#combat offload

[gothhabiba]

Curious what actions in support of Palestinian liberation you’re engaging in? I’m disabled so participating in physical protests is difficult but I’m not seeing much collective actions that are more accessible to me (other than following BDS company protests, sharing the stories of Palestinians and info about the Israel apartheid state). Maybe I could organize something myself but I’m not even sure what that could look like? Do you have any tips?

educating yourself & being vocal across various social media sites & in your personal life does matter in terms of refusing and combatting rhetoric and disinformation that justifies genocide, including "both-sides" rhetoric

yes, spreading information about & participating in BDS boycotts. tell family & friends. BDS may also have a local chapter near you (note that local chapters may have a different or expanded list of companies to boycott) that you can join & ask how you can help.

contact your representatives (no it's not going to end Israel but it doesn't take much time)

similarly, look for phone zaps taking place in your state. phone zaps organise a good deal of people to call on the same day.

donate to the strike funds or bail funds of labor unions who are blockading arms factories that send weapons to Israel, refusing to offload arms from ships, &c. and spread their links

contact a local labour union or Marxist organisation that's taken an anti-Zionist stance and ask them if there's something you can do to help. some of this might be coördination and organisational work that doesn't require you to leave your home. you're going to be more effective if you link up with other people who are already organising to do work than if you try to organise something yourself without having wide connexions to local labour imo

[saphira-approves]

Okay no I’m not done talking about swords, and their names, because sword names are IMPORTANT okay and they MEAN THINGS—

I rambled in the tags of this post about Eragon and Murtagh naming/renaming their swords to be positive, compared to their fathers’ respective negative sword names, but I want to go further into it.

First is the obvious one, Morzan’s Zar’roc, Misery, and Murtagh’s Ithring, Freedom. I’m almost certain Morzan names his sword as an offensive measure—and I don’t mean offensive as in insulting, I mean it in the combat sense. It’s a curse, almost, upon his enemies: any opponent he faces with this blade will be struck by misery, literally. But one thing we know about Morzan: he’s not particularly wise, and even his best works backfire on him. We see it with Selena, and his confidence that she loves him too much to betray him, so he never warded against her. He named his sword Misery, and Misery is all it brought him: he joined Galbatorix, brought the downfall of the Order, and lost his dragon to nameless madness; he killed Brom’s dragon, making an enemy of the man who once had idolized him and sealing his own demise by Brom’s hand; he threw Misery at his own child and pushed his wife to betray him, which ultimately led to the downfall of everything he had ever worked for. Talk about a curse. He upheld Misery, and Misery came right back to bite him in the ass.

And then Brom took Misery from him, and sequestered it away, and eventually gave it to Eragon without telling him its meaning; and Eragon wielded it without knowing its meaning or history, trying his best to do good with it, and even when he did learn its history and its name he resolved to work to give it a better legacy. After all, a good sword is a good sword. But Murtagh, Morzan’s son and heir, was not done with Misery, bore too painful a scar from Misery to let it go—he took Misery from Eragon and claimed it as his own, claiming his birthright, yes… but taking Misery away from Eragon, in the very same moment that he also protected Eragon from capture and forced servitude, the fate that had befallen Murtagh himself. Complicated as feelings all around may have been, intentional as the act itself may or may not have been, Murtagh here is very much intentionally shouldering that burden. He fully believed that Eragon was another son of Morzan, he could have easily justified rejecting that part of his history and his father’s legacy and offloading it on his younger brother, and yet he didn’t. He took it for himself and declared it his own.

And then he called it Freedom.

After enduring torture and enslavement and a hundred other humiliations, he took Misery in hand and said, no. I do not uphold you. I do not fight for you. I fight for Freedom, for my own and my loved ones’, and for the Freedom of all. He looked at the horror of his past and refused to let it define him. He looked at his father’s mistakes and refused to be bound to them. He took a name of offense, of attack and hostility, and changed it to a name of preservation, of defense, of peace.

And then there’s Eragon, with Brisingr, Fire, and Brom’s mysterious Undbitr, Void-biter. At first glance it may seem that they have absolutely nothing to do with each other, but I would not be here if I wasn’t going to loudly and fervently declare otherwise.

