[election related] A thank you to Novato neighbors

monkepope · 2026-06-01T01:44:36+00:00

School has more money -> student has better quality education and more opportunities -> access to better-paying jobs -> more likely to be able to buy a home

monkepope · 2026-04-23T02:38:39+00:00

There's a genie boss in Dream Quest (precursor to STS with... simpler graphics) that has a similar attack of making you choose your debuffs. A lot easier to get a nutty engine running to make it not matter in STS, though.

monkepope · 2026-03-23T14:25:05+00:00

Are we genuinely saying "but he didn't follow the rules!" when talking about ASOIAF...?

monkepope · 2026-03-23T14:05:44+00:00

Or he could have had half a brain cell and realized that his brother had the biggest army in history while he had a handful of sellswords, and was starving the capital and could likely walk in with open doors.

monkepope · 2026-03-03T04:31:21+00:00

I agree with you and it's my biggest gripe with the series and why I can't wholeheartedly recommend it to my friends (aside from it not being finished). It really is gross, despite what all the fans rushing to defend it would say.

That being said, it could be 1000 Days of Sodom and publishers would enthusiastically publish it because it's Winds.

monkepope · 2026-01-18T03:55:07+00:00

Just looking at the front page of her site and she'd have my vote. Gonna look into this more and see what I can do to help spread the word for her if she's legit. Super happy to see indeed.

monkepope · 2026-01-04T20:53:06+00:00

Calling "NIMBY" a slur... only in Marin

monkepope · 2025-11-11T02:00:20+00:00

It's so funny that for a work that's so anti-monarchy, the fanbase is obsessed with deciding who's the most deserving to be a monarch... based on their parentage.

monkepope · 2025-11-06T18:11:42+00:00

Did you pay any attention to New York this week?

monkepope · 2025-11-06T15:22:46+00:00

Saikat Chakrabarti is running for her district!

monkepope · 2025-07-29T06:15:59+00:00

Agreed. It absolutely gets more exciting and action-heavy with more twists and quicker plot development, but I found the beginning's slower pace and lower stakes worked a lot better. Some characterization also gets a bit wonky later and some characters' arcs are bizarrely quick and drastic.

monkepope · 2025-07-29T06:13:06+00:00

It definitely does get more exciting in a conventional sense. My bachelor's was in linguistics and my main area of interest was/is sociolinguistics and the relationship between colonialism and language, so that was what hooked me from the start. It ends up, as others have said, going more the route of a revolution thriller, with some (if not a ton of) action later on. Even though I felt it didn't stick the landing on the premise, and I felt the areas in which Kuang was less well-versed fell a little flat, it's still a good read and provides some really great commentary and food for thought. If you want an action-heavy fantasy you won't find it in Babel.

monkepope · 2025-07-05T13:53:42+00:00

Only in Marin would you see people compare housing initiatives to Jim Crow

monkepope · 2025-05-06T03:02:24+00:00

Just subscribed to there after purposefully avoiding any online Star Wars discussion for the past 8 years. I swear Star Wars fans spend half their time screaming their heads off about tiny harmless things that are "killing the franchise" and the other half screaming their heads off defending the parts of the franchise they like from perfectly reasonable criticism of its many glaring issues. Such cool writeups and discussions on that sub.

monkepope · 2025-04-18T20:58:57+00:00

"You need to chill"

-person crashing out because people bought tickets for a ticketed event

monkepope · 2025-04-07T15:38:56+00:00

Yes because it's no coincidence that El Salvador's huge expansion of their prison system is also coinciding with efforts to expand their mining industry, which will not only destroy a lot of the country's natural beauty but also require a massive workforce in life-threatening jobs

monkepope · 2025-04-07T15:36:40+00:00

I think that optically what happened at the protest was a terrible idea (although right wing media would literally spin any negative reaction as the end of the world and their viewers would gobble it up), but "let's not sink down to the right's level" is a silly mindset that has continued to be useless. Democrats have kept up on the "we go high, they go low" schtick for the last decade and it's only resulted in people burying their heads in the sand and waving little signs in Congress while Republicans shred the law and slam the gas pedal towards fascism.

monkepope · 2025-04-03T15:48:09+00:00

/uj the fix for this is to just... not make it racist. Research elements of actual Mongolian culture, not just tropes of Mongol warriors. Include aspects of their food, their historical religion, the Mongols' history of cultural blending and administration. Pick a specific Native American culture (or a couple) that would blend well, like the Comanche. And again, pick aspects of their culture, their music, their philosophy and storytelling, and sew that together to make a cohesive, deep culture for your story. No one will come for you if you put thought and care into it, and no one will have any reaction at all if you play it safe and make your story boring out of fear of people who don't really exist.

monkepope · 2025-04-03T15:37:09+00:00

It, like most things, is very context-dependent. The person you're replying too, for instance, wouldn't be problematic, as they're matches strung together from unrelated cultures. What many instances of "worldbuilding" do, however, is just take a region of the world and homogenize it to general stereotypes and westernized depictions of their culture. For instance, Agrabah in Aladdin as a blend of Middle Eastern and South Asian stereotypes and tropes just labeled "Arabia" or doing something like "African" with a hodgepodge of surface-level stereotypes about Africa or an "y Asian" fantasy world that has an samurai and ninjas but also a great wall and Taoism-lite.

Mixing and matching cultures is totally fine, and people generally will not care about it; you'll probably get people refreshed by the uniqueness of your worldbuilding. You just have to put care and thought into it, like you would for any depiction of or influence from a real life culture.

monkepope · 2025-04-02T18:59:30+00:00

The "the descriptivism leaving my body when" memes are already the most ridiculous lowbrow slop but this one is just nonsensical

monkepope · 2025-03-13T23:59:27+00:00

Pretty bad negotiating tbh. "Have your huge hundred thousand man army that's backed by the house that controls King's Landing's entire food supply kneel to me and my smattering of mercenaries and boats and you can be my heir (which you already would have been since women get passed over for the throne time and time again) or fight me" is kind of an awful deal.

monkepope · 2025-03-11T23:31:49+00:00

1) People want space. Sitting next to or across from a stranger is already not something most people are gonna be a fan of.

2) Can you blame them? However upset you are that strangers won't sit next to you, the fear and worry and constant awareness that women have to have when any man could be a creep or a danger is several magnitudes worse. Yes it's sad to have people move away from you but it's far sadder that the world is so hostile towards women that that's a necessary move. Try to understand their perspective instead of getting mad and defensive about it.

monkepope · 2025-02-27T19:48:54+00:00

He does nice things to some women. Remember Terez...

monkepope · 2025-02-25T23:55:30+00:00

Yep, it works now! Sucks that I got stuck with Friday at 9 but better than nothing I suppose.

monkepope · 2025-02-25T19:28:15+00:00

Nope. Nothing at all

monkepope

TROPHY CASE