At twilight's end, the shadow's crossed / a new world birthed, the elder lost. Yet on the morn we wake to find / that mem'ry left so far behind. To deafened ears we ask, unseen / "Which is life and which the dream?"
Thank you very much. It's been a good day at least, and even though I know I don't shoot the breeze around here as much as I maybe could, it's a pleasure having you all around.
_________________
"Enjoy your screams, Sarpadia - they will soon be muffled beneath snow and ice."
I'm a (self) published author now! You can find my books on Amazon in Paperback or ebook! The Accursed, a standalone young adult fantasy adventure. Witch Hunters, book one of a young adult Scifi-fantasy trilogy.
I think this week I've been doing better than normal to be honest. I haven't been here because I've been tuning in to Awesome Games Done Quick, which I'm sure has been helping a lot for keeping my spirits up. I even tuned in when I could while at work, which isn't something I normally do but I'm slowly getting less serious about it all (partially just kind of "done with" work in general, partially recognizing that I'm not "being a bad boy" by not being focused on work 100% of the time). I've got another friend on Discord whom I was talking to about the marathon while it was on, too, so I've even been keeping in touch with people! As an aside, there were some amazing runs and showcases this event, like a Stepmania mod which melted my brain to watch.
Yesterday I also went to see the new Mamoru Hosada movie Belle with my friends, so that was cool. It didn't quite end up being the movie I expected, though it played out a lot like a "Beauty and the Beast, BUT ANIME!!" -- which isn't to say it was bad, but I feel like saying too much about it would be spoilers. I'm still kind of processing it to be honest.
Also, happy belated birthday, Tevish. Sorry I wasn't around on the day of to give you good cheer then.
Yeah, Belle was a lot messier script than I'd anticipated, but the sound design and visuals were top notch. Actually a little vain since there seemed to be a lot of shots that amounted to "look what we can do" rather than particularly serving the story or scene. But eh. I went to see it with a friend and his wife I haven't seen in a few months. Their daughter was in surgery in Boston for a while, so it's been about three months since I've seen them. Unfortunately my other friend cancelled since his brother was positive for COVID-19, but what'll you do, right?
_________________
At twilight's end, the shadow's crossed / a new world birthed, the elder lost. Yet on the morn we wake to find / that mem'ry left so far behind. To deafened ears we ask, unseen / "Which is life and which the dream?"
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
Unfortunately my other friend cancelled since his brother was positive for COVID-19, but what'll you do, right?
Speaking of positive for Covid...
I'm curious how you're feeling Hopefully it's extremely mild and you'll be over it in no time
_________________
At twilight's end, the shadow's crossed / a new world birthed, the elder lost. Yet on the morn we wake to find / that mem'ry left so far behind. To deafened ears we ask, unseen / "Which is life and which the dream?"
Ooh that's hard to hear. If it helps my life's been the pits lately.
Naw, I've never been a "misery loves company" kind of person. I'd rather take the lumps for all of us, if possible. Hopefully things turn around for you pretty soon here.
I'm curious how you're feeling Hopefully it's extremely mild and you'll be over it in no time
All things considered, I think it's gone fairly well. My symptoms were never all that severe, apart from the first couple of nights when I had a fever that peaked at around 100.4 (my normal hovers around 97.6, for context). I've had a sore throat and a mild cough the whole time, but for the most part, it's just been the cabin fever of being cooped up and not going to work, which is exceptionally weird for me. I'm pretty sure I took more days off for being sick this week than I have the entire rest of my employment here, because I didn't have a choice.
But my isolation ended yesterday, so I'm back at it today. So yeah, all things considered, it could have been much worse.
Yeah, Belle was a lot messier script than I'd anticipated, but the sound design and visuals were top notch. Actually a little vain since there seemed to be a lot of shots that amounted to "look what we can do" rather than particularly serving the story or scene. But eh.
I don't know how to judge a "messy script" but I was definitely surprised a lot by what it *didn't* touch on or address.
all the Belle talk in a spoiler to save space
Like, I basically expected Belle to be a new-age Perfect Blue with a B-plot of the mystery of this "beast" character. I probably should have expected Hosada to be almost positive about the modern internet given how Summer Wars went (which was basically the first Digimon movie done the way he wanted originally), but given how much talk there has been lately with things like "the Metaverse", I almost think that this movie is poorly timed because it's so non-critical of the "world of U". I'd almost say Belle has a child-like-dystopian-future thing going much like in My Little Pony's early days when they were all "the trees grow, the clouds move, and the animals care for themselves ALL ON THEIR OWN", because it has little elements sprinkled throughout that point to a much more crapsack world than is actually presented.