My guess for Brom’s reasoning of naming his sword Undbitr would be somewhere between edgelord teenager antics (look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t have wanted a sword name Void Biter at twelve years old) and his admiration for Morzan, who named his sword the simple yet devastatingly clever Misery. Void-biter, bite of death, the bite that would send his opponents to the void. To darkness, to nothingness, to anti-life and anti-hope. A sword lost after his dragon’s death, never seen again, and yet Brom himself succumbs to the bite of his own personal void: he dedicates himself to vengeance, throws everything he has of himself into orchestrating Morzan’s downfall, and the downfall of Galbatorix and the rest of the Forsworn for good measure. It’s implied, from Brom’s own admission of fearing his son would hate him and Oromis’s discussion of his near-suicidal madness after Saphira’s death, that revenge is all Brom lived for until he met Selena—and even after he met her and fell in love with her, I suspect his need for vengeance is what ultimately decided the events leading both to Morzan’s death and Selena’s doomed reunion with Murtagh. Brom may have lost Void-biter, but the void consumed him anyway.

And then there’s Eragon. Yes I’ve said that already but if anything can sum up these books, it’s And then there’s Eragon. The first spell he learns is fire. A dangerous force, certainly, one that can easily break control and wreak untold havoc and destruction, but what force of nature doesn’t fall into that category? He could easily have learned, and thus be represented by, wind or ice or lightning, or even just pain or break. But he didn’t, and he’s not. He wields fire. A force of nature, a destructive weapon… but also the foundation of a home, fire in the hearth; the fuel of invention, to shape metal and glass; and most importantly, a light in the dark, the hope of dawn in the long cold night. Eragon names his sword Brisingr, and it’s not merely a weapon: it is a beacon. His father was consumed by darkness, but Eragon is the one who guided him back to the light, who gave him something to live for after he had defeated his enemy and lost his love; Eragon was the figurehead of the rebellion, the spark that drove a passive resistance into the blaze of true revolution; and now Eragon builds the new hearth of the Dragon Riders, to tend and defend it for future generations.

What a change from misery and the void.

Fire, and freedom. Hope, and peace. Family, and love.

I think Selena would be very proud of her sons.

[ai-luni]

HI IM THE HESH ANON I LITERALLY LOVE YOU NSKGKSKFK <333

I headcanon despite him being obsessed with impressing his dad he’s a sneaky little bastard who likes to take risks with the reader. Like in your fanfic, he pulled her down the hallway. I see him doing that all the time!! He wants to cop a feel!!!!

OH ABSOLUTELY STOP you've unleashed something within me. Happy valentines day, take this horny mf.

David "Hesh" Walker NSFW headcanons

I think this man is an ass man through and through. Whether it’s big or small or no matter, he will always become so mesmerised by your hips and how they move. I’ll get into that later but for now

I think he learns very quickly when to pick his battles. His job and serving his country means so much to him so I don’t think he’d even think about getting intimate on a mission, in a situation that could really easily result in either of you losing your jobs and NEVER in a combat setting. 

That being said, if you’re in between missions, at base or occasionally hiding at a safe house and he’s certain you guys are safe and have time, he’ll shoot his shot. I feel like his kind of risky is people risky rather than situation risky. He’ll fuck you in a closet with the ghosts next door, but the offers off the table the moment any element of physical danger is implied. 

The only exception I can see to this rule however is patrol. In fact if the ghosts have been hiding out in a safehouse for longer than two days and one of you is on a night patrol shift, that almost seems like prime time to him. So long as you're not expecting any action to pick up soon. 

He's never afraid to slap your ass though. Like annoyingly so. You haven't spent a single day on base without him trying to slap it at least once.

Look. Elias has been there, done that. He knows how it feels to be young and in love. He couldn’t be more thrilled that his son’s found that in someone he trusted as well. He 100% knows you guys sneak off and in all honesty, he thinks it’s good for Hesh. Hesh got his father’s hot headedness and there’s literally no better way to offload that kind of tension. 

Don’t you think it's kinda odd you’re always put on patrols together or one after another in the very early mornings. Every. Single. Time! Everyone knew but if Merrick and Keegan ever tried to pry for fun, Elias would always respond with “Whenever Hesh gets too tense, I set them up at night and magically he’s got lazer set focus the next day.” 

So if Hesh is ever cheeky, it’s only because his father enables it. 

He has often fantacised about taking you in the back on a truck or helicopter after a successful mission. He knows it’s likely just pure adrenaline draining down south but the way you look in your tactical gear when you take off your helmet and balaclava. 

He’s only ever almost pursued it once. Logan and Keegan were driving a small cargo truck, sat in the front while the two of you sat in the back. It was after what was supposed to be a quick mission in the midst of no man’s land that had turned into a showdown of excessive gun fire. No one was hurt but his heart was beating so fast. 

The entire bumpy ride, his eyes flickered between you stretching as best you could to the little metal bar separated window between you and the front seats. 

Off deployment though, the two of you would happily drive your truck into the woods at night and stargaze. You two do whatever your little heart's desire until the sunrise.

