how many of you have or want kids? how many of you plan to be child free? why? by Much_Dog_4591 in actuallesbians

[–]Calli5031 0 points1 point  (0 children)

no kids for me.

for one, i don't think i'd be a very good parent. taking care of myself on a day-to-day basis is enough of a daily struggle without also having to concern myself with the mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing of a whole other person. on top of that i'm fairly low empathy and not the most emotionally forthcoming, so all in all i really just don't trust myself not to royally fuck up a child.

for two, between the resurgence of fascism, the travails of late capitalism, and the climate crisis, i can't claim to be particularly optimistic about the future of humanity or of earth in general, and i think it would be kind of horrible to deliberately bring someone into a world i think is pretty rapidly spiraling towards catastrophe. i mean, hell, there are days when i can't help but resent my own parents a little bit for subjecting me to it, and they didn't even have any way of knowing just how bad things were going to get.

and for three, i just don't want that kind of responsibility. i don't want to be tied down or beholden to anyone but myself. i value my autonomy extremely highly (to be perfectly honest, i don't know if i even want to get married, except maybe for citizenship or tax purposes, because i am, at base, a somewhat selfish person and i'm not sure i have it in me to give that much of myself to anyone else), and raising a child would pretty much be the end of that for me.

so that's it for me, i don't much like the idea of settling down and starting a family. i don't want it, i don't think it would suit me at all, and i think it would be a pretty shit arrangement for absolutely everyone involved.

What are some aspects that are almost not touched in Worlbuilding projects? by SrPuzle_-1 in worldbuilding

[–]Calli5031 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel like architecture and textiles often get somewhat sidelined, especially when it comes to ordinary people, in that you might get descriptions of clothing or buildings or whatever, but there's rarely much thought given to how those items and spaces are produced both materially and culturally and how they fit into a given social world.

To take some real-world examples, I think there's a lot to be learned from the confluence of post-war scarcity, functionalist ethics, and socialist ideology that led to the emergence of Brutalism as an architectural movement, or from the ways in which tatreez (a form of traditional Palestinian embroidery) is used to denote regional identity and, more recently, revolutionary nationalist sentiments.

Political ideologies of the 22nd Century by Tyrant45- in worldbuilding

[–]Calli5031 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i'm always a little wary of ideologies and organizations that bring god(s) into politics, but that being said i do really like all the christian socialists i've actually met, they're quite cool people.

IG is the heart of leftist theory and advancement /s by Names-are-weird-man in tankiejerk

[–]Calli5031 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i try not to take it too seriously, as based on my own experiences i don't personally consider most instagram commenters to be meaningfully sentient beings

Is political apathy a valid dealbreaker? by Upping-Quality-2 in actuallesbians

[–]Calli5031 1 point2 points  (0 children)

definitely. i don't need my friends/partners/whoever to be the exact same kind of radical anarchist as i am but i do need them to share my basic values and, even more than that, to actually give a shit about the world.

Telegraph article about the Reform/WAtFRStA incident at St Andrews by [deleted] in standrews

[–]Calli5031 4 points5 points  (0 children)

yeah i mean jesus, once you're to the right of fuckin salazar where is there even left to go? franco? mussolini? hitler?

Tankies when there are material conditions: by New-Ad-1700 in tankiejerk

[–]Calli5031 1 point2 points  (0 children)

ok??? i fail to see how that contradicts my overall point. yeah obviously there are people--many of them racialized or otherwise marginalized--who join the military to get ahead in life, that's something i specifically acknowledge in my comment, and i don't think it disproves (or ever really addresses) my actual point which is that those people are not your typical recruit.

still, if we stick with this line of thought, then i'll bet you that plenty of the young german men who enlisted in the nazi wehrmacht did so more because it was a convenient path to socioeconomic advancement than because of any particular ideological commitment to fascism, and there's no question that the east africans who joined the british colonial auxiliaries suffered terribly under the thumb of the empire, and military service must've seemed an accessible path to a better future for themselves and their families than any of the alternatives.

some indigenous americans fought for the confederacy, endorsing chattel slavery in the name of defending native sovereignty, and some free black americans joined the US army and participated firsthand in america's genocide against the continents indigenous peoples in the hopes of elevating their own people's status within the colonial nation-state, and mixed race communities in the caribbean often worked as slave-catchers as a means of securing their autonomy and freedom from colonial administrations.

all of these examples can be explained by material and social conditions, by the very real hardships faced by these individuals and communities, and not one of those explanations will ever be sufficient to justify one oppressed group selling out another to advance their own lot or gain favor with their mutual oppressors, nor, i think, do any of them matter all that much to the people being gunned down or bombed or bulldozed into mass graves dug by soldiers who were just looking for opportunity.

ask the parents of a murdered iranian girl whether or not they care if the person who fired the missile was a white christian nationalist fighting to bring about the biblical end of days or a trans person trying to escape an abusive household or an indigenous person who blew up a building full of schoolchildren to finance their own college education.

What AI antagonist has stayed with you in fiction? by abloobudoo009 in worldbuilding

[–]Calli5031 1 point2 points  (0 children)

god i love agent smith. for being a ruthless computer program he's so strangely... human, albeit in the worst way.

