cassie 🐺

Well yes, but I don’t even necessarily mean a gun :P

Hey don’t underestimate it! If that’s what ya got, lean into it if you need to. If you can be quick on your feet and convince someone you’re not worth the trouble that can already keep you out of danger. You can always pick up a more physical weapon later, or that just might not be your thing, you’ll figure what works for you.

Yeah, I feel much the same. Shit happens sometimes and it’s good to be prepared. That goes for situations where civilization is collapsing and also in day to day life too. “Preppers” are so hyper fixated on one particular hyper-individual fantasy outcome. The merits of, say, integrating into a mutual aid network are completely missed.

It’s always so much more useful to have AND KNOW WHERE every one-off necessity you might need is. A flashlight and spare batteries. First aid supplies. Spare medication. Superglue. A good utility knife. Emergency bedding. Enough shelf stable food for a few days. Some card games to pass the time. A few creature comforts that are easy to keep on hand. An appropriate weapon you practice with regularly. Some space an unhoused friend could crash for a week.

You get whatever you can together and organized and then you SHARE IT, because these things will all solve day to day problems for people in your life who maybe don’t have them on hand. And then you pay attention to other needs that come up and make small additions so you’re prepared for the needs of people you care about. And then boom there you go you’ve done actual fucking preparation! And get to sleep a little easier knowing you’re ready for a lot more that life could throw at you.

Margaret Killjoy has a great podcast on effective preparation that comes from a very practical community readiness perspective. Definitely worth a listen. Live Like The World Is Dying

I was getting ready to come out to my sister in like late 2021, she had a really bad motorcycle accident and we were catching up and it seemed like the right time to tell her.

then she started talking about how a near death experience made her start re-evaluating some things, and then she came out to me and it was the fucking spiderman pointing meme. Both of us moved to WFH after covid hit so the timing makes sense, but it was such a wonderful coincidence.

I played a student project game a long time ago that based itself around this kind of mechanic. It was a horror game set entirely in the dark, and the only way of seeing was by echolocation - you’d click to send out a pulse, and you’d get brief ghostly glimmers of your environment. Importantly, you couldn’t directly see anything moving - you’d have to send out another ping if you wanted to see something in motion.

Given that monsters could hear your pings too, it was a wonderful little game of cat-and-mouse deduction trying to figure out where monsters were with as few pings as possible, remembering their patrol paths in the dark, and so on. Really cool and I’d love to see that mechanic in a full game production.

(edit: apparently that full game exists, it’s called Perception, and I’m absolutely giving it a shot!)

The thing is some games make the line really fuzzy and it’s hard to draw an exact line where it no longer is a game.

Pyre does have a whole RPG wizard basketball thing going on that I enjoyed, but wasn’t the reason I recommend the game. The more engaging part of the game was the visual novel stapled to it, which was affected by wizard basketball in cool and interesting ways, but inside each scene it’s largely non-interactive.

Disco Elysium also has some RPG mechanics going on, and there’s a city block for you to wander around, but the vast majority of the game is dialogue. It could largely be written as a more complicated choose-your-own-adventure book, but it’s so much stronger as a game.

Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is almost entirely dialogue and telling people’s fortunes, with only brief moments of creating new tarot cards to break up the dialogue. Despite this, the fortune-telling aspect of the game has made it one of the most interesting games I’ve played in a bit.

There’s any number of “walking simulators” that this debate comes up around and I counter that with the fact that Outer Wilds built off the back of that formula to create something unquestionably a game, but built off of gameplay loops largely based around traversal and finding new bits of lore to unlock progression.

These were all successfully marketed to gamers as video games. My hot take is that they’re all games, but with a form of gameplay that some may find too simple for their liking and that’s ok. And the semantic debate over what’s a game and what isn’t is just feels vibes based sometimes.

I’m gonna copy another comment I made on this post since it’s the best thing I think I can say about it. But just know I once felt as you do and probably still would if my sister wasn’t a furry.

I think the kink and fursuit parts are what most people understand about furries because that’s the most signal boosted and bizarre parts about it. However, furries often have other things that really attach them to it, and the kink is a further expression of that.

For a lot of people, neurodivergence is a core feature. I struggle with speech a lot. I’m learning ASL but few people speak it. The flexibility to communicate in howls, barks and yips on occasion is extremely helpful. The furry community is full of people who just get this and will treat me very normally when I’m nonverbal. The scared kid in me still expects to be hit for disobedience, so it’s incredibly healing.

Some folks who like fursuits like them because they present a barrier and literal mask that helps them feel safe and protected from bad sensory experiences in public. Some attach themselves into a fursona character and find a way to express parts of themselves they couldn’t elsewhere. My sister describes her fursona as a manifestation of her inner child unburdened by abuse, and made the character female years before she worked out she was trans.

When you consider how much kink and trauma go hand in hand, how much furries lean on their identity as a way to feel safe engaging with others, and how much genuine joy people find in their fursona, the kink makes a whole lot more sense. It’s less about being attracted to “rejected Disney mascots” specifically as it is about the comfort and safety a rejected Disney mascot persona can bring to people who need it. For as much as it’s helpful in the outside world, it would in fact be weirder for none of that to come into the bedroom too.

phobia of neurodivergent people as well, I think. A lot of the things people find weird and offputting are just like… autism or something.

I think the kink and fursuit parts are what most people understand about furries because that’s the most signal boosted and bizarre parts about it. However, furries often have other things that really attach them to it, and the kink is a further expression of that.

