fuck everything see now there are problems in the world YOU FUCKING DESERVE THE PROBLEMS YOU BASTARDS the people need to rise up BECAUSE THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN why even bother I AM NEVER VOTING AGAIN

[sapphire-monkey]

I think the thing that frustrates me the most about John Michael Greer is while his analysis is good, its very obvious he's never spoken to a black person in his life.

I'm not even convinced he's spoken to a non white person in his life. Learning that he grew up in the Seattle suburbs in the 60s and has only ever lived in majority white small cities explains so fucking much. Why are white western occultists like this?

[teaboot]

The problem with giving advice to angry and suffering people is that rather frequently the thing they need to know to improve their position is the last thing they want to hear and not something they have the capacity to internalize or accept

[teaboot]

Unfortunate truths you can tell people that would help if they could hear what it means and not just what it sounds like

You were the victim, and it wasn’t fair, but it’s over now. Nobody came to save you, and I’m sorry, but it’s too late for anyone to go back and do it different.

You’re suffering over something that cannot be resolved. You’re allowed to feel angry, or outraged, or betrayed, but there will eventually come a time that you don’t feel that so violently anymore, and you’re going to want to have something good left to go back to.

You can’t make anyone love you the way you need to be loved. That’s how a lot of good things end. Not with a clear sign, something blocking the road that says “do not proceed”, just a splitting of the path that’s still moving somewhat in the same direction.

You can’t fix them. Nothing you can do will fix them. And if they fix themselves, they can’t do it for you- they have to do it for themselves as well, because otherwise a day may come when they’re alone, and as long as they live, they are their only true constant. So you can support, and you can encourage, but the hardest part is up to them. And sometimes they can’t do it even with your help.

Sometimes letting go of someone feels like mourning at their funeral before they’ve died, and every time you see them after it’s like talking to a ghost that doesn’t know it’s dead. Sometimes that happens. You’ll both still wake up tomorrow anyways.

I understand that you’re afraid, and that you’re afraid for good reasons. And I understand that being brave isn’t as easy as just turning that fear off, and you would if you could in a heartbeat. But the thing is, as long as that fear is able to dictate your choices, it will have power over you. If you don’t believe you can try to fight it, if you accept that it will always be in charge, you let the frightening thing stay present in your life. It will exist as long as you stay paralyzed. And that sounds cruel, but it isn’t something anyone can fix for you.

The person you may let yourself become after experiencing the terrible thing may very well grow into a much bigger, much more terrible thing, and someday it will swallow the first terrible thing whole. And all that will be left is something far worse for someone else. And you will not be able to shrink it down by explaining where it came from, because terrible things that are dead and gone are never as terrible as terrible things that are alive right now in front of you.

No matter how much or how little I love you, I still do not have the ability to help you the way you need to be helped. I might be the helper you want, but I am not a helper you can get. If you are to be helped at all, you will need to accept that it will come from someone else.

[teaboot]

If anyone goes out of their way to find this user and harass them, please know that’s shitty behaviour and I will be deeply disappointed, but I think they really helped to underline number 8 in a way I wished I’d known to consider of others years ago

[teaboot]

So I’ve read the notes and the messages.

If you read this whole thing and found yourself angry, if you thought to yourself ‘I know that, and it doesn’t help. I know that, and I’m still suffering. I know that, I’ve heard that, I’ve been told that before, over and over and over again, by people who aren’t listening who don’t understand, who don’t get it, and I’m still hurting, still tired, still in pain, still suffering, and this isn’t something a handful of pithy words from some asshole who isn’t here and present and walking in my shoes suffering what I’m suffering from can fix. I know all of this and it changes nothing”, I want you to know:

Yeah. That was me, too. I sat at the bottom of a miserable pit that I didn’t even dig while a bunch of detached, emotionally unavailable jackasses who weren’t helping even a little yelled all this down at me, like just saying it hard enough or making me hear it as though I wasn’t already a hundred percent aware and still hurting anyways would magically solve all my problems and it didn’t. Like I was some whiny little rat with a victim complex looking for the easy way out and not the survivor of something awful doing their goddamn best to keep going, scraping by on the skin of their fucking teeth.

Every single note on this list is something someone told me at the exact wrong time, that made me want to scream and cry and smash a goddamn brick over their head because ‘I already know that, you fucking asshole, and it doesn’t change anything, so fucking help me or piss the hell off.”

