This is so real it hurts…

I think it’s absolutely intentional. It feels like it’s written by and targetted towards people who are viscerally repulsed by pedophilia.

It’s creating a situation that feels like absolute horror, and using that revulsion to help sell the horror. This centuries old mind, trapped in a child’s body, unable to properly experience things like sexually and romance, continually on the outside of everything, treated like a child despite her age and abilities…

If I remember correctly, she ends up being this extremely bitter murdering monstrosity, out of rage and spite over her existence. Despite her angelic, innocent face, she’s the most evil of the lot. Partly because she doesn’t even have the option of interacting with humans properly, and even most vampires treat her poorly.

And all because a character had a moment of moral panic, of pity for a poor child. A desire to do the right thing.

It’s awful. And it’s supposed to be.

This is so wholesome, especially in contrast. I love it!

I’m now envisioning a car wrecking its way into a house, and then trying to make cat sounds with its engine and stuff (the meows would be kinda hard, but whining would be easy enough) at the door of the restroom, and then the tires just squeal as it zooms away as the person opens the restroom door. I’m envisioning the sheer, overwhelming perplexity on their face.

I’m completely cracking up over this image. It’s amazing.

The TumblrBot’s response to the “do you want to be human” question made me crack up.

It’s fantastic. A bit insulting, playful, charming - man, that’s amazing. I’m going to be randomly giggling about that answer. Coming from an AI… haha!

A Link To The Past had the most magical feel of any master sword, I think.

Ocarina of Time was great, but it felt… almost like a religious artifact, if that makes sense. Whereas LTTP was just this sword in this exquisitely beautiful little grove, deep within a magical forest… it had a feeling of a legend being born that no other game has ever quite touched since. At least, for me!

Ospreys are so fucking cool! Those pictures are amazing. The intense focus, the smooth curve of the wings…

Birds of prey in general are just so beautiful. And badass. I love them!!!

This is so cute and weirdly wholesome

Even if Jellico was right about it being a superior system, he was still being a shit leader.

You don’t come into a management position and instantly change everything up. You start by learning how things have been going with your staff and setting up a series of changes, with adequate forewarning, for them to adjust to reasonably.

You sure as hell don’t come into a situation that’s tense with time pressures, emotional pressures, legitimate causes to fear for their lives, etc, and then force a wide array of changes onto your staff.

Even if the 4-shift thing is unquestionably superior (and let’s assume it is, ignoring the Bajor comments people are making) - it’s still a stupid as fuck thing to do, under the circumstances.

Especially considering all the other changes and pressures he was adding on, all at the last minute, before a major battle.

Engine overhaul, protocol changes, shift changes, multi-day extreme overtime, on a staff that’s emotionally distressed right before their lives will be put at severe risk?

He’s an absolutely terrible captain and a disgrace to Starfleet. His bullshit would have endangered everyone’s lives for no good reason, had he not been damned lucky that the battle never came.

We once did something really amazing along these lines. Only once, it was a crap ton of work.

We were fighting this giant demon wall thing. We made it out of Graham crackers and chocolate decorations, which we attached with melted chocolate as glue, basically. It was super creepy - I made demon eyes, oozing blood stuff, it’s was great.

As we damaged the wall, we would rip parts of and eat it. It was like a solid 2-3 freaking pounds of chocolate and other assorted things. It was glorious to devour the enemy like that!

The way I think of it, there is no subtraction, and there is no division. Or square roots.

There is the singular layer of operations (the adding/subtracting layer which I think of as counting, multiplying/dividing layer which I think of as grouping, etc).

Everything within that layer is fundamentally the same thing. But we just have multiple ways of saying it.

Partly because teaching kids negative numbers is harder than subtraction, and thinking of fractions is hard enough without thinking of it as a representative process of relationships via multiplication.

Again, just how my brain does things. I’m not a mathematician or anything, but I’m pretty decent at regular math.

Thank you! That’s really sweet, I appreciate it.

It’s been a number of years, and I’ve found my way. Found someone truly amazing to get married to and she’s done a lot to help me out. I still suck at making friends, but my wife helps bridge that gap.

Interestingly enough, tabletop roleplaying games, like dungeons and dragons, helped me more than anything else. I could practice different ways of interacting with people and get actual feedback on how I came across - people will criticize characters I’m pretending to be in a way that they won’t for my real self. And it has lower stakes - if I screw up in that context, it doesn’t matter. If I freeze and don’t know what to do, I can just roll a die and make the problem go away.

I appreciate what you and your wife are doing. If it weren’t for my wife, I’d probably really be in need of that sort of support. Thank you.

“Different?” That’s just always been true.

I’ve been going to a psychologist on and off for “social dysfunction” since I was like 3. My family wasn’t well off, so it was more my mom trying to do what she could with evaluations or whatever every few years.

