#and i dunno

[heretherebedork]

Y'all wanna know my real secret?

I am bored to tears by TLP. I am watching at 1.5 speed and STILL occasionally just wander off. I don't care. I wish I cared. But I do not.

But also because so much of the drama just takes so long and happens for just... like, why? I get the historical aspects but they just never seem to work. Whatever. I'm gonna finish it.

I mean, actually, I probably won't end up watching the last episode if they do the same 'release it for a price then wait three weeks' because I will REALLY not care by then.

[maranull]

sometimes a small smile of support goes so much further than you can ever realise

[toaarcan]

I think there's kind of a split in the Spider-Man fanbase between comic readers and adaptation-only fans.

The latter start screaming and complaining if any Spidey media comes out and isn't about how being Spider-Man is awful and bad and Pete needs to be the Marvel universe's biggest loser at all times.

Meanwhile the comics fans are mostly at the level of "For the love of fuck, stop with the endless misery brigade and let Pete have some nice things in his life" on a good day. On a bad day they seem to be actively conspiring to feed the comic's writer, and its entire editorial staff, and Joe Quesada, into a woodchipper, feet-first.

[twospiritstooprideful]

I kinda miss when he had a tag for me but I'm fine

[blackrosecapri]

Nicholas The Punisher.

associated so closely with the weapon he uses that him and its names are practically the same. given to him by a false god and a shitty doctor when he didnt fucking want it. youd think he wouldnt keep it around. youd think the second he gets hed trash it and start again, i mean, he knows how to use other guns, so why keep it around?

you Have to assume its bc he humanized it, to some extent. he didn't have any humanity. at least that's what hes told, what he believes, and he wasnt allowed a sense of identity outside of it. outside of or away from "the punisher," so he Had to make it what made him a person. he HAD to embody it, he wasnt given any choice, really. he only chose to embrace it.

he hated everything else around him. of Fucking course he did, but he couldn't afford to hate the punisher. that's All He Was. if he hated the punisher, he hated himself, and he'd Never get out. never fully. so the punisher had to become something he enjoyed, and looked forward to, and valued. that's why i think he keeps it. he had to learn to love it so any semblance of identity or joy.

in order to make it through the eom he Had to learn to love it, even if he didn't want it, it was him now. weather he liked it or not, hed never escape it. but now? now he Genuinely dose. he doesn't like how it's from the eom, he doesnt like how it was forced upon him, But. he does like it. hes bonded with it, basically. if he can vaule his weapon then he can vaule himself. if he takes care of the punisher, to Love the punisher, it's catharsis. because That is Him.

and now he goes everywhere with it. is he still Nicholas The Punisher? maybe. ans maybe he hates that. but at least he can love the punisher itself. who that is isnt clear to him, not anymore, but it got him here. it got him out. it let him be happy. if he cant pity, or love, or process it all himself, he Can pity, ans love, and empathize with the punisher. whether he knows it or not, thats him.

and he can love at least that. even if he plays it off as a bit

(yes he calls it his baby girl, its funny, alright?)

[utsuboh]

sitting here at 1 am thinking about the good ol days when i wrote fucked up bloodborne and dark souls muses.

[maverickcalf]

Sending you love. You're included in Pride, always, & the pain you feel is real & needs to be seen & not just brushed over. It's not fair what you're dealing with & you're not alone in it.

I'm glad you're here & that we're friends. It won't always be like this for you, I promise. But you're also not getting left behind now because you're unable to be more open currently. We all know the pain of this somehow & you're not alone ❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜🩷💖✨🏳️‍⚧️💐🎉🫶🏻

I think on a base level I know I am included in pride. But I dunno, maybe it is just being closeted in some form or another for half a decade now... it has left me rather numb. I should be celebrating or doing more.

I appreciate your kind words and love. It means a lot,

[sensitivegoblin]

Vent

[peregrineggsandham]

...I met a friend once, at what I'll just describe as nerd summer camp. This friend talked excitedly to me about Portal 2 for hours, was the only other person I knew who knew Tom Lehrer's Elements song by heart, and introduced me to Team Fortress 2. This friend and I played TF2 together for hours.

This friend introduced me to the game Psychonauts, which became a favorite of mine. (This will become plot-relevant later.)

