#and I'm glad of it

[demongirlgarlicbread]

Paradox games are.. interesting. We can put it like that. I'm talking specifically about the propensity for doing truly abominable thing within the world of the game. Stellaris and it's intergalactic slavery and genocide. Hearts of Iron and how it lets you establish a fascist regime over all the world. Crusader Kings and how you can get.. well.. medieval. And Europa Universalis, where you engage in colonial expansion and genocide as a matter of course.

EU4 stands out as the most uncomfortable to play, when you sit back from the ducats and the development and the drilling.

It's not like Stellaris, where the scales are too big to ever really grasp what you're doing. There's too much abstraction. You can't look at a pop and say "this is X amount of people I've enslaved or condemned to genocide."

It's not like Hoi4, where in the interests of creating a wargaming experience, the only relevance fascism has to the game is the alliances your country makes, the type of puppet state you establish, and the buffs you get from your focus tree. TNO is as of yet the only Hoi4 experience we've had that grapples with fascism. What it means, what it does, what it is. And it's in essence a visual novel grafted onto the game, near completely divorced from the standard experience. One of the stories it tells is in fact a repudiation of the standard Hoi4 experience, that of a world conquest. What does that say about the game?

CK2, on the other hand, is very personal. The stories you tell with the game are about people, after all. Love, lust, rage, hatred. Scheming, fighting, praying. Cruelty, kindness, apathy, fervor. It does the opposite of the two games mentioned above, and brings into sharp focus the individual lives of the rulers. Every part of the mechanics and the flavor is centered around telling the tale of an individual monarch and their dynasty.

And that's an interesting question, mechanics. How do the mechanics of a game influence your experience with it? And I'm not talking about the basic functions of mechanics here or anything. I'm not talking about whether or not the game is fun to play, or well designed. I'm talking about the way the interaction of the mechanics with the setting of the game influences the way you think about it.

In Stellaris, you think about the grand scale. Of great empires, of massive economies. You're far beyond the concerns of manpower. Far beyond the focus of the individual on the ground. You have no time for that. There are stars to explore, civilizations to conquer, and a galaxy to colonize. Stellaris is a very dehumanizing game. The closest you get to stories on the ground are events talking about large societal trends, or the archaeological digs. I don't think anything with your leaders counts, really. They're paragons, isolates, and more representative of groups than they are themselves. Stellaris isn't a game about people. It's a game about civilizational machines, beyond your ability to comprehend.

In Hoi4, you think about war. Your goal is to get to a war economy and a high conscription law as fast as possible, produce as much war material as you can, and then go about the business of fighting the second world war. Hoi4 is so incredibly focused on war in its mechanics that it presents an utterly alien dichotomy the moment you sit down to think about it. You, the commander in chief of this nation of many millions of people, are actively encouraged to rush towards the death of millions. Because doing right by your country, fighting a limited war, only doing as much as is necessary to defend yourself to ensure the best life for your people, that's not only boring, it's non-optimal gameplay. This is exacerbated to such a degree that it's the opinion of most persons that the democratic nations, the most passive and reactive nations, are the most unfun to play. You are encouraged by the mechanics of the game and how it provides enjoyment to be a warmongering tyrant, because fighting war is the purpose of the thing. For a game about the second world war, it seems incredibly uninterested in actually portraying anything but the most surface level, historybro understanding of it. Particularly when it comes to atrocity. It's a game about civilizational machines, grinding into one another and desperately asking you to forget about the civilian dead.

Then EU4. It's a game that starts in 1444, and ends in 1836, and chronicles the history of the world in a wholly and entirely eurocentric manner. Your goal is not so much to conquer the world(though you may) but to become a dominant global power through your mastery of science, diplomacy, the economy, snd the military. As one might expect, one of the primary mechanics of this game is colonization. Another primary mechanic is culture and religion. Like all things in EU4, these mechanics can be somewhat labyrinthine to those who are inexperienced with the game. So I'll spare any readers an in depth dissertation on how it works. The gist of things is that each province has a religion and a culture, representing the beliefs and way of life of those living there. Ethnicity too, one might presume. When you colonize a territory, you over the course of a number of years turn it from a stateless, uncontrolled province to one with your own culture and religion. Except, the land is not uninhabited. It is with only a very few exceptions, never uninhabited. There are people there. Cultures and religions. Helpfully marked down with population stats, as well as 'aggressiveness' and 'ferocity' stats to let any potential colonizers know what to expect. As though these people are simply animals, and should be dealt with like animals.

