Gwardinen

Why do you hate me, Yufster? Got together with some friends last night, partly as distraction, partly as a kind of group therapy session. Turns out a couple of my other friends were having relationship troubles so it made sense. However, it actually turns out one of them is having huge, pregnancy-related life-changing problems! It's funny how life can put your own issues into perspective while still not making you feel better about them at all. Anyway, as always I appreciate the thoughts and advice. As I said to Speedy recently, I'm not traditionally a particularly open person and it's been really great to have the Thumbs' support and relative lack of judgement in this time.

Cannot get over the face from Thompson's gif.

Once, many moons ago, I deleted Windows 3.something in order to make room for Frontier: Elite II. I'm not saying there weren't times it would have been useful to have an operating system beyond DOS, but damn Frontier: Elite II was a good game. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Thanks for the advice, guys. I'm still not totally sure what I'm going to do, but I'm going to at least try to bear in mind the opinions of people who are totally divorced from the situation. I know that distance often makes things clearer, and I've been frustrated by friends' inability to see what's clear to me while inside a situation before now. I was wondering whether trying distraction tactics on myself was a good idea. One part of me says I need to bull through this, figure it out NOW and then put something into action, but I do wonder if you're all right. Maybe right now I need to back off this, even in my own head, and just let the back of my brain do a little processing. Perhaps PiratePoo is right, decisions made while in the grip of sadness may well not be the most trustworthy.

Spoke to the girl. Didn't go well. She didn't say it in these words but my basic take away is that she fears upsetting her current relationship in any way more than she wants to be with me. It's a harsh way to put it but it seems like that's what it boils down to. I don't know what to do now. I'll have to figure out if there's a lesser situation that I can handle, or whether I'll have to try to figure out a way to be just friends, or if this means I need to not see her at all. I hate all of the above at this moment in time, so I wish I could stop thinking about them. At least for a while.

Urgh. I hated the text as I was writing it but it was weird trying to figure out what to say. I don't know. I feel like trying to contact her again in any way today would be a mistake, so I'm just going to have to live with that for now. Miscommunication is horrible, which is why I want to speak to her face to face anyway. Being misunderstood in this situation is one of my top fears. It's happened on multiple occasions, in response to me saying I love her, while within intimate distance... so I'm pretty sure I haven't misinterpreted, but it might not have been particularly meaningful. She may be someone who says it easily, and she's probably someone who doesn't consider loving two people in what way simultaneously a problem.

I don't want to monopolise this thread for too much longer, but I do appreciate the advice I've heard so far. I'm going to add a little bit more information in case anyone still has any thoughts - you can PM me with them if you don't think they'd benefit from peer review here. In the intervening time between posting and reading the more recent posts here (around three hours ago - ie. before I saw Sal screaming ABORT), I sent her a text asking if she'd spoken to him yet, whether she was all right and, though I didn't want to put pressure on her or her time, if she could let me know whether there's a time in the next few days when we would be able to speak face to face. She hasn't yet responded. I'm trying not to worry about what that might mean, if anything. My "plan" for what I'm going to say if and when I see her is changing every time I think about it, but the current one is mostly to just ask questions. Ask how she feels at the moment, what she thinks about us, what she wants from us and her other relationship at the moment, and long term. I don't know if I'll really get any answers, but I feel like the first step to any meaningful decisions has to be understanding her mindset and desires. After that... I suppose I'll have to trust my instincts to try to figure out whether to talk more about my feelings for her. For reference, I have actually already told her I love her, a number of times. She's even said it back, a number of times. The situation isn't even as simple as some sort of grand revelation... the only things I'm sure of are that I don't want to be without her, but the current situation makes me unhappy. Maybe there's a middle ground that could work for everyone but I honestly don't know what that would be. I'm trying to be reasonable, but I don't know how long I should realistically just accept unhappiness before at least trying to find another solution.

Thanks for the thoughts so far. I'm still interested if others want to chime in. Perhaps crowdsourcing my relationships will work out for me. I know you've been going through some stuff where you've had to go hands off the hard way recently, Speedy, so thanks, I may be right there with you soon. Kroms's desire to learn to row put a smile on my face, as well. This. All the fucking time. Trying not to talk to her today has been awful. I really need to have a full sit down talk with her soon, ask her exactly how she feels and thinks, short term and long, about him and me and everything. I also get the feeling, from what you guys have said and one of my few friends I could turn to who doesn't know the couple agrees, that I need to put across my feelings for her in really, really plain terms. As Dan said, I hate the idea of an ultimatum, but at the very least I need to tell her how I feel and how much this situation is bothering me. God, I hate leaving them alone right now. One way or another this situation is going sideways, and I hate not even trying to do anything about it. I'm not even sure when it would be a good move to contact her to ask about times we could talk soon. tl;dr Relationship drama leads to a lot of unproductive overthinking.