That’s why I wrote the list.

It’s everything I needed to know that I already knew, that only made me feel worse, and didn’t help me improve anything at all even a little bit until I experienced the exact right circumstances that made them click the exact right way and allowed me to say it to myself and feel only a sense of, “okay yeah, I get it now.”

It’s not something I would ever directly say to someone in a time of crisis, but it’s all stuff I learned and needed to learn while I was that person.

You get what I mean?

The difference between knowing and internalizing, the difference between hearing the pain is temporary when you’ve broken a bone and KNOWING the pain is temporary after its healed, is that you KNOW, but you’re still not done experiencing the part that makes it true and real and meaningful.

[afurioushawk]

You and other liberal bloggers have been so helpful for my recovering doomer issues. I've been more hopeful since the start of the election. But I was wondering if you know of anything that could give me optimism about the state of public transportation in the US?

I keep hearing bad news after bad news and I struggle to keep from doom spiraling. I rely on public transportation, and when I think about how republicans are constantly trying to destroy it and how uncommitted didn't care at all i feel so angry.

I do have my bad days, too, but I try not to vent online about it because I know doomerism is contagious. And having been a history major helped because I have the perspective of knowing our country has been through worse. Also, setting aside a few hours a day when you're not online will help.

Public transportation is largely a states' issue, so there's not much I can say about it because it will come down to whether you live in a blue/purple/red state and what your state legislature looks like.

But just remember some day soon-ish, It's going to happen and one day we will have some form of federal power again.

[pagecommando]

Hey OP. Something else to keep in mind is narrative and perception - how doomer people want you to be about Public transit vs how the US actually is (politically/Legally, historically and geographically) about Public transit. A lot of the 'Public Transit Discussion' is undertaken by people who anoint themselves "Urbanists" and are either for lack of a better word 'guilty' americans who seek European approval, or Europeans who grew up in cities that mostly started as walking/Horse accessible and then either added transit on top of that (and rebuilt post WWII. The US Geography and cultural impetus is different. We have AMAZING freight rail relative to Europe for example ) US geography and culture most closely approximate "An Aerospace Republic" with larger distances and travel times even BEFORE the invention and widespread adoption of the automobile. (We actually have a shitload in common with say, Brazil relative to 'Europe' (Whatever that means) or even Canada) So you'll see people cooking their brains on r/FuckCars or Insert Cool Subreddit here and radicalizing each other while idolizing the Touristy/curated images European Cities and HIGHLY curated images of Chinese Future Cities (LEDs slapped on buildings, etc ignoring social/economic costs/building codes) And then they'll start yelling about gentricfiation or Waymos or how you need to be ok with people attacking you or peeing on transit because 'that's just city life' It's not sincere advocacy for better transit or walkable cities at that point, it's a tribe-fandom performing virtue to the in-group. I'm not saying don't be mad at the GOP or give up on agitating for better. I'm suggesting managing your expectations and reassessing how transit funding actually works to meet local needs and where it falls short and how existing systems can serve you and others or how you can adapt etc is probably the way to go here vs feeling sad or upset or guilty to the extent you don't do anything and just marinate. Understanding helps.

[sapphire-monkey]

Sorry I forgot to mention, you're right when you point out that a lot of so called urbanists (especially on reddit) do this all or nothing thing were they trash even the small steps because they're not light rail. (nevermind that light rail is way too expensive for small cities that don't have the density of NYC or Philly, while BRT is more suited since it can change routes far easier and cheaper)

And exactly what you say that they act like any criticism of people being antisocial on public transit is being ableist or classist. Again I can't drive, I rely on public transportation. And i would like to not be yelled at by a homeless person while i'm on the bus. Why is the privilege of not being yelled at by people only for car owners?

[afurioushawk]

You and other liberal bloggers have been so helpful for my recovering doomer issues. I've been more hopeful since the start of the election. But I was wondering if you know of anything that could give me optimism about the state of public transportation in the US?

I keep hearing bad news after bad news and I struggle to keep from doom spiraling. I rely on public transportation, and when I think about how republicans are constantly trying to destroy it and how uncommitted didn't care at all i feel so angry.

I do have my bad days, too, but I try not to vent online about it because I know doomerism is contagious. And having been a history major helped because I have the perspective of knowing our country has been through worse. Also, setting aside a few hours a day when you're not online will help.

