context

i've been thinking about this lately, as well. it's very difficult. elves n orcs may have deeper origins in northern european folk mythology, but the modern version clearly comes to us filtered through tolkein, and let's face it the guy was steeped in british imperialism and white supremacy. much easier to lampshade it and subvert it, perhaps.

a big part of the problem, i think, is that the characters and their stories are often far removed from the means of production within the game world. it's hard to craft a world in which people are motivated by materialist interests when those interests don't really exist. the economy, such as it even exists, is based on capitalist realist ideas about money and pricing. nobody really worries about who's doing the mining, farming, and so forth that keeps these societies functioning, so the economy is always at a remove or two from the in-game action. monster lairs are filled with treasure for the taking, but that devolves into an accounting problem on character sheets.

and that's before considering how real magic would affect all of that.

so i think you need to start with the worldbuilding and try to imagine a materialist history. how do societies in this world train new characters? will a class-based system inevitably result in class warfare, with one or more of the classes coming to dominate a society and using their institutional power to oppress other classes? how do these societies create and distribute the powerful magic items that everyone wants? like, of course the paladins and witch hunters say that theirs is a battle against evil, but it's really about controlling magic items. the paladin's "detect evil" ability is a projection, an active ability the necessarily reflects the paladin's ideology back, and this ideology forms the superstructure of a settler-colonialist empire, perhaps. the real world paladins worked for charlemagne, after all.

after all, it's much easier to justify killing "monsters" and taking their stuff when you've convinced yourself that they're all ontologically evil.

and it's a role-playing game, so how to the players react to that situation? maybe the paladins of the empire of good are telling them to go kill the evil kobolds that happen to be living in the mountains of shiny magic rocks, and after a few generations of this the kobolds are ruthless in their confrontations with outsiders, relying on traps and their tunnel networks to maintain their resistance against an ever increasing number of "adventurers" who seek the sweet lucre hidden away in their homes.

not sure we should accept the neoliberal's framing here at face value. "owns up to the fact the he is unhinged" could mean he openly and honestly advocates for a position that the author here finds unhinged. i'm picturing something like

uncritical support for the democratic people's republic of korea and its struggle against the genocidal imperialist occupiers

that's completely unhinged

sure, and you are deeply unserious

i mean given how florida and texas have been snubbing the feds these past few years i'd say there's a barrier to legitimacy, but obviously it's not exactly the same. mostly it's interesting how "objective" reporting chooses to legitimize or delegitimize recognition of a government while maintaining the pretense that there's no other way to view reality.

yeah, i said, you can still win, but you're like margaret thatcher here. you've got to get lucky every time and they only have to get lucky once.

The Houthis, who control Yemen's capital and most populous areas, have attacked international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with the Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas, drawing retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.

i was curious how the western press is framing the retaliatory strikes by yemeni forces against the genocidal imperial navy. the allies of god in yemen "control the capital and most populous areas" in much the same way that, for instance, the u.s. federal government controls the capital and most populous areas. i will be using this description for the regime in washington from now on.

A U.S. defense official told Reuters they were not aware of any attack on the Eisenhower.

straight up denial? or just a vague way to undercut yemen's narrative. "technically i spoke to someone who is technically a defense official and technically that person was not yet aware of the attack that had just happened. this person is not even necessarily related to the navy, mind you, so there's no reason to expect some nameless defense official to know any details or even be aware of it. but it's certainly my job as an objective reuters journalist to include this uninformative line that gestures in the direction of yemeni claims being false so that my readers draw the correct conclusions."

imperialism is actually caused by a parasitic fungus whose reproductive cycle requires it to be eaten by humans while it's in olives and olive oil, like toxoplasmosis but instead of making mice unafraid of cats it makes humans willing to eat at an olive garden

mfw my tax accountant says my ira contributions are tax deductible

just the fact you're saying it's "contaminated with lead" instead of "enhanced with lead-based flavor crystals" proves you're part of the woke conspiracy

desperation doesn't necessarily breed sufficient ingenuity to overcome the fact that mars is completely inhospitable to human existence?

stop using up our precious few minutes of oxygen remaining and start ingenuiting

porque no los dos? anyway i'm pretty sure that got added to the book but wasn't in the original short story

precisely so. there's a certain strain of liberalism that values intent far above outcomes. i think back every so often to o. scott card's ender's game which started as his thought experiment: can a good person commit genocide? in which he responds with a resounding, yes! people, and by extension, nations, are good or bad, not actions. the malice with which nikki haley writes on the bombs is to be condemned, of course, but in the liberal mind the banality with which the bombs are paid for, built, packed, shipped, loaded, armed, aimed, and dropped is to be commended.