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Posts posted by Rehab
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Doing literally nothing/adopting the most hands-off position on the Syrian crisis possible would be accepting the source of the refugee crisis, along with its current destabilizing effects on the region and elsewhere.
Which is technically an option, but...
Some of those neighboring countries, like Jordan, would love for the U.S. to back a horse, to be sure.
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Appropriate: whenever you want to either consume or produce something that has whatever given form of sexy in it
As with all other things, having sexy in your thing changes that thing to "something which has sexy in it," just like having a song and dance number in your thing changes your thing to "something which has a song and dance number in it." Ask yourself, for example, "do I want to make/consume the type of thing which has a song and dance number in it?" Then, change "has a song and dance number in it" to "has sexy in it."
Is your answer to this "maybe?" Then whittle it down from there. Would you be okay with some characters singing a bit of impromptu drunk karaoke in the bqckground that serves more as window dressing for the scene, like would a description of how the wind pleasantly caresses the protagonist's face in their hometown, or do you require a Disney style full-blown impromptu choreographed musical number? Likewise, do you want your thing to have characters who on some occasion or another do their best to look whatever form of appealing they intend (as regards yr various gender presentations and th humanly-recognizable standards of attractiveness to which they are or are not trying to appeal) at some public event, as it might be imagined would an actor/tress attending an award ceremony? Or do you just wanna see some good ol chain mail miniskirt and tube top plate armor, the torpedoes be damned?
It's like that. Ask what it does for the thing and how it changes the thing, then decide if you're okay with it. Whatever "it" and "the thing" are. It's pretty simple, really
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To try to get everything out in the open, there has been a bit of uninformed supposition of both what it means to be otherkin in this thread, and of how blah's sister specifically is interpreting it. This may in part be because as much as blah has said of his sister, enough about her behavior and feelings has been left unsaid that it's still easy enough for us posting here to form assumptions of what exactly she's said and done that are based on our own feelings towards and (lack of) knowledge of otherkin. And most of us have been pretty comfortable expressing negative opinions drawn from outsider perspectives, which doesn't make for a very appealing environment for somebody to come forward and say "I'm one of those dudes you're talking shit about, here's what I have to add" (as has been noted by princeymarmar). It also probably doesn't help mitigate the appearance of a dogpiling that Ritisa's more conciliatory post went without much notice.
Of course, if blah's sister isn't both forthcoming and at least somewhat articulate on the subject, even knowing exactly what's being dealt with in the first place could be difficult at best, and if no otherkin come out to post, then those negative outsider opinions (and maybe a bit about adolescence as a work in progress) are about all we've got to add or go on. (Which is why I ducked saying pretty much anything actually to do with otherkin entirely on page two)
[spoiler=mostly-pointless, insubstantial addition on otherkin themselves]The most I can remember from the very little I found to read on "the data, regarding real, dyed-in-the-wool (adult) otherkin" a long time ago on Wikipedia went roughly something like "brain scans didn't pick up any structures or patterns they could identify as particularly anomalous, but they also didn't pick up any indications that the person was claiming something they believed was anything other than the absolute truth." Maybe just... keep that in mind, as a possibility if nothing else, if you're ever frustrated enough that you find yourself about to adopt the "tell her she's 'NOT A GODDAMN WOLF.' until she she agrees with you" approach, blah.
The whole otherkin thing could go such a dizzying number of ways that I wouldn't even fixate on it, at least not compared to simply putting it in the context of blah's relationship with her.
Like, maybe she'll always consider it an aspect of her identity, but will acquiesce to your requesting she learn to hide her power level a little. Maybe she'll only get louder and prouder with time, and resent every single instance where she was told to suppress [what ends up being] a core part of her identity. Maybe she and blah will just laugh the whole thing off later. Maybe it'll likewise become something she considers "a thing I grew out of," but resent that her family was harsher than she would've liked in reacting to it. Or maybe she'll wish it had been somehow drilled out of her sooner! Based on what blah has posted, these are all within the realm of real possibilities.
At least from where I'm standing, it's much easier to start out with a focus on what can be done than it is to try to force her to unconditionally accept the demand that she be broken of it immediately. Reiterating amiabletemplar, what can be done, at a minimum, is that she can have the potential consequences for whatever she's doing explained to her, and she can be reminded of the how others may see her (particularly when she does something that imposes on other people, like howling). At some point, though, the decision on how to act, with that information in mind, can only come down to her.
People do sometimes do things they regret, to be sure, and can even do things they wish others had dissuaded them from, but dissuasion doesn't necessarily require antagonizing them even if you're set on it. I think it's possible to come out of this quote on her side unquote even if she doesn't immediately do as you wish.