Hear me out. This man has an obsession with just the act of humping, like almost embarrassingly so. Moving your hips is a sure fire way of teasing him and getting him in a mood. Swaying your hips when you walk, bending over a railing, stretching, sparring especially. Everyone knows you can hold your own but whenever Hesh is in sight while training with a sparring partner, you’re always sure to put on a show. 

He has on multiple occasions came in his pants from you riding his thigh alone. It’s his favourite video on his phone (he has other photos of you and his dad and Riley and Logan of course! But he only really uses his phone for those videos, let's be honest).

You guys were on his bed, his phone perched on the bedside table watching from a three quarter angle. He sat with his legs spread enough for you on the edge of the bed, forearms resting over his head. You were in your underwear, hands gripping his triceps as you grounded yourself on his clothed left thigh. 

You would pant, rock your hips, whimper, repeat. For a good excruciating minute you told him to keep his arms up while asking him about his day. He’d stutter out words that didn’t really make a whole lot of sense while his eyes worked overtime following your hip movements without missing a beat. 

At exactly the 1:24 mark, your head dropped onto his shoulder and your hips started to rut onto him. Your hands slid to his chest and his newly freed arms flew to your hips to guide you. He was groaning as much as you were. 

2 minutes in, you were letting out soft mewls into his left ear. Your arms wrapped around his neck as his face obscured yours from the camera. One hand was sprawled out on your lower back pushing you to him while the other hand was gripping your thigh pushing you back out. 

His head had fallen back as far as you let it, eyes squeezed shut as he let himself get engulfed by you. The noises you were letting out to the warm breath down his back. The way your spine curled in one hand to the softest flesh being squished in the other. The way your thigh would graze the fabric of his crouch just enough to feel it. 

He started to bounce his thigh for you, a little too rough in the moment that it made you giggle in surprise. Your giggle always made him smile but the moment he looked at the small screen and the way your ass jiggled at the action, the man was a goner. 

He let out a noise that could only be written out like a strained “GE-Heh” of pain followed immediately by “aAHO Oooh” of release. 

By 3:30 you had stopped all movements, watching in amazement as Hesh was now rutting into your thigh. Once his high was over, he met your eye with a look you couldn’t entirely read. He’d later tell you he was thinking he should’ve been embarrassed but it felt too good. Whatever you thought it was in the moment though was irresistible and you pushed him onto the bed in a sloppy kiss the camera could clearly pick up. 

That video continued rolling for another 20 minutes until one of you remembered it was still going.

[angrybell]

You know how the Left was screaming that we needed to press Israel for a ceasefire so that the “innocent” people of Gaza could get food and those of us with a brain said, essentially, “yeah, sending anything means it’s going to be taken by Hamas and used to supply their terrorists?”

I hate being right.

Above is a not uncommon occurrence in Gaza. Hamas has hijacked the aid truck. None of the food will reach non-combatants. It will be used exclusively for Hamas’ purposes. Usually they just send armed gunmen to the UNWRA sites where they take but I guess this time they decided they didn’t want to wait for it to be offloaded.

This is a war. And I’m not sorry to say the quickest way this ends is if the brain dead Leftists stop getting their way and forcing Israel to supply the people trying to kill the Israelis.

[reiverreturns]

bg3 camp/companion features i would give my firstborn for that have little to basically no impact on core story gameplay:

side missions to give a special item to every companion a la giving shadowheart a night orchid. my love language is gift giving larian don't deny my love

customisable tents (tav and companions) and purchasable decor/upgrades for camp

idle camp banter between companions based on where the player has been. i want karlach to call astarion a stinky boy after adventuring in the sewers. i want gale to cheerfully inform me he knows twenty spells to get blood and brain matter out of leather when i return from the temple of bhaal. do you get me do you understand my vision

cooking minigame with gale

boo brings you stuff in camp like scratch but instead of a piece of rope or a potion ingredient it's a fuckin two handed greatsword or something

a post/letter function where npcs can send you/your companions messages of thanks or course you for not helping throughout the game (kind of like what we got in the epilogue but i want it throughout. you could also get cryptic puzzles and mission requests! that would be fun!)

wash facilities where tav can actually bathe with a lil cutscene

party function where i can choose to throw a get together as part of a long rest with companions sitting around the fire, mingling, chatting, etc. maybe it costs a load more resources but gives a buff until the next long rest. saving the tieflings wasn't enough for me i require more parties

a passing trading post where i can sell a bunch of shit without having to load the full map to find a shop or merchant. give me less money for the convenience idk my lame ass wizard can only eat so many magical boots the laces will give him indigestion i've gotta offload them somehow

little funerary tributes to companions who are permakilled where their tent used to be. press f to pay respects

mizora having camp gossip dialogue options when you speak to her (PERFECT for inter-companion romances wink wink nudge nudge.) Should also include some narrative pathways that make her leave because the companions are so fucking insufferable

camp resets after a combat in camp (e.g. puddles from create water are gone) and one random character bitches about being on cleaning duty

jaheria/halsin occasionally in wildshape and hanging out with scratch and owlbear

[bitchfitch]

I've got this story about a rainforest forest that was made and is maintained by a dragon in the middle of Antarctica bc he was lonely. The issue is. I have Never been able to decide what like. Species the people living there are. So I'm offloading the choice onto y'all.

