I stopped watching her generally when she put up her poorly thought out, TERF-filled anti-trans video, but the “Capitalism is good, actually” video came up in my feed and I watched it out of curiosity.

It’s so wrong it’s impossible to know where to begin. She invents a history of money that didn’t happen, defines capitalism in a nonsensical way and in the comments admitted she did no research for the video whatsoever and yet still defended her points as if her absolute ignorance on the subject was somehow laudable.

Absolute buffoon. Nobody should watch her videos. She is intellectually dishonest and generates ignorant content to garner clicks.

It was literally outlined as this in Project2025, ban porn then define speech you want to suppress (primarily LGBT but also women’s health) as porn.

I appreciate the discussion, I get out of my depth pretty quickly on the topic being a linguistic hobbyist rather than someone with actual education and background.

It’s an approximation, but the t is partially vocalized giving it a ‘d’ sound even if it’s not made exactly the same way.

This phenomenon is called “T flapping” and it is common in North American English. I got into an argument with my dad who insisted he pronounces the T’s in ‘butter’ when his dialect, like nearly all North Americans pronounces the word as ‘budder’.

I had a homemade vegan shepard’s pie at a coworker’s house (she lived in the US, but from the UK) and it was one of the best dinners I’ve had in a long time.

If the criticism is limited to “It’s too hard.” then I would agree. But that’s not a valid response to criticisms about specific design elements like “these power ups feel like they do nothing”, even if it’s a perception issue at hand you need to address the actual observation and not jump on with ‘git gud’.

I was learning a game a few months ago and struggling with understanding a specific character, so I went to the official discord and asked for advice, not complaining it was too hard, just asking for what kinds of strategies work and I was met with endless ‘try harder, scrub’ responses and literally no actual advice. I quit playing the game because the community was so up it’s own asshole.

And for sake of clarity. I don’t play HK, it’s not my preferred genre and my favorite game (that I can replay) is Noita so I am familiar with reviews that complain about difficulty. It’s fine for games to be hard and it’s also fine for people who find the games too hard to leave a review saying they found it too hard. That is part of informing buyers so people can only pick it up if they desire that kind of challenge.

It’s just a trend that is all too common in gaming. People like a game or a developer and become incapable of seeing an opinion that they disagree without taking it as a personal slight. It’s weird.

We should definitely talk about how levying criticism, especially thoughtful criticism, is treated as a personal attack by other people playing the same game. It’s a bizarre form of tribalism.

Muskrat looks pretty gross, plus all those chemicals can’t be healthy.

It is a Civ tradition, BotS made Civ4 amazing, but I’d argue the base game was solid and just needed some mechanical polish.

I listened. I bought Civ6, hated it, didn’t get any of the predatory DLC and went back to Civ4. Didn’t give Civ7 so much as a glance. Sad to hear it went downhill from 6 though.

Femboys can be hot too, though often authors seem to mix up femboys with trans women and that ends up being frustrating when I try a CHOYA game marked as m/m and it doesn’t have any actual m/m in it.

On the m/m side, the visual novel Coming Out on Top is a remarkably well-written, if saccharine, dating game about a college guy figuring things out. I don’t usually like VNs but this one was worth playing. It’s has a lot of gay sex in it, that is literally the entire point so, you know, be aware of that.

My reaction to both The Dying Gasp and Seat of Sacrifice fights was “Can’t I feel good about winning just once?” and then speaking to Seto at the end was full on waterworks.

It’s no exaggeration to say it changed my perspective about life, I still can’t hear Final Voyage without tearing up.

My sister tried playing it and didn’t get very far, but her preferences are for highly character-driven material so I think it’s just not for her.

A few times.

Most notably, when playing Outer Wilds. I was playing it during the pandemic and had lost two friends, my grandfather and my cat within the span of around 3 months. I was struggling with depression and I got to one specific spot in the game and the revelation caused me to just sit there and cry for like 10 minutes, I was so emotionally shut down at the time that the tears felt like a life preserver. I had to stop playing for a bit, but it definitely helped me process my grief.

I also cried during a couple of quests in FFXIV. The post-Shadowbringers content especially, not because it was sad, just very poignant. And again in the last area of Endwalker, where Masayoshi Soken’s incredible composition combined with some very emotional content just got to me (especially the Endwalk, jfc).

I think I cried a bit at the end of Journey just because it was a powerful experience, but I had an amazing partner in that game who stayed with me through the whole thing.

an alpaca wool fursuit sounds like it would melt the wearer.

You either die dignified and impoverished, unrecognized in your own lifetime, or you live long enough to afford a custom alpaca fursuit.

I saw the pieces of the wall outside of Berlin where they were moved just after the wall came down. I was in high school.

Christ.

Oh, I also get a pill pocket (which doesn’t work on its own) and tear it in half to make a tasty coating for the pill then down the throat it goes. I think most pills are chalky and get stuck in the back of their mouth or at the top of their throat and they cough them back up.