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watchfreeone1 · 1 month

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15 Best IPTV Player: The Future of Entertainment in 2024 and Beyond

Cut the Cord and Stream Live TV with the Best IPTV Players for Android! Tired of expensive cable bills and limited channel options? IPTV offers a world of entertainment at your fingertips, letting you watch Live TV, Movies, and Shows on your terms. This guide will unveil the best IPTV players for Android devices, helping you unlock the full potential of IPTV streaming.

Unleash Your Entertainment with Top-Rated Players:

TiviMate IPTV: Reigning supreme, TiviMate boasts a user-friendly interface, support for multiple playlists, recording capabilities, and more. It's a premium option, but well worth the investment for a seamless viewing experience. (Paid) Flix IPTV: A versatile player gracing various platforms, Flix IPTV offers parental controls, theme customization, and a beautiful interface for smooth streaming. Enjoy a free trial before committing to the affordable one-time fee. (Free Trial, Paid) Kodi: This powerhouse media player goes beyond IPTV. With the PVR IPTV Simple Client add-on, Kodi transforms into a powerful IPTV player, supporting M3U playlists and XMLTV EPG URLs. Kodi's extensive device compatibility is a major plus. (Free) Explore Other Feature-Rich Options:

Perfect Player IPTV: Renowned for its user-friendliness, Perfect Player effortlessly streams your favorite IPTV service. Manage multiple subscriptions, enjoy various URL formats, and EPG support, all in one place. (Free) GSE Smart IPTV: Juggling multiple IPTV subscriptions? GSE Smart IPTV streamlines the process, letting you sign in with all your providers for centralized access. Import playlists or use supported URLs for a hassle-free setup. (Free) Smart IPTV: A one-time fee unlocks Smart IPTV's capabilities across various devices. Import playlists directly within the app and enjoy a stable user experience. (Paid) Additional Choices to Consider:

SS IPTV: While the interface might not be the most modern, SS IPTV offers a capable player with built-in partnerships with some IPTV providers, multiple language options, and more. (Free) MYTVOnline3: This app is specifically designed for Formuler Android TV Boxes, boasting a modern interface, recording capabilities, and a user-friendly layout for both Live TV and VOD content. (Paid) Finding the Perfect Match:

With this comprehensive list, you're well-equipped to choose the IPTV player that best aligns with your needs. Consider factors like features, pricing, and device compatibility to make an informed decision. Happy Streaming!

Important Note: While IPTV offers exciting possibilities, it's crucial to ensure you're using a legal service that complies with copyright laws.

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anyab · 6 months

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Via NasAlSudan

Sudan Action Week, from December 17th to December 24th, is dedicated to fostering awareness and understanding of the War in Sudan while harnessing our collective power to move to action. Join us in this impactful week as we educate, unite, and mobilize for Sudan.

Transcript:

Sudan Action Week

#keepEyesOnSudan

17 Dec. What is happening in Sudan

Learn about the war in Sudan, its origins, and the key players involved.

18 Dec. Centering Dafur

Learn about the ongoing situation in Darfur, understanding both current events and the historical context spanning decades.

19 Dec. Sudanese Revolution

Delve into Sudanese resilience and the significance of December 19 for the Sudanese community.

20 Dec. Contact your representatives

Discover various ways to contact your representatives and advocate for addressing the war in Sudan.

21 Dec. Centering Sudanese voices

Debunking hashtags and identifying the appropriate news sources on social media and online.

22 Dec. Day of donation

Amplify and learn about fundraisers supporting Sudanese people currently on the ground in Sudan.

23 Dec. Support Sudani Businesses

Explore wayst to support Sudanese businesses, whether through online orders or in-store shopping.

24 Dec. Honoring our martyrs

Reflect on and pay tribute to those who have lost their lives in the conflict.

End Transcript

#sudan #will share their posts here to the best of my ability #if you have an instagram best to boost them there #keepeyesonsudan

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vexwerewolf · 1 month

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I’m suddenly getting swathes of Lancer hate across my feed… Has something happened in the fandom? “Union is ______ how could they paint them as even remotely good. They allow _____, and I hate the devs they are ______. The whole thing is just 40k with communist veneer”.

Like am I taking crazy pills…? I thought that all of the problems were literally like right there on the tin “we are a utopia in progress! We will obtain it by any means possible even if it means being everything we say we are not/fighting against. As the player you decide what is right. How much will you ignore for someone else’s idea of utopia?” Like doesn’t it mean all the tools to actually change are there and that is the HOPE aspect of all of this?

(Sorry if this in incoherent grammar is a weak point and I pulled something in my back simply standing up. Now I am sad and crook backed in spasmodic pain)

This isn't an argument I feel super enthusiastic about stepping into, because it gets the most annoying sort of people in your mentions eager to maliciously misrepresent what you say.

However, yeah, there are some pretty terrible readings of Union floating around. I'd invoke "media literacy" because think that a lot of this comes from people not really holistically engaging with the fictional future history of Lancer, but also from a sort of dogmatic purism that requires future societies to be flawless, else they're irredeemable.

It is important to note that ThirdComm is the direct descendant of two highly imperfect societies. FirstComm was formed as a response to the Three Great Traumas of discovering the Massif Vaults (and thus that they were the inheritors of a fallen world), the wars over the Massif Vaults, and the discovery of the lost colonies, all of which collectively showed humanity how close it had come to total extinction.

FirstComm decided that it had a responsibility to ensure that humanity never risked extinction again. It manifested this by trying to colonize every habitable planet it could find, pumping out ship after ship to seed the cosmos with as much human life as it possibly could. This led to problems when it encountered civilizations like the Karrakin Federation and the Aun, who had been carrying humanity's torch just fine by themselves, thank you very much.

SecComm was an Anthrochauvinist fascist state. The book defines it thusly:

We can see a lot of Anthrochauvinist historical romanticism in the mech naming schemes of Harrison Armory, SSC and IPS-N - the fact that Harrison Armory names its mechs after great military leaders of pre-Fall Earth history, IPS-N does the same with naval figures, and SSC uses the names of Earth animals. Even the GMS Everest is named for a mountain on Earth. It's very Cradle-centric.

Anthrochauvinism was, to be clear, largely just an excuse for colonialism and hegemony. Atrocities could easily be justified under by stating that whoever they're being committed against were a threat to the Continuance of Humanity - a term that SecComm got to define.

It's also at this point that we have to zoom in from broad sociopolitical points to address one very specific piece of history: the New Prosperity Agreement. This was signed to prevent the outbreak of a Second Union-Karrakin War, and mandated that the Karrakin Houses would maintain privileged levels of autonomy within Union, and that they would be granted colonial rights to the entire Dawnline Shore. This agreement, struck in 3007u, basically defines much of the current political situation today.

ThirdComm was a final and inevitable reaction to the atrocities, abuses and excesses of SecComm. The unspeakable horrors of Hercynia were the spark, but I need to stress how little Hercynia actually mattered in the larger Revolution - at the start of NRfaW, it's explicitly stated that almost nobody in the galaxy even knows where it is, let alone what happened there. The Revolution was a generalized response to SecComm's tyranny, with no single rallying cry.

The Revolution might also have failed entirely, but for a critical error by Harrison Armory: pissing off the Karrakin Trade Baronies. After getting kicked off Cradle, the Anthrochauvinist Party organised a fleet at Ras Shamra to try and retake Cradle. Simultaneously, however, they were attempting to secure protectorate agreements to steal worlds in the Dawnline Shore out from under the KTB. Putting these two together and making five, the KTB assumed that the fleet was pointed at Karrakis, and started the First Interest War.

