Toth

My Skyrim Re-Run has caused me to become extremely old-school yesterday after I happened to see Elder Scrolls Online in a sale and wanted to prevent myself from getting weak. Who needs that to see all of Tamriel? So... I installed Elder Scrolls 1: Arena again. This time I managed to find my way out of the first dungeon! And... well, in a lot of ways it feels like a test version of Daggerfall. Very similar graphics and mechanics, though with a plain old XP system instead of the later "get better as you keep using it" system. There is also no guilds to join, no horses, houses or boats to own and the equipment seems to be rather limited as well with just one light and medium armor type and then a couple of scaling heavy ones. I started as a Spellsword who can only wear medium armor and I was able to buy the whole chain armor set at the first town with my money earned in the first dungeon. However fortunately Spellsword feels so far really powerful as I can easily heal mid-combat and use a variety of convenience spells while at the same time still deal with enemies in close combat. Quests so far also are... suspiciously boring. So you can ask in town for general rumors that lead you to two-stage dungeon crawl quests to find unique artifacts (apparently the predecessor to the daedric quests, some of the items even are the same) and then you can ask for work rumors which either leads you to guys in taverns who give you simple delivery quests in town or (somewhat more rarely) the local lord in the palace who will... give you a simple delivery quest to another town in the province. That's it, so far. It's all fetch quests everywhere. According to the wiki you get more complex object retrieval quests in dungeons later on, but so far... it doesn't look like it. I must admit, after a couple hours and being level 7 I feel a little bored and need to keep going with the main quest. Hopefully I'm strong enough for that one as I'm currently just dicking around in Elsweyr after an artifact quest for a powerful ring led me there. The progression in Daggerfall just felt far more rewarding, I must say. I also have to say that I find the enemy spawning system annoying. In Daggerfall all enemies load in as you enter a dungeon and then you can clear it out, all simple. In Arena the Dungeon is always empty as you enter and random enemies constantly spawn into your vicinity. 90 % of the time into your back, because screw you! Or right in front of you just when you close a menu and wanted to continue on. This makes resting and healing up an unnecessary gamble all the time and you never know whether the game gets a kick out of dropping two wizards fireballing you to death into your back directly after an encounter that left you with three hitpoints.

Damn. I think this is the first time ever I saw Valentine's day expressed this publicly. Was constantly seeing girls clutching flowers they received today (and guys frantically lining up at flower shops). Had something happened to make it worse? As far as I picked stuff up, it sounds like some guys showed up with flowers this morning at school and this caused a cascading reaction where scores of other guys felt forced to rush the closest flower shop during break time as to not get their asses kicked.

That's extremely odd. Makes it sound the cowards want to skip the F entirely and not show it onscreen to show their own G instead. But why bother? If they want to avoid acknowledging STO's F or pay for the royalties for the use of the E, it would have been entirely within their rights to do just their own take on the F.

They... did! There is an animated Suicide Squad movie taking place in the game universe! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman:_Assault_on_Arkham

Good thing Russia donated 30 new vehicles to them recently:

Oh no, I'm not a fan of too fast RTS either. Well... I guess I'll see. The first game was massive in content and had pretty decent mechanics, but was unfortunately hampered by the utterly braindead AI that the developers tried to gloss over through absurd waves of enemy attacks. Some of the later campaigns were disgustingly difficult with the enemies rushing you from every direction the second you start setting up a camp.

