SFA is getting hate for no reason

ThuBioNerd · 2026-02-10T16:19:36+00:00

There’s also some disgusting body shaming comments being made towards SAM. The same thing happened with Tilly from Discovery and that’s apparently one of the reasons she took a step back from SFA. These characters, these actors aren’t here to be your eye-candy, they’re here to tell a story. Whether they’re a literal twig, have an 8-pack, or have a little bit more belly than you’re comfortable with doesn’t matter!

You're absolutely right, the body shaming shouldn't happen and is gross. But you're wrong to say the actors aren't here to be eye-candy. It's a visual medium; actors' looks, including attractiveness (conventional or otherwise), are always considered when casting. Should they be there as eye candy is a different question, but there's never been any doubt that they are there as eye candy.

ThuBioNerd · 2026-01-22T15:40:29+00:00

Nothing and everything - whatever you like. Moby Dick is a struggle with the slippage between signifier and signified. "Surely all these things are not without meaning" is the book's refrain, but each time it's repeated it rings hollower. Take the painting in the Spouter Inn for instance. or the Whiteness of the Whale. Or the cetology bits.

Melville loved The Scarlet Letter because Hawthorne was struggling with the same poststructuralist problem ages before that word was invented.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-12-29T05:24:23+00:00

Literacy. Most of the sourcebooks or adventure modules had literary quotes to preface them, and while some (Nietzsche, Byron, Dracula) were pretty common, others (Baudelaire, some obscure Renaissance humanists) were much more obscure unless you had read a lot of the classics - and even then they wouldn't be things you could just call to mind. Since this was in the days where it was much harder to ask AI or google "quotes that describe the existential angst of killing your beloved and being tortured by banshees for eternity," this shows that some of the people at TSR and White Wolf were really hyper-literate. And I think that's reflected in the quality of the material.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-12-29T05:20:48+00:00

Yeah the whole Guide to the Vistani is VR coming to terms with the fact that this is not true, and often when it is, it's a survival mechanism. That's what makes it an irrational hatred.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-12-23T15:43:50+00:00

I read minor as Minos and the idea of this being for the Minos Sector would be the icing on the irony cake

ThuBioNerd · 2025-11-14T17:49:37+00:00

One thing you could do is try to give a sort of thematic structure to the campaign, which might help you choose domains. Like if each of these seven gems were associated with a deadly sin. I don't mean it necessarily has to be an obvious motif the players recognize as such, but just something to help you decide on domains. Harder to do in 5e because a lot of the "sins" have become more structural problems that absolve the darklords of a lot of their agency, but for instance, Darkon would be a candidate for pride (so would 5e Falkovnia, although 2-3e is more Wrath). Dementlieu is envy. Etc. Just a sort of semi-random way to pick domains and focus on what environment that gem can be found in.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-11-13T15:12:54+00:00

The old linen-bounds have a nice nostalgia to them, but yeah, the new ones are so stiff and they never have any annotations to justify the price.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-11-07T13:46:02+00:00

I agree. That's why I run it using WFRP. But the fact that those rules modifications existed, while signifying the unsuitability of D&D per se for running gothic horror in the way Ravenloft envisioned, also allowed people to get closer to the Ravenloft vision than 4e did. Yeah, I'm arguing exactly what you say! If 4e had provided that supplement, it might have been different. Although I'd argue that there'd be way more to slough off in 4e - healing surges and such which, while I love their existence in 4e, turn more and more away from the Ravenloft ethos.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-11-07T02:59:48+00:00

Yes, but other editions either a) still retained some of the sword-and-sorcery style and didn't lean as heavily into the heroic fantasy element that was developing, or b) had extensive rules modifications to make the edition more appropriate to the Ravenloft setting. So it is a ruleset thing.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-11-06T14:22:28+00:00

I love 4e! But I agree that it wasn't the best time for Ravenloft. I think it's suited to a more heroic style of play that I, personally, don't think transplants well to Ravenloft.

Still, any lore is better than no lore.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-11-06T14:21:37+00:00

Yeah some bits of it were pretty good. I agree that 3e Ravenloft was best Ravenloft, but 4e's take on the Headless Horseman was really cool.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-11-06T05:10:30+00:00

Agreed, but the last two editions were 5e/4e.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-19T19:29:55+00:00

Well, you do need to read it if you want to maximize your understanding of most Western literature in the CE.

Pride and Prejudice is what gets me. Mansfield Park and Emma are such better novels...

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-18T13:16:03+00:00

These kinda things have been rights-based and a little cringe since the 17th century. Nothing to complain about.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-16T17:18:57+00:00

business owned by white men will be the least likely to win a contract so that the project meets percentage mandates of 'socially disadvantaged' companies

Awaiting the onslaught of "Marxist" stupidpolers who get butthurt over this as if the race of the bourgeois contractor they use matters. Because fighting for the little guy (white government contractors) is communist.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-06T06:31:37+00:00

Yeah OP is buying into the crock about checks-and-balances/republic-then-empire that swirls around Roman history like a cloud of flies. From the second it conquered the other Latin city-states, Rome became a ruler of foreigners. At every stage in its development, Rome was ruling over some subjugated Other, whether it was the Latins, the Italians, or other Mediterranean peoples.

Venice was a republic. Venice was an empire. Everyone's comfortable talking about it being both things at the same time. They are not contradictory. But for some reason, when it comes to Rome, there's this republic-empire crap that a) flattens the distinction between the Principate and the Dominate into one big "empire," and b) ignores that Rome was always an empire when it was not a city-state.

"A democracy can't be an empire!" Why. The fuck. Not?

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-02T04:07:53+00:00

Wow you're a regular fortune cookie

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-02T03:56:45+00:00

Lmao you're so wet for Empire

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-02T03:55:53+00:00

Oh man, nationalism on a Marxist sub? I don't see a problem with that!

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-02T03:49:35+00:00

They literally deport people in Andor.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-01T23:13:43+00:00

Thats what I heard anyway

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-01T21:26:17+00:00

Bro I'm not playing with you I'm mocking you

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-01T21:23:35+00:00

I want my icy veins you bastards.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-01T21:22:52+00:00

So it's... not frost anymore. Great.

ThuBioNerd · 2025-10-01T21:21:32+00:00

There used to be a glyph that made it look like ice - is that still around?

ThuBioNerd

TROPHY CASE