solitaire

I was a big 'offend everyone' dweeb, with a side serving of "free speech".

I grew up in structure where etiquette and taboo were abused and hated them. Like the chilidish little maximalist I was, I applied that hatred to everything. Slurs were particularly hilarious, I thought people were ridiculous with how they tip toe around them and delighted in their discomfort when I'd just come out and say it. They were just words, why be scared of them?

In my mind, I clearly didn't hold any bigoted views. Particularly with homophobic ones - I'm queer, I've been beaten for it, I've been beaten counter protesting "actual" bigots. I'd ask critics "what have you done?", before calling them a fa-

Well, you get the idea.

At the end, I was also a sort of community figure. An extremely minor one in the grand scheme of things, but I still had attracted a small audience. This included a large number of younger men who were impressionable. The thing is, they attract their own audience too.

I noticed an increasingly amount of what I considered, back then, to be "actual" bigoted stuff being said. Usually from older men trying to sway those younger men. I saw them buzzing around my peers too, encouraging them to say things for them, dropping bait in chats and pulling aside the younger male audience members to try to recruit them, more or less.

I tried a couple of times to call it out, but they'd fall back on "it's just a joke". They'd point to all the bullshit I'd said over the years and the obvious hypocrisy. I'd given up any credibility I had and bred an environment where these people could thrive. It also became clear that plenty of my audience had taken me seriously, and were imitating what they thought I was doing.

It made me reevaluate things. I'd alienated people, good people, by acting in this way. I'd hurt people I never had any intention of hurting with my callous disregard for their feelings. I'd convinced people to be worse in ways I'd fought against, destroying far more progress than I'd ever made.

So I stepped away from the spotlight and stopped. As a side note, working it out of your vocabulary is a truly frustrating progress. I'd trained myself to use slurs to mean the most basic things. Getting sober was more difficult but at least it was quicker. It took literal years of diligence to kill the impulse to call someone who is being annoying a fa-

Anyway.

Afterwards, a surprising number of the people who distanced themselves from me reached out. More than I deserved. I hadn't told anyone I'd had a revelation, or made some grand apology to try and absolve myself of the sin or whatever. It is telling about how bad it was that people took notice just from it's absence. Many of those shared stories of how it'd hurt them.

The one that broke my heart the most was a transwoman who I had stood up for when others tried to push her out. She had been lonely, and I'd given her just enough acceptance for her to get trapped in a toxic community. My bigotry she rationalized away, and it desensitized her just enough to try to fit in with the broader community around me. She internalized the horrific transphobia that was being said. I think it goes without saying what that did to her mental health and the places it lead. I had caused deep harm to not only someone I liked, who had looked up to me, but someone I had tried to help.

It's not just jokes, the intention doesn't change that.

It's not a real Onion article, the original was about Al-Qaeda. https://www.theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-sit-back-and-enjoy-c-1819576375

It's actually way funnier. I CTRL+F'd the thread to see what the reactions would be.

I actually didn't get any feminist themes outside of the main characters being female.

What do you see as the feminist and indigenous power of this story? Is it just because the leads were women?

This is the most unadulterated feminist rage I've seen on screen for a long time. Time and time again it exposes misogynistic violence and punishes it. Yet even when it's this unsubtle, all the average reddit nerd can see as feminist is "it has women in it".

We joke about how "political" to these people means "women or people of colour exist", but it is not just a facade. It's literally all these nerds can comprehend.

I've had intrusive thoughts, your experience with the pliers is very familiar, but the rest is not. They've only ever been directed inwards. They ebb and flow along with my mental health more or less, but I don't have some grand revelation about them either.

I was pleasantly surprised, I didn't realize Hollywood still knew how to make good adventure flicks. It has restraint and isn't insufferably quippy or self-fellating. I'm actually disappointed I missed it in the theaters because it would have been a great sort of lowest common denominator* movie to see with a group.