Public transportation is largely a states' issue, so there's not much I can say about it because it will come down to whether you live in a blue/purple/red state and what your state legislature looks like.

But just remember some day soon-ish, It's going to happen and one day we will have some form of federal power again.

[pagecommando]

Hey OP. Something else to keep in mind is narrative and perception - how doomer people want you to be about Public transit vs how the US actually is (politically/Legally, historically and geographically) about Public transit. A lot of the 'Public Transit Discussion' is undertaken by people who anoint themselves "Urbanists" and are either for lack of a better word 'guilty' americans who seek European approval, or Europeans who grew up in cities that mostly started as walking/Horse accessible and then either added transit on top of that (and rebuilt post WWII. The US Geography and cultural impetus is different. We have AMAZING freight rail relative to Europe for example ) US geography and culture most closely approximate "An Aerospace Republic" with larger distances and travel times even BEFORE the invention and widespread adoption of the automobile. (We actually have a shitload in common with say, Brazil relative to 'Europe' (Whatever that means) or even Canada) So you'll see people cooking their brains on r/FuckCars or Insert Cool Subreddit here and radicalizing each other while idolizing the Touristy/curated images European Cities and HIGHLY curated images of Chinese Future Cities (LEDs slapped on buildings, etc ignoring social/economic costs/building codes) And then they'll start yelling about gentricfiation or Waymos or how you need to be ok with people attacking you or peeing on transit because 'that's just city life' It's not sincere advocacy for better transit or walkable cities at that point, it's a tribe-fandom performing virtue to the in-group. I'm not saying don't be mad at the GOP or give up on agitating for better. I'm suggesting managing your expectations and reassessing how transit funding actually works to meet local needs and where it falls short and how existing systems can serve you and others or how you can adapt etc is probably the way to go here vs feeling sad or upset or guilty to the extent you don't do anything and just marinate. Understanding helps.

[sapphire-monkey]

Thanks Pagecommando this also is very helpful. :) you bring up a good point that a lot of urbanists just trash american public transportation while glazing europe's and japan's. (not all though, some like citynerd at least gives american public transportation credit (I almost never see them glazing china though i know of people who do so i'm not saying it doesn't happen)

My main worry is for Philly due to the actively hostile republican senate. The budget crisis that happened last year comes to mind. https://www.reddit.com/r/transit/comments/1ovk25e/pa_budget_4_months_late_includes_no_new_funding/ comes to mind.

Harrisburg has been known for its active hatred towards Philly. This wouldn't be an issue if PA wasn't one of the few states that makes the City's transportation funds come from the state.

[vyvilha]

i like when people say that the universality of campbell's hero's journey only applies to western mythology/folklore. brother, i am going to hold your hand when i say this... it doesn't apply there too

[umbrellanumber5-deactivated2021]

.

.

This.

This is why people who stay in my life are neurodiverse like me!

[nottoolateforthegame]

Huh

[thisisnotjuli]

this!! I swear I lost like all my friendships bc of this, like I had a group of friends in hs that one day I realized “huh I haven’t talked to this people in a while” and popped in to say hi and they were all awkward?? because they hadn’t seen me in a while?? and that’s when I realized that friendship works different for them?? I was like yeah I haven’t talked to you in like four months but it’s not like I’ve forgotten about y'all why would anything change, and they were all like we haven’t talked to you in four months why are you here again acting like nothing happened? and it was really confusing for me

[mimir-bashir]

YEAH! THAT!

Also I have a thing where I just put the people on pause. If I don’t see them or contact them, my brain kinda put them in stasis. I don’t think about them nor misses them, and I stay on what I last knew about them (how they look, what they study/work). So when we meet again I’m like “wait, you’ve aged?” and I have the same familiarity with them thanI had before.

[gender-snatched]

Anyway all my mutuals I haven’t messaged in forever - this is why

[official-lucifers-child]

oh my gods this makes so much sense??? there are people who i haven’t talked to at all for literally over a year and we’ll pick up like nothing happened, but for their people it’s just like…… falling apart but onesided???? i think we’re still on the same level but actually we’re strangers??

[link-the-feral-anon]

Ohhhhhh

[shark8-my-leg]

OHHHHHHHHH….

