#I just. feel so lost and stuck and doomed and it won't fucking get better! it won't! my life got better ONE TIME and it has been pure hell

[running-in-the-dark]

well I can already tell this is gonna be a bad night

today has just been fucking weird and hard. I'm in a bad mood. everything feels bad. (probably not helped by me not taking the new antidepressant last night so I wouldn't sleep all day)

the plan was for my friend to come over this weekend to help me pack. she did that last time and it helped a lot. (my husband could help, obviously, but he's in charge of other things that also need to get done. plus he's very bad at putting things into boxes.)

but the rail strike is still going on so it's likely that she won't be able to get here (or get back in time). so now that's suddenly a lot more stressful and the one thing that I thought would make it go okay is gone.

and I also have to like. at least reread my thesis a few times or whatever to study for the oral exam on Friday. which will make me want to die. because it is bad. so. that will be bad. and the thought of being asked questions about that piece of garbage for 30 fucking minutes is so horrifying that I genuinely do not know if I will be able to get through it without taking my Lorazepam beforehand (which I know is a horrible idea, and my psychiatrist told me twice that it's a bad idea, and I know it would just make me unbelievably stupid. but holy shit that is the scariest thing I can imagine.)

and of course instead of doing anything useful I'm now just sitting here feeling like shit (like last night, only worse)

[jaythelay]

Notes: Dems, you're doing it. You're Trying. Keep Trying. This is good.

I'm seeing people rework old comics to advertise everything I said should be, Not because of me, but because They Tried.

That was it. You can try too! Try! Because it's better to start a fire than sit on your hands for warmth. You don't need to be a genius playing 4D chess, sometimes the obvious isn't so obvious til it's done. Do it. Now.

I'm seeing people in droves shitting all over the handcrafted for Biden talking points, sometimes by redirecting them back at Dump, like him being the oldest running candidate now.

The bad points for Khamala likely won't stick as hard in 4 months as Biden's 40 years has for him. If she fucked up, you shouldn't defend it, you should demand better so that Dem politicians do too, you won't retain voters with stubborn apathy towards dem cruelty.

This way onlookers don't see "dead end/genociden biden" again. That crumpled the party, and the remaining Blue Fanboy's pro-genocide messaging pushed many away from dems entirely. It pushed me into discussing politics far more publically ffs. Damn certain I'm blocked by most at this point for not riden with biden's genocide. Feel free to steal anything I write about politics and spread it in your own or better words.

Main thing to focus on is Hype.

Dump lost the popular vote by 7mil last time. He's bleeding votes but not support. We need to make messaging that demotivates R's into believing even voting won't make up the difference while motivating people to vote dem for progress. Anti-Dump is losing steam, ya need hope and progress.

"Keep things the way Dump left them" or "Dump makes it worse" was Biden/BlueFanboy Messaging. Where we were and still are heading if the hype is killed again. Khamala represents potential change from that, you cannot let Blue Fanboys take over again, you cannot get stuck defending genocide while fear mongering another's possible.

"sorry but the other side is Blank and no matter what I'm votin-"

This isn't for you. You're chronically online expecting that to spread to normal people. It does, but it gets telephoned into garbage before it even has the chance of being in your intended format.

"I'd vote for a corpse-" I'm sure dems are that out of options, I really am, but that messaging is murder for hype. You aren't voting blue for XYZ belief, you're doing it to punish republicans who will never change and allowing Dems to worsen because they haven't reached R levels yet. You're doing it out of a belief the other side is worse, that's unfortunately debatable to the average joe. You need them to go "Oh shit they're legalizing weed?" or "Oh shit they're fighting medical costs?" not "They both approve of genocide but a Dem genocide has rainbows!"

It's genuinely the most hype-killer phrase for a political party yet. "I'd vote for Blank over" Ya aren't even positive about the party you're voting for. You're negative towards both but distinctly one more than another. There's nothing to bring in votes there my dude. Just means politics is the show it really is anymore to them.

If you can't be positive about your party, then, for onlookers, be positive in changing that with Dems in charge but not R's. That there's convicing that can be done for Dems and Never, Ever R's.

I cannot stress enough, if all ya'll do is "Not Biden" Khamala, you've doomed us to a 2028 R presidency. She needs to be Khamala, much like Bernie is Bernie and AOC is AOC. "Not Dump" was all Biden had ya'll. Please. Don't "Not Dump" Khamala, don't let that be all she is while in office.

