(Paris, 1908-1986) French thinker and novelist, representative of the atheist existentialist movement and an important figure in the vindication of women's rights. Originally from a bourgeois family, she stood out from an early age as a brilliant student. She studied at the Sorbonne and in 1929 she met Jean-Paul Sartre, who became her companion for the rest of her life.
He graduated in philosophy and until 1943 he devoted himself to teaching at the lycées of Marseilles, Rouen and Paris. His first work was the novel The Guest (1943), followed by The Blood of Others (1944) and the essay Pyrrhus and Cineas (1944). She participated intensely in the ideological debates of the time, harshly attacked the French right wing and assumed the role of a committed intellectual. In her literary texts she revised the concepts of history and character and incorporated, from an existentialist point of view, the themes of "freedom", "situation" and "commitment".
Together with Sartre, Albert Camus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, among others, she founded the magazine Tiempos Modernos, whose first issue was published on October 15, 1945 and became a political and cultural reference of French thought in the mid-twentieth century. Subsequently, he published the novel All Men Are Mortal (1946), and the essays For a Morality of Ambiguity (1947) and America a Day (1948).
Her book The Second Sex (1949) was a theoretical starting point for various feminist groups, and became a classic work of contemporary thought. In it she elaborated a history of the social condition of women and analyzed the different characteristics of male oppression. She asserted that by being excluded from the processes of production and confined to the home and reproductive functions, women lost all social ties and with them the possibility of being free. She analyzed the gender situation from the point of view of biology, psychoanalysis and Marxism; she destroyed feminine myths, and urged the search for authentic liberation. She argued that the struggle for the emancipation of women was distinct from and parallel to the class struggle, and that the main problem to be faced by the "weaker sex" was not ideological but economic.
Simone de Beauvoir founded with some feminists the League of Women's Rights, which set out to react firmly to any sexist discrimination, and prepared a special issue of Modern Times devoted to the discussion of the subject. She won the Prix Goncourt with The Mandarins (1954), in which she dealt with the difficulties of post-war intellectuals in assuming their social responsibility. In 1966 she participated in the Russell Tribunal, in May 1968 she showed solidarity with the students led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, in 1972 she presided over the Choisir association, in charge of defending free contraception, and until her last days she was a tireless fighter for human rights.
Her abundant testimonial and autobiographical titles include Memoirs of a Formal Young Woman (1958), The Fullness of Life (1960), The Force of Things (1963), A Very Sweet Death (1964), Old Age (1968), The End of Accounts (1972) and The Farewell Ceremony (1981).
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anyone have recommendations for some immersive narrative-driven games? trying to rewrite my brain to not be such an adrenaline-addicted fighting game head and to rediscover stuff I used to fw more. I also realize doomscrolling is the mindkiller during the dark months so I'm trying to have activities on deck. something as simple as watching a couple eps of Eva and then reading my book til I fell asleep had me feeling so much more mentally healthy last night than just letting my brain drift through the void.
My two GOAT games are Undertale and Outer Wilds. I feel like people don't recommend Undertale anymore because they assume everyone has played it already, but if you haven't, you should. It has its fame for a reason. It's very good.
I've played Undertale but Outer Wilds has been collecting digital dust in my Steam library for a while now. Might give it a whirl, thx comrade!
As for Outer Wilds: If you want one of the most inspiring video game experiences ever, buy Outer Wilds right now, don't read anything about it, don't read the steam reviews, definitely don't watch a YT video about it.
I originally clicked on a 40-minute video about it before playing it myself, and at the 3 minute mark the YT guy was like "If you haven't played Outer Wilds yet, stop watching this video right now, play the game yourself and come back later.", I followed that advice and I'm very happy I did. I genuinely think Outer Wilds is one of the greatest games ever made, but you can't recommend it with more than "trust me, bro" because of how it works. But trust me, bro.
Yeah I own it and know the basic premise (and I think watched the zero punctuation review) but if I ever knew more details than that I've long since forgotten them. I'll make it a priority on my list!
