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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   26483 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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To be fair, Scott was an outlier at that time. I didn't and don't have his way with words, but I'd had similar drive to overtures of earnest engagement and disarmament, and then had them burned out of me in around 2010-2011. I hope that there's something more or deeper, and in a way I'm reminded of Chuubo's, where :

So, there's two ways to look at wish-fulfillment. One is "wishes are immature: they're all about wanting gratification without consequence." It's like when a cynical realist scoffs at an idealist: "yeah," they say, "your ideals are great and all, but this is the real world."

The other way is "wishes are about building something better."

Like when the idealist scoffs at the realist: "yeah," they might say. "Just accepting the way things are and lowering your standards might be 'realistic,' but it's also what KEEPS things the way they are."

And the truth of dreams, love, hope, hearts, wishes, ideals, fantasies, ambitions, purposes, striving, and even creative chaos is—-

It's both. It's always, always both.

We learn realism. Then we learn idealism. Then we have to learn realism again. Then we have to learn idealism again. If you're an idealist, there will always be realists out there whose narrow-minded embrace of the status-quo is something you've grown past, and there will always be realists out there whose wisdom see through your nonsense and overambition. And if you're a realist, there will always be goofy airheaded idealists out there whose starry eyes you've grown past, and there will always be idealists out there who've accepted and seen everything you've accepted and seen but also gone beyond it.

Wishes are bleak when they're bleak. That's all it is. Wishes are bleak when they cut away the sense in the world. They're bleak when they're the idealism that the realist looks down on. They're bleak when the principal lesson you can learn from them is "possibly you need to do less wishing."

And they're Imperial when they're fundamentally reaching for something better—-when maybe they cause a lot of trouble, when maybe "do less wishing" is a big lesson you can learn from them, but when there's a hint of them of the idealism that's grown past realism.

But there's reasons I can't post on rpgnet, anymore, and reasons why they never responded to my appeal, and why I only bothered to send one because one of their moderators demanded it. There's a reason I don't have discussions like those here, on a wide variety of other locations and nyms that are tots open to serious debates, fingers crossed. There's a reason Scott knows that there are things that put his practice or license or career at risk, or whatever is left of his friendships.

There's a reason Moran finished her otherwise-excellent piece about the horrors of a Bleak worldview with

And there are worse things, of course. I mean, a little bit of substanceless fantasy can be better than, like, having the world drown in nothingness, or, say, letting someone suffer from a harsh reality to too great a degree. In fact, really, it should be good in exactly the same circumstances that our cynical realist would be OK with a spot of idealism. You know. To entertain kids. To keep things from breaking down further. To organize volunteer labor. To comfort someone in grief.

Jenna Moran remains a design treasure.

Lord of Light level RPG

Ah. This puts a few things into focus about her other projects.

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