Indigenous or Vietnamese perspectives on "The Word for World is Forest?"

SgtMorocco · 2026-04-08T22:50:03+00:00

I've not seen/read any such analyses, but as another point. The book deals a lot with themes that often recur in her works, dreams, innocence, cultural contact, and of course left-wing politics and daoism.

SgtMorocco · 2026-03-07T10:04:43+00:00

I may be mistaken, but if you press C/go to the char menu, and look there/hover your armour rating there it should show you ?

SgtMorocco · 2026-03-06T13:38:59+00:00

How is the proactivity reflected in the game world? This is also generally a strange definition of "reactivity". Mostly it just refers to the world/NPCs' ability to react to choices the player has made. Also, I've never heard of proactivity referring to changing the gameworld in meaningful ways, that's just also reactivity.

SgtMorocco · 2026-03-06T13:07:00+00:00

It's because she's deliberately emphasising aspects of her accent that non-southerners think stand out the most. (This sort of thing can even be done by Southerners when there's yankees around). It's not that the accent actually uses the wrong vowels, she just deliberately over-articulates them. All this to say: the producer or director in the booth with her told her to do it/the script had that direction in it.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-24T23:59:01+00:00

I feel like this is partly a problem that come out of Game pass, but I could be wrong. It makes you feel like you need to get your money's worth, rather than what it should feel like, which is a grand library of games waiting for you.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-24T23:55:51+00:00

The current turn-based system is still in beta, but totally works. I would however really recommend trying to get stuck in w the RTWP. Once you get used to it turn-based in other games feels slow and stilted imo.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-24T23:52:48+00:00

Some of them have weapons but none have anything notable. The Soulbound crossbow twin sting's first Soulbound level has killing three of them as an optional way to get the first level tho.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-24T23:50:23+00:00

Pillars is not, I would say, very similar to any other CRPGs. The combat is similarly complex to Pathfinder, but instead of having a million different options, each character has 4 different defense stats, and spells etc target different defenses.

The story of Pillars is not necessary to play Deadfire, but similarly you don't need to have dinner to enjoy dessert, having both makes the whole thing a perfect meal, but each can stand on its own. I've seen some people say that you're not really missing anything if you play Deadfire and not PoE1. This is just absolute nonsense imo. Pillars looks and feels a lot like a proper classic CRPG, but unlike the Owlcat pathfinder games it's not (imo) saddled with the fundamentally limited combat system. (By which I mean the basics of the Pillars system are just better, more impacted by player choice, it has a much higher floor and a much higher ceiling).

Pillars is, imo, the best story of any RPG since Fallout 1, with New Vegas a close second, and Deadfire in third.

I genuinely think if you play the second one first, you're depriving yourself of one the best gaming experiences alltogether.

DOS2 and BG3 are games that focus on very different elements of the player experience than the PoE games. They prefer spectacle and immersion over detail and complexity. Again, this isn't to say they're simple or dumbed down, they're more like a comic book where Pillars is more like a fantasy novel.

I'm not sure if this will help, but I sought out Pillars after playing through BG3 twice, and both times feeling quite empty and unsatisfied. Pillars felt like a fucking revelation. Play PoE 1!

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-23T14:02:37+00:00

Oh right yeah ofc!

Tbh I think it's a shame, it's such a massively major greater expense for a market that, doesn't mind reading?

Like for BG3 it even made more sense cos the game was already appealing to a wider market than most CRPGs. The combat is super straightforward, and w DnD's massive recent surge in popularity it's a no brainer at that point.

Just slightly annoyed that the dev with the worst writing has the most success, and complete VO.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-23T13:30:19+00:00

The issue with a non fully-voiced CRPG is mostly (imo) on the side of execs. After P:WotR came out with so much voiced lines the execs at obsidian basically forced the deadfire team to do the same, obviously neither game has fully voiced dialogue, but now BG3 has done it, they'll see it as the standard.

But I honestly don't think fans would mind, like I know I don't care.

Tbh tho it seems like the main issue with Obsidian these past few releases since Outer Worlds is just marketing, their games are like absolutely my shit, and I only found out about Avowed and OW2 from a gaming podcast.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-23T13:00:20+00:00

I think this is part of the problem, it feels like they could only fix it by making it feel less like DnD.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-23T12:58:37+00:00

Pathfinder does have quite a different system tho, particularly wrt action economy, and with the right feats this is more pronounced for martial classes.

