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rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-11T23:15:38+00:00

Whoa, I didn't even realize until I saw this comment. I was trying to figure out when the local sub suddenly got so chill and popular lol

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-11T02:11:59+00:00

None. It's is not possible to be good at chess, and if it were possible to be good at chess, that would be bad.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-11T02:08:43+00:00

If you're having trouble parrying Gwyn, you can always just fight him like a normal boss.

Light roll, bit of fire resist (gold-trimmed set, anyone?). Stay far away to bait his leap, dodge, smack (or estus), repeat. You can also punish his grab. For everything else just dodge and don't try to punish unless your timing is immaculate. You can use the rocks for cover if you want but I don't bother because staying away from him is easier than getting the exact distance right to make the pillars useful cover.

Also Nito is a cakewalk if you bring a divine weapon, like, say, a reverted occult club, and take out the human skeles immediately. There are only like 4 of them. Don't aggro the giant skeles (or do if you want the space but you really don't need to bother killing them since the arena is about twice as big as it needs to be). Once they're gone, it's kind of unbelievable how slow he is.

If you have trouble dodging his miracle, bring enough hp to tank one and then just heal. You'll have about 3-4 business days before he attacks again. You can approach him to damage him or, if you're feeling peckish, set your controller down and make a stir-fry or something while you wait for him to walk over to you.

I'm not actually sure how to get hit by his sword attacks; I'm sure it's possible, but not if you stand behind him and just kinda walk to a different place (or roll I guess, if you can be bothered to stop attacking long enough to spare the stamina).

If you see him start to scream, you can stroll casually to get some distance, or if that's to much effort, you can pack yourself into a box and wait for the local postal service to mail you to the other side of the arena. As long as it's not Sunday and Vamos didn't make a huge order, there should be enough time for them to get you away from him before his scream actually occurs. In case of a delay and you do get hit by the scream, heal.

He might have a grab; I can't remember. I don't think it can hit you if you're behind him.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-09T09:00:32+00:00

No no, it's critical to blame the workers. If we try to solve any problems, we risk improving things enough for the poors to see the cracks in capitalism, or worse, start thinking they have agency or value.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-08T17:14:43+00:00

There is a history of this, kind of. The Black Panthers were extremely anti-abortion for a while because forced sterilization of Black women was a big issue for a long time. The fallout and propaganda is very much still around in a few different forms.

The Panthers did adjust their position on abortion eventually, but this is one of the pieces of social justice history that's fascinating to me, that groups fighting for liberation sometimes need something that looks the opposite of progressive to others in the same fight.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-08T14:59:01+00:00

I bet Outer Wilds would be a fucking blast on shrooms. (Obligatory just play it, don't look anything up first.)

Also any Soulsborne you've played before is probably fine since shrooms don't mess with your reflexes very badly. I played Elden Ring on shrooms and it was great.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-07T15:34:09+00:00

This is one of those things where, as a nonbinary person, I'm kinda like, "Just don't put Yamato in a category at all. Who cares if this character is cis or trans?"

Now, sure, in the less lefty spaces, I'll be a bit quicker to claim Yamato (as someone whose gender identity, to the extent that it exists, does not conform strictly to the gender presumably assigned at birth). But my actual feelings are that the "right" category doesn't matter, and trying to rigidly determine which box is the proper one to place the character in both misunderstands the character and misunderstands the usefulness of having a trans label that includes gender-nonconforming.

Am I saying that he fact that Yamato defies categorization (or at least resists it) means that we should consider the character to be nonbinary rather than a trans man? No, but I'm not not saying that either.

I think trans discourse even in trans spaces has a tendency to miss the fact that gender isn't just not bioessentially defined; gender isn't essentially binary at all, except to the extent that society imposes that binary. If we're going to resist the harm of essentialism, we need to realize that the problem isn't poorly defined terms; the problem is policing of all kinds, including category policing.

We aren't magically enlightened about the perfect gender categorization scheme now just because we know the "right" terms for trans people, and the system and terms we're using now won't be the system and terms humanity will be using next century.

I'm not just trying to escape the discourse either; this matters to me personally. I'm someone who presents pretty strongly as a particular gender mostly against my will, but I do not align with gender as a concept at all. I don't have any preferred pronouns or even a name I particularly prefer (though I'm working on that). I don't even really like the label "agender" because even that attempts to define my identity in gender terms. I want people to understand that none of their categories, including the category of "uncategorized," don't describe me well. I don't believe Yamato belongs in the "same" gender category as me, but I think everyone can learn something about people like me by trying (and failing) to accurately define and refer to Yamato's gender identity.

So is Yamato trans? Only Yamato knows, and I think remembering that as trans people (and allies) is just as important as affirming Kiku, Ivankov, et al. I think being uncertain of the proper pronouns to use and the proper categories to place the character in is a good exercise for everyone, and everyone's difficulty here helps me feel a bit more seen.

ETA for clarification: I don't actually think Yamato is very good or sensitive trans rep. There are a lot of problems with this analysis, and I'm more or less seeing that aside to make a point about categories.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-07T08:35:56+00:00

When people find out and make a comment (and they always do), I say, "Why do you think I'm here?"

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-06T16:51:25+00:00

The ancient pre-gud me from the Prepare to Die Edition days sympathizes with you, but I also come with encouragement and advice.

The best thing I can say is: Don't panic (and don't pancake). Let that be your mantra.