The culture is comunal and largely centered around revelry and the worship of the party loving god dragon. Heavy focus on the arts and connecting with others, very little reason for combat outside of "it's fun to wrestle your buddies", the forest provides basically everything they need in terms of food and protection. There's nothing else besides that antarctic desert for miles around them.

arguments below the cut

Humans: the easiest but the least interesting narratively. Part of the joy of this project is building up this isolated culture and making the characters humans means they had to come from somewhere with the resoluting culture being a evolution of what they brought with them.

Elves: middle ground between the other two options. Keep the humanity, but add more elven bullshit like stupidly long lifespans.

Fauns: this was the original concept, but I really want the main character to throw his sandal at a guy, and he can't do that if he's got hooves now can he? and also. most of the characters in the story are brown or black, making them fauns feels like an attempt to sidestep their humanity.

[spewagepipe]

Plumbing the Depths: Ben Milton rates his subscribers' hot takes

My experience is that Ben Milton is among the "oftener right". I don't have much to add about his ideas in this video, but I have a lot to say about the hot takes themselves.

My responses are long enough that it seems better to me to publish them one at a time, so here is just the first hot take:

The 5e community has a toxic problem where it offloads all of the system's problems on DMs. The game isn't too easy, it's just the DM's fault for not being creative enough with combat encounters! Darkvision isn't OP, you just need to build your encounters around its very narrow limitations! Want your characters to think outside the box and not spam abilities? Design situations specifically tailored to that!

I want to take a brief aside to talk about terms like "toxic", which get thrown around an awful lot in ways that I don't think are accurate or helpful. If the community is mocking and berating these struggling DMs, then yes, that merits the term – but if that's really a common occurrence, then I must admit that I'm ignorant of it. What I do often see is advice that is framed in a dismissive, "If I were in [situation X], I would simply [solution Y]" sort of way. That's obviously unhelpful, but it's not really hazardous to anyone's psychological health.

But whether or not it is "toxic", the phenomenon being described in the take here is both real and commonplace. Among my pals, I coined the phrase "cherchez le maître du jeu" to describe this trend. In old noir fiction, detectives would "cherchez la femme" (transl. "look for the woman"). Somehow, every dead man was either killed by a woman, killed by that woman's associates, killed by that woman's rival lover, or whatever – the specifics didn't matter, but somehow "the woman" was always the cause, no matter how ridiculous (and misogynistic) that assumption might be.

In the same fashion, it seems like no matter what the problem is with someone's RPG experience, the D&D community always asks "what was the GM's mistake?" and then proceeds to engage in whatever mental gymnastics are necessary to somehow attribute the problem to GM error.

There is some truth to the idea that some GMs can sometimes work within any given set of rules in order to achieve some arbitrary creative goals – but if the system is at odds with those goals, then the GM will find that it's a struggle to accomplish. Much of the output of the D&D-advice cottage industry amounts to exactly this: helping GMs figure out how to fit the "square peg" of their stated creative goals into the "round hole" that is the D&D system.

The easiest solution, in almost all cases, is to change the system itself with either a house rule, home-brewed subsystem, a new set of special procedures, or by swapping to a different game altogether. Once your system is in harmony with your creative agenda, these problems just evaporate and the game begins to effortlessly behave as desired. This idea – that changing your system is the chief way to fix the problems with your game – is going to be a common theme here on Plumbing the Depths.

[txttletale]

a recurring theme i see in a lot of people talking about dnd (and to be clear if you happen to love, like, 5e’s combat and action economy--you baffle me a bit, but this post isn’t about you) where they will mentally just allow the nebulous concept of ‘dnd’ to absorb credit for cool things they and their friends did. they will tell a cool story about befriending a minotaur or whatever that happened entirely because they made up some cool stuff and their friends made up some cool stuff to respond to that, with absolutely no input from The Player’s Handbook 5th Edition (2014) and then give credit for this story they created to Dungeons and Dragons, the product, the brand, the big expensive book that sat there doing nothing while they told a story together

and that’s kind of sad honestly! if you’re offloading responsibility for your own storytelling work with your friends that resonated with you onto a bunch of $60 books that did nothing to help you with it, you deserve better than that. dnd did not ‘allow’ you to make up that story. you could always do that!! you always have the capacity for human storytelling within you and you should not attribute that capacity to the magnanimous affordances of Wizards of the Coast! it’s a disservice to the people who put in serious game design work to create games that facilitate storytelling play but most of all it’s a disservice to You!

