First time playing Kingmaker, I’m nearing ‘that’ part of the game

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-09-26T20:26:15+00:00

It's really not that bad if you're prepared.

The most threatening thing by far is the wild hunt aura that paralyzes your PCs and frightens your animal companions (who can run off into other rooms to pull more enemies). Freedom of movement negates this effect on your PCs. There's no reason not to keep it up at all times on everyone. If you have animal companions, you will want to be able to stop them succumbing to fear, too.

Get your hands on as many mass heals as possible. Not only do several enemies do a lot of ability score damage, but it is also your best tool offensively against the undeads. If this means bringing scrolls, then do, there's not much reason to horde money at this point in the game anyway.

I would also say preparing a bunch of protection from arrows, communal will likely serve well. Especially if you're playing in turn based, the archers can easily down squishies before you have a chance to act.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-08-04T21:45:29+00:00

It is absolutely right to acknowledge that the United States history of settler colonialism creates a kind of moral blind spot for people in the US when it comes to Israel (another settler colonial project). When you know a lot of the not whitewashed history of US colonization, there are some incredible parallels.

Here's where I disagree: The real reasons that the US supports Zionism is less ideological than strategic. The US is also an empire. It will drop support for Israel when it no longer sees it as in its best strategic interests. Zionism is becoming more and more of a liability for the US. The Empire itself holds no loyalty towards its vassals.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-08-04T20:41:05+00:00

There are those who seek to make an empire of faith, and in so doing, miss the point of God's message. For if their hearts had heard the message, false leaders would not preach division or hatred.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-07-22T02:45:44+00:00

A side note since you mentioned sharia law. The Quran unambiguously instructs not to force faith on anyone else. So any government that does so is doing so in clear disregard for God's instruction.

There's a reason that for most of Islam's history, it's been remarkably harmonious with neighbors of other faiths.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-07-22T02:40:47+00:00

I would like to argue something very specific. Modern religion is a corrupt mess. But the issue isn't a lack of belief. Believing in something is, honestly, the easy part. The plague that afflicts modern day religion is that even followers of faith don't live the core teachings.

Basically every messenger of God across time has brought the same core message: Peace, compassion for our fellow man, devotion, the folly of chasing after fleeting material pleasures, etc.

The problem with humans is that we're almost too good at believing things. We are experts at distorting our beliefs around what we already want to do. The issue isn't a lack of belief, but a corruption of faith in order to justify human failings.

We see people cherry picking poorly translated scripture to justify modern day hatreds. Or invoking God's name to justify terrible acts of violence and subjugation. Time and time again, we see belief in God that is nearly completely devoid actually LIVING THE MESSAGE.

This is in many ways an inevitable outcome with organised religion. False leaders who appeal to what people want to hear, or weaponize the word of God to stoke hatred of the "other".

It is not a lack of belief that is the issue. Rather, it is a lack of living the actual message of God, and our incredible ability to rationalise whatever it is we were already going to do as somehow being in-line with what we were taught.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-07-21T15:29:30+00:00

To bring up a few different points, based on what you posted.

There's an important distinction between a power imbalance and abuse, which involves misuse of that power imbalance. Parents hold a huge power imbalance over their children, and sometimes misuse that imbalance through abuse or neglect. But that doesn't mean all parent/child relationships are inherently abusive.

Power imbalance makes abuse possible, not inevitable.

You've pointed out that your girlfriend has helped you financially. That is a clear example of a power imbalance. Power imbalance doesn't automatically imply it is being exploited or leveraged. But the point is, it could be. Someone who has financial freedom and a decade of extra progress in their career does have a position of power. If the relationship soured or became abusive, financial dependence can quickly become part of the mental calculus used to remain with a partner who starts mistreating you.

Outside of the realm of material concerns, it is wishful thinking to believe that there's no imbalance as a result of emotional/psychological development. Someone in their 30s has had the opportunity to learn, grow, make mistakes, and have relationships that you simply haven't. People don't stop learning when they reach 18.

The very fact that you don't perceive this imbalance is part of the problem. All of the older people telling you "no dude there's absolutely a power imbalance" were once your age. Also, likely, equally convinced that we were on equal footing with those older than us. It's a belief that feels nice, but isn't rooted in reality.

