Glad you're feeling better today, Luna, and hopefully things are moving in the right direction for you!

I've got a friend in town staying with me for a few days, so I probably won't be around as much this week, but I'm sure I'll stop in from time to time.

I'd never thought about it that way but I think I may have been a sufferer.

I feel like I've been kinda quiet lately.
That's partly just because of the mundane day to day, but I think it's more the fact that a huge Xmas order I placed has been in postal limbo for... Like a month and my frustration had stolen my freaking words.

Bright side, I heard from Orcish.

Understandable! This period has been a nightmare for couriers where I live (some companies have lagged tremendously due to strikes) and I hear in the US there have been... additional complications for the postal system.


Oh?

I've been haranguing him every ten weeks or so and he finally emailed back to wish me a merry Xmas. He exchanges the usual pleasantries but otherwise didn't say much about how his year went and I'm disinclined to pry overmuch.

A new friend of mine linked me to this article (part 1 of 3) that's helpful in explaining it, if you haven't already looked into it. Long story short, I suffer from a sense of compulsion that I must always be moral even in thought, and I hadn't realized how much that has shaped me over the years.

Helpfully, one of those articles also outlines ERP exercises (Exposure Response-Prevention) which I've been trying out myself a bit especially in regards to my reaction to certain sexual material, trying to logic myself out of emotional states which I logicked myself into to begin with.

You know, I hadn't given it much initial thought, and really it's not exactly comparable, but anyone else find it a little odd that my snow world doesn't have a sun and then Kaldheim ends up without one either?

Not that it would bother me near so bad as how much Kaya stomps all over the ground that Cara covered first. That bothers me muuuuuch more.

Yeah, Kaya IS a sorta superhero version (as in, doesn't require items and rituals but goes off on sheer innate power) of Cara, and the similar sound of her name is a kinda weird coincidence... can't tell much about kaldheim and Aerik's homeplane either, aside from his backstory I know little about either.

They also have planeswalker twins now, and a planeswalker pharaoh, technically...

It is highly likely that Wizards is aware of us, and therefore possible that someone or some multiple people there have read our stuff, and it is therefore conceivable that they've adopted some of out ideas. It is equally possible that these are cases of parallel evolution of ideas.

The real clue will be when they do a wild west plane with a crystal ceiling, and a red-eyed bandit queen...

The semester hasn't even started yet, and already I'm stressed.

It's going to be a long semester.

anything we can do to help buddy?

Seconded.

Naw, it's just teaching during a pandemic is a significant challenge. It's no worse than others are going through, though.

Thanks, though!

Sorry I missed the love-in, but I'm here for you, too if you need me

Happy birthday, Tevish! I hope your day is better than the times leading up to it!

* * *


Thanks, Luna! Love ya, buddy.

Yeah sorry I haven't been active as much on here; in part due to other things going on in my life and making new friends in another group and in part just because I haven't done much that I feel is... pertinent? to mention around these parts. Like, I'm starting to look into Roman mythology and culture, but that's slow going anyway and I'm not really actively building or writing anything like I had been.

Oh, but I did just pick up Hades, the game from Supergiant (makers of Bastion, Transistor, and Pyre), after learning that they had mandatory breaks and no crunch. A long time ago, I had initially been against it because I don't really like the early access process, and then further against it when it went on Epic for reasons that are kind of stupid now, but it does have Supergiant's signature style all over it.

Not that I've put much time into it yet, but I kind of don't like how it's a "gamer's game" without a good tutorial of any kind. It's not like the opening gave me any difficulty, but I was waiting for it to show me how to play and never got anything. All the voice-acted quips from the large cast is great, of course, and I'm only just starting to dig into the story, but I haven't been "wowed" yet.

Does anyone here know the etymology of the slang “stan”? I understand the meaning but don’t understand how it originated.

The Eminem song of the same name. Which makes it really weird when people choose to self-describe that way, since the Stan of the song commits murder-suicide when he doesn't get the attention and validation he wants from Eminem.

So is Stan a slang term now?
If it's not and you want to know the etymology all I know is it's short for "Stanley".

On a similar note: Chad- compliment or insult?
I grew up in a world where it was an insult, but I keep hearing whippersnappers use it as a compliment. I think it's gone from meaning "a guy who thinks he's all that" to "a guy who's all that". I suspect 4chan involvment.

Stan is a portmanteau of "stalker fan".

As for Chad... I believe it depends on the individual using it. If you call someone a Chad, then it's complimentary now? However, if you use it to refer to yourself, it's interpreted by others and being a pathetic cry for attention.