It has it's roots in actual letter writing, as in "I hope this letter finds you well".

Not going to lie, this video is pretty shit.

It was already a rough start but the claim that people didn't say things like "the graphics look incredible" was so ridiculous I had to pause it, especially while simultaneously showing clips from around the 7th gen. We absolutely praised games for their graphics back then (and much earlier), not just in terms of technological advancement over other titles but as things that were visually pleasing even outside of being a game. 7th Gen is actually notable for how aggressive the marketing around graphics became.

We did not, in fact, talk mostly about the stories of games. For a long time video game writing was widely considered unimportant. There were exceptions of course, though this thinking was so wide spread that I think younger gamers might be surprised to find that even RPG stories were often secondary - at best - to the game play for a long time. Story became a much larger feature once voice acting came to prominence in the mid-00s, but it would take awhile to catch on.

The author then states that Assassin's Creed 2 and Black Flag had memorable stories. What? I played both at the time, and had enjoyed both, but their stories were entirely forgettable. The writing of the series was even kind of a punch line at the time. You know the thing people really talked about with Assassin's Creed 2? How cool it was to parkour through such a beautiful recreation of renaissance Italy.

The stuff about how there were no microtransactions back then is nonsense as well. The period he keeps going back to for old games was the rise of this bullshit. Oblivion's horse armor was already years earlier.

The vibe of this video is just an awkward teenager lamenting he wasn't born in his imagined version of an earlier time.

The disappointing thing is, I do actually prefer older games. I think there is a wealth of interesting discussion about the things that were done differently. This video just isn't it.

I was a big 'offend everyone' dweeb, with a side serving of "free speech".

I grew up in structure where etiquette and taboo were abused and hated them. Like the chilidish little maximalist I was, I applied that hatred to everything. Slurs were particularly hilarious, I thought people were ridiculous with how they tip toe around them and delighted in their discomfort when I'd just come out and say it. They were just words, why be scared of them?

In my mind, I clearly didn't hold any bigoted views. Particularly with homophobic ones - I'm queer, I've been beaten for it, I've been beaten counter protesting "actual" bigots. I'd ask critics "what have you done?", before calling them a fa-

Well, you get the idea.

At the end, I was also a sort of community figure. An extremely minor one in the grand scheme of things, but I still had attracted a small audience. This included a large number of younger men who were impressionable. The thing is, they attract their own audience too.

I noticed an increasingly amount of what I considered, back then, to be "actual" bigoted stuff being said. Usually from older men trying to sway those younger men. I saw them buzzing around my peers too, encouraging them to say things for them, dropping bait in chats and pulling aside the younger male audience members to try to recruit them, more or less.

I tried a couple of times to call it out, but they'd fall back on "it's just a joke". They'd point to all the bullshit I'd said over the years and the obvious hypocrisy. I'd given up any credibility I had and bred an environment where these people could thrive. It also became clear that plenty of my audience had taken me seriously, and were imitating what they thought I was doing.

It made me reevaluate things. I'd alienated people, good people, by acting in this way. I'd hurt people I never had any intention of hurting with my callous disregard for their feelings. I'd convinced people to be worse in ways I'd fought against, destroying far more progress than I'd ever made.

So I stepped away from the spotlight and stopped. As a side note, working it out of your vocabulary is a truly frustrating progress. I'd trained myself to use slurs to mean the most basic things. Getting sober was more difficult but at least it was quicker. It took literal years of diligence to kill the impulse to call someone who is being annoying a fa-

Anyway.

Afterwards, a surprising number of the people who distanced themselves from me reached out. More than I deserved. I hadn't told anyone I'd had a revelation, or made some grand apology to try and absolve myself of the sin or whatever. It is telling about how bad it was that people took notice just from it's absence. Many of those shared stories of how it'd hurt them.

The one that broke my heart the most was a transwoman who I had stood up for when others tried to push her out. She had been lonely, and I'd given her just enough acceptance for her to get trapped in a toxic community. My bigotry she rationalized away, and it desensitized her just enough to try to fit in with the broader community around me. She internalized the horrific transphobia that was being said. I think it goes without saying what that did to her mental health and the places it lead. I had caused deep harm to not only someone I liked, who had looked up to me, but someone I had tried to help.

It's not just jokes, the intention doesn't change that.

It's actually way funnier. I CTRL+F'd the thread to see what the reactions would be.

I actually didn't get any feminist themes outside of the main characters being female.

What do you see as the feminist and indigenous power of this story? Is it just because the leads were women?

This is the most unadulterated feminist rage I've seen on screen for a long time. Time and time again it exposes misogynistic violence and punishes it. Yet even when it's this unsubtle, all the average reddit nerd can see as feminist is "it has women in it".

We joke about how "political" to these people means "women or people of colour exist", but it is not just a facade. It's literally all these nerds can comprehend.

My favourite bit on drow related lore is from 2E. Non-drow followers of Eilistraee would do black face and travel the world as part of an effort to show drow could be peaceful. There is something hilarious to me about how well intentioned the author seems to be but completely oblivious to what it looks like.

I had this ex who was deep into D&D and really keen on similar movies to The Princess Bride from the same era, but hadn't seen it. I suggested it for a movie night while we were sharing movies that were a big part of our childhood and got "it looks stupid, I'm not watching that". Unironically might have been the straw that broke the back of that relationship, I ended things not long after.

It's a little petty, but I feel stupidest about my hearing. Cranked my music too loud and didn't wear ear protection ever when I was younger. The tinnitus gets so bad sometimes it makes me suicidal.

My complaint is I wish they spent less time fighting monsters and more chilling in random villages to learn a spell that bakes bread.

Sort of off topic, but "apes together strong" has been hilariously useful to me over the years. The number of gamer brained "lone wolves" I've had to get onboard and working together is bizarrely high. Apes together strong always hits. Instant enthusiasm and team cohesion as they make fucking monkey noises together and start to roll with any set backs they have instead of squabbling amongst each other.

My neighbour gave me a TV. To be precise, he rushed it to me unannounced at the exact moment I was leaving to go to a party. I accepted as quickly as I could in an effort to still make my train.

It turns out it's about 15 years old and I have no use for it. He's a lovely man but I intend to post it as free to a good home then drop it at an e-recycling station if nobody is interested.

I doubt I'd notice.

i would love you even if you were the size of a whale

Please for the love of god do not say this lmao