[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 20 points 1 week ago

I once read a pretty good write up somewhere on Reddit with proof that they were getting reasonably large financial support from the daughter of an oil baron, and it's unclear if she supports the left or right.

On the other hand, a friend of a friend was arrested at a just stop oil rally in Manchester, UK a few months back, and I know him well enough to absolutely believe he thought he was doing what was best for the world, although I'm unsure if he'd deface anything.

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 26 points 1 month ago

Infact we should go out of our way to swear because it's the fucking advertising companies that pedal the ad friendly, PG internet and if you don't support that, you're harming their ability to advertise by swearing.

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 29 points 3 months ago

This isn't a perfect example but Cormac McCarthy has been my favourite author for years now, and his first major work Suttree was from '79.

My all time favourites novel is Blood Meridian from 1985. If you're familiar with metamodernism, which is basically very modern works that have their cake and eat it when it comes to modernist ideals and postmodern critique, you'd clock that practically every western is either a modernist white hat western or a metamodern "the west is grim and hard, but also fucking cool" western. The only straight postmodern takes on the west that I know of are either Blood Meridian or pieces of work that take direct notes from it, such as the films Dead Man from '95 (except maybe the Oregon Trail video game from. 85'). Blood Meridian otherwise is a fantastic novel which meditates on madness and cruelty, religion and fate, race, war and conquest and so many other themes. It also has one of the best antagonists ever written in Judge Holden, a character who I would have called a direct insert of Satan if not for the fact that his deeds and the novel as a whole are closely inspired by true events. I feel the novel takes inspiration from Apocalypse Now, specifically the '79 film and not Conrad's 1899 novel Heart of Darkness. If you enjoy that film, you're likely to enjoy this book. The opening and closing chapters are fantastic, but I often find myself re-reading chapter 14. It has some of the best prose and monologues of the entire novel, and encompasses in my opinion the main turning point of the novel.

His other legendary work is The Road, a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel. I'll talk on this one less but as our climate crisis grows and our cultural zeitgeist swings more towards this being the critical issue of our time, the novel fantastically paints itself as both a fantastic warning to our 21st century apocalypse and the unresolved 20th century shadow of nuclear winter. Despite this, it hones in on a meditation of parenthood and could be considered solely about that, with other themes of death, trauma, survival and mortality being explored through parenthood. Of course the unsalvageable deatg of the world that make the setting also makes this theme extra tragic. There is an adaptation into a film from 2008 but it isn't anywhere near as potent as the novel and I'd suggest should only be seen in tandem with reading the novel. The prize of this novel has really evolved to fit the novel too. McCarthy is renowned for his punctuation lacking prose, but where Blood Meridian is practically biblical in its dramatic and beautiful prose which juxtaposes the plain and brutal violence, The Road sacrifices no beauty in it's language but is so somber and meanders from mostly terse to so florid, while also always perfectly feels like how the protagonists are seeing their world.

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 23 points 4 months ago

Because the quality of Disco Elysium comes from it feeling like a piece if art that stays with you, it is absolutely written by left leaning writers but it's mature and elegant in it's storytelling tbaf happens to revolve around those ideologies.

Call of duty is a for-profit propaganda tool of the US government that is rimarily a multiplayer arena shooter designed to optimise profits due to gaming addictions while passively normalising American world police imperialism.

Apologies for any typos I wrote this while drunk.

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 28 points 4 months ago

In March 2007 Chiquita Brands pleaded guilty in a United States Federal court to aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, when it admitted to the payment of more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a group that the United States has labeled a terrorist organization since 2001.

The company that is willing to commit terrible crimes including murder is still the same company. They have not been adequately punished for their various crimes against humanity. The punishment for these crimes should have been large enough that the company wouldn't exist today, not just a small fine.

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 22 points 5 months ago

I really doubt Hasbro are looking to sell it unless they're planning to shut their doors too. To my knowledge they have two profitable IPs, Magic the gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. D&D is also a strong brand but people don't need the brand to enjoy the game. If the designers aren't appeased, they'll just leave and make their own D&D clone. It's happened before and it's currently happening now.

Also the repeated use of only referring to the game as DND in the article is very odd, nobody calls it that maybe DnD is ok but not in a professional setting where either Dungeons and Dragons or maybe D&D is the standard. It sets off my hearsay alarm massively.

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 24 points 5 months ago

Like Club Penguin.

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 25 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

In my setting I dropped darkvision for dwarves because I wanted to make it scarce, but even the dwarves that don't study light or dancing lights use their many lighting inventions that were developed for underground exploration such as flairs and glow sticks, and gas lighting for their main settlements.

I also gave them all spiderclimb just because I like the way that fucks up how they'd build those settlements as down is only a necessary direction to know when you drop something, even their tankards work at all orientations and are basically sippy cups.

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 21 points 5 months ago

Gnomes would make those folding fabric camping chairs with the cupholder in the arm

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 19 points 6 months ago

The final one is about a YouTube animator JoCat who was as far as I understand pretty beloved and charming.

I may not be up to date on events but while streaming he improved a gebderbent version of boys by Lizzo and people liked it so he made a full animation for it.

A small but loud number of people, primarily from outside his community considered the swapping of the genders and/or the platforming of Lizzo to be misogynistic and gave him enough hate that he permanently stepped away from content creation.

I have no idea if anything else has happened since but to my knowledge that's the event that made him "cancelled". Imo it's different to being cancelled because most people are on his side and are supporting him, and everything I've seen about this news takes that stance. Him suffering abuse from a few niche corners of the internet and quitting the platforms is not the same as the internet's collective consciousness turning against him. Metaphorically, he which his workplace due to bullying by people who foybd something he did obscene, he didn't get fired for it.

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 23 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Honestly it's all an abstraction anyway but I absolutely would not bring my chompers to a knife fight.

[-] Khrux@ttrpg.network 27 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I've often had this silly scenario in my head.

You walk into a celebrated high class restaurant, and at the bottom of the menu, it reads "Human meat steak. $10,000". You ask the waiter who fetches the chef. The chef comes out and explains that after decades honing his craft, he feels like he's a master of his craft, and now he'd love the honour of cooking a steak taken from his own body. If anyone purchases the steak, a skilled surgeon will remove half a pound of meat safely from the chef, who will then prepare it for you, and the chef is visibly keen to serve this.

As a vegetarian, I honestly don't feel that this would bother me, if I had money to spend, the only reason I wouldn't go for it is that I'd worry the chef would come to regret giving up chunk of his ass or leg or whatever, and I'd be partially to blame, or that the chef was not thinking straight otherwise.

Most entertainingly, I think it would be vegan.

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Khrux

joined 11 months ago