one frustrating element of the new content bans on gumroad and patreon is that they’re doing it to stay in line with their payment processors’ policies, which themselves are in place to stay in line with FOSTA-SESTA.
which is a law passed in the united states, a country of which i am not a citizen and in which i do not live. i was legally prohibited from voting for or against FOSTA-SESTA, but because the platforms and payment providers i use are based there, i am expected to comply with it anyway.
and the tiktok situation shows us that any platform based outside the US can and will be either blocked from operating within it or forcibly divested from its foreign owners.
this is just another facet of american empire, by the way. it’s more than bombs and guns and client states: it’s that the US leverages its dominance over technology and finance to set policy for, effectively, the entire world.
THE CASUALNESS OF THAT COLLIE SLIPPING RIGHT OUT OF THEIR COLLAR. That dude is a Willing Participant of this walk and by god everyone else is going to follow the RULES.
can we just have, like, any feminist movement whatsoever. did everyone just stop caring?
feminism became a declawed commodified marketable trend and then trends changed and everyone just decided to pretend we won feminism despite nothing changing? despite things actively getting worse? is that what happened?
I’m listening to fantasy high. All these player characters are really charming, I can’t really pick a favorite. Love the adopted orc, the delusional private investigator goblin, the neglected elf girl and the punk girl tiefling. Not good at names
They got the first genuine laugh out of me
“Can I get a perception check to see if this dude actually rules? Cause right now I think he rules. I rolled a 9”
When you watch videos coming out of Gaza, you can almost always hear a buzzing sound in the background. This sound has been keeping Gazans under constant anxious state for almost 20 years.
The sound you hear comes from surveillance aircrafts that roam the skies of Gaza with three main purposes: specific strikes, guiding missiles and the obvious, tracking every move of the people in Gaza.
People call it الزنّانة (zannana) which is attributed to the sound it makes that is similar to the buzzing noise of mosquitoes.
The use of the Zannana by Israel has been ongoing for many years leading up to the current aggression and it is constantly going for 24 hours of the day nonstop. People have always reported suffering from insomnia, being anxious all the time because of the ongoing noise, inability to study and focus and a complete loss of privacy and feeling of safety. It has a foreboding effect on people given its historical use in Gaza.
Israel uses this surveillance aircraft to gather information and determine targets, while placing the people of Gaza in a constant state of distress. This is of course just another piece of Israel’s ongoing psychological war that it imposes on Palestinians every day of their lives.
When you know you’re being watched by an aircraft that has resulted in killing over 2000 people between the years 2000-2022 in Gaza, imagine the constant state of horror you’ll be experiencing on a daily basis as it buzzes around you while you make your breakfast, go to school, or even try to go to sleep.
I have been a Dragon Age super-fan for almost fourteen years, now. I have played every game, with every DLC. I have read every novel, lore book, and every comic — yes, even the terrible ones that are better off forgotten. I have seen the anime film, the animated series, and the web mini-series. I have enjoyed all of these pieces of the franchise over and over, more times than I can count. So, make no mistake: the negativity you’re about to hear comes from a place of love for this fantasy world, developed by many creative people over the years. I would love nothing more than to see the resurrection of passion in the Dragon Age fandom again. But the unfortunate truth is, that resurrection is only needed because BioWare took the fandom out back and shot it in the first place.
I think it’s entirely fair to compare Baldur’s Gate 3’s rise in success to the Dragon Age franchise’s downward spiral. Same goes for all other big name RPGs, for that matter.
What BG3 has just proven is that people do still love single-player, character driven roleplaying games. What BG3 has just proven is that studios do not need to fill their games with trash like micro-transactions, loot boxes, etc. What BG3 has just proven is that player-engagement can be used for the betterment of your product, and that people care more about feeling valued than potentially “spoiling” something.
But to circle back to specifically comparing BG3 to DAI…
BG3 has consequences to your actions. If you want to be evil, you can be really, really evil, and part of that experience is having the characters and world actually react to your wrongdoings! It’s so fucking refreshing to experience an RPG that has completely gone off the railroad track, unlike DAI which only offers what feels like the illusion of choice in comparison.
The way the player interacts with the all BG3 characters actually affects the course of their journey, as they all potentially change as people. I can only say the same for like, less than half of the DAI characters.
I think the biggest difference though, to me at least, is that BG3 has themes that anyone can relate to. DAI relies so heavily on the single theme of faith, without much else to offer, that it excludes anyone who doesn’t subscribe to that. But BG3’s multiple themes of trust, autonomy, power and corruption, etc. means that it’s far more likely for the player to feel personally invested in the story.
So, yeah. Baldur’s Gate 3 is everything Dragon Age used to be, and maybe that’s why it’s my new favourite game.