When you colonize, of course, people will fight back. Native uprisings, they're called. So you need to station troops there, to protect your invasion and your genocide. But since your troops can only be in so many places at once, well. Wouldn't it be nice if there was some way to get the inevitable fight over with? In comes the 'attack natives' button, marked with a helpful graphic of a stylized man wearing a stylized war bonnet running from a stylized sword. With one to three applications of sword mana, you can commit genocide at your leisure, and reduce the population in the province to zero so your settlers have an easier time of things.

And so the game goes. For captured territory, there's a religion conversion button and a culture conversion button. The mechanics, through their simulation of people simply desiring to be free, make it optimal to crack down, restrict autonomy, crush rebellions, and homogenize all religion and culture. You are playing as an absolutist monarch, after all. Though even the republics aren't any better, because they're under the same mechanical pressures as the monarchies.

So it's interesting, how these mechanics influence your view of the world that the game presents. You get to see, in close to real time, how your empire snuffs out peoples and cultures and faiths, all for the sake of power and money. And these are good things for you, the player. Because the good numbers go up, and the bad numbers go down. You make more money, you have to deal with less unrest, and your name on the map grows larger. Press button, kill people, receive dopamine. All in a way that's so incredibly difficult to divorce yourself from, because the mechanics invite you to actively take part in the atrocities. And they make them fun. And satisfying. And it's on a scale that is very, very, very possible to comprehend. It's a game about civilizational machines crushing peoples under their heels, all while inviting you to look and see with just enough detail to make out the dead.

If you're going to play Paradox games, then you need to go into them knowing damn well what the difference is between what they're portraying and how they're portraying it. So you don't reduce the very real people who survived the horrors of colonialism to numbers on a screen.

[fan-fangirl-world]

Capcom: We’re gonna have VILLAGE Golden Edition, now with the Winter’s expansion.

Fans: So the poster promos are gonna be about the Winters right?

Capcom: yeah, right...

Also Capcom:

Love they keep on giving us Chris but so far we don’t even know if the 3rd person is gonna be for both Ethan and Chris.

[shoomlah]

I have a feeling that beneath the little halo on your noble head There lies a thought or two the devil might be interested to know You're like the finish of a novel that I'll finally have to take to bed You fascinate me so

You Fascinate Me So, Blossom Dearie

[liquidstar]

If my mom sees a significant amount of blood she gets lightheaded, and has fainted on some occasions. Once it happened when we were kids, I wasn't there to witness it but I heard the story from my dad. Basically my brothers, around 7 or 8 at the time, were playing outside while my mom was making their lunch, and she accidentally cut her finger. It wasn't anything serious, but it drew a fair bit of blood and she passed out. My dad saw this and rushed over, but he didn't really know what to do so he just sort of started slapping her to wake her up (not recommended, but he had no idea and panicked)

At that exact moment my brothers both came in from playing, and all they saw was our mom unconscious on the floor and our dad slapping her. So, like, without even saying a word to each other they both just INSTANTLY start whaling on him, like, full blown attack mode to defend our mom. Which obviously didn't help the situation, but she did wake up and everything was fine.

Now our dad says that he's actually really glad they attacked him over what they thought was going on, because it means he raised good boys. And I still think that's true, they're very good boys.

[mysticdragon3md3]

Ngl i prefer the 2016 version purple on the right.

[savagegood]

“Did you see the way that little girl looked at me? Kids. Little kids. They grow up believing that they can be a hero if they drive a sword into the heart of anything different. And I’m the monster? I don’t know what’s scarier. The fact that everyone in this kingdom wants to run a sword through my heart or that sometimes I just wanna let ‘em.” “We have to get you out of here. Over the wall. We won’t stop until we find some place safe, okay? We’ll go. Together. No matter what we do, we can’t change the way people see us.” “You changed the way you see me... Didn’t you?

