Qizilbashwoman

I did point out that Karel Čapek was an infamous antifascist who was the Number-Two Wanted Man in Nazi-occupied territories. It's not a subtle critique given that robot means "slave labour".

I should add that locusts are not only edible and taste good (you can get them dipped in chocolate!), but they are also 1. kosher and 2. halal.

then the locusts eat your crops? (and your hair and your clothes?) kind of a no-lose situation attempt because they were gonna do that anyway. thankfully, locusts are edible and taste good, even if you have to eat them naked with no hair

I think we can assume that's a given Čapek has shown us the Deep Ones are not monstrous, but the shoggoths are definitely living tissue Grey Goo Today I learned the term "ecophage"

oof well I don't have my books, I moved it has to do with the way skills work in the game system first, force users choose a force tree in place of a third talent "tree", so you can be a Pilot or a Stormtrooper who awakens to the Force. it means that force powers are awesome but also that non-force users aren't like mooks facing Superman; there's structural balance. Second, there's this whole thing with the dark and light dice. you always have the option of tapping the dark dice for fast strong power... at a price. mechanically seductive! you, the player, are tempted - and everyone rolls these dice, although they are of much greater import for force users. After all, the force flows through all things... Similarly, you can be a Dathomiri Witch and tap that white die. It's a struggle to be good, to mend your ways. Oh lord to give up that power!. Also, there's a massive diversity in force users. First, some force users are gonna be really spectacular at murdering people, while others are gonna be better at manipulation and negotiation. Second, different force users have different fighting styles because they benefit their style: this is a long conceit of the series and it's a fantastic use of fiction as mechanic. There's also different powers taught by different cabals and movements; a Dathomiri Witch (I love themmmmm) is a heavily Dark-Sided cult with specific powers but you can learn new ones if, say, a Sith Lord takes you on as a follower. They also put a lot of emphasis on Right Time Right Force, so their first books were about a period when there were no Jedi, no teachers, just Vader and the Emperor. All the light-side force users are self-taught weirdos or turned dark-siders. The next force-focused book is after the Rebellion gets moving and Luke has returned. People are reopening Jedi temples. There's not formal Jedi training, but there's actual temples and books. Light-side users are stronger and have formed little training groups on their own.

I actually don't really understand Balazar very well, maybe someone can weigh in. The GtG isn't particularly helpful; it just says it's incredibly infertile.

robot comes from the word for "slave labor"; Čapek was a ferocious antifascist and the Nazis, after invading, listed him as their second-most-wanted individual in the Occupied Territories for his political and intellectual work against totalitarianism. He died of pneumonia in 1938 while still in hiding.

SPIRIT COMBAT THE LOCUST SWARMMMMMMM

well no they're absolutely unrelated in every possible way, but it's a symbolic thing.

she's a Jungian but she's explicitly not a feminist. she rejects the term.

It's Glorantha. Staring at navels is basically kind of what we do with it. But. I mean. It's a lot of pig for a culture that lives in a land that is cursed to prevent agriculture. I'd rather imagined the swine lord to be a boar god before I learned about Balazar up close because what kind of people reliant on gathered produce wants to spend their day herding pigs? there's literally no reason to.

Blacklisted by History was written by infamous stooge. The Wikipedia article itself notes: Kirkus Reviews called the book "[a] revisionist biography", which, although a "detailed account", is "marred by ideological blinders" and fit "[f]or true believers only", Publishers Weekly described Evans as "given to conspiracy thinking" and Reason magazine described the book as "revisionist" and "a breathless defense of McCarthy." And I don't think that article made the point you intended it to, because first of all nobody denies there were Soviet spies. The issue is "decades of FBI scrutiny, frenzied Red scares, blacklists, loyalty boards, and show trials" - which has borne out only a handful of actual evidence. Oppenheimer: not a spy. The Rosenbergs: actually spies, but largely convicted out of an anticommunist frenzy - accidentally convicted. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Americans lost their jobs, were jailed, and even killed themselves in decades of antisemitic and explicitly homophobic panic whipped up by grandstanding politicians. To this day, the word "socialism" is a dirty word, despite the fact that some of the greatest programs in American history were socialist programs, including Medicare, the Great Works programs of the Depression, the building of the national infrastructure, and other things that lead to the incredible national wealth of the 1950s.

