Best posts made by Kestrel

@Pandora

Philip Pullman is an atheist who literally wrote an anti-establishment book series for children about killing God and challenging religious dogma and oppression. Before it was cool.

If you think he gives a toss whether some internet people are throwing rocks at him, you're misinformed.

He actively enjoys it and baits Christians to take more shots at him.

"I've been surprised by how little criticism I've got. Harry Potter's been taking all the flak. I'm a great fan of J.K. Rowling, but the people - mainly from America's Bible Belt - who complain that Harry Potter promotes Satanism or witchcraft obviously haven't got enough in their lives. Meanwhile, I've been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God." — Phillip Pullman, 2003

Now there's a man who understands — and welcomes — repercussions for his opinions. If taking a stand was easy, everyone would do it.

Addendum: This has 0 to do with RPers being treated like OOC villains for being IC villains, but I was annoyed enough by his inclusion in that group that I felt the need to mention.

@Roz said in Good TV:

Orlando Jones talked a bit more in-depth here about the whole thing.

So they fired Orlando Jones and hired Marilyn Manson?

Oof. That's a big oof. That's a mega yikes.

I ... just yikes.

Maybe they'll want to add Johnny Depp to the cast, while they're at it. And hire Woody Allen as a writer?

What's Roman Polanski doing these days?

I feel sincerely bad for Ricky Wittle. Guy can't catch a break.

@L-B-Heuschkel said in Well, this sums up why I RP:

@Kestrel One point on Lovecraft and other long dead writers: They're dead. With a living author -- like Rowlings -- you can ask yourself, do I want to give money to this asshole? With an author who's long dead, though, the point is moot. The only person who suffers from 'canceling' them is, well, anyone with an interest.

As a hobby historian I'm very wary of attempts to clean up history. Kipling wrote beautiful India stories -- doesn't change the fact he was an imperialistic git. Lovecraft was a horrible racist but his universe is still fascinating. The writings of long dead writers tell two stories -- that which they intended to tell, and on the meta level, the story of the writer and the ethics of the period they lived in.

For modern writers it's a little different. I'm inclined to say that Rowlings being a horrible person doesn't make her books horrible (though I'll admit they never appealed to me much, but they didn't before she was outed either). It's okay to love them. The question to ask oneself is whether one wants to financially support this person -- and for some the answer will be, yes, because I love the books more than I care about the author's views. I'm inclined to say that either take is alright because where one draws the line is always a very personal thing, and mob mentality rarely leads to good places. Personally I'd never buy a thing she wrote, but I'm not going to condemn others for doing so.

Lovecraft is a whole bucket of crazy I would love to dissect but I'm not too keen to rederail this thread.

I'll reiterate I don't think anyone who likes, enjoys, reads, purchases Lovecraft novels, is a bad person for doing so.

Honestly, I don't even judge people who continue to enjoy Rowling's universe. I wouldn't even call her a horrible person; I find that to be hyperbole. I find her to be a mediocre person — at best, and at worst. As mediocre as just about anyone, morally speaking, and my cynicism inclines me to believe that's even better than average. She's just a privileged person who doesn't care about, accept, nor understand the existence of underprivileged people who exist beyond her notice; what else is new in the world? I don't feel any rage towards her, but as a cis person I also know it's not my place to exonerate her. I just nothing her. I avoid things to do with her now because I can no longer consume Rowling-adjacent products in any capacity without being reminded of the harm her bigotry inflicts on the transpeople in my life I love and care about who deserve better heroes in the public eye. I wouldn't even say I'm boycotting her, I just think I've outgrown her.

As for Lovecraft, I think evidence of his abominable racism and xenophobia isn't just present in his works; it's the entire foundation his works were built on. I don't avoid his works because I'm making it a conscious point to boycott them; I avoid them because they disgust me. I'm just not interested in reading the sad, pathetic ravings of a depraved and lonely lunatic writing about how scary foreigners are through the thinly veiled metaphor of incomprehensible alien creatures replacing and overtaking humanity or whatever.

I know sweet, kind, intensely good, non-racist people who enjoy his works. I do not judge them for being able to find their own interpretations and charitable meanings in his work. I understand that many of the themes of alienation and nihilism resonate with people, and think that everyone is entitled to, even owed, the right to find art that resonates with them on some level and brings them comfort. I'm not interested in robbing people of the connection they feel with these works. Art, music and beauty are the most human things we have. It's tangible empathy.

I just don't personally connect with these particular works. It's not for me. I'm not his target audience, I'm the horror that kept him up at night while he was writing them. As long as you don't view me that way, we're kosher. I'm OK with you finding your own interpretation in his works, not that you should need my permission to like the things you like.

@eye8urcake one of my nieces had similar issues when she was born. It was very taxing on my sister who had some difficulties feeding her and, as a consequence of her physical issues, the child developed infantile anorexia.

The good news however is that Elle has blossomed into a lovely, healthy young woman. Although it's kind of fucked that this is what it apparently takes to have the right look, she's worked as a child model (with very close supervision) so you know, she has remained underweight but apart from that she's vibrant and physically active. I recently made the cross-continental trip to attend her Bat Mitzvah and I honestly couldn't be prouder. She's smart, brave, sassy and morally-driven. So those issues do not define her though understandably, her mother will always worry.