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where else are my people supposed to go
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isn't coming already? (just ps4 and just na so far or something tho)
I'm not taking them at their word until the game is in my hands
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PS3, digital download! If somebody hasn't made a topic shilling for it yet, I should
Help convince them to bring Yakuza 0 over here, folks
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And there's also Condemned 2, I think it was? Where a particularly fucked-up-looking and huge but otherwise normal bear is chasing you through a dark abandoned house, threatening insta-death
That might be the standard by which to judge, I think
Also, a thought: maybe a contributing factor to why bears aren't exploited to their full terror-inducing potential is their eyes- IMO they're not that immediately frightening until A) they're really pissed, and B) you're also close enough to them to notice "this thing is a LOT bigger than me, huh"
A lot of other animals used for horror with scary eyes have frightening visages in general, of course, but if a normal old bear had even just slightly bigger/more expressive eyes I think the impact would be huge
Their faces are like big fluffy rodent faces, though. Like they're our primary genre of stuffed animal. In person nobody wants to fuck with something that big but a miniature bear (hopefully also with less muscle mass period of course, in case any bear breeders who want to run with this idea happen to be reading) would be cute as hell
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I've dropped a small but dense porcelain plate on my toe, which caused it to crack and turn blue I think (though it healed naturally just fine), slammed my thumb in a car door when on my way into a martial arts class (just remembered the details of how my dad rushed me into the school's bathroom while crying to touch it up, then right back out without anybody in the school saying anything, which were details I could've gone without remembering), tripped on some poor jerk's accidentally-outstretched foot and hit my head on a bookshelf, which needed 10 stitches to fix up and turned my already-enormous forehead into a lethal weapon, and failed to get through childhood without getting my head stuck in a bannister
Also, I once accidentally fell in P.E. such that I landed in a full split, which would've been cool, except the strain on my legs had me crying immediately upon hitting the ground
These may be a bit more wincey than funny, I am realizing a bit late, sorry
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Fuck, got me
I'm playing Yakuza 5 right now, which as it happens hits a nice balance while still also being appropriately ridiculous for a character-action Triple-Ay game, I thinksince we're talking about video games, why do so many video games with bears have them do a really slow animated attack where they rear up and try to maul you with both paws, only it's stupid easy to dodge so bears aren't a threat? like bears are terrifying irl, why are they often a meat shielded pushover in video games...
The first time you encounter a bear it's played as one of those HOLY FUCK IT'S A BEAR moments which some fellas on tvtropes decided constitutes A Thing, and the player character (whose power level is around "action/drama legendary badass, albeit a mortal homo sapiens"), who happens to be caught out in the middle of the blizzard of the year while wearing mere corduroys, lets out an appropriately-heartfelt OH FUCK considering he's face to face with a bear literally twice his his height (which is way bigger than any kind of bear from Japan normally gets!). And this, among other things, is given additional weight by said pc being the biggest dude and biggest taker/dealer of Major Hurting in the main cast, like if he's going OH FUCK we know we best be going OH FUCK too
...And then he squares off against it in a fist fight, because what else is he gonna do.
It's cool though! Because the bear is a capital-b BOSS fight with twice the health of anything in the game up to that point, and while slower than a real bear would be/susceptible to the old easily dodged rear-up-on-hind-legs, slam-down-with-shockwave standby, it also has a charge that you actually have to kinda work at dodging, some up-close paw swipes that will floor you through your guard even at their weakest, and is resistant enough to hitstun that you have to whittle it down with flyby tackles to come out anything like unharmed, lest it toss you around with its jaws like a chewtoy.
Then when you finally complete the actually-cool-and-fun QTE, where your dude gets tossed into the air and comes down on the rumored man-eater with a FIGHTING SPIRITO overhead spike into its open maw to end the fight, (shut up its great), that doesn't knock it out, or even scar it; the bear just burns your dude's face into its memory and returns to the shadows. A minute after which your dude faints from exhaustion on the spot.
Later your dude gets taught stuff by hunters who actually know shit, and they're like "So that was pretty much the meanest bear that ever lived, and by rights there shouldn't be even a tiny piece of you still intact so we dunno what the fuck happened there, but even with normal bears you never fuck around. Don't even engage unless you- are you listening? Unless you HAVE to. And NEVER without a gun, holy shit are you completely out of your mind, fuck no not ever." And the game has a legit hunting min- actually minigame doesn't do it justice, it becomes like your dude's job, and the gameplay goes from running around a martial arts flick flattening dudes to this slow-paced, almost survivalist Red Dead Redemption kinda creeping through the snowy mountain woods, taking like ten seconds plus to line up a shot on animals deal. And even with your shotgun capable of one-shotting a bear if you do it right, meeting any bear is still a "shiiiiiit" kind of moment, because they're both legit threatening and can come running if they're in the area or even near it when you shoot something else. And if you ever meet the aforementioned Man Eater again, it escalates even further, from that to "MOUNTAIN'S CLOOOOOOSED [screeching]," with you wading awkwardly through the snow as fast as you can, all the way back down from the furthest ends of the hunting grounds just trying to avoid being eaten with it on your tail.
