Controversial posts made by wanderer

May the fucker who downvoted my post witness his children die painfully of cancer, thank you. Are you that closed off in your mind, that anything other than the comfortable, familiar status quo is unacceptable to you? You're not in the very least interested in something completely different than a crudely materialistic existence? Seriously?

This type of petty closed-mindedness is why I always regret writing anything here. And no, I'm not exaggerating in the first sentence. People like that have made my life hell, so I am fairly serious. If you're going to downvote this post, the same goes for you.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

@wanderer I downvoted you because you're salty. Now you're double salty, so I'm double downvoting. Keep it up, it's pretty amusing!

People tend to misrepresent it when I write harshly, because if they were to write something like that, they'd have to be furiously frothing. I write such things with cold condemnation, after a life's worth of experiences to base it on.

I'm not going to be your amusement, don't worry. I've been gone for months before and I'm unlikely to return after this.

@Arkandel said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

@wanderer said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

It's not about what I believe in, it's about what I know to be true. I had to know for sure, so I got off my ass and found out.

I don't intend to insult or mock your beliefs,

Then don't. When you call it "beliefs" you're directly insulting me. You're calling my mental faculties deficient and my judgment worthless.

The difference - for some folks - can only be made up by being able to offer conclusive evidence for a belief to be transferable. If someone thinks something is true they must be able to conclusively demonstrate that somehow to others.

Transfer to me the conclusive evidence that man has walked on the Moon. Preferably you will be able to take me there so I can walk myself, or repeat the act where I can witness it.

Transfer to me the understanding of high-level mathematical proof. Make sure to explain all the silly squigglies.

Testimonies just aren't good enough. Not because they are false, intentionally or otherwise, but because our minds are simply not reliable witnesses - ask any cop. We think we see things all the time, we reconstruct what we perceive and memories are dynamically assembled together and not retrieved from a stable source.

Testimonies aren't good enough, so I'm not going to trust the astronauts who claim to have walked on the Moon. Pictures and videos don't count either, it could've all been doctored at that level, or simply shot in the studio.

That's why hard evidence is needed. It's not not because we're sceptics ready to cast down anything that doesn't fit our narrow definitions of the truth but because without a recreatable chain between observation ("...hey, that's weird...") to conclusion ("oh, so THAT's what happened") there must be steps in between someone else can follow from beginning to end and arrive at the same result.

Hard evidence? Ok, bring me a stone from the Moon and prove to me you didn't just pluck that off the side of the road. As with high level mathematics, some types of proof are not accessible to everyone, because they require certain prerequisites. Some of them are physical (getting access to the stone), some are mental (understanding mathematical proof) and some are psychological/evolutionary (developing the senses and abilities to observe supernatural phenomena). This is why I've said that I'm not interested in discussing the subject, and why convincing anyone is completely futile.

Hard evidence in physics isn't the same as hard evidence in history or psychology. Someone's state of mind and their subjective experience is valid proof within psychology.

I'd like to think I've an open mind. If someone can demonstrate precognition works by consistently beating, say, statistical expectations outside the margin of error in a double-blind experiment then I will believe the fuck out of it. But even though I can believe someone is telling the truth as they know it by stating they saw a guy predict outcomes in Vegas twenty times in a row it doesn't mean I am prepared to believe the same thing without that chain.

I also have an open mind when it comes to high-level mathematical proof but I haven't spent years studying and researching it. Should I conclude that it doesn't exist unless someone can prove it to me? Even though I barely remember arithmetic from school?

Talk to me about being open minded after you've spent over a decade researching this stuff in depth.

What's a good argument to loosen my requirements?

Having an actual experience that shakes you out of your worldview. Probably not even then, because you would be strongly motivated to rationalize it, regardless of the incongruities you'd have to ignore.

@Botulism said:

@wanderer Thanks! Drop by sometime!

I'm actually very interested, but my time has been limited lately. If I figure out I can do this without flaking on you nice people, I'll join in the fun.

@Insomnia said:

Volition has released the cancelled Saint's Row game for PSP for free you just need a PSP emulator to play it.

It's really awesome of you to keep updating the thread like this!

@surreality said in Do you believe in paranormal things?:

(Mainly, I note this because what you describe is much like the 'this was a different thing' experience I mentioned. The rest were more or less, 'gah, crap, wtf!!' which is not... the same.)

That would be more what I described as some sort of misalignment of the spiritual body with the physical. Maybe there wasn't an entity involved, I don't know. But the mechanism is the same, it's because we undergo this process while sleeping, and all these aspects are completely ignored by any scientific approach. To be honest, I haven't had one, but I have done astral projection and I've heard horror stories about what it can attract (precisely because of how easily this inbetween state can be exploited). It's the same basic mechanism, except with non-spontaneous AP you're doing it voluntarily and have only yourself to blame.

When I was experimenting, I talked to two women who had a lot of experience with AP. The first one, her son asked her to please "make all these people leave, the house is full of them." She'd been doing a lot of AP and attracted so many entities that they started bothering her son. That's when she knew she had to stop. The other woman weakened the connection with her physical body, so she spontaneously projected while driving a car. She was watching her physical body from a few feet above, unable to do anything. Barely managed to regain control in time not to crash. Those experiences dissuaded me from going any further with the practice.

