Yeah everyone is gonna have a different degree of challenge because of their own familiarity and skill level, I meant more that it is the exact same game at the exact same difficulty setting for everyone. FromSoftware games rely a lot on overcoming challenges and the feeling that comes with that.

Knowing everyone else have the same settings across the board and struggle some way or another justifies their design choice in my eyes. It is very efficient in making you feel like you are truly getting better, progressing and that you are overcoming impossible walls.

I’m sure they are able to, but it’s not the type of game they want to do. Instead they prefer to give tools for players to make their experience easier or harder, like, in Elden Ring, you can summon spirits, play co-op and use other stuff like magic, craft consumable buffs and throwing items to make the game easier for you. Everyone is facing the same challenge, but the tools they choose to use will make it easier or harder to tackle any giving situation.

The developers of the game have a clear vision of how they want their game to be difficulty-wise and I don’t think sticking to that is a problem, it’s their intended way of experiencing the game and making sure everyone, regardless of anything, are in the same playing field, difficulty options are not necessarily about accessibility, it depends entirely on the intention of the developers.

There’s a lot of other options you can have on your game for people with all sorts of needs and necessities, just look at recent Sony games for example, and From Software sucks on that front, they desperately need to put more accessibility options for those that need it.

Judging from even the g*mer places A LOT of people who would like to play have problem with the difficulty level.

If you’re talking about Elden Ring/Souls games specifically, I’m gonna be honest, this whole reputation of them being this “difficult, brutal, unrelenting, unforgiving” games is mostly wrong. It’s mostly just a different type of gameplay loop than other type of games. And yeah, it can be difficult depending on a lot of factors like the level of familiarity someone has with playing games, more specifically 3D games, or someone’s tolerances, preferences and mood. There are things in these games that are made to be difficult, like a specific area or boss, but it’s not nearly as close to what people make it seem to be, it’s just different from other types of games.

You’re not weak for finding out what your limitations are, comrade. Everyone is different and have their own tolerances and limitations. Being vulnerable to yourself and acknowledging that is not weakness. And while yes, the Palestinians have it way rougher right now, having to do anything they can to survive an ongoing genocide, that does not mean your own difficulties and limitations are not important too, you probably live worlds apart from them and your life is also going on.

I think the best course of action would be to try to hold on a little longer there and at the same time try to contact a mental health professional. That way you could still try to be in your current job a little longer to see how things go while also seeking the help you need right now.

And like another comrade already told you, if the place is so toxic and you’re the only counter to that, your presence there matters a lot. You don’t need to be confrontational of them, as that can create animosity between you and the other workers, but being able to listen, assert your position and stand your ground when needed, could be the change they need to be able to pierce the veil of ideology they are clearly immersed in.

Castanhari’s video is truly great. I haven’t checked it for this video, but the portuguese to english auto subtitles tend to be good enough to understand for the people that only speak english.

Also, the video originally had a warning about violent content and eventually got taken down, but was quickly restored/reuploaded. From what I saw people commenting it was because of a single image that needed to be blurred or removed.

There’s a bunch of libs in the nested comments and there are quite a few blatant anticommunists there, also some people telling others to visit some right wing channel that is supposedly “dismantling the lies” of this video, lol.

I’m also surprised Guilherme Briggs is narrating the video, hearing his voice in this is awesome.

You didn’t say he ever claimed to be a fascist, but speaking from an outside perspective he sounds just like that without the self-label. The reason I say that is because when I was still a lib that knew jack shit of politics, my only friend group had fascists in it, the kind that will call themselves fascists without hesitation, but that are all too much of a coward to do anything. Still they would say basically everything you described in here, and even worse stuff, antisemitism was a big one among them.

When I became increasingly aware of what being a fascist actually meant and started to see through them, instead of cutting it right away I naively tried my best to change them, not realizing that was impossible. I still hate that I didn’t leave that group sooner. Being an autistic, social anxious and introverted person, I clung to the group from fear of ever feeling lonely.

I’m only now realizing how much that group fucked me up mentally and it fucking sucks.

Nowadays, while I do feel lonely, most people around me are just libs that know little or close to nothing of politics but that are all well-meaning people. My attempts at politicizing and bringing class consciousness to them have met only some success, but I’m learning along the way and I’m sure one day I’ll be able to connect better with them on that front. Most of the time I can’t even bring myself to say what I want, probably because of the way I had to act around the old group, and when I actually do say what I want, it’s like my body wants to shut down, so it’s really hard. Luckily I have a good psychologist that is slowly helping me with this.

I do want to say tho, please prioritize your well-being. As much as I completely agree with you wanting to say how much you despise Tony to his face when you leave, weight in if it is safe to do so when the time comes.

And shit on the US all you want. It’s a terrible system controlled by corporations and the only people that believe who they vote for matters are dimwits that believe the bullshit pedaled to them by the media. I just think you should also understand that the reality of your ideal is no better. It’s just different branding of the same control by those at the top.

There have been some material pointed at you for reading already, so I just want to say that this is just common liberal thinking used to discredit any attempt of change by claiming everything is the same, “it’s all different power hungry elites at the top” stuff.

