The remorseful player
There's a really conceptually interesting beat in World War Z, during one of the later Todd Waino sections, where Waino is discussing that the problem with trying to use land mines to fight zombies is that the point of a landmine isn't necessarily to kill the enemy, it's to control their movement because they're aware of the possibility of land mines, it's to hurt them, it's to turn a soldier into a living-but-crippled drain on the medical system of the enemy nation and a morale drain when he goes home to his parents without legs. And, of course, since absolutely none of those head games or logistical concerns are applicable to zombies, the best case scenario is that you create a bunch of legless zombies that are harder to notice until they're underfoot, and the worst case scenario is that you blow up your own guys on accident because the documentation on where you put the landmines while running away from all the zombies wasn't very good. And all of this is part of the book's continual concern with how there's this two-faced idea in war, where you dehumanize an enemy against whom none of your tactics would be remotely effective if they actually were the unthinking evil automaton you're hyping them up as. That's fine. But at the end of it all I'm left in an uncomfortable position where I'm not really sure if Max "lectures at West Point" Brooks recognizes the moral horror of what he's describing, or if he thinks that Landmines are a clever idea that're just inappropriate in this specific context. A lot of the book falls in that uncanny valley for me.
i made a character sheet. free to use as you wish, feel free to change whatever you want XD open source ass thing. spent all of ~maybe an hour on it.
Credit: the text in the insert-image box comes from this video, and the text for the top three lines (intense, complex, fruity) comes from this post. The actual image was made with the free NBOS character sheet creator, which is a sort of dated but free and solid text-layout sheet maker intended for ttrpg style character sheet creation.
gotta be honest with you, i'm not too sure about this thing ppl say of "conservatives" being irrationally opposed to "trans people just existing" or whatever. i guess controversial take but no they actually have very concrete reasons to oppose bodily autonomy and the destabilization of sexual roles we represent considering their views on sex/gender and social reproduction overall actually. obviously we must oppose those views as they are 1. wrong and 2. oppressive but like. it's not like they just chose a random minority to hate. i mean otherwise why do you think it's specifically us.
'This is Garnet, back together.'
So my sister wants to start sewing more, because
a. She’s 5′ 11″ and can never find pants long enough for her legs or shirts long enough for her arms.
b. She hates synthetic fibers as much as I do and it’s difficult to find natural fiber clothes that aren’t made of cotton
c. She’s a biologist and would physically fistfight microplastics if given half a chance
So her gift from mom and dad for her birthday was a sewing machine. Not a super expensive one but a good solid serviceable one.
And recently she asked “So where do I GET wool or linen and thread that isn’t polyester” and mom was like ‘go ask your sister’
And I, of course, crashed into the group text like “GET A PEN I HAVE WEBSITES FOR U” and honestly I’m thrilled about this
harry dubois would end death note in one episode. he'd be unkillable bc he has no fucking idea what his name is and then he'd go drink driving and accidentally run light over and the killings would mysteriously stop