Skulldrinker
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User ID: 1874
Skulldrinker
11d ago
My impression is that telling obvious lies to temporarily confuse people is more in the Russian national character than the Iranian national character.
Skulldrinker
8d ago
I find this satisfactory, the MC isn't a Girlboss and the black guy is more morally ambiguous than people of color are typically allowed to be. It's just good.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
It's not ugly women and pathetic men that makes the score go up, it's just interacting with SBI, and corporate decision-makers see no reason NOT to chase ESG, since to them "quality" is a vague untrackable nonsense term uncorrelated with the financial success of a product, but ESG rating IS trackable and legible
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
Game writing was dreck before these consultants and is so now, too. The reason for this is simple - almost all game writers are D&D geeks who almost exclusively read science fiction and fantasy garbage and have no understanding of classical literature or even film to broaden their ability. Everything is a Marvel movie to them because it’s all they know.
D&D geeks have been writing nothing but in-jokes and sci-fi references since before MCU films were good, and WAY before they were bad. I'm surprised you didn't use the boo-word "capeshit." Being incredibly derivative and tropey are would be an improvement over woke writing.
Skulldrinker
30d ago
I stopped using social media to connect with real people in 2015 because most of them just posted links to progressive ragebait and it was making me hate them. I even moved to a new city, met a bunch of new people, added them on facebook, and had to unfollow them because otherwise my feed was inundated with propaganda instead of details of their lives.
but it's a lot if you think of them as real people actually becoming friends with you each year.
But they're not friends.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
One morning at a farmer's market, in front of our families and newborn babies, I said I didn't like the new Star Trek and another liberal father there started yelling at me at the top of his lungs in public about the importance of punching fascist.
I remember the day I said The Last Jedi wasn't very good and some 40something mom said I was just against strong role models for girls. I told her to go back to the internet and take her opinions with her. It was a big moment for me, because politics intruded on one of my favorite hobbies; bitching about film and TV.
Skulldrinker
2mo ago
Isn't that a bit of an absurd leap? Both towards cutting off power to the rest of the country and assassinating governors. Neither Biden nor Abbot are tryhard fedposters fantasizing about the Boogaloo, they're elected officials with investment portfolios and re-election campaigns.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
She got subtly uglied between game 1 and 2. She also ditched all her (masculine) friends and allies from game 1 and replaced them with PoC simps.
And after going through the effort of making a post-racial future with new societies to be the cast of heroes and antagonists (the 1st game bad guys were Carja political extremists being manipulated by an AI) , in the 2nd game they brought in DBZ floating space hwite people to be the villains, complete with a floating crew-cut southern-accent straight white male goon. Everything about 2 just fucking bugged me.
Also, how many spunky oseram wrench-wenches who are way better at engineering than the men but are fighting against patriarchy do you need? I'd say two, three max, because I like wrech wenches. You dont need 8.
Exchanging text messages is not a way to get to know anyone, and for people who apparently want to be texted, women are singularly bad at contributing to a text conversation. I do not know what being "interesting" means in this context. The only thing I can imagine is generic faux-deep prompt questions about if you can ever can't literally really. Whenever I see examples of successful online dating text conversations, it looks like two animals grunting at each other.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
I've stopped using Hinge and can't bring myself to try again because every time I do, the same thing happens; I get a reasonable number of matches and likes, frankly more Likes than make sense. I'll have a short conversation, ask for a date, get a yes. Then the day of the date, she bails, sometimes with apologies, always without suggesting an alternate date. If I ask for another date, she says yes, next week rolls around and she bails the day of. This cycle continues until I take the hint and stop asking. I do not know how to get this to stop happening. I also don't get why I don't hear this complaint from other people; typically they complain about getting no matches or not hearing back after the first date.
I've considered completely cutting people off after the first flake. I've considered very tepidly expressing my disappointment at being flaked on. I've considered talking beforehand about how often I get flaked on and asking please please please if they don't want to turn up for a date, then just say that instead of saying yes and then flaking, because I find it way more painful than a "no." None of these strike me as good ideas.
And I live in fucking Chicago of all places.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
Thanks for your analysis, but I think you got a bit schizo at the end trying to symbologically analyze the two houses. And the Agamemnon thing is frankly house mythology; history from our time is barely remembered in the year 10000. A huge chunk of the conflict in DUNE is a straightforward critique of imperialism in the Middle East over oil; CHOAM is OPEC.