In summation I give Yakuza 5 an A minus regarding its depiction of bears in video games
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For myHe nitpicks too much
moneyadviews while I didn't really disagree with a lot of the details, I got the impression that for him the (almost) totally open go-anywhere nature of Zelda 1 was what defined what "Zelda" is at its core, and to me that idea seems, like, a little insubtantial if just stated without support? Because, regardless of whether that approach was or is better than item&plot world gateways, that seemed to only last for one-and-some-fraction entries, in a series with dozens of themThe games generally fall somewhere in a spectrum of course, and there's a lot of wandering to do and a less-than-completely-unbroken sequence in even the less-freeform Zeldas, but Zelda 1 is kinda lonely over at its end of things
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But why have that when you could have a Best sf member contest
Still decided by open vote of course
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also obligatory does this also go for not-women
because I'll be kinda disappointed if not, I was hoping to segue smoothly from having my hands on a foot to my tongue on a dick but not if thatd be weird
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I've had a cursory interest in learning Actual Massage technique for a while, it's like an intersection of a bunch of things that interest me- anatomy as it applies to both Science and art, (physical) therapy [via human contact], documented health benefits for days, etc. (But,) I heard that in my state, just to get certified it's a couple years training (just learning about it? not sure) for like one thousand literal hours total, 8 hours a day? And the massage schools (who have a vested interest of course) tout it as a high-ranking field in terms of growth, but also that average pay is $40k, which isn't bad by (most) any means but for two years training? I (literally) dunno...
Which is to say;
*ahem*
Cast ye not your aspersions, if you please, upon the distinguished and honorable* field, art, and practice of massage therapy, sir(s).
*cough*
[spoiler=*]if perhaps, maybe, occasionally, sometimes in-some-ways-always uncomfortably-near-to-the-proximity-of prostitution (not that I would know really)
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Did y'all catch that "new" sequelitis? Just wonderin
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!WARNING!
!NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHING!
*sweats*
I will not dispute that undertale fans are, disappointingly, as dumb as any in a crowd, to be sure.
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Since I don't want to be negative and just talk about what I didn't like, I'll give you guys this at least, thanks for sharing your opinions.
I got an example of a game that I would compare to Undertale's no-fighting RPG style, Ultima IV (or 4): Quest of the Avatar. This is probably one of the only other games where the primary concern of the game is about the betterment into a paragon of good where there is no final boss or looming evil to face. While you're still allowed to kill enemies and the game won't necessarily have a "bad route" for you to go through like Undertale, doing things like killing fleeing enemies is considered detrimental to Justice, and so directly goes against the main goal of the game. Stealing penalizes the player, as it goes against Honesty. Some even worked together against each other, such as Valor representing the defeat of enemies and not fleeing in combat, yet going against the aforementioned Justice virtue. Mastery of Eight Virtues was the goal of the game in order to ascend to becoming the Avatar.
It's not exactly the same because you still kill things and get loot, but it had a lot more depth to it than other games around that time (or since) and that game came out in 1985!
It actually makes me wonder if Ultima 4 was inspiration for Undertale along with Earthbound considering the Seven Traits/Souls could be seen as a correlation to the Eight Virtues from Ultima.
Here's a comparison of Ultima 4 - Undertale in terms of the above:
Honesty - Integrity
Compassion - Kindness
Valor - Bravery
Justice - Justice
Honor
Sacrifice - Perseverance
Spirituality - Determination (in terms of how Undertale explains that it is "is a force assumed to be possessed naturally by humans due to the sheer strength of their souls."
Humility - Patience
It may just be coincidence as certain ones aren't exact (Sacrifice & Perseverance and Humility and Patience, for example) but that is kinda strange, even if it is seven vs eight. Anyway, I'm just rambling. it's early morning and i haven't got much sleep and i'm delusional
I think we should want more games like Undertale, Spec Ops and Ultima 4 that have ethical depth. So I think Undertale is a good game, but
some of ya'll like it too fucking muchI do have some issues with it, I won't get into them like I said.One thing that I'm not sure how true is that any amount of self-defense in Undertale may lead the other creatures to dislike you. I've really not seen (or played) enough of the game to tell, but I don't particularly like that choice of design. I know that you have the option of going true pacifist, neutral, etc, but that sort of moral quandary seems... flawed to me, at least. What do you guys think about this? Is this even true or am I just misinformed?
