self-loving-vampire

[self-loving-vampire]

[self-loving-vampire]

i think the problem with the "even the villain thinks he's the good guy" writing advice is that, while technically true, many people do not understand just how alien peoples' ideologies can be. the villain who thinks he's the good guy doesn't mean a villain who is sympathetic or even understandable.

#a lot of real life terrible people are very irrational #or bad in the more boring “overly selfish and greedy” way rather than anything sympathetic

[self-loving-vampire]

Mahoyo is on sale for the next 2 weeks on every platform it's on- Steam, Nintendo Switch, and Playstation.

go play one of the best fantasy visual novels ever made

[self-loving-vampire]

Incredible power move to make one of the most beloved crpgs ever made using a modified dnd 5e system, make a ton of money and shit on most AAA game studios in the process, then say “cool. Anyway fuck dnd 5e and wizzards of the coast. We’re doing our own thing now.”

#I should actually finish BG3 at some point #I was having fun but it feels like it has a big startup cost for me #I got recommended some mods to deal with the scavenging and inventory management though so that might make it a smoother ride for me #otherwise I'm just obsessively checking boxes and messing with inventories the whole time

[self-loving-vampire]

Do you prefer skill/stat checks that are chance based, or just a flat you pass or you don't pass? Example: To reactivate a robot you need a Robotics skill of 50. If you have 49 in Robotics you're guaranteed to fail. If you have 50 in Robotics you're guaranteed to succeed, vs. If you have a Robotics skill of 50 it gives you a 50% chance of reactivating the robot.

Flat checks whenever the checks are "stand alone", i.e. they are not part of a series of checks and cannot easily be retried via reloading or other mechanics that require no adaptation from the player.

RNG in stand alone checks you can retry with no cost (other than time) feels more than pointless to me. Feels bad imo.

[self-loving-vampire]

something i didn't really notice until my latest rewatch is that utena's response to her depression being especially bad is still to curl up in a dark and/or claustrophobic space. sitting between two pieces of furniture while hugging her knees with the lights turned off.. like damn she really didn't ever leave that coffin, huh?

#the utena coffin bit was the most relatable part of the show for me #fuck death

[self-loving-vampire]

She didn't know about Morboobs.webm.

#tsukihime

[self-loving-vampire]

Some other warnings about the future:

1- Conservatives are also starting to fearmonger about birth control and declining birth rates as well. The Heritage Foundation has even openly spoken against recreational and consequence-free sex as a whole.

That's the extremely well-funded organization that wrote up Project 2025 and one of the handful (along with the likes of ADF) that has been pushing anti-trans legislation.

They have already begun to move towards trying to ban contraception.

They are already using the very same judgments and arguments that were crafted to ban abortion and transition for minors against contraceptives. They won't get rid of them overnight, but at the very least I think we'll see a lot of "concern" about birth control pills being too much like abortion, or experimental, or excessively harmful to one's health.

2- Future studies looking into detransition are going to have to distinguish between people who detransitioned willingly and those who were forcefully detransitioned by the government in these last few years where we have seen literally hundreds of anti-trans laws being pushed in multiple countries.

The youth map for anti-trans legislation in the United States currently looks like this.

More than half the country has enacted laws meant to detransition people, and adults have had their healthcare affected as well. Some politicians and organizations are explicitly calling for trans adulthood to start at age 26. A total ban is their stated endgame and minors are just the more acceptable initial target to do this incrementally.

There's the current mess in the UK too.

If these people are classified as detransitioners without the context that this was forced on them, it is going to inflate the numbers. Those numbers are then going to be used to justify even more control over trans people's bodies. Look at the growing numbers of detransitioners (that we created against their will)!

#transphobia

[self-loving-vampire]

Worth reminding people that the book's author, Abigail Shrier, is literally a PragerU talking head, among other things. The conservative links are in plain sight.

the "irreversible damage" book cover is still perhaps the most succinct demonstration of how the laserfocus the detranxiety movement has on muh poor little girls is fundamentally an outgrowth of the general terror about declining (white) birth rates and white woman fertility as a dwindling resource. like, what's actually wrong with the kitschy smiling little girl in that picture? she looks pretty content for someone "mutilated." is she missing her head, brain, heart, limbs or what? anything that would obstruct her in living out her 8 decades on this earth? hell no, it's much worse than that. it's something that actually matters. she's missing her ability to produce White Babies. you're telling me we've spent decades working to overturn roe or at least make it as difficult as possible and now that we succeeded they've found a way to weasel out of being a reproductive resource anyway? that just won't do.