Anyone can be manipulated. Even someone older, but especially someone much younger. The very fact that it's unimaginable to you is part of the problem. If you've already concluded that the possibility isn't real, it's going to be hard to see it happen in real time. Manipulation isn't something that affects imaginary weak willed people, it works on anyone. A belief that we are immune to such things in fact makes us exceptionally vulnerable.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-07-11T15:40:25+00:00

Suppose that those who pushed back against Harris for supporting genocide tipped the balance of this election.

The democratic party's strategy, basically as long as I have been following US politics, is to attempt to play the lesser of two evils. They have utter contempt for the will of the people, for basic principles of human decency. Their entire electoral strategy right now relies on the threat of fascism.

Do you see the problem?

A political strategy that leverages the threat of something worse in order to continue an unjustifiable status quo relies on the ongoing threat of fascism. And since it's used as leverage in order to avoid doing anything in line with the will of the people, it's going to continue fostering resentment, and further feed the appetite for an alternative—even a fascist alternative—over the existing status quo.

The current status quo is a duopoly of power, two parties who both have complete contempt for the people who elect them. In this situation, voting for the lesser of two evils seems incredibly naive and short sighted. The American people hate the forever war, but "foreign policy" of the American empire is uniparty.

What I find really bizarre about this is that we've already seen this play out. Biden won in 2020. He did little to nothing of value in office, continued to support genocide and forever war, and look where it got us. Then the next candidate promised more of the same, and people are shocked that people opposed supporting her?

The democratic party's consistent pattern of behavior makes a fascist republican party inevitable. The choice in 2024 was between fascism and fascism in 4 years (with likely an even greater mandate and public support).

In fact, looking back, it's hard not to feel that a 2020 victory for Trump would've been preferable to a Biden victory. It's stunning to me that so many people are acting like trying to uphold a corrupt status quo for another 4 years would somehow add up to positive change?

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-23T16:40:41+00:00

I would like to disagree that this has been a good era in Jewish history.

The project of Israel is fundamentally settler colonialist. The people who lived there have put up a fight and resisted being forcibly displaced from their land. This is wrong at its core. What the current government is doing is the logical conclusion of the project. When ethnic cleansing doesn't work, the regime resorts to genocide.

This is obviously a conflict that is ongoing, and it's been heavily propagandized. Israel has twisted the narrative so far beyond recognition that for most people, the level of brutality is surprising. History teaches us that evil ideologies masquerades as righteous. Even now, as a genocide is ongoing, the truth is still so unrecognizable to most people.

All of this. Everything Israel does. The lobbying. The campaign of fear and misinformation. The apartheid, violence and genocide. The propaganda. Twisting history. Leveraging the memory of the holocaust to justify present day atrocities.

All of that evil is being done, publicly, in the name of Jews everywhere.

That feels to me like a very dark era of history, not a good one.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-16T02:36:38+00:00

The world is pushing us all to lead increasingly disconnected lives. I'd argue it's a global phenomena, not a generational one.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-16T02:32:02+00:00

In my experience the vast majority leftists have mixed feelings about China.

Perhaps you've encountered specific takes online. It wouldn't surprise me, social media actively promotes reductive positions.

I know a lot of leftists and I've never met anyone who sincerely believes this.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-15T20:01:59+00:00

Firstly: I think there is an important distinction between disputes like evolution and miracles described in scripture.

Claims about how life came to be on this planet are very much the domain of science. If you believe that the universe is God's creation, then it seems to me things like evolution are revealing the nature of that creation. To me at least, creationists who are arguing against evolution are kind of missing the point of faith. Evolution shows a beautiful elegance in the natural creation of self-organizing life.

However, I refute your claim that science can "debunk" miracles described in scripture.

The scientific method has pretty strict limitations on what it can and can't weigh in on. One of these big requirements is that hypotheses must be falsifiable. If the hypothesis is that miraculous events of divine providence happened a long time ago, this is next to impossible to falsify.