To give an example from like 10 minutes into the movie, the conspiracy theorist friend who sets up Bell's* celebrity-idol-account mentions that (paraphrasing) "I set up all the money to go to charities so it can't be tracked back to you", but then barely touched on again. Doxxing is kind of a plot point as everyone's trying to figure out who this "beast" character is, but "being revealed" is only ever about not being who you pretend to be in U and not about the actual dangers of being doxxed.
*side-note for those who haven't seen the movie: that's not a typo. The character's name is Bell, not Belle, and that's commented on in-universe. The original Japanese title translates to "The Beast and the Freckled Princess" and I am 90% sure the English title "Belle" was chosen very specifically to reference Beauty and the Beast because there are straight rip-off scenes from Beauty and the Beast in Belle.
--------
Well, my mom is back from her holiday stay with my brother and sister-in-law so I'm feeling a bit worse again. Also just not been quite as up without AGDQ to lift my spirits. One of my Switch controllers broke so now I'm going to have to get another new one. Instead I ended up finally getting Inscryption for the infinite mode that was added and have been kind of blazing through the challenges.
For those that don't know, Inscryption is by the same guy that made Pony Island and is a rogue-like card game. As with all games by the developer, the atmosphere is very heavy and creepy and filled with satanic references, and the game quickly spirals outward beyond the scope you are initially presented with, going very meta with its story. It's a very solid card game, though, and since it got popular enough the developer has been working on an infinite game mode that makes it a true rogue-like (rather than the rogue-lite it was in the base game). It's currently in beta but fully functional and should be released in full by next month.
Joined: Sep 25, 2013 Posts: 14140 Location: Kamloops, BC
Identity: Male
I played Inscryption. It's pretty awesome.
Rant about things sucking
I've worked for the same company for 10 years now. I've been a supervisor for years now and consider the owner a personal friend. Since about the time of the first COvid outbreak I noticed one of my co workers was becoming increasingly aggressive. I brought up this coworker's aggressive and unproductive behavior with my boss several times. Month after month I was told to "just cut her some slack", even as I repeatedly told my boss that the plan was backfiring; this coworker was only becoming less efficient and more hostile as I was being effectively told to sign off on her harassment. After a number of months I confided in a coworker that my problem co worker had become "the biggest source of stress in my life". The problem coworker overheard me and reported me to the boss. Despite ignoring my repeated complaints about her, my harasser's complaint drove my boss to take immediate action. My boss had us both sit down for a 3 way talk, but before that, my boss talked to me 1 on 1 and she made it clear that she believes the harassment was all in my mind. That kind of shook me and really undermined my confidence in my position going into the talk. Possibly as a result, my harasser got off 100% scot-free. A few months later my harasser took another job but I find myself unable to get over this. I am extremely bitter about the whole situation and I worry it's soured my view on work for good. I respect my boss a lot but I suspect she's unwilling to acknowledge the darker side of people's natures. Twice before, my boss failed to do anything about highly problematic employees. Both other times there were complications that might have excused her. This time she was warned multiple times, and not only failed to address the problem, but forbid me as a supervisor from addressing it. There's a decent chance I could have nipped the whole thing in the bud if I just applied the existing rules firmly. Certainly if I had my boss' backing it could have been dealt with a year ago. I feel betrayed. I just needed to rant and this is probably the only place I can do so. Thaks for acknowledging me forum fam.
