Sure the pieces of land don’t matter to but the ukrainians, but if Putin gains anything it’ll signal to his own that he won and that attacking works. At this point any security guarantees mean basically nothing since the west has shown such a weak response, and Putin will just challenge the promises the moment he has the opportunity. Seeing how USA and western Europe still don’t seem to fully understand the situation, it’s easy to believe Ukraine can’t trust any guarantees given unless it’s something like straight up joining NATO, which isn’t on the table.

If Putin gains parts of Ukraine, the war will not end. It means he succeeded in the war; that the west is weak. Which in turn means the war will “end” as in Russia will just regroup and build it’s war resources for a while - maybe some years, maybe more, maybe less - and then attack somewhere again. Why would they stop? Russian imperialism is not based on logic or reason; it was insane to attack Ukraine in the first place.

It is pointless to expect Putin to be somehow reasonable or actively want to stop warring. It is also completely pointless to believe whatever he or his lackeys say, they’ve lied from every step on the way and will continue to do so for their own benefit. It’s very likely the war will continue whatever the result in Ukraine is anyway, it can only be postponed now that Russia has again started on this damned path. If Putin gains land, they won and it’ll continue; if they don’t gain anything, Putin needs to attack again to prove it wasn’t a loss. I cannot believe people still seem to think you can somehow just reason with Russia

I’d say one problem is also that the characters being “race swapped” are typically the less-important sidekicks or something. “Sure, we can put more color in there - but they can’t be too important as characters” seems somehow almost more racist than just following the original stories. Why not swap the main characters if they’re going to change things? I don’t usually mind, if they put in any effort sometimes the changes improve the story and even the characters themselves.

(And that was a rhetorical question, I know they won’t because… racism usually)

Insult to injury. Soothes the sense of justice to imagine the humiliation and anger nazis could have felt when taken to the gallows

“Hey why don’t you use this tool you don’t need? It does the thing worse than you do and also fucks up the planet in the process!”

I say this as someone from the overseas (for the context): from here it looks like you are living in a fascist takeover. I can’t say what you can or should do about it - what do I know. But you have a dictator in the making, your court system looks to be failing in preventing anything, you even have the fucking gestapo now. Your vulnerable groups are already either being taken or basically being prepared to be taken. Scientists and researchers are leaving. It’s only a matter of time when they start coming for dissidents…

Maybe I am wrong, I hope I am wrong - and again what do I know, basically nothing. But it is looking bad

Unrelated, but this just brought back memories from long ago when I was a kid and used to watch the advertising channels on purpose. Endless stream of useless gym equipment and weird kitchen tools; they painted such a bizarre and surreal world full of repetition, forced plastic smiles and all sorts of almost otherwordly things that had nothing to do with reality. It was fascinating, almost like watching something of the fae folk