That said, I must really get back to the Spellforce main series. I played the first one ages ago when it appeared on a game magazine disc, only got into a fraction of the campaign, but it was a really fun combination of RPG and basebuilding strategy game. Right now my own gaming these months is... erratic, to say the least. Some time ago I had a Star Wars fever and ended up finishing EA's Battlefront 2 even after I had some frustrations about endlessly respawning enemies and figuring out that blindly charging across the map often seems to be the encouraged playstyle. I then played Squadrons, which I also got as an Epic Games freebie... and while it has very fun gameplay, I must admit I also quite suck at it and it also very regularly crashes on me, which made the campaign more of a nuisance to play through. Otherwise I kept on going with Dead by Daylight, despite it making me quite miserable and the endless streak of defeats with my game group never stopping. Last week I ended up snapping at them after three games in a row where all my attempts at coordinating us were utterly ignored and that was the last straw where I decided to... start with a break and eventually uninstall it, given that the last reason I still stuck to it is in danger of being turned on its head. I wanted to play something with others, but I don't want to fight with them about it. And sadly, DbD seems to be the only game they are interested in, with my attempts at getting them to try Vermintide as something actually cooperative failing. God, I just hate PvP so much... I then had some fun playing Project Zomboid, but frustratingly... I never have enough time to seriously go ham on it and it's much too intense and punishing for briefly jumping in, with a too high likelihood of getting my carefully raised character killed. So I wanted to play something relaxing. Tried out Project Hospital. Was quite astonished at how brief the campaign is, but it's a very fun hospital management game that somehow feels closer to Dr. House MD than Theme Hospital, especially when you hire cheap incompetent doctors who keep asking you to diagnose for them... which is just a brilliant way of somehow rewarding being a miser with more gameplay! XD Then I somehow ended up installing Skyrim again. I... did play it quite a lot when it came out, but never got around to the Civil War quests or the addons and am not even sure whether I ever bothered finishing the main quest. But I recently got the anniversary edition in a sale and somehow it's... just far too perfect fit of mindless fun after a long stressful work day.

Talking of gross things: So that's what you get when you visit my city. This morning I was on my way to school in the freezing cold. Since it is next to a central station there are lots of hotels around and a group of Spanish girls came towards me, talking to each other in hushed, half-giggling, half-shocked voices, while glancing back where there was at this point some not really discernible chaos going on behind them and then looking at me with bemused grimaces. Yeah, so when I looked where they were looking, there was some drugged up dude without pants standing there, yelling at the sky: "YOU FUCKING CUNTS! YOU ARE ALL COWARDS! YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, YOU CUNTS!" and went on and on and on like this. Must have had a fantastic impression of my city...

Meanwhile I'm somehow morbidly curious how the Leopards will fare in this conflict. Turkey had a horrible performance with theirs in their dumb offensive against the Kurds, but then again, they used them unsupported similarly like the Russian tanks did in the early stages of the Ukraine war, so the pictures of flaming wrecks were to be expected. I heard Canada had a good performance with them... but then again, all those missions had been in asymmetrical warfare. I'm crossing my fingers Ukraine will be able to use them to maximum effect just like they did with all the other deliveries, rolling back the front lines and forcing Russia back to the table. Also have to suddenly think of War Thunder. There the Leopards are depicted as agile, hard-hitting, but fragile. Of course they are also depicted as unable to penetrate the far superior armor of Russian miracle tanks ('cause Russian developers of course)...

Mmh. I guess it depends on what you consider flirting... but then, any kind of expression of interest can I think be seen as unwelcome when the person receiving it doesn't consider the one doing the flirting attractive enough. Therefore to me it makes sense that flirting is 'testing the waters' so to speak, to check whether it is reciprocated or get confirmation whether you are a bother. Not that I have any experience, but it sounded believable enough to me. Yes, yes, it's on my list until after I get a civil servant status. I'm afraid until then I can't afford to have anything in my records. Her own workshop is about foam armor, which is not in any way needed for the stuff I have in mind, so I'm gonna give that train of thought a pass, thanks. I should also reinforce that I was just using this as a reference point for my anxieties. It's not like I have any serious interest in a person I have just had a few exchanges with and for all I know is likely taken anyway. It's just that I felt scummy when noticing I considered trying out this place more because a woman asked as opposed to a guy. That really shouldn't be my concern when I just wanted to network.

And the best part was that aforementioned solar industry was developing in former GDR territory, which had been economically wrecked by reunification and was in severe need of prestige projects signalling a process of catching up. And then it all died and the frustration of having gotten the short end of the stick kept festering, making these states even more vulnerable to right-wing agitation resulting in scary election results there.

