damn I wanna re-read Parmenides

parmenides nuts lol

David Kakabadze - My Mother (1918)

Europe (yur·uhp) is an exotic peninsula in the extreme westernmost reaches of Asia with many fascinating cultures and landscapes and home to many of the world's last remaining feudal kingdoms, offering a glimpse back into a more simplistic way of living.

Winter Wvlf

What we know so far.

Even though I'm a bit guilty of it myself with my own space opera setting (it's supposed to have a retro aesthetic), it's surprising how science fiction has been so permeated by cynicism and what I can best define as "End of History" thinking that the only thing pop sci fi seems able to imagine is "the future will be the same as today (or even worse), but there will be Cool Laser Guns"

(lately even the lasers have been replaced by regular bullets)

What I mean is that much like it's harder to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, it's easier to imagine our current capitalist system extending indefinitely but now In Space rather than imagine societal changes. Like, this it guys? We're gonna have to pay rent and fight pointless wars and be ruled by corporate suits forever? are we actually gonna have fucking CEOs as we explore the galaxy?

This is it? You can't imagine a better world than this?

Even when sci-fi authors talk about realism, it's usually about how to make ships pound each other harder with missiles, not how about society will evolve in the future, what changes might technology bring to society (the whole point of science fiction in my opinion). It's just Today, But With Lasers. We will still have corporations, nation-states, cops, war, the same society we have now. But Now With Lasers.

anyways, for a good start, read Banks and LeGuin, but there are others, lots more, who dare to imagine what actual futures might look like, they just aren't as well known

it's like if fantasy settings were just perpetually stuck for ages with the same technology and same pseudo-feudal social organization (the same dynasties sometimes!) instead of changing over the centuries like in real life

oh wait

All of the zeldas so far in order of release

This took me so long lol i don't even know why i did this but here it is :>

And also i have not played eow yet so no spoilers pls

It's always disappointing when a series makes a big deal about societal and structural problems in it's setting, making readers think it has interesting things to say about the subject, only to then resolve the problems by fighting The CEO of Racism, John Racist, so that all of society's problems would then get better because they promoted a new CEO.

the onion could buy clarín

I relate to Reimu because I would also rather be getting drunk and railing a tgirl witch than doing my job

no no, this is all real

It's incredible how widespread the worldbuilding trope of "this culture/species has no art" or "they're so focused on war they don't have any culture", have you ever seen the clothes and items of nomadic cultures, their song and poetry, ever even seen what hunter-gatherers craft? Jesus Christ.

This is all because of racism of course but also because typical fantasy stories need enemies the heroes can vanquish and you don't feel too bad about them if the orcs "have an inherent hatred for beauty" (textually from GURPS Fantasy Folk, which also very much says explicitly, and forgive me for quoting this, some races in fantasy are meant to be cannon fodder villains)

But this isn't about RPGs only, in fact I was thinking about the Dothraki from Game of Thrones, a supposedly serious REAL fantasy based on REAL historical people like the Mongols and the natives of the Great Plains (GRRM's words) where their entire culture is created around them being savage bad guys, basically doing NOTHING but to despoil and do sexual violence with no culture beyond warfare (Bret Devereaux from ACOUP did a better takedown on them that I could ever hope to do, and it was a very enlightening one with regards to real history too)

The first thing you learn about humans in anthropology is that all human societies have culture. From birth to death. As a worldbuilder, I also imagine this applies to any species capable of abstract thought. THERE IS NO SOCIETY WITHOUT CULTURE. They all have beliefs, rituals, customs and ways of life that go beyond warfare, and that last part is important, because every society has children, there is not a single society made exclusively of big mean warriors who kill for fun, they have families and loved ones to care for and raise, they have food that needs to be produced (perhaps the key factor shaping most pre-industrial societies), they have rituals and customs to interact between themselves and the world, they have culture. NO HUMAN LIVES WITHOUT CULTURE.

Why are you taking real life nomadic and hunter/gatherers cultures as examples here?

Because that's what people like GRRM compare these "warriors with no culture besides war" to.

not really sure what else to say at this point. these opinions being platformed in the mainstream media is just so catastrophic for the way that people view minorities in this already extremely racist-by-nature country. gasoline on a bonfire.

Neither did white women or white men apparently and yet they never get the misogyny label applied to them wholesale. Seems exclusive to men of color.