Seattleite

I've had issues finding a job for a long time. I looked a LOT, and got nowhere. Then, suddenly, one just fell in my lap completely independently of the massive amount of effort I put into finding one, making me wonder why I bothered in the fucking first place. That said, I had a great first week, and hopefully my second week will be just as good.

Two quick, related, rants: 1. The whole fucking world knows when I'm trying to write something, doesn't it? No, not literally, of course. But DAMMIT I get interrupted just CONSTANTLY whenever I try to write ANYTHING. Jesus FUCK, leave me alone! 2. I am an atheist. I am not Richard Dawkins. If you are a creationist, I do not agree with you. That does NOT make it my job to argue with you about it. Especially not on a daily basis. It IS Richard Dawkins' job, and he is way better at it than I am. Go bother him, or I swear I will FIND a way to ignore you to death. I am surprised you people haven't gone deaf from my door slamming in your face when you wake me up at nine every goddamn morning. I can slam it harder if it will make you harass somebody else who doesn't have better things to do than waste their time debating the same three pre-recorded messages every single day. In short, jesus fuck, leave me alone.

Unless you're female, then "girlfriend" could mean either, both or neither at any time.

There's stylistic differences, mostly, between a creepypasta and a regular horror story. And that style isn't being appropriated here. In other news, I don't have much free time, so it might take longer than a thousand-odd word story really should.

Alright, I've started writing. But I'm abandoning the creepypasta format. I like them and all, but it just doesn't feel good to write. If that makes any sense. It will still be short stories, and they'll still be horror, just not creepypasta.

Alright, well, the idea just popped into my head this morning so it'll probably be a day or two, but I'll link to it once it's up. First step is, of course, deciding where to post it.

I'm going to start writing creepypasta-style horror stories. The only twist being it's all going to be taking place in my own tabletop's universe, in the few years before Earth was fully merged into the rest of the universe. Which means the weirdness of the rest of the universe is beginning to slowly bleed through, and these are just isolated supernatural incidents in what is, as far as the people living in it know, a totally normal Earth in the 2010s. Hopefully, somebody is interested, and I'll post a link to it when I get the first one up. If not, oh well, it was worth a shot.

If you're familiar with two sentence horror stories, this is the same concept. The only difference is you get a bit more length to work with. Now let's all work together to not get any sleep tonight.

Apparently her episode was triggered by an instance of sleep paralysis featuring the lifeless forms of her family lying burning on the ground, except for her dead eldest sister, who was badly burned, who stood at her bedside, poured gasoline over her, and climbed into bed with her before lighting a match. Well, that sounds splendid, can't believe the episode was over a lovely firelight cuddle with her dearest sister. Seriously, that might just give ME nightmares, and I'm not the one who saw it. She apparently refused to relinquish her neice and nephew, whose bodies were on the pile in the hallucination, for the rest of the day.

