Here’s the thing… People who care still use Discord. I’m one of them. I have no other option for maintaining communications with a group of 20 people I have been gaming with since 2009. We’ve all hopped from Skype to Teamspeak to Ventrillo to Discord. There’s no going back for many of these people.

Like it or not, Discord offers a product that Signal, Briar, or any other Matrix chat offers and that’s accessibility. I would love for a mainstream E2EE chat program that actually can host a 15 person call, hold multiple chatrooms in one server, allow screen sharing, streaming and multimedia sharing.

We can’t just live in a vacuum and claim nobody uses these programs because they’re stupid or don’t care. For many, like me, Discord a reasonable security risk people are willing to take in order to maintain communications with people they care about.

Yeah, totally. As far as game lore goes I don’t see why they can’t change that. As far as we can see all of the schools had widely varied ideologies. What is good, what is evil, contract killing and more. I see no reason in established lore that another school couldn’t have had female witchers or why the Lodge wouldn’t want to get their hands on the recipes to revive the witcher schools.

What’s a couple decades with a dying witcher school, the world’s most powerful sorceresses and the ability to teleport to the dimension where magic was birthed?

I’m pretty sure Yenn or Triss mention how trivial it would be for them to figure out the potions and transmutations required to make the trials happen but the Witchers are very, very against an outsider touching it all. The original plans were made by a sorceress in any case.

I’m sure they’ll have a perfectly reasonable way of explaining how she went through the trials.

That’s fair.

But this post posits that we do need to get philosophical as does your initial post. By claiming there’s “theoretical allyship” we call into question the efficacy of small actions performed by allies and serve to weaken the cause.

Any action is action. No matter how small.

Because you stated that, on the presumption their actions prevented transphobia, that person would be an ally. But that presumption can only be fact checked by themselves anyway; Does this not mean then, that a person should have the right to label themselves an ally if they self-assess their actions as allyship?

Or does someone have to ally-check each of their actions once performed with some sort of… council or committee, as I have here?

So in your opinion indirect action may as well be inaction?

Say I have coworkers with certain opinions on gendering people, use of pronouns or who still use dated terms like “Tranny” or “Shemale”.

I spend my days correcting them when they misgender or reminding them of acceptable words to describe people. I have political discussions where we come to terms about how LGBT rights are human rights. They’ve corrected their behaviour and now speak of LGBT folks in a kinder light.

I don’t directly see how those actions affect LGBT folks. I don’t have tangible evidence I have made a person’s life better through my actions.

Am I an Ally or not?

Feels like dealing in absolutes to me.

You’re either all in or not in at all.

“If you don’t support the troops feel free to stand in front of them.”

Can’t I just be outspoken in my social circles and attempt to affect change at the lowest levels, thus spreading my message amongst people I can relate to?

Nope. Sign petitions and call politicians or you’re just a poser.

Or so this post seems to say.

What is allyship to you?

Does one need to be overtly politically active or can one simply change minds in their social circles?

Must they sign petitions and call politicians or can they simply be a comforting or understanding shoulder to a marginalised person?

How much legwork is required to be an Ally? Is there a scorecard to keep in order to meet criteria?

Obviously, passive acceptance without any action isn’t explicit allyship but must one be openly militant about LGBT issues in order to be considered an ally?

Does the real answer not lie somewhere in between? Maybe on a spectrum or sliding scale?

Oooh there’s one for my bingo card. Comment to Nazis in one.

Silence, Bot!

Bro. Bro.

Belle province, all dressed steamies and an “Italian” Poutine. My god.

Sure as fuck ain’t Italian or a good meat sauce but as a combo that shit slaps.

Define authentic taste for me.