I don't mean "to you" I mean for her. She cannot sit on her hands doing the obviously wrong thing when the time matters. She cannot "save christmas" by allowing trains to crash and spill chemicals, potentially if not actually killing people like you and me.

She has to retract the 40 headless babies bullshit, correct it firmly, and acknowledge the genocide. They faked Aid Trucks into humanitarian tent reserves and shot a little toddler girl over 130 fucking times. If she's pro-genocide, she loses the anti-genocide crowd permanently and I will actively be holding her accountable for it as normal people fucking should. Hold. Them. Accountable. Or Lose.

Being Pro-Genocide is not being Team Blue or BNMW, it's being Pro-Genocide.

Otherwise, ya'll got it going. The problem is that the second criticism comes in ya'll turtle and punch like bitches. Time to acknowledge and work against bullshit and focus entirely on progress. We cannot sit on our hands expecting dem politicians to do their job like we did with Obama and later Biden.

None of us should have to debate against Dump solely by discussing Dump. We should have a good candidate that's obviously a Good Choice, not "the better poison".

Biden's "accomplishments" did not affect my day to day positively. I still can't afford medicine and food. I still will never own a home. Prices keep skyrocketing. Yes that gets worse under Dump- What do you not understand here??? You cannot motivate people with "Not Dump" you motivate them with Felt Actions. Biden had None other than being anti-union, a Felt Action of negativity. He undid some of Dump's shit and recorrected the ship away from the iceberg, and did some politics, the barest of all minimums. Can medicine other than insulin not cost thousands eventually?

Khamala represents that to me, and only in 2 months time will I have the chance to really say if Dems dropped the ball or not. She has to be Khamala. She has to be anti-genocide. She has to be a Good Choice.

"Not Dump" didn't work in 2016, didn't work in 2020 that well honestly, and it failed miserably in 2024 already before the elections.

What ya'll are seeing and doing? Keep it going.

Forever.

Never. Fucking. Stop.

Maybe the Dem party can be saved from it's apathetic, company controlled self at that rate. Y'know, even though those same controllers bullied Biden out through wealth power. Y'know maybe I shouldn't be hopeful for anything actually. I doubt most dems really care to fix the bigger problems, just abortion.

There's still only 10 dems in office with any courage or ethics. Yeah we didn't change shit switching to Khamala. We just killed R messaging and our own near decade of advertising. But at least Biden kept his Interim promise, just, uh, 4 months from the fucking election when we have no other alternative but His Choice. Blegh. It's a two-way street.

Dems will do messaging until Dem politicians essentially tell them it was a massive waste of time by doing The Obviously Wrong Thing. Then Dems stop and all that's left is the chronically online Blue Fanboy having a debate you're glad you've never heard of before. Such as "Which genocide is better, blue or red"

Imagine thinking being anti-genocide is a bad thing when there's not one good bit of PR for Israel since Oct 7th. We pay their free healthcare folks. They faked aid trucks into a refugee camp and shot a little toddler girl 130+ times. Dems can afford to be anti-genocide, I believe. And so can their politicians, for certain.

Otherwise, still third party til I see some action by her. So far she's just been a magnet of bad PR for dems all around that had to be hidden from the public for years. That's genuinely so bad I dunno what to tell ya. I wouldn't be confident in her, but if I was a Dem I wouldn't have much choice in having to publically back her.

Up to her how this goes. Will she guarantee an R for 2028 or will she keep them at bay til 2032. Not hard to say logically, but it is emotionally. No confidence. But at least Dems are trying again, just...hold them the fuck accountable? Jesus christ you treat criticism as worse for prospects than the actions they take, like an abuse victim.

[8bitsupervillain]

8bit Reviews: Pathfinder Kingmaker

The first five or six hours I was having a grand time with it. Just loving it from top to bottom, sure the combat was a bit clunky, but aside from that I was having fun. Then I unlocked the kingdom management section of the game and my opinion dropped sharply. The lie that you can set kingdom management to auto-resolve itself is a massive lie because if you leave this bastard alone for too long you will get slapped with an inevitable failure message and have to redo potential HOURS of stuff just to get back to before you doomed yourself. Nevertheless I stuck with it, maybe it'll get better, I thought as I was very thoroughly not having a good time. Twenty hours passed, then thirty, at forty I decided enough's enough I'm done with Pathfinder. So it went for a couple of months I played other better games I became mesmerized and spellbound by other stories that respected my time.

