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Alchenar posted:The main problem with Rowling is that people keep judging her and her books against standards of high literature, when the reality is they're just mildly above average children's books. There's no such thing as high literature.
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Apr 4, 2019 14:29
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Ahem. https://www.hightimes.com Also Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas.
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Apr 4, 2019 14:31
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AlBorlantern Corps posted:When people post "REEEEEEEEEEE" which I've seen popping up more lately on the internet(though not a lot here), I feel like they are mocking people with developmental disabilities who are nonverbal. Am I off base? That's what people are doing isn't it? It's a Pepe thing, so I'm sure some people are using it to be abelist, but it actually comes from a frog distress display.
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Apr 4, 2019 15:23
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VanSandman posted:There's no such thing as high literature. Lol, literally every literature club in every high school is packed with stoners
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Apr 4, 2019 15:25
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No, it's meant to be an autistic meltdown. The REEEEEE meme originated with 4channers making fun of their own nerdy/reclusive tendencies by saying something extremely nerdy or anti-social (often a genuinely held opinion under a layer of irony) and prefacing it with "normies out REEEEEEE". Like, the fact that Pepe is depicted doing it is because Pepe was super popular on 4chan at the time - the frog thing is a happy accident.
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Apr 4, 2019 15:29
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Oh it's definitily poking fun at people loosing it on the internet, but it's not a shot atquote:with developmental disabilities who are nonverbal
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Apr 4, 2019 15:50
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i'm not quite sure how you can agree with "it's meant to be an autistic meltdown" while also not recognising it as massively ableist
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Apr 4, 2019 15:56
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regardless of exactly how terrible it is, it's not a good look
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Apr 4, 2019 16:22
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So anyone have any opinions on D&D alignment?
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Apr 4, 2019 16:29
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Random Stranger posted:So anyone have any opinions on D&D alignment? 4e's alignment system was terrible and insultingly narrow but "unaligned" is not an awful concept to introduce to alignment. A lot of normal people who would generally get shunted into NG or CG because they "broadly prefer good to evil" are probably actually unaligned. There, there's an alignment take for you. Taciturn Tactician fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 16:33
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In addition to good and evil, law and chaos, there should be a third axis: Serious v aloof
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Apr 4, 2019 16:50
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AlBorlantern Corps posted:In addition to good and evil, law and chaos, there should be a third axis: Serious v aloof You say it as a joke, but "conviction" is a pretty good additional thing to consider for character building. OotS has a lot of characters who are really devoted to their alignment or trying to live up to it like Roy, Durkon, etc but it also has characters who broadly fit an alignment but only because it's where their instinctual behaviour leads them (Elan, arguably Belkar).
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Apr 4, 2019 16:53
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I like 13th age's Icon system better than alignment. It's a tangible thing that can be more easily put into real terms. No metaphysical quandaries. Also it provides a system available to all players rather than just paladins and clerics.
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Apr 4, 2019 16:59
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Taciturn Tactician posted:You say it as a joke, but "conviction" is a pretty good additional thing to consider for character building. OotS has a lot of characters who are really devoted to their alignment or trying to live up to it like Roy, Durkon, etc but it also has characters who broadly fit an alignment but only because it's where their instinctual behaviour leads them (Elan, arguably Belkar). The casual vs hardcore axis?
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Apr 4, 2019 17:01
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I like alignment being literally any two abstract concepts that morally matter to the character. "Family and wealth" is a much better description of a mob boss than "chaotic evil"
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Apr 4, 2019 17:08
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ikanreed posted:I like alignment being literally any two abstract concepts that morally matter to the character. Maybe a Westworld inspired 'core loop' - i.e. describe one event from your character's past that most defines them.
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Apr 4, 2019 17:13
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Random Stranger posted:So anyone have any opinions on D&D alignment? It's completely vestigial tool for enforcing active play. Best practice is to ignore it.
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Apr 4, 2019 17:43
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in my last d&d game i just had characters alignment for purposes of spells and such be determined by their deity.