Citizen Sleeper is a nice little game. It's a bit too short, but it's almost like reading fiction in that you're mainly following individual stories with various characters (there isn't that much gameplay). I kept wanting to play another and another day in the game because every story advances in its own time and so you're constantly switching between them. There aren't many choices to make, basically just different endings you can pick, so it's too linear to replay really, but I enjoyed my time with it.
sounds cool! I do think slice of life scifi has a lot of unexplored potential. Sort of reminds me of VA-11 HALL-A in terms of its core concept.
Check out "A long way to a small angry planet" and it's sequels. they're really cozy slice of life sci-fi stories. There's some hardship, but it's mostly about people's lives and there isn't much plot. The second one is very much about the trans experience from an unusual perspective.
Citizen sleeper has tons of replay value though, even if one game is short.
obviously Disco Elysium is out because that game is already my wife
Sable is a mostly story driven exploration and puzzle game with no fighting. A young person sets off with their magic powers and trusty hover-bike to decide who they want to be on the dusty wind-swept desert of their home planet.
Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth is a narrative game that follows a medieval European village over the years as they construct a cathedral.
Va-11 Hall-A and The Red Strings Club are cyberpunk narrative and character driven games. i think you're a bartender in one and a bar piano player in the other?
Disco Elysium, obviously
Life is Strange is some coming of age + supernatural weeirdness thing but I ddin't get far in to it.
Spiritfarer is a cozy game about taking on the role of Charon, boatman of the river styx and ferryman of the dead. It's very cute and positive, as you help people resolve their problems so they can have a peaceful afterlife.
Yes your grace is a narrative hard choices game; As a king you try to rule your kingdom as best you're able while managing the wellbeing of your family under the shadow of impending war.
Far; Lone Sails is a relatively short, "Man vs Nature", contemplative puzzle game where a lone traveller manuevers their land-sailing ship through a desolate post-disaster world. Very soothing and chill for the most part
Dawnfall is a narrative space pirate adventure romance game
Max Gentleman Sexy Business is a goofy... uh... economic dating sim? Idk what to even call it, "Mustache" is a stat you can have that make you better at business. "Business" involves training up gangs of proles to beat up your bougie competitors proles in the park. There's some NSFW stuff but you can toggle it on or off to suit your presence. It's very lighthearted and silly.
Death Stranding is basically impossible to really explain, but you're a mail-man in an austere, beautiful, terrifying world ravaged by an inexplicable supernatural apocalypse. not killing people is strongly emphasized. There are lots of action sequences, but most of the game is about navigating the weird landscape and the core theme is that people need community and that through mutual aid and compassion we can connect with each other. I found it very powerful during the darkest days of the early pandemic. Great acting and much less
than Kojima's other games, though there's still a bit of it.
The Banner Saga games combine a hard-choices narrative adventure with tight tactical turn based grid combat. You're gonna make some decisions and you're gonna feel real bad about them later. The combat layer directly effects the outcomes of the narrative layer. The art is all hand-drawn sprites and animations and is so gorgeous it's worth checking out all by itself. The story has a rich mythology built around it.
Limbo is a puzzle adventure game with heavy themes of alienation and identity. It's got some action sequences but no real fighting tht I remember.
Subnautica is a fairly chill exploration game about exploring the seas of an alien world. There is a narrative but it's mostly about discovering weird secrets, building your sea-base, and advancing through the tech tree. But there's relatively little combat and it's very pretty.
Quadrilateral Cowboy is a narrtive hhacking game
All of TellTale's games are narrative adventure games, basically interactive movies. Some are quite good and they've done everything from Batman to Borderlands to Walking Dead to the Expanse to The Wolf Among Us, which is about a murder among washed up fairy tales
All of the Sam and Max games are worth a shot. They're screwball comedy adventure games about a pair of "cops for hire", Sam the Dog and Max the hyperkinetic rabbity thing, as they go on adventures and solve/cause problems. Also all the Monkey Island games and alot of the other ancient Lucasarts Adventure games. Might be worth looking up guides for the older ones becauser they can be very frustrating - You have to find items that are very hard to see or combine them in ways that make no sense, but the stories are fun.
damn homie really dropped the whole trove!
some of these I've played, some I've tried and bounced off of, others on my to do list, but definitely a ton that are new to me. i'll save this post for when I'm trying to choose what to play.
Firewatch is $2 on Steam rn. It's a walking simulator but don't hold that against it, the acting and writing is top quality.