[quarra]

Ok but listen, on the other side of this, as a person who moved hundreds of miles away from everyone i knew and then became a hermit for several years, it was SUCH A FUCKING RELIEF to get in contact with an old friend and have him be like, “my friendship levels do not degrade, so in my mind we are still awesome close buddies” and i almost fkn cried. I thought he would be mad or would have moved on because i had slacked on my reaching out to him and staying in touch and doing all the friendship things. But NOPE. 800 miles of distance, depression, and life changing circumstances didnt steal our friendship and i am SO GRATEFUL.

[thatlittleegyptologist]

#came back to tumblr after four years #lottie and I immediately went like that spiderman meme yknow tags via @rudjedet

I have literally no friendship degradation whatsoever. I will not have spoken to someone for 5 years or more, and they’re still as much a friend to me as if I had only seen them yesterday. I’m just very bad at communicating if someone is not in my direct orbit. So when Sonja reappeared on this site I basically screeched into her notes like a banshee because I was delighted and we picked straight back up where we’d left off.

[elodieunderglass]

Happy to go on the record that I don’t expect regular contact and will welcome hearing from people after a long time

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

Holy shit, I didn’t actually realize this was a Thing.

[mysteryteacup]

I’m not ND, but as someone who grew up on the internet - but before social media exploded - when vanishing for ages and then spontaneously reappearing was normal, please know that you are welcome to vanish and reappear on me. I will simply assume that real life got you for a while.

[sapphire-monkey]

Final fantasy 14 is a pretty game, but is it weird that the battle music and some of the town music reminds me oddly of Pokemon???

I 'm liking the spell casting for arcanist. The animations are so pretty!

[twoblogger-deactivated20260714]

The unfortunate thing about catholic twitter is that they constantly make S tier posts completely by accident

[sapphire-monkey]

One thing I've realized is that when someone calls Buddhism life denying, they're actually showing their whole ass. Because they're revealing that they either do not understand Buddhism (more often then not that is the case), or that they are rejecting the Buddhist cosmology of Karma, Samsara, and Rebirth. (Or both, its pretty much both)

Yeah I can imagine Buddhism would appear life denying if you don't know anything about Bodhisattva's or that you don't believe in Rebirth. If we only get one life, of course it would appear life denying.

Basically people with this take are either Abrahamic or former Abrahamic. Mainly christian and ex-christian Atheist. I wish these types would actually talk to a Buddhist, but that would require effort, and these types are allergic to such a thing. Easier to wallow in ignorance and arrogance i suppose.

[sapphire-monkey]

I love Guanshiyin Pusa so much. Whenever i'm scared, i call for her and she comes. I feel like she's saved my live more times then i can count. Whenever i feel depressed, i call for her and i feel better. I love her so much.

[unusual]

Japanese is an incredibly fun and rewarding language (if you’ve ever wanted to learn it for ANY reason, most importantly including the “silly” reasons) but the fearmongering and capitalist intervention involved in the language learning process have given it a reputation as an “impossible task” for English speakers, leading to confusion and dkn learners and weird pessimist attitudes about the whole thing. In this thread I will explain how to effectively learn and retain Japanese. This is a tried, tested and true method; probably 99% of all people who try to learn Japanese give up, but everyone I’ve met who has tried and stuck with this has been at or above N3-N4 after 6 months or less including me

[unusual]

You can teach yourself Japanese for free if you have a little free time every day and a computer

1. Drill yourself on hiragana and katakana. These are the phonetic building blocks of Japanese, think of them as equivalent to english letters. This site is a good resource in general. Once you have a solid grasp on this, DO NOT LINGER HERE; move to step 2. You will master kana later.

2. Download Anki. This is a flashcard service. They have a paid app if you’re willing to invest for it, but if not, they have a mobile website (create an account and sync it with your computer).

This is the deck you’re going to download. Import it to Anki and do this every day. I have learned the hard way (twice) that skipping this is bad. If you become overwhelmed, you can change the number of new cards and reviews by clicking the cog next to the name of the deck!

3. Cure Dolly (Youtube, grammar) + transcript. She has kind of a posh accent, you might want to turn subtitles on. Watch a few videos when you feel like it but most importantly set up 4 and 5 as soon as possible

4. Yomitan (must have) is a browser extension that functions as a pop-up dictionary. you need to install dictionaries for it to work. here are some dictionaries you can use with yomitan and explanations of what they do

5. READ. DO NOT LET YOURSELF GET STUCK BEFORE THIS STEP. JUST READ!!!! Most people who fail to learn Japanese do so because they are afraid of not being ready to move on, which is counterproductive. Just read. When you were a child did you spend years on vocab and grammar before reading? No I bet you did not. Pick something to read and learn what you don’t already know by reading in Japanese.

