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“It Is an Honor to Be Suspended for Palestine”

Dispatches from the Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University

https://crimethinc.com/Columbia2024

In this in-depth report, participants offer a blow-by-blow account of the events at Columbia, appraising the tactics that the demonstrators have employed and the challenges that they face.

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I want to talk about how Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves is an excellent use of meta humor applied seamlessly to a story without ever breaking immersion.

Mild spoilers. I'll keep it vague so nothing will be spoiled if you choose to read on

This movie integrates many things that someone familiar with D&D would recognize from the narrative structure of a campaign.

There are some things in particular that demonstrate this particularly well

At one point, the party is joined temporarily by the character Xenk. But he really feels like he'd be an NPC party member controlled by the GM rather than a player. So when the other characters banter and quip, this character doesn't really join in or get their jokes cuz he simply wouldn't have the agency to. More examples of this would be how he's much more capable than the others, but he doesn't overshadow them. He provides aid if it's desperately needed, and will sometimes bail rhe party out of situations they can't manage on their own, just like how a GM should utilize an NPC companion. He even has a quote that perfectly reflects this. "I've given you the tools. Now you have to be the ones to use them". There's even a more direct joke about his NPC behavior. When he leaves the story, he walks off in a random direction, going straight forward, even stepping over obstacles and terrain unnecessarily. This all amounts to him feeling like a very clear GM controlled NPC, however he is presented in a way that still makes him feel entirely faithfull to his own world and does not break immersion

Other ways the movie plays around with the GM campaign structure would be the approach to backstory. The only time a character outright explains what their backstory is, in full, directly to us, is at the very start, to give context for the story going forward, as the character even puts it himself. Backstory later in the movie is told to us whenever it's relevant. Characters will toss in another fact or two about themselves in situations where mentioning a past experience would fit in. Much like how players usually prefer to build their characters.

And one of my favorite instances of being meta about D&D campaign structures comes in the second act.

the characters are faced with a complex and dangerous obstacle. The GM's stand in, xenk, explains the method of progressing through this obstacle correctly. But in true D&D fashion, the party immediately does it wrong and now the campaign has been derailed and the GM's setup squandered. So now they straight up don't have a way forward in the narrative. Logically, it should end there. But that'd be a shit campaign, so the GM would naturally bend the rules to get things back on track. So after the party fails the obstacle, one of them goes; "Hang on, that stick we've had with us the entire time isn't a stick after all! It's actually a magic staff that solves our EXACT predicament at this EXACT time". That is such a clear cut meta joke about GM's having to get things back on track cuz players are all chaotic evil. Is it a plot contrivance? Absolutely. One of the biggest ever. But it's what D&D is built on

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As a person of colour, Toshiro is so unbelievably relatable once you realize the reasons and emotions behind his actions. He's been microaggressed upon p much all the time down to the name people call him, but he continues to be silent about it because of the cultural pressure he was raised on of having to be polite and kind and not to speak his true thoughts.

I can relate so hard to his jealousy about laios being able to be more open and confident and speak his mind. I can never bring myself to dislike him at all esp during the laios/toshiro fight because both of them are coming from very real relatable places to me. Its a nuanced conflict. Toshiro has a lot of pent up emotions he needed to get out for all the reasons i said before. And laios was rightfully upset about Toshiro not seeing him the same way he sees him and hiding all of this from him. Both of these guys are in the wrong in this situation. It's not a good guy / bad guy thing.

They both are different kinds of autistic people under different circumstances and I can honestly relate to them both on different things.

Also the scene right after dude gives him the bell and gives them a way out if things were to get bad. And with that we see he obviously cares for laios and the rest of the party despite everything.

All in all. Love u Toshiro they could never make me hate u !!

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Details on Omar As'ad's murder

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🇵🇸💚 Journalists in North Gaza request water, get full meal, “This is just how we are. These are our traditions!”

🔸 Source: eye on palestine (main post), mahmoud._.shalha20 (footage) and translatingfalasteen (translation)

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writing my first ever fic and its almost at 5k words wow!! !