I don't know... in another forum I once read that all "flirting" is careful overstepping of boundaries and it did sound like a reasonable take. And as someone who is constantly defensive, has very strong boundaries and has no other reference point for the boundaries of others, I... really don't think I can ever do that. I now have continued that conversation and kept open about looking into that meetup. The next is in February, so there is still time. I guess in that time I need to work through my feelings of not belonging, because I got scolded by the other guy who is doing a workshop there when I was saying my amateurish cosplay attempts are trash in comparison to the effort I'm seeing everyone else put into it. Well that and getting out of my current slump of self-loathing, for that matter.

I think I stumbled across a good example of the thought processes in my mind that are causing probably needless hesitation. A while ago I signed up on a cosplay Discord, hoping to be able to network some more as I started that hobby last year, so hoping maybe I don't have to go to conventions all alone. The channel is divided into states and unfortunately most of the active users are from the south and form a fairly tight-knit group with lots of in-jokes that leave me startled. I only had one conversation with one admin from my city right at the beginning, but then nothing. That changed last week when a new user signed up and introduced herself. I took the opportunity to react celebratory. The admin and another guy then joined and admitted that they live just outside... just like myself I admitted to them (affordable housing is a myth after all), then the new user said she doesn't know whether inside or outside and we then had a little exchange where I tried to wring the answer out of her, but in the end gave up and left it a mystery. We had a bit more of an exchange about the hobby and how to keep creativity up, but then she asked into the group whether we come to what appears to be a monthly geek meetup at a youth center with workshops, card games and D&D. Well... technically D&D is another thing on my list of things I still want to try, but looking through the pictures on their home page, the core audience seems to be small children. Mostly. Probably. Which is why I'm thinking I would feel drastically out of place. However I then briefly caught myself contemplating still at least checking it out... even though I'm so unsure of the location... and that is because she, as a presumably attractive woman (at least judging by her heavily edited professional photos) of my age invited as she's doing a workshop there. So I actually caught myself considering to check it out to see what she is like, which in return made this whole consideration feel pathetic, creepy and foolish and I have because of that shame completely retreated from the thread and couldn't make myself form any kind of reply in the last three days, not even to the other conversation.

And Germany announced to finally send some Leopards immediately afterwards: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-send-leopard-2-tanks-to-ukraine-reports/a-64503898 So... was all that PR disaster really necessary? In another forum I have seen some users regard that as some kind of 5D-chess maneuver to make the US commit more than they initially considered, but I remain skeptical. It seems to be a lucky stroke where everyone tumbles through the same door after much of pushing.

Meanwhile the German defense ministry doesn't know how many working tanks we have.

You somehow have a whole lot more trust into my government knowing what it is doing than I have... Of course I would love for that to be more than wishful thinking, but I tend to think that the simplest explanation for Scholz dragging his heels at every point is usually the correct one when it comes to people. And here I think Scholz isn't playing any 4D games, but is instead trying to soothe the fears of the vast swathes of his party that are very Russia-friendly since the Schröder days and who keep blaring into his ears that Germany shouldn't get involved and anger our big old friend Russia. On the other hand I severely doubt that ruining the opportunity for Germany to take a position of leadership and instead tank public perception makes sense in any kind of game plan, much less one that is in cooperation with a Polish government that has been a pain in the ass to Germany and the EU for years now and gladly leverages this opportunity for some easy reelection points. Also I'm thinking of stuff like how Merkel's strategic advisor, some general Vad, keeps running from media outlet to media outlet, blaring on how Russia will definitely win this war in the long run and therefore support to Ukraine won't matter and that opinions like that, which, granted, had been much more prominent in the early days of the war, might still linger around in the circles of Scholz.

There are no family meetings anymore, I don't think I ever had to shake hands with colleagues and I can't remember ever getting introduced to someone. I suppose shaking hands I do if I have to, but it falls into the "uneasy obligation" category as well.