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Apr 4, 2019 17:46
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I'm doing a dumb and joining a 5e game to play Dragon Heist and I'm genuinely concerned about alignment debates. I've only played D&d with one of the 6 people involved and I know neither of us give a poo poo about it but what if they do? 
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Apr 4, 2019 18:06
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Len posted:I'm doing a dumb and joining a 5e game to play Dragon Heist and I'm genuinely concerned about alignment debates. I've only played D&d with one of the 6 people involved and I know neither of us give a poo poo about it but what if they do? i've played in some otherwise bad groups and nobody has ever cared overmuch.
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Apr 4, 2019 18:28
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As long as you don't try to roleplay a paladin setting fire to a goblin orphanage because they'll grow up to be evil so the only way to be lawful good is to kill them first, you should be okay alignment-wise with most groups.
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Apr 4, 2019 19:15
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my alignment is Money and Power through Homicide
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Apr 4, 2019 19:58
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A general-purpose alignment chart:
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Apr 4, 2019 19:58
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I don't think anyone has linked the new page that has been out a few days. http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1160.html
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Apr 4, 2019 19:59
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Heh, boomerang buddies.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:18
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Taciturn Tactician posted:4e's alignment system was terrible and insultingly narrow but "unaligned" is not an awful concept to introduce to alignment. A lot of normal people who would generally get shunted into NG or CG because they "broadly prefer good to evil" are probably actually unaligned. The only problem with 4Es alignment system is it chickened out of killing alignment altogether.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:30
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Lazy - Hard Working Procrastinate - Proactive Should also be alignments
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Apr 4, 2019 20:33
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The only good alignment system is from Freebase, the LARP rules included with the Hol RPG.quote:ALIGNMENT
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Apr 4, 2019 20:55
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All wizards in Harry Potter are Evil because their whole society is built around maintaining the status quo, and the status quo involves Literal Slaves as an oppressed underclass. Discuss.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:56
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AlBorlantern Corps posted:When people post "REEEEEEEEEEE" which I've seen popping up more lately on the internet(though not a lot here), I feel like they are mocking people with developmental disabilities who are nonverbal. Am I off base? That's what people are doing isn't it? It is also known as "autistic screeching", so yes.
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Apr 4, 2019 20:58
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Mikl posted:All wizards in Harry Potter are Evil because their whole society is built around maintaining the status quo, and the status quo involves Literal Slaves as an oppressed underclass. Discuss. Hard agree. Also evil because a few well-trained witches and wizards could do immeasurable help to developing countries, the environment, and poverty, easily solving the energy crisis, global warming, starvation, healthcare access, etc. but instead they all choose to remain secret and keep their magical power to themselves. Just the revolutionizing of transportation logistics with teleportation would be a massive good in the world. Now I know that the literal ONLY rule that magic is said to follow in the books is that they can't create food, but there ain't nothing stopping them from creating fertilizer, enlarging existing food, etc.
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Apr 4, 2019 21:58
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DontMockMySmock posted:Hard agree. Also evil because a few well-trained witches and wizards could do immeasurable help to developing countries, the environment, and poverty, easily solving the energy crisis, global warming, starvation, healthcare access, etc. but instead they all choose to remain secret and keep their magical power to themselves. Just the revolutionizing of transportation logistics with teleportation would be a massive good in the world. That's why the "gun beats wand" thing is pretty genius. They could do a lot of that stuff, but they're afraid of muggles responding aggressively to people different from them and killing them all. It's why they stay in hiding in general.
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Apr 4, 2019 22:15
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Mikl posted:All wizards in Harry Potter are Evil because their whole society is built around maintaining the status quo, and the status quo involves Literal Slaves as an oppressed underclass. Discuss. This is my answer. https://mobile.twitter.com/GoodWitchLeigh/status/1105307775754592256?s=19 You can blame the UK Megathread on D&D for radicalising me into going socialist.
