To go 'feminist' for a moment... its worse than that. Anti-abortion movements are a way to showcase and prove that women aren't people. We are merely objects and incubators for the 'precious life' inside us. This is a way for men to keep power over us, to control us.

A man can walk into a doctor's office with no symptoms, no issues, and get a vasectomy with zero problems because its his right to choose whether or not he wants to have kids.

A woman has to be screened by OB/GYN, has to under go psychological screening, and can still be told that she can't have her tubes tied because of the possible future children she might be giving up. Even when its a matter of her health over those potential future children, she has to jump through flaming hoops for the procedure because she's told her body isn't her own, it belongs to those future children she might one day have.

Women are not viewed as individuals with rights and needs, we are treated as objects for men to control and use as they see fit, including telling us that we have to put the lives of fetuses that don't even exist yet above our own health and welfare.

But God forbid we infringe upon the rights of men like ours have been since... forever. With an easily reversible outpatient procedure covered under health insurance that requires less recovery time than the COVID vaccine.

@noodle-mcdoodle An observation for you.... Nowhere in any of the advertising for Spirit Lake did any of you state that this was meant to be a small game. In fact, by opening to the public and posting advertisement for your game on MSB, you're in fact implying just the opposite. If anything, you seem to be encouraging more people to app in by saying 'Players are actively encouraged to run plots, write spells, create magical worlds, and invent creatures'. This suggests that you are going to rely more on the playerbase being able to entertain themselves than to expect staff-driven plot. Perhaps next time be more upfront with your limitations? Your game though, so grain of salt and all that.

Okay. So. Serious talk.

ANY parent who EVER tries to guilt-trip a child (grown or not) for the 'sacrifices' they made for that child? NOT a real parent. That is someone who was expecting to get a lifetime YesMan/Indentured Servant/Gofer/Flunky. If you EVER hear anything about how hard it was to 'sacrifice' their social life or the economic hardships they faced in feeding/clothing/putting a roof over your head... that is not a parent, that is an entitled incubator. Walk away and don't look back.

No real parent will EVER make their child feel guilty for THEIR decision to have a child. I had my first child at 16, I literally did not get a choice in the matter, and I still will never make my son feel guilty for having been born. It was not his decision, he did not get to choose who he was born to. Even though I didn't get to choose whether or not I wanted to have a baby, I chose to have sex with someone and it resulted in a child. Not his fault. He will never hear that it was his fault I couldn't go to parties or concerts or that I spent my 20s working dead end jobs just to make ends meet. Because it is Not His Fault.

And it's not yours either. Seriously, that person does not care about you as a person and you owe them nothing. Walk away, delete them from your life, they are worse than dead weight because they are actively trying to hold you back. I won't say that it's easy or simple, it won't be. It never is. But you are worth more than what they will ever give.

The sea battle. That scene was EPIC and BADASS. I laughed multiple times, shrieked with glee so loud I startled my cats AND my son, and even teared up once or twice. I am so glad for everyone that was there, and for the staff that ran it. You guys are all rockstars and that was possibly one of the best events I've ever been in!

Doublepost but....

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

@wretched said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

This. This hit me SO HARD. I rarely think about high school, it wasn't a great time for me. I overloaded on academics to get out of gym. It was incomprehensible to me that I would be graded on how fast I could run or how many situps I could do.

And then I would get into class. I would dazzle teachers with my comprehension and how quickly I picked up on source material, my notes in-class were so thorough and well-done that I had teachers use them as grading standards. I would ace quizzes with flying colors.

But I also never turned in any homework. And once we got past the learning to the repetition my scores started falling. And projects where we had to go over things multiple times were half-assed and often unfinished. And my year end tests were usually middling to bad.

And nobody could figure it out. I was called lazy. I was called unmotivated. I was told I had so much potential. And they didn't understand why I couldn't follow through. And I couldn't make them understand. My mother never understood why I went through hobbies like they were passing fads. She paid money just to have me up and quit it a few months down the road. We used to argue all the time over it.