Mmh... I... really don't know how much of my touch aversiveness is what I was born with or a result of bad experiences and that's why I feel like thinking about it on my own without having a person I would want to figure things out with is pointless. Right now my limit is 'everything'. Kisses to the cheek I only ever received from old aunts at family gatherings when I was little and found it always a horribly intrusive chore I was forced to endure. Similarly hugs. The only thing I know them from is being forced to give one to my mother every year to her birthday, with her always being extremely upset if I let show my discomfort. Maybe because of this... Well, I remember a stupid scene during university when I was hanging out with a tightly-knit group I got acquainted with as a social ghost like usual and then the girlfriend of one of them came to the table, hugging each one as a greeting and then looked at me contemplating whether she should give me one as well. I insisted that there was no need, which... she somehow interpreted as an attack and complained whether I find her icky and insisted on giving it at one point. When I said goodbye she insisted on now doing it and forced it upon me and I recoiled so badly I dropped my bag. Similarly with the Chinese student non-date. She also offered a hug when greeting and when saying goodbye and both times I instinctively shrunk back and refused, stating Corona concerns to save face. However when analyzing my thought process during both instances, I was overwhelmed with the thought that I didn't want either of them to feel forced to touch me out of obligation and that's why I denied it, even though both times the response was confusion. So basically I need to learn what you are saying that everyone is different and make myself belief that they wouldn't only touch me out of societal pressure. Because right now, my mind tells me nobody would want to do that otherwise and I'm making them more comfortable by refusing them to act out of obligation. Meanwhile the only memory of touching hands was during trust exercises in theater class where I found other people's hands sticky and sweaty and was always glad when it was over and I could rub the ickiness away.

... eh, I don't think that's possible or a good idea to aim for. From my posts you should have also gathered that I'm not in any way outgoing or capable of making any hearts flutter and have also severe reservations about touching people. So committing to a relationship to me is in a large part about finding someone I could trust and who would be willing to put up with me, because putting up with me I imagine is for its own sake not at all fun in any way. What you decry as 'lazy' I actually find extremely laudable.

... well, during my own school time, the reactions when classmates met my parents were more along "With his parents looking so good, why does he look like he does?" Which was a sentence I did indeed hear several times. So I think I'm in a vaguely worse position actually. Not to mention that during university time I developed a lot of anxiety hiding the fact that my mother lives with me and dodging every private discussion about home situations... while at the same time my mother had a bad case of "I WANT GRANDKIDS, NOW!" syndrome and interrogated me about their looks and my intentions whenever I let slip I talked with a female fellow student, so I was forced to relay stories as gender neutrally as possible because I found it extremely annoying in the face of me having no intentions and everyone already being in relationships anyway. So... very cool of you to keep out of his life that much! Yeah, I guess so. Though with online dating being the only environment to meet people who are actually looking for partners and wouldn't regard me as an intrusive creep for doing the same and that world being ALL about getting judged and easily dismissed, it's just... well, that way of dating that I shouldn't even try in order to preserve what little self-worth I have. Thanks for the honesty... mmh... well, maybe in 30 years I can try or so...

Hey, I wasn't only moaning my age, but my age combined with my lack of normal people experiences!^^ I know it's probably just my anxiety fueled by fear of how people judge me, but another forum with a "Lovesickness" thread years ago I stumbled across women writing how they would never want to be someone's first relationship for how that would put unreasonable pressure on them. And in another forum with a dating thread similar to this one was someone I got acquainted with mentioning how one of her worst dates ever was with a guy mentioning he still lives with his parents. In all instances it was about people younger than me. Or let's take a scene from my one non-date with the bored Chinese Master student two years ago that I recapped here. After she said she wasn't searching for any kind of relationship and I said I didn't expect anything else from how she was writing and would love to gain a friend, she seemed taken aback and asked me "out of curiosity" about my previous dating history. When I said truthfully that I had none and then semi-truthfully explained I was too focused on studying, she seemed even more startled and her first reflex was to say that... I "should date other girls before coming back to be friends". Which... I suspect meant that she was worried I was only taking that "revelation" of her not being interested so well because I had secret hopes or something. So from all that stuff I have taken awayf that the older I get, the more unattractive my cluelessness becomes and will just be perceived as one giant glowing red flag for anyone who doesn't want to deal with the hassle that comes with me. Concluding: Yeah, you are right, I should focus on getting out more and not care about that sort of relationships. I was just venting my frustration about how I can't make that voice in my head shut up that I'm somehow missing out on something that 'everyone' else regards as natural to life.