For a lot of people, neurodivergence is a core feature. I struggle with speech a lot. I’m learning ASL but few people speak it. The flexibility to communicate in howls, barks and yips on occasion is extremely helpful. The furry community is full of people who just get this and will treat me very normally when I’m nonverbal. The scared kid in me still expects to be hit for disobedience, so it’s incredibly healing.

Some folks who like fursuits like them because they present a barrier and literal mask that helps them feel safe and protected from bad sensory experiences in public. Some attach themselves into a fursona character and find a way to express parts of themselves they couldn’t elsewhere. My sister describes her fursona as a manifestation of her inner child unburdened by abuse, and made the character female years before she worked out she was trans.

When you consider how much kink and trauma go hand in hand, how much furries lean on their identity as a way to feel safe engaging with others, and how much genuine joy people find in their fursona, the kink makes a whole lot more sense. It’s less about being attracted to “rejected Disney mascots” specifically as it is about the comfort and safety a rejected Disney mascot persona can bring to people who need it. For as much as it’s helpful in the outside world, it would in fact be weirder for none of that to come into the bedroom too.

Best description of this I’ve read, thank you. It’s not a question about men directly, it’s a question about how women have to navigate a world with a small percentage of men that will hurt them given the opportunity.

I like the word “burgerpunk” to describe our dystopia not as neon lights and cool sexy cyborgs but more the aesthetic of a DoorDash ad.

internet discourse is so attention-seeking, contentious and unempathetic that I feel like it’s fostered a culture where people expressing hurt are routinely interrogated and doubted just in case they’re seeking undeserved attention. (because some people do!)

so, people are caught between a rock and a hard place. They can be honest about what burdens them in a way that leaves room for critique, and take the emotional damage that comes from the interrogation of their experiences. or they find extreme, bulletproof-sounding, “nobody could be ok under these circumstances” ways of putting their problems that aren’t in line with reality.

The former is honest but puts you at emotional risk when you’re already vulnerable. The latter is inauthentic but does grant the solidarity and support they’re seeking in the first place. I can’t really blame the people who pick door #2, especially when this decision is conditioned over long periods of social media use. It’s also in line with catastrophization, a common distortion many of us experience already.

notably, this has always been a common problem with how PTSD is understood, specifically complex trauma. many people discount their own trauma because it’s not the typical “got my limb blown off” image of trauma and they’ll occasionally be attacked for claiming they are traumatized. So they find more extreme ways to put their trauma that do get them the support they’re seeking. (and need!)

I don’t know what the solution to any of this is but I do feel it comes from a real place and I put the blame more on social media than the individuals, despite how annoyed I can get with people when I see it.

Ultimately, we’re discussing two different styles of communication that I don’t see as any better or worse than each other - everyone finds what works for them in their circumstances and environment and your style probably works great for yours!

There’s a fair bit of hostility and harassment I encounter in public for various reasons, and I also have some inherent difficulty processing speech and verbalizing. As a result, I take a pretty blunt approach to communication - one in which I do not mind showing that I’m angry, because that is a necessary thing to be sometimes.

I practice mindfulness a lot and do not generally feel required to say the first thing that comes to mind. But if a drunk asshole is following me home, I’m not looking to outwit em. I’m looking to stay focused on my safety while letting em know that I see em and I’m probably more trouble than they’re looking for.

In serious conversation with people I care about, I do swear, but it’s because phrases like “I’m so fucking sorry that happened to you” come naturally to me and are effective. The emphasis that a little bit of swearing can add in moments like that is pretty useful.

This all doesn’t have to be your thing, like I said this is all down to personal preference - but it would be a mistake to assume that people who swear aren’t communicating as meaningfully. It’s just another tool that we have at our disposal.

1. why is letting off steam indicative of a weak character? I think that when under stress, it’s actually indicative of someone being emotionally intelligent to recognize they need to let some stress out and find an avenue for it. I can’t explain exactly why, but swearing has always been a pretty effective way for me to let out some stress mid conversation while staying focused on a problem.

2. some contexts call for aggression. i.e. If someone’s making me or someone I care about uncomfortable in public, it can be pretty useful to bare my teeth back. A simple “fuck off” doesn’t require me to engage with any of their bullshit at all, gets the point across, and carries it with a mild aggression that actually does make people fuck off much of the time.

3. it is imprecise, but in many contexts it’s precise enough to convey displeasure and dismay enough to get the point across. In fact the power of “fuck you” is in how concise yet universally applicable and understandable in so many situations.

Much of the time communication isn’t about being creative or coming off smart. It’s about effectively conveying meaning with the tools you have. Sometimes that means simple, crude language is more effective at conveying something than all the wit in the world.

So when I’m in a situation that calls for its use, I don’t care that “fuck off” is a dime-a-dozen phrase that doesn’t make sense. It’s never misunderstood, it’s cathartic to say, and I don’t need to think on the spot to figure out something more eloquent - my mind is on, y’know, who or what needs to fuck off instead.

I lost my chance to stop years ago

Especially considering a lot of the creative talent behind Valve’s acclaimed single player catalog are no longer at the company. Valve is a different company now and so their games will be different too.

Hmm… usually I prefer push-in 😇

Gotta say I’m glad we can be and date any genders we like these days with much milder pushback (on average) than used to be the case. Really does help zoomers be a lot healthier imo, even if we’ve got other issues in the internet age.

young men have been told that white men are the worst thing to be.

Ok, but try not being a man and see if people think that’s any better…