I finally figured it out. I hated waiting for other people to catch up. I hated having to do things half a dozen times when I was ready to move on. I couldn't concentrate because someone across the room was talking and I could hear it. I couldn't focus because in my head it had already been done to death. I wanted new. I wanted different. I wanted to be DONEOMGWHYCAN'TWEJUSTMOVEOOOOOOOOOOONALREADY?!

I was called a slacker. An underachiever. A quitter. Everyone was forever disappointed in me for not living up to my potential. And they never stopped, once, to think that I was waiting for them to catch up. That experience has shaped a lot of my adult life and its only now as I get into my 40s that I can even really talk about it and not have people roll their eyes or think I'm just making shit up to cover my laziness.

I have bounced from job to job to job to decades because the repetition KILLS ME. I get so bored doing the same thing over and over and over again. And I'm afraid, because my current job is nothing but repetition, and I've just passed the one year mark, and I'm feeling antsy. Its a great company, I could get really far... except I don't know if I'll last long enough to get there.

For the first time in my adult life, two companies are in a bidding war over my services. I feel like I've finally hit some sort of achievement where a company is going to fight to keep me in my position!

@wretched said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

Pffffffft, twice? Buddy, I think 6 times before most people finish the first thought, each successive thought more meandering and incomprehensible than the last! By the time you finish that second thought, I've already gone POW! to the moon, rode the midnight train to Georgia with the Piano Man so we could meet the Ninja Turtles in NYC because I did take that left at Albuquerque, and we went right round, baby, right round because fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you and I'M OUT!

Edit: fixed a typo

As a female player, I highly recommend everyone 'covertly' play a female character at least once. The experience is wild. And not in a good way. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to play a male character from time to time just to get a break... but then I end up on a game where there's 3 female characters for every male and I'm not sure that would really be any better. XD

Missed one...

Treat Williams - RIP 06/12/23.

Belatedly... Jan 1, 2023... Fred White of Earth, Wind, & Fire.

@Ganymede The venn diagram of people who bitch about both things and who do not understand how public school funding works is pretty much just a circle.

An eternal hat tip to the late Mrs. Jessica Fletcher. May you finally see Frank again, and not have to solve anymore murders.

@Macha I am grateful on a daily basis that my direct supervisor is tech-savvy. So I can drop him a note in Teams saying 'hey, my bandwidth dropped to like.. 3mbps down around 2am, I had to restart the router to clear the noise off the line and refresh the signal, back up and running by 2:20!' and he actually understands. I've told him each time I've had a tech out to check the lines or fix issues, so I haven't lost any time trying to get Comcast to play straight with me.

Comcast currently owes me recompense for one of their tech's putting a hole in my bedroom wall and cracking the baseboard in the living room because their brilliant idea for 'fixing' the issue of a dead port in my bedroom was to run coax all the way the Hell around the living room, through a second port on the other side of the living room, through a hole they put in my bedroom wall (no port, no face plate, just a hole punched into the drywall with a screwdriver), to run more coax from the hole to the router. Since I live in an apartment building where they are supposed to gain permission from the PMC before making any modifications to the buildings, they're now responsible for the damages to the wall and baseboard. >.>

@Macha Of course not. The average tech understanding amongst management is stuck at 'turn it off, then turn it back on again' or 'reset the router'. Beyond that they don't understand intermittent and recurring issues. It either works or it doesn't.

@Ganymede Yes, Ripley! She was fun.

@Ganymede Weeeeeeeell, I don't know what game you're on now. Last game we were on together was Arx. But that last time I had a character flirt at yours was... the female vampire with the hat. Which was... Fallcoast? The Reach? One of those.

@Ganymede I tried to flirt with your female vamp! She just.. never really took the bait. Probably because I'm terrible at flirting. >.> But you do play an exceptionally good psycho, whichever the gender.

As a female player, I highly recommend everyone 'covertly' play a female character at least once. The experience is wild. And not in a good way. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to play a male character from time to time just to get a break... but then I end up on a game where there's 3 female characters for every male and I'm not sure that would really be any better. XD