succubi don’t sleep - we watch others sleep. and give them vivid dreams that become obsessive, shameful yearnings

https://m.ai6yr.org/@ai6yr/115907898577599466

Another one for the #OCArt collection! Again a work of Dreaming Ghostfire, this time my one (1) properly furry character. A sheep is he, with the Guilty Gear inspiration shining through quite obviously.

Fun fact, the leaf hornament is a gift from one of his first partners in RP sense. Since said partner was quite instrumental in making this character actually be something, I figured including a gift from them was only right.

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about 4,500 gestapo goons at ICE/DHS got doxxed today and their personal information put online for all to see (at https://icelist.is)

you know what that means? informing the families of what their precious nazis do for a living. how unthinkable would it be for them to be separated from their families, huh? how sad

i hope america throws some equal respect back their way. you know, treat others how you want to be treated

#politics #uspol #ice #dhs

video games allow us to live out even our most impossible wish fulfillment fantasies such as… *checks notes* being a disposable corporate wage-slave exploiting a planet’s resources for the profit of space billionaires

seriously why are there three separate factory games with this premise and how can people stomach playing them? what is it with automation games and fucked-up stories?

I think we have certain innate desires - given to us by evolution - that we can not indulge directly without hurting others. I’m specifically thinking of the desire to dominate and conquer others, the desire to feel superior to others, and the desire to be violent and to feel dangerous and powerful because of that violence

I think the vast majority of people have these desires, but if we indulged them directly we would start attacking people or socially dominating them - which would be harmful to others who didn’t consent to that

so we have to find roundabout ways to satisfy these desires. obviously kink can indulge all of these desires very very directly. I think roleplay is another great way to indulge these desires (and of course there’s plenty of overlap between roleplay and kink, or even ways to incorporate the two together)

another way to satisfy these desires is through video games - where dominance, superiority, violence, etc. are simulated for us in virtual worlds where no one is actually harmed. why else would video games (generally) be so violent if not to satisfy these desires?

but with that out of the way, what I actually want to talk about is how this relates to competition in games, and video game culture in general. yep this is related to my last boost

first of all I want to say that I don’t enjoy competition because I don’t have a healthy relationship to it, so my perspective on it might be skewed. but with that said, I think that the purpose of competition in a sport, a competitive video game, a competitive board game, etc. is to let the winning side satisfy their desire for domination and superiority - with a (hopefully mild) emotional cost to the losing side

I can’t imagine a reason to play a competitive game (as opposed to a singleplayer or co-op game) other than to establish domination and superiority over another person in a way that everyone consented to by playing the game. in which case only one team/player can have their desires satisfied at a time, at an (ideally mild) cost to the others. the goal is probably that everyone will get to win at least a bit, so everyone will get to feel dominant and superior at least some of the time. but again my perspective might be skewed here

obviously one needs to be very careful when engaging in a competition. one needs to understand that this is meant to be a safe environment to indulge dark desires that would otherwise harm others, and to understand that it’s not only possible but important to learn to not feel too hurt by losing. that way losing is a mild enough pain for a player that the positive experience of winning will even it out

unfortunately a lot of players don’t have the emotional maturity to do this - so they express domination and superiority in terrible ways to the other players, or they express frustration and contempt that they won’t get to be dominant and superior. I think that’s more-or-less what toxicity is and where it comes from: the desire for domination and superiority, stoked by the competitive nature of a PvP game, unfiltered

I think a lot of people are drawn to video games because they have an especially strong desire for dominance and superiority, and that is part of why even singleplayer games can have toxic communities - because video game players as a demographic disproportionately want to assert superiority over others - and they often don’t have the emotional maturity to express that in healthy ways. which is how you get things like *shudders* the Steam community

so how do we fix this? assuming that I’m right about why people play games (both singleplayer and multiplayer) the best thing to do is probably to create a culture that:

• calls out people who socially attack others to assert dominance/superiority - even if those social attacks are cloaked by bad faith tricks
• goes out of its way to educate others on the limits of how dominance/superiority should be expressed - in a game or otherwise. and why it’s important to stay within these limits
• has explicit expectations of players in any given game - laying out in clear terms which behaviors are okay and which aren’t

it frustrates and upsets me that the need to feel valuable to capitalism poisons so much, but especially relationships.

we should celebrate the interests, progress, and excellence of our loved ones but instead, many feel threatened because of the inherent competitive nature in which we’re steeped. and often these feelings can’t be openly addressed despite the fact that it’s a systemic problem rather than an individual problem. too often i’ve heard expressions of these feelings be met with accusations of jealousy and the only remedy is to get good or whatever. it’s made much worse and much more confusing when so often these feelings are directed to those who are close to us. what are we supposed to say: “stop being so hot and good at stuff, it makes me feel worthless?”

even more specifically, it reminds me of the relationship between passing and feeling threatened by other trans individuals.

i hate the idea of living competitively. i like competition but competition only works when it happens in (mostly) a vacuum where the rest of the participants’ lives are cooperative – otherwise, it’s just reinforcing and celebrating the same shitty behavior that makes us miserable in the first place.