Okay, so this isn't 100% vent, but it's got enough vent in it that I can't post it anywhere else. So, to start off, I need to explain something. Something that isn't exactly a secret and I've mentioned it before, but also could be missed. My girlfriend is mentally ill. And I don't mean "She has a couple personality or temperament flaws she pretends are an illness as an excuse not to work on them.", because that's my mother's thing. I also don't mean "She's actually perfectly fine but was convinced by a quack doctor who isn't at all a doctor and even calling him a quack is somewhat generous that there was a problem with her as an excuse to sell her drugs.", because that's my brother and sister's thing. No, I mean she's ACTUALLY mentally ill. Like, she is not considered legally competent and is under her sister's guardianship. Something I have strongly mixed feelings about, but that's a whole other story. Now, as a quick word of advice: The #1 rule of dating a mentally ill woman is that you never mention, EVER, that you are dating a mentally ill woman. The reason why? Look at what happened when I just did it, how repulsed you are right now, because I said my girlfriend was mentally ill, and especially after I mentioned she is not considered legally competent. And how your immediate kneejerk reaction is to assume I'm taking advantage of her, that I'm just using her for sex, entirely because she's mentally ill and you assume that means I can't actually care about her, and further because of what you think mentally ill means. And for the record, if you are actually having this reaction? Your idea of what "mentally ill" means bears no resemblance to what "mentally ill" actually means. You're probably picturing some drooling, gibbering moron who thinks the moon landing was a hoax because there is no moon and Obama is a reptile sent by the Illuminati. Somebody who couldn't find their ass with both hands, probably somebody who in addition to being crazy is also severely retarded and should never be allowed to decide anything about anything, from finances to romance, and is incapable of meaningfully consenting. That is NOT the definition of "mentally ill". Very, VERY few mentally ill people actually fall into that category, and not all people in that category are even mentally ill. For starters, mental illness and mental handicaps are NOT the same thing and you can totally have one without having the other. Second, there is an ENORMOUS spectrum there, and a lot of reasons why somebody might not be considered legally competent, most of which don't actually have anything to do with actual day to day competence. My girlfriend is the perfect example of why the standard image of mental illness is complete bullshit. She is, 99% of the time, entirely competent. So most of the time, the only signs of her mental illness are being a bit melancholy, always trying to hide it, and rapidly switching between needing a lot of attention and needing a lot of space. Character traits shared by EVERY WOMAN I HAVE EVER DATED. And also, EVERY WOMAN I HAVE NEVER DATED. Okay, slight exaggeration there, but that's not exactly a rare set of character traits, and everybody knows it. She's also highly intelligent, introverted and has no social skills, so there's some things she and I have in common. Her actual mental illnesses, people have HUGE misconceptions about as well. She's paranoid, but that doesn't mean she believes in the Illuminati, or Reptile Government or any of that crap. The only conspiracies she believes in are the ones there's actual evidence for. (You know, like the NSA spy program? Yeah, we both knew about that before it was publicly confirmed. See also: COINTELPRO, MKULTRA, Citizens United, CISPA, NAFTA and the TPP. Just to name a few.) She also is schizophrenic. That does NOT mean she has a second evil alter-ego, schizophrenia has NOTHING AT ALL to do with dissociative identity disorder. Instead, she only has significant hallucinations during occasional episodes, which only come every couple months and only last a day or two, are usually triggered by something and mostly involve extreme depression and hallucinations of dead family members. And this bring me to her biggest issue, which is post traumatic stress disorder following the death of her parents and two eldest siblings. That's a story for another time, but suffice to say that she was a small child at the time, and while she didn't directly witness their deaths, it was violent and horrific and was a murder-suicide by her eldest sister. She was, at the time, extremely over-attached to her father to the point where she doesn't always seem to remember she also lost a brother and a mother as well. He kept her stable, and between the massive loss and him normally being her main source of comfort and stability, she did not cope well. There being further complications regarding her living arrangements, not going into that, made that even worse. And given that her eldest sister was the one that killed her father, it's not hard to see why said sister appears so frequently in her nightmares and hallucinations, or why she's such a powerful demonic figure in those nightmares and hallucinations. And I say that her PTSD is the worst of her issues because it would be there even if the others weren't and wouldn't be much weaker, and also because it made all of her other issues much, MUCH worse. I was barely aware of her schizophrenia, for instance, until her parents died. Her hallucinations were also of a largely positive variety before the loss of her parents, or at least that was her feelings towards them. Her paranoia also wasn't a problem at all until her parents died, and in fact I'd say wasn't any stronger than the healthy paranoia most millennials possess. Even so, her PTSD also isn't what you're imagining, if you're picturing a mentally crippled woman triggered by normal conversation who can't tie her shoes without having a violent flashback. Most of the time, she's fine. She can even have her own personal tragedy brought up without being "triggered", what actually "triggers" her is anyone's guess as while it seems to be personal turmoil of the type she used to go to her father about most of the time, the rest seems to be random. As for why this rant is coming right now, she's presently having an episode and trying to pretend she's not. And I wanted to talk about it, but I know damn well from past experiences just how hard it is to talk about your mentally ill girlfriend's episodes without being shamed for having a mentally ill girlfriend to begin with. I've never had that experience here, but I've had it many times on other sites and in real life, in this case I just in a chat room not ten minutes before I started typing this. And it makes me DAMNED angry, and I really need to get that off my chest before I say anything about her actual episode.

I am depressed as shit. In other news: Birds fly, grass grows and Scout hurts people. That is all.

To be honest, I've got enough Sonic games on my wishlist that I didn't really look into the new one. The new art style kinda turned me off, and I still haven't finished Colors or Generations, so it wasn't very appealing.