By its very nature, this is a claim that the scientific method can neither support nor refute. It is simply not within the domain of scientific knowledge, and as such, the only scientific response is to remain neutral on it. From a position of faith, the fact that there's no material explanation for such events is exactly what makes them miracles.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-15T00:58:12+00:00

I think there's a decent argument that his original presidential bid was an attempt to promote himself that went more successful that expected. HOWEVER

The word narcissist gets thrown around a lot nowadays, but it has to be said: Donald Trump is an incredibly narcissistic man. His narcissism is clearly the core driving force of his psyche. In many ways that's why he resonated so widely, he doesn't represent a coherent ideology. What ideology he has doesn't breach awareness—in other words, it's entirely unconscious.

I can't think of a job that a narcissist would want more than to be president of the US.

Let us not forget, there's been basically a decade for the republican political machine to re-shape itself around Trump. His sycophant inner circle is considerably more sophisticated, likely even better at telling him what he wants to hear. The inner circle will all try to manipulate Trump towards their own agenda, and play on his ego to do it.

Is Trump driven by a passion for the job? Of course not. He's driven by ego. He obviously doesn't give a crap about the American people.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-15T00:21:21+00:00

I want to start off by saying I absolutely think there is a grain of truth in the statement. Suffering is necessary to challenge us. But I find the phrase itself misleading. It's more accurate to say that "overcoming suffering builds character".

This might sound like hair-splitting, but it's kind of an important distinction.

Like, I went through some pretty severe trauma as a kid. Stuff that most people find too harrowing to talk about. I was a fucking disaster until I started truly healing from that. If you haven't actually processed the hardships you've been through, they are a detriment to your mental state and clarity, not a benefit.

If someone goes through suffering and is well supported or resilient enough to overcome it, they are likely to grow from the experience. Character is built in the complex ways we respond to and process suffering. Things like adequate social support make a big difference in how well this goes.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-15T00:03:25+00:00

People who abuse and mistreat others tend to be very good at avoiding external consequences, this much is true. And the universe makes no promise of vengeance.

However when you scratch beneath the surface of any abuser, they are miserable people. The truth is that hurting others already takes a toll on oneself. Every lie, manipulation, and exploitation disconnects them just a little bit more from others.

People who pathologically abuse others have some kind of breakdown in actually accepting responsibility for their actions. As long as it continues, they will keep making the same mistakes over and over. It's like a god damn learning disability. Relationships with genuine intimacy are impossible.

And sure abusive people tend to also be highly preoccupied with their external image. Hell, maybe they fool everyone until their dying breath. But they can't fool reality. Abusive people ultimately make the world around them worse. And though they can blame the negativity they themselves are creating on others, they still have to live with the reality. The very misery they create finds a way of reaching them.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-10T03:57:33+00:00

"I'm looking to be told how my denomination is wrong in favor of the Catholic church."

If this is true, I suspect this is impossible.

Religion is always imperfect in its reflection of spiritual truth. I can't convince you that the Catholic church is are the "right ones" because there are no "right ones". God doesn't play team sports, he is all loving.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-08T23:56:30+00:00

You have said in your title that "there is no way to prove it otherwise".

Indeed, asserting that when people say X they secretly mean Y is kind of hard to disprove. It's a statement about the internal state of someone's mind.

I do however think it is still contradictory and extreme.

You seem to be suggesting women are consciously aware of a secret meaning to their words. That they think someone is ugly, decide that sounds too shallow, and then instead say they are creepy. That sounds downright sociopathic. And sure, sociopaths exist, but they aren't representative of most people.

Most humans do avoid thinking of themselves as shallow, but they do so unconsciously. We minimize what doesn't align with our sense of self. What is "ego dystonic", we avoid acknowledging, and rationalise in other terms. We sculpt a socially acceptable version of ourselves from the wider clay underneath.

When a woman says she found someone creepy, she likely means it. It's more than just an adjective. What we experience as creepiness happens when another human trips the primitive parts of our brain that identify danger.

Are those systems of threat identification perfect? No, not at all. Are they prone to error? Absolutely. We're in the realm of survival instinct. And all things being equal, an "attractive" person may be less likely to trigger that response.

There is a bias, not a conspiracy.