@surreality said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Never give up your right to argue (barring spaces that disallow it for whatever reason, provided said reason is reasonable, obviously).

No, really.

Sometimes -- and I think I can say with some confidence that it has happened here a whole hell of a lot, really -- it leads to pointlessly gripey angst.

But even then, it means people are thinking. Brains are working, even if they're wandering far afield of sense now and then. (We're all susceptible; it's part of being human.)

Brains working is good.

It's OK to disagree with people. Most of us were socialized to be pleasers to some extent or another, in some way or another, but those ways tell us 'don't speak up and don't argue or disagree'. Well, fuck that.

If you wanna avoid it because it's causing undue stress in your life, or is otherwise doing you harm? Go for it; always take care of you, y'know?

Just don't do it because someone else tells you 'you should just fall in line', that it's pointless, or similar. Those people are the ones the word 'defenestration' is best used in regard to.

I'm not giving up my right to disagree with people; I'm just going to try and stop getting into heated political debates etc., though we'll see how long I can keep that up tbh. (I wasn't kidding when I said I was already finding it to be a struggle.)

I'm opinionated and honestly it's bad for my mental health. I need to stop caring what strangers on the internet think or feeling like it's my job to tell them why they're wrong because it's ineffective and accomplishes nothing other than souring the community and bringing out my worst side. I don't want to be that kind of person. I don't want to feel angry/emotional all the time. I feel enough climate/political grief as it is without letting the toxicity of faceless strangers poison me.

EDIT: gl with your ER appointment, also.

@Rinel: I do know adults who are genuinely happy. I am not one of them. At risk of sounding like I'm peddling new age bullshit though, the closest indications I've found for what makes them happy is a combination of community, family, physical activity and ikigai.

Some of this can be chased; some of it is down to luck. I can't choose my family so on that front I'm a bit fucked, but I know the closest I've felt to peace has been doing fulfilling work in a team of like-minded people in a remote enough location that we had to spend a good amount of time together bonding etc. Good luck — to both of us.

@Autumn

I don't feel totally comfortable answering these questions because I'm not staff.

Personally, I do actually believe it's possible to have a setting that's more faithful to the original history without being yourself a bad, though I also wouldn't attempt it if I was making a game for a wide public audience.

If this was my game? And I knew you personally and I trusted your ability to tell a faithful historical story that didn't make me feel personally grossed at as a descendant of Holocaust survivors? I'd let you play whatever you want, hell, even a Nazi. A friend of mine actually got mixed up in controversy for playing a fascist on another game (funnily enough, not a historically accurate fascist, but a magic fascist in a similar flavour to Savage Skies' Drachenordnung) and I felt very frustrated on their behalf because I knew their intentions were never anything other than to ridicule and criticise this ideology.

Generally speaking, I think it depends on why you do it and how you approach it. I doubt that anyone would argue that it was wrong for Tarantino to have Nazi characters in Inglourious Basterds, or for Christian Waltz to play one. Are you wanting to examine and criticise the way political war machines brainwash us into dangerous ideologies? Do you want to tell a story of a character's escape from that? That sounds cool.

But as far as this game's concerned, that's up to staff. And I think a more important question to ask on that front isn't just what your intentions would be for the character, but if they opened the door for other people to play such characters, what might theirs be? If the answer is 'potentially really bad', my assumption would be no, you can't play this character, no one can, because it's not worth the risk of one person using it to be an ass. Even if you, personally, have only the best intentions.

Publicly accessible games have limits that a smaller cadre of close-knit friends might not.

@Sunny said in What do you eat?:

@Kestrel

'Misconception that it's privledged' is why I got upset, because it isn't a misconception.

ETA: the misconception is that it is solely food cost alone that makes it a privilege

OK, let me amend.

Choice, of all and any kind, in any context, is and always will be a privilege.

For those who have geographical access, physical ability and the mental capacity (vs. depression meals, eating disorder recovery, work/life schedules) to make choices regarding what they eat, and can rely on more than simply what's available, I make the case that choosing veganism is no more tied to privilege than any other conscious dietary choice.

Some people are unable to make conscious choices about what they eat or feed their families. Any post I make advocating to choose veganism does not apply to these people. (Though I do, incidentally, make the case that limits on these people's choices is frequently the consequence of systemic issues in our global food distribution and resource management, with animal agriculture one of the biggest culprits. The other is capitalism and food waste.)

@JinShei said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

@Kestrel said in The Savage Skies - Discussion Thread:

I'm going to put my hand up and say I don't know much of anything about Hirohito, nor the IJA. I feel very embarrassed reading this thread because it's obviously something that had serious consequences on human history and that I should have been educated about it in school, though I wasn't. ... It's evident to me that Eurocentric bias has serious impacts on our education system and cataclysmically, our ability to empathise with and connect with other human beings who have a family history tied to the era.

