thebardingreen

I'm making fun of it. I am also a libertarian socialist or something.

I don't care what the science says! I don't care about the suffering of others! This offends my capitalist sensibilities that I have never questioned and I'm not about to start thinking too hard about it now just because some hippy libs want to sneak communism in the back door!

I have zero respect for this world view and hope we are able to simply bulldoze it with unstoppable momentum.

This is exactly how I feel. I can't relax into my work (and my work quality is impacted) when I have to use Windows.

WTF red states?

I can only assume they WANT this to get challenged so it goes to the Supreme Court because our insane SCOTUS might uphold it.

Anymore, Wine can run anything I care to run.

You mean exactly where you'd expect to find one?

When I go to some reddit posts on Mobile now (like from a Google search, that's the only way I end up at reddit anymore), it tells me "this content is unmoderated" and gives me a choice to either navigate away or install the Reddit app. Fuck that noise.

The news is really interesting exobiology science, but the headline is terrible.

These experiences are hardly the norm. I've been active in the gaming and poly world for almost 30 years, so there's a lot of time to accumulate stupid stories. Most of the time, most people in my life are stable, sane and cool. Sometimes you get that problem person who's a problem for everyone and more often you get that person who's fine 95% of the time and then The Thing happens.

Poly is hard. It's work. Lots of people try it and it doesn't work for them. Every relationship is different, and goes through stages.

Meanwhile, gaming seems like a casual pass time, but it's tapping into people's deepest imaginations and fantasies. It can bring buried psychological stuff, good and bad, to the surface in unexpected ways.

People aren't always at their best. Take that guy from my story who set his life on fire in under a month, using gaming to do it. He was a stable, reliable good friend to me for like six years... then one day he gets into what to him is clearly the most intense and meaningful relationship of his life to that point, but to the girl he's with it's an afterthought. She doesn't have bad intentions, she's just literally DATING FUCKING EVERYONE... 5 months later my friend breaks. He's totally head over heels for this girl who has no time for him and is getting distant because he's getting pushy. He starts being a dick in game, because it PROBABLY feels safer than being a dick out of game. He's so hurt and angry on the inside and he's repressing all of that, trying to keep his social life normal and it just blows out in the behaviour of his characters.

Part of why I love gaming is getting to know people over time by watching the kinds of characters they play and the kinds of stories they want to tell, and watching them discover things about themselves through game (I have a story about a REALLY sweet, kind young woman who decided to play the Power of Abuse in a Nobilis game... shit got DARK).

Hanging with poly people who are dating all the new people all the time always brings in a diverse crowd of personalities. Gaming is something they can all participate in together and bond over. It can cause situations, both awesome and fucked up.

"Poly drama derails campaign" is a headline that I could have run plenty of times in a news paper about my life.

• Dude brings new girlfriend to GURPS Battletech game. Girlfriend makes lecherous female mechanic who attempts to fuck every male PC. That's all the roleplaying she's doing and it's kinda uncomfortable and also SUPER disruptive to the actual game. Dude then freaks out at girlfriend semipublicly for "hitting on all his friends" (I'm not sure that's what she was doing but wtf). Dude's wife then freaks out at dude for making a scene. Game had run almost a year, lasted two more sessions. Dude's marriage lasts about three more months.

• Guy dates girl who's supposed to be his dom, but she's polysaturated and is dating 8 people. She's also going to school and working 20 hours a week. They only see each other at D&D pirate game, because she has zero time. Guy is clearly pissed that girl doesn't spend enough time with him but just sits on it. Then starts back stabbing and undermining her character at every turn, up to and including setting fire to a ship that she's on. When the party confronts his character he tries to initiate party combat, causing DM to call a time out and try to talk things out. Ends with guy raging about how girl has no time for him, how she's supposed to be his dom, but isn't in charge of anything, finally storms out and slams door. THAT'S NOT THE END! Guy then proceeds to sabotage 3 OTHER GAMING GROUPS AND LOSE LONG TERM FRIENDS (including me, he was one of the groomsmen at my wedding, but I haven't talked to him in years). In another D&D game, he plays a racist elf that tries to murder all the humans in his party, then quits when they ask him out of game to stop. In a Nobilis game he starts a war with another PC, betrays the party at the climax of our big fight with the bad guy and tries to join the Excrucian side before storming out of the game IRL. In a Star Trek mercinaries game I'm running, he's playing a Tellerite engineer who gets into an in character argument with another player who's an exFederation special forces guy and pulls a plasma torch on him (wizard pulls dagger on fighter and goes hand to hand wtf?). Other player says "Stand down or I will phaser you on high power." Tellerite goes berserk, exFed phasers him, guy screams "Fuck you I don't like you, I don't want to be your friend anymore and I don't want to play with you ever again!" and storms out of game. Guy had been exFed's apparently very friendly roommate for two years previously. Don't know what happened to him, he set his life on fire and completely disappeared.

It's not clear from my narrative... this all happened over the course of like... 3 weeks.

• Girl dating two guys insists on one vagina policy. Is extremely jealous and controlling to both of them for years. They both stick with her FOR YEARS for some reason... anyway, running Star Wars game, turns out guy1 is cheating on girl with other girl they both work with... other girl thinks things are fine because "they're poly" so guy is lying to her. Almost don't blame him (but please, break up the fuck up with toxic people instead of cheating on them). Anyway, Star Wars game is just over. Also, years later guy2 ends up cheating on her with a girl who thinks it's fine because they're poly. My opinion: guy2 did wrong, but girl has some responsibility for situation too... which she DOES NOT ACKNOWLEDGE. Just gender reverse the scenario and think about what we all think of a jealous controlling man with a one penis policy...I'm still good friends with guy2, don't talk to girl anymore.

• Super ADHD bubbly girl who I'm dating is also dating a really chill, cool guy with massively low self esteem who is married to CRAZY WOMAN who diagnoses everyone around her with really extreme mental disorders they totally don't have and then tries to "help" them. Me is running Changling game with everyone in it, CRAZY WOMAN starts figuring out what mental disorders all the players have and then talking to me about it like I have some responsibility to act. When I'm luke warm to this, she tells me her husband is a sociopath who would be a serial killer if she wasn't there to stop him and that my girlfriend who is also her metamore has Narcissistic Personality Disorder and she's going to turn on me and she wants husband to break up with her before she turns on him. I lose interest in game and tell my players I don't have time to keep running it. Fortunately, husband becomes exhusband who is totally not a sociopath, and girlfriend does NOT have NPD.