I think there's actually a fair amount of subtext in Undertale and it's all very interesting. Even if I hated everything else about the game, this remains true: the music is effing good.
I agree, I look at Diablo 2 which is undoubtedly my favourite game of all time and yet it loses to Goldeneye 007. If you tried to play them both now, Diablo 2 clearly has aged infinitely times more superior than Goldeneye, but if we're looking at the times they came out at... well, that's a different thing, and shit those games are both classics imo. and truth about a lot of gamefaqers (i don't know what to call them) not being old enough to even recognize a lot of these games. I'll fucking admit it, a lot of my favourite games are because of nostalgia but that shit is fucking goooood
[spoiler=This may rapidly become a discussion better suited to the actual Undertale topic but anyway][spoiler=This redundant spoiler is here to give a prompt to anybody who has remained on the fence regarding picking up Undertale, who may want to at least maybe possibly get the closest thing to the vaunted ~perfectly~unspoiled~Undertale~experience~ that they can get after reading this much already, to quit reading just in case]In a "get the 'best' (as in 'happiest) ending" sense and/or any completionist sense, Undertale could be considered to "punish" the player for meeting violence with violence in a way that would, in our world, probably be considered easily-justified self-defense by a good lot of people, yes.
Aside from the stipulation that FIGHTing one monster to death will require you to reset your playthrough if you want to get the happiest possible (and what is widely considered the "true" ending, though I personally think that's a poor label for a couple of reasons) (I think it's more like "the final floor of the pacifism rabbit hole"), though, I'm hesitant to call the way the game reacts to that situation "punishment." This is because (fuck I'm tired/not going to put words together as well as possible here, probably) the game is written to treat the player character's life and the life of each monster as both having intrinsic value. Not all the characters will hold it against the player if they do bring a monster down, because it was self defense, they might just acknowledge that it kinda sucks somebody had to die; and some others, who may have with very strong opinions on the matter, will look at what the player does more harshly, depending on their own character/personality. The many endings that fall under the "Neutral" label will generally show some divergence of opinion between the surviving characters on your actions, and/or detail how the characters are dealing with the aftermath of whatever happened.
I think this is at least possible to interpret as less "the game punishing you, the player, for your actions" and more "the game showing you what happens when you kill somebody. (what, did you think nobody noticed?)"
Also, I think it's word of god that the game was intended to be played multiple times just for the sake of seeing what happens when you do whatever, in a sense less along the lines of the game judging the player for their actions than "this is what happens, player, when you do this (some characters
[and at this point real life people]will judge you for it)". (and I also remember the creator responding to questions of why he didn't put achievements into the game with "because I don't want to incentivize people playing any certain way(s) over any others," or something along the lines)Put another way! There's at least possibility space for the player (getting into character a bit) to say, "you know what? Yeah it's sad that somebody ended up dying, but what I did was ultimately self-defense. All I wanted in the first place was to leave, and almost all of you were yourselves not just trying to keep me here, but kill me. So you know what? Fuck you. Got mine. I don't owe any of you shit." and just turn the game off
"Boom. Happy ending to me"
fuck this response is disorganized and groggy and kinda seizes on just one little portion of the post to reply to and also why am I saying this here?? but fuck if I typed it for nothing. also I should play Ultima IV, it sounds like
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Purely for Tryhard's sake: I personally enjoyed Undertale more than any of the games it went up against, and also have fonder lasting memories of it, but if you were to actually ask me to state my position on this very important topic, I would have honestly voted for it as "somehow more exemplary/affecting in any 'objective' analysis of game design" only over Fallout 3 and ME3 (which in a Final Analysis I think were ehhhhhokay, and like well enough in spite of myself, respectively). I would indeed guess there's likely a lot of viral, sketchy voting for it based on the less-than-totally-honest evaluations of silly fans, in this polling contest which is by design and in practice one of the most open and easily-gamed polling contests ever yearly produced (pretty much exclusively by silly fans), yes.
But then Skies of Arcadia lost in the first round to Twilight Princess, Mega Man X lost to FFX, and neither Gitaroo Man, EBA nor Ouendan were even in the running, so obviously this was never a truly right-headed contest concerning the actual best game ever in the first place, was it -
You're sounding like the person they want a safe space from.
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Having little to add on the subject itself of otherkin, I'd suggest attempting to exercise a certain kind of empathy, or that you at least consider it.