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Apr 4, 2019 22:21
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The Question IRL posted:This is my answer. I'll argue this point hard because Voldemort is an ongoing disaster, and the most important thing about a disaster isn't what happens once you stop the disaster, it's about stopping the disaster in the first place. Like a car parked on a train track. The train bearing down on you isn't a time to have a discussion about the destination. The train bearing down on you is the time to MOVE THE loving CAR. Once the car is parked safely on the side of the road, THEN do you have the debate about "how the gently caress did we get stuck on the train tracks in the first place? Will it happen again? How do we never get stuck on the train tracks again?" Yes, it's helpful if your driver says "poo poo, the car broke down, let's take it to a repair shop," but only if that statement doesn't take away time that could be spent moving the car.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:35
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AnoHito posted:That's why the "gun beats wand" thing is pretty genius. They could do a lot of that stuff, but they're afraid of muggles responding aggressively to people different from them and killing them all. It's why they stay in hiding in general. I'm about 99% sure the "gun beats wand" thing is apocaryphal and Rowling never said that. But even aside from that, this is completely incongruent with the actual text. At no point are wizards shown to be afraid of muggles—they consistently hold them in contempt, whether maliciously or just patronizingly. Hagrid claims in the first book that the secrecy is because muggles are annoying, Arthur Weasley's the head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office but has almost no understanding of the muggle world, Hermione modifies her parents's memories so they think they're Australian and have no children because they don't want to flee and obviously she knows better than them. The ministry casually messes with the mind of the President of the United States (and presumably his staff) so he forgets a scheduled phone call with the PM, because that's more convenient to them than waiting until the PM is free. I'm not even sure if Fudge was the minister anymore at that point, but they still value his time so much more than that of any muggle. Any muggle technology is dismissed as a "replacement for magic" (including by Hermione, a muggleborn), even though that doesn't really make sense—how can muggles seek to replace something they believe doesn't exist? The witch burnings are treated as a joke. If guns were that effective against wizards, why doesn't any wizard/witch use them, even muggleborns? Do the Death Eaters never run into a muggle with a shotgun or something? Most wizards don't even know what a gun is, of course, but surely someone would have figured it out. Or to take another angle, is there any reason to think the Shield Hats Fred and George sell wouldn't be effective against guns (or at least small arms fire)? And just in general, it seems unlikely that wizards just decided (globally), in the seventeenth century, that muggles were going to suddenly decide to kill them all and they should hide. If you mean that they stay in hiding because muggles might kill them all if they reveal themselves, I don't really see how that wouldn't just end in wizards seizing muggle nuclear arsenals and killing the muggles instead. The Question IRL posted:This is my answer. Apparently Cursed Child has a time traveling Harry watch as Voldemort murders his parents, even though he could stop him, because the future is pretty nice and changing anything would risk that or something? And another character describes this as "heroic" (not even after the fact, literally as they're standing there watching). That's peak centrism right there. (Though of course Rowling didn't write that, but she did say it's canon) Sky Shadowing posted:I'll argue this point hard because Voldemort is an ongoing disaster, and the most important thing about a disaster isn't what happens once you stop the disaster, it's about stopping the disaster in the first place. The epilogue doesn't really give much indication that there's been significant change in the 19 years after Voldemort's death, though.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:50
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Mikl posted:All wizards in Harry Potter are Evil because their whole society is built around maintaining the status quo, and the status quo involves Literal Slaves as an oppressed underclass. Discuss. I mean that is basically text. Even the sympathetic characters are giant shitheads and they get called out for it basically all the time. Say what you want about Harry Potter it is pretty blatant about that. A major plot point in the last book is that Dumbledore used to be a Nazi. Like Hagrid, who is treated a the next best thing to Jesus, is a violent drunkard who accepted a teaching position granted by nepotism even though he is an awful teacher who drives literally all his students away from his subject. He's nice to Harry but we're introduced to him attacking a man's child (not the man himself) because the man offended him and that sets the tone for the character. This isn't even subtext or death of the author, the characters all talk about this poo poo in the books. The books are overly sympathetic to the idea that someone can do bad things and good things and is way way way too quick to forgive Literal Nazis, but that's a different issue. The Question IRL posted:This is my answer. This doesn't actually make any sense within the context of the books though? Like yeah, Hermione is treated like she's being ridiculous by people but then it turns out she was actually the one in the right and the people who ignored her suffered consequences for it. If you're going to argue that point it sort of is defeated when the character is ultimately proven right, which is pretty much a reoccurring theme throughout the books. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 23:50
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ImpAtom posted:I mean that is basically text. Even the sympathetic characters are giant shitheads and they get called out for it basically all the time. Say what you want about Harry Potter it is pretty blatant about that. A major plot point in the last book is that Dumbledore used to be a Nazi. That's pretty much the point - the story makes it clear that wizard society is awful in most ways, then makes the primary story be about protecting it. It's been increasingly highlighted in recent years as Rowling gets more involved in politics and showing that she has the same basic attitude in real life, that things are terrible and she'll defend that to the death.