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
I've worked for the same company for 10 years now. I've been a supervisor for years now and consider the owner a personal friend. Since about the time of the first COvid outbreak I noticed one of my co workers was becoming increasingly aggressive. I brought up this coworker's aggressive and unproductive behavior with my boss several times. Month after month I was told to "just cut her some slack", even as I repeatedly told my boss that the plan was backfiring; this coworker was only becoming less efficient and more hostile as I was being effectively told to sign off on her harassment. After a number of months I confided in a coworker that my problem co worker had become "the biggest source of stress in my life". The problem coworker overheard me and reported me to the boss. Despite ignoring my repeated complaints about her, my harasser's complaint drove my boss to take immediate action. My boss had us both sit down for a 3 way talk, but before that, my boss talked to me 1 on 1 and she made it clear that she believes the harassment was all in my mind. That kind of shook me and really undermined my confidence in my position going into the talk. Possibly as a result, my harasser got off 100% scot-free. A few months later my harasser took another job but I find myself unable to get over this. I am extremely bitter about the whole situation and I worry it's soured my view on work for good. I respect my boss a lot but I suspect she's unwilling to acknowledge the darker side of people's natures. Twice before, my boss failed to do anything about highly problematic employees. Both other times there were complications that might have excused her. This time she was warned multiple times, and not only failed to address the problem, but forbid me as a supervisor from addressing it. There's a decent chance I could have nipped the whole thing in the bud if I just applied the existing rules firmly. Certainly if I had my boss' backing it could have been dealt with a year ago. I feel betrayed. I just needed to rant and this is probably the only place I can do so. Thaks for acknowledging me forum fam.
Wow, that is a **** situation, TP. I'm really sorry that you had to go through that. Not that this will help or is even really advice, but your boss sounds to me, at least from that description, to be a classic non-confrontational sort. Feeling closer to you personally, she's more willing to "confront" you or deal with you than with others, particularly those who are more likely to bring that conflict. That's a terrible position for you to find yourself in, because it is by definition not fair. I'm really glad that your particular stressor is no longer directly involved, but I definitely get that the sourness lingers.
Like I said, I don't really have any good advice or anything, but I know you weren't asking for any. I'm glad you were able to get this out, and hopefully it won't eat away at you too badly going forward. Some people are just poor managers, I think.
Joined: Sep 25, 2013 Posts: 14140 Location: Kamloops, BC
Identity: Male
Thanks Raven. I was looking more for somebody to confide in than any real solution. I can honestly say that the worst part about the pandemic for me was the effect it seemed to have on this co-worker. I suppose that's something I should have mentioned in the original post; this person work there for over a year without any serious problems. It's probably a big part of why first I, and then my boss let things escalate so far. I think the root cause may have been social anxiety triggered by the pandemic. I'm not sure if that's how social anxiety works, but I've gone through a bunch of possibilities and its the only theory that holds up.
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
Joined: Sep 25, 2013 Posts: 14140 Location: Kamloops, BC
Identity: Male
hONESTLY, JUST TELLING SOMEBODY HAS ALREADY MADE ME FEEL A LOT BETTER ABOUT I.... oh I hate capslock. I'm already feeling a bit better is what I was saying.
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
hONESTLY, JUST TELLING SOMEBODY HAS ALREADY MADE ME FEEL A LOT BETTER ABOUT I.... oh I hate capslock. I'm already feeling a bit better is what I was saying.
Joined: Sep 25, 2013 Posts: 14140 Location: Kamloops, BC
Identity: Male
Not all good news though.
bad news
I've been picking up weird vibes from the new guy. He's only been here about a month and he's expressing rather particular opinions about how he wants things done. Last week I didn't sweep off the table before loading up more items to sort. He insisted I should have cleaned it off first and said "come on man you've been here 10 years, you should know this stuff" and when I agreed he had a point said, " mean that's just how teamwork works". Certainly there's a point where you would want to clean up your work area before you get it messy again, but that is not a well-defined point and I can't really see myself having gotten angry over it. In another incident last week he was annoyed that I left him to finish off an order by himself he expressed displeasure in a way that said to me he saw it as a clear cut issue; I tried to get across the idea that some people prefer it that way by telling him that the former problem employee had actually screamed at me for doing things the way he was asking to do them he said he "didn't appreciate being compared to that person". Today he said he could "you told me before that somebody screamed at you... I can kind of understand why somebody might do that". I'm getting a little bit worried here. On the plus side I talked to some other people at work and they seem to agree that this is all pretty crazy. Perhaps this won't go as badly as last time.
