I've never broken a bone! I've probably had minor fractures before and played it off when stubbing my toe for example, but as far as I know, I've never broken a bone.

Tildes, tildites, tilidians? What is something you've never done?

Anything you guys have been having great fun/difficulty with lately? Any riffs/songs you're making? I've been trying to improve on Bass guitar and I learned that RHCP's Torture Me has a really fun bass line. That whole 1-2-2-1 structure is challenging but satisfying as hell to pull off

Since RuneScape (both RS3 and Old School) currently has a free month for those of us using Twitch Prime, is anyone here playing? I find that despite it being one of the best games I've ever played, I tend to drift away from OSRS after some time because it's so enveloped in that YouTuber meme culture that gives me a headache. So, to any players here, are you hanging out in a friendly clan chat or Discord server to escape that? Would we want to start our own?

Or, more generally, how do you deal with the toxic nature of the game's community?

There's tons of one hit wonder artists out there. Those who made one or two hits but then faded into obscurity.

Have any of you ever pursued these artists' other music, and if so, who stood out to you the most?

I have an interest in this type of subjects, and it seems this site doesn't have an appropriate space for these matters. Can we have a dedicated group and if not where should I post about this kind of stuff?

I started writing this a couple days ago and it's turning into a bit of a novel with no plot, so I thought I'll break it up a bit. Warning, there will be spoilers. I'm not caught up - only watched the three seasons available on Netflix, so if you're in the same boat, you're safe.

Diversity in shows is not something I actively look for, but will generally notice if done really poorly or really well, the former more than the latter. Gotham as a whole swings in both directions.

There's lots of different ways for a show to be diverse, I'm going to focus on women, race and sexuality in this post. Disability is going to be its own topic (when I get around to writing it).

Women

I'll start with the easiest check - yes there are women in this show, and they appear in frequency and numbers that more or less make sense for where they are. For example, in the bull pen, it's mostly men with a handful of women around, at a party they're about equal numbers, and so on. For named characters, they are in a variety of roles, both traditionally female and not. A short list includes, Sarah Essen, Barbara Kean, Selina Kyle, Renee Montoya, Fish Mooney, Ivy Pepper, Leslie Thompkins, and Tabitha.

There are stereotypes and caricatures, but mostly they feel like dramatized comic archetypes more than sexist, though it can definitely be both. There's plenty to write on each character, which in of itself is a good sign.

Now let's look at a few specific cases that caught my eye:

Spirit of the goat victims
This is just a little peeve. They went out of their way to specify that the victims are Gotham's first born to the point that Alfred points out that Bruce is a first born. Generally in stories, when referring to first born children, it's usually sons, but here, all victims are women. I'm going to guess it's for visual reasons, since the whole sacrificing a virgin in white on an alter is a pretty common trope. Still, can't decide how I feel about this one.

Barbara Kean
Now we're finally getting to who I really want to talk about - Barbara Kean, specifically from season 1.

Comic book fans will recognize Barbara as Gordon's first wife and mother of the original Batgirl (also named Barbara). In the comics, she has a mental breakdown and leaves Jim and Gotham (their daughter refuses to leave and stays with Jim). She's the character that Gotham literally broke, and though she is not an unsympathetic character in the comics, her relationship with Jim is pretty glossed over for an emphasize on her lack of a relationship with her daughter. There is also an implied break in her and Jim's relationship where she supported him in his extremely stressful career as best she could, but he didn't support her when she needed him (and depending on the version, he actually cheats on her because he was so stressed...).

This little background is why I was super excited to see Gotham's take on Barbara. This is probably the first time we get more than a flashback or half mention of this character in any medium. And she's treated with a lot of respect. She's supportive and compassionate, but still very human. At the start of the series, she's on relatively equal ground with Jim, asking to share his life, believing him (and in him), and just generally being supportive.

As an audience, we see Jim take from this relationship, and never really give anything back, so we know it's doomed.

She's not a flawless character, and suffers from what a lot of supporting casts do, which is that they are defined by the main character. Her fall, her mental break, can still arguably be classified as a women-in-refrigerator trope. She becomes a different person, but is generally there to haunt Jim, or help him, as the plot requires.

Honestly, her flip to the dark side, will check of every bad sexist trope you can think of, including magician's assistant. So, she's easily one of the best and worst written characters of Gotham.

Leslie Thompkins
She is everything I wanted Le to be...until she's in a relationship with Jim. She starts off being a strong, competent doctor. She stands up for her patients and what she believes in, and is unafraid of sticking around when things get tough. Then she starts dating Jim, and does crazy things like demand PDA at work that is unprofessional and more importantly, that Jim is uncomfortable with. Nobody should ever kiss someone if they feel uncomfortable. Demanding it doesn't make you confident, it makes you creepy!