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
I remember when a recent whistleblower or leaker or whoever said that a crashed captured UFO was found to contain "Unknown Elements," with no further explanation of what that's supposed to mean, and it very much killed all of my interest in UFOs. We know what an element is even if we haven't seen it before. All the elements on the periodic table are known, or theoretically known. There's no room on the table for an element that isn't an rapid-decaying ultra-heavy metal. Unless we're talking about an incredibly exotic isotope of element 325 that somehow exists for more than 2 seconds and isn't hideously radioactive. Or Element Zero, in which case, I guess we should head to the Charon Relay in the outer system. Is the unknown element he describes a tiny sample in some sort of larger mechanism, like the Freon in a refrigerator? Or is the hull of this thing made of 70% Glorkium? Or did the guy mean elements as in elements of construction? Then I'd love a cursory description of the novel metamaterials that this thing is made of; whatever nanotubules or gels or frictionless fluids or super-conductors it's made of would be super-interesting to just have a cursory description of. Or is this guy just a 'tard that knows "Element" is a science word?
Also, your top-level post is bad and you should feel bad.
Skulldrinker
2mo ago
I'll add that as an Atheist, Ive concluded that politics has become everyone's new religion and I hate it, and I especially hate the progressive/leftist religion. To my mind, I'm the last New Atheist, being a stubborn prickly contrarian against smug sanctimony and moral panic regardless of the mask it wears.
Skulldrinker
2mo ago
Upon watching the first episode, I said "They're doing Strong Female Characters by writing them as though they were men and making sure all the actual men around them are wusses or scumbags or wussie scumbags" and never bothered to watch further. The only thing I liked was how they pushed that everyone in town is depressed and miserable, that part rang true for me from my time living in northern Wisconsin.
I'm amused/vindicated that They are still doing the whole "You don't like our poorly-written show/film/game? You must just hate women and minorities" thing.
Skulldrinker
3mo ago
You're a fucking idiot. I threw away my first love for the same reason, and regret it to this day.
but but it's worth noting that the 2017 Wonder Woman did well despite obviously having a female lead.
Wonder Woman is a girlier Rosie the Riveter and Gal Gadot has a desirable personality. There's a lot more basic appeal there than a film that inexplicably shouts "black girl magic."
The problem isnt putting a chick in it, it's the making her lame and gay.
Edit: And doing it all the time while pretending that it's daring.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
That's my take too; it's in a random OCB quote: Thou shalt not mutilate the human soul.
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
I could have put this in Wellness Wednesday, but I'll phrase this as a question:
When am I allowed to mace a hobo?
The story: I'm working at a food stand at a winter market festival downtown for a month. It's over $25/hr after the copious tips, and short 6-hour shifts, but my ulterior motive is about getting an In with the bar running it, and just to network amongst the Hospitality Folk.
But, this means I'm taking the CTA for a change, and thus keep seeing things that can't be unseen. The other day, there's a ranting man on the opposite platform, wandering up and down it, shouting nonsense. Not old, bent, or decrepit, cheap clothes that are still in one piece. I'm waiting for my train, and see him eventually fixate on a woman and start leaning in to her and gabbling. She stands there frozen and ignores him as he shuffles around her like a giant annoying pigeon. There's a bunch of back-and-forth of this guy wandering away, coming back, going down the stairs, then back up, then looming over her and gabbling at her. I'm staring the whole time with what must have been a thunderous expression, the woman meets my gaze a few times and mouths something once. Both of them are black, incidentally; she looks like a nurse or something adjacent: South-Side Respectable. I'm trying very very hard to control my temper and not escalate the situation, actual physical harm in these situations is pretty rare, this is just emotionally harrowing for the poor woman.
He wanders away a bit and she makes a move for the stairs, I see him start to follow, and I've finally had e-fucking-nough. I go down the stairs and meet her sheltering by the turnstyles. He sees me and stops on the stairs, starts going up and down them, in that attempt to be nonchalant that the mentally ill always fail at. My train is a minute away, she's crying, I say it's okay, and shout to the attendant "Hey, there's a ranty hobo that isn't leaving this woman alone. She needs help."
With my train arriving and my shift starting soon, I go back up to my platform, get on the train, and see though the window that same woman, standing on the platform, crying, while the hobo stands behind her gabbling. She's got her own train to catch. This is what I'm left with as my train leaves the station.
After, of course, I realize the optimal move would have been to being her up to my platform, get on my train til the next hobo-free platform, then continue on her way. My presence alone would probably have dissuaded him. But I didn't want to be late, I didn't want to escalate the situation, and I didn't want to be tempted to beat up a brain-rotted hobo.
Cut to work.