That’s a fundamentally wrong view of how societies work that not only completely ignores class struggle, also ignores all the advancement made in socialist societies. You are already on the right path and identified that the US is controlled by corporations, you just gotta go further and realize these corporations have owners, the extremely wealthy, the capitalist class. From there you can start to understand the interests a government serves under a capitalist society. That’s not to say there haven’t been any mistakes and wrongdoings in socialist societies, far from that, we are very aware of that and self-critique is core to communist thought.

With all that said, there isn’t much I can add here that will convince you or anything, this is something that takes willingness, time and research. What I can ask of you is to at least give it a fair thought. If you want good starting places in a video format in english, give Second Thought, Hakim and Yugopnik a watch from time to time.

Youtube is usually pretty good in recommending me leftist content, but every now and then some bullshit like you’re describing shows up to me too, sometimes all the recommended to the side of a given video is full of right wing bullshit. I have the impression social media in general is going to shit. Twitter is full of fascists, Instagram (and Tik Tok to some extend) have some of the most vitriolic comments you’ll see, and are probably being infested with fascists too.

I’m not yet well read, but I’m currently reading more theory. I think Why Socialism? by Einstein shouldn’t just be a honorable mention, it is pretty good as a first text to read, specially if you want to send to someone that does not know much about communism since it is such a simple text. I would add The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism by Lenin after The Principles of Communism by Engels helps a lot, it’s a pretty short text that is very approachable.

You can’t blame climate change for the flood itself, but it is part of the reason one of the rivers reached 30 meters tall, the highest recorded in there.

And since capitalism is to blame for the current crisis of climate change, it is connected with this tragedy.

Some context for anyone wondering: this was absolutely preventable. The governor of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite, knew this happens at this time of the year but not only did he not do anything, the investment in preventing this was basically null. A flood also happened last year and he did nothing too.

One of the rivers rose up to 30 meters this time.

After the flood this time around he resorted to Twitter to beg president Lula for help, which is absolutely weird and pathetic to do. Not only that, but now he is asking for donations to the state to help people. This could have been prevented or at the very least mitigated if there was proper funding.

Hopefully there is a lot of groups there helping like MTST and people from all over the country are donating to different groups to help those in need right now.

My heart goes out to everyone suffering because of the flooding right now, the number of desperate people I’m seeing on Twitter sharing pictures of people missing after the flood is absolutely devastating.

Fuck Eduardo Leite and fuck capitalism.

I haven’t seen a documentary about that, but the movie Judas and the Black Messiah is about the Panthers and Hampton’s assassination. I don’t know how accurate it really is because I still don’t know much about the Panthers, but I did like the movie itself a lot. It manages to not only show the Panthers in a very good light, but also shows how reactionary the US can be against those that truly fight capitalism.

You mean the one made by Boy Boy? They aren’t a couple despite everyone thinking they are, me included fora while lol. The other videos they do are just as good tho. Also Alex’s channel, I did a thing, has some of the most hilarious content I’ve ever seen.

Yeah, as a neurodivergent person too, I also faced bullying and it was fucking horrible.

I can see bullying still being an issue on the first generation of people living in a socialist society, but as the individualistic ideology starts fading in favor of a more collective one, it will probably become much less of an issue.

That being said, it’s probably a good idea for said society to actually teach people how to be parents, teach professionals how to deal with bullying at school, etc. I always found weird how school never teaches kids this stuff in my country. If we learned at some point in the educational system how to parent, it would probably lead to a much healthier family relationships in general on society.

There’s also other stuff that can and should be done, like teaching about neurodivergent people, about limits, respect, empathy, etc.

One thing is for certain tho, I cannot see bullying stopping under capitalism.

That’s awesome, I wanted to get a tattoo of the antlers too, but haven’t been able to yet, hopefully sometime in the future I get it.

Carmilla is that vamp novel that predates Dracula, right? Hope it’s a good read, I’ve wanted to read it for a while but always forget it exists until something reminds me.

Yes that’s the one. I’m only a few chapters in and besides one racist passage it’s been pretty good so far. It’s much more sapphic than I expected lol. Also the book is very short, I’m just slow to read at the moment.

I usually buy from bookstores when I go to the mall, but shit’s expensive and I haven’t gone in a while, so I’m mostly just sailing the high seas for now.

Right now I’m reading Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, still on the very beginning of the book, and I also started rereading Marx: An Introduction by Jorge Grespan, it’s very short and only available in portuguese I think, but helped me grasp some concepts I struggled a bit before.

Congratulations, comrade!!

The end of the text warmed my heart, I hope everything goes well for you going forward.

Got it, I’ll finish it eventually, thanks for informing me about that.

Also I didn’t know it was somewhat inspired by a movie, I don’t think I ever seen a movie from the DDR, I’ll probably watch it if I can find it online, thanks for pointing it out.

Oh I see, that’s actually good to know, most of my impressions of the anticommunism in the game come from very early on with the total surveillance, ammo being “property of the state” bullshit and then from the way lore was being phrased as I was playing.

But I agree the aesthetic is amazing. Space DDR fucks.