[blackjackkent]

I was just thinking that I really need to find a merchant and dump some of the goods I'm carrying, so this seems promising.

The shop is rather nice inside and run by a dragonborn named Exxvikyap; she's a gold dragonborn, which is gorgeous, and seems like a nice person. Her voice is v perky.

I think this is the first time in the game that we've seen NPC dragonborn?

She's also apparently dealt with a lot of very dumb customers.

Anyway, let's have a chat.

"Hiiiiiii! Want a blade? Or a bow? Or a dagger? Or maybe a spear is more your thing?" She leans closer to Hector and grins cheerfully. "You look like you know how to use a spear. Buy a spear, whaddya say? Huh?"

I love her. I can't believe this is an effective selling strategy in the long term but she's certainly likable.

[MONK] "I normally rely on my own hands for combat, but let's see what you have."

The dragonborn gives a knowing, conpiratorial nod. "One of those *stoic* types, are ya? Well, I'm sure Gyldro's got something cooked up that even you can use."

This absolutely sends Karlach into a fit of laughter and gets grins out of Jaheira and Shadowheart too; they are very familiar with Hector's stoic nature and the dragonborn has him completely figured out.

She didn't really have anything I immediately wanted but I did offload my whole inventory on her so there's that.

[saltysaltdog]

I've spoken about how op was jealous of Megatron and projecting, but I never actually went into any detail. Tbh, I'm not certain it's truly jealousy. It's more of a "Do I want to be her? Or do I just want her."

I can read so much queer subtext into the aligned op and meg plot lines.

Quickly brushing over Megatron, he's actually not a very jealous person. He readily admits to himself his jealousy about Soundwave, in that Soundwave was s triple changer who could fly, but he was also awkwardly jealous of his relationship with his minicons- either because he couldn't do the same, or of the quasi-family type bonds a deployer and minicon share. I'd bet on the latter because when Megatron is jealous/envious, he sets out to get it. He wanted to fly. He gained a jet mode. He wanted a family, he found a "brother".

Orion Pax, however... doesn't. There's not actually much we see orion pax go out of his way for aside from contacting megatron. He usually just obeys alpha trion and offloads most of his thinking to him. In the covenant, it's not until alpha trion praises him for being idealistic that "For the first time he considered himself as something potentially worthwhile, -a bot who had something to offer the world instead of one who awkwardly negotiated with it." Which is just sad. From there, he helps name and catalogue the cybertronian ages, but there's a limit to that.

Orion doesn't set out to fix the world until he comes across Megatron, and even Alpha trion can't really shake him from admiring Megatron.

His jealousy is a natural thing to follow from here. Megatron has a purpose, Megatron believes in his own ideals so strongly he'd kill for them. He has physical strength, is apparently mesmerising in a fight, has connections across the planet, and tons of devoted fans and followers who obey his every command.

Orion to his credit does start combat training and gaining curious fans of his own, and is flattered when Alpha trion asks him to give an opinion for the council, but all of this is prompted because of his connection to megatron.

There's room to grow resentment here, even in the strongest of friendships... but there wasn't much of that to begin with.

Weirdly, though Orion risks a lot by warning Megatron, by breaking travel laws to see him, by continuing their acquaintance even though Megatron is a criminal and then a suspected terrorist, Orion is always unsettled by Megatron's gestures of friendship, first by the title friend, then upset even more by the title "brother".

You see where I'm going with this.

When orion gains the primacy and becomes Optimus, he doesn't get what's happened and at some point to Ratchet calls it jealousy. Because Orion would have been jealous if Megs was acknowledged by the council in the same way.

Even when Optimus has everything he was jealous of. A cool new title, a bigger alt mode, followers, etc. He doesn't feel like he has any real power, making him a bit sensetive to any signs of disrespect. In spite of this, He prefers Jazz's way of interacting with him (with the nickname op,).

But the title of brother still bothers him when Megatron starts using it again, though he never denies any of Megatron's claims of an unbreakable bond between the two of them.

...

I'm saying Optimus is deep in whatever cybertronians have instead of a closet.

[frostbittenfemme]

With the space bridge open, the pilot of the ship wastes no time; navigating the ship and its precious cargo through the portal. In an instance they are spat out in a completely different universe; on a completely different planet.