Alright, I just have to say... I didn't think Heroes or Unleashed were bad. I mean, they weren't really all that good either, but they weren't bad. Sonic Adventure (1&2) were really good, Colors and Generations were great, and really I wish I owned a console just so I could actually play them. But... I can't forgive Shadow, and '06 was a crime against humanity. Except its soundtrack, the soundtrack was still pretty good, come to think of it. I guess that means it can't be the *worst* game of all time, in that it has the soundtrack and Shadow kicking Silver in the head as its two positives. Some games can't even manage one. *COUGH*RIDETOHELL*COUGH*

Pest, the difference is that killing Bubsy was a public service, but Sonic is a GOOD series. Well, mostly. There was a five year period from 2003 to 2008 we don't talk about, but other than that it's a good series.

As a Sonic fan... SONIC '06. It fucking HURT me, PHYSICALLY, just to have to know it exists. I would rather be waterboarded on a bed of nails while my genitals are gnawed off by wolves than play that fucking game, and it did so much damage to the franchise that even though the series went back to being good just two games later, it's impossible to take Sonic seriously anymore, even if you're a fan. I simply can't think of a single other game that did so much damage to a beloved franchise.

So, Binky, are you actually feelin' fine, or is this a nod to the writings spread all over the walls and ceilings in that scene?

Except once again, you are now ignoring scientific definitions and throwing around ad hominem attacks. Funny how you do that, might be because you're wrong and that makes it really hard to make a good argument. The International Atronomical Union (THE authority on this matter): "A dwarf planet is a planet-mass object that is neither a planet nor a natural satellite." (Notice how the definition is "planet-mass" and "NOT a planet"? Kinda means you're definitionally wrong on this one. It isn't about their size, they have to be large enough that they would normally be considered a planet to qualify. And it also means that if they do qualify as a dwarf planet, it can only be because they are not a planet despite their size.) "That is, it is in direct orbit of the Sun, and is massive enough for its shape to be in hydrostatic equilibrium under its own gravity, but has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." (That means, if it's not gravitationally dominant in its orbit, it's not a planet, even if it's large enough to reach hydrostatic equilibrium, which used to be the only definition of a planet. This does usually come down to size, since a larger object's gravitation will better clear out other objects or bring them into its orbit, but it's not the sole factor. Also, although unmentioned in this sentence, the definition excludes natural satellites, so the many moons of Jupiter are neither planets nor dwarf planets despite them having the mass of a planet.) Now, if we remove the gravitational dominance requirement, do you know what happens? We'd have HUNDREDS of fucking planets. We have over a hundred dwarf planets in the solar system, and nearly 200 moons. Not all those moons would qualify as planets even without our requirement for gravitational dominance, but many would, including our own moon, all the larger moons of the gas giants, and even Pluto's moon. Good luck memorizing all of those in highschool science. We need the extra definition largely for convenience, sure, but that's a good reason to have such a barrier. And if you want to write a definition of a planet, as opposed to a dwarf planet, that only lets Pluto in without letting in Eris, Ceres, Makamake, Haumea or Biden, I'd love to hear it, because there's no fucking way you can draw that line. Gravitational dominance is the accepted definition now, and none of them get in, but if they did draw the line just below Pluto we'd also have Haumea as a planet. If they went by mass, Eris would get in. If it was by proximity to the sun, which is batshit but I've heard it proposed, Ceres would get in. We can't possibly have a nine-planet solar system with Pluto in it, and even if we did that would be changing the definition to suit tradition rather than having a definition that actually makes sense, which isn't how science works. Now stop whining about Pluto.

That argument is 100% completely insane. People and planets aren't even the slightest bit comparable, for one. Two, "planet" and "dwarf planet" are SEPARATE CATEGORIES, "dwarf planet" is NOT to "planet" what "dwarf" is to "person". It's more like the difference between a tablet and a laptop. They're both computers, but the categories are entirely different and everybody who isn't you understands that. And if you insist on calling your iPad a laptop, people are going to think you're clueless and out of touch. Just like we think you are when you insist on calling Pluto a planet.