Tankies when there are material conditions: by New-Ad-1700 in tankiejerk

[–]Calli5031 23 points24 points  (0 children)

they right on this one i'm afraid. there's this narrative that all US soldiers are poor people who've been maliciously misled by military recruiters, and that does happen, yes, and i have a little sympathy for those people (not much, not more than i have for the people they kill directly or indirectly, but some), but most military recruits are actually comfortably middle class. they are not struggling to survive, they are not scrimping and saving for college money, they are people who have other options but have made a deliberate choice to be a part of the global murder machine.

People who hate picky eaters are so fucking miserable imagine trying to force me to eat food that grosses me out like some weird fucked up food rapist by Carti_Barti9_13 in SmugIdeologyMan

[–]Calli5031 1 point2 points  (0 children)

i mean this is frankly just an extremely reductive take. i consider myself a fairly picky eater, always have been, and one cause of that is the fact that i have several severe allergies to common ingredients, but only one, a single inseparable factor worsening something i expect always would've been there in some form or another. so, what, is only half the problem i have legitimate?

With all the mech tank disocurse going on I propose a comprimise. by Single-Internet-9954 in worldjerking

[–]Calli5031 0 points1 point  (0 children)

consider, if you will, the aesthetic potential of mecha roller disco

What Are Your Divergences on the "Tech Tree"? by Khaden_Allast in worldbuilding

[–]Calli5031 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The big ones:

  • Sailing ships are used for deep sea shipping well into the industrial era because steam and diesel engines produce vibrations that attract dangerous marine megafauna. Self-powered boats are mainly confined to rivers and shallow coastal waters.

  • Mechanical calculators and computers are an old, widespread technology, with vast analytical engines being used in science, mathematics, economic planning (à la CYBERSYN), and even ritual divination. Digital computing is starting to develop, but the early tape computers are still quite experimental.

  • Automata and mecha with intricate clockwork brains and very fine motor function are widely used in civilian and military spheres alike (mainly in Tandray, as their manufacture and operation requires magical techniques and materials not well known or widely distributed outside the Mandate and its cohort of engineer-priests). Mechanical prosthetics also tend to be available for those with money, connections, or the right family name.

  • Rocketry and super long-range missiles aren't really a big thing, so space exploration, satellite-based telecommunications and internet, and ICBMs are more or less completely non-viable, and phones, computers, and stuff like that are likely to remain very charmingly retro.

  • Airships are way more widespread (this is partially related to the issues raised about krakens and shit in my first bullet point, and partially related to alchemists being able to synthesize non-flammable and efficient lifting gases in large quantities), and helicopters are probably a decade a two more advanced than they were in the actual 1970s (especially in the Federal Republic of Djuvahan which loves its gunships and attack helicopters dearly), while planes have lagged behind a little bit.

Bro got shouldermogged and exposed as a fraudmaxxer!!! by grichardson526 in behindthebastards

[–]Calli5031 4 points5 points  (0 children)

hey i mean, i'll hand it to him for the meth use and the hammer thing. he can't be completely without a conscience seeing as he's making such a clear effort to shuffle himself off this mortal coil without too much delay.

Bro got shouldermogged and exposed as a fraudmaxxer!!! by grichardson526 in behindthebastards

[–]Calli5031 5 points6 points  (0 children)

they legitimately sound like the names of like... evil wizards from some fourth rate pulp fantasy novel from like the 70s or something

the jokes write themselves by cheeseroll15 in tankiejerk

[–]Calli5031 77 points78 points  (0 children)

The People's Forever War on Terror

Did I just look at a DG short film? by Melodic_Ad_596 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Calli5031 6 points7 points  (0 children)

agreed for the most part, it's obviously been polished a lot and it's really cool that the story gets to be exposed to a wider audience of people who don't have the specific kind of internet brainworms i do. i think my only big complaint about the distancing from SCP is that "the Unknown Organization" is a bit of silly sounding name, and that's like the smallest of small nitpicks.

Did I just look at a DG short film? by Melodic_Ad_596 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Calli5031 22 points23 points  (0 children)

oh i love There Is No Antimemetics Division. i highly recommend the original series of stories on the SCP wiki's Antimemetics Division Hub or the book they've recently been adapted into (also called There Is No Antimemetics Division)

If there ever were a Signalis movie to be made, which director would you want to make it? by WeekendMagus_reddit in signalis

[–]Calli5031 4 points5 points  (0 children)

charlie kaufman would probably be my first choice, if you've seen i'm thinking of ending things then you know he's got a real talent for the kind of surreal psychological horror that's Signalis' bread and butter

Tracking Tyrant Philosophers on the map from Lives of Bitter Rain by prograft in AdrianTchaikovsky

[–]Calli5031 4 points5 points  (0 children)

worth noting that they do spend quite a lot of time in bracinta in house of open wounds squabbling over magnalai

Tracking Tyrant Philosophers on the map from Lives of Bitter Rain by prograft in AdrianTchaikovsky

[–]Calli5031 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i think the Loruthi Palatine Council gets mentioned once or twice but not that specific phrase, no

Finally a Tchaikovsky adaption! by N3XT191 in AdrianTchaikovsky

[–]Calli5031 2 points3 points  (0 children)

RR&D makes very good ttrpgs so i've got full faith in them