A new set of stars greets the arrival of the space craft. The pilot only having co-ordinates to work on while navigating this alien planet’s skies. Even with this limitation, it doesn’t take them long to reach their destination; a lab hidden deep within the dense expanse of a Brazilian Rainforest.

Doing their best to avoid damaging the trees that hide the labs entrance, the Pilot slowly touches down onto the ground. The engines of the ship die down and the sounds of the jungle’s nighttime wildlife take over once more.

The pilot sends a ping with the following message;

:: CBP-01 has touched down, awaiting retrieval of special delivery.:: “Sir the requested subjects have arrived.” A femme states to Flatline.

“Excellent, have them offloaded into the containment unit. Keep them separated as usual. Once you’ve done that I want you to retrieve subject A-135 and subject C-126 from their stasis pods and bring them to me.” Flatline answers, refusing to look at his assistant. Instead he is focused on a datapad, reviewing old notes.

The assistant nods, attempting to leave, just as Flatline clicks his digits for her attention.  “I want the other three armed and spread about the base of operations in areas with multiple security feeds.”

“May I ask why sir?” The puzzled assistant asks. Flatline smirks, letting out a chuckle. “Why? Well because we’re entering the combat testing phase of course. “

“And who’s best to test them out on? Why Subject 001 of course.” He adds, sadistic grin decorating his faceplates.

[nebris]

A combat support ship pulls alongside USS George H.W. Bush in March 2018. At least once per week while the carrier is underway, it connects by hose to receive 1.5 million gallons of JP-5 aviation fuel, and to take on food and replacement parts by helicopter in a sequence known as vertical replenishment. Supply Officer (SUPPO) CDR Anthony P. Bannister manages 13 supply divisions that serve a combined 20,000 meals each day, counting regular hour servings plus midnight rations or “mid-rats.” Between meals, vending machines take in $60,000 per month that sailors spend on energy drinks alone. At any given time the carrier stores $1 million to $5 million in food, and its shelves draw down a $20 million annual budget for ship parts, plus $200 to $300 million for aviation parts. In return, the ships send back any repairable aviation parts, called carcasses, to Boeing or Lockheed for repair, and offload waste from food service.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

its interesting that you jump to the idea of physically subduing classmates when at least in the portion of the post you screenshotted no direct reference to physical violence is made (they use the word fight but this could easily refer to many different forms of conflict). it feels like you chose the least charitable interpretation of what was said.

as someone who was physically attacked by my school mates sometimes to the point of significant injury it never compared to the damage done by school staff who never engaged in corporal punishment. this was my opinion as a child at the time and i still feel the same thinking back on it decades later.

similarly with prison abolition you critique people for not having perfect and non-violent answers to how to deal with anyone adamantly set on being violent. do you truly believe the current system has an answer to that? and do you truly believe calling the cops represents a non-violent resolution to an issue?

offloading resolving interpersonal conflicts onto violent systems of oppression doesn't remove violence from interpersonal conflict. it merely obfuscates it. situates it out of sight and out of mind of the fortunate few. and ensures that it is a constantly present threat hanging over the lives of everyone else.

Did I write a post about how much I love the carceral state and think it should remain basically unchanged forever bc it represents a nonviolent alternative to “just learn to solve problems on your own thru direct interpersonal aggression”? No, I did not. So why are you writing to me like I did?

Ppl insinuating that refusing to consider vigilantism and conflict-resolution-through-combat is always just offloading the work onto cops is completely false to my actual life experience, in which I have managed just fine to deal with personal conflicts with my friends without ever countenancing either calling the cops on them or jumping to employing diy corporal justice. This utopian ideal is, on an individual level, in fact widely achievable and often achieved

I’m not going to give the satisfaction of confessing my Trauma for validation but if you think I am somehow living in docile bourgeois ignorance of these “violent systems of oppression” as one of the “fortunate few” you pretty clearly don’t know a bunch of shit about my life and that should maybe make you hesitant to level those sorts of implicit accusations

[lunaremy]

BOMBERMECHANICS 103

Because I spent 3 minutes scrolling to figure out if the last one was 102 or 103. This one focuses on some misc mechanical.

How our bodies remain intact

Obviously, explosions are dangerous. Bombermen normally have to undergo training to hone their skills enough to prevent accidents. Of course, there's always the possibility that one may get blown to pieces by a stray blast; if that happens, the Bomberman antennae comes in. This sensory piece on the body helps to facilitate the "Recall" feature, in which the body is sent back to the place it was destroyed via a small element chip in the head. Of course, after more than a fair share of blasts, the body will truly be damaged, and the user must return to a safe space to prevent further damage. Respawning is a slightly harsh process in theory, but most bombers don't mind it too much. It beats being blown to pieces, after all.