Background: One of my fellow döner-kabob-slingers is a early-30s woman that I was initially a bit taken with; she introduced herself to me as recently-divorced, asked me if I had a partner or not, and just generally paid way more attention to me than I'm accustomed to (which felt good, because it doesn't happen much, which made me sad. But also made me uncomfortable, because of the unfamiliarity of it, which also made me sad.) There's a bit more incidental physical contact from her than necessary. She's skinny and wide-faced and granola-y, we talk about nature and wildlife stuff; she's involved with urban ecology project planning and...equity. Dang. Also, I later overhear her talking about Polyamory or some shit (Polyamory as practiced by women is just laundered Friendzoning/Cucking, Polyamory as practiced my men is just laundered Playa-ing. She wants to fuck around but needs a buzzword for it). So my interest is...reduced. The woman who mutilated my heart in 2019 was also a recently-separated devorcé, fool me once and all that.
Anyways, I arrive at work all bent out of shape and want to talk about it. So I ask my not-crush, as someone who's lived in Chicago for a while, and as a woman, if stuff like that ever happens to her and what bystanders can do to help without making the situation worse. I narrarate the story pretty much as I do here. (I leave out the part about them both being black, it isn't relevant). I'm genuinely looking for advice, but I also want to untangle my feelings, and, yeah, I want to convey to her that I'm the sort of person that struggles to not White Knight.
The first thing she says?
"I think you're trivializing that poor man's mental illness by calling him a gabbling hobo."
The walls go up inside me. She's Orthodox Woke. "Yes, I should have been more technical: Bum, Gabbling Stalker Variant, Able-Bodied."
"You don't understand, access to mental health services has been reduced because Republicans-
"I'll go tell that woman to not cry, then, it's Ronald Reagan's fault for kicking him out of his mental hospital."
So that's the story of how I stopped being attracted to someone.
Just to quickly double-check, I ran this story past a close female friend who moved here from Nebraska, and an apolitical Chicago native bartender, and both had different flavors of "What the actual fuck?" Reactions. She was speechless, he laughed.
Because of stuff that's happened to me, I carry a can of mace on my keys. But I notice my hand going for it in situations like this, where I'm almost looking for an excuse to use it, and I'm worried I'm eventually going to spray a particularly-annoying panhandler in the face.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
Probably an ex.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
This was when the Last Jedi had just come out, and in a Costco. This shit's been going on since way before TikTok.
Skulldrinker
1mo ago
I do this. It apparently serves as a reminder to them that they should cancel the date, since it's typically immediately after this that they cancel.
Skulldrinker
5mo ago
My objection to ethnic swaps is also related to the use of race in (semi)original works; my best recent example is the The Last of Us HBO adaptation, which was overall very good. But I still noticed that no diverse person is ever allowed to be bad,. The closest we got was a reasonable Asian FEDRA school administrator who's technically a fascist, and Marlene, a character that is worshipped by 1/3rd of the cast, is a romantic revolutionary, and who's mild badness is part of the show's entire grey/grey moral choice thing re: Ellie. In "bad" settlement #1, everyone is a beardy Midwestern type you'd see at a MAGA rally, with guns and trucks, and they're obsessed with hunting down one particular guy, who appears to have been the only black man in town (and who has a great moral excuse for ratting on his neighbors, conveniently. In the game, he and his brother weren't being specifically hunted by white people, they were just survivors like the main duo). "bad" settlement #2 is also mono-ethnic. They run into one "good" settlement, which of fucking course calls itself communist and is run by a black woman. It's like Stephen King; black people are so good they're magic. You can always tell who's good and who's bad by where the African-Americans are. The game itself has this too, but it's pretty tame by comparison and I don't have issues with it beyond Noticing.
When you have to have diversity but also can't depict anyone diverse as "bad," all the antagonistic roles get concentrated in the non-diverse characters, and any diverse antagonist that sneaks in has a maudlin excuse that makes them tragic and sympathetic, only the straight white male is capable of just being evil.
Skulldrinker
2mo ago
The standard psychoanalysis review is that stuff like She-Hulk is written by narcissistic women for narcissistic women. Which is an easy/lazy dunk.
Skulldrinker
4mo ago
Why are some young women apparently trying taboo a 22 year old women dating a 28 year old man when they are also disproportionaly hooking up with older men on the dating apps?
People in general are quite capable of saying the thing they think is currently popular, then doing something else. Women on the Internet in particular, but everyone does this, male or female, on the internet or off. Everyone I've seen complaining about "Capitalism, amirite" still has the latest iPhone.
My main noting of Current Year elements of Fallout has been the lack of tits. The only sexuality in the show so far was a full-body above-the-dick male shot. Because if there was a hint of something a heterosexual man might enjoy, someone somewhere would have complained.
Otherwise, good so far.
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