The First Interest War initially favoured the KTB. They smashed the fleet above Ras Shamra and simultaneously conquered the moon of Creighton in the Dawnline Shore. However, they underestimated just how ruthless Harrison I was - he "retook" Creighton by relativistic bombardment, and then conquered four of the 12 worlds of the Dawnline Shore with mechanised chassis, a technology the KTB had not adopted and had no counter for.

To prevent further loss of life, Union was eventually forced to broker a peace agreement that saw Harrison I handing himself over to Union justice in return for Harrison Armory's continued sovereignty, and the KTB joining Union as a full member state.

So, with that historical context out of the way, let me get to the second part of this absurd essay I'm writing.

Third Committee Union isn't a civilization that arose from whole cloth. It's shaped by five thousand years of Union history, six thousand years of post-Fall history, and six thousand years of pre-Fall history before that. It is, ultimately, an extremely well-thought-out and well-worldbuilt fictional polity, in that all of its imperfections come from traceable root causes in its history.

Why does ThirdComm permit the abuses of the KTB? Because to stop them, it would likely have to go to war, and such a war would butcher billions. Worse, to do so, it would probably have to ally with Harrison Armory and make horrific concessions.

Why does ThirdComm permit the expansionism and cryptochauvinism of the Armory? Because to stop them, it would likely have to go to war, and such a war would butcher billions. Worse, to do so, it would probably have to ally with the KTB and make horrific concessions.

Nobody in CentComm likes that Harrison Armory are empire-building expansionists. Nobody in CentComm likes that the KTB has a hereditary nobility and enforces blockades against planets that rebel against it. The problem is that ThirdComm is, in historical terms, still relatively new. They've been around five hundred years, and compared to the 1600 years that SecComm was around and the 2800 years FirstComm existed for, that's not very much.

ThirdComm is attempting to decouple itself from the Cradle-first politics of its predecessor, and to amend the many, many atrocities committed in the name of Humanity. It is not easy to do any of these things. SecComm was defined almost entirely by the fact that if it didn't like what you were doing, it would send in the military as a first response. Every time ThirdComm chooses to do the same, its legitimacy erodes, because the mission of ThirdComm is to prove that diverse, vibrant and compassionate human civilization can exist without devolving into war and bloodshed. ThirdComm always tries diplomacy as a first response because if it doesn't, millions of people could die.

#lancer #lancer rpg #lancerrpg #lancer-rpg #union #lancer lore #lore #fictional history

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punkitt-is-here · 10 months

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Hey uh you seem cool and I’m sure you mean well but. You might want to watch this video bc some stuff w/ the shrudler is. Uhh. Not great.

https://www.tumblr.com/a-little-revolution/718626820182982656

I do genuinely completely understand where you're coming from with this, but I'll say a couple things; the Schrudler is not meant to represent the dwarf/little person population, he's not meant to be someone with dwarfism at all. If I were to draw the Susan Taxpayer characters as IRL people, he would not be a little person, he would just be a particularly short man. Secondly, he's not the only character with those proportions in the Susan Taxpayer universe, so he's not meant to represent all folks with those proportions anyway. I understand that the link between physical features and morality is very annoying and a consistent problem in media, so please understand that he wasn't designed with this in mind nor are all the very-short-folks in the game "evil", he just happens to be a short man who is also a dick. The ability of Susan to pick him up and throw him is not a reference to any sort of dwarf-throwing sport (which is very bizarre and unjust, having just heard about it) but is instead a throwback to Mad Scienstein, or Arewo Shitain-hakase in Wario Land 4, who is an archeologist whom you pick up and throw to solve puzzles. In Wario Land 4, he takes on this role to show that Wario is kind of a dick to others to get what he wants, and he's shaped this way likely so that the player has to be precise considering he's a 1x1 block and not a 2x2 one like other throwables in-game.

The Schrudler's in-game design is that way so that he works better proportionally for this reference and so that he also more resembles the items the players pick up in-game (roughly 32x32px for the most part).

I understand your concern that this might seem to be an issue with the character, but I'm going to stick with him and his design intentions with consideration of what I've previously stated in mind. I hope this helps quell some of those feelings, and if not, I do apologize!!

#my posts #asks #anon #susan taxpayer

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aesethewitch · 7 months

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Shufflemancy 101: A Brief History & Analysis

Hey! If you like my work and want to support me in my quest for divination theory, digital tools, algorithmic quandries, and research into niche divination tools, consider throwing dollars at my Ko-Fi tip jar! Every contribution helps me keep making posts like this one. (You can also read this post over on Ko-Fi!)

The difficulty with researching something like shufflemancy is that it's a relatively modern phenomenon. I haven't yet found anyone (online or in a book) specifically talking about the origins of shufflemancy as a term or where it might've come from.

So, we start from square one.

What is Shufflemancy?

According to Wikipedia, shufflemancy is divination "by the use of an electronic media player such as an electronic playlist, iPod, or other medium wherein one skips a certain number of songs and the lyrics and/or tune of the song is the answer to the divinatory question."

Simple enough. Use an electronic collection of music that's been shuffled to divine.

This did lead me to the question: What counts as shufflemancy? Does tuning into a radio station count?

It's my opinion that radio divination does not count. There's no shuffle function. Yes, it has an element of chance, and that's what makes it divination. It certainly falls under the wider umbrella of divination via music, too. But it isn't shufflemancy if it doesn't make use of a shuffle function.

So, to make things simple, for something to be shufflemancy, it must:

Use an electronic medium

Involve a randomized shuffle function

Be something the shufflemancer can interpret to answer a question (pretty much anything)

Early Shufflemancy

The earliest form of shufflemancy as we understand it today, using the above requirements, would probably be tape players capable of shuffling music. With the nature of tape, it would take a while for the thing to wind and rewind to find the cue on the tape which signaled the start or end of a song, but it'd work.

With that said, shuffling as we understand and recognize it today would've started with CDs in the 1980s. There were CD players that could hold three to five disks at a time. They could shuffle songs between all disks held in the player, creating a random mix of tunes for listeners to enjoy.

Using either of these methods for divination would work, technically. The results would be somewhat limited, but that doesn't mean it's a bad method to use. Especially if your CD player could hold 5 disks, you could easily put in 5 albums from different artists with all different vibes for a wider variety of outputs.

I certainly remember using my little blue radio that held two CDs at once like this. I'd put in two albums and hit shuffle, and the first song that played would be my vibe and advice for the day. It was divination -- some of the earliest I'd ever done consciously, at the young age of nine. And when I got the bigger one that held three CDs? Game changer.

So this puts shufflemancy's origins somewhere around the mid-to-late 1980s, when Sony put out the first CD player with shuffle. As we moved into the 1990s, CDs became more popular and cassettes faced obsolescence.

The Shuffle Revolution & Early Modern Shufflemancy

In 2005, Apple changed the game again. It had already debuted the iPod in 2001, providing an easy, pocket-sized music experience as a direct challenge to the CD's cultural domination. On January 11, 2005, nearly 20 years ago, Apple announced the iPod Shuffle.

And oh, boy, did it change everything.

I could talk forever about the iPod's impact on the music industry, the death of the in-order album, and the eventual rise of music streaming services. But others have done that to death, so I'll focus in on our topic of shufflemancy.

This is where we start seeing shuffling music as it is now, in the modern day. In my digging, I found mentions of the term "shufflemancy" as early as 2007 -- just two years after the iPod Shuffle was announced. Someone proposed the concept and terminology of "shufflemancy" as we understand it today on a Halfbakery Forum "Idea" post on October 3, 2007.

