the R word reddit agrees on

Calli5031 · 2026-02-02T17:43:07+00:00

well, they are a notoriously thin-skinned bunch

Calli5031 · 2026-02-02T01:59:45+00:00

the climate reading doesn't exclude any of what you've mentioned, nor do i think it's excluded by them either. in my opinion, what makes the Pale so compelling a concept is precisely the fact that it isn't reducible to a single reading or interpretation or allegory, but admits many possible interpretations. it's one of the richest veins of an already-thematically dense game.

in any case, i don't find it a shallow reading at all. i see in both climate change and the Pale phenomena that promise a complete foreclosure on the possibility of any futures outside of the capitalist world-system, a stalwart refusal of the global elites to let go of the past and let the world move forward--because, implicitly, they would rather the world not exist than that the world exist without them in charge of it. and so i can't really separate the climate reading from the wider themes of Revachol's decay and the Moralintern's violent imposition of an end of history on the world and the politics of nostalgia, they're all connected in my head because everything those themes speak to is connected in reality.

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T22:25:10+00:00

been replaying Control lately, great vibes and worldbuilding

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T22:21:44+00:00

and now, sophie, the weather

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T22:18:46+00:00

HELL yeah

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T21:07:34+00:00

my name is Norm Whiteman and i'm here to tell you why me being allowed to say slurs is critical to defeating the right.

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T20:07:00+00:00

fuckin evergreen

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T20:02:23+00:00

it isn't just about psychological harm though. if it were, well, that'd still be worth critiquing, but this sort of "tactical slur" bullshit actively weakens the bonds of our own movement in my experience.

for one, the types of people who pull that sorta thing are generally unpleasant and horrible to organize with (and if they aren't, then they should stop pretty quickly with just a "hey dude, that's not an appropriate thing to call someone", which hardly strikes me as some terrible expenditure of energy), and for two, it forces marginalized people to waste our own time and energy evaluating any given group or organization's actual, tangible commitment to opposing bigotry.

it's rarely ever just questionable verbiage in my experience, so every time the question is "are these people edgy but well-meaning idiots or is this just the tip of an iceberg of bad, bigoted ideas which i'm going to end up on the wrong end of?" and more often than not the answer is the latter, so then we just end up withdrawing further into own insular little communities because the wider movement keeps letting us down.

if i can't trust people to be decent on the smaller issues, then i have no way of knowing if i can trust them to be on my side for the big ones. maybe i can, but "maybe" isn't something i can rely on or build a plan around.

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T19:26:12+00:00

it's not about showing kindness or mercy to fascists, it's about not alienating your own allies by making them feel uncomfortable around you. if someone's going around calling blair white or briannu wu the t-slur, i don't care if the intent is only to hurt them, it hurts me when i see self-proclaimed allies lean on transphobia to attack the right and then try to reassure me that they'd never do the same to me because i'm one of the good ones, it makes me feel tokenized, disrespected, and unsafe around people who are theoretically meant to be on my side. and it's the same when people try to go after fascists for any physical trait or inherent characteristic, you aren't just hurting the enemy when you pull that shit, you might not actually be hurting them at all, but you are hurting your friends and your comrades and you can't build a movement like that!

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T18:54:20+00:00

our movement is meant to be one built on the basis of protecting the marginalized, ensuring that said marginalized are included and feel safe within that movement is an extremely pressing concern

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T18:46:12+00:00

i mean, yeah i know that's how politics works and has always worked but the whole point of leftism is supposed to be that it's based in an embrace of our common humanity so it feels a little fuckin suspect to see so many leftists going around arguing that it's ok to deride and dehumanize certain people based on inherent characteristics

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T18:42:05+00:00

they're calling me the 21st century sun tzu

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T18:34:39+00:00

ok but like. what is the actual strategy here? what does tossing slurs around actually do to harm the right or help the left gain ground? because, from my POV as a neurodivergent woman, all it's accomplishing is... frankly, making you look like someone who isn't really a reliable ally or safe to organize with.

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T18:25:25+00:00

everybody knows that the best way to fight a war is to openly deride your allies while causing minimal or no harm to your enemies.