given that baboons and trolls have essentially the same body plan, I am a little surprised they'd bother to give baboons a special hit location layout in RQG. I very much doubt I'd use it!

salt pork! it's true that their reliance on pig is bizarre when not paired with agriculture. the use of domesticated swine is usually hand-in-hand with agricultural waste to feed them. i know they can eat anything, but they're really likely to get away and go feral if you're out feeding them in the forest. it's not usually worth the effort. usually if you are reliant on gathering food you aren't going to need that much meat! easier to just snare a brace of coneys once a while. what are you gonna do with all that pork?!??! the only thing that makes any real sense is if they sell most of the herds to Lunars, and even then... like, hardly worth the effort.

I'm sorry what mccarthy made literally all of it up, it was an antisemitic and homophobic witch hunt. even the die-hard anti-communist groups - the FBI, etc. - thought he was a shithead loon and were aghast Hoover supported him what alt-history nonsense is this

I managed to refrain from suggesting something akin to this when I read the post because I thought it would be uncivil to tell a fellow poster to shove something vibrant womb are you serious, men get star hearts but we get vibrant wombs? so thank you for pointing this out

I'm surprised there's no presence of Aldrya anywhere

minus the curse of agriculture! the neolithic is often called "the neolithic revolution" because it was a time of transition to large-scale agriculture. balazarings rely on gathered plants, which is perfectly acceptable, but is a little annoying when you can herd swine because you can't feed them normally. there must be a massive trade for maize stems for pig slop - and a decent trade for maize kernels for mieliepap - from neighboring Lunar territories.

I don't know if they are shamans (the word is from a Siberian language and doesn't actually have a "man" in it, so you pluralise it with an -s) or not. It is possible that here, Earth Witch is just the name of Ernalda. She might be approachable as a Rune cult and as a shaman (like Ernalda is in Orlanthi culture) but because Earth Witch doesn't have the sort of agricultural association Ernalda does elsewhere, the usage of "Earth Witch" was kept to keep Her separate. The weird Balazari lack of agriculture means Her role is really different.

when Ernalda was dead, Earth Witch was the hero who shamanised and found she could reach her using shamanism. Her name was Serdrodosa. There's still a tiny secret cult of Earth Witches around Orlanthi lands because honestly some people just prefer to shamanise.

Is this Serdrodosa? I thought she was more of a Hero than a deity, inasmuch as that matters for prehistory. It explains her weakness.

Well I meant in the original sense of meme, "unit of culture". The Atarks stopped; there seems to be no more Atarks after the very early age; they are mentioned only as an incomprehensible opponent, a lurker in the darkness. Only one story makes it clear that the Atarks is the (Green Age deity-person)'s other, and it's in the same narrative that tells a story about how men and women are different, genitalia-wise,

Do you think there's a link between Jernotius and Rashorana? They share some commonalities but I don't see anything that doesn't relate to Illumination (ignoring the external, like gender, etc.). I think the link between all these Illumination deities is just them sewn together by Red Goddess theologians and perhaps by their Pelandan predecessors. The story of Jernotius is a discrete myth narrative of a solid deity who is firmly ensconced in a pantheon, with children and grandchildren; the Atarks is a Green Age mytheme of a terrifying wisdom monster echoing all over northern Genertela; Rashorana is basically a name attached to the Trio and repeated by the Lunars a lot without much else to it. And so forth.

The Trio was taught by Rashoran/a and then they killed them. Bye, becky.

i like this. i also like how the Force works in the game. A lot.