But eventually the bastard thought wormed its way into my head to give it another shot why not? You had time away, surely now's the time it'll be fun! You tried and bounced off some other CRPGs, so who knows, maybe Kingmaker has that secret something to get you back in. Fifty hours passed, sixty, and once again I vowed I would never return to Kingmaker, I uninstalled it from my laptop and desktop. I even went so far as to delete the saves off of my laptop (where I'd been primarily playing Pathfinder). September rolls around, I fall deeply, madly in love with Baldur's Gate III, but eventually I have to go back to work, and my laptop isn't quite the youth it used to be, and storage space is at a premium. Back to Kingmaker, I guess. Reinstalling it I find that because I never deleted my saves off of my desktop the cloud storage for GOG Galaxy kept my saves up to date.

What fun, now I won't have to redo a whole bunch of stuff or start from the beginning. Has the combat always been this aggravating? Be fair, you might just be unfairly comparing it to Baldur's Gate III, the Pathfinder guys did this at least five years ago, and had a fraction of the budget. Comparing the combat to Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny was similarly disastrous because I recall feeling the combat in those was a lot smoother than Kingmaker. Then, disaster strikes, sixty-nine hours into my save file the game declares that I've lost, and I cannot continue the game. Sixty-nine fucking hours down the tubes, nearly three actual days. Literal months of time wasted for this? FOR THIS?! No, NO! Fuck that! Fuck this! I'm done! I'M ABSOLUTELY DONE. FUCK PATHFINDER KINGMAKER, FUCK OWLCAT, FUCK EVERYONE WHO SAYS THIS GAME WAS WORTH PLAYING! And so I uninstall it, again.

Bullshit game, I hate it. The combat, trash. The characters, generally unlikable garbage! At least in other games when there are villains they're well-written villains, you might not like them, but at least they provoke a feeling other than vague irritation. Fucking game, absolute waste of my time. Why did I try to respect the game for so long as I had? What did I gain from it? Our antagonistic relationship was clearly one-sided, Pathfinder was never going to try to meet me halfway and be something decent.

Time passes, it's October and I'm looking at nexus mods. You should see if there's mods for Kingmaker, sure none of them will magically make the game good, but you know, just for a lark. Sure enough, there they are, the whole spectrum. What's this? Cheat mod, well with this I could theoretically reach an ending in Pathfinder. Wouldn't that be something? Get revenge on the game that pissed you off so? I could, theoretically, do that. But why? Why should I shove my hand back in the bear trap? Hadn't I suffered enough? Shouldn't I just leave well enough alone and move on and put Kingmaker (and Wrath of the Righteous) firmly in the rearview of memory?

So, once again, for the last time let's reinstall Pathfinder. This time I'm done pretending to care about beating the game honestly. I want it to be over with. Weight limits? Gone. Barony rolls? Win them instantly. Sure "I'm robbing myself of the experience" of finishing the game "legit," but I am so far beyond caring at this point. You know what the hell of it is? The thing that makes this all so very much unbearable? It wasn't worth it. Eighty-nine hours and seventeen minutes later I finished the game, I got my unsatisfying conclusion, and… that's it.

Back when it first came out I got very very annoyed with Bloodborne. I could not for the life of me get past Vicar Amelia, it got to the point where I stopped playing the game for months because just the sight of it pissed me off. But eventually I powered my way through it, and I now regard Bloodborne as one of the finest games I have ever played.

The sense of satisfaction I got from triumphing over it was exhilarating. Pathfinder Kingmaker gave me no such feeling. Yes I'd finished the game, but there's nothing there. Just another game to add to the list of games I've beaten. For all the self-inflicted agony I've put myself through I got roughly the same satisfaction as when I beat something completely forgettable that I played for roughly a week. I feel more satisfaction finishing Little Nightmares 2 than I do Kingmaker, and I didn't particularly care about Little Nightmares 2.

I guess what I got out of Pathfinder Kingmaker is I really need to get over my absurd feelings that I'm somehow letting the developers down if I don't play a game I hate to completion. Blackguards is probably a better game than this, and I don't particularly like Blackguards.