How we gain Skill

...Incidentally, all bombermen are roughly equal in strength, give or take a few special cases. Not all bombermen can harness that strength, though. It's like the adrenaline rush humans get in danger; you MIGHT be able to do a lot of stuff, but more often than not you'll just break your own bones and give yourself a brain bleed instead. In order to prevent this from happening, Bombermen have to vigorously train until they have reached a sufficient strength. White, who trains regularly and with great intensity, can reach the maximum power of a Bomberman with ease. Someone like Black, however, can only go up to a certain amount before it becomes dangerous.

How we Keep Skill

It takes a lot of work being a bomberman, which should be self explanatory by now. As such, keeping your body at it's maximum potential all the time is extremely exhausting and extremely stupid. It's like giving your 100% all the time, until you can only give 0%. So, after an intense bout of combat, most bombermen like to wind down and offload all of those enhancements. They go back to the default level, and the risk of prolonged strain is removed. After that, it's not necessary, but it's nice to take a hot bath and relax for a while. It's generally accepted to use data chips to quickly restore you to your true potential during combat.

CONSCIOUSNESS

In humans, consciousness is easy to define. If we are awake, moving, and interacting with the environment in a way that makes sense, we are generally considered conscious. I consider the bombermen to be human as well; perhaps even more human than many of the bodies on earth. In bombermen, consciousness has the potential to be much more complex, but it is intentionally simplified for them. Should they sustain enough damage to the body, they will lose consciousness for a brief moment. It was originally designed to make a unique experience for the bombermen, but test runs of the function revealed that it proved useful for preventing major damage, as it triggers the antennae to start the Respawn Function. Most of the parts contributing to overall consciousness are located in the head and chest of the body ; similar to the heart and brain of the people of today. An interesting side effect of being a mechanical-based lifeform is the ability to upload oneself (or, rather, an approximation of oneself in the form of compressed data) to a "Host Device"; most often a spare computer of some sort. From those who tested this undeveloped feature; 90% of users reported it as being "Thoroughly Unpleasant" and "Like Sensory Hell".

Other Notes

Bombermen with special abilities often need to channel their power into something else. Plasma Bomber's scarf releases the extra electric energy in his body; it is something that he was built with, and a more than useful asset for him. Also, it has shocked White multiple times.

White is fine, though, because Bombermen are element-resistant (keep that specific wording in mind). They'll be just fine underwater. Their exterior bodies will not burn easily in a fire. Their systems will not be compromised if they come into contact with an inhaled poison. It should be noted, though, that they are least resistant to electricity, which has a slight chance of scrambling their internal processes for a little while. Understandably, that is unpleasant.

[moonlightpaladin]

Since your character is so new, are there any tropes/scenarios, etc. that you're hoping to explore with them over the course of ffxiv's story? Are they the sort of person who adapts well to hardship and strife?

This is such a good question I had to take a couple days to think on it, and still am not sure how to sound coherent about it, so I figured I'd just go ahead and answer haha

So many!!

His story is obviously a massive work in progress but, the reason Dal is in Eorzea is because his tribe was affected by Dalamud's descent and Bahamut's escape. His tribe worshiped Dalamud before the fall but in a peaceful manner. As it fell, however, they gradually became more fervent and even violent--presumably becoming what he would later come to know as Tempered.

Dalamus, himself, was inexplicably immune to the changes for reasons he did not know, but what he would eventually assume to be due to the Echo. But he could not calm his family nor stop their increasingly violent actions. He had to leave. Maybe he could find a way to help them. Or at the very least, he could find a way to help prevent others from suffering the same fate.

Eventually, I want to write out the slow descent into near-madness that his tribe experienced, and Dal's thought processes as he watched it happen and what was the breaking point that made him decide to leave. I also want to write about the moment where he's told by Thancred that Tempering is permanent, and there's no cure, and what that means for the future of his family.

I want to write him making friends, definitely. He's quite the stoic fellow, and after leaving the tribe he withdrew a lot. A lot of Xaela tribes are extremely close-knit at the exclusion of everyone else, and Dalamus' tribe was similar. Perhaps because of that, lone Xaela tend to draw glances and stir whispers, but he's learned to ignore that and keep to himself. But I think that would make friends more valuable; having other perspectives, more knowledge, sounding boards for ideas, and having people to rely on and who rely on him would help him feel closer to home again. I'm a sucker for Found Family.

It'd be fun to write him in a moment of weakness, when he's normally stoic and quiet. I love when a strong, silent type is forced to--or even better, finally decides to--open up to someone in order to heal.

