Vi

i was incredibly dysphoric about my round face and softer features until i started looking at the faces of hispanic men and realized that those features weren’t feminine at all, they were ethnic features white supremacy had conditioned me to see as less masculine

What's NOT the appeal. Aren't they cute together?

But if you want me to elaborate: Namari takes an attitude of "these guys are my responsability" about Laios' party in general but especially about Laios himself. There's lots of panels on the manga where she's scolding him, worrying about him, jumping him because she's happy he's there and more to the point she's almost fussy about Laios especifically. Yes, even when she goes in a quest to kill him because of his own stupidity (which I'm pretty sure counts as high romance in Dwarven culture). There's a lot of "THIS IS MY OWN PERSONAL IDIOT" vibes.

There's also this little subtle bit when Chilchuck complains about romance in Laios' party, where she HATES the "marriage seeker" who wanted to get it on with Laios.

Sure, you might interpret this as she being angry at her taking advantage of him, or that AND the fact she's jealous to death of her. It fits her character. Also, there's her well known "fascination" for Tallmen. And Laios, IIRC, is the tallest of the main cast.

The funny thing is that Laios treats her just as a good friend and if this is all true he is likely totally oblivious. Which makes it ten times more fun. Can you imagine having a crush on the weirdest, densest man on the planet? I'm sure Laios would come to understand, perhaps with a couple bonks on the head, how good a dwarf girl with a weapons fetish can be. It would be very fun to watch.

Yeah, you could definitely play a scenario where violence is the morally correct answer for laughs, but you don't have to.

If you wanted to play it straight, one might imagine a game about fighting a fascist state where all of the bosses are The One Good Nazi types with very sympathetic, human reasons for collaborating with the regime – there's the Sad Dad who's only committing mass murder because they're holding his kid hostage, the idealist who genuinely believes they can reform the system from the inside, the moral coward who rationalises their atrocities as harm reduction because if they quit, whoever replaced them would be even worse, etc. – and all of the talky nonviolent options for dealing with them involve compromising the player character's principles.

The final boss is naturally a totally unsympathetic Hitler 2.0 type, but before you can fight him he hits you with the old Mustapha Mond monologue, and if you've let even one of his buddies off the hook, he turns the tables on the conversation-fu trope and persuades the player character to stand down.

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.

"fishfinder"

These scenarios may include:

Moving around folks who are already spooked or easily-startled

Approaching people who you absolutely do not want to alarm, such as people with poor spatial awareness, people experiencing paranoia or a panic attack, folks who are very focused on a different thing, people handling dangerous chemicals or machinery

When you very urgently need to get somewhere and there are people in your way

Any other time when you require others to be aware of your presence and location

Sincerely,

Studies from life of some swifts I met, who were under the care of a wonderful swift rehabilitator.