It's difficult to say whether this is the first instance of the term. In reality, shufflemancy seems to have emerged as a natural by-product of the evolution of music technology. Where there is innovation, witches and diviners will mold it to their purposes. We're a resourceful bunch like that. It grew organically as we moved from buying albums to buying singles to streaming music without buying at all.

People were offering public shufflemancy readings as early as 2009 in places like TarotForum.net. It's spoken about during this era as a "silly" and "new" form of divination that people were trying out. There aren't any dates in that link, but according to the website's data, the first post in the thread was published on June 16, 2009.

From there, shufflemancy saw a gradual rise in popularity. It evolved from using iPods to iTunes, Napster, and eventually Spotify as these new applications emerged.

Shufflemancy Now

If you look up "shufflemancy" using Spotify's search function, you'll receive dozens of results. Many of the top playlists are public ones curated by shufflemancers for themselves and others to use. Options range from general playlists to "mega mixes" containing upwards of 200 hours of music from all different genres, artists, and eras. There are some with a paltry five hours of music, while one that I've seen goes up over the 600 hour mark. (If I can find that one again, I'll reblog it, because... damn.)

Select a "messages from your guides" option from the search or curate your own -- the choice is yours. For one-time shufflemancers, using a pre-made option may be the best, most economical choice. But dedicated shufflemancers sometimes boast multiple hundred-hour playlists for different purposes, all personally curated.

Clearly, it's popular. There are shufflemancers on Tumblr and Etsy offering free and paid services using their specially curated playlists. A quick search is all you need to find someone receiving a divinatory reading via song lyrics, meanings, and vibes. And it seems to work -- sellers on Etsy boast hundreds of positive reviews. Some even offer playlist curation services for personal shufflemancy or messages from deities and/or spirits.

It all begs the question, how does shufflemancy work?

Shufflemancy Methodology

Finding this is significantly easier than pinning down the history of shufflemancy. This post from Tumblr user orriculum, sums it up fairly well. So does this one by the-daily-diviner.

To do shufflemancy, the basic steps are:

Create or find a playlist of songs. A large collection seems to be the most favorable option for a wide spread of possibilities.

Ask a question. Divination 101 -- figure out what you want to know and ask it. Simple enough.

Pick a number. Choose any number and shuffle that many times or skip that many songs.

Listen to the song. Write down lyrics that stick out, messages that come through, and anything else that seems relevant (genre, tempo, vibe, etc.)

Interpret. Take the information gathered during the song and use it to draw conclusions, just like any other form of divination.

Simple enough. Shufflemancy is the sort of method that requires a high level of intuitive thinking. It's very mutable and suits a good amount of personalization.

This is both good and bad, I think. It would be incredibly easy to create a bias in your shufflemancy playlists by selecting songs with primarily one genre, artist, album, emotion, or through-line. The ideal playlist really does have a wide variety of music, and this means selecting songs that the shufflemancer doesn't necessarily like. We all have a genre or artist we hate; excluding an entire genre skews results. Impartial selections of music are critical to the success of good divination. Otherwise, we risk interfering with the outcome.

And speaking of interfering...

The Algorithm Problem

(Note: I'm focusing in on Spotify since it's very commonly used and because it's accessible to me. Shufflemancy can be (and is!) done with plenty of other apps like Apple Music.)

When Spotify was originally launched, it used a version of the Fisher-Yates Shuffle to perform its shuffling of music. In essence, this algorithm takes a finite sequence of data, picks an option from that selection of data, and removes it from the pool. Then, it picks another and another until no more options remain.

At first glance, this seems great! It creates a fairly random output. But as is the nature of randomness, there were clusters. The same artist would play four or five times in a row from a large playlist, and Spotify users complained. It was random, but it didn't feel that way.

The human brain is wired to find connections and patterns. When the same artist plays over and over again despite a playlist being on shuffle mode, it creates a pattern that the brain recognizes. Therefore, the "true" randomness of clustering outputs was unsatisfactory.

So, in 2014, Spotify updated it. Their new algorithm would detect and remember the song it just played and, in shuffling, account for the artist and album to provide a more random-feeling result. The new algorithm detects what's already played and selects accordingly to prevent the same artist from playing twice in a row, just as it prevents the same song from playing twice. It spreads artists out evenly (though not perfectly, to maintain the illusion of randomness) to provide an enhanced listening experience.

What does this mean for shufflemancy, then? If Spotify's algorithm is interfering in the output provided from a playlist, does that mean it's not a reliable form of divination?

At first, I wasn't so sure. I adjusted my thinking -- if a tarot app was preventing certain cards from being drawn (or from being drawn in a particular order) because I'd already drawn them that day or week, would that render the app unreliable? And the answer was yes. It would! It removes the random element from the method, therefore making it not true divination by my definition.

So shufflemancy with Spotify isn't (good) divination, then. Right?

My Opinion & Theory

In thinking about this further, I think it comes down to personal opinion. People certainly have success with shufflemancy via Spotify, or else they wouldn't do it. They definitely wouldn't offer their services (free or otherwise) if they weren't confident in the results it provides.

Thinking that way, I believe there's a way to off-set the algorithm's interference. With enough songs in a playlist, the random element is enhanced despite the algorithm. Not by having the same song multiple times (Spotify would surely detect this and prevent it from playing), but perhaps the same song covered by different artists. Songs with the same vibe, the same meaning, similar lyrics... AND songs from a wide variety of artists and genres, regardless of whether the shufflemancer likes the songs or not.

The person with that 600+ hour playlist for shufflemancy has it right, I think. That's the key. Variety and volume to make up for Spotify's algorithmic shuffler.

Additionally, in listening to my many, many Spotify playlists, I noticed something. If I'm listening to a playlist on shuffle and decide I want a specific song, I can choose to play it immediately. Afterwards, songs I've already heard might play. It seems as though doing this resets the shuffling algorithm in some way. Doing this in combination with a large and varied playlist might be the key to making shufflemancy in Spotify truly, fully reliable.

My Next Steps

Obviously, scholarly research only goes so far in situations like this. In order to properly gauge the accuracy of shufflemancy, I'll have to do it myself.

First, I'll need a playlist. I have a handful of playlists that sit in the hundred-hour range, but they're curated with friends for specific vibes. They're not really suitable for shufflemancy. So making one for myself is step one. I'll use premade playlists as a springboard for ideas, but the end result will be my own. For transparency, I'll make the playlist public and share it as part of the next edition in this series of posts.

The next step is to just... do it. Do the divinations, and do them regularly. Instead of a daily tarot card, I'll do a daily shuffle. I'll form "spreads" and put together a more in-depth methodology that fits my style as it develops.

Then, finally, maybe public ones? For reviews and feedback, obviously. It's one thing to do divination for myself -- confirmation bias and all -- but to do it for others and to be open for immediate feedback is entirely different.

Last, it's a matter of compiling my findings into a coherent document. Easier said than done, but done it must be.

Resources

I pulled from a lot of places for this one. Massive thanks to the Crossroads Discord for listening to me yell about divination for the last several weeks. It will continue.

In any case, here are all the resources I referenced for this leg of research:

Wikipedia - The Fisher-Yates Shuffle

Wikipedia - Methods of Divination

Wikipedia - The iPod Shuffle

PopSci - History of Shuffling Music

Engineering at Spotify - How to Shuffle?

The Verge - The Mixed-Up History of the Shuffle Button

Auntie PanPan (YouTube) - Shufflemancy - What IS It?!?

