Stalinwolf

I haven't reached that one yet, but I'm close. I really enjoyed A Colour Out of Space, The Dunwich Horror, Rats in the Walls, The Temple, Call of Cthulhu, and the very beginning of The Festival, when he describes wandering along the seaside road toward the distant twinkling lights of a wintery village. The opening pages of that book are beautiful.

Do you recall which Lovecraft story?

Your fear of disappearing resonates the worst for me in regards to my daughter (4) doing so. It makes me want to vomit to think of her just gone, at the mercy of someone or something else, with no way to know where she is or how to save her. It rips my heart in half that so many parents throughout time have lived this exact nightmare and never received answers. I find some relief that I live in a very safe part of the world where child abductions rarely (if ever) happen, but there are a number of other ways your little girl can just vanish.

I wouldn't say this perpetually weighs on my conscience, but every time I remember it can happen, it really fucks with my head.

I've never cared much about TikTok but old Vine memes make me wish I had been more involved with that platform. If Loops ends up being cool, it might be neat to help pioneer something for once.

A lot of customers at work mistake me for one of my staff. We look nothing alike. Different hair color, different facial hair, drastically different glasses and demeanor. But once or twice per week someone tries to continue some conversation we never had.

I could understand if they had spoken to him once and saw me in there a week later.. But these are regulars. I guess glasses + hair growing from face goes a long way.

We used to prepare and eat these back home. They're a bit like eggplant. My dad would sometimes hop out of the car on his commute home from work and grab these off the side of the road.

Not hearing the kind stranger line for over a year now has been wonderful.

Lambda lambda lambda and...?

Omego-Muuuuuu....

I'm not surprised. Immigrating to Canada for seven years and then visiting home was very eye opening.

I believe WoW was the tipping point for this. Never had these experiences with older games like Dark Age of Camelot.

I had just mentioned this in a similar post, but Discord culture has really killed multi-player games for me. Especially guilds in MMORPGs. I remember joining one before 2010 felt like this very regal thing. They were these sacred orders of gentlemen with cool names like "The Iron Wolves", "The Order of Light", or "The Knights Templar". Upon initiation you were inducted into a fellowship and granted access to private forums to stay in touch and keep up with the guild. You'd get to know the more productive members who would forge you equipment and look after you. You would gather in great halls beneath the severed head of the world dragon and discuss official guild business. Somewhere along the way that magic just died.

Now the guilds are all edgy and gamey, like "HATE", "FURY", "APEX", "FIRST IN", and "METHOD". Initiation involves two paths. You either remain in relative obscurity in the fringes of the guild, never really growing much or forging meaningful relationships, or you take the other fork; walking closely with the sweaty, most egotistical edge-lords of the guild who don't actually care about or support you, and spread toxicity throughout the ranks. Both paths tend to require you to live in Discord, partaking in constant banter with a group of perpetually online sigma males. It's like plugging yourself in directly to the guild hive-mind and permanently altering the game's atmosphere. You're just playing "ENVY" now, or whatever your dumb guild is called. I've joined guilds that want you to have Discord on your phone so you are connected even while offline. That's fucking nuts.

Anyway, that garbage doesn't exist with single-player games. I can read dialogue at my own pace, toggle walk through the entire village to take in the sights/sounds and slow down the pacing, and truly absorb every last bit of that wonderfully thick atmosphere. Single-player games are so much deeper for me.

Take a heavily modded playthrough of Skyrim for example, with camping/tenting mods. Dusk begins to fall and you hear the call of a northern flicker in the forest around you. Better make camp. You find a clear spot outside or town and pitch a tent, raise a tanning rack, and build a fire. Now it's getting dark. You walk to the river's edge to fill your waterskin and return with a large salmon to cook over the fire. Now the stars are out. The score is swelling to inspiring highs that move your soul. The aurora dances above you in brilliant colors. You sit beside the fire and thumb through your inventory, deciding which lore book to read first. After some time you study a spell or record your thoughts into your journal, then quell your fire and sleep.

That's my shit right there. That's a single-player game.

Wow! That's like a sixth of two billion!