Hey [%target] Whatcha Playin'?

[Friday]

One thing that stands out to me about HP is it's one of the only YA stories where the premise is flipped: The heroes are the force for the world as it exists and the villain is the one who wants to change things. I'm not on He Who Shall Not Be Nosed side, of course, but even the most terrible trite YA stuff generally casts the plucky average but exceptional boring looking beautiful clumsy exceedingly capable teen girl as going up AGAINST the terrible world's status quo and the dystopian authoritarians. It's usually some distant sci-fi bullshit, but will have something to say about the policies of the world/society now. Even in Twilight the MC and her "I still date high school girls at 40" boyfriend go up against the fucked up established order.

Meanwhile the Wizarding World is presented as a good thing that must be preserved and Noseless Guy as a bad change force.

JK Rowling's bias is showing there, I think. She likes the status quo, the world the way it is. So she invents a schnozzle-challenged dark lord that wants to bring back Nazi Germany, Wizard edition. Meanwhile like every other hack YA at least recognizes that the world we live in could use some fucking improvement.

[Thad]

And where she does indicate there's room for improvement, it's often deeply fucking confused (House Elves).

I'll at least grant she does a pretty good job depicting the rise of fascism as the result of institutionalists refusing to see the threat even when it's right in front of them.

[Upthorn]

By the end of the series, Tonks was a married, fully binary woman, softer and gentler, letting her husband feminize her as “Dora” — a name she’d previously hated.

That's, uh, not where Tonks is at the end of the series.

"By" and "at" don't mean the same thing, though?

Or does Tonks grow out of the aforementioned binary feminine phase?
(I honestly don't know. I positively couldn't stand HP, so I never read the books or watched the movies)

[KingRoyal]

Tonks dies in the final book

[Upthorn]

Does this undermine the essay's point that Tonks' character arc is to go from rebellious genderqueer to soft woman?

[beatbandito]

If anything, getting pointlessly killed of at the end defines her as still a queer character.

[Thad]

Does this undermine the essay's point that Tonks' character arc is to go from rebellious genderqueer to soft woman?

No, my point was that on top of all the other ways the last book does her dirty, it kills her off for no real narrative purpose.

[KingRoyal]

Kills her off page, too. I believe Harry just happens upon Tonks and Remus's bodies after a battle, right?

[KingRoyal]

I keep wanting to get into Caves of Qud because the aesthetics are nice and exploring a procedural RPG world sounds fun, but I keep encountering strong roguelike-bullshit in the first dungeon where a regular, run-of-the-mill monster I've already killed a dozen times just gets a series of really good dice rolls and instantly ends my run.

[François]

Early game Qud is trying really hard to teach you that investing in survivability is important. There is nothing in Red Rock or the rust wells that's actually very hard to kill, so you're not punished for giving yourself high Toughness or choosing defense/escape options in your initial pick of implants or mutations. I'd recommend going out of your way to choose tanky builds until you have enough experience with the game to know what trade-offs are worth making. Besides, strong offensive options will become available as you level up and find gear. Focus on durability, and your caution will be rewarded.

Armor tends to be more valuable than dodge for a while (until you start encountering more foes with attacks that don't care about armor), so don't turn up your nose at the early armor options that reduce your dodge value. Even with high dodge, something's going to hit you at some point, so make sure you have the HP and armor not to crumple up instantly.

Also, that one zealot in Joppa telling you to visit the Six Day Stilt is there for a reason. You don't have to worry about the watervines or Argyve's quests right away. If you get a couple levels and some basic gear hunting down random snapjaw parties in the salt marshes (and trade the extra stuff for fresh water), you can then go a little ways west into the desert and head north to the Stilt. You'll almost certainly be attacked by Issachari raiders on the way, but they're not hard to kill (they live in the literal salt dunes, they're not wearing much armor) and the rifles they drop can carry you for a long time. And the Stilt itself is worth the trip.

[Mongrel]

Wait... you can't sell ammunition in GTA Horse?!

Well, that sure was a design decision, I guess.

[beatbandito]

Besides, strong offensive options will become available as you level up and find gear. Focus on durability, and your caution will be rewarded.

who needs to invest in offense when you can invest in bio engineering and graft 64 psychic-powered atomic howitzers to your arms

[Mongrel]

Last night I went down south to Rhodes, which, between various set subplot events (Billy Midnight, the Gunsmith's story), and several hilarious random events leading to mischance (e.g. Arthur goes to the Parlour to get a meal, gangers come in and start shit, so I beat the shit out of them... but the barman fled. So much for a nice dinner.), Arthur has decided that Rhodes is an accursed town full of lunatics.