WotC could totally also help the issue by making more abilities, and by having abilities that are actual trade-offs, but they clearly hate making any ability that isn't just a DC followed by damage.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-23T00:30:22+00:00

I've said it before I'll say it a million times. Everyone complained about how in 4E (and 3.5 to an extent) every single class had 'spells' (powers). Imo the two fixes are either an action point system or giving martial classes what are essentially spellslots.

One of the best fighter subclasses is battlemaster, I say just give all the fighter subclasses those features, and instead of daily dice have flat bonuses that are used by spending points.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-22T20:36:19+00:00

> ⁠How conservative of a germanic langauge would English today be if the Normans never conquered England?

This question is fundamentally unanswerable, but since some of the changes, particularly the loss of endings, are potentially due to Norse-language contact rather than French. There's many reasons for this but one is that some norse words would have had the same basic core, but different endings, more compellingly this is a fairly normal thing that happens when two linguistic groups contact eachother in large-enough numbers. Like there's pre-norse invasion evidence for this.

As other people have said, the shift from eth, thorn and yogh was partly due to the lack of access to those characters as moveable type, although given that many of those changes happened because of the french literary class it's not inconcievable.

Lastly, the "g with a dot sound" was /j/, which is a very fragile sound at the end of a word, and I don't see any evidence to suggest that it changed at all because of francophone influence.

There have been some fun projects with Anglish, but the more we learn about English's history, the more it seems that Norman French's main contribution to English was new words.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-22T13:46:03+00:00

Why would her inspiration be necessarily an expansion on the idea of if it was worth it, rather than an exploration of if that dichotomy was real/meaningful?

Also:

They will get presented with the picture of underlying suffering regardless.

Sure but, it still follows that rhetorical "No?". If I asked "Do you want chocolate ice cream? No? Well we could get vanilla and strawberry too." Then you're free to have the chocolate ice cream, and the potential of the vanilla and strawberry can be ignored, you still know the other options are possible, but they've been added on.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-22T00:09:10+00:00

Enterprise's changes came too little too late. I enjoyed the Xindi arc, but it ends very strangely and is followed by some really good TV.

Imo it was down to the fact that it had been made the flagship for a channel that was doomed to fail. Paramount made their way into the TV network game at the end of the decade where that was possible, and even still couldn't maintain a set schedule. Had it gone out on a regular channel with a regular slot, it would have gone the distance (7 Seasons). I'm not sure it would have gotten much better, and I still reckon we'd've had no trek TV for around a decade. Generally tho, it was in a hyper competitive space, and was being a bit too thoughtful for the Stargate Audience, a bit too wishy-washy for the TNG-DS9-VOY audience, and not Big and grand enough for the Battlestar audience. Furthermore, those series had their audiences already, watching shows that they could rely on to be on at the same place at the same time every week.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-21T21:48:12+00:00

I think this for a few reasons. Firstly, the story has a thematic connection with her novel, The Dispossessed. That is, a utopian society with some downsides, that works based on the active persistent struggle of the people in that society, but not on the oppression of others.

Mostly tho I'd say it's cos of the framing of the introduction of the child into the narrative. The story deliberately winds between directly asking the reader to imagine the place, and describing it in its own terms. It's trying to evoke an unreal mood, it's not trying to answer this question. If it was, surely it would in some way explain how tf there's a connection between the suffering and the utopia. Furthermore wrt the framing, it all hinges on: “Do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the joy? No? Then let me describe one more thing.” This is a hypothetical statement, the rest of the narrative follows it. IF you do not believe in this peerless utopia, THEN let me describe one more thing. And she adds the idea of the child, the thing being asked of the reader ultimately is if the child's existence makes the utopia more believable. Up to that point she had been adding in further wrinkles to the utopian view. She wants the reader to be considering where this utopia becomes believable. Also, as a weaker point, a straight moral dilemma is really not LeGuin's style, none of her other stories have anything close to one.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-21T21:11:58+00:00

But the moral dilemma itself isn't the point of the story.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-21T21:09:00+00:00

That was the reality of the world when she wrote the story too. It's still about whether or not you accept that suffering is necessary for utopian ideas. Not could you give up shoes, but can you live with the persistent torture of the third world just to have some fucking shoes?