Ah fuck, I'm irredeemable. After my disheartening attempt at online dating almost two years ago I decided for myself that I should give up on romantic love and instead should focus my attention on improving my social skills, get new hobbies and make friends. I... did try that, though still failed utterly at the making friends part and still struggled really hard to have conversations with my coworkers without feeling extremely awkward... still, baby steps I guess. However now that my 30th birthday is only a couple of months away, I once again have these nagging intrusive thoughts that I'm running out of time and that I should try it again, but... ugh... I just know it's pointless and would just further deteriorate my self-esteem and I have enough stress as it is with work and my procrastination that seems to have gotten significantly worse since Corona. But once again, who in their right mind would date a guy this old who has no experience whatsoever in regards to relationships, hates touching and is quite probably asexual and is only available in a package with his mother? Ugh... why can't I just forget about all this societal pressure that relationships somehow are part of life? I suck at this part of life, I don't know how any of that is supposed to work, this shit is too hard...

... yes? Why that question?

I fear they are astonishingly deep in that incel rabbit hole already. I yesterday had another lesson in that class and a different boy for some reason wanted to blab about the Matrix again and again while another wanted to show me Tiktok videos about Tate's innocence. After that stuff last week and now having read that Tate also seem to incessantly reference the Matrix in his bullshit, I kind of wonder whether that is connected. What is it even with Incels and a movie made by two trans women? I also noted that, since I hadn't taught the whole class in quite some time after some schedule changes, that there have been some peculiar changes in the seat arrangement. A few months ago boys and girls were still more or less sitting together, with a slight left-right-divide. Today I noticed ALL the girls sitting in the front row, then two rows of nothing and then a large blob of those conspiracy sprouting boys in the back. This after there had been a massive number of kids dropping out entirely (8 of 28), with some stating they don't feel comfortable in the class. Externals had already done a workshop with them a couple of weeks ago, but after this experience, I must say I'm feeling things have only gotten more insidious. When before this class was mostly prominent for constantly pulling weird pranks on teachers, a large chunk of the boys now have really taken a liking to sprouting conspiracy theories and incel stuff with lines blurring between them just wanting to be provoking or actually believing some of it. (during the Andrew Tate discussion last week, one boy kept interjecting with the question whether I have a girlfriend, apparently feeling I need to confirm my manliness in order to have an opinion on him... meanwhile another interjected with Flat Earth stuff to derail it entirely when the boy harping on the media depiction of Tate kept stuttering in circles unable to form any coherent argument about why "the media" would purposely lie about the events that happened... so this guy was just kind of trolling. Colleagues however confirmed that they also observed that they seem to hero-worship men with girls and money in the most troubling way possible... I must admit I also couldn't help but respond by making fun of them when two boys tried to get some [relatively tame] pictures of dolled up women as desktop backgrounds during computer science - I just had to ask them whether we are on a construction site with them needing pin-ups to feel manly. Got at least a few laughs out of them before changing them back to Fortnite...)

I... never said anything about defeat, I'm only wary about this release of equipment which before had been completely held back might indicate another offensive. That the Russian army is essentially beaten and they are only refusing to accept that reality to stroke Putin's fragile ego is pretty much fact, but facts don't seem to bother him anymore. I will anxiously follow those "exercises" with Belarus next week and then we will see whether they will make another push from the north even though it would be the stupidest move imaginable. I just... wouldn't put it past the Russians...