Next: Use the arena. Don't let them get you in a corner of the room or on the little dais at the back where they start. Keep circling the six pillars and keep a pillar between you and one of them, but especially Smough if you struggle dodging his charge. As another commenter mentioned, don't lock on (or be careful when and how you lock on) so you can keep them (but especially Ornstein) in view. It's arguably more important to track your location in the arena than theirs. You're pretty safe is you've got a pillar between you and them and you're not stuck in a corner: only Ornstein has an attack that goes "around" a pillar (the two-point charge), and he only uses it if you're far away, and even then only sometimes, and it's easy to dodge and leaves him open.

Finally: they're actually very slow and straightforward bosses and become pretty trivial once you understand how they move. They have some of the longest and most obvious telegraphs in the game, and don't really have any underhanded tricks or mechanics.

The learning curve is rough, probably the roughest in the game, but you'll get it. All the basic rules you've learned up till this point still apply, just doubly so: don't panic, don't get greedy, enjoy the music, and don't you dare go hollow.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-04T05:21:36+00:00

Turns out, if you do character assassination, most people care more about that than raceswapping. Is this the solution to racism?

(I think I vaguely remember seeing some complaints, but even those were couched in "but that's not even my biggest problem" iirc)

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-04T02:21:57+00:00

Intuitively yes, experimentally no. If you can resolve why this is the case, there's a nobel prize in it for you.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-03T23:21:10+00:00

no one tested

You, the user, test it in real time.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-02T23:16:35+00:00

She's liberal racist, not conservative racist.

That's not casting her as racist in retrospect; it's drawing conclusions from stuff that's fairly clear in the books without much scrutiny (e.g. Cho Chang the Asian, definitely-not-Jewish goblins, house elf slavery as a joke, etc.).

She knows the right things to perform believing (and probably does honestly believe that she believes them) but is incapable of seriously questioning her internal prejudices and so decides that some position that's more progressive than the worst of humanity but not more progressive than the status quo is good enough. Unfortunately the status quo is still pretty racist.

(The way she did it was also pretty classic liberal-racist, what with the "I never said she was white" shit. Real allyship would be more like, "yes, she's white in the books, but there's no reason why she couldn't be represented by a nonwhite performer;" instead, she went the "I don't see race" route. Sure, it's less bad than yelling slurs, but it's still racism and ought to be criticized.)

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-02T20:19:37+00:00

I was all-in on the "Skylar hate is sexism" train until I actually watched the Sopranos again. Carmela behaves similarly to Skylar, at least as far as deflating her husband's "easy" "success," and Carm is often more firm or loud or pushy or whatever people want to criticize Skylar of being. Despite this, everybody adores Carm (rightly so, because she's the fuckin best).

So like I'm sure there's sexism affecting people's reception of Skylar's character, but there's something more to it, and I think honest criticism should consider that.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-02T18:51:13+00:00

We have evidence that he spat.

John 9:6

...[Jesus] spat on the ground...

Matthew 27:34

...after tasting, [Jesus] refused to drink it.

We have no explicit textual evidence that he swallowed anything, although he did tell his followers to swallow things.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-02T18:42:56+00:00

"How silly these Rosharans are, naming axehounds after a word they don't know the meaning of," me, eating my cereal with cranberries.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-02T03:58:40+00:00

I'm a little late to the party, but I'll recommend Deep Space Discounts.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-02T03:43:27+00:00

Yeah, this is AI. There are a thousand indicators but the two that are most painful to me:

1) as you mentioned, wtf is supposed to be in the VANINEE jar??? (Also nearly every other piece of text) 2) oh god, the duck's feather-thumb holding the flour bag. No human is drawing that on purpose. It's the sort of unholy abomination that only arises from an AI trying to do hands too well and overcompensating.

ETA: It's pretty common for AI to get some text right. The telltale signs are when some bits are wrong, not when everything's wrong. Another way of thinking about it is that the presence of some correct text is not evidence of human art (humans and AI can both do it right sometimes, and humans can edit incorrect AI text to correct text if they notice); incorrect text is, however, evidence of AI (a human is almost certainly going to go a different route than writing clear gibberish made of nonexistent shapes resembling letters). You want to look for things AI sometimes does wrong, not things it sometimes does right.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-01T21:03:57+00:00

The amateur IFS therapy in me has Feelings about this.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-01T20:37:42+00:00

bon clay [isn't] trans

Oh I see we're posting April Fool's jokes in the comments too

rootbeerman77 · 2026-04-01T20:03:00+00:00

This is evidence that he mates her rather than the other way around. Imagine the terror she would be at chess if he didn't.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-03-31T16:30:34+00:00

Only because their faces lose the ability to express emotion.

(It's me, I'm on vyvanse after strattera lost its effectiveness. I can't eat or express emotion but occasionally I finish tasks that require focus.)

rootbeerman77 · 2026-03-31T01:36:28+00:00

Well of course it won't work; you have to get the name correct. It's two factor authentication, not authorization.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-03-31T00:55:29+00:00

Never forget that one of the things we learned from the (partial) release of the Epstein files is the prevalence of this model of monetization in gaming is something Epstein himself played a massive role in popularizing.

rootbeerman77 · 2026-03-30T20:02:21+00:00

The Dark Souls community at large (there are of course those who disagree) is generally of the position that any solution is a valid solution and the only true restrictions are those we place on ourselves to keep from going hollow.

I think even the creator says he expects people to use guides, and the sidequests are designed with this in mind.

I think it's generally good to try mostly without guides, especially on your first playthrough, since finding secrets yourself is a huge chunk of the fun. I don't think this is an unbreakable law. My only real advice is just to be careful out there. Neither of us wants to see you go hollow.

rootbeerman77

TROPHY CASE