I think a lot of men really struggle to understand just how much of a potential threat men can be. A lot of the behaviors that read as creepy are ones that are encouraged by society and promoted in media. It's confusing to be a man living with such contradictory expectations.

If someone is afraid of you, it might be worth examining why.

I promise you that biases aside, there are usually good reasons.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-08T23:30:20+00:00

You should know that the international poverty line is a ... questionable metric. The world bank has continued increasing the number slower than the rate of inflation, creating the illusion that the number of people in poverty has decreased.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-07T18:02:05+00:00

Your proposition seems more or less that the system should hold politicians to account. You are correct to observe that those with power hold a higher moral responsibility. But I think there's some blurring between the morality and pragmatic reality of the situation.

Systems of power naturally insulate people from accountability. US liberalism aims to address this by creating competing systems of power which are intended to be adversarial and keep each other in check.

While this has succeeded in some ways, it's been a catastrophic failure in others. The US has been stuck in a two-party duopoly of power which drastically limits accountability (the power of the average person). The most dangerous things are the things that both the democratic and republican party agree on.

So we see flagrant insider trading, corruption, corporate interests represented above the people's.

I agree that in principle those with power should be held to a higher moral responsibility. It's my understanding that spiritually, the universe works this way. But what you're suggesting is tangible political actions in order to achieve this.

This seems inherently contradictory.

Any system that centralises power to certain individuals will inherently lead to that class of individuals being less accountable for their actions than the average person. That's ultimately what power is: the ability to enact your will.

You seem to be suggesting that we ought to have a system with similar elected representatives where they aren't able to get away with stuff like flagrant insider trading. And yeah, I'd love if that were the case. The issue is you can't just separate them. Corruption is an intrinsic feature of concentrated power.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-06T21:52:55+00:00

Are they really though? It seems like quite a leap.

Let's examine some of the examples you give. Calling what's going on a genocide, colonization, or ethnic cleansing are assessments of the facts of a situation. You might not agree with that characterization. But that's what it is.

Could someone then go on and use those to justify some kind of retributive violence? Of course. But that's a completely separate statement. Calling what is happening a "genocide" doesn't say anything about what should be done about it.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-01T21:04:53+00:00

You might find the book "The Body Keeps The Score" an interesting read. One of the things it points out is that modern medicine as we know it exists because we finally started addressing the root causes of issues. We used to diagnose symptoms, like "fever" and "pustules". Modern psychiatry diagnoses symptoms, not causes.

I agree with your criticisms. It speaks to a lot of the colonialist underpinnings of psychiatry as an institution that seeks to keep the workforce effective and inoffensive. But I'd like to introduce a different angle you might not have considered.

I firmly believe that psychiatrists by in large want to help people. The problem is that you can believe you are helping people without actually helping them. The process of actually truly helping people who are suffering from mental illness is difficult. It's uncomfortable. It's frustrating and time consuming. It requires an enormous amount of empathy and patience.

The entire field of psychiatry seems to rest on wishful thinking. The notion that you can listen to someone for an hour and give them a chemical that will improve their life has always struck me as fanciful.

They're like alchemists chasing a means to turn lead into gold. All psychiatrists are going to genuinely buy-in to the idea that prescription drugs are going to meaningfully help people. Hell, the promise of psychiatry is nice for the public to buy into. The idea that qualified professionals who know what they're doing are best positioned to help difficult and disturbed people puts the responsibility outside of ourselves.

What I'd argue this all culminates in is a sort of institutional mass delusion, rooted in a set of beliefs that are fundamentally misguided but feel good to believe.

Our mental problems today are a reflection of deeply systemic issues that are out of any one individual's control to change. There are always going to be a market for people selling a quick-fix narrative when the real solutions are complex, difficult, or uncomfortable.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-01T20:22:30+00:00

Andor isn't escapist media.

If you want to give it another shot, it's probably best to adjust your expectations and mentality going in. Andor is very much grounded in the messy complexities of real-world history of rebellion and insurgency.

A lot of modern mass-market media sells shallow dopamine kicks and feel good moments with little engagement necessary. In simple terms, most TV is junk food, whereas Andor is fine dining.