Halfbakery - Shufflemancy Idea Post

Fox and Faith Wordpress - Radio Divination and Intentional Living in Your Day to Day

Scientific American - How Randomness Rules Our World and Why We Cannot See It

PC World - The CD Player Turns 30

Make Use Of - How Spotify's Shuffle Feature Really Works

Orriculum on Tumblr - Post on shufflemancy technique

The-Daily-Divinre on Tumblr - Post on shufflemancy technique

Empirical Zeal - What Does Randomness Look Like?

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didalexiabreakupwitholgayet · 2 months

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hi :) thanks for all your answers!

lingering question from a while back, but do you consider the players who made themselves available for selection after being part of las 15 to be scabs? the article that lucia garcia wrote sort of made it sound like that, and it's hard to read the situation differently.

it makes me respect Mapi and Patri so much, to stick to their guns even when everyone else went back.

I get all their careers have a lot on the line, but like.. collective bargaining only works if it's collective, right? Is there nuance i'm not seeing?

sigh...i have gone back and forth so many times throughout this entire saga. and in some ways, i'm still working out how to make sense and reconcile it all. it's complicated, and i think you have to factor in the prior history.

first, spain has the unique situation of having its draconian sports law in effect. according to this law, players who refuse a call-up risk sanctions and losing their license to play football.

second, there have been prior protests before that were unsuccessful and only helped to damage individual players. vero boquete essentially threw away her nt career because she decided to speak up after the 2015 world cup. that has to have been percolating in the back of some players' minds.

third, you are right. you can't have a successful revolution with partial participation. people kept comparing the uswnt lawsuit with las 15 and they are both completely different situations. however, what uswnt had going for them was unity. all the uswnt players signed on. that never happened with las 15 (there were only 15 of them!). and there was even pressure from liga f clubs to back out of any protest that prevented other spanish players from signing on. so it wasn't so easy to have every player in the spanish nt system just sign on. if there are so many divisions from the start, then there's no way that movement can be successful. (especially when you had players who went out of their to way to kiss vilda's/rfef ass, but that's a separate conversation!)

plus, there was so much media backlash and skewering of the players that made the divisions worse. rfef was talking to players individually and breaking down the lines of protest even further. it was a huge mess. and ultimately, some players felt that they could have better progress by working within the system. as alexia said in the oliva conclave, if they left, then they knew rfef would just call in the youth players who would have no voice or say in the matter. so no, i don't think they are scabs because there was no proper picket line in the first place. it was a fractured mess from day one.

and of course, i have the utmost respect for mapi, patri, and others who basically sacrificed a world cup to stand up for their ideals. that takes so much guts. but i also understand why others returned to the team to advocate for change from within because they saw how corrupt and messed up rfef was in quashing any dissent.

there is still so much left to go with improving conditions in spain, and some days it feels like spain never won the world cup because we never had the boom that england did after winning the euros. but vilda/rubiales would still be here had it not been for the spain winning the world cup. there never was that amount of world pressure and scrutiny and political will to actually get things improved. so that's something.

#rfef ruins all the good things #futfem #woso

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lesmissocials-fuckedup · 5 months

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Les Mis socials : 2023 hall of shame tournament - Round 2

Rules

Links to the posts and propaganda can be found under the cut !

Propaganda :

The "Who should Marius choose ?" question - source : Twitter - January 29

For many, many years, this fandom has been arguing that neither Cosette nor Eponine could be reduced to simply being love interests for Marius, that we shouldn't call their relationship a rivalry and that the Marius x Eponine relationship was way too toxic to be defined by love. Well, the musical's social media managers seem to disagree, no to mention that the picture is made to make it seem like Eponine is the only thing keeping the two lovers apart. Featuring an uncanny use of emojis you can find in every single one of their posts.

Mother's day post - source : Twitter - March 19

The one thing to be said in favor of this post is that they actually meant it as a joke and understood that Madame Thénardier was not a good mother. On the other hand, why not simply go along with the concept of Mother's Day and post a picture of Fantine, a mother who cared deeply about her child ? But they gave us an abusive mother instead. Again, very uncanny use of the laughing emoji.

The Wimbledon one - source : Twitter - July 15

Have you ever seen a post in which everything is wrong ? well this one is for you. Starting with the words they chose because no, there should not be a Cosette for every occasion. Putting a tennis racket in the hands of a starved and abused child ? To promote rich people's sports ? They also edited her arms to make her look more muscular. Also I know nothing about english sports but there is a strawberry emoji ? And finally, cherry on top of the cake... they messed up the colors of the french flag. Which, let's be honest, is an easy one to get right.

Cosette celebrating Thanksgiving - source : Twitter - November 23

Our only contestant left for the US team ! And... it's a bad one. Without even going into what is wrong with the concept of Thanksgiving itself and promoting it, why would you ever put Cosette in front of a Thanksgiving meal ? The gril who is famous as an icon of starved and abused children ? Not to mention how disturbing it is that there is so little to eat in the pate in front of her. And finally, on a purely cultural level : 1- Thanksgiving became a federal holiday years after Les Misérables was published and 2- most french people could not care less about when Thanksgiving is celebrated.

Christmas Eve - source : Twitter - December 24

To be honest, this one might by far not be the worst they have done, but it is undeniably very disturbing. And the way the edited the "One day more" quote may be the least uncanny thing here. They also edited snowflakes in the picture, a Christmas tree on the barricade and a Christmas hat on (I think ?) Enjolras's head... knowing that the men on this barricade are throwing a revolution. In which all of them will die painfully. What's more, this revolution canonically and historically takes place at the beginning of June. Which means this picture is the worst thing they could possibly have chose to illustrate the Christmas spirit. Also, as many people have mentionned, this year was the 200th anniversary of Valjean meeting Cosette in the woods, so... perhaps they could have done something about that instead ?

#les mis #les mis socials fucked up #les mis socials fucked up 2023 ranking

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racefortheironthrone · 1 year

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Thoughts on generative AI or AI in general? Especially its impact on history, economics, politics, and society at large? Huge topic obviously but would love your perspective.

I consider "generative AI" (to the extent thatterm is even accurate) to be kind of bullshit.

I've already written about the fundamental commercial problems that AI suffers from. I think this will severely limit the actual value of "generative AI" to the vast majority of people. A lot of these yahoos trying to gold rush what they think is the next revolution by spamming magazine submissions and the like are going to find that they've wasted their time.

When it comes to the personal use issue, I find it a bit concerning from the position of personal development. This may make me sound a bit like Grandpa SImpson yelling at clouds, but it is noticeable that a lot of people seem to be using generative AI either to outright cheat (doing their homework, plagiarizing essays, taking remote exams for them) or otherwise get out of having to do the heavy lifting of intellectual labor - and that's a problem, because practice is the main way our brains learn, so I do worry that there are going to be a lot of people wh'll gradually eliminate their own ability to actually do important forms of intellectual labor without the crutch of a computer program doing the work for them. Again, it's a bit of a kneejerk "hard work is good for you"/"back in my day" reaction, but as someone who's had to teach remedial essay-writing for more than a decade because the high schools have stopped teaching this stuff, I do think it matters.

I also find it a bit concerning on another level, because what AI researchers seem to be automating isn't the boring busywork of modern life that should be automated out of existence, but the creative work that people tend to find compelling and rewarding. When I read about D&D players using ChatGP to write an adventure for them or DM for them and the like, it makes me sad, because that's the stuff I do for fun and I don't get the idea of wanting a machine to do the fun stuff for them because it's less work.

And then finally there's the issue of ego and ownership. One of the things I've noticed time and again in discussions of AI on various discussion threads and social media sites is that people often develop a largely-unearned sense of ownership and accomplishment over the products of generative AI: over and over again, I see people say "look at what I wrote" or "look at what I painted" when all they did was enter a prompt and let something else do the actual creative work. (Even as they often admit that they used AI because they couldn't be bothered to muster the effort to learn how to do it themselves or because they're too cheap to pay working writers and artists a fair rate for their labor.)I find that attitude a bit insulting to actual writers and artists and more than a bit pathetic.