#transphobia

[self-loving-vampire]

just once I want to see a good post critiquing makeup culture that doesn’t turn out to be made by some janky radfem blog

[self-loving-vampire]

Believing in nonsense really does seem to put you on a pipeline where you get sold more nonsense.

A friend's sister is a literal flat earther, apparently. Seems to have come to it through christianity and other conspiracy theories.

She works in medicine and has less scientific literacy than I did at around age 6.

[self-loving-vampire]

A friend's sister is a literal flat earther, apparently. Seems to have come to it through christianity and other conspiracy theories.

She works in medicine and has less scientific literacy than I did at around age 6.

[self-loving-vampire]

Transphobes: We can't trust all of these studies that say the detransition rate is extremely low. There's not enough good evidence so we just don't know the true detransition rate.

Transphobes: So I am just going to assume that it's over 80% by favoring this one study by a conversion therapist who conflated people who wanted to transition with people who were just gender non-conforming or gay over all others, even though it doesn't even focus on the same age group I want to legislate against.

#transphobia

[self-loving-vampire]

Her body now.

[self-loving-vampire]

Honestly it seems even more impressive and strange in hindsight that an amendment to the US Constitution (something which is notoriously extremely difficult to accomplish!) banning alcohol was ratified and then repealed all in the span of 14 years.

[self-loving-vampire]

The review also finds that regret rates for gender-affirming surgeries are lower than those for many life decisions. For instance, the survey found that marriage has a regret rate of 31%, having children has a regret rate of 13%, and at least 72% of sexually active students report regret after engaging in sexual activity at least once. All of these are notably magnitudes higher than gender affirming surgery. Regret is commonly weaponized against transgender care. The recently released Cass Review, currently being used in an attempt to ban transgender care in England, mentions "regret" 20 times in the document. Pamela Paul's story in The New York Times features stories of regret heavily and objects to reports of low regret rates. Legislators use the myth of high levels of regret to justify harsh crackdowns on transgender care.

(Article.)

Also note that high rates of regret are not usually considered a reason to ban something.

There's no deluge of articles from mainstream news sites calling for a ban on marriage on those grounds, for example, despite it having a significantly higher regret rate, and I don't think there should be.

[self-loving-vampire]

“What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. “And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.” The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over. “Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.” In exchange for extra food and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. ... Everyone would be welcome at the Gray Pride march—everyone, that is, except the Blues. Srinivasan defines the Blue political tribe as the liberal voters he implies are responsible for the city’s problems. Blues will be banned from the Gray-controlled zones, said Balaji, unlike Republicans (“Reds”). “Reds should be welcomed there, and people should wear their tribal colors,” said Srinivasan, who compared his color-coded apartheid system to the Bloods vs. Crips gang rivalry. “No Blues should be welcomed there.” While the Blues would be excluded, they would not be forgotten. Srinivasan imagines public screenings of anti-Blue propaganda films: “In addition to celebrating Gray and celebrating Red, you should have movies shown about Blue abuses.… There should be lots of stories about what Blues are doing that is bad.” Balaji goes on—and on. The Grays will rename city streets after tech figures and erect public monuments to memorialize the alleged horrors of progressive Democratic governance. Corporate logos and signs will fill the skyline to signify Gray dominance of the city. “Ethnically cleanse,” he said at one point, summing up his idea for a city purged of Blues (this, he says, will prevent Blues from ethnically cleansing the Grays first). The idea, he said, is to do to San Francisco what Musk did to Twitter. “Elon, in sort of classic Gray fashion ... captures Twitter and then, at one stroke, wipes out millions of Blues’ status by wiping out the Blue Checks,” he said. “Another stroke … [he] renames Twitter as X, showing that he has true control, and it’s his vehicle, and that the old regime isn’t going to be restored.”

To be expected from libertarians that they're more tolerant of conservatives, cops, and fascists than progressives.