Oh, but my eyes lit up like a molotov when I realized the gang down in Lemoyne is just the KKK.

[Destynova]

The downside of having a Samsung A13. No Genshin,Nikke or Fate like the cool kids are playing.

[Friday]

Oh, but my eyes lit up like a molotov when I realized the gang down in Lemoyne is just the KKK.

One of the best parts of playing RDR2 is how unapologetically anti-racism/Leftist Rockstar is; they go out of their way to paint the racist dipshits of the time as pathetic idiots who you receive no dishonor from doing whatever you want to them. There's a couple of sidequests that deal with the remnants of slavery in 1899 America, and the message is clear: not only are slavers evil, they're pathetic losers.

[Mongrel]

I definitely noticed the times they clearly eschewed period accuracy to remove racist language, like Micah, who is very very obviously racist, only refers to the black characters as "Darkies" or says "Kid" instead of what he would almost certainly say, and I'm pretty sure there wouldn't have been much objection if they did have a racist character say "Boy". Or the railroad foremen referring to the work gang as "Orientals". They do work some other words in when it's perfectly appropriate, like Lenny explaining how he "almost got lynched".

They're little moments that kind of remind you this is a modern game, so you could call it "jarring", but at the same time, hey, black kids and asian kids and all sorts are gonna actually play this and how are they gonna feel if it's not only starring a white protagonist, but is constantly racist to them? It's not like this takes place in real US states or cities anyway, so no one should be throwing up some bullshit about perfect accuracy (I'm not gonna go looking, but I bet a non-zero number of white kids were Mad and whined about how "They should be saying n-----!"), but more importantly, if characters in the game are racist, it's still VERY OBVIOUS, because it's not about exact words, it's about attitudes and those are still very clear no matter which words they use.

As for killing Rebs, I also noticed that the game also doesn't seem to mind if you kill any of the Deliverance gang (and yes, I saw they even had an obligatory banjo player... looking like the goddamned L4D spitter, lol).

[François]

Besides, strong offensive options will become available as you level up and find gear. Focus on durability, and your caution will be rewarded.

who needs to invest in offense when you can invest in bio engineering and graft 64 psychic-powered atomic howitzers to your arms

That is a life goal for sure but it's not necessarily actionable advice for someone whose experience with the game so far appears to have been repeatedly getting ganked by snapjaws rolling twenties while trying to get Mehmet-senpai to notice him.

[KingRoyal]

Thank you for the advice. I will stop beating my head against Red Rocks for now and go see what else lies in this world

[Mongrel]

The books you find your camp-mates reading are so fucking brilliant, like obviously they're absolutely ridiculous-overkill sorts of parodies, but at the same time, the dime-store novels of the era could be so bad that they're simultaneously somehow still in the realm of possibility. Fits right in with all the other small parodies on everything, in the catalogues, recipe pamphlets ("sheep manure, dried and brewed into tea is a great cure for *list of ailments*"), and everything else is really on the nose with being silly as fuck but somehow still perfectly fitting the grandiose bombast and melodramatic hyperbole of the era's print media.

Hosea's "Crime Novel" is of course the best out of all these (or rather the most "explosive"), but the horrible not-Bronté one of the ladies is reading is pretty great too.

Like, props to whoever wrote all this (listed somewhere ass-deep in the credits, I guess), they really have the tone of all the environmental writing just right.

[atog]

Waiting my turn to play through, thinking of all the oldey-tymey classified ads for mail-order patent medicines, replete with florid, bogus testimonials from satisfied customers and fellow druggists: "I haven't been able to move my bowels in about 16 years, due to a war wound. Our doctor had exhausted his supply of purgatives, enemas, blasting caps, &c. My son brought back a bottle of DR. HIRAM'S FLUXICATING TONIC while in Boston on business. As soon as I had my first dose, our lost bird dog, Sonofabitch, came loping up the driveway as if he'd never left and gone missing for 3 months. Then, my neighbour brought back the lawn mower he borrowed 25 years ago and since has insisted it was his all along. To cap it all off, our daughter is expecting triplets and I found a hundred dollars in an old coat pocket. From our entire family - THANKS Dr. Hiram for changing my life in so many ways! I'm writing this while in the outhouse in hopes the excitement alone will bear fruit. You should order yours today!"