Jiten.moe has a list of novels and visual novels that you can read on your computer sorted by difficulty. So does jpdb. There’s also this document. There’s also this document. Hey look this website is cool too

For visual novels: download LunaHook. It “hooks” to your VN and allows you to use Yomitan on words you don’t know. Turn off the translation feature, it does nothing to help you learn

For literary texts: ttsu e-reader supports epub and htmlz files.

You can also learn Japanese by watching anime, but it’s a little more convoluted and requires a lot more patience.

For manga, utilize Mangatan, but I don’t recommend this right out the gate because when you’re first learning sentence structure you’ll want something with complete sentences.

Set your computer up for mining vocab before you start reading. Once you finish your kaishi deck, you can drill your mining cards (I didn’t do mine until after finishing kaishi because it was too much).

Most importantly: reading is going to be hard at first. It is going to piss you off. You need to muscle through with this because this is where the bulk of your learning will happen. After a while you will just feel like reading because you love reading! Try not to pick something too hard for your first read, but if you’re interested in the story you might be able to muscle through something a little tougher.

Remember to consult yomitan and cure dolly where needed, that’s what it’s there for. As you can see I am quite normal about the Japanese language, so if you have any other questions or need help with anything else feel free to shoot me an ask and I will get back to you promptly. Japanese is not your enemy and it is not impossible. It is your friend

[sapphire-monkey]

Why am i not surprised to find that the people who like Jessie Gender's trashfire of a video the decaying monomyth of star wars are all prequel haters? (Almost 6 hours. 6 hours! there's no reason for a video to be 6 hours, and jessie you are no were near good enough for 6 fucking hours)

Also why is it that star trek fans are the biggest prequel haters? I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Prequel haters are sad pathetic people. Love how they basically trash movies that are beloved by my generation. (there's nothing wrong with hating a film, heaven knows i loathed GOT, but making it your entire personality is pathetic. Grow up). Showing no grace or empathy towards people who were again children who loved the movies.

Fucking man and woman babies who make hating kids movies into a replacement for a personality. Go outside and touch grass.

[sapphire-monkey]

I'm so torn, on the one hand i miss the class stories and i love star wars. On the other hand, i loathe swtor's gameplay. Like i want to play jedi consular and sith warrior again, but my god i hate most of the maps (there's a reason the stealth classes are the most popular), the mob placement is awful (especially on republic side) and the combat is boring.

But on the other hand i really miss the class stories! T-T

[sapphire-monkey]

There's a certain type of westerner (and in this case i mean Australian/European, American, and Canadian white person) who loves to say that Buddhism is too 'exotic' for westerners. Dion Fortune called, she wants her 1800s racism back.

The idea that Buddhism (and Hinduism) is just too Asian to be practiced by westerners and that white people should all be christian, was a very popular refrain for a certain type of racist that was pissy that white Europeans were showing an interest in an 'non white' religion.

And its Bullshit. Its Fucking Bullshit. Its racist and insulting. Westerners should have some fucking self respect and not hide behind racist refrains of 'too exotic'. Anyone can practice Buddhism, anyone can understand Buddhism. It just takes a willingness to learn and listen. To leave your presuppositions and biases at the door and listen.

Plenty of westerners have done this by the way, plenty of 'white people' have done this. The people with this take are both lazy and racist. And anyone with any self respect will not take such bullshit as an answer.

[vaard]

Spiral Staircase Breakdown!

I've had so many questions and asks about the spiral staircase in my house, I figured it would be easiest to do a quick breakdown of it.

It's only two items. A pillar if your choice, and a beam style of your choice. For mine, I used the Sturdy Wood Pillar and Stormwind beams, both available from your basic neighborhood's furniture vendors.

The room type I used to connect the two levels is the empty stairwell room.

With a central pillar to curve your steps around, start placing the beams at the height you need for the size of your race, rotating one click for each additional beam. You might need to shuffle the center beam a few times to keep the curve from clipping through once it starts to take shape

And that's pretty much it! From there I just walled in around the stairs at the width I wanted and fabricated some hand rails from more basic beams. Very quick, very easy!

Enjoy!