* I don't mean this disparagingly. I think it's a positive quality in a movie to see with family and friends, so you're not worried about killing the mood, it going over someone's head or being too niche. Part of why I don't see movies very often anymore is the stuff that's supposed to be safe and have broad appeal has become absolutely painful.

My mother was mostly a stranger growing up. I don't know exactly how the arrangement came about, but I was my father's child. She kept her distance and took to my sibling instead. She worked weekends when I was younger so I saw her comparatively little, and by the time I was a teenager my father's abuse had long since driven her into drink and depression. I had little idea what she liked, what her hobbies were or what her life was like before me.

I left in my late teens but moved back in with her in my early 20's. They had divorced just before I left, and she hadn't been coping with it very well. I hadn't coped well with life either. Those were some hard years at first. Both traumatized and stranded. I've gotten to know her very well since then. Frankly, too much. She's no saint, but she's well intentioned and I've come to love her even if I didn't as a child.

My father I always knew. He's not exactly hard to understand, just another emotionally stunted and cowardly little man. We were only ever a tool for him - to win approval from his parents, and to provide one small space where he could inflict his control. I know every little thing he likes because those were the only things that were allowed to matter. He tried desperately to make me become like him. I am very glad I am not.

I disagree with most of this thread. Microsoft must maintain market share at all costs, any additional monetization from tracking or ad revenue is a very distant third to that. It lives based on being the default option. A new launch will bring in new users and help keep existing ones, but it must be seen as successful. So Microsoft needs to port as many of it's current users over as possible.

Second I think is pruning the nightmare of legacy support. A "new" operating system lets you set a more modern baseline and tell people to buy new hardware in a much more user intelligible way. No having to explain why Windows 7 no longer works on someone's 2007 laptop that came with it, or come up with a maze of partial support and having to work out what the last usable update was.

The editor is truly amazing. It has powerful scripting engine and was easy to use. One of my potentially hot takes is it was so much better than using Morrowind's construction kit. The game used to be full of custom persistent world servers which were sort of MMO-lite, big communities that were often way more roleplay based and free of the time wasting, money sucking bullshit of actual MMOs. Sadly, one of those ephemeral game moments that cannot be replayed.

And yeah, Deekin comes in the Shadows of Undrentide expansion and remains a companion through Horde of the Underdark. Honestly, if you like Deekin and haven't played Undrentide I'd recommend giving it ago. It's a refreshingly small scale adventure - it's more like the CRPG equivalent of a short paperback fantasy novel than a grand epic. It also makes the wise decision of not being a continuation of the original campaign.

I loved NWN when it came out but it's appeal was rooted in the multiplayer and custom content. It had an amazing community with great tools to support it. You can still find servers for it but they're not worth it, it's the bastion of people who haven't moved on in 20 years.

The single player was pretty bland. Shadows of Undrentide is a genuinely fun adventure, and I'll love Deekin (a kobold companion) forever, but the original campaign is a slapped together proof of concept and Hordes of the Underdark is a mess that's only really notable for being a high level adventure.

Some of the premium modules were praised but I'd moved on to persistent world servers then other games long before they were released.

I've been looking for rentals lately. Every inspection has dozens upon dozens of people show up. Rental vacancies are at a tiny fraction of a percent. No landlord will take someone if the rent will cost more than 30% of their income. To qualify for a studio apartment it takes almost double the median wage.

I hate it so much. I've budgeted so that I know I can afford these places on my income, I have a significant pile of savings and a stable job. I have been looking for a place for six months and been rejected from them all.

I've given up. Even if I could get a place it'd be cheaper to pay a fucking mortgage.

I've been very candid about most aspect of my life at different times on the internet. Health, sex, poverty, abuse, you name it. Some of it while extremely mentally unwell.

But would would actually be the worst is if anyone found the fan fiction I wrote when I was like 13.

That's interesting, when I learned to touch type in school we weren't taught to use the right shift. Likely an oversight rather than intentional, but I just use my pinky to hit the left shift while using the left hand side of the keyboard.