I was diagnosed with ADD back when everyone was diagnosed with it, despite not meeting pretty much any of the criteria. My mom tried to argue about it, but random not-quite-poor person vs psychologist, she was blown off.

I used to fantasize that there was an alien civilisation that was trying to understand earth and so created a human-alien mental hybrid to try to make sense of humanity. It’d mean there was nowhere I truly belonged, of course, but it’d also mean there was a reason, a purpose, to me being surrounded by confusing aliens.

Mom ended up going to medical school and learned about autism (and Asperger’s, at the time) while there. She was furious. I was a textbook case of a woman with Asperger’s syndrome, but in my youth, psychologists frequently didn’t consider it possible for female patients to have Asperger’s.

She wasn’t sure if she should mention it, since by that time I was an adult and on my own. I discovered it through a video game, actually - To The Moon, an amazing story in which one of the main characters has Asperger’s.

I mentioned it to her as a “holy crap, I looked into this and I feel like I’ve been seen!” And she mentioned what she’d learned in school. It kinda annoyed me that she hadn’t passed that along, but between her support and what I’d seen, I pursued options and got diagnosed.

Now it’s just autism and not Asperger’s, but whatever. Still, it was blatantly obvious my entire life. I had a rough childhood. I didn’t manage to actually make a friend of my own till I was 17. I had a few friends before then, sort of, but they were a thing where I was kinda adopted because I was easy to manipulate, and not any real connection.

I could be defiant as hell, but I was so lonely, I’d do anything for those who called me friend, so… yeah, not the best friendships, in hindsight.

Really wish those psychologists would have identified my issues back when. My life would have been vastly different.

100% this.

I consider myself a woman, but I’m pretty apathetic about gender all told. I think I’d adjust to being male pretty well? It’d be weird and uncomfortable for a while and I’m sure I’d find things I’d miss about being a woman.

But between the male privilege and biological advantages (no periods, easier strength, etc), it sounds like a deal to me.

Yes, omg! And the world building idiocy drove me absolutely insane.

Like, this one part where the were-something (might have been a werewolf?) was like, “only the first born of any pair of weres will also be a were” or something, and the immediate reaction… was to wonder why the were population wasn’t taking over the whole country or whatever. And the were took that seriously, saying the only reason their population wasn’t huge was a large number of stillbirths and such.

They try to backtrack that a few books later, and deal with the actual consequences of the fact that they literally can’t increase their population without polyamory - clearly someone informed the author of how stupid that was - but still, that initial response was some of the most obviously not-thought-out world building I’ve seen.

… okay, maybe that’s not true, but some of the worst I’ve ever seen in a book I continued to read, anyway.

I used to love physical books, but I just can’t do them anymore. It’s eBooks all the way - on my phone, namely.

I love to read so much and the ability to have my book on me at all times is irresistible. Going to the bathroom? Waiting at the doctor’s office? A few minutes break at work? Snuggling in bed at night and I don’t want to turn on a light and disturb my partner?

I’ve tried a few times to read physical books in the last few years, and having gotten addicted to the pleasure of reading whenever the hell I want, I just can’t anymore.

Audiobooks are great for long car drives, but I rarely do those, so they’re a very occasional treat for me.

Oh, no denying that at all. It is a problem, especially in aggregate.

When looking at the big picture, those rotten apples really do spoil the bunch and it can be depressing.

But also people can take that big picture awareness of problems and hate on people a little universally. Saying things like humanity is awful and a plague on the earth and maybe shouldn’t exist. There’s absolutely reason to see things that way.

But we are also a species that dolphins can approach for help when they’re injured. Or that will fight tooth and nail to help a wild creature. Or who will sacrifice their own well-being, not just for friends and family, but for strangers. Who will take other creatures, like dogs, into our homes and hearts and love them with all we have.

We can suck as a species, absolutely. We need to fix it. But it’s important to remember the joys of humanity, and not just the failures. Both are extreme, for we are a rather extreme species!

It really is a matter of perspective.

You’re saying that 10% of the population being awful means that a “huge number” are deeply broken.

So then 90% are being good! Mind, it doesn’t take too many assholes to wreck things for everyone, but it is nice that the majority of folks really are trying to do their best. A sizeable majority, even!

I dunno, I’ve seen some really low bars :P

None of this is saying don’t hit on women.

It’s saying that some men are complete assholes when they’re rejected, and so it’s not a simple and straightforward thing to reject men.

Don’t invalidate the experiences of women who have had reason to have trouble. Don’t say stupid shit like “just say no, why do women gotta do things like ghost people,” etc.

And if you do hit on women, don’t give them a hard time for rejecting you! They’re allowed to say no, for any reason, and they aren’t required to justify themselves to you.

But absolutely continue to pursue women - respectfully.