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reality-detective · 11 months

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About the Transgender Agenda…

When it comes to evil, few things beat the mental abuse and physical mutilation of children and youngsters that we are witnessing. It is evil to the core and there are no two ways about it.

Mentally messing up a child by making them reject the most fundamental of human considerations; our biological denomination, is sick and twisted and demonic.

The Transgender Agenda is not about gays, lesbians or bisexuals, who have existed since time immemorial, it’s not about their rights or freedoms, which we have all come to accept to a greater or lesser degree (at least in Western societies), it’s about twisting, transforming and defiling humanity itself. And there is a purpose behind it.

Transgenderism is the first step towards Transhumanism, that is why it’s being shoved down our throats through the media, academia, entertainment, big tech, big pharma and the whole medical establishment.

The plan is to make us lose our identity altogether in order to make us open to the idea of becoming cyborgs, or as they call it, humans 2.0.

One must understand that the ultimate goal of the evil powers that rule the world, is to desecrate God’s creation and as his masterpiece, humanity is the ultimate prize.

The only way that they can gain ultimate control over us is to destroy our original, biological composition and to sever our connection to the divine by morphing us into technological/organic hybrids.

That is the Fourth Industrial Revolution that Klaus Schwab proudly preaches around the world with the help of his loyal counsellor, Yuval Noah Harari.

Transgenderism is the mechanism that is allowing them to not only transform the concept of human identity from male and female to a myriad of identity absurdities, it’s also allowing them to change the legal framework, the medical assistance, the social perception and even the language, that will soon give them a free pathway to Transhumanism.

They want to transfer human function, interaction and procreation away from God and into the hands of Big Tech and Big Pharma for ultimate and absolute control.

Let’s not fall prey to the provocations, the gimmicks and the grotesque show of depravation and violence, let’s wisen up and call them out for what they are trying to do:- destroy humanity as God created it.

These crazy, radical, cult-like transgender youngsters are the result of an evil psyop, the dispensable pawns used to advance a greater agenda on a chess board where check mate is a society of sexless, soulless cyborgs under total control.

If we have learned anything from swallowing red pill after red pill, it must be that we must look further than the puppets and the pawns and stand up against the puppet masters and the chess players.

It’s time to put up a joint, concerted front against the ongoing psychological and physical abuse that forms part of the ultimate plan to destroy us.

Let’s speak up, reject it, protect our children and NEVER turn our backs to our God given nature, that is the only thing that can save us.

🙏💜🙏💫🙏

#pay attention #educate yourselves #educate yourself #knowledge is power #reeducate yourself #reeducate yourselves #think for yourselves #think about it #think for yourself #do your homework #do some research #do your own research #do your research #save humanity #save the children #save the kids #save our children #crimes against children #crimes against humanity

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cyberpunkonline · 6 months

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Blasting Through the Controversy: The "DOOM" Effect on Society on it's 30th Anniversary

In the heart of the '90s, a digital revolution thundered through our living rooms, and at the forefront was the iconic video game "DOOM". This pixelated powerhouse not only changed the gaming landscape but also stirred up a whirlwind of media frenzy. Let's jack into the mainframe and decode the controversies that rocked the boat.

Digital Demons: Fueling Aggressive Bytes

The most buzzing feed in the circuit was the notion that "DOOM" could rewire players' brains towards aggression. The pixelated gore and adrenaline-pumping action were accused of desensitizing players, making them more prone to violent outbursts in the real world. Talk about a digital dystopia!

A Tragic Connection: The Columbine Nexus

Post the 1999 Columbine High tragedy, "DOOM" found itself in the crosshairs again. The perpetrators were avid players, prompting a media blitz linking the game to their heinous actions. It was as if the game had a hidden level influencing real-world violence – or so the headlines screamed.

Academic Alert: The Grade Drain

Then there were whispers down the school halls. "DOOM" was fingered for plummeting grades, with students trading study time for demon-slaying sessions. The game was painted as a digital distraction, a mind-melding vortex sucking in young brains.

Addiction Avenue: The "DOOM" Dependency

Our virtual journey takes a turn down Addiction Avenue, where "DOOM" was branded as digital crack. Reports of obsession and round-the-clock gaming painted a picture of players trapped in a never-ending loop of ‘just one more level’.

Reality Rift: Blurring the Pixels

The game was also caught in the crossfire of causing a detachment from reality. Could blasting demons in a virtual world make the lines between pixels and pavement blur? The media certainly thought so, drumming up fears of a generation lost in a digital dream.

Mind Maze: The Mental Health Debate

The '90s were a wild ride in the realm of mental health discussions. "DOOM" was thrust into the spotlight as a potential catalyst for mental health issues, including depression and anxiety. It seemed the game was more than just a battle against virtual demons.

The Anti-Social Network: From LAN Parties to Loners

Finally, we tap into the anti-social network theory. The game, it was said, turned players into isolated islanders, drifting away from social interactions and into a solitary cyber sea.

In the final analysis, this digital drama is a blend of fact, fiction, and a hefty dose of '90s media sensationalism. While the accusations made headlines, they often flew in the face of scientific scrutiny. "DOOM" was more than a game; it was a digital milestone – and every milestone attracts its share of moss. As we log off from this retro rewind, remember, the '90s were a time of tech-panic and pixelated perceptions!

- Raz

#cyberpunk #doom #ganes #gamer #retroganing #Tumblr #Internet culture #2000s internet

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1997thebracket · 7 months

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Round 3

Tamagotchi: Hold up, I gotta feed my Tamagotchi. Tamagotchis were the leading name in digital pets that came to us in 1997, and rapidly gained immense popularity among kids and young adults. Invented by Bandai, Tamagotchis are perfectly pocket-sized egg-shaped toys with a simple LCD screen where players raise and care for a virtual critter. Users are responsible for feeding, playing with, and nurturing their Tamagotchi, ensuring it stays healthy and happy; the pet evolves through various life stages, and neglect or mistreatment can lead to its tragic demise. The charm of Tamagotchis lies in their portability and the borderline alarming emotional attachment users develop with their byte-size babies. They were the start of a cultural phenomenon in 90s and early 2000s toys, sparking a trend of virtual pet-raising games.

Revolutionary Girl Utena: If it cannot break its shell, the chick will die without ever being born. This sentiment, originally found in Hermann Hesse’s 1919 novel Demian, features during a repeated sequence in the 1997 anime Revolutionary Girl Utena. Hesse is far from the only reference to philosophical, surrealist, or heavily symbolic text in the show, which trades in visual metaphor and multi-layered subtext. Revolutionary Girl Utena follows the story of Utena Tenjou, a young orphan who aspires to princehood-- challenging or outright circumventing the place of gender in that aspiration-- and is entangled in a series of duels centered around a girl named Anthy Himemiya. Written by Kunihiko Ikuhara, Chiho Saito, and Yōji Enokido (known collectively as Be-Papas) and soundtracked by J.A. Seazer and Shinkichi Mitsumune, the show has an instantly recognizable style, combining lush fairytale visuals and French-inspired architecture with a choir that functions as a sort of Greek chorus to the internal worlds externalized in combat. Utena is a story about many things, arguably all things, taking a surgical scalpel to adolescence and using the flat of the blade as a paintbrush, leaving a deeply human, visceral work of art in its wake. It has been massively influential on feminist, queer & sapphic, and otherwise gender-deconstructive or gender-subversive modern media. Smash the world's shell! For the revolution of the world!