A bit later, it happened that this friend's prom was coming up. I happened to be visiting my grandmother around then, in the same area (I did not live in the states, the coincidence of me being in the same country let alone region as this friend was ridiculous and fantastic).

We went to prom together. It was... a little awkward. I liked this friend, but as a friend (I cherished the night before prom in which we talked for four hours about the evolution of the borg), and completely did not pick up on this friend's Crush Indicators™ towards me. This culminated in a somewhat awkward slow dance at this prom (alongside a similarly awkward prom photo, in which the photographer took great joy in posing us like dolls and neither of us were smiling convincingly).

My mother and grandmother had taken this even as an opportunity to dress up the (grand)daughter. My dress was TARDIS blue and I had a corsage of celery; I and this friend were both Doctor Who fans. I was Inexplicably Uncomfortable the whole time for reasons that had very little to do with my friend and much more to do with Being A Girl At A Prom™. (Couldn't put my finger on why. Wouldn't, for about four years.)

The event itself was a lot of fun, though! I enjoyed spending time with this friend, and dancing, and was only a little betrayed upon realizing that what I'd thought were mozzarella sticks were in fact breaded zucchini. (Who does that???) All in all, it was a positive experience!

A few months later I was off to college, and we kept in touch for a while. Then my mental health crashed, and I forgot to reply. Then months passed. A year. Three years. Five. It reached the point, rather quickly, when reaching out felt too awkward - it had been too long.

And by then I was a very different person than I'd been at 16.

But now and then I'd play a little TF2 for nostalgia's sake, and be reminded of this friend. We were still friends on Steam! They kind of haunted me from my friends list; I felt so bad about having vanished, left our conversations unfinished, even though I've since come to forgive myself for most of that (was definitely Going Through Some Shit). But still, that friend haunted me.

...And then Psychonauts 2 came out.

Psychonauts 2 is the perfect sequel. It is a fantastic game and a love-letter to fans of the first so many years later. So after playing it, I figured, well, there's the ice breaker. No "hey. it's been eight years. sup". No "so I stopped being a functional person for about half a decade, how've you been". Just, "Hey! I don't know how much you remember me, it's been a while, but Psychonauts 2 came out and I thought of you."

Psychonauts 2. A barrier, ready-made, to avoid being too friendly after too long. A bridge, ready-built, between the me of 16 and the me of my mid-20s.

I was a little scared. I was a very different person than I'd been at 16. I'd already tried to reconnect with one other friend from my preteens who, well, lets just say I decided not to come out to her. But I could not in good conscience avoid coming out to this person. I had no idea when or where that conversation would happen, but the "yeah so it turns out I'm actually kind of a dude" was probably inevitable.

But, well, as far as I knew, this friend was a straight man; we'd been friends and there'd been a one-sided crush and I'd dropped out of existence before we really moved through that. I had absolutely no idea how they'd take this development. Hell, when we first met, I hadn't ever met a trans person (that I knew of) - I had no way of knowing how they'd feel about that now, if it'd be an impediment to rekindling a friendship.

Our friendship before had always been sincere but inexplicably awkward in a way I couldn't articulate. But I wanted to reach out. So I did. On Steam, the only place I knew how to contact them.

This friend's Steam profile was sparse.

"Katherine", was all it read.

(........No, I thought. What were the chances, I thought.)

Psychonauts 2 sat in my Steam library, 100% completion, the dulcet tones of Jack Black singing in-character as a gay psychic viking-themed musician ringing through my heart and soul. I reached out.

It's been a long time. (How have you been? I've been really busy being dead.) I am so sorry I vanished off the face of the earth eight years ago. My mental health plummeted and by then I felt awkward about trying to reconnect, but I wanted to reach out and say hi.

.........

........

......

...So anyway, Katherine and I video call a few times a month now to talk about life and TTRPGs. She's came to visit in-person, got me into Magic: The Gathering, and we've been working our way through seasons of Taskmaster together.

Turns out a lot of that awkwardness was greatly solved by us just... growing up. Becoming adults. Understanding ourselves better.

Also swapping genders. That probably helped.