NIMONA (2023), based on the comic by ND Stevenson, who came out as transgender in 2022

[galaxylover06]

Anybody care for some little ponies?

Made the sonic one a couple days ago and ended up loving it, so now there's a tails and Amy to match, making an AU I suppose. Enjoy!

Edit: realized an AU needs a name, I've decided on

"MLP: Friendship got Faster"

[nereb-and-dungalef]

Mongolian history class, 2022, start of the semester. We're having a discussion on animal slaughter, featuring the one Mongolian student in our school.

The student explains that he's slaughtered animals himself, and there are two ways of doing it that avoid the spilling of blood. For a small animal like a chicken, you reach up into the chest of the animal and sever the arteries. For a larger animal like a camel, there's a spot on the forehead that, when hit hard enough, causes the animal to die instantly.

While this discussion is going on, a couple of the students are sharing something back and forth on their phone

The professor calls this out, asking if what they're sharing is more interesting than Mongolian animal slaughter

The room is dead silent for a few seconds. The two students look at each other awkwardly.

Eventually, one of the students pipes up:

"Well, the queen of England just died."

And without missing a beat, another student:

"Did they hit her on the head like a camel?"

[fox-mulder-gets-pegged]

I just wanna say bc I KNOW you're somewhere on tumblr, to the teenage girl who attended Take Your Kid To Work Day at an office building in Ontario, Canada circa 2013 and had a conversation with a middle aged woman in which you showed her your Black Veil Brides fanart and fanfics and ship content and told her about different fanfic tropes including a/b/o verse bc she happened to know who Panic! at The Disco and Fallout Boy were and thus you felt the need to show her your bandblr ship art, that was my fucking mother and I had to clarify all that to her including looking my mother in the eye and trying to explain a/b/o verse without sounding like a lunatic.

It's been 10 years and I still regularly sent evil energies in your direction. Since you'd be probably two years younger than me and thus legally an adult now, please know if this post reaches you it's on sight.

[sashasluggo]

now THIS.

This is yuri

[monotcchi]

dragon roast dreamin' 🍖💨✨

[reasonsforhope]

Sometimes you just have one of those moments where the progress we've made as a culture get thrown into stark relief. You look at something and go "Holy shit, that would never have happened when I was a kid."

Today, I had one of those moments when I realized that the teenage boys I'm working with are just. genuinely, openly enthusiastic about going to Build-a-Bear for their outing.

These are sixteen and seventeen year old boys! They just had a whole conversation about what to name their "cute", mostly new squishmallows! They're genuinely excited that they're going to Build-a-Bear this weekend and asking other kids to pick up specific accessories for them!!

Holy shit, that never would've happened when I was 16. None of the boys would have dared to be visibly interested - and neither would most of the girls! There would have been a million gay jokes and "Haha, you're a girl" jokes and "What are you, a baby?" jokes. Teenagers weren't even supposed to care about anything back then!

Less than 15 years later, and I'm watching three 17 year old boys treat all that as not even worthy of comment.

So let's call that a reason for hope. Even when the kids aren't alright, in some ways apparently they are alright. Go Gen Z, honestly. It's so lovely to watch you guys just openly doing and saying stuff that, when I was a teen, would've been a social death sentence.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

not "i ship these characters" or "i want them to bond platonically" but a secret 3rd thing (I want them to be forced to interact by the Narrative bc they would HATE that)

[nouverx]

Obligatory Alastor and Niffty art because their little moment in the finale was everything to me I can't wait to see them interact more in the next seasons

Also bonus sketch bc I just know he kept the crown on the whole evening

[yesokayiknow]

i know we won't but GOD i hope he never tells her he's an alien i hope we have a whole series of ruby thinking he's just a time travelling human until he gets hurt and is like ohhhhhh ruby love can you check my pulses and she's like check your fucking what now

[saradiation]

Hey it's that time of the year again :D

HAPPY 413! 🎂