I have to second this - my education was lacking generally because Steiner (whose own behaviour was very questionable when it came to race, gender and being in touch with any form of reality) education didn't seem to cover much history. But particularly outside of the Eurocentric view, there was nothing.

As an aside, when we moved to Australia and I went to the museum there on the history of the country, I came out entirely horrified and ashamed to be British.

I have the minor benefit of having grown up between two countries, one of which used to be a British colonial territory but is also somewhere up there in the top 5 most hated countries at the moment, at least in Britain. I'm totally used to answering for each of my countries' crimes whenever I'm in the other one.

@Kanye-Qwest said in What do you eat?:

@Sunny peanuts and canola oil are both high in vitamin e, and George Washington Carver specifically worked with peanuts because he thought they were a good staple food for people needing affordable nutrition.

Seeded wholegrain toast + peanut butter is my go-to depression meal.

@SquirrelTalk said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:

I have never known any amount of armchair psychology to be useful to anyone. We're not the ones who are going to solve whatever's wrong with that guy. Best just to keep them out of our lives, imo.

I find it very useful. If I know what's precisely wrong with the kinds of people liable to make my life worse, and I know how to spot early warning signs of their behaviour, then I know how to protect myself.

Did this guy make my life worse? No. Not even a little bit. But there are a million other guys like him out there, and they are everywhere. They're incredibly predictable and not nearly as special as they like to think. It doesn't hurt to go through life with a radar in mind.

I almost forgot my own personal genius invention: "toast sticks"

Take toast

slice lengthwise to create multiple strips

open hummus tub

pour some kind of chilli/hotsauce into hummus tub

dip toast sticks into tub for a filling albeit sad, protein-rich depression meal.

If you don't finish the entire hummus tub in a single sitting you're not doing it right.

Carrot/cucumber sticks are for suckers.

That man is a leaf on the wind.

@GreenFlashlight said in Depression Meals:

@Kestrel said in Depression Meals:

What do you guys eat when you literally can't be fucked to make anything difficult?

Realistically? A bag of potato chips, or drive-thru.

A super easy comfort food recipe is pasta aglio e olio, though. While you boil a box of pasta al dente, heat half a cup of olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat, crush a head of garlic into the oil and brown it (most recipes tell you to slice it, but that's a suboptimal way to get the garlic evenly spread, I say), and toss the pasta into the garlic-infused oil. Juice a large lemon into it. Most recipes tell you to add a ton of parsley, and you can do that if you want, but it's not crazy necessary. You have a meal full of carbs and heart-helpful garlic that takes maybe twelve minutes to wake.

This changed my whole entire life, enjoy.

@Jeshin said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

For those wondering what crazy facist @Kestrel is talking about, pretty sure she is refering to Az from HavenRPG aka Cullen.

Honestly he's not even the only one but he's probably the worst. Or maybe the best? I dunno. He's so nice when he isn't on a murder/rape/stalker spiral. And by contrast there's Ppurg who just unabashedly spouts antisemitic vitriol -- calling me 'a corrupting jewish influence' with regards to Daed, and openly declaring that women lack superior male intelligence, but at least that inability to help himself makes his toxicity transparent.

@Ganymede said in Depression Meals:

When I get depressed, I drown myself in work. Including cooking.

You have the kind of depression I wish I had.

EDIT: ditto @Testament below
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@onigiri said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

I think I've also posted at length here before ranting about the rampant fetishization of queer characters -- though this is not the specific topic to talk about that.

I mean, kinda is. This is the same reason I don't think white people who are uncomfortable doing so should feel obligated to make an effort to play POC. People who want to do it and can do it comfortably will just go ahead and do that anyway, and people who feel ill at ease about it should just trust their gut.

I feel there's very little harm in people writing what they know, whether that's their own culutre, ethnicity, sex or orientation. The likelihood of harm is much higher in writing about experiences that aren't yours, and offensively mischaracterising them through an external lens. If this were more than a hobby, and we were writing for publication or an audience, I'd care more. But in this hobby, the only audience we're writing for is one that's actively participating in the writing process already, and don't require others to tell their stories.

@eye8urcake I’m about halfway through Season 2 so I’ll hold off clicking spoiler tag for now.

But I’ll weigh in when I finish it.

@bored said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

re: civility, I don't actually see what's uncivil here? Did anyone call anyone names? If anything, calling this out is proof that we're all old and lame. Anyway, enjoy your champagne, guy.

tbh I think the whitesplaining is pretty uncivil but I'm joining @HelloProject over here in tipsytown and today has just been one of those days where I have reached my upper tolerance limit for white bullshit.

@GreenFlashlight

Torn between upvoting for hbomberguy and wishing I could downvote because trashing BBC’s Sherlock is unacceptable heresy no matter who you are.

@bored said in Diversity Representation in MU*ing:

@Kestrel Cool, so incivility is literally 'disagree with someone (EDIT: POC ONLY OF COURSE) in this topic.' We've come far.

I will leave it to someone else to blacksplain what whitesplaining means.

Fleabag & Sherlock:

I'll watch anything with Andrew Scott in it at this point.