This exactly. I’d love a world where everyone was on board with social welfare because it’s morally good, but I’ll take a world where even the self-interested money ghouls recognize that social welfare benefits them.

It’s genuinely harrowing how much gambling addition has become a part of normal every day life.

I keep getting ads for Kalshi or whatever it’s called (the one that’s all about betting on irl outcomes) that are just the most blatant “actually you’re super smart and maybe even morally superior for putting money on a 1:1,000,000 bet.”

I can’t believe it happened again but dumber. Just the same people falling for the same bit but without even the illusion of a huge payout. Buck Wild.

Oh wow! I’ve been absolutely marveling over your work in the Orruk and FEC tomes, what a treat to stumble on your profile here! Amazing work!

*sharing this

This is the hardest I’ve laughed at 40K content in a minute. Bless you for this.

If you’re open to a lesser temptation, AoS is a lot cheaper to get into and (imo) much better written.

(Especially since in every other way the show is *allergic* to doing anything with queer characters. We get the bee kid’s two moms in season 1 (barely) but no one else despite the show being otherwise *weirdly* romance focused. Which, again, fine but you’re telling a story about outcasts!!!)

This is what I mean when I say it feels like the show is trying to flirt with allegory (someone in a writers room made that conversion camp line) but doesn’t actually commit to saying anything. You can do so many stories about community with that setup without invoking conversion camps.

ENID’S BIG CHARACTER GROWTH MOMENT FOR THE END OF THE SEASON IS WOLFING OUT! Allegorically we have a character who is struggling with her relationship to loved ones because if a part of her identity that makes her an outsider… and the resolution to that is “never mind I stopped in my own.”

And that’s not even getting into stuff like the “werewolf conversion camp” (show’s words, not mine) which, ok. If you’re going to call it that, you’re saying that “not turning into a wolf” is your allegory for queer identity. Which, sure, it could work if it’s a conformity thing, except…

Like, there’s the very surface level stuff (all the houses are named after Shakespeare characters without that really meaning anything) but season 1 really tries to sell an oppressed underclass narrative with Outcasts that *super* doesn’t work.

Like, it’s in a strange place thematically where it’s clearly trying to do allegory but also just completely isn’t (or at least it’s trying to pretend to do allegory without actually putting the work in).

Can we do it line item, like yay to the Birds of Prey center and potatoes but nay to the white supremacists.

I try to maintain empathy and connection for humans as a whole, but the illusion that the world "just works"--that the assumptions of past generations are true, that the rules of your teachers are sacred, that change is a risk rather than a necessity--is poisonous, and creates poisonous people.