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Apr 5, 2019 00:00
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Tenebrais posted:That's pretty much the point - the story makes it clear that wizard society is awful in most ways, then makes the primary story be about protecting it. It's been increasingly highlighted in recent years as Rowling gets more involved in politics and showing that she has the same basic attitude in real life, that things are terrible and she'll defend that to the death. I guess I'm not really clear on how the books show that? The main magical government is the enemy for almost the entire latter half of the series, with Harry actively claiming their behavior in arresting people illegally, torture, letting Nazis roam free, and various other poo poo is unacceptable. Harry himself is a shithead who is often willing to give people passes on poo poo but he's also wrong almost every single time he does that and the books don't actually shy away from that fact. If you go by the only actual written material about the post-series then there are sweeping reforms passed throughout the government and Hermione becomes Minister of Magic, while Harry is treated as a weird rear end in a top hat who can't accept the idea that maybe people he decided are villains aren't. I feel like this is genuinely a case where the author's lovely tweets mean people don't actually pay attention to what is in the original text, which is a pretty good argument for Death of the Author right there.
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Apr 5, 2019 00:08
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Even overlooking the genetically programmed for servitude slave race (which to be fair, does have a basis in some folk mythology), the wizarding world is highly stratified. Ron's family is super poor, Harry's and Malfoy's families are super rich. Everybody gets sorted into a house that determines whether you're heroic, evil, smart, or a hardworking nobody. Hagrid is a good character, but in the eyes of the world he lives in, he's a freak because of his heritage, and generally it's implied the wizarding world sucks for most non-human races, who don't get any real say in the mostly human organizations that dictate the hiding from normals.Sky Shadowing posted:I'll argue this point hard because Voldemort is an ongoing disaster, and the most important thing about a disaster isn't what happens once you stop the disaster, it's about stopping the disaster in the first place. Well, he's a recurring disaster, and much of his power comes from his gang. The first time he died, the organization just went underground until the next time they could pop up and be good old boys again, or even just be the good old boys behind closed doors. Cutting off the head of the serpent doesn't matter so much if you're just going to let everyone else get away. What's to stop somebody from following in his footsteps? I think the way the series falls short of saying something is really exemplified in how the unforgivable curses just kinda get thrown around like they're nothing towards the end. What once was a solid rule just falls by the wayside in the name of expedience, even as the actual goals start to feel less ambitious.
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Apr 5, 2019 00:24
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I was never a big HP fan but my girlfriend is and when I asked her how disappointing it must have been to live this wonderful childhood full of promise and adventure only to grow up and become the wizard equivalent of an accountant working 9-5 she got mad at me It's also unfortunate that the world building never quite left the constraints of 'British middle class society BUT magic instead of TVs" though I imagine that's why it's so relatable even if it seems like a bunch of wasted potential Also gently caress every TERF That's my HP opinions thanks for reading them!
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