The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
I have not read Penny-Arcade since 2009...
BuriedFerret
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
I apologize if this post does not, in fact, fit the forum criteria and is in fact a well disguised loophole used for the express purpose of blatantly fangasming in such a way that my actions or responses would otherwise have no proper place in a civilized world, but the bottle of Jameson I have just finished begs a question I have only entertained in foggy dreams and long lost thoughts.
To understand the extent of my dilemma, you may need a brief introduction.
Shortly after my twentieth birthday I moved out of my mother's apartment and to an entirely different state (to assert my dominance over reality, of course). I stayed with a friend for a while, lived nowhere at all for a month or two and eventually got my own apartment some three to four miles away from the job I had by some miracle been allowed to acquire. After that I managed to score a studio apartment with some very generous and understanding folks who saw my self created situation as a mark of courage and responsibility. The building had free wifi and so, after saving up for the proper funds, I quickly bought a computer and started using it primarily for study purposes. I walked to and from work daily, stealing precious time away from my personal studies and, since I worked an overnight shift, most of my daylight. A few years later, fate managed to lay it's cold unfeeling hands on me and introduced me to a woman who I knew from our first moments was fated to destroy me. We bore a child and , despite our ancient and eldritch rivalry, have managed to stay on peaceful terms for the last three years of his existence.
Until a week ago or so, the moment of the break in our peace, in our rivalry, I had been without casual internet/television or "recreational" entertainments.
The last Penny-Arcade Comic I remember reading was this one...
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/07/03/guest-lookouts-page-3
I had no doubt been sitting empty headed in my mother's living room filling my head with whatever meager stimuli was available at the time. A week or two later, I was in a different state with no sources of entertainment or reprieve at all. I continued that way.
I wondered, what ever happened to my wayward gaming hobbies? My diligent criticisms of the latest internet satire?
My old life?
I came to find that it had gone on without me for six and a half years.
So, in keeping the rules of the forum in the limited amount of time I have before I become sober and think that communicating this is pointless, I ask fellow readers to help me with the issue at hand. Who do I share this with? Who CAN I share this with? How do convey the sheer scope of rediscovering something beloved and forgotten in an all new light for the very first time and knowing that for six years it had it's own time to grow and evolve on it's own terms?
How do I even...
To understand the extent of my dilemma, you may need a brief introduction.
Shortly after my twentieth birthday I moved out of my mother's apartment and to an entirely different state (to assert my dominance over reality, of course). I stayed with a friend for a while, lived nowhere at all for a month or two and eventually got my own apartment some three to four miles away from the job I had by some miracle been allowed to acquire. After that I managed to score a studio apartment with some very generous and understanding folks who saw my self created situation as a mark of courage and responsibility. The building had free wifi and so, after saving up for the proper funds, I quickly bought a computer and started using it primarily for study purposes. I walked to and from work daily, stealing precious time away from my personal studies and, since I worked an overnight shift, most of my daylight. A few years later, fate managed to lay it's cold unfeeling hands on me and introduced me to a woman who I knew from our first moments was fated to destroy me. We bore a child and , despite our ancient and eldritch rivalry, have managed to stay on peaceful terms for the last three years of his existence.
Until a week ago or so, the moment of the break in our peace, in our rivalry, I had been without casual internet/television or "recreational" entertainments.
The last Penny-Arcade Comic I remember reading was this one...
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/07/03/guest-lookouts-page-3
I had no doubt been sitting empty headed in my mother's living room filling my head with whatever meager stimuli was available at the time. A week or two later, I was in a different state with no sources of entertainment or reprieve at all. I continued that way.
I wondered, what ever happened to my wayward gaming hobbies? My diligent criticisms of the latest internet satire?
My old life?
I came to find that it had gone on without me for six and a half years.
So, in keeping the rules of the forum in the limited amount of time I have before I become sober and think that communicating this is pointless, I ask fellow readers to help me with the issue at hand. Who do I share this with? Who CAN I share this with? How do convey the sheer scope of rediscovering something beloved and forgotten in an all new light for the very first time and knowing that for six years it had it's own time to grow and evolve on it's own terms?
How do I even...
+1
This discussion has been closed.
Posts
Drop the purple prose and just talk plainly about the matter at hand.
Or you could grab onto just a few games and maybe share the experience with others that play the same games, there are many ways to do all this and you can either try to plan an how to go about or, and that is my suggestion, simply enjoy and do what comes naturally.
PS. A good way to catch up gaming wise can be to get some of the games you missed. Check out HumbleBundles for cheap collections of games where some of the money spend goes to charity.