There are a bunch of character visual quality enhancement mods made by a guy called Xenius - this is the collected mod. If you only want some parts of it, all the ones that are integrated should be listed on that page. I thoroughly recommend at least getting the Detailed Faces & No More Blocky Faces segments.

Did you hear that, guys? VTOL jetbike confirmed. So... I've avoided doing this here so far, but let's talk about an honest to god squishy emotional problem of mine. From what I've seen, you guys tend to give semi-sensible advice, and I can't really talk to anyone else about the situation because it mostly involves people they know. I have two friends, a guy and a girl. They're in a relationship. It's an open relationship. As a consequence of that, the guy has another girl... thing. Good word to use? Meanwhile, the girl has another guy... thing. The guything is me. Yeah. I know. It was always going to be a bad idea. Here's the problem, though; I've been semi-in-love with her for at least seven years, on and off. I couldn't resist. This situation has been going on for a number of months now, with varying degrees of comfort on my end. I definitely haven't been happy with it for a while, but as I'm friends with both of them it's hard to begrudge them their relationship, and it's not like I didn't know what the deal was. Beyond that, my last major relationship left me a bit adrift and other things in my life haven't been going great so I've somewhat unsure about whether I could actually successfully pursue a proper full-time relationship even if it was available. However, recently it's come to a bit of a boiling point for me. Last time I saw the girl, it was tense and awkward and I was surly and when she left I was just acting like kind of an idiot. I called her the next day and tried to repair some damage, but the moral of the story is that shit is definitely complicated between us and my feelings have been coming to a head - I was on the verge of calling off seeing her today to try to figure out my own shit. Meanwhile, the girl discovers that the guy has been lying to her about the other girlthing. The one rule of the open relationship was honesty, but he had arranged a somewhat expensive trip for him and the girlthing without telling the girl, and had apparently spent over £1000 on her recently, despite constantly complaining to the girl of money troubles and borrowing from her. As you can imagine, drama begins. According to her, they nearly break up then and there. So she sends me a text saying she shouldn't come today because shit is going down and she needs to focus on her relationship, etc. I hardcore panic upon reading it, and realise within the 13 seconds between getting the text and her picking up the phone as I called her that I'm fairly solidly in love with her and definitely want to be with her. What that actually means in terms of the situation, I have no idea. On the phone things seem a little less like I'm being dropped like a bad habit, but basically she's still taking today with the guy to try to work things out. So, here I sit, while the girl I love tries to fix her relationship with a guy who is theoretically my friend. I honestly don't know what to do going forward, but I'm trying to give her the space to figure things out for now. I hate not doing anything, because there's a roiling cloud of worry and not a small amount of anger in my chest and gut, but it seems like anything I did right now would be likely to make things worse. Sorry for the wall of text, I still feel like I've had to be pretty sparse with information. Any thoughts appreciated - even if they're "get the fuck out of that shit NOW, noob!"

That is vaguely possible. I had a hard time understanding him at points, but I thought it was because my German is a tad rusty and I was trying to interpret for people at the same time (we had subtitles off). However, my family and I are from Munich, which was west Germany...

Ending a turn with a taunt seems to just mean that your guys do a little dance at the end of your turn. You start with ten uses of it and can buy more. Possibly the weirdest freemium addon I've ever seen.

I watched 13 Assassins, though (perhaps sadly) it was an English dubbed version. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would from the first 10 minutes - I very nearly switched it off as I got this exposition dump about things that weren't yet in any way meaningful and traded heavily on customs of a Japanese era that I remain on the knife edge of oversaturated with. The story gets better, but is always very, very blatant and totally suffused with clichés. It's really a film that benefits much more from how it's done than what it's actually about, in my opinion. There were a lot of little touches that made it feel right, and it definitely gives the impression of a classic samurai tale throughout. Everything from the wardrobe to the sets to the cinematography and choreography totally sold it to me as a traditional Japanese heroic samurai film. So I guess it comes down to whether that interests you or not.

