AnarchistArtificer

"So uh... Hi, I guess I'm a pretentious douche. IM SMRT"

It's okay, you're not nearly as bad as me, who instinctively shifted into a judgemental mindset after reading the first line of your comment (before checking myself on that nonsense)

I suppose I spent many years inadvertently training myself to be an asshole in this manner, so I shouldn't be surprised that it requires regular work to remain a "recovering asshole", rather than just an asshole. Because you're quite right: like what you like, fuck the haters indeed

Same. I am really glad I went in blind on a Durge play through. I unexpectedly ended up romancing Astarion, and I really loved how that dynamic unfolded. I think in Act 2, Astarion even says something like "huh, I guess we're more alike than I realised". I just love my party of traumatized weirdos who are desperately trying to forge a life of agency and hope, and wholesome Durge is the epitome of that

"I've seen 5+ clones of Papers Please. I doubt that if you surveyed people describing the mechanics that they would be interested especially if Papers Please never came out."

I think this is a great example. You can't distill things down to a formula because these things exist in conversation with each other. An example that comes to mind is the game "Not Tonight", a Brexit themed Papers Please clone. Mechanically, it does very little to distinguish itself from papers please, but narratively, that's sort of the whole point: It being a clone specifically leverages the energy of "Glory to Arstotzka" to satirise the UK's institutional racism.

Surveys don't capture that games like this aren't just clones of Papers Please, they're actively in conversation with Papers Please

How so? (Not trying to start an argument; am genuinely curious for sources because I found it hard to find info when I googled this)

Edit: not the politico being owned by Springer, but Springer being partially responsible for the rightward shift

Ooh, thanks for this link. I'm not a podcast person, but I have a friend who would love this

I have a disability that gives me quite a lot of pain, and my 1-10 pain scale doesn't actually go up to 10; I will never say I'm at a 10/10 pain, because that's saying it's the worst it could ever be, which is asking for trouble

"But we also have to be careful because presenting a minority group as already extinct exists to help continue the perpetuation of the genocide. As Judith Butler describes.

  An ungrievable life is one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as a life at all'

Thank you so much for this reminder; because of this, I have realised that this is a trap that my thoughts sometimes slip into. Hopefully I will be able to be mindful of it and check myself in future

Lmao

When I was a teenager, I promised myself that if nothing improved by the time I was 20, I would allow myself the escape of suicide — fuck anyone who would begrudge me that. The bar wasn't "things have to be fully better"; there just needed to be a non-zero improvement to prove that improvement was possible.

Ironically, this pledge probably saved my life, because it meant that I could tell myself "not yet" when I was in a crisis and at risk of harming myself. Fortunately, by the time I had reached 20, I had experienced some fairly significant improvements, and whilst my mental health was still rocky, there were parts of me that genuinely wanted to live.

My post-20 life has been messy, because I literally never expected to get this far. It sort of feels like a bonus level in a video game. It's pretty surreal.

Enough about me though, I want to hear a bit about you, if you're willing to share. What's something that gives you zest for life? Something that fuels the hope that I'm feeling from your comment?

I feel you. Having to grieve the person you could've been is one the tragedies of having been forced to survive rather than live. The most difficult part of healing is somehow forging a new life in which you can thrive.

That's something that I've been struggling with lately. If I structure my life around who I am right now, then the result is a routine of misery where I don't chase anything of joy. However, if I try to build a life for the person I would like to be, I find I don't fit inside that world, and I crumble — demoralised by overambitious burnout. The tension between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be is a tightrope that I need to somehow balance on if I want to make progress.

Solidarity, friend. You deserve better than what you have had.

Damn, I didn't realise I needed this today

Do they not do stuff like that anymore? I'd be interested to hear about what's happening in schools nowadays — I don't know any school-age kids, so I'm unaware of what things are like.