#tamagotchi #bandai #revolutionary girl utena #shoujo kakumei utena #1997

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richincolor · 7 months

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Jessica's 2023 Favorites

It's always so hard to pick my favorite books of the year -- there were so many! I read poignant graphic novels that made me sob, lighthearted adventures that made me think, and heartfelt romances that I couldn't stop telling people about. I've narrowed my favorite reads this year down to three -- and I imagine they might be on your list too! We'd love to hear what you loved reading this year and what you look forward to reading next year. Anyway, without further ado...

In Limbo by Deb JJ Lee A debut YA graphic memoir about a Korean-American girl's coming-of-age story—and a coming home story—set between a New Jersey suburb and Seoul, South Korea.

Deborah (Jung-Jin) Lee knows she's different. Ever since her family emigrated from South Korea to the United States, she's felt her Otherness. For a while, her English isn't perfect. None of her teachers can pronounce her Korean name. Her face and her eyes—especially her eyes—stand out. As the pressures of high school ramp up, friendships change and end, and everything gets harder. Even home isn't a safe place, as fights with her mom escalate. Deb is caught in a limbo, with nowhere to go, and her mental health plummets.

But Deb is resilient. She discovers art and self-care, and gradually begins to start recovering. And during a return trip to South Korea, she realizes something that changes her perspective on her family, her heritage, and herself.

This stunning debut graphic memoir features page after page of gorgeous, evocative art, perfect for Tillie Walden fans. It's a cross section of the Korean-American diaspora and mental health, a moving and powerful read in the vein of Hey, Kiddo and The Best We Could Do.

The Wicked Bargain by Gabe Cole Novoa El Diablo is in the details in this Latinx pirate fantasy starring a transmasculine nonbinary teen with a mission of revenge, redemption, and revolution.

On Mar León-de la Rosa's 16th birthday, el Diablo comes calling. Mar is a transmasculine nonbinary teen pirate hiding a magical ability to manipulate fire and ice. But their magic isn't enough to reverse a wicked bargain made by their father and now el Diablo has come to collect his payment: the soul of Mar's father and the entire crew of their ship.

When Mar is miraculously rescued by the sole remaining pirate crew in the Caribbean, el Diablo returns to give them a choice: give up your soul to save your father by the Harvest Moon or never see him again. The task is impossible--Mar refuses to make a bargain and there's no way their magic is any match for el Diablo. Then, Mar finds the most unlikely allies: Bas, an infuriatingly arrogant and handsome pirate -- and the captain's son; and Dami, a genderfluid demonio whose motives are never quite clear. For the first time in their life, Mar may have the courage to use their magic. It could be their only redemption -- or it could mean certain death.

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert Bradley Graeme is pretty much perfect. He's a star football player, manages his OCD well (enough), and comes out on top in all his classes . . . except the ones he shares with his ex-best friend, Celine.

Celine Bangura is conspiracy-theory-obsessed. Social media followers eat up her takes on everything from UFOs to holiday overconsumption--yet, she's still not cool enough for the popular kids' table. Which is why Brad abandoned her for the in-crowd years ago. (At least, that's how Celine sees it.)

These days, there's nothing between them other than petty insults and academic rivalry. So when Celine signs up for a survival course in the woods, she's surprised to find Brad right beside her.

Forced to work as a team for the chance to win a grand prize, these two teens must trudge through not just mud and dirt but their messy past. And as this adventure brings them closer together, they begin to remember the good bits of their history. But has too much time passed . . . or just enough to spark a whole new kind of relationship?

#highly suspicious and unfairly cute #the wicked bargain #in limbo #ya lit #graphic novels

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courtrecord · 2 years

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hey, i’m riley rethal!

i’m a pharmacy student who enjoys ttrpg design and fanfic writing. currently my main interests are casablanca (1942), andor & ace attorney, with the mainstays of friends at the table, greek mythology, and Learning About Stuff always in the background.

my main social media is twitter, and i plan to stay on it as long as it’s viable, but i’m back on tumblr now too!

my ao3 is rib14, and i’ve written:

court record companion (5.9k, T) a collection of tweets, texts, posts, and articles surrounding the first 4 aa games

when the chips are down (28.5k, T) my narumitsu magnum opus; a canon-divergent story of disbarment

the ones who deal the cards (2.1k, G) trucy & kristoph have a totally normal conversation in the basement of the borscht bowl club

yours forever (14.3k, T) the life and loves of thalassa gramarye, told in letters and memories

history lesson (1.7k, G) a conversation between mon mothma and 14 year old leia organa, set during andor s1

a few more ideas (8.4k, T) a canon-divergent andor fic where a certain character survives and fake dates another character and also i can’t help but be a sucker for mon/tay

the tree remembers (4.4k, T) leia organa in the aftermath of the destruction of alderaan, reflecting and moving forward

also a bunch of jaceaddax one-shots for the fatt fans out there, but i’m assuming u all already know me lmao

i’m currently publishing what the future brings, a post-canon casablanca fic, and it would mean the world if u checked it out! victor/ilsa/rick is so important.

my ttrpgs can be found at metagame.itch.io, and here’s a few of my faves:

galactic 2e: a game of rebellion, relationships, and war among the stars (what if star wars was good?!)

venture & dungeon: two games with a new perspective on the high fantasy genre (i wrote venture, which is like, what if dnd was good, dungeon is by jay dragon of wanderhome fame)

doikayt: a jewish ttrpg anthology i co-organized! it’s a got a bunch of jewish themed games by jewish ttrpg designers

the riot starts: a gmless game about a revolution in the literal capitalist hell of the underworld, inspired by hadestown

it’s been a long, long time: a two-player ttrpg about characters who are in love, are separated, and finally reunite

i haven’t done a ton of game design in the past year, but my main current wips are an untitled resistance system game inspired by fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood, and a game of card-based mini-games inspired by les mis called “music of a people”

so yeah, that’s me! i haven’t spent a lot of time on tumblr since 2015, so this will be an interesting experience. looking forward to posting with you all.

#ace attorney #narumitsu #andor #star wars #ttrpg #it’s so funny that i rejoined tumblr like 2 months before The Exodus #n now i’m like. oh gotta make this more of a possible new professional brand place or whatever??? n not just aa shitposting???? ok fine #anyways. also gotta reflect the pivot to andor

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alpaca-clouds · 1 year

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Revolution in the Media

The Mageseeker game is coming out in two days – and I kinda want to talk about it. About Sylas and about Demacia. Because holy fuck, I hate the Demacia storyline in League of Legends. Like, some of the other storylines have their faults (big faults at time, let’s face it, the entire Noxus thing is not that much better), but Demacia? Demacia will tell you: “Are Nazis really so much worse than the people fighting against them?”

And this is… sadly a problem that American media has in general. Especially during the last… ten or so years. And I want to talk about it.

The Demacia Storyline

Other folks have talked about this before, but let me make this once again clear: The Demacian regime in League of Legends is fascist. Let’s face it. It is basically fascist. They have literal concentration camps, have an underclass, who are held in those concentration camps just for the way they have been born… And if we were going through Ecco’s “traits of ur-fascism” we would find a lot of the traits in Demacia one way or another.

In itself it would not be a problem. A lot of media does have fascist bad guys, but of course League of Legends does not have Demacia as the bad guys. Instead, well, we have several champions in the storyline, who can be played by the players of the main game. And who of course do not want to be reminded of “You are playing the bad guy”. So, all characters within the Demacia storyline are treated the same. Sylas is as good and as bad as Garen.