Are these the droids you're looking for?* *Yes, I know, but I mix chocolate and vanilla ice cream too.

That reminds me, has anyone seen 13 Assassins? Does it seem worthwhile?

Yeah, I thoroughly second that piece of advice from Kroms. We as humans have a tendency to place undue importance on the immediate. Do as Kroms says and try to step back and put it in as much context of time and your life as you're able.

I didn't realise that was the same guy. I considered but passed over Valhalla Rising when it was first released due to a tepid critical reception and my own oversensitivity to dodgy cash-ins on Norse culture and mythology. Perhaps I'll actually give it a fair shake and see what it really is.

Thanks for the advice, subbes. I've bookmarked that site and will have a browse at my leisure. As for the massage therapist, I probably can't afford one, but I'll see if I can figure out that "self massage" myself if you know what I mean.

I actually went in with the opposite expectation. I had heard people say "the start of the film is a car chase but that's not really the film" so I thought it was going to be a totally non-action film. The fact that it did end up being kind of an action film at times later on took me by surprise and I think that made it feel even better. I'm way too used to crazy violence and explosions and permanent adrenaline rushes now, settling in and feeling calm and curious before suddenly being hit with violent crises and physical emergencies actually made the action make an impact for once. I almost feel bad for spoiling the possibility of that experience for another just by saying all that, but I avoided it in my first post about the film and after a certain point you have to accept that discussing anything creates preconceptions, even if you avoid explicit content references.

Yeah, those criticisms all sound fair, Tanu, they're just not relevant to me and to a number of other people because we'd given up on Sonic for quite a while. I haven't played the vast majority of the levels in any form before, and those I have were several console generations back. It's sad to hear that the game isn't really doing anything new, and that doesn't exactly fill me with hope for the franchise's future, but at least this game has been mostly worthwhile for those of us who have been hoping for a decent reunion with the crazy blue hedgehog after a long absence.

I could do with a laugh. Pass me some daft anecdotes. Also, just as an update for those who responded to my RSI post, it is gradually getting better. I'm limiting my time at the computer, and particularly not typing a whole lot (apart from here, of course, can't go without the Thumbs). I've also been using an ibuprofen gel 2-3 times a day and it's now reduced from hurting all the time to just hurting when I use my hands.

Man, wouldn't it be great if I hadn't read Hitchhiker's? I'd love to introduce a grown person to that book without them having any preconceptions. I should probably get back to reading Bone, but currently I'm looking for something that's honest-to-god text that I can read on my phone at night that will make me feel better about life before I sleep. I may give Speedy's Wodehouse recommendation a try.

Anyone have any recommendations for humorous books and/or writers? I could do with my mood lifting right now. Of course I'll probably have given up and gone to bed before anyone replies to this, but I'll probably be ill-tempered in the morning too, so... hooray?

I'm having a few issues with the moral choices too, though not in exactly the same way. My favoured way of making a fully rounded and complex character at this point would be to pick light and dark as I feel they're appropriate to my own character's sensibilities and the situation at hand. However, there are mechanical methods to discourage you from doing so. Unlike Mass Effect, there are not two independent morality sliders in SWTOR. Dark side points are simply negative points, they move you lower on the scale while light side points move you higher. For this reason they only possible outcome of not sticking to one side or the other is that you will end up more in the middle than you would otherwise. This is a problem because there are equipment options that are only available after having entered a particular tier of alignment. For example there are weapons that can only be equipped if you are "Dark I" or "Light I". All being nuanced does is make you weaker. It may actually fit the Star Wars lore for that to be true, but it doesn't make for a very compelling morality system in a roleplaying game.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that has more to do with the latter part (your not giving a crap about them) than the former (their attempts to stop pirating). It took me all of one Google search to ascertain that actually, all recent Ubisoft games are totally piratable (is that a word?). This doesn't surprise me at all, and I often use the complete ineffectiveness of the vast majority of DRM systems as yet another reason for them being a bad idea. It actually makes them even more annoying, because Ubisoft is only making things more difficult for its paying customers with its DRM. The ease of pirating is almost identical. Diablo... there are more reasons for the online only thing, but that doesn't necessarily make them better reasons. I'm trying to limit the amount of typing I do at the moment so I won't go into it right now, but you can consider me in the "conflicted" camp regarding that stuff.