Imagine somebody (say older family members, friends, and/or somebody who's somehow above you in some pecking order) reacting to something you had said or done with any mixture of incredulity, scorn and/or embarrassment- anything comparable to your reaction towards her. Say also this is something you did indeed later wash your hands of (or would want to), and further something you did indeed later find embarrassing. Maybe leave open the possibility space for this to have been either something you genuinely believed at the time, or something that was in any way a show.
In retrospect, how would you prefer your family/friend/senior have reacted to whatever you did? What sort of response do you think would've done the most good for you, and for your relationship with the given person? Can you imagine that your current answers to the above could possibly change over time? And how can you say how your sister might answer the same questions, given the chance?
I have a particular disposition here. There has been a good share of grudges held in my family, some of the worst of which were conceived in youth and held for many years over pettier stuff than this, and with professionally-diagnosed mental illnesses thrown into the mix over generations. Us owning each other a little bit harder when we were down than strictly necessary a few times probably didn't help, I would guess.
And I didn't even need siblings for us to accomplish that.To be sure, I've been told I have a social anxiety disorder or two and some other brain problems, so to put it mildly I'm more likely to paint the possibilities here with a relatively negative, grandiose brush. I, at least as much as anybody else, have to admit that different people have different reactions to any given stimulus, so your and your sisters' answers to all that above certainly could be different from mine. And you, of course, would know what your sister is like and how she'd react better than I do, at the very least in the short term.
But if I were to answer my own hypothetical in your place, I'd prefer to see some magaminity in those reactions, especially if it turned out nobody needed help to end up regretting what they did in the first place. (Regardless of how well you know your sister, you will probably not have the easiest time accurately predicting whether this will be the case for her over the long term, no matter how annoying she seems about it now.)
Since she has told her friends, it might be safe to assume you're no longer the only other person with any influence over whether she holds onto any otherkin identity or whether it ever causes her any embarrassment, if you ever held that influence. What you might have a deceptively substantial amount of influence over here is how she ends up reacting to the reactions of other people.
To that end, I might suggest you refrain from owning your younger sister to the full extent of your power over this.
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John Kasich has at least been good for a few laughs when he broke from debate etiquette and interrupted other candidates to tell them their dumb, infeasible and wrong ideas were dumb, infeasible and wrong. Albeit to scarce positive returns onstage and jeering from the crowd.
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Motherfucker to receive
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I might call that worthy of being spoilered, just in case.
Well, to an extent. The game goes back and forth a bit on whether the monsters are a threat to you as you play. Flower was talking out his ass as to the extent that the underground is intrinsically hostile, but we do keep getting warnings of some sort even from the monsters that are never anything but friendly to us, like that there are indeed some beings that want to capture us, and we do have to protect ourselves during random encounters (though nonviolent resolution is (almost) always eminently possible). Papyrus talks about capturing us, then ends up being mostly bluster/the biggest softie a skeleton ever was, and in Snowdin we meet a whole gaggle of monsters who are nothing but friendly, but looking and talking around reminds us a lot that there is indeed a lot of tension between monsters and humans, so the player could easily still be conflicted/wondering what the hell to think. And then Undyne goes straight up R.E. Nemesis on us, chasing and openly trying to murder us.
And so on.
There are still moments where players not decidedly committed to nonviolence (and who haven't been spoiled *cough*) could be be made to wonder if violence is the right choice to pick, or to rationalize it, like in Undyne's case
and then being rewarded with the realization that they basically just killed Goku, in that fucking horrific Neutral death scene.I think the game still managed to pull off something neat as far as morality goes, in that while violence may unambiguously end up being the worse choice when looking at all the outcomes in hindsight, it can often be said to make sense in the moment- and at the same time there's also generally room for the player to doubt that, to keep trying to find another way out. And it also manages to be way more internally consistent with its own standards of morality than the average effort.
I'm having a hard time imagining how the exact same trick could be pulled off a second time by a successor, though. But then again it wouldn't be strictly necessary- Toby can probably cobble together stuff worth playing using just good old-fashioned game design easily enough. And it's also nice to merely have more examples of games where pacifism is not only possible but supported and encouraged to the extent that Undertale manages.
Unambiguous +1 here for loving the game's meta horror, to be sure.
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At first I thought this recent-ish tweet:
https://mobile.twitter.com/FwugRadiation/status/663423828425629696
implied otherwise, or that he'd changed his mind, but I didn't see the one that came before it:
https://mobile.twitter.com/FwugRadiation/status/663421225218277376
which clarified that he was just addressing content patches to Undertale itself. Here's hoping!
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Poor bastards.