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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: October 7th, 2023

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  • In practicality, and this life-and-death is a matter of practicality rather than preference, betrayal beats zealous genocide support.

    Even as someone from outside, I can say the U.S.’ best bet is Biden again. His international politics are no different than most U.S. presidents that came to office in the last century, but at least U.S. citizens are getting a nice end of the mostly shit-ended sticks for a change. And that goes for all the current immigrant peoples in the U.S., too, although for many the reason for leaving their homes can be traced back to deep-rooted U.S. foreign policy.

    What do they have with Trump? Persecution during immigration while their home countries will be kept bombed to hell or stripped and exploited by the ongoing U.S. policy.


  • Ah, I didn’t wanna give the impression of completely ordinary so as to be a character from Dostoevsky’s novels, but I guess how I wrote it can easily take the topic there. Just wanted to make the distinction between “you are someone special’s descendant, albeit without yours’ or viewers’ knowledge till the story ends” vs “you are someone special only through your efforts, even among the specialty group of ninjas, heroes, devil fruit users etc.” The first one has been pretty much trodden with either last minute revelations justifying huge power-ups, or setting the stage for the plot armor of the protagonists.

    I’d argue that the will of ancestors is different, and even their effect on Luffy’s development is rather through direct action than just being related by blood. Without Dragon directly interfering, Buggy would have got Luffy in Loguetown. “Strong blood” was never something openly used in One Piece before, even more it was pretty much criticized through some villains like Axe-hand Morgan’s fascist ideology and the showcases of Celestial Dragons.

    The illusion of re-emerging endurance through hardships all over again just thanks to willpower is just as a basic, and as a tired trope for plot as the use of ancestry, but it can nevertheless result in a good variety of situations like the post-Shabody separate training arc, and is a much more comfortable aspect to cheer for a protagonist through.

    Having the ancient and most powerful spirit emerge through the protagonist to beat up the bad guys is pretty much against how Luffy’s efforts are portrayed. Yes, Luffy does not acknowledge such a thing and plays the usual fool to not understand it, but for all intents and purposes, except for one to subvert later for a possible plot-twist, Luffy is regarded as Nika by the other characters and the audience. In my opinion, Luffy should have been rejecting such a thing as reincarnation or even personification of someone else outright so as to assert the quality, fun, and morals of his own efforts than to utilize ancient bloodline powers, like rejecting Raleigh’s offer for the explanation of One Piece and being played favourites as well as being deprived of the fun of overcoming things by oneself.

    Inherited will being a culture, thought structure, morals, or aspirations vs being some ancient person’s spiritual being has been pretty distinct for me in One Piece till about Nika exposè.

    It is a taste issue, and as far I can see you try to help out with the reframing the problem I have to resolve it, and I thank you for that.




  • Tbh I am really pissed about this in One Piece’s rather latest track. The will of D. and people with the D. names could have been pretty ordinary people with strong wills, good nature, social skills etc. opposing the injustices we see in the manga, but lately with all this reincarnation of Sun God Nika stuff, it is no different than what Naruto and Sasuke have been reduced to.

    I know it is 25 years in the making and cultures and perceptions change, along with perception of tropes in entertainment, but can we at least go beyond this “the special one” or “the chosen one” stories?

    I also know Oda has been a spectacular surpriser and a mangaka that can connect and change most trivial things to most core stuff to do unforeseen changes to the core of his world-crafting, but my doubts in One Piece being as unique as it was before the New World has been increasing these last 10 years of commercialization of it.







  • They meddled with the Islamic countries beyond what befalls them, and they helped the worst of the extremists come out in the instability they helped create.

    Besides, being some of the worst offenders on climate pollution per capita by far and making someone else’s homes burn to global warming first was bound to create these refugees whether those ecuador countries were stable and tried to counter the local symptoms or not. I’m not saying advancing the comfort of human living is a sin or anything zealous like that. All I’m saying is that glossing over personal and corporate consumption while neglecting apt measures in favor of decoy policies and trying to reflect the blame somewhere else was bound to have the problem become bigger and more apparent.

    They reap what they have sown over the last few decades. Trying to put up a gunship and gunboat barrier over Greece while bribing the corrupt Turkish president to keep over millions of Syrian refugees, let aside others flooding illegally in groups of hundreds from Afganistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, etc. will work so far to keep the facade on.

    Rising fascism in Europe is not a defense against the religious extremists. It is due to desire for continuity of personal comfort and freedom in the face of reckoning day, by ensuring those who they fucked over can’t come near and try to share in their abundance of resources.


  • I have more than a soft spot for Valve. Their price recommendations over the years Turkish Lira reached the moon was stellar for the consumers here, and it wasn’t just us. There are whole regions of countries that Steam has provided affordable game prices, which would otherwise simply have to resort to piracy completely.

    On another side, Steam’s many features like lenient refund policies, extensive yet on-point and open profile/library/workshop/community infrastructure add more than 50% of the content and quality on some games, and a complete easy of use for consumers.

    Whatever one can say about their specific policies on some topics, I’m going to argue no other for-profit company has ever put this much feature on display without immediate gain from all of them. This is almost on par with many FOSS projects with such development behind them.

    However, on this price-matching practice, I believe it is totally not a pro-consumer one. It is not exclusivity, which could completely bankrupt and erase all other competitors long ago if Steam went that way, but it is still somewhat meddling with blocking cheaper options for consumers.

    All that said, and with another commenter mentioning that 30% price cut is standard in the industry and a developer selling a game expensive on Steam and having the possibility to sell it cheaper on another wouldn’t make sense with the same cuts in place, I don’t think this policy completely lacks any merit. Having unreachable presence on Steam and using it as an advertisement platform thanks to its reach while selling the game cheaper elsewhere with the same cuts, or even no-cuts in their own stores, would open a hideous scam many of the well-known companies in the industry would jump on without blinking an eye.