SaraTonin

There must be some kaizo levels which require you to do this

She’s also been a firm advocate for Epstein’s victims and has repeatedly called for releasing the Epstein files.

She believes the worst conpiracy theories and she’s a terrible bigot, but the difference between her and her peers is that she actually believes the things she says she believes. She’s not just grifting for profit. She ran on a platform of being against child sexual abuse, and she’s still against child sexual abuse.

This is somewhat less notable, as it’s the usual Republican “but this affects ME now”, but she is actually different from the other Republicans in Congress because she has principles that she sticks to. Many of them are horrible principles, but they’re principles nonetheless.

Outer Wilds. Easily the most profoundly moving experience I’ve ever had from playing a video game. And it does such a good job of starting off - and even remaining, to a degree - a fun, light-hearted story.

If there’s anybody reading this who’s interested in the game, let me say a couple of things.

1. Go in as spoiler-free as possible. The entire progression system is based on acquiring knowledge, and a lot of the power of the game comes from discovering everything for yourself, in your own way.

2. Don’t treat it like a game. Instead put yourselves in the shoes of your character. See something that you think looks cool? Go and look at it. Don’t think “well, I should probably finish this area first…” Explore. Learn. Decide for yourself what your priority is.

Loads of games call themselves open world, but are actually quite on rails. One trigger at the beginning of the game aside, Outer Wilds really is open world. One reason why watching other people play it is so much fun is that everybody really does have a completely different experience while playing it. One person will do something as the first thing they do, then someone else will do the same thing when they’re 80% of the way through. And the game is so well-designed that both ways is equally rewarding.

Sorry, I tend to evangelise for this game a lot because it is, as I said above, a genuinely profound and moving experience.

Okay. Note the quotation marks.

Oh she absolutely did. Just like she did the “i never said Hermione *wasn’t * Black” thing, despite having described her cheeks as “pink” on more than one occasion.

But that’s not what the people i was quoting mean. They’re doing the “straight, white, cis, man is the default, and anything deviating from that needs an explicit in-universe explanation”.

There was a thing that did the rounds a while back which was variations on “what race are you? White or political?”, “what’s your sexuality? Straight or political?”, etc.

it’s basically that. Straight guy? Fine. Gay guy? “But what’s the *reason *he’s gay? How is it relevant to the plot?”

Note the quotation marks

Yes, i was explaining why the same isn’t true in the UK, but that that also doesn’t mean that we can just sit back and relax like it isn’t a possibility down the road

Me neither. That’s why i put it in quotes to make it clear i was aping stupid objections.

Brexit isn‘t really relevant to the UK. ATM Reform, the most far-right party, is polling very well. As in „would become the ruling party if an election were called today“ well. They‘re also starting to get defectors from the hertofore bigger right-wing party (whose leader literally just said at the party conference that the UK should have it‘s own ICE squads doing what the US one is).

Some of the fearmongering is overwrought - especially the characterisation of Labour as being equivalent because they are acting in some utterly reprehesible ways in a stupid and doomed effort to court Reform voters - but it‘s a threat that should be taken seriously.

The good news is that the next election is 4 years away. If Trump fails in that time, or if the US gets so unahamdedly fascist that even the most denialist person can‘t deny it and it seriously harms the US on the international stage, then perhaps the British right-wing politicians will fall out of love with trying to ape Trump and the punters will see the warning signs and quietly shift back leftwards (or will crawl back in their holes in an atmosphere of „actually it isn‘t okay to say that out loud“).

I think also we‘ll need the Your party to definitively collapse so as not to split the vote on the left and for Starmer himself to resign and someone like Andy Burnham to take over (although he‘s just flubbed that one) in order to make Labour electable again.

Or there‘s the other option of Labour actually introducing something like proportional representation before the next election and thereby limiting the power of a party like Reform.

Point is, there are ways out of this mess, and there‘s time for it to happen. And we‘re definitely not where the US is, and the idea of a NeoNazi coalition seems far-fetched even under a potential Farage leadership. But at the same time, there is definitely cause for serious concern here in the UK, because there are definitely those in power or near power who would very much like to be where Trump is now.

„But what‘s the plot reason for them being gay? I don‘t mind gay people being in something, but if there‘s not a reason for it, then it‘s just pandering!“

I‘ve spent far more free time than I should have watching let‘s play videos of this. But I‘ve not downloaded it myself because after putting around 200 hours into Vampire Survivors and buying the first two lots of DLC I‘ve burnt myself out on the genre. This has got a couple of twists, not including the fact that it‘s 3D, but in the end it doesn‘t really appeal as something to play myself.

Just checked Outer Wilds, which is deemed „slighly woke“ because the race of aliens to which you belong all use they/them pronouns. They do note that the race of aliens you‘re studying all use he/him/she/her pronouns.

Here‘s the thing - your race has evolved from amphibians. Hermaphroditism and spontaneous sex-change is a well-established trait in some species of amphibians. The other race are mammals, where such examples are much rarer.

For it to actually be a „woke“ thing, rather than world-building, you‘d have to have one of the mammals be referred to as „they“. Or, perhaps, one of your race referred to as „he“ or „she“. As it is, it suggests that gender is either non-existent or fluid amongst your species and therefore it makes no sense to use that as an identifier, and gender exists amongst the other species and therefore it does make sense to use that as an identifier.

And, truthfully, we don‘t know, because other than a couple of references to people „flirting“ with each other (in both species) and you being referred to as „hatchling“ rather than being given a name, sex gender, reproduction, etc. doesn‘t come up at all.