This is something we have seen especially in the entire Lux comic. Which so clearly shows Sylas as bad and manipulative and you should not side with him within the story, that so clearly says: “The only good side in this is neither.”

And just… No. For one: Sylas is the victim of the Demacian regime. A victim who managed to escape what is effectively a concentration camp. He is a rebel, who tries to bring the regime down. No, he is not as bad as the Demacians. Him killing the king and rebelling the way he is, is basically the same, as a Jew escaping a Nazi concentration camp and then going on to kill Hitler.

This is not a case of “good people on both sides”, but a case of “fascists on one side, those who fight them on the other”. There is no equivalence.

But of course this is not the first time – and probably not the last time – this happens in American media.

The Daisy Fitzroy thing

Remember Bioshock Infinite? That third Bioshock game, that was quite different than the other two that had come before?

Now, let’s put it bluntly: Bioshock has always kinda suffered moral relativism. The old games basically go like: “Laissez-faire Objectivist Capitalism is bad, but the other alternatives are not that much better (if at all!)” Which is just blatantly wrong, though obviously it is just a very American way about depicting it, given that… well, we know how Americans cling to their “freedom economics” and it being the “only right economic system”. Because Freedom!

But then… Well, then came Bioshock Infinite. Instead of in Rapture, we play in Columbia. A religious pseudo-fascist place, with a regime that is build very much on the suppression of BI_POC, especially Black and Irish people, who are used as a servant class and outright slaves. Obviously with a lot of iconography mirroring the South under slavery and later Jim Crow.

In that game, we have a group of rebels, though. The Vox Populi. Rebels fighting against the system, which to the credit of the maker is shown to be unquestioningly bad. The rebels are under the lead of a Black woman named Daisy Fitzroy, who gets involved with the protagonist, by forcing him to get her weapons to fight the regime… But then comes the big twist, when Daisy Fitzroy tries to kill a kid of the oppressing class and your NPC companion Elizabeth kills Daisy Fitzroy in turn. After which you are going to fight the Vox Populi as much as the folks of the regime, with the only difference between the enemy types being the color schemes.

In that moment, when Daisy Fitzroy tries to kill the white kid, the game is taking your hand and pointing at her: “See, people fighting against white supremacy are just as bad as the white supremacists themselves! Don’t you agree?” Which is, of course… like a really bad conclusion to draw from it.

Because, let’s be very clear: Even if she had killed that child… Someone trying to free themselves from oppression through radical means will never be as bad as the oppressor, who did the same horrible acts without any reason other than “you look different, hence you are less human than me and I can treat you that way”.

But, of course, there is another screaming example of this…

The MCU and the faulty status quo

Honestly, to me right now there is no bigger offender in this than the MCU and within the MCU there is no offender as bad as The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

Now, let me preface this with: Yes, as much as I love Black Panther, that movie very much is very much at fault for this, too. At fault for the entire: “Oh, yeah, the guy who wants to do something about systemic racism is as bad if not worse than systemic racism.” But at least that movie ended on a change to the faulty status quo. (A change, mind you, that was undone by later installments of the MCU because the MCU just cannot have the status quo change too much, obviously.) It also clearly came down on the side of “the thing the good guys fought for originally was real bad”, with T’Challa outright confronting his ancestors on it.

No such thing, however, happened in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which obviously features our main characters going up against first and foremost the Flagsmashers. And now lets be very clear: The Flagsmashers are anarchists! Which is very much on the very tailend of “wanting to change the status quo”. (Note: I am an anarchist.) Their reasoning is a good one, though. They say: “Yeah. The entire Snap made it that people could move without borders. That was good. Now we are displaced and the organization that is supposed to take care of our needs cares more about enriching themselves than making other lives livable.” Which is something that is actually shown to be right. We know they are right.

Now, for once, of course, the entire thing with them turning towards violence comes kinda out of nowhere and is not really set up. But… We also need to talk about how violence is a valid means of fighting an oppressive system. And this system is very much oppressive. Again: The series SHOWS US THAT IT IS! That people oppressed in this system die of neglect! The system, as it stands, is a form of oppressive violence. That it kills through neglect rather than through active means does not make the killings less horrible or less deadly.

Yet, the Flagsmashers all die in the end. All those, who were enriching themselves through the system get no narrative punishment, with Falcon (now Captain America) holding them a nice speech. And the literal fascist getting a last minute redemption arc.

And that is just… horrible. I cannot put it any other way. It is horrible. It is a horrible end for that story.

The myth about the peaceful revolution

What all of this calls back upon is the myth about the peaceful revolution. The myth, that a peaceful revolution will be the only successful revolution and that violent revolutions are destined to fail and are – in fact – as bad the oppression they fight against. This, obviously, does completely ignore the fact that… most revolutions that were successful were either violent or had a violent revolutionary group cooperate with a peaceful revolutionary group. Just that again and again the violent groups will get erased from history.

The example most probably know about, is the Black Panthers, who served as an aligned group to MLK’s peaceful civil rights movement. Here, too, it often gets erased that the Black Panthers were closely aligned with MLK and were not a completely different group. Just as it is often erased from history, how the Black Panthers for example also helped feed and educate other underserved communities, including the poor white people.

We see the same again and again in the way we speak about history. A good example is decolonization (a process, mind you, that long has not ended). We kinda never go into how that happened. The usual narrative is: “Oh, yeah, western forces realized it was bad, so decolonialization happened.” Maybe we are talking about Ghandi, the peaceful revolutionary in India, and maybe we actually get told: “After WWII the western forces had no money left to uphold colonialism.” But, oh, what is that? No money left? But wasn’t one of the main things about colonialism that it was meant to extract value from the colonies? So should this not be a reason to hold up colonialism?

Yeah, no. Because here is the thing. In almost all colonies there were constant violent revolutions happening. And those had to be fought down with military power. Which was a costly endeavor. So costly, in fact, that in the end the colonies cost the western forces more money, than it brought them. But again, this gets erased from history. (Let’s face it, we do not speak about the ills of colonialism enough either way.)

But they (those who hold power) want us all to believe that it happened all through peaceful means. Because this way, we do believe that we, too, should rebel peacefully against the system that oppresses us and that destroys our environment. To put it frankly: They would not allow a form of protest, that actually worked.

And media? Well, media serves to uphold this myth as well. By telling us again and again that those rebelling and revolting through violent means are as bad, as those who uphold an oppressive and often directly or indirectly violent regime.

We need to make better Media

Something I see this in as well, is the reception of media and the lack of understanding of tropes and storylines, that might put you into the shoes of violent revolutionaries, who end up harming some innocent bystanders as well – at times a lot of them. Heck, even those trying to change the system that has oppressed them in a way that they are no longer oppressed, without a care for others get often judged as harshly, if not harsher, than the actual oppressors.

My two main fandoms are kinda an example of this. Both Arcane and Castlevania has this issue.

In Arcane the main issue is, that we have an obvious example of oppression of the poor. Piltover oppresses Zaun. And while the series kinda shows this, it also asks us to be very much on the side of Zaun, given that from the main characters only Ekko is exclusively aligned with Zaun, while everyone else is either at least partly aligned with Piltover or a bad guy. And sure, we do see that under Silco the poor suffer even more because of how he pushes his drugs. But… Well, he originally was a revolutionary and while Vander has given up the revolution he is the one to fight for Zaun independence, but yet… He is very much the bad guy, other than all those other characters who uphold the oppression. Which is… Not good.