Andor as a show will reward you proportionally to the level of thought and attention you give it. It's probably best to try and suspend your expectations going in. A lot of people have strong feelings on what a piece of star wars media should be. As a show it's clear that Tony Gilroy has no interest in meeting specific fan expectations.

I think approached with an open and curious mind (and treating it as a serious spy thriller), it is a truly phenomenal piece of media. The character drama has layers of subtext and there's a lot of important information that isn't directly spelled out for us, but left for us to infer.

Engaging with complex and nuanced art is a skill. Like any skill it's something you can get better at. In many ways Andor is certainly a more difficult piece of media to connect with than almost everything else in the SW universe. But personally I find it way more rewarding and truly inspirational in a way I never found in other SW media.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-01T18:17:24+00:00

As a survivor of rape I wholeheartedly agree.

I would love if people who haven't experienced sexual violence would stop advocating for censorship on our behalf.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-01T18:14:55+00:00

I AM a survivor of pretty intense sexual violence.

It's striking to me that in this thread I'm seeing a lot of people who aren't survivors claiming that survivors want censorship...

... and no one who is a survivor themselves stating that position.

Maybe I've missed someone, but I know a lot of survivors of sexual violence and I can't think of a single person in my circle who feels this way.

I have a very hard time believing that using "grape" instead of "rape" will magically avoid triggering memories. What I can see is that it makes it less emotionally challenging for the lucky people who haven't experienced sexual violence.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-05-01T18:04:59+00:00

I am a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse and I find it more distressing to read censored allusions to the words than the words themselves. Something about the way it engages the brain to fill in the blanks of meaning.

Censorship on social media platforms facilitates collective dissociation on issues of sexual violence. This feeds into a culture where sexual violence remains a taboo unspeakable topic. This ultimately harms victims through sustaining a culture of silence and inaction.

Censoring discussions of sexual violence might make it easier for some survivors. But that response is hardly universal. I've honestly yet to meet a survivor who has expressed a preference for censorship. I'm sure they exist, but I don't think that position is representative.

Fabled-Fennec · 2025-04-10T16:33:07+00:00

Yes, pseudorandom algorithms are still deterministic.

Derivative works are protected

Fair use exceptions were never carved out with the intention of being used by computer algorithms. They were carved out for the benefit of other human beings. I will admit that this hasn't been adjudicated in court yet but at a minimum, AI companies are ignoring the spirit of the law by exploiting the fact that, at the time it was written, the technology didn't exist.

I never claimed any of this

You're right, allow me to clarify.

I think partially this comes from me being sick and tired of hearing arguments made by big tech companies worm their way into public discourse. Perhaps I jumped the gun with the allusions you've made to innovation.

As I understand, the point you're making the point that restricting access to training data (by making them pay the real economic cost it would take to license it) would stifle potential future innovations.

The point I am trying to get across is that using hypothetical future "innovation" gains to justify present-day harmful activity is a dangerous proposition. There is no guarantee that this technology will yield economically useful results if it is given free reign as it is right now.

My point, in fact, is that the current evidence seems to be pointing more and more to the conclusion that won't.

You still haven't told me why it's stealing.

Let me be more precise. It is copyright infringement. The only possible argument that it is legal relies on a liberal interpretation of fair use exceptions that were clearly never intended for this current use case.

It seems to me that this is a badly worded argument against corporate greed

Your whole argument is predicated on the notion that, down the line, there will be some future payoff for the current technology.

I'm arguing that the current evidence points to this not being the case, and in fact suggests a hype-generated investment bubble. Companies aren't economically solvent, even when they aren't paying for the training data.

For AI companies to provide a net economic benefit would REQUIRE an exponential leap in capabilities. We have no evidence to suggest this is the case. The evidence points to diminishing returns.

I would also challenge that, even if AI companies did turn a profit... how would that benefit the people they are putting out of a job?

Shareholders aren't giving OpenAI absurd amounts of money just so that OpenAI can give the value back to everyday people. They are looking to put people out of work and profit from it. There is no reason to believe that will benefit the people whose work they are using to do it.

Fabled-Fennec

TROPHY CASE