“O.M.G. the SHOW! Yknow, THE show! The show that JUST came out, the show you have no way to watch, the show you can’t possibly have fully formed opinions of yet, the show you probably haven’t picked a fave from, the show that is over already because everything comes out immediately and you’ve basically missed it all, the show you can’t avoid spoilers for, the show you have tag-flagged (cos blocking doesn’t work)? I’m Tumblr’s useless algo and i KNOW you want to hear about THE. SHOW.!”
Once saw something that said “Warhammer is quintessentially British while Dungeons and Dragons is quintessentially American”
I’ve thought about it a lot and it does add up in a horrifying sort of way.
There has been this lil thing needling my brain when consuming Warhammer content where I’m like…annoyed that nobody matters? That 95% of life in this universe is regarded as cheap and meaningless? That, unless you’re part of this top echelon of humanity, you’re basically on par with a mouse who’s solely been bred into existence to feed a snake.
And I’ve known on an intellectual level it’s a dumb thing to feel irked by–like it’s a Grimdark setting, this is the whole deal–but I kept asking myself “why does this get under my skin?” and I think that quote perfectly explains why.
The British class system is so fucked and omnipresent that, like, yeah: for the vast majority of British history, most British citizens have been feeder mice and they’re well aware of their place in the hierarchy. You aren’t allowed to forget it. The aggessive classism is baked so deep into the culture that it becomes a sort of obvious, bland fact of life.
And America has it’s own insane class issues and rampant inequality, but we also have the myth of the American Dream and a hyper-individualist culture counteracting it. So while you are almost certainly a feeder mouse, you’re still raised to feel “I’m something, I’m important, the world just doesn’t know it yet”. A whole country of temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
So Warhammer represents the British class system turned up to 10000; most people are a speck floating by in the background of a story about bigger, grander characters and there’s nothing they can really do about it. The random guardsman is never going to become a character as important as a fuckin Primarch, there’s no narrative upward class mobility if you will.
But Dungeons and Dragons is almost always a story about a ragtag crew of random schmucks taking on Big Bads and defeating them, it’s about equal opportunity heroism. You may be a rogue who started life as a pickpocket street urchin, but you and your friends still lay waste to an overpowered evil wizard using naught but wits and teamwork.
And it’s embarrassing to admit, but my American brain worms start screaming when presented with such a British worldview because it makes it clear: I would not matter in this setting. If I existed in this universe, I’d be dead, enslaved, a servitor, working myself into an early grave in a hive world factory or cannon fodder because that’s just how life is for 95% of humanity and there’s no reason why I’d be the exception. And the fact is, as unpleasant as it is to acknowledge, my dogshit American main character syndrome ego does not like that.
But whaddya gonna do.
you can’t leave this in the tags sis
“THIS SHIT SMACKS OF MARGARET THATCHER” I scream as I flip a game table
to paraphrase something I said long, long ago:
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only TORIES
A big reason why I think I became a marxist is bc I read A LOT of Calvin & Hobbes and Bill Watterson really went out of his way to lay the groundwork for teaching people critical analysis.
Like take this panel for example:
EVERYTHING one knows about American/Western culture, especially in the late 80’s/early 90’s, would lead to the logical next line being some form of “Kids These Days Are Succumbing To The Evils Of Satan” or some likewise cheap Reaction™
But then Bill pulls the rug out
He criticizes the “satanic” bands not for some lack of christian morals but because theyre a byproduct of hyperconsumptionist culture. Bill takes no issue with the subject matter bc his issue is knowing its only being done to sell rebellion as a consumer product rather than to say anything truly provocative or inspired.
just a friendly new year’s eve reminder that if you accepted a challenge from a green knight this time last year you’re due tomorrow at the green chapel to get beheaded. time to get a move on
I cannot stand the parodies of modern major general, they’re overdone and simply not as good as the original. They’ve done them about everything, whatever topic, big or small.
And when i notice one of them my eyes will always start to roll.
The diction’s always slurry when they rush the complicated words, and adding many fricatives will turn it so cacophonous. The slanted rhymes are silly and they keep just making more and more, please someone stop the parodies of modern major general.
The scanning of the lyrics in the meter is unbearable, they emphazise the syllables in ways that are untenable, in short in matters musical, prosodic and ephemeral, i cannot stand the parodies of modern major general!
I was explaining to goat to my dad the other day and it make me realize something... what DO they do with all that straw on years the goat doesn't burn? I imagine it might be a bit moldy from being out in the snow and rain, so I feel like my dad's suggestion of feeding it to livestock
oh youre gonna like this… they burn it. in a press release i think last year they said that it gets ‘energy recycled’ after it gets taken down, in other words its burned in an incinerator for electricity generation or heating.
You see, burning the goat represents linking the first flame, perpetuating the age of Light and the doomed cycle that comes with it, and failing to burn the goat means plunging the world into an age of Dark. But what if there were a third option? Something else entirely…
the virgin loss.jpg versus the chad xkcd Seven Years
Don’t forget the latest version, Ten Years
@vividaway Randall Munroe is an internet cartoonist who runs the ‘xkcd’ online comic series, which has run from 2006 up to today, with new comics every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Xkcd isn’t an ongoing story, just a series of funny, wholesome, depressing, or oddly scientifically informative comics.
In 2010, Randall’s fiance was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. He didn’t share too many details at first, but things tended to bleed into his comics: sometimes funny, sometimes sad.
Often in this time, other cartoonists would write in guest comics for Randall, or he’d put in short filler pieces, to try and fill space while nonstop cancer treatments took up most of his time.
In 2012, he posted a comic called ‘Two Years’, about the time since the diagnosis. It’s the one that hasn’t yet been posted here (although parts of it are included in the other comics), and it commemorates some of the things that had happened in the two years since the diagnosis.
There are representations of Randall and his fiance being together for her treatment, worrying together, traveling the world, and getting married. It’s still depressing, but it’s a lot more hopeful, showing how they’ve still managed to have happy moments together, and things will still get better.
Themes of cancer continued in xkcd, but they increasingly became less about fear and nihilism, and more about hope, or just cool facts related to cancer.
At the top of this post is the comic posted in 2017: Seven Years. In it, Randall and his wife are traveling more, trying to have fun and continue old and new hobbies, with cancer ever-present in the background of it all. At the end, the two of them observe the 2017 solar eclipse, and despite all the uncertainty that comes with the thought of another seven years, agree to watch the 2024 eclipse together too.
There are just about no cancer comics between that one and the most recent comic, the one I posted: Ten Years, written in 2020. It’s by far the most hopeful of the three in the little series: the two of them are happy, they’re playing with rabbits and riding on handcarts and going out hiking and stargazing, together. At the end, Ten Years breaks the format with a conversation in which they talk about how unbelievable it is that it’s been so long, and share their worries as well as their hopes. It even ends on a much more lighthearted joke about immortality.
It’s a good comic. Definitely in my top two comics wherein internet cartoonists express emotions about an illness suffered by their wife.
“The ten-year cancerversary is traditionally the Cursed Artifact Granting Immortality anniversary.” -Randall Munroe.