I talked about the issue in Castlevania once again. Isaac. Here the issue is not as much with how the series is written, because for once the series actually has a somewhat good and understanding take. But… fandom has the issue here. Now, Isaac has been enslaved before. He ran away, after which he again and again was attacked and assaulted for either the color of his skin (this is after all the time that the first Europeans came up with the idea that Black people are less human than white people) or his religion. Given that this was all he had ever known, he at some point decided that it was how humanity had been – and hence that humanity should be extinguished. Which, if you have just a droplet of empathy, is kind of understandable. Not right, mind you, but understandable. Yet, a lot of folks have a lot more empathy for either Dracula or Hector, who partook in the genocide as much as Isaac did, than they have for Isaac.

This really… Is just not a good look.

And of course, all of this we see again and again in real life. Not only from the fascists themselves, who will claim there were “good people on both sides”, but even from more left-leaning folks. When marginalized folks get angry with their oppressors, they quickly get labeled as “as bad” as the oppressors. See Tone Policing. As a trans person I have been told several times by people, who identify as “left leaning”, that I am as bad as JKR and her posy, because I say that folks who support Rowling and her conservative fantasy shit are not really leftist and are definitely not queer allies.

So, yeah. Really. Fuck this thinking. Threating oppressed people rising up as the same as the oppressors is just shitty. And I just wish media finally let go of this shitty trope.

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lacklusterhero747 · 1 year

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Into the Perilous Wilds

I can clearly remember when I took my first, tentative steps into the hobby that would ultimately become my lifelong obsession. Sitting in a Walden Books on the floor, flipping through one of the Monster Manuals for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and marveling at the artwork while I read the bits of lore written on the page to accompany it. After that, the first Table Top RPGs I ever played were, first, Shadowrun and that black book AD&D with the Barbarian on the cover.

This was an era where the Gamemaster was considered like unto a god. Prevailing Gygaxian advice was that players should defer to the GM's judgement and that the GM themselves should deeply understand the lore of their world, have answers for everything, be able to make harsh but impartial decisions on the spot. It was a point of view that had a huge impact on what I thought it meant to play TTRPGs and especially what it meant to be a GM for a very long time and would not change until much later in life when I encountered the indie revolution that swept through the space around the end of 3.5e/beginning of 4e when Powered by the Apocalypse games had their day in the sun.

PBtA games were the first games I really encountered that called out the idea of collaborative storytelling to an extent that caught my attention. They told you to ask your players their opinion, and featured moves with advice to ask the player themselves where they might have learned the information they new in character. These were questions that had implications on the lore of the world. In a heartbeat your players, rather than you as the godhead of the game, could shift the entire world in tone, or even turn the whole thing on its head. You might still control the Fronts, and the world itself might still be your character to play, but suddenly everyone had the creative freedom to change things in new and interesting ways baked into the mechanics of the very game.

I loved it.

Fast forward a few years and I would encounter a funny little book called The Perilous Wilds, a supplement for the PBtA game Dungeon World.

This little book is 76, digest-size pages, and had such a simple pitch:

The Perilous Wilds combines Dungeon World's approach to collaborative world-building with the old-school RPG reliance on random tables to generate content on the fly, woven together by modifications to the original Dungeon World travel moves. The main differences between the use of tables in The Perilous Wilds and their use in older RPGs is an emphasis on exploration and discovery over combat encounters, and the baked-in methodology of using randomized results as prompts rather than facts, to be interpreted during play. The collaborative map-making guidelines and all of the tables are system-neutral (usable with any RPG rules). Although the tables are structured to tie directly into the rewritten travel moves, they can be used in any game in which a fantastical landscape is explored.

It was in this little book where I found a concept that was, perhaps not new, but one that I was incredibly taken with. Letting the players draw the map, and by extension, the world.

Starting from a discussion of the fiction of your world, be it a village on the frontier or even en media res as you emerge from a ruin temple into the wilds, you had your players a blank sheet of paper with a simple X on the map that says you are here. From there, you start with the youngest character in the party and proceed clockwise around the table. Each player is given the opportunity to add a region to the map, be they a swath of land or a sea, defined by either their prevailing terrain type or political boundaries, and then give that region a name. This step can be repeated as many times around the table as you like, but eventually you have to move on.

From there, each player is asked to places to the map. Areas, Steadings, and Sites get injected into the map, starting from the Fiction of which character is the most well traveled. Areas are like sub-regions, calling out interesting exceptions to a Region's overall theme. Steadings label the settlements of the territory, its villages, towns, keeps, or cities. Sites meanwhile, create your points of interest and landmarks. Each of these is meant to be given a brief description and name, the process continuing until everyone is satisfied with the amount.

After this the Oldest Character steps up and begins adding personal places. The book asks them to name two things: The place the character calls home and a place the character finds significant to them. These can be places already on the map, or newly named and added details like in the previous step, but the question must be answered of each: why? Why does your character choose to dwell where they do? What important thing happened to you at the point you've marked on the map? It tells you to shape the fiction of both the world and the character by considering such a simple but necessary detail.

After that, each player gets the chance to add connectors to the map in the form of roads, rivers, paths, or leylines. Anything that can be reasonably considered to connect to places within the world. Name it now, or name it later, but they must be drawn on the map as you further define the territory.

Finally, the book asks the most knowledgeable character to begin the process of sharing rumors and legends. Something the character has heard about any place on the map, but something that no one in the party can be sure to be true or false. The rumors must be noteworthy and provocative, the book advises, but each player has the chance to add to the depth of the fiction. Cutely, the book even offers the following advice:

This conversation might happen in character, or not. Ask clarifying questions; chide the speaker for giving any credence whatever to such malarkey; whistle in awe at the very idea.

And meanwhile the book itself speaks directly to the Game Master and asks you consider which of these rumors is really true, and what does that mean for the world?

All of this is excellent advice, and the procedure itself has been fun and engaging to work with every time I have put it to use in one of my games. It's also one of the primary reasons that I took to Fabula Ultima with such gusto, after reading that game's own advice and procedure on how to build a world. The two products are aligned in their ideals of what it means to create a world for cooperative storytelling, and the similarities in their process was striking.

But it goes beyond merely that.

The book is filled to the brim with interesting mechanics for the game Dungeon World, including new rules for followers and overland travel, Moves for handling the weather and compendium classes for your players to level into, but even past the mechanics built specifically for one game in particular, there are so many tables and system agnostic little details.

There's a Monster maker, a Discovery generator, Steading creator, and so much more. There are tables for creating quirks and details for people, places, and things, and a section that provides a whole array of rules for generating dungeons on the fly who's details can be fleshed out as you go and it's layout can be easily represented by a flowchart rather than meticulous lines drawn on graph paper.

And most importantly, the book simply tells you to trust your gut.

Yes, it offers you advice on how to prep between sessions, but it advises that a little bit of prep can go a long way. You don't need to worry about having all of the answers. Your campaign bible need not be so thick that you could bludgeon someone to death with it. All you really need is a sense of what is happening in the world and your gut instinct as a storyteller. You really only have to take a step back think more deeply on the game, its Fronts and its people and places, if you begin to sense instability in the world's fabric that you or your players find intolerable. With practice, the book says, you shouldn't need more than an hour or so between sessions to make the minimal, necessary notes for what comes next.

It's an excellent little tome, and one which I still use to this day, even though we're not currently playing any Dungeon World games. The tables provide me with rich inspiration and quick in-game answers to the question of what comes up during exploration. Its dungeon generation system has taught me that in theater of the mind play, a node map can be just as useful as a real one.

And when I feel my dedication to the ideal of collaborative world building and storytelling slipping because I want more answers or more control, I flip through its pages and read its advice as a reminder that we don't have to live in the castles that Gygax built any longer.

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #Perilous Wilds #Dungeon World #inspiration #random tables #collaborative storytelling #world building #fabula ultima #pbta

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