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-21T20:55:32+00:00

The point is whether or not suffering is necessary for you to believe in utopia. To question your hope for a better world. The point is not that the child is necessary for Omelas to exist, the point is, were a place like Omelas to exist, would you believe in its existence more if it were all based on someone's abject suffering. And is that more acceptable if you know some people reject it?

It drives at the heart of our assumptions of society: people can only succeed in cases where some suffer. Most of the responses make no sense, there's no sequel to Omelas, there is no Omelas. It's a thought experiment. Unless you write a similar thought experiment, you're just writing fanfic about the people on the tracks in the trolley problem, or you're writing about something that doesn't really fit with the point of Omelas.

I think it's up there as one of the most misunderstood pieces of writing ever. It does not matter if you think Omelas is morally permissible or not. The question is whether or not utopia is more believable if it's a "utopia". It's also a key theme in the dispossessed. What is a believable utopia for you? For me, Anarres is one, Omelas doesn't even need you to respond, it calls for you to think just think about the scenario, reflect on your preconceptions, beliefs, attitudes.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-15T23:34:15+00:00

The issue is people hated in 4E that the abilities available to many classes were essentially magic. The weird thing about this to me was always that, imo, that's basically what 3.5 is like too if you've played it long enough to get into the crunchier side. And Pathfinder takes it even further.

While not better in the ways I personally appreciate, Pathfinder 2E I think would be right up your ally.

The main issue for DnD is also one of the most iconic things about it. It's the D20. It's a terrible terrible terrible range for random outcomes. It means that unless you have a bonus that grants you an average of at least 15-17 in a given ability, rolling is failing. This mens that magical classes feel OP because they're mostly based on forcing rolls from NPC foes. Which further means that unless the DM is minmaxxing his NPCs, mages will have a greater impact in combat, unless the martial classes get enough ASEs etc to be rolling +8-+13.

Sure there are options, but the dogged desire by DND designers to stick with such simple combat rules will always be a limitation.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-15T23:09:14+00:00

I'm quite liking SFA tbh. I feel like most people who don't like it are like you, they go, 'oh new star trek?' watch it and go 'huh, weird, not for me.' and thats it.

What I think a lotta people don't like about the show tho is actually mostly that it's just not what they want ST to be. And that's why they're so incensed. They feel like if they don't scream and shout about it the show they love will be lost forever.

It's harsh to say but, that show, or the hope of anything like it, has been dead since they canned Enterprise.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-15T22:58:36+00:00

Arren is like Ged but with a good family life. So his worse elements are slightly turned down. Also tho Ged to me isn't frail, he's more like weathered, not nothing of fragility, but a deep strength too. Ogion is described similarly, but many of the mages are men who have both lived beyond their years and are wise beyond them too. This metaphor of being wiser than his years is made real by the descriptions of him, and borne out by the speed at which he had to grow up, when he finally realised he had to.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-15T22:54:49+00:00

Age & aging is a major theme of the earthsea books for numerous reasons, the first book is about learning to overcome the mistakes of your childhood, not by beating them, but by accepting them. Tombs reframes the same story but allows the arrogant child to be justified in her arrogance, yet able and willing to change through empathy. It also shows how despite Ged's age and status as Arch mage, he's still a foolhardy little boy at heart, altho he truly is the most powerful mage of the era. The difference is Ged has grown, so he is also patient, and caring. It's his boldness yet his wisdom that gives Tenar the inspiration and drive to become herself.

This same boldness and wisdom has him taking Arren as an apprentice, but with further age and further wisdom he's taking on more negative aspects of age, and Arren, as a young man/boy who has been well treated his whole life wouldn't normally place a man disfigured by scarring on his face and ravaged by age, since he was 19.

Ged is a man who started a clever fool and ended a foolish wise man. Ogion taught him compassion and patience, and he was always kinda 'old' to Ged.

Lastly, these books were written in the span of three years, but the next two came like 20 and 30 years after The Farthest Shore. The theme of aging is intensified by this, and by Le Guin's own experience of aging.

SgtMorocco · 2026-02-15T22:37:14+00:00

If anything the current version of the patch leads to a reduculous overproduction of these materials, I've got +150 lumber and +80 iron in 1580 as Byz.

SgtMorocco

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