Shrine of the Nephilim

So, we've seen a lot of push back against the 2024 Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. Whether it's the art, or the inclusion of a 'consent' form, or certain text, there's a huge cry against "woke culture" and "politics in gaming". Yeah. There has been a change in gaming. And yeah, it falls under "woke" and "politics". There's another way to look at it, though. It's accepting that there's people beyond what's normally seen in fantasy, and that there's a diversity of cultures, beliefs, and people. It's stepping outside of the old stereotype of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and accepting that the world is large and complicated, and that people are also complicated. And it's always been political. But we'll get to that in a minute. So. You're seeing orcs that aren't thuggish barbarians and shamans. That's good. Because societies can change, and it's a very tired stereot...

 Getting sick and tired of being called a 'groomer' or worse by the right, because we're pro-LGBT. Listen. It isn't about sex. Conservatives are the ones dragging sex into this. It was never about sex. It's about identity . A kid who's five years old decides they like girls. Is that about sex? No. It's about the idea that they like girls . That is all it is. When we were six? We had a crush on the Invisible Woman, Sue Storm. We saw her in a Spider-Man comic, and she seemed nice, and nurturing. She was shown to be a good and caring mother, and we decided at that point we "liked" her. We didn't have a fucking clue what sex was. Sex wasn't even in the picture. (By the by, before you start guessing our gender -- the answer is "yes". Our gender is "yes".) Being a lesbian doesn't have anything to do with sex when you're a kid. That isn't on the radar. It just means you "like" girls more than you "lik...

As usual, when we get into a topic we have keen interest in, we tend to fall down the rabbit hole and go on at length. A side-effect of our autism. In this case, we're going to tweak our comments in a Twitter thread about Judaism and Christianity. Are the 66 chapters of the Bible "God-breathed" inerrant? Of course not. Preamble:  "Here's the thing.  We, ourselves, don't see much wrong with the Bible, flaws and all.  It's a good book.  It teaches lessons. It provides a history. None of which is bad.  It's what people do with it, treating it as the ultimate authority, we disagree with."   And yes, this is what annoys us the most, and makes us respond. Because there's people that consider the Bible the ultimate authority, and then turn off any critical thinking. They ignore anything like why the Bible says what it does, what the cultural context for any given text was, the history associated with those parts of the Bible, even the theology surr...