*sigh* the part of the soundtrack where Hooper says "Fast fish" and the movie is no longer about horror, it's about how fucking amazing white sharks are, how completely amazing it is that we share the planet with them and can see them. And in the dismal mood I'm in this probably predictably sets off a crying jag.
OST Jaws (1975): 09. Ben Gardner’s Boat https://youtu.be/tO-EWpQeoug via @YouTube
Bllbbbbb!! BLLLLBBBBBBLLLLLBBB! *surfaces, pulls off mask, gasps loudly *
Thanks @frostwolf I am now listening to the Jaws soundtrack again and predictably I now really want to go swimming or hop on a boat.
thoughts about "race" in D&D and the recent half-elf/half-orc decision
I have mixed feelings about "no more half [whatever]."
My *opinion* is; rules differences for ancestries *are* mostly good (because they're different species, not humans with indistinguishable physical and intellectual capacities), *but* it can shade into racism. Ie; I can see "an elf" being naturally faster and more agile than a similar human (different species) but I can't see cultural differences between hunter-gatherer wild elf and bookish gray elf playing out in biological differences in strength.
I definitely feel "intelligence" (and to a lesser extent "wisdom" and "charisma") are loaded terms where stat modifiers should *always* be off limits. That gets uncomfortably close to justification for real world exploitation and genocide. Moving along...
Like it or not, D&D comes from a somewhat racist context (for instance Robert E Howard's fiction, where Aquilonians are innately different from the Picts they're trying to conquer), and half-elves/half-orcs are an inclusion from where Tolkien, who was fairly good about this stuff, was racist. "Half elves are not just culturally but biologically different from elf or human" teeters on the edge of profoundly offensive. Theoretically you could take hybrids out of the game and I'd be cool with that, but... I'm not.
Given that I'm from groups where being recently made invisible by pigeonholing us as "white" is the latest step in genociding us, I'm really uncomfortable with "disappearing" mixed ancestry adventurers!
Unfortunately I feel like reductionism here - and you need reductionism to jam reality into something you can quickly play as a game - is a real problem (when you simplify armor into "AC," it doesn't touch on anyone's bitter family history) and I don't have an easy answer.
That also took my mood from "simmering anger at everything to wanting" to "find anything that looks like an oppressor and beat the shit out of it with my fists," and a *good* development of this is I realized that being this angry doesn't make me an out of control monster - but it does mean my judgment's really screwed up for a little while, and acting out of anger at the next thing that pisses me off (not hard in that mood) might not be what I honestly *want* to do.
I figure I will go somewhere as long as I'm now unemployed and relatively near a school but well after when the kids would have started class, there are some bright flashes of light, so I think I got tagged for a speeding ticket again. I really hate those cameras, and whether I get hit with a fine or not, I think the takeaway is drive nowhere *near* schools on the weekdays.
A thing I've always wondered about AD&D;
"Accidental Death and Dismemberment" insurance. I'm curious whether a former actuary turned game designer decided this was a hilarious acronym for the variation of his game he wanted to push, and which featured a fair amount of accidental death and dismemberment.
Lots of random gunk, but some drawings and cooking talk too. Obsesses about DnD and related topics. Left-leaning/profoundly frustrated politics. Black lives matter; trans rights are human rights.
Occasionally NSFW art and discussion, please do follow if you're 18+.