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
There are moments of increasing frequency lately that I feel my isolation growing more profound, not because I lack proximity to others, but because the touch stones I take as granted grow ever more obscure to those around me. People do not understand the things I accept as normal and in most ways, through no fault of their own. Every year, the youth are ever mired in a culture I find shockingly more vapid, though it was no more than that with which I grew up. But they have an unwillingness to look backwards I don't feel I shared as a youth. Even still, that would be the way of the world, and yet... It only makes it more keenly felt that I was not understood in my time either, that though some of my peers knew of the foundations upon which I was built, they did not know many, and have grown to understand me less even further removed from those halcyon days of yore. And even still, I could bear that if not for the pressures levied against me now, that were not present in those remembered days. It is not the burden of growing older that weighs me down, but the ever growing gulf of not being understood, to be unable to share my thoughts and feelings with another, even those I consider close, because their blank stares and brittle smiles speak a cacophony of my growing loneliness....
TL;DR: none of my friends still like power rangers and I never grew up.
_________________
At twilight's end, the shadow's crossed / a new world birthed, the elder lost. Yet on the morn we wake to find / that mem'ry left so far behind. To deafened ears we ask, unseen / "Which is life and which the dream?"
Joined: Sep 25, 2013 Posts: 14140 Location: Kamloops, BC
Identity: Male
There's a pervasive notion in our culture that nerds are driven to works of fantasy by the ostracization of their peers. Supposedly, people flee from harsh social realities into nerdish fantasy. I propose that this is precisely backwards. Every child knows that dragons are cool. As we grow, people shun this basic truth to curry favor among their peers. Nerds are those people who declined to make the trade. Some would say that this makes us childish, but I think we're simply being authentic.
*"To YMTC it up" means to design cards that have value mostly from a design perspective. i.e. you would put them in a case under glass in your living room and visitors could remark upon the wonderful design principles, with nobody ever worring if the cards are annoying/pointless/confusing in actual play
Of course, that's certainly part of it. I'm sure I scarcely need to actually put this quote in, as I find it unlikely you've not encountered it, but all the same, it is poignant:
Spoiler
Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
Beyond that, though, is that while many of my interests run towards the childish, they also, and always have, run towards the obscure just as much. As a consequence, even encountering someone that might have that shared experience could be rare, and even rarer still to have many of those interests overlap, sadly.
It all adds up to make me feel very alone in a crowded room, and even when I try to share some of those hallmarks of my youth, or even my present, there is a substantial reticence in people to give up a fraction of their time to an unknown thing purely on the recommendation of another who desperately wants to connect. And understandably, that reticence turns to intransigence if pushed. I'm equally guilty of that, the more one insists, the more I choose not purely from spite.
_________________
At twilight's end, the shadow's crossed / a new world birthed, the elder lost. Yet on the morn we wake to find / that mem'ry left so far behind. To deafened ears we ask, unseen / "Which is life and which the dream?"
Joined: Sep 22, 2013 Posts: 5699 Location: Inside my own head
Identity: Human
@TPman: Man, that sounds awful. For someone like me it would be a nightmare; I've already had thoughts of "what if it's just me?" and I've basically never even had confrontations like that. I'm glad you seem to have other "normal" people to talk to and I hope everything turns out okay for you in the end.
@Barinellos: I would have busted out the quote if you didn't -- I think there's a grain of truth that most people like us retreat maybe a little too much into our "childish" games and shows, but it's become more and more apparent over the last few years that it's because our entire generation, worldwide, was dealt a **** hand and we're coping the only way we know how. Like, I was just talking recently with a friend of mine over how simply the way we grew up with the whole "climate change" thing hanging over our heads like a Sword of Damocles undoubtedly affected us more than anything our parents had to live through in their childhoods. I think collectively, we're all gravitating toward the safe and comforting moreso now than ever, whatever that means for each of us, and less interested in taking a risk toward the unknown. That's without touching on the way new media has affected us all. For what it's worth, I have a friend I hang out with who is still big into Power Rangers and will rattle off lore bits whenever he has the chance.
--------
So the news came out this week that there's going to be a Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer anime and for once in my life I am excited about a new anime. Or at least the first time in the last decade or so. I was turned on to Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer AKA Hoshi No Samidare by a (of all things) music video using the manga and some sort of Arthur remix, and it quickly became one of my favorite (out of the few I've actually read) manga, but it was also old and unlikely to ever be picked up to be animated, so to hear it actually will be is great news for me.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot post attachments in this forum