From there she ranges from damsel to pregnant to evil. There are too many incidents to really cover, but, I do want to talk about the gas-lighting, which is a particularly poor choice of plot in my opinion.

There's an entire arch where she, as the medical examiner, discovers evidence that a murder occurred, but is asked to believe it's suicide. She points out the inconsistently and basically points out that Jim is lying, which he was. She takes this from co-worker to co-worker, and literally every guy tells her she's just seeing things because she's grieving the death of husband. This is never addressed for what it is. The resolution comes when she turns herself to her "darkest desire", which is to wear lots of dark eyeliner and f*** Jim.

This, compared to her comic character, who let Batgirl (Brown) die to prove a point to Batman. She's not a strictly good character in the comics, but she's definitely a strong character. So yeah...she's probably the worst written woman in Gotham, and is unfortunately the main female protagonist.

Race

Sure, the good competent guys are mostly white, and I'm always up for seeing more Asians, but the casting in general feels fine to me. No one feels out of place or token. I would say there's more stereotyping based on class than on race. So we have "hats" like Russian gangster, Italian mob, posh 1%-ers, and circus freaks.

Not to say there aren't awkward parts, like Alfred's British(?) accent.

Sexuality

Identity
As far as I can tell, there's no real representation here at all.

Orientation
There's three women, one man:

• Renee is gay
• Barbara is bi
• Tabitha is bi
• Penguin is gay

They're a bit shallow, but probably because these women aren't as core as other characters. Renee and Barbara's relationship feels a bit more authentic than Barbara and Tabitha's. Maybe because Renee really is gay and an alcoholic in the comic, so the writers had more to draw from. Maybe because Barbara and Tabitha's relationship seems more for plot, or worst for easter-egging (not-Harley and not-Catwoman running the Sirens, with mini-Ivy popping in).

Penguin being gay is actually really cute, in a creepy way. He spends a good deal of the show wanting a "friend" and finds one in Ed. Though there is an extreme selfishness to his love, it's still a pretty good subplot.

Final thoughts

So these are my quick thought on diversity in Gotham. What are your thoughts? Anything else stand out from the series (or comics) for you?

Edit to add: I forgot about Penguin being gay.

When it comes to disaster relief, I often hear the refrain that it is best to donate cash, and donating boxes of things often hurts more than it helps. Is this universally true, or are there situations where donation boxes are actually helpful?

Search results on the subject ("disaster relief donation box vs cash"), all saying that boxes of stuff hurt more than help, due to the logistical costs of shipping, sorting, and storage:

• https://www.cidi.org/how-disaster-relief-works/monetary-contributions-work-bestwhy-cash-is-best/
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/best-intentions-when-disaster-relief-brings-anything-but-relief/
• https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2017/10/27/thing-bad-disaster-donation/

So I was thinking since we're still a smaller community things like this could actually foster some decent games talk and make friends the best way I know, begging for stuff!

Post a want with some bullshit reasons for being a cheap wanker, see if someone might be willing to toss some virtual things your way! If you do get your wish, be sure to give a write up on what you thought of it.

If you want to gift someone, pm for steam nick plz.

W:https://store.steampowered.com/app/332200/Axiom_Verge/ - Just saw this awesome Metroidvania at SGDQ and would love to play it but the cash I'm throwing at the screen is not working. Oh yeah did I mention it's available for Linux? I NEED THIS NOW. I'll pay it forward tomorrow when I can stick some of these biĺls into a proper slot!
Gee thanks sxo, great gift. I'll report back when I have some time to play it!

{
  "author": "@json (Jason)",
  "message": "Hello, people of Tildes. This does seem like an excellent platform for discussion. I hope you enjoy my kinda bad joke."
}

@Jason was taken, so I had to drop the a and become a data format. I have used json as a username in many other places before, when available.

I like thinking about alternative history. There are people like Harry Turtledove who write extensive alternative histories based on whether the South's main general's war plans got to the Northern armies' general in time for the Battle of Antietam. For me there's something appealing about thinking back through complex events in world history and finding critical moments and critical decisions that might have gone another way. I'm also quite taken with the idea that some historical events end up in hindsight looking like perfect storms, where a number of complex variables make the world we now know, but where any one of those variables would have produced a massively different result.

But I'm less interested in thinking about waving a magic wand to change the weather of some day or to change facts on the ground or morale or something like that. What I'm most interested in are situations where someone's individual decision might have dramatically altered the world. Can you identify one decision that happened in the past that you would have that person making it change? How might that set us up in a different reality?

A small note on housekeeping before I let you go. I know this might be a type of topic that walks the fence between something designed for ~talk and something best suited in ~humanities. I think of this as kind of an experiment to see how best to handle topics that straddle two different tildes.