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5 more notes already, too late for this fool

i once went to vegas as a child pre smart phones and there was a store in one of the hotels selling gold and diamond phones and i walked right in and pointed at one and said hey can i hold that i might be interested in it and the worker looked at 10 year old me and asked if i could afford it and i told him well ma has been extra generous with the lunch money lately and i've been putting a little away each day and i hadn't checked interest in a bit and he said the phone cost $50k and i stood there and thought for a moment and said well i'll have to do a couple extra chores around the neighborhood but i could handle that if i could do a payment plan and he asked me what kind of chores i did to make so much money and he did not like me answering "burglary"

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investing at 12 notes, I see great potential in this post

i once went to vegas as a child pre smart phones and there was a store in one of the hotels selling gold and diamond phones and i walked right in and pointed at one and said hey can i hold that i might be interested in it and the worker looked at 10 year old me and asked if i could afford it and i told him well ma has been extra generous with the lunch money lately and i've been putting a little away each day and i hadn't checked interest in a bit and he said the phone cost $50k and i stood there and thought for a moment and said well i'll have to do a couple extra chores around the neighborhood but i could handle that if i could do a payment plan and he asked me what kind of chores i did to make so much money and he did not like me answering "burglary"

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Master doc that contains different resources and support for many countries including Palestine, Congo, Haiti, Hawai’i, etc ((op is underneath the link))

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Fuck Israel and fuck everyone who still wants to pretend this is confusing or complicated. Is it really that hard to point out the "bad people" in a scenario where a multi-billion military apparatus is handcuffing and killing children and medical staff inside a fucking hospital?

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i think the way tiktok and tumblr (yes i am unifying these two sites together for this, for shame!) talk about autism and adhd (n honestly ocd too) as this quirky party trick has really damaged The Youths, at least in america (n they enact that damage on the rest of us, per usual)

like you guys will CONTINUE as usual to mock n harass anyone who is slightly "weird" or "offputting" bc well YOURE autistic and YOU dont do that, so it must be a them problem. well, YOU live on your own and YOU have a job and YOU have tons of friends and YOU go to uni and YOU go to the club and YOU arent weird. its not an "autism thing", this persons just weird. weird for being a picky eater, for using scripts in conversations, for avoiding crowded places n having meltdowns while in them, for living w their parents or in assisted living, for going on about their special interests, for missing social ques, for speaking "weird", for stimming, for having little or no friends, for being unemployed, for having motor issues, for being nonverbal, for not being able to handle the school/academy system, for being autistic.

THEYRE clearly just weird, THEYRE wrong for exhibiting signs and symptoms of autism. their autism is WRONG and WEIRD and OFFPUTTING. YOURE autistic and YOU dont do that, so its clearly "not about autism".

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toshiro is also autistic and clearly envies how much laios doesn't mask and is able to say whatever he's thinking outright (he literally says so after their fight). and he was raised as like a minor lord or whatever in feudal japan so he learned to mask early on and that combination of masking + raised in a high-context culture + being in a foreign land with different etiquette means that he'll go through herculean levels of discomfort to not upset any perceived group balance and only snaps when he's like three days away from dropping dead. which is also something he sees in falin btw and is a big reason why he's drawn to her. imo

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My friend Mona has asked me to share her story with you all.

Here's the link to the evacuation gofundme. They're very close to their goal. They legitimately only have less than 10k USD left to go before all 9 of them can evacuate.

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i hope that the discussion about student protests does not get reduced to "privileged rich kids faffing around at an ivy league school." setting aside that tenuous claim, over the last week, protests have erupted over the entire country. a few days ago, riot police beat, pepper-sprayed, and arrested NYU faculty shielding students; protests started at the university of southern california when the admin cancelled the valedictorian's speech; encampments appeared at the university of southern carolina, UT dallas, the university of maryland, the university of new mexico, IUPUI, virginia tech, the university of virginia, the university of illinois, the university of north carolina — chapel hill, the university of pittsburgh, uc berkeley, the university of michigan — ann arbor, MIT, emerson, tufts, the university of rochester, rice, swarthmore, the new school, vanderbilt university, with students arrested; students protested or walked out at miami university, northwestern, temple, the 5 claremont colleges: pomona, pitzer, scripps, harvey mudd, and claremont mckenna, stanford, washington university in st louis, students were arrested at ohio state, students were confronted by riot police at cal poly humboldt, after which they occupied campus, students were arrested at the university of minnesota — twin cities, after which faculty walked out; and yes, there are protests at the other ivies, most notably yale, with students facing mass arests after encampments, but there is also an encampment at brown, protests appeared at cornell, princeton faculty issued a statement of solidarity while students are preparing an encampment, and harvard banned the undergraduate palestine solidarity committee. there are thousands of students who are protesting for palestine across the entire country, facing harassment, arrest, and suspension in return

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Person created

@venerabledreadnought @ohlookaperson @feeblephrog

Starting a picrew chain because I'm bored as hell

here is the picrew :)

And a not entirely accurate Luigi <3

A silly goofy fact for you all<3: All of my shirt collars give or take a few shirts are chewed up like that lmao

I'm tagging (but if you want to join go ahead<3): @fvcking-stupid-666 @dawntones & @acetheidiotinacloset