So, I'm using a bit of extrapolation from knowing the basic mechanism, and from having over a decade of gathered knowledge and related experiences.

I love the theme and originality. It reminds me somewhat of False Positive.

This is a real shout in the dark. I doubt she reads this forum, but maybe someone is still in touch. I have her AIM but haven't seen her log in for a while.

She was the coder on the first Kushiel game where Metatron was the headwiz, and I think she used to play on Shoujo-Ai MUSH.

If anyone could get in touch, I would appreciate it immensely.

It's not about what I believe in, it's about what I know to be true. I had to know for sure, so I got off my ass and found out.

@surreality I'm not saying sleep paralysis doesn't happen, I've just seen the term thrown about by skeptics as some way to disprove the experience. "Oh no, it's just sleep paralysis, that's a documented scientific phenomenon!" It's a bunch of materialistic rationalizations stuck within the limitations of the paradigm.

When we sleep, the connection between the physical and spiritual body is weakened. This same weakening is part of the process leading to an astral projection, which is why it can happen spontaneously. Precursors are sensation of floating, or when you lie down on your back and feel like you're sinking through the bed, and so on. Malicious entities made of crude emotional essence abuse this state in order to feed on the fear of the sleeper. They freeze this state and disrupt the natural return to the physical body, in order to cause fear in the sleeper and exert power over them. If the sleeper doesn't give them fear, they have nothing to feed on, especially if there are positive emotions. Those are like poison to them, because they are the antithesis of their being.

That's sleep paralysis, variations on this theme with a similar mechanism and purpose. It can also be a misalignment during reintegration with the physical body. It is a supernatural phenomenon, whatever the gradation. Sure you can find parallel effects in the material world, things that can be observed from a strictly material standpoint, but that doesn't mean they're the whole sum of the experience.

Even though it's misguided, the materialistic approach of "it's just sleep paralysis" might actually work to lessen the intensity of the experience. If you think you understand it and it's no big deal, you might disregard it and won't produce the fear the entity needs to feed on. So, ironically, the approach might work. If the entity is powerful enough, it might not.

This Renaud is not Custodius.

It's funny, because I told him this might happen when he chose the name. It's a nice name, however, and he'll do it justice.

Also, zombies are lame and so overdone. Come up with your own apocalyptic bad guy. Alien infestation. Triffids. Monsters from a secret government laboratory... well, okay, the horror of zombies is that they were once human, so you have to kill a decayed former-person. That's pretty cool. But the way they've been overplayed, especially in computer games like L4D, it's just gratuitous slaying of hordes. Zombies work best when it's not strangers, when the zombies are humanized. When they are family and close friends that the protagonist has to confront/kill. I guess ease of infection is a significant factor in this regard.

It'd be super cool if there were metaplot-like hooks through which players could eventually find out what caused the zombie outbreak. Not something over-arching, just nice juicy theme-dumps that can be discovered if the character makes an effort to search for it. Ideally, this info would also help figure out better ways to deal with them. So, even if you have zombies, figure out a cool origin story for them, so that they're not just mindless hordes.

I've also had it on several occasions, but usually refresh worked. However, on one occasion it seemed to block the site entirely, and only got restored after a few minutes.

I might like to see a forum group here, just for chatting about writerly stuff, sharing experiences, maybe have a thread with prompts just to write a paragraph or so. We could share inspiration, advice, resources, etc. I am not sure if there'd be enough interest and activity to warrant that, though.

Anyway, people could spin off from there into google docs, hangouts, or whatever. For me, what works is having one friend for mutual support. I tried groups IRL and that doesn't work for me. With just one person, it's much more private and focused.

...I kind of feel like a fraud just posting this and even remotely considering myself a writer. XD

It'd be something different.

Maybe that kind of concept failed elsewhere, but it doesn't mean it can't be implemented in a better way.

If we cut out all the concepts that have at one point failed, we'll be left with the same old shit.

It's lame if someone proposes a different idea and all the feedback they get is "that won't work." It's more productive to try and figure out how to counteract the reason it failed before.

For instance, Serenity MUSH had people separated in small crews on ships, but they all met on the Eavesdown docks. So it's not necessarily a bad idea, you just have to build the theme to make it work. Maybe make a large resource that they all have to visit, but can't stay there. I wouldn't use alts to counteract the separation. Imagine getting to meet people from a group you don't even know OOCly. You don't know how the characters breathe, how they function, who's their leader.

As players we also have to give a chance to different concepts.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

Yeah. When I wasn't in writer's block I could write 4000-6000 words a day, no sweat. With a minimum of around 1k a day when I was having some block. And 350-500 on the days where it was just pulling teeth to write.

Can you try jumpstarting your inspiration some way? For me, it helps to immerse myself in media that inspires me, whether it's games, music or writing. Then I suddenly have tons of ideas and can't write them down quickly enough. It reignites my enthusiasm.

Maybe start a different writing project, something totally wacky and outside of your comfort zone, something you wouldn't have to show anyone else if you ultimately didn't feel like it.

Trigger warning: racism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO12X1nhzzk