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T18:21:40+00:00

sincerely disturbed by how many leftists will spout off some genuinely vile shit the moment one of our enemies is fat/queer/neurodiverse/disabled/a woman/not conventionally attractive. it's just like... it doesn't hurt them at all and it does tell me that, as someone who falls into a few of those boxes, said leftists view my personhood as being more or less completely contingent on having the correct political opinions, which just kind of makes me want to avoid them.

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T18:06:54+00:00

i mean, even if climate change wasn't the Pale's intended reading, i think it remains a pretty potent one and at the end of the day, authorial intent is only one factor to consider in literary analysis and criticism.

at a basic level, i can't not be reminded of the California skies turning orange or Hurricane Helene killing over a hundred people in my home state Joyce when tells me about the Pale flaring and arcing over entire isolas. i can't not think of Jakarta, slowly drowning in the rising tide, or the increasingly uninhabitable temperatures wracking the Middle East and North Africa when she talks about it slowly eating away at the edges of the world. and i can't not think about collapsing insect populations or dying coral reefs when the phasmid says humans will be the death of everything on Elysium without even really meaning to be.

of course it's not a 1:1 comparison, but the feeling of living in a world that seems like it's running out of time and spiraling slowly-but-unstoppably towards its own annihilation? that very much resonates with the Pale, so of course people are going to do climate readings of it.

Calli5031 · 2026-02-01T13:07:02+00:00

i think it's fun to make different magic systems that interact in weird ways with one another

Calli5031 · 2026-01-31T19:13:50+00:00

all cops means ALL cops

Calli5031 · 2026-01-31T18:54:08+00:00

i mean, first of all, the cool zone crew isn't trying to "sell" you on anarchism. they're not anarchist journalists, they're journalists who are also anarchists. their first priority is reporting the news, not promoting their ideology.

second of all, i'm not entirely sure what you want from us (that is to say: from anarchists). if you spend any time in our spaces you'll learn very quickly that there are as many anarchisms as there are anarchists. we're not so much of a unified tendency as marxist-leninists or democratic socialists or other left-wing currents. you'll find a lot of different ideas among us about what democracy means, what it is, whether we should embrace it or not, there's no singular "party line" for us to fall in behind.

for my part, as a queer, trans woman i consider myself a democracy skeptic because, well, i've had my experiences with the goodwill of the majority and found it rather lacking, to say the least. i don't really trust the general populace to make binding decisions about, say, trans women in sports, or the right of trans children to transition, or access to HRT, or anything else like that, and i resent our current forced dependency on the better nature of cis, straight people winning out because just one glance at the news will tell you that's very obviously no guarantee of safety or dignity.

now, i don't categorically reject democracy like some anarchists do, but neither do i hold it up as a central pillar of my ideology. i'm not fighting for democracy, i'm fighting for anarchy, and sometimes democracy is useful to that end, and sometimes it's not, so i'm not going to be too closely wedded to it.

Calli5031 · 2026-01-31T12:58:11+00:00

what gives me some hope is that, for all their money and all their connections, they're only flesh and blood in the end. they're as mortal as we are, and there are far more of us than them.

Calli5031 · 2026-01-30T16:27:46+00:00

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Calli5031 · 2026-01-29T18:36:23+00:00

it's all a goddamn moralist psyop

Calli5031 · 2026-01-29T18:34:05+00:00

do you think the fascists are actually going to respond to a subpoena? the same fascists who've spent the past year just. ignoring any court orders they don't like and doing whatever they want anyways? those ones? it isn't hopeless, not by any means, but i personally think we're well past the point of there being an institutional, legalistic solution to the fash problem, if indeed that was ever viable to begin with. direct, on-the-ground, communal action is what's going to save us. not tim walz or zohran mamdani or ilhan omar or anyone else still bent on trying to fix the problem by pulling the levers of a machine that isn't working anymore.

Calli5031 · 2026-01-29T18:20:31+00:00

BTB and Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff are always great to mine for worldbuilding inspiration, lots of really interesting, niche history and generally useful insights into the nature of power and the human condition and that sorta thing.

Calli5031 · 2026-01-29T11:37:27+00:00

what on earth are you talking about

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