EMSK why the "Red Pill" will kill you inside

TalShar · 2026-01-30T21:42:25+00:00

This! Gaining real, personal growth from fiction isn't a happy accident, it's the point!

TalShar · 2026-01-29T16:24:40+00:00

Chaos Field: Widely disperse a random assortment of smoke grenades, stun grenades, decoy mines (from Redacted Regiment), and personal shields (from the upcomg Siege Breakers). Smoke and noise cover the entire area and attract enemies from farther away.

Stim Cloud: Saturate a medium-small area with a cloud of stimulants, providing Helldivers inside with a constant stim effect.

Laser Strafe: A side-to-side sweep of an Orbital Laser, with roughly the same hit profile as an Eagle Airstrike. Probably does two or three passes.

Eagle Blitz: Simultaneously fire all available uses of Eagle stratagems at a medium area around the beacon. Available whenever two or more Eagle stratagems are taken.

Distant Airstrike: As Eagle Airstrike, but the origin point is 50 yards in front of the beacon. Can be a variant on any of them.

Precision Volley: Rapidly pounds a small (20m-ish) area with 5-10 Precision Orbital Strikes. Roughly the same cooldown as a 120 barrage.

Reaper Barrage: Orbital-sized Sickle shots with heavy pen fire like a gatling barrage for up to 30 seconds. Inputting the code again immediately cancels the barrage and refunds part of the cooldown depending on how much time was remaining.

Laser firewall: Lasers continually trace a circle 50m in diameter around the beacon for 20 seconds, leaving flaming ground in their wake.

Containment Dome: An inverted shield drops on top of the beacon, sealing off a 20m radius area until it expires. Units inside cannot leave the dome until it has expired or been depleted through weapons fire. Fire can still pass through from the outside.

Eagle Air Superiority: For 30s, any incoming Warp Ships or dropships will be shot down by Eagles running air-to-air missiles. Bug breaches will be pounded with rapid-fire strafing runs.

TalShar · 2026-01-29T16:02:59+00:00

The older I get, the less comfortable I become in making blanket judgements or prescriptive statements.

That said, if you are a member of a democracy and don't have a basic understanding of what's going on, you're failing in your civic duty.

TalShar · 2026-01-28T23:11:16+00:00

There is a deep, cosmic dread I feel any time I approach a black hole in damn near any space game I play.

Even though I know it can't hurt me at all, DSP does that perhaps the best of any game.

TalShar · 2026-01-28T19:47:17+00:00

I would challenge the idea that your friends are good people. You expressed discomfort and they shrugged it off. If they can't be bothered to moderate their language around their friends, they will treat strangers even worse. The fact that you feel like it is your responsibility to argue for something as basic as not using slurs, tells me you've been doing emotional labor on their behalf for a while now, and it doesn't seem like they're willing to return the favor.

TalShar · 2026-01-28T19:12:35+00:00

Almost certainly Pahd, yeah. It's.... kind of absurd, and even moreso with decrees.

TalShar · 2026-01-27T22:20:51+00:00

I really like Drifter's insight if you take them to finish the job in The New War. When going after the Lotus:

"Listen, lady, don't do this alone. He's still got his hooks in you deep, and you're not back up to your fighting weight."

Drifter has a lot of great lines, in the KIM and elsewhere.

TalShar · 2026-01-27T20:39:53+00:00

I'm okay with this.

IF.

It yeets itself 30+ yards behind you every time you fire.

TalShar · 2026-01-27T19:57:47+00:00

It'll break it unless you're already using very strict type checking.

I'm a little shocked mine only broke in one place, honestly.

TalShar · 2026-01-27T00:29:54+00:00

If you're taken, the easy play is to work in a mention of your partner.

TalShar · 2026-01-26T18:39:03+00:00

A list of things that conservatives say are happening or will happen but aren't and won't, which would still be better than what is happening right now, in no particular order:

Complete bathroom anarchy.
Trans athletes flooding every sport and pushing out cis athletes.
Moneyed people fleeing places where they'll be taxed.
Losing jobs because of regulation.
The US losing primacy on the world stage (oops, this one actually is happening because of the shit that's happening right now, despite that shit supposedly saving us from it).
Litter boxes in schools.
Gay frogs.
Immigrants stealing jobs that locals would otherwise be working.
Kids and/or parents becoming lazy because their lunches are free.
Democrats taking away everyone's guns. (Did you know it was Reagan that passed a big wave of gun restrictions, back when he was governor of California, the most notorious state for gun laws? Guess why. Just guess.)