I'd love to write his potential reunion with his younger sister who was thankfully too young at the time of Dalamud's decent to be strongly affected.

He draws a lot, something he was taught by his father, an herbalist, to help keep notes on plant life that's useful (or harmful), as well as the occasional wildlife or landscape. I've toyed with the idea of him drawing people he's met or those who stuck out to him in one way or another, and keeping "notes" on them in that way, too, haha. He preserves tons memories in a single portable book this way.

He's never shown anyone the sketchbook, and never really had a reason to, but I think it'd be funny if someone caught him drawing them.

With him being so stoic and quiet, I like the idea of him eventually having a group of friends who make a bet on who can make him smile and/or laugh first. It takes a while. Dal is mostly oblivious to it, though, which I think makes it even funnier.

In general I think Dalamus adapts well to hardship. His tribe was largely practical and he's very much a "It is what it is. So what do I do about it now?" kind of person. But in a way, I think it's also bad for him, because the strife is still there, he just shoves it down to deal with it later and then "forgets" to deal with it later. Maybe that's why he enjoys combat a little bit too much? It's a way to offload feelings in a non-obvious manner, or the adrenaline supersedes anything else. I'd have to think about it more

I know the FFXIV world is full of strife and Dal's backstory has already given him a head start on grief, so I just think it'll be nice for him to find people he can be soft around, or at the very least provide him a soft place to land :)

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

More Albion Thoughts

Is it weird to give my reasonably-warm takes on this now-rather-old game?

I feel like if I’m finding design insights in the course of processing this information, it’s worth the time even if nobody else cares, so what the hell.

There are two points of interest I think are worth a look:

First, there’s this neat natural-consequence system that pushes people to hedge their bets, formed from other independent systems and probably accidental:

Some mobs drop items. When dropped, these items are always at full durability.

Items you’re using very slowly expend durability, as a general money sink. But items in your bag that you aren’t using remain untouched. Because, y’know, they’re sitting unused in your bag.

BUT! If you get KO’d there’s a small durability hit to all your gear, including everything in your inventory.

This means even in relatively safe zones (yellow or blue) where jerk players can’t just kick you over and take all your stuff, finding a rare item may mean you want to head for home to offload it right away. Because if you mess up a pull, or lag decides you walked into the fire instead of away from it, or you’re in a yellow zone and someone decides to kick you around for the lulz even though they can’t take your lunch money too, or whatever else, congratulations you just lost 2-5% of the value of every piece of treasure you’ve found that has a durability score on it. Because cost to repair is based on the value of the item, you’re always losing a flat % of its total value on KO, so this is even worse if the item’s fantastic.

Second, there’s this constant push-and-pull between silver - the in-game currency - and xp. For instance you can cut into the amount you flood the market with Druid Sandals when you’re trying to level up your Druid Sandals Crafting Specialization; Rather than selling all the Sandals for silver and using it to buy more materials to craft more Sandals, the game kindly cuts out the middle man and lets you Study an item you can craft (destroying it utterly) to gain 275% of the xp you’d gain for crafting it. Because there’s a random roll for item quality when you build it, and higher-quality versions don’t Study for any extra xp, I’ve taken to Studying the bottom two quality levels (Normal and Good) but selling the top three (Outstanding, Excellent, and Masterpiece) when they come up.

There’s also an item that grants you 20% bonus xp in combat, but each point of bonus xp it grants costs you 1 silver and monsters generally drop 10% of their xp value as silver, so when you’re using the Bag of Insight you’re leveling up notably faster but also slowly bleeding money in combats.

Some players don’t see the point in rushing the xp when you could get more cash immediately, because they can clearly see the value of the silver. But the xp is also extremely potent; for instance putting you on a totally different scale in terms of what you can produce and sell and who you can sell to. If you’re selling Tier 5 boots instead of Tier 4,  your profits per pair of boots is probably doubled or more? Getting to the point where you can sell T5 faster therefore has a substantial value, but it really comes down to personal playstyle and preference. And I think it’s good that there are systems all over the place to let players craft their own experience based on their own ideals.

There’s definitely a bit of weirdness around the fact that with enough money you can just...level crafting jobs up like crazy? Like, a big enough pile of money is really all you need. But on the other hand in theory the reason you’d do crafting is to make money, so sinking money into it seems counterproductive unless you’re just obsessed with completion. There’s certainly a “rich get richer” situation in the game’s economy, where if someone handed me a billion silver to start with I could max my crafting levels, craft super-rare items, and repay the billion silver pretty quick - and this kind of thing happens on a smaller scale, not necessarily with billionaire players fron the start but certainly with hugely lucrative dungeon crawls subsidizing a leap forward in crafting xp which in turn boosts that player’s average crafting income.