Does that make me any less of a gamer? Heck no. That's just the reality of being an adult. We've all had the experience of being like, "ok, that looks like a cool game/movie/book/comic/whatever, too bad I won't have time for it".
Anyone who says that you aren't a real gamer because you didn't consume some particular piece of media at some particular point in time is an idiot who doesn't understand how massive and diverse the gaming community really is.
I have found that not having the time to play every game as it comes out has actually improved my gaming experiences. If you're gaming for enjoyment then it doesn't matter if the game is ten days or ten years old. I only buy one or two games a year and I find that it is way more enjoyable than when I was younger and played everything I could get my hands on. Gaming is something special now, not something routine.
As far as rediscovering an old past-time, that's always great to be able to do. I found that during university I had to almost completely give up personal reading in favour of reading course materials. Now that I am done, I can read whatever I want again and it is wonderful. There was only one way back in though - pick up a book and start reading. The same goes here, just pick a game or hop on a forum and jump in!
Stuff keeps happening.
That seems fitting, even if my ego deplores it on some petty level.
I'm gonna go ahead and be a dick here and say that Baudattitude, Kilgore Trout, Pure Din and BlindZenDriver all gave responses and advice that legitimately helped me with my emotional orientation. Your posts matter and I appreciated them beyond what I should have reasonably felt in a normal world where online forums are so negatively disregarded as emotional outlets. All the better for it, they made me feel anything at all. I was suffering in a moment of pain so abstract that I had to fall into the past to ignore what was happening in the present so my subconscious could work out the where to place the falling tetris blocks in my immediate future without my interrupting it with emotional bullsense (is this board Pg-13? I forget). On the other hand...
Enc;
Your response strikes me like a Wiffle ball bat against a ping pong ball. I have denser problems for sure, but the whole point of my reaching out to the world was to completely ignore those problems for as long as I possibly could while getting back to the roots I had established for my persona in a what we could insanely call my brain's attempt at "The last known good configuration". (I have no doubt that a man who focused both on neuroscience and computer science would find frightening similarities.) I don't have a lot of reasons for why your response comes off this way, or what it implies, but I do respect your effort to help me anyways and can't really fault you for that. I like that your response combined both concern with agitation at my lack of wanting to be understood to solve the problem because it also exposes my many deeper problems in wanting to be understood without compromising who I am, even if that "who I am" is narcissistic, glib and self absorbed.
Frei;
While not helpful emotionally in the same way I thought I needed at the time, the punctual response and sardonic nature of your post was the most influential ( I ended up seeing it just before I went to bed that night). Really, whenever somebody gets as wrapped up in themselves or anything at all as much as I did it only makes sense to back up a few hundred feet and remember that you might actually be going crazy. Also, it was funny as hell, which let me sleep on a positive note.
TychoCelchuuu;
Everyone except you provided some kind of beneficial input that truly made me consider a new aspect of my fairly conceited approach to my problem. Your response, no matter what angle I continue to try to view it from, comes off as completely self serving and counter-intuitive to solving the problem I am dealing with.
This boils down to, in the very simplest details, how much you are actually trying to relate to and solve (From what you can imagine my perspective to be) my problem.
(Because that's how people help people).
And you're not. At all (Because you did not for an instant try, in words, to express that you could imagine how I could or would relate to this very complex and controversial social issue regarding rape culture you referenced from the angle provided by my current situation). Moreso, if you had, somehow, figured that I would sift through the multiple petty and simple-minded personal issues that I will no doubt continue to go through for the next thirty years as a result of my most recent event and one day, by some miracle, see through that to conceive your presumably enlightened viewpoint of the WEB COMIC which brought some small sense of familiarity to my equally small existence, I would still be left with the problem of trying to figure out why you thought that specific information was relevant to my conversation at the time or how you thought it was I would learn from your chosen content link.
Screw it.
I get it. You're a "pigeon". Even while I have been away from the general internet for the last eight years, the fact that your form of trolling is commonly accepted enough to appear on a forum as tightly knit as this still scares me beyond reason. I will accept whatever forum punishment is necessary (including bans or suspensions) as a means of expressing my complete and utter discomfort at your complete lack of concern for the very topic you chose to involve yourself in.
I feel the redundant need to confirm that this isn't my viewpoint on feminism or sexually motivated ideals or crimes or viewpoints in general, this is just my feelings regarding one poster who (as far as I could logically figure with my admittedly male human brain) was really only in the conversation to propagate a political ideal and in no way tried to help me or lend any insight with their post otherwise.
(I do like the atmosphere of this forum so far though... And the smoked meat thread managed to catch my interest...)