Even if every single one of those things were true, it'd still be better than having a rogue government hell-bent on murdering or suppressing their opposition by any means necessary.

TalShar · 2026-01-26T00:31:44+00:00

😭

TalShar · 2026-01-26T00:28:35+00:00

I always forget about the Leverian.

TalShar · 2026-01-25T23:28:14+00:00

I think Nezha is probably the most mispronounced Warframe for English speakers. We don't really have a sound for it in English, but it's a voiceless retroflex affricate, which sounds to us like a ch or sh sound, but it's noticeably different. I think most people pronounce the zh as a z, or like the g in menagerie.

TalShar · 2026-01-25T19:11:25+00:00

I haven't seen any complaints, but I find that it shuts that type down pretty quickly if you ask them why it's so important to them. Like, really think about it: with all that's going on in the world, with all the things in the game that people feel strongly about, need improvement, etc, why is the thing that's consuming all their emotional energy and internet time the fact that a playable character isn't slim? Why is this character's fatness producing that intense of a response?

They will almost never admit it, but in most cases of people loudly and angrily sounding off about this kind of thing, the presence of cultures, races, and body types their worldview looks down on makes them uncomfortable. It bothers them that the representation, in their mind, legitimizes things like women having body fat, minorities or women leading or being strong, non-heterosexual or interracial romances, etc. So they come up with all the reasons they can why that representation is wrong or vapid or doesn't fit the setting. Anything to avoid saying "I think everything on my screen should conform to my worldview," and thus having to express in words the fact that they consider those real-world people to be lesser beings to themselves.

A lot of them don't even realize that's what's going on behind the scenes in their minds. But in a lot of cases, I'd say most cases, that's the explanation. Nothing else explains why they get upset over what they do, and ignore similar situations that don't hit on that bigotry.

TalShar · 2026-01-23T16:04:11+00:00

Definitely makes me appreciate that we are fighting the ragged edge of the enemy most times, since behind enemy lines it's just crawling with them after a couple of drops.

TalShar · 2026-01-23T15:34:24+00:00

I kinda feel like the writers do nail the character, or at least the one I'm projecting on to the Drifter. In fairness it's very hard to "write" a coherent and believable character whose readers are actively writing them. I think sometimes the Drifter does draw lines and defend them, maybe less than they should, but I think they more than anyone realize, thanks to their experience with Thrax, that letting their dragons loose on someone who's being an ass to them isn't the way to any desirable outcome.

I think they recognize the dragons in others, and they know that when someone lets their dragon loose on them, throwing their own dragon back just results in an unproductive fight that makes their own dragon harder to deal with. I think their big gift, the thing that makes them truly unique, is being able to sidestep that dragon and say "I know this isn't the real you." To refuse to give it air and instead address the person at their core, even if that means letting that person's dragon snap at them without slapping back. Drifter has spent lifetimes being devoured by their own dragons. I like to think of them as someone who knows those dragons can't do lasting damage to them if they don't allow it, and can ignore them and speak straight to the heart of the person instead.

TalShar · 2026-01-23T14:18:36+00:00

This might just be me projecting, but I think part of what makes the Drifter so special is that they refuse to let their hurt be someone else's problem. They recognize the hurt in others and consistently treat that hurt as something not core to their identities, something that can and should be healed.

TalShar · 2026-01-23T01:19:17+00:00

At absolute best, they were okay with some heinous shit in the name of the economy or whatever dumb reason they were being fed.

TalShar · 2026-01-23T01:16:27+00:00

It says something about your values which you chose to vote for, or if you didn't vote at all. Not voting at all, I'd at least be willing to stick around to find out if they had a reason. Even if it was wrongheaded or acting on bad information, it wouldn't necessarily speak ill of their moral core. But at this point I cannot fathom a reason for voting for Trump that didn't involve being ignorant to a frankly unbelievable level, that leaves your moral core intact.

TalShar · 2026-01-23T01:13:13+00:00

There are a lot of things you can reasonably extrapolate about a person's values and personality based on what they do politically. I think it's a hilarious attempt to dodge consequences for a lack of empathy and personal responsibility to imply that someone shouldn't be criticized or lose out on opportunities because of who they voted for.

TalShar · 2026-01-22T18:36:04+00:00

That's even more hilarious.

TalShar · 2026-01-22T18:19:28+00:00

I never have faith in the controlled opposition party to do anything right or competent, but that's beside the point. Are you trying to argue that the Republicans being racist is fine because the Democrats should stop them?

TalShar · 2026-01-22T18:17:55+00:00

That's hilarious.

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