"It's easy to lose touch with friends, especially when you live far apart. And sometimes the longer you've gone without speaking to someone, the harder it feels to pick up where you left off. However, a new study suggests that reaching out to pals—especially ones that you have not talked to in a while—is even more appreciated than initially thought.

“People are fundamentally social beings and enjoy connecting with others. Yet, despite the importance and enjoyment of social connection, do people accurately understand how much other people value being reached out to by someone in their social circle?” the study asks. To answer this question, the authors gathered 5,900 participants and put them through a series of experiments.

In one scenario, half of the participants were asked to remember the last time they contacted a friend they had fallen out of touch with, then estimate on a seven-point scale how appreciative the person was (with one being the lowest score, and seven being the highest). Then, the other half of the participants were prompted to recall a time when someone had reached out to them and assign a number to how grateful they were. When these two groups were compared, the researchers found that people greatly underestimated the value of reaching out to someone.

“Across a series of preregistered experiments, we document a robust underestimation of how much other people appreciate being reached out to,” the authors continue. “We find evidence compatible with an account wherein one reason this underestimation of appreciation occurs is because responders (vs. initiators) are more focused on their feelings of surprise at being reached out to. A focus on feelings of surprise in turn predicts greater appreciation.”

In another experiment, participants were told to send a note and small gift to a friend they had not interacted with for a long period of time. They were then asked to estimate on a numerical scale how thankful the person would be because of the contact. Additionally, the receivers of the gifts were asked to rank their feelings upon accepting the gift on the same seven-number scale. Once again, the gift-givers greatly underestimated how much their gesture meant to the other person.

The study concluded that reaching out to people—particularly those that you've lost contact with—is almost always appreciated. It can seem challenging to maintain healthy social interactions, especially due to an increased amount of people working from home and a lack of opportunities. But clearly, the evidence suggests that a little extra effort is worth it.

“For those treading back into the social milieu with caution and trepidation,” the study adds, “feeling woefully out of practice and unsure, our work provides robust evidence and an encouraging green light to go ahead and surprise someone by reaching out.”"

-via My Modern Met, 7/31/22

[maranull]

One of my favourite things in the game is the Blade of Gold skill.

It's the leap into the air, the spins before and after firing the projectile, the pose when landing. It's all just really cool.

Top tier skill, for animation alone. (Its Melina association is a very neat bonus.)

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[tooquirkytolose]

He made her an offer she couldn't refuse

[tryingthisfangirlthing]

It's not just that. Jacques grew up with a certain amount of food insecurity rationing, as another poster pointed out — dude was born in 1939. So lots of food meant peace and happiness and plenty. The feasts weren't just for his audience, but for himself, too, a signal that Redwall was a haven in more ways than one. Everyone shares. Big appetites are not really shamed but treated by the narrative with a bit of humor and provided for too. Jacques liked thinking about and imagining the food and feasts and all of that, too.

guys I had this realization the other day that Redwall works really well for reading aloud, and kinda half-remembered something about the author reading to kids? So I looked it up to see if I had made a connection.

And it turns out, yes, actually, because he read aloud to kids at a school for the blind. But all the books they gave him to read were depressing. So he wrote Redwall, a story about heroism and courage and making it through struggles, and filled it with so many sensory, visual details so he could give them something better and I just-- that's so wholesome-- help

[myimaginationplain]

white queers are always so damned certain that "true" queerness is for them & them alone. expressions of queerness from Black people (most notably, Black women & those percieved as women) that don't center whiteness & aren't tailored for white audiences are always, always pegged as being unbelievable. all this plus a heaping dose of thay classic "all bi women are dirty attention seeking liars" brand of biphobia. fuck off man

[foldingfittedsheets]

When I was young my dad offhandedly told me he thought people treated fish with so much casual cruelty because fish can’t scream.

The words branded themselves across my soul.

As an adult I think he may have been joking. He payed no especial attention to any indignities fish suffered in our household but I could never forget. I saw fish in a different light after that.

Fish kept in tiny bowls, breathing their own poisons, dying by inches. Fish kept in cold tanks, casually disposed of. Fish touted as being short lived when they could outlive the better loved family dog if only they could breathe. Fish casually won and discarded in cheap plastic bags, thrown away a week later.

How they would scream, if they could.