((Also; Currently on comic http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/04/18/one-explanation and trying to secure a PS3...))
The only person you are impressing with this narrative is yourself. This isn't the writer's block (though if you are wanting to practice and get honest critique I encourage you to head over to that subforum as you can learn a good bit).
Concerning the rest of your post, this reads more as an attempt to create a podium to show off your prose style than any reasonable desire for assistance. The H/A thread is for people actually having a problem and seeking help in good faith. Maybe you are and are just bonkers at communicating this, but this post makes it fairly clear to me that you are not seeking actual assistance here and further responding is wasting the time of those of us who actually spend the time trying to help folk.
Ultimately, whatever your goal is, I think it's going to require a big step towards getting over yourself. You've used the word narcissist to describe yourself, and to be perfectly honest it shows in the way you post. I'm not trying to attack you here, I'm just being blunt. If you talk anything like you post, it will probably put people off. Most people don't want to listen to/read a flowery dissertation waiting for you to get to the point (only to have the point get lost in the fancy language or even worse, never show up).
It's been mentioned before that the Help/Advice subforum is pretty big on recommending therapy, and this is one of those cases where I definitely agree. Therapy isn't just for "crazies" or "damaged" people. Pretty much anyone, no matter how even-keeled, can get some benefit from seeing a therapist. I think it would help, seeing as how you're calling yourself a narcissist. That word isn't an excuse, it's a disorder.
I like writing long narratives, they help me figure out who I can relate to. That aside...
I am experiencing an existential dilemma. I want very badly to share with some group of like-minded individuals somewhere that a medium I had previously enjoyed and become dissociated from has taken on what could be dubbed "a life of it's own" and has managed to take on it's own experiences and live it's life separate from myself. This is a big deal to me. It's like suddenly discovering a close high-school friend who used to write you clever stories over the weekend eventually went on to write Harry Potter and has become something you can't relate to at all.I also understand that it isn't that big a deal to other people who have either moved on with life or have been following the series this whole time, but I still have a well of emotion to share and no one to share it with.
I recently bought a PS3, which has helped me get reacquainted with gaming culture, but for most things I am a newcomer to an old game and there isn't much to relate to anyone else on.
There's no forum for "people who just rediscovered their youth", or keenly worded nostalgia threads made explicitly for people who never had the experience to be nostalgic about it to begin with.
I guess I'm just trying to not feel so alone in the whole experience?
I guess I'm looking for somewhere to fit in and talk to people who can relate on this unusually specific topic? A forum or something?
Any avenue will do.
I guess that might be a bit childish..?
Of course if you want to write tracts of text about something, there is the writing forum here. I'd try and make sure that they are about something specific though. People are much more willing to read this kind of language when it is in narrative form. When you are just spouting flowery and confusing language in a conversational format though, no one is really going to be interested. Not here at least, and doubtfully most anywhere else. Those sorts of interactions aren't conversational. They are more one way, which is what makes me think that something like a youtube video might be best to look into. Or blogs. The penny arcade blog itself is quite often wordy in the same way. You can always cruise through the old blog posts here. Might get you a little caught up on what verbacious people of the time thought.
but they're listening to every word I say
I'm also curious why it's such a big deal to you that the gaming industry has continued on while you were away. All those games you missed are still there, and if you want to talk about them while you play them there's no shortage of places to do it. Want to play Ni No Kuni? There's a Ni No Kuni thread here on the PA forums. Castlevania: Lords of Shadow? There's a Castlevania thread. The Last of Us? If there ain't a thread, make one - I'll join in.
The only thing you missed out on was release date hype. Maybe marketing hype. But the games are still there, and still good. People still like them, and will happily discuss them with you.
If you're only looking to talk in iambic pentameter to other people who fell out of the hobby for a while and are now coming back and feel nostalgic and overwhelmed, then I don't know what to tell you as that's a very niche group.
I think you may be romanticizing games and the games industry. Comparing a form of entertainment to an old friend who you can't relate to anymore is kind of hyperbolic and, to me at least, indicates that there's a much bigger issue here that isn't being addressed. You can't see the forest for the trees, as it were. Finding like minded individuals may help you feel less overwhelmed, but that's not going to fix any deeper psychological problems that may be at play here.
xbl - HowYouGetAnts
steam - WeAreAllGeth
Step 1: Find a game that sounds good.
Step 2: Pick up said game.
Step 3: Find a place to discuss it.
Step 4: Discuss it.
If you can't do that, and require to engage in ridiculous hyperbolic condescension in order to get that across, then we are not qualified to help you.