Yeah, BTG, do you want to count up the number of "planets" we have if you use that definition? Pluto isn't a full planet, not just because there's so many objects in its orbit, but really because we know of several other objects that are just as big and just as round, directly orbiting the star we don't consider planets either. If we considered Pluto a planet, we'd have to consider them planets too. And when they use the word "planet" here, they specifically mean "non-dwarf", and expect you to know that from the context and stop playing semantics with them. They chose to remove one instead of adding three, probably mostly because it was less of a pain to work with. The facts that it's in the middle of the Kuiper Belt, isn't sufficiently round and otherwise doesn't fit the definition of a planet we've been using for decades made that a pretty easy decision. But if you liked having nine planets, you're in luck. There's gravitational evidence of a ninth AND tenth planet somewhere further out. Better planets than Pluto, at that. Well, assuming that any of the other explanations for the unusual orbits aren't true and it actually is the result of gravitational influence from extremely distant planets. Here, have a link:

Long-winded video game rant: Game developers, you can't do armour worth a damn, and it's a bigger issue than you think. 1. Stop making early-game armour worthless. Whenever I play a game, the first thing I do is figure out the math on how much my armour actually does. I can count on one hand the RPGs where the resistance was actually meaningful. Those were Demon's Souls, Dark Souls ONE (all armour is worthless in 2), Fallout: New Vegas and... That's it, really. 2. Stop using pure percentage resistances. They're the whole reason early game armour is underpowered and pointless and late game armour is always overpowered and pointless. Just so you guys understand it: A 25% resistance isn't half as valuable as a 50% resistance, it's 2/3 as valuable. Similarly, a 50% resistance isn't 2/3 the value of a 75% resistance, it's 1/2 the value. And this is for the exact reason that a 90% resistance isn't 90% the value of a 100% resistance. If you can't figure out that math, you're too stupid to make video games, but the basic gist of it is that the value of armour is determined not by the amount of damage it blocks, but by the amount you *still take*. That 50% resistance is half as valuable as a 75% resistance because you take twice as much damage with it, and that 25% resistance is 2/3 the value of a 50% resistance because you take 1.5x damage with it. If you intend a resistance to be half the value, you can't just halve the resistance because the difference will be too small early on and it won't matter, and the difference will be absolutely gamebreakingly huge late game. Which is an issue with 99% of all RPGs. Either you guys need to keep your resistances both very high and in a narrow band, include armour-penetrating effects as a standard part of the system, not use percentages at all, or some combination of the three. 3. Stop making armour useless against magic. Seriously, why do you guys think a layer of metal between you and a ball of fire won't make you take less damage from the fire? Because, spoiler warning, it will. A LOT. You can argue it isn't as effective against fire or lightning as it is against swords or axes, but you can't say it'll do nothing. 4. Stop making armour systems that people have to go to the wiki to understand. Either give an explanation in the game, or just make it simple. Use general code words people will intuit. Damage reduction, they know it's a point value. Damage resistance, they know it's a percentage. Defence, they have no goddamn idea. Armour rating, they have no goddamn idea. You *can* use those kinds of words, but you have to then make it easy enough they can figure it out. Dark Souls 1 does it by just making it divisive. 200 means 1/2 damage, 300 means 1/3 damage. Oblivion does it by making it just a straight percentage. Then the sequels change it to some crazy obscure formula where you have to divide the values by some unstated number, add an unstated base value and then convene with the old ones, who if they deign will bequeath the secret art of determining the final variable from the phases of the fucking moon. And not, like the Moon moon. Earth's second secret moon, Ascendra. Neither Dark Souls 1 nor Oblivion had a perfect armour system, I'd even say Oblivion's armour system was pretty bad, but no benefit came from making them impenetrable other than maybe hiding how you made them shittier. 5. Stop making armour work on body parts it doesn't cover. I get that this doesn't apply to a lot of games, but somebody's boots shouldn't protect their fucking head. Bethesda is the *champion* of fucking this up. If a fucking mod like Counter-Strike can make their armour locational, I'd think you could have put it in Morrowind. Or at least Oblivion. Or Fallout 3, or New Vegas, or Skyrim. And I'll believe it's in Fallout 4 when I fucking see it, thanks. Alright, rant over. I'm going to go get some coffee and stop playing Dark Souls 2.

I stole one of Ross's lines today. "Strange that it doesn't have a fear response, most animals have that. I guess the thought of something kicking its ass just confuses it." Didn't even realize I was quoting Freeman's Mind until after I said it. We were doing a campaign, and our party killed a T-Rex. And it just didn't seem to understand it was in danger. Like, at all. I mean, you'd think it'd try to get away when it gets a serious injury, but there was half a minute between us breaking its leg and breaking its other leg that it could have gotten away from us, and it didn't even try. Then again, maybe I'm overthinking it and Justin just didn't consider how the animal would actually behave.

Just go to forum games, you can get a good twenty posts a day. And I know that because at one point, you did.

I'm drinking and Iaiiiiaiiii have become... Comfortably numb...

Note to everybody: If you do ANY sort of roleplay, PEOPLE FUCKING HATE YOU IF YOUR POST IS ONE FUCKING LINE. Seriously, the rest of us write an entire paragraph, as much as we can, what's with all these fucking one-liners?

Well, the little girl dreams stopped when I went home and was no longer with my girlfriend every night. And it's been back to my standard "Blender Theatre". Where we pick a couple genres and set-ups at random, put them in a blender, and what comes out is tonight's dream. And last night, it was "post apocalyptic" (didn't get enough of that in there), "kidnapping" (held up for a ridiculous $50,000 no less), "awkward friendship movie" (makes even less sense in context, because it's me and the villain), and a few others with a side of "plane crash". So basically, I'm flying across a ruined town in a very slow plane, get distracted and clip a building. I crash, surprise surprise, and I crash into a place where apparently the local (singular) decides to hold me up for random. In a post-apocalyptic environment. A cookie for the first person who sees the glaring problem with that. He wants "50,000" for my release, apparently. But I get the distinct impression that he's really just a lonely old man, using this as an excuse to have some company that isn't four-legged and furry for a while. Until then, my stationary plane is my new home. I didn't bother telling him it can actually still move fine, it just can't fly. I start offering him things to get him to let me go, from stacks and stacks of pre-war USD (which he, of course, turns down) to my sword, to my airplane. And every time, I next go for threatening him, which should have convinced him under the circumstances but didn't somehow. First time, I offer him a big case of pre-war money, all in mint condition because I just raided the US mint. (Hey, it's post-apocalyptic, nobody cares.) He refuses it, saying he's not impressed, and then I threaten to beat him to death with the case and see if he's "impressed" then. He then tells me his dogs are trained to attack anybody who hurts him. I whistle, and all four happy, lovey little family dogs come running up for attention. Yeah, sure they are. Yes, your mid-sized mutt certainly seems poised to strike when he lays on my feet panting. Oh, and the golden retrievers sitting there being pet, they must be dangerous. And the chocolate lab rolling on the ground for my attention, he sure seems the vicious type. Second time, I offer him my sword on top of the pre-war money. He says a sword isn't worth "50,000". Which makes me wonder: 50,000 WHAT. What are we trading out here, how much is each unit worth? What's the big mac index in this area? Seriously, I need info. But instead of asking, I then ask him if his life is worth 50,000. I draw the sword, putting the tip of it to his chest. (It's a rapier, I can pierce the sternum just fine, thank you very much.) He then brings up the dogs again. I remind him that even if his dogs were vicious attack dogs, and they're not, I have a sword. Before the next time, we're sitting down eating dinner and having a fairly pleasant conversation. I get the distinct impression He's telling the story of his last hostage, who eventually he let go because they didn't have anything worth taking. He even mentions that they tried to strangle him in one escape attempt, but he can't be strangled. I snark that I'd be willing to test that, and the idiot actually lets me. Though, he does prove immune to conventional strangling. Not arterial choking, however, which proves even more effective on him than regular people. But for some reason, I chose to wait for him to wake up and remind him that I could have just put his head on the table and killed him with one good hit to the neck, instead of just doing it and being done with him. (Note: This actually works. The table prevents the head from moving, and the impact on the neck breaks it on the corner of the table. Takes a LOT of force, though.) He seems mildly creeped out by me knowing how to do that, but that doesn't stop him from putting his head in position and calling my bluff. He knows I'm not willing to kill him to leave. (Though I was certainly tempted at a few points.) Lastly, I offer him my airplane in exchange for letting me leave. It's his ticket out, he can move somewhere where there's people and not have to kidnap them just to have some company. I can make it home on foot. He declines, saying the plane can't fly and is of no use to him. I then threaten to leave in that plane. He repeats that it can't fly, looking confused and now scared. I then get in that plane, turn the engine on and roll out of there. It's slow enough he can keep up at a jog to yell at me and beg me to come back, but he can't stop me and he quickly gives up. And there, the dream ended, I wish. It kept going for about ten minutes of me driving my plane